by D. Tolmach
“Constantine. Humanity is in grave danger.” Now one of the faces before him had stopped morphing. It was an old green-bearded man whose head was made up of a maze of an infinite number of wrinkles and with eyes that burned blackly. Without warning, Kanard was sucked down toward the face into the labyrinth of dry flesh, finding himself at the bottom of a deep canyon. The sky was far above him, and the walls were covered in every symbol mankind had ever created and would ever create. As he walked, the path took him deeper and deeper into darkness, and he felt neither fear nor apprehension. In the distance he could see a light. After what felt like hours, he finally left the maze and found himself at the edge of a giant cactus forest, where a large chigger was having lunch. It turned to Kanard and spoke: “Soon you will be forced to travel farther than any man has ever traveled and spread the Word of Truth. When that time comes, you will know. First you must build your ark.”
The years passed and Kanard dutifully wrote down everything Goldath told him, compiling hundreds and hundreds of pages of what this omniscient, omnipresent being told him to call The Big Holy Book of Absolute Truth. When he wasn’t hunting or working in his garden, he was using spare parts and metal scavenged from a nearby abandoned air base, as well as black-market radioactive waste, to convert his humble yurt into a vehicle to take him into the future.
Finally, the voice awoke him from a deep managa coma late one night.
“You have done well, my son. I am pleased. Your next task is to place the Book in a strong, airtight safe and take it to where the two rivers meet and the spring bubbles with the purest of waters. You will throw it into the spring and await my sign.” And then there was silence.
The event that Kanard interpreted as the sign from Goldath came in a month, when the police knocked on his door to arrest him because for the last five years he had forgotten to pay any property taxes.
The actual sign from Goldath came later that day, when the Emergencies Ministry announced over the radio that nuclear war had begun and everyone was about to die. By that time he was already zipping through the temporalverse, leaving behind three very confused police officers who would spend the very precious last hours of their lives trying to think exactly how to explain to their superiors the yurt just disappeared.
It wasn’t the end of humanity that Kanard had predicted, but history would consider the billions who died in the first few days the lucky ones.
* * *
Magnetta aimed the light on her space suit into the window in the ceiling. This is odd. There was a bed, a desk, a chair, books and papers, dirty clothes, and pieces of sausage all floating around inside. When a bearded face appeared, pressing itself up against the glass with wild eyes, her heart shot into her throat and she involuntarily pushed herself back.
“Guys, there’s somebody in there.”
“C’mon, Maggie,” James’s tinny voice replied through her radio. She could imagine his smug expression and dismissive smirk. Fuck yourself, Jamie.
“I’m serious. He scared the shit out of me. Get the ship over here and pull us in.”
Osco
Osco was proud of his mug shot.
It brought out a menacing charm from somewhere deep inside that he didn’t even know he was capable of, and his mischievous half grin was shown on all the holonews shows under the headline Enemy of the Dynasty. The face of the new threat.
Throughout the galaxy, he was known as the hot convict.
Having missed out on the girl he loved and learning that the government he had believed in was lying about everything, he replaced the Dynastic flag and portrait of the king in his room with posters featuring inspirational quotes by Aris set against sunsets and mountains. She gave him a new way to fill the emptiness in his life: religion. And money. For each recruit, he earned a bonus from the Church, plus a percent of the sales each recruit made. Soon he was giving motivational speeches at universities and corporate retreats throughout the Dynasty.
Osco used his earnings from the Church to set up a criminal network. Masking his resentment at Ion and Vildana’s happiness, he channeled his anger into gathering more and more power.
There had been public outcry upon his arrest. Sure, he and his gang had trafficked in drugs, strong-armed businesses into selling Dark Fluid, and were probably responsible for the disappearances of several high-profile royalist public figures, but they also changed the lightbulbs in the corridors and stairwells of apartment buildings, painted over graffiti, and were probably responsible for the disappearances of several high-profile—and increasingly unpopular—royalist public figures.
In short, Osco Silvos had turned himself into a folk hero.
He had taken on a roguish swagger, which was enhanced by his limp, and started wearing silk scarves and an anachronistic cap tilted to the side. His new band of comrades from the stairwell took over large swaths of Port City, neighborhood by neighborhood, running protection rackets and pushing out rival criminal groups. After spending a few days in prison, he was released when one morning an officer from the Department of Public Order was found crucified in Central Square, wearing only a note pinned to his chest: We got three more of ’em. Let Osco go.
The King
Admiral Coldpack, the last man of any importance with a sense of honor in the Dynasty’s armed forces, was marching regally down the hall of the Royal Palace past civil servants rushing this way and that clutching documents and potted plants and avoiding eye contact. The palace was in orbit over Port City, a small and gaudy moon shining night and day, and the atmosphere was one of rats abandoning a sinking ship.
“Your Highness?”
“Yes, come in, Admiral.” The king was swinging in a hammock between a birch and a pine in the Royal Arboretum, drinking tea. “How are things on the front?”
“You know how wars go, Your Highness. Some days are better than others.”
“Of course, of course. Where are my manners? Have a seat, please. Pour yourself some tea.”
