by YS Pascal
I smiled and gave Jerry the thumbs up sign, mumbling to Spud, a veteran of the often competitive Hollywood gay dating scene, “Can’t Jerry score a more talented boyfriend?”
“Score?” Spud scanned Jerry and his guest star with a critical eye, before answering, “No.” To my amusement.
* * *
Shooting the cliffhanger had taken us all of Monday morning. I thought we’d never be done. I’d spent an extra ten minutes in the shower before lunch, letting the warm water massage my aching arms and hands. Refreshed, I wrapped my towel around my bikini parts and stepped out of the bathroom into my trailer’s sitting room.
“Spud!” My partner was lounging in one of my beanbag chairs, blowing smoke rings with a unfiltered cigarette. “And stinking the place up with those filthy—”
“And I shan’t report you to the water conservation board,” he responded with a grin. “Are you hungry?”
I sighed. “Always. But …” I pointed to my shiny skin-tight spandex suit laid out on the adjacent sofa for this afternoon’s scenes. “When are you due back on set? I could do a salad at the commissary.” The craft services food table on our set was unfortunately known for its high fat, high carb, high sugar fare.
“Not until three.”
“It’s a date. Now out!” Spud’s affection for me had never been physical, but I still wasn’t about to change into my jeans and T-shirt under his critical gaze.
Ten minutes later, we set off for the cafeteria together. “I just cannot wait for this season to end,” I moaned as we walked through a wing of studio offices to get to the commissary. “My agent sent me a good script for an upcoming film.”
“A Disney? What type of animal do they want you to morph into this time?” Spud teased as he led us down his shortcut, a long, deserted hallway between two soundstages.
“I turned that script down, thank you. And the other one, too. This film is about a teenage girl with multiple disabilities who has learned how to communicate with sign language for the first time.”
“Hunh.” Spud looked away.
I was peeved. “Okay, it probably won’t be box office gold, but there are some scenes that could get me a shot at, dare I say it, Oscar-man, so I really want the part—what?”
Like a bloodhound finding a scent, Spud had abandoned his typical slouch and straightened tall, his eyes roving and his nostrils flaring. On alert, my own hand crept down towards my Ergal, and I scanned the hallway as well. Neither of us saw anything, but I quickly shared Spud’s perception that something wasn’t quite right. I took out my Ergal cell phone and cradled it in my palm, ready to M-fan a stun gun in a millisecond if needed. Spud, his stun gun already in his hand, leaned flat against the wall, sliding forward, checking perimeters, turning the corner, and—
Screamed! A ghostly figure floated before us, his two-foot reptilian body riddled with stab wounds from which seeped greenish-tinged blood.
“Ulenem!” I gasped, frozen in my tracks.
Spud was even paler than his normal ashen shade, but had the presence of mind to aim his stun gun at the specter.
Ulenem laughed. “What’re you going to do, Escott, kill me?”
“Ulenem,” I said, my voice quavering. “What, how—?”
“I haven’t transitioned yet. I may never. Look, I don’t have much time. You’ve got to stop Benedict. He’s in over his head.”
I was totally confused. “I thought you were on Benedict’s side.”
“Save Orion,” Ulenem shouted, as he started to fade. “Save the Universe!”
In a second, the Assassin had disappeared. My hands were still shaking, clinging to my cell phone Ergal. My partner, fortunately, had X-fanned his stun gun and was waving casually at a gaffer and sound man from our crew who had just rounded the corner on their way to get food. Spud does “cool” so well.
“Let us go out to dine instead,” he suggested, after the crew guys had passed us. He put an arm around my tensed shoulders and whispered, “I fancy a little private conversation.”
I nodded, shivering. “Some fresh air will do us a lot of good.”
* * *
Paris, France—present day
Not eager to fight the paparazzi again, we didn’t bother taking my Zoom Cruiser, leaving it parked in my space so inquiring minds would think we were still on the Burbank lot. We decided, or rather Spud decided for us, to Ergal to a picturesque little out-of-the-way club for lunch instead. Vernet’s was nestled on the outskirts of the Left Bank—of Paris, France—where Ignace, Spud’s first cousin twice-removed, was the Head Chef, and the lighting was, to Spud’s delight, blindingly dim.
