Reassignment
It was unseasonably cold that night, had been unseasonably cold since I got to the city. It reminded me of home at first. But the air wasn't sharp and clean, and the street was frozen mud churned into ruts and craters by passing traffic before freezing solid.
I pushed through the door of the bar and stepped quickly to the side. It was a small place, with abused fixtures and a dartboard nailed to the inside of the door. In my experience interupting a game could be dangerous.
A quick glance around the room showed the place was, as usual, empty. I shook the gray snow off my coat and walked to the table in the corner just like I always did. Tonight though, I didn't sit. Instead I stood by the chair and studied the game board. A square if many squares, with multicolored pyramidal pieces. Tonight there was red in the array. Red and orange and yellow with too little else. Without moving I studied the board from all angles. The message was clear. I turned around and left.
"Never run." My cousin Vlad used to tell me. "They will always suspect you but if you run they will know." So I walked calmly, with a destination but as though I had all the time in the universe.
"Know everything around you." Irena would say, "Never look though, you must see everything without turning your head." So I listened to the tiniest echo and tested each breath of wind without batting an eye.
I walked a few blocks and slid through the turnstile at the train station. Few planets had them anymore, mostly backwaters and industrial worlds. It was a short train, only five dingy cars slowly turning the same gray as the city around them.
I got off at the third stop, none of the other passengers so much as glanced at me. They were all the same. Round, squat people with gray hair and sagging skin wearing gray clothes. Poverty, here as much as anywhere else, leeched the color out of everything. The poor were shapeless, colorless masses devoted to some mindless toil. Drained of everything, even their dreams.
On the concourse between train platforms were banks of small storage lockers. Big enough for a purse or a backpack. I pressed my left thumb against a sensor and one of the lockers popped open. I took the communicator out, closed the empty locker and boarded the next train.
When the train pulled out of the station I flipped the communicator open and entered a code. Outside the windows it was snowing harder. Fat flakes drifting out of the heavy clouds. It was probably snowing back home too. The snow would be drifting ten meters deep outside the mines and all the machinery would be tucked in for the winter. The miners would be in the bars, toasting each other and the snow, drinking themselves blind and singing three different songs at the same time.
The communicator in my hand buzzed. The message said, “Report to Admiral Harris for debriefing and reassignment.”
The train rumbled along the tracks. The snow fell outside. In my mind I rearranged some pieces on a game board. Translucent pyramids in all the colors of the rainbow.