by Jenn Thorson
“He who?” asked the reporter. But the music sensation had already leapt up and was approaching their guest. The journalist’s eyes trailed, puzzled. Still beaming, Frabblagundger said, “I didn’t realize there would be such major talent on this flight!”
“Hey, that’s us!” Bertram said, injecting enthusiasm straight into his voice. “Fun for the masses!” He dug in his bag. “Brochure?”
The reporter had joined them, arms folded, surveying the figure before him. The press pass that dangled around his neck read, “Zaph Chantseree. Heavy Meddler News.” “Interesting,” he said. “I didn’t realize Popeelies ever flew Primary. Business must be stellar.”
“One of those singing cult dudes?” a band member in the back asked, craning to see. “Supernova!”
Another musician stretched his trunk to pluck an hors d’oeuvre from a tray. “My sister has one of those Cloak-in-a-Cans. Said she felt strangely compelled to buy one after 37 sequential ads interrupted her soaps.”
A small Calderian perched on a chair arm added, “I went to one of those jamborees once, man. It was a truly cosmic experience; and a great deal for only 19,999 yoonies.”
Here, Gumpert stepped forward. “I totally hope you don’t mind I invited him in, Foobaz. But I know how much you enjoyed that Popeelie festival we attended.”
“I did,” agreed Foobaz Frabblagundger with admiration. “I learned so much about harmony, melody and how to cram existential theory of the cosmos into three minutes with a catchy refrain.”
“You wouldn’t consider sharing one of your songs with our viewers now, would you?” Zaph Chantseree asked, indicating the levitating sphere above them. The sphere swiveled and the spotlight swung from Frabblagundger’s empty chair to Bertram’s seat, bathing him in light. “It would be such a treat to hear you sing.”
Sing? Bertram choked on the beverage someone had given him. They wanted Bertram Ludlow to sing? For people? Ones with ears? “Uh …”
But the interview was already so off-orbit, the reporter seemed determined to salvage it any way he could. “It would be a stellar chance for you to give the people a taste of your next jamboree,” Chantseree encouraged from somewhere beyond the spotlight’s glare.
Here, Foobaz Frabblagundger sounded awed. “Would you? It would mean so much.”
“Yeah,” pressed another. “They say once you hear a true Popeelie sing live, you’ll absolutely never forget it. Give us a tune.”
“Yes, please,” begged a last fellow.
Now, Bertram Ludlow excelled at a number of things. He had a wicked tennis serve. He had the patience to deal with tedious statistics. He was a fast study. And recently, he’d learned he had a talent for impersonations.
But as far as singing went, his brutally honest self-assessment was that he was fairly high up among the very worst singers on his planet. He didn’t have hard data to back it up, but he felt pretty sure any formal analysis would support his theory.
The problem with Bertram’s singing wasn’t a lack of passion. Because Bertram Ludlow loved music as well as the most music-lovingest person who ever downloaded a one-hit wonder. Indeed, in the shower, as he biked, and even as he crunched his thesis data, Bertram’s singing was filled with passion and joy.
But what Bertram Ludlow had in passion, he sloshed on the pavement each time he tried to carry that tune in a bucket. Love of music didn’t equate with talent for it.
Add to that the fact he had absolutely no idea what Popeelie music sounded like, and Bertram Ludlow felt he might as well just drown himself in his own sweat.
Which he was doing a pretty good job of right now.
“Er, do you have any favorite tunes?” Bertram asked, hoping to stall for time.
They debated. “How about ‘Gimme Some Yoonies’? That’s a classic,” said one.
“I like ‘Bloke with the Hooded Cloak,’ myself,” recalled another.
“Or ‘Flock Me, Popeelhonoromous’? That one’s such an earworm.”
“Uh, yeah. How does that last one go again?” Bertram asked meditatively. Even in the glare of the spotlight, he could see them exchange glances. He waved it away with energy. “Kidding, kidding! “How about I do a brand new one you guys have never heard before?” And I do mean never heard before, he thought.
