Authors: Evangeline Anderson
I may be a lot of things, but a safe-cracker I’m not. After a few minutes of futilely twisting the dial, I gave up. This thing wasn’t going to budge for me and it was time to stop wasting my time.
Strike One but I wasn’t done yet. Time to find another way out of this ship.
I threaded my way back through the narrow passages and into the main corridor. It was weird how quiet it was—except for the soft hum of the ship’s engines, I couldn’t hear anything at all. At least Sarden had left the lights on—it made the long, empty hallway a little less spooky.
A
little
. God, I
really
wanted to get out of here!
The next thing I tried was the control area of the ship. The manacles opened the door for me with no problem but then I was faced with a bewildering array of blinking, glowing, buzzing instruments. What
was
all this? It made the control panel of the shuttle look like a kiddy car. There was no
way
I could get any of this to work—even if it hadn’t been voice locked to Sarden’s voice. Also, there was no door anywhere—at least not any I could see.
Strike Two. But I still wasn’t ready to give up.
I left the control area with its crazy Christmas light display instrument panel and went the other way down the long hall. After the food-prep area, the entertainment room (which had some really intriguing-looking tech that would have made any gamer pee his pants with excitement) and the bedroom and storage room doors, there was nothing for a long way.
Then, just as I was beginning to wonder if the ship went on forever, I came to a small door at the very end of the corridor. Suddenly I had a thought—when Sarden had first brought me aboard, he had specifically told me to stay out of the storage area in the back because it was dangerous. Was that what this was? And what had he meant by dangerous?
Maybe he just wanted to keep me out of a place that had a possible exit,
I thought. I wouldn’t put it past him, the big red bastard. I didn’t care what he had said—I was going to take my chances.
I pushed the manacles through the invisible beam and the door slid open with more of a wheeze than a whoosh. It seemed I might have come to a part of the ship that wasn’t used very often. Well fine, that didn’t bother me as long as there was an exit door.
The room revealed by the open door was dim—almost dark, in fact. There was, however, a faint yellow rectangle of light at the very end of it. The glow reminded me of sunshine—of daylight.
A-ha!
My heart jumped in my chest and I took a step inside and nearly tripped. The big dark room—it was seriously almost as big as a football field—seemed to be packed with all kinds of objects.
I held the manacles up, using the faint glow of their lock-light to try and see what they were. I saw lots of shiny metal and glass—or plastic maybe, I couldn’t tell—but none of it made sense to my eyes. There were many large, complex machines and some smaller ones as well. I lifted a small, heavy device from a shelf and held it up to the manacles’ light. It looked like a round blue glass paperweight but it had a silver corkscrew-looking arm sticking out from the center of it.
I studied the small instrument carefully, looking closer. There was a reddish-brown stain on the sharp, jutting end of the corkscrew. Was it just rust…or something worse?
Then, a faint noise began. Soft, at first—so soft I could barely hear it. It was a tinkling melody kind of like an old fashioned music box. I frowned—was that coming from the corkscrew paperweight in my hand?
It seemed that it was. I brought it closer to my face, examining it, trying to figure out how it could make music. The blue glass part of it was clear and I didn’t see any kind of mechanism for music inside, but the soft, tinkling tune was definitely coming from the strange device.
That was when it came to life in my hand, the corkscrew stabbing out at me with no warning.
“Oh my God!” I gasped, feeling a line of fire slice across my cheek. I dropped the thing as a bolt of terror surged through me, and hopped back a step as though I’d seen a spider. Or something
worse
than a spider.
I expected the blue paperweight part of it to shatter but it didn’t—it bounced once and then lay there on the floor, retracting and stabbing the bloody metal corkscrew over and over as the soft, inviting tune played on and on, echoing eerily in the vast, dark room.
I waited for a long, breathless moment to see if the thing was going to grow legs and come skittering after me, but the stabbing motion appeared to be the only movement it was capable of. Well, that and the weird song, which now reminded me of the kind of music you hear in a horror movie when the doomed character opens an ancient, cursed puzzle box they’re supposed to leave strictly alone.
