by M. D. Cooper
“Damn it,” he breathed. He was sweating heavily, his arms and legs were burning from the exertion. He had been focused on a door near the bar that he was fairly certain opened back into Night Park, not far from the fountain. As he breathed and pulled, he had done his best to determine where the corridor out of the Hangar actually went, and it made sense that it only skirted the edge of the park. Otherwise, it would have been out in vacuum. Considering how the corridor looked like it was made from an old ship, that was possible—but it was also warm. You could always tell the presence of vacuum on the other side of a wall in Cruithne by the cold seeping its way inside. Mama Chala liked to say they lived surrounded by death, always looking to tear its way inside and suck the life out of them with the Vacuum’s Kiss.
The sound of someone big throwing their shoulder against the door made the curtain wave, and on the nearest table to the door, the briki flower quavered. Starl watched, holding his breath, then told himself he had to keep moving. The opposite door was only a few jerks of Zanda’s heavy ass away.
It took the Rack Thirteen people less than a minute to pry the door open, and force their way in to the room. Starl had just made it to the edge of the bar, the door within reach, when Tithi swept the curtain aside and shouted with delight in her voice, “Starl!”
Her joy turned to anger when she saw Zanda sprawled like a corpse near the bar. “Zanda! What did you do to him? I’ll cut your head off, Ngoba Starl!”
Starl could only shake his head, the exhaustion making it impossible to speak.
Crash the parrot squawked ruthlessly, flapping his wings like a pent tornado.
Unable to warn her about the briki flower near her arm, Starl could only blink sweat out of his eyes as the flower’s petals gathered in a single, powerful convulsion and then opened to spit a cloud of crimson pollen into Tithi’s face. She stood blinking in surprise as the pink fog floated back over the group behind her, drawn by the moving air from the open door.
Tithi screamed. She surged forward, probably trying to escape the pollen that had painted her face red, and bumped into another table. That flower spasmed pollen all over her as well. Flower after flower spit pollen as she stumbled around the room, bumping tables in her path.
Starl gathered his strength and yanked Zanda toward the door. The fog had grown suddenly thicker. He thought he could see its edge reaching for him but couldn’t be sure just how much pollen filled the air now. He let go of Zanda so he could pull the door open, and immediately realized his mistake.
The suction of the opening door drew a cloud of pollen over him. Starl squeezed his mouth closed, holding his breath, and grabbed Zanda’s hand again to pull him into the vestibule where a glass door waited, and from there, the crowded booths of Night Park.
Starl charged into the open, not caring that a crimson miasma followed him outside. He struggled as far as he could without taking a breath, until his lungs screamed and black claws threatened his vision. He reached the first row of booths and staggered into a gap among a pile of storage crates. Then he fell to his knees, setting Crash on the deck, and rolling Fug off his shoulder. The black had nearly overtaken his vision when he pulled Zanda in toward him, laying his friend across his lap.
Starl let his head fall against the cold crate behind him, and finally sucked in a breath of fresh air.
He hadn’t run far enough, though. He braced himself as the hallucinations rolled in.
12
A giant pterodactyl patrolled the domed ceiling of Night Park, shrieking and breathing fire on the two-story battle slug moving slowly across the vegetable market, leaving glowing slime in its wake. In front of the neon battle slug, two versions of Mama Chala clad in ornate armor charged at each other with burning swords raised above their heads, screaming war cries. All around, screaming and cries of terror mixed with maniacal laughter. The ceiling was replaced by a stormy purple sky, like a bruised stomach sucking in and out; changing the air pressure in the great space so that Starl’s head seemed to expand and shrink, squeezing his thoughts.
Rack Thirteen thugs stumbled between booths, scratching at their crimson-stained faces, babbling and crying, while others ran full-sprint down the more open areas, firing indiscriminately with projectile weapons, chemical lasers, and, occasionally, the deadly plasma gun that thankfully never struck anything of consequence. A fabric booth burned in the distance, sending up roiling plumes of oily black smoke, a mix of plas and natural fibers that smelled like roasting flesh.
Starl had lost sight of Fug and Zanda. He pressed his hands over his ears to shut out the mad laughter, only to find his equilibrium disrupted. He stumbled as if the deck had become a merry-go-round, left and right heaving up and down. He shook his head, trying to find something to anchor himself, something to serve as reality in the twisting funhouse the world had become. He felt like he was falling, his stomach leaping into his throat and then doing a somersault that left his head spinning; then he felt nailed in place, the bazaar wheeling around him in a riot of color, shape, and sound.
He supposed this might be fun, if the other people caught in the wrath of unbridled hallucinogenics weren’t trying to kill him, and if the world wasn’t populated by grinning, stomping monsters, while his soul leaked out his ears. At any moment, an angry fire god was going to crack open the fleshy, domed roof of the park, and jam a flaming cock deep into the crevasse of Night Park, and fuck them all with fury and fortitude until everything burned away in an orgasmic maelstrom of fiery fusion and blood.
