Six Months, Three Days, Five Others

by Charlie Jane Anders

  “We helped you one time,” Kango said. “Okay, three times, but two of those were just by accident because you had used reverse psychology. Point is, I am not your lackey. Or your henchman. Find another man to hench. Right, Sharon?”

  Sharon nodded. “No henching. As Hall and Oates are my witness.”

  “You are everything!” Jara mouthed soundlessly.

  “Listen,” said Lewis. “You do this one thing for me, I can expunge your criminal records, even the ones under your other names. And I can push through the permits on that empty space at Earthhub Seven so you can finally open that weird thing you wanted. That, what was it called?”

  “Restaurant,” Sharon breathed, like she couldn’t believe she was even saying the word aloud.

  “Restaurant!” Kango clapped his hands. “That’s all we’ve ever wanted.”

  “It sounds perverted and sick, this whole thing where you make food for strangers and they give you chits for it. Why don’t you just have sex for money like honest, decent people? Never mind, I don’t want to know the answer to that. Anyway, if you help me with this one thing, I can get you permission to open your ‘restaurant.’ ”

  “Wow.” Kango’s head was spinning. Literally, it was going around and around, at about one revolution every few seconds. Sharon leaned down and slapped him until his head settled back into place.

  “We’ll do it,” Sharon said. “Do you want us to infiltrate the spacer isolationists of the broken asteroid belt? Or go underground as factory workers in the Special Industrial Solar Systems? You want us to steal from the lizard people of Dallos IV? Whatever you want, we’re on it.”

  “None of those,” said Mandre. “We need you to go back to Liberty House and get back inside your former place of, er, employment. We’ve heard reports that the Courtiers are developing some kind of super-weapon that could ruin everybody’s day. We need you to go in there and get the schematics for us.”

  “Holy shit.” Sharon nearly threw something at the tiny viewscreen. “You realize that this is a suicide mission? The Courtiers regard both of us as total abominations. We can’t open a restaurant if we’re dead!”

  Lewis made a “not my problem” face. “Just get it done. Or don’t even bother coming back to Earthhub Seven.”

  Kango’s head started spinning in the opposite direction from the one it had been spinning in a moment earlier.

  4.

  They were about halfway to the outer solar systems of Liberty House, and they decided that Jara had probably passed out of range of The Vastness’s telepathic communication. Plus, they were pretty sure they’d disabled any tracking devices that might have been inside Jara’s headdress. So, Sharon leaned over the seat that Jara was still tied to.

  “I know you can hear me, even though we can’t hear you. If I turn off the dampening field, do you promise not to yell about The Vastness?”

  Jara just stared at her.

  Sharon shrugged, then reached over and disabled the dampening field. Immediately, Jara started yelling, “The Vastness is all! The Vastness sees you! The Vastness sees everybody! The Vastness will feast on your flesh with its countless mouths! The Va—”

  Sharon turned the dampening field back on with a sigh. “You’ve probably never known a life apart from The Vastness, so this is the first time you haven’t heard its voice in your head. Right? But you stowed away on our ship for a reason. You can claim it was so you could be a missionary and tell the rest of the galaxy how great The Vastness is, but we both know that you had to have some other reason for wanting to see the galaxy. Even if you can’t admit it to yourself right now.”

  Jara just kept shouting about The Vastness and its boundless wonderful appetite, without making any sound.

  “Fine. Have it your way. Let me know if you need to use the facilities or if you get hungry. Maybe I’ll feed you one of Kango’s Rainbow Cows.” (This provoked a loud and polysyllabic “noooo” from Kango, who was in the next compartment over.)

  When Sharon wandered aft, Kango was waist-deep in boxes of supplies, looking for something they could use to disguise themselves long enough to get inside Liberty House.

  “Do we have a hope in hell of pulling this off?” she asked.

  “If we can get the permits, absolutely,” Kango said. “We might have to borrow some chits to get the restaurant up and running, but I know people who won’t charge a crazy rate. And I already have ideas of what kind of food we can serve. Did you know restaurants used to have this thing called a Me-N-U? It was a device that automatically chose the perfect food for me and the perfect food for you.”

