by B. V. Larson
“Look, Raash,” I said. “We worked so hard to revive you. Why aren’t you grateful?”
Raash stopped advancing. His eyes glittered in the faint light. “I remember now… things are returning to my mind. You are the human that stole my breath, my life. You took me from Rigel, and you burned me to ash!”
“That’s exactly right! You are remembering stuff.”
Raash’s eyes were strange. I couldn’t tell if they were focused on me or Floramel for the moment. Probably, it was neither one of us.
He was remembering things, I could tell. It was like a flood for him, a rude awakening. He put his claws to his head and lifted his snout high. I thought he might crow like a rooster or something.
“Raash?” Floramel said from behind me. Her voice was gentle but full of pain. “Raash, you’re having a mental break. It will pass. The revival… it wasn’t professional. It was the best we could do for you.”
“Not professional?” he demanded loudly. He took another step in our direction, and his hands came away from his head. He grasped at the air, flexing his claws over and over as he spoke.
I’d never seen a lizard go crazy before, but if there had ever been such a case, I figured this is what it had looked like.
“Where is my body? This one… it is taller. The tail is longer, the arms are slightly less thick… and the scales… blue scales? I’m a freak.”
“You’re a freak?” I asked. “Why? I mean, most saurians I would classify as freaks just on principle, but—”
“Blues are rare and they’re laughed at. I’ll never find a mate like this.”
“You have a mate, Raash. I’m your mate.”
We both looked at Floramel. She had dared to peep out from behind me. Tears glistened on her cheeks.
“Madness…” Raash said. “I feel… wrong, somehow.”
I glanced at Floramel. “Maybe he means it. Maybe if you stuff one man’s mind into the brain of a stranger, it doesn’t fit right.”
“Have you seen a case like this before, James?”
“Never.”
Raash was walking in circles, tramping right over the poor old Investigator. His claws left prints in the man’s flesh, and his tail rasped over him like a scaly fire hose.
The Investigator moaned again.
“He’s alive! Raash, stop walking over him, you crazy lizard. He gave you life.”
“Then he deserves death for such a poorly done job.”
Raash stooped over the Investigator, and I’d seen enough. I picked up a block of fallen stone, walked up to him and bashed him down.
Most lizards are pretty tough. Raash was no exception, but he went down anyways, collapsing to the rough stones. Maybe he’d been weakened by his amateur-hour revive.
I held the rock in my hand, and I bounced it up and down a few times. It was as big as a softball and five times as heavy.
“Should I finish the job?” I asked Floramel.
“I… I don’t…”
“No…” this last voice came from the floor, but it wasn’t emanating from the throat of Raash. Instead, we realized the Investigator had spoken. “Don’t harm my masterwork.”
We helped the Investigator to his feet and sprayed him with some Nu-skin. He winced and hissed, but after a few minutes his only critical injury was his left arm, which seemed broken in two places. There were plenty of crescent-shaped bites taken out of it as well.
“Raash is a wild one, is he?” the Investigator asked when he could speak.
“Not really,” Floramel said. “This streak of violence is out of character for him.”
The old man scoffed, but he didn’t argue. “You begged for his creation. He’s your responsibility now.”
We helped the new, blue-scaled Raash onto his feet and led him out of the place. He was kind of floppy and groggy, but he could walk well enough. That was a good thing, because he had to weigh a hundred and fifty kilos—maybe more.
We took him outside under the night sky. There, I let him down on the dusty ground and sighed.
“We should probably just kill him, Floramel. It would really be for the best.”
“What? Never!”
She crouched and spread her hands over him.
“Jeez, girl. He almost killed the man that brought him back. He doesn’t like being a blue. Maybe we can record him, like, and take his remains—”
“You’re just blowing smoke up my ass,” she said stubbornly. “Isn’t that the correct idiom?”
“Yeah, well. I guess it is… look, girl, we can’t take this wild renegade back to Earth. He’s dangerous, crazy, and a traitor to boot.”
A strange smile came over her. “No he isn’t. He’s unknown. Any scan of his flesh will show no history. No citizen of Earth or Cancri-9 has ever matched his DNA. As far as Hegemony knows, he’s innocent and nameless—a fresh immigrant.”
“Huh…” I said, chewing that over. She was right. There would be no record of this crazy lizard. His crimes had been erased by switching bodies. “Say, that is an interesting angle. If a man wanted to get away with murder, for instance…”
Floramel watched me. She was still hovering over her lizard boyfriend. Damn, if she’d shown a tenth as much interest in me, maybe we’d still be together. It was kind of insulting in a way.
“What do you want to do?” I asked her.
“We’ll take him back. We’ll sedate him if we have to. We’ll take him home, and—”
“Home? Are you talking about your place?”
“Where else? You don’t want him sleeping on your couch down in Georgia, do you?”
“Hell no. He’d eat the cat or something.”
We both looked him over. After a time, Raash released a big hiss and stood up. He swayed and eyed us in the starlight.
“I was attacked. Why?”
“Because you went shit-off crazy, you dumb lizard.”
“Hmm… I wonder if I’m a bad-grow. A twisted thing. A mind that doesn’t fit into this discolored body.”
