by Jean Kilczer
“Get in the vehicle, Huff,” I told him. “You can ride into Gorestail with me.” I shook my head. “We'll just take it from there.”
“Do you want to tell me what's going on here?” Chancey asked.
“Can't do,” I told him. “Government work. Classified.” I extended my hand. “Rammis. Jules Rammis.”
“Do you always talk in monosyllables?” He grinned broadly, displaying gleaming white teeth, and took my hand. “Jones. Chancey Jones.”
I shook his hand. “Chancey. We'll drop the body off in the sea before we head into town. This hovair's got engine problems. We'll have to stay in ground mode.”
Huff sobbed and I laid a hand on his trembling shoulder. “It's a sea-worthy burial,” I said, “very respected on Earth.” Yeah. Right.
I looked toward town. I had to contact Joe Hatch with the information I had on the location of Rowdinth's Citadel. Well, more or less the location. I'd bet a new pair of boots that the vicinity was holo-protected as plain beach from the air, and nothing but sand from the ground.
I parked the hovair with the rear facing the ocean and we got out. “Walk away for a while, Huff,” I told him and opened the storage compartment. I unsheathed Zorga's knife and studied his body.
Chancey shambled over to watch as I cut through Zorga's scales and thick chest muscles to slice open his lungs. I held my breath as ammonia and methane gushed out.
Chancey backed away. “Keeps the body underwater, right?”
“Yeah.” I took a breath and retched from the bloody work. “It helps, until the fishes have their full. The bones might wash ashore someday.”
“You've done this before, tag?” Chancey asked.
“No.” I looked around. The beach was still deserted. “Give me a hand, will you, Chancey.”
Together we slid Zorga's body out and onto the sand.
“Huff?” I called.
He came over on all fours, sobbed as he hooked his teeth into Zorga's uniform and dragged him to the water's edge. Seabirds must have smelled the blood. They circled Huff like a living white halo as he towed his friend out to sea.
“What're you going to do with the Vegan when we hit town?” Chancey asked.
“I don't know.” I kicked sand over the bloody patch on the ground. “Drop him off at the spaceport I guess, and pay for his ride to wherever he wants to go.” I thought about contacting Joe. “You know today's date, Earth time?”
“Somewhere in late April.” He kicked more sand over the blood. “You got an appointment to keep back on Earth?”
“Just curious.” We all do, I thought, and stared across the inlet. Somewhere, on that far shore, a madman was conspiring with traitorous scientists to destroy our homeworld.
I scratched under my arm. My clothes were stiff with salt and sand. “Right now I'd give a lot for a shower, a clothes vib, and a hot meal.” And access to a star positioning system. I looked at my feet. “A new pair of shoes and a place to kick back for a while would be a little bit of Nirvana. “There must be Terran-class hotels in Gorestail, no?”
“Sure, and I know a place that sells alien food, and stocks Terran clothes.”
“'Alien Health', by name? 'We Serve the Stars'.”
“That's the one. You familiar with it? Run by a Cleocean married threesome.”
“Oh yeah. I've heard of them,” I said distractedly. I was more concerned whether or not Rowdinth had agents in Gorestail who were out looking for me. “What about the police force? Do those tags patrol the town?”
“Not since seven of them were killed by miners.”
“How'd that happen?”
“The police are General Rowdinth's cruds. They thought they could muscle in and extort the mining companies for a cut of the gold. You know, Mafia style.”
“The companies took umbrage?”
“Yeah, and they decided to use some mafia tactics of their own.” He made a “thumbs down” gesture.
“Did the police force disband?”
“They're still around, getting paid by the general. But these days, the tags stick pretty close to their fortified office.”
“So you and the other hired guns have filled the niche?”
He nodded. “And all we ask from the mining outfits is our weekly check.”
I watched Huff swim back to shore. How the hell did they find me in the barn? I shook my head. Probably dumb luck. I scratched an itch behind my right ear. The skin there was crusty and sensitive. I'd probably been bitten by some native insect.
