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become the signal for it. A smile lit her face. Thanks, Mama Nilla. That is
good news.
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Revolution 101 for the Bewildered, Leo decided grimly, should be his course
title. Or worse;
050: Remedial Revolution
...
The shell of floating quaddies hovering expectantly around him in the lecture
module had been officially augmented by both the off-duty pusher crews, and
loaded with all the off-shift older quaddies Silver had been able to contact
covertly. Sixty or seventy altogether. The lecture module was jammed, causing
Leo to jump ahead mentally and think about oxygen consumption and regeneration
plans for the reconfigured Habitat. There was tension, as well as carbon
dioxide, in the air. Rumors were afloat already, Leo realized, God knew in
what mutant forms. It was time to replace rumors with facts.
Silver waved all clear from the airseal doors, turning all four thumbs up and
grinning at Leo, as one last T-shirted quaddie scurried within. The airseal
doors slid shut, eclipsing her as she turned to take up guard duty in the
corridor.
Leo took up his lecture station in the center. The center, the hub of the
wheel, where stresses are most concentrated. After some initial whispering,
poking, and prodding, they hushed for him, to an almost frightening
attentiveness. He could hear them breathing.
We would need you even if you weren t an engineer, Leo
, Silver had remarked.
We re all too used to taking orders from people with legs.
Are you saying you need a front man?
he d asked, amused.
Is that what it s called?
Her gaze upon him had been coolly pragmatic.
He was getting too old, his brain was short-circuiting to some distant rock
beat, slipping back to the noisier rhythms of his adolescence.
Let me be your front man, baby. Call me Leo. Call me anytime, day or night.
Let me help.
He eyed the closed airseal doors. Was the man waving the baton at the front of
the parade pulling it after him - or being pushed along ahead of it? He had a
queasy premonition he was going to learn the answer. He woofed a breath, and
returned his attention to the lecture chamber.
As some of you have already heard, Leo began, words like pebbles in the pool
of silence, a new gravity technology has arrived from the outlying planets.
It s apparently based on a variation of the Necklin field tensor equations,
the same mathematics that underlie the technology we use to punch through
those wrinkles in space-time we call wormholes. I haven t been able to get
hold of the tech specs yet myself, but it seems it s already been developed to
the marketable stage. The theoretical possibility was not, strictly speaking,
new, but I for one never expected to see its practical capture in my lifetime.
Evidently, neither did the people who created you quaddies.
There is a kind of strange symmetry to it. The spurt forward in genetic
bioengineering that made you possible was based on the perfection of a new
technology, the uterine replicator, from Beta Colony. Now, barely a generation
later, the new technology that renders you obsolete has arrived from the same
source. Because that s what you have become, before you even got on-line -
technologically obsolete. At least from GalacTech s point of view. Leo drew
breath, watching for their reactions.
Now, when a machine becomes obsolete, we scrap it. When a man s training
becomes obsolete, we send him back to school.
But your obsolescence was bred in your bones. It s either a cruel mistake, or,
or, , he paused for emphasis, the greatest or opportunity you will ever
have to become a free people.
Don t... don t take notes, Leo choked, as heads bent automatically over
their scribble boards, illuminating his key words with their light pens as the
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autotranscription marched across their displays. This isn t a class. This is
real life. He had to stop a moment to regain his equilibrium. He was positive
some child at the back was still highlighting no notes - real life , in
reflexive virtue.
Pramod, floating near, looked up, his dark eyes agitated. Leo? There was a
rumor going around that the company was going to take us all downside and
shoot us. Like Tony.
Leo smiled sourly. That s actually the least likely scenario. You are to be
taken downside, yes, to a sort of prison camp. But this is how guilt-free
genocide is handled. One administrator passes you on to the next, and him to
the next, and him to the next.
You become a routine expense on the inventory. Expenses rise, as they always
do. In response, your downsider support employees are gradually withdrawn, as
the company names you self-suflicient. Life support equipment deteriorates
with age.
Breakdowns happen more and more often, maintenance and re-supply become more
and more erratic.
Then one night - without anybody ever giving an order or pulling a trigger -
some critical breakdown occurs. You send a call for help. Nobody knows who you
are. Nobody knows what to do. Those who placed you there are all long gone. No
hero takes initiative, initiative having been drained by administrative
bitching and black hints. The investigating inspector, after counting the
bodies, discovers with relief that you were merely inventory. The books are
quietly closed on the Cay Project. Finis. Wrap. It might take twenty years,
maybe only five or ten. You are simply forgotten to death.
Pramod s hand touched his throat, as if he already felt the rasp of Rodeo s
toxic atmosphere. I think I d rather be shot, he muttered.
Or
, Leo raised his voice, you can take your lives into your own hands. Come
with me and put all your risks up front. The big gamble for the big payoff.
Let me tell you, he gulped for courage, mustered megalomania - for surely
only a maniac could drive this through to success - let me tell you about the
Promised Land...
Chapter 9
Leo stretched for a look out the viewport of the cargo pusher at the
rapidly-enlarging Transfer Station. Damn. The weekly passenger ship from
Orient IV was already docked at the hub of the wheel. Newly arrived, it was
doubtless still in the off-loading phase, but nothing seemed more likely to
Leo than for a pilot - or ex-pilot - like Ti to invite himself aboard early,
to kibbitz.
The Jump ship was blocked from view as they spiraled around the station to
their own assigned shuttle hatch. The quaddie piloting the pusher, a
dark-haired, copper-skinned girl named Zara in the purple T-shirt and shorts
of the pusher crews, brought her ship smartly into alignment and clicked it
delicately into the clamps on the landing spoke. Leo was encouraged toward
belief in her top rating among the pusher pilots after all, despite his qualms
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