  “I meant, do we have any hope of getting back inside of Liberty House without being clocked as escaped Divertissements and obliterated in a slow, painful fashion?”

  “Oh.” Kango squinted at the piles of glittery underpants in his hands. “No. That, we don’t have the slightest prayer of doing. I was trying to focus on the positive.”

  “We need a plan,” Sharon said. “You and I are on file with the Courtiers, and there are any of a thousand scans that will figure out who we are the moment we show up. But Mandre is right; we know the inner workings of Liberty House better than anybody. We were made there, we lived there. It was our home. There has to be some way to play the Courtiers for fools.”

  “Here’s the problem,” said Kango. “Even if you and I were able to disguise ourselves enough to avoid being recognized as the former property of the Excellent Good Time Crew, there’s absolutely no way we could hide what we are. None whatsoever. Anyone in the service of the Courtiers will recognize you as a monster, and me as an extra, at a glance.”

  “I know, I know,” Sharon raised her hands.

  “We wouldn’t get half a light-year inside the House before they would be all over us with the biometrics and the genescans, and there’s no way around those.”

  “I know!” Sharon felt like weeping. They shouldn’t have taken this mission. Mandre had dangled a slim chance at achieving their wildest dreams, and they’d lunged for it like rubes. “I know, okay?”

  “I mean, you’d need to have a human being, an actual honest-to-Blish human being, who was in on the scam. And it’s not like we can just pick up one of those on the nearest asteroid. So, unless you’ve got some other bright—” Kango stopped.

  Kango and Sharon stared at each other for a moment without talking, then looked over at Jara, who was still tied to her chair, shouting soundlessly about the wonders of The Vastness.

  “Makeover?” Kango said.

  “Makeover.” Sharon sighed. She still felt like throwing up.

  5.

  “Greetings and tastefully risqué taunts, O visitors whose sentience will be stipulated for now, pending further appraisal,” said the man on the viewscreen, whose face was surrounded by a pink-and-blue cloud of smart powder. His cheek had a beauty mark that flashed different colors, and his eyes kept changing from skull sockets to neon spirals to cartoon eyeballs. “What is your business with Liberty House, and how may we pervert you?”

  Kango and Sharon both looked at Jara, who glared at them both. Then she turned her baleful look toward the viewscreen. “Silence, wretch,” she said, speaking the words they’d forced her to memorize. “I do not speak to underthings.” Kango and Sharon both gave her looks of total dismay, and she corrected herself: “Underlings. I do not speak to underlings. I am the Resplendent Countess Victoria Algentsia, and these are my playservants. Kindly provide me with an approach vector to the central Pleasure Nexus, and instruct me as to how I may speak to someone worthy of my attention.”

  They turned off the comms before the man with the weird eyes could even react.

  “Ugh,” Kango said. “That was . . . not good.”

  “I’ve never pretended to be a Countess before,” said Jara. “I don’t really approve of pretending to be anything. The Vastness requires total honesty and realness from its acolytes. Also, how do I know you’ll keep your end of our bargain?”

  “Because we’re good, ho
nest folk,” said Sharon, kicking Kango before he could even think of having a facial expression. “We’ll return you to The Vastness, and you’ll be a hero because you’ll have helped defeat a weapon that could have been a threat to its, er, magnificence.”

  “I don’t trust either of you,” said Jara.

  “That’s a good start,” said Kango. “Where we’re going, you shouldn’t trust anybody, anybody at all.” By some miracle, the man with the cloud of smart powder around his face had given them an approach vector to Salubrious IV, the central world of the Pleasure Nexus, the main solar system of Liberty House. Either the man had actually believed Jara was a countess, or he had decided their visit would afford some amusement to somebody. Or both.

  “So, I’m supposed to be a fancy noble person,” said Jara, who was still wearing her tattered rags apart from a splash of colorful makeup and some fake jewels over her headdress. “And yet, I’m flying in this awful old ship, with just the two of you as my servants? What are you two supposed to be, anyway?”

