Welcome

...to my new visitors, and to those of you who already know my fiction, welcome back. I started blogging fiction in 2005 as an exercise in writing fast, without the "internal censor" that is the devil of creativity. I chose to blog because I thought it might be more motivating to write knowing that somebody might actually see what I wrote. The stories and scenes you'll find below, from 2005 to today, vary widely in quality and in length; most are science fiction, and they allow me to toy with ideas about both the future and my own present. If you enjoy a story, leave me a comment! I need all the motivation I can get.

You say she left you an hour ago

"The only reason you don't want me to do it is because you won't let yourself do it," she said. "And you won't let yourself do it because she wouldn't let you do it. But you say she left you an hour ago, so why are you still taking it out on me?"

He stood there with the phone number between his thumb and his index finger, staring at her. "That's not the reason," he said.

Her eyebrows shot up. "It's not dangerous."

"You've got a funny idea of danger."

"You're more likely to die in a plane crash," she said.

"Who's talking about dying?" Kevin waited until she looked back at him, and said, "You're not worried about the risk to your personality?"

Amber snorted. "No."

A slow grin crept out on Kevin's face. He pushed the piece of paper into the back pocket of his jeans. He crossed his arms. "You're not worried at all. You want to be changed."

She lifted her hands and let them slap down against her legs, rolling her eyes. "Who would do this who doesn't want to be changed?"

"Yeah, but you don't just want enlightenment. You want to... not be Amber anymore."

By the time she had stepped up to him her face was blank, and her hands on the back of his jeans were rough, careless. "Why should I? You didn't want me as I am," she mumbled against his neck. "Still don't."

He shook his head but remained mute. His face was hot as she pulled away, the phone number in her fist. "So you're going to go... let some dirty Korean with a giant magnet jolt everything away."

"I'll remember everything. It just won't matter anymore. My agonies will be gnats. They say that. You and her, gnats." She was already turning to walk away. "And you still won't let yourself do it!"

He stared, and kept staring, as she walked. Was he immature for not wanting to make his agonies into gnats? "It's just that I don't want to change who I am," he called.

"No, Kevin. It's just that you're not hurting badly enough. Wait."

Been mistaken

Every guy I dated was a pilot. The first one, I went with because he was a pilot. The second one, I went with despite that he was a pilot. The third one didn't tell me he was a pilot. I found out later. The fourth one told me he was a commander, but he turned out to be a lying pilot. After that, I decided the universe was trying to tell me something. I decided to become a pilot.

I only met two other women up here. One looked like a man, and the other one looked like my mother, and I never made friends with either of them. It took me four damn years to get my wings and when that was done, and I started to fly ships, I realized that nobody had any clue what to make of me. Not the other pilots, not the mechanics, not the soldiers-on-contract that were all so bulked up their shoulders pressed against each other when they all sat down. Half of them treated me like a little girl and half of them treated me like an untouchable, and one treated me like his sister, which creeped me out so bad I kept the cabin door locked for the whole flight. Nobody's nice up here unless they want something from you. If you can't figure out what that something is, you better run.

After the universe told me to become only the 16th woman to qualify to steer a freighter, I kept waiting for some other message, like "Start the fourth war," or "Sleep with the commander to steal his secrets," or maybe "Steer the ship into the sun and sing 'Band on the Run' as it goes down," but nothing came. Not a whim, not a thought, not a peep. So I began to get angry. I started to take zeiger pills. I'm not one of those idiots who thinks zeigers improve your performance, I know they're just a palliative, but it's true they make you feel good and it's true they're undetectable, and so I flew one, two, three missions with my blood hot as runny lava.

"India," said Lincoln my nosy co-pilot on my fifth run high on zeigers. "What are you doing?"

"Flying like a zeiger freak, Lincoln," I said, tapping the engines up to full.

He laughed in a rotten way. "Okay, but you're not on zeigers. And you don't want them to think you are."

"I am on zeigers." I looked him full in the eye. How obvious can a girl be?

He twisted so his harness strap was cutting across his neck. "India... and you complain about people not taking you seriously?"

I stared straight forward again. "No complaining here. Woman of action."

"Just throttle down. I can't keep covering for you. You know some of the brass is looking for an excuse to get rid of you."

The anger mixed with the hot love in my blood in the most thrilling way, sending me into a wicked little euphoria that made the hairs stand up on my thighs and set my tongue to clicking in my mouth. All the controls looked a little green to me. The red had drained out of my vision. It had been seduced somewhere else. "Do they think I'd ever do anything to endanger a ship full of..." I fished around in the soup. "...aristocrats and mercenaries?"

"And volunteers? No, not dangerous, they don't think that." He twisted in his harness again. "They want to think you're incompetent. And lately you're not doing very much to dispel that impression."

