Angry Young Spaceman (19 page)

“You have a lovely kitchen,” said Christina, apparently on an entirely different wavelength. “The instafood oven must save time.”

“Oh, it’s very convenient. We had one on Squidollia and now I can’t imagine life without it,” Kathy said, patting it fondly.

John walked over to the wall panel and poked a few buttons. A buzzing started from overhead. The lights dimmed. “Wait ‘til you get a load of this,” he said. “Those ceiling panels? They’re actually Opaque-tastic Glass.” The buzzing stopped. He punched another button, and the glass cleared like a mist.

And we could see the stars. I tilted my head back. After a few seconds, I could see the pattern of an attacking dwarf.

“Wow,” said Christina, “isn’t that something.”

I saw a constellation that looked like a saucer. “Yeah.” I look a deep breath, thinking about being in a dome in the middle of nowhere under these twinkling drops, with nice and interesting folk, people who didn’t eat people smaller than themselves. I let my breath out.

After a few minutes the Unarmoured and Hugh came in together. They looked at the stars with us for a minute, but then resumed their conversation.

“Ideas are artificial, at a basic level,” murmured the Unarmoured guy, tilting his bullethead.

“That’s exactly it, exactly,” said Hugh.

It wasn’t so much the pretentious drivel but the way it immediately captured Christina’s attention that made me leave the room.

9/3 and Matthew were still on the couch. Matthew had his back to me, turned around and speaking intently to the roboman.

“Why not?” Matthew said.

“Why not what?” I asked, sitting down.

Matthew’s head swung in my direction. He had a funny grin, and he took a swig of beer. He slowly sat back. 9/3 sat there, his pretty arms crossed and his eyelights unreadable.

I waited.

Matthew shrugged and tilted the bottle back again.

I leaned forward. “Did he... ask to have sex with you, 9/3?”

“No!” yelled Matthew, his face painted scandal scarlet. “Come on!”

I leaned back, relaxed. “What was it, then?”

“I just wanted to see his tits,” said Matthew.

I stared at Matthew, amazed. He kept defiantly meeting my eyes and looking away. 9/3 remained silent. How would he feel about that?

I swallowed the bitter dregs of my wine. The door opened and two guys walked in with a case of Neb beer.

“Kitchen’s in there,” Matthew said, chinning towards it. “Neb drinkers welcome.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Robomen don’t...” I started, shaking my head, “You trying to get him declared defective?”

“Oh, shut up,” said Matthew, rolling his eyes.

“Maybe I am defective already,” said 9/3.

I need another drink.
I got up and went to the kitchen. Hugh and the Unarmoured guy were ensconced in the corner, Christina was getting talked at by one of the guys who had just come in. Kathy took my cup right away and as I was waiting for it back I noticed something familiar about the way that Hugh was leaning in and touching the Unarmoured’s hand. It was the same way he had been with 9/3 at the Octavian bar a few weeks ago, before Matthew and I left on his quest for whores.

Maybe I am defective already.

Kathy passed me a full cup. “Sam here works on Octavia,” she said to the man who’d come in with the case of beer.

“Is that right? Just stopped off there myself. Quaint little place,” he said, with a knowing grin I disliked immediately.

twelve

“He was rude,” I said to Mr. Zik a few days later.

“Was he from Earth?” Mr. Zik asked. “Earthlings are very plolite.”

“I don’t know if he was,” I said. “But he was stupid,” tapping my head with a scowl, “and too loud.”

“Not normal Earthling, I think,” said Mr. Zik. “More bleer?”

I consented.

He called out to her as she passed. She stopped, most of her tentacles laden with platters, and continued on after giving me the once-over.

She was young and pretty by Plangyo standards, and the restaurant was flashier than the one Kung took me to, but not entirely Earthified. True, the place did have an English name (“The House”) but the pictures on the walls were of Octavians rather than offworlders.

The waitress came by and dropped a bladder of beer on the table. I snatched it up and squeezed out a glass for Mr. Zik.

“You know how to use the old-fashioned style?” he said, after thanking me.

“Of course,” I said. “
I am an Octavian.
” We laughed at that.

