by C H Duryea
“That was fun,” Narissa said breathlessly. “Can we do it again?”
“Not until we have to,” Zeke said, standing and dusting himself off.
They turned to look at wherever it was that they had arrived at. The ledge led inward to one of the wide circular concourses that traced the circumference of each revolving ring. Once on the track, Zeke could see that the surface was inclined slightly inward, in what seemed to be at least a cursory nod to the laws of physics. Rows of cubicles lined both sides of the walkway as pedestrian traffic crowded between them. A wide variety of bipedal life forms passed by, seeming to ignore them.
“Well, at least we won’t look that out of place,” Vibeke remarked.
“Yeah,” Narissa said, watching as what looked like a seven-foot-tall crustacean walked by. “But without antennae or multiple appendages, I’m going to feel underdressed.”
Zeke looked around. On either side of the walkway, behind the rows of cubes, he could see the relative rising and falling of the adjacent rings.
“I suggest,” Zeke said, “that we observe first. Watch carefully and see what kind of patterns we can discern in their social and economic customs.”
“And I suggest,” Narissa said, taking him by the arm and stepping ahead, “that you put your haggling face on and let’s get into it with the locals.”
“Since when have any of us ever had to haggle for anything?”
“You forget who I’m married to.”
“All right, already,” Vibeke said. “So where do we go first?”
“We should go straight to the nearest tavern,” Harbinger declared, “and get a table with our backs against the wall.”
Narissa pointed. “How about there?”
Up ahead was a cube that had a wide u-shaped rail around a floating hologram. Around the rail, several observers exchanged small squares of metal. Standing at regular intervals around the perimeter of the crowd stood several broadly built, gray-skinned humanoids.
“Would appear to be a game of chance,” Zeke observed. “So they gamble here too.”
As they approached, they saw that the hologram displayed a swirling array of symbols and orbs and curving lines that looked like orbital paths.
“Hello,” Narissa said. She watched the holo and the activity underneath for the better part of a minute. “Hell’s bells.”
“What is it,” Zeke asked.
“They want us to think that holo is just a random numbers model of smashing happy quarks,” she said, “but it’s really a sub-atomic Brownian motion simulator. I can beat this game.”
“That would be great if we had some currency to bet,” Vibeke said.
“That’s cake. See that gent? At least I think he’s a gent, I could be wrong. I’ll just whisper to him that I’ll win him the next round for half his take. Learned that in Reno.”
“I think they break your legs for that in Reno,” Harbinger said.
“This ain’t Reno, Charles.”
She broke away and started towards the game.
“All right, boyo,” Vibeke said. “Are you going to win me a stuffed alien at the strongman game?”
“I don’t follow,” Zeke said. “No—we need supplies. We need a laser alignment coupler, about a kilometer of fiber optic, an m-particle ossifier—”
“We need weapons,” Harbinger said, “that’s what we need.”
“What the blazes do we need weapons for? That ship is a whole universe away. We’re safe for now. Let’s just focus on getting home in one piece.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She tapped the comm unit clipped to Zeke’s belt. “Should probably check in.”
“Right,” he said, plucking up the unit and toggling send. “Hey, Augie? Are you receiving?”
“Friendly Card, reading you, Zeke.” Augie’s voice crackled in the speaker. “But I’m picking up some interference.”
“I’m surprised any signals can make it through this metal compactor at all. What’s your status?”
“I helped our cybernetic host and his friend calibrate a sticky spectrometer,” he reported. “And they’re reciprocating with a sensor tune-up in exchange. I do believe we can establish a fruitful business relationship with him. How goes the reconnaissance?”
“Your better half is winning friends and influencing aliens.”
“As only she can do, I’m sure,” Augie said. “But don’t forget—we’re the aliens here.”
Narissa was bounding back from the game kiosk.
“See what else you can negotiate for,” Zeke said. “But don’t let him see any of our enhancements. I’ll check back later.”
