Up Against It Part 2

The kids surveyed Sh.e.l.ley, who eyed them back, a corner of her mouth quirked up. He looked at his companions, eyebrows raised. One by one, they gave him a nod.

"All right," he told Sean. As if he could make such a promise. The arrogance of youth. But h.e.l.l; why not? Maybe the rest of the bikers would listen to him. At this point, the cl.u.s.ter had nothing to lose.

"You're on, Agre. Sh.e.l.ley, you lead the op."

They suited up and went out. Geoff was still shaking. He could not believe he had said what he had out loud. Worse, Moriarty had listened. Now he had to act, fast, when all he wanted to do was curl up somewhere.

He kept seeing how Carl's face had looked-the swollen body, the frozen eyes, the bulging veins. The world had shrunk, like he was seeing it through a long tunnel. Everything was happening in slow motion.

He remembered the old man's face as he had challenged him. Geoff had told Moriarty he could do this. If he could not keep his s.h.i.+t together, he should have said so then.

The big blond woman, the one they called Sh.e.l.ley, was talking to him. Near them, the cl.u.s.ter's ice was boiling away. If that wasn't a good enough reason to suck it up, he may as well take off his helmet right now.

For you, Carl, he thought. he thought. I'll do this, because you would. I'll do this, because you would.

"... to get your friends," she radioed. "We need them now. Whoever you can muster in the next three minutes. Less, if you can."

"What do we need to know about the bug neutralizer?" Kamal asked.

"The juice comes in five-hundred-kilo bladders. It's not damaged by cold, but it needs heat to liquefy. Solid, it's useless. And you'll have to break the packaging. The ice is hot-the packaging should melt on impact-but to be on the safe side, you'll need to hurl them hard. That means low, powered orbits. To shut down the reaction you'll have to blanket the ice, which means you'll need to come in from different angles, at high speeds. In other words, it'll be a death derby up there."

Amaya asked, "You know biking?"

"I know orbital mechanics. Think you guys can handle it?"

The four of them looked at one another. This time it was Ian who replied. That was fine with Geoff. He had done all the thinking he could handle for now. Now he just needed to go and do. He needed to outrun what he had just seen. "We can handle it. We'll be at the pickup spot in three.

"All right," Ian said, as they bounded across the landscape toward their bikes, "Geoff, you take one ten nanometers; Amaya take one sixteen point five; and Kamal, you're one twenty-two. I'll take one twenty-seven point five. Let's start making calls."

Geoff switched his comm frequency to the first biker channel and leapt onto his bike.

Sean got notice his boss, Jane Navio, was on the way up. He suited up and stepped out onto the commuter pad as she and a dozen Resource Commission staff poured out of the lifts. She spotted Sean.

"I come with extra hands," she radioed. "The big equipment is on its way. It'll be here in twenty minutes."

"Too late to do much good, ma'am-but the extra hands will help. We need them badly." He directed the new hands to Cal for a.s.signments. Then they two bounded over to the crater.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Disa.s.sembler disaster in Warehouse 2-H. It set off a chain reaction and we have runaway disa.s.sembly in the lake. We lost two crew when the warehouse came down." He hesitated. "One of them was that young man you recommended for the position last fall. Carl Agre."

She was looking out at the vanis.h.i.+ng lake. She did not say anything for a second. He watched her struggle with it.

"All right," she said softly. "All right. We'll deal with that later. What's happening out there?" She gestured at the bikers dive-bombing the dwindling ice pile.

"They're helping. Trying to stop the reaction."

Jane eyed the scene. "We're down at least seventy percent. More. d.a.m.n." The look on her face said all it needed to, even beneath the radiation s.h.i.+elding. Then Sean's words registered. "So we've recruited bikers? Ah, to dive-bomb the ice with neutralizer. Clever! My G.o.d." She eyed Sean. "Is it working?"

He squinted down at the ice: what with the mist and the boiling and splas.h.i.+ng, it was hard to tell. "It's better. Don't know if it's enough."

She turned, taking information in. She pointed toward the ruined warehouses. The woman was like a f.u.c.king computer.

