ANGRY YOUNG SPACEMAN Copyright (c) 2000 by Jim Munroe. All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews. You know the drill. Make up your own little stories. That being said, you're free to make copies of this version as long as it's copied in its entirety. The real thing is available in stores or directly from me. It's $20 postage paid (well-concealed cash or cheque made out to "No Media Kings") and the address is: 10 Trellanock Avenue Toronto, Ontario Canada M1C 5B5 If you haven't already, you should swing by www.nomediakings.org -- an animated screensaver of the beautiful cover art, tons of odd and interesting articles I've written, and info on indie publishing awaits you there. I also love letters, so feel free to feedback at jim@nomediakings.org. *** Bubbles over Plangyo, Where did you go? -Octavian folk song one I had a massive suitcase dragging down one fist and my Speak-O-Matic case in the other. "Let me help you with that," said Lisa. I pushed my suitcase at her, but she reached around it to snatch the jet black translator. I let go reluctantly. "Careful," I said, lurching on with my suitcase. She swung it jauntily as she walked, smirking back at me from under her messy mop of brown curls. I set the suitcase down and picked it up with my other hand. "'What do I need antigrav cells for, Lisa?'" Lisa said in her stupid-guy voice as she watched me struggle. "'What a total waste of money!'" I looked at the spaceport ahead and picked up my pace. "You deliberately parked the floater far away to -" A guy with a jetpack touched down between Lisa and I, cutting me off. I scowled at him as I walked through his purple exhaust, my nose burning from it. She watched me with a smidge of sympathy. "How's your head?" I shrugged. "Not bad, considering." "Yeah, it was quite a party," she said with a crooked smile. "Were you surprised with how many people showed up?" I nodded. The rooftop had been packed, new people landing every minute it seemed. I felt, again, a bubble of doubt rise, as I thought about all the good friends I had on Earth. I could feel Lisa watching me. Ahead, a rocket launched, its ignition-plume predictably lighting a burst of excitement in my chest. "It's gonna be good," I said, staring at it as it rose. I suddenly worried about my boxes. They had been sent ahead and (hopefully) already sat in the belly of my rocketship. We reached the whisk-away and it slid us into the spaceport. I was able to put the suitcase down for a minute and flex blood into my hand. We passed through the field and stepped off near a bunch of shops. Lisa checked her watch. I took my Speak-O-Matic back from her, saying, "I'll take it from here." "Sorry to get you here so early," she said. "I gotta get to work." I smiled at her. "It's not that early." I thought about last time we were in a spaceport together, back when we were going out. "Well, I guess..." she said, folding her arms and looking at me. "Thanks, eh," I said at the same time. "Oh, yeah," she said. "Skaggs wanted me to give you something to remember the gang by." I put up my fists. She laughed and fished out a moviedisk. I took it and tucked it in a side pocket of the suitcase, then picked up both my bags. "See ya," I said, and she lifted her hand. I turned away, trying to decide if I should go to the bar or check in first. "Oh, and here's something to remember me by," Lisa said behind me, and I reluctantly turned around, hoped it would be a hug rather than a kiss. It was a perfectly-aimed right hook, and it knocked me cold. *** "Lead the way, sir!" said the luggage-droid hovering above me. I sat up, rubbed my jaw and neck tendons. My head was really pounding now. There were a few curious onlookers, but as soon as I stood up they lost interest. "Where would you like me to carry your bags, sir?" chirped the luggage-droid. It made my massive suitcase look infuriatingly light, bouncing there in mid-air. "Nowhere! Drop them," I growled. It set them down. I picked them up. "Please deposit zero credits," it said to my back, then buzzed away as it realized the stupidity of that request. I headed into the washroom. There was a medvac installed on the wall, which was great - it meant I didn't have to go rooting through my suitcase. I set it to medium and stood in front of it as the healing rays swept over my face. I shut my eyes (one hand on my suitcase) and smiled, thinking about Lisa. She couldn't resist giving me a pug send-off. So sentimental. I spat in the sink - no blood - and felt my head. There was an egg under my crewcut where my head had hit the ground, but it wasn't leaky. The medvac had snapped off so I turned it on again, crouching awkwardly so it could reach the back of my head. A Yenatian sprung suddenly over the door of the toilet stall and made me jump. "Do not move," the medvac chastised with the voice of a grumpy nurse. The Yenatian bounced to the door and out, his characteristically innocent eyes looking me over. I tried not to glower at him. It wasn't his fault that most of the universe was engineered for people with door-opening appendages. The medvac switched off. I checked the spot on my head, and other than the residual numb tingle it was back to normal. I picked up my suitcase and left for the bar, with a plan to make the rest of my head numb. *** "Could you stop that?" The charliebot continued polishing the shot glass. "What?" "The polishing. You weren't doing it when I came in." They have some subroutine that gets them doing some pointless busy-work. It's irritating. "Just stop the polishing, willya?" "Uppity human," he growled as he rolled away. That was a bit extreme. Someone had been in here talking revolution, or at least bitching about Earthlings. The idea was that it gave each carbon-copy bar its own character, for better or worse: the bar near my place had a charliebot that spouted the annoying pretentious witticisms of its lunarian regulars. I resisted the urge to ask what species had used that phrase - it'd just feed my own prejudices, after all. It was odd, though, 'cause bars were mostly a human thing. I looked around, a little paranoid. I couldn't see anyone, but that didn't mean anything. "How many people in the bar, Charlie?" Charlie's head extended about a foot on a thin metal pipe neck... turned one way clickclickclick.... turned the other way... clickclickclick... then turned his jug-eared lump of a head back to face me. From on high, he reported: "It's just you and me, buddy. No other patrons present." His head dropped down with a hydraulic hiss and he asked: "So who owes who a drink?" When the charliebots were being test-marketed, the locals (after they got tired of mocking it and getting it to repeat various naughty phrases) started taking advantage of its sensor functions, usually with a little bet involved. The manufacturers saw this and capitalized on it, adding theatrics - a charliebot doesn't have to extend its neck to count the people in the bar, for instance - and, naturally, the follow-up pressure sell. Don't ask me how I remember clavinish facts like this, but the craven and clever tactics of business are in my blood, I suppose. Of course, I also remembered all the times they had slipped up - asking the one person in a bar who was buying, for instance. An "if barpatrons=1 then..." statement would have done the job. "Come on, don't be a cheap bastard. Our house beer is only eighteen credits, buddy!" The charliebot's hose arm extended, poised above my glass, waiting for my OK. I sat there quietly. With sales-happy robots, no input is the best input, if you can stand it. Sometimes, they'll presume consent, and if you haven't actually ordered it... I sat there quietly. Charlie started filling my glass. Like beer, silence can be golden. "Who's paying?" he said, driblets falling from his retracting draft arm. "The other guy," I said, watching as it paused to sense for the "other guy." There was no theatrical flourish this time, just a quick attempt to get its hose into my glass. "Whoa, Charlie," I said as I snatched up the glass. It would have sucked it back up in a second if I had let it. The charliebot has its charms, to be sure, but when it comes to class and breeding - well, it's no jeevesatron. It stood there for a second, processing the fact that it couldn't charge me for a drink I hadn't ordered, nor take a drink out of my hand. Then it rolled away. When it stopped, it barked a word I recognized as a curse from the ghettos of the most depraved Nebular planets. A word, incidentally, I had never used - even in a joking, over-the-top way with my friends. How was it getting exposed to that kind of language? Jesus, I thought. Spaceports are weird places. And then it got even weirder. *** Before I even write the next line I want to put in a disclaimer. I can't stand the thought of someone reading this and thinking "Oh wow, this guy is total xenophobic trash!" Because that's what I would think if I read the next few lines cold. This is the situation: I was totally paranoid because the charliebot was talking some serious evil-alien shit, and I was worried they were regulars. I wish it wasn't the case, but aliens often make me paranoid - not because I think they're all bad, just that I think that they have a genuine beef with us Earthlings. What with the war and all the fucked-up shit that happened. I think if I was a rough-and-tumble Neb, for instance, and I saw someone like me in a bar all alone... In fact, that was one of the reasons I was headed to one of the most isolated planets in the known galaxy - to see just how non-xeno I was. But if I worried that I was a xenophobe, I soon found out that there are more virulent cases out there. *** Halfway through my free beer someone came in. I glanced backwards. Human. Thank god. He was dressed in a grey body-suit with a superfluous-but-still-snazzy collar. I wish I was the kind of guy that could just throw out "Cool collar!" to an utter stranger, but the best I managed was a civil nod. He took a seat at the bar, ordered a gin-and-tonic. "So," he said, in a strange scratchy voice, "What brings you to this godforsaken hole?" Now I had just been thinking about what a creepy place this was, but "godforsaken hole" was a bit bombastic. It wasn't as if there were acid tests going on at the tables or kids skinning themselves or anything. "Well," I said, "It's a little sterile... but it feels like God is here, somewhere." He gave me a guarded look. "Maybe in the beer," I said. He went back to his drink. "I'm here because I'm going to Octavia," I said, picking up the thread. He looked at me slowly. "Octavia, eh? It'd be a nice place, except for all the sea monkeys." I froze. My grandfather would use that slur, war vet that he was, but I'd never heard it from the mouth of someone my age. "Not that I've been there, of course. Someone like me can't afford to..." He made jerky hand movements meant to resemble carefree planethopping. "...to flit about any time he wants. Some of us have to work for a living." I guessed he was a driver or worker at the spaceport. And he had a point. Anyone without money or a university education couldn't hope to leave Earth. All they could hope for was some lame vacation someplace like Barcelona or Tokyo, while the privileged class got to go ring surfing, or swim in the molten core of a star... But the bud of sympathy quickly withered. "Not that I'd go to that fucking... hole. You must be fucked, buddy." I shrugged. Oh well, there goes civility. "You seem to know a lot about a place you've never been to," I said, speaking with a mildness I didn't feel. "Oh, I know. I know enough. Robot, another for this poor jackass. On me." I debated whether it was worth it as the charliebot was filling my glass. I checked the time. Still had a while. Looking at the charliebot made me think about the free beer I'd just scammed. "Heh, you know if you ..." I stopped when I saw the way his eyes were locked on the glass in front of him, hovering but going nowhere. I waited to see if he would prompt me to continue and when he didn't I started to see how quickly I could drink my drink without being completely obvious about it. Pretty quickly, it turned out, but not quickly enough. His head swung towards me as if on a hinge. "I know enough. I had something going with one of those cold fish once." I nodded. Lifted my glass. "A digital romance is what they call it," he said, his face rippling with scorn. I knew this was going to get nasty. "Remote" is what they actually called it; "digital" had less pleasant connotations. "So fucking high and mighty." He pulled at the collar I had admired earlier. Lifted my glass. "All that bullshit about mating." Thought it might have had something to do with that. What a prick. "Frigid sea monkey bitch. She had some problems all right. She -" "Sounds like you're the one with the problems." He looked at me. Nothing in his eyes. I stared him down. He looked back at his drink. Shrugged a little. "You'll see. Fuck." "Yeah, I'll see, for real. I won't be some jacked-in jack-off, pulling his pud to four-second-old relays." It was a cheap shot - two actually, 'cause if he worked here then his comm set-up was probably really slow - but I was suddenly dying to box this guy's ears. My resolution to leave my pugilistic habits behind were quickly dissolving in a red haze. Checked my aggrometer wristwatch - I had the time and adrenaline to crack this guy's head before I caught my flight. I looked at his greasy hair and loose mouth and waited for him to give me an excuse. A minute passed. Nothing. I checked my aggrometer, and my levels had dropped below optimum. Reluctantly, I got up. Grabbed my suitcase. "Thanks for the beer, asshole," I said as I turned away. A few steps from the door there was the familiar music of cheap bar glass smashing against... what was that? I turned around. Ah. Fuckwad had thrown his glass into the display of expensive liquor bottles. His back was to me, and his arms were crossed in a sullen way. The charliebot was immobile. One of the lights in his neck switched from green to red. I heard the tally as I shoved my way through the door. "You owe the bar 450 credits for the damages incurred." It made me smile, but it wasn't a real smile, just skin pulled tighter. *** A few steps outside the bar I switched hands again. "Carry your bag, sir?" The luggage-droid hovered like a vulture, its claws slowly opening and closing in