29
Michael Fisher, oiler first class—Michael the Clever, Bridger of Worlds—aroused from a deep and dreamless sleep to the sensation, unmistakable, that somebody was fucking him.
He opened his eyes. Lore was straddling him, her spine bowed forward, her brow glazed with a glinting, sex-fired sweat. Flyers, he thought, hadn’t they just done this? Most of the night, in fact? Hugely, hilariously, in every position allowable to human physiology in a sleeping berth the approximate dimensions of a coffin?
“Good morning,” she announced with a grin. “I hope you don’t mind I got started without you.”
Well, so be it, Michael thought. There were certainly worse ways to face the day. From the flush of her cheeks, he could tell that Lore was well on the way, and, come to think of it, he wasn’t far behind. She had begun to rock her hips, the weight of her sex lapping against him like waves on a beach. In and out went the waves.
“Not so fast, mister.”
“For Christ’s sake, keep it down!” a voice barked from above.
“Shut up, Ceps,” Lore replied, “I’m working in here.”
“You’re making me hard! It’s disgusting!”
This conversation seemed to Michael to be occurring in some distant orbit. With everyone bunked together, nothing but thin curtains for privacy, you learned to tune things out. But the feeling was more than that. Even as his senses sailed away into pure physicality, something about sex, its hypnotic rhythms, prompted in him a kind of disassociation. It was as if his mind were lagging three steps behind his body, sightseeing its way through a landscape of various concerns and sadnesses and emotionally neutral images that rose before him like bubbles of expanding gas in the boiler. A decaying gasket that needed replacing. The delivery schedule of fresh crude down from the depot. Memories of the Colony, which he never otherwise thought about. Above him, Lore continued on her journey, while Michael drifted in this current of mental disloyalty, trying to will his attentions into alignment with hers. It seemed the least he could do.
And in the end, he did. Lore’s accelerating passion won the day. By the time they pulled the curtain back, Ceps was gone. The clock above the hatch read 0630.
“Shit.”
Michael swung his feet to the floor and yanked on his jumpsuit. Lore, behind him, wrapped her arms around his chest.
“Stay. I’ll make it worth your while.”
“I’m first shift. If I’m late again, Karlovic will chew my ass for breakfast.” He stuffed his feet into his boots and swiveled his face to kiss her: a taste of salt, and sex, and something all her own. Michael wouldn’t have said it was love between them, exactly. Sex was a way to pass the time, but over the months their relationship had evolved, little by little, into something more than habit.
“You were thinking again, weren’t you?”
“Who, me?”
“Don’t lie.” Her tone wasn’t bitter, merely correcting. “You know, someday I’m going to fuck all the worries out of you.” She sighed and relaxed her grip. “It’s all right. Go.”
He rose from the berth and took his hard hat and gloves from the post. “I’ll see you later?”
She had already lain back down on the cot. “That you will.”
As Michael exited the barracks, the sun was just lifting over the Gulf, making its surface shimmer like a sheet of hammered metal. It might have been the first week of October, but the heat was already building, the ocean air tart as ever with salt and the sulfurous stench of burning butane. With his stomach growling—food would have to wait—he strode at a brisk clip across the compound, past the commissary and weight cages and DS barracks to the Quonset hut, where the workers on the morning shift had gathered. Karlovic, the chief engineer, was calling out assignments from the roster. He shot Michael a cold glance.
“Are we interrupting your beauty sleep, Fisher? Our mistake.”
“Right.” Michael was zipping his jumpsuit. “Sorry.”
“You’ll be even sorrier. You’ll be firing up the Bomb. Ceps will be your second. Try not to blow up your crew.”
Distillation Tower No. 1, known as the Bomb, was the oldest of the lot, its rusty bulk held together by a combination of patch welds, baling wire, and prayer. Everybody said it was a matter of time before she was either decommissioned or launched a cooking crew halfway to Mars.
“Thanks, boss. That’s swell of you.”
“Don’t mention it.” Karlovic swept his gaze over the group. “All right, everyone. Seven days until we ship. I want those tankers full, people. And Fisher, hang back a minute. I want a word with you.”
The crews dispersed to their towers. Michael followed Karlovic into the hut. Christ, what now? He hadn’t been late by more than a couple of minutes, hardly worth a dressing down.
“Listen, Dan, I’m sorry about this morning—”
Karlovic didn’t let him finish. “Forget it, that’s not what I want to talk to you about.” Hitching up his pants, he lowered his bulk into the chair behind his desk. Karlovic was heavy in the true sense, not fat but large in every aspect, a man of weight and heft. Tacked on the wall over his head were dozens of sheets of paper—duty rosters, work flows, delivery schedules. “I had you on the Bomb anyway. You and Ceps are the best I’ve got for hotwork. Take it as a compliment I’m putting the pair of you on that cranky old bitch. If I had my druthers, that thing would be in the scrap pile.”
Michael didn’t doubt that this was so; on the other hand, he knew strategically timed praise when he heard it. “So?”
“So this.”
Karlovic slid a sheet of paper across his desk. Michael’s eyes fell quickly to the signature at the bottom: Victoria Sanchez, President, Texas Republic. He quickly scanned the letter’s three short paragraphs.
“Any idea what this is about?”
“What makes you think I would?”
“You were the last crew chief on the offload. Maybe you caught wind of something while you were up there. Talk around the depot, extra military hanging around.”
“Nothing that rings a bell.” Michael shrugged. “Have you spoken to Stark? Maybe he knows.”
Stark was the refinery’s chief security officer. He was something of a loudmouth and liked the lick too much, but he generally commanded respect among both the oilers and DS, if for no other reason than his prowess at the poker table. His caginess with the cards had cost Michael a bundle, not that the scrip was any big loss—within the fences of the refinery, there was nothing to spend it on.
“Not yet. This won’t sit well with him, though.” Karlovic studied Michael. “Aren’t you guys friends? That whole California thing.”
“I know him, yeah.”
“So maybe you can grease the gears a bit. Act as a sort of, I don’t know, unofficial liaison between DS and the military.”
Michael allowed himself a few seconds to probe his feelings. He’d be glad to see someone from the old days,