He must have been screaming. He opened his eyes to find Crash the parrot watching him carefully, the gold eye ringed by gray feathers holding steady in the midst of the storm. Starl crawled toward the parrot, clawing at the deck.
“Crash,” he moaned. “Crash can you see me?”
“Ngo-ba!” the parrot squawked, bobbing its head. The eye flashed, and Starl realized Crash had turned his head and was studying him with his other eye, like he was consulting two different brains. Starl struggled to hang onto the image of the parrot, what he knew to be true, before Crash swelled into a rhinoceros with gleaming wings.
“Clippers,” Crash crooned, pointing its beak to something beside Starl’s shoulder. “Snippers. Snip, Ngoba. Snip!” Crash released a squawk and continued nodding at something next to his cage.
Starl slowly turned his gaze in the direction Crash was pointing. Bits of the world steadied for an instant, then spun away. He saw a man in the distance frantically fighting off a mottled, bulb-shaped thing that seemed to be chewing on his head. He fell into a booth, and it exploded in sparks and gobs of liquid flesh.
Shaking his head, Starl worked his gaze closer, finding the ground beside his arm empty except for grime, then up again, centimeter by centimeter, until he found an open toolbox that had spilled its contents. It was probably only a meter away but seemed like another dimension. On top of toolbox lid was a pair of power-cutters, the kind electricians used to snip fiber cables, or that gangsters used to remove fingers one knuckle at a time.
Crash was telling him to cut him out of the cage.
With his head contracting and expanding like a balloon, Starl reached for where he thought the clippers had been. Finding nothing, he felt among the shifting colors and shapes until his hand closed on two long pieces of metal that he recognized as the tool. He pulled it back to his chest, eyes suddenly full of joyful tears. Starl was overcome with agonizing happiness to hold the clippers against his chest.
Starl opened his eyes to find Mama Chala in battle dress standing over him, holding high the decapitated head of the other Mama Chala. Mama’s dead eyes stared outward in a way that seemed to take in everything while staring solely at him. The victorious Mama tossed the head at him, and it rolled to a stop with the dead, half-open lips close to his.
“Ngo-ba!” Crash barked. “Clip! Clip!”
Starl nodded, squeezing his eyes closed. His thoughts were starting to get closer together, to link in ways that at least went from A to C. He knew Mama w
asn’t there. He knew avatars weren’t smashing their way across Night Park. All he had to fear were the hallucinating Rack Thirteen gang members, and Tithi, somewhere in the labyrinth of the bazaar.
Somewhere in his heaving mind, he knew that if he was coming down, they would be, too.
Starl rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself toward the cage, which lay on its side a few meters away. Rising to his knees, he set the cage upright and clipped the bars above the rectangular door. Once the top bars were done, he cut along the bottom of the door, trying to shut out the background screams and booming thunder giant beings fighting around him. A mecha-dolphin rumbled past, barking and squealing in high-pitched clicks that stabbed his ears, but he squared his shoulders and concentrated on the task.
Finally he pulled the door out, and then reached inside for the parrot. Crash tilted his head until Starl held his palm sideways, and the gray bird hopped onto his hand, claws gripping the meat between his thumb and forefinger.
Starl carefully removed Crash from the cage, and no sooner was the bird under the open air, than it spread its wings and launched upward, squawking with joy. Starl slumped against a crate at his back and watched the parrot shoot higher and higher, its gray wings flapping, red tail feathers tight, squawking the whole time.
He sat staring at the ceiling for what seemed like a long time, watching the mottled bruises that had first looked like lightning resolve themselves into rows of lighting that criss-crossed between support beams. His vision was full of sparkles drifting like snow, but the major hallucinations subsided. He stared at his hand for a while, watching his blood move through his veins.
Starl was smiling at his palm, understanding perfectly how the various lines indicated his course in life, when a crunch beside him made him look up. A man in a faded red shipsuit stood over him, a fat plasma pistol in his right hand. His eyes were black, and his dust-covered face was covered in the tracks of red tears from the briki pollen.
Starl blinked at him, smiling, excited to see another human being. “Have you seen this?” he said, holding up his hand. “My soul is like a little maglev car moving along the tracks on my palm. It’s all laid-out right here.
The plasma pistol made a long beep as its arming mechanism warmed up. “We’ve been looking for you, Rack Smasher,” he said, voice warbling slightly. “You thought you could hide, but you’re a giant crocodile. Dumbass. You can’t hide anywhere.”
“I’m not trying to hide,” Starl said.
“I’ll hide the little bits of you,” the man said, steadying the pistol in two hands. “But I’m taking your head. I want to make your face into a hat.”
