by Mack Maloney
"Well, hello," she said, her fingers suddenly twisting her long blond hair.
"Well, hello…" he replied. "I'm sorry if I startled you."
"I thought I was the one who startled you" she said sweetly.
He was wearing a very cool outfit. All black with the double-X logo of Sorcerer's Dick on his chest. They were Ashley's favorite band. Cool boots. Cool haircut. It had a military look to it And so did the guy, in a way.
He spoke again. He had a slight accent. "I'm having trouble with my vehicle."
"Well, I'm not a mechanic," she replied. "Unless you think I look like one?"
"Not in the least," he said with a smile. Great smile.
She began babbling: "Is your car broken down? Do you know what's wrong with it? A flat tire? The battery?"
The guy just shrugged.
"I'm not sure," he said. "I don't know much about how they work."
He was a real hunk, she decided. Movie star handsome. She told herself to stop playing with her hair.
"Where is it?" she asked.
He turned and pointed farther down the road. A white Firebird was pulled off onto the shoulder, nearly hidden by cornstalks.
She just shrugged and said: "I don't know much about cars, either. But I'll take a look at it."
They walked down the road in silence. Ashley began twisting her hair again. When they reached the car, the guy got inside and twisted the key, but nothing happened. The engine sputtered and then just died away.
Ashley looked at the guy.
"Did you run out of gas?" she asked him.
He looked back at her, pure incomprehension on his face.
"Did I run out of what?" he asked.
Hunter pushed the car the last mile into town. Ashley steered— or she tried to. It was hard to do with the motor not running.
He discovered that a gas station was a place where they put a hose in a hole at the back of your car and pumped that hole full of liquid fuel and then, apparently, sent you on your way.
They also had food at the gas station. Concoctions the likes of which Hunter had never seen. While Ashley was doing the pumping, he looked through the window at one of the station's replication devices. But it seemed to be merely heating the food as opposed to creating it.
His tank full, Ashley signaled that he should follow her into the station's store. Hunter froze for a moment though. He'd been on the road for nearly a day now; He, Tomm and Zarex had decided to split up early that morning and voted that Hunter take the car. Their plan was to keep a low profile and do a discrete recon of the planet. Hunter had avoided interacting with anyone until now. Though he'd ditched his cape and helmet, he was still wearing his combat suit with the double X across the chest. This didn't seem so out of place here, though. At least not so far.
He finally did step into the store. His eyes were nearly blinded by the onslaught of bright colors. The place was stuffed with items of food and drink, and everything seemed packaged in the loudest, more garish hues possible. Hunter took down one of the packages hanging from a thin line that stretched across the top of the store. He opened it to find two long, yellowish confections inside. Spongy texture. Extremely sweet, creamlike material in the middle. He took a bite.
It was delicious!
Ashley was standing next to a large counter, smiling weirdly at him. Very strange music was blaring from somewhere, and she was tapping her two-tone shoe to its beat. There was a large guy behind the counter. He had dirty hands and a dirty face. He was leering at Ashley out of the corner of his eye.
"Well?" Ashley said to Hunter. "Time to pay…"
Pay?
"For what?" he asked her.
"For what you just ate — and for the gas."
Hunter was confused. This was food and fuel.
"You mean you have to pay for this stuff?" he asked.
Ashley's home looked unlike anything Hunter had ever seen. Most dwellings in the Galaxy, both within the Fourth Empire and out, were based on a simple block design, with few windows, and constructed entirely of random reconfigured atoms put together by electron torches.
But this dwelling was different. It was irregular, its roof was angled with a peak. A long funnel made of red stone shot up through the roof; wisps of smoke were rising out of it. The house was surrounded by a white fence, made of short, pointed wooden spikes that would have a hard time keeping out even the weakest intruder. There were trees planted between the front of this gate and the dwellings' main entrance, and a short, green plant growth covered the ground in between the trees.
