On Whetsday (3 page)

5

Denny took up the plates and helped Sirah set the tables. Mostly the plates went down in ones and twos, scattered at round tables and square tables around the big room. As few people as there were now in Jukal, they might have all sat together at just one of Restaurant's larger tables. Instead, they all sat where they used to sit when there were more cousins, more aunts and uncles, more nonnis and poppas. Restaurant used to be a place to talk, now it was a place to remember.

While they were getting things ready, Poppa Jam shuffled in and haggled with Auntie Talla. Talla always made Poppa Jam pay more for his Restaurant than the others, but that was only fair. Poppa Jam had more than any of the others. Probably more than all of them put together.

Behind him, Cousin Kettle came in, still wearing his blue cover-ups from the spaceport. He joined his mother, Auntie Flash, who was already sitting at the corner table. Auntie Flash had been sick, and despite several visits to the Human Assistance Authority doctor, she still trembled when she walked and she talked with a strange slowness. Denny knew that Kettle had used a lot of the credits he made at the spaceport to take Auntie Flash to see a klickik doctor who was supposed to know a lot about humans. It didn’t seem to have helped Auntie Flash, but knowing that he had used his credits for his mother made it hard for Denny to stay mad at Kettle.

Sharing a table with Kettle and his mother was Cousin Yulia. Yulia was actually just days younger than Auntie Talla, but no one had ever thought to call her an aunt. She had strange, pale eyes, and she always seemed so frightened. Yulia had come from Halitt Plex, the last human in that whole plex, and before she was consigned to Jukal, she had been alone for a long time. It had made her...different. She was quiet. She rarely looked at anyone. She had a big jacket, big enough that it looked like it was made for someone much larger than Yulia, and she huddled down in that jacket so much that it seemed like she wanted to disappear.

Before the rest of the remaining humans could come into the room, the other door opened—the blue door at the far side of the space.

Sirah jumped and spun around. Denny turned more slowly. Half of him was afraid that it was the patrol come to consign them all to some other place. Half of him hoped it was.

But this time, there was only a single, very large, very old cithian in the doorway. Hiser Grismalamacata Omicradiscrad, Overcontroller Human Assistance Authority, pushed his way slowly into the gather room. The big cithian had to move carefully to keep the burrs and notches of his deeply etched shell from snagging on the door. He was so old that the hinges of his shell didn't really flex well anymore, and the whole thing moved like one stiff, hard bowl. Long before he was completely in the room his broad eye pads had scanned the handful of humans. The Overcontroller held his heavy, hooked forelimbs folded across his chest as he raised a smaller mid-limb in greeting.

“Humans,” he said, his voice sounding in an echoey sigh that came from all around his shell, “enjoy.”

Denny wasn’t sure if the Overcontroller meant to say he enjoyed being with them, or was wishing that all the humans should enjoy their meal. The older cithians became, the harder they became to understand, and Hiser Grismalamacata Omicradiscrad was about as old as a cithian ever got.

The Overcontroller finally managed to get all his bulk into the room and crossed slowly toward Auntie Talla. His hard feet clacked off the tile floor loud enough to stir echoes around the nearly empty room.

A second figure appeared in the blue doorway. This one was smaller in every way than the Overcontroller. A rounded head that was roughly the same color as the blocks of Human Assistance Authority chez looked around the edge of the opening.

Denny smiled. “Omi!” he called.

The young cithian raised the orange-red edges of its mouthparts in reply, which Denny knew–or at least thought–was the cithian equivalent of a grin. “Deee!” he shouted back. Omicradiscrad had recently been through a molt, and the softness of his shell, including the noise-plate cithians used for speaking, made it hard for him to pronounce Denny’s name.

Omi waddled toward them. He was wearing a temporary shell on his back made of tough plastek, which was meant to protect his fragile body until his exoskeleton hardened after the molt. Until a few cycles before, Omi had been small, lean, and covered in a narrow shell that was a bright, orange-spotted yellow. He had looked quite unlike an adult cithian. With this latest molting Omi had taken on more of the rounded shape of the adults, though he was still only half their size and his form was still much sharper. Unlike the adult cithians, Omi wore clothing over his slow-hardening body and limbs. Enough of his head and forelimbs had hardened up that he had pulled the cloth back from those areas, but still the loose gray folds of heavy cloth completely hid the contours of his thorax and joints of his hind-limbs. Denny thought that, except for the big dark patch of his eyepads, Omi might have passed for a human with a tub strapped to his back. He’d thought that even more when Omi had been completely wrapped in cloth just after his molting, but Denny had never told this thought to Omi. He didn’t want to insult his friend by comparing him to a human.

