The Hunt for Reduk Topa

by Barry J. Hutchison

  Raising a leg, he stepped over the desk and stopped when he towered above Cal.

  “Now, tell me who you are and what you want,” said the Controller, his voice as smooth and as pleasant as always. “Or I promise I will take tremendous pleasure in killing you all myself.”

  Twenty-One

  Tyrra charged forward, mouth wide, teeth bared.

  “Wait, Tyrra, no!” Miz yelped, grabbing for her, but the girl slipped through her claws and threw herself at the silver figure.

  “You dare threaten us?” she hissed, and then she let out a yelp as a whole new arm extended from inside the Controller’s hub of a body, caught her by the throat, and jerked her cleanly into the air.

  His other arms continued to move, his thumbs tap-tapping on all those little screens.

  “What is this?” he asked in his smooth, sing-song tone. He twisted his grip, turning Tyrra so he could look at her back, before rotating her to face him again. “I’ve never seen one of these.”

  “Let her go,” Miz growled, spit foaming at the corners of her mouth.

  The Controller regarded Miz coolly. “Huh. Or one of whatever you are, in fact.” He studied them all in turn, Tyrra still squirming in his grip. “Well, aren’t you just a big old bag of enigmas?”

  “You’d better do what the lady says, man,” Mech warned. “Let the kid go.”

  The Controller appeared momentarily confused, then reacted as if only just realizing he still had Tyrra in his grip. “Ah. Yes. Apologies,” he said. His hand opened and Tyrra fell wheezing to the floor. “Kindly remove it from my office.”

  “Her,” Cal corrected. “Not it.”

  The Controller’s new arm reached into the desk, retrieved one of the palm-sized devices, then joined the others in swiping and tapping.

  “Kindly remove her from my office, then,” the Controller said. “Sorry.”

  “She’s going nowhere, pal,” Cal said, as Miz helped Tyrra back onto her feet.

  The Controller gave a polite nod. “Fair enough. Then, it looks like our conversation is over. You can all leave the same way you came in.”

  Cal flicked his tongue across the back of his teeth. “Actually, maybe Tyrra should go back to the ship.”

  “What? We’re listening to this silver shizznod?” said Miz.

  “She charged right at the guy all…” Cal bared his teeth. “She did kind of bring it on herself. It’s better she goes back to the ship before she gets someone hurt.”

  Tyrra coughed and rubbed her throat where the hand had gripped her.

  “Any more than they already are, I mean,” Cal added.

  He bent down so he was face to face with Tyrra. “Miz’ll take you back to the ship. And, again, we’re going to have words later, young lady.”

  “I want to stay,” Tyrra croaked.

  “Well, you can’t. I told you what would happen. One strike,” Cal told her. He softened a little when her bottom lip stuck out. “Mech will patch his comm-link into the ship so you won’t miss anything exciting.”

  He looked up at Mech. “That’s a thing, right? You can do that?”

  “Yeah. But can I mute Kevin?”

  Cal pulled a face that suggested that part was a given, then looked back at Tyrra. “There. You’ll be able to hear us.”

  “That’s not the same,” Tyrra sulked.

  “No, but it’s the best offer you’re going to get,” Cal told her. “And it’ll be a life-lesson. You need to rein in this behavior before—”

  Tyrra slapped him across the face, staggering him and forcing a sound he was not proud of to come tumbling from his mouth.

  “Ha. Bested,” she croaked.

  Then, with a furious glare at the Controller, she turned and went stomping back toward the forcefield, with Miz striding along behind her.

  “Thank you,” said the Controller, once they’d left. “It’s one thing maiming my security forces, but I can’t have someone directly challenging me in my own office. Sorry, but I just can’t. You get it, right? Yeah. You guys get it.”

  “Uh, yeah,” said Cal. “We get it. Now, you’re probably wondering—”

  “Wait! Wait! Hold up,” said the Controller. “Let me run something by you. OK? I’m going to fire some words at you, and you say ‘hot’ or ‘cold.’ Got it?”

