Cosmic Tales - Adventures in Sol System

by T. K. F. Weisskopf

  Elaine snorted. Who did this jerk think he was, trying to soften her into increasing the Pieds Nus allotment with cheap flattery and hints that he might share his collection of rare early music?

  Dear Orlin Okusa, you have an unmathematical mind and flattery will get you nowhere. Obviously . . .

  It probably wasn't a good idea to insult ComCen clients, no matter how idiotic they were. Besides, this guy wasn't nearly as obnoxious as that last jerk from Islamic Renaissance; if she could be polite to all the other idiots, she could certainly be polite to this one.

  Dear Orlin Okusa, I am afraid you have misinterpreted the ComCen regulations. The total amount of broadcast time allocated to each asteroid colony is the maximum of minimum life-support time and population-based calculated time, not the sum! You have a very unstructured way of expressing yourself. Please do not . . .

  Sighing, Elaine crossed out the last sentence and a half. Not only was it rude to comment on his two-streams-of-consciousness writing style, it wasn't necessary. It wasn't like they'd be corresponding again. Yours sincerely, Elaine Byelski, Coms Spec 4. P.S. Do you really have a Rolling Stones audio cube?

  She tapped "Transmit" and then bit her lip. It had been most unprofessional to ask about his music collection. Unnecessary, too. Still, what harm could it do?

  * * *

  She learned the answer to that as soon as she signed on-shift. Her pod was already vacant, which was no great surprise; Jana usually cut out a few minutes early if she thought she could get away with it. For that matter, she was just a couple of minutes late, having slept so deeply that the first and second alarm buzzes had barely registered through the dream that she could no longer remember.

  But all the pods surrounding hers were vacant as well, and her usual neighbors were clustered around Aksia complaining vociferously. And there was a low rhythmic beat thrumming through the tube that made Elaine feel happier, more awake and alive, than she'd been in a long time.

  As she made her way down the tube to her pod the thrumming grew louder and clearer, until it resolved itself into a repeated four-chord motif.

  Coming from her com board.

  "For pity's sake, make it stop!" Dom detached himself from the group around Aksia and slid into the pod beside Elaine's.

  "How? I didn't start it," Elaine pointed out virtuously. "I just got here!" Besides, she hadn't heard a Stones audio in, oh, a long time; Ceres Central Programming didn't do much early music.

  "It started itself," Dom said, "exactly when you should have been on shift."

  "One minute and fourteen seconds ago? Poor you." Elaine brought up the list of her emails and nodded once, sharply.

  "Do you know how to make it stop?"

  "Mm-hmm. At least, I can figure out how it was done. Bound to happen sooner or later, really." Elaine was stalling because she didn't really want to turn off the music yet. "He's figured out how to trigger an action macro from within an unopened message. Very clever. But somebody'd better get onto Programming Central and tell them to fix that hole in their security before somebody more obnoxious works out the same trick."

  "Who cares? And for that matter," Dom whined, "I don't care if that guy can get satisfaction or not."

  "Can't get no," Elaine corrected absently. She turned off the music and routed the message to her personal address. She could play it through in her own quarters, after shift, as many times as she liked. It was sort of like somebody sending flowers, she thought, only nicer.

  "Thank goodness! I can't think with that noise going on."

  "Um-hmm. It's not thinking music," Elaine conceded, moving slightly in her pod to the remembered beat. "Be good for a party, though. Maybe I'll save it to play on Unity in Diversity Day."

  "Are you out of your mind? We need something everyone likes for that. Bryce suggested a nice Vronsolo tape."

  "Bryce was here? And I missed seeing him?" Elaine pounded her head against the flexible walls of the pod.

  "You should have been on time," Dom said smugly. "Anyway, what do you think about using Vronsolo for background music on UDD?"

  "Who?"

