Angry Young Spaceman (21 page)

She made an
oh well
shrug with a smile, then stood up. “Let’s go!”

We walked to the next sculpture. I couldn’t help but grin. “You have a very good attitude, I think,” I said. “Most people would be very unhappy.” I mimicked crying, and she laughed.

“No,” she said. “It is stupid. Maybe I will get it back.” She spotted something down the way. “Oh! Sam, come on. Hurry up. It is my favourite one.” Her tentacle swung out and wrapped around my arm, right up to my armpit. I squeezed it gently as she pulled me along, mad grinning. The tip of her tentacle twitched and tickled like crazy, and her with no possible clue she was tickling me.

thirteen

“Where do you want to go?” the Octavian travel agent asked.

The client said, “I want to go to Earth.”

“Oh, very good,” said the agent, her head bobbing in enthusiasm. “The Earth is good cost now.” (I wrote down: Earth fares are low now.)

“That’s great!” said the client, her incredible nervousness making the lilt to her voice more manic than happy. “I am very poor.”

A few of the English teachers laughed at this, although it was obvious the student playing the client had no idea of the intended humour. I noticed Mrs. Ahm looking at me, and I broadened my smile.

I had been pretty sure these were her students — the Earth references and the high level of their English (hitting their P’s) were tip-offs. I looked over to the vidphone where Matthew’s bored head floated.

There was a paper cut-out of a rocketship brought out, and the client-student held it in front of her. Being concealed seemed to increase her confidence, and she practically yelled: “3-2-1 Blastoff!”

“Farewell!” said the agent, waving her tentacles human-style. “Bye-bye! Take care! See you! Good-bye!”

The skit ended and there was polite popping-applause. Mrs. Ahm noticeably relaxed. Her two students made hastily for the exit, and three boys trooped in.

“Welcome to Plangyo,” they shouted together. I glanced at Matthew, who was already smirking. I deliberately avoided looking at the teachers.

I wrote: Too loud.

“We-have-a-proud-filling-about-Plangyo,” said Tallboy.

“There-is-many-good-things-Plangyo-like-cucumbers,” said Middleboy.

“And-caves,” said Shortboy.

“SHUT UP,” yelled Tall and Middleboy.

Matthew laughed, incredulous, and Mr. Kung beamed back. That figured.

“Plangyo-bloys-are-good-to-fighters,” said Tallboy. I started to zone out, looking down at my pad, wondering where to start criticising. I could feel Kung’s eyes on me like heavy, meaty things.

Shortboy earned the ire of his betters again. “SHUT UP!”

I started thinking about Jinya. I wondered if she had competed in these speech contests when she was young. Probably. If she was here, she would watch these bizarre displays and get something utterly different from it — a nostalgic charge, perhaps, seeing herself in the kid who played the travel agent. It was a little depressing how different my perception of it was from hers.

“SHUT UP!”

Matthew was, guessing by the angle of his head, writing away, a little smile playing on his lips.
What the hell was he writing? Maybe it was a letter. I wonder what’s taking Lisa so long to write back — maybe she was freaked out by the idea of me having sex with an Octavian.

Sliding my gaze along the floor, so as to not catch the eyes of any of the teachers, I admired Mrs. Ahm’s tentacles. They were a little thin, maybe, but had a lovely colour to them. I imagined holding them in my hands, sliding all the way up to—

“SHUT UP!”

This time Shortboy got poked in the eye by the other two, and then he ran out of the room. It looked like it actually hurt. The remaining two boys bowed, and, flushed with pleasure, left the room to applause.

The principal stood up and told the teachers that the two judges would be left alone to choose a winner. Mr. Kung, despite being the least capable of it, translated this into English. Then everyone left, Mr. Kung making jokes with the principal, Mrs. Ahm giving me an expectant smile.

“She’s a sweet one,” said Matthew from the vidphone when the room was empty.

His voice was coming in a bit crackly so I adjusted the knobs.

“—over there?” he said.

“What?”

“So you couldn’t get them to fly me over?”

I snorted. “They were saying you should be audio only, at first.”

“Jesus, the Octavians are cheap.”

I felt defensive. “They’re just not rich Squidollian bastards, is all. So did you talk to 9/3 about the holiday?”

