Angry Young Spaceman by Jim Munroe Read Free Book Online

was.

    When I opened the door, a line of droids buzzed in.

    “Ido?” they said, in turn. They each carried a box of stuff, and I recognized the scrawl on top as my own. “Ido?”

    Ido?! What was — oh yeah! “Where?”

    I tilted the box of the nearest one so I could read it. Kitchen Crap.

    I pointed towards the fourth and last room in my apartment. I was a little scared to check it out, considering how nasty-dirty the rest of the place was. I pointed the other droids on their way.

    Other than the little trails of bubbles they left, and the fact that they had metal tentacles instead of arms, they were pretty standard-issue droids.

    Or so I thought. One of them, on their way out, brushed my sleeve — and didn’t apologize. Not in any language. That was surprising.

    A noise from outside distracted me. I looked out the window. Mr. Zik was getting out of his saucer. He hurried to my door.

    He surveyed the scene. “Good,” he said. “I was worried you would have trouble.”

    “Oh, no,” I said. “They said ‘ido,’ and I knew that meant ‘where?’”

    “Very good, very good.” He looked around, then quietly ordered the droids to do something. They all pulled an attachment from a small compartment in their backs and used it to clean the floor.

    “Great!” I said. “I didn’t know they could do that. Droids on Earth are a lot more job-specific. They can only do one job,” I clarified.

    Mr. Zik nodded. “Octavia was very ploor until this century. We could not afford too many droids.”

    I happily watched the little guys go about their work. I had been wondering how I was going to go about cleaning in an aquatic atmosphere, and now I didn’t have to bother.

    Mr. Zik just stood there. I didn’t know why he had come over, exactly, and I couldn’t ask him without feeling rude. “I’m going to look at the kitchen,” I said to him, pointing at it. “I haven’t seen it yet. I went to bed right away last night.” I put my hands together and rested my head against them in the mime for sleep .

    Mr. Zik didn’t react, just followed me. I realized how stupid it was to mime for a person who obviously understood English perfectly. Also that I had no idea of how Octavians slept.

    The kitchen was pretty much like an Earthling kitchen. Mr. Zik floated by me and started opening up cupboards, two or three at a time. In one of them, he found a bottle. “Ah, Zazzimurg!”

    “What’s that?”

    “It’s a... tea. Traditional Octavian tea.” He shook it and watched it settle, opened it and sniffed it with his stubby nose. “And it isn’t too ripe.”

    “Let’s make some,” I said, eyeing its dark brown colour with caffeine lust.

    While he busied himself with that, I rifled through the cupboards. There was quite a bit of stuff there, although most of it didn’t have any English on it. “What’s this?”

    “It... is a kind of Octavian flour.”

    I picked up a box with a cartoon chimp on it. The green chimp looked half-way between insanity and ecstasy. I angled it his way.

    He laughed. “Ssss-sss-ss. Candy. For children.” He was holding the teapot with one tentacle, the kettle with hot water in another, and the bottle of distillate in another above his head. With the end of that tentacle, he unscrewed the cap and tilted the bottle.

    The distillate came out in a thick brown stream, moving with unnatural slowness, arcing towards the teapot. Then he started to pour the boiled water, which came out equally slowly, gleaming carved silver. After he stopped pouring the distillate and before it entered the pot there was a second when it was a stream unconnected to anything, like a bent rusty bar.

    I watched it, mesmerized. I knew liquids would look different poured through a soluble atmosphere, but I never imagined it’d be so beautiful. Mr. Zik had put the bottle away and shut the cupboard by the time both streams had entered the pot. He sealed it, breaking my gaze, and set it down on the