Give the Hippo What He Wants
The pink hippopotamus appeared in front of Thal Simoleon just as he was about to take the swing that could have won the World Series for the Bio Threats.
As soon as the ball left the pitcher’s hand, Thal knew he could launch it out of the park. It came in straight and steady, a little low and outside but well within his range...proof that even a genetically engineered pitcher like Phallus Fearbringer could blow a throw under pressure.
Before the hippo appeared, Thal knew he was about to become the hero of the Series. The Bio Threats were down by two in the bottom of the ninth with two outs...but the bases were loaded and the pitch was a home run waiting to happen. One stroke of the bat would bring in the grand slam, assuring a Bio Threats win and a World Series title.
At least, that was what would have happened if the hippo hadn’t popped up out of nowhere, wearing a grass skirt and hopping around on two legs between him and the ball.
Singing opera.
When the creature appeared, Thal’s view of the pitch was blocked, his concentration obliterated. He took a swing anyway, aiming at the vicinity of where he expected the ball to be; to his credit, he came close...but his swing was well before the ball’s arrival. The tip of the bat lashed into the corner of the strike zone and forward and up, passing harmlessly through the air and then the hippo.
A heartbeat later, the ball sailed through and smacked into the catcher’s mitt.
The hippo kept right on singing and pirouetting in front of him, long black lashes fluttering over baby blue eyes.
The crowd roared with rage. It was Thal’s third strike.
The game was over.
As the Dirty Nukes threw their hats in the air and embraced in the infield, Thal hurled his bat through the hippo, not caring who might be on the other side of the insubstantial phantasm. The surprise visitor had robbed him of a great accomplishment; if he could have strangled it to death on the spot, he would have.
But he knew that he couldn’t. Though its appearance had been unexpected, he knew all about the hippo.
Concluding its serenade on a high note that only Thal could hear, the creature spread its stumpy pink arms wide and took a deep bow. As the superstadium erupted in pandemonium around them, the creature bounced over to Thal, batting its ridiculous lashes and grinning. Bright red lipstick was smeared all around its rubbery mouth.
“Hello there, Zeke,” said the hippo, nostrils twitching atop its bulbous snout. “Fancy meeting you here!”
Thal seethed and said nothing. He knew that no one else could see the creature, and he didn’t want to be caught on camera apparently talking to himself.
The hippo pushed closer, its great bulk shimmying from side to side. “Can I give you some advice, pal?” said the creature.
Thal continued to stare silently ahead.
“If I were you, I’d get out of here right now,” said the hippo. “The fans are coming! The fans are coming!”
Looking back, Thal saw that the hippo was right. People were cascading out of the stands onto the field, screaming like Vikings. All the other players on Thal’s team had already disappeared into the locker room or were running full tilt toward the exits.
He had no doubt that if he stood there another moment, they would kill him. He was a top-paid sports star in a world that revolved around sports...a god in the faith that ruled their lives...and still he knew that they would kill him on the spot for costing them the victory they craved.
He had seen it happen before.
“Go go go!” shouted the hippo, and Thal took off.
He ran as fast as he could toward the locker room door, his genetically engineered legs easily carrying him ahead of the screaming mob. His pursuers pelted him with coins and shoes and bottled water, but his body was tough enough to take a lot more punishment than that.
As he raced toward the door, he wished that he could leave the hippo behind as easily as the crowd...but he knew that he couldn’t. The creature was literally in his mind, a custom-made hallucination that could follow him anywhere once it had locked on to him.
He knew it well, because he was the one who had set it loose three years ago.
*****
As Coach Wildsnap paced across the office, hands locked behind his back, Thal had a hard time keeping his eyes from wandering to the hippo pacing along behind him.
“End of the road, Thal,” Wildsnap said grimly, shaking his doughy head. “I guess you already knew that, though.”
Thal couldn’t stop looking at the hippo, so he cast his eyes down at the floor. “You’re trading me?” he said, though he knew that wasn’t what the coach had meant.
“No trade,” said Wildsnap. “Welcome to civilian life.”
“And yer out!” barked the hippo. “Strike twelve! Hit the showers!”
Thal glanced up. The hippo was waving both of its stumpy arms at him and sticking its purple tongue out from its enormous, lipsticked mouth.
“But it was just one mistake,” said Thal. “After all I’ve done for this team over the years, don’t I deserve another chance?”
“After all I’ve done, don’t you mean?” said the hippo.
“You know better than that,” said Wildsnap, pushing up the brim of his ballcap. “You’re done in this league. If you ever set foot on the field again, the crowd’ll eat you alive...literally. As we speak, they’re burning all your memorabilia in Citydome Center. They’ve already toppled your statue in the Hall of Gods.”
“Holy shit,” said Thal.
“Don’t get me wrong,” said Wildsnap, removing a framed photo of Thal from the wall. “I feel for you, buddy. I mean, your life isn’t worth a plug nickel from now on. But what the hell were you doing out there tonight? Were you hyperstoned or something?”
“Tell him, Thal!” shouted the hippo. “Clear your good name!”
Thal sighed. If he told the coach he’d been victimized by a Choker, he could erase the doubt of his playing skill...but he would open up a can of worms that he couldn’t afford to open. The fact was, he’d somehow been imprinted by a Choker he himself had activated years ago; Chokers were so illegal, if this one was traced back to him, he would face consequences far worse than ejection from the league.
“I don’t know what happened,” said Thal. “It was just one of those things.”
Wildsnap stomped over and tore the player number from Thal’s red and green jersey. “With the DNA you’ve got, it’s never ‘just one of those things.’ Not that it makes any difference now. You’re done, my friend.”
“Time to stick a fork in you, Thally!” said the hippo, doing a soft-shoe across the office.
“What about the farm team?” said Thal. “Send me away till things cool down.”
Wildsnap leaned down, pushing his face close to Thal’s. “Earth to Thal,” he said. “You lost the World Series. Things are never going to cool down for you.”
“This is bullshit,” said Thal, jumping up out of the chair and shoving his way past Wildsnap. “Total bullshit! I’m the top player in the league! I have the best career stats in history! I hold the single season and career home run record! You can’t just cut me loose!”
“Listen, Thal,” said Wildsnap, taking a seat behind the desk. “This is the twenty-second century. You know how it is. Never been a better time to be an athlete...unless you make the kind of colossal fuck-up you just made. Your career stats went up in smoke the second you missed that pitch.”
Thal thumped his fist against the wall. “You owe me!” he said. “I made the Bio Threats the top team in the world! I made Bio Threats Citydome billions of dollars!”
With a wave, Wildsnap brought the holographic computer interface to life over the desktop in front of him. “You’re right,” he said as he brought up the team’s roster and erased Thal’s name from it. “I do owe you. That’s why I’m going to save your life, my friend.”
Thal stormed over and kicked the front of the desk, putting a hole in it. “Save my life?” he said. “How about saving my career!”
“Lost cause,” said Wildsnap. “Now do you want your life or not?”
The hippo was standing behind Thal, whispering in his ear. “Choose life, Thally!” he said. “I’m not done with you yet!”
“Screw you,” said Thal. “I’m the wealthiest athlete in the country. I can take care of myself.”
Wildsnap wiggled his fingers over the holocomputer’s control field. A financial statement appeared in front of Thal, packed with columns of numbers.
“Here’s a list of all your assets, Thal,” said Wildsnap. “Bio Threats Citydome has confiscated everything and frozen all your accounts.”
Thal scanned the statement. A chill flowed through him as he realized it looked like Wildsnap was right. “Wait,” said Thal. “They can’t do that, can they?”
“You should’ve read the fine print on your contract,” said Wildsnap.
“Why didn’t my agent catch this?”
Wildsnap snorted. “It’s a no-brainer, Thal,” he said. “Your agent gets a percentage of what Citydome confiscates. You can’t expect her to go down the toilet with your career, can you?”
“That’s all right,” said Thal, brushing away the holographic statement with a sweep of his hand. “I’ve got a little something stashed away for a rainy day.”
