The ships would kick up dust anytime they ran the circuit of airstrips going up or down. As Nicky looked at the horizon, she saw a small freighter going back up to the sky and the orbiting mother ships. The two tails and two wings, set at 60-degree angles, played a dazzling moment of reflection and veiled translucency. The bright reflection of the polished aluminum and the misty haze of dust created a carnival ride of mirrors and fog, all lit up in an amber glow of late afternoon under the white-hot sun.
* * *
She walked from the Kafir Hotel and out toward the square with its reflecting pool and mosque. The tall, white minarets and turquoise-green stripes around the entrance and the intricate patterns of mosaic tiles shining in a glittering array of precious stones told of an era when all shipping in the sector, headquartered in Medina Prime, had been located in the lobbies of this very mosque.
She chagrined the boys’ club of old.
She found shipping out with spacers to be irresistible.
That was what had brought her here. What she risked now could ruin all of the deals she had labored to bring into being. Here was the cube and the cube was Suleman.
The cube was everything from the Mah-dee to the fifth coming of Jesus. Here was the ghost of the Collective.
You could get anti-matter from a ghost on a few occasions. They would not give it away for wars of dominance by big empires. They would give it to small groups interested in growth and corporate start-up.
You could not get it for assassinations or terrorism. Ghosts were not fond of politics, but that was essentially the politic that they chose. The ghosts relished the small.
The meek shall inherit the Earth, but only in sectors where the ghosts were here to enforce the supremacy of the meek.
The 24 columns of fluted Doric style were as Greek as Earth. Nicky’s narrow face and sharp features were framed by her mane of dark-brown hair. She stood at the foot of the stairs of this green Parthenon and tried to envision what a ghost could want with her.
“Hey ya, Boss Bowman,” cried a voice from across the street. It was Lucas Andrews, Bowman’s engineer on board Merchant Stellar 262. He had spotted her on the threshold of the temple and its awesome potential. “Got any money ideas, boss? Yer the ringer there, lady. I know enough to sidestep your money ways, boss.”
“Lucas! Good to see you. I had no idea you would be down here on the rock,” she said.
“’Tain’t my concern, boss, but you got the ‘touch,’ as we say in engineering. Takes a policy monger to squeeze gold out of a parsec of space. You got my vote, boss.”
“Lucas, if you want my vote, you have it because I clearly have yours. I hope I can return the favor,” she said.
Lucas got within whispering range, his blonde curls framing his pale skin and fleshy, rosy cheeks. “Are you gonna make a deal with them ghostie mongrels? They are a fickle lot, missy. You best watch yerself around that lot.”
“I will, Lucas,” she said.
She clenched the cigarette in her teeth and relit it, as it had gone out through disinterest. It spit sparks and billowed sweet smoke around the warnings of Mr. Andrews. “I have an appointment with the main ghost in there, Lucas. He won’t let me down. You stay out of trouble, Andrews. I will mesh my mind with the one they call Tarkus in less than an hour.”
“Good Lordies, Miss Bowman, sir. I’da not done such a thing. You got more cahones than I do, sir.”
“Yes, Andrews, but I need men like you to run a fusion torch into the black hole, and I just cannot do it without good crew. If my brain survives Tarkus, then we can make more money together.”
Andrews rolled his golden eyes and said, “Four square, on the even, boss. Good luck, missy.” He reached into his back pocket and withdrew a blue bottle, and stretched his hand out to Bowman, offering the beverage to her. “Rigelian ale, boss. It’ll give you more spirit. Not saying you don’t got that. You got plenty, but it’s not a bad idea to sharpen the spear before you throw it. It’s got ferrin seed oil in it. That will perk yer spirits some, boss.”
She reached out and took the 20-ounce blue bottle from Andrews, and opened it with a quick twist. She sipped its spicy flavor and took in a swallow. “Good stuff, Andrews. Have a seat and tell me what you want me to say to Tarkus.”
