Angry Young Spaceman (23 page)

The boy on the breakaway passed the ball between his tentacles in lightning succession and flicked it with an audible
pop!
at the corner of the net. The goalie snapped closed on the ball, suddenly an oblong ball himself, and floated slowly to the ground.

The boys made the routine sounds of failure and victory and I called out, “Very good!”

They seemed to remember I was there, and one of them said, “You play... socca?”

Surprised, I shook my head. I declined politely in Octavian and they laughed, either because I was speaking Octavian or because I was a teacher using the honourific for the students. I put my hands behind my back and strolled on.

But before I had even left the school yard in the distance, I turned around and went back.

“Can I play soccer with you?” I asked.

“OKOK!” sassed one boy, flicking me the ball. I trapped it with my foot and reared back for a kick. It flew in an unsatisfyingly slow arc back to them, black over white over black hexagons, but they made impressed noises. A boy pulled the ball to him and idly did a circuit of his tentacles in under a second.

“I will be goalie,” I said. They looked back at me blankly.

“
I will...
” I thought for a second,
“Ball-stop-man.
”

They laughed and said the Octavian word for goalie.

“In English, goalie,” I said.

One of the kids muttered in Octavian that it wasn’t class time.

I looked at him. “
True.
”

His eyes widened with distress. One of his friends whacked him in the head. “Sorry teecha.”

I got into net. I hung for a second from the top bar, and they laughed. Then they started to take shots. But they were soft shots, their eyes always watchful for the disapproval of the teacher, and it was hard to miss them. Once, when some mud from the ball got on my shirt, one of the students rushed to wipe it off.

The boy who had been impatient to start finally got his turn, he came at me with appealing ferocity and thrust it between my legs. The boys responded with guarded enthusiasm.

I went to get the ball and then gave it to the boy. “Number One soccer player,” I said. He thrust four victory tentacles in the air.

“Good-bye,” I said.

Several of the boys twined their tentacles and bowed, a few bellowed “See you,” and some did both.

fourteen

Jinya looked around, a small smile on her face. I waved her in, and she pushed through the door frame in the Octavian way.

“Welcome,” I said.

“Thank you very much,” she said. “It is very good. Very modern.”

I shrugged, decided against telling her about the difficulty of keeping a modern apartment, complete with corners, clean. I had been doing it by hand with a small sieve for the last few hours.

I went to sit down and she followed suit.

She picked my pad off the table. The pad was blinking.

“You have someone... a message,” Jinya said, and passed it to me.

I felt all important and accessed it. It was from Lisa and I read the first few words automatically:
So you’re planning to fuck a...

“Ha ha,” I laughed nervously, thanking the fates it hadn’t been on sendthru mode.

“Who is?” Jinya smiled, wanting to be in on the joke.

“A friend,” I said, watching the ribbon tied around her headcrest float. It was silver, and matched her eyes. “She is hilarious,” I said, saying the word slowly.

“Ah, I know.” She said excitedly. “My friend Junghee is hilarious, too. She gives people names, very good names... fasfessfas, you know?”

I shook my head.

“Bean-husk,” she said. “But it sounds very funny in Octavian.
Fasfessfas
!”

I could hear the individual words now. “Do you have a nickname?”

“She calls me Moon,” she said.

I thought for a moment. “There’s no Octavian word for moon,” I said.

“English nickname, because I love English!”

I nodded. I could see that her tentacles were restlessly sliding along the table legs.

“Also because... my face is fat, like moon.”

“No!” I said. “Your face is... perfect!”

She smiled, and lowered her eyes. I realized that, instead of the vague flirting that I would have done back home, I had been perfectly straightforward. She circled her face with the tip of her tentacle. “Like moon.”

From my bedroom door there came a few thumps. I tensed.

She looked up, “Sometimes I eat too many snacks. I study for test, and eat many snacks... is bad. Junghee said, ‘Stop, Moon!’ Is good!” She laughed.

“Beautiful like the moon,” I said.

“No!” she said. “Junghee is hilarious,” she said, tasting the word. “She is good friend.”

