Chewing Rocks

by Alan Black

  She looked at the smallish man sitting quietly in a corner chair. He looked up from the book he was reading. She smiled at him.

  The man did not smile back. He knew the smile was not for him and he knew he was not required to smile back even if it had been.

  Wallace was listed on the organizational charts as her executive assistant, but he had no head for business whatsoever, nor could he type or file. He was not an attractive man, nor was he homely. He was just the type of bald little man who could disappear in a crowd, or go completely unnoticed in a meeting when Queene excused herself from the room. His dull eyes seemed to miss what was going on around him, but in truth, his eyes missed nothing and neither did his ears. He could and would mirror back to Queene every word, every whisper, every backroom deal, every rumor, gossip and backstabbing comment so prevalent in Queene’s world. Plus, the man did not register on any electronic sweeps like so many of the devices relied on by other corporate officers.

  She put a smile in her voice and spoke sweetly into the comm, “No, dear. The interruption is quite alright. I will be glad of the break, to get away from these dreary accounting figures. I can’t seem to make heads or tails of them anyway. Please try to remember that I do know Vittie and Willem. They are some of the most pleasant people I have met so far. And that is really saying something, because Ceres is filled with such wonderful people, as you yourself know. So, if either one cells again, please just put them through to me.” Queene continued, adding a conspiratorial tone to her voice, knowing full well that the rest of the office could hear her as clearly as if they were in her office. “As for Miss Whyte, well, we have all heard she can be a handful haven’t we, dear? I am sure she is delightful in her own special way, bless her heart. You just send her in and see if you can get someone to volunteer to bring us in refreshments when she gets here.”

  Queene let a genuine smile escape when she saw the comm light shut off. “Good,” she said to herself. “It is time to meet the heir apparent to Whyte Mining. Willem is a nice man. Maybe too nice to run such a successful business, small as it is.”

  She looked at Wallace and continued, “He is going to be easy to convince it is time to retire. See what you make of the daughter. We need to see where she stands. If we can take over Whyte and maybe even pick up the pieces of that wreck Synethco, we might be able to turn our gross profits around in half the time.”

  Wallace did not reply. That was fine with Queene because no reply was necessary. She only required him to respond when she asked him a specific question. Otherwise, he made a wonderful sounding board.

  Queen asked, “Have we found out about the ownership shares of Whyte?”

  Wallace nodded, “Yes, we have. Almost everyone in town thinks that when the founder of Whyte Mining old man Snowden Whyte went missing, he left all of his assets to his son. Willem Whyte had his father declared legally dead eighteen months after he went missing. This, as you know, is the longest time a human has been revived out of a medical stasis chamber. So, if the old man had an accident and had gotten to a stasis chamber, he would have been dead in eighteen months whether he had been found or not. No record in twenty years of Snowden Whyte’s ship or his signal beacon.”

  Queene said, “You said almost everyone thinks he left Whyte mining to his son. That is not the case?”

  Wallace answered, “No, Miss Queene. Data clearly indicates at the time of the daughter’s birth, the Whyte’s had ownership in a fifty-fifty split. At the time of Snowden’s death, he and Willem were joint owners. The old man’s will settled his half to his granddaughter upon his death.”

  Queene asked, “Ownership didn’t rely on Willem Whyte’s trusteeship and then revert to the daughter when she reached maturity?”

  Wallace shook his head, “No such requirement exists on Ceres. The daughter has been half owner of the Whyte Mining Company since she was a little over five years old. This is probably why Willem is unable to keep her from taking the Sedona, her mining ship, out on her own without any crew. It seems the Whytes are content to let some people think Willem is the sole owner. It is not a very closely guarded secret though.”

  “Well,” Queene said, “we knew the daughter would be a problem in one form or another. We do have a plan in place to deal with this contingency. This child will not hinder our plans to take over Whyte. From what I hear, her disappearance will be no loss to polite society anyway.”

  Chapter 3.1

  “Hey, Doc!” The voice shouted over the communication speaker rousing Doctor Martin Savage from a deep sleep. “Get up to the bridge, would you? We are coming up on the micro-jump.”

