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.

The legend of Danny Engall, part 1

Terry always waits until the last second to put the thrusters on and it drives me nuts. I understand why he does it, because a lot of people do it, but I feel invisible in the cockpit here with him and I might as well be just another chunk of rock like we've got strapped to the back.

He's trying to find that sweet spot, the place somewhere between the dock and the station where our inertia runs out just enough to make it just barely energy-efficient to start using the thrusters. He can feel it. Heck, I can feel it, I've been doing this long enough. Where we slow down just enough. Then he eases the throttle forward light as a breath and the hopper picks up speed without any jerks. Very smooth. He's been doing this for ten years.

Terry is a very, very good pilot. There are a lot of very good pilots here. I'm a good pilot myself, but I'm never going to have that genius feel for the controls like they do. This place attracts people who like to be very, very good at things. Because there's a lot that can go wrong up here, and sometimes if you give yourself a millimeter too much on either side you're toast. Situations like that don't happen all the time, but they happen enough that mining has once again become the system's Most Dangerous Job.

Terry Spratt doesn't look at all like the kind of person you'd expect to be a hot-shot pilot. He's short and thick-lipped and curly-haired and has a boy's high voice, and cares more about getting home and watching the World Series of Poker than about bragging how that last run went. He doesn't look like a hero and he doesn't look like the kind of guy I'd have expected to change my life.

I came up here five years ago because I didn't know what the hell to do with my life. I had been working as a handler for a huge border collie breeding and showing operation, I lived and slept and practically breathed dogs, and then Mojo--the guy who started it all, the champion, the number one sire, and probably my best friend--died, and the owners expected me to carry on with the new generations and I just couldn't. It was the oddest thing but as I tried working with the pups and tried working by myself as a groomer for a few months, I came to this realization that I wasn't sure if liked dogs at all. I just liked Mojo. I had since I first met him at my cousin's wedding. He was why I ended up working with the McHones for fifteen years. And I had no clue where to go from there. All I knew was dog handling.

So I came up here. I signed up as a miner and got my suit and my tools and got to work on the asteroid and I hated it more than I could ever have thought it was possible to hate anything. I remember hearing the alarm in the morning and waking up in my dark bunk and wanting more than anything else in the world to pull the covers over my head and lie there while my roommates shook me and shouted at me and eventually gave up and went off to breakfast... the only reason I didn't was that I knew I'd signed a contract and I knew if the company had to pay to ship me back home I wouldn't dig myself out of that hole for years. And I went through that for literally the first year and a half here. Almost every morning. I would finally get up and jam my legs into the legs of the suit and tie the arms around my waist and get to the mess room just as they were putting breakfast away, and have some cold cereal and just make it onto the hopper I was sharing with two kids from Canada who were happy as hell to be here.

Through the entire day I'd have a running commentary in my head on the outrage and stupidity of everything I saw and did. "God, Caleb is an asshole. Is that the fifth time he's walked off without anchoring the hopper? If I fucking get killed because of him... Christ, do you think they could afford to spend more than five dollars on the joints on these suits? I can't even touch my toes, let alone pick up anything I drop. What the hell is Jason doing? Why is he using the #5 drill? If he breaks that thing and we have to go back..." all day long. It's funny but some days I think about half of it was about dying.

I was scared of dying, all the time. I would say there's death all around you up here, and there is, if you think of it that way... the vacuum and all... but somebody really only dies every few months, and with thousands of miners crawling over these rocks that's a pretty good rate of survival, all things considered. But I kept thinking about it and thinking about it and I was convinced it would be me next. Because of something Caleb or Jason did, or just some random asteroid collision, or a tear in my suit. I couldn't keep my mind off it. And I was angry and scared all the time.