“She is
a
good friend,” I said, unable to stop myself.

“Yes, right,
a
good friend,” she said, taking her recorder out of her bag. “We start?”

I nodded.

The thumping on my bedroom door began again. I pretended to ignore it, but this time Jinya turned around. “What?” she said, turning her silver eyes on me.

I shrugged and adopted the teacherly tone, “What did you do today, Jinya?”

She smiled and settled in her chair. “Today, I went to my university. I study English very hard.”

Thump thump thump.
Shit
.

“What is that... sound?” she said.

“My droid is broken,” I said. “What else do you study today?”

“Droid?” she said.

I nodded. “What else—”

“I can fix,” she said, getting up.

My first thought, even before thoughts of trying to stop her, was
she knows how to fix droids?
Wow!

It was hopeless anyway, since she was opening the door before I even got up. Octavians move fast, especially when cutting in line and following their curiosity.

The wallen shot out, saw an Octavian, and shot back in.

Jinya looked at me, her eyes wide in perplexity. “Not a droid.”

“I was...” I balked at saying
lying
, despite its accuracy, “joking.”

She looked at the wallen. “How?”

The wallen, scared of Jinya, got behind the door and pushed it closed.

“Yesterday, I went to play soccer,” I said. Jinya came and sat down, watching me closely. “When I came home, he followed me.”

Well, with a bit of coaxing.

Jinya nodded. “Just...” She made
shoo! shoo!
movements with her tentacle.

“No. I like him. He’s cute.”

Jinya laughed at this. “Wallen is not cute! Wallen is ugly!”

“To me, he is cute. To Earthling.” I felt like an idiot. I didn’t even think he was that cute. I just wanted to see if they were sentient or not. Now she was looking at me like I had been eating out of the garbage and calling it “tasty.”

Her smile faded. “You have... I think...”

I felt a sinking, all the dumb hopes I had for her sinking into the pit.

I looked at her. “I have what?”

“You have...” She looked up something on her pad. I didn’t look, presuming it was going to be
brain damage.
The wallen started banging on the door it had closed.

“You have... kindheart.”

I stared at her and felt a grin tug at my lip.

“Many Octavians think you... crazy. I think you have kindheart. Just me.”

My smile was too big to keep on my face. “I don’t... I am not kind-hearted,” I said. “I am a scientist.”

Jinya made the Octavian sound for confusion.

“I am studying the wallen,” I said.

“No!” she said, slapping my wrist. “You are kindheart.” She looked around. “Your droid is broken?”

I shook my head. “No, it — actually, it
is
broken.” I took her to the washroom and called it out of its cubby hole.

When Jinya caught sight of the toilet, she started laughing. “Oh! It is a surprise! Earth-style?”

I laughed, amazed by the fact that I was having so much fun. Not only was I laughing at toilet humour, but the simplest possible toilet humour — the object itself being funny.

“It is so difficult,” she said. “I tried, once.”

“It is very easy,” I disagreed. “Octavian toilets are too difficult.”

Jinya was looking at my droid, spinning it around. I told it to clean the corners and Jinya immediately saw the problem.

“Yes!” she said, and opened up the droid’s back panel.

“How do you know how to fix droids?” I said.

She pushed in its eyes and its headcap popped open in its hinge. “My brother taught me. He works at a... I don’t know the word. Owenfgv.”

“Where they fix droids?”

“Fix? No,” she said, thinking. “The birth of droids.”

“Where they make droids.”

“Yes!” she said. One of the droid’s metal tentacles shot out to hit the corner. She flicked a dipswitch inside its head.

“A factory.”

“Factory,” she repeated.

I wondered if he worked on the line or designed them. “Does he...” I mimicked putting a droid together, “Or... does he,” I mimicked drawing them and thinking.

“He’s an engineer,” she said, looking back at the droid.

“Oh,” I said, feeling stupid.

I watched her tinker for a few more seconds. “
Do you want tea?
”

“Yes, please,” she said. When she looked up she noticed the pug moviedisk sitting a few feet from her. “Oh!” she said, and stretched a tentacle to activate it.

