We were shoved through a door into a room that resembled a courtroom. We stood at the end of an aisle, with miserable-looking souls packing uncomfortable plastic benches to either side. At the head of the room sat the adjudicator, a many-tentacled arthropod from the Rings of Nurgg. In front of her crouched a vaguely humanoid-shaped blob of orange-yellow gunk that I eventually recognized as a member of the Velveetarian species. I couldn’t make out much of what it was saying, but it seemed to be blubbering for leniency. Its efforts were certainly wasted; leniency was not part of the vocabulary of an adjudicator of the Galactic Credit Bureau.
In any case, our bailiff shoved the lump aside and handed a note to the arbitrator, whose eyes went wide and tentacles flailed excitedly. She said something to the bailiff, who grabbed the Velveetarian and shoved it into a chair in the corner of the room. Then the bailiff came back to us, giving Rex a prod to indicate that we were to approach the bench.
“One point six billion credits!” hissed the adjudicator. “My first Six Omega case! Which one of you is Rex Nilly-hoo?”
“Nee-hih-lo,” said Rex, stepping forward. “That would be me.”
“Tell me, Rex Nilly-hoo,” said the adjudicator, “how does one come to owe 1.6 billion credits? Usually it takes a whole boardroom full of idiots to default on a loan that size.”
“My planet ran into some tough times,” said Rex.
“Really? What sort of tough times?”
“The sort where it gradually cooled over the course of millions of years into a worthless lump of rock.”
“I see. Well, since you are the sole responsible party, I have no choice but to demand immediate repayment of the loan.”
“Will you take a check?”
“Cash only, please.”
“OK, so here’s the thing,” said Rex. “I’m expecting a large check from the Galactic Development Fund in a few weeks. Until then I’m a bit, shall we say, cash poor.”
“The GDF? Was your planet destroyed by the Malarchy?”
“Not yet, your honor, but I have high hopes.”
“So you haven’t even applied for development funds yet?”
“No, your honor.”
“How much can you pay right now?”
Rex bit his lip. “Fifty million credits.”
The arbitrator snorted. “How much can your friends come up with?”
Rex conferred momentarily with Wick and turned back to the adjudicator. “Wick here is owed six weeks’ back pay by the Frente Repugnante, amounting to twelve hundred credits, which he has graciously agreed to donate to the cause. Additionally, as an active member of the Frente, there is a forty-thousand-credit bounty on Wick’s head, which I hope to collect shortly after I get the twelve hundred from him.”
“What about your other friend?”
“Sasha is worth around twenty thousand on the open market.”
“What’s wrong with its face?”
“Nothing,” said Rex. “She’s just not easily impressed. I’ve also got a space clipper worth a million or so, but I’ll need it to get off this planet.”
A chorus of laughter erupted from the gallery.
“If your ship is in as bad a shape as your robot,” said the adjudicator, “you can keep it. I’ll take the fifty million. The balance of the loan, roughly 1.55 billion credits, is to be paid in pain and suffering. Do you have any heirs, Mr. Nilly-hoo?”
“No, your honor.”
“In that case, we will have to artificially lengthen your life by . . .”—she punched numbers into a calculator on her desk—“384 thousand years in order to extract the balance from you.”
“What if I adopt Wick as my son?”
“Then you will be tortured until you die a natural death, at which point the pain and suffering will be passed down for the next several hundred generations to his descendants.”
Rex turned to Wick. “What do you say, son?”
Wick’s brow furrowed. “Is this in addition to the six weeks’ pay?”
At this moment the bailiff approached with another note for the adjudicator. She read it and scowled. “In light of new information, I’m modifying your sentence. Fifty million to be paid now, with the balance to be paid in six months. Additionally, one of you will have to remain behind as collateral.”
I sighed. “All right,” I said. “Just try to come up with the money as quickly as you can. I’ll entertain myself by reflecting on the meaning of life and shutting myself down as soon as I get close to figuring it out.”
“No robots,” spat the adjudicator.
“Huh?” replied Rex.
“I can’t take a beat-up old robot with a mangled face for collateral. One of you two will have to stay.”
“OK,” said Rex. He turned to Wick. “Keep your chin up, son. I’ll be back for you as soon as I extort twenty billion credits from the Malarchy.”
“What?” gasped Wick. “Why me? I don’t owe anybody anything!”
“Have you forgotten the shameful incident on the Malarchian battle station where you momentarily refused to run into a volley of lazegun fire?” asked Rex. “Because I haven’t, Wick. That’s the sort of incident that can haunt you for the rest of your life. You should consider yourself fortunate that fate has provided a way for you to get all your suffering out in a scant six months. You’re a young man, Wick. Six months is nothing to a strapping lad like yourself. Why, I wish I had spent six months of my youth in solitary confinement rather than squandering my time getting drunk and engaging in a series of meaningless encounters with sex-crazed women of a dozen species. Besides, if I remain behind, who is going to mastermind the extortion of twenty billion credits from the Malarchy? You? No offense, Wick, but you couldn’t even figure out how to sell out your own cause when the opportunity was practically handed to you on a silver platter. And if that money goes unextorted, the debt will remain unpaid, which will mean that I’ll be tortured for the rest of my life. And then, assuming I can talk you into becoming my heir—and let’s face it, Wick, it’s pretty clear that your paltry wits are no match for my overwhelming rhetorical skills, so the adoption is basically a done deal—then you and your descendants will be tortured for countless generations to come. Is that what you want, Wick?”
