Alien Victory

by Mark Zubro

  With teenage exasperation, another universal galactic concept, Bir said, “Perfillian wood is worth a fortune. We could be rich.”

  Mike’s interest peaked only slightly. The chances of them making money were nonexistent.

  “Which garbage?” Mike asked.

  “From one of the way early colonies. I just saw it. It’s way down deep. Where I found it, it’s really dank and moldy.”

  “What were you doing down there?”

  “Exploring. You said on our time off, it might be good to look around. I roam all over the place. And yes, I report back my mapping to Brux.”

  Mike had thought to get a clearer picture of their world by these personal inspections. So far they’d found dead ends, a few caves with unstable walls and roofs, and mounds of centuries old garbage. The earliest expeditions hadn’t had garbage removal as efficient as the latest. Or maybe when colonies were going broke, they didn’t care what they did in their last days, weeks, months, and years.

  This evening Joe was still in the fields. The first rainy season was just weeks away. Mike was tired after a long day’s work and then negotiating with the supplier who was due in days. He’d looked forward to seeing his husband and making love.

  Bir pointed. “It’s down in sector seven, level h. It would take forever to get there, but Brux has hooked up the electricity to whole new sections. With electricity some of the old moving sidewalks and ancient elevators go faster. They all kind of creak, but it’s so cool.”

  Even with what Brux had improved upon, it took nearly an hour to traverse the distance. The moving sidewalks didn’t move much faster than he could walk. The elevators might have been moved up and down by a group of bored guys who were out of shape and using ropes and pulleys.

  They came to a room at least half the size of their main storage room. This one too had plain, unadorned walls, and high ceilings, but this one had a ramp leading down just to the right of the entrance. It smelled mostly sterile and felt cool.

  They followed the ramp between mounds of garbage. “Where?” Mike asked.

  He wasn’t really suspicious. With his implant, he couldn’t be ambushed, but this was as creepy as any horror movie.

  “Just a little further. I found a stack of old provisions. Maybe we could use them.”

  Mike said, “These could be from a thousand years ago.”

  Bir said, “Couple thousand I think. I was told they don’t go bad. I tried one when I first found it. It made me kind of sick, but it didn’t kill me.”

  Mike said, “Twinkies live.”

  Bir said, “Huh?”

  Mike said, “Skip it.”

  After ten minutes, Bir stopped. He pointed the light from his communicator. “Look to the left of the direct light.” Bir jammed his fist toward a plant about eighteen feet away. He yelled. “Look at it! Look at it! We’re saved!” He extended his arm and held out his communicator. “I can’t shine it directly on them. They’re sensitive to any source of light. It will kill them or at least harm them if it’s not extremely well controlled. Yes, even artificial light. Perfillian wood plants soon die in direct sunlight.”

  Mike peered into the semi-darkness at the anemic little plant and shrugged. It looked like a largish, dead weed, gray, dull, boring, although admittedly the first growing thing he’d seen on the planet. If it was even alive.

  Bir said, “Come on, old man, look.” He waved his light around the plant. “Use yours too.”

  Mike did. To him it now looked like a better-lit gray, dull boring weed. He shrugged again. “You found a weed. How nice for you. And I’m not old.”

  “Ancient,” Bir corrected. “Don’t you know anything useful?”

  “Why are we staring at this?” Mike asked.

  “Why? Dummy!” Bir punched the older man’s arm playfully. “That’s perfillian wood.”

  Mike shone his light near it. “This is? Is it alive?”

  “Sure.”

  “It doesn’t look it.”

  “The agricultural guys will know how to perk it up, or it will be in the memory banks.”

  “Oh.”

  “This is a baby tree. There’s bigger ones deeper in. One of my sugar daddies taught me to recognize a million different plants. I can recognize and name every plant in the galaxy.”

  “Wasn’t that kind of odd? Doing plant stuff with a trick? Wouldn’t he rather be intimate in other ways?”