anticipation. I hefted my suitcase and started moving. If you slowed down or faltered, the droids were all over you. I prided myself on striding through these places without ever giving them an excuse to pounce, the cred-gobbling little bastards... It was a bit of a walk, but it was good to walk off the adrenaline. I wasn't used to having it course through me unused, and I felt my jaw clenching as I imagined that xenophobic jerk back at the bar "helping" with the various species that used the spaceport. I was still amazed that I had walked away from a fight - a first for me. Not like a pug at all, I thought with grim happiness, not at all what you'd expect a pug to do. It excited me, this new course of inaction. Maybe I could leave it behind. I walked the last few steps sort of shuffle-pushing my bag into the line, staring down a droid who veered off as it realized I was in a line-up and therefore not in need of service. I watched it go, its red cap wobbling, wondering why I got so worked up. It wasn't so much the droids themselves, but rather what they symbolized - Join the moneyed class and you'll never have to sweat again. My mom's world. I grimaced as I surveyed the line, separating the haves from the have-to-sweats. An old human sat on his trunk festooned with stickers, shifting it along every minute or so. A grey Urasan, horn-shaped lips twitching as she flicked through her pad, was attended by a droid. The only toss up was a young woman in formfitting sports gear and a large backpack. Looking closer, however, I saw the slight haze that betrayed antigrav cells sewn into the lining. Rich. Despite it, I considered chatting her up - just to kill the boredom of waiting in line - but I couldn't think of anything to talk about beyond the health dangers involved in having cells so close to her spinal fluid. A few minutes later I was at the counter. "Destination?" "Octavia." I waited for the slight, obscurely gratifying shock that I had come to expect. Nothing. Not even a raise of the eyebrows - only a flicker of the light running over the surface of her eyeballs as she accessed the file retinally. I wondered why her indifference to my destination was so deflating. I had decided to go for a bunch of reasons, most relating to my dislike of Earth. I chose the most remote planet I could figuring that it'd be the least like the self-proclaimed centre of the universe. But over the past few months, people had responded to the news with shock and wonder: "Really? Golly, how brave of you!" and all that. I had made the decision alone, but it had been bolstered by people's gratifying reaction. "Mr. Sam Breen. You have a week stopover on Polix." She blinked up some more data. Her lashes were lovely, and the way she stared through me to the data made her look dreamy. "How did you know -" "There's only one human traveller to that destination." "So I guess you don't see a lot of people going to Octavia," I said, fishing. She shook her head. I smiled, secure again. "I started a week ago," she said. My smile broadened in appreciation of my pathetic neediness. "Are you travelling with zap guns, cultural products, registered technology?" "Yeah, my Speak-O-Matic," I said, looking at my single suitcase. Oh shit. "I'll need to scan it, sir." I rewound my recent activities frantically. I had set it on the bar stool... Shit shit shit. "Sir?" I lifted my suitcase onto the platform automatically. "I've left it in the bar," I said. "I..." Her eyes widened. "You left a... you should go back." She looked at me sympathetically, but I felt no satisfaction in piercing her veil of boredom. "I'll send this ahead, and if... when you get your item, I can register it." She tapped my bags with a wand and they became enveloped in black plastic, then the platform dropped out of sight. I took the flight card from her and walked away from the counter. There was no point in running, I told myself, it was either there, or it wasn't. I started running. The frothy glass that glowed above the entrance to the bar grew bigger and bigger as I dodged luggage-droids and nearly stepped on a family of Plevs. How was I gonna teach English to kids when I couldn't even speak - The door of the bar slid closed behind me, and my eyes adjusted to the dim light. Three humans were chatting quietly a few stools down from where the xenophobe and I had been sitting. I walked to the stool where it should have been, hope draining out and self-loathing filling the empty space. "Whattalitbe, buddy," the charliebot said. "Did you see a Speak-O-Matic in a triangular case-" "We can't be responsible for items left on the premises," it said, starting to polish a glass. I looked over at the humans, who had heard the exchange. One of them shook her head. A trip to the lost-and-found office revealed that items of that cost were rarely returned, and that the number of employees who wore grey body-suits numbered in the hundreds. I took a seat in the waiting area, watching families reunite and break apart. One recently reunited family of metal triangle people sat down beside me and started tinkling to one another. Two little ones had bravely taken the chair next to me. They were swivelling towards me and talking, and my casual curiosity as to what they were saying swelled up; and was suddenly smacked down by the reality of the situation. I can't believe I lost my fuckin' brand new Speak-O-Matic. Suddenly the lovely tinkling became too much to bear, and I stood. *** It was the longest line-up I'd ever been in in my twenty-three years, and there was a long way yet to go. In the distance I could see the glass tube that arched over the landing pads and kissed the rocket ship. The shock of losing my Speak-O-Matic was wearing off. I was calculating how long I had worked at the foundry to earn the credits it cost: three months, I figured. I imagined pounding my friend in grey for about three months, to even the score. A part of me, the stubbornly pug part, was grumbling: If I had left him in a bloody heap in the first place, he wouldn't be sneaking off anywhere for a while. We finally turned the corner and started moving through the tube. The rocketship was this old model, but still shiny - a classic, and I was excited despite myself. The last time I went offworld, it was in a ship just like this one, and I had been amazed by the size. I had known the toy I had at home was smaller, but I had expected something just a little bigger than the family floater. Now I was amazed at how small the rocketship seemed, in comparison to the endless line of people. How were we all gonna fit in that skinny thing? The tube vibrated a bit as another rocket blasted off. The ignition fire whipped shadows on and off the faces of the other people in the line. Other than the occasional alien, they were mostly human - not a single Octavian in the lot. I looked back as far as I could, then forward as much as I could - nope. And it wasn't as if they were hard to spot. I guessed I'd have to wait to meet a live Octavian, face-to-face. Not that I'd be able to communicate with them anyway. Damn it! two Hi Lisa, Nice punch. Haven't you heard that pug is dead? No, I'm not on Octavia yet. All us new English teachers have a week of orientation on this dinky little planet before we're flung to the stars. It's OK, though, the gravity's awesome. At the end of the day I've got so much energy left I've just got to go out and hit the local bar. Their most tolerable local brew, Poikapoik (means "mighty king killer"), has a kick you remember well into the next day. The illustration on the bottle is a pile of smoking bones with a crown on top, as if His Royalness has just been energy-fragged. The bartender told me that the original king was actually eaten alive, but the natives are always trying to freak us out with their cannibalistic stories... Back to the gravity - cool for Earthlings, not so cool for lunarians - it's actually higher grav than on the moon. One or two of the thinner ones actually had to be sent back because of organ problems. The rest of them are just tired all the time. Between their thinness and exhaustion, when a trooper of a lunarian actually hits the bar with us they usually end up hitting the pavement, too. Poikapoik is quite a bit stronger than what they're used to. Amongst the more predatory of the Earthlings, this was really good news. Who didn't grow up with a crush on one of the bird-boned lunarian mediastars, with their grace and thin angular beauty? (Guess that's why people are said to be "mooning after" someone...) A real conversation: "Hey Julia, how'd it go with your lunarian boy last night?" "Well, he had two whole bottles of Poikapoik..." "Uh oh." "Yeah. When we got down to it I found out it kills more than mighty kings." Some of the lunarian women are really attractive, but they're so tired all the time - and seem a little nervous around Earthling men - that I haven't been seriously smitten. And you know how I hate that flowery, excessive way lunarians talk. In fact, that's how I met my first friend here. There was this beeeyoutiful moonboy whispering on about something at dinnertime with, like, eight Earth girls hanging on his every word. After he said "the most atrociously designed springboots ever to grace the planet's surface" I checked my wristwatch aggrometer - out of curiosity, Lisa, just to see. The guy next to me asked me what it was, and I tried to tell him, but the shrill laughter from the lunarian's entourage drowned me out. I watched the needle move a little closer to the red zone, then repeated myself. "It's just a wristwatch with an aggrometer feature added. It gauges levels of aggressiveness in the wearer." "Oh yeah, that's a pug thing," he said. "My friend had one, but it was bigger and had a holo readout. Went on his chest." "Well, then your friend wasn't much of a pug," I shot back. "The idea was that it wasn't flashy. Those morons who walked around with black eyes and idiotic gloves didn't have anything to do with the pug I knew." He raised his hands. "Did I say he was my friend? He was actually more of an acquaintance. Sort of an enemy, really." Matthew's the only guy here with shorter hair than me. We walk around the place like Stumpy and Stumpier, yelling "You want to get to hell, you gotta get through the burny bits!" at inopportune moments. It's fun. Sam. *** It was four in the morning when the room's speaker snapped to life. "...Breen Samuel, you have a call from... Earth, America, New York-" "Patch it through." Lisa's voice came through. "I'm not getting a visual." "There's just a speaker here," I said. "You know what I look like." "I'm imagining you with hair all flattened and pillow creases in your face." "Exactly." "What kind of place are you in? They have visuals on prisonships, for Christ's sake." "Prisonships? Who do you talk to there?" "Uh... never mind. My attorney -" "Lisa, why are you calling me? Do you know how expensive it is?" "My work's paying for it. We do a lot of business in that sector, so no one'll notice." "Nice." I relaxed. "By the way, what the fuck are you doing there? Anything important? Other than drinking and stalking lunarians?" "We have classes and stuff during the day. About the planets we're going to, the culture there and that kinda crap. But we're grouped together in sectors, because it's usually one person per planet-" "You're the only person going to Octavia?" There was a satisfying measure of concern and awe in her voice. "Yup. Might be the only offworlder there. Other than the occasional tourist. So the classes are kind of pointless, because it's so general. I've been trying to get a jump on the language, though." "Why bother? With your swanky new Speak-O-Matic -" My stomach lurched as I remembered. "I lost it." "Oh." There was a pause. "Sam? I'm waiting for the punchline." "I put it down in a bar and that was the last I saw of it." "...Aw, man." "Yeah. So luckily the Octavian language is hypothetically compatible with a humanoid brain. That's about all I know so far." "They can't send you home for not having a translator, can they?" she asked. "No, it's not an official requirement," I said. The topic exhausted me, so I chose a new one. "Oh, I know why you're calling prisonships... it's a new boyfriend, isn't it?" "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. "Not too bad," I said. "Not really specific enough, though. How was yours?" "Similarly inadequate," he said, looking at his nails. "Everyone going to planets with dominant symbiotic species were thrown together. Very little was said about my planet, not that much is known about the exact relationship between the Unarmoured and the Armoured." "Other than that the Unarmoured write better love songs than the Armoured," I said, smiling a little. Hugh was obviously going out of his way to talk to me, but there was no need to make it overly easy for him. He looked at my face and seemed to be trying to see if I was making fun of him. "Yes. A lot can be gleaned from their art. In fact, most of my studies dealt with extrapolating societal norms from their verse." "Huh," I said non-committally, thinking about how many women would love to talk with Hugh about his poetical extrapolations. As if he read my mind, Hugh suddenly left. Later that day I sat with him during dinner. He seemed happy to see me. "Samuel," he said with a nod. It was potatoes done lunarian style, with sweet onion bulbs, so Hugh had a huge plate of it. "No way you'll finish that," I said. Hugh shrugged and grinned, scooped his fork in. "So what interests you so much about the Unarmoured?" I said, determined not to let my petty jealously get the best of me. Hugh's face lit up, and he set his fork down. "It's the extremity of the situation. They're given the choice between being stripped down to a cloud of nerve endings - the ultimate in vulnerability - or being strapped into a mechanical block, a suit of armour - the ultimate in defence." "I find it amazing they co-exist peacefully," I said. "Or do they?" said Hugh, pointing a finger at me. "There have been rumbles about the exact nature of their symbiosis ever since the part the Unarmoured played in the war. But to me their governance is less important than their symbolic value. Defenceless and free, or armoured and trapped? Isn't it a delicious analogy for the social mask every sentient being chooses?" He lifted his hands up as if to frame the question. I shrugged. I doubted many people would enjoy being a delicious analogy. 