"What happened to 1-H, over there? Oh-I see. Partial collapse due to bug backsplash from 2-H. Jesus. That must have been a violent reaction. We need to know what caused that. All our simulations said the bugs should have frozen first. I see activity inside. There's a crew in there?"

"Several are trapped in the rubble," he replied. "They got to the emergency lockers in time, but they're buried under debris and they only have pony bottles and rescue bubbles, so they only have a few more minutes of air. We have to hurry."

She scanned further. "And that team?" She pointed to the workers guiding the neutralizer packets from the warehouse air locks. "They're taking the neutralizer to the bikers?"

"That's correct."

It was a long way from the warehouse locks, across the commuter pads, past the hangars to the rocketbike launch pad. It took four people to push-pull each neutralizer bladder. The supply chain inched along. Jane gestured at the biker ramps. "There are bikers backed up and waiting for the neutralizer, Sean."

"So?"

"So," she said, "you've got a resource bottleneck. Even with the new hands helping, it's going much too slowly. We need every gram of ice we can rescue. The last thing we can afford right now is a bottleneck."

Her meaning became clear. Sean glared. "If I rea.s.sign the rescue team to the neutralizer brigade, the crew trapped in the warehouse will die." My people will die. My people will die.

"Sean. I can tell by looking-we're losing about a day's worth of ice every minute. I checked the s.h.i.+pping ledgers on the way up from Zekeston. There's not another ice s.h.i.+pment coming Down anytime soon. I don't know how I can keep everyone alive till we get another s.h.i.+pment, even if the runaway were stopped this very instant. Hundreds of thousands of lives depend on how much ice we can save. We don't need your team for long. Maybe another fifteen minutes. Then you rea.s.sign them to the warehouse."

Sean shook his head. "Fifteen minutes is too long for those people trapped in there. We'll lose them."

She looked at him. "The cl.u.s.ter has to come first, Sean. There's no time to argue. Get someone to throw them some more pony bottles and then get your team out to the juice brigade."

"There's no way to get them ponies or air lines, or we already would have. You're telling me to abandon them."

The commissioner said, "Then you're right. I am."

Sean stared. He had been here before. After a long and honorable career, he had been dishonorably discharged, during the Gene Purges, for disobeying orders. But those had been stupid orders. Evil ones. These weren't. Jane Navio was a chrome-a.s.sed b.i.t.c.h, d.a.m.n her. But she was right.

"Rea.s.sign the warehouse team to the neutralizer brigade," she repeated. "Now." And he did.

Geoff remembered the biker chatter in his headset. He recalled dodging other riders, dragging nets filled with neutralization bladders, dropping them, watching them crash onto the shrinking mound of ice, while Moriarty's engineer Sh.e.l.ley gave targeting and pickup instructions-then landing, waiting while technicians loaded up their nets, and taking off again. But everything blurred together in a jumble of events.

He did remember one pa.s.s in detail. He and Amaya went in low enough that the net dragged the top of the ice. They dodged ice crags and sudden spurts of superheated gas to drop the packet into a crevice deep in the ice's center. He caught a glimpse: the boiling ice looked like lava in a cauldron. Then they veered upward amid towering gas columns.

Another team veered into their nets as they rose, and Geoff got yanked off his bike. He spun wry-the stars, the flares of the other bikers' rockets, Phocaea's surface, all tumbled past. He had no idea where his bike was, or where Amaya was. He feared he'd plow into Phocaea's surface, but after a moment he realized he'd been thrown upward, out of Phocaea orbit. His breath slowed. Numb calm fell over him. He breathed in and out. Dots of fog appeared and vanished on his faceplate.

Amaya was back there, somewhere, circling back around for him. He was sure of it. But for a moment he thought it might be good if n.o.body had noticed, and he could just float away, off into the Big Empty.

Then she radioed him that she was approaching. She shot a net that snared him. Geoff grabbed at it, climbed along it to her bike, and mounted behind her. She fired her rockets and took him back around to his own bike. Neither spoke a word.

As he mounted his bike, she finally asked, "You OK?"

