Dwarves in Space

by S E Zbasnik

  Joe smiled wide, "Jolly good show!" He was clearly enjoying this part. Eric dialed up another number.

  Orn glanced up at his boss. Most clients insisted on flipping the hidden switch themselves despite not having the proper biometrics to see the damn thing. It was a challenge of bravado that could take hours and once led to a permanent case of cross eye. No one ever approached it like a magic show.

  Variel motioned him forward; he was the star at this part. She preferred the dirty work, Orn was there for the show. Rolling his mountainous shoulders, the dwarf lifted the sack of cloth hidden inside the briefcase and shook it once. The hidden seams popped and shifted into place, creating an open basket ready to gobble up anything that could be shoved inside a 12x12 inch fabric box. "The deluxe backpack of storing contains not one, but two handles," Orn's voice oozed oily charm as he motioned to the two strips dangling off the edge. "It can store up to three hundred items that do not stack," he said as he grabbed up One Eye's leg and slipped it into the black void, then reached for a desk lamp.

  Eric jumped to his feet, throwing off Orn's concentration. The dwarf's sticky fingers paused, but Joe waved his partner off, "Let him be."

  Orn gripped the lamp anew, but Eric made the "I'm watching you" motion with his fingers. It was a very threatening gesture on the dwarven home planet, as it implied you owed someone money. The dwarf shook it off and shoved the lamp into the knapsack along with a pile of rocks he kept in his coat pocket.

  "Once you've finished storing whatever you need to cart, simply push down on the sides," Orn struggled, forcing all his weight onto the EZ-Snaps, when one finally unlatched. Half of the bag slipped under, while the other half remained stubbornly upright. The dwarf cursed under his tongue and fought before snagging half the room in an unstable gravity field. Without breaking a sweat, and holding his sigh of relief in, the other latch gave and the backpack curled up in on itself, creating another pile of uninteresting cloth. Orn lifted the backpack high and waved it about as if it was a towel.

  "Amazin'!" Joe crowed, carefully taking the thin sheet that now held his entire life, "How does it work?"

  Variel stepped in, "MGC is laced into the fabric which top research mages use to create a small wyrmhole to the storage facility."

  Orn's eyes slid back to his boss but he didn't move his head. Joe was shaking his new toy like a dog with a rabbit, blathering about all the things he wanted to squirrel away inside his new bag. "Amazing. See Eric, simply amazing!"

  "Yes, love, amazing. How much does this amazing bag cost?"

  "Two fresh cat videos and a picture of a domesticated animal in clothing," Variel said smoothly.

  "One cat video, a hedgehog playing badminton, and three goats standing atop a crashed orc ship," Eric argued back, mentally ticking over how many meals out this was going to cost them.

  "The price is non-negotiable," Variel replied, her fingers plucking the fabric away from Joe's and folding it up to place back in the case.

  "Eric..." the old man whined, upset at having lost his highly illegal toy.

  "Fine, two new cat videos and a bird singing along with a hamster," Eric relented.

  "Sold," the captain smiled, thrusting the dangerous fabric back into the buyer's hands. "We have an off-planet dwarven account to transfer the funds into."

  "Of course you do," Eric muttered, wishing his love would get back into building bottles on ships or something that didn't dirty their tapestries with the unsavory type. "Wiring them now."

  One-Eye placed the bag on the ground, snapped it open, and reached inside. "Look, it's me leg!" He struggled keeping out of character whenever he touched the damn prop.

  "Would you like to read the safety manual?" Variel asked as she snapped the briefcase shut, a thick flyer resting between her fingers. Paper was much harder to trace.

  "No, thank you," Eric clipped as his grandfather's lamp appeared and then vanished back inside the bag.

  "Suit yourself," Variel muttered, still laying the book down upon the edge of the desk. When they accidentally invert the gravity in the room, they can figure out how to solve the problem themselves. "Come on, Orn," she said quietly to the dwarf trying to pilfer the man's eyepatch.

  His fingers dropped the famous bit of elastic and they wandered back into his pockets, "Yes, Sir."

