Heinlein's Finches Read online

  I usher everybody out the door. Nick will have to find comfort elsewhere for now, but Aiden has probably got this. When I turn back, Gwen is kneeling by Asher’s bed holding his limp, gaunt hands by her cheek. There’s a look in her eyes I’ve never seen before. I find myself fervently hoping that it will go away and that I’ll never see it again. Yet when she speaks her voice is calm and measured, though distant.

  “This changes everything, you realize? Everything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Until now, nothing they’ve done has been personal.”

  Now I’m really confused. “Eh?”

  “When they were attacking me, they weren’t trying to kill me. Not really. They were trying to kill what I represent to them, trying to stop what I do. And I can’t blame them. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with it or appreciate it and I’m sure as hell gonna fight it, but it’s a coherent behavior in some belief systems. If I can’t understand that, then I’m in the wrong job. But this is different. Nobody has any right or duty to hurt Asher. His position is entirely apolitical. He doesn’t upset anyone’s belief system. He doesn’t upset anyone at all. He just teaches floaters how to stay safe. He’s saving lives all the time. If he’s been targeted, it’s because of me. And if that’s the case, this is an attack against me, not against my role. This is personal.”

  “You don’t even know that it was an attack. Climbing is dangerous. Accidents can happen. I mean, you know how the guys get; if it had been an easy climb, they wouldn’t have bothered trying it.”

  She smiles an eerie, joyless smile. “Come here. Check this.”

  I kneel beside her and take his hand. Bony, flaccid, and cold, it gives me the creeps. If I couldn’t see Asher’s chest moving, I’d think him dead. But that can’t be what Gwen meant.

  “Smell it. What does it remind you of?”

  An out-of-place memory pops up. This makes no sense. “It’s like… Landing Day. Fireworks?”

  I turn around in shock to see her looking at me with that expressionless look. “The overhang didn’t just give. It was exploded out. Small charge, I guess, enough to make the rock give way, not enough for anyone to notice what was happening in the chaos of the moment. I’m sure the bolts didn’t just give, either. I know how careful the guys are. They’re adrenaline junkies, but they’re good at what they do. This was a setup. Someone waited until he was hanging there, vulnerable, and then they blew him back to earth.”

  I’m still playing catch-up with the implications of this. “But why go through all this when you weren’t even there? To do this to you, or in front of you, that would be messed up enough. But why just do it?”

  “Well, if they wanted to let me know that they can and will hurt me, they got their point across. Nobody I love is safe now. If they can do this, I don’t know what else they could do. Hurt you? The third years? The chicks? The decent thing for me to do now would be to quit. Leave this place, leave everybody. Disappear, somehow. Hell, I could just walk out of the bubble, and wait for them to get me. Or for my air to run out. Keep everyone safe.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I won’t be doing it, but it is what I should be doing. End this for good.” She sighs. “But I know what Asher would think of that.”

  A bit of life is returning to her voice. I’m relieved. “So what now?”

  “Well, neither of us is any good exhausted. I’ll take first watch. I couldn’t sleep anyway. I’ll get you up in four.”

  I know she’s right, so I don’t bother arguing. I drag one of the beds across the door and make myself comfortable.

  “Lying across the front door, like a faithful hound guarding his master?” she smirks.

  “Sleeping across the front door, like someone who really wants the chance to total the motherfuckers who did this.”

  She shrugs. “Fair point, well made. I wonder how long before the nanobots let him wake up. He’s gonna be so pissed…” Her voice trails off as she watches him, stroking his face.

  At some point during the night – and I’m sure it’s well into my watch; the little liar never woke me – a moan wakes me up. It’s the moan of someone gaining consciousness to find himself in pain he can’t understand. It’s the most heart-rending sound I’ve ever heard.

  Gwen is next to him within seconds. She holds him and murmurs an explanation, repeating herself again and again until it all sinks in. It takes a little while for Asher to fully come round and calm down. They whisper to each other for a few minutes, then Gwen’s voice breaks. She starts crying, then sobbing uncontrollably, choking in her own tears. I’m so relieved to hear that. I’m sad she’s hurting, but I was really scared to see her so rigid and cold. I’m so glad she can cry.

  The morning brings good-ish news. Asher is conscious and relatively clear-headed, though he can’t remember the accident at all. Medics come to check on him and confirm that the bots have done their job and all the bone fragments are in their proper place. The damage is confined to the major bones of his lower legs; both tibias and fibulas have comminuted fractures. This is good news under the circumstances; it could have been a lot worse.

  That’s the end of the good news, though. The condition of Asher’s bones is, in his medic’s words, ‘ambiguous’. Zero g work always carries the risk of bone degeneration. Even with all the welfare precautions built into Asher’s lifestyle and schedule, his bone density is an ongoing concern. However, Asher was born and raised third class, and lower third class at that, at a level where gravity was well above a comfortable one g. Growing up under higher-than-normal gravity can favor increased bone density, if diet will allow it, but it can also result in minute stress fractures. The combined effect of high g and low g on the overall state of Asher’s bones has got the medics puzzled. They have no idea of his prognosis. They simply do not know yet the likely course of recovery for someone in Asher’s condition with that kind of injury. The data is just not there. Most third-class floaters who have accidents never make it to a med bay.