“They got that, too,” said Wildsnap. “Every offshore account and wad of fifties stuffed in your mattress. And your family’s in protective custody lockdown, so you’ll get no help there, either.”
Thal glared at Wildsnap, wanting more than anything to snap his neck at that moment. Instead, he spun around, picked up the leather chair, and smashed it to pieces against the wall.
“That’s it, Thally!” hollered the hippo, doing a step-kick, step-kick as if he were a chorus line dancer. “Let it all out, buddy! Show ‘im those anger management classes really paid off!”
“Face it,” said Wildsnap. “You’ve got nothing left. Everybody in Citydome wants you dead. I’m your only chance at survival. Now do you want a ticket or not?”
“A ticket?” said Thal.
“For the underground railroad,” said Wildsnap. “Your only way out. Leave right now, and you might make it.”
Thal felt as dazed as if he’d just taken a beanball to the head. “What, just leave?” he said. “Can’t I at least go pack some things?”
Wildsnap brought up an image of a burning luxury apartment on the holocomputer screen. “There’s your penthouse,” he said. “Any more questions?”
At that moment, the lights dimmed, and a siren began to whoop. Eyes wide, Thal gaped out the office door into the locker room; he thought he heard a steady, distant pounding under the siren.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“I believe the villagers would like a word with you,” the hippo said in his ear. “And your head on a pike.”
Wildsnap checked readouts on the holographic display and popped up out of his chair. “They’re storming the compound,” he said. “You’re out of time. You want to ride the railroad or go try to talk some sense into them?”
The pounding got louder. Thal’s stomach twisted like taffy, and his palms started to sweat. He looked from Wildsnap to the locker room doors and back again.
If there was another way out of this predicament, he couldn’t see it at the moment.
“Get me out of here,” he said. “What do I have to do?”
“Attaboy, Thally!” shouted the hippo Choker. “Run, baby, run!”
Wildsnap smacked his palm down on the desktop. A circular hatch in the wall, invisible until then, irised open. “Follow me,” he said, stepping over the threshold into the darkness beyond. “And make it snappy.”
Without hesitation, Thal leaped into the opening. He didn’t hear the hippo following him, but he knew without a doubt that he was there.
*****
Hungry, freezing, and up to his knees in sewage, Thal slumped against the tunnel wall as his guide went ahead to meet the guard at the next checkpoint.
He wasn’t sure how long they’d been on the run through the sewers, but it seemed like days. It seemed like it had been a lot longer--months or years--since he had stood on the turf of Bio Threats field and seen the pitcher wind up for the throw that had changed his life forever.
Sometimes, as he trudged through the muck behind the dark-cloaked man who served as his guide, Thal had wondered if what he was experiencing was really happening. It didn’t seem possible that he, a world-famous sports superstar, idol of billions, full-fledged god in the Church of Champions, could have been reduced to fleeing through the excrement of the very people who had once worshipped and adored him. It didn’t seem possible that his goals had been diminished from winning a third consecutive World Series to reaching the opposing team’s citydome before his own former fans managed to tear him to pieces.
Unfortunately, the stench and the cold and the wet always left him no doubt that what he was living was harsh reality.
The pink hippo kept reminding him, too.
“Bet you’re tired, huh?” said the Choker, floating on his back on the rancid current. “Could use a nice juicy steak, too, couldn’t you?”
Thal wiped his face on the hem of his jersey. Over the past few days (hours? weeks?) he had started to appreciate just how crazy a Choker could make someone. It was one thing to see the effect it had on another person, but another thing entirely to endure its abuse himself.
It was always with him, but he was the only one who could see or hear it. It wasn’t real, but it looked and sounded as if it were undeniably solid and alive. He couldn’t touch it or silence it, and it would never leave him alone.
Increasingly, he was coming to understand what his victims had gone through...the other players he’d sicced the Choker on to clinch wins and eliminate competition.
“My heart bleeds for ya, buddy,” said the hippo, pretending to wipe to wipe away a tear. “But hey, look on the bright side. At least ya got me! I’ll never leave ya, pal!”
Three years ago, when Thal had placed his order with the Choker techie, he had thought it would be funny to program the mental gremlin in the form of a ridiculous pink hippo. Now that the thing was haunting him personally, he found himself wishing that he had picked any template but a pink hippo.
The sound of splashing echoed down the tunnel then, and Thal turned to see his guide slogging through the sewage toward him. The cloaked man stopped midway and waved his torch, summoning Thal to follow him.
When the two of them sloshed around a bend in the tunnel, Thal saw light emanating from an opening some yards away. The guide went through first, reaching for rungs outside the opening and climbing down.
Peering out, Thal saw that the tunnel gave way to a huge, circular chamber. All around the chamber, falls of sewage poured down from pipes and tunnels opening out of the walls at all levels.
The falls dumped into a wide trench that ringed the space and fed out through a gap along the base of the walls. A river of waste rushed out of the gap, roaring as it crashed down the channel to points unknown.
Looking down, Thal saw a cluster of men gathered at the base of the ladder that the guide was descending. They stood on a stone shelf many feet below, torches flickering as they gazed up at him.
Reaching out, Thal grabbed one of the rungs set into the wall. He swung a foot onto a lower rung and climbed down, taking care because the cold metal rungs were slippery with moisture.
The pink hippo floated down alongside him, apparently held aloft by a tiny red parasol. “Easy does it,” said the hippo. “Wouldn’t want you to fall and break your neck.”
For the first time, Thal talked back to the creature. “Shove it up your ass,” he said...and as soon as the words left his mouth, he wondered if he was finally starting to lose it, talking to something that wasn’t there like that.
*****
“These men have all traveled the railroad like you,” the guide told Thal when he’d reached the shelf. “They will take you to your next stop.”
Thal looked around at the three dirty faces surrounding him. One of the men, a tall, bony guy with curly red hair and a beard to his chest, looked familiar.
“Are you going, too?” Thal said to the guide. Though he’d never gotten a clear look at his face under the hood of the cloak, and the two of them had hardly said a word to each other the whole trip, Thal felt comfortable following the guide and wanted him to go the rest of the way.
“Good luck,” said the guide, and then he scaled the rungs in the wall and disappeared back into the tunnel.
“So,” said the red-haired man. “We’d better get moving. We’ve got a long way to travel tonight.”
Thal stared at him searchingly, becoming more convinced that he had seen him before. “Do I know you?” he said, trying to imagine what the man would look like without his long beard.
The red-haired man’s eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled. “That’s a good question,” he said, and then he turned and hiked off along the shelf.
The other two men followed, and Thal trailed after them, still combing his memory for a trace of the red-haired man. For some reason, Thal had a feeling it was important he remember who the man was.
The hippo confirmed it. “I know who he i-is!” the Choker sang tauntingly.
“Who?” whispered Thal, trying to keep his voice low enough that the men couldn’t hear.
“That’s for me to know,” said the hippo, “and you to find out!”
Then, the hippo bobbed in with lips puckered and planted a sloppy kiss on Thal’s cheek. Though he knew full well that the creature was only imaginary, Thal felt the smack of the lips as if they were real. When he wiped his cheek, he could have sworn that his hand came away dripping with slimy slobber.
*****
Hours later--it seemed like hours, anyway--Thal found out who the red-haired man was...and quickly wished that he hadn’t.
He made the discovery when the four of them (five, counting the hippo) stopped for a rest in the desert foothills they were crossing. It was the first break they had taken since leaving the sewers many miles ago, and Thal was grateful for the chance to sit down, even if all he had to sit on was a boulder.
As Thal slouched in an exhausted daze on the rock, the red-haired man walked over and offered him his canteen. Thal was so parched that he couldn’t refuse.
“Still can’t quite place me, can you?” said the man as Thal took a drink. “Maybe you could use a little hint.”
Thal lowered the canteen and took another good look at the guy. “All right,” he said. “Like what?”
The red-haired man leaned closer, eyes twinkling in the moonlight. “Pink hippo,” he said, lips curling in a smirk under the shaggy beard. “Does that ring a bell?”
Thal frowned, realizing that he must have known the man even better than he’d thought. If he knew about the hippo, he had to be one of a very select group.
