8 The Polyps of Preparation
Dante clenched his fists as he watched Tompa, her guard, and a single Shon supporter approach the glowing sphincter. Appropriate name, considering what was being done to her. He only half listened to the chaotic chattering around him.
“A massacre, I tell you, unless we . . .”
“Law school didn’t prepare me for . . .”
“To the death?”
“Suggest we all go down there and . . .”
The hazy light of the sphincter turned Tompa’s uniform yellow as she stepped through and disappeared from sight. He squeezed his eyes shut.
“I didn’t know, Dante.” A hand touched his thigh.
He stared at Carolyn. “Would it have made any difference if you had?”
She didn’t speak for several seconds. All around them, humans jabbered while Shons began filing toward the exits at the top of the bleachers. She moved closer to him. “I’m not an unfeeling monster. My job requires me to make decisions for the greater good, and sometimes those decisions aren’t pleasant.” When he didn’t respond, she shook her head impatiently. “Look, Dante, I can’t afford a conscience. Before your accident, you would have understood.”
He stared at her hand, resting on his thigh. Her thinking was flawed, but he couldn’t pinpoint where.
“Madame Ambassador.” Vice President of Logistics Ollie Davis, the ranking officer amongst the Navy delegation at the trial, sat down on Carolyn’s other side. “The crew doesn’t like abandoning even a Ship’s Ward under these circumstances. Everyone except the lawyers wants to charge out to defend her.”
“No! Violence between sailors and the natives is the very last thing I need right now. God, I can picture the lizard grins on the Klicks’ snouts.”
“I understand,” Davis said. “Thing is, most of these sailors report to other VPs. It would be best if the order to leave her to the Shons came from you.”
“Certainly.” Carolyn rose. A second later Dante rose also, but he looked the opposite direction, toward the sphincter.
“No one,” Carolyn ordered the humans, “is going after the Ship’s Ward. Understood?”
Dante stepped toward the arena. Behind him, he heard Davis advising Carolyn quietly.
“That’s an order,” she added. “A Code Magenta order.”
Magenta. The color splashed across Dante’s mind. It meant an order of ultimate importance that he must instantly obey, no matter what. But magenta was also the color of blood. Of life and death. Tompa’s death.
Doing this to an innocent girl wasn’t fair. What Carolyn had done to him that night on the Vance wasn’t fair, either, and in a way that he couldn’t articulate, it made Tompa his responsibility. Otherwise, it was sex in exchange for his silence, his conscience, his very soul.
The confusion and uncertainty of the last few days crystallized into a vivid, magenta decision. He turned to Carolyn. “You’re wrong.”
“Not now, Dante.”
“I—” But she was turning away. He spoke to her back. “I would never have understood.”
He turned and dashed down the steps, toward Tompa Lee.
Shouts arose even before he reached the powdery dust of the arena. He kept running, expecting with every step a sudden, burning agony to terminate his dash. He’d ignored a Code Magenta. That was an act of mutiny. If he were still in command of the guards, who’d kept their weapons, he’d order them to fire.
Yet he didn’t dodge or weave. He owed the Navy a clear shot at his back even more than he owed Tompa Lee her safety—or, to be more realistic, the small grace of not dying alone.
He paused at the sphincter. Burning agony still didn’t strike him, even though his broad back was an easy target. Well, he’d given them their chance; he and the Navy were even. Not that he expected they’d see it that way, of course.
Crouching to avoid bumping his head, he stepped through the sphincter and edged into an empty hallway that curved away from the courtroom. For as far as he could see in the light from weak overhead bulbs, the walls were covered with wide doors painted alternately orange and white, hiding their secrets with wooden insolence. He pushed a couple of doors. Locked.
After trying dozens of doors, Dante stopped. The gateway to the courtroom was no longer visible because of the hallway’s arc. No one was in the hall, and only dusty footprints on the concrete floor showed that living creatures had ever passed this way. Ahead of him, doors stretched seemingly without end. None of them was conveniently labeled with a sign saying Tompa Lee went this-a-way. The low ceiling was as oppressive as Dante’s uncertainty.
