by Alan Black
Ain called out from the back room, “Mister Menzies, I beg of you, listen to Cherry’s heart and hear not her words.”
Tasso nodded. “I’m sorry. I’m touchy about family.”
Cherry laughed, “Ain’t we all. Me? I’m touchy ‘cuz I never had no family. I get touchy when I haven’t had breakfast. I get touchy when I haven’t had sex in a week. And, I definitely get touchy when those S.O.B.s at Schnitzer Merchandise Shipping short my order on hair ribbons again. That’s three times in a row and we have customers waiting for special orders.”
Tasso looked thoughtful. “Ribbons? Is that the kind of ribbons women use in their hair?”
Cherry laughed, “You really haven’t had much contact with women have you? Never mind. Women use ribbons of every color to tie dang near everything down or up, from their hair and hatbands to their boots. They’re pretty and versatile.”
Tasso nodded, thinking back. “I uncovered a Thurmand Corporation plasti-cellulose extruder in the attic last week. It wasn’t working, but all it was missing was a trydratic surtran coupler. I pulled one of those off a beat up gammic roll frame arm attachment and it fit like a charm—”
Cherry was staring at him with blank eyes. “Sorry, Tasso. You lost be as soon as you got started. You uncovered a what?”
“Oh. I found a broken ribbon maker and fixed it. I can check with Tio Gabe to see if we can use it to make some ribbons for your store.”
Cherry stared at Tasso. “You can make ribbons?
Tasso shrugged. “Not really, but I think I can run the machine that will. We have to set the dials to the width, length, and color of ribbon you want. And we have to put in the right type of raw materials.”
Cherry said, “I … well … we … um….”
A tinkling laugh fluttered from the back room. “Mister Menzies, you are a worker of miracles. Not for your ribbon maker, but you have done the unthinkable and rendered Cherry speechless.”
Cherry laughed, her hearty guffaw was a counterpoint to Ain’s delicate laugh.
Tasso shrugged again. “Um, well let me see what Tio Gabe says about using the extruder. I’ll let you know.”
Cherry surprised Tasso when she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Whether Tio Gabe says yes or no, you come back and visit us.”
Tasso was so startled that he turned and rushed out of the shop without looking. He crashed into two maintenance techs leaning over the broken pallet jack. The men easily managed to keep their balance, but Tasso crashed to the deck. His face was bright red, but not from the fall.
An outsized and powerfully built mechanic laughed at Tasso. “I’ve been in this shop, amigo. I almost ran out of there in a panic myself. I didn’t crash to the deck, though. Good tumble, amigo. I give it an eight point nine. What do you give our crash and burn contestant, Roberto?”
Roberto laughed. “Nice crash but poor follow through, Gordo. I can only give him a six point eight and I’m slightly gracious only because he should already be used to our gravity.”
Tasso said sourly, “Well, maybe I can do better next time.” He was used to having gravity on the ship at about ninety percent less than he grew up with at home. It didn’t stop him from falling down, but he didn’t crash to the deck as hard as he would have on Saronno.
Gordo laughed heartily, “That’s the spirit. You can become a true champion of falling down with a little practice.”
Roberto poked Gordo in the ribs with a wrench and said, “Maybe falling down is this boy’s thing, but you’re the king of running away from pretty blondes.”
Gordo laughed. “Yeah, I do have a thing for blondes. I followed a pretty thing in there one day without paying attention to where she was going. When she turned to talk to me, I panicked. Nearly broke my neck getting out of the place.”
Tasso asked, “Which blonde?”
Gordo said, “The one in the store. What do you mean which one?”
Tasso shrugged. “There are two blondes in there.”
Roberto shook his head, “Oh, now Gordo’s going to be hanging around here panting after two blonde-haired women instead of one.”
Gordo went glassy eyed. “Two! No wonder you forgot to watch your feet when you came out of there.”
Tasso grinned. “I only saw one of the women up close and she sure was pretty, but a pretty woman wasn’t what caused me to stumble out here.”
Robert said, “You’re Menzies, right? I’ve seen your vids all over the net.”
