Happy Snak

by Nicole Kimberling

  “I didn’t read it.”

  “Of course not, you are not a priest and have no knowledge of holy letters, as is right and natural. But as the guardian of the ghost you must not allow its blasphemy to seep out of the confines of its chamber. If the ghost continues to be rebellious, it will be exorcised and your Mini-Snak will be no more. If you see the ghost making holy letters, you should discourage it.”

  “How do I tell holy letters from regular ones?” Gaia asked.

  “All Kishocha letters are holy. They are not like your human dead-sound marks. They contain the motions of divinity. The ghost must not be allowed to defy the god again.”

  Gaia said, “I understand.”

  Wave mashed its face further into the petals of a flower.

  Oziru continued, “Is this blasphemous letter the sole reason you demanded my attentions?”

  “No.” All liquid in her mouth evaporated. She felt the profound urge to fling herself down flat and play dead. Wave definitely had the right idea.

  “What then?” The timbre of Oziru’s voice hit her like a physical force. Goosebumps rose up, and the muscles of her arms began to infinitesimally quake.

  “I…” She trailed off. Gaia knew that she’d come with grievances, but she couldn’t think of any words. Her thoughts scattered like a flock of pigeons being assaulted by an excited dog. “I need…”

  Oziru regarded her imperiously, its cranial tendrils lashing slowly from side to side. “Wave!”

  Wave flinched. “Yes, my glorious lord?”

  “What does Gaia Jones want?”

  “She begs for a divination.” Wave’s hands shook as it spoke.

  “What for?”

  “To know that Mini-Snak is a righteous endeavor, and so Gaia Jones can understand what the god wants of her.”

  “Why would the god have any care for a human?” Oziru’s eyes settled on her.

  Gaia managed to locate her voice, but her intellect lagged fearfully behind. “The god let Kenjan choose me as a guardian.”

  “Perhaps the god wanted all Kishocha to remain uncontaminated by the dead. Perhaps it was never the god’s intention at all, but Kenjan’s last defiance.”

  “Maybe it was,” Gaia said. “But without a divination, I won’t know for sure why it happened.”

  Oziru narrowed its eyes. Its cranial tendrils halted, mid-lash. “There is no logic behind those words.”

  Gaia choked. She had to think of something to say, something that had nothing to do with Kenjan.

  Gravity. She was supposed to ask about the gravity. That had nothing to do with Kenjan.

  “There have been microgravity failures in the human sector that have caused some damage, and I’m worried that people will be killed if this continues.” Gaia felt her intellect resurrecting itself.

  Oziru took its time responding to this statement, and when it did its voice was slow and perplexed, as the alien tried to follow Gaia’s reasoning.

  “Why would you need a divination about that?”

  “Wave told me it was a holy force. I thought that meant it was the power of your god.”

  “It’s regulated through the songs and motions which I perform,” Oziru said.

  “So, you haven’t been punishing us humans?”

  Oziru started aback. “No, I have not.”

  “But the gravity…” Gaia trailed off again.

  “I have had sorrow sickness and have not danced some days.” Oziru stroked the letter again, which Gaia thought would be dead by now. It wasn’t. It curled weakly at the edges, still trying to escape. “This doesn’t matter so much inside the orb of Ki Island, but Seigata had told me human structures need to be always held with heaviness. So I dance though I have ill, acid nausea.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “There is no reason to ask the god about gravity,” Oziru ended.

  “That’s a relief.” Gaia forced a little perkiness into her tone. “I’ll just be on my way.”

  “No, you may not leave. I will call Seigata to divine your purpose, since you want to know,” Oziru said. “I can see that you are clever to wonder about it.”

  “If it’s only me then, please, don’t trouble Seigata.” Gaia wanted nothing more than to go back to Happy Snak, crawl into her bed and maybe leak a few overstressed tears.

  Oziru rose and bellowed out a series of sharp ascending notes. Instantly, the anvil-shaped head of Sudden Red Crush rose out of the water behind Gaia. She bit her lip to keep from moving or screaming. Residual fear made it easy for her to freeze. The shark floated inches from her body. Gaia barely breathed. Its teeth were bigger than her hands.