  "Honestly, Elaine, don't you keep up with anything? He sets inspirational and motivating quotations to music. Not tunes or anything vulgar. Nice tinkling bells and wind chimes and he intones the words very reverently. Like, 'Walk with a hope in your heart and you will never be alone,' " Dom chanted with a slight rise and fall in his voice. "That's one of his most popular pieces."

  "What comes after that?"

  "That's it." Dom looked blank. "With, like I said, nice music in the background. But he did lots more. His top piece right now is, 'Oh, Great Spirit who dwells in the sky, lead us to the path of peace and understanding.' That's Native American wisdom, you know."

  "Do you suppose the Native Americans were thinking of Ceres when they looked up into the sky?" Elaine finished scrolling through the new memos and slipped the general com channels plug into her ear. "Lovely, Dom, but now I've got to lead a bunch of VolksAlliance bullies to the path of peace and understanding." Maybe she could play Vronsolo tapes at them until they begged for mercy.

  Dear Orlin, thank you very much for the Stones audio, but please don't send anything that broadcasts from my work station again. It was a clever way to draw our attention to the security breach in our programming but I'm afraid it rather upset some of my colleagues who don't appreciate the classics. They got really upset when I suggested it as theme music for Unity in Diversity Day. Would you believe . . .

  Well, Vronsolo couldn't be that bad if Bryce liked him. Elaine had downloaded some of his audios after work and listened to them for—well, as long as she could stand it—and it was, umm, certainly peaceful. She didn't want to say boring, which was the only other word she could think of. Okay, scrap that last sentence and start over.

  Anyway, somebody else is working on the theme music, so all I have to do now is decorations. I don't suppose you have any creative ideas on that subject?

  Better make the signature formal, just so he wouldn't think there was anything personal beyond mere politeness in her reply.

  Sincerely yours, Elaine Byelski, Coms Spec 4, Communications Central, Ceres Base.

  P.S. I notice your picture isn't in the Pieds Nus directory.

  Not that it mattered, but it would have been interesting to know what this Orlin Okusa looked like. Probably nothing special. Certainly nothing special compared with Bryce. Elaine called up his employee picture on the desk console and sighed. What a pity she'd missed his visit to ComCen earlier. Oh well. If he was doing the music for UDD and she was doing the decorations, they really ought to get together and discuss their plans some time, shouldn't they? But it was a long time until UDD. She'd have to think up some excuse to go down to Life Support before then.

  When the next shift started, Elaine discovered that Orlin had created the excuse for her.

  She could hear Aksia's violent sneezing even before she got into the ComCen office tube; it echoed off the gray corridors like splashes of paint in bright primaries.

  "Ged thad thig out of here!" Aksia demanded as soon as she saw Elaine.

  "Huh?"

  "Thad thig." Aksia blew her nose and pointed at Elaine's pod, which was almost filled with a profusion of colors—green sparked with pink and orange and red.

  When Elaine got close enough to see over the distorting translucent softwalls, the blurs of color resolved into flowers almost covering the leafy top of a small potted . . . tree? Bush? She pinched one of the flowers curiously; it was soft under her hand, and when she let go the petal showed a thumb-and-finger-shaped bruise. "I'm sorry," she said.

  "So you should be," Dom said. "Didn't you know about Aksia's allergies?"

  "Not until now, and anyway I didn't fill up my own pod with potted plants," Elaine pointed out. "I wonder who . . . Oh, no, I don't." This was Orlin's answer to office decorations for UDD, wasn't it? It must have cost him a small fortune to have it shipped to Ceres by fastmail. "Who delivered it, anyway, and
why did Aksia let them install it?"

  "Came just before shift change, and she wasn't here to stop the delivery," Dom told her.

  "And I suppose Jana had left early, as usual, so my pod was the only empty place to put it," Elaine sighed.

  "It'll have to go."

  "I know. I'm just trying to figure out how to fit it into my personal tube." Maybe if she put the bed under the desk, after all she didn't use them both at the same time, no, that wouldn't work.

