The stylized skull-and-crossed-rocketships icon still grinned at me long after it had delivered its message. Blinking would not make it go away. The implant made it as real as pain or loss. Or joy and contentment, for that matter. But unlike those ephemeral emotions, the harbinger could be banished with the twitch of a finger. Bell, book, and candle.
"Come to St. Attila's World," it had said, "Mother needs you." Short, bitter (or was it sweet, still?), and to the point. Fenton Aurelius Jones could probably find me on the other side of a gray hole. He had better hope I still loved him when I got to St. Attila's World.
I had been invited to a haven for smugglers, privateers, and outright pirates. St. Attila's World was surely one of the more interesting places to live (or die) in the galaxy. My lover and dearest friend had invited me to an interstellar den of iniquity and decadence to help him and his mother in some endeavor. It could be anything from a party to a coup d'etat in the Empire.
I was looking forward to it.
But I still desperately hate having a severely well-deserved sabbatical cut short. For any reason.
The customs agent looked me up and down dubiously. "Anything to declare?" she asked. Just a few syllables that somehow contained a universe's worth of mind-numbing boredom. I supposed she would have been immensely relieved if I had been attempting to smuggle something in-world, just like almost everybody else who came to St. Attila's World.
"Only my genius."
Evident disgust replacing boredom, she waved me past customs and on to the tender mercies of St. Attila.
Just outside the starport, bright blue skies silhouetted a large, chunky-style male human. St. Attila being St. Attila, nobody seemed to notice when we kissed. Or else they were too polite to be obvious about it. An armed society really is a polite society, I guess.
Still embracing, Fenton said, "Good to see you, Tommy. Nice vacation? You still look jovial."
My branch of the Clan St. James had called Jupiter home for so long now that I, like all hi-g worlders, was readily identifiable. Fen was utterly incapable of resisting the call of the wild pun.
Neither could I.
We separated. "As if I had a choice. At least I was virtually guaranteed to be left alone on the trip. Even the cleaning robots didn't like my cabin's internal hi-g! Now. For what, exactly, does Mother Anne Bonney Jones need me?"
"Follow me."
Mother Anne is, or was, one of the last of the great CPAs (certified public assassins). She could handle almost anything, and frequently did in the time I knew her before I went on vacation. Both Fenton Aurelius and I knew the value of time spent alone and of time spent together. Both require a period of some readjustment.
So it was when we had dinner that evening that he made me blush; I've been a police detective, freelance tribune, survival school instructor, and a bouncer in a house of great repute but I always was a sucker for expensive sentimentality. And red roses, hideous puns, and big, bearish guys. And... but I digress. What made me blush was when he said Mother Anne said I always was her favorite son-in-law. And that she'd be pleased to have me as backup anytime. Which led to the most important question of the evening.
"Okay, where is she?"
Fenton let out a long, dramatic sigh. "That's a long story." He sipped on his shoju and mango juice cocktail. I sipped on a very expensive, imported Jolt Colaña real warrior's drink. "Y'know, Mom has some sisters you might find interesting. Care to ditch this joint?"
Secretiveness has its place. But this was getting to be ridiculous. I had broken a vacation, hauled ass halfway across the Arm, and been superhumanly patient, I thought, waiting for Fenton Aurelius Jones, my one and only, to give me some answers. Even as I contemplated the wisdom of the saying that you only hurt the thing you love, I swallowed annoyance and said the only thing I could think of.
"Sure. If you've seen one interspe-cies polysexual bar you've seen them all."
So we walked down the street, disdaining ground transportation. Too many worlds have global weather management. St. Attila, I was glad to rediscover, had no use for such modern inconveniences. On a pleasantly cool evening like this, I was glad to spend a little more time with Aurelius. Even as I was considering that the whole thing was a hideously expensive practical joke.
I smelled a bakery. A good thing, because I was getting hungry and I could use a hot, buttery croissant to tame the smoldering alcoholic fire threatening to consume my digestive tract. Okay, maybe two croissants.
"We're here."
A price list was displayed on the window, and we paused to read it. Fenton leaned over in my direction and told me something startling, although I think I half-suspected it anyway, at least on an almost subconscious level.
"Mom owes the Jolly Rogers a favor or three. But things aren't like they used to be. Our glorious near-anarchy is starting to get organized. Real pirates are staring hard times in the face. Some of them are going to go out in a blaze of glory and they want to take Mom with them. I have nothing against glory or martyrdom but damned if they are going to take my mother with them! You have to help me get her back. In a proper piratical fashion. That's why we're here."
He placed his arm on my shoulder and waited, looking at me expectantly.
And for what? I looked at him, dumbfounded. If he had told me Mom had actually been adopted by giant insectoids I couldn't have been more amazed. So I asked him the most cogent question I could come up with on such short notice and smiled.
"Huh?"
"She took a route untraceable by ordinary means. Alien technology. A family secret. To generate an inter-dimensional gate you need to be able to generate a circle with a variant value of pi. The greater the variation from the norm in this universe, and, therefore, the farther and safer away, metaphysically and quantum mechanically speaking, the more expensive. The going rates for various gateways are encoded in the price list." He pressed the doorbell.
A rather matronly looking somewhat anthropomorphic giant insectoid walked in from a back room, waved large, friendly looking antennae, and grinned somewhat hideously in our direction. She came to the door and let us in.
"Thomas St. James, meet my Aunt J'myma!"
It was only because I was family that I did not botch the deal when I asked him, "So, tell me about the pi rates of Fen's ants!"
| Broadside 2 | Bucconeer |