Dwarves in Space

by S E Zbasnik

  She thought of asking for that in "universal please," but knew how well it'd go over and did the calculation in her head. The captain was going to blow about ten inertia seals herself, but it was better her than the ship. "Fine," she relented to the man.

  "Excellent," he punched some numbers into the computer, "would you like delivery?"

  "Delivery? I'm standing right here."

  "Oh no, no, no. We don't keep parts like that in store. It would be too dangerous."

  "Too dangerous for whom? It's a hunk of plastic and rubber until the charge is run through."

  The finer points of space travel passed over the clerk's head and he repeated, "One of our gnomes will have to retrieve your package and deliver it to your ship within a business day. Or you could return here."

  She thought of just how much damage a second return to this shop would cost her and shook her head, "Delivery, fine, tack it on."

  The clerk tapped happily into his screen, "And the name of your ship for delivery?"

  "The Elation-Cru, it's on the," she tried to tamp down her own shudder, "Happy Jellyfish deck."

  "Thank you, Sir. I mean, Ma'am," he banged furiously against a holographic keyboard, trying to hide his own blunder before unlocking the scanner and passing it over, "If you could be so kind as to give me your PALM."

  She held out her pale hand and felt a small tingle as it accessed her internal data, decimating the already paltry bank account. He took the scanner back and she flexed her fingers, always afraid of the day there'd be a major blowback from one of those damn things. "Someone will be around with your inertia injector in 12-25 hours. Be certain you have a sentient adult or gnome with legal guardianship waiting to sign for it."

  "So, no ship of hyper-intelligent chicken children, then?"

  "Is that what this part is for?" he asked seriously, as if he were about to report her for poultry-napping.

  Ferra's mouth hung agape, "We're you born this stupid or did a troll sit on your head as a child?"

  "Ma'am?"

  "Put it away," she mumbled to her fists as she shook her head. Lifting up the old injector that could be cannibalized later, Ferra marched towards the door crowded with fading stickers from part manufacturers; a few far too familiar to the old engineer. "I'm leaving before I put your head through something it's not actually thicker than."

  As she passed over the threshold, pausing for the few seconds it took the door to whoosh open, his cheerful voice carried across her last nerve, "Pleasure doing business with you. Please come again."

  Third Technician Segundo tapped another set of checks off of his endless list as he placed the bags of flour and sugar back inside the galley's peeling cabinets. "Labeled properly," he muttered aloud to himself to overcompensate for his silent guide.

  He switched on the drinking sink, a pitiful stream of water burbling out, its shade an appeasable yellow. Another checkmark down, 786 more to go by his count. "I believe I need to visit the 'Crew Storage' next," he said and looked up and then up some more at his silent guide.

  The monster...No, the training was very explicit. When meeting a fellow sentient it was best to address them as alien and later determine if they are in fact someone's pet or grandmother. He failed that test every time he opened his mouth, his previous life failing to prepare him for much of anything aside from sitting quietly and being holy. His guide, Gene they called it, towered a couple of feet above Segundo, putting him somewhere near the eight foot tall ceilings the ship boasted. But it wasn't the height that bothered the technician, nor the fact its skin was composed of an igneous rock substance cleaved to reveal ever shifting fires below. It was the eyes, the only gaps in the head portion of the monster, that flared an eternal red, occasionally clouding over in puffs of grey smoke. Like when the mon...Gene laid red gaps upon the kid it'd be touring about the ship. He could almost swear the smoke rolled like a tornado when he asked the Gene for its PALM scan.

  Segundo wasn't prepared for this. Technically, he wasn't even prepared to be a technician. He'd been bumped to intern in the training program after his predecessor jammed his head inside an aft engine burner when the ship was in the middle of pre-space flight checks. It took days to properly scrub the ship and hours for the government's lawyers to lay blame at the feet of the ship's owners; a nice couple from the rolling farm systems who were doing time in a troll prison up-galaxy.

