Hammer and Crucible by Cameron Cooper (book recommendations for teens .TXT) 📕

Then he requested my serial number, his hand waving toward my wrist. “It’s a simple procedure.” Desperation shaded his tone.

I figured he would get his ass chewed out, possibly his pay docked, if he didn’t complete the formalities. Reluctantly, I held out my wrist.

He waved the pad over it and nodded. “Thank you.” He went away.

Far more quickly than I suspected was normal, the medico appeared. She smoothed down her white shift nervously and indicated the other man who had come into the room with her. He did not wear white. “This is Harvey Blankenburg, the director for the clinic.”

They really didn’t like a paying customer walking on them. I nodded at him. I didn’t bother smiling.

“Do you mind if I sit?” Blankenburg’s smile was full of white teeth, the epitome of good health. He didn’t wait for me to say yes. He settled on the chair opposite me and gave me another blinding smile. “I must admit we’ve never had anyone of your caliber in our clinic before.”

“You mean you’ve never had anyone so old before.”

“I’m quite sure we’ve had people far older than you. I myself am in my fifth century.”

“Then what the fuck are you doing in a place like this?” I asked him. “Most people get over the need to shill for a living in their first century.” I wasn’t bothering to spare him, as I had no advantage to gain by sitting here. I wasn’t even sure why I was cooperating this far. “Time is ticking. I have things to do, places to go. Are you going to sell me a crush shot, or not?”

He wove his fingers together and placed them on the table in front of him. It was supposed to be a friendly, let’s-be-frank gesture, yet he had barricaded his hands in front of me. I was only in my fourth century, but I knew what that meant.

“I think we can find an arrangement which suits you and us. I’m not here to tell you ‘no’.”

The doctor cleared her throat nervously.

I didn’t look at her. She had no power in this room. I kept my gaze on Blankenburg.

“We have a range of half-life mortgages available, all of them with minimal bondage—”

“How much does crush juice cost these days?” I asked in amazement. I have never paid for crush juice in my life. The Rangers took care of that for us. I had learned from conversations with private carriers and freighter grunts that commercial crush juice was a month or two’s worth of wages and bonuses. By scrimping and saving across the approximate five years a crush shot lasts, civvies could buy their next dose and therefore continue to work in space.

A half-life mortgage to pay for the juice said inflation had exploded in this section of the Empire.

Blankenburg paused, while his jaw worked. “Mortgages are not available for crush juice. Why would they? Most people can afford an inertia inoculation. I presume that you can, too. That is a secondary arrangement we can deal with later.”

My jaw sagged as I realized what he was not saying. “You’re pitching me on rejuvenation?”

“Well…yes. I mean, that is clearly your first priority.”

I sat back. Caution mixed with the anger I was feeling. “I’m not shopping for rejuvenation.”

His jaw dropped.

The doctor gave a strangled sound. “Biologically, you’re in your last decades. Of course you must rejuvenate and, I judge, within the next few years, before your telomeres have shortened beyond the point of regeneration.”

I looked her in the eye. “I’m already dying.” I looked back at Blankenburg. “Rejuvenation is not on the table here. Move on.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the doctor insisted. “Rejuvenation addresses a vast array of medical conditions and resets them out of existence.”

“Next?” I asked Blankenburg, my jaw tight.

He shook his head. “There is no next. If you want crush juice, you must rejuvenate.”

Cards up.

I was breathing too hard. Hyperventilating myself into an oxygen-deprived panic attack wouldn’t help me here. I controlled my breath, waiting for calm to return.

Rejuvenation was out of the question. Juliyana was a Ranger, but her pocketbook wasn’t endless. She could not afford to pay for my rejuvenation. Neither could I. I had lived aboard the family barge without income for decades. There, they had to feed me.

Blankenburg must have guessed some of my thoughts, for he said, “You’re a former Ranger, yes?”

“You looked up my serial number. Congratulations.”

He shook his head. “You have a military bearing about you.”

“So has half the Empire.”

“I’ve never been in the Rangers. Neither has anyone I know,” Blankenburg replied. “I believe the current recruitment rate is eighteen percent of the statistically surveyed population of the Empire.”

“So I was a Ranger, so what?”

“Then you have never negotiated for rejuvenation before. Half-life mortgages are the normal way of arranging them.”

“Not where I come from.” Enslave myself for thirty years to pay off the medical debt? “Anyway, you said your mortgages were bonded.”

Bonded mortgages were even worse. Not only did I have to work for someone else for thirty years, but I didn’t get a choice about who I worked with. True, I wouldn’t have to pay interest on the mortgage, but whoever held my mortgage bond got to tell me what to do, where to go and how to breathe. I would be a slave in all but name, so that at the end of the thirty years, I would get another twenty or twenty-five years of free life, before having to go through the rigmarole all over again.

No, thank you.

“The rejuvenation process the Rangers provide is not a form of bondage?” Blankenburg asked me. “After all, you work for the Emperor, for more than thirty years. If you stop working as a Ranger, no more rejuvenation. The difference is?” He cocked a brow.

He had a point, but I didn’t like it. “That’s completely fucking different.”

He pressed his palms to the table. “It is not my intention to get into semantics. I am only here to find a solution for you.”

I rubbed my temple.