Lawless Sign Part Six (Fiction)

Chapter Ten: Following Strings

I have no idea what the brain trust at Royce Cole was thinking at any time during the events accounted for here. We did find out what they were up to and what their motives were, but their decision making process in reaction to my activities remains a mystery to this moment. They may have initiated defensive procedures which never filtered down to my perception  If the people at Royce Cole have an excuse, it’s that they were in the midst of doing things—and they weren’t expecting me.

I won’t even venture to guess at what they knew and when they knew it. Thus far I’ve sprung Stan Goodman and Pierre Colbert and I’ve trashed their bottling plant. But the order in which I performed these activities is not necessarily the order in which the folks at Royce Cole found out about them. You will note that Nick Kazios did not mention Doctor Colbert’s lab being trashed. That happened first. Kazios only called Nasus after the media became aware of the attack at the bottling plant, several hours later.

One might suspect that they were being cagey with Nasus. If that was the case, it doesn’t track with the rest of what we know. The attack at AUAQ may have been big news at noon, but by 6:00 PM it was the melted laboratory I had left behind in the process of springing Pierre Colbert leading every newscast. Not owning a television, I missed this. I have been told it actually hit the national news.

The weird thing is, the lab wasn’t considered a crime scene—at least at first. It seems I left the door to Colbert’s lab unlocked. The real courier (Royce Cole employee Paco Sanchez)) eventually did show up and, finding no one, left the door open—and let a smell out. The fire department gets called. The landlord shows up.

The grain on the wood paneling of the lobby had migrated, its texture shifted down, spilling into the carpet. Veneer from the coffee table’s top was drooling to the floor. Chrome plating from the interior split door’s knob had become imbedded in the woodwork. Parts of the carpet had grown, elongated fibers climbing up baseboards.

That’s just the waiting room. In the lab there are melted tables and mounds of fine dust from pulverized ceiling tiles. Lying over the lab’s hills of ceiling tile flakes like  giant spider was the black blot that remained from the walking thoughts I dispatched  It’s very visual. It was only a matter of time before someone took a picture of it.

I guess good pictures make for good television. Originally this story is about the landlord complaining what a bad tenant Colbert was. Seemingly Colbert has closed shop and trashed the place. And then it comes out that Colbert is on a watch list for writing too many narcotics prescriptions. Within hours reporters have tracked down where Doctor Colbert lives and are bugging his neighbors.

A succession of reporters did try Colbert’s door first. Emile and Pierre own a modest mansion in Riverside, set back from the road by an acre of lawn. It’s something of an old money neighborhood (old mobster money) of similar houses. None of the neighbors like to see reporters wandering around. The police are called.

Supposedly the Riverside police got a hold of Emile on the phone. She didn’t know about anything having gone wrong at the lab. Per her, the lab was still in business and everything was fine. Pierre, or “Pete”, as she called him, was simply out of town.

This didn’t trickle back to the last officer on the scene at Colbert’s house in Riverside. After he was through watching the news crews pack up, he went to the Colbert’s door and chanced ringing the bell. Like the reporters, he heard the bell followed by the approach of a large dog who scratched on the door from the inside. This is, in fact, the exact response the reporters received. The officer made a brief radio call while he was there and rang the bell again. Same exact response. The dog only approaches. It doesn’t seem the dog ever left. Perhaps this makes the officer suspicious.

We only have the remainder of the events at Colbert’s house third hand and I can’t be sure of their exact timing. The cop started walking around Colbert’s place. From the windows, it seemed like the place was furnished and lived in, although unoccupied at the moment. There was, however, no evidence of a dog about and no dog came to any of the windows. Upon looking in the side window of the garage the officer (or another officer who arrived later) spotted a car in the garage. It looked like a man and a woman were sitting in the front seats of the car.

Two people in a car in a darkened garage. That’s textbook suspicious. Cops open garage’s the side door. The two people in the car are still not responding. They don’t look dead, but they’re not moving. Trying to get the people out of the car, the cop breaks the car’s side window.

And the two people in the car vanish. No one is in the car. Until he looks through the front windshield and sees them again. The two people are a hologram printed on the windows. Similar holograms are on the windows of the house, which turns out to be empty. Inside, the house is configured as one large room. The whole house has a funny chemical smell. The police found five man-sized glass tubes in the basement, all filled with fluid. One has a body in it. To everyone’s surprise, the guy in the tube springs back to consciousness the moment he is free from the liquid.

Which caused the medical examiner at the scene to have a coronary.

Nick Kazios is the guy in the tube. How long he’s been there is anyone’s guess. His last recollections date back to about eighteen months ago. And he has no idea how he got into the tube nor why he is in there.

So who the heck were Miles and Myron talking to?

Whether the process I just described took minutes, hours or days, I can’t tell you. The Riverside police department certainly did have a deep, dark mystery on its hands. And the Royce Cole people had a major headache, if they ever became aware of it. (This may have been the personal emergency Leon Bernstein was dealing with.) The folks at Royce Cole may have had many problems like this. This incident is merely an illustration.

Following strings can lead anywhere. A day before I landed on Tiamore, I thought my job was to look for inhabited planets in The Garden. Tracking astroglance emanations and now drone freighters was a new ad hoc duty.

Looking back at it, I don’t really know what is typical for Incline City. I maybe know eight people on the entire planet. I spend most of my time in space.  Toovy does my shopping. Except for trips to see either Elmaty or my barber Tyrel, I never leave my hovel.

For all I know, princesses, kings and popes drop in there all the time. It was off season, although it was getting near stocking time. Some of the dry goods food stuffs were already arriving at the slips in Mister Rongo’s.

I was making my way to Tyrel’s for my mud bath.  I passed hanging cranes clattering down dull black strips on the ceilings of the halls as I made my quite straight path out of the port dome. The cluster of warehouse areas right after the port were still completely dark, so the season was still a little bit away.

A lot of the areas around where I live are dedicated to perishable food storage. During the season, it’s bright, it’s clattering, it’s moving. These are segmented, specialized spaces with broad avenues to bring goods in and out of. The quarter mile area is very easy to get through, busy or not, lit or not. Then you get to the city.

Incline City is forty eight-story, five acre domes. The layout is scattershot. All of the domes are sharing walls with at least one other dome. There are parks and terraces and open areas between some of the domes, which are active during the season. Domes at the center are residential and also house the lodges themselves. Radiating out from this are retail shops, restaurants and other small commercial establishments. After that, you have the attractions, the theaters, meeting halls and arenas.