  Bir said, “Listen they haven’t written the book on the kinky I’ve dealt with. The plant shit was easy. Why once…”

  Mike stopped him. “Okay. Odd or not, you say this is perfillian wood. How did it get here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Mike was thinking fast. If this was the real thing and really was worth what he’d heard, he wanted time to figure out a way to use the discovery to the colony’s advantage. He also wanted to have the plant checked with Joe.

  Mike said, “Bir, we need to keep the discovery a secret.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t want the central government to know we have it. Who knows what they would do?”

  Bir nodded.

  Mike said, “Would it be okay if we put you in charge of it? But keep it a secret until you and I talk about it some more?”

  “Sure, great.”

  “I’ll talk with Joe and then you and he can work out a schedule of some kind. You’re willing to take care of these and do your regular work?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks.”

  They walked back. The boy’s arm and shoulder seemed to bump into Mike’s a bit more than they would in the normal course of two people walking together. Just before they got to the habitable sections, Bir said, “You know, if you ever wanted to, you know.”

  Mike was a little surprised at the hesitation, but he said, “I’m flattered, thanks. But I’m married. I love Joe.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  They parted. Mike hoped the kid would keep his mouth shut. With a spy or spies abounding, he didn’t think they could be too careful.

  He dragged himself to their cubicle. Joe was at the monitor for their connection to the electronics. They hugged and kissed. Mike told him the news about the wood.

  Joe said, “That’s sort of good news. Maybe great news, but I understand your hesitation. They could just move us all out.”

  “What is it with this wood?”

  They looked it up on the terminal.

  Perfillian wood was the hardest and most rare and most valuable in this part of the galaxy. In some sectors, it was a crime punishable by death to cut down one of the trees without express permission from the central government. The wood shimmered from an inner light and was not of one color, but a blond swirling into darkest ebony and all shades in between – all natural, unfinished, untouched. It grew only on a few planets in the Hrrrm system.

  If it existed here in the amount Bir claimed, they had wealth unimaginable. Mike had allowed himself to fantasize an independent colony – able to pay its own way, a utopia. Instead of million and billions of exiled miserable gay people, they would be a trillionaire colony with a leather-lunged voice in the Hrrrm’s affairs. Not likely, Mike had thought.

  If the government found out, specifically if the Religionists knew they had perfillian wood, that would be the end of the colony. They’d simply show up and confiscate all the plants.

  Joe read from the screen. “Perfillian wood grows best in darkness. Who knew? It synthesizes everything through the soil.”

  Mike asked, “How did it get here?”

  “Hard to tell. Maybe some early colony happened to bring a cutting of perfillian wood or seeds as part of their supplies. It wouldn’t have grown on the surface. Maybe they discarded what they had, and it grew on its own in the slag heap of garbage from their own or a previous colony. The slag heap might have been sitting there fermenting for thousands of years from the first colony expedition.”

  They read some more. Joe pointed to a particular passage about feeding the trees
. “You know how one of the previous colonies destroyed the entire eco-system on the planet?”

  “Yeah. Why didn’t it kill these?”

  “Perfillian wood grows best in garbage.” Joe nodded at the screen. “But the chemical they used to kill so much of the local flora and fauna?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Perfillian wood thrives on it.”

  “Why doesn’t it kill it?”

  “You know how weed killers on Earth can kill weeds and not the grass next to it?

  “Yeah.”

  “And trees on Earth take in carbon dioxide?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you know they found, in Ecuador I think it was, that fungus that eats only polyurethane, one of Earth’s most horrible pollutants?”

  Mike smiled, “I think maybe I might have missed that.” Joe tended to read and understand a whole lot more science than Mike did.

  “It was a microbe that survives on plastic. Well, this tree eats the acid that destroyed the ecosystem on this planet. Perfillian wood thrives on one of the chemicals in the substance they used to destroy the local flora and fauna, but it had to mix with the garbage, and I presume seeds from the plants here, probably for ages. And poof, you’ve got a forest of wealth.”

