The three men on stage snapped to attention, and began belting out the planetary anthem of the Ice Lords of Sneth, those benevolent purveyors of frozen foodstuffs to the denizens of the Crab Nebula. The audience howled with laughter. I stood next to the trio and wished I were a bit deaf. Each man sang an entirely different tune using completely unrelated nonsense words. There is no Sneth. No planetary anthem, and no aristocracy. I’d made it all up just a few moments before. I invented the whole thing, even down to the bit about frozen food. It’s what I do. I’m the Amazing Conroy, Hypnotist Extraordinaire.
As the men finished singing I leaned in and spoke to each, reinforcing their respective trigger phrases. Then I awakened them from the trance, waved them offstage to the applause of the audience, and took my final bow. Ten minutes later I was sitting comfortably in my dressing room, sipping a chilled bottle of Uncle Waldo’s™ Raspberry Rootbeer. I heard a knock at my door.
“It’s open,” I called, and removed my feet from where I’d crossed them on the edge of a table. I sat up.
One of the former ‘Ice Lords of Sneth’ stepped into the room. In his right hand he gestured expansively, waving a meerschaum pipe intricately carved in the likeness of a majestic swan. A cloud of sweet smelling tobacco smoke entered with him, which caused the room’s exhaust fan to kick in. “That was amazing, Conroy, simply amazing.”
I laughed. “It goes with the name, Donny. Have a seat.”
The fellow with the pipe was Donald Swanseye, a mega-billionaire from the outer colonies. We’d met at a corporate fundraiser two nights before, and afterwards over poker and cigars I’d invited him to see my show.
“I still can’t believe it,” he said. “All the way through I kept thinking I was fooling you, just going along with the gag.”
“That’s a common response to being hypnotized,” I said. “It’s easy to deny what’s really happening to you, but trust me, you were well under.”
He settled into the only other chair and looked at me, really studied my face, for the better part of a minute. “I don’t understand, Conroy. What are you doing here? This... show. You’re a wealthy man, why are you performing at all?”
I bought a little time by turning and opening the tiny refrigerator under my makeup table. I tossed Donny a frosted Uncle Waldo’s™ which he looked at with an expression of bemusement before opening. He smiled at the first sip, and his grin broadened as he drank more. As I said, I liked Donny, and he deserved an honest answer. “Immortality,” I said.
Donny chuckled and lifted his bottle in salute. “Trust me, Conroy, you’ll go down in history for breaking the buffalo dog monopoly. You’re one of the wealthiest men on Earth, but hypnotism? I doubt that talent will be your legacy.”
I clinked my bottle to his. “I didn’t say it was my own immortality.”
“Then whose?”
I chuckled. “An alien criminal who re-introduced me to my great aunt, Fiona.”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
I set my rootbeer down and asked, “Do you remember the destruction of a starship, the Kubla Khan, about fifteen years ago?”
Donny frowned. “The smartship disaster? Didn’t the vessel’s captain go mad? He imploded the engines, or some such, killing himself and his crew.”
“There wasn’t much of a crew. Other than the ship’s automatons, it was just Captain Coelacanth and me.”
Donny lowered his bottle and gaped at me. “You?”
I nodded. “I wasn’t a hypnotist back then, just a college sophomore majoring in xeno-religious studies, with a minor in psychology. I’d grown up hearing stories of my Great Aunt Fiona. She’d been among the first Terran missionaries, back when space travel first opened up. But Fiona gave up the religious work after just a few encounters with cultures and recorded histories far richer and older than anything on Earth. She never stopped traveling. Before she died she had probably stood on more alien worlds, spoken more alien languages, than any other Terran. Her exploits shaped my life.”
“It sounds like she made quite an impression on you,” said Donny.
“She did,” I said. “Her adventures were the talk of my family. They generally disapproved of her, particularly her parting with the church. I grew up on tales of exotic alien cultures, and every snippet of her escapades just made me hunger for more. Small wonder then, that between my own devout upbringing and the stories of distant peoples, my studies took me into the study of alien belief systems.