Huff knew the location of the citadel, maybe by some landmark of rocks or whatever, but even Huff didn't know where the laboratory was located, and that was target one.
Chapter Nine
Gorestail was a wild, wide-open town that reminded me of the Western frontiers portrayed in historical flicks. Except that instead of horses, though a few Terrans rode them into town, the preferred mode of transportation was still hovairs and hovars, and hybrid water sprites.
Altairians, Vegans, and Cleoceans, with their smell of kelp, walked the wide, muddy streets. Long strands of oblong Zenorgisms, looking like giant plums with wings and eyestalks and spindly legs, buzzed drunkenly in eccentric circles, crashing into each other and falling out of the sky like purple rain. They dipped into puddles of black ooze that bubbled to the surface. Oil, I think. It must have clogged their pores, from which they breathed, and forced them to retain carbon dioxide, which caused intoxication. A dangerous game. Some regained flight. Others fluttered oily violet wings and fought to pull their long legs out of the black ooze.
A few Terrans miners in soiled clothes squeezed out of the swinging doors of a bar with laughing Altairians and Vegans. One Altairian handed his bottle to a Terran and turned around. The Terran obligingly poured dark liquid into the diaphragm on the Altairian's tank. The Altairian pulled back his lips in a sharp-toothed grin and nodded.
The group staggered to a Hovair van and piled inside.
I wondered who was driving. “Is anybody in town still sober?” I asked Chancey.
“Only the patrons.” He chuckled. “It's a holiday.”
“What are they celebrating? The day fermentation was discovered?”
“They celebrate Gold Lode Day,” Huff said from the rear seat. “The day Altairians discovered gold on Fartherland.” He quietly sobbed.
I glanced at Chancey and shook my head. Huff?” I turned in the seat. “What say we take hotel rooms and get cleaned up? I'll pay for it.”
“I am cleaned up. And down too. But I will oblige you.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, thanks.”
“You are welcome, Terran Jules friend.”
I let Chancey off at a bar, supposedly to check that the miners were behaving themselves, and Huff and I found an All-Species' hotel and restaurant. Joe Hatch could wait a few more hours for my report, if I could find an SPS to contact him. It wouldn't do much good anyway, until I located the lab.
While Huff went to the Vegan quarters of the hotel, I took a Terran Deluxe room, threw my clothes into the vib unit, thermiconed off my beard and brushed my teeth. I punched in Deluxe Wash-Male and stepped into the Geisha stall. Soap and warm water caressed my body from jets in the tile walls. I hummed as scrubbies extended from slots and softly rubbed me all over, washing away bacteria, salt, oil, sweat, and dead cells, and moving gently in my more sensitive areas. Soft streams of water rinsed me off until I was squeaky clean. Warm currents of air moved across my body. It was almost sexual. I closed my eyes and softly hummed. The unit located and sprayed rashes I'd accumulated from my gritty clothes with narrow jets of soothing, medicated pain blocker.
I sprang for a medical checkup. After all I'd been through, I thought it might be a good idea.
A green light announced Medical Exam in Progress. Suddenly I froze as green turned to flashing red and a low alarm sounded.
“What the hell…”
LIFE-THREATENING CONDITION DETECTED. HIGHLY RECOMMEND
ASAP VISIT TO MEDICAL CENTER!
>
I backed away and turned off the system. The whine of the alarm, the flashing red warning, all stopped.
The silence was worse. I felt as though I were lost in a void. Was I about to have a heart attack at twenty seven years old? Or maybe a stroke? How do you fight something that's inside you? Had I picked up a deadly parasite? I threw on my clothes, remembered that I had no shoes, and didn't care. I reached the door, then turned back and grabbed my jacket and the stingler and holster.
I ran down the stairs with my heart pounding and asked the clerk at the desk for directions to the medical center.
I tried to avoid pebbles and twigs as I trotted there in my socks, and ran into the emergency room.
“There's something wrong with me,” I told the dark-haired, stocky nurse seated behind her desk and tried to catch my breath.
