Opening Acts

  *** ***

  Sean got notice his boss, Jane Navio, was on the way up. He suited up and stepped out onto the commuter pad as she and a dozen Resource Commission staff poured out of the lifts. She spotted Sean.

  "I come with extra hands," she radioed. "The big equipment is on its way. It'll be here in twenty minutes."

  "Too late to do much good, sir-but the extra hands will help. We need them badly." He directed the new hands to Cal for assignments. Then they two bounded over to the crater.

  "What happened?" she asked.

  "Disassembler disaster in Warehouse 2-H. It set off a chain reaction and we have runaway disassembly in the lake. We lost two crew when the warehouse came down." He hesitated. "One of them was that young man you recommended for the position last fall. Carl Agre."

  She was looking out at the vanishing lake; she did not say anything for a second. He watched her struggle with it.

  "All right," she said softly. "All right. We'll deal with that later. What's happening out there?" She gestured at the bikers dive-bombing the dwindling ice pile.

  "They're helping. Trying to stop the reaction."

  Jane eyed the scene. "We're down at least seventy percent. More. Damn." The look on her face said all it needed to, even beneath the radiation shielding. Then Sean's words registered. "So we've recruited bikers? Ah, to dive-bomb the ice with neutralizer. Clever! My God." She eyed Sean. "Is it working?"

  He squinted down at the ice: what with the mist and the boiling and splashing, it was hard to tell. "It's better. Don't know if it's enough."

  She turned, taking information in. She pointed toward the ruined warehouses. The woman was like a fucking computer.

  "What happened to 1-H, over there? Oh-I see. Partial collapse due to bug back-splash from 2-H. Jesus. That must have been a violent reaction. We need to know what caused that. All our simulations said the bugs should have frozen first. I see activity inside. There's a crew in there?"

  "Several are trapped in the rubble," he replied. "They got to the emergency lockers in time, but they're buried under debris and they only have pony bottles and rescue bubbles, so they only have a few more minutes of air. We have to hurry."

  She scanned further. "And that team?" She pointed to the workers guiding the neutralizer packets from the warehouse air locks. "They're taking the neutralizer to the bikers?"

  "That's correct."

  It was a long way from the warehouse locks, across the commuter pads, past the hangars to the rocketbike launch pad. It took four people to push-pull each neutralizer bladder. The supply chain inched along. Jane gestured at the biker ramps. "There are bikers backed up and waiting for the neutralizer, Sean."

  "So?"

  "So," she said, "You've got a resource bottleneck. Even with the new hands helping, it's going much too slowly. We need every gram of ice we can rescue. The last thing we can afford right now is a bottleneck."

  Her meaning became clear. Sean glared. "If I reassign the rescue team to the neutralizer brigade, the crew trapped in the warehouse will die." My people will die.

  "Sean. I can tell by looking-we're losing about a day's worth of ice every minute. I checked the shipping ledgers on the way up from Zekeston. There's not another ice shipment coming Down anytime soon. I don't know how I can keep everyone alive till we get another shipment in, even if the runaway were stopped this very instant. Hundreds of thousands of lives depend on how much ice we can save. We don't need your team for long. Maybe another fifteen minutes. Then you reassign them to the warehouse."

  Sean shook his head. "Fifteen minutes is too long for those people trapped in there. We'll lose them."

  She looked at him. "The cluster has to come first, Sean. There's no time to argue. Get someone to throw them some more pony bottles and then get your team out to the juice brigade."

  "There's no way to get them ponies or air lines, or we already would have. You're telling me to abandon them."

  The commissioner said, "Then you're right. I am."

  Sean stared. He had been here before. After a long and honorable career, he had been dishonorably discharged, during the Gene Purges, for disobeying orders. But those had been stupid orders. Evil ones. These weren't. Jane Navio was a chrome-assed bitch. Damn her. But she was right.

  "Reassign the warehouse team to the neutralizer brigade," she repeated. "Now." And he did.