Fulcrum

by Doug Rickaway

  To Letho’s simultaneous horror and delight, the creature took a seat a few spaces to his right. Letho noticed that his own body was trembling. He had never seen a living thing so large. A sense of reverence and awe washed over him as he stared at the beast.

  They rode together in unbroken silence until the train pulled in to the next stop. An older gentleman took one step inside the shuttle, and his entire body flinched as he noticed the hulking slave bear. He retraced his steps and the door closed.

  Guess he’s taking the next one.

  Letho could bear the silence no longer. His curiosity was overwhelming his usually dominant sense of fear.

  “Hello,” Letho said. A moment of interminable silence passed.

  “Hello,” the creature finally replied, in a basso profundo that rumbled in Letho’s chest. The creature pursed its lips after its completion of this singular Eursan utterance.

  “What are you doing here?” Letho asked. There was another moment of silence, and Letho could sense the gears turning in the creature’s mind. He knew very little about the slave bears. How smart were they? Since the creature’s entire race was subservient to his own, significant intelligence seemed rather unlikely.

  The creature turned its head toward Letho for a moment, and Letho caught a glimpse of amber eyes glowing beneath the hood. It gave a single nod of its enormous head, and turned back to look straight ahead.

  “Maintenance.”

  “Maintenance, huh? What’s that like?”

  “It is work,” the Tarsi said after a pause.

  “Do you like it? I mean, is it hard work?”

  Letho felt a moment of embarrassment as he realized that he was speaking in the exaggerated manner of one addressing a child. The slave bear turned, and the light caught his visage just right. Letho could not bring himself to match the slave bear’s gaze, and immediately dropped his eyes, finding himself staring at the slave bear’s hands instead. He thought of the damage that the creature could do with those enormous hands. Or were they paws?

  Letho felt cold dread spreading throughout his core, and he stifled the urge to leap from his seat and start banging on the exit door. There were no records of slave bears attacking Eursans, but he supposed that there was a first time for everything. Then the creature laughed, and Letho felt the dread begin to fade.

  “Relax, Eursan, I mean you no harm.”

  “Yeah, I know. I wasn’t scared or anything.”

  The creature laughed again, and Letho heard himself issue a nervous chuckle.

  “To answer your question, the work is manageable. We quite enjoy maintaining the Centennial Fulcrum for your people.”

  Letho didn’t like the way the bear said your people. The timbre of his voice had darkened when he spoke the words.

  “Really? How did you get here? I mean, why are the slave bears here?”

  The slave bear snorted, but not unkindly. A smile spread across the creature’s face, softening its bestial appearance.

  “We belong to the Fulcrum station, just as you do.”

  “Oh, okay,” Letho said. The loudspeaker announced the approach of his stop.

  “Hey, this is where I get off.”

  “Indeed it is.”

  The shuttle came to a stop, and the doors hissed open.

  “Hey, uh, nice meeting you I guess.” Letho said.

  “Likewise,” the slave bear replied. “Take care of yourself, Letho Ferron. There are ill portents on the horizon.”

  Letho almost fainted when he heard his own name come from the slave bear’s mouth. He turned back to ask the slave bear how it knew his name, but the doors were already closing. The slave bear raised one hand and nodded at Letho as the shuttle pulled away.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  The door to Letho’s domicile slid open with a familiar hiss as soon as his uCom implant came within range of the proximity sensor. He emptied the contents of his pockets onto a table built into the wall near the entrance to his apartment, adding to the pile of discarded pocket-flotsam that adorned it. He made a mental note to clean up the mess—later, of course.

  Letho was too lazy to be neat, his threshold for filth and disorganization just high enough that it overrode his desire for things to be in their right place. The place was only clean when he was expecting company, and that was a rare occurrence. He was stuck in a rut, a self-perpetuating cycle, sniffing previously worn jumpsuits to see if they were wearable, and only washing dishes when the pile in the sink threatened to come crashing to the floor.