  Without ceremony Oziru tossed the dying letter into the shark’s mouth. Sudden Red Crush swallowed it whole.

  Chapter Twenty-One: Smoke and Abortion

  Gaia clenched her fists. This was awful. She should never have come. She hadn’t even assembled the courage to ask Oziru to prohibit other Kishocha from throwing rocks at Kenjan. Oziru’s attitude toward its former consort was heartless. Apart from getting an answer about the gravity, this visit was a complete failure.

  Wave wouldn’t look at her. Gaia didn’t know if Wave was scared or sad or just angry. But Wave had curled in around the emotion coursing through itself and refused to give her any support. So Gaia silently waited. Time passed. Alternating washes of fatigue, cold and dullness wore her down to a state of inert inoffensiveness. She sat, passive as a closed clam.

  Seigata finally emerged from the red water glistening and wrapped with strand after strand of yellow pearls. Its throat was ringed from jaw to sternum in an intricate collar that not only covered the alien’s pit, but also managed to obscure any hint of the pit’s existence. Golden rings circled the base of each of Seigata’s cranial tendrils.

  Seeing that Oziru was seated, Seigata collapsed immediately to its knees, which left it sunk up to its hips in water. Behind Seigata, Gaia could see an entourage of a dozen other Kishocha waiting just beneath the surface. Only minute differences in their facial swirls defined one from the other.

  “You have summoned me,” Seigata said.

  Oziru hands curled inward, as if it were still holding the ghost of Kenjan’s letter. “Gaia Jones of my house has asked for a divination.”

  “For what purpose, my noblest master?” Seigata’s elongated, singsong accent confounded Gaia. She wondered if the alien really was singing its words for some reason.

  “To discover her place in the currents of the god’s will.” Oziru laced its fingers together. Gaia remained still and silent.

  “Come to me, then, Gaia Jones.” Seigata extended its hands, wet gold rings glistening against its fingers. The priest tilted its head slightly. Its palms were open to her. She held out her own hands and Seigata folded its warm fingers around them.

  Oziru lay down on its side. Its long, heavy cranial tendrils dangled in the water. Gaia wondered if sitting or standing upright in air was a strain on its neck muscles. The spotted octopus that had previously tried to dismantle Gaia’s rebreather latched onto one of Oziru’s tendrils and seemed to be riding it.

  “Gaia Jones.” Seigata sighed enormously, as if deflating. “Gaia Jones is a difficult question to ponder.”

  “Yes.” Oziru flipped the octopus into the air. The octopus flew up, popped open and drifted gently back to the water.

  Seigata released her hands. “I would like to try a different technique of divination from the normal Kishocha, simply to be sure I am not mistaken in the god’s intent.”

  The octopus had wrapped around Oziru’s tendril again, waiting.

  “This uncertainty is uncharacteristic of you,” Oziru commented.

  “Forgive me.”

  Oziru flipped the octopus into the air again.

  “What method will you perform?” Oziru played a listless game of tug of war with the octopus.

  Seigata said, “Since the human soul is made of fire, I will use smoke and abortion.”

  Gaia glanced at Wave. Apparently all the Kishoc
ha believed this to be true of human souls. She deliberately ignored the word abortion, since she couldn’t even hazard a guess what that would be. She unsuccessfully tried to comfort herself by thinking of the “pain and suffering” payment which she was sure to receive for this encounter. The impending cash infusion didn’t quell her alarm.

  Oziru said, “So extreme? You must feel very unsure.”

  “Yes, glorious Oziru, I do. I beg this of you.” Seigata stretched itself out across the coral. Its jewelry clicked against the hard shells.

  When Seigata lay fully prostrate, Oziru said, “Fine, you may divine this way if you choose.” Oziru turned its attention to her.

  “Gaia Jones.”

  “Yes, glorious Oziru?” Gaia found herself bowing her head reflexively.