9/3 sat down, foodless of course. "That sounded interesting," he said. Ever since Hugh had fallen asleep in 9/3's arms they had been close. Go figure. "Just talking about the Unarmoured," Hugh said. "The only thing I'm an authority on." A group of lunarians walked by and waved at Hugh. He waved back distractedly, looking around. "Where's Matthew?" Hugh asked. "We could have our whole sector crew here." "He went bowling with a bunch of people. To that place we passed on our way back from that green planet." Hugh's eyes widened. "The one with the bowling pin carved out of a meteorite? Blast, I wanted to check that out." "It's gotta be two meteorites stuck together. It's too huge," I said. "He said he wanted to send a picture of it back to his girlfriend," 9/3 said. After a moment, Hugh said cautiously, "I know very little about relationships on your planet, 9/3." "There are no relationships on Roboworld. Officially." "Officially?" I asked. "So there are relationships." 9/3's eyes blinked assertion. Hugh said, "I met a roboman who seemed to travel endlessly. He talked about being involved with an offworlder. He said he didn't want to go back to Roboworld." "Really?" I said. 9/3 said, "It is unacceptable for a roboman to have singular emotional congress with another. Those who do are said to be defective, and treated accordingly." Defective. That made me feel a little sick. Kalen passed by at that point, one of the Earthlings with an eye on Hugh. "Hey Sam. Hugh." We nodded, Hugh scraping up the last of his potatoes. "Lunarian style," Kalen pointed out. Hugh flashed her a brilliant smile. "Right you are." Kalen patted 9/3 on the head. "Hi 9/3-0001!" "Hello." "See ya later," she said, and sauntered off. No one said anything, the clinking of fork against plate being the main sound. 9/3 finally broke the silence. "Flirt." three "Do you realize there's a low level hum coming from your torso?" I asked him, finally. We had been waiting for a full hour, and that weird hum had been there the whole time. "Oh. Sorry," 9/3 said. "I did not notice that." I felt bad, snapping at him like that. "It's my nerves. Just a little worried that our co-teachers haven't shown yet." "I am, too. That is what caused the sound - it is an imperfectly muted warning alarm caused by stress." Huh. I didn't know robomen got nervous. Sometimes it's hard to remember that there's a human brain swimming around in that iron case. Not that that made them human, exactly, but it looked like some things still held true. The transfer spaceport was quite dead, which was good. It was a small place and I didn't think I could take Montavians crawling all over me. There were a lot of them, but not enough for their famed different-concept-of-personal-space to kick in. Montavians and Octavians passed by in equal numbers. The Octavians, naturally, were of particular interest to me. They lay on their sides on their floating platforms, their bodies insupportable in the oxygen atmosphere. They were soupy bags of flesh, a single tentacle raised to the controls. I stared at them openly, thinking that this spaceport may be the last place that I could look at them as aliens. Soon, I'd be the outsider. 9/3's nervous hum started up again. I looked at him and it stopped instantly. I chuckled. "Hey, 9/3, if you had Richardson in front of you right now, what would you do?" 9/3 had been suspicious of the co-ordinator's competence since the beginning, and now that he had warning alarms going off because of him... The roboman's arm stretched out and a flame-thrower nozzle protruded past his tri-pincers. The pilot light popped on like an exclamation mark. "I would think of something," he said. I barked a laugh. 9/3's static-tinged voice suited his low-key dry wit perfectly. The people passing by were staring openly at us now, veering away, and you couldn't really blame them. When 9/3 retracted the nozzle, the people-flow straightened out. "I have already filed reports with the four most relevant agencies." "Good," I said. "You can add my name to that letter." There was a pause as he did just that, his eyelights going offline briefly. The loudspeaker spoke in a language I couldn't understand, but some nearby Montavians cocked an ear. "Ah, Montavian," I said wisely. 9/3 looked at me. "It is good you have been studying. Without a translator, you will need it." "Thanks, pal." "I have heard that some co-teachers have a very low level of English and must rely heavily on the translators." Nothing good would come out of my mouth, I knew, so I clenched my teeth. "Why are humans so inefficient?" 9/3 pondered. "Why are blockheads so fucking blockheaded?" I exploded. Twenty-eight hours on a ship, and now this crap? 9/3 looked at me, and I stared back at him. "I did not mean you," he said. "Well... you don't even know it was Richardson's fault," I said. "It could be your host." "It would have to be both our hosts, then." "Yeah," I admitted. Fuckin' Richardson. Probably on the vapours when he made the arrangements, the goddamned... "Maybe," 9/3 said slowly, "they do not recognize us." I snickered. "Yeah, we're kind of hard to spot." "Ha ha," 9/3 said. 9/3's laugh always cracked me up, so we were in the middle of a laughter avalanche when our hosts finally showed up. They were the only Octavian-Montavian pair I had seen, so I waved on a hunch. They waved back in the slightly loose way that people from non-waving cultures do. We snuffled and chortled our way to a full stop by the time that they got across the room. Maybe it wasn't the most professional, but it was better than catching us while I was spouting xenophobic slurs or when 9/3's flame-thrower was activated. I checked my watch. Dead on the hour. I looked at 9/3 and his eyes flickered, his way of nodding. "Richardson gave us the wrong time," he grated so that only I heard. "Very glad to meet you," my Octavian co-teacher said, after positioning his platform so his head faced my way. He lifted his head a few inches, with great effort. "I am Laz Cha Zik. You may call me Mr. Zik." We had split off to meet our hosts privately. I heard 9/3 address his co-teacher, a tall Montavian (almost 3'6") in another language. The munchkin looked relieved. I fought an urge to apologize immediately for not having a translator, and instead just introduced myself and stuck out my hand. Mr. Zik's tentacle waved out and slapped into my hand. It was dry, but there was a slight stickiness that I had been warned about. Luckily. Because if I didn't know that it was from micro-suction cups, I would have obeyed my instincts and wiped my hand on my pants. Wars have been started for less, and it would certainly make for a less-than-auspicious beginning to a working relationship. "So..." said Mr. Zik. 9/3 and the munchkin were talking a mile a minute. Mr. Zik smoothed his head crest, then said, "Shall we go?" "Sure," I said, turning to 9/3. He was setting the Montavian on his shoulder. The Montavian smiled at me and fiddled with something behind the roboman's head. 9/3's neck hissed briefly. "So, I'll uh, give you a call," I said to 9/3, wondering what in the hell was going on. The Montavian clambered back to the ground. 9/3 lifted his head off and handed the cube to his co-teacher. "Yes. I will stay in touch," he said, from the tiny man's arms. The Montavian nodded to us and left with 9/3's head. 9/3's body sat for a few more seconds, then stood up and walked in the opposite direction. I looked at Mr. Zik and said, "Weird!" He took a second to process it, then said: "Yes." *** We walked through four entire docking bays before we found it. They were smaller bays than at an intergalactic spaceport, but weren't by any means small. Mr. Zik tried to keep his platform at a regular speed, but kept shooting ahead. "How was your trip?" he asked. "Kind of rough. I drank too much coffee and so I couldn't sleep." "Ah," he said. "Coffee." He made a hissing sound. "Drinking coffee makes me... jumpy?" He looked at me. I didn't know what he was asking me. "Is that right?" he asked. "Jumpy?" "Yeah, that's right, jumpy." I said authoritatively. The teaching had begun! "They had hoses on the ship where you could get any beverage you want, so I drank too much. I love coffee." Mr. Zik nodded. We stopped in front of a large gold saucer. "There is no coffee on Octavia," he said, perhaps sadly. "Oh," I said, certainly sadly. Mr. Zik pushed a button somewhere on his person and there was a bleep. The ramp started to lower. "This is a nice saucer. I haven't seen rocket thrusters on a saucer before." I pointed to them, two large chrome pipes right below the back window. Mr. Zik paused on his way up the ramp. "No," he said. "They aren't rocket thrusters. They're... thrusters." "Another... kind of thrusters?" I fished. "Yes!" He continued up the ramp and I followed him. "I'm sorry, I don't remember the word for the kind of thrusters." He made the hissing sound again, which I decided was probably a laugh. "That's OK," I said. "Your English is very good." "No," he said. "It's very blad." The cockpit had been rearranged to facilitate the platform. He moved in close to the control board and his tentacles swept out across it in a languorous way. We were airborne in half the time a human would need to take off. "Wow," I said, as we manoeuvred through the asteroid belt that surrounded the station. "Having eight appendages is really useful!" He laughed softly, his head still on its side, watching the viewscreen. "It is useful for driving... not so useful for walking." "Well, knowing how to walk isn't very important for people on Octavia. Most humans can't swim very well." He watched the viewscreen and said nothing. I waited for a while, to see if the conversation was paused or finished. I knew there were questions I should be asking, but I was so tired my brain felt like there were cables cut in it, the frayed ends sparking. I looked out the window and thought about how good it would be to get some sleep. Traffic was really light, just the occasional saucer passing us every couple of minutes. Saucers were very popular here; they never really sold well on Earth because the first models were all manual control and got the rep as being death-traps before the fully automatic ones came out. But I always liked them - one of my best friends in high school had built one from scratch, pretty much, for shop class. He had to keep it at school, though, 'cause his dad was a bigot who thought that driving anything without a motor meant you were an alien sympathizer. "I went on a road trip in a saucer once. My friend Pete was a really good pilot." "Why did your friend fly a saucer?" Mr. Zik asked. "Why? ...Uh, well, they're really cheap. A lot of students get them because they don't need fuel and you can fit a lot of people in them." He nodded. "I see." I thought about telling him about how the young people also like how it pisses the xenophobes off, but decided against it. "A lot of my friends swear by them. Do you know that phrase?" "Yes. 'Swear by them.'" "Yeah, they think they're more reliable than floaters." Pause. "Yes. More reliable. More efficient, too." It had become quite busy, saucers on every side. Gold was most common, and the rest were silver. It was an odd feeling, because I was used to floater traffic with only the occasional saucer thrown in. As well, the guy behind us was really close. I was about to mention it when I noticed we were just as close to the guy in front. "Sit down and connect your seat blelt," said Mr. Zik. "We are ablout to enter the stratosphere." I did just that, thinking about how pleasantries disappear with the stress of speaking another tongue, and suddenly noticed something. All the signs in the saucer, down to the little seat-adjuster, were in English. "Why are the signs in English?" I blurted. "They are made for explort," said Mr. Zik. "We will reach the entry ploint in four, three, two, one, now." The gravitational shift felt like a too-tight halter-top. The idiot behind us got even closer and I was sure he was going to be up our ass. I was alternately watching him (his outer shell was starting to glow with the heat of re-entry) and squeezing my eyes shut (they always give me problems during gravitational transitions) so I guess I looked a bit frenzied. "Are you OK, Sam?" Mr. Zik said worriedly. I wrenched my head to point it at him. "Uh..." I said, staring at the Octavian. The grav did funny things to his skull-free head, pulling back the skin of his face against soft cartilage. His eyeholes were huge and cavernous, his mouth grew larger. "Are you sick?" he asked. "The gravity will blee normal soon." His head returned to normal as the gravity lessened, but I could still see it. "I'm fine, really. I was just shocked..." I stopped. What was I gonna say? That he looked a bit like a monster? "I am sorry. The gravity is very... plowerful." "Uh, yeah." "I am very sorry." "No problem, it's my fault." He slapped a few controls. "Are you ready?" I nodded. We dropped like a rock, aerodynamics eventually turning us sideways. It was hard to gauge how close we were getting to the water, because we were approaching the landless side of Octavia so there were no landmarks to gauge our distance or speed. The viewscreen was a solid blue-green for twenty minutes. As soon as we hit the water the thrusters came on. Bubbles whooshed out of the pipes behind us. "Ah, hydrothrusters," I identified. "Yes," Mr. Zik said. "Hydro. I forgot. My English is not so good." I shook my head no. The saucer traffic was just as tightly packed underwater. We were headed down in a diagonal, but there was no scenery to speak of this high up. I tried to keep my eyes open but the drone of the hydrothrusters eventually had their way with my exhausted self, and I nodded off. *** I had an anxiety dream about being torn apart by aliens with squashed-skull faces, and woke up a little contemptuous of my subconscious's lack of imagination. We were level now, and were going through what looked to be a small town. "Where..." My mouth felt weird. My whole face felt weird, actually. "What?" I moved my arm around and watched Octavia's atmosphere ripple faintly. "I filled the cablin with our water. I was told it was easier for humans to adjust to our atmosphere when they sleep. Are you OK?" "Yeah, I'm fine," I said, breathing in the water oxygen, in and out, in and out, letting