Change State, page 6
"Which brings me to why I'm here, talking to you."
She paused again, but her audience sat rapt.
"Right. Short tell is this: Step three in the protocols, subhead long-term emergency, is take stock of human potential. That's everybody on this station, including you, including me."
Windy stood up. "You're counting us? What for?"
Malvern smiled at him.
"Good question, and put straight. 'preciate that. What's your name?"
"Wi–Wallace VinHalin, ma'am. Awaitin' Transport."
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. VinHalin. Now the reason I'm counting you is that the Station's gotta run, and we need a certain number of people to make sure that all the necessary jobs are covered at least twice. By necessary jobs I mean stinks, and maintenance, food service, engineering, life support, communications—all of it, saving Port Admin because for the duration of the emergency that particular seat belongs to me."
She raised a hand.
"So, before anybody says that we already got triple redundancy on almost all jobs on-station, I'll say, that's now, before we evacuate."
She stopped talking then because the word evacuate had elicited a response from the group, a sort of a startled murmur, Shanna thought, folding his hands tightly together on his knee.
The murmur having died, Malvern spoke again.
"Yeah, we're evacuating. Kids, olds, med-cases, those'll go first, each with one caregiver. Then we'll move down to those who don't wanna stay in harm's way. Outstation Quince isn't even gonna see the comet go past, so we're putting as many as we can under the dome. Ships in port can take the overflow. Planetary Admin is talking about sending shuttles up, taking anybody who don't mind dirt downside. We could get everybody out, and would, if the situation was more dangerous than what we got."
She paused, as if struck by what she had just said, then smiled slightly and shook her head.
"What we got is dangerous enough for me. But there'll still be a station to come home to, even if that rock with our name on it strikes truer than projections. So what I'm looking for is people who will stay, and keep Port Chavvy running, and do whatever needs doing during and after the collision.
"Here's what I can guarantee: things will be confusing; there'll be more work than hands, which is a new kind of problem; and it'll be dangerous. We're looking at dealing with anything from a major breach—in which case people will die—to watching a couple antennas get ripped out of our array.
There came a rumble of voices. Malvern continued to talk, louder, asserting her precedence.
"The other things I can guarantee: Everybody who stays and helps keep Port Chavvy up and running, will get three meals a day, bunk space, training as necessary, and, when the emergency is over and Admin takes back its damn chair—all the emergency volunteers will be recognized as having fulfilled their residency requirements."
Silence overflowed the lounge, as if those present utterly disbelieved what they had just heard. Shanna felt his blood quicken. Residency! He could do more than volunteer, he could learn a trade, he could—
"In just a few minutes, I'll ask those who are volunteering to come up here and talk to Mr. Ferlandy. There's some questions to be answered, and so forth. Before we do that, though, we need to get the med-cases on their way to safety. There are two, I think, Mr. Ferlandy?"
"Yes'm. Cazzy's still under clinic-care, but—" He glanced out over the lounge.
Shanna felt a movement in the seat beside him, as Jeef rose to his full meager height, the empty sleeve of his lab coat pinned neatly out of the way.
"Jeef Baker," he said. "I volunteer to stay and work for the safety of the Port."
Malvern frowned at him.
"Medics let you go?" she asked.
"They have not yet. Will there be no medics among those who remain?"
The frown eased.
"We'll have medics. Tell me what you can do for me, Jeef Baker."
He inclined his head, very Liaden in that gesture.
"I can read. I can do inventory. I can cipher. I can—"
"Follow orders?" Malvern interrupted.
Jeef took a breath, and this time inclined from the waist.
"Yes," he said.
"Then get yourself up to the clinic, right now. Tell 'em I sent you for a work eval. Tell 'em you volunteered for Comet Utility Crew. You bring whatever the medics give you back to Mr. Ferlandy, here. Got that?"
"Yes," Jeef said again. He stepped out of the row, walking out of the lounge without a backward glance.
Shanna thought about going after him, took a breath and remained seated.
When he looked up, Malvern gave him a nod and a smile.
#
They were issued Port volunteer vests, protective gloves, goggles, and a utility belt. Every sixth of them, by count-off, was issued a comm unit, and that person became a team leader. As a group, they were known as Uties, and their first duty was to assist in the evacuation, keeping order among those moving to the docks and the ships that would take them to safety. As each apt was cleared, it was entered by a Utie, who verified that no one had been left behind before using their Admin-issued general key to trigger the inflation of air bags that would keep furniture in place, should—when—the comet struck the station.
As Uties were rotated out of escort-and-lockdown, they were given tours of vents, stink-pots, utility cabinets, wiring and plumbing closets, tool-bins, and emergency hatches.
The tool-bin proved unexpectedly exhilarating for Shanna, as the tools within were handed around and named as a primer to their duties.
"Bash bar," said their tutor, handing it to the first of the group, who obediently repeated the phrase and passed it to the Utie on her right.
"Life-pry," the tutor continued, "stinks hammer, starbar. . ."