Anger is like a warm milkshake sometimes, so sweet and thick I can hardly stand it.

He said, "You're not exactly fitting in."

"You're not exactly pilot material yourself," I said, hearing the words come out of my mouth more than saying them exactly, wanting to giggle at my own childishness. I didn't giggle but I did grin.

Lincoln stared straight forward. Through the blur of the zeigers he looked like a rock star, a lit-up mop-haired boy with shiny lips. I drummed my middle finger on the engine lock. These things, these pills, are absolutely the hail and hallelujah for cancer, and if I'm not cancer, a lump of unwelcome matter in the midst of all these men, then what am I?

"You're not on zeigers," he said. "I wish you'd stop trying to get attention. Just do your job. You don't think I get sick of them sticking me with you? Don't you know how everyone sees you?"

"The universe told me to do this," I said.

Lincoln sat there a few seconds then flipped open the cover for the radio.

"And if it isn't going to tell me what to do next," I said, "I'm going to steer this ship into the sun. The universe owes me that."

"The sun is 50 AU from here."

"Five minutes," I said. "If I don't get a sign in five minutes, we're all going down." I was happy because my body felt so good and my mind felt so loopy and supple, but I knew I wasn't happy.

"CT-789, this is CR-990, come in," said Lincoln into the radio.

Jarrod was my first boyfriend. He'd wanted to be a pilot because he thought they had the hardest training. He gambled so much he sold my car to pay a debt, and I called the police and then I dumped him. Micah was my fourth boyfriend; he'd wanted to be a pilot so he could make commander. He cheated on me with another girl, and then he dumped me. Harry was my third boyfriend. He wanted to be a pilot because his father wanted him to. He was a doormat and I dumped him. Skylar was my second boyfriend. He wanted to be a pilot so that he could defend our people if the fourth war came, but he also wanted to be right and punched me in the face when I took that away from him. Then he tried to force my pants off. Then he dumped me. I was as humiliated then as I am ten years later.

"Lincoln. Zeigers don't do anything. They just make you feel good."

"Shut up, India," he said, waiting on the radio. "The crazy act might have gotten Boomer a medal, but it's not doing anything for you."

"Five minutes up," I said. I reached up and shut down the engines. It got so quiet I could hear my red blood cells banging against each other.

When I didn't say anything else, he said, "Some people just aren't cut out to be pilots." His shiny lip curled a little. I saw it.

"I might have been mistaken," I said. "Been mistaken before. But I don't think I was. Maybe it's the pills talking but I still think I was right," I said. That the universe wanted me to be a pilot. But our leaders didn't and they were coming to rectify their mistake. Clap me in irons.

"Give me a break," he said to the control board. "Pretend to be doped out on painkillers but you won't just admit you're not cut out for it."

"Give me a break," I said.

Vance and Lexy do the Flame Chain, part 1

A hollow-cheeked young man stood on the humming deck of the Red Ring of Flame Chain Station, his saffron furodo gi hanging limp in the centrifugal gravity, and tapped the doorbell with a finger. As he waited a young woman slid up behind him, black bowler hat pulled low over her eyes. She slung a natty violin case off her shoulder, knelt and opened it silently and lifted out a black length of cloth, wrapping each end around a hand. In one motion she stood and whipped the loop of cloth up above the young man's head.

The man moved barely at all, only leaned the upper half of his body to the side, but he had the woman's arms pinned against his side before the door glided open. A shadowy skull-faced figure appeared in the doorway, its round eyes and gaping mouth suggesting humanity without quite reproducing it.

"Sam, Lexy wants me to wear this mood headband," said the young man to the figure. One side of his mouth crooked downward.

The woman's quick lips grinned under the shock of blue hair that spilled from the hat. "I do," she said. She twisted, trying to pin the cloth on the man's head as it shimmered to pink and orange in her hands. "Vance! You'd be the baddest furodo master!"

Vance pulled Lexy into the room, where Sammy the Faj--not their only alien friend, but the only alien friend who wanted to take them out to wild alien parties--was standing, still open-mouthed, with a drink in his hand. "So, where are we going?" said Vance.

"Hold on," said Sammy in his slithery voice. "Let me see your costumes." His green eyes looked them over with the appraising squint that always made Vance think the faj was amused, though he knew Sammy smiled differently than humans did. The glow-white skull Sammy had smeared on his face had already begun to crack and he looked even more like a work of art than he usually did, with his long sculpted limbs statuesque in the dim light. "You're a gangster," he said to Lexy, peering at the pile of faux gold chains hanging down over her black tank top. Then, immediately, "You need a mustache."

Lexy blinked. "All right," she said. Sammy was fascinated by human facial hair. So Vance continued to hold her arms while Sammy got out a black pencil and sketched a painstaking affair that drooped over Lexy's lips like an indolent caterpillar.

