Whatever insight I thought Chamblin might have regarding children disappeared shortly into the tour. In the bioconversion technology section, it became painfully evident the man had never tour-guided before, and perhaps had never been around children.
“This technology was an important breakthrough in the Humans’ efforts at conservation. Bio matter was placed into these actual receptacles,” Chamblin said in an unexcited voice.
Geiger wriggled his way to the front of the children who’d crowded around Chamblin, trying to see what the heck he was talking about. Clarice stayed beside me and clutched my hand like a lifeline. A lifeline to save her from the tedium.
“What kind of bio matter?” Geiger wanted to know. “Rotten food? Dirty socks?”
“Gross,” Clarice muttered.
Chamblin eyed Geiger as if anticipating the next question and how he might answer it with a minimum of helpfulness. “All matter went into the receptacles.”
“What receptacles?” several children asked.
Chamblin, not for the first time, had positioned himself in front of the display. He was not a small person. In fact, he was strapping for a male Zhie, which meant he blocked more of the view. “The receptacles behind me.”
“What’s the big goon talking about?” Petunia, the tallest kid in the class, jumped up and down. The bioconversion process was illustrated in miniature with glow effects, lift-a-flaps, tiny holo screens and somewhat functional levers and buttons, but the receptacles themselves were hidden by Chamblin’s form.
“Don’t name-call, please,” I said to Petunia. Zhie didn’t regard strappingness in their males as highly as did Humans.
“It’s not like I said he was ugly,” Petunia pointed out. “I just can’t see. It’s not fair.”
I wanted to tell her she wasn’t missing anything, but out of respect for a fellow educator—if you could call Chamblin that—I held my tongue. “You can move closer.”
“Okay.” She shoved into the crowd, not too roughly, which was a nice change. She’d been working on that with the school counselor. “’Scuse me.”
Her efforts bumped everyone forward into Chamblin. The wave hit him. It could be properly described as a shock wave, because he seemed shocked and a little orange as he fended off children. They squeezed him away from the display. Off to the side, he rubbed inside his jacket and adjusted his ear bud like a cat licking its fur when its dignity had been affronted.
The children approached the bioconversion display with a semblance of interest until Petunia pointed out with great disgust, “Well, cruddup. It’s nothing but garbage chutes.”
“I hoped it was going to be something cool,” another child said. “This is boring.”
“I think this button is broken.”
“Did they turn stuff into food and eat their trash?” someone asked.
“Did they put dead bodies in there?”
“What if a live body went into there?” Clarice said. “Would it burn up?”
Chamblin didn’t answer any of the questions. He appeared to be having another hushed conversation with the person on the other end of his ear comm. If his earbud pal was feeding him his lines, he needed a new prompter.
I took over, at least partly. “They had preventative measures to ensure any living creatures wouldn’t be harmed,” I told the class. I didn’t want anyone having nightmares about people or pets in bioconversion chutes. “Probably used an early form of Tarretta wave detectors, like we learned about in science.”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Petunia announced.
“Hey, do the chutes still work?” Lovey wadded up his slurp and took aim. “Convert this!”
Quicker than I expected, Chamblin darted forward and snatched the item from Lovey’s grasp, proving he was paying attention. “No, they don’t. This space station is out of commission. It is for display only. Don’t chuck garbage at the displays, young man.”
“I’m doin’ my part to keep Earth green,” Lovey grumbled. He slid a glance at me to see if he was in trouble, but since he hadn’t actually thrown anything, I smiled.
Chamblin tucked the wadded slurp inside his coat. Geiger, using his uncanny powers of appearing where there might be a chance at a ruckus, sprang up beside Lovey.
“So what did they put in the receptacles?” he asked Chamblin again.
“I told you several minutes ago.” Chamblin frowned down at Geiger. “All sorts of matter.”
Geiger blinked his big, green eyes at Chamblin, staying out of arm’s reach of all four adults. “Like what? Specifically.”
Chamblin pointed toward the display. “It’s on the flow chart.”
“Poop?” Geiger asked.
Everyone near Geiger laughed, and everyone further back heard the laughter and started laughing too.
“Geiger,” I said warningly. He was in that phase. It was not my favorite. “There were bathrooms for that.”
“Yeah, but did it go the same place as the rest of the matter or did they send all the poop through a cross point to the Phantasm’s dimension?”
“They did not,” Chamblin said. “Why do you ask about the Phantasms?”
“It’s what I’d have done,” Geiger said. “Poop on our enemies.”
Chamblin opened his mouth to respond. Nothing came out. Or if it did, I couldn’t hear it through all the hilarity.
Clarice, who wasn’t laughing, tugged my arm. “Is it time to go? I want to see the engine room and the bridge.”
She tried to head down the corridor, but I redirected her—with some difficulty—toward Chamblin.
“Maybe we could move on,” I suggested quietly to our guide beneath the commotion. “Aren’t the crew quarters next? The kids will love the holo complex.”
“How do you know what comes next, Miss James?” he asked with raised eyebrows.
“I’ve been on this tour a few times. You’re doing great, by the way,” I lied with a smile. “First time for you?”
