by D. Tolmach
“Is this seat taken?”
“No, I was just . . .” She had been putting her tablet in her purse before looking up at the most classically ideally handsome man she had ever seen. He was wearing just the right amount of leather and had just the right amount of stubble. “. . . leaving.”
“Aww, that’s too bad. I was just about to buy a fifth of scotch, and I was hoping not to have to drink it alone.” He threw a one-thousand-credit bill down on the bar for the bartender and pointed to the most expensive bottle.
Not wanting to seem like a slut, Karlatte waited a whole nanosecond. “Why don’t we take that up to my room?”
* * *
“Goldath fucking damn it. . . .” She was running down the hall to the lift, wearing nothing but a robe embroidered with the Mugger’s Point Hotel logo and carrying a large travel bag, hungover and still drunk. She pounded impatiently on the Up button and chewed on her thumbnail, waiting for the elevator to arrive. After a short eternity, a bell rang. The doors opened and she got in the empty box and pressed the Top-Floor button simultaneously with the completely useless Close-Door button. After another eternity, they slowly crept together and she started moving up.
When she had woken up, Pete (or was it Paul? Phil? She could have sworn it started with P, which reminded her, Goldath, I really have to fucking pee) was gone, having left only a note: Thanks for last night, babe ;) XOXO.
She rolled her eyes thinking about him—Emojis and x’s and o’s? You really know how to bag yourself a winner, Karlatte—and then quickly put him out of her mind. It wasn’t her first regrettable drunken one-night stand, and she knew herself well enough to know it wouldn’t be the last.
Eventually the doors opened, and she bolted down the hall to the gate.
“Kar-late Silvos? You are late.”
Her annoyance that the official mispronounced her first name was overshadowed by her distaste upon hearing her real last name. She would’ve changed it legally, but that process made getting an interdimensional visa seem like a walk in the park. Plus, it was a public process and would alert her father, president of the Galactic Union of Autonomous Planets, to the fact that she was still alive.
Muggers, for all their affected strictness and bureaucracy, were actually usually very kind at heart and forgiving, knowing that they themselves were not at all punctual and the system they worked under was a farce. They took all their rules and regulations far less seriously than they pretended to.
“That’s Kar-LA-tay.” The key, she found, to getting people to do what you want is to make them feel guilty, even about very small things.
“I’m sorry Kar-LA-tay. Ticket, residency permit, passport, and visa, please.”
She rummaged around in her purse without finding the documents, and her heart began to beat even more strongly. Did they fall out of my bag? Did that bastard Piers steal them? Oh, there they were at the very bottom, underneath an almost empty liter of scotch.
“Ma’am, you can’t . . .”
She cut the customs official off by holding up her index finger and downed the rest of the bottle, threw it in the garbage, and handed her the papers with a smile.
* * *
Karlatte woke up in a barrel full of slime. She stood and took in a large gulp of air in the bathroom of her new hotel room, her naked body dripping a clear snotlike liquid, reaching to where she instinctively knew the towel would be.
Reason number two traveling to another dimension is absolutely the worst thing you could possibly ever submit yourself to: after checking your luggage in a safe at the Point, your body is dissolved in a large yellow tub and siphoned through a mysterious portal, the physics of which not even the Muggers understand completely. Different dimensions have different temporal characteristics, so when you wake up on the other side, before your body and brain can adjust, time seems to be moving either in slow motion or fast-forward.
She turned the shower on, and the water droplets were ejected from the showerhead agonizingly slowly, millimeter by millimeter, each individual one distinguished clearly as she waited with hungry eyes for the hot spray to hit her face. Minutes went by as they fell leisurely above her. Minutes in her last dimension, anyway. Her head still pounded, and soon she found herself retching several times, her vomit projecting down into the drain at its own sluggish pace. Then she felt a strong rumbling building up in her intestines, and her bowels let loose a long brown stream that took what seemed to be twenty minutes to reach the floor. This better fucking be worth it, Wolfram.
