Among The Stars (Heinlein's Finches Book 2)

by Robin Banks

  “Simon, I don’t know what you’re seeing. All I can see from here is a worker in overalls having a cup of coffee. Quietly. Which strikes me as the right way of being this early in the day.”

  He looks too pissed off to find words for a few moments, then screeches. “Mr. Jameson is going to hear about this!”

  “You go on and tell him. He’ll love to hear about this, I’m sure. He’s got nothing better to do than getting dragged into petty squabbles.”

  The clown looks like he’s about to explode. His missus grabs him by the arm and turns him around. They stomp off.

  Alya sighs. “Luke? I don’t suppose you did anything that could explain any of that?”

  “Not that I know of. I was just having my coffee. I didn’t say anything to them. He just started screaming.”

  “Have you had any issues with him before?”

  “Only time I spoke to the guy was to wish him a happy birthday.”

  “Oh well. Maybe he had too much fun last night. Or not enough. I’d tell you to avoid him for a bit, but it sounds like you don’t see him anyway.”

  “Am I going to get it from Jameson?”

  “I doubt it. He doesn’t have much patience for this kind of bullshit. But try and keep a low profile, ok?”

  I spend the morning worrying about whether I’m going to get in the shit. I know that Alya isn’t concerned, but if they bring this up to Jameson it’s two of them against me, and clowns are more important than grooms. I think I have a valid reason to worry. Tom does not agree.

  “Man, I heard the whole thing. I could hardly miss it. It was ridiculous. No way that can come back at you.”

  “If Simon squeals on me, he’ll tell the story the way it suits him.”

  “Too many witnesses. It’s bullshit. Chill.”

  Nothing happens all morning, so I start to relax. I have my lunchtime coffee on my steps and the world doesn’t come to an end, so I guess I got away with whatever the hell it was.

  Tom, being my best friend, has to rub that in my face. “See? I told you. You’re just too damn twitchy.”

  “I bet my ass you’d be twitchy too if that had happened to you.”

  “Bullshit. I’m too cool for that.”

  We’re still squabbling about it when we get around the back of the big top with the dogs for the show. It’s just banter, though. It’s not as if we mean it. Apparently that’s not good enough.

  “Will you two shut up and start behaving professionally? You’re at work now, not on a street corner!” The guy who does all the announcements hisses at us through the backstage door. I’m guessing he can’t scream without disturbing the show. He sure as hell looks pissed off.

  I can’t think of anything to say in response, so I stay quiet. So does Tom. You’d think that would be enough, what with being what the guy asked us to do, but clearly that’s not the case. He keeps on hissing.

  “And look at the state of you. Why are you not wearing your jackets?”

  “What jackets?” asks Tom.

  “Your show jackets,” he growls.

  “We don’t have any jackets.”

  “Well, go and ask for some! Do you need to be told everything? And don’t come back until you have them!” He shuts the door and disappears inside.

  Tom and I look at each other. I don’t want to say anything in case we get overheard, but this is weird as hell. Tom doesn’t seem to have a clue either.

  When we get back to the stables with the dogs, we go to get Nicky.

  “What happen? Why those faces?”

  “You know the guy with the tall hat and the coat with the flappy bits at the back?”

  “Oscar? The ringmaster?”

  “I guess. He had a go at us for not wearing jackets. Says we need to get some.”

  “Strange. Grooms never wear jackets. Not good for work, and get dirty.”

  “He said we need some now.”

  “Ok. If he says. But is weird. One of you go to Ava in the café. She has uniforms. You run.”

  I leg it to the café. Thankfully the interval hasn’t started yet, so Ava’s not busy.

  “Nicky sent me to get jackets for us three. The ringmaster says we need them.”

  Her eyes narrows and she crosses her arms. “Jackets? For you? No way.”

  “The ringmaster says…”

  “He can say whatever he wants. Nobody’s ever heard of putting grooms in jackets. And the Russian is too damn big, anyway. We dress people here, not gorillas.”