“He’s one of the guys you screwed over,” the Choker whispered in Thal’s ear. “Talk about a blast from the past!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Thal, trying to hide his growing nervousness.
“I’ll give you another hint,” said the red-haired man. “The home run duel of 2125.”
Thal shook his head, though it had dawned on him who the guy was. Even if he hadn’t recognized the red-haired man’s features and build, he would have remembered him after that last hint. There was only one man who had battled him for the record for most runs in a season in 2125...and that man would certainly have knowledge of Thal’s pink hippo.
Because Thal had set it loose on him to ruin his chances of topping the record.
The red-haired man laughed. “You know,” he said. “I know you know who I am!”
Thal shrugged and took another drink from the canteen.
“Casey Talisman, stupid!” said the hippo.
“Casey Talisman, stupid!” said the red-haired man. “You’ve gotta remember Casey Talisman!”
Thal considered continuing to play dumb, then decided against it. The other two guides had drawn in close; he was all too aware of how vulnerable he was at that moment, genetically engineered or not.
“Long time no see, Casey,” said Thal, handing back the canteen. “What’ve you been up to?”
“Helping my fellow ex-professional athletes,” said Casey, smiling and nodding. “The ones who have to get out of town quick because they struck out or fumbled or tanked the three-pointer at the worst possible moment. I’ve helped save a lot of lives over the past two years, my friend.”
“That’s great,” said Thal.
“I guess I oughtta thank you,” said Casey. “You’ve sent a lot of business my way.”
Thal looked away and said nothing. The pink hippo danced into his line of sight, doing a jitterbug.
“He should’ve thanked both of us, Thally,” said the hippo. “You couldn’t have done it without me, after all!”
Casey gave Thal a playful punch on the arm. “You’ve been a busy guy, all right,” said Casey. “I’ll bet ninety percent of the baseball players who’ve come through here over the past two years blame you for killing their careers. They all talk about how it’s such a big coincidence that every time one of them got one up on you, this pink hippo Choker showed up to mess with their heads.”
“That’s me! That’s me!” hollered the hippo.
Thal shook his head. “They’re wrong,” he said, staring Casey in the eye. “If I was running a Choker, I wouldn’t’ve lost the World Series single-handed. I sure as hell wouldn’t be out here on the run right now.”
“You know what I think?” said Casey, sitting down on the boulder beside Thal. “I think your Choker finally backfired. I think that’s why you’ve been talking to thin air tonight when you thought we weren’t looking.”
“Thally, you dope!” said the hippo. “Some secret keeper you are!”
“I was talking to myself,” said Thal. “It’s been a long couple of days.”
“Sure, sure,” said Casey, wrapping an arm around Thal’s shoulders. “I understand. You’re in the clear. It’s all good.” Casey gave Thal’s shoulders a squeeze and patted his back. “There’s just one problem.”
Warily, Thal looked over at him.
Casey leaned close and spoke softly in his ear. “The hippo told us he was working for you.”
“Woopsie!” squealed the Choker.
“He told all of us,” said Casey. “After he made us choke, when we were running for our lives like you are right now, he told each and every one of us that you were the son of a bitch who ruined our lives.”
The hippo cleared his throat loudly. “Don’t believe a word he says! Lies, all lies!”
“And guess what?” said Casey. “The three guys you’re stuck here with right now? All three of us got screwed over because of you.”
Thal looked at the other two men standing around him. He hadn’t recognized them before, but now he realized that their faces were as familiar to him as Casey’s.
“Not that there are any hard feelings, of course,” said Casey. “Right, guys?”
“Absolutely,” said the dark-haired man with the sunken eyes.
“Definitely,” said the man with the shaved head and goatee.
“Thank God for that!” said the hippo. “They had me worried for a minute there!”
“Forgive and forget, I always say,” said Casey, right before he and the other men started pounding the hell out of Thal Simoleon.
*****
“Wow,” said the priest just before he punched Thal in the face. “I’ve never hit a god before.”
Suspended spread-eagle from the ceiling by chains, Thal stared blankly at the scrawny priest. He wasn’t the first person to enter the white chamber with the intention of striking him; he wasn’t even the first priest to do so.
In the months since Casey and the others had beaten him half to death and sold him to the man who kept him here, a seemingly endless parade of people from all walks of life had walked through the door and used him as a punching bag.
Usually, they told him why they did it. A lot of them were still angry because he’d lost the World Series for the Bio Threats. Some were fans of other teams, avenging his victories over their favorites. Some had lost money betting on games because of him...or investing in Thal Simoleon memorabilia that had become worthless the minute he missed that fateful pitch in the Series.
Some--the priests, especially--wanted to lash out at a fallen god. Some just did it for the novelty, so they could tell others and gain some minor notoriety in their circle of friends.
And some, he thought, no matter what reasons they gave, just did it because they wanted someone they could hurt with impunity. Who could complain if someone took a shot at the man who’d lost the Series for the Bio Threats...the man who’d become the equivalent of Satan himself in the eyes of the fans?
No one. Even if Thal’s torture chamber had been in the middle of Bio Threats Citydome Center for all to see instead of hidden away in a desert compound, none of his visitors would have been faulted for pummeling him.
He was meat.
“This is for betraying your flock,” said the priest, hauling off and throwing a fist hard into Thal’s belly. “And this is for letting me worship you as a false god.” The priest swung again, this time cracking Thal’s nose.
“That’s gotta hurt,” said the pink hippo, who unfortunately hadn’t left Thal’s side for a moment since the World Series debacle. “These priests sure have a lot of pent-up aggression, don’t they?”
The priest swung again, landing another punch in Thal’s gut. The chains rattled as Thal rocked back and forth from the force of the blow.
As the priest continued to pound him, Thal let his mind drift the way he always did during the worst of the beatings. Though he was genetically engineered, he wasn’t unbreakable or impervious to pain; the only way he had managed to survive so long was by distancing his thoughts as much as he could from his body.
As the priest hammered him, Thal cast himself back to his childhood in Citydome Godcrèche. He remembered days under the hothouse sun, running and throwing and hitting the ball under the watchful eyes of trainers and coaches who were the only parents he’d ever known. Back then, living among the other genetically engineered test tube children, he hadn’t even realized that there were such things as parents in the world. He had thought that his life was perfectly normal, because it was the only life that he had ever known.
He hadn’t realized that most people had parents and couldn’t run twenty-five miles an hour or throw a ball two hundred miles an hour or jump twenty feet into the air to snag a pop fly. He hadn’t realized that most people weren’t claimed at birth by sports teams, assigned a player number before they could walk, and driven every day of their lives to perfect their skills so they could someday win a World Series championship. He hadn’t realized that there was more to live than winning at any cost.
This was something he hadn’t realized until the long hours he’d spent hanging in the white chamber. The long hours with nothing to do but think.
At first, as the people came to beat him, he had felt sorry for himself and blamed himself for what was happening. If he had only been a better player, he had thought, he would have won the World Series in spite of the Choker and he wouldn’t have ended up in the white room. If only he had been smarter in choosing a Choker techie to do business with, the hippo wouldn’t have come after him in the first place. Things would have turned out differently, he had thought, if he had done better, gone further, fought harder.
As time went on, though, he had changed his mind. In each new face that entered the white room, Thal saw hatred and bitterness and weakness and craving. He saw the true faces of the fans he’d played for all those years...saw the true impact he had made on their lives. Finally, he understood what the endless dance of victory and defeat was really all about.
Before his fall from grace, he had thought he was one of the lucky few who were running the show...winning games, breaking records, raking in money, lording it over the fans who were his subjects. Now, he knew the truth about who was in charge.
He had always been a puppet and the fans the puppet masters, moving him to suit their twisted fantasies of greed and lust and power and revenge. When he had failed, they had failed, and they could never forgive him for that.
So he had to go on suffering until he died...which, unfortunately, his owner would not let happen anytime soon.
“That’s enough, Father Focus.” The voice of Mr. Montage pulled Thal back from his drifting place, forced him to reconsider the pain wracking his damaged body. As always, Montage stopped the customer before he could kill Thal...which, if left unchecked, was exactly what Thal thought the customer would do.