The dwelling itself had many, many windows. Each one had a small box hanging beneath it filled with multicolored vegetation. There were houses of nearly the exact same design on either side of this one. In fact, the entire road on both sides was covered with them. Some were hard to see because of the trees, though.
Ashley never once hesitated. She opened the front door with a key and invited him in.
"My parents are away," she said as a means of explanation.
Hunter stepped through the front door. In most places in the Galaxy, the interior of the home was made up of one main room with a few smaller ones around the periphery. In this place though, there were many rooms, all of them relatively the same size.
The room to his right had a table at its center with six wooden chairs around it. There were plates and glasses and cutlery set up, even though there was no meal in sight. She led him to a room at the rear of the dwelling. It was filled with instruments of cooking: pots, more utensils, glass storage bins stuffed with grains and other unidentifiable foods. An assembly of silver pipes made up the unnecessarily elaborate device for transporting water into the house. This room also held a table and chairs and a large white box that seemed cold and was giving off a whirring sound.
She told him to sit at the table, then took off her sweater and put her hair back in a ponytail. She retrieved two glasses from a compartment hanging over the water-retrieval device, then went to the big white box and opened its door. A wisp of cold air filled the room briefly as she took out a large brown glass container and screwed off a cap from its top.
"You're thirsty, I assume?" she asked him.
She poured out an amber liquid without waiting for a reply. He watched with some amazement as the liquid began to bubble and foam over the lip of his glass.
She filled her glass, drained it, filled it again, licked her lips, and looked across the table at him. He was still examining his glass closely; he had not yet attempted to taste it.
'Take a sip," she urged him.
Hunter raised his glass and gave the liquid inside a quick sniff. The aroma came back pungent but not totally alien to him.
He just shrugged. How bad could it be?
With that, he took a healthy drink. An instant later, he was spitting the liquid noisily back into the glass. Ashley laughed so hard, she almost fell off her chair.
Hunter thought he'd been poisoned. The liquid was the worst tasting thing that had ever passed his lips.
"What is this stuff?" he asked.
Ashley poured him another huge glass.
"Man, where are you from?" she said. "It's beer."
They went up the stairs to Ashley's personal room.
The walls were covered with pictures of boys her age posing with musical instruments and sporting paraphernalia.
Ashley sat on the edge of her bed and took off her shoes and socks. "I hated beer the first time I tasted it, too," she said to him. "But you can get used to it after a while, don't you think?"
A device on Ashley's desk began ringing. Ashley picked up the ancient communicator and, retreating to the far corner of the room, began a quick, hushed conversation. Hunter could hear every word. Ashley was telling the person on the other end how she met him, how they got gas, what went on inside the gas station and how he had just spit up beer.
"But he is so not a freakazoid," she whispered. "Wait till you see him."
There was a short silence, then Hun
ter heard Ashley say, "OK, in an hour. And don't be a bitch, promise?"
Then she returned the device to its place and said to him, "Want to go to a party?"
The golf course was two miles east of Ashley's house.
It was getting dark by this time, and the moon and all those stars and the necklace of heavenly bodies began brightening all over the deep blue sky.
Hunter let Ashley drive; he wanted to study the sky through the open sun roof, in faint hope that he might recognize something shining way up there, something that might give him a clue as to where he was.
But no such clue could be found.
They reached the golf course, parked the car, and walked across a huge fairway. Ashley was wearing a short white skirt, a white blouse, and white sneakers. She looked gorgeous. Hunter tried his best to walk quickly beside her, his eyes still gazing at the stars. Ashley was talking to him, explaining that this was where all the kids came to do the party thing and avoid the authorities. They reached a small clump of trees located in the middle of the vast fairway. Other kids were already there. Some had blankets and tents and were obviously planning to stay overnight. Ashley met a guy who sold her six bottles of beer. Then they walked out of the clump of trees, over another fairway, to a nearly perfect circle of short green grass beyond.
