Centennial Hills, the first draft, is done!  Who knows if it will get additional work and see some more mainstream form of self-publication?  This might be the final version of it.  Neighborhood of 75K words – light for a sci-fi, low end for a thriller.  You can click the Centennial Hills tag to see ’em all, tho I don’t have a convenient way to arrange reverse chronological / oldest first.  Maybe someday I’ll add previous and next buttons to them.  Or just sell an e-book!  Can you imagine?

Content Warnings:  Drug Use, Mental Illness, Big Feels, Inequitable Class Systems.

 

CENTENNIAL HILLS: THE END

by Bébé Mélange

Snar propped theirself up with enough drugs to survive the night without killing Tmai, and after some sleep, was able to do much more competent work at finishing the repairs.  The humans stayed with the Vinudians and the bgrudjh let them, at last releasing all of them, on the condition nothing of their fight got back to the authorities.

Snar had to confess their trauma to the big man, to excuse their own behavior, and get on a course of treatment for it.  But they were staying.  One could not go against the way of the worlds, try as one may.  It was for a doctor of Vinudian medicine to serve Vinudians.  It was for Vinudians to be unjust to each other, unequal in distribution of that healing hand.

And it was for the uncontacted to remain on their worlds, and for space escorts to ferry bodies where they were meant to be.  Once again, there was little time for a proper goodbye; High Jdibitong wanted Tmai and the Earthlings gone.

The Earthlings waited in the clinic while the Ainavians said their farewells in Snar’s quarters.  The room still had the feel of an alien hand in design, and nothing of the personal from Snar’s life or interests.  Someday that would change.

For the moment, the doctor was focused on getting well enough to function, using a more sensible drug and dosage to curb the worst spikes from their trauma disorder.  It didn’t have a noticeable effect on their personality, from Tmai’s point of view.  They saw them hunched, tired, distracted – lounging nervously on a long chair.

The captain had been ready to jet, under pressure from the bgrudjh, but suddenly let their pack hang low, and sat down on a stool near the doctor’s more luxurious seat.  “I don’t think we’ve settled this.  I don’t want to leave you, feeling like we don’t understand each other, like…”

“That I haven’t forgiven you,” Snar signed.  “Tmai, I have.  Though I don’t want to talk about it.  Please spare me.”

Tmai considered it for a moment, looking at their hands.  Then they signed, “That is your right, and it’s reasonable.  But can I just say how I feel?”

Snar shrugged.  “We all have to do that sometimes.  Keep it as plain as you can, and please don’t contact me again.  Maybe … if you must, in a few years.”

“Thank you very much.  I need this much; you are right.  I recognize that I messed up in my duties, unforgivably so.  Terribly so.  And you may feel you have to forgive me just to help yourself forget.  I don’t mind that; I don’t need to be punished forever.”

“This sounds like the beginning of a therapy session.”

“I can keep it brief, I swear.  I just… hm… Let’s say, we just go through this Universe, through our lives, without really understanding each other fully.  And true, full understanding is genuinely impossible.  Abstractly, we get that everybody is a thinking and feeling individual with their own experience of life, but it isn’t always real for us, and that can feel isolating.  We’re all alone, as they say.”

“Preface for something maudlin?”

Tmai pulled an expression of wan amusement and continued.  “Maybe.  I just want to say, I feel you.  Of course not in a way that’s of any use to you, but it is of use to me.  You saved my life.  I care about your life.  We’ve been close to the limits of our lives together – of course, always apart – but also together.  It isn’t meaningless.  I’ll never forget you, Snar.”

Snar sunk more fully into their seat, close to feeling overwhelmed, but steadied just enough by the drugs to avoid a completely embarrassing display.  They couldn’t quite raise a hand to sign back.

Tmai said, “This was for me.  You don’t have to say anything.  I love you.”  They stood, walked to the door, and looked back one time.  “Goodbye.”

Then they were gone.

Snar covered their head and allowed theirself a long moment of physiological sadness response.  They knew, all the while, that their connection with Tmai was over, and that this was a good thing.  But it was a heavier thing than they had expected, and the weight would pull them down for a while.

Out in the clinic, Tmai said their names, “Scudz, Shammy, Elidza.  We go.”  The terse basic language was hard to speak without feeling rude, so they were learning to punctuate these things with the practiced expression of a human smile.

