Chapter 1.7

The next week was filled with fear for everyone on the station.  It was taking a considerable amount of time for Marc to disable all of the exterior doors.

In the interim we got several things accomplished.   A woman with chocolate brown skin was appointed the joint leader for the ladies.  When I saw her, I smiled.  “Hello again,” I said to her.  She looked at me disbelieving.  “You’re really him?” she asked.

“No, I’m really her.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I was him.” I laughed.  “I really slid the chair over to you, Kari.”

Perl had come in with her, and sat down at my comm station.  She turned to stare at me for a few moments.  “I find it hard to believe, but I can’t deny it.  You look the same, only different.”

“That’s quite a paradox,” I said.  “Now that we’ve got the disbelief out of the way, can we please not bring up who I used to be?  I get scared thinking about once being male.”

They both agreed, as thinking about it for them was frightening as well.  Perl turned to the computer and in a few moments Freeman’s visage filled the screen.  “Thank goodness it’s you Perl,” she said, obviously relieved.  “I wasn’t sure how many more times I’d have to speak to either Carter or Reese.”

She smiled at him.  “Well it’s me for awhile now.”  She introduced Freeman to Kari and explained her function.  

It looked like they were settling into a good conversation, so Kari and I made our exit.  It was not easy to walk out to the circular corridor, but we made it.  All the way, we could see curtains and blinds fluttering as men looked out to see who was walking down the street.  When we got to the circle, Marc and John were standing quite some distance away.  

“We’ve already inspected your bay’s motors,” John yelled to us. “They look fine to us.  We are going to the next one.  As you can see, we have removed the door to the stairs.  When you come back down, Marc will weld it in place.”

“Why?” Kari asked.

“The only reason for going up there is the motors,” Marc explained. “They no longer work.  I’ve also welded beams in place on both sides and in the middle of the doors.  The scaffolding is still there so you can inspect my welds.  John wants to see them as well.”

We watched as Marc removed the door from the next set of stairs.  Satisfied with what we were seeing, we went up the stairs to the overhead doors in the bay we had just been in.  We came to the motor and could hardly believe our eyes.  It was about the size of a refrigeration unit, and the outer casing had been melted into the armature  There was no way this motor would ever function again.  It was a heap of scrap.  “I definitely approve,” I told Kari.

“I’d hate to be on the receiving end of Marc’s torch,” Kari said, her voice trembling.

I just looked at her, but at the thought, I could feel my heart beating wildly.  I hoped it would slow down before I tried to go down the stairs.  We stared at the remains of the motor for a minute or two, then I said, “Let’s see the welds.”

We started moving to the center of the doors.  About six meters from the center, we came to an I beam that had been welded to the bottom of the door.  It was about half a meter tall, and there was a continuous weld along the part of the I that was touching the door.  It went all the way along to the same position on the other side.  We went back to the center and moved through a hole that had been cut, big enough for us to crouch and step through to the catwalk.  Both Kari and I had prepared for this.  We were both wearing peach colored jumpsuits, rather than anything that would expose us to the underside.  We hadn’t known about the beams welded in place, but John had told us that Mark welded the two sides of the doors together.  It was why the work had taken a week to do.  By the time we had finished inspecting this one bay’s doors, I was determined to find out who had helped Marc.  I had understood that he was going to do the work himself, but it was apparent he couldn't have done this himself in the amount of time allotted.  Not on forty bays.

Eventually, we went down the stairs.  We found John and Marc waiting for us, again a considerable distance away.  Marc took the door that had been set against the bulkhead and began welding it in place.  It took some time, as he was a meticulous welder.  When he finished, we moved to the next one.  I turned to speak to them men before we entered the stairwell.  “Can we get someone else to follow with the welder?  No offense intended, Marc.  You’re a very careful welder, but it’s going to take awhile to inspect every bay, and waiting for you to weld the doors in place will take even more time.  If they’re welded in place after we come down, we can make another circuit of the corridor when we’re done and then go downstairs.”

“Who do we trust to not weld the door on while we’re up there?” Kari asked.

“How about Colleen Grimes,” I suggested.  She was an artist, and her medium was metals that she welded into sculptures.

John and Marc conferred for a moment, then Marc yelled to us, “That sounds good.  Can you call her?”

I did just that, and a few minutes later, Colleen and her daughter came from downstairs.  “I figured if there were going to be two men here, I’d want to have someone else I can trust with me.”

“I can’t blame you at all,” I told her, then Kari and I went up the stairs.  

As we ascended them, I could hear Marc yelling to her, “Don’t worry about making them pretty.  Just make them secure.”

It took us all day, and most of the next to do all forty bays.  By the time we were done, All four of us were shaken up by such a frequent contact with men.  Not that there was ever the opportunity to touch each other.  They wanted to keep their distance from us, just as badly as we wanted to from them.

Both Kari and I were exhausted from the constant stair climbing.  Five flights up, five flights down.  I had never made an up and down circuit of five flights, twenty five times in one day, then fifteen the next.  Once we were done, I crashed in my bed and slept for a day.  It wasn’t just the stairs, but keeping vigilant while looking at welds without going cross eyed was mental stress.  When I woke up, it was time to move all my stuff to an apartment ‘downstairs’.  We had an electric tractor with a six meter trailer that could be used to carry stuff downstairs, but it meant my piano would have to go down five flights now.  

When I got down to street level, I was surprised to find John, Marc, and three other men there. There wasn’t supposed to be any men out on the street while the women were moving to downstairs.

“What’s going on?” I asked.  I was mad.  I didn’t need to be scared today.  I had a lot of fragile things to move.

“We would like to help,” John yelled across the ten meters between us.

“I have a lot to do,” I yelled back.  “Why would you want to help me?”

