So here it is again—fiction, right on the front page. And by “again” I mean there was an Episode 1 last week in this space (same Kos channel, same-ish Kos time).
Though a couple of people gently rapped my fingers with a metaphorical baseball bat for spilling my novel in the middle of the primary-a-thon, for the most part folks were very kind. I really appreciate that. Some of you even expressed a desire for more. That’s what this is. More.
Last week we met Denny, a young guy dancing for the odd tossed token on a planet in a tight orbit around a pair of smallish stars. And we met the long, pointy-toothed dasiks, and a couple of snobby hard-shelled cithians, and an old chug with a great many eyes. This week, a few more people, both human and otherwise.
As with last week, there’s a podcast of the episode read by Raymond Shinn (doing yoeman work in the critical “please don't make me listen to the yokel who wrote this” category) and more utterly great artwork from Amy Jones, who is also Ashes of Roses around these parts. If you haven’t already listened to last week’s podcast, give it a try. You can rest your eyeballs and exercise your… earballs? Sure. Why not.
Ready? 1, 2, 3 ...
PASSDAY
3
On Passday, Denny got to eat. There was food on other days—orangey blocks of cheez and goopey brown nutter that came in gray boxes from the Human Assistance Authority. Denny stood in the line most mornings and waited like everyone else to get his boxes from cithians who wore tight plastek gloves over their forelimbs and hard plastek masks over their faces. Sometimes there were also boxes of dry little crackers. Sometimes there was powdermilk mix for drinking. But most of the time there was just cheez and nutter, nutter and cheez.
Except on Passday. On Passday Auntie Talla did restaurant.
Auntie Talla had a place on the lower floor of an old compartment building. It had been the gather room of the building back when there were enough humans in Jukal to keep all the little rooms packed, but now it was a nothing room. Just another of those places that once had people, then didn't.
Talla and Cousin Sirah had dragged in a bunch of mismatched tables and chairs that came from empty compartments and closed. They had made shelves of stacked boxes, and a bar from a length of plastek with scorch marks along one end. Plates and cups and spoons had come from everywhere, no two alike.
It had been Denny's father who helped Talla build a stove out of sheet metal from a scrapped transport. They beat the metal into shape, with a firebox down below and the middle domed up like the shell on a cithians' back. Denny had been there, watching, waiting for a taste of the first meal off the new stove. He still remembered how Talla had traded with a klickik—old human junk in exchange for vegetables and spices—and how the stove had been covered deep in a layer of pop peppers mixed with loops of brown mummion and snapping strips of meat. The whole thing had smelled so good that Denny couldn't help dancing from one foot to the other while he waited for the food to finish.
His father had put a hand on Denny's shoulder and grinned down at him. "Hold your horses," he said. "We can't eat until everyone gets here."
That was the last thing Denny's father said before the blue door at the other side of the long room swung open and a handful of cithians came in, their shells rasping against the sides of the human-sized door. Behind them had come a dozen of the dasik guards. Half the humans in Jukal had been sent away on consignment that night, including Denny's father. Denny never had learned what horses were, or why he should hold them. No one who was left seemed to know.
Later, when all the humans had been hurried away and the cithians had squeezed back out through the same door they had entered, Talla had said they should eat the food that had been cooked so it didn't go to waste. It was the only time Denny could remember having more food than he could eat. It was the only time he could remember not being hungry.
That had been two years ago. Since that night, Restaurant had been a lot less crowded. A lot less noisy. A lot less happy.
4
When Denny came through the door for Restaurant, there were only four other humans there. Auntie Talla was brushing oil across the big stove. Denny could see that there were plates of vegetables already chopped and waiting for their turn on the heat. There was some kind of meat, too. Something that Talla had bought at the market. Usually the meat came from the klickiks in pinkish gray strips peeled off some animal that lived far away. Sometimes the meat was something sold by the cithians—something that, before it was pried from its shell, looked a lot like a bigger version of the little red scuttles that prowled under boxes and in the shut-ups of Denny’s compartment. Denny didn't look too closely. Usually it was better not to look at the meat until after it had been cooked.