Tyrel’s Hygiene Holliday, as he called his day spa, barber shop and pharmacy, was located in an edge spot of its dome. One of its walls was a long curved outside window. The shop was actually right on the edge of the plateau. During the season he had a spectacular view of the oddly finger-like mountains across the ocean three miles away. At the time, he had a magnificent view of fog. Our Friend, as the gas giant Half Marble rotates around is called, had just snuck her way between the fingers outside. Within an hour her redness would be the sky.

The wall to the pharmacy was also glass, so that you could enjoy this view and perhaps be excited by what was in the shop. (Yea, Barbersol.) It was actually rather pricey retail space. This was the only real shop within this dome, most of which was dedicated to business offices.

“I hear the plodding of the Captain of Meteor, ace of space,” Tyrel said. Tyrel was a member of my race, although his skin was red and brown  as opposed to my blue and grey. This was common. My brother was this color. Most first born males are. He was eight feet tall and powerfully built, although you could barely tell it through the blousy toga adorning his form. Like many older men, he wore a cone on his head with a lip that crested just above his blue, perfectly square eyes. The cone and toga were white with nonsensical gold swirls spotted throughout. His brush of fleshy tubes hanging beneath the eyes and covering what chin he had was overly orderly, straight, and cut in a drastic angle. I suppose it was fashionable. That was his game.

I am a member of a sub race of Tyrel’s species. Most of the core race are about his size. As for his bulky, muscular build, he is a  twenty-five year veteran marine of our version of NATO. The entirety of his career was spent on U.N. style peace keeping missions. He was a medic. In our services a medic is a barber is a dentist is a pharmacist as well as a weapons steward.

He and I are the only two of our species on Half Marble with any kind of military background, although there isn’t much equivalence in our services. He is a former Navy Seal and I am a Coast Guard Captain on indefinite section eight leave. He tolerates me, however. He and I are also amongst the handful of our kind who are from some place other than Half Marble originally. The other Warbirds were born and raised here.

His shop was bright and orderly, lined with rows of glass shelves, all facing merchandise in the direction of the door. The barber area was behind a gold wall, in its own covered step down level.

I wasn’t one step in and he was looking at my boots. He asked “Has the Captain of Meteor blown his nose on his shoes again?”

He was referring to the green smudges on my gold boots. “No, that’s actually the remains of a giant collection of creatures who melted in the sleet.”

“Luckily, you had this ‘sleet’ on you or they would have eaten you whole!”

“They don’t actually eat people. They kind of eat each other.”

“Come in quick, then. I will see if I have any of this ‘sleet’ stuff and we can perhaps fend them off.”

“They’re actually back on Rega. It’s another planet.”

“Not in hot pursuit?  So there is some reason that the Captain of Meteor didn’t wipe off his boots as opposed to tracking xenoforms through five miles of our nice domes?”

“Honey didn’t detect any bio hazard.”

“Oh, the little ship that I trust as far as I can throw—and I can throw it. This same ship I just got fifty pages of reconfiguration for sent from its manufacturer while you were away. She still pulling to the right in air?”

“I haven’t checked lately. I think I fixed that. Or I sent for the fix.”

“Best of luck on fixing it because what I just got is the fix. Right now I am having the fix set to paper. Give you something to read while I am dealing with this disaster on your face.”

“Do you want me to wipe my boots first?”

“Just take boots off. I have new boots. And new hoops for your shoulders. Now they will match the bandolier and belt. More gold than yellow.”

“Did they change the colors again?” I asked, starting to bend over.

“What’s with the squeak?”

“What squeak?”

“The squeak. Pop, squeak. Get up. Get out of my doorway. Follow me. Why am I having a man with a mechanical arm take off his boots? A man with a squeaking mechanical arm. How long has arm been pop squeaking?”

“I didn’t hear anything. I have sort of been having a hearing problem.”

“A hearing problem he says and didn’t say before. Anything else, Captain of Meteor? Did you die? You’re not going to decompose and not tell me.”

“You’ll be the first to know,” I said, following his lumbering form in the general direction of the barber area’s step down. “I must say, the old Hygiene Holliday is looking quite spic and span and all spruced up. Holding a sale? Expecting an off-season run on orthotics?”

“I am sure that the Captain of Meteor is far too busy facing off against melting giant ooze creatures to have heard that our humble Incline City is hosting a Warbird Queen.--The Captain of Meteor’s republican mind is to be advised that a royalist hand with a knife in it will soon be at his throat.”

“A queen! How wonderful!”

“As I understand it of the house which supplies grenadiers to the Red Comet fleet. Very favored of this church of yours, too. Had a brood of two, now grown. Widowed for some time now. Has a plantation in the Intersection.”

“Very far from home. For what reason?” I followed him down the seven steps to the cave like barber area. Upon entering, I felt a swirling breeze. “Hey, Gusto!”

“Captain Meteor! Hello! I was just thinking of you. I started your chart in my sand bowl when I heard you were coming,” an alto voice responded. It was Tyrel’s entity, Gusto.

“I get my scruff pealed, a mud bath and my fortune told! What more could I ask?”

Gusto is twice Windy’s age and fancies himself an astrologer. He may have even been one. In any case, you always indulge another person’s entity.

“You’re not getting off quite that easily, Captain of Meteor,” Tyrel said. “I want a look at that arm. Plus, I have the fix set for your helmet. Plus I have a new module for the bandolier. The replacement for your sidearm still isn’t in, but I have an equivalent. And, of course, this mess of a fix for your Honey for you to go over.”

I sat down on the slab at the center of the rounded space. Along the walls was a single shelf,  containing various blinking mostly golden stations. I started to disrobe.

“I have the mud bath set on stun,” Tyrel said, leaning over me and decoupling my right arm. “I am assuming this Queen is here on church business. Like your Elmaty, she is quite the august muckity muck. I hear tell she is a patron without peer.”

Gusto removed my boots and then my helm. The boots found a trash bin. My helmet hovered onto a blinking sphere on the shelf. Tyrel had my arm in a device resembling a lathe.

“Probably here to see the prelate,” I said, leaning back on the slab. A floating towel laden with acid-like chemicals engulfed my scruff.

“I don’t know about that,” Gusto said. It was swirling a shallow bowl with multi-hued sand flecks inside. “You are about to meet someone very important. But it’s not saying what sex they are. It always says that, too.”