  “You have already used my time and favor past the point that I can spare it. When Seigata’s divination is over, Wave will take you back to Happy Snak. We will confer over Seigata’s holy findings at a later tide. I have much work.” With that, Oziru slid into the red waters.

  Gaia said, “I’m sorry,” but Oziru was already far beneath the water. She turned to Seigata who looked much more formidable than before.

  “Follow me. Leave your servant.”

  Seigata drew Gaia away from Wave. It climbed the gentle incline silently and slowly, which was lucky for Gaia since the carpet anemones were slippery.

  They ascended higher, into the heavy curtain of mist. The coral slowly gave way to soft, spongy moss. Thin, willowy trees grew around the edge of the structure. Bells and chimes dangled from their branches. Gaia thought she saw a dove. It turned out to be something like a small, white pterodactyl.

  Seigata motioned that she should sit, which Gaia was grateful to do. The sensation of moss beneath her feet produced a sharp pang of homesickness within her. The pterodactyl-thing came to rest on a bell-laden branch, which chimed eerily under its weight.

  Seigata walked into the misty trees, then reappeared carrying a pink egg. It sat opposite Gaia and asked her to hold out her hands. The priest cracked the egg into her upturned palms.

  If a huge spider or slimy crustacean embryo had slid squawking from the egg, Gaia would not have been surprised. But the egg’s interior was very ordinary. It held clear albumen with two orange yolks floating in it. One yolk had broken, and leaked thinly through the albumen. Seigata leaned over it, regarding the yolks.

  “I no longer need smoke,” Seigata announced. “You may reunite these with the waters.” It indicated the yolks. Gaia walked to the edge of the spire, which was dizzyingly far above the water level. She scraped the egg off her hands. When she returned Gaia found that Seigata had made itself comfortable, leaning against a conveniently shaped rock. Seigata looked much less formal and scary. Gaia sat opposite it.

  “The aborted egg indicates that there are two paths that you can follow. One leads to order and the other to chaos,” Seigata said softly. Gaia didn’t have to think too hard to figure out which egg yolk indicated chaos.

  “Okay.” This divination told her nothing but she was strangely glad. Gaia disbelieved divinations, but when one is told a fortune, it’s always hard not to be affected by it.

  “This may be hard for you to understand, but your desire to know the god’s will for you is misplaced. Neither you, nor any other human has any part in the god’s plan. That is why one of the yolks is broken. When a thing has no place in a pattern, the result is disorder and chaos. Disruption is the only result. Because you have no purpose here, any action that you make inside the god’s pattern is wrong.”

  Gaia hadn’t expected her fortune to be “everything you do is bad”. She’d done a lot for Kenjan, and more than that for Wave, and Mini-Snak was gaining popularity by the hour. Happy Snak was becoming a destination establishment, instead of just a cheap replacement for Treat Bonanza, and she’d finally made some friends. That was not wrong. She reminded herself that she didn’t believe in mysticism, and then decided to use it against Seigata anyway.

  “But how can that be true, when the god made me Kenjan’s guardian?”

  “Kenjan no longer has any place in the god’s order either. The god killed Kenjan to protect the righteous from living amid its heresy. The god made Kenjan a ghost to keep that one from reaching heaven. And last, the god made Kenjan choose you, a human, its guardian to keep the ghost from being able to pollute any more Kishocha. This decision was made by the god not to draw you into the Kishocha waters, but to keep Kenjan from ever getting back to them.” Seigata took a deep breath. “You understand, maybe?”

  “And yet, the opposite seems to be happening. How can that occur without the god’s consent?”

  Seigata’s eyes narrowed. “Many things occur without the god’s consent. They are named evil.”

  “So I am evil?” Gaia kept her expression innocent, earnest. Maybe she would get out of here with her body and dignity both intact.

  “No, Kenjan is evil. You are merely Kenjan’s servant. That one is very evil.”

  Gaia felt her ire rising. “Seigata, I don’t serve evil. I serve snacks.”

  “Snacks, too, are evil.”

  She could not let this slur pass. “Snacks are not evil. They’re tasty. And they’re some of the best things about life.”