“Yeah.” Matthew scratched his chin. “Blockhead’s in. Dunno about Hugh, though. I can’t fuckin’ wait to get out of this soup and catch some warm breezes.”

I nodded. I missed the wind, and we had specifically chosen a destination with a breezy climate. “So the travel agent one is the winner, right?”

“No way! The Shut Up one. As I’ve written here: ‘For pure entertainment value, Shut Up can’t be beat. Four stars.’”

I rolled my eyes. “For pure idiocy value. The fucked-up thing is that the words they mispronounce are the same ones their teacher mispronounces. The guy chumming it up with the superintendent. And there’s no way he wrote that skit.”

“Which one did the hottie write?” he asked, eyebrows raised in a simulacrum of innocence. “The travel agent one, maybe?”

“Maybe,” I said, smiling. “But it
was
the best one. The last one was the worst, man! Even the first one was better. At least they seemed to know what the hell they were saying.”

“So do you think it’ll get you laid?” Matthew said. “If you fix the contest?”

“I’m not fixing —” I thumped the desk. “You’re
lucky
you didn’t get flown in, asshole.”

Matthew laughed. “Oh, like I care. Travel agent it is.”

“Good,” I said.

We sat there for a moment.

“How long do you figure we have?” Matthew asked.

I shrugged. “Let’s just wait till they come back. Any news from home?” I asked idly.

Matthew frowned. “Stuff from my girl... oh, and this crazy message from my dad. Telling me not to travel.”

“That’s weird. Why not?”

His signal hissed a little. “...no reason.” He got an annoyed look on his face. “As if I’m going to say, ‘Uh, OK Dad, if you say so.’”

“You don’t get along so well?”

“He’s a freak! He’s been fighting for lost causes all his life. He’s missing three fingers ‘cause of pissing off the wrong people.”

Matthew looked more vexed than I had ever seen him. “Lost causes?”

“Yeah. My great grandfather, too — it skips a generation, thank god. Great grampa was messed up in the ASCII wars. He actually died as an anti-English terrorist, if you can fucking believe that.”

“Anti-English, eh? Put that on your application form?” I could see shadows lurking outside the door, but I ignored them.

Matthew shook his head. “Idiots. I don’t even know how the hell he found out I was going anywhere.”

“Maybe he’s hooked up into some spy network,” I said, smirking.

Matthew was still agitated. “
‘
Don’t go on vacation, Matthew. You’ll enjoy yourself and forget to ruin your life like me.’” He was pointing at the screen with a two-fingered hand. “Can you believe that he tried to teach me old Chinese languages when I was young and impressionable?”

“Really?” I said. “He knew them?”

“No,” he said. “He had bootlegs. But at the time, it was a serious offence. Stupid, stupid risks...”

“I should try to learn Chinese — I’ve already learned Octavian, practically.” I patted down my hair in an insufferably self-satisfied way. “And I’m going to be perfecting it with a fine young miss tonight.”

His face smoothed out immediately, as I intended. “Well well. Sampling the local talent, are we? Well, good luck.”

The shadows outside the door were looming larger. “I suppose we should let them in.”

“Sorry about freaking out, eh,” Matthew said. “Talking about my drunken ass of a father will do that to me every time.”

“I’m glad to see you freak out,” I said, walking over to the door. “Gives me something to use against you.”

***

When I arrived, a minute or two late, they were laughing together. She and he. I did the best I could to keep the sudden nauseating dip in mood invisible.

“Oh, Sam!” Jinya said, jumping up. Her glowing face, her happy beautiful golden face that would never be mine, shone welcome. “This is my senior, Surrong. He wanted to meet you very much.”

Surrong also smiled hugely, and stuck his tentacle out. “Hi how are you? I am fine.” When I didn’t shake hands immediately, he collapsed into his seat again and covered his head with his tentacles.

I took a seat.

Surrong muttered
I am a fool
in Octavian. Jinya shook her head.

Mostly to impress her, I told him he wasn’t a fool.

“You speak... Octavian?”

“A little.”

“In universary, I study Englishee,” he said, and the big brown eyes I had previously assessed as threateningly handsome became openly childlike.

“Univers
it
y,” I gently corrected.

“Yes!” he said. “Universary! I am her senior,” he said, looking at her in a decidedly superior way.

