“Miss Treasure would like to speak with you,” Ivy said.
Electra swung her legs over the edge of the bed and pulled herself into a sitting position to slide on her Utopalex pants. “Yeah, okay, send her in.” She fumbled around the bedding for her shirt. It was a black shirt in an entirely white room. Finding it should have been much easier than it proved to be.
The wall slid away and Treasure walked in, dressed in a green-and-tan plaid flannel shirt and baggy blue jeans. She’d clearly figured out how to use the fabricator—or maybe she hadn’t. The clothes looked painfully drab and scratchy to Electra.
“You’re topless.” Treasure quickly turned to avert her eyes.
“My shirt is being elusive in ways that don’t make sense,” Electra said, finally locating it. “Why does that matter?”
“Because…modesty,” Treasure said. “I barely know you and you barely know me.”
“I’m in my own bedroom,” Electra said. “Besides, this is way more than most people wear to the beach. In fact, most aliens don’t even wear clothes. I do because they’re pretty, they keep me warm and Utopalex feels amazing.”
“Your breasts…”
“Won’t bite, I promise.” Electra rolled her eyes and pulled her shirt on. “Better?”
“No, I didn’t mind, I guess. I meant they look so real…and nice.” Treasure smiled a little, caught herself in the act and tried to hide it with a vague headshake.
“They are real,” Electra said. “You’ve seen my Spatronic. No crap-o holograms required to make the twins looks perky.”
“But like real real.”
Electra grabbed her breasts, one to each hand, and gave them a playful jiggle. “Yep. I’m not really following. Is there another not-really-real option I’m unaware of?”
“Not implants?”
“Like biosynthetic implants? Everyone has some of those,” Electra said. “My hormones come from them. Little grain of rice things attached to my ribcage on the inside. I’ve got some spiffy new eye lenses that allow the Spatronic or any ocular affixed terminal to change the color of the iris and adjust the light spectrum I can see in. Most of the spectrums outside the normal visual range give me a headache, so that turned out to be pretty useless. There’s the standard audio-visual universal translator, but you have one of those too. I have a radiation conversion node. We need to get one of those for you, by the way, if you’re going to do much space travel. Radiation sickness is such a pain in the ass to kick. But external appearance mods never really appealed to me.”
“So you grew those breasts yourself?”
“Uh-huh. Not consciously of course, but how else would I get them?” Electra quirked an eyebrow. “Did you not grow yours?” Electra realized only after asking that it was a silly question. All of Treasure had been grown in a lab. “Yours are really nice too. Is that okay to say? You complimented mine, so…”
“Thank you. It’s fine to say, I suppose. I did grow my own, but you…” Treasure stopped to consider her words carefully. “Back from my time, there was a surgery to put liquid-filled implants into women’s chests to give them breasts. Men who became women had to do this to have them.”
“I wasn’t a man, and that surgery sounds super unpleasant,” Electra said.
“I think it probably was unpleasant. What were you?”
“An un-transitioned woman,” Electra said, trying to think of some time-appropriate analogies from the Encyclopedia Britannica to help Treasure understand. “Like a caterpillar isn’t a worm. It’s an un-transitioned butterfly. A pollywog isn’t a fish. It’s an almost-frog. A face clinger isn’t a parasite. It’s a rampaging carnivore xenomorph that hasn’t chest-burst yet.”
“Those are real?” Treasure’s eyes went wide.
“No, but I had you going,” Electra said. “Aren’t old Earth movies great?”
When Treasure didn’t join her in the reminiscing about ancient Earthling cinema, Electra sighed, walked to the door with her and guided her down the hallway toward the exit hatch that led to the gangplank. Donuts and coffee would fix everything. The confusion cut both ways. It wasn’t like Electra could understand people who prized modesty so much that they wore boring, itchy clothes to cover up everything. And the liquid-filled bags for breasts? It all sounded so barbaric and uncomfortable. To call an un-transitioned woman a man was simply wacky. In the most clumsy, backward way of speaking, she could at best have been a boy to start her life who grew up to be a woman after the age of thirteen. She’d never been a man, and even if she’d been called a boy at one point, the ultimate gender of a child couldn’t be determined by simply looking at them.
