Highly Functional Forms by M. K. Dreysen

Go away and come back home. Sounds good, doesn't it?

Until you can't. Home has its ways. You know them, don't you? All those little things.

Talisa Denove knows them well. She understands how the Field operates; it's where she grew up. Once upon a time. Only, the Field let one of their own get away with murder. And Talisa's the only one with the sack to do something about it.

For this week's story, dear reader, I invite you to contemplate what and how you'd tackle trouble in the family. And, if you had to, just what you'd do to pry apart those...

Highly Functional Forms by M. K. Dreysen

Talisa Denove rotated the solar system and its rocks around her.

She liked it that way. Rotate the universe, rotate the ship, it all came to the same thing. The algebra and the view of it, such a magic combination. Star map interrupted by window bracing.

And whichever way the coordinate system twisted, there came Ward Theriot's rock into view. Dead center of the window. She'd pass underneath, a gentle arc of semi-orbit some thousand kilometers in radius away from Theriot's stake.

Just another piece of what might have been. That's all her ship would be to Theriot's sensors. At this distance, Talisa reminded herself. Don't go, girl.

Don't go any closer. She checked her engine systems, all good.

And then Talisa double checked the tight-focus radar beam she allowed to query her arc. What good would it do her, all tucked in nice and tight and quiet in this here surveillance pass, and then fire the engines and give herself away because she'd gone and missed a piece of rock dancing into her way?

There were no such pieces of rock. Talisa patted herself on the back, well ok she smiled and considered it the same, for measuring twice and only having to cut the once.

The mouths and the wanna-be's would be sitting at the bar, telling themselves and anyone who'd listen, especially the cheapjack novel writer with a penchant for stretching, that a real hunter would be lighting onto Theriot's rock, suiting up and blasting him where he lived. Laser cut the doors off, vent that sucker's habitat and take him in fire and ice and the stars to witness.

In Talisa's experience, the mouths had never pulled the job anywhere without gravity. And the wanna-be's had never pulled a job. Theriot, just like any other miner, had armored pressure suits and armed and armored habitats.

Had to. Micro-rubble at kilometers per second walked the walk in the field. That's why the armor on the suits. And the bigger rubble pieces explained the cannons and the rockets. Theriot's little piece of heaven carried plenty of firepower to sweep the volume free of anything big and nasty.

Both his own and random bits floating free. Requirement of his claim. The miners all carried an obligation, if they wanted their millions, to protect anyone and everyone from their activity.

Ward Theriot hadn't kept up with his end of the agreement. A hundred tons of his rock had come free and found its way to traffic.

Three hundred and twenty-nine souls, outbound from Bangalore, Earth to their sister city of Bangalore, Mars, had come out on the bad end of Theriot's hundred tons of rock.

The Worlds Union's TSA investigation had quickly nailed Ward's little operation as the source of the rock bundle that destroyed the Indian transport. Radar, and the ballistics equations weren't in any danger of being jawboned away.

Only, the Worlds Union didn't have a proper enforcement arm. Not yet, too few centuries into the experiment, and the planetary signatories yet too mistrusting of each other.

So the asteroid field continued its ancient tradition: hiding away trouble. Ward Theriot had lost a little property, here and there, on Mars and Luna mostly.

And formally, his claim had come under "review". Enjoined from selling material. Supposedly, and Talisa snorted at that one. Because the ballistics might not lie, but not even the best chemist could determine the difference between Ward Theriot's asteroid and a handful of the others.

And no one paid a chemist to do that level of investigation, anyway. Too many other questions to answer ahead of tracking assholes.

A lot of horse trading went into hiding rock sources. Another of the asteroid field's ancient traditions. Because your neighbor's trouble might find her in a similar boat someday. And she too would like to keep the lights on and the life support running when the time came.

Talisa remembered it well. Her momma'd had her reasons for bringing three kids into the field, taking over an old claim and making a go of it.

A dead body leaking blood into the Luna apartment's air return being real high up on that list. Talisa and her brothers didn't ask about their father. They didn't have to.

Talisa knew the way the asteroid field worked. She and her family had benefited from that world.

And here she was, come home at last. But hunting was different. The flip side of the coin.

