Citizen Pariah (Unreal Universe Book 3)

by Lee

  Armed with what he knew, Kant would approach Nickels and present Trinity’s case. Just as he’d been ‘asked’.

  Then he was rather afraid he was going to have to kill the man.

  Somehow.

  The Historical Adjutant hadn’t quite figured out how he was going to accomplish that without the normal accoutrements of his profession, but he was nothing if not resourceful.

  Kant supposed –no, no, he knew- it was a suicide mission. What else was he to do? Nickels spelled doom eternal for Trinityspace. It was up to one lone Adjutant to do the right thing, no matter what.

  Kant gazed at the reflection in the mirror set above the wash basin. Normally watery eyes were cracked eggs with the yolks running everywhere. Distressingly dark black bags blossomed under those very same cracked-egg eyes. His relatively uniform skin color –a most boring, ultra-typical NorthAMC pale white- was gone, replaced with blotches of bright, itchy swathes of mottled pink.

  He suspected his hair –always thin and fine- was thinning. There was no way to verify this, but Ingrams remembered his brow being much further along his forehead. Why, he’d even gone so far as to comb every inch of his bed and pillow in search of these stray hairs. Beyond normal nighttime detritus, there was no sign of balding.

  Yet his hair continued to disappear at an alarming rate.

  Outsiders would assume Kant hadn’t slept properly in months, yet the Adjutant knew for a fact he did nothing but sleep, had done nothing save sleep since entering Latelyspace.

  Kant shut his eyes and imagined he was back in his office back on Trinity Prime. It was a place of solace, that tiny little spot of order amidst a never-ending Universe of chaos and madness, the only place he’d ever felt truly comfortable. He could see everything as he’d left it. He ached to be back there, poring over reports from Trinity Investigators, attempting to pierce the veil of their sometimes baseless suppositions in an attempt to see if true Historical danger was in the offing or if the investigators were merely over-exaggerating.

  Kant turned his head this way and that, grinning and smiling and staring at his teeth. Were they, like his skin, changing color?

  Something whispered in his ear.

  “What was that?” Ingrams turned around so quickly he banged an elbow on the sink.

  There was nothing there. There was never anything there. There hadn’t been anything there since they’d crossed into Latelyspace. That was the problem. There wasn’t anything there … except when he thought there was.

  Shifting from Trinityspace to Latelyspace had been … troublesome.

  For the first time in his life, Kant Ingrams had experienced discomfort when making the translation through a Quantum Tunnel, and in the execution of his job, he’d been through thousands. He’d read the reports, he knew all the stories. Ship crews whispered about it, told ghost stories and macabre tales of deep space madness. They’d even given the mystery a name,

  Quantum Sickness. Or –if you were particularly banal- Q-Sicky.

  Kant knew all about Quantum Sickness.

  One slow workday, Kant had used his influence to consult with the best medical specialists in Trinityspace. They’d corroborated what he’d already known to be true; there was no such thing.

  Humanity had been using the Tunnels for nearly thirty thousand years. There was a catalog of illnesses and maladies a person could experience when using Quantum Tunnels –most notably in the earliest decades of using the tech- but rumors about ‘Quantum Sickness’ were just that. Rumors. More than likely, anyone prone to imagining they had Quantum Sickness had many other things wrong with them.

  Kant turned back to the mirror, tilting his head one way and then the other one final time. He wasn’t mad, he wasn’t sick, but there was something wrong with him. He could see it under his skin, in his eyes. He was an intelligent, rational human being who had had his imagination excised after his third Historical Emergency. When you saw the earth split open to reveal a gigantic, continent-sized eyeball whirling madly in an unfathomable socket, there was suddenly very little room left for imagination.

  When he thought he heard something whispering in his ear, something was whispering in his ear. That was the truth.

  Kant Ingrams wasn’t going mad. There was something wrong with Latelyspace. Something that was making him go … weird.

