At the far end of the arrivals hall, near the sealed air lock where—hopefully—Parker, Lourdes, and Milo were still floating around on their hangman’s nooses, a lone security cog dressed in the official red uniform of the Grosvenor Galactic Police Department danced and flailed with unrestrained joy. He made a mess on the floor around his feet because he was missing his left arm from the elbow down, as well as the middle three fingers on his right hand, so he sprayed cog snot everywhere as he danced and danced for us.
“I am so burgeoning with happiness, so pregnant with jubilation, I want to place us all under arrest so we could go through the humiliation of the booking process together and spend the rest of eternity in a six-by-six-foot cell with each other!” The very happy cog squealed as he danced and skipped—and dripped—toward us.
I still carried my tire iron—just in case, of course. “I’ll gladly knock his fucking head off,” I said.
“Do it,” Billy, who never liked cogs anyway, urged.
Rowan cleared his throat. That was really all he needed to say to us. But, as Rowan so predictably tended to do, he added, “Cager, we don’t actually know how many—or few—cogs the Tennessee has remaining on board.”
That was Rowan, as always my eternally reliable voice of reason.
The security cog came scampering up to us, wriggling his butt like an ecstatic hunchbacked pug while a stream of wetness ran down his red trouser legs.
“Wheee! Wheee! Wheee! Look at my butt! I am so happy, I can’t stop shaking it back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and yippeee!”
“Please kill him, Cager,” Billy said.
I shook my head. “I was never cut out to be a rabbit, Bill.”
I held up my hand in an attempt to calm the overeager security cog, whose name, according to his uniform insignia, was Dennis. “Officer Dennis, we’ve only come here to retrieve three of my cogs who’ve been stranded in the docking bay for quite some time now.”
Officer Dennis, suddenly aware that he had some kind of job duties that went beyond simply gyrating his ass and urinating in his pants, straightened up, glanced over his shoulder at the air-lock door, and then looked back at me.
“There are cogs in the docking bay?” Officer Dennis attempted to point at the air lock’s door, but he only had a thumb and little finger on his right hand, which dripped and dripped.
“Yes. Three of them,” I said.
Officer Dennis said, “Wheee! This makes me want to flip in the air like an acrobat!” And then Officer Dennis jumped up and attempted a joyous backflip but only ended up landing hard on the back of his skull.
Apparently, Officer Dennis had about as much practice at backflips as Reverend Bingo did at pitching.
“I am so happy there are cogs in the bay! Yeee! Yippeee!” Officer Dennis, whose neck had broken open and gushed a renewed flow of slime across the floor, paddled and flopped around in his own internal goo like a beached hagfish. And when he tried to stand again, his head lolled forward so his chin rested against his sternum. “That’s what my feet look like! Yay! I’ve never looked at my feet before! I love my shoes so much!”
Officer Dennis fell down onto his face.
“I am so freaking happy!” he burbled into his goop, flap-splashing what was left of his arms down into the spreading pool.
I stepped around the twitching remains of the partially eaten and broken security cog and made my way toward the air-lock door.
“Oh, no!” Officer Dennis said. “Humans are not allowed to perform labor on or around the air locks. I will be forced to place you under arrest if you attempt to do so.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, waving dismissively. “I own this ship, and besides, your head’s falling off.”
“I’m so thrilled to announce that I am making my very first arrest of a human being! I am placing you under arrest, Cager Messer! This is better than anything ever! Yippeee! Yay! Yay! You’re under arrest!” Officer Dennis’s words percolated up in a stream of bubbles through the stringy, viscous gravy his face was lying in.
Then he said, “Please cooperate and come along with me to Security Detention Center Seven! Hooray!”
I looked at Officer Dennis. He did not appear to be capable of going anywhere.
“Um, Officer Dennis,” I said, “I don’t think you can walk.”
Officer Dennis kicked his legs wildly, splashing his slippery cog slop all over himself. I took a step back. I was sick of getting cog juice all over me.
“You’re right! I’m so thrilled to say I can’t walk! I’ve never wanted anything more in my life than to arrest a human being and lose the ability to walk! But you’re still under arrest! Wheee!”