  The death or dismemberment of a technician was always ruled the fault of anyone other than themselves. Even a few suicides were found to be the cause of too well constructed rope, far too copious pharmaceuticals, and -- in one landmark case -- the deadly overabundance of gravity. After dwarves, elves, and humans all laid a stake to Samudra, terra and ocean forming it up to match their preferred water getaway, they realized it was far easier to found its own interspecies government rather than getting the other species' ruling classes to communicate. Being traditionalists, the elves demanded a proper coup before the official documents could be signed. A single bread stand was tipped over. Every year the stations celebrate the triumph of freedom over imagined tyranny by lighting explosives and tossing bread.

  So here was poor Segundo, barely out of his pupal stage and already poking about dwarven ships. "Are there any rickety staircases that are not up to the Aliens with Disabilities code?" he asked the Gene leading him through the narrow galley with its slightly wobbly but acceptable table, out past the heat exchange and MCG expansion pipes, towards what would hopefully be storage.

  The monster swung his head in a wide "No," emphasizing the movement so the technician wouldn't have to ask twice. Not that it helped.

  "So there are no cases of anything stair that could impede a gnome with a broken back?"

  Steam hissed through some of the glowing cracks in Gene's back as he swung his head a harder no and kept pulling the babbling child forward. Segundo's paper thin boots skidded across the carpet. He'd never seen cloth laid across the floor before and was uncertain how to react to it. Currently, he was building up such a static electric charge his visit to engineering should be very hair raising indeed.

  A few curious trappings remained from the old ship's early days. A pair of curtains hung over what had once been a viewing port long since covered in scrap. A phrase etchinged in five languages hung over the door to direct people who didn't spend their lives on the ship to the lavatories. And in every room, a happy blue and gold panel with a bright washscreen of a rising planet's shadow greeted the entrance.

  As Gene stomped onwards, his bulk skimming across the cramped walls of the shunted sails, Segundo paused at the eternally open doorway to the "Entertainment Deck." His fingers scrolled through the inventory list, never letting it fade away from his PALM incase it couldn't come back. There was nothing about testing a door system, aside from making sure no limbs were recently mangled, but a small pique of curiosity got the better of him.

  He approached the blue screen, larger than his face, with a hefty speaker system grate embedded below. Segundo tapped the small image of the cruise ship zipping around an asteroid belt. A calm voice chirped up, "Good day fellow star traveler. I am your Welcoming Engine of Spacealogical Tours. Whatever your heart desires, I shall endeavor to make available. What do you wish?"

  The soft screen faded and a narrow tan box appeared. A pair of wheels of varying size took the place where eyes would be, while a foul zigzag of wiring created a mouth. For some reason, it also wore an eyepatch and a tri-corner hat. The zigzag opened and a foul, echoing voice asked, "Whatcha want?"

  Segundo stepped back. He'd been expecting a human face, formed from the users own sexual preferences. It was a coming of age experience for children near puberty to rag on whatever the computers picked for their friends, and secretly hope what it chose for them was acceptable and not, say, a gargoyle in fishnets. He'd never interacted with a talking box before. "Who are you?"

  The talking box cranked its wheel eyes and said, "Read the watermark below your fat lips, detective."

  "W.E.
S.T? Oh I get it, Welcoming Engine of Spacealogical Tours. You're west."

  "It's pronounced Wee-st," the computer snipped, stretching out the vowel as if it were a game to pass the time.

  "Why?" Segundo's hospitality instructor would have just thrown him into an aft engine.

  The wheel eyes spun quickly, creating the animation of smoke pouring off them, "Because Mighty Overlord of Organics was already registered."

  "Oh," he tried to make a note of that in his likely never to be read report, but the tablet kept flashing at him every time he etched in "overlord." Even the slightly-less-sentient-than-a-toaster word document picked up on the sarcasm flying right over the human's head.

  WEST sighed by activating the air compressors to clear out its interface in the inevitable event of an undeveloped organic jamming crispified potato into its airports. The air whooshed right over the technician's head as he leaned down to pick up an errant bit. "Was there an inquiry you wished to make, or must you drain the life out of every thing you interact upon?"

