Aidan Redding Against the Universes

Forever Falls-2

“He wouldn’t have,” Marcus said. “Not a chance in hell.”

“Why?” I said.

“He hated it here,” Pouter said, his hands idly twisting a circular slide rule. “Said he wanted solid ground underfoot.”

I wished she hadn’t said that. For a second I felt the emptiness beneath me. Yes, the facility had half a dozen more levels beneath me. The complex had roots sunk deep into the granite behind me. But for the space of a breath, the endless plummet sucked at my feet.

“We have our own floaters,” Pouter continued. “If he ever wanted to go above the shield, he’d check one out and fly up.”

“Was he—” Marcus coughed. “Was he wearing climbing gear?”

I thought back. Blood had soaked his clothes, but they’d looked like the usual Montague-issued khakis and loose-fitting shirt. His shoes had been the slip-on gum-soled corporate issue as well. You had to work security or construction to get boots. And the construction guys didn’t get the bronze buckles. “No.”

Cedar turned to face me. “If Devin got it in his fool head to climb above the shield, he’d have worn armor. He’d have the boots, the ropes, the gloves, the grappling hook gun. Devin liked the toys.”

I frowned. “When did you see him last?”

Takamoto said “Yesterday. End of day.” A sun, huge and fuzzy, loomed outside, its red light pouring through the tinted window. It had inched down in the few minutes I stood there. Even if that sun set, another hung right above it to take its place. Like so many other universes, our clock was a mutually agreeable fiction.

I peered around the room, trying to look past the work surfaces and drafting tables and hanging metal-working gear. “You said you had floaters?”

“He would not have,” Takamoto said. “No.”

“Devin didn’t even like the zeppelin,” Cedar said. “If he wanted something from above the shield, he would have had someone else float up and get it.”

“And he had—“ I glanced at my watch. “Eighteen hours to find someone to do that.”

Cedar’s face twisted.

I resisted the urge to pounce. “Excuse me, Doctor?”

Cedar looked like she tasted something bad.

Pouter peered up at Cedar. “Well, out with it!” She flung her hands in the air. “It’s not like we don’t all know.”

Takamoto’s eyes grew as round as his face.

“Know what?” said Marcus.

Pouter glanced between the two men. “All right then. The smart ones knew.” She snorted. “Everyone with an innie.”

“I saw Devin this morning,” Cedar said. “Before breakfast.”

I carefully didn’t notice Cedar’s rising blush. Researchers get touchy about those things. “So, about ten hours ago then.”

“He said he needed to check some samples here.” Cedar’s voice sounded quieter than ever. “We were going out to the Hindenbarge today. Devin said he’d meet me in the mess hall.”

“Did he?” I asked.

Cedar shook her head.

“You should have said,” Takamoto said, forcing a smile over his stormy expression.

“It’s not your business,” Cedar said. “It’s not anybody’s business.”

It’s my business, I didn’t say. I can be tactful.

“I did payroll at my desk this morning,” Takamoto said. “Was due at noon. Paperwork, always paperwork. He never show up.”

“If he had snuck in and flown up,” Pouter said, “we would have seen him.”

“The floaters have been here all day,” Marcus said.

The floor of the Diffusion Lab felt tenuous enough. I wanted to walk back into the nice stable granite.

“I better check these floaters,” I said.

3The Diffusion Lab felt uncomfortable enough, with its glass walls suspended over the infinite void. I did not want to go outside it, into the open air.

But I’d wanted to see the universes. When the job tells you to walk through a door, you walk through it.

Doctor Takamoto led me around a freestanding cabinet to a door where the glass wall met smooth polished green-flecked granite. The glass door swung open at a touch, letting the warm sirocco flow around us as we stepped out onto the steel mesh walkway.

My eyes blinked in the sudden light. This side of the Diffusion lab stuck out further east than any other level of the Freefall facility. The warm wind rising through the walkway smelled of a dusty desert that hadn’t seen rain for centuries and never expected to see it again. I instinctively grabbed the steel pipe rail separating the walkway from the long drop all around us.

I kept my eyes on Takamoto.

“Is impressive, nyet?” Takamoto said, raising a hand. “Is closest we get to Forever Falls. Without flying, of course.”

You have to speak well to work for Montague. That accent has to be deliberate. Doesn’t it?

Takamoto’s arm pointed up. I had looked straight up earlier today. I intended to never do it again. But I made myself raise my head and follow his arm to look at the waterfall.

The waterfall tumbled from infinitely far overhead, coursing down the granite, splashing and spraying as it bounced between worn crannies of stone. The steaming red light sparkled off the spray, glittering gems that dissolved into the air. You couldn’t help but look up, trying to trace its origin, and wind up peering into the infinite sky.

We were close enough to the waterfall to hear water surge and gush as it poured between the rocks. My hands ached to reach for the water, even though it fell meters beyond my reach. The air’s parched dryness made the torrent feel like a taunt.

I’d heard the reverse physicists arguing about the waterfall over dinner more than once. The flowing water should have dissolved into spray, and then into vapor, within a few kilometers of wherever it started. The fact that it didn’t meant that they didn’t understand Freefall’s physical laws as well as they thought they did.

