There Goes the Galaxy

by Jenn Thorson

  It was also at Quad Three College and Spa that Pollux discovered her passion for teaching. Explained Pollux, “I realized infopills were truly under-utilized in pre-Didactics learning. So many students came to my class having never devoured the prerequisite infopills they needed for the hands-on portion of the class. As a result, I spent more time locating and distributing infopills than carrying on with my lesson plans. Soon, students were actually stopping me on the way to class, asking whether I could get them a pill on this or that topic on the side. They didn’t want their friends knowing there was so much they hadn’t devoured yet.” (Pollux on Pollux. Spectra Pollux. RP: 35.)

  It wasn’t long before Pollux traced the source of the problem to print. “Parents were encouraging their progeny to read the print their family already owned, instead of spending the yoonies on infopills. I think that’s really what motivated me in the Print Liberation Lounge initiative. Infopills were clearly the future, but print was continuing to block our path to greater enlightenment. The LibLounges helped remove those stacks of print and got people together, talking.” (Pollux on Pollux. Spectra Pollux. RP: 82.)

  It was as Pollux began choosing new selections for the Quad Three LibLounges she managed, that she saw the potential for pre-approved infopill selections. “Go into any infopill distributor and you’re surrounded by walls and walls of bottled capsules. To find out what’s on them, you have to push a button on the dispenser and waste time listening to a cumbersome several-sentence summary. I thought, ‘Who has time to listen to summary after summary to find a good infopill? No one will learn anything this way.’ I realized what we needed was something that would just say, ‘You’ll like this. Here: eat it.’ And that’s basically when the Featured CapClub Feature-of-the-Day was born.” (Pollux on Pollux. Spectra Pollux. RP: 103.)

  Today, the CapClub has subscribers across all four quadrants of the GCU, infopills dominate early learning, and print has largely become a historic tale GCU elders relay to their second-level progeny at holidays.

  “I run the CapClub because I believe everyone in the GCU deserves a Pollux level of good living. I want you all to have more knowledge and more time to enjoy it, which is why I shoulder the burden of hand-picking each and every infopill that becomes my Featured CapClub Feature. Do I learn about each infopill before I digest it? Of course; I listen to each and every pill summary, which sometimes takes almost a whole Universal hour out of my day. Do I always understand what each infopill I promote is about? That’s not the point. The point is doing what you can to become ‘Your Best You.’ And by following my CapClub choices, life-forms all over the GCU are doing that, every day.” (GCU Now. “Polluxian Method: How to Be Your Best You.” Spectra Pollux. RP: 4125.)

  Pills of Pollux Promotional Pithiness

  What lessons-learned can young marketers suck up and digest from Spectra Pollux’s CapClub program? Wash down these helpful hints!

  —Never underestimate life-forms’ innate need to offload responsibility for even the simplest tasks. Spectra Pollux understands that no responsibility is ever too small to pawn-off onto someone else. And, says Pollux, that opens up niche markets. “Telling people what they want to absorb is just the beginning. We’re starting to see lines of pre-chewed foods; child-rearing pills, so parents never have to say “no”; and even music club capsules that decide what music you should like and play as in-ear ambiance day and night.’” But, remember, this is only the beginning. There are plenty of responsibilities still out there, waiting for someone to develop clever new ways to avoid them. The next idea might just be yours!

  —There’s nothing like fear of ostracism to bring people together! Spectra Pollux knows the universe can be a very cold place for the life-form who hasn’t digested the Featured CapClub Feature-of-the-Day. So think: how can you make those who don’t buy your product feel like the one-faced cousin at a Dootett family reunion? Make the threat of not having your product greater than the joy of having it, and you’re on your way to Pollux-sized success.

  —Know best and share that often. Spectra Pollux is known for her exquisite good taste; we know, because she says so in every CapClub announcement. Market research shows that 75% of the time, sentient life-forms don’t recognize quality unless it’s accompanied by supporting references to how stellar it is. Pollux’s example shows that building your intergalactic reputation for cosmicness begins with you.

