The Iceman's Lament

He awoke far before his accustomed hour, sober and clear-headed. It was mildly euphoric, this unfamiliar feeling. He made tea and toast, took it out onto the little balcony that fronted his cabin and watched the world go by.

“Morning!” he hailed to the passers-by, the miners trudging to their shift, the haulers coming home, the family with their child, the only child on Phoedrus.

“Benjamin!” he called out to the two-year old slumped in his stroller. And Benjamin’s parents cast him dubious looks, nodding doubtfully up at the un-hungover hauler settin’ on his porch like some elder of the village.

Then he remembered. Annie. Where the hell was Annie? Again, he checked his device for messages. Nothing. Worry gnawed at him. He shouldn’t have brought her up there. He shouldn’t have shown her the Lights. Shit…

And then up rolled Lucy Liu and her entourage, coffee cups in hand, stopping to coo at the kid, eyes flitting up to him on his deck.

“Well hello Lieutenant!” Lucy trilled.

“Top of the feckin’ morning to you, miss,” he grunted.

She came right up there, sat next to him, pulling out a tablet. He almost told her to get the hell off his porch but then she sighed and said, “It’s really quite pretty here, isn’t it?”

He grunted. The row of hauler cabins were laid out along a long gantry flanked for its entire length by a diamond hardened window which afforded a view outside. Not much to see, not like the view from the Scurvy Dog: clouds of toxic gas swirled through the alley between buildings, but people had fixed window boxes to the railings and clusters of Earth-flowers bloomed along it.

“Do you mind if I sit for a minute?”

He shrugged.

“Mr. Flanagan said I might find you here….”

Another shrug. But he got the hint. He shuffled over on the narrow bench. He couldn’t help himself: his eyes drifted downward, to her nylon-sheathed legs. Skirts were rare on Phoedrus. Everyone wore either shapeless overalls or gym clothing.

She smoothed down her skirt. He lifted his eyes. She had caught him. He found he didn’t care. He sipped his tea and looked at her.

“Remarkable,” she nodded at Benjamin and his parents. “People having children out here.”

“Accidents happen…”

“Benjamin was no accident, we’ve already interviewed them.”

He looked at her sharply. “You leave those people alone,” he growled.

She sighed. “Why Tom? They’re already in deep shit.”

“Yes they are so why push them deeper into it?”

“You don’t get it do you?”

“What’s to get, Ms. Lin? They’re just a story to you.”

“Well now, Tom, I’m glad you mentioned that. Let me tell you something…”

Benjamin’s parents had broken the law by having their child. They had kept the pregnancy secret until it was too late to terminate. UNSA demanded they immediately leave Phoedrus, but the parents insisted the child was too young to travel, forcing UNSA’s hand. For now, here on Phoedrus the family would remain, creating a legal and ethical limbo UNSA was eager not to see repeated.

She was talking and Tom was only half-listening. He was watching the parents, the way they stood looking out of the window. He’d never seen them do that before. It was as if Lucy Lin had placed them there for his benefit.

“They were going to take the child from them, Tom, remember? Throw them in jail. You know how UNSA is, heavy-handed and ham-fisted. Rip a child from his parents and for what? They’re good people.”

They’re Remainers, he thought. They knew exactly what they were doing.

“We ran a story on them. Then another. We got UNSA to back down, to let them stay…”

“I don’t remember that…”

“Of course not. You don’t watch TV.”

He shrugged again.

He wanted to say something harsh about the parents. The rules were clear cut. Frolick here, formicate here, and if you choose to take that to its ultimate conclusion then go, go somewhere with better medical facilities, schools, infrastructute. Not out here on the raggedy edge of the new Frontier…

Jared and Gail were also looking out at the view. Gail… His eyes narrowed. His tongue touched the split on his lip where Meng had punched him. He thought about all those nights cocooned with the Quartermasters girlfriend, the two of them huddled under a blanket thirty million miles from Earth, a little nest amidst the desolation.

He’d never fooled himself into believing this might actually be Love. He was Meng’s toy-boy, her piece-on-the-side. Her way of exerting control over Flanagan. She had always been in charge. He’d been given direction on how to conduct himself sexually, direction on how to conduct himself around her in public: no looking at her, no idle chatter, no sending of texts or other digital contact. No talking about her to anyone. And he’d respected this. He’d told nobody.

It seemed people had found out anyway. It was a small planet.

Only a matter of time before the Quartermaster found out too.

And as he stared at Gail, the researcher, the fact-checker, plain and rather dowdy in comparison to her boss with narrow features that looked upon everything with suspicion, he realized how scared he was.

These people will fuck up your life, he thought, and they’ll fuck up other lives along with it. Meng. Gottlieb and his people. Annie... No, not Annie. You did that all by yourself.

