On Whetsday (2 page)

2

At first Denny thought the chug had left no payment, but when he looked more closely, there was something new in his box. It wasn't a fat red chip, or even a slender green chip. It was a small cube, scarcely bigger than the end of Denny's thumb. Sitting in the box the cube appeared to be a pale, dusty purple, but when Denny picked it up between his thumb and first finger, little sheets of other colors ran across the sides. He had never seen anything quite like it before. It might only be a piece of trash, something the chug had left behind to mark its dislike for Denny's dance. Or maybe it was some other kind of scrip, some kind they only used on...wherever chugs came from. Whatever it was, Poppa Jam or Auntie Talla might be willing to trade for it if they knew where the little cube could be sold.

No shuttles had landed since the old chug appeared, and the long dance under the paired suns had Denny in no mood to wait for the next. Not as many shuttles seemed to come to Jukal Plex these days. Once they fell like a shower, spilling all the different kinds of people. But for cycles they had been spaced farther and farther apart. Denny frowned toward the cool glass doors of the terminal. He was thirsty. There was water at the troughs and fountains inside the port, but humans were not always welcome there. Denny might have stolen a quick swallow, or bought something from a dispenser, but some of the workers at the port made a fuss if they saw him inside and Kettle would probably give him a bad look.

Denny picked up his box, and gave a little smile at the sound of the chips clicking together. There was enough there that Denny could buy his way back to the quarter on the ground transport, and still have enough to trade Poppa Jam for a picture book or sweetpop. That was good, because otherwise Denny would have to sit outside the port and wait for the free transport that carried Kettle and the rest of the crew back to the city. Waiting for Kettle would mean sitting in the heat for another hour, which wouldn't be so bad, except Kettle would be angry to see him and make Denny beg for a ride. Denny didn't mind begging the visitors at the port so much. He did not like begging his cousin.

Denny tucked his box of credits under one arm and hurried down the green dot path toward the ground transport. When he got to the platform and saw that the cithians were still waiting for pods, he wanted to do another dance. A frustration dance. Denny wouldn't be able to ride on the next transport, because humans weren't supposed to ride in the same pod as cithians. It wasn't respectful. You could ride in the same pod as dasiks, if there were any dasiks and if the dasiks didn’t press the button that simply said “No,” but it was best to wait until you found an empty pod.

When the next transport showed up, Denny stood back and watched the cithians climb on. One of them was ranked high enough that its glossy black shell rose up past the top of its bowed head and the edge on either side had been carved with grooves indicating some kind of important title. Denny squinted at the little grooves, but he didn’t know all the cithian ranks. He didn’t know this one. The weight of the tall shell made the cithian's movements slow and ponderous. The hard tips of its four rear limbs clacked sharply as it tipped from left to right and back again. It took a pod by itself. The other two cithians shuffled into the second pod, and as they did one of them turned round and looked at Denny standing in the doorway. Right away the blunt knobs of its clangers began to rasp out a warning on the edge of its shell.

Denny lowered his head and stepped back. Humans were supposed to be grateful to the cithians. For saving them, and giving them a place to live, and stuff. Sometimes that was hard.

3

Passday

On Passday, Denny got to eat. There was food on other days—orangey blocks of chez and goopey brown nutter that came in gray boxes from the Human Assistance Authority. Denny stood in the line most mornings and waited like everyone else to get his boxes from cithians who wore tight plastek gloves over their forelimbs and hard plastek masks over their faces. Sometimes there were also boxes of dry little crackers. Sometimes there was powdermilk mix for drinking. But most of the time there was just chez and nutter, nutter and chez.

Except on Passday. On Passday, Auntie Talla did Restaurant.

Auntie Talla had a place on the lower floor of an old compartment building. It had been the gather room of the building back when there were enough humans in Jukal to keep all the little rooms packed, but now it was a nothing room. Just another of those places that once had people, then didn't.

Talla and Cousin Sirah had dragged in a bunch of mismatched tables and chairs that came from empty compartments and closed stores. They had made shelves of stacked boxes, and a bar from a length of plastek with scorch marks along one end. Plates and cups and spoons had come from everywhere, no two alike.

It had been Denny's father who helped Talla build a stove out of sheet metal from a scrapped transport. They beat the metal into shape, with a firebox down below and the middle domed up like the shell on a cithians' back. Denny had been there, watching, waiting for a taste of the first meal off the new stove. He still remembered how Talla had traded with a klickik—old human junk in exchange for vegetables and spices—and how the stove had been covered deep in a layer of pop peppers mixed with loops of brown mummion and snapping strips of meat. The whole thing had smelled so good that Denny couldn't help dancing from one foot to the other while he waited for the food to finish.

His father had put a hand on Denny's shoulder and grinned down at him. “Hold your horses,” he said. “We can't eat until everyone gets here.”

That was the last thing Denny's father said before the blue door at the other side of the long room swung open and a handful of cithians came in, their shells rasping against the sides of the human-sized door. Behind them had come a dozen of the dasik guards. Half the humans in Jukal had been sent away on consignment that night, including Denny's father. Denny never had learned what horses were, or why he should hold them. No one who was left seemed to know.

Later, when all the humans had been hurried away and the cithians had squeezed back out through the same door they had entered, Talla had said they should eat all the food that had been cooked so it didn't go to waste. It was the only time Denny could remember having more food than he could eat. It was the only time he could remember not being hungry.

