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

the others to hush; they’d done so on their
own, letting their hopes burst through to their faces.
    Shadia raised her arms a little higher within her
self-imposed cave and gave one of the casual little chirrups she’d often heard
from Feef. A long trill with a few clucks at the end, a soft repetition . . .
    He sprang from his corner, scuttled across the rubble, and
climbed her like the nighttime tree she pretended to be. Fast enough to make
them all gasp. And then she steeled herself for the stench of him . . .
but the stench had transformed to perfume, a crisp pervading caress of a scent;
his soft, suede-skin arms clung to her not with fierce intent, but gentle
trust.
    Slowly, filled with a sweetness she could just barely
remember, she let the coat slide down to her shoulders and closed it around the
both of them.
    They clapped for her. The man, the woman, the uni . . .
the people several levels below on the first intact inner ring, watching it
broadcast on their PIM gridviews. She met the grin of the uni with a surprised
gaze, and he nodded at the maintenance shaft. “Go.”
    The others went. And Shadia turned to follow, awkward under
the burden of coat and akliat, in wavering mid-step when the uni shouted and
the grid-watching crowd gave a collective gasp of horror. She saw it from the
corner of her eye, the bulk of falling debris, screeching metal against metal
as it bounced on the way down.
    She’d never get out of the way. Not in time. Duster-like,
she was ready for that . . . except within her whispered a
long-forgotten child’s voice, something that treasured the newly rediscovered
sweetness in life and didn’t want to give it up again so soon . . .
    Something hit her hard. She twisted, trying to cushion the
akliat even as she protected him from above, and all the while he exuded his
scent of trust. A horrible crash buffeted her with sound and everything went
dark, dark with a great heavy weight upon her.
    She waited for the pain.
    “Close one, eh?” said the uni’s voice in her ear. “Come on,
then. You’re the one that knows the way, I think. Let’s get you and your new
friend out of here.”
    I don’t understand. He could have been killed. He doesn’t
even know me, doesn’t have any of a perm’s affection for those they keep around
them.
    I don’t understand.
    She led him through the darkness and back to the dimly lit
pole shaft. She did it in silence, moving carefully to protect Feef, moving
slowly to accommodate the tremble in her limbs. When they reached the level
they’d come from, he put a hand on his own coat and stopped her before she
remembered that dusters didn’t like to be touched by strangers. That everyone
was a stranger.
    “I work the duster turf, mainly,” he said, and his voice
held an understanding she’d never heard before. “Never yet met one who hadn’t
already lost too much to listen, but you . . .”
    She looked at him, going wary. Feef snuggled against her and
before she could stop herself, she stroked the absurd fluff of his topknot
where it poked out at her neck.
    The uni gave the smallest of smiles. “We’re not so dim as
you dusters think, perms aren’t. Sure, we lose things, and then it hurts. It’s
just . . .” He shrugged, losing most of what little composure
he’d had. “It’s just that—it gives us—”
    She thought of people rushing to help strangers and other
strangers cheering her success with Feef and yet other strangers who mourned.
Perm strangers, who somehow weren’t really strangers at all, not as dusters
defined them. Perms left themselves open and vulnerable to the hurt and
disillusion that dusters scorned, but . . .
    “You could have been killed,” she said. Killed, tackling her
to take them both flying into their only safety instead of diving there
himself, a certain save.
    “Yes,” he admitted.
    “A duster wouldn’t have done it.”
    “No. A duster wouldn’t.”
    “You leave yourself open to lose