Jack knows who belongs out in the Black. And who doesn't -- until Kit comes walking into the pub and changes everything he believes about the Black, about the people who live there, about what it takes to be a human being.
Margaret Bechard had set out to write an adventure story with laser guns and spaceships. Then, she says, "there was a big step and a long fall off a cliff while I realized that my characters didn't want to do the stuff I had in my mind; they had plans of their own." The result: Spacer and Rat, a fast-paced space adventure and a short story about human feeling and growing up -- science fiction for those who love SF; riveting fiction for those who don't.
Jack knows who belongs out in the Black. And who doesn't -- until Kit comes walking into the pub and changes everything he believes about the Black, about the people who live there, about what it takes to be a human being.
Margaret Bechard had set out to write an adventure story with laser guns and spaceships. Then, she says, "there was a big step and a long fall off a cliff while I realized that my characters didn't want to do the stuff I had in my mind; they had plans of their own." The result: Spacer and Rat, a fast-paced space adventure and a short story about human feeling and growing up -- science fiction for those who love SF; riveting fiction for those who don't.
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Overview
Jack knows who belongs out in the Black. And who doesn't -- until Kit comes walking into the pub and changes everything he believes about the Black, about the people who live there, about what it takes to be a human being.
Margaret Bechard had set out to write an adventure story with laser guns and spaceships. Then, she says, "there was a big step and a long fall off a cliff while I realized that my characters didn't want to do the stuff I had in my mind; they had plans of their own." The result: Spacer and Rat, a fast-paced space adventure and a short story about human feeling and growing up -- science fiction for those who love SF; riveting fiction for those who don't.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466874343 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Roaring Brook Press |
| Publication date: | 06/24/2014 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| File size: | 212 KB |
| Age Range: | 12 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Margaret Bechard is the author of Star Hatchling, winner of the DucKon Golden Duck Award for Excellence in Science Fiction, and Hanging On to Max, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. She lives in Tigard, Oregon.
Read an Excerpt
Spacer and Rat
By Margaret Bechard
Roaring Brook Press
Copyright © 2005 Margaret BechardAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-7434-3
CHAPTER 1
JACK SLIPPED through the line of Earthies waiting for the DNA check and sat down on the bench next to Nguyen. Her chessboard was humming softly. He nodded to the crowds jostling around the dock plaza. "You scamming visitors?"
"As many as I can," she said, grinning.
The right lift doors opened. More Earthies were crowded inside, their Ceres colony patches glowing bright on their coveralls. The Earthies took about two steps out of the lift. Then, all together, they stumbled and lurched, like the floor of the station had risen up and knocked them back.
Nguyen clapped her hands and laughed. "Welcome to Freedom Station!" she shouted.
Jack laughed, too. The drop from zero gee at the shuttle dock to the full grav of the station had to be a shocker. Probably the worst part of their trip out to the Belt. He shook his head. "I just love the looks on their faces. They are so surprised. Like they thought they were stepping out onto Earth."
"They'll learn," Nguyen said. She made an adjustment to the board, and the red bishop shouted an insult at the black queen.
"Nice piece of tech," Jack said. "Did you make the changes yourself?"
"Nothing illegal," Nguyen said, loud and clear. Just in case there was a Company spook lurking nearby, taking notes. "Just made the game a little more interesting." The black pawns started sharpening their swords. Nguyen leaned back on the bench. "What brings you to the North Dock anyway? Gert close the pub early today?"
"That'll happen when the sun burns out." Jack patted the sling bag, dangling fat and heavy from his right shoulder. "I had to pick up a delivery from Red Vera, and I thought I'd check out the arrivals. See who's coming to celebrate Perihelion. Leo's supposed to come in from the Shipyard today. And Tranh."
"And Annie," Nguyen said, grinning again.
"And Annie," Jack said. He wanted to find her as soon as she came back on-station. He wanted her to be the first to know.
There was a commotion in the baggage line. Two security guards had grabbed an Earthie bound for Ganymede and were demanding to search his bags. All bags got searched, ever since a group of colonists had smuggled eight cats on-station. And their cryo boxes had thawed early.
"You missed all the excitement," Nguyen said. "A group of New Oslo colonists got off the right lift just as a Pallas bunch got off the left. They started fighting it out, right in the middle of the plaza. It was stellar."
