Unconstant Love

by Timothy J Meyer

  “Thanks.” Gertie smiles. “Me too.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Gertie makes her grand entrance.

  For three minutes and more, she'd lingered behind the appropriate curtain, waiting for a lull in their conversation so that she might draw everyone's fullest attention. Unfortunately for her theatrics, her husband and her guest-of-honor got on perhaps a little too well and the conversational lulls weren’t as frequent as she'd like.

  When her moment does come, Gertie brushes aside the curtain with a sweeping gesture of both hands. She's rewarded with both pairs of eyes – her husband's great purple orbs and the Menace's slate gray ones – swinging across the room and ogling her entrance.

  “Gents,” she greets, all casual. True to form, her husband screws his face into a grin, knowing what's to come next. True to form, the Captain is as clueless as a gamorka toad and just blinks, drooling a little from his open mouth.

  Those expressions – lascivious grin and vacant stare – hold steady as Gertie thumbs button after button on her massive Trijan officer's coat. The great jangly heap sloughs off her shoulders and into a heap at her feet. The jborra out of the bag, it's a wholly naked Gertie Guspatch – ditrogen scars, prison tattoos, that birthmark on her right thigh that looks like an AV2 suborbital blockader – that pads her way across the room. Once she reaches the cauldron's edge, she daintly dips one toe into the slime.

  “Sorry,” she apologizes, not even remotely sincere. “Didn't mean to interrupt your conversation.”

  Triggan, of course, is far from fooled. “Is you not? Is very curious.”

  “How's the goop?” she wonders, even as she descends, step by step into the soak.

  Nemo withdraws a hand from the slime, long tendrils of the stuff clinging to his fingers. “Goopy,” is his response, both innocent and slurred enough to betray how strongly it's affecting him.

  “That's better,” Gertie sighs contentedly as more and more of her body sinks beneath the slime. A sluggish ripple spreads across the cauldron's surface as the goop settles around her shoulders. Gertie inhales deeply of the amalgamated cocktail of narcotics that rises to her nose.

  One of Triggan's feelers makes a beckoning gesture and she complies, spacewalking her way through the slurry over towards where her husband reclines. As she does, Triggan returns his attention to the Galactic Menace and cues him with a flick of the other feeler. “Is continuing?”

  Soaking is probably the strangest new experience Gertie's been exposed to by her third husband. On Tagi, Triggan's distant homeworld, the preferred method of getting supremely fucked up involved soaking one's entire body in a superheated soup of concentrated narcotics. Despite its obviously unpleasant appearance, soaking was quickly catching fire in this farflung corner of the Quadrant, thanks to Thaksu's extensive bathhouses.

  It's exactly the sort of experience – like having sex with someone that grows two prehensile feelers from his upper lip, not to mention the pair of wings – that looks absolutely revolting but only to the uninitiated.

  Absorbed through the pores, the blend of herbs and chemicals is twice as strong and works twice as fast as any of the traditional methods of snorting, shooting or sniffing. In addition, each bath could be individually flavored, designed to inspire different effects on its users. A soothe conferred a pleasing numbness. A boost increased adrenaline levels. A muse inspired profound and creative hallucinations.

  This particular recipe, known simply as seduce, was concocted by Triggan's very best cooks to render its bathers extremely suggestible, more so than a few bottles of Gitterswitch Gin ever could. As such, the Votagi preferred this blend as a negotiation tactic, a good way to butter up a prospective client before signing on the dotted.

  It was practically tailor-made for the final round of negotiations with their guest of honor, the 34th Galactic Menace.

  For the past week, The Unconstant Lover's very wanted crew were the very special guests of Thaksu, her quadrant-renowned mudwrecking league and her two generous Governors. They'd kept mostly to the shadows and their ship early on, understandably gunshy after months of all the galaxy's heat coming down on them.

  As the week wore on, however, no immediate threats emerged to threaten them. The protection of Gertie and Triggan's operation here held firm and they started to creep from their burrow, to take advantage of all the criminal civilization Thaksu could offer.

  Flask, the Captain's supposed cousin, was the first to embrace the drinking, the debauchery and especially the gambling that made Thaksu go round. He was the least wanted and most capable of blending into the hooligan crowd. Embolded by his cousin's show of trust, Nemo followed shortly and wherever Nemo went, Odisseus followed.