  Licking his lips nervously, Kant poked at an eyeball.

  xxx

  Captain Suarez of The Midnight Song looked over his small crew of loyal shipmates, twitching his mouth back and forth thoughtfully. He was doing his best to ignore their quiet debate, but for naught; as it had been every ship-evening for the last three nights, they discussed their ‘cargo’, and their ‘cargo’ was … captivating was probably the only word that fit the man properly.

  Thanks to the smuggler network connecting Latelyspace to the Trinity-controlled systems within their ‘own’ Galaxy, Suarez had learned of a Trinity Man looking to make his way into the last ‘untold frontier of space’ available inside The Cordon.

  Now, Suarez didn’t know much about The Cordon or what happened on the other side of the thing, or even if it was really true, but he did know this; Trinity dollars were what made the world go around. While fifteen thousand might not seem like much to the average person, when you finished with the exchange rate, it meant you could live well enough for a month or two. Even though the task was well outside their milieu, they’d been close enough to the Tunnel to snap the contract up. The poor old Midnight Song needed repairs done if she was going to live on and the money was considerable.

  Suarez had never shipped a person; before … acquiring … the man currently screaming his head off, Suarez had been a black market goods hauler through and through, and never outside Latelyspace. There’d been some initial concerns about hopping through the Q-Tunnel, but a few quick calls to the right people had set his mind at ease; friends in the business had all given him the same contact aboard Smash All Infidels, a conscience-soothing balm.

  A thoroughly unpleasant and unsettlingly easy to irritate man, the permanently on-duty comm jockey was always open for bribery and ever keen to receive virtually anything at all in return for looking the other way during a quick in-and-out Q-Tunnel jaunt.

  Trading illegal narcotics and freshly frozen shubin meat to the massive troop carrier that was forever attached to Smash All Infidels, Suarez and his crew had found themselves perfectly poised to take advantage of the Trinity Man’s needs. After hasty negotiation with the comm jockey –he’d settled for a first generation copy of Garth Nickels’ astounding performance in the ring and fifty pounds of steak- The Midnight Song had made her first ever voyage through a Quantum Tunnel.

  The trip had been uninteresting, to say the least. Mostly a letdown, though Suarez was keeping mum on that: his crew had loved every second of the translation, and if there was one thing you learned as captain, it was that your crew needed their moments. Sadly, that elation had died literally seconds after reentering the loving embrace of Mother Latelyspace.

  The debate amongst his crew grew a little furious and the Captain considered saying something. The furor died down on its own, for which he was thankful. Their ‘cargo’ was … high-strung and took liberal offense at everything. After a few seconds of hushed, strained silence, the noise returned and his crew leaped to another of their favorite topics: the Trinity Man’s eyes.

  They didn’t ‘like’ them. The consensus was that there was something ‘wrong’ with them. Anyone with eyes like that wasn’t normal and they were trying to find out if all Trinityfolk had eyes like that. Suarez silently agreed with his men. There was indeed something ‘wrong’ with Kant Ingram’s eyes, as was there something ‘wrong’ with the man overall.

  Fifteen thousand Trinity dollars was a king’s ransom. Enough to pay his crew, repair the most troublesome of Song’s failing machinery and enough to sit around for a week or two doing nothing more strenuous than watching the Final Games, possibly even on Hospitalis.

  A high-p
itched wail spread through The Midnight Song. Suarez hung his head as the crew turned to stare accusingly at him. A sigh escaped him.

  He should’ve taken the other captain’s extreme pleasure at handing Ingrams over into account. He should’ve paused to ask about the man’s habits, how he was during space travel, had he been prompt with payment. He should’ve asked anything at all, irrespective of the comm jockey’s insistence that they spend no more than half an hour on the other side of the Q-Tunnel. Even if that other captain had lied, well, he could say he’d done his best to understand the man before dumping him out the airlock.

  Such a payout, though…

  Fifteen thousand Trinity dollars!

  Suarez looked at his crew again. They’d been with him the longest of any; near on fifteen years for almost all of them. They’d been through a lot, they had, from being boarded by other smugglers, God soldiers, Regime agents … you name it. The crew, captain and men both, had had themselves some adventures on The Midnight Song. There were adventures, and then there was whatever Kant Ingrams was.

