Angry Young Spaceman (12 page)

They nodded. “It is very difficult but not impossible,” said Mr. Nekk. “Octavian’s can learn English perfectly but humans can not learn Octavian perfectly.”

Well la-dee-da
, I thought somewhat sourly. “Let’s practice the B sound,” I said. “Bad. Repeat after me.”

“Blad,” everyone said.

I noticed something weird. There was a slight movement around their lips. I repeated it again, and watched closely. “Bad.”

“Blad,” they said. When they said it, a few bubbles leaked out of the corner of their mouths. Trying not to stare, I pointed at Mr. Nekk. “Bedpost.”

“Bledploast,” he said, bubbles rising at the B and the P.

“Bust,” I chanced, pointing at Mrs. Ahm.

She licked her lips, her tongue surprisingly tapered. “Bust,” she said, only the tiniest of bubbles escaping.

“Perfect!” I said. I asked her to repeat, and she did, but I admit I did it just so I could stare at her lips a little longer.

I looked at Kung. “Bastard,” I said.

“Blastard,” he said, bubbles the size of eyeballs floating up.

By the end of the two hours, I had avoided as many questions as I’d answered, but they seemed happy.

“You will go to drinky?” said Mr. Kung as we left the school. “My saucer?”

I looked around at the three other teachers. “Will we go to have a drink?” I said, amazed at how stilted my speech had become.

Mr. Nekk said, “Regretfully I cannot. I am old and sick and my blody does not like to drink.”

“How about you?” I said, looking at Mrs. Ahm.

She smiled. “Oh no, I must go home. My husband, I must make dinner.”

“Women, no,” said Mr. Kung.

Oh great
, I thought, but went with him anyway. After a formal good-bye from Mr. Nekk and a cute wave from Mrs. Ahm, we bubbled off out of Plangyo to what Mr. Kung described as a “not nice place.”

When we got out of the saucer, I noticed some girls about my age passing by — and they noticed me. One of them, tall and lovely, called out to me as she floated gracefully by:
you handsomebloy
.

I smiled, stunned, and Mr. Kung said, “University,” he said, oblivious to the girl’s comment, pointing out some nearby buildings. Then he led me away from the beautiful girls to a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant.

It was a traditional building, a small cave of black-and-white coral. There were no chairs, and we sat down in the slight indents in the floor beside a small table. He called out for the waitress and presented me. She reached out and pulled at the fingers on my hands.

We all laughed.

When she went to get our ujos, I said, “Do you know her?”

He nodded vigorously, jowls shaking. “Here I am... famous!” he said.

“A movie star!” I said.

We drank for an hour or two. Once again he brought up the topic of women, with a slyer look than he had had at the school.

“Introduce!” he said.

I was tempted, but uncomfortable with the idea. Somehow I doubted that he would know any women like the ones who had passed by outside the restaurant; and the idea of being indebted or entwined with this man was also unappealing. At one point, he had gestured at the waitress and curled two tentacles in front of his chest — it took me a second to translate it:
nice tits, eh?

I hadn’t really made any firm policy on whether I would be fraternizing with the natives, but I figured it was really unlikely. The chances of finding an Octavian gal who knew English beyond
hello
were pretty low, and living in cucumber town whittled them down even further.

But not, as it turned out, down to nothing.

eight

We floated down the tunnel. The density of the atmosphere this far down was pretty intense, every breath a conscious one.

“You guys OK?” I said.

Matthew gave me the thumbs-up and Hugh nodded.

“Let me know if your lungs fill up with water and you die,” I said.

Laughter. “Your Octavian caves ain’t shit,” Matthew said. “You try some caves on my planet—”

“The coral is incredible,” Hugh noted. “I can’t believe you’re not down here every day.”

I took a look at the coral, with its swirl patterns and its infinite tiny holes. “There’s a saying here about something being so hard to find or rare that it’s like it was hidden away in one of these pores. Mr. Zik told me that.”

“Oh he’s a fount of wisdom that Mr. Zik,” snarled Matthew. “But I’ll bet he doesn’t teach you swear words and drinking songs.”

An old Octavian couple wearing cave-exploring goggles surprised us as they came around a twist in the tunnel. It was pretty narrow so they flipped upside down and climbed on the roof. The man grinned at us and called out a polite greeting, but his partner gave us a guarded look.

