What the #@&% Is That? Page 6

  “Jesus, Jam,” Inaya said. “Open the fucking door or we have to report this to the commander anyway.”

  She was right about that. Bubbah hadn’t come to work, hadn’t contacted his supervisor, and now he wouldn’t answer his door. Technically, this was a potential medical, or a possibility of one, so Jamel was in the clear as far as entering went.

  He punched Bubbah’s code into the door pad. The pad let out a slight beep, then the door hissed open. When it did, the smell that had filled the corridor boiled out like steam, like an engulfing, loving, invisible cloud. Jamel had never smelled cookies that good. He’d never smelled anything that good.

  “Spank my ass with a wooden spoon,” Inaya said. She closed her eyes and inhaled. “Fatso has outdone himself this time.” Jamel started to agree with her, then remembered that she was smelling brownies, not cookies. There was something weird about that, something off he couldn’t nail down. It was . . . it was a little frightening.

  Why would he be afraid of a scent?

  The two crew members walked into Bubbah’s small living room.

  It was trashed.

  Spacers never had a lot of room to call their own. They had it better than terrestrial ship crews, to be sure, but still, the tiny living space didn’t leave a lot of decorating options. Living room, a tiny galley big enough for one person, bedroom, and head. When that was all the area you had, shelves, pictures, and hanging monitors became your best friends, your link to the life that existed outside of the ship. If you had a life outside, that was, which Bubbah did not—most of his hanging pictures showed photos of his best cooking creations. He had knickknacks from his many ports of call—just like Jamel did, just like everyone did—little talismans that were breadcrumbs the galaxy gave to you to remember your path.

  Frames, monitors, and breadcrumbs alike were scattered all over the floor. Someone had moved the couch, making it stick out at a shallow angle from the wall.

  And there was blood.

  Streaks of it on the walls, across the floor, staining the couch, dried up on the galley counter. It looked like someone had suffered a small but significant cut, then thrown themselves about the place in melodramatic agony.

  “Holy shit,” Inaya said.

  Jamel nodded. Bubbah had to be hurt. Or drunk. Way drunker than Jamel had been when he’d tried to force his way into Camilla’s room. Maybe hurt and drunk both, as those two things tended to go hand in hand.

  But that smell, that wonderful, spirit-soothing, stomach-fluttering smell . . .

  Jamel looked to the galley; he saw no cookies. That filled him with an instant and powerful sense of despair. Had Bubbah hidden them? Had he eaten them all like a motherfucking selfish fat-ass pig?

  Inaya walked to the galley counter, leaned over it, looked at the tiny kitchen even though she could easily see everything in there from the front door. Her hands curled into fists, which she punched knuckles-down on the countertop—the hard clonk surprised Jamel, made him wince.

  “No brownies,” she said. “Where the fuck are the fucking gaddam brownies?”

  Cookies, not brownies—Jamel was getting tired of this old hag’s bullshit and getting tired of it right quick.

  She turned toward him, finger pointed at his face, her lip twisted by a snarl.

  “Shut that door,” she said. “He’s not getting out of here until we find out what’s up.”

  Jamel nodded, reached back, and touched the door panel. The door swung shut. In an almost instant afterthought, he grabbed the wheel at the door’s center and spun it shut, sealing the cabin.

  Wait, what was he doing? Stop Bubbah from getting out? There was only the tiny bedroom and the bathroom left; it wasn’t like Bubbah could escape through some secret maze.

  “Inaya, calm down,” Jamel said. “There’s blood all over the place. He must be hurt.”

  Her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared, not with anger but with need, the need for whatever it was she smelled. She blinked, seemed to pause even though she was standing still. Her pointed finger relaxed. Her hand slowly dropped to her side.

  “I . . . yeah, all right,” she said. “Calm down . . . right. He must be in his bedroom.”

  She turned toward the closed door that led into the bedroom and the head, and when she did, Jamel took two quick steps forward, almost sprinting before he stopped so fast, he stumbled. He shook his head to clear away the panicked thought that she might get there first and she might get all the cookies and there wouldn’t be any left for him.

  What the hell was going on? He needed to get out of there, go get security or at least call for help.

  But what if he did that and it turned out there actually were cookies? He wouldn’t get any. Any at all.

  And they smelled so good.

  “He’s got to be in there,” Jamel said quietly, as if a loud noise might spook Inaya. “We go in together?”

  Her eyes narrowed again, a hateful look that showed her age far more than the cracked hands and dry skin, more than the wrinkles at the corners of her mouth. She looked like she wanted to kill someone—kill Jamel—then the look melted away.

  “Together,” she said. “We check on him together? You promise?”

  A negotiation of sorts, a deal. Inaya, pleading yet firm at the same time. If Jamel didn’t agree, would she come at him? She was strong, with long, lean muscles hardened from decades of twelve-hour shifts, but he had forty pounds on her, and a fight wouldn’t last long. If he got the first shot in, it would be over almost immediately, then he would get the cookies, get all the cookies. Maybe he should just kill her now, kill her before she could attack him, kill her got to kill that greedy bitch and—

  Jamel punched himself in the mouth so hard, he felt a tooth crack. The pain flared in his face and on his knuckles, enough to overpower the strange, sudden thoughts of murdering Inaya.