“One of my professors recommended me for a job as alter-shift crew on a smartship. Captain Coelacanth was a vat-grown husk close to ripening, and the ship expected to transfer its own personality into him by the end of the voyage. Other than the ship’s automatons, there was just the captain and me, with literally no work to do. Sometimes the captain finished his downtime early and came in during my shift, usually carrying a bowl of pudding. We’d chat a bit while he ate.
“The pay was almost nonexistent, but we were scheduled to stop at a dozen different worlds and I had days to explore on each of them. Coelacanth never took a shuttle downworld with me. He just stayed in his cabin, brooding and eating pudding. Sometimes he’d have these weird little panic attacks and back away from some cable or other and scream something about worms. When that happened the ship would medicate him, and moments later the captain’d be fine. I probably should have been more compassionate, but I was overwhelmed by the incredible things I was experiencing at each new port.
“On Krackleburr I witnessed birthing ceremonies from ten alien species. During my time on Venton I was invited to participate in an adulthood rite of Bluie triplets on the rim of an active volcano. And on Kelspar, I actually received payment for serving as an usher at an Arcturan wedding, and tasted twenty-six hour vanilla eel cake served to me by a Taosian bride. The wonders and richness of the galaxy had been laid before me, courtesy of the smartship and crazy Captain Coelacanth.
“The port of call I most longed to see was Hesnarj, oldest of the known mausoleum worlds. Thousands of civilizations perform their rituals and services for death and departure on Hesnarj, and my aunt had had herself buried there. Our ship, the Kubla Khan, had only just been granted clearance by the orbiting station. I climbed aboard the first of our shuttles taking cargo downworld. It had just disengaged from the Khanwhen over the com I heard Coelacanth shouting about giant worms. That’s when the ship blew up...”
I awoke in the hospital with little more than a scratch. My shuttle had caught the edge of the explosion and tumbled into the atmosphere amidst thousands of tons of debris from the Khan. That’s how quickly your world can change. The doctors all told me how lucky I was to have survived, and left me to rest. The next day I removed the monitoring patches, changed into my own clothes, and checked myself out of the hospital. I had a chit in my pocket to present to the Terran Consul General which would get me passage back to Earth, but Hesnarj wasn’t a human world. The Consul covered forty planets in this region of space and his next visit was five months away.
Beggars and panhandlers don’t do well on a mausoleum world; the bereaved rarely notice them, and the zealots have no time for them. I needed to find a job if I expected to keep body and soul together until the next Earth-bound ship arrived. That would have been the mature, responsible course. Instead, I set off to get stinking drunk.
I found a bar without difficulty. It looked like it had stood there for centuries. Almost everything in the world’s mourning cities was bland, so as to avoid offending any particular culture’s taste. Most buildings had been constructed by stacking slabs of flat gray basalt, one atop the other. It was actually more of a lounge than a bar. The polyglot sign out front indicated it served double duty as an eatery during the mornings and early afternoons. Not that I cared; a quick meal wasn’t among my plans.
I wandered in and settled onto a bench gracing one side of a stone counter. It was second afternoon of the Hesnarj fifty-seven hour day and the place was packed with mourners, the soon-to-be-interred,
thanosists, and a few of the local residents who had decided to draw out lunch and start their drinking early. The air held the faintest of traces of morbidity blossoms, a pleasant mix of vanilla and jasmine that most found restful. The room buzzed with dozens of conversations, which was comforting as well. It looked like an excellent place to get quietly soused and wallow for a while in anonymous self-pity. Anonymity was never an option. My face had been all over the planetary newsfeed, the Kubla Khan’s blessed survivor.
I no sooner sat down than a trio of Clarksons appeared at my elbow. They had raspberry hair and fishbelly complexions, and grinned at me like hillbilly lottery winners.
