Wayne came out of sleep because everything around him was vibrating. He rolled out of his hammock to see a space suit containing a blue stranger riding a platform hung with equipment that came toward him using the pole as a monorail. At the same time, Nayung, suited up, appeared on the screen.
"Hi, Wayne," the Opuulu said through the speaker. "That's Tsekwe Iano. She's gonna fit your respiration gear. Ooh, you shouldn't wear that. It'll just be in the way." The former hero was getting out his cape. He'd been keeping it stuffed into the foot of his hammock because of the way it tended to catch on things without gravity to make it hang properly, but the prospect of company had inspired him to put it on. With Nayung's words, though, he simply rolled it into a compact ball and hung onto it.
The platform parked just outside his habitat. The woman pulled out a toggle from her suit's belt. It turned out to be a conical end to a cord that unwound from a spool built into the belt. She tossed it onto the base that held the habitat onto the pole, where it stuck. Then she picked up a pair of oxygen tanks exactly like SCUBA tanks, with various straps, tubes and controls attached, and leaped straight "up" off the platform. The cord caused her trajectory to curve so that she made a perfect landing inside the airlock. The cord released and was reeled back into her belt. The outer door closed, the airlock filled up, and the inner door opened.
He'd gotten so accustomed to being alone in his tiny space that the presence of another person felt awkward. As she moved into the room, Nayung spoke again.
"Anchor yourself and hold your arms away from your body." He did as instructed, grabbing one of the handholds the place was dotted with. She swung around behind him and anchored herself by wrapping her legs around his waist. It might have been uncomfortably intimate, but between the bulky suit and her impersonal manner, it somehow wasn't. She strapped the tanks to his back. "Hold your head still," said Nayung. "She's gonna put your helmet on." She moved up so she was riding the tanks, holding on with her knees. He heard a grinding sound and felt pressure at the back of his neck. The pattern of the pressure told him what was going on: she was shaving back there. He had a moment of surprise that she knew what special equipment was needed to shave him, then realized that, no, it would be surprising for a human, but these people knew about his kind and knew just what was needed. He felt strangely comforted at that. These were not the Glau, but they knew the Glau, and just because they knew, he felt closer to home. She wiped his neck with something cold, not just where she had shaved but all the way around. Then something like a sheet of transparent plastic seemed to expand from behind the base of his skull, growing like a cobra's hood until it completely surrounded his head and closed around his neck. Iano took another little device and ran it around the edge where the transparent stuff touched his flesh. She pressed some kind of gooey stuff along the seam.
"Move your head around to test the seal," Nayung said. He did as instructed. "Looks good," the fish said. "See you on the ground." As the screen blinked off, Iano floated around in front of him and motioned him toward the airlock. Once he was in, she crowded in after him, turning her back so that it was like being in a very small full elevator. The inner door closed. There was a hiss and Wayne felt every hair on his body stand out under his costume as the air was pumped away and he felt vacuum against his skin. He took a good, deep breath just to reassure himself that he could. Then the outer door opened and he flew out, free in space. He hadn't realized how cramped that little bubble was until he was out of it. And there was no air resistance at all. Holding the bundle of his cape under one arm, he swooped a full orbit around his prison, coming back to the airlock door just as Iano came out of it. She pointed toward Harolup High Orbit. A bay was open and a littler craft, shaped more or less like an Earth jet airplane, was emerging. The shuttle. With a gesture, he offered to carry her. She took his hand and he towed her down to the platform. The bubble was already deflating. He gave her his best heroic smile and flew off after the shuttle.
###
First Seed was now three domes joined together in a vee shape in the center of a cleared area on the edge of a vast lake. As Wayne approached it, he could see a crowd gathered in the open space inside the vee. He'd read that the population here was a little over two hundred and it looked like most of them were out there. Holographically projected shapes in solid, bright colors floated in the air above their heads. He couldn't be sure from this angle, but he thought they looked like text, this world's equivalent of printed banners. Then as he got closer, he began to hear music, Earth music, electric guitars and drums. He recognized it after a moment as a heavy metal song Megamind had used in one of his attacks on the city. When it ended, another one began, from another attack. As the shuttle came in for a landing just ahead of him, he found himself at the correct angle to read the projected words. Only two were in English: "WELCOME ROXANNE".
