Angry Young Spaceman (36 page)

I stared at him. I wished I was back on the ship being beaten by the guard. The guard was someone I could hate. It burned pure, but with 9/3 it was all pops and guttering.

I felt a perverse gratitude to the guard for being a focal point. Now all I had was 9/3.

“So I guess you’re headed back to Roboworld, now that you’ve fulfilled your function,” I said through gritted teeth.

9/3’s eyes blinked no. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” I said. “You were sent to spy on us, right?”

9/3’s eyes flashed red anger, then back to white.

“If you hadn’t told them who I was, maybe they wouldn’t have confirmed that he was safe to kill.” I excluded my own part in it, though it sat in my brain like an implant. “Maybe they could have... shrunk him.” I had an image of Matthew, normal sized, with pools of skin around his ankles. It was an appropriately stupid image, as I realized how unlikely it was.

“In a planetary emergency, I have to report all pertinent details to the authorities and Roboworld,” he intoned.

I flared up at this. Just more hiding behind procedures, just-following-orders bullshit. “Well, did you tell them that you fucked Hugh?” I yelled, straining against my magnashackles. “Did you report to Roboworld that you were defective?”

The word hung there like the piece of shit it was. I was ashamed but determined. I willed 9/3 to get angry, ground my teeth together and psychically flung my rage over him like waves of radiation.

His eyes flickered several different colours at once, landing on red a few times. There was a sound of static that came from his voicebox that was nearly inaudible.

I stared through the window. A star crawled across it. I wished I was burning in its core. And then my fierceness was gone.

I checked my aggrometer to verify. Yep. The needle was dead.

9/3 went offline.

When I fell asleep, I saw a squirrel gathering food and stopping at a sound. There’s a new river on Pleasureworld 33, rushing over rocks and around trees. A red river that flows from a head cracked open on a mountain, where the gigantic boy’s parted lips leak endlessly, bubble and leak.

twenty

“It was very unusual to inhale the eggs and sperm of another animal,” I explained to my workshop teachers calmly, a week later.

“It is Octavian tradition,” Mr. Kung said. “But boyfriend-girlfriend no. Just wife.”

“Fertility,” said Mr. Nekk. “Is very important to Octavian families.”

Mrs. Ahm nodded seriously.

“Boyfriend-girlfriend... strangey,” said Mr. Kung, crossing his tentacles in case I missed the meaning.

“After marriage, OK.”

“The Gardens are an Octavian treasure,” I said, deliberately using words Kung wouldn’t understand. “The colours are amazing.”

“Why did you not go to Pleasureworld?” Mr. Nekk asked.

“We changed our plans,” I said, with no intention of going into it. The Pleasureworld chain had used their clout to kill the story. I continued quickly. “I have some bad news.”

“Bad news?” said Mrs. Ahm, always the quickest. “What?”

“I am moving to Artemia. My language skills will be tested.” Jinya’s professor had set it up, after an excited meeting. I wasn’t convinced that it was the right thing to do, but I figured I could clam up at any point.

“That’s terrible,” said Mr. Nekk.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mrs. Ahm said.

“Too bad,” Mr. Kung said. “We go drinky?”

***

“Did you tell the teachers about the... accident?” Jinya asked while we lay in bed.

“No. I told them about the Living Gardens. And about the coral orgy.”

“Orgee?”

“Like... sex party.”

“Yes! Coral sex party!” she said, laughing against my shoulder. It felt wonderful, and I almost smiled.

“Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you sad that we don’t sex?” she said. “Humans like to sex.”

I thought for a second, tracing the spaces between her suckers with my fingertip. “Yes, but... you are sad that I am leaving, right?”

I felt her nod.

***

The next day was my last day.

“Artemia tomorrow?” said Mr. Zik, getting ready to leave for class.

“Yep,” I said, waving at my cleaned-off desk. “All ready.”

“I can drive you,” he said. “In my saucer.”

I thought of what that meant to him — the harrowing request he’d have to make of the principal, the sixteen hours of travel — all for an offworlder who was abandoning his post.

I got up and hugged him, gently holding his stalk-of-corn body.

