Angry Young Spaceman (3 page)

“Funny you’d say that. I gotta date tomorrow night. He’s taking me to a dance recital in Persia.” There was a lilt to her voice that was either excitement or crowing.

“What!?”

“That’s right — you’re in the theory stage, while Lisa Industries has already moved to the development phase. I’ll let you know how it goes. And of course, since I’s goin’ out first, I actually dumped
you
.”

I smiled in the darkness. “Like hell! We had a mutual —”

“Mutual’s boring. As soon as I hint how delicately I let you down, and your subsequent offworld retreat —”

“I’ll just get on the horn right now and tell everyone I’m snogging lunarian models —”

“But you’re hopeless at lying, Sam, that’s what I always liked about you.” She yawned and I wondered what time it was there.

“And you’re hopeless at being evil, Lisa, that’s what I always blah blah blah. Hey, you know how they say blah blah blah in Octavian? Allum allum allum.”

She barked with laughter. “Well, I’m glad you’re learning how to be flippant in another language.” She paused. “I’m going to miss allum allum allumming with you, Sam. We’ve hung out for what — three years now?”

I thought back to when the Prague scrap had been. “Yeah.”

“Anyway, this has been a standard business call length, so gotta go. Have the widgets arrived at the docking bay, Mr. Breen?”

“They certainly have. I’m one happy customer, Ms. Kamac.”

The speaker clicked. I scooted under the sheets some more and looked up at the ceiling, where the light from outside had stamped oblong rectangles.

***

Near the end of orientation we went on a field trip. It was with the three other guys who were going to my sector: Matthew (who I already knew), Hugh (the irritating lunarian at the table when I met Matthew) and 9/3 (a roboman who, like most robomen, scared and impressed me).

“I’m so thrilled you’re coming with,” Hugh said to the roboman as our shuttle shot out into the black expanse. It was the first thing any of us had said, so it sort of sat there.

“Why?” the roboman replied. His voicebox needed calibrating, it was really staticky.

“Well, what with robots being so much faster and stronger than humans,” quoth the prettyboy. “It offers me a level of comfort.”

The roboman’s square head swivelled to stare at the guy.

I just sat there, motionless. I dared a glance at Matthew, who was also frozen, his eyes noticeably bugging.

The lunarian noticed the red lights glowing at him. He shifted uncomfortably in his restraints.

“I am a roboman.”

“Precisely, that’s—”

“Not a
robot
. That is
your
word for a robotic slave with no brain.” His head didn’t move.

“Oh. But—”

“We have a word for humans, but I do not use it... for politeness’ sake.” I half-hoped he’d say it:
fleshpots
. I’d never heard a roboman say it, ‘cause usually if they did they were just about to attack you.

His head swivelled back into place with a sharp hydraulic whine.

“I’m sorry,” Hugh said, his eyes downcast. “I just...” he trailed off, which was a good idea, ‘cause I noticed the roboman’s eyes flicking to red again.

“Well, I’m Sam. Sam Breen, Earthling. Toronto, specifically. It’s on the N.Y.C. line,” I clarified.

“Matthew Chan. I’m from Earth, too. The eastside. Asia.”

The roboman and the lunarian looked at each other and the lunarian tilted his hand. The roboman said, “I am from Roboworld. My name is Nine slash Three dash zero zero zero one.”

“You’re from the progenitor line,” I said.

“Yes.”

The lunarian looked confused at this, and said softly, “I’m Hugh. From Darkside.”

There was a silence.

“So,” I said to 9/3, “What’s your function?”

Matthew rolled his eyes at my robo-savvy chit-chat. There was a pause, so I looked over at 9/3. His eyes appeared dimmer.

“I have no function.”

Matthew’s eyebrows lurched in surprise, as did mine. No function?!

It was a trip destined for social blunders, it seemed. We spent the rest of it in silence, watching the green planet grow from a pebble to something much larger.

***

Matthew had one arm around 9/3’s shoulder and one around Hugh’s. They were smiling and sweating; even 9/3’s metal seemed to glisten. Behind them was a valley of obscene lushness, a smooth green made softer by the mist.

“OK?” I asked, amazed by Matthew’s ability to put his arm around anyone for the sake of a picture.

Matthew nodded, grinning.

I pushed the button.