It took some time for the little cithian to reach them. Even Omi’s feet were soft, and he walked with a peculiar roll from side to side. By the time he got close, Denny could see that Omi had grown after the last molt. His eyepads were now almost even with Denny’s face. “Look how big you are!” said Denny. He shook his head. “Another molt or two, and you’ll be an adult.”

“Yes, yes,” Omi agreed. His voice sounded funnier than usual as it bounced from the plastic shell. “One or uuoo...or two.”

Omi joined Denny and Cousin Sirah at a small table. They talked and waited while Talla served the Overcontroller and the rest of the humans. At the far end of the room, old Nonni Hacci came in. Shortly after that, Auntie Yue and Auntie Fro joined her at a table. Everyone was there but Poppa Gow, but his absence wasn’t unusual. Poppa Gow had been sick for a long time, and he needed a wheeled chair to get around. Denny would take some Restaurant to Poppa Gow later. He didn’t mind. He liked seeing all the things that Poppa Gow kept in his compartment.

Denny offered Omi some of his food, but Omi’s mouthparts were still too soft to eat most of it. At the moment, Omi could only drink liquids. It would be another cycle before he could eat anything he wanted.

Before the last molt, Omi had spent a lot of time hanging around the human quarter. He was the only cithian who seemed to care about human music, or listening to the old stories. On this visit, Omi told them that, now that he was getting close to his final molting, he would have to spend more time following Overcontroller Hiser. There would be no more time for things like music and games. No time for silly human stories.

Omi was the Overcontroller's second. Cithians didn't have families like humans. Most of them had no idea who their parents were. They thought the way humans put so much time into thinking about family was rather strange. It was just genes. Only those cithians who had done something important were allowed to create, not a child, but a copy of themselves. You could tell that Overcontroller Hiser was a very important cithian, because he had not one copy, but two. Omi was the new one. The first copy, Grismalamacata, had been made years ago. Denny had never seen him, but he’d heard that Grismalamacata already had a copy of his own. Some of the most famous cithians were copies of copies of copies.

“One day you'll be the Overcontroller,” said Denny, thinking of when Omi replaced Hiser, “and you'll be the one who tells us what to do.”

Omi slurped at a cup of water and bobbed his head. “I will know oow, 'ut...but then ii...it will be uuoo laa. Too late.”

Denny took a second to work this out. “Too late for what?”

The flat black eyepads studied Denny. “You…” Omi stopped and spoke more slowly, forming the Xetosh words as carefully as he could. “You doo...don’t know?”

Denny glanced over at Cousin Sirah. She only looked back at him and shook her head. “I guess I don’t,” he said.

“You aaa...all you humaa...you all ee…” Omi tried again. “You all humans are leaving soon,” he said. “You’re all being consigned.” Then his mouthparts went up again in that cithian smile.

6

Skimsday

On Skimsday, Denny went shopping. He stopped first for his nutter and chez, which didn't take too long. One thing about there not being many humans left in the plex was that the lines were always short. He got his food, ate most of it sitting on the broken pavement in the dim sunshine, and still had the whole day ahead.

The dull red sun was still just starting its long roll around the Skimsday sky when Denny knocked on the corrugated metal door of Poppa Jam's Porium. The Porium was at the center of a long block of small buildings with slide up front doors and narrow windows. Denny could just remember when all the buildings had been stores. Rasha's bakery, and Wallin's woodstuff, and Luxa's. Denny couldn't remember what Luxa had sold.

It didn't matter anyway. The others were gone. Now the only store left was Poppa Jam's.

The tall door rolled up, and Jam looked out. For just a moment, he looked very old, and a bit confused, with his spotted bald head and his heavy gray brows, then he saw Denny and he rolled his yellowy eyes. “It's barely light,” he said. “What are you doing here so early?”

“It's Skimsday,” said Denny with a shrug. “This is about as light as it gets.”

