Learning the World by Ken MacLeod

Author:Ken MacLeod [MacLeod, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780765313317
Publisher: Macmillan

The Engineer’s Dream was known as a deep hang, a disreputable venue near the axis of the forward cone, popular with habitat trainers, microlight pilots, maintenance coordinators, and other low-responsibility crew members. Horrocks drifted through the hatch into its hazy air and narrow-spectrum artificial light and toed off for the drinks wall, where he broke off a bulb, crooked his elbow through a loop, and turned to survey the scene. Time of day wasn’t an issue here, the entire circadian rhythm being based on on-shift or off-shift, but the place was in one of its phases where only a score or so of people were in. Good: he wanted that sense of drinking at the wrong hour.

He exchanged nods with a few people hanging in the central mesh, none of whom he fancied talking to, and then noticed Genome Console at the far end on her own. Focused on an inhaler, she didn’t see him so he pinged her. She turned, saw him, waved and rolled to place her feet on the wall. One swift thrust brought her over. A neat somersault docked her in the same loop as himself. She wore something like an opaque black sphere with holes for wrists, ankles and neck, but a sphere that had crinkled and shrunk inward to cling here and there, mostly there. Her fair hair floated wild. “Well, hello,” she said. “Where have you been? The gang all thought you’d gone flatfoot.”

“It was just for a few days,” said Horrocks.

“A few days at a time,” she said. “You’ve been going down there for weeks.”

“Doing business with passengers.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute. Fancy a sniff?” She waved her inhaler. Horrocks checked the cartridge: red clouds and a lightning-flash, an obscure brand name.

“No thanks.” Horrocks swigged a squirt. “But you’re right. I got caught up in something.”

“Ah!” said Genome, her eyes bright from her sniff. “You and that flatfoot girl.” She tilted her head back, sighting him along her nose. “She’s trouble.”

“She is that,” Horrocks said. “How do you know about her, anyway?”

“She’s biologged your little contretemps already.”

It had been hours. “You follow it?”

“I track the feeds. Bad habit I picked up from Grey.”

“Oh,” said Horrocks. For some reason it was a name he didn’t welcome hearing. “How is he, by the way?”

“Perverse,” said Genome. “Like all that Red Sun crowd.”

“Red Sun crowd?” Horrocks had an alarmed moment when he thought she alluded to his dealings with the Red Sun Circle.

“You know, all the people from back there.” She waved over her shoulder. “The old crew hands are as bad as passengers, sometimes.”

“Oh, right. They’ve been so long in the ship it’s like—”

“They have to make life more complicated than it needs to be,” she said.

“You’re right there,” said Horrocks, with more force than he’d meant.

“Ah!” said Genome again. “Her caremother got under your skin, did she?” She grinned at his open mouth. “Atomic biologged that, too.”

Horrocks had to laugh. “What do you think of the substance of it?”

“The argument? Huh.” She took a long sniff and stared into the distance.

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