02/26/2025 Snippet, PICKMAN’S MODELS.

I’m doing a weekly ‘you have to sit and do work because a couple of other people are and we’re all expecting each other to do it’ session and it’s humiliating how well it works.

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“Commander Marsh is in charge of the Americans here on the moon,” Reithner told him. “I am not even his direct subordinate. You should talk to him, not me.”

The cleaver-man scowled at Tobias. “He’s not one of us. Maybe you are, maybe you’re not. If you are, you can tell us how to talk to him, get what we want that way.”

He might have said more, but Tobias interrupted. “Let me start talking to you right now. There was a man captured with us. His name is Pickman. Where is he?”

Tobias did not like the cleaver-man’s grin. “You worried about him? You want him back? You going to ask nicely?”

“Absolutely,” Tobias replied, his voice flat. “Pretty please, with sugar on top.” He noted with bleak satisfaction that his captor reacted with the same desperate longing to the s-word as everybody else on the Moon did. “And while we’re talking about what I want: you leave her be, too. Harm the Lieutenant in any way, and you’ll get nothing you want.”

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