by M. D. Cooper
“Fuck! That tater tot tried to kill Kenny!” Her eyes are wide with shock and, strangely, admiration. Garbdorians must emote admiration differently than humans do.
I cough one last time. “Charlie,” I correct her. “My last name’s Kenny.”
“Right. Sorry.” Greta looks chagrined. “I tend to forget which planets do the family-name-first thing.”
“That’s okay,” I say, wiping my face and pretending that she hasn’t just witnessed my near-death at the potatoey hands of a tiny fried blob, even as Pinky gently sits me back on my stool.
Greta’s a champ though, because she pretends right along with me. She asks Pinky for a lushfruit muffin and a glass of yak milk, straight up.
“Just one,” Pinky says to her warningly. “You know how you get.”
I really want to know how she gets, but am not brave enough to ask.
I eyeball my tater tots. Not eating them would be uncool, as it would ruin my pretending-my-horrible-death-never-happened mystique, which I feel is working for me. But while I’d enjoyed them before, I’m now engaged in a death match against them. In this corner, a pile of starchy little murderers, and in the other corner, Charlie Kenny, master of the unlikely. Well, not the master. If I were the master, I wouldn’t have to worry about this kind of crap.
Whatever. I tear a tot in two, dunk it in the orange sauce, and carefully chew. Hah. Take that, tater.
The night before, Greta had been casually friendly. Now, however, she seems…well, interested. Which is the opposite of how my encounters with women usually go, and understandably makes me question everything in my life up to this point.
She turns chatty. As she tears the top off her muffin then pulls off little bits to poke into her mouth, she asks me questions about life on Earth, my work, my background, and so forth. Being a polite conversationalist, I ask similar things of her, and learn quite a lot about her. Which I don’t mind at all.
“What about school?” she asks, veering away from questions about my family, which inevitably result in ghastly answers. I’m not sure if she turns from the topic of my family for my sake or hers, but the change of pace is refreshing. Sort of.
“Oh, you know,” I say airily. “Explosions in chemistry class, taking the elevator instead of the stairs, and always making sure I sit near an exit.”
“Why?” she asks, fascinated.
“Well, it’s a risk,” I admit. “If a rabid boar comes barreling into the room, I’m right there within chomping distance. But it’s more likely that something will happen inside the room. An earthquake, for example. And access to the exit becomes a critical thing.”
“So there was never a rabid boar.” She smiles, seeming charmed by the idea.
“No, there was. But it got electrocuted by a loose wire in the doorway so it worked out.”
The smile freezes on her face. “Damn.”
“Yeah. Two negatives made a positive.” As soon as I say it, I mentally kick myself. Math jokes are not the way to impress girls.
But she laughs. “I guess it did.”
“What about you?” I ask. “What was school like?”
But she made a dismissive gesture. “Nothing interesting. The same old stuff. Valedictorian. Prom queen. Blah blah blah.”
“What about university?” I ask.
“I only went for a year, then it closed down due to a goat infestation.”
Now that sounds like my kind of luck. Maybe we have something in common after all. “How does a university get a goat infestation?”
Her eyes widen and she shakes her head. “It was the strangest thing. One day we were in class and the next, goats had taken over the school. I don’t know if you’re familiar with goats, but once they’ve decided to be somewhere, it’s really hard to convince them otherwise.”
I, in fact, have no familiarity with goats. I have no regrets about that. “So then what?”
“I went to a jai-alai tournament the next day, and someone was taking video. An executive at Spark Cola saw it and noticed me in the crowd. A couple of messages and one meeting later, I was their new brand ambassador.”
That sounds exceedingly against the odds to me. “How many people were at the tournament?”
“Ten thousand or so.”
Jai-alai must be way more popular where she was from than it is on Earth. But I have trouble even beginning to compute the odds of someone picking her out of a crowd of ten thousand and tracking her down to give her a job. A job that thousands of people would have eagerly auditioned for. But no. Greta Saltz got the job without even trying.