Until that moment, the former hero hadn't missed Earth a bit. But seeing that there was no welcome banner with his name did something in his gut. On Earth, cheering crowds were for him and on some deep, irrational level, he felt that that was the way it should be. The craft arrived and hovered about ten feet off the ground, extending pontoon landing gear, then lowered itself gradually, in time with the song, so that it touched down as the last notes of "Black Hole Sun" faded out. There was a few seconds' pause and then "Welcome to the Jungle" came on. As the door opened, another hologram was projected directly above it, two or three times life size, showing the door with Megamind emerging from it. The crowd made "reereeree" noises and held up flashing lights. He supposed that was how they cheered here. Wayne told himself that it was only fair, that this was wasn't his homecoming and there was no reason for these people to be welcoming him. Roxanne emerged, holding Megamind's hand, then Minion, then another Yi#vi he didn't know, then Nayung. Wayne landed beside Nayung. The crowd quieted down a little when they saw him, although it wasn't the total silence that would have greeted the sudden appearance of any criminal - and Wayne had to face the fact that he was, to the Tseri#uu, a criminal - at a public event like this on Earth, much less the gasp of horror that would have greeted Megamind. He gave them all his best smile, anyway, with an extra glint for Roxie, who grinned back while Megamind browed him with a quietly victorious little smirk. That lasted about one second. It wasn't in Megamind's character to indulge in tasteful, subdued gloating. The music was still going, He touched Roxanne's arm, their eyes met in wordless understanding, and they began to dance. The volume of ree-ing rose again and then the whole crowd began to dance.
"Hey, Wayne," said Nayung. "Hold still." One of the Opuulu's mechanical hands reached up and peeled off the sealant from around his neck. "You need to leave your respiration gear in the shuttle." Other Tseri#uu were still coming out of the little ship and joining the dance. Tseri#uu dancing, at least when the music was rock-and-roll, had a lot of acrobatics in it, cartwheels and flips and people lifting and being lifted. It meant they had to spread out for quite a distance around the shuttle. The helmet withdrew from around his head. Nayung got the tanks off him.
While he put them inside the shuttle, Wayne looked nervously out at the crowd. The glances he was getting in return seemed nervous, too. Then Roxanne caught his eye and gave a little tilt of her head that seemed invitational. He started to respond, noticed that he was still carrying his cape, unfurled it and put it on. Then he moved out into the crowd, rocking and rolling, showing them his best moves. About the time Axl Rose hit the high note at "knees", he took to the air. He did a few of his most popular aerobatic stunts, played around among the holograms and, by the end of the song, some of the young people were looking a little impressed, although nobody held out any babies for him to juggle. As the song ended, Roxanne caught his eye again. She had that Planning Something look on her face. He descended on the lyrics "It's gonna bring you dowwwnnn," and landed behind her. She looked at Megamind. Wayne could only see the back of her head, but from the way Megamind's eyes went from her face to his and his smile degenerated to a smirk, he knew that he must be the topic of conversation. Minion's eyes moved back and forth between them, with a glance at Wayne. He looked nervous, like he expected drama. Wayne had known her long enough. He knew what she was doing. She was trying to get her blue husband to make peace, while the husband was probably inclined to gloat a little longer. Maybe a lot longer. And Wayne knew what was called for. Eat some crow. It was gonna hurt, but in the long run things would be smoothed out a lot faster. All of Harolup was probably watching. He gritted his teeth and took a step forward. As he held out his hand, a better phrase occurred to him than I'm sorry, one that would mean more to Megamind. He'd heard him describe what they did as a game often enough.
"You win," he said. And it worked. The smirk turned back into a smile. Megamind stepped forward and shook hands with him. The crowd ree'ed.
###
The room assigned to Megamind and Roxanne was about three times the size of the one in Harolup High Orbit. All the furniture could be left unfolded at once and there was still room to walk around. Other than that, it was a basic Tseri#uu couple's room: the niche for Minion's suit in one corner next to a trapdoor in the floor that opened on the water of the big central tank; the dividers that would extend from the ceiling to create smaller soundproofed compartments; the hammock strung across one corner; the inner door leading to the pool; the outer door leading to the corridor, although in this case the corridor was a veranda; its far wall was the sloping exterior of the dome, open (in good weather) to the outdoors. The weather was good most of the time. Given a choice of any place on the planet to build their first colony, the Tseri#uu had settled in the place with the most pleasant climate.
Wayne's room hung from the ceiling of the central dome, resembling a wasp's nest designed by cubists. Like his prison in space, it had been built especially for him, although this time the reason was not mistrust but simply that the ceilings of normal Tseri#uu personal rooms were too low for his height. The cleaning ring that descended out of the ceiling was specially adapted, too, for the width of his shoulders. The shaving and grooming equipment was adequate for his hair and beard, the hammock was extra long, and they'd apparently tailored the chair to his measurements. Best of all, the room had one curved wall that was just windows, which opened to the sky at a voice command, so he could fly straight out, just like from the balconies of the mansion where he'd grown up. It was darned thoughtful of them, he decided, to study his needs and preferences and set up the room in accordance with them. It also didn't have things he didn't need, particularly walk-out access to anything. Both the entrances were trapdoors, one down into the veranda-corridor around the outside of the dome, the other into the pool area. His room was only accessible by flying.
