Among The Stars (Heinlein's Finches Book 2) Read online

  Going home is not an option. Well, it is, but not one either of us would take. If we were financially independent, able to buy our own air, we could divorce our parents. That’s a pipe dream for the likes of us if we stay here. Well, we could do it, but not legally, not so we could have any paperwork to prove it. So we’re stuck in a two-year limbo, being controlled like kids and punished like adults.

  Which is why we’re here. This is the only solution I could come up with. And it doesn’t seem to be working.

  The woman is still staring at me. I got to tell her something, but I can’t think of anything that would sound good. So I tell her the truth instead.

  “I had reasons not to be home. So did Tom. Neither of us wasted our time in juvie. His figuring and writing are better than mine, but I’m better with tools, so it kinda evens out. We’re both good workers. We’re much better workers than most people our age.”

  “Most kids your age. Why would we be hiring kids?”

  “Because we want to be here. We don’t want to be home, that’s right, but we want to be here. The two things are separate. Older people may be better than us at some things, maybe at a whole bunch of things, but if they really wanted to be here they’d have turned up at sixteen, too. And seventeen. And eighteen. They’d have stood in front of your door every time they got the chance, until you let them in.”

  She stares at me hard. “I get your point. I dislike it immensely, but I can’t disagree with it. Not rationally, anyway. But wanting to be here doesn’t make you a good fit.”

  “Being good at a bunch of trades does, though. You must need techs and cleaners and people to do the lifting and carrying and whatever else. We may not be great at anything but we’re good at most things. And we work hard.”

  “And we’d have you for at least two years.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Because you’re stuck. The game you’ve been playing is up, you have zero options, and need a place to tide you over for the next two years.”

  Damn. She’s still staring at me. I have nothing good to say, so I shut up.

  I can feel Tom putting up his front beside me. We may be about to get kicked in the teeth, but we’re not going to go down groveling.

  “I wonder what you might have done if we hadn’t been here at just the right time.”

  “We’ve had figured something out. Mining, maybe. Or some kind of side project.”

  “Side project?”

  “Yeah.” I’m not gonna tell her about the kind of job offers we’ve been getting. “But I knew you’d be here. I’ve been following you on the com since you were here two years ago. I was out then. I watched the show.”

  “How did you get tickets?” I can’t answer that. Not truthfully, anyway: that would fuck us up completely. I should have kept my trap shut. Shit.

  The woman looks at us, two of the toughest juvenile delinquents in this town and damn good at what we do, and out of nowhere she cracks a smile. It’s not a big one, but I’ll be damned if I expected it.

  “You cut it a bit fine. Do you know what you’re getting into?”

  No, we don’t, not really. But we know what we’re leaving. “Look, we just want to work. And we don’t mind working hard.”

  “Never let the boss hear you say that. That’d be your funeral.” She glances at a reader. “Ok. You’ll have to hang on for a bit. I can’t promise anything.”

  “You’re not in charge here?” blurts out Tom.

  “Oh hell no. I wouldn’t run this shitshow for my weight in credit. I’m a mere cog in the machine.”

  “Then why the hell have we been wasting time talking to you?”

  Her smile gets more threatening. “Because I’m the cog with the power to help you get in, or keep you out. So you better mind your manners. Assuming you have any.”

  I can feel Tom starting to bristle up, so I kick him in the ankle. Thankfully that’s enough to shut him up.

  “Now, if you would be so kind, please go and wait outside. The boss won’t be long.”

  We make our way down the ramp. It’s weird being this side of the perimeter, where regular citizens don’t get to go. It makes me feel special. It also makes me feel out-of-place and threatened. There are not many people around, but all those we see don’t make qualms about checking us out. They don’t seem to like what they’re seeing. And while this is business as normal for us, under the circumstances it’s far from reassuring. We need this to work and it’s not looking good.

