Five Unicorn Flush

by TJ Berry

  I’d like to look up my children, said Kamis. Yep, she figured he’d change his mind.

  He zoomed her into a memory of his. Two little kids with delicate elfin ears framing thick human features. They would have fared pretty badly – ostracized from the Bala community and also hunted for parts in the Reason. Best case scenario, they’d be on the new Bala world.

  In the memory, a woman stepped out into the high grass holding a plate of sandwiches out to them. The kids looked up and screeched. They were that tender age when it was hard to tell from their screams whether they were excited or being murdered. Just balls of pure energy coated with dirt and smears of food.

  “Lunch, kids,” the woman called. The two children bounded toward her, parting the grass like happy little badgers. She was entirely human. Her round face framed by hair the color of the sunset on Varuna. She was just the type of woman Jenny would have smiled at a few seconds too long, just to see if she was interested. Kamis barraged her with a mix of amusement and jealousy.

  “I’m not macking on your wife, Kamis,” said Jenny, aware that he knew she was lying and also not caring. “But she’s pretty hot.”

  She played her fingers over Mary’s touchscreens.

  “What’s your full name, Kamis?” Jenny asked. Kamistaff Jhaeros Uhlararaice, he answered.

  “That’s a mouthful,” said Jenny, typing it in letter by letter with his coaching.

  His records came up as Wanted – even in Mary’s six-week-old database. Jenny wasn’t surprised. Nearly all Bala were marked as Wanted in the Reason database. If they weren’t wanted for a crime then they were wanted for parts. She clicked into the file. There was a note that he was likely deceased because his ship had been found adrift and unoccupied in Reasonspace a year ago; however, without confirmation via records or a body they wouldn’t issue an official death certificate.

  Jenny clicked into the record for Kamis’ wife. She was also wanted for fraternization – a charge that Jenny herself had on her record. It was the blanket crime for any full humans who had relationships with Bala beings. There was also no death record, but Jenny knew she was gone. The Well Actually had read the transcript of her murder.

  Grief hit Kamis anew. He’d guessed they had killed Min, but never really had confirmation. Jenny’s memory of the transcript, his wife bargaining for her life, had made it real.

  Jenny clicked into the children’s profiles. A girl and a boy a year apart. Their dates of birth would have put them at five and six respectively. They were also wanted. As half-Bala their very existence was a crime. Both of them were marked as rescued from a ship adrift just outside of Varuna’s orbit.

  That’s where the Well Actually met up with us, said Kamis. We stopped to help them. Min and I went aboard with a few crewmembers and left the children on the ship.

  “It says here that they were dropped off on Varuna when you didn’t return,” said Jenny. “That’s not too bad. There are a lot of Bala-friendly people on Varuna. I bet they’re on the new Bala planet right now waiting for you.”

  Kamis ached with sorrow inside of her. It was nearly unbearable. She’d spent all that time trying to shove her own bad feelings down a gravity well, and now she was marinating in Kamis’ grief. She scooted into the bed, tucked her legs under the covers, and cranked the heated blanket up to full power. If she couldn’t tamp down Kamis’ feelings, she could at least drown them out with television. She tapped a console on the wall and pulled up her favorite crime drama – an old series about a Reason officer who investigated local crimes against Bala beings. It was a remarkably even-handed show given the prejudices of the Reason. Probably because the show’s director was the daughter of a high-ranking officer in the Reason Space Force. They let her get away with murder.

  In the episode, someone had sawn the horn off a unicorn living on the rough side of town and stolen it to power their starship.

  The premise was ridiculous. As if there were any full-blooded unicorns left unaccounted for. Besides the couple who’d popped back into the area for the Century Summit, then disappeared just as quickly, there had been no free unicorns in the known universe for almost a century.

  And the idea that a unicorn would deign to live in squalor like the place depicted on the show was flat out ridiculous. They would have trotted down to city hall and demanded a suitable living space with gardens and fountains. Unicorns were bloody demanding, and accustomed to living like royalty.