Shanna flinched as that came to hand, sagging with the weight of it. He had not seen the instrument of his master's maiming, and had imagined something. . .powered and smooth. But this object was evidently meant to be used violently, and was clearly capable of damaging the fabric of Port Chavvy itself, much less the fabric of a Liaden lordling's expensive port-side coat sleeve, and the arm it embraced.
Jeef, separated from him by several of their team members, his wounded arm now enclosed in a flexible cast that allowed him to fully occupy his shirt and vest, received the starbar in his good hand, and went to one knee, bearing the weight of the thing to the deck.
"Yeah, starbar'll getcher attention, all right!" said the Utie on his right, reaching down and hefting the thing as if it were a twig.
Jeef regained his feet, caught Shanna's worried eye and bowed with subtle irony.
#
The evacuees departed; the Uties' work shifts grew longer and more frantic. The images of the onrushing comet were on all the news screens, the constant beauty of them dimmed by the other information that they absorbed as they worked: the protoplanet had been being mined for metals and ice; and among the metals nickel and iron were common, with a smattering of the heavier elements. Shanna found Jeef’s interest in the technical side of things imposing but not surprising; he seemed more at home among real things than the fripperies of etiquette and dominance that had been so commonplace in their melant’i-ridden past.
Word came that the station's maneuvering jets and pocket engine were useless in the present emergency. Port Chavvy could, indeed, be relocated, but not quickly enough to avoid its oncoming doom. The question of tugs pulling the station out of the way was dismissed by the engineers as likely to cause more structural damage than the comet's kiss.
The Uties worked on.
Most of the store fronts of the various malls and shopping districts were no longer air-tight, despite the maintenance rules requiring it. Rumors went through the decks that certain owners had paid bribes to be excused from higher levels of compliance, with Malvern promising damnation and worse to anyone she might prove it against. The Uties condensed the goods in the stores around the known pipes, conduits, and air vents in an attempt to allay the potential damage from objects traveling at the rate of a kilometer or more a second.
And then the comet broke again, becoming ash and dense cores, spinning madly.
Aghast, an on-break team stood watching the streaming, nearly foaming mass of hurtling objects split away from the larger masses in a view from a probe. Some parts appeared to adhere to the pockmarked centers, others spewed away as if under power. Portions, at least, were still on course for the station.
"But why?" Shanna asked while shaking his head, "Why this chaos now, why like this?"
He’d expected no answer, but Jeef’s quiet voice came, as if trying to soothe with explanation.
"Transition phases, Shanna, change of state. The coma—the comet-head—is not an atmosphere, has almost no pressure whatsoever and with the approach to the inner system the ices become gas without being liquid—they boil. Then in the starlight they look like they burn into smoke or turn to ribbons, but there’s no flame. Just a change of state."
Around them a mix of nodding and shaking heads, and an echo, "Just a change of state, that’s all."
#
Malvern had ordered everyone who remained into the core safe lounges, where they strapped in, fresh batteries in their comms, food and water packs to hand, with pressure masks and breathers. They had done everything they could, all they had been asked to do, and more. Now, they waited for the impact. Any other duty lay on the far side of that event.
The all-station intercom snapped, and here came Malvern's voice.
"Strapped in and waiting," she said. "You got what I got. There's maybe a chance these things are gonna rush by and we won't have to worry about 'em til we hit this section of the orbit again in five Standards. But that's a maybe chance, and I don't think we're gonna get that lucky. So, stay strapped in, be ready to call your leaders. Zanzo's Flitter is standing off, observing. They sent a radar image of a mess of stuff—the rocks and what they've attracted—coming through our intersection in fifty-eight minutes. There may be rapid accelerations. Strap down. Stay strapped down until I send all clear!"
#
Scarcely ten minutes had elapsed when the comm blared again.
"Movement in the Long View! Chef Klyken, acknowledge!"
There was a pause, then again, more urgently. "Long View, acknowledge!"
There was a grunt in his ear, and Jeef was up, unstrapped, in danger.
"Stay!" Shanna cried. "What are you—"
"Klyken," Jeef snapped. "I will get him!"
And he was gone, running.
Shanna repeated several of the useful new words he had learned as a Utie, released his own webbing, and ran after.
#
The window—it was the window that gave the Long View Restaurant its name. Jeef remembered that it was said to be tougher than hull-plate. He remembered the view, the long swell of stars, against the black of space.
Now, the window opened on mud and dust. Objects struck it, audibly.
And Klyken was nowhere to be seen.
Jeef turned on his heel, straining to see in the meager light of the emergency dims.
"Klyken?" he called.
There was no answer.
No, Jeef thought suddenly. Klyken would not be here where other people ate what he had made for them.
Klyken would be in the kitchen.
He spun and bolted through the pass-door.
The kitchen was locked down, pristine, and empty.
The door worked at his back, and Shanna was there. He spun.
"Go!"
"Come with me! Jeef, this is too dangerous!"
"Yes!" he shouted. "It is dangerous! Shanna—go! You already died of me once! I will find Chef Klyken—he must be here!"
"Perhaps he is tied down," Shanna suggested, not leaving.
"Here?" Jeef said, with a shudder, imagining the damage. "Malvern wants everyone in the core lounges. Shanna—"
"Yes, I will go. Let us find the chef, first."
