by Scott Rhine
Max tilted his head for a better angle. “You’re favoring your right side. Take off your left boot, and let me take a look.”
As he slid off the hard, conical boot, Reuben winced. Though these aliens didn’t have hooves, the two toes qualified them as cloven-footed and unclean under church dictates. The furred toes felt soft as Max ran his fingers over the pads and between. Reuben tensed during the exam.
Max tsked. “You have a blister. No running for a week. No hard shoes. I’ll dig some salve out of my stash. Use it three times a day. At cards, offer sympathy to Jubalasch. The rest of the crew is liable to be pretty hard on him for a recent mistake. You might get some information or some more of your money back.” He sprayed anesthetic on the area and tossed the empty can in the trash.
Squinting his eyes, Reuben said, “Why are you being so nice?”
“I’m your doctor and friend. Laming you doesn’t do anyone any good. We’ll find some other way to build your legs during that time.”
Reuben blew out in frustration as Max rummaged through the medicine bag. “Let’s try this another way. Why are you such a hard ass the rest of the time?”
“Life doesn’t give do-overs. I have a few short weeks to prepare you for your first mission when we stop at Jotunheim station.”
“I’ve been to space stations before.”
Max raised his voice in English. “You won’t be going. You’re the hostage. If they let you escape, there’s no way for them to hold me to my contract. That means while I buy supplies, you’ll be here with a mob of outlaw predators who like to chase their food down and feel the heart explode in their mouth. Teaching you to outrun and outfox them is the surest way I can keep you alive until I return. I could be in stasis right now. I’m choosing to help you.”
Reuben stared at the floor for a few moments. “I’m sorry. I’ve been treating you like the teachers at the orphanage. I’ll try to pay better attention.”
Reuben’s dejected tone made Max feel like a bully. His head was pounding again. He was on edge, almost like when he had been using drugs. Withdrawal from Gina? The ache in his neck confirmed the cause. He forced himself to take deep breaths. “It’s not your fault. The captain is toying with me. After we find his brother, I think Zrulkesh wants to hunt me. He’s using this time to learn everything he can about his new prey.”
Reuben left his shoes on the floor when he departed. “It’s okay. I know you’d trade places with me if you could.”
****
Max tossed and turned all night. He had perhaps two hours of uninterrupted rest. When he returned from his cold shower, the bed was made, his bag was returned to the closet, and the Goat’s shoes were in the trash. Even the dirt from the shoes had been swept from the carpet. Somehow he had a butler.
Over breakfast, Reuben bragged about how grateful the copilot had been during the card game.
Max munched on his usual toast. “What kind of mammal escaped? I get the feeling that the captain wanted the hunt for himself.”
Reuben leaned closer. “Some sort of mimic. They’re notoriously difficult to track, but they’re supposedly quite tasty. When you ruined the normal bonus, a massage with Echo, Jubalasch helped himself to the next best thing. He set the animal loose in the desert region instead of the jungle, which is completely sealed.”
That explained why the captain was angry at Echo … and why the gym bag that night had been heavier than normal.
Max took a mug of water and a variety of food scraps back to his room, placed them on the floor in front of the closet, and snuck out. When he returned from teaching meditation, the plate had been cleaned and stuck in the garbage. The empty cup was on his nightstand in the same position it had occupied the night before.
He laughed. To better hide, whenever Max left, the creature was restoring everything about the room to how it had been that first night. “I won’t tell anyone,” he announced to the room. “I’ll do anything I can to help you keep your freedom.”
Nothing poked out a face. “That’s okay. We’ll meet when you can trust me. Until then, I’ll continue to leave you scraps. I’ll visit Hans this afternoon to see what you need.” Silence. “Right. Since you’re not going to introduce yourself, I’ll have to pick you a proper butler’s name. I’ll call you Jeeves.”
