Nancy Kress - Borovsky's Hollow Woman

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BOROVSKY'S HOLLOW WOMAN

by JEFF DUNTEMANN and NANCY KRESS

[first published in Omni October 1983]

[VERSION 1.1 (Jan 28 02). If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version number

by 0.1 and redistribute.]

Laura walked the Low Steel above the stars, searching for her man.

It was 2.3 klicks across the skeletal terrain by the most direct route - the e blue line on the diagram of

the construction zone burned in the eye of Laura's mind. No one but Mikhail Borovsky would take that

particular route across the unfinished girders of the titan cylinder's outermost level, and even - he would

not take it without her.

One foot before the other, lift, swing, step. The pilot beam was solid monocrystal steel, I-section, one

decimeter wide. One hundred meters to her left and right identical girders glittered in the always-

changing light. They were the primary structural support of the latest, lowest level of George Eastman

Nexus. Each girder was a single crystal of iron atoms, one hundred nineteen kilometers in

circumference, and strong enough to rest an artificial world on.

For a kilometer ahead and behind, it was Laura and her beam.

A man in the saddle of a six-wheeled yoyo swung under the horizon far away antispinward and

quickly approached her, soon passing to the rear and vanishing. Borovsky's yoyo was a four-wheeler.

The earth swung up behind her and made blue highlights creep across the dull gray steel plates ten

meters above her helmet. It slipped above the horizon and was gone again for another forty minutes.

Laura adjusted the magnetism in her boot soles. Just enough to add a little friction, a little sureness. If

she fell outward from the rotating structure into the starry darkness the steelworkers called the Pit, no

one would fall after to her rescue. But she would not fall. Steel was her medium, just as it was

Borovsky's, and she loved it. Steel was sure and clean and true. It could be trusted, as Borovsky could be

trusted when he wasn't-

No. She would not allow that thought to be completed.

Where had they gone? Borovsky, in rubber underwear, off on a yoyo to fight a man twice his size,

somewhere on a level swinging more than 1.6 g. Falling on your face could flatten your skull on E

Minus Seven. Fighting could dock you a week's pay. Ignoring a challenge could get you called a phobe.

A coward. A . . . woman.

Where?

Step following step, body bent forward, using the artificial gravity to help carry her onward, Laura

searched. She scanned the chatter on the CB and the bloody-murder band. Nothing spoke of a man in

rubber hurt on E Minus Seven.

Less than five hundred meters of open steel remained. Far ahead Laura saw something streak through

the shadows toward the sucking stars. She followed desperately with her eyes and saw it catch the sun

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beyond the great cylinder's shadow. Four-wheeled gantry, cable, saddle: It blazed brilliant yellow for a

moment and was gone, falling forever.

His yoyo, unridden, alone. Damn the Pit! Laura broke into a run, each boot hitting the beam safely

though without thought, each magnet grabbing just so much. Raw dawn broke behind her and cast

lurching shadows against the unfinished steel ahead. The sun was beneath her feet as she stepped from

naked monocrystal onto gray steel plates.

Above was the port from which the yoyo had fallen. She pulled herself up a ladder and stepped out

onto E Minus Six. A little lighter, a little less deadly.

No sign of fleeing men. Six was a big level, one hundred meters thick. Heavy chemical industry, she

remembered.

Before her a dozen huge steel tanks squatted against the floor like brooding hens. Each was ten

meters high, with a ladder leading to a dogged circular hatch.

She scanned the tanks. All were alike, save that one of the hatches had dog-handles twisted

differently from the rest. In moments she was at the hatch, pushing the dogs aside.

The tube was a simple pressure lock. Laura pulled herself in, dogged the outer hatch, and released the

inner.

With a rising rush there was sound all around her. She pushed the inner hatch wide and found her

man.

Mikhail Borovsky lay naked in a heap, blood leaking from his mouth. Laura cried out, and for an

awful moment she lay immobile in the tube until she heard a rattling breath. She slid to his side and

squeezed his wrist until her gauntlet felt his pulse. Drugs - he needed drugs to stir his system out of

shock.

