On Whetsday

by Mark Sumner

  It took longer than Denny had hoped to finish winding the cloth around his face and body. By the time he stumbled toward the stained square of metal to see how he looked, Denny was sweating and feeling very uncomfortable under the many layers of cloth. The clothing, which included an old coat that Denny had outgrown and the blanket from his father's unused bed, bulked Denny up until his figure seemed nearly round as a ball. He had taken special care to wrap up his shoulders so that his head and body seemed all of a piece, with little sign of a neck, and his hands were reduced to vague mitteny shapes. But the strangest thing was that the figure in the glass had both an extra set of arms and a spare set of legs.

  Denny shoved a pair of socks onto the end of the extra legs. Some mittens he had never used onto the arms. The extra set of arms was positioned below his own, where the mid-limbs would be on a cithian. Denny tried raising and lowering his real arms, and saw that the fake set moved with him–though not very much. For the fake legs, he'd put the cloth-filled pants actually in front of his own so that with every step the extra limbs would bounce along. He could move, but he sure wasn't going to do any dancing.

  He reached down clumsily, barely able to bend inside all the layers, picked up the biggest thing he had purchased from Poppa Jam, and hung it on his back. The plastek moltling shell wasn't heavy, but it took Denny a few tries to get the straps tied while reaching backwards with his wrapped up arms. When he finally got it in place and turned around again, his reflection showed a cithian moltling.

  Denny stared through a slit in the cloth bindings. The figure in the glass looked a little lumpy, a little uneven, but so did a lot of moltlings. He crouched forward, and then took a slow step, letting his body tilt to the side. Then he took another slow step with the other leg. The motion didn't look right at first, but Denny backed away and approached the glass again, this time taking care to bend his knees less, extend his legs further. He pulled his hands up, holding them at the level of his shoulders, letting the extra set of arms bob a bit at each step. Then he backed away and did it again.

  When he thought his movements looked enough like Omi's, and those of the other moltlings Denny had seen in the street, Denny picked up the eyepad shield that was the last of the items he had gotten from the Porium, and slid it onto his face. The tint of the shield was so dark that Denny had trouble seeing anything at all, but he hoped the heavy glass would keep anyone from noticing his very human eyes peering through a slit in the cloth wrapping.

  He wished he had time to practice more, but he worried that if he stayed too long in the old building, he would be caught. After all, the building where the few remaining guards rested was right across the street. Denny shuffled to the door, sending more of the scuttles running as he crossed the room. He twisted around to get the plastic shell through the opening, and stepped outside.

  There was no one in the narrow street near the old gate to the quarter. Denny moved as quickly as he could to reach the next corner, then settled into the slow, tilting shuffle that he hoped looked like that of a moltling. Already he was sweating under the many layers of cloth. The plastic shell, which had felt not so very heavy at first, swayed against his back and the straps dug into his shoulders at each step. Though the dark eyepad shield he could see only a vague outline of the street ahead. It was like walking in the darkest part of Dimsday, with no lights anywhere. He kept walking, concentrating on making the right turns to get to his destination.

  Denny had always been kind of happy that there wasn't a big cithian work complex very close to the human quarter, because it let him walk around without running into too much trouble, but now he sort of regretted it. Because he needed a work complex to find what he needed, which meant that he had a long walk ahead in his uncomfortable disguise. He sweated his way past one big block of smaller buildings after another. It was the same curving road he had followed on his long walk to see Loma, only this time Denny found every step to be an effort. After a few minutes, he found he didn't have to fake the wobbly side to side walk of a moltling, because he really was that close to tipping over.

  He had been walking for close to an hour before he reached a place where there were road ferries regularly moving along the street. He stayed far over to the side, as he had seen real moltlings do, and kept traveling at his slow pace. At first, he was sure that every ferry was about to stop, and that the cithians were sure to see through his disguise, but they just kept moving. Denny even passed a moltling moving in the other direction. Like Omi, this moltling was nearing the end of its soft period. It had discarded most of the cloth wrapping, and its feet were hard enough to clack against the pavement. Denny held his breath as it drew near, but the young cithian passed him quickly, never even turning its eyepads his way.

  Finally, when he'd walked so far that his wrappings were damp with sweat, Denny came to one of the circular complexes with a dome-shaped building at its center and a series of taller blocky buildings around it. Following Cousin Yulia's instructions, he turned into one of the narrow paths that angled in toward the central dome. A trio of adult cithians went past, close enough that Denny might have reached out and touched the nearest, but none of them turned or showed any sign of seeing the human behind the cloth and plastic. Denny had the sudden urge to go back. Better yet, to tear off the layers of clothing, discard all the rags, throw the stupid shell on the ground and just run back to the quarter. But he didn't. Keeping himself to the slow tilt-step-tilt shuffle of a moltling, he went into the opening of the dome.