"Dailies said today the O-two explosion on New Oslo was a confirmed assassination attempt," Jack said. "They're blaming it on Pallan extremists."
Nguyen shook her head. "Half the colony worlds aren't worth living on, let alone fighting over."
"Better than Earth, though," Jack said. He watched the new group of Earthies stagger over to the end of the DNA line. He could smell them. Quarantine spray and disinfectant soap and something harsh and bitter. Something he always thought of as Earth itself. "Gert said there's another famine somewhere. That's why so many of them are coming out here now."
A sci guy, on leave from Saturn's moons, stopped in front of them. He nodded at Jack. "You playing, kid, or just using up atmo?"
"Just leaving," Jack said. He stood up. Nguyen was already bending over the board.
Jack circled around past the info sign. The Armstrong holo was out, reciting the station regs. Some spacer had hacked it the week before. After "No excess use of station resources," there was a faint click. Now the old astronaut tipped his clumsy, helmeted head and said, "Remember, visitors. In space, no one can hear you whine."
The head tip was an especially nice touch, Jack thought.
A little flock of maintenance bots was hovering in midair in front of the holo, their laser drivers and memory probes extended. As Jack passed, they swiveled their optics toward him. "Maintenance has arrived," they chorused in their flat, tinny voices.
"Then get to work," Jack said. He'd take bots over Earthies any day. Bots couldn't whine.
The left lift opened.
A group of geeks from the satellite array and some sci guys stepped out. Followed by Annie and her father. Annie's father headed for the workers' check-in line. She shouldered both their duffels and pushed her way over to an empty bench.
Jack watched her, craning around the crowd to keep her in sight. Annie had been working off-station, out in the Shipyard for one whole cycle. One whole cycle plus three weeks. Not that anybody had been counting.
"Get your hot sweet potatoes!" Veggie Tom stopped his barrow bot next to Armstrong. When he turned toward a family of Earthies, Jack snatched a potato piece out of the hot pot.
Annie's face lit up with a big smile when he stopped in front of her bench.
"Welcome home." He held out the potato, warm and steamy.
"Thanks!" She took a bite. "Oh, Pluto, that's good." She closed her eyes, briefly, and heaved a sigh. "We've been living on nutricubes for the past week."
She scooted over, and Jack sat down next to her. "So, other than the food, how's working in the Yard?"
She finished off the potato and licked her fingers. They were flecked with rosin stains, dark against her coppery skin. "It is absolutely flash. I mean, way better than I expected." She sighed again, deeper, happier, and flicked back her long black hair. She'd already braided a strand of yellow Perihelion beads down the side. "I've been disassembling thrusters, grunt work of course, but mostly in zero gee. And yesterday they let me do a pressure check on a Zephyr-class. All by myself."
No surprise Annie was apprenticed to the mech crew. Before she could even talk, she'd been taking apart the vid players in the Nursery. Drove all the nannies loony. "You're a natural, Annie." And from the look on her face, Jack knew he'd said the right thing.
"How's your work? How's the pub?"
"Oh. The pub is totally flash. Last week? Gert let me change the synale tap." He raised his eyebrows. "All by myself."
Annie laughed. "You're going to be busy, too. All these workers coming on-station for the holiday. Not to mention all these Earthies."
He couldn't hold it in anymore. "I got the job, Annie."
"The what?"
"The job? Remember, the food-service posting in the dailies? I got the job on Liberty Station!"
"True fact?" She turned all the way toward him. "When did you find out?"
"Yesterday. I got a bounce yesterday from the Company offices."
"And have you heard from your mother's brother? Is he really out there?"
Only Annie knew he'd been searching the Company archives. Looking for family. Jack frowned. "He's out there. DNA files confirmed it. But, you know, I'm going to wait. Until I get there. Until I can actually meet him and his kids."
"Cousins," Annie said.
"What?"
"It's an old word. It's what they used to call the offspring of your parents' siblings."
"No kidding." Jack would have to remember that.
"So when do you leave?"
"I transfer next cycle."
"Wow. Next cycle. That's really soon." A look flashed across her face. But it was gone almost before Jack saw it.
"It'll really be midcycle," he said. "More like forty-five days. I catch passage out on the freighter Isaac Asimov." He was grinning again. "It's going to be completely stellar, Annie. The job's going to be much better. Liberty gets all the big ore transports and the experimental expeditions. And, you won't believe this. Because it's so close to the ore asteroids, you can rent a zip scooter and mining equipment. So I'll be able to go prospecting. You know, on my days off." He could maybe take those kids. Those cousins. "Asteroid hopping on a zip scooter. How flash is that?"
