The Storm Fishers and Other Stories Read online

labor and neither minded trading dust on the boot for an education.

  Brine had been trying to get Quark a seat in the physics department and had yet not exhausted each option. So he felt justified in saying, “I can’t believe how easily you’re giving up. It’s a little-well put yourself in my lab coat, I go up for you and now you’re giving up?”

  “Well, the way I figure it, getting a good set of recommendations from math will put me in engineering one day and engineering may not be the core, but it’s pretty good none the less.”

  Three years later Quark was sitting beside Brine on bleachers setup adjacent to the tarmac outside the university space port. Hundreds of young people, the top minds of the year, waited silently next to their chatty parents. Quark turned one last time to see the red sandstone towers and gray limestone roofs of Faraday University.

  A gust of wind came first, quickly it felt like a dust storm. Then a hum and the swirling clouds parted as the Interplanetary Research Vessel The Poet of the Black Birds, called ‘The Black Bird’ by those in the know, came to hover just above the tarmac. Crimson and Violet landing lights, set against the pitch colored underbelly, twinkled like the Milky Way. The chain of thunder faded to a hum as she docked just one hundred meters from the bleachers.

  Captain Dross, a stout man with a gray beard and gray eyes, stepped to the microphone and in a deep gravelly voice hardened by decades at the helm, gave what he thought was an inspirational speech. The students though were too anxious to hear how their lives were beginning and how much learning lay ahead. As the assignments were read most students shouted triumphantly, hugged mom and dad, some with appreciation for all they’d done, others for appearance, and rushed to the teleporter.

  Slurry comes before Quill in the alphabet. Brine cheered at “Physical Engineering, ‘Reactor Core Team’.” He hugged his mom and hid a quick tear. He shook his father’s hand then turned to Quark. “I’ll be putting my things away. I’ll save you a spot in my room if you want.”

  “Do you have to ask if I want?”

  “I’m gonna get the fermenter set up.” And Brine threw his rucksack over his shoulder and hustled to the teleporter pad.

  Quill was the fourth to the last name read that day. The Slurrys sat with him and spoke as they had at Founder’s Day cookouts. They chatted about school and the perlait trees and about girls; they’d always been kind to Quark. The sun was setting and the wind getting cool when Dross turned to Quark, “Come on up son. You’ll be in the accounting sciences.”

  The guide sign at the fork in the hallway smiled at passersby, waiting for an opportunity to help. The sign introduced itself to students as they walked past ignoring it, as if they instinctively knew where to go.

  “Would you like some help?”

  Quark walked to the AI sign, “Which way to the core?”

  “Oh congratulations! Just take the elevator on your left and get out on negative seventeen, then take a left a right and another right. You’ll see the rest of the students in their apartments. I believe they’re celebrating. Hurry before the bubbly is gone.”

  “And which way is accounting?”

  “Robotic inventory is what we call it here. Same tube, up to thirty-seven and you’ll see it directly in front of you.”

  The accounting suites were quiet and azure like an irrigation well. The halls were painted with a formal tan stripe, the doors gray, though some students had personalized them the welcome signs. Quark wandered down the empty corridor until he came to suite 382. He started to knock, then saw the thumbpad with a nearly human face smiling up into space, blinking. He signed and laid his right thumb on the light blue scanner.

  “Welcome Master Quill.”

  Laughter and two voices greeted him before he passed the foyer. A man and a woman were talking as if they were old friends. He stood and watched for a moment, shy as he’d been on the first class at Faraday. They looked at him for a moment. The woman sipped champaign (Venusian, ‘25), the man glanced over and mimicked her motion, and finished his drink.

  Quark juggled his bags trying to set his computer case on the ground, but ended up dropping it on his foot.

  “Hello.” He used the most sophisticated tone he knew. Both his new roommates looked him over and the woman sipped quickly finishing her glass. She took a third flute and poured the three drinks until the bubbles overflowed each rim to the counter.

  “I’m Quark.” He stuck out his hand and remembered to smile, as the books on stellar etiquette suggested.

  “My name is Volt Rebore, this is Maria Karst.”

  “Maria, you’re-”

  “Terran. But I’ve lived on Phobos for the past decade,” she handed Quark a glass and raised a toast.

