Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold Page A

undocked from her body rather gracefully—perhaps it was all that piloting experience showing through—and planted a kiss in the hollow of her throat. Pretty lady.
    Silver blushed a little, grateful for the dim lighting. Ti turned his attention momentarily to a necessary clean-up chore. A quick whistle of air, and the spermicide-permeated condom was gone down the waste chute. Silver suppressed a faint twinge of regret. It was just too bad Ti wasn't one of them. Too bad she was such a long way down the roster of those scheduled for motherhood. Too bad . . .
    Did you find out from your doctor fellow if we really need those? Ti asked her.
    I couldn't exactly ask Dr. Minchenko directly,Silver replied. But I gather he thinks any conceptus between a downsider and one of us would abort spontaneously,pretty early on—but nobody knows for sure. Could be a baby might make it to birth with lower limbs that were neither arms nor legs, but just some mess in between. And they probably wouldn't let me keep if. ... Anyway, it saves chasing body fluids around the room with a hand vac.
    Too true. Well, I'm certainly not ready to be a daddy.
    How incomprehensible, thought Silver,for a man that old. Ti must be at least twenty-five, much older than Tony, who was nearly the eldest of them all. She was careful to float facing the window, so that the pilot had his back to it. Come on, Tony, do it if you're going to. ...
    A cool draft from the ventilators raised goose bumps on all her arms, and Silver shivered.
    Chilly? Ti asked solicitously, and rubbed his hands up and down her arms rapidly to warm them by friction, then retrieved her blue shirt and shorts from the side of the room where they had drifted. Silver shrugged into them gratefully. The pilot dressed too, and Silver watched with covert fascination as he fastened his shoes. Such inflexible, heavy coverings, but then feet were inflexible, heavy things in their own right. She hoped he'd be careful how he swung them around. Shod, his feet reminded her of mallets.
    Ti, smiling, unhooked his flight bag from a wall rack where he had stowed it when they'd retreated to the control booth half an hour earlier. Gotcha something.
    Silver perked up, and her four hands clasped each other hopefully. Oh! Were you able tofi nd any more book-discs by the same lady?
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    Yes, here you go—Ti produced some thin squares of plastic from the inner reaches of his flight bag.
    Three titles, all new.
    Silver pounced on them and read their labels eagerly. Rainbow Illustrated Romances: Sir Randan's Folly, Love in the Gazebo, Sir Randan and the Bartered Bride, all by Valeria Virga. Oh, wonderful!
    She wrapped her upper right arm around Ti's neck and gave him a quite spontaneous and vigorous kiss.
    He shook his head in mock despair. I don't know how you can read that dreck. I think the author is a committee, anyway.
    It's great! Silver defended her beloved literature indignantly. It's so, so full of color, and strange places and times—alot of them are set on old Earth,w ay back when everybody was still downside—they're amazing. People kept animals all around them—these enormous creatures called horses actually used to carry them around on their backs. I suppose the gravitytir ed people out. And these rich people, like—l ikecom pany executives, I guess—called' lords' and 'nobles' lived in the most fantastic habitats, stuck to the surface of the planet—and there was nothing about all this in the history we were taught! Her indignation peaked.
    That stuff's not history, though,he objected. It's fiction.
    It's nothing like the fiction they give us, either. Oh, it's all right for the little kids—Iused to love The Little Compressor That Coul d—w e made our creche-mother read it over and over. And the Bobby BX-99
    series was all right . . . Bobby BX-99 Solves the Excess Humidity Mystery . . . Bobby BX-99 and the Plant V i rus ... it was then I asked to specialize in Hydroponics. But downsiders are ever