  Chapter 12

  Bertram woke to a siren’s blare. In the ship’s cabin, a yellow light in the ceiling whirled, and a computerized voice was chanting, “Warning! System set for manual landing. Landing controls unmanned. System set for manual landing. Landing controls unmanned.”

  Bertram gave a start and leapt up out of the chair he’d been sleeping in for the past few hours. Ignoring the kink in his neck and a spine doing a fair imitation of a spiral-bound notebook, he ran across the room and pressed the button that opened the cockpit doors, only to find the cockpit empty. Out the front window, Bertram spied a large cluster of little planets—30 to be precise, though he didn’t waste time counting. And the computer was absolutely right: one teal-green planet was much, much closer than Bertram felt comfortable with. They were in their descent and getting ready to land.

  They probably needed a pilot for that.

  “Rollie?” Bertram dashed into the main cabin and went through door-by-door. It was a mad rush of button-pushing, doors shooshing and painfully empty rooms, all the while the sirens wailed.

  At last—just about the time Bertram pondered escape pods, and whether his driver was currently enjoying one—Bertram came across a small, dim, sparse chamber. And in it, placid as the guest of honor in a wake, Bertram Ludlow found the missing captain. Eyes closed, the alien rested on what looked to be a solid marble slab. A small, thin cushion, about the size of a washcloth was under his head. His utility belt and holster were on the floor beside it, his coat in a puddle beside that.

  “Oh, thank God! There you are,” Bertram shouted over the sirens. “Don’t you hear that? You gotta get up. It’s Nett.”

  The captain lay motionless as a frat boy who discovered Jell-o shots.

  Bertram sighed irritably. His patience was in short supply when it involved possibly splattering across a planet. “Rollie, you can sleep it off later. We need you in the cockpit now.”

  But Rollie didn’t hear. He didn’t stir.

  Bertram drew nearer, his own chest pounding now, as he stared at the prone, unmoving figure. Yet for the Hyphiz Deltan, there was no rise and fall of breath. Bertram shook the man gently—then not gently—to the same disturbing indifference. Bertram touched the figure’s pale, scarred forearm, which was so cold and clammy, fishermongers would have tossed it in the pile and slapped on a price tag. “Oh God …”

  Bertram felt the sweat beading up on his own back, felt his knees turn to cold, clotted gravy. He leaned in to listen to Rollie’s heart, but he wasn’t entirely sure where that would be. He tried the general chest-ish region, strained to listen over the shrieking sirens, and found the task hopeless. He grabbed Rollie’s wrist for pulse.

  Pulseless.

  He raced to the main cabin, snatched the metal stew pot, ran back and held it up to Rollie’s nose and mouth.

  No condensation. On impulse, Bertram reached for Rollie’s toolbelt on the floor and withdrew one of the knives the Deltan had there. He took a deep breath and, carefully, made a long thin cut on Rollie’s bare forearm.

  No motion. No flinch of pain. An orange-brown fluid came to the surface, but barely.

  Bertram’s felt his own shoulders slump, and his hope seep somewhere down into his big toe.

  “Way to go, Rollie,” he chided the body on the slab. “Great timing, you big alien bastard. Thanks a lot.”

  Bertram’s mind swam as he tried to reconcile himself with the situation. Had the Deltan been unable to endure another year of Zenith Skytreg’s leadership? Was this his way of escaping Altair-5 and beating the RegForce forever? Or had too many years of alien b
ooze, prison terms, two-faced ex-wives and Feegar battles finally caught up with him?

  Bertram had no time to mull it over. He sprinted to the cockpit. “Warning! System set for manual landing. Landing controls unmanned. Warning! System set for—”

  “I’m here! I’m here!” Bertram told the machine, diving into the pilot’s seat and scanning the area. The sirens and announcement system whirred to a stop, a relief to the ears, if not the nerves. “All right,” he began, “let’s just hope aliens believe in owner’s manuals.” He started searching under seats. He ruffled through compartments.

  Then he realized: “Unless the manual came in capsule format.” It sounded like Truth the moment he said it. Stupid Forwardists. Couldn’t leave well enough alone. They had to go changing all the owner’s manuals to pills while decent people needed to not crash and explode.