  “We were made here,” said Kango. “I’m an extra. She’s a monster.”

  “You don’t need to know what we were.” Sharon shot Kango a look. “All you need to know is, we’re perfectly good servants. This ship is an actual pleasure skimmer from Salubrious, and you’re going to claim that you decided to go off on a jaunt. We’re creating a whole fake hedonic calculus for you. The good thing about Liberty House is, there are a million Courtiers, and the idea of keeping tabs on any of them is repugnant.”

  “This society is evil and monstrous,” said Jara. “The Vastness will come and devour it entire.”

  “Of course, of course,” said Kango with a shrug. “So, we have a few hours left to teach you how to hold your painstick, and which skewer to use with which kind of sugarblob, and the right form of address for all five hundred types of Courtiers, so you can pass for a member of the elite. Not to mention how to walk in scamperpants. Ready to get started?”

  Jara just glared at him.

  Meanwhile, Sharon went aft to look at the engines, because their “plan,” if you wanted to call it that, required them to do some crazy flying inside the inner detector grid of Salubrious IV, to get right up to the computer core while Kango and Jara provided a distraction.

  “Nobody asked me if I wanted to go home,” said Noreen while Sharon was poking around in her guts. “I wouldn’t have minded being at least consulted here.”

  “Sorry,” said Sharon. “Neither of us is happy about going back either. We got too good an offer to refuse.”

  “I’ve been in contact with some of the other ships since we got inside Liberty House,” Noreen said. “They don’t care much one way or the other if we’re lying about our identity—ships don’t concern themselves with such petty business—but they did mention that the Courtiers have beefed up security rather a lot since we escaped for the first time. Also, some of the ships are taking up a betting pool on how long before we’re caught and sent into the Libidorynth.”

  “I can’t believe the Libidorynth is still a thing,” Sharon said.

  Sharon and Kango spent their scant remaining time making Jara look plausibly like a spoiled Countess who had been in deep space much too long, while Kango gave Jara a crash course in acting haughty and imperious. “When in doubt, pretend you’ve done too many dreamsluices, and you’re having a hard time remembering things,” said Kango.

  “Silence, drone,” said Jara in an actually pretty good impersonation of the way a Courtier would speak to someone like Kango.

  “We’ve got landing points,” said Noreen, and seconds later, the ship was making a jerky descent toward the surface of Salubrious IV. From a distance, the planet looked a hazy shade of brownish gray. But once you broke atmosphere, the main landmass was coated with towers of pure gold studded with purple, and the oceans had a sheen of platinum over them. They lowered the Spicy Meatball into the biggest concentration of gilded skyscrapers, and all the little details came into focus: the millions of faces and claws and bodies gazing and squirming from the sides of the buildings, the bejeweled windows and the shimmering mist of pleasure-gas floating around all of the uppermost levels. Gazing at her former home, Sharon felt an unexpected kick of nostalgia, or maybe even joyful recognition, alongside the ever-present terror of Hall and Oates save me, they’re going to put us in the Libidorynth.

  They touched down, and Noreen seemed reluctant to open her hatch, because she was probably having the same terrifying flashbacks that were eating Sharon’s brain. Things Sharon hadn’t thought of in years—the cage they had kept her in, the “monster training,” the giggles of the people as she chased them around the dance floor, which turned to shrieks after she actually caught up with them. The painsticks. Sharon felt the bravado she’d spent years acquiring start to flake away.

  As they stepped out of the hatch, a retinue of a hundred Witty Companions and assorted Fixers and Cleansers swarmed to surround them. “How may we pervert you?” they all asked, with an eagerness that made Sharon’s stomach twist into knots. They all felt obliged to declare their fealty to this long-lost, newly returned Countess right away, and this became deafening. One of the Witty Companions, who introduced himself as Barnadee, started listing all of the Courtiers who were dying to meet their cousin, but Jara gave him a sharp look and said that she was tired after her long journey.