The admiral sat in a cast-iron chair next to a small glass-topped table with a teapot and poured himself a cup. “I feel it’s my duty to ask . . . um, has His Highness considered possibly moving his palace to a more secure location?”
“Pffft, whatever for?”
“Well, as I’m sure you know, things have been getting somewhat rough down below. Some of your subjects seem to have gotten it in their minds that it’s time to have a bit of a revolution.”
“Nonsense, you know as well as I do there’s always some busybody talking of revolution. If someone’s being troublesome, the Department of Public Order will arrest them and sort it all out. You know how they like sticking things into orifices!”
“Um, yes, sir. The thing is, it would seem that there is no Department of Public Order.”
“What are you talking about? Of course there is.”
“I’m sorry, but there is not. They have all, to a man, defected to something called the Church of the One Undeniable and Completely Accurate Truth.” He handed the king a flyer with happy young people hang gliding through Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. GOLDATH HAS A HIGHER MEANING FOR YOUR LIFE.
“What does that even mean? Who is Goldath?”
“I don’t know. Your Majesty, I’m not sure how to say this, but they’ve hung the mayor.”
“Arnaldo? That’s preposterous! Why would anyone do such a thing?”
“I’m afraid they tried him in a revolutionary court and he was found guilty. Now, regarding the army . . .”
“Yes?” The king’s eyes pleaded for good news.
“Entire regiments have resorted to slaughtering their officers.”
“I see.” He looked down at his tea. “And the navy?”
“There are a handful of ships that haven’t mutinied. But the remaining officers in power are on eggshells, and discipline isn’t what it used to be. I really must insist that you allow the armada to escort you to a more secure area.”
“Admiral, I thank you for your concern, but I know my subjects. They
are loyal, cultured people. They need but to listen to reason, get their patriotic blood flowing again.”
Dilaura
The laboratory was full of bustling doctors in lab coats and safety glasses doing important-looking things, one wall lined with small glass pods holding fetuses in a glowing greenish suspension.
“This,” Aris said theatrically, which was pretty much how she said everything, “is our clone program.”
Osco hadn’t known what to expect when Aris said she wanted to meet with him, but it wasn’t this.
“The Dynasty is crumbling and no one but us has the resources and will to lead mankind into the future. If we don’t seize power before it’s too late, humanity will devolve into a new dark age, becoming vulnerable to hostile aliens and greedy industrialists. It’s either us or chaos. We will build a new galactic union, and we need people we can trust. So we are creating them. These clones will integrate with the people, become our eyes and ears. Honey, come over here. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
When she took off her protective goggles, Osco was struck, as most men were, by Dilaura Centaurus’s emerald eyes.
“This is my daughter, Dilaura. This is Osco. I want the two of you to get to know each other. The new order needs a strong leader, an ambitious and moral family man with a loving wife who can inspire his people. Osco Silvos, can you be that man?”
Man from the Past
Their first item on the agenda was to get Kanard drunk.
James’s husband, Carlyle, was an expert in ancient Human cultures and spoke several Old Earth languages. More importantly, he knew all the bouncers at all the hottest clubs on Titan and could get them past face control.
This future place ain’t so bad. Kanard sat at a booth with Carlyle and Magnetta while James was at the bar, competing with about fifty other people to catch the attention of an indifferent bartender. The place was packed and smoky, with a minimalist industrial interior lit up by strobe lights and lasers and a DJ playing in a cage on the other side of the room.
“You are an amazing man, Constantine Kanard. A man from the past. We never thought such a thing would be possible.” Carlyle had a stilted but not unpleasant accent. “That book you wrote? Magnetta found it. I translated it into Human. It made a lot of money at auction. So, drinks tonight are on us!” He focused his piercing, crystalline eyes on their mysterious guest. “It was a very strange book.”
Kanard was in a dreamlike state and starting to think he must still be at home, piled under blankets.
Magnetta whispered in Carlyle’s ear.
“She wants to know what you think of the future so far.”
Kanard thought for a moment. “It’s loud.”
Carlyle laughed and translated for Magnetta, and she laughed. Finally, James made his way to the table with a bottle of absinthe and four shot glasses. James said something and Carlyle and Magnetta laughed again. He placed a glass in front of each of them and poured out green shots.
“Are you ready for this?” Carlyle looked at him with an evil glint in his eyes and a shark’s grin.
Kanard nodded and James lit their drinks on fire with a lighter. They covered the flames with their palms and sniffed the vapors, and Carlyle lifted his glass. “To the past,” he said, repeating himself in Human before they tapped their glasses together and drank.
Then things got fuzzy.
James and Magnetta, who it turned out were brother and sister, tried to talk to Kanard at the same time, and Carlyle did his best to keep up translating, but after they had done three more shots, Kanard found it impossible to focus on such a convoluted way to communicate.
Eventually, Magnetta grabbed his hand and dragged him to the dance floor. Then there was a long gap in his memory, but at some point Magnetta was lying on the table and he was doing tequila shots from her navel. He stumbled to the bathroom several times, where he would have to lean against the wall to steady himself while he pissed. Nightclub men’s rooms, he noted, were still as disgusting as they had ever been.
