BehaviorNorm by Sue Lange

* * * *

7:30 a.m.

As usual Shoalie McHandler skipped breakfast because she had no appetite. She paused in her morning preparations only to go through yesterday’s mail, consisting of a pile of faxes, automatic bill payment slips, a yellow overvacuum packet from the Nasturtium Galaxy Development Consortium.

It was the same yellow envelope that came to her every third week. Some glitch somewhere had them resending it to her for the past four months—ever since she’d contacted the group for an employment application. Unfortunately they kept sending her apps for managerial positions. She always returned them the same day with a voice answer attached, pointing out she wasn’t interested in management and please resend a worker app. A few weeks later the packet would come back with the exact same forms inside. She answered again, and again the management forms came back to her.

Not that she wouldn’t try a boss job if given the chance. Just wasn’t in the cards for her. One time she almost filled out the forms for a joke, knowing full well their computer would spit back her app with a big “No Management” stamped across it. Maybe then Nasturtium would understand her place in this life as defined by the psychtest experts at BehaviorNorm Labs—the arbiters of career choice, the talent coordinators, the king makers.

She looked at the packet and frowned, tossing it over to the ready-for-the-rotocinerator pile.

She finished her morning ritual—the packing of her boots, the rinsing of her face mask, the grabbing of the binky bag for lunch—and stepped out into the hot salty air of Xeres. It hit her like a burlap sack of needles, scraping and stinging her exposed skin, getting into her lungs and choking her, urging her on to the bus and its conditioned atmosphere. Yeah, it was some great place, this Xeres.

But she was not complaining. Not for a minute. Not on this fifth day of the fifth month of her fifth job in as many years. No way was she quitting, getting fired, being asked to leave, or getting laid off. She would not agitate, question, bemoan, or even so much as notice there was room for improvement here.

* * * *

10:15 a.m.

“Hey, ho! Wait up. Hold that thought!” Fub Rainey, Shoalie’s pal, was calling to her to hold the lift to the top.

“Yeah? And who died and left you foreman?”

“Ha. Ha. Old joke.” Fub made it in just as Shoalie released her toe from the hold button. “Up!” they called together.

“So we’re getting volleyball started,” Fub said, leaning against the side rail of the lift. She breathed heavy as if the run for the lift had taken a lot out of her.

“And?”

“And you wanna play?”

“Yeah, okay, maybe. What’s the deal?”

The lift reached the surface and bumbled to a stop. The two swayed with the box just before the gates opened. Fub stepped out first, stretched her arms and inhaled deeply. Shoalie passed her at a clip, holding a hand over her mouth and running for the break shack.

“God I love summer, don’t you?” Fub called after her.

Once inside Shoalie took a deep breath. Fub entered at a leisurely pace, as if she hated leaving all that salt behind.

“How can you stand it?” Shoalie asked.

Fub followed Shoalie as she wended her way through the seats and tables to the smoking section.

“It’s like those mountain men,” Fub said. “When you’re born to it, you develop the lungs for it. You acclimate.”

“Yeah, I got your acclimation.” Shoalie sat at a table over at the far wall. Fub pulled a cigarette out of her overalls front pocket before taking a seat.

“You know we don’t have to sit here,” Fub said. “I’m not really smoking. I quit. I’m just going to fumble.”

“Mm.”

“So how about it, we need a captain?”

“Oh I get it. You need some loser to do the paperwork so all of sudden you need me on the team. Forget it, I just wanna play.”

“What’s the problem? You show up at the first meeting of the season and tell them who’s on the team, schedule a few throwaways and boom, we’re league champions.”

“Yeah, but in between there’s all that nagging to get people to practice. No thanks.”

“How hard is that? Set up an automatic tickler that goes out every Tuesday. We’ll all show up on Wednesday at six, practice for a few, and be on our drunken way home by ten.

“If it’s so easy, whyn’t you do it?”

“Nah, the kids are always on the terminal. Besides nobody’s as organized as you. I see you with pencil and paper in your back pocket everyday.”

“You should carry too. Beats memorizing.”

“Well think about it, anyway.”

“Think about what?”

“Volleyball.” Fub patted her side pockets, upper pocket, and seat pocket, searching for an unknown item. Finally she extracted a mini striker from the back one. She fumbled now with both the ciggy and the striker.

“Yeah, sure,” Shoalie answered. “Wait a minute, you don’t play outside do you?”

“Hey, now that’s an idea!” Fub’s eyebrows shot up, light bulb fashion.

“I was kidding! You can’t breathe now as it is.”

“No, you can’t breathe; the rest of us are fine. You’ll get use to it eventually.”

