Custodians of the Cosmos

by Drayton Alan

  “I’m not sure… Ouch!” Kale said.

  “Exactly, you are unsure of yourself. That’s why you need it so desperately. Now let me get a scan of your I.D. card there, and put your thumb here, and here.” Quibbler had fast reflexes. Before Kale knew it, he was the proud owner of the rare, advanced, one-of-a-kind technology, the Situational Transition Decoder, commonly called an STD.

  Kale stared at his upper arm, still uncertain of what had happened. He felt someone shove him out into the throng of people in the passageway. The stream of people pulled him along with the flow. After a moment, he came back to his senses, it was like he’d been hypnotized and couldn’t quite remember what had just happened. The crowd thinned out and deposited him in the food court.

  He remembered he was supposed to do something, but what? Oh, yes, ask people about Nigel.

  The food court looked much the same as before, but now he felt exhilarated and ready to run around the room.

  He looked at the counter of The Bloated Roach. Nanaberi was still distributing death and screaming at customers. So he steered wide of her, in case she might remember him. In a few minutes, he’d looked through the whole room, there was no trace of Nigel.

  He saw two Centaurians sitting and talking over a sensible lunch. The Centaurians, who come from Proxima Centauri, prided themselves in being helpful. As a people, they were held in the highest esteem. Nearly everyone in the galaxy respected them for their wisdom and impressive deductive reasoning abilities. They had been the first alien race to discover humans living on their little watery planet orbiting its weak and puny sun. But they were always helpful to their disadvantaged galactic neighbors.

  In galactic terms, Earth was considered a hopelessly frumpy and unstylish place sitting in a remote backwater of the galactic community. Its only sentient inhabitants all looked the same with only slight variations in skin color and no unique or original organ placement; overall, they were merely symmetrical and rather plain. Geographically, Earth was also considered bland, compared to most of the popular planets. It could boast of no unique attractions and aside from a few large mountains and interesting holes, it had nothing to draw people off the main space routes. Although a few of the more eccentric space faring races might have thought Earth quaint or even kitschy, it never achieved any status as a trendy getaway with the well-to-do.

  On the other hand, or appendage, Earthlings were a prolific species and have become widespread across the galaxy. This was mainly due to their breeding habits and tendency to avoid bill collectors.

  Kale felt a strange compulsion to approach the Centaurians. He decided they might help him.

  “Excuse me, sirs. I hope I’m not interrupting, but I have lost my friend and hoped that you might have seen him?”

  “You are welcome to inquire of us. I am called Bifadan, and my friend here is Kimidius,” the tall slender Centaurian said in their characteristic lyrical voice.

  Kale had met several Centaurians on Earth and was more or less comfortable approaching them. Unconsciously he scratched his upper arm where he wore the STD.

  “He’s about my height and dressed like me, except he’s really ugly.”

  “Ugliness is a subjective concept,” the Centaurian, who identified himself as Bifadan, said. He lectured Kale further in his singsong voice, “Each race has its own interpretation of aesthetics, and so describing a person as ugly is not helpful, young human.”

  The second Centaurian, named Kimidius, chimed in. “Perhaps a name and more detailed description might be in order?”

  “Oh sure. His name is Nigel Van Mullet, he’s a human...” then added. “I think.” Kale realized he had never asked, but just assumed Nigel was human. In retrospect, there was little evidence to back up the assumption.

  Both of the Centaurians immediately gave looks of recognition. “Oh, Ugly Nigel, why didn’t you say so,” Bifadan said. “We are taught the Nigel Effect in our Earth orientation lectures. It is an example of comparative aesthetics, which is a useful field of research.”

  “We haven’t seen Nigel here since we arrived,” Kimidius said. He gave Kale a condescending smile, satisfied in knowing he’d been helpful to a lesser species.

  “He was supposed to meet some people called the Lactarians to sell them something, perhaps orbs. Does that mean anything to you?” Kale asked. “I haven’t seen him since.”

