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

into their inner wrist complants, one of whom she
caught on the way by and said, “What’s going on?”
    “It’s contained,” the uni said, not even looking at Shadia,
her eyes on some invisible goal . . . or maybe still seeing that
from which she’d just come.
    Shadia wouldn’t be invisible. “What?”
    Now the woman looked at her, swept her gaze up and down and
took in Shadia’s coveralls and vest. “Gravity generator surge,” she said,
clearly impatient. “The offending system is offline—no more danger there. As if
a duster would care. Just stay out of the way and you’ll be fine.”
    As if—
    Shadia jerked, stung, and then didn’t know why she should
be. By then the woman had moved on, pulling a flat PIM from her pocket to enter
notations on the run. Shadia scowled after her. “At least I’m the one going in this direction.”
    Then again, why is that?
    ∞
    Shadia stopped short at the edge of the damaged area. She
would have stopped short had the station uni not stood in front of his hastily
erected low-tech barrier. She’d never imagined—
    She couldn’t have imagined—
    Gravity generator
surge.
    Random lashings of unfathomable gravity, crumpling away the
residences. Level after level, collapsed and twisted; she couldn’t tell how
deep it went, if it reached the next ringhall or even went beyond. Narrow
ribbons of damage spared some residences entirely, and destroyed others just as
surely. Sullen, acrid smoke eased out of the wreckage, and Shadia pulled her
loosely fitting coverall cuff past her hand and covered her mouth and nose.
    There were other smells. Oils and coolants and hot metals,
compressed beyond all tolerance. And a cacophony of sound—shouting and crying
and orders and creaking, groaning structures. Someone jostled her; she barely
noticed. She was too busy trying to orient, to find the residence ID
numbers—but the chaos distracted her eyes, and she found nothing upon which to
focus.
    Until she glanced at the barrier, realized it was part of a
residence. Her eyes widened at the number.
    Not so very different than the Rowpins’.
    The uni seemed to notice her then. The expression on her
face, maybe. He swept his gaze over her much as the woman had done . . .
and then it softened. He suddenly didn’t seem so much different than she, not
in age or reaction or station status. “You know someone here?”
    Behind him, there was a sudden flurry of alarm, shouted
warnings; a chunk of a residence broke away and tipped off into the exposed
core. Shadia flinched at the hollow boom of its landing; they both did. And
then she whispered, “I think so.”
    It wasn’t loud enough to be heard over the noise, not even
though the alarm stopped in the middle of her words. He seemed to understand
anyway. “I can’t let you through. Only unis.”
    Official hover scooters flashed through the core, strobing
ident lights. Already starting to clear the debris. Towing things.
    Stretchers, mainly.
    Shadia puzzled in blank lack of understanding, knowing that
any victims were more likely to come out in a bucket than on a stretcher. The
long-coated uni saw that, too, and edged a little closer to her, like a
confidant. “The edge zones,” he said, gesturing. “The parts damaged by the
damage, and not the gravity. You see?”
    She saw. Unable to go forward, unable to leave, she waited
and watched, an anomalous quiet spot in a Brownian motion of perms and
destruction. Trying to discern just where the Rowpins had lived, and to figure
out if they’d had enough time after picking up Feef to make it back home.
Listening to people around her recount the moments of the disaster—what they’d
seen and what they’d heard and how they thought it might have been. Watching
them pitch in as the rare survivor stumbled out of the edges of the damage.
Watching as people pushed past the barriers, climbing into the wreckage to join
the unis as they tossed bits and pieces of what had been homes into the core
net