Two girls were waiting for them there. Ashley introduced him as her friend. The girls showed Ashley a bottle of clear liquid they had secured. It was called vodka. Ashley explained to Hunter that they liked this location because it was far out on the fairway, and they could see the cops coming from any direction.
Hunter studied the perfectly manicured grass within the circle. There was a tiny, shallow hole in the middle with a flag sticking out of it. He sat down next to the hole and studied the stars further. Ashley conversed with the two other girls. One approached him and asked if he wanted a drink of vodka. Hunter agreed and took a slug from the bottle. From the moment it touched his tongue, he thought he was going to die. It tasted like a combination of liquid fire and bilgewater. Truly awful. Far worse than beer.
"I can't believe anyone would want to drink that stuff," he told the girl with a cough.
She smiled and took a swig herself. "That's what they all say at first," she told him.
At that moment, there came a small racket over his shoulder. Hunter turned to see three guys walking up to the green. They were obviously drunk and belligerent. One went up to Ashley's other friend and began a loud conversation with her about a broken date. The girl was trying to ignore him, but then the guy began screaming so loudly, the other girl started screaming at him to quiet down or the cops might hear him.
"It's good advice," Hunter called over to the bigmouth, not taking his eyes off the stars.
The next thing Hunter knew, the three guys were standing around his head, looking down at him. This was Reggie, Moose, and Weed. Reggie was the one with the big mouth.
"What are you?" he asked Hunter. "A wise guy?"
Hunter thought about that for a moment, then got to his feet and brushed himself off. He was roughly the same size as Reggie, even though the guy was obviously younger than him by at least a dozen years.
Hunter asked him, "Am I a what?"
"A wise guy," Reggie roared back. "An asshole, pal. What's the matter? They don't speak like this wherever you come from?"
Hunter shook his head no. "No, they don't. Can you explain it to me?"
"Explain it to you? You are stupid then."
"I won't be, if you explain it to me."
"Oh, yeah? Well, maybe I don't know either. How can I explain it to you if I don't know either?"
Hunter just shrugged. "Well, then I guess that would make you just as stupid as me."
This confused Reggie. He looked to Moose and Weed; they were no help of course.
Reggie turned back to Hunter. He swigged his beer and switched tactics. "I just bet your car sucks, man."
"It does, when it runs out of gas," Hunter replied.
Reggie went right in his face. 'Wow whad the fook do you mean by that? I already asked you. You being a wise guy? You being a wiseass?"
Hunter just laughed at him. He couldn't help it; it was funny. A 0.1783622-second bolt from his blaster pistol could reduce Reggie to a pile of ash. Half that would render him a babbling idiot for the rest of his life, maybe a slight improvement. But clocking Reggie wouldn't be in line with Hunter's low-key policy. He had to amuse this fellow somehow.
"Maybe it's your car that sucks," he told Reggie with a grin.
Reggie's friends immediately went, "Ooooooo…"
Even the three girls gasped. Obviously, Reggie was sensitive to what people said about his car.
Again, he went nose to nose with Hunter.
"Are you saying my car sucks? Is that what you're saying? Let me tell you something, you freak. My dad and I built that car. Hear me? Me and my dad. We built the engine. We built the frame. We built the chassis. Me and my dad. Get it?"
"You do a lot of stuff with your dad?"
Reggie's neck vein nearly popped. He was so furious he could barely speak.
Moose and the other guy closed in around Hunter. Were they threatening him? He couldn't tell. At this point, one of the girls started crying.
"Well?" Hunter said to the beet-red Reggie.
"Well — the fuck — what?"
"Well, show me your car," Hunter told him. "If it's so fooking special, show it to me."
Reggie hung there, like in suspended animation, for about ten seconds. With one fist cocked, he was using the other to slowly crush his beer can.
"OK, wiseass," he said finally. "I'll show you my fucking car."