  "Tell me about this ship," Segundo stuttered. Not that the technician had any plans to cut short his first inspection by asking the onboard computer to do his job. He just couldn't think of anything other than, "Why is the sky black?"

  "It is a ship," WEST began, "it is made of various metallic ores and alloys, shaped and formed to create something that others would generously call a 'bedpan with wings.' Most scientists believe it exists primarily within the four dimensions of space except when opening a wyrmhole where it slips either down to two or up to five. These scientists are, of course, wrong. A few calculated that in order for the sheer energetic magnitude of folding space to fit within a two dimensional view of..."

  "Where are the bathrooms?"

  Another blast of air hit Segundo in the chin. WEST's voice, always a bit shrill from age, raised a few octaves higher in its perturbance. "The commons bathroom is located behind the shuffle board, which was torn out. A second family and non-organic friendly one is towards the back of the deck near a gaping hole no one bothered to cover over," as the computer lapsed out of its script, the eyes spun slower and it asked darkly, "Would you also wish to know where the exits are located and how to squeeze your soft, squishy form into a life suit?"

  The technician shook his head and poked at his concave stomach with his licensed SPLITR stylus. It was the first time his form had ever been referred to as soft. The head was a different matter. He could almost swear the jagged wires smirked as the welcoming engine lapsed into bemused silence. Computers were supposed to be helpful, not revel in getting a rise out of every organic that woke it from its slumber.

  Segundo flipped to the ether and did a quick pile on for anything calling itself 'west robot.' After about fifty hits for a very prolific porn actor who had a particularly entertaining handicap, he found what he was looking for, and hoisted his PALM illuminated clipboard at the computer screen. "Says here your entire lot was discontinued, ripped apart chip by chip and sold for scrap ages ago. You're the only one of you in the entire universe."

  WEST's eyes rotated slower, the left one coming to a halt before it responded in a chipped voice, "That makes me special, mammal."

  A crack resounded from behind the technician and he flipped away from the computer that he could have sworn flared an animated tongue at him. His guide stood in the doorway, its knuckles firmly gripped upon the half closed door, digging into the metal alloy. Segundo nodded solemnly to his silent guide, turning his soft chest away from the computer.

  But WEST wasn't finished with him, "Hey, djinn!" Gene's eyes smoked up rapidly as it focused on the blathering box, "Would you kindly stomp this puny human to paste?" Segundo gasped, his head flapping about like a terrified chicken, but Gene only folded his arms up and tapped his crackling foot against the carpet.

  "Damn," WEST complained, "It used to work on the last guy."

  "What did you call him?" Segundo asked the computer trying to turn him into paste. There were subsections inside of subsections on the legal transportation of specific species not recognized in the Intergalactic Book of Not-Making-An-Ass-Out-of-Yourself. Most came down to "You can't do it."

  "Djinn, or if you'd prefer the colloquial jinn spelling," WEST teased, even though both sounded the same to the organics unequipped with verbal grammar check.

  Segundo's fingers sped through lists: pixies, pictsies, sprites, can of sprite, brownie, brownie scout, pan of brownies...There was nothing under a D or a J for the jin. He tried not to hyperventilate at the idea that he just discovered an unknown species, conveniently forgetting it was on a ship docked at an orbiting vacation spot and more than likely it was aware of, and had discovered its own species some time ago.

  He flipped his PALM over to document mode, preserving five images of his thumb and a video of his nose for posterity before lining it up properly over the now steaming hulk of rock, seething at the attention and interruption. A few flashes bounced from his hand, held up as if he were waiting for a very low high five. He pushed send, launching the images off into the ether with the epitaph "Gin." "I cannot find anything in the lists for the feeding or housing of a Dah-jinn," he mused to himself as if he weren't surrounded by two people who cared little for what passed between his ears.

  WEST's eyes rolled quickly, giggling to itself, "Perhaps you can find them listed under 'genies.'"

  Gene shifted back as the technician's head swung up, his dust cloth eyes as agape as his mouth. A few gurgles dribbled from the drooling maw, but nothing coherent escaped. The information seemed to have pushed the human over the narrow edge it teetered upon. Even WEST hadn't anticipated this utter mental breakdown. It was looking to be a much more entertaining day after all.

