by Jenn Thorson
“Deal?” said Bertram, eyes wide. “Deal?!”
“Wow, that’s high,” breathed Rollie, mopping his brow. “Bleedin’ Karnax, I never thought he’d agree that high.”
The being was sorting out some kind of money cards.
Bertram hissed. “You are not going to take this thing’s money, are you?”
Rollie blinked. “Well, frag it, Ludlow, it is awfully high.”
“Okay, and just how are you going to get in to the seers on Nett?”
“10,000,” counted the being, “12,000 … 17,000 …”
Rollie frowned. “Explain.”
“Don’t you think,” said Bertram, “that they might just want to see the guy from Tryfe who’s supposed to save the planet and help with the lines of Fate and blah, blah, blah? For all we know, to these Nett people, you’re just some alien hood. Do you really believe they know about the arrangement you had with the Seers of Rhobux? And if the Seers of Rhobux used you and skipped town, who’s to say you’ll get any better reception with their branch office? Hm?”
“25,000 … 27,000 …”
“You need me for this,” Bertram proclaimed.
“30,000.” The being looked up and held out the money cards with its largest claw-like hand. “This is right. Now, zakari, come. We go to many shows and win prizes, yes?” It motioned to Bertram.
“Rollie,” snarled Bertram through gritted teeth.
“Er, my exoskeletoned friend?” Rollie called. “Been having a rethink; and I just can’t let the zakari go.”
At this, the being turned abruptly. “What is this you say?” it queried.
“It’s a favorite lower life-form of mine. Inherited it from my Second Level Maternal Archetype … y’know: Gran. It’s not that it’s so valuable. I mean, it’s total rubbish on the show circuit. Arthritic and terrible for breeding. Impotent and chock-full of parasites—”
“Rollie,” Bertram growled, “I should—”
“—But it’s got sentimental value, you see,” Rollie concluded, his expression placid and sincere.
“I do not understand ‘value of sentiment’,” the alien replied. The eyes perched on its stalks narrowed with suspicion.
“Okay, then, I’ll make it simple: not selling, mate,” said Rollie. “Sorry.”
“Not sell? You must sell. There was a deal.” The being gave a loud crack of its claw.
“And you, mate, are not using your listening antennae. As I already said, what with the zakari being in the family for so long …”
At this moment, the robot returned on squeaky wheels. “Captain Tsmorlood,” Erl began, “I believe you’ll be pleased with the news. My employer did indeed hold onto the package you had requested some time ago, and my assistants are ready to load this and the rest of your order into the ICV.”
“Stellar,” said Rollie, handing Erl a wad of paper currency from his pocket without counting it. He then turned to the zakari-enthusiast. “Sorry, mate,” he told it, “it’s just not going to work out.” He and Bertram followed the robot to the exit.
But the life-form wasn’t so easily deterred. It trailed them, raising its voice as marketgoers turned to watch. “On my planet, he who retreats on his word is the lowest form of vileness, the scum at the bottom of the Well of a Thousand Screams.” It reached out and gripped Rollie’s arm with one of those knobbled claws.
Rollie whirled swiftly around, eyes narrowed. He wrenched his arm away, an answering gash crossing his coat sleeve. “Look, mate, I never actually said—” he began, but the creature wasn’t much interested in what Rollie had never actually said.
“Do you know what we do with those who lie in my culture?” the being hissed.
“I’m fragged if I know what your culture is,” Rollie admitted.
“Liars must stand up and recite the Verse of Regret.”
“A’right then, if gets us out of here any quicker.”
“And then throw themselves on a pit of spikes.”
Rollie rolled his eyes to the heavens. “Couldn’t have mentioned the blasted pit of spikes first?”
“He’s right,” advised Bertram. “Next time: pit, then poetry.”
“Come. The pit is in my ship,” the life-form told them with an energetic snap.
Bertram let out an exasperated huff. “Dude, you get lied to so often you need a portable pit of spikes?”
“Should make you want to reflect on why no one’s ever straight-up with you,” Rollie said.
“You will come,” sneered the life-form, “or I will—”
But they never found out what the being would, either. Because Bertram Ludlow was suddenly very tired of having his subconscious take lead. He was tired of being pushed around, and stunned, and jailed, and given impromptu dental examinations and—and sold!—to pushy aliens with irrational best-in-show fixations.