"No!" said Vance. "She looks like a gigolo. You might as well draw chest hair on her now." The faj wiped off the attempt and penciled in one fine line, then popped off Lexy's bowler (placing it on his own rounded head) and picked up a tube to squirt something clear into his thick, three-fingered hands. He soon had Lexy's mop smoothed back into a slick, manly coiffure.

"What is that stuff?" said Lexy.

"Gel, for human hair."

"Why do you have human hair gel?" The only hair Sammy had was the fine, silky fur on his arms and legs.

"For when I want to smell like a human. I have human deodorant and human toothpaste too."

"Do you have anything for us to drink?" said Vance. He had dropped Lexy's arms and was gazing intently about Sammy's small quarters, the cramped angles of which resembled a pack of trapezoids trying to have sex with a circle.

"You know, humans don't smell like hair gel and deodorant and toothpaste. We smell like humans," said Lexy.

"You have faj perfume, Lexy," said Sammy. He dropped Lexy's hat back on her head and poured a pull of candy-pink faj liquor for each of them. Vance grabbed his off the counter. He took another glance at Lexy--her blue eyes exposed for once, her fine brows and freckled nose below the suddenly crisp and aristocratic hair. The incongruent mustache... she had such long eyelashes. Then he took a big gulp of alcohol.

"Oh my God, this is terrible," he said, his face flushing.

"I'll drink it," said Lexy. "I like it." She took the stem of a glass in each fist.

"We need to go," said Sammy.

"Where are we going?"

"We're going to crash a party." Sammy was touching up his make-up. He drew a black line around his startling lips, the faj lips that seemed to split his face in half and made a lavish setting for his canines. He pursed his lips around the toothless center of his mouth. It was this eerily half-human palate that gave the faji their lisp when they tried to speak English. Vance watched Sammy's hands work, his two opposing "elbows" on each arm giving him a sinuous grace. The black outfit he was wearing made his face seem to float. He was a fine faj ghoul--or a deliciously creepy human one.

Lexy smiled at Vance.

"I'm fine," he said.

"I know."

Vance tightened the black belt around his waist and stepped back into "waiting heron" stance. The anti-grav martial art didn't exactly lend itself to full-grav practice, but if he was going to be lazy enough to not make a proper costume he could at least ham it up a little. "Ready to go, Sammy?"

Sammy chucked his make-up in a drawer, drained his drink, said something in his own language and punched the door panel. It slid open and all three partygoers tried to step through at once. Sammy caught his shoulder full on the jamb and launched a stumbling pirouette into the corridor. He careened into Lexy, who fell on Vance. Sammy chuckled in his birdlike, whistling laugh.

"Oh, boy," said Vance.

The Legend of Danny Engall, part 4 fin

I came out of Harold's office hugging an offer of 11.5 million dollars to my chest on a tablet. I was choked up with triumph and disappointment. I had certainly gotten more out of OMC than what Dynacorp had offered me... but in my fantasies, I'd imagined millions more being tossed around. Fifteen million, twenty million... who knew what I was worth?

I went back to my bunk and tried to plan out what I'd say to Dynacorp. Could I get more out of them? Probably, I figured, maybe I could get another half a million. Maybe they'd have me for twelve million. I wondered if that would be a record. Jack Lipstein, best orehound in history! The thing was, though, I wasn't really sure I wanted to work for Dynacorp. I didn't know anything about them, of course, but that was the problem. What if they expected more from me than what I was already giving to OMC? What if they wanted me to do something I liked even less than what I was doing now? What if it was even more dangerous? For twelve million, did it really matter?

Since I knew I wouldn't be working with him much longer, I decided to I might as well just get Terry's opinion.

We were digging out a little pocket of platinum on a knobby rock I could have sworn I'd visited when I first got up here and not found anything. But who knows? The rock was really friable and there was dust and chips around us everywhere, making it hard to see what we were doing, which was pretty tiring. We decided to take a break and chew a little juice back at the hopper.

I felt pretty good after I'd had a few bites, tired and relaxed at the same time, so I just told him, "I got an offer of 11.5 million from OMC and can maybe get more from Dynacorp... I just want your opinion, which one do you think I'd get more out of working for?"

Terry didn't even take a second to think. "Jack, you'll get more out of working with me. I told you that."

"Why do you--I don't even know what you mean," I said. "I'm making pretty lame money, all I have up here is a tiny little bunk and about five possessions, honestly, I bust my butt out here all day and hardly ever get any acknowledgement, from you or anybody else... you tell me what I'm getting out of this!"

"There you go," said Terry.

"There I go, what?" I jerked the juice nozzle off my helmet so I could stare at him.

