I had to bite my tongue when he said that. We were pals, but racism isn’t an endearing trait. Sure, Superiors can be weird—their eyes, for starters, which was why some people called them by that name—but if you also use words like nigger, slant, kike or spic to describe people, then you’re no friend of mine.
On the other hand, when you’re hungry for work, you’ll put up with just about anything.
Schumacher read the expression on my face. “It’s not just that,” he said hastily. “I understand the first officer is okay.” For a google, that is, although he didn’t say it aloud. “It’s McKinnon himself. People have jumped ship, faked illness, torn up their union cards… anything to get off the Comet.”
“That bad?”
“That bad.” He took a long hit off the flask, gasped, and passed it back across the desk to me. “Oh, the pay’s okay… minimum wage, but by Association standards that’s better than union scale… and the Comet passes all the safety requirements, or at least so at inspection time. But McKinnon’s running a tank short of a full load, if y’know what I mean.”
I didn’t drink from the flask. “Naw, man, I don’t know what you mean. What’s with this… what did you call him?”
“Captain Future. That’s what he calls himself, Christ knows why.” He grinned. “Not only that, but he also calls his AI ‘The Brain’…”
I laughed out loud. “The Brain? Like, what? He’s got a brain floating in a jar? I don’t get it….”
“I dunno. It’s a fetish of some kind.” He shook his head. “Anyway, everyone who’s worked for him says that he thinks he’s some kinda space hero, and he expects everyone to go along with the idea. And he’s supposed to be real tough on people… you might think he was a perfectionist, if he wasn’t such a slob himself.”
I had worked for both kinds before, along with a few weirdos. They didn’t bother me, so long as the money was right and they minded their own business. “Ever met him?”
Schumacher held out his hand; I passed the flask back to him and he took another swig. Must be the life, sitting on your ass all day, getting drunk and deciding people’s futures. I envied him so much, I hoped someone would kindly cut my throat if I was ever in his position.
“Nope,” he said. “Not once. He spends all his time on the Comet, even when he’s back here. Hardly ever leaves the ship, from what I’ve been told… and that’s another thing. Guys who’ve worked for him say that he expects his crew to do everything but wipe his butt after he visits the head. Nobody gets a break on his ship, except maybe his first officer.”
“What about him?”
“Her. Nice girl, name of…” He thought hard for a moment, then snapped his fingers. “Jeri. Jeri Lee-Bose, that’s it.” He smiled. “I met her once, not long before she went to work on the Comet. She’s sweet, for a google.”
He winked and dropped his voice a bit. “I hear she’s got a thing for us apes,” he murmured. “In fact, I’ve been told she’s bunking with her captain. If half of what I’ve heard about McKinnon is true, that must make him twice as sick as I’ve heard.”
I didn’t reply. Schumacher dropped his feet and leaned across the desk, lacing his fingers together as he looked straight at me. “Look, Rohr,” he said, as deadly serious as if he were discussing my wanting to marry his sister, “I know you’re working under a time limit and how much the Jove Commerce job means to you. But I gotta tell you, the only reason why Captain Future would even consider taking aboard a short-timer is because nobody else will work for him. He’s just as desperate as you are, but I don’t give a shit about him. If you wanna turn it down, I won’t add it to your card and I’ll save your place in line. It’ll just be between you and me. Okay?”
“And if I turn it down?”
He waved his hand back and forth. “Like I said, I can try to find you another gig. The Nickel Queen’s due home in another six weeks or so. I’ve got some pull with her captain, so maybe I can get you a job there… but honest to Jesus, I can’t promise anything. The Queen’s a good ship and everyone I know wants to work for her, just as much as nobody wants to get within a klick of the Comet.”
“So what do you suggest I do?”
Schumacher just smiled and said nothing. As my union rep, he was legally forbidden against making any decisions for me; as a pal, he had done his best to warn me about the risks. From both points of view, though, he knew I didn’t have any real choice. I could spend three months aboard a ship run by a borderline psycho, or the rest of my life jacking off on the Moon.
I thought about it for a few moments, then I asked for the contract.
The three Futuremen who were Curt Newton’s faithful, lifelong comrades made a striking contrast to their tall, red-haired young leader.
One-sixth gravity disappeared as I crawled through the carousel hatch and entered the bridge.
The Comet’s command center was located in the non-rotating forward deck of the crew module. The bridge was the largest single compartment in the ship, but even in freefall it was cramped: chairs, consoles, screens, emergency suit lockers, the central navigation table with its holo tank and, at the center of the low ceiling, the hemispherical bulge of the observation blister.
The ceiling lamps were turned down low when I came in—The Brain was mimicking Earth-time night—but I could see Jeri seated at her duty station on the far end of the circular deck. She looked around when she heard the hatch open.
“Morning,” she said, smiling at me. “Hey, is that coffee?”
“Something like it,” I muttered. She gazed enviously at the squeezebulb in my hand. “Sorry I didn’t bring you any,” I added, “but the Captain…”
“Right. I heard Bo yell at you.” She feigned a pout which didn’t last very long. “That’s okay. I can get some later after we make the burn.”
Jeri Lee-Bose: six-foot-two, which is short for a Superior, with the oversized dark blue eyes that give bioengineered spacers their unsavory nickname. Thin and flat-chested to the point of emaciation, the fingers of her ambidextrous hands were long and slender, her thumbs almost extending to the tips of her index fingers. Her ash-blond hair was shaved nearly to the skull, except for the long braid that extended from the nape of her neck nearly down to the base of her narrow spine, where her double-jointed legs began.
The pale skin of her face was marked with finely etched tattoos around her eyes, nose, and mouth, forming the wings of a monarch butterfly. She had been given these when she had turned five, and since Superiors customarily add another tattoo on their birthdays and Jeri Lee was twenty-five, pictograms covered most of her arms and her shoulders, constellations and dragons which weaved their way under and around the tank-top she wore. I had no idea of what else lay beneath her clothes, but I imagined that she was well on her way to becoming a living painting.
Jeri was strange, even for a Superior. For one thing, her kind usually segregate themselves from Primaries, as they politely call us baseline humans (or apes, when we’re not around). They tend to remain within their family-based clans, operating independent satrapies that deal with the TBSA and the major space companies only out of economic necessity, so it’s rare to find a lone Superior working on a vessel owned by a Primary.
For another thing, although I’ve been around Superiors most of my life and they don’t give me the creeps like they do most groundhogs and even many spacers, I’ve never appreciated the aloof condescension the majority of them display around unenhanced humans. Give one of them a few minutes, and they’ll bend your ear about the Superior philosophy of extropic evolution and all that jive. Yet Jeri was the refreshing, and even oddball, exception to the rule. She had a sweet disposition, and from the moment I had come aboard the Comet, she had accepted me both as an equal and as a new-found friend. No stuffiness, no harangues about celibacy or the unspirituality of eating meat or using profanity; she was a fellow crewmate, and that was that.