Starliner (The Intergalactic Investigation Bureau Book 1)

by John P. Logsdon

“Vally-too-duh-nay-ree-uhn,” she tried again.

  “Valetudinarian?” Telian said. “You mean sickly?”

  “Dat’s it, yep.”

  Telian merely shook her head in what appeared to be disgust and shut the door.

  “And dey say dat it never hurts to ask,” Lemoolie said to the door.

  FAITH

  ZIMP HAD SEEN countless cathedrals on VizChannels and the GalactiNet over the years. This was the first one he’d ever experienced firsthand. It was not very impressive.

  The walls were flat and empty and there were rows upon rows of deep brown pews that led all the way up to a stage that shared the same palette. The front wall had a large screen sitting in its center, twenty feet tall and framed with thick gold etchings. It was the only thing in the entire place that had any type of adornment.

  Whoever handled the interior decoration would do well to watch the Home and Plastic Garden channel, where they talked about everything from interior design to placing and caring for synthetic foliage. Zimp’s favorite shows were Design on a Credit, CCOP Walk Path Appeal, and Extreme Changes. There were also a number of reality programs that he enjoyed, such as The Next CCOP Building Reatomizer and the Uknarian sponsored, Can dey fix it?

  At least the chapel had off-white carpet to give a nice contrast to the benches. The carpeting was deeply padded too, which was only apparent because it softened the sound of his captor’s heavy footsteps. Zimp looked back and watched the carpet as it rebounded from his prints instantly. It served as another reminder that class-3s were smaller than the other robotic classes.

  A Mechanican at the pulpit was wearing a shirt that said “Prayer Leader” on it. He was talking in a droning voice, saying the same things over and over again, pausing slightly to allow the congregation to chime in with their affirmations. Sometimes they responded with a simple humming sound and other times they would say, “and with you.” Without context, Zimp was at a loss to understand what they were doing beyond what Burt had referred to as prayer. Zimp knew what the word meant, of course, even if he had never understood its context.

  Regardless, he had no desire to participate. He had a job to do. The day was getting late and his first priority was to get the information he had found back to Prime Dresker. It was what he had been sworn in to do. It was what got him his voice. Oh, his wonderful voice!

  “Zimp is pleased!”

  “Good, good,” Burt said while pressing Zimp into one of the pews. “Now keep it down and follow what everyone else is doing.”

  “But Zimp has to go.”

  “No, Zimp doesn’t,” Burt said, wagging his finger. “Zimp needs to stay and learn humility.”

  “Zimp already knows what that means.”

  “I’m not talking about the definition of the word. I’m talking about the practice.”

  Zimp was boxed in. Burt sat on his left, some other Mechanican was to his right, and there were many in front and behind him. They were all looking over some type of document.

  “Zimp wonders what that is,” he said, pointing at the page the Mechanican in front of him was holding.

  “It’s a daily pamphlet,” Burt said.

  “Zimp doesn’t understand. Why not just use the VizScreen or internal memory?”

  “Because there are some things better printed.”

  “Zimp wants to know why?”

  “Well, you can’t know why. It’s just the way it is. You just have to have faith that it’s the right way.”

  Burt pointed back at the front but Zimp wouldn’t budge. “Zimp finds the concept of faith confusing.”

  “Why?”

  “Zimp understands faith to be a firm belief in something for which there is no definitive evidence.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s right?”

  “You do not need irrefutable evidence to have faith. If you had that level of data it would be a fact and would require no faith.”

  Burt again pointed up front to redirect Zimp’s focus.

  “Then Zimp wants to know how you can believe it?”

  “And that’s where faith comes in,” Burt said as if the point were obvious.

  “Ah,” Zimp said, catching on. “So if Zimp were presented with something for which there is no proof but was told that it was true by others who also had no proof, and then Zimp decided to believe that thing...that would be faith?”

  “Close enough,” Burt said. “Now pay attention to the prayer leader.”