“Ssss-sss-ss,” he said. “What?”

***

I ended up walking to the bus stop alone. Jinya had school and besides, we were going to meet in the city soon.

It was a short walk to the station, but long enough for my melancholy to build. I walked by the tree and nodded to the grandfather and the dumb, rock-headed girl. She climbed down from the hill and started walking beside me. I looked back at grandpa but he didn’t seem in the least concerned.

I hadn’t seen her in a long while — ever since the test I monitored, maybe that long. “
Shouldn’t you be in school?
” I asked, but with a smile.

She just answered my smile with one of her own. She reached out and took one of my lighter bags.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Yellcome,” she twisted out after a moment, the first and only English word I’d hear her speak.

We walked through the town together, pretty empty at this time of morning. A scooter buzzed by on a delivery, and I wondered what it would be like to be that blank-faced boy. I willed myself into his head, his life. Did he have any worries about what he was doing, what effect he was having? Or did he simply weigh his decisions by which held the most beeds and the least trouble?

My suitcase was getting heavier by the step but the station was within sight. I checked my time. I was all right. We cut through the small market and an old lady called out.

“
Come help me!
”

I stopped and looked at the old lady in the booth, her tentacles bristling with cucumbers. I was trying to figure out what she wanted when the rock-headed girl shook her head and showed her the bag of mine she was carrying.

The old lady nodded and went back to stacking Plangyo’s favourite vegetable.

When we got to the bus station and sat on the bench, I was surprised by the amount of memories that had accumulated there so quickly. There was the spot where that little chump had sung I.C.Y. to me, the day Jinya and I met. This was the place that every one of my trips on Octavia had begun and ended.

I looked around at the ticket vending machine and the two or three other mid-day travellers. From my spot on the bench, I could see the hills in the distance — never terribly impressive but now even less so that I’d seen the incredibly fecund Living Gardens. Not much to be fond of, but I was sad to be leaving anyway.

I remember how defensive I’d gotten when Matthew had visited. “My station on Squidollia is twice as big as this. This is pathetic.”

“Yeah, well,” I had retorted. “I’ll bet we have twice as many hideously old women waiting here at any given moment.”

The rock-headed girl sat beside me, her eyes disinterested. But I guess it beat stacking cucumbers. I wanted her to ask me why I was sad, to divine with a child’s insight that something weighed on me, and to want to draw it out.

“
Why are you sad, teacher?
” she could say.

“
Well,
” I’d say, and then decide to tell her. “
A good friend of mine died.
”

She wouldn’t say anything, then, because what could you say that wasn’t stupid or trite? That’s why I hadn’t bothered telling my teachers. It was bad enough that the memory of it kept backing up like a brackish sewer, draining only to bubble up again, without hearing people fumble through empty phrases.

Ha
, Matthew’s voice mocked me,
big bad pug hopes a kid will make him feel better. Aw.

A bus came for somewhere else and picked up two people. I watched its backside as it moved away.

The bubbles from the exhaust were caught in its wake and thrown up, an answer to the song.

Bubbles over Plangyo,

Where did you go?

I heard Mr. Zik singing in the sing-song room in my mind. I hummed it, since I didn’t know the words, and looked at the rock-headed girl. She had her little painted stone friends out, playing with them contentedly. She was humming too.

twenty one

The charliebot was polishing glasses, and I was getting them dirty.

“Fill’er up,” I said, staring in front of me. The charliebot stuck out his hose and let me have another. He didn’t say anything. They don’t when you’re drinking at an optimum rate.

It had been a year since I left Plangyo. The spaceport bar was exactly like every other one I’d been to. The light just bright enough so that you can see the pretty bottles sparkling, an offer of the rough stuff. It was the same as every other spaceport bar in the bloody galaxy, although sometimes there’s more people.

Today, it was just me and the charliebot. Goddamn trash can.

“Whattaya lookin’ at, bud?” it said.

“Shut the fuck up, metal man.”

The charliebot kept polishing. The door slid open.

The guy was dressed in a grey body-suit, with a collar he probably thought was pretty damn stylish. I sneered at him.

“Gimmie a gin-and-tonic,” he said, in a scratchy voice.

