Near + Far (29 page)

He didn't answer, but paused in the doorway of the pharmacist. "The usual," he snapped at Ercutio.

The pharmacist said as he passed over the pack of juice bulbs, "If you wouldn't retain your fluids in your body so much, they would not cause the infection."

He ran his card through the reader to pay. "I know, I know," he said.

"Who are those with you?" Ercutio nodded at the cousins, who stood backing Kallakak in a little ring.

"Cousins," he said. He toothed through the seal of a juice bulb and sucked down the salty-sweet fluid, mixed with antibiotics.

"I heard there's some trouble with your space," Ercutio said and Kallakak paused before hurrying out of the doorway.

"Some," he said. "I'll know more in a day or so, need to size things up."

They moved along towards the shop. The name "Akla's Wares", written in standard and red Balabel script rode the wall above the doorway, which Kallakak had widened at his own expense in order to make it easier for customers to enter.

Alo2 looked at them from where he sat beside the counter.

"We are Kallakak's cousins. You will no longer be needed," Sla told the mechanical in an officious tone.

Kallakak hastened to say, "Don't listen to it. Visitors from home. Go look at the merchandise, you three, while I catch up."

Alo2 registered the knowledge with a flicker of the blue lenses that served it as eyes. Its surface was matte steel, marred in places with dents from years at dock labor. "The shop took in 541 standards," it said. "A party of six sailors bought twelve souvenir items at 2:11. Two Jellidoos came by but bought nothing."

"Did they say anything to you?" he asked.

"They wanted to know the sum of my wages," Alo2 said. "I misrepresented them as considerably more than I make."

"Good," Kallakak said enviously. He was incapable of lying; the effort of it caused a purpling of the ear frills that was unmistakable to anyone knowing much of Balabel physiology. While a master of understatement and misdirection, he envied Alo2's ability to overtly misstate things.

"Jellidoos are tough to deal with," Alo2 said in a statement of absolute truth and Kallakak nodded in glum agreement.

"They used to use a lot of mechanicals," Alo2 said.

"Used to?"

"They're superstitious. We spread a rumor that mechanicals hold souls that have been displaced from bodies—ghosts. Not all of us, mind you, just a few. They're terrified of ghosts and death."

"Too bad we can't convince them this place was once a body repository or something," Kallakak said. He looked around at the walls, which were a dull layer of cloudy plastic over gray metal.

It was unclear what use the station's creators had meant to put the space to centuries ago. Finding it unused except for storage, Kallakak had submitted petitions to three versions of TwiceFar's constantly changing government, achieving success on the fourth try. He touched the counter, a silvery glass slab he'd found in a cast-off sale at the University and swore.

"What?" Alo2 asked.

"I've put too much work into this to see it taken away," he said, feeling tired. "It is the only thing I have to remember Akla by. It is her past—my future."

He turned to the cousins. "All right. Desla, sweep the back aisles, Sla, wash the wall—you'll want to unpin those scarves first and then put them back up. Tedesla, sort that box of mail cards, and make sure they're grouped together by language. Alo2, can you stay a few more hours and show Tedesla how to operate the credit reader?"

"Where are you going?" Sla asked.

"To do some research."

"Huh," Bo said after he'd listened to the whole long saga. "Jellidoos are bad news; they know law inside and out."

"You'd think that they wouldn't know TwiceFar law," Kallakak said bitterly. He took a sip from the fragrant tea Bo had served him, redolent with yellow, straw-like flowers that smelled like honey and apple.

"They've probably been waiting for a turn that would allow them to do this," Bo said. His height had been augmented to over two meters and that, coupled with his ferocious black eyes, helped him keep his own establishment orderly. "A lot of people watch the station to see how things change, watching for opportunities. But how can they claim your space? I thought it was unoccupied until you moved in there."

"It was," Kallakak said. "But there was a caff cart stored there for three days at one point, a temporary measure. They are claiming occupation based on having owned most of the cart."

"Feh," Bo said. "So you can make it too expensive for them to force you out, I suppose ... "

"Hard to do. In that location, they can recoup a very large sum quickly. Larger than I can raise against them."

"You can wait them out and see what happens next time the government shifts."

Kallakak shook his head. "Then they'll have been the most recent occupants—most law will lie in their favor."

"It's a shame," Bo said. "I remember when you arrived—took you a year to save up enough to buy citizenship, let alone start to make claim to that space. When you and your wife first came ... " The sentence trailed off in awkward silence.

"All done and gone," Kallakak said. He drank the last of his tea, now cool.

Back at the shop, he swore when he saw the mess Sla had created. The scarves, draped against a wall still damp from washing, had bled mottled dyes onto the wall's plastic.

"I didn't mean to," it said, shrinking unhappily into itself. Tedesla came up behind it and touched its shoulder, giving Kallakak a look that reminded him of Akla. By the end, she had learned to play his guilt-strings like a musical instrument. The emotion glittered in his mind like Sla's unhappy eyes.

"It doesn't matter," he sighed. "Take those down and fold them. We'll sell them to the Jellidoos for a decent sum, I'm sure." He frowned at the colored wall; the pink and green dye had left pale, feathery patterns like fern leaves.