Knowing he had saved something from the captain made the fourth week in space tolerable. He traded Hans for fruit that the creature would enjoy. Max even caught a glimpse of another mimic in the corner of a cage in the stevedore’s room. “They look like piles of leaves or dirty laundry.” The dark eyes were tiny, and they peeked out through wrinkled lids.
“Those are just the babies,” Hans explained. “If they latch onto a spot, the young adults can change colors and smells to blend in. If the Saurians didn’t keep them running, no one could find one of the little guys. I hear that the first three expeditions to their home planet didn’t even know these mammals existed.”
“How big do they get?” asked Max. The largest he could discern was half the size of his pillow.
“I don’t know. The Saurians eat these guys faster than I go through caramel-coated popcorn. I only get a week’s supply at a time. The captain has the only key to the stasis vault.”
Chapter 11 – Bored to the Extreme
Max declined the next dinner invitations with the captain despite his growing desire to see Gina. Instead, he watched the Saurian crew work out with machetes and wrestle. He told Reuben, “They’re practicing to take down the accountant and anyone he’s hired to protect him.”
“Can we do something other than guided imagery today?” the kid asked.
For an entire hour, Reuben tried to boost Max’s IQ to solve a simple number puzzle, but failed. In English, he speculated, “Either I can only do it on women, or my gift doesn’t work with nulls.”
“Perhaps it only works on Goats or to enhance an existing gift. I’m not very good with numbers,” Max admitted. “Too many variables for now. Have you felt smarter when you’re clustered at the card table with the crew?”
Reuben shrugged. “I’m getting better, but it’s more luck and reading people than raw intelligence.”
“Push the envelope. Try to tell what the other players have and how they’ll react by their nonverbal cues.” In Banker, Max announced, “We can skip the shower today.”
“Oh, Jubalasch wanted me to pass along a message.” Reuben picked up the equipment bag. “The captain says you’re flushing in your bathroom toilet too often. Once a day should be enough.”
“Excuse me?”
Reuben held up a hand in protest. “His words, not mine. The guy is a cheap bastard and cranky to boot.”
“I don’t flush … Jeeves.” Max palmed his forehead. “That explains why I never found any scat in the trashcan. He’s learned to flush the evidence. I’ve heard of cats doing that with training, but never from watching a person do it.”
“Huh?”
“Step into my office.” Max closed the stateroom door behind his apprentice. “I’m going to tell you a secret in case something happens to me on Jotunheim station.” He then explained his suspicions about the escaped mimic hiding in his room.
“Not only is this invisible creature potty trained, but he cleans your room too?”
“It’s all part of effective hiding. Have you ever seen a trapdoor spider or other camouflage-based creature at work?”
“Why would he jump in my gym bag? Wouldn’t he try to get back to all his little mimic friends?”
Max shrugged. “Maybe he thought you were Hans. All Goats probably look alike when you’re disguised as a pile of laundry.”
“You need to find a way to visit that woman again,” Reuben insisted. “You’re starting to act weird.”
“Believe me, I’m trying, but I need leverage. The captain is trying to break her will. She’s safe until we’re out of subspace, but then he’ll get ugly.”
Reuben smiled. “The crew is throwing a big party that afternoon, celebrating the r
eturn of a true sun. I hear there’ll be a little drinking. I could arrange a distraction where the captain may need your first aid skills. That could give you something to bargain with.” The Goat opened the door to the cramped toilet. “Excuse me, but all this talk about flushing has reminded me that I need to—whoa!” He jumped back.
When Max didn’t react, Reuben explained, “Your girlfriend is in the john. She says she appreciates your efforts.”
“Ask her if getting stuck in that form is my fault. Oh, is the ship still registered in her name?”
“She’s gone now. Creepy. I’m going to use the group toilet down the hall.”
Even Reuben sees her. Why can’t I?
Max didn’t come out of his room for the next day. As he feigned sleep the next morning, he saw one of the spare blankets on the shelf quiver. “Sorry, Jeeves. I know you need to use the facilities, too. Thoughtless of me to wallow for so long. I’ll pop out and fetch us some breakfast.” Max made one concession to depression and refused to shave, growing a beard in protest.
