Vyyda Book 1: The Haver Problem (2 page)

Dorsey smiled and nodded.  “Which one?”

“Trends of the Modern Organized Criminal Enterprise.  I’m hoping to go into transport logistics…so it’s a must.”

“Very true.”

As Dorsey started to move on, the student labored to continue the exchange:

“Alain Mossgrove said you know everything about Dirty Water – just like you were a member or something.”

It was a
n innocent comment, something designed to curry favor.  The effect on Dorsey, however, was a slight hiccup in his step that betrayed the nerve it had struck.  Clearing his throat and looking over his shoulder at the student, he responded:

“Important to know as much about those people as possible.”

“Are all of them so dangerous?” The kid asked, following at what he must have thought was a respectful distance.  “What I mean is, the stories that go around make it seem like they’d enjoy killing someone as much as taking them for everything they’ve got.”

“That’s always a pos
sibility with Dirty Water – and they tend to do both.  We’ll save the rest for next term.” Dorsey hurried away before the student could ask anything else.

“My name’s Stem Kurdle, by the way,” the kid called after him, receiving a half turn and wave by Dorsey. 

Dirty Water (among the most notorious organized criminal groups in U-Space, rivaled only by Slowe Staine) was an area of expertise for Dorsey.  But he wasn’t comfortable with questions or theories as to how he’d cultivated his knowledge.  

Dorsey stopped, once he was sure Kurdle had returned to his companions,
and pretended to take in more of the striking sculptures and paintings.  They depicted inhospitable U-Space worlds and repeated renderings of planet Earth.  Feigning interest gave him a chance to collect his wits, breathe slowly and bring his pulse back under control.  The beginning of panic-sweat on his brow made the ragged molka warmer hiding under his purple vestments unnecessary.

Nevertheless, he wouldn’t return to his quarters.  Not just yet.  His stroll along the promenade had a purpose to it; he was avoiding a man.  His rooms would be the easiest place to be found.

V
              V              V              V

Dorsey’s dishonesty about himself, who he really was and where he’d been in life, could be tied back to the name into which he’d been born.  Officially, he was Dorsilonn Roederie Jefferson (reduced to Dorsey in his younger years).  However, Jefferson was the part that mattered, according to his father.  Millar Jefferson repeated to his son (and anyone else who would listen) of the family's direct descent from Thomas Jefferson, among the most famous Earth men of his age:  Vanquisher of American marauders who attempted not once, but four separate times to invade England and force on the citizens their crude ways.

             
"He harnessed electricity.  First time in the history of mankind.  He made it safe for usage." Millar Jefferson could recite the "facts" without a word of deviation, "He killed a multitude of dangerous animals prowling London...because very few others knew how."

             
Pretty heady stuff for a boy of Dorsey's ilk, born onto Hyland 6A, a food processing settlement centered in the sparse, far reaches of U-Space.  Existing within stifling gray stone walls carved below the planet's surface (as most settlements were to avoid the frequent bombardment of lethal radiation), Hyland wound deep through excavated pockets just large enough to accommodate the crushing routine of endless labor.

             
Men and women as young as fifteen (and sometimes past sixty-five) did the work of stripping raw syntho-grains.  They sifted, scaled and sorted, purified and packed, then repeated it all again and again.  Robotics and automation which would perform all such tasks more efficiently were entirely impractical.  Human beings didn't breakdown, require expert attention or replacement parts.  Or, if they did, simple enough to plug a brand new man or woman on the line in place of an old one.

             
Four generations of Jeffersons preceded Millar as laborers on Hyland.  While it wasn’t clear how the Jefferson line came to be there, the certainty of the connection to their famous ancestor was
unassailable
.

"Our direct damn link to Thomas Jefferson should have saved our family from relocation," Dorsey's father said frequently, so as to never lose sight of the
reason for his misery on Hyland.

             
Millar Jefferson, with his long face, tired features and prematurely arthritic joints, also clung to the belief that his ancestors, along with countless others, were wrongly relocated from Earth during the "age of removal”:
forced
migration from Earth.  The theory held that the sheer number of human beings spread across the expanse of U-Space, as well as their permanent, iron-solid separation from Earth-controlled C-Space could only have come as the result of a massive, engineered exile. 

             
The elder Jefferson (with longtime cronies at his side) passed these stories on to younger laborers on Hyland.  They routinely suggested that one of the new breed might have come from a distinguished line of humans and never even known it.  An alluring thought; that one could be something more substantial than they’d been conditioned to believe.

             
“Who knows,” the elder Jefferson said to more than a few young men and women toiling alongside him, “you could even be from a more substantial line than me.”

             
As the new convert pondered the possibility, Millar would always follow up with a disclaimer:  “It’s not
likely
.  The Jeffersons are an unusually special case.  But it’s possible.” 

However, convincing as he may have been to dozens of "uninitiated" Hylandites, the one he most hoped to reach evaded his influence.

              Dorsey had vivid memories of his father, at the end of an excruciating shift spent scaling the unusable crust from syntho-grain links, fingers numb and calloused after years of the repetitive task, kicking his shoes into a far corner of the tight quarters inhabited by the family (on nights when he no longer had the funds to occupy a seat at one of the taverns and drink his troubles away), reclining and retelling stories of Jeffersons through the ages.