With that, Reggie ran off, across the fairway and into the woods from whence he came. Before anyone could say a word, there was a screech and the sound of rubber skidding on mud. Suddenly another roar, this of a car engine. Then from the woods to the south, wheels turning madly, headlights wildly lighting up the night, came Reggie, driving his precious auto at high speed across the formerly pristine fairway.
There now were a few seconds when those standing on the green weren't sure whether Reggie intended to stop or mow them all down. Even Moose and Weed looked like they were ready to bail out should their overly sensitive friend forget they were standing there, close to his intended victims.
But Reggie did stop. He stood on the brakes, and the car fishtailed wildly on the knoll leading up to the green, tearing up huge chunks of dirt and sod in the process.
"Oh God," one of the girls moaned. "The cops will kill us!"
Reggie jumped from the car even before it had stopped moving. He was again right up in Hunter's face.
"There's my car asshole. See it? See it?"
"How can I not see it? It's right there."
"Yeah. Yeah it is… So you like it, you freak?"
Hunter stepped to one side and studied the car. It was very basic. A metal body. Four wheels coated in rubber. Two seats in the front, a smaller single seat in the back.
"It looks like every other car I've ever seen," Hunter replied truthfully.
This was not the answer Reggie was expecting. Moose and Weed threw away their beer cans, ready now to fight. Reggie's face was as red as the finish on his car.
But at that moment, one of the girls — the one with the vodka bottle — laughed out loud. "Like any other car! Man, that's rich!"
No sooner were the words out of her mouth than Reggie spun around and violently slapped her across the face.
Whack!
Hunter's eyes nearly fell out of his head. He couldn't believe what he'd just seen. Reggie had actually hit the girl. Hunter was shocked. Never, ever, from the time he'd woken up on Fools 6 to his travels throughout the Galaxy had he seen a man strike a woman. In his world, such an act was beyond comprehension.
But then, just as quickly, the shock subsided, and anger flooded in. Reggie needed two friends to back him up but had no problem hitting a girl? That was not right. Low-profile or not, Hunter decide
d Reggie needed an education on something.
He reached over, grabbed Reggie by the collar of his football jacket, and spun him around, all in one fluid motion. Reggie tried to say something, but Hunter had his collar twisted so tight under his throat, Reggie could no longer speak. His face was becoming a darker shade of crimson with every moment.
Hunter yanked him even closer, so that Reggie's inflamed ear was now up against Hunter's lips.
"Now, Reggie, it's time for me to show you my car." Hunter told him.
He dropped Reggie to the putting green, then took the Twenty 'n Six box out of his pocket. He pushed the button; there was a small puff of green mist and a flash. And suddenly, his flying machine was there.
Moose threw up. All over the front of his football jacket, his pants, and his new sneakers. Weed was paralyzed with fear. The girls were, too.
Hunter retrieved Reggie from the seat of his pants and dragged him up the access ladder to the cockpit. "Here's my car, Reggie. See it? See it?"
Reggie tried to mumble something but found it impossible.
"Suddenly not much to say, Reggie?" Hunter taunted him.
Reggie was legless. All he could do was point at the suddenly materialized aircraft and babble.
"I think it's time you and I went for a little ride, Reggie."
With that, Hunter dropped him into the rear of the cockpit, then climbed in himself.
Hunter closed the canopy, lifted the wheels, then set his velocity handle on less than 1 percent of his basically unlimited power. The flying machine disappeared in a flash… and was back a thousandth of a second later. In that time, however, Hunter had completed a dozen high-speed circuits of the tiny planet, pole to pole, much of the flight made inverted.
To those still standing on the golf green, it seemed as if the aircraft had been gone for just the blink of an eye, no more. But Reggie's condition testified that it had not been a pleasant interlude. His face was plastered against the side of the bubble canopy, held in place there by his own gurgling saliva. Hunter popped the bubble top, reached in back and lifted Reggie up by his jacket collar, and dropped him to the ground below.