The field folks protected you like they would themselves. Up to a certain point. If someone had the brass to come out here and get you, well. Especially if, like Ward Theriot, all you'd ever done was manage to piss everyone else right off. From day one.

"Biggest asshole this side of a house full of representatives," Cherry O'Brien had said to Talisa. "Jackass can't stir himself out to help you replace an engine or change out an air handler. Only reason anyone's sticking up for the big sonofabitch is because they want the same consideration..."

"When it's their turn," Talisa supplied.

"Yes ma'am. And your turn will come too, little miss, you know it. You grew up here. Your momma sat your brothers right here in this habitat while you and she went to check out your claim that first trip, remember?"

Talisa had smiled, smiled now at the memory. She'd spent the whole way out from Luna, thirteen years old and just a little too fast with the calculator, estimating what a hundred tons of gold recovered would look like in a bank account.

Couple million of iron, call it half that each of aluminum, titanium, chromium. And a real assay, one that had been done after the original claimant had already made his way back to gravity and a beach in the sun. Someplace, old Dick Campbell had told Momma, where the money went a long way, and he didn't have to screw around with measuring his air supply and counting water droplets for fun.

So the ore concentrations were real. It all came down to working the smelters properly.

Raw rock didn't do anyone any good at all. Momma knew that. You deliver ore you get cheap-shit prices. Deliver real metal, on the other hand, and you've got yourself a going concern.

One nobody was going to take away from you. But Talisa'd learned the different between gross and net receipts, there in the field, along with the way a stranger, a new in town, could good and proper make friends and relations in the field.

Chemistry and finances. Momma'd been a scientist who'd gone on to an MBA. She'd made folks like Cherry O'Brien enough more money that she'd become family fast and easy.

And, Momma'd been the one who'd figured out that laser sintered bricks made from the tailings could also make the miners money. Material already in orbit having a certain advantage.

Especially where someone wanted to contact the brickmakers for custom jobs. Either way and half the solar system, it seemed, had a brick or twelve with Momma's, and now Talisa's brothers, bricks folded into construction.

And Ward Theriot couldn't bother his happy ass to pick up a nickle a brick in extra profits. Some people ain't worth shooting, Talisa reminded herself.

Unless someone like the Bangalore Co-op puts up the money to make him worth shooting. Only, nailing an asteroid miner was harder than pulling a hermit crab loose of the shell.

Habitats proof against radiation and built to recover every erg of waste energy meant habitats proof against thermal sensors. Meaning, she couldn't just annihilate Theriot's claim, since she couldn't guarantee he was there. Besides, Theriot's cannons and rockets would make short work of any rock she might throw his way. Or Talisa and her ship, if she messed up and got too close.

A conundrum. Which required strategy, it did. Talisa pondered this as the Tailchaser passed through Theriot's neighborhood.

She didn't get very far. And the flood of network traffic coming in when the Tailchaser drifted far enough away that Talisa felt comfortable turning the electronics and transmitters back to life drowned out whatever focus Talisa had found.

Her little reconnaissance mission netted Talisa a few terabytes worth of pictures, and other completely passive EM measurements. None of which told her whether Ward Theriot was actually home.

Talisa sighed in disgust. The Worlds Union wouldn't accept Theriot's death on remote, unverified and unprovoked. She needed to winkle the man out of his hole. Capture him alive, that was best, and paid twice the bounty.

She pointed the Tailchaser at Orion's Bar. Where else?

Orion's Bar, number eight of twelve, floated above the asteroid field proper. For some value of above and Talisa smiled at that one the way she smiled at rotational algebra. Half a dozen below, half a dozen above, the bars had come along because miners throughout time and space needed a drink, companionship, a place to get someone else's cooking for once, and most of all a place to sell the metal.

Electronic communications having negated much reason at all for the place to sell, granted, but the little human touches still had it. Never more than a few days worth of travel from someone's claim.

Orion's being the closest to Theriot's place. The home place floated closer to Andromeda's Spread, so Talisa didn't have any visits home marked on the calendar.

The first time Talisa had seen some of the old drawings, what the first dirt-bound dreamers had come up with when they'd imagined the far future and spacers living there, she'd giggled. Huge structures, those folks had drawn and painted, donuts rotating within donuts, massive cylinders.

