Odd Jobs

by Jason A Beauchemin

  I kept my revolver unholstered, clutched against my chest, ready to swing outward if shit decided to go sideways. Sweat poured from my hand. The weapon was slick with it. It felt like it was one moment of carelessness away from slipping from my grasp. I gripped it tight enough to cramp the muscles in my hand.

  The dope sick made everything worse. My eyelids felt like they each weighed twenty pounds. A deep throbbing ache pulsed within every muscle of my body, hard enough to make me wince in pain and so deep it felt like it reached down into my bones. My stomach was churning. I kept burping up splashes of bile. There was nothing I could do to alleviate the dope sick. I tried deep breathing to steady my quaking body but that did no good. The air was thick and warm. It reeked of the breath and sweat of many creatures from numerous species. Plumes of smoke from the variety of drugs being burned here constantly wafted over me. All I could do was endure and push onward. The only possible relief was somewhere up ahead.

  The corridor ended at an archway. I emerged into an enormous room. The claustrophobic atmosphere was not eased by the drastic increase in space. If anything, the suffocating aura of the place became even more oppressive. The mob increased in size in proportion to the available space. The stinking fumes the mob excreted thickened as well. The noxious vapors caressed my face like a putrid invisible cloud. Music that sounded like a computer with Tourette syndrome boomed out of speakers in the ceiling, giving the impression that the darkness above my head was trying to beat me into the floor. The noise from the mob was even worse. The clamor of a thousand shady business deals being made all at once became a thunderous wordless murmur that came at me from all sides. Every few minutes, the shouts or screams or roars of business gone wrong would cut through the murmur from somewhere off in the mob. More than occasionally, these exclamations would be accompanied by the sound of fighting. Sometimes that fighting took the form of weapons fire. The mob ignored the disturbances. Minding your own business was one of the keys to survival at Evelin’s Café.

  A large circular bar dominated the center of the room. A few weak lights shown down upon a trio of hammangs tending bar within the ring. The three balls of sentient snot rode inside multi-limbed exoskeletons that looked like giant metallic spiders, dispensing all manner of drugs and toxins to the faceless figures clustered around the bar. I did not head over there, however. I owed money to the house. They would not serve me until I paid my debt.

  I angled to the right of the bar, cutting a zigzagging path through the mob. Spotlights meandered across the masses seemingly at random, bringing creatures into sharp focus for an instant before the light continued on and the creatures were plunged back into obscurity. I saw humans, lots and lots of humans, and also yandocs and grindles and sagisi, all moving stealthily through the crowd, all gripping poorly-concealed weapons. The lights swept across tables in the center of the floor and booths along the walls, all occupied with creatures conducting business best left to the dark. No one acknowledged the spotlights. It was well known that there were blue workers behind those lights... security personnel armed with energy weapons, ready to blast someone in half if shit got out of control... and no one wanted to give them an excuse to take a closer look. Once in a while, the sounds of fighting would go on for an inordinate amount of time. Then the spotlights would zero in, the bystanders in the area would scatter, and either the fighting would stop or some creatures would die. It was all business as usual at Evelin’s Café.

  I arrived at the far end of the room without incident and stepped through another archway. I was in a lobby area that was the doorstep of two of Evelin’s three main revenue sources... the third being the bar area I had just passed through. The establishment’s pink marketplace was down a passage to my left and the permanent silver marketplace was through an arch to my right. I had business to conduct in both of them but silver had to come first.

  I stepped under the arch and into a room that was like the evil twin of the bar area. It was small, sparsely-populated, quiet, and light enough so I could actually see farther than two inches in front of my face. Still, in spite of the improvement in surroundings, my anxiety-level jacked up several notches. Death was just as much a possibility here as it had been in the bar area. The only difference was that the death here was much more visible. The room was in the shape of an octagon. A hammang blue worker occupied each of the eight corners, operating exoskeletons that were basically giant energy rifles with legs. They were boogers perched atop deadly steel and energy. Two of them pivoted to bear on me the instant I stepped into the room. I tucked my revolver back into its holster and withdrew my hand from my coat. I did not want to give the blue workers an excuse to light me up.

  The blue workers were there to guard seven booths that were the only other furnishings in the room. There was one along each wall, except for the one I had come through, of course. A hammang silver worker occupied each booth. These hammangs were not employees of Evelin’s Café, but they made enough money to afford to pay rent. The death-dealing bodyguards were part of the executive treatment they paid for.

  There were customers at some of the booths. A group of human pirates were sitting across from a hammang known for dealing nuclear fission-based projectiles. They were normally utilized for ship-to-ship combat but this dealer had developed a reputation for modifying its merchandise with shielding that allowed them to penetrate most planetary atmospheres without burning up. A dirty and disheveled grindle was at the booth directly to my right, hunched down because he was too big to sit. The cybernetically-enhanced glob of goo in the booth sold heavy mining equipment... sometimes stolen, sometimes obtained through legitimate channels. At another booth, a couple of humans whose ragged and mismatched clothes suggested that they were scavengers of some kind were in a heated discussion with a ball of snot known as a major wholesaler of military-grade small arms. I could not imagine why scavengers would need military-grade weaponry... or how they would have been able to afford it. They had probably stumbled upon a cache somewhere and were looking to unload it.