“She looked up from the romance novel she'd been reading. “There usually is.” She closed the book with a sigh. “What's the problem?”
“I don't know.”
She lifted her brows.
I explained about the automated medical exam.
“Those units malfunction all the time.” She ran a hand lovingly across the book's cover.
“Can I see a doctor, please?”
“Take a number.”
“What?”
She gestured toward the waiting room.
There were perhaps twenty Terrans and aliens sitting or slumping in straight-backed chairs, or lying on the floor, moaning. The refugees from the holiday spirit, or spirits. But one Terran lay unconscious on the floor.
I went to him and checked his pulse. It was weak and rapid. His skin was gray and his forehead was clammy. I lifted his eyelids. The pupils were dilated. I sat back on my heels. The tag was in shock. He had a paper slip with a number on his chest.
“Christ and Buddha!” I got up and strode back to the desk. “There's a Terran in there who's in shock!”
She slammed down her book. “Does he have a number?”
I leaned my spread hands on her desk. “Look, lady, his number might be up if he isn't given medical attention fast!”
She tilted her head and smirked. “You must be a doctor,” she said and opened the book.
And you must be an asshole! I thought.
I grabbed the book from her hands and strode outside. I heard her chair scrape as she stood up.
“Hey!” she called.
I went out the door and flung the book down the steps. “Go fetch, bitch!” I yelled back, and took a deep breath as I walked down the steps into fresh air and sunshine.
She must've been right about the unit malfunctioning, though. W-CIA's physicians had given me a thorough checkup back on Alpha and an A-OK rating.
I asked a drunken Cleocean if he knew where they sold shoes. He pointed a wavering fin toward a store across the street and took an unsteady step backward. I grabbed his slippery fin as he began to fall and stood him upright.
“We Make 'Em Fit!” the store announced on a sign that dangled above the door.
They did, too. A nice pair of black hiking boots to go with my color-coordinated outfit of a worn blue jacket, an old black turtleneck that hadn't recovered from the swim in salt water and was sagging at the neck, and black ripped pants from my climb down the jetty.
A drunken Shayl with tawny fur and golden wings glided toward me. I drew my stingler and flattened into a recessed doorway, but he continued on, his wings fluttering, and crashed into a swarm of Dineans, who were singing a native ballad from their homeworld. The Dineans took umbrage and attacked the Shayl with claws and their long, sharp proboscises. The Shayl galloped, hissing, in an erratic path down the street, until he crashed into a parked water sprite and slid to the ground like a crumpled dragon.
This town is a nut house! I thought and looked around. Nuts would be good, though. I realized again that I hadn't eaten in over a day and I walked back to the hotel's restaurant.
I was enjoying a fresh meal of mock steak, genetically modified native veggies grown in Earth-Type artificial sunlight, vat-grown sweet potatoes, and beans made from desalinated sea-foam polyps. Dessert was a helping of yapple pudding, and coffee with mother's milk-crème of Tarhanth. What the hell was a Tarhanth? I wondered as I drank it. Well, it tasted good.
Huff came into the restaurant and smiled as he walked to my table. “May I sit here?” he asked and pointed to a chair.
“Sure.”
“You look well, Jules.”
“I feel human again.”
“Is that a good thing?” He sat down.
“It is if you're a human.” I sipped the last of the coffee. Do you know what a Tarhanth is?”
“Oh, yes. A native species of Fartherland. Somewhat like your Earth's Tarantulas, except larger and hairier.”
“Spiders?” I stared at my empty cup. “But…spiders don't give milk.”
“Oh.” He chuckled. “Mother's milk-crème of Tarhanth. They extrude a white liquid from their anal glands for their young to lick. Did you drank it with your coffee?”
“I don't want to talk about it.” I spread a hand across my stomach. “Huff, do you know if there's a star positioning system in town that I can use?”
“An SPS?”
“Yes, Huff, an SPS.”
“No.”
“No, you don't know, or no, there isn't one?”