it fill my nose and lungs. I had only panicked once, back in orientation, and that was because I was still feeling the side-effects of a chemical cocktail Matthew had made for me the previous night. I looked at Mr. Zik, upright for the first time. The points of his headcrest bobbed slightly and were much healthier-looking than when they had been strands hanging limply over his platform in the oxygen atmosphere. The platform had been tucked out of sight somewhere and Mr. Zik reigned supreme from his cockpit chair. My feet felt funny, and I realized I was wearing cotton socks. Odd that I would remember to water-treat all my clothes but the socks, but I didn't mind the discomfort - it drove home the fact that I was somewhere very different. "Where are we, exactly?" We were passing the buildings too quickly to see anything but ribbons of coloured light. "We are in Plangyo." Plangyo. I had first seen the name four months ago, on my work contract. It was hard to believe I was actually here. I stared at the viewscreens with a new intensity. Mr. Zik, noticing this, slowed down. Storefronts selling unknown products represented by mysterious colourful pictures. A building with a crest on the gates and a guardhouse that could have been an army base or city hall. A block of apartments, with kid-sized saucers tied to the balconies. We turned into a small apartment building and parked. Mr. Zik lowered the ramp and gracefully left the saucer with a kind of skipping lope. I stood carefully and followed, hanging on to the handrails and getting my sea feet, appreciating the reversal of our comfort levels. Most people I talk to back home are under the painfully ignorant assumption (painful for me too, since these people are my friends and I expect better from them) that the atmosphere of Octavia is the same as the oceans of Earth were before the draining, except you can breathe in it. And I have to say, "No, look, it's got stronger gravity. It's almost exactly half-way between swimming and walking." Really, though, it's incredible how much Earthlings don't know. I was walking so slowly that the ramp started to retract before I got to the bottom. Mr. Zik started fumbling for his key chain but I jumped - enjoying my slow movement through the atmosphere - and landed on my feet, socks squelching. He led me into the apartment and turned the light on. There were a few pieces of furniture there, which I was happy about, because we were warned that we were guaranteed an apartment but not necessarily furnishings. "I'm sorry, blut I must go now. Tonight, I will come black and help you clean the aplartment," Mr. Zik said. I wandered into the bedroom. The bed was a simple single, but that night my wearied brain couldn't have seen a finer object. "Tonight I will be asleep. In that bed." I said, pointing demonstratively. "Yes, of course, you are very, very tired," said Mr. Zik, and his hiss-laugh. "Call me for anything, even a small thing." He left, pulling the door shut behind him. I took off my clothes and was in bed before they had floated to the floor. *** "Flsfjhas lsfheriheu fjshflahdoe Sam Breen. Fheoi ejkthjad goirteoi gdkgjvn?" Underwater! drowning! I'm fucking drowning! I frantically started swimming for the surface. My flailing got me about three feet in the air before I remembered where I was. I floated back to my bed, weighted by shame and blankets. "Flsfjhas lsfheriheu fjshflahdoe Sam Breen. Fheoi ejkthjad goirteoi gdkgjvn?" Quick, what was it? How do I say yes? What's Octavian for - "En," I said, screwing up the intonation completely. The vidphone lit up the room, and an Octavian's face started to fade in. "Visuals off, visuals off!" I yelled, pulling my sheet up to my chin. Was it even Mr. Zik? "Uhh... falfje elrelj," said the person on the screen. The vidphone image faded out. "I am sorry," Mr. Zik said. "Did you wake up?" "Yeah, it's OK. What time is it, anyway?" "It's nine o'clock, Plangyo time." I set my watch, something I'd avoided doing since I left the orientation. I was going through so many systems, some that didn't even keep time, that there had been no point in doing it before now. I noticed the needle on my aggrometer had registered my waking terror. "Your luggage has come. It is outside." I started pulling on clothes. "Right now?" "Yes. Can I come to your aplartment?" "Uh... I guess so." Pause. "Is it OK?" he asked. "It's fine, come over," I said, smoothing out my blanket. The speaker clicked off without a good-bye. I went to my front door. The windows were letting in a blue-green light, and my suspicions were confirmed about just how dirty the living room was. When I opened the door, a line of droids buzzed in. "Ido?" they said, in turn. They each carried a box of stuff, and I recognized the scrawl on top as my own. "Ido?" Ido?! What was - oh yeah! "Where?" I tilted the box of the nearest one so I could read it. Kitchen Crap. I pointed towards the fourth and last room in my apartment. I was a little scared to check it out, considering how nasty-dirty the rest of the place was. I pointed the other droids on their way. Other than the little trails of bubbles they left, and the fact that they had metal tentacles instead of arms, they were pretty standard-issue droids. Or so I thought. One of them, on their way out, brushed my sleeve - and didn't apologize. Not in any language. That was surprising. A noise from outside distracted me. I looked out the window. Mr. Zik was getting out of his saucer. He hurried to my door. He surveyed the scene. "Good," he said. "I was worried you would have trouble." "Oh, no," I said. "They said 'ido,' and I knew that meant 'where?'" "Very good, very good." He looked around, then quietly ordered the droids to do something. They all pulled an attachment from a small compartment in their backs and used it to clean the floor. "Great!" I said. "I didn't know they could do that. Droids on Earth are a lot more job-specific. They can only do one job," I clarified. Mr. Zik nodded. "Octavia was very ploor until this century. We could not afford too many droids." I happily watched the little guys go about their work. I had been wondering how I was going to go about cleaning in an aquatic atmosphere, and now I didn't have to bother. Mr. Zik just stood there. I didn't know why he had come over, exactly, and I couldn't ask him without feeling rude. "I'm going to look at the kitchen," I said to him, pointing at it. "I haven't seen it yet. I went to bed right away last night." I put my hands together and rested my head against them in the mime for sleep. Mr. Zik didn't react, just followed me. I realized how stupid it was to mime for a person who obviously understood English perfectly. Also that I had no idea of how Octavians slept. The kitchen was pretty much like an Earthling kitchen. Mr. Zik floated by me and started opening up cupboards, two or three at a time. In one of them, he found a bottle. "Ah, Zazzimurg!" "What's that?" "It's a... tea. Traditional Octavian tea." He shook it and watched it settle, opened it and sniffed it with his stubby nose. "And it isn't too ripe." "Let's make some," I said, eyeing its dark brown colour with caffeine lust. While he busied himself with that, I rifled through the cupboards. There was quite a bit of stuff there, although most of it didn't have any English on it. "What's this?" "It... is a kind of Octavian flour." I picked up a box with a cartoon chimp on it. The green chimp looked half-way between insanity and ecstasy. I angled it his way. He laughed. "Ssss-sss-ss. Candy. For children." He was holding the teapot with one tentacle, the kettle with hot water in another, and the bottle of distillate in another above his head. With the end of that tentacle, he unscrewed the cap and tilted the bottle. The distillate came out in a thick brown stream, moving with unnatural slowness, arcing towards the teapot. Then he started to pour the boiled water, which came out equally slowly, gleaming carved silver. After he stopped pouring the distillate and before it entered the pot there was a second when it was a stream unconnected to anything, like a bent rusty bar. I watched it, mesmerized. I knew liquids would look different poured through a soluble atmosphere, but I never imagined it'd be so beautiful. Mr. Zik had put the bottle away and shut the cupboard by the time both streams had entered the pot. He sealed it, breaking my gaze, and set it down on the counter. I stared at it like it was a genie's lamp. "Is that..." I mumbled, "is that a ritual?" Mr. Zik was putting the kettle away. "Ritual? No," he said. "It is just making Zazzimurg." One of the droids came in and said something to Mr. Zik. He nodded and the droid bobbed off. I wondered why it hadn't talked to me. Was it programmed to favour Octavians? That was illegal, but possible... "What are your plans for today?" he asked me. "Um, nothing really. No plans." Other than cleaning this place from top to bottom, unpacking... "Would you like to go on a trip?" "Uh... sure?" "Wonderful." He waited a second and looked around the kitchen. "Can I use your vidphone?" "Yeah, of course." He turned on the vidphone and spoke with another Octavian, one wearing a rainbow coloured bandanna who gesticulated a lot. I poked through the cupboards. Something was happening in my brain. I was able to note an outlandish bandanna on an Octavian without it registering how odd that was. Now that I did register it, though, the first thing that came to mind was how hilarious my friends back home would find it when I told them. And that wasn't quite right either. *** We had been on the bus for four hours before I cracked. "When will we arrive, Mr. Zik?" My voice was very conspicuous. Four people looked and a half-dozen more wanted to. It wasn't as if I was the only one speaking - there were two guys up near the front who were really loud, and attracted no looks despite their volume. Mr. Zik told me that we'd be there in two hours. I didn't ask where there was. The seats were really quite appropriate for human dimensions. After four hours, however, the differences became more significant. I wondered how 9/3 was doing in the land of the munchkins. 9/3 didn't have to worry about leg cramps, mind you. The image of 9/3's body walking headless through the spaceport came to mind, and I made a mental note to call him when I got back. If I got back. It was Friday, and I figured there was a good chance of getting back for Monday. But for all I knew, I wasn't scheduled to start work until the following week. I really didn't know anything. What prevented me from asking was one of the things they had taught us at orientation. "With many cultures, you'll find that their concept of duty is far more important." This was from a tall thin man just back from a year of teaching. "For instance, the Squidollians take being a host very seriously. Amongst a group of friends, they'll take turns being host - and the host pays for everything, arranges everything, takes all the credit and blame for everything. And being an offworlder means that you'll probably never get the honour of being a host." A happy murmur went through the room. "Yeah well, it cuts both ways," he said. "You'll never pay - and you'll never really belong. Anyway, have some faith in your host. Often offworlders badger the host with questions about everything, and this can be taken as a kind of insult - 'cause you're basically questioning their ability as a host. Here - on Earth that is, not here here, I think I'm home already - saying someone's a bad host is kind of a joke. There, it's... not." "Are you uncomfortable?" asked Mr. Zik. "No, it's not so bad," I lied. "Maybe I can put my legs out here..." I stretched them out in the aisle, watching for a reaction. A little girl, who was playing with a little human doll, looked at me and then back at her doll. She seemed to make a connection, but stayed quiet about it. But why was the doll not shaped like an Octavian? I watched how the girl played with it: moving the doll through the air in the slightly wavy way Octavians moved, using its legs to pick up things as often as the arms. There wasn't anything in the orientation against asking toy questions, so I went for it. "Mr. Zik, aren't there Octavian dolls?" I nodded towards the girl as I said it. He nodded. "Yes. The human dolls are very popular. More popular." "Huh," I said. No further conversation ensued. I may have gotten the impression that all Octavians were closed-mouthed but for the two polar opposites of Mr. Zik at the front of the bus. And in fact, the whole bus refuted the idea that Octavians were the same - there was every shape and size. Every Earthling has seen a beautiful Octavian model - her shapely upper torso ending in suggestively undulating tentacles, her mysteriously pupil-less eyes and an upswept headcrest - but she bore little resemblance to the people on the bus. Closest were the two giggling schoolgirls, make-up-less and plain, who kept looking back at me. The old man two seats over was terrifying to me, his head a withered old balloon and the soft skin that ridged the top of his head lined with purple veins. And there was a middle-aged guy in a suit and tie who was so fat even his tentacles moved sluggishly. Despite his appearance, the round crackers he was eating made me think about how hungry I was. I watched the scenery in an effort to take my mind off my stomach and my bladder. The huge pink and grey columns of rock and the scrub brush were good for about thirty minutes before I started thinking viciously intolerant things about people who didn't have bathroom breaks. The bus headed off the main throughway. "Great!" I said. "Yes, we will stop to use the toilet. Are you hungry?" "I'm starving!" Mr. Zik stared at me blankly. "I'm not really starving, I just feel like I'm starving." "Ah yes," he said. "Starving. Ssss-sss-ss." A second after I said "starving" I had been worried he would take it as a criticism of his hosting, but evidently he wasn't that sensitive. I relaxed a little. We piled out of the bus and I headed towards the bathroom with an icon of an Octavian with thick tentacles (thinner tentacles and cocked head indicated the female) and I got into a booth. Poised on tiptoes, I whipped out my johnson and let it fly. It was easier than it would have been in an oxygen atmosphere. I'd say about 80% accuracy. 