  Also, this unicorn on the show had a human girlfriend, whose sole purpose on the show seemed to be so that the Reason cops could keep making salacious horse-fucking jokes at her expense. Unicorns were born in the heart of a star and didn’t reproduce sexually. They had neither the desire, nor the organs for sex. Those two might have been in an asexual romantic relationship, but they sure as hell weren’t fucking.

  Kamis was aghast at the portrayal of Bala in the show, which was at least better than the grief. And this was one of the more even-handed shows on the air. Most programs cast Bala as livestock or pets. Some treated them like rampaging monsters, especially the ones humans recognized as storybook villains, like trolls and golems.

  The Reason officers had pinpointed the culprit. A down-andout fairy, mouth all gums from selling his sharp teeth for drill bits, dirt-streaked and wearing a traditional gauzy fairy dress worn down to rags. Fairies hadn’t dressed like that for eight hundred years but the Reason-based audience ate up those inaccurate stereotypes.

  She could feel Kamis’ disgust. As the show ended she turned it off and settled in to get some rest. It took her a while to get to sleep, and when she finally drifted off she dreamed of the battle at Copernica Citadel.

  It was the same dream she always had, starting with her being unable to stop the purple lightning from wrapping around her ship, the Pandey. The screams of her crew filled her head. She slid under the bulkhead door as it closed, stopping it with her body for the handful of seconds that it took for seventeen soldiers to slide underneath. Then there was that sickening sensation of her pelvis bending. The one that she wouldn’t never forget as long as she lived.

  Tonight, for the first time in fifteen years, there were two new parts of the dream. First, Kamis stood off to the side watching her. The twisting hull of the Pandey froze in place and the screams of her crew faded away. Delicate slippers embroidered with green foliage stood at her head. Kamis reached down and took her hand, pulling her out from under the door as easily as if she were simply getting up like anyone else. That was the second new thing in this version of the dream – she could walk again.

  Over the last fifteen years, she’d come to only ever think of herself in a chair. Even in her dreams. She didn’t run around like an abled person in her dream, she wheeled around. Or, more often, she pushed as hard as she could, but her chair moved like molasses. Dreaming herself walking was new and strange. She felt disoriented, and maybe… guilty. As if it was a betrayal of who she really was. Around her, the Pandey was broken and empty. Inside, Jenny felt the same way.

  “You could have stopped the battle of Copernica,” said Kamis, speaking to her from his own body in the dream. He was a good head taller than her and all angles and points, like most elves. His dark hair hung perfectly flat, as if it had never been bothered by humidity in his long, long life. Jenny walked away from him.

  “I did stop it,” she said, walking through the empty halls of her former ship. It felt strange to want to go somewhere and then simply move there. No thresholds to navigate, no hallway too small, no stairs or fruitless searches for working elevators. Jenny’s problem was never with her chair, but with a world that refused to accommodate it.

  “At great cost,” said Kamis, following her. Jenny whirled on him, bracing against the wall for support. She wished she had her chair.

  “Everyone always talks about the cost. I knew the risks going into the Reason Space Force. I knew them the day I slid under that door. I know them every day that I wake up in this terrible place,” she said.

  “
But if you had the power to stop another massacrew now, you would,” said Kamis.

  She didn’t want to say the answer out loud, because of course she would.

  “These things will keep happening. This ship will keep moving forward until someone throws themself in front of it,” said Kamis.

  “That’s how you get killed,” said Jenny.

  “But it’s also how you make a change,” said Kamis. “You have a responsibility to stop the killing.”

  He wasn’t talking about the Pandey any more. He was talking about the Kilonova.

  “I can’t do this,” she said, waving her fingers at the Pandey’s hallway, torqued out of alignment and spraying sparks.

  “Even the smallest sabotages can have great effects,” said Kamis.

  Jenny sighed.

  “You’re right. I only have one question. What kind of conditioner do you use?”

  His exasperated elfin sigh gave her life.

  couldn’t recall the name of the day, or where she was tucked in, but it was warm and comfortable, so probably safe.

