The Garbage Chronicles Read online

  Javik saw Evans crack a smile. Out of the corner of his eye, Javik also saw Wizzy, on the oxygen tank behind his chair. “Pay attention to your duties!” Javik howled. “Evans! Blanquie! Think about the mission, damn it!”

  Evans straightened, and Javik heard the whir of Blanquie’s moto-boots as he returned to his station.

  “Looks good so far,” Evans said, reading a digital trouble scanner. She thought of the way Captain Javik often stared at her laboratory-shaped breasts.

  “Now listen to me, crew,” Javik said, his tone terse. “You risk your lives—and mine—every time you forget about duty!”

  Blanquie gave an astrogational reading.

  I sounded pretty good, Javik thought. Strange, coming from me. He stared at his instruments with unfocused eyes. What sort of assignment do I have here? Is Wizzy going to get in my way?

  “No,” Wizzy said in Javik’s ear.

  Javik started. He snapped his head forward.

  “Thoughts create energy waves,” Wizzy said. He flew aft.

  Javik gazed into space in the direction taken by the Great Comet. It was out of sight now, having blended with the stars and shining planets in the distance. Damn, Sid! he thought. You’re big time now!

  Oblivious to the businesslike chatter of the crew, Javik felt a rash of envy for the Great Comet. And he recalled his meeting with Sidney at the Sky Ballroom the year before.

  Sid was envious of me, then, Javik thought. Those days seemed like long ago. They were simpler, more innocent days. But Javik did not want them back.

  An hour later, from a dark resting place in an aft cupboard, Wizzy surveyed the thoughts of the crew. In the darkness, thoughts inundated him like sounds to a blind man. He practiced identifying them.

  This one’s from Javik, Wizzy thought. He feels both attraction and repulsion for Evans. That’s interesting.

  Wizzy concentrated on Evans’s thoughts now. Ah, Wizzy thought. She wants to hit the sack with our friend Captain Tom.

  Blanquie’s thoughts crowded in: I could turn this console into a video game. With a maze here, and sixteen laser-fired squibs.

  Wizzy laughed aloud when he heard this.

  “Shutup back there!” Javik barked. He mentoed the mission briefing tape.

  “Assignment fifteen,” a woman’s voice said over a dashboard speaker. “Guna One.”

  CHAPTER 3

  No one has ever seen proof of the Happy Shopping Ground. I wonder if our Product Failure did really go to such a place!

  Whispered words picked up by a Black Box of Democracy detector

  It was evening by New City time.

  Leaving Mother in charge of all ship’s functions, Javik yawned while rolling by Blanquie toward the captain’s sleeping compartment. “Fifteen minutes to clothing destruct,” Javik said, glancing at his wrist digital. “Has everyone changed?”

  “I have,” Evans said in a sultry voice. She popped her head out of the hatch of her sleeping compartment, on the deck to Javik’s left.

  Javik gave her a cursory glance downward. She was staring hard at him. Feeling the effects of his sex-sub pill wearing off, he mentoed his own sleeping compartment hatch hurriedly. Tumblers sounded as the lock was released. He leaned down and pulled open the hatch that was just forward of hers. It squeaked.

  “Is Captain Daddy reminding us to change our clothes?” Blanquie drawled. He slouched at his console, a sneer on his freckled face. “Now we have a mother and a daddy on this ship.”

  “All right!” Javik snapped. “Just forget the automatic destruct time once. That’s all. Just once. You’ll be standing there in nothing but your moto-boots.”

  “Now that would be interesting,” Evans said, examining her wardrobe ring closely “Clever little gadget. All the problems of reducing weight in space, and they’ve still got a device that gives you a regular change of clothes!”

  “You’re too easily impressed,” Javik said. He mento-locked his boots, then stepped on the top rung of the ladder inside his compartment.

  “Night, Captain Daddy,” Blanquie said.

  Javik scowled at him.

  “Did you brush your teeth, Blanquie?” Evans asked.

  “How about a little co-hab tonight, Evans?” Blanquie asked.

  She laughed. “Not tonight,” she said.