And Orion's looked like a bunch of teenagers at a drive-in movie on a summer night. If Talisa had known what that was, but the disparity between imaginings and what the Bar had accumulated itself into couldn't have been more apparent.

Orion's, and the others of the Twelve, had started out as a dozen little stations, NASA's last fully independent hurrah.

The asteroid fielders had added on, but not directly. Nobody had bothered with welding. Why? All you had to do was to park your old hulk in the general vicinity. Everyone had their own ships, anyway, right? So long as you didn't park your new addition close enough to shadow someone else's solar panels...

Something followed Talisa all the way to Orion's. A drone, she figured. Something small and light, just enough of a signature for the Tailchaser's sensors to pick it out of the noise.

Not enough to bet on the little obnoxious tail being anything larger than a remote. Theriot hadn't chased her himself, Talisa decided. No, he'd just put a bird dog on her trail.

She smiled. And sailed the Tailchaser straight and clear for the Bar.

She'd already spent six weeks scouting the field.

A little drone unit of her own let Talisa know when Theriot came out of his hole. She'd laid a chain of them. A relay team. Each with a passive sensor package.

And a tight focused laser to communicate with the next link in the relay. No sideband emissions to give them away, either. Just cameras and a few other passive devices, to pick up the wash of the rockets.

Theriot's path to the Bar tracked Talisa's almost exactly. His ship passed close enough for three of her sensor units to pick him up along the way.

She sat in Orion's Bar, the main one, three nights running until Ward Theriot made his entrance. The big man, graying, bearded, carried a belly and a soft fat look, but moved through the old-style swinging wood doors as easy and clean as a nervous rattler.

And he'd worn his inner armor layer, Talisa noted. The miners favored a multi-layer approach. The hard suit itself, and an inner layer, skin-tight, climate controlled to keep thermal levels even. Self-healing polymer gels layered with titanium-carbon weaves and thin-sheathed plates.

Talisa wore the same, with linen tunic and pants thrown over for decoration. As had Theriot, she wore her hood thrown back, one of the customs of the Bar. A face to be identified.

And, in theory, shot at. The only real vulnerability for anything another miner might carry inside a habitat.

Theriot surveyed the place, still standing at the doors. The bartender, Talisa, and close on twenty others early of an evening watched, in their fashion, the new entry to the place make his acquaintance with civilization again.

Then they all turned back to their beer and their conversations, or card games, with whatever degree of contemplation they gave the new arrival hidden as much or little as they cared to.

"Another one?" the waiter asked. The kid had made his way around the room, stacking empties and handing out refills in almost equal measure.

Talisa gauged her beer. Half full of Something Resembling A Stout, her choice for comfort food of the Bar's own make. "Yeah, one more I think."

One more would give her a chance to gauge Theriot's nerves. Not with a confrontation; Talisa pulled a roll of coins from her pocket and, when the kid set the next mug down, carried it to the pinball machine.

She wanted to know how much the target would push the limits.

Theriot ordered his drink from the bar. Something on the order of a gin and tonic, from what Talisa could see. At least, it came in that kind of glass. Then the miner made his way around the room.

Listening. Talisa nodded to herself in the pinball machine's reflection. She'd played most of the half dozen roller tables these past three days.

She'd chosen this one because the reflection showed most of the room behind her. She'd thrown a few rolls of quarters at it to learn the table's ways. Which bumpers did and didn't respond as cleanly as she'd have liked.

How twitchy the table was, if she bumped it with her hand a little too hard. Not that Talisa needed to vent any feelings. She had quarters to burn, and a good view of Theriot's walk.

The big man made his way around the room. The miners in the place talked mostly of this year's shitty ore prices.

The buyers talked of the Betelguese Broadway Revue and Whorehouse. The other types, mostly spacers, didn't have any interest in ore prices, and always had plenty of urge to find something besides a video screen to stare at, so their conversations tended to follow the ore buyers.

The faces had rotated, at least on the spacer and miner side of things, over the past three days, but Talisa had already heard enough of the general run of conversations to tune it out. Theriot seemed to have other things on his mind, as well.

"He won't come up to you while you're at the table," the waiter said.

Talisa flipped the buttons, watched her current ball fall through. "Yeah?" She figured, if the kid knew the room well enough to tell she'd been watching Theriot in the reflection, then she'd pay attention to what he had to say.

