by D. Tolmach
* * *
Osco awoke on his back on the floor of the landing, the sun blasting into his eyes through the window and baking his face. He stood, his head still groggy and seeing stars, but more at peace than he had ever felt. Where can I find some more of that? But his new friends were gone, having left behind only their empty plastic bottle. He shook it and peered inside, finding just a couple of burned pieces at the bottom that crumbled into ash when he poured them into his hand. There was something he was supposed to do today, but he couldn’t remember what until he found the flyer in his pocket.
* * *
“What happened to you? You look terrible.” Vildana was sincerely concerned. “You’re covered in sunflower-seed shells and cigarette butts.”
Ion grabbed a fistful of snow and started wiping down Osco’s back.
“I’m fine. I, uh, slept in the stairwell last night.” He looked oddly proud to be able to say that.
“The stairwell? Are you crazy?”
“I was looking for you.”
Vildana’s heart lodged in her throat. After running away, she had gone up the stairs to the next floor and then, freaking out from fear, took the elevator back down to Ion’s floor and ended up spending the night with him. Nothing had happened—they stayed up ’til dawn talking—but she wasn’t about to try to explain that to Osco.
Hanging out with Ion, her butterfly of a heart found it had grown weary waiting for Osco to decide what he wanted, and she realized the only reason she had been chasing after him this long was because he was the only boy who had paid any attention to her. Now that she had somebody to compare him to, all of the little quirks that she had found quaint or was able to ignore made him seem like an emotionally needy narcissist with unsophisticated politics.
Ion flicked off a couple rogue hulls and checked Osco’s suit one last time. “Good as new, mostly. Come on, the show’s about to start! You don’t want to miss the intro.”
A booming bass and drum filled the auditorium as the audience took to their seats. As guests of Ion’s, Vildana and Osco were in the center front row. When the emcee came out, pumping his hands in the air, Ion rose to his feet, clapping and cheering enthusiastically, along with most of the hall. After a few minutes, the music faded out and everyone sat back down. The emcee had a broad smile and wore sunglasses, a white suit with thick gold chains around his neck, and a headset microphone. He waited a beat in the near silence before beginning, speaking softly at first.
“Ladies and gentlemen, what you are going to learn here is going to change your life. I know times are hard. Breadlines are long. There doesn’t seem to be any hope. A lot of our brothers and sisters out there have given up. But you’re here today because, no matter how bleak things may seem, you have not given up.” The crowd cheered again. “We are going to introduce you to some folks that have found their inner drive, taken their fate into their own hands to ensure that they don’t end up out there, just another face in the gray huddling masses asking for handouts. Stuck in a nine-to-five? It doesn’t have to be like that. Laid off of work? Turn that into an opportunity. The key to success is here with us, and all you need is the will to rope in all the unimaginable wealth just on the other side of the sea of self-doubt.” More cheering at this mixed metaphor. He went on like this for a while, and Vildana found her mind wandering as Osco soaked it all in. She was snapped out of her daydreams when she heard “Ion Armonde!” and everyone hollered and clapped again. The part she missed was “And now I want to introduce you to my friend, the highest-paid promoter of Dark Fluid this month. . . .”
Ion had stood up and was holding his hands to the ceiling, accepting the applause as he jogged to the stage. Osco was on his feet. Overwhelmed, she started clapping as well.
“Just over a month ago, I came back from the war a broken man. I was living on the street because I would have these violent nightmares and breakdowns and I didn’t want my pops to see me like that. That’s when I met Aris Centaurus. She saw something inside me, a spark I thought I had already lost. It was the will to make my life better, to break out from the mediocrity I was born into. I know that each and every one of you has that same spark, or else you wouldn’t be here.”
* * *
“I think everybody has this animal lust for violence inside them. It’s what used to keep us alive back on Earth when we were hunting woolly mammoths and running from saber-toothed tigers, right? Like, ever just hope something bad happens just so you have an excuse to kick somebody’s ass or kill them? Everyone has. But for some people it’s what drives them, like they thrive on violence, whether it’s a bar fight or the battlefield. And this ain’t just Humans. Junkers are just like us, and I’d bet my last credit all sapients are the same way.”
