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Page 4.
2. Menkent Express
 Today was nearly New Year’s Eve 5000, Old Calendar (OC). Tomorrow the Year 5000 was going to begin. Man ruled the Galaxy, and it was going to be mankind’s finest thousand years.
Jared Fallon took one last deep breath of summer evening air of Alda Meina III. Then he stepped into the spacecraft that would bear him back to Mercury City. He looked crisp and handsome in his uniform. With him moved a slender, graceful ghost—a hologram in motion—elegant, dressed for travel, almost resembling a wife or at least a feminine counterpart to his life, but as far away from that in actuality as possible. A swarm of molecules bound by deep physics particles around a 3/di holo of Lyxa’s nervous system, Stella faded in and out from moment to moment, and in parts at that.
Vacation was over. When they entered the little solo vessel, Jared was once more a lieutenant in the Mercurian Star Fleets, wearing his white summer uniform with gold braid on the gray bill of his white saucer cap. He carried his black winter cloak over one arm. An orderly brought in his suitcase, saluted, and left with an appraising glance at Stella. Only wealthy persons owned djia, so Stella’s presence at a young officer’s side left a lot of questions unasked.
Jared turned on a small bedside lamp and settled on the bunk, in the passenger cubicle, looking out a small square window. Stella had brought along her cosmetic kit, and proceeded to do her eyebrows (peach blonde) and her lips (apricot pink) while they waited to lift off.
The craft trembled, vomiting radioactive waste into a cistern deep in the ground, and began to float weightless out of the atmosphere. The journey would take a little over one day at Li!2 velo in the Temporale, the motherverse transit world underlying time and space.
Jared made himself a sailor’s grog when the vessel was under power and well away from Alda Meina III. The drink was a Menkent Express, sweet and fruity, but potent.
Jared settled back on the leather bunk, not bothering to put a sheet over it, and thought about his terrible dilemma. In his personal life, he’d been robbed of his potential for advancement, and become a uniformed pet of the queen’s palace. It was sweet but bitter duty, and he would give anything to escape her clutches, rejoin the line fleet, and finally make his destiny among the stars. In his world, Mercury Free Port City tottered on the brink of collapse, under assault by subject races on all sides, including hostile aliens who hated humankind.
“You look sad again,” Stella said. Her beautiful features shimmered, flickering almost like the softest of neons by night. He’d gotten used to having a demi-human as his, well, now his best friend if you got down to it.
“I can’t help it. You know why.”
“Yes,” Stella said with a sigh, without looking up from painting her nails. “Poor Jarry. I wish I could help you.”
He made a wry mouth. “You are a good friend, and you help me greatly. I’m sorry to be such a bore.”
She kept working and said matter-of-factly, “Oh no, I understand and I don’t blame you.” After a pause, she added: “Jarry?”
“Mmm?”
“When you do get free. I mean, find the woman you will love. What will become of me?”
“I’ll take you along.”
She gave him a melancholy look, as the fine golden pencil lines of her facial mask, normally agitated, now worked overtime at a crazy redrawing pace. “You know that won’t work. I’m an echo of an old love. You need to get away. Fresh air.”
The Menkent drink was too sweet, and he made a face, adding a few drops of very sour red lemon. “Stella, you shouldn’t worry. I’m attached to you by now, and anyway, you’re not a love in that sense because there cannot ever be anything physical between us. Just out of curiosity, did you get a contact for Edzar?”
“Why do you ask?” The pencil redraws on her face quickened, giving the impression of a wink. “Are you jealous?”
“No, I do want you to have friends. I just saw you two gazing into each other’s eyes and holding hands.”
“That’s just how djia communicate. It doesn’t mean anything much. We are more like cats. We don’t make friends, just keep our solitary territories and eyeball each other.”
“You could have fooled me, holding hands and all.”
“We were djialoging about the weather, the beaches, the swimming. We do go swimming, you know. I love being in the water, and I’m a good swimmer. He said he’s afraid of the water, and can’t swim.” Her pencil lines fragged. “Not my type of guy.”
“Not your kind of guy then,” Jared agreed. Stella had a blonde fierceness about her, a dramatic pout, a serious and unnerving stare that she’d inherited from Lyxa.
“Just a friend,” she said.
“Would you fall in love, ever?”
She shrugged. “How do I know? I like holding hands. I like it when you hold my hand.”
“You are a woman,” Jared said fondly.
“Yes, I am. A demi-woman, but female through and through. Just as you are a man, and I like that about you.”
“We’re a pretty decent match after all.”
“Yes we are. I am here for you, whereas Lyxa seems to be letting you go.”
“You think so? Will she ever just give me my freedom back?
Stella finished her nails and inspected each hand carefully. “I don’t know, Jarry. I don’t emo with her like I do with another djia.”
“I think we emo sometimes, you and I.”
“We do, Jarry, but you need a real woman, and I am content being alone. My social context is you, or whoever shelters me and, well, owns me. That is logical, comfortable, and works for me. You humans are much more flighty and volatile.”
Jared sipped at his first full glass of winey Menkent; there would be another before he fell asleep. He was glad to leave Alda Meina III. That was the standard vacation planet of junior officers, who crowded its beaches, vomited in its dingy hotel rooms, and crowded its venereal disease clinics. He’d been spared that indignity; it was one of the perks of being attached to both the royal household and the UGO president’s staff.
He’d grown daily uneasier because there were foul rumors circulating about Mercury City, about assassination plots and popular unrest. It was possible to set those fears aside on the vacation world, but now the realities of life came flooding back.
He had at first enjoyed Alda Meina, trying to overlook its vile accommodations as he went swimming at the beach, and then stopped in a cabana here or there for sausage and beers. Young, smart officers from all parts of the Galaxy circulated among each other, passing on vital rumors and reports that made for a comprehensive picture of the status of the empire.
Jared’s cover assignment was at the capital—Mercury Free Port City herself—as attaché with the Mercurian delegation to the United Galaxy Organization. His real mission was (or had been) between the sheets with Her Majesty the Princess. He’d been her favorite, but that could end any time at her whim. He wondered if she’d take Stella from him once she released him to the common stable of line officers. If that was what Lyxa had in mind; or was she selfish enough to just keep him dangling forever at her whim?
Stella finished her grooming, wrapped herself in a blanket, and after giving him a brief pat on the forehead (her way of kissing, usually) she crawled into bed behind him, facing the wall, and fell asleep. Soon, he could hear her snoring—a sibilant, broken but regular little whine, almost like a tiny engine. Like all else about her, she did not have straight-forward human lungs but she did breathe almost like a person. Oxygen mattered for her. He reached behind him and touched her forehead. Half asleep, she responded by gently squeezing his hand briefly in both of hers. Then, as sleep took her, her hands dropped away and he was left to his thoughts.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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