We pick up with Tmai trying to comfort Scuzz, who has become heartbroken by Pep’s new obsession.  That will mean something to you if you’ve been reading.  Failing that…

Content Warnings:  Processing Trauma, Mention of Sexual Abuse, Animal Exploitation, and Gun Violence, Ableism, Mortal Despair, Heartbreak, Inequitable Class Systems, Sci-fi Racism, Cannibalism Mention, Poverty.

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CENTENNIAL HILLS CONTINUES

by Bébé Mélange

Tmai would not stop haranguing Scuzz and she didn’t understand why, didn’t care.  What could be so dangerous in a stupid airport?  Were space hare krishnas going to get her to join their ashram?  But it was more than annoying.  It wasn’t giving her the emotional space to get over her upset.

At last she slapped Tmai away with both palms and cried out.  It was supposed to be a cry of righteous fury, a kiai shout like she did in aikido, but her ki must have been out of alignment from a broken heart, and she fell to her knees with an ugly sob.  Maybe she should have used her krav maga instead.

Tmai went to their knees as well.  When humans suffered this condition they required reassurance of some kind.  They embraced her like they had done for Olivia at their parting.  They almost let go when Scuzz jerked in surprise, but the human settled into the embrace.  Thankfully, her crying was less piercing than the larval human’s had been.

I wish I understood, Scuzz.  I don’t want you to get hurt like Snar.  They could say nothing more than they had before.  “You and Tmai.  Less danger.”

“Tmai, I’m sorry, I’m being the worst.  I’m just a big stupid baby.  This sucks!”  She sniveled and moistened the fuchsia shirt’s shoulder with her face.  Her shoulders heaved and shuddered as she spent her sorrow and frustration on the patient alien, other strange beings paying little attention as they walked or drove around them on the broad concourse.

She composed herself enough to look at her savior.  The aliens were smaller than men – smaller even than Scuzz, if not for their big heads.  What gender did they even possess?  What was going on in their minds?  “Why do you care if I live or die, Tmai?  Who are you?  Some kind of hero?”

Tmai flicked thin eyelids over their massive glossy black orbs and made a weak smile with their little mouth.  Their silvery skin was as soft under her hands as a frog belly.  She held their head in her hands and kissed them with just a little tongue.  This one was new to Tmai, who tried to accommodate the gesture without overt distaste.  Her mouth tasted like the spaceport food with a subtle undertone of earthling biology – like the boiled carnivore bones.

Scuzz noticed Tmai was looking past her and she jerked around to see the others approaching.  She fumbled and patted her face dry.  “Hey guys.  Where is..?  Still..?”

“Yes,” said Eliza.  “He’s found his calling, so now it’s time for us to find ours.  We should return to Earth as soon as we can, dear.”

Scuzz rolled her eyes.  The motion burned from the lingering salt of her tears.  “Please.  Just because you’re afraid of space doesn’t mean we all have to be.”

“Well, suit yourself.  Go to your man, or bum around a spaceport terminal until you starve to death.  We’re not waiting on him anymore.”

Tmai helped Scuzz to her feet, but quickly fell into a rapid gestural conversation with Snar.  “Where is Pep?”

“With the zigilous komber.  Eliza decided we should leave them.”

“I can’t do that!  Snar, after what happened to you, I can’t let somebody else get hurt.  Somebody I have responsibility for.”

“What responsibility do you have to them?  It was their idea to mess up your ship, wasn’t it?  All the humans want is to exploit the beings and technology that are alien to them, use us for weird thrills.  If Pep wants that kind of adventure, leave them to it.”

“Snar, on their world, they should have been better to you.  I know that.  But they’re unregistered.  They have no rights, no protections.  I brought them here.  Yes, they wanted to come, but they had no idea what they were getting into.  Leaving them without help is a terrible wrong.”

“Captain, you have not finished your job yet.  Just because you failed at one key moment does not mean that you have the right to quit before the job is complete.  Ignore fools who chase danger and find it.  Get me to the Vinudian enclave.”

Tmai was terribly frustrated.  Their mind ran through all the possible ways of proceeding and none were any good.  They hated Snar for making them commit to this abandonment, but realized that feeling was going to make the situation even worse.

Shammy asked, “Everything alright, chief?” and signed, “We good?”