From somewhere above, a black shape floated down, resolving into the spread wings of a bead-eyed crow. The bird unclenched its talons and landed on the man’s shoulder. He turned to look at the ruffle-headed bird with surprise and wonderment, and the crow pecked one of his eyes out. The man dropped the plasma pistol and clutched at his face, screaming.
The pistol hit the ground and spat a blob of plasma at the man’s foot and ankle, which disappeared in a splatter of blood and bone.
The crow launched from the man’s shoulder as he fell backward, then circled over him as he rolled over and started crawling away from Starl’s pile of crates, babbling and sobbing the whole time. Eventually, the crow landed on his shoulder, pecking at his neck as he crawled.
In the distance, Starl heard more screams, real this time, as birds from the fountain attacked the Rack Thirteen thugs. Random gunfire spat uselessly as clouds of starlings, grackles, and crows descended on the frantic men and women.
Starl stood eventually, and wandered toward the center of the park, watching with bemused detachment as Night Park grew gradually silent except for the squawks, caws, and shrill songs of its birds. When they finished their work, the birds flew back to the fountain and covered the spiky branches of its stone tree, murmuring among themselves as they fell to grooming and grousing at one another, just like during the bazaar.
Finding himself drawn toward the fountain, Starl was pleased to see Crash the parrot sitting on the edge near the water. The gray parrot moved from foot to foot, scratching furiously among its neck feathers before fixing him with a yellow eye.
Starl gaped. The parrot’s voice was like any man’s, and he thought for a second Zanda was playing a trick on him. He looked around but he was the only person in sight.
“What?” Starl said. He reached for Fug’s visor, which he’d forgotten about.
“You mean this thing is like having a Link?” Starl asked.
“I’ll be damned. This whole time, Fug’s had a Link.”
Starl nodded. “You don’t know where she is, do you? Is she all right?”
“For dropping you?” Starl said, not sure if the bird was kidding. “I was tripping balls, you know.”
“You mean you tried to hypnotize me?” Starl said, crossing his arms.
“Oh,” Starl said. “Well, of course I was coming back for you, brother. I’ve always loved the parrots down here. I’ve been watching you since I was little. The only thing that seemed free in this whole damned place, even if we are all trapped, even you. I couldn’t let you rot in that cage. That was just cruel, a Cruithne parrot in a cage. Besides, your little buddies at the tree asked me to, as well.”
Crash said.
“An experiment? Isn’t that some kind of urban legend? Were you a successful experiment?”
Crash said.
“You mind if I ask what kind of experiment?”
Behind Crash, the birds on the stone tree flapped their wings and grumbled, making it seem like a wind had moved through the bazaar. Starl became aware of how many black eyes were watching him, and how easily they had killed or disabled the Rack Thirteen people.
“Do I look worried?” Starl asked.
Starl looked from the tree to the dark booths surrounding them, many smashed or covered in scorch marks. “This place is pretty messed up,” he said.
“They? You mean you can talk to the other birds?”
Starl nodded agreeably. “Makes sense. So what do you plan to do?”
“I thought I saw a busted nut vendor back over there,” Starl said.
Crash bobbed his head.
“W
ait! Will I get to talk to you again?”
Crash shot into the air like a bullet and the other birds followed, filling the air with a great rustling power that made Starl take a step back from the fountain.
“Ngo-ba!” the parrot squawked. “Ngo-ba!”
The crows and starlings seemed to enjoy circling him for a few seconds in a tall black funnel of wings and beaks and talons, before turning to shoot off after the little parrot.
Starl stood watching them fly away across the park, with the last vestiges of the briki turning the air behind them into swirls and sparks. He absently adjusted his bowtie, and ran a hand through his curly hair, which was crusted with what might have been blood or hydraulic fluid, he couldn’t tell.
Turning his back on the quiet fountain, he went to find Zanda and Fug. He would give the eye-shade back to Fug. He grinned as he walked, thinking of all the ways he was going to give his boy Zanda hell.
13
“What do you mean you’re not coming?” Starl demanded. “This is it. I got a place. I got you a ticket out of the Squat, away from Mama Chala. This is our chance to make something together, brother.”
Zanda offered one of his sheepish smiles. He barely held eye contact with Starl. “I never thought I would say this, Ngoba, but I’m signing on with Rack Thirteen.”
They were standing outside the door of a studio apartment in a worker’s housing section of the Lowspin Docks, an area that looked like several troop carriers smashed together. Corridors ran into dead ends, while others split off in odd directions that defied design. Fast-growing ivy hung everywhere, intertwined with the exposed plumbing and electrical, as well as a few thorny blackberry vines. The air was sweet with the smells of incoming blackberries and leaking oil. A baby was crying in a nearby room.
Starl shook his head. “You’re signing on with the crew that three days ago tried to kill us? Does Tithi have a ransom on your balls or something? I got a great deal on this place. It’s close to everywhere we want to be, and there’s more room here than we’ve ever had in our lives. Are you telling me you’re staying in the Squat, then?”