“If?” Josh said, picking up on the word that seemed most important in the conversation.
“Oh, we should be staying here for a while,” Jala said, smiling.
“Here, here?” Josh asked. “In the apartment?”
“Yes, Josh,” Jala replied. “Here, here.”
“Oh.”
Josh was working on swear words. He knew some but he also knew better than to say them to his mother.
****
School went on as school always did. The bullies stopped taking his lunches, since they never knew what they were going to be laced with. The transition period was… tough. He ended up having to both bring a lunch and buy one a couple of times. He had a real aversion to habanero and an even worse aversion to uncooked oyster sauce. He stopped getting beat up so much, but that wasn’t the same as making friends. He didn’t. Usually he’d find at least one person to hang out with, but not in this school.
The school was in a state of societal flux; even Josh could tell that. Most of the kids were from the local area and tended to be the children of up-scale urban professionals. But a solid core had been transferred from an adjoining scraper, one that had more than its share of low-pay, semiskilled workers and their children. Josh couldn’t make friends among the kids like “him” because they had all been going to school together for years and had closed ranks in protection against the “new” kids. Josh, by default, was considered a “new” kid but the children of the relative “poor” had little or no use for some snotty brain. Except as a punching bag.
He figured this out after about a week and quit trying. Most of the bullying came from the low-class kids so he avoided them as much as possible. It was a tightrope every day of school and it was wearing him to a frazzle. No friends in a school where people pretty much ignored you was one thing. No friends in one where you needed them to back you up was hell.
He slouched through the door of the apartment and went to his room, not even bothering to go by the kitchen to try to cadge a snack. He had another stupid writing assignment due in the morning and it was driving him nuts. He’d figured out that he could use the plant to paint the words better than he could actually write them. He actually had the assignment memed. All he needed was a printer but they cost like a gazillion credits. The only one he could get to was at school and he’d tried the old “I wrote it at home and scanned it dodge” only to be told to go get the original. What he needed was a dog to eat his homework.
He got out the paper he’d been writing on, which had about a hundred tears in it, and frowned. He really, really didn’t want to write right now. It hurt his hands and he was embarrassed by the way the words looked. He kicked off his sneakers, which ran to the closet and put themselves away, and then lay down on his float bed, closing his eyes and bringing up a book by some guy called “Dickens.” It was really old, almost as old as Tarzan, but it was pretty good.
He opened his eyes when his dad came home and pinged him to say hi. Then he closed them again until he heard the magic word: “project.”
He crept to the room iris and put his ear against it. He could hear them talking, faintly.
“Nari…”
“ Nari? Accompanied?”
“If we want. It’s a minimum two year project.”
“But… Nari? That’s…”
“In the Peshawn sector, I know. But there are some choices. It’s either double my Terra salary or I can take one and a half with benefits. The benefits are housing allowance for spouse, a generous one, and a driver. I can probably swing an education allowance since there are no public schools. There are travel benefits, too. One ticket back to Terra per year for myself and one on the odd six months to Charon Sector or equivalent for myself and family. You get to travel, Jala; I know you’ve wanted to. And the pay is… great.”
“The pay would be great and we need it; we’re barely keeping up with the Visam Card payments. But… Nari… That’s sort of…”
They moved away towards the kitchen and Josh frowned. “Nari.” What the hell, or where the hell rather, was Nari?
He carefully accessed the net. His parents had all the usual filters in place but looking a place up wasn’t going to get him in trouble. Unless they caught what he was looking up. He never talked about his eavesdropping but when you didn’t know from one day to the next where you were going to be sleeping, eavesdropping became a habit.
Nari… too many hits. Nari, place. No. Nari… geographical… Nothing. Where on Terra was Nari? It didn’t ring a bell. Nari. Okay, just go through them. Popular singer. Most of those sites were blocked for some reas… oh. Woo-hoo!
He spent a little time accessing some sites on the pop-singer Nari Senescenes. Two bangles and a feather, INDEED. My.
But that didn’t tell him where they were moving. Or maybe moving. Nari. What did Dad say? Peshawn? Ah. Nari. The Narians. Try that.
Nari, a planet in the Peshawn Sector…
WE’RE GOING OFF-PLANET!
Oh, man, but look at those natives… UUUUUUG-LEE.
