“Is the drillship check almost complete?” Izar asked him.
“Almost, boss,” Zaurak replied.
Izar laughed at the word that formed a running joke between them.
Six years ago, when he’d been Deneb’s age, Izar had begun as a lowly but spirited assistant engineer at Ocean Dominion. (Antares had been willing to give Izar any role he wished, but, unlike Saiph, who’d decided he wanted to start off in senior management, Izar had wanted to start at the very bottom—that way, he would earn each of the promotions he aimed to get.) On Izar’s very first day, Zaurak had hobbled over to him and pumped his hand. His black eyes had glinted like he knew him—like he was greeting a long-lost nephew, not a young, replaceable worker. Izar had had the strange sense that Zaurak had been waiting years for him to arrive.
Like the other assistant engineers at the company, Izar had kept his hands perpetually in machine parts, grime blackening his nails, grease smearing his elbows. Within a year, however, in addition to performing his ordinary workload with extraordinary quality, he’d also managed to invent an ultra-lightweight fishnet. The net had doubled Ocean Dominion’s catch of schools of small fish, and Zaurak had promoted Izar to the role of Engineer.
Soon after, Izar had informed Zaurak that he wished to widen Ocean Dominion’s focus from fishing to oil. “Commence your research today,” Zaurak had said, “and meet with me in my office every week to provide me an update.” Every week, Izar had arrived in Zaurak’s office with stacks of papers—articles, early drillship designs, scraps of calculations. Zaurak had offered suggestions, never directions, for Izar’s consideration.
A year after he’d commenced his oil research, Izar had a detailed drillship blueprint in hand, three feet in length. He’d shown the blueprint to Antares and Saiph during his weekly meeting with them in Antares’s thirtieth-floor office. Antares had beamed so widely that even his tufty eyebrows had appeared to be grinning. “I promote you to director of operations,” he’d said.
“Thank you,” Izar had said, “but I have to decline.”
Antares had nearly choked on his cigar, clouds of smoke billowing from his lips. “Why?” he’d asked, coughing.
“Because Zaurak is director.”
“Do you think he’ll be in his office right now?” Antares had continued, sipping his whisky.
Izar had nodded. Zaurak was an eternal bachelor, married to Ocean Dominion’s fleet of ships. He worked steadily through the evenings like a train making its rounds.
“Good. I’ll call Zaurak up here and dismiss him straightaway.” Antares had started dialing the phone, but Izar had placed his finger on the dial, his arm almost displacing Antares’s whisky.
“Zaurak mentored me through all aspects of the drillship blueprint,” Izar had said. “I wouldn’t have been able to do it without him. If anything, Zaurak and I can be co-directors of operations. I can lead our new Oil division, and he can continue to lead the Fishing division.”
Antares’s steel-gray eyes had pondered Izar from across the wisps of cigar smoke. “Zaurak was among my very first men,” he’d said. “He started at Ocean Dominion thirty-five years ago, in the first month of the company’s founding itself. I like him well, and I’m not opposed to paying two director salaries for a single role, but that’s not how the world works, son. He would be competing with you every step of the way, undermining you, in order to protect his position and maintain his influence. I cannot give you his position while he still has it.”
“He’d turn the men against you,” Saiph had added, charred-kale eyes gleaming. “He wouldn’t let you succeed, not over his dead body.”
Izar had removed his finger from the dial.
“I’m glad you finally understand—” Antares had begun.
“If you fire Zaurak,” Izar had pronounced, “I’ll resign from Ocean Dominion this moment.”
Antares’s fist had slammed down on his desk, and his face had jutted forth through his cigar smoke, the reddening color of his cheeks making Izar think of a tiger. Izar had been startled at his own declaration, for he had nowhere else to go—his walking away from Ocean Dominion would have been equivalent to a penguin waddling away from ice. There was no habitat he could imagine to which he was as specifically suited as to Ocean Dominion. Antares had waved his cigar reproachfully until its embers had dusted his mahogany desk like black pepper, but, eventually, he’d relented.
A year later, when Dominion Drill I was built and had conducted its first oil drill, tugging twenty thousand barrels of gurgling black bubbles out of the ocean floor, Antares had promoted Izar to vice president of operations and informed him that he’d gotten a new office built for him next to his own on the thirtieth floor.
Izar had insisted on remaining in his present office, next to Zaurak’s on the first floor of the underground, B1. He had done it in part so that Zaurak would not feel that Izar had risen above him not only in title but also physically, in the level of the building. Another reason was that Izar viewed Ocean Dominion as a giant with wide feet and a gargantuan head. He’d always resided in the feet of the giant—both his office and Invention Chamber were underground. The feet of the giant were a place he understood, a place where respect was earned through diligence and effort. The head of the giant was populated by men recruited by Saiph, men with expensive degrees but obscure duties. The head of the giant was perpetually in the clouds, Izar had come to conclude—he wanted to do his best to ensure the giant’s feet remained steadfast on the ground.
Antares had promoted Saiph to vice president of strategy in the same meeting. Izar’s sense of his own accomplishment had been diluted, for Saiph had done nothing to deserve his promotion—he simply would have resented Izar’s rise over him.
When Izar had informed Zaurak of his promotion, Zaurak had said, “Congratulations, boss,” and they’d both laughed.
Atop Dominion Drill I, the sun was so bright that Izar could see every mote of dust between himself and Zaurak as a suspended golden particle. He waved a hand before his face to watch the particles dance, then settle again—the laws of physics continued to amaze him even long after he understood them.
Serpens Sarin, a large, red-bearded man, shuffled up to Zaurak’s elbow. He had cloud-gray eyes and an energetic manner, like a tense violin string. Each of his ears was studded with one-inch-long spears, arrows that pointed at the face of anyone to whom he spoke. Thirty-five-year-old Serpens had started off in the oil-drilling business at a competing firm, Seven Seas, at the lowest level, roustabout, and had risen steadily through the ranks of motorman, derrickhand, then driller. He’d been a driller for four years when, two years ago, Zaurak had poached him to be manager on Dominion Drill I. Serpens was in charge of supervising oil drills, including the one planned for tomorrow. Increasingly, he had become Zaurak’s right-hand man.
“The drill bit and conductor casing are checked,” he said.
“Good man,” Zaurak said. Upon making two quick tick marks in his checklist, he placed an arm around Serpens’s shoulder and started whispering in his ear. A chorus of waves and cackling seagulls drowned out his voice, such that, though Izar’s ear was keened, he could not hear a word.
“What was that about?” Izar asked when Serpens shuffled away.