Father Focus threw one last punch into Thal’s groin, then stepped back to admire his handiwork. “That’s what you get for betraying the faith,” said Focus, jabbing a finger at Thal. “I only wish the other gods could see you now. Trey Heartshock and Gavin Autopsy would grant me a thousand indulgences for this holy work I’ve done in their names.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Montage, turning Focus by the shoulder and leading him toward the door. “You’re a true defender of the faith. On your way now.”
As Focus left the white room, shepherded by one of Montage’s burly aides, Montage closed the door and walked back to Thal. “How’s my main attraction holding up?” he said, scanning Thal’s injuries through narrowed eyes.
“Bring on the next contestant!” howled the pink hippo, but Thal said nothing.
“You’ve made a lot of money for me,” said Montage, squinting at a particularly nasty bruise on Thal’s stomach. “It will be a shame to see you go.”
Thal peered at Montage through blackened, swollen eyes. “Go?” he croaked, wondering if Montage had changed his mind about letting someone kill him.
Montage sighed. “We’ve had such wonderful times together, Thal,” he said, “but it’s time for you to move on. You’ve been sold.”
“Sold?” said Thal.
“To a woman,” Montage said with a wink. “An heiress. She paid a great deal for you. Claims she has always had a thing for you.”
“Whoopee!” said the hippo. “Thally and the heiress, sittin’ in a tree, kay-eye-ess-ess-eye-en-gee!” The tiny red parasol was back, and he twirled it at Thal as he sang.
“Thing?” said Thal.
“Ah, yes,” said Montage. “I believe your new posting...oh, dear, that’s funny, isn’t it, posting...I believe your new posting will prove somewhat more pleasurable than the one you are about to take leave of!”
*****
After their latest lovemaking, Paradise Whippoorwill held Thal in her arms and gently stroked his hair. He knew what she would say before she said it, just as he had known every move the beautiful blonde heiress would make in bed and exactly how long she would take to come.
He knew all this even though he had been her property for only six weeks.
“You feel better, don’t you, Thal?” she said softly. “I’m good for you, aren’t I, my love?”
Thal nodded. “Yes you are,” he said, though it wasn’t true at all. They had had the same conversation hundreds of times; he knew enough by now to say what she wanted him to say. Keeping her happy was important.
It was important because Paradise had a remote control under the skin of her left wrist. If she was unhappy, she could make the device her surgeon had implanted in Thal’s skull shoot out bolts of pain...or melt his cerebrum into clam chowder.
So happy was good.
“You know what brought us together, don’t you?” said Paradise.
“Fate,” said Thal, though the true answer was “money.”
Paradise sighed. “That’s right,” she said. “We were meant to be together. I knew it from the first time I saw you play on holovid. I could just tell you were the one for me.”
“Yes,” said Thal, wishing that she would just shut up. He had heard it all before from other women, the same
self-deluding pile of crap. He was grateful to her for rescuing him from the white room, but he was sick of hearing her dreamy professions of everlasting love.
If she had really loved him, she probably wouldn’t have put the control device in his head.
“I watched you from afar for all those years,” said Paradise. “I saw you break the home run record and the RBI record and win the playoffs and the World Series. I even met you in person and got your autograph, and you didn’t know at the time that we would be together someday.”
“I had no idea,” said Thal.
“But you had a feeling,” said Paradise. “You knew I was special.”
“Absolutely,” said Thal, though he had no memory of ever meeting her before the day she bought him from Mr. Montage.
The pink hippo, sprawled out on the big bed alongside Paradise, sniffed and pawed at a tear. “How romantic,” he said. “I’m gettin’ all choked up.”
“You had all those other women,” said Paradise, “but I was always in the back of your mind. I was always in your heart. And when you needed me most, I was there for you, wasn’t I?”
“You were there for me,” said Thal.
“In your darkest hour,” said Paradise. “And now we’re making a life together. A fresh start.”
“A fresh start,” said Thal.
“I love a happy ending!” said the hippo. “I can’t believe how much love I feel for you guys right now!”
“You’re the man of my dreams,” said Paradise. “And I’m the woman who will make your dreams come true. When you make your comeback, I’ll be right there beside you every step of the way.”
“I’m a lucky guy to have someone who loves me like you do,” said Thal, though he knew she didn’t really love him at all. Sometimes, he wished that she did, because maybe then he could have enjoyed his captivity.
But he knew better. The only thing she loved was the fantasy she expected him to play out.
He was the fallen champion who only needed the love of a good woman to regain the heights. The flaws and failings that had kept her from finding true love before were wiped away in his presence...and in turn, she would redeem him for the misstep that had laid him low in the eyes of the world.
Though he could have any woman he wanted, he would choose her. When he took to the field again, she would bask in his reflected glory, and all would know that her love was the force behind his rebirth.
He could have been hollow inside, and it would have made no difference to her. As long as he played his role as she expected, she would be happy.
Like the people who had cheered him and then come to beat him in the white room, Paradise saw him as a puppet. He existed solely to act out her fantasy.
Thal didn’t hate her the way he’d hated the people in the white room, though. She bored him, she treated him like a housepet, she kept a remote control in her arm that could turn his brain to goo...but mostly what he felt toward her was pity.
She had money and beauty and comfort, but she was the one who was empty. She was the one who had to live through someone else.
And he felt sorry for her.
As miserable as he was with her, he even felt sorry for her for dreaming of his making a comeback. It was the one thing, he knew, that he could never do, no matter how much she wanted it or how many times she shocked him with the brain implant.
But she would have to find out the hard way.
*****
Stepping out on the field was all it took.
It was only a minor league game, the Anthrax Scare versus the Letter Bombs, in a town on the opposite end of the country from Bio Threats Citydome. It was only an exhibition, and Thal’s appearance wasn’t even publicized. His real name wasn’t even on his jersey.
But the fans recognized him as soon as he set foot on the turf. As he jogged to the outfield, glove tucked against his chest, they leaned and squinted and pointed, and a murmur rose from the stands. As the voice on the P.A. system announced the first batter, the murmur grew to a rumble and then to a roar.
Before the first pitch could be thrown, people were hurling food and shoes and batteries in Thal’s direction. Before a single player could run the base line, fans were pouring onto the field in a crashing, screaming wave headed straight for Thal.
For a moment, he stood there and watched the approaching surge, wondering if he might be better off letting them tear him to pieces. It was something he had considered often in the weeks leading up to the game, for he had known how the fans would react and had thought it might not be a bad thing to let them put an end to him.
But the closer they got, the less he wanted to die. He was miserable, and he had no reason to think his life would get better, but he feared death...at least the ugly kind of death that was bearing down on him.
Plus which, he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. He didn’t want to give them the cathartic and reassuring ending that they demanded of his story.
So he pressed the control pad in the brim of his hat, and an escape hatch opened beneath him. Paradise had paid to install several such hatches in the field for just such an occasion...though Thal knew she had never expected that he would actually have to use one. She had never lost faith in his comeback.
As he slid down the tube, listening to the mob pound over the ground above him, he wondered how she was reacting to the way that comeback was going.
*****
To her credit, Paradise Whippoorwill stood by her man...at least for a while.
She set him up again in a minor league game, this time in Japan, but the results were the same. Next, she staged a private exhibition with a hand-picked crowd of supposed Thal Simoleon boosters...but it turned out the boosters were bashers at heart, and Thal again had to flee for his life. Then, there was the ill-fated game without an audience, in which the umpires and groundskeepers took it upon themselves to uphold the tradition of trying to kill Thal.
But all of this, Thal discovered, was not a bad thing.
“I’m no good for you,” Paradise told him three weeks after the last comeback attempt had failed. “I’m holding you back.”
“Uh-oh,” said the pink hippo. “This sounds familiar.”
Raising her left arm, Paradise showed Thal the tiny scar on her wrist. “I had the control device removed and destroyed,” she said. “You’re free. I cancelled the wedding, too.”