The one thing it didn't have that he missed was food. In the mansion, he'd had a small refrigerator in his bedroom so he wouldn't have to wake up someone on the staff if he wanted a midnight snack, and he'd found that so convenient that he'd put one the bedroom of his underground apartment. Here, he had to go down to the kitchen to get a snack, and he was expected to show up three times a day for the nudist banquet that was Tseri#uu mealtime. And that was a problem because Wayne was sharply aware of how different he looked from the other diners. The Yi#vi men were all built along the same lines as Megamind: not only blue and bald, but rail-thin and as modestly endowed in the body-hair department as the women. Wayne's nickname in boarding school, never spoken to his face, was "the gorilla", and that's how he suspected the Tseri#uu must see him: as some kind of primitive life form, something that belonged in a zoo.
"Couldn't I just eat up here?" he asked Nayung's hologram, which was hovering, suitless, over one of the trapdoors.
"This is the human body embarrassment thing, isn't it?" asked the Opuulu.
"How'd you know about that?"
"Well, even if we hadn't seen enough of Earth television to figure it out, we would have guessed from Roxanne's reactions. You should have seen her face when she found out what we think of privacy." Wayne could imagine it. He could also see, glancing through the wall, that she seemed to be over her initial reaction. She was down there already, one brown-topped pinkish-ivory body among the blue ones sitting at tables around the edges of the big pool, and she looked as comfortable, nude in the nude crowd, as if she'd been eating in settings like this her whole life. It was at her table that Nayung and Wayne were expected.
"What if I dive in and swim to the table underwater?" He'd be watched by lots of Opuulu, but somehow that didn't seem as intimidating.
"Ew, not good manners. The splash would swamp the tables. Besides, my little cousins down here want to see you fly. They'd be disappointed if you didn't."
Well, that made a difference. He didn't want to disappoint his public, even if that public was a few finned and scaled kids. If they were looking forward to seeing him soar through the dining room with his private parts (if he could still call them private here) flapping in the breeze, that's what he'd do. "Tell 'em to be watching. I'll be down as soon as I get undressed."
In fact, he needn't have worried. The Tseri#uu, having learned about the Glau at an early age, already knew what to expect. Those who remembered the Home Star Group, with its multiple intelligent species, reacted to the sight of him with nostalgia. Those born in space or on Harolup were curious. Megamind was still wallowing in his victory; Minion's mind was so preoccupied with his new Tseri#uu social life that Wayne kind of faded into the background for him. The one person who found him outlandish, ironically, was Roxanne. She'd seen Wayne in a bathing suit at pool parties at the mansion, so it wasn't as if she didn't know pretty much what to expect. Rather, it was her background of normalcy that had changed. Away from Earth, from the context of cities and superheroes and rescues, she saw him, for the first time, as the alien he was. As he floated down, feet first, to the empty place next to her, she wouldn't have been surprised if he had spoken to her in the Glau language, whatever that sounded like. Instead, he gave her his usual glinting smile and greeted her as if they were meeting at the KMCP studios for an interview, or at a social event.
"Hey, Roxie." His words snapped her out of her trance of amazement.
"Hey, Wayne. We sure are a long way from Metro City, aren't we?" It wasn't really a joke, but somehow it was so true that they couldn't help laughing. Everyone at the table joined in even though Tsveö and Naüÿng didn't really get it. After the usual pleasantries, Roxanne invited him to be her study partner.
"Studying what?" he asked.
"Well, its name translates 'underlying reality'. It's basically the more advanced physics and chemistry that everyone here learns when they're kids. Intensive study always goes better with a partner, and you're the only other person here who doesn't already know this stuff." Wayne didn't answer at first. He wanted to help, but physics had been one of his worst subjects and he really didn't want to subject himself to that again.
Tsveö spoke up. "Do you know how you fly? Do you know the physics behind any of your abilities? We do, and you should really consider finding out, now that you have a chance to."
"And when you meet your own people, you'll seem like less of a deepwater," added Naüÿng.
"A what?" asked Wayne.
"That sounds like it has some other meaning that literally deep water," said Roxanne. "It doesn't make any sense in English."
"Hick from the sticks," said Minion firmly. "That's how our folks used it."
"Are you sure?" asked Naüÿng. "The deep water dwellers were our own ancestors who had no language, so 'ape-man' would be a more accurate translation."
"But 'ape-man' is informed by the human experience of apes," responded Megamind. "So it has implications beyond simple ignorance. Poor hygiene, for instance, and impulsiveness and physical strength and a tendency to make choices based on instinct and emotion rather than thought. I don't recall deepwater having any of those, well, maybe that last one can be implied, but the others?"
By that time, Wayne had checked out of the discussion. The thought of preparing to meet his own people had him racking his brains to remember whether the Glau language material in the computer system included actual lessons in speaking it. Suddenly, five years didn't seem very long at all.