The Starry Sphinx

by V X Lloyd

  None of them were labeled, he noted with disappointment.

  The vials were filled with fluids of various colors, some looked clear as water, some white, brown, green, and several blue. There were jugs of grey opaque fluid that looked like mercury, and some that had grown a kind of multilayered film on the top of the fluid's surface. One had chunks of stone or dirt in it.

  Only one vial was empty and unstoppered. But that was fine. All he needed was one vial to fill the potion.

  He turned to look at the altar. It was wide and flat except for three deep almond-shaped bowls carved into its surface. One of these pools was the one he needed to collect the asteroid water from.

  He brought to mind the recipe.

  [Checkered Potion Recipe]

  Dedicated to the all-encompassing sun, in whose presence all mysteries find home.

  Here follows the list of ingredients.

  The one who brews the checkered potion

  must first obtain the latest serum crafted by the force of darkness.

  Next, opalescent lunar exudation bestowed by a force of neutrality.

  Third of three, verily third of three, is dew from space-stone.

  This abides at the sacred cave.

  Of all the ingredients, time is the most essential.

  This potion also requires one negative ingredient:

  Only the pupil, not the master, must be present.

  Here follows the instructions for preparation.

  In silence without blending them overmuch

  add in equal measure darkness and neutrality to the vessel,

  to this, the dregs of material life, brim the vessel with dew

  using your corporeal hand to feed it

  before drinking, set it to the noontime light one hour.

  Then it is ready for the maker to quaff entirely.

  The maker whose pillar of self rises high will descend even to the dregs.

  He felt strangely calm. All he had to do was follow these directions. Though the wording was a bit frilly, they seemed straightforward enough to him, now that he was here.

  He grabbed the empty vial and slowly poured in first Heath's nano-3, then the Qualid's ectoplasm. He submerged his hand into the third pool and brought it upward, cupping the cool water and pouring it into the vial, over and over, methodically watching the vial's level rise. The water carried the same sense of luminosity and high pristine music as the water in the stream. With each new handful, he became more joyous, until the level had reached the very top. He grinned. His task was done.

  In a matter of seconds, the fluids in the vial bubbled and swam around until the vial of liquid looked like a black and white checkerboard. Ordinarily when, say, oil is mixed with water, the oil floats to the top of the water. When materials separate in a fluid, they either float or sinks. But here before his eyes was an example of a weird grey goo that when it was allowed to settle, the grey gradually found its way into vertical separation but also horizontal separation: a checkerboard pattern.

  He sighed with relief. He had in his hand the substance with which darkness could be defeated. Life was so beautiful!

  Now, to attend to practical matters, like getting this potion out into the sunshine for an hour so it could brew. It would mean one hell of a shooting fest to get back out the hallway and beyond.

  The cork for the vial was about four inches long, a wand-shaped crystal of some kind. He grabbed it and secured it onto the neck of the bottle.

  A strange sound echoed through the cavern, brief and loud. It sounded digitized, somewhat like the yip of a coyote.

  Oh, no.

  A circle of white stars appeared at the cavern's roof, the circle growing in brightness and beginning to strobe until the light completely filled the room, and all was painfully brilliant.

  A spotlight shone down directly on him from above.

  He felt a familiar shift in gravity and allowed the light to overtake him.

  *

  Standing there in his underwear, Moony squinted in the familiar brilliance of the Qualid spaceship.

  Thousands of jellies floated in the air all around him, only a few of them bobbing with excitement or agitation. Most of them watched him with an eerie steadiness.

  He took a half-step backwards and felt something soft and warm bump his arm. It was Deb's ass. He turned to face her and saw that Perry was there as well. Both of them looked as startled as Moony, their eyes wide, their mouths agape. Scanning their cerebral activity, he saw that both of them were thinking the same thought, basically over and over again: Holy shit.

  Not known for their speechlessness, the Qualids spoke.

  "Hand over your Lumerian crystal, human."

