Salamander 3

            With grain having nothing to do with fruit on my mind, I went to the center, and met with Camillia. Looking at the sky, being fifty pounds heavier, and feeling the pressure of the air, I understood that I wasn’t being lied to. I had just been in denial. I was on another planet.

            But, in those first few days, that would slip my mind. Sometimes, I thought that they may have reasons to stage this on Earth. And, that was workable, as long as I was treated well and got the money promised me. I was open minded, but deep down, I was certain that I was on another planet. Among the six classes of five ‘astroworkers’ at the center, all at different phases of their tour, opinions toward our situation varied. Some adapted well, and frequently reminded others that we were on another planet. Some finished their assignment and went home believing that it was all a hoax, and that they’d only been a few miles away.

            Before the morning meeting, we would wait to go into a small room. Several were available. There, we would sit, and a Valian would tend to a machine that was somehow reaching out and taking excess gasses from our blood. Recently, I was told, Valians freaked during the process with one guy, and informed him that he had practically no potassium. He was given an IV drip while he read ‘The Old Man and the Sea’. He got the day off with no resulting cut in pay.

            On my training day, Camillia took me on a short walk through the suburb our complex was in. The sky was a radiant grey-blue. The fair-weather clouds looked like they had been drawn by a children’s book illustrator. A very good one.

            The houses were squat, with nearly flat roofs. The colors were monotone, or dusty pastel. I understood later that roofs on Vale had to be shored up, but couldn’t be flat. They needed the slightest pitch. Camillia showed me how to interpret a Valian map, and look for the design (well, a set of characters) on the house, and we sacheted into a backyard. Basically, she told me to double-check, then sachet on in. There was a kit waiting near the tiny garage there, a ladder, a large bucket, and a small spade. I was to clean the gutters around the garage. A very short and easy task. Camillia waited.

            “Could there be bugs or animals in the gutters?”

            “There could be,” she said. “It’s not likely to be dangerous. There might be…” she rattled her fingers.

            “Spiders?”

            “Perhaps.”

            “Centipedes?”

            “Those too.”

            “Poisonous?”

            “No. They might pinch if you pick them up. This might be another world, but it’s not like in Star Trek.”

            I set up the ladder at the center of a long wall of the garage.

            “Most of the bugs can go along with the leaves into the compost. Centipedes! That’s a good name.”

            She ‘eed’.

            I scooped the leaves from the gutter, and, yes, there were a few bugs, which fascinated me. It turned out to be like finding one I had never seen back in the Midwest, but much more frequently. Camillia noticed that I was finding a few through my demeanor, and told me not to kill them. That it was considered ‘bad form’. She waved to a couple who were watching us through the patio door, and I waved too.

            “That’s not expected when you’re on a ladder.”

            She watched as I made it around the garage, scooping leaves from the gutter, and dumping them onto a beautiful pile of compost. I told her about finding a snapping turtle in leaves I was raking up, back on Earth. She was professionally interested in whether I was bitten, (I lucked out) where it had come from in the first place, and what I did in reaction. Finished, I quipped that if I stayed for a year, I could make a lot of money. She told me that six weeks on Vale feels like six months to a Terran.

            I made it back to the complex, and I was tired. The meeting hall was the place for gatherings of astroworkers in the evening. It was low-ceilinged and utilitarian. There were long tables, plastic chairs, the works. The workers there were from all over, and the average age was in the late-twenties. I wasn’t the oldest there, but I might as well have been. The most important questions I had since arriving had already been answered, (There is no peanut butter or acetaminophen on Vale.) so I plopped down there in the late afternoon, and monitored the news of the day. Mostly, I listened.

            “…You should drink that Loganberry Liquor and observe the Dew Geckos at night. They’re venomous and glow in the dark.”

            “Where do you get this stuff?”

            “Got a Valian friend with a connection with the black market.”

            “Ooo.”

            “No, that’s Valian, to show you have sympathy.”