Officer Dennis spun an excited quarter circle in the soup of his innards.
And as Officer Dennis cheered and splashed, I turned on the wall screens to check on the cogs in the air lock.
That’s when I realized something was wrong.
I mean, it’s not to say that there weren’t plenty of things wrong with the Tennessee. But when I turned on the wall screens and scrolled through the camera views, I saw that Parker, my endlessly horny valet cog, had somehow ended up outside the ship, that he was dangling from his tether in space.
And I know it was stupid of me, but I suddenly felt so terrible for the way I’d treated my cogs.
“You’re under arrest, Cager Messer! Yippeee! This is the greatest moment of my rapidly fading life!” the porridge of Officer Dennis announced as Meg stepped around him to join me near the air-lock door. “And you’re also under arrest, human girl in a black dress whose identification data is not on the manifest, so I therefore have no idea what your name is. But it would greatly please me if you could put your face down here next to mine, so that I might scan your eyes. Yay!!!”
“Um, no,” Meg said.
“Well, you’re still under arrest, I am very happy to point out!” Officer Dennis’s words spouted in bubbling globules from the pool around his mouth.
Meg looked at the screen, and then at the air-lock controls alongside the door.
The air lock was a smaller, intermediate room—a sort of gangway—between the arrivals hall and the docking bay where I’d left the cogs. On the display screen Lourdes floated around like a mermaid. She made elegant swimming movements with her arms while her hair fanned all around her shoulders. And her skirt had come completely off. Most likely it was outside somewhere, orbiting the moon on its own, like some kind of interstellar jellyfish.
Also, her undies were pink with black kittens on them.
Why did I find Lourdes so incredibly attractive? I must have been losing my mind, I thought. No, I did lose it.
Milo pressed his hands against his face. In the silent-movie image of the boy that illuminated from the wall screen, I could tell Milo was crying.
“You didn’t need to leave the outer docking bay door open. Why did you do that?” Meg said.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I thought they’d be safer—that if cogs went out looking for them, the hunting cogs would end up getting sucked outside the ship or something.”
“You’re all under arrest! This is the happiest moment of my life! I’m so proud of myself for arresting all these human beings!” Officer Dennis burbled, “Let’s all go straight to jail immediately! Wheee! Would you mind helping me up, please?”
Billy Hinman kicked Officer Dennis.
The security cog’s head came off. It scooted through the puddle of fluid, leaving a soupy wake, like a soccer ball on a swampy field.
“Yeee! Whoopeee! I love getting decapitated! This is the best thing ever!”
“Do you like elevator rides?” Billy asked.
“I love elevator rides so much, I could do three backflips and gouge my eyes out! If I had arms and fingers and legs and a torso!” Officer Dennis’s head said. What was left of his body was excited too. It danced around in the slimy goulash of Officer Dennis’s hydraulics.
“Come on, Jeff,” Billy said, “let’s
take Officer Dennis on an elevator ride.”
“This makes me so happy! I am beside myself!” Officer Dennis squealed.
Billy Hinman said, “Literally.”
If Thy Right Eye Offend Thee
I’m so overjoyed to be riding in the elevator with you!” said Officer Dennis’s head. “I trust I am taking the two of you to jail; am I right?”
“No,” Billy Hinman said.
Jeffrie had been carrying Officer Dennis, who dripped and dripped a stringy trail of snotty droplets all the way from the lower west arrivals hall. She put him down on the floor of the elevator and wiped her hands on the wall.
“I think we should drop him off at the maintenance deck,” Jeffrie said. “Maybe they can repair him or recycle him or something. Didn’t the guy with the hole in his face say they were fixing things down there?”
Billy nodded. “The guy with the hole in his face is Dr. Geneva.”
“And there’s lifeboats there. Do you realize what that means? We can get out of here.”
“And go where? Besides, you’d never get me on a lifeboat, Jeff. Sorry. Those things are too small, and too terrifying for me.”
“Wheee! I love being kidnapped!” said Officer Dennis’s head.
