by M. D. Cooper
“No need. It flies itself. I just like to sit in the pilot’s seat. You get a great view.”
“But what if something goes wrong?” Jaquil asked. “What if the computer breaks down?”
Banty frowned. “Y’know, I never really considered the possibility.” Her face brightened. “It wouldn’t be a problem. U8AB would know how to fly it.” She looked around. “Hey, where is that metallic love engine? He better not be fiddling with the air filtration unit again.”
She rose heavily to her feet and waddled out.
Jaquil went over to the flight controls and moved them around. It was obvious now that they were loose to the touch. They didn’t seem to be connected to anything. He squatted down and peered up at the underside of the console. Unattached wires were hanging down.
“Urgh,” Jaquil exclaimed. He’d noticed a large, flat lump of green mucus that was stuck under edge of the console nearest him, as if a giant had wiped a bogey there.
“Gross,” he said, standing up and backing away.
“Did you see Fred?” Lollololp squirmed over and peered up at the globule. “Hey, Fred. I was wondering where you’d got to.” A wheezing noise like a long fart emerged from the green splodge.
Lollololp turned to Jaquil, all his eyes narrowing. “She heard what you said, kid. you hurt her feelings.”
“What? But, I didn’t know...but he...she...” He paused. “Why’s she called Fred?”
“‘Cos that’s her name.”
“Oh. So, what is it—she?”
“She’s a slime mold. What did you think she was? Cotton candy? Hey, you’re not doing that idiot thing again, are you?”
Jaquil knelt down and looked up at the lump. “Sorry, Fred. You took me a little by surprise there. I didn’t mean anything by what I said.”
At that moment, Banty returned, pulling U8AB by his silver ear.
“I swear,” she said, “if I catch you interfering with the equipment on this ship again, I’ll maroon you on the nearest planet, electricity supply or not.”
“But, Banty, it was entirely consensual. I would never—”
“That ain’t the point. I need this ship’s parts to be devoted to flying us to Kranablehater III and keeping us alive until we get there. I can’t have their circuits distracted by whatever it is that floats your electronic boats.”
“All right,” U8AB said. “I apologize. I promise I won’t do it again. It’s just that you do have some very attractive appliances aboard, Captain.”
“Listen,” Banty craned her neck backward to look up at the metal man’s chin. “Keep your wires in your chest, or I’ll schedule you for an electro-neutering—with a chainsaw. Got it?”
“I’ve got it.”
“Sheesh!”
Chapter Four
Whether it was due to the Reversamil he wasn’t sure, but Jaquil discovered over the next few days that space travel was less exciting than he’d anticipated. Between liftoff and landing were hours, days, and weeks of tedium.
Unlike the rest of the crew, he hadn’t yet developed a hobby to pass the time, so while U8AB was 'servicing’ the ship’s equipment, Lollololp was performing aerial yoga, and Banty was relaxing on the observation deck experimenting with different combinations of huffing juice, Jaquil was at a loss for something to do.
On one of his rambles around the ship, to his great pleasure he’d discovered the storage room full of forklift trucks in the hold. Forklifts and how to operate them was about the only thing he excelled in on his Garbology course. He spent a couple of days familiarizing himself with their controls and driving them around and around the hold. Unfortunately, Trash Iz Uz was on its way to pick up trash, so he didn’t have anything to transport, but at least he had something to occupy himself with for a while.
Eventually, however, he tired of driving the forklifts, and took to lingering on the bridge, watching the stars approach and pass Starblaster as they journeyed to Kranablehater III.
One day, he recalled the unattached flight controls. Squatting down, he peered at the loose wires. This time, he was prepared for the blob known as Fred. She didn’t seem to leave her spot very much, though Jaquil had seen her once or twice sliding along the walls around the ship.
“Hi Fred,” Jaquil said.
Fred farted a reply. It was a friendly sound. Jaquil took it to mean that she’d forgiven him for his earlier reaction to her.
“I thought I’d take a look at these controls. Maybe reattach them so we can fly the ship manually if we have to.”
