Lunar Descent (14 page)

“Was it Sloane?” Monk asked. “Sam Sloane?”

“Huh?” Lester was startled from his train of thought. “How did you know that?”

Walker shrugged. “Lucky guess. But we …” He coughed; he seemed reluctant to go further. “Well, we know about Sam Sloane. Kind of a folk legend, you might …”

“C'mon, Lew, don't be such a schmuck. You can't believe that, can you?” Peterson crossed her arms and sat down on the edge of the desk. “Some of the guys claim they've seen a ghost while on EVA,” she continued impatiently, looking at Riddell now. A cynical grin curled her lips. “A mysterious figure in an old-style suit, wandering the edges of the base at night …” She raised her hands and fluttered them around her face. “
Woooo-weeee-wooooooo
…”

“Well, I believe it,” Monk said.

“Well, I think it's a bunch of shit,” Butch shot back. She looked at Lester. “What do you think?”

A ghost on the Moon
, he thought.
Right. Sam's ghost
…

A faint chill ran down from the base of his neck. He didn't like thinking about it, and there were far more important matters facing him right now. He glanced at his watch. “Look, we've got the meeting coming up in a few minutes,” he said quickly, “and I've got to get ready.” Abruptly, he sat down and opened his briefcase. Looking up again, he found Butch and Monk still watching him. “Is there anything else?”

The two scientists glanced at each other. “No, I don't think so,” Peterson replied. “We thought we might have a few more minutes, maybe get to know each other before …”

“Sorry, no.” Lester shook his head. “It's nice of you guys to stop by and introduce yourselves, but …” He sighed and spread his hands. “Seriously, I've got to get ready for the staff meeting. I wasn't even planning to hold it until the minute we landed. So, y'know … I need to get prepared.”

Butch blinked, but said nothing. “All right,” Monk said, edging out into the corridor. “We'll have plenty of time later to become acquainted.”

“Yeah. Okay. Right.” Lester looked first at Monk, then at Butch, then back at Monk again. “See you at the meeting. Right?”

“Right,” Butch said tersely. She turned and marched past Monk out of the office. Monk let her pass, then cast a faint smile upon Lester before he carefully closed the door. The door swung shut behind them, but not before Lester heard Butch whisper: “He's doomed.…”

He leaned back in his desk chair and let out his breath. Just a couple of minutes until the meeting … barely enough time to prepare himself for the inevitable confrontation.

Doomed? he thought. Christ, lady, by the time I get through with these guys, they're going to be organizing a lynching party. He let his eyes drift to the narrow window and gazed out over the bleak yet startling landscape.

“Doomed,” he repeated aloud.

Okay, maybe so. Just all I ask, dear God, is please don't let anyone get killed again like Sam did. Not while I'm here
.

7. Attitude Correction

This is
, Lester thought as he surveyed the crowd in the mess hall,
going to be harder than I expected
.

The mess hall was a long narrow room, its Mylar-padded walls painted a utilitarian shade of gray, with hard, sheet-metal tables and benches arranged in straight lines down the cement floor. It was tonelessly lighted by fluorescent fixtures that dangled from the mooncrete ceiling between the omnipresent pipes, conduits, and airducts. A couple of recessed windows looked out onto the drab moonscape; travel posters taped to the walls-San Francisco's Telegraph Hill, Yellowstone National Park and the Great Smoky Mountains, Chicago's Lake Shore Drive, an anonymous beach scene somewhere in Hawaii—fought a lame battle to lend color to the room.

Even more colorless were the faces that turned toward Lester the moment he walked in. Conversation diminished to mutters and grumbles as he strode to the front of the room; not a respectful silence, but rather an obligatory absence of noise. Lester was reminded of a friend's account of having attended a bullfight in some South American nation when the country's unloved dictator showed up for the games; no one cheered for the old murderer, but no one dared make catcalls either. The arena had simply fallen silent until
el presidente
had been seated in his box, then the aficionados resumed their roaring.