"I don't know, Jack." Annie laughed. "I kind of can't see you on a scooter."
"What do you mean?" He held his hands out in front of him, like he was grabbing the controls on a scooter's handlebars. "Your dad let me drive last time I went off-station with him. Turns out I'm a natural." Jack imitated the swoop of a scooter, leaning right, then left. His shoulder bumped into Annie's.
She bumped him back, hard enough to push him into the arm of the bench. A guard pacing by shot them a suspicious look.
Annie straightened up. "So now there are two good reasons to have the party."
Jack straightened up, too. "The party?"
Annie sighed and whipped her hair back again. "Don't tell me you've forgotten the party, helium head."
"No. No. Of course not." But he had. As soon as he'd gotten word about Liberty, he'd pretty much forgotten about everything else.
"I've been bouncing with Nguyen and Luna. We've got it all planned." Annie frowned. "Well, almost all planned. We've still gotta find a place. But it's going to be the best Perihelion party yet." Her frown cleared, and she rested her hand on Jack's leg. "And I am glad about Liberty. I know how much you've wanted this."
"Thanks," Jack said. Although all he could think about, right then, was her hand, warm and heavy, on his leg.
The chron above the Company offices chimed the hour. "Oh, spam." Jack hoisted the sling bag up onto his shoulder. "I gotta get this stuff to Gert."
Annie's hand slipped away. "Does she know you're quitting?"
"The Company notified her. She's already been down to the Nursery, checking out the next batch of apprentices. And I'm not quitting." Jack stretched the word out. "I'm being transferred."
"Right," Annie said. "Well, as soon as I know the party data, I'll bounce you a vocal off the grid."
Jack stood up. "Stellar." And he meant it. For the first Perihelion in a long time, he really felt like partying.
He caught the tram heading to the Workers' Sector and found a seat at the back of the trailer. Two klicks above, the station overheads were already starting to dim, slowly switching from day to night. The tram left the plaza and started down the main street. Past the Company offices and the guard headquarters. The only buildings two stories tall on all of Freedom. Wiper bots were busy at all the windows, and polishers were waxing the walls. But no matter how hard they scrubbed, the buildings always looked gray and blank to Jack.
He leaned back against the trailer's railing and thought about Annie and her father, catching the next tram. Going over to the Infirmary to get Annie's mom at her clinic. Going back to their quarters together. And he imagined, again, how it might be on Liberty.
He hopped out at Grissom. A group of Earthies blocked the sidewalk, arguing about the best way to get to the Visitors' Sector. They looked at Jack hopefully. Came all the way out to the Black and got lost just trying to get around Freedom. Jack dodged past them without speaking and headed down the alley.
The lights were coming on over the shop doors. The paint on the buildings wasn't so fresh and shiny. No bots were wiping and polishing. And the floor tile in front of Tariq's Wafer Shack was still cracked and curling up. Two farmers were coming out of Ollie's with their dinners. Across from Gert's, the usual sci guys were standing outside Madame Io's, watching the naked holos.
Jack stopped beside the fence that ran around the pub's side yard. The inorganics recycler was humming, processing a load of Gert's empties. A cool breeze fanned up from the South Dock. Cycle Four of the weather program. Jack took a deep breath and caught the smell of the fish farm, heavy and musty. Gert would say it was the ventilation glitching again. Gert would say the Company admins should get off their big, soft, fat butts and fix a few things around here.
But Jack had always kind of liked that smell.
Over the soft drone of the recycler, he heard a thump. And then a bump.
Slowly, carefully, Jack set down the sling bag and peered over the fence.
A rat was sneaking out from behind the bin of the recycler.
"Hey!" Jack shouted. "Hey!"
The rat froze. Its head turned, and just for a nano, it stared up at Jack.
And then it made a dash for freedom.
"No!" Jack leapt over the sling bag. He reached the gate just as the rat did. His fingers hooked into its shirt collar. "Got you!"
A booted foot shot out and whacked him, hard, on the knee.
"Ow! Ow! Drekking ... ow!"
"Let me go," the rat hissed. "Let me go, you toxic spacer!" The foot shot out again.
