by Harry F Rey
Tentacles flailed all over the desk, disturbing moldy bits of food and stacks of folders. He couldn’t see, but he could smell, and I reeked of half-truths.
“What late, Javer? I was on fucking Baldomar. I can’t take the slipstream. The station is across the Verge, sideways.” The paper rustling got louder and more frantic. A muffled, rumbling hum emanated from him.
“It’s seven point fives hours from Baldomar to heres. I messaged yous twenty-six point threes hours ago.”
“Yeah, well, I was taking a break.” My reflex memory wanted me to run for the exit, but I needed to stay for the job. “Anyway, you said you had a job for me.”
“I says nothing.” One tentacle smacked a dirty jar of weird blue goop off the desk, but another feeler below caught it. I knew what this meant. I steadied myself, took in a deep breath, and held it.
The tentacle that caught the jar raised it closer to the middle of his body. He popped off the lid. Despite trying not to breathe, I could feel the stench. I’d been trapped in sewers that smelled better. A slit in the middle of Javer’s body opened up, which arguably smelled worse than the blue goop he was about to consume. In one movement, his tentacle tipped the jar upside down and shook it a few times. With a sluggish shrug, the contents crept out of the jar from the inevitable forces of gravity, helped by a few taps from a tentacle. Then with a plop, it fell completely into his mouth hole.
Continuing this assault on my senses, I now had to listen to him chewing. Globular-based life forms like Javer sounded the worst when they chewed. Like vomit swirling in a bucket. They had no bones or teeth or sharp edges, only a dozen or more globs pushing against each other all at once, trying to break down and digest their food.
Finally, after wishing my ship had burned to dust on entry, I watched Javer finish his meal with a deafening, putrid burp.
“Hey, Javer, have you ever thought of going on a diet?”
“Shuts your tiny mouth, homo. Yous skin-bags think yous so smarts with all your teeths and your precious dicks. Whats do I care if I lose a tentacle, huh? I gots twelve. So why yous homos care so much abouts one little tentacle?”
I jumped a half step back to avoid a swift tentacle punch to my lower half. It was really his favorite part of homosapien anatomy, but I wasn’t sure he gave mine the respect it deserved.
“Finished being jealous about my dick, glob brain?”
His tentacles flapped faster, more and more agitated, and the low grumbling sound became a few decibels louder.
“Yous a sorry-ass piece of skin-bag shit, Ales. I gives you a job, and all yous do is rob mes—”
“Oh save it already. I’m the only one that you can trust to deliver a crate of Kri without selling it to moon junkies. And that’s literally fifty percent of your profit margin. So what do you need delivered?. And to where?”
The grumbling grew louder, like the sound of a MAST drive about to implode.
“Come on, Javer. I don’t have time for this. There’s dicks out there that need me.”
He calmed down. “You makes a pickup from the storage locker and takes it to Jansen, way past the ends of the slipstream. Goes stay in Capital Hotel. Someone meets yous there.”
“Sounds fine. Got an import license for me?” Tentacles felt around the desk independent of each other, literally sniffing out the right piece of faux-paper.
“Heres.” He thrust a damp set at me. I took them, and without me seeing, he tapped my wrist-tech, adding a thousand to my account. It also bound me by contract to make the delivery. Breaking a contract could see my ass hauled before the Trades Council, the closest thing to a government the Outer Verge had. The last thing I wanted was to be slapped with a travel ban and left stranded. It had happened to a friend of mine over at Galactic Shipping. He’d made ten times as much selling the cargo on the black market, but when GSC caught him, they were merciless and demanded a lifetime ban. He was as rich as a Kyleri prince now, but lived on a refueling station in an asteroid belt. I shuddered and shuffled through the papers to figure out what my cargo would be.
“Medical supplies? Since when do we pretend to deliver medical supplies?”
“Since shut you damn mouths, homo, that’s when.”
Why Jansen? I racked my brain, trying to remember what I knew about the planet. I’d heard the name recently. Maybe I’d hooked up with someone from there? Doubtful, I normally didn’t even know their name, let alone their home-world. I checked my wrist-tech. My heart dropped.
