Condomnauts

by Yoss

  Turns out, things could get worse. We’re being insulted from the bridge of the Dalí by none other than Jordi Barceló.

  “Hold up a sec, Josué, you’re almost half a klick ahead of them. You’re all three supposed to touch the extragalactic ship at the same time,” Captain Berenguer reminds me, his face looking worried in the small holoimage projected inside my helmet. This time he didn’t want to delegate the responsibility of being my remote Contact operator to anyone else. “We don’t want the crew of the Dalí to freak out and start the First Catalan Interstellar War right here, do we?”

  “But what if that’s what we want?” Yotuel smiles venomously from another holographic window.

  “Krieg if you mogeln,” comes the hoarse voice of Jürgen Schmodt, once again looking the part of the model gray-eyed Aryan in a third small holoimage next to that of his protégé.

  What’s the point of having translation software with thousands of Alien languages programmed into it if he’s going to refuse to use it even to express himself in halfway passable Spanish?

  My own German translator tells me that Krieg means “war” and mogeln is “cheat.” Clear enough. They trust me as much as I trust them. I never expected any different. No reason to.

  This simultaneous triple hololink only proves how complicated the situation has become.

  Could have been worse, though. If ours had been the only other Catalan ship in the system, then Jürgen, Yotuel, and especially Jordi Barceló (did the Qhigarians take the DNA sample from his pristine heterosexual rectum instead of his mouth, just to piss off the resentful prick even more?) would definitely have talked Captain Rubén Molinet of the Dalí into opening fire on us. Faced with the superior weaponry of the largest and most modern hyperjump cruiser in the Nu Barsa fleet, we wouldn’t have had any choice but to flee. Using our inertial engines, to make matters worse, because the hypergraph went dead only minutes after they arrived—meaning that Qhigarian-style hyperjumping has now stopped working throughout the galaxy.

  We’ll never get out of this system if we don’t obtain a new form of faster-than-light transportation from the still unseen extragalactics in the cloud ship.

  Luckily for us, Captain Saudat and his Servet were already here. Any hyperjump cruiser, no matter how outdated, is a factor to be taken into account in an armed conflict. Maybe the Dalí could have dealt with them and us both at the same time—but it would have sustained significant damage in the space battle. So the situation was basically a stalemate.

  The three-ship problem, instead of the three-body problem.

  Everybody frozen, watching the others.

  Nobody making Contact, nobody letting the other guy make Contact.

  Too awkward to last, right?

  The Dalí trio started hurling insults and then threats our way. Jordi expanded on all the things he’d do to Amaya and me when he got his mitts on us. Yotuel told anyone who would listen about my more embarrassing childhood adventures in Rubble City. And Jürgen? I never imagined the German would have such a fertile yet rotten sexual imagination. Some of the things he said he’d do to Nerys when he had her at his mercy would make even the most experienced Contact Specialists, like my friend Narcís, blush.

  But the bullying phase didn’t last long. Once they saw that they couldn’t intimidate Berenguer or Saudat into giving ground, they bit their tongues and let the grown-ups negotiate.

  Discussions dragged on for three hours, constantly interrupted by “sincere” protests of innocence and marked by open mutual mistrust, but at last we more or less came to an agreement on a joint plan.

  That’s why the three condomnauts still capable of making Contact are approaching the extragalactic ship at the same time, like good buddies. This way we’ll supposedly each get a fair chance. And may the best at Contacting win, right?

  Lovely. Such fair play. Brings a tear to my eye.

  If this had happened in Rubble City, my sarcastic mentor Diosdado would have said something like, “I want a clean fight—but everything goes.”

  Two against one. The odds obviously are with the Dalí and their two Contact Specialists, first and fourth generation. Hard to say which of the pair is sneakier or hates me more.

  I suppose one will try to knock me out of circulation while the other takes his own sweet time making Contact.

