by D. Tolmach
“Tombstone, I’m from the LMR. I’m here for an interview.”
“Fuck off.”
“Yeah, he’s not gonna be in the mood for an interview,” Liona warned her. By the time she got her bearings, Tombstone and the rest of the band were gone.
* * *
“If the people want blood, you have to be prepared to give them blood, or it’s your blood they will demand.” President of the Galactic Union St. Osco Silvos was addressing the Galactic Assembly in a closed meeting. “Under my leadership we have seen some very important victories. We have reacquired sectors that were historically rightfully ours, but our enemies are still many and they are strong. In fact, it has come to my attention that, even amongst this Assembly, fifth columnists are working to undermine our fragile Union. I assure you they will be weeded out and taken care of.” After a slight pause, the chamber erupted in a deafening applause as the lawmakers took to their feet.
His people were bloodthirsty, and in some cases they were far ahead of him, with pogroms against aliens and xenophiles occurring already on many planets. If he or anyone in the government faltered in their enthusiasm, they would look weak and the consequences would be grave. There were liberal governors and senators, led by the freewheeling and charismatic Orbit Crenshaw, opposed to another all-out intensive war; for now their existence was useful to show that Osco was a tolerant democratic president. As soon as their opposition got a little too determined, they would be blackmailed and bribed—or jailed—to be put back in line. The legislation of the Galactic Union was so intentionally confounding it was practically impossible to not be guilty of something.
Silvos basked in the applause for several minutes, doing an admirable job of looking like he wasn’t enjoying it, his mouth a cheerful grimace.
* * *
The rest of his morning was spent meeting with different ministers and getting briefed on various aspects of the government. A degenerate artist collective had unveiled a banner on the side of a starstation, a mock icon of him sitting on the toilet and getting blown by the Patriarch while anally penetrating the Ministers of Purity and Benevolence with his fingers as Goldath looked on from above masturbating. The Minister of Benevolence assured Osco that the artists had been arrested and their sentence of hard labor on a penal asteroid would be especially hard. Many citizens, including the Patriarch, demanded they be put to death, but Silvos secretly instructed the judge to give them a lighter sentence. He may even pardon them. That would show the naysayers what an enlightened leader he was. The illustration had actually given him some ideas to try out with his harem.
The only other news that interested him came from the CEO of the state construction monopoly. That xenophile living on G-44-01 had survived the three-year mark, and cargo ships loaded with building materials were waiting for the order. It was time to get to work turning the planetoid into a first-class Human recreational zone. They would start with the Mugger labor camps.
For his afternoon, St. Silvos was scheduled to rescue children from a burning orphanage.
* * *
Karlatte could hear the commotion from down the empty hallway, the sounds of broken glass, thudding, and an animalistic cry, and on a dime it all stopped, a dark silence gripping the floor. Reaching the door, she paused to gather her nerves, finding herself far tenser than she expected to be, before knocking.
“Go away.”
“Tombstone, let me in, please. I need to ask you some questions. It’s for a profile in the biggest music magazine in the Multiverse.”
“Go the fuck away.”
“I want to ask you about Andromeda?”
“Andy?” Another moment of silence. “Andy’s gone. You’re just another parasitic journalist who wants to make a name for herself by exploiting her legacy.”
“Tombstone, come on.” Her mind raced. “I’ll give you a hand job.”
The door opened.
The room was just as Karlatte expected: the bed had been thrown on its side, tables turned over, shards of glass glistening on the floor, and in the middle of it all Tombstone was sitting naked, propped up against the wall.
“She’s leaving.”
“Who?”
“Liona. She said she’s tired of dealing with my shit, and they offered her a job singing in a lounge here.”
“It’ll be okay. You’ll move on. There are plenty of other singers out there.”
She took out her tablet and opened the voice recorder, set it on the floor beside him, wrapped her fingers around his cock, and started asking questions.
* * *
In his room, Chirp had discovered that you could remove those vertical bricks from the wall and open them. Inside they were made of thin sheets of a fragile white material with words on them, like on a computer screen, but you had to physically turn each one with your fingers. They had a dusty, appealing smell.
He was sitting on his bed, reading one, when there was a knock on the door.
“Open.”
A cute green-eyed brunette with curly hair and a slightly upturned nose stood there in a bathrobe with a bottle of whisky. Her face was kind of familiar, but he didn’t remember where he had seen her.
“Hey, bad boy, I saw you onstage tonight. You were pretty amazing.” She entered and the door closed behind her.
“I was?”
“Oh yeah. The entire time I couldn’t stop myself from thinking ‘Does he have those same crazy moves in the sack?’” She shrugged off the bathrobe and straddled Chirp, closing his brick and tossing it over her shoulder. “So, I came up here to find out.”
* * *
Chirp awoke wet with sweat after a night of nightmares. In the last one, a bunch of very tiny sharks were biting his crotch and lower stomach. Peering down, he was relieved to learn that it was just semen coagulating on his skin and pubic hair, pinching him. I got laid!
