I grew increasingly uneasy as the flowers drifted closer. Was the ’fly going to land directly on one of the enormous blossoms or merely hover above it? Either seemed equally dangerous. An unexpected thermal could easily smash us against a foot-long needle. And if the ’fly tumbled into the plant, the spines would rip us to shreds.
Rebona Myking didn’t seem to be worried by the prospect. She merely gestured at the huge yellow flower upon which the butterfly was now slowly settling.
“The Demon Lover’s narco-flower contains a powerful aphrodisiac and euphoric, at least for human beings. At wedding ceremonies the bride and groom wrap themselves in sheets of petals and are carried by their guests to the nuptial banquet. Later, after ceremonial toasts with petal nectar, they’re led to the honeymoon suite where the bedsheets are composed of mats made from the petals. It’s a very powerful experience,” she added in a surprisingly harsh tone. “Even the Bagpipes seem to be affected by the damned flowers. Frankly, I’m surprised they live in a Demon Lover the way they do.”
“You seem to know a lot about these things,” I ventured cautiously. “Have you tried them?”
Rebona Myking was silent so long that I was certain I had offended her. Finally she spoke without looking at me.
“My husband’s an ethnologist. One of the reasons we came here was so he could study the courtship and wedding rituals of the New Sonorans. So, yes, I did try it. Purely as scientists, he said. Unfortunately Ross is one of those people who overreact to it and he’s become an addict. I haven’t seen him in over nine months now.”
“You mean he’s given up a beautiful woman like you for… for a flower?”
She nodded curtly. “So it seems.”
“There’s no treatment for this addiction?”
“If you want to be treated. But like most addicts, he doesn’t. I’ve been waiting for him to admit that he needs help.” She shrugged almost imperceptibly. “I’m going to give him another three months. After that…What about you? Do you have a wife somewhere?”
“No, not anymore.”
“Was it terrible, your—divorce?”
“It’s never fun, I guess, is it? I had some business problems and she couldn’t handle my—my change in circumstances. It’s a long story.”
“I shouldn’t have asked,” Rebona said apologetically. “Let’s forget both of them and just enjoy our ride.”
A moment later the ’fly withdrew her proboscis from the flower, revved up the flapping of her wings, and fluttered us back up into the sky.
As I watched the narco-flower dwindle beneath us, I wondered gloomily if what had happened to me on my purported way to Charon IV meant that all my future flying would now be confined to the backs of butterflies…
Rebona Myking had approached me in the best restaurant the metropolis of Saguaro had to offer. It was called the Belle Vue and it lived up to its name. It was at the very top of what looked like the tallest living thing in the entire Universe. Seven of the massive staves rising from its geometrically precise circular base held apartments. In the eighth, in addition to offices and stores, an elevator serviced the thick capstone where the Belle Vue had been hollowed out of the living plant.
Far above the desert floor, the restaurant-tavern afforded a 360-de-gree panorama of hundreds of square miles of orange, scarlet, and red desert, expanses of huge cacti, and four ranges of jagged olive- and rust-colored mountains. In spite of the hellish sun beating down from the cobalt sky, the restaurant itself was dark, cool, and moist, an oasis in the middle of a Dantesque landscape.
As I sat sipping pale blue beer and sampling a tableful of tiny dishes of New Sonoran haute cuisine, I reflected glumly that with every passing hour it was becoming more likely that I would have to tap my emergency cache of Universal Credits just to get enough fuel to escape this world. It was certain that the useless crystals wouldn’t power the Venture’s engines.
“Excuse me, are you the gentleman with the crystals for sale?”
A pretty girl stood looking down at me, or at least what I thought might be a pretty girl, for her face was halfhidden by the floppy brim of her enormous sunhat.
I rose. “Yes, I’m Isaiah Howe.” I pointed to the empty chair across from mine. “Please join me.”
She paused, smiled faintly, and removed her hat. I decided that she was almost certainly not a native of New Sonora. Her skin was far too fair, almost a milky white, while that of the locals was uniformly tanned a leathery brown. And her light gray eyes sparkled with a liveliness and intelligence that was noticeably absent from the faces of the petal-chewing New Sonorans.
“I’m sorry,” she said in an accent that was pure Standard, “but I can’t at the moment. You see—” she nodded toward the broad expanse of window behind me “—it’s actually someone else, outside, who’d like to speak to you about the crystals. He… didn’t feel comfortable coming in. Could you come outside and meet him? He’s just out on the landing deck.”
“My pleasure,” I said warmly; if someone wanted to buy my cargo I’d walk across the New Sonoran desert at high noon to meet him. “Lead the way. Perhaps later you’ll join me for a nightcap.”
The alien honked at me, then he burped like a sated tyrannosaurus, and finally he produced a sound that was a passable imitation of a highspeed collision of four or five ground-cars.
“Can you make any sense of that?”
Rebona Myking sighed. “It’s difficult enough to translate even with computer analysis and enhancement, but I’ll try.”
“I thought I knew every alien species in Human Occupied Space but I’ve never seen anything like that. What is it?”
“Here on New Sonora we call them Bagpipes.”
“Because they look like bagpipes or because they sound like them?”
“A little of both.”
I turned back to the alien. It looked like a jury-rigged bundle of hoses, tubes, tentacles, and rubber pipes that were anywhere from a quarter of an inch to two inches or more in diameter, with lengths as varied as their thickness. The Bagpipe’s colors ranged from pewter through a dark silvery charcoal. Its body was neither vertically nor horizontally symmetrical. Instead, various hoses appeared at random locations, some undoubtedly serving as fingers, hands, feet, ears, noses, and mouths. Half a dozen tiny aprons of various gaudy colors were strapped to tentacles in no apparent order and were its only articles of clothing.
When I was finally able to tear my fascinated gaze from the Bagpipe I saw that Rebona was studying the display panel of a small hand-held computer connected to a wire leading to her ear. She pursed her lips.
“He says he’d like to discuss the crystals with you and requests that the three of us take a short ride to his quarters.”
“Fine,” I agreed immediately, heedless of the outlandishness of the alien beside me. “Let’s go.” I needed that sale!
We headed for an aircar at the edge of the landing area, the alien moving with surprising grace. The ten or fifteen hoses that served as its feet shuttled in a complicated rhythm as if the Bagpipe were a strange breed of circular centipede that could move in any direction without having to rotate its body.
The alien fitted his flexible body into one of the seats without apparent discomfort. “It’s actually my aircar,”
Rebona Myking explained, “but he insists on flying it.” She grinned ruefully. “Who’s going to argue with anyone who looks like that?”
In a swift blur of motion two of the Bagpipe’s smaller tubes pecked at the craft’s instrument panel and moments later we were cruising 900 feet above New Sonora’s desert. I studied the alien carefully as we flew along but it was impossible to guess which of its appendages might serve as visual receptors.