“Poor Gus has been very excited about his reading here,” Tyrel said. “Is there a part where he meets the widowed Queen and sweeps her off her feet? And they go off to live in her mansion at the Intersection plantation?”

“I’m not doing her reading. I’m doing Captain Meteor’s reading,” Gusto said.

Tyrel said “If there’s no impending nookie involved, then what good is it?”

“You want to do the reading, smarty ass?” Gusto said. “It’s not even saying that the person is alive. It’s like Captain Meteor is meeting a ghost.”

“Perhaps the ghost will help him with this,” Tyrel said, feeding a pad of papers into my hands. “When it says a type three switch, it’s talking about a dip switch or a switch hidden in housing and not an electronic command or toggle. Or at least that is my guess. Lucky I got you that inhibitor. Did you try it out yet?’

“Inhibitor?”

“Whatever this person is, he isn’t making any sense to Captain Meteor. As if he can’t make sense. He isn’t able to. Captain Meteor takes him for one thing, but he turns out to be another. And then Captain Meteor waits for it to act, but it can’t,” Gusto said.

Tyrel said “Personal mass inhibitor? Floaty belt. The one I told you not to buy the cheap version.”

I said “I haven’t had a use for it, yet.”

“You can float in front of the primitives and convince them that you are a god,” Tyrel offered.

“That’s not really what I do,” I said.

“The hell you don’t,” Tyrel said. “You try to convince people that there’s some invisible man in the sky that really cares about them. You know, there’s a word for that.”

“We’re just out to convince them that the universe isn’t indifferent,” I said. “We actually did some good on the last planet. Have you seen Elmaty today?”

Gusto said “Whomever or whatever this is, it turns out to be the most important person Captain Meteor has ever met.”

Tyrel asked “Important in general or important to the Captain of Meteor?”

“It doesn’t say. It’s a real turning point for Captain Meteor,” Gusto said.

“Maybe you do get to meet the Queen, after all?” Tyrel said. “Elmaty was ruining the carpet out front about an hour ago.—You know Toovy is missing, right?”

“Since when?” I asked. I knew Toovy wasn’t actually missing anymore, but it would have been giving up a confidence if I didn’t fake concern.

“Yesterday, I believe,” Tyrel said. “Don’t tell anyone I told you, but she had a line on a junk corvette that was supposed to come in on a drone freighter full of sea food paste that never showed. I’m guessing she’s going back to Sistus to give those smugglers what for.”

“Why would she be doing that?” I asked.

Gusto said “It says that you are going on a really long trip.”

“He does that every other day,” Tyrel said. He then whispered to me “I think she’s trying to get you parts for Honey on the cheap. Maybe she thinks they might have left an interceptor missile just lying on it.”

“That’s not at all worth the risk,” I said to Tyrel.

“The center of the problem is: Captain Meteor keeps thinking there is more to it than there is. The entire motive is where Captain Meteor is at. The person behind the situation is right there, at the place and his designs are entirely about the place. He’s really just abusing a find, or a discovery. There are no other people waiting in another place to come in. Captain Meteor is trying to help someone who can’t act because he isn’t really there. It’s not really a person, but rather a message or a device. Or maybe it’s talking about the ghost again.”

Tyrel asked me “You didn’t directly tell her not to, did you?”

“This is the first I heard of this,” I said. “Honey doesn’t really need any spare parts. I have an outlaw matter healer on her. As for an interceptor missile, first, I don’t think the Combine would like that and second, as a monk, I can’t think of having a need to fire interceptor missiles at anything.”

“You know her. Just trying to be helpful. Young women are worthless with their ideas. Maybe there will be a sidearm in the wreck? That would be good. That’s well within the realm of hoping for,” Tyrel said, removing the towel from my scruff. He flicked open a straight razor and then paused “There’s something else.”

Gusto said “It doesn’t give an end state to the situation.”

Tyrel asked Gusto “Does the Captain of Meteor die?”

Gusto said “It says he goes home.”

“That is not possible,” Tyrel snapped. “Very rude of you, Gusto.”

I said “I am sure Gusto didn’t mean anything by that.” By this I meant that I was sure that I didn’t want a ticked off Tyrel going after my face with a knife.

Gusto said “Maybe it means Captain Meteor finds a home?”

“The Captain of Meteor has a home. Here. Half Marble is the Captain of Meteor’s home,” Tyrel said, starting to trim my face. “Although the Captain of Meteor is doing us all a disservice by enjoining with such a young mate. I know three widows your age, all church people, but you have never seen them. How is the Captain of Meteor exempted from doing his patriotic duty? Even you republicans have the patriotic duty, no?”

“Some euphemisms are universal,” I said.

Gusto asked “Didn’t we get two intra-system communications for Captain Meteor?”

“One just this hour,” Tyrel said. “You want we should acknowledge?”

I waved my hand, meaning yes. But no, I never read them or had them printed out. Intra-system communications are something like registered letters. Most of mine are spam.

Gusto wafted over to my helmet, after first having hit a few switches on the counter to receive my communications. The helmet hovered from its place. He announced “Recalibration done. New commands for the baton are in. Did we give him the new baton?”

“No we did not,” Tyrel said. “It is a piss poor substitute for the sidearm, but what do you want in a place run by… What did you call them again, Captain of Meteor?”

“Neglectful Inheritors,” I said. “Does the new baton still come back? I like that trick.”

“Yes, same thing,” Tyrel said. “Has an anti-welding, anti-magnetic super heating pop out at the tip. But that isn’t why I got it. There’s a new alloy for the shaft that will increase the integrity of the entire arm, in case the Captain of Meteor gets his expensive forearm slammed in something, it won’t snap off. It was under your tolerance level, so don’t worry on the price.”

“Would have come in handy this morning with all that sleet,” I said.

Tyrel said “Perhaps we can come up with an attachment which will make you want to attend ice cream socials at the temple, no? The prelate was in here and asked me to describe you, mister monk. Me, the resident atheist. You should show off this masterful trim job to something other than aliens. Flip over.”

I turned over. Tyrel popped open the hatch at the base of my neck. I felt him blow air from a can into it. “Hear now?” he asked.

“Perfectly. Ringing is gone,” I reported.

“Piece of crud,” Tyrel said, closing the hatch. “It will outlive you, but it’s still a piece of crud.”

“What about the other piece of crud we have for Captain Meteor?” Gusto asked.