A string of staccato pops came from Fred. They sounded encouraging.
Jaquil examined the wires and the empty ports. He couldn’t see anything to indicate where the wires should go. Thinking that he would randomly try different arrangements, he moved to push a wire into a port.
This brought a large trumpet from Fred. Was she telling him to stop?
“Is that wrong?” he asked.
Fred’s single report seemed to say yes.
Jaquil picked a different wire. “How about this?”
Another single report seemed to be in the affirmative. Jaquil slotted the wire home. He picked another wire.
Over the next half an hour or so, he worked with Fred to reattach the manual flight controls to Starblaster’s engines. When he was finished, he tested the control sticks. They were firm and resisted as he moved them.
He ducked his head under the console. “I think we did it,” he said to Fred. The slime mold slid over and exuded a tendril to touch Jaquil’s cheek like a kiss.
“Aww, Fred,” Jaquil said, deeply moved by this display of affection. He sat under the console and began to talk with the slime mold. As they’d worked together to fix the controls, he’d begun to understand a little of the creature’s language, and as they chatted, he gradually comprehended more and more of what she was saying.
He told her about his Garbology course and the various forklifts he’d become proficient at driving.
“You wouldn’t believe the different kinds there are, Fred,” he said. “Electric walkies, pneumatic tire and cushion tire, narrow aisle, rough terrain. The list goes on.”
Fred farted, “Seriously?”
“Yeah. But, y’ know, they all drive pretty much the same.”
A pair of plump feet and chunky legs appeared outside the console. “There y’are. I’ve been looking for you everywhere, kid.”
Jaquil looked out and up at the underside of Banty’s multiple chins.
“Better get strapped in,” she said. “We’re gonna land.”
Jaquil went to his seat. The straps came out as he sat down, holding him tightly in place. As before, the secure feeling, coupled with the vibration of the braking and descending engines, sent him quickly into a deep sleep.
This time, his dream involved a long, narrow submarine. He was piloting the underwater vessel through long, waving fronds of sea vegetation. He was alone aboard the ship, but he didn’t mind. An undersea cave was up ahead, and he was guiding the submarine toward it.
The cave seemed to yawn wider, inviting him in. Jaquil pushed his vessel onward at maximum power. Just as he was slipping inside the dark, yawning cleft, he woke up.
Chapter Five
Kranablehater III seemed to be a well-populated planet from what Jaquil could see as Starblaster completed her descent. They were touching down at a spaceport, and starships and domestic aircraft were arriving and leaving in large numbers. The air was so busy with traffic, Jaquil was grateful for the ship’s automatic systems that were guiding them safely through all the comings and goings. His thighs were clenched together, causing his dungarees to bulge.
Around the spaceport a vast metropolis stretched to the horizon on every side. Ground-based and mid-air vehicles teemed, and they were occupied by a range of different aliens. Kranablehater III was a multi-sentient-species planet. Jaquil wondered what kind of extra-terrestrial the Trash Iz Uz client was, and which hated neighbor was destined to receive the load they were collecting.
They landed and Starblaster joined the line of starships that stretched to the parking lot. The engine’s deep vibrations subsided to a gentle purr, and Jaquil’s safety straps retracted, freeing him of restraint. He stood and stretched.
“Okay team,” Banty said, easing out of the pilot’s seat. “Let’s go see our new customer. Except for Fred.” She looked under the console. “I want you to stay here and mind the ship.”
A long, bubbling, vaguely sad fart was Fred’s reply.
Jaquil felt sorry for the slime mold being left behind, but a thrilling feeling was also rising up in his chest. He’d just completed his first deep space flight, and now he was on another world. Most of his friends and acquaintances went offplanet for their vacations, but his mother never managed to scrape together enough money for them to even take a trip to the Moon. Whenever people around him talked about the wonderful time they had skiing on Mars or hiking on Proxima Centauri VIII, he stayed quiet. Now, he would finally have something to talk about.