  I did not give any of the other customers more than a cursory glance. My need greatly exceeded my curiosity. The blob I had come here to see was alone in a booth across the room from the door. My mouth was actually salivating now that I was this close... I mean close to my drug not close to the hammang... because they were a fucking disgusting species. I marched across the room and sat down in the booth without waiting for an invitation.

  This hammang was hideous creature, like all of its race. Its membrane was yellowish and semitransparent. I could see bubbles and chunks of its last meal lazily floating about within the thick pus inside it. The membrane looked like it was sweating in places. Yellowish pus oozed through unseen pores and trickled down its sides, enhancing its phlegmy appearance. Its mushy body was encased inside a black metal shell so that only its top third was exposed. It looked like a giant rotten boiled egg in a high-tech egg cup. Various knobs, speakers, doors, and lights were smattered across the surface of the shell.

  “Hello Mister Steven T. Jenkins,” I said. “Are you open for business today?”

  The hammang race was weird about names. They picked them up from every race they came in contact with, without discrimination. Since humans were the dominant species in the galaxy, a lot of hammangs chose traditionally human names. I did not know if they genuinely liked the names or if the practice was some obscure form of hammang sarcasm. To make matters even more annoying, regardless of what name they chose, they only responded to the whole name. Take Mister Steven T. Jenkins for example... if I addressed it as Steve or Mr. Jenkins or Steve-o-rino or The Jenkmeister or anything other than its long-ass formal moniker, the oversensitive ball of snot would interpret it as disrespect.

  “I don’t provide merchandise on credit, Jobs,” Mister Steven T. Jenkins said. Its voice came out of a circular speaker on its shell. It was the voice of a computer, without tone or emotion of any kind. Hammangs could purchase countless voice programs for their speakers. I did not know
if there was a calculated purpose behind Mister Steven T. Jenkins’s choice of this generic program or if the fetid lump of slime was just too cheap to splurge on a more colorful one.

  “I know you don’t extend credit. You tell me every time I see you,” I said.

  “I want to make sure you don’t forget. You have a reputation,” it said.

  “I need a fix.”

  “I can see that. You look like shit.”

  I did not know how it could see that. I had never learned where hammangs kept their eyeballs. There was no telling if their ocular sensors were organic parts of their pus-filled bodies or were cybernetic components that they rigged onto their exoskeletons. Some human scientist somewhere along the line had probably managed to dissect one or two of them, but I had not seen the report so the hammang-eyeball conundrum was a mystery to me.

  “What do you want?” Mister Steven T. Jenkins said.

  “One hundred milliliters of your finest synthetic opioid, please,” I said.

  “You know that I prefer to deal in bulk, Jobs,” it said. The computerized voice was as monotone as ever but I was certain that, if I could have heard annoyance in it at that moment, I would have.

  “Yes, Mister Steven T. Jenkins, I do know that.” I did not have the hammang’s verbal handicap. I injected quite a bit of annoyance into my voice. We did this same song and dance every fucking time I made a purchase. “I also know that you’d cheerfully sell a nanogram of petrified grindle shit so long as the buyer wasn’t asking for credit.”

  “That’s not a polite thing to say, Jobs. I would think that someone in your condition would be at pains to avoid insulting the one creature that could help him.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.” I was not sorry but, at that moment, my drugs mattered more than my pride. The dope sick felt like it was done simply fucking with me and was now engaged in a full-fledged attempt to take control of my body. My eyelids kept closing on their own. I had to keep jerking them open to keep from passing out and slamming my face into the table. Random muscles all over my body were spasming suddenly and painfully. It felt like a hundred invisible hands were reaching inside me, grabbing clumps of muscle, and clenching into fists. My stomach felt like countless miniature explosives were going off in rapid succession inside it. Rancid gas gurgled out of me from both ends and I feared that liquid would be following soon.

  “I don’t believe for a second that you’re actually sorry, Jobs. I’ve met you before,” Mister Steven T. Jenkins said. “But I appreciate the lie. So... What can I do for you?”

  I wanted to scream that I had already told it what I wanted, followed up by an unflattering description of its entire race. I wanted to reach across the table and strangle the smugness out of the stinking ball of mucus. It did not matter that I had no idea where in the holy silver fuck its throat might have been... I was ready to give it the old college try. I did not do either of these things, however. Neither would have helped me get my drugs.

  “Synthetic opioids. One hundred milliliters,” I said. I put the money on the table in front of me.

  Two small doors opened in Mister Steven T. Jenkins’s shell. A thin tube extended from each door and moved toward me across the table. There was a low slurping sound and the money vanished up one tube. A second later, a vial of clear liquid tumbled out of the other one.

  I snatched up the vial and pulled my hypo-injector out of my coat.

  “I’m gonna shoot up here,” I said.

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” Mister Steven T. Jenkins said. Its tubes retracted back into its shell.

  “I don’t give a fuck about what you would rather.” I filled the hypo-injector with ten milliliters of liquid from the vial.