  “But the ringmaster…”

  She puts her hands on her counter and leans over me. “I don’t care what you tell me. I am not giving you as much as a button without Mr. Jameson’s permission.”

  I’m totally stumped. If I go back without jackets we’re probably going to get in the shit, but she’s clearly not going to help me out. Not much I can do about it, so I rush back to the stables.

  We don’t have time to mess about. We’ve got to take the ponies over. When we get there, the ringmaster is nowhere in sight. We do our job and get back to the stables with no mishaps. I’m still pretty wound up, though.

  “Nicky, should I find Alya and get her to sort this out?”

  “You see her tonight, for sure.”

  “But what about the next show?”

  “Over twenty years I work here. I don’t have jacket. We all live. We can live another day without.”

  “But that guy was really pissed off.”

  “He is not my boss. He is not my problem.”

  I appreciate where Nicky is coming from. The whole thing seems like bullshit to me, too. Still, I feel like I’m stuck between the two of them, three if you add Ava, and it’s not a place I like to be.

  Thankfully we bump into Alya between shows and she sorts it all out.

  “Don’t mind Oscar. Not sure what got up his ass, but if he wants you dressed up then we’ll dress you up. And Ava can be damn unhelpful, but she was doing her job. She could have been nicer about it, to be sure, but I don’t think she knows how.”

  I have to admit that we do look better in the show jackets. They’re damn uncomfortable and will get filthy in no time at all, but for now they make us look a lot classier. Anyway, I’m just glad this is all sorted out.

  We’re hanging outside backstage with the dogs for the second show, looking all snazzy and shit, and I’m starting to get over the whole thing. I’m peeping through the door to see if the ring boys are coming over for the dogs, when the lady clown sees me and charges over.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Just waiting to hand the animals over.”

  “Stop leaning! Stand up straight! Show some respect for your work!” And she stomps off.

  “Tom? You still reckon that nothing’s weird?”

  “She’s probably just putting the boot in because you’ve slighted her man or something.”

  “Slighted? I just sat there while he was screaming at me.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s gonna take his side regardless. Way it goes.”

  We deal with the dog act with no further mishaps, but when we’re on our way back to the stables we run into Jameson. As soon as he sees us, he turns purple and starts screeching.

  “What the fuck are you wearing? Who the fuck gave that to you?”

  He doesn’t look in the mood to listen to our tales and we know better than to drop Alya in it. Problem is, that leaves us with nothing to say. I’m not sure it matters, though. I don’t think we could say anything to calm him down, the state he’s in.

  “Do you know how much those jackets cost? You fucking hand them back right now! If there’s anything wrong with them, I’m going to take that out of your wages!”

  We struggle out of the jackets and go to hand them to him, but that just makes him angrier. “Not to me! To Ava! Do you think I’ve got nothing better to do than fuck around with your clothes?”

  We shake our heads. That just pisses him off more.

  “I’m fucking talking to you. Answer
me, you little shits! Do you want me to dock your wages for being insolent?”

  “We’re not being insolent,” I manage to croak.

  “You’re not insolent? Then answer when people talk to you! And don’t look so fucking smug! I’ll wipe that look off your faces! Who the fuck do you think you are? Get the fuck out of here and sort those fucking dogs out! I don’t pay you to stand about!”

  We leg it while we can. As soon as we’re out of earshot, Tom mutters at me. “Ok, man. You were right and I was wrong. Something’s definitely up. You pissed someone off, for sure.”

  “But when? How?”

  “I have no idea, but clearly people are pissed at you today. You need to fix it.”

  “How the fuck do I fix it if I don’t know how I broke it?”

  “Don’t know. Ask Alya. You’ve gotta do something.”

  We go to Alya’s ATR straight after work. The sky is still bright, so she’s sitting in her doorway with Laika, reading. I don’t want to disturb her, but Tom nudges me on.