  A good thing condomnaut suits are designed so you can’t carry any sophisticated weapons. Even having a laser telemeter on you is a bad idea: a particularly paranoid Alien might mistake it for some kind of gun, you know. I’d better keep my guard up anyway. They can always try strangling me or breaking my back between the two of them. And it’d be easy enough to hide a shiv in one of the pockets.

  I had to accept the risk, of course. Time stands still for no one, and if the extragalactics decide to take off from this system and leave us behind here—I don’t even want to think about how embarrassing that would be. Or what consequences might result.

  If Nerys had at least come out of shock it would have evened things up a little. Then I’d feel sure that Captain Saudat would support the Gaudí with all his ship’s arms, to protect his own condomnaut. Oh, well. If dogs had wheels, they’d be carriages. My mermaid still hasn’t shown any signs of consciousness. Quite a trauma.…

  But you can’t lose a battle before you fight it, and having the odds on your side doesn’t mean you’ve already won. Point is: sure, it’s two against one, but I’m still in the game, still playing.

  Sure, I sound as trite as a college football coach or a drill sergeant. It’s a pile of clichés, but they work. Even when I use them on myself. It’s the magic of motivational speaking.

  Now we can see each other. There’s no confusing us: Jürgen is wearing a red suit, Yotuel is in white (what a surprise, right?), and they’re approaching in close formation from the same direction. My suit is green, as always. I wish it was blue; then we’d be wearing the three colors of my country’s flag. So symbolic.

  Blood and purity against green, which is the color of hope. And the old flag of Libya, with no other details. How lovely. How allegorical. How full of shit my thoughts get at a time like this. Like I care at all about Gaddafi. Or flags.

  “Just five more klicks to the extragalactic ship,” Captain Berenguer tells me after checking his telemeter, like mine’s not working. “Synchronize your trajectories, though I doubt they’ll let you approach much closer. Captain Saudat thinks that at any moment they might telepor—”

  Said and done. His voice cuts off, and the next instant we aren’t surrounded by the black of space but a softly luminous white. We’ve been teleported.

  It was so soft and painless that, if their hyperengine functions anywhere near as well, I can think of one good reason why the Qhigarians were in a hurry to leave: the Qhigarian mental con game is no match for this system.

  We’re inside an empty terminal half a kilometer in diameter, according to my sensors. Our comms are cut, of course. The unsullied white of the whole place must make Yotuel feel right at home, as obsessed with cleanliness as he is. I can barely make out his suit: it’s the exact same shade.

  The air around us is perfectly breathable, and the pressure is correct. Well, a little low, to tell the truth. And—huh. Helium instead of nitrogen. We’ll be squeaking like a bunch of Donald Ducks when we try to talk. That’ll make it hard to sound like serious ambassadors.

  The weird thing is, we’re still floating. Don’t these visitors use gravity control?

  We’re still arranged as before: a few dozen meters apart from each other, Yotuel in the middle, me on the right, Jürgen to the left. My two rivals look at each other, make an almost imperceptible signal, and promptly remove their helmets in perfect synchrony.

  The empty helmets float like abandoned satellites, while their owners briefly activate the inertial micromotors on the suits and come at me, with the coordinated decisiveness of football linebackers in a slow-motion replay: colorful monochrome uniforms bearing down inexorably on the quarterback from t
he other team who’s got the ball…

  I was expecting this. Lucky I didn’t end up between the two of them. Fighting isn’t my thing; I prefer “Here is where he turned and ran” to “Here is where he died.” But hey, if you’re not going to give me a choice, let’s play ball, guys.

  I remove my helmet, too (if there are extragalactic bacteria or viruses that our reinforced immune systems can’t deal with, we’ll figure that out later), and hold it between my hands. Not tight against my chest, like a football player trying to break through the defense and score a touchdown, but slightly away from my body, at eye level, like a basketball player about to shoot a free throw.

  I was never any good at football. Standing barely five foot seven and 145 pounds, I wasn’t beefy enough, though I’m a fast runner. But I’ve got a good jump, so I was a better than average basketball player; almost a champion. And now I’m planning to show off some of my skills to this pair.

