VIC was one of those who had been routed elsewhere at the end of Phase One. With Flash's transfer of allegiance to Linc, this had left Arvin pretty much on his own for a while after moving from Coulie. But then he found himself a new sidekick who called himself Welsh, a Southerner, maybe from Alabama or Georgia from his voice, with a mean-eyed face formed of ruddy crags that made him look twice his years. Welsh worked part of the time as the machine-shop and workshop storekeeper, responsible for issuing tools and materials. It was uncanny how, after Arvin and Welsh got to be friends, mix-ups always seemed to occur when Linc was involved, but never with anyone else.
"Hey, Welsh." Linc showed him a broken tool bit. "This is the wrong one for the alloy I'm working on. It chewed right."
"Hell, lookit that. Someone musta turned it back in the wrong box."
"It's ruined the piece I was making."
"Isn't life just a bitch sometimes."
On another occasion, when Linc started up a pillar drill after coming back from the rest room, a steel chuck key that had been left in the chuck—on the far side from him, where he couldn't see it—flew out like a bullet, narrowly missing a girl working at a milling machine twenty feet away. Mr. Turner, who was in charge of the shop, was not amused.
"That could have killed somebody," he said. "You ought to know better, Linc. That was one of the first things you learned here."
Linc never left a chuck key in, even for a few seconds. But arguing would only have made things worse.
He was bumped by people passing in the corridors, shoved when standing in line in the cafeteria. The clothes in the bag that came back from the laundry were three sizes too small. "The wrong tag musta got put on," he was told when he took them back. "Dunno how that coulda happened . . . Nope, sorry. No sign here of yours at all."
He had no doubt that Arvin was behind it. It was as if Arvin took it that the incident in the gym finally settled that he had come out on top, and Linc couldn't be allowed to forget the fact. Linc tried to put it out of his mind and concentrate on the different way of seeing life that he was beginning to discover.
It took hours of patient work to create something as intricate as a precision instrument, years to acquire the skills to do it; and what made it possible beyond that was knowledge that had been built up over centuries. Yet any jerk with a hammer could destroy it in seconds. Since there were so many jerks loose in the world, it seemed that nothing complicated or demanding should ever get made. Yet the machines that he worked with were here; every day, planes climbed skyward from the San Antonio airport, a few miles away. When they put their minds to it, people could create so much more than they destroyed.
Something in their nature seemed to drive them that way. Linc would have liked to see a world in which more of that could happen. He wanted, somehow, to help make it happen.
It was after seven in the evening. Swimming and diving classes were over for the day, and the pool was free for recreation. Linc and Patch hung in the water with their arms draped along the edge, enjoying the coolness after a hard day. Johnny was on cleanup duty in the front building. Rocky had asked them to stay away from the room for an hour, and they hadn't asked why. He had been keeping company with a girl called Liz, from Room One Hundred-Something on the ground floor of the other wing.
"I hope we're still together when we get wherever this is heading, and it's okay to talk about ourselves," Patch said. "I've got a story for you that'd keep us up all night. There's something that tells me yours wouldn't be all that uninteresting either."
"If you're fishing, Patch, forget it," Linc told him. "When it happens, I plan on still being around."
"Still playing it straight and even, eh, Linc? Not taking any chances. Not like Rocky."
"He's crazy. They know everything that goes on in this place—it's like in the slam. It could even be bugged everywhere for all we know."
Patch made a face. "Aw, I dunno. This just doesn't strike me as that kind of an outfit somehow."
"How could you tell?"
They turned their faces away as somebody jumped in off the side, making a large splash nearby. Patch wiped an eye with the back of a hand. "Do you still reckon it could be something in space like you said—corporations? I asked around about it. A lot of guys think that could be right."
Linc shrugged. "Like I said before, you can guess all you want, but it isn't going to change anything. Why waste the time?" He looked away. On the far side of the pool, a girl called Marlene looked as if she had spotted them and was coming around. He added, "But if it's right, and we are still together, I don't know if we'd be able to get in much climbing out there."
"Not on the Moon?" Patch said. "Doesn't the Moon have mountains?"
"More like just dust everywhere from the pictures I've seen."
"I thought it had mountains. Isn't all that white stuff you see ice? . . . I've seen pictures on TV of bases and tractors and things, with all this ice everywhere."
