“Really?” said Bruce, missing the point altogether. “No wonder I felt a little dizzy when I got up.”
“I will order a food trolley for you,” said the big woman, leaving them alone for a few minutes in case they needed to follow some strange private offworld ritual of reunification.
“Thanks very much, Sideshow,” Sue thanked the woman as she left the room.
“Sideshow? What a ridiculous name! She certainly looks a bit like a circus attraction, though, doesn’t she.”
“Now don’t start on her, Bruce. She’s been very good to me while they were working on you,” Sue said defensively. “You made things really difficult for them, I understand.”
“Is that right?” Bruce asked proudly.
“Something to do with actively repressed thought processes and emotional responses.”
“Sounds good,” said Bruce, wondering what she meant.
A knock at the door interrupted them, and another large Skidian wheeled in a food trolley. Bruce fell on it eagerly. Chances were the food on Skid would be a big improvement on the stuff they had on the spaceship. Surely?
He was sorely disappointed. They would have to make do with the same sort of muck they had eaten on the way here.
Sue took only a cup of coffee, saying she had eaten earlier, while Bruce ate standing up and slopped his food as far and as wide as possible.
Sideshow reentered the room and made a beeline for the trolley, helping herself to a pile of food before sitting beside Sue.
The women indulged in a little female idle chitchat as Sideshow devoured her meal. Bruce tried to ignore the two of them, but he suddenly felt a bit left out. They seemed quite cozy.
The thing was, though, that Sue just rubbed him up the wrong way. Not for any reason he could point to, they were almost as culturally incompatible as both of them were with the Skidians.
Finished eating, Bruce searched the trolley for agar, found some and then with a cup of coffee sat opposite the two women while he rolled himself a smoke.
“You are familiar with agar then?” Sideshow was already well aware that Bruce was, but she was eager to show the unsophisticated brute how superior Skid and Skidians were.
“Oh yes. We call it tobacco at home.”
“It’s bad for your health, it stinks, and I wish you wouldn’t smoke around me,” Sue snapped.
“To use agar on Skid is a great privilege. Why don’t you don’t use it, Sue?”
“Where we come from, only people with no concern for their health, or the health of others, smoke,” Sue informed Sideshow sharply.
Bruce placed the cigarette between his lips and lit it, tossing the dead match carelessly to the floor.
Sideshow stared at him with an expression of disgust and disbelief that Bruce was quickly becoming familiar with.
“Why do you put it in your mouth in that manner?” Sideshow asked, for a plausible reason had eluded them to date.
“Everyone knows that smoking causes cancer and heart disease,” Sue continued, to no one in particular.
Bruce suddenly remembered that the Skidians smoked through their noses. He took the cigarette from his mouth and studied it for a moment. “Well, that’s the way we smoke it.” He inhaled deeply and blew a stream of smoke in Sue’s direction.
She waved the smoke away. “Yuk! Do you have to be so inconsiderate?” She got out of the chair and walked over to the window.
“Always have. In fact I’ve never seen anybody put a smoke up their nose unless they were drunk or just being silly. It must be bloody uncomfortable.” Bruce considered trying it, decided not to, and took an extra noisy slurp from his coffee cup instead.
“Pig!”
Sideshow reached across for the matches and agar that Bruce had dropped onto the table. “How often do you use agar? We use it only sparingly, especially as it is in short supply at the present time.”
Bruce was appalled. “Any time I feel like it. Oh, twenty or thirty times a day, whatever. I hope I don’t run out.”
Sideshow was in turn appalled at this excess. She placed her own cigarette firmly between her teeth and lit it. After several puffs she decided this positional change was not for her and returned to smoking in the accustomed manner.
“Don’t you grow the agar then?” Bruce asked, wondering why it might be in short supply. Disease, drought? An insect plague perhaps?
“Grow it? Please, I don’t understand,” Sideshow replied after a brief pause.
