“I need to talk to those picks!”
“Defense had them purged.”
Gabe turned on her heel, heart thudding hard.
“How does it feel to be part of a Great Experiment?” the Tailor called after her.
Gabe whirled around. She ran outside. The cold bit her face, hands. The bare branches of the ren trees looked like big knobby hands reaching up toward the sky. Her breath sounded loud in her ears. All the globes along the path shone brilliant white.
She passed through the fence and into the Falandir Compound. Second security check, and the filter ate what remained of Cori’s blood on her face, her hands. Which meant Cori had been barred from passing through the fence. Cori had been purged along with her picks. Who was next? Gabe?
She stumbled down the hill and past the compound. She had to find Jorian, and if she found him, everything would be all right, and Cori wouldn’t be dead, and Gabe wouldn’t have to tell on all of them, and she could go back to being just another agent with a new metal loop in her ear.
The gate to his residence was open. Warm air seeped out into the cold night. Gabe went in and heard the cats mewling. The barred metal gate over house door hung from one hinge. The padlock lay shattered on the porch.
She jumped into the house. Her boots sounded loud across the floor. A bottle of milk had been tipped over in the kitchen. The back door looking out into the garden was open. The sound of the cats came from there. Long, surreal cries.
Gabe ran out back and saw the cats crawling around a figure lying on the long grass by the rock pool. Jorian lay on the grass, his skinny arms wrapped around his skinny body.
It felt as if someone had taken hold of her guts and squeezed.
She knelt down next to him. “Jorian?”
He whimpered.
Gabe reached under his little body and picked him up. The cats meowed at her, brushed up against her legs, and then ran ahead of her, into the house.
He was lighter than she expected. She felt his breath on her skin. He was damp and shivering.
“Where’s Talaba?” Gabe said.
He pressed against her, still shivering. “They took her,” he murmured.
“Who?”
“Defense.”
Gabe strode into Jorian’s room. Only one of the glow worms was still alive. Shadows licked at the corners of the room. She lay Jorian in his bed and pulled the blankets around him, but the shaking didn’t subside.
“I didn’t tell them,” she said. “It wasn’t me. I think they already knew. I think this was a game.”
“I tried to stop them,” he said. The cats hopped up onto the bed and settled around his head and pillow.
“You aren’t strong enough to stop Tailors.”
Jorian squeezed his eyes, and tears leaked out. “I know that! They made me this way so I couldn’t fight them!”
“How can I stop you from shivering?”
“I’m dying. Just like everyone else they took from the Opposition.”
“I’m not smart enough for this.”
“Any other agent would have stopped at Cori or the picks. Any other agent would have purged them all so she’d get another metal loop. They would have acted. You didn’t. You thought.” He writhed in the bed. “I’m so cold,” he said.
“Don’t die, Jorian.” She wrapped her arms around him, and his whole tiny body trembled like a leaf. She could leave Cori to die. But some part of her could not leave this pick to die. Not here. Not alone. Not like the rest of them.
“They knew it was her,” he said. “They wanted to know what you would do. And they were wrong about you. I proved Defense wrong.” His hands and face were cold to the touch. “They said I would hate you and everything that you are, and you would run to Defense and kill me for what Talaba did. I picked into their communications. I knew what they were planning, with you. I had to prove them wrong.”
Gabe stared at the little whorl of chestnut hair at the nape of Jorian’s neck.
Jorian’s body was almost still. His breath came slow, irregular.
“What do I do?” Gabe said. “Please, Jorian, I don’t know what to do. They know I’m a bad agent now. They know I think too much. I didn’t turn you in. They’ll kill me too.”
“Follow the cats,” he said.
“What about the –”
“They came with me. They’ll led you away… to the Opposition.”
“I’m not… I can’t…”
“You are. You can. Each of us has so little time. We are but a flicker of light in the darkness. Don’t waste the little time you have.”
The orange light of the globes shuddered, flared once, and died. The glow worms were spent.
The cats mewled.