  The great Ortoki shadow never took part in the festivities, nor did he explicity approve of their occasional public appearances. It was immediately clear that he dogged the Menace's steps merely as bodyguard, rather than willing participant, but Gertie was more than happy to call that a victory all the same.

  The bounty hunter Quicksilver was the rarest seen and, to Gertie's estimation, the rarest missed. The two of them had exchanged perhaps ten words in all these years, none of them friendly, and Gertie could care less whether Nemo's angry ex-girlfriend hung around or didn't.

  It was the Captain that was her real quarry, the galaxy's certifiably most dangerous individual. Here he was, relying on her hospitality, her protection, and desperate for a buyer for his priceless, unmovable cargo.

  Like a wild beast, skittish before humanity, the Galactic Menace was a labor of love to slowly tame. All her millions of unrequited advances unsuccessful so far, Gertie tried a different approach to domesticating this particular specimen; the tried-and-true method of male bonding. Triggan was enough of a Galactic Menace fanboy that he didn't need much prompting to cozy up to Nemo in a way that Gertie, considering their long and colorful history, never could.

  It took more than a dozen offers to come and have a soak for Nemo's disgust to wear away. Considering his character, this too was understandable in its own way. The bathhouses were very public, the baths appear pretty gross and there was the unimpeachable fact that he'd be naked, an arm's length and a stew of chemicals away from an equally naked Governor Gertie Guspatch.

  Triggan's irrepressable charm, however, could batter down any wall. It had proven too much even for the one that Gertie had erected against matrimony, considering the averted disaster that had been her second husband.

  “Oh, I don't know,” Nemo explains when prompted, sloshing his hand through the inky black substance that simmers all about him. “I just don't think he's having any fun, you know?”

  “Is understanding,” Triggan agrees, sagely. “Is not in keeping with his character, no, having fun?”

  “No, I s'pose not,” the Captain admits, allowing his hand to sink into the goop and staring at the utter lack of ripples this makes.

  “This is...?” dangles Gertie as she nuzzles into the sheltering embrace of Triggan's spread arm and wing.

  “Is the Ortok,” Triggan provides.

  “Odi,” Nemo supplies, no enthusiasm or even inflection in his voice.

  “Is thinking,” Triggan explains, gesturing a dripping feeler towards their guest, “his saltbrother is, how you say, being killjoy.”

  Gertie spikes her eyebrows. “Ah.”

  “That's not even really how I'd describe it,” Nemo makes the point, a look of preteen angst on his face. “It's like, the whole vibe's different now, you know? Like, the energy. Sure, they'd yell at me before but it was all, I don't know, superficial, then. Stupid. Never meant anything.”

  “Is diferent now?”

  “Feels like it means something.” There's a degree of melancholy there that Gertie suspects is deeper and truer than whatever the soak's dredged up in him. “I mean, who knows. Maybe everything'll get better once we've actually got a fucking buyer.”

  Gertie and Triggan are free to exchange a glance while Nemo stares morosely into the depth of the narcotic st
ew.

  “Speaking of which,” Gertie transitions, shifting her weight as she shifts the conversation onto another topic. “I've – we've – given your offer a good deal of thought,” she starts slowly, hoping to slowly warm him to their counteroffer, “and we're prepared to, with one caveat, accept.”

  A bubble pops on the surface of the soak before Nemo reacts.

  “Accept,” he repeats listlessly. “Accept means you accept? That you'll buy the tree?”

  “With one caveat,” Gertie stipulates, a small smile growing on her face to match the Captain's own.

  Astonishment slowly dawns on the Galactic Menace's great moon of a face. “Governor Good Luck Gertrude Gundeck Guspatch,” he recites with admiration. “You–”

  “Gertie,” she reminds him, as ever.

  Addled by the soak's vapors, Nemo's only too happy to take the correction. “Governor Good Luck Gertie Gundeck Guspatch,” he recites again, with no less admiration. “You know, I'd pretty much lost any hope we were ever gonna move the blooming thing.”

  “Is your lucky day, yes?” Triggan congratulates, a little astonished himself at Nemo's unexpected outpouring of positivity, so morose mere seconds ago.

