ten year sentence part 4

ten year sentence part 4

fiction
edward w pritchard

Every 50 miles on the water line there is a respite station. I have been filling in and training with a crew from India. Countries on earth each have a small portion of the water line assigned to them to dig and maintain. The nationalities are fiercely jingoistic and it was a miracle that me as an American was accepted on the four man team from India. We were in the respite area having a drink and a Scottish team was making sexual remarks against Lalie one of the team and I lost my temper and threatened them. Those guys are intimidating, they play rugby back at the Station on the cement floors where I worked before and they are always lifting weights. Fighting is very expensive here if you are caught but it was more like the posturing that animals do. Sometimes I don't think first and I won the crew from India's respect and they ask me to be on the team. They are the intellectuals of the crews and I am a little lost with their conversations but they look out for me now that I am one of them.

I have been fantasizing about Lalie. She wears a lot of flowing clothes very brightly colored. Her family on earth is very wealthy and she is here just for one year. She is a management trainee of sorts and is spending the six months on the water line so she can apply the techniques to other planets and moons in the solar system.

When we were changing into our suits to work outside on the line, Lalie changed in front of me wearing only a leotard. I can't get that image out of my mind. Shuim one of the other members of our team says its the effect on my nervous system of the winds, which are very strong. I think it's just I haven't seen many women in the last twenty six months. The few women of the assertive management types of females here don't interest me. Lalie talks very softly, and is intelligent and ladylike. She gave me two plums for helping her. They are priceless here. I enjoyed them and later found out they were grown on the last transport from earth hydroponically in an experiment to later produce food on the moons of Saturn, which is Lalie's next assignment.

Shuim has been teaching me Chinese karate. He used to be a psychological examiner before he cracked up one day and now is finishing out his ten year term working on the water crew. He is extremely bright and we are now friends although I call him Schopenhauer like the philosopher from earth because of his pessimism. He calls Io hell. He is coaching me on how to pass my next psychological exam. He says life is an illusion and I am just adapting to my environment here by having odd thoughts. Shuim says when he arrived here nine years ago fifty percent of the crews went home because of the volcanic activity which exacerbated the effect of the rocks on the emotions and intellect and the winds on the nervous system. He said he had some bizarre dreams for years after the volcano's stopped. Now he just wants to finish his ten years.

The fourth member of the team from India is Poj. He is a gambler and we have went to some of the games at the respite stations together. More on that later.
end part 4