There Goes the Galaxy Read online

  “Two U-days,” muttered Rollie thoughtfully. “All right, count me in.”

  Bertram looked up sharply from his stew. “Wait, no. Absolutely not. What about Nett? Talking to the prophets? Blanking your archive? … Saving my planet?”

  “S’kay, Ludlow,” said Rollie, unruffled. “Vos Laegos is right on the way to Nett.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So, how do you know you can’t save your planet by going to Vos Laegos?” Rollie leaned in and whispered, “Has the Yellow Thing told you?” His smile was diabolical.

  Bertram drew back and glared. By now, he had more than a few thoughts on aliens and their lofty attitudes. But rather than say something he’d regret—and maybe get himself lasered into oblivion—he took out his annoyance on the last few stew molecules.

  Rollie sensed a win. “We’ll be there,” he told Xylith.

  “Stellar.” She nodded. “Oh, and one more thing before you go …” It was Face Two doing the talking now, her violet eyes narrowed. “Was it really confinement, Tsmorlood? Or did you get yourself life-merged again?”

  “You’re the second one to ask that.”

  “And I know how it happens,” she said. “The pearly moons … The out of the way spot … the music … the laughs … the Zlorgon Sub-Atomic Headbanger flowing like dihydrogen monoxide. Just the setting for romance, poor decision-making and life-shattering disast—”

  “Paar too, Xylith.” Grinning, Rollie touched a knob and the screen went blank. A tiny blip of light clung to the its center and faded away. The cabinet panels returned to their simple cabinetry duties.

  Bertram set his empty bowl aside. There was a vague stew residue in the bottom, but Bertram thought licking the bowl probably wasn’t the right image for the guy who was supposed to save Life As He Knew It. “Your ex, huh? She seems …” He searched for a safe adjective. “… Nice.”

  Rollie shrugged a shoulder and made a non-committal noise. “Could’ve worked out. Just there was one too many of us in the fragging relationship. Now then—” He gave an hearty clap of his hands and moved to the cockpit doorway. “—Coordinates for Vos Laegos?”

  Bertram had already resigned himself to the brain’s storyline. He felt vaguely manipulated by stew. “Give ’er all she’s got, Kiptin.”

  But as soon as he said it, he wished he hadn’t. Alien hallucinations these days were sorely behind on their Tryfan pop culture references. And as far as the reaction went, Bertram Ludlow might as well have licked the bowl.

  Chapter 7

  “Okay, whose is this?” On Podunk, the female Peace Guard held up a third arm—a thick male one—currently attached to the center of her chest.

  She peered around its twiddling fingers, which interrupted her line of vision. With a sigh, she steadied the hand in a less obtrusive spot. “An arm? Anyone?”

  “Mine!” One male Guard raised the stump of his shoulder in response, then switched to his remaining arm for better effect. With that hand, he rolled up his pants leg and pointed out the body part currently jutting from his knee. “Anyone need an ear?”

  “What?” asked a second male Guard, his lidless eyes unfocused.

  “I said, anyone need an—Oh.” The officer noticed his colleague’s missing ear and nodded. “I’ll tell you later.”

  “I’m dizzy,” said that officer loudly.

  “It’s your equilibrium.”

  “Ickle what?”

  “Later, we’ll talk later.”

  It was to this scene that the Hyphiz Deltan Regimental Enforcement Squad finally broke down the fused front door of the Podunk confinement center. W.I. Mook was the first to enter. He took one look at the mixed-up mess before him, clasped his hands in front of him in a tidy parade rest position, and said, “So would I be completely off-mark by asserting there’ve been some … challenges … with the prisoner?”

  The Podunk Peace Guards froze and eyed him in stunned silence, this blond, middle-aged tower of a man, a bit on the heavy side, with an intelligent, poetically-sensitive face and rigid posture. Then the room exploded with dialog.

  “I’m going to need my arm, and she’s got it!”

  “Red was green … Green was red.”

  “We should sue the manufacturer!”

  “The weapon you’re looking for is a ZT-112G polymer-casing hydro-reactive collapsible hand-laser.”

  “Everyone knows Podunk regeneration gets tricky in proximity to other unregenerated Podunks! This was clearly a diversion designed with malicious intent.”

  “Hey, my ear is gone!”

