She tossed my bag to me, hard. I grunted when it hit my chest. “For ANY REASON!” Minat crushed the magpie’s hand under the heel of her boot as it squealed in brain-ripping disharmonies. “Damn magpies!”
“Hey! That’s a sentient xeno,” I protested as she gave her heel a hard twist.
The furry white magpie dropped a chronometer on the floor. With its free paw, it swept the timepiece back into its vest pocket.
“Yeah, yeah. I used to be all politically correct too, but you have to learn a quick lesson here. Most xenos don’t have your same code of morality. So get over being amazed at the diversity of the universe and wake up to the reality that magpies, sentient though they may be, are ownership concept challenged.”
“Huh?”
Her blue cascade of hair shimmied but didn’t hide her annoyance. “Magpies are fucking thieves. If you aren’t holding onto something, by their code that makes it salvage and they can take it. But see, because they’re all sentient and everything, they kind of understand that it pisses off every other xeno, because the little fuckers take off like greased lightning the second that they swipe your stuff. So be politically correct and get robbed blind, or turn on your reality radar and get hip to the fucking blips on the screen, okay?”
I was struck speechless. Not by her tirade, but because eighteen feet of real live green dragon undulated between us. It was so close to the tip of my nose that I had to blink several times before I could focus on the scales before my eyes.
The dragon leaned into Minat. Minat’s blue hair puffed back from her face with each snort from the dragon’s nostrils. She stared ahead as if she didn’t notice anything unusual, her mouth open with each chomp of her gum. The magpie under her heel grabbed its arm and tried to yank loose as its high pitched screams bounced off the hard surfaces of the immigration building. The dragon flexed the entire eighteen feet of its sinuous body, from the top of its crested head down to the tip of the spiked tail. Its iridescent wings unfolded and folded, fluttering scaly skin. I smelled something kind of good over the bureaucratic stink of the port, so I flared my nostrils and pulled it deep into my chest. As I exhaled, I felt as if the stale air of the spaceship was being squeezed out of my body. A sweet scent enveloped Minat, the dragon, me, and the magpie like the dark perfume of a femme fatale.
For a moment, all was very, very, cool in my world. My spine felt wiggly and I was sure that my feet floated off the ground. There was a disturbing time loop that seemed to last minutes but ended in a second. Minat winked at me.
The dragon dragged claws over its palm as it collected credit chits to drop into Minat’s hand. Minat gave a terse nod. The dragon ambled away. Minat pocketed the chits faster than I could see her hand move. She spat out her gum on the dingy tile floor and lifted her foot just enough for the vehemently chattering magpie to yank its hand free. It kicked her ankle. As she lifted her boot again with malice in her eyes, the magpie ran, grabbed the wad of gum, held it aloft triumphantly, consulted its chronometer, and zoomed away.
It happened so fast that my head was still spinning when Minat marched ahead of me and snapped off information like gunfire over her shoulder.
“Look alive, offworld boy. I’m getting hazard pay just to be seen with you. I promised ’em I’d deliver you alive. I didn’t say you’d be in one piece.”
I didn’t mind jogging several steps behind her. Nice ass, and her short pleated skirt showed the under-cleavage of her buttocks with every sharp thrust forward of her hipbones.
Minat didn’t so much walk as she stalked. Part of me hadn’t come out of stasis sleep yet woke up and shook off the permafrost real fast. Every nerve ending in my groin went on red alert.
She hit the glass spaceport door with both hands, letting it slam back in my face, but not before I saw enough of those sweetly rounded mounds to know that Minat was – how would she put it? – underwear challenged. My grin slid to the side of my mouth as my eyebrow arched.
Outside the dreary seen-one-you’ve-seen-them-all government building, my eyes didn’t know where to look first – the pile of garbage on the ground, or the pile of garbage that looked like someone lived in it. Minat already crossed the street and was about to duck into an alley between ramshackle buildings when I called out, “Wait! Where are we? I need to get my bearings.”
“Shuulmach.” It sounded as if she were coughing up a hairball.