  “My parents are Terran. They named me William and called me Billy until first grade. They stopped when I came home crying. My dad called me Quark since before I was born, so we settled on that at my next school.”

  “I wouldn’t change it no matter how much I stuck out,” she said. “But I understand.”

  Quark didn’t drink his champaign immediately. He wandered from the bar to the social room and ran his hand on the crimson couch, sank in and smiled almost laughing. To his right was the entertainment console, to his left hall leading to bedrooms, at his back was the kitchen. No wall separated the two spaces, unlike home. And in front of the couch was a window eight by five meters wide giving the most angelic view of space he had seen. He turned back to his roommates, who were now lost in conversation and another glass, “When I was young I used to go out into the back vineyards and find a space between the trees that gave me a view of the sky. My brother and I used to take our flashlights and shin them at the stars wondering if anyone could see them, or maybe shine back. Sometimes we saw a satellite or a ship and thought maybe they could see us and take us away.” He turned back, rose and walked to the window. He reached out tracing new constellations between the nebulae and planets. Mars vanished below; Quark looked down, unable to see the farm, and wondered if his brother looked up that night. “Nothing at home compares to this.”

  “Robots.”

  The two laughed, ignoring him.

  “I got assigned to the robot inventory department. How about you two?”

  “Hmm?” She broke away from Volt’s story. “Oh I’m in business law. I want to go into politics eventually.”

  “And what about you?”

  “Oh, ah, finances. I’m in finance.” And they shut Quark out once again.

  His suitcase suddenly seemed heavier than it did. His roommates had claimed the two front bedrooms. And while all business student quarters were in theory the same, Quark’s room at the back and adjacent to the washroom felt small. Perhaps it was the large bed or the antique wooden dresser. Though the claustrophobia became obvious after unpacking; his room had no view of the stars.

  Science and engineering dorm walls were a light blue and gray, but the color mattered less than the makeshift decorations the students constructed in an effort to personalize their homes.

  Above was a mobile constructed of orange and blue pipes spinning and whistling to announce visitors. The deck had been tagged with three dimensional holographic graffiti giving the impression of walking across I-beams on the hull of a frigate. Behind the hull illusions of stars twinkling in regular blips, unlike in the administrative quarters, made Quark laugh and reach down smudging the glass. Almost every dorm room door stood open. The Senior Intern read an old tree-book copy of Comacus’ Astrochemistry for Astrobiologists, but even she left open her door for the sake of the wonderful smell of burning conifer cones.

  And there were voices all chattering and laughing the way people laughed after the afternoon talks in the seminar rooms at Faraday. Unlike the meet and greet with visiting lecturers Quark didn’t smell coffee and cakes. He did hear the Ziggy-Zaggy made famous after Faraday defeated Roger Bacon in the first game of gravityball. His people must be nearby. Brine’s voice carried, but he couldn’t see his friend. In fact, he cou
ldn’t see anyone.

  From nowhere a heavy hairy arm landed on Quark’s neck startling him, then comforting him with a mug of perlait homebrew. “Here ye go new friend. Don’t worry it’s all comp’d by that tall feller down the hall.”

  “I don’t see him, where is he?”

  The big fella clinked glasses spilling a little on each other and laughing. “My name is Nugget and I’m from The Musk Institute. Energy research is my game. Let me introduce the other newbies.”

  “I’d just like to find my friend if you don’t mind. He was supposed to save the brew for us.”

  “Oh your friend. Well what use is brew if-not” Nugget stammered and, arm still around Quark’s neck, lumbered around the corner, into the lounge and pointed at Brine, “shared among new friends and old? But I understand. First time from home, heh. BRIIIIINE whatever-your-last-name-is! Your friend just arrived!”

  “Brilliant. Did the AI play a trick on you?” Brine toasted and waived Quark over. “Here is Nugget, and there is another Nugget, and that girl over there is also named Nugget. We should get ‘em to bunk and we’ll call them the Boulders for short. I’m sorry. I tried to save you a room but there weren’t any left.”

  “Oh I’m on a different floor actually.”

  “Where did they stick you?”

  “I got stuck with administration.”

  “Oh.” Brine set his mug on the adjacent table and