Up Against It - M. J. Locke [6]
“I knew you were going to say that,” Carl said. “You always say that.”
“That’s because it’s always true. Anyway, I’ve got to go. Don’t want to spin wry and miss the first wave of ejecta.”
“I’ll never get why you’re so into ice slinging.”
“It beats trash slinging!”
“Hey,” Carl broadcast, as Geoff bounded back toward his waiting rocketbike, “this job is just to pay tuition. Someday I’ll be a ship captain. You need to take the long view.”
“Burn hot,” Geoff retorted. Burn hot—you might not be around tomorrow to enjoy whatever pleasure you’ve been putting off. Carl had always taken the long view and laid his plans carefully. Geoff had no patience for that. His bug-turd skeleton project was as long term as he was willing to go. He leapt onto his bike and raced to the far side of the crater.
Amaya, Kam, and Ian were already space-borne. He signaled to Amaya and she gave him her trajectory. Then he watched the spectacle of the ice mountain’s collapse into the crater, while waiting his turn at the base of the ramp.
Down it kept coming, all that ice, onto the remains of their prior shipment. It tumbled out over the crater bed in an avalanche, collapsing on itself, flinging ice shrapnel. Geoff, waiting in line with the other bikers, gripped his handlebars, raced his engine, impatient. Some of the ejecta were beginning to rain back down; more was propelled into orbit.
His turn—finally! He raced up the ramp, dodging flying ice shards, as the ice mountain finished settling. He whooped again as he reached orbital velocity. The ramp arced upward and then fell away—he was space-borne. He fired his rockets and caught up with Amaya. They spread their nets and got started harvesting ice.
* * *
Carl headed back to his shift work once the mountain had finished settling. On the way back to the warehouses, he thought about Geoff. Something was definitely up. Carl could always tell when Geoff had done something that was going to get him into trouble with Dad. It looked like another storm was brewing. Geoff couldn’t seem to resist provoking their father. It didn’t help that Dad was always holding Carl up as an example Geoff should emulate: Carl, who made straight A’s, who had gotten a full scholarship to study celestine administration, who had been accepted to a top Downside university for graduate work next spring. Carl, studious and serious. Carl, the one all the teachers said would go far. Exactly the opposite of Geoff, who zigzagged through life in the same insane, impulsive way he rode his bike.
Geoff and Dad would never get along. They were too much alike.
You could smell the disassembly warehouses through a bulkhead. The tart, oily smell of the disassembler bugs mingled with the rotting trash to create a truly foul brew. They had told Carl he would get used to it, but after three months, he still hated the smell. It was also noisy, with the big vats churning, and fluid hissing and rumbling in the pipes under the floor.
His coworker, Ivan, sat on a bench along one wall, pulling on his boots. Carl sat down next to him. “I’m back.”
Ivan started and gave him a stare. Carl wondered if he was angry. “What are you doing here? I told you to take off.”
“The ice is already in. I’ve a lot of catching up to do. No big deal.” Then he noticed how pale Ivan was. His underarms and chest were stained with sweat. “Are you OK?”
Ivan shook his head. “You startled me, is all.” He had been out of sorts for the past few weeks. Carl had heard a rumor his partners and children had left him recently.
He had been looking at something in his wavespace. Ivan noted the direction of Carl’s gaze. “Ever seen my kids?”
Carl shook his head. Ivan pinged Carl’s waveface, and he touched the icon that appeared in front of his vision. An image of Ivan, his wife and husband, and three snarly-haired children unfolded before Carl’s gaze. The kids were playing microgee tag in a garden somewhere in Kukuyoshi while the adults watched. The image swooped down on the children’s