He wished the Hyphiz Deltan RegForce would storm in. After all, by comparison, how horrible could the punishment be for jailbreak, assault, resisting arrest, stealing, more assault, identity theft and…
Sing, Bertram. Just sing, he thought. And what came out was this:
Spinnnnnn me to the heaaaaaaaaavens …
Let me seeeeeeee you jive ‘n’ swing …
Cooooover me in moooooondust …
While we’re swingin’ on Saturn’s ring …
Yes, it was the very last song he’d heard pre-abduction, as performed by 40s big band sensation, Jumpin’ Jimmy Jive. Initially, the lines wobbled out, hesitant and blushing; Bertram wasn’t used to belting it out for such a crowd, usually just the backscrubber and a few stoic shampoo bottles. But as the song progressed, he felt the notes fill his chest, then erupt from his spirit.
Jimmy wouldn’t be daunted by an alien crowd. Jimmy wouldn’t hold back just because his whole cover and freedom and preserving his planet depended on this performance.
Soon Bertram found himself almost energized by the blinding light of the spotlight, wailing it out and giving it all he had.
So kitten noooow, set my vectors …
So baby noooow, launch my space probe …
Heading into the second stanza, Bertram had become frighteningly aware the rest of the song wasn’t so space-themed after all—just a lot of stuff about wedding rings and bells that ding—and so he’d improvised. Something he was sure Mr. Jive would have done under the same circumstances. It was funny how any appropriately space-related metaphor he could substitute, ended up sounding like some raunchy double entendre. Bertram figured it would be lost on his alien listeners, but didn’t imagine Jimmy could have slipped it past the censors.
Launnnnnch me to Vos Laeeeeegos …
And we’ll swing it on Ottoframmmmmmm …
Send me to Nett Thirrrrrrty …
And we’ll hear the great Prophets’ plans …
So baby now, fire my thrusters …
So kitten now, system’s goooooooooo!
At this big finish, the spotlight powered down, zipping back to the reporter’s outstretched hand like baseball to mitt.
Dazzled by the shift in lighting, Bertram blinked away the stars and any lingering musical moondust and examined the faces before him. Foobaz Frabblagundger was scratching his head. Zaph Chantseree was corpse white.
Bertram blanched, too. Tough crowd.
Finally, in a soft voice, Frabblagundger said, “Extremely hard on the ears, friend.”
A few heads bobbed. “An almost offensive lack of pitch, key, and purity of tone,” observed someone else. “It made me sort of resent not being deaf.”
“Wow, dude,” breathed Gumpert, “I’ve heard Gorpish mud-rattlers with more rhythm.”
Bertram nodded, thinking he should probably just head back to the Secondary Corral and await the RegForce. On the plus side, no one’s ears were bleeding. So that was exciting.
Then someone added, “But that’s innovation for you! Your work is so musically-advanced, it’s gone beyond what our current ears can handle.”
“Like, that’s the far-out truth, man,” Gumpert agreed. “It was totally unique, dude, just like you’d said. Completely unlike any Popeelie stuff I’ve ever heard. It, like, wakes you up and makes you go ‘aagh!’”
“No argument here,” affirmed Foobaz Frabblagundger. “It’s musically off-putting to the point it actually makes you question ‘what even is music and why do we want to hear it?’ I love work that makes you really think like that.”
Yes, they agreed, it made them all reevaluate why anyone would ever want to listen to music.
“Does your Popeelie chorusmaster
know your solo work?” asked the smallest musician, leaning in to hear the answer. “You could be the next great sensation. Maybe even have a top ten hit!”
“We should add him to our group,” Gumpert suggested. “Reinvent ourselves with him, and we could prob’ly extend our popularity for another, like, half day, at least.”
Zaph Chantseree honed in on this like aardvark to ant. “Oh, you mean follow in the footsteps of those fellows who were from, er …” He stroked his chiseled jaw thoughtfully, “What’s their name? That star system with all the space junk?”
“I thought it was comets.”
“Oh, yeah!” the percussionist exclaimed from the back corner. “Those guys.”
Foobaz Frabblagundger folded his arms and nodded. “Say, if we’re talking about the same band, those guys were in the news for a whole few hours extra after they added that … person … what’s-his-name … to their group. It could really elongate our Resilience Curve. That’s a stellar idea.” He turned to Bertram. “What do you say?”
Bertram’s head was spinning. One second, he murdered Jumpin’ Jimmy Jive, measure by measure. The next? He was stretching out their Resilience Curve and entering a world of fame, used undergarments and, apparently, lobbed pudding.