  “Okay, think, Bertram, think!” He slid behind the ship’s wheel and scanned the front panel for some clue what to do next. Here, gauge needles appeared to be heading leftward. There, bar graphs were going up and down. And something in the corner periodically said, “Bip!”

  Struck with an idea, in a clear, authoritative voice Bertram announced, “Computer, go to autopilot landing!”

  He paused, listened.

  The planet grew closer, frighteningly closer. The bar graphs jounced. The needles continued leftward. And that thing in the corner gave a “bip,” possibly just to brighten the mood a little.

  “Computer: landing instructions,” Bertram tried again, his voice cracking now slightly under the weight of the task ahead of him. But advice wasn’t forthcoming. Backs’ ship had voice controls, didn’t it? But either they were another one of those options Rollie felt was gratuitous, they were turned off, or the ICV was too busy screaming through the planet’s atmosphere right now to chat.

  So Bertram seized the wheel and gave it a good backwards yank—then a series of frantic ones—but the thing was either jammed or locked into place. He stroked the stubble on his jaw with trembling fingers and scanned for a wheel release. None of the buttons on the console said anything remotely useful.

  “Underpressure? GravFloor Mode Lock? Upper Lower Lomb Casing? Lower Upper Umb Cover? Kretch?!” He scanned desperately now. “Where’s the one that says ‘Autopilot’? Where’s the one that says ‘In case of emergency’? Where’s the one that says ‘About to Die in a Fiery Detonation’? Where’s that, huh, pal?”

  “Who on flaming Altair are you talking to?” Rollie asked, leaning, squinting puzzled from the doorway. He motioned at Bertram. “Anyway—out. You’re in my seat.”

  Bertram gaped. Rollie had color again. His eyes were keen. His movements were smooth, snappy and controlled. All signs pointing to a significant lack of death about the guy.

  “C’mon. Move, time’s wastin’.” He twiddled impatient fingers at Bertram.

  Knees still weak, Bertram barely stood and almost tumbled into the copilot’s chair.

  “And I see I’m bleeding,” the Deltan observed calmly. “Your handiwork, is it?” He held up his left forearm where a long, very bloody cut ran up it, standing out bright rust on pink, scarred skin. Dropping into his seat, he drew a pen-like object from his belt, flipped a switch on the gizmo, and ran it along the cut. Humming, the little tool fused the skin together nicely but left a raised white line where the cut had been. It matched the other white lines he already had.

  Rollie tucked the tool back in its case, took the wheel, flipped a few levers, spun a few dials, and even Bertram could tell the ship was in a better position for landing. “That’s serious trouble on Hyphiz Delta, that is.”

  “What is?” Bertram managed.

  “Assault.”

  “You were dead,” Bertram reminded him.

  “Asleep,” Rollie corrected, as they swept over the largest planet in the Nett system. He hooked a thumb at the harness on Bertram’s chair. “Fasten.”

  Bertram looked for the harness and secured himself in. “You weren’t breathing,” he went on. “You were cold. You had no pulse. You didn’t bleed out.”

  “Mm,” agreed Rollie.

  “In Pittsburgh, we call the next of kin over that sort of behavior.”

  At this, Rollie raised a keen eyebrow, as if the information was all just some fascinating biological difference to note for later. “Hyphizites pretty near shut down when we sleep. Total sensory deprivation, extremely slowed vitals. It’s a complete recharge, you know. Forty-five Universal minutes a day does me right, typically. Others, well … say, an hour, hour and a half. That’s why we got the laws.”

  “Laws.” Bertram leaned back in the copilot’s chair and closed his eyes. He had a headache again. He massaged the area at the bridge of his nose.

  “About touching a sleeping Hyphizite,” Rollie said. “Very strict stuff. Otherwise, half of us would be murdered in our beds. I mean, I could tell you some stories.”

  “I’m sure you could,” Bertram said with some certainty. “And that slab is …?”

  “Slab?” He blinked, then understood. “Hyphizite bed. I’d like to get one custom built but can’t manage it right now.”

  “It’s a slab,” Bertram reemphasized.

