Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold (1999, 320 pages) – Okay, this may be cheating, but it’s my 52nd Cannonball review this year so I think I should go out with a bang by rereading something I know is incredible.
I fell in love with Ms. Bujold’s hunchback hero, Miles Vorkosigan, in Borders of Infinity (the short story and book of the same name), and have relished every day of his incredible life. Falling Free, however, takes place two hundred years before Miles and, while it’s in the same universe, it relies more on Ms. Bujold’s engineering father’s problem/resolution teachings.
About five minutes into the book, I’m totally pissed off. You can tell the sweet, young, genetically engineered “quadlings” (people’s whose DNA has been changed to give them four arms instead of two arms and two legs) that the Company has designed for cheap labor in zero gravity are being mistreated. Through the eyes of a crusty old “go with the flow as long as safety standards are met” engineer who has been assigned to teach these youngsters (none over twenty-years-old) how to weld and repair space stations, we see the poor quadlings for the helpless children they are. We also see the Company for the heartless bastards they are.
The Company engineer, Leo, hates the scumbag administrator in charge of the orbiting school but loves the enthusiastic kids. The quadlings, because they are Company property, have serial numbers instead of names. They are raised on stories of The Little Rotor That Could and expected to provide the Company with a profit and obey commands. The problem is that the Company made them able to reproduce their own kind. When a couple with a small child is told they must separate and engage with new “reproductive” assignments, they flee the station but end up planet-side and in a jam. They and the baby are not prepared for gravity, and Leo barely gets there in time to prevent them from being killed (the administrator convinces the planetary police that the quadlings are dangerous “chimps”) although the dad is shot.
As if this situation wasn’t bad enough, the smeghead lets slip that the Company will be using anti-grav soon so the quadling project will not be profitable and must be scrapped. At first, the quadlings are assigned to a prison on the planet where they are expected to be sterilized and die out without anyone noticing. That’s considered too expensive, so cancellation by cremation is Company approved.
Leo throws his years of service to the Company away and starts immediate plans to move the orbiting school to a free-zone asteroid belt where the quadlings will become citizens. With the quadlings’ help, he sets a plan in motion to send all the two-legs safely to the surface, steal a tow ship to move the station, and break up the station in self-sufficient pieces to be moved into the asteroid. Oh, did I mention there are a thousand quadlings onboard? Leo has his work cut out for him as first one engineering snafu after another pops up, but Leo works with what he has and manages to save the day.
My favorite part is where the good Company psychologist (who has been ensuring the quadlings remain childlike and malleable) pops the administrator a good one up the back of the head.
Really good good guys. Really bad bad guys. Hope from hopelessness. Honor before job security. Right versus might. Can you get any better than this?
I don’t think so.