"That's not the Moon we see. It's other moons someplace else," Linc said.
"Really?"
"I think so . . . But it's something we can still do when we get time off," Linc said. "Whatever this thing is that we're into, we're bound to get leave or vacations or whatever sometime. When that happens, we'll get our own stuff together, and we'll go to the mountains ourselves, somewhere. And we'll climb."
"Hey, you really mean that? It sounds great! You're on, man! We'll do that. It's a deal." Patch grinned and held up a hand. Linc slapped his own palm into it.
"Deal!"
"Hi, guys. Cooling off?" Marlene lowered herself to sit on the edge by them. The pool area was starting to get crowded as more people came out to make the best of the free time.
"After a day like this one, I could use it," Linc said.
Patch stretched out to let himself float, still grasping the rail with his hands. "Just hanging in here."
"Seen Rocky about?" Marlene asked, looking around. She managed to sound too casual about it. Linc got the feeling that she was more curious about who Rocky was supposed to be with.
"Not lately," he replied.
"I think he might be working," Patch said.
"Oh." The air of chatty intimacy switched itself off. "So, what did you guys do today?"
Linc made a face, rocking his head from side to side. "Oh, workshop stuff that you probably wouldn't want to hear about.
An hour in the gym. Floor-scrubbing detail in the kitchen. All kinds of wild things."
"I saw you in the library at lunchtime," Marlene said.
"That's Linc's new room," Patch told her. "We're gonna put a pool table in the space where his bed is. He doesn't need it."
"What's so interesting in the library?" Marlene asked.
"Math and trigonometry," Patch said. "Would you believe he sits in there and reads math?"
"The final machine-engineering practical tests are in a few days," Linc explained. "You have to make a set of test parts to drawings, and they get graded. The dimensions that aren't given have to be calculated."
"It sounds really like my idea of fun," Marlene commented.
"It's what he wants to do," Patch said. He braced his arms against the side of the pool and lowered his legs until his feet were pressing against the side as well. "And what I want to do is stretch a little and get some lengths in before this gets to be wall-to-wall people. That's what I came here for . . ." So saying, he pushed away, turned to head in the lengthwise direction along the pool, and broke into an easygoing crawl.
"So what're you aiming for?" Marlene asked, looking back at Linc after a few seconds. "Some kind of engineer or something?"
"I don't know yet. Maybe something like that, yes."
"You seem to take it seriously," Marlene said.
Linc nodded distantly, his eyes on the far side of the pool. "Maybe there's a time when people need to start doing that."
"Your nose is looking better anyhow."
Linc turned his head and looked up. She was watching him curiously, her head tilted to one side. He no longer needed the dressing, and the flesh was almost back to its normal color. "You figure my looks will keep then, huh?" He grinned.
"Oh, your looks are pretty okay anyhow, never mind the nose." Marlene seemed to think for a moment, as if the line had given her a cue that she wanted, then looked back, seemingly weighing him up. She glanced around, and her voice fell. "You know, sometimes everyone needs a break from all this thinking. If you wanted to, kind of . . ." She let the suggestiveness in her voice say the rest for her. "I know a place."
Linc leaned his head back against the side of the pool and closed his eyes. "A nice thought, but . . ." He shook his head. "I plan on being around when this thing gets wherever it's going. I guess it's gotten me curious now."
"Huh. Maybe I need to be put together with nuts and bolts or something. Who do you get off on, Frankenstein's daughter?"
Linc grinned. "You're put together just fine, Marlene. But I don't want to blow this chance now. It's different from all the other things I've known. I want to know where it goes."
There was a sigh. He heard her straightening up. "Okay. I just wish I could see something like that in it . . . I'll see you around."
"Sure thing."
"Oh." Marlene's voice came from slightly farther off. "And good luck with the tests."
"Thanks."
Linc relaxed in the water for a moment, then opened his eyes and turned to rest his elbows on the edge and watch her as she walked away. Not bad looking, in a zesty, sporty kind of way, he had to admit. Her body was solidly formed and supple—maybe about eighteen; her legs, well shaped below the midnight-blue skirt. Yes, there was no doubt about it, he told himself. Life could be tough at times.