Salamander 5

            I felt a bit guilty, one day, late in the assignment, when I understood that my job that day was to pluck weeds from, what, 400 square feet of mulch. I felt even more useless when I saw the garden. It was fairly well-tended, and wouldn’t take much more than an hour to weed.

            I was distracted, though, with the sky. I couldn’t remember if there had been as much silver in the silvery blue. I got a spade, gloves and bucket, and looked up, admiring. There were no clouds, or so it seemed. Just streaks of things, lighter, that looked like huge seahorses.

            I should have known better.

            I was in Earth mode. It might rain, I thought. ‘La di da. So, I beh-dur hur-ry!’ I started weeding a landscaped patch that had weeds the most.

            Then something hit me from above. I thought it might have been from one of the impish squirrels there on Vale, but whatever it was splattered when it hit me on the shoulder. Another hit me, then another. They were raindrops, and they hurt. I wanted to finish, so I tried to finish quickly, tugging the sprouts from the mulch. I heard a kind of booming from the house. It was the inhabitants, warning me. I continued to weed, feeling the water-hail smack on my shoulders and my back. At times, my head. They had the force of large acorns, and I was fascinated, even entertained, that they immediately seemed to disappear, losing their force as they struck. Of course, I should have known better.

            The deep hum, the booming, continued from inside the house. I looked over, and a few people were looking out the windows and the porch door. I gave up on the sprouts and walked over to get my umbrella. It was now, certainly, my friend. I grabbed it, pressed the button and rattled and twisted, like Jonathan had told us to do. It opened, I swung it up, and heard pounding from above.

            “Ka-Pack! Pack!”

            Through Jonathan’s abbreviated lecture, I hadn’t picked up on the danger of rain. It was becoming something that I hadn’t experienced before. I looked over, and a Valian was at the open patio door, waving me inside. I walked toward the house, and he was trying to tell me something. He didn’t have a clip, so, it could only be heard in Valian, but that didn’t matter. I could hear only the tangerine-sized raindrops roaring to water-bits on the umbrella I was trying my best to keep above my head. At the porch door, the Valian held his hands to his sides with confusion and resignation. He became more and more obscured with silver. It was a waterfall, coming off that shallowly-pitched roof. That’s the thing about roofs on Vale. It throws the water at a flatter angle during downpours. Like a fire hose. Thinking quickly, but wrongly, I tilted the umbrella toward it, and screaming as I was pelted from above, ran into the waterfall, which pushed me back. I took a tumble, and the edge of the umbrella raked my face. The whole kit and caboodle flew behind me, giving me a second of ‘enemy’.

            The people in the house came out. I could hear them through the waterfall. They grabbed me by the ankles, one of which was sprained, and tugged me into the house. They, talking loudly, me- hollering.

            I lay there in what looked like the ‘dining room’, which was white with refracted light, and pointed to my ankle.

            “I hurt it! Hurt!”

            “ooo.” A Valian was handed a towel, patted my ankle, jeans and all with it, then placed a Pain Patch on the affected ankle. Over the jeans.

            They hesitated, until it was clear that I realized that they were helping, then descended upon me with towels, about five of them, as I lay there, patting, with the deep hum of concern, the ‘ooo’ of helping fashion, and, in the background, others watching with the faint ‘eee’ of reserved Valian chuckling. I didn’t think the towels would help, but they finished by patting off my hair and face. I sat up and felt my head. It was dry. I put my hands on my face, laughed embarrassedly, then pulled them away. What seemed to be the smallest adult Valian was leaning close.

            “eee?”

            I paused, balled my fists and burst out an- “eee!”

             The universal was well received by the residents. The Valian pretty much told me that I could get up. I hesitated, pointed to the ankle with the patch.

            The Valian shrugged, reached down, and whipped off the pack. I tested the ankle as I got up. It was fine. Placing a hand on my knee I’d noticed that I was dryer than I thought I would be. In fact, I felt pretty light, for being on Vale. I was completely dry, and amazed. An incoming message burbled through the small crowd.

            One looked right at me, gestured, and said- “Home.”

            This was their home? It was... I was to go home. I pointed to myself, then out.

            “Home?”

            There was nothing to indicate that I was right, except for a pulse of relief coming from them. The downpour was finished. They may have gotten a message from Camillia even before they had me in the house. Nothing else to do, I turned and stepped to the patio door. I kind of felt a sigh, a release of breath from the homeowners. It wasn’t a release from fear, though, unless it was release from fear of embarrassment. Then I remembered to wave and say “Thank you” as I left.

            “THANK YOU!” I heard from behind, as I stepped out onto the patio stoop. I made sure to step down using the ankle that hadn’t been hurt, but the other one was fine.

            In fact, I was so fine, walking ‘home’, that I confused myself by favoring my right foot, which had been hurt, and finding it stronger than my left, then favoring the left, since it was left out of the Pain Patch Miracle Therapy. Then, I couldn’t remember which foot I hurt. I realized that it didn’t matter, but all of this gave me a headache. Getting closer to our complex, I chuckled, a bit hysterically. A Valian looked at me, and walked into a lamppost. I mouthed ‘ooo’ to him without even thinking about it, and he waved a bit to me as he walked off, with some embarrassment.

