And when someone spotted the dangling pale tan arm amidst the edge wreckage, several levels up and with the inner ring destroyed between here and there, she knew how to get there. She glanced at the uni, who quite deliberately looked the other way, and then she slipped past the barrier to the half-height tech access door recessed invisibly into the slightly skewed wall, the seams not evident until released with the right touch in the right spot.
She led them into the tight darkness.
They murmured uneasily behind her, following at a slower pace so when she emerged into the maintenance shaft and flicked the control to release the stepholds folded into the pole for upward transit, she still had a moment to wait. They’d never been in such tunnels; their uneasy voices rang louder than they’d ever guess. They worried about the obvious warping in the walls, they murmured about the motionless arm they’d seen… and they wondered about her.
It’s only fair. I’m wondering about them.
Who were these people, following her into the unknown for the sake of someone equally unknown? Who were any of them, defying unis to work among the wreckage of the neighborhood? Clustering around the dangers instead of running away as any duster would do? Take nothing for granted and take what you can get, one of the common duster phrases. One would say it, and all others within earshot would finish with the chorus of And then move on!
It’s only fair. I’m wondering about me.
Shadia moved on, all right. She waited for the first tentative head to poke out of the half-height tunnel and she started climbing the pole. She took them up two levels and stepped off onto the platform… and then, remembering the layout of the wreckage they’d seen, took them farther into the structure, through an even smaller access hatch until they were just about to balk—and then she clambered out into the wreckage itself. So close to the edge, where it tumbled straight out into the core. The floor beneath her feet seemed to give a little quiver when the second person came out, and when the third appeared, there was no doubt.
The third was the uni. He gave her a guileless smile—and he bent down to instruct the others to wait. “It’s not secure,” he told them. “You shouldn’t be here.”
None of them should be here-And yet here they were.
“Found someone!” the second person, a woman in an expensive work suit from which she’d already ripped the frills so they wouldn’t get in her way. Her voice held a vibration of excitement that made her next words seem lifeless. “No. Never mind. We’re too late.”
The uni joined her as Shadia inched around the wreckage; a fourth person eased out into the open and began to cast around, hunting the owner of the elusively dangling arm. What had seemed so obvious from below was hardly that from amidst the tangle of walls and upholstery and crushed electronics.
“Good Lord, what’s that smell?“ exclaimed the man who’d just joined them; his hand covered his nose and mouth, but from what remained of his expression, it had done no good. The woman caught a whiff of the odor as well, and was the first to spot the source.
“There!” she said, flinging up a hand to point. “That.”
That. Cowering into the smallest possible bundle in the only dark, intact corner left in the residence—the upper tier of a closet, it looked like—was a mostly hairless slothlike creature. The crumpled remains of a den-cage, barely recognizable, were not far away.
Aw, ties and chains. The Rowpins. And Feef, their survivor.
She must have said some part of it out loud; the others glanced at her. Then the uni said, “I found a second one,” and the tone of his voice was clear enough. Too late. Both dead.
“That’s all there is,” Shadia said, her voice very small as it fought to get out of her throat. Nothing’s permanent.
The uni looked at her, somber. “These are the people you were asking about when you first came.”
Shadia nodded.
He gave a little nod back at her, a small gesture that shouldn’t have made her feel as it did… as though she were part of something. Something bigger than she was or he was… bigger than all of them. She frowned, caught in the moment.
“Go on back down,” the uni told those people still waiting in the tunnel. Waiting to help… except no one here needed it. “There’ll be crews here to deal with… what we’ve found.” The flooring gave a decisive tremble beneath them, and his voice grew crisp. “Go on, then. We’ll get their animal and be right after you.”
They meant well.
They cooed and they called, unable to reach the akliat through the rubble, wanting badly to preserve this creature belonging to those people they hadn’t been able to save. But the flooring gave a wicked shudder and Feef’s odor-signals only grew more intensely offensive. A gridnews hovercam floated past, stopped short, and wandered into the destruction, wavering slightly in midair as it soaked up the scene for its operators. Shadia, retreated to familiar duster ways— nothing’s permanent—eased back toward her escape. It was all too much, this joining in, this caring… she’d learned the lesson once as a child and learned it well. She hadn’t thought she’d be learning it again, that she’d been foolish enough to let herself care about these people who loved their akliat.
He was a disturbed old ex-duster. I didn’t do anything besides bring him a few meals, sneak out some of the family’s old clothing and once a pillow. An old ex-duster who wanted to return the kindness, to save me from the misleading perm ways of my family. I understood that later. And in a way I suppose he did. When he took me away from all I knew, it was the strongest lesson I ever could have learned. Nothing is forever. Things change, whenever and wherever. So embrace the change. No ties, no extended responsibilities to others, nothing to lose. Dive into the change and ride it like a wave.
The uni shouted a warning; a huge chunk of flooring broke away and tumbled down the levels, leaving the others scrambling for safety while Shadia clutched the edge of the maintenance shaft. Time to leave.
“That’s it, people,” the uni said. “He’s not coming to us. I wish there were something we could do, but—”
“Give me your uni coat,” Shadia said abruptly.
He gave her a baffled, resistant look, one arm raised to usher the other two back toward the shaft.
Shadia stepped away from it. “Your coat,” she insisted. The man and woman hesitated by the exit, watching them. “You want to save the akliat? Hand it over!”
Still baffled, less resistant, he peeled it off and passed it to her, a long, dark tailored thing that smelled of sweat and stress and physical labor. Shadia tented the collar over her head, put her hands halfway up the sleeves that were way too long for her anyway, and turned the coat into a draping cloak, turned her upraised arms into caveenclosed branches. She didn’t have to warn the others to hush; they’d done so on their own, letting their hopes burst through to their faces.
Shadia raised her arms a little higher within her self-imposed cave and gave one of the casual little chirrups she’d often heard from Feef. A long trill with a few clucks at the end, a soft repetition…