“Is it?” Poppa Jam leaned past Denny and looked up at the scarlet-tinged sky. “Then I guess I'm open.” He turned his back on a Denny and shuffled off into the cluttered aisles of the store.

Denny followed him under the hanging door. The walls on either side had been knocked down, none too neatly, expanding Poppa Jam's space into the empty shops on either side. Once, the Porium had been filled mostly with things that come from the cithians or the skynx, things that the humans wanted to buy. There were still a few things like that here and there. Sets of glossy, colorful bowls that were made by the chugs. A curling horn that had come from some beast of from the skynx home planet. A pair of heavy plastek molting shells like the one Omi had worn at Restaurant. Thick cithian cloth so stiff that any shirt made of it was guaranteed to rub a human raw. To Denny, all that stuff looked like plain old junk.

Most of Poppa Jam's Porium was the other way around. Now most of the dusty shelves and stacked corners were filled with things that used to be in the compartments and gather rooms of the humans, and most of the customers were cithians, or skynx, or chugs who came in to buy these human left overs. Denny had even seen a pair of lesser dasiks carrying away an orangey couch.

“So, you come to sell me something?” Poppa Jam said without bothering to turn around. “Finally going to give up one of those ugly lumps your father left behind?”

“I'm buying,” said Denny. He stopped near the counter, where there were still a handful of klickik picture books and a bin of sweetpops. Denny had never been sure who made the sweetpops. Probably not the cithians. None of their food ever tasted right to Denny. Surely not the skynx. Skynx food was...well, it was nothing that a human would try twice. Poppa Jam watched Denny flip through the books for a moment, then just shook his head and shuffled away.

Denny saw someone else enter the Porium. He turned to see that it was Cousin Yulia. As usual, Yulia was wearing her big jacket, which seemed much too warm for Jukal, but then Yulia had come from Halitt Plex, where it was supposed to be a much colder place, even on Whetsday. Maybe Yulia still carried some of that cold with her.

Denny held up the picture book to show Yulia, but she wasn't looking his way. She fingered a roll of the rough cithian cloth, and then walked on and disappeared among the shelves.

A moment later there was a thump from the corner of the big room and Cousin Haw came in. Haw worked for Poppa Jam, and Denny rarely saw him anywhere but the Porium. He seemed to have two jobs, carrying things and looking mean. He was pretty good at both of them. It helped that Haw was the biggest human in Jukal. In fact, Denny thought if you added all the other humans left in the quarter together, including Cousin Kettle, who was pretty big on his own, you just might have enough to make one Cousin Haw.

Cousin Haw was eating from a gray carton of nutter, digging out mouthfuls of the stuff with a flat plastic froon. He spotted Denny by the counter and angled his way. “You finally going to sell your dad's junk?” Haw said.

“No.” Denny grabbed up a yellowish sweetpop and not one, but two of the picture books.

The first book was tattered at one corner, and when Denny looked inside it was clear that all the images had degraded to bits of digital noise. In some of them, he could just make out the shadows of a moving...skynx? klickik? But really, the silent, messy pages were ruined.

The cover of the second book came alive at his touch. The material of the cover looked like the same water-stained brown paper as the first, but this time the big green form of a planet or moon rolled smoothly into view as soon as Denny's finger settled onto the page. The rest of the green form trailed slowly around the edge of the book, covered with spirals of cloud and scattered circles of blue marking craters filled with water. As Denny continued to watch, the darting shape of a sleek, silvery spaceship came into view. The world grew even larger as the spaceship homed in. There was a momentary stutter and the image turned pale–few of the old things in the Porium worked perfectly–but then it picked up again, and the ship spiraled down to disappear against the deep green side of the little world.

When Denny peeked inside, he was surprised to see that several of the other pages were also working. This was a good one. An amazing one, really. He had never seen a book in Jam's store where more than a few of the images still moved. He could even hear the tiny squeak of voices coming up from the pages as he flipped to the heart of the book. He ran his thumb along the side and the voices grew louder. This book worked. Maybe all the way through.

“I'll take this,” he said, waving the floppy pages of the book in the air and speaking loudly so Poppa Jam would hear.

Haw only snorted at his choice and spooned in more of his nutter. Poppa Jam took a while returning from whatever he was doing in the back. When he saw the book in Denny's hand, his shaggy brows went up. “That's a good one. You got credits?”