  "Can't," Dom told her. "No plants on station outside of Life Support. Regulations. You should know that—well, it's obvious really, isn't it? We can't have uncontrolled life forms with who-knows-what microorganisms attached to them growing just anywhere in a closed environment."

  Elaine sighed and agreed it was obvious, and -wondered why whoever delivered the tree hadn't known about this rule and taken it directly to Life Support in the first place. "I'll take it down now," she said. "Dom, you'll have to cover my calls until I get back."

  "It's too heavy for you. Better let me take it," Dom volunteered with a fine air of chivalry, "and you cover my calls."

  Elaine gave him a dirty look. "No, thanks. My tree, my excuse to go to Life Support. Besides, he's straight, it wouldn't do you any good."

  "A man can dream, can't he?"

  "Why would anybody send a tree to Ceres?" Bryce was looking at the tree rather than at Elaine. Well, it was more colorful. She made a mental note to add to her personal list:

  Buy brighter clothes. Anyway a scarf or something. Didn't birds flash bright plumage to attract their mates?

  "I asked for ideas on decorating the office for Unity in Diversity Day," Elaine explained. "I think this was his idea of an answer."

  "Doesn't he know we don't allow any plants on the station outside of Life Support?"

  "I don't think so. He's from one of the smaller asteroid colonies. Well, not a small asteroid, they claimed a fairly good-sized one and hollowed out most of it, but the population is relatively small." Elaine had looked up some data on Pieds Nus while she was off-shift, and it seemed to be an extremely strange place indeed, with botanical life forms actively encouraged all over the place and a population per cubic meter that was so low she'd thought at first the computer had misplaced a decimal point . . . and this conversation was not working out the way it was supposed to, Bryce studying the flowering tree and her babbling about Orlin Okusa. Talk to a man about himself, Bethy had advised, and you'll always get his full attention. "I hear you're programming the music for Unity in Diversity Day."

  Bethy was right; Bryce beamed at her. "Yes, I'm putting my entire collection of Vronsolo audios on a repeating loop. It's such soothing and inspirational music, I hope station management agrees to keep it on continuous broadcast after the day. Just imagine how it would be to work in an environment where you kept hearing words of ancient wisdom like, 'Every sorrow is an opportunity to heal yourself,' repeated until they sank into your heart."

  "I can feel my heart sinking already," said Elaine, and then, "I mean . . . it sounds peaceful. Very, very . . . umm . . . peaceful." So they didn't like the same kind of music, so what? Lots of couples didn't have exactly the same tastes. "Maybe if I heard more of Vronsolo's work I'd understand it better." This is your cue to invite me down to your personal tube after shift.

  Bryce apparently couldn't hear the cue. "It's not something you explain. You just have to feel the vibes. Maybe you're not sensitive to them." Bryce was looking at the damn tree again. "Well, I'd better take care of this."

  "I hope you can find a nice place for it in the Life Support gardens."

  "Huh? No, we'll shred it for compost. Grass is actually much more efficient than trees for recycling carbon dioxide, you know. And Chlorella pyrenoidosa is even better. Not to mention that we can process it into food when its efficiency drops off. It makes very good simulated protein."

  "Have you tried the algysteaks in the cafeteria?" Obviously not, or you wouldn't be praising the simprotein like that. But I'd be more than happy to take you up to sample them after shift.

  "Yes, that's an excellent example of energy- and space-efficient recycling. Well, see you later."

  Oh, well. On the way back to ComCen, Elaine crossed Meet Bryce off her list. Date Bryce, Fall in love, and Get married were obviously going to take a little more effort.

  Dear Elaine Byelski Coms Spec 4, what did you think of my suggestion for Unity in Diversity Day decorations? If you like the tree, our bio labs can clone as many as you want. They've developed an accelerated growth gene, so the trees can easily be ready by the time you need them.