The room was as she requested it: a desk with a tablet, a pack of Mercury Reds and a lighter, a change of clothes, a press pass, and a carafe of water with a glass. There were also tickets to the breakfast buffet, the thought of which would have made her throw up if she hadn’t just emptied her stomach. She went straight for the water and tipped the carafe to her lips, again waiting forever for the water to fall.
As a child, she was taught that bad people ended up having their flesh eaten away for eternity in the chemical pools of Andal’aang. She was no longer a Truther, but if there was an Andal’aang, it couldn’t be worse than this.
After another eternity, she got dressed and grabbed the cigarettes.
This hotel was identical to the one she had left. In fact, it was the same hotel taking up the same space in all the various different dimensions Mugger’s Point could take you to, so she knew every little crack in the wallpaper. The doors were voice-activated and, when locked, only the guest’s voice or an employee of the hotel could open them. In the elevator the temporal lag loosened up a bit and things started moving a little more quickly, but she knew it would last until at least that night and there would be residual flashbacks over the next few days in which time would slow or even stop completely. The lobby of the Mugger’s Point Hotel was enormous, with artwork from all over the Multiverse and an awe-inspiring mural on the ceiling dedicated to the many Muggers who risked and lost their lives creating a stable portal to alien dimensions. Once you’ve walked through it a hundred times, you don’t even notice it, and Karlatte clenched her cigarette pack desperately, willing herself to go as fast as possible to the entrance. At the end of the lobby, there was the opposite of a coat check. Instead of leaving your coat and taking a number, you left your name and room number and took a Mugger suit, which was a bulky uniform made out of long white mugrat hair with a matching helmet with goggles. If there were no Mugger’s gas eruptions that day, you could skip the helmet and smoke outside.
Unless you left your lighter in your hotel room.
So she waited for someone she could bum a light off, looking up at the very queer Mugger sky. Several asteroids floated against a violet background, and the sun glinted whitely in the distance, snow just hanging in the air, sparkling. After a while, a kindly-looking elderly Human with a long beard came through the door and lit up a fragrant brown cigarillo.
“Eeexxccccuuuuussssse mmmeeee, cccaaaaaaannn Iiiiiii gggeeeeeetttt aaaaa llliiiiiightttt?”
Her voice was a deep bass and, as annoying as it was to be in this state, it was pretty funny. The man couldn’t tell the difference though and lit her cigarette.
“Ooofff Cccooourrrssse,” he answered, and she couldn’t help but laugh, which was also an absurdly low sound. He must think I’m tripping out on Mugger’s moonshine. He tried talking to her, but she explained that she was in no condition to carry on a conversation.
One good thing about living in slow motion is that a single smoke lasts a really long time.
Murder
“Hey, you there, mate, in your skivvies, you hear it, don’t you?”
After going through the door, Chirp found himself standing on a stage within the middle of a full musical ensemble. A scruffy man with an accordion seemed to be addressing him.
“Uh, sure, I hear it.”
“See, he hears it!”
A disembodied metallic voice came out of nowhere. “Sorry, Tombstone, I’m not hearing any feedback.”
“That’s b
ecause there is no fucking feedback. He’s coked out of his fucking mind again.” Chirp turned to see the most beautiful alien he had ever seen, and she seemed angry. She was a Lathe, the sexiest of the aliens, and her skin was a mixture of vibrant purple and silver hues that stood out even under the harsh stage lighting; she had the longest, most erotic prehensile tail.
“Shut the fuck up, Liona,” he shot back at her. “You worry about hitting your high notes and let me worry about the sound.”
“Why don’t you take it from the top again? I’ve turned down the gain. If there’s feedback, you’re the only one that hears it, so, um, just try to ignore it,” reasoned the voice.
“Fine,” the man said loudly into the microphone, then muttered, “Deaf motherfuckers.” The drummer banged his sticks together four times, and the band started playing again.
We got married in a fever
Hotter than a pyrocumulus cloud
We’ve been talking ’bout Saturn
Ever since the fire went out. . . .