Tyrel said “A new bandolier module from the Captain of Meteor’s rinky dink Shadow Fleet. Charliq directional anti personnel mine, without recoil. To replace the one that knocks you off your ass, apparently. Super sonic dispersal cone. Everything it touches goes off to a scab universe. At least you didn’t have to pay for it.”

He wasn’t being literal. Charliq, or charged liquid, was nasty stuff, but it wasn’t intra-dimensional. Until that moment, I had gone about five years between hearing the words ‘scab universe’ used in a sentence, even jokingly.

Gusto said “I am a little concerned about my sand reading here. I think what it is trying to say is that you are the critical actor. That you shouldn’t fight your distrust of authority. That what it is there is to do, you have to do.--”

“—And I am a little concerned that I am directly descended from this charlatan,” Tyrel said. “In the Combine, they reward their warriors with mansions. What do I get? A superstitious, half-literate old coot.”

Gusto said to Tyrel “It is a strange man who does not believe what he sees every day.”

“You are nothing more than a slice of race memory projected from my genetic material. A retarded slice, at that. It is a parlor trick of super science--one they had no better use for, no doubt,” Tyrel said.

Gusto said “I think Elmaty’s coming.”

“We just cleaned the floors. Are you sure the hairy clay blob is coming here?” Tyrel asked.

The sands in Gusto’s bowl shifted and he reported “Yes, I am sure.”

“Crap. We’re going to have to deodorize again. Hit the bath, Captain of Meteor. We will have your uniform and accoutrements ready for you when you are done. Gusto, his helmet, in case the blob wants to talk to him. Here, and take this technological pornography with you,” Tyrel said, handing me the pad of Honey’s fixes. “Check out the fifth page, where it describes a rear pop out wing which I am sure your Honey does not have. Forty-three year old design, and they still haven’t got it right. I left the news on in the cave. Not that you care.”

Chapter Eleven: Goodbye to Everything I Know

Mud in the pool percolated around me in wide bubbles. I sank to my shoulders, holding the print out of Honey’s fixes aloft. Radio was playing in the broad, but low slung cave that housed the bath. A dimly glowing halo on the ceiling provided this chamber’s light. As Tyrel said, he had the bath set on stun, nice and hot.

Half Marble’s only form of electronic mass communication was a hard wired radio system. Mostly it carried canned programs, radio shows produced on Sistus and imported via physical recordings. Only the news channel was produced live, and then, not all that professionally.

Initially, I tuned it out. They were going over the betting lines for various sporting events on the Sistus circuit. Technically Half Marble was a possession of Sistus. Or at least it had been purchased by the original Mister Rongo from someone on Sistus back before it was inhabited.

That was the news! A delegation had left from Half Marble to petition the court on Sistus to have Mister Rongo declared dead. No one had seen the guy in ten years and a search for successors had come up empty. I’m not sure what end game the Half Marble authorities--essentially the trade union everyone but me belongs to--were playing for. There are no squatter’s rights in the Combine. At best, the resorts would simply be assigned a new owner. Or the Sistus government would view Half Marble as found money and auction the place off. The union was much better off continuing to be employed by a dead man and his automated annuities.

There must have been more to it than that. If I was a more interested citizen, I am sure I would have a more informed opinion.

I kept listening for the name of the visiting Countess, but there was no mention of her having even arrived. Although the press was relatively free on Half Marble, it did have a tendency to be selectively focused. It was the union’s channel. The Countess would have only been of interest to Warbirds or members of the church.

The resort was doing well. Bookings were ahead of last season. We were slated to run at 80% of our visitor capacity just on pre-paid sales. That meant no discounting this season. (Music to their ears.) Merchant representatives and buyers were already working full time.

Then Tertraforgimula made its presence known. Its arm formed a sucker and pulled it onto the lip of the mud bath. In the pug clay lump’s other arm was a metal contraption, something like a pinwheel.

Tertraforgimula was about the size and shape of a bowling ball bag. Its surface was uneven, grey and  porous. Thick, short clumps of red hair dotted its form. Tiny boils were continually emerging and exploding across it. The small being stunk like a peat bog.

By the time it got all the way onto the pool’s lip, it had absorbed the arm used to reach up. It waved the pinwheel at me and I spun it. The wheel opened like a flower, with sections of it rotating in a counter direction.

The creature didn’t speak. I don’t think it could, yet. I glanced at the door. If Tertraforgimula was here, Elmaty could not be far behind. Elmaty seldom let the little being out of his immediate presence for long.

Elmaty was about eight hundred pounds of what Tertraforgimula was. I assumed they were related. Neither I nor anyone on Half Marble was sure what either of them were. Elmaty was rich. In the Combine, that’s all that counted. The fake Mister Rongo, brain box owner of the cargo port where I lived, enjoyed similar rights for similar reasons. If a cheese log could pay its bills, it too could become a citizen of the Combine.

I affixed my helmet and turned to Tertraforgimula. Even if it couldn’t talk, it could at least think.  The pinwheel, as it should turn out, was part of a two acre erector set that the little being refused to be pulled away from unless Elmaty let it bring a part with. Tertrafirgimula had just started using tools recently and, having started, could not put them down. At present, all it wanted was a little attention for its achievement. In Tertaforgimula’s mind attention and approval were fairly much the same thing. I wondered at what approximate size these creatures became more complicated.

When last I had seen Elmaty, he had been carved by artisans into a statue of a Zed—the type of being I had first mistaken the humans for. At the time he was traveling around in a little cart. He would have used the legs, but he was afraid of ruining the carving. He must have molted or melted or shed or whatever since then, because he was back to his globular self. Elmaty was squishing his way into the mud bath chamber. He normally motivated by a process of rolling and smooshing himself places. And yes, he did  a number on carpets and waxed floors.

And he reeked. Like an eight hundred pound bag of flaming dog poop.

“Cap, you are in the presence of an empress.”

“I had no idea you were even female.”

Elmaty spoke through his exploding boils, which released small brown puffs into the air. These puffs more or less accounted for his odor. The voice was a warbling collection of high pitched yawns. I understood it, but it would be impossible for me to speak it. Our conversation was telepathic. He still insisted on vocalizing. In general, what he is saying and what he is thinking to say are the same things.

“Not me. A Warbird empress.”

“Is she invisible? Did you eat her?”

“You will see her.”

“I’m looking. I’m not seeing.”

“Why do you not want to see her?”

“She’s been promoted from princess to queen to empress since I landed two hours ago. I figure if I wait in the bath here long enough she’ll become a circumambient deity.”

“You will see her. She asked for you. Almost by name.”