Most of all, he was tired of running around the universe of his mind in holey friggin’ socks.
So before he even realized what he was doing, he heard his own voice saying: “Hey Crustacean Boy!—How do you feel about … mathgar kidney?” And with one great swoop, he was pushing over a nearby stand.
Hundreds of roundish, bluish things tumbled out one of the crates and rolled around the life-form’s feet. Moving sideways as it did, the zakari-enthusiast was slipping and sliding, uneasy on its strange jointed legs.
And that was all they needed. By the time the aspiring zakari-trainer gained its footing once more, Bertram and Rollie were bursting from the doors of the Shop-O-Drome and racing to the ICV park.
“Calderic moon polyps,” Rollie called, as they sprinted the last length to the ship.
“Pardon?”
“Moon polyps, that was back there. Not mathgar kidney.”
“Potato potahto,” shouted Bertram, running up the ramp into the ship. “Where’s that robot with the supplies?”
“‘How do you feel about … mathgar kidney?’” Rollie laughed appreciatively, shaking his head. Having set course for Nett, now he was unpacking some sort of raw meat and tossing it in a metal pot. “I mean, I was just gonna frag-up the fellah, but then you went all Keeltsar on him and saved me the trouble.”
“You were going to sell me to that thing,” Bertram said. The memory of it was still too fresh with the stench of his mathgar kidney-coated hands.
“Aw, I was not really,” said Rollie. “Probably.” He dumped something else into the pot. “Almost certainly probably not really. Anyway, what an exit strategy! Didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Oh, it’s in me, all right,” Bertram replied. “You just haven’t been seeing me at my best.”
Rollie admitted he’d heard that somewhere before, and tossed three more things into the pot. Then he drew his laser. Bertram flinched, but the captain directed the gun potward. “ZOT!”
“FFOOF!” Up shot a blazing flame and a cloud of smoke licked the ceiling. It spread across, thick and blackish-blue, until it dispersed into stray, lingering feathers. Soon an enthusiastic sizzle popped and fizzed, followed by a hearty, smoky-rich smell.
Bertram crawled out from under a table, watchful for more laserfire.
Rollie said, “Smell that? Hyphiz Deltan Flash Stew. Just like home.” He considered it a moment, adding, “Not my home, o’ course. But someone’s I’m sure.”
Bertram’s stomach was already rumbling about a Five on the Richter Scale, and whatever had been lasered into medium-well smelled unexpectedly good. He didn’t recall being ravenous in his dreams before.
He wondered how long he’d been operating on that one cup of breakfast ramen and just where he really was. In a fetal position on his apartment floor? Tucked into bed in the mental ward of the local hospital? It depended on how time translated from the real world to his mind. It was likely his students had already missed him from class. The department head would be contacted. And she’d have called his apartment, maybe even gotten someone to check on him.
His semi-girlfriend Rozz, perhaps? Though, he imagined, one joint
ly-run psych experiment and three actual dates didn’t really solidify her role much for any Checking-to-See-if-He’s-Dead-and-then-Admitting-Him-to-Western-Psych kind of activities. Not a great way to advance their fledgling relationship either, Bertram considered, him going all Syd Barrett on her and skipping out to Orangeville.
A girl might have second thoughts about Date Four over a thing like that.
Rollie flipped on the hotplate and put a lid over what he’d just seared. “Supposedly there’s been these huge advancements in food preparation units,” Rollie mused, “but you can’t tell me that pre-programmed stuff is ever as good as what you can laser up yourself.”
He dropped into a seat as Bertram’s gaze fell on the last of the supplies. The package sat on the table next to him, the unopened rectangle in yellow paper that someone named Marlok had held onto for so long. Bertram pointed, “So, what is it? Drugs? Counterfeit money? … Spice?”
Rollie smirked, his eyes seeming to shine very orange in the light. He folded his long fingers into that thoughtful steeple again before him. “Open it.”
Bertram picked up the package and blew off a thickness of dust. He looked up, hesitant.
“Go on.”
