Smith's Monthly #9 Page 3

  “We’ll just leave it at thirty.” I took a big drink out of the beer to try to give myself time to think and also not look at her. The attraction between us seemed to be growing by the minute, at least on my side.

  “It’s a job,” Lex said, clearly feeling she needed to explain even more. “I meet interesting people like you and I do a service. In a few years I’ll retire back to my time. There are some beautiful places in the future among the Planets.”

  “There are beautiful places here in this time, too,” I said. “Granted I haven’t seen many of them lately, but I know they’re here.”

  “Take this job,” Lex said, “live a couple of months like you’ve never lived before, see planets you can’t even imagine exist, play ten concerts and then come back rich, with enough money to see the places you want to see and start your music career over under a new name.”

  “Ninety years from now.”

  Lex nodded.

  “So why? Why me?”

  Lex actually laughed at that. “Honest question. We want to hear you play concerts. That’s all. The Consolidated Planets love any type of Old Earth music, and have gotten very little of the style of music you played before. That’s why we’re willing to offer someone of your talent so much money. Trust me, we’ll make a profit on you.”

  “You’ve gotten people to go with you for less?”

  “Oh, sure. One burnt-out rocker went out about two years ago with only the promise of a lifetime supply of food and drugs.”

  “And how did it go for him?” I asked, before it dawned on me Lex would have no way of knowing.

  Lex shrugged. “He’s still in transit.”

  “Still in his first day on the ship?”

  “More than likely,” Lex said. “He won’t arrive for another forty-three years this time.”

  “Oh,” I said. I was starting to catch on to how it worked.

  “What I told you is the limit of my knowledge about this stuff,” Lex said, her voice soft and sincere sounding. “I’ve been totally honest with you. I just fly in the ships and hope someone somewhere knows what they are doing.”

  “I know that feeling,” I said, smiling at her. “I’m the same damn way with these spaceships that flit from system to system now.”

  “So you understand?” Lex asked.

  “Not a bit of it,” I said. “But what the hell difference does that make, right?”

  “Right,” Lex said. “So what do you say?”

  “Give me an hour sitting here alone,” I said, “and I’ll give you an answer.”

  Lex nodded and slid off her stool. I really didn’t want her to leave, but I had to be outside of her wonderful smell, those driving blue eyes, to think clearly.

  A moment later the tavern was lit with bright light as Lex went out onto the sundeck

  “The way you two were talking,” Carl said, “it seemed important.”

  I shrugged and finished off my beer so Carl could bring me another. “She’s just offering me a gig is all.”

  “Fantastic,” Carl said, his face lighting up like someone had just given him a hundred buck tip. “It’s about damn time you got back on the horse.”

  “Not even sure what a horse looks like anymore,” I said.

  Carl laughed as he slid another beer in front of me. “Man, I heard you when you opened for Baked Pie in the Princeton System in the Baseline Theater. Trust me, you know the horse.”

  I stared at Carl, actually looking at him for the first time in the two years I had been coming into this place. “You were at that concert?”

  “Sure was,” he said. “And I saw you over on Mercer as well, when you opened for Craig S. and the Princes. I even bought a hard disk copy of your first song collection.”

  “Only collection,” I corrected.

  “First,” he said, smiling at me.

  “Man, I didn’t even think you knew who I was.”

  Carl laughed. “I let people in my bar do as they want. But I can tell you I was a huge fan of yours. You were just ahead of your time is all.”

  “Yeah, ahead of my time playing Old Earth Country,” I said, sipping my beer. It sure seemed that time was an issue a lot lately.

  “No man, honest,” Carl said. “Things have changed, your original songs would take off now.”

  “I sure hope you are right my friend.”

  “Oh, I am,” Carl said, smiling. “Take the gig, get back on tour. I’ll miss your business, but I can buy the next collection and play it in here on busy nights.”

  It had always seemed that my songs, the only songs I really wanted to play, were just a little too “edgy” for most Old Earth Country fans a few years back.

  “Man, this is exciting that you’re getting back to playing,” Carl said. “Just tell me when and where your first concert is, and I’ll be there, right in the damn front row. I know a bunch of fans who will do the same.”

  “Well, right now everything’s a little up in the air,” I said.

  Carl smiled real big. “Just let me know.”

  With that he turned and walked down the bar, going back to his prep work for the nightly crowd, leaving me to my thoughts.

  I couldn’t believe how much things had changed for me in simply a day. I had an offer for a short tour that I didn’t really believe, yet part of me accepted.

  And I had been reminded I still had fans, few as they may be, but they were still out there, and they remembered my work.

  I glanced down the bar at Carl. I doubted he had any idea how important his comments were to me. Hell, any fan’s comments to any artist, in any field were important. When the money runs out, the recording contracts are cancelled, all musicians have are fans to keep them going. Fans. They are everything.

  I sipped my beer and sat there, remembering the concerts, the feel of making people happy with my music, the disappointments and setbacks on the business side, and finally all the loneliness, hitting bottom yesterday when I hocked my guitar for money.