  “Of course, of course,” said Barnadee, bowing and flashing his multicolored strobe-lit genitalia as a show of respect. “We will show you to your luxurious and resplendent quarters, where any debauchery you may imagine will be available to you.”

  Jara snorted at all of this nonsense—it was all pointless, because it did nothing to glorify The Vastness—but her disdain sounded enough like the petulance of a jaded hedonist that it only made Barnadee try harder to please her.

  6.

  “Drone, bring me more cognac and bacon,” said Jara, waving one finger. Sharon and Kango looked at each other, as if each trying to blame the other for turning this girl into their worst nightmare. They’d been on Salubrious IV for a week and a half, and you wouldn’t recognize Jara anymore. Her skin had been retro-sheened until it glowed, they had put jewels all over her face and neck, and she was wearing the newest, most fashionable clothes. But most of all, Jara had gotten used to having whatever she wanted, at the exact second she decided she wanted it. They were staying in one of the more modest suites of the Pleasure Nexus, with only seventeen rooms and a dozen organic assembly units—so it might take a few whole minutes to build a new slave for the Countess Victoria or create whatever meals or clothing she might desire. The walls were coated with living material, sort of like algae, that looked like pure gold (but were actually much more valuable) and had the capacity to feel pain, just in case someone might find it amusing to hear the golden walls howl with agony.

  “I grow bored,” said Jara, as Sharon rushed over with her cognac-and-bacon. “When will there be more amusement for me?”

  Sharon had a horrible feeling that she could not tell if Jara was faking it any longer. She’d had that feeling for a few days.

  “Um,” said Sharon to Jara, “well, so there are five orgies this evening, including one featuring blood enemas and flesh-melting. Also, there’s that big formal evening party.”

  “Is this the sort of party where you used to be the featured monster?” Jara held her cognac-and-bacon in both hands and gulped it, with just the sort of alacrity you’d expect from someone who’d only ever tasted gruel until two weeks before.

  “Um, yes,” Sharon said. “They would turn me loose and I would chase the guests around and try to eat them. I’ve told you already.”

  “And how did that make you feel?” Jara asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Sharon turned and looked at Kango, who was tending to the Countess’s assembly units but also double-checking that there were no listening devices in here so they could speak freely. Kango gave her the “all clear” signal.

&n
bsp; “Let’s talk about you instead,” Sharon said to Jara. “Are you ready to go to the big party? It’s one thing to play-act at bossing Kango and me around in private. But at this party, you’ll see all sorts of weird things—depravities that The Vastness never prepared you for. And you can’t bat an eye at any of them.”

  “I’ll do whatever I have to,” Jara said. “You said there’s a weapon here that’s a threat to The Vastness, and I’ll endure any horrors and monstrosities to protect The Vastness. Praise The Vastness!”

  “Do you think she’s ready?” Sharon asked Kango, who shrugged.

  “She’s got the attitude,” Kango said. Just a few hours earlier, Jara had made Kango go out and fetch her some still-living mollusk sushi from the market, and meanwhile she’d gotten Sharon to fabricate a tiny legion of pink fluffy shocktroopers for her amusement (they goose-stepped around and then all shot each other, because their aim was terrible).

  “Thank you,” Jara said, “Drone.”

  “But she’s still rusty on the finer points of Courtier behavior,” Kango said. “She doesn’t know a painstick from a soul-fork.”

  “She’s a quick study. And she’ll have you to help her,” Sharon said. “As long as you don’t get all triggered by being back inside the Grand Wilding Center. I can’t even imagine.”

  “You two,” Jara said out of nowhere. “You talk as though each of you was The Vastness to the other.”

  “Yeah,” Kango said. “We’re a family, that’s why.”

  Jara was shaking her head, like this was just another perversion among many that she’d encountered on her journey. “At least the people here in Liberty House care about something bigger than they are, even if it’s only a pointless amusement. You two, you are so small, and all you care for is each other. How can you stand to have no connection to greatness?”

  “We had enough of other people’s greatness a long time ago,” Sharon said. “You start to realize that ‘something bigger than you are’ is usually just some kind of stupid mass hallucination. Or a giant scam.”