Apparently, she’s just one of those people that fortune smiles upon. The opposite of me. That first job with Spark Cola had started Greta on her life of travel and adventure.
It sounds positively fascinating to me, but she seems bored by it all. “What about your work? Any natural disasters or hostage situations?”
Her avid interest in my foibles makes me wonder if she’s ridiculing me. But Pinky looks on curiously, and I don’t think she’d allow someone to be that kind of mean in her pub.
As we talk, Greta tears the bottom portion of her muffin into pieces and spreads them across her plate. Her process of eating fascinates me. Does she always obliterate her food this way? She cut that sandwich last night into pieces, but I’d thought at the time that was merely a matter of handling the size issue. Perhaps not.
“What’s your destination, Charlie?” she asks. “I’m headed for Mebdar III.”
I’m not sorry to move the conversation away from the disasters in my life. “I’m going to the end of the line—Mebdar IV.”
Greta’s brow furrows. “The retirement planet? Did you take a job there or something?”
Man, I really wish I could say yes to that. “No, I can work remotely from pretty much anywhere.”
“Oh, you’re visiting someone?”
I suppress a sigh. “No. I’m moving there.”
Yep, there it is. The look I’m used to getting from people who see me holding onto a staircase railing for dear life, or refusing to cross a busy road.
“Why?”
Time to give her the big truth, which will surely have her recoiling like a frightened turtle. Though perhaps she already suspects, given our conversation. “I’m a—” my voice catches. Probably a residual piece of tater tot. I clear my throat. “I’m a redshirt.”
I don’t think I’ve ever said the words out loud before, except during therapy. People like me don’t advertise our genetic heritage. Not surprisingly, it scares the shit out of people to be near someone who has a one-hundred percent chance of dying in a terrible and unlikely way—and perhaps taking some innocent bystanders with him.
But when I chance a look at Greta, she seems fascinated. A peek at Pinky reveals a total lack of concern. If anything, she looks bored. But then, what does she have to worry about? The woman could probably eat the Second Chance if she wanted to, and complain that it didn’t have enough salt.
“Wow,” Greta says. “I’ve never met one before.”
I have no answer for that. She said it like being a redshirt was interesting somehow, not a death sentence. Sudden doubt about her intelligence makes me squint at her.
“I mean, I’m sure it sucks,” she says quickly.
“You could say that. My nana’s a cyborg.”
She clicks her tongue in commiseration. “Ah, and cyborg cookies are total rubbish, aren’t they?”
“Yeah.”
Silence falls over us. We had both stopped eating and I feel uncomfortable. Exposed. I wish I’d never said anything about my history. I could have been anyone before all this, as far as they knew. Now I’m just…a redshirt.
I stand. “If you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do in my cabin.” It isn’t a lie, but Greta and Pinky surely know I just want to get out of there. They play along, though, and I thank Pinky again for the breakfast and for the life-saving.
She shrugs both off. “Come back for lunch. I’ll make sure you get something really good that
won’t kill you.”
I have no intention of that. I know they’ll see a redshirt every time they look at me from now on. “I’ll have to see if I get done in time,” I hedge.
Pinky gives me a sad look and nods. I don’t even look at Greta as I make my getaway.
Back in my cabin, I heave a sigh. It had been nice, pretending to be a normal person. For a minute there, I was even happy. I thought maybe my luck would hold for a little longer, that maybe I could get a glimpse of a normal life.
I sit and turn on the lightstream. It will have to be my companion for the rest of this trip. I’ll start on the statistics work tomorrow.
It’s almost worse, really, to have had such a good start to this trip. It raised my hopes, making the fall back to my reality hard to take.
***
After falling asleep to an old robot western on the lightstream, I wake up to a banging sound. Falling to the floor in a tangle of sheets, sure that doom has arrived, is not the best way to start a day. But I’ve begun enough days that way to be able to pick myself up with relative equanimity.