  “Alya? Something weird is going on.”

  “Kid, this is a circus.”

  “No. Weirder than normal.”

  She sighs and puts her reader down. “What’s weird?”

  “People are just being weird with me. Well, some people. I thought it was just a strange one-off thing, but it’s been going on all day.”

  “Weird how?”

  “Hard to explain. You heard this morning. It’s been going on all day. I’m just getting yelled at over nothing. Like people need to make a point that they can push me around.”

  “Oh. That could be the Reza thing.”

  “What Reza thing?”

  “She’s all over you and you’re all over her and you’re going to get married and have a whole platoon of babies. Didn’t you know?”

  “Actually, no. When did this happen?”

  “She kissed you. Passionately. In public.”

  “You mean when she pecked me on the chin to cheer me up? And she kisses everybody all the time. Only person I know who kisses more than her is Laika.”

  “You kissed. People noticed. The rest is history. Well, no: the rest is fiction, but you know what it’s like around here.”

  “I just got out of being gossiped over about Meena and there’s already a new story? These people must think I’m way cooler than I really am.”

  “No shit,” mumbles Tom. I’m so glad he’s my friend.

  “Anyway, that still doesn’t make any sense. Why the fuck would me getting with Reza make people treat me like I’m a piece of shit? It’s not as if she’s underage or married or something. Is she?”

  “You’ve got to understand the sociopolitical undercurrents to this event.”

  “The what? And it’s still firmly a non-event.”

  “Reality is irrelevant. The story states that you dare to date an artist. You’re climbing your way up the social ladder. Fucking your way up the social ladder, to be precise. Your sniffing around Meena was not altogether approved of, what with you being a peasant, but she was barely an artist. Most people who believe in this kind of bullshit consider dancers as little more than window dressing. But now you’re mingling with an actual artist. That’s a gross breach of protocol, to some people.”

  “What people?”

  “Assholes, mostly, but we’ve got a lot of them around here. Circus is terribly feudal, in every meaning of the word.”

  “I don’t know any meaning of the word.”

  “Oh. Circus has very strict classes. Bit like a tube, really.”

  “That means precisely nothing to me.”

  “Shit. You’ve never been on a Fed space station, have you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good for you. Don’t go. They’re awful. There’s no damn room to breathe and everything is segregated by class. First, second, and third class don’t mix outside of work. It’s the same here, really, though it’s not formally enforced. You noticed how the boys eat at a separate table?”

  “Yeah. I figured it was because they’re friends and their English is not great.”

  “Their English would improve if they spoke it more, but they don’t speak to anyone much outside of their circle. That’s not entirely their fault. Not many people outside their circle would speak to them. Workers and artists keep themselves apart. You two are kind of borderline as to where you fit. You’re workers but you’re Anglo, well-spoken, and decent-enough looking when you clean yourself up.”

  Tom grins. I don’t.

  “We are?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Not an issue, really, as you never clean yourself up. But you could become more than workers, if you wanted to. Most of the boys would struggle to do that. So you’re wildcards, really. You could climb up the ranks. But you haven’t yet. You’ve not even started. And now you dare to get in there with an artist. Some people will treat you like an upstart and try and smack you back down.”

  “So I’m being treated like shit because of people’s opinion of an entirely imaginary situation?”

  “Yup.”

  “And Tom is getting in the neck because he’s associated with me?”

  “Yup.”

  “What comes after annoying?”

  “Infuriating?”

  “Yeah. That. How do I fix it?”

  “I don’t know. They can’t do anything to you, though. Not really. Kolya’s your boss, I’m his, and neither of us is going to let anyone treat you poorly. But screaming is an acceptable form of communication around here. I can’t stop them doing that. If you can bear with it, they’ll hopefully get fed up with it soon enough. They’ll get it out of their system.”

  “It’s unfair, though.”

  “Yes. It is. You could try to challenge it, but that’s likely to stir it even more. See if you can ride it out. If it gets too bad, come speak to me, ok?”

