Not felt another kind of knot in his stomach as he looked inside the mod. There she was, the lettlest slip of a thing, lying still, so still. There was blood spattered all over the permod interior, and on her face. Her hair was a tangled, wadded mess, her clothes along ago sweated through.
At first, Canpopper Notworthit thought she was dead, that the trip had killed her. But no. There. Her chest was rising, falling. Her eyelids fluttered. She was alive, at least sumwut.
Well, wut wuz wrong with her? Unconscious? Sick? Comatose? No—leastwise, didn’t look like none of thoz. Just asleep, looked like.
Pretty lady, she wuz, even under alltha grime and stuff. Canpopper Notworthit at least knew he had no right to carp about someone else being a bit on the dirty side.
“Heavy dozer,” he muttered to himself in admiring tones. The first half of his name was derived from his job, but Canpopper Notworthit had earned the second half by being sure nothing was ever worth the effort required. He was, however, a big admirer of sleep, with real respect for anyone who knew how to do it right. And this chick knew, for sure.
Help. Get her some help. That wuz thing todo. No. Waitasec. Not get. Give. For wunz in life, do tha thing self, notdoa handoff.
Not knelt down by the permod, looked over the plumbing connections, and undid them with a minimum of fumbling. He shifted his weight, got his arms under her, and lifted her up. He turned and started carrying her toward the medfixer, moving carefully in the microgee of the Boredway, down the closest gangway to the docshop.
Even down in the hi-gee decks, she didn’t weight hardly nothing at all, nohow.
Eyeballer Maximus Lock-on had the fear sweats, and no surprise. There was trouble abubble, no doubt. There was a perfect torrent of cargo headed toward the hab, and every can of it carried a little bit of trouble.
Prob was simple. Every arriving cargo that was incoming at more than zero speed—which was all of them, of course—gave the hab a leetle goose. To put it a bit more formally, every arriving cargo unit added a microscropic velocity vector to the hab. Plus, were lots of cargo craft arriving, all from about the same direction, which meant that there were a lot of microvectors coming in and adding up. Plusmore, each time the Ghoul Mods tweaked the grav systems on the Moonpoint Ring, that perturbed the hab’s orbit as well. Norm-time, such tiny perturbs wouldn’t matter—but no such thing as minor orbital perturbs this close to a singularity.
Sooner or later, Eyeball knew she was gonna hafta light the maneuvering engines on this mother and tidy up the hab’s orbit—if she could. She had a nasty feeling that the cargo teams were not making her job easier. Couldn’t light the engine with unsecured cargo floating allways about.
Eyeball decided to head on down to cargo and get a peek for herself, live up to her name. There wasn’t much she could do about the SCOREs just now, and the hab orbit wouldn’t destabilize for a while yet.
She powered down her station, got up, and moved out into the labyrinthine, and rather grotty, corridors of the hab. Put plain, the place wasn’t looking so good these days—and the hab expecting guests, too. Those eggheads from MRI, coming in on permods. Strange thought, that: the idea they should spruce up because company was coming. Was that one of the pointless counteract instincts the Pointless Cause was supposed to whack out of the Purpfolk? Or was it a good thing, a “Troo Way,” however the term was being spelled this week? The bigshot Purpthinkers were forever pronouncing contradictory Noo Ways and Troo Ways. What was part of firm and unswerving policy last week was out the window next. That wuz the Purpthinkers job—to keep the rules changing so’s no one got too comfortable. It was hard to keep up, and that wuz the idea. Keep you on edge, alert, awake, thinking.
Eyeball threaded her way along the mazeways, the rat’s nest of corridors and detours and vertical ways that made up the hab. Somewhere underneath the dark, Purple-built squatter’s boxes and pseudo-art and dayclubs was the straight-out, linear, geometric corridors and passages laid out by the original architect of the hab. Prob if they cleared away all the Purpbuilt add-ons it would take half as long to get anywhere, and there would be more room in the place to boot. But no, that would spoil everything. Efficiency was not the be-all and end-all. People did not join the Purple so’s they could do things the sensible way.
Eyeball spotted someone—closer to something, maybe—coming her way. It took her a moment, but then she had it locked: Canpopper Notworthit, repped as one of heaviest goofers on the whole damn can. You wanted a job not done, you sent the Popper to do it. A very popular fellow during official work stoppages. But the Popper was carrying something, something big and heavy, an event about as common as nudists wearing tuxedoes to bed. Whatthehey was he up to?
Eyeball moved toward Canpopper and realized he was carrying a who, not a what—and a who that was in no good shape. Eyeball hurried down the corridor. “Jeeks, Pop. Who-the-hell?” she asked. Young kid, a pretty girl in a bad way.
“Outta a can,” Popper replied, looking down on his burden. “One of the science jaspers up from Earth. Just a baby, huh?”
“Just a baby for sure,” Eyeball agreed. “Where to?”
“Nearmost docshop,” Popper said. “I think she’s core okay, just burned out. Gonna make sure.”
Eyeball reached out, touched the young one’s face. This was whut the Earthside eggheads sent? Was that a real special brain in there or was she just a lamb to the slaughter? Her skin was warm, felt okay, not cold clammy or burning. Eyeball moved her hand down, found a strong pulse under her jaw. Maybe would be okay. But nothing she could do doc couldn’t do better. Her job was getting the cargo untangled, else they all in bad shape. “Get her down pronto to doc,” Eyeball said. “Good way, Popper.”
“On it, Eyeball,” Canpopper said, and went on his way.
Eyeball watched him go, and then recommenced toward Boredway. She walked through the zones and turfs and operations sections and rand centers, her mind much more on cargo handling than her route. She knew this part of the hab by heart. She could still get lost in the Downways zone, or Old High Bagdad, but then why would she ever wanna go those place? She went through Looparound, took the shortcut across Doubleback turf, up three levels to get around the blockage caused by the Funway, through hydroponics control, past two or three childcare bars, and then up the accessway to the low-gee and no-gee sections at the axis of the ship.
Eyeball came out onto Boredway, the huge long-axis passageway that would have been called Broadway on any other ship, an enormous, enclosed cylindrical space that ran the whole length of the hab. It was a bright, gleaming place, very much in contrast to most of the hab. Even the Purps knew to keep this sector nice and tidy and clean and linear, if they wanted to stay alive. A wise Purp knew there were limits to chaos, just as there were limits to order. And there had best be no chaos at all hereabouts.
Back before the Purps has started rerouting corridors into more aesthetically pleasing forms, you could get to any point on the hab just by taking a vertical passageway to Broadway, moving to the vertiway nearest your destination, and heading back down. Too simple. Too easy. Too boring, and hence the name.