“Fremden, they call us,” said Vincenze Fleur. “Strangers, in German.” He lit a chemical torch and worked away a little more on the so-called snow.
“It ain’t no thing,” replied Pazachoff. He, too, was on the snow-melting detail that Gerardo Funk had put together out of guys in the neighborhood. Funk was a local grist engineer, and it was he who figured it out about the weird snow.
“But it’s our goddamn moon,” said Vincenze. “They’re the strangers.”
“Sure,” said Pazachoff. “Whatever you say.”
“I just wonder why the Broca grist doesn’t translate it over, you know? How come it leaves it as fremden when it overdubs?”
“How the hell would I know?” said Pazachoff. “Ask Funk next time you see him.”
They were quiet for a while, and they burned away at a mound of snow. Every once in a while Vincenze checked to see if the confinement grist that Funk had added to his pellicle was still in place. If any of that killing snow got through it, he was done for. But it seemed to be holding up pretty well, according to the indicator readouts that popped up in his peripheral vision.
“It’s not that I don’t like it,” said Vincenze.
“What?”
“Fremden.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“I mean, they could have called us shitheads or something.”
“They probably call us that, too,” said Pazachoff.
“What do you think we ought to call them?”
Pazachoff straightened up, rubbed his back. “How about shitheads,” he replied, then went back to melting.
“My brother’s dead,” said Vincenze. Pazachoff did not say anything. “This shit ate him up last week. Five e-days ago, I mean. He was a good kid. He was practically running this shoe store where he worked. Taking some night classes about law or something. He had a girl. He met her in the class. I haven’t seen her to tell her.”
Pazachoff grunted. He turned his back on Vincenze.
“I was kind of jealous of him,” said Vincenze. He thought Pazachoff might have turned off his communications reception, but he went on talking anyway. What else was there to do? “I mean, he worked his ass off, but I was always the better-looking of the two of us. Plus, I had tricked myself out in these fancy body mods. Got the muscles and everything, and for a good price. I know that guy at the store. But here was my toad of a brother bringing home this gorgeous chick. I mean, she ain’t Sandra Yen, but she was okay, right? And she was all over him: Georgie this, and Georgie that. That was my brother’s name—George. George Pascal Fleur. So I was jealous, but I was real nice to her. I mean, me and George respected each other generally. But he sort of noticed how I was feeling, and after she left he asked if did I think I could have flexed my arms a little more, or did I need more light to show off my rez coating. We sort of got into it, then and there, and George storms out, and I follow him out, yelling. He’s only got basic adaptation, so he can’t stay outside very long, so he’s hurrying away, but I pretend like he’s running from me, and I call him chicken and idiot and stuff. And then, about halfway down the street from the house, he stops.”
Vincenze’s torch went out. He cast aside the handle, and reached into his backpack and got out another. Pazachoff still wasn’t looking at him, but he could tell, sort of by the way the guy was holding himself, that he was listening. Vincenze shook the other torch hard, and it lit up. He turned back to melting the so-called snow.
“George stops, and I figure that he’s had about as much as he’s going to take of my lip, and he’s deciding what to do next. I figure I’ll save him the trouble, and I come after him, giving him hell the whole way. And when I get to him, I give him a big shove. Boy, I was mad. I give him a big shove. And he topples over. Falls right over, like I had pushed a statue. Damnedest thing. And when he hits the ground, he just shatters. Like he was made of glass. Shatters into about a thousand pieces. It was the damnedest thing.”
“Did you sweep him up or anything?” Pazachoff asked. Still he did not turn to face Vincenze.
“I sort of . . . look, I was mad,” said Vincenze. “I guess I tore into that pile of him, of George, I mean. I guess I sort of kicked him all apart . . . that pile of my brother on the ground there.”
“Jesus,” said Pazachoff. “Your own brother.”
“Well, I talked to Funk about it,” Vincenze said. “He told me it wouldn’t have mattered if I had like swept him all up or anything. There was nothing to be done. There was nothing I could do.”
“Still,” Pazachoff said. “Your own brother.”
“You don’t think I haven’t thought about that?” asked Vincenze. “It was like . . . it wasn’t real, or something. Like it was something I had dreamed up because I was so mad. I thought it was just my imagination or . . . hell, I don’t know what I thought. I wished it hadn’t gone like that, though. The last thing he probably heard was me screaming at him like a lunatic. What must he have thought?”
“He don’t think nothing now,” said Pazachoff.
“Do you think it’s true?” Vincenze said. “That we just die? And that’s it?”
“How the fuck would I know?” Pazachoff said.
“I mean, a guy needs closure, you know? I didn’t get any closure. It’s still all open.”
They felt the pressure wave from an explosion, and then two rockets streaked by overhead. A few seconds later, there were more explosions.
“Shit,” said Pazachoff, “here they come.”
“We’d better get out of here,” Vincenze said.
“Where the hell was you planning on going?” said Pazachoff. “We’re surrounded.”
“Shit,” said Vincenze.
“Keep your torch lit,” Pazachoff said, “until the last minute.”
“Then what do we do?” asked Vincenze.
Pazachoff finally looked his way. And he was smiling. The light from the torch reflected off the teeth in his big grin.
“We get closure,” he said. “That’s what we do.”