by Glenn Smith
“Beth?” he whispered. Where was she going? Why was she leaving him?
He loved her. He couldn’t just let her go. He ran into the water after her and swam with all his might. Suddenly she was there, floating over the water’s surface directly in front of him, glowing beautifully in the moonlight, her eyes and her arms lifted to the stars.
“The goddess Satah’ra has appeared once again,” she proclaimed to the mystical night, her melodic voice resonating from all around, just like that of a goddess. Then she looked down at him. “And you, mortal man, have looked upon her.”
“My heart is enslaved forever,” he replied. He hadn’t wanted to, but he’d been unable to stop himself, as though he’d been compelled by some unseen force.
She smiled, a warm and beautiful smile. And then she began to drift away once more.
He swam after her and caught her by the ankle as she reached the far bank. He closed the space between them, then reached around her on both sides and grabbed hold of the moss, trapping her between his arms and pressing himself against her as he kissed the nape of her neck. She turned to him and rested her hands on his shoulders, then wrapped her legs around his waist and invited him with a passionate kiss to consummate their newfound relationship. The kiss was a long and passionate one, but when he opened his eyes, she was gone.
He gazed upward, into the dark, star-filled sky. Directly overhead, an albatross floated motionless on the air, glowing ghost-like white in the moonlight. He swam deeper and deeper into the sea, far beneath the rolling waves. Deeper and deeper, pursuing Beth into a labyrinth of coral caves, its living walls slowly undulating, back and forth, back and forth, keeping time with the echo of a distant tide as it came willowing across the sand. Green. So many shades of green.
He swam harder and harder, deeper and deeper into those living, breathing caves, but could only watch while Beth pulled farther and farther away from him.
And then she was gone. She was gone, but still there were the distant echoes.
Dylan opened his weary eyes and checked his watch as the hypnotic music played on. It was already 1930 hours... Saturday! “What the...” It was Saturday evening? He’d intended to lie down and take a short nap and had ended up sleeping for more than thirty uninterrupted hours! More than thirty hours! How could he have slept for so long? He had to get moving! He might still have had a month or more, but there was a lot of space out there and he had a starcruiser to find and save! “Computer, end playback,” he instructed as he climbed out of bed. The music ended instantly and silence filled the room.
He went into the bathroom, did what he had to do, and then took another shower, but at this time of the evening, especially Saturday evening, in an old blue-collar frontier town like Red Gulch, there probably wouldn’t be a clean-shaven face within half a dozen blocks of where he intended to go, so he decided not to bother shaving. There was only a couple days’ growth on his face anyway. It wasn’t like he looked like a drunk on a week-long binge.
He dried off, then pulled on clean underclothes and socks, of course, the same jeans he’d been wearing, a clean denim shirt, and his boots. Then he grabbed his jacket and went down to the hotel’s dining room for a big dinner. Afterwards, he left the hotel and walked the dozen or so blocks to the sprawling, predominantly commercial downtown area that bordered the southern-most edge of the small aerospaceport, the part of town he’d overheard others referring to as ‘the combat zone,’ hoping to find a private transport pilot or the like. Someone who might be willing to take on a passenger whom they knew nothing about, transport him into a remote area of deep space that he could not yet disclose, with no questions asked, all for a price that he could easily afford. Unfortunately, someone like that could usually be found in only one type of place.
The town’s main road passed through an approximately twenty foot wide, roughly semi-circular, natural stone arch that seemed to segregate the southern district from the rest of town. There was no way he could be sure exactly what color it was in the dark, but Dylan assumed that it was the same rust-shaded-sand as all the other large rock formations he’d seen since his arrival on planet. The old, front-lit oval sign mounted in the center of its apex had most likely identified the district by its official name or settlement designation number, but somewhere along the line someone had painted over it in black and then rechristened the place ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ in bright neon-orange and red. As graffiti went, the artist had actually done a pretty impressive job, and judging from the clarity of the work, the sign had been well maintained ever since.