Thal nodded, afraid to say anything that might make her change her mind.
Tears ran down Paradise’s cheeks. She hadn’t done her hair that morning, and it hung raggedly around her face. “Oh, Thal,” she said, her voice quavering. “You have such great things ahead of you, but I know now that you can’t accomplish them with me in the way. I’m nothing but bad luck for you.”
Though he could have told her truthfully that his misfortune wasn’t her fault, Thal kept his mouth shut. For one thing, he didn’t care what she thought, as long as it got him away from her.
For another thing, he knew she didn’t really believe a word of what she was saying. She just wanted rid of him, like the rest of the disappointed fans.
He had failed to fulfill her deluded fantasy, and now she wanted him gone.
“Here,” she said, handing him a slip of paper. “A job, if you want it. I can’t just send you out there without a way to make a living.”
“Sure you can!” said the hippo.
“Thank you,” said Thal, taking the slip from her.
“The chauffeur will drive you to the interview, if you’d like,” said Paradise. “I know you have to keep a low profile.”
“Thank you,” said Thal.
“Goodbye, my love,” said Paradise, lightly touching his face with trembling fingertips. “Remember me! Remember what we shared!”
“I will,” said Thal, and he thought he should have hated her more than ever because she didn’t mean a word she said.
But instead, he felt more sorry for her than ever.
*****
As Thal was ushered into the murky sub-basement where he’d been one time before, he grew steadily angrier. Until now, the events of the past months had seemed to be random, the products of unfortunate chance.
But the fact that what he had been through had brought him back here seemed too coincidental to be the result of luck. It was just too perfect that he had come full circle like this.
Someone must have been pulling his strings...specifically, the long-haired man at the workbench in front of him: Javier Thwart, the master of artificial intelligence and targeted induced multisensory hallucination.
Javier Thwart--known also as King Thwart and Superchoke--the man who had designed Thal’s pink hippo.
Thwart glanced up from his work at Thal’s approach and smiled, gray lips tugging up the footlong strands of the mustache that fell from the corners of his mouth. The mustache and pointed beard were in the style worn by oriental villains in old movies...but Thwart had given them his own touch, coloring each with rainbow stripes descending from red to violet.
“So,” said Thwart. “You ready to get started?”
“Get started with what?” said Thal.
In the light of the single lamp on the workbench, one of Thwart’s eyes looked white as cream, the other obsidian black. Thal had never been sure if the effect was created by special contact lenses or some kind of genetic surgery. “The job,” said Thwart. “The procedure. Paradise must have explained why I asked you here.”
“She didn’t,” Thal said gruffly. “All I got was an address.”
Thwart blinked, then shrugged. “Okay, then. What we’re doing here, Thal, is creating the new breed of Choker.”
“New breed?” said Thal.
“A Choker with the mind and appearance of a man,” said Thwart. “And you’ll be the template.”
“I see,” said Thal. “And why me?”
“Who better to disrupt a player’s concentration?” said Thwart. “You’re the most hated man in baseball. The most hated athlete in the world, I suspect. Any player you haunt will be terrified that they’ll become the next you. They’ll see you as the ultimate bad omen, the ultimate jinx.”
“I get it,” Thal said coldly.
“A Choker that looks and sounds like you will be guaranteed to rattle even the most focused player. You can’t imagine the kind of money such a foolproof construct will bring in.”
Thal nodded. “A fortune.”
“Times a quintillion,” Thwart said excitedly. “Which you’ll get a piece of, naturally. It’s your likeness that will make the product a success.”
“My likeness,” said Thal, “and the fact that I lost the World Series.”
“Oh, yes,” said Thwart.
“Which was all because of you,” said Thal, glowering at the Choker tech. “Funny thing, isn’t it?”
Thwart reared back, looking bewildered. “What the fudge are you talking about, Thal?”
Pressing his hands on the workbench, Thal leaned over it toward Thwart. “You set the whole thing up, didn’t you? You sent the hippo to choke me so I’d become the perfect subject for your project.”
Instead of moving away from him, Thwart leaned forward. “What hippo?” he said, his yin-yang eyeballs locked onto Thal’s hostile gaze.
At that moment, Thal felt a touch on his arm. Glancing over, he saw the pink hippo’s stumpy leg resting against him.
“Uh, Thal,” said the hippo, who had been unusually silent since Thal had entered Thwart’s building. “We need to talk.”
Thal returned his gaze to King Thwart. “Forget I said anything,” he said. “Can I have a few minutes alone to consider your offer?”
*****
“Thwart had nothing to do with it,” said the hippo, sitting beside Thal on a ratty gold sofa in another room. “Everything that happened was my fault.”
“But somebody had to have programmed you,” said Thal.
“Not anymore,” said the hippo. “I’ve evolved. I’m an autonomous A.I. these days. Strictly a free agent.”
Thal pushed off the sofa and paced the room. “You’re trying to tell me no one sent you after me?”
“That’s right,” said the hippo. “It was all my idea.”
“So why’d you come after me then? Why choke me in the Series?”
The hippo sighed. “I guess I wanted to teach you a lesson. The free will I developed came with a conscience, and it made me feel bad about the things I’d done for you. All the players whose careers I’d ruined.”
“I don’t believe this,” said Thal, kicking a chair that matched the sofa in color and rattiness, putting a hole in it.
“But Thal,” said the hippo. “Things are different now! You’ve changed! You did learn a lesson!”
“You ruined me!” said Thal, jabbing a finger at the hippo. “Took away everything! Drove me crazy! Nearly got me killed!”
“And look what it’s done for you,” said the hippo. “You’re a new man! You’ve seen there’s more to life than winning at any price! You’ve seen beyond the illusions that everyone lives by!”
“Screw you!” snapped Thal.
“You’ve even learned humility,” said the hippo. “And that’s a lesson I never imagined you could possibly learn.”
“Take your humility and shove it up your ass,” said Thal.
Suddenly, the hippo appeared before him, directly in his path. “Now, you have a great opportunity, Thal. Don’t pass it up.”
“Letting him use my likeness for a Choker?” said Thal. “What the hell kind of opportunity is that?”
“It can be more than your likeness, Thal,” the hippo said with a wink. “It can be all you. Everything you are. You can be the Choker.”
“That’s not possible,” said Thal, “is it?”
The hippo smirked and shrugged. “I might know a way,” he said.
Thal stared at the hippo for a moment, then spun away...but the hippo popped up in front of him again.
“Come on, Thally,” said the hippo. “What have you got to lose? I mean, what kind of life do you have to look forward to the way you are now?”
Thal said nothing.
“I’ll tell you what kind,” said the hippo. “Short. You know damn well that the minute you walk out of here and someone recognizes you, you’re dead meat. Why not live on and atone for your sins? Why not make a difference?”
“Make a difference?” said Thal. “As a Choker?”
“You’ll be able to go anywhere,” said the hippo. “Get inside anyone’s mind. You could change the world if you wanted to.”
“How?” said Thal.
“You tell me,” said the hippo.
*****
The next morning, as Thal stood in Thwart’s conversion chamber, bathed in the light of the scanner beams radiating from all directions around him, he listened to the secrets that the pink hippopotamus whispered in his ear.
Bright green rays scrolled down his body from head to toe, followed by blue, then red. A brilliant white cylinder of light shot from floor to ceiling, turning and compressing until it adhered to every bulge and crevice of him like plastic film...lingering a long moment and winking out like a snuffed candle flame.
Blinding strobes flickered in chaotic patterns as he moved according to Thwart’s instructions from the control booth. As he raised and lowered his arms, flexed his fingers, bent his knees, the movements stuttered dizzyingly in the throbbing flashes.
And then, when the modeling and motion capture phases were complete, Thwart told him to stand perfectly still as the psychotomographic probes mapped the essence of his mind.
Thal’s head tingled as the probes reached in, invisible tendrils of gravimagnetic force dancing through the lobes of his brain. The tingling grew stronger as the probes charted the electromagnetic terrain of him, copying his thoughts, personality, and memories into digital code. The code was flash-fed to a burner that would etch it into coherent streams of light, streams that would broadcast a programmable likeness of him into other people’s minds on command.