Anyway, it answered my question over whether the reddish brown stuff on the corkscrew end was rust or blood. I put my fingers to my cheeks and winced—it had really sliced the hell out of me! What a horrible device—who would invent something like that?
I wondered if it was a Vorn thing but somehow I doubted it. I didn’t know Sarden very well, but he struck me as a straight-forward kind of guy. If the rest of his people were anything like him, they wouldn’t invent a device so subtle. One that invited you to get closer and closer with its faint, tinkling music until you were within stabbing distance.
What about the Eloim then? I didn’t think so. To hear Sarden describe them, they sounded stuck up and priggish. This kind of weapon or whatever it was, would probably be considered crude.
Another thought occurred to me—maybe this was part of the medical equipment Sarden had gone to the spaceport to try and sell. That seemed most likely although I couldn’t imagine any medical exam that would require you to be suddenly jabbed in the face with a metal corkscrew. Another inch to the left or right and the damn thing would have burst my eardrum or popped my eye like a grape! Ugh!
Okay, enough messing with the equipment, I told myself. Sarden hadn’t been lying—it
was
dangerous. So from now on I was going to keep my hands strictly to myself and just try to get to that rectangle of light I saw at the end of the huge room.
I stepped carefully over the stabby-stabby corkscrew paperweight and picked my way carefully through the room, being extra careful not to touch a thing. Though I tried to blot it with my sleeve, blood was running down my cheek from the long, shallow scratch on my face. I really hoped I wasn’t going to need stitches—I was millions of miles away from the nearest E.R.
Shaking my head, I kept going.
Sarden
I didn’t know why, but I had a bad feeling as Al and I made our way back to the unattached males district. It’s a small area of synth-sex shops and delusion parlors that the Ma
jor
an peace keepers usually don’t bother to patrol. In contrast to the rest of Gallana, there were almost no females here and I could see why. The whole district was about males getting their most savage needs met without female interference.
Synthi-whores trolled the streets, crying their wares in cracked, mechanical voices. Cloning-mechs called that they could make the female of your dreams…and you could do anything you wanted to her.
Anything at all.
A male cloaked in a shadow-coat whispered to me from a dark alley, asking if I wanted any dream dust. Further down the dirty, rutted road another male offered me fantasy implants.
“See yourself as you want to be…live the life you cannot have in reality,”
he rasped hoarsely, dangling the long, silvery synthec-worms which would burrow into a host’s eyeballs and attach to the optic nerves. While he lived—while they fed on him—they would send him the sweetest of visions, stimulating every part of the brain in turn even as they devoured his neural function. They would refuse to let go until he was effectively brain dead—a useless husk with nothing left to give. Then they could come slithering out of his skull and return to their master who would sell them to another fool wishing to escape from reality.
I passed them all by and kept on walking, keeping my head low as I looked for my destination—a bar the buyer had named. At last I found it.
Outside the bar—The Suck Hole—was a row of artificial mouths mounted on adjustable metal poles. The red lips gleamed obscenely and made sucking and kissing noises when I got close enough to trip their sensors.
“A credit a minute—best blow job this side of Endora Six, big boy,” one of the mouths said. I ignored it—public gratification holds no interest for me. And besides, who knew the last time those things had been cleaned? Like everything else in the unattached males district, they were dirty and disreputable.
Not everyone was as fastidious as me, though. Down the line, a male—a Xlexian by his greenish brown, mottled skin—stepped up to a mouth and slid a cred-card into the slot on the side.
“Mmm, give it to me, baby!” the mouth moaned and the Xlexian obliged by unfastening his trousers and shoving his engorged member between its lips.
Obscenely loud sucking sounds began as the mouth took him in. The Xlexian groaned and pumped his hips enthusiastically, oblivious to anyone watching his pleasure. I looked away, disgusted.
“
He
seems to be enjoying himself,” a voice remarked beside me.
I jerked around and found myself facing a tall male with smooth, even features. His skin was tan and didn’t change color—a sure sign that his lineage was closer to the Ancient Ones than mine—but I couldn’t immediately tell his people. His hair appeared to be a deep, Ma
jor
an blue, though it was hard to tell with my sepia-toned vision. Maybe a half-breed like myself then? He had a long, boney nose and a thin mouth—barely more than a slit, which was currently turned up in a sardonic smile.
