Home Again, Home Again | Page 9

you could hope for from them was pity.
"Be-ing a coun-sel-or is ve-ry hard, Chet. But coun-sel-ors sometimes get a spec-ial re-ward. Some-times, we get to help. Do you re-ally want to do this?"
"Yeh. Yes. I mean, it sounds good. You get to travel, right?"
The Amazing Robotron's idiot-lights rippled, something I came to recognize as a chuckle, later. "Yes. Tra-vel is part of the job. I sug-gest that you start by ex-am-in-ing your friends. See if you can fi-gure out why they do what they do."
I've used this trick on my kids. What do I know about their psychology? But you get one, you convince it to explain the rest to you. It helps. Counselors are always from another world -- by the time the first generation raised in a bat-house has grown old enough, there aren't any bats' children left to counsel on their homeworld.
#
I take room-service, pizza and beer in an ice-bucket: pretentious, but better than sharing a dining-room with the menagerie. Am I becoming a racist?
No, no. I just need to focus on things human, during this vacation.
The food is disappointing. It's been years since I lay awake at night, craving a slice and a brew and a normal gravity and a life away from the bats. Nevertheless, the craving remained, buried, and resurfaced when I went over the room-service menu. By the time the dumbwaiter in my room chimed, I was practically drooling.
But by the time I take my second bite, it's just pizza and a brew.
I wonder if I will ever get to sleep, but when the time comes, my eyes close and if I dream, I don't remember it.
I get up and dress and send up for eggs and real Atlantic salmon and brown toast and a pitcher of coffee, then find myself unable to eat any of it. I make a sandwich out of it and wrap it in napkins and stuff it into my day-pack along with a water-bottle and some sun-block.
It's a long walk up to the bat-house, but I should make it by nightfall.
#
Chet was up at 6h the next morning. His mom was already up, but she never slept that he could tell. She was clattering around the kitchen in her housecoat, emptying the cupboards and then re-stacking their contents for the thousandth time. She shot him a look of something between fear and affection as he pulled on his shorts and a t-shirt, and he found himself hugging her waist. For a second, it felt like she softened into his embrace, like she was going to say something, like it was normal, and then she picked up a plate and rubbed it with a towel and put it back into the cupboard.
Chet left without saying a word.
The bat-house breathed around him, a million farts and snores and whispered words. A lift was available almost before he took his finger off the summon button. "125," he said.
Chet walked to the door of the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla and started to knock, then put his hands down and sank down into a squat, with his back against it.
He must have dozed, because the next thing he knew, he was tipping over backwards into the apt, and the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla was standing over him, concerned.
"Are you all right, son?"
Chet stood, dusted himself off and looked at the floor. "Sorry, I didn't want to disturb you. . ."
"But you wanted to come back and see more. Marvelous! I applaud your curiosity, young sir. I have just taken the waters -- perhaps you would like to try?" He gestured at the ocean.
"You mean, swim in it?"
"If you like. Myself, I find a snorkel and mask far superior. My set is up on the rim, you're welcome to them, but I would ask you to chew a stick of this before you get in." He tossed Chet a pack of gum. "It's an invention of my own -- chew a stick of that, and you cannot transmit any nasty bugs in your saliva for forty-eight hours. I hold a patent for it, of course, but my agents report that it has been met with crashing indifference in the Great Beyond."
Chet had been swimming before, in the urinary communal pools on the tenth and fifteenth levels, horsing around naked with his mates. Nudity was not a big deal for the kids of the bat-house -- the kind of adult who you wouldn't trust in such circumstances didn't end up in bat-houses -- the bugouts had a different place for them.
"Go on, lad, give it a try. It's simply marvelous, I tell you!"
Unsteadily, Chet climbed the spiral stairs leading up to the tank, clutching the handrail, chewing the gum, which fizzed and sparked in his mouth. At the top,