"Yeah."

It was hard to believe that only a half hour ago he had been so excited about his bug-t.u.r.d art project. He had thought he was such hot s.h.i.+t. Now it all felt like a waste of time. He shook it off. Don't think. Just do. Don't think. Just do.

Half an hour after they started, Sh.e.l.ley gave the all-clear. By the time the reporters and their cameras had started showing up, most of the bikers were down, gathering near their hangar, checking their equipment. Geoff coasted to a stop and launched himself off his bike. He ached. He could smell his own sour stink, and though slimed in sweat, he was s.h.i.+vering. Dully, he wondered if his climate controls were malfunctioning. He shuffled clumsily over to the crater lip, near where he and Carl had been standing less than an hour before, and leaned over, hands on his thighs.

When he straightened, the mist in the crater was clearing. The pale sun rose low over the horizon in the southwest, and cast long shadows across the still steaming wreckage. The stars faded from view. The crater floor was covered in a graphite slick, with neatly s.p.a.ced blocks on top in yellow, red, and an a.s.sortment of metallic hues. In the crater's middle was a lump of dirty ice about half the size of what they had had before the delivery. A couple weeks' worth, maybe. No more.

Amaya came up next to him; he recognized the stickers on her suit sleeve. He could not see her face well. But he knew what she was thinking. "There's always other s.h.i.+pments coming Down," he said. "My mom says Commissioner Navio is a genius at making the ice last. We'll get more in soon. It'll be OK."

"Yeah," she said.

Sh.e.l.ley alighted next to them, and slapped Geoff and Amaya on the back. "You all saved us. Good work." She bounded off toward the warehouses. By then, Kamal and Ian had found them.

"Aren't you going to talk to the reporters?" Kamal asked, and Ian said, "You should get over there. This was your idea. You deserve the credit. Not those clowns."

Geoff shook his head. "Nah. Gotta bounce."

Kamal and Ian protested, but Amaya said, "Lay off." And to Geoff: "We'll talk to the reporters. Catch you later."

"Yeah. Later."

No point in delaying the inevitable. It was time to face his parents, and their disappointment that it was not Carl, but he, who had survived.

3.

Back in Zekeston, Jane and her team got to work on inventories, damage reports, alerts, rationing plans. Hours pa.s.sed in a blur. Marty Graham, her aide, followed her into her office, holding out two pills and a bulb of water.

"What are those for? I feel fine."

Marty Graham, barely twenty-eight, was a recent transplant from Ceres. He had just gotten engaged. He had not been with Jane long, but had quickly made himself indispensable with his ability to fend people off without angering them, and to antic.i.p.ate what she would need next in order to do her job. On the other hand, he could be rather a pest, and when she saw the pills and vial in his hands, she waved them away. "I'm fine."

"Honestly, Chief, don't be a baby. You're exhausted. You need to be at your best." He held up one capsule. "Clears out the cobwebs." He held up the second. "Stimulant. Medic's orders. None of us are going to get any sleep for a while. May as well enjoy it."

He pressed them into her hands. She eyed them sourly. "All right, all right." She swallowed them. "Has the prime minister gotten my initial report yet? When does he want his briefing?"

"I just got confirmation from his office a moment ago. He'll see you in half an hour."

"Good. Call Sean, Aaron, and Tania in."

"In person?"

"Yes. I'll want a meats.p.a.ce meeting for this one."

"Will do." He left, and her office door closed behind him. Jane's three direct reports entered-Sean of s.h.i.+pping, Stores and Disa.s.sembly; Aaron of Utilities and a.s.sembly; and Tania of Computer Support Systems.

"Come in," she said, and entered the privacy code to her waveware. The tailored drugs did their work: a chemical wave of well-being and strength moved through her, and her thoughts cleared. OK, Marty; you were right, OK, Marty; you were right, she thought, but she was still scowling. She did not like to depend on a pharmacy to function. she thought, but she was still scowling. She did not like to depend on a pharmacy to function.

