by Jenn Thorson
Bertram slipped inside the ICV, the ladder folding itself back up, and retracting into the ship. He could still see the lawman’s lips twisting with dangerous promises.
The hatch closed. They were leaving Vos Laegos.
Chapter 11
Biking home, Rozz Mercer caught a glimpse of herself in the side mirror of a parked car. Dark circles, red rimmed eyes, wan complexion, and an almost-visible fog hovering right between the eyebrows … Yep: there she is, she thought. The postergirl for insomnia. The Bettie Page of lost REM.
Well, she’d slept a little over the last few days, she reconsidered, directing her bike up through the park. She must have, right? Or else she’d be close to seeing things and hearing voiceover narration. But between student teaching, her part-time programming gig, her own studies, and now all this hubbub about Bertram Ludlow going AWOL …
Well, the brain found sleep sort of gratuitous. Like movie bonus material, she thought. Nice if you have the time. But who does really?
At least before she’d been able to grab a good four to six hours if she worked it right. A couple of power naps between classes … An upright doze at her desk … And the full-on snorefest face-down in the campus coffeehouse. Management didn’t care as long as she bought something, anything, and wiped up the drool when she left.
But since Bertram had gone, it was all different. Sleep teased and eluded, taunted and tweaked. Now she just had too damned much on her mind.
Not that she was so exactly hung up on the guy, she told herself. Sure, she liked him okay and all … He had a decent sense of humor, a little bit of style and, unlike the last guy she went out with, didn’t seem to think of pain as a pastime to be savored and shared. Plus, she found Bertram attractive, in a tallish-Hobbit way. He was curly-haired, boyish and genuine, if you were into that. She supposed she was. Or, at least, it was a nice change from tortured and posed and poetic. And that was good enough.
But she didn’t keep coming back to thoughts of Bertram Ludlow because of some deep magnetic passion. He just didn’t inspire that kind of raw emotion in her, and that was probably just as well. No, she kept thinking about him because he’d vanished. And she didn’t care what the campus police, the real police, or even the university psychologist had concluded. Bertram Ludlow was not the kind of guy to crack and bail. He wasn’t about drama and danger. He wasn’t about attention and angst. Bertram Ludlow was about calm, firm responsibility. He wouldn’t decide to be impulsive without packing a change of underwear first.
He certainly hadn’t left, of his own will, without his shoes.
She told that to the campus police. The real police, too. But both just kept asking her how well she really knew him. How long they’d worked together. How many times they went out. Did she ever see him take drugs? Did he drink? When did she see him last? How would she describe his demeanor? They kept saying disappearances like this were usually the result of a mental breakdown, not some sort of kidnapping. That the right answer was usually the simplest. And the university psychologist, well, she seemed mainly interested in knowing how many stimulants Rozz had been taking and what kinds. Like they really knew anything about anybody.
Losers.
Rozz swerved to avoid a suddenly-opened car door and wobbled back to balance on the rutty road. “Losers!” she shouted at the driver, just for good measure. It wasn’t productive, but it made her feel better.
Only no, it really didn’t. Because it was a pretty shitty system when a grad student could just vanish and everybody shrugged it off as “psychological strain,” prompting fewer questions than it did bloodhounds.
It was a pretty shitty system when no one was willing to see who you were.
Of course, Bertram’s disappearance had been on the news. Still was, in fact. But in ever-reducing levels of importance. Yep: “No new leads at this time,” was what it boiled down to now. Ten seconds of airtime after the 20 minutes on Steelers’ pre-season. That was the weight of Bertram Ludlow’s life.
And oh, those police dogs? Those stupid mutts had just U-turned in the doorway and tromped on each other in the hall, confused and yelping. One seemed to have sniffed out Bertram to a nearby field, but that, the cops said, might just as easily have been a false positive. The young academic was gone. The scent was lost.
Bertram had smelled like coffee and ramen. Soy sauce with caffeine and a hint of fabric softener. Rozz had kinda liked that. That was gone, too.