Tasso nodded as he rolled to his knees. “Since this is my second time running into someone this morning, I suppose I’ll be the prime character in a clumsiness montage on the shipnet by lunch.”
Roberto said, “Yep. I’d put together a vid of our young friend if we didn’t have to wrassle this jack back to maintenance. I told Gordo we should bring a sled, but he thought we could get it working.”
Gordo nodded. “Junction box is fried. I’ll bet we don’t have another one in stock and we’ll have to wait until we get to the next port. Marking this jack as non-functional means we’re going to have to get one of the other broken ones fixed or we’re going to drop equipment availability levels below standard. You know the boss hates being below standard.”
Tasso peeked over Gordo’s shoulder. “It looks like a number seven alpha junction box is what has fried.”
Both men looked at Tasso in surprise.
Tasso shrugged. “I only know because I saw one a couple of weeks ago in the attic.”
Roberto grinned, “We can get off early today if we can get a replacement junction box from the attic for this piece of crap.”
Tasso said, “Sorry, it’s not in the attic any more. I put it in a box of parts and sent them down to” he called up the spreadsheet on his dataport, “Section E-17.” At their astonished look, he added. “What? Wasn’t that the right place? The ship’s directory said that was repair and maintenance. I thought—what?”
Gordo said, “Not only is it the right section, it’s our section. We work in Section E-17.”
Roberto spoke into his an ear bud. “Hey, Alberto, do we have a box there sent down from the attic?” He held his hand over his ear to cut out the ever-increasing noise along the promenade. His hand also cut the sound of replies.
Tasso looked around. As the morning progressed, the shops and restaurants were opening and getting busier. He sighed in relief. He was sure Cruz and his friends wouldn’t harass him in a crowd. Also, even after two months on the ship, crowds still made him nervous. He looked at the two men as they talked to their maintenance contact.
He’d become angry when the men made fun of him for his trip and fall, but he hadn’t reacted angrily. As he thought about it, they really were funny, or at least, trying to be funny. He’d started to get angry at Cherry when she embarrassed him and called him ‘jetsam’. She hadn’t meant to be mean, he’d just taken it that way.
Grandpa told him he wasn’t supposed to take being insulted from anyone. But what if they didn’t mean it as a real insult? Cherry had laughed with Ain when Ain offered her an insult. He was going to have to mull over laughing at an insult instead of becoming angry.
Roberto slapped Tasso on the shoulder. “We found the junction box you sent us and we can get this pallet jack back to operational condition in record time. Gordo, put up cordon-off tape so no one else trips over this and I’ll go get a sled.”
Tasso said, “Um, why don’t you cross the external pall conduit with the junction box lever control? It won’t move fast, but the residual power in the charge node should last long enough to get it where you’re going.”
Roberto said, “Cross the … no. You can’t … why … okay. That should work. How do you know a workaround on this?”
Tasso shrugged. “Actually, I grew up using a powered rock jack. The manual lists this shortcut under frequently asked questions back in the appendix. I’ve used it a couple of times. It sure beat walking back to the tool shed to get another junction box and the tools needed to … what?”
> Gordo hugged Tasso. “Jefe, you have saved our Saturday.”
Roberto shook his hand. “Señor Menzies, you’re wasted in the attic. When will you rotate your training through maintenance? I want to make sure our straw boss gets you assigned to work with us. See that Gordo, he can read manuals!”
Tasso shrugged. “I don’t have a training schedule. Or I never saw it if I do have one.”
“Huh? That ain’t right. You go talk to your boss. Oh crap, you work in the attic for Tio Gabe. Hell, you can’t go to First Officer Graham. That’s a breach of ship protocol.”
Tasso shrugged again. “I kind of like it where I am. I’m sure I like it better than if I had to spend time working in the human waste processing plant.”
Both men laughed.
Gordo said, “Say, you look like you’re in good shape. What position do you play?”
Tasso shook his head. “Sorry?”
Gordo said, “Position? You know, as in football. You have the look of a wide receiver. I’m right. Right?”
Tasso frowned. “You mean soccer?”
Gordo and Roberto both looked stricken.