“We buy drink,” one of them said in the Traveler pidgin. “Drink for lucky man.”
I shrugged and let them. My limited cash would last that much longer if someone else was willing to pay to get me drunk. Others came up to me. Some just wanted to touch me, rub off some luck; most seemed to feel that buying me a drink ensured them a share of my good fortune. It wasn’t until my third drink that I started telling them about the smartship, Captain Coelacanth, the explosion, and being marooned. I poured out my heart, pausing only to sob and drink, then wailed some more. It being a mourning city, almost everyone around me had his own story of sorrow to tell.
At some point I excused myself and managed to stand. It was well past local midnight and except for my personal group of co-mourners the place had emptied out. I staggered off in search of the establishment’s facilities, following the floor arrows to a clearly marked door. I relieved myself and turned to retrace my steps, passing someone else who had just entered. Before I could open the door to leave, a sack had been pulled over my head. Hands spun me violently around and it was all I could do not to puke. My assailant shoved me. I toppled backwards, struck my head against the wall, and the world went away.
I regained consciousness, courtesy of a bucket of water the lounge’s owner threw into my face. He was my first sight as I sputtered awake, a gangly, bright yellow humanoid wearing a bartender’s apron. I sat up and immediately wished I hadn’t. The bathroom spun. The cloth sack that had blinded me was gone. So were my shoes, my identification, my travel chit, and all my money.
“I’ve been robbed,” I said, voicing the obvious.
My awakener made a noncommittal grunt and helped me to my feet. I followed him out into the main room and back to the bar. The lights had been brightened and only three other customers remained. The ceiling chron showed early first morning. I’d been out for hours. I sat on the bench and rubbed my head, wondering if I had a concussion or just a vicious hangover. The lounge owner puttered behind the counter and set a mug of fizzing blue gel in front of me.
“Drink,” he said. “For head. Drink.”
I complied, and with the first sip I felt better.
“Thanks, um. . .”
“Rarst,” he said, slapping one lemony hand against his chest and nodding. “No charge.” Then he turned away, ladled something into a bowl and popped it into a waver.
The drunken fog began to clear from my brain, chased by throbs of pain. I was in even worse straits than before, having gone from little to nothing in the course of a mugging. And I still needed a job.
“Thanks, Rarst,” I said, and straightened up on the bench. “I appreciate your kindness. I, uh, don’t suppose you’re hiring?”
He turned back around.
“What can do?” Rarst appraised me from the other side of the counter. His jaundiced expression reminded me of my paternal grandfather who used to bounce me on his knee, except my granddad didn’t have slit pupils like a cat. Maybe Rarst felt a twinge of compassion because I’d been mugged in his bar. It didn’t make him charitable, just open-minded. “Can sing?” he asked. “Make music?”
I had no marketable skills. I did my best to look pathetic. It wasn’t hard.
Rarst scowled and any resemblance to a long-dead relative vanished. “I need entertainment. You figure talent by first evening, I give meals and room in back. You entertain, we got deal, okay?” He took a bowl of paella out of the waver and shoved it in front of me, and then waddled off to tend his real customers, leaving me to ‘figure’ my talent.
I began reviewing things I’d learned in my two years of college. The lounge served a dozen alien races, with nary a human among them. I needed something with broad appeal. It seemed very unlikely that leading a discussion comparing and contrasting various religious practices would qualify as entertainment in the current venue. My college major just didn’t lend itself to performance.
Then I remembered a psych course from the Fall semester and the week we’d spent discussing hypnosis. I’d been fascinated, even written my final paper on the subject of multimodal induction techniques. During finals week I had hypnotized my roommate, and planted suggestions that improved his study habits and test scores. Encouraged for the first time since waking up in the hospital, I picked up my spoon and amid mouthfuls of paella began formulating my act.
“. . . and when I snap my fingers you’ll awaken, with no conscious memory of anything I’ve said. But what I’ve told you remains true; the number eight no longer exists in any form.”