"I wish you could hear yourself, Jack, I really do. I tell you, Danny Engall was a little dense at first too, but I don't think I've ever met a man who had just your combination of talent and pure blockheadedness. And I don't know how else to--"

"Who the hell is Danny Engall?" I shouted, on my feet without having made a decision to stand up. I was suddenly afraid I was going to cry.

Terry laughed, that scumball. "He was just a guy we had here before, all right? I don't know why you keep bringing him up."

"You keep bringing him up! You keep comparing me to him! Everybody does. I'm supposed to be the next Danny Engall, I'm supposed to be the best at what I do, heck, I'm supposed to love what I do, but I still have to drag myself out of bed every morning!"

He'd stopped laughing. He leaned forward a little. "Look... all right, I'm sorry, Jack." He took a breath. "You know I never apologize. But I am, all right, I'm sorry, I'm not always the best teacher."

I kept waiting for him to continue and he didn't. So I sat down.

"I don't know what to tell you," he said at last, "so I'll just ask you something my teacher once asked me. Who do you hate more, me or yourself? Give me the truth."

"You!" I said, with a little more anger than I meant.

Terry nodded. "Good." He had a little smile.

I felt somehow like a little valve had opened in my chest and let some of the pressure out. I was confused. But I didn't feel as angry. I looked away from him and out the door of the hopper and then I saw it, a little spire of rock that was very familiar to me.

"We were here before," I said. "Before I met you. Didn't find anything."

"I'm not surprised," said Terry. And then, after a long pause, "You've gotten exponentially better since I met you."

"It's all right. You don't have to say it. I get it." I glanced at him and he was grinning again. "I still don't know what to do. Twelve million dollars a year is a lot of money."

"Jack--" he began sharply, then stopped. "Jack... I just asked you who you hated more. Who would you hate more if you signed that contract? Either one of those contracts?"

I looked down. I knew the answer, I just didn't want to say it. "But I don't like this job," I said to the floor. "I don't like being here. I don't like orehounding, damn it, I don't care how good I am at it."

"I know that, dummy!" said Terry. "You think you're going to like it any better for twelve million? They going to pay you to like your job?"

Something was flipping over in my chest.

"You got how many more years on your contract here with OMC, three? I've already told you fifteen times what's the best way you could use those years. You really think it matters whether you like what you're doing? I'm sorry I'm so bad at getting you to understand me, I really am. But you tell me what would be smarter than using this time to tune every cell in your body to maximum awareness? And don't think it matters that it's platinum you're looking for. I swear, sometimes you're just clueless."

"But Danny Engall signed with Dynacorp..."

"Will you let go of Danny Engall? He was just this guy."

"I thought you were being selfish," I said. "Just wanted to have one more great trainee to your name."

Terry shrugged. "Who wouldn't want that? But really, Jack, if fame was all I wanted, I'd spend every day by myself in the Hatch Patch. Why should I come out here and torture myself trying to get basic rock smarts through your thick skull? Why should I turn down promotions? You tell me."

I stared back out the door of the hopper. I was afraid I was going to start crying, again, but for even stupider reasons than before. I wished I'd brought the contracts with me so I could tear them up that instant. I just thought of Mojo, for some reason, how amazing it was to have been able to work with that dog, that once-in-a-lifetime dog. I didn't know how a guy could be so lucky.

So that was what happened three years ago and now, you know, I'm still working with Terry and I still don't like prospecting for platinum. Well, I like some parts of it, I like seeing just how big the ore pocket is and thinking about the platinum being processed and going into electronics and things in people's homes and bodies. Wedding rings. I wouldn't say that Terry is a great friend, not so much, but we still watch poker together most evenings and I tolerate whisky, and I can't even imagine never working with him or seeing him again. But my contract is up next week and I'm going back to Earth.

We're heading back to the Hatch Patch today, just for a lark, just for the sake of old times. We don't talk the whole way in and we don't talk once we land. This asteroid is huge, another that makes you feel almost like you're on a planet or a moon, with its own faint gravity and its own horizon in the distance. I can see Orion on the horizon. Terry heads off in one direction and I in another, and I know he's there just a word away, he will be in my ear instantly if he finds anything, but we're silent. I want to go back to Chicago when I land, I want to see snow again... I have a brother-in-law who runs a catering business and he always needs help. When I lived there he must have asked me five times if I'd take a job with him. And God, I am going to be happy to never see another asteroid in my life. So happy.

As for Terry, I don't know. I don't think we'll write. Why would we write? We have nothing in common. But I'm going back to Earth about a ton lighter than when I came, and it's not just because he makes me wrestle that drill around everywhere. I have nothing to say. So we finish up the day in silence, and then next week I go live my life.

