Space Stations

Having people handle such simple tasks on the Wheel was cheaper than the trouble and expense of maintaining the servos and other mechanisms that performed such jobs elsewhere. Whatever Earth might lack in other resources, it had no shortage of people.

“You might have been taking a risk,” Alonza said, “even with our agreements. Ways might have been found to keep you both on Earth without violating any treaties.”

Te-yu's eyes focused on her. Alonza finally had her attention. Benzi sipped some juice, then set his cup down. “We thought that most unlikely,” he said.

“But still possible.”

“Just barely.” He frowned for a moment, then drank more juice. She wanted him a bit apprehensive; that would make him and his companion less likely to interfere with her task.

They got through the meal while saying little of any significance. Benzi and Alonza exchanged opinions on the very few mind-tours and virtual concerts they had both experienced. The dinner, better than Benzi had clearly expected, inspired them both to discuss some of their favorite foods. Alonza mentioned in passing that she had been born in San Antonio, and Benzi said that although he had grown up on one of Venus' Islands, he had been born in a small town on the North American Plains. Te-yu said almost nothing at all.

Alonza walked the two Habbers back to their room, then hurried to the nearest lift. The door slid shut silently; the cage hummed softly around her until the door opened and she knew that she had arrived at the Wheel's hub.

Alonza welcomed the half-g of the hub, where all the docks were located. She came here often, to look at the ships and imagine herself on an endless journey aboard one; such musings were one of her few indulgences.

She entered the bay area, empty except for two technicians checking some readings, and went to the viewscreen. Often Tom Ruden-Nodell joined her here after a shift of duty at the infirmary, partly because the half-g eased his minor aches and pains. He was another one like her, according to his public record, someone who had been a child living on Basic and what he could scrounge for himself until he caught the eye of a benefactor who, impressed by his quickness and intelligence, had taken him away from his negligent parents and found him a place in a dormitory.

But they never spoke of the past. They sat in the bay and speculated about the travelers who passed through the Wheel and exchanged the stories they had each gleaned from them. There were workers in gray tunics and pants with tales of repairing seawalls and dikes near the flooded cities of New York, Melbourne, or Corpus Christi; Linkers in white robes with gossip about the sexual affairs of those close to the Council of Mukhtars; students and young scientists with stories of their future ambitions told with a mixture of youthful arrogance and insecurity. While listening to them, Alonza often thought of how far she had come from the wretched shantytown of people on Basic that nestled near San Antonio's port.

“I might put in for a change,” Tom had told her the last time they were here in the hub.

“I'm thinking of making a move to Luna. They'll need another physician there sooner or later, and there'd be the astronomers and other researchers to exchange ideas with and the engineers and miners to drink with. And one-sixth gravity might be just the thing for my old bones.” She had noticed the deep lines around his eyes then, the graying hair, the weariness his slouch betrayed.

“You're not that old, Tom,” she said.

“I am that old, Alonza,” and he was right; he was eighty, and could expect another thirty or forty years if his rejuvenation therapy worked as it did for most people, but there were always exceptions, and Tom was already showing many of the signs of age. “Might not be a bad place for a Guardian officer to be posted either,” he added.

“And why is that?”

“Because there isn't much to do except keep order and look out for people's safety and maybe round up a few miners and workers when they get a little rowdy.”

“There wouldn't be much chance for a promotion, though.”

“And not much chance of running afoul of ambitious officers either.” Tom had smiled to himself then, and for a moment Alonza had envied the physician the relatively peaceful life he had won for himself.