It was these thoughts that preoccupied her. These thoughts that kept her mind relentlessly at work, twisting and turning over every discussion, every police interview, every moment she and Bertram had spoken before he vanished. Trying to understand. To think of any information that might lead to answers.
It was these thoughts that kept her from noticing the giant pothole before her.
The front wheel of her bike dropped into it like waffle to toaster, sending Rozz flying over the handlebars in a surprising display of pastry-popped aerodynamics. She turned, trying to catch herself, but only caught air—helmet flying from her short, fuchsia hair in one direction, her backpack and books skidding off in another. She met asphalt, hard.
The world spun.
She lay there a moment and groaned, slowly peeling her face from the ground.
She wiped blood from her lip, only to realize she’d bitten her tongue. She dusted gravel from her hands and noticed road rash there, too. She brushed gravel from her knees and then quavered to stand.
The ankle complained with a jolt that shot up her leg.
Twisted.
Just one more thing twisted around here, she thought and dropped into a patch of soft grass on the side of the road. Did that bike wheel look bent? The wheel looked bent to her. Bent and twisted. Such was life these days.
Or was that just her vision rippling? Suddenly, it was hard to focus, and she felt very queasy.
She settled into the grass to peer at the sky, to feel the level stability of the wonderful, solid earth under her back. It felt strangely warm and comfortable there in the sun. It dried the blood on her cheek, her lips, her knee. It caressed away concerns and nausea with soothing late summer heat that made her sleepy. So sleepy.
She could call somebody, she thought suddenly. Call someone with a car. Did she know anyone with a car? Probably. Though it wouldn’t spring to mind.
Or maybe she could just sleep here in the park, her brain suggested lazily. Sleep in the nice soft grass and not get up for days and days and days …
Or maybe she had a concussion, she considered further, jolting herself back to consciousness. And should you sleep with a concussion or try to stay awake? She couldn’t remember that, either. Did she not remember because she was concussed or because she never really knew? She didn’t recall.
Life was such a bitch.
She saw the spaceship that moment, dark and smooth, and flying in low over the field. She didn’t have a good perspective on how big it was. Initially, it looked no bigger than one of the yellow jackets wavering around her view, pestering, hovering, landing and tasting the blood and sweat on her skin. But as it came in lower, she began to sense the magnitude of the craft. Many times the size of a car, and almost soundless.
Most people only saw stars when they hit their heads. But Rozz … Rozz was seeing spaceships. And it was funny, Rozz considered, because she never had liked sci-fi that much. The stuff on TV relied so often on stark good and evil, big boobs in catsuits, and alien invasion. Not that she wouldn’t have minded flying around space with … Oh, who was that guy? … That doctor dude? … Who?
Nope, she knew she wasn’t going to remember. Her head throbbed too much to draw it out.
She heard a whirring sound, a few moments of silence, and then the clang, clang, clang of shoes on a hard metallic surface. She heard voices talking, which part of her recognized she really shouldn’t be able to understand. They were tinny, but sounded like English. Only they weren’t really English, were they? They were thousands of different languages … hundreds
of thousands of languages … millions of different languages, maybe … which could be understood only by the ears of those who recognized them. Millions of different alien tongues being projected at once, until they found the right listener. Including Earth English.
Or Rozz Mercer had a scary-big head injury.
“I think this might just be the investment property for you,” a female voice was saying in chirpy tones. “The planet is located in a quiet neighborhood. It has its own sun. A breathable atmosphere for the oxygen-dependant life-forms of your choice. And I can recommend a good exterminator with tenting services to take care of any of the pre-existing humans, so they won’t be in your way. That could be handled before you moved in, of course. So please don’t let that impede your decision about the property. Remember, we’re very flexible.”
Tenting? Exterminator? Humans? Rozz felt a chill run down her spine, or maybe that was just the sun going behind the clouds. She lifted her head to see the speakers, but the world spun out of control. It whirled her back to the welcome security of the ground.