  Javik shook his head in dismay as he stepped down the ladder, pulling the hatch shut behind him. Reaching the corrugated metal floor of his compartment, Javik removed his pillbox from his pocket and slipped it into a wall-hung stuff pocket. It was a tiny room, with barely any walking space around the bed. Mirrored walls and a reflecting, gold-foil ceiling made it seem larger, A single porthole on the outside wall displayed a distant blue nebula with veinlike streaks of pink and green. Corner ceiling fixtures lit the room evenly.

  He mentoed a nightshade over the porthole. It snapped over the glassplex.

  Feeling a dull, low-level throb of pain in the back of his head around the implanted mento unit, Javik gave it a brief thought. The pain subsided.

  Javik stood next to the bed, there being nowhere else to stand in a room of this size. Staring at his wardrobe ring, he mento-concentrated on the rectangular turquoise stone. The stone glowed.

  A happy tune sounded from the ring, with a tiny computer voice that sang: “It’s fresh-up time! It’s fresh-up time!”

  Javik hated that tune.

  Now his Space Patrol jumpsuit disappeared in a puff of white smoke, leaving him wearing nothing but his moto-boots and his ring. A black thread shot out of the ring, followed by a thread of gold. For a moment, they hung poised in the air, like tiny cobras about to strike.

  Checking my size, Javik thought, recalling the demonstration class he had taken.

  Now the threads darted around Javik’s wrist and up his arm, covering the arm with finely woven black and goldcloth. Over his shoulders and around his neck the threads flowed, forming a braided collar. Then down the other arm, back up the arm and down the torso. He felt the warmth of the pajama cloth take hold.

  A white strand darted out of the ring next, and this encircled his waist and thighs to form a fresh pair of underwear. Then two new black and gold threads covered that and his legs, forming pajama bottoms.

  It is kinda clever, Javik thought. He sat on the bed, sinking into its synthetic softness. Soon the moto-boots were off and he was under the covers.

  “Captain Daddy,” he muttered, just before falling asleep. “I’ll have to speak with Blanquie about his attitude.”

  The wall-mounted transcriber worked while Javik slept below decks, making ship-log tapes from his resting brain. In the cabin above, Wizzy sat on the dashboard, rolling the gaze of his cat’s eye aft. The chrome and white plastic cabin was empty, with captain and crew belowdecks in sleeping compartments. With his sensitive tympanic sensors, Wizzy heard the low hum of the transcribing machine, despite it being in another compartment.

  Through the curving windshield he watched two closely aligned planets come into view, covered by a continuous system of swirling, mysterious clouds. Both planets were mountainous, plunging to high plains of green and thence to wide blue seas. Being so close to the twin spheres, Wizzy absorbed a torrent of animal and geological history from their energy waves, more than enough to whet his appetite for knowledge. But too soon the Amanda Marie had sped by and the planets were receding into the distance.

  I’ll return to explore someday, he thought, feeling the energy waves subside.

  Now the faint twinklings of stars, red quasars, and bright planets beckoned to him from far off. He felt a weak signal trying to find its way into the atoms and molecules of his brain. Something about a solar system with three suns, a planet with disturbing activity.

  From Cork, Wizzy realized. The planet Javik calls Guna One.

  Static crackled in his brain, blocking out the Corkian signal. He surmised a meteor storm had intervened, or perhaps a solar flare. Feeling weary, he let his cat’s eyelid droop.

  Wizzy called upon his com
etary data banks, drawing forth information imprinted in him at birth. Papa Sidney’s deep, mellifluous voice spoke to him: “Energy waves take a variety of forms, including simple heat waves, radio signals, and microwaves. Your red star crystal sensor is highly adaptable, permitting you to learn from all things. The most ordinary-looking piece of plastic and the most brilliant nova in the universe have something to offer.”

  He tried for the Corkian signals again, but received no further messages. Staring out the windshield with a bleary, stinging eye, he tried to focus on a cluster of stars dead ahead. That planet is out there somewhere, he thought.

  Wizzy’s gaze wandered sleepily around the cabin, from the blinking instrument panels to the tan gortex, wall-hung survival packs. His eyelid drooped heavily, then opened once, seeing only unfocused images. He dozed off.