****
The night of the real-space party when they emerged into the Jotunheim star system, the loud music made Max’s headache throb more. When someone pounded frantically on his door, he covered his head more tightly with the pillow. “Go away.”
“Boss, we need you!” Reuben called.
Growling, Max stomped to the door and threw it open. “What?”
“I may have gone a little too far.”
The sounds Max had mistaken for frazz trumpet and bass drum turned out to be sliding and breaking furniture. He grabbed his medical bag and his Union jacket to cover his leisure pants and t-shirt. “Whatever it is, we can patch it up.” He mentally reviewed the extensive medical supplies stacked in his pod as part of their cover.
They ran out to the common area. Just as the pair arrived in the room, the biggest miner smashed the copilot over a bench. In Saurian, Max snapped, “Enough. He yields.”
His clutchmates held the menacing Bortral back while Max examined the whimpering copilot. “Jubalasch, which foot am I touching?”
“Neither.” Urine flowed into a puddle on the floor, another bad sign.
Max glanced at Hans. “Call the captain.” To Reuben, he said, “Get me seatbelts, ratchet straps, or anything else you can find to cinch him into place on this bench. You two, keep his head and hips from moving.”
He administered a pain blocker and strapped gauze pads on the bleeding facial injuries. The copilot wailed as he set the nose and tried to arch his neck to avoid further pain. “I told you to frilling hold him!”
“Lousy cheat, got what he deserved,” Bortral muttered.
The captain strode up behind the clump of onlookers and slapped the offender on the nose with the flat of his ceremonial blade. “You’re pulling double shifts until Jubalasch recovers.”
“That’s not fair. He cheated.”
“Can you pilot?” asked Zrulkesh. “That means I have to take his squeezing shifts as well as my own. If I’m working twice as much, so are you. If he dies in the ten days it takes us to reach the station, you forfeit your share to his clan for the wergild.”
Bortral’s face colored and went through several contortions, but the sword in his face made him say, “Yes, sir.”
“Broke his back, nose, and mangled the end of his tail,” Max reported.
“Fix them,” ordered the captain.
Max raised an eyebrow. “Not with what I have in my bag.”
For a moment, the captain looked about to break something. “Clean this mess up, and out of my sight, all of you!”
Once the guilty scattered and the victim was strapped in place, Max whispered to the captain, “I just so happen to have a regeneration tank in my pod that could fix him up in a couple weeks. Perhaps we could come to an understanding.”
“I’ll give your stones back,” offered Zrulkesh.
“A unit like that is worth 250 thousand credits.” Max had difficulty blocking out his patient’s pain, but he focused on the sweet taste of the captain’s anger.
“Fine. The chips spilled on this floor and the diamonds should cover most of the expense.”
“Plus, I’ll have to explain to my old employers how I lost the unit.”
Zrulkesh clenched the sword hilt until his knuckles went pale. “Minder, allow Mr. Culp one round trip in the elevator to visit with the astrogator, once the title to the regen unit is transferred.”
Max nodded. “Certainly, but you pay the fee for registering the transaction by ansible now.”
“We should wait until after cargo and supplies are settled at the dock. Recording everything in bulk at the bank will be cheaper.”
I can’t wait that long to see Gina. “If I let you use the regen tank before then, you won’t need to pay.”
Zrulkesh cursed long and hard, but eventually he conceded. They went to the bridge together to use the ansible. The sealed faster-than-light device was the primary export of the Banker race as well as the foundation of the Union economy. The Banker world was unreachable via jumps because all the star lanes led outward, making the treasure stored there the safest in the galaxy. Merchants and planetary banks could transfer large sums or titles from one account to another with a single signed message. Other races had no idea how the device worked, only that opening the seal let the blue smoke out, forcing the vandal to buy a replacement.
