At least that was the plan.
“You remember me, don’t you?” As the boys tightened the ropes around Cornucopia’s shoulders and torso, I patted the top of her smooth, bald head.
Cornucopia nodded. That same old sparkly Ration smile was pasted onto her pudgy face. “The little beggar girl. Always begging for a bite of me.” Her voice tinkled like tiny bells when she spoke.
“And you never said ‘yes.’ Not once.” I pinched the meat of her shoulder, thinking about sinking my teeth into her. “But I guess you can’t say ‘no’ anymore.”
“Actually, I can,” said Cornucopia. The iridescent swirls on her face flowed and changed color. “Nothing has changed.”
“Like flap!” My oldest brother, Roto, took a deep whiff at the back of her neck. “You’re ours now! You have to feed us!”
“No,” said Cornucopia. “I don’t.”
“And why is that?” I made a face at her. I wasn’t taking her seriously.
“I’m still someone else’s property.” Cornucopia nodded. “Señor Gustavo still owns me, and I can’t feed anyone unless he tells me.”
Roto’s wild, frizzy puff of black hair bounced as he laughed. “We aren’t going to ask your permission, y’know.”
“Yeah,” said my other brother, Miguel. “Don’t look like you can stop us, either.”
“You’re right, I can’t.” Cornucopia’s angelic smile drifted from Roto to Miguel to my third brother, Oswaldo.
“Didn’t think so.” Miguel grinned and drove his teeth into her tricep. He tore off a hunk of meat and chewed it with his eyes closed, an expression of perfect bliss on his face.
I understood why he hadn’t been able to wait. None of us had eaten anything but bugs and rotten garbage for weeks. My stomach growled just from watching him.
“That’s good,” said Miguel. “Oh God, that’s good.”
Oswaldo, just a year older than I, was the next to pounce. He bit into the flesh of Cornucopia’s right thigh and came away with a mouthful dripping with rainbow blood.
Miguel laughed. “Thank God,” he said. “Oh, thank God.” Then he hugged Oswaldo.
I was just about to go in for a bite of my own when Cornucopia spoke up. “You were right when you said I couldn’t stop you.”
“Tell me about it.” Oswaldo bit off another hunk of her thigh.
“I can do something else, though.” Cornucopia’s smile never wavered. “I can kill you.”
Roto smirked. “Good one. Kill us how?”
Cornucopia looked a little embarrassed. The swirls on her face shifted from blue-green and gold to red and deep pink. “Poison,” she said. “If my owner hasn’t programmed your genetic code into my glands, one bite of my flesh will poison you.”
Oswaldo stopped chewing his food. So did Miguel.
“She’s bluffing,” said Roto. “The perra’s trying to scare us into letting her go.”
I glared at the Ration. I had a horrible feeling she wasn’t bluffing at all. “Why didn’t you say something till now?”
Cornucopia shrugged. “Would you have believed me?”
Miguel groaned. Oswaldo coughed.
“Don’t listen to her,” said Roto. “She just wants to escape.”
“That’s not an issue.” Cornucopia shook her head slowly, still smiling. “The policia are almost here. They followed a tracking tag in my bloodstream.”
Automatically, I looked toward the door. Then, when Miguel and Oswaldo started vomiting, I looked at them instead.
“What’s the cure?” I shouted.
“There is no cure,” said Cornucopia. “They’ll be dead in minutes.”
I heard sirens outside the shack, and I went to my suffering brothers. As they collapsed--first Oswaldo, then Miguel--I dropped to my knees with them. I felt as if my own guts were being torn out by rough hands.
For many years, death had been my constant companion on Polvo...but this was different. These brothers were all I held precious in the world, all that had kept me alive in the darkest of times.
And the worst of it was, their deaths could have been prevented so easily.
As they released their dying breaths, I glared at Cornucopia. Even then, that damned sparkle-toothed smile never left her face.
*****
Is it any wonder that twenty-four years later, I didn’t join in the Ration lovefest rolling through the Puerco all the way from Saguaro to Polvo?