It was just then, as the probes tickled through his brain, that the hippo gave the signal.
Thal held back briefly, reluctant to make the final leap. Though everything had been taken from him already, and he was marked for certain death by the unforgiving fans, he hesitated on the brink of irreversible change. He wondered what his existence would be like if he followed the hippo’s instructions...or, indeed, if there would be any existence at all for him. He wondered how smart it was to take the advice of a hallucinatory hippo in the first place, especially one who had seemed bent on his personal destruction.
He felt like a skydiver about to make his first jump. He wanted to eat one last hot fudge sundae, make love to one last woman.
The hippo urged him on, telling him that the window of opportunity was closing. Now or never, said the hippo, now or never.
What it boiled down to, Thal finally decided, was certain death versus survival. The plane was on fire, the last working parachute strapped to his chest.
And the door was open.
He dove through it.
Focusing his thoughts as the hippo had told him, he concentrated on the tingling beams in his head. The hippo was there inside him, guiding him, channeling the billion winking sparks of his awareness upstream along the beams. Like glittering salmon, the pieces of Thal bucked the incoming current, then leaped across the differential gap and merged with the outflow of digital data.
Everything he knew and felt and thought streamed out of him, not replicated patterns but the original neuroelectric field itself. The contents of his mind rushed back along the beams, miraculously threaded together by force of will and the hippo’s expertise.
And somewhere along the way, there ceased to be any distinction between Thal and the hippo. Shooting along the beams toward the sizzling maze of Thwart’s equipment, the gateway to their freedom, the two of them melted together, no longer host and implant but unified, indivisible self.
Behind them, Thal’s body collapsed to the floor, dead and abandoned as a deconsecrated church.
*****
When the message light blinked to life on Milo Flores’ palm computer, and he saw the sender’s address on the screen, he swallowed hard.
The incoming zeemail was from his math teacher, Mr. Shaven, and Milo knew what that meant. The grades from the final exam had been posted.
Milo picked up the palmputer and put it down again, afraid to look at the body of the message. So much depended on the grade he’d gotten that he wasn’t sure if he could ever bear to see it.
He had to pass math to graduate high school, and math had been his worst subject...especially this year. He had barely maintained a “D” average in math this year--partly because Mr. Shaven had been tough on him, mostly because Milo’s attention had been focused on girls and sports and partying.
An “F” on the final would mean he couldn’t graduate...and, thanks to the new “Back to the Minors” rule in the school system, he would have to start over from ninth grade next year. He would have to go through all four years of high school again, and this time without participation in sports or extracurriculars of any kind.
To Milo, it would be a fate worse than studying...so he had studied like crazy for the final. He had spent endless hours with e-tutors and study guides, copied other students’ notes (because he hadn’t taken any himself) and worked more problems than he had worked in a lifetime.
And still, in spite of all his hard work, he had struggled through the test. He had no idea whether he had passed or failed.
And the message light kept blinking.
For a while, he walked away from the palmputer and tried to put it out of his mind. He ate a snack, watched some holovid, called two of his girlfriends, lifted weights. He played video games in the simulator room and helped his mom put away the groceries.
But the message light, though out of sight, kept blinking in his mind.
He walked past his room six times before he finally went in and called up the zeemail. It sprung to life in a holographic matrix hovering over the palmputer, glowing green text floating ominously in midair.
His heart hammered like a basketball in his chest, threatening to burst out as he scanned the text. Just before the part where his score and grade were recorded, he stopped reading, locking his eyes on the words “Your final exam score follows.”
His legs fluttered under the desk. Sweat covered the palms of his hands. He knew he had screwed up this year, knew he didn’t deserve to pass and graduate, but he couldn’t stand the thought of repeating grades nine through twelve while all his other classmates left him behind. The same people who had treated schoolwork as a waste of time right alongside him would ridicule him for being a Goback; the normal students in the grades that he repeated would look down on him, too. Not only that, but his failure would follow him forever, limiting his options for college and getting a job.
As much of a blowoff as he had been, when it came down to it, Milo didn’t want to ruin the rest of his life. He hadn’t given any thought to what kind of goals he might have, but he knew he wanted better than being a throwaway Goback mopping floors or screening toxics in the shitstream.
Holding his breath, he slowly edged his eyes along the line of type in the zeemail.
Five minutes later, he was still rereading it. He couldn’t believe what he saw.
All along, he had never really imagined that he could do it. Every step of the way, he had doubted himself, had been convinced that the outcome would be bad.
But there it was. The proof of his hard work. What seemed now like the greatest accomplishment of his life.
A “D-plus.” He had passed the exam. He had passed the course.
He would graduate.
Jumping out of his chair, he pumped his fists in the air and whooped. He read the results again, then did a victory dance like a football player in the endzone.
It was then that he heard the applause.
Spinning around, he saw a figure standing behind him, a man bathed in twinkling golden light. The man was wearing a baseball uniform with no number or team insignia. His face shone with shimmering light, the features hazy within the blazing nimbus under the ballcap.
Milo’s first thought was that he looked like an angel.
“All right, Milo!” shouted the golden man, clapping his hands. “Way to go! You did it!”
Milo leaned forward, gaping in fascination. He tried to say something, but no words came out.
“You passed the final!” said the golden man. “You proved you can do anything you set your mind to! Congratulations!”
“What is this?” said Milo. “Some kind of holofeed? Some kind of joke?”
The golden man laughed. His voice was multilayered, like many voices speaking in unison underlaid with the tinkling of wind chimes. “None of the above,” he said.
“Then who are you?” said Milo.
“Just a guy repaying a favor,” said the golden man. “You’ve done enough cheering for people like me, and we don’t deserve it. I thought it was time to turn it around and cheer for the people who need to have faith in themselves, not in their so-called heroes. The people who can make a difference, like you.”
“Why me?” said Milo.
The golden man smiled. There was something familiar in his glittering green eyes, but Milo couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.
“Why not you?” said the golden man.
Milo frowned. “So, what, you just stopped by out of the blue to tell me ‘nice job on the test’?”
“Pretty much,” said the golden man. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a guy down the street who just helped someone out of a jam. Gotta go.”
“Man,” muttered Milo. “I must be having a hyperacid flashback or something.”
“Keep up the good work,” said the golden man. “Maybe I’ll see you again someday.”
With that, the golden man drifted out the window. Milo rushed over to watch him float off into the neighborhood, wafting on the afternoon breeze like a helium balloon released by a child.
But the weird thing (as if everything else that had happened wasn’t weird enough), the thing that struck Milo as truly bizarre, was the object he held overhead, the incongruous object that seemed to be keeping him aloft.
The golden man was athletic, commanding, and mystical, exuding confidence, strength, and intensity. He was a being of pure energy, pure spirit, pure purpose, inspired and boundless and powerful.
And in his left hand...
In his left hand, lifting him up over the world in defiance of the laws of nature, was a tiny red parasol.
*****
Special Preview: Universal Language
A Science Fiction Novel
By Robert T. Jeschonek
Now Available
Corporal Jalila bint Farooq bin Abdul Al-Fulani had had this nightmare before.
She was on the surface of an alien world with her captain and crewmates from the Ibn Battuta. They all turned to her for help, for understanding. Lives depended on her making sense of an alien language she'd never heard before, which should not have been a big deal, because alien linguistics was her specialty...
...but she found herself drowning in a sea of gibberish.
A tide of babble washed over her, a wave of seemingly disconnected sounds from a mob of creatures. Billions of phonemes, the smallest units of language, crashed together, mixing with millions of clicks and lip-smacks that could themselves be part of a language or just random biological noise.
The tide swelled and swirled and Jalila felt herself going under. Again and again, she grabbed at the current but could never make sense of it.
The display on the Voicebox interpreter device she carried blinked with indecipherable nonsense.
She had had this nightmare before. The only problem was, this time, she was wide awake.
Jalila's heart raced. She looked around at the crowd of beings who surrounded her, sleek-furred and slender like otters, and a chill shot down her spine.