That didn't really start to change until the day Caleb crashed the hopper into the side of GR8290 or something and broke his leg, and we had Terry flying us for a few days until some other guy took over. I was really out of it that first day Terry was with us. I remember being really mechanical, sealing my suit up and getting in the hopper and sitting there across from Terry not caring who he was, and looking out at the stars like all the sky was just black paper with holes poled in it. Nothing felt real. My system was fried with adrenaline by then, cortisol, just so exhausted all the time that I was only half there. I felt like a robot. I was totally resigned to the fact that I couldn't get out of the job and I was just going to keep going like this for another three and a half years until my contract was up. I remember talking with Terry and Jason as if I were there. But there was a buzzing in my ears and nothing was real.

I climbed out of the hopper door and felt my boots stick to the rock, and I shouldered one of the drills and went right off to a "corner" of the rock where I knew there was some platinum. And I worked at it all day, thinking about how I was going to be in the next crash, and that'd be it. And about how to worm out of that fate. I wanted really badly to transfer to another team but I knew I was at the bottom of the totem pole and anyway, what if I got stuck with someone worse? Some of these young kids were really crazy. I could deliberately injure myself and end up back in hospital with Caleb, but that'd only last for a little while. I ground miserably at the rock holding the platinum in place. It was very long and very quiet and eventually we got back in the hopper and went home and I stayed in my bunk the rest of the night.

It wasn't until the next day that I really talked to Terry. We landed on another asteroid and again I got out and went over to where I knew there was some platinum, and he came over and looked at what I was doing.

"How long you been up here?" he said.

I was irritated. "A year and a half," I said.

He nodded in his helmet, toeing the dust that was kicking up into nowhere. "And they still got you stuck with that kid?"

I wanted him to stand a little further off so he didn't endanger me, didn't get in the way of what I was doing. It's hard for me to split my attention. I didn't know what to say to him. "Well, yeah."

He watched me drill for another minute without saying anything, which really irritated me. I noticed his squinty eyes then and his slow-looking lips. "We had a guy up here a year ago... maybe before you came... named Danny Engall. He's with Dynacorps now. He had the same kind of feel for ore that you do."

I didn't know Terry from Adam then, and I'd certainly never heard of Danny Engall. "I don't think I have any kind of a feel for ore," I said, leaning hard into the drill.

I could tell when Terry shrugged in his suit. "I could believe that you think you don't. If you've only been here a year and a half and haven't worked with anyone other than Boy Wonder over there. But I've been up here almost a decade and believe me, you do."

So what was I supposed to say to that? "What good is that going to do me?"

Terry chuckled.

He eventually wandered back to the hopper and spent the rest of the day catching transmissions and playing with the settings. I thought he was being a lazy bum and maybe he was, but I didn't know then how much of a right to that he'd earned. We talked a little bit the next day too, about my supposed feel for ore, where it was and how to get at it, and then I didn't see him. Some guy with red hair and freckles took over as pilot until Caleb got back and I don't even remember his name.

But it was only a couple weeks more of dead misery until I got transferred to Terry's hopper, and then I was too busy to think about dying for a long time.

I know what you want, part 3

In the morning I get ready for our excursion into the jungle. My pad is pretty small, but it's all I need. I'm looking in the mirror now. I still look so young... no wrinkles to speak of... no grey hairs. But sometimes I feel like I've been here forever. I haven't always been a tour guide, but it was my first job, and I've been doing it on and off ever since. Sometimes I think about quitting it and going somewhere else, getting a job working with animals or something. But heck, people are animals.

I can't just wear shorts to go into the jungle. No... actually... I could just wear shorts to go into the jungle. I've done it before. But the mosquitos, man. I pick out a terrible Hawaiian shirt and grab my boots from the bottom of the closet. They're still dirty from the last time I went. I always forget to clean them.

This shirt is really something. It's got pictures of women surfing in grass skirts on it. It's usually good for a laugh. And I want him to laugh. I don't think I'm all that good at making people laugh, but it's so great if you can get them to.