“There’s a damn blockade there. Javer, you’re sending me into a war zone?”
“Not war zone. Humanitarian mission. Medical supplies. Yous can go.” A tentacle waved to the door.
“And how exactly do I get out after?” Right then, I swear the damn hetero smiled.
“Don’t knows. But there’s five thousand waiting for yous at the end.”
A voice inside my head, not whispering, but screaming, told me I’d never see that five thousand.
IT TOOK ANOTHER few hours to get to Targuline’s orbit, away from the gas giant that Alverson orbited and toward the system’s inner worlds. I probably shouldn’t’ve delayed heading out to Jansen too long, but before heading into a siege, I craved familiar food and a friendly face.
I directed the ship toward the docking bay atop one of the thousands of Shards that grew out from the planet into orbital space. Targuline wasn’t a large planet, but it was the only complete city-world in the Outer Verge. One out of every four Vergians lived on Targuline, and the only way a hundred and fifty billion homo- and heterosapiens could fit was by building into space. Living above the atmosphere in one of the Shards was much cheaper, and in space the parking was free.
I traveled along the familiar route, under a Shard that connected Targuline to one of its closer moons, a small green and blue orb that had been terraformed into a park back when the Verge had been full of money and hope. It hung in a somewhat comforting contrast to the steely grays of the Shards and blurry oranges of the rolling atmosphere.
I remembered with perfect clarity the first time I’d seen Targuline. My stomach fluttered as rewoken memory flushed through my system, heightening my senses to the surroundings. Back then I’d taken the hour-long journey down the spine of Shard to the ground level far below. It opened into a feeling of childish freedom. I could taste that hot, muggy air of the outside. The street-level smell of old trash and greasy cooking, the throngs of people of all types and races, rushing from here to there. I could do whatever I wanted, go wherever I pleased with a sense of anonymous safety as thick as a nebula.
The whole Verge held that same sense of wide-open freedom for me, but it was only on Targuline that, rightly or wrongly, I really indulged. That was why I never spent more than a day, two at most, in a place where my pain could all too easily be replaced with fantasy.
After docking my ship in an individual pod at the Shard’s tip, I walked along the dank corridor to the arrivals hall. The Shard’s tip hosted a busy and crowded marketplace, a maze of shacks selling goods from every system in the Verge. Steaming cook pots knocked against spare MAST drive parts; boxes of cheap clothes for sale were stacked high against doorways to the hundreds of docking pods that surrounded the Shard’s tip.
I squeezed past blobs of heteros and tried to block out the shrieks of stall holders yelling their prices. I pushed through the throng all the way to my favorite pit stop, Churlie’s Chicken, a tiny kitchen stall with four stools and a countertop tucked between a Kyleri diamond trader and a wrist-tech repair place.
“Churlie!” I yelled, grabbing a stool.
The old gray man turned around from his chopping board and greeted me with a surprised smile. “Hey, Ales, buddy. What’s new?” If I hadn’t shouted, he wouldn’t have heard. He’d been through the wars, old Churlie, and his face showed it. Pockmarked with shades of brown from multiple skin grafts and little remaining of his left ear. He wiped off a hand and thrust it into mine.
“All good, Churlie.”
“Yeah
? Well, that’s swell, that is. Really swell. Hey, how’s your old buddy? How’s Franxy?”
“He’s doing great, Churlie. In fact, I’m off to see him now. Right after a spicy chicken slanja. Came halfway across the Verge for one of these.”
“Sure thing, Ales, coming right up. So, you still working for old Javer?”
“Yeah, still at his beck and call.”
“Ah, that old crook.” Churlie laughed and sounded like he coughed up half his lungs.
“He’s sending me to the edge of the damn galaxy today. To a system called Jansen.”
“Jansen? That’s funny. You know I swear I’d never heard of the place before. But that’s the third time today.”
“Third time?” I asked, pulling my stool in closer.