Wick stood in open-mouthed befuddlement.
“Your honor,” said Rex. “Wick has volunteered to remain behind as my collateral.”
“Very good,” said the adjudicator, motioning to the bailiff, who dragged Wick silently away.
“Nice kid,” said Rex. “A bit dumb.”
“I’ll expect to see you within six months, Mr. Nilly-hoo,” said the adjudicator. She banged her gavel with one of her tentacles and we were led out of the room.
* * *
4 Far from being gratuitous cruelty, the torturing of deadbeats is actually a vital part of the planet’s economy: Gulagatraz possesses the dubious distinction of being one of only two planets in the galaxy whose infrastructure is powered entirely by misery. A massive underground misery reactor collects the six known types of misery (loneliness, pain, hopelessness, heartache, melancholy, and acid reflux), combines them according to a precise formula, and converts the resulting bursts of pure misery into heat and electricity. Gulagatraz’s misery reactor is so efficient and well fueled that it consistently produces far more power than the GCB can use in any practical way. The excess energy is channeled into printing vast numbers of preapproved credit card offers that are mailed to the far corners of the known universe.
CHAPTER SEVEN
What do you think that was all about?” I asked Rex, once we were safely back on the Flagrante Delicto.
“Don’t be too hard on him,” said Rex. “You know teenagers. To them, six months on top of a stone pillar in a dark cave on a hostile alien planet is a lifetime.”
“No, I mean why they let us out of there,” I said. “
That adjudicator was all set to torture you to death and then someone hands her a note and the next thing you know, you’re a free man. Doesn’t that seem peculiar to you?”
“Sasha, when you’ve been in this business as long as I have, you learn not to question the capriciousness of the galactic bureaucracy. Who can say why we were allowed to go free or why Vic was so unfairly sentenced to be imprisoned for crimes he didn’t commit? I prefer to look to the future. Now rationalize a course back to Schufnaasik Six. I want to see the grand edifices of my planet blasted to atoms by that prismatic atrophy cannon.”
“There are no edifices on Schufnaasik Six, grand or otherwise, sir. And I believe it’s a plasmatic entropy cannon. Come to think of it, it’s a little strange that repo bots were able to find us on that battle station. It’s almost as if someone deliberately arranged for—”
“ . . . forget the sacrifices of the brave men and women of Schufnaasik Six City,” Rex was saying, “who are about to give their lives so that their fair city can be rebuilt even more glorious than before.”
It took me a moment to find my place back in the conversation. I interjected, “But you’re not actually planning on rebuilding the planet, sir.”
“Sasha, for Space’s sake,” Rex snapped, “the imaginary citizens of Schufnaasik Six don’t need to know that. Let them have their moment, you unfeeling churl. Where’s Vic? He’s missing my speech.”
“As you’ll recall, sir, Wick is still—”
“Have you rationalized a course yet? What have you been doing this whole time? Damn it, Sasha, we’re going to miss the big explosion.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” I found a course that would get us to Schufnaasik Six in less than two days. With any luck, we’d get there about the time the Peace Fortress was blasting the planet with its no-longer-secret weapon. I didn’t bother to tell Rex there was a significant chance we’d be spotted by the fortress and recaptured by Heinous Vlaak so that he could extract from us the secret of the nonexistent cloaking device that concealed the nonexistent buildings on Schufnaasik Six that housed the cloaking device. Presumably he knew this and didn’t care.
Rex spent the next day getting falling-down drunk. When he tired of that, he turned off the artificial gravity so he wouldn’t fall down anymore. He sobered up just in time for us to drop back into Euclidean space. Decelerating, we neared the planet.
“There it is!” shouted Rex, and then immediately regretted it.5 He continued, in a barely audible whisper, “The Malarchian battle station.”
Indeed, there it was in orbit around Schufnaasik Six, looking like a dead bat impaled with knitting needles. Its fearsome plasmatic entropy cannon was pointed toward the planet.
“We’ve got front-row seats!” whispered Rex. “Make us some popcorn, Sasha. And a couple of vodka martinis.”
“I don’t drink, sir.”
“You don’t eat popcorn either, you overpriced can opener. Come to think of it, nix the popcorn and just bring me three vodka martinis.”
“We don’t have any vodka, sir,” I replied.
“You’re just bound and determined to ruin this show for me, aren’t you? Ooh, it’s starting!”
As he was speaking, the base of the huge dish lit up with an unnatural blue light.
“Oh man, this is going to be good!” shouted Rex, forgetting himself. He winced in agony.
The light went out.
“Test run,” said Rex. I nodded. We continued to watch. Nothing happened.
“Did we miss it?” I asked. “Did they already wreck the planet before we got here?”
