Angry Young Spaceman (27 page)

I didn’t bother picking the stray one up — it had rolled away, anyway — and walked on.

I stopped at a cart where a guy was selling small muffins and ordered a bag.

He snapped open his black iron moulds. At the same time, he used the covered tips of four tentacles to flip the fresh tiny muffins into a bag. It had the feel of a magic trick, although he looked bored.

“
Is he a beggar?
” I said to the cart guy.

He nodded. He looked over at the dish-boy, then at me. “
You are generous
,” he said, squinching the bag shut and handing it over.

I paid. “
Thanks
.”

He nodded and started refilling the moulds with goo. I walked away, pulling the bag open, and decided I disagreed with the guy. I think I was more motivated by not wanting to look like a heartless Earthling than by genuine empathy. I munched away on the sweet muffins, which Mr. Zik had told me were shaped to look like a fruit which I’d never seen, and I was almost half-way through the bag before I got to the store.

I did a quick shop, and the counter girl tallied up my items but stopped when she saw my spicy pickled onion.

She looked a little flustered for a moment, the pickled onions in her tentacle, then said “No.”

I raised my eyebrows, which seemed to almost terrify her. Then she noticed another employee coming from the back of the store.

“
He wants to buy chikim but it’s too hot for Earthlings
,” she said to him in a whiny voice.

He set down a box and pointed to the chikim. He mimed eating it, then waved a tentacle in front of his mouth.

“
I know it’s hot. I love chikim. It’s delicious.
”

She broke up into laughter and his jaw dropped. “
You speak?
” She hit the other employee.

“
I didn’t know he spoke Octavian
,” he said crossly, picking up his box.

I apologized, and paid for my groceries.

“OK!” he shouted as he walked down an aisle.

The door shut behind me and I heard a new gale of laughter, its quality perhaps a little harsher and meaner.

On my way home I saw a moviedisk rental store and popped in.

I smiled at the guy at the counter, and he smiled back. He was on his wristphone. “Chikim?!” he said incredulously.

I couldn’t hear what the other person was saying, but evidently it was hilarious. I looked at the rows of moviedisks, my ears burning. The bag of chikim hung obviously from my hand.

I glanced at him. He was looking at me with a smile.

Did that girl from the grocery store call here after I left?

He bleeped off. I picked up a moviedisk randomly and looked at the slowly moving image, an Octavian with a helmet and a lance.

Were they talking about me?

It was a really creepy feeling. Then again, chikim was very popular on Octavia... it could have easily been a chance reference.

I put the moviedisk back and approached him.

“Do you have English moviedisks?” I asked.

He nodded eagerly and pointed to a wall. I went over to it, and he followed.

“Good,” he said, poking at a roboman action flick,
In Zap Guns We Trust VI
.

I looked them over, still wondering, not really seeing them. I picked up an Octavian one by mistake.

“No, Octavian,” he said. “You... spik?”

“
Yes, I speak Octavian,
” I said.

“Oh... very good,” he said with pleased surprise.

Shifting my bags in my hands, I realized that the grocery girl would have mentioned my Octavian if that had been her on the line. I relaxed a little. I went to the English section, looking for that action moviedisk — it would be interesting to watch it now that I knew 9/3 so well. Some of the appeal of the roboman action hero is that he is completely pure, completely ruthless, and I wondered how that image would jive with the memory of 9/3 walking softly through the forest, cradling Hugh.

While looking for it, I came across
Princess Artemia
. I was a bit surprised to see it there — while it was readily available during my teens, it was hard to find now on Earth. The current take on it was that the tragic doomed romance depicted the Octavian female lead as an exotic prize for the Earthling hero — a xenophobic product of its times.

I put it back on the shelf, wondering if the actress still lived on the planet, what she did now.

sixteen

“I am very sorry, Sam,” Mr. Zik said when I walked out of the classroom, recorder-pad under my arm.

I raised my eyebrow and smiled, expecting him to ask me some tiny favour or let me know about a minor inconvenience. Mr. Zik was always apologizing.

“You have bleen replaced.”

I looked at his sombre face. The usual tangle of kids roared around us in their swirls and eddies, and for a second their noise was the only thing I could hear.

“What?” I said, seeing Jinya’s sad face in my mind, me with a suitcase.

Mr. Zik evaded my eyes. “The school hired another English teacher.”