There was no more time to argue, if they were, indeed, to find Klyken and bring them all safely to the core.
Jeef moved down the aisle, came to the freezer, the bread safe, the—
The bread safe.
He put his hand on the latch, but it was locked.
"Klyken?" he called.
There was no answer.
"Jeef, he is not here, or he does not want to be rescued." Shanna came down the other aisle. "Come, we must save ourselves."
"Go," he said. "I—" He bit his lip, as memory rose.
It isn't a good thing, to throw a child away. The Long View—that is my child now.
He took a breath. It was dishonest, what he was about to do, and the book made a strong case for honesty in all things, even as it also instructed one to care for those in need.
Surely, Jeef thought, here is need.
"Father!" he called, sharply. "Father, I am here!"
For a long moment, nothing happened. The clicking against the window was loud in the silence. Shanna extended a hand.
The latch of the bread safe moved. Klyken stepped out, holding a stasis box.
He paused on the threshold of the room, and Jeef had a momentary fear that he would bolt back inside.
Then, the chef nodded.
"Yes," he said, quietly. "I had only wanted my bread-heart."
FOUR
The largest rock destroyed much of the comm and power array in a single jolting strike that took an hour of Malvern’s superb piloting of station resources to quell.
The ashen remains of the smaller rock smashed into dust on the Long View's window.
The middle-sized rock passed through the shattered remains of Port Chavvy's array, flew by the dusty detritus splattered by the small rock, and left no additional trace to add to the confusion already spawned.
#
The last of the evacuees was home, joining forces with the Uties, as they repaired the damage the comet, and neglect, had done.
The station had paid each Utie a "stake," and issued each a new card, declaring them to be Residents of Port Chavvy Station. They still lived in the ARTS halls, as apts were being repaired and made ready for them.
Shanna was now full-time leader of a Utie team. He’d kept the toolset he’d been assigned for the duration of the emergency in their rooms for eleven days, for quick response in case one more lump of the comet managed to find the Port, but it hadn’t happened and both he and Jeef were relieved once the set that included starbars and stinks hammers went back to their emergency closets rather than bulking large just inside their own door. Jeef was Klyken's apprentice, certified and formal, and most of his hours were spent in the Long View, repairing and cleaning with the rest of Klyken's workers—and also learning somewhat of baking.
At the Admin level, investigations were underway, and a team of auditors had come up from the planet to assist.
Shanna was crossing the lounge, thinking of a shower before he joined the usual group to go in search of supper. This was a better habit than backstairs at the delm’s residence, with none of the tension of those rule-bound precincts. Joolia and he had taken to walking apart from the group after the meal was done, going up to the Atrium on E Deck, which had taken only a little damage from the comet.
"Shanna!" a voice came, sharp and unexpected from the right. He stopped, and turned to face Femta; a talkative Femta, as it happened.
"Just the man I wanted to see! A friend of mine got in today, first time on port. I wonder if you'd be willing to meet him and me at the Atrium on E Deck, at purple. There's a couple others coming, too. We've got an offer to put in front of you."
Shanna frowned slightly.
"A job?"
"A job?" Femta nodded. "You could call it that, sure."
Uties did worthy work, but Shanna had lately been thinking about what he might prefer to do, as his service to the port and to people.
"I would be interested," he said, and Femta grinned.
"Good, then. See you at purple."
#
He let the dinner group get ahead of him, and realized that he was not alone.
"Going up to the garden again?" Joolia asked.
"Yes, but tonight I am to meet Femta and his friend, to hear about a job."
Joolia grinned.
"Funny thing—me, too."
Shanna tipped his head, not liking to think of Joolia as. . .competition. However—
"I figure it can't hurt to listen to what they got to say," Joolia continued. "Might be inneresting; might not."
"Yes," he said, and offered his arm. "Let us go together."
"Great idea," she said, and slipped her arm through his.
#
It had just come purple when they strolled into the Atrium, to find Femta and another person awaiting them at the first grouping of benches.
"Just on time," Femta said, and urged his companion forward. "This is my colleague of many years, Jemmon Fairkin, who has come to fetch me away! Jemmon, this is Joolia Tenuta and Shanna Newman."
The man was bulky and bald. A long fine silver chain depended from his left ear. He bowed in the Terran style, one hand over his heart, the other held loose at his side.
"Joolia Tenuta, Shanna Newman, I am happy to see you."
"We invited one more to speak with us this evening. He did warn that he might be a little behind the—"
There came the sharp sound of bootheels on decking, and 'round the curve of the path came a figure dressed in white, carrying a tray in two hands.
"Here I am," Jeef said, "late as promised! I bring my first batch of cupcakes, to balance my tardiness."
He came up with them, and smiled, a scent of citrus and sugar wafting in with him.
"Joolia. Shanna. Good evening."
"Good evening," Joolia said, adding, "cupcakes?"
"Do not expect very much," Jeef said, stepping forward to place the tray on one of the benches. "I am told that they are misshapen and mis-decorated, which is true, and my fault for jostling them too much for curiosity while baking. But they taste very good, if I say it myself."