“Yeah. Some fella came by this morning. Real tall, he was.” Churlie threw a handful of marinated chicken bits onto the grill, and a cloud of fragrant steam screeched through the noisy air. My stomach groaned. “Ordered wings and asked me about the place, Jansen I mean. If I knew anyone who was heading out there. Said I’d never heard of it.”
“That’s weird.”
“Yeah, full of weirdos this place. Weirdos like me.” He gave a deep, smoky laugh, dolloping sauce over my sizzling chicken.
“What’s the other time?”
“Huh? Oh yeah. I saw on the newscast. Trouble happening out there. They want to blockade it. Didn’t think they could do that kinda thing.”
“The Trades Council?” I asked as he scooped my chicken onto a steaming bed of rice and laid it in front of me. The fork wasn’t the cleanest, but I didn’t care. Nothing in the Verge compared to Churlie’s chicken.
“Who else? Come to think of it, how’d he get there with that siege going on? The tall fella. How’ll you get there?”
I barely cared anymore. The spicy food caused an explosion of flavor in my mouth. I’d missed it. I swear it’s better than half the sex I have. I shoveled it down while Churlie gazed absentmindedly at me eating, forgetting his own question.
“No idea.” I swallowed a mouthful and grabbed the cup of soothing klo juice Churlie had helpfully put in front of me. “Just there for the job.”
I TOOK ONE of the dozens of internal Shard elevators all the way to Franx’s level. It didn’t take too long. He lived barely inside the atmosphere, where the one-bedroom apartments were still cheap. Bought with the proceeds of our enterprises. It took a few minutes to get my bearings in the maze of cramped corridors and apartment numbers that went into the thousands. It’d been a while since I last stepped foot here.
Eventually, I reached the right one and gave the door a tap, suddenly unsure if he would even be here. Although it wasn’t like Franx to not be home in the middle of the daytime. The door used to open with my wrist-tech, not anymore. It slid open.
“Oh,” Franx said, reacting like he’d been charged double for something he expected for free. “Buying or selling?”
“Well, hello to you too.” I pushed past his slender frame. The apartment, once so familiar, now so strange. Like putting on clean clothes that I didn’t remember washing, or touching a lover whose heart now belonged to someone else. Where once had been low floor cushions pushed against the wall and a dirty rug we used to slouch across and get high on, now was a shiny sofa set and glass table. I took a few steps and peered into the bedroom on the right. The bed was beautifully made with plush, blatantly expensive covers. Ones I certainly didn’t remember buying. A pile of freshly laundered dark-gray tunics sat on top. Franx had never worn a tunic in his life. Even the bubble-enclosed balcony outside now boasted hydroponic flower beds.
“Having a boyfriend agrees with you,” I said, lowering myself onto the sofa, crossing my legs, and picking a bit of chicken out of my teeth. Franx even looked different. His once-scruffy beard now tidy and shaped. His shirt didn’t have any holes and his trousers weren’t baggy, but fitted ones that showed off his thin legs. Even his skin glowed fresh with a healthy tan. A far cry from the pasty white I remembered, like he’d recently been on a pleasure cruise around the system. He sat on the other sofa, gazing out of the glass doors into the cloudy distance.
“So what’s this, Ales, a social call?”
“Just wanted to say hi.”
“This is the first time you’ve been on Targuline for half a year, is it?”
I sighed. He could easily track where I was every time I logged in searching for sex.
“I wanted to give you two space.”
Franx didn’t respond. He kept staring into nothing, and I wondered if this whole thing had been a mistake and I’d wasted half a day for nothing.
He stood. “You want coffee?”
“Sure,” I said, and we both smiled. We could never stay mad at each other for long.
“THIS ONE HAS double the protein of any steak, and this one over here, I swear it tastes like Churlie’s special sauce.”
We sat on the balcony in chairs made entirely of translucent bubbles. They gently massaged my lower back, and I couldn’t complain. Franx proudly showed off his home-grown plants, while through the shifting atmospheric clouds, I caught glimpses of Targuline’s lights and buildings far below and the stars and orbiting ships above.
“But it’s still leaves, right?”
