Interzone 244 Jan - Feb 2013 (7 page)

He lay back down and held on to Carmel and
she turned, trustingly, and settled into his arms.

* * * * *

Copyright © 2013 Lavie Tidhar

* * * * *

‘
The Book Seller’ is the
latest story set in
Lavie Tidhar
’s Central Station milieu,
following on from ‘Strigoi’ in issue 242. He also has a story
(‘What we talk about when we talk about z------’) in the current
issue of our sister magazine
Black Static
(issue 32, out
now). Lavie’s novel
Osama
recently won a 2012 World Fantasy
Award, and is out now as a mass market paperback. Visit his website
at lavietidhar.wordpress.com for more information.

* * * * *

Please check our website, ttapress.com, for details
and ordering of all available back issues of Interzone, Crimewave
and Black Static/The Third Alternative. You will also find links to
the publishing sites of our Ebook editions if you want to see
earlier e issues.

* * * * *

by Helen Jackson

Illustrations for
Build Guide
by
Richard Wagner

BUILD GUIDE

T
he new
apprentice was a slight, childish figure, maybe 150cm tall and
massing about 50 kilos. She clung to a grabrail and glared at us.
She looked nauseous. She wasn’t what I’d hoped for.

The Gaffer said what we were all thinking:
“Great. They’ve sent us a little girl. She’s no good to us. Did you
know about this, Peggy?”

I shook my head and sighed. I was too old to
wrangle teenagers. The Earthside contractor we worked for had
embraced the New Modern Apprentice scheme. They got government
subsidies, tax breaks, and good PR. We got a stream of unemployed –
possibly unemployable – youngsters. This was the youngest yet.

The Gaffer spoke to the kid. “What’s your
name, girlie?”

“
Grace Benjamin Murray,
gramps
,” the kid said, pointedly. She spoke with spirit,
despite still being doped up from the shuttle journey, in a
pronounced South London accent. Eltham, maybe, or Kidbrooke. One of
the rougher estates. The Gaffer didn’t rise to the
challenge.

“
How old are you, Grace
Benjamin Murray? Fifteen?”

Murray kept her head up. “I’m nearly
nineteen and I’ve been through full training.”

Diego snorted. “What, six weeks groundside?
Think that’ll help you up here, nearly-nineteen?”

Murray looked fit to explode. She reminded
me of myself at that age: scrappy and determined. I stepped in
before she could say something she’d regret.

“
Peggy Varus, foreman’s
assistant,” I introduced myself. “You’ll be bunking in with me. The
Gaffer’s Rasmus Larsson, Mr Larsson to you.” I nodded at the Gaffer
and hoisted a thumb Diego’s way. “He’s Diego.”

“
Mr Fernandez to
you.”

“
In your dreams,” she said,
letting go of her grabrail and attempting to step forward. As she
floated, her face went distinctly green. I barely got the sick bag
to her in time.

The Gaffer looked disgusted. Diego burst out
laughing. I hustled the kid away before she could get herself in
more trouble.

* *

“
Can we keep
her
inside?” asked the Gaffer. “I haven’t got time to
babysit.”

We were running through the week’s build
guide for the
nth
time. Although we’d each be fed our
step-by-steps on the Head Up Displays, it helped to know the full
operation by heart.

“
I don’t see how,” I said,
pausing the build guide at step five and pointing at the holo.
“It’s a four person job from here onwards.”

We’d received a steelwork delivery along
with our problem child and were ready to move onto the main truss
extension. We’d also received a new boatload of tourists. The hotel
accommodated fifty sightseers, keen to view the Earth from space.
It’d take twice that many once we completed the new wing.

“
Could we adjust to use the
three of us plus an arm?” asked the Gaffer.

“
Not a chance. Roboarm-1
will be doing the heavy lifting, Diego’ll be attached to R-2 in
order to come in from the offside, and R-3’s giving rides to the
visitors.” The Gaffer looked thoughtful. I headed him off: “We’ll
never get permission to requisition R-3.”

He nodded acknowledgement. We’d asked
before, without success. “Can we reprogramme the build to use a
maximum of three people?”

“
I already looked at it.
Today’s on the critical path: we’d lose a lot of time.”

This wasn’t quite true. I could see a way of
reprogramming, but it would affect the delivery schedules for
several suppliers I wanted to keep happy. I knew the Gaffer
wouldn’t question me.

He frowned. “Okay, we’ll take her out. But I
don’t want her causing trouble. Watch her, Peggy.”

* *

I contemplated Murray
as we suited
up. She was over her space-sickness and handled her suit fasteners
with confidence. It looked as if she’d stayed awake during
training.

“
Hey, nearly-nineteen,”
said Diego. “D’you know one end of a podger wrench from the
other?”

Murray pulled the wrench out of her tool
belt. “Sure do. Used to have these in the gang.” She paused and
lifted it in a raised fist, spike end forward. “Pointy end for
stabbing, blunt end for hitting, right?” Diego blanched. The Gaffer
pushed forward and grabbed it from her.

“
No way were you in a gang,
girlie. Stow this and stop menacing Diego.”

Murray took the podger back, but didn’t
replace it on her belt immediately. She floated it near her hand.
“Was too. Steel erector gang. Started straight from school. I’d
done eight months when the recession hit and we got laid off. I
know what I’m doing with a podger.”

“
Oh yeah?” said Diego.
“Fifty quid says every nut you put on today needs tightening by a
real erector.”

“
Give over, Diego,” I said.
“That’s not a fair bet.” It takes several shifts to figure out how
to apply the right torque in microgravity, and fifty pounds was
more than an apprentice’s daily wage. I expected the Gaffer to
intervene. He stayed quiet.