During the trip through space, Guapo and Frogface palled around with Manny like he was their long-lost childhood friend. They were inseparable.
They were always together in the cockpit or the break room or the tool room. Guapo and Frogface were always nibbling on some hunk of Manny--a meaty haunch or a crispy ear or a candy-coated fingernail--and Manny was always telling jokes or stories about the many people who’d eaten him before. They invited me to join them again and again, but I never did, and I hated them for being such flapholes. I hated them for bringing Manny onboard, and I hated them for having so much fun with him right in front of me.
The truth was, my bad mood wasn’t just because of Manny, though. I was also full of dread at the thought of returning to my homeworld. Good old Polvo, dust bowl of the galaxy, final resting place of two of my brothers.
And now, maybe my third brother as well.
It was the real reason we were going to that craphole planet, though Guapo and Frogface didn’t know it.
We were going to look for my brother, Roto, who had disappeared a month ago on Polvo, at the height of a rash of attacks by a man-eating alien monster.
Guapo and Frogface thought we’d been hired to kill that man-eater, but no one had hired us. I was taking us to Polvo to find Roto, though I’d gladly gun down any
man-eater that came between me and my brother.
*****
A week after leaving Saguaro, we landed on Polvo. My heart pounded as we got ready to leave the ship.
As I got ready to see home for the first time in over two decades.
“Remember.” Guapo grabbed an ultraviolet rifle off the rack on the cargo bay wall. “If you see yourself coming, shoot to kill.” He wrapped one black-gloved hand around the barrel of the rifle and curled the other around the grip.
“That’s kind of a no-brainer, isn’t it?” Frogface snickered. “You see yourself, you’re either lookin’ at a mirror or one of these reflejo creatures.”
“It’s harder than you think, killing your identical twin,” said Guapo. “Why do you think so few people have managed to do it?”
“It’s the perfect camouflage.” I finished braiding my long, brown hair in a ponytail and flipped it over my shoulder. “At the very least, seeing your perfect mirror image can rattle you just long enough for a reflejo to pounce.”
“And sink its teeth into you.” Guapo snarled and gnashed his teeth like a wolf, then laughed. “Not that anyone knows what reflejos use for teeth or what they really look like in the first place.”
I smacked a red button on a panel on the wall, and the cargo bay door rolled up into the ceiling. Before the door had finished opening, a swirl of gray dust lashed in from outside, followed by a flying black spider-bug as big as my fist.
Welcome back to Polvo.
Guapo swung his rifle around and picked off the araña volando with one quick flash of purple light. The creature screamed as it died, and Guapo hooted.
“I shot your dinner, dulcita!” Guapo sneered at me. “Since you won’t eat the Ration, you can fry that up with some butter and salt!”
“You shot it, you eat it,” I told him. “I’ll stick with my jerky and fruit leather.” While Guapo and Frogface yukked it up, I slid extra weapons charges and a hunting knife into my belt loops.
When I was done and looked up, I noticed Manny watching me. He smiled at first, but then his sparkly smile quivered and faded.
“What’s your problem, flap-off?” I snapped at him.
Manny shrugged. “I, uh...I have a bad feeling about this place.”
<
br /> “Since when does food have feelings?” I sneered as I pulled on my goggles.
“Maybe this’ll make you feel better,” said Guapo. Smiling, he strolled over and handed Manny a rifle.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” For the umpteenth time, I wondered what I’d ever seen in Guapo. “You’re giving the food a gun?”
“Why the hell not?” Guapo slapped Manny on the back. “I sure don’t want no reflejo chowing down on him.”
“Actually,” said Manny, “any unauthorized parties who eat me will die.”
“But who knows with these crazy reflejos, eh?” said Guapo.
“If the reflejos are at all organic in nature,” said Manny, “the toxins generated by my anti-theft system will...”
I cut him off right there. I knew all about the Rations’ anti-theft system.
So did Miguel and Oswaldo.
“Shut up, all of you.” I armed my rifle and stalked toward the open cargo bay door. “Let’s get this damn show on the road. We’ve gotta go kill us a man-eater.”
