Toxicity

by Andy Remic

  “Don’t get too close to the sand,” said Lumar.

  “Eh?”

  “The sand,” she said, glancing down, where it was smeared over Svool’s legs, and arms, and damn, he even had it on his face. How had he done that? “Don’t get it on you.”

  “You can’t say that!” he snapped, fuelled by pain. “You can’t let me fucking roll naked in it, then nonchalantly enunciate, oh, don’t touch it. Why ever the hell not?”

  “I worked out where we are,” said Lumar, voice level, eyes still scanning the expanse of jungle fringe. Behind her, the sea rolled and sloshed up the sand. The sun had started creeping up the sky, bringing with it welcome green light and warmth and hope.

  “So? Where are we?”

  “That, in which we crashed,” said Lumar, pointing out over the rolling waters, “is The Sea of Heavy Metal. Polluted to the fucking gills, Svool. I don’t know how much of that toxic shit we swallowed when we crashed, but I’m pretty sure we’ll be on the toilet for a month. Shitting out our internal organs, if we’re lucky.”

  “Polluted? With what?”

  “Hah! Everything from magnesium, potassium, strontium, cerium, barium, neodymium, promethium - those have what is considered low toxicity; but then we get onto the real gems. Beryllium, cadmium, cobalt, copper, palladium, polonium, radium, niobium, osmium, tantalum, uranium... shit, it’s a toxic cocktail, a radioactive soup. I’m surprised it even looks like water!”

  “Er. Are all those things bad?”

  “Pretty bad, and in the quantities found in that sea, I’m only surprised we can’t walk on the waves.”

  “How do you know all this?” said Svool, frowning, and tenderly touching his feet.

  “I’m a chemist. I have degrees in biological chemistry, pure maths and environmental chemistry,” said Lumar, staring at Svool with her cool green eyes.

  “So... so you’re educated?”

  “Yes.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “You never asked. You were too busy groping my tits.”

  “But... but... where were you educated?”

  “Quad-Gal Royal University.”

  “I am... stunned!” said Svool, who really was.

  Lumar smiled. “Don’t worry. Events and reality rather ran away from me. When they took my sister. When the ganga gangs fucked up my life. But then, that’s what it is to be a kroona. We’re ranked lower than the fucking androids.”

  “That is disgraceful,” said Svool. Then, suddenly looking up, “So... what’s wrong with the sand?”

  “It’s sand made from toxic heavy metal particles. As I said, cadmium, cobalt, polonium, niobium, uranium, lead. And you’re smearing it all over your skin like mascara.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  Lumar snorted. “Of course it’s fucking dangerous! Heavy metals are much more dense than water, and your body cannot metabolise the constituent particles; thus, the toxic shit accumulates inside you. It affects your lungs, kidneys, nervous system, mental functions. Just don’t fucking put it in your mouth, okay?”

  “What about these rocks?” wailed Svool.

  “Look like weathered lead slabs to me,” said Lumar, gaze sliding back to the jungle. Her green eyes narrowed, and she took a tight hold on her sharpened staff. From the edges of the jungle had stepped three of the maroon cats, with their odd fur slabs and yellow spots. The wild cats stopped at the openness; at the daylight. Lumar saw their eyes fall, as one, on her and Svool.

  “I just don’t believe it,” moaned Svool, “you let me walk across this, this, this toxicity, smear it all over me like the sexual juices of the Humphammaraha Twins, then cry my tears onto slabs of lead or whatever the shit the shitty toxic shit really is, and then you calmly stand there telling me you’re a toxic chemist or whatever you are, and you reel off all these bloody names and you still let me roll around in the crap. Only at the end do you spill the beans that this can affect my kidneys and spleen and mental conditions! You need to get your priorities right, Lumar. Right, girl? Right? I said...”

  “Get up.”

  “But what about my mental faculties?”

  “You won’t have any mental faculties if you don’t haul your arse out of that toxic sand, lover boy...”

  Svool turned. And watched with rising horror as the three huge cats, each one as big as a lion, made a decision and, with disjointed heads swinging to glance up and down the beach, started towards them with long, loping strides...

  “Get up!” screamed Lumar. “I can’t kill all three on my own!”

  Svool scrambled up, wincing at his burns, and then scrabbled at his jewelled sword. Lumar was already moving away from him, putting distance between the two in order to split up the huge cats.

  “What shall I do?” bubbled Svool.

  Lumar gave him a nasty glance. “I sure hope you can use that pretty little fucking sword.”

  “But! It was a present! From the Galactic Council’s Chief Royal Emerald President, Googall von Suckerberger, after I performed a particularly fine evening of poetry, music and dance at the Galactic Palaces of Suckerberger and Suckerberger.” He fumbled again with the weapon, until, finally, he was holding it the right way round.

  The cats accelerated, leaving deep pawprints in the sand.

  Svool felt suddenly numb. Numb, and lost, and very, very frightened.

  “Is there nobody to help us?” he wailed, swishing his sword from side to side.

