by J. S. Bailey
His stomach rumbled, and his mouth felt so parched, he could hardly swallow. If only he could get some water, he might be able to brainstorm his way out of this mess.
But he was in a desert. Water wouldn’t likely be free, anywhere, and right now free was all he could afford.
A wave of lightheadedness made Chumley stop in his tracks and put his hands on his knees to steady himself. He felt like a tiny plant trying to grow through a crack in the pavement on a summer day—withered and useless.
If he still had his Cube, everything would be fine. But the Cube had been lost in the fire along with everything inside it, including his wardrobe, his childhood mementos, his minibar, and his refrigerator full of bottled Crystalline Ice, which would feel downright refreshing right now.
The buildings on this street rose three or four floors, the upper levels of which boasted balconies festooned with laundry drying in the bright Molorthian sun. A woman pinning bras to a clothesline on one of the balconies scowled down at him and spat. It evaporated before it hit him.
“Could . . . could I have a glass of water, please?” Chumley croaked, his voice a ghost of its usual self.
A door above him slammed. He blinked, and the woman was gone.
He forced himself onward, keeping an eye out for a church. Would churches around here offer free water? He hoped so, or there wouldn’t be a Chumley Fanshaw dying of thirst for much longer.
The townspeople would probably love that. He’d been naïve to think the sheriff would help him again after last night. The man probably gave him the money to get him out of his hair.
“Hey, mister.”
Chumley turned. A boy of perhaps twelve stood in the street behind him, wearing a wide-brimmed hat that kept the sun out of his eyes.
“Hello,” Chumley said, faintly, as the ground swayed.
“You’re the salesman,” the boy said. His callused, weather-worn hands hung at his sides.
“I’m Chumley Fanshaw.”
“You sell things. We saw you in the town square.”
“Levi, who’re you talkin’ to?” a man asked before Chumley could form a reply. Footsteps behind him made Chumley turn, putting his back to the boy. A man roughly Chumley’s age had planted his hands on his hips and was looking Chumley up and down, sneering at his ruined dressing gown.
“I’m lost,” Chumley whispered. “Can you tell me how to get to a church?”
The man cracked a malicious grin showing several missing teeth. “You were the one disturbing the peace.”
“I was just trying to do my job.” Not that it was a real job, but this man didn’t need to know that.
“You have anything to do with the Green attacks?”
“What? No!” Chumley pulled his dressing gown tighter around himself, wishing it could protect him.
“Awful funny, they attacked right after you showed up.” The man stepped closer to Chumley. “It’s like even the savages sniffed you out.”
Chumley sensed his situation was about to deteriorate even further when another man and a woman appeared on the front step of the nearest dwelling, looking gleeful much in the way piranhas do when someone has thrown them a juicy steak.
He recognized them as a couple to whom he’d given his fraudulent tanning bed information.
“We heard you survived the Green attack,” the woman said, folding her arms.
“I run fast,” Chumley said.
“Let’s see just how fast,” her partner said, and suddenly two men and little Levi were charging at him all at once, fists raised.
Stars danced in Chumley’s eyes, and the next thing he knew, all he could taste was sand and blood.
Dalton had been working on his crossword puzzles again when Cadu stepped into his office, looking chagrined.
Dalton slapped the book shut, his heart stuttering in a sudden panic. “Green attack?”
“Um . . . no,” Cadu said. “There’s been a disturbance over on Wax Street. It’s your salesman friend again. He’s made some people unhappy.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Dalton rose and jammed on his Stetson. The last thing he needed was a mob to defuse.
He marched past Cadu and hopped on one of the quads parked out back, then nearly hit Gwendolyn Goldfarb when she stepped out into the street in front of him just as he was gunning it up to full speed.
Gwendolyn wore a fluorescent pink wide-brimmed hat that kept most of her wrinkled, nut-brown face in shade, and a matching kaftan that fluttered in the light wind. “Two broken halves make a whole,” she crooned as she hobbled toward the nail salon on the other side of the road.
Dalton scowled and stomped his foot into the accelerator. The woman was going to get herself killed if she didn’t snap out of her daydreams and start paying attention to the world around her.
It took him five minutes to reach Wax Street, which had accumulated a small crowd in the center of it like ants swarming a discarded bit of candy. Dalton disembarked from the quad and strutted toward the gathering, flashing his tarnished badge even though everyone in the city knew him.
“Out of the way, out of the way,” he snapped. “Now what do we have here?”
He noted that many of the twenty-odd people clustered in the center of the street looked a bit ruffled, as if they’d been engaged in some overexuberant physical activity shortly before his arrival. A few, like Bennett Smith and his son, Levi, looked a shade guilty.
Dalton didn’t see Chumley. He must have been trying to keep a low profile to avoid imminent arrest.
When no one was forthcoming in moving, Dalton shoved his way past the Smiths, the Wus, the Nguyens, and the Kaouds, who parted like a reluctant Red Sea. He was fully prepared to give an intense verbal berating to one Mr. Chumley Fanshaw, but he found his mouth hanging open in silent yet abject horror.
