The Next Thing I Knew (Heavenly)

by John Corwin

  Since I couldn't very well hop inside one of their bodies and go along for the ride, I was at a loss. I exited the building and watched as aircars glided to various points up and down the high rise and docked. Portals opened in the organic material and the drivers simply stepped inside their apartments. Apparently most inhabitants didn't even need to use the elevator. According to information, my target lived at coordinates which placed her on the side facing the park around the 200th floor or so. That meant I'd have to count the blasted levels. I grimaced. Some of the levels didn't have windows since the inhabitants created them as the mood suited them. Just like doors, they would form out of the amorphous material of the building. Living inside something like that would scare me to death.

  I started counting and noticed translucent symbols along the edge of the building that I wouldn't have seen if I hadn't looked closely. They were numbers. I cheered, thanking whatever genius had such brilliant foresight to put them there. Trills of excitement and joy echoed from above. I looked up in time to see two young Shaval rocketing straight down, wings folded back. At the last minute, they opened their wings and whizzed over the trees and into the park. I watched as they glided lower and disappeared into the canopy.

  An older couple launched from a few stories above me, opening their wings and gliding into the park. As the sky grew darker, a group of lights focused on a large clearing in the park. Soon the sky was filled with the gliding forms of Shaval as they went toward the clearing. I watched in wonder, trying desperately to hold onto my sense of worth as I drank in the magnificent sight.

  No wonder the Shaval think they're such bad asses. They kind of are.

  I forced myself to ignore the view and flitted up to the proper level of the high rise. Another set of coordinates on the building led me to the proper spot where the committee head supposedly lived. A window morphed open and she stepped out. The pictures in the Shaval database didn't do her justice. She looked exactly like Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas. That is if Fergie was over nine feet tall with wings and an extra set of arms. She wore a tight t-shirt with the monochromatic image of a handsome male Shaval emblazoned on the front and a knee-length black skirt. I wondered if the man on her shirt was the Shaval equivalent of Che Guevara or Justin Bieber.

  I decided to name her Fergie since she seemed pretty hip. It was better than "Bob" any day. Kyle had told me he planned to name his new host Fred. He obviously hated the Shaval.

  Fergie launched herself from the window and glided toward the park. She looked to her right at a neighboring female who was also gliding the same way. They spoke aloud, warbling and trilling and making a racket as they talked about how hot they thought the neighbor in 22.4 was and how stupid his girlfriend acted. Wow. Just wow. And our captive Shaval criticized us for being petty. These beings were no better. Screw Diana and her bunch of elitist snobs.

  Just like humans had done in the past, the Shaval weren't above justifying their criminal behavior when it came to wiping out or enslaving other sentient beings for their own selfish reasons. I listened to Fergie and her neighbor prattle on like two teenagers until they reached the park and went separate ways. Fergie joined up with a group of friends. They were standing around drinking what looked like cocktails to me. A tall male, easily over ten feet tall, was boasting about the important things his committee was doing with regard to regulating some substance that I couldn't translate into English. One of the ladies was all over him.

  A platform bubbled up in the center of the park, growing out of the ground and made of the ubiquitous stuff that formed the buildings. It was the color of the dark green grass that carpeted the clearing and almost looked like a natural formation except for the flatness. A group of Shaval glided in from the darkness around the clearing and landed on the new platform. One of them bellowed out thanks to the attendees and warbled out how cool Chandara was and how great it was to be back home.

  This was a rock band? I wondered if Fergie might join them and sing about her lovely humps.

  Then they sang. From the first notes to the last I was entranced by the amazing harmony and melody. They spread their wings, creating intricate patterns that mirrored the melody and sang in a range that extended to notes I probably couldn't have heard in physical human form. As the concert went on, I found myself swaying to the sound of their voices. Tears formed in my eyes and chills ran down my back. Music had never affected me this way. When it was over, I wanted more. Fergie and her friends gabbed on for a while after, then she hugged some of them goodbye, waved to the others, and walked to a clear area of the field where I'd seen aircars landing and picking up their owners.

  Her vehicle landed. Like the others, it had its own shape and color which I assumed could probably change at her whim. I slid into the portal behind her. It closed and the vehicle took her back to her apartment. I wondered why she hadn't flown back using her wings. I hadn't seen any of them flying back, now that I thought of it. Maybe they were too lazy, or maybe the wings couldn't handle lifting off.

  Once we reached her apartment I wandered around looking at the decorations. There was no kitchen. The bathroom and bedroom looked like the ones on the spaceship. She had holographic images, presumably of family, and nice wooden furniture like tables and chairs, albeit much larger than the human equivalent. I wondered if they were real or holographic.

  Fergie hit the sack after cleaning off in her mist shower. I followed up with my usual meditation techniques and started the process of assimilation all over again. It was getting to be old hat. By the end of the night I felt comfortable enough to completely merge with her. I marveled at how quickly I'd been able to hit that point, but then again, I'd gathered some experience with her kind. Fergie's thoughts were every bit as complex as Diana's but I didn't bother searching her soul or trying to understand what made her tick. I found her consciousness triggers and tested them once she started to wake up. She winked back out. I took over and walked her around, scratched her butt, ran in place, and did a few more tests until I was satisfied that I could do it again.

