by C. Gockel
“Yup. Covered in black sand. Nothing but black sand that seeps into places yous don’t want it,” Dactyl said.
Craze shifted his weight tugging on the legs of his coveralls. “You have some sort of plan? I mean we just not goin’ to march in there like we did on Mortua. Right?”
“We gonna swagger this time.” Dactyl seemed no taller standing, putting on his long brown coat, pulling at the lapels to settle the fabric around his wide body. He straightened his holsters.
Maybe the Quatten wasn’t serious. For several minutes Craze waited to see if the lawman would crack. Dactyl’s expression never wavered. Not once. Dammitall, he meant what he said.
“We got nothin’ to act haughty over,” Craze said.
Dactyl rubbed absently at his left arm, something he did often enough that it made Craze wonder. Old injury? Something else?
“There’s them bars yous took from Mr. Slade’s Emporium on Elstwhere,” Dactyl said. “Possession of chocolate gives any Backworlder the right to boast.”
Shit. How’d he know? Dactyl might make the aviarmen give the stash away or turn it into the Backworld Assembled Authorities.
Craze sucked in his lips, organizing imaginary bottles on a gleaming future shelf. Rum with rum. Short to tall. Spiced to dark.
Talos ran a hand through his shock of blue, mouth pursing. He glanced at Craze. Craze shrugged.
Dactyl chuckled. “I wasn’t sure until now that yous took some. Yous all just ate a meal of guilt. It seeps out of yous every pore.”
“The stuff concealing the frizzers was mealworms,” Craze finally dared to say. “Isn’t anythin’ to swagger over.”
“Not every bar was. When yous have docked ‘n secured the ship, meet me down at the hatch.” The lawman climbed down the ladder, leaving them to wonder.
Great news and misfortune all grotesquely entwined to hear not every bar was a mealworm cake. A mere few genuine chocolates represented a major fortune. The rub was whether they’d be allowed to keep any. But, hey, the patroller didn’t know how many bars they’d taken. No reason they had to fess up to the whole lot, and way out here, Craze imagined Dactyl’s disappearance could be easily arranged, especially if Wism was as rotten as he claimed.
Craze and the aviarmen smirked at each other. Craze pumped his fist in the air a couple of times.
Lepsi whipped out his tab and sang in a bare whisper. “Eat that Federoy. You a stupid boy. Eat that Federoy. Face full of hemorrhoids.”
Craze laughed at the inane rhyme, which encouraged Lepsi to get more outrageous. The aviarman stood, repeating the lines, swishing his hips, smashing the image of his brother against his backside.
Talos joined in the high jinks, beating the stale, smelly air inside their vessel with a raised fist, grinning. “Fortune keeps twisting our knickers. Huh?”
A shrill signal blasted over the Sequi’s speakers, stopping their revelry. It was a warning from Wism that coming any closer without contact would be considered a hostile act. Talos opened a communications channel to the docking facilitator.
Music blared over the speaker with the greeting. “Identify.”
“Sequi, small passenger transport, coming from... Elstwhere.” Talos raised his voice to be heard over the clamor on the other end. “Request docking.”
“For what purpose?” The reply sounded gruff and rancorous, wary and suspicious.
Talos took his prized “Carry On” pin out of his pocket, and placed it prominently on the console where its comforts could be easily seen. It kept the quiver shaking his hair out of his words. “Trade ‘n shelter.” He barked it, matching crusty with crusty.
A dry cough cut through the din of bad singing and out-of-tune instruments. “Shelter from what?”
Talos didn’t blink when blurting, “The Assembled Authorities. Bastards tailed us to Elstwhere. Heard we can lose them here.”
Snort. “Must have something good to trade?” An iota of interest leaked into the last couple of syllables.
Talos let out a long, slow exhale. “Better than good. Bars wrapped in stamped gold foil.”
“Shut it!” the dock facilitator yelled at the merrymakers on his end. An abrupt hush fell. His next sentences echoed clear as fresh-scrubbed air. “If you lying, we reserve the right to shoot you. Take Slot 12-24.”
The threat was unmistakable. Craze gulped, hoping the rest of the bars weren’t mealworms. Wism wouldn’t be forgiving.