  It’s Saturday, said Kamis in her head.

  Jenny startled and sat up so fast that her back spasmed and she let out a squeal.

  I’m sorry. You forgot that I’m here, he said.

  “You all right, Jenny?” asked Mary.

  “Fine. I just forgot about Kamis,” she said. “You can come out of there now. Go be a ghost on your own.”

  It takes a large amount of energy to manifest on my own. If I could continue to share space with you until we reach my children, I would be grateful, he said.

  “Share space,” he’d said. As if they were flatmates. She figured he was probably the type to label all the food in the refrigerator and complain about clothes on the living room floor.

  Definitely. I’m very tidy, said Kamis. Jenny reminded herself to watch her thoughts. Prepare yourself for the day and then I can guide you through necromancy to find the Bala.

  “That was just a dream, not a real conversation,” she said.

  Is there a difference? he asked.

  “I guess not,” said Jenny. “I just don’t know if I’m ready to jump into a task this big.”

  We have to stop them, said Kamis, suddenly urgent. Millions will be killed or enslaved. We cannot let this happen again.

  “Oh I agree, but why is it always me?” she asked. Kamis smiled, suffusing her mind with his sympathetic amusement.

  She showed him a memory from a few weeks ago during the Century Summit. The Pymmie, rotund and tiny, their oily black eyes staring, asking Jenny to give input on the fate of all Bala as they had a dinner party. She felt Kamis’ horror, both at the ease at which the Pymmie decided the fate of the Bala and the fact that they had solicited input from a human at all.

  “I know, right?” said Jenny, sensing his distress. “I am profoundly unqualified to decide the fate of a single being, let alone an entire civilization. And yet, there I was eating a proper pumpkin boil-up and being asked to weigh in. How does this keep happening?”

  I do not believe in coincidence, said Kamis. So I must believe you were chosen.

  “Well I don’t believe in chosen one stories, so I must believe this is all just a terrible coincidence,” she said.

  If you fail in your endeavor you will only damage the Reason ship. The risk is low, said Kamis.

  “Good point. Zapping a couple of soldiers with purple lightning wouldn’t be so bad,” she said.

  That’s the spirit, said Kamis. Let hate guide your actions.

  Jenny wheeled her chair to the cargo hold, a task which was complicated by the stairs going down one level. Jenny threw the rolling chair down the stairwell with a crash and bumped down the stairs after it.

  Elegant solution, said Kamis.

  “I get where I’m going,” said Jenny.

  There were still corpses strewn about the hold. They had completely thawed and had started to bloat and smell.

  “Aw hell,” said Jenny, rolling her dented desk chair over to the cabinets along the wall. “I’ll deal with them when we get off the Kilonova.”

  She pulled her spare chair out of a cabinet and unfolded it. It was a streamlined model, all pipes and angles. Nothing near as beautiful as the dwarf one that had shattered on the Well Actually. She got herself settled and strapped in.

  “All right Kamis, show me how to find the Bala,” she said.

  “Is this a good idea?” asked Mary. “We can probably get the information out of the Kilonova’s computers.”

  “Do you have access to their systems?” asked Jenny.

  “No, but if you can get to the data center–” began Mary.

  “Uh… no. I’m a little obvious in my chair here. They’ll know I don’t belong in about five seconds,” said Jenny. “We’ll try this way first.”

  This will be easier than you think, said Kamis.

  “I’m not worried that it’ll be hard. I just don’t like dabbling in things that I don’t understand. Makes me feel squirrelly,” she said.

  Like Cowboy Jim did when he went into the null, said Kamis, drawing on her memories in a way that made her uncomfortable.

  Jenny’s mouth dropped open. “I’m not one bit like that wanker,” said Jenny.

  Of course not, said Kamis. Jenny wished there was a way to rattle him around in there by shaking her head real fast.

  “I’m being reasonably cautious about using a power that I know nothing about. A power, by the way, which tore the Pandey in two right in front of my own eyes,” said Jenny.

  Understandable. But you’ll only be looking. No tearing ships apart right now, said Kamis.