  W.I. Mook allowed this flood of discussion to surge around a moment, let them purge it from their systems, and then gave a slight bowing motion to his colleague, W.I. Tstyko. Igglestik Tstyko had been Mook’s partner for almost half of a Hyphiz Deltan century. He was equally tall and fair-haired, but wiry and with large, protuberant eyes that always made him look faintly unstable. Which he was.

  Fortunately, Mook found it a pleasant, heady sort of professional balance between them. Mook’s higher ups had always rated him personally as efficient but his tactics somewhat on the low-key side. In contrast, Tstyko lacked consistency but was fiercely devoted to nabbing anyone stepping remotely outside of Deltan regimentation schedules and regulatory procedures. Particularly if it involved lengthy intergalactic chases and weaponry in excess.

  They both enjoyed cheese.

  These were the reasons their partnership had flourished.

  At Mook’s gesture, Tstyko whistled sharply. Even the Peace Guard missing the ear jumped at the sound.

  “Thank you,” said Mook with a tight little smile.

  “My pleasure,” grinned Tstyko, scanning the group for signs of further unruliness.

  “Now,” began Mook, “I’m W.I. Mook. And this is W.I. Tstyko. The prisoner is gone, I take it?”

  As the Podunks opened their mouths to rain a torrent of response, Mook waved them to silence, “No, no.” He pointed at the female Guard with the three arms. “You. Peace Guard …?”

  “Nak, Sir,” she said, slapping the third arm out of her view. Cowed, it rested its hand on her shoulder.

  “P.G. Nak, proceed.”

  “Yes, sir, the prisoners are gone. You see, we just got this new Prisoner Confinement System, sir. The day we contacted your department from the ICV, we hadn’t used it before, sir. It’s a Klinko system, sir. And the instructions were, well, they were—”

  “Prisoners, P.G. Nak?” interrupted Mook mildly. “More than one prisoner? You sent us the I.D. on Rolliam Tsmorlood. Who else is missing?”

  “That’s just it,” said Nak. “We’re not sure. The life-form’s voice print didn’t come up with a match for priors. But the life-form was traveling with Tsmorlood and was located in Oogon Bungee’s ICV.”

  “Describe him, please?”

  “Male humanoid, sir,” she responded. “Not Hyphiz Deltan, but pink and void of scales. I’m unsure of his species. We have images if you’d like. It should have been recorded through the Klinko LK-31 Prisoner Confinement System surveillance component.” She looked uncertainly at her colleagues. “Anyone know how to check the recording of the Klinko LK-31 Prisoner Confinement System surveillance component?”

  (Forty-five Podunk minutes later …)

  The Podunk Peace Guards and Hyphiz Deltan W.I.s gathered around the display and all but Mook took a horrified step back. The image of the life-form on the confinement cot was stunned cold, hair askew, facial muscles over-loose for the stunning, and he appeared to be drooling lightly on the covers in a long, damp string.

  Tstyko laughed. “Well! I think we can safely rule out last year’s Miss Big Dippers.”

  “Can I get a digital copy of this sent to my ICV?” asked Mook.

  “Uhhh … sure …” considered P.G. Nak.

  (One hour and fifteen Podunk minutes later …)

  “Stellar,” said Mook, feeling a little like he’d been left stunned and drooling himself. “We have what we need. You write up the report on the in
cident and send us a copy. And we’ll place an alert on the Uninet. If your escapees are anywhere in the Greater Communicating Universe, we’ll hear of it soon enough.”

  “Thank you.”

  After all of this space travel and technological sorting, Mook’s mind now turned to the journey home. From there, it was a short leap to a nice mootaab cheese on toast. The food preparation unit on board their ship could do just wonders with a nice mootaab cheese toastie. He’d always considered it one of the simple pleasures in life. “Paar too, friends. Thank you for your assistance. We’ll be off.”

  He reached out and shook hand after hand, yet one hand—the one in the center of P.G. Nak’s chest—wouldn’t let go.

  “But V.I. Mook, what about us?” P.G. Nak said, black eyes shining with unshed tears.

  “W.I.,” Mook corrected gently with a smile.

  “Excuse me?”

