Connie Willis: Spice Pogrom

“You’ve got to talk to him,” Chris said. “I’ve told him there isn’t enough space, but he keeps bringing things home anyway.”

“Things?” Stewart said absently. He had his head half-turned as if he were listening to someone out of the holographic image.

“Things. A six-foot high Buddha, two dozen baseball caps, and a Persian rug!” Chris shouted at him. “Things I didn’t even know they had on Sony. Today he brought home a piano! How did they even get a piano up here with the weight restrictions?”

“What?” Stewart said. The person who had been talking to him moved into the holo-image, focusing as he entered, put a piece of paper in front of Stewart, and then stood there, obviously waiting for some kind of response. “Listen, Chris, darling, can I put you on hold? Or would you rather call me back?”

It had taken her almost an hour to get him in the first place. “I’ll hold,” she said, and watched the screen grimly as it went back to a two-dimensional wall image on the phone’s screen and froze with Stewart still smiling placatingly at her. Chris sighed and leaned back against the piano. There was hardly room to stand in the narrow hall, but she knew that if she wasn’t right in view when Stewart came back on the line, he’d use it as an excuse to hang up. He’d been avoiding her for the last two days.

Stewart’s image jerked into a nonsmiling one and grew to a full holo-image again. With the piano in here, there wasn’t really enough room for the phone. Stewart’s desk blurred and dissolved on the keyboard, but Chris wanted Stewart to see how crowded the piano made the hall. “Chris, I really don’t have time to worry about a few souvenirs,” he said. “We’ve got real communications difficulties over here with the aliens. The Japanese translation team’s been negotiating with them for a space program for over a week, but the Eahrohhs apparently don’t understand what it is we want.”

“I’m having communications difficulties over here, too,” Chris said. “I tell Mr. Ohghhi…” She stopped and looked at the alien’s name she had written on her hand so she could pronounce it. “Mr. Ohghhifoehnnahigrheeh that there isn’t room in my apartment and that he’s got to stop buying things, and he seems to understand what I’m saying, but he goes right on buying. I’ve only got a two-room apartment, Stewart.”

“You could move your couch out of the living room,” he said.

“Then where would I sleep? On top of the piano? You said you’d try to find him someplace else to stay.”

“I’m giving the matter top priority, darling, but you don’t know how impossible it is to find any kind of space at all, let alone space with the kinds of specifications Mr. Ohghhifoehnnahigrheeh requires.” A blond young woman moved into the image and put a computer printout down in front of Stewart. Chris braced herself against being put on hold again. “We were already full over here at NASA, and today Houston sent a dozen linguistic specialists up on the shuttle, and I don’t know where we’re going to put them.” He shook his head. “With all these reporters and tourists coming up, there isn’t a spare room on Sony.”

“Can’t you send some of these people back down to earth?” Chris said. “I’ve got two little girls living on my stairs who’re here because they think Spielberg’s bound to make a movie about the aliens so they came up here to try to get a part in it, which is ridiculous. I’m not even sure Spielberg’s still alive, but if he is, he’s got to be at least eighty. Isn’t there some way to send people like that home?”

“You know Sony’s got an automatic thirty-day travel permission wait. It’s been in effect since Sony was first built so that immigrants couldn’t change their minds before they got over shuttle-lag. NASA’s trying to get the Japanese to limit the earth-to-Sony traffic, but so far they’ve refused because they like all the business it’s bringing up.”

“Can’t NASA put on its own limits? They own the shuttle.”

“We don’t want to jeopardize relations with the Japanese. We’ve got too many of our own people who need to come up to see the aliens.”

“And they’re all using my bathroom,” Chris said. “How long will it take you to find another apartment for him?”

“Chris, darling, I don’t think you understand the overcrowding problem we’ve got over here… Hold on a second, will you?” he said, and flattened and froze.

“We’ve got an overcrowding problem over here, too, Stewart,” Chris said. Someone rang the bell. “Come in,” Chris shouted, and then was sorry.

Molly came in. “My mother thaid to tell you to get off the phone,” she said, lisping the word “said.”

“I’m really six,” Molly had told her without a trace of a lisp the day she and her mother moved onto the landing outside Chris’s apartment, “but six is box-office poison, because your teeth are going to fall out pretty soon, so my screen age is four and a half.” She was certainly dressed to look four and a half today, in a short yellow smock with ducks embroidered on it and a giant yellow bow in her shingled brown bob.

“My mother thayth to tell you we’re eckthpecting a call from my agent,” she said, with her dimpled hands on her hips.

“Your mother does not have phone privileges in this apartment. Your agent can call you on the pay phone in the hall.”

“It’th a holo-call,” Molly said, and strolled over to the piano. “He thaid he’d call at thickthteen-thirty. Did you know thum new people moved in on the thtairs today?”

“A slut and an old guy,” Bets said, coming into the hall. She was wearing a pink dress with a sash, pink ribbon bows, and black patent-leather shoes. “My mother says to ask you how we’re supposed to get the lead in Spielberg’s movie if we can’t talk to our agent.”

“How could new people move in?” Chris said. Molly’s mother had sublet half of the landing to Bets (who was also six according to Molly, even though she swore she was five) and her mother last week, and Chris had thought at the time that the only good thing about it was that nobody else could move in because Mr. Nagisha’s cousins were renting the hall outside Chris’s apartment, and Mr. Nagisha himself was living in the downstairs hall.

“Mr. Nagithha rented them the thtairth,” Molly said, plunking the piano keys, “for twenty thouthand yen apiethe.”

“The slut says she’s in show business,” Bets said archly, patting her golden curls, “but I think she’s a hooker.”

“The old guy came up to thee the alienth,” Molly said, banging out “Chopsticks.” “He thayth he’th alwayth wanted to meet one. My mother thayth he’th thenile.”

“Chris,” Stewart said, his face expanding out from the screen. Molly stopped banging on the piano. Bets tossed her yellow curls. They both turned and flashed Stewart a dimpled smile.

“They were just leaving,” Chris said hastily, and pushed them out of the hall.

“What adorable little girls!” Stewart said. “Do they live in your apartment building?”

“They live on the stairs, Stewart. At last count, so do four other people, not counting Mr. Nagisha’s cousins, who are living in the hall outside my apartment. They use my bathroom and make earthside calls on my phone, and I don’t have room for them or for Mr. Ogyfen… whatever his name is.”

“Ohghhifoehnnahigrheeh,” Stewart said disapprovingly. “You’re going to have to learn how to pronounce his name properly. You don’t want to make him angry. I’ve told you before how important it is we don’t do anything that might offend the Eahrohhs.”

“He can’t stay here, Stewart.”