I went into the kitchen and started making tea, listening to the sounds from the other room. It was in the middle of a particularly vicious fight. It was in a warehouse in Moscow, during the height of the whole pug thing — there was a band playing and someone had brought a crate of oranges. I vividly remembered the orange I had eaten after that fight, how it stung the shit out of my busted lip but how I was too thirsty to wait for the medvac.

Because they say we can’t — we will

Because it’s our spirit they’re trying to kill

The violence we make is ours

Fighting gives us powers

What was amazing was that despite everything that had happened since that fight, the song still hit me in the gut. I stood there, watching the kettle, until I heard Jinya’s voice.

“Sam?”

I felt like I’d been caught at something. I felt mad at myself for not being proud. I felt too defensive to move, covered in scales.

“Oh, Sam!”

It was her alarm that broke me out of it. I walked into the room, where Jinya was watching me pound someone who just refused to go down. My fists were slick with blood and I was wearing a calm smile.

“What is?” she said. She was sitting beside the open droid, her eyecrests high.

I knew this would never work
.

“It is a... game,” I said.

She shook her head. “Too violent.”

We watched for a little while longer. I started to get some punches myself, and Jinya winced. “Oh!”

“After, we medvac,” I said, trying to smile. “Violent, yes, but no consequences... you know?”

She shook her head. Her concerned silver eyes reflected a tiny Sam punching away. She reached out and turned it off with a slap. She turned back to the droid.

The kettle was beginning to boil. I went back, thought about trying to communicate how we felt that Earth was a violent place, but it was Sadism With a Smile, Remote Control Killing and all we were doing was tearing the mask off of that, reflecting that.

I made the Zazzimurg and brought it in to her. The wallen was banging against the door again. I opened the door and it sped away into the night. She watched it go, and I could see her trying to fit my kindheart into the maniac she’d just seen.

“Very strangey,” she said, sipping.

I nodded. “Is it OK?”

She looked at me, silent, then at the moviedisk.

“I mean the tea,” I clarified.

“Oh, yes. Is good.”

She continued to sip. The shine of her distant eyes reminded me of the Line, the place near the planet’s surface that I visited with Mr. Zik and Mr. Oool. The silver mirrorskin of the world that I could push my hand into but never get through.

***

“That’s just it,” said Hugh. “There’s nothing to do. This is the dullest place in the universe.”

“No restaurants?” I said, intrigued despite his best efforts to entirely dismiss the Armoured side of the planet.

“They take it intravenously,” he said, his lip curling. “Through a socket in their armour.”

“Hmm!” I said. “Let’s go!”

Hugh and I walked down the street, the street being magnetized tracks that the Armoured stepped onto and were whisked to and fro. The space between the buildings and tracks didn’t amount to much, especially when you considered we were wearing bulky spacesuits without helmets. Mine was a cheap bubblesuit, too, so the slightest tear would mean I’d be exposed to an atmosphere which did naughty things to your lower organs. It wouldn’t be fatal as long as it was brief, but it would be extremely unpleasant.

So I was quite relieved to reach the building named FOOD. A customer stepped out (looking satiated, I thought) and stepped onto the track. His head jerked back with the immediate acceleration and, even more wince-worthy, he didn’t bother righting it. I watched his rectangular body go off, and thought how much more human looking 9/3 seemed than the Armoured, even though their heads were exposed.

We walked through the doorway. “Are there no doors on this planet?”

“Businesses are expected to be open all the time.”

I seemed to remember hearing something about the Armoured work ethic from Intergalactic Studies classes. “That’s convenient,” I said.

“Yes, well,” Hugh said. It was a large white room with recesses in the walls, a few of which contained Armoured people, all facing the wall. “The hours are good, but the goods are horrible.”

We stood there for a second. “They look like they’re taking a piss,” I said, sotto voice, hoping that they had average humanoid hearing.

“That’s about the attention they afford to eating,” Hugh said.

I nodded, wondering if I was really hungry after all. My stomach burbled, and Hugh looked at me. “I wish I had some solid food to offer you, but my next shipment won’t come in for a week. I was pretty depressed last week and I... binged.”