  “W.I. It stands for ‘Waassall Issen.’ It’s Hyphiz Deltan. A title for senior-level crime investigators.” His years of service came flooding back to him in a warm wave of fond reminiscence. “It took me ten Deltan years to work up to Waassall Issen. Sadly, Translachew gum’s rubbish making sense of any of it.” He shrugged it away, one minor disappointment in a lifetime of job satisfaction.

  “W.I. Mook,” P.G. Nak corrected in pleading tones, “I have three arms.” She pointed to a colleague. “P.G. Zlotni has an ear on his knee. P.G. Wezzag is dizzy and half-deaf.”

  “Oh!” W.I. Mook evaluated this information with some surprise. “Are you saying you don’t want them then?”

  “Yes,” she exclaimed, releasing his hand like it was diseased, “of course we don’t want them! They’re not ours.”

  “What?” shouted P.G. Wezzag. “My hours are the same this week as they always are, why do you ask?”

  “Hm,” Mook considered this interesting new perspective and stroked his chin. “Funny. Time and again, I’ve wanted an added hand or an extra ear-to-the-ground, so to speak. But perhaps detective-work is done differently here on Podunk.”

  He turned to his partner and W.I. Tstyko nodded. “To each his own and all that, eh?” Tstyko agreed.

  “So what can be done about it?” Nak persisted.

  “Well, to be quite honest, I don’t really know, P.G. Nak,” Mook said. “I’m regrettably unfamiliar with the finer points of Podunk anatomy. Perhaps a talented surgeon might do the trick? Or a really good lasering, centripetal DNA sorting, and a follow-up regeneration?”

  “A strong astringent,” suggested W.I. Tstyko.

  P.G. Nak’s head bowed in disappointment, a simple gesture yet deeply moving.

  “Surely, your people have dealt with this before,” Mook said, finding himself patting her shoulder like a kindly uncle. “What do you do in cases of natural disasters? Mass transit accidents?”

  “We’re not a very populated planet,” said Nak. “There’s one city. One store. One bar. One doctor, whose patients are mostly livestock and they keep to themselves. We’ve only joined the GCU because the GCU found us and they liked the view.”

  “It is a rather lovely view, isn’t it?” agreed Mook heartily, wishing to cheer her. “The colorful sunsets are from the … the livestock methane, is that right?”

  “Yes,” she mumbled. “It’s fine unless you’re downwind.”

  “Hey, I heard of a rancher who got struck by lightning and merged with one of his livestock,” piped up P.G. Zlotni.

  “Oh, very good,” said Mook hopefully. “And what happened to him?”

  “He won the first prize trophy at the Podunk Northern Hemisphere Fair and gets all the grass he can eat.”

  Mook exhaled. “Ah.” He turned to Nak. “Include the physical damages in your report. I’ll confer with my supervisors and see whether they don’t have any ideas. At the very least, we can tack on a few years to Tsmorlood’s sentence for assault and, er …” He looked at her extra arm. “… Shuffling things about a bit.”

  She thanked him.

  “Take heart, P.G. Nak. We’ll do what we can.”

  “Refusing to adhere to the Deltan Regimentation Schedule … Escaping from confinement twice … And now scrambling up a bunch of Podunk Peace Guards. I tell you, Mook, when we find Rolliam Tsmorlood, I am making sure Altair-5 is the very next—and last—planet he sees.” Tstyko bit fiercely into his mootaab cheese toastie.

  They were back at the ship and Mook examined the image of the unknown escapee on their screen as he enjoyed his favorite sandwich. A robust flavor, just the right level of stretchiness. Perfect.

  Tstyko continued, “I don’t understand why some of these Deltans just won’t hold with the planet’s Regimentation Schedule. It always starts with that, you know—the criminal element does.”

  This was a speech Mook had heard many times. He chewed his sandwich meditatively.

  “I mean, Hours One to Three: sleep. Hours Four to 15: pre-determined productivity. Hours 16 to 27: mandatory recreation. Is it so difficult to support?”

  “I’ve found it a very pleasant existence,” Mook agreed.

  “Precisely! It assures everyone is busy, happy, prosperous, balanced … It’s good for society. It reduces crime significantly. And yet there are a handful of pribs like this Tsmorlood that simply won’t come to. I think it’s a genetic defect.”

  “Well, he does have systemic hypermotocerebrostasia.” Mook had noticed it in Tsmorlood’s case file once. It was a condition that hit about 1% of the Hyphiz Deltan population, represented by excess energy, bursts of movement, rapid, non-linear thought, manic episodes and, if uncontrolled, even madness.