I snorted. “Sounds like you need a drink, buddy.” I slammed the glass on the bar. “And so do I.”

He looked at me, a weak little smile on his face. “Where you coming from?” He got his drink and took three quick sips from it.

“Octavia,” I said.

“Well, welcome back to civilization,” he said.

I laughed and raised my glass. He clinked it.

“You know, I had a... thing with one of them once,” he said. “A
digital romance
they call it.”

“You were lucky, guy,” I said bitterly. “She didn’t get her fuckin’ tentacles around you.” I breathed heavily, feeling bile in my throat and not just from the drink. I washed it down with the rest of my beer. “Didn’t get her hooks into ya...”

Then I whipped the glass into the row of liquor bottles.

“Goddamn sea monkey!” I bellowed, clenching my fist and thumping it on the bar. The guy in the body-suit laughed, a dry clicking laugh.

He offered his hand. “I’m Kevin.”

I shook it. “Sam.”

“You’re gonna end up owing quite a bit for that, Sam,” he said, watching the charliebot tally it up.

The door slid open. An Octavian walks into a spaceport bar...

“Oh, great,” I said. “They’re following me.” Then a crafty look stole over my face. I knew a few tricks. I got up and waved the Octavian to a seat beside Kevin.

“
Welcome,
” I said in badly accented Octavian.

I got the charliebot to pour the Octavian a drink. He was young and reminded me immediately of one of those cheerful morons from, what was that stupid pop group? Whatever.

The charliebot went back to tallying up the smashed bottles.

“
A friendly Earthling, how unusual!
” exclaimed the prettyboy.

I shrugged, pretending I didn’t understand. It would be easier that way.

The charliebot finished. “You owe the bar 150 credits.”

I pointed at the prettyboy.

“
You owe the bar 150 credits.
”

I sat down and smirked at Kevin, who was laughing.

“
That’s an expensive beer!
” he exclaimed. He lifted the glass and looked at it. Through the glass he noticed the smashed bottles.

I ordered another round of drinks for Kevin and I.

The prettyboy looked at us and seemed to figure it out. He set his beer down and started to leave.

We were in front of him in the blink of an eye.

“
Go back and pay the bar
,” I said. Kevin nodded.

“
You tried to rip me off,
” he said. “
Get out of my way
.”

“No speak Octavian,” I said, sneering, and now he knew I was lying. He tried to push us out of the way and Kevin swung at him.

The Octavian took the punch and wrapped Kevin in his tentacles, squeezing with all his might. I started to pull him off until a well-aimed tentacle poked me in the eye.

I reeled back, hand over my eye, and refocused on the fight in time to see a powerful twist of a tentacle snap Kevin’s neck.

When he fell with Kevin, I ran at him and aimed a boot at his head. I missed, and felt a tentacle — maybe two — wrap around my lower leg.

Oh fuck.

I went face first into a table and grabbed the edge in an effort to get up. I just succeeded in toppling it over. But the tentacles were gone. Prettyboy was making his way for the door.

I got up and lifted the round table and swung it at him, laughing as blood ran down to my chin. At the last second, the Octavian dropped on his back, caught the table with all eight tentacles, and swung back.

It connected solidly with my skull and knocked me back a few steps. The prettyboy hopped up and, when I was still dazed, strolled up and gave me a light push in the chest.

I fell backwards, knocking over the entire bar. Every bottle in the place shattered.

The prettyboy looked at me coolly and waited for the charliebot to announce the damages: 2575 creds. He looked at me on the ground, my hand twitching, my mouth still twisted, and shrugged.

“
That round’s on him
.”

Then he walked out.

“
Cut! That was perfect!
”

I got up.
Lucky it was perfect
, I thought as I spat out the blood packet,
that was the third take
.

Kevin was still lying there. “Oh — get up, Kevin. Scene’s over,” I told him

He bounced up. “He just said ‘perfect,’ right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Learning the language, eh? Good.”

The door slid open and the guy who just thrashed me came in. “
You’re a great actor, Sam!
”

“
Thank you! I was happy to work with you, too. You’re the funniest member of Intergalactic Cool Youth
.”