Auntie Talla glanced up long enough to nod at Denny when he came in, but she quickly turned her attention back to her stove. She swiped at the oil as it dripped down the sides of the domed metal, pushing it back to the top with a practiced twist of her curved stick even as the oil sizzled, popped, and took on a brownish color. As soon as the oil was pushed up the metal dome of the stove, it started to ooze back down. There were little white scars all along the backs of Talla's fingers were the oil had burned her, but with fast work she could make just a spoonful of the stuff last out a meal.
Even if the oil had allowed her more time, Denny doubted Talla would have given him a greeting. She seldom said more than a few words in an evening these days and Denny could not remember the last time she had joked, or laughed, or even smiled. People had called Talla an Auntie for years, though she was barely nineteen and never anyone's mother. It was just that she was so serious, and she had watched over Cousin Sirah ever since Sirah's parents were consigned five years earlier. Young as she was, there were already lines of worry pressed into Talla's thin face, and in the last weeks Denny had noticed strands of white mingling with her dark hair.
Once this would have been about the time when everyone got together and did a jilly-ho for Talla to welcome her into the ranks of adults. There would have been a ceremony, and music, and dancing, and talk about who Talla might marry—Kettle, if it happened now, it would have to be Cousin Kettle or Cousin Haw and Denny could not imagine Auntie Talla with Haw—and more talk about when she might have children. But all that would have to wait until Talla was consigned to somewhere else. There just weren't enough people left in Jukal Plex for a proper ceremony. It didn’t seem fair that Talla was treated like an Auntie, when she never got a jilly-ho.
Denny stopped beside the stove long enough to make a show of breathing in the scents from the cooking food. It was partly just to be polite, but the green edges of the poppers were just starting to darken, and the smell was good enough that he really was tempted to reach in and steal a bite.
Auntie Talla had no trouble reading his mind. "Step back, now," she said with a wave of her oily stick. She smacked it down hard against the metal surface close to Denny’s fingers. Denny snatched back his hand.
Talla would never actually hurt anyone. At least, Denny didn’t think so, but he stepped back anyway. He fumbled in the pocket of his baggy shorts and came out with three green chips, leftovers from what he had earned at the spaceport. "Is this enough for Restaurant?"
"It's enough," said Talla, without bothering to look at what Denny was holding.
No matter how much or how little Denny brought, it was always enough. More than once he had come to Restaurant with nothing, and Talla had fed him just the same. Denny supposed that if he never brought in another chip, he would still not go hungry, but Denny liked to pay when he could. To get the food, Talla had to trade with cithians and dasiks and klickics at the big market. If there were not enough chips to buy what she needed, she would have to do what others did all the time. She would have to sell some of her things to Poppa Jam.
Denny hoped Talla had enough this time.
Cousin Sirah was busy setting out dishes and cups even more mismatched than the tables they sat on. She flashed Denny a white smile as soon as she saw him.
Next to Denny, Sirah was the youngest human left in Jukal. She was not really his cousin, of course, anymore that Talla was his Auntie, but for a long time now—generations, his father had said—all the adults in Jukal Plex had called one another auntie or uncle. Had called all the old ones poppa or non. Had named all the children cousins. It was just something you did when everyone all together was not much bigger than a family.
Denny had not paid much attention to Sirah, not when there were other kids around. She had always been too serious. Too much like a little adult. Sirah had never wanted to play when she was smaller. Never wanted to dance when she was older. Sirah had never been someone to go to if you wanted fun. These last two years, there had been no one else much for Denny to talk to—no one human, at least—and he had decided that talking with Sirah was not a bad thing. Maybe that meant that Denny was also becoming an adult. Maybe it was just that he had started to notice that Sirah was very smart, and often kind, and also kind of pretty.
"Did you see any skynx at the port?" she asked.
"I did," said Denny. He circled round the table and dropped into a chair across from Sirah. "And some dasiks, of course. And a chug. And two klickiks. "
“Klickicks?” Sirah dropped a bent froon onto a plate with a clatter. “What were they doing?”