He’d had this dream. Space was a place to reinvent yourself. The sins of his youth would be banished. He’d make his pile and return to Earth well-set for the future.

And now, somehow, way out on the fringes of the known universe, all that noise was going to rip his life apart? If they broke this story about Gottlieb…

He rubbed his face, lack of sleep clouding his perceptions. Lucy Lin was jabbering on about something but he barely registered her words. He was thinking of Gottlieb, how desperate the Major had been for competent men and women who could manage the ion-drive tugs. Trained pilots were short in supply and most of them had no appetite for netting asteroids when there many other, more glamorous missions: expeditions into Deep Space, new planets to investigate.

Gottlieb had been desperate and there was Tom: scruffy ex-juvenile offender who’d found his stride in the Officer Corps of the Irish Army and gotten lucky when it became their turn to provide UNSA with fresh meat. One day the kid had found himself lashed into a Soyuz and blasted up into the stars.

He’d been a rigger at first, spending up to ten hours a day on EVA, learning the finer arts of vacuum welding and manhandling of multi-ton modules. Gottlieb had taken a shine to him and pressed him into service as a trainee on the ion-tugs. In a matter of weeks he was doing work that only highly-trained military pilots were meant to do. It wasn’t that he was so great. He was just There.

He tuned back into to Lucy Lin, averting his gaze from the swathes of nylon that encased her slender legs. Lucy Lin was still talking to him.

“We’ve built the backstory Tom, you probably want to take a look…”

“Backstory?”

Lin sighed theatrically. He caught a whiff of her perfume. She sat close to him on the narrow bench and he felt another sudden stirring in his loins. He folded his arms across his chest, straightened his back.

“We’re going to do the story on the haul road and pipeline, remember? And we want to use you as a vehicle for a narrative, how you came here, all the stuff that happened…”

“We talked about it…but er, I don’t recall that we agreed to actually do anything like that. As I recall I was going to provide technical assistance, fill in the details…nothing about Tom bloody Kelly!”

“We’re telling your story, Tom,” Lucy chided him. “And it’s a great story!” She laid a conspiratorial hand on his knee and said quietly “I mean really, they fucked you Tom. You saved a lot of lives and how do they thank you? Banishment. Ice hauling…don’t you want people to know?”

There it was, playing on her tablet, the career of Tom Kelly, one of the first Irishmen in space, his humble beginnings as a rigger, the field promotion to Officer, the accident that had destroyed his dreams.

“Don’t you want to tell your story Tom?”

And he threw his precious enamel tea mug out onto the steel gantry.

“No. No I don’t. Find someone else.”

Jared looked up, Gail flinched, stepping back. The neighbors pushed their stroller hurriedly away.

“I’ll just leave you to think about it Tom. “ Lin gathered up her tablet, stepped off the porch and nodded to Jared.

The big Minder sighed and came up onto the porch. Tom stiffened. Jared grinned, a big genuine grin.

“No, Tom, nothing like that. I don’t feel like getting my ass kicked again.”

“I don’t think I’d be so lucky a second time, Jared.”

And Jared was laying his hand on Tom’s shoulder.

“Look mate, I know…I understand the way you feel. It’s a lot to process, all at once.”

“Jared you sound like my fucking therapist…” Tom stared pointedly at the hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah, guess I do.” Jared removed his hand. “That’s what I am. Therapist. Bag-carrier. Fender-off of rabid fans….” He glanced at Lucy and Gail, dismissing them with a toss of his chin.

“See you back in ConOne,” Lucy called as they faded away.

“Not if I see you first,” Jared muttered under his breath.

“Like that is it?”

“Sometimes. Spend a lot of time together don’t we? The three of us. Get’s a little…you know…”

“Claustrophobic?”

“Yeah…No…well…whatever. She’s good people, Lucy Lin, she actually is. But a lot of people would like to see her dead. That’s why she keeps me around.”

Tom stared at the back of his hands. He said nothing. He let the silence build. Jared didn’t seem uncomfortable with it. In fact he laced his fingers behind his skull, stretched out the endless tree-trunks of his legs and stared happily at the unfolding of morning in Sector Nine.

I know how this goes, Tom thought. Jared was the good guy, slathering you in reassurance, making it all seem Ok while his colleagues built the story that would fuck you. The thing was he liked the Minder. He didn’t think Jared had much guile in him. He was as much a player-being-played as Tom was. The silence stretched out.

But then Tom remembered something.

“Shit, Jared, I gotta go…”

“Let’s finish the rest of that Jameson when you get back.”

Tom struck out his hand. “It’s been real, mate,” he said. “

“I’ll say one thing, Tom, alright?”