85%, even. Not bad for a first try. And I wasn't the only one to have missed the hole in the wall today, either - why did they make it s'damn small? But compared to a lot of alien toilets, this one was only mid-range challenging. At least it stayed stationary. I left the booth, washed my hands and walked out, hearing a few indecipherable comments and laughter in my wake. I found Mr. Zik outside the restaurant and we went in. There were a couple of policemen eating soup over a small table, their zap guns holstered. They stopped eating to watch me walk to the counter. When the counterman turned around, Mr. Zik pointed to himself and said something. Then he pointed to me and said something else. I smiled uneasily. "Sligllgy blick?!" asked the counterman, his eyes wide.. "En, sligllgy blick. Koogeem." Then they laughed together. "Koogeem" meant "offworlder." I smiled and nodded, repeating my mantra: Trust your host, trust your host. The counterman prepared the food and brought it to us, two plates of seed-speckled seaweed, red dumplings and other vegetables that I didn't recognize. "Oh Kay?" said the counterman when he gave it to me. At first I thought he was speaking Octavian, but then I figured it out and nodded. "OK!" he confirmed, and the policemen behind us laughed. I kept telling myself that I was lucky to be on a planet with human-suitable food, even if I had to eat a lot of it by Octavian standards. I took my fork out of my pocket and started eating. I knew this would cause a bit of a stir. We had been warned that a fork may be mistaken for a weapon and so it was best to start eating with it immediately. The policemen made gestures towards it and looked to be deciding who should ask me about it. I ate quickly and kept my head down. "They think your fork is very interesting," Mr. Zik said. "Really?" I said, eating faster. I was just trying to buy myself some time. I'm not going to dwell on it, but Octavians are messy eaters by our standards. We've all heard the stupid sea-monkeys-in-a-posh-restaurant jokes, and there is an element of truth to them. One of the policemen, in an endearingly bashful way, sidled up to me. I kept eating. Then he said, "Can I... food-tool?" His friends were watching intently. Mr. Zik said something to him. The policeman quickly slurped the remaining food off of his tentacle-ends and then held one gleaming one out. I scraped the last bit of food into my mouth and gave him the fork. His friend, mouth ringed with soup-stain, came over to get a look at it. "Fork," I said, pointing at the silver utensil. "Fork?" he said. I confirmed. He said "Gheithih fork, eoituihvv slork!" to his friend and Mr. Zik laughed, too. "It sounds like a word in Octavian," Mr. Zik said. I nodded. The policeman feinted at his friend with the fork and his friend jumped back. I waited for their fun to be exhausted, wondering if I'd ever get it back. How much would it cost to get a new one sent here? Now he was using it to pretend to eat from an empty plate, though it seemed to be more to get the feel of it rather than mock me. I belched quietly, realizing I had hardly tasted my dinner in my rush but that one of the vegetables had left a pleasant aftertaste. Mr. Zik finished his food and put his plate to one side. They saw that as a sign and handed the moist fork back to me. I took it with the tips of my fingers, which would have been rude if they had understood it as a slight. "Good-bye," I said. The one who had first approached me stuttered out a good-bye, much to the amusement of his friends. *** The saucer's acoustics seemed to be designed to amplify the noise-sound Mr. Zik made. I looked back out at the countryside and tried to reconstitute my shattered daydream. Scenery of this sort was new to me: the grey hills of coral rock sparsely dotted by pink and green bushes were a sharp contrast to stimulus-rich Earth. Every half an hour or so we'd pass through a town, a welcome rush of people and buildings, and I'd scour them for a bizarre storefront or a mysterious activity that would keep my mind busy until the next town. Because the space between each town was so long and empty, the trip reminded me more of space travel rather than any trip I'd taken on Earth. We were headed for the surface. Mr. Zik and his friend Mr. Oool had promised something "very interesting" and "wonderful" there. Mr. Oool, who we had met up with last night, was having no trouble sleeping despite the occasional bump and noise-sound. What I had mistook as a bandanna on the vidphone was actually traditional Octavian garb - the multicoloured scarf went around the neck and also entwined itself around all eight tentacles. Often Mr. Oool would chew on it thoughtfully, which I suspected wasn't traditional. We passed over a whole row of the green bushes, and their vines stretched out to us in our wake, wiggled and floated back down to the ground. Small round forms that had been scared out by the sudden animation went back under the bushes. What were they? I was about to ask Mr. Zik about them when I was struck with the regularity and the abundance of the bushes. "Are these... farms?" I asked him, incredulous. He nodded. "Octavia makes all its food on Octavia." I almost said what I was thinking - too bad - when I realized there wasn't any embarrassment in his admission. How outrageously inefficient! I thought to myself. "That's why... no coffee," said Mr. Zik with a smile. "Sorry." "No, don't apologize..." I said, thinking to myself: The only reason we have it is because people like Mom keep the Neb slave planets producing it... Mr. Oool came awake with a hacking cough. "Hello," he said. "Good morning," Mr. Zik and I said in tandem, and then we all laughed. "Are we to the destination?" Mr. Oool said. We had been travelling for two hours already - on Earth, we could have done a world tour. It was a real conceptual puzzle: Octavia was half the size of Earth, and yet felt twice as big due to the transport systems and the low population density. "We are very close. You are like the child, I think," said Mr. Zik to Mr. Oool. "Always ask, to the destination? To the destination?" Mr. Oool had a laugh twice as big as his body merited. "Ftehui iruet faeiu?" he said in a whiny voice, poking Mr. Zik in the neck. "Ftehui iruet faeiu?" "Are we there yet?" I guess-translated, and Mr. Zik confirmed it. Making an impressed noise, Mr. Oool asked me if I spoke Octavian. I laughed and shook my head. "You have a translator?" he asked. My good humour shrank under this cold reality. "No," I said, watching Zik from the corner of my eye. He didn't react for a second, then he did. "At home? You have?" he said, looking at me directly for the first time this trip. "No," I said, looking out at the town we were bombing through. No one spoke. Mr. Oool took his scarf out of his mouth. "So, you learn Octavian. No problem." "Yes," I said, foolishly grateful. "Yes." Mr. Zik's face was expressionless. A few seconds later he made the nostril sound, and my heart jumped because I thought he was going to say something. A few minutes later he parked and we got out. It was exceptionally bright and humid at this elevation, and there were quite a few people milling about. Mr. Oool immediately went to buy us bladders of iced Zazzimurg tea at a concession stand, and then we went through the ornate gates. "The Line," pronounced Mr. Oool, pointing up at the lettering on the gates. It was only then that I noticed the sky. When you look up on Octavia, you usually see an indistinct grey-blue haze, with no discernible horizon. But suddenly, the horizon was there, a few feet from the top of the gates. "Wow!" I said, starting to point but then, feeling dumb, let my finger drop. It was just the Line, after all. We walked a bit more into the park and came across a titanic statue of an Octavian in bleached coral rock, some of its tentacles unfurled to the ground and some of them lifted to where the water met air. Where breathable water met unbreathable air. It made me dizzy to think about it. Mr. Oool and Mr. Zik simply began loping up the nearest tentacle, and I followed them. "When you say 'Don't mention it' what does it mean?" asked Mr. Oool, his eyes bright, handing me a bladder of iced tea. "What?" I asked, looking away from the kids playing on the uplifted tentacles to meet his eyes. "'Thank you.' 'Don't mention it.' You know?" I looked at Mr. Zik for guidance but he was in his own world, sucking at the corner of his bladder. "Oh," I said. "It's like, 'You're welcome.'" "Same-same?" he said, his blue-black eyes fixing on me. "No difference?" Well, there are certain nuances and connotations - I thought, and stopped myself. "Uh... well, no, there is a small difference." He waited. A kid hanging on to his father's back yelled something at me when they went by on their way down. "'Don't mention it' means that it is a very small thing, too small to say thank-you for," I said, warming up a little. "It is more polite." "I understand," said Mr. Oool, and he looked like he did. "That's an excellent question," I said, meaning it. Mr. Oool laughed and slapped Mr. Zik, repeating the word "excellent." Mr. Zik responded with something that made Mr. Oool explode with mirth. I was glad to see Mr. Zik had a sense of humour, even if I didn't understand it. We crossed onto the second tentacle - this one was a little thinner, only about four people could walk abreast - and I made sure I was near the middle. It made me a bit nervous, even though I knew that a fall from this height wouldn't kill me unless I died from embarrassment. An old Octavian couple passed by and said something that made Mr. Zik look at them sharply. "What did they say?" I asked. "To know the time," he said. I glanced back, caught them staring at me. Now that we were close, I had trouble taking my eyes away from the Line. It was a giant wavy mirror that stretched over the entire world. I could see, distorted but distinct, the three of us walking together - or rather, the smooth slide of the two of them beside my jerky bipedaling. We got to the tip of the tentacle. The Line was perhaps four inches above my head, a reflection of my face etched in silver. It looked faintly absurd, my average flattened features on such a gorgeous canvas, but I couldn't look away. My neck muscles were beginning to complain about the constant tilt, so I looked around at the other three tentacles that were raised up to The Line. All had kids on them who pushed their tentacles into the Line's surface. Their parents, having done the same as children, watched on passively, indulgently. The surface gave, stretched astonishingly, but didn't tear. One stone tentacle was so close to the Line that the children mashed their faces against it, their soft heads twinned and intent. I wondered how my more solid skull would fare. I reached out my hand and pushed the metallic rubber, gently at first, and then pushing all the way to the wrist. The surface enveloped it, warm, yielding, and when I stopped pushing it ejected my fist. I looked over at the stone tentacle closer to the Line and wondered what would happen if I stood up there. Would it stretch to accommodate my whole body to the waist? Would I be able to see the sun, the surface - nothing but water? Or would the Line press against my eyeballs and blind them? "Is it bloring to you?" said Mr. Oool. "Too bloring, I think," he said to Mr. Zik. "No, it's not boring, it's very interesting," I said, in a daze. What would happen if I broke through? Found myself on the other side? Could I get back? Would I be stranded? "Is interesting to children. Keeds," Mr. Oool said. I touched the Line again, slid my fingertips across it and watched the lethargic ripples. "On Octavia," I said. "I am a child." four "So the cool thing is that Mr. Zik apologized for them." I had just recounted the story of the fork-curious police. "So he knew how gross it was?" said Matthew from the vidphone. "Yeah. 'His tentacles were not clean.' I didn't expect it. But then, Mr. Zik's a rare gem. No evil drunk like the guy you have for a co-teacher." "He's not evil. He's just real irritating. He's kind of sweet. And he really wants me to like him." I went to sit down on the couch - way down, since most Octavian furniture was close to the ground. Matthew looked around the room, or as much as he could from the vidphone. "So as you see," I said, sweeping my arm across my boxes, "I haven't had enough time to unpack any boxes. We left on our fantastic voyage twenty minutes after they arrived, and got back..." I checked my watch, "forty minutes ago." "That's all I've had energy for," said Matthew. "Unpacking. I haven't even seen the town yet. Well, a little at night." "Oh - I almost forgot," I said. "How have you found the whole see-through-walls thing?" "Not too bad. I had kind of psyched myself up for it. They actually stare a lot less than you'd think - when it's part of the culture to be so open, people really respect privacy in a strange way." "Huh. So you don't feel like you're in a zoo?" Matthew adjusted the pillow he was sitting on. "Not really. Because I can look at any Squidollian in their home, too. And they really only stare when I'm on the toilet or eating. Especially eating, which they've got an endless fascination for." "So have you got a normal toilet?" Matthew arched his eyebrows. "Yes, I got an Earth-style toilet. It's very abnormal for Squidollia -" "Yeah yeah whatever," I said, embarrassed at my faux pas. "We'll see how you talk if you gotta crap in one of them sideways johns." Matthew looked pained. "Already have. We were in the goddamned bar till seven in the fuckin' morning!" "Drinking the whole time?!" "Yeah." "Both nights?" "No. I begged off at three last night, after learning the joys of ralphing into a sideways toilet. Through liquid atmosphere." I laughed. "Nice!" "I don't find it a big deal at all. The liquid air thing. I'm used to it already." Matthew ran his hand through the atmosphere quickly and left a trail. "Same here," I said. "So tell me about this trip you went on," Matthew said. "Naw," I said. "It'll take too long. I'll tell you when we get together. I'm... still kind of absorbing it all now." Matthew yawned. "OK. Man, I can't believe I'm yawning. I got up four hours ago." "You're screwed. Don't you have to work tomorrow?" Matthew smiled. "Nope. Triumph Over the Hurtful Days." "What?" "It's a school holiday to commemorate the long Squidollian struggle for freedom." I rolled my eyes at his