  “We have to help ourselves,” growled Lumar, eyes narrowed, taut body tensed as the cats separated, two peeling away to focus on Lumar - whilst the third, the largest and most ferocious looking, swung its massive shaggy disjointed head, with maroon ears and square patches of tufted fur, towards Svool.

  The creature advanced.

  Svool urinated on the sand, and waved his glittering, jewelled sword. As the beast approached, the weapon looked suddenly ridiculous, even to his own eyes. Like a golden toothpick. Or a diamond knitting needle. It didn’t appear as the sort of weapon that could take down five hundred kilograms of rancid jungle cat...

  “Oooooh,” said Svool.

  The cat roared, and a fetid stink of rotting meat blasted over Svool as, drawing closer, its charge accelerated with massive power and a bunching of steel muscles...

  With a roar the great cat leapt.

  Svool stumbled back, squealing like a pig on a stick, his bare feet pedalling in the grey sand, his arms frantically waving his glittering sword bauble at the mammoth beast rearing over him.

  Lumar had her own problems as the two large cats split, circling her, and she knew with dreaded certainty that she could maybe pull off her trick where the animal leapt onto her spear and impaled itself; but it would only work once. If she was lucky.

  Son of a bitch! Why did I have to get lumbered on this stinking shit-hole with a useless poetry-reciting narcissist? Why couldn’t he have been some kind of military action hero with a machine gun? Then I wouldn’t be having this problem!

  The cats rumbled, circling her. They were more intelligent than she gave them credit for. They had seen her handiwork on the cat back on the trail; and they wouldn’t let such a simple trick work again.

  One cat feinted, and Lumar jabbed out with the stick. The other was behind her now, and it, also, darted forward. With a howl Lumar spun, the sharpened stick catching the beast across the muzzle with a whack and knocking free a long, curved silver fang.

  The cat took a step back and fixed her with a cool, levelled gaze that sent a chill through her soul. The intelligence glittering in those feral eyes reminded her of a human opponent...

  “Svool!” she shrieked.

  There was no answer.

  As the cat leapt at Svool, he screamed like a girl, wailed like a massacred nun, caterwauled like a fighting feline, brayed like a horse in a mincer; he closed his eyes, the sword slashing and swishing before him as he stumbled frantically backwards and tripped, just as the cat landed above him and the sword carved a long groove above the beast�
��s eyes. Blood flushed from it as if Svool had yanked a toilet chain. The cat, in turn, screeched and back-pedalled as Svool continued to waggle his tool.

  “Uh,” he panted, as Lumar risked a glance towards him. The big cat was now standing before him, blood dripping to the sand, its charge halted. A huge disjointed paw was scratching at the wound as if trying to stop the flow of blood.

  “Kill it!” she screamed. “Fucking kill it!”

  “Uh?”

  Svool scrambled to his knees, then his feet. The cat was blind before him, and it lay down now, both paws over its eyes, worrying at the wound. Svool glanced across at Lumar, who whacked a beast with her stick, but went down under a tangle of fur as the second cat leapt across her back. She vanished under a flying furball. Svool felt very, very sick.

  He charged at the cat, then pulled back at the last minute, but the beast ignored him. This fuelled his rage. How dare it! How dare it ignore his charge! The... the damned furry critter! The mewling sack of bullying shit! The... the big stupid pussy cat!

  Svool moved forward, and stuck his sword straight through the cat’s eyeball, which popped in a flurry of milky fluid; he pushed hard, leaning all his body weight into the strike, and skewered the brain within. The cat screeched, then flopped to its side, all four legs kicking as its bowels loosened. Then it lay still.

  Svool stood up, staggered, then waved his sword in the air. Yay! He was triumphant!

  He was, goddammit, a Hero!

  “Hey, Lumar!” he cried, but both enemy cats were stood over her, and he caught just glimpses of her green flesh. A terror grabbed his heart in its fist, and his eyes widened, and oh, my God of Manna, they’d killed Lumar! They were eating Lumar! And next they’d turn their attention on him and see that he’d killed their friend and they’d come for him and eat him as well! What to do? See if Lumar was all right, but of course she wasn’t all right, look at her, surrounded by fur and teeth and claws and she’d be all dead and eaten up by now. So the only thing to do is

  Run.

  Svool ran, arms pumping hard, his blood-encrusted, jewelled sword in one fist, glittering in the light of the green sun, but forgotten for the moment as terror took over and cowardice became his brother; he pumped hard, sprinted, burnt feet forgotten and ignored as he padded across the sand. He could hear cracking sounds behind him. Oh no. They’re eating her! They’re breaking her bones! I don’t believe it! Now, the horror, I am truly all alone and now more of those horrible cannibals can take me into the jungle and eat the meat off my genius bones...

  Oy! Idiot! What are you doing?

  Excuse me?

  I said what are you doing, fuckwit?

  I’m sure I don’t understand what you mean?