  As Variel eased out of the back office, dragging her companion along, she called out behind, "Pleasure doing business with you."

  "'MGC woven into the fabric?'" Orn's voice bounced around the mostly empty promenade as Variel reached across the counter of the only open food stand, "I had no idea you humans could pull that kind of shit our your orifice of choice."

  The professional weaver of near truth was impressed. His notion of most humans was that they clustered in groups, coated furniture in moisture at the first sign of distress, and broke down into a trembling pile of flesh upon a moment's scrutiny. Of course, prior to this job, his only major interaction had been shuffling groups of missionaries to their holy site. Possibly not the best cross section of the species, but Orn didn't match up well to the preferred example of dwarves either.

  Variel thanked the gargoyle manning the food cart, one of the few species to prefer the endless night of space, and lifted the horrendous concoction towards her mouth. The fat still sizzled from the fryer as clumps of excess batter dropped off the weaving blob of meat on a stick to the pristine grates. She ignored the disgusted look on her pilot's face while wrapping a napkin around the edge of her dinner and commented upon the job. "Not a good idea to go blathering about gravity wells and microblack holes. That makes the customer jumpy."

  "What was he expecting? That thing's illegal nearly everywhere."

  She gazed up at the blinking lights of a security camera stashed into the high walls of the glorified floating shopping mall, "The ownership is. The sale is perfectly legal. Provided no one catches you actually holding the damn thing." She spent a lot of her life skirting around the name of the law, sometimes by hiding for days in a frozen asteroid belt.

  Orn curled up his lip and stared at the stomach churning image of the human chomping down on the wad of meat, "You're not gonna eat that are you? Orc food gives your intestines nightmares."

  Variel shook her head. For being the people that took one look at the galaxy and said 'You're all welcome as long as you have the coin,' he was one xenophobic little turd, "There's nothing wrong with Orc food. It's quite nutritious and full of protein."

  "And some guy named Ogg who didn't pass inspection," Orn grumbled.

  "What would you want that isn't straight sugar?"

  "Wolf, Bear, Jaguar, Snake? Anything that wasn't screaming about drinking my mother's blood before heading into the deep fryer," Orn shrugged, hunting around for a dwarf seat as his boss plopped the empty briefcase onto a rickety wrought iron table, scattering the triangles advertising the great fun they could have across the station.

  Variel chomped down in the least ladylike way imaginable short of stuffing the entire thing down her throat and swallowing whole like a duck. Table manners were for something that didn't come on a stick. Orn drug over a hard won chair. He sat and pushed the "lift" lever to be about on eye level just as the last of Ogg vanished.

  "I'm surprised you want all that human food," Variel said, clearing grease off her chin, "I figured you and Ferra'd go in for haute elven cuisine."

  "Ha! She says it tastes like nothing but air and condescension with a wafer on top," Orn responded, dropping his hand to the table with a heavy thud. The thing was itching again.

  Variel sighed, realizing the eternal story teller was gonna keep his mouth shut, "What was it this time?"

  "Nothing. She just," Orn scratched at his bulbous nose and tried to find an untruth so he wasn't at fault for whatever repair bills Ferra was currently running up, "So, I maybe over-tweaked the last burn when we swung around the base."

  "How 'over-tweaked?'"

  "A few things caught on fire," Orn admitted sheepishly, "But nothing major,
and it all went out like a light. We shouldn't need to test the fire alarm anytime soon."

  Variel sighed, but any reprimand died on her tongue. It didn't matter much what she said to the dwarf, the elven engineer could dish it up tenfold and he actually had to listen to her. "I don't know how you two even got married, much less stay."

  Orn stopped fiddling with his hand and brought it up to his lips, thinking. Slowly, he smiled and answered, "Angry sex. She gets that ship up and running after a long fight and...sweet ore. A pilot, an engineer, and a humming ship is the best kind of threeway."

  "I do not need to hear this, or think about this," Variel muttered, wishing she could wipe her memory with something other than troll ale (along with her liver, spleen and lungs), "I'm never walking into engineering alone again."