I snapped my fingers and the half-ton saurian opened its eyes and straightened up on its reinforced stool. We were alone on the lounge’s makeshift stage and the attention of the entire audience, all thirty-seven of them, throbbed with a heartbeat of its own. Time hung suspended in the silence. None of them had ever seen a hypnotist before. I smiled and winked at them. Then I returned my attention to the saurian.
“Your people are responsible for the design and construction of most of the cenotaphs here on Hesnarj; I’m sure that requires tremendous engineering knowledge and mathematical acumen. I wonder if you’d mind giving us a demonstration. What’s one plus one?”
The saurian glared at me. “Two,” it snorted.
“Two plus two?”
“Four.”
“Four plus four?”
It froze, tiny eyes squinching in calculation. “Whah?”
“Four plus four,” I repeated.
The saurian squirmed; its spinal plates quivered. It whuffed out acrid air from a trio of nostrils. It rumbled deep counterpoint in two of its stomachs. Finally, with a look of total stupefaction it muttered, “Can’t be done!”
The audience howled with laughter and pounded the tables in approval. I’d found my talent.
By the end of the week I was doing two shows a night. I spent the mornings developing new material for my routines, and the rest of the day trying to figure out what to do with my life. Comparative religion had lost its allure, and more than anything else I found myself wishing I could talk with Great Aunt Fiona about it. I needed someone to discuss my future with, to find some perspective and direction, maybe even real purpose. I couldn’t even visit my aunt’s tomb; it was half a world away on another continent. I didn’t have the funds to travel there, not yet.
News of my act spread and the lounge filled with the motley visitors and bored residents of a world dedicated to housing the dead. Rarst raised his prices, put in a real stage, and even began paying me. The success was a welcome distraction and I threw myself into the work. My technique improved, as did my fluency in Traveler. My patter grew polished and I began mastering an assortment of gestures and body language from other worlds. More importantly, I quickly learned that some alien races could not be readily hypnotized, and that others were almost criminally suggestible. I started saving money toward a ticket to visit the southern continent and my aunt’s final resting place.
Some two months into my run, during the second show of the night, I met Kwarum. He was ‘pebbly,’ that’s the only way I can describe him. Imagine dipping someone in glue and then rolling him around in a gravel bed, with each and every grain polished river smooth. I’d never seen his kind before, but that night there’d been two of them in the audience. One had volunteered, along with a rare human and a Clarkson.
The show proceeded smoothly; the audience l
aughed and applauded in all the right spots. Along with my usual induced forgetfulness, invisible objects, and dog-barking, I had decided to end that night with something new. A minor scandal had circulated through the city in the last few days; a prominent embalmer had mixed up two clients of vastly different biologies and the resulting stench had necessitated the temporary evacuation of several city blocks. My three volunteers sat entranced upon the stage, calmly discussing the event. When I was convinced that each was familiar with the details I instructed them to believe they were actually the individuals in question. In an instant I had two offended corpses loudly complaining with a pompous and ineffectively defensive embalmer, none of whom was actually the correct race for the part he played. The audience ate it up, and even somber Rarst cracked a smile.
After the show the lounge emptied quickly. I left the stage and headed toward my back room to plan the next day’s shows. The other pebbly alien, the one from the audience, stopped me along the way.
“At the end of your performance,” she said, “would you explain what you did to my kinsman, please?” She spoke crisply, clipping each word.
I looked her over. She hadn’t done anything overtly threatening, but I had an uncomfortable feeling. People routinely approached me with questions after a show, curious and delighted. This woman didn’t look happy.
“I told him he was Karsten of Belscape, the former plenipotentiary of the far Arcturan colony.”
“This individual you named, he is deceased?” asked the alien.
“That’s safe to assume, or they wouldn’t have embalmed him.” I said it with a smile, hoping she’d catch the joke. She was far too serious.
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