  Since you were interested in what I look like, I've attached a picture. I'm afraid I'm not nearly as pretty as you, but everybody says I have a really nice personality. If you have any vacation coming up, would you like to come to Pieds Nus? I'd love to show you around our habitat, and it would give us a chance to get better acquainted.

  Love, Orlin Okusa.

  Dear Orlin, the tree was beautiful, but I'm afraid we aren't allowed to have plants on the station outside of Life Support, especially flowering plants. Too many of the staff have allergies. I'll just have to think of something else for the UDD decorations. As you say, there's plenty of time. Please don't send anything else to my work station! I'm in enough trouble over the music audio and the tree already.

  Sincerely yours, Elaine Byelski, Coms Spec 4, Communications Central, Ceres Base.

  He was right, "pretty" wasn't the word. The attached picture showed a young man with a strong, dark-skinned face with sharp cheekbones and a surprisingly engaging smile. Not her type, of course, and nobody would look twice at him with someone like Bryce around, but he wasn't bad-looking. She would guess a mixture of West African and Native American blood, except it was against Federation guidelines for non-prejudicial thought to speculate on somebody's ethnic heritage. There was enough of that going on between the VolksAlliance and the Candomble Negre and all the other ethnic-enclave asteroids to put anybody off the idea, anyway.

  And he was nice, and thoughtful, but definitely pushy. "Love, Orlin," indeed!

  P.S. I don't expect to have any vacation time in the near future.

  Dear Elaine Byelski Coms Spec 4 Communications Central Ceres Base, it's too bad you don't have any vacation coming up. I guess we'll just have to come up with some other way for you to get to Pieds Nus. I know you'll love it here.

  Love, Orlin.

  * * *

  "The guy can't take a hint," she complained to Bethy. "Maybe I should tell him I expect to be washing my hair every free shift for the next year."

  "If he doesn't take hints, what makes you think he'd take that one? He'd probably just send you a package of flavored shampoo." Bethy studied the picture which Elaine had printed out along with the latest letters. "Besides, why do you want to hint him off? He looks okay to me."

  "I'm already making progress on my master list," Elaine said. "See?" She brought up her personal list and waved the screen under Bethy's nose. Meet Bryce was crossed off.

  "Not that much progress," Bethy sniffed. "I had a date with Henrik the first off-shift we were both free." She regarded Elaine with an older sister's critical eye. "I should take you shopping, get your hair done, get you fixed up to catch Bryce's eye. If you're determined to have him."

  "That's on my list too," Elaine said. "See?"

  Buy brighter clothes. Anyway a scarf or something.

  "I don't think a scarf is going to quite do it," Bethy said, "and bright colors are all wrong for you anyway."

  Elaine didn't feel like getting into one of Bethy's detailed what's-wrong-with-you-and-how-to-fix-it sessions. "Why do you suppose this Orlin Okusa writes so oddly? I mean, first he addresses me as Dear Elaine, then it's Dear Elaine Byelski Coms Spec 4, then Dear Elaine Byelski Coms Spec 4 Communications Central Ceres Base."

  "You're definitely more the pastels type, with that brownish-blond hair and soft coloring," Bethy mused. "You couldn't possibly wear my iridescent peacock eye shadow, f
or instance."

  Elaine didn't think any living being ought to wear Bethy's iridescent peacock eye shadow. "I'm beginning to think he's making fun of me. For being too formal or something."

  "On the whole, I'd say you're a Muted Warms color type."

  "Do you think I am?"

  "Oh, definitely."

  "What, I'm too formal?"

  "No, silly, you're a Muted Warm Shades color type."

  Elaine had barely logged in for her next shift at ComCen before Aksia logged her out. "Did you hear about the disaster on SprOUTs?"

  "What, the gay vegetarians?"

  "The same-sex-preference non-carnivorous colony," Aksia corrected. "I wish you would follow the Non-Discriminatory Speech Guidelines, Elaine."

  "So what's happened on SprOUTs? Oversupply of methane from eating all those beans?" Dom -snickered.