The Legend of Danny Engall, part 3

We worked in the Hatch Patch for weeks. This is a part of the asteroid field a bit further out that's known for its copious amounts of junk. But everyone wants to go there because every once in a while, someone finds a rock that's loaded with ore, breaks all the records and makes its finder famous. Terry didn't like to work out here as a matter of course, he said, but it was good for a lark if you'd already met your quotas that month. And we had probably met our quota in the first half of the first week.

"Came out here with Danny Engall once," said Terry. "Found a little rock that was near solid platinum. He saw it across the field from the hunk of junk we were standing on."

"You said that already," I said.

"Well, get your tools. We're not going to find anything if we stand around here yakking."

I pulled the bag out of the hopper and clipped it on my belt, and shuffled across the surface of the massive asteroid we'd landed on. It was jagged and rubbly and didn't allow my boots a very good grip. It was big enough to have its own horizon, though, a barely-arcked line in the distance between black rock and not-so-black sky. I automatically swung my head back and forth as I walked, my light sweeping the rock around me as fast as I could. Terry was twenty steps ahead of me and I was five steps out of the hopper when I stepped right on it. A little nub of shiny rock, I saw it before the brushy pad of my boot covered it. I slid my boot off and I already had the drill out and going into the rock before I really regained my balance.

I didn't bother to call Terry over. I wanted to find out how big the pocket was more than I wanted his attention. I drilled a hole near my left foot. Rock. Drilled a hole on the other side of the platinum nub. An inch of rock, then more platinum. Drilled a few more holes around the nub, then further away, toward where Terry had disappeared to, then up back toward the hopper. Platinum. Platinum. Platinum. Platinum. I was starting to get excited, but I just wanted to find the edges of the pocket. Kept drilling but I wasn't finding it.

"Where the hell are you?" Terry's voice sounded tinny in my ears.

"Found something," I said.

And in half a minute he was there beside me. "How far's it go?"

"No idea. Half the damn asteroid."

Terry was laughing. He looked in a few of my drill holes and shook his head. "All right, keep going. Wait, I'll help." He got out the backup drill and went off on the other side of the hopper. After half an hour I heard his voice, "Think I found one edge of it over here."

"I found an edge, still going in one direction," I said.

"You know we can't get this out by ourselves," he said. "We'd be here all month."

I grunted, more focused on the drill than anything else. It took me another hour to outline the pocket, then me and Terry took a break by the hopper.

"Show me what you saw first?" he said.

It took me a few minutes to find it. A little bump with a faint shine to it under the lights, no bigger than my thumbnail. That was the only part of the lode that was exposed at all.

Terry didn't say anything for a while. Then he said, "I feel like a moron for missing that. Not that I ever would have seen it."

I didn't any anything.

"Let's put the beacon up. We can work on establishing the edges some more and then we'll turn it over to a crew." I didn't really want to stop working on it... I was too curious to see just how deep it went... but we were going to be late as usual. Terry was uncharacteristically solemn as he drove the hopper back.

"This one's big, you know," he said. "I'll be sure to tell them who found it." His voice was quiet.

I nodded. I hadn't told him about my meeting with Harold Slawski, but I'd been thinking about it. I had no idea what to expect. I kept thinking what I'd do with eleven million dollars. I didn't know whether or not I was as good as this Danny Engall guy, but heck, I might be even better. Maybe I could get more. Maybe I could get a bonus I could use right away. Maybe I could get new quarters, visits to Earth, my own hopper with a pilot who worked for me instead of the other way around. I wondered what Danny Engall was doing for Dynacorp and whether it was better than what I was doing for OMC.

Then Terry said a funny thing. "You want to come over and watch the poker championship tonight?"

"Uh," I said, "You mean, over to your place?"

"Yeah, I got a good screen. Vaclav Horn is in the finals again."

I didn't know a thing about poker, and Terry wasn't particularly the kind of guy I would have hung out with on Earth. I looked over at him where he steered the hopper with light hands, the size of a boy's but far hairier. He was looking up at the displays.

"What time?" I said.

"Just come over after dinner. C324. We'll have some whisky."

"All right," I said. All I could think was that I didn't have to sit around in my bunk after supper.

I showed up at C324 after I ate. Terri's door looked like it hadn't been cleaned in a while. There was a black smudge across the center where it looked like he'd pushed it open with his hip about a thousand times. He didn't have his name up. I rang.

Terry opened the door in shorts and bare feet. He already had a glass of whisky in his hand. He motioned me in and sat down on his couch and poured me a whisky and put his hairy feet up and turned back to the screen. I took the whisky and drank it slowly, trying to swallow without tasting it too much, and stared at the screen for a while. Yep, there were people playing poker.

He still hadn't said anything.

I watched the poker for a while and finished my drink. I felt very sleepy. "You like this stuff," I finally said, and my voice sounded hoarse to me.