Treasure received another visible shock when they walked down into the massive freighter hangar. Ships of all shapes and sizes taxied after landing or before taking off. Gromphra maintenance crews scurried to clean stuff, fill other stuff, charge customers for purchased stuff and probably sell drugs, guns and other illegal stuff on the side. It was glorious commerce running at breakneck speeds to turn ‘stuff’ into money.
“There are giant cockroaches everywhere!” Treasure shrieked, right in Electra’s ear.
“What? No, those are Gromphra,” Electra said. “They are everywhere, though. You’re right about that. Any planet you go to with any sort of economy has at least some, and space stations? Forget it. Every space station is crawling with them, even if they aren’t immediately visible.”
“They’re safe to be around?” Treasure asked, allowing herself to be led away from the ship.
“More or less. Don’t talk to them or make eye contact unless you’re interested in forceful flirting. They’re lecherous and aggressively sexual.”
“They’ll rape you if you look at them?” Treasure asked.
“No, no, nothing like that. They’re all sterile females,” Electra said. “They’re born in one big explosion from their home world every once in a great while, and each generation goes out to make money and gather crap to send back. The older generations are called ‘uncle’ by any group that comes after and the younger generations are called ‘niece’ by any group that came before.”
“How do you know they’re female?” Treasure practically jumped out of her skin when one of the eight-foot-long bugs scrambled past her to get to a docked freighter’s clogged intake valve.
“I’ve never seen a male, but I’ve heard they look like floating balloons with a bunch of strings dangling off them,” Electra said. “The strings are penises. The male Gromphra don’t live long and they never leave the home world. Plus, I don’t think they’re able to talk. Too many penises to fit a mouth… That came out wrong.”
Treasure stopped dead in her tracks, forcing Electra to come back. “Does that sign say what I think it says?”
“Tim Hortons?”
“Yes! That’s from my time!” Treasure screamed and bounced around a little bit. “It makes no sense for it to be in a place like this, but there it is. I got my coffee from Tim’s every day for years. I’m pretty sure I’m dreaming now or in a weird simulation.”
“I pulled you out of the simulation, remember?”
“Then the galaxy is being cooler to me than I thought it was going to be.”
“Yeah, I’m kind of feeling that way myself right now.” Electra smiled to Treasure and blushed when Treasure smiled back. “And now you can get your coffee and bits, but only if we move. We’re standing right in a taxiing zone and we’re going to get squished if we don’t clear out.” Electra took Treasure by the hand and led a far more eager and comfortable companion into the familiar confines of the donut and coffee shop.
“If I had eyes to disbelieve, I would disbelieve them,” Om said when they walked in. “That is only the second human I’ve seen in years, and she’s attached to your hand.”
Electra eagerly led Treasure up to the counter. “Om, this is Treasure. Treasure, this is the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-pouring, all-donuting Om.”
“Electra is exaggerating my abilities to know, see and pou
r, but she’s correct about my ability to donut,” Om said.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Treasure said, cocking her head in one direction then the other, likely trying to figure out where she was supposed to look to make eye contact with the swirling mass of rocks.
“Just look at the glow in the middle,” Electra whispered to her. “Om doesn’t have a face in any way we can comprehend.”
“This has to put you over the top or close to it,” Om said.
Electra loudly cleared her throat and flared her eyes. “It does… A free small coffee. The punch card is all full.” Electra slid a half-punched card quickly across the counter. If Treasure knew her value to Bi-MARP and the extent of Electra’s debts, being trusted would be pretty much impossible, and Electra deeply wanted to be liked, admired and trusted by Treasure.
“I see,” Om said. “Coffee and bits for you both?”
“Timbits? They’re here?” Treasure asked.
“Here and at our other seventeen thousand locations across the galaxy,” Om said. “I’ll get you a souvenir menu map.”
Om delivered their order of coffee and donut holes on a tray. Electra thought she felt them watching her as they walked away, judging her, seeing the deceptions she must have enacted. They slid into a booth by the window and quietly picked apart the glazed bits of donuts. Electra actively averted her gaze from anywhere near Om, considering she didn’t precisely know where their eyes were or if they even had them, but she assumed they’d be judgmental eyes.