  The helmet is made of light but very hard material. And I was always pretty good at making baskets. A little luck and, first guy that gets near me, I might just break his nose. No, I’d better strategize this. It doesn’t matter who’s in the lead; I’ll go after Yotuel. Jürgen’s nanos are made for shifting his body shape, but they also help him to heal disconcertingly fast.

  It really is too bad there’s no gravity. When I throw the helmet, I’ll logically go flying in the opposite direction. For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction: it’s the law. Plus, it won’t hit him with the classic 9.8 meters per second squared of acceleration force it would have on Earth.

  But speak of the devil… The gravimeter tells me we’ve got microgravity now. We’re all settling gently to the floor, which is as white as the walls. It has the soft, strange (and a slightly repulsive, I might add) consistency of jam or gelatin. Luckily it isn’t sticky, though.

  I flex my legs and keep my grip on my helmet, waiting as the gravity slowly increases, bit by bit. The helmets that my two adversaries tossed aside hit the floor and bounce a little. Jürgen’s red helmet rolls almost to my feet. Perfect. If I grab it in time, a second projectile will give me even more opportunities. Why would they throw away such obvious weapons?

  Maybe because they’re sure they’ll easily beat me without them.

  My suspicions are confirmed as soon as their feet touch the gelatinous flooring and they continue advancing on me. Their long, weightless leaps remind me of the old recordings Abel showed me one time, about the first humans to land on the moon, in the middle of the twentieth century, on the Apollo 11.

  And, yes, I’m a fan of old-time astronauts. I was bound to have some sort of shortcoming, right? Nostalgia for the olden days. I hope Nu Barsa will forgive me. There are worse flaws, after all, even for a condomnaut.

  Jürgen pulls a long, thin chain from a compartment in his suit, unwinds it, and holds it up before him with both hands, a meter apart, in the classic pose of a strangler.

  A mistake, I think. He could have hurt me more easily and from farther away if he’d used it as a lash.

  Yotuel, for his part, is more traditional or orthodox about evildoing. He’s gone for a large screwdriver. Good for stabbing, good for slashing: pure Rubble City style. I’ve got to keep my eye on both of them. In my triple-armored suit, the only part of my head that’s really vulnerable to a stabbing by my old pal is my eyes, but if I let myself get distracted by protecting them, the nanoborg could easily take advantage, sneak up from behind, wrap the chain around my neck, and strangle me.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have taken off the helmet. Too late now; no time to put it back on.

  Speaking of which, I can feel its weight in my hands now. The gravity keeps getting stronger. I don’t need the gravimeter; my bones and muscles tell me it’s almost up to Earth level. Hopefully it won’t rise much beyond Earth gravity.

  Here they come, running with all their might, white and red. A killer Polish flag against the flag of Libya. Nice image, or colorful at least.

  Damn, like I care about flags. Is the air getting to me? Muddling my brain? I’ve seen stranger things happen.

  Let’s test it, just to be sure.

  Self-examination. What color was the flag of Kiribati?

  No idea. That’s good: I’m still the same old Josué. And I’ve got more important things to worry about.

  Yotuel will get to me first—and with that screwdriver in his hand, he’s also going to find it harder to block or dodge a helmet missile than Jürgen will with the chain.

  “Fuckin’ bastard!” screams Yamil’s little brother, the aspiring murderer, as he pounces with his deadly weapon raised high. I can’t help noticing how ridiculous his high-pitched nasal war cry sounds in this helium atmosphere. Revenge of Duckman?

  I keep my cool. I’ve been waiting years for this.…

  When he’s two meters away, I hurl the helmet straight at his face with all my might. It does no good: my hard, green helmet travels all of one meter and stops cold, suspended in midair, as if held by an invisible barrier.

