by Jenn Thorson
What a shame, she thought. Space could be such a blast if not for all the pushy, control freak E.T.s.
Rozz was locking down the last of the presentation goodies when the shadow of Spectra Pollux fell over her.
The woman’s face looked so clear it was almost dewy. Her lips were turned in a small stiff smile, like the rosebud on a tuxedo lapel. Her dress was an unreadable mix of fog and sand.
“Oh!” Rozz jumped in spite of herself, and she compensated by indicating the travel-safe containers. “I think we’re all set, Spectra. Everything for the presentation is ready to go.”
Spectra made no move as if she heard her. The rosebud smile blossomed slightly. “Rozz, sit down.”
Rozz looked around the ship’s hold and took a seat on one of the larger cases. She waited. From Rozz’s seated position, Spectra Pollux seemed to loom 100 feet tall. She imagined that was the idea.
“We’ll be leaving soon, Rozz, leaving for Skorbig,” Spectra said. “And I think you should know, I’m disappointed.”
Rozz widened her eyes in a way she’d been working on lately. It made her look extremely innocent, if slightly dim. “Oh? Won’t the ship get good fuel mileage?”
“I am disappointed,” Spectra began again, her tone a firm demonstration that now was not the time for innocent or dim, “because you have failed to appreciate what I’ve been trying to do for you. For everyone on your planet.”
“I know what you’re trying to do for us, Spectra,” Rozz told her.
“I had thought I could transform you into the best CapClub leader there ever was. That I could mold you into someone informed, efficient, friendly, and quick with a mootaab milkshake.”
“I do all those things, Spectra,” Rozz reminded her gently.
“And do you also tell Heavy Meddler reporters lies about my organization? Do you also start rumors that make it look as if I have something to hide, that imply that my business is corrupt? Do you hint I’m covering over some sort of scandal? Do you undermine me? Is that how you repay me for wanting nothing more than for you to Be Your Best You?”
“Mostly I wipe the counters and gather up the print ashes from the LibLounge incinerators,” Rozz said.
“I suppose,” Pollux sighed as if to herself, “that there is simply no empowering some life-forms. That certain beings are not equipped to appreciate the wonders, the beauty, that’s presented to them.”
“You’re disappointed,” Rozz added helpfully.
“I’m afraid our work together has lost some of its twinkle for me, yes, my dear. With your repeated attempts at running away from what’s good for you and by spreading these vile rumors, you’ve become a burden I have only chosen to bear because I believe so strongly in second chances.” She motioned as if all the weight of the GCU had been placed across her impressive Rumoolitan shoulders. “But tomorrow morning’s presentation is your final chance to make it up to me. To yourself. To all of Tryflingkind.”
Rozz wondered how long Pollux had been rehearsing this speech.
“I am still willing to offer your people this opportunity, Rozz. I believe that it is possible that I can lift your species up out of backspace degradation and into the exciting world of fast-serve health beverages and infopills. But the question is, Rozz: do you believe it?”
“I didn’t start those rumors, Spectra,” Rozz lied sincerely. She was a little scared how easily it came.
Spectra’s gown had become a flat, gray swirl, like a cyclone in motion. “I saw you talking to those reporters,” she said.
Rozz paused and bit her lower lip. She dug the floor coyly with the toe of her uniform’s boot. She found herself giving it a long, appropriately awkward moment. Finally, she said, “You know what I told those reporters?” A giggle started to form, and Rozz quelled it by clearing her throat. “I told those reporters how much you balance every day, without so much as a complaint. I told them how devoted you are to your CapClub subscribers. I explained how thorough and caring and altruistic you are with every choice you make for us. I told them all of those things because I owe you so much and I know you’d never, ever tell them yourself.” She gave the wide-eyed expression her Best Her. “I told them what I did because I believe, Spectra! I really, really do!”
The “do” hung in the air like chimed bells, pure and hopeful.
Spectra Pollux let it hang there, while she sized Rozz up for what seemed like years. All the while, the shades of the woman’s gown wavered from stone gray to pebble brown and back again. It was pebbles buffeted by surf and whirling with sand. It was shifting and unreadable.