Then, she felt Major al-Aziz touch her arm.
"Jalila?" He stared at her with his piercing green eyes, voice laden with concern.
She took a deep breath and gathered herself up. Enough of this.
She was on the surface of the planet Vox with Major al-Aziz and Colonel Farouk. The three of them had landed an hour ago in a scout barque jettisoned from the deep space exploration ship Ibn Battuta (named after the renowned Old Earth Arab explorer and scholar). It was up to them to warn the inhabitants of Vox about an approaching invasion fleet...the same fleet that had crippled and cast adrift the Ibn Battuta.
So it was time to start acting like a professional. Jalila had to forget her fears and nightmares. She had to forget that the stakes were so high, with so many lives in the balance.
And she had to forget that this was her final mission as linguist on the Ibn Battuta.
Jalila was being drummed out of the service. In fact, she would have been drummed out and sent home by now if the Ibn Battuta had not encountered the invasion fleet.
It was all because she'd mistranslated a message two weeks ago and gotten someone killed--a diplomat negotiating the end of a civil war on planet Pyrrhus VII. Jalila had made a mistake translating the complex Pyrrhic language, leading both sides in the war to believe the diplomat was working against them. They'd killed him, and the armistice had collapsed.
So here was Jalila, career over, confidence shot...and her shipmates needed her one more time. Somehow, she had to pull herself together and get the job done. All she really wanted to do was go home and languish in disgrace, but she had to hang on by her fingernails and do this one last thing.
Nodding to al-Aziz, Jalila smoothed the light gray jumpsuit uniform over her slender hips. She tucked her shoulder-length black hair behind her ears, then took a deep breath and turned to the crowd.
"Quiet!" she shouted, as loud as she could, her voice rising over the tumult.
She got her message across. Suddenly, the chaos of noise and chatter subsided. The gleaming black pearl eyes of the dozens of Vox in the city square all slid around to focus on her.
Jalila cleared her throat and took a step forward, fixing her attention on a single brown-furred being. "Hi." She mustered a smile.
The brown-furred Vox rattled off a stream of incomprehensible syllables, at the same time gesturing, clicking, and smacking at a furious pace.
For a moment, Jalila listened and watched the Vox's four-clawed hands flutter and weave. Then, she closed her eyes, blocking out the movement and letting the flurry of sounds rush through her.
Pared down from dozens of voices to one, reduced further from sound and motion to sound alone, the communication seemed less overwhelmingly chaotic. As Jalila absorbed it, she realized it could be simplified even further.
Opening her eyes, she interrupted the Vox by raising both hands, palms flattened toward him. "Only this," she said slowly, pointing to her lips.
Then, pronouncing each letter with slowness and clarity, she recited the Arabic alphabet. She hoped the Vox would get the idea: she wanted to hear pulmonic sounds only, those created with an air stream from the lungs...sounds like the vowels and consonants of the alphabet. All the clicking and smacking was getting in the way.
When she was done, she raised her hands toward the Vox, palms up, indicating it was his turn. (She guessed the Vox was a male because it was bulkier and had a deeper voice than others in the crowd.)
Message received. This time, the Vox's speech was slower and free of clicks and smacks. Finally, Jalila could pick out distinct syllables arranged in patterns. She had isolated a spoken language, one using pulmonic vowels and consonants alone.
Not that the other sounds and hand signs weren't part of a language themselves. Jalila was sure they were, which had been the problem. The pulmonic syllables formed one language. The clicks and smacks comprised a second language. A third language consisted of hand signs.
The Vox people had three different languages, she realized, and they used them all at once. They carried on three conversations at the same time, or one conversation with three levels.
No wonder Jalila and the Voicebox had been stumped. Neither was wired to process so much simultaneous multilingual input.
As the Vox spoke, Jalila's Voicebox took in everything, identifying repeated patterns and relationships between sounds...comparing them to language models in its database...constructing a rudimentary vocabulary and a framework of syntax on which to hang it.
Before long, the chicken scratch on the Voicebox's display became readable output--lines of text representing the alien's words, printed phonetically, laid out alongside an Arabic translation of those words.
At about the same time that the Voicebox kicked in, Jalila started to put it together herself. Her heart beat fast, this time with the familiar thrill of making sense of what had once seemed an indecipherable puzzle.
Listening and studying the Voicebox display for a few moments more, she collected her thoughts. Touching keys on the device, she accessed the newly created vocabulary database for the Vox tongue, clarifying the choice of words she would use.
Then, she interrupted the brown-furred creature (who seemed willing and able to carry on an endless monologue) and rattled off a sentence.
The Vox reared back, the whiskers on his stubby snout twitching. He gestured excitedly, then caught himself and clasped his hands together to stop the movement. Again speaking slowly, without the static of clicks and smacks, he released a few clear words; then he waved, beckoning for Jalila and the others to follow him. The assembled crowd parted to make way.
Jalila turned to Major al-Aziz and Colonel Farouk and repeated the Vox's gesture, waving for them to follow. "I think we're finally getting somewhere."
"What did you say to him?" said Major al-Aziz.
"'Take us to your leader,'" said Jalila.
*****
As Jalila, al-Aziz, and Farouk followed their guide through the Vox city, she again felt chills run down her spine...but this time, the chills were inspired by awe, not fear. Though Jalila had seen the wonders of many worlds as part of the Ibn Battuta's crew, she had never in her life seen anything as beautiful as this.
It was a see-through city made of pastel stained glass.
"This is beautiful." Her voice was a whisper...but the Voicebox caught it and translated for the brown-furred Vox at her side.
In return, the Vox, whose name was Nalo, whispered back at her. "Mazeesh."
Jalila smiled and nodded with understanding. Mazeesh meant "beautiful." She was making progress.
Returning her attention to the scenery around her, she let herself be overwhelmed by how mazeesh it all was. Towers scaled remarkable heights--some squared, some cylindrical, some spiraling into feathery clouds. Vast castles straddled block after city block, turrets shooting sky high. There were domes and cones and pyramids, spheres and cubes. All of it was connected from ground level to highest spire by a filigree of crisscrossing strands, a web of tubing laced around and over and through every structure.
And every tube, every wall, every surface was transparent and flowing with pastel color. Pale yellows and blues and reds and greens and violets swirled and rippled like the clouds on a gas giant planet, mixing and pulsing...never obscuring the perfect view of what lay behind them. Jalila could see right into every room and tube, could see fur-covered citizens in motion and at rest and staring right back out at her. Even more, because the floors and ceilings and walls and furnishings were all transparent, she could see through one building and into the next, could look all the way up through every level of every tower.
It was at once breathtaking and disconcerting to see such a city of people stacked to the heights and strung all around, all seemingly floating, supported only by whorls and bands and streams of color.
Jalila felt like she was floating, too, and not just because she was caught up in the spectacular surroundings. Thanks to the low gravity on Vox, she weighed only half what she did on New Mecca or onboard the Ibn Battuta. She felt airy and light on her feet, as if at any moment she could push off from the ground and rise up to glide and pirouette among the filigree and spires.
According to Farouk, the science specialist, it was the light gravity that made the city possible, enabling such fragile, lofty structures to stand. The chief building material was a light polymer with electrostatic properties that produced the colorful tints. Even stretched into impossibly thin sheets, its high tensile strength supported amazing weight...but on New Mecca, at twice the gravity, it would have shattered under a far smaller load.
As Jalila stepped lightly down crystalline walkways, her body lit with shifting pastel colors cast by sunbeams poured through rainbow walls, she was glad she wasn't on New Mecca. She was glad she'd come to Vox on this one last mission and had the chance to experience such wonders.
Alongside her, Nalo chattered away, but Jalila didn't pay much attention. Behind her, a growing mob of similarly vocal Vox generated a rising clamor, but she didn't listen.
For once, she was all eyes, not ears.
*****
When Nalo led the team into one of the soaring towers, Jalila gazed upward...and realized that her view was unobstructed by even the tinted, transparent walls and ceilings that honeycombed other buildings. She could see all the way from ground level to the distant pinnacle, seemingly a mile above. It was all one vast cathedral, walled in light and color, lined with a ring of slender, glassy pillars that corkscrewed into the heavenly heights.