Suddenly a door creaked, out of sight ahead of him. He dashed toward the sound, head low, determined to get to the door before it closed and left him without clues.
“Good God, man, what are you doing here?”
The English words, spoken with a lilting, inhuman accent, made Dante rein in his headlong dash just in time to keep from smashing into a tall figure at the threshold of an open doorway. Major Krizink. The Klick grabbed his arm and urged him into a wedge-shaped room lit only by the glow from what looked like a picture window covering most of one wall. A projection, obviously, but a good one; the stream rippling through a dense, alien forest was impressively realistic, considering the Shon’s level of technology. At the narrow end of the wedge was another door, much narrower than the first.
“You aren’t supposed to be here, you know.” Krizink closed the squeaky door and curled himself on the floor, which was the only way his height would fit in the tiny space. “But then, I, too, should have left the arena with the other accusers. In our mutual defiance of convention, do I discern a kindred spirit, human?”
Dante faced him, his body braced and ready. Krizink massed more than Dante and he was a head taller. Klicks were legendary fighters, but in such an enclosed space Dante’s compact strength might count for more than Krizink’s speed and dangerous tail.
“Why did you drag me in here? What are you going to do to me?”
Krizink gave a raspy wheeze that might have been a laugh. “I am going to welcome you to my polyp of preparation, cramped though it is for two beings of decent size, and ask you your name. That’s the purpose of these little rooms, you know. To allow pairs of people engaged in a legal dispute to meet as individuals before submerging their independence in a herd.” Raising the tip of his tail to shoulder height, Krizink pointed with it to a dun-colored blanket under Dante’s feet. “There’s even a love mat, should they wish to have sex one last time.”
Dante glanced at the mat. If Carolyn hadn’t seduced him, would he care enough about Tompa Lee to be here? “I’ll pass, thank you.”
Krizink wheezed and held out his hand. “I’m Krizink K’lahl, a Major in the service of the Multitudinous Elected Potentates.”
“Dante Roussel. Associate Vice President in the Commerce Space Navy.” Speaking his title—or rather, former title, now that he was a renegade—hit him hard. How much of his personal authority and strength had come from outside, from his position in a hierarchy of social power? Was he a hollow figurine, shellacked by his rank with a glaze of importance? The questions rattled everything he knew about himself. Yet at the same time, he felt more alive than he had in years.
The Klick, meanwhile, still held out his hand, waiting. After a moment, he flexed his fingers and studied them as though visualizing the right way to shake hands. “Dante Roussel, this is how your species greets one another. You are the first human I have met face to face, but in my study with the foremost scholars who have sojourned on Earth, I learned that the handshake ritual was universal.” He thrust his hand forward more aggressively, as though determined to prove he knew more about humans than Dante did.
Amused, Dante shook it. He expected the alien to engage in a squeezing contest, but though he shook too vigorously and for too long, his grip was gentle. Another surprise was the feel of the Klick’s skin, which was warm and human-like rather than slimy. Indeed, the only parts of Krizink that fit th
e ‘oily reptile’ stereotype were the shiny beige skin of his face and, especially, the stringy hair that went all around his neck as well as the back and top of his head. Krizink’s dark eyes studied Dante with intelligence, fascination, and an intensity that would have been daunting to a mere figurine.
Dante smiled as he let go of Krizink’s hand. “Where is Tompa Lee?”
“In a polyp, I presume, preparing her soul to plunge into the wellspring, or having sex, perhaps, with the Shon male foolish enough to stand up for her. She is female, correct?”
Dante nodded, then wished he hadn’t. The Klick had been fishing for information, and he’d just given him some, free.
“By her clothes and size I thought so, but she might simply be young. I have learned the most obvious identifiers such as long hair and big breasts, but in their absence I sometimes have difficulty distinguishing man from woman. There is much I wish to learn about humans.”
“Well, I’m a male.”
Krizink looked him up and down, wheezing as though happy. “A creature as bulky as you must be a grand fighter. Or perhaps you’re a tactician? I must admit, this trial promised to be boring until you showed up.”
“I must find Tompa Lee.”