Because Bulwark has recently been syndicated in Europe, Ignace arranged for us to have a private table for two, in a cubby next to a multicolored wall fountain, far from prying eyes and Euro-pap lenses. After all, it wouldn’t do to find our photo on the cover of the tabloids next week with a headline wondering how Shiloh Rush and William Escott (or, in their parlance ‘Willoh’), could possibly be in LA and Paris at the same time.
I was happy to be as far away as possible from the Eurotechno drumming on the dance floor in the main room, and I found the gently rushing water near us calming. After his cousin had returned to the kitchen, however, Spud eyed the fountain warily and complained that he felt like he was back with the Kharybdians.
I chuckled and returned to deciphering the menu by Ergal flashlight. Lunchtime in LA was late evening in Paris, and the sun had long set by the time we’d arrived. Guillaume, the Head Waiter, approached our table with a gift from Ignace that looked red. For a second I was tempted to order a cheeseburger just to annoy Spud, but, I frankly wasn’t in the mood, and instead played it safe with some sashimi.
Guillaume opened the dusty bottle of wine and poured the thick red liquid in Spud’s glass. (BTW, unless it’s Chidurian ale, we always drink responsibly. Except that weekend on Aldebaran 7, but I don’t think I’ll tell you—or anyone—about that, ‘cause it never happened.)
I’ve always found the stuffed-shirt ritual of shaking and smelling the wine a little pretentious, and, seeing as this was Spud’s family, worked hard to keep from making a face. Really, if wines were meant to breathe they would’ve had lungs, like the wines of Phrastis 4.
“Bouquet excellente,” Spud nodded at the sommelier. “Merci bien.”
Guillaume poured some wine into my glass and filled Spud’s. He disappeared to the kitchen and returned in just a few minutes to serve us our perfectly prepared fish morsels on a bed of steamed brown rice.
The food looked wonderful, but I realized I really didn’t have much of an appetite after all. Ulenem’s appearance had been terrifying. We had faced death before, but it had never before talked back to us.
“No,” Spud interrupted my thoughts once again, “he’s not in Level Three.”
How did Spud always know what I was thinking? Did the man have Ifestian genes? I forced myself to swallow. “Purgatory? Limbo?”
Spud shook his head. “Izmalis don’t believe in—”
“It’s not what you believe, it’s what is,” I countered. I had no memories of my parents, having lived with Grandpa Alexander from the time I was very little. But the knowledge that they would be alive in heaven—or, Level Three, if you will--had always been a comfort to us all.
“Sometimes ‘what is’ is what you believe …,” Spud responded cryptically. He gulped a few bites of ahi and continued. “I don’t know if that was really Ulenem, or an Aggellaphor messenger of some sort. But, someone was definitely trying to tell us something … something I didn’t expect.”
I shrugged. “Benedict wants to take over Zygfed. That ambition alone puts him in over his head. Add having to coordinate time-traveling guerilla attacks over thousands of planets, hundreds of millennia. Could be too much even for a sharp dude like him.”
Spud shook his head. “No, that’s not news. There is something else. Something Ulenem, or whoever sent him, has just uncovered. And we must find out
what it is.”
“Oh, goody,” I said, soaking a mouthful of rice with a sip of tasty liquor. “We’ve got ourselves a MacGuffin.”
Spud looked puzzled. “A what?”
“Alfred Hitchcock. The famous movie director. He had his characters chasing a MacGuffin in his film thrillers.”
“Yes, but what is it?”
“Nothing. Anything. It doesn’t matter. A Maltese Falcon. Or,” I snickered, “a Maltese period. It just gets the plot moving. In fact, once the film gets going, the audience often forgets about what a lousy actor Brandon—”
“You are brilliant!” Spud shot out of his seat, bursting with excitement.
I gagged on a piece of octopus. “Whu—?”
“Let’s go!” Spud waved at his cousin, threw a fifty euro bill on the table, and grabbed me by one of my still-sore arms.
I swallowed my last bite, and looked at him with disgust. “So help me, if you say ‘the game is afoot,’ I’ll kill you.”
Chapter 8
The Game is Afoot
Earth Core—present day
Dragging me with him from our table into the men’s water closet, Spud Ergaled us into a rubbish bin next to an imposing brick museum off the Rue de Rivoli near the Tuileries Gardens. His patience waning, he incessantly grumbled as we suffered through the obstacle course of rat greeting and scans required to enter Earth Core from one of the numerous secret portals scattered around the globe.
