Angry Young Spaceman (16 page)

I looked away, shocked.
Was I in Plangyo? Who was she? When could I look back at her without being too obvious?

There weren’t any beautiful girls in Plangyo. Almost all the youth that showed any promise left, either to go to university or get a job in Artemia. That was probably it. She was probably visiting her parents here or something...

I looked back again, rubbing my eye in a ruse. Her eyes, a rare silver, were fixed on the ground. I looked back, stared at the ground myself. I wished I hadn’t seen her. What could I say in my laughable Octavian? Why would she want to talk to me any more than the half-shell had? She had probably seen me scare it away, I realized, but didn’t laugh at me because she had more class, she had more intelligence...

The tow-headed kid was suddenly in my face.

“Whassup, whassup-whassup-whassup?” he said, bobbing his head at me, raising two tentacles.

His face was blotchy, his eyes were wild, he couldn’t even dance. He bounced up and down on his tentacles as if they were springs. Why was he dancing?

“Whassup, whassup-whassup-whassup?” he repeated.

I finally recognized the line from an Intergalactic Cool Youth song, the chorus of which was in English — What’s up — and probably was the only thing he knew how to say in my language.

The other kids were tittering nervously, but this was a little too much even for them — and they were the town bad kids. I looked over at the pretty girl, but she was staring at the ground even more intently. I couldn’t believe I was letting this little jerk make me look stupid in front of her, I wished I could make him ten years older and —

“Whassup, whassup-whassup-
whassup
,” he said, this time a desperate shouted challenge. I closed my fists and thought about how I was going to find out how punching a boneless face would feel when I heard the hiss of the bus’s landing gear.

“Are you going to Artemia?” said the pretty girl.

I nodded dumbly.
She was talking English.

“Come with me,” she said. I did.

As we got on the bus, she turned back to me and smiled shyly.

I showed my ticket to the driver and he pulled away, unconcernedly barking the bus on a bump of coral as he pulled away. I almost stumbled into the girl.

As the bubbles started to obscure the back window, I looked back at the tow-headed kid and took a petty satisfaction at the jealous twist of his face.

And she spoke English
, I thought with a barely concealed rush of joy.

She sat down and patted the seat with a tentacle. I accepted her invitation.

I waited for her to say something. She didn’t.

“Are you —” I started.

“How —” she started.

We laughed. “You go,” she said.

“Are you from Plangyo?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I... have part-time job. In Plangyo.”

“Oh, I see,” I said, realizing that I was again speaking Octo-English. “I am a teacher at Plangyo Middle School.” Irritatingly, I also automatically avoided contractions.

“Yes, I know,” she said, and giggled. “My students tell me. You are Mr. Sam?” she said, cautiously again.

I nodded. “You have students?”

She nodded.

“Are you a teacher?”

“Yes, I am a part-time teacher. Nayundi Private School, you know?”

I didn’t.

The lady with the bag of cucumbers made a horking sound with her mouth. A quick cursory glance around revealed a bunch of straining ears and averted eyes.

“Oh,” she said, a little surprised. “Some of your students go Nayundi.”

That was news to me. “Are they good?”

“Some of them. Some are very loud. One is in love with you, I think.” She laughed.

“Ha ha,” I said, looking at her sadly, thinking how absurd she must find that as an adult Octavian. She looked straight ahead and composed herself after her laughter, calmness flooding her face. Then she looked at the side of a tentacle and I realized I was staring.

I looked away just as she looked at me. “Do you know the song he sung? The bad boy?”

“Yes,” I said. “Intergalactic Cool Youth.”

She gave a little jump of surprise and delight. I felt a foolish grin on my face. “Yes! I.C.Y.! Pop music. Is he famous in Earth?”

“No,” I said. “But my students love I.C.Y..”

“Yes,” she said. “All Octavian students, I think.”

“Do you love I.C.Y.?”

“No, not love... just like.”

I nodded. We sat in silence for a while. I pretended to watch the landscape. I was thinking about things to say to her, simple questions, but all that was coming to mind were ruminations about the kitsch appeal of offworld music acts. Then I was depressed that even with this obviously intelligent woman I was unable to have a decent conversation.