  Cal frowned, glanced at the others, then opened his mouth to say that no, he didn’t really get it. Unfortunately, the window of opportunity had passed.

  “Audience,” said the Controller.

  “What?”

  “Hot or cold? Audience.”

  Cal glanced to Loren and Mech for help, but they looked just as confused as he was.

  “I’m not asking them, I’m asking you,” the Controller said. “Hot or cold?”

  “Um… hot?” Cal guessed.

  “Cleanliness.”

  “I guess…” Cal puffed out his cheeks. “I guess cold.”

  “Modular thought.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Hot or cold?”

  Cal shrugged. “Cold.”

  “Cold? Modular thought? Really? You think cold?”

  “I don’t… OK, hot.”

  The Controller looked wildly excited. “Hot! Yes!”

  Cal nodded, pleased with himself despite not knowing why. “Obviously.”

  “Textured flooring,” said the Controller. “Cold, right? I don’t even have to ask.”

  “Freezing,” Cal agreed.

  “All right. That was really useful. Thank you. You’ve been a great help.”

  He half-sat, half-leaned on the edge of the desk. Even in this position, he was a full foot taller than Cal. “Now, what was it you wanted? Because, I hate to tell you, guys, but I’m kind of busy here.”

  Cal was still trying to work out what all the ‘hot or cold’ stuff was about, and it took him a moment to switch tracks.

  “Oh. Yeah. We’ve got a delivery.”

  “Deliveries don’t come to my office,” the Controller said. “They never come to my office. We have a specific cargo section of the station just for deliveries. We call it ‘The Delivery Section.’ I came up with that name myself.” He smiled. “I’m kidding. I’m kidding, I didn’t come up with the name. But we do have a delivery section. For deliveries.”

  “Yeah, we know,” said Cal. “But we couldn’t find it.”

  “It covers six hundred floors,” said the Controller.

  “Yeah. Still couldn’t find it,” said Cal, waving a hand to suggest that this was a minor and unimportant detail. “So, we thought we’d bring it here. Straight to the top. You are the top, right?”

  “Guilty! I am the Controller of the network. You don’t get any higher,” the silver figure replied. “What are you—hold on, one moment.”

  He placed one of the devices to the raised area on his head where an ear should be. “What? No. Since when? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

  Cal rocked on his heels and took the opportunity to look around the room. This took approximately ten seconds, as there wasn’t a lot to look at. The desk was fancy. The chair was oddly shaped. The various display cases held nothing of any obvious significance—a pair of shoes, a model of some sort of insect, a blue soft toy that might have been an elephant, a hippo, or neither of the two. Nothing particularly exciting.

  He gave his breasts a nudge, adjusting them. They each gave a jelly-like wobble, one after the other. In his experience, this was not normal behavior, but then nothing about the situation was exactly run-of-the-mill.

  “No, no, listen. Tell him that’s not an offer, that’s an insult. Has he seen our audience share for that slot? Ninety-four percent. That’s of the system, Forank. Not of a country, not of a planet, of the system.”

  He pressed both thumbs firmly against the contraption, then turned his attention back to Cal.

  “Sorry, sponsors getting ideas their brains aren’t big enough to process,” the Controller said.

  “We know how that is,” said Cal, nodding sagely.<
br />
  The Controller cocked his head to one side. “You do?”

  “Actually, no. I don’t know why I said that,” Cal admitted. “Anyway, as I was saying, we’re here to deliver two crates from the planet Floom—”

  “From Tolgor. One of the moons of Trogol,” Loren interjected.

  “From there. Yes. That’s it,” said Cal.

  The Controller jumped up. “Aha! Yes. We’ve been waiting for those. It’s feed for the Sloorgs. You’d be amazed, but those things are surprisingly picky eaters.”

  “I am amazed,” said Cal. Then: “What’s a Sloorg?”

  The Controller’s thumbs all stopped moving. “I’m sorry?”

  “You said it’s food for the Sloorgs. What’s a Sloorg?”

  The Controller’s perfectly smooth face creased just a little. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean—”

  “You mean… you don’t know?”