Once the captain inserted the tip of his tail into the magic box and gave his pass phrase, Max did a retina scan and ceded rights to the medical equipment.
The crew worked together to strap the copilot into the unit while Max attached feeding tubes and repaired the structural damage. He labored another four hours fixing injuries no one else could see before the copilot floated peacefully alone in the tank. Max removed gloves that dripped with blood and nutrient solution. “Anything else you want changed? Because this is what his face is going to look like when he’s through.”
Hans chuckled at the ugly humor.
Zrulkesh lowered his voice. “I hope the bitch burns out your brain.”
“Does that mean I can start my visit?”
“As long as I don’t see you before we dock.”
Max arranged for Reuben to drop breakfast off for Jeeves every morning until he returned. Then he neatened his beard with a trimmer, indicating the desired length in the mirror interface, and donned clean clothing.
Chapter 12 – Third Date
The mirrored sphere was now arranged with furniture, much like a high-end stateroom. Gina had changed her hairstyle to match the movie but wore casual clothing from a magazine photo. She smiled warmly as he rushed over to the loveseat beside her. Placing a hand over her heart and bowing her head, she greeted him as a friend of another species. “You took an awful risk offending the captain.”
He studied her perfect, sapphire eyes. “I had to see you again before we reached the station. One of my enemies might spot me when I’m there alone.”
After he kissed the back of her hand in greeting, she withdrew from his grasp. She lowered her eyes. “How long do you have?”
Max considered. “Do you have water down here?”
“Yes.”
“The captain didn’t specify. As long as I only use the elevator once and he doesn’t see me, I could stay the whole week.”
She covered her smile shyly. “You jest.”
“I’ve gone without food that long before. I’ve already arranged for the others to think I’m in my room.”
“I will make you tea,” Gina said, leaving the room abruptly.
When she returned, her movements were slow and elegant, carrying an antique tea set with supreme grace. The only concession to space was a valve on the pour spout to prevent leakage in zero g. She placed the set on the end table and poured. “Such prolonged exposure wouldn’t be safe for you. I fear afterward that you would be unable to enjoy communion with those of your own kind.”
“Nothing physical,” he insisted.
“Wh
at would we do for that much time?” she asked, mixing in the exact amount of sweetener he normally used in the dining hall.
She’s definitely been observing me. Gazing at her, he replied, “I want to learn everything about you.”
“Such as? Magi are secretive for a reason.” She sealed the top of his cup with a lid in case the ship suddenly changed directions or lost power. She passed him the warm cup and bowed.
He crossed his legs to get comfortable and put a slight barrier between them. “Did you transfer ownership for your vessel?”
“No. The AI wouldn’t allow Zrulkesh to do so because I was still alive. In the end, he transferred the name and ansible from his old ship. Despicable things, the ansibles. Never mention me on one of them.”
“Sure. I promise.” With control of her, the captain still had control of the ship, but Zrulkesh could avoid responsibility for any illegal activities during this period. He sipped the drink. “Perfect. Aren’t you going to have any?”
“This is not part of my ration. I cannot afford such luxuries.”
Max replied, “Once we sell the ore at Eden, I’ll have enough to pay off your rescue.”
“Zrulkesh won’t allow it.”
“I can be very persuasive.”
The implication of violence disturbed her, tightening the cords in her neck. “What do you want for these efforts?”
“Only to hear more about you, to share. How did you get in this mess?”
Gina remained silent for a while. “This vessel has an experimental drive capable of longer range than normal. When pushing the theoretical limits, we experienced a disastrous misjump.”
This was the phrase that every astrogator dreaded, usually a euphemism for mistake that ended up in the middle of a star. He savored the aroma and warmth of the brew in his hands, trying to make the ritual last. “Your people didn’t search for you?”
“We had no flight plan, and the jump ended in the hubward gap between the spiral arms.” This expanse was widely considered uncrossable. The Pegasus arm on the rimward side of the local Orion arm came closer in several places, but the Turtles guarded that border zealously.