“Wait. Shuulmach? The ‘wide boulevard doted with gracious mansions and breathtaking local xerscaping?’ ” I read the description on the computer in my hand, glanced down the street, turned to look the other direction in case the view was stunningly different to the east. I read the screen again. There was a scraggy weed valiantly trying to push through the orange, packed-dirt street. Guess that could be the xerscaping. The reek of the street, something between dust and death, certainly took my breath away. Mansions? Hardly. Every building was either caught in a suspended state of slow motion decay, or was a depressing example of the galaxy-wide unification project.
Minat bobbed her head. “That would be the one.”
“This place is a pit!” The local architecture was similar to seedy neighborhoods on Mars all red dust, flat top roofs, and chipped stucco work – except that on Mars the houses were low and fat, where the ones leaning over the alleyway in front of us were anorexic and perilously tall, as if the walls of the houses sprouted fast and the structure couldn’t quite keep up.
She patted my head. “Welcome to the real world, doofus.”
“My name is Matt.”
“Yeah. So our publisher told me. Right after they explained that I was off the payroll.” She put her hands on her hips and seemed to be thinking hard.
I didn’t like the curl at the corner of her mouth, but with her hands balled up and her shoulders scrunched, I could almost see if she was shaved or not in front. I felt myself listing to one side for a better look.
From the expression on her face, she knew my gaze was creeping up the inside of her thigh, tickling across the top of her stockings, and groping under her skirt. She already called me a doofus, so I thought I’d try to act like sex wasn’t the only thing on my mind. New planet to explore, countless new xenos to meet and write about, new job, and I fixated on the one thing that mattered – a woman in a short skirt. A very short skirt. With no panties under it.
My hand rubbed over my chin and lips to check if I was drooling.
“So you’re leaving the planet? Why, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“As if you can’t fucking see that for yourself.” She threw her arms wide and danced in a circle that made her skirt flare up.
Instant hard-on. She wasn’t completely shaved. She had a small patch left that was dyed to match her hair. Her skirt must have been holding her scent down, because I got hit with a strong dose of unwashed, heat-fermented pussy. She was ready to go, no sweet talk or flowers necessary. My tongue just about fell out of my mouth.
I knew that I had to say something other than, “Can I lick you like a lollipop until I get to your cream center,” so I stammered, “How long have you been waiting to go home?”
“Since I first set foot on this shithole.” She did a neat military turn on the ball of one foot and marched off again, her hands balled into tight fists. I guess she knew I’d follow.
I scurried across the hard-packed red dirt road. Trying to keep her scent in my nose, and that ass in view, I followed three short paces behind her. My dick dowsed for the cleft between her butt cheeks.
She stepped into a narrow alleyway lined with scruffy orange stucco buildings. Light from the planet’s primary star bounced off green and white stripped awnings over the entrance to small shops. I stumbled over bits of trash. Xenos slammed against my shoulder as they passed by, intent on their shopping and conversations. Merchants eyed me as they reclined on overstuffed pillows and lush carpets that were strewn at the entrance of each shop. I closed up the gap between Minat and me.
Big, brown, muscled xenos, armed with s
piked clubs, stood suspicious watch by a big interplanetary NO sign with the black silhouette of a magpie. When I balked at the xeno guards, Minat grabbed my shoulder and jerked me into the alleyway.
With the buildings so close, the air was hot enough to sear my lungs. I choked on the dust kicked up by the hundreds of xenos, each a different species, moving through the streets in the bazaar. The noise was unbelievable. Smells like bleach mixed ammonia burned away the hairs inside my nose.
“Um, how’d you know the magpie was going to snatch my bag?” Girls liked conversation, right?
“Two steps onto this planet, my bag got snatched.”
“The guidebook clearly states –”
“Who do you think wrote the guidebook, doofus? Do you think I just guessed at those things? That guidebook was written from experience. Hard experience. That’s the reason we guidebook writers exist, right?”
“You made up the description about Shuulmach Boulevard.” I winced. Accusations so weren’t the way to get laid.