"He comes in often enough. Way we figure it, he seems to think someone who comes all this way just to play an arcade game ain't interesting enough to matter."

Talisa measured that. If he thought that way on normal business, Theriot, from Talisa's perspective, would probably have the same opinion of a pinball wizard now.

Not the kind of person Theriot had to worry about. A real hunter wouldn't be fooling around with paddles, chasing a steel ball around an incline. Talisa hummed to herself, as though she was talking to the ball.

Better than a grin. Grin at the wrong time and both the kid and Theriot might spook. No need for that, Talisa told herself.

She nursed the stout through most of the roll of quarters, and Theriot getting himself three refills on the clear and fizzy drink, before she called it a night.

Whether Theriot was trying to find her, or just hunting for an insider's view of the ore market, she'd be better off hiding somewhere along his backtrail.

Besides, she figured she owed him for the drone that had followed her to the Bar.

Which she left shadowing the Tailchaser. Which in turn had been programmed to trail Theriot when he left for his claim, just far enough behind to make the miner nervous.

Orion's, like the rest of the asteroid field's floating commercial district, always had plenty of ships for rent. Talisa had nosed it around that she might be interested in buying. Which had opened a few more possibilities than otherwise.

She let the Redhead's Lament show her what it could do; there really was only one place a miner felt safe.

Talisa's surveillance drones had also recorded the only wideband signal most miners ever used. The coded radio beacon that told his claim rock that he was coming home. The code wasn't complicated enough to matter.

And the ship's bay signal amounted to a step up from an old style garage door opener. Talisa slid into Theriot's garage, through the doors that opened to greet her, programmed the life support computer to a new setting, and drifted away into the asteroid field's cover with more than time to spare.

Theriot spent three days at the Bar. Shadowing the ore buyers, Talisa figured. Or maybe just spending the profits he couldn't use on Luna and Mars on shows and bedwarmers. Either way, Talisa got to know the Lament's berthing arrangements a great deal more intimately than she'd have preferred.

She also spent the time in her own head, fighting her conscience. She'd left the asteroid field, chasing dreams and ideas, and she'd swore to herself she'd never come back. Not for more than a holiday visit with the twins, anyway. And yet her she was.

Breaking the taboo. Or close enough, anyway. The field had sheltered her, held her too damned close Talisa had thought. A closed circle, and more than a few of that circle with secrets they'd run away from.

The little town, and Talisa grinned at little, but just more than twenty thousand souls called the field home, so what else would you call it but little? An extended family. They'd professionalized, to a certain extent, but the field crew still came at ya with a smile and a nervous look over your shoulder for what you might be bringing behind you.

Someone came hunting you, and everyone turned stone cold quiet. Mouth shut. If the hunter found you, in spite of the field doing what it could, ok fair enough. But you didn't go after your field neighbors, did you?

Talisa remembered the few times it had happened, when she was still a kid. Tracy Dickers had brought the hunt on herself when she'd threatened to nova the Tracker inside Taverna Sirius's central ore trading nexus. Zem Losha had taken and sold kids, to somewhere nobody had ever been able to nail down. Old Bald Charles had set himself up as a pirate inside the field.

Was Theriot not cleaning up his trash enough to call the hunt? It hadn't been, Talisa reminded herself.

Maybe she'd taken a little too much on her own hands; maybe she should have done more than talk to Cherry O'Brien about why she'd come home. Maybe maybe maybe.

Ward Theriot came home to his claim before Talisa could finish her wrestling match with herself. The life support trap she'd rigged set itself off. She drifted the Lament in behind Theriot's ride.

Waited for Theriot's computer to complete its new program and signal to her that it had cleared the nitrous mixture. Talisa restrained Theriot in one of the Lament's bunks, with an IV drip full of night-night juice, and made her way back to her own ship.

Still questioning, but she fought the questions through transferring Theriot to the cold sleep bay she'd installed on the Tailchaser, and then all the long way back to Luna.

The pay helped, and so did the various tracks she'd left suggesting Ward Theriot had managed to get himself blown out of his own airlock. But while the rigged computer and its tale would cover Talisa's tracks with the fielders. And the big pay day in her bank account went a long way toward making those dreams and ideas closer to reality.

Neither helped her sleep at night.