*****
“Thank you for coming,” said the governor of Pesadilla province. “Your help means more to the people of planet Polvo in this time of crisis than you will ever know. I only regret that I found it necessary to relocate before your arrival.”
“Found it necessary to run away like the cowardly gatito you are, you mean!” said Guapo, aiming his ultraviolet rifle dead-on at the governor’s face on the video screen. “Die, flapper!”
Guapo squeezed the trigger, and a bolt of purple energy sizzled across the governor’s office and pierced the video screen. Smoke and shards of layered crystal circuitry erupted from the impact point, and the image of the governor’s face flickered off the screen.
But her voice kept talking from the undamaged audio speakers.
“Very sorry I can’t greet you in person,” she said, “but my staff and I thought it best if we moved off-world for the duration. Please contact us at the following frequency when you’ve eliminated the threat.”
Guapo whipped his rifle toward one of the speakers, but I swatted his arm before he could fire. “We need to hear this,” I told him.
Guapo lowered the rifle but kept a tight grip on it.
“Here’s what we know,” said the governor’s recorded voice. “The man-eater has ranged across Pesadilla, Grito, and Rasgón provinces. However, we believe it has a refuge in the Cambio region of southwest Pesadilla.”
Guapo shot me a look, and I nodded. After growing up on that craphole planet, I knew plenty about the Cambio.
“This is the first case we’ve encountered of a reflejo turning man-eater,” said the governor. “Given the abilities and native intelligence of these creatures, we believe we are fortunate that the death toll to date has not risen above 257.”
“257?” Frogface whistled through his duck-bill lips.
“Nothin’ left but hair and gristle,” said Guapo.
“Madre de Dios.” Frogface made a hasty sign of the cross over his forehead, chest, and shoulders.
Guapo puffed out his breath. “What’d you expect for the kind’a paycheck we’re gettin’? Fish in a flappin’ barrel?”
The governor was still talking. “Best of luck on your mission. We salute you and your unit, and we promise that your selfless courage will never be forgotten. Thank you, men of the...”
Before she could say another syllable, I swept my rifle around and fried the speakers.
“Yeah!” Guapo fired off another purple bolt from his own rifle, plowing a charred furrow in the ceiling. “There’s the chica I love! Good riddance to that stuck-up reflejo perra who’s been takin’ your place lately.”
I didn’t dignify his remarks with an answer or even a look. Instead, I turned and charged past everyone, right out the office door into the blazing sunlight of midday Polvo.
The truth was, the perra--the bitch--was still in charge of me. I’d shot out the speakers not for fun or out of anger, but because if Guapo and Frogface had heard the rest of the governor’s recording, it would have been a dead giveaway.
The governor had already saluted our “unit,” and had started to thank “the men of the...”
As in “the men of the 24th Spaceborne Division of Mexifleet,” who were the ones who were supposed to do the job we’d come to do. They’d be on Polvo in three days.
I’d brought us there three days early to try to save my brother, Roto, before the Mexifleet Marines came in with guns blazing. Brute force, not precision, was Mexifleet’s style. If there was still anything left of Roto to save, and he was anywhere near the man-eating reflejo when the Marines caught up with it, there wouldn’t be anything left of Roto for long.
In other words, no one was paying us to do this job.
The only possible reward would be getting Roto out alive. My crew’s cut of the pay would be zero percent of nothing.
As well as I got along with Guapo and Frogface, that’s the kind of information that can get a girl like me keelhauled out here in the ol’ rough and tumble.
*****
We flew out to the Cambio and parked the Puerco on a ridge about a mile and a half back from the border. Frogface whined about having to walk the extra distance, but Guapo explained how we needed to sneak up on the reflejo’s turf.
The real reason I made sure we parked that far away was this: the borders of the Cambio are always changing, just like everything out there, and you do not want your spacecraft ending up inside those borders.
Trust me on that one.
“Should we bring a cart?” Frogface said as we straggled out of the Puerco’s cargo bay. “For Manny, I mean?”