As Zeke ended the transmission, Narissa sprang to a stop in front of them, rattling a small stack of the metal squares in her hand.
“That was fast,” Harbinger said.
“There’s more where that came from,” Narissa said. “I could own this whole station by the end of the night!”
Harbinger examined one of the metal tiles. “I don’t know what they’re using for currency here. But if it’s rare here, it couldn’t hurt to have more than we think we’ll need—given our uncertain circumstances.”
“Nice going,” Zeke said. “Keep half and see how much more you can get out of that Brownian simulator. Chuck, take some and see what supplies you can find. Vee and I will do the same.”
They divide the tiles and Narissa went back to the game as Harbinger disappeared into the crowd.
“Okay,” Vibeke said. “We got a little scratch. What are we going to do with it?”
Just then a commotion broke out near the game. Narissa’s voice rang over the din.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?”
They turned and saw four of the gray-skinned thugs from the game kiosk heading their way. Two of them had Narissa roughly by the arms. She twisted and lashed out with a series of well-placed kicks, and sent two of them sprawling. One of the thugs on her arms unclipped what looked like a nightstick and clubbed her savagely across the back.
“Hey!” Zeke shouted, racing towards the aliens. “Let her go!”
The grays stopped before them, Narissa twisting in pain, but still resisting.
“You guys are real ladies’ men, I see,” Vibeke remarked.
“Is this carbon-based creature with you,” one of them growled in something that was close enough to English for Zeke to make out.
“Yes,” he said, “and if you don’t release her right—hey!”
One thug seized Zeke as another grabbed Vibeke. The pedestrian traffic around them parted as if they already knew not to mess with these fellows. The gray-skinned thugs shoved the three of them to the deck and the rest of them unclipped their nightsticks from their belts. The clubs then sprang open to resemble something more like electrified meat hooks. The thugs took positions surrounding them.
“I’m beginning to wish we were in Reno,” Narissa said.
The thugs raised their weapons and moved in.
“Still think we didn’t need weapons,” Vibeke asked.
Zeke didn’t have a chance to answer before one of the assailants was struck in the side of the head by a heavy, metal projectile that sent it reeling, knocking a cloud of gritty, gray residue into the air.
From an adjacent ring, a figure descended and landed with a solid crack on the deck.
The seven-foot crustacean.
It held out a red, knobby claw and the metal ball swung around through the air and landed in its hand. The thugs redirected their discontent at the newcomer and charged.
The crustacean was ready. It sent its ball on a wide arc around it while leaping on the attackers and making judicious use of its pincers to snap two of their weapons just as the flying ball came back around and struck another with a bone-crunching impact to whatever constituted its rib cage.
The other two thugs went after the interloper and one landed a savage blow with its weapon. The crustacean’s exoskeleton was clearly resistant, and the hard-shelled figure returned with a pulveriz
ing blow to the thug’s face. The thug’s meat hook skittered across the deck.
The crustacean pressed its advantage and dispatched another with its own claws as its flying death-ball delivered a crushing impact to one more. Tiny bits of gray bone shrapnel flew through the air as the crustacean kept up its attack. Vibeke skidded over and helped Zeke up.
“Come on,” she said, “let’s skedaddle!”
But Zeke couldn’t help continuing to stare. He couldn’t shake the impression that the crustacean was enjoying the fight.
In fact, if Zeke was properly interpreting what he was seeing, it appeared that the crustacean was eating pieces of its opponents.
“This isn’t our fight anymore!” Narissa shouted at him. “Let’s get back to the ship!”
One of the downed thugs lurched up, turning on them with its teeth bared. Zeke spotted the dropped meat hook on the deck and scrambled to grab it. He sprang into position between the attacker and the women and jammed the point of the hook into the thug’s chest.
The weapon had no apparent effect on its owner. It grabbed the electrified shaft and wrenched it from Zeke, then swung it around batted Zeke with the handle, sending him sprawling to the deck.