  “Great for the posture,” Rollie told him.

  Silence fell as Bertram watched the craft swoop in close over a body of brilliantly blue-green water glistening under a sun, to land neatly on what appeared to be a small lush island in its center. Flowers bloomed the size of compact cars. And a brightly plumed bird-lizard crashed through the foliage to peer at its reflection in the ICV’s front glass shield. It stared riveted now, cocking its head to the side, a sac under its throat bobbing in time to the throb at Bertram’s temples. Rollie flipped levers, spun dials, attended to the device that went “bip,” and the ship settled neatly into silence.

  Finally Bertram couldn’t take it any longer. He found himself saying something aloud that he’d been feeling, on and off, for quite a while. “None of this is in my mind, is it? None of this has ever been in my mind.”

  Rollie gave him a brief glance as he double-checked the controls. “What tipped it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, the level of detail. How real the pain feels.”

  By now seven or eight of the bird-lizards were peering at themselves in the reflective windshield, cocking, bobbing and raising broad, webbed flaps off the tops of their heads like great plumed golf umbrellas. It looked like a Steelers’ stadium crowd during a bad rainstorm. Or singles’ night at a warehouse district bar, where things were getting desperate.

  “Also, I am not this colorful.”

  “Ah.” Rollie nodded knowingly, then turned a thoughtful look to the creatures outside. Two had started up an enthusiastic yodeling serenade to the saucy feathered lookers they saw shimmering before their eyes, a song which could be heard faintly through the hull. “I only hope they don’t try to mate with the ship,” he said, frowning. “I just had it waxed.”

  The bird-lizards scattered with a scrambling clatter and a whoosh of wings, love life put on hold, as Rollie lowered the ship’s ramp and the two travelers stepped down onto Nett-30. The air was heavy with blossom perfume and the savory aroma of alien spices. The thick grasses had a vague blue tinge to them, just “off” enough to make Bertram want to adjust the color values setting in his eyeballs.

  There was little question where they were headed. A path of glistening quartz-like paving stones formed a winding path through the greenery—or bluery, as the case was—around a series of bright gardens, and up a hill to a white pillared dome.

  “’Least the planet’s still here,” Rollie mused, leading the way. “After the Seers’ Tower blanked, I hadn’t much hope for our Nett prophets.”

  “How do we know they won’t arrest us on sight?” Bertram asked his back. The fact that Bertram really was a fugitive from justice— intergalactic justice, no less—was sinking in. And it was funny because on Earth, as far as encounters with the law went, Bertram Ludlow had only gotten one ticket in his entire life
, and it was for biking in a cars-only area. He knew he was guilty and didn’t want the hassle of a court appearance, so he’d paid the thing the day he got it.

  Here in the GCU, however, Bertram was wanted for helping a dangerous prisoner escape … For a jailbreak of his own … For an assault on law enforcement personnel … And for who knew how many other charges. Yet the concept of turning himself in seemed impossible to imagine, almost laughable. Maybe it was because he knew he couldn’t do anything productive for his planet if he were tucked away in a Hyphiz Deltan prison, making license plates for ICVs. (Or whatever intergalactic prisoners did there between, say, shiv-carving and dinner.)

  Maybe it was because he’d simply gone too far to turn back now.

  Hard to say.

  Up and up they climbed, ducking under arches and through areas of strange giant fruits and vegetables ripening in the sun; forward to tiered fields of warm waving grains; past herds of round, bouncing pink livestock that made a cheery “squonk” as they went by; on and on. With each arch, they seemed to enter a new world. Until finally, they reached a set of elaborately carved white stone steps, and behind it, the white domed structure raised by hundreds of stately pillars.

  On each side of the steps was a guard. To the left side was a beefy humanoid with dark gray skin, a hard face, and great shining horns springing from the top of his head. To the right, an equally powerful-looking humanoid covered in thick fur, with large clawed hands, and sharp teeth. Both were draped in cobalt blue robes with fine needlework in gold around the edges.

  Rollie strode up to this pair and said, “We’re here to see the Prophets of Nett.” Even at his height, he stood several inches shorter than these immense creatures.