  So that’s what his friends had meant when they used the term “blind faith.” It’s one of those things that can allow discussions to go ‘round and ‘round for clicks, which nobody benefits from. He thought it was a fascinating topic and one he could comprehend. For example, he had never swam the waters of Kaenlombik, or any waters, for that matter, but he had complete faith that with the proper hardware upgrades, he could navigate the waters like a fish.

  “Besides,” Burt piped up after a miniclick, “it’s not like you can know everything.”

  “Zimp can’t?”

  “Of course not,” Burt hissed, getting funny looks from the others in the meeting. “Where would you put all of the data?”

  “Zimp could get his memory expanded.”

  “You couldn’t even afford a decent voice unit from the sound of it.”

  Zimp slouched and looked at his feet. “Zimp thinks, ‘ouch.’”

  Burt wriggled a bit in his seat and groaned. He placed a hand on Zimp’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Friend Zimp. Sometimes I forget that new recruits don’t quite understand our ways at first and I get a little flustered.”

  “It’s okay,” said Zimp.

  “Look,” Burt said, “why don’t I go and grab you one of those pamphlets so you can keep up with what is going on?”

  “Zimp would be happy with that, yes.”

  Burt got up and was halfway to the front where the pamphlets were when Zimp slipped off the pew and padded his way to the back of the room. He stopped when he saw a sign on the back door that read, “The Captain arrives in 1 day... Will you be ready?” It made him think, but only for a moment because his senses were pulled back to the moment when he heard Burt yell out, “Hey...stop him!”

  Zimp burst through the door, knocking over a Mechanican that was holding a tray of what looked to be beads of some sort. A cascade of the things were high in the air as Zimp took off down the hallway. As he looked back, Zimp saw a bunch of Mechanicans flying through the air and slamming into the walls. The beads mixed with the hard floors outside of the cathedral made for a wonderful diversionary tactic. He couldn’t have planned it any better.

  But he was far from free.

  He doubted there would be this much upheaval over a Mechanican refusing to partake in the prayer meeting. The Starliner had to know he was a spy.

  Instead of heading down to the main level, Zimp took the steps three at a time going up to the top ring. Doors ran the length on both sides. Zimp went right and then cut into an adjacent hallway until he found a nice large door that he hoped led to a closet of some sort.

  Footsteps and voices were approaching as he pressed through and shut the door just enough so he could peek through the crack and see his pursuers.

  “Can I help you?” a voice behind him said.

  He didn’t bother to look back. Instead, he kept looking through the crack while waiting. “Zimp needs a second.”

  “Zimp?”

  “Right,” Zimp replied, thinking that he’d said his name loud enough for even the mob to hear.

  He could see Burt through the crack and so he pressed the door fully closed. It was only a matter of time, luck, or both, at this point. He began to reconsider the concept of prayer.

  “You got away, yes?”

  “Zimp thinks so.”

  “That’s good, then.”

  Zimp pulled the door back open just a bit and found the coast was clear. Then he closed it again and leaned on it for a moment to let his senses catch up.

  This was a
ll part and parcel of being a spy. It couldn’t all go smoothly. At least it never did in any of the stories. What fun would it be if the spy never ran into any challenges? Zimp was okay with fictional challenges. It was the ones based in reality that he wasn’t finding all that compelling.

  “I do have chairs, if you’d prefer,” the voice said.

  “Zimp is okay. He just needs a moment and then he’ll be out of your way.”

  “You’re welcome to stay in here as long as you like,” said the voice. “Actually, I insist.”

  Insist? Zimp looked up and saw the figure that he had seen a number of times recently. Veil, gloves, white robe, and an enormous brown desk that had a placard which read, “The Leader” in an embossed gold.

  “Zimp is out of here...”

  The door locked and The Leader chuckled.

  Then everything went numb.

  Zimp could still see and hear, but his body had frozen. Even his voice would not respond. Beep! he thought. That saddened him too because it meant that he was also relegated to thinking in beeps. All connections to his peripherals had somehow been severed.