They were all eager to leave the Vinudian enclave, not at all hesitant.  Though at the door, Eliza cast one look back toward the door of Snar’s quarters.  She had a sense that of everyone who had been on the misadventure together, Snar might be the closest to a kindred spirit with her, but that they could never come close to sharing that with each other.

It was only a moment, and then she was gone.

Back in the big city, the humans figured out how to keep their heads low, and Tmai arranged for all of them to stay together in a miserable vermin-infested hostel.  It took an unbelievably long week for Tmai’s spaceship to be properly repaired, during which they all busied themselves with learning or with computer games.

As a charitable offering, the humans had received mobile computers of their own, and learned to call each other on them.  Unfortunately, no human language – or even numbering system – was accounted for anywhere in the user interfaces of the devices.  Eliza, and to a lesser extent Shammy, could muddle through in Ainavian mode.

They took turns cleaning their clothes in a sonic washing machine, washing their bodies in a luke-warm saltwater shower, and hoped nothing too vile would come of the grotty circumstances.  Scuzz stared out the tiny window, wondering similar things to Eliza, but in different ways…  How was Pep gone forever?  How did it come to that?

At last Tmai announced it was time to take them home.  No one protested.

The ship was a flying saucer again.  Or had it been replaced?  The humans would never know the difference, just that Pep’s Millennium Falcon was no more.  The interior was barely furnished with a handful of large ottomans and ugly hospital curtains.  No windows.  At least it was a lot more spacious, without the cramped cosplay interior design.

“Scudz, Shammy, Elidza, go Eardh widh Chnai now.”  They smiled at their passengers, looked at them for any kind of response.

Shammy said, “Thank you kindly,” and nodded in polite dismissal.  You have permission to do your thing, Captain.

The humans were alone, insofar as they could be, with nothing but curtains between them and wherever Tmai had gone to push buttons.  The ladies caught Shammy looking some kind of way, and asked him about it.

“Shamar, what is this look about?”

Scuzz looked expectant as well, but said nothing.

“I know we hafta go back.  We don’t belong out here.  But … this is it?  This is all that comes of it?  I just don’t know how ta feel, I guess.”

Scuzz said, “I think I get it.  I’d probably feel like that too, if it wasn’t so crazy for me there.  Not that it wasn’t crazy for you!  But…”

Eliza scowled.  “You have a reservation about going home?  To the place where we are not treated like dogs?  Where we have rights and jobs and condominiums?”

“Do we have jobs?,” Shammy asked.

She nodded and rolled her eyes in annoyance.  “Still.  You cannot honestly want to play spaceman like Pep did, can you?”

He stared into the middle distance, wondering.

Scuzz said, “That’s interesting.  What would you do, if you could stay out here?  In outer space?”

“Don’t rightly know.  Tmai don’t need a copilot.  Flyin’ this UFO is a one-alien job.  Maybe they could use a mechanic?”

Eliza asked, “Do you want to spend your senescence in an alien housing project, or in a luxury nursing home, with nice clean sheets?  And nurses who know what orifice you shit from?”

Scuzz crinkled her nose.  “You’re nasty.  Heh.”

“You’re right, but I can’t help think I’m missing out on something.  On seein’ things nobody ever seen before.”

Eliza mock-strangled him.  “No.  You.  Don’t!”

Scuzz laughed, and blushed when they kissed.  She left them for another curtained-off wedge of the saucer, and let herself sink into an identical ottoman there.  She did feel it too, on reflection.  The call of the unknown, of the amazing.  But Earth was pretty cool too, in its way, and she never wanted to come within a thousand miles of being a slave, ever again.  She imagined a bed of human design, reflecting that when she was a child, she always wanted something more exotic.  A room full of translucent pillows ten feet deep, a waterbed covered in koosh ball rubber.  Now four posts and a mattress seemed like perfection.

 

The flying saucer moved faster than the speed of light, an expression of the impertinence of thinking beings, when confronted with the physical limitations of their material existence.  From the time a simple cell first develops an organelle or chemical process that decides what to do in response to change, a soul is born – a thing that is of the body but separate, larger.  Never free but always striving for freedom.

This time, the refurbished machine flew straight and true, finding the planet Earth small – easy to reckon with, a tidepool on a beach that could be ignored or examined as one pleased.  It set down, detected by defense systems that would be far too slow to do anything about it.  A seagull with no fear of a slow dog.