  He had to leave. He had to stay.

  Inaya stared at him, not at all surprised by his actions. Maybe she understood his sudden, overpowering need.

  “Together,” he said. They hurried the few steps to the bedroom door, stepping over broken frames and treading on the scattered, blood-spotted mementos of Bubbah’s career in space.

  Jamel and Inaya stood at the bedroom door. Unlike the door that led to the corridor, there was no wheel, no locks. Locks weren’t allowed on internal rooms.

  Pain screeched from deep inside Jamel’s broken tooth, like the dispensary robot had gone haywire and jammed a wide-gauge needle straight into the nerve. Jamel looked at Inaya.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  She licked her lips. She sniffed, meaning it to be only a quick intake of air but then changing it, inhaling deeply, her eyes fluttering half shut.

  Jamel needed her to hurry. A few more seconds and the pain wouldn’t stop him anymore; he’d have to elbow her in the throat, break her windpipe, put her down so she couldn’t get any of what was his and only his.

  Inaya looked at the panel on the bedroom door, then put her hand to it.

  The door slid open: Jamel’s eyes snapped closed. He had no control over his body because the odor bulldozed him, roiled out of the bedroom and forced its way into his body, his atoms, his very being, so powerful he couldn’t think about anything else; he could only surrender to it, succumb to it. Beyond the smell of food, beyond anything he’d ever known, beyond love, beyond breathing, beyond life. A caressing tidal wave enveloping him and lifting him.

  He smelled heaven.

  Jamel opened his eyes.

  The door was only a meter from the foot of the bed, from Bubbah’s feet. Bubbah’s naked feet. His bloody, naked feet. His naked legs. His bloody, fat, naked legs. Fat, naked, bloody arms. The obscenely bloated belly rose so high that Jamel couldn’t see Bubbah’s face.

  Reaching up from Bubbah’s stomach were long, thin, willowy rods, the thickness somewhere between wire and grass. Supple, waving so slightly in a wind that did not exist, just enough motion to hold your eyes, to make you watch. Their deep r
ed color seemed to absorb the overhead light, soak it up, diffuse it, and cast it out again in what might be a glow, might be a reflection. And at the top of each of those stems, clustered like black-copper berries the size of the end of Jamel’s thumb, strange shapes—spheres made of flat facets.

  The stems flowed in that phantom breeze, slowly, hypnotically. The triangular facets caught the light in a staccato shimmer, one side flashing, then the next, then the next, then back . . . pulsing, repeating, a metronome of light and movement.

  The smell . . . so overwhelming. There were cookies in here, somewhere, the best cookies ever made . . . and Jamel would find them.

  Bubbah didn’t move. He was asleep. Peaceful and content, relaxing on his bed as he should because this was his room even though he was fucking bogarting those gaddam cookies and Jamel was going to fix that problem ASAP.

  Jamel glanced at Inaya. She still had her eyes closed, her head tilted back, that grin quivering on her face . . . her throat, exposed . . . It would be so easy to kill her, to throw an elbow and crush her trachea and leave her suffocating, gagging for air that would not come. Jamel could take her out, keep all the food for himself because it wasn’t just food; it was everything.

  It was the universe.

  It was creation.

  Inaya opened her eyes; the moment was gone.

  She didn’t look at Jamel. She looked at Bubbah. She looked at the reddish stems and the round-but-not-round black-copper berries.

  “Jamel,” she said, “what the fuck is that?”

  He didn’t want to look, because looking made the smell more, made it drive fishhooks into his soul and reel him closer.

  But look he did.

  Bubbah, all peaceful and shit, just sleeping, and that smell, and—

  Jamel felt the punch before he knew he’d thrown it. He’d hit himself a second time, harder than the last, maybe harder than he’d ever hit another human being before. The pain swelled and blossomed and stun-shocked his brain into another place.

  A place of reality.

  He stared at the fat man.

  Bubbah wasn’t sleeping. Bubba was dead.

  His belly had swollen to three times its original size. Swollen far past where it had been on even his worst days, puffed up like a balloon. No, not a balloon, like a muffin made of brittle gelatin or fragile red foam, because great, ragged fissures split that belly, split it deep, but the dome of hard flesh didn’t deflate. In those fissures, Jamel saw organs, frozen and shattered, fossilized remains embedded in the bloodless strata of Bubbah’s body.

  The willowy reeds grew up from inside those fissures, like trees reaching from a canyon’s darkest depths and stretching toward a sun’s primal, life-giving force.

  They weren’t plants. They were something else.

  Something horrible.

  And then Jamel understood.

  He didn’t smell cookies; he smelled the berries. The berries were tricking his brain into thinking they smelled like something else.

  Inaya pointed at one of the berries, her fingertip gently following its swaying path.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. Her voice sounded hollow, a hiss and a breath pretending to make words that only someone standing right next to her could hear. Her voice might as well have been the invisible breeze that made the red stems sway.

  Jamel felt blood coursing across his lips, down his chin. He’d punched himself in the nose and done a bang-up job of it.

