Free Interzone 244 Jan - Feb 2013 by TTA Press Page B

better than I’d
realised.
    Caldwell continued: “It turns out the new
suppliers can deliver sooner, which gives us a bit of leeway.”
    “ We need more than a bit!”
I said, looking at the Gaffer for support. “Especially when we’re
already behind because of the accident.”
    The Gaffer looked pained at mention of the
accident. He glanced at Caldwell. He knows , I realised.
    Murray and Diego swung in.
    “ Ah,” said the Gaffer,
pleased with the distraction, “right on time. How did you get
on?”
    “ What have you been doing?”
I asked.
    “ Fraternising,” said Diego.
I frowned. Nothing was making sense.
    “ The hotel operator has
agreed we can have R-3 for two hours every morning,” said Murray. I
looked at the revised build guide again. The extra arm would get
them back on schedule within weeks. Everything I’d achieved had
been reversed; no-one but the shareholders would make money out of
this job.
    “ Thanks for coming down,
Peggy,” said the Gaffer, “but we’ve got things under control. Take
a couple of days off.”
    “ I asked a favour while I
was talking to the hotel manager,” said Murray. “She’s given you
permission to spend as long as you like in the skylounge. Enjoy the
view.”
    * *
    I was shipped groundside on the
shuttle that made the SureEng delivery, fittingly enough. It didn’t
have passenger facilities, so I suited up for the journey. The gang
waved me off.
    Angela Caldwell looked more relaxed than she
had in years. She confided she was enjoying working with a podger
and having a holiday from management. I might have known she’d be
the type to go straight.
    The Gaffer wouldn’t look me in the eye.
Eleven years we’d worked together and he barely said goodbye.
    Diego shook my hand.
    Murray hung back until the others had left.
I could still see myself in her; she’d got exactly what she wanted:
acceptance, a place on the gang, and an honest living. Her dear old
granddad would have been proud. Would she regret giving up the
money, I wondered, when she reached my age?
    “ Better start saving for
your retirement now,” I said. “Or you’ll be working until you
drop.”
    She recoiled. “That’s better than being like
you,” she said.
    “ Oh, but you could have
been, if you’d had the courage. You nearly made it.”
    I put down my visor. I hoped Murray would
see herself, reflected in gold, as I turned away. But, deep down, I
knew she saw a tired old woman whose schemes had failed; I was a
build guide Murray would never follow.
    * * * * *
    Copyright © 2013 by Helen Jackson
    * * * * *
    Helen Jackson likes making stuff up
and eating cake. She’s lucky enough to live in Edinburgh, her
favourite city. Her stories have been published in the anthologies Rocket Science and ImagiNation: Stories of Scotland ’ s Future , and in Daily Science
Fiction . Visit helen-jackson.com for more information.
    * * * * *

THE GENOA PASSAGE
    by George
Zebrowski
    Illustrations for The Genoa Passage by Martin Hanford

    THE GENOA PASSAGE
    I told myself that they would have to be
fakes. At worst, it would be a good hike; forewarned, I would not
be fooled.
    “I will take you to the places,” he said,
“and you will pay me later, or not at all.”
    He gave me a rifle and said that two other
people would come with us.
    Earlier, he had recited a pretty good tour
guide spiel, how from 1945 to 1950 a route through the mountains
from Germany down to the port of Genoa here in Italy had been used
by Nazi war criminals, with papers forged for them by
anti-Bolshevik Fascist Catholic Italian priests who feared the
Soviet Union’s post-war takeover of Eastern Europe and in time the
rest of the world, and imagined that the surviving Reichmasters
would escape and form a necessary resurgent German power against
Stalin – or there would be no one to stand against him, given the
left’s blindness to the betrayal of their socialist ideals, which
had never been any good anyway because they denied free