He toyed with the tassels on his sleeve. “I’m really flattered,” Bertram told them. “But my duty is to the Mighty Popeelhonoromous. I’ve got sandals to model, pamphlets to push, and, um, I’m teaching a class on … on …” Under the secure awning of his hood, he found inspiration. “… Getting the cloaks back into the can. Thanks for the offer, though.”
Foobaz Frabblagundger blew a frustrated sigh. It came somewhere from the lower nasal appendage region. “Really? You’d turn down 2,880 minutes of complete adoration from the GCU for some street performances, consumer ed and grassroots marketing? I think the Munificent Popeelhonoromous himself would make an exception.”
“Ya’d think,” said Bertram affably, “but … um … little-known Popeelie trivia: Popeelhonoromous is a real stickler for a good schedule. Likes the planets to spin just a certain way, is picky about how things orbit and when.” He shrugged. “What can ya do?”
Foobaz Frabblagundger’s face darkened as he watched his Resilience Curve for fame thud onto the X-axis at the all-too-soon 4:38 p.m. the next day. “Fragging shame,” he said. “I thought Popeelies never turned down a good offer.”
And Zaph Chantseree looked hard at the Popeelie before him, his unearthly blue eyes trying, it seemed, to pierce the hood’s darkness with their own electric glow. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I thought so, too.”
Through the back hatch, a Non-organic Simulant in a Farthest Reaches uniform glided in. “I’m so sorry to interrupt. But the Corral to Ottofram is preparing to land. For our fine guests here in the Primary Corral, please ensure you’re seated comfortably and enjoy a last bit of Mig Verlig moon cheese and Ottoframan smorg wine—courtesy of DiversiDine Entertainment Systems and Aeroponics®— before we touch down. I’ll harness you in. And when you leave, please remember to exit away from the Secondary Corral. There’s been an … incident. Nothing to concern our Primary passengers, of course. Just exit quickly from the craft, please, and duck if you sense the sound of laser fire. Thank you.”
It was a strained silence as the members of Dumbbell Nebula gathered their belongings and rolled out the equipment upon landing. Two of the musicians waved hesitant goodbyes, torn between good nature and the fact their careers were rapidly approaching a hard stop. Gumpert was one of them; Foobaz Frabblagundger was not. The latter shot off on eight-inch-thick rocket-booster heels, tossed his nose over his shoulder and didn’t look back.
A crowd of roadie Simulants—who had been specifically engineered to look sweaty and who all wore Dumbbell Nebula tour shirts—poured in to get the rest of the gear, while a throng of fans outside rushed Frabblagundger for autographs and to chuck pudding at him.
Zaph Chantseree, meanwhile, grabbed his equipment and trailed Bertram to the exit. To the back of Bertram’s head, he said, “It was quite an offer Mr. Frabblagundger made you in there.”
Bertram turned, shifting his increasingly heavy fast food bag of Dootett currency to the other hand. He hoped it didn’t jingle much. “And I’m honored,” Bertram told him. From his hooded view, Bertram saw the Hyphiz Deltan RegForce, the Ottoframan fuzz, and law enforcement reps from a dozen other planets surrounding the Secondary Corral, lasers drawn, and holographic scanners at-the-ready. Uninet news crews were darting between Frabblagundger and the fugitive search, those with more fluid cellular structures actually dividing in two to cover both scenes at once.
Bertram Ludlow kept walking.
“Do you realize what you gave up?” Chantseree persisted. “An almost-guaranteed 2,880 minutes of Universal respect, adoration, and a stellar buffet after the concert.”
“Ah,” mused Bertram, “but as Popeelhonoromous says, ‘Give a man a Cloak-in-a-Can and he’s warm for a day. Teach a man to put his cloak back in the can, and he’s warm whenever.’”
There was a pause. Chantseree replied, “Forgive me, but I don’t get it.”
“Buy a Cloak-in-a-Can and you’ll see,” Bertram said mysteriously, with a wink. He tossed a brochure at the reporter and hoofed it.