“Yeah, but so much healthier.”
“You’re into that now?” I asked him.
“He is,” Franx said. “So I am too.” We both took a long sip of our coffee, thick and black. “So, what’s going on with you?”
I sighed. Chasing Ukko around the Verge didn’t exactly compare to the shiny new life Franx was living with his shiny new boyfriend.
“Nothing. Really, nothing. There’s this one guy. Flew all the way to Baldomar yesterday to meet him.”
“He must be special.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t even show up.”
“Oh, Ales, I’m sorry.” He put a hand on my leg, but it hardly helped.
“I’m sick of it. Tired of wasting my time, tired of being alone.”
Franx fidgeted in the chair. I wouldn’t know what to say either. I clasped my hand around my forehead, rubbing my temples.
“Remember when we didn’t care about any of that? We had a good time and fucked whoever like there was no tomorrow,” Franx said.
“I remember when you didn’t care about that.”
He knew I was right. Franx had never given a damn about the future. We’d lived from one party to the next, one job to the other. I’d left, not him. I was the one who’d had enough of the endless nights, the countless vials of Kri, the nameless men. I’d left Franx and our little two-man smuggling operation and joined Javer, thinking it would be me who’d come out on top. But nearly two years later, it seemed like Franx was the one with his act together.
“You know he works for the Trades Council,” Franx said, still not letting go of my leg. “Why don’t I talk to him. Maybe there’s something for you.”
I stared at him with my mouth open.” As what, an invigilator?” I laughed at the absurdity of it.
“Maybe.”
“Infinity’s end, you’re serious?”
“They need people like you, Ales. People who know the tricks.”
“Oh and they’ll wipe my record, too, will they? And what about yours for that matter?”
Franx sunk into his chair and took a long sip of his coffee.
“I’m assuming lover boy doesn’t know you’re the number-one Kri dealer this side of the slipstream?”
“We were,” Franx corrected me.
“Fuck off.” I jumped forward in my chair, my hand clenched, ready to punch him right through the membrane bubble that surrounded the balcony. “You’re still pissed about that?”
“Dunno. Seems like you threw away everything we had to do pretty much the same, except by yourself.”
I stood and kicked my chair away. The bubbles rearranged themselves. “I needed more.” I stared over the balcony edge at the endless city that disappeared beneath the planet’s cur
ve. Staring at the height could make a person feel breathless after a while. Like falling but never going anywhere. I turned to face him. “You made it really clear you couldn’t give me more. Not with the business. Not with you.”
“I was never enough for you.” Now Franx stood and walked toward me, grasping himself like a wounded warrior. “Nothing is ever enough for you, Ales. You know what, nothing ever will be. You can’t replace your home. So stop trying.”
I couldn’t talk about it. Not now, not like this. Inside the only other place I’d ever called home, but now wasn’t mine.
“This was a mistake,” I said, blinking away tears. I pushed past him and went inside, heading straight for the door. Franx followed me.
“You push people away, Ales. The people who care. The ones who want to care. No one can get into your orbit.”
“You’re wrong,” I said, one foot already out the door. “No one’s ever been worth letting in.”
Chapter Three
“WHAT IN INFINITY?” The door to my docking pod wouldn’t open. I’d cut through the arrivals hall straight to the section I’d docked the ship in. I wasn’t in the wrong place, for sure not. It was the right corridor. Pod number 463. I tried the door again. Maybe they’d started charging and I hadn’t paid?
The door should have recognized my DNA and opened automatically. If the sensor was broken, then at least the handle should sense I was the ship’s owner. I banged on the metal. Nothing happened. Out of options, I trudged along the corridor, passing rows of doors on either side that probably all opened without a problem.
I stepped inside the arrivals hall, into the never-ceasing noise, and spotted a terminal close by. Maybe that would tell me something, if the thing worked. A couple of translucent heteros hung around the terminal, beside a stall selling holiday homes across the Verge. Globular eyes staring at me. They oozed suspicion. Turning away from them, I touched my wrist-tech against the terminal.