They were having brunch at a long table after the conference, eating and listening attentively to Ion, star of the day’s show. Aris, an elegant matriarchal woman of indeterminable age with long braided hair and intense green eyes, had asked him what he had learned from serving in the Dynastic Army.
“So a government has its own interests, right, like securing resources, making its oligarchs richer, and it takes these people with violent tendencies, puts them in a uniform, gives them a gun, and says ‘you go kill for us and you can be as vicious as you want.’ They want that type of person brainwashed and out there killing Junkers instead of at home causing trouble. Then they get the rest of the people stirred up about Human colonists being repressed by aliens on XR, but really there’s a lot of titanium on that rock they can use to build more and more weapon systems and space mansions. Plus, taking it would be the first step in conquering the whole Junker quadrant.”
“But Humans were attacked by Junkers! And they live like second-class citizens on XR, not allowed to speak Human. We can’t just sit by and let that happen.” Osco found this kind of talk absurd, if not traitorous.
“Hey, I’m not defending the Junkers. Like I said, they have their own extremists and their own violent minority. And their government has its own interests, which are directly opposed to those of the Dynasty. But it is their planet. Everyone agreed when it was time to draw up the galactic borders. Humans were sent there in the hopes that they would outbreed the Junkers and purely through numbers tip the balance of power back in our favor. The Junkers know that, and that’s why they have anti-Human laws. Hell, it’s not like aliens in the Dynasty are treated much better.”
* * *
It was the worst day of Osco’s life.
“Ion Armonde, do you take this beautiful, sacred, innocent young flower to be your one true love under the all-seeing gaze of Goldath?” Aris Centaurus was dressed in scarlet robes, standing behind an intricate podium in front of an audience of around a thousand people. The mood was solemn and fervent with the almost overwhelming scent of incense and recently hung golden icons. The Church of the One Undeniable and Completely Accurate Truth had purchased the Port City Convention Center from the bankrupt city.
“I do.”
“Vildana Dianae, do you offer your sacred virginity to this mighty knight, to protect you and guide you for the rest of your physical life until you are called by Goldath to join His celestial harem?”
“I do.” She smiled brightly at the crowd, showing off her newly straightened teeth, which Ion had saved up to fix, along with her eyesight.
“I now pronounce you man and wife. Ladies and gentlemen, please bow your heads in prayer and stay seated for the ceremonial deflowering.” She led the couple to the bed behind the pulpit as the stage they were on began rotating a hundred and eighty degrees, the gaudy backdrop becoming a flimsy separation between the newlyweds and the audience. There were a few minutes of silence before Aris could be heard saying, “Put your hand here, like this,” followed by heavy breathing, and, after not too long, low moaning, which culminated in a girlish cry of ouch! There were more guttural sounds, male and female, getting louder and louder and proclamations of Oh, Goldath! as the bedsprings creaked and the headboard pounded rhythmically
against the wall. This went on for a while, giving Osco enough time to escape off to the bathroom and smoke the black tar he had scored from the vets in his stairwell to numb the pain of emptiness he felt in his soul.
When he returned, the bride and groom had gotten into some light S&M (Go ahead, pinch her nipples! Now pinch mine!).
Then the stage rotated back around, and Aris stood between Ion and Vildana, holding their hands up like two victorious prizefighters. The crowd cheered. All three were covered in sweat, clothes disheveled, and Ion grasped a white cloth with a large spot of fresh blood, which he waved proudly. The volume of the cheers and applause doubled.
“Now I’d like to invite the bridesmaids to the stage.”