Chapter 15
“Welcome to the LibLounge. How may I help you Be Your Best You?” said Rozz Mercer for the umpteenth time. Her eyes darted to the giant figure in the corner, who watched on with the proud, hungry grin of a mother T-Rex. Surrounded by her 37 personal assistants and her two celebrity best buds, Spectra Pollux whispered something to one of the people at her table—Stella Cygnus, a creamily blue-skinned redhead so beautiful it almost hurt to look at her—then motioned for Rozz to proceed, with a shooing flick of her hands.
Rozz affixed the bright “LibLounge Smile” Spectra Pollux had been teaching her. Rozz had never been a smiler. She wasn’t one now, either. She was only biding her time until she could enact Plan Two.
“I’ll have, um …” It was the man who’d come in with the famous blue-skinned dancer. Jet Antlia was the name, supposedly a big-name unconventional poet in the GCU—a real renegade with the verse, they said. He was as handsome as Stella Cygnus was stunning, with copper hair, copper skin, soft jade-green eyes and teeth so white they were almost luminescent. He squinted at the projected menu board behind her, withdrew a pen from his pocket, and dragged the virtual menu’s selections onto a second page of virtual choices. “I’ll have the fat-free Mathgar Kidney PowerPunch and, hmmm …”
The “hmmm” drew out so long, it sounded like a hive of honeybees at choir practice. Rozz sighed. Fer Chrissakes, what’s the big debate? Just grab one. Any one. But Rozz had a feeling that she and Mr. Beautiful were going to be here a while.
She took the time to consider her next moves. Plan One, she had to admit, hadn’t gone so well …
It was possibly too impromptu.
See, after plucking Rozz from her home planet and transferring her to her own spaceship, Spectra Pollux had fixed up Rozz’s noggin with an alien revitalizing beverage and some brain-cell-soother-over gadget. That was all it had taken.
In and out of consciousness for who-knew-how-long, Rozz had had a lot of extra time to summon up a big batch of steaming hot resentment. Resentment for her situation, in general, and for her Titan abductor, in specific. Much as she’d always said she’d like to travel more, Roslyn Louise Mercer would not allow herself to be dragged around the universe like E.T.’s favorite stuffed toy. So the healing gadget had no sooner hit the table, when the recovered Rozz hit the floor and ran. She reached out for the first door she could find, frantic for an exit.
She found one, but not the kind she’d expected. Within nanoseconds, sirens blared, space’s vacuum inhaled all the oxygen it could eat, and Rozz Mercer clung desperately to the hatch knob, her feet a yard-and-a-half off the floor. It was only the kidnapper’s great strength and surprising speed that got the hatch closed and Rozz back to solid ground again. If you could
call “solid ground” the ground floor of a huge luxury interplanetary cruise vessel heading back toward Spectra Pollux’s huge luxury complex, on some even huger planet called Rumoolita.
Yes, Rozz had better hopes for Plan Two. She’d learned a lot in her short time in the GCU.
Too much, maybe, she considered. Because ever since ol’ Ms. Bunyan got a hold of her, Rozz had been absolutely stuffed with information. She was fed capsules on this … Pills on that … Languages, etiquette, GCU history, and every single Featured CapClub Feature-of-the-Day®, it seemed, since Old Man Time had looked around the universe and decided this whole Life thing would be a hit.
There was a lot of digestion to do.
At every meal, Rozz was given a new bag of capsules to suck down. Her head pounded with information the way Zeus’ did, right about the time Athena burst from his skull in that very messy grand entrance. Her stomach felt like a roiling, swirling Greek whirlpool. She was catching up on a lifetime of knowledge in a few days. She started to see how things fit together in ways she’d never expected … time, space, even why we always leave a dribble in the milk carton.
Spectra Pollux was prepping Rozz Mercer to be the best LibLounge Book Capsule Discussion Group Leader and Barista the GCU had ever seen.
And Rozz not only devoured every little bit of information the Pollux woman gave her, she started sneaking extras on the side. A pill on celestial navigation here. A capsule on interstellar travel there. Star charts and solar systems, astrophysics and ICV driver’s tests … Underworld hand-to-hand combat tactics and the complex defensive arts of Sum-Gai-Wowee Yup.
She slipped them all into her knowledge bank and then went about making frothy alien beverages for Spectra Pollux’s personal LibLounge branch, and learning how to smile. Yep: if this was the way it was gonna be? Fine. Big Momma might just find out the knowledge she offered became her very own undoing.