  "Probably for the best," the dwarf admitted. His last move wasn't the only time the fire systems had been prematurely checked.

  The station fell silent as the two lapsed into a comfortable quiet. Only the soothing hum of "everything's still working" wormed up through the floor. It must be a deafening cacophony when the place was at capacity; boots trampling up and down the metal corridors, faces crying for food, water, those stupid sunglasses that give you "elven" eyes. Orn didn't do "family friendly." He could barely handle "friendly," and Variel seemed to keep the ship as far from the Pax sectors as she could. Peace and harmony didn't often call upon the likes of them.

  A few spotlights bounded around the section below their outcropping, advertising for some show that wasn't to start for another three hours. If you have crowds of parents trying to find a place to sit down, you get a small stage filled with the kinds of people you'd normally never let your kid near. But, for five minutes the screaming stops as the kid watches wide eyed while a troll swallows bricks of flaming charcoal or a dwarf chops credit bits in half. It was one of those devil deals that leaves everyone soulless.

  The station smelled of artificial baked goods, disinfectant, and the base note of urine. If it weren't for the occasional hurried run of someone in a drab uniform carrying a punctured hull repair kit, it was hard to believe you weren't actually trapped on a hell planet.

  The gargoyle grunted, a low call of release, as it unsheathed its wings in the rare moment between shifts. Stretching long past its little stand, the thick stonehide that aided in gliding curled up and around the man's craggy head, bumping his carved curly locks. It was rare to find one this deep into shared territory. Permits weren't as easy to get for the lower species.

  They weren't officially called that. Something like "Non-Organic Entities," which accounted for all the non-bipedal, greater than four limbed, occasionally non-corporeal beings that tried to carve a niche in the ever expanding universe. But everyone knew which way the solar winds blew. The only one lower on the pecking pole than the NOE's were the gnomes, but it's harder to get lower than dirt.

  The gargoyle curled up his wings and tucked them back inside the apron decked with his stand's name, "Exotic Eats," and blinked his eyes rapidly. Orn slugged Variel on the shoulder and pointed excitedly, "He must have one of them new EyeScans."

  "And..."

  "No more lugging around a piece for the PALM to project onto when the imager loses cohesion, instant eye access, none of that scrolling through your hand," Orn sighed wistfully as if he was describing the perfect woman.

  "And they drill straight into your brain to place it. No thanks."

  "It's a one time installation. A one time, highly expensive installation." The dwarf dreamed of one ever since the big unveil Expo on Traltar, but coin was tighter with each passing month. If the cat market stayed the way it was, it could get much worse.

  Variel shook her head, tapping her trusty hand and letting the screen wash over one of the PALM receptacles at every table, "It's one time, until there's a major hardware upgrade, then back into your skull they go taking gods know how many brains in the process." She tapped a few more numbers and, after exchanging their new riches into bank numbers, transferred it all over to Ferra. Almost all. The bird and hamster duet would go into the ship's lease pot.

  Centuries back, when meeting someone who didn't look like, sound like, or act like you was a novel thing, a few people had the brilliant idea to try a universal currency. Credits they called it, which confused most everyone who thought they were paying on credit and would wake up to a depleted account and massive overdraft fees. Then the gnomes came into play. After the vultures got them to a 10,000% interest rate, there was such an epic economical collapse the galactic community talked of trying to sell their universe off to an alternate one for scrap.

  Oddly, it was the ancient elven tradition of trading stories for goods that took hold. Sure, the humans came back with coins, now in the form of holographic projections. Dwarves had an incredibly complex system involving the maiden name of your great-grandmother's clan, and most orc colonies had their own denominations of pressed heavy metals. But anyone could transfer a story to heavy currency.

  Eventually, the stories simplified when one needed an epically epic poem to purchase bread. Filtered down due to anti-inflation laws, the most highly guarded mint in the entire universe contained a single man, a cat, and a video camera. There hadn't been a major crash since.