Vibeke found a length of pipe and went after the thug, but her blows were not enough to distract it from coming after Zeke. It stomped over to him and raised its weapon to strike.
Then its head exploded as the alien death-ball passed through its skull, spraying gray gore all over Zeke. It was suddenly quiet. The gray thugs lay in various states of disassembly around the crustacean, who held up a claw and caught the death-ball as it finished its final, fatal orbit.
Vibeke pulled at Zeke’s arm, but Zeke continued to stare as the crustacean slowly turned to them.
“Thanks,” Zeke said to the alien. “You saved my life.”
It tilted its head and looked at Zeke with beady eyes like black holes pressing into twin gravity wells.
“I saved your life,” it said. Or sort of said, its words coming out in a high squeak that did not sound like it was made by anything resembling vocal cords.
“Yes,” Zeke said, “I’m in your—”
The crustacean leapt at Zeke and seized him by the throat, lifting him high above the deck and hurling him through the crowd, onto a jump point between two cubes.
Vibeke took the length of pipe and set about pounding the biped about the head and shoulders from behind.
It did no good. The crustacean stalked across the platform, trapping Zeke on the ledge.
It reached down, once again grabbed Zeke by the throat, and then held him aloft at the end of its arm, flailing over the depths like a speared fish.
The bipedal crustacean squeezed Zeke’s neck between the pincers of what was presumably his hand as Zeke’s leg dangled over the open gulf off the edge of the ring. His hands struggled with the mighty pincers holding him, completely without effect.
“Let him go!”
Vibeke continued to attack the alien from behind, smacking it with the metal bar, but she wasn’t even able to get a reaction out of it. Narissa went after it with a flurry of kicks and strikes, with as little effect. The creature stood as still as a statue, staring at Zeke with its dark little caviar eyes.
“I saved your life,” it creaked again in its unsettlingly nonhuman way.
Zeke seized on that.
“Yes,” he gargled as Vibeke continued ineffectually to hammer at the crustacean’s back. “You did! I mean you no harm.”
“No,” it said. “But you will visit it upon me just the same.”
“What?” Zeke said. “Why would I do that? I don’t even know you!”
Without changing his grip on Zeke, the alien reached back and seized Vibeke’s bar with its other pincer. Vibeke tugged, trying to get it back, so it turned its head and stared at her.
“You let him go,” she growled.
“I will release him,” it said and opened its pincer with Zeke still hanging off the ledge.
A scream rose in Vibeke’s throat, and Zeke’s whole body flushed with the instinctive certainty of gravity.
But he didn’t fall, and Vibeke’s scream died in her throat.
Zeke just floated there. He was presumably in free fall, but he remained at a constant arm’s length from the ledge rail.
The alien stood and considered Zeke. It looked at him, down into the space below, and then back at Zeke. It seemed to be thinking hard. Then it reached out again and grabbed Zeke, by the shirt this time, and hauled him back, tossing him casually to the floor.
Vibeke and Narissa grabbed Zeke and dragged him away from the edge—and away from the alien.
“Are you okay?” Narissa asked.
Vibeke spun on the crustacean. “Why you—I’m gonna get a vat of melted butter and a really big set of nutcrackers—”
Zeke sat up and pulled her back by the arm.
“Hold off,” he said. “Something’s weird about this.”
She turned to him.
“And you’re just figuring this out now?”
Zeke stood slowly and painfully. He faced the alien. If it was possible for the completely black, shiny balls of its eyes to look anguished they pulled it off.
“I’m in your—” Zeke stopped himself when he remembered what the crustacean had done the last time he tried to tell him that. He decided to try a different approach. “Why did you prevent those guys from killing me?”
“Because I am weak,” it said.
“I beg to differ,” Vibeke said, “after watching you take those lugs apart.”
“Your assailants I meant to slay.”
“Why?”
“Because I hate them,” it crowed. “That, and they are a rich selenium source.”
