The Iceman's Lament

A black depression fell upon him, back at Eleanor Station. There was no discernible reason for it but he felt a blackness descending as he slumped in his cabin, unable to summon up the will to drag himself down to the bar and join his fellow haulers in the usual debauchery. It was just the road, he thought. Such fits of deep depression were common among space workers and much medication was dispensed to counter it: powerful drugs that would keep the suicidal thoughts at bay, buoying the victims up on a cloud of false euphoria.

But not for haulers or other operators of heavy equipment. All they had was the Drink.

He took himself down to the communications center and booked a booth. There was a short wait: tightbeam connections being sparse for mere civilians like him, and expensive, but finally he found himself at a terminal.

Lights, he typed in. Swirling Lights on the surface of a newly-opened planet/asteroid/moon. There was information, but not the kind he wanted. The further he read the more he felt like a believer in hobgoblins and leprechauns.

Why didn’t you take pictures? He hadn’t even thought if it. There was a camera in his helmet. Next time he would just fire it up when he left the rig and leave it running.

And then he typed in ‘hallucinations in surface environments’ and pages of medical data began to scroll past his eyes.

No, he thought angrily, standing. They are not hallucinations. His eyes swept the room, a sudden tinge of desperation, of borderline lunacy, grabbing him by the mental lapels. Other communicants, talking to their families, their loved ones, glanced up at him nervously.

I’m not crazy, he thought, storming out.

Not yet.

The comm unit in his cabin chimed. Incoming call. There had been a lot of them lately. All from the same caller: Lucy Lin.

“You’ve been hiding from me, Lieutenant” she cooed.

“Been on the road, haven’t I?”

“I left you several messages.”

“Gotta make money,” he growled. “Especially after losing three runs of pay.”

“What for?”

He didn’t feel like explaining Flanagan’s little extortion rackets to her. The Quartermaster exacted a toll on just about everything: liquor, drugs, sex. Maybe Lucy Lin would find that interesting, he thought. But he wouldn’t be the one to tell her.

“Speaking of which, Tom, you know that we pay handsomely for ‘local color’. Have you given my offer any thought at all?”

“None,” he scowled into the comm. “Why don’t you talk to Greg, or Annie? They got plenty of stories. Way more colorful than me.”

“But we want you Tom…”

“Why?” he barked, suddenly apprehensive. “What’s so bloody exciting about me?”

“Lots of things, Tom…great back-story for one.”

And then understanding dawned. Lucy Lin had done her research.

“Don’t you want; I don’t know…vindication, Lieutenant? A highly-commended pilot now pushing ice down from the Pole?”

“So that’s your story then?” he snarled. “I’m still under indictment, you know? Of course you know.”

He closed his eyes. The terror still came to him, in the wee hours of sleepless nights in his cabin, on the long stretches of the haul road. The untethered barge careening, the tugs scrambling to escape, the UNSA cruiser unable to maneuver quickly enough. The collision like a boulder rolling over a minivan…

“Stay away from me,” he said quietly.

“We can’t Tom. It’s a story, right? It’s what we do.”

“Goddamn you...”

“Or, help us, “she said brightly.

“Go to hell, Lucy Lin…”

“We can tell the story your way, Tom.”

And the threat hung there. We can tell it your way, Tom. Or we can tell it our way.

Either way he was screwed.

And there was a deeper story too. A slaughtered father, a treacherous brother, murder on the bog rod, back on Earth. If she dug even deeper…

He let the silence hang on the line.

“Tom…?”

“Meet me in the morning,” he said abruptly. “At the docks.”

And he smashed the handset of the comm against the wall of the cabin.