The moondogs seated at the tables—most of them male—were a lean and sullen bunch, with hard faces reminiscent of old-time West Virginia coal miners and oil-rig operators from the Alaskan North Slope. The jumpsuits of those wearing Skycorp blues had been altered, with sleeves cut off at the armpits and various patches sewn on the front pockets. Most of the crowd was dressed in football jerseys and perspiration-stained sweatshirts, frayed jeans and hightop sneakers, baseball caps and bandannas. On most of the tables were empty vegetable and coffee cans, into which, every now and then, someone spit a rancid stream of tobacco juice. Cigarettes were banned on the Moon—smoke tended to gunk up the filters of the air circulation system—but there was enough contraband Red Man and Bull Durham stockpiled in their lockers to last a generation. Brown stains on the floor showed that some of the tobacco-chewers didn't bother to aim for the cans.

The moondogs sat at the tables and leaned against the walls, watching him watching them, waiting for their new boss to make the first move. Their stoical faces expressed their silent thoughts:
What a pain in the ass … Who does this guy think he is?… Okay, let's get this aver with
.… Near the door, Butch Peterson and Monk Walker silently waited for him to start. He caught a quick wink from Walker, but that was the only reassurance he had. Yes indeed, this was going to be a tough audience, and there was nothing to do but brazen it out.

Lester cleared his throat tentatively. “Umm … good afternoon,” he began. “I'm Lester Riddell and … uh, I'm the new general manager.”

“So what?” someone in the back of the room muttered.

Lester ignored it. “I'm … ah, glad to be here.…”

“Big fucking deal.” Scattered laughter.

“And I'm looking forward to working with you over the next year.…”

“Yo' momma's looking forward to working with you.…”

The laughter grew louder now; the faces before him went from noncommittal apathy to mean-spirited enjoyment in watching the new GM squirm. Lester fought to contain his temper; he paused and took a deep breath before going on. “And I hope we can …”

“Say
what
?”

“Me said his momma's coming up here to run the place.”

“Sheeit, I believe it.…”

“Maybe she can get our bonuses back.…”

“And maybe she can go down on us, too.…”

Okay, Lester thought, that's
it
.

He snatched the spittoon off the table in front of him and swung his arm back. “And I hope we'll learn to
respect
each other!” he yelled, and pitched the can out in the direction of the last voice.

Men ducked and howled obscenities as the can hurtled over their beads, spraying brown slime across their shoulders and backs. It hit the San Francisco travel poster with a loud CLANG! and splattered mucus across the poster and the table beneath it as it ricocheted across the room. Moondogs jumped to their feet, staring at the wall, then at Lester, then back at the wall again. Suddenly, the mess hall was deathly quiet.

At the targeted table, a huge black man slowly stood up and started moving toward Lester. Head shaven, with a trim mustache framing his scowling mouth, he was not much smaller than a shopping mall; his clenched fists looked as hard as bricks, “Muthafucker, I'm gonna …”

“You're going to
what
?” Lester shouted back. He didn't wait for the giant to get to the front of the room; instead, he quickly strode down the aisle between the tables. Men and women quickly got out of his way as he advanced on the moondog. Lester met him before he left his table.

“Tell me about it,” Lester demanded. “
What
are you going to do?”

The giant glared down at Lester, and Lester stared straight back at him. Blood pounded in Lester's ears like kettledrums; he barely noticed the expectant silence in the mess hall. If he swings, Lester thought distantly, he'll plaster me like a tomato across the floor.…

“Do you know my mother?” Lester snapped. “Huh? Have you ever
met
my mother?”

The big man said nothing, just kept staring at Lester. “You can say what you want about me,” Lester continued, lowering his voice to a tone of restrained menace, “but unless you want your ass kicked, you leave my mom out of this.”

A young black man sitting at a nearby table politely cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said, smiling as he peered at Lester over the top of his rimless glasses, “but do I understand you correctly in that you're saying you're going to kick Tycho's ass?”

Lester didn't move his eyes from Tycho's face. “That's right,” he said evenly. “If Tycho makes any more remarks about my mother, I'm going to kick his ass.”

