The Prom Goer's Interstellar Excursion (16 page)

“You'd want to give me the money directly?”

I put Skark's brick of cash on the counter in front of her.

“Are you trying to bribe me?” she said.

“No no no. Forgive me for giving you that impression. Again, I'm not from here, so I'm not familiar with the customs. I'm thinking of it more as an expediting fee.”

The receptionist eyed the money and then looked up at me.

“I see,” she said. “An expediting fee. We don't call it exactly
that
, but I understand how you would want your friend returned immediately.”

“I appreciate that.”

“And it is a
generous
donation,” said the receptionist, looking at the money. “Will you be reporting this contribution
on your taxes, by any chance? I'd prefer to not deal with any extra forms.”

“Of course not,” I said. “I choose to keep my charitable donations private. You can do with it what you like.”

She smiled.

“Well then, I don't see any problem with you sending me the Certified Receipt at a later point,” she said.

“Thank you for understanding my situation. If it ever happens again, I'll make sure I have my paperwork in order before my arrival.”

The receptionist took the money off the counter and surreptitiously slid it into the desk in front of her.

“I'll call the Ranger and tell him you showed me your Certified Receipt. Just make sure to keep your hands inside the vehicle. Remember—there are a lot of exhibits here, and out in the open you're food. There's a reason nobody comes anymore.”

“It's not safe?”

The receptionist leaned in close to me.

“Visitors don't come here anymore because of
him
,” she said. “I suggest you get your girl and get out as quickly as possible, or you might not be leaving at all.”

I waited for the Ranger in a clearing behind the welcome center, standing next to a garden filled with iridescent roses and mother-of-pearl bonsai trees. Beautiful. A small section of the enclosure had been set aside for exotic grasses, so I plucked a
handful and shoved it into an inside pocket of my scrubs to give to Walter later on. I had no idea if the grasses would be good for him or not, but I remembered seeing some rams at a farm when I was young, and it seemed like they could digest anything.

After a few minutes, I saw the Ranger driving toward me in a vehicle that was a cross between an amphibious duck boat and a Sherman tank. What looked like a surgeon's mask was hanging from his neck, but instead of a lab coat, he was wearing a suede jacket with thin strips of leather hanging from the elbows. He resembled a combination of mad scientist and western-wear enthusiast. The horns on his skull were catching the sun, and his forehead was as polished as a leprechaun's pot. No doubt—this was one of the Jyfos I had watched kidnap Sophie.

The Ranger accelerated as he drew closer, threatening to run me over. At the very last moment, he turned the wheel hard, skidding to a stop a few inches from my feet. I'd seen the bullies in my high school use the same intimidation technique.

“Are you the guy who had the Certified Receipt?” he said.

“Yeah. I already gave it to the front desk.”

“I have to say, I'm deeply disappointed you showed up. I've never seen a human able to run like this female, but she's starting to tire. We all wanted to see what would happen when she had to make a stand.”

“You realize that using a girl as bait in a game of death isn't normal human behavior, right?”

“
Bait
sounds so crass,” said the Ranger.

“It's true, though.”

“
From our studies, your culture seems to love violence, love the chase. We're just giving the rest of the universe a chance to see it play out.”

“You shouldn't have taken her.”

“My actions were all in the name of science. Get in. I'll give you a tour of the place and get you out of here.”

“I don't want a tour. I want Sophie.”

“
Everybody
gets a tour. We do good work here, and we like to show it off. Who doesn't like a tour? Feeling the wind whip through your scrubs. What's the deal with those anyway?”

“I lost my other clothes,” I said.

“That's too bad,” he said. “It's good to have a little more protection from the elements out here.”

It was a ghastly ride. The park's unpaved roads were peppered with craters shooting hot air that scorched my skin and dried my eyes, and the Ranger seemed intent on driving his vehicle over every one of them. Each time the front wheels smacked into a new pothole, I thought the ground would crumble beneath us and we would disappear into a pool of boiling water.

“Is this road safe?” I said.

“Nooooo, but I take tourists out here all the time as a special treat,” said the Ranger. “There's some wildlife I want to show you, since your visit is so unexpected and unique.”

“I don't need to see any new things,” I said.

“I don't know what is with your species's reluctance to travel and have new experiences,” said the Ranger. “You go back and forth to your moon a few times a couple generations and you
think you have the right to call yourselves adventurers. It's tremendously arrogant.”

The Ranger's vehicle approached a field of glass littered with circular cracks, as if heavy stones had been dropped on it from high above. A sign depicting a Jyfo being eaten by a blood-drenched monster was posted in front of the area.

“Here at the Ecological Center for the Preservation of Lesser Species, we care for over ninety thousand endangered animals from forty thousand worlds,” said the Ranger. “Our primary goal is to save these species from climate problems, wars, and poachers—and in your case,
yourselves
—while also preserving the animals for future scientific research. You never know when a species that might have gone extinct will turn out to be the cure for one of our diseases or something helpful like that.”

“Are you talking about grinding up humans and using them for medicine?”

“Or applying them topically—you can't foresee what the use might be,” said the Ranger. “I'm not saying we
would
do that, because we're a conservation society, but when an inhabitant passes away—”

“The bait, you mean.”

The Ranger rolled his eyes at hearing me use the word
bait
again. He pointed at the field of glass. There didn't seem to be anything out there. I didn't know why we were stopping.

“Here we go. I wanted you to see this,” said the Ranger. “Because we slowed down, it's going to
think
it's feeding time, so I suspect it won't be long before we witness some activity.”

“Who's
it
? What do you mean, feeding ti—”

VOOSH.
The field of glass sucked up into itself and shot upward, twisting into the air to form a monster as tall as a church and made entirely of mirrors.