Tmai gave up, shook off the pain.  “We good.”

 

Tmai considered paying to set the remaining humans up in a room until they returned from escorting Snar, but knew there were too many potential dangers for them in that.  They somehow corralled the whole lot into an automated cab and set out for the Vinudian enclave.  There could be no returning for Pep then.  Tmai resolved to see if they could find him with a little detective work later.

The world outside the Tasite-Kolbar Spaceport was unfortunately a pretty common sort of place in the galaxy, biodiversity severely impoverished by early industrial excess.  There were two flying species sharing the skies, one that stayed out of sight except when ground feeding on the scraps of civilization, the other swirling lazily in small flocks above the island.  Nothing lived on land save those creatures and a small assortment of minuscule things, beneath the notice of diverse aliens in the streets.

Erbinians were orb-bodied with segmented tentacles and no need of clothing.  Inside the spaceport they were a minority, in the streets they were about eighty percent of the population.  How they told each other apart was a mystery to the Ainavians, neither of which had learned much of the species.  The natives worked storefronts and street carts, and drove around in bulky three-wheeled conveyances.  Among them walked a melange of the peoples of the galaxy, expressing their diversity in everything from sensory apparatus and body shape to modes of communication and attitudes in body language.

At first Shammy had the window seat and was lost in marvel at the people, but Eliza became fixated for a different reason and insisted on trading places with him.  She was increasingly worried that if she didn’t learn everything possible about the world and the situation, any given moment could become dangerous.  Her eyes darted madly between the aliens on the streets, taking in every detail.

Scuzz was on the other side, head leaning on the window, disconsolate.  Shammy took note and tried to comfort her, to no avail.  “Look at that one, ma’am.  Looks like a walking banana, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.  I guess.”

On the front bench, Tmai and Snar took no interest in the streets around them, just looked at each other in contemplation.  They’d been through life changing circumstances, each psychically devastated in their own way.  Their relationship was defined by profession.  But hadn’t the trauma of Earth been the exact sort of circumstance that always redefined that relationship, in the Ainavian romances of space escorts like Tmai?

It didn’t seem possible.  This would surely be their last time together, and they were not in love, and they were not alone.

Tmai signed, “I feel like you should be telling me how you feel.”

“What good would that do?,” signed Snar.  “No point in feeling worse than you surely already feel.  You can guess at what I feel easily enough, I’m sure.”

“Can I?  Or am I imagining worse or better than what you actually feel?  If I’m thinking it’s worse, that’s fair, let me twist.  If I’m thinking it isn’t so bad and you are scarred for life, correct me.  Don’t let me get away with feeling better than I should.”

“Punitive therapy?”

“Why not?,” said Tmai.

Snar’s tight body language from before the crash had given way to a profound slouch.  They let the back of their brain flatten against the window and sighed.  “Captain, it was bad.  Humans wanted to have sex with me, or hit me, or see me devoured by beasts.  Some kind of armed authority figure shot me full of holes, and I don’t count that as the worst of my experiences there.”

Tmai curled their hands in on their chest in an Ainavian expression – speechless.  Their thoracic area vibrated invisibly within the big human shirt – another sign of intense emotion.

“I warned you.  Anyway, I know you didn’t get shot, but it was probably pretty bad for you too, right?  It’s not like either of us could have avoided that situation.  Unless the ship malfunction was a result of neglect on your part.  It wasn’t, was it?  Captain?”

“I’m sorry.  No, it wasn’t.  But I should have gone straight to you.  I let myself get held up for … just … I don’t know.  It’s terrible.  My time was nothing like yours.  Nowhere near that painful.  Humans in Centennial Hills must be a different species from those in Las Vegas.”

Snar’s eyes bulged briefly in anger, but then subsided.  “Then you couldn’t have known how bad it was for me, while it was happening.  But I assure you, they’re all the same species.  I’m an exophysician.  These people in the back seat?  That one back at the spaceport?  The little one you embraced in the junkyard?  All monsters.”

“I hope you don’t lose your cultural consideration over this.  You’ve devoted your career to Vinudian medicine, right?  They are more like humans than Ainavians in their ways.”

“No, no… You’re right.  I’m just talking from anger.  I don’t love any aliens, Vinudian or human or whatever.  But I can coexist with them on shared terms of some kind.  It’s just the uncontacted thing, right?  No shared terms.  They don’t know better.”