  Upon hearing the name Lactarians, the Centaurians’ demeanor and attitude changed to one of deep concern. “That is troubling. I believe this is an opportunity for my higher powers of deduction to help you. One moment, I have a theory germinating.” Bifadan closed his eyes and began performing a logical extrapolation of the facts.

  Kale opened his mouth to ask a question, but Kimidius hushed him, wagging a long finger in his face and shaking his head.

  After a moment of quiet contemplation, the one named Bifadan opened his eyes and asked, “Humans are at war with the squidmen?”

  “Yes,” Kale said.

  Kimidius hushed him again, and whispered, “These are rhetorical questions, human. Wait for him.”

  “What is the nature of Mr. Van Mullet’s duties on your ship?” Bifadan asked, but answered his own question. “No, wait, you work together and thus are custodians, I can tell from your clothing. And you clean up After Maths, correct?” Again, he didn’t give Kale time to answer. Bifadan had begun one of their famous deductive processes and would follow it uninterrupted until its natural conclusion.

  “Allow me to link to your deduction, Kimidius said. They pressed their temples together. It only took a few minutes.

  “Yes,” Bifadan said. “We have extrapolated the most likely scenario from the data provided. Nigel would probably have gathered the aforementioned orbs from the squidmen. The Lactarians will pay a high price for these. Nigel’s primary motivation being greed, he would desire to make the largest possible profit from the orbs he collected.”

  “He would not have sold them to a middleman but directly to the final customer.” The two Centaurians were completing each other’s sentences now, making it difficult for Kale to follow.

  Bifadan continued. “In Lactarian culture, the orbs are thought to bring good luck and fertility to a Lactarian female. Thus, when he attempted to sell these directly, he fell prey to their murderous tendencies. He was probably ejected out a portal into space. A most efficient way to dispose of a body and kill the victim at the same time.”

  Kale’s heart fell; he hadn’t realized he’d grown attached to Nigel.

  Then Kimidius contradicted Bifadan, “You have ignored something important. That is the fact that Lactarian women are the only ones of their race who are bold enough to travel into space. Their weak, hairless, and emaciated males have no courage or fortitude and often die during reproduction.”

  “Therefore,” Kimidius continued. “My theory is that Nigel would be considered a paragon of courage and beauty in the eyes of the Lactarian women. His unique facial hair arrangement and distribution of features match the ideal of classical male beauty in the Lactarian culture. That he was willing to risk meeting with them alone showed his great courage, another trait they find irresistible.”

  “That’s a valid observation, Kimidius, I believe you are correct. He would be the very archetype of heroic and handsome in their world. Thus, not murdered but instead, Nigel has been kidnapped.”

  “Kidnapped?” Kale said in disbelief.

  “Yes, allow me to illustrate our very impressive estimate for you, to make it easy for an intelligence-limited human to understand. Are you familiar with the mythology of ancient Earth Greek culture?”

  “I know some,” Kale said.

  “You see, from the viewpoint of the Lactarians, Nigel’s selling them orbs would be like the handsome Adonis selling aphrodisiacs to Amazons. So, they’ve kidnapped him. No doubt to give as a gift to an important leader, or perhaps one of their women wanted him for her mate. That sort of thing is not uncommon in their culture. I hope we have been helpful young h
uman.”

  Kale was bewildered, the idea of Nigel as an ideal of male beauty defied the imagination. Kale thanked the Centaurians and walked back to the ship flabbergasted.

  He went straight to the custodial shop and told Idonna and Belle what the Centaurians had said.

  Both in unison could only respond with, “Eww.”

  They took Kale to the lieutenant’s office and told him. The lieutenant was equally horrified. Yet the logic of the Centaurian’s conclusion was solid. Kale even did a computer search on male Lactarians and decided that Nigel could indeed pass for a good-looking version of one.

  “Good work, Kale,” the lieutenant said. “I’ll see if I can get the captain involved. However best not to get our hopes up. It would be unlike the captain to make any effort to retrieve a crewman.”