  Doc mashed the comm button and shouted back, “So what?! Daryl, you just press the big blue button and be done with it. You don’t need me to do that.” Still, Doc rolled out of his bunk, rubbed his eyes and looked around for his pants.

  Daryl replied. “Yeah, Doc. I know it sounds easy. I’d be happy to, but you set up the coordination so all three ships could jump together. We thought you might want to be up here.” Daryl lowered his tone a bit. “Besides, Joey is up here and you know he gets nervous about jumps.”

  Doc nodded, forgetting neither Daryl Graham nor his son Joey could see him. It did not matter if everyone on all three ships tried to explain to Joey that there were no ill affects to jumping a ship. The ship and all of its contents, people included, were in one place. Then, they were not; they were just somewhere else. This was their third micro-jump and Joey still got nervous.

  Normally Joey acted like a bit of a goof; pulling pranks and making bad jokes only he understood. Doc knew most young teenage boys acted silly occasionally since he had been one once. Joey made silliness a lifestyle and Daryl put up with it because he was just happy to have the boy with him. However, when Joey got nervous he began to whine like a runaway electric motor wound way too tight.

  Doc sighed. “Give me five minutes and I’ll be up there. I have to visit the facilities first. Have you commed the other ships?”

  Daryl replied, “Oh, yeah. Steadham and Oritz on the Nod have been on playing ‘Zombies in Space’ on the computer-link with Joey for an hour, though I don’t know how Steadham has stayed awake that long. And Jackson and Lee on the Blinkin are holding comms open for us.”

  Doc pulled on his pants and said, “Lee on comms or is it Jackson?”

  Daryl said, “Jackson is on now. Lee was complaining about the Blinkin’s galley freezer not keeping the ice cream cold enough. He went down to work on it while we got set up for the jump. Why? Does it matter?”

  “No,” Doc replied. “I am just checking.” Although, Doc would not admit it to anyone out loud, he was really getting tired of Allan Lee’s constant complaints. It was almost as irritating as Joey’s whining. Still, of the three ships, Doc preferred the crew he had with him on the Winkin.

  Harold Oritz, on the Nod, was a good man, honest and extremely trustworthy. Since getting into space he had become a hard worker. When they were earth-side, his constant allergy attacks and sneezing made him almost useless. Tyler Steadham, Harold’s comrade on the Nod, was a consistent, but not especially creative worker; that is when you could keep him awake.

  The Blinkin’s two man crew was Marlon Jackson and Allan Lee. They made for a good pair. Jackson was shy around people. Lee, from his grousing, did not appear to even like people. Doc imagined the two spent most of their time avoiding each other.

  Doc finally arrived on Winkin’s bridge. “Hi ho, people. I guess we are ready for another micro-jump. There is nothing unusual about this one, right Joey?” Doc smiled at the boy, trying to put him at ease. “No sweat if we do this by the book. It has taken us about three weeks to fly ourselves above the ecliptic of the solar system. Our grav-meter shows the only gravity we have to take into account is Sol’s and since we are doing a micro-jump from inside Sol’s gravity well to another point inside the same gravity well, we shouldn’t have any problems.”

  Lee’s voice came over the comm, “Let’s just get on with it, Doc. We�
�ve all heard this before.”

  Doc suppressed a sigh, “I know, Lee. But, it doesn’t hurt us to cover the basics from time to time. That is what keeps us sharp. Bear with us, okay?”

  When there was no reply, Doc continued. “As you know, on the solar clock face Sol is the hub and the line between the North Star and Sol always sets the line for high noon. We are now at about 3:30. Our plan is to micro-jump to about 9:45, but still above the elliptic. All three ships are going to micro-jump at almost the same time, with just a few seconds between us. This will allow all of us to exit jump within a few hundred kilometers of each other. Once we exit jump we will drop down into the belt and begin to put Harold’s expertise to work and pick us out some good asteroids to mine that will make us all rich enough to buy our own personal politicians.”

  Lee replied, “So let’s do it already. Or are you planning on flying all the way there and talking us to death?”

  Doc nodded, “Jump in thirty seconds. Joey, would you like to push the button?”

  Joey shuddered. “No. Are you trying to kill us all?”

  Doc said, “No, just making the offer, Joey. You can’t hurt a thing no matter what you do. No? Okay. Daryl?”