  Lex had been right. I had nothing to lose by taking her offer.

  I glanced down the bar. Nothing to lose except fans like Carl, who still remembered.

  Carl’s dream had been owning a bar. He’d told me that right after he bought the place. He was scared to death, and at the same time as happy as a little kid at Christmas. It couldn’t be easy running a bar off a sundeck on an old space station orbiting a star with a name no one could pronounce, but he was doing it, making it one day at a time.

  I shook my head. Man, that was admirable. Maybe Lex was right, maybe I had given up and dove into the bottle a little too soon.

  And now I was getting a second chance. Granted, no one like Carl would be around to remember me in ninety years, but it was still a second chance.

  Maybe my songs would be dated by then, I would be dated. Wouldn’t that be ironic, a musician who was ahead of his time coming back dated?

  Again that time thing.

  I glanced down the bar at Carl. I hated to lose my fans, even the few who still remained. I hated the idea of coming back and starting over and being dated then. For me it would only be a few months, but I wouldn’t recognize most of anything.

  There had to be a way to get everything. I was always accused of wanting everything, and I guess this time was no different.

  I started to take another drink from my beer, then looked at it and set it back down on the bar napkin. I pushed it to the inside edge of the bar, away from me and said, “Hey, Carl, could you bring me a diet soda of some kind?”

  Carl looked up, the smile on his face huge. “Coming right up.”

  FOUR

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER, when Lex came back through the door and stood for a moment letting her wonderful blue eyes adjust, I had my plan pretty much worked out. It was going to cost me a pretty penny to pull off, but if it worked, I just might get the best of both worlds, Lex’s and mine.

  And if I got lucky, maybe Lex as well. As I said, I wanted everything.

  Lex slid onto the stool
beside me and Carl brought her a diet drink as well. I sipped mine, some sort of drink that tasted like lime only sweet.

  After Carl moved down the bar, Lex pointed to my drink and smiled, looking into my eyes. “I see you’ve made a decision.”

  “I have,” I said. “But hear me all the way out like you asked me to do for you. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Lex said, a puzzled look on her face.

  “Your entire problem with finding people here on Earth to play out in the Consolidated Planets is time. Right?”

  Lex nodded.

  “And Carl said that my songs had been ahead of their time,” I said.

  “I think he was more than likely right,” Lex said. “I listened to your first collection. It’s amazingly good.”

  “So here’s what I want to do,” I said, plowing on and ignoring her wonderful compliment. “I want to take you up on your offer, but I want to postpone when I leave.”

  Lex really looked puzzled, but she didn’t say anything, letting me go on.

  “I want to try to make a comeback right here, right now, first, before I leave. And I want you to be my manager and backer with the money you’ll pay me to leave to the future.”

  With that Lex sort of rocked back and got a distant look for a moment.

  So I just went right on talking. “In exchange for you helping me get going again, right now, doing a little bankrolling, I’ll help you recruit some top talent for your Planets tours. And if I don’t make a comeback here, I’ll take less than what you offered me now in a couple of years.”

  “And if you do make it big?” Lex asked.

  “We both get rich and we’ll just fake my death when I get as far as I can here, and then head out to the Planets together to make some real money. But the key is time.”

  “A win-win situation for you,” Lex said, staring at me, a slight smile creeping into the edge of her perfect lips.

  “For both of us,” I said. “Think about it. You get me cheaper if I don’t make it, we both make money if I do, and I get not one, but two chances to make a comeback. Now and in ninety years. All that is lost is a little time on this end.”

  Lex laughed and nodded. “You know, that sort of makes sense.”

  I looked her directly in the eyes and reached out and took her soft hand. “Eventually, my songs won’t be ahead of their time.”

  “Timing is everything,” Lex said, nodding, squeezing my hand softly in hers. “You’ve got yourself a manager and a bankroll.”

  While keeping one hand in hers, I held up my glass with my other hand and offered a toast.

  Lex picked her glass up, smiling at me.

  “To time,” I said, “the real solution to everything.”

  “To time,” she agreed, tapping her glass against mine.

  Then she put her glass down and with her free hand pulled me close and kissed me.

  And for me, right at that moment, time just stopped. And I had no desire to restart it.

  MEMORY

  She wrote me a letter

  this last Christmas, expecting

  me to remember who she was,

  what color hair she had,

  how wide her smile had been.

  Ten years ago, give or take a year,

  I gave birth to a story called

  “Ghosts of Christmas Future,”

  a damned original title

  now that I look back at it.

  The story found a home in a book

  titled “Christmas Ghosts.”

  I made fifty-five bucks I don’t remember spending,

  the amount recorded in a book of notes

  I don’t remember keeping.

  I have no memory of writing the story,

  not one stinking word of it,

  yet with one short letter she expects me to remember her

  because we slept together for a few months

  twenty years before I wrote the story.

  Little did I know during those possibly good,

  Possibly bad, nights of sex thirty years ago,

  that she would become a ghost of my Christmas future,

  walking hand-in-hand with that story I wrote

  as I desperately ask myself “What the hell was I thinking?”

