Happy Snak

by Nicole Kimberling

  “You’re an ass, Sharkey,” Gaia said. “Wave’s too good to even stun your snakes.”

  Sharkey lapsed into uncharacteristic silence, then crossed to the Kishocha-side door and took up its usual position.

  “What was that about?” Gaia asked Stinger.

  Stinger shrugged. “Mysterious.”

  Gaia glanced away from Stinger just in time to see a large rock hurtling through the air toward Kenjan’s island. The rock crashed through the delicate latticework window, bounced off something inside the house, then landed with a wet thud on Kenjan’s bed.

  “Honorable Scholar!” Wave cried. “Why must your school criticize in death as well as life?”

  In the moment she had to think, Gaia thought, What?

  The scholar ignored Wave, raised another rock and hurled it at Kenjan’s house, bellowing, “Go away, Ghost!”

  Stone after stone flew through the air. The Kishocha bellowed out epithets along with their missiles. “Heretic! Barren! Curse to you!” The shrine echoed with the crashes of breaking coral and wood.

  Sharkey and Stinger remained motionless and silent.

  She couldn’t believe this was happening. Wave also stood still, but seemed rooted in horror, rather than just complacent like the guards.

  Gaia rounded on Stinger.

  “Do something!” She seized Stinger’s upper arm and tried to drag the Kishocha out.

  “It is their right to express anger at the ghost.”

  “They’re destroying Kenjan’s house.” Gaia jerked Stinger’s upper arm again. “Go out there and stop them.”

  Stinger sighed and stepped forward. “You! Honorable Scholar and servants. You must be orderly. You must throw rocks one at a time.”

  The assembled Kishocha seemed to find this request reasonable and lined up to stone Kenjan’s house. Gaia found this totally unacceptable. Her fear of being hurt by the crowd was overpowered by her desire to beat at least one of them senseless. Her restraint evaporated. She charged forward.

  “You get back! You get out of my store!” Gaia grabbed her own drink and flung it at the scholar. The waxed paper cup bounced off the Kishocha’s shoulder then spilled onto the floor. The scholar launched its next rock directly at her. The other Kishocha let loose a barrage of rocks and clam shells. Gaia couldn’t possibly dodge them all. She shot up an arm to try and protect her face from the onslaught. Nothing hit her. Looking up she saw that Wave had stepped between her and Kenjan’s detractors. Wave doubled over as a baseball-sized rock smashed into the Kishocha’s abdomen. A clamshell grazed the side of Gaia’s face, scraping the skin away.

  “You keep away from Gaia Jones.” Wave was enraged. “You go home.”

  “Stand down, Servant,” the scholar shouted.

  “No! You have no right to criticize her with stones.”

  “Disobedient,” the scholar roared, hurling another stone at Wave. Wave didn’t dodge. It took the impact in the throat, howling out a terrible scream of anger.

  Gaia rushed to the concession stand and grabbed the clam-pounding mallet. Reason had fled. As she spun around to attack the scholar, she saw Sharkey step forward and smash the blunt end of its spear into the scholar’s head with a wet smack. Sharkey whirled, bringing its spear across the back of the scholar’s knees forcing it to the ground. The other Kishocha simply dropped to the floor, terrified and supplicant. Again, Sharkey brought its weapon down, this time across the scholar’s shoulders. Gaia thought she heard something snap. Stinger moved in after Sharkey, blocking another brutal blow to the scholar’s head.

  “Sharkey!” Stinger said.

  Sharkey stopped and looked over to Stinger.

  “Our Lord Oziru has proclaimed that any Kishocha who hurts a human is charged with death.” Sharkey spun, and before Stinger could intervene, Sharkey drove its spear into the scholar’s back, pulled back and with one arcing motion severed the scholar’s head. Black blood rushed out across the floor, hissing and steaming. Gaia scampered back from it, gagging on the smell.

  Sharkey surveyed the blood and steam. “Motions of treason,” it said.

  Gaia felt sick. She flung an arm across her mouth to keep the smell out, and the horror and bile in. Wave lay on the floor clutching its throat. Wave’s breath came in shallow gasps, like a person trying not to cry. Gaia went to it, but she didn’t know what to do.