He then began to unwrap it from its container, carefully from each end. Finally, he peeled back the paper to find …
A book. A musty, tattered old book.
Bertram could barely make out the faded title on its leather-bound spine. “Belief Systems of the Kegnis Karb?”
“That’s right, Ludlow,” said Rollie, the glint still flickering, “print.” Taking the book from him, he inhaled the musty pages with relish. “Ah, that smell’s history, that is. Can’t get that any better way, to my thinking. And still so portable, so tactile, so easy on the eyes. Doesn’t require any power. Nothing to swallow. Extraordinary!”
“You collect old books,” Bertram said after a sneeze. Somehow, it didn’t fit with the jail breaking/police pureéing image he had going.
“Old, new.” Rollie shrugged and leafed eagerly through its pages. “Not easy to get a hold of now, though. Not since Spectra Pollux and those Forwardist slaggards have had their way.”
“So print is finally dead.” At the thought, Bertram felt a dry, weighty disappointment fill his chest.
Rollie rose and moved to the hotplate. “I still hear ’er wheezing in backspace corners like your Tryfe. But that’s all the breath left in ’er, I’m afraid.”
“And it’s all gone digital?”
Rollie stirred absently. “Oral.”
“Oral? Like …” He conjured up images of aliens sitting around rustic campfires telling epic space tales about the evening news, “Beowulf?”
Rollie blinked, a stranger to Beowulf, and he settled the lid back on the pot. Funny, Bertram expected there’d be a lot more shared knowledge with his hallucinations.
“Like Translachew gum does for languages,” Rollie clarified. “They’ve coded print into pills. Want to read the Calderian classics? Have a pill. Want to check out the Ottoframan news? Subscribe to today’s pill. Want to discuss the latest Fensteev Gnik bestseller? Buy the pill.”
“So, digest the latest digest, and devour the book of the month?” Bertram offered.
“That’s the idea.” The Hyphiz Deltan sat back down again, sprawling comfortably in the chair. “It’s about retention. Most everyone you’ll meet knows core mathematics, science, literature, local etiquette, solar system history, whathaveyou, right off the top of their heads. Coded capsules freed ’em up. Schools do hands-on training now. Stuff you can’t get in a safety seal packet.”
“I never did get through the Last of the Mohicans,” admitted Bertram.
“Well, first, last, and every Mohican in the series, you’d be set,” he said.
Bertram managed to turn his laugh into a little cough. “Er, so who are these Forwardists?”
Rollie’s face clouded over and his knee twitched spasmodically. “When infopill technology came along, most everyone was very launched about it. But some were still afraid to take the pills—worried about long-term effects, you see. Or they just preferred the print experience. So the Forwardists decided the only way to ensure the GCU advanced properly was to fragging-well see to it there wasn’t any print left to muck things up. Their answer was the LibLounges.”
“LibLounge.” Bertram chuckled. “Sounds like somewhere you’d go to discuss Gloria Steinem.”
Rollie looked intrigued. “One of your Tryfe religious songs?”
“Not so much.”
Rollie shrugged and leapt from his chair. “Clever idea the LibLounges were, I s’pose.” He pushed a button, opening a cabinet, withdrawing a chipped tumbler and examining it with a critical eye. He scraped a bit of gunk from it with a fingernail and set it prominently on the counter.
He opened a second cabinet. “The Forwardists knew something dramatic like forced banning or burning would only make everyone more resistant to giving up print. So best way to purge it? Make purging trendy.” He was now echoing, crouched somewhere half-in the cabinet. “Forwardists raised big yoonies and built these Print Liberation Lounges.”
Bertram saw a hand rise up and clomp a large green glowing mug next to the glass, only to submerge again. “The idea being, ‘why weigh yourself down with heavy boring print when you can be free and all-knowing? Be Your Best You.’ That’s their motto. Got everyone real excited about eradicating their print, too. So these Lounges are—Ah, here we are!”
He rose with two mismatched bowls and a couple of smudgy translucent spoons in his hands. He put them with the tumbler and mug. He blinked. “Er … What was I saying?”
“‘The Lounges are …’?” Bertram prompted. He was getting the vague idea that Rollie had some kind of alien ADHD.