“Thanks, guys,” Matthew said, patting them both on the back. 9/3’s back rang hollowly, which awakened my old curiosity: how much of the boxy design of your average roboman was for actual circuitry and wiring and how much was for looks? I had never asked the other guy I knew, which got me thinking about him...

“Hey, I knew a roboman back on Earth. He was cool. He played bass in my friend’s band.”

9/3 didn’t respond.

It wasn’t bare enough to sit down and admire the view, so we were sort of standing around in this tree-circled clearing. It had taken us a good little while to get up here, so I didn’t want to head back right away even though I was kind of nervous out there. Surrounded. I couldn’t stop wandering in circles, pretending to admire the view like some vacationing tourist but really checking the perimeter.

Matthew finished mumbling into his recorder-pad. He saw me looking at him. “Sent off the pic to my girlfriend.”

“Faithful guy, you,” I teased. He had sent a five minute clip of the whole bunch of us at the bar, singing a regional song about Poikapoik. I asked him how she’d liked that.

“She said it was too expensive to be sending clips back.”

“Smart.”

Hugh had been listening. “I’m beginning to wish I’d brought my pad.”

“I’m beginning to wish I’d brought my pad,” 9/3 repeated exactly, except for a whiny buzz of static.

Hugh looked at him quickly, hurt shock on his face.

“I am making an audio-visual recording of this expedition. You may have access to it,” 9/3 explained. I had thought he was being mean to Hugh, which amused me; then I realized he was being kind, which surprised me pleasantly, too.

Hugh looked at Matthew for a second. Hugh had been pretty quiet on the hike, and when I looked at him now I could see the fatigue hanging on his body. “How’d your girlfriend feel about you leaving for Squidollia?” he said, his eyes nervous but intent.

“Well, she’s from there, so she was really happy at first,” Matthew said, pulling a leaf off a tree. It was almost a perfect circle, its stem in the centre. “As the time came closer, she was kind of bummed out. But we had already told her relatives there and everything. So I was committed for the year, anyway.”

So she was Squidollian. That explained the relationship’s intensity, which was very similar to Octavians in that respect.

“You leave any broken hearts behind you, Hugh?” Matthew asked.

Hugh was squatting, drawing in some dirt with a stick. “Not unless you count mine.” He was tracing squares and bisecting them.

Damn. Empathy was breaking up the jealousy clots.

“Well, let’s get out of this creepy place,” Matthew said.

I whipped around. “You think it’s creepy, too?”

Matthew nodded. “Yeah. I feel like the place is gonna grow right over me.”

“What?” said Hugh. “How can you—”

“What I hate about it the most,” I ranted as we started walking back to the ship, “how peaceful it looks from a distance. But when you get close up it’s, like, got a million insects all over it. Totally sneaky.”

“But that’s the marvellous part, is how there’s life
everywhere
here. It’s teeming with creatures of every sort,” said Hugh, his eyes wide and his thin arms moving as he spoke. “Look at this tree.”

I stopped and looked. It was a tree as broad as a city transtube entrance, maybe five times as high. It was a dark brown, and every inch of it was covered with these intricate swirls. It made me dizzy to look at it.

“It’s like an apartment block for the animals here.”

Matthew was annoyed by this. “Oh, I understand
now
,” and started off.

Hugh was looking up at it as if he wouldn’t mind moving in.

“Earth used to have trees,” I said to him, following Matthew. “I’m not unfamiliar with the concept.”

“Have you ever climbed one?” Hugh asked, innocently enough.

Matthew shot back what I would have classed a warning look.

Hugh wasn’t looking. He kept on, “It’s a lot easier back home, of course. When I was young I could pull myself up with one hand.”

I heard Matthew mumble something sarcastic about how
perfect
the terraformed moon was, getting worked up. It was the heat, none of us were used to it. He was quickly putting space between himself and Hugh.

I looked back. Hugh was trying to keep his bangs out of his face, blinking sweat out of his eyes. He tried to wave 9/3 ahead of him but the roboman silently insisted on taking up the rear.

“I fear I’m slowing us all down,” he said with a painfully shamed smile. “You know what they say about lunarians...”

Since Matthew was annoyed, I felt it was OK to ease up. “
They
say a lot of crap. We’re not in any hurry.” I said, picking up a pebble to show how relaxed I was. “Is your teaching planet as high-grav as this?”

