For the Thrill of the Blunt Read online

  “You did, Captain. Hours ago, here in my bar. You told me so much about yourself I could write your biography.”

  Charlie swallowed hard. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead.

  Fuck.

  What the hell did I say?

  And why the hell can’t I remember any of it?

  Her smile widened. Again, she leaned forward and whispered into his ear, “Don’t worry, your secrets are safe with me. After all, it’s my job to keep them for you. It’s also my job to bring you secrets. I’ll tell you the things Mother won’t tell you.” She switched to his other ear, and as she did so, she swept her lips within an inch of his. “And I’ll give you the things that Mother can’t.”

  As she slid back to her side of the bar she flashed a wink—and some glorious cleavage—at the awestruck stoner.

  “But Mother can make anything, right? I’ve seen it. She’s made me all sorts of things.” He yanked his eyes away from Nadia’s and looked up at the ceiling. “Mother, tell her. Mother? You there?”

  Nadia smirked. “I’m sorry, but she can’t answer right now. She and I have an agreement. She gives me some privacy, and I give her the high ground.”

  “But she’s the ship, right? If we’re in the Starseed, doesn’t that mean—”

  “That may be true for the rest of the ship, but not here. Don’t get me wrong, I love her as much as any other Seeder. I just can’t handle such invasive mothering. Out there, she’s always around. Watching every move you make. Listening to every conversation. Only here, in my Lavaka, can we truly be alone. Which is why, ever since I’ve served as the Starseed’s Chief of Secrets, each and every one of her captains, like you, has eventually found their way here. To Lavaka, to me. Mother may always give you what you need, but I will always give you what you want.”

  Charlie let her innuendo hang among the thick tendrils of incense as he felt panic creep up his spine.

  What the hell do I want?

  An image of his former campsite surrounded by massive cannabis plants popped into his mind. A few days ago, his goals were simple: avoid the feds long enough to pay off a dangerous drug lord; sneak out of the country and start another grow operation; triumphantly return to California with his Golden Ticket strain and win first place in the Cannabis Cup. That’s all. Piece of cake. Everything was on track, too, until that goddamn beam of light started sucking his girls up into the sky.

  Now, after the uncanny events of the last forty-eight hours, it felt like the whole world was on his shoulders.

  Dude, that’s because the fate of Earth—and hundreds of other planets—IS on your shoulders.

  More recent memories flooded his mind: diving onto Happy, the last of his cannabis plants to be sucked up by the Starseed; meeting Mu the giant worm demon; his brutal interrogation at the hands of a psychotic Reptilian; the dying words of Captain Major Tom.

  Captain Major Tom. Human on the outside, Reptilian on the inside. Not only did he trick me into becoming captain, he told me I was the only one he could trust to finish his stupid weapon and free the galaxy from his buddies. Worse, the asshole died before giving me even the faintest clue where to start. Fucker.

  But wait. If this lady knew Captain Tom, if she’s really the “Chief of Secrets”, maybe she knows something about his weapon? Maybe she’s the one person he said he could trust?

  Then again, she might be the Reptilian spy he mentioned.

  Shit, man.

  He turned away from his thoughts and stared deeply into Nadia’s almond-shaped eyes. Her gaze was intense, tenacious, hungry. He felt like kissing her. Courage swelled.

  What do I have to lose?

  He leaned forward.

  A wisp of incense snuck up on him. Before he could stifle it, his nose unleashed a double-barreled snot explosion across the bar. The pain in his head returned, twice as strong. His courage evaporated. He sniffled and looked around for something to wipe up his snot.

  She smiled and wiped down the bar. When she was done, she leaned forward to hand him a napkin.

  “So, Captain, all you have to do is tell me what you want, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “What I want?” Charlie’s nose honked loudly as he blew into the napkin. “What I want, right now, is…”

  “Yes?” she leaned in further so their faces were just an inch apart.

  “A sirloin steak—bloody rare—and a fat joint. Oh, and a big-ass bottle of ibuprofen.” Charlie moaned and dropped his head back into his arms. He heard Nadia huff and felt her turn away.

  “You’re a man,” she said sharply. “I know what you want. Perhaps better than you do.”

