Cosmic Orc Name Generator

The story

The fish had looked smaller on the ceiling. Suspended above the gaming tables of the orbital barge Sunrise, it had been graceful, golden, and plainly too valuable for a room where Zork had once been paid in meal tokens. In his little hired craft it looked like a swollen cupboard with fins. Its tail pressed against the rear cushion. Its round, offended mouth faced the controls. Zork had already removed it from the barge when he began to suspect that stealing something was not the same as getting it somewhere useful.

He sat sideways at the helm. His shoulder fitted between the fish's cheek and the wall, but the ordinary observation slot was entirely full of gilt scales. Beyond that slot the departure beacon would be showing a pale pattern against the trading ring. There was no unattended departure setting in this old fictional craft. Someone had to remain at the helm through the turns while someone could see the changing beacon. Zork tried looking through the fish's mouth. Its interior contained an old fastening, dust, and none of the outside universe.

Suri knocked on the open side hatch. She had a booking to carry parcels that evening and a talent for appearing whenever Zork was about to enjoy a private success. ‘You've bought an awkward ornament,’ she said. He said it was cargo. She looked at the fresh break around the upper mounting ring. ‘Expensive cargo?’ Zork said he hoped so. She stepped into the side observation pod, a narrow recess offset from the helm, and said she could see the weak beacon from there. At the controls he could see only a gilded eye with a crack across its pupil.

They were still secured to the service rail. Nothing was pushing them away from it. Zork could stay where he was, put the fish back aboard Sunrise, or unload and reconsider the arrangement before trying to leave. Those were real possibilities, though none resembled the brisk triumph he had pictured. Instead he asked Suri what she wanted for watching the beacon during departure. ‘Half after the agreed transport cost,’ she said. He offered a tenth. She began to climb out. ‘A tenth is not a conversation,’ she said. Zork discovered that he had plenty of time to negotiate when remaining moored was the alternative.

Before agreeing, he left the helm and squeezed into the observation recess while Suri waited by the hatch. A thin white pulse appeared beside two dim violet lights, just where she had said. The departure lane's little indicator shifted as another craft passed farther along the ring. He could verify her current view. He could not carry that view back to the helm and continue receiving new changes from it; the controls and recess required different positions throughout the turns. Knowing where the lights had been while secured did not make the fish transparent. Suri asked whether he wanted to return the load and try again another day. He said no, not yet.

They agreed on two equal shares after the named transport cost, and on returning to the secured rail if either wanted to stop before departure. Neither threatened the other. It was a genuine agreement about their work, which did not make the fish theirs to sell. Suri took the viewing position. Zork stayed at the controls and stopped pretending that the arrival would be a solo accomplishment. He resented the half he had promised before they had even made it away from the barge. Resentment was familiar enough to him that he could distinguish it from a reason to change the terms.

The short transfer to the market ring was slow and undignified. Suri kept the changing pale light in view from her recess. Zork waited for her present observations instead of substituting his earlier glimpse. Once they were secured at the market berth, they both had to emerge past the fish's chin. The broker waiting nearby looked at the ornament, then at them. ‘Sunrise's fish,’ she said. Zork had hoped for ‘remarkable workmanship’ or ‘unusual purity.’ The broker pointed to the exposed edge of the damaged mount. Under the gilt was ordinary brass. She did not need to scratch another scale to establish it.

Zork rubbed the exposed edge with his thumb. The brass remained brass. Above the gaming tables, warm ceiling lamps had made the thin gold surface look inexhaustible. He had let that appearance do the work of an appraisal. Suri said she would like to sit down before discussing their astonishing equal shares of nothing. The broker declined to buy an ornament belonging to somebody else. A small amount of gilt over a large amount of trouble did not improve the offer. Their transport charge, however, was entirely real.

They could have left the fish at the market and made another person deal with it. Suri refused to pay a second carrying fee merely to abandon it somewhere inconvenient. Zork considered describing the whole matter as a loan, then looked at the broken mounting ring. He sent a message to Sunrise's proprietor saying that he had the fish and asking where to return it. The reply named a receiving berth and the cost of a replacement mount. It contained no thanks for his honesty. The proprietor also required the transport of the fish back to be their expense. Zork disliked the terms and could not find a truthful reason why the owner should pay them instead.

The return took another booking and more of their own money. At the receiving berth they handed over the complete fish and paid the stated mount cost, each recording the share they actually paid. The owner checked the body and fins before accepting it. Return did not make the damaged mount intact, and the payment did not turn removal into an authorized commission. Zork would have liked a quieter ending to that conversation. The proprietor gave him a receipt and asked them to leave the work berth clear. Suri read the receipt, folded her copy, and went to arrange her parcel run. Their agreement had covered this haul, not the rest of her working life.

One obligation remained in Zork's bag. Before the fish affair he had borrowed the communal store's heavy wrench, whose grip had already been worn smooth along one edge. The keeper had shown him that worn patch at the loan. Zork had promised an improved return, a custom he observed much more reliably than other people's ownership of ceiling ornaments. Now he replaced the old grip covering with leather from the upper of his own good boot. He had to make the choice while the boot was still good; a ruined strip found later would not be the same private cost. At the store, the keeper worked the wrench in both hands and confirmed that the covering no longer slipped against its fitting.

‘Better,’ she said. Zork mentioned that he had also returned the fish. ‘The wrench is better,’ she repeated. ‘I didn't ask for a character reference.’ He accepted the distinction with less grace than he would later remember. Outside, a gaming token lay beneath a bench. He picked it up, pleased to discover that the universe had at last provided him with something free. Then he saw Sunrise's little fish stamped on it. He turned back and asked the keeper whether the abandoned tokens were actually discarded or collected for reuse. She said she would find out. Zork waited, one boot less comfortable than the other. He still wanted a fortune. For the moment, he had a question whose answer he had not yet decided to steal.