  “About human life. Snacks are not for Kishocha. Snacks corrupt. Snacks impersonate truth.”

  Gaia had no idea how that could happen, and said so.

  Seigata had an answer ready. “They offer cheap satisfaction while the soul swims to hell. They blur that pattern, replacing sustenance with venal urges for orange. They take the divine mystery of carbonation and transform it into a sticky poisonous brew of black vice. Your people build temples to blasphemous carbonation. The Coca-Cola building, where you, yourself originate.”

  Gaia thought about trying to explain that Coca-Cola was not a religion, but felt it went outside the range of the current argument.

  “So you are against snacks, and you think that humans are evil.”

  “I am against snacks, but I do not think humans are evil. You are simply not ready to travel in the god’s ocean yet, and we should not aid your progression into a mystery you are not yet able to understand.”

  Seigata had obviously thought this whole thing through. “We have intruded on the god’s pattern for your people. Making contact and encouraging you humans to live on our island like worms biting into the skin of a great shark. That was the worst of the heresies of Kenjan. For the god’s pattern, I believe that we must separate. We must undo the contamination, which we have done to ourselves and to you. You have not mastered the skills to traverse the great ocean and survive. You do not know gravity. You do not know how to call back to your home quickly. The human goal in the ocean is to go searching for nothing. Kishocha know what they want and seek it singularly.”

  “The god, right?” Gaia felt like she’d really gotten the gist of the conversation now.

  “Exactly. Our search is for the god. We should not be here going around this red planet. Our search must go on.”

  “Can’t you stay here and send other people out?”

  “We are the ones who were sent out. And here we are, going in circles around a red dry hell that is going in circles around a yellow sun. Confusion is compounded upon confusion. We must go on. The students of the scholar, True Current, know this. I know this. Only Kenjan did not believe this. But you can help us correct our path by taking Kenjan to your world.”

  “To Earth?”

  “Or to Mars.” Seigata waved the difference aside. “I think the god may have intended for Kenjan to be on Mars.”

  “If I could even get permission to do that, which I don’t think I could, Kenjan would die,” Gaia said.

  “Kenjan is already dead.”

  “Well, then Kenjan’s already out of the way and doesn’t have to go to Mars.”

  “Many do not agree,” Seigata said. “It is well known that we would not be here with you humans if Kenjan had not been charmed with you. Ken
jan argued that the god led us to meet you for a reason that we Kishocha must discover before going on. We had to learn from you, said Kenjan. We know now that you were simply a temptation, to which that one weakly succumbed. There is nothing to be learned from congress with mammals.”

  Gaia was not prepared to give up Happy Snak or her dream of an ideal life in space, which included congress with aliens. She also felt that Seigata was not the kind of person who could be argued with about matters such as personal freedom.

  She said, “I am not going to take Kenjan to Mars. It’s just out of the question. I don’t have a visa for Mars, or a business permit, and they don’t allow ghosts.”

  “So the humans are also worried about contamination from Kenjan? They are at least that insightful. I can understand. Kenjan is persuasive. This makes me respect the human piety more. Not all human priests rush to embrace wrong ideas.”

  Gaia nodded. Another human would have found the nod noncommittal and lackluster, but Seigata didn’t seem to notice. She wondered what nuances of conversation she was missing.

  “I have given you the divination as Oziru commanded, but now I humbly beg that you assist me.” Seigata shifted forward.

  “What do you need?”

  “When Kenjan died in your original Happy Snak, some things were left behind.”

  “Yes, the motions of dying.” Gaia allowed herself a little beam of satisfaction at knowing the Kishocha so well that she could predict what they would say.

  Seigata went on to immediately deflate her sense of worldliness.

  “I mean some material possessions of Kenjan’s. There was a wrist cuff, a pit guard and three tendril adornments that were never found. These are precious items and I would like to find them.”

  “I can’t help you with the tendril adornments or the wrist cuff, but I’ve got the pit guard.”

  “This object is a symbol of rank. I will need to wear it when I am made the consort of Oziru. So could you please return it to me?”