“Blun Kipp, do you know?” she said, her silver eyes bright and alive and fuelling me up.

“Ah... no. Is he a musician too?”

“Yes,” she said, her brow furrowing. “But not a pop musician. He, ah,” and she broke out into an operatic soprano, throwing her tentacles up:
lalalaLa!

“Oh,” I said, looking into her serious eyes, falling in love. “Opera.”

She blinked.

“He is an opera singer,” I said.

She nodded, smiled.

I looked around to see if the other passengers had noticed her solo. No one was staring. I had yet to understand the exact nature of Octavian conservatism.

The bus stopped and hissed. I wondered if she was getting off, but she didn’t make any moves to. I looked around and tried to see any differentiating characteristics, but other than the name of the town, I couldn’t. I read out the name.

“Good!” she said. “You can read Octavian?”

“A little,” I said, with feigned Octavian modesty. All Earthlings were assumed to be outrageously arrogant, so I thought I’d counter it.

“Oh,” she said. “A little.” She sounded disappointed.

I had outsmarted myself.

Fuck modesty “Well,” I said quickly. “All.”

“Good!” She was back to her original level of enthusiasm. Then her eyes narrowed slyly. “How about —” and then she said a word with one of the impossible sounds.

I repeated it, using the thumbnail trick to compensate.

I was rewarded by a flash of delight and surprise. She said the Octavian word for
wow
, then said it in English. “Wow!”

I was happy that she wasn’t as disturbed by it as Mrs. Ahm had been.

One old guy got on the bus. He was swaying — an obvious ujos victim. He traded some unpleasant words with the bus driver, and even more unpleasantly, crawled into the seat in front and started staring at us.

We sat in awkward silence for a minute. “He is very old and ugly,” I said to the girl in English.

She laughed. “You are right.”

He muttered something at her, low and nasty. Her expression changed not a whit, her bearing dignified. I was proud of her and I didn’t even know her name.

“His breath smells bad.”

It took her a second to unravel this, and then she cracked up. She slapped me playfully, her suckers plucking lightly at my wrist as she did so. It was unexpectedly erotic, but it may have had something to do with the fact that it was the first female contact I’d had in months. The old man shook his head again and then turned his disapproving alcohol-soused eyes elsewhere.

I started to wonder if she’d be on the bus all the way to Artemia. I wondered if it’d be too forward of me to buy her a juice at the rest stop. “Where do you go to university?”

She named a nearby town. “Molko. I am studying to be an English teacher. Like you. I get off the bus at next time.” She looked at me. “Why do you go to Artemia?”

“I go to meet my friend,” again pointlessly stultifying. “At a spaceport.”

“Oh! Very exciting!”

Not nearly as exciting as meeting you
, I thought. “Yes. My friend is very interesting. He is a roboman.”

“Wow!” She started crawling all over me, which was not as nice as it sounds. I tried not to wince as she crawled over my groin to the aisle.

She held out a tentacle and I shook it. “Good to meet you,” she said.

“Yes!” I said.

She strapped on her knapsack.

“Maybe some time we could have a drink together,” I said.

The bus stopped and she jerked forward a bit. “Yes,” she said. “Maybe!”

I locked my smile in place. Wondered as I waved good-bye if I should have asked her a direct question, if I had loused up the entire thing with native speaker vagueness. And how I didn’t know her name or a way to contact her and now I couldn’t even remember the name of the school she worked at—

The bus started again and my common sense kicked in. If she wanted to have anything to do with me, she wouldn’t have any problem finding me. I was the only guy with legs on the entire planet.

***

I had agreed to meet 9/3 half-way. “Half-way” turned out to be this meteor in the middle of nowhere.

A meteor, I saw from my porthole in the rocketship, that was utterly barren of anything beyond the transfer station. The rounded dome stood out on the pocky skin of the surface like the ugly pimple it was.

Fuck. Why didn’t I suggest the Bowling Ball? 9/3 liked that place, and it’s just as close.

The rocket thrusters kicked in and we touched down. I booted it so I could get ahead of the Octavians and their platforms. I got into the chamber with the first group, and the Octavian atmosphere was evacuated with no fanfare.