Denny shrugged. “They were leaving. They got on the first shuttle this morning.” He knew Sirah liked the klickiks, with their tall purple frills and hard red limbs. Once, one of them had come to the quarter, even come to Restaurant, and Sirah had watched it so closely she spilled a whole bowl of mummions.
Sirah finished spreading the plates across the table, took another stack in hand, and then set them back carefully. Denny saw that she was looking across the room to where a dozen or more tables had been stacked and shoved into the corner. Denny could just remember when there were enough people in the Jukal Plex to fill all those tables.
"I don't suppose ..." Sirah picked up a handful of tarnished froons and started to put them beside the plates. "I don't suppose you saw any other humans at the spaceport?"
"No," said Denny. "Not today." Not on any day.
5
Denny took up the plates and helped Sirah set the tables. Mostly the plates went down in ones and twos, scattered at round tables and square tables around the big room. As few people as there were now in Jukal, they might have all sat together at just one of Restaurant's larger tables. Instead, they all sat where they used to sit when there were more cousins, more aunts and uncles, more nonnis and poppas. Restaurant used to be a place to talk, now it was a place to remember.
While they were getting things ready, Poppa Jam shuffled in and haggled with Auntie Talla. Talla always made Poppa Jam pay more for his Restaurant than the others, but that was only fair. Poppa Jam had more than any of the others. Probably more than all of them put together.
Behind him, Cousin Kettle came in, still wearing his blue cover-ups from the spaceport. He joined his mother, Auntie Flash, who was already sitting at the corner table. Auntie Flash had been sick, and despite several visits to the Human Assistance Authority doctor, she still trembled when she walked and she talked with a strange slowness. Denny knew that Kettle had used a lot of the credits he made at the spaceport to take Auntie Flash to see a klickick doctor who was supposed to know a lot about humans. It didn’t seem to have helped Auntie Flash, but knowing that he had used his credits for his mother made it hard for Denny to stay mad at Kettle.
Sharing a table with Kettle and his mother was Cousin Yulia. Yulia was actually just days younger than Auntie Talla, but no one had ever thought to call her an aunt. She had strange, pale eyes, and she always seemed so frightened. Yulia had come from Halitt Plex, the last human in that whole plex, and before she was consigned to Jukal, she had been alone for a long time. It had made her … different. She was quiet. She rarely looked at anyone. She had a big jacket, big enough that it looked like it was made for someone much larger than Yulia, and she huddled down in that jacket so much that it seemed like she wanted to disappear.
Before the rest of the remaining humans could come into the room, the other door opened—the blue door at the far side of the space.
Sirah jumped and spun around. Denny turned more slowly. Half of him was afraid that it was the patrol come to consign them all to some other place. Half of him hoped it was.
But this time, there was only a single, very large, very old cithian in the doorway. Hiser Grismalamacata Omicradiscrad, Overcontroller Human Assistance Authority, pushed his way slowly into the gather room. The big cithian had to move carefully to keep the burrs and notches of his deeply etched shell from snagging on the door. He was so old that the hinges of his shell didn't really flex well anymore, and the whole thing moved like one stiff, hard bowl. Long before he was completely in the room his broad eye pads had scanned the handful of humans. The Overcontroller held his heavy, hooked forelimbs folded across his chest as he raised a smaller mid-limb in greeting.
“Humans,” he said, his voice sounding in an echoey sigh that came from all around his shell, “enjoy.”
Denny wasn’t sure if the Overcontroller meant to say he enjoyed being with them, or was wishing that all the humans should enjoy their meal. The older cithians became, the harder they became to understand, and Hiser Grismalamacata Omicradiscrad was about as old as a cithian ever got.
The Overcontroller finally managed to get all his bulk into the room and crossed slowly toward Auntie Talla. His hard feet clacked off the tile floor loud enough to stir echoes around the nearly empty room.
A second figure appeared in the blue doorway. This one was smaller in every way than the Overcontroller. A rounded head that was roughly the same color as the blocks of Human Assistance Authority cheez looked around the edge of the opening.
Denny smiled. “Omi!” he called.