“I cannot help at the moment.” He jabbed his tail toward the small door at the narrow end of the polyp. “However, when that door opens it will be our turn to board a tube train for a six-hour ride under land and sea to the island of justice where Tompa Lee’s bones will bleach in the sun. There we shall all find her.”
“Why are you telling me this when we’re going to fight each other in a little while?”
Krizink gave another wheezing laugh. Instead of answering directly, he held out a string of grease-matted hair from his forehead while at the same time unsheathing the four-inch spike at the end of his tail. The spike seemed intended primarily for stabbing, but a gleaming metal blade was implanted in the inner curve so it could be used for cutting, as well. Staring into Dante’s eyes, Krizink suddenly lashed out with his tail and sliced off the hair nearly at the scalp. He didn’t even blink.
“You’ve never seen anyone do that, I’ll wager.” Krizink held the hair toward Dante, turning his hand to display it from all angles. “My tail is thinner than most and thus more limber. Such agility, speed, and control are almost unheard of—which means that a fight between you and me would be terribly one-sided, considering your measly two fighting appendages. Fortunately for you, however, strategy decrees that the Shons fight their own trial. We are observers only.” Krizink brought the hair close to his snout, sniffed it, and then popped it into his mouth. He chewed noisily, with a sideways motion of his jaw like a camel.
Dante grunted. He tried the small door leading to the tube train. It was locked.
Krizink swallowed and licked his lips. “My studies of your species have raised many questions, Dante Roussel. For example, are you truly so immoral that you are capable of procreating at random, without even the decency of—how would you say it in English? Proper courtship between three to seven people? No, unsatisfactory words. Sufficient time to acquire the souls of your life-party?”
Instead of answering, Dante tried the large door through which he’d entered the polyp. Locked.
“In English,” Krizink complained, “our life paths sound wrong. Flat and sterile, rather than vibrant and sacred. Your human tongue is pitifully deficient.”
“In my native tongue, we’d call it a ménage a trois.”
“You know the concepts then?”
“Of sexual perversions? Yes.”
Krizink didn’t seem to realize he’d been insulted. “I shall introduce you to my beloved life party. This trial promised to be such a simple matter that I’ve brought all six of them. Our—” he paused, moving his jaw from side to side “—there’s no English word for glish-naka. Anyway, one of my partners is pregnant. I shall introduce her to you.”
Dante shook his head. Meet this lizard’s pregnant wife in the middle of a fight to the death? Had the Navy actually shot him and he was lying in the arena, dreaming an absurd, feverish dream? “No, thanks.”
“But this is your chance, my good man, to learn something of the depth and grandeur your puny institution of marriage lacks.”
There was a small square of cloth and a bowl of water in an alcove across from the fake picture window. Dante wet the cloth and made a production of washing the hand that had shaken with the Klick.
Krizink wheezed. “Ah well, being a glish-naka, she doesn’t understand English, in any case.”
When Dante was finished with the cloth, Krizink stretched out his tail and picked it up. He placed it over the tip of his tail like a tent and tossed the cloth straight up. On its way down, he sliced through its edge with his claw. He repeated this little game over and over. Finally, he held up the cloth, now neatly and precisely fringed along one edge.
Wheezing a laugh and staring at Dante, Krizink shredded the other edges.
Tompa couldn’t summon the energy to look up as the tiny, wedge-shaped room began to rumble and shake.
“Train arrived speedily.” The geezer lifted a dripping washcloth from a bowl and extended it toward her. “Necessity urges ritually the rinsing of each other before proceeding onto the train for journey to island called Bez-Tattin’s Toenail.”
The train ceased its rumbling outside the small door.
“Rinse hurriedly, strange human.”
When they first entered the Polyp, the geezer had introduced himself as Awmit. When she didn’t respond, he touched the translator in his ear and introduced himself again and again. Awmit. Awmit.
Tompa hadn’t had the will to respond. Instead, she had curled into a ball on a tan mat in this tiny polyp of preparation, trying not to think, not to feel.
Awmit began pacing. She sensed he was starting to panic, but she wanted so badly to be left alone. He touched her thigh, then jerked his hand away quickly. “Please, human being, cleanse ritually.” When she didn’t respond, he plucked at her skirt.