  Moments later, a loud clunk and the rustle of clothing awakened him. Looking groggily toward the sleeping compartment hatches along the floor, he saw that one of them was open.

  Marta Evans popped her curly blond head out and looked around. Then she lifted the adjacent hatch. It squeaked open. Wizzy heard voices after she entered that compartment.

  Javik turned to one side, scrunching the air pillow between his shoulder and head. Hearing the hatch squeal, he opened one eye in the half-light of his sleeping compartment. A woman’s foot was on the bottom ladder rung.

  He sat bolt upright.

  Evans short-stepped to the floor, looking down over her bare right shoulder at him. She wore a black lace blouse, low-cut, with black bikini panties.

  “You!” he husked angrily, smelling lilac perfume. “Get out!” His tone was low and menacing.

  Smiling softly, Evans knelt next to him on the mattress. He felt the bed move.

  Javik moved away. “I told you to get out,” he said. But his voice was not firm, and Javik knew Evans had noticed this. Where are my sex-sub pills? Javik wondered, his gaze fleeing frantically.

  Kneeling on the mattress with her gaze locked on Javik, Evans mentoed the zipper on the front of her blouse.

  Ziiippp! Each side of the blouse parted.

  My God! Javik thought, seeing her well-shaped bust, Evans wore a scanty yellow brassiere with tiny black buttons down the front. He looked into her olive green eyes.

  She smiled. “Shall I get the buttons?” she asked. “Or would you prefer—”

  “Uh, I don’t think . . . ” Javik coughed. He felt weak.

  She mentoed the buttons. Her breasts virtually exploded out of the brassiere as the garment flew open. The breasts were exquisitely formed and impressive. Javik saw no surgical scars.

  Javik’s gaze locked on hers. He felt his eyes burning with desire. He looked away and felt the tempo of his breathing increase.

  “I’ve seen you watching me,” she said.

  Javik scowled. Another time he might have laughed at the situation. He had known many women, some as aggressive as Marta Evans. All the aggressive women had mento-activated bras.

  Evans removed her blouse and brassiere. Then she leaned close to Javik and pressed her lips against his. Her mouth was soft and warm. She pulled back and said, “I thought you might like some company. It can get lonely in deep space.” She brushed a yellow curl out of her eyes.

  Transsexual! Javik thought, pulling away in revulsion. “I’m doing fine without you,” he said. He reached around her to the wall-hung stuff pocket and located his tin of sex-sub pills. He noticed the pocket floated a little against the wall. “I’ll have to adjust the gyros,” he muttered, fumbling to open the tin.

  She knocked the tin away. It clattered against the wall.

  “Hey!” Javik said, leaning across the bed to retrieve the tin. “My ulcer pills!”

  She lay next to him and nibbled at his ear. “What sign are you?” she asked. “Pisces?”

  “Sparky the Hormone,” he said, irritated that the tin was beyond his reach. His glands were beginning to go wild.

  “I’ve never heard of that one,” she said.

  “Thirteenth sign of the Zodiac,” he explained sarcastically. “The sign of natural craving.”

  “Oh.”

  Stupid transy broad, he thought. Won’t admit she’s confused. He butted the palm of one of his large hands against her shoulder and pushed her away firmly. Then he glared at her. Evans’s green eyes were soft and feverish, reminding him of a girl he had once datemated in an astro-port—the one he almost permied. What was her name? he wondered.

  Their lips drew close, then touched. Javik pulled her body against his. His lips ran down along her neck to her bust. Her lilac perfume smelled inviting and exotic.

  Evans was beginning to breathe hard. She ran her hands through his hair.

  Javik moved his hand along the curvatures of her body, from the soft skin of her bust along her waist to her hips. A shudder coursed through his body.

  She sighed.

  How did they do it? Javik thought. No surgical scars. Anyone else would think this is a real woman. But I read her dossier.

  He massaged her stomach and pressed his hands against the underside of her breasts. Javik felt curiosity over how a transsexual made love. He knew he had reached the point of no return.

  A loud thump sounded around the ship.

  “What was that?” Javik asked,; staring at the black nightshade over the compartment porthole.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” she said.

  Thump! the sound was right next to them.