It was an old Earth traditional duet sung by a man threatening to run off to another planet to sleep around and his wife, who dares him to do it. Chirp had never heard this kind of music before and found it hard to stand still or control his body at all. Before he knew it, he had grabbed the tambourine from the pretty alien lady and was dancing across the stage, more or less keeping rhythm. The musicians were unsure at first what to do and faltered, but Tombstone, laughing and without missing a beat, shouted, “Holy shit, that guy is amazing!” By the second chorus, Chirp was singing along. “I’m going to Saturn. . . .”
* * *
“So what do you say, mate? You up for it?” They were sitting in a booth in the Mugger’s Ballroom after the soundcheck, drinking beers.
“You can’t be serious, Tombstone. You want this half-naked half-wit—sorry, no offense—spazzing out on stage while we play?” Liona seemed very stressed out.
“Did you see him? They’ll love him. He’s—”
“I know, amazing.” She stood up and shoved her way past him out of the booth.
“I don’t think she likes me very much.”
“No, no, it’s me she doesn’t like. Don’t worry about her, you know how aliens are. Nice tats, by the way.”
Chirp was enjoying the attention. He didn’t remember the last time he had friends. Well, he tried not to remember. Friendships tended to not end up very well for him. Tombstone and his band seemed nice, except for Liona, but he was sure he could win her over. Oh Goldath, that tail!
* * *
I must be getting old. It was just past 10 a.m. and Karlatte was exhausted. Her vagina was sore and her head refused to stop pulsating painfully. It seemed like it wasn’t that long ago when she could stay up all night, doing Goldath knows what with Goldath knows whom, and still get in a productive workday, but those times were apparently behind her. The concert was that evening, and she still didn’t have any questions prepared. If she fucked this up and missed her chance, the band was leaving the following morning and she could kiss her book good-bye. Her choices were either score some speed and spend the day preparing and hoping she didn’t crash before the show started or get some sleep and wing the fucking interview, just make it a conversation and let it go where it goes.
Her body made the decision a lot easier by collapsing in the lobby. Nice old Beardface helped her up.
“Shhhooouuullllld IIII ccccaaaalll aaa dddoooccctttooorrr?”
“Nnnoooo, cccaaannn yooou hhheeelllppp mmeeee gggeeettt tttooooo mmmyyy rrrooooooommm?”
* * *
In her dreams she was being chased by something menacing yet indefinable down the endless halls of the hotel. All she knew was that it had something sharp, claws or a dagger, and wanted to kill her. Muggers stared at her with their black eyes, but no one would stop and help. She finally found a safe place somewhere in a dark void and was just catching her breath when she felt a jolting cramp, followed by another, her body beginning to rip apart as if there was something inside her trying to get out. For a moment she was gripped by fear, thinking she had gotten pregnant, but then she was filled with relief, realizing that she was probably just dying a very painful death. Her cells seemed to have declared war on one another. She woke up in a cold sweat to the sound of her alarm clock, which had been going off for two hours. As she slammed her hand down on the snooze button, she realized that the temporal lag seemed to have worn off. At least something was going right.
* * *
Since joining the Tombstone Wolfram Sextet—indeed turning it into a sextet, which by its very nature is sexier than a quintet—Liona had played the unofficial (and unpaid!) roles of tour manager, agent, and babysitter to five immature, self-entitled drunks, not to mention how she had saved them from certain death at the hands of the Galactic Navy, and they still treated her like a lowly backup singer. If it weren’t for her, they would have never gotten the Mugger’s Point gig, by far the hippest and most prestigious club in the Union; the guy that organized shows there was an old friend of her family. She had even contacted the Laniakea Music Review to set up an interview. It was a couple of hours before the concert now and the journalist hadn’t shown up yet, which would have made her furious before, but she no longer gave a fuck about anything.
* * *
It didn’t take Chirp long to make the complete transformation into a rock star. Before he knew it, he was backstage with the guys and a bunch of hot Mugger groupies, when there was a knock on the door. You know how sometimes you see someone you haven’t seen in a while in a completely unexpected place and don’t recognize them right away? It took Chirp a moment to realize who was standing at the door with a kilo of coke and his arm around a Mugger stripper.