Finally Spectra Pollux said, “We’ll take off in a few minutes.”
And since lightning didn’t shoot from Spectra’ dress in wild electric abandon and strike her where she stood, Rozz guessed she must have made a pretty convincing show of it. At least for now.
The smell was overpowering. It had taken a team of experts and a number of days to crack open the false wall to the hidden room inside Oogon Bungee’s impounded ICV. And now, with the seals blown, 29 booby-traps unboobied, two anagram security codes puzzled out using a primitive form of Hyphizite speech, 12 separate locks undone, and much time wasted setting explosives on what was, remarkably enough, explosion-resistant materials, they were in. The panels were finally all removed, and W.I. Mook was almost certain what lurked inside had to be dead.
He based this on what he described in his official report to the Podunk Peace Guards as “the fragrance of decomposition and excrement emanating forthwith.”
The RegForce had become involved because the Peace Guards had desperately required technical assistance and requested Mook’s help specifically. At this stage in their fledgling membership with the GCU, they simply weren’t equipped to deal with this sort of advanced lock system, and with half their patrol on temporary disability, Mook hadn’t minded stepping in.
He made sure to take meticulous notes for their records. It was an amusing novelty to write by hand with instrument and paper. He hadn’t done that since one of his childhood Didactics classes, a course that taught things students would rarely use but which reflected a lengthy Honored Tradition. Like diagramming the action words in a Hyphiz Deltan sentence. (Most Deltan sentences were 85% action words.) Or making pottery ashtrays for your parental archetypes, though the planet had been publicly conflagration-free for 200 U-years.
Truth be told, Mook was curious himself what Rolliam Tsmorlood and the mysterious Tryfe man had been doing in the ship belonging to Oogon Bungee. Tstyko had bet Mook a wheel of mootaab cheese—the finely-aged variety, too, none of that flash-processed flavorless muck—that Tsmorlood had stolen the craft for himself.
Mook, however, was of a different mind. Tsmorlood’s own ICV had been there, cloaked, on the Podunk grounds. Mook found the look of Tsmorlood’s transport, like most Protostar models, to be ponderous and cumbersome, as if some tumorous growth had spawned other tumorous growths in a quest for full-body domination. Yet the rumor that wafted along Underworld channels suggested Tsmorlood was irrationally fond of that vehicle and unlikely to ever seek an upgrade.
So why was Tsmorlood there?
Upon cracking the seal to the hidden room, the RegForce team backed off and gave it a few minutes to air out. “If I’d known,” began W.I. Igglestik Tstyko meditatively, “I would have brought along my protective outerwear and breathing apparatus. My wife gave me a very smart set for our last Hy Holidays. I’ve been looking for a chance to break it in.”
The Hy Holidays in the Hyphiz system were a multi-day celebration involving get-togethers, letting off steam and—in the Tstyko household, at least—gifts of new hazardous materials protective gear.
At Mook’s questioning glance, Tstyko added, “Oh, I know the RegForce provides them to us, Mook. But it never is the same as owning your own.” He peered into the darkness of the ICV. “I’d say that’s had enough time to blow the stink off, wouldn’t you?”
“Highly doubtful,” mused Mook, “but as the philosopher Nanga
ra once said, ‘It is better to be the head and forepaws of the raging rorrdrasher than the tail-end, as both the view and the air is always clearer.’”
“Nangara said that, eh, Mook?” Tstyko queried cheerfully. He was always upbeat on these sorts of RegForce outings. “Why, she really was a bit of bright beam, wasn’t she?”
“I suggest we focus on the task at hand, Ig.” Laser drawn, Mook stepped silently into the hull and approached the once-hidden room.
It was pitch black and still smelled like the backend of that rorrdrasher. Mook withdrew a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and held it to his nose. He said, “Lights.” And the overhead lights flickered on, revealing the compartment’s contents.
Food wrappers and empty beverage containers littered the floor, all of them bearing the name of DiversiDine Entertainment Systems and Aeroponics. Star charts and slim digital travel guides sat in ragged piles, sporting ads for locales across the GCU’s four corners, as well as some outerland expeditions. A few were blank now, their power sources having drained with time.