Luckily, Minat seemed to think I was funny. “I figured out very early on that if I described this charming dystopia as it was, no one would ever visit. And since yours truly is fucking marooned in this shithole, well, I thought the least I could do was trick other humans into traveling a year and a half each way for conjugal visits.”
“Marooned?”
She spread her arms and walked towards me. Her blue eyes opened wide and she spoke very slowly. “My bag got snatched by a fucking magpie. Have you forgotten that already? I told you, what, two seconds ago? Everything I owned was taken from me, including my return ticket. I’ve been trying to earn my way off this planet ever since.”
“Can’t you ask for an advance from our publisher?”
Her laughter was so bitter that small animals for sale two stalls over yelped in pain until she stopped. “Oh please. Stop. You’re killing me.” She wiped tears from the corners of her eyes. “Thanks. I needed that. Listen doofus, you’re going to be lucky if your paycheck clears, or if it reaches you within a solar year.”
“No, they’re supposed to deposit it in my account back on earth.”
She doubled over. “Oh jeeze. Oh jeeze. Don’t be such an offworlder. They’ll mail it to you. As things are looking desperate, you’ll needlecast pleas back home, and their accounts receivable department will tell you that until they get the original back, they can’t re-cut the check. And oh, yeah, they are so sorry about the misunderstanding, but that’s the rule. Meanwhile, a year later, the mail finally arrives and behold the check is not in the mail! You, at great personal expense, needlecast them again. They put you on hold while they go get their supervisor. What’s that going to cost you? Another week’s rent? They don’t care. They put you in hold hell while bad elevator music riffs to you from back home, and you’ll cry because it’ll be the only human music you’ve heard in a year. When she finally picks up, the supervisor will apologize profusely. Of course they didn’t send the check. They were supposed to deposit it to your account on earth. Should she change that? ‘No’ – you’ll cry out, ‘No! Just deposit my pay. I’m eating my shoes!’ And she’ll say, ‘Okay, we’ll get right on that.’ If you’re lucky, before you’ve resorted to dirt soup, they’ll make the deposit. With the money you borrowed to pay for the needlecast, and the interest on it, you’ll be lucky to have enough left over to buy back the picture of your mother.”
I was seriously disliking Minat. Still wanted to fuck her though. After the scouring my nose suffered, I wanted to sniff her hair.
Then she was off again, pushing past the merchants who rose off plump cushions to come to me. I felt like raw meat at a hyena convention. Picking up the pace, I managed to hang on Minat’s heels as she twisted left, left, left, right, left again in the narrow maze. The heat radiating off the walls made me sweat. I felt it trickle along my spine. My shirt stuck to my back in damp patches.
“Where are we . . . Where are we . . . Where are we going?” I asked, demanded, and finally pleaded in breathless bursts as I jogged to keep up with her. Those months in stasis sleep did a number on my muscles, and the heat drained away my reserves of energy. Even if I did manage to get her into bed, I was afraid that I’d fall asleep on her.
Minat ignored me. We raced along, dodging between tall, fat blue tentacled creatures and short, thin, seafoam green quadrapeds. I set my sights on a high tower like a minaret over the shops and by the fourth loop, began to recognize the stalls. The merchants recognized me too. After the third time, they refused to leave their hookahs. I tried to gawk and keep Minat in sight, but obviously put a little too much time in my gawk, because I plowed straight into her. She’d stopped at an intersection.
Tilting her head so that her long flow of hair shimmied back from her face, Minat stood, panting and sweating, in the full light of their primary star. Minat saw the sweat streaming down the side of my face. Her gloved hand reached for the trickle. “If only women sweat like men do. You’re very lucky. You should do very well here.”
A wheezing, pasty fleshed xeno like a worm with too many eyes oozed up to Minat. She gave it a nod. I whipped out my hand-dandy guidebook and flipped to the Xeno ID pages. Pictures popped up on my screen as I waited for the wheezer’s phylum to display.
The wheezer seemed to be looking at me with some interest with most of its optical orbs. It moved closer to me.
I took a step back.
“Don’t move,” Minat growled out of the side of her mouth.
Terrified, I froze.