  There was no door or curtain that Denny could see, but between one awkward step and the next the air became much cooler. There was a dry, sort of metallic smell and the distant sound of voices, but at first Denny didn't see any cithians at all. What he saw looked kind of like Poppa Jam's Porium...but only if the Porium had been much, much larger. Ahead of him, the building was filled with rings of shelves. These were stocked with boxes of every size, most of them in shades of yellow or brown or red. The shelves were at least twice as tall as Denny. Cutting through this series of rings were aisles that shot straight toward the center, where a tall round tower rose up out of sight toward the top of the dome. Somewhere overhead a a ring of white globes glowed, but the light barely cut through the gloom of the huge space.

  Denny stood there, the sweat cooling against his skin, and wondered what to do next. Cousin Yulia had told him that the cithians kept everything in buildings like this, making them available to the zone of buildings that surrounded each storage dome. In Halitt Plex, her father had been one of several humans who actually worked for the cithians, helping to create a new section. The humans thought that they would be living in the section with the cithians, and that one of the buildings near the dome was for them. Only when the section was finished, the humans began to be consigned. Cousin Yulia ended up in Jukal Plex. Her father didn’t. She'd never seen any of the other humans she'd known from before.

  But just knowing that the cithians kept everything in a storage dome didn't help as much as Denny had thought it would. Because the cithians kept everything in the storage dome. Everything. The dome was huge. There was also another problem, because now that he really thought about it, Denny had no idea what a maton looked like.

  He scanned the row of boxes in the nearest shelf. He didn't know if he should be looking at those as small as his hand, or those large enough to hide a whole cithian. He took a clumsy step forward.

  “Objective,” said a voice.

  Denny jumped, which made the plastic shell rise and thump against his back. He twisted around awkwardly, trying to see who was speaking, but there was no one near.

  “Objective,” said the voice again.

  As far as Denny could tell, the voice was coming from nowhere. Or maybe everywhere. “Hello?”

  “Objective.”

  “Uhh...” He thought about making something up. After all, if there was a cithian watching him from somewhere else in the big room, the cithian might have already noticed that Denny didn't look quite ri
ght, or didn't sound like a moltling. There could already be cithians from the authority on the way, or a team of dasik guards ready to hurry Denny to consignment. Only Denny didn't see anyone. Plus, there was something about the voice. It was sort of not real, like the voice that came from the buttons on the dasik uniforms.

  “I need a maton,” he said.

  “Specify model,” said the voice.

  “Uhh...” Denny said again. He wasn't sure what the voice meant by “model.” He hoped it meant that the voice understood what he was looking for, but he didn't know what to say next. “Do you have a maton?”

  “Specify model.”

  “Can I have one?”

  “Specify model.”

  “Can you show me how to find it?”

  “Transaction ended,” said the voice. Then after a short pause. “Objective?”

  Denny took a deep breath and tried again. “I need a maton.”

  “Specify model.”

  “What is a model?”

  For a moment, there was no response. Then the voice spoke again. “The following models are available at this facility. Ocelli A. Ocelli A four. Malpighian fourteen. Trochanter B. Trochanter C. Subesophageal Nine...”

  “Ocelli,” said Denny. “An Ocelli A four. Yes, I want a Ocellia A four model of maton.” He had picked it mostly because, of all the models that the voice had listed, this was the easiest to say.

  There was no immediate response, and Denny wondered if he had ruined things by interrupting the voice. Then a thin line of yellow-orange appeared on the floor. The line pulsed slightly with light. It led from Denny's feet–his fake, front feet–down the nearest aisle toward the center of the room.

  “Thank you,” said Denny. The voice did not reply.

  Denny began walking across the room. Once away from the door, it was dark enough that Denny had to hold the eyepad shields up with one hand and peek under them to see the line. He forgot, for the first few steps, to keep up his imitation of a moltling's walk. Then he slowed down, hunched over, and started his tilting back and forth. Just because the voice came from something like a maton, didn't mean that there wasn't someone out there watching.

  The yellow line carried on past a dozen or more ranks of high shelves, then turned right between two curving rows. Between the shelves Denny felt a bit trapped. The space was narrow enough that the plastic shell tapped against shelves on either side with each rolling step. The top shelf was high above his head, and the curve of the row meant that he could only see a few steps in either direction. He passed by one of the aisles pointing to the tower at the center of the room, but the yellow line kept pointing around the curve, so Denny kept following.

  He felt like he had gone so far that he was about to be back where he started, when suddenly the line ended. Denny looked up at the shelves on either side and saw that there were many, many, many boxes, all of them about the size of his head, and none of them with any clear label.

  Denny looked up at the shadows overhead. “Where is it?” he said. “Hello?” The voice either couldn't hear him, or wasn't interested.

  He took the eyepad shield completely off and set it down on the shelf so he could take a closer look at the boxes around him. If there was any writing on them, or anything at all to tell you what was supposed to be in inside, he couldn't see it. Maybe the cithians could tell what was what by smelling the boxes. Or by tasting them with the little sensors he knew they had on their forelimbs. Denny couldn’t do that.

  He turned to the shelf on the left and grabbed the box at eye level. Denny thought about turning and leaving, but he also thought how bad it would be to get back to the quarter and discover that what he'd picked up wasn't a maton after all. He fumbled at the box with his cloth wrapped hands. There were some grooves in the package, but they seemed to be designed for the tiny manipulators at the end of a cithian mid-limb, and were way too narrow for Denny to get his fingers in, even when he slipped them out through a gap in the heavy cloth wrapping. He tried to pull the top off, but it wouldn't come. He pressed and poked at the edges, but nothing happened. Finally he simply turned the box over and shook it.