  “It’s okay, Wave.” She was afraid to touch Wave. She gagged on the smell of acid.

  Stinger looked irritated. “All of you go and take the body back to the school. Leave the head.”

  The other Kishocha rose, cowering as they did so. They picked up the scholar’s body and dragged it out. When they were gone, Stinger grabbed the head by its cranial tendrils. It turned to Sharkey. “I will go explain to glorious Oziru. You stay—and see to Wave. I think that one is hurt.”

  Sharkey nodded, then knelt and pulled Wave into its lap. “Pull your hands away,” Sharkey said, not cruelly, but decisively. “Let me see your wound.”

  Wave complied, leaning its head against Sharkey’s chest and shoulder.

  “Is it bad?” Gaia crouched down beside them. Her throat hurt from the fumes. Irritated tears welled in her stinging eyes. She pulled her smock over her nose and mouth.

  “No, the impact was taken by this blasphemous jewelry.” Sharkey studied the latch of Wave’s pit guard, then unhooked and removed it. Gaia could see where the pit guard’s edges had bitten into Wave’s skin. “The god must love you, Wave.”

  Wave shook its head.

  “It’s true. The god armored you in unfit garb, to bear the wrath of the unholy—just like in the stories.” Sharkey stroked the side of Wave’s muzzle.

  Wave’s cranial tendrils curled weakly. It seemed to perk up, although the reference was beyond Gaia.

  “Can you talk?” Gaia asked.

  “Yes, but it hurts my neck.”

  “Then remain silent,” Sharkey said.

  “Can you take Wave back to its room?” Gaia asked Sharkey.

  “Yes, I am strong enough to bear the weight,” Sharkey said.

  Gaia thought at first that Sharkey was being sarcastic again, but then realized that Sharkey had genuinely misunderstood her intention. “Please take Wave back to its room and wait with it.”

  “That would leave this place unguarded,” Sharkey said.

  “I command you to do it,” Gaia said.

  “Then I will obey.” Sharkey took Wave’s pit guard and handed it to Wave, then gathered up Wave and carried the Kishocha into Happy Snak. Gaia followed long enough to retrieve her mobile breather pack. She fitted it over her nose and mouth and returned to the vacant shrine. Careful to avoid stepping in the steaming pool of blood and acid, she crossed to the Kishocha-side door and closed it.

  The room was even more still then, and more empty. Gaia walked the rim of the circular pool and searched for Kenjan beneath the water. Finally she caught sight of a shadowy movement in the depths. Kenjan seemed to notice her at the same time and swam up. Its head broke the surface of the water.

  “I take it the criticism is over,” Kenjan said.

  “Yes.” Gaia sank to her knees. Her voice sounded muffled.

  “I taste blood in the water. Who is hurt?”

  “Some guy Wave called ‘scholar’,” Gaia replied. “Sharkey killed it.”

  Kenjan nodded, as if this was to be expected. “But no one else?”

  “Wave got hit with a rock, but Sharkey’s taking care of it.”

  Kenjan surveyed the damage done to the grotto. “I suppose I should begin to repair my house.”

  “Do you want me to help?”

  “No,” Kenjan sighed. “It is my lot to live like a dog now, with no servants. By the way, have you given my message to Oziru yet?”

  “I haven’t seen Oziru since you gave it to me.”

  “Then this criticism is not a reprisal—that is good.” The alien drifted away from her. As Kenjan pulled itself out of the water, Gaia thought she could hear it singing a cheery
tune, but she didn’t know why it would do such a thing.

  Chapter Seventeen: Humans

  After Gaia left Kenjan’s shrine, her shock and numbness wore off. It was easy for her to be brave in front of other people, but alone in her room fear overtook her.

  Gaia crumpled onto her bed. She curled beneath the thin blanket like a kid trying to hide from monsters. She was scared and shaking. Tears leaked out of her eyes. She wanted her mom. She took a few deep breaths, found her hand-held and entered her mother’s number. She waited, biting her lip.

  “Please answer the phone, Mom.”

  Her mother’s answering service picked up.