The wheezer sniffed at the dark stains under my armpits and trilled a remarkably pleasant song. I wondered if that was a blessing over a kill. I wondered if it had sharp teeth. I wondered if it ate its meal while the meal was still screaming.
Minat wheezed agreeably while shimmying her shoulders. More trilling followed as the snout worked across the nape of my neck. I was about to piss my pants.
The xeno made noises, more wheezing, only faster, and then, suddenly, coughed loudly. It shuddered. My pictures flashed past but I was so close to an alien phylum that I couldn’t concentrate. The wheezer smelled of deep earth.
The wheezer handed Minat some chits. She wheezed back at it angrily. A few more chits went into her hand. She stomped and made a gesture that, judging from the expression on her face, was very rude. Merchants laughed and shouted out encouragement. The wheezer ambled on. Minat angrily searched through the chits.
“Not nearly enough. Cheap bastard.” She wagged a finger in my face. “Never break a sweat for less than twenty. Don’t say I never gave you advice.” She sighed and rolled her eyes to the smoggy brown sky as her lips moved. I heard her whisper numbers. Minat shook her head hard so that her hair covered both her eyes. “Not nearly enough to make up for the hours I waited for you at immigration. Here, chew this gum.” She slapped a stick into my hand.
“I don’t like gum.”
“Chew it, asshole.”
Those empty blue eyes of hers were frightening enough that I put the stale stick in my mouth and crunched it around until enough of my saliva worked into it to make it chewable. The red dust was already in my mouth and I could feel the grit between my teeth. “Why?”
“ ’Cause I said so, and I’m, like, your native guide.” She was off again, haring through the twisting alleyways. I raced to keep up. Then, finding a shop full of bronze platters, she dropped onto a cushion and gestured for me to do the same.
I sank down cautiously.
She sat in lotus position on a dusty scarlet cushion. I could see right up her skirt, so I wasn’t gonna move an inch. Her elbow on her knee, she cupped her chin in the palm of her hand and leaned close. She smelled like sex and calamity. “Keep hold of your bag. Magpies sometimes break through the security.” Then she jerked away and her skirt flopped down enough that I had to be obvious if I wanted to catch another glimpse of her pussy.
“What’s with all the chits? You like a loan shark or something?”
Minat’s eyes got hard. “Yeah. Or Some
thing. Don’t you know that writers are supposed to be silent observers? Silent. Shut up and observe.”
The owner of the shop slithered out of the back. Another dragon. When it saw Minat, it puffed tentative smoke rings out its nostrils. That one was plum colored and it seemed fascinated by me.
“How do you do that?” Minat asked in a softer voice.
“What?”
“Chew so damn suggestively. You tease!”
I had no idea what she meant. I didn’t know if I should look at the dragon or glare at Minat.
“Keep chewing that cud, Bossie.”
Minat pinched me.
The dragon’s head drew closer to mine. It had incredibly long eyelashes that fluttered. Its narrow face and angular eyes reminded me of a cat, but the folded iridescent wings were scaly like a reptile. The thing huffed sweetly scent breath over me.
“Is it a boy dragon or a girl dragon?” I asked out of the side of my mouth as I felt that pleasant floating sensation wash over me again.
“Boy. Girl. That’s limited thinking for this planet. This particular xeno starts life in a liquid environment. All babies are females. Then they hit adolescence, and boom! They all turn into males. At the age of maturity, some of the survivors become female again, depending on the existing male/female ratio and after some pretty ugly dominance fights, the winners mate. The losers are lunch. Other xenos have three sexes, five sexes, whatever. Why’d you ask if it was a boy or girl?”
“It seems to like me.” I wanted to scoot backward across the pile of jewel-toned pillows.
“Oh yeah, it likes you all right. Keep chewing. You’re doing fine.”
“But why?”
“Less talk, more chew.”
We left after we got sprayed down with that weird perfume again. I didn’t mind, for as long as the little trip lasted. I gave the dragon a sly smile of thanks for the brief high. The dragon dropped a huge pile of chits into Minat’s cupped, gloved hands. Minat pirouetted away with a smile.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 6 Page 24