Gabe waited until Jorian’s breathing slowed, then stilled. She waited until his hand was cold in hers, waited until the cats pushing against her body became impatient, insistent.
Opposition, or Defense?
She believed she knew both well. She had been proved wrong.
Gabe stood. The cats ran out into the field behind the compound to a half-hidden trail of trampled grass that meandered through the cane fields.
She did not know what lay ahead of her, but she knew what lay behind.
Gabe followed the last instruction she would ever receive from a pick. Gabe followed the cats.
END
Glottal’s Gift: An Intergalactic Fable
Gather closer, my blurbalian children, and listen to the tale of Glottal and her booted creature, the last inheritance Glottal was to receive from the browning globular body of her third mother. Ooze over here next to the fountain, and bring your whisker rings and count those shiny marbles in their gelatinous bags, because the creature I have come to tell you of was once thought of as quite a bit more useless than those shiny marbles. A remarkable bauble she was.
Let me tell you a story.
Glottal the blurbal found her mother's blue-tentacled face in the dishpan one red morning. Her mother's image slurped and burbled, "My well-filled, many-tentacled Son, I have expired and left you the most important gift I possess."
Glottal, her face purple with engorged excitement, donned her fashionable red tentacle bells and put on her whisker rings and oozed into her faster-than-light, en route to the other side of the galaxy where her mother had retreated to spend her old age reading Eraz'I poetry and collecting foreign creatures from broken stars.
On the spongy ground of the world called Krett, accessible only through a narrow field of asteroid mining operations owned by the local SwARTzin entity, Glottal found that her swarm of relative podlings had already arrived. They sat around her mother's browning globular body, burbling and hissing among themselves about her mother's obvious fortune.
And, certainly, Glottal noticed that the walls of her mother's shimmery abode were a particularly striking silver color, and the dripping oozes of the performance art pieces looked quite intimidating in their organic niches.
The family assembled in front of the womb-pod as the funeral workers loaded the brown body into the pod. A red-splotched record keeper slithered up to the area in front of the pod and opened her slitted mouth. From the orifice came the voice of Glottal's mother, a precise recording of her death instructions.
"Greetings, podlings," the recording said. "The plutarch crash of the middle era left me to find my fortune here on Krett. After donating the bulk of my fortune to performance art charities, I am left with three possessions. To my eldest daughter, Ecctal, I leave my vast collection of performance art pieces, gathered from the farthest reaches of the galaxy."
The crowd stirred at this. Glottal tried to hide her greenish body flush of irritation. There was much she could have done with those pieces!
"And to my next eldest, Blutach, who has always shown such wisdom in the ways of real estate, I leave this elegant organic house, to be sold at her discretion."
Blutach shuddered a delightful pink of happiness.
"And to my youngest daughter," the recording said. "To my favorite podling, I leave my most prized possession."
Glottal raised her tentacles in anticipation.
The recorder gestured to a little organic playpen set beside the gray womb-pod.
"To you, Glottal," the recording said, "I leave this human."
All eight of Glottal's eyes focused on the playpen. Surely, this was a humorous performance piece of some kind. But sitting there in the playpen, gripping the bars with five short, peach-colored tentacles was a hairy animal clothed in naked skin from its top to its bottom. It had only two black eyes, which stared stupidly back at Glottal.
The relative podlings all murmured their sympathies, then ejected the womb-pod into the outer atmosphere and congregated in the spherical dining room to partake of the many textured delicacies available only on Krett. Glottal did not join in the reverie. She oozed over to the playpen and gazed down at the small creature.
"What a useless thing you are," she said to the creature.
It gazed back up at her and blinked its two eyes.
"I will have to sell you to the stews," Glottal said. "Are your kind worth anything?”
"Why, yes," said the human, in a barely understandable string of clicks and hisses that children often used at play. "I am much more valuable to you as a possession than as a commodity. Don't fear, Mistress. Give me some tentacle rings, a pair of grav-boots, and a faster-than-light and you will see my value."
