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

from what
remained of his expression, it had done no good. The woman was the first to
spot the source.
    “There!” she said, flinging up a hand to point. “That.”
    That. Cowering into the smallest possible bundle in the only
dark, intact corner left in the residence—the upper tier of a closet, it looked
like—was a mostly hairless slothlike creature. The crumpled remains of a
den-cage, barely recognizable, were not far away.
    Aw, ties and chains. The Rowpins. And Feef, their
survivor.
    She must have said some part of it out loud; the others
glanced at her. Then the uni said, “I found a second one,” and the tone of his
voice was clear enough. Too late. Both dead.
    “That’s all there is,” Shadia said, her voice very small as
it fought to get out of her throat. Nothing’s permanent.
    The uni looked at her, somber. “These are the people you
were asking about when you first came.”
    Shadia nodded.
    He gave a little nod back at her, a small gesture that
shouldn’t have made her feel as it did . . . as though she were
part of something. Something bigger than she was or he was . . .
bigger than all of them. She frowned, caught in the moment.
    “Go on back down,” the uni told those people still waiting
in the tunnel. Waiting to help . . . except no one here needed
it. “There’ll be crews here to deal with . . . what we’ve
found.” The flooring gave a decisive tremble beneath them, and his voice grew
crisp. “Go on, then. We’ll get their animal and be right after you.”
    They meant well.
    They coo’d and they called, unable to reach the akliat
through the rubble, wanting badly to preserve this creature belonging to those
people they hadn’t been able to save. But the flooring gave a wicked
shudder and Feef’s odor-signals only grew more intensely offensive. A gridnews
hovercam floated past, stopped short, and wandered into the destruction,
wavering slightly in mid-air as it soaked up the scene for its operators.
Shadia, retreating to familiar duster ways— nothing’s permanent —eased
back toward her escape. It was all too much, this joining in , this caring  . . .
she’d learned the lesson once as a child and learned it well. She hadn’t
thought she’d be learning it again, that she’d been foolish enough to let
herself care about these people who loved their akliat.
    He was a disturbed old ex-duster. I didn’t do anything
besides bring him a few meals, sneak out some of the family’s old clothing and
once a pillow. An old ex-duster who wanted to return the kindness, to save me
from the misleading perm ways of my family. I understood that later. And in a
way I suppose he did. When he took me away from all I knew, it was the
strongest lesson I ever could have learned. Nothing is forever. Things change,
whenever and wherever. So embrace the change. No ties, no extended responsibilities
to others, nothing to lose. Dive into the change and ride it like a wave.
    The uni shouted warning; a huge chunk of flooring broke away
and tumbled down the levels, leaving the others scrambling for safety while
Shadia clutched the edge of the maintenance shaft. Time to leave.
    “That’s it, people,” the uni said. “He’s not coming to us. I
wish there were something we could do, but—”
    “Give me your uni coat,” Shadia said abruptly.
    He gave her a baffled, resistant look, one arm raised to
usher the other two back toward the shaft.
    Shadia stepped away from it. “Your coat,” she insisted. The
man and woman hesitated by the exit, watching them. “You want to save the
akliat? Hand it over!”
    Still baffled, less resistant, he peeled it off and passed
it to her, a long, dark tailored thing that smelled of sweat and stress and
physical labor. Shadia tented the collar over her head. She put her hands
halfway up the sleeves that were way too long for her anyway, and turned the
coat into a draping cloak, turning her upraised arms into cave-enclosed
branches. She didn’t have to warn