About twenty girls of various shapes, sizes, and species dressed in flowery dresses gathered at one end. Aris took the cloth from Ion and gave it to Vildana, who turned around dramatically, still smiling. As the crowd counted to three, she tossed it high into the air over her shoulder, and the bridesmaids pushed and punched each other in hopes to catch it. The winner would take it home and sleep with it under her pillow, praying that Goldath would bless her with a husband as handsome and successful as Ion.
Henri
Even while swinging around a gaggle of screaming four-year-olds one at a time by their arms, Henri Livshits had the aura of a man you wouldn’t want to fuck with. Toddlers, as parenthood had taught him, have an insatiable thirst for being swung around in circles by their arms, and the kids at Seraphim’s birthday party had found themselves a sucker who would do it for hours without complaining that his shoulders hurt or his head was spinning. After robbing banks and seducing people, swinging toddlers around by their arms was Henri’s favorite pastime. It was about the only time you could find him without a cigar in his mouth or a pistol on his belt.
Auras of danger, of course, go right over the heads of four-year-olds.
The banquet in his father-in-law’s tavern was piled with more food than they would eat and enough torn-up wrapping paper to swim in.
“You Humans are so adorable when you’re young.”
“UNCLE KRAE!” Abruptly as a school of hungry fish, the children darted in unison to surround the latest visitor, gliding their hands over his hairless, marbled mauve skin and pulling on his tail. He was carrying a stuffed horse that was almost as large as he was and an armada of colorful balloons.
“Happy birthday, Seraphim!” She squealed as he picked her up and spun her around before carrying her back to her father. “It’s a shame how ugly you get when you grow up.” After setting the girl back down to fight with her friends over the new present, he embraced Henri. “Congratulations, brother.”
“Thanks, Krae.” The greasy-haired and leather-clad leaders of all the revolutionary parties in the Dynasty had come to pay their respects to Henri, the young patriarch of the oldest and most powerful rebel group. In all, that little girl’s birthday party was worth just over half a billion Dynastic credits in bounty for her guests.
She was blissfully unaware of the nature of the secondary meeting that would accompany her celebration, a meeting that was to shape the future of the entire galaxy.
“Let’s eat!”
The long table was piled with deep salad bowls of diced vegetables and mayonnaise, beets and herring and mayonnaise, beets and mayonnaise, and baked chicken with potatoes and mayonnaise, all towered over by bottles of cognac, vodka, and sweet wine. A fiddler played lively songs from Old Earth, a backdrop to Seraphim’s wrinkled grandmothers and innumerable great-aunts, wrapped tightly in colorful kerchiefs and chiding anyone who ate less than their own weight in food. In fifteen minutes waiters brought each guest a bowl of a pale noodle soup served with a dollop of mayonnaise.
“Friends, comrades, thank you for celebrating with us this wonderful day.” Henri stood, holding up a glass. His gaze flickered momentarily to the door as a guard entered. “To my beautiful and talented Seraphim and her bright and happy future in a free galaxy!” Everyone at the table entangled their arms, reaching their glasses over one another and clinking them together. After they sat back down, the guard approached Henri and whispered something in his ear before rushing back off. A few seconds passed before the front door opened again.
“Aris! Fashionably late, as always.”
“I’m sorry, darling. You know how it is these days: work, work, work.” She was carrying an intricately wrapped present and a bouquet of roses, which she took to Serephim. “Happy birthday, honey!”
“Daddy, look, flowers!”
“Yes, dear, Aris is always full of surprises. Now say thank you.”
* * *
“Four-year-olds can teach you a lot about politics.” The tavern’s back room was full of smoke, and the various revolutionary leaders sat around a table over a large map of the Milky Way, listening to Henri. Aris was the only woman. “I see Seraphim fighting over a toy with a cousin and it’s exactly the same struggle taking place between the Dynasty and the Junkers. They’re just children fighting over planets. ‘It’s mine because I want it, and if I’m stronger than you I’ll take it. If I can’t take it, I’ll sit here and cry about it.’ Conceptions of right or wrong or just or unjust are irrelevant, other than to cynically manipulate their populations into supporting more and more wars. But now we have the chance to create something better.” He spun around and pulled down the curtain behind him, revealing a large white flag with a black star in the center, along with a display case of T-shirts, coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets, and calendars, all with the same star and the letters CFSS. “The Coalition of Free Star Systems. No more will our destinies be at the whim of a senile old king. The CFSS will be a diverse military and trade alliance of autonomous star systems. We’ll make peace with the Junkers and build a democratic galaxy-wide government.”
