This is the first installment of a new novel, On Whetsday. The book was inspired by recent events, old attitudes, and the long-held conviction that science fiction’s ability to create a fresh angle on society is more than just a parlor trick. On Whetsday is my first new work in several years. It will be available from my friends at Word Posse both as an ebook and in genuine wood pulp. The book is also available as a podcast, with voices provided by Raymond Shinn and Rett Macpherson.
The artwork today comes from Amy Jones, our own Ashes of Roses. I think it’s fantastic.
Running fiction on the front page of this site, right in the middle of the primary season, is a pretty big gamble. I’m hoping that it pays off—not just for me, but for the community—and that such fiction works become a regular, ongoing feature of Daily Kos.
Okay, maestro, strike up the band. Let’s get started …
WHETSDAY
1
On Whetsday, Denny danced at the spaceport. It was a good place to dance, if you didn’t mind the heat that boiled off the acres of asphalt or the noise of the rising shuttles. You could meet a dozen races in single morning: lithe little skynx, scarlet klickiks, and sluggish chugs with their curtains of eyes brushing the ground. Most of the passing visitors had never seen a human, and fewer still understood what Denny was doing. Dancing was a rare thing among the races of the galaxy. But they understood enough to toss shiny credit chips or small bits of scrip into the box by his feet. They understood begging. Begging was universal.
Cousin Kettle had told everybody that Denny was not a good dancer, but Denny didn't let that opinion slow his feet. Kettle had a job helping out at the port, a very responsible position for a human; though the truth was Kettle just cleaned food troughs, and scrubbed fouled pacer bays, and carried stuff. When Denny came to dance at the port, the door guards would sometimes come out to watch, but Kettle stayed away. Denny could tell that Kettle was embarrassed.
Most of the guards were lesser dasiks, and Denny thought that they liked his dancing. The speech badges clipped to the dasiks' uniforms were coded only with phrases like "do not cross the green line" and "present your identification," so he could not be sure, and the dasiks never dropped a chip in Denny's box, but when they passed him, they would often pause and watch. The dasiks were very tall, and everything about them was long. Long feet. Long hands. Long faces. When they watched Denny dance, their long necks swung from side to side and their long mouths opened to reveal double rows of long needlely teeth. They never once pressed the button that said "leave this area immediately."
Close to noon, when the dull red sun and the tiny blue-white sun were so close together in the sky that everything at the port cast one set of deep violet-fringed shadows, a very old chug came out of the main terminal in a burst of cold ammonia-scented air. Denny could tell it was very old because, even though the eyes at the top of the chug were still rich shades of brown, and blue, and orange, those at the bottom had turned dead white. Some of the stalks were even missing their eyes altogether. Denny could see some of the chug's many limbs swaying and clicking though the gaps left by the missing eyes.
One of the dasiks put its long head through the terminal door after the chug and pressed the button that said, "Follow the blue dots to the air taxi." The chug angled a dozen brown eyes at the pavement, and it shuffled forward as if it were going to comply with this advice. The guard clicked his long teeth together and went back inside. As soon as the door closed, a cluster of orange eyes tipped Denny's way, and the chug stopped.
Already there were several chips gathered at the bottom of Denny's box, and the Whetsday heat was scorching. Normally, he would have been thinking about going home, but this was the first real audience of the day, the first person to stop for him instead of just tossing a chip, and he wanted to put on a good show. He raised the volume of his singing and the energy of his dance. He clapped his hands, which made the brown eyes jerk away, and stomped his feet, which made the blue eyes open wide, and sang "all alone, Old Poppa Stone, rolling home." He rose up onto his toes and spun around.
A ripple went through all the eyes. "Are you a human?" said the chug. Its voice was soft and windy and it was hard to tell what part of the chug produced the sound, but it spoke Xetosh very well.
Denny stopped singing and tipped down from his toes. "Yes," he said. "That's right."
There was a skittering, clicking sound from somewhere beneath the eyes, as if a number of tiny metal switches were being thrown very quickly. Four blue eyes raised up and looked toward the distant city, six brown eyes directed themselves at the door to the terminal. The cluster of orange eyes kept their gaze on Denny. "I understood that you were not allowed out of the containment facility."
"The containment facility?" Denny had never heard anyone call part of Jukal Plex a "facility," but after a moment's thought he smiled. "Do you mean the human quarter?" He glanced back over his shoulder. The tallest buildings of the plex were clear on the skyline, with the great pale spike of the Cataclysm standing above all the rest, but the buildings near the human quarter were shorter, and Denny could not make them out.
The quarter itself was far too small to spot. Despite the name, it wasn't a fourth of the great city, or even a four hundredth. It was just a few buildings and a handful of compartment houses, most of them empty. Like everything else about humans, once it had been more important. "When there were lots of humans, we used to have to stay in the quarter—you know, so we didn't get in the way. Now that the cithians have consigned most of us on to other cities," he said, "they let us move around more."
"How many?" asked the chug.
"What?"
"How many humans?"
"In Jukal?" Denny had to think for a moment. "Fifteen. No ... thirteen. Auntie Jo and her baby went off last month."
There was some rustling among the eyes, and more than a few of the stalks twined around one another as brown eyes turned to look into orange eyes and blue stared into blue. "So few?" There was more of that switchy clicking and clacking.