“
Too right it isn’t fair,”
said Murray. “It’ll be the easiest fifty I’ve ever earned. Wanna
make it a hundred?” She held out her gloved hand to shake on the
bet, an awkward Earth gesture that made Diego sneer.

“
Helmets on,” said the
Gaffer.

I got a glimpse of Murray’s resolute
expression before the gold visor hid it. I admired her commitment
to making a fast buck. She’d go far, if she could master her
overconfidence. Maybe I should take an interest in her?

“
Clip in, Murray,” I said,
passing her a line. “Attach the other end to the red rail as soon
as you get outside. Understand?” She nodded, hooked in, and looked
back at me. Her body language said she expected something else. I
waited.

“
Where’s my secondary
line?” she asked. She really had been awake during
training.

“
We can’t use secondary
lines today. With the four of us, and the build order we’ve got,
we’d get tangled with two lines each.”

“
Safety handbook says
no-one’s to go out without primary and secondary lines.” Murray
spoke quietly. She moved back, away from the airlock. She sounded
even younger without her attitude.

The Gaffer entered the code to open the
airlock inner door. As the release alert beeped, I did my best to
sound reassuring.

“
Construction Manager
Caldwell set the build order. If she says it’s safe, it’s safe. We
work without a secondary line all the time.”

“
But what if it breaks, or
comes loose? Safety handbook says – ”

“
Safety handbook? Not so
tough now, are you, nearly-nineteen?” said Diego.

Murray shut up, and pulled herself into the
airlock with the rest of us. We exited on the off side of the space
station. Diego and the Gaffer headed to their positions. I kept
Murray near the airlock door. If she panicked I wanted to be able
to stuff her back inside straight away.

“
This is freaky,” she said,
floating a step away from the door. She didn’t sound scared any
more, she sounded awed. I could remember my first time well enough
to know what she was experiencing. Space is different from the
neutral buoyancy lab. Sure, the suit floats in the pool, but in
space…

“
I’m floating inside my
suit!”

“
How’re you feeling? Any
nausea? Headaches? Dizziness? Anything strange happening to your
vision?”

She brought her legs up and pushed off,
drifting until her line pulled taut. Over the radio, I could hear
her laughter: bubbling glee rather than hysteria. Looked like she
wasn’t going to pass out on me. Next step, dealing with the
view.

“
Murray, pull yourself back
in now.” She didn’t obey immediately, still caught up in the
sensation of floating. I raised my voice a notch.
“Murray!”

“
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m
coming.” She remembered enough of her training to grab hold of the
line rather than using her legs to manoeuvre; I’ve seen plenty of
apprentices floundering as they kicked off against nothing at all.
Murray’s return wasn’t elegant or fast, but it wasn’t bad. She had
promise.

“
We’re going round to the
Earth side. Use the green grabrails, hand over hand like this.” I
demonstrated. “Don’t try to float. Stay behind me.”

She kept up, until the Earth rose in her
vision. I heard her indrawn breath. She stopped dead. I’d been
expecting it – the view from Earth-Moon L5 is something special –
and carried on moving steadily.

The planet was the only colour in the sky.
There wasn’t much cloud that day; big banks of white over the
Americas, but vivid blue elsewhere, with the landmass of Europe
clearly visible. I always liked being able to see England. I missed
home.

“
Beautiful, isn’t it?” I
said. “It’s a real challenge to ignore those visuals. This is where
you have to remember your training and focus on the job you’re here
to do. Can you do that, Murray?”

She reached for the next grabrail and hauled
herself forward. She’d almost caught up when she spoke. I swear I
could hear the shrug in her voice.

“
Where’s the big deal? Seen
it a million times.”

She seemed to mean it. I stopped.

“
Seeing it on a screen’s
hardly the same as being here.”

She took her right hand off the rail and
brought it up to her helmet. “Nah,” she said, cheeky. “The view was
better in the movies, without all this Head Up Display crap getting
in my face. Are we starting work or aren’t we?”

I got moving. I’d noticed a similar attitude
in the last apprentice. The way these kids took space for granted
made me feel ancient. It was time I moved Earthside, if only I
could find the right successor. If the company had had a decent
pension plan, or I’d managed to skim enough, I’d have taken
retirement years ago.

Diego was plugged on to Roboarm-2 when we
reached our work point. The Gaffer got us started, steadily talking
us through the build, step by step, reinforcing our HUD visuals,
keeping everyone together.

The three of us worked well as a team. The
Gaffer and I had been on the same crew for eleven years. I knew
he’d make sure we got the job done, and he knew I’d deal with the
paperwork without bothering him. Diego was into his third year with
us and the Gaffer was training him well. Still, a fourth pair of
hands – even clumsy hands – came in useful.

Construction Manager Caldwell had done a
nice job of allocating tasks. For the first hour or so, Murray’s
role was restricted to nudging the position of steelwork lifted in
by R-1. She’d had enough time in the neutral buoyancy pool to
understand near-zero weight doesn’t mean near-zero inertia. She did
okay.

Her troubles started when she had to use
tools. It took her nearly a quarter of an hour to get her first nut
onto a bolt. She struggled with the gloves. It was painful to
watch. When she’d finally got it tightened, I moved over to check
it. It needed a finishing twist. So did the next one, and the next,
much to Diego’s delight.

“
Looks like my drinks’ll be
on you tonight, nearly-nineteen.”

Murray swore viciously and promptly got
worse. She dropped her podger, grabbed for it with reflexes
conditioned to Earth gravity and missed. It headed in the direction
of the main hotel viewport. The Gaffer pushed out and snagged
it.

“
Take a breather and calm
down,” he said, before passing it back. “And, Diego, concentrate on
your own work.” Diego was working well. He and the arm operator had
a smooth rhythm going; they made a difficult job look
easy.