“When? I’ve been here almost half a year already.”

“Jeez, really? Time flies. I remember when you were here only a week, crying that you couldn’t take it, had to get out of here. Now look at you; half a year almost. You’re practically a lifer now.”

“That’s for sure. Looks like I’m stuck, too!”

“Aw come on. It’s not that bad here.”

“Not for you, but it’s just not where I’m looking to settle.”

“So what’s happening with that nostalgium thing?”

“Nasturtium. Nothing. Still sending me manager stuff.”

“So go for that. What’s the problem?”

“Can’t. BehaviorNorm flunked me out of the corps. Definitely not management material.”

“I guess.” Fub lit up her ciggy and immediately stubbed it out on the table top, placing the butt back in her upper pocket.

The two stood up together, as if the call had hit at the same time, and wended their way to the little room in the back. Break was almost over.

* * * *

Noon

Lunchtime came. Shoalie and Fub sat at a table with Rube and a couple of other cutters in the cafeteria. Shoalie extracted a cream of whatever and bowl of wilted greens from her binky bag. What passed for food on this planet would have been unmentionable in more civilized sections of the galaxy. The places that were more sophisticated with clean golden air and boys with long hair. Not like here.

“Didja hear what’s happening?” Rube asked, gossip like.

“Yeah, I’m getting shafted,” Shoalie answered.

“Very funny!” Rube answered in mock disgust. “You been in the mines long enough, you need to learn a new joke.”

Rube opened a prepackaged carton of something like juice glop and continued. “I’m talking about the pay strike.”

Shoalie’s stomach sank. It was the last thing she wanted to talk about. “I heard something about it, but I couldn’t believe it,” she said.

Rube continued. “Well, you have to do a lot more’n hear about it; we’re voting at afternoon break.”

“Jesus Christ! Already?” Shoalie jumped. “Has anybody even thought about this?”

“What’s to think about? The Dushens got a pay raise and nobody’s even looking at us.”

“Yeah, well, maybe they deserve it. What’s the COL there?”

“Look Shoalie, you’ve only been here a short time. You don’t even know these birds. We gotta fight for every cent we get. They wouldn’t give a Bubonic rat if we had to breathe straight sodium chlor. If they could legally scrimp on the lights down there, they would do that too. We gotta fight just as a matter of form. Otherwise they’d just forget we were here.”

“That’s the case since the beginning of time, Rube, but you gotta pick your fights. Has anybody done the research on this one? Is this anything more than a blank rumor even? What’s the union say?” Shoalie was fighting an urge to do something. She wasn’t exactly sure what: spit, argue, fight, throw up maybe.

“Yeah! The union. They don’t even do their once yearly over here, we’re so damn far away.”

“So nobody’s even EasyFaxed them yet? There’s no confirmation, no recommendation?”

Silence. Shoalie stared at Rube.

“You all are wildcatting?”

“We take care of our own,” Rube finally answered.

“Jesus!”

Shoalie looked down into her cream of whatever. Despite the fact that she’d eaten very little today, she had no appetite and so excused herself and carried the mealware over to the big hole in the wall. She stood and stared for a few moments after the vacuum had sucked up her refuse and then walked out into the steaming, caking, painful air. There was nothing else that could make her feel better at the moment.

She picked up a leaf of eelgrass growing behind the cafeteria building. The salt-water gel oozed out of the stem and out onto her hand, coating it white in a matter of seconds. Every day the liquid in the grass became more concentrated. It’d be another month before rain came, diluting the solution in the plants’ xyla, giving the leaves relief.

She’d be gone by that time of course—thrown off the planet by management along with the rest of the probationary types. Less than two months from now they wouldn’t have been able to do it to her. They wouldn’t even care whether or not she took part in the agitation. But as it stood now, they were going to need a scapegoat to punish just to show they were serious. The ones on probation were always the easiest to give the shove off.

Shoalie’d then have to write a sobby letter to the Union board and ask for another position. They’d bark at the fact that she had participated in an unsanctioned strike and lovingly put her on detention for a year and after that maybe they’d find her an assignment. Until then she’d have to scrape for scab jobs.

There was no way she could support this strike, wildcat or no. Just wasn’t in the cards for her. The sad part was, the union would not look kindly on her not supporting her brethren—or sistren—either. She could not win with them in a wildcat situation.

On top of all that, she’d had no time to pile up the savings for the unemployment haul. Unlike most of the cats who’d been here since they were born, her life was not set up for an emergency.

Nope. This strike simply could not take place. Not now; not to her; not for their flimsy reasons. These misguided people simply had it too good. And they had no idea how to be in a union.