  “How about this?” Her voice was suddenly different.

  Charlie peeked over his forearms. Nadia was gone. In her place stood Zylvya.

  Her wood-grained skin and her emerald braid looked grayish in the dim violet candlelight. Her orange toga hung low on her chest, revealing the curves Charlie had obsessed over since arriving on the Starseed.

  “What’s wrong, my sweet ape?” Fists on her hips, she whipped her braid around and batted her green eyelashes toward the bemused captain. “Didn’t I get it just right?”

  “I… I…” he stuttered. “Zee, how’d you get here? Where’d Nadia go?”

  Zylvya roared with laughter. Amused chuckles reverberated through the alien patrons sitting nearby.

  “You see, Captain,” Zylvya whispered, “nothing is as it seems out here beyond your little pale blue dot.”

  She leaned forward, the loose toga falling away from her chest even further. She reached out a hand to caress Charlie’s forearm. It felt just as Zylvya’s hand had felt; soft yet strong, grainy yet fleshy. She leaned closer still, her lips once again at his ear.

  “It’s smart to be skeptical, Captain. You’ll live longer out here if you question everything you see, hear, feel, taste.” A gentle moan accompanied the last word. “I know what you need. When the time is right, ask Mother for Captain Major Tom’s Outernet history file.”

  “Uh…what?” Charlie stammered, not a single drop of blood left in his brain. “What the hell is an Outernet history file?”

  “Shhhhh.” She held her finger to her lips. “What you’re looking for starts there. You’ll see. But Mother won’t want you to have it. She’ll keep it from you. She’ll try to deceive you.”

  Her hand moved from his arm to his cheek as she switched ears again. Charlie smelled Zylvya’s acacia scent lingering in her hair. He felt her fragrant breath on his neck. Yet the way she moved was different, more animalistic, more… predatory.

  “When that happens, when you see for yourself how easily she’ll lie to you, return to me. We’ll work out a pleasurable exchange of goods.” She sprawled her torso across the bar in front of him.

  For the first time, Charlie was able to catch a glimpse of Nadia’s, or Zylvya’s—or whoever the hell’s this was—lower half. His mouth fell open. He leaned over her to get a better look behind the bar. She squealed with delight.

  The upper portion of her body—her head, arms, torso, even her voice–was Zylvya. But from her waist down stretched the body of an immense snake. Scaly green coils filled the space behind the bar, writhing and toppling over one another.

  “You’re not human. You’re…” He rubbed his eyes, not knowing how to finish the sentence. She laughed and reached a hand out to touch his cheek.

  “Now that you’ve caught a glimpse of my true form—the part of me I can’t shapeshift—would you like to see more?”

  “I…” His heart raced. Blood pounded furiously against his skull.

  “Owww!” The Zylvya-snake-woman shot upright, her mischievous grin replaced with an agonized scowl. She winced and held her side. “What the fuck?!”

  Tiny droplets of blue blood spanned the length of her torso and arm. Charlie looked down just in time to see a cluster of thorns melting back into the surface of the bar.

  “Zylvya!” she screeched, spinning around. “We had an agreement! Keep your weeds out of my ba
r!”

  “Yes, you snake, we had a deal,” he heard another Zylvya call out from behind a curtain. “And you agreed to stop mimicking me. I guess we’re even now.”

  The new Zylvya—this one with legs instead of a tail—stepped out from behind a curtain. An emerald fire raged in her eyes. In a flash, the Zylvya behind the bar shimmered and transformed back into Nadia.

  “Fine, have it your way.” She waved a dismissive hand toward the real Zylvya. “You caught me. I was just having a nice conversation with our new captain, and I thought a familiar face might help him warm up.”

  “Warm up? Is that what you call it these days?”

  A lightning bolt shot around the inside of Charlie’s skull. He pressed a knuckle into each temple. A row of five more pint glasses morphed on the bar in front of him. With a trembling hand he grabbed a glass and chugged.

  “Oh, stop being jealous, Zee. We’re keeping everything professional. For now.” She flung a smirk at Zylvya before leaning across the bar to Charlie’s ear. “Remember, you’re the captain. You’re free to come to Lavaka, to me, any time you’d like.”