He looked around, but there was no trace of the brunette other than an empty whisky bottle, so he got up and found his breakfast ticket.
The cafeteria was full of Muggers and various other sapients, and it was loud with the sounds of silverware and conversation and the smells of exotic foods. He scanned it for a familiar face—Kanard, Tombstone, anyone—until his gaze settled on Gerrard. Anyone but him. Taking a tray, he got in line for the buffet and found himself behind Liona. She turned and their eyes met, but she looked away immediately. Apparently she still didn’t like him.
It was while using pincers to peel some kind of unrecognizable meat onto his plate that he saw her, the girl from last night, in line for the coffee machine. Quickly he snuck over behind her and grabbed her ass.
“Hey, baby, how’d you like my crazy moves?”
She turned with a what-the-fuck look on her face and knocked his tray out of his hands, sending his mystery meat flying back into the buffet and his plate shattering on the ground.
“What the fuck? Get away from me.”
Standing in the middle of the now-silent cafeteria, Chirp could feel all kinds of alien sensory organs watching him with pity and disgust. Slowly he picked up his tray and got back in line for the buffet.
While he ate, he tried to look at Liona without looking like he was looking at Liona, who was eating and trying to ignore his gaze without looking like she noticed him. As she was finishing, a Mugger approached her and whispered something in her ear. She quickly stood up and left, without even taking her tray to the receptacle like you’re supposed to. Then that same Mugger approached Chirp.
“Kanard needs to see you in his office.”
* * *
“Bertha!” Kanard was sitting on a leather chair with Chirp’s cat on his lap. She looked up at him, mildly interested, before submitting to being picked up and hugged.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news,” Kanard said. Also in his office were Liona, Armida, and two Muggers Chirp didn’t recognize dressed in fancy outfits. “Chirp, this is Bartholomew, Manager of the Mugger’s Point Hotel, and Shakespeare, Chief of Security.” Hotel manager may
not have sounded all that important, but it was the highest post Muggers had. “I have information that affects us all. Chirp, please tell us what your job is.”
“Well, mostly, I, um, keep an eye out on the outpost, make sure, um, nothing happens.” He strained to think what it was he actually did. “Sometimes a ship will come in and I change a headlight or something.”
“When is the last time that happened?”
“A while back. Last year sometime.”
“Well, it appears that the president of the Galactic Union has more grand designs for our little planetoid. Soon he will be building an elite vacation resort here.”
“Whoa, that sounds sweet!”
“Mr. Sundown, does it sound sweet that he is going to enslave all Muggers? Destroy the Interdimensional Point? Likely send you to a reeducation camp for xenosexuals?” The manager had a low, professorial voice. “This is our home.”
“We have to kill that homo.” Everyone turned to Liona, who had slammed her fist on Kanard’s desk. Homo was the derogative term other sapients used for Humans. “I’ll do it.” Her species had suffered under the Union more than anyone else.
There was silence for a moment. Finally, Kanard said, “I agree.”
“We need a plan, then. I can provide all the resources of the hotel.”
Kanard turned to Chirp. “Are you in?”
Conspiracy? Assassination? Adventure? Of course Chirp was in.
* * *
The Tombstone Wolfram Sextet met in the lobby with all their luggage and instruments, and Liona was there to say farewell. She told them they could take her ship—she had stolen it anyway—so at least they wouldn’t have to cancel their tour. The only problem was there was no Tombstone, which was not particularly surprising because not once had he not gotten completely fucked up and slept in the next morning after a show, making everybody late. When she had fallen out of love with him, she had turned off their psychoempathic connection, but now when she reached out she couldn’t find him, which meant he was probably blacked out.
“I’ll go get him.”
She took the elevator up to his floor and knocked on his door, but there was no answer. Damn it, Tombstone. She looked up and down the hall for a maid, but there was no one in sight, so she went back down to the lobby to the front desk.
“Hi, my, uh, friend was supposed to check out this morning, but he seems to have forgotten to set his alarm clock. Actually, it’s totally not like him to be late for anything, so I’m kind of worried something has happened.”
“I’m sure everything is okay, ma’am. What is his room number?”
“664.”
The clerk dialed Wolfram’s room, but there was no answer. Again, not surprised.
“Come with me.”
They made the journey back up to the suite and the clerk said, “Open.” The stench was putrid. Liona’s first thought was that Tombstone must have shat and threw up all over the place, but even that wouldn’t be this bad (it wouldn’t have been all that surprising, either). It was a morbid smell. The clerk pulled his vest up over his nose and turned on the light. The room had been torn apart, but that was another non-surprise. Liona did finally find herself surprised by the corpse lying in the middle of the room on the floor, ripped open in a bloody pile.
* * *
“This should be a pretty easy case to solve. We started putting cameras in the rooms of all musicians so we can sue for damages when they inevitably trash them. Everything should be caught on tape.” Shakespeare was leading Liona, shaken and crying, down to the Security Command Center alongside Kanard. The hotel had asked them not to inform anyone else until they had more answers. The command center was dark. A single Mugger was lying on a couch, sleeping. Shakespeare kicked him.