Montague researchers had taken zeppelins up almost forty kilometers and down another forty, where the hazy air made the facility invisible and the electromagnetic interference made radio communication almost impossible. The waterfall ran all the way. As far as we could tell, the waterfall ran forever.

I traced the waterfall down, seeing it skip and splash from eternity to a point where it felt I should be able to touch it, and then receding again back down into forever—

—and I stared into the abyss.

It’s one thing to look up and see the cliff face recede into eternity. You can look to left and right and see the cliff marching on and on. But most of us, when we look down, have that little monkey part of the brain that starts shrieking There’s no ground.

There. Is. No. Ground.

The cliff face descends forever.

The only thing beneath the metal walkway was burnt amber sky.

For a split second, my mind tried to convince itself that I was sideways, lying on the ground. But that didn’t work either. The cliff was too flat, the pull of gravity too strong.

One wrong step and I’d fall. Into the sky.

My stomach knotted again, and my hands clamped around the railing. My pulse hammered in my ears even as my breath froze solid.

Takamoto said something.

I tried to swallow, and couldn’t.

The breeze flowed past me, rising. No, it wasn’t rising. My gut plummeted, we were all falling—

Something seized me and shook.

I jerked.

Takamoto had his arm around my bicep. “Redding!” His Ukraine accent made my name almost unintelligible.

I met Takamoto’s eyes. Sweat soaked the back of my shirt and my armpits, and tension strained my every muscle. My head quivered on my neck. The warm breeze suddenly felt cool over my face.

On my first day in Freefall, Pete from HR took me to the observation deck at the edge of the dirigible hangar and let me have a good look. This second look hadn’t been any better.

“I am sorry.” The accent faded. He sounded almost gentle. “You learn to ignore it. We do, at least.” His lips twitched downward. A touch of bitterness leaked back into his voice when he added “Most of us.”

I drew a shaky breath. “It’s okay.” Had Takamoto truly forgotten what most of us felt looking down the cliff? Or had his disappointment over Cedar and Gupper led him to minor cruelty?

“This way,” he said, holding a hand along the walkway.

The metal balcony circled the Diffusion lab. I clutched the steel pipe rail as we turned the corner and started along the long way. The Debris Shield loomed floors above us like an awning, but offered no shade whatsoever from the horizontal suns.

“I come out here at lunch,” Takamoto said. “This morning, breakfast. Sit on edge, let my feet dangle over, watch water fall. Peaceful.” He chuckled. “Lost a shoe once. Supply clerk most upset. Had to insist I was very sure shoe not lost in quarters.”

I kept my eyes on his back.

The floaters were at the far side of the balcony, on a wide launch platform. Each had a battery pack and two meter-wide fans, one pointed back, the other up. You would wear a flight suit and a self-packing parasail, letting the one fan blow you up and the other push you forward. It wouldn’t work on Earth, but on Freefall, floaters were the easiest way to maneuver around the cliff. You stood on the platform, tugged the parasail trigger, and let the fans carry you away.

The Diffusion lab had two floater racks. Both floaters had a locking plastic strap with a date tag around its frame, tying it to the launch platform. Someone could take a floater any time they needed, but then a Transit flunky would replace the tag. Without computers, and with radio spotty at more than a couple kilometers, the facility relied on these kinds of tricks to keep track of equipment use.

Nobody had used the one floater for a week, the other for three days.

Takamoto glanced at me, then at the floaters, and shook his head. “However he got up there,” Takamoto said, “it wasn’t with our floaters.”

I glanced at the window. The glass reflected my silhouette, surrounded by the glare of the falling suns. Inside that room were three people who insisted that Gupper would not have climbed above the shield.

I’d have to check the rest of the floaters, but I was beginning to think they were right.

Gupper would have only gotten up above the Debris Shield if someone had taken him there.

If I planned to meet a new lover for breakfast, I wouldn’t have gone climbing or floating.

That meant someone must have taken Gupper up there.

Someone knew how he died. I could only think of one reason for them to keep silent.

Gupper hadn’t fallen.

He’d been pushed.

4Gupper had last been seen around seven AM. His body had appeared on the Debris Shield at half past four. Nine and a half hours. I spent another hour gathering and checking facts before rapping on Security Second Forecourt’s door. My feet hurt and my eyes ached in their sockets. I’d been up early to start a long day, and if Forecourt granted my request it promised to be longer.

“Come in.”

Forecourt’s granite-walled office barely fit her, the raw granite desk, and two uncomfortably rickety office chairs. When adding a cubic inch means carving it out of granite, every space is as small as possible. Air tainted with machine oil whispered through a narrow ceiling vent. Two pole lamps in the corners shed light, which reflected off the unpolished green and gray ceiling. Every time I came here, I fought the urge to shade my eyes against the glare.

“Redding.” Forecourt put her blue pencil down next to the paper on her desk. Earth ran on computers, but those of us in Montague grew accustomed to places where computers didn’t work. “Report.”

I stood straight and clasped my hands behind my back. “I’ve talked to Gupper’s team, Surveillance, and Transit.”