  “Damn me,” Suarez said into the brittle silence, “Damn me, I say. The money ain’t worth it.”

  “What’re you gonna do?” The First Mate, Chicki Resown, asked quietly.

  Suarez shrugged. There was a first time for everything, it seemed. “I’m going to suggest our cargo take a walk, Chicki. Sounds as though Sa Ingrams needs himself some fresh air, don’t you think?”

  Chicki’s eyes widened, but she said nothing. Neither did anyone else.

  Captain Suarez of The Midnight Song rose and went to have a quiet word with Kant Ingrams. The Trinity Man wasn’t big enough to fight off a fully-grown Latelian, so it wouldn’t take too long.

  xxx

  Kant regretted poking himself in the eye. He couldn’t remember what’d possessed him to do it in the first place. He couldn’t even really remember what’d been bothering him before either, which, he reflected as he tended to his sore eye, was probably helpful. Allowing small worries to creep into his mind, to affect his judgment, had been stupid. He needed his wits about him if he planned on dealing with Garth effectively. A man with Nickels’ resources could very well be in control of the entire planet by now.

  Kant sniffed. There was no telling if there’d be a Hospitalis left. Trinity’s decision to have the man join the Dark Age Cabal … the Historical Adjutant raised a finger at his reflection. “Down that way madness lies.”

  The mirror image looked apologetic. Kant nodded. Good. Things were under control, yes they were.

  The door to his rooms opened up and the immensely tall and angular Captain Suarez strode in without so much as a by your leave. Kant, used to precision and order, whirled to confront the man.

  “I say!” The Adjutant barked, throwing his hands up in front of him. “What is this?”

  Suarez stopped dead in his tracks. He opened his mouth to say something. What came out wasn’t what he’d been expecting. “I came to throw you out of the airlock, sa. There’s something wrong with you that no amount of money can hide. You’re terrifying my crew.”

  Kant nodded, accepting the information. “A Captain’s responsibility is to his ship, his crew, and his cargo, and in that order. I understand that, Captain Suarez. Why? Or, more precisely, how am I terrifying your men? I’m sorry, if I recall, at least one of your crew is a woman.”

  Suarez felt his forehead beetle. Looking at Sa Ingrams was filling his head full of sound and … and … needles, like actually looking at the thin, short, odd man wasn’t something someone should do for any length of time. There was … there was something about the man that screamed ‘I am not here, do not see me’. Suarez, a tough man in a tough galaxy who’d stood his ground numerous times against a half-hundred different things each tougher and more frightening than Sa Kant Ingrams, shifted his eyes.

  The sound and pressure decreased the greater the effort he undertook to look away. What was with Ingrams?

  “You …” Suarez stammered, tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth, “you, sa, are strange. You are filling my ship with random screams and laughter. Several of my crew has heard you talking to yourself in different voices.”

  Kant shook his head. “Impossible. I don’t talk to myself. The … screams … are regrettable. I believe I’ve come down with Q-Sickness, er, sa.”

  Suarez tried to fix his eyes on Sa Ingrams and boggled as they slid to the left without even pausing on the diminutive form standing no more than three feet in front of him. He sighed. Like every single person who plied the inky black, Suarez knew about Q-Sick. It was a ghost sickness, sure enough, where lunatics convinced themselves parts of their body were still stuck back in the Quantum Tunnel’s impossible passageway. Advanced cases of the ‘illness’ saw ‘sufferers’ believing that all their organs were on a rotating list, where everything inside their skin was warping in and out all the time.

  The pain was supposed to be quite intense and even though doctors had proved to sufferers that everything inside them was right where evolution had intended, each and every one of them said the same thing: ‘that’s not my real kidney, that’s a ghost kidney’.

  Suarez pursed his lips. He supposed it wasn’t fair to persecute anyone because of a mental illness. “I need for you to keep your screaming to a minimum, sa. My crew … don’t like it. Continue as you have and I’ll have to come back this way and introduce you to the inside of my airlock, like as not. Tales of Q-Sick or otherwise.” Suarez dipped his head, and then turned to the door. Someone whispered right in his ear.

