The Blue Behemoth Regrown



  The Blue Behemoth Regrown

  Lee Brackett

  Copyright 2010 Lee Brackett

  A Gender Switch Adventure.

  Beccie Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. She knocked over the pitcher of thil, but it didn't matter. The pitchers was empty. She jabbed me in the breastbone with her forefinger, not very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to spring them.

  'We,' she said, 'are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and down the drain.' She added, as an afterthought, 'Destitute.' I looked at her. I said sourly, 'You're kidding!'

  'Kidding.' Shannon put her elbows on the table and peered at me through a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. She says I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in Space, plastered so thick with attachments...'

  'It's no more plastered than you are.' I was sore because she'd been a lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. 'The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey! I've wetnursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down! Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it is over.' '

  I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults Beccalyn Shannon's Imperial Circus to Beccalyn Shannon's face unless she's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.

  Shannon got up. She got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see her grey green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earthblood Martian boy wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.

  I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.

  I said, 'Beccie. Hold on, fella. I...'

  Somebody said, 'Excuse me, gentlewomen. Is one of you Miss Beccalyn Shannon?'

  Shannon put her hands down on her belt. She closed her eyes and smiled pleasantly and said, very gently:

  'Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?'

  I shot a glance at the newcomer. She'd saved me from a beating, even if she was a lousy bill-collector; and I felt sorry for her. Beccie Shannon settled her shoulders and hips like a dancer.

  The stranger was a little guy. She even made me look big. She was dressed in darkngreen synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of grey in her hair and her skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully clean. She had the kind of a face that nephew maiden-ladies will trust with their last dime. I looked for her strong-arm squad.

  There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale blue eyes like a baby, and her voice was softer than Beccie's.

  She said, 'I don't think you understand.'

  I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair back. It sounded like she'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Beccie Shannon sighed, and let her fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.

  Then I saw what the little guy was holding in her hand.

  I yelled and knocked the table over into Beccie. It made a lot of

  It knocked her sideways and down, and the little dark women jumped up, quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian boy screamed.

  Micky heaved the table off her lap and cursed me. 'What's eating you, Jix? I'm not going to hurt her.'

  'Shut up,' I said. 'Look what she's got there. Money!'

  The little guy looked at me. She hadn't turned a hair. 'Yes,' she said. 'Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlewomen permit me to join you?'

  Beccie Shannon got up.

  'Delighted. I'm Shannon. This is Jix Bantley, my business manager.' She looked down at the table. 'I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity.'

  The little guy smiled. She did it with her lips. The rest of her face stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more than you could see through sheet metal.

  I didn't like her. I didn't like her at all. But she had money. I said, 'Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking like hungry cats at a mouse-hole.'

  The little guy nodded. 'Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simone Beamish. I wish to – ah – charter your circus.'

  I looked at Beccie. She looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh pitcher of thil on the table. Then I cleared my throat.

  'What exactly did you have in mind, Ms. Beamish?'

  Beamish sipped her drink, made a polite face, and put it down. 'I have independent means, gentlewomen. It has always been my desire to lighten the burden of life for those less fortunate...'

  Beccie got red around the ears. 'Just a minute,' she murmured, and started to get up. I kicked her under the table.

  'Shut up, you lug. Let Miss Beamish finish.'

  She sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish ignored her. She went on, quietly,

  'I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of toil and boredom...'

  I said, 'Sure, sure. But what was your idea?'

  'There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no entertainment of the – proper sort has been available. I propose to remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Miss Shannon, to make a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt.'

  Beccie had relaxed. Her grey-green eyes began to gleam. She started to speak, and I kicked her again.

  'That would be expensive, Miss Beamish,' I said. 'We'd have to cancel several engagements...'

  She looked at me. I was lying, and she knew it. But she said, 'I quite understand that. I would be prepared...'

  The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Beccie and I glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.

  It was Gow, our zoo-man – a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the scenery – scowling, unapproachable, and tough. Her hands, holding the curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger than the hams of aVenusian swamp-rhino.

  She said, 'Boss, Gerty's actin' up again.'

  'Gerty be blowed,' growled Beccie. 'Can't you see I'm busy?'

  Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. 'I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gerty ain't happy. He ain't had the right food. If something...'

  I said, 'That'll be all taken care of, Gow. Run along now.'

  She looked at me like she was thinking it wouldn't take much timnber to fit me for a coffin. 'Okay! But Gerty's unhappy. She's lonesome, see? And if he don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot ship'll hold him.'

  She pulled the curtains to and departed. Beccie Shannon groaned. Beamish cleared her throat and said, rather stiffly.

  'Gerty?'

  'Yeah. She's kind of temperamental.' Beccie took a quick drink. I finished for her.

  'She's the star attraction of our show, Ms. Beamish. A real blue-swamp Venusian cansin. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt Sisters, and he's much smaller than Gerty.'

  He was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gerty may be a little creaky, but he's still pretty impressive. I only hoped he wouldn't die on us, because without his we'd have a sicker-looking circus than even I could stand.

  Beamish looked impressed. 'A cansin. Well, well! The mystery surrounding the origin and species of the cansin is a fascinating subject. The extreme ra
rity of the animal...'

  We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, 'We'd have to have at least a hundred U.C.' s.'

  It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker. Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a second I thought I saw something back of her round blue eyes, and my stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.

  'I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be agreeable to me.' She dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.

  'By way of a retainer, gentlewomen. My attorney and I will call on you in the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night.'

  We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Beccie made a grab for the money, but I beat her to it.

  'Scram,' I said. 'There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs. Here.' I gave her a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. 'We can get lushed enough on this.'

  Shannon has a good vocabulary. She used it. When she got her breath back she said suddenly, 'Beamish is pulling some kind of game.'

  'Yeah.'

  'It may be crooked.'

  'Sure. And she may be a screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!' I yelled. 'You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?'

  Shannon looked at me, kind of funny She looked at the bulge in

  my tunic where the roll was. She raked back her thick light hair. 'Yeah,' she said. 'I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury.'

  She poked her head outside. 'Hey girl! More thildatum!'

  was pretty late when we got back