It's really early still, like six o'clock. It used to be really easy for me to get up after a night of partying. Then as I got a little older it started to get really hard. And then as I kept doing it some kind of hangover expertise replaced the original energy and it got easy again. I know I'm going to be tired. It just doesn't bother me anymore.

I get on the bike and zip down the streets to his hotel. I do like it when it's this quiet. The air is very foggy, the birds are chirping, and it's neither too hot or too cold. He's outside the hotel already, all dressed... still in black... no guitar. He has his hands in his pockets. He climbs on the back of the bike without saying anything. We've already discussed the outing.

My surfing friends get to see me being a tour guide when I take clients to the beach, but I'm being a surfer there... once, Kit was with me when I picked up a client at the docks. The French teacher. Afterward he actually sounded angry with me. "You act that way with every dude, man?" he asked. I think he was upset I was so solicitous. Or maybe just so different from how I am when I'm surfing, using. He doesn't see the solicitation as using too, like I do.

Or maybe he was just alarmed at the physical contact. We're physical, we hug each other, but we don't, for instance, touch each other on the arm when we talk. Not like you'd want to do to put a potential client off his or her guard.

So I'm glad it's just me and Rafe, motoring through the fog, down to where the road turns to dirt, then up over the hills and into the scrubby land before the jungle. The sun is starting to show through the fog, but it hasn't got much definition yet. The jungle starts pretty abruptly in front of us: where I hide the bike in the bushes, it's not a forest at all, and then it is, a few feet on. I walk in first and it's dark.

"Ooh," says Rafe.

I am totally at home. "When you planned your vacation, did you think you'd be doing this?" I ask.

"Yeah," he says.

Well damn. "Did you think you'd be doing this?" I bolt from him then, down the path at a run, and of course he follows. It's just a few more seconds to the river, and the pool that's deep enough to belly-flop into, which I do. And damn if he isn't just standing there on the bank when I come up, looking at me. In his clean black clothes. So I just kneel there on the bottom of the pool. I have to get him vulnerable. I've got a monster craving for some genuine soul and while the shock of the water was a pretty good thrill, it's nothing compared to seeing another human being let down their guard for just a few seconds.

Rafe is looking at me.

I laugh out loud at my own floundering. Come on, Nate, I tell myself. You're a pro. Just watch him. He'll reveal something. They always do.

He takes his eyes off me to look at the plants we've stumbled into. Their leaves are huge, I could wear them, just one would cover my chest and crotch besides. There are orchids on the trees. There are ferns up to my elbow. It's like being in a coloring book about dinosaurs, except without the dinosaurs.

And he's just looking at it all... I want him to be here, be with me, connect... God knows I need it. Don't I need it? I can't go into space, I can't take those little metal tubes, and I'm stuck here. Doesn't that deserve some compensation? This is all there is for me. The least they can do is visit and make some kind of effort to bring me something when they visit... I want a little high, a little contact, a little soul... I want to put my arms around him... I can barely stand to admit it. I don't care what it means, and I'd never do it, after all... my job is to give the tourists what they want, not send them screaming back to the ship.

Rafe is just lost looking around. He's captivated by the silly plants. "Hey," I say. "What's the matter, never done a belly flop into a leech-infested river with a raving lunatic before?"

He turns to me and smiles.

"Uh," he says. "I'm not really sure how to do a belly flop."

This makes me laugh. "Neither am I," I say. I watch his face for a sign. He does want something. I just don't know what yet. It's hard to tell sometimes... people... it could be anything. You never know. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of desire and find out what they really want is to find a restroom.

A fish darts by me in the pool. I am so wet.

I am even wetter when he jumps in suddenly, in a terrible, skilless flop that almost dashes his brains out on a rock. But I can't stop laughing. I like being surprised. After almost a hundred years, you get to appreciate being surprised.

I'm curious now and I remember I can just ask him. I don't need to tease things out of people all the time... "How old are you?" I ask.

"Twenty-two," he says.

"No, how old in real years?"

