Vyyda Book 1: The Haver Problem (11 page)

             
Just as Sklar had concocted the admission of students in pursuit of broker’s licenses, he took advantage of the revenues to be gained from billeting various batches of the traveling troupes of workers.  It was all to keep Sykes up and running.

V              V              V              V

              Rollos.  Even Dorsey, with his expertise in language, of the creation of words common to nearly everyone in U-Space, didn’t know the origin of the term.  Yet it was a single word that stirred a very specific image:  roughnecks and savages used only for their brawn.

             
As much as Rollos were uncivilized and raw, with a penchant for violence, it was the work performed by such men which helped develop countless settlements, doing the jobs that others could not or would not perform.  Shuttled from one world to another – wherever their services were needed – they engaged in semi-skilled work, creating functional, livable and even somewhat pleasing environments with backbreaking effort.

             
The recurring problem with Rollos was what to do with them between jobs.  No settlement contracting them for work had any hospitality in their hearts once work had been completed.

             
“Move along,” best describes the sentiment that crews of Rollos faced.

             
That left the owners of Rollo teams to find reliable locations where they could deposit their workers during down time.  The going rate for hosting Rollos was not insignificant; Sklar couldn’t bear to turn it down.

             
And so it was that four to five times each year, a band of transient laborers wound up on Sykes, locked into a converted storage area for anywhere from three days to two weeks.

             
The most unpredictable, vulnerable point for the school came during the periods of arrival and departure as the Rollos were transferred to and from secure confinement.  They generally came in groups of fifteen to twenty, were always hulking figures (constant manual labor made them so), with unkempt beards and hair long enough to require being tied down and threaded inside the stained, thick material of the coveralls that they wore at all times.  If a new member of a pack didn’t already match the appearance of the other Rollos, they soon would.  The stench that came from such men was formidable, seemingly capable of penetrating layers of solid tresanium.  They spoke their own language, had their own, clannish customs and looked for ways in which to make trouble for their “owners” whenever the opportunity arose.

             
Those who wrangled and booked these packs into jobs around U-Space kept their Rollos compliant with the constant prodding of ‘shockers’ – electrically-charged wands designed to elicit submission from even the hardiest of men.

             
This is what was coming Sykes’ way.

V              V              V              V

              The room in which Vardon had been stashed was no worse than typical quarters in the student sector, for sure.  A larger than average bunk, soft-end chairs which immediately stoked Dorsey’s envy and a round table where the remnants of Vardon’s most recent meal remained.  Someone would come and get the dishes – better service than any faculty received.

             
“Thanks for coming, professor, because I really wasn’t sure you would,” Vardon said, sitting up from his position reclined on the bunk.

             
Sklar excused himself:  “Our man around the corner will lock the door when you’re finished.”

             
“What’s it all about?” Dorsey asked the Vardon.

             
“I never had a class with you, but I bet I’d have liked it.”

             
“Vardon?”

             
“Uh-huh.”

             
“You know I can’t reverse my vote, don’t you?”

             
“Sure.”

             
“So…”

             
“Oh, I don’t blame you for any of that.  I took a chance.  That’s how it goes.”

             
“I still don’t see -- ”

             
“Professor, they’re going to send me off to one of these plephs.  Do you know about them?”

             
“A little.  Pleph isn’t really the right term anymore.  They’re relocation cen -- ”

             
“I know, but everybody still calls them plephs.”

             
“You’re worried?”

             
Vardon tilted his head slightly, as if perplexed by the question.

             
“Why would I be worried?”

             
“It’s a lot of uncertainty to deal with.”

             
“Are you kidding?  Uncertainty is the best thing there is.  Opportunity comes from uncertainty.”

             
Dorsey puzzled over Vardon’s enthusiasm. 

             
“I’m glad you’re embracing it so well.”

             
“Right.  Yeah.  But there’s only one problem.”

             
“And what’s that?”

             
“Opportunity from uncertainty comes a lot easier when you’ve got a little currency to help exploit it.”

             
“Are you asking me -- ”

             
“Not a lot.  Just to seed my plans.”

             
Dorsey didn’t know how to react.

             
“I figured that if you were feeling bad about your vote with the committee.  You know, if you wanted to make it up to me.” Vardon said with a straight face.

             
Dorsey’s refusal went easily with Vardon who shook Dorsey’s hand, wished him the best and then climbed back on his bunk.

             
“Maybe you’ll find your way to Scuuva, try to collect your, what was it?  .002% ownership?”

             
“It was two one hundredths of a percent…but that doesn’t matter.  Scuuva can’t be trusted.”

             
Dorsey repressed the urge to ask Vardon what he knew about trust.  “Ah, they still have those hostesses you arranged for them, I suppose.”

             
“Time comes for me to find a woman…I’m going with a transactional,” Vardon said matter-of-factly.

             
In U-Space terms, a transactional referred to an arranged marriage purchased through a compatibility agent.  Dole Vardon planned to buy himself a wife.  Someday.