“That could be. You want me to fix it?”
Raash looked at me sullenly. “I have no desire to burn to ash in your clutches again, McGill.”
“Hey now! There you go! You know my name, and that’s a clear improvement. Maybe that dormant organ inside your skull is starting to function again.”
“Insanity.”
We turned and walked toward town. Raash followed us like a lost puppy.
“We’re just going to walk into Central like nothing is weird about this, huh?” I asked.
“Isn’t that how you’d do it?” Floramel asked me.
I shrugged. “I guess so.”
We had a minute or two of trouble getting past the hog guards at the gateway posts.
“We’re not supposed to allow off-worlders to walk through to Earth this way, Centurion.”
“What? You mean like Dust World people?”
“Uh… not them. I mean real aliens.” He nodded meaningfully toward Raash, who was doing that strange, crowing-rooster pose again.
“What? Him? He’s just feeling poorly. He ate a few of those rockfish, see, and it’s affected his mind, slightly.”
“Rock-fish? Aren’t they toxic?”
“Only if you’re human. For a saurian—well, let’s just say that it’s like drinking a bottle of Tequila—and swallowing the worm.”
The men shied back from Raash, who was walking toward the gateway posts determinedly.
“Make way!” I called out. “Make way! Let’s make him somebody else’s problem.”
The guards fidgeted with their rifles, but in the end they let us pass. They muttered something about not saying anything to their counterparts on the far side, and we were gone.
Just like that, we were zapped and unmade. A few moments later, our bodies were reconstructed back on Earth.
-17-
Back home on Earth, we had lots of explaining to do. Fortunately, three things helped out: For one, Floramel was a lab director. That was a pretty big piec
e of cheese for any hog guard to oppose. Second, I was a centurion from Legion Varus. We were known for strange goings-on. No one inside Central, the official hog capital of Earth, hadn’t heard of us. By reputation, we were the very agents of the Devil when it came to oddball off-world missions and the like.
Thirdly, there was Raash himself. No one wanted to mess with him. He wasn’t just a huge, thumping reptile—he also looked a bit crazy. He just had the feel of someone you didn’t want to mess with.
Thinking their best move was to pass us on to the next set of officials in line, the hogs let us ride the elevators into the depths of Central. Floramel took us to her lab, where workers gathered around and stared with interest.
One of these white-coat-wearing nerds hung back. She was taller than the rest—except for Floramel herself. She didn’t watch Raash, she watched me instead. She clutched one of those clipboard type computers to her chest and eyed me with suspicion.
As soon as I was fairly sure Raash wasn’t going to go berserk and kill all the softies, I walked over to the girl in the back and gave her a hug.
“Hey, baby-doll! How’s the prettiest girl in Central doing today?”
“Really, Dad? A saurian? A wild saurian with no records, no—?”
“Look, look,” I said, dipping my head down close to her ear. “Don’t fret about this guy. He’s okay. He’s just had a rough revival, that’s all. He’ll be fine by morning. Just see for yourself tomorrow.”
Etta slid her eyes in my direction. “A rough revival? He’s clearly in shock. And why is it we don’t have any record of him?”
“He’s from Cancri-9, girl. Cut the lizard a break.”
“He’s not in any of their databases either, Dad. I already checked with the deep-link connection to my computer, right here.”
She indicated her clipboard, but I didn’t even look at it. I just kept grinning and bullshitting for all I was worth. I would probably have had no trouble bamboozling any of the other lab-monkeys, but my daughter Etta was a different breed. She’d grown up living under the roof of the certified king of bullshit, and as one might expect, she had an excellent lie-detector built right into her skull.
“Dad, why don’t you just tell me what’s going on? Are you trying to get into Floramel’s pants again? Is that what this is all about?”
“Hey, hey. That’s just plain rude, girl. Besides… I think she might have a thing for this new, blue-skinned fellow.”
Her eyes flew wide. “What? Another saurian fetish? It’s been years since she—that’s so upsetting. Look at him, he’s got blood on his snout and filth everywhere else.”
I shrugged. “Yeah… he could use a good hosing-down.”
“Okay, okay—I don’t even care. Just forget about this cold-blooded creature. We’ve got bigger troubles, anyway.”
“Uh… we do?”
Etta eyed me strangely. “You’ve heard about the attack, haven’t you?”
“Uh…”
“Come on, Dad. You haven’t been covering up your tapper again or anything, have you? I figured that’s why you were back in town. I heard your legion was called back to service.”
That last sentence of hers made me wince, but I tried to be carefree. “I’ve been working down at the docks in the Harbor District, actually.”
Etta frowned. “The Harbor District? That figures. That’s where the trouble started. One of those big ships—the really big, monster ships the size of a town—one of them blew up last week.”
I scratched a finger on the back of my neck. It was beginning to feel kind of itchy. “You don’t say? That is strange. I wonder what’s going on down there.”
She stared at me and shook her head. “Wow... You really do know what happened, don’t you? All right, all right, keep your secrets. If Floramel isn’t eaten or something tonight, maybe you’ll get a date with her after all.”