****
“Nari is a planet in the Peshawn Sector,” Josh said, tooling the data and throwing up a holopic of the sector then zeroing in on Nari. “It’s a hot world which has a green sun. It’s mostly arid-that’s dry like a desert. The natives are insectoid forms, ten extremities, including two true arms and two false arms, a curved head sort of like a banana…”
When he’d told his social studies teacher where they were going she’d asked him to do a presentation for the class. And herself. With as many planets as were known to Terra, she couldn’t keep up with all of them. The teacher seemed interested but most of the kids were bored. Until he got to the next bit.
“The Narians reproduce by implanting their eggs in mammalform hosts,” he said, showing a video of the implantation. The Narian looked something like a giant wasp and the ovipositor it extended appeared to be about two meters long. “When the eggs hatch, the babies eat their way out of the hosts…” And, sure enough, there was a tridee of the young Narian bursting out of the side of a thing that looked like a six legged cow.
“Oh, gross!” “Cool!” “Are you going to get eaten, Josh?”
“Okay, Josh,” the teacher said, hurriedly, shutting off the video as the baby Narian extended a labial probe and began ripping chunks out of the shuddering former host. “Thank you very much for that… interesting presentation…”
“The Toolecks had a war with them about fifty years ago…” Josh continued.
“That’s enough, Josh.”
****
Josh had only been at a spaceport a couple of times before. They’d shuttled up to visit his Nana in one of the orbital nursing homes once and had a vacation on the Terraformed Mars colony. Other than that, all his traveling had been on Terra and most of that by aircar.
But now here he was in the Bowan Spaceport, get
ting ready to head to Nari via Toolecks. All he knew about Toolecks was that the people there were one of Terra’s staunchest allies and they had five eyes. They all spoke Terran with a funny accent, but it was going to be neat.
“You’re going to be well over gross cubage, ma’am,” the cargo-bot said as the floater transferred their bags to the conveyor.
“Check our record,” Jala replied politely, as if the machine was a human. “We’re cleared for excess cubic.”
Mom had bought him gobs of clothes because she didn’t know what she could get in Nari. Not only clothes that fit but some that were too big so he could grow into them. It made a respectable pile of bags.
After they got cleared by the baggage handling system Mom headed for the gates. They passed through the security tunnel, then down a bounce tube to the lower levels. That was when Josh started to pick out the aliens.
There was a group of spiderlike Grantin, clustering together as if to avoid the horrible mammalforms around them. There was a tall, spindly Barick, striding through the crowd waiting for the tram. A couple of Toolecks, short and lobsterlike with five eyes extended on eye-stalks, waving their mandibles and clacking away in Tool.
There were more. Harons and Sjoglun and Beetoids and Nalo and… too many to count and in all different shapes, sizes and colors. It was just so cool.
Dad joined them as the grav tram arrived. He’d been held up by a ping from his home-office. But they got on the tram together, careful to take the oxy-nitrogen sector one, and headed for the out-terminal.
“Problem?” Jala said as they hung onto the grab bars. There was a stabilization field so those were more for psychological benefit than anything.
“Bank of Heteran wouldn’t take the transfer,” Steve replied, shrugging. “So we’re going to be paid through Bank of Donlon on Tooleck. Not a problem, there’s a branch in Heteran and you can access from anywhere on Nari. But you’d better get used to the fact that Nari uses more physcreds than Terra or Tooleck. They’ve got a local money called the rayel and they mean real money. Sheets with the local ruler’s face graved on them.”
“How… interesting,” Jala said, her eyes widening.
“You can carry enough to get around in your pouch,” Steve said, shrugging. “And hotels and things in Heteran will take Visam or a Bank of Donlon… well it’s a piece of plastrip with writing on it called a ‘cheque.’ You fill in how much money you’re paying them and then thumb it. Hand it over to them and it’s like doing a trans but you have to keep track of them so you don’t overdraw the account. We’ll pick some up in Tooleck while we’re there and I’ll get one of their comps to explain it to you. Bank of Donlon ‘cheques’ are accepted in some of the strangest places.” He paused and grinned. “Welcome to the Outer Limits, honey.”
“Hey, Dad?” Josh said. “Can I get some of those rayel?”
“We’ll see, squirt,” Steve said, rubbing his head. “We’ll see. You’re going to be in a different part of the ship from us, Josh, you know that?”
“I am?” Josh said, his eyes widening.
“Yes, you’re going to be up front,” Jala replied. “I’m going to be riding with your father in the back. Don’t worry; you’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Josh said as the tram pulled into the R terminal. They got out and went up another bounce tube to the terminal then through an emigration scanner to ensure they weren’t carrying any of the fourteen billion, one hundred and twenty three million known forms of replicating biologicals and hazardous nannites. The scanner buzzed on a Sjoglun ahead of them and the floor opened up under the large caterpillarlike creature, dropping it into a bouce tube and down to the medical quarantine facility.