  “With one caveat,” Gertie feels the need to keep reminding everyone.

  “Is, for you, I think,” Triggan introduces, taking her cue, “an interesti–”

  “You're sure,” Nemo continues, completely ignoring their tagteam attempts to steer him onto the right course, “you can handle the heat? Like, we sell you this tree and the Consortium ain't gonna be–”

  “It's a danger,” Gertie acknowledges, “and it's baggage we've taken into consideration. There're a few favors we'd maybe ask you, concerning where you go from here and where the Consortium thinks you might've dumped the thing, but,” she shrugs a little, considering Triggan while she says this, “it should go without saying that we wouldn't be conducting any harvesting or moonshining or what-have-you in the public eye.”

  “Is avoiding the attention,” Triggan explains, sweeping a feeler across the private soaking room, “of the bigwigs for years and years, our operation is, no? Is you, Galactic Menace, even knowing of our humble little Thaksu before Gertie contact you?”

  “I suppose that's true,” Nemo admits. A moment later, a fresh objection comes burbling from his mouth, almost as though he's attempting to dissuade them from buying the thing in the first place. “But, Gertrude, you don't–”

  “Gertie.”

  “But, Gertie, you don't know the first thing–”

  “Is 70 million,” Triggan announces abruptly and all three stew in the silence that follows. “Is how much we is prepared to pay you.”

  “Is 70 million,” repeats a vacant Nemo.

  “Is how much you stand you make,” Gertie explains, before he has a chance to run away with the number. “There's the caveat to consider, of course, but, assuming you'd be game for that, you could be making tracks from Thaksu with 2 million more in your pocket than Gella would've put there.”

  “That's...” Nemo starts to tabulate in his head, “...more than we ask–”

  “Is 2 million more,” Triggan reiterates, “than you ask for.”

  “Remember what I said, Nemo,” Gertie makes the pitch, appealing to his soak-riddled emotions. “We could make you very happy.”

  It takes a remarkable stretch of time for this idea to penetrate the Captain. A few deep bubbles rise and pop before Nemo surfaces one hand from the soak and, slime dripping of his fingers, extends it across toward Gertie or Triggan or both. “Deal,” he agrees.

  His hand lingers there a second, goop sloughing off to splat back into the sludge. Gertie purses her lips and she knows without looking that Triggan's curling his feelers – the Votagi equivalent of same.

  “What? Nemo wonders, bringing the hand up to his face and, in the process, smearing slime everywhere. “Is there something on my face?”

  “Is the caveat,” Triggan informs him, “yet to discuss.”

  “Oh yeah,” Nemo remembers, spreading the sticky stuff between his fingers, unfazed by whatever could be lurking behind that caveat. “What's that?”

  “Come to bed with us.”

  Gertie anticipated all kinds of reactions to this. She'd imagined a blunt refusal. She's imagine shocked terror. She'd imagined a dumbfounded stare. In the inimitable tradition of Nehel Morel, the reaction she does get would have been impossible to predict.

  “What would we do there?” Nemo wonders, captivated by the strands of gunk gumming the distance between his spread fingers.

  This time, it's Gertie's turn to be dumbfounded. The soak, she realizes, has affected him much more profoundly than they'd thought it would. Thankfully, Triggan is there to pick up the slack. “Is thinking the usual.”

  They allow the idea some time to sink in, letting the conversation lapse into silence. For nearly a minute, the only sounds are the bubbling cauldron, the ambient crash-and-clamor of the debauchery outside and the sloshing sound of Nemo and his slime-drenched hand. Eventually, the neurons in his brain fire correctly and his hand freezes.

  “The three of us,” he starts to puzzle out, “in bed,” he turns the slowest possible gaze towards the pair of them, where they lounge across the cauldron, “doing the usual.” He blinks once. “You mean fucking.”

  “Is meaning fucking,” Triggan confirms, a parent guiding a child to a conclusion.

  Nemo screws up his face, some errant piece of logic snagging somewhere in his brain. “Aren't you two married, though?”

  “We're married,” Gertie scoffs. “We're not boring.”