He doubted that anyone he knew had even heard of Kranablehater III. He certainly hadn’t. The planet was sure to be a very exotic, unusual place. His heart began to race. Nervously, he felt for the bulge of the pot of Reversamil in his dungaree pocket. He didn’t want to go catatonic again. That would be embarrassing, and it would only encourage Banty and the others to continue calling him kid instead of his real name.
When Starblaster was parked and her engines were silent, Banty called an autopod to take them to the client’s residence. A short while later, an egg-shaped vehicle with pointy ends drew up outside the ship, and its doors rose up, inviting them to step inside. The pod was plenty large enough for four average-sized occupants, which meant it was entirely too small for Banty, let alone U8AB, Lollololp, and Jaquil too.
Jaquil found himself squeezed up against the pod’s window, his face pressed on it. Though he was probably the most uncomfortable he’d been in his entire life, he at least had an excellent view of the streets of the capital of Kranablehater III as they passed through them. The cosmopolitan city was full of dwellings that reflected the diversity of its inhabitants. Some resembled the houses and apartment blocks of Earth, others were plastic mounds, or holes in the ground, or large artificial structures like patches of vegetation. The streets were filled with pods of varying kinds large and small, and smaller drones carrying goods.
They arrived at their destination. The pod’s door lifted, and Jaquil tumbled out in a huge puff of vapor, red-faced and gasping. He rested on the sidewalk on his hands and knees, getting his breath back while the others emerged. The journey had taken only around forty minutes, though to Jaquil it had felt more like four hours. U8AB and Lollololp seemed perfectly fine. He guessed that neither of them required air to breathe nor space to exist in.
The pod’s doors closed and the vehicle sped away. The four walked up to the tall, wide entrance to a grandiose residence, and Banty went up to the doors. Just as she was about to press the door chime, a humanoid alien appeared around the side of building and rushed over to them. The being was about two and a half meters tall, gray-skinned, and bald. It had two eyes, but they were on the sides of its head and entirely black. The creature had no chin. Its face became smaller at the bottom and blended into its neck.
“This way. This way, please,” the being said, waving its flappy, four-fingered hands at them. It glanced around as if it didn’t want them to be seen and ushered them quickly down an alley at the side of the mansion.
A smaller door in the alley was already open, and the creature pushed them quickly through before closing the door and activating its lock.
“You are Trash Iz Uz?” it asked.
“That’s right,” Banty replied. “We have an appoin—”
“Yes, yes. Please come with me. I apologize for bringing you through the side entrance. The matter you are here to discuss is top secret.”
“It always is,” said Banty. “Don’t worry about it. We’re highly discreet.”
The alien led them through many lengthy hallways, deeper and deeper into the client’s abode. The walls and ceiling were made of a dark, fibrous material, but after they’d been walking for about five minutes, the material abruptly switched to smooth, lustrous metal. A little while later, the metal was replaced by a thick glassy substance.
“Is there something in there?” U8AB asked, stopping and peering at a wall. After a moment, he shrugged and walked on.
Jaquil followed the direction of the metallic man’s gaze. He, too, spotted a movement, but it seemed far off. Something seemed to be swimming toward them, darting from side to side in a zigzagging motion. Jaquil suddenly realized that the walls that surrounded them were tens of meters deep and full of water. He tried to focus on the swimming thing to see it more clearly.
From the corner of his eye, he spotted another movement in the water, and another. He stopped and turned to look at the opposite wall. All around, the swimming things were drawing nearer.
“Hey, guys...” Jaquil said to the rest of the Trash Iz Uz crew without taking his eyes off the aquatic creatures.
The first of them had reached the glass wall. It was deep orange, oblong and squat. Translucent fins ran along each of its long sides, and its stomach contained a long, wavy line of eyes. Jaquil couldn’t see where its mouth was. The eyes blinked at him. More of the creatures had reached the glass and had flattened themselves against it as they stared at Jaquil.
He began to feel like he was the one in captivity.
The first creature wriggled in a smooth motion running from the top to the bottom of its body. The one next to it copied the movement, and then the next and the next, until they were all wriggling in the same way.