  Kale went to his room and slept, he could do nothing else. The chance that the captain would pursue the Lactarians and rescue Nigel was scant. Sure, the Centaurians deductions are often reliable, but not enough to alter the course and mission of a starship. For all the captain knew Nigel had gone willingly. Besides, the starship had received a mission to respond to a distress call from a nearby human colony, and they were already on their way there. Nigel was on his own.

  Chapter 8

  After two days in warp, the ship arrived at the colony, too late to help. The main force of attacking squidmen had left and there were only a few hidden pockets of human survivors. They transported officers and crewmen to perform a military mop-up operation. When it was nearly completed, and they had gathered all the survivors, they sent Kale and Chopi down to do the mop-up of the mop-up.

  They’d been assigned to clean the colony’s command center. It needed to be cleaned and brought back online to coordinate the restoration and recovery effort.

  There were rumors that pockets of squidmen had been left behind to ambush new settlers. A notorious trick of theirs was to hide in bodies of water on the planet and then creep out later and kill colonists in their beds. Despite advanced scanning technology, the soft-tissued squidmen were still difficult to detect underwater.

  Kale and Chopi materialized in a typical colonial command room. While most people would have been struck by the trendy contemporary styles employed in the room’s décor, Kale hadn’t even noticed. He was distracted by the overlay of massive carnage caused by the battle. The Coalition was nothing if it wasn’t fashionable. This is why the starship Cosmos employed Idonna, to coordinate the latest trends. Nearly every major Coalition facility had its own decorator. But the colony’s interior decorator, if he’d survived the attack, would have had a fit if he’d seen what had happened to his decor. The tasteful trendy beige and tan color scheme of the station had been ruined by the horrific gore of the battle’s After Math. However, the sad truth was that the station decorator was probably one of the casualties. His days of fretting over paint chips, upholstery swatches, and 3D models of interior spaces were over.

  With the advent of robot replication, little effort was needed in changing color schemes and furniture styles. A busy decorator might need to switch styles hourly in a swank command center like this one. Either that or the colony administrator might have subscribed to one of the new and popular decorator services, so that your robot could update your decor as soon as the newest trend was announced from Earth. This was putting a lot of decorators out of work and had spawned the Livid Revolution in the industry a few years ago. It was one of the most tasteful labor confrontations in history. But, it all fell apart when the cappuccino maker in the decorator’s strike headquarters broke down.

  Each of the light beige computer stations, with matching ergonomic seating units, still held the corpses of the former security technicians. Medical staff was there putting tags on the bodies. These were systematically being transported to the designated morgue area.

  A dozen or so vac-bots materialized near to where Kale and Chopi stood. The custodians got right to work with their spray bottles and squeegees. Kale had never seen such a massacre; he was sickened by it. So, he focused on the work to keep from being overwhelmed.

  A maintenance robot materialized in the room as the men worked. It was the robot Belle had repaired, Reggie.

  “Greetings, Reggie,” Chopi said to the robot.

  The robot seemed to reply with a friendly chirp and whistle.

  Reggie went to work scanning the room’s chairs and other upholstered items. Any items that were stained or otherwise compromised were teleported somewhere else and new ones were replicated into place. Reggie also fixed the thick shag carpet, discarding and replicating large sections, which had been stained or burned by weapons’ fire. He went through the entire room floor to ceiling. Reggie’s reactor hummed as he effortlessly generated matter from energy. Soon the room was almost back to normal and the newly cleaned and repaired control room radiated off-white splendor. A person could now better appreciate how the khaki shag contrasted so nicely with the cream walls. It gave the room a cozy lived-in feel, or, given the situation, a cozy died-in feel.

  At this point, a half dozen crewman teleported in and began replacing and initializing the desk work stations. Soon the room was buzzing with workers.

  As Kale and Chopi were finishing their cleanup, Commander Frakes entered the room. The man was positively radiant. He was whistling, happy, and even joking with some of the crewmen and technicians repairing the consoles.

