Skid

by Keith Fenwick

  “Cheers!” he said, accepting a large glass of beer from Leaf and brought it to his lips. He became uncomfortably aware of how four sets of eyes bored into him as if he’d committed some great cultural sin. To cover his confusion and try to stop the hot red flush creeping up his face under his whiskers he rolled up a cigarette and was relieved to see the Skidians relax visibly. Leaf came round and whispered in his ear.

  “You must ask for permission to be seated in the presence of Inel.”

  Bruce tried to ignore the warm tingle that began in his groin and moved up to settle in the pit of his stomach as he felt Leaf’s breast pressing against his shoulder. Then he became angry.

  This was his home and he’d do what he damn well pleased, Inel or no Inel. Leaf placed a restraining hand on his shoulder, sensing his unreasonable indignation at being educated about some basic Skidian custom.

  “If the others are taking agar, your first action must be to join them in ceremony,” she added.

  Bruce nodded, smiled at the Skidians, and lit his smoke. Bloody bastards, he thought, smoldering resentfully at their arrogance.

  “Thanks, Leaf,” he managed to whisper with some courtesy. Why did the Skidians just assume he knew their customs? He ignored the sudden thought that if he were a little more open-minded he would set about learning a few Skidian customs himself. Bruce dismissed the idea, they wanted him here; it was up to them to spell these things out.

  Nevertheless Bruce gradually relaxed. The beer and the cigarette made him feel mellower than he really wanted to be. On the other hand he’d had a fairly constructive day and someone else was cooking his dinner. What else could a man really want at the end of the day?

  One by one the Skidians flicked their butts over the veranda and settled back in their chairs with audible sighs. As if Leaf had been waiting for this precise moment, she quietly announced that dinner was ready to be served. Inel acknowledged her with an imperious wave of his hand and pulled himself up to the table.

  Not a word had passed between them since Bruce had joined the happy little party. He flicked his own butt away and took a last long swig of beer, feeling more like an outsider than a host.

  A drone appeared carrying several trays heaped with synthofood and meat on its shiny metallic arms. Bruce looked at the plate Leaf set down before him, wondering if the Skidians said grace or something before they ate.

  “On Skid we believe nothing should get in the way of consuming food, so we do not stand on ceremony. Although it is customary for the host to begin to eat first, to show the food hasn’t been poisoned,” said Cyprus, Bruce’s self-appointed mentor and cultural adviser, then added, “It is permitted to converse over a meal.”

  Bruce considered the chunks of burnt meat on his plate and how unappetizing they must appear to the Skidians. By now they must be wondering if these meager offerings were really a part of the solution to their impending famine. Oh well, he shrugged, not really giving a shit one way or the other.

  He skewered a piece of meat with his fork, dipped it into a pile of synthofood and with a flourish he stuffed the forkful into his mouth. It wasn’t that bad really.

  The Skidians watched him without making a move towards their own meals. It belatedly occurred to Bruce they would be unfamiliar with solid food. At least, he grinned inwardly, they had the teeth for the job even if they didn’t know how to use them. Big, white, horse-like chompers.

  Inel looked at Cyprus and then Toytoo. He personally did not intend to consume any of this organic food until it had been subjected to a battery of tests back in Sietnuoc and perhaps not even then. For the other two it was a different story – one of them had to show Bruce that a Skidian wasn’t going to be outdone by a primitive from some backwater planet.

  Inel pushed his plate away and spoke in a strange guttural dialect Bruce could not follow. Inconsiderate bastards, he thought. Bloody rude of them to speak as if he weren’t there, as if he were some lower form of life. He glanced from one to the other, saw Cyprus’s jaw drop, and heard him suddenly breathe in short, panicky gasps. What was going on, was he sick?

  Cyprus slowly composed himself and hesitantly speared a piece of meat with his fork, regarding it suspiciously as if it might suddenly reach out and bite him. Something about Cyprus’s expression reminded Bruce of a dog contemplating a new and interesting morsel, trying to decide whether to eat it, roll in it or do something else on it.