Tmai let the ship go to the coordinates it had left from, but at the last moment diverted some distance into the desert hills.  Best to not be landing in somebody’s back yard.  The portal opened onto cold dusty night air, rich with the miasma of life.  There was no symphony of insects and night birds crawling out of their nests, everything within a kilometer spooked silent by the change in air pressure as the unnatural object descended.

Everybody came out, more awkwardly than when the UFO had a proper ramp.  Eliza nearly injured her shoulder.  But once on solid ground, they all began to feel that weight again.  The Earth’s gravity had them.  It was more powerful than the artificial gravity of the ship, or that of the slightly smaller Erbin 2.

Standing in that Nevada desert, looking up at the spacecraft, so much had changed.  It was no Millennium Falcon.  Its Han Solo was rotting scraps of flesh on a city street, unspeakably far away.  And the doctor was not in.  Snar would never have to face that terrible world again.

Tmai shook their hands, each in turn, saying their names, and “Goodbye.”

Shammy held his head in his hands, hearing that wind, smelling that life.  No small amount of cow shit in that aroma.  Space had been full of unwelcoming sensations as well, but still…

He signed to Tmai, “Shammy with Tmai.  I engineer.”

Tmai shook their head, and Eliza protested.  “We talked about this, Shamar.  It’s horrible out there.”

He signed to Tmai, “Please please please,” and said to Eliza, “I got to try.  It’s the only chance I’ll ever have to see what’s out there.  I know Erbin 2 was a hot mess, but what else could there be?  It’s got to be amazin’.”

Scuzz felt the call of her inner child dragging her forward, and forced herself to take a step back, just to keep that thing in check.  “Shammy, it’s too dangerous for us.  We don’t have any rights in space.  I don’t know why they’re so prejudiced against us, but they are.  It’s bad.”

“We got space welfare for a minute.  That ain’t nothin’,” and to Tmai, “Please please please.”

Eliza could see it was true, even though she could barely see his expression in the deepening shadows of dusk.  Shamar was in the thrall of wonder – that childish hedonism for curiosity itself.  Reveling in the unknown, in poking it with a stick, with putting household cleaning products in your mouth.  “It’s horrible.  I can’t stand this.”  Her smoky voice broke apart.

Tmai considered it.  Uncontacted aliens were generally in bad shape under galactic law, but they could apply as individuals for protections and eventual citizenship.  Could Shammy’s skills be of any use to Tmai?  Possibly.  The man had much more practical experience with the tools involved in repairing and modifying machines such as the ship.  They wouldn’t see the same tools he had used before, wherever they went, but the principles would be the same.

“Ogay, Shammy.  But maybe maybe, ogay?”  They meant to say, “think about it for a minute,” but the words eluded them.

Scuzz folded her arms and looked at the old guy in admiration.  “That’s so brave.  Ya know, even aside from all the heavy stuff, the big reasons not to go, I couldn’t do it just because of how uncomfortable everything is.  The water was gross, the food was gross, the temperature was always too hot or too cold, none of the furniture was any good.  It’ll be like camping out forever, but no marshmallows and wieners.  You’re a crazy guy.  I respect that.”

Eliza felt a sinking sensation she couldn’t understand.  She had experienced so many firsts recently – emotionally profound things, life-changing things – that she didn’t know which one this was related to.  All of them?  “Shamar… Please.”

He turned to her and put a hand on her shoulder.  “Eliza hon, I got to do it.  I never knew I needed this, but I need it.  I just couldn’t stay here and always have ta think, what am I missing?”

She nodded weakly and turned away, but he caught her mid-turn for a big hug.

Scuzz looked at Tmai.  “Sorry.  Humans always have to do this kind of stuff.”  She thought about that for a moment.  *I’m a human*.  She leaned in to hug Tmai.  “Thanks for trying to save Pep for me.  Thanks for trying to save me.”  She was certain they couldn’t understand her, but tried to reciprocate the human gesture.

Scuzz pulled back enough to talk directly to Tmai.  Would they understand?  “You are a hero.  I’ll never forget you, Captain Tmai.”  She kinda wanted to smooch them again, but thought better of it.  They had already imposed so much of their human goosh on the awkward alien.  Time to step away.