  Daryl replied, “Be happy to, Doc. Close your eyes, Joey. We are on our way.”

  Chapter 4.0

  Sno stepped into Mario’s Subs, Suds, Spuds and Grub Pub. She immediately sidestepped to the right and put her back to the wall. Mario kept the lights in his place dimmed by comparison to the overhead lighting in the street. The sideways step moved Sno out of the path of traffic while her eyes adjusted to the lumen shift.

  She grimaced. She had been coming into Mario’s for as long as she could remember and she felt as safe here as anywhere on Ceres. None-the-less, it still felt wrong to stand framed and backlit in a doorway. This time the move did not help.

  Before she could see beyond a few feet, a barrage of trash pelted her where she stood. Empty plastic cups, utensils and buttered dinner rolls sailed out of the dark, gently arcing across the room in the standard Ceres ten percent gravity. A wadded napkin got past her guard and slapped her across the face. It stuck briefly and slid very slowly down her chin.

  “Johnson,” Sno shouted. “As soon as I can see you, I am going to kick your scrawny butt all the way up Strawberry and back down.” Sno was pleased Johnson was at Mario’s. She was not exactly what Sno would call a friend, but Johnson had grown up on Ceres and was one of the few young women Sno’s age she could tolerate for a while.

  The woman’s voice floated out of the crowd. “How did you know I was here?”

  Sno snorted, finally spotting a small group of people, “You hit me with your used napkin and it stinks to high heaven of anchovies and oyster pizza. No one else on this rock can stomach that garbage.”

  Johnson replied, waving Sno over to an empty chair at her table. “If you don’t like it, you should learn to sometimes step left when you come in, not always to the right. Sit down. We saw the Sedona on the dock boards. Figured you would be here before now. There’s an empty squat box between Spanky and Norm.”

  “I would have been here earlier, but I had to drop by Queene Mines for a meet-n-greet, then I got to ream Ernie down at United Mech about some bad equipment.” Sno smiled at the memory.

  She had lit into Ernie from the get-go. He had taken the abuse like a trooper, letting her rant on and on until his earther co-workers had come into the office from the warehouse. Out of the sight of the others, Ernie had winked at Sno. He backed up and cringed into a corner letting Sno tower over him. It was no easy feat to tower over Ernie, since he was as tall as Sno and twice as broad. Ernie had relented on the autojacks and promised complete replacements delivered within the hour, plus a twenty percent store credit for her next purchase as a bonus to make up for her lost time. Sno stomped out of United feeling much better at having blown off steam.

  Johnson laughed. “Ernie already sent me the video. You didn’t see the faces of those lumpers he works with. They looked confused at first, but then they got the bejezzas scared out of them. Ernie says it should take ‘em down a notch. He has been complaining that they are getting a bit uppity with some of the miners. This might save ‘em from a beating in a dark alley some cold summer night.”

  Sno said, “Might or it might not. I might have done something just like that if I hadn’t started on Ernie before they got there. Freaking earthers passing off garbage like the crap they sold me. They ruined the profit on a whole trip. Hey, sounds like you have a direct connection to Ernie. I wasn’t there but fifteen minutes ago.”

  The short, heavy set girl at the end of the table spoke up, “Yeah, the two of them been making googly eyes at each other for a couple of weeks now. ‘Nuff to make a decent girl sick.”

  Sno said, “Well, Spanky, that keeps you safe. You haven’t been decent around men since Bob Touchette took you to watch the moon rise.”

  Spanky replied with a sigh, “I never did get to see the moon rise.”

  Johnson laughed, “Not what I hear. I hear you saw Bob’s moon rising and setting over his shoulder about six inches at a time.”

  Spanky snorted in her beer. “Six inches? Not likely. Ol’ Bob was nine or nothing. I was truly sorry to see him take that job on Io.”

  Sno said, “I hadn’t heard Bob left. Sorry to hear that.”

  Spanky shrugged, “Ain’t it the life of a miner’s daughter! I miss the man, nine inches and all. Hey, Johnson, do you want to timeshare Ernie? There ain’t that many single men left around here.”

  Norm spoke up for the first time, “Hey! What am I?”