  He came over to where Kale and Chopi were working and, much to Kale’s surprise, gave them both a friendly smile.

  “It’s my two favorite cleanup men! Kale, isn’t it? The vac-bot wielding warrior of the custodial crew, and of course my good friend Chopi the enigmatic curator of all things clean. Hey, Chopi, have you cleaned up the entire cosmos yet?” Frakes laughed at his own joke. Kale half-expected Frakes to poke him in the ribs.

  Chopi smiled and nodded good-naturedly.

  “You are in good spirits, sir. It’s very nice to have you leading the operation,” Kale said.

  “Yes, I am in a good mood. Wait... was that sucking up you were doing just now, Yeoman?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I meant to...” Kale began.

  Frakes interrupted. “Oh, don’t be sorry, I kinda like it. But if you're trying to get a good part in the play, that won’t be enough. You had better practice, practice, practice! I need talented crewmen for my pirate ship. Perhaps you can join me and some of the guys on Friday, we’re going over our lines together.”

  “Oh, that sounds like fun, sir! I’m glad you and the captain could decide on roles. You will make a wonderful pirate king, sir.”

  “Oh, we didn’t actually decide anything. I have confidence he will come to his senses eventually and see I’m the logical choice. But you are correct, I will be wonderful!” Frakes’s expression was a mask of self-confidence.

  Kale dropped the subject of the play, and asked, “How is the mop-up operation going?”

  “Things are going nicely. I have commanded that all bodies of water on the planet be drained to catch any hiding squidmen.”

  “That seems a lot of effort, sir. What happens to native aquatic life?”

  “That’s a good question, I’ll ask the engineers. Well, I have to be going. Once you gentlemen are done in here, please decontaminate the vestibule and surrounding hallways.” The first officer walked off singing “I am the pirate king!”

  Kale wondered how this could be the same man that had called him a “freak” a few weeks ago.

  “That’s nice, commander is in a good mood now,” Chopi said.

  Just then, Reggie gave a strange jerk and the carpet he was replacing ended up an inch off. Without skipping a beat, Chopi took the tool he was holding and gashed a big hole in the carpet Reggie had just replaced. Automatically, seeing the damage, Reggie replaced it again. This time it was perfectly on-center.

  “Is that normal?” Kale asked.

  Chopi smiled and nodded without stopping his work. Kale was already missing Nigel. Sure, the guy could be irritating
and arrogant, but he held up his end of a conversation much better than a smiling and nodding Chopi.

  Kale remembered he and Nigel once had a five-hour discussion about cheese. The man loved his cheeses. He could list every Earth type and most all of those known on other worlds. Perhaps he’d be okay with the Lactarians, they’d provide him a wide variety of cheese products. His time with them might end up being good. Still he worried.

  Kale had been spending his spare time researching them on the ship’s computers. Everything the Centaurians said was right, it was the only thing that made sense.

  Idonna and Belle had got Falcon station’s commander to do a scan of nearby space for bodies. The scan turned up a few other crime victims, but not Nigel.

  Kale and Chopi finished the control room and began cleaning the entry vestibule and main entry area. The scene here was much the same: cozy tan and beige, with a smattering of gore.

  They got right to work with the robots joining in.

  Kale heard someone singing the Pirate King theme. He looked up to see Frakes walking past again. There was something strange about how he moved, a sort of rhythm in his walk. For a moment, the robots near him seemed to synchronize and moved in step with him and the song. It was bizarre. Then it was over.

  “Did you see that, Chopi?” Kale asked.

  “See what, Kale?”

  “Just now, the robots, they moved, like, I don’t know, together?”

  “They same program, they move same.”

  “I guess that was it.” Kale believed he had imagined the whole thing. He had read a study about how humans are programmed to recognize patterns in random events. Probably his brain was doing that.

  The rest of the cleanup went smoothly, with no alien encounters or murderous botany specimens.

  Chopi again talked to Kale about being the chosen one. Kale asked what this meant but Chopi only told him it was against the rules to explain further.