It had taken a few tries to get it to work, but the plastic bags of beer — or any liquid — made more sense, and not just due to the liquid atmosphere. All you had to see was one Octavian struggling to lift a pitcher with a handle made for human hands to show you that.

But in big, modern cities like Artemia, more restaurants used pitchers than didn’t. It was infuriating.

“One of the rude offworlders told me that there was a special restaurant in Artemia that used forks.” I didn’t care to add that he had gone on to imitate the trouble his fellow diners had had. Only on an alien planet could you be proud of speaking your native tongue and knowing how to use a fucking fork!

“Very strange,” said Mr. Zik. “Is he... was he visiting Octavia?”

“Yes, for a week.” And for that he felt like he was an authority on all things Octavian. “He was making fun of — do you know ‘making fun’?”

Mr. Zik’s pale yellow eyes wandered. “Like a good time?”

“No... uh... mocking,” I said, unable to think of anything simpler, though
defaming
and
ridiculing
popped uselessly into my head.

“Yes, mocking. He was mocking you?” Mr. Zik inquired, deftly rolling the bladder into his tentacle and squeezing me another glass.

“No,” I said. “He was mocking Octavians. I wanted to punch him.” Luckily Matthew had seen the needle on my aggrometer and had dragged us out of there. 9/3 had come with us, after asking Hugh if he was coming. Hugh stayed.

Mr. Zik blinked.

“Punch,” I said, throwing one slowly into space.

“Ah yes,” said Mr. Zik. “Earth-style fighting.”

I nodded. Octavian fighting was, naturally, more fluid.

“But... it is very old fashioned?”

I thought about getting into the whole history of the pug movement, how it sprang up in opposition to the prohibitively expensive and ineffective vengeance vendors — then how I’d have to explain how the vendors got that way... I looked at Mr. Zik’s smiling, slightly drunk face and changed the subject.

“You are working very hard these days,” I said. Mr. Zik had been making charts, adding up rows of numbers, and rushing back and forth between his desk and the principal’s office. I hadn’t wanted to disturb him, so I kept to my letter writing. “Are you done now?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s why...” he pointed to the glass, “drinky.”

“Oh, that’s why we’re
drinking
,” I corrected. It was fine for Kung to sound childish, but Mr. Zik deserved better.

“It is my job to send the marks to the high schools,” he said.

“Why is it
your
job?” I asked, automatically defensive for him.

“Every teacher has an extra job. Some stay on the weekend to guard the school. Mr. Ent does the schedule.”

Of course, I had no extra duties. I was also spared having to give out grades. I was spared a lot of things, I thought guiltily, then I remembered the gym teacher and my temper flared.

“What about Mr. Blok?” I said, thinking about his indolent strolls through the staffroom, his stupid-but-well-received jokes. He never seemed to be busy. “Is it his job to annoy the teachers?”

“Annoy? Ssss-sss-ss,” Mr. Zik said. “No. He is to discipline the blad students.”

My mood darkened. On the few occasions I had stayed after school I had seen it in progress, this “discipline.” A student would have all eight appendages stretched out at once, secured in what looked to be a painful position. I didn’t know for sure — I didn’t know Octavian physiology to know what was painful, but I know it well enough to know that the position left the sex organs exposed. They were usually crying, either from the pain or the embarrassment, as Blok’s reedy whip of a voice came down again and again. “
Worthless! Shame to your parents! Lazy! Shame to Octavia!
”

“I hate Blok,” I said.

Mr. Zik looked alarmed. “Mr. Blok is your blig brother.”

I shrugged. Mr. Zik was watching me, worry plain on his face. There was no point in pursuing it. It went too deep.

“Shall we go... another place?”

“Sure,” I said. We got up and before I could get my hand in my pocket Mr. Zik had paid for it, passing the beeds to the young waitress. It could have been a sensuous act — the sliding of tentacles certainly looked so to me, in my tipsy state, except that the waitress was looking in another direction and calling out an order to the kitchen as she did it.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Don’t mention it,” said Mr. Zik, grinning like he meant it.

“Wow, we’re drunken,” I said.

“Yes,” Mr. Zik said. “I must go to washroom.”

“Me too,” I said.

On our way there, I ignored my general principles against humanization and prayed for Earth-style toilets. I needed to take a shit and it wasn’t something I was very good at.