She slapped his hand, then felt sorry. He was the only one who cared enough to stand up for her, and this cleansing thing seemed important to him. Reluctantly, she leaned her face forward, inviting him to wash it. After pausing for a moment, he let out a whistling throb and hurriedly ran the dripping cloth across her forehead in a slapdash parody of cleaning her. Water stung her right eye. She opened the other eye and saw him dipping the cloth in the bowl and holding it out to her.
The small door gave a thunk. She guessed it had just been unlocked.
“Cleanse quickly, human, quickly.”
She took the cloth and ran it over the top of his head. The water that dripped from the cloth turned to mud on his skin; he was coated with dust. So was she, probably. Maybe this ritual cleansing served a real purpose. She was starting to wash Awmit in earnest when the door swung open with a hideous creak.
It was dark out there. Dark as hell.
No, wait. She could see shapes, but dimly. Everything was black. The floor of the train was black, the cushions on the floor were black, the walls were black. She imagined a long train of such compartments, all of them black and empty, pulling up to the doors of Polyps. The doors automatically unlocking. Her accusers gleefully leaving their Polyps for the trip to her death.
Not just her death, though; Awmit’s, too. He let out a groan and sank to the floor. He covered his eyes with his hands.
“Poor guy.” The cloth was still in her hand, so she resumed rubbing dust from his head, stroking him with a tenderness that she didn’t know had survived in her. “You didn’t do anything to deserve being saddled with a loser like me, did you?”
He lowered his hands and stared at her. “This one lives negatively as saddled beast of burden.”
“I didn’t mean—”
The train let out a little beep. Awmit’s head swivelled toward it. Despite his lack of a neck, he could turn his head far more than a human could.
“It’s the translator.” Tompa tapped he
r ear. “It makes words come out wrong sometimes. I didn’t mean to insult you.”
He turned back to her and, after a moment, shuddered. “This one comprehends fearfully. Yet lack of herd-bonding equals dying disgracefully, unworthily.”
The train beeped louder.
“I’m sorry, Awmit.” She reached out and awkwardly put both arms around him. “I’m no good at bonding. Even with humans.” That suddenly seemed tragic. No one would care when she died. She clung to Awmit, thrusting away tears and the urge to curl in a ball again.
After a moment he returned the hug hesitantly, then with increasing strength. When his vaguely fruit-like odor began to cloy in her nostrils, Tompa pulled away gently.
“This one disagrees respectfully,” Awmit said. “Embrace with human feels amazingly excellent as way to herd bond.” He reached out and touched her hair with two fingers, then stroked her neck, staring at it as though in wonder. She forced herself to remain still, though her impulse was to recoil. “The human exists softly and weirdly, yet seems unexpectedly the most graceful being this one knows ever.”
“You old sweet talker, are you trying to honey me?”
He stared at her. After a moment, he removed the translator from a belly-button-like indentation near his huge left eye, shook it and put it back in his ear.
Tompa surprised herself. She laughed.
The train wasn’t amused, and let out an angry shriek. Awmit crumpled to the floor, quivering.
She pulled him to his feet. “African princess, Awmit. Think African princess.”
Again, he started to pull the translator from his ear, but she stopped him and tugged him toward the gaping blackness of the train.
“It’s time to go. I’ll explain about African princess on the way to Bez-Tattin’s Foot, okay?”
“Toenail, graceful human. Bez-Tattin’s Toenail exists as harsh, uninhabited island, dry earth broiling lifelessly in sunlight.” He stood a bit straighter. “After graceful human explains ‘African princess,’ this one explains vividly the tragedy of Bez-Tattin’s sorrowful judgment on the ancient civilization of the Nail, thus dwelling negatively on the doom impending.”
The train shrieked at them again.
“Fuck you, train,” Tompa said.
Awmit made a gargling sound, as though the air was emptying from his lungs. “Incomprehensible human offers grotesquely intercourse with a machine? The perversion exists as possibility? Human anatomy appears outlandishly, yet imagination refuses horridly the contemplation of how or why—”
As he chattered on, Tompa stepped aboard the train with him. At least they wouldn’t run out of things to explain to each other during their long journey to death.