Billy said, “I wish he’d shut up. We should leave him in the elevator. I can’t stand cogs.”
“Some of them are okay.” Jeffrie touched a finger to the activation pad and said, “Maintenance deck.”
Billy sighed. “I really was hoping to go back to bed. Um . . . you know?”
Officer Dennis said, “Yeee! I’d be so happy to go to bed too! Maybe we could play cards! Oh, wait! Ha ha ha! I don’t have any hands!”
Billy Hinman closed his eyes and shook his head. Almost as much as he wanted to go back to the room with Jeffrie, he wanted to kick Officer Dennis’s head.
Jeffrie said, “I’d like to go back with you, Billy. Maybe after we drop off the cog head.”
Billy put his arms around Jeffrie and pulled her into him.
“Are you kissing? You are! Wheee! I love being in an elevator when humans are kissing!” Officer Dennis’s head chirped, “Can one of you please roll me over slightly, so I can watch you kiss?”
* * *
As Dr. Geneva had promised, the cogs of the Tennessee had been busy trying to fix things during the hours since Meg had gotten into the ship’s main systems and erased Queen Dot’s experiment in cog cannibalism. The maintenance and lifeboat deck was a beehive of frantic activity, noisily accompanied by shouts from the outraged, ecstatic cries from the joyous, nonstop blathering from the know-it-alls, weeping and wailing from the depressed, and the occasional proposition from the horny.
This was how the Tennessee ran.
“ ‘And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee!’ ”
As soon as Billy and the head-carrying Jeffrie had stepped from the elevator, they came face-to-face with Reverend Bingo, who flicked a small vial of holy water at them. Reverend Bingo was missing an eye. Half his head had been slicked over with the glistening sludge of cog fluid.
“Why’s he missing an eye?” Jeffrie said. “And why’s he making us wet?”
“He’s doing God’s work, I guess,” Billy said.
Officer Dennis bleated, “Yeee! My favorite thing in the universe is having water splashed in my face by a one-eyed priest!”
“Here.” Jeffrie sat Officer Dennis’s head down in front of Reverend Bingo’s feet. Reverend Bingo had no shoes, and his black preacher’s socks were wet and slimed with cog slop. She said, “I’m an atheist, anyway.”
“I am too,” Billy said.
“How dare you? How dare you?” Reverend Bingo flicked his little bottle spout at Billy and Jeffrie, but the bottle was empty, and God’s work was unfinished.
And Officer Dennis’s head said to Reverend Bingo’s socks, “I’m Episcopalian!”
“There are no atheists in space!” Reverend Bingo howled. “How dare you make this about you, and not about ME? I’m the victim! Not you! You don’t get to decide these things! Die, motherfuckers, die!”
Reverend Bingo wound up and threw his empty water bottle at Billy and Jeffrie. It hit Officer Dennis’s forehead.
Officer Dennis said, “Ow!”
Reverend Bingo shrieked, “Satan! Satan!”
Then Reverend Bingo hurled himself onto the floor, kicking and flailing his arms in a tantrum of cog pus and anger, screaming, “I should have bought the blue car! I should have bought the blue car!”
“I love blue cars more than life itself!” said Officer Dennis’s very happy head.
“I almost wish they were still eating each other,” Jeffrie said.
Billy put his hand on Jeffrie’s shoulder. “They might be doing something even weirder. Look at that.”
Jeffrie turned around to see what Billy was talking about.
The maintenance and lifeboat deck on the Tennessee had transformed into some massive and very noisy interstellar field hospital. All across the floor of the enormous deck, cogs leaned over tables or kneeled around any available floor space, working on pieces of other cogs.
Cogs were making cogs.
“Ah! William! So nice you’ve managed to come down here to see what we’ve been doing! Isn’t it fantastic?”
Dr. Geneva, the hole in his face gaping and oozing, had come up behind Billy and Jeffrie. He warmly patted Billy between the shoulders and waved his arm outward, as though it was he who’d been responsible for orchestrating the entire scene.
“But please,” Dr. Geneva continued, “you haven’t even introduced me to your lovely . . . friend.”