  “That wasn’t polite.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about polite either.”

  “There’s the Jobs I know.”

  I ignored Mister Steven T. Jenkins’s latest quip. It did not matter. Nothing mattered except the salvation I held in my hand.

  I pressed the business-end of the hypo-injector against my neck and pulled the trigger.

  It was like magic... only better. A soothing warmth washed through my entire body. My stomach stopped throwing its temper tantrum and went to sleep. The spasms in my muscles relaxed all at once. The invisible hands stopped clenching and began massaging, caressing me from the inside out. My flesh stopped crawling and lay still. A mellow itch materialized on a few spots on my skin, but it was not annoying... it was a comforting reminder that the drugs were working the way they should have. My body felt weightless and infused with energy at the same time.

  The physical aspect was heaven in a vial, but it was only half of the effect. An unbreakable calm descended over my mind. All my fear and anxiety was buried beneath it. I was not worried about the death that was so close in this place. I paid no mind to the money I owed nor the creatures that wanted to collect it. I was not even concerned with how I would score more dope once the ninety milliliters I had remaining ran out. I was the center of the universe and I existed completely in the now... well, almost... there was one thing that I still cared about that was neither me nor the now: the job I had contracted to do. Innocent, little Penny McKellen was still out there. It was time to stop fucking around and go find her tiny red-headed ass.

  Chapter 6

  The pink marketplace at Evelin’s Café was a large area that was split between dark and light. If Penny McKellen had been sold into sex-slavery, Evelin’s pink administrators would know about it. The dark dominated most of the area. Shadowy figures moved about in the gloom. I could only see silhouettes in the dark, like in the bar area, except when the figures were hit by one of the few spotlights projected by the blue workers in their perches above the masses. Then I would catch glimpses of the writhing clusterfuck of creatures in the place... mostly human but with respectable doses of kabebes, grindles, yandocs, and sagisi. The cautious chaos of the bar area was not mirrored here. The patrons of the pink marketplace were in no way reluctant to shoulder one another aside as they competed for vantage points of the merchandise that was on display.

  The light here was greater than in the bar area but it was still the minority. Aside from the few roving security spotlights, the bulk of it came from the plethora of raised platforms that were speckled throughout the room. There were at least a hundred of these stages, each with its own pink worker. They were like well-lit pornographic islands in an ocean of shadow and lust.

  I took a route across the center of the room. The mobs of silhouettes were concentrated in groups around the stages. The spaces in between them formed a massive spiderweb of interconnected pathways. I moved easily, not having to dodge and sidle like in the bar. Every so often, I would have to squeeze past a shadow or two, but no altercations arose from this. I made my way across the room quickly.

  Pink work went on all around me. The stages served two purposes: they were stripteases for customers who only wanted to watch for the price of a tip and they were auction blocks serving those who possessed both the cash and the inclination to take one of the workers into the back rooms for a more interactive activity. The ambient light from the stages illuminated the first couple rows of their respective audiences. This place, more than anywhere else in the spaceport, was strictly segregated by race. If there was a human on stage then there were only humans surrounding it. The same was true for the other races. Cross-species fucking was known to happen but it was very, very uncommon. At Evelin’s Café, that particular perversion required both good connections and a special request... and it was so prohibitively expensive that only the wealthiest of deviants could afford to indulge.

  Most of the stages were dedicated to humans. They were everywhere, in every corner of the room. The humans on stage, of both genders, of all ages and complexions and body types, danced and posed and gyrated and inserted all manner of foreign objects into every conceivable orifice. Members of the audience periodically contacted management and a pink worker would exit their respective stage to b
e immediately replaced by another of the same race. I tried to get a look at every one but there were just too many. I was not going to find innocent, little Penny McKellen that way.

  Stages dedicated to the other races were interspersed here and there among the human stages. I saw a grindle wearing a negligee big enough to cover a small automobile lumbering in circles, swinging its hips and blowing kisses to its audience. I assumed it was a female but I could not tell for certain... nor could I identify the genders in the audience... but they seemed to be able to figure it out and that was all that mattered here. I passed a stage that was slightly lower than those surrounding it. A kabebe was leaving the stage and another was taking its place. Three kabebes in the audience were splitting off and heading for the back. I wondered how they were going to manage to screw without murdering each other with their quills, but then I remembered that I did not care about kabebe-fucking and I put the thought out of my head.

  I was about two-thirds of the way across the room when a sagisi-dedicated stage caught my eye. A male was chained to a post on stage. A horde of female sagisi surrounded the stage, shouting and jostling each other and waving money above their hideous insectoid heads. The male was obviously terrified... which was not surprising considering female sagisi killed their mates. A hammang in a contraption that looked like a metallic human skeleton stood on stage beside the terrified male. It pointed at members of the audience in no discernable order and trumpeted sagisi noise from the speaker mounted on the exoskeleton’s chest. I was not close enough for the translator implanted in my head to pick up the words but I did not need to know what was being said to tell that the male was being auctioned off. Some pink workers did their job of their own volition. Some were forced into it against their will. Usually it was not so easy to identify one kind or the other.