  Mike said, “A dream come true?”

  “Maybe. With the price of perfillian wood at five thousand dollars a foot. Gays would be trampled in the mad rush the central government would make to the colony.”

  Mike did not want to imagine what the Senate’s next loony alternative would be to the existence of gay people if the news got out.

  Joe returned to the screen and read out loud. “Roots of perfillian wood are a delicacy.”

  Mike said, “Didn’t I have them in a little dive near the river on Diversey Avenue back in Chicago? I think it was with a red sauce, heavy on the garlic.”

  Joe smiled, “Probably not.”

  “I liked it.

  Joe said, “Who doesn’t?”

  They finished their research and turned to each other. Joe said, “You’re right. We’ve got to keep this quiet for now. I’ll work with the kid.”

  Mike mentioned Bir’s offer. Joe moved close to him and ran his hand up Mike’s thigh. “You mean like this?”

  Mike rubbed his hand between Joe’s legs up to his crotch. “He didn’t get this far.”

  Joe caressed the front of Mike’s pants. “Or this far?” Joe asked.

  Their tongues entwined and bodies mashed together.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Mike and Joe sat with their feet on the ground, backs propped against the old communications shed. They listened to the gurgle of the irrigation canal ten feet away. The sun eased down behind the mountains. The heat of the ground left over from the scorching day and the cool of the setting of the sun mingled to make them comfortable.

  The Leavers hadn’t left. Mike was beginning to think it was an hysterical bluff, a freak out by those who couldn’t cope. Joe had reported a rumor he’d heard that there was infighting among the group itself about precisely what to do. Joe said, “They can’t come to a decision. All of their meetings end in fights.”

  Mike said, “Maybe they’ll fight until they’re too old to move. Maybe that’s their secret plan.”

  Joe shrugged. “I wish them all the best.”

  The perfillian wood was thriving under Bir’s care.

  Mike and Joe had attended what on Earth Mike would have called a ballet with un-Earthly noise for music. The guys on Hrrrm called it dancing. Mike thought it was a mixture of line dancing in a western bar on a Saturday night and Kabuki Theater without the elaborate makeup. There were no instruments of any kind, no piped in music. The men moved in minute increments to claps, grunts, slaps, hums, squeaks, whistles, and brief chants they made as they moved. No one touched another and all moved in unison. Some participated in only one or two of these dances. The most Mike had seen were twenty-four of them moving in unison. Joe told him they were traditional Hrrrm dances some dating back eons. They’d watched for half an hour then moved to rest against the now-unused sheds.

  Mike sighed. “No meetings tonight.”

  “Lucky you. I have a planning meeting for the pumping installation in the new sector.”

  Mike stretched, shook his shoulder muscles and yawned. “I’ve put in my ten hours of hard labor and two hours of running this madhouse. I intend to watch the stars come out and the moon rise. I may even curl up in a blanket and sleep right here.”

  Joe said, “I have Karsh to face tonight.”

  Mike smiled at Joe. “Give him my best.”

  “I may take a vacuum digger to the side of his head.”

  “Please don’t. The celebration among the men would last for days. We’d never get them back to work.”

  “We’re ahead of the quota of digging and agriculture for the past three weeks.”

  “I don’t want to hear that man’s name or discuss him for the rest of my life.”

  Joe sighed. “Your wish is my command.”

  Mike searched the heavens for the first star. The wishing star from childhood fantasies on Earth. He asked, “Do you ever wish upon a star?”

  “What kind of fairy do you think I am? Of course I do. When I was a kid I wished for a handsome prince to take me away to a place of perfection and bliss.”

  “And did it happen?”

  Joe touched Mike’s arm. “You fit part of the bill.” Joe swept his arm around at their surroundings. “But it depends on what you define this as.”