We peered at the planet’s bleak surface. It was hard to tell whether anything had happened to it. It certainly looked no better than the last time we had been here, but it didn’t really look any worse either.
“I don’t think so,” said Rex. “I mean, that dish lit up, right? They were clearly doing something with the polemic apathy cannon.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So why don’t they fire?”
“I don’t know, sir, but I wonder . . .”
“What? Out with it, Sasha!”
“Well, sir, now that Heinous Vlaak no longer has us captive, he has no way of getting the cloaking device technology out of us. So maybe—”
“ . . . maybe he’s afraid to destroy Schufnaasik Six because he thinks finding Schufnaasik Six City is the only way of getting his hands on the cloaking device!”
“Brilliant deduction, sir.”
“So the only way to get Vlaak to destroy the planet is to make him think he has another way of getting the plans for the cloaking device.”
“And how do we do that?” I asked.
“Clearly we need to get ourselves captured again. Sasha, set a course to intercept that battle station.”
“Sir, are you certain that’s the only way? We just barely managed to escape last time, and that was only because of the repo bots. I’m not sure we can count on another lucky break like that.”
Rex paused and scratched his chin. “No, you’re right, Sasha. Vlaak would only torture me to get the location of the cloaking device plans out of me.”
“Sir, I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but you do recall that there are no cloaking device plans, correct?”
“Right, but Vlaak doesn’t know that.”
“Still, he can’t very well use torture to extract something from you that doesn’t exist.”
“Obviously,” said Rex impatiently. “But his failure to extract the plans will eventually cause him to deduce that the plans don’t exist. So I need you to repress my memory of the plans before we get recaptured.”
“You want me to repress memories of something that doesn’t exist?”
“Are you going to make me explain everything twice? If you repress my memories of the plans, then I won’t remember that they don’t exist, right? So if Vlaak tortures me, all I can tell him is that I don’t remember anything about the plans. He’ll destroy Schufnaasik Six to try to force me to reveal the plans and then torture me, but I won’t be able to tell him anything. The only way to get me to reveal the location of the plans will be to transfer five billion credits into my bank account.”
“Five billion, sir? I thought you had asked Vlaak for two billion?”
“The price has gone up. I’m working my ass off here.”
“And what happens when Vlaak finds out there are no plans?”
“I’ll figure something out. Oh, you should wipe my memory of Schufnaasik Six City as well. Otherwise Vlaak will try to torture me to get the coordinates for him. I don’t want to be able to tell him anything useful whatsoever.”
“I think we’re well past that point, sir.”
“Keep it up, crater face.”
“So you want me to repress your memories of the nonexistent cloaking device and the imaginary Schufnaasik Six City. Anything else?”
“Not that I can recall. Ah, Sasha!” cried Rex theatrically. “So much to lose. The Spiraled Tower of Bernoth. The smokestacks of the zontonium refinery. The eight-hundred-ton cybernetic cranes toiling at the Schufnaasik Spaceport. The Museum of Particularly Tricky Knots.”
“Sir,” I said, “none of those things are real.”
“Well of course they’re not real, Sasha! Schufnaasik Six City exists only in my imagination, so more’s the pity that my memories of it have to be erased. The stalwart imaginary citizens of that grand fictional city will simply disappear without a trace.”
“Your memories aren’t erased, sir. Merely repressed. You might be able to get it back someday, with extensive therapy, which is probably advisable in any case, given your—”
“Perhaps.” Rex sighed wistfully, looking out the window at the barren planet. “Makes you wonder what other grand erections are buried in the recesses of my mind, eh, Sasha?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All r
ight then, let’s get started. I need to lose these memories before that battle station leaves. Remind me again, Sasha. It doesn’t hurt, does it?”
“You won’t remember a thing, sir.”
I suspected that the battle station was conducting an intensive scan of the planet’s surface in an attempt to locate the mythical Schufnaasik Six City and that they wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. There was no way to know for sure, though, so I had to accelerate the repression procedure. It was over in two hours.
“Aaaaaaaaaargh!” screamed Rex. “Hey, what am I screaming about? Space, my throat is killing me. Did we do that repression thing again?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What was it this time?”
“The location of the plans for the cloaking device. And the location of Schufnaasik Six City.”
“Cripes, don’t tell me, you idiot! Now we have to do it all over again.”
“No, sir. I haven’t told you anything you don’t need to know.”
“See that you don’t, Sally. What’s that?”
There was a noise like someone knocking on the hull of the Flagrante Delicto.
“Are we expecting someone?” Rex asked, puzzled.
“No, sir. We’re in orbit.”
“Oh man,” Rex groaned. “You know what that means. Sp’ossels. Get rid of ’em.”
“Yes, sir.”
Space Apostles, colloquially referred to as Sp’ossels, are the scourge of the galaxy. Nobody seems to know where they come from or how they find their targets, but they have an uncanny tendency of showing up in the most unlikely places at the worst possible times with their message of . . . something about Space. As far as I know, nobody has ever listened to them long enough to find out what it is they’re trying to communicate. You can sign up for their newsletter if you really want to know.
Starship Grifters (A Rex Nihilo Adventure) Page 8