"Uh huh," Terry said. I wondered suddenly if he had any friends.

"Harold Slawski told me they wanted to promote you but you wouldn't," I said.

Terry put his drink down. "Harold has some funny ideas about things. You been talking to him?"

I nodded. "He said they might renegotiate my contact."

Terry was very quiet, then he laughed. "Trying to cover all his bases, as usual. Well, they might. What are you going to ask for?"

I stared at the poker players. "Fifteen million a year," I said.

Terry laughed again. "All right. And what are you going to do with it?"

I shrugged. "I'll think of something."

"All right," said Terry. He picked up his drink again. "You know I'd have to find somebody else to justify my existence as a pilot," he said.

I glanced at him. He was looking at me, his gaze amused under the bushy eyebrows. Was he serious? "You could always take that management job," I said.

"What the hell would I want to do that for? Get some sense, Jack!" He snorted and I looked back at the poker. "Piloting's about the only thing that's worth anything, unless you count orehounding."

"What do you mean?"

"What do you think I mean? I mean it's the closest you can get to working for yourself. I'm responsible for nobody but me and you out there, and what I do matters. Plus it's hard. At least if you want to do it well it's hard. So's your job. And you might want to take a promotion or take a contract somewhere else but let me tell you, Jack, you still have a hell of a lot to learn and it's going to take you more time, not less, to learn it if you move on now. Trust me."

My face was burning. That was the most I'd ever heard Terry say at once before and somehow it stung in a way that all his comments out on the rocks didn't. What did he mean, I had a lot to learn? Obviously I was still new to what I was doing and I needed a little more practice, but he said it like I was still a kid. Like I was an idiot for thinking I could get fifteen million. I sat there seething, not paying attention to Vaclav Horn.

"Well," I said. "What if I wanted to get some experience with some other pilots, you know? While I was here. Obviously you've seen a lot but I know there are other guys who've been out here just as long."

Terry gave me a hard look, then shrugged. "Yeah, Earl Hardwick's good. Some others. But you wanna learn, I'm not shitting you, I'm going to teach you more than they can. Earl's all right. He knows some good tricks. But you'd be an idiot to leave me." He had his jaw set so hard I could see the muscles bulge under his chipmunk cheeks.

Well what the hell? I thought. What the hell is this guy on? I didn't want to learn! I didn't even want to be here on this station, let alone in this room. With this friendless caveman who thought I was his protege and still couldn't manage to ever say anything nice to me. I wanted to scream at him, "I don't want to learn orehounding!" but I didn't, because I didn't want it to matter that much. This wasn't something I was going to scream about. What did it matter to me? I used to think I had a calling, but I was wrong. Now I thought I had a meal ticket, and maybe I did, but it wasn't worth getting into a fight with anybody about it.

I sunk into the couch and didn't say much the rest of the night. Neither did he. After the matches finished up he told me I should come back again the next night, and I did, because it was still better than my empty cube. Had whisky and watched poker. And it became a regular thing. We really didn't talk. I started to get into the poker a little, not as much as Terry, but it was a good thing because at least I wasn't bored to death. I asked him once why he liked it and he said, "Because it's hard... to do well, anyway," though I got the idea he wasn't very good at it himself.

We kept going back to the Hatch Patch but, ironically, never found anything else. It was a little frustrating. A crew was excavating the big lode on the rock we'd hit the first day, and we kept landing on these piddling chunks and not finding anything besides scraps. Terry was treating me a little better, I have to admit, but the times he was critical it just made the frustration all the worse.

Once we were excavating this tiny, walnut-sized chunk of platinum and I popped it wrong, so that it spun up into space. Terry grabbed at it and missed and then it was way out of reach, heading off into the field. "Shit!" he said. "I don't believe it! You were doing so well, Jack, now you just made a mistake my sister's three-year-old kid wouldn't make."

That made me angry. "What do you want? It's barely worth bringing in."

"I want you to do your job, Jack. Just do your job. It's not nothing. The demand goes up every year."

I stood up. "You think I care what they need this stuff for?"

"All right, so you don't care. Fine. But I expect you to care about the kind of job you do. You know how I feel about people cutting corners up here."

"I just don't understand why it matters," I said. "That piece was scrap."

"Well, if you don't know that, I'm not sure I can teach you," said Terry, and he turned around. He was walking back to the hopper. Him yelling at me was one thing, but I'd never seen him pissy like this. I caught up to him and he turned around again before I could say anything. He was glowering. "Whoever Dynacorp is paying at OMC probably already leaked the news of your big find, and that'll convince 'em to move if nothing does. I expect you'll be hearing from them before next week. You'll get a big offer and you'll take it. Why not? You're clearly not interested in anything I have to offer."