  The medics have no idea how long the recovery is going to take. They are also hesitant in setting up a recovery program. There’s no knowing whether any kind of medical intervention would make things better or worse. Asher is going to have to heal old-school, resting his legs in casts until the bones are set and he can commence progressive rehab. Until he’s healed, he needs to avoid both high g and low g environments. He could do with being at one g, but he’s going to have to do with the gravity this planet provides because space travel is out of the question at present.

  That’s more than a mere inconvenience. A critical part of Asher’s job is to take the new floaters to what we call float camp; a two-week stay on the nearest tube, where they can practice moving in zero g in relative safety. That’s due to happen next term, and is now utterly unfeasible. There’s no knowing how long it will be before he is recovered enough, either. There’s no knowing much of anything at present. We all have to just wait and see how his bones heal, if at all. If they don’t… The medics don’t want to talk about that possibility yet.

  All they can do is to monitor him closely to make sure that everything is proceeding as well as possible, and to check for complications. They advise him to start a program of upper-body conditioning as soon as he can bear it, in order to limit bone and muscle loss to those parts of the body. They are cautiously optimistic, but they can’t promise anything.

  Gwen is more upset by this than Asher seems to be. His attitude is very stoic, though that could be the painkillers.

  “Milady, you know how it goes. This is good news, really. I just have to wait for the bones to set. You’ve been at me to take a break for ages. So I’m taking it now. Nick will have to take float camp. He’s more than ready to handle that, and there is nobody else for the job. We got nowhere off-planet we need to go. I don’t want to be more than two steps away from you at the moment, anyway. And it could have been worse.”

  It’s hard to disagree with the obvious, but Gwen tries
anyway. “They aren’t doing anything! They haven’t even mentioned a negative pressure chamber, or hormone therapy!”

  “That’s because they don’t want to mess me up worse. They have to wait and see how I heal – if I heal.” He frowns. “They can’t accelerate a process they don’t fully understand. We always knew there was a risk. I thought we both agreed that it was worth it.” He looks sad now, which is his not-so-secret weapon against Gwen.

  “You’re right, of course. I’m being irrational.” And she goes off to organize the minute details of the current situation as it stands.

  We’re to continue camping out in Asher’s office until he’s well enough to manage the tower stairs. The service staff has already volunteered to bring us our meals here. If the first sample is any indication, they won’t be regular canteen meals, either. Gwen and I could work from Asher’s office – Gwen could take over Asher’s seldom-touched terminal, and the techs would probably set me up a relay in no time – but Asher nixes that. “I don’t want you around me if you get cabin fever; not in my weakened state. I want you out of my hair for at least a few hours a day.”

  By the end of the holiday we’ve all fallen into a groove. It’s a rather narrow groove; narrower than our previous one, which seemed constrictive enough. Asher seems to be bearing his confinement very well, which makes me suspect that he’s in more pain than he’s letting on. The medics visit him twice and seem happy enough with his progress. We think we’ve got it all in hand, but we’re terribly wrong. The first day of class reveals a major flaw in our plan.

  Everyone loves Asher. His students adore him. The techs think the world of him. The faculty… Well, it’s harder for them to admit it, as he’s such an unorthodox teacher, but they love him too. People I didn’t know existed and I have never seen near him seem to love him. When he misses his morning class for the first time ever, his students want to know why. When they find out, they want to see him. Nick cancels class and lets them go over. Once they’ve seen Asher, they go out and tell their friends, who in turn tell their friends, and on it goes. And everyone wants to see him.

  His office is outside the campus walls, in the Tank building, and has a single entry point. It doesn’t even have a window. That makes for a good hidey-hole, but it doesn’t facilitate crowd flow. What we have created is a choke point for what is now a quiet but determined mob of people wanting to make sure that Asher is ok, to ask him if he needs anything, or just to say hello. People who are upset by his accident; therefore, Asher being Asher, people who cannot simply be turned away.

  By lunchtime, when Gwen and I come back from class, people are lining up outside the building. We can only get in ourselves through the judicious application of sharp words and elbows. The situation resembles one of those Terran cathedrals where pilgrims used to gather to touch a holy relic.

  Realizing that Asher has had no rest all morning, nor is likely to get any in the immediate future unless the crowd is disbanded, Gwen intervenes. For someone so tiny, she can be disproportionately terrifying. Clint and Clarence are co-opted as door security. I’m to organize a schedule of visiting times. “Everyone who should be in class better get there now or I shall let the Chancellor know where you were and why,” she roars. Her declaration is followed by a small stampede; turns out that half the faculty had been skipping their own classes.

  Order is temporarily restored, anyway. As people are clearing off, Gwen corners Skip and has a brief but energetic chat with him. The poor guy practically runs away from her, which is weird. They’ve always gotten on well, and he wasn’t doing anything deserving of an individual telling off.