            A month of work on Vale had worn me down. I considered opting out, which could be done. Others had in the past; some had who were who were in the group at the time. The salary would be pro-rated, and a small amount would be taken from what had been earned so far, for room and board, as one waited for the regular flight back.

            I gave myself a pep-talk. The job was easy! All I needed to do was putz around in backyards. But I didn’t want to just putz. But, Jonathan wasn’t ‘just putzing’, and look where it got him.

            Winthrop was there to greet me as I slunk in. He told me, in the gentlest way, that I had mulch on my ass. I groaned and tromped out the door, muttering, “If I had a quarter…”

            I had to go out through the hall access nearby, but it wasn’t much of a walk outside. It was all on the ground level. I got comments from one of my co-workers as I brushed myself off, and turned to go back to the hallway. I could see Winthrop checking on me as I finished. I felt a bit bothered by that. It was just a glimpse of him at the door, a bit of a stick, leaning for a better view of me- the handle with a bright red light on top.

            It’s kind of hard for two entities to ‘give space’ to the other in such a small apartment, but when I came back in, he was over at the bureau corner, picking at the carpet.

            “Are you okay?”

            I sat on the bed.

            “I got caught in the rain.”

            “Happens to everyone! Happens to everyone. ‘It’s better to get an umbrella in the face than have a raindrop in your trachea.’ Anything I can do?”

            “Nothing more than what you’re doing now. You’re great.”

            “It’s my job…”

            He rolled like a Roomba, here and there, as we both ascertained each other’s moods. He rolled close.

            “I’m curious…”

            I felt kinda prickly at that point, but Winthrop had been very helpful so far.

            “…I watched you brush the mulch off, and at no point was a ‘quarter’ needed.”

            I burst out a light- ‘hoo!’

            “Or any combination of ‘dimes’, ‘nickels’ or ‘pennies’.”

            I grinned at him.

            “So, there was no need for its use as currency, per se. I then thought,” he said, “that, since people sometimes use coins as tools, you needed one for the fine work. Getting the mulch off your ass.”

            I laughed, then told him that I was sorry.

            “You don’t say sorry to androids.”

            “I do.”

            “Well…” he spun about, and found no grit, “That theory fell apart when I thought: ‘Why not a half-dollar, then?’”

            I nearly hugged myself for laughter, but made no sound.

            “I’m sorry.”

            “No need to say ‘sorry’! We don’t feel pathos, or register it directly.” Then, in a sing-song voice, “Just: Ethos in our software, Logos through to our frame.”

            “It was good reasoning,” I told him. “But what I was saying, basically, was ‘If I had a quarter for each time I walked into an apartment without brushing myself off, I could buy this or that’.”

            “Oh. I didn’t hear that part.”

            “I didn’t follow up. A lot of the time, we leave it at that.”

            “Oh!” His feet flexed a bit out of his base.

            “It might go further with: ‘If I had a quarter for every time I got caught out in the rain, I’d buy a new set of speakers.’ Or, ‘an umbrella’, to make it more of a joke. It means that it happens a lot, and you wish it paid money.”

            “Okay. Thank you! I’m no longer curious.”

            He rolled back and forth

            “But, now I’m curious about another thing. If you had a quarter for every time you walked into the apartment without brushing yourself off, what would you buy?”

            I gaped at him and covered my mouth. Winthrop was an intellectual dynamo.

            “Well?” he asked. “A car?  I’m curious. The surf-and-turf special? A Tootsie Roll. A lint brush!”

            I got over my amazement and thought. I came up with an answer for him.

            “‘Lint Brush’ is good. But, right now… Hm. A bag of Fritos.”

            “What size? Work with me here.”

            “Family pack.”

            “Ooh…And I mean that in the Terran sense.”

            I propped up some pillows and stayed on the bed where I was, not caring if mulch would be left. I would take care of the blanket later. Winthrop went to the kitchen nook, extended an arm, and put a bowl and cup into the cabinet.

            “I think something like Fritos would cheer you up.”

            “Oh! Are there Fritos on Vale?"

            “No. Agricultural restrictions, you see. But, I’ve already ordered something close to them. They’re on the way.”

            “What is that?”

            “They’re called: ‘Pow! With The Serious Taste Of Fern’.”

            “Sounds tasty.”

            “Duh!”

            There was a knock on the door, he went to it, and a cellophane package was thrust in. He brought it back.

            “That was Fred. He’s kinda snarky.”

            We feasted on the Pow!. By ‘we’, I mean that I finally got the hint as Winthrop watched me try them, and I dropped one on the floor for him to vacuum up. With that first one, he said,

            “Salty. Leaves a vegetation aftertaste.”

            I said that the words on the package looked like a Rorschach, and he informed me that the twin was the echo. That the other side would vary more in literature.