Unfortunately, it was with so little fanfare that I had been breathing in at the time and had a lungful of the old stuff. I choked it out, coughing noisily, but some of the Octavians were also having a hard time. One of them hadn’t positioned himself properly above his platform, so he had settled half-on, half-off, a pile of insupportable flesh. I spat out the water, amazed at how little there was for the trouble it caused, and started breathing the brand of air I had been weaned on. My lungs didn’t like it. It felt like white fire.

The bay door hissed open and the four or five platforms around me hummed to life, their antigrav units kicking in. The guy who had fallen half-on half-off didn’t raise at all, despite the green glow under the platform and his frantic tentacling of the keypad. Before he sped off, the guy beside him told him something that had him up and running before long. He probably had it set to the lighter-grav Octavian atmosphere.

I walked out, the platforms passing me. I didn’t blame them for rushing — I wouldn’t have wanted to dawdle in a place that made me look like a bag of soup. My muscles were a little sore, so when the guy who was having the problems knocked into my thigh I gave him a more dangerous look than perhaps he deserved.

He apologized in Octavian, pulling his joystick sharply away. His head was on its side, looking anxious, and only the tip of one tentacle moved. He managed to manoeuvre around me.

9/3 was waiting at the exit gate — I could see his head above the crowd. As I got closer, I realized that’s all there was to 9/3. His head.

I tried to appear unimpressed. “Hi.”

“Hello Sam,” 9/3’s head said.

“Why no body? The android have a hot date?” I asked.

9/3’s head tilted off to one side. “Why do you ask? Did you like it?”

“Uh,” I said. “It was OK.”

9/3 paused, and then said, “Bodies are too much trouble.”

I looked at him curiously. “What do you mean?”

“Where do you want to go?” he asked. We were currently in the flow of traffic, as another chamber emptied.

“Oh, gosh,” I drawled, “I don’t know! There’s just
so many
great places to choose from.”

9/3 turned towards a food kiosk. “There are seats over there,” he said.

I shrugged and we headed to them. 9/3 didn’t care about seats, or even meeting in person — he would have been as happy speaking over the phone. I was the one who needed to get off of Octavia. I was the one with all the demands, so I decided to drop the subject.

It was a Montavian kiosk with a consequently very short robot server. On its tin can body it had stickers in several languages,
Intergalactic food served here!
alongside a baffling icon. Taking it at its word I asked for Earth-style beans and rice, and was met with a cheery blank stare. A second or two later it chirped that it didn’t have that, but perhaps I’d like to try the Montavian version of the dish? I sighed and acquiesced.

9/3’s head hovered between the stool and table, finally settling on the latter. I reached around it for some salt and after I used it I set it on top of 9/3’s head.

“How are you doing without your translator?” asked 9/3.

I responded
not bad
in Octavian.

9/3 laughed. “Ha ha. Your accent is good.”

“Really?” I said. Octavians had told me that but I never really believed them.

“Yes. Too bad it’s impossible for humans to pronounce all the sounds.”

I centred the salt shaker on 9/3’s head, so it looked like an antenna. “You’re sure about that?”

The server droid came back and gave me some water. It noticed the salt shaker and replaced it on the counter. “Do not abuse the condiments,” it said without a trace of cheeriness. “Salt is precious.”

“Ha ha.” 9/3 said. “I knew that would happen. Salt is a very important commodity on Montavia.”

I vaguely remembered some history lessons about salt mine wars on Montavia.

“Try to steal it,” said 9/3. The droid wheeled around. “Uh oh. Ha ha ha.”

I snickered. “OK, it’s kind of dumb, but I can do the two difficult sounds. I was learning this song by an Octavian pop group—” and I did the lines
You catch my hand I will get up, I give you happiness
. (It rhymes in Octavian.)

9/3 processed that. “89% of the population would understand that.”

“Really?” I said. Statistics had a way of bolstering my confidence.

“And you use your mouth to make those sounds,” 9/3 continued. “So once your vocabulary is large enough you can register as the first offworld speaker of Octavian.”

“Huh!” I said, imagining a ceremony involving medals and kisses.

“Of course, there will be repercussions,” 9/3 said. “It will change Octavia’s cultural status.”