  Two days later, the mystery is solved. Skip, stammering and blushing furiously, presents Asher with a custom gift: a miniature ATR, with a central seat and three articulated sets of wheels. The thing won’t handle the tower stairs, but it can handle most other surfaces. Gwen has to exert a considerable degree of pressure to prevent Asher from scooting off right there and then. I honestly think that the only thing that stops him is that he can’t get out of bed on his own. As soon as the medics clear him, though, we load him on the ATR and he’s up and away.

  His first journey outside causes another public commotion.

  “There should be bunting, love, and girls with baskets full of flower petals to throw under your feet as you walk by,” says Gwen.

  “Walk?” puzzles Asher.

  “Wheel by.”

  “Flower petals? Wouldn’t they be slippery?” say I. Terran customs sure are odd at times.

  “Bunting and girls and flowers. And a marching band.” Gwen insists.

  “Where would you get enough musicians for a band around here? At most you could have Nick whistling.” Asher frowns. “Hey, where is Nick? I’ve not seen him since we got back.”

  “Probably busy covering classes, my love.”

  “Can’t be. He was already scheduled as an assistant for all of my classes. He can’t add any floating hours; the medics would have his hide. Tech support wouldn’t let him.”

  “I haven’t seen Aiden either,” I realize. “Not since you guys first came back.”

  Gwen frowns too. “Well, they can’t be very far. We’ll find them soon enough. Let’s see if we can get to the refectory before lunch turns into dinner, hey? Smile and wave, love. Smile and wave. Keep it classy.”

  We can’t find Nick, so we ask around. Turns out that he’s been covering Asher’s classes then disappearing into his quarters ever since the start of term. He seems to have no intention of coming out unless he has to, and won’t talk to us. He won’t even let us in his room. Rather than batter his door down, we go and find Aiden in his workshop.

  “It’s all fucked up. He’s gone and lost it. Says it’s his fault. Doesn’t want to see you. Any of you.” He nods towards me. “You, in particular. Really does not want to see you.”

  “What? What the hell did I do?”

  “Dunno. I suggested you two could talk. He went frantic.”

  “Well, that’s rather insulting.” Nick has never had a problem with me before. Not that I was aware of, anyway.

  Asher shakes his head. “I’ll try and get him to talk to me. He needs to snap out of this. It’s completely irrational. Nobody’s blaming him.”

  “Chancellor could call him. He’d have to come out. Not sure he’d like it, though. Really doesn’t want to see you.”

  “Not much can be done about that. We have to meet, really. If he’s taking on float camp, we need to talk about it. He can’t go in without prepping. He’s never led a camp before. He has to decide what he’s doing. Either he takes on the job, or he’s got to tell us that he’s backing out. We have to know.” Asher pulls a face. “I’ll get the Chancellor on to him. He might hate me for it, but hopefully it’ll give us a chance to straighten this out.”

  When Asher comes back from their meeting, he’s more shaken up than he was after his accident.

  “You should have seen him. I don’t recognize him. He didn’t want to talk to me. He hardly even looked at me. He looks ill, Gwen. Really ill. Like something is eating him up.”

  Gwen goes over to hug him. With him sitting in the ATR, they’re nearly at the same height. “I’m sorry, love.”

  “I have to do something about it.”

  “I don’t know if you can.”

  “You didn’t see him. If you could see his face…”

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t want to, love. Just that I don’t know if you can. He doesn’t want to talk to us. He’s made that very clear. You can’t force him.”

  Asher looks up at me. “You could read him, couldn’t you? See what’s going on.”

  I try to be gentle. “He’s made it very clear that he doesn’t want to see me, either.”

  “But you don’t have to see him, do you? I thought you could read from a distance.”

  I shake my head. “That would be unethical. Grossly unethical.” If Asher wasn’t so upset right now, I’d be seriously offended at the suggestion.

>   “What if he’s in danger?”

  Gwen gives him a kiss he hardly seems to notice. “Love, we have no reason to think that. Aiden is keeping an eye on him. He’d let us know if things go south.”

  “I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”

  “Of course you don’t. But as things stand, we don’t have a right to get involved. I’m sorry. Look, he’ll be going off to float camp soon. He’ll be kept busy and he’ll be running his own show. You know he loves being the center of attention. He’ll have too much to do to obsess about crap. Hopefully he’ll snap out of it.”

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  “Then we’ll have to see what we can do. But as things are, we have to leave it. It’s only been a few days. Some people take things hard. You know Nick; he’s emotional, and he’s not used to bad things happening. This may be good for him, in the long run.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  Gwen sighs. “No. I think it sucks. And I am worried about him. But I also think that following him down that spiral won’t help anyone. It won’t help us and it sure won’t help him. Someone’s got to keep it together.”

  That seems to help. Asher closes his eyes and runs through a few breath cycles. When he opens his eyes again he doesn’t look as if he’s going to cry anymore. “Ok.”

  “You never know. He’s not leaving for a few weeks yet. You may be able to patch things up before he goes.”

  April

  Fortunately or unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury to obsess over Nick’s obsession. After Asher’s accident, the Chancellor has given up pretending that we’ve got the threats against Gwen under control. He’s gone and asked for help from the Patrol, which must have dented his pride. They responded by arranging an official visit by a Colonel Darrington and sundry minions.