  The Leader appeared in front of him. He was manipulating some device that made Zimp’s body begin to move. It took a little doing, but within a few miniclicks, Zimp was sitting in one of the chairs that faced The Leader.

  Zimp felt very alone all of a sudden and began to question if joining the IIB had been such a wise move after all.

  “There, that’s better,” The Leader said. “Now, feel free to tell me if you want me to let you go. Just say the word. Any word at all.”

  Zimp was thinking as loudly as he could but nothing would come out. Then he realized that his captor was making a joke. A cruel one at that.

  “No?” The Leader said with a bit of sympathy. “Well, then, I will just have to take your silence to mean that you would like to stay. That’s good. No point having you running around loose in my halls anyway, is there? Don’t fret, though, after tomorrow you will understand everything far better than you had ever imagined.”

  FRONT STEPS

  HAWKINS AND ELWOOD were in position.

  Hawkins, always the slicker of the two, had brought along a portable chair. Elwood was content to stand. He never quite grasped the need to sit all the time. Sometimes, sure. But his partner made the act of relaxation almost an art form.

  They were just beside the Billington Building, which contained a historical record of the various industrial ages that documented the evolution of the CCOP. The curators preferred the term “archives.” Hawkins had explained that he thought of it as a museum, not an archive, and so that’s what he called it. Elwood didn’t mind whatever term they used for the establishment. To him it was just the perfect location to keep an eye on The Starliner, and it had personal facilities should the need arise.

  “Now what?” Elwood asked.

  Hawkins plucked up his hat. “Now we stay here and wait.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Almost. I’m planning to get me a bit of shuteye while you hawk The Starliner folks. We’ll be after taking turns, ya see?”

  “Watching or sleeping?”

  “That’s right,” Hawkins said and then pushed his hat back down.

  Elwood shook his head knowing that he wasn’t likely to get a turn at the sleeping phase. That was okay though. Sleeping during the day was wasteful.

  He looked at the guards milling about on The Starliner steps. There were four of them now. He recalled seeing only one yesterday. They seemed to be on high alert too, walking this way and that, scanning the terrain. Every now and then one of them would stop and stare in Elwood’s general direction. At one point Elwood waved. One of the guards started to wave back but the other one slammed the waver’s arm down and started giving him a talking to, even to the point of finger poking.

  After a few moments, Elwood decided to take things to the next level. His partner was doing what he had called “sawing logs” anyway.

  Methodically, he walked directly toward The Starliner’s front steps. It was only about a block away, so he was careful to pace himself to make sure it would take quite a while to arrive. The closer he got, the more the guards pulled in and fixated on him. It was all he could do to keep from smiling as he reached the bottom of the steps and looked up at them all.

  It was a standoff.

  They did nothing.

  He did nothing.

  After a few more moments, Elwood smiled and the guards gave each other questioning glances.

  “What is your business here?” the guard with a green striped shirt said.

  “Me?” Elwood asked, pointing to himself.

  “You see anyone else around here?”

  “I see a number of Mechanicans.”

  “Yeah, right, well, we all know why we’re here. Why are you here?” Green Stripe said.

  “Oh, I just like standing at the base of staircases from time to time.”

  “Why?” they asked in unison.

  “Why not?” he replied with a tilt of his head.

  Green Stripe took one step down. The other guards remained on the landing. “Because it’s not natural.”

  “Natural to whom?”

  “To anyone,” Green Stripe said with a bit of a shriek.

  “I’m not just anyone, though,” Elwood said. “I’m me!”

  Green Stripe crossed his arms and tapped a large metallic foot. “And who, pray tell, are you?”

  “Elwood is my name.”

  “And, Elwood, what is it that makes you so special that you think you can just prance on up to any set of staircases and stand at the bottom of them?”