  Cyprus held the charred chunk of meat up to his mouth. His nostrils twitched and flared, and all he wanted was to be somewhere else so he would not have to face this moment. Nevertheless, there was no avoiding it. Inel had spoken and to defy him meant certain death.

  Cyprus had been panic-stricken when Inel commanded him to consume some of the organic material. Inel certainly was not about to endanger his own health unnecessarily. It also seemed to Cyprus that he had been chosen rather than Toytoo because he was expendable. That thought did nothing for his flagging confidence. He could not ignore Inel’s direct command without avoiding the threat of immediate disinfection, which was most likely permanent banishment to a social correction center away from his life in Sietnuoc – or even worse.

  Staring at the organic material that Bruce called meat, Cyprus, with sudden clarity of thought, realized that if this material proved incompatible with his digestive system then not only was he a dead man, but so was Skid. Or was it? Cyprus was becoming a little confused on this point. In ancient times, as far as any of them could discover, Skidians had consumed the very material that Cyprus noticed with a start was now moving of its own volition to his mouth. Could their digestive systems have altered that much over the intervening millennia?

  Cyprus glanced over at Bruce who was eating both synthofood and organic food and showed no ill effects from either. Still, you could never be sure with these primitives, he thought, forgetting that Bruce’s internal anatomy was identical to his own.

  The ‘meat’ as Cyprus as Bruce called the material, was perfectly safe for him to eat. Though no amount of intellectual justification could ease the tension of the moment when he had to put this knowledge to the test.

  He used his almost redundant olfactory sensors to assess the meat and was surprised by its aromatic nature. It might be a raw and unprocessed product, teeming with harmful microorganisms. But the smell, the smell conjured up all sorts of visions in his mind and his mouth began to feel moister than usual.

  Then the meat was inside his mouth. It was hot and juicy and suddenly he was trying to suck it off the fork. Cyprus panicked momentarily and tried to pull the fork out of his mouth. However, in his panic his jaws had almost clamped firmly shut and the meat caught on his teeth and fell off into his mouth.

  Now what? He moved the chunk of meat experimentally around his mouth with his tongue, trying to work out what to do next. He could not swallow a chunk of food this size, for he would surely choke. Cyprus glanced across at Bruce, whose jaws seemed to be trying to crush something, and followed his example. Cyprus had always wondered what he had teeth for, and had considered, as had many other Skidians, whether he should have them extracted or not for cosmetic reasons. Now he was glad he had not.

  He closed his eyes and assumed a grim expression while savoring the taste of the meat and the new and pleasurable sensations that flooded his brain. Even the memory of the bloody carcass on the ground and the thought of how unhygienic the meat must be failed to spoil his enjoyment of this first mouthful of organic food.

  Now he understood what food really was as the first mouthful made its way down his digestive tract. The meat had a flavor all of its own. If this was but one example of the offerings the offworlders had, then Cyprus looked forward to trying the others, even if they only tasted half as good as this first one.

  “Excellent,” he managed to remark between mouthfuls.

  Although his obvious enjoyment convinced neither Toytoo nor Inel to make a start on their own meals. Cyprus could be pretending, after all, to try to lure them to a fate similar to
his own. It was not beyond the realms of possibility that he was stoically enduring extreme agony until he could lure them to their own ends.

  When it became obvious to Inel that Cyprus was not likely to keel over on the spot, Inel decided it was time to depart. He curtly ordered Cyprus to remain behind since he seemed to have some affinity with the offworlder. As if eating the same food gave one man a greater feeling towards another.

  He would remain to learn all there was to know about organic food production, so that the offworlders could be disposed of. This turn of events irked Cyprus. It was not enough that he had to associate closely with the offworlders; he must also remain in the wilderness. The prospect of remaining in this isolated spot made him most uneasy for, as every Skidian knew, inexplicable dangers lurked in the wilderness. Why else did they all live in cities?

  Cyprus wondered whether he would ever see Sietnuoc again. However, he lacked the imagination to be really concerned and accepted the role that had been allocated to him with what little dignity he could muster.