As Dylan passed under the arch and started looking around, he began to understand why some commercial trade and industrial districts outside smaller outlying aerospaceports tended to have such bad reputations. Compared to the rest of town, at least to what little he’d seen of it, which admittedly wasn’t very much, walking through the southern district of Red Gulch was like walking even farther backward in time than he’d already traveled. Much farther, in fact, into the dark, dingy, and usually dangerous streets of Earth’s late twentieth and early twenty-first century urban slums. Bars and clubs with names like Hades’ Gate, Highway to Hell, Den Of Iniquity, The Pleasure Palace, and The Flesh Factory lined both sides of the street. He’d patronized some seedy places before over the years during his military career, but now knew now what many old works of literature were really referring to when they talked about ‘the other side of the tracks.’ He half expected stray gunfire to take him out at any moment.
He spotted a large establishment just ahead on the right. The Devil’s Dungeon, according to the bright violet neon sign above the entrance. He considered for a moment, then decided that would be as good a place to start searching as any. As he approached the entrance, the thick and no doubt very heavy studded wooden doors suddenly swung open and banged hard against the pale alcove walls, and a pair of men, each one at least six and a half feet tall with military style haircuts and muscles that threatened to tear through their brightly logoed black t-shirts, literally tossed a much smaller, somewhat disheveled older gentleman into the street.
“I have told you for ze last time to keep your grubby paws off ze girls!” one of those hollered, his voice a thundering bass with a heavy Germanic accent.
“I’ll gonna ge’ the p’lices on yeh, you son’va bish!” the dejected man cried out as he struggled to rise to his hands and knees. He was obviously very drunk.
“Ya, sure,” the other man replied. “Just as soon as you can manage to stand up. Go home, old man. Sleep it off. And don’t ever come back here! Ve might not be so gentle next time.” With that, the bouncers went back inside, laughing, slamming the doors behind them.
“Sel’-righ’shus boy-lovin’ muscle-brain’ bassards!” the old man muttered as he tried to pick himself up off the street.
Dylan went to him. “Are you okay?” he asked, helping the old guy to his feet.
The man turned his head and gazed at him through dull, glassy eyes. “Huh?” he asked. Then he belched, and the overwhelming smell of cheap alcohol and bile was enough to make Dylan’s eyes water as he turned his face away from the man.
“My god,” Dylan said. “Those guys were right. You’d better go sleep it off. Ever tried synthohol?”
“Synth’hol!” The man harrumphed, and Dylan turned his face away again. “Hell, no! No way! I ain’ dringin’ none o’ tha’ imtitame... intima... itmi...”
“Imitation?”
“Yeah, tha’s it. I ain’ dringin’ none o’ tha’ inimation dog piss!”
Dylan got the man more or less balanced on his own none-too-steady feet and guided him over onto the sidewalk, then let go of him and backed away to escape his overpowering, rancid odor. “Whatever you say, old man.” He turned and started toward the bar doors. “But you smell like you’ve been drinking dog piss all night.”
“Hey!” the drunkard shouted. Dylan stopped, his hand on the door handle, and faced him once more. “You goin’ back in there?”
“Yeah. So?”
The old man staggered the two or three steps over to the wall and steadied himself against it, then half sat, half fell, onto the sidewalk. “Bring me outta dring, will ya? An’ fer Go’segs, don’ toush none o’ them women in there er those sons o’ bishes’ll throw y’out li’ they throw’d me out.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“Oh, no pro’lem. Cos’ ya one dring.” He paused a moment, then busted out laughing at his own joke, as if someone else had told it. “Ah, tha’s rish!” he exclaimed. “Cos’ ya one dring!”
“Hysterical,” Dylan said humorlessly.
“Hey! Don’ kee’ me wai’n’ too long fer tha’ dring. I’ll be righ’ here.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Either do I!” he agreed, suddenly laughing again.
Dylan shook his head, half in disgust and half out of pity for the old man, then finally opened the door and went inside.