Stepping into Reception, I was pleased to see that Fydra was not at her usual post. She still hadn’t forgiven us for what she perceived as our costumed deception last week. Another Scyllian, Fyodor, sat at the desk and, to our relief, efficiently waved us into the Core command center.
Our first sight was Ev downing a box of chicken nuggets as he leaned back in his chair and watched the flurry of Sol System activity on a score of screens. Thankfully, this time, most of the colors displayed were green instead of red.
“Gary in?” I asked casually.
“Should be,” Ev mumbled as he chewed. “Took Fydra out to dinner for her birthday. Said he’d be back by six. Three, GMT minus 8.”
I patted him on the back with a ‘thanks’. I was glad he didn’t turn to face us. Ev always chewed with his mouth open, and you could usually see spittle spots on the front of his shirt. Ick. As far as I know, Ev hasn’t had a date in years.
We decided to wait outside Gary’s office. If Spud was right, we had a lot to talk about with our boss.
Gary arrived at ten after six, New York time, and invited us into the distinguished suite. As soon as we sat down, we immediately hit him with our big question.
“What’s Benedict’s game?”
Gary frowned at us. “I don’t get what you’re asking. You know he’s trying to—”
“Take over Zygfed, yeah, yeah,” I interrupted. “No, I mean his real game. What’s he after?”
For a few moments, Gary was taken aback. His expression then became quite stern, like that of a frustrated high school principal. He seemed to be seriously considering how best to respond. Finally, he took a deep breath and whispered. “The key to Level Three.”
I glanced at Spud victoriously, asking Gary, “So there really is a Level Three?”
Gary nodded. “Yes. I’ve been there.”
Now it was our turn to be shocked.
“And you lived to tell the tale,” I said, awestruck.
“Or not,” Spud said, raising an eyebrow.
Gary chuckled. “I’m not dead—I mean, ‘transitioned’.” He made the quote marks with his fingers.
“Why not?” Spud returned without hesitation.
“If you don’t mind his asking,” I added, aiming for politeness.
“I don’t know,” Gary said quietly. He looked down at his hands, then back up at us with a hint of a smirk. “It’s a question I hope to get answered someday—among others.” He snorted. “It’s our blessing and our curse, you know.”
“What … is?” I asked, puzzled.
“Being aware,” Gary’s tone was rueful, “that we’re all under a death sentence.”
“I’m not,” I joked. No one laughed, and I backtracked quickly. “Okay, duh.”
“Humans, and all sentient beings, really—except you, Rush,” Gary added with a smile, “know it, and because of that we are desperate for a reprieve.”
“With you so far.” Cellular regeneration centers were packed throughout Zygfed by citizens seeking eternal youth. Still, living for thousands of years isn’t a bad deal in and of itself, even without regeneration.
“In a sense, we’re overqualified for our existence,” Gary continued.
“Now you lost me,” I admitted.
“We know too much about our future … and too little. We know that we’re going to die, and yet we don’t even know why we live.”
“There’s a country song in there somewhere, Gary,” I joked. “What’s this got to do with Level Three?”
Gary stared at his hands for a few moments, hesitating, before he asked, “Did you know Theodore Benedict and I went to Mingferplatoi together?”
I was blown away. “Benedict was a catascope?! They didn’t tell us that.”
Gary mimicked me. “No, duh.”
“So how did you and Benedict get to Level Three?” Spud interrupted.
Gary looked at Spud through narrowed eyes for a moment, then his brow unfurrowed, and he sat back in his chair and began. “Ah, thereby hangs a tale …”
* * *
“Thirty years seems like a long time, but, in Zygan terms, it’s only an instant. Zygfed thirty years ago wasn’t much different than it is today, give or take a few planets.
“Catascopes in those days had a very tough job. There have always been Benedicts in the Universe. Individuals with too much ambition and too little empathy. They helped drag us out of the caves thousands of years ago, and may, through devastating wars, return us there on a path to extinction, sooner rather than later.”