  "Your consciousness must be wiped clean, as we agreed at our last meeting."

  Moony looked down at the vial, at its crystal cork.

  Slowly, he uncorked it and handed the crystal to one of the jellies.

  All at once, easily a dozen of them extended long translucent tendrils and wrapped them cautiously around the crystal, then softly pulled it from Moony's outstretched hand.

  "We are reading your crystal, human."

  "And we are most impressed."

  "Our tentative impression is that we are impressed by your longevity and grace."

  "We are perplexed by your perplexing ways."

  "This consciousness does not befit your human body."

  "Yeah, that’s... uh--" Moony tried to think of something clever to say, but thought better of it. He just didn't want to do anything that compromised the checkered potion. He was going to need that cork back. All this would be for nothing if something jostled him and he wasn't able to expose the potion to sunlight before drinking it.

  "This consciousness speaks of you as one of the seven moonlords of the Lumerian age when the universe was young."

  "We are most delighted to be in your presence now that you have brought your consciousness along with you."

  The jellies slowed their bobbing and watched him, the sea of them gradually fading into tonal unity. Each of them shone back at him simply in a pale white hue.

  A moment of silence in which the low hum of the ship became more noticeable.

  "Congratulations and harmony, Moonlord. You are now a part of the Enclave."

  "Yes, we have concluded our scan and reprogramming of your consciousness, Moonlord. You may have your crystal back."

  Several of the jellies extended the tendril-wrapped crystal to him, and he took it, wedging it once more onto the vial.

  It felt very different in his hand than it had before. It felt good. Very, very good.

  It was orgasmic.

  He felt a lightness and a thrumming somewhere deep below his feet that cascaded upward in tidal waves of ecstasy.

  He gasped and threw his head back.

  The effect was better than sex. The waves continued to reverberate, fill him, flow through him. He felt a profound sense of ease that was at once detached while at the same time fully present to the world around him. His emotional sense felt especially vibrant.

  His whole body, and indeed the whole spaceship thrummed with ecstatic life-giving tidal bursts of pleasure that massaged his deepest sense of self.

  "Whoa, what did you do to it? It's -- amazing."

  "We have noted a depressing sense of energetic stagnation in the cognitive range of many humans who have a lot of unexplored territory in the realm of pleasure and sexuality."

  "In our research and probing, we have concluded that waves of visceral pleasure play a significant role in various modalities of human motivation and persuasion."

  "Regrettably, it is the best we can do. Perhaps you will find it to be of use in your future as you persuade others to abandon all their hopeless endeavors and be assimilated into the Enclave."

  "You yourself have been strongly swayed by the presence of physical and emotional pleasure in your life. This is humorous to us, though highly illogical."

  "Perhaps with this power, your path will unfold
more rationally."

  "Ah. Wow. Uh. Thank you."

  The jellies paused a moment, then with a subtle rubbery sound, floated and swiveled to face Perry and Deb.

  "And now, we turn ourselves to greet your two companions."

  "What welcome would be most welcoming to bestow upon the two guests you bring us?"

  "Would they also like to have their consciousness harmonized?"

  Perry sent Moony an encrypted thought: Buddy, I need your help with this.

  Moony responded: All right, I'll do the talking.

  Deb, meanwhile, stayed motionless and squeezed both Perry's and Moony's arm.

  "My friends are, as you have noted, my friends, and I am part of the Enclave. Therefore, my friends already have a suitable place among us. Logically, then, no alterations to their consciousness would be necessary."

  "Yes, we agree with this," came the response from many Qualids. "Provided that you fulfill your quest."

  "What quest?"

  "To deliver to us the Sphinx."

  "No, you don't want her. You want The Gypsy. You guys remember all the trouble I had from the Gypsy? How she didn't want me to brew the checkered potion? You of course realize that only the checkered potion can overcome the dark one. Therefore, someone who stood in the way of me brewing the potion are your enemies as well. I guess what I'm getting at here is that the Gypsy is a shared enemy for both light and neutrality."