I was practically panting, I was so worked up. Steam condensed for a split second on the inside of my helmet before the air conditioner whisked it away. And yet I didn't want to be upset. Not at Terry, crazy Terry, little, foolish Terry. "I don't get it, why do you care what I do?"

"I don't get why you don't care," said Terry. "That's what I don't get." He climbed in the hopper and took the controls.

Apparently we were heading home. I climbed into the hopper too. I looked out the little window on my side. I had an ugly feeling in me, a feeling like I was being used, like Terry wanted something from me but didn't want to pay for it. I knew he'd worked with Danny Engall. I knew Danny had jumped ship for Dynacorp. What if they'd been close or something? What if Terry just wanted me to be Danny? This phantom I kept hearing about... I suppose I'd meet him if I ended up at Dynacorp. See him for real.

Terry told me he'd see me at poker and he did, though as usual we didn't talk. Two days later I came home to a note from Dynacorp. Terry was right. They wanted me, as soon as they could get me. They didn't want me to talk to OMC about it. They mentioned Danny Engall in the note. They said I could expect something similar. I almost picked up the stylus to tap something back to them, but I knew I had to talk to Harold. I knew I could get more.

The Legend of Danny Engall, part 2

[Note: it's been a long time. Read the first installment of the story here.]

My first few days working with Terry, I was confused as hell. He'd supposedly brought me onto his hopper because he liked my skill, but I couldn't seem to do anything right.

"Don't put the drill bit in that way, you'll snap it off. Come on, dummy.

"No, not there. No no no no nononono. Are you looking at the rocks right now? Get over here!

"If you crack it that way one more time, I'm going to have you sent back to those two punks you were working with before. Come on. Act like you've got some sense now.

"What the hell are you doing? Jesus! You know better than that. You're going to lose half of it into space. If I see you come up underneath it like that one more time, I'm taking you back to NRX for another lesson.

"No, no! You're killing me, Jack! I'm going to have a heart attack and die right here on this asteroid. Pay attention!

"What are you, still asleep today? Get your head into it! You have a brain, you idiot, use it!"

It was the most incompetent I'd ever felt in my life. Of course I was pulling out more ore every week... it was hard not to, with him there watching my every move... but the comments never ended. So in the space of a couple months I went from being miserable and terrified of death to miserable and terrified of Terry. And it was laughable. Because he wasn't at all imposing, either, in stature or in volume. He stood maybe 5'8" and looked like somebody's unmarried brother (which he was) and talked with a sort of high boy's voice.

I can't say whether I preferred working with Terry to working with Caleb and Jason because I didn't give it any thought. I was so busy. We put in extra hours almost every day, and I came in and ate my supper and went to bed. But if I was still miserable, I was miserable in a different way. I was working so damn hard. Partly because I was afraid not to, but partly because every once in a while, Terry would say something less insulting.

"Good," he said once, when I sunk in the drill. I was so shocked I nearly jerked the bit in two right there. We'd been working together for weeks and it was the first time he'd liked anything I'd done.

"You're getting better at finding the edges of the ore pockets," he said a few days later. I didn't say a thing. I was afraid to break the spell.

After a few months, one day he told me he liked the way I scoped out an asteroid. "You've got more pure rock smarts than all the other rock jockeys put together. I decided I'm taking you out to the Hatch Patch next month."

I had an appointment with Harold Slawski, V.P. of Mobile Extraction, that one afternoon and I wasn't thinking. I remember waiting outside his office with my suit half off, the arms tied around my waist and the legs dirty and baggy over my sweaty long underwear. I'd come back early from the asteroids and didn't even think about cleaning up. So I was waiting there in the two-foot-wide hallway outside his office and this group of bigwigs came past me, all clean-shaven and dressed up, and talking about some expansion, and I didn't even look at them. I suddenly wanted to get out. But then the door opened and they let me into the office.

Harold Slawski was well-fed. He had big teeth and a slightly crooked nose, and a big gold thing on his desk with his name on it. He stood up when I came in and leaned over his desk. I jerked my sweaty hands out of where I'd stuck them in the tied-off arms of my suit and shook his hand, and then I sat down before he could offer me the chair.

"So you're Jack Lipstein! They tell me you're the next Danny Engall." He sat back down and beamed at me.

"Uh... that's what they tell me."

"I wanted to meet you. We've been hearing a lot about you up in the office. You know, you bring in about seven thousand kilos a month? Of platium?"

I had no idea I was bringing in that much. "No sir," I said.

"Well, it's very impressive. We've had maybe three, four people in my time here who were able to locate that much in a month. All of them, I would have said, they had the eye for it." He tapped under his puffy eyelid. "Or maybe you can smell it."

I laughed. "That's what Terry says."