They waited while dead "Stroiders" spy glitter drifted toward the vents, and the "Stroiders" broadcast signal in her heads-up display went out. Gravity was light enough here that the room had no official ceiling; as with all the low-gee parts of the city, they bobbed gently in various s.h.i.+fting orientations around the conference room, twirling slowly and touching surfaces to guide themselves back toward the center. All but Sean, that is, who clung to a handhold: as a Downsider, he was uncomfortable with the tumbling indifference to which end was up that native Upsiders had.

"This will be a quick meeting," she promised once the mote dust had cleared, "and then I'll let you get back to work."

As resource commissioner, she had a budget of twelve offline hours per workweek. During a crisis, as commissioner, she could invoke emergency privilege and take more. The fees were high-and she had no doubt that Upside-Down would bring pressure to bear to keep access open to her department, where the core of this drama was playing out. So be it.

"Sean, how many did we lose, up top?"

He twisted to look at her, and the banked fury in his face told her the news was bad. Hazel-eyed, black-skinned, gray-haired, and tall, Sean Moriarty sported broad, military-stiff shoulders. Deep lines engraved his forehead. He was at the edge of old age, pus.h.i.+ng the century mark. "Besides Agre and Kovak? Eight." His voice was hoa.r.s.e.

Eight. She had killed eight. She released a slow breath, but did not allow herself to think about it. Not just yet. "I'm very sorry."

He gave a sharp nod of acquiescence. "Send me their names," she said. "I'll notify their families."

"Thank you, ma'am." He made a gesture inwave, and her waveface acknowledged receipt of the file. "Fourteen warehouse workers were injured, in all, most of them minor. The list is also attached."

"I'll contact them as well, then." She'd have to do it after her emergency meeting with the PM. She shot the files off to Marty, with a note to fit the notifications into her schedule.

Aaron Nabors was still young, around forty, with blond hair, freckles, and pale skin. His brown eyes were shadowed with fatigue and worry. You would think he had spent the night in half a gee, the way his shoulders slumped and his face muscles sagged.

"What are we down?" Jane asked him.

"Let's see." Squinting, tumbling slowly, he ran his finger across invisible icons. Graphics and figures sprang up in their shared waveface, in response to his words. "The city infrastructure a.s.semblers took a hit during the initial disaster, when nutrient flow was disrupted, but we've got that back online now, and the bugs are regaining their base numbers, feeding on enriched bug juice as well as their own dead. We'll be fine there.

"Materials and parts. We're OK as long as the a.s.semblers don't hit their reproductive limit for another few days. We have an emergency s.h.i.+pment of parts and equipment scheduled to arrive a couple months from now. We can probably limp along till the bugs are back up to full capacity.

"Food. The food a.s.semblers weren't touched and we still have plenty of raw stock. So starvation isn't an immediate threat, praise G.o.d."

He paused to wipe at the sweat beaded on his upper lip. Jane raised her eyebrows. "Air, water, and power?"

He gestured. Images played in the small group's center, showing the impending collapse of Phocaea's resources. He played it through, tweaking the inputs to show them three or four simulations in succession, and froze them in a patterned layout. He pressed his lips together and let Jane and the others study the readouts.

"This one can't be right," Sean said, pointing at the temperature display. "The temperature levels off at minus ten C or so, and only drifts down a little after that. I thought the big risk was freezing."

Aaron replied, "No, not at all. We've dumped too much heat into this rock over the decades. It insulates us. It would take a year or more for the city to cool down to a truly dangerous level. It'll get cold in here, but not deadly cold."

"Not deadly to humans at least," Jane said, thinking of the arboretum. "The real risk is the toxins. Contamination in air, water, and food supplies, as our a.s.semblers and disa.s.semblers die off."

"Slow suffocation, poisoning, and famine," Tania said, with a gallows grin. "We'll steep in a stew of our own excretions. Mmmm!"

Jane gave Tania a sharp look. Tania had the decency to look sheepish. Jane pulled the calculations and graphs over, reorganized them, and examined the parameters Aaron had put in. "Your simulations are saying that if we preserve hydrogen fuel for the power plant we can't begin to rebuild the disa.s.sembler base."