She returned to work starved but lacking an appetite. Her stomach churned and palms sweated and she got less than an hour’s worth of halide preps done. The laser housing just kept slipping from her hands no matter how much she chalked them. Sweat kept trickling into her eyes. Her mind raced, working out arguments.

* * * *

2:30 p.m.

Breaktime and the workers swarmed like bees into the central cavern, the only place all of them could fit. A few were raising their voices in indignation to inspire cohesion in the troops, but most of the workers were yakking and laughing amongst themselves in paragroups. Everyone was just so jovial. This was going to be easy, Shoalie figured.

At one point Champy Gran materialized on some sort of riser over on the side. All eyes turned to him. “Eh Champy!” went up here and there.

Champy put on his best mad face and started in with the typical anti-company rhetoric.

He spoke for five minutes. There wasn’t much to say since everyone knew the score and had agreed ahead of time. An easy thing to accomplish when you agitate in small groups and mention raises in other people’s pay. These goofs would say yes to a wide-awake tonsillectomy at this point if Champy suggested it.

“So we’re going to vote now. We have to be together on this thing, you know the score. Rube’ll take a snapshot of the votes.” Everyone watched while Rube jumped up on the table beside Champy holding her insta-scan. “Of course we know how you all feel, we’ve been talking a month now. But for formality’s sake, I gotta ask if anybody’s got something to say.”

Shoalie took her only chance and sucked in a big breath before raising her voice: “How’s the union gonna feel about this wildcat?”

Champy was thrown off balance. He hadn’t been expecting an answer. He took a moment to focus on the part of the crowd where the voice came from. Shoalie took advantage of his confusion.

“I mean we’re all in the union. You folks ready to get suspended for a year? It’ll happen if they get pissed. Who’s the steward here?”

Shoalie was walking up toward the front, keeping her eyes on Champy the whole time.

A low mumble rose from the crowd as it tried to figure out who the rep was.

“Why Dod over there, ask him,” somebody answered.

Shoalie turned and found Dod standing behind a clump of people.

“Dod,” she called. “What’s the union say?”

“Um, well, I ah ... kinda...”

“Didn’t ask, did you?” Shoalie jumped in. “So nobody here even knows how the union feels.”

“They’re too far away,” Dod defended himself, hastily trying to save the only status—undeserved as it was—he’d had in the last 30 years of his life. “They have no idea how things are here.”

“And no one here has any idea what’s going on out there, do they?” Shoalie puffed herself up, preparing for the blow she’d worked out ahead of time.

“You folks do these wildcat things here on a regular basis? Does anybody know what the consequences will be? Anybody besides me even been out in the world in the last year?”

“I been out.” A voice came from the back.

Shoalie jumped up on the riser to see who it was. She knew there’d have to be somebody. There was always a handful of strangers like herself at a job site. She didn’t recognize the face amidst the other workers.

“Girt Gruder’s my name,” the face said. “I been out.”

“And you were going to go out on strike here?”

“They ain’t had the vote yet,” Girt said indignantly, as if someone might have been stupid enough to presume she would give “Aye.”

“And you would vote against?” Shoalie asked.

“There’s no jobs out there right now. That’s why I’m here. I wouldn’t be here for any other reason.”

“Bullshit!” someone shouted. “That new galaxy’s opening up. There’ll be jobs in development.

“Not happening for a long time,” Shoalie interrupted. “Believe me they’re not funneling workers in yet. I know, I’ve been trying to get an app. They won’t even send me one for future work. All they want are specialists and managers. You folks are not specialists. Any of you good with a tracker or can read the stars go ahead and strike, you got a job there because that’s all they want besides bosses—explorers. The Big Three have it all sewn up as usual, and they’re not exploiting for a long time. That’s their stand at the moment. My guess is that the economy is not presenting a favorable climate.

“The Dushens got a raise,” someone hollered.

“Girt, you been there?” Shoalie asked. This was so easy.

“No, that was my choice after this dump.”

“And why is that?”

“You ever worked on a landfill planet?”

“Actually I have,” Shoalie said. “If they doubled the pay from what we get here, I still wouldn’t go. Yet those people are no doubt only getting a small percent more than what you get. Well, that’s okay because when you all get fired from here you can go work there because the turnover rate is so high they always need people. Don’t forget the yellow filter for your masks. The ones for carbon tet, sulfuric, and the lovely quantanium family of gases. And there’s nothing like a good wire scrub at the end of the day to get your skin feeling invigorated once the bleeding stops. I’m sure all the Dushens will be tickled to slip-slide on over here to get your vacancies after you’re all shit-canned. Who’s ready to vote?”