“Well, Mimsi my dear, I will let you in on a little something,” a second female voice began, its tones smooth and mellow. It was soothing, magnetic, with a musky heat to it. Maternal, yet with firmness suggesting scalding magma bubbled just under the surface. “I am actually less interested in the planet, than its people,” purred the voice. “But I understand that it’s a package deal, is that correct? If I take the Tryfe-people, I must take the planet, as well?”
“I’m afraid so, Ms. Pollux,” said the one named Mimsi.
“‘Ms. Pollux’?” laughed the other. It rang out like bells. “Ah, we’re friends here, Mimsi. ‘Spectra,’ please.”
“Spectra,” repeated Mimsi. “Well, Spectra, the seller really wants a streamlined sale. So the bids are for the property and all of its contents.”
“I respect that.”
“Can you share what your plans are for the Tryfe-people?”
“Let’s just say it has to do with the LibLounges and my infopill-of-the-day club.”
“Ohhhhh,” the one named Mimsi exhaled. “What an honor! I absolutely love the CapClub. You know, I used to have such a difficult time deciding what information I wanted to ingest. I mean choosing entertainment was just so … so …”
“Burdensome?”
“Why, yes! Burdensome!” Delight filled Mimsi’s voice.
“I get that a lot,” the other agreed.
“But now that I’ve joined your Featured CapClub Feature-of-the-Day infopill distribution, I never have to worry about what to ingest anymore. It’s such a relief. And knowing that we ingest the book capsules you ingest yourself, well … I always just know it’s going to be a poignant infopill worth my time. Oh, but I’m probably embarrassing you.”
“No, my dear, the truth should not be hard to hear,” Spectra said gently.
“Well, I wish I’d asked you about your goals for Tryfe sooner. But, of course, I hate to pry.”
“Of course you do, Mimsi.”
“If I’d known you were particularly interested in the Tryfe-humans, I would have arranged for us to encounter one or two of them. In a controlled setting, of course. They’re not members of the GCU yet. Some of them get a little high-strung when they see us coming.”
They laughed merrily.
“We even prepped the ship with Tryfe translators,” continued Mimsi. “Not the easiest thing to do for planets outside the GCU, but that just shows how dedicated we are to our clients.”
“It’s interesting you mention it, Mimsi,” said Spectra, “because I was going to ask about the Tryfe-human I see there in the grass.”
There was a gasp. “Why, I totally missed that!”
Naturally, thought Rozz fuzzily, they want to see the human.
“It’s a female,” Mimsi said. “She looks hurt.”
“I think you’re right,” Spectra agreed.
“She seems to have fallen off that contraption there.”
“I believe you’re right again.”
“Do you think another Tryfe-human will be along to help her?”
“Oh, fer the love of God,” managed Rozz around her swollen tongue, “could you thtupid halluthinationth clear off tho I can get thome fucking retht?” Struggling weakly to sit, Rozz choked back the nausea that washed over her in a cold, pounding wave, grounded herself, and looked up. And there she spied the two strangest things she’d ever laid eyes upon—and that was saying something; she attended the on-campus art gallery regularly.
What’s more, shattering all pre-conceived notions, these visions involved neither big boobs, nor catsuits. Which just goes to show, you can’t trust Hollywood.
The one being resembled an aging blow-up doll with tight, synthetic hair. All plastic and stretched and injection-molded. She wore some shiny-looking business suit with a large shiny nametag.
The other was simply immense—not in fat, but sheer size and sturdy Amazonian thickness. Thick fingers, thick hands, thick arms and legs and feet. The woman’s aqua-blue hair was like an entire ocean’s rolling surf. Her aqua-blue eyelashes were like great forest fronds. Her creamy skin was a quartz coastline, washed smooth over time by the waves. She stood a good ten feet taller than anyone Rozz had ever seen, like a moving, living monument to herself.
This alien woman’s clothing appeared to be made of nothing tangible. Just gas reflections and moonbeams and stardust and solar flares, which changed, flashed and covered strategically, depending on how she moved. It was a fascinating, dizzying, mesmerizing sort of glamour.
