Aidan Redding Against the Universes

Forever Falls-5

“He sounds like a decent guy,” I said.

“He was.”

Takamoto stuck his head in the door. “Good morning.”

“Doctor,” I said.

“Miss Redding. You have good trip?”

“I did what I had to do.”

“And Lucy,” Takamoto said. “How are you today?”

Cedar shrugged. Devin’s death had hit her hard.

My trip hadn’t been wasted, I told myself. A negative result is still a result. And Gupper’s death still didn’t make sense. How had he gotten up high enough to die splattered across the Debris Shield?

And I knew too many Montague scientists who would steal every scrap of credit they could get in hope of being assigned more glamorous problems. Freefall was one of Montague’s successes, but not much in the way of cutting-edge research happened there beyond the ongoing failure of the neutronium project. Gupper sounded like a rare creature, one worth keeping.

MacConnor came in, took us through the pre-flight instruction, and we set out for the Facility, the cliff, and solid ground. After the Hindenbarge’s majestic tides, the rocking of the Tahiti Sunset’s rickety basket dangling beneath the silk hot air bag unnerved me even more than it had on the flight out. Although I hadn’t eaten, my lurching stomach dissuaded me from testing the sandwich.

I closed my eyes and focused on the facts of Gupper’s death rather than the endless emptiness beneath.

Devin Gupper had fallen to his death on the Debris Shield. I made myself review his impact, trying to set aside the blood and broken bone and visualize how he’d hit. He’d landed almost perpendicular to the cliff, his head about a meter from the granite, arms outstretched in a Y. The impact had been so hard he’d deformed, his torso flattening, body bulging out at the sides, the front of his skull destroyed. The corpse slid half a meter down, until a gum-soled shoe and a sleeve had caught on separate rivets.

I must have chewed that image for half an hour as the dirigible slid through the sky at a breakneck thirty kilometers an hour, trying to make sense of it. He’d fallen out of the sky, somehow, and hit at an incredible speed.

Cedar and Takamoto spent the time arguing about rescheduling work assignments. I got the impression that Takamoto was trying to give Cedar something more immediate to focus on, instead of Gupper’s death.

“I think you should give Marcus a chance with the titanium diffusion,” Cedar said.

Eleven hundred kilometers an hour was terminal velocity for a human being in freefall on Freefall. How far would you have to fall to reach that speed? I’d have to figure it out sometime.

“Marcus is good,” Takamoto said, “but I really need him on the coupler math.”

How long would it take someone to fall that distance?

What did Gupper think as he fell?

“The coupler project is really straightforward,” Cedar said. “I mean, it’s almost a waste of his time.”

Everyone did parachute and free-fall training before coming to Freefall. With enough distance, Gupper could have steered himself away from the Debris Shield.

“Is easy income,” Takamoto said.

Had Gupper aimed himself at the Debris Shield?

“It’s not all about income,” Cedar said.

Maybe I should get MacConnor to take a detour. We could go up the cliff above the Debris Shield. Surely MacConnor knew how far someone would have to fall to hit that hard.

“Is all about income,” Takamoto said. “We make Freefall even more profitable, we choose next assignment. I help you myself.”

MacConnor had a certain flair to him. Maybe I should see if he wanted to get dinner tonight.

“Devin and I had that project for two years,” Cedar said. “I’m not letting you swoop in at the end and grab credit.”

But MacConnor’s mustache, it could double as a paintbrush.

“Devin will get full credit,” Takamoto said. “Is smallest we can do. You look through his papers. See what he did not finish. Team will split up, he gets credit on all he touched. He has two boys on Earth, they can use royalties.”

The pilots probably had rules against diverting without letting either the Facility or the Hindenbarge know. We should probably dock first. Let Cedar and Takamoto off, let MacConnor file a flight plan, then the two of us could go up and look at the cliff.

Cedar sighed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap like that. It’s just…”

No, I needed to check in with Forecourt. That would not be fun.

“Is hard,” Takamoto said quietly. “Is hard for us all.”

If I wanted to look at the cliff over the Debris Shield, Forecourt would probably tell me to take a floater. The thought made my stomach clench like a fist. I’d have something under me the whole way—the Debris Shield. I’d only stood on the Shield once, so that wasn’t a pleasant thought.

Cedar and Takamoto were quiet for a moment.

Either my pride or my dignity was done. I’d ask for MacConnor to take me up in the Tahiti Sunset. And it had nothing to do with MacConnor, he was just the only pilot I knew and I didn’t want to throw up while riding a floater.

But that mustache.

“If we really want to push on titanium diffusion,” Cedar said, “maybe we can get someone to take care of the neutronium calculations they have me doing.”

I couldn’t help imagining my own puke spattering on the Debris Shield. At terminal velocity.

“Da,” Takamoto said. “I try again. As soon as I finish payroll today, I help you.”

My pulse suddenly thrummed in my temples.

Adrenaline surged in my veins.

This is not the place.

My head wanted to jerk up, but I made it stay still. I didn’t even breathe deeply or let my eyes open.

We hung in a rickety wicker basket dangling over infinity. I don’t care how well a wicker basket is made—if you’re suspended from a balloon over a literally bottomless drop, it’s rickety.

But Doctor Cedar, too smart for her own good, said “Payroll was due yesterday, though.”

