12

WORKING

All during January I watched Bernie work, helping him as I learned. We crawled into every nook and cranny of the colony—under the housing complexes, under the open land, checking the ecosystems, electrical conduits, neutrino-sensor links, water and ventilation passages. It brought home to me how necessary the service level was to Bernal’s survival and well-being. The same was true of any building ever built, so there was nothing special about Bernal except the details.

But what details! There was an average of five feet of soil, more than enough for rose gardens and trees; then twenty feet of service level, followed by fifty of outer shell, mostly tons of slag shielding and water-filled cavities as a guard against meteor penetration and hard solar radiation. The slag was left over from Lunar mining processes, hurled into L-5 space by the Moon’s mass thrower—a big bucket on a fast track. There would always be enough materials for as many habitats and manufacturing centers as the Sunspacers cared to build.

Bernie not only liked to check when something was wrong—when the Brain picked up a sensor alarm—but he also liked to just nose around. He carried thousands of possible trouble spots in his head, and some part of him was always thinking about what might go wrong.

Of course, he wasn’t the only one who knew a lot about the place, but many of the others were no longer on Bernal. Bernie didn’t want to live anywhere else; the whole place was alive in his mind.

“You don’t have to, Joe,” he said to me one day. We were on our knees, staring down into one of the water cavities. A sensor had died, denying us readings of heat changes in the outer shell, as the big ball turned in and out of direct sunlight. Bernal’s rotation averaged out the temperature in the outer shell, but the heat exchanges weren’t perfect.

“The water may be frozen near the bottom,” Bernie said. “One damaged sensor isn’t crucial, but it can probably be repaired rather than replaced.”

“I’ll get it.”

He gave a tug on the sensor’s line. “It’s stuck about twenty feet down.”

I put on the mask, adjusted the rebreather pack on my back, and jumped in.

The water was cool, but it got colder as I pulled myself lower. The light beam from my mask played on the cable. The water was gray-blue, foggy.

I pulled lower, shivering as I imagined that I would reach Bernal’s outer shell and look out into space, where Earth and Moon swam in a black sea. It was strange to realize that I was swimming toward the stars.

A milky surface lay below me. I reached the floor of ice and saw where the floating sensor had been caught by the freeze. Taking out a small pick, I chipped away until the small device came loose. Bernie whisked the unit away when I tugged on the line.

I cast my beam in a circle, looking to see what else might need tending, then pushed off from the bottom. I was beginning to get cold by the time I surfaced.

“Not much to fix,” Bernie said. “Just a plug-in, and we can drop it back on a shorter line.” He was rummaging around in his tool bag for the replacement part as I climbed out. “Good going, Joe. Anything else?”

“No,” I said as my teeth began to chatter. But it felt good to do something and see the use of it right away—no waiting for distant moments of achievement that might never come, as Morey would have to do. I still felt a bit guilty about Morey. You have no faith in yourself, he would probably say. But working with Bernie made me feel good about myself, and I needed that.

* * *

Several times a month Bernie sat before his terminal and punched what he knew—observations, drawings, suspicions—into Bernal’s Brain. He loved the colony and was trying to put his whole mind into the central banks of the cyber-intelligence. He was part of the settlement, as much as the recyclers and solar power plants.

The administrators had long ago learned to let Bernie do all the checking he wanted. He often seemed a pest to the younger bureaucrats, but was too frequently right to be ignored. Bernie was a natural resource, a maker of traditions; and if the cyber-intelligences ever became the equals or superiors of the human mind in creative capacity, it would be because they had been weaned and raised by people like Bernie.

I rented a room in Bernie’s house. There were fifty such modular houses in the North Low-G Park, mostly single-floor blocks in an open, grassy area with scattered trees. Bernie owned his house, but many of the other tenants were skilled transients, working at specialized short-term jobs in the space factories near Bernal. Some were planning to go on to the Moon, Mars, the Asteroids—wherever they got the best offers. Most were from Earth, having come out under one kind of contract or other. There were married couples, brothers and sisters, teams of siblings and parents, as well as bands of men and women brought together only by skills—all hoping to make it in off-planet industries. Very few would climb high in the companies and agencies for which they worked, but the pay and benefits were good, the opportunities for education excellent. The work was often dangerous, but there was more of it than could ever be done by the number of applicants.

