Angry Young Spaceman (9 page)

“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.