When we reached the ground floor I suddenly wondered if it had something to do with my fluency. Why the fuck did I have to show off? Or maybe there’d been talk about me and Jinya...

We walked into the teacher’s room and he pointed at the only other human on the planet. “You bastard!” I said.

Matthew turned around. He was grinning ear to ear, sitting at my desk and in mid-chat with Mrs. Pling. “Hey, is that how you greet a visitor on Octavia?”

“Sam is very rude,” said Mr. Zik, sitting down at his desk. “Blastard.”

“Did you put him up to that?” I asked Matthew. “Corrupting Mr. Zik. Mr. Zik, you are a liar!”

“Ssss-sss-ss,” laughed Mr. Zik. Mrs. Pling asked him what happened and Zik recounted the trick in Octavian.

“How’d you find our little backwater?” I asked Matthew, happy as hell to see him. It was funny — I had been crestfallen about the idea of leaving Octavia, but the prospect of hanging out with an Earthling and reminiscing about Earth things was also exciting.

“I have my ways,” he said, nodding mysteriously.

“You look brothers each,” said Mrs. Pling.

I looked at Matthew’s Asian features and shrugged. “All Earthlings look alike.” I turned to Mrs. Pling. “
He is much more handsome
.”

She nodded in agreement.

I looked at Matthew. “I just said ‘You are considered very ugly on Earth.’”

“Ssss-sss-ss. Let’s go!” said Mr. Zik.

Matthew reached under the desk and lifted a shiny new jetpack made of Squidollian glass with chrome trim. He nonchalantly slung it over his shoulder and we walked out of the teacher’s room together.

“When did you—” I started.

A gang of students attacked us, putting out tentacles for Matthew to shake and yelling Hellos!

“The students are very excited. Now there are twice as many offworlders,” said Mr. Zik.

“But how could you afford—” I started.

Matthew looked back at me, wiggling his eyebrows.

I gave up. “You bastard.”

He flicked the chrome pipe, and it dinged beautifully. “Yup.”

We walked past the gate and I immediately started addressing the children in Octavian. “
Leave us in peace you little monsters!”
They laughed at this because “peace” required a cheek-pop.

“Man, your Octavian sounds good!”

“It’s not so bad. I’ve been getting private lessons,” I hinted. “How’s your Squidollian?”

“Crap. Not that I have any interest in learning it anymore.”

We trudged along, losing kids to the gravitational pulls of the school and the corner store. I waited for him to elaborate.

“My girlfriend got married last week,” he said. “My dad told me.”

I looked at Matthew. He looked back and shrugged.

“Yeah,” he went on. “My dad was flipping out over us going to Pleasureworld 33. He actually called. My girlfriend must have told him. He was blithering on and on about how Pleasureworld was the most evil place in the world, yadda yadda yadda, and then he stops and thinks to mention, oh, your girlfriend got married.”

Mr. Zik looked back. I thought he was going to say something but then he didn’t.

“Then he says it’s a good thing anyway because she’s Squidollian —”

“Oh, fuck,” I said, disgusted.

“Yep, typical. Then he’s back on how dangerous it is for me to go to Pleasureworld,” Matthew said. “So I just flicked off the vidphone.”

“Good for you,” I said. “How could it be dangerous? He’s just xenophobic.”

I pointed out a store to Matthew. “That’s where I buy my chikim.” We reached the main street and, behind Mr. Zik’s back, I motioned to a window with shadowy round things hanging from strings. “Tell you later,” I said to Matthew.

We walked a bit further. Matthew shifted his jetpack to his other shoulder.

“Little heavy, eh?” I said, eyeing it.

“Oh no,” he said, holding it out for me.

I hefted it. It was admirably light. I wondered how it handled... “Take this away,” I said.

Smirking, he did. “Yeah, I figured that since I didn’t have to rush back for her, I might as well put a down payment on one of these babies. I’ll have to sign up for another year to pay for it, but I’ll be living in style. No more buses for this bucko.”

I grimaced. Then my face did a total inversion.

It was my wallen! Rooting there in the alley!

I looked at it closely, to make sure — yep, little grey-black stripes on its shell... I walked over to it cautiously.

Matthew stopped and called out to Mr. Zik, who hadn’t seen me stop.