  “Is forgiving me, I hope, for saying so,” Triggan starts to explain, as delicately as he can. “Is the lover my wife has always desire for but has never attain.” Spoken so plainly, Gertie actually starts to blush, a sudden heat in her cheeks, and she's forced to gaze down at the simmering cauldron, like a schoolgirl with her crush. “Is best to consider a toast,” Triggan continues, “celebrating a successful business venture.”

  Gertie sneaks a peek at him, to see how he's absorbing all this. Nemo massages his chin with his hand, inadvertently smearing more sludge across his face. He mulls the idea over much longer than he ever has in the entire history of their relationship. Triggan even gives Gertie a little squeeze on the shoulder, a show of faith that all their efforts are about to pay off.

  “You're saying,” Nemo seeks to reiterate again, “that you'll buy the tree for 70 million,” he screws up his face again, the idea sounding completely preposterous to him, “if I have sex with you?”

  “Is inelegant but accurate.”

  Nemo stares not at them but at the space between the two of them. “That would make me a whore.” There's no judgment in his voice at this, simply stating a rational fact.

  “Doll,” Gertie breaks in, favoring him with an indulgent smile, “that would make you the highest-priced whore in the galaxy.”

  The Captain extends two fingers, one for each of them, and makes a sudden stipulating gesture. “If I agree–”

  Then the chamber's door explodes inward.

  In the heartbeat before it happens, Gertie is certain she sees a brilliant orange line, jagged and swiftly struck, slice through the thick thermosteel. The first thing through that door, the moment it crumbles, is the smouldered corpse of Ugbur Two-Tongue. Charged with guarding the door to their private cauldron, the unfortunate Naskren tumbles onto his back with an identical gash, still smoking, carved completely through his midsection. Made a ragdoll in death, his carcass flops awkwardly onto the floor as, through the smoke, their adversaries arrive.

  There's no time to commiserate with husband or Menace about what this means or what defensive strategy to take. Gertie Guspatch, once headliner of the Consortium's Most Wanted knows exactly what's about to happen and she's less than an eyeblink to react.

  “Down!” she commands in her pirate captain's voice. Trusting Triggan to understand, she grabs Nemo by the hair and yanks him beneath the surface. Prayi
ng to all the moons he was quick enough to close his mouth before submerging, she follows him, disappearing into the gunk with a sudden sucking sound.

  Beneath the surface, everything is thick as molasses and suffocatingly toxic. They cannot remain down here for more than a moment or two. Through the deadening sludge, Gertie still hears the telltale clatter of a Domino opening fire across the chamber, pockmarking the walls and sometimes the edges of the cauldron. In seconds, their assailant would cross the distance and empty the next clip into the soak, like shooting sporefin in a barrel.

  She may very well, Gertie appreciates, have killed them all with this maneuver.

  Instead, she searches through the viscous fluid with her hand, groping against the cauldron's side for the release lever. Every second she doesn't find it, Gertie knows there're harnessed boots hustling across the chamber to come and execute them. Finally, by the grace of the moons, Gertie's fingers wrap around the necessary lever and, her lungs straining, she yanks the thing open.

  There's a sudden rush, the liquid drains from all around them, sluices out of the cauldron and spills across the chamber's floor. Their ray shield incapable of repelling a tide of toxic goop, the spice ranger is taken wholly by surprise and recoils in disgust, their legs suddenly swamped. Gertie seizes her opening and goes shooting through the opening, sliding on her bare stomach and clambering as fast as she can from the cauldron.

  The spice ranger – a hairless Helker, with six ears flapping in panic – loses his balance and splashes into the soak, the feet of his harness suffused with slime. Moving as quickly as she can, Gertie scrambles to Ugbur's corpse, fumbles for his piece and bears down on the prone Helker, his harness unresponsive in the sludge.

  The Naskren's sidearm is a bulky, cumbersome, cobbled-together piece but she still manages to squeeze off a pair of shots. One sizzles uselessly in the slime. The second clips the Helker through the roof of the skull, burning his face away in a flash of orange ditrogen.

  The ranger flops limp and, in seconds, is swallowed completely by the seduce that keeps pouring from the cauldron's open hatch. For a long moment, Gertie can only hear the sound of her own panting. That's when the rest of the universe comes crashing back into her ears and she can hear what's actually happening outside their private soaking chamber.