  Lost in deep space, Reeves knew rescue would never happen. But around him the Western, a supply ship full of a lifetime of living, could keep him alive.

  Fresh fish from the hatchery, fresh meat from the stored animals, fresh fruit and vegtables from the botanical gardans. Completely alone, no boss, no one to tell him what to do. What more could a cowboy from Idaho want?

  First published in stand-alone paper and electronic book form with a very different cover.

  THE TRAGIC TALE OF A MAN IN A DUSTER

  ONE

  REEVES KNEW HE shouldn’t be frying fish over an open campfire in the ship’s botanical garden, but the smell alone was going to make up for all the problems he might face if anyone ever found him. The fire crackled in a rock ring in front of him, the flames casting strange shadows on the trees and brush ringing his little meadow. He didn’t care about the extra oxygen consumption and the fire repellant system being shut off. All he cared about was the two fish in the skillet, and how wonderful they were going to taste.

  Reeves still had on his deep-sleep jumpsuit. It didn’t feel right wearing it out here, while cooking trout, but it hadn’t occurred to him to change clothes since he woke up. That would be next, right after dinner. Besides, there wasn’t much reason to stay in uniform when there was no one to dress up for.

  He kneeled and picked up the skillet, studying the fish for any sign of them being overcooked, then quickly replaced the skillet on the fire before the hot handle burned his hand. His dad back on Earth had showed him how to do this when he was a kid, and he had watched it done a dozen times since. His dad always used to say that fish were never meant to be baked or broiled or steamed. Only fried.

  Reeves had to agree. Cooking fresh trout in the ovens they had on this piece of floating space junk would be a crime. No sir, fish were born to be covered in corn meal crumbs and fried quick and hot in a half inch of margarine in a heavy metal skillet while the flames licked the sides of the blackened pan.

  And right now the two Rainbow Trout he’d caught out of Danny’s stream over in the hatcheries section of the ship were being cooked in exactly that way.

  The rich, wonderful smell was almost more than he could take. It covered the faint odor of the pines around him, filling the small meadow with a mouth-watering aroma. He just wished that when the builders had designed the botanical garden they would have made it possible to open some sort of portal so he could sit beside a fire under the stars. He glanced up hoping to see stars, but the roof was black, the light low, simulating night. Maybe at some point in the future he’d go up there and paint some fake stars on that ceiling just to make the feeling right.

  He glanced around at the darkened meadow and the trees and brush beyond. He had to do this cooking at night. No other time would be right for cooking fresh-caught trout over an open fire.

  The smoke from the fire was swirling upward around the skillet and then on toward the ceiling, lost in the darkness. He had no doubt the garden was going to smell of smoke for months to come, but he didn’t care. Hell, if this worked, and these two fish tasted anywhere near as good as they smelled, he might even fry a couple more fish tomorrow night.

  And a couple more the night after that.

  Maybe he might even fix up a tent and bedding to sleep nearby. What could it hurt? There was no one to stop him out here in the deep space between stars and jump stations. There was no fixing the ship. He had determined that an hour ago. And if he did happen to get lucky and live long enough to finally reach Jump Base Perry, he’d deal with the consequences then. But in the meantime, he was going to eat freshly-cooked trout.

  TWO

  “BLAME IT ALL to damn!” Canny said, her fingers running over the smooth surface of the tracking board, bringing
up images on her screen faster than Fergason could follow.

  Canny was in charge of tracking what they called the “pink sector,” officially call the “P” sector, following ships and anything else that might be jumping through hyper space in that area. Fergason had never heard her swear in the three years he had worked with the tiny and very competent woman.

  Canny was from a colony world around Devan Six, and claimed she was five foot tall. She had typical Devan red hair and light, fair skin. She also had a laugh that sounded like a chime and made him smile.

  Today Canny wore a white blouse, dark black pants made out of some new material, and flat-heeled shoes meant for comfort.

  Fergason was Canny’s immediate supervisor and her exact opposite in just about every way. Where she was short, he was tall, slouching at six-five. Where her skin seemed to glow white in the lights from the screens, his skin was dark, his hair pitch black and short. And he came from Stevens, a planet that had been waging an economic war with Canny’s home planet for decades. Yet somehow, over the years, even with the differences, they had become close friends.

  And were getting closer every day.

  Around them the large General Hyper Drive control room felt hushed as a few of the other controllers glanced at Canny’s direction with a look of surprise.

  Fergason stood from his supervisor console and moved over beside Canny, glancing at her screen. “Transfer to the wall screen,” he said.

  She nodded as her fingers moved over her board almost faster than Fergason could follow. He knew she was one of his best, but he had never seen her work at full speed before.

  Suddenly she stopped, sat back, and just shook her head.

  “Dropped out,” she said. “Twenty-six hours ago real time.”

  Fergason stared at the wall monitor filling a section near Canny’s station. It showed three-dimensional representation of the “P” area of space Canny had been monitoring. She had put up a line starting at Jump Base Peanut and ending about halfway to Jump Base Perry.