That had been two years ago. Since that night, Restaurant had been a lot less crowded. A lot less noisy. A lot less happy.

4

When Denny came through the door for Restaurant, there were only four other humans there. Auntie Talla was brushing oil across the big stove. Denny could see that there were plates of vegetables already chopped and waiting for their turn on the heat. There was some kind of meat, too. Something that Talla had bought at the market. Usually the meat came from the klickiks, in pinkish gray strips peeled off something that lived far away. Sometimes the meat was something sold by the cithians. Something that, before it was pried from its shell, looked a lot like a bigger version of the little red scuttles that prowled under boxes and in the shut-ups of Denny’s compartment. Denny didn't look too closely. Usually it was better not to look at the meat until after it had been cooked.

Auntie Talla glanced up long enough to nod at Denny when he came in, but she quickly turned her attention back to her stove. She swiped at the oil as it dripped down the sides of the domed metal, pushing it back to the top with a practiced twist of her curved stick even as the oil sizzled, popped, and took on a brownish color. As soon as the oil was pushed up the metal dome of the stove, it started to ooze back down. There were little white scars all along the backs of Talla's fingers were the oil had burned her, but with fast work she could make just a spoonful of the stuff last out a meal.

Even if the oil had allowed her more time, Denny doubted Talla would have given him a greeting. She seldom said more than a few words in an evening these days and Denny could not remember the last time she had joked, or laughed, or even smiled. People had called Talla an Auntie for years, though she was barely nineteen and never anyone's mother. It was just that she was so serious, and she had watched over Cousin Sirah ever since Sirah's parents were consigned five years earlier. Young as she was, there were already lines of worry pressed into Talla's thin face, and in the last weeks Denny had noticed strands of white mingling with her dark hair.

Once this would have been about the time when everyone got together and did a jilly-ho for Talla to welcome her into the ranks of adults. There would have been a ceremony, and music, and dancing, and talk about who Talla might marry–Kettle, if it happened now, it would have to be Cousin Kettle or Cousin Haw and Denny could not imagine Auntie Talla with Haw—and more talk about when she might have children. But all that would have to wait until Talla was consigned to somewhere else. There just weren't enough people left in Jukal Plex for a proper ceremony. It didn’t seem fair that Talla was treated like an Auntie, when she never got a jilly-ho.

Denny stopped beside the stove long enough to make a show of breathing in the scents from the cooking food. It was partly just to be polite, but the green edges of the poppers were just starting to darken, and the smell was good enough that he really was tempted to reach in and steal a bite.

Auntie Talla had no trouble reading his mind. “Step back, now,” she said with a wave of her oily stick. She smacked it down hard against the metal surface close to Denny’s fingers. Denny snatched back his hand.

Talla would never actually hurt anyone. At least, Denny didn’t think so, but he stepped back anyway. He fumbled in the pocket of his baggy shorts and came out with three green chips, leftovers from what he had earned at the spaceport. “Is this enough for Restaurant?”

“It's enough,” said Talla, without bothering to look at what Denny was holding.

No matter how much or how little Denny brought, it was always enough. More than once he had come to Restaurant with nothing, and Talla had fed him just the same. Denny supposed that if he never brought in another chip, he would still not go hungry, but Denny liked to pay when he could. To get the food, Talla had to trade with cithians and dasiks and klickiks at the big market. If there were not enough chips to buy what she needed, she would have to do what others did all the time. She would have to sell some of her things to Poppa Jam.

Denny hoped Talla had enough this time.

Cousin Sirah was busy setting out dishes and cups even more mismatched than the tables they sat on. She flashed Denny a white smile as soon as she saw him.

Next to Denny, Sirah was the youngest human left in Jukal. She was not really his cousin, of course, any more that Talla was his Auntie, but for a long time now—generations, his father had said—all the adults in Jukal Plex had called each other Auntie or Uncle. Had called all the old ones Poppa or Non. Had named all the children Cousins. It was just something you did when everyone all together was not much bigger than a family.

Denny had not paid much attention to Sirah, not when there were other kids around. She had always been too serious. Too much like a little adult. Sirah had never wanted to play when she was smaller. Never wanted to dance when she was older. Sirah had never been someone to go to if you wanted fun. These last two years, there had been no one else much for Denny to talk to—no one human, at least—and he had decided that talking with Sirah was not a bad thing. Maybe that meant that Denny was also becoming an adult. Maybe it was just that he had started to notice that Sirah was very smart, and often kind, and also kind of pretty.

“Did you see any skynx at the port?” she asked.

“I did,” said Denny. He circled round the table and dropped into a chair across from Sirah. “And some dasiks, of course. And a chug. And two klickiks. “

“Klickiks?” Sirah dropped a bent froon onto a plate with a clatter. “What were they doing?”

Denny shrugged. “They were leaving. They got on the first shuttle this morning.” He knew Sirah liked the klickiks, with their tall purple frills and hard red limbs. Once, one of them had come to the quarter, even come to Restaurant, and Sirah had watched it so closely she spilled a whole bowl of mummions.

Sirah finished spreading the plates across the table, took another stack in hand, and then set them back carefully. Denny saw that she was looking across the room to where a dozen or more tables had been stacked and shoved into the corner. Denny could just remember when there were enough people in the Jukal Plex to fill all those tables.

“I don't suppose...” Sirah picked up a handful of tarnished froons and started to put them beside the plates. “I don't suppose you saw any other humans at the spaceport?”

“No,” said Denny. “Not today.” Not on any day.