  Twenty-five

  As far as Bruce was concerned, the sooner the Skidians were learning to run farms and process the ivops and feeding themselves, the better off they’d be. There was no way he could feed Skid’s one billion plus population by himself, which is what the Skidians seemed to want. Rather he saw himself as an adviser, whose main aim should be to make himself redundant as quickly as possible.

  He also had some definite ideas about teaching people things; he was a staunch believer in the value of hands-on experience, as Cyprus was about to discover.

  Cyprus’s general attitude didn’t impress Bruce. God help the Skidians if they were all like this lazy bastard, he decided, as he toiled away on the fence lines under the hot, Skidian sun.

  In keeping with his self-appointed role as would-be leader of the entire organic movement and the traditions that had made Skid strong, Cyprus was content to let somebody else look after the basics. He did not follow how Bruce’s effort was important to the development of the organic plant, or ‘farm’ as Bruce called it. Nor was he really interested. Bruce’s explanation that the farm was vital to exploiting the ivop resource, that unless the ivops were properly managed the resource would soon be exhausted, fell on deaf ears.

  Cyprus knew this to be nonsense. Why not just kill the ivops and process them where they stood out in the wilderness? The ivops were plentiful now and always would be. If this resource were ever threatened, they would deal with it at the appropriate time and in the customary manner.

  After several days of verbal wrangling with Cyprus and trying to get some work out of him by gentle digs that Cyprus steadfastly ignored, Bruce finally lost patience with him. He wasn’t about to slog his guts out for Skid while Cyprus sat around irritating him with his inane comments.

  The tipping occurred when Bruce asked Cyprus to bring him some more posts from the back of the ute where the Skidian had perched himself, legs crossed on the tailgate. Initially Cyprus just played dumb, pleading ignorance, typical of Skidians when they wanted to avoid anything unwelcome. On Skid this was acceptable behavior and always worked because nobody was rude enough, unlike Bruce who was most persistent, to press the point beyond the first silent clamping of the jaws.

  Bruce informed Cyprus bluntly that he, high-and-bloody-mighty Cyprus, was here to learn and one of the things he was going to learn was how to work, whether he liked it or not. Cyprus continued to stare insolently at Bruce, which just served to infuriate Bruce even further.

  “Right, ya bastard!” Bruce reached over and pulled him off the tailgate. “You can get your fat arse off there for a start.”

  Cyprus tried to catch his balance but ended up in an untidy heap on the ground. His eyes bulged, almost popping out of his head, as he tried to pick himself up, but Bruce held him down with a foot and handed him the hammer he had been using.

  For a moment Cyprus could not believe what was happening, nobody handled a Skidian like this. Unless on the Stim field, when anything went. He’d barely touched another Skidian ever and even then only by accident, let alone been thrown to the ground.

  “Here.”

  Bruce let Cyprus scramble to his feet, made him take the hammer and pushed him over to the fence line. Cyprus was too stunned to do anything but comply as Bruce set him alight knocking the slim posts into the ground. After standing over Cyprus until he was satisfied he could be left alone for more than five minutes, Bruce walked off to where he had dumped several coils of wire.

  Fifteen minutes later, trailing a wire behind him, Bruce came to where Cyprus was working. In typical Skidian fashion, Cyprus believed if he proved incapable of doing what he was told, he would be made to stop. However, Bruce was made of sterner stuff.

  Cyprus had knocked in a few posts at irregular intervals and varying depths, which offended Bruce’s sense of decorum. Muttering darkly, “He’s just doing this to piss me off,” Bruce corrected the faults that threatened to mar his rural art form and told Cyprus to get his shit together before he whacked him one.

  Cyprus did not know what a whack was but suddenly fearing for his own safety he applied himself a little more diligently; it was a simple task, after all. However, before long his lack of physical stamina and general fitness manifested itself, as never before had he exerted himself so strenuously.