For a moment, Gary’s tone became wistful. “I don’t pretend to be a psychologist, but most of them drag us out of our comfortable caves to help them in their quest for something. Something they’ll never be able to find. ‘Tilting at windmills’xviiixix becomes their purpose in life.”
He sighed and took a deep breath. “Benedict and I were thrown together from the very first day at Mingferplatoi. I guess they thought we had a lot in common, seeing as we were both from Earth. We didn’t, except that we both wanted to make it as catascopes. I grew up in New England, prep schools. Benedict, in a small town in Missouri. My dad was a banker of his own inherited fortune. My mother was a docent for the Peabody. Benedict’s father left before he was born, so his mother worked three jobs as a home-care nurse to raise him.
“But, we were both smart and ambitious and talented. Benedict, frankly, well, he was almost a genius. He could rattle off physics theories like Einstein. He even liked to do mathematical proofs by himself instead of uploading them like the rest of us. But, he wasn’t exactly the friendly type or a team player. When it came time to assign partners, I was the only one willing to work with him. He kind of reminded me of my Poppy.
“He was, however, one of the best catascopes I’ve seen, before or since. Undefeated at Mingferplatoi—and beyond.”
Gary leaned forward and intoned, “Theodore Benedict saved my life.”
I gasped.
Our Chief nodded. “We were only on our third training mission. We were ambushed by a Lestrigon ship that had wormholed into our quadrant.”
“So you mega’ed,” I interjected. Lestrigons were a giant carnivorous species much larger than humans.
“We tried,” Gary admitted. “Only the Lestrigons had disabled all our megators, so we were unable to change our size. We were about to be bite-size snack food for the hungry bastards.”
“Ouch,” I winced.
“And yet, you’re here …,” prodded Spud.
Gary sighed, “We
lost our two companion ships right away—swallowed up in the blink of an eye by the Lestrigon vessel. Five excellent Mingferplatoi trainees—gone. There was nothing we could do. And we were next.”
I continued to wince.
“Terrible,” Gary agreed with a note of sadness. “Even worse, Benedict had been monitoring the Lestrigon ship’s course and calculated that they were on their way to 51 Pegasus.”
Spud whistled, “Three hundred million souls in that solar system …”
“Yes indeed,” Gary agreed. “If the Lestrigons were to make it to Pegasus…” He took another deep breath. “Tragically, we knew our comrades were being digested inside the Lestrigon ship. The leftovers were being dumped back into space through a massive exhaust cylinder that was spewing out particulate matter and polluting the entire sector. We didn’t dare comm to Central, lest we become the next immediate target. Without our megator, we were so tiny and defenseless. Even if we fired ten of our fusion torpedoes put together we couldn’t dent their ship.
“But, we had to do something. Frustrated by our helplessness, we stayed back and followed at a discreet distance as the Lestrigons headed for Pegasus. I suggested we try to run for it and go warn Central about the imminent attack on Pegasus when Benedict shouted at me to ‘put a cork in it.’ Before I could even respond, he leapt over and grabbed the weapons controls, played them with his rapidly moving fingers, and launched a fusion torpedo aimed directly at the exhaust pipe of the Lestrigon ship.
“‘You do realize that our torpedos are too small to destroy their ship,’ I told him, for want of a better suggestion.
“He nodded. ‘Don’t expect them to.’ We watched on scan holos as the torpedo entered the foul exhaust conduit of the Lestrigon vessel.
“Benedict quickly shot us back out of the line of fire and then held up a hand. I waited, dubious, for the miniscule spark that would signal the tiny torpedo’s useless explosion. And waited. And waited. And—
“The enormous Lestrigon battlecruiser exploded in a burst of metal, flesh, blood, and other small bits of detritus that I wasn’t eager to analyze.
“I was totally awestruck. A microscopic torpedo blew up that giant vessel? ‘How--?’ I turned to my partner and asked.
“Benedict put our nav on autopilot for Zyga and leaned back in his jump seat. ‘Easy,’ he said, grinning at me. ‘I anamorphed the ions in the core of the torpedo into silicon. Then, when the torpedo exploded, it shot out a layer of liquid silicon that cooled off and blocked their ship’s exhaust conduit, preventing them from discharging their engine wastes.’ He burst out laughing. ‘Basically, they got blown up by their own gas. And our torpedo was the … cork.’”