On Whetsday Read online

  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 klickiks 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, any more that Talla was his Auntie, but for a long time now—generations, his father had said—all the adults in Jukal Plex had called each other 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. “

  “Klickiks?” 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 klickik 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 chez 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.

  6

  Skimsday

  On Skimsday, Denny went shopping. He stopped first for his nutter and chez, which didn't take too long. One thing about there not being many humans left in the plex was that the lines were always short. He got his food, ate most of it sitting on the broken pavement in the dim sunshine, and still had the whole day ahead.

  The dull red sun was still just starting its long roll around the Skimsday sky when Denny knocked on the corrugated metal door of Poppa Jam's Porium. The Porium was at the center of a long block of small buildings with slide up front doors and narrow windows. Denny could just remember when all the buildings had been stores. Rasha's bakery, and Wallin's woodstuff, and Luxa's. Denny couldn't remember what Luxa had sold.

  It didn't matter anyway. The others were gone. Now the only store left was Poppa Jam's.

  The tall door rolled up, and Jam looked out. For just a moment, he looked very old, and a bit confused, with his spotted bald head and his heavy gray brows, then he saw Denny and he rolled his yellowy eyes. “It's barely light,” he said. “What are you doing here so early?”

  “It's Skimsday,” said Denny with a shrug. “This is about as light as it gets.”

  “Is it?” Poppa Jam leaned past Denny and looked up at the scarlet-tinged sky. “Then I guess I'm open.” He turned his back on a Denny and shuffled off into the cluttered aisles of the store.

  Denny followed him under the hanging door. The walls on either side had been knocked down, none too neatly, expanding Poppa Jam's space into the empty shops on either side. Once, the Porium had been filled mostly with things that come from the cithians or the skynx, things that the humans wanted to buy. There were still a few things like that here and there. Sets of glossy, colorful bowls that were made by the chugs. A curling horn that had come from some beast of from the skynx home planet. A pair of heavy plastek molting shells like the one Omi had worn at Restaurant. Thick cithian cloth so stiff that any shirt made of it was guaranteed to rub a human raw. To Denny, all that stuff looked like plain old junk.

  Most of Poppa Jam's Porium was the other way around. Now most of the dusty shelves and stacked corners were filled with things that used to be in the compartments and gather rooms of the humans, and most of the customers were cithians, or skynx, or chugs who came in to buy these human left overs. Denny had even seen a pair of lesser dasiks carrying away an orangey couch.

  “So, you come to sell me something?” Poppa Jam said without bothering to turn around. “Finally going to give up one of those ugly lumps your father left behind?”

  “I'm buying,” said Denny. He stopped near the counter, where there were still a handful of klickik picture books and a bin of sweetpops. Denny had never been sure who made the sweetpops. Probably not the cithians. None of their food ever tasted right to Denny. Surely not the skynx. Skynx food was...well, it was nothing that a human would try twice. Poppa Jam watched Denny flip through the books for a moment, then just shook his head and shuffled away.

  Denny saw someone else enter the Porium. He turned to see that it was Cousin Yulia. As usual, Yulia was wearing her big jacket, which seemed much too warm for Jukal, but then Yulia had come from Halitt Plex, where it was supposed to be a much colder place, even on Whetsday. Maybe Yulia still carried some of that cold with her.

  Denny held up the picture book to show Yulia, but she wasn't looking his way. She fingered a roll of the rough cithian cloth, and then walked on and disappeared among the shelves.

  A moment later there was a thump from the corner of the big room and Cousin Haw came in. Haw worked for Poppa Jam, and Denny rarely saw him anywhere but the Porium. He seemed to have two jobs, carrying things and looking mean. He was pretty good at both of them. It helped that Haw was the biggest human in Jukal. In fact, Denny thought if you added all the other humans left in the quarter together, including Cousin Kettle, who was pretty big on his own, you just might have enough to make one Cousin Haw.

  Cousin Haw was eating from a gray carton of nutter, digging out mouthfuls of the stuff with a flat plastic froon. He spotted Denny by the counter and angled his way. “
You finally going to sell your dad's junk?” Haw said.

  “No.” Denny grabbed up a yellowish sweetpop and not one, but two of the picture books.

  The first book was tattered at one corner, and when Denny looked inside it was clear that all the images had degraded to bits of digital noise. In some of them, he could just make out the shadows of a moving...skynx? klickik? But really, the silent, messy pages were ruined.

  The cover of the second book came alive at his touch. The material of the cover looked like the same water-stained brown paper as the first, but this time the big green form of a planet or moon rolled smoothly into view as soon as Denny's finger settled onto the page. The rest of the green form trailed slowly around the edge of the book, covered with spirals of cloud and scattered circles of blue marking craters filled with water. As Denny continued to watch, the darting shape of a sleek, silvery spaceship came into view. The world grew even larger as the spaceship homed in. There was a momentary stutter and the image turned pale–few of the old things in the Porium worked perfectly–but then it picked up again, and the ship spiraled down to disappear against the deep green side of the little world.

  When Denny peeked inside, he was surprised to see that several of the other pages were also working. This was a good one. An amazing one, really. He had never seen a book in Jam's store where more than a few of the images still moved. He could even hear the tiny squeak of voices coming up from the pages as he flipped to the heart of the book. He ran his thumb along the side and the voices grew louder. This book worked. Maybe all the way through.