  After another fifteen minutes he needed to stop for a rest. Painful bubbles had appeared on the hand that grasped the hammer shaft, his limbs had become heavy and sore, and his robe was drenched from the moisture that sprung alarmingly like little streams from his skin. When Bruce wandered by on his way back running out another wire and saw Cyprus lying on the ground he harangued him, verbally and physically, forcing him to continue.

  Bruce thought Cyprus had got the idea, but when he turned after walking about fifty meters he saw the Skidian had already stopped again. Bruce stomped back and revived him with a few well-placed kicks.

  “Get up, you useless bastard.”

  Cyprus whimpered at the unaccustomed pain as his muscles tightened and cramped. To his surprise he found he could still stand, and when Bruce thrust the hammer at him, he grasped it limply in hands that had become a bloody mess as the blisters burst, and started to hammer in another post.

  Somehow Cyprus managed to struggle through the rest of the day and those that followed. He resented the way Bruce had bullied him so savagely and vowed he would get his revenge somehow. Each afternoon Cyprus collapsed in his quarters once the day’s work was completed to Bruce’s satisfaction, almost too tired to contemplate a wash or food, and cursed the day he had ever set eyes on Bruce.

  With his body aching and still exhausted from the previous day, Cyprus faced each morning with a hollow feeling of dread as if he wanted to be sick. So intense was this feeling that for the first few days he could barely eat.

  “Not again,” he groaned each morning, as Bruce turfed him out of bed before the sun rose. Then he had to sit at the table and watch Bruce while he devoured his morning meal, drank his coffee and smoked, which made him feel more nauseous than ever. A small offering of synthofood in the middle of the day and again in the evening was all Cyprus could manage for days. He could not even bring himself to take agar in the presence of another. Not that Bruce ever thought of sharing his agar with anyone.

  Despite his growing hatred for Bruce, Cyprus was grudgingly beginning to respect his abilities. How did he manage to be so physically active and show such little fatigue? And unlike any Skidian he had ever known, including Inel, Bruce was able to dominate by sheer force of character, just as he had dominated the Stim event. No longer could Cyprus patronize Bruce as a primitive being, not in his presence anyway.

  He began to wonder if all the males of his planet had similar characteristics. If they did then the universe better look out when they eventually managed to get off their planet in any great numbers and started to roam through space.

  After a few days, Cyprus also noticed to his horror a gradual change in the color
of his skin. He had quickly abandoned his usual robes for Bruce’s style of dress: a singlet and shorts. The robes were far too clumsy and hot to be wearing outside in the heat of the day, so for the first time in his life his skin was exposed to the sun. Soon he would be as dark as Sue, he thought with distaste, as his normally pallid skin became red and hot, and then turned the same color as ivop meat when it was cooked.

  At first he thought the change in his skin color might have something to do with the ever-increasing quantities of the meat he was eating. Its dark color might be somehow changing the pigmentation of his skin. He almost worried himself to death over this dramatic transformation. If the meat could do this to him, what else might it be doing to him?

  “You’re getting quite a sun tan there, Cyprus,” Bruce said one day.

  Being burnt by the sun was not something he had thought of. Was that dangerous he wondered?

  By the fourth day of Bruce’s brutal regime Cyprus was becoming aware of other changes, too. Though he was still stiff and sore, his veins pulsed with a new sense of vigor, and he sensed that his body was strengthening. However, it was a relieved Cyprus who greeted the arrival of the three ‘trainees’ promised by Inel. Cyprus was now able to assume a position more in keeping with the dignity he thought he deserved, as he began to instruct the new arrivals in the duties he had so recently learned himself.

  Having established himself in a supervisory role and assuming that Cyprus would be motivated enough to do what he was told, Bruce realized he had to find something for himself to do until all the fencing was finished, before he went nuts.

  Bruce turned his hand to tidying things up and doing those little jobs that seemed to escape everybody else’s attention. That used up half a day. Consequently, it didn’t take long for Bruce to get on everybody’s nerves. In the manner of a man suddenly retired from an active working life, he poked his nose in where it was not appreciated, in effect doing nothing particularly useful and busying himself by getting in everybody’s way.