"Twenty-two," he says.

Christ in a caboose. I am a dirty old man.

It's getting lighter, light enough that the reflections off the water are playing on the undersides of the leaves all around us. The water's just this side of cool and my boots are trying to float up to the surface in front of me. Well. I am so grateful. That he is here. That he is new. New to me and new to the universe. And here in a blue pool with me in the middle of the jungle, sharing his company with me, this alive bright spot on my consciousness, a real person, fresh and new and achingly young and sweet. That is the old man part. These are old man feelings. To feel grateful just to have a pretty young thing beside me, sinking down so that only his hazel eyes are above the water.

And the dirty part... well. I'm young too. And not so bad looking, after all, and not what they call swishy, but I still love the way his innocence pokes out everywhere, in the way he hesitates before trying to swim a few feet, the way he knows I'm interested in him but has no idea how. Because I want him... his everything... I want to feel it with more than my eyes and ears. I want to grab him right now and tickle him, or tear his shirt off and run a finger down to his navel, just to feel. I want my arms around him, I want to hear his voice... I want to slip my fingers in his dark hair and pull him close to me. And let him feel my breath on his cheek. And just taste the tip of his ear.

And see what he does.

And for a moment, thinking these things, I think I've already done them. But no, he's on the other side of the pool, singing to himself. The songwriter. Before him there was the botanist, the mechanic, the retired naval captain, the cook, the pothead, the French teacher, the twin sisters, the counselor... eighty years is a long time to be stuck on one planet. Most of it in San Francisco. The weather doesn't change, anymore. The land doesn't change. The only thing that changes is the people. I just wish he would stay for a while. I don't want to possess him. I'd just like someone to stay for a while.

"Do you make all the tourists jump in a river?" he asks.

"Yes," I say. "It makes the money fall out of their pockets."

"I didn't pay you for today!" he says, sitting upright in consternation.

"You can pay me after," I say, and "I'll make sure you catch your flight. I just wanted to loosen you up a bit. Spacefolk are so serious, you know."

"I know," he says. "I wish I could be more like you."

"No you don't," I blurt out, before realizing that I should have said something else. "I mean... what I mean is that I'm sorry."

"You're sorry?"

I don't know how the hell to phrase this. "I'm just a junkie, you know. I'm just a user. Practically everything I do is just manipulation to try to get a high." He is looking at me totally blank and I'm getting hot with frustration. "All right, it's impossible to explain. Just take my word for it, everything I do is just to get something I want."

He's silent for a moment. "What do you want?" he says with confusion.

"What do I want??" it explodes out of my lips before I have time to flip the emergency self-control switch. "I want somebody to stay more than a goddamn week! I want somebody who lets me get to know them. I mean really know them. I want somebody who actually cares who I am, who Nate is, besides the best tour guide in San Francisco, besides a doped-up surfer, I want somebody to at least just be a little bit curious for once and be more interested in me than in the orchids and to stay for more than a few days, and to just be here."

And he has the strangest expression on his face. He's staring at me with this intense fascination like the answer to the secret of life is written on my face, and I am feeling really exposed all of a sudden. I really want to get out of here.

"Okay," he says quietly, still staring at me. And I have no idea what he means.

I am rolling onto my stomach and paddling around the pool like a dog, just bobbing at the surface, so light. This pool is really not very deep but it is exceedingly charming. I feel fond even of the slime on some of the rocks. I don't know what I'm doing. Just splashing around. This is all very silly. I am thinking that I hope he likes me. I am thinking about what I might like to do tomorrow, and the rest of my life.

I must also say this

Sorry I haven't gotten around to finishing the latest story! I hope to do that over the weekend.

I was sitting in the park the other day and a woman came in, wheeling a 2-year-old in a stroller. The 2-year-old dropped her package of animal crackers and the woman said, "Oh, f--- me." I glanced at her and she smiled sheepishly and said, "Sorry, didn't realize there was anyone else here."