“We wouldn’t be here if Pep hadn’t done that strange work on my ship.  I could not have repaired it, wherever it fell.  I’ll take care of them all, after we get you to your new life.  I just wish…”

“You don’t have to say it.  I’d rather not think about any of it.  I’m going to pretend it never happened, and after your ship is patched up, you’d best fly away and do the same.”

“Isn’t that supposed to be unhealthy?  I’m no brain doctor.”

“I don’t care.”  Snar shook and waved away the conversation, unwilling to talk anymore.  They turned toward the street, still leaning their big squishy head on the cool window.

“Understood.”  Tmai’s thorax trembled away unseen, quietly rattling their breath.

In the back seat, Shammy said, “Eliza, look at me, please.”

She peeled her attention away from the street, but not her body, looking over her shoulder very awkwardly.  “What, Shamar?”

“Turn around, ma’am, please.”

She realized she looked silly and sorted herself out.  “What is it?”

‘’You have got to calm down some.  I feel like everybody’s going loco except for me.  We’ll be alright.  We will.”

“Shamar, that is childish.  We can’t be assured of anything until we’re safely home.”

“You could have a heart attack or get hit by a bus there, easy as out here.”

“You must know it’s not comparable at all.  Out here add to the heart attacks and buses the possibilities of being eaten by a bobadoober or disintegrated by zingo bolts or mutated into buzznorts.”

“Is that for real?”

“They could be.”

“You’ll be more liable ta live through all that if you aren’t so worried.”

“Hm.”  Eliza looked away, eyes unfocused.  “You may have a point there.”  She checked her pulse.  “You may have a point indeed.”  She didn’t like being the focus of attention in that moment, and asked, “What of you, ‘Scuzz’?  How are you holding up?”

Scuzz began to quietly cry.

Shammy didn’t know how to touch her, to reassure her without freaking her out any worse.  His hands hung confused in the air.  “Aw girl.  You poor baby, I jus’…  What are we gon’ ta do with you?”

The cab carried the sad passengers over a bridge to a small neighboring island, around a cloverleaf of highway, and then to a larger island.  The sky was grey with darker grey-green clouds hanging forming a dismal ceiling.  A light rain dotted the windows as they returned to city streets.

This island was more hilly than it had appeared from the sky, reminiscent of San Francisco or Seattle.  Most buildings were brick and the streets a patchy mix of concrete and hexagonal cobblestones.  Everything was eroded by the ocean winds and waves.

The automatic driving slowed with denser traffic on neighborhood streets, creeping up and down the steep hills.  Scuzz was inconsolable, but at least she wasn’t loud about it.  Shammy felt horrible, in the middle of a traumatized lady sandwich and powerless to help either of the bread slices feel better.  Guess I’m traumatized too, he thought.

Eliza took in the little details.  The resemblance to Seattle was uncanny.  Convergent technologies abounded.  The buildings were mostly rectangle shapes arranged in a grid, there was pedestrian access at the side of the streets, the intersections were regulated with marks and signs both electric and analog, poles supported plasticky grey tubes which could have been carrying communications or energy around the city.

And slathered over the poles and brick building faces at every inch reachable by hand, tentacle, or ladder there were signs painted or posters plastered of alien paper or cloth analogs.  Advertisements.  What were the odds?  Old posters were defaced, torn, or weathered away to wads of glue, or bits of ragged tissue.

“It’s Pioneer Square.  Does that make us into vagrants?  What does an alien homeless shelter look like?”

At Eliza’s words, Scuzz started to tremble.

Shammy said, “Oh dear.  Oh no.  Don’t worry, girl, she’s-”

Scuzz wailed, head tilted back and mouth wide like a Peanuts character saying “Augh.”

“Come on, ma’am.  You’re still rich, you really are.  You’ll never be poor.”

“I don’t know,” said Eliza.  “I don’t think they accept Visa or Mastercard here.”

She wailed again.  Shammy flexed his hands in the air around her, still uncertain about providing physical reassurance, though compelled by every instinct to do so.

Tmai looked in the back seat sharply, took in the scene.  Scuzz upset, Shammy trying impotently to do something about it, and Eliza looking both tired and wired, mouth in a cruel smirk they would never understand.  They touched Shammy’s hand and urged it toward Scuzz.