  It looks even worse when a red-faced older guy walks through the gap between the vehicles. His face gets even redder when he sees us. He starts stomping towards us at a fair clip. He’s speeding up and swelling up as he’s getting nearer. In any other circumstance I’d be getting ready to bolt or fight, probably bolt given the size of him, but I don’t know who the hell he is and I don’t want to do the wrong thing. Tom is taking his cue from me, as usual, so he doesn’t do a damn thing either. The guy is close enough for me to see the veins throbbing in his forehead, close enough for me to think it’s time to leg it, when the lady emerges from the ATR behind us. With a cheery voice and a smile that stops halfway up her face, she chirps “Good morning, Mr. Jameson. I have your coms ready. And these two young men would like to apply for a job.”

  The man stops charging towards us and just glares at us in disgust. “What young men? They’re fucking kids!”

  “Their records are impressive, though. Never seen the like.” The shock of that makes me goggle at her before I can stop myself.

  “Do I look like I give a fuck about their records?” he bellows.

  The woman lowers her voice. “We are three boys down as of last week. And we didn’t get any other applicants. Nicky has been making do with casual help. He’s not happy. Neither are the helpers.” The man swells up even more and looks about to burst, but the woman carries on. “Maybe having to deal with a couple of kids will teach him to be more careful with his staff. This keeps happening. He doesn’t seem to learn.”

  The man slowly deflates. “Yes. Do that. See how he likes it.” Then he turns to us menacingly. “50 credits a week, room and board.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I see the woman shake her head.

  “We were thinking more like 100,” I stammer.

  The man goes red in the face again and growls through gritted teeth. “75. No board. And you can take that or fuck off.” The woman nods, so I nod too. “And if you two fuck up, I’ll make you regret the day you were born. Fucking grubbers.” He stomps off into the ATR and slams the door.

  Tom whispers to me, “You took a chance there.”

  “It worked out, didn’t it?”

  A few minutes later, the woman emerges clutching two bundles of paper. “Your contracts. You will need them to apply for your emancipation, and you will need that sorted before you come on board.”

  “You seem to know a lot about the system.”

  She scowls. I should have kept my mouth shut.

  “Full emancipation or parental permission. I don’t much care what you get. But we’re not about to harbor teenage runaways. You’re most definitely not worth that kind of trouble.”

  “Thanks,” snarls Tom before I get a chance to kick him.

  “Don’t mind him. We’ll get this sorted out.”

  “You know the drill?”

  “I’ve known it since I was ten. We’ll sort it.”

  “Easiest way is if you get your parents to sign you off. Fastest way, too. We pack up in eight hours.”

  “No worries. We’ve got this.”

  We take the papers and head back towards town as fast as we can walk. We have no time to waste.

  I nudge Tom. “You got the forms?”

  “Yeah. Got them the day I got out. Wanna check?”

  “No time. I trust you.”

  “That’s a first,” and he nearly manages a smile.

  “You think we can pull this off? Time is tight.”

  “Has to be, doesn’t it? Parental permission is rev
ocable. Do you want to give those assholes the chance to change their mind before we’re off planet? Anyway, it’s easy on my side. It’s not even lunchtime yet.”

  We go to his house first. We shimmy up the containment wall at the back and crawl along it until we can look through the windows.

  “There you go,” smirks Tom. “No bother.”

  Tom’s dad is sprawled on what passes for a sofa in that house, completely out of it. By the amount of bottles around him, he’s not yet recovered from the night before. Nobody else is in. We crawl back along the wall and hop down.

  Tom mutters “Easy does it, ok?” As if he needed to tell me.

  We stash our bags behind a bin and walk to the front door. It takes Tom about three seconds to jimmy open the lock. He’s been doing this since he was tall enough to reach. I stay by the door to keep an eye out just in case, while Tom goes in. He picks up his dad’s limp hand, puts a pen in it, makes a scrawl on his form, and pushes his dad’s thumb against the biometrics pad. His dad doesn’t react at all. Tom looks at him for a couple of seconds before shaking himself off and walking out. He doesn’t even bother to shut the door.