"Terrence Spratt... yeah, he worked with Danny too. Funny guy. He's been here a long time. Never worked outside of piloting. Back in 84 they wanted him to be a manager, fought for it, but he wouldn't. That was before my time."

A side door opened and a young guy came in and told Harold that he had some report from Shipping and they needed a reply. Harold said to give him two seconds to look it over, so the young guy brought in the report and I looked around the office. It was very clean. Lots of wood, which we don't see a lot in space. Carpet. Lots of gold and platinum touches. There was some kind of award with a platinum hammer on the wall.

"So, how long have you been with us now?" Harold was asking me. We were alone again.

"Two years."

"What'd you do before this?"

"I worked a lot of jobs on Earth," I said.

"One of those, huh? We see a lot like you up here, you know. You know how many new people I hired this week? Maybe fourteen. And that's not so unusual. We have a lot of people go through here. So you know I'm not lying when I tell you that your gift is really something special. Let me break it down this way. You've got the bottom ten percent, they're here to get away from something, you can tell right away. They don't necessarily want to be here, but they don't want to be on Earth either. I won't lie, some of those folks are our best workers. Whatever's driving them. But they're usually rotten. We terminate a lot of them early.

"Then maybe... the next fifty percent who come through here, it's just another job. They're working for the paycheck. That's our backbone, really. Some of the rest, say twenty-five percent, they're real frontier men, they just love it up here, some of them stay for life. They're part of that backbone too, really. And... what's that leave?"

"I don't know."

"Say, about fifteen percent, the remainder, they have some actual talent for what they do. They're good pilots or they're good at finding ore, or they're leaders, that sort of thing. It's the sad truth but we have a hard time holding onto that fifteen percent. The truth is, smart folks, talented folks, they don't want to be stuck at some menial job in the middle of nowhere all their lives. Am I right?"

"I guess not."

"With most of them, we try to offer them incentives to stay with us once their first contract is up, but a lot of them leave anyway. But for the really exceptional folks, we really try to make arrangements. OMC has a lot to offer for those kinds of skills. And you know you're up there, in that area, right?"

I wiped my palms on my dirty suit legs. The sweat on my back was getting cold. "Well, people tell me I'm all right at finding ore."

He laughed at that. "Don't be modest, now, Jack, that's not going to get you anywhere in life. Don't be cocky, but don't be modest. Let me tell you, you have a lot of people in this department with their eye on you. But not everybody knows or cares how important a good orehound is, and sometimes you have to tell them yourself."

The side door opened again and Harold stood up. "Just let me finish up with Jack here..." he said to his assistant, already taking the offered sheaf from his hands. I stood up too. "Jack, we want a real good relationship with you. You understand why. If you keep up this kind of performance, there's no reason even to wait until your contract's up in three years. We understand that other companies might offer you enough to make you think about breaking your contract with us. I just don't want you to do anything rash without seeing what we have to offer, all right? We'd like to keep you."

I nodded, quickly, taking a step toward the door. Harold came around the desk, leaving his assistant holding his stylus in the air. He leaned in close and looked me right in the eye. "Just so you know... you might have heard what Dynacorp put out for Danny Engall. Most of it's not rumors; eleven million a year is a lot of money, but like I said, a good orehound is... worth a lot, to a company in this business. Just think about it. We didn't want to lose him and we don't intend to make the same mistake twice. Okay?" He clapped me hard on the shoulder, hard enough to make me lose my balance, and stuck out his hand again. "Great to meet you, Jack. I'm glad we could talk. Say hello to old Terry for me!"

And then the door behind me was open and I was out in the little hallway again, more bigwigs rushing through on their way to some high-level meeting. Some of them were younger than me. I sagged against the wall. I was making seventy thousand a year on this contract I'd signed in this smelly recruitment office in downtown Chicago when I was half-drunk and hated myself. And that was more than I'd made for dog handling, but it wasn't exactly a fortune.

I got lost trying to find the mess hall and by the time I got there I was pissed at myself. How hard could it be to find my way around a station I'd already spent two years on? They had that tofu meatloaf that was usually all right, but I got sick of it halfway through and went back to my bunk and went to bed early. I didn't want to be awake. For some reason I just wanted off this hunk of metal I was on. I thought about Mojo, in the ring, at the training course, and got myself good and miserable, and then I went to sleep.

I woke up early the next morning and actually had enough time to get dressed and have a real breakfast. I felt a little better. I started thinking about how I might be able to get a new contract, maybe fewer hours... maybe I might even like to go back to Earth. It was too much to think about yet. I just liked having that hope there, a big new house I could explore when I wanted.

Terry showed up when I was finishing my toast. "Ready for another day of misery, rockmuncher?" he said, grinning. I stopped chewing. My mouth was real dry all of a sudden.