She said, “C’mon, Eliza.  Time to hitch a ride on a tumbleweed, or rustle some cattle, or whatever.”

The specificity of that plan clarified something in Eliza’s mind.  What was she coming back to?  Interrogation by the DoD, probably a lifetime of surveillance.  Work.  Bills.  She didn’t have a family, just some half-assed internet friends.  But if she went back to space, what would she be doing there?  God knows.  What would she be missing out on, as Shamar put it, if she stayed on Earth?

“Alright,” Eliza said, “Scuzz, you can hitch that ride alone.”

“Eliza?,” Shammy asked.

“Really?  Aww,” Scuzz said.

“Apologize to the Air Force for us.  It was all Pep’s idea.”

“It sure was,” Scuzz said, folding her arms against the gathering chill of the evening.  “You two are the cutest.  I hope you have all the space babies and colonize Mars.”

Shammy mumbled, “Gosh, shoot, dang.”

Eliza said, “You know I don’t have a womb… whatever.  I can’t say it was always a pleasure knowing you, but in the end, I respect you.  Have a good life, Scuzz.”

“I like that you never asked my birth name, Eliza.  You too, Shammy.”

“Ain’t nothin’ to it, ma’am.”  He was still holding Eliza close, feeling her warm hair bunching around his cheek, grateful.

“It was real.  Goodbye everybody!”  Scuzz pivoted on her heels and staggered away over uneven desert terrain, cheerfully flapping her arms as she went.  Maybe she could ride a cow home.  Wouldn’t that be a trip?

Tmai could see that Shammy and Eliza were not intending to stay on Earth.  There would be more bureaucracy to contend with, but why break up a mated couple of beings?  They nodded their agreement, and clambered up the portal, leaving it open for the Earthlings to follow.

 

Years passed.  The Earth moved around the sun again and again.  Olivia graduated from college, accepting her diploma at a lofty, glass, heavily air-conditioned convention center in Los Angeles.  After the ceremony, she exchanged hugs and phone numbers and business cards with dozens of people.  Randomly, in the middle of it all, she encountered a dark-skinned middle-aged couple she’d never seen before, who seemed intent on speaking with her.

They were wearing grey robes over white jumpsuits and were very well-groomed, like members of a cult.  Not speaking ASL or wanting to rely on any uncertainty in lip reading, the woman held up a cellphone for her to read.  Olivia hesitated.  She didn’t like the look of their smiles, their weird presence.  But alongside the phone, the woman made a hand-sign she recognized.

“Tmai.”

The text on the phone read, “Tmai wanted to know if you would be amenable to an internship in outer space.”

Whatever menace she felt from the strangers blew away in an instant.  She understood that smile – the look of a person who knows we are not alone in the Universe, and knows that you know.  But she couldn’t see them because tears filmed her eyes in a second, turning all lights into spiderwebs, all colors into quivering impressionist splotches.

She nodded and signed, “Yes.  Yes, yes, yes.”

—

I thought I was going to include more in the last chapter, discussion between the humans about what happened with Snar, etc., but this seemed like a good place to end it.

–

Sorry to call you out on the floor like that, haha.  I only knew for sure of one person reading Centennial Hills, and the time has come for the last few installments.  Enjoy!

Content Warnings:  Misogyny, Violence, PTSD, Slavery, Bullying, Injury, Surgery, Dehumanization, Violations of Personal Space, Inequitable Class Systems, Sci-fi Racism, Mortal Danger.

CENTENNIAL HILLS 22

by Bébé Mélange

“Slippery freak was a real dirty fighter, messed up the guys.  Look.”

High Jdibitong watched his computer as the man on the other end moved his camera over the hall, where the defeated were pulling themselves together, getting ready for another round.  “And where are they now?,” he asked, eyestalk rotating in exasperation.

“I don’t know.  A couple of guys were chasing them upstairs.”

Jdibitong hung up, cast his rear eye at Googhi to express his incredulity at the situation, and glared at Snar with the front eye.  “Doctor, why is there an Ainavian tearing up my building?  What do they want?”

Snar twitched in fear and glanced from their boss to his children and back.  “I imagine that’s Captain Tmai, wanting the humans back.  I did not know they were so violent, or I would have let you know of the risk, surely.”