“Of course not,” he said quickly. “Why would you think that?”
“You seem to be getting a lot of help from your...” I gestured at my ear. “Trainer?”
“You must be watching me closely.” He rocked back on his heels and looked down at me. “Any particular reason for that?”
“You’re the tour guide?” I turned it into a question, because he hadn’t convinced me he was one. “And you’re always in front of the displays. Right in front of the displays.” I considered offering him more constructive criticism, but Clarice chose that moment to yank my arm so hard I stumbled sideways.
“Hello, cadet,” Chamblin said to her. “Are you having a good time?”
“I’d like to see the crew quarters,” Clarice said in a sweet voice. “Can we please?”
“Certainly.” He reached out to pat her head, but she was already in motion.
“Let’s go, kids.” I let Clarice tow me through the group. Geiger was close behind.
Chamblin called to me as Clarice hustled me forward. “Miss James, about my...” He gestured at his ear, like I had. “We instated communication exchanges between group leaders six months ago so we don’t overlap. This has been my job for almost a year. Everything is standard so far.”
“Standard is his favorite word. It means boring,” somebody stage-whispered, followed by tittering and giggling.
The rest of the morning went about like that, and the scenery between exhibits didn’t help. The windows in the station’s outer ring displayed orbital views of planets, novas and nebulas. Along the edges, countless children had scratched off the paint to reveal the half-empty parking lots and battered sim-rides outside the land-bound hulk. A nonprofit gig like this couldn’t buy new holoscreens any more than it could hire an artist to repaint the windows. But it had a budget tour program, so the IPSSE of Lesser Wisconsin, where I taught, could afford to shuttle the kids there.
Chamblin’s incompetence was representative of the museum’s decline. Easy on the eyes, if you liked Zhie, with fabulous posture, more control over his coloring than two TAs I could name, and an intricate, braided coif that mimicked high caste hair. He even displayed evidence of a personality when he wasn’t trying to lecture. But I had to question his intelligence. This profession clearly didn’t suit him, and here he was, doing it anyway.
Badly.
To make matters worse, he sometimes patted the kids on the shoulder, head or back when he didn’t know the answers to their questions. Which they didn’t like because it was patronizing, one, and because he often used his big hand instead of his little one, two. Everyone knows one of those eight fingers could fall off at anytime.
And I came to realize the vest rubbing he did after touching people had nothing to do with his affronted dignity. It had to be some kind of nervous tic.
Germophobe.
Yep, things had indeed gone downhill at the Space Station Freedom Museum and Amusement Park. If the Primocans didn’t win the next election and get that historical monument bill passed, I’d have to find somewhere to take future classes. Maybe the Lesser Lunar Canyons or the Museum of Soil and Water Conservation. I was one of the few hold-outs in my district still coming here.
And why did I? With the right guide, it wasn’t bad. Lots of walking and ladder climbing to tire the kids out, and I knew what to expect. The parentals liked that it was educational, in-state and a registered galactic monument.
With the wrong guide, aka Chamblin, when the kids weren’t yawning, they were giggling, groaning, sneaking on their buzz comms or trying to break the displays. Only Clarice seemed interested in the station itself, and she stuck to my side. I answered the questions Chamblin couldn’t, which was three-fourths of them.
On the plus side, Lem, Lon and I kept anybody from slipping into a different group, which a kid had done last year. Granted, I thought I might have to retrieve my TAs once, but the Ladies of the Forty-Fourth Latitude Walking Club and their panting guide outdistanced them in no time.
The last stop in the first half of the tour was the dining area. The children were reaching crisis point. I’d tossed eight slurps into the proper receptacles, confiscated Lovey’s buzz comm, been dragged thither and yon by my buddy Clarice, pulled Geiger out from under a gravity turbine and taken Petunia to the bathroom three times.
It was time for a break. Chamblin had begun to jerk his braids at random intervals while the children showered him with questions, mostly about the bathroom habits of early Humans. And I’d begun to realize wee Clarice, my smart, shy, well-behaved Clarice, had been hiding the strength of a draft horse. The hand she’d insisted on holding all morning ached like I’d dropped a cinderblock on it, and my shoulder was almost as cranky.
I guess historical monuments excited her.
Our arrival in the dining area coincided with that of fifteen or so other tours. The spongy floor tiles in the cavernous space were scuffed, the metal tables and benches battered, and the girded ceiling low. The echoes of hundreds of shrill voices should have been deafening, but early Humans had known a thing or two about acoustics, even if they hadn’t known squat about dimensional cross points.
“The space station was home to up to eight thousand individuals,” Chamblin explained. “There’s seating for over two thousand individuals in this dining hall alone.”
“What’s beneath the dining hall?” Clarice asked.
Chamblin shot her a pained grin that looked more like a grimace. “More quarters.”
“What kind of—”
Before Clarice finished, the rest of the class crowded through the doorway and cut her off.
Chamblin cleared his throat. “You’ve been so well behaved I’m sure Miss James is proud of her little heath...astronauts. Do you have any final questions,” he said with a noticeable flinch and an orange tinge, “before we eat our delicious space rations?”