  He went to his pantry and took out some dehydrated meal packs, gathering mismatched items in an attempt to cobble together a respectable meal. He placed his bounty in the hydrator and keyed in the settings on the touch screen.

  Letho couldn’t stop thinking about the slave bear encounter. What a magnificent creature! He recalled the sheen of the slave bear’s coarse green-brown fur, the odd juxtaposition of a bear-snout filled with those perfectly square, pearl-white teeth. He remembered the eyes: glimmering gold rings that shone from under the creature’s hood. When he had looked into the bear’s eyes, all doubts about the creature’s intelligence had vanished.

  And how had the slave bear known his name?

  That’s going to keep me up tonight, he thought.

  The hydrator chimed, and he removed the steaming plate of mashed potatoes, soy bacon, and a chocolate cookie.

  “Just like Mom used to make!” he said to the hydrator.

  He thought of the parents he’d never known. Parents that had died when he was very young—in some laboratory accident, made sinister by how little anyone knew about the particular circumstances.

  Letho ran through possible scenarios in his mind as he fell upon his couch. It was possible that the slave bears had an access terminal somewhere deep within the bowels of the Fulcrum station, where they could pull up personnel files or bring up security camera feeds. That seemed plausible enough. But why on Eursus would the slave bear have targeted him out of thousands of Fulcrum citizens? And what had it meant when it said there were ill portents on the horizon? The concept of danger was foreign to Letho, as was the tinge of fear in the pit of his belly.

  Life on the Fulcrum station was uneventful: there were no murders, petty crimes were few and far between, and all the heavy lifting was done by the slave bears, all but eliminating industrial accidents. Even that guy that had fallen off the loading platform and onto the shuttle tracks had lived to see another day.

  A cold, electric shiver ran down his spine. He shook it off, and took it for a signal from his body that it was time to urinate. He did so, then headed toward his sleep capsule. The faint white glimmer of the display that hovered over the sleek lid drew his eyes.

  10:00 p.m. Eursus time, it proclaimed.

  As he was about to press the open button on the capsule, the readout changed:

  Hey bruin, drinks at the Grind? – Deacon

  Deacon. Of course he would message right when I’m about to turn in for the evening, Letho thought.

  Letho felt a slight tingle in his index finger, signaling an incoming message. It was a duplicate of the electrotext that had just appeared on the sleep capsule’s readout screen.

  “Jimmy,” he said, and a familiar green smiling face appeared.

  “Map: Grind Bar,” Letho said.

  An overhead view of the Grind Bar appeared before Letho’s eyes. With subtle alterations of his hands he manipulated the view, zooming in on Deacon.

  And there he was in all his splendor: clothes well-pressed, jaw-length brown hair coiffed around his boyish face in a way that bespoke hygiene as well as a devil-may-care attitude. At the tip of his chin was an angular goatee that brought the jut of his jawline to a point. His eyes were a flecked grayish-blue streaked with brown, and could go from mirthful to penetrating at will. A disarming smile was spread across his face, and it seemed that the effect wasn’t lost on the brunette sitting next to him.

  Letho’s heart sank when he realized that the brunette was h
is Sila.

  As if on cue, Deacon turned his face to Letho’s, and their eyes met—but really didn’t—and Deacon winked.

  Sila’s laughter was a musical lilt that made Letho’s face go red and set his insides aflutter.

  Of course it would be her, Letho thought.

  Get over here, you lump. The pickings are good. Even you might score tonight, muttface, said Deacon’s electrotext.

  Letho didn’t feel like making the trek, even though most of the travel would be handled by sleek machines that ran up, down, and all around the Fulcrum station. He didn’t want to hear insipid music full of angular distortion and table-rattling bleeps and bloops. He didn’t really want to drink anything either, as he was still feeling a slight amount of depression from his previous hangover. But, as much as he hated to admit it, his friend’s boyish grin had a certain effect on him.