His first impression was that The Devil’s Dungeon lived up to its name. Something like a hundred patrons had crowded themselves into the gloomy, smoke-filled barroom, which smelled heavily of hard liquor, burnt tobacco, and perspiration. Most of those he could see were scruffy, unshaven, tired-looking middle-aged men, some of them a little on the burly side while others were nearly as thin as skeletons. Almost all of them were dressed in heavily soiled and tattered Merchant Marine crew uniforms. Many were sitting around the numerous thick, round wooden tables that surrounded a meter-high raised circular platform in the center of the floor, drinking and talking or drinking and roaring with laughter, or drinking and playing cards, some of them gambling for some pretty high stakes if the tall stacks of gold, silver, and bronze colored chips in front of them were any indication. Others sat shoulder-to-shoulder along the entire length of the L-shaped bar near the back of the room, competing for elbow room and, judging from the poor posture of some, drinking themselves into unconsciousness. Still others filled the high-backed booths that lined the walls, whispering secretively to who knew whom about who knew what. Here and there, bare-breasted waitresses in skimpy costumes of black leather and lightweight bondage chains delivered trays of drinks to thirsty patrons, while a handful of heavily made up and provocatively-dressed socialators were keeping company with prospective customers of their own, some of them already engaging in the earliest stages of their chosen profession.
Mounted on the walls about three meters above the floor and evenly spaced around the room’s perimeter, sixteen flaming, wood-handled torches, each one in its own iron-gray holder, served as the bar’s only apparent significant source of light. Yet that light, dim and somber as it was, seemed fairly evenly distributed throughout the entire place—no doubt the intended result of the unusually high ceiling’s slightly concave, multi-faceted and semi-reflective design. The walls themselves were made of large rust-sandstone blocks and mortar, were cool to the touch, and were decorated with long, heavy-duty iron chains draped from torch to torch like some kind of overweight Christmas tree garland and a several ancient, partially rusted metal tools of torture, most of which Dylan couldn’t even begin to identify. And in each corner, up on a narrow ledge about a meter off the floor, a woman stood on public display, naked except for the threadbare remnants of what might once have been clothing, wrists and ankles shackled to four iron rings that appeared to be permanently embedded in the stone.
“Nice place,” Dylan mumbled sarcastically under his breath as he started walking toward the bar. “I wonder what time the police raid occurs.”
As he made his way among the tables and around the empty, black-floored platform, he observed that although most everyone in the place was of Terran stock, there was a scattering of Naku, mostly males but a few females as well, mixed in. Naturally, because of their physiology, those Naku weren’t wearing a whole lot of clothing either, and the females in particular seemed to be drawing a little more attention than they desired from a few of the Terran men.
He homed in on the only unoccupied bar stool he could see. It had just been vacated by a man who, for whatever reason, had earned himself a back-handed swat across the mouth from the shirtless, massively muscled Naku male sitting to his immediate left. Dylan intended to sit down and order a synthohol without so much as glancing at the brutish, black-maned giant, but at the last second someone else beat him to the stool—a small but rugged-looking man with a shaved head and tattooed scalp. Clearly posturing for a fight, that individual stared at the Naku as if to challenge him. Dylan stopped and backed away. After all, challenging a drinking Naku was not among the smartest things a man could do.
In a boisterous and defiant voice, the bald tattooed man ordered a synthohol, and before he could so much as raise his arms to defend himself, the Naku back-handed him without even looking at him, just as he had the other man, knocking him violently to the floor. Then the Naku stood up off of his stool and leaned over the man, let loose with a blood-boiling howl of laughter from deep within, and then applied a colorful variety of uncomplimentary names to the man. The man scooted backwards across the floor, away from his tormentor, and then leapt to his feet and ran for the exit, and the crowd laughed at him and harassed him all the way.
As soon as the Naku returned to his stool and turned his attention back to his drink, Dylan stepped up and slid onto the empty stool beside him.
“I guess you’re gonna be his next victim!” the grossly overweight, sloppily-dressed and unkempt bartender bellowed jovially as he ran his beefy fingers through his uncombed, graying brown hair and scratched his head. “Wha’da’ya say, friend? Wanna synth?” he asked, barely able to contain his laughter.