Glottal, who had never been a stupid Blurbal, wondered if this strange creature of indeterminate origin would somehow cheat her. In the end, she preferred to see her sisters watch her take something home rather than believe her slighted and defeated by their illustrious mother.
And so Glottal brought the smelly human back with her, bestowed upon it a globular pair of boots, a handful of tentacle rings, and her spare faster-than-light, an ancient model that was no longer up to the current faster-than-light emission laws. Perhaps the local Blurbalian Authority would simply eradicate the creature and the faster-than-light in one brilliant explosion of heat and fireworks, and Glottal would be rid of both.
She could always hope.
"You will not be sorry," the human said, and jumped into the faster-than-light.
Glottal watched it go, then settled into her spherical sitting couch. She slurped a wide variety of slimy substances, and cursed her mother's supposed gift. At least, Glottal reasoned, she had managed to unload that particularly troublesome faster-than-light without paying to have it re-calibrated or compacted. She wouldn’t have to deal with that or the human creature ever again.
But Glottal's human, who called itself Wottol, was more than it seemed.
Wottal propelled itself swiftly across the galaxy to the world of Krett where it expertly landed the craft and jumped out to hunt the rare spotted jobber, a particularly fearsome creature that had a weakness for colorful tentacle rings. After dicing the mottled greenish creature into Blurbal-sized pieces and properly preparing the whiskered head as her previous mistress had taught it, Wottol zipped out across the SwARTzin-owned asteroid field, back across the galaxy to the world of Ko'tan, seat of the Blurbal Empress, Occtollotal bo Ru.
After much clicking and hissing, Wottol presented itself before the great heaping mass of the Empress using all the farting and burbing its former mistress had taught it.
"Greetings, great one," Wottol sputtered. "I bring to you a gift from my mistress, the well-filled, far-reaching, exquisitely tentacled Ruler Glottal, of the Mittocc system, who sends you her many wishes and regards for a moist life of wide-ranging riches."
Occtollotal, who had a deep fondness for the big whiskered jobbers, made a polite slurping sound and waved her tentacles at the gift. In truth, she had never seen a creature as strange as Wottol, and its obvious prowess in the preparation of Jobbers intrigued her, as did her unique flatulence. "Indeed, your mistress must be a rich Blurbal, to own such a peculiar creature," Occtollotal said.
"My mistress is a great ruler," Wottol said, flourishing its naked tentacles. "She has holdings that span the system, and a great organic house of the newest fashion and function."
Occtollotal, who had grown wide and discolored in her old age, crooked one eye at the creature, unwilling to admit that she had not heard of the influential ruler of the Mittocc system. She burbled, "It would be of great interest to me to see this great Blurbal. Is she very rich, indeed?"
"Oh, yes," Wottol said, "very rich in moisture and odor."
"You must tell your mistress that my podlings and I would enjoy meeting her at her fine house."
And so Wottol hopped into her faster-than-light and landed back at Glottal's tiny blue house of belching organic materials that was in need of a new outer skin.
"Wondrous news, mistress!" Wottol said. "The Empress Occtollotal and her podlings are traveling to meet you."
Glottal oozed from her chair, her skin an orange flush of horror. "What have you done, you foul creature! When they arrive they will know how poor I am! Look at this house. I should have sold you to the stews!"
"Leave everything to me," Wottol said.
It went back out to Krett and caught two more jobbers. It prepared them well and presented them again before the Empress. While waiting to present this gift, Wottol overheard the Empress's faster-than-light drivers discussing the Empress's travels to the Orythian system the next day, to show her podlings the progress of the mining systems there. After presenting the jobbers and telling Occtollotal where to meet the Ruler Glottal of the Mittocc system, Wottol flew back to find Glottal curled up in her spherical chair, a perpetual sickly brown color.
Wottol said, "It is time, mistress, to make you rich!"
"Leave me alone, you stupid creature!" Glottal slurped.
"Leave everything to me," Wottol said. "I will make your fortune.".