  Charlie pulled away, a rush of nausea washing over him. He downed a second glass of water and squinted at the two women. Dazed and exhausted, he grabbed a third glass of water.

  “Let’s go, Charlie,” Zylvya barked, the green fire in her eyes flaring up. With a pint of water in hand, the wobbly captain began shuffling toward her.

  “Thanks for the Demonic Dewdrop, or whatever you called it.” Not only did his head feel like it could explode at any moment, each footstep caused his stomach to do a backflip. He pointed himself toward the curtain to Zylvya’s right, reached a hand out, and closed his eyes. “Put it on my tab. Like you said, I’m the captain, man. I’m good for it. I think.”

  Thinking it was the entrance Zylvya had come through, he brushed the curtain aside and hurried past. Both legs connected with a knee-high mound of velvety pillows, causing his top half to lurch forward. After face-planting into the far wall of the alcove, he squealed in pain, jerked backward, and collapsed onto the floor.

  Zylvya sighed heavily. She swept aside the curtain to her left.

  “This way, Captain.” She waited as he slowly got to his feet and stumbled through the passageway she held open for him.

  As he started down the hallway that connected Lavaka to the Ring, he heard the final exchange of words between the women.

  “Stay away from him,” Zee snarled. “Keep him out of whatever web you’re spinning. I mean it.”

  “Oh, darlin’ sprig, feelin’ more green than normal?” Nadia teased in Mother’s voice. “You know as well as I that it’s just a matter of time before our dear captain finds his way back to Lavaka. They always do.”

  3

  The whole shitter-in-a-shower thing was an idea Charlie and his college buddies had kicked around after a night of heavy drinking. Their half-baked theory was that nothing could soothe a hangover like being free to relieve one’s bowels while sitting beneath a stream of scalding water.

  Now, a bazillion miles from his cramped dorm, Charlie was living the dream.

  The stand-alone shower appeared within seconds of Zylvya tossing him into his room and slamming the door shut behind him. It simply morphed out of the floor like everything else on the Starseed. At first, Charlie had hoped the wide, glass cylinder was a walk-in bong tube. But once steamy water began raining down inside and that familiar porcelain seat rose up in the middle, he stripped down, slogged his way through the oblong porthole, and sat down.

  The part of the hangover where he shit his brains out was agonizing, but brief. Once that was over, he’d resorted to rocking back and forth and occasionally moaning into the steam. The Starseed kept the water at exactly the right temperature and pressure. The toilet seat seemed to soften and conform perfectly to his ass. After a while, Charlie started to feel less like a turd-stuffed corpse with its head in a vice. Just as he told himself that nothing could get him to leave his brand new shitter-in-a-shower-in-space, a voice appeared from inside the toilet.

  “Pssst. Hey, buddy. You done, or what?”

  Charlie, jolting to life, slipped from the wet seat and plopped onto the shower floor. Cautiously, he peered into the clear toilet water. A few bubbles rose from the dark hole at the bottom.

  “You’ve been sittin’ for a long time,” the voice said with a thick Bronx accent, “and I got other stuff to do. So what’s it gonna be?”

  Charlie yanked the toilet’s handle. The water swirled and drained from the bowl, then started filling slowly. Once it refilled, a few more bubbles floated to the surface.

  “What was that? You messin’ with me?”

  “Uhhh…” Charlie’s mouth hung open, unable to produce a coherent response.

  “Look, sorry if I startled you. Thought a little scare might help loosen those bowels of yours. Why not have a seat and we’ll see what happens, okay? Number 1 or Number 2 is fine. Hell, I can’t remember if Earth apes are capable of Number 3, but I’ll take that, too. I ain’t picky.”

  Charlie sat on the wet tile floor, peering into the toilet bowl. Suddenly, there was a gurgle deep in his abdomen. His stomach did a half gainer with a full twist. His bowels growled. Despite every instinct to get the hell out of there, Charlie slid his ass back onto the talking toilet.

  “That’s it, buddy. Just relax. Now, visualize blowing some more mud down the ole poop shoot.”

  His head started spinning wildly. His vision blurred. Nausea bubbled up from his bowels, punched his stomach in the face, and scrambled up his esophagus.