  His nose . . . It was clogged. He couldn’t smell anything. But the memory of that scent, it pulled at him. Like the best lover he’d ever had—Romona, the one who lit him up from the inside out, who knew just what to say, just how to touch, just what buttons to push, that did him so good, he just wanted to float in a fuck-coma for days—his body knew that smell and wanted whatever had caused it even if it wasn’t real.

  He knew he had only moments before his resolve faltered.

  What was this thing? An infection of some kind, obviously. A parasite? A predator? A fungus? Where had Bubbah contracted it? Was the incubation period days or weeks? Or possibly months—if so, Bubbah could have been infected at any of seven or eight different work sites.

  Which meant others in the crew might have the same thing.

  “Inaya, come on. We have to get the hell out of here.”

  Jamel grabbed her arm, pulled at her to guide her out of the room.

  She faced him, snarled, and ripped her arm away all in the same motion. She growled, an ancient sound culled from the ancestors of her ancestors, from a time before man walked erect. The sound made him take a step away.

  Inaya rushed at Bubbah’s corpse. She reached out, grabbed a handful of the round-but-not-round berries

  —that smell like cookies that have to BE cookies that ARE cookies the food of the gods and the things that MADE the gods—

  and she shoved them into her mouth, swallowing instantly.

  —she’ll get them all there won’t be any left for me!—

  He launched himself at her, slammed a solid shoulder into her so hard, she flew into the wall. Out on her feet, Inaya slumped down, leaving a streak of blood to mark her path.

  —psoriasis psoriasis psoriasis you old bitch the cookies are mine—

  Jamel’s hands reached, his fingers closed. He felt the berries in his palm. He twisted his wrist. The berries popped free with a tiny sound of escaping air.

  And then they were in his mouth.

  He chewed madly, feeling the crunch and the splat of the juice inside, his mind exploding in an anticipated orgasm of flavor and textures and perfection.

  He swallowed it, all of it, before he realized the berries didn’t taste like cookies at all.

  They weren’t berries. They were seeds.

  A primitive fear crashed across his mind. He turned to run, but as he did, he breathed out sharply through his nose, clearing the clog of blood, and he took an accidental breath in.

  He smelled it.

  Jamel turned back to his sleeping friend.

  There were still some cookies left.

  And now he didn’t have to share them with anybody.

  They were all his.

  THE SOUND OF HER LAUGHTER

  SIMON R. GREEN

  Two things for you to remember: First, that even the closest of married couples still keep secrets from each other. And second, that we all have pasts we don’t talk about.

  Alan and Cora Tye had been married for almost a year, and Alan could honestly say he’d never been so happy. He still loved her smile, the way she looked at him, the way she always clung to his arm when they were out in public together. They were in London that day. They’d been to see the musical Chess and were waiting to catch a train home from Paddington station. Alan kept humming the song “I Know Him So Well.” For some reason, Cora found that endlessly amusing. She hung on his arm and giggled happily but didn’t laugh. She never did—just one of the little quirks that endeared her to him.

  They’d been waiting at Paddington for some time. The wide concourse was packed with people, crammed almost shoulder to shoulder in places, because of a major signals failure. All trains were stopped, the destinations boards were blank, and no one was going anywhere. The station staff had gone into hiding to avoid admitting they didn’t have a clue as to what was going on. People stood around with grim mouths and stressed eyes, listening to the occasional blurred announcement from the overhead loudspeakers, and queuing endlessly at the fast food outlets. Because queuing, eating, and then complaining to each other about what they’d just eaten at least helped pass the time. Alan and Cora decided they weren’t really hungry. Alan had a strong suspicion the fast food would end up justifying its name, sweeping through these people so quickly, it would elbow its way out the back door the next day.

  He was vaguely aware of another distorted announcement but was caught completely off guard when Cora’s head suddenly came up and her eyes widened. Her head whipped around as she looked for the overhead loudspeaker, her arm
tightening fiercely on his.

  “What was that?”

  “What?” said Alan. “What was what? I wasn’t listening. . . .”

  “That announcement!” said Cora. “I was expecting a platform allocation, or an arriving train, but all I heard was a name. Just a name.”

  Alan looked at her doubtfully. “Are you sure? I didn’t hear . . .”

  “I did,” Cora said firmly. “Clear and distinct: Elena Marsh.”

  And then she stopped, as she saw the look on Alan’s face. An old, cold hand had just squeezed Alan’s heart, hard. He felt like he’d been hit. He shook his head slowly, to clear it. Cora squeezed in close beside him.

  “You know that name, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Alan. “I knew an Elena Marsh once.”

  “Who was she? What did she mean to you?”

  “She was the woman I used to love, before I met you,” said Alan.

  Cora let go of his arm and stepped back so she could look directly into his face. “You never mentioned her before.”

  “I’d moved on,” said Alan. “Sometimes, the past needs to stay in the past. So you can move on.”

  Cora considered that carefully. “Did you really love her?”

  Alan nodded slowly. “For a while.”

  “Why did you break it off?”

  He shrugged uncomfortably. “Because she became . . . unstable. It was her work. It drove her crazy.”