  Several eternity-long seconds of silence in which the jellies blushed and shook their heads.

  "We find your logic exceedingly wasteful of our analytical bandwidth."

  Moony looked down to find that he was gesturing with his hand like some sort of professor or maybe meteorologist. "Yeah, but that's not because it's nonsense. It's because it's artful. You know how we humans get with our art."

  More silence.

  "Your rebuttal is irrelevant. You now have the potion."

  "You, of course, will quaff the potion at the optimal time of your chosing."

  "But you will not find that it satisfies your satisfaction."

  "Of course it will," Moony said.

  "It will abominate her nexus of control, thereby unseating the maximal effectiveness of the Gypsy's pyramid, though this is but small potatoes."

  "It is but the most minuscule of root vegetables, human."

  "To win galactic supremacy for the forces of neutrality, you must send us The Sphinx, that we may claim the technology of the Stewards on behalf of the Enclave."

  Moony gulped. "Oh, no, it's not her that you want. Remember? We just cleared this up. You said you wanted the Gypsy."

  "Your statement was partially correct. We want them both."

  "The main goal here is to defeat the dark one," Moony asserted in his most Enclave-like mental tone. "To defeat the dark one, the Gypsy must be given over to the Enclave. You, yourself have said as much, and your words are reliable, since you are also members of The Enclave. Therefore, you need only heed your own cognition."

  "Moonlord must accomplish your next mission for The Enclave. You must send us the Gypsy."

  "Why can't you just beam her aboard?"

  "She has defenses from her dark master."

  “The Gypsy can only be taken by us if she is disconnected from her cognitive computer. You'll have to find a way to get her to drop her defenses. Of course, we are watching her at all times. All we need is a few seconds of emotional vulnerability."

  "Yes, we are watching even now."

  "OK, so what do I need to do to get her to be vulnerable?"

  "Your Sphinx does not hold the answer."

  "Though it would make it easier if you can get the Gypsy drunk first."

  "Really?"

  "It couldn't hurt. Intoxicated humans make fantastic abductees. They are especially compliant."

  "And delicious."

  "Yes, the alcohol makes their brains highly delectable."

  "As the saying goes, the best cerebellum is the booze-pickled cerebellum."

  Moony decided it was high time to hightail it out of there.

  Understanding this, the jellies slowed their bobbing and nodding. The vibe in the room became reverential, solemn.

  "Moonlord always wishes to get back."

  "Ah, well. We do not need to get flummoxed about our goodbyes. We watch your every move with joyfully disinterested flummocation."

  "Where you go, the Enclave goes as well."

  5. The Spirit World

  They had beamed onto a rocky outcrop underneath the wide branches of a very old oak tree. Lichen hung low from its branches. The area around them was silent except for the slow trill of insects. It was high noon.

  All three of them were there. Deb and Perry still had their clothes from before. Still in his underwear, only Moony was covered with ectoplasm.

  In the distance, at the crest of the hill, he saw the parking lot. It was nearly empty of cars, and he didn't see anyone.

  The three of them looked at each other, wondering what to make of this.

  "Oh, come on now. I can't believe this service," Deb said. "Couldn't the aliens have dropped us someplace better than back in enemy territory?"

  "At least we're back on Earth," Perry said, offering a grin.

  "Yeah, we're fine," Moony offered. "No one knows we're here, and we're a good distance from those bums up at the house. If they even care about us anymore, they wouldn't think to look for us here."

  Deb stared at the parking lot. "I guess it's safe to assume our cab driver is gone."

  "Dammit," Moony said. "And I was hoping to show him all the money that I hadn't lost. I don't think that guy believed in us."

  "Except --" Perry stopped himself. "Well, no, we're probably fine here."

  "No, Perry, what is it? Spit it out."

  "I was just thinking it's too close for comfort. What if the man of the house likes to wander the grounds? Any minute, he might just stumble upon us in his long johns."

