Ball of Silence

Ball of Silence - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Space stations stink. They reek of too many people, booze, and food. You can buy station air for your ship or scrubbed air to freshen up your own recycling systems. No matter how broke that I've been so far, I've always bought scrubbed air. Too much station air already pours into my ship, the Voice of Silence, whenever the station airlocks cycle open and close.

Flin and I enter the fanciest and most expensive restaurant of Baslam's station. I don't plan on paying for this lunch.

The place is reasonably quiet, which makes me aware of water dripping inside the pipes behind ceiling panels. Something is odd about the dripping. I concentrate and hear what's wrong: insect feet. Two cockroaches chase each other on the smudgy film of dirt and grease that coats the pipes. The roaches' tiny feet make plopping sounds when they pry them lose from the smear. I don't need to see the roaches to know that they're big.

I tried to find out what Blan Friscus, who invited me for lunch, is doing on Baslam's station, but without success. I suspect he has joined the military, which would suit him: Drill Sergeant Friscus, the biggest asshole in the company.

A waiter leads us to the private room Blan has booked. The restaurant is Old Earth, Africa themed, with exotic masks and tapestries of savannas. Have Old Earth savannas really looked like that? Impossible to verify that now.

The private room has five masks to offer, one on each of the four walls. The fifth mask, the ugliest one, awaits us on a chair: Blan.

He jumps to his feet as Flin and I enter. He definitely looks like Blan Friscus, but the years have been unkind to him. When we were thirteen-year-old boys, Blan was the open, funny, and straightforward kid, so pretty with his blond hair and freckles. I was the weird boy with ear problems, average and boring with my black hair and brown eyes, a percentage of Asian blood like half of the rest of humanity.

Now Blan is fat around his ass and belly; I'm not. He's balding. He still has freckles, but on his oily skin, they look like dirt. He wears neutral black pants and a black pullover. A black jacket hangs from a wall hook, next to a mask with an oversized mouth and a tremendous tongue hanging down for half a yard.

"Jaiah, hey, so good to see you. Thanks for coming."

Blan stretches out his hand. I refuse to shake it. Instead, I leave on my leather coat and sit down at the flat table that dominates the room. Flin sits down next to me.

"Hi, Blan," I say.

He withdraws his hand with a contemptuous chuckle. His buttocks smack while sitting down. Even his sounds are abhorrent.

Every human generates a certain noise, like a signature. The beating of his heart, the sound of the blood rushing through his veins, and the noise of his breathing. They mingle with the signature sounds of Flin and of my own heart, breath, and blood, which I hear all the time. Never quiet. I hear how my bones crack, how my muscles contract and expand, and how my skin stretches and tightenes over my muscles when I move. I hear the digestive rumbling of my stomach and the movements of gasses through my guts. As I sit next to Flin and opposite Blan, I hear all that triple-fold.

Blan stares at Flin.

"That's Flin," I say.

"Hi, nice to meet you."

Flin nods without a word. I've asked him not to say anything during my meeting with Blan. As usual, he takes what I tell him a bit too literally. Flin is seven feet tall and built like a tank. He has a two-foot long club dangling from a rivet-spiked belt. Firearms are forbidden on space stations.