About The Laws of Space

Post 163:

The Laws of Space

Episode Seven

Chapter Four Continues

            “There’s the Administrator,” finished Lerner, taking a puff from a cut-rate cigarette. He didn’t bother to look at his palm; Lerner was a Breather and wouldn’t let the cost stop him from his favorite habit.

            “Administrator,” gritted Alder. “Clement Pope, L10, in charge of the Five Cities.”

            “Could have been you,” said Lerner, looking crookedly at him. His face was all innocence, pudgy and wide-eyed. Hair regularly fell down around his little mouth, igniting when he tried to light his smokes. It happened at such a clip, Lerner was known at work and at the Dom for his fragrance; a mixture of burnt hair and coal residue. He was a shovel man; had been since his eighth birthday.

            “If what you say is true,” added Webb, wiping dust from his cropped hair. “And frankly I wish it were—I’m getting tired of seeing that ugly face look at our ugly faces. If I’m to be the subject of his schadenfreude, the least he could do is not be so squirrely. What’s with the hair grease? You people had hair grease?” Again, Lerner wasn’t following.

            “We had anything we wanted,” answered the former Spacer. He stood up to stretch his legs and to pat the dirt off his pants. There was only the one pair and the cotton was becoming increasingly threadbare. His movement drew the surrounding Regulars’ attention away from the Worldview but he paid them no mind.

            “Go back to your show, you rapacious ingrates!” yelled Webb, sensing the rumblings of the Breathers and Hopers. “Sit back down, man. You’re going to have to acclimate to sitting on concrete. It’s all we got around here.”

            “Never sat in a chair before,” said Lerner, finishing his smoke.

            “Hey, don’t say things like that around the aristocrat. He’s bound to get depressed.”

            “It’s okay,” Alder said, settling back down. “I chose this life, after all.”

            “And one day you can explain why. I mean, I know you’re a genius, but you can boil it down for me in Regular’s terms. Once that happens I’ll use hand gestures so Merchant here can understand.”

            Travers talked tough toward Lerner, but Alder knew there was something else in it. Webb’s care and concern for his hovelmate was transparent enough, though the simple shovelhand was mostly blind to it. Other people weren’t so bad; this simple sentiment was becoming less opaque to them, but to those watching, it was like the three were playing in radioactive waste.