  The top came off, and something small, rounded, and silvery fell from the box. Denny dropped the box and tried to catch the object, but it struck the hard floor with a metallic clang and bounced away. Clumsy in his moltling disguise, Denny shuffled after the gleaming ball as it wobbled along between the shelves, but he only managed to kick it with one of his fake front feet, and when he stepped forward to try and catch it, he kicked it harder. The device went spinning away, wobbling and twisting along the aisle. The shape of the device wasn’t a perfect sphere, and it tended to roll to one side, but its turn almost exactly matched the curve of the shelves. It just kept rolling and rolling. Denny hurried after it, with his real legs thumping against the empty front legs of his disguise and the spare set of arms bouncing against his chest.

  When the silver thing finally fetched up against the bottom of a shelf, Denny bent down to pick it up. The weight of the plastic shell on his back almost caused him to fall over, but with a little arm waving, he managed to stand up again and get his first good look at the device.

  There was nothing to it. Just a slightly lumpy silver ball. Denny turned it over carefully, but there were no buttons, no knobs or dials or screens. “Are you a maton?” he said, hoping that the little device might reply. It said nothing.

  “Hello?” Still nothing.

  Denny looked around. He had walked so far in chasing the fallen device that he couldn't even see the box it had come from. He went back along the curving aisle... and stopped.

  The fallen box lay in the middle of the aisle. Bending over it was a cithian. An adult cithian with the red stripe of the Jukal Plex Legal Authority across its shell.

  Denny slowly backed away. When the curve of the shelf was enough to hide him, he started to walk faster. When he got to the next aisle that cut across the sets of shelves, he turned right toward the outside of the building. Behind him, Denny heard a clicking, scrabbling sound. A movement sound. He started to run as fast as his disguise would allow.

  He reached the outer wall of the building, but still couldn't see anything of the door where he had come in. The wall was a dark gray, and seemed to be nearly covered in wires, pipes, ducts, and grids, all of them painted the same color. There were no labels or signs that Denny could see. Some of the old buildings in the human quarter had signs above the outside doors that said “Out.” Some of them had arrows on the floor that pointed to these doors. The cithians apparently didn't believe in such signs.

  Denny wasn't sure which way would take him back to the door, but he turned right again and kept running. A few steps later, he skidded to a halt. The bright twin suns of Pairday were shining right through the broad open door just ahead, spilling a cone of brilliant light into the otherwise gloomy space. But silhouetted against that light was the form of another adult cithian. Denny backed away. He pressed his plastic shell against the wall, peering toward the entrance from around the side of a large pipe.

  From out of the shelves, another cithian appeared. It could have been the one Denny saw by the fallen box, but he couldn't really tell. It joined the cithian standing in the entrance. The two cithians bent close together and touched forelimbs, as cithians often did when speaking to each other. After a moment, they moved apart, and both of them headed into the shelves, moving in different directions. Denny gave them ten seconds to get away, then started for the door.

  He had barely taken half a step when two more cithians appeared. And two dasiks right behind them. The newcomers didn't hesitate, but started immediately into the stacks, fanning out to cover all the aisles.

  “Earth,” Denny said, but he said it very, very quietly. He back away until he once again had the shelves sheltering him from the view of the nearest cithian, and then he turned and ran again, staying to the outside. He thought that maybe there was a door on the other side of the tall building, but even if there was, it seemed
likely that there would be a cithian or a dasik there, too. In fact, if there was another door, maybe cithians had already come through it. Maybe they were coming toward him. Maybe he was running straight toward them. And what about the cithians who had gone up the center aisles, wouldn't they get to the other side long before Denny made it by going around the outside wall?

  He stood against the wall. His breath was coming hard and his heart was beating in his ears. The sweat he had worked up getting to the building was now icy under the many layers of cloth.

  One thing was sure, Denny could not get caught. His disguise might fool another cithian if he was just passing them in the street, or even talking to them at a distance, but there was no way the cithians wouldn't notice something strange if they were right beside Denny. For one thing, he didn't even have his eyepad shield. It was still lying on the shelf back where he had been looking for a maton. No cithian was going to look at his eyes peeking out between the folds of cloth and think that he was anything but a human.

  Denny imagined the authority cithians grabbing hold of him with the hard manipulators of their forelimbs. He imagined them dragging him through the city. He imagined Overcontroller Hiser looking at him, not in the kindly, protective way that he sometimes did, but in a way that said Denny was in serious trouble. If he was caught now, it wouldn't be just no chez for a week. It meant Hiser telling Denny that he was going to be consigned today, right now, this moment. And not consigned to the place where his father had been sent. Not to a place where anyone had been sent. Consigned to a place where he would never see Cousin Sirah, or Auntie Talla, or irritating Cousin Kettle, or even Poppa Jam. A place where he might never see another human. Ever.

  There was a scraping sound ahead. The sound of a hard cithian foot on a hard floor.