“Open up, Charlie, we’ve arrived at Posytin!” Greta’s unmistakable voice reaches me before I even make it to the door.
My shoulders sag. Why has Greta sought me out? Does she want to make sure I didn’t choke to death on my own saliva while I slept?
When the door opens, she stands there, looking excited and pretty. The sight of her happiness has me swallowing my words—which amount to a polite way of saying, Buzz off.
She wedges her bright personality right into my doorway, preventing me from closing the door or telling her I want to be alone. “Come on, grab whatever you need and let’s go! You’re going to love Posytin. We have three hours of stopover before we get underway again.”
My mouth is too full of my suddenly gigantic tongue to get any words out. I suspect a rift in the space-time continuum. Or entry into a parallel dimension. Sure, the odds of those are infinitesimal, but either possibility seems more likely than Greta Saltz wanting to go day tripping with a guy who’d nearly gotten killed by a piece of potato the day before. I run the numbers in my head and decide it must be a parallel dimension.
“You’re still in your jammies?” She looks at me with incredulity. “Come on, there are things to see!” She takes a step closer to me and grasps the hem of my shirt as if to shuck it up over my head.
I find the ability to speak. Sort of. “Blaahg!” I say. I’d like to tell you that this is a Garbdorian word for please remove your hands from my clothing, but I’d be lying. At least I’d managed to become verbal. I back away from her. Not far, given the lack of space in my cabin, but her arms fall to her sides.
“Should I give you a minute?” she asks.
“Uh, yeah. Is there a package from the laundry out there?”
She goes back into the corridor and checks the delivery bin. “Yes.” She returns holding a clothing bag.
I take it from her awkwardly. “Right. I guess I’ll get dressed then.”
We stare at each other for about three and a half seconds, then she takes a step backward, into the corridor. “I’ll be waiting right here.” She points to the deck plate below her feet.
I close the door in her pretty golden face. Which is rude, and I’m immediately sorry for it, but I’m so thrown for a loop that I barely know my ass from an exhaust pipe.
I put on my clothes and stuff my pajamas into the clothing bag to send it out for laundering. Taking a deep breath, I open the door.
“What do you want with me?” I ask. Again, rude. I know. Like I said—ass versus exhaust pipe.
Rather than being put off by my lack of manners, she smiles. “It’s your first trip away from Earth, right?”
“Yes.”
“That means this is your first trip to Posytin. I want to show it to you.”
“I don’t think you do. I mean, I’m not…” Not safe. Not normal. Not the kind of guy you want to hang around with. “…like other people,” I finish lamely.
“Neither am I,” she answers. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 3
It all happens in a blur, and before I know it, I’m about to disembark from the Second Chance to go sightseeing. I recalculate the odds of having slipped into a parallel universe.
Leaving the ship means going down an elevator that I hadn’t seen when arriving on the ship. Above it, a sign reads Do not use elevator. Please use elevator.
“I think this one’s broken,” I say. “Is there another?
Greta laughs. “Never mind the sign. It means do use the elevator.”
“But it says not to use it.”
The thing opens. It might actually look like the gate to hell, or, more likely, one of my complexes has come roaring to life. But Greta takes my hand and pulls me in. I’m so stunned by her touch that I’m like a deer in headlights. I suspect I’d walk right into a lion’s mouth if she led me there by the hand.
What is wrong with me?
As we stand there and the doors close, though, I get a very bad feeling in my stomach. Something like a porcupine that’s been lit on fire. But we begin to descend and Greta turns her head slightly to smile at me. When we get to the bottom and the doors reopen, I remember to breathe. That could have been really awful—elevators are not kind to my people. But somehow with Greta, it had been okay. So far.
The Posytin space port turns out to be small and calm. Provincial, even. Fresh-faced teenagers carry baskets full of paper brochures, which they offer to people as we filter through the airlocks. A freckle-faced boy holds one out to me, and he looks so earnest that I hurriedly accept it.