“You seem upset about the fact that you saved me,” Zeke pressed. “I don’t understand.”
“Because now there must be an accounting.”
“Uh oh,” Narissa said. “He’s not talking about some kind of life debt, is he?”
Zeke wasn’t ready to deal with any accountability the crustacean culture was prepared to impose on him for having been saved. But he didn’t want to appear rude either.
“I am honored and humbled to be called upon to discharge my obligation to you,” he said, sounding embarrassingly formal. “But I am—”
“You are not obligated to me,” it interrupted.
“I’m not?”
“As you have repeatedly reminded me, I saved your life. Your assailants meant to slay you. My actions have resulted in your continuance. In doing so, I am now responsible for any action you may take from this moment forward.”
“What?”
“It was my intention to slay you,” it went on. “Your death by my hand would release me of my responsibility.”
Zeke didn’t like the sound of that. But his curiosity got the better of him. “Then why didn’t you?”
“What is your name, small, soft-shell biped?”
“Um, I’m Zeke Travers. These are my companions, Vibeke Helstrom and Narissa Brand.”
“Zeke Travers and companions Vibeke Helstrom and Narissa Brand,” it said. “I am Qaant Yke, and I am now responsible for you. I must account for what changes you will effect in the universe through your continued existence.”
“You’re responsible for me?” Zeke asked.
“Sorry, Mister Yke,” Vibeke said, “but I’m the only one responsible for my actions.”
Qaant Yke looked at her. “Not anymore.”
“Well, then I formally release you of any obligation,” Zeke offered. “I don’t know what kind of rituals your culture practices to make something like that happen—”
“There is no ritual,” Qaant Yke said. “Zeke Travers and companions Vibeke Helstrom and Narissa Brand, I am bound to you for the duration of your subsequent existence.”
Zeke turned to the women. “He doesn’t seem like he’s going to budge on this.”
“Then what the hell are we supposed to do?” Vibeke said.
Zeke took another look at the stolid, carapaced alien. “Somehow I don’t think that would stop him.”
“Then we take him with us.”
They turned. At the mouth of the alcove, Harbinger stood, one hand on a large antigrav sled, full of all kinds of equipment, supplies—and more than a few weapons. His other hand was busy rolling a handful of dice.
“Looks like you did all right,” Vibeke said.
“I struck a few bargains. Found these keen new twenty-sided die. Who’s your friend?”
“Charles Harbinger,” Zeke said. “Meet Qaant Yke. Qaant Yke, Doctor Charles Harbinger.”
“Is Doctor Charles Harbinger also a companion, Zeke Travers?”
“For the moment,” Harbinger answered. “Where he goes, I go.”
“Then I am accountable for you as well.”
Narissa craned her neck and looked up at Qaant Yke.
“It might be easier just to ride the horse in the direction it’s going,” she said.
“I do not know horse, nor do I have a point of reference to calculate bearing.”
“Do you know your way around a spacecraft?”
“I am ashamed,” it said. “I have only built seventeen of my own.”
Narissa, Zeke and Vibeke exchanged glances.
“Do you know how to fight?” Harbinger asked.
“Clearly,” Vibeke said, “you weren’t here a few minutes ago.”
“Brass tacks—do you have any specific nutritional or environmental requirements?”
“I must return periodically to the waters of my forehatchers. I require raw material with specific mineral qualities.”
“Like what?” Zeke asked.
“Nothing we can’t mine a few asteroids to get,” Narissa said. “Come on. Let’s go spend the rest of this money.”
“Right,” Zeke said. “We need weapons.”
“He finally sees the light,” Vibeke said.
“And pressure suits,” Narissa said.
“And decent food,” Harbinger added.
“And free selenium,” Qaant Yke suggested.
Zeke’s comm unit beeped. He grabbed it and toggled the pickup.
“Augie, that you? How’re the repairs going? Tell our hosts we can afford to take them up on some of their upgrades—”