Andrews swung up to her step and spoke. He sat next to her and said in a low voice, “Get us the golden run that pays off the ship and crew. The golden run is out there, missy. A fine space of anti-matter and fire gems. I know a woman who can rock your world for five grams of thermo fluorescent fire gems. God bless her soul, but I love her for true. Get me that woman, and I’ll quit spacing.”
Bowman shook her hair for a moment and said to Andrews, “If I did that, Andrews, I would have to find a new engineer. Perhaps I like you enough to want to keep you jumping from rock to rock in the depths of space. Answer me those questions before you wish me good Joss and a profitable run.”
Andrews and Bowman kept chattering in small talk for another half-an-hour until Bowman stood and said, “Time for me to go, Lucas. I have to start the process of getting this all going. There are two gates in this cube. A bit like an airlock it is. It takes about thirty minutes to get inside to the main room of the temple.”
“Lordy have mercy, lady. That’s a lot of trust in there.”
“You can watch me sing the door open, but when I go inside, you have to wait out here. I will be inside of the cube for about three days.” She stood and walked up the stairs to a vault-style door of circular design. She began to sing in low, almost monastic tones. Be they Gregorian chants or Buddhist droning low tones, they all came out in a language that Andrews could not understand. After five minutes of this went by, the door began to hiss and open. It popped open slowly.
When it was done the vault looked dark, and a mist exited the room inside.
Andrews thrust his hand into hers and shook it. “Good-bye, lady true. Good luck, missy sir.”
“Take care, Andrews. I gotta run.” She stepped over the threshold and into the dark.
* * *
As the door behind her closed, she centered her thoughts on Tarkus. On previous occasions he had taken the shape of her father, Admiral Proctor Hargraves Bowman. Just a two-star admiral, but quite influential. The admiral had gotten her the first taste of stellar travel about 13 years ago. Now she was 28 years old.
Tarkus could take any form he wanted to. She breathed deep and waited for the second door to open. As the door behind her closed and sealed shut, she watched in total darkness as the inner door began to crack its seals.
Slowly the rim of the circular door illuminated the room Nikita was in. She stepped through the door, and there was a ghostly dog, huge in size, and possessing three heads. One head was her father, and another was the trader baron Artemis, while last of all was a vision of herself.
Slowly these three heads and dog body dissolved into mist, and her father was left standing in front of her. His peaked cap was covered in high-contrast gold braid with a black wool background.
“So, Tarkus, what gives with you projecting me my father? I haven’t seen him in over three years. He sent me a hologram about a year ago. You look like that picture,” she said.
“That is why I have used your hologram. It is a memory that will open your mind faster and better than any other key I could devise.” The ghostly vision of her father in foggy mist lingered and began to dissolve into a mosaic of lines and shapes of mathematically determined, artistically elegant forms. The cloud turned into a large head of an African black man with dreadlocks. It was the trader Artemis. It spoke to her. “The real question I have for you is what do you think I can do for you? You may be deluded. I cannot fulfill every request,” it said. “Lend your mind to dissent. Jah rule over us all. We got to fulfill the books.”
“Relax, Tarkus. Most of what I desire is only to better myself and search your memory for ideas on how to make money. I have a hobby of taking spacer kids back to Earth for education so they can have a chance
to be voters. I have a voters’ plot in America and my father has one in France, if you can still call those two by their old nation names.”
Tarkus began to metamorphose into being a mirror image of Nicky herself. “So how do you like me now? My speak is your speak. I could program you to do my bidding, and you would have no memory of having served my purposes. Remember that! I do not carry on lightly. You will help my people, and you will be blessed with the memory of it all.
“Now you will know of all this coming to be, coming together. I want you to do something for me. I want you to plant a bomb for me on a ship that will depart in several days.” Tarkus dissolved into mist again and surrounded her in a fog of opal colors and glowing flashes, like lightning inside of a cloud.
Slowly she moved to sit down on the green stone. She moved then to lie flat on the cool rock.
Here Tarkus began to move in her mind. He released dopamine and serotonin. The pituitary and pineal glands began to swamp her brain with chemicals of both natural formulas, and some completely created outside of the realm of the human.