His rubber suit lay on the floor. Laura kicked it scornfully aside, reached to her throat, and undid its

latch. Quickly she eased her helmet back. She pulled her ventral zipper down, flipping the hooks aside

with her fingers as they went. Eagerly she spread her ventral plates apart, pulled her pelvic plate

forward, then pulled the zippers down each of her legs almost to each knee.

She lay on her back beside him, plates gaping, helmet folded under. The eyes in her wrists and in the

toes of her boots helped her lift Borovsky above her. Gently she eased his legs down into her legs and let

the slow peristalsis of her inner layers draw his feet into her feet. Her ventral plates stretched wide to

clear his hips. She placed the Texas catheter over his penis and pulled her pelvic plate back into position.

Wriggling slightly, she guided his arms down into her arms, where her inner layers did the final

positioning.

Each finger was drawn into place and continuously massaged. Laura zipped and hooked her ventral

plates and finally eased her helmet over his head.

For a Rabinowicz Manplifier Mark IX space suit, walking steel empty was too lonely to bear.

Without her man inside her Laura felt herself a hollow mockery, less than even a woman, not worthy of

the soul Borovsky had paid so much for. Never again, she said to unconscious ears. Never again. Stay

inside me. You are mine.

Slowly she stood, whole again. Up from his toes the hydraulic rings pressed in smooth waves,

helping his blood back toward his head and heart. A tiny needle jabbed into his buttocks, sending a

careful measure of stimulant into his bloodstream.

This was no place to be caught by a boss. Laura moved slowly as she climbed from the tank. It had

been some time since she had carried his dead weight asleep, and never unconscious. She gave the torn

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rubber underwear to the Pit with a vengeful flick of her hand.

They went home the long way, going up through Six to Five and walking slowly. Halfway there he

came around.

"Laura," he whispered.

"I love you," she said, without breaking her stride.

"He had a metal bar shoved up his ass," he said, and coughed. "Crapped it out on the floor, grabbed

it, and that was that. I'm gonna kill the fugger. You watch me."

"I love you," she said again, hoping against knowledge that the words would soothe the murderous

rage she feared might get him killed.

A world without Borovsky-

"Love you too," he mumbled, only half-conscious. "I'm gonna kill him."

By morning the bruises showed up. Borovsky swore at his image in the mirror. The left half of his

face was swollen grotesquely. Ugly purple blotches covered most of his cheek and curved up nearly to

surround his left eye. All across his body were bruises and scrapes from hitting the iron going down. He

pressed a bruise with one finger and jerked the finger away from the fiery pain.

Laura watched, unmoving. The tiny, cylindrical pod with its watercot, its kitchen, its shower, and

squat toilet was very silent. If Borovsky fought again, if he insisted on fighting again today-

Panic appeared in her crystalline, layered machine mind, seeping outward from the F layer at the

core. Layers A through E were standard Manplifier equipment: sensory, motor, communications,

memory, and intellect. Borovsky had paid three years' wages for the F layer that Laura so cherished:

unique, personal, precious - her soul. The E layer, shared by any machine that could speak and reason,

could have stopped the panic, but it did not. Instead, when Laura could no longer stand the way he stood

gripping the edge of the sink in furious silence, she spoke.

"You didn't have to go fight him."

He spat into the sink. "He called me a phobe. Maybe once I can take it. Maybe twice. Some people

have to make noise. But he made me answer him. So I answered." He probed a bruise on his thigh,

wincing. "What do we got for bruises?"

Laura turned and searched a small cabinet beside the bed. "Hemoverithol."

"Let's have it."

Laura pressed an autoampul against his thigh and squeezed.

He sighed as the needle came and went, then nodded. "How long?"

Thousands of words of medical data flew past the eyes of Laura's mind. "Eighteen hours to kill the

swelling. Color should be gone in forty-eight. I hope we can afford another yoyo; the spare wasn't new

when we bought it and-"

"Nix. Rent's up, food's up - we get a new yoyo and we'd default on your soul. Gimme a couple

months. We'll get a new one from that bastard Coyne even if I have to beat it out of his hide."