Jack jumped back, lost his grip on the collar, and barely managed to grab the rat's sleeve.
And realized it was a girl. Spam. Girl rats were the worst. They cried. They whined.
"You some kind of perv?" the rat said. And she slapped him, hard, right across the face.
Jack let go of her and rubbed his cheek. "Jupiter's eye. You don't have to hit people, you dim rat."
The Earthie girl glared at him, her hands on her hips, all wild, wiry white hair and eyes as bright green and iridescent as fish scales. They had to be gen mods, no way they could be natural, but Jack had never seen them in the catalog. "You don't have to grab people." She sounded just like a school vid, teaching the basic regs. "And don't call me 'rat.'"
Jack laughed. "You are a rat. True fact. Your parents dumped you here."
"Look, spacer." She took a step closer, her eyes narrow bright slits. Jack took a step back. He couldn't help it. "No one dumped me on this rusty space station."
It happened all the time. Earthie parents got out this far into the Black and ran out of supplies, ran out of credit. Ran out of caring. They knew the guards would round their kids up and shuttle them right back to Earth.
Jack and Annie, Nguyen and Eli and Rigel, they'd had some stellar rat hunts, when they were kids. There were lots of games you could play with rats, before you turned them over to the guards.
This rat stood up straighter. She could almost look him in the eye. "I'm here to refit and resupply." She frowned, and her hand tightened on the small duffel she had over one shoulder. "And to arrange transport into the Belt," she added.
Not just a rat, but clearly dysfunctional. Not really a rat to play games with. "You know what?" Jack said. "You can just tell all this spam to the guards."
The door to the pub rattled open. "Jack!" Gert roared.
"I'm right here!" he shouted, glancing back. "I've caught a —"
His hand closed on thin air. He spun around.
The rat was already across the yard and up onto the fence. She glanced back once.
And smiled.
"Hey!"
She was over the top and gone. There was nothing left but the sharp whiff of Earth.
CHAPTER 2GERT WAS already back behind the bar when Jack walked into the pub. "You go all the way out to the Junkyard, boy?" she snapped.
Booker John shook his head sadly. The actor was sitting on his regular stool at the end of the bar. Where he could stretch out his legs. "I'll tell you, Jack. Gert here's been just about run off her feet."
Jack checked around the room. A couple of farmers playing the Home Port game in the corner. Two miners on the front couch. A tinjock slumped on the stool near the wall. "Yeah. It must have been chaos in here." He set the bag down on the bar. "I had to wait for Red Vera's guy to show up." True fact.
Gert glanced down the bar, but the tinjock hadn't even lifted her head. Gert lowered her voice anyway. "Red Vera and her crew hijacked the Dan Simmons just off Phobos two cycles ago," she said to Booker John. She opened up a cryo can and picked up the sling bag. "Freighter was heavy-loaded with special-order food and drink. For the Company admins." She poured the coffee beans into the can and sealed it tight. She winked her green eye at Booker John.
"At least the rakers are keeping the economy healthy." Booker John took a sip of his whiskey. "Were there a lot of new arrivals at the dock, Jack?"
"Plaza's packed with Earthies. They must be running double shuttles from Quarantine." Jack did the figures, quick, in his head. "Must be over a hundred just this past week. I even saw a rat. In the recycler yard."
"You catch it?" Gert turned, her hands on her hips. "We don't want them using up station resources."
"She ... it was already going over the fence. When I saw it." Jack crossed to the sink, which was overflowing with dirty dishes. He got out the scrub bots.
"Drekking Earthies," Gert said.
"It must be frightening, though," Booker John said. "To be out here in the Black all alone. Poor little rat."
Jack turned and looked at him. His knee still throbbed where her boot had hit. "This rat wasn't that little," he said.
"Drekking Earthies," Gert said again. "If they're not trying to kill each other, they're dumping their kids for somebody else to worry about." She leaned over and poured a refill for the tinjock and another for Booker John. "They ruined Earth and now they're going to ruin the rest of the solar system."
"Should leave space to the spacers," Booker John said.
"Too drekking right." Gert set the whiskey bottle down with a clunk. "And guess who else can't stay buttoned up where he belongs? Guess who else has decided he has to go touring around the system?"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Spacer and Rat by Margaret Bechard. Copyright © 2005 Margaret Bechard. Excerpted by permission of Roaring Brook Press.
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