  “I heard that” she said, sitting up on one elbow.

  Crash! This came from somewhere else on the ship.

  Javik mentoed the porthole nightshade. It snapped open, revealing a clear view of deep space. A red quasar burned brightly to one side of his framed view. Suddenly a mangled, semihuman face appeared in the porthole, staring in with bulbous, bloodshot eyes. The eyes were unfocused, with death’s disorientation. The head was oversized and entirely hairless, having no eyebrows or eyelashes.

  Javik felt his heart beat irregularly. He reached for his service pistol, which hung in a holster on the wall. “The engines aren’t on,” Javik said, just realizing it then. “We aren’t moving!”

  Evans screamed.

  “Topside!” Javik barked, pressing his feet against the moto-boot rack at the foot of his bed. He felt the boots snap on over his ankles.

  Evans fumbled around, trying to find her clothes.

  Javik scrambled up the ladder and opened the hatch. Looking into the cabin, he saw clusters of the strange creatures against the outside of the windshield and portholes, knocking against the ship. “Hurry!” Javik yelled to Evans. “They’re trying to get in!”

  Javik felt his hand quiver on the automatic pistol’s handle as he short-stepped out of the compartment to the deck. He rolled forward to the command chair. Wizzy was on the dashboard, snoring heavily. Javik knocked him away with the gun barrel and fell into the seat. He heard Wizzy hit the floor and roll. There was a fit of breathing for a moment from the baby comet. Then the snoring resumed.

  With bulbous-headed humanoids only centimeters away outside the windshield, Javik mentoed the engines. There was no response. He felt a sharp pain in the back of his skull around the implanted mento transmitter.

  “Nine hundred thirty-three possible causes,” the ship’s mother computer reported. “Complex circuitry. Search commencing.”

  Switching the pistol to his left hand, Javik slammed down the black manual start toggle in the center of the instrument panel. Still no response from the engines. “Shit,” he said. His head ached. Something’s terribly wrong with my mento unit, too, he thought. What a place for it to go gunny sack!

  Glancing aft, Javik saw Evans scurry half-dressed to her own sleeping compartment. He was about to yell for her when she hustled out with her service pistol and used it to pound on Blanquie’s hatch. “Stations!” Evans yelled. “Blanquie!” Then she rolled forward.

  Javik waved his gun menacingly at the creatures on the other side of the windshield. But they did
n’t react, and continued to pummel the ship with their mangled heads, legs, arms, and bodies. Their unfocused, bloodshot eyes stared beyond Javik. “Where’s Blanquie?” Javik asked.

  “I called him. Do you think they can get in?” She stood beside her chair.

  “Zip that,” Javik said, glancing at her blouse.

  She mentoed it.

  As Javik heard the zipper rise, he wondered how the mento-zipper system worked. He knew from experience that another person could not mento your zipper, but did not understand the technology. He scowled. I am really low, he thought, scolding himself. On a critical presidential mission, and I’m in the sack with a goddamned transsexual.

  Evans pressed a red alarm button on her console. “Blanquie!” she yelled as the siren screamed. “Get out here!”

  “Where is he?” Javik snapped.

  At Javik’s memo-command, Mother reported on the ship’s mechanical problem: “Still searching. Maximum search duration three minutes, fourteen seconds.”

  “There’s something strange about these creatures,” Evans said. She shut off the siren.

  “That’s news?”

  “I mean, they look like dead humans, with terrible wounds. Oh! That one has no arms!”

  A hideous, deformed creature with open wounds at its torn and empty armpits pounded its body against the windshield. Javik grimaced as the glassplex flexed.

  “His forehead!” Evans said. “What’s that on his forehead?”

  “I don’t know,” Javik said, glaring at the instrument panel. “Damn these engines!” He rubbed the back and one side of his head. The mento unit pain had become dull and had traveled around the outside of his skull.

  “P.F.,” she said, reading the creature’s forehead. “Product Failure!” She felt a chill. “Catapulted bodies from Earth!”

  Javik heard Wizzy snore fitfully from somewhere on the floor.

  “I think we’re in the Davis Droids,” Javik said. “Asteroids to port and starboard.”

  “How could they be alive out here?” she asked.