“Father Kanard?” It had to be him, the long white beard and kind eyes, only instead of a black dress with an icon and funny hat he was wearing a leather vest, black T-shirt with a big skull, and leather pants with a studded belt.
“Chirp! Glad to see you up. How was your nap?”
“Uhhh, good I guess. What are you . . .”
“Ah ah ah, no time for questions.” He handed the kilo to the Mugger woman, who promptly started carving up lines with a mirror on the coffee table. “Armida, this is Chirp. Chirp, this is my wife, Armida.” Like all Muggers, she was covered in short white fur with gray stripes.
“Hi, Chirp.” She winked at him as she moved the powder into a straight line with a razor blade.
“You’re married? To an alien?”
“Now Chirp, don’t tell me you’re a xenophobe! Apologize to Armida. We prefer the term sapient. It is much nicer than alien.”
“Sorry, Armida.”
“Ain’t no thing.” She winked at him again.
“It’s just that aren’t you a priest? Truthers can’t marry ali . . . sapients.”
“Well, yes, I was a priest, but you know now I’m not so much religious anymore. I’m more spiritual, like if there is a Goldath, does He really judge us and want us to go around killing each other? Wouldn’t He want us to, like, be who we are? Love who we want to love?”
“Blow?” Armida held the mirror under Chirp’s face and handed him a rolled up five hundred Mugger credit bill.
“Uh, sure.”
After that, things got a little weird.
“What in Goldath’s name is going on here?”
Chirp looked up from the mirror, eyes wild, feeling the acidic drip of cocaine travel down the back of his throat.
“Oh, hello, Father Gerrard!” Kanard’s enthusiasm was served with a large dollop of regret.
“Father Kanard, who are these people? What are you wearing?”
“This is Tombstone and, uh, most of his sextet. You know Chirp, of course.”
“What has gotten into you? Why aren’t you in the temple? What are you doing here?”
“It’s the damnedest thing. There’s an underground gas spring in the valley where we put the church. It erupts rather unexpectedly, and when it does, as you have notic
ed, that Mugger’s gas puts you right to sleep. It happened to me during my first sermon. My congregation saved me. The two of you are lucky we found you before you froze to death. I decided it was safer to stay here, and the Muggers were nice enough to give me a job booking shows for their Ballroom. I must admit, I was very surprised to see you, my son. I wasn’t expecting the Church to send anyone for another six months.”
Chirp was about to ask about Bertha, but Gerrard interrupted him, his voice both matter of fact and confused. “We couldn’t get in touch with you, and the Ministry of Dogma has instituted some changes in doctrine we need to inform you about.”
“What kind of changes?”
“Can we talk alone?”
* * *
“That man, Chirp, was kicked out of university after being caught in a carnal relationship with an alien.” Even though they were alone in Kanard’s office, Gerrard whispered the last word and smiled as if this was particularly funny. “He’s a xenophile.”
“I see.”
“But his father is some bigwig officer in the Ministry of Benevolence, so instead of sending him off to a reeducation camp, they sent him here to see if it’s possible to live on this rock. He’s been here three years, and they figure if a retarded pervert can survive, anyone can. Soon they’re going to start building condos, amusement parks, malls, the works. It’s going to be paradise.”
Kanard sighed. “What about the Muggers?”
“What about them? They’ll be the ones doing the building. Oh, right, that’s another thing. The Church has banned all aliens from salvation, so if you converted any of those things, you’ll have to tell them it’s not going to work out. I’d let them down easily, as they seem rather violent.”
* * *
As usual, Karlatte was running late. She was supposed to meet with the band backstage before the show, but by the time she got there they were already well into their first song. She watched the entire show next to the drummer in between the stage and the green room, not about to let them get past her. For some reason they had a large, mostly naked man dancing around the stage with a tambourine. She made a mental note to ask about him. As the last chord faded out, the musicians left the stage, practically stampeding over Karlatte.
