Tales of Kitsune by Kris Schnee

Author:Kris Schnee [Schnee, Kris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2018-04-01T07:00:00+00:00

Destiny

Alexei sat with a heavy coat draped over his office chair, a chewed pencil in his hand, and his mind a million miles away. He'd never wanted to work in any place identifiable as "the office," but he was biding time until the big chance came. Beneath his desk lay piles of technical manuals ranging from Sergei Korolev's lunar rocket to the latest Star Trek ship blueprints. Sometimes his computer would flash a news alert on some new piece of research. Sometimes someone would walk by the cubicle. Alexei just let the pencil explore the lined paper in front of him, swooping like an incoming shuttle.

The faint sketch smudged against his left hand even as he drew it: himself the way he was in his dreams. He wore the crimson uniform of some future world's Spacers' Guild, but with a silver fox-tail flicking behind him as he posed. One gloved, clawed hand rested on the curved flank of his crimson Starwing fighter, and on his chest shined a gold medal from the Star Tsar himself. He could feel the cold metal, the hum of the photon-pressure engines that would carry him into the sky. Fuzzy ears stood out at a jaunty angle, obviously glad to be free from the flight helmet under his arm. But outside Alexei's head, there on the actual page, it was just graphite: grey uniform, uneven lines, eraser marks. Nothing ever looked right, not in any of his sketches.

Leika coughed behind him. Alexei spun, making his chair clatter on the plastic floor. In his hands the notepad cut against his palms. "Leika! Hi! I was just, uh --"

Leika had been a swimmer all her life, and it showed in the tanned muscles of her bare arms. "What's that?" she said, pointing to the paper.

"Nothing!" he said instinctively. He'd mentioned art to her one time, over lunch, and she'd given that bell-deep laugh of hers and asked, weren't cartoons for kids?

Leika gave an easy shrug. "Anyway, Ivan needs the design specs for the afternoon meeting, so he asked me to go over a couple of points with you."

"Okay," Alexei said. He turned to put the notepad away, but in his nervousness it fell open on the floor instead. With his face flushed he swept one arm down to grab it but the page tore, and Leika was stepping into the cubicle to try to help. Alexei fumbled the notepad into a cheap plastic inbox and kept staring in its direction, drumming one foot on the leg of his chair. "The meeting -- what points?"

"Is that your sketching?"

"I was only idle for a minute. Waiting for an e-mail." It was just for a minute, here and there, that Alexei felt alive.

"Really," she said, tossing her hair back over one shoulder. "Boys and their cartoons." She laughed.

Alexei tried to laugh with her.

* * *

The meeting was an endless hour of dull detail. Smoke curled through the conference room from their cigarettes -- one in Leika's hand, one in most of the other employees' -- and snaked into Alexei's lungs.

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