  An unexpected, convulsive sob choked her. Her mother wasn’t there. Gaia gulped. It was stupid to cry about something that was over. She’d only been scratched. Wave wasn’t badly hurt. Kenjan wasn’t touched. The only person mercilessly decapitated before her eyes had been disturbing the peace. The image of the scholar’s open neck gushing black blood rose up before her again. She’d been able to see the Kishocha’s spinal column. Its cranial tendrils had still been moving when Stinger picked up its head. Another pathetic sob broke out of her clenched teeth.

  She was done. She was glutted on aliens and alien ideas and explaining sex to aliens and trying to understand aliens. She didn’t want any more cultural expansion. Mini-Snak wasn’t doing well enough to put up with execution by stoning. A jolt of nausea shook through Gaia’s abdomen, sending her running to the bathroom. She coughed, gagged and vomited up her dinner. Panang curry splashed wetly into the chemical toilet. Gaia coughed and whimpered at the humiliating pain of puking. She hadn’t thrown up for at least a decade, then she became involved with aliens and was instantly afflicted with permanent nausea.

  She had to quit. She wasn’t a cultural anthropologist or a gravitational physicist or even a particularly good or empathetic listener. She just sold snacks.

  After rinsing her mouth and splashing her face with cold water, Gaia tried her phone again. If she had been able to reach her mother, her mother would have said to stop all this and come back home. Gaia dialed Blum’s office, but no one was there at twenty to one in the morning. For some reason, Gaia could not bring herself to resign to an answering service. She needed a real person to quit to. She had one real person’s private number. She dialed it.

  A sleepy male voice answered. “This is Fitzpatrick.”

  “I quit!” Gaia shouted. “I don’t even care about any of it. Find somebody else to put up with this shit.” With each word, Gaia’s voice degenerated closer to unintelligible sobbing.

  “Ms. Jones?” Fitzpatrick’s voice was gravelly and deep.

  “What?”

  “Your visual’s not on. Would you engage it, please?” Fitzpatrick cleared his throat and coughed once.

  “No.” Gaia’s hands shook too much to grip the hand-held anymore. She set it down.

  “Well, my visual is on if you want to switch to your main screen.”

  Gaia sniffed, swallowed and switched over. Fitzpatrick sat on the edge of his bed, shirtless, tousled and unshaved. He wore a pair of flannel pajama bottoms. He removed an actual pack of cigarettes from his nightstand drawer and lit one.

  The sight of it momentarily surprised Gaia out of her misery. “Why isn’t your smoke alarm going off?”

  “I disabled it.” Fitzpatrick took a deep drag of smoke. “Executive privilege. I take it you’re tired of your job?”

  “I want to quit.” Gaia held her voice steady.

  “I see.” Fitzpatrick reached over to a hot-drinks dispenser and got himself a coffee. His dispenser was the fancy European kind that was recessed into the wall. He took a sip of the coffee. Gaia was jealous. She wanted to have a hot coffee and a personal cabin that had clearly been professionally decorated. She wanted blue and gray striped flannel sheets. She didn’t want the impressionistic winterscape Fitzpatrick had chosen for his wall, but she could block that out.

  “Traditionally when one quits, one usually gives a reason why.” Fitzpatrick addressed the camera, even though there was no visual of her. All he saw was blank screen.

  Gaia said, “I’m tired.”

  “What of?” Fitzpatrick’s voice remained calm.

  “Them.”

  “Them…” Fitzpatrick took a gulp of his coffee. “Yes, they can be quite the test of patience. What did they do?”

  “They threw rocks at Kenjan, then Wave and me, then Sharkey cut the scholar guy’s head off.” Gaia paused for a moment, before continuing. “I want to go home.”

  Fitzpatrick’s cigarette and coffee were forgotten. His shocked expression filled Gaia’s screen.

  “That sounds awful. I am so sorry.” He knocked the column of gray ash off his cigarette and crushed it out. “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  Fitzpatrick lit another cigarette. “So am I correct in assuming that you feel you are in danger from the Kishocha?”

  “Sharkey cut a guy’s head off today.” Gaia knew she’d said that already but words didn’t seem to convey to Fitzpatrick how it felt to watch that happen. “And just a few weeks ago Sharkey had that thing pointed at me. When that guard jabs a spear at you, it’s not bluffing.”

  “I understand that you feel threatened, but Oziru assured us that you would not be harmed by a Kishocha on pain of death, and I think we know that Oziru’s not bluffing when it makes a statement like that,” Fitzpatrick went on reasonably.