             
Offering a nod and smile, Dorsey left the room.  He would have shook his head in wonder, but there seemed to be little left with which Vardon could surprise him.

7.

To Hell w
ith Caution

              More than two years earlier, upon meeting Tomas Witt for the first time, it had been impossible for Dorsey Jefferson to overlook a constant tremor in the older man’s right hand.  They’d come face to face in an intimate, but impressive triangular room with brushed tresanium alloy lining, decoratively textured, rust-brown clay walls (what passed for the smart look of the year according to those "in the know”). 

             
Dorsey was determined to impress.  A faculty job at The Sykes Academy was hanging in the balance.

             
He needed to do more than make an impression.  He needed to create the illusion that he was the clear choice for the position, because, strictly speaking, he was not
technically
qualified.

             
Even as Witt formally introduced himself and genially explained that Sykes preferred a seasoned faculty member such as himself to conduct the interview instead of the school's director, who was no academic, Dorsey found it difficult to ignore the quivering hand.  Moreover, as Witt extended his left hand to shake, Dorsey began to present his own right, quickly switching to his left to avoid an awkward clasp.  Dorsey felt unexpected shivers of guilt rise up through him as Tomas Witt smiled brightly.  The lying he had been prepared to do in pursuit of the job with no shred of inner-conflict, now bothered him in the face of the kindly, older man.

             
"Shall we dig in and get serious?" Witt asked with a burst of enthusiasm.

             
The lies actually started well before Witt walked into the room.  Dorsey had arranged for the interview to be held on Kovetkoh, a settlement named after the company that owned and operated it.  Kovetkoh would make it appear as if Dorsey had truly arrived.  Not unlike Sykes, Kovetkoh was among the best in U-Space at what they did:  creating consortiums of investors for opportunities in manufacturing and engineering.  Kovetkoh packaged deals.

             
The biggest deception in the choice of location?  Dorsey didn't work there.  Didn't have a single tie to Kovetkoh other than three individuals within the company he'd managed to coax into helping him get use of the room for a few hours.  Inducing their cooperation didn't come inexpensively:  two hundred thousand
dervin
(the currency of choice in the region) – every last bit of Dorsey's savings since leaving Hyland.

             
Dorsey reached Kovetkoh twelve hours before Witt was scheduled to arrive; critical for him to be completely ready.  The three “company men” who'd taken his money were obliged to keep him under wraps: Kovetkoh was not without prying eyes.

             
Fortunately, the facility was large enough to offer numerous places to stow the “unauthorized” Dorsey Jefferson for half a day.  But that still didn't prevent one of the three Kovetkoh men from beginning to panic just as Dorsey arrived.

             
"We should just cancel this damn thing, send this blander back where he came from," urged Harebyer, the youngest of the trio.  He had a point.  They'd be discharged if anyone found out what was going on.

             
"It's two hundred thousand dervin, you
bihstburter
!" Nin Seegahl, thin and pale, said, berating his co-conspirator.

             
Harebyer was properly cowed.  His confederate’s use of the most demeaning slur among men of accomplishment obviously hit a sore spot. (Bihstburter suggested someone of weakness – a person who might be capable of rising to a certain position but without the wits and heart to hold onto it.) 

             
Harebyer relented and Dorsey was placed in a stifling, overheated utility room to pass the time until Witt's arrival.  Not to be completely denied his say in things, Harebyer lingered in the "hiding" room with Dorsey.

             
"You put more into faking a job here than most people would give to actually get hired.  What the hell's wrong with you?"

             
The perturbed young man left on that note.  A job with Kovetkoh, lucrative as it may be, didn't interest Dorsey.  A position there meant worries about extending your value to the owners, proving yourself on schedule, in perpetuity.  Harebyer was proof enough of that:  A sad, angry sort who clenched his jaw in rhythm, as if letting anxiety squirt out of his system in tiny, manageable bursts.  Kovetkoh was a trap in gold-laced wrapping. 

             
Sykes, however, was something entirely different.

V              V              V              V

              Years earlier, in pursuit of a far less desirable situation than the Sykes job, Dorsey had learned a valuable lesson about appearances versus reality in the world of U-Space opportunity. 

             
He'd come to be stuck in the initial stages of liberation from the suffocating confines of Hyland with virtually no prospects.  Manual labor jobs aboard cargo molkas hadn't panned out (not surprising, given that he hated them and was no good at the work).  Dorsey Jefferson badly needed a source of income.

             
It was at this stage that Dorsey arrived at a facility officially named The Sipchinn-Belles Opportunity and Situation Placement Affiliate, but informally referred to as "The Wheel".

             
Dorsey had no idea it even existed until he was in his fourth month away from Hyland – another example of how much he'd been missing out on in the sheltered food processing settlement.  Once he'd been told, however, he made for it with urgency.

             
Although it functioned in decades past as a hostessing niche (a brothel, by old Earth standards), The Wheel had been turned into an employment exchange.  The owners and operators made their money renting bare-bones rooms to men and women in search of work.  Employers filtered in and out, scanning, scrutinizing and sometimes selecting.