“Almost by name? Who did she actually ask to see? And who did she ask?”

“She asked the prelate to see the monk.”

“That seems like she asked to see one of the prelate’s monks.”

“The prelate has acolytes.”

“If you say so.—Are we being invaded by royalty here or is this woman actually a baroness or a countess?”

Despite the way this sounds, I am very fond of Elmaty. He’s a great boss and an absolutely fantastic ball of clay—as I have told him many times. Not that it takes much, but he is far more accomplished as a monk than I will ever be. I admire him, whatever he is.

But he was a hard read. I sensed he was upset, but not at me. It had something to do with our work. Every time he brought it to mind, he looked at (perceived in some way) Tertraforgimula and became calmed—or reset in his perspective. Venturing a guess, I asked “Did you pinpoint the astroglance emanations?”

“The empress is a fiend,” he said. For a second it seemed like he might cry—if that was possible. Then Tertraforgimula shook its pinwheel vigorously. Having gained a better humor, Elamty continued “The astroglance is not ours.”

“Not one of ours. That’s good. So it is our discovery and no one can make a claim on it,” I said.

There were only seven known astroglances in the glob of nine galaxies we lived in. They can accurately predict the motion of bodies in space: any body, anywhere in space. For that reason, they’re the most valuable things in existence. The Shadow Fleet had one and it was considered our key asset. The guy in charge of its access had a higher rank than I did.  Discovering another one would be a big find.

As of last week, that is. Per Sulfur’s brain box, every ship he ever owned has had one as standard equipment. This is odd, since compared to our vessels, Sulfur’s ships were relative wind up toys. This is what makes space exploration so much fun: what’s a big deal magic artifact to you turns out to be  a widget pooped off someone else’s assembly line. At that moment, however, I thought we were onto something.

Then Elmaty threw cold water on it with “The astroglance is not ours to find.”

“Did we rule out Planet Twelve?”

“Ask the empress.”

“Is she saying it’s hers? I have the imprint. It’s very distinct, so she had best have evidence.”

It’s so distinct that I now know that this same astroglance is on the top floor of the Roymarillo Building at Madison Street and Western Avenue in Chicago. The thing has probably been there since 1929. How we were getting emanations from it on Tiamore is the crux of our mystery.

“Toovy is missing,” Elmaty said, having again brought Tertraforgimula to mind.

“Toovy is on Sistus, either picking up fifty Warbirds for unknown reasons or telling off some smugglers. She should be in soon.”

“You are several hours behind on this situation.”

“Enlighten me.”

“I will leave that to the empress.”

“She’s an empress. Fine. I will meet with the empress.”

“Good. Now stopping that. Will pick up again. Report on Planet Seven.”

“You were right. The cluster formations were in fact towns. We named it Planet of the Incessant Percussionists. Total population is about thirty million. Largest town had about two thousand in it. Percussionists themselves are about two thousand pounds, twelve feet long, eight feet wide, five feet tall. Three segmented body. Eight legs on the rear segment. Top segment is enclosed in a shell. Middle has large pincer arms. Maturity appears to be about thirty years. Life span two hundred. Pretty much a one to one ratio of children to adults. Language, religion, basic sewage, basic building. No nations. No literature. Music. Lots of music. No farming. Pure meat eaters. Settle near water and hunt. Oddly, not really tribal. There’s a development phase where the young adults run away from home as far as their little legs will take them. Once they are exhausted, they find a town and find a mate. They do have weddings and marriages.”

“Males run or females?”

“Both. The young adult phase seems to go on for about twenty years. Windy and I ran into a number of towns that were just young adults. The towns weren’t very well done, which led us to speculate that they were a less developed sub-species. There really are no sub-species. The young just make dumb towns. The migrations are seasonal. Which sex was dominant varied by region and in some areas by couple. Very little division of labor. Besides the exchange of young, no commerce. No sign of previous contact. And negative on your idea of a second intelligent species. The percussionists were it.”

“The large trenches?”

“Seems to be a natural formation. A rocky desert in a creator or a dried ocean bed. The linear trenches are really cracks in the bedrock. The percussionists didn’t know anything about it, other than that it wasn’t a good place to hunt.”

“Grace of god?” By which he was asking for our good deed.

“Infant mortality. The very young can become afflicted by a fungal infection. We were able to provide a crude compound of native minerals to fight it. They didn’t buy the idea of science and they had no real writing. Also, they didn’t buy the idea of outer space. We sold our procedure as shamanistic magic.  Windy was the Glorious Helping Ghost Queen Sent by the Great Sea Clam and I was her animated object, a big fairy. It was incomprehensible to them that I was even an animal. We made widely distributed contacts and are fairly sure our procedure will spread.”

“May the Sea of Peace embrace you. Stopping. Will review notes before picking up. Report on Rega.”

“Useless. Up-scaled micro organism colony forming transient reefs.”

“I wasted your time sending you. The astroglace emanations did not originate on Rega. It is not on Rega. Did you trace the drone?”

“No, I didn’t. Probably it’s fish paste from Sistus. Probably last season’s, which wasn’t half bad. My guess is it is on its way back to Cethree or the Transfornis sub-route. Toovy should be able to catch it, even in the caravel. Not sure why it strayed. And there’s no chance that there is an Assembler Brain Box on it.”

“You are behind on this. The Assembler Brain Box summoned the drone. The drone was sent to you with a smuggled wrecked corvette on it, purchased by Toovy from the empress. It strayed in response to the Assembler Box.”

“Do we know what the Assembler Box told it?”

“Ask the empress.”

“So is the empress here to pay Toovy back?”

“A smuggler with a guarantee? Not in the Combine. She officially is here to see the prelate. So she said.”

“So where’s the Assembler Box?”

“Tiamore.”

“That near Cethree?”

“No. It is the next stand alone body in from Planet Twelve.”

“The planet has a name. Who named it?”

“Its inhabitants.”

“So the people of Tiamore have an astroglace? And the empress sent her brain box to snag it from them? ”

“It is possible my instruments have been wrong.”

“That would be a first. What’s the other possibility?”

“I feel the call of Justice, though and she is my worship. The god and gods in their heaven and heavens, above and below, instill her in us first—first just to make things and then to make them right. Happenstance determines the size of your stride and the range of your concerns. To those whom the most is given, the most is expected; and to her first.”

That’s monk talk for “saddle up.” Elmaty wasn’t sure what the hell had happened, but he didn’t like it. I was off to see the empress.