            “I do…”

           

            “…District three, they’ll zap ya soon as look at ya…”

           

            “…Crazy world…” (From the Portuguese.)

           

            “…It’s, like, a gazillion proof. Not legal, even here…”

           

            “…Those vacs are sturdy, though.”

            “Not like a stick-vac where I come from.”

            “Yeah. Once they act up, you gotta toss ‘em.”

            (The term ‘Planned Obsolescence’ came to mind, but I held my tongue. I was a little older on the scale, there, and realized that the term itself is obsolete.)

            “Toss one here, and you got a lot of trouble on your hands.”

            (laughter)

            “For what it’s worth, some recent models can be mended. Depending, of course…”

           

            “…If Valians out there have the clip, why don’t we have them here? Sometimes, I don’t understand what my job coach is saying.”

            “The police have them.”

            “You’ve seen cops?”

            “They had some sort of accident. They didn’t want me to gawk.”

            “What sort of accident?”

            “Side of a garage was bashed in and singed. I don’t know what happened. My guess is they were embarrassed when I walked up.”

            “Might have been contamination or something. You never know, here.”

            “Nah. They just didn’t want me there. I’m saying- ‘I wanna gawk!’…”

           

            “…What tool do you use to fix vacuums?”

            “With what they have now, a standard screwdriver usually does the trick. Not like they’re a particle accelerator. But, if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s better to toss it, I guess…”

           

            “…It ain’t a utopia.”

            “The Valians really know how to party.”

            “We must be in some suburb…”

           

            “…well, maybe the androids are on strike.

            “We could be the underclass here. I’m keeping my eyes open.”

            “Maybe it’s a ploy to shame the androids into going back to work…”

           

            “…We had a suburb pop up in one year. Now there’s ten thousand there. All of them would be happy to be here…”

           

            “…I guess I’ve got rid of a few things that would’ve lasted.”

            “Why toss it if it’s good? Or, you can take it to a shop.”

            “Not many of those anymore.”

            “That’s a pity. But my uncle in Perth has a shop. Of course, with what’s out there now-a-days, more and more he’s telling people- ‘It’s trash.’…”

           

            The evening and the workers trickled away, to morning, and the meeting began in the same room, after four hours of sleep for some. About twenty of us were working that day. Jonathan stepped up to the front of the room, holding an umbrella.

            “This! Is an umbrella.”

            And, the shared comments amongst the peanut gallery began.

            (“Ooh!”

            “No, Valians say that to express sympathy.”

            “I am.”)

            Jonathan continued, gamely.

            “An umbrella can be your best friend. Handled wrongly, it can be your worst enemy.”

            (“What caliber is it?”

            “They can hurt! I went out shopping during a typhoon once…”

            “What were you doing…shopping in a typhoon…”)

            The group did like to josh Jonathan a bit, as long as he didn’t wind up in a pool of drool. Some in the group really liked him. To extreme ends. I don’t know. Maybe they were ‘expressing sympathy’.

            “I try to bring humor into things. This is important, really,” Jonathan said.

            The hall went to a relative hush.

            “The rain falls from higher, here on Vale, and the drops can be much larger than rain on Earth.”

            (“There is no way!”)

            Jonathan held the umbrella with two hands, pointing it out.

            “You may only have seconds to act. Press the button, and use a shaking and rattling…thing…”

            He demonstrated, or tried to.

            (“Not in here!”

            “Maybe it’s lucky on this planet.”

            “I may be a Yank, but I can open an umbrella.”

            “Closing it’s the rub, then?”

            “Dude, it’s too early…”)

            “Fine!” Jonathan said, and stopped. “The most important thing is to carry it with you, and remember that every Valian business and domicile also serves as a rain shelter. They won’t be thrown off if you come in from under Angel Fucking Falls. Now, all of you! Go putz around in a backyard…”

            He headed for the side entrance. There were placating words from some who had listened. He muttered on his way out-

            “…this is why Astroworker Level Two Liason/Managers drink…”

            (“Aww. People!...”)