He had vague recollections of getting to at least second base with Magnetta somewhere in a dark and secluded part of the club, but he would never know for sure.
* * *
Something was very wrong.
As the world came into focus, Kanard found that his teeth didn’t fit right in his mouth and he couldn’t breathe through his nose. He struggled to sit up, discovering an intense dull pain in his chest. Each movement revealed a new source of pain. He was on a cot in a small, cold, bare room. The bottom half of the walls were green and the top half white, the paint peeling, revealing damp concrete. He shifted his legs to the edge and found that his knees felt as though they had been smashed with a baseball bat. Looking down at himself, he noticed his clothes were covered in blood. As slowly as possible, he stood shakily and made his way to the iron door, but there was no doorknob, so he pounded on it and tried to yell something, his voice cracking and too hoarse to make much of a sound. Overwhelmed with pain and anger, he went back to the cot and, as he was about to sit back down, the door opened. A small mustachioed man wearing a uniform entered, and Kanard, his brain still fermenting in absinthe and tequila, bum-rushed him, pushing him up against the wall. The man let out a cry, and in moments three or four more men were in the room and had him on the ground, punching and kicking him before tearing off his shirt and handcuffing him to a heater. They looked at him for a moment, wiping their bloodied hands, and the one in the fanciest uniform started berating him in an unintelligible language.
When he had come to, he had completely forgotten that he was no longer on Earth and assumed the tax police had finally arrested him, but when he heard the man speak, everything came flooding back. Despite having been a hermit in the wilderness for over ten years, he had never felt as lonely as he did at that moment.
* * *
“Fucking pigs.” Carlyle, Magnetta, and James met him after he was released from custody. “Do you remember anything that happened last night?”
“Not really.” Despite his pain, he could swear he felt the ghost of Magnetta’s lips on his.
“You were sitting in the booth, and you closed your eyes, you know, you were very tired, and security doesn’t like it when people sleep at the club, so they came and grabbed you. You pulled yourself away, so they dragged you out and beat you before they called the police, who came and took you.”
He had been in a goddamn outer-space drunk tank.
“You look terrible, man. We need to get you cleaned up, but it’s not safe for you here anymore. We bribed them to let you out, but word will get around that there is a Human who doesn’t speak Human without any documents. You will have to leave the solar system. I know of a woman who will be very happy to see you.”
That sounded promising.
* * *
Kanard’s bed in the wagon of the transport vessel that would take him to Port City was at the very end of a long corridor right next to the toilet. Each section of the hall had a set of narrow metal bunk beds parallel along the wall to the left with a window between them, and to the right there were four perpendicular beds with a small table in the middle in front of another window. There were no doors, and these sections stretched on for as far as he could see.
His traveling companions were hairless humanoids, their skin multiple shades of violet, with long slender tails, and they had been drinking tea or beer and playing cards before he arrived. He couldn’t tell if they stared at him because he was the only Human or because his face had been beaten to a bloody pulp and his breath still reeked of stale alcohol.
Magnetta, James, and Carlyle had packed him a lunch of hard-boiled eggs, salami, and sliced bread and seen him off, waving through the window as the ship slowly rose into the sky. He put the food on the table and sat back on the bed, hitting his head on the top bunk. The female sitting across from him—nursing a purplish baby in one hand, six playing cards in the other, and drinking a cup of tea with her tail—stifled a laugh, covering her smile with h
er cards. She said something, breaking the abrupt silence that had taken over the economy-class wagon when he entered.
That’s when Kanard used the most important phrase Carlyle taught him:
“I don’t speak Human.”
This amused his fellow travelers. A Human that doesn’t speak Human?
* * *
Don’t have sex with non-Humans, as it is a sin worthy of death.
Goldath had been pretty adamant about that in The Big Holy Book of Absolute Truth. It made sense back on Earth, but now Kanard was thrusting in and out of Martina from behind in the bathroom while everyone slept. Before he knew it, her tail was in his ass and he came. She turned around, grabbed his forearm, and shoved it halfway up her vagina, leaning against the wall with her feet on the sink as he fisted her for about twenty minutes before shuddering violently with a cry and collapsing on top of him. It may have been a mortal sin, but it was one heck of a workout.
Then there was a pounding at the door.
The conductor, a middle-aged Human with bleach-blond hair and long roots, scolded them, like she always did, as they left the bathroom, and Kanard could even make out about half of what she said. Martina had been teaching him Human, and he was learning a lot of the alien language they spoke from the other passengers. Her husband had been crushed in a mining accident, and now that her people had been freed from serfdom, she was left to fend for herself and two children and was traveling to her new job in the mines.
The months passed and Kanard spent his time playing cards and watching the stars go by. D-22 was at first just another a small speck in the black sky, but day by day it got bigger and bigger. The seventh planet orbiting it was the capital of something called the Galactic Dynasty, and his final destination. His mysterious benefactor, the woman Carlyle had told him about, had wired him money for his ticket and living expenses for his journey. Kanard bought a communicator from a little old lady pushing a cart down the aisle, selling meat pies and sauerkraut and cheap electronics.