  “Just give me the drill,” she said, impatient to get going. This hold wasn’t going to smell any better.

  You have to feel your way through it, he began.

  Jenny sighed with exasperation.

  “Instructions. I need instructions,” she snapped.

  “I’m only getting half the conversation here, you two, but I assume that you are attempting to locate the Bala planet within the nullspace,” said Mary. “Please be aware that there are three necromancers on this ship and any of the three could spot you the moment you start poking around in the null.”

  Now Kamis sighed.

  “Turn her off.”

  “I like her,” said Jenny.

  “Does Kamis not like me? I try to be accommodating, but I don’t know what he wants.”

  “You don’t need to accommodate him. You need to keep doing what I tell you,” said Jenny. “Kamis. Instructions. Now.”

  First, reach out with your awareness and find the nullspace energy that you’ve used in the past. It’s all around you, but it concentrates in pockets near living beings, plants, any place where there’s life and emotion, said Kamis.

  “Do I have to close my eyes or something?” asked Jenny.

  Not yet. You need to learn how to be aware of both openspace and nullspace at the same time. It’s a critical skill in battle, said Kamis.

  “I’m not in a battle.”

  Not yet you aren’t. Let yourself sink into awareness of the nullspace, but don’t allow openspace to disappear fully. Leave it in your consciousness, like a map overlay. In the beginning, it will help you understand why nullspace energy is concentrated in certain spots. Maybe there’s a ship there, or a Bala settlement. Eventually, you’ll be able to recognize hotspots and pathways simply by their shapes and colors in the null, said Kamis.

  As far as using her powers, Jenny had only gathered a bit of energy and used it to manipulate matter back when the Reason was still in charge. It made her nervous to think of letting go of her reality and slipping into a new one. She let her awareness expand, tapping into the energy around her and allowing her consciousness to expand to outside of both Mary and the Kilonova. Nothing changed.

  “I don’t think I’m doing it right. I don’t see anything different,” she said to Kamis.

  I know. I see what you see. You’re doing it right. Part of the problem is t
hat with the Bala gone, there aren’t many bright spots of nullspace energy to focus on. And tell your ship that all three necromancers are off duty, so no one will spot you.

  “Kamis says to tell you that the necromancers are all asleep. No one will see me,” said Jenny.

  “Good, but hurry,” said Mary.

  Try again, said Kamis. This time, I’m going to guide you.

  “What does that mean?” asked Jenny.

  I’m going to take your mind, and ever-so-slightly help you expand your peripheral understanding.

  “Sounds fake,” said Jenny.

  Trust me, said Kamis. And she had to, because he was inside of her brain.

  I’ll go slowly, he said.

  “Go quickly,” said Jenny.

  She again let nullspace bubble up around her. This time Kamis tugged her awareness into a space far out from the Kilonova. For a moment, it felt as if she was falling into nothingness. She flailed out and caught her chair’s armrest.

  Don’t panic, he said.

  It was as if a fog had suddenly appeared around her. It coalesced in some locations and was sparse in others. Kamis seemed to know exactly where to look. She could see what he saw. He let his focus go and allowed the null to pass by him as if they were moving faster than the speed of light.

  She watched the show. It glowed in pure whites mixed with a rainbow of colors, some on a spectrum that she had never seen before. Kamis pushed them out past Reasonspace and far into unexplored territory. Your body is able to use the nullspace energy much more efficiently than I expected, he explained. We can do this quickly.

  Nearly all of the star systems they passed were dark – absent of any trace of Bala. Kamis swore in the elfin language and Jenny grinned. His prudish façade was dissipating now that he was frustrated. Jenny knew how to curse and order a beer in all the Bala languages; it was a good one he’d let fly.

  Kamis pushed past all of the star systems that Jenny was familiar with, then past a host of them she had never seen before. Stars in pairs and triplets, and plenty of singletons with their handful of orbiting planets and satellites. She saw evidence of other civilizations that were neither human nor Bala. She tried to slow Kamis’ progress to look but he tugged her forward.