  “What papers did you use?” I ask him.

  “Full emancipation, my man. If you’re gonna do it, do it all the way.”

  It all seems too easy. “You sure this will work? What if he contests it?”

  “You think he reads his coms? And I’ll be off-world by then. Not that he’ll care, but even if he did what’s he gonna do, pay for my transit back?”

  One down, one to go. We pick up our stuff and get going. The next bit is going to be trickier.

  My house is only a few roads down, but it’s a third floor flat, the security’s tighter, and I know that asshole’s inside. There’s nothing for it, though. I can’t just hang around outside and wait for my mom to come out. I could be waiting for days. There’s no choice but going up. That doesn’t make me feel any better.

  “Never broken into the place before.”

  “First time for everything. You want me to come with?”

  “Nah. Stay out here. If you hear anything kick off, start chucking cobbles at the windows.”

  “Subtle.”

  “Effective. Probably. Here goes.”

  Tom gives me a leg up so I can grab the first bracket holding the waste pipe that runs down the length of the building. I know that it can support my weight because I’ve used it a million times to climb down. From there it’s pretty easy for me to get up to the third floor, grab the balcony railings, and haul myself up and over. I try to land as quietly as possible, but I still make way too much noise. I crouch on the balcony for a few seconds, waiting for some kind of reaction from inside the house, but nothing happens. I dart past the living room door, just in case, then peer through the kitchen door. My mom is there, as I expected. She’s almost always there. No sign of the motherfucker, either, which I also expected. He doesn’t do mornings. I tap gently on the door to attract her attention, nearly giving her a heart attack by the looks of it. Thankfully she doesn’t scream before she recognizes me. Maybe she’s too zonked out for that. Her eyes widen and she looks behind her at the door into the flat, but I tap on the glass again and gesture at her to be quiet and come out.

  Meeting my mom is always the same: gross and frustrating. She won’t accept that I don’t like her pawing at me. She throws herself at me and clamps on. As soon as I manage to get one bit of her off me she latches on with another, all the while snuffling and snotting me up. It makes me feel like an asshole for being so grossed out, which is what it’s designed to achieve. Knowing that has never helped.

  She’s babbling incoherently all along. She’s clearly halfway out of it on some of her meds already, which could make this either incredibly easy or a giant clusterfuck. In no time at all she’s going to be working herself up into full hysterics and then I’ll be screwed. Once she’s wound herself up she can go on for hours and the noise is unbelievable. I have to keep her calm. Thankfully, I’m used to doing that.

  “Mom, stop. I’m here for a reason. I need you to do something for me.” I only have to repeat it four times for her to catch up.

  “What? What’s going on? You’re not back?”

  “I have a job. But I need you to sign some papers.”

  “A job?” She looks at me as if I’d achieved some kind of miracle, which I guess I have.

  “A job. But you need to sign some papers for me first.”

  “And then you’ll come home?”

  “Then I can come visit. Send some credit over, too.”

  Her eyes narrow. She’s not whacked out enough. Damn. “Where is this job?”

  Shit. I should have lied. “It’s a travelling job. A building crew. Get me out of the city. Away from bad company. You’ve been telling me I should stop hanging out with the guys for years.”

  Her eyes narrow even more. “Yes. That Lopez kid. Bloody trash!”

  She’s going to go off on one about Tom now, so I head her off. “Well, this is your chance. I got me a job. A paid job. A paid, permanent, legit job. Who else my age has a job around here?”

  She swells up at that. “Nobody, that’s who. Such lazy kids! Disrespectful, too!”

  “But I’m not like that. I messed up a lot but you never gave up on me and you did what was right even when it was hard for you. So I straightened myself out and now I got a job. All you have to do is sign the consent form and I’m set. Even though it’s hard for you, you’ll do it because it’s the right thing for your son.”

  My mom doesn’t really see reality. Never has, since I can remember. Dealing with her has always been about manipulating the dream she wants to believe in.