“You told me we needed to bury the hatchet.  Well, you have a piano up there.  It’s got to come down five flights without being dropped.  Do you want to do that?”

“How do I know you won’t drop it just for spite?”

“If I do, you can deck me,” he returned.

“And turn you into a woman?” I laughed in spite of my fear. “Not likely!”

He looked down at the ground for a moment, then back up at me.  “In spite of my fear, I care about you.  I know those instruments are special to you.  I saw how broken you were when you saw the damage as you unpacked them.”  He paused again, then with a trembling voice he called to me, “Please let me help you.”

“Let you personally, or all of you?” I asked.  I was curious about what he said.  Was it a Freudian slip?  We had always been best friends, but did it now extend farther than that?  It seemed unlikely with all the fear involved.  A Freudian slip, however, is regarded as revealing the subconscious.

He didn’t say anything for a moment.  He looked scared.  Scared of me, and perhaps scared of what he had said.  He looked at the men around him.  Marc raised an eyebrow at him, and looked like he may laugh.  He might have, had he not been so scared by my presence.

“Please let us help you,” he finally said.

I looked up at the window of my soon to be former rooms, then back at the men.  “I have your word.  Not a scratch on anything?”

“You have my word,” John said.  “Not a scratch.”

“Yours personally, or the entire groups?”

His voice was firm and decisive.  “Mine.”

I gazed at him for a minute, then said simply, “Fair enough,” and I walked down to the former boutique.  I went inside and pulled out one of the chairs.  The upholstery on it had certainly seen better days, but I wanted to watch them.

I carried it out, my arm muscles straining at the size of the thing, and set it down in the middle of the street.  I sat down, crossed my legs, and folded my arms.

John watched with an almost amused expression.  When he saw me in my supervisor position, he told the others, “Come on guys.  She can’t help us, and we don’t want her to.”

His words filled me with relief, but also something else.  Disappointment?  Why would I be disappointed about that?  Was I so concerned about my things?  

I watched as they took several cases upstairs and then started bringing them back down a little while later.  John didn’t come down, however.  He must have taken up the position of supervisor in my apartment.  

I was wondering if the cases held my instruments.  I supposed that they probably did.  Maybe my cooking utensils also, or rather those that weren’t in the restaurant.  What surprised me was when two of the men went into the restaurant and brought out four cases.  My restaurant equipment had been moved from the old bay and placed into what I was going to make my new location.  With everything that had happened, I hadn’t had a chance to do what I wanted.  While they were doing that, Marc pulled the trailer over to the other side of the street and put a net over everything, pulling it tight.  Nothing would fall off now. I was surprised.  I had seen several tractors and trailers heading both ways before I climbed into bed.  None of them had things tied down on them.

While all of this was being done, John started carrying my instruments down in their small cases.  So what were in the huge cases?  The four cases of equipment from the restaurant were loaded onto the trailer, then the five men went upstairs.  They were gone quite awhile, but eventually I could hear one of them urging the others to be careful, move right or left.  Telling John where the next step was.  Eventually, I saw, first the man who was giving directions, then John and another come out of the stairwell holding one end of my old upright Yamaha.  I wasn’t sure how old it was, but I knew it was many centuries.  I had paid an incredible amount for it, but it was worth it.  

Very carefully, the four men set it down on the street and I saw them massaging their muscles.  I remembered taking that thing up the stairs when I moved in.  It was heavy.  John and Marc helped then too.  I was ashamed of my fear, but there was no way to turn it off.  When they picked it up and lifted it onto the trailer, I held my breath, waiting for them to drop it.  They didn’t.  Instead, they took some heavy blankets and used them to protect the finish from scratches from the hemp rope they used to tie the piano in place.  The rest was tied down with nets, although a heavy blanket was placed over my instrument cases to protect them.

John took a few determined steps toward me, then stopped.  He looked ashamed that he was stopped by fear, but he told me that everything was out.

“Everything?” I asked.  Surely, they hadn’t got my clothes.  I doubt they could have stomached that.

“Everything,” John said again, firmly.  He paused for a moment, then as if he’d read my mind, told me, “You sure got a lot of clothes in a short amount of time.”

I stared at him, then ran toward the stairs, shouting, “Move!”  They all did, and I went up the stairs two at a time.  I entered my apartment and just stared.  Everything was gone!  I went into my bedroom and bathroom.  That must have been what John was doing while the others brought stuff down.  He was packing everything.  Why would he do that for me?  I had thought they’d just get the heavy stuff, but no.

I went downstairs, and saw Marc and the three guys pulling the first trailer away.  John sat on the tractor ready to pull my piano downstairs.  “I’m sure you don’t want to ride on the tractor with me here, but there’s room at the back of the trailer.”  He was right.  There was a mesh tailgate that lowered into a ramp, allowing people to load stuff with a hand truck.  The piano had been loaded to one side, leaving a space I could ride, approximately a meter square.  That would put me about eight meters from John.  I could probably handle that, but I shook my head.

“No thanks, I’ll walk.”  He looked both disappointed and relieved as he shrugged.  “No problem,” he said.

“I also want to tell you of a development from yesterday.  Marc and I didn’t want to mention it in front of the other men without your approval.”

“And what is that?” I asked.  “Was this whole helping me move just to give me some news?”

“That’s ridiculous, and you know it,” He answered.  He stared at me until I nodded, signifying he was right.  He started the tractor moving, and said, “I’ll tell you when we get into the passageway.”  A moment later, I thought to myself, to hell with it and I ran up to the trailer, grabbed the tailgate and jumped on.  He stopped the tractor and looked back at me, smiling.  I stared defiantly at him.  A few minutes later, we entered the corridor to take us downstairs.