Eight miles of walking, two twenty-five thousand foot elevator rides and an open ferry trip across the frost spraying ocean later and I am in the entry gantry of the sensor-proof dock at Hand Bell City’s spaceport. Standing ten feet away from me at the sealed door to the dock is a male member of my race wearing a yellow and black checkered tunic, a common uniform for a Benelux pirate. He is not armed. I do not recognize him. All I know for sure is that he is not a princess, countess or an empress and I tell him so.

“Star-Marshal Sunshine Blessing Cool Breeze also known as Captain Meteor, visual confirmation,” he said into his bracelet. Then he waved a hand at me, saying “This way, Excellency.”

I looked behind me and I was the only other guy in the tube.

I was scarcely over the shock of such a friendly reception when my ears were filled with this: “I put out cans on strings all over the place. I have an unlimited supply of these Assembler Brain Boxes. I don’t pay for them. Get them as tribute for a factory that is on one of the estates. Well, you know how taxation is in the royalist zone. They have a problem taxing or tracking gifts. Put that as another pirate strike against me, not that you would be wrong in assuming that all of my wealth comes from a core of such. Hearing your name made me curious so I sent a can out. It wasn’t my intention to actually pick up anything. You never know what’s being transmitted over these strings. You get a lot of verbs but not many nouns you can make mile markers of.  I will admit that you were the noun, so I shot the string out. It’s not every day someone is buying a junker corvette from my mooks. Then the mook said that Toovy’s sidekick lover was this Captain of Meteor. I thought to myself: ‘Captain Meteor’, I have heard the name before. I couldn’t place it at first. It wasn’t my intention to spy on you. Or you anymore than I would anyone attempting to smuggle arms through the Splinter Xenophobe. Of course, I don’t consider a junker corvette arms, but who knows what the Neglectful Inheritors think. I get a premium if it’s smuggled, no matter what it is. And if something else in the back of my head itches, I send out a can on a string. I can’t account for what I heard and you are the noun, and the space explorer monk I have given so much money for, so it is kismet that you are also who you are. Indifferently confining universe at times. But I didn’t want to compound the mistake by being so indifferent with what was vibrating the strings.”

So she wrote me a note. The note I didn’t read.

More shocking than the cordial reception was being matter-of-factly introduced to this person as Countess Rezvulga. Maybe I heard that wrong? I knew I wasn’t Countess Rezvulga. It had to be her. In a blink, the guy disappeared. I was alone in the sensor-proof area with this bell-shaped being.

I had never seen a female Rezvulga before. Other than the utterly hideous teal and maroon striped uniform, she was just a Warbird, as most pirates were. Like myself, she was a shorter version of the Warbird, a member of my sub species. Her slightly upward slanting eyes were glowing gold, as mine do: a sign that she too was a long time spaceman. Cresting from right above her eyes and then surrounding her head was a halo shaped mantle of teal and maroon feathers and scales. This headdress merged into a wing-like cape that ran straight down her back. At her waist the outfit blossomed out to form a bell that covered  her legs and obscured her feet from view. The shoulders of the uniform flared out a foot and were fairly standard except for their exaggerated size.

But skip that. Her face was lovely, absolutely symmetrical and elegant. Perfectly even maroon triangles bracketed her scruff, starting right beneath her eyes. Her scruff was maroon also, with teal ends. It was parted in the center in such a way as to show off her pointed teal chin. She was a tiny thing, too, maybe a half foot shorter than me, with wonderfully broad shoulders.

She might have been the prettiest woman I had ever seen. Dial up ‘princess’ and this is what they are supposed to look like. (If you changed the color of her clothing and made her something other than a pirate, that is.)

Even weirder than having accused someone of being the Easter Bunny is having that person casually admit to it. Having done so, she just started chattering on.

“I kept thinking to myself, ‘Captain of Meteor, Captain of Meteor’. I wasn’t drawing a blank, but I became fixated on the ‘of Meteor’ part. Seems a silly thing to be the captain of. Is Meteor a ship? No. Not a royalist ship. Those are all called Repulse or Intrepid or Intruder or Insipid or Incompetent or Incontinent. A republican vessel? Those are all numbered, but they have ironic pet names like Honey or Sweetie or Muffy or Fluffy—Beware Battlestar Fluffy, as we pirates always say---so it wasn’t that. Was it one of the countries on Sistus, those ones that are always under martial law and redrawing their borders and renaming themselves? Then it occurred to me what ‘Meteor’ meant, that it was a bureaucratic holding place for a name. There was a Shadow Fleet officer who had been given that name because his real name was deemed inappropriate for a warrior. Why would a country on Sistus be using a republican bureaucratic naming convention? And besides, all the leaders on Sistus are colonels. I was with the prelate, lovely fellow, when I finally put it together. Captain Meteor, as in  Captain Meteor the Shadow Fleet officer who shaved seventeen percent off my dowry. I still didn’t believe it when I was told the Captain of Meteor was the monk whose explorations I have been funding. Not that I thought that Elmaty, also lovely in his own way if you like clay, was actually hiking his hairiness from star to star. Still I thought ‘They are saying Captain of Meteor’ so it can’t be the same guy. Even though there is no ‘Meteor’ for you to be ‘of’. But, boom, here you are, cosmic scoundrel recycling program product that you are, not some weird monk who hangs out in the cargo port who nobody sees, but rather Captain Meteor of the Shadow Fleet, previous bane of my existence. At least professionally. I hope you never took it personally.”

“You’re Countess Rezvulga?”

“The demon queen. The void’s pitch witch. Darkness herself. I am.”

“Yes, I took it personally. But let’s leave the past where it is. Would you mind laying off Toovy?”

“Certainly. Anything else?”

I wasn’t exactly composed but I was going ahead with it. “That was easy. Thank you. Pleased to meet you, Countess. I’m sorry you had such trouble finding me, if that is what you wanted. Everyone around here is Somebody of Someplace. They do it to your name automatically. I think officially I am Monk Meteor of Rongo Port.”

