A white turd? Prior marveled. Did the man have a liver-bile blockage? He had heard that bile was what made fecal matter possess its normal rich brown. When the bile duct got constipated, the stuff backed up in the liver and had to run through the blood, finally making the urine brown instead.
The pale lump pushed out. It was rounded and smooth, and its surface glistened. On an oily film it eased out of the heaving bowel. It was about the size and shape of a hen's egg.
An egg! Something halfway registered in Prior's mind. They did call themselves egglayers!
The egg dropped into the nest. Plymouth picked it up and studied it closely. "Good shape, good heft, Clucker. You sure can hold 'em."
"Incubate it," Clucker grunted. "Sometimes the end one gets cold."
Plymouth carried it carefully to a glassed-in nest and set it inside. Clucker strained over his own receptacle again. As Prior watched, another egg emerged. This too was incubated. Then a third and a fourth.
Clucker stood up and hitched aloft his trousers.
"You go to all that trouble just to carry a few eggs?" Prior inquired.
"Eegs," Clucker said. "E-E-G."
"They look like plain old chicken eggs to me."
"Takes some chicken to lay an eeg," Clucker said amiably.
"The first time, that is," Plymouth said. "Our layings don't count; that's just transport."
"I don't understand. Why don't you just carry them in a basket, or a regular box of a dozen?"
Plymouth burst into laughter, his belly shaking St. Nick fashion. "Shitfaced inspector'd just love that start, fart!"
"Also, it's cold on the pass," Clucker said. He finished his mug of brew, burped, hauled the nest around and dropped his pants again.
More slowly now, and with increasing grease, two more eggs passed. Then, after a labored pause of several minutes, a couple of chunks of odoriferous fecal matter and a seventh egg.
"You longtongued cuntlicker!" Plymouth exclaimed with admiration. "You packed an extra!"
"Going to shit for the record one of these trips," Clucker said, pleased.
"You sure got a voluminous intestine! Five's the best I can manage. I'm afraid of breakage. What if I took a jumpstep on the pass and they knocked together?"
"Occupational hazard," Clucker said, wincing. "I thought sure I'd cracked one, once, but I guess I hadn't, 'cause here I am today."
"But what's the point of it?" Prior demanded. "Cramming eggs into your ass!"
"Who the fuck is this turd?" Clucker inquired politely.
"Oubie sent him along. Says he got pekker-rolled."
"Oh—another dope who'd lose his cock every time if it wasn't screwed on! And it wasn't, eh?" He laughed unkindly. "But I s'pose if she speaks for him, must be hokay." He turned to Prior. "Hokay, you wanna know what's the fit, shit, I'll tell you. We pick 'em up on Beetlejuice VII and smuggle 'em past customs and take 'em through the pass. There's a fence here on Earth who retails 'em for the standard markup or more. Layers like us make good loot, long's we're careful. I figure to retire next year, if I don't bust an egg goin' for the record."
"Good money?" This always interested Prior.
"Thirteen seventy-five per eeg viable," Clucker said. "Makes ninety-six twenty-five this trip, my cut."
"Cut-cut-cut-daCU-U-UT!" Plymouth put in, sounding so perfectly like a cackling hen that Prior had to laugh. But he remained amazed.
"Almost fourteen dollars for an egg?"
"Thirteen hundred and seventy five dollars, sterling," Clucker said curtly. "Eegs ain't cheap."
Prior couldn't digest this figure, so he didn't try. "Where'd you say they came from?"
"Beetlejuice VII. You know, seventh habitable planet of Betelgeuse, the red giant. Long trip."
"I guess so. Just how far away is it? I thought the stars were several million miles."
"Several hundred quintillion miles," Clucker corrected him. "Give or take a decimal."
"Uh, sure." Prior regretted having made the inquiry.
" 'Bout 650 light years," Plymouth said helpfully. "Be 'un 'ell of a trip if we didn't use the pass."
" 'Ell of a trip," Prior echoed. He still didn't understand what was going on. "I didn't know we had space travel. From star to star, faster than light, I mean."
"I told you. We use the pass. Cuts it way down."
"You told me," Prior agreed. Some things he just wasn't fated to grasp.
"Any more due this week?" Clucker inquired. "Rhose Island Red tomorrow. That's all on the schedule, until the fence comes next week."
"Rhose Island Red, huh? Red's a good fuck. I like her." Until that last word, Prior had not been certain of the sex of Red.
"Yeah," Plymouth agreed. " 'Cept for the way she slips an extra eeg up her front hole."
"Whatsamatter with that? If I had a woman-hole, I'd use it too. Cop the record for sure!"
"Stretches her honeypot all outa shape. Got to wait a good hour 'fore it's tight. Anything I hate, it's a loose woman. 'How's the hunt, cunt?' I asks her, and she says 'Take yer pick, prick.' Then she's too loose for me to get a good lodging. And even after a day or so, she still ain't exactly in Oubie's league."
Prior perked up. "You Eggers have intercourse with Oubliette?"
"Huh?" Two blank stares.
"You know. Cohabitation."
Plymouth squinted at him suspiciously. "You a Communist?"
"Sex!" Prior yelled. "Did you ever screw her?"
"Whyinhell didn't you say so! Sure we fucked her. Never got to the bottom of that well, though; deepest dame you ever fingered."
"Course usually she's too busy," Clucker admitted. "So we leave her be unless she comes out here. Which she does, every month or so. Great gal!"
"Sometimes she hardly gets by the statues," Plymouth said, inspecting the last two eegs. "All tuckered and fuckered out, can't screw mor'n three-four times before she nods off, and once or twice after that."
"She spends time looking at the statues?" Did she find them as dismayingly fascinating as he had?
"Yeah, and they look at her!" Both men laughed crudely. Prior didn't get the point of the joke, so