For three days Tarkus held her close, and fed and pruned her mind as a farmer might tend crops in the field. As a doctor might treat a patient, the ghost Tarkus manipulated Nicky’s brain chemistry until her body was halted in physical age of a 20-year-old human female. She would look young for the rest of her life, and if she kept readjusting her aging, she could live well into a second century.
After poetry and encyclopedias were all implanted into Nicky’s mind, she was revived with the vigor and rest of someone who had just slept for three days.
As she awoke she could see the door was open, and Tarkus was nowhere to be found.
There was a box at her feet. It was small. Red in color and shiny in texture, it was the bomb that Tarkus had asked her to plant for him. She had misgivings for sure, but curiosity got the better of her.
She had never thought of her identity as an assassin. She felt compelled to carry out Tarkus’ mission. It called to her like an old lover or a wine on a dry day. She picked up the box and put it into her leather satchel.
She left the temple by the same two doors she used to get inside of the cube.
* * *
She walked down dusty streets to the spaceport at the edge of the dry lakebed.
She reached into her satchel and fingered the box. As soon as she got to the main gate, she felt a presence she perceived as something similar to Tarkus. She could feel things. The presence from the box moved her to a Morgoth fleet raider ship. It had obviously been demilitarized. It still had the slab-sided angular features of a war bird. The gun turrets had all been replaced with view plates.
She felt compelled to walk up to its landing gear struts. Her hand went into her satchel and withdrew the red box. It quivered and shook with vibration. She reached up and placed the box on the inside of one of the landing gear doors. It stayed attached as if magnetic.
As she was walking away from the black, sleek lines of the fleet raider, she spied a man coming to her.
It was Andrews.
He hailed her and said to her, “Look at this thing, boss. This rig is a hundred years old if it’s a day. I got a free ride on this one! They want me as engineer for a quick run out to Mandilor and back. Just three days. I’ll be gone and back quick as a bug in season spring. Ya should come with, boss. I’ll bet you never saw Mandilor ever. Finest kind of people there too,” said Andrews.
She approached him and reached out her hand to grab his in a handshake.
When she gripped him she felt a bit of electricity run from her mind to his. It was as if all the charge built up from her stay at the temple let itself go into her palm as she gripped the hand of the engineer. It was a ghostly grip.
He jumped for a moment and pulled his hand back and looked at his palm. “Damn, boss. You gotta helluva grip there, missy lady,” he said.
“Now that I think about it, I don’t really need to see Mandilor for a while. I think I’ll just tuck it in at the Kafir and get some shut-eye.”
She said, “I am giving you an order, Andrews. On ground I’m not your boss, but I think it’s in your best interests if you come with me.” She said to him, “We need you too dearly on the 2-6-2. I will walk you to the hotel. Perhaps we can get a meal together.”
“That’ll be great, boss. Now that I got time to think about it, my lady with the fire gems is a better use of my down time. You got a touch though, boss. Just seeing you gets me thinking of what’s best about this rock. Ya gets me thinking, ya do. Maybe it’s that ghostie touch you got but I like it here for a while.
After Bowman and Andrews got to the Kafir Hotel, they retired to the bar and had some blue ales. The inside of the drinking parlor was opulent and upholstered with wine-colored red leather heavily padding the walls and doors. The cool air was a nice respite from the heat of the sunny day.
As they looked out of the window to the spaceport, they saw a small mushroom cloud rise up from the flight line.
Andrews was transfixed by the sight of the shattered ship.
Nicky thought of Tarkus, and the mission to place the bomb. It was kind of her ghost to give her just enough ESP to save Andrews. She looked at her right palm and remembered how she changed Andrews’ mind with just a spark of Tarkus’ energy. She looked at Andrews and said, “Two more Rigelian Ales, Luke. That’s what we need now.”
“Yeah, boss, what we need now is to drink and catch the news.”
“We can drink to the ghosts, and to ourselves,” she said as the sun began to set. The orange sun blazed and cooked until it disappeared below the horizon.