Denny dipped into his pocket, producing a pair of green chips.

Jam shook his head. “Take a lot more than that,” he said.

“Well...” Denny felt carefully in his pocket and found the edge of a fat red chip. He added it to the stack on the counter.

Poppa Jam only shook his head again. “Still not enough.” He tugged the book from Denny's fingers and thumbed through its pages. “Book like this, perfect condition...”

“It's not...”

“Near perfect condition,” said Poppa Jam. He closed the book and put it on the counter. “Book like this is worth at least three red.”

“Three red!”

“At least.”

Denny dug deep. With everything, he had barely two red, and if he gave all of that to Poppa Jam, there would be nothing else for the rest of the week. He'd have to go back to dance at the spaceport before next Restaurant if he wanted to pay for his food.

Before Denny could make another offer, a tall figure appeared at the shop door. It was a dasik–a
greater
dasik–with the long spines on its back and even longer teeth lapping the sides of its mouth. Poppa Jam at once forgot about Denny and hustled over to great his new customer. He said something to the tall creature that Denny couldn't hear, and in response the dasik pressed the button that said “Show me.” Poppa Jam lead the dasik back into the shelves.

The book was still sitting on the counter, and Danny decided this might be a good time to simply read it. Poppa Jam got pretty upset sometimes if he thought Denny was getting too much out of a book without paying for it, but with the dasik here, Jam wasn't likely to notice. Besides, Denny didn't have three reds.

He opened the book to the first page. The silver spaceship was just landing on the surface of the green, vine-tangled planet. Denny had expected the ship to be crewed by klickiks, but instead a trio of tiny figures in white slid down the ramp, moving quickly on their little legs. Something, something big and dark, moved in the vines. One of the figures raised an instrument in the curl of its tail and the book gave a tiny squeak. Denny reached up to slide his hand over the page in the way that would make the book louder.

Cousin Haw's big hand came down on Denny's with enough force to make him jerk in pain. “No reading in the store,” said Haw.

Denny tried to pull his hand free, but Haw pressed down, grinding his fingers into the counter. “You're going to hurt the book,” Denny said through clenched teeth.

For a moment, Haw actually smiled, but after a bit he raised his heavy hand. “Wouldn't want to hurt...the book,” he said.

Poppa Jam emerged from the back of the store, a deep scowl on his face, and Denny saw Cousin Yulia peek out for a moment around the end of a sagging shelf before she returned to her own shopping.

“What's going on up here,” Jam said in a fierce whisper. “Can't you see we have a customer?”

Denny flexed his aching fingers. “I still want the book.”

“Do you have three red? Because if you don't...”

A sudden thought struck Denny. He thrust his aching hand into his pocket and came out with the glossy little cube that the chug had dropped into his tray. “I have this.”

“What is it?” Poppa Jam stepped closer, leaning down to take a closer look. Immediately, his eyes went wide. He turned his head, looking back over his shoulder at where the greater dasik was still rummaging through the store. “Put it away,” Jam said, his voice dropping back to a whisper. “Put it away now.”

Denny look at him in surprise. “Why?”

“Please assist,” said the voice of the dasik's talk button from the back of the store.

Poppa Jam stepped around, putting himself between Denny and the dasik, then made another quick look over his shoulder. “You're not supposed to have that.”

“Why not?”

“Because–”

“Please assist,” said the talk button again, this time from somewhere closer.

Poppa Jam looked as if someone was squashing
his
fingers. “Take it out of here,” he said quickly. “Take it to old Loma. She can tell you about it. Just take it out of here.” Then Poppa Jam turned away and shuffled toward the back of the store just about as fast as Denny had ever seen him move.

Denny turned the cube between his fingers, watching the colors play over the flat sides. He wondered what there could be about something so small that made Poppa Jam so upset.

A heavy hand came down on Denny's shoulder. “You heard him. Get moving.”

“I'm going.” Denny cast one more look toward the book that was still spread open on the counter. The little figures in white suits were fighting with something big and scary. It looked like a very interesting story.

But Denny also had something interesting to do. He shoved the cube safely back into his pocket and left the Porium. From somewhere back in the store, he heard the dasik's talk button say “Yes, I will take all of it.”