“I was afraid you would….”

“Seriously, mate, take a look at her story. Think about it. Just think about it. Most people don’t get a chance…”

“A chance?”

“She’s gonna tell it anyway Tom. This is your chance to control the narrative.”

“Fuck that, Jared…” Tom stood.

Jared stood with him, towering over him.

“Yeah I know, I know mate. You think this is the first time I’ve seen her dig her claws into something? She won’t let go, y’know? She’s gonna tell the story. Most of the time the protagonists are not present, right? She tells it her way, whatever she decides, it becomes history.” He put his hands on Tom’s shoulder, twisted him around and made him look up at him. “You have an opportunity to present the facts your way. Work with her. That’s all I gotta say.”

“She starts digging, Jared. She finds a vein that she can mine, a rich vein. Where does it end?”

“Whaddya mean?”

And Tom pushed by him, on up the gantry.

She has no idea, he thought, how rich that vein was.

Where was Annie? The door to her cabin hung open. Within a tangle of sheets and pillows were strewn across the floor. But otherwise it was empty. All of her personal effects were gone. He turned to go and then a sliver of light caught his eye. Her silver chain. Her crucifix, strewn carelessly on the floor. He picked it up, dangled it before his eyes.

“Annie?” he whispered. Once again he tried her comm and once again it went straight to voice mail.

“Hey Jerry, Jerry,” he called out to an agronomist friend of hers. “Have you seen our Annie then?”

Jerry gave him a hostile look.

“What happened to her Tom?”

“What do ye mean?”

“I mean she packed her bags and quit, yesterday evening. She’s going back down the Well…”

He was gobsmacked.

“What do ye mean?” he said again, weakly, a gorge of sudden fear rising in him.

“I saw her heading off to the elevator with all her gear and next thing I hear she’s at the Gemini platform trying to get a berth on the Trade Voyager…why would she do that?”

He ran.

“Tom!” called Jerry after him.

The Gemini platform was a good hour out from Eleanor and Tom had to crowd into a surface transport with a heaving crowd of miners who were also returning home, to Earth. They were boisterous, loud, passing around little nips of Phoedran scotch.

Despite his worry about Annie he couldn’t help but marvel at them. They had done their time, served out their contracts and by the time they’d completed the six-month transit back a bonus would be in their bank accounts.

Assholes, he thought merrily. They’ve made their cake and they’re goin’ home. One day, he thought, this will be me.

But Annie had a good year left on her contract. She would lose her bonus and have to pay her own passage to Earth. It would wipe out all the money she’d made.

He scrubbed at his scalp. It was his bloody fault. The Lights had spooked her. Why did you have to take her up there you arsehole he raged inwardly as the transport finally reached the spaceport and the enormity of the Trade Voyager loomed above them.

He shouldered his way out through the airlock and went at a dead run down the metal gantryway to the lounge where passengers would be getting prepped for embarkation.

“Hold it, hey!” an UNSA guard stepped in front of him. “What are you doing?”

“I gotta get in there…” Tom panted.

“Let me see your ticket.”

“Ticket, what ticket? I ain’t got no bloody ticket, I’m not leaving, pal…I just…I just want to see someone, say goodbye, I….”

The guard laughed. “I don’t think so, pal…”

And Tom brushed by him.

“Hey!”

He ran. He could see a knot of passengers’ ahead, filing through the entry to the airlocks. And then he saw her, duffle bag over her shoulder.

“Annie!” he called.

She looked back. And then he was on the deck, face down, the foot of a guard pressing down hard on his back. More guards arrived. They hauled him to his feet. He caught a glimpse of her again, the crowd of passengers pausing to see what the commotion was about.

“Annie!” he called again. She turned. She stepped forward. Into the ship.

Her face, he thought later. The terror writ upon it. And the hate. For him.

Later, after the UNSA guards had let him go, the transport bumped back across the surface, past the giant heaps of fan-tail ejecta from the strip mines, like mountains left there to slump and sprawl and slowly subsume back into the regolith. Mercifully the transport was more or less empty, a handful of Gemini staffers. No new arrivals. He would not have been able to stand their excited blather.

‘Feckin’ hell, Annie,” he muttered to himself. “Why did you go do that?”

The Lights had warned him before about helmet cams and therefore it had been incumbent upon him to make sure Annie was prepared, that she understood she couldn’t try to film them. None of this was Annie’s fault.

I have to get up there, he realized, to the Lights. I have to apologize, to ask them why? But he had three days to wait before that could happen. And it was likely the Lin crew would be coming with him.

He scrubbed at his scalp so hard that a tuft of hair came out from underneath his fingernails.

Jesus, he thought, I need a drink.

And then he thought of a better idea.