  “You can try to throw me out the airlock all you want, Latelian, but you’ll fail in the most spectacular way ever imagined and then from there, your crew will suffer.”

  Suarez turned back, ready to pummel Sa Ingrams to the ground. It took a few seconds to even find Ingrams; the bastard was on the other side of the room, lying down, a pillow over his head.

  Captain Suarez of The Midnight Song stood there, silently calculating. He took into account a great deal of things, ranging from how long it’d take someone to whisper into his ear and then run to the far end of the cabin, get himself into a comfortable position on the bed and put a pillow over his head. All without making a peep, and Suarez was widely known for having ears that could hear through bulkheads. Suarez pulled at the ear that’d been whispered into.

  Then he took into account how the story would sound to his crew. Anything he might say about his experience with Ingrams would be worse by far than any errant screaming. “I shall be expecting more money in my coffers than originally offered, Sa Ingrams, or all you’ll be seeing of Hospitalis will be through a Screen.”

  The pillow muffled Kant’s response.

  Captain Suarez turned on his heel and headed back towards the Common Room, wherein he planned to tell his crew that he’d extorted the Trinity Man for more money.

  At no point did he plan to mention that he was now officially terrified of a man who weighed less than the boots he put on every morning.

  xxx

  Kant was certain he’d said something to Captain Suarez, something very unkind and threatening, though when he replayed the sequence of events back in his mind, he found nothing. It was bothersome. Muscle memory remembered his mouth moving, his tongue and lips forming words, but try as he might, he couldn’t … he couldn’t remember having said anything.

  “Don’t worry, Kant, none of this is real.”

  Kant Ingrams, top-tier Historical Adjutant for the greatest assemblage of Humanity ever known to exist, sat bolt upright in his bed. He looked warily around the room.

  No one was there. He hadn’t heard anything.

  His mouth, on the other hand, felt like it’d spoken.

  He lie back down, mind ringing.

  Don’t worry, Kant, none of this is real.

  To be polite, he stuffed a fist in his mouth and screamed and screamed and screamed…

  Chadsik al-Taryin Reaches an Arrangement … With Himself

  “We is not likin’ thi
s, not at all.” Chad pulled themselves up out of the wreckage slowly, mindful of the persistent ache in their joints and the unsubtle ringing in their ears. “Where in the fuckin’ ‘ell is we, mate?”

  “Trajectory indicates somewhere inside Port City as being the most likely area.”

  Chad pulled a face, nodding. The last few minutes of their existence before somehow folding themselves into a flying space coffin were understandably hazy. Truth be told, if they could recollect those moments, Chad was justifiably keen in wanting to not; in their time as an intergalactic super-cyborg assassin, they had witnessed their re-sculpted body do some amazing things to achieve an objective, but never once had they … transformed like that.

  Still though, the astounding and entirely off-putting experience had saved them from an ignoble death at the hands and lasers and missiles of a duo of monstrously large soldiers. The FrancoBrit genuinely hoped someone else had done for those two. Christ, what a mess, that. What were the Latelians thinking when they did stuff like that?

  “I rather suspect they themselves are wondering that, now.”

  Now that they knew where they were, Chad needed a place to lie low, hunker down, recharge. They looked down at their pale, muscular and naked self. “Clothes. We is also needin’ clothes.”

  “From what I recall of Bolobo’s maps of Hospitalis, there is a Hotel nearby. Some half an hour’s distance.”

  Chad surveyed the wreckage that they’d crashed into as a flaming cyborg-meteorite. They ran a hand through their hair. “Well, at least we know our hair is robotic, too. Our luxurious mane of hair should’ve gone up like firelighters, yeah?”

  “Indeed.”

  Chad unerringly aimed themselves in the direction of the Hotel mentioned, wrinkling their nose in distaste at the thin drizzle of rain pouring down from blackened clouds. The rain, they noted, left grimy streaks across their alabaster skin. “Wot a fuckin’ shithole, this.” They cast a disparaging hand at the ruined sky. “All that is from the Spaceport, yeah?”