“Payroll? Da, payroll,” Takamoto said. He spoke too quickly. “I mean other paperwork.”

My shoulders wanted to rise, but I forced them to remain still. Accept that, Cedar. Do not argue here, in a picnic basket, dangling over forever.

“You always said payroll was last,” Cedar said. Her voice turned suspicious. “What were you really doing yesterday morning?”

“What are you implying?” Takamoto said.

Crap. I opened my eyes and slowly sat up, as if awakening again. “Sorry, I must have drifted off.” Maybe that would cool off the discussion.

Takamoto’s face burned bright red. He glared at Cedar.

Cedar didn’t flinch.

For a moment we sat there, three figurines in a basket.

Then Cedar looked at me and said, “Doctor Takamoto lied about where he was when Devin disappeared.”

Takamoto said “Unacceptable!” He wrenched off his seat belt and flung it aside. The buckle bounced harmlessly off Cedar’s thigh. “I do not have to sit here and take accusation from subordinate!”

“Wait,” I said. “Hang on, let’s talk this out.” One hand went to my own safety belt. I didn’t want to fire my taser sitting down. The Tahiti Sunset’s cramped basket was no place to subdue someone, but I’d need all the maneuverability I could get.

Takamoto said “I will not be accused!”

Cedar said “I just asked—”

Takamoto whirled and grabbed the ladder leading to the pilot’s loft.

“Takamoto, no!” I said flinging my own belt aside.

Takamoto scrambled up the ladder and out the loft hatch.

Cedar looked at me, brows furrowed beneath her shocking red hair.

MacConnor shouted something angry, but the wind carried away his words.

I grabbed the ladder, leaned close to Cedar, and stage-whispered, “Don’t have this fight here. Apologize. Wait for us to land.”

Her frown intensified, then understanding lit her face as she touched the wicker wall next to her.

I nodded, then hoisted myself up a rung on the ladder.

MacConnor’s next shout carried naked rage.

I scuttled up two bamboo rungs, grabbed the edges of the hatch, and heaved myself up just in time for MacConnor to collapse on top of me.

Blood smeared across my face.

8I stood on the bamboo ladder at the hatch for half a second, paralyzed.

MacConnor had toppled on top of me, his chest smashing against the crown of my head and crushing me back down the ladder. We were about halfway between the Hindenbarge and the Facility, but he weighed more than I could lift with my neck.

My hands were still above the hatch, where I’d been about to hoist myself into the pilot’s nest. I flailed out, stretching, trying to grab something, anything. The bamboo deck slipped across my fingertips, then my left hand caught a gap. I dug my fingers between bamboo strips to anchor myself to the top of the ladder.

Sticky blood covered my forehead, my cheek. The smell of copper filled my nose. My stomach clenched even harder.

Beneath me, inside the zeppelin’s tiny wicker passenger space, Cedar shouted in surprise.

MacConnor’s chest heaved.

The whole zeppelin shuddered and twitched around us, stressing every fragile connection. Structural bamboo—a total contradiction. This was a ramshackle deathtrap, and our pilot was bleeding, maybe dying.

Gripping my unseen anchor more tightly, I heaved myself up. MacConnor cried out in pain, then rolled to the side. My head emerged into open air.

The pilot’s loft hung in the breezy open space of Freefall, a complex nest of silk cables and bamboo struts connecting the passenger basket to the huge red-and-white air bag overhead. I blinked at the column of sinking suns, their majestic descent in reds and oranges coloring the whole sky.

Something liquid oozed down to my upper lip. I tasted fresh blood.

Takamoto stood beside the pilot’s console. One hand held a length of shining metal no larger than a pen, with a line of blood slipping down its bottom side and dripping to the floor. His round face looked blank, and his jaw flapped helplessly.

MacConnor deserved better, but I set my shoulder against his side and tried to heave him aside so I could squeeze out. His cry of pain had no thought behind it, just the blind mewling of a helpless animal.

I almost had MacConnor out of the way when Takamoto saw me. “No!”

I got another shoulder past MacConnor and tried to pull that arm up after it.

Takamoto lunged forward, the shining steel in his hand arcing through the air.

Instinctively, I flinched aside, my feet kicking, trying to squirm my way through the hatch.

The knife plunged through my outstretched, anchoring hand.

The blade punched through the back of my palm into the deck like hot ice, sinking effortlessly between the bones of my hand and into the bamboo deck. My nerves flared, outraged agony crashing up my arm into my whole body.

They tell you in training not to pull at a puncture like a knife. They don’t tell you that if your hand gets nailed to the deck, ancient animal instincts will make you recoil. I reflexively pulled myself back, wanting to shut everything down and coil myself around this fresh hot agony in my hand, not even thinking about being nailed to the deck.

The blade slid effortlessly through the pinky edge of my hand, slicing bone and muscle and sinew as cleanly as a surgical laser or an axe.

I screamed and fell back, grabbing at my bisected hand, tumbling back into the wicker passenger basket, slashing my head against the edge of a chair before my back bounced off another chair and I rolled to the ground, a tight knot of horrified pain.

Cedar screamed.

MacConnor’s head and upper torso filled the hatch, suspended by his chute box caught on the edge. The chute box thunked with the kick that knocked it free, and the burly pilot fell headfirst to the floor behind me.