Talos didn’t break, sounding as confident as a sunburst. “Aye. Meet you at the bar.”
When the connection cut, Craze asked. “How’d you know there’s a tavern? Thought you’ve never been here.”
“It’s a constant out on the Edge.” Talos steered the spacecraft toward the cluster of shadowy moons. “There’s always a bar.”
Good to know that when folks came out of the Lepper they expected a drink. Craze nodded. “Soon I’ll have the best one the Edge has ever seen, a true destination.”
“With folks coming from all over to trade their wares,” Lepsi said, assisting Talos in guiding the vessel.
The aviarmen brought the Sequi in low, skirting over the ebony sands swirling into a dusty wake beneath their passage. Craze watched as particles glistened when caught in the ship’s lights, dancing and winking like flirtatious gals. The landscape stretched in soft undulations of fine grit, gentle wave after gentle wave of black without variation until the Sequi began the approach to the docking facility. There the sands ended abruptly in an oasis of bedrock, dipping into a steep canyon. Along the ravine walls glowed spots of orange and yellow, the lights of an austere city. A rickety bridge linked the two sides, but Craze didn’t see any movement. It was as if they headed to a ghost town. The Sequi braked and turned for a ledge protruding from the rock face.
“They live in caves?” Craze said. “Doesn’t history say the Fo’wo’s once lived in caves? Before they became civilized? Hrrmph. Depends on one’s definition of the word I guess.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Talos answered. “Barbaric horde of inferior genes is all they is.”
“True as the Lepper’s blue.” Lepsi nudged the ship closer to the walls, openings gaping like hungry mouths and flaming eyes. “Looks like a huge skull about to swallow us.”
A very unhelpful observation, Craze thought.
Lepsi rubbed at a tic under his eye. “You did a great job getting us a landing, Talos. However, I’m worried we won’t live up to their expectations. What if the first bar they open is mealworms?”
“We give them the opened one we know is chocolate,” Craze said. He remembered the rough crowd in the bar on Elstwhere, friends of the Jix who probably called Wism home. “Put on your darkest clothes before goin’ to the hatch. Black if you’ve got it.”
Craze went down to his bunk, switching out his cheery red suspenders for forest green ones, and his white shirt for a caramel-colored one. It was the darkest shirt he had. Lastly, he put on the gray duster, wishing he’d selected a black one instead.
At the hatch, the aviarmen smeared cleansing gel mixed with dirt into their hair and onto their shirts. It darkened them, but they were a far cry from black. Dactyl had on a black hat with all his brown. The effect was lacking, but Craze couldn’t fault them for it. It was the best any of them could do
The lawman handed them each a holster complete with a revolver. “Strap ‘em on,” Dactyl said. “This is one of them Backworlds where bullets rule. These folks won’t hesitate to use theirs. Try to avoid such a situation. ’N whatever yous do, don’t smile or get too surly. Surly enough will do.” He rubbed at that left bicep again, facing the hatch with a steely mien, as if he could wrestle the rocks and win.
Craze wasn’t sure what surly enough meant, but he figured not behaving the coward was part of it. He thrust his chin up and hooked his thumbs on the holster strapped to his hips, mimicking the Quatten. The hatch slid open. Despite the show of bravado, his knees knocked, threatening to give out.
Chapter 21
Dactyl took
the lead leaving the Sequi. The aviarmen flanked his sides, and Craze brought up the rear.
One scrawny kid stood there with a scowl on his face that could crack a hull. “This way, assholes.” He strode off through a tunnel in the rock lit by safe lanterns sunk into the floor.
Maintaining the same formation, Craze and his companions followed. The air was cool, threatening to be damp, but not quite making it. It smelled sour and sharp. The sharpness probably came from the ventilation system. Craze could hear the fans rumbling below the din of folks roaring and barking, slapping things and laughing. The laughter was cold and unsettling, the tones mocking, seeking to cause pain and humiliation.
Craze hitched up the holster, his fingertips grazing over the revolver’s handle. Then he stopped, wheezing, heart hammering. He braced himself against the nearest rock wall, laboring to catch his breath. His hand rasped over jagged chiseled edges biting into his palm, raising welts.