Champy jumped at the opening finally. “You don’t know if any of that’s true; you’re just guessing.”

“And you do? You been out there grubbing on dozens of planets in the last ten years like I have?” Shoalie’s eyes blazed. “Champy, you’ve been here so long you’ve turned into a pillar of salt of the community. There’s no way you know what’s going on out there.”

She turned to the people below her. “Anybody else besides Girt been out there?”

No one answered.

She continued. “You all have been watching too much Hollywood. Life is not always like it is on TV. I’ve been out there a long time. Too long. I’ve seen a lot of places. You people got it good here. Most of you been here most of your lives. There’s the proof; otherwise you’d have left like Girt and me did. My advice—don’t draw attention to yourselves. Shut up and dig.”

“Oh, that’s great! Management’s gonna piss all over themselves to see a bunch of complacent sheep that don’t give a Bubonic rat’s ass when everybody else but us gets a raise.” Champy said.

“Oh, I get it,” Shoalie said. “It’s a pride thing. Well, let’s see, maybe we can come up with something.

“Uh, Dod, contact the union, send them a letter with your pay bands and the conditions here—health risks, recorded cancers, hearing losses, insanity numbers, that sort of thing. Get their opinion.

“Champy, elect a spokesman to go with Dod to management and discuss pay. Find out what the climate is. For all you know they’re on the brink of closing this planet down. Salt is pretty plentiful throughout the universe after all.

“Fub, sign these folks up for volleyball. They’re turning into zombies from lack of exercise.

“Last thing: Rube, get the vote.”

With that, Shoalie stepped down and walked through the group, returning to her previous work chunk, the designated break having been over by five minutes. She soon heard the muffled voices of her co-workers returning to their own stations and one by one lasers being switched on. The rhythmic thuds of falling chunks of crystal soon followed.

* * * *

4:30 p.m.

As the quit-time alarm rang out, a much-relieved Shoalie packed up and out. People nodded to her as she moved past. Some shook her hand or slapped her on the back. No one ever really wants to strike.

Up at the surface, a boy that looked to be 12—but as per child labor laws had to be at least 20—ran up to her and asked if she was Shoalie McHandler. The high feeling she’d been experiencing since hearing the sounds of muffled voices returning to work instantly departed, replaced by the grinding of her stomach.

“Yeah,” she answered but kept walking, looking straight ahead.

“My boss wants to see you.”

“Yeah? Who’s your boss?” Shoalie knew the answer—the human resources stooge. She was getting sacked. Agitation. A spy reported on today’s afternoon break activities, her name got mentioned, they looked up her file and found out she was still on six-month probation. They’d have someone to fire just to keep everyone in line regardless of the fact that they hadn’t struck. Some companies were like that—just plain evil. No explanation would be given or taken. At least the union wouldn’t be excommunicating her.

She stepped into Heron Stahl’s office in the corrugated tin shack admin building. She barely had a chance to sit down in the waiting area when Stahl himself called her in and had her sit in the interview chair.

He held out his hand over the intervening desk, greeting her like he was a politician and she owned a vote. He held his tie back with his free hand so it wouldn’t dangle unceremoniously in front of him. If he stated his name and that he was “damn glad to meet her,” she wouldn’t have been in the least surprised. He gave her the creeps, being so happy while handing her the sack.

“Well, well,” he said, returning to his seated position. “So you’re here almost, what, six months now?”

“Er, yeah, five actually.”

“You like it here?”

“No problem, really.”

“Yeah? A lot of people that aren’t born on Xeres don’t like it here. Not used to the dryness or something. Doesn’t seem dry to me. You could get used to it.” He said it all with an appalling wide smile. She chomped on her back teeth, clenching her jaw.

“I, ah, watched the action this afternoon,” he continued.

“Yeah,” she answered. “We had a good day; no breakage. That doesn’t happen too often.”

“Forget the work, McHandler. You’ve got other things to do.” He just couldn’t stop the chuckle burbling up from his petty lungs.

“Yeah, on what grounds?” she demanded, not waiting for him to say the words.

“What are you talking about? I saw you at the break.”

“You were there?” she challenged.

“No, we knew Champy was starting a dispute so we taped.”

“Great.” She said it almost imperceptibly. “And the sound got garbled, right?”

If Stahl knew what she was alluding to, he ignored her, bulling right through to the chase.

“Did you ever consider going into management?”

“Look, that’s it.” She rose to go, too indignant to be hurt by the sick question. “Quitting time’s been and gone.”