Shammy didn’t get it at first, but then took it as permission to physically comfort – though it wasn’t the most important person’s permission.  He took her shoulder in hand and she curled in on him.  It was a big relief for both of them, but she was still wracked with sobs.

“There, there, ma’am.”

Tmai considered the reduced squall an acceptable outcome and returned their attention to the front seat.  They mentally thanked Olivia for that hard lesson in the way humans work.

The cab made its way to the waterfront.  One more highway roared between them and a coastline of docks and piers.  Just shy of the highway, they turned into an alley behind a brushed steel building with rounded corners and nothing but tiny round portholes for windows below the highest floors.  Barely inside the alley the cab stopped, lights blinking.

Everybody quickly got out, a sense of uncertainty there about how long it would take the autocab to start rolling again.  That was justified, because it backed out of the alley fast enough to pose some risk to pedestrians.  Scraps of debris whirled in its wake and the weary travelers felt the ocean wind for the first time since arrival, bitter on their skin.  The world itself smelled like a cross between potting soil and tomato soup; only the breeze kept the humans from gagging.

Tmai signed, “Don’t lose my contact.”

Snar signed, “I know.”

The group followed Snar toward the back door.  Scuzz had hesitated a moment, feeling petulant about everything, but the hope for a regulated atmosphere indoors hurried her along.  If the ocean breeze let up for a moment, she’d lose whatever weird alien garbage she’d eaten that day.

Eliza quietly said, “This is disturbing now, isn’t it?  We’ve no idea what we’re doing here.”

Shammy said, “They just haven’t been able to explain it because of the language barrier.  Nothin’ to be scared of, I’m sure of it.”

“Tmai would be quite justified in seeing all of us as beholden to them over the damage to their ship.  What could we offer in payment?  A stint on an exobiologist’s vivisection table?  Allow our legs to be eaten as a delicacy?”

“They don’t have any teeth, Eliza.  They’re all gummy.”

“Slow cooked barbecue gams.  Meat falling off the bone, Shamar.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“I know, I’ll scare the baby.”

Scuzz couldn’t hear her over the traffic, the wind, the hum of power and building processes, the keening of flying animals as they squabbled like dolphins on helium.  She wanted to run away forever but couldn’t.  Not yet.

She followed everyone in through a weirdly narrow double door in the back.  Apparently the efficiency of having a single set of hinges never occurred to the natives and most of their single width doors parted in the middle.  The hall was dim and narrow, the walls exposed hexagonal brick, the ceilings a wood-like substance smoothed out with a dark dull glaze, the floors smooth hexagonal tiles in a medium ketchup red.  They walked single file with her bringing up the rear behind Eliza.  She felt an itching urge to throttle her neck, but resisted.  It was easy to resist; she barely had the strength to lift her arms.

In an amber-hued lobby the regulated air was much nicer than it had been in the back hall.  Everyone took deep breaths.  Scuzz found an alien ottoman-like thing and collapsed into its raspy upholstery.  It felt like cuddling with a huge pig in a sharkskin t-shirt.

Tmai caught sight of her again and flexed their hands in concern.  They caught Snar’s attention.  “Can you make sure these ones are safe while I go back for Pep?,” they signed.  “I failed you badly and this feels like the same thing all over again.”

“Pep got himself into that mess.  It wasn’t your fault, captain.”

“It feels like it is.  I know you don’t owe me anything, but you think you can arrange for these ones to stay safe, less than a half day at most?”

Snar flicked their eyelids in annoyance but conceded.  “Yes. Vinudians can be reasoned with.  If they want money, I’ll tell them you’ll pay for it.”

“That’s all I ask.  Thank you so much.”  They turned to Eliza and Shammy and spoke.  “You shtay wibh Smar.  I will be bag, dang you.”

“Oh?,” asked Eliza.

“I need ged Beb.”

Shammy said, “Thank you, Tmai.  That’s mighty good of you.”

Tmai made little bows in return, then looked to Scuzz.  “I ged Beb.”

She couldn’t look up, couldn’t acknowledge the alien.

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Will dashing space captain Tmai rescue the wayward human and save the day?  Stay tuned!

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