  Charlie clenched his throat shut. There was a thump under his feet. An ivory mound burst through the wet tiles and quickly morphed into a second toilet.

  He relaxed and set his stomach contents free. With a chunky splash and some sputtering, it was done. Charlie wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, spit one more time, then flushed.

  “Did you just puke?” the voice echoed up from between his legs. “I heard a flush, but nothing came down. You clogged up there or something?”

  “Is that you, Frank?” a second voice, with an even thicker New York accent, called out from the second toilet.

  “Yeah, what if it is?” the first voice said defensively.

  Bubbles rose up from the second bowl. “That is you, Frank! It’s me, Tony. Your second cousin on your mother’s side. Helen’s boy.” He paused, giving Frank’s memory time to catch up. “We worked together at that big gaming conference, maybe a decade ago, remember? That row of defecation stations lined up outside Nylf’s Arcade.”

  “Tony!” Frank gurgled from under Charlie. “How could I forget that weekend? There was some kind of food-borne thing, real nasty, going through the crowd like wildfire. We ate like friggin'’ kings! Man, how you doin’?”

  “I’m doin’ great! The wife and I settled down near the Transit Bay. She really likes the exotic spices that come through. They give me indigestion—but don’t tell her that or she’ll bust my balls.”

  “I didn’t know you were married, Tony. Congratulations! That’s great to hear. Just great.”

  “Yeah, I’m a lucky fella I guess. Her name’s Helen, from one of the colonies near the Crab Nebula. She’s my whole world. Hey, that reminds me, how’s Ruth?”

  “The hell if I know. We ended that years ago. One day, without warning, she just up and left. Said I was full of shit.”

  Both toilets started bubbling wildly with laughter, almost as if they were boiling over. To Charlie, it sounded like two New York City construction workers laughing their asses off. Charlie could almost see their huge round beer bellies shaking under their neon safety vests, big goofy smiles underscoring scuffed-up yellow helmets.

  “That’s a good one,” Tony said through a chuckle. “Well, I’m glad you found a positive outlook on life after marriage. I hear divorce can be kinda rough. Especially on the kids.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t easy. Especially not at first. But, after a while, ya
know, you just kinda get used to it. Your heart heals a little each day, and before you know it—”

  “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON, MAN?” Charlie stood glaring at the toilets. “WHY THE FUCK ARE THERE TALKING TOILETS IN MY SHOWER?”

  “Talking toilets?” Frank sounded hurt. “Did you hear that, Tony? He called us toilets.”

  “I can’t friggin'’ believe he just called us toilets. That’s awful.”

  “And rude,” Frank added.

  “It’s hate speech, really,” Tony said stiffly. “Makes me wanna send this ape’s puke back up through the pipe, if ya know what I mean.”

  “NO, I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT YOU MEAN.” Charlie winced as a spiky ball of pain rattled around inside his skull.

  “Now darlin’, there’s no need to yell.” A voice appeared over his shoulder. He spun around, ready to kung-fu the intruder, and slipped. Both feet went flying. His body went horizontal and he landed flat on his back. As it had on previous falls, the local gravity adjusted to soften the impact.

  Charlie laid on the wet tile and gazed into the steam. “Mother. Hi.”

  “Hello, Captain!” she squealed in her sweet, southernly style. “How are you feelin’ this fine mornin’?”

  “Never better. Glad you could join the little party I’m throwing in my shower.” He sat up and pushed his knuckles into his eye sockets to keep them from bulging.

  “Hey Mother! Great to hear your voice, as always. Hope you’re doin’ well,” Frank bubbled from the first toilet. “As far as I’m concerned, this party ended over an hour ago. Since then, he’s just been sitting there moaning. Until Tony showed up, that is.”

  “True, Frank, but after what he just called us, I’m not sure I enjoyed my meal very much. I feel kinda sick to my stomach.”

  “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN—” Charlie stopped himself, sighed, and continued through clenched teeth, “Mother, what the hell does it mean by ‘meal’? Are the toilets alive on the Starseed?”

  “Oh heavens, no!” Mother said. “No, darlin’, the toilet is just plain old porcelain. A standard Earth model, right? I do hope I got it right.”