Severance Read Online Free PDF Page A

the central axis, where Argosians
could amuse themselves in the micro–G environment. Stein tugged her way down the
access corridor using the hand holds mounted on the walls, beads of sweat
quickly forming on her brow. It was always warm up here, though Stein conceded
it was probably a little warmer than normal. Not that Griese was the sort to
complain unnecessarily. As she neared the end of the access corridor, she palmed
herself to a stop and looked down into the floatarium.
    Griese Otomo stood on one of the twenty different surfaces
in the room that laid claim to the designation “floor.” Above him floated a
half–dozen other people, scripts clasped in sweaty hands, rehearsing a scene
from what appeared to be
Taming of the Shrew.
Stein watched quietly as
Petruchio, gesticulating wildly in the course of a monologue, accidentally
struck his assistant, sending the boy backwards and into the gathered crowd of
players, scattering the group like billiard balls. Everyone broke down
laughing.
    “Having some problems with your blocking?” Stein asked from
the entrance.
    Griese looked up, recognizing his old friend. “That was
intentional.” Which was entirely possible. No one attended a low–G play to see
it go right. “So, you finally got around to us?” he asked, though Stein could
tell the annoyance in his voice wasn’t genuine.
    “It’s nine thirty!” Stein replied. “You’re my first call of
the day.” She kicked off the floor of the entrance and sailed across the room
to Griese. “I’m amazed you’re even awake. I thought you arty types didn’t roll
out of bed until noon.”
    Griese watched her approach, offering up an arm for her to
catch. She caught him by the wrist and planted another hand on the back of a
chair, spinning her body around to land roughly on this new floor. “That’s my
wife you’re thinking of,” he said. “As for us, would you believe we were trying
to beat the heat?” He poked a finger at a bead of sweat on Stein’s brow. “You
see our problem then?”
    “Yeah, it’s pretty steamy. Are you guys growing drugs up
here?” Stein looked at the gaggle of actors, which had retreated to the far
side of the space, still giggling. “Or just consuming?” Griese laughed, though
not with his eyes. Stein decided not to prod him anymore. “Let me see if I can
do something about that.”
    She pulled her terminal out of her webbing, and called up a
display of the bow’s ventilation systems. She immediately spotted the error,
two thermostats reading the temperature in the room at 15 degrees Celsius. The
system had thus concluded it should stop supplying cold air to the room. It was
even trying to supply hot air in its place, though she knew that that wasn’t
going to work, thanks to a damper that had been deliberately bent shut eighty
years previous. She tapped a couple of commands on the terminal to enable an
override, pumping chilled air into the room temporarily while she replaced the
sensors.
    Looking up from the terminal, she scanned the many floors of
the room, trying to figure out where the thermostat was hiding. Spotting it,
she bounced across the room, landing neatly on the wall where it was hidden,
and with a practiced twist, disconnected it. The designers of the ship had been
acutely aware that every element of it would be replaced at least a dozen times
over the length of the journey. Every system on board the ship was based on
nearly antique designs, all with decades–long track records of reliability. And
they were all designed to use parts that could be easily recycled and re–fabricated
onboard the ship. Almost everything was made of soft metal or thermoplastics,
capable of being scavenged, melted down and recycled. A routine piece of trivia
delivered to school field trips in the vessel’s fab shops was that these shops
were just as critical a part of the ship’s life support systems as the
hydroponics or carbon dioxide scrubbers. As with most pieces of