“I’m very sorry. I hate to see this, but your contract was very clear.”
“But you only paid me five thousand. How can I give you six noses and still owe you seven thousand bugs?”
The nurse made a disapproving sound.
“I’m very disappointed in you, Charlie. I thought you were a smart young man,” the doctor said. “I thought we could trust you. They weren’t your noses. It’s a sacred trust to grow them for your patron.”
“Sorry,” was all Charlie could manage to mumble between his gritted teeth.
“Why not switch the noses?” The nurse offered in a cheerful voice, as if she had just had a brilliant thought.
The doctor sighed. “If I were Mr. Daemon, I’d rather just pay the fee.”
“What do you mean?” Charlie asked.
“Well.” the doctor sighed again. “You would technically be fulfilling the contract if we switched your old nose and the broken one. It’s still your flesh. And then we wouldn’t have to blackball you. We could work with you again and help you make more money.”
“You want to take my nose?” Charlie almost laughed in horror.
“It’s up to you. If I were you I’d rather tighten my belt for a few weeks and pay the seven grand.”
“I don’t have seven grand.”
“So, what do you want me to do?” the doctor asked.
They took Charlie’s nose. He was left with a thin white scar on his shoulder and six very bad jagged scars on his legs. And he had someone else’s broken nose where his used to be. The doctor was almost able to match the skin tone, and he partially straightened it. He gave Charlie a referral to a specialist who could fix the nose properly, but Charlie knew he wouldn’t be able to afford that.
He stared in the mirror for a long time. It wasn’t his face looking back. The nose was the wrong shape. The nostrils looked alien to him.
“I’ve ruined myself,” he thought. And then he shouted it at his reflection, as if accusing his doppelganger of having done it to them both. “I’ve ruined myself!”
Before he left, Charlie asked the nurse for more information on the mind loan program. She gave it to him with his bill. Charlie now owed them $749 for the nose transplant.
It seemed to him that he should get to either have the stardust leather coat, or his own nose back. He deserved to have one of them.
He had already sold back his amps. He could play without an amp. He still had the new guitar and the effects orb.
He sat alone in the darkness and cried for a long time. Finally he began conjuring with the orb. It twisted the sounds, any sounds which it picked up. It could play with a guitar, or a voice, or even the noises of the crowd. It changed what everyone heard. Charlie liked to begin with a simple inversion of the sounds so that the deep sounds became high and the high notes became low.
Sitting right next to the orb, it warped even the sounds coming in through his window. The traffic sounded like laser beams shouting past.
He started to hum. He echoed the sound so that it sounded like there were twenty of him, all humming together in harmony. He isolated the sounds and made some of them just a little different, as if there were a real choir right there in the room with him.
He found an effect he liked. It made his voice sound like an alien God’s. Then he started singing:
“We are the people born by radio
Ray ray ray ray radio
Ray ray ray ray radio.”
After about an hour, he put his instruments down and went out for a walk. It was a bright and sunny and freezing cold day. The scents of rotten fish and burnt rubber filled his nose. He began walking over towards the library. It was twenty seven blocks away. He was used to the walk.
As he walked, he passed by a man in a long dingy overcoat. The coat looked like it had used to be gray and fluffy. Now it was hard and muddy. The man quietly sang a Bob Marley song as he walked. But the reason why the stranger stood out for Charlie was because he had two large noses growing prominently out of the side of his neck. He looked like an Arab.
Charlie stopped walking and stared at the flesh donations.
“Oy! Screw you, buddy!” the man shouted at him.
“Sorry. I just did the same thing. I grew some noses for money,” Charlie apologized, prying his eyes off of the man’s neck and looking him in the eye.
“You make good money?” the man asked.
“No. No, one of the noses – I was in a fight and one of the noses broke. They made me give them my real nose and they say I owe them like a thousand bugs now.”
“Really?” The man sounded shocked.
“Yeah.”
“I wouldn’t put up with that. I would have just walked out.”
Charlie sighed.
The man pointed at Charlie’s face. “That one isn’t even the right color. Is it – was it a woman’s nose?”
“I think so.”
“And you let them do that to you? You’re paying them to disfigure you?”
Charlie felt like he was going to burst into tears. He had to struggle to keep them down. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t feel like I had a choice.”
The man looked him up and down. He was very thin. He didn’t look healthy. But he looked at Charlie with the worst look of contempt Charlie had ever seen. “You should just kill yourself. What’s the point in you?”
Charlie didn’t reply.
The man walked away.
Charlie watched him walking away for a while. He began to feel this heat rising up in his belly. His legs were tensing. His hands were fists, hard as rocks.
Charlie took a deep breath. His throat was wet with sorrow.
And he launched himself at the man in the overcoat. He grabbed the stranger by the back of his collar and yanked him backwards. Then he took the stranger’s head in between his palms and smashed it once against the pavement. There was a spurt of blood and the man shouted in pain.
Charlie pulled back and stood smiling as he watched the man get up and look back at Charlie with terror in his eyes. The stranger’s nose was swollen and the bridge was cracked down the middle. He ran away.