  Cal shook his head. “Yes. No. I mean, no, I don’t know what a Sloorg is.”

  “You don’t know what a Sloorg is?”

  “Do you want me to talk slower?” Cal asked. He exaggerated his mouth movements. “That’s what I’m saying. I don’t know what a Sloorg is.”

  He turned to the others. “Do you guys know what a Sloorg is?”

  Loren and Mech both indicated that no, they didn’t.

  “None of you know what a Sloorg is?” the Controller yelped. There was a slightly hysterical edge to his voice now, and his arms had all dropped to his sides. “So… what are you saying? You’ve never seen The Hunt?”

  “No,” Cal confirmed.

  “What, never?”

  Cal looked to his left and right, meeting Loren and Mech’s gazes again. “Have we ever seen The Hunt?”

  “Not unless it’s got puppets in it,” said Mech.

  “No, that’s Puppetopia,” said the Controller. “You’ve seen Puppetopia, but you’ve never seen The Hunt? How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know,” said Cal.

  “How is it possible?” demanded the Controller, leaning in so his liquid metal face hovered just above Cal’s. His eyes were made of the same smoothly-flowing material as the rest of them, but Cal was sure he saw something blazing behind them for a moment. “You must have seen The Hunt. Everyone has seen The Hunt.”

  Cal blew out his cheeks. “No, sorry.”

  “Juggacrush. Eviscerator. Plasmoid,” the Controller continued, his voice going higher with each word. “Mean anything to you? No?”

  “It’s not ringing any bells,” Cal said.

  “We’re from a different sector,” Mech said. “We’re a long way from home.”

  This seemed to relax the Controller a little. He sat on the edge of the desk, steadying himself. Most of his hands went back to work, but three didn’t seem quite up to it yet.

  “Oh. Ah. That explains it,” he said. “Phew! That’s a relief. Because you’re exactly our demographic, and if you hadn’t seen… Wow. I don’t even want to think about it. Can I assume you only arrived recently?”

  “We did,” Loren confirmed.

  Reassured by this, the other three hands went back to work. “OK. OK, that’s fine. That’s… wow, you had me worried there for a second.”

  He stood up, took a complex backward step, and reinstalled himself back in the center of his donut-shaped desk. “OK, so I’ll call someone up from cargo to take those crates, we’ll arrange the transfer of Viacoin to your ship and… I think that’s everything.”

  The Controller gestured past Cal and the others in the direction of the landing platform. “Your friend is back.”

  Everyone turned to see Miz come padding through the forcefield wall alone.

  “What? Like, what are you all staring at?” she asked.

  “I thought you were going to stay with Tyrra and make sure she doesn’t get into trouble?” Cal asked.

  Miz shook her head. “No, she’s fine. Kevin’s watching her. And besides, she’s busy smashing up all your stuff. That’ll keep her occupied for a while.”

  “Great. That’s great,” said Cal. He turned to the Controller. “We should probably get back. Nice to meet you, uh, Controller.”

  “And you. Thanks again for the market research help,” the Controller replied. “Sanitation inquiries.”

  “Cold,” said Cal.

  The silver figure gave a satisfied nod. “I knew it.”

  Cal and the others turned to leave, but before they could go any further, the Controller spoke again.

  “Although, since you’re here, and new to the area…”

  Cal turned back and raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “How about I have someone give you a tour?”

  Twenty-Two

  “So, you guys met the Controller? So cool! Isn’t he just the greatest?”

  “He’s something, alright,” said Cal. He trotted along the corridor alongside Bryman, their official guide on their unofficial tour of the Viaview station, and one of the few people Cal had ever met who could talk more than he could.

  He seemed like a nice guy, Cal thought. A little too eager to please, maybe, but it was a refreshing change to have to suffer someone being overly nice to him as opposed to, say, shooting him with gun turrets, or knifing him in the thigh.

  Bryman also had a way of finishing every sentence with a rising inflection so that it sounded like a question. Cal had thought this would become irritating after a few minutes, but he’d been wrong. It became irritating much sooner than that.