The thin air might as well have been absent as far as his body was concerned. It wanted to shut down and hibernate. The aviarmen and lawman huffed too, but they hadn’t not as badly. Craze’s coveralls pumped against his chest in a maniacal rhythm. He yawned.
“No time for sleeping.” Dactyl held Craze up, pushing him toward the gold light and flickering shadows seeping around the bend. “You can rest in the bar with a beer in yous hand. Not much farther to go.”
Craze’s legs buckled. He swayed, chest constricting, inhales useless. He’d not make it, not without sitting still for awhile. The kid leading them, glowered, sizing him up. The smile his young, reedy face offered came off as smug and stupid. Craze met the glare, narrowing his eyes. He gripped the revolver handle and spat. The kid ran.
“What did I tell yous on the ship?” Dactyl stomped a foot. “Now he’s gonna tell our contact we Flatsies to be pushed around. That doesn’t help us none at all.”
Leaning against the wall, Craze panted, doing his best to rally. He winced when Dactyl mentioned Flatsies—tab-thin Backworlders feeble as newborns. “You go on then, you ‘n the aviarmen. I’ll go back to the ship.”
Talos shook his head, whipping out his prized pin. Orange words with wings on blue. “Carry on. We need your skills. C’mon, Lepsi, help me out.”
On either side of him, the aviarmen shored Craze up and walked him toward the light and the noise.
Lepsi hummed, a few words escaping here and there. “Lean on yo mates ... heavy brother ... carrying on ... wha wha la.”
The corridor opened into a hellhole. Broken tables and chairs were splintered into spears as drunk folks sparred with one another. Ale sloshed out of their tankards, and everyone wore black as Craze had predicted. A good number of the crowd even had black teeth.
Craze estimated fifty Backworlders were crammed into a tavern sized to comfortably serve thirty. He hoped this wasn’t considered a large establishment on the Edge. He’d never get his revenge on Bast if that were so. Shit.
Talos and Lepsi set him on a stool at the counter. His breathing came a little easier and his pounding heart slowed. He calmed himself further by concentrating on the bottles of booze on the shelf behind the bar. Organized completely wrong, he reordered them in his mind. Blue with blue. Short to tall.
Dactyl requested ales from the bartender and paid for them. The four of them turned, their backs solidly against the bar, surveying the other patrons, sipping the brew.
Craze had been wrong earlier. The sharp smell came from the shit in his cup and not the ventilation machinery. It tasted like mildewed ship hull. Worse. He wrinkled his nose and discreetly spat the beer back into his mug.
A wall of a man sauntered over to them. He wasn’t tall, but burly and muscular, like he did nothing but lift chunks of rock. His head was shaven and painted with disturbing images of blood, knives, and shattered bones. The art spread down onto his cheeks, a permanent mask. He wore a sleeveless shirt and black pants ripped at the knees. His feet were bare and black, painted like the aviarmen’s hair. His fingers sported rings with spikes and razors, making the threat of his punches more painful.
“I want to see what you came to trade. Now.” The tone of his voice matched the rock the room was carved from.
Maybe he had eaten through it to create the city on Wism, Craze mused. “What you got to trade for it?” He couldn’t help taking the lead on negotiating. The art of the deal ran strong in his blood. The coveralls were finally able to manage his equilibrium, and he stood.
“Down. Don’t yous listen.” Dactyl shoved Craze back in order to stand nose-to-chest with the dude big as a boulder. “We’ll tell yous our terms when we decide ‘em.” His glare didn’t waver from Rock Man’s. A timeless stare down. The Quatten pushed up the sleeves of his coat, his hand lingering longer on the left bicep, the shoulder lurching, before he settled himself with a determined, grim expression.
Rock Man shifted his weight first, a hint at respect, putting a little space between himself and Dactyl.
The lawman bared his teeth, inching forward. “Here’s a sample.” He handed the big man the bar of chocolate the aviarmen had unwrapped. “We’ll be back with our terms in two hours. In the meantime, we want to walk around Wism without bothers from anyone.”
Rock Man sniffed the chocolate bar and arched his brows, satisfied the goods were as promised. “Consider it done, little man.”
