Across the Spectrum by Pati Nagle, editors Deborah J. Ross Read Free Book Online

the vest. That’s all I’ll ever need.
    She wouldn’t stay a single pay period longer than it took to
pay off the med-debt. She’d take her experience—one more thing for her
listings—and she’d take her inexpressible relief and she’d move on.
    Too damn bad that zipscoot was going so fast when it hit
me.
    ∞
    “Until they’re clean ,” Shadia told the youthful
first-jobber who had deluded himself into believing the pet room maintenance
was completed. With a glare at the cleaner machine, he gave its handle a jerk
and sullenly dragged it back into Feef’s unoccupied area. He’d been on the job
a week and she was about to give him notice.
    Toklaat’s workers took so much for granted . . .
that they could keep a job once they took it no matter their performance, that
they could find another. Dusters knew to keep their records spotless for ease
of transition from one situation to another. No one vouched for a careless
worker, or digi-stamped their jobchips with the top rating that would draw that
next good gig. Ever-imminent transitions kept them sharp.
    Maybe she’d just start hiring dusters. If she could get the
assistant’s job listed as temp . . .
    And why not, when she wasn’t keeping most of the assistants
beyond the time a duster would stay? Just one, a young woman named Amandajoy
who loved the animals and applied herself to learning their routines with
nearly Shadia’s vigor. A more honest vigor, since Shadia used the work as a
means to an end and Amandajoy did it for the work itself. Shadia could have
loved the work, but didn’t dare. She could have loved the memories it invoked,
but didn’t dare that, either.
    Those memories couldn’t coexist with a duster’s life, not
and be cherished.
    I don’t have to think about that. Another few pay periods
and I can turn this place over to Amandajoy, even if she doesn’t know it yet.
By then she’ll have the confidence. She’ll have to, even if she doesn’t.
That’ll be a duster lesson for her. Never let the doubt show.
    More airfresher ’zymes in the rrhy-tub, that would probably
help. Amandajoy must have had the same thought, for she emerged from the
storage pantry with ’zyme packets in hand—
    Shadia’s world shifted. It looped in a strange manner her
senses couldn’t unravel; her first jobber made a loud gurgle and dropped his
cleaning equipment. A series of hollow booming noises made the ground shake;
the air fluttered in response. Shadia and Amandajoy clutched each other for stability
and ended up on the thickly carpeted floor anyway, gathering skitzcat hair.
    For a moment there was silence. Then Gite bleated, leaping
from his wire enclosure as the door slowly swung open on its own. He landed on
both of them, searching for a lap. Shadia winced as his claws dug in,
automatically scooping his legs out from beneath him to cuddle him—and save her
skin. Amandajoy looked like she wanted to climb right into Shadia’s lap with
him. “What was that?” she said, her eyes wide.
    Shadia searched her duster experiences, years of different
stations and different failures and accidents and emergencies, and then she
searched her ten whole years on Belvia, all the time she’d had before she’d
been snatched away.
    I don’t know. All those years, all those places . . .
never anything like this. That’s a duster’s life, not knowing what’s next,
ready for anything. But not ready for this.
    Shadia shifted Gite from her arms to Amandajoy’s. “Wait
here,” she said as the dwelling erupted into noisome protest—howls and chirps
and screams and a few entirely new scents—though none as bad as the akliat’s
would have been. “Try to calm them.” To the first jobber, she said, “Whatever
Amandajoy says, you do.”
    “You’re leaving?” Amandajoy’s fear-widened eyes
opened even further with surprise.
    “You want an answer? Someone’s got to go find it.” Shadia
climbed to her feet, not bothering to remove the Gite-defense chaps