Across the Spectrum by Pati Nagle, editors Deborah J. Ross

now strung below this level.
    Go back to the pet facility, Shadia Duster. You don’t
belong here. This is just one more story to take with you along the way. Walk
away, finish out what little time you have left before the med-debt’s gone, and
then board the first ship you come to.
    Except she didn’t. She couldn’t ease around the uni; her
coveralls were far too conspicuous. But she couldn’t go. She asked perm after
perm if they knew where the Rowpins’ address would have placed their home, and
she asked if anyone had seen them—or rather, she asked if they’d seen Feef, who
would have made more of an impression than just another person in the bustle.
She made herself useful on this side of the barrier, distracting the uni when
another perm needed to slip by. When a handful of people came with warm drinks
and what must have been their entire month’s ration of treat bars, she knew
who’d been working the longest and needed the boost.
    And when someone spotted the dangling pale tan arm amidst
the edge wreckage, several levels up and with the inner ring destroyed between
here and there, she knew how to get there.
    She glanced at the uni, who quite deliberately looked the
other way, and then she slipped past the barrier to the half-height tech access
door recessed invisibly into the now-skewed wall, the seams not evident until
released with the right touch in the right spot.
    She led them into the tight darkness.
    They murmured uneasily behind her, following at a slower
pace. When she emerged into the maintenance shaft and flicked the control to
release the stepholds folded into the pole for upward transit, she had to wait.
They’d never been in such tunnels; their uneasy voices rang louder than they’d
ever guess. They worried about the obvious warping in the walls, they murmured
about the motionless arm they’d seen . . . and they wondered
about her.
    It’s only fair. I’m wondering about them.
    Who were these people, following her into the unknown for
the sake of someone equally unknown? Who were any of them, defying unis to work
among the wreckage of the neighborhood? Clustering around the dangers instead
of running away as any duster would do? Take nothing for granted and take
what you can get, one of the common duster phrases. One would say it, and
all others within earshot would finish with the chorus of “And then move on!”
    It’s only fair. I’m wondering about me.
    Shadia moved on, all right. She waited for the first
tentative head to poke out of the half-height tunnel and she started climbing
the pole. She took them up two levels and stepped off onto the platform.
Remembering the layout of the wreckage they’d seen, she took them further into
the structure, through an even smaller access hatch until they were just about
to balk—and then she clambered out into the wreckage itself. So close to the
edge, where it tumbled straight out into the core. The floor beneath her feet
seemed to give a little quiver when the second person came out, and when the
third appeared there was no doubt.
    The third was the uni, covered with dust as were they all.
He gave her a guileless smile—and he bent down to instruct the others to wait.
“It’s not secure,” he told them. “You shouldn’t be here.”
    None of them should be here. And yet here they were.
    “Found someone!” the second person, a woman in an expensive
work suit from which she’d already ripped the inconvenient frills. Her voice
held a vibration of excitement that made her next words seem lifeless. “No.
Never mind.”
    The uni joined her as Shadia inched around the wreckage; a
fourth person eased out into the open and began to cast around, hunting the
owner of the elusively dangling arm. What had seemed so obvious from below was
hardly that from amidst the tangle of walls and upholstery and crushed
electronics.
    “Good Lord, what’s that smell?” exclaimed the man
who’d just joined them; his hand covered his nose and mouth, but