Dylan folded his arms across his chest and gazed first at the bartender and then sidelong at the Naku, as if to weigh the risk to life and limb. The Naku finally straightened, turned slightly toward him, and stared back, nodding slightly and baring his pointed, yellow teeth. Dylan looked back at the bartender, deciding that discretion truly was the better part of valor. “Give me a scotch, straight.”
“Coward!” the Naku accused, leaning in closer. At least his breath wasn’t as bad as the drunkard’s outside had been.
Dylan lashed out before he could second-guess himself, his left arm snapping like a whip. The blade of his hand struck the belligerently drunken Naku across the thick-boned bridge of his crooked, over-sized nose with a satisfying crack, sending him sprawling backwards to the floor with a resounding thud that kicked up a cloud of rust-red dust. The giant clutched his bloodied face in his hands, howling in pain, cursing ten generations of Dylan’s ancestry in plain, standard English and then screaming a string of epithets in his native tongue, and Dylan hoped that he hadn’t just made a huge mistake. The same bouncers he’d seen in action earlier came running, and for a moment Dylan thought they were coming after him. But instead they grabbed the Naku, whose nose had begun bleeding profusely, and dragged him away by the arms, apparently not strong enough to pick him up. The Naku gained his footing just as they reached the exit and threw them off of him like ragdolls, then kicked open the doors, stormed outside, and slammed them hard behind him. The whole place grew suddenly very quiet.
Dylan put on his best tough-guy face and looked around the barroom, His fellow Terrans didn’t concern him—they’d just borne witness to him knocking down and chasing off a fully-grown Naku male, after all—but he silently prayed that none of the Naku’s friends would choose to avenge their countryman’s shame. A number of the more disreputable looking Terran patrons stared back at him in silence, perhaps out of respect for what he’d been able to do to the Naku, or perhaps sizing him up, deciding whether or not they thought they could take him on themselves. Whatever they might have been thinking, each of them in turn looked away when Dylan met their gazes with his own. Including, thankfully, the few other Naku.
As the noise began to pick up again, he turned back to the bar, slowly, and then asked the bartender, “How about that scotch?”
“Uh... yeah. One scotch, straight, comin’ right u
p, sir,” the bartender replied respectfully as he took a step backwards, away from his side of the bar. Without even watching what he was doing, he reached back toward the wall shelves behind him and grabbed hold of a lightweight but sturdy looking silver chain that was fastened to a ring bolted the wall beside the open storeroom door. “Get out here, Nikki!” he hollered as he tugged hard on the chain. A slender young woman with shoulder-length black hair came stumbling out of the dark storeroom wearing nothing but a black leather choker and wrist-shackles, which were padlocked to the end of the chain on which the bartender had tugged. Actually, now that Dylan looked more closely at her, the term ‘young woman’ seemed a likely overstatement, because although she had long since begun to develop physically, under all the make-up and heavy black mascara her face was that of a young girl. She couldn’t have been a day over fifteen if she was even that old, and she probably wasn’t.
“What the hell is this?” Dylan exclaimed, pointing at her.
“You have a task for me, master?” the girl asked the bartender, gazing downward at the floor between them, apparently afraid to look him in the eye, hands folded compliantly in front of her. Dylan gazed at her closely. She looked totally broken emotionally, as though she’d long since given up on any hopes and dreams she might have had and had accepted her life of slavery and servitude.
“Get this man a scotch, bitch,” the bartender commanded her, ignoring Dylan’s question. “In fact, make it two. The good stuff, and don’t get no pubes in it!”
“Right away, master.” She set about her assigned task immediately, making no effort to hide any part of her anatomy from anyone’s curious view.
“What the hell is going on here?” Dylan asked in disgust. “You can’t treat her like that!”
The bartender looked at him as though that were the stupidest statement he’d ever heard. “What, she your baby sister or somethin’?” he asked sarcastically.