pious tone. "I feel very strongly about it, especially since it means I get to sleep in -" "Bastard!" I looked at my watch. "No wonder you're so damn chatty. I have to get my work clothes ready for tomorrow. They're probably all wrinkly." "All right," Matthew said. "I'll get in touch with the other guys and we'll meet soon." "See ya." Matthew nodded and the screen winked out. I started pulling boxes open, looking for my clothes. *** I was tricked out in a suit and tie, my hair slick from the shower. I looked at myself in the mirror. I tried to convince myself I looked like a Venusian gangster, but I didn't buy it. Checked the time. Still ten minutes until Mr. Zik was supposed to arrive. I would have liked to leave right away, to be swept along with the constant demands and distractions that come with the first day of anything new. Instead I found myself getting reflective in front of my reflection. My genetically bestowed square jaw and heavy eyebrows gave me an authority I despised. My broad shoulders made me look good in a suit, and I hated it. It wasn't the first time I had donned the uniform of the ruling class - but it was the first time I had done it voluntarily. I knew it would drive Mom crazy if she knew. She had made some fairly big concessions in an effort to keep me on Earth. She even went offline while she discussed it with me. I was used to talking to her as she scanned the net retinally, watching the light flicker in her eyes and the rapid blinking as I talked about the political demonstration I went to or the band I saw the night before. She would frown and her voice would sharpen if I mentioned anything that may have threatened my profile graph - she knew nothing about my pug scraps, until the end - but usually she would respond with a vaguely positive murmur. "Samuel," she said, a few days before I left. I was trying to get a sandwich together in the kitchen before I met up with Skaggs in Paris, so my head was in the fridge. I could tell it was serious, though, from the tone of her voice. "I'd like to make you a final counteroffer." Her arms were folded, and that's when I noticed she was offline. The last counteroffer, through her assistant, had also warned me that it was the final one but I didn't bother pointing that out. I did try, you know. "OK, let's hear it," I said as I cut the bun open in my hand. "Use the cutting board for that, hon," she said, distractedly. "There's an entry level position in the media conglom. Low stress. No physical presence needed. Fifty hours a week, but most of that just on call." "No suit or anything, huh?" I said, chomping into the bun, holding my hand under it to catch the crumbs. "Just for the prelims." I scowled a bit, pretended that really disturbed me. Mom rolled her eyes. "I don't think so. Thanks anyway." She shook her head. "Open file, recruit: Breen, Samuel." Light danced across her eyes as she accessed my file, adding to the angry sparks there. "Mark it closed. Erase file." I smiled. That was dramatic, since she could have done it by blinking rather than voice. "How are you doing with the new school crop?" I said pleasantly. "Better than ever," she snapped, still online. "Who in their right minds would turn down a conglom job?" "This Urasan spread is just delicious," I said, my mouth half-full. "And you know that... offworld job doesn't qualify you for any of the trust fund-" "Oh, I know. Why don't you do something with it?" "I can't invest frozen money, Samuel. The market is so good right now. There would be four or five investments that would be just perfect." The look on her face was frustrated misery. It was a look that wouldn't have been out of place when Jane left, or Grandpa died, but it hadn't been there in either of these cases. I decided to cut to the chase. "You know I don't want it," I snapped. "You don't want to be out of debt?" "I don't want money that was made from planetary renovations. The slave planets -" "Oh, stop that - that neo-abolitionist nonsense was fine for your university days, but they're over now." I had finished my sandwich and walked out, saving my rage for the scrap that night. In front of the mirror, waiting for Mr. Zik, I wondered how much the Urasan spread cost on Octavia. Or if the green delicacy was even available. And if my mom would ever get worked up about anything other than a missed business opportunity. I saw Mr. Zik's saucer pull up, and I went out to meet him. "You look very handsome," he said, his tentacles rippling with pleasure. "Thanks," I said. *** I nodded and smiled, trying not to wince every time the old guy looked at me. His eyes were traced with red and white cracks. He said something, and I was sure he was asking about my translator. "Supervisor Lok would like you to be very welcome," translated Mr. Zik. Supervisor Lok was sipping his tea, unfortunately opening his mouth to do so. I thanked him in Octavian. He nodded, looking out the roof. There was a dome window that looked quite expensive. I looked up at it again. We sat in silence for a few minutes. I glanced over at Mr. Zik, who was incredibly nervous. He kept smoothing his headcrest down, and glancing between the two of us. I felt a little sorry for him, and tried to answer the ugly little man's questions properly. I sipped at the tea. It was woody with an unpleasant sweetness. The office of the supervisor was plushly furnished, and didn't look like a lot of work got done in it. I looked over at the supervisor, who was calmly drinking his tea, and felt a surge of dislike for him for the anxiety he caused Mr. Zik. He wasn't doing anything to encourage it, from what I could see, but neither did he try to lessen it. The supervisor said something else, holding forth for a few sentences, a tentacle poised in the air. "He said that you are an important part in Octavia's... desire to become more galactic," Mr. Zik told me. I nodded, and waited for the rest. Nothing. Was he a redundant blowhard, or was Mr. Zik choosing what to tell me? Not that I necessarily wanted the long version - I had heard the party line already. To remain/become competitive, planets had to learn the tongue of trade: English. Only a few could afford the expensive English-translators, and most Earthlings were contemptuous of non-English speakers anyway, so the solution most planets gravitated towards was a.... blah blah blah. Allum Allum Allum. Mr. Zik was staring at me, his tentacles bunching and unbunching. For his sake I delivered the appropriate response. "Teaching English to your citizens will give your planet a commercial advantage. It's a good investment." Mr. Zik translated, making it two or three sentences long. Mr. Lok stood, offering a withered tentacle to me to shake. I did. He said something to me. "You are a very handsomebloy, he said." I smiled at Mr. Lok, who fixed those awful eyes on me, and tried to reciprocate. Honestly. "Your... office is very comfortable." "Good-bye," Mr. Lok said. After we left, Mr. Zik said, "I didn't tell him what you said ablout the office." "That's OK," I said, smiling at a person with files that we were passing. "It was pretty meaningless, anyway." Mr. Zik looked thoughtful. "It was unimportant." "Oh, I see," he said. "Ssss-sss-ss." We walked out of the school board building and I almost asked him why he'd been nervous, but it felt like I would be implying that he was stupid or cowardly for being so. So we got into his saucer in silence. Soon the gates of the school came into sight. My stomach leapt, and I was surprised by my own nervousness. The building was white, with glints of windows. "Is that it?" I asked. Mr. Zik nodded. We parked and passed through the gates. There were children around the entrance who moved aside to let us through. They had brooms and bags. "Zik oewiru, eoit fljnt fadntr he?" one called. "Kllletnroj fldaj rnui Sam Breen, English oewiru," Mr. Zik said brusquely. I looked back at them and smiled. That started everyone talking at once. "Hello!" someone said. I looked back and said hello. This prompted a few squeals and a couple of follow-up hellos. I didn't respond, since we were almost out of earshot. One of them said something that made Mr. Zik's head swivel. He didn't respond to it, but to me he said, "They are the blad students. They must clean up the ground." I looked back at the bad students and they looked like they were already talking about something else. Ahead, a few windows went up and curious heads stuck out, their tentacles sticking out over the windowsill. Mr. Zik walked smoothly and calmly through the halls. I followed, feeling clumsy with my two-legged gait. The groups of students twined their front tentacles and bowed to him, and some of them even made this polite greeting to me. He said something that sounded friendly without being chummy. Was this the same Mr. Zik who had been shaking with terror twenty minutes ago? He turned into the staff room and glanced back to make sure I was there. I straightened my tie, yanked on my cuffs, donned a blinding smile, and walked into the room. five Hi Lisa, "Welcome to Plangyo. Are you a criminal?" So yesterday I'm going about my business. Not doing anything out of the ordinary, except I'm taking a little more time than usual to buy my vegetables since they have physical currency here (5 Beeds = 1 Intergalactic Credit, I feel rich!) and I can't read the signs and I've never seen a double-barrelled cucumber... No, I'm not complaining. Just explaining why I was holding up the line. I had to put everything on the counter to pull out a handful of beeds and for some reason people thought that was really funny - Octavians don't often run out of hands, I suppose. I was probably blushing to beat the band (archaic English idiom I'm using to make you feel dumb) and when I did get a handful of their damnable (though admittedly quite lovely) spherical currency out of my pocket two dropped to the ground. The laughter stopped suddenly at this point and I still don't know why. Were they at first amused by my awkwardness, but then shocked and moved to pity at this proof of how extreme my clumsiness was? I handed the correct amount of beeds to the cashier (there was a read-out, luckily) but before I could go crawling for the dropped balls (now rolling away) the female behind me in line picked them up. I put out my hand and smiled, trying like hell to remember Octavian for thank-you. She had them sticking to the suckers on her tentacle. She looked at my hand for a second, and then put them on the counter! She actually swerved around my filthy human hand to do it! I scooped up the two beeds and looked at her, dumb-struck. She had dipped her tentacle into her purse and came out with beeds running along its length, one for each sucker. Then she sort of twined it with the cashier's tentacle for a second and the cashier deposited the money into the cashbox. All I could think was: she wouldn't drop something into my hand, but twining with a stranger was just fine. Then she pushed by me to leave. After I stared a few daggers into her back I checked my aggrometer - surprisingly, a few notches below the red zone. I got my double-barrelled cucumber and turned to leave, and some budding comedian spits out "Hokay-thank-you-come-again" to the merriment of all assembled. This cut me free - I felt the giddy light-headedness of white rage. Balloonhead, as you call it. I swayed there for a second, looked at my double-barrelled cucumber and reminded myself of a few things: Octavian atmosphere made a fastball punch into a lob. Octavian boneless physiology made a lob punch rather ineffective. Which, as you know, is one of the reasons I chose Octavia in the first place. By this time, the people in the store had gone about their business - having tired of staring at the freak clutching the cuke - and my aggrometer needle had stopped rising and started sinking. And that was just the beginning. So a few steps from the store this cop comes up to me and says, or rather gestures, that I should come with him. I had this sudden paranoid flash that I had broken a law by dropping a beed, like how it was illegal on some planets to desecrate the flag, and that I had been reported. Of course I hadn't thought to even register with the Earth consulate, even though I had had plenty of time. (And no, I still haven't.) So we get to this little police booth - the rather sinister crest above the door involves several snaky looking creatures - and go inside. There's a fat Octavian inside there, looking mighty pleased with himself. That's when he welcomes me and asks me about being a criminal. Before I can say anything he busts out laughing, a few bubbles even coming from his nostrils. "Joke, that I thought of!" "How proud you must be!" is what came to mind, but dry wit doesn't suit this atmosphere. Doesn't suit it at all. Instead I said, "That is a very funny joke," in a tone that sarcasm doesn't begin to describe. Nauseatingly, this puffed him up even more, and he immediately said something in Octavian (except for "criminal" "joke" "very funny") to the guy who had brought me in. I watched the little guy's face and his nervous smile and noticed he only had one little snake pin on his collar to fat-boy's five. "Und's English, very good!" the little guy said, more to his beaming boss who didn't even refute it - quite unusual, most Octavians I'd met were very modest. I gathered that I had been arrested to give Und an English lesson. "What are the snakes for?" I asked, determined to get something out of this. He looked at me, his mouth slightly agape. "Snakesfor?" he repeated, the crest above his eyes furrowing. The little guy said something quickly in Octavian and my host dismissed him with an undulate of his tentacle. I pointed to the silver pin on his collar once the underling had left. "Snake," I simplified. "Why?" "Ah," he started. "Me, Mr. Und." He counted the pins. "One two three four five. Five very good! He, Mr. Plon. One. One not good." He laughed. Yeah yeah, I thought. Rank-proud fuck. "No, I mean..." I pointed to the snakes on the police crest on his chest. He laughed again. "I see! I see!" His eyes narrowed with the effort. "Before," he finally said, waving a tentacle over his shoulder. "Snakesfor... help Octavia." I couldn't be bothered pressing for details. "I see," I said, forcing a satisfied smile. Then I stuck out my hand and said "Glad to meet you. Good-bye." It was pretty much as easy as that, although