The wallen turned towards me, its tail straightening and curling. I got close and crouched. It floated to me and bumped into my shoe once. I touched the top of its shell, the strange feel of its surface inspiring a tender feeling in me. His big eyes followed my hand, and I moved them in a circle to see him track it. They rolled around comically.

Matthew and Mr. Zik had approached behind me, and the wallen caught sight of them and scooted away. I walked out of the alley, feeling mean.

“You see, Matthew,” I said, loud enough for Mr. Zik to hear. “Octavians aren’t the only people on this planet. They share the planet with these other creatures, who are intelligent and peaceful. But because of an old war grudge, the Octavians
eat
the wallens.” I threw the word “eat” over my shoulder at Mr. Zik.

Matthew raised his eyebrows, and I let his shock feed my indignation. “I think it’s barbaric,” I said, trying not to let my guilt at saying this in front of Mr. Zik overcome me. I thought back to the shadowy corpses in the window.

“He is right,” Mr. Zik said.

I looked back at him. Mr. Zik looked unhappy, his brow furrowed. “It is Octavian tradition,” he continued. “But it is blad, I think.”

My mouth swung open.

“Sure is,” said Matthew, “but you kill them first, right?”

“Yes,” Mr. Zik said, “we bleat them to death.” His head sunk even further. “Very blad.”

“The Squidollians ate their enemies alive,” Matthew said conversationally.

I was as annoyed at his blasé attitude as I was buoyed up by Zik’s shame. “Well, they don’t do it today, do they?”

“Of course not!” Matthew said. “They ate them all. So at holidays they eat a kind of rice paste in the shape of the froids.” He grinned. “The oldsters complain that it’s no substitute,” he said conspiratorially to Mr. Zik.

Mr. Zik smiled weakly.

***

“You are dreaming,” said Mr. Nekk.

I looked up from the thing I was pretending to read. “Yes, I’m daydreaming.” Usually I discouraged speaking English during the workshop break by walking around the room or sometimes I would talk Octavian. Not often, though, because Mr. Kung would correct me in an insufferable (and often redundant) manner.

“What do you... daydream about?” asked Mrs. Ahm. “Girls?”

I smiled mysteriously. I had been thinking about Jinya, the way her lips set and the nod she gave after she said
You are honest
. But I wasn’t about to give them the whole story like that.

I checked the time. Break-time was over, anyway.

“Have you been to the Sculpture Garden?” I asked.

Both of them had.

“Do you like it?”

They looked at each other and nodded. But nothing else. That was strange, with these two it was hardly ever this difficult to get them talking.

“Why?” I said, smiling a little to encourage them.

“It is very artistic,” said Mrs. Ahm.

“I agree. There are not a lot of artistic places on Octavia,” I said. “My friend Jinya took me to the Sculpture Garden and it was fascinating.”

“There are not a multitude of art on Octavia,” said Mr. Nekk, rather agitated. “Blut it is bleecause of war.”

“Who is Jinya?” asked Mrs. Ahm.

“The Octavian pleeple are very artistic... very creative,” stated Mr. Nekk.

Mr. Kung burst into the room. He looked like he’d been drinking, but I wasn’t sure. “Very sorry,” he mumbled. He looked at Mr. Nekk and Mr. Nekk told him in Octavian I had accused Octavians of being unartistic.

“Who is Jinya?!” said Mrs. Ahm, her excitement rising.

“She is a friend,” I said. “Do you think Octavians are artistic?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said. “Some.”

“We do not have time, bleecause of war,” Mr. Nekk told me. I was amused and intrigued by his vehemence, which I had sparked entirely accidentally.

“War,” repeated Mr. Kung.

“Mr. Kung, do you like the Sculpture Gardens?”

Mr. Kung looked desperately at Nekk who grudgingly translated for him. Today, I felt a kind of fondness for Kung.

“Jes, interesting,” he stuttered out.

I nodded and went back to Nekk. “How has the war affected art on Octavia?” It was something I was interested in, and obviously Nekk was passionate about it. It would have been a good conversation, if not for the fact that I was intent on sabotaging it.

Nekk laid two more withered tentacles on the table, a sign of intensity — in bars I had seen guys launch at each other from this position, though I doubted sick old Mr. Nekk would be doing that.

“After the wartime, Octavia was very ploor. There was no time to make an art. Like in the movie,
Hard Years
. Have you seen it?”