CHAPTER FIVE
Jed Lewis had a theory about life. Life was hard. Complicated. Life was a long, meandering slog up a very steep mountain and if you didn't have good friends to help point out the way, it was pretty easy to choose the wrong path sometimes. (Lewis didn't think Mickey Moss had many friends, just admirers. Rivals.) And even after choosing, you could go miles, years, before knowing whether your path was wrong or right. Moreover, everybody had their own route and their own schedule. So Jed was slow to judge how people made it up the slope. You didn't know where they were coming from. Couldn't know, as Moss had said. Didn't know where they were going. Lewis had examined the meteorite and would probably test it, but the fate of the rock was really none of his concern. Let the old scientist make his own lonely way up the peak.
Lewis himself was tired of being alone.
By the time he got back to the dome he was ravenous again. Geller was right: The polar cold almost snatched food out of your mouth. When Lewis yanked open the freezer door and stepped into the galley vestibule, he was salivating.
The galley was crowded and a table of beakers was almost full. Lewis, curious to sample the station's social spectrum, decided to sit with the some of the support staff who kept the place running. He plopped next to Geller, who was working on another mountain of food. Next to him was a smaller, quiet, mouselike man he'd noticed earlier, keeping his head down as he ate.
'A beaker joins the rabble,' Geller greeted.
'Just trying to meet everyone.'
'And your appetite's improved.' He nodded at Lewis's tray. Stroganoff, fresh green beans, cobbler, all heaped high. Pulaski and Linda Brown could cook.
'I was on tour. The cold really burns up your reserves.'
'That ain't cold. Sitting out eight hours in the wind trying to fix equipment some moron beaker busted-that's cold.'
'Are there always no scientists at this table?' Lewis asked.
'Mostly. We get along great but they tend to eat with their own, we tend to eat with our own. They bitch about us, we bitch about them. Works better that way.'
'I thought segregation was against the law.'
'It ain't segregation, it's fucking high school.' It was the growl of a new voice and Lewis looked up. The grump from the shower, Tyson. He sat heavily, spreading his arms and legs to claim a substantial portion of the table. His manner was one of fingie instructor. A heavily muscled forearm boasting a tattooed snake pulled his tray against his torso. A fork was held upright in his other fist like a flagstaff. He'd unconsciously made a tiny fort of his food. 'Like the jocks and the nerds, remember? We got more cliques here than Hot Pants High.'
'I think you're exaggerating a little, Buck,' Geller said mildly.
'The hell I am. You got us, and you got the beakers, and you got the smokers, and you got the singles, and you got the women. The science side is all rank and show-off, with know-it-alls like Mickey Moss lording it over grad students and postdocs. And then even the tweezer twits get snobby when they want something done.'
'Yeah, but everyone gets along. Better than anyplace I've ever been.'
'We gotta get along, or we fucking die. But that don't mean people don't cluster with their own. Look around this room. Planet of the Apes, man. We're monkeys.' The phrase jogged a memory. Hadn't Norse said something similar?
'Buck Tyson, resident sociologist,' Geller introduced.
'Yeah, me and our new shrink.' He nodded to Lewis.
'We met at the shower.'
'Yeah, I remember. That wasn't about you. That was about Ice Prick.'
Not exactly an apology, but not hostile, either. Maybe Tyson was okay. 'You like to analyze?'
'I just see things like they really are. My day job is master mechanic. I make our go-carts go. You need a snow Spryte, a D-6 Cat, you come to Buck Tyson. But at night I think about our loony bin. Me thinking for myself makes some of the beakers nervous. You nervous?'
How to respond to that? 'You like Doctor Bob?' Lewis deflected.
'I like where he's coming from. I like that he stays in shape. I talked to him already and I think he sees through the bullshit like I do. We're into the same shit: self-reliance. The importance of Numero Uno and thinking for yourself. He's got all these ideas from NASA about whether this place suggests what you need to make starship troopers. It's cool, what he's trying to do. Not the touchy-feely crap of the other shrinks that come down to The Ice.' He turned to Geller. 'You know what they did to a shrink at Vanda, over in the Dry Valleys?'
'No, what?'
'Ran over his gear with a tractor.' Tyson laughed.
There was a silence, the others digesting this.
'I guess Buck is your nickname,' Lewis finally said. 'What's your real name?'
'James,' Geller quickly interjected.
'Jimmy, you dumb fuck. You know I hate James. English faggot name.'
'James Bond ain't a faggot.'
'James Bond is the biggest goddamned English pansy there is! He carries a girl's gun and dresses like a fucking bridegroom! I like big guns, and big guys. I like guys who go it alone and kick butt. Like Clint Eastwood. And John Wayne. And Bruce Willis. And Rambo. And Ahhhnold. Except he married the fucking Kennedys.'
'Everyone calls Tyson Buck because he's into knives,' Geller explained. 'And guns. And commando crap. And every other bit of militia weirdness.'
'No, I'm not. I'm into sufficiency, which is more than a little important way down here.' Tyson pointed his fork at Lewis. 'Don't take this 'all for one and one for all' crap too seriously because when it's dark and blowing and people are freaking out, you gotta know how to take care of yourself. Right? The government likes to jabber on about our happy little commune, but in fact it's just a bunch of fucked-up overachievers. They may have a doctorate, but they manage to bring down every goddamn neurosis there is.'
'Buck doesn't like people,' Geller summarized.
'That's not true. I'm eating with you assholes. I even like some of the beakers like crazy Alexi, our Russian cocktail. He tells it like it is, 'cause he's out of the gulag, man. Hiro's kind of funny, like a Jap cartoon. But some of them are humorless know-it-alls, like Harrison Adams. Harrison. Not just Harry. Pompous twit. Or weirdos like Jerry Follett. I watch my backside around that faggot. Or Mickey Mouse out there in the Dark Side. Our head rodent needs his ears pinned.'
'You're talking about Saint Michael,' Geller said with humor.
'Pope Moss can kiss my you-know-what.' Tyson turned to the other man at their table, who'd been eating silently, and clapped him on the shoulder. 'The one you want to stay friends with is this guy, who runs the power plant. We try to keep him sober and sane.'
The small man looked up like a blinking mole. He was balding, with pinched features and a brushy mustache. 'Pika,' he mumbled as introduction.
'What?' Lewis hadn't understood.
'Pika,' Geller said. 'Like the animal.'
'What's a pika?'
'Sort of a rock rabbit,' Tyson explained. 'No one can stand to hang around with Pika 'cause he whistles while he works, like those dwarves. Remember them? Drives us all nuts, like Muzak. His real name is Doug Taylor but we call him Pika, which is sort of like a marmot. Critter that whistles?'
Lewis slowly nodded. 'Got it.'
'Pikas sort of squeak,' Geller said. 'But we liked the sound of the word.'
'Makes sense to me.'
'See, Mickey Moss can collect all the medals he wants to but what it comes down to is the guys like Pika,' Tyson said. 'We're at the outer edge of the envelope down here. They don't like to tell us that, but it's true. The generators stop, and we're dead. The well gets fucked up, and we're dead. A good fire gets started, and we're