he made me promise we would go drink ujos, the local poison. When I walked outta there I instantly felt better - I wasn't gonna have to call up Mr. Zik to get me out of jail, at least, and I knew it would make a good story for you. Anyway, Plangyo - ah Plangyo. Known primarily for having the best cucumbers (not the double-barrelled one I was buying, but a grey-skinned sister) and very little else. Unless you count me, the only resident offworlder, the right to whom they won in a lottery. They actually won the right for three years of teachers, of which I am the second - Plangyo's the testing ground for the Octavian English program, which has progressed to the point where every kid is capable of yelling hello. I had been led to believe that the planet was had been pretty much levelled during the I.G.W. but it turns out that the west side of the planet and the major cities got the brunt of it. Farm towns like these still have a lot of the traditional coral houses, although Mr. Zik says that most people prefer the rounded apartment blocks. Evidently, one of my predecessors complained about the rounded floors - the Octavian's suckered tentacles allow them to use a bit of the wall space, as far as gravity will allow - and so I live in the only "flat" building in town. Pretty boring, although it's about three times the size of your place. Sorry, downtown girl, had to rub that in - no more crouch showers for Sammy-boy! I'd kill to live in one of the traditional ones. Mushroom shaped, beautifully coloured, and growing right into the ground. Mr. Zik says that poor people live there, because anyone who's anyone wants to live in the modern and convenient apartment buildings. Phooey. There's so much space here, it's unbelievable. It takes me a solid fifteen minutes to walk from my apartment to the school, and there's a total of seven houses and one small apartment block on the way. Most of the houses are on huge plots of land, not because they're shamelessly rich but because they grow food there. It's wonderful, getting to walk so much - there's something about walking that lets me think, just like my jetpack flights did on Earth. Must be the movement. Actually, I think I'll go for a walk right now. Night isn't too bad for walking around, because it never really gets pitch black. The mushroom houses look amazing against the deep purple twilight. Seeya, Sam *** "It is Octavian cookie," said one of the teachers, proffering a bowl of chunky green diamonds. I took one. "You are handsomebloy," she said. "Thank you," I said. I put away my pad. I had pretty much been writing letters all morning - after I was formally introduced, I was shown to my desk and left alone. Not ignored, in fact people watched me constantly and smiled when I caught them, but no one had talked to me until now. "What do you teach?" I asked slowly, biting into the cracker. It was very salty, and I had been expecting sweet, so I had to contain a wince. "Me? I teach... science. Science teacher." She smiled. "Yes." She said something to the teacher sitting beside me that got a laugh. "Your English is very good," I said. I took another cracker. They weren't bad now that I knew what to expect. "Sank you," she said. "You are very different from Jessica." "Who?" I said, thinking even as I did so that the name rung a bell. "Jessica. She was the last teacher here." Ah. I had seen the name on the class schedule across the room. I looked back at it, all written in Octavian except for the past teacher's name spotting it here and there. I had felt a silly twinge of hurt pride that my name hadn't been put up in its place. "She half-human. You all human," the science teacher said. "You bletter teacher, I sink." I smiled, even though it was bullshit. There were plenty of people of mixed species at the orientation and they spoke English as well as me. "Jessica very good friend me." "Where did Jessica live?" "Same apartment." "The whole time?" The science teacher furrowed her brow. She had the sheen of oil on her tentacles that older Octavian women wore, and her features were made-up in Earthling style. (Octavian faces being already quite humanoid, the make-up mostly consisted of darkening the hairless ridges above the eyes and shading the cheeks so as to de-emphasize the slightly different angle of the cheekbones.) "Did Jessica complain about the apartment?" The science teacher shook her head and shrugged. "I don't... sink I understand." Mr. Zik glided into the staffroom, a book curled in one tentacle and a mug in the other. "Time to go," he said, taking a sip. "Ready?" I nodded, but what I was thinking was: There's no steam coming from that mug. I won't be able to stare at the steam curling from my coffee cup for a year. I had already stood up and put on my jacket on automatically when the science teacher's awkward stance yanked me out of my odd funk. "It's... very nice to meet you," I said, smiling and waving perhaps too enthusiastically. But I would have felt like a jerk underdoing it, since she was the only person who went out of her way to be nice. Her face lit up and she waved a loose wave. As we left the room for my first class, I scanned the other teachers. Instead of the intense surveillance I expected - some part of me expected to be caught before I could impersonate a teacher - they were all going about their business. Getting ready for classes themselves, writing stuff down, and in one oldster's case, drifting off to sleep. I imitated Mr. Zik's regal bearing as nearly as I could, staying close in hope that his teacherial aura would encompass me as well. Out in the hallway, a cluster of girls turned to us like sunflowers. One of them, tall, wore a bow on her head. When we turned the corner to the stairs she called out "Hello!" and her comrades giggled and hooted. I looked back and waved. She buried her face in her tentacles and the giggling intensified. "You are very plopular, wow," said Mr. Zik with a smile. On the ramp to the second floor there were boys playing with a yellow ball that disappeared when they saw us. Mr. Zik said something mild to them and they scattered, flowing down the ramp. "The science teacher is very nice," I said. Mr. Zik nodded. "Yes. Her husband is a news-teller." "Oh." "Her name is Mrs. Pling." He slid open the door with a flick of his tentacle. Pling, Pling, Pling I repeated to myself as the class saw me and started to froth over like a test beaker. Luckily, Mr. Zik was a stabilising agent. "Good morning," he said to the students, a few of which were still running about the room to their desks. One student was cleaning the board, an expectant smile on his face. I heard someone gasp, "Handsomebloy! Oh!" I smiled and smoothed out my tie. Mr. Zik said something in Octavian. The class laughed. One girl asked Mr. Zik something, plucking at him. "Ask him," he said with a smile, pointing at me. She buried her head in a tangle of tentacles and made an embarrassed-alarmed sound: waah! The boy cleaning the board handed the brush back to me with four twined tentacles, his eyes wide and grin infectious. "Thank you," I said, relieved that I didn't have to mumble through the Octavian translation - in fact, this being English class, I shouldn't speak Octavian. "This is Sam Breen. He is from Earth. He will blee your teacher." He nodded to me. It seemed to me like he had already used all my best material. What else could I say in simple, easy sentences? What the fuck was I thinking? Teaching? Me? "Hi!" I said, smiling as broadly as human physiognomy would allow. "Hello!" said forty unreasonably excited children. If I had my goddamned translator I... I what? What would I say to them, even with a translator? It would be a good prop, I suppose, something official to fiddle with... Write something on the board drifted up to my consciousness, perhaps from orientation. I took off my blazer to buy some time, and the female part of the class made a siren sound like a line graph, rising and falling, against a solid giggle background. A little alarmed by this, but completely without a response, I turned to the board. As I picked up a black marker and wrote my name, I tried to figure out why taking off my blazer had that kind of effect. Octavians didn't wear pants, just a loose multi-armed shirt to cover their chests, so it was kind of hard to know. I turned to face them and the class laughed at me. I looked at Mr. Zik, and he was poking at buttons on the side of the board. He nodded to the board, which had changed my handwriting into proper characters - proper Octavian characters, the ones that were closest to the English letters. Then they squirmed back to what I had originally. "Sorry," said Mr. Zik. "It is automatic." I looked back at the class. "My name is Sam Breen," I said. "Repeat. Sam," "Tham!" they repeated enthusiastically. I guess I sounded like a teacher... "Breen." "Bleen." Hmm. I looked at Mr. Zik, but he was gazing benignly out at the students. "Sssssss," I hissed, failing to keep a faint smile from my lips. Amidst giggles, they repeated. "Sssssssam." "Sssssssam." All right! I gave them the thumbs-up. "Brrrrrrr," I said. They repeated, but it came out wrong. "Brrrr," I repeated, this time wrapping my arms around myself and shivering. They repeated, again poorly, some of them also miming shivering. I realized that I had no idea if Octavians shivered with the cold. "Breen," I said. "Bleen," they said. Mr. Zik looked at me. "It's very hard." I nodded and gave up. I turned to the board and started to draw a circle. "O," someone called out, just as I started to colour it in. When he realized his mistake he ducked down in his chair, and the boy next to him whacked him with a tentacle. If I can't think of anything else, they're obviously up for a game of Identify the Letter. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a map on another wall. "Ah," I said, leaving my crappy drawing and striding fake-confidently over to the galactic map. I pointed to a planet at random. I looked out at their rapt, spellbound faces and was temporarily speechless. God, it was scary! Was I that fascinating? "Is this Earth?" I asked. "No," "No!" "Nooo," and "NO!" pelted back at me. "Right. This is Earth," I said, pointing to Mars. I watched them expectantly. Eventually, "No!s" started coming. Mr. Zik hiss-laughed. "You are lying." He had taken a seat at the teacher's desk, and I was glad he was relaxed. "Psycho!" someone called out. Choking back a laugh at this weird bit of vocabulary, I asked "Where is Earth?" As I said it I realized that Earthlings at the same age wouldn't have had a spit-on-the-sun's-chance of identifying Octavia. I chose the first tentacle that shot up and a fat kid marched up to the map and poked my home planet, then marched away. "Very good!" I said, and the kid raised a few tentacles in victory before he thumped back in his seat. I traced the route between Earth and Octavia, a little amazed at the distance myself. "It was a long trip. A long trip," I said, emphasizing with my outstretched arms. The kids were looking at each other. Mr. Zik translated, also stretching his limbs. I looked at him and nodded wisely, as if I understood exactly what he said, and when he said something that made the class laugh I smiled indulgently. "How did I get to Octavia?" They looked at each other. Mr. Zik stayed silent this time. Oh dear. I repeated myself. "Rast weeka," one boy called out. Was he swearing at me? I wondered. "Yesterday," a girl at the front shyly said. Oh. "Not when, how," I clarified. I wrote both words on the board, for no good reason, then crossed out when. "How? How did I get to Octavia." No response. I mimed driving a floater. "Did I drive from Earth to Octavia?" I goose-stepped down the aisle of desks and back to the front. "Did I walk from Earth?" They laughed, but didn't answer. Fuck. What was I doing up here? I started imagining returning earlier-than-expected to Earth, Mom's smug smile waiting for me... "Rocketshipuh," a thin boy at the front said. "Yes!" I said, pointing at him. I ran to the map. "I took a rocketship from Earth to Octavia." I made the sound of a rocket as I traced the route. The class laughed, some imitating the sound. I held up the marker. "Draw a rocketship," I challenged. The kid next to the thin boy pushed and whispered at him, and the thin kid got up slowly, watching me as if he was cornered prey. He took the pen with twined tentacles and wrote on the board: R o C k- "Nonono," I said, shaking my head. Some wag in the back repeated it. The thin boy flicked terrified eyes on me. I smiled and took the marker back. He got back to his desk as quickly as possible, muttering something to the laughing boy beside him before burying his head. "Draw a rocketship. Draw." I shot a look over at Mr. Zik, who was scratching his ear. "They know the word 'draw,' right?" I asked, trying not to stare as the tip of his tentacle seemed to slide unnaturally deep into his ear canal. He nodded, looking unconcerned. "Draw a rocketship," he repeated. "Ah!" a girl exclaimed, jumping up and then seeming to regret it. I held out the pen and tried to make my face more encouraging than desperate. I was tempted to pretend she was right, regardless of what she did - to give up trying to communicate would have been embarrassing for everyone - but I was worried about how Mr. Zik would react. When she started to confidently sketch the upright bullet, complete with landing fins and tiny portals, I slowly exhaled. She looked back at me and I nodded her on. When she finished I gave her the thumbs-up sign. "Very, very good." There was a short series of popping sounds coming from somewhere but I decided to ignore them. She rushed back to her desk, her face a beacon. I looked at the drawing and drew a stick figure sticking improbably out of a window. I pointed to it and said, "Sam Breen," then pointed to me to drive the point homer than home. Laughter. I scribbled beneath the fuselage and made the taking-off sound. More laughter. I minimized my smirk, mostly brought on by how lame I was, but found myself genuinely fed by the laughter. Who needed sophisticated humour when you had childish shenanigans? I started to erase the board, thinking frantically for something else to do. The few things they taught us about actual teaching had all but vanished from my memory. I was running out of things to erase... I could hear Mr. Zik talking to a student with