“He’s not dead, you know. Mister Rongo, that is,” she said in the voice of a songbird.(A tuned cricket, to be more accurate.) “He’s just incarcerated. That was my other cover story to go with my other cover story: passing on to the prelate that Rongo can be sprung for a price. Not by me or my mooks, of course. Because we don’t have him. Really! We can’t spring him directly, but, you know, he can be sprung. I’m tempted to do it myself, or cause it to happen, but I wanted to make sure that would be ok with the prelate and everyone else here. You see, that’s the whole thing about here: everything I do here in this part of the universe is entirely charitable. All I want is one place, one section of reality, where I haven’t smudged it up. That’s why I lavish on the church and why I fund Elmaty. Then this thing on the string came back. I hand selected fifty of my best mooks, but they are mooks with no surface work behind them. Praise the god and gods in their heaven and heavens above and below: I have never been so happy to see a Shadow Fleet officer of any stripe before in my days. The void itself is less indifferent than these Neglectful Inheritors, these Myopic Pinchers at Statistics. They and their Combine may have no use for these fifty stars in their path, but god’s grace does if we bring it there. I am under no illusions as to my inevitable fate in the Lake of Fire, nor am I trying to mitigate it. My clan will fall apart with my passing. My children will kill each other for my wealth. Upon my death, my body will be placed in a screw shaped container and screwed eight feet down, a helpmate to my destination or a hindrance from my being spat frothing out of holy ground. All I will be is a messy memory and an afterthought inspiring petty violence. There. But here on The Garden’s planets, my clean slate, all I will have done is spread god’s grace as its servant. And I will be damned if I allow what is happening on Tiamore to happen, by whosever hand it is.”

This (highly cute) larcenous little plutocrat has her own pet sector of the universe. How quaint.

I said “You don’t seem to be ready to die anytime soon.”  Countess Rezvulga was a lot younger than most people believed she was, if she existed. She was around my age and seemed very healthy.

“You never know when posterity is going to happen,” she said.

I don’t think the Countess really believed in the concept of a sensor-proof chamber. (Nor should a pirate.) She floated around the little spherical enclosure, continually glancing at the grey panels on the walls and occasionally knocking her painted knuckles against them. “You  know, I don’t even know your replacement’s name. And that’s bad. Because I know the names behind everyone of my itemized deductions. It’s real money, you know, more real than anything else in my life, really the only reality I deal in for the most part, except for my hopes for this garden of planets Elmaty has found for me. My clan has been getting too fat and too happy without opposition. That isn’t good for anyone’s skill set. I can tell you that the Shadow Fleet hasn’t cost us much in such a long time that they have slipped into the incidental column. They haven’t since, I want to say, twelve years. Has it been twelve years?”

“I believe so. Twelve years would be around right.”

“I am so sorry,” she said, abruptly halting her miniature orbits and floating across to me. She grabbed my hands and pressed them together, surrounding them in hers. “Arsenal exploded twelve years ago. You were from there. That’s why they said you were on leave. Then they said you weren’t coming back. The whole town. Your entire family. My condolences.”

“Thank you. That’s very nice of you. You’re very kind. It was an industrial accident. There is no one to blame.”

“That makes it worse in a way. Sorry. So sorry. Here I am apologizing for dredging something up and I’m dredging something up again.”

“I understand and appreciate your sentiments.”

“All this, and housebroken, too. Why can’t I train my mooks as well? Well, they’re drawn from another population strata, that’s why,” she said, breaking away from me. “Not that all of the mooks are bad, as in stupid. Or bad, as in evil. But I could only find fifty of them that I would trust in my garden. Hypothetically, might you be willing to have them follow you on darling Toovy’s caravel to a specific point of interest within the garden, Planet Twelve called Tiamore?”

I said “Hypothetically, moving fifty armed men through the Combine from anywhere puts the church in jeopardy. Hypothetically, passing those forces out of Combine space into ‘the garden’ could cause the Splinter Combine to log a protest, which they do with randomly targeted interceptor missiles and no explanation. Hypothetically passing those people back into the Combine might cause the crime lords to get curious about the activities of our prelate, who honestly knows nothing and whose ministry would then be endangered.”

Hypothetically, those ‘mooks’ would have come in handy. Even a Rezvulga swabby is much more technically proficient than I am. 

“Your corvette constitutes no military threat, but the caravel might?”

“Why are we debating legal nuance?” I asked her.

“I could distract the authorities. Quite thoroughly.”

“Why don’t you run that plan past the prelate?”

“All these places you go, all these people you meet, I consider my places. My places for god, what the gods have given me to see and protect. I care so much about them because they are perfect, perfect as in untouched by me. All these little people, even these new Crab people, I have plans for. I make shopping lists, things to give them. Just drop it out of the sky for them. When that can came back, when my Assembler Box vanished on Tiamore, it gave me the most vast chill. They seem like such nice people, too. Of all of them we’ve found, by far the most easy to directly convert to The Teachers’ way. If only we can put to a swift end this situation.”

Why you (perfectly altruistically motivated and absolutely sincere) meddling little klutz. All of my work here had been in service of helping her form a cargo cult.

I’m not saying that’s right. I’m saying that’s what I was thinking.

She had already bounced part of this idea off Elmaty. Having seen how disheartened her disclosure had made him, the Countess was now pitching me. Not that I knew the prelate, but my guess is that he would turn her down and probably excommunicate her. Would that stop her? She’s already come half way across nine galaxies with an aircraft carrier full of mechanized force recon gear and fifty of her best trained gun men.

A younger version of me might have jumped down her throat. Or wrung her neck. This version of me just wanted to prevent her from making the situation worse. To do this I needed for her to explain exactly what she did and then convince her to accept my help-- as a substitute for whatever drastic action she had in mind.   

For the moment, I will spare you what this unfathomable goof ball did other than to say she wasn’t at all responsible for the mass extermination on Tiamore. And nothing she told me in any way prepared me for what I found.

After about two hours of dancing around, our encounter ended as follows:

“Look, I think you’ve done enough. Perhaps too much,” I said, starting to glance around at the sensor-proof tiles. “I am probably going to need you to do something, something to shake the attention of the Combine, something…”

Something that would get her and her mooks as far out of my hair as possible. I am not normally devious. This is because I am not very good at it. She gave me this. I just spat it back at her. “I want you to spring Mister Rongo. That will cover your presence here. He’s on Cethree, right?”

“Of course.”

That wasn’t a stretch nor that good of a guess. Cethree was the neighborhood police state. It was the only one of the five planets out here that even had jails. “Leave on Toovy’s ship with your mooks. Take Elmaty with you. Have Toovy return alone with Rongo. That ought to give us enough of a distraction.”

I then pointed at the walls, implying that a follow up question was probably not advised.

I think she bought it, but she did have to ask “What if you have a problem on Tiamore?”

“Trust Captain Meteor.”