I wanted to slap his face tomato-red, but I settled for shooting him a serious stink-eye. “No, we are not hauling Manny in a cart.” I adjusted the straps of my backpack, which was heavy with jerky, fruit leather, and tubes of nutri-paste. “The whole point of Rations is that you don’t have to store, preserve, or carry them.”
Manny smiled at Frogface and nodded. “Like livestock, Froggy. Right? It was easier for ancient travelers when their food did the walking.”
“Shut up, flap.” As usual, I wasn’t in the mood for the tutti-frutti little bastard. “Shut up and play with your rifle. Feel free to point it at yourself and pull the trigger.”
“I’d probably just grow back,” said Manny. “I can regenerate, remember?”
“And I can reload,” I said, glaring at him as I stalked past. “Again and again and again.”
*****
You can’t see the border of the Cambio, but you always know when you’ve stepped across it.
It starts as a chill flickering up your spine, and then it spreads out. Your arms and legs tremble, and sometimes you drop what you’re carrying. Then, there’s a mighty squeeze in the pit of your stomach, and a flare of heartburn pushing up through your throat.
Then, suddenly, there’s a fizzy, weightless dizziness, like the top of your head has floated off and your brain is turning and sizzling like butter in a skillet.
After that, it’s smooth sailing. If you don’t give up and cross back over the border, the storm of feelings settles down. It never quite goes away till you leave the Cambio, but at least you can stand it.
It’s a hell of a place, the Cambio. I guess I should’ve warned my men what to expect...but if I had, they wouldn’t’ve gone in with me.
In which case, they’d still be alive today.
“What the flap?” Frogface almost fell as he stumbled over the border.
Guapo marched across okay, but then he threw himself down on a boulder and held his head. “Dios! Feels like I’m turnin’ inside out!”
I’d been back and forth over the border often enough in my life that at least I could mask its effects. “Come on,” I said, stomping ahead through the gray sand. “Walk it off, you gatitos.”
To my surprise, Manny strolled up alongside me, seemingly unaffected by the border. Smiling, he extended two fingers toward me.
“You ough
tta try the tips,” he said. “I hear they’re excellent.”
“Go flap yourself.” I hated that tutti-frutti little hairless bastard even more for not getting zapped at the border like everyone else.
“They tell me the wine’s even better,” said Manny. “Want a taste?”
“I don’t even wanna know where that comes from, you flappin’ freak,” I said, walking faster to get away from him.
*****
When I was a little girl, my friends and I used to run through the Cambio on a dare, dodging the shifting landscape and trying not to get killed. We only ever lost one of us--Ernesto Chiapas, who disappeared down a sudden sinkhole in the middle of a run.
Maybe I was going to see ol’ Ernesto again after all those years. The terrain of the Cambio was just as unpredictable and dangerous as before.
As Guapo, Frogface, Manny, and I walked onward, following a faint human blood trail with Guapo’s sniffer glove, the land was in constant upheaval around us. Geysers and steam vents erupted without warning, spraying us with water and heat. Landslides rumbled down hillsides, and tremors shook the ground. Spines and humps and shelves of rock thrust up suddenly alongside or in front of us...and in one case, underneath us. We tumbled ass over teakettle down the rising slope, barely missing a jagged, deep crevasse as it opened below us.
To me, it was just a typical day in the Cambio...but Guapo and Frogface weren’t as easygoing about it.
“What the hell, Lupe?” said Guapo after a flying, head-sized rock almost took off his head. “This place is loco.”
“No one knows for sure what causes the instability.” As I said it, a stream of bubbling red lava ran out of the side of a nearby mesa that hadn’t been there five minutes ago. “Some say it’s the nexus of powerful cosmic energies, focused by an immense celestial convergence. Some say it’s the intersection point of multiple dimensional rifts, moving in and out of phase with our reality. Others say it’s Mother Polvo’s rectum, and she’s got a thousand-year case of Montezuma’s revenge.”
Six Scifi Stories Page 10