“No, I don't know if there isn't one.”
“Fine!”
“I'm sorry, Jules. If I knew, I would be smiles to tell you.”
“I know. It's OK.” I got up and patted his shoulder. I went to the counter, paid for my meal, asked the waiter about the SPS, and was told that only the government had those systems. The government. That would be General Ki Rowdinth and his rat pack.
“Huff,” I said on my way out, “if you want a meal, go for it. It's on me. No, wait! It's not actually on me. And I mean ask for it, OK?” Who knows where the hell he'd go looking for it. I nodded to the waiter and gestured toward him.
He glanced at Huff and nodded back. Considering that he was a Cleocean, that couldn't have been easy to do.
I walked down the street feeling lost among the revelers and paused before a closed office with iron gates protecting its plate-glass window, and the androids behind it.
COMPANION DROIDS Inc.
Replace A Loved One
Your Specifications
Grown Right Here on Fartherland
Short Waiting Period
Financing available with good credcount
With a lack of females of all races, except for native Vermakts, and gold miners making creds they never dreamed of, the plant behind the office, the largest building in town, probably did a thriving business.
I leaned against a lamppost with my hands in my pockets and gazed at the finished models and the new blank ones behind the dark glass. I won't go into the ethics of A.I. androids who could respond like humans, but as I studied a blank-faced female model, I thought of Willa and mentally sculpted her features onto it.
The Government on planet Alpha kept a bank of DNA samples from members of all willing races, taken at birth. I could buy an exact replica of Willa, capable of learning and programmed to respond to my instructions, sexually functional and responsive, but not flesh and blood. That was against the law. Whatever materials they used looked so close to real, I'd heard people say that they forget it's a replica. I had the creds for it. But did I have the desire for a replicant?
“How come a great-looking tag like you looks so lonely?” a woman said as she stopped between me and the plate-glass window. She broadened her wide, cherry-red lips into a crooked smile. “How about the real thing?” Her black eyes held the allure of night, set in an olive skin tone with sculptured cheekbones and an aquiline nose.
I stared at her face for a moment, intrigued by her gypsy looks, her tight red dress so amply filled, her perfume that reached out like tendrils to touch desire, then shook my head and turned to go.
She grabbed my arm and pulled me
back to face her. Her tongue caressed her upper lip. “Rejection only makes me more persistent, tag,” she said.
She wasn't beautiful, but she was exotic, the way gypsy woman are said to be, with a promise of wild abandonment and a disdain for rules. She flung back her thick, raven hair dramatically. A few wisps stuck to her moist lips. Her cheeks looked flash-burned with all the blush she wore. Oh, she was good at “gypsy.” A love child with lots of experience. I guessed her to be in her early thirties.
“Sorry, Carmen.” I pulled my arm away. “Persistence only makes me want to reject.”
As I walked toward the hotel, she caught up and strode beside me. “Don't you think we make a handsome couple?” She took my arm again.
“You're wasting your time, lady. There are plenty of Terran tags wandering around with full credcounts.” I walked faster, but she kept up with her high heels clicking on the sidewalk. She would've been tall without them. Now we were at eye level.
I stopped and faced her. “I'm going to my hotel room. And I'm going alone.”
She took my chin in her hand and shook it. “Ah, cutie's in a grumpy mood.”
“What do you want?”
“Just to talk.” She shrugged. “Did I say anything about sex or getting paid?”
“You didn't have to. You're a walking advertisement.”
I started toward the hotel again. She caught up as I entered the lobby.
Huff was eating a meal of something raw and full of eyeballs and bones. His jaw fell open and a piece of food slid out when he saw us. I swear his pupils dilated at the sight of all that red and I wondered if he were picturing Carmen swimming for her life in Fartherland's ocean.
I chuckled and nodded at Huff. He showed teeth in a forced smile.
A Terran tag reading a real paper newspaper looked above it and watched Carmen sway her hips in the tight dress. He winked at me as we headed to the elevator.
Screw off, I thought.