“Why do we have to eat in this dump?” Petunia asked. Chamblin smiled and patted her on the head.
“Yeah, why can’t we eat in the Admiral’s dining hall?” Geiger said. “Space rations make me puke.” He stuck a finger into his mouth and gagged.
“Ick.” Clarice turned up her nose. “Miss James, make him stop it.”
I took Geiger’s hand out of his mouth. The kid only had five fingers on that hand, and I didn’t want to hear it from his parentals if he dropped to four again. “On today’s tour, we’re cadet astronauts. We eat with the crew, not the officers.”
“Please find empty tables and wait for your class to be called,” Chamblin said. “I’ll be over here, watching to see when you finish.” He gestured vaguely into the dining area and fled with a relieved exhale.
Using the insight of many tours, I led my students to the front left corner of the dining hall. Sure, it was next to a door temptingly marked, “Employees Only,” but it was further from the exit than anywhere else in the room.
We didn’t have long to wait. “Could the class from…Hell please make their way to the food prep area for their space rations?” Even the acoustics of the drafty room couldn’t muffle the inevitable laughter.
“That’s Hele.” I corrected the grinning cashier and handed her our budget food pass. “Hell-eh. Hele, Wisconsin. Three adults and twenty children.”
I accepted my plastic tray of paste and glop with as good grace as I could manage. Hele wasn’t so small that nobody would know how to pronounce it, but people delighted in saying “the group from Hell” or “the party from Hell” over loudspeakers.
The staff members stationed all around the room like totem poles stared at us after the announcement, as if expecting us to live up to our unfair moniker. There were several clustered at the “Employees Only” door, which meant Geiger didn’t try to break into it one single time.
I was so relieved, I gave him my green dessert glop. I hated the stuff anyway—cloyingly sweet and gummed up your teeth for days afterwards. But Geiger didn’t know that, and I’d found that bestowing treats upon certain children improved their behavior while worsening that of children like Petunia.
During the meal, I did learn one way the station experience had changed, beyond the faulty holo projector in the shuttle ride. Every time a student finished with a tray, one of the many uniformed employees swifted it away. If they’d invested their annual budget in dining room attendants instead of tour guides, I had to say it wasn’t the museum’s wisest choice. Luckily nobody tried to take Petunia’s tray until she was entirely done eating.
When we’d finished having our trays swifted away from us, Chamblin met us at the opposite door of the dining hall. Once we buddied up, he resumed his tired recitation of facts, figures and hushed conferences on his comm which begged the children to misbehave.
“This afternoon we’re going to talk about how the crew conducted their day to day lives,” he told us, as if that were the most depressing topic known on Earth.
“Now are we going to get to the good stuff?” Geiger asked. “What about the pooping?”
“You’re so annoying. Shut up.” Clarice, who’d already grabbed my hand, aimed a kick at Geiger. It landed on his shin with a whack. A stricken look crossed the little man’s face.
“Hey, now.” I tugged Clarice to the side. The blow had only hurt Geiger’s heart, but that was the worst kind of injury. “What is going on, young lady?”
“Nothing.” Clarice leaned forward, our arms stretching and our hands locked. “Can we go?”
I pulled her upright. “Let’s have a chat. You, me and Geiger.”
Clarice slitted her eyes in a way that made me wonder how much Geiger had rubbed off on her during their one-sided love affair.
“We don’t need to talk with him,” she said.
“This won’t take long.” I gestured at Lem and Lon to follow Chamblin and the children. No one else had seen what Clarice had done, and if I could keep it that way, it would be for the best. Too much attention, and Geiger might mutiny. Extra dessert gloop wouldn’t overcome the humiliation of first love’s rebuff.
As soon as we had no eavesdroppers, I said, “Clarice, I expect better of you. Of all my students, in fact. Aggression is unacceptable.”
She glowered at me. “Sorry.”
“Tell Geiger you’re sorry.”
She glanced at him, her face as scrunched as a wadded slurp. He kicked the wall, hands in pockets. “Geiger, you’re sorry.”
He stuck out a forked tongue. There was trouble in Paradise, all right.
“Clarice, we don’t hurt other people. Only Phantasms hurt other people. I’ll let you try that apology again,” I offered, “before I notify your parentals to come get you immediately.”
Her jaw dropped. “Me? Come get me? But he’s the one who—”
I raised my hand. Everyone had an off day. Clarice had clearly been saving hers up. “That’s enough. One more chance.”
Geiger raised his hand with a smirk. Clarice, to my relief, clamped her mouth shut and raised hers too. It was one thing to throw gum, destroy museum artifacts and run like a wildebeest through an antique space station while belting out a song about carnivorous space rats, but it was entirely another to strike a classmate.
“Tell Geiger you’re sorry,” I reminded her.
“I’m sorry, Geiger,” Clarice parroted. Then she turned on me. “I don’t want to be your buddy any more, Miss James. You’re mean.” With that, she raced after the group with as much wounded pride as a nine year old caught red-footed can muster.
Geiger and I exchanged a glance.
“How about it, buddy?” I held out my hand.
“Nah, I gotta chase my woman.” And he was off too, before I could say another word.