  “You ask me, he was kinda creepy,” said Mech. He and Loren were following behind Cal and Bryman, both doing their best to look interested.

  Miz took up the rear of the procession, making zero attempt whatsoever to look anything but bored senseless. She plodded along, each laborious footstep slapping against the floor, each new nugget of trivia from Bryman eliciting another groan.

  “He gets that a lot. Like, I mean, all the time,” Bryman said, nodding vigorously. He seemed to do most things vigorously. His movements suggested a barely contained explosion of nervous energy that was getting increasingly close to going off.

  “He’s an AI,” Bryman explained. “That’s Artificial Intelligence. You know, like a living computer? He’s got, like, a superbrain.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Cal. “We have one of those.”

  Bryman reacted with a comically exaggerated frown. “Huh?”

  “An AI. We have one,” said Cal. “His name is Kevin. He helps control our ship. You know, kind of.”

  Bryman continued to look confused for a few moments, then laughed through his nose and slapped Cal playfully on the arm. “Oh, you guys.” He wagged a finger reproachfully. “You almost had me!”

  Cal gave a chuckle, then shot a look back to Loren and Mech. All three of them shrugged at the same time. Behind them, Miz tutted loudly.

  “Now, come on, slowpokes!” Bryman urged. “The Puppetopia studio is right around this corner. If we’re lucky, we might catch some of the cast between rehearsals and we can say hi!”

  “That’s awesome!” Cal gushed. “Hear that guys?”

  “We heard,” said Loren. She clenched her fists and waved them beside her head. “Yay.”

  Cal leaned closer to Mech’s arm. “Hear that, Tyrra? Hear what you’re missing? We’re going to see some puppets. I hope you’re thinking long and hard about what you did.”

  “Ugh. Now I kind of wish I’d tried to kill the guy,” said Miz. “Maybe then I’d be banished to the ship.”

  “They’re actually very excited,” Cal told Bryman. “We caught part of the show, and we were hooked.”

  “Yeah, that’s the Brainbeam. It’s like a hypno-signal,” said Bryman, leading them past a brightly colored sign that proclaimed they were Now Entering Puppetopia. “It affects the mind so people get addicted.”

  “Oh,” said Cal. “Right.”

  They walked on in silence for a few moments. “I mean, I guess that explains a lot.”

  “Ain’t that il
legal?” asked Mech.

  “Illegal? Goodness, no. Why would it be illegal?” asked Bryman. “All the networks do it. Thanks to the Controller, we just do it better than anyone else. We like to joke that our hypno-signal is so addictive, even other hypno-signals get hooked!”

  He laughed at that, a shrill little giggle that came out like a car alarm and made Cal jump.

  “We’re a little crazy here!” Bryman said. He pointed to the side of his head and made a ‘screw loose’ motion. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, you don’t have to be crazy to work here—”

  “But it helps?” said Cal.

  Bryman stopped walking and let out a little gasp. “But it helps! I like that. That’s perfect!” He touched Cal very sincerely on the arm. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to get that put on a little sign and hang it above my desk. Is that OK? I can’t pay you, or anything, but I’ll credit you at the bottom. It’ll be great exposure.”

  “No credit necessary,” said Cal. “That one’s on me.”

  For a moment, he thought Bryman might burst into tears, but then the guide pulled himself together and gave Cal’s arm a squeeze. “Thank you,” he said breathlessly. “That is so kind.”

  He began walking again. Call fell into step, then overshot by a few paces when Bryman stopped again three seconds later outside a door with two shiny gold stars fixed to it.

  “Here we are,” he announced. “Let’s see if anyone’s home.”

  He leaned in close to the door, rapped a knuckle against it, and simultaneously said, “Knock knock!”

  Without waiting for an answer, he opened the door. “Yoohoo! Tour calling! Anyone home?”

  Cal found himself staring in at the two puppets he’d been watching on TV a few hours earlier. The larger of the two was wrapped in a towel from the waist down. The other one lay sprawled on a couch, something that wasn’t entirely unlike a cigarette hanging from its bottom lip. A little funnel on his head spurted bubbles into the air.