Spin Control by Moriarty Chris

Author:Moriarty, Chris [Moriarty, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spectra
Published: 2006-06-27T04:00:00+00:00

“Hey, cowlick,” Arkasha said when Arkady walked into the lab.

“I hate that nickname.”

“Why else do you think I keep using it?”

Since their late-night talk, he had taken to speaking to Arkady in a cool, bantering tone and gently mocking him about everything from his cowlicks to his bad housekeeping habits. It was better than being ignored…sort of. But it was part and parcel of the same frustrating pattern that had characterized their relationship from that first meeting. One step forward and a step and a half back. And somehow it was always Arkady taking the step forward and Arkasha retreating.

“What’s bothering you?”

“Who says anything’s bothering me?”

“You do.” Arkasha rubbed at his own cowlick-free forehead in a mocking through-the-looking-glass gesture. “Talk about futility. Nothing you can do now to make your hair lie down and grow the right way. That kind of defect’s almost impossible to fix, even in utero. A real throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater problem.”

“Well, in MotaiSyndicate they would throw the baby out with the bathwater, wouldn’t they?”

Arkasha shrugged, apparently not all that interested in Motai-Syndicate’s cowlick policy. “The interesting thing to me is when you do it. At first I thought it was just social self-consciousness. A first meeting. An awkward conversation. A contentious consult. But then I noticed that you do it when you’re alone too.”

“If you’re there to see me do it, then I’m not alone, am I?”

“Very cute. You do it when you’re working is what I mean. And I think you do it when you’re thinking non-norm-conforming thoughts. Going after the outward physical deviation because it’s easier to smooth out than the one that really scares you.”

“And when exactly did you decide to become a renorming counselor?”

“Oh, so nothing’s bothering you? I’m glad to hear it.” Arkasha folded his arms and smiled.

“Okay,” Arkady admitted. “It’s the survey.”

He cleared his throat, feeling suddenly awkward, and crouched down to pull his field notebook from his rucksack. He set it on the table, still not meeting his pairmate’s eyes. “I’m just…not a hundred percent comfortable with the results I’m getting in the field.” The understatement of the millennium. “Normally I’d talk to the DVI team about it but…well…the DVI situation being what it is…”

Arkasha grasped the essence of the problem with such astounding speed that Arkady caught himself thinking yet again that he was far too fine a tool for the scientific hackwork of a routine survey mission. “Have you worked up your climatic succession equations yet?” he asked.

“I tried. I came up with nonsense.”

“Can I see your work?”

“I checked it. And double-checked it. It’s not a calculating error.”

“I’m not saying it is,” Arkasha replied with unaccustomed mildness. “I just want to understand what you’ve done so I don’t waste time repeating it.”

He waited while Arkady leafed through the pages, written and scratched out and overwritten, on which he’d tried and failed to make sense of the facts on the ground.

“What’s dh? Disturbance history?”

“Yes. And C is percentage of the sample in climax stage. And P is…”

“Patch areas. Yes. Great. Perfect.

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