  Her eyes fill with tears. “Of course. My boy, my beautiful boy!” She’s starting to tear up again, so I get her to sign the papers and give her thumbprint quickly, before she dissolves into sobbing. Only instead of the parental permission forms, I get her to sign the emancipation papers. She doesn’t read them, anyway. She doesn’t even look at them. She’s too busy telling me what a good mother she is and how hard it’s all been for her. I’m trying not to scream.

  I stash the papers in my back pocket. Time to scram. I detach her from me for the umpteenth time and hold her at arm’s length. “Ok. I have to go now. I can’t be late for my first day.” She tries to clutch at me again, but her arms are too short.

  “Aren’t you going to come in, have something to eat? Klaus will be up soon. He’ll want to see you.”

  I stifle a shudder. “No, mom, I gotta go.” I can’t piss away my time here and I’m starting to feel dirty enough to vomit. Plus if the motherfucker catches me here I’m going to have a situation. Nothing I can’t handle, particularly with Tom as backup, but I’ll rather not have to. “I’ll write. Send you a postcard, with a picture on it.”

  She swells up with pride and tears up again. Time to end this.

  “Mom, I gotta go.” I get over the railing before she can grab me, and shimmy down the pipe.

  Tom’s just around the corner of the building, out of sight. He hands me my bag. “Which way?” he asks.

  “This way. Longer, but she can’t see us.”

  We run down the alleys until we’ve gone round enough corners that there’s no way they could catch us. We don’t need to, most likely, but old habits die hard.

  “She signed you off?”

  “Of course. Anything to get me away from you.”

  “Your mom still hates me?”

  “Yup. Can’t blame her. You’re a bad influence.”

  “Bullshit. She never liked me.”

  “That too. But she can’t have you people leading her golden boy astray with your loose morals and looser women.”

  That makes him grin. “Fat chance of that!”

  We jog all the way to the court house. This is the last step. I’m really worked up now. Of course, when we get there there’s a line.

  We’re waiting our turn, twitchy as hell, when Tom asks me. “What would you have do
ne if she said no? I wasn’t at all confident. I can’t believe she’s letting her little boy go off world.”

  “I didn’t tell her anything about that. Who do you take me for? I wasn’t sure, either. But they managed to recover quite a bit of DNA from me a few years back, nail scrapings and stuff, when we had a bit of a situation.”

  “Nail scrapings?”

  “Yeah. Nearly took the motherfucker’s eyelids off. It was a fun time.”

  “I don’t know whether to be impressed or to point out that you fight like a toddler.”

  “Very funny. Anyway, I managed to convince the case worker that I was a jerk and wasn’t going to play ball, and that it was probably partly my fault. She didn’t bother investigating much or filing for charges. But it’s all on record and I was 13. The motherfucker doesn’t need charges of assault against a minor. He’d have to get off his ass to deal with them.”

  “Eh. Fuck that guy.”

  “Rather not. That’s the whole point.”

  The woman standing in line behind us jumps up at that with a horrified face. That makes us both laugh. We’re both so wound up that once we start we can’t stop for ages. We just keep setting each other off. By the time we get to the service window, we’re out of breath and I’ve got a stitch, but we’ve worked enough tension out of our systems that we can pretend to be cool about this. I do the talking. I’m better at sounding serious.

  “We’re here to file our emancipation papers. Both consensual. Parental release forms. Proof of employment. IDs.”

  The woman behind the window looks at the papers, then looks at us over her glasses. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Absolutely.” She carries on staring at me, so I carry on. “If you look at our records, between the two of us we’ve spent around 90 months in a juvenile detention center. I think we can all agree this is an improvement. And a great saving to our fair city.”

  Tom smiles broadly at that. “Your chance to sanitize the neighborhood.” He sounds so cocky. I love this guy.

  The lady looks openly disgusted, but she stamps our papers and feeds them through a machine.