“Jdinghris, Chtonoming, shoo.”  The children complied and he switched the largest screen to the building surveillance system.  “If you want something done right…”

The bgrudjh switched to a multi-camera view surveilling an entire floor, and seeing no movement there, switched to another floor.  The highest, the place where the Earthlings had been left, where few Vinudians would be privileged to reside.  Immediately, problems jumped out at them.

“The Earthlings damaged my cage.  Where do they think they’re going?”  He could see the empty cage, but also see the escapees, trying to sneak through the labyrinth of drapery – to find an unguarded escape route.  He could also see the Ainavian losing their pursuit in the maze, his incompetent men stumbling around.  Not unusual for them to be intoxicated at that late hour, but annoying nonetheless.

He noticed Snar looking at the screen, making some inscrutable, nonverbal hand gestures.  He asked, “And what do you think you’re going to do, Doctor?”

Snar startled to attention.  “Nothing.  No one.  I’m just… I should probably…”

“I’ll need you to translate so we don’t have to play with our computers.  Come.”  He stood and Googhi began to rise, but he gestured for her to remain.  “You know the children may try to sneak out.  Keep this from happening.  We don’t know what the Earthlings are capable of.  They’re uncontacted, and might be savage enough to kill.”

Googhi flexed her thorax pensively and said, “Yes, my bgrudjh.”

Jdibitong dipped his rear eye respectfully at her.  He was glad she responded with appropriate seriousness; she could be quite impertinent at times.  Then he took the doctor by the princess sleeve and stormed out of the room.

In the hall, Snar sorted theirself out.  “I can walk for myself, sir!”

Jdibitong let them go.  “Then keep up.”  He didn’t have to turn around to scowl at them as he kept walking.  It would be a short trip.

Thanks to the cameras, he knew exactly where the Earthlings were, and soon was upon them.  Without a moment’s thought, he grabbed the cords of the drapery, and brought it down on the three.  They hadn’t even seen the big-eyed aliens in the dark, using one of their personal computers to light their steps.  Snar yelped.

Jdibitong kept a deft, powerful grip on the cords, moving them just so, to keep the Earthlings tangled.  They called out in confusion, fear, anger – all muffled by the thick cloth.  “To your bgrudjh!,” he yelled, and more men hustled into the opening.  “Catch them when they get out.”

Scuzz and the others didn’t take long to escape; the drapery hadn’t been designed to serve as a net.  Burly Vinudian men were waiting, and physically restrained them until they could be bullied into standing still.  Jdibitong barked at them, words they’d never know.  “Be still!”

“Shtob!,” Snar tried to translate.

Before the humans had been rather easy to intimidate, but they seemed to be feeling more confident, each standing ready to fight.  Scuzz had a practiced battle stance of some kind, which amused the bgrudjh.

Tmai slipped in under a drape, rising to their full height like a snake, and held a palm up to each side – hopefully communicating to the Vinudians they both did not want to fight, and did not want to be touched.

A Vinudian lunged, but pulled up short as Jdibitong bellowed, “Not now!  You had your chance, Gdeemosh.”  He tugged Snar more fully into the fore.

Lights began to turn on, dimly illuminating the scene from beyond layers of cloth, but at least the humans could finally understand who was present, and – roughly – what was going on.  Eliza flexed her arthritic fists and stared daggers at Jdibitong’s big wet eye.

“Can we go now?,” Shammy asked.

The bgrudjh silenced him with a furious gesture, then began to address Tmai, with Snar frantically translating into Ainavian sign language.  “This is trespass and destruction of property.  You will be arrested, fool.  Was it worthwhile to you?”

“I left these creatures with Dr. Snar, with the understanding I could retrieve them later.  You chose to withhold them from me.”

“Wild animals do not belong to anyone.  Surely you’re familiar with the Codex.”

“Then they don’t belong to you.  What do you gain by keeping them?”

“It’s what I lose by letting you get away with this.  This insult is unforgivable.”

“They are intelligent creatures and it’s my fault they’ve been taken from their home world.  I cannot allow them to become pets to a petty tyrant.”

“This isn’t an impasse, little Ainavian,” Jdibitong said, flexing his fists, “Because I can pass through you anytime I please.”  Snar’s fingers fumbled; their head sagged in dread.  Jdibitong gripped their arm again and said, “Every word!”

Snar signed to Tmai, “You can’t.”

Everyone hung in the dim light, tense but exhausted, angry, fraught with heavy feelings that hadn’t been a problem for them when they woke up that very morning.

