Asimov's Science Fiction by Penny Publications Page B

decelerate. We're still moving when the antigrav engine sputters and goes quiet, and my stomach lurches with the sensation of freefall.
    "Symrock!" Duyi swears, frantically working the stabilizers to keep us upright as we angle toward the ground.
    I yank up on the emergency lever, and the rollcage springs closed over the passenger compartment. We hit the ground at too sharp an angle and roll end over end, the leaf-dappled sky and dark earth alternating in dizzying succession. We finally slide to a stop upside down, one corner of the rollcage bent inward so we hang at an odd angle.
    "Well," I say. The flight straps are cutting into my shoulders uncomfortably. "So that was the end of the symrock vein, I take it?"
    Duyi coughs, the air full of dust kicked up during our inelegant landing. "I may have somewhat over-estimated my own reaction time, I admit."
    "Mm, somewhat," I agree.
    "I can't get this thing off," he complains, fiddling with his flight harness. There's an audible click, and the harness dumps him unceremoniously on the ground. He squirms in the confines of the rollcage, struggling to reorient into a crouch. "Ow."
    "Are you injured?" I brace my feet against the sides of the foot well and put one hand on the ground below my head before releasing my own harness.
    "Showoff," he grumbles, as I let myself down carefully. "No, I'm fine. Just bruises."
    We have to climb out between the bars of the rollcage. Duyi's shorter and slimmer than I, and he shimmies through without much trouble, but I have to exhale to squeeze between, and for a moment I fear I'm stuck. Duyi laughs but grabs my hands to pull me free. Then there's nothing to do but retrieve our packs and deal with what's in front of us.
    We may be safely away from any roadlines, but traveling by foot is slow, and the regent will be getting impatient for Duyi's retrieval by now. A sobering thought. At least I can consult the topo map stored in my NeuroLogic, now that we're out of range of the estate.
    "We're close—half a day's hike to the mining roadline, and we can hitch a ride into town from there."
    Duyi scowls. "We'll be late for the rendezvous. Santiago better wait for us."
    "He'll wait. He needs you."
    Duyi shakes his head, mystified, and I realize he only believes in his own value because I keep insisting upon it. He hasn't actually internalized how pivotal his ability will be for the Freeminers' cause. The Regency bloodline is unique among humans in its ability to support the symbiont infection—Duyi is the only person on the planet, aside from the regent herself, with the proper genetics for hosting symbionts. It makes me furious, sometimes, how thoroughly he's internalized the regent's view of his limited worth. I have to swallow the angry words and remind myself it is not his fault what happened to him.
    "He'll wait," I say again, with emphasis. "Let's go."
    I came to the estate too late to meet his mother, and Duyi rarely spoke of her. Perhaps it was easier to pretend she had never existed at all. After the old regent's death, his wife was found guilty of treason and sentenced to follow him. No one would actually say that the Regent Junmei hated her father's second wife for being scandalously young and pretty, and for replacing her own mother who had been rendered barren by disease. But everywhere this was implied, in the careful ways the staff would skirt around saying it. So it seemed that Junmei first framed and then executed Duyi's mother out of spite. Duyi himself had been inoculated at birth and the symbiont infection took root, so by law he could not be harmed. Otherwise I suspect she would have taken care of him, too.
    Instead the regent found herself in the unforeseen position of needing to take care of him in the non-euphemistic sense. Guardian to a much younger half-brother she'd never wanted, Junmei sought to control him the only way she was capable of: through fear. I do believe, even though she stayed distant and cold with him, she