Gordo gasped, “Cállate, jefe. Shut up! Such language! Football, not that foolish round ball thing. Aren’t you on the trainee team?”
Tasso shook his head no. “I don’t know this game.”
Gordo looked horrified. “We could’ve used a good wide receiver with the game coming up against the Araña Rojo next Friday in port.”
Roberto shook Tasso’s hand again. “Well, Gordo and I owe you. You come hunt us down if you need anything, and I do mean anything!”
Tasso kept his eyes open all the way down to his quarters. He wasn’t worried about running into Cruz on the crowded promenade. Cherry told him cameras covered almost everything, so all he had to worry about was Cruz finding him in any unexpected corners, nooks, and crannies. He reached his room after an uneventful walk.
His roommate, Rodrigo was already up and gone. Even after two months, Tasso was not used to sharing a room. When he slept here, it woke him up if there was any movement or noise. Not that Rodrigo was ever deliberately noisy. The young boy was as polite and easy to get along with as anyone Tasso had ever met. Rod was a few years younger than Tasso was. They were not active adversaries, but they’d never become friends.
Rod’s current training assignment was the galley on Deck N, so he went to work hours before anyone else was up for breakfast. Working the breakfast shift also meant Rod’s workday was over hours before anyone else. The boy was back and hanging around their cabin by the early afternoon.
Tasso sat on the edge of his bed and shook his head. He still had trouble with calling things: bunks, decks, hatches, and bulkheads. Even without a window … porthole, this room was his bedroom. It took a conscious effort to remember to call it a cabin.
Tasso checked his closet … locker. He had a clean coverall inside. He stripped and slipped into his robe and slippers. He didn’t need a robe or slippers. The deck wasn’t ever cold. The carpet was a lot more comfortable than walking along the flagstone path from the back door to the outhouse. The air wasn’t ever cold, set at a constant temperature. It made the robe more uncomfortable than the air itself. It’d been pointed out, unmistakably and without excuse, that he was bunked on a mixed sex deck. Walking around barefoot without wearing any clothes wasn’t appropriate.
As early as the day was, the hallway … corridor was empty. Early risers were up and gone. Late sleepers were still in their bunks. The boy’s bathroom was as empty as the corridor. Tasso didn’t mind sharing the bathroom with other boys, ranging from ten- to eighteen-years-old. Even when they were rowdy and loud, sharing with other young men was still more pleasant than sharing a bathroom with an old man. He loved his grandfather, but the man could generate some really weird smells that could gag an adult yapikino. Tasso shook his head. Even after two months, he still had a hard time imagining the tough old man was gone. Some days he missed his grandfather so bad it hurt. He knew it would get better. He clearly remembered crying himself to sleep when his grandmother died. He’d cried for days when his mother died. Here on the Escorpión Rojo he was rarely alone except in the attic. He was alone a lot in the attic, so time to cry was readily available.
Tasso stripped and stepped into the showers. He let the water wash away the tears.
“Well, well, well. If it ain’t the little lost gringo.”
Tasso stiffened at the voice. Without turning, he recognized it. Cruz was a little over a year older than Tasso was. At seventeen, Cruz was a few months away from graduating into full crew status and moving into crew’s quarters. He rarely let anyone forget he was almost crew.
Without looking, Tasso knew Cruz wasn’t alone. Ivan, Eber, and Flacco would be with him. All four of the boys were taller than Tasso, but he’d spent his whole life at hard farm labor, breaking rocks to clear more tillable land and doing it in a higher gravity than any of them. He’d learned to move quickly to avoid stobor. He may have been shy of his seventeenth birthday when he came aboard, but his muscles and reflexes were well developed. On the ship, he continued his habit of working hard.
On the other hand, Cruz rarely did more than was required of him. All four of them rarely did more than was required. Tasso was surprised at that. Every other Texican he had met on the Escorpión Rojo worked hard and they all worked long hours. Even his roommate Rod took pride in his work. Washing dishes may not be glamorous, but Rod worked to do it right and he worked harder at more than he was tasked to do, and as a result, the boy had been advanced to food preparation ahead of schedule. These four seemed to be from a different breed.
