Nor did the alarms. The ones that had been going off for some time now. Not the screeching you might die breach alarms, but the swell-and-fade tones of the alarm that merely admitted something had happened, and if you paid attention the station techheads would eventually tell you what it was.
Except… in the distance, Shadia thought she heard shriller sounds. Harsher vicinity alarms, the ones that meant no breach, but if you were there to hear them, you might die anyway.
Or already be dead.
Duster reflexes kicked in, urging her to move off. The dusters knew all the safest nooks and crannies of a station— the structural strengths, the environmental neutral areas. She’d take the time to shout back into the shop and release Amandajoy and the first jobber from their duties here so they might secure the animals and follow if they wanted, but then she’d shed her shallowperm facade and take back the duster ways that had served her so well. Back to the east side.
At least until she understood what had happened. Until the skitter of fear along her spine eased and she trusted the disaster—whatever it was—wouldn’t spread.
Wait a moment. Center west. The finest residences. The luxury residences. Half my clients live there. Gite’s people. The Rowpins. They’re perms… but they’re nice perms. Kind perms.
Kind people.
Shadia’s hand brushed over her vest, on which she’d recently sewn an exotic bit of weaving. Meant to be a small spot of wall decor, and acquired by Claire Rowpin on her latest off-station jaunt. She fingered the newest bead in her hair, something the rrhy’s owner—a shy young man—had hesitantly offered, noticing her fondness for such things. Just something he’d had around the house, he’d said.
She’d doubted it.
She stuck her head back into the pet care facility, a building unidentifiable from the outside by anything other than a utilitarian number. “Something’s happened in center west,” she told Amandajoy, who’d succeeded in calming Gite enough to secure him in his den-cage. The starkly normal sounds of the cleaning machine emanated from Feef’s room; Shadia nodded at it. “Let the ’jobber go home. You can go, too, if you want.”
“Don’t you want me to stay with the animals?” Amanda-joy asked, torturing the corner of her work apron into a twisted knot.
Shadia couldn’t answer right away; it wasn’t the response she’d expected. After a moment she said, “Yes, I do. But it’s up to you.”
“I’ll stay, then,” Amandajoy said, not hesitating. “I don’t want to leave them alone, and people might call in and get worried. But I want to turn on the gridnews. I know you think it bothers the animals sometimes, but—”
“Turn it on,” Shadia said, and left. Heading for center west and not even sure why. All her instincts told her to run the other way, and all her habits warred with every step she took. Within moments—still true to duster ways in this, at least—she’d slipped down the maintenance poles few perms even knew existed and reentered the inner ring several levels below her own. New territory.
Chaos prevailed. Perms running away from the alarms, other perms running toward them. Perms crying and stark-faced and grim. Uniformed station personnel muttering into their inner wrist complants, one of whom she caught on the way by and said, “What’s going on?”
“It’s contained,” she 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 off-line—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 shouted after her, “Hey! 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 ring-hall 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 herself, 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 from 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. “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, falling in what seemed like slow motion. 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 cut off 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, and as they pushed past the barriers, climbing into the wreckage and joining the unis as they tossed bits and pieces of what had been homes into the core net now strung below them for just that purpose.
Go back to the facility, Shadia Duster. You don’t belong here. This is just one more story to take with you along the way. Walk away, finish out what little time you have left before the med-debt’s gone, and then board the first ship you come to.
Except she didn’t. She couldn’t ease around the uni; her coveralls were far too conspicuous. But she couldn’t go. She asked perm after perm if they knew where the Rowpins’ address would have put their home, and she asked if anyone had seen them—or rather, she asked if they’d seen Feef, who would have made more of an impression than just another person in the bustle. She made herself useful on this side of the barrier, distracting the uni when another perm needed to slip by. When a handful of people came with warm drinks and what must have been their entire month’s ration of treat bars, she knew who’d been working the longest and most needed the boost.