Jaquil was entranced. He wriggled in a similar fashion. This seemed to excite the creatures no end. Their wriggling sped up. Jaquil thought he would try something. He wriggled again, but this time from his toes to his head. He was elated when the creatures copied him.
“Hey, guys,” he said, and turned to see what the rest of the company of Trash Iz Uz thought about his trick. But they’d walked on without him and were far down the corridor, about to turn a corner. He ran after them, stumbling over his dungaree pants.
“Banty,” he said as he caught up to his colleagues. “There are hundreds of weird water creatures living in the walls. Did you see them?”
“Kid,” Banty replied patiently, “we’re on another planet. You’re gonna see weird stuff. Get used to it.”
Jaquil sighed. He thought he’d seen something remarkable and amazing. To him, the water creatures were remarkable and amazing. But to the seasoned deep space workers of Trash Iz Uz, this was just another day on the job. He grabbed his pants legs and hoisted them up before trudging after the Trash Iz Uz crew. Just when he’d begun to feel less of a spare part, he’d gone and made a stupid newbie comment again.
“Here we are,” said the bald humanoid alien. They’d arrive at a spiral door. The door twisted open, and they stepped through. The metal of the door was twice as wide as Jaquil’s hand. Whoever it was they were about to see seemed to require a high level of security, Jaquil guessed, but he didn’t remark on the fact. He didn’t want to make another ignorant comment.
The Trash Iz Uz customer was aquatic like her deep orange pets, or perhaps she just enjoyed wallowing. At the center of the room was a wide, circular pool of milk-white, opaque water. A thick, bulbous, vaguely feminine head with large, baggy eyes and a mouth like the open neck of a sack stood out of the water. What lay beneath the head was anyone’s guess—except Jaquil’s, because he really didn’t want to think about it.
“Trash Iz Uz are here to see you, ma’am,” the humanoid servant announced.
“Ah,” said their client in a sultry voice. “Welcome to my home. Thank you so much for coming all this way and agreeing to take on my project at such short notice.”
“Not a problem,” Banty said. For once, she had put away her huffing apparatus. The walk from the side door of the mansion had lef
t her seriously out of breath and wheezy, and the three words seemed to be all she could get out for the moment. There was an awkward silence as Banty panted.
Lollololp said, “So, what’s the deal?”
“A practical attitude,” said the client. “I like it. It was necessary—for obvious reasons—that I use a code name when I contacted you earlier. Now that we’re in the safety of my home I can tell you my real name is Cilia. I’m afraid I can’t tell you more than that.” The water around her rippled. “I believe that Earth beings touch appendages when they meet for the first time?”
At the edge of the pool, three or four meters distant from the head at the center, a round-ended tendril arose. It was as milky-white as the water surrounding it. Banty had caught her breath somewhat, and she tottered over to give the tendril a shake. U8AB did the same. Lollololp took the tendril delicately in his mouth and waved it around a little. Jaquil stayed right where he was.
Banty frowned at him and looked pointedly from him to the waiting tendril. His head bowed and his feet dragging in his baggy pants, Jaquil shuffled over to the waiting appendage and held it for a millisecond. It was just as cold and wet and slimy as he’d imagined it would be.
This brief introduction had allowed Banty’s breathing to return to normal. “We’re very pleased to make your acquaintance, Cilia. Thank you for inviting us into your beautiful home. Shall we get down to business? Would you mind telling us what your garbage is, how much you have, and where you’d like it deposited? I’m not usually as blunt as my yellow employee here, but you explained in your advertisement that your business was urgent. I made room in Trash Iz Uz’s busy schedule to come directly here. I should say also say at the outset of our negotiations that emergency trash disposal attracts an additional fee—for your convenience.”
Jaquil was impressed. He felt like he should be taking notes as Banty talked. He hardly recognized the Banty he knew. When she got going, she was a smooth operator.
“Of course,” Cilia said, “I appreciate your candor. So, I’ll get straight to the point. I have seven tonnes of mixed waste that I would like deposited at a location within the private hunting grounds of the president of my species’ ancient enemy, the Brackelodians. I must emphasize, for this project, your utmost discretion is required.”