In a single violent movement, the beast leaped forward, coming to a hard stop directly over us. I could feel it staring at me, but I didn't know where its eyes were. Every part of the mirrored creature was reflecting the image of the Ranger and me sitting in the vehicle back at us.

“That,”
said the Ranger, “is the Palapar Glass Cloduron of the Cloverleaf Quasar. Extremely dangerous, incredible appetite, extraordinarily low IQ, which makes it impossible to reason with once its emotions overtake it. Needless to say, we should
truly
not be here, but I thought you might want to check it out.”

“Bragh,”
said the Cloduron, rearing up on its haunches. Its teeth were shards of broken quartz and its breath smelled like burning sand.

“Thanks for the
opportunity
,” I said. “But I think I don't need to check it out any more than we already
have
, so let's
go.
”

“Come now, don't tell me you can't appreciate the
beauty
of the Cloduron. The sheer
unlikelihood
that evolution would somehow produce a hundred-foot-tall killing machine made of glass. Even in a universe with an almost infinite number of worlds…it's remarkable.”

The Cloduron straddled our vehicle, its head hovering above us. Abruptly, a glob of diamond mucus the size of a football
fell from its nose and landed on the vehicle's grille, smashing a headlight.

“Ah,
dammit
,” said the Ranger. “Sometimes that happens when the Cloduron is feeling under the weather. Its nose gets runny, but no vets will come out to see it because it kills all of them instantly.”

“Bragh bragh,”
said the Cloduron.

“You're probably wondering why you can't understand him even though you've no doubt had your share of Spine Wine by now, since you can understand me,” said the Ranger.

“I was wondering why we're not
leaving.
I don't
care
why I can't understand him. I have
no reason
to talk to this thing.”

“The answer may surprise you,” said the Ranger, ignoring me. “You see, Clodurons have no formal language. We think that they communicate with each other by reflecting patterns of light, but we're not sure. It's hard to do research on them for the same reason it's difficult to get vets to see them—they're psychopaths.”

“Bragh bragh bragh,”
said the Cloduron, lunging at our vehicle with its open mouth, serrated tongue lashing forward, about to cut my head clean off. I jumped back in my seat and covered my eyes when suddenly bullets rang out around me, shattering the Cloduron's elbow and three of its teeth.

The Cloduron howled, retreated from the shots, and collapsed back onto itself. As quickly as it had come to life, it flattened out and once again became a field of glass.

“Exciting stuff, huh?” said the Ranger, holstering the enormous black-and-blue pistol he had pulled out of his belt.

“
Does that happen every time you drive past here?” I said. Sweat was drenching my scrubs.

“Yes, most of the time, the Cloduron gets a little pissy when I ride past,” said the Ranger. “Today was a particularly showy display.”

“And you shoot it every time it rears up?” I said. “Isn't that a little counterproductive to conservation?”

The Ranger grew somber, and stared at the puddle of mirrors stretching out in front of him.

“I have no sympathy for it,” said the Ranger. “This beast ate my partner.”

And that's when I said something I shouldn't have.

“The guy with the orange clipboard?” I said.

The question just popped out. Having watched the Ranger and his partner take Sophie away, I must have gotten excited at the thought that one of them might have met his fate in the jaws of another specimen they had kidnapped.

The Ranger trained his eyes on me.

“How, exactly, do you know my partner carried an orange clipboard?”

“I don't know,” I said, scrambling for a way to cover my tracks. “I just thought since you're doing research…”

Recognition crossed the Ranger's face.

“I
knew
it—you were
there
the night we picked up the girl, weren't you?” he said. “I thought I remembered seeing you on our scanner while we were flying over. It was you and the girl, but we only took her. Our readings said your brain wasn't fully developed.”

“
My brain is developed.”

“No no, we definitely got a reading that your decision-making skills were subpar.”

“You can't know that from a scan. I've always done great in school.”

“If I remember correctly, our equipment said you only applied to one college. Anybody whose brain was fully developed would never do that kind of thing.”

Impressive technology.

The Ranger tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and then gripped it tightly. I could tell he was boiling inside at having me in his vehicle, and I anticipated him lunging at any moment. I pressed my back against the door, which felt icy through my scrubs.

“You don't mind if we head back to the front desk so I can check out your Certified Receipt with my own eyes?” said the Ranger. “Not that I don't trust you. It would only be to cover my ass for administrative reasons, of course.”

I paused a moment too long.

“And there it is,” he said. “I
knew
you were lying about the Certified Receipt.”

“Whether I have a piece of paper or not, I want my date
back
,” I said. “You had no right to do what you did. She's not
bait.
She's important to me.”

“As someone who did a graduate thesis on human culture, let me say this—we have as much of a right to do what we did as humans have when they haul a gorilla out of the jungle or a
lion off of the plains. We do this for the preservation of your species.”

The Ranger fell quiet for a moment, thinking. He loosened his grip on the wheel.

“But I appreciate that you've come so far to get her, and I believe you when you say her return holds a special importance to you.”

“Thank you,” I said warily. He was changing his tone, but something wasn't right about this.

“We Jyfos may have pleasant exteriors, but I'll tell you a little secret—our hearts are even warmer than our smiles,” said the Ranger, not grinning. “I'll take you to the female right away.”

“If you want, another ranger can take me,” I said. “It's a big park—I'm sure you've got extra staff.”

“Oh, I'm the only Ranger,” he said. “This is my world.”

He put his foot on the gas, and the vehicle zipped down the path, though this time he avoided the potholes he had been crashing into on purpose before, and his mood seemed to be lighter—maybe all I really had had to do was be honest with him.