On one wall was a to-do list, detailing elaborate PR plans for sweeping some future Intergalactic Underworld Society election. Items had been crossed out and added in an increasingly hard-to-read hand.
One emptied storage container in a far corner of the room had become a creative toilet.
And there in the back—crouched behind several crates of some DiversiDine product Mook did not recognize called “DrinkThis”— was the laser-wielding inhabitant of this uninhabitable space, Oogon “Backspace” Bungee.
Bungee’s plan may have been to leap at them, lasers flaring, and make his exit over their motionless forms. But with days of crouching among the cargo, it was his numbed knees and not his will that failed him. The daring plan was unexpectedly downsized to a forward-flailing tumble, a wild shot into a crate, and a blast of beverage that drenched the scene. It ended as Tstyko’s quick aim left the prisoner stunned in a puddle of DrinkThis and disappointed dreams.
“How interesting,” observed Mook in this aftermath, dabbing at his misted face with the handkerchief. He tucked it in his pocket and then grabbed the prisoner’s left arm. “It seems Tsmorlood wasn’t trying to steal the craft after all; he was simply visiting an old friend.”
Tstyko took the right arm and shot Mook a glare. “I see what you’re doing, you know.”
“One, two, three: LIFT.” They lifted.
“This is your tricky way of pointing out I lost our bet, isn’t it?” Tstyko said.
Mook permitted himself a small, if slightly gloaty, smile over the prisoner’s lolling head. “Remember, I prefer golden mootaab, Ig—not white, not chartreuse.” They dragged the prisoner down the ICV ramp into the bright Podunk light. “And Extra Nippy, please. I do so love that tang.”
“Now how in Altair’s blazes would I know where Tsmorlood and the Tryfe boy are? I been in storage, haven’t I?” protested “Backspace” Bungee, squinting into the spotlight that beamed into his grooved and leathery face.
The RegForce had heard rumors that the law enforcement on less-civilized planets still used these bright light torture techniques to intimidate suspects and gain confessions. So when they discovered one such machine in the Podunk station, Tstyko was simply over the moon to try it out.
“You mean to say,” began Tstyko, hand on the device, “you met Tsmorlood and the Tryfling fugitive at the Podunk canteen, and you all just sat round in silence, reading the, er, the advertising thingies the drinks sit on?”
“Coasters,” supplied Mook.
“Right. You only sat round reading the coasters?” Tstyko bumped the light up a notch. He’d been delighted to see it had 11 different intensity settings, from Sunny, Arid, and Scorcher all the way to Second Degree, Third Degree, and Extra Crispy.
“I never said we didn’t speak,” corrected the prisoner. “I said I dunno where they are.” His tone was firm and unruffled, like RegForce interrogation was just a part of his daily schedule.
CLICK! Setting Three. Suddenly the room was like high noons on the place formerly known as Rhobux-7.
“What did you discuss?” asked Mook, hands folded neatly before him.
“Did some catching-up, is all. Current events, politics, the fragging-pathetic state of the Deltan RegForce these days. Like that.” Bungee looked up at the blazing white light through his slitlike eyes and turned to Tstyko. “If you’re trying to give me a tan, son, might as well conserve the resources. It’s too blasted late.” His chuckle was like fine sandpaper.
CLICK! Setting Four. A hot smell came over the room.
“How did Tsmorlood meet the Tryfling?” asked Mook.
Under the blinding light, Oogon Bungee shrugged. “Never heard, never asked,” he said. “Ask too many questions in my line of work, some fellahs get nervous. Others think you know things. Word spreads, and suddenly, the RegForce gets wind and hauls you in for questioning.” He indicated the room as an ironic case-and-point.
CLICK! Setting Five. Mook’s beverage gave off a fine evaporative mist. Tstyko put on sunglasses. Bungee wiped absently at the perspiration coating his face and neck.
“Where do you perceive they were going?” asked Mook.
“I regret I did not request a copy of their itineraries,” Bungee said, in a fair imitation of Mook’s own refined tone.
Tstyko skipped Six and went straight to Seven—CLICK! CLICK! The non-organic upholstery of Bungee’s chair made a sizzling sound.
“You RegForce got no sense of humor,” Bungee grumbled.