  Elwood took a deep breath and turned his face to the mock sky, letting the artificial sunlight bathe him for a moment. He wanted to give the impression that he was completely at peace with the situation and didn’t see it as anything more than a dialog between peers. Confrontation is what this Mechanican wanted. Elwood would be more than happy to troll him along.

  “Firstly,” he said after many moments, “I did not prance, I sauntered.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “A prance is more of a dancing walk and a saunter is one that is, as my friends say, cool.”

  “So sauntering is something related to temperature?”

  “No,” Elwood laughed. “Not that kind of cool.” He tried to remember all of the synonyms that Hawkins had spewed out over the years. “Cool as in nifty, neat, chilled, laid back...that kind of thing.”

  Green Stripe glanced at the other guards, who shrugged in response.

  “Fine, so you sauntered then.”

  “There may have been a bit of prancing, I’ll admit.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I do so get excited about standing in front of a nice set of stairs and so I may well have pranced some. But not enough to warrant that being the full description of my walk here.”

  “Look,” Green Stripe barked, “I don’t care if you pranced, danced, sauntered, strolled, or walked backward over here. The point is that you’re not welcome here.”

  Elwood guffawed, trying to look as hurt as possible. “I’m sorry, is this private property?”

  “As a matter of fact, it is.”

  “So right where I’m standing,” he pointed down, “at the bottom here, not touching a single one of your steps, mind you, is part of your property?”

  Green Stripe hesitated. “It’s...” He scratched his chin. “I believe that if you look it up in the, um, records, that, well, it’s, um—”

  “Yes or no?”

  “It has to be!”

  “I don’t think it is,” Elwood said, crossing his arms. “But I’ll tell you what. If you can show me a document or even give me a VizScreen link that demonstrates it is on your property than I will promptly stand one foot away from your property line.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” Green Stripe said and then turned back. “Wait, only one foot? You mean you won’t leave entirely?”

  “Of c
ourse not,” Elwood said. “It’s not every day that I have the chance to stand at the bottom of such a glorious flight of steps. I plan to be here for at least a click. My friend over there—”

  “The fat one in the chair?”

  “I wouldn’t call him fat, really.”

  “You wouldn’t? And yet you’re arguing with me about the number of feet you have to stand away from our steps?”

  § § §

  Back alleys were the prime locale for an Uknar. It fit their modus operandi perfectly.

  Everyone looked at Uknar as being goons, fighters, and often even shady in their dealings. There was no truth to this at all. No more than any other race, at any rate. But, still, for someone like Cleb this was the ideal setting. It meant that he didn’t have to deal with too many people.

  He and Pat were stationed at the loading docks, which were just off an alley near the back of The Starliner building. There were a couple of bots rolling boxes back and forth with no apparent purpose, and another bot kept poking his head out one of the multiple doors, no doubt keeping an eye on the box pushers. To Cleb, it only proved that no matter what line of work you’re in, there’s always a chance you’ll end up with some power-hungry moron who thrives on micromanaging your time.

  Cleb leaned up against one of the trash bins. It was so clean that it sparkled. Literally. No trash had ever seen the inside of the monstrosity. Or, if it had, the box pushers probably had to do all they could to polish it to the nines.

  Pat had walked off to look at the various bits of foliage that lined the outside of the area. She always seemed to find the flora fascinating. On the few occasions that they talked about things outside of work, it always digressed into a lengthy discussion—from her side, anyway—about the various species of artificial fauna that were used to replicate real worlds. The CCOP was not flooded with actual plant life. There was too much work in maintaining it, Pat had once explained. Plus, as she had further noted, the lack of seasonality on the CCOP made it dull.

  Drumming his fingers and tapping his foot, Cleb decided to test out his theory regarding the dumpster.

  He took out a Roozer Bar, a nice chocolaty treat that was filled with flash-frozen worms that were known, not surprisingly, as Roozers. The bars were made on his home planet of Uk, the only place where Roozers were known to live. After finishing the last bite, he wadded up the wrapper and casually launched it into the bin.