“What I can tell you, Luke, is that Tarkus wanted me to get you out of that Morgoth war bird. The junk that used to be a fleet raider is now useless wreckage. Counterpoint that with the fact that you’re still alive, and you will have a dose of that ghost energy in you always. It will help you get a feel for things without leaving you as blind as most humans. The slave trade is something even Tarkus hates.”
“What cha got up yer sleeve, missy girl? You know more than yer sayin,” he said.
“It’s nothing a couple Rigelian Ales won’t cure. The Morgoth was being fitted out as a slaver. They were fitting out a hundred G-suit harnesses in the cargo bay. They might even have had their sights on you,” she said as she looked out the window at a cloud of dust drifting away from the flight line. It had been a zero casualty day with the loss of an old spaceship. Perhaps that was the definition of a good day for Tarkus. That ghost had a knack for helping out the meek. So thought Nikita Bowman on that hot evening.
“Too much Tarkus today, Andrews. Today we drink more ales,” she said.
“Cheers,” he said, and they clinked glasses and drank. The screen behind the bar bottles sprang from a romantic opera to the breaking news from the flight line as policemen held up the harnesses from the palette cubes in front of the news cameras. “I owe you one, missy. That’s for sure.”
“We both owe one to the ghost of the moment. He set up this whole deal. He even got you that job on the Morgoth. He is a crafty old devil, he is.” She rolled her eyes and said, “That old devil. He knew it all along.” She laughed for a moment and sipped her ale.
THE END
THE PIÑATA
New York City, October 5, 2123:
Lawrence tilted back his tan fedora hat and looked for an opening on the table where his friends were eating food off of their plastic trays. He found a spot between Kermit and Eddie.
“What’s up, Kermit?” said Lawrence.
“Where ya been hiding, Larry?” said Kermit.
“I been researching stuff from the stacks. All that hundred-year-old off-wire data is a goldmine for any retailer as long as you know how to present it.”
Kermit smiled and stifled a laugh. “Dust and decay is all you’ll find in there. You’re a hopeless romantic living in the twenty-first century.”
“I need your opinion on something more important than that. I have been seriously thin
king about sponsoring a clone.”
“Are you crazy? They cost two hundred thousand credits and they rarely stay with their sponsors more than a couple of years. You would be better off spending your weekends in a sex shop if sex is what you want. You’d keep your costs down to a thousand credits a day if you did the weekender thing. Or are you having a perfectly Victorian moment and a quest for an untouched perfectly new human body to have your way with? Do you want to buy a human just to be man numero uno? You just want to be the first lover in a, dare I say it, truly virginal experience. That’s really the only real benefit you get.”
It was a Caucasian fellowship between Eddie, Larry, and Kermit. Eddie was cooling his six-foot-tall frame while Kermit, the younger by ten years, was interrogating Larry and inspecting him for mid-life dementia signs. The race card was a subtle play. Most of the clones were harvested as ovarian eggs bought from third-world women. They needed money and selling a few eggs was a quick ticket to a year or two’s salary. That meant the Caucasian lunch circle of Kermit, Larry, Eddie, James, Ross, and Danny would be broken by a Thai, or East Indian, or Chinese woman being thrown in the mix.
“Yeah,” said Eddie as he glanced at Kermit’s return to devouring his meal. “You better do some more research before you leap into this.”
* * *
Lawrence walked into the church through the west door from the parking lot. He left his car in the lot. He knew the Reverend to be down the east wing hallway. He walked on red carpet and dark oak woodwork walls to the secretary seated behind a desk, computer unfolded and docked. “I am here for my appointment with Reverend Green,” he said to the secretary. She was a pretty, young woman, perhaps in her late twenties in age, and dressed in a dress of brown and tan earth tones. Her shoulders matched his hat in color.
The Reverend spotted Lawrence and smiled behind glasses and a balding pate, hair of gray. “Come in, Lawrence, we have something to talk about.”
“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice. I am not making an impulse purchase. This isn’t a pack of gum or a tabloid. It isn’t even a car. This is a form of life.”
“I am relieved you see it as such. Souls are my business. You’re talking about bringing a new soul into this world. A soul that can live eternal in Christ. I assume this is a sister you intend to introduce to us?”