“Wake up and get me footage from 664 for last night.”
They watched from the viewpoint of the upper corner of the suite as Wolfram, completely naked, turned over the beds and dressers, smashed mirrors, and in general took out all of his artistic frustrations on the property of the Mugger’s Point Hotel. Finally, he collapsed onto the floor and went still. The viewers were all breathless, waiting for the killer to appear. Eventually the door opened and a Human woman entered the room.
“Do you know her?” Shakespeare asked them.
“I saw her smoking a cigarette outside. I gave her a light. Then she collapsed and I helped her up to her room, but I don’t know her name.”
“Karlatte Centaurus. She’s a journalist for the LMR,” Liona answered.
Karlatte, who would be glad to know Liona put the stress on the second syllable, walked across the room to Tombstone and sat next to him. After talking a moment, she started giving him a hand job. This took an extraordinarily, even surprisingly, long time—upwards to an hour—and made the atmosphere in the command center quite uncomfortable. After Tombstone finally came, he passed out again. She tried to wake him up, but he wouldn’t budge, so she wiped her arm off on a bedsheet, stole the rest of the coke that had been knocked onto the floor, and left. Less than a minute later the door opened and she entered again, this time wearing only a Mugger’s Point Hotel bathrobe, which she removed and hung on the coat rack by the door. Then, using her fingernails, she cut into the sleeping man’s throat and, her lower jaw stretching out and teeth growing into daggers, she began feeding on his flesh.
“Holy shit,” Kanard gasped, saying what they all were thinking.
* * *
Karlatte spent the rest of the night and whole morning after the interview snorting Wolfram’s blow and writing, even though her hand ached and her arm was sore with the familiar cramp from trying to get a coked-up drunk guy to finally come. At around noon she hit that peak a writer gets to when she realizes her inspiration is just spent. Sometimes writing can be a lot like trying to get a coked-up drunk guy to come. Just as her head hit the pillow and her body collapsed gratefully onto the soft bed, she heard footsteps in her room. For a split second she assumed they were hallucinations before her arms were torn violently behind her back and she was pulled up, only to be thrown onto the floor and placed in handcuffs.
“Karla-tey Silvos, you are under arrest for the murder of Tombstone Wolfram.”
Well, fuck.
* * *
It was, of course, quite the scandal. The estranged daughter of the president of the Galactic Union was staying in their hotel, and she had killed and eaten the best accordion player in the Milky Way. The Mugger press was all over it, and the newspapers giddily printed selected transcripts of the trial:
At this point, the prosecution turned to the defendant: “So you don’t deny that was you performing the aforementioned sex act on the victim just minutes before his brutal murder?”
Silvos: “No.”
Prosecution: “But that wasn’t you who returned a moment later and devoured him?”
Silvos: “No.”
Prosecution: “It sure looked like you.”
Defense: “Your Honor, I object.”
Judge: “Overruled.”
And,
Defense: “You gave the defendant a complete medical examination?”
Medical Examiner: “Yes.”
Defense: “And what were the results?”
Medical Examiner: “Ms. Silvos is a reasonably healthy Human woman.”
Defense: “So there were no indications that her teeth can grow into fangs or that she can slit a man’s throat using only her fingernails?”
Medical Examiner: “No.”
Prosecution: “Your Honor, I object. The medical examiner has no expertise in Human anatomy.”
Judge: “Is Human anatomy covered in Mugger State Medical University?”
Medical Examiner: “We have a semester on the biology of non-Mugger sapients. It includes Humans.”
Judge: “Sustained.”
For her part, Karlatte sat dejectedly in a metal cage in the courtroom, long past the point of caring when they called her Car-lot or used her real family name. When the trial went into rec
ess, they took her back to her jail cell. Her only visitor was that nice old man who had lit her cigarette.
“I’ve watched the tape many times, and the more I do, the less convinced I am of your guilt. I’m working with the defense to see to it that your trial is fair.”
It was a nice gesture, but she didn’t put much stock in it. In fact, she was pretty sure if she was on the jury, she would convict her.
* * *
Before the arrest, Bartholomew shut down all extraplanetary communication. If Osco Silvos got wind that his daughter was alive and had been arrested by the Muggers, it would be a matter of hours before Union ships showed up. Gerrard, who had locked himself in his room in a self-imposed quarantine to avoid whatever diseases those mangy aliens might be carrying, was admiring videos of St. Silvos, topless and glistening with sweat as he pulled one orphan after another from a burning building, when his screen went blank. He had been irritated that Kanard still hadn’t come to visit him and was sulking and lonely. Now, without access to the news and Church bulletin board, he was pissed enough to finally leave his room and find out what was going on in this Goldath-forsaken place.
As he walked down the hall, he couldn’t help but feel as if the Muggers he passed were staring at him, whispering about him. He found Kanard’s room and knocked on the door, but it didn’t open. That’s when he heard shouts of “Look! A Human!” and a Mugger camera crew ran over to him. “What’s your opinion about the trial? Is she guilty?” A reporter shoved her microphone at him.