Angry Young Spaceman Read Free Page B

just to see.

    The guy next to me asked me what it was, and I tried to tell him, but the shrill laughter from the lunarian’s entourage drowned me out. I watched the needle move a little closer to the red zone, then repeated myself. “It’s just a wristwatch with an aggrometer feature added. It gauges levels of aggressiveness in the wearer.”

    “Oh yeah, that’s a pug thing,” he said. “My friend had one, but it was bigger and had a holo readout. Went on his chest.”

    “Well, then your friend wasn’t much of a pug,” I shot back. “The idea was that it wasn’t flashy. Those morons who walked around with black eyes and idiotic gloves didn’t have anything to do with the pug I knew.”

    He raised his hands. “Did I say he was my friend? He was actually more of an acquaintance. Sort of an enemy, really.”

    Matthew’s the only guy here with shorter hair than me. We walk around the place like Stumpy and Stumpier, yelling “You want to get to hell, you gotta get through the burny bits!” at inopportune moments. It’s fun.

    Sam.

    ***

    It was four in the morning when the room’s speaker snapped to life.

    “...Breen Samuel, you have a call from... Earth, America, New York—”

    “Patch it through.”

    Lisa’s voice came through. “I’m not getting a visual.”

    “There’s just a speaker here,” I said. “You know what I look like.”

    “I’m imagining you with hair all flattened and pillow creases in your face.”

    “Exactly.”

    “What kind of place are you in? They have visuals on prisonships, for Christ’s sake.”

    “Prisonships? Who do you talk to there?”

    “Uh... never mind. My attorney —”

    “Lisa, why are you calling me? Do you know how expensive it is?”

    “My work’s paying for it. We do a lot of business in that sector, so no one’ll notice.”

    “Nice.” I relaxed.

    “By the way, what the fuck are you doing there? Anything important? Other than drinking and stalking lunarians?”

    “We have classes and stuff during the day. About the planets we’re going to, the culture there and that kinda crap. But we’re grouped together in sectors, because it’s usually one person per planet—”

    “You’re the only person going to Octavia?” There was a satisfying measure of concern and awe in her voice.

    “Yup. Might be the only offworlder there. Other than the occasional tourist. So the classes are kind of pointless, because it’s so general. I’ve been trying to get a jump on the language, though.”

    “Why bother? With your swanky new Speak-O-Matic —”

    My stomach lurched as I remembered. “I lost it.”

    “Oh.” There was a pause. “Sam? I’m waiting for the punchline.”

    “I put it down in a bar and that was the last I saw of it.”

    “...Aw, man.”

    “Yeah. So luckily the Octavian language is hypothetically compatible with a humanoid brain. That’s about all I know so far.”

    “They can’t send you home for not having a translator, can they?” she asked.

    “No, it’s not an official requirement,” I said. The topic exhausted me, so I chose a new one. “Oh, I know why you’re calling prisonships... it’s a new boyfriend, isn’t it?”

    “Funny you’d say that. I gotta date tomorrow night. He’s taking me to a dance recital in Persia.” There was a lilt to her voice that was either excitement or crowing.

    “What!?”

    “That’s right — you’re in the theory stage, while Lisa Industries has already moved to the development phase. I’ll let you know how it goes. And of course, since I’s goin’ out first, I actually dumped you .”

    I smiled in the darkness. “Like hell! We had a mutual —”

    “Mutual’s boring. As soon as I hint how delicately I let you down, and your subsequent offworld retreat —”

    “I’ll just get on the horn right now and tell everyone I’m snogging lunarian models —”

    “But you’re hopeless at lying, Sam, that’s what I always liked about you.” She