  "You," Segundo pointed to the hulking rock, "you're a genie? But you don't live in a lamp, or have a beard, or wear pointed shoes."

  A large gasp of steam blew, the heat bursting dangerously close to Segundo's face as the djinn leaned in close. His red eyes burned hotter than seemed physically possible as small sparks of blue overtook the middle flame. Slowly, with emphasis, Gene shook his head. A very definite and clear there-will-be-no-follow-up-questions "No."

  Segundo gulped, settling back onto his heels, trying to put all those old books he read as a child out of his mind. But something stuck deep, a fervent dream more than anything else, and --ideology overriding the self preservation instinct -- he looked up at the quickly defusing djinn to ask, "Will you grant my wishes?"

  "Satellite."

  "No way, look at that gait. He's never stepped foot off planet in his life," Orn tossed another piece of fried close-enough-to-chicken into his mouth. Ferra would have him sleeping with the genie if she knew what was failing to travel his digestive tract. Dwarves were supposed to be loyal, hardworking, and concerto ass flautists. Orn failed at the first two, so he doubled down on the last.

  "His knickers could be trapped in a gravity well inside his ass," his captain said, snagging one of the dwarf's bits of fried sea bug. "There's no way you can tell who's a virgin from their walk."

  "Oh my cynical, Sir," he said, mocking a small bow as he balled up the last of the sack and tossed it towards a recycle bin. It called out a cheery "Only You Can Prevent Decompression," as it flared up his trash. They moved their 'basking in the glow of a job well finished' party onto the main thoroughfare, watching the early risers pass through shops over-crammed with every tacky piece of paraphernalia the designer could stamp "Samudra: Gateway to Relaxation" onto. Most denizens were decked in gargantuan sun bonnets, some with high frills thanks to a passing fashion interest in the headgear of pilgrims making their way through the nebula havens to find god or something. If it can't be exploited, it isn't fashion.

  Orn hitched up his waning belt -- the canvas knot of his traveling pants slipping loose from their employment famine -- and gestured toward a young man, human from the size of his legs and lack of brains. The example tottered about, failing to adjust for the microshift of gravity with each pass of the balanc
ers. "Like watching a baby varg take its first steps before it bites your face off," he said to Variel.

  She smiled politely, her own calculating eyes picking through the piles of tourists, some dragging still groggy spawn towards the shuttle deck. Another dawn, another day of fun; even if the kids screamed the entire time about not wanting to go, the parents screamed about not wanting to take them, and the vendors screamed about spending another 10% of their monthly income to rent a scubaship. Fun. The middle class: backbone of the galaxy. It was a world she only ever saw from the outside, more alien to her than a ship full of elves, a dwarf, and a mute djinn.

  "He may not be a space virgin," she said diplomatically to her pilot, "perhaps he suffers from a debilitating inner ear infection and he cannot remain standing still for more than a few moments before he takes a pathetic tumble to the floor." The dwarf looked up at her deadly serious face, his mouth drooping, "You could have just committed seventeen violations of the ethics code for this quadrant."

  "Are you shitting me?" Orn asked, his hand slightly trembling at her stone face. Whenever he saw her this focused something was about to explode, occasionally something important.

  She glanced down, one eyebrow raising in an elven maneuver, "What do you think?" And failed to maintain her straight face as a laugh broke.

  Orn laughed himself, shaking off the momentary fear that she'd toss his dwarven ass into some ethic's reform jail for breaking part of her ship, "Never shit a shitter."

  "I'll remember that the next time I meet a toilet." She shrugged her shoulders, trying to crack a bit of life into stiffening joints, and checked her hand, "It's been nearly three hours. Do you think they've finished the damn inspection?"

  Variel and Orn were allergic to government oversight; one by habit, the other by genetics. Even seeing a badge sent them both into hives. It was one of the few things they could actually share aside from food so greasy it could bottom out a golem's gastrointestinal tract.