Angry Young Spaceman (38 page)

The actual testing of my language skills had been a joke. I had expected a room full of Octavian experts that would listen and judge. I had been terrified. But the reality was, as usual, entirely more banal and entirely more horrible.

After I arrived in Artemia, a representative from the Earth Council had shown me to a room with a desk. He had the same boyish haircut and doctorly manner as the guy on Pleasureworld 33. He tapped his recorder-pad and asked me to make the impossible sounds. I thoc’ed and op’ed for him. He hadn’t even smiled, just nodded and left. That had been it, and about three months later, the Octavian government instituted a series of unpopular laws in the name of modernization. I had tried to ignore most of it, guilty and unsure, although Jinya had shown me one editorial cartoon depicting a plague of wallens overrunning the streets.

I stuck my hands in my pocket as we strolled down the street, which were, at the moment, wallen-free. I took a route through the flashier parts of the city, where saucers tried to behead you and flashing lights tried to blind you.

“No one says hello here,” said Kevin, watching a chain of girls turn sideways to slide by us. “I almost miss it.”

“Most urbanites have seen bipeds before,” I said, looking at a snazzy hat in the window display. “There’s a small tourist trade.”

We turned down a series of successively smaller streets until we came to the alley. It wasn’t even flattened, really, just a path worn in the coral. At the end of it was a small entrance with a glowing eye above it. It pulsed different colours. Kevin looked at it before he went in, but looked more excited than frightened.

“
Oh no, they’re multiplying!
” Ilnok said, throwing up his tentacles. I introduced Kevin to the old husk, and we followed him to the far end of the small bar. One of his students was working there.

“Where you from?” demanded Ilnok.

“Kenya,” said Kevin.

“
You speak English?
” I said, surprised.

“No in Earth. Where Octavia?” Ilnok pressed Kevin.

Kevin told him.

Ilnok nodded, mimed sitting down and then made a sucker-pop: really good.

We nodded. Blusan’s sitting disks
were
really good, not that our big asses could possibly appreciate it.

Ilnok turned his attention back to his student. The student was oblivious to our presence, dipping the tip of his tentacle into a small dish of pale red pigment.

“
The colours remind me of the Living Gardens.
”

“
I went to the Living Gardens
last week!
” Ilnok said, animated. “
It’s too expensive now that the government doesn’t fund it.
” He shook his head.

I nodded, glad that guilt didn’t have a particular smell to give me away. I resolved to buy a few more pictures from Ilnok later this week.

The student smeared the pigment on the cloth, adding a hazy pink line to the landscape’s horizon.

“Oh,” said Kevin. “It’s a flat picture. Of a reef.” He cocked his head to the side. “Huh.”

I nodded. “It’s a uniquely Octavian art form. They call it ‘smearing’.”

“Uniquely?”

“Well, humans can’t do it,” I said, waggling my thin fingers. I looked enviously at the thick, dextrous appendage adding definition to a saucer in the distance.

“
How’s Jinya?
” asked Ilnok.

I shrugged. “OK.”

Ilnok rubbed his forehead, leaving a yellow mark. “OK?”

“
She didn’t get a teaching job this year
,” I said. “
She was hoping to move here.
”

He looked surprised. “
Very competitive,
” Ilnok said, doubt in his voice. He reached down and lifted the student’s smearing tentacle up. “
Lightly.
”

“
They liked her English. But I think they didn’t like her boyfriend,
” I said, guilt and frustration welling up. “
Some things I said about the school system were reported on the newsfeed.
”

Ilnok nodded, his cloudy eyes regarding me sadly. He was partially blind.

“Wow,” said Kevin, as the student used his suckers to roughen up the texture. The student looked up at this familiar word and smiled, slightly embarrassed.

It had been a long few weeks after Jinya was rejected. We didn’t see each other at all: she had been busy, looking for private teaching jobs, and I had been working long hours on a movie called
Intense Believability
. The gritty drama had been a good backdrop for the agonizing I had done, deciding and undeciding that it would be better for her if we broke up, assuming in the silence following her rejection that she was cursing the day she met me.

Then she brought her parents to meet me on the set. Her mom had beamed at me benevolently and called me ‘son’... and I burst out crying. On Octavia, crying is extra dramatic, because the atmosphere causes tears to linger. I figured the drama was excusable since I was an actor now.

“It’s OK,” I summed up for Ilnok. “
Next year will be different.
”

***

9/3 was sitting at the lunch booth, his android arms crossed and leaning on the counter. I smacked his shoulder as I seated myself at a stool.

“What’s the occasion for the andy body?” I said, wiggling my eyebrows.

“You are late.”

“They gave me trouble again,” I said, shrugging. “They didn’t believe I was meeting someone on a way-station.”

“They can not restrict you from travelling within the sector. Just leaving it. I would like an orange juice, please.”

The squat droid swivelled to me. “Same as him.”

We had to buy something if we wanted to sit there, and I was sick of bowling. I liked this place because everyone was in a rush and ignored us.

“Yeah, I told them that. They’re just not used to dealing with suspected terrorist-accomplices at the Artemia spaceport.”

“Have you requested a case update?” 9/3 was convinced it was just a bureaucratic oversight.

I shrugged. “Nope. Haven’t had any contact with Earth — other than occasional messages sent to Lisa — since they refused to let me visit.” My overwhelming feeling had been a perverse joy at my official exile status. Not only was I free of any obligation to visit, but there was a satisfaction at finally qualifying as dangerous. Ever since pug had been unmasked I had been unconsciously seeking it, and it fed me.

“They will clear your name soon,” he said in an extra staticky monotone I had come to recognize as unsure.

“Whatever,” I said, meaning it. “If I don’t go back, I don’t have to pay my student loan.” Not that that was a real concern, anymore. I had the savings to pay it several times over from my acting work.

“I had a dream about Matthew,” 9/3 said, and my first reaction was:
robomen dream?
I’m such a goof. “He was growing on Pleasureworld 33. Then he said, ‘My cock is so big.’”

I laughed, and he looked at me. “It’s just funny to hear you say it. Go on.” Our orange juice came. It was orange, and it was juice, but it just wasn’t orange juice.

“But he didn’t have a cock. He had this large toggle switch, covered in skin.”

“Eww,” I said, sipping at the juice despite myself.

“And he stopped growing. He was turning the switch on and off, and the sun was controlled by it.”

“Both suns?” I said.

“No,” 9/3 said patiently. “Just the small one. He wanted to turn off the big one — for some reason I knew this. And Hugh —”

“Hugh was there?” I interrupted. I hadn’t thought of Hugh in months, and idly wondered where he was, how his angel search was going.

“Do
your
dreams make sense?” he said, his eyes flashing red momentarily.

“Go on,” I said.

“Hugh told him that he had to click the toggle switch to the side to turn off the big sun, so he did. That was it.”

“How did Hugh tell him that? I mean, how did Matthew hear him?”

“He was standing on the part of the ear right beside the hole. We all were.”

I shook my head, impressed. “Man, that’s a fucked dream.”

“I know. Ha ha ha.”

***

Find other e-books by Jim Munroe
over here
.