If he fell, there would be no gymnet base web, not even a soft carpet. A two-year-old might weigh fifteen or twenty pounds. They loved to climb; it was as if they sensed that once they got big and heavy, they'd be stuck with climbing stairs and making only the most trivial jumps. Babies could fall a lot farther than grown-ups without serious injury, but long falls would still kill them. Two-year-olds didn't know that. A simple suggestion would send Birbop off for the window at the top. The chances were good that he would make it... .
Normally, Viki and Gokna would jump into any wild scheme, but this was someone else's life....The two stared at each other for a moment. "I—I don't know, Viki."
And if they did nothing? The babies would likely be killed along with the rest of them. There could be terrible consequences whatever they chose. Suddenly Viki was more frightened than she had ever been before; she walked across the floor to stand under the grinning Birbop. Her arms reached up as if with a life of their own, to coax the baby back down. She forced her arms down, forced her voice into a light, teasing tone. "Hi, Birbop! Do you think you can carry the twine all the way to that little window?"
Birbop tilted his head, turned his baby eyes upward. "Sure." And he was off, scuttling back and forth from weld patch to pipefitting, upward and upward.I owe you, little one, even if you don't know it.
On the ground, Alequere squawked outrage that Birbop should have all the attention. She jerked hard on the twine, leaving her brother dangling by three arms from a narrow ledge twenty feet up. Gokna scooped her off the floor and away from the twine, and handed her to Jirlib.
Viki tried to shake off the terror she felt; she watched the baby climb higher and higher.And if we can get to the window, then what? Throw out notes? But they had nothing to write with—and they didn't know just where they were or where the wind might carry a note....And suddenly she saw how one thing might solve two problems. "Brent, your jacket." She jerked her hands, waving for Gokna to help him take it off.
"Yes!" Gokna was pulling at the sleeves and pants almost before Viki finished talking. Brent stared in surprise for a second, and then he got the idea and started helping. His jacket was almost as big as Jirlib's, but without the slits down the back. The three of them stretched it flat between them and sidled this way and that, trying to track the lateral movements of the high-climbing Birbop. Maybe, even if he fell...It was the sort of thing that always worked in adventure stories. Somehow, standing here holding the jacket, it seemed absurd to imagine such success.
Alequere was still screeching, struggling to get out of Jirlib's grasp. Birbop laughed at her. He was quite happy to be at the center of attention, doing something he normally would have gotten whacked for. Forty feet up. He was slowing. The foot- and handholds were scarce; he was beyond the main ventilator fixtures. A couple of times he almost lost the twine as it slipped from hand to hand. He gathered himself on an impossibly narrow ledge and leaped sidewise up the remaining three feet—and one of his hands snagged the window grille. An instant later, his body was silhouetted in the light.
With only two eyes, and those in front, babies almost had to turn around to see behind themselves. Now for the first time, Birbop looked down. His triumphant laughter choked as he saw just how far he had come, so far that even his baby instincts told him he was at risk. There were reasons parents didn't let you climb as high as you wanted. Birbop's arms and legs clamped reflexively to the grillework.
And they couldn't persuade him that no one could come up to help him, and that he could get down by himself. Viki had never imagined that this would be a problem. On the occasions that Rhapsa or Little Hrunk had escaped to unholy heights, neither had any trouble getting back down.
Just when it seemed that Birbop was in a permanent state of paralysis, his sister stopped crying and began laughing at him. After that, it wasn't hard to persuade him to thread the twine through the grillework and then use it as a kind of pulley to support his descent.
Most babies came on the idea themselves, sailing downward on play twine; maybe it went back to some animal memories. Birbop started down with five limbs wrapped securely around the descending strand and three others braking the ascending strand. But after he had descended a few feet and it became clear how smoothly the play twine worked, he was holding with just three arms—and then two. He bounced off the walls with his feet, flying downward like some pouncing tarant. Below him, Viki and the others hopped around in a vain effort to keep their makeshift net under him... and then he was down.
And they had a loop of play twine extending from the floor to the window grille and back. It glowed and twitched as it released stretch energy.