Tmai said, “I know a little about your kind.  Would you let them go if I beat you in a physical contest?”

The Vinudian scoffed.  “Going to propose a wiggling competition, little worm?”

“Hand-to-hand combat, of course.  I’ll need a weapon to make up for my lack of bones.”

The bgrudjh’s men looked at each other in amazement at the words Snar translated, and more gathered, parting the drapes, making the room seem larger and larger.

Scuzz asked, “What is even going on?,” quiet enough to not draw the big man’s ire.

Eliza said, “They’re arguing over us.”

Jdibitong said, “Very well.  Gdeemosh!  Message everyone to come for the fight.  We will go to the ring.”

Vinudians bellowed and clicked in excitement, shaking their fists in the air.  They roughly escorted the humans and Ainavians to the sparring mat beneath the milky skylight, more opaque now with no daylight above.  Bright lights were turned on and angled toward the show, again reminding Snar of a terrible time on Earth.  Regarding Tmai, was this what Snar had looked like from the sidelines, to those wretched Earthlings?

Jdibitong conferred with his highest ranked men, staying for the moment in his corner.  Snar and the Earthlings were kept at ringside, one strong man on each, pinning them with only an implied threat.  Tmai looked at them with tired eyes, availing theirself of large water bottles in preparation.  They were recovering their structural integrity well, but would have less energy for this fight than they had in the halls below.  The snakeskin pants were aggravating, but they did not know how severe the Vinudian reaction would be if they removed them.

At last, Jdibitong’s family were allowed to crowd in at ringside, and it was time.  He spoke with a booming voice punctuated by snapping noises.  “This little vandal has come to claim the Earthlings as their property.  We like our little songbird, do we not?”  There were shouts of agreement.  “But, you know, they did have the Earthlings first.  Who can say what’s right or wrong?”

“Fists!  Fists!  Fists!”

“Give the Ainavian some bones.”

Someone at ringside gave Tmai a pair of metal objects.  Fingerholes fit for a Vinudian, joined in a bar – to increase the weight of a punch.  Tmai could fit their own fingers in the wrong holes and make it work.  They tested the weight with air punches.  Difficult.

Scuzz muttered, “it should be me,” then louder, “It should be me!  I know martial arts!  Leave Captain Tmai alone!”  More quietly again, to herself, “Pep…  Where are you?”

Eliza tried to console her, but a brute slapped her hand down.

Shammy watched Snar intently.  He sensed something in the doctor’s pathetic state, something larger than the present circumstance, that was making things worse.  But they had a close connection to the boss, seemed to work for the bgrudjh.  He wished the boneless creature wasn’t so lost, so weak in the face of this stress.

Jdibitong took no weapon for himself, stepping into the ring with bare hands.  “Ainavian.  I would not even take this fight as a joke, if you hadn’t beaten so many of my men.  Nice trick.  Do you think it will work on me?”

Tmai flicked their eyes at Snar, who was no longer bothering to translate.  They just looked up at the boss and shrugged.  Who could guess how the alien would interpret the gesture?  It was time to fight.

Jdunazh leaned in from the side, holding up three digits.  She folded one in and slapped it on the mat, then another for a second slap, and at the third,

Jdibitong shot a straight fast punch directly into Tmai’s center, fist sinking into them, compressing their torso at the site of impact to a few fingers depth.  Tmai’s elastic tissues violently decompressed, shoving their body off of the unmoving fist, down to the mat.

The bgrudjh stood there, arm soaked in ejected fluids, wondering if he’d just invited his whole enclave to witness him committing murder.  Scuzz shrieked, “You killed him!  Nooo!”

The crowd shrank back, buzzing and chattering, not knowing what to do.  Jdibitong collared Snar and dragged them onto the mat.  “Fix them, now!  Fix the Ainavian.”

Snar looked up, head swimming, not remembering a word of Vinudian.

“What is wrong with you?  Don’t you care about your fellows?  Fix them!”  He shoved Snar toward Tmai, and they just collapsed to the mat, bouncing once, laying nearly as immobile as the vanquished pilot.  Their body curled uselessly.

Shammy said, “Snar’s messed up, man!  That’s PTSD.  Got to give them some space!”

Eliza added, “Please!  Let them go!  Let us go!”  By then she was holding Scuzz close, with no rude interruptions.