“Talking about drinking songs,” I said. “Mr. Kung and I got too drunken last week.” I explained who he was. “He ended up on my back, hugging me, singing ‘Intergalactic Harmony’ — well, every other line of the song, anyway, filling in sometimes in Octavian.” The tunnel narrowed and I worried that it would only be Octavian-sized.

“That sounds nice,” said Hugh. I guessed contact with the Armoured wasn’t often physical.

“It
was
kind of... touching in an absurd way. But he let it slip that he had a mistress, which kind of disturbed me. ‘I am very sorry but I have two wives.’ That he would cheat on his wife was one thing, but that he would pretend to be sorry about something he was actually bragging about —”

“Fuck, I’d love to have an affair,” Matthew said.

“Aw, man...” I said.

Hugh looked at me curiously.

“Well, I mean, his girlfriend’s at home being faithful,” I said.

“Yeah, but she’s not going to know anything,” Matthew shot back.

“And second, sex stuff here is really serious. Because of the eggs and stuff.” I really knew almost nothing about it as I had no practical need for the knowledge.

I picked a tunnel at random. Supposedly they all led to the same place, anyway.

“Why’d you form these biases, anyway?” Hugh said. “I mean, Matthew obviously follows situational ethics, which is pretty normal.”

“You callin’ me normal, moonboy?”

“But is there something in your past—”

I wasn’t about to get into how my mom cheated on Jane. I shrugged. Had that turned me monogamist?

“Hmm,” Hugh said.

“Shut up,” I snapped. “Fuck. The tunnel’s getting too narrow.” I turned around. “Unless you’re soft-boned Octavians in disguise, we’re gonna have to try the other tunnel.”

We started back, this time with me taking up the rear. “Mr. Zik says that one of the tunnels is human-sized.”

Matthew mumbled
Mr. Zik
and made a derisory noise that sent a flurry of bubbles from the side of his head. They rose faster than the bubbles usually did topside.

“So have you made any progress on your philandering scheme?” I asked, interested despite myself. Hugh looked back but before he said anything Matthew answered.

“OK, so there was this guy who was teaching in my town last year, right? A lunarian, and so of course he was quite the bag of briskets amongst the ladies of the town. A bit of a rep that way. I get his apartment, as usual. He’s left it pretty messy but with enough good shit in there so that I don’t mind cleaning it up.”

“What’dya get?” I asked.

“A talking pot and a pillowpat. He wasn’t really being generous — he couldn’t use them anywhere else because the Squidollian power outlets are different from everywhere else. Fuckin’ pain in the ass. Anyway, I’m cleaning out these drawers and one drawers got nothing but, like, tins of opened chewing tobacco and a jar of spit.”

Hugh curled his nose.

“I just figured the previous guy — call him Tim — took up the habit and didn’t really like it. ‘Cause almost all the tins were pretty full. I just left the crap there ‘cause I didn’t need the drawer and I didn’t feel like cleaning it up,” he shrugged. “I forgot about it.”

We came to the fork in the tunnel and took the other choice. I prayed that it’d be the lucky one, and I hadn’t wasted the afternoon for the three of us. It was interesting how much pressure I felt to be a good host. Octavia was rubbing off on me.

“So one day after my class with the adults one of the teachers offers me a ride. I say OK, even though it was close by. I was hoping for a ride other than in her saucer, get me?”

“How did she ask you?” Hugh said, untouched by Matthew’s crudity.

“Pretty casually,” Matthew said. “But when we got in she got really excited, saying that the other teachers would be mad because she got extra time with me. But off we go and we stop off at this corner store. She gets out and comes back with a big bag. Then we go to my place.”

A group of three schoolgirls appeared suddenly, and two of them twined their tentacles and bowed, using the honourific word for teacher. I responded in Octavian.

“Your students?” asked Hugh.

“I guess so,” I said. “They’re the right age.”

“No giggling?” asked Matthew. “No hello? Those can’t be schoolgirls.”

A slightly echoey
good-bye
was heard behind us, followed by bubbly laughter.

I looked at Matthew. He nodded, “Better.”

“So you’re back at your pad,” I prompted.

“Yeah, so once we’re inside she immediately passes me the thing she bought at the store. It’s soap for the washing machine, which is kind of useless since I get all my stuff laundered — I mean, it’s so cheap — but it’s a tradition to bring a small gift whenever you visit someone, especially the first time.”