Chumley lay crumpled and unmoving in the center of the dusty thoroughfare. His dressing gown was gone—mercifully he’d been wearing a pair of designer briefs underneath it, which were now ripped in several places. He appeared reasonably well-toned, yet his strength had not been able to save him. Both of his eyes were swollen shut, his nose appeared a bit more crooked than it had earlier, and blood had run from his nose, over his lips, and onto the dirt.
Shit, shit, shit.
Shaking, Dalton crouched down and put two fingers against the man’s neck, grateful when he felt a pulse.
“Who did this?” he asked softly, without rising.
At first, no one spoke. Levi Smith shuffled his feet, and Ramsey Wu became very interested in the time on his wristwatch.
“I assume this man just beat himself all up,” Dalton said.
The silence continued.
Dalton drew himself to his full height and growled, “I can arrest the whole lot of you if nobody speaks up!”
“We . . . we found him lying there,” said Bennett Smith. “He, uh, didn’t look too good.”
Bennett had fresh blood on his knuckles. So did Benjy Kaoud and Ramsey Wu.
Dalton strode right up to Bennett and seized him by the collar. “Did you, now.”
Bennett let out a squeak that might have been words, or just a noise.
“It’s a rough part of town,” Ramsey said, stepping in and turning his hat over in his hands. “He had it coming.”
But Dalton knew who had it coming, and it wasn’t the poor bastard lying in the street. In one swift movement, Dalton brought a fist back and slammed it into Bennett’s insolent little face, sending the man crashing backward into the others.
“You can’t do that!” Ramsey cried, rushing in to help his accomplice to his feet.
“Can’t I?” Dalton held up a quivering finger and shook it. “If I find out you’ve done this to anyone else, ever again, I’m deporting you back to Earth without trial on the next shuttle. Is that clear?”
A few hea
ds nodded. Bennett, Ramsey, and Benjy shot him looks of pure loathing before drifting away, no doubt to plot further mayhem.
Dalton gritted his teeth and crouched down beside Chumley once more. He had to get him out of here before the crowd decided they didn’t like sheriffs, either.
When Dalton realized that some of the crowd remained like vultures waiting for a piece of the kill, he shouted, “Go home, or I’ll arrest every last one of you!”
The stragglers glared at him and dispersed. Dalton refocused his attention on Chumley, whose chest rose and fell with shallow breaths.
“Hey,” Dalton said in a low voice.
Chumley groaned, but his eyes didn’t open.
“Mr. Fanshaw—Chumley—I need you to wake up.”
“Mmmwake,” Chumley said. He remained still.
“You’ll need to come with me.”
Silence.
“Mr. Fanshaw?”
Belatedly, Dalton recalled Chumley mentioning that he’d been driven from the inn when he went down to get his breakfast. Perhaps he hadn’t had the chance to eat any before his eviction.
Perhaps he’d had nothing to drink, either.
Dalton patted his trench coat pockets and found his emergency flask. It had been a few days since he’d put anything fresh in it, but the stale liquid would have to do.
He shook the flask, then said, “Mr. Fanshaw, I have some water here. You’ll need to sit up to drink it.”
Chumley’s swollen eyes fluttered open, unfocused. Dalton held out a hand and helped him into sitting position, then handed him the flask. “Drink all of it,” he said. “When we get to my place, you can have more.”
The words slipped from his mouth before he could think. Chumley admitted to being a conman. He would probably rob Dalton blind while he slept and be offworld before he knew what had hit him.
As if Dalton had anything worth stealing.
Chumley accepted the flask with trembling hands and spilled half the water down his front. “Th—thank you,” he spluttered. “They . . . they . . . ”
“Don’t wear yourself out. Where’s your dressing gown?”
Chumley made a weak gesture with one arm. Dalton followed the angle of it and spotted the dressing gown slung over an electric line in front of one of the flat complexes, high out of reach.
“Right, forget about that,” Dalton said. “We’re going to get on my quad, and I’m going to take you to my house where those fecking punks can’t get their hands on you.”
Chumley’s head bobbed up and down in acknowledgment. Dalton helped him to his feet and then guided him over to the quad. It took a few tries for Chumley to swing his right leg over the seat, and then Dalton clumsily clambered on behind him, his face burning less from the midday heat and more from the embarrassment that he had a gangly, mostly-naked man parked in front of him while half the street watched from their windows.
Dalton craned his neck to see over Chumley’s shoulder, set his jaw in determination, and stepped on the accelerator, wondering what exactly he’d done to make the universe hate him so.
He avoided the busiest parts of town and kept his gaze fixed straight ahead anytime he detected onlookers. Chumley started to lose consciousness a few times and slumped uncomfortably against Dalton’s front, and it was with immense relief that they arrived in front of Dalton’s house ten minutes later.
As Dalton guided him toward the door, he glanced toward the north and saw yet a new plume of smoke unfurling into the air from below the horizon.
He frowned, unlocked the door, and began attending to his guest.
Chapter 4
Chumley had been on more than his fair share of benders at university and even in the years since then, but nothing compared to how he felt when he cracked his sore eyes open. It was like knives had been inserted beneath his skin in various places. His head, for example. And most of his face.