It took Wottol a few more well-chosen clicks and whistles before it persuaded its mistress to ooze into the faster-than-light. Once inside, Wottol flew them to the Orythian system. It landed the faster-than-light and found a wide pool of burbling orange liquid just off the road leading out from the mining fields.
"What are we doing here?" Glottal slurped.
"Trust me," Wottol said, and then it heard the steady whoosh-whoosh of the Empress's land-carrier. When Wottol saw the beginning of the caravan, it took a running leap and pushed into Glottal, who oozed and shook and finally lost her balance. Her big globby body splashed into the pool.
"I can't swim!" Glottal cried.
Wottol jumped onto the road and waved down the caravan. "The Ruler Glottal of the Mittocc system is drowning!" Wottol cried.
The Empress Occtollotal, interrupted from her conversation on outer-system holdings, gestured to her personal escorts, who slithered from their carriers and oozed over to the orange pool. They fished the young Blurbal from the pool and presented her before Occtollotal's carrier window.
"What has happened?" Occtollotal said, staring with intense consternation at the strange blurbal presented before her, flushed in the color of extreme distress.
A dry, naked creature sprang up next to the blurbal and said, "Oh great Occtollotal, this is my mistress Glottal, Ruler of the Mittocc system."
The Empress peered back into the carriage where her prime pod mate sat in her comfortable spherical chair, all eight of her lovely silver eyes focused on Glottal.
"She is quite handsome," she said in their own coded language of clicks and hisses.
"I hear she is also quite rich," Occtollotal said.
The Empress waved her tentacles. "I believe our youngest daughter is in need of a rich, handsome pod mate."
Occtollotal looked back to Glottal and said, "Are you indeed very rich?"
Glottal began to sputter, burbling orange ooze, and Wottol said, "Why, yes, my mistress is very rich, indeed. Come and see her fine organic house. I will meet you there."
"My house?" Glottal sa
id.
"On Krett," Wottol said, and pinched its cheeks so they flushed a happy, darker color. And so, as Wottol zipped off toward the planet of Krett, the Empress's slow, lumbering carrier made its way to the edges of the asteroid fields.
Glottal sat with Occtollotal, feasting on delicate peppered squibbles and talking about the fine trade in foreign performance art pieces. Occtollotal looked up from the jellied surface of the table and out the observation window to see the blinking lights of the asteroids the big cruiser lumbered past.
"Why," Occtollotal said, "what a marvelous way to announce your presence in this system, Glottal!"
Glottal, who had thus far managed to keep her mouth shut on all matters relating to wealth, nearly choked on the loose membrane of a squibble. She chugged a bowl of jellied slime and looked back out the window where Occtollotal directed all eight of her eyes.
Even Glottal was able to make out the Optical Code flashes. She gurgled to clear her throat and said, "Yes, I thought it was a good idea to make my holdings known, especially since the SwARTzin presence here is so - ah - recent...?"
"Hm? SwARTzins. Don't know much about them. Enlighten me, Glottal," Occtollotal said, with increasing interest.
Glottal slurped another squibble and hoped her orangish flush would be interpreted as an after-effect of the orange sludge. She gurgled and started in on the history of asteroid mining in the Mittocc system, beginning directly after the plutarch crash of the middle era.
In the meantime, Wottol had arrived on the world of Krett where the SwARTzin entity had finally managed to wrangle the fine organic house from the grips of the greedy real estate agents employed by Glottal's sister Blutach. Wottol, having kept up on all real estate ventures in the system and already widely familiar with the house, hid its faster-than-light in a little grove of droopy red-limbed rama trees and strode confidently to the hidden exterior passage leading into the organic house.
Inside, Wottol found the hulking form of the SwARTzin entity, a bushy-browed creature whose globular body resembled that of the Blurbals, but whose hair and lack of tentacles placed it as a separate species, with six eyes and four appendages, each appendage looped in elegant bands vaguely similar to tentacle rings, but shinier and more brightly colored.
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