"That's just in Jukal," Denny said with a shrug. "People get moved. Anyhow, there used to be more."
"Yes," said the chug. "There did." It waved toward Denny's feet with a twitch of multicolored eyes. "What is this thing you do?"
"Dancing."
"Is it a human thing?"
"Yes. Skynx dance too, I’ve seen them do it, but not like humans dance."
"Dance like a human," said the chug. A hundred eyes tilted toward Denny. "I want to see a human thing."
Denny grinned. He didn't think the chug was making fun of him. It was dangerous to read emotions into races you didn't know well, but he thought the old chug seemed sad. Perhaps if he danced well enough, the chug might toss a red chip, or even a blue.
"Dance like a human," said the chug. "I want to see a human thing."
He tilted back his head and sang, "Hey Judy, hey Judy, hey" to the hard white sky. He shook out his shoulders, and flung up his arms. He let a wave move through him that curved his neck, then his back, then his hips, then his knees, and then his feet. Left, right, left again. He sang the old music and tossed himself this way with a "hey" that way with a "Judy." He shook his head at the part about being "sad," and nodded when the song got to "better, better, better."
The two suns were straight overhead, red touching blue, and the heat made sweat roll down Denny's face. In the near distance, a shuttle shot upward with a rumble that shook the ground, crackling yellow lightning at its tail. There was a smell of ozone, like the air before a storm. Denny kept his head back and watched the shuttle all through the long "nah, nah, nah" part of the song.
When Denny lowered his head, he was very surprised to find that the old chug was gone. He looked down the line of blue dots, but did not see it moving toward the air taxis. He looked down the line of green dots toward the ground transport, but there were only three cithians pulled in under their hard black shells as they waited for the ground transport. Denny thought the chug must have gone back inside the terminal, but the glass was tinted and he could not be sure.
The old chug, it seemed, did not care much for Denny's dancing. Maybe Kettle was right.
2
At first Denny thought the chug had left no payment, but when he looked more closely, there was something new in his box. It wasn't a fat red chip, or even a slender green chip. It was a small cube, scarcely bigger than the end of Denny's thumb. Sitting in the box the cube appeared to be a pale, dusty purple, but when Denny picked it up between his thumb and first finger, little sheets of other colors ran across the sides. He had never seen anything quite like it before. It might only be a piece of trash, something the chug had left behind to mark its dislike for Denny's dance. Or maybe it was some other kind of scrip, some kind they only used on ... wherever chugs came from. Whatever it was, Poppa Jam or Auntie Talla might be willing to trade for it if they knew where the little cube could be sold.
No shuttles to Jukal Plex these days. There could be hours between one shuttle and the next, and the long dance under the paired suns had left Denny in no mood to wait for the next passengers to arrive. He frowned toward the cool glass doors of the terminal. Denny was thirsty. There was water at the troughs and fountains inside the port, but humans were not always welcome there. The dasiks probably wouldn’t mind, but if there were cithians around … Denny might have stolen a quick swallow, or bought something from a dispenser, but some of the cithian workers at the port made a fuss if they saw him inside. They would make the dasiks chase him away, and Kettle would be mad.
Denny picked up his box and gave a little smile at the sound of the chips clicking together. There were enough chips that Denny could buy his way back to the quarter on the ground transport, and he could still have enough left over to trade Poppa Jam for a picture book or sweetpop. That was good, because otherwise Denny would have to sit outside the port and wait for the free transport that carried Kettle and the rest of the cleaning crew back to the city. Waiting for Kettle would mean sitting in the heat for another hour, which wouldn't be so bad, except Kettle would be angry to see him and make Denny beg for a ride with the employees. Denny didn't mind begging the visitors at the port so much. He did not like begging his cousin.
Denny tucked his box of credits under one arm and hurried down the green dot path toward the ground transport. When he got to the platform and saw that the cithians were still waiting for pods, he wanted to do another dance. A frustration dance. Denny wouldn't be able to ride on the next transport, because humans weren't supposed to ride in the same pod as cithians. It wasn't respectful. You could ride in the same pod as dasiks. Usually. You could if there were just lesser dasiks and if the dasiks didn’t press the button that simply said “No.” But it was best to wait until you found an empty pod.
When the next transport showed up, Denny stood back and watched the cithians climb on. One of them was ranked high enough that its glossy black shell rose up a foot or two past the top of its bowed head and the edge on either side had been carved with grooves indicating some kind of important title. Denny squinted at the little grooves, but he didn’t know all the cithian ranks. He didn’t know this one. The weight of the shell made the cithian's movements slow and ponderous. The hard tips of its four rear limbs clacked sharply as it tipped from left to right and back again. It took a pod by itself. The other two cithians shuffled into the second pod, and as they did one of them turned round and looked at Denny standing in the doorway. Right away the blunt knobs of its clangers began to rasp out a warning on the edge of its shell.
“I wasn’t …” said Denny. “I mean, there’s room …” The cithian only buzzed louder.
Denny lowered his head and stepped back. Humans were supposed to be grateful to the cithians. For saving them, and giving them a place to live, and feeding them, and stuff. Sometimes that was hard.
