Kallo looked in the mirror of the level three sluff and sleep pod and scowled at the sight. It was hours past her sluff time; she looked like a 50-year-old child.
She released the fasteners on her wing suit; it crumpled to the floor. She kicked the suit into the sonic launder unit and pressed her palm on the wall panel. The triple hydro-shielded door slid open as the base of the pod filled with the mixture of water and salicylic acid. She slipped into the hot liquid, reveling in the itch-and-tingle of the sluffing solution as the day's skin slid off. It had been such a long day that her skin practically sluffed in one piece, along with the silk anchor patches for her flight suit, which now clung only for a moment before gliding away from her arms, neck, legs and back. She stood. The change in her posture triggered the drain at the far end of the pod to open, sucking away the old skin, and the day's radiation with it, in a high, sharp wsssht! Warm water pulsed from dozens of nozzles as she turned in the spray, sighing in relief. The jets went still, then sprayed her with slip, the solution of aloe and refined sheep fat. Kallo rubbed her tender, new skin with the slip, stepped out of the pod and wrapped a hooded ironsilk robe around herself. She pressed her palm on the opposite wall, opening the sheepskin-padded, triple-shielded sleeping pod. As she curled up under the warm layers her mind was buzzing with the terrible things Del had said.
He had been so angry! And now that Kallo thought back, he had been angry for a while. In fact, he seemed to grow more sarcastic and bitter every year, dropping mean remarks here and there. Why? What was wrong with him? Daddy had said that Del was just jealous of her and she knew practically everyone was, but Del was still important to her, and still important to her Daddy.
He seemed far away now. And it occurred to Kallo that not many other people liked her.
Tassie had never liked her, and although Anso was always helpful, he wasn't really close. She didn't even know much about him. Beyond that, Kallo had no friends at all. She had no one else to turn to. Kallo turned on her side under the sheepskins. What could make Del act like this?
Was it possible that he didn't love her like he used to?
Then she rolled to the other side. She couldn’t sleep, though she was shivering with fatigue.
She worried on Del in her mind, like a tongue worrying a cavity. Then she worried on her poor, injured Daddy, hurt even more again while he was just trying to make things right. It was so unfair. Why were things so unfair for him?
Kallo was on her own now and for the very first time, and she didn't know what to do.
Sleep settled on her, but it was a blustering sleep like the first gusts of a storm. She was at the edge of a dream mesa. The wind was too warm; it was carrying energy from the ground and the funk of moist air sucked up from the cisterns; that meant a dust storm. She had to tell everyone. She had to hurry.
An old woman was now standing on the edge of the mesa, spinning that stupid yarn and staring up at the huge roiling, looming claw of a haboob that darkened the sky above them. Kallo stared up, her heart hammering. She yelled to the old woman, but her voice was lost in screaming winds. The old woman stared at Kallo and said, into sudden silence,
"My name is Dohna."
Tassy drifted idly in the wind tunnel, staring off into space. The rhythmic buffeting jets of air rocked her peacefully. Her practice suit undulated gently against her skin, her helmet creating a safe space of deep, deep quiet. She was grateful for the shielded backup power in the lab, and also for the quiet. With all the world comm systems down, she really had time alone. She could really think.
She thought about gravity, and the old laboratory Hertz experiment, considering the interaction of electro-magnetic and gravitational waves into a strong magnetic field.
If flyers didn't need air molecules or currents for lift, flight could be a very different thing. Energy packs had never been efficient enough. Chutes couldn't do much on short notice because of the thin air. But really, any air was too thin for the hazards that busy fliers might have to face.
She was not kallo's biggest fan, but watching the girl nearly crash and die had ruined Tassy's sleep for several nights. Every time sleep started to pull her under she saw Kallo tumbling and coming much too close to crashing before Del had caught her in mid-flight..For one thing, the whole idea of overriding manual had been a terrible mistake. Tassy wouldn't have blamed Kallo or Mano for raging at her about that, although they hadn't said a word, probably more from preoccupation than anything. It had been a terrible day. If Del hadn't rescued Kallo-the thought chilled Tassy to the bone. She had to do something to protect her fliers. She needed to do something new, something great that would truly help them.
When Tassy had been in school she'd been fascinated by gravity generators, those quantum magnification systems installed in the floors of space stations, lunar installations and other off -world manned vehicles and habitatats. She had wanted to create a mechanism using the same ambient gravitational waves, but in reverse. For a few months she was mocked for it. "It's antigravity girl!" they'd say, and because there was no such thing and would never be any such thing, it was the same as being called stupid. “Why not just run the specs?”her friends would ask. But no machines, quantum or beyond, would ever be as creative as the mind. And the mind had its organic needs: to attempt, to fail, to find solutions, to see beyond solutions, to create. One of her greatest champions in those days had bdeen Mano. "Real creatives and real scientists don't hv th luxury of lisstenin o mundane minds," he said, "'They'll sap your drive," but she had let the problem go, for the time being. She always knew she would come back to gravity as a source for drive power.
Now, it was more important than ever that fliers could be free of reliance on the environment. Or on outdated, inefficient systems.
Tassy spun in the jets of air. What if a flier could activate gravity resistors (reversed grav generators)and use them for lift? You wouldn't want complete grav reversal, because you'd fall up into space. But if you could control gravity that would be all you needed. Tassy's heart began to pound. That would be all you needed. Some of the best technologies were simply commonly used technologies adapted in size and reapplied to other common uses; reapplication had been done hundreds of times in other industries; now it was time for grav resistors to find their way into personal flight technology. Blueprints sprang into Tassy's brain. She wrestled out of her wind tunnel practice suit and tore a seam in her hurry as she stumbled out of the wind tunnel and into the lab; she stubbed her toe, tripping and nearly falling on her face getting to her desk. A holopanel scrolled in the air above the desk as she sat. She began tracing a design before her butt hit the chair.
The hardware would be basic: a quantum AI unit managing gravitational magnification units, other AI units reacting to the flier's commands coming through the neural patches, and simple circuits embedded in the suit connected to resistors, which would give the flier control. The hardware would be tiny but easy to maintain, supported by a network of passive ambient radiation harvesters, like generations of suits before, a proven reliable system..But what about lateral movement? it would work like a system of thrusters, like allerone, pitch and yaw, basic rocket mechanics of flight. It would take some skill to operate, of courae, but, Tassy thought with some pride, no corps of fliers was more skilled than the Mars Central Comm Corps. Kallo was the undisputed star, but they could all hold their own, including her twin brother Anso.
Tassy finally took off her helmet, releasing her glinting silver pigtails, her face glazed lightly with sweat. The same thought always came to her at this stage of developing an idea: what would Mano think?
Mano had given her this lab, had invested in her as if she were his own child. He had paid for her advanced education, had told her saw creativity in her when others at the shabby school in Arturos only saw her test scores. She had been pressured into asteroid engineering, but Mano was the one who supported her in her independent projects, the only one who told her she was an innovator worth the investment. And she had proven that true, several times; she had been the flight suit designer for Mars Central Comm Corps for over ten years now, and they were known for having the very best technology in flight suits. It was one thing Del loved to brag about. Mixed with the recall of Mano’s help in those early days were her sweet memories of getting to know Del. He had never led her on, though he could have; she had followed him around like a devotee’. He hadn’t loved her back. And why should he? He was a star athlete and an Interworld broadcaster, too. But he was always kind, and had always trusted her designs. He would flash that dazzling grin, his dark hematite eyes glinting at her, and her insides would melt. Still she felt that deep thrill for him and still she kept her secret hopes that maybe...one day...
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