“You know, this stuff comes from a plant. To get agar you chop the leaves off, dry them and dice them up. You know?”
“Plant?”
Bruce was starting to get confused. Surely she understood about plants and growing them? There, right out the window, were grass and trees. How was a man supposed to explain something so obvious and fundamental?
“Those are trees and that’s grass out there, right?” He pointed out the window and waited for some sort of reaction from Sideshow.
She nodded dubiously and glanced out of the window at the organic structures that existed there. Who knew anything about the wilderness and the structures that had been there for all time?
“Those trees, for instance, are big plants,” said Bruce triumphantly. Surely the woman wasn’t that dumb?
Sideshow was not sure what to make of Bruce’s explanation. Plants were the immense structures mostly out of sight under the sea where synthofood and other products were manufactured. Sideshow thought Bruce must have become deranged as a result of his recent experiences.
Maybe she was. Bruce tried another tack. “Where does your agar come from?”
Sideshow brightened. “From the plants under the sea close to Larrel.”
“Oh, it grows under the sea?” Well, Bruce thought, he couldn’t expect everything to be like it was at home.
“No, it is manufactured there.”
“Oh, I see now. It’s synthetic like the food!” Little wonder, then, that Sideshow didn’t understand about growing things. Did they grow anything here? What about kids? Were they made in factories as well? That idea conjured up visions of baby farms and rows of test tubes containing developing embryos.
“Please explain this growing to me,” Sideshow demanded, realizing they had missed something vitally important when they analyzed the offworlders’ brains. Much of their accumulated data was virtually useless to them because it could not be related to any relevant experience or knowledge on Skid.
Were the offworlders more complex than had been realized? Sideshow quickly dismissed the idea.
“How would you explain plants and growth, Sue?”
“The obvious way would be to show her, but I don’t …” he voice trailed off hesitantly as Bruce walked over to the window. “Leave it to me. Sideshow, how do I get outside?”
This new direction confused Sideshow even further. Why, on Skid, would anyone want to go into the wilderness? Sideshow had never been out there and did not know anyone who had. Still, the male did appear to have an affinity for the wilderness.
“Here we are,” Bruce muttered, finding a depression that made the window swing open wide enough for him to jump out. Before Sideshow realized what was happening, Bruce had vaulted out the window.
The sticky sea of grass seed heads swaying in the breeze reminded Bruce of paspalum. He picked off a couple of the more mature-looking seed heads and turned back to the window.
“Chuck us a couple of those empty bowls will ya, Sue.”
Bruce scraped dirt into the bowls then clambered back through the window.
“Right, Sideshow, have a look at this.” Bruce placed the two bowls of soil on the table and held up the seed heads.
“That green stuff out there is grass. Right?” Bruce pointed out the window and Sideshow nodded, wondering what sort of madness this was.
“Good. This …” Bruce waved the seed head in Sideshow’s face, “… is a grass seed head, and these little things are the seeds.” He carefully picked off a few of the seeds. “From these the
grass will grow.”
“These seeds develop into that organic material?” Sideshow asked in disbelief. “That is not possible.”
“I’ll prove it to you, though it will take a while.” Bruce poked several small holes with his finger in each bowl of earth, wiped several seeds off into each one, swept a little soil over each depression and triumphantly handed the bowls to Sideshow.
Sideshow took the two bowls from Bruce and stared at them dubiously.
“Take the bowls, and put them somewhere in the light and water them regularly. Like this.” Bruce dipped a spoon into some water and sprinkled it over the bowls. “About this much every couple of days.”
What exactly Sideshow might learn from this exercise he wasn’t sure. Hopefully she would learn something, as any further explanation he might have provided would probably be met with the same impenetrable blankness he had encountered in the last few minutes. She obviously didn’t like being told anything either, arrogantly believing too much in her own intelligence. Surely being a doctor type, she was interested in learning new things, and she must have some understanding of growth and development?
Perhaps not. One never knew with people who thought they had all the answers.