I frowned at my daughter. She was getting to be more disrespectful with each passing year. Some would say that was due to appearances. At this point, what with all my frequent revivals, she had to be nearing thirty, while I was maybe twenty-five years of age. That could be very confusing for a father-daughter relationship.
But there was something else that came to mind. My father had warned me this day was coming. He’d insisted for years I should have tanned her hide more often when she was a kid, but I hadn’t listened. Not listening to good advice was a general failing of mine at all times and in all places, but in any regard, it was way too late to fix Etta. She was what she was.
I sighed, gave her a hug, and left. Floramel never even said goodbye. She didn’t even wave back at me. Her eyes were fixed on Raash. I hoped she was happy. She had her pet lizard back, and he was being well cared-for. If he ate any of her lab-rats down here, well sir, it would be on her head, not mine.
Trying not to trot, I left quickly and high-tailed it for the street-level. I almost made it to the first bar I spotted—but not quite. Somehow, my tapper had finally located me, and it alerted everyone who’d been looking for me lately. That turned out to be quite a list.
“McGill?”
It was my tapper speaking to me, and the face looking up into mine wasn’t the pretty kind. It was Graves.
“Hello, sir!” I said in a cheery tone. “You must have figured out that trick about forcing calls to be accepted by an underling’s tapper. Congrats.”
“Where are you…? Central City? You’re right here in town? Did you know you were marked as missing down at the Harbor District? Everyone had you counted as permed. How did you get out of that massive explosion?”
“Uh…” I said, thinking of Lenny and all his friends back on board the Sea Empress. “That’s a real funny story, sir. But I need to tell it to Tribune Turov. She sent me on the mission herself, see.”
“Hmm… then you’re not heading in the right direction. About-face and march, soldier. Turov is in her office at legion headquarters.”
I sighed. Graves was like a professional cock-blocker when it came to keeping a man from a well-earned beer.
“All right, sir. McGill out.”
A few more pesky people tried to contact me, but they were small-fry. People like Natasha, Leeson, and even Carlos sent me texts and calls. I let my tapper buzz and beep without even glancing at it. Sure, they were probably stunned to have their commander back, and my unit’s officers were no doubt freaking out about the surprise muster back to duty—but I didn’t care all that much.
I’d just run around three or so different star systems, died a few times, and generally been mistreated by everyone. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to petty problems these people should be able to solve on their own.
Back at Central, I took the elevator up from the lobby. I was whisked up to a floor in the mid-three hundreds—brass territory. I don’t mind telling you I was in a sour mood. It seemed like I couldn’t catch a break today.
True to form, when I walked into Turov’s office I met up with some more of my least-favorite people. Her assistant, an adjunct named Gary, was there with his hands up and waving. He was trying to calm an unruly crowd of centurions and a primus or two. They were all trying to get in to see Turov.
“There will be a briefing first thing in the morning,” Gary told them. “Take residence at the barracks downstairs if you need to—and no, there won’t be any reimbursements for anyone who rents a hotel.
Sour grumbling broke out everywhere. I couldn’t say as I blamed them.
“Just tell us what the hell is going on, Gary. Does anyone know?” one ornery primus demanded.
Gary shook his head. “Briefing tomorrow, sir. After that… you’ll probably be deployed to the Harbor District.”
“What? That’s a hog’s job. This is a cluster-fuck of the first order.”
Gary shrugged. He really didn’t care much. He was Turov’s eye-candy, and he’d never been paid for his brains or his compassion.
“Sirs, I’ll see you all in the morning.”
They turned away and l
eft after that, complaining about everything, even the ornate décor. Turov had always liked her gold-leaf embossed doors and her thick carpets. These extravagant details never failed to irritate the mid-level officers who noticed them.
When the last of them had slouched out the door, I slammed it behind them.
“Damnation!” I said. “What a surly lot of babies, huh? You’re just trying to do your job. You’d think they’d know that.”
“What do you want, McGill?”
“Why, to see Turov, of course.”
Gary twisted up his lips and shook his head. “Didn’t you see me herd away that pack of wolves? What makes you think you’ll do any better?”
He’d asked the question, but I didn’t bother answering it directly. After all, we both knew that Turov and I had a “special” relationship of a “questionable” nature. That’s how things had been for decade or more.
“Uh… did you know she sent me on a special mission to the Harbor District?”
He blinked at me. “What? You mean that bullshit about the missing persons? That was just to punish you for… something. She was laughing about it last time she mentioned it.”
My face darkened, but I didn’t fly into a rage. I had a reputation and a natural tendency to react aggressively when I was disrespected like this—but I held back. I was proud of that.
Taking in a deep breath, I forced a new smile. “Gary… did you notice how the Harbor District pretty much exploded just a few days ago?”
“I sure did. My tapper is crawling with news and notifications about it.”
“Right. Did you also notice that the ship that blew up… was the one I was investigating? At the very moment of glorious ignition, no less?”
Gary’s face fell, and his mouth sagged low like he was one of my unfortunate relatives. “You were aboard the Sea Empress?”
“That’s right.”
“When it exploded? Taking all hands and fifty billion credits worth—”