the part of my brain that wasn't scrambling. "Sam? She has a question." I turned around and put a friendly smile on my face. The same girl who had drawn the rocketship stood up. "How... old are... you?" "I'm 23 years old." There was a murmur of translation, so I wrote the number on the board for good measure. The class gave that funny up-and-down 'wooo' of approval. I looked at Mr. Zik, a little confused at it. "You're young," he said. "That's good. Young teacher." Another boy put up his tentacle. I nodded to him, but he was really looking to Mr. Zik. He stood up and grunted out, "Do you... like Octavia." "Yes," I said enthusiastically. "Octavia is beautiful." I remembered the Octavian for beautiful and said it with gusto. They were impressed, and so was Mr. Zik. "Oh very good," someone called out. A couple of girls stopped giggling long enough to beg Mr. Zik to ask me something. He refused. They looked at me and went back to beg Mr. Zik some more. He was laughingly adamant. Finally they turned their fearful eyes back on me and one of them blurted out: "Girlfriend?" Through the sudden deafening noise, I attempted to clarify with Mr. Zik: "Do I have a girlfriend?" He nodded, calling out something that reduced the noise level. "Uh, no," I said to the girls, and they were happy with this answer. Indeed, all the girls seemed to like this answer. What the hell were they planning for me? Mr. Zik fielded a question in Octavian and translated it. "They want to know if you would have an Octavian girlfriend." Uh-oh. Loaded question. "Um... I don't know," I said, choosing the safest and (coincidentally) the most honest answer. I doubted it, given the problems I had communicating. He translated for them. I braced myself for the next question, which I was worried would be if I liked younger women. Since I doubted he'd be asking me that, I relaxed a little when the fat boy's hand went up. I shouldn't have, though. Mr. Zik gave him the nod. He stood up and seemed to rally his energy, then blurted it out. "Can-you... sing-a-song?" I laughed at first, and then realized how excited everyone was getting. "Sing-song! Superstar!" Forcing a smile to climb onto my face, I checked the clock. Mercy, I begged, please... No mercy. There were ten minutes left at least. I looked at Mr. Zik, who had a look of pleased anticipation. "They want you to sing a little song," he said. "Uh huh, yeah I know." I licked my lips. Thought fast. Thought mean. "Tell them," I said, "That I will sing a song... after he does." I pointed at the little bastard who had asked me. After listening to Mr. Zik, he looked at me and pointed his tentacle at his chest, as if to verify. "Yes, you," I nodded with a mild smile, feeling triumphant and guilty at the same - the kid was smiling. The little - He got to the front, a little shy, but still with that plump grin. "English?" he asked me. "Whatever, English or Octavian," I said, still stunned. He listened to his classmates suggest songs, and he shook his head a couple of times and then decided on one. He put two tentacles together and pulled them apart, making a popping sound, and the class did it with him, making a rhythm section. He sang very well. I leaned against the board, watching this kid belt out the pop song or whatever it was with flair and confidence. He even had this little spinning dance move that shot his tentacles out so that I had to move or be hit. The only thing wrong with his performance was that it was too fuckin' short. After the popping applause had stopped (and I had learned that you can't clap in a liquid atmosphere) they looked at me expectantly. "Teacher sing-song!" I looked at Mr. Zik, then at the clock, then at their shining happy dreadful faces. I had never sung in public. Tough enough to do that. Now my cleverness had made it even worse. Now I had to follow a killer act. And I didn't know any spinning dance moves. Well, at least in this atmosphere they won't know I'm sweating. six I bellowed for the waitress. Hugh looked at me, his face shock-smashed. I looked mildly back, shrugged, savoured his outrage. I recognized the vintage - it was the same I had produced when I was new. The waitress arrived and I ordered more beer and snacks for us in Octavian. She understood what I was saying right off, which was gratifying. "Fuck, Mr. Fluent over here," said Matthew. "It's just restaurant-Octavian," I said. "But I've been picking it up." "Did you have to yell like that?" said Hugh, still scandalized. "It's what you do here," said Matthew. "Same on Squidollia." I continued. "You can't just catch their eye. It's hard at first - but I actually kind of like it now. I feel like I'm getting away with being rude." One of the other tables bellowed for more. I gave Hugh a "see?" look. He still looked disgruntled. We had just got there. Matthew had been there for an hour already, came here straight from the rocketship - he was into his fourth or fifth beer and he was more intent on checking out the clientele than watching how pissed off Hugh was. I had started it, but then he just made it worse. "S'pose the Unarmoured have a subtler way of doing it," Matthew said distractedly. Hugh finished his beer in a quick draught. "I wouldn't know," he murmured. "Whattaya mean," I said. "They must have taken you out?" "Yes," he said, rolling his glass back and forward between his palm. "But I'm not with the Unarmoured. I'm with the Armoured." "What?!" Matthew and I sputtered. Oh man, I thought. Hugh had been dying to meet the Unarmoured. What a blow. "They tested me before I entered the atmosphere. Turned out, by their estimation, that I was better suited for armour than stripping." "But you weren't actually going to - like, get stripped, were you?" Matthew said, a rare look of worry on his face. "It's irreversible, isn't it?" "No, I wasn't planning to... but who knows?" Hugh lifted a slight hand in the air and let it drop. We sat and drank in silence to ponder this massive fuck-up in our minds. How crazy was that - everyone knows lunarians were like, Earth's Unarmoured. And Hugh was almost uncannily so. A table of Octavians laughed inappropriately across the room. There were maybe four sets of couples there, some of which were actually touching each other. The big city certainly was different than Plangyo! "Where is the big guy, anyway?" said Matthew, his eyes following a female Octavian's admittedly hypnotizing trip to the bar. My fascination ended when she opened her heavily made-up mouth and brayed at the bartender, but Matthew's didn't. "Might not be so big, now," I said, thinking about how the roboman's body and head had parted ways at the spaceport. Matthew's head swivelled. "Whattaya mean?" I shrugged slyly. The order arrived and I dug into the twisty snacks. "Man, I love these things," I said, ignoring Matthew. "They're hot!" "Seriously -" Matthew started. I noticed a smile on Hugh, and he noticed me noticing. "9/3's mounted his head on a small mobile unit with treads," Hugh said, spoiling my fun. "You know how the Montavians feel about big folk." "How'd you know?" I asked Hugh. "When I called him to tell him about us meeting. Don't say anything about it. He has no idea how strange -" "That's probably why he's late," Matthew said. "It must take a long time to... roll anywhere." I had an image of him as a tiny tank, buzzing obliviously through a crowd, but I was distracted by someone's hip knocking our table. Hip? I looked back. "9/3!" I blurted. "What the fuck!" On the top of this perfectly normal human body was 9/3's bread box of a head, staring back at us. Hugh opened and closed his mouth. Matthew yelled for another beer. "What's wrong?" 9/3 inquired, taking a seat. I watched as he placed his slightly hairy forearms on the table in an unnervingly natural way. His nails were dirty. "We thought you were a tankbot, that's what's wrong," Matthew said, looking a bit annoyed. "With treads and shit." "Ah. No, that would not have been appropriate for this meeting. It would have been foolish." The beer came and 9/3 made a fist, then used his other hand to pull it out of his arm. It popped like a cork and came clean out of the socket. He set it down on the table and picked up a mug of beer. He held his fistless arm upright and poured the golden liquid into the empty wrist. Hugh laughed. "Marvellous!" I looked at the hand on the table. It was still fisted, and wobbled back and forth a bit because of the uneven surface, and when it wobbled towards me I could see the gleam of metal inside. "Whoops," 9/3 said as his arm cavity foamed over. It slid down his arm to be soaked up by the roll of his plaid shirt, since of course he couldn't slurp it up. I had a weird flash of Hugh leaning over to do so, but of course he didn't. 9/3 clicked the fist back into his hand and wiggled his fingers alive. "I borrowed this body from one of my teaching aides - Theodore." "You're pretty open minded," I said. "It's so... humanoid." "Yes," said 9/3, almost sadly. "My... friends would be shocked and disgusted. But they didn't understand why I was happy to leave Roboworld, either." I picked up a mug of beer and Hugh did the same. I raised it to 9/3. "A toast to the rebels," I said. "Hear hear," Hugh said. "Where's my fuckin' beer?" said Matthew. "You've got a head start on us there, bucko," I said. "Reign it in. I don't want you wreaking havoc on my planet." Matthew looked at me with the floating eyes of the Already Tanked and said, "Gotta take a piss." He left. "So does it absorb it all at once, or does it feed the alcohol slowly into your brain?" I asked 9/3. He held up his arm and showed it to me. "You see those spots there?" he said, pointing to a few small dots. "When they go away, I am ready for another." "Really!" "No." 9/3 said. "Ha ha ha. They're just freckles. Ha ha. Gullible fleshpot." Hugh let out an astonished hoot. "Fuck you, blockhead," I laugh-blustered. "You ain't so tough without your goddamn flame-thrower." "He's still got the laser eyes, remember that," Hugh said. "Oh yeah. I was just joking." Took a sip of my beer. "Spare parts motherfucker." "Ha ha ha. Actually, I cannot power the laser without my body. I am completely helpless. Ha ha ha." I cracked up. Matthew returned, an anticipatory smile on his face. "What?" "He called me a gullible fleshpot!" "What?!" Matthew said. "Yes, and I am completely helpless. Ha ha ha." We cracked up again. That fucking laugh is unbelievable! I looked around the table, amazed that a month ago I had hated Hugh, feared 9/3, and had just met Matthew. I was also amazed by the attention that a noisy table of offworlders got without half trying. A cook, or maybe the manager, was framed in the kitchen door. The couple closest to us moved their chairs slightly to get more table between them and us. No one else at our table seemed aware of it, so it may have been a case of host anxiety. I wondered, would I blind myself to this if I could? "They think I look like Sean Plynn," Matthew was saying. "Can you beat that? Soon as I get into the classroom, it's 'Sean Plynn, You are Sean Plynn.'" We all laughed. "He's not even from Earth!" Hugh shook his head with mock grief. "I'm afraid I don't see the resemblance." "Thank god for that," Matthew spat, "Prettyboy." "And how," I said, clinking glasses with him. The clink was muffled and echoey. "Next time they accuse you of being some lunarian flit you just show 'em some muscles." I whacked my biceps. 9/3 looked down at his own muscles, flexed them. "Muscles are a poor substitute for steel." I snagged a waitress and ordered more beer. Once that was done, I held my hand up to cover my view of 9/3's head. "You know, you look OK like this - like some kind of Neb farmboy - or like this," I moved my hand so I couldn't see the body, only the head, "That's fine too. But together," I whipped my hand away and said slowly, "You-look-like-a-total-freak." 9/3 shrugged, holding those too-human hands aloft. "Why? I do not understand your complaint." I looked around. Matthew was doing the hand trick I had done a moment earlier and Hugh wore a mild smile. "Am I wrong?" I asked. "It's just disturbing, is all," Hugh said. "It's not that much more unusual than a human brain in a robot body, which is the entire population of Roboworld. It's just an extreme example of seeing someone with a hat on who never wears it or vice versa." Hugh looked around. "Frankly, we're all freaks, and I don't think they can tell the difference between us. What I find hard to understand is why the Montavians would want such a large android." "He's an Earthling model," said 9/3. "They use it for English class and... other exercises." Smirks all 'round. When the talk turns to androids, can sexual innuendo be far behind? And would we have it any other way? Oddly enough, it was Matthew who saved us from that particular predicable conversational black hole. "So did you sing?" he asked me, his beer mug not quite hiding a sneaky smile. "Sing?" asked Hugh. I told them the story. "Green Earth Forever?" Matthew hooted. "It was the only one I knew by heart!" "A little controversial," said Hugh. "They didn't understand the words," I scoffed. "You kidding me?" "And there was no chance of them recognizing the tune," Matthew said. "Yeah, I made sure of that." I looked at Matthew. "What'd you sing?" "Sing?!" he made a dismissive sound. "No way. I was ready. When they asked me I said it was against my religion to sing. The kid who asked looked ready to hang himself." "So you knew about the singing?" I sputtered. "Fucker! Why didn't you tell me?" "Ah, I knew you'd do fine," he said with a grin. "Actually, I got a standing ovation," I said proudly. "I think it was the somersault I did in the second verse that won them over." Hugh looked at Matthew. "An experience you've missed out on." The beer arrived and 9/3 popped his fist out on the table. The waitress squealed in amazement. 9/3 spoke to her in Octavian, his Speak-O-Matic built in. She had a plate of fruit as well which I knew we hadn't ordered. She pointed to it and spoke, saying a word that I knew and loved: free. "The fruit is free," 9/3 translated. "It is to thank us for drinking here." "I knew that," I grumbled. "So did you guys bring your translators?" Hugh and Matthew shook their heads. "Too risky. You know how expensive they are out here?" I shook my head, morose. I didn't want to know. "You'll be OK," Hugh said. "You've obviously got a knack for learnin