Jinya sipped her tea with a small smile, looking into the cup.

“Her English is better than yours,” I said, and of course Jinya understood it first. “She is
your
senior, I think.”

He sat there and looked embarrassed, and I felt a little bad.

“Surrong’s written English is much better,” said Jinya.

“Yes!” said Surrong, puffing up again. His changeability was alarming. “Muchee bletter!”

The way they were sitting together — a matching pair, so right for each other — wiped me out.

“
Tell me your family story,
” I asked Surrong dully, an appropriate question to ask a person you’ve just met on Octavia.

They laughed a little. “Accent is strange,” she said into her tea. “But good.”

“
My family is very rich. My mother is a housewife and my father is a businessman.
”

Surrong looked out the window as he said this, so I chanced a look at Jinya. She was still staring into her cup. Her demure behaviour was even more appealing in contrast to his chafing arrogance. Could she really
like
this jerk?

“
What type businessman?
” I asked.

He said something I didn’t recognize, but that had the word for metal in it.

“Stocks in metals,” said Jinya. “You know?”

“Yes!” I said.

“
You are from New York City?”

I nodded. “
I am from Toronto.
It is a...”

I turned to Jinya, “Suburb? Do you know?”

She shook her head and took out her dictionary. A waitress came by and I ordered some tea. “Sam Breen,” she said as she walked away. I smiled and nodded. I had never seen her before.

Jinya pinpointed the word and Surrong nodded. “I see!”

I nodded. “Toronto is a suburb of New York.”

My tea came. The waitress, beyond the call of duty, poured me a cup. The casual beauty in which she made it describe an arc across the table was counterbalanced by the dirty looks she gave Jinya. “English teacher,” she said, pushing out the words from between her thickly painted lips.

I nodded nervously. Jinya looked at me. “You know her?”

“No.”

“What ablout the family,” said Surrong.

“My mother is a powerbroker,” I said. “I have no brothers or sisters.”

“Yes, very good,” said Surrong. “Powerbroker.”

“No, it’s bad,” I said. “I think.”

“Why?” said Jinya.

“It’s boring,” I said, and they laughed.

“No... Make much money, not bloring,” said Surrong.

I picked up the dictionary and looked up a word. “
Unethical,
” I said in Octavian.

The waitress looked over, then said something that made her friends laugh.

“
Unethical,”
repeated Jinya, a funny smile on her face. “Sam is very interesting,” she said to Surrong.

I liked her more and more.

“
Unethical
OK, but... make much money good!” he said, his face desperate and confused, as if he thought it was just a language misunderstanding.

“
What is your favourite sport
?” I asked.

His face cleared and he was sunny again. He slapped his tentacles on the table. “Soccer!”

***

A lot of crap had accumulated on my desk so I was sorting through it when I heard the ring.

“
Audio only,
” I called out, trying to puzzle out an ad flyer that had the Octavian words
blind
and
wealth
juxtaposed with a smiling model.

“That you, Breen?” Matthew called out from the speaker.

“
Retarded waste-of-skin?
” I called out.

“I can tell it’s you, fuck. You think your accent’s that good?”

I smiled. “Let’s hear you. Speak to me in Squid, baby.”

“Etiujwtfjsdlgj,” he said. “It means idiot-loser.”

I laughed. “What a coincidence! I just called you that in Octavian!”

“Thought it sounded familiar,” Matthew said. “So how did the speech contest go?”

I thought about the fact that Kung had to have another teacher tell him that he didn’t win. His look of befuddled surprise actually made me warm to him, while Mrs. Ahm’s smugness took her down a notch in my estimation. “Um... OK. The riot police didn’t have to be called in. Thanks for helping out.”

“Beat putting up with my brats in person.”

“Sure. Make sure I get flown in for your contest.”

“See what I can do,” Matthew said.

The droid entered the room, moving slowly as it tried to clean the room. I say tried because its metal tentacles didn’t seem to ever get right into the corners. I sighed with frustration.

“What?” Matthew said.

“
Video on,
” I said. Matthew solidified and looked where I pointed. “It can’t get into the corners because it’s built for a normal, cornerless Octavian house. Do you know how fucking hard it is to clean by hand? Shit just floats everywhere. I fucking inhaled a dustbunny — dustfishy — yesterday.”