I thought little about going back to school. I had a lot of respect and affection for Bernie, and he said I was good at what I did. The tiredness at the end of each workday freed me from the pressure of worrying about the future. I felt like someone else; my name was just a tag from the past, like my shirt or shoe color. What is it that makes you what you are? Maybe we have to be forced to learn what we’re good at, and that marks us for life, not what we think we are or should be.

I had little time for reading, except as part of the job. I would go over to Cole Hall and have dinner with Rosalie. Between seeing her and the job, I had no time for anything, not even for worrying if I had been crazy to sign up for Merk. It sometimes occurred to me that I was happy here. So why was I going? Because I still thought I was special and could make a difference. Old ideas die hard.

* * *

Bernie came home one Saturday afternoon in March and sat down in the old chair facing the sofa, where I was taking a nap. I usually lounged around on my day off, watching newscasts from Earth, waiting for Ro to give me a call when she was done with schoolwork.

Bernie stared at me strangely, and I wondered if what he had to say would make it harder for me to tell him my news.

I sat up. “What is it? You took as if you’d been chased by the Brain’s ghost on the engineering level.”

He smiled feebly. “It’s not that. They’re sending me to Merk, to work on the habitat.”

“Oh.” For a moment I had thought it was something really bad. “Don’t you want to go?”

“I should. They need people who can do things well.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

He shook his head. “It’s bad out there. The way it’s been is Earth gets various ores while getting rid of undesirables. But there are children and young people out there now who will have it even harder if the habitat isn’t built well.”

I could see he was being pulled two ways. He liked being needed for a worthy project, but he didn’t want to leave home. Maybe the hospital stay had taken something out of him. For the first time since I had met him, I felt a moment of disappointment.

“I should go,” he repeated, “even if the working conditions aren’t perfect.” He looked at me, and I felt that I had missed the point. But then it all dawned on me, and I knew that I would surprise him.

He took a deep breath. “I was hoping . . . that you’d apprentice with me and we’d go together. I would need you.”

We stared at each other.

“A lot of kids your age are going,” he said before I could tell him. He looked down at the carpet.

“Bernie—Ro and I have volunteered.”

He looked up and smiled, and I saw how much he had become attached to me. “But don’t you plan to go back to school?” He had thought that I would refuse.

I shrugged. “Not just yet.”

“But will you apprentice with me? No one wants to sign if it means going to Mercury.”

“What else is going on? Tell me.”

“Well, the agreement calls for a certain number of workers to be sent, and there just aren’t that many volunteers who qualify, not yet anyway. They just about said I would have to go, if only to be able to come back and keep my position here.”

“They threatened you?”

He nodded. “Why should I protest? It’s a good cause. Bernal can get along without me now.”

“Bernie!”

“I know, I know. Earth Authority has people here, pressuring the Guilds. I get an apprentice and go, or I don’t work again.”

“It’s wrong,” I said, appalled. “How can they?”

“They’ll force my retirement—even if they have to invent a charge. It would be a lot of trouble for me to fight, even if it didn’t stick. There’s a lot of push to get this job done, Joe. The pressure’s on from the top down to raise the skilled work force. Earth has to have the resources, and it’s gotten tired of the guilt publicity.”

“And you still want to go?” I was ready to go punch someone.

“What Earth Authority thinks doesn’t matter. I should go, and I should take an apprentice with me. There aren’t enough people. The work will be useful and challenging.”

“You’ll have me with you,” I said, feeling angry that this wonderful man was being pushed around to do what he would have agreed to anyway.

* * *

Ro and I were finishing dinner on the terrace of Cole Hall. The dinner hour was over, so we were alone.

“I knew he would probably go,” she said after I had told her about Bernie. “They’ll need thousands of people before it’s over, and they don’t have enough to even start. The pay they’re offering doesn’t compare with other things, so they’re using pressure to get people, wherever they can.”

“It’s going to be a big step for the two of us. I wonder what we’re getting into.”

“I’m hoping we won’t have to leave before the term ends,” Ro said. “I don’t like incompletes.”

She stared at me from across the small table, and I wondered if I was going because of her, or Bernie, or to get away from school. Or maybe I just wanted to see far places and do something worth doing; maybe this was what I’d been waiting for all along, without knowing it. Maybe Earth Authority was right—the job had to be done, and the fact that it would inconvenience individuals just wasn’t as important; that’s what happens when you wait too long in solving problems.