“So Tsmorlood didn’t mention plans to meet anyone? Or something he wanted to do, now that he was out of confinement?” Mook continued.
“Look, I just caught him up on Simmi labor problems and the latest Underworld news. No time for much else.”
“What of the Tryfling? Did he say anything?” pressed Mook.
The prisoner folded his arms and leaned back in the chair, the surface of which had cracked in several places like parched earth. Its filling was popping out in bursting poofs. “What’s it worth to you?”
“No-no,” Tstyko warned gently and cranked up the machine. CLICK!—Eight! CLICK!—Nine! CLICK!—Ten! “What is it worth to you?” he yelled.
By now Bungee was sauteéing in his own juices, and the topcoat on the table was bubbling. Mook glanced at the settings.
Tstyko was giving him the Third Degree.
“All right, all right!” croaked the prisoner. “The Tryfling said he had to ‘Save Life As He Knew It.’ And no, I got no idea what that means. Didn’t say much else, but he sure was a nervous little fellah. Followed Tsmorlood around like a lost Argonian snoogle. Surprised Tsmorlood put up with it; kid’s not really the patient sort.” Bungee squinted into the darkness. “Bergerom, I think his name was.”
“The Tryfling’s name is Bergerom?” Mook clarified, raising an eyebrow and lowering pen to paper.
“No, wait,” said Bungee. Mook paused mid-word. “Ber-trom! That’s what he’d said. Ber-trom!” Bungee winked and drummed a finger on his now-blistering temple. “Memory’s still as sharp as a Feegar incisor.”
“Could it be … Bertram?” Mook suggested, forcing himself to be calm, though a gleeful flutter of recognition filled his chest.
“That’s what I said, didn’t I?” insisted the prisoner. “Ber-tram. That mean something to you? Enough to, say, cut a de—”
“Turn it off, W.I.,” Mook told his partner.
Tstyko looked startled at the controls before him. “What? But Mook—”
“Turn it off, I said.”
“Aw, why? It goes one hotter.”
But Mook was buzzing for one of the Peace Guards to return Bungee to his cell. In a moment they had left the interrogation room.
“Mook, I don’t get it,” Tstyko told his partner’s back as they swept through the narrow halls of the station. “What’s so important about this fellow’s name being Bertram? Isn’t that some kind of … giant water-container-bridge-hickey … out in the Ny-El system s
omewhere? What’s the big blasted deal about some Tryfe person named for a water-container-bridge-hickey?”
“Because of the recent controversy regarding the Featured CapClub Feature-of-the-Day,” explained Mook. At Tstyko’s blank expression, he went on, “That very strange title of the missing infopill everyone’s been talking about? The one that seemed so intentionally awkward?” Tstyko’s metaphorical screen remained blank. Shaking his head, Mook persisted, “Breakfast with Bertram at Skorbig Stadium for Independence Day, by Miss Eartha Shatter?”
“Oh,” said Tstyko and wrinkled his nose. They stepped outside into the fresh Podunk air. “You know I don’t really hold with all that Uninet Heavy Meddler CapClub fiddle-faddle in my off-hours. Waste of time, really. No,” he continued proudly, “I’ve been learning the zeelaylay. Ancient 18-stringed instrument from Hyphiz Beta you play with two hands and a foot because … well … the Betas had some interesting evolutionary attributes digit-wise a while back and—- Mook?”
They were standing in the ICV park now, and Mook was lowering their ship’s ramp. Tstyko glanced at his Universal watch. “A bit early for off-duty, isn’t it? You know as well as I do: ‘Regimental Hours four to 15, pre-determined productivity’ and—”
“We’re going to Skorbig,” Mook told him. “Skorbig Stadium.”
“Ah, but the Ergowohms haven’t played there in many, many U-years. I doubt you can even buy signed merchandise there anymore these days.”
“I realize that, Ig.” Mook started up the ramp.
“Oh. Well, about that CapClub thingie: you do know the stuff they say in infopills isn’t always real, don’t you?” He was jogging up the ramp himself. “Some of them are about real things. But some of them are completely made up.” Igglestik Tstyko looked so pleased to impart this information.