  Besides, Sila was there.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  In the shuttle again today, must be my lucky day.

  The shuttle came to a gradual halt, and Letho headed for the sliding doors. Around him, noise clattered and clanged off the white-tiled walls of the substation. He trundled up a flight a stairs and entered Central Station, directly beneath the Ministry of Civil Services Building.

  Central station was a massive open space just beneath the city streets above. It teemed with life and sound, filled with people heading toward the Envirodome sectors that provided the only respite from the dim enclosures they slept in. The walls were coated in a gold-colored alloy, interspersed with lustrous wooden inlays that somehow withstood the many hands that touched them. Up above, a spherical clock that once told passersby the time on planet Eursus attempted to gleam through years of tarnish. Though no longer functional, it was still beautiful, a golden orb that melded with the top of a floor-standing sculpture—of a tree shading a man and bear who stood together.

  Surely on a blasted space station someone can figure out how to fix a clock.

  To Letho’s left was the concourse that led to the slums. As he mounted the stairs that led to the entertainment sector he shoved protective hands into his pockets, a vestigial response, for no one carried anything of value in their pockets anymore. The lights on the “poor side” were flickering, the stairs closest to the exit littered with dirt and waste.

  How could it be that dirty? he thought.

  If ever there was a motivator that kept Letho from giving up his job, it was what waited at the end of that filthy stairway.

  Hurrying past the entrance to the slums, Letho exited Central Station. Above him stood a massive pyramid. It was one of the largest buildings in the Envirodome, standing roughly thirty stories high. It loomed over all the others with an enormous square base that stair-stepped upward, each level smaller than the former. Atop the pyramid sat a smaller but no less impressive building, this one made of pure white marble. A sloped roof replete with relief carvings appeared to be supported by thick columns that wrapped around the perimeter of the building.

  In the center of the building was a bronze clock, and just below it, carved in enormous characters, it read:

  CENTENNIAL FULCRUM MINISTRY OF CIVIL SERVICES

  The Civil Services Building hosted the station inspectors, the police force that protected and served the population of the Fulcrum station. The public court that handled civil disputes was also part of the Civil Services complex.

  Letho began to make his way to the entertainment sector, where garish ribbons of neon lit up the false night sky and throbbing music accosted his body and ears as he drew closer.

  In front of him stood several blocks of restaurants, night clubs and casinos, all laid out in perfect grids. Fulcrum citizens capered and careened, strode and meandered. Some of them appeared drunk already, even though it was still early in the evening. Others were heading to dinner or meeting up with friends to discuss the insignificant details of their days.

  Many of them were decked out in their best attire while Letho still wore his jumpsuit. The colors of their clothes ranged from subtle earth hues to bright primary colors and pastels; the fabric textures from leather to plastic.

  Clothes, other than the jumpsuits that were given out freely to Fulcrum citizens, were fairly expensive, and Letho had never seen the point of it. He chose to spend his credits elsewhere, usually on video or audio entertainment products.

  The Grind Bar was in sight now and he quickened his pace. He just wanted to get the evening over with so he could go back home. He cast a final gaze across the way to the low-income sector, where he saw children in stained jumpsuits, fingers threaded in the chain link fence, wide eyes reflecting neon lights.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  As Letho trundled toward the entrance of the club, a scowling man out front gave him a surly once-over and motioned for him to come through. Letho moved to enter, and the large, hairy man placed a paw on Letho’s chest, stopping him in his place. A green light flashed above him, and a disembodied voice proclaimed that his credits had been accepted, then encouraged him to be well and perhaps try a Hoary Bear Brew while he was there.

  “Have fun, Mr. Ferron,” the bouncer said, not even looking up from his pedestal. The tone of the bouncer’s voice indicated that he didn’t particularly care whether Letho danced a jig or got sucked out of an airlock.