“I’m glad we’re going together,” Ro said, touching my hand. “I was sure you’d go. You wouldn’t have been the person I know if you had refused. I know we can’t be one hundred percent sure about doing this—no one could be. But I know it’s right and we’re doing the best we know can be done. What else can anyone do?”

She was right. I pushed my doubts aside. The project sang to me; it would be both exciting and useful.

I was sure enough.

* * *

“But why should you go?” Dad asked.

The question made me angry. “Maybe some of us should accept responsibility for conditions created by those who came before us—especially when we can change things.” One, two, three.

“What?”

I thought he was going to laugh.

“Joe—you and I had nothing to do with this!”

I felt foolish, but I tried to answer him. “Don’t you see? Mercury has been one of the prices of having a Sunspace civilization. It didn’t have to be that way, but that’s what happened. We’ll have a worse future to be responsible for if we don’t act.” I waited.

He grew pale. “That’s a lot of propaganda. It’ll get done without you, Joe. You don’t have to be a hero.”

“I want to go,” I said sternly.

“Do you really?” he said after the delay.

“Look around you,” I shouted, “at all the metal products. The alloy in your tie clip probably started in a furnace on Mercury.”

“Oh, I see,” he replied, ignoring my point, “maybe your friends are going. Girlfriend?”

“I have to go, Dad,” I insisted, clenching my teeth.

“Think for yourself. You don’t have to do what they do.”

“I’m signing tomorrow. Look, Dad, I wasn’t sure about going back to school just yet anyway. It’s a good cause, and I’ll learn a lot.”

A reasonable tone didn’t work on him either. My words caught up with him, souring his expression further.

“It’s my decision anyway,” I added, “even if it’s wrong.” One, two, three.

“Eva will blame me,” he said sadly. “Don’t expect me to call and tell her.”

“Are you worried about me or yourself?” One, two, three.

“That’s not fair, Joe.”

“There was no answer when I called her.”

He was very nervous now. “It may take longer than they say.”

“Take it easy, Dad, I’ll be fine.”

“They’re only delivering bodies,” he muttered, “to fulfill the agreement.”

“But it still has to be done,” I insisted. “People are dying out there, and I want to do something about it!”

“What can you do?” he asked after the pause.

“I’ve learned a few things working.” One, two, three.

He gave me a hurt, hopeless look. “You don’t need my permission,” he said finally, “so why talk to me about it?”

I took a deep breath. “Okay—but you can wish me luck. I’m going for personal reasons and because I want to, because it has to be done. I can’t imagine not going. Can you understand that? There are just too many good reasons. I wouldn’t be the person I thought I was—a person who can make a difference—if I stayed.”

He sighed heavily and nodded. “Get ahold of your mother. And keep in touch.”

There was a defeated look in his eyes as he faded away.

* * *

At the Riverbend Courthouse I learned that I had to contract for a year plus travel time and unforeseen delays. I would not be able to quit.

A bored-looking judge took my handprint. The contract was with Earth Authority, which now governed all employment connected with the Mercury agreement. My contract carried a fine of a hundred thousand New Energy Dollars. Acceptable reasons for breaking it were all listed, the judge said, and there were no others. They came down to two things—illness or death.

“Could you pay the fine?” she asked coldly.

“No.”

“Since you cite work experience with Mr. Kristol, I’m assigning you to him. You must accept.”

“That’s fine with me.”

She gave me a stern look. “Name of anyone who could take your place in case of legitimate cancellation?”

I shook my head. “Don’t know anyone who’d want to.”

She thumbed her console. My ID card jumped out at me. “Memorize the numbers.”

As I left the chamber, I imagined the judge checking off another name on her quota list. Five thousand workers. Get them any way that’s legal. Press gangs in the year 2057, or the nearest thing, Dad would have said, exaggerating. But it didn’t matter, I told myself. It couldn’t.

Rosalie met me outside. “You look glum,” she said, taking my arm as we walked toward the bridge. Our four shadows seemed crowded on the pavement. “Think of what we’ll see, things we might never get a chance to know otherwise. A year isn’t anything.”

I felt a bit trapped, but I smiled. “Let’s go make love in zero-g.”