             
"Am I expected to remember all of this?" Dorsey asked once, around the time of his fourteenth birthday – a year shy of transitioning into the labor force.

             
"Expected to?  Don't you
want
to know about it all?"

             
"What good does it do?  Past is past."

             
Millar Jefferson rose gradually from his half-reclined position on that particular evening, jarred from the sincere hope that his son would carry on the oral tradition of the family Jefferson, and walked away, never to look at Dorsey quite the same way again.

V              V              V              V

              Administrators on Hyland 6A couldn't do much about discussions regarding family histories and Earth's conspiracy to dislocate billions.  At least, they couldn't do much about it without antagonizing workers.  Nor did they try.  Sure, they would have preferred that everyone on the planet contented themselves with the banal recorded entertainments piped into the residences of laborers during off-hours (music, insipid human dramatic presentations:  morality plays and cautionary tales for a modern age).  However, as long as the tales of Jefferson and others like him didn't diminish output, they were loath to put effort into quashing it.

             
Control over information regarding
current
events outside the planet, on the other hand, was something else entirely.

             
Developments occurring throughout U-Space considered potentially disruptive or demoralizing to the workers of Hyland 6A were excised from the daily digests of news made available to the population.  In truth, very little real information from outside Hyland actually snuck through to the citizens.

             
Yet during much of Dorsey's youth, an alternate means of contact with the far reaches of U-Space existed:  crew members of cargo transports (
molkas
) delivering supplies and goods or, conversely, removing processed grain for delivery, were a regular presence.

             
Stories and tidbits brought by these men of constant travel served as the basis of addiction for some, Dorsey Jefferson included.  Even the discussion of essentially inconsequential events in places completely unfamiliar to the workers of Hyland 6A was thrilling.

             
Most tales tended toward the harmless: the description of fashion fads (which the plain-living people of Hyland could only barely grasp), popular new games of chance invented on other worlds that were beginning to make the rounds and rumors of intriguing items (small animals, plants and the like) successfully smuggled off Earth and sold to the highest bidders in U-Space.

             
Many administrators aware of these episodes looked the other way, avoiding discipline they had no desire to dole out.  However, a few of the "overseers" theorized that the minutiae of U-Space would eventually give way to a more significant storyline, potent enough to provide genuine distraction for the workers.

             
And that is exactly what happened.

Sessions in which the cargo molka crew members held forth with stories from around U-Space always took place in one or another of Hyland’s taverns.  Smaller, dark places were avoided.  The ‘nook and cranny’ joints were inadequate to hold the numbers interested in listening.  Since the visiting crewmen never, ever bought their own drinks, having a large crowd to share the burden of keeping them supplied made all the difference.

Dorsey knew of such evenings for most of his childhood, but he was only allowed to attend once he turned fifteen and joined the Hyland workforce.  The first few weeks of his eligibility just happened to coincide with the start of an epic storyline that lasted months.

V              V              V              V

              "Earth!  The man said there's four of them...and they're going to
Earth
,"  one of the process line laborers, speaking to a coworker across stacks of unrefined syntho-grains, was overheard to say by Dorsey.  Not that the other dozen people in the room scaling the rough crusts couldn't hear, but few of them seemed interested. 

Millar Jeff
erson watched intently as his son passed through the room, a pair of small, durable carts with him to collect the discarded crusts and wheel them away – the lowliest job on the line.  Dorsey lingered, focusing on the story being retold.  Millar glared in his son's direction until the younger Jefferson noticed and moved along.

             
It didn't prevent Dorsey from getting the entire story.  He'd been hearing fragments from workers in all the processing rooms the whole morning.  Very few Hylandites had been at Binches (one of the settlement's larger taverns) the previous night to hear the full telling of the tale by visiting cargo crewmen, known as joks.  But word was spreading quickly among the workforce. 

             
Millar Jefferson, even after Dorsey had departed the room, made faces of sour frustration punctuating each sifting move he executed to separate crust from edible grain.  Why wasn't rearing his son as simple as pulling away the undesirable elements and tossing them aside? 

             
Dorsey continued to pick up more shards of information throughout the day.  Most importantly, he learned that the four men set to attempt a trip to Earth were a group of accomplished
pobbers
.  Plenty of stories about pobbers operating throughout U-Space had reached Hylandites before.  The vast majority telling of violent deaths.  Pobbers lived and breathed to build better and more advanced
ketts
– the commonspeak term for small vessels. 

             
Large companies and settlements in U-Space had their oversized
molkas, constructed by manufacturers who guarded design secrets.  Pobbers were going to revolutionize the ability of average men and women to make their way around U-Space of their own accord.  These devoted innovators were necessarily dreamers, tinkerers and experimenters, married to their passion and unafraid of dying.

             
Underpowered displacement drives could be easily produced, but pobbers were intent on matching the big molkas for sheer power and reach, whatever it took.  It was one of the reasons many of them didn't tend to live all that long.

             
"A sweet goodbye to haska!" had become the traditional “war cry” transmission to confederates, typically followed by the declaration, "It's quite alright to die!", signaling that the pobber at the controls was about to engage a new displacement prototype.  These words were usually delivered with over-the-top conviction, tightening the guts and lifting resolve necessary to follow through.