Charlie smiled as he walked back home. He found Amber waiting for him inside. She was reading through his pamphlet on mind donations and seemed pretty upset. Then she saw his nose.
Her soft little face exploded into boiling tears. But Charlie was in just too good a mood.
He kissed her.
He told her jokes, and promised that neither of them would ever have to do anything like that again. And he made love to her in a way he never had before, full of confidence and power.
3
PRESENT DAY
Charlie was brought first, but he listened as the four other members of his team were each dragged in through the central chamber and put into their small individual cells. It was stone and dust. There was no lighting, not even fire. What appeared to be sunlight dribbled in from a few small and distant windows, but Charlie couldn’t imagine how sunlight would find its way down through the biomass. It sounded like Avraam tried to fight as they put him in his room, but the big man cried out in horrible pain just before they shut the door on him.
Charlie listened to the aliens talking to one another in their language filled with Hs and Fs, but couldn’t understand a word of it.
When some time had passed and Charlie couldn’t hear the creatures anymore, he called out,
“Are we all here?”
“Wu Gwei.”
“Avi Fock.”
“Kalligeneia Athanas.”
“Queen Gloryannana Mellifluous The First, most bodacious ruler of -”
“Good. What are our injuries?” Charlie interrupted.
“My finger is horribly broken. I’m – I’m having trouble getting a deep breath,” Kalligeneia answered.
“We suffer well,” The Queen replied.
“I could do that again,” Avraam boasted.
“I’m attempting to re-boot my core, but there is a very real possibi
lity that I could melt down,” Wu Gwei announced.
“Meltdown? You mean, a nuclear explosion?” Charlie asked.
“No, not nuclear, but the explosion would be enough to level this settlement. I can always prevent this by ejecting my power core. But then I’d be dead in minutes.”
“That’s what you get for being a robot-man,” Avraam laughed.
“I can’t believe we’re all still alive after that fall,” Gloryannana said. “You do amazing work, Mr. Wu.”
“Thank you,” the cyborg grunted quietly.
Charlie tried to use his communicator, but it was dead. “Can anyone contact the surface?”
“No, our electronics are all bunged up. But at least the rest of the crew will know that something is wrong,” Gloryannana answered.
“Unless they think we went too far underground,” Avraam countered.
They heard metal jangling, and then the sound of a large group of the serpent people entering the jail. A bowl of liquid was shoved in through the bottom of Charlie’s door. He wasn’t sure if they meant him to eat or drink it, but it was at least a sign that their captors didn’t plan on immediately killing everyone.
Once the jail was quiet again, Charlie spoke. “We need to get out of here. Anyone have any ideas?”
“This building is poorly made. If my implants were working, I could knock the walls down, but right now that is impossible.” Wu Gwei spoke in a serious tone.
Charlie leaned his hand against the wall. His fingers began to tingle, even through his gloves. When he pulled his hand back, his fingers were still pins and needles. “Our force fields are gone. Our suits are compromised. How worried should we be?”
“Very worried,” Kalligeneia answered. Her voice was sharp. She was in pain. “We are exposed to energies down here which our bodies are not prepared for. The atmosphere is wrong for us. The Waydio waves built us sturdier than we used to be, but we’re not invulnerable. I’d be surprised if any of us are still alive a few days from now.”
“We’re lucky though. This is the second world I’ve been on and I’ve been able to taste the air on both. I mean, I get that it’s not good for me, but that seems like a heck of a coincidence.” Charlie thought out loud.
“It’s not as unusual as you would think. Complicated forms of life tend to only survive on certain kinds of worlds, and the longer a planet has life, the better it tends to become suited for it. We’ve seen it again and again as we have explored the galaxy. There’s a reason why we don’t often land on the planets with liquid lead or zero Kelvin atmospheres,” Wu Gwei explained.
“Are there optimal worlds out there? Places where any living being could make it?” Charlie asked.
“Probably not,” Wu Gwei answered. “But this is not the time to theorize the existence of Utopian worlds.”
“In an infinite universe, we’ll find everything sooner or later,” Kalligeneia interjected between clenched teeth.
A heavy door opened loudly. There was the sound of metal clinking. The serpents were breathing loudly. It sounded like there were at least six of them, but they all huffed and puffed together in an asthmatic chorus.
“I will not go with you,” Avraam said in a deep and serious voice.
Charlie could hear shuffling in the dirt. Maybe wrestling? Avraam grunted a couple of times. He growled. Then he said, “Alright. Okay, okay, I said alright. Don’t you understand English?”
Charlie and the rest of the crew sat uselessly in the darkness as Avraam was dragged away.
When it sounded like Avraam and their captors had left, Wu Gwei called out, “Roll call.”
“Captain Charlie Daemon.”
“Queen Gloryannana.”
“Kalligeneia Athanas.”
“Wu Gwei.”
“If they wanted us dead, they wouldn’t try to feed us,” Charlie told his crew. “They’re going to interrogate Avi. They may be rough with him, but they won’t be planning on killing him.”
“He might not give them a choice,” Wu Gwei interjected.
“Exactly,” Charlie agreed. “We need to get these doors open before they come back.”