“No danger, ma’am,” the Youtoon beetling the terminal shrilled by rubbing two of his back legs together. “Just a minor case of Purple Spot Fever. Not contagious to Terraoids. Move along, please.”
****
When they reached the gate area they took a tube to the Gamma boarding level for oxy-nitrogen, 10 kps gravity, travelers. Then his mom led him over to a roped off section.
“This is my son, Josh,” Jala said to the Tooleck attendant. “He’s boarding in first class, oxy-nitrogen Terra/Tooleck mix.”
“Yes, Mrs. Parker, I have the note in my memory,” the Tooleck said, bending down to Josh’s level and waving all five eyes at him. “Hello, Josh. Is this the first time you’ve been in a spaceship?”
“Nah,” Josh said, puffing up his chest. “I’ve been to the orbital colonies and Mars before!”
“We’re going to Tooleck for a couple of days,” Jala said nervously. “Then on to Nari.”
“Nari!” the attendant said, whistling through his breathing snout. “That’s a long way, Josh, nearly six thousand light years! You’re going to have fun, aren’t you!”
“That’s right,” Josh said. “And I get to stay out of school till we find a house!”
“Always a pleasure,” the Tooleck said, whistling in humor. “We’ll take good care of him, Mrs. Parker. Josh, why don’t you sit over by that Sjoglun over there where I can keep an eye on you.”
“Okay,” Josh said, skipping over to the seat.
The Sjoglun was about the size of a rhinoceros and looked something like a gray caterpillar, with a tapered tail and head. It had ten stubby legs that were stretched across two sets of conformable chairs and eighteen more stubby pseudo arms ranging from about the length of a human forearm near the base to very small ones the size of a hand at the upper quadrant. It was rocking back and forth with all fourteen compound eyes on short, retractable, eyestalks waving in different directions and appeared to be asleep.
“Hi!” Josh said, jumping into the seat next to it and leaning back as the seat figured out his squirmy body conformation. “I’m going to Tooleck! My name’s Josh!”
“We are all going to Tooleck, young Terran,” the Sjoglund grunted, whistling faintly from spicules along the side by Josh and rotating a handful of eyes in his direction. “And my name is…” it let out a complex whistle.
Josh tried to whistle the name and then gave up.
“I’m just gonna call you Pilly, okay?” Josh said. “I can’t say that name.”
“That is fine young Terran,” the Sloglund replied. “Few Terrans can. And how old are you, young Terran?”
“I’m ten!” Josh said. “I’m in fifth grade. Well, not right now, I’m out of school until we get to Nari and find a house!”
“Ten!” the Sjoglund said, whistling from both sides of his body. “Why, you are barely a grub! When I was ten, I had not yet come of mind. You are lucky to be traveling so young, Terran. There is much you can learn, in school or out of school.”
“I guess,” Josh said. “Hey, what’s Purple Spot Fever?”
“Why?” the Sjoglund said, suspiciously.
“The guy in front of me at security had it,�
� Josh said and was amazed at the speed with which the massive creature could move. “Nice talking to you!” Josh yelled at the retreating form. “Bye!”
****
Josh watched the world dwindling into space until the stars began to move faster and faster. Just as promised, the ones to the front got red and the ones to the rear got blue and then they vanished. What was left was a swirling purple like the stuff you got with your eyes closed if you weren’t reading or meming or something.
“Ladies, gentlemen, neuters and?T*Reen,” the captain said in a clipped Fordoss Galactica accent. “The ship has entered hyperspace and you may now unbuckle your restraints and feel free to move about the cabin. Please keep minimal restraints in place when seated in case we encounter subspace turbulence or black holes.”
Josh tapped the command and the enveloping body cover retracted into the seat. Then he leaned the seat back and closed his eyes. It was a pretty good book but it had been a long day and eventually he went to sleep.
3: When In Rome
“Excuse me, young sir,” the Tooleck said, prodding at his arm.
Josh opened his eyes and looked out the window but they were still in hyperspace.
“Mwuff?” he said, sitting up. “Sorry, I must have fallen asleep.”
“Here is a hot towel,” the Tooleck said. “Dinner will be served in a few cycles.” It was apparently a Tooleck female, slightly larger than the males and less ornate in body etching with the blue and green stylized starship of Tooleck Spaceways graved on her carapace. She handed him a towel and then turned to the seats across the aisle from him continuing her service.
Jim Baen’s Universe Page 53