“Same thing here,” I said, nervously watching the roof of the cavern get lower as we kept walking. I looked at Hugh. “What about—”

He gave a bitter laugh. “Are you kidding? God forbid the Armoured spend even a moment doing something... inefficient.”

“I don’t know,” Matthew said. “It seems kind of a silly ritual. It’s not like you have a choice, it’s not like spontaneously giving a gift.”

Right when it looked like we were going to have to duck, the tunnel widened. I was sweating a little, although it was hard to tell.

Hugh touched the side of the tunnel. “It’s... smoother here, I think.”

I looked around. “Yeah, I think they may have widened this part artificially. Go on, Matthew.”

“So I notice there’s something else in the bag,” Matthew continued. “It’s this little tin of chewing tobacco. I take it out and she sort of laughs like she’s ashamed. ‘It’s a bad,’ she says, taking it from me. I’m like, I don’t care, so she breaks open the tin and goes at it.”

“She chews?!” I said, surprised. I’d never seen women chewing on Octavia. “Isn’t it a taboo?”

“Big time,” said Matthew. “I was kind of excited about it because I figured, if she’ll break one taboo...” he let his lascivious smile finish his thought. Eye on the prize, our Matthew.

“Just going into a man’s apartment alone is pretty odd, isn’t it?” asked Hugh.

“Yeah, but I never really thought about it. Until she starts talking, between spits: ‘This is the first time I’ve been in a man’s apartment alone since I married my husband.’ Spit. ‘My husband is a very good man but I am not in love with him.’ Spit.”

“My husband doesn’t understand me?” Hugh guessed.

“More or less, eh?” Matthew laughed. “She’s totally nervous. Her tentacles are twitching and her skin is cycling from red to green to white. For some reason I found this really attractive. I mean, she’s not that hot — my girlfriend’s way better-looking, for instance...”

I had to stifle a grimace.

“...so then she says. ‘But my husband knows I am here. He... he trusts me.’ Then she looks at me, suddenly. ‘I must go now.’ And she gets up and jets out. I’m left standing there, staring at her bubble trail and then I pick up the tin, close it, and put it in the same drawer where all the other ones were. Then it dawns on me that I was probably just one in a series,” he said, looking more amused than rueful.

“Was it Old West brand?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “Balloon Flower.”

“What a lovely name,” Hugh said, “Oh — here we are.”

The tunnel ended with a well-worn exit. The hole was pretty small, but we would all be able to fit through it, one at a time. I opted to go first.

“It’s a bit of a drop,” I said, sliding my legs through feet first. “But a real Earthling won’t even feel it.”

Hugh said something in response but I had already swung myself out into the unknown. It was only about twenty feet, but the density of the atmosphere increased so sharply that it actually slowed me as I floated down. I had a full half minute to appreciate the scenery.

It was a massive cavern lit by glowing moss, the far wall speckled with dark holes. The roof was a craggy blue and the walls were green. It had the feeling of a secret; so far down and hidden from even the most powerful eyes on Earth. Anything could happen here.

I touched down, then sat. It was a little unnerving, how close it felt to zero grav. But I could feel my lungs working harder, and this grounded me. Matthew landed, and walked over to the edge. “Wow,” he said. “I can’t even see the bottom.”

He looked up, and I followed his gaze. Hugh was free-falling, his eyes opened anxiously and his arms spread as if he was trying to slow his descent. His hair floated above his head like a blonde halo. Even as it impressed me, it irritated me, this endless pose he struck.

Fuckin’ lunarians.

“Get away from the edge, man, you’re making me nervous,” I barked at Matthew. If he was to fall any further down he’d drown slowly; I didn’t relish the idea of communicating that to Mr. Zik.

“Breathe!” Matthew called to Hugh.

Hugh started to. His body convulsed a little. He landed on his knees on the ledge and hiccuped violently.

“You gotta breathe evenly all the way down.”

Hugh nodded, patting his hair back into place.

I mimicked him. “Ready for your close-up?”

Matthew laughed.

“So prettyboy,” I said, “anytime you want to work off a little steam,” I said powering a punch through the molasses-air, “you know, mix it up pugilistically, let me know, OK?”

Hugh looked at me with confused eyes. “You mean... fist-fight?”