  The thudding boom of low frequencies assaulted Letho’s ears as soon as he entered. The walls were adorned with massive gears that turned in step with the throb of the music. Enormous false pistons pumped up in down in sensuous rhythm, the sheen of oiled metal reflecting light from garish neon ribbons that spelled out hideous catchphrases like “Score!” and “Bottoms UP!”

  Letho became self-conscious the moment he stepped onto the faux-wood dance floor that was the club’s central feature. Surrounded by beautiful people executing complex but appealing gyrations, he was all too aware of his own mass and lack of grace.

  A beautiful person in neon and lace met his eyes, and Letho smiled. She turned her back to him in a smooth twist that she skillfully incorporated into her dance routine. As he made his way toward the bar he realized he wasn’t sure if the person had been male or female.

  Letho shouldered his way through tight-packed clusters of people who seemed incapable of tearing their faces from their uComs. Even those that weren’t staring at the little glowing screens paid him no mind until he gently placed his hands on their shoulders. A young man that was a full head taller than Letho snorted and stepped aside, a look of derision on his face as he gestured for Letho to pass.

  “Thanks,” Letho said.

  “Whatever,” the man said, then went back to laughing with the gaggle of goons that surrounded him.

  Knuckle-dragging slow-brows, he thought.

  He lost himself in a brief fantasy of grabbing one of the plastone mugs and cracking it across the pack-leader’s melon-shaped head. He was drawn from his lurid daydream by Deacon’s call.

  With a grin he shouldered through the remaining clusters of people to greet his old friend.

  “Letho. How goes it, friend?” Deacon met Letho with a welcoming smile.

  Letho was about to unload the typical response to the question: Work sucks. It’s so boring. Then he saw Sila looking at him with wide, expectant eyes. His tongue became two sizes too large and his brain locked up.

  “It’s good, uh, Deacon. I wrote an article on a triplet set born on the Radiant Fulcrum. My boss said it was really good,” Letho stammered.

  “That’s really stellar, Letho!” said Sila.

  The awkward silence that descended upon them indicated otherwise. Deacon began to chew at his fingernails, an unpleasant habit that Letho had scolded him for more than once. It was the only blight on Deacon’s immaculate presentation, and a disgusting one.

  At least he isn’t entirely perfect.

  The trio committed themselves to meaningless conversation. None of them had anything terribly interesting to say, though Deacon’s stories tended to be more palatable than the others’. Af
ter all, he did get to leave the Fulcrum station from time to time, though most of his duties were fairly routine: deliver three pallets of work uniforms to Trinity Fulcrum, pick up replacement parts for the slave bears to repair the leaky valve on underdeck seven—repeat ad nauseam.

  After a time Letho noticed that Sila was lost in her uCom, and his heart sank.

  “Hey guys, it’s been really fun, but I have to turn in early, busy day at work tomorrow,” she said.

  “Hey, are you sure? The night is young!” Deacon said, extending his hands toward her. The thousand-credit smile appeared, and Letho’s heart plunged yet again as he saw how dazzled she was by it.

  Another strikeout.

  “Hey, I forgot to tell you, I met a slave bear today!” Letho blurted.

  Sila closed the glowing uCom window, and for the very first time Letho felt that she was truly looking at him, an intrigued smile spreading across her face.

  “Really? Where?” she asked.

  Letho almost fainted from the warm shock that flooded his body.

  Deacon let a flatulent sound fly from his mouth. “I see those things all the time.”

  To Letho’s surprise, Sila didn’t take her eyes from his.

  “It was on the commuter shuttle this afternoon. It was the strangest thing; there was no one else on the shuttle. He sat right next to me. He even talked to me!”

  Both Deacon and Sila’s eyebrows rose into high arcs.

  “He talked to you?” Deacon asked. “Slave bears go out of their way to avoid us when we’re on the loading decks.”

  “What did he say, Letho?”

  “Not much. I asked him what it was like in the underneath. He said it’s not bad, that the work isn’t that hard.”