Dactyl didn’t even hint at a flinch. The condescending name didn’t bother him. He thrust his chin at the far corridor. “Keep that as a token of our intentions to make a good deal. Clear us a path. Now.”
Rock Man’s fist closed over the chocolate and he hollered above the noise in the bar. “These special guests of mine. Keep your mitts off ‘n make sure everybody else knows it.”
Space opened up around Craze and his friends. When they stepped toward the intended tunnel opposite from where they had come in, the gap between them and the Wism derelicts stayed constant, like they were encased in a bubble.
Dactyl led the way to other docking berths, searching for the Fo’wo vessel and the Fo’wo’s. Craze couldn’t keep up. His body couldn’t match his will. The lawman and the aviarmen left him wheezing on a crate in a storage bay.
They walked away, Lepsi singing one of his made up songs. “Don’t asphyxiate for me, Verkinn guppy. We need our fortunes ... ’n not by dying.”
Craze would have rolled his eyes if he could see straight. Hand over his chest, he fought the urge to hibernate, gasping to get more air and remain conscious. A clang made him whirl about. The sudden action made things worse, bringing on a wave of dizziness. He fell to the ground, mouth working, sucking in need of what it couldn’t find, as if he had been thrust into a cosmic void.
Chapter 22
Craze found himself staring into the face of a gal with chrome-hued skin. Tears and blood streamed down her cheeks. Her lips opened wide as a Lepper portal. She screamed and screamed and screamed. Craze had to close his ear holes, choking, trying to speak. He couldn’t get enough air. He could only lay there blinking at her, hoping his expression conveyed he meant her no harm.
“Please,” he huffed. “Please ... I ... no ... hurt ... you.”
She stopped shrieking to listen to his choppy plea, sniffling. “You look familiar. Have we met? I think we met before. Not here though. I hate this place. I haven’t been here long, but I know I hate it.”
Her pink irises raked down Craze, making him feel naked. There was a glow behind them not entirely natural. He noticed cybernetic plugs at her elbows, but the mechanical halves of her arms were missing. The same was true of her knees and legs. She had no hands or feet, helpless on the floor like he was.
He recovered enough to speak better. “We haven’t met. I’d remember you. I don’t like this place either. You OK? You look hurt.”
“I suppose I’ll live if my next master lets me. I don’t know why I still need a master. I can think for myself now, decide things for myself. This obedience thing sucks. They make me do things I don’t want to do.” She sniffed,
crinkling the bruises on her otherwise lovely chrome cheeks.
Her partial arm hit against his coveralls. “That’s how I know you. I made those. Don’t you remember? My master kept me on Siegna several weeks so I could make those for you. They not working well enough here, huh? That’s not because I did bad work. Wism is just hard for anybody to breathe on let alone someone like you. There’s a canteen in the corner with the rest o’ my stuff, a tea I brewed. It should help you. Drink it.”
Wow, she could talk. He’d never met a cybernetic Backworlder before and couldn’t judge whether this was normal. “It wasn’t me you met on Siegna,” he said, “but I’ve been told my pa ‘n I resemble each other a lot.” He looked around, trying to figure out which corner she meant.
“Your pa? What a small arm of the galaxy. What’s the chances of us running into each other like this?”
“Freaky.” Craze pushed himself up to sitting, slumping against the nearest crate. The effort made his head swim. He noticed her arms and legs thrown into the farthest corner across the bay. Of course, way over there. He crawled toward them. “Who did this to you?”
“My master is unhappy with me. Says he’s going to sell me.” Her weeping filled the storage room, until she wailed like an alarm. “I don’t want to stay here.”
Craze pushed the cybernetic arms and legs at the gal. They slid easily across the floor, bumping up against her floundering form. He followed after them, rolling and slithering. He figured out how to plug in an arm for her. After that, she was able to put on the other arm and her legs herself.
She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thank you. Now drink the tea.” She held the canteen to his lips.
He panted on the floor, hand pressed over his aching chest, taking a tentative sip. Her concoction tasted like over-ripe socks in piss. He pushed the flask away. “That tastes terrible.”
She sobbed. “Oh. I mean nothing bad. Honest I don’t.” Her shoulders shook with her sorrow. “You won’t buy me now, will you? I had hopes. You seem like a good man.”