  I spoke with the other team members. Chris had managed to take control of the database administrator. He'd discovered a risky back door technique to changing the database that might work in case of an emergency. The others on the team felt certain they'd have physical control of their hosts by the next night. We still had a couple of days so I wasn't too worried.

  As for Kyle and his team of battleship thieves, he informed me that things were on schedule except for one thing: Harb was missing. Kyle wasn't too concerned since he already had enough people for the job, but Harb was supposed to be collecting military data by using Azriel's contacts. Harb hadn't responded to Kyle's calls.

  I tried calling Harb but he didn't answer. I cursed him a few times for good measure and decided to check in on Zhrrii and Ciirr. Needless to say, they didn't have a way to contact us so I had to go there in person. Zhrrii was trumpeting something in a worried voice to Ciirr when I arrived. I tapped into her.

  What's wrong?

  Lucy, thank goodness you came. This is terrible.

  My chest iced over. What is?

  The bodies. They're gone.

  Chapter 29

  I belted out a curse and broadcast the emergency to Kyle and Chris. Everyone dropped what they were doing and flitted back to the ship.

  Zhrrii was beside herself with worry and sorrow. I tried to assure her that everything would be okay, but she was frantic.

  I have failed you, my dear friend, she said. I cannot believe the bodies would vanish.

  The first thing I noticed was that Harb was a no-show to the emergency meeting. The next was that the ship's logs showed Azriel had come and gone a few times. My mind jumped to the obvious conclusion. Harb had hijacked our bodies for some reason. He could hold us for ransom if he wanted to. But why would he? It made no sense. Surely he had as much invested in the mission as we did.

  After the yelling died down, I told everyone there wasn't much we could do at the momen
t. Like everyone else, I was scared to death. The end could come at a moment's notice and that would be that. Chills ran through me every time I gave it a thought. I couldn't help it. Somehow I convinced everyone to go back to their assigned tasks. I pulled my trusted inner circle aside and asked for advice.

  "This place is totally automated, right?" Jane asked.

  "Yeah," Kyle said. "So there wouldn't be any guards we could assimilate for information."

  "For all we know, he parked an aircar right outside the ship and loaded it up with our bodies," Chris said.

  Jane looked at the holo-console. "Doesn't this ship keep a video log?"

  "I guess," Kyle said.

  Kyle merged with Bob and brought him into the room. It took a few seconds to find out how to activate the video log. In the middle of the night while we had all been in deep meditative trances with our new hosts, Azriel emerged from the ship. The video could be panned and shifted any way to follow Azriel. He walked toward one of the large hangars several hundred yards away and returned with a smaller hovering craft.

  "Looks like a luggage carrier," Kyle said.

  "Why would Shaval need luggage?" I asked. "Everything they use is holographic."

  "I'm sure they have plenty of souvenirs from other planets they visit."

  I shrugged and watched as Azriel lugged out the gel cases with our bodies. Each case had a name painted on it so we knew which one was ours. We each grimaced as the cases with our names were tossed into the carrier. Azriel finished loading and drove away toward the same hangar.

  "He probably hid them in that hangar," Jane said. "Let's go check it out."

  We didn't waste a second flitting over to the hangar. I gasped once we arrived inside. It was massive and stuffed to bursting with containers. Large cargo shuttles landed in one area and wheeled robots offloaded hundreds of containers then turned around and loaded other crates back on the same shuttle. Smaller aircar vehicles landed at another dock and picked up goods, probably for local distribution. This particular hangar had almost nothing but food in it.

  "The Shaval keep their fresh foods in stasis at home," Kyle said. "When they order something to eat, the computer organizes the ingredients and a machine prepares the dish. This looks like a main hub for food distribution. I hope like hell our bodies aren't sitting in someone's stasis unit right now."

  "You mean our bodies might get served up as food?" I asked, gagging at the thought.

  "No, stasis units scan for spoilage and will dump the bad food into the garbage automatically."

  "Let me guess, they probably treat their garbage like they did the human structures on our planet."

  Kyle nodded. "They send garbage to a treatment plant where those giant centipedes and Sst's convert garbage into energy."

  "Oh crap," Jane said.

  "I doubt our bodies will even make it out of the warehouse. I'd bet a place like this has scans for spoilage as well."

  We looked up and down the rows of containers that seemed to stretch into infinity. I started cursing like a sailor. "There's no way to find our bodies in this place."

  "Might as well give it a try," Kyle said.

  I slumped my shoulders. We had no choice. If anything happened to our bodies the mission would fail. Thousands of Rrilk and billions of humans would die; the humans for real this time. I recalled everyone back to the ship to help. After a few hours of flying back and forth across my section of the warehouse, I was certain we'd never find the bodies.

  I found something useful, Jane sent to me.

  I flitted to her. She was in a room with a console. A short Shaval with a stunted lower arm and a potbelly sat inside. He looked like a social reject and I wondered if bottom-of-the-barrel jobs were given to people like him.