“We won’t need that. I know all the best places to visit.” Greta leads me through the small station and out to Posytin itself. Or whatever town within Posytin this is. I know nothing of the naming habits of such places.
She pauses on the sidewalk, taking in a deep breath. “Doesn’t it smell wonderful here?”
I take a tiny, cautious sniff. I have no plans of snorting a bee up my nose. Or whatever insects they have here. I must admit the aroma is nice, though. “Is that flowers?”
“Yes!” She spreads her arms in the air. “This little planet provides most of the flowers you’ll find along this trade route. A good bit beyond that, too. That’s pretty much their whole reason for being: growing flowers and flora tourism.”
“People go traveling just to look at flowers?”
“Sure.” Greta shrugs. “There are far worse reasons. I think it’s nice. I love the chance to get fresh air and some time outdoors.”
“Right. You spend a lot of your time traveling around on ships.”
“Yeah. I like it, but it gets a little stifling sometimes. All that recirculated air.” She scrunches up her nose, looking cute.
“So where are we going?”
“The best garden on Posytin.”
“What makes it the best?”
“I won’t spoil the surprise. But they also have a stand with fried flowers that you dip in a sweet sauce. It’s amazing.”
Not only am I not sure about eating in front of her again, I’m really dubious about eating flowers. But I stay quiet.
A piece of paper skitters across the ground and lands in the same spot as Greta’s next step. She bends, reaches, and comes back up with a rectangular paper with curly blue writing on it.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Local money.”
“Paper money?” I’m amazed. I’ve never seen physical currency. Banking is usually done through the First Interplanetary Bank, in entirely digital form. It’s clean, efficient, and a barrier to illegal activity since it’s so easily tracked. Not that illegal activity is impossible. Just risky.
“Something they do for the tourists. Getting people to exchange their money for this stuff is like letting them have play money. It’s fun, like a game, and they spend it accordingly.”
“How much is it?” I can’t decipher the script.
“Fifty marks.”
; “Is that a lot?”
Greta gives me a cheeky grin. “Enough to cover our activities here. Including a souvenir for you.”
“I don’t need a souvenir.” I’m not much of a collector of kitsch. Or of anything, really.
“Sure you do. This is your first visit to a planet that isn’t Earth. That’s pretty cool.”
She resumes walking, which saves me from having to reply.
We arrive at a tall, wooden arch emblazoned with Welcome to Waterfall Garden.
I freeze like a dog that just realized he’s on the way to the vet. “There’s a waterfall in there?”
“Just a little one. It’s nice.” She tries to nudge me forward.
I resist. “Define little.”
“Tiny.” She makes a vague gesture. “Nothing to worry about.”
“I don’t want to drown today. Or ever.”
She rolls her eyes and puts her arm around my waist. “You’re not going to drown. Come on.”
Her arm. Is around. My waist. I’m entirely incapable of resistance as she propels me through the arch. Once she’s sure I’m coming along, her arm falls away, but still I follow her lead.
A man approaches, dozens of loops of interwoven flowers draped over his forearm. With a happy smile, he plucks one and holds it up. An offer.
Greta nods and the man gently places the flower crown on her head. “Thank you,” she says warmly.
“You’re welcome. If anyone asks, tell them where you got it.” He winks at her.
“I will.”
As we walk, she puts a hand to the flowers. “Like it?”
“It’s pretty,” I admit, though I’ve never particularly cared for flowers. But they look nice on her.
We walk along for several minutes, down a wide path with flowering hedges on each side. The roar of water in the distance gets louder as we go. We turn a corner and there it is, a seven-foot-tall waterfall, with a cascade of frothing water rushing over.
I take a step back. Sure, it’s small, as waterfalls go. But fear shoots up my spine and no amount of tugging from Greta is going to get me past that point.
Her smile falls away and worry fills her eyes. “Okay. Okay. I’m sorry. Let’s go this way instead.”