  "I've still got some bullets left," Deb said.

  Moony thought back to recent events. He had actually killed someone. Could he do it again, he wondered? He also wondered how long it would take for this ectoplasm to evaporate from him.

  He looked at Deb. She had killed someone last night, and she didn't really seem any different. He wondered if she had already been a killer before. He knew very little about her past. Did killing change something subtle about how a person looked? He didn't know. Maybe there was a way of killing someone that left a mark, and a way that didn't.

  He patted his thigh, expecting for a moment to find a pocket there, and in the pocket to find his gun. Having no pants, he realized he no longer could consider the gun his own possession. "If we make a move," he said, "we risk everything. We walk along the road there's a high likelihood we'll be spotted, and if they spot us they can take the serum from us. And, and... Kill us. I don't like it any more than you, but we should be safe enough where we are for the time being."

  Deb once more stepped into her grim and incredibly competent survival mode. "Yeah, I think you're right. The most important thing is the potion. We can't risk delaying any longer."

  Moony nodded, then walked ahead a few paces to a spot where the overhead sky was unblocked by any tree limb. The warmth felt good, and already the ectoplasm seemed to be getting tackier. Based on previous experience, pretty soon it would dry on his skin and then flake off. He sat the potion on a small outcropping of stone.

  "OK, so it's settled. We wait here while the potion brews in the sun. It'll just take an hour. I do think it would be nice if we could develop a plan, something we can do in case... in case they stumble upon us out here." Moony scanned his body. Besides his underwear, he had his wristwatch. That was it.

  Everything else, including his passport, was still down in the cave.

  "Damn those jellies. I lost all my stuff."

  "Hey, they got us out of that cave," Perry said. "If they hadn't beamed us up, I don't know what we would have done. We were cornered."

 
; "They could have at least given him his clothes," Deb concluded. "I hope they don't get the idea to abduct us all again."

  Moony sat on a burly mass of the root belonging to the great oak tree and grinned to himself. "You know, though, really, we're all set up for our next step. We are so close. Now is no time to get down. We are on the brink of success here. And I'm glad, really glad that we're facing it all together."

  A long, awkward pause.

  Moony continued to smile.

  Looking over, he saw Deb uneasily eyeing the horizon and Perry nervously shuffling his feet.

  Moony patted a comfortable-looking low-hanging limb of the tree and Deb came and sat next to him. After some time, she gave a long sigh.

  Perry responded with a huff. "No, I don't feel good about this at all. We shouldn't have stayed here."

  "What?" Deb said. "Perry, don't do this. We just got settled."

  "It's just ---" Perry stopped himself. "Nah, it's nothing." He fumbled, hand in his pocket, with his flashlight. "It's just -- what if they release the dogs or something."

  "Perry!"

  "What? I just thought maybe if they had our scent they could send the dogs out looking for us. And then we'd need to run, but it's hard to run from dogs." He looked around him. "Except that we could climb a tree, because dogs can't climb trees. No dog I know ever could do that." He rubbed the tangles of his beard. "But they would probably bark a lot. That'd be the main thing, if it came to it."

  "I wish you wouldn't say those things. You're scaring me. You're always spoiling things."

  "Me? You're one to talk. Spoiling things. That's you who does that."

  "Psh."

  "Ever hear, oh, I don't know, of a little thing called marriage? Yeah, remember that? The sanctity of marriage?"

  "Well, I was married when I met you, and that didn't stop you from plowing my field--"

  "Guys, please," Moony had had enough. "And seriously, 'Plowing my field?'"

  Deb, though, wasn't in the mood to quit. "Anyway what do you care, now that you're plowing his mom?"

  Moony stood and raised both hands and waved them in a gesture that said either it's safe for large planes to land here or you all need to hear me and shut up right now. "Would you at least keep it down? Nobody's got to plow anyone right now, and if you don't mind, I'd like to avoid attracting any attention from our murderous enemies at the moment. Just for now. Give me an hour and then you two can have at it."