“No, it’s about halfway between home and this.”

“This is good training, then,” said 9/3.

Hugh gave a rueful nod and we continued on. Before we landed the shuttle, we had scanned the planet and mapped out the easiest two-hour hike. It was hard going — while the grasses were low in this area, there was only the roughest of paths that we ourselves had made on our way up to the clearing. Each step met with some resistance; a tangle of grass, or an unseen root, or just a dip that was obscured that you had to compensate for. It was as if the surface had been randomized. I was getting a little stumbly myself, and I’m used to higher gravity. So it was hard going.

We were only half-way back when Hugh collapsed. The first time, he got up himself, smiling and bright-eyed in the way of the utterly exhausted. The second time 9/3 had to pick him up. And he picked him up entirely.

“I will carry you. You are dangerously weak.”

I didn’t want to stop and turn around because I knew Hugh would be mortified. I couldn’t hear what he said, but got a general sense of his futile resistance.

9/3’s staticky voice carried, though. “That is not a concern. I have enough energy in my atomic battery to carry 100 of you 4,504 times the distance back to the ship.”

Mechanical exactitude had a way of carrying machismo to a whole new level. There’s a good reason robomen heroes dominate the action movie genre.

I listened for further resistance, but there wasn’t any more discussion except for the heavy steps of 9/3 and the occasional cracking of branches under their combined weight.

I speeded up a little. The path dipped down for a while and then climbed back up. It was an unusual sensation, a pleasant level of exertion. I had never liked running, and walking was too easy — the slight incline was perfect. It was like finding the ideal thickness for a protein shake.

Pretty soon I was back at the shuttle. Matthew was sitting against the landing gear, no longer looking annoyed. I flopped down beside him. The landing thrusters had caramelized and smoothed out the area nicely. “Ah, flat ground,” I said gratefully, feeling it warm under my hand. It had been autocooled, of course, but then the sun had got at it.

We watched the forest. I wondered about Lisa, thought about how well she’d get along with Matthew, imagined them meeting.

“Why did they send us to this overgrown rock?” Matthew said. “It’s nothing like the planets we’re going to.”

I shrugged. “I think it’s a get-to-know-your-sector-buddies thing. They’re pretty serious about us hanging out with our fellow English speakers — that’s why we get free travel in our sector. So we don’t go nuts.”

“Free travel. Still can’t believe that. Too bad we’re stuck with a blockhead and a moonboy.”

I smirked despite myself. “9/3 seems OK. Hugh is a little irritating, except...”

“Except when he’s extremely irritating?” Matthew said, yawning. It was getting dark.

I willed myself to argue, although I basically agreed. “All lunarians talk in that fakey-fake way. It’s not his fault.”

“Oh yes it is,” said Matthew without thinking.

“Why did that stuff about the tree bug you so much?”

Matthew grimaced. “It sounded word-for-word like the crap my dad spouts. ‘Before the rise of the bourgeoisie, Earth was a glorious garden.’ Such bull. I traced our family tree back. We’ve been living in cities as long as there’s been cities.”

“Parks not parking!” I said, fist in the air. In university, I was sympathetic to the regrowth cause, but not because I wanted a forest to frolic in. It was the threat it presented to the powerbrokers that really interested me: valuable real estate turned into public land.

We had time for a spirited debate on activism and a discussion about the attractiveness of a certain female in the orientation before 9/3 and Hugh finally arrived.

We heard them before we saw them, the rustling. Then I saw movement, and the glimpse of 9/3’s eyelights, and then they emerged. 9/3 cradled the lunarian’s wisp of a body against him. Hugh was sleeping, one hand on 9/3’s chestplate. His mouth was slightly open. 9/3 was walking extra slowly so as to not wake him up. This was one strangely considerate roboman.

We quietly walked up the ramp and into the shuttle.

***

We were taking a break in the middle of the Emergency Situations seminar. A pretty good one, actually — this army guy described some pretty gruesome situations involving offworlders caught in the middle of wars, ecotastrophies and the like — the moral being, “Register with your planet’s consulate
.”
A bit dramatic, but effective.

“How was your cultural history class? Edifying, I hope?”

Hugh was standing beside me, sipping a cup of water.