Rozz Mercer, who under normal circumstances had quite a lot to say on virtually any subject, found her bitten tongue with absolutely nothing to share. And her brain, which had really taken one for the team today, decided that it had had about enough of this whole consciousness thing after all. It determined what it really deserved was a nice recuperative holiday in the sub-level.
It only took a moment for it to pack.
“I told you,” said Mimsi Grabbitz, shaking her head sadly at the figure out-cold on the ground. “High-strung.”
“Open the ICV if you would, Mimsi?” Spectra Pollux asked, lifting the girl as easily as a sack of new potatoes.
“You’re putting her in the ship?” asked Mimsi, wide eyes growing wider.
“To borrow her. Just for a little while.” The sack of potatoes didn’t know it, but she’d aroused the giant alien’s equally giant sense of compassion. “I can help her, you see. Make sure she gets well again.” Spectra Pollux said. Though that wasn’t the whole truth. The Tryfe girl had also piqued the lady’s even bigger business sense. “And I do believe she can help me with my bid for Tryfe.”
Excerpt from:
How To Gain Pals and Sway Life-forms in Cosmic Commerce
Chapter Nineteen
With permission from the
Eddisun Center for Ideas, Interceptive Marketing and Cliché Prevention
A Dose of Healthy Pre-Made Decisionry: Spectra Pollux and the CapClub
Overview
It’s as much a part of the daily routine as the hum of the Food Preparation Unit and the buzz of the personal molecular cleanser. It’s the arrival of the Featured CapClub Feature-of-the-Day, and life-forms just can’t wait to devour its contents. In almost no time, they feel the flood of information course through their minds and bodies, they hasten to their local LibLounge for in-depth discussion, and they wait eagerly for their next hand-picked literary, inspirational or autobiographical fix.
Called everything from “the one real intergalactic unifier” (Maternal Archetype Today) to “a pill-popping, pop-culture mind-frag” (Anti-Matter Vortex unimag), Spectra Pollux’s Featured CapClub Feature-of-the-Day program is vastly popular, often controversial and always leaves life-forms talking.
Yet how has Pollux encouraged sentient beings across the GCU to hand over their infopill self-determination so willingly? How has one former Didactics professor from Rumoolita transformed a universe of independent life-for
ms with diverse interests into eager LibLounge and CapClub fans, ravenous for her next fortifying capsule selection? And how is this “pre-made infopill decisionry,” as Pollux calls it, part of her greater plan for mass education and enlightenment?
This chapter shares the techniques Spectra Pollux has used to change the infopill market from one of “overwhelming selection and burdensome personal choice” to a smooth, streamlined, pre-determined process that, coincidentally, also leaves a lot of time for sitting around in LibLounges drinking frothy beverages.
Giant Dreams, Super-Sized Success
Spectra Pollux was born on Rumoolita, the youngest and smallest of three sisters in a world where size is greatly prized. Said Pollux, “I always felt my parents really couldn’t see me. And I mean that literally. I was only three kroms tall when I was a teenager. That’s very undersized for a Rumoolitan girl, where my sisters were four kroms easily and my parents were in the five krom range. I was stepped on daily during most of my formative years. On many occasions, they would call me for dinner, not realizing I was already there. And I just kept thinking, if I couldn’t truly be large, I must think large. Thinking large has gotten me to the heights I am today.” (Pollux on Pollux. Spectra Pollux. RP: 15.)
Young Pollux’s attention to both her Didactics lessons and a passion for Kachunkettball earned her a scholarship to the GCU’s illustrious Quad Three College and Spa. Among her non-Rumoolitan Kachunkettball teammates, the towering Pollux was a one-woman powerhouse. “Spectra was the best Lower Lobber the college has ever seen,” said team captain and Upper Chucker, Zang Watley. “When she racked the ball in her shoop—why, not a player on the field wasn’t worried about that painful rebound parzak!” (Kachunkettball Illustrated. “Spectra Gets Her Goal.” Jeen Marplezot. RP: 158.)