Late that night, he heard them whispering together, admonishing Sla. After they finished, he heard the smallest cousin weeping and then the other two comforting it.

"Of course it is strange here," Desla said. "But tomorrow we will go and get the little cream pastries from the Food Court that the woman was talking about. Sweet and light as air, she said."

"We'll bring some back," Desla murmured. "He deserves to be taken care of, now that he no longer has his wife."

"He never speaks of her," observed Tedesla.

"Never," said Sla. "Do you think she died of something gruesome?" The other two shushed it and lapsed into murmurs that he couldn't make out.

When the hallway lights brightened to morning shift white, he let the increased angstroms tug his eyelids awake and drank another of the sour bulbs. His bladder felt much the same as it had the day before, irritated and a little sore, but at least it was no worse.

Sla was cheerful. Kallakak gave the three the day free, with a handful of coupons and vouchers he had gathered through exchanges with other merchants.

Alo2 was sweeping out the aisles as he entered.

"Where's your entourage?" it asked. He shook his head. "Sent the pack of them off to the Food Court."

"Good. What are you going to do about the Jellidoos?"

"There's not much I
can
do," he said. Moving over to the card-reader, he tapped at it, checking the totals. "I'm going to see the Undersecretary today. Can you watch over the shop again?"

"And the cousins?" the mechanical said.

He shook his head. "I told them they were off today and to meet me at evening to eat together."

"They tried to ask me questions about Akla yesterday."

"What did you say?"

"That I didn't know anything. I think they don't understand that non-Ballabel can lie yet. Not that I'm complaining. I had the middle one fetching and carrying for me yesterday when I described the pain that sudden movements caused to my resistors."

He laughed. "They'll learn soon enough, I'm sure." He drank another juice bulb, feeling his outlook improving. His cheer was confirmed when the Undersecretary saw him with surprising promptness, but the emotion fled when the official bluntly mentioned the sum the Jellidoos had already provided.

"I can't match that in the short term," Kallakak ventured. "But perhaps over the course of time ... "

The official shook his head. "Things change too quick around here. There hasn't been a government that's lasted more than six months in over a decade," he said. "Who's to say what could happen? Better to grab what I can while I can."

"All right," Kallakak said.

Bo was similarly discouraging. "Chimp down in the Click Bar said the Undersecretary picks up lonely sailors every once in a while, treats them to a good meal and usually breakfast too, isn't too picky about looks. I don't have anyone that could lean on him."

"And the Jellidoos are better at brute force anyhow," Kallakak said. He sighed. "Thanks anyway."

Coming home through the Food Court, he came across a noodle vendor screaming at the cousins, who stood in a line before the livid, red-faced man, their upper and midhands clasped together in embarrassment.

"What's happened here?" he asked, hurrying up.

"They pick up soup unit, get it all mixed around, bad programming!" the man yelled, his voice grating across Kallakak's ears. "Expensive machine!"

"We were just looking at it," Sla said sullenly, its tail lashing.

"We thought that you might get one for the shop," Desla said.

"How much to fix?" Kallakak said to the merchant. He wished he could lie, wished he could pretend this trio, so clearly linked to him, were of no relation, no consequence. But their every movement proclaimed them his.

"Fifty credits."

"Give you ten here and now or twenty store credit."

"Fifteen here and now." The merchant swiped Kallakak's card through his reader, punching in the numbers as he eyed the cousins. As though his money wasn't flowing away rapidly enough, he thought.

"You're not paying him, are you?" Sla asked. "We were just looking!"

"Apparently you punched a few buttons," Kallakak said tiredly. They followed him as he circled around the entrance of the Midnight Stair, towards the shop.

"You could sell a lot of food in your shop," Sla said.

"We aren't zoned to sell food."

"But you sell the chocolate and fruit boxes."

"Those are sealed."

"Oh," Sla said.

"Tonight you can watch over the store with Alo2," he said. "First two of you in a five hour shift, then Desla by itself."

"All right," Tedesla said agreeably.

"What will I do by myself?" Desla asked, alarmed.

"You can go sit in the shop with them. You just won't be working. Although if you get bored, Alo2 can show you how to weave hiber baskets. We sell a lot of those."

"And what will we do when Desla is working?" Tedesla asked. "Sit and weave baskets as well?"

"You may also wish to go and fetch yourselves some food at that point, and perhaps bring some back for Desla. In such a case, do not look at or touch any machines, but allow the vendor to hand you the food," he said. "At any rate, I will see you in the morning."

But in the solitude of the room, things felt empty. Much as they had after Akla's departure, full of strange echoes and spaces that could not be filled with boxes of Corrinti jellies and bioluminescent inks. He drank another bulb of medicinal juice and chewed his way through a pack of dried protein flakes, washing them down with swallows of meaty, buttery tea, while his midhands spread lotion on each other, brushing away bits of accumulated, overgrown skin and picking away the cuticle in order to burnish each sharp, curved claw.

"I do miss you," he said aloud to the empty air. "I do."