Suddenly, I’m off to Tiamore—if you define suddenly as following another four miles of walking, two twenty-thousand foot plus elevator rides and a ferry trip wherein I inadvertently ate a quarter pound of sea ice.

I was in the Three Level district, closing in on Rongo’s port when my helmet suddenly triggered. This was in the middle of a stadium. I hadn’t noticed it, but the oval lights failed to come on to trace my path.

I questioned the darkness: “I thought you were missing.”

“Answer: I’m hiding,” Toovy said.

“From your own passengers. That’s not very hospitable.”

I caught a glimpse of her outline. She was wearing her silver environment suit, which had a striking set of crescent walleyed lenses on the helmet. This gear enabled her to become transparent. It was one of the few nifty gizmos that the Combine didn’t seize from her when we emigrated. My guess is that she put it on the moment she got a load of who her passengers were.

“Directive: We have to go,” she said. Toovy and I don’t speak the same language. Her translator is on the low end side, but it does preserve the alto clicks of her voice. When we’re alone, she doesn’t use this device at all. We get along with our own sort of chatter. Here she’s trying to say something in a hurry, so she has to use it.

“You might be a bit behind on this—“

She cut me off with “—Clarification: We means you and me and go means now.”

Toovy is nicely tightly wound under normal circumstances. Spending time in close proximity to gun men who chased us clear across nine galaxies did nothing to improve her comportment.

I said “You’ll never guess who I ran into.”

“Incredulous: I was about to say the same thing.”

“The answer to both questions is Rezvulgas and the king of the Rezvulgas.”

“Expletive! Confusion.”

“Who did you think the mechanized infantry unit belonged to?”

“Statement: My passengers’ affiliation was unknown to me. It is their nature which is of concern—their low character, their vile temperament—their current proximity to our home. I would have opened the airlocks on them once we were underway, if I thought I could get away with it, if I didn’t need my ship for our getaway. Highlight: Our getaway. Directive: We are leaving now. Highlight: Now.”

“Landing a force of fifty mooks on Half Marble would be overkill. Our neighbors would surrender to a telegram. And nothing kills trade to a theme park faster than the presence of arms. Unless I am being snowed, suppressing the trade union is not what the mooks are here for. Did you monitor their internal chatter? Is that what they said?”

“Statement: Blah, blah, blah. Directive: Pack Honey up, Spanky. We’re out of here!”

“If that is your ultimate wish, Toovy. We would be blowing an opportunity to return home. Home, where you were prosperous. Countess Rezvulga is willing to lift the vendetta against you.”

“Comment: Appeal to my vanity. Low blow. Definition: Home is my Spanky and my caravel. Appeal: Windy, Windy, Windy are you hearing any of this? Question: Countess Rezvulga exists?”

“I spoke with her right before my bath in sea ice. Stupid ferry.”

“Conjecture: If Countess Rezvulga exists, she deals in lies and murder—“

“—I have a telepathic helmet and I’m very good with it—“

“—Comment: Rude! Continuing: If Countess Rezvulga exists, she deals in lies and murder as a reflex and on a grand scale. Even if you can read her mind, you still can’t understand it because you don’t think like her or accept the bounds of her morality. You can’t possibly be able to predict her future behavior, no matter what she is honestly willing to agree to. And you’re the one who taught me this. Per procedure, yours, evil exists to be opposed or fled from. Never understood. Never cooperated with. Per procedure, yours, never trust a piece of equipment if its readings counter what good sense tells you is true.”

“Trust Captain Meteor.”

“Statement: Captain Meteor is a noble ghost, mental scar tissue. Not a molecule of you is Captain Meteor. We could be done with him with the twist of a screw.”

“Would that be best?”

“Pleading emphasis: I’m sorry I said that.”

“You’ve said it before.”

“Pleading emphasis: It was mean and wrong before, too. I didn’t mean it. I don’t mean it. Statement, switch of tone, composed: But it is like a hostage negotiation. Captain Meteor, would you please let my goofy boyfriend go? I know you want to go beat up on pirates, but that’s not your duty. I know you want a noble cause, but that didn’t work out for you. Maybe I’m not a noble cause anymore? I know this was more fun and sexy when we were rich, but at least we still have each other. I am living in a cargo pod with you. Do I have anything else to prove?”

“You have nothing to prove, Toovy.” At this point I grabbed her. Her transparent arms wrapped about me. All I could see of her were the glints off her helmet’s crescents. “I just want a sporting chance at getting part of your life back.”

“Pleading, resigned: No, Spanky, no.”

“What do you propose?”

“Proposal: The caravel has enough renewing resources to keep us in chips for fifty years. That’s more than enough time for us to find a nice primitive planet that we can live on. We could hunt and gather, make lean-tos. Just you and me. As long as we take it nice and slow through The Garden, the Splinter Combine will never detect us. It might take us a year to get past The Garden, but then it’s off to unclaimed space.”

Given what I found on Tiamore, this is going to sound harsh: had I to do it all over again, you would have never heard of me. I would be off playing Tarzan and Jane for the rest of my life.

There was a down side to this little fantasy, which I explained with “After I die in twenty years, you’re alone on some primitive planet. Just at the time that you will need medical treatment. Your eyes are already starting to glow. Left unchecked, that condition eats you alive, brain first. There won’t be any memory stick to put your memory on.”

As if we were going to die of natural causes! Chances are we would be bumped off by wildlife or an environmental event. I’m an idiot. This is a much better plan than what I wound up doing.

“Statement: I did monitor their chatter. The mooks said they were going after an artifact that had been sent into The Garden, to some place called Tiamore. They said it looked like a giant chrome plated cake and that it communicates through dream images.”

“It might also have a Zoom Tube in it,” I explained. “The Countess said it looked like a fake fireplace eating a giant candelabra. She programmed the thing to communicate the Teacher’s lessons to the people of Tiamore in their dreams. The nitwit has no idea what the people of Tiamore even look like or what their society is like. All she knows is that something has gone wrong. And she only knows that from monitoring their satilites.—Toovy, I’m going to need you to hike her royal stupidity and the mooks to Cethree. I need them gone.”

“Statement: You have my heart. I’ll do whatever you want. If it is to be it is up to you—have it your way. Do what you’re going to do, but don’t hang this on me.”

That’s my girl. It’s a pity Captain Knucklehead didn’t listen to her. Toovy is better off without me. I wish I could say the same.

***

Next: Captain Meteor returns to 'reality', such as it is.