  "This guy looks rough," Jane said. "They could patch him up with cloned parts."

  "I guess. So what's useful here?"

  She pointed at the console. "Video records."

  I called Chris and had him grab Gabriel from the ship. While we waited, I tapped into the dude in the chair. His thought processes were pretty simple compared to my other hosts. It didn't take me long to figure out why he was here and hadn't fixed himself. He'd failed to vote on several occasions and shirked other civic duties thus earning a demotion to non-citizen worker class. At that very moment he was stewing about his crappy job and how he'd like to get back at his boss. Seemed like a typical blue-collar guy having a bad day.

  Despite his apparent lack of brain power, it would still take a while to assimilate him so I had to wait on Chris to bring Gabriel over. He arrived twenty minutes later, but it felt like eternity with our bodies on the loose. Gabriel asked the guy to review the video logs. The worker refused.

  I told Chris to say that he was with internal affairs trying to find video that his boss might have stolen some items and that his boss could lose citizenship privileges. The worker happily agreed to that and showed Gabriel how to access the pertinent logs. Then he went outside for a break.

  Since the video was compiled into one large file that allowed holographic 3-D viewing, we skipped to the time the ship's log had recorded Azriel and panned in the direction of the ship. Azriel drove the cart to the local distribution dock and past it. An aircar waited just past it. He loaded the gel cases inside and the car took off.

  "Son of a bitch!" Kyle said, slamming his fist onto the console. "Now we'll never find him."

  "Harb's in an unfamiliar place," Jane said. "He knows what Azriel knows, but he only trusts himself, right?"

  "That pretty much sums it up," I said. "Harb is narcissistic and craves to be the center of attention."

  "So the first place to look is obvious."

  "Azriel's address?"

  Jane nodded. "Unfortunately, none of us know Azriel like Harb so he might have other places to go. But it's a good start."

  "We've got to tread very carefully," Kyle said. "Harb might do something stupid if he feels threatened."

  "Stupid? He's already done that," I said. "Chris, put Gabriel away and let's pay Azriel a little visit."

  Chris sprinted back. I flew ahead and updated Zhrrii and Ciirr with the news. Zhrrii pulled up Azriel's bio on the console and found his address. I told her I'd keep her updated. She trumpeted out a few notes of good luck which roughly translated into "I hope the Rruukk doesn't eat you." I knew the Rruukk was a giant carnivorous fish on her home world. You could at least see a Rruukk coming. Harb could pull the trigger at any moment and vaporize our bodies. We'd never even know it happened.

  Whatever happened, it was imperative to sort this out by nightfall so we could finish assimilating our targets. The committee members were especially important since their meeting was happening in less than two days.

  Since we'd never been to Azriel's place we had to fly there. His building had the same numerals on the side as did Fergie's so it didn't take long to pinpoint the apartment. It wouldn't have been hard anyway since he was on the penthouse level.

  "Guardians must get paid pretty well," I said, whistling.

  "I get the feeling his military contacts have something to do with this," Chris said.

  Azriel's high rise started broad at the base and reached for the skies in undulating waves. His penthouse capped the top like the dome from a mosque. A columned terrace surrounded the penthouse complete with a large pool of dark blue liquid that I figured might not be water. The window portals facing the sun were open. I zipped over to them and looked inside. The place was palatial, all columns and marble floors. It looked almost earthly.

  "This reminds me of the Taj Mahal," Jane said. "In fact, it looks virtually identical."

  "They can alter the appearance to just about anything," Chris said. "This is a sure sign Harb's around here."

  "I am indeed," Harb said through Azriel as he stepped outside onto the terrace.

  Chris streaked over to him. "You asshat. Return our bodies."

  Azriel smiled. "Or what?"

  "Or you'll find an army of Shaval knockin
g on your door with us inside."

  "You'll do no such thing."

  "Why are you doing this?" I asked. "I don't understand."

  Harb freed himself from Azriel but stayed tapped in. Harb retained his new muscular look but now he'd added wings and extra arms. He looked like a Shaval. "This is why I'm doing it. Humans are pathetic and weak. The Shaval were right to kill them all."

  "That includes you, buster," I said. "Lest you forget, you're as human as we are."

  "No longer," he said, cutting the air with a swing of his arm. "Azriel and I are in agreement. They will clone a Shaval body to be my own. I will be given a high rank in their society. Among humans I was an orphan. I was trash to be discarded or used like an animal. The Shaval have no such thing. Every citizen has a place of honor."

  "The Shaval are no better than us."

  He sneered. "Then you're blind. True, they aren't perfect, but their society has achieved a level that humans never will."

  "Fine, Harb. Join them. But let Earth be. Let us fix their database and we'll go back to Earth and live happily while you stay here. Everyone's happy."

  "Lucy, you can have your own Shaval body. You can stay with me. But I'm sorry. The humans are too dangerous to leave in any form. They must be destroyed for good." His eyes locked onto Chris. "I must uphold my end of the bargain for the Shaval to fulfill theirs."