The men all looked at each other, uncertain, but Aris stood up with a slow clap.
“Brilliant. I must say, Henri, I’m impressed. You have the soul of a poet and the mind of a businessman.” Nobody there fully trusted Aris. To them she was a cult leader, but the lion’s share of cops and soldiers were defecting to her church, so her power was growing daily and her support would be necessary for any revolution.
“Are you sure about the color scheme?” The leader of the Intergalactic Workers’ Party spoke up.
“What?”
“I mean, it’s kind of bleak. If we want to instill hope in the people, shouldn’t we have something, I don’t know, brighter?”
“You want pastel rainbows and ponies?”
“No, I, uh . . . Oh, forget it.”
“Any more suggestions? Good. I’ve drawn up a constitution. Please take a look at it, and if you have no further questions, go ahead and sign your name at the bottom.”
The Prophet
Constantine Kanard’s feelings about the future were mostly ambivalence bordering on disappointment. Sure, it had flying cars and interstellar travel, and he had to admit it was certainly better than dying slowly of radiation sickness in a nuclear holocaust, which was what the day had planned for him before he managed to summon up the courage to try out his time machine, but the people of the far future were still the same old fuckwads they had always been. And most depressingly—and unsurprisingly—of all, the Earth was gone, and when he reached his temporal destination, Kanard found himself among its remnants in what had long since become the most unfashionable zip code in the galaxy. There was no place to get a decent latte in ten light-years, so it was pretty much ignored by everyone but a group of professional scavengers quite surprised to come across a perfectly preserved yurt floating around in space with a live man inside who spoke only an Ancient Earth dialect. Yurts, they knew, were the houses of Turkic peoples of the Russian steppe, where Kanard had purchased a hectare of land to get as far away from everyone as he could and start building a device that would take him even farther away from everyone.
* * *
Life on the steppe was full of pleasant existential loneliness, mare’s milk, and
horsemeat sausage. Winters were long and spring came late, bringing with it mud, mosquitoes, and winds that carried hints of the flowers that had already bloomed in Moscow and a sense of inevitable doom.
The powers of Europe had grown bored of the peace that had reigned since the last time they had decided to slaughter each other senselessly, and the primal bloodlust inherent in humanity was bubbling back up to the surface. His friends had said he was paranoid, which he was, and every conversation he had would quickly come back around to how the end of the world was imminent. He found that the easiest way to avoid being called names and laughed at was to disappear into the grassy flatlands and low hills of the southern Urals.
The locals, an Asiatic people that descended from nomadic equestrians, had taught him how, in autumn, when it was the ripest, he could boil the wild cannabis that grew around his yurt with unpasteurized milk and create a vile-smelling greenish concoction they called managa. It induced hallucinations that could last for days, and it was while under its spell that the physics and mechanics of time travel occurred to him. Slaving away with a panicked sense of purpose, he filled several notebooks full of equations and blueprints before collapsing into bed from exhaustion.
That was when he first heard the voice of Goldath.
He was in the fetal position under many layers of blankets, wearing only socks—the key to having a good trip, he found, was to wear a pair of comfortable socks—and listening to the rain pelt the roof while he watched the light show in his head. Multicolored bubbles rushed toward him from the white center of the Universe, and faces appeared and morphed into angels and demons.
“Constantine.”
Kanard threw off his covers and was jolted momentarily back into reality. The yurt was dark, lit only by a dim gaslight. Nothing seemed amiss and he was still alone. After an indeterminable amount of time trying to differentiate any alien noises from the sound of rain, he crawled back under the covers.