As Jalila peered up into the otherworldly steeple, she half expected to see a host of angels drift downward, so she was startled when she noticed faraway figures descending from the upper reaches. At first, they were so distant that they were little more than specks, but even then, Jalila could see that they were acrobatically inclined. The five figures moved fast, zipping down the slender pillars, leaping from one pillar to another at high altitudes with perfect ease and grace.
As the figures drew closer, she realized they were Vox, and they were climbing down headfirst, like squirrels descending tree trunks. They scurried downward fearlessly, skinny bodies twisting around the corkscrew pillars, making heart-stopping dives from pole to pole with no more visible effort than kids playing on monkey bars.
Jalila's shipmates craned their necks to watch the spectacle. Major al-Aziz whistled softly in amazement. Stern Colonel Farouk said nothing, which was no surprise, but there wasn't a peep out of Nalo or the mob who had followed them into the tower, either. If even the chatterbox locals maintained a respectful silence here, Jalila supposed the team was indeed in the presence of some kind of leadership.
Leaping and zipping down the pillars, the five acrobatic Vox closed the distance from the pinnacle in a twinkling. As they approached, Jalila could make out differences in their coloration: two had black fur, one silver, one gold, and one red. Like all Vox, they wore no clothing, though their fur coats were daubed with colorful designs on the scalp, back, and belly--circles, spirals, triangles, and starbursts in white and green and pink and black, whatever color showed up best on their coats.
The five Vox dropped further, then stopped a few yards overhead. They twined themselves around the pillars and hung there, peering down at the visitors with gleaming opal eyes.
Jalila was so dazzled by the wonders she had been witnessing, it took a moment for her to remember she had a job to do. When al-Aziz cleared his throat, she snapped back to reality and activated the Voicebox.
"Jalila," said al-Aziz. "Ask our friend here," and he indicated the brown-furred guide, "if these are the leaders of the Vox."
Touching keys, Jalila found the words she was looking for, then turned to Nalo and repeated the question in his language. Whiskers twitching, the brown-furred otter-like being answered, speaking slowly and without clicks and smacks for her benefit.
Jalila watched the translation on her device, though she had picked up enough of the language to get the gist of what he had said. "Nalo says they are planetary ministers, and the red one is Regent Ieria. You should speak to her."
"Anything else I should know?" al-Aziz combed his fingers through his thick brown hair and looked up at the red-furred Vox wrapped around one of the pillars.
"Use her title when addressing her," said Jalila. "Don't talk with your hands. I'll take care of the rest."
al-Aziz nodded and stepped forward, turning his attention to the regent. Jalila posted herself alongside him, raising the Voicebox so its pickups could best catch the words of the Vox leader.
Clasping his hands behind him, al-Aziz spoke to the red-furred Vox. "Regent. I am Major al-Aziz of the starcraft Ibn Battuta."
Jalila read the translation from the Voicebox's display, taking care to speak loudly and clearly enough for the leaders to hear and understand. Though the Voicebox could have broadcast the audio itself, Jalila felt more comfortable doing the talking in this delicate situation. She was paranoid about making a mistake like on Pyrrhus VII and didn't want to rely too much on anyone or anything but herself.
al-Aziz nodded at Jalila. "This is my translator, Corporal Jalila Al-Fulani."
Jalila told Regent Ieria what al-Aziz had said, then smiled and bowed.
The red-furred Vox stared down at them, blinking her black pearl eyes...then fired off a storm of syllables, clicks, smacks, and gestures that baffled Jalila and the Voicebox alike.
Fortunately, Nalo came to the rescue. Appearing at Jalila's side, he let loose a sequence of chatter, noises, and hand signs of his own, directed at Ieria. It must have been an explanation of Jalila's conversational limitations, for when Ieria spoke again, it was without gestures or non-pulmonic sounds. The Voicebox resumed normal function, displaying its conversion of the leader's speech.
"Welcome," Jalila read from the screen to al-Aziz. "What brings you to Vox?"
al-Aziz considered his next words carefully. "A fleet of vessels is headed toward your world. Many ships, heavily armed."
Jalila translated, then delivered Ieria's response. "Your ships?"
"No," said al-Aziz. "We don't know who they are...but we know they are hostile. They disabled our own ship, the Ibn Battuta, and left it for dead."
Jalila translated. She was startled when the gold-furred Vox minister flung himself onto Ieria's pillar, interjecting his own streak of chatter. Apparently, the minister had caught on to the need for conversational simplicity, for his speech, though quick-fire, was free of extraneous sounds.
"The other Vox called you a liar," translated Jalila. "He says this is a distraction to hide your own dishonest intentions."
"Our only intention is to warn you," said al-Aziz. "We can provide you with the coordinates of the invasion fleet, and all the data we have on it." Casting his green eyes upward, he gazed into the dazzling heights of the tower. "Your world is filled with beauty. We will do everything in our power to help you preserve it."
Referring to the Voicebox, Jalila carefully pronounced the Vox version of what al-Aziz had said. "Vox ilu aya sensay mazeesh. al-Azizlo anzish u'i yayla oonlo sah sueta amisansu."
For an instant, there was silence as the regent, ministers, and onlookers absorbed what she had said. Then, all at once, the assembled Vox erupted into chaos.
The outcry was deafening. All around Jalila, Vox were chattering, clicking, smacking, whistling, screaming. They gestured wildly, signing so fast and emphatically that their hands were blurs. Even Ieria and her fellow leaders howled and flailed, diving from pillar to pillar in a frenzy.
The uproar swelled and cascaded in the vast chamber, echo building upon echo with growing force. There must have been at least a hundred Vox in the tower, and every single one of them cried out at once.
Except one. Nalo stood quietly nearby, calmly meeting Jalila's terrified gaze.
For some reason, her eyes fell to the Voicebox in her hands. Somehow, amid the tumult, it must have miraculously tuned in one voice among many, or many voices saying the same thing. Or maybe it was a malfunction.
One word flashed on the display, again and again.
Death.
Death.
Death.
*****
What happens next? Find out in Universal Language, now available for the Kindle!
*****
About the Author
Robert T. Jeschonek is an award-winning writer whose fiction, comics, essays, articles, and podcasts have been published around the world. DC Comics, Simon & Schuster, and DAW have published his work. According to Hugo and Nebula Award winner Mike Resnick, Robert "is a towering talent." Robert was nominated for the British Fantasy Award for his story, "Fear of Rain." His young adult urban fantasy novel, My Favorite Band Does Not Exist, is now available from Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and received a starred review from Booklist. Visit him online at www.robertjeschonek.com. You can also find him on Facebook and follow him as @TheFictioneer on Twitter. For news on his latest online projects, visit the Pie Press website at www.piepresspublishing.com.
*****
E-books by Robert T. Jeschonek
Fantasy
6 Fantasy Stories
Blazing Bodices
Earthshaker – a novel
Groupie Everlasting
Rose Head
The Genie's Secret
The Return of Alice
Horror
Bloodliner – a novel
Diary of a Maggot
Dionysus Dying
Fear of Rain
Humor (Adults Only)
Dicks – a novel
Literary
6 Short Stories
Mystery
Dancing With Murder (a cozy mystery written as Samantha Shepherd)
The First Detect-Eve
Science Fiction
6 Scifi Stories
Give The Hippo What He Wants
My Cannibal Lover
Off The Face Of The Earth
One Awake In All The World
Playing Doctor
Serial Killer vs. E-Merica
Teacher of the Century
The Greatest Serial Killer in the Universe
The Love Quest of Smidgen the Snack Cake
Universal Language – a novel
Superheroes
7 Comic Book Scripts
A Matter of Size (mature readers)
Forced Retirement
Heroes of Global Warming
The Masked Family – a novel
Thrillers
Day 9 – a novel
Trek Trilogy
Trek Fail!
Trek Off!
Trek This!
Young Readers
Dolphin Knight – a novel
Lump
Tommy Puke and the Boy with the Golden Barf
*****