“That may be difficult,” the young man replied, smiling a little, “but that's beside the point. You're saying that, even if he happens to inquire about your mater's
health
, you're going to attempt to kick his ass?”

“My mother's been dead for ten years,” Lester said, still not looking away from Tycho. “And, yeah, I'm going to kick his ass. And it won't be an attempt, either.”

The kid crossed his arms. “Still,” he pontificated, “I'm not sure how you can be …”

“Shaddup, cool.” Tycho looked away from Lester to cast his chill gaze on the young man, who immediately shut up. The big moondog looked back at Lester. “Too bad about your mother, man,” he rumbled. He paused, then quietly added, “I'm real sorry about that.”

Then, without another word, he turned around and went back to his chair. Lester silently let out his breath.
Thank you, Jesus, for not letting me die
.…

He turned and looked across the mess hall. “
Now
!” he shouted. “If I've finally gotten your attention, maybe you can start this meeting!”

Lester began to walk slowly back down the aisle. “Let's get a couple of things straight,” he continued, allowing his gaze to sweep across the faces. “I'm the new GM, and I've had as much shit as I'm going to take from you people. If you don't like me, then keep in mind that I don't like you very much either. In fact, there's nothing in my contract which says that I have to treat you as anything but a bunch of low-life grunts for hire. The difference between me and you is, I've got the power to fire you if I feel like it, and there's not
one fucking thing
you can do about it.”

“Fuck you,” someone in the back of the room murmured.

“No, you're the one who's fucked,” Lester retorted, not bothering to look round. “Your ASWI local contract gives me the right to terminate your employment whenever and for whatever reason I please, so don't even think about getting the union to bail you out. In fact, the union doesn't give a wet shit about you guys. You're an embarrassment. They let Skycorp screw you in the contract talks last year because ASWI wanted to get concessions for the Olympus Station beamjacks instead, and you were an expendable giveaway. And as for Skycorp, the reason why the company sent me up here was for me to be a hardass. They spent righteous bucks to send every one of you up here to do a job and for me to make sure you do it, and now they want their money's worth. I'm only too happy to oblige.”

He reached the front of the room again and turned around to look them over. “Make no mistake about it, pilgrims. I'm not your buddy, I'm not your pal, and I'm not going to let things slide the way Bo Fisk did. And you've gotten me pissed off already. From the moment I landed here, I've gotten nothing but attitude from you guys. I've had a chance to look around this place, and it's a goddamn sewer. Now, I'm going to clean this place up and get it working right again, and I'll be only too happy to purge the whole work force if I don't get some cooperation from you people. Have we got this straight?”

No one said a thing. Lester leaned against a table and crossed his arms. “You people have been hired to do a tough, lousy job,” he went on in a calmer tone of voice. “Things were getting sloppy here. You got away with it for a while, but Skycorp found out how much this base was fucking off, so they cleaned house. If you were here then, you're still here only because you weren't screwing around on company time—and that's twenty-four hours a day the way I see it, because they pay you and me too well for us to be fooling around. Understand?”

A few coughs, some hushed murmurs, but no reply. The crowd watched him. “If you were jerking around and just weren't caught,” Lester went on, “don't count on getting away with it with me. And if I hear any more shit like I got on the radio coming in, you're outta here.” He snapped his fingers for effect. “Fired, and I don't give a rat's ass what it does for your sick grandmother or the kids you're putting through school. Do I
still
have your undivided attention?”

A few heads were nodding. Mostly, the response was as if a harmless puppy had suddenly turned dingo: stunned disbelief. “If you're new here,” Lester went on, “that's no excuse, either. Skycorp couldn't find anyone decent to work in this godforsaken hole, so they hired you instead.”

“What about you?” someone loudly asked.

“I'm here because they couldn't get anyone else dumb enough to take this job,” Lester answered honestly.

For the first time since he walked into the room, people laughed without malice.
Good
, he thought.
I'm beginning to get somewhere
.…