"Maybe we should stay away from the Beer Tube for a few days."

"He'll be laughing behind his ugly face."

"Let him laugh. Borovsky-"

"Don't say it." He turned to her and smiled. The smile was made lopsided by the swelling in his

cheek, and even when whole it was not a smile to charm women - too flat, too suspicious, too much of

the smile of an outsider more used to contempt than to love. But Laura was not a woman of flesh. This

smile was Borovsky's. It was enough.

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"Let me run the balalaika," Laura said. The image came to her mind instantly: Borovsky as he looked

while listening to the tape of his father playing the ancient balalaika. The tape was all he had brought up

from the crumbling slum that was Deep West London. The sad, hollow music made his face change -

change from underneath, Laura thought.

At those times his features lost some of their hardness; his eyes ceased their constant nervous

scanning back and forth. His mouth - no, his mouth did not smile, but in the small parting of his lips it

seemed to find peace. If he would just listen - now - to the balalaika . . .

"Let me run the balalaika!"

"And get me canned? No, dushenka. We'll be late to the grind. Damn. That spare better be okay." He

turned from the sink and tapped a command on the lock console. The spare yoyo's condition read out in

a few crisp words. Not the best, but the battery was a retread, and old at that.

"The balalaika-"

"Come on, Laura. Shit, we're late already. Move it."

Laura put down her hand and deliberately began undogging her plates.

George Eastman Nexus had begun as a single cylinder, rotating to simulate standard Earth gravity.

From the inner surface, towers and delicately suspended trees of modular office clusters grew toward the

center. In those offices the engineers and managers of a thousand companies guided an industry worth

six trillion dollars in gold annually.

George Eastman grew outward as well. Downward from Earth-Zero swelled the industrial levels.

Some industries preferred the heavier gravity; many chemical processes actually worked more

efficiently under higher swing.

For other industries the heaviness was less necessary, but materials were cheap ever since the asteroid

Calliope had been towed into orbit around the moon for the steerable mirrors to mine.

It was less than three klicks from their pod to the advancing edge of E Minus Seven. Its monocrystal

rings girdling Eastman Nexus had been in place for ten months. At the forefront of construction the

longitudinal beams and outer-deck plates were being welded into position amid showers of sparks.

Behind the edge the power conduits and other piping were being laid, and farther still, the floor plates,

one meter square and removable, were being bolted down. Laura gripped the yoyo's cable tightly as they

rode, and felt through her fingers the sizzle of old motors in its gantry above her helmet.

Two of the welders paused long enough to let Borovsky pass between them, unharmed by the molten

droplets. Borovsky waved clear, and the yoyo purred on to the point where the floor plates began. He

parked it and punched in with the shift boss. Docked nine minutes - he shrugged, and Laura tallied the

beers he would have to forgo to make it up. Borovsky's partner, Andre Wolf Lair, thumped his shoulder

as Borovsky yanked his card from the clock. Borovsky grunted in greeting and returned a playful poke

to the Amerind's midsection. Coyne's lamp on the clock was green. Borovsky clenched his jaw and

glanced toward the supply dump. Coyne was loading diamond cutting wheels into his Enhanced

Leverage Manipulator.

Coyne looked up. Borovsky's personal microwave channel triggered, and a single scornful, whispered

word came across over Coyne's chuckle: "phobe."

Laura felt her man's pulse race. Quickly she squeezed his thigh and whispered in his ear, "He can't

even walk the Low Steel for a living. All he does is ride in that big yellow egg. You're twice the man he

ever will be."

"I'll kill him," Borovsky muttered. "Damn, I'll feed him to the stars."

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file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20documente\n/spaar/Nancy%20Kress%20-%20Borovsky's%20Hollow%20Woman.txtBOROVSKY'SHOLLOWWOMANbyJEFFDUNTEMANNandNANCYKRESS[firstpublishedinOmniOctober1983][VERSION1.1(Jan2802).Ifyoufindandcorrecterrorsinthetext,\pleaseupdatetheversionnumberb...

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