And when Dr. Geneva, in all his overbearing creepiness, said “friend,” he leaned in closely and stared directly at Jeffrie’s eyes, taking in a quick, cog-scanned medical exam.
“Her name is Jeffrie Cutler,” Billy said. “Jeffrie, meet Dr. Geneva.”
And Dr. Geneva said, “Oh my!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Billy said.
Dr. Geneva cleared his throat, which made a gooey balloon of cog snot expand and then pop like a lava bubble over the hole in his face. It made a sound, like Poink!
“What I mean is—well, did you know, William, that the Roman emperor Elagabalus was arguably a . . . ahem . . . third gender, if you are familiar with such archaic terminology, and that, although this was definitely at a time when human thought and the capacity for understanding, what were referred to as the emperor’s eccentricities, given the presence of male genitalia—”
Billy clenched his hands. “Look. I’m going to be nice and say please. Please shut the fuck up. We’re not interested in what you have to say, Dr. Geneva. Nobody is. Nobody ever was.”
“You . . . What?”
How could anyone ever not be interested in Dr. Geneva? The mere thought of it nearly seized the spinning code wheels driving Dr. Geneva’s endlessly blathering circuitry. But the doctor recovered from his moment of astonished pause and said, “Bisley! The Bisley boy! Have you ever heard of the Bisley boy, who was actually a child substituted for Queen Elizabeth the First, who had purportedly fallen ill and died while sent away as a precautionary quarantine against bubonic plague in . . .”
Billy Hinman held up a hand. “We don’t care, Dr. Geneva.”
Dr. Geneva shook his head as though he’d been slapped. A little cog mucus splashed out from the hole in his face. “But—excuse me—there is one thing in particular I think you’ll find to be absolutely thrilling, William! Absolutely! It’s my surprise for our handful of human passengers on the Tennessee. Please, allow me to show you, so you might be the first to see what we’ve done!”
“If it has anything to do with Jeffrie, I’m going to knock your fucking head off,” Billy told him.
“Jeffrie? What? No, no, no, William! It has to do . . .” And Dr. Geneva paused to emphasize all the self-absorbed drama he believed he’d created. “It has to do with Mr. Messer’s television program—you know, the one called Rabbit &
Robot. And it also has to do with something you’re quite fond of—I mean to say, besides your friend Jeffrie here, ha ha—because it involves Cager!”
What Kind of World
I tried to get Lourdes and Milo to help pull Parker back inside the Tennessee, but it turned out to be an exercise in futility and frustration.
I explained the urgency of Parker’s dilemma over the docking bay’s announcement system, but no sound carries in space. I typed messages to them on the inner wall screens in the bay, but neither Milo nor Lourdes paid attention. I could clearly tell what they were doing. I didn’t even have to hear them to know.
Milo hid his face in his hands, and he cried and blubbered about being afraid and wanting to give up. And Lourdes was in another world entirely. She just kept swimming and wriggling while her hair waved gracefully all around her like some kind of cloud of sexuality (which I found to be wildly erotic), singing over and over and over, “I’m a fish! I’m a big floating flying fish! Wheee!” And then she’d fart (which was definitely not erotic) and kick her slender cog legs.
“Are you absolutely certain you really want them back?” Meg said.
I looked at her eyes. I was a mess. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, space, Lourdes, the Tennessee, but I wanted to kiss Meg Hatfield so bad. And I hated myself for being such a coward, and such a spoiled piece of shit, too.
“I really do,” I said.
“I think you’re going to have to shut the outer doors and cut that boy loose, then. I can’t see another way to get into or out of the docking bay if you don’t,” Meg said.
Look. They were just machines, right? Flywheels, seed drills, walk/don’t walk signals, socket wrenches, can openers. But when Meg suggested I abandon Parker, I began to feel sick inside. As annoying as he was, and as much as I sometimes hated him, Parker was also loyal and unselfish. He could have actually been a friend, not just some goddamned hired Hocus Pocus partner. And as dumb as I feel admitting this now, here in this list of secrets—my attempt to account for what it meant to be a human being—I believe Parker genuinely liked me, and not just because he was horny all the time.