Free Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold Page B

play the hand I'm dealt, Mr. Graf. Blast—she controlled herself, almost visibly wrenching the conversation back on its original track. I've got to find her soon, or I'll have no choice but to let Van Atta start the show ass-back wards. Leo, it's absolutely essential that Vice President Apmad get the creche tour first,before she has time to start forming any—do you have any idea at all where those kids may be?
    Leo shook his head; an inspiration turned the truthfulgesture toa l ie even before he'dfinished it. But will you give me a call if you find them before I do? he pleaded, his humble tone offering truce.
    Yei's stiffness wilted a bit. Yes, certainly. She shrugged wryly, a silent apology, and broke off.
    Leo swung back to his locker, peeled out of his work suit, donned coveralls, and hastened off to track down his inspiration before Dr. Yei duplicated it independently. He was certain she would, and shortly, too.

    Silver checked the work schedule on her vid display. Bell peppers. She floated across the hydroponics bay to the seed locker, found the correct labeled drawer, and withdrew a pre-counted paper packet.
    She gave the packet an absent shake, and the dried seeds made a pleasing rattle.
    She collected a plastic germination box, tore open the packet, and coaxed the little pale seeds into the container, where they bounced about cheerfully. To the hydration spigot next. She thrust the water tube through the rubber doughnut seal on the side of the germination box and administered a measured squirt, and gave the box an extra shake to break up the shimmering globule of liquid that formed. Shoving the germination box into its slot in the incubation rack, she set it for the optimum temperature for peppers, bell, hybrid phototropic non-gravitational axial differentiating clone 297-X-P, and sighed.
    The light from the filtered windows plucked insistently at her attention, and she paused for the fourth or fifth time this shift to weave among the grow tubes and stare out at the portion of Rodeo this bay's angle of view allowed her to see. Somewhere down there, at the bottom of that well of air, Claire and Tony were crawling now—if they had not already surrendered—or managed to make it to another shuttle—or met some horrible catastrophe. . . . Silver's imagination, unbidden, supplied her with a string of sample catastrophes.
    She tried to crowd them out with a firm mental picture of Tony and Claire and Andy successfully sneaking onto a shuttle bound for the Transfer Station, but the picture wavered into a scenario of Claire, attempting to jump some gap to the shuttle's hatchway (what gap? from where, for pity's sake?) forgetting that all such tangents were bent to parabolas by the gravitational force, and missing the target.
    Silver thought of the peculiar ways things moved in dense gravitational fields. The scream, chopped offby the splat on the concrete below—no, surely Claire would be holding Andy—the double splat on the concrete below. . . . Silver kneaded her forehead with the heels of her upper hands, as if she might Page 35

    physically press the grisly vision back out of her brain. Claire had seen the same vids of life downside, surely she'd remember.
    The hiss of the airseal doors twitched Silver back to present reality. Better look busy—what was she supposed to be doing next? Oh, yes, cleaning used grow tubes, in preparation for their placement day after tomorrow in the new bay they were building to show offeverybody's skills to the Ops VP. Damn the Ops VP. But for her, there'd be a chance Tony and Claire might go un-missed for two shifts, even three.
    Now . . .
    Her heart shrank, as she saw who had entered the hydroponics bay. Now, indeed.
    Ordinarily, Silver would have been glad to see Leo. He seemed a big, clean man—no, not large, but solid somehow, full of a prosaic calmness that spilled over in the very scent of him, reminiscent ofd ownsider things Silver had chanced to handle, wood and leather and