  You fucking back-stabber, Lumar saved you, saved your stinking worthless carcass, and here you are hotfooting it away when you’ve got a fucking sword in one hand and she’s in trouble.

  I’m sure she’s already dead, and I can certainly be of no service to the young lady...

  Oh, yeah, that’s convenient, I’m sure! Convenient that you didn’t check and didn’t even try and help, and now you’re sprinting across the sand like your arse is on fire and she’s back there fighting off two huge mauling lion-cats!

  Well it has to be said, I am a rare talent in the Galaxy of Manna, I am a genius, no doubt, a poet prodigal, and soon to be the finest film star the Quad-Galaxy has ever seen! I do not desire to die here and now! I desire to be rescued!

  Oh, you back-stabbing, turn-coat, cowardly bastard...

  A whine cracked across the sand.

  Svool slowed his sprint, but did not dare turn back. Oh, my! What could possibly have happened now?

  There came twin thuds and the sounds of sprinkling. Followed by a low growl.

  “Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no,” muttered Svool, reaching the edge of the jungle and leaping full length into its protective undergrowth. He hit the soft ground in the cool shade, glad to be out of the baking sun and toxic sand. He lay for a while, panting, wondering what to do, and how to get himself out of this fix. Then he crawled around on a carpet of bent ferns and knobbly creepers and crept back to the edge of the jungle to see what was occurring.

  Confusion met his confused gaze.

  There was a small cloud of black smoke on the beach, funnelling upwards as if some ancient diesel engine had slammed a valve open and was busy burning oil. The cloud perfectly eclipsed the area where Lumar and the cats had been.

  “Uh?”

  Various concepts vied for precedence in Svool’s mind. Missile strike? Spontaneous combustion? Hidden land mine? None of them seemed probable, although the land mine could be a possibility...

  The sea sighed against the beach, rolling and, to the naked eye, beautiful despite the hidden loaded toxins within.

  Svool wondered what to do.

  A cool breeze blew, and the smoke started to disperse. Svool was just wondering whether to run for it again, or to hide under the ferns, when he saw Lumar step from the smoke and stand, hands on hips, staring across the beach at his hidden location.

  “Oh,” said Svool, and stood up. He gave a wave. Lumar did not wave back.

  Then, from the smoke eased the gliding matt-black tennis-ball body of Zoot, Svoolzard’s PR PopBot, manager, bodyguard, agent, manager and all round good egg.

  “Now I understand!” He beamed. Somehow Zoot had also survived the crash, and eventually had come looking for them when his circuits came back online, and he’d seen the battle on the beach and zipped along and zapped the bad cats. Wahey! Well done that PR PopBot!

  Feeling buoyed and triumphant, Svool strode out onto the sand in all his nakedness, and watched as Lumar and Zoot approached him. Lumar had a long slash from her temple to her jaw, and another set of triple gashes across both arms, and one very sexy thigh.

  “Zoot! You survived! And came back to help us!” beamed Svool, placing both his hands on his hips and standing there, tackle out, free and proud and brave now his bodyguard had arrived.

  “I did indeed,” said Zoot, smoothly, bobbing to a halt on a cushion of ions.

  “And Lumar! I’m so glad you’ve not been gobbled up by those nasty cat beasts!”

  “You are?”

  “Yes!”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” said Lumar, her eyes narrowed, “I saw you stab that cat through the eye, and stagger around drunk on combat glory; and as the beasts reared above me, my wooden spear the only barrier between me and gaping gnashing maws, I thought Svool will save me, just like I saved him! Yet through the legs of the attacking, mauling creatures all I saw was your cherry-red arse fucking off up the beach.”

  “Er,” said Svool.

  “You left her?” said Zoot. “Left her to be eaten?”

  “No, actually, no, it wasn’t like that...”

  “But you did run off?” said Zoot.

  “Er, yes, but I thought she was already dead!”

  “I don’t know how you came to that conclusion,” snapped Lumar. “You were too busy running the fuck away.”

  “Wait, wait,” said Svool, “now, don’t be like that.” He held out his hands, smiling broadly with friendship and love and charm. “Come on, you know I would have helped you if I could...”

  “Yeah, right, back-stabber.”

  Zoot bobbed. “We need to get out of the sun. We need to get away from all this toxicity; the beach is a chemical hotspot. My scanners are... stunned by the level of pollution. I had to run three tests. I thought my scanners were faulty at first! This is not a safe place for two organic meat-sacks.”

  “Okay. Which way?” Svool was still beaming, almost oblivious to the seething rage emanating from Lumar’s eyes and body-language and snarling lips. She still held her spear, bloodied and chipped and claw-scarred. She did not look like a happy bunny.

  “I have detected a settlement of some kind, twenty kilometres northeast through the jungle. We should be able to rent passage there to the nearest
city - which, according to my database, would be Organophosphate City. A place less cheery than its name, I assure you.”

  “What about my clothes? And boots?” beamed Svool. He seemed unfeasibly chirpy. As if Zoot’s arrival was the sudden end to all his problems.