  Johnson said, “You are my fourteen year old brother, so you don’t count. Be a good brother and go to the bar and get us all another round of beers or I will tell Mom you’ve been drinking again and sleeping with Spanky.”

  Norm looked shocked, “I never did no such thing. Well, yeah, I mean I drink, but I never touched Spanky. Eewww…the thought gives me the shivers. Nothing personal, Spanky…but eewww!”

  Spanky looked at Norm with mock horror, “Not personal? It does not get any more personal than horizontal docking maneuvers, junior. You go play stinky finger with someone your own age, then you come see me and I’ll show you what for.”

  Johnson pointed her finger at Spanky, “You do the boy, you fat fanny floozy, and I will erase your name off the men’s room walls every time you write it up there. Then no one will ever call you again.”

  Before she could reply Norm stood up and said. “That is enough fighting over me, ladies. I am saving myself for Sno; just as soon as she no longer scares me bad enough to make me pee my pants. Okay, four drafts coming up on my sister’s tab.”

  Sno said, “Come on. I am not that bad, am I?”

  Johnson and Spanky nodded in tandem.

  Johnson said, “Here, watch the vid from Ernie.” She set her data card on the table and tapped the edge. The reader fuzzed to life and a small holograph of United Mechanical’s front office appeared on the tabletop. The three watched until it ended with Sno storming out of the office and Ernie telling the others that they needed to be careful of angry miners because they could go crazy at any minute.

  Johnson and Spanky laughed through the whole vid. They laughed even harder at Sno’s horrified reaction. “That’s not right.” Sno said.

  “Not right?” Johnson said stifling a laugh. “That was mild. It was just a little Sno flurry, not even a Sno storm.”

  “Or a Sno blizzard,” Spanky chimed in.

  Sno shook her head, “That is not what I meant, you rock bound floozies. What I meant was, is my butt really that small and flat?”

  Johnson said, “Not touching that subject. I haven’t been slapped around all week and I plan on keeping it that way. Oh, change of subject, or rather back to the other one.”

  Sno asked, “What other one?”

  “Single men.” Johnson and Spanky said together.

  Johnson continued, “Have you seen the new guy around town? Prentiss Chalmer
s? Tall, wavy hair and a tight butt with pectorals chiseled from deck plating.”

  Spanky said, “Yep, Prints is a new ship captain over at General Division Mining.”

  “Prince? You mean like in royalty type?” Sno said.

  Johnson shook her head, “No. As in writing. Prints. Said that was what we should call him. Prints is short for Prentiss, I guess. Ex-Ranger from the word around town; rumor is he has made two long jumps out of the solar system. You know, those exploratory trips they have been doing looking for new habitable planets.”

  Spanky added, “He was in buying beers for some of the General Division warehouse lumpers a couple of days ago.”

  Johnson laughed, “Yeah, and ol’ Stinkybutt here leeched on to him like a…a...doggit, like a leech.”

  Spanky laughed and pointed at Johnson, “That was smooth metaphor. Is that the best you got, Miss Skankoid Johnson? Anyway, Prints didn’t mind. Real gentleman though. I got so drunk he could have humped me on the bar and I wouldn’t have minded.”

  Sno snorted, “Come on, Spanky, you wouldn’t have minded if you were stone cold sober.”

  “True enough, but even when I leaned the twins here right up against him,” Spanky pointed her fingers at her ample breasts, “the man still didn’t go for a cheap feel.”

  Johnson laughed, “Cheap or free, what’s the difference with you?”

  Spanky shrugged, “Not a thing. Howsomever, I’ve got time to work on the man. He said he came to AZ City looking for work a tad bit more stable than jumping around the galaxy. He said Earth Gov cut the Ranger’s budget in half and put a lot of them out of work. So, he should be around awhile. And you,” she pointed a finger at Sno, “keep away from him. Maybe he likes skinny redheads, but I need time to convince him that voluptuous brunettes are the key to his happiness.”

  Sno said, “He is all yours. I am not going to be in town any longer than it takes to get restocked and do some upgrades on Sedona’s apps and core. Then I’ve got a hot date with a cold rock. Now, where is that brother of yours, Johnson?” Her voice rose to a bellow. “I need a beer and I want it now.”