Jdibitong’s lieutenants tried to keep the rabble in line, but some were already leaving, or taking video with their computers.  The big man knelt over the Ainavians, in an uncharacteristically gentle pose.  “Dr. Snar, please!  Are you on some kind of drugs?  Is there a quick cure?  This one could die!  Wake up, please!”  He offered gentle prods with his brutal hands.

Shammy knelt on the mat close by and whistled for the boss’s attention.  The Vinudian looked up in rage, but saw that the Earthling was offering advice, gesturing for him to step back from the Ainavians – particularly the doctor.

As much as it was maddening to lose even a second that could save the foolish creature’s life, he was at the mercy of circumstances beyond his control, and took the suggestion.  He stepped away, pacing in his corner of the mat, straining to control his rage and fear.

All of the movement, all of the chaos, it was still affecting Snar.  They lolled, mind reeling.

Shammy gently took the Ainavian’s head into his hands, cradling it, looking straight into their eyes.  “Listen to me, doc.  Just nothin’ but me.  Forget about all this hooey, OK?  Nothin’ but me.”  He couldn’t help but have his eyes dart to the captain, as still as dead, but reeled them in, to try and focus the ailing doctor.  “Tmai needs you.”  He let a hand free to sign, “Snar help Tmai?”

Snar rolled their head to look at Tmai, to make an effort to understand the situation, when all understanding had fled them.  In that strange moment, they suddenly became convinced that the Ainavian beside theirself was theirself, and was dead or dying.

“Oh me,” they signed.

Shammy scooted back, but kept himself large and in between the ringside crowd and the pathetic creature.  “What can you do, doc?”

Snar rolled onto their hands and knees and pawed at Tmai, feeling them all over the torso, the neck, the arms.  It looked like more flailing from a useless junkie, but resolved into firmer palpations, assaying the damage, and what life might be salvaged from apparent death.

The crowd began to close in again, barely held back by Shammy, now helped by Jdibitong and Jdunazh.

“Give the doctor room,” Jdibitong said, still able to intimidate his lessers.

Eliza and Scuzz were in the part of the rubberneck mob held back by a Shammy cordon, both gripping his outstretched arms with tired hands.  Eliza was much more concerned for Shamar than the aliens, always putting himself in front of trouble.

Snar put a hop in their shoulders to come down on Tmai’s chest with both palms, popping it back into a more proper shape.  Blood and milkier substances bloomed and swelled under skin, all over the chest and sides, and there was a barely perceptible cough from Tmai’s throat.

“I need to get to the clinic,” Snar said.  “I’ll die if I don’t get a proper balance of transfused fluids immediately.”  Even if I do, they thought, I still might die.

The crowd obediently moved this way and that, allowing the bgrudjh and his personal assistant to bear the Ainavians to the medical facility.  They didn’t stop the Earthlings following behind, but Jdibitong’s lieutenants followed closely, to make sure they didn’t try any wild moves.  Googhi held herself, in the drifting wake of their departure, and wondered if that would be the end of her family’s power.

Buttermilk lights hummed to life and Snar let the Vinudians ease Tmai onto a table, while they worked the biosynthesizer.  More sophisticated chemicals would be needed than the drugs they’d mixed up before, and they’d need to be injected or transfused in just the right places, or they could cause more harm than good.  Their medical mind had woken up, but they still, through it all, were imagining that it was their own body on the slab.

Scuzz was starting to come out of her own daze, starting to realize Tmai returning without Pep was a bad sign.  She whimpered her concern to Eliza, who could only offer a shoulder to lean on.  Shammy took advantage of the focus being on Tmai, to relax onto a stool.  His back felt a great sense of relief, but was still a hair’s breadth from collapsing into spasms – just now in a less disc-grinding position.

Snar watched theirself laid out, mostly dead.  Enough tissues would still be alive that circulation might be restarted, but four types of fluids would need to be administered, just so.  They coldly maneuvered the transfusion heads into place, piercing their skin.  They felt no pain – a bad sign.

Jdibitong and Jdunazh watched their work closely.  What did it all mean?  The transfusion heads looked more ready for an embalming than a resurrection, chewing into the Ainavian’s cold flesh with lamprey teeth.