  Same thing with Yotuel’s huge screwdriver, when he tries to drive it into me with all the force of the years he’s spent dreaming of vengeance. A second later Jürgen is caught in the same barrier when he lunges for my throat with the chain.

  They both struggle to free their improvised weapons, but they can’t get them loose. Seeing this, I don’t even try to recover my helmet, which remains stuck in midair. Instead, I calmly walk over to Jürgen’s and pick it up (no problem). Good thing the ultraprotects we condomnauts use are all a universal model. Maybe a red-green combo only looks good on parrots, but better safe than sorry. I won’t survive long in outer space in a suit without a helmet.

  My would-be executioners in red and white are still struggling in vain. They’ve given up on their weapons; now they’re just trying to get at me with their bare hands. First they jump as high as they can, then one stands on the other’s shoulders; they’re trying to see how high the transparent but invulnerable barrier goes. Now they’re running away from me in both directions, trying to find a way around it. But no doing: not only is the wall invisible and solid, it seems to divide the entire terminal in two, from side to side.

  I’m intrigued by its nature. My instruments detect no force field or electromagnetic waves. But here it is, impregnable, though my stubborn enemies refuse to admit it.

  Having nothing else to do, I sit on the floor, holding the red helmet in my lap. It appears that I’m completely safe from my colleagues and their uncharitable intentions for the time being. All I have to do is wait for our extragalactic hosts to take the next step toward making Contact. They are obviously in complete control of the situation. They’ve been controlling it from the beginning.

  I clear my mind. This is what the ancient Greeks called ataraxia, philosophical calm, a state of robust waiting, not mere laziness. Narcís Puigcorbé would be proud if he could see me.

  I don’t have to wait long. A rasping, whispery sound comes from behind Jürgen and Yotuel. They stop their fruitless efforts to break through the barrier separating us and spin round to face whatever it was that made the curious noise.

  An aperture has appeared in the white wall, some two hundred meters behind them according to the telemeter in my suit. Not a laser telemeter, of course. As condomnauts, we don’t carry anything that could be mistaken for a weapon.

  It’s just like Amaya said. The invisible barrier threw me for a moment, but this is clearly another bioship. Maybe I should specialize in races that do biotech when I get out of this.…

  Lady luck is loca. You never know who she’s going to smile on. Apparently they’re going to start on Jürgen and Yotuel’s side. I guess I should appreciate the biblical justice—last shall be first and all that jazz—but damned if I find it funny.

  The aperture must be about ten meters across. The weird thing is, I don’t see anything coming out of it, but my rival-colleagues obviously do. And they seem not to like what they see.

  I pay close at
tention. Indentations appear at certain points in the strange white gelatinous floor. Footsteps. From them I deduce that the newly arrived invisible creature has four, or maybe six or even eight, feet. Considering that there’s about two meters between the right legs and the left, I figure it’s about that wide by about… five to ten meters long. Big, but I’ve seen bigger. Not so much to write home about after you’ve made Contact with Continentines and Kigran rorquals. That’s some comfort.

  But Yotuel falls at once to his knees and begins vomiting, weeping, wailing, moaning for his dead brother, crying for help from his babalawo. Diosdado! Poor kid. He’d probably also be calling for his mother if he’d ever known her. No way he’s going to try and take off his suit or make any effort at Contact. He’s literally dying of revulsion and fear.

  What is it he sees that has him so horror-stricken? Sure, he’s new at this, but he must have a lot of experience. Otherwise Jürgen would never have taken him on.

  The German Contact Specialist, meanwhile, shows more presence of mind, though he’s also trembling like a leaf. The damn professional. Training shows. He manages to get his red suit off. Under it, his skin looks like it’s boiling.

  His nano-impregnated body is modifying itself before my eyes, trying to adopt the morphology of… of what? Damned if I even want to know. It’s so weird, watching a First Contact between humanity and a creature I can’t even see but my colleagues obviously can. I suppose the barrier between us must also have some curious optical properties. The notion of privacy that this race from another galaxy has is a bit odd, to say the least.