“What does it matter?” I said, frowning. “It’s a common enough sight.”
“Not on Gallana,” he said, shifting. He was dressed in a long, black cloak that fell from his narrow shoulders and swirled around him as he moved. “This is the only place on this Gods-forsaken spaceport where a male can get a little peace and quiet away from the meddling of females.”
“You are sahjist?” The sahjists were a group of dispossessed males—mostly half or quarter Ma
jor
ans that didn’t like the way their society was run. They refused to believe in the Goddess-hood of the Empress or the sovereignty of females in general. It went further than that for some of them, though. They said they only wanted equal rights for males but some of them, I knew, fucking
hated
females with every bone in their bodies. Those were the types—the radicals—you had to watch out for. Especially in a place like Gallana.
“Not a sahjist, exactly,” the male with the blue hair said. “But I don’t believe in letting females run your life. Of course, they have their uses…” he nodded at the row of sucking, artificial mouths where the Xlexian was just finishing. “But to claim they are superior or in some way divine, well…that’s just foolish. They ought to be kept in their place—preferably chained to a male’s bed. Am I right?”
He laughed heartily but I didn’t join in. Instead, I took a step away, looking around the district.
“You’d better keep your voice down,” I told him. “Expressing sentiments like that is liable to earn you a night in lock-down.”
The Peace Keepers don’t patrol the unattached males district often but when they do, you’d better look out. That’s when all the shady characters you meet on the street melt away and the dirty, rutted walkway is deserted. We were safe for now though—I could still see a cloning-mech trying to sell his services to a male dressed in a trawler pilot’s uniform.
“Anyone you want—any female that ever caught your eye but you couldn’t have her,” he was saying. “You can have her now—and do whatever you want with her. Doesn’t matter if she wants it or not—take what you want—what’s
rightfully yours.
It’s perfectly legal because you’ll
own
her. All it costs is a hundred creds and a small sample of her DNA.”
The deal turned my stomach. The idea of treating a helpless female so harshly was repugnant to me—even if she was a clone. My thoughts must have shown on my face, though I tried to keep my expression impassive, because the male beside me spoke again.
“Forgive me. I see you don’t share my views,” he said smoothly.
“I’m Vorn. Half Vorn, anyway. We don’t believe in worshiping our females like the Gods-damned Ma
jor
ans but we don’t mistreat them either,” I said harshly. As I spoke, I had a guilty flash of Zoe as I had left her, held tight by the Force-Locks and secured in her room. I pushed the image away irritably—locking her up for safe keeping had been necessary. There was nothing else I could do.
“Forgive me,” he said again. “Let us speak of more pleasant things, shall we? Such as the fascinating collection of Assimilation medical equipment I understand you have for sale?” Seeing my startled look he added, “I am Count Doloroso, collector of oddities. Your A.L. contacted me about your collection. You
are
Sarden de’Lagorn, are you not?”
“I am,” I said. “But I don’t intend to conduct business here. Let’s go inside and get a drink.”
In the dim interior of The Suck Hole we found a seat and Doloroso pressed the chipped call button for service.
A fembot waitress with long, matted blue hair and hugely inflated breasts tottered over.
“How can I service you?” she asked in an artificially seductive tone, batting her eyes—one of which had been blinded by an angry patron and still had the stump of a serving fork sticking out of its empty socket. “Would you care to try my pleasure holes?”
Lifting the tattered skirt she wore, she displayed a flat, fleshy pelvis with three vaginal slits—one in the center, between her legs where it should be, and two set above it, beside her hip bones. They formed a kind of obscene, inverted triangle.
“I am able to service all manner of species, not just the Twelve Peoples,” she reported mechanically. “Even three-shafted Yarons are welcome.”
“Thank you my dear, but we just want something to drink,” Doloroso said smoothly. “A pitcher of your finest Ma
jor
an ale, I think.” He looked at me. “Have you ever had it dirty?”