  Mike said, “Not quite as perfect as I’d want it to be.” He pointed to the sky. “There.”

  Joe gazed upward.

  Mike said, “The first star of night fall.” He settled back, closed his eyes as if he indeed would make a wish.

  A comfortable silence followed.

  Joe said, “The storms are getting lower in the mountains.”

  Mike craned his neck to look behind and above for a few moments. The eternally looming mountains hadn’t moved, but the storms had gotten larger and closer. Mike could see the snow level had fallen half again as high as it was when they arrived. Light from the setting sun glinted off it in sharp contrast to the lightning and darkness above it.

  “Rainy season will be here soon,” Mike said.

  “That’s what they told us. I hope all of our stuff is ready.”

  “And this is the short rainy season. You can make refinements and be ready for the longer one.”

  “If it’s humanly possible.”

  The alarm bell clanged.

  Mike said, “Shit.”

  Joe said, “They can’t make us respond.”

  “If Brux or that kid accidentally set off the alarm again, I’ll strangle one or both of them.”

  Brux had been training Krim in all the aspects of energy and electronics in the colony. Krim had set off the alarms twice already. Since moving from the sheds to rooms just inside the entrance, they’d been testing all the equipment. The sheds were empty, and Mike had suggested they leave them up. He wasn’t sure why. Mementoes of their first day?

  Joe said, “You will not. Krim is now the second most highly trained communications specialist in the galaxy. Brux trained him. The kid has caught on.”

  “We better go see.” Mike eased to a standing position, stretched. They began to amble to the communication center. He saw others moving in the same direction.

  Once there, Mike found Krim hunched intently over the main radar screen. With his right hand Krim moved a large dial in minute increments, while his left played rapidly over the hundreds of black buttons of the main computer hook up. The fourteen-year-old didn’t stir when Mike stopped next to him.

  “What’s up?” Mike asked.

  Without stopping his deft maneuverings, Krim pointed with his chin to the radar screen.

  Mike leaned forward and peered at it. A blip flickered erratically in and out of focus. By now Brux and several others took up stations at computer consoles.

  “A shi
p,” Krim said.

  “Probably another freighter off schedule or off course. We’re not due again until tomorrow.”

  Krim said, “I can tell that this is definitely not Nek’s ship.”

  Mike said, “Or it’s another unscheduled idiot inspection team.”

  “It’s not a freighter,” Krim said.

  Brux who now sat next to him said, “He’s right.”

  “Who is it?” Mike asked.

  “No central government ship leaves a signature or moves like this one,” Krim said. “I know. Brux has been teaching me.”

  Krim worked the controls for the largest monitor. A ship popped into view. Brux, Krim, Joe, and Mike scanned it.

  “It’s damaged,” Brux said. “And definitely not from the central government.”

  “Religionist?” Krim asked.

  “Can’t be. They’d never come here alone. There’d be a fleet.”

  “Pirates!” Brux declared.

  “Pirates?” Joe’s voice was incredulous. “Come on, Brux. What would pirates want here?”

  “Duh! Your husband.” Brux was exasperated. He pointed at the screen. “I’m reporting reality. That’s what the thing is.”

  Mike asked, “Do they need help?”

  Cak who had entered only moments before asked, “Have you lost your mind?”

  “If they need help…” Mike began.

  Cak cut him off. “They’re pirates. Damaged, half dead, their neck in a noose, they’d kill you as soon as look at you. We need to be ready to fight and kill if necessary.”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” Mike said. “We have absolutely nothing of value on this planet. No gold, no jewels, no fuel for a space ship, no zukoh. We’ve got mountains of rock and oceans of sand. I’ve never heard there was a large black market for those commodities.”

  Cak said nothing about perfillian wood. So far Bir had kept his mouth shut.

  Cak said, “There’s you.”

  The second reminder in less than two minutes caused Mike’s level of annoyance to soar, but he kept his temper. He asked, “Why aren’t the guard buoys keeping them out?”