“Oh, right. Well, the Lounges are designed so you can bring your print to demolecularize, then sit round and chat about the latest works you’ve digested. They have comfy chairs, sell copies of the latest book pills and exotic beverages to wash ’em down. You get 1/100th of a yoonie for each book you recycle. But I imagine most of it goes back to the café.”
He brought out a bottle and poured a clear liquid into the two glasses. He handed one to Bertram. “I try not to think how much print gets fragged. And how much never makes it to capsule first.”
Bertram envisioned the last copy of something big being wiped from the universe. Theories from the next Einstein or Hawking, stories from the next Twain, eradicated unknowingly over coffee and overpriced Martian danish. He took a bracing sip of the drink in his hand. It had a strange, fruity-woody-spicy flavor to it. Like iced orange pekoe strained through a 70s spice rack. He was pretty sure he didn’t like it. He also thought he could get used to it quickly. “Don’t they keep track? Isn’t there a system?”
Rollie tipped the stew into the bowls. “Oh yeah, and systems are always just so flawless, aren’t they?” He handed Bertram a bowl. “That’s why we’re blasting halfway across the fragging GCU to see these slaggard prophets bunkered down all the way on Ne—”
A buzzer rang out over the ship. Momentarily, an upper cabinet panel flashed to life with what appeared to be a display. Its screen featured a two-faced woman.
That wasn’t a judge of character, either. She—or they, as the case may have been—had two faces, and both on the very same head. One face beamed with warmth. The other held a bored air. Bertram caught himself in mid-gape, so busied himself with his dinner. It seemed wrong to stare.
“My, my, my. So Fess and Wilbree told no lie!” said the smiling face in a musical, genteel tone. One set of large violet eyes shone with good humor. “Rollie Tsmorlood, as I live and respire! I was convinced you’d fallen out the back of the Universe.”
“Xylith,” Rollie said coolly. “Been a while. What is it you want?”
“Always so direct, you Deltans. You never waste a minute on the little pleasantries.” She waved his question away like a fruit fly buzzing around her mint julep. “Aren’t I right, dear? Have you ever heard
him waste time on pleasantries?”
Bertram realized he was being addressed now. But he was right in the middle of a big mouthful of surprisingly good Flash Stew. “Well,” he mumbled through the food, trying to savor every bite and still speak, “he pretty much just showed up and shot me.”
“Ohhh,” cooed Face One sympathetically. “You poor, poor thing. Shot by way of introduction … Yes, yes, well … That’s just his way, I suppose. One of his many, many idiosyncrasies. Something we all must find within ourselves the forgiving strength to overlook.” She nodded with empathy at Bertram.
Bertram nodded affably with another spoonful of stew.
Rollie frowned from Bertram to the woman on the screen. “I assume you didn’t buzz to chat-up my bad habits and your forgiving nature. What is it you want?“
“Ah,” Face Two exclaimed with a mischievous smile, “But, my star, the question is what you want.”
Rollie perched on the edge of the counter. “What do I want?” He folded his arms.
“Why, I do believe you want to be at the next Underworld Society meeting.” She let the words sink in, slow and patient, like syrup to pancakes.
Rollie’s expression went from perturbed to puzzled.
“You want to be there to make your historic mark on the shining inner-society governmental system that provides our fine organization representation, leadership, justice and the brotherhood found in skirting around GCU trade regulations.” She smiled like the Rose Queen in the Tournament of Roses parade.
“Official Leader of the Intergalactic Underworld,” breathed Rollie, recollection filling his voice. “Holy Karnax, the OLIU elections! We could finally vote Zenith Skytreg outta there!” He hooted and cheered like his team had just scored in overtime.
“See?” smirked Face Two, “I knew he’d forgotten.”
“He’s been in confinement,” persisted Face One. “Priorities shift.”
“Xylith,” Rollie interrupted, “pull yourself together. When and where? The meeting?”
“Vos Laegos, my star,” said Face One. “Two Universal days. Crater Club, The Core. Fess and Wilbree were saying they forgot to mention it when Backs was regaling you with his future career plans, and so I said I hadn’t spoken to you in simply a Klimfal’s age, and so then they said they would give you a buzz, but then I said I’d be happy to—”