The young cithian raised the orange-red edges of its mouthparts in reply, which Denny knew—or at least thought—was the cithian equivalent of a grin. “Deee!” he shouted back. Omicradiscrad had recently been through a molt, and the softness of his shell, including the noise-plate cithians used for speaking, made it hard for him to pronounce Denny’s name.
Omi waddled toward them. He was wearing a temporary shell on his back made of tough plastek, which was meant to protect his fragile body until his exoskeleton hardened after the molt. Until a few cycles before, Omi had been small, lean, and covered in a narrow shell that was a bright, orange-spotted yellow. He had looked quite unlike an adult cithian. With this latest molting Omi had taken on more of the rounded shape of the adults, though he was still only half their size and his form was still much sharper. Unlike the adult cithians, Omi wore clothing over his slow-hardening body and limbs. Enough of his head and forelimbs had hardened up that he had pulled the cloth back from those areas, but still the loose gray folds of heavy cloth completely hid the contours of his thorax and joints of his hind-limbs. Denny thought that, except for the big dark patch of his eyepads, Omi might have passed for a human with a tub strapped to his back. He’d thought that even more when Omi had been completely wrapped in cloth just after his molting, but Denny had never told this thought to Omi. He didn’t want to insult his friend by comparing him to a human.
It took some time for the little cithian to reach them. Even Omi’s feet were soft, and he walked with a peculiar roll from side to side. By the time he got close, Denny could see that Omi had grown after the last molt. His eyepads were now almost even with Denny’s face. “Look how big you are!” said Denny. He shook his head. “Another molt or two, and you’ll be an adult.”
“Yes, yes,” Omi agreed. His voice sounded funnier than usual as it bounced from the plastic shell. “One or uuoo … or two.”
Omi joined Denny and Cousin Sirah at a small table. They talked and waited while Talla served the Overcontroller and the rest of the humans. At the far end of the room, old Nonni Hacci came in. Shortly after that, Auntie Yue and Auntie Fro joined her at a table. Everyone was there but Poppa Gow, but his absence wasn’t unusual. Poppa Gow had been sick for a long time, and he needed a wheeled chair to get around. Denny would take some Restaurant to Poppa Gow later. He didn’t mind. He liked seeing all the things that Poppa Gow kept in his compartment.
Denny offered Omi some of his food, but Omi’s mouthparts were still too soft to eat most of it. At the moment, Omi could only drink liquids. It would be another cycle before he could eat anything he wanted.
Before the last molt, Omi had spent a lot of time hanging around the human quarter. He was the only cithian who seemed to care about human music, or listening to the old stories. On this visit, Omi told them that, now that he was getting close to his final molting, he would have to spend more time following Overcontroller Hiser. There would be no more time for things like music and games. No time for silly human stories.
Omi was the Overcontroller's second. Cithians didn't have families like humans. Most of them had no idea who their parents were. They thought the way humans put so much time into thinking about family was rather strange. It was just genes. Only those cithians who had done something important were allowed to create, not a child, but a copy of themselves. You could tell that Overcontroller Hiser was a very important cithian, because he had not one copy, but two. Omi was the new one. The first copy, Grismalamacata, had been made years ago. Denny had never seen him, but he’d heard that Grismalamacata already had a copy of his own. Some of the most famous cithians were copies of copies of copies.
"One day you'll be the Overcontroller," said Denny, thinking of when Omi replaced Hiser, "and you'll be the one who tells us what to do."
Omi slurped at a cup of water and bobbed his head. “I will know oow, 'ut ... but then ii … it will be uuoo laa. Too late."
Denny took a second to work this out. “Too late for what?”
The flat black eyepads studied Denny. “You…” Omi stopped and spoke more slowly, forming the Xetosh words as carefully as he could. “You doo … don’t know?”
Denny glanced over at Cousin Sirah. She only looked back at him and shook her head. “I guess I don’t,” he said.
“You aaa … all you humaa … you all ee …” Omi tried again. “You all humans are leaving soon,” he said. “You’re all being consigned.” Then his mouthparts went up again in that cithian smile.