It felt like someone had tied him to the back of a lorry and dragged him through a few thousand miles of boulders.
Something cool pressed against his forehead. He lifted a hand and patted his fingers against what felt like an icepack. Craning his neck even further, he noted that he wore a clean pair of pajama shorts.
He appeared to be in an unfamiliar living room. The off-white curtains had been drawn, but he could still make out the outlines of shelves and another sofa.
He remembered feeling deliriously thirsty, but his mouth felt fine now, as if he’d been recently hydrated.
Footsteps made Chumley shift his attention to the left. A man stood in the open doorway between this room and the next.
“Hello?” Chumley rasped.
“You’re awake. Good.”
It was the sheriff. Chumley hadn’t recognized him without the long coat and cowboy hat. His pulse spiked, and he scrambled into sitting position, looking for his shoes, then remembering they’d been lost in the fire.
And God only knew what had happened to his slippers.
“It’s all right,” the sheriff said, striding into the room and seating himself in a chair on the other side of the coffee table. The man’s light brown hair had faded into the color of straw at the ends, and his gray shirt and dark slacks looked equally faded from use.
The shorts were probably his.
“Am I in trouble, Sheriff?” Chumley asked.
His host smirked. “Loads of it. How are you feeling?”
Chumley touched a hand to his chilled forehead. The icepack had fallen into his lap when he sat up, and he set it aside. “Sore,” he said.
“You caused quite the scene over on Wax Street.”
“I did?” Chumley strained to remember. He thought there might have been a kid, and some men. “I was looking for the churches. For water.”
“Let me know if you need more. I can tell you’re from a temperate climate.”
Chumley nodded. “I was born north of London. I’ve been on Pelstring Four for a while, though. They have nice summers.”
Dalton stared at him. Chumley averted his gaze, uncomfortable.
“I want the truth from you,” Dalton said at length.
“The truth?”
“Who are you, and what are you doing on my planet?”
“I already told you.”
Dalton folded his arms. “You’re Chumley Fanshaw, and you pretend to sell tanning beds to con people out of their money. You say you only carry cash, which was burned up along with everything else you owned.” He paused. “I don’t buy it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re wearing designer briefs, so I have a hard time believing you’re in as much trouble as you say you are.”
Chumley felt his cheeks turn scarlet. “I paid for them with cash at a charity shop. They still had the original tags.”
“Do you have cash stashed anywhere else? On Pelstring Four, perhaps?”
“I swear I don’t. I . . . sort of fell on hard times.” Harder, now, it seemed. Every time Chumley hit rock bottom, yet another rock bottom had lain below it like levels in a rock bottom skyrise. “I had cash with me when I came here. I assume it all burned.”
“Hmph.” Hidden gears turned behind Dalton’s gray eyes. “You seem to be in a dilemma.”
Chumley swallowed, and the smirk returned to the sheriff’s face. “The only way you can get off this rock is if you earn your keep long enough to save money for a shuttle ticket. However, the good people of this city will skin you alive the moment you step out my door, and few of them are about to go hiring you. You are, as they say, up a creek.”
Chumley picked up the icepack and jammed it into his suddenly-throbbing temple. “Then what am I going to do?”
Dalton’s smirk turned wicked. “I’ve been thinking.”
“And?”
“I’m going to put you to work.”
“Doing wh
at?”
“We’re understaffed at the police station. Greens keep invading us so the mayor is instituting a city watch, but it won’t be enough. If you work for me, you’ll be as protected as you’re going to get. People respect lawmen here.”
It took Chumley’s frazzled brain a few tries to comprehend what Dalton was saying. “I can’t be a police officer!” he exclaimed, rising on unsteady legs. “I don’t have that kind of training!”
“Neither did I in the beginning. You’ll learn the ropes like I did. Consider it a penance for breaking the law.”
“This is cruelty!”
“Cruelty would be me leaving you to the folks outside. Now I think you’re probably a pathetic person, and I think it’ll give me a migraine having you stay here, but I’m an officer of the law, and I can’t abide with murder.”
“Are there a lot of murders here?”
“Not too many. You want to know why we have a No Solicitation ordinance?”
Chumley was sure he didn’t, but he said, “Why?”
Dalton looked thoughtful for a moment. “These people, these Molorthians, are a different sort of folk. I say that because I came here too, a long time ago. Molorthia Six isn’t like other places. You won’t see rich folk or poor folk, because here we’re just folk. Someone opens a business, it’s because it’s needed. Half the goods are probably bought with bartered items anyway. But if a salesman comes along?” Dalton’s smile reminded Chumley of a shark’s.
“I think I understand now.” Chumley swallowed. “The ordinance is for my own protection.”
“That’s right.”
“Isn’t there an ordinance against homicide?”
“Of course. But when has that ever stopped a murderer?”
Chumley blinked at him, wondering if Dalton had noticed his own contradiction. “I knew I should have gone to Killian Six instead.”
“No point in lamenting that.”
“I just can’t work for the police. It’s—it’s wrong!”