Bruce turned to the window, gazing out longingly. Yearning to be able to stroll out there with some degree of freedom.
“I want to go for a walk out there,” Bruce demanded with the simple single-mindedness of a small boy demanding lollies, as he gestured towards the window.
“It is not done,” Sideshow replied sharply.
Bruce would have argued the point, but the look on Sideshow’s face convinced him arguing with her wasn’t worth the effort. Her lips were set in a grim line, her eyes hard and uncompromising. A formidable sight in anybody’s language. An angry fat lady was not someone you would want sitting on you.
Sideshow struggled out of her chair and waddled over to the window, slamming it shut, muttering to herself. “Why me?”
Puffing from her exertion, her jowls now the color of a rooster’s hackles, she painfully lowered herself back into her chair. It is so unfair being a nursemaid to the offworlders, she thought bitterly.
Unconcerned because he knew that if he really wanted to he could be out the window before Sideshow had dragged herself out of the chair, Bruce paced up and down the room with his hands clasped behind his back.
“Tell me something,” Sue asked conversationally. “Why is the agar in short supply? I thought you said it was made in a factory?”
Bruce stopped his pacing, to await Sideshow’s reply with interest.
Sideshow hesitated long enough for Bruce and Sue to realize she was trying to hide something. “Short supply? I know little of these things,” she answered with a dismissive shrug, in much the same way Mulgoon had dismissed a similar question back on the spaceship.
Suddenly the apparently unconnected pieces of a puzzle slipped into place for Bruce. “But it has something to do with us being here. Yes?”
On the ship, Mulgoon or Cyprus, or had it been Myfair, had implied that they were to be guests on Skid to help the Skidians in some undefined way. Did the apparent shortage of agar have something to do with this?
“Don’t be silly, Bruce. How can we help these people?” Sue clearly thought Bruce’s idea was preposterous. “These spacemen are far too sophisticated to need our help.”
“How the hell would I know, woman? Nobody’s told me, have they? It’s just that, um …” Bruce was sorry he’d said anything now. He might be wrong. He searched Sideshow’s face for any sign he could have been on the right track. “Well,” Bruce insisted, trying another line of attack, “can you tell us why we’re here then, Big Girl?”
“Big Girl?” The insult was over Sideshow’s head and she procrastinated silently, trying to think of a way to change the subject. “I don’t know,” she admitted lamely.
Bruce was sure she was lying. Before he could speak again, Sue had jumped up and stood over Sideshow, jabbing a finger into her face.
“It’s not on to hold us here against our will. I’m an American citizen you know!” she shouted in her agitation, forgetting this meant absolutely nothing on Skid.
Bruce grinned, thinking she was going to demand another audience with the American ambassador.
“I want to go home,” Sue sobbed, collapsing back into her chair.
Sideshow’s eyes bulged and her face became even redder until Bruce thought her head might explode like a ripe tomato. However, when she spoke, after a few moments, her voice sounded normal enough, though Bruce detected a little hostility in her tone.
“It is against Skidian etiquette to confront another as you are doing so now.” As far as Sideshow was concerned the discussion was becoming tiresome and the offworlders were becoming most uncouth. It was time to put them in their places. “If you weren’t so ignorant of our customs …” Sideshow conveyed the impression that this deficiency was entirely Bruce and Sue’s fault, “… I would have you severely disciplined in a social re-education center. I certainly will if you continue to behave in such an outrageous manner.”
Sounds a bit ominous, thought Bruce, watching the two women with amusement.
Sue, to his surprise, came out fighting. “I don’t care for your customs. What do you care for ours? People aren’t usually kidnapped where we come from, it’s against the law!”
“What about the Red Indians?” Bruce interjected.
“Shut up, you. Whose side are you on, anyway?”