  “That’s no excuse,” said Tstyko. “There’s medication for that sort of thing. To slow down … er … energy whosis in the blood … or …” he twiddled his fingers wildly, “nerve sensory thingies or … brain whatnot.” He shook his head. “No, I won’t have that kind of half-hearted pretext.”

  “I wonder if he might not be from Tryfe,” Mook said thoughtfully. He dabbed at his lips with a napkin and popped it in the waste incinerator.

  “Tsmorlood? Oh, he’s Deltan, all right …” But then he noticed Mook looking at the unknown escapee on the screen. “Oh, him.” Tstyko crammed in the last of the toastie. Through the food he said, “Tryfe. Isn’t that that little wishy-washy blue swirly planet outside of Quad One?”

  “It is,” Mook said. The coloring, the facial features, the response to stunning … They reminded him of a documentary he’d seen once on backspace life-forms.

  “Well, I don’t see how he could be from Tryfe. That lot isn’t a part of the GCU. They don’t do space travel as we know it. And the only ones who go there are cheeky teenagers for fly-by pranks looking to impress their girls at their brave determination to go somewhere so terribly remote and dead boring.”

  Mook turned his mild gaze on Tstyko with curiosity. “And was the future Mrs. Tstyko impressed?”

  “Not so as you’d notice,” Tstyko said, clearing his throat. “But it’s her icy stoicism that still gets me moony. Another toastie?”

  Chapter 8

  If only she’d installed a new fragrance in the air recycling system before they’d left, Mimsi Grabbitz thought. And maybe put down some plastic. The overripe vegetable scent that seemed to radiate from her current client was one she’d figured she’d get used to over the course of their journey. But so far, it only left her thinking about the time her on-board refuse incinerator glitched, just as the vegetarian take-out went whiffy.

  Still, a sale was a sale. And never let it be said that Mimsi Grabbitz let her sense of smell override her sense of better business. “I think you’re really going to like this property, Mr. Mij,” she said with a beaming smile, as she moved the craft in swiftly over the planet’s surface. “Tryfe is a unique fixer-upper opportunity if ever there was one, virtually ideal for someone of your creative thinking.”

  “You know my work, do ya, Mimsi?” Musca Mij asked, his multi-lensed eyes shimmering with green-violet iridescence. His voice, even through the projec
tion translators, buzzed with a vibration that rattled her eardrums.

  “Why, indeed, I do! The Blumdec timeshare ads … the Galacti-Gorgefest Cruises … and—oh!—the Heavy Meddler newscapsule and Uninet channel—both of which I am simply addicted to, dear!” It was true, she enjoyed her Heavy Meddler with breakfast and dinner each day. Lately she’d been riveted to the Meddler’s coverage of the romantic get-together, break-up, reunion, split, life-merger, attempted murder, criminal investigation, trial, merge-fragging, reunion, joint adoption of 437 Biblucian orphans, nasal congestion, orphan PR shots, public drunkenness and the Coalition of Planets annual awards ceremony dinner of celebrity darlings, Stella Cygnus and Jet Antlia.

  But who wasn’t?

  Mij rubbed a pair of hands together merrily at this. “Glad to have a fan.”

  “Your biggest! And that’s why, knowing your work as I do, I was thinking that if you’d care to share your potential plans for Tryfe, that would really help me help you better.” She gave him the Interested face. The Interested face, she noticed, was getting easier to do; meaning, it was time for her Facial Tightening Touch-up again. She’d have to book an appointment quickly before full-deflation.

  But Mij waved her interest away with two sets of arms. “Sorry, Mimsi. Love to dish, but no-can-do. Preliminary stages. Hush-hush. That sorta thing.”

  “I understand completely. Forget I even mentioned it,” she said, donning her Wide-Eyed Sincere face, and pressing on, directing his gaze to the ground below. “So, as you can see, the planet is located in a quiet neighborhood. It has its own sun. There’s a breathable atmosphere for oxygen-dependant life-forms. And it comes complete with some absolutely charming Tryfe humans.”

  At the last point, Musca Mij’s wings twitched. “Yeah,” he said reflectively, “about that. I’m probably gonna have to wipe them all out.”