But even as he finished that sentence, the creatures returned loudly breathing together like a single organism. Charlie’s door was flung open and they pulled him out. With his foot he accidentally upset the still-untouched bowl of liquid they had given him. He felt it wet on his foot. Charlie didn’t fight back. He made a point of looking each of the serpents in the eye, so they knew he was in charge. He walked peacefully with an escort of five huge slithering aliens.
As they pushed him down the dim corridors, he got a better look at them than previously. Their eyes were red and looked intelligent. One of them looked obviously frightened of him. Another was angry. He got the feeling that a third one was angry, but not with him. That one glared at one of the other serpents. It amazed Charlie to think that he could so easily understand them, that their body language was apparently so similar to human body language.
Then he thought about the way they spoke. It was not the same as humans, but so many of the sounds were in common. Many of the vowel sounds were common. Those omnipresent Fs and Hs were no different than the ones used in English. It was remarkable how much the serpents of Cosmic Shag and the humans of Earth had in common.
They took him into another small room. His escorts waited outside while he was shoved in to confront three more of the species. These ones were smaller. They seemed to move constantly, like they were dancing or blowing in the wind.
“Fffhaa. Farah,” the one in the middle said.
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand. I really only speak English.”
“N Rfnfff L. Ferahahahah,” she insisted.
Charlie has a feeling that these three were all female. While he couldn’t resist the temptation to think of a serpentine being as a reptile, they obviously were not reptilian. They had no scales, and never felt the sunlight. As he looked closer, he thought that these serpents might even have small breasts on their chests. The light was dim, so he didn’t notice at first, but the females also had feathers on their backs.
One of them leaned forward and looked him in the eyes. She was threateningly close.
“Farah!”
“Farrah?” Charlie asked. “Do you mean Umbra Farrah? Do you know my friend Umbra?” Charlie was suddenly hit with the realization.
“Uhra Farah,” the one on the left said with some satisfaction. The tone of her voice made her sound like she was very pleased with herself.
The serpent on the right shot a look of annoyance at her sister on the left.
”Yes, Umbra Farrah.” Charlie smiled. “We’re all old friends, you me, her, her, Umbra Farrah, Avraam Fock, Wu Gwei, Kalligeneia Athanas. Friends.”
The serpent on the left grabbed Charlie’s right arm. She pulled him close and began sniffing him.
“That’s right. Friends, like Umbra Farrah.” Charlie forced an uncomfortable smile to his face.
He turned his head and looked at the other two serpents as the one holding him began to lightly lick his face. Charlie suffered the attention as he would from an overzealous dog or cat, without complaint, without showing that it made him uncomfortable.
The serpent on the right made a “huff huff” noise which sounded to Charlie like laughter. They locked eyes for a moment and she sure seemed to be aware of and enjoying his discomfort. Still, Charlie was glad it was only licking and not biting.
He turned back to look at the one which was holding him. He raised his hand up to her shoulder to push her back. To Charlie’s shock, she kissed him!
He didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want to kill them or die himself and forget the past weeks, so he politely allowed her to kiss him for just a second before gently pushing away.
The serpent drew back and looked at him for an uncomfortably long time. She licked her thick green lips and then kissed him again. Strangely, the captain found himself enjoying it.
Then a second one of the serpents
was also holding him and pressing herself against his body. Her hands were in his hair and then her long tongue was in his ear. It was hot and wet.
Charlie pushed them both back. He did it a little harder and more forcefully than he had meant to, but they were both very strong, possibly stronger than he was.
“No, I don’t think this is a good idea. You’re both lovely young snakes, but…”
Some distance off, there was a loud crashing sound. The three serpents quickly forgot about him and rushed out to see what was going on. Charlie was relieved, but if he was honest he felt a little disappointed at the same time.
He could taste the alien’s saliva in his mouth. It was different from a human woman’s.
In the distance he could hear a human voice shouting. It sounded like there was fighting and rocks falling. Dust fell from the ceiling above him and Charlie began to worry about how well built the primitive stone building was. The roof above his head looked very heavy and loose. Through a little crack, a ray of light was shining into the room like a tight laser beam.
With a smash, the wooden door in front of him came apart and fell to the floor. Avraam was standing there. He held one of the serpents by its neck. He was standing on another. He smiled a wide and joyous smile. “Our storm has begun!”
“Storm?” Charlie asked.
The big man reached in and pulled Charlie out of the room. He could see four more aliens writhing on the floor, hurt but not dead. He recognized one of them as one the females which had interrogated him.
He paused for a moment, unsure of whether he should help them, and what he could do.
Out through another open doorway, Charlie saw Wu Gwei and Kalligeneia wrestling with three more serpents. Wu Gwei’s cybernetic parts were sparking with blue electricity. For just a moment he saw a blue x-ray of the quartermaster’s skeleton.
Kalligeneia turned out to be a skilled warrior. She was using martial arts against the serpent, moving quickly and deliberately.
Avraam walked over, grabbed Kalligeneia’s opponent by the back of the head and threw it to the ground unconscious. The Russian was turning out to be a breathtaking warrior.
The Secrets of the Universe (Farther Than We Dreamed Book 1) Page 28