Sideshow rose ponderously from her chair, holding up a hand, halting Sue in mid-flight. “As you are ignorant of our customs, I will ignore these insults this time. Seat yourself!” Sideshow shoved Sue unceremoniously back into a chair. “Since you are now on Skid, you must do as Skidians do. Life here will be much more pleasant if you learn and understand our ways.” She paused to catch her breath and added almost maliciously, “You realize, of course, that you can never be allowed to return to your own planet.”
“Why not?” Bruce demanded.
“Isn’t it obvious? You cannot be allowed to return, with news or evidence of our existence.”
“And just who do you think would believe us?” Bruce inquired angrily. “Don’t you realize that if we went back home with a story about being kidnapped by aliens from a planet called Skid, for heaven’s sake, they’d think we were nuts?” Bruce pointed a finger at his head and rotated it.
Sideshow responded with a malicious grin. “You will never return. You will stay forever on Skid.”
“Bugger that for a joke.” It occurred to Bruce that for all their outward pleasantry, the Skidians didn’t give a shit about them at all. However, that still did not answer the important question of why they were there in the first place. What was so secret about it that Sideshow wouldn’t say? It gnawed at Bruce like a hunger pang. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Bruce turned on Sideshow, tersely, forgetting his recent lesson on Skidian etiquette. “I suppose when you’ve finished checking us over, you’ll knock us off in case we contaminate your precious Skid anymore.”
Sideshow squirmed in her seat, attempting to admonish him for his rudeness. But he gave her no chance.
“Don’t give me that rubbish! Leave us alone!” He had suddenly had enough of Skid, and of this Skidian in particular. He knew it was being childish, like a kid throwing his toys out of his cot. Skid wasn’t about to go away, but he had to lash out now even if it resulted only in a fleeting feeling of satisfaction that he would subsequently regret. There would be time enough later to come to terms with Skid and whatever the future might hold.
Fleetingly, he recalled an image of a place from his past where he might never walk again, the place where he felt most secure and comfortable, even if he didn’t get there too often these days. A metal road leading to the sea, the dusty oily smell of a hot old car at the end of a long trip and the sharp odor of fennel, mingling in his nostrils. Sideshow became a focus for his anger.
“Get lost,
bitch. I’ll not tell you again!” Bruce grabbed the neck of her robe and with difficulty pulled her to her feet. Grunting at the effort he propelled her to the door, found the dimple that opened it and bundled her out into the corridor where she collapsed in an untidy heap on the corridor floor. Bruce shut the door behind her and lay back against it, breathing heavily. No worries, he thought. Now what?
“Wonderful, macho man. What makes you think you can get away with roughing these people up?”
The door started to open. Bruce aimed a kick through the gap, had the satisfaction of hearing a grunt of pain, and the door slid shut again.
“Piss off, bugger ya! Look, Sue, I don’t really care one way or the other at the moment.” And Bruce realized he didn’t. “It’s not going to make any difference in the long run, so don’t worry about it.”
“How can you say that?” Sue was petrified the Skidians would retaliate in kind.
Bruce shrugged off her fears. “I’m going to have a look around,” he said, harboring a faint hope of being able to escape into the countryside and maybe live off the land for a while. He strode over to the window, opened it and vaulted out.
“What about me?” While Sue feared to face the Skidians alone, she was unwilling to follow Bruce and attract even more trouble in the process.
Bruce looked back over his shoulder. His first thought had been to ignore her.
“You can’t just leave me here alone,” she pleaded. “I’ll have to take the blame for everything.”
“Well, come on then.” He extended his hand to help her out, which was not what Sue had intended and she hesitated for a moment.
“Okay, suit yourself. I’m off.”
Her fear of being left behind overrode Sue’s misgivings about escaping and she started for the window. “Wait a minute, where are we going?”
Bruce hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. “That way,” he waved vaguely in the direction of the river and strode away leaving Sue rooted to the spot, still trying to decide whether it had been such a good idea to follow him.
A moment later she ran after him and did not catch up until Bruce stopped in the shade of a tree to look back at the building they had escaped from. “Look at that, will you?”
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