I opened the stall door on the wall-toilet and did my business. (I remain vague because no matter how strongly people press for details — in the name of cultural edification, naturally — I am invariably stopped before I get a full sentence out.) Mr. Zik was gratefully not one of those males who need to talk while in the john, and waited patiently outside the door.

“Every time I use an Octavian-style toilet,” I said, as we left the restaurant, “I am more grateful for you giving me an Earth toilet.”

“Ssss-sss-ss,” said Mr. Zik. “No, is not me, is the school bloard...”

I cut him off with a shake of my head.

Outside, it was cool and dark. It felt like a different season than the one I had arrived in. I started thinking about the fact that planets with different orbits and species with different sleeping patterns had had to conform to Earth time. Usually, it made me mad, but tonight it made me almost teary.

We walked along the street. A lot of the places were closed, one of the places was selling human dolls. Everything’s the same. Earth has bullied everyone into being like it. I felt like I had come here to bear witness to the fact that Earth was everywhere, and what was more, Earth was
welcomed
into the houses of —

“Shall we go sing-song room?” asked Mr. Zik.

I looked at him. He was smiling as if he had asked nothing untoward, a normal suggestion for a night on the town. My mood neatly inverted from crash-bound into soaring. “
Tremendously marvellous,
” I said in Octavian.

We swung into the sing-song room on a cloud of joy. (My jubilation at Octavia’s unassailable alienness was amplified by the alcohol as much as my prior misery had been.) Mr. Zik booked a room, and a young boy escorted us there, looking askance at me. It was a small room with two or three places to sit — I wondered if there were smaller rooms, perhaps a stall, for just one songster. He stared at me until Mr. Zik closed the door on his slack-jawed gaze.

I was disappointed at the selection. “No Intergalactic Cool Youth,” I complained.

“Your favourite pop group,” said Mr. Zik with a smile, removing the microphone. “My daughter, too.”

“You have to sing, first. Your favourite song.”

Mr. Zik nodded. He sped through the selection and chose something from the Traditional section. He made a few adjustments at once on the panel, obscure level changing that showed a casual expertise. The first twangs of the song started. “It is very old,” he said apologetically.

“Good,” I said fiercely, “I hate
modern
.”

He looked at me with the perplexed fondness that characterized our relationship.

Then he started to sing, slowly enough so that I was able to translate.

Bubbles over Plangyo

Where did you go?

When you were here before

You promised us more

I have mentioned Zik’s sunken face and thin lips. He wasn’t handsome, by his world’s standards — never mind ours. I had never seen him sing before, but I would have imagined it would have been a reflection of his shy speech. It was not.

The dish is empty of food

Our hearts have drained

Beyond this life

What is there?

I sat there, glad I had not sung “my favourite song” first. It would have been insulting. Between verses, Zik looked into middlespace as if he was adding it all up in his head.

Hopes for our minds

Dreams for our spirit

Food for our body

Bubbles over Plangyo

As the last few plaintive twangs faded away, Mr. Zik came back, slowly.

“That’s a very beautiful, sad, song,” I said. “You sing it very well.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Zik, “I am not a good singer.”

“Why is it your favourite song?” I asked for lack of being able to articulate, unable to take my eyes away from his face.

“It is a very famous song,” he said, looking at the microphone in his tentacle. “During the war with the dolphins, there was a battle near to this place. The soldiers who were not killed saw the blubbles from far away, and they came to here.”

“They thought the bubbles meant that there were people here.”

“Yes, but there were no pleeple here. Very sad story.”

What happened to the soldiers didn’t interest me particularly. But why Mr. Zik was so moved and transformed by this song did. Was this a moment of indulgent melancholy or a peek beyond his social facade? Was he, at his heart, a sad man? I felt unreasonably close to him.

He offered the microphone. I took it, reluctantly. “They do not have my real favourite songs.”

“Yes, only plopular songs, I know,” said Mr. Zik, forgiving me.

I looked at the selection. I searched for just one song in English that wasn’t about rocketships or girls. The bouncy “Got me a Saucer (but I ain’t got you)” almost tempted me, but it was like using belchy cola to chase a bittersweet liquor.