Snar returned to the biosynthesizer, activated the pumps, and carefully worked the knobs.  A little of this, a little of that… They felt their body growing colder, so quickly.  They saw theirself, a corpse.  Pumping the stuff of life into an unreceptive vessel.  Watering a dead plant.

How had the barrage of gunfire done so much less damage than a single punch from their brutal boss?  The piercing injuries provoked an instantaneous clotting response, with openings in the skin allowing a potentially harmful by-product to escape as gas.  The unbroken skin, the internal bleeding now…  Unlike Vinudians, who have one predominant circulated fluid and local reservoirs for small amounts of other humors, Ainavians have parallel major circulatory systems carrying a variety of important fluids that are best kept unmixed.  Snar had to work against some biochemical processes while promoting others, while all of them were interacting with each other chaotically in the same region of the thorax.

What did I do to myself?, they thought.  This is what I get for sticking my neck out, for trying to help people.  I was a fool, and now I am going to die!  They thought about the strange poisons they consumed on Earth, the filthy creatures shoving those in their face, again and again.  They wondered if it was worth the effort to save theirself.

Who am I that I even matter?  I never enjoyed life as fully as others.  So much effort just to keep up an endless season of melancholy.  They touched their head and face, felt their lips rudely, pushed on their eyeballs.

“The hell are they doing?,” asked Shammy.

“Trying to wake Tmai up?,” Eliza offered.

Snar rested their head on their own, moaned with grief.  Just because I didn’t want life doesn’t mean I should have to die.  It’s not fair.  I hate it.  They propped theirself up and got back to work, running multi-spectrum body scans.  Live, you fool.

The scans showed a terrible cloud of trisemic cords forming between the volar and vular atria.  Moturic acid was the obvious solution, but if it got into the pismal process, they could be paralyzed for life, or killed.  The only solution was manually injecting drops of moturic acid into the densest clumps and hoping it had catalyzed into less dangerous compounds by the time it escaped.  Without opening the chest, causing trauma to a body barely alive, the work would have to be performed blind.

Snar had no assistance that would understand the relevant terms, and was clearly feeling the lack, as they crashed around the lab for tools and devices.  They came back to Tmai’s body with a brace of sharp probes, and began stabbing them into their chest at irregular intervals.  Corresponding to areas revealed as problematic on the scan?  It was very hard for a bystander to tell.  Snar worked the buttons on the handles, leaving the probes standing in place, like a vampire hunter fussing over wooden stakes.

Everyone stood as close as they dared, hoping not to be in the doctor’s way if they had sudden need of yet another instrument, and soon were rewarded with a sign of life.  Tmai’s lips seemed to tremble, just for a moment.  Then an eyelid flicked.

Snar couldn’t see that, so focused on metrics and readings, adjustments and implements.  The excitement of the bystanders was an irritation, like the audience at their own boxing debut, and far from a good sign.  Suddenly, both eyes snapped open, and Snar stumbled away in shock.  Those aren’t my eyes!

What was more horrible?  That their identity had been usurped?  That their mind was so broken they’d imagined theirself into another body?  That another person’s life had been in their hands while they had been in such a state?  They fled wildly, flopping and crashing into every tray and table in the way.

Jdibitong grabbed them by the princess-sleeved arms again, and tried to speak with calm gravitas.  “Dr. Snar, please.  We don’t understand this behavior, but your Ainavian friend needs help only you can provide.  Please, please, snap out of it.”  Jdunazh blocked their way, but also made her best Vinudian gestures of supplication and pleading.

Back at the table, the humans leaned close – Scuzz closest of all.  “Tmai..?”

“Scuzz,” Tmai said, barely a whisper.

“Where is Pep?”

Tmai closed their eyes grimly.  “No Beb.  No, no Beb.”

Somehow, the message was conveyed.  Scuzz began to squall in sorrow, reminding Tmai so much of Olivia, and the larger Earthlings comforted her.  At last, Snar returned, seemingly in better wits, while physically more pathetic than ever.

Through it all, Eliza stared at Tmai in amazement.  Not at the captain’s survival or travails, but at the idea Pep was gone forever.  All of her imagining of the ways they could die did not prepare her for the reality of it, and she was completely stuck on the mystery.

How the hell had it happened?  Could they ever know?  Would they want to?

—

I think there will only be one more after this!  I think!  One of my regrets in the story is that there are no opportunities left for Scuzz to use her krav maga.

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