  A sign across from their vantage point lit up: "Loqual's Trinkets and Tricks." The mood lights set to simulate day began to rise. Dawn was coming to the station. Variel motioned to Orn it was time to be moving on, avoid all the sticky fingered children and sticky chinned adults poking into business they'd never understand.

  As she passed the gargoyle, she dropped a few limericks into his tip jar and nodded, "That was the best fried klak I've had in ages." The gargoyle's eyes faded to a pink as he accepted the comment.

  "You know what your problem is," Orn started, walking beside the human who learned to shorten her stride years ago.

  "That I have a government official poking about my ship, a ship I'm still over 10% on the line for -- assuming it doesn't crumble to ash before then -- and a dwarf trying to psychoanalyze me?"

  "I was gonna say you're too cynical, but that's good too."

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ferra tapped her finger against the pale blue button, a small charge bouncing through the air. Most people would wait patiently after shocking up a summons, but the elf had already laid into it five times and was about to go for a sixth when an exhausted human stumbled forth. The facial fur of their kind had something pink stuck on the cheek, but for all she knew it was a common fashion trend.

  "I need to replace the seal on this inertia injector," she said in her most colloquial tone.

  Probably-not-titular Crazy Al slipped on the store's pair of discharge gloves and picked up the part, micronodes of excess MGC dissolving into the atmosphere. She barely felt anything above a deca-mage anymore. He turned the piece over in his hands and placed it back on the overloaded counter, "The seal's broken."

  "No? Here I thought it was a perfectly functioning injector that wanted to go for a stroll, see the universe and all before it bloody cracked in half," colloquial was quickly slipping into snippy. After that came sardonic, then vitriol. Most people never lived to see stage five.

  But Crazy Al's minion didn't get the nightshift because he feared the light, "A-yup, have to order a whole new part." His fat fingers slipped free of the gloves and called up the inventory screen embedded in the counter. "What class is your vehicle or traveling structure what needs a new one?"

  Ferra's fingers slicked her nearly transparent eyebrows in place as she tried to calm the rising fire, "I don't need a new injector, all I need is a seal." She flipped apart the coil and bounced up the rubber piece fraying to near breakage. "See, seal, little rubber thing what goes on the injector and keeps excess inertia from shattering across the deck."

  "I'm afraid we don't have excess seals...Ma'am. Only entire parts."

  That little pause before he settled on ma'am told her she wasn't dealing with a human used to elves. They worried to a
n excessive degree about getting gender correct, as if elves gave a shit. Humans could keep their concerns about everyone's genitalia to themselves. If he'd called her a dulcen though they wouldn't be finding the body until all of the galaxy compressed into a black hole. "Then go get another injector, take off the seal, and sell me that!"

  "Then that injector would be missing a seal."

  Ferra bounced her head against the counter, causing the inventory screen to jump, "This is when I'd ask to see the manager but..."

  "I'm the manager."

  "I feared as such." She rose, her large eyes quickly narrowing as she asked, "How much for a new one, then?"

  "For the entire part, we don't sell seals."

  "By all that...yes, the fucking part. How much for the entire injector and not the three inches of colon I wish to shred out of you."

  "No reason to be using that kind of blue language...ma'am," the barely sentient clerk shifted over to the locked down transaction screen, poking at a few more buttons until a range of injectors appeared beneath Ferra's fingers. "Please select which size to continue," he said just before the helpful computer chirped up "Select which size to continue."

  Ferra flipped quickly through ten pages, her eyes not scanning as years swam by until a good five decades were gone. Barely a blink for her kind, but the human in front of her had probably only gotten out of diapers, or something like that. "Species relating" was for ambassadors and salesmen. Larger, sleeker ships passed under her fingers; the fancy ones aging people buy to impress their younger not-technically-peers. The clunkier ones, still sturdy as rocks, and enjoyed by those with a nostalgic touch also vanished with each scroll of the menu. Finally, she came to the "Commercial Class" of ship.

  Pushing the button, she looked up at her current tormentor and said, "That one. How much?"

  He paused, waiting for the computer to tell him his job, "Five hundred chickpeas," he said, his dull eyes casting down upon her.