Lewis didn't see Norse at dinner and so went looking for him afterward, guessing the weight room attached to his berthing module. The psychologist was the kind of guy who would try to stay in shape. Norse wasn't there but Harrison Adams said he'd just left, heading for the sauna. The astronomer was working out in faded trunks and gray, baggy T-shirt, grunting as he lifted with his white, stringy muscles. Adams was a sharply intellectual man, obsessed with the sky, and it was odd to see him like that. "Can you take a minute to spot me, Lewis?"
Lewis wasn't anxious to. He found Adams prickly, the kind of scientist who did not suffer fools gladly and who thought everyone who wasn't interested in what he was interested in was a fool. "I need to find Doctor Bob."
"He'll cook for a while. Come on, spot me first. Tyson certainly won't."
The big mechanic was lifting in a corner, an enormous weight across his back as his knees bent and straightened like thick hairy pistons, his lungs whooshing like a surfacing whale. He looked at them balefully, as if offended by their mere presence. For a man who claimed a crushing workload, he seemed to have plenty of time and energy to lift weights.
"What do I have to do?" Lewis asked Adams.
"Stand over me on the bench here, while I press. Just so I don't pin myself."
"Why can't Buck do it?"
Tyson pushed himself erect, exhaling. "I'm busy."
"He's always busy," Adams said, moving to the bench. "Too busy to grade the trail to the Dark Sector. Too busy to fix the Spryte. Too busy to move the cargo for my scope repair before this wind came up. Too busy to give me any hope of meeting schedule."
"I'm not your servant, Adams." The weight clanged heavily down, Tyson's arms dangling after it like an ape's. "The world doesn't revolve around you."
The astronomer lay down on the stained weight bench. "We're not serving me, are we, Mr. Tyson? We're serving the research. We're justifying our time and expense. The world does revolve around this Pole. Except too many of us have to wait on you."
"Screw you." Tyson stretched. "Shoulda let me go home when I had the chance, if you don't like me. And get in line. Tell Cameron to back off on the other stuff he wants me to do if you're so anxious for my help."
"You use too much water, too. You ignore the rationing. People resent it."
"Let them drink beer."
"I'm talking about the showers."
"Let them shower in beer."
Adams gripped the bar of the weights. "At the end of the winter, Buck, there's going to be a review for bonuses and recommendations for future employment."
Tyson took two fifty-pound weights and began hoisting them like a crane. "Is that a threat, Harry?" He knew Adams hated the common nickname.
Adams began lifting, too, grunting. "Simply a reminder of how things are," he gasped.
"I'm thinking how things ought to be."
Adams was growing red from the exertion. "Maybe you ought to think about where you are right now, Buck. Your future. Your lack of it." His arms were shaking with the final lift.
"Maybe I am thinking about my future. Maybe I'm not the moron you think I am. Maybe errand boy here is starting to think for himself."
The astronomer gasped and put the weight to rest, sitting up. He was sweating, angry, frustrated. "You can't go through the winter like this, Buck. You can't sulk for eight damnable months. You've got to get along."
"Really? And who says?" Tyson racked his own weights with a thud. "Who says I have to get along with anybody? The truth is, Adams, you need me but I don't need you for a single fucking thing. I could care less about the sky. I could care less about you, or the fingie there, or Cameron, or any other moron stupid enough to like it down here. I do my job at my own pace, mind my own business, and count the days until I get out. And if people were honest about it, everyone else does that, too."
"No, they don't."
"Like all you beakers are best buddies? You know Moss pigs out on the grant competition. You know you're in a race with all the beakers to get papers featured in Science or Nature. You know the competition is about as collegial as a convention of Mafia dons. And you know that all you want from me is a broad back and compliant brain. Two weeks after the winter is over you won't remember who I am."
"Dammit, that's not true. This is the one time in your life to contribute to- "
"So you can take that bonus of yours and cram it up your ass. Because down here I don't have to take no shit from nobody." The big man walked out.
Adams shook his head, looking after him. "Now, there's a project for Doctor Bob," he muttered to Lewis.
"Doctor Bob might think Tyson has a legitimate point of view."
Adams snorted. "Shrinks think everything is a legitimate point of view."
Lewis went to the sauna. Cameron had told him the cedar box was both a morale booster and a safety feature, adept at warming people up after too much exposure outside. It was also supposed to relax them, bringing them together in communal contemplation. It worked well enough to be heavily used.
Lewis shed his clothes, wrapped a towel around his middle, and stepped into the red-lit dimness inside. He recognized Norse's muscled form and Mohawk crew cut through a veil of hissing steam and sat down on a cedar bench. The psychologist lazily raised a hand.
"Adams and I were just talking about you," Lewis greeted.
"In flattering terms, I hope."
"About putting Buck Tyson on the couch. Making him into Mr. Rogers."
Norse smiled. "As if therapists could make anyone into anything. The best they can do, I'm afraid, is help people come to grips with who they are."
"I think Buck's already come to grips with himself as a self-centered, shower-hogging, antisocial, dysfunctional, butt-ugly son of a bitch."
"So, good for him." Norse threw some water on the sauna rocks, releasing a hiss of steam. The psychologist leaned back, uncharacteristically quiet.
"Who am I, Doc?"
For a minute he thought Norse wasn't going to answer. Then: "That's what I'm working on, remember?"
"I talked to your spy today."
"Spy?"
"Abby came out to poke into my past. Said she was working for you."
"Oh yes." He sounded unembarrassed. "She's already reported back."
"And?"
"Said you were 'desperate.' I think that was the word. It's in my notes." His tone was amused.
"Is that description accurate, do you think?"
"I suppose it is," the psychologist said. "Of everyone. What's the phrase? Lives of quiet desperation?"
They were quiet again. Then: "What the hell are you really doing down here, Doc?"
"I already told you."
"Trying to get into our brains is just going to piss people off."
"I'm not trying to do that."
"It's one thing to trade life stories. It's another to be pinned like a bug to a wall for some shrink's research project. I don't care for it, and I don't think anyone else is going to, either. I know you've got your job to do, but nobody asked for a psychologist and it's going to be a long winter. Head collecting isn't going to make you popular."