Tasso wrote off the difference because people are people. Some are smart and some aren’t. Some worked hard and some didn’t. Some were nice and these four weren’t. He’d ducked them for a couple of weeks. Cruz took it personally that Tasso wasn’t afraid of him. Cruz also seemed to take it personally that Tasso wasn’t a native-born Texican. Whatever the reason, Cruz was on a vendetta to make Tasso’s life miserable.
He knew a fight was coming, but was trying to delay it as long as possible. Tio Gabe had seen the fight coming although he’d never seen Cruz and Tasso in the same room. The old man told Tasso, ‘The Klingon saith, brute strength is not Tchaikovsky’. Most people thought Gabe was going senile. Much of what he said didn’t make sense. The old man rarely said things exactly the way he meant them and he tended to blend his sentences together. Tasso had looked up Klingons and found out they were a warlike race, fictional of course. Tasso found a Klingon quote: ‘Brute strength is not the most important asset in a fight’. He also found a quote from Solomon Short: ‘The only winner in the war of 1812 was Tchaikovsky’. It took a bit more study until Tasso thought he understood the meaning. Tio Gabe was telling him to use his head and not get into a fight if he could avoid one because no one ever really wins a fight.
He would’ve never thought to look up quotes on his dataport, but Tio Gabe had the same look in his eyes that Grandpa got when he was spouting a proverb. It took a little while to find out what Gabe meant most of the time, since the old man was fond of quoting fictional characters.
Cruz had warned Tasso against eating lunch in the mess hall on Deck J, not to exercise in the gym on Deck T and to stay off the promenade on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Tasso did his best to avoid the four boys in all of those places. Besides, the mess hall on Deck J was too spicy for his tastes, the gym on Deck T smelled too much like old sweat socks, and there were too many people on the promenade on either day.
He wasn’t afraid of the four boys. He was sure he could whip any one of them if they pushed him into a fight. No, the fight wasn’t if, but when they pushed him into it. He was sure he could beat any two of them. He might be able to take any three of them. However tough he was, he doubted he could overcome four to one odds.
Tasso sighed. He was only about halfway through his shower but he shut off the water. If Cruz and company decided to attack, soapy wet skin woul
d serve him better than being dry and clean. The boys had picked a good place for an altercation. The restroom was about the only public room not covered by La Dueña Dunstan’s security cameras.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Tasso said. “How may I help you this morning?”
Cruz spat, “You can get your gringo butt off my ship.”
CHAPTER 12
TASSO MUSTERED up his most agreeable tone, “Would that I could. But, my word has been given for me. I couldn’t leave without breaking my training cruise contract even if we were on a planet.”
“Think you’re smart, don’t you, greenhorn?” Cruz said.
Tasso nodded. “Yes. I guess I do. Thank you for noticing.”
“Smartass!”
Tasso smiled, “See! Even you agree.”
The four boys took the time to circle around Tasso. Tasso continued to turn, keeping Cruz in front of him.
Flacco pushed Tasso in the back. His intention was to push Tasso into Cruz. Instead, his hands slipped on Tasso’s soapy back. The push threw the boy off balance and his feet twisted on the non-slip shower deck. Flacco crashed to the wet deck with a cry.
Ivan and Eber tried to grab Tasso arms, but his soapy skin was hard to grasp. Eber’s long fingernails dug deep trenches across Tasso’s biceps, but he couldn’t get a firm hold on Tasso. He fell backwards as Ivan clamped his other arm tighter.
Tasso braced his feet on the deck. He clenched his fist and punched Cruz in the nose as hard as he could swing. Cruz’s face seemed to blend into the ten-year-old face of Dougall Lamont. Tasso hit both Cruz and Dougall’s faces with both fists as hard as he could.
He turned and slammed a clenched fist into Ivan’s stomach. Ivan doubled over. Tasso turned, throwing a punch to Eber’s face. A blow to the back of Tasso’s head pushed him into Cruz. He saw Eber’s fist aiming for his face. He ducked his head, but couldn’t get out of the way. The blow landed on the top of his forehead. Eber screamed and grabbed his hand.