  “So what?” Gaia shouted. “So Sharkey gets executed for killing me. Big fucking deal, I’m still dead. And what if it’s not Sharkey? What if it’s some other Kishocha just following its master into the barren, scorching desert because orange is blasphemous? What then?”

  Fitzpatrick stared into the camera, as if by sheer will of concentration he could turn on her visual. “You are making very little sense right now, Ms. Jones.”

  Gaia took a deep breath. “I know.”

  “Do you really think Sharkey is going to kill you?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m not only worried about myself. Kenjan’s not safe. I’m supposed to take care of it. I can’t do it. There’s only one of me.”

  “Within its own society, Kenjan’s position is really precarious,” Fitzpatrick said. “There’s nothing we can do about that.”

  “You didn’t tell me this would happen.” Gaia heard the whine in her own voice and winced.

  “We didn’t know it could happen. You’re the first one on the inside.”

  “You should get someone else. Maybe you could do this. You’re good at talking to people.”

  Fitzpatrick sighed. “I’m not the guardian.”

  “I don’t want to be the guardian anymore!”

  “I know. It’s hard on you.” Fitzpatrick was a perfection of soothing reassurance. Gaia wished she didn’t want him to be that way, that she could scoff at him for being insincere. But right now she wanted, more than anything else, to be comforted. “Oziru wouldn’t allow anyone else. We tried very hard to dissuade Oziru. We tried to get a trained person in there, but Oziru wouldn’t allow it. Being a guardian is a sacred calling. When Kenjan asked for you and you accepted, the pact was sealed. The fact that you didn’t know the consequences of your words was irrelevant to Oziru.”

  “I’m a free human being.”

  “I understand, but we really need you to stay there if there is any way that you can. I know it’s difficult for you—”

  “Sharkey cut someone’s head off!” Gaia yelled into the receiver. “Head off! Cut it off! What don’t you understand about this?”

  “What happened after that?”

  “What?” Gaia’s concentration was thrown.

  “What happened after that?”

  “Sharkey went to help Wave, who’d been hit by a rock.” Gaia slumped, remembering how tenderly Sharkey had lifted Wave. “Sharkey pays too much attention to Wave.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what all the Kishocha say. I guess it means Sharkey’s got a c
rush on Wave.”

  “Sharkey wasn’t aggressive to you?”

  “No,” Gaia said, dully.

  “What about the other guard?”

  “Stinger picked up the head and took it somewhere,” Gaia said. “To Oziru, I think.”

  “And Kenjan?”

  “Kenjan hid the whole time.” Gaia sat down on her bed. “Some of its stuff got broken. I think Kenjan needs a new hand-held.”

  “I’ll get one tomorrow,” Fitzpatrick said. Silence drifted between them. It was as if by yelling Gaia had exorcised all her emotions. She felt drained and mute. Fitzpatrick peered into the camera, trying his psychic-manipulation trick again. “Are you still there, Ms. Jones?”

  “Yes,” Gaia murmured.

  “I can’t force you to stay. I can only beg you to try. We need this.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Everyone living one the station who isn’t you. Kishocha technology could make a big difference for us.”

  “Sure.” Gaia pushed out one syllable in response. She didn’t want to give in to Fitzpatrick just yet. He could console her for a little while longer.

  Fitzpatrick seemed to recognize and accept his role and kept speaking in a smooth, collected tone. “What you need to do is tell me what I can do to make you feel safe.”

  She let out a short, bitter laugh. “Get me a Norton shock pistol.”

  “Done.”

  Gaia’s eyes widened. She switched on the visual, leaning in close to the camera. “I can have a stun gun?”

  Fitzpatrick smiled. “It’s good to finally see you. You can have two stun guns if you want. I have amazing latitude with regard to your continuing happiness.”

  “Can I have a customized Mitsubishi liquid oxygen rebreather?”

  “Yes,” Fitzpatrick said.

  “And surveillance cameras for the shrine?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And can I borrow a rebreather from building maintenance in the meantime?”

  “If you decide to stay, then yes.” Fitzpatrick took a long, final drag on his cigarette before rubbing the butt out. “What do you think, Ms. Jones? Will you stay?”