  3.

  I never thought I’d find myself celebrating Isabella’s birthday. She’s not one of my favorite people. She treats me like crap. The only person to treat me worse is her precious daddy, but at least he pays my wages. I know it’s not personal, though. She treats anybody who’s not a circus superstar as if they were so beneath her that their mere presence was offensive. What bugs me the most is how she speaks to Nicky. Without him she wouldn’t have an act, but she treats him like shit. He doesn’t seem to mind, largely because he feels sorry for her.

  “This is what happens when you spoil your children. One day she is not her father’s daughter anymore, does not have him behind her. Then she finds nobody likes her, nobody gives her work, nobody wants to know her. She is old and ugly and poor and lonely, and she cannot run away from herself. Is very sad.”

  Nicky is much nicer than I am. I find her infinitely more irritating than tragic. However, I don’t dislike her enough to pass up the opportunity for free food and drinks at her father’s expense. Tom and I haven’t been formally invited to the party, but we’ve not been told we can’t go, either. We know that’s largely because Bella prefers to ignore our existence, and we’re kinda being assholes, but that just makes it more fun. We’ve been so good for so long, it’s about time we shake it up a little.

  I really feel I have to do something minor, to blow off some steam, just to stop myself doing something major. This place is so full of chances for mischief that I’ve been finding it really hard to be good. If Tom and I had found ourselves on the streets in a place like this, we would have never signed up for honest work. We could have lived here forever doing practically nothing. It’s so warm you don’t need to sleep indoors and there’s so much wasted food thrown around you could never starve. Add Tom’s whoring and my stealing and we’d be killing it. That’s without even considering the opportunities offered by the drug scene.

  Then again, I’ve not seen any street kids around the place. Not one. I wonder what the local sentences are like, or whether people deal with troublemakers in-house. Something’s certainly going on. It’s a shame I can’t really ask Alya about it. I d
on’t want to make her suspicious. If I slip up and end up owning something I didn’t buy, I don’t want her to jump to the right conclusion.

  Gatecrashing a party is not going to make up for all the opportunities I’m passing up, but it’s better than nothing. Every now and then I just have to do something bad to feel good, I guess. The fact that both Tom and I detest Bella and Jameson makes it all more enjoyable: we can’t wait to rip them off. We’ve got the right clothes for this kind of thing, too. Cleaned up and dressed up, hiding among Tom’s friends, we should be able to get thoroughly wasted before anyone notices us.

  The party starts well enough. The food is decent and the drinks table is nowhere near the hosts. I’m just starting to think that it’s so easy it’s almost boring, when a hand grips my elbow.

  “You little shits. I knew you were up to something. You’ve been looking way too gleeful all day.”

  “Hi, Alya.”

  “Don’t you ‘hi, Alya’ me,” she hisses, “and don’t you try and tell me that the drink you’re holding is something you should be anywhere near.”

  “We’ve only had a couple.”

  “You’ve only had as much as you could down in the time you had. And the time you had is over. You are out of here. Now.”

  “Oh, come on…” pleads Tom.

  “This is me being nice about this. Not nice is also an option. Are you sure you want to try it?”

  Tom sighs. “When you put it like that…”

  I remember Nicky’s ‘magic word’ advice. It’s worth a shot. “Could we at least have a couple more snacks? Just snacks. I promise. Please?”

  She grits her teeth. “I could strangle you. Snacks. Five minutes. And I’m going to tell Kolya on you. I want him to make tomorrow as much of a misery for you as possible.”

  We squeeze over to the food table, accidentally forgetting to put our glasses down first.

  “Man, that woman’s no fun at all,” mumbles Tom.

  “Looks like getting busted by her is the only excitement we’re gonna get tonight.”

  “Speak for yourself. It won’t take long for people to get fed up of ass-kissing the little princess and start drifting off. Night’s young yet.”