Home Again, Home Again | Page 7

the subject of countless action-adventure
vids.
At one end of the apt stood a collection of tall, spiny apparatus,
humming with electricity and sparking. They were remarkable, but
their impact was lost in what lay at the other end.

The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla had an ocean in his apt. It
was a clear aquarium tank, fifteen meters long and nearly seventeen
high, and eight meters deep. It was dominated by a massive, baroque
coral reef, like a melting castle with misshapen brains growing out of it.
Schools of fish -- bright as jellybeans -- darted through the ocean's
depths, swimming in and out of the softly waving plants. A thousand
neon tetra, a flock of living quicksilver sewing needles, turned 90
degrees in perfect unison, then did it again, and again, and again,
describing a neat, angular box in the water.
"Isn't it beautiful? I'm using it in one of my experiments, but I also find
it very calming."
#
I hail a pedicab and the kids back on my adopted homeworld, with their
accusing, angry words and stares vanish from my mind. The cabbie is
about nineteen and muscular as hell, legs like treetrunks, clipped into
the pedals. A flywheel spins between him and me, and his brakes store
his momentum up in it every time he slows. On the two-hour ride into
downtown Toronto, he never once comes to a full stop.
I've booked a room at the Royal York. I can afford it -- the stipend I
receive for the counseling work has been slowly accumulating in my
bank account.
Downtown is all foam now, and "historical" shops selling authentic
Earth crapola: reproductions of old newspapers, reproductions of old
electronics, reproductions of old clothes and old food and other
discarded cultural detritus. I see tall, clacking insect-creatures with
walkman headphones across their stomachs. I see squat, rocky creatures
smearing pizza slices onto their digestive membranes. I see soft,
slithering creatures with Toronto Blue Jays baseball hats suspended in
their jelly.
The humans I see are dressed in unisex coveralls, with discreet comms
on their wrists or collars, and they don't seem to notice that their city is

become a bestiary.
The cabby isn't even out of breath when we pull up at the Royal York,
which, thankfully, is still clothed in its ancient dressed stone. We point
our comms at each other and I squirt some money at him, adding a
generous tip. His face, which had been wildly animated while he
dodged the traffic on the long ride is a stony mask now, as though
when at rest he entered a semiconscious sleep mode.
The doorman is dressed in what may or may not be historically
accurate costume, though what period it is meant to represent is
anyone's guess. He carries my bag to the check-in and I squirt more
money at him. He wishes that I have a nice stay in Toronto, and I wish
it, too.
At the check-in, I squirt my ID and still more money at the efficient
young woman in a smart blazer, and another babu in period costume --
those shoes look painful -- carries my bag to the lift and presses the
button.
We wait in strained silence and the lift makes its achingly slow
progress towards us. There are no elevators on the planet I live on now
-- the wild gravity and wilder windstorms don't permit buildings of
more than one story -- but even if there were, they wouldn't be like this
lift, like a human lift, like one of the fifty that ran the vertical length of
the bat-house.
I nearly choke as we enter that lift. It has the smell of a million
transient guests, aftershaves and perfumes and pheromones, and the
stale recirc air I remember so well. I stifle the choke into my fist, fake a
cough, and feel a self-consciousness I didn't know I had.
I'm worried that the babu knows that I grew up in the bat-house.
Now I can't make eye-contact with him. Now I can't seem to stand
naturally, can't figure out where a not-crazy puts his hands and where a
not-crazy puts his eyes. Little Chet and his mates liked to terrorize
people in the lifts, play "who farted" and "I'm gonna puke" and "I have

to pee" in loud sing-songs, just to watch the other bats squirm.
The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla thought that these games
were unfunny, unsophisticated and unappetizing and little Chet stopped
playing them.
I squirt extra money at the babu, after he opens my windows and shows
me the shitter and the vid's remote.
I unpack mechanically, my meager bag yielding more-meager clothes.
I'd thought I'd buy more after earthfall, since the spaceports' version of
human apparel wasn't,