“Where’d you learn to fly?” Treasure asked. “I get the feeling you’re good at it, based on what you did back there.”
“I was training to be a pilot in my Embarker flotilla before…before everything.”
“Embarkers?”
“It used to be a big, mostly human society thing—lots of caravans, fleets, flotillas filled with laborers who lived on their ships and roamed around working jobs like mining, farming and construction,” Electra said. “By the time I was born, our flotilla was the last one. My parents figured out I was meant to transition, so they found a place for me to do it since the flotilla didn’t have very good facilities for that sort of thing. They sent me away, using most of their savings for the deposit. A year later, the flotilla took a job mining asteroids in a belt around a red dwarf on the rough outer edge of the Scutum-Centaurus arm of the Milky Way. A strange kind of radiation started making everyone sick. Ships were lost from lack of able hands. Within a couple of weeks, the whole fleet was dead. The mining company went bankrupt. All that remains of the last Embarker flotilla are few thousand dead bodies, a bunch of irradiated ships and a poisonous asteroid belt floating around in a backwater part of the galaxy.”
“That’s horrible.”
“It is, but it’s also a perfect example of why my people and our way of life eventually went extinct,” Electra said. “Living hand-to-mouth like that, flying often-times ancient ships to dangerous jobs that we never researched thoroughly enough… It was a lousy and apparently unsustainable lifestyle that endured longer than it probably should’ve.”
“That kind of work, that life, it doesn’t seem to fit you at all.”
“No?”
“You’re beautiful, glamorous and posh,” Treasure said, “like a movie star or something.”
Electra bit the side of her lower lip to try to hold back her smile, but it slipped through and she knew her cheeks would already give her away with a visible blush. “You’re right. Embarker life wasn’t for me and I’ve worked hard to distance myself from it. I left when I was thirteen, give or take—Embarkers aren’t big on birthdays. Maybe not much sank in or it got shed when I transitioned. I don’t remember thinking my parents looked happy, even when I was little. Happiness isn’t, or I guess wasn’t something Embarkers thought much about, but it’s pretty damn important to me. Wanting to be a pilot when my schooling began might have been my subconscious looking for a way out, and flying ships made me happy.”
“Whatever the reason, I’m glad you can fly the way you can.” Treasure pushed the now-empty tray full of nibbled donut holes and a drained coffee cup into the middle of the table and folded her hands in front of her. “So, from what Ivy showed me about what happened and what you’ve said about Bi-MARP rebuilding Earth, I want to help. And I wouldn’t mind getting to know my rescuer better.”
“That can be arranged—both things, actually. There’s a list of stuff to collect,” Electra said, her stomach doing somersaults at the prospect of being known by Treasure. “Each item has a value. The more of an item that can be found the better, but the rare stuff pays the most.” Electra stared into the tiny hole on the top of her coffee cup while she thought. She had an expert on more or less the right period for the Encyclopedia Britannica books being used as a guide. Sempa and the other treasure hunters didn’t have the Treasure she had, not with the ocean of knowledge about the twenty-first century and that brain-melting smile. If she worked with Treasure, they could both get rich if they managed to steer clear of Sempa and beat other contractors to the goodies. Then it wouldn’t matter what Treasure was worth or how much Electra owed. She’d just have to keep her secrets until they found enough Bi-MARP loot. “You know all about Earth—more than scholars even. You could help me find the best stuff and identify it.”
“Absolutely,” Treasure said. “For example, I can tell you this whole restaurant is accurate for a Tim Hortons. Like if I only look at you and a little to the left, I can almost forget we’re in a space station and that there’s a giant cockroach putting way too much sugar in a hot chocolate at the condiments station.”
“Hey, you two. I’ve got two mandibles, no waiting,” the Gromphra said. “How about taking a ride?”
“Just ignore her,” Electra said.
“Ignore this.” The Gromphra made a few awkward thorax thrusts in their direction, poured her hot chocolate down her throat and waved the two hands on one side dismissively at them. On her way out the door, the Gromphra tossed the empty hot chocolate cup into a trashcan. “Hey, trashcan, I’ve got something to fill you up.” The Gromphra made several more thorax thrusts at the trashcan before leaving.
“They’re sterile?”
“Yep.”
“Why do they do that?”
“To gross out other species, maybe,” Electra said. “I don’t think even they know.”
“Anyway, let’s study the list and get treasure hunting,” Treasure said. “I am caffeinated and ready to work, Captain.”
Being called ‘captain’ by Treasure carried a tremor of delight that the title didn’t have when anyone else used it. “Division of labor,” Electra said, trying to shake off the warm, fuzzy feeling. “Why don’t you work on the list, find things you think would have survived and I’ll work the galactic net to chase down rumors of whatever you decide is worth our time.”
As they were walking out of the Tim Hortons, Om called to Electra. “Dr. Baarqua was in here earlier looking for you.”
It made sense only after the fact that Dr. Baarqua had probably been the one to tell Om about the Bort Pod job in the first place. Om was too effective and efficient for any of the Jun’Tar to be his Bi-MARP contact. Unfortunately, there was no way Paul hadn’t told Baarqua about the theft of Treasure and Electra assaulting the doctoral candidate with a glob sphere in his own lab, which meant Baarqua probably knew she was in possession of a healthy human female, even if Paul had been coy about the nature of his research before. Paul couldn’t demand Dr. Baarqua return his test subject without divulging that he’d had a human woman all along and hadn’t planned to share with his good friend at Bi-MARP.
“Thanks, I’ll call him—or see him or whatever,” Electra shouted back over her shoulder. She hated to admit it, but she was going to have to start avoiding Om and Station 51. Om was too smart not to figure out at least part of what she was doing and now Dr. Baarqua knew she frequented the place. Treasure was looking over the souvenir placemat map while they walked. With seventeen thousand other Tim Ho
rtons locations to visit in the galaxy, they’d be fine for French Roast and Timbits.
Chapter Eight
After a few days of chasing down a handful of dead leads, Electra was getting a little sick of treasure hunting. She’d set up a few thousand galactic net search alerts with Ivy, racked her brain for alternative wording and descriptions that might yield fruit and posted inquiries on dozens of boards and forums to try to build a database of possible goodies. Unfortunately, Cog 2 had been good to his word. An ever-growing number of acquisition agents were looking for Bi-MARP booty and they were managing to get in each other’s way at nearly every turn. The Jun’Tar weren’t good at much, but complicating the shit out of a task was where they truly shined.
“A new search parameter hit, Miss Electra,” Ivy announced, snapping Electra out of her idle polishing of the cockpit’s chrome fixtures.
“Sweet… What do we have?” Electra asked, pointing to the primary display for Ivy to show her.
It was a bounty and a kind of lengthy takedown rant about her. The pictures, swiped from her galactic net listings to advertise her professional party guest business, were quite flattering, even if the accompanying words were not.
“What the hell?” Electra mumbled while she read.
“It would seem Sempa has placed a public capture or kill contract on you, Miss Electra.”
“He calls me ‘miss-shapenly upright’? What does that even mean?”
“I do not know, Miss Electra, but the release of this bounty announcement has coincided with a seven hundred fifty-three percent increase in requests for party guest bookings,” Ivy said.
“Well, those are obviously traps,” Electra said. “Shut down the contact information stream for my old business, I guess.” She chewed her thumbnail while she re-read the bizarrely unflattering description that Sempa had written to accompany the posting. He really didn’t like her and was willing to put a lot of money on the line to prove it. She couldn’t help but wonder if the quarter-of-a-million units he was offering would come out of the Bi-MARP fee she would fetch or if he’d made up his mind about keeping her around for payback. It seemed like throwing a lot of good money after bad to pay someone to find her then pass on the units she was worth just so he could torture her for a while. She also had to wonder how stupid a freelancer would have to be to give her to Sempa when she was potentially worth significantly more to the Chamber project to rebuild Earth.
Electra Rex Page 8