“I’m serious, McHandler.” His smile vanished. “I don’t think we’re understanding each other. No, you did great this afternoon! We’d like you to jump up.”

“What are you talking about?” She was having a hard time getting Stahl into focus and considered sitting back down. She stood there, half up and half down, staring at him.

“I’m talking about Sutton Clope just moved up into heavy management. He checked out last week for the Sugar System; we had to kick Geester up to his spot. We’d like you heading the equipment team where Geester was. It’s a mean job—first line super—I know, but you wouldn’t stay there for long. And you’d be great. You have a grip. I’ve been checking your records since three. You need to get out of your slump, girl. You’re in the wrong place!”

Stahl was still not coming into focus and Shoalie was just starting to come to grips with the fact that for the second time today she was not going to lose her job. She turned her head sideways and tried to look at him from an angle, like he’d clear up if she squinted a little at him. She did, in fact, finally sit down.

“What are you talking about?” she said.

“Management, a promotion. Do you like it here, McHandler?”

Instantly her vision cleared and the feeling eating at her stomach since the office boy summoned her left.

“What are you talking about?” she sputtered. “If you’ve been checking my record since three, you know there’s a big ‘No Management’ stamped across the top page asterisked by the BehaviorNorm logo.”

“BehaviorNorm?” Stahl sat back in his chair and rocked with his hands behind his head in amusement. “Those idiots? Nobody pays attention to that quack outfit. I don’t think they’re even in business anymore. Lost their license or incurred too many lawsuits or something. Nobody buys psycho tests anyway. They went out with drug testing. If you can’t tell who’s good for what, you need to get out of the human resources line.”

The boy that had previously summoned Shoalie stepped into the doorway. Shoalie could just see him out of the corner of her eye. Stahl looked up as the kid tapped a timepiece hanging on his chest. Instantly, he jumped up, saying “Look, McHandler, we’d like you to join the team. I’m sure you were expecting it. Why don’t you go home and mull it over. Take tomorrow off—full pay—and send in a buzz and let me know what you think. I’ll work up a contract over the weekend and we can iron out the details on Monday. I know it’s not a plum and you get no OT so the take home’s going to be lower, but you’ll move up quick and pretty soon we’ll be playing golf over on the moon some lunchtime.”

He ushered her out of the office and shook her hand at the same time, practically pushing her because her legs seemed incapable of moving fast enough—or at all. Her eyes kept staring at him and her mouth dangling and her hand receiving his handshake long after he’d let go.

“Uh,” she finally managed.

“Great!” he said, ecstatic. “We’ll see you on Monday. Don’t forget to buzz me tomorrow.”

With a final shove, he turned and grabbed his briefpad and raced out himself. Later, as she was boarding the air bus for town, she saw him entering the executive cab over in the parking tube.

She didn’t know if she should be happy that she didn’t get fired or that she was getting a day off. The fact that life had just tossed her a break didn’t enter her mind. And why should it? Boss of the equipment grubs was not so much “not a plum” as it was a downright scum assignment. Didn’t matter, she didn’t have to take the crappy job. There were a lot of assignments, a lot of mines, a lot of planets. Her horizons just got wider and a pile of questions just got answered.

A strange view of her future confronted her. It didn’t necessarily concern a number of years pushing people and papers in a salt-drenched cracker of a planet either. She wasn’t sure what it entailed. But that was okay, she had tomorrow to think everything through. Tonight she’d stop over at the Green Door for a martini and fat plate of smashers and boing with extra butter, before heading home.

Tomorrow she’d take her time. Spend the day in deep contemplation. Weigh the pros and cons. Compare the bird in the hand with the nothing ventured, nothing gained. A promotion today or the world tomorrow. Tough decision but she had a whole day to think about it.

* * * *

Next day, 7:30 a.m.

As usual Shoalie McHandler skipped breakfast. Not because she had no appetite, though. She was simply too busy retrieving a certain yellow overvacuum packet containing forms to be filled out immediately.

* * * *

Sue Lange graduated with a degree in chemistry and biology from Western Michigan University. She worked for a time in the nuclear industry and is currently employed in the publications section of IEEE. She’s an assistant editor for Broadsheet, the newsletter for BroadUniverse. Her writing has been published in RockRGrl, Astounding Tales, Nth Degree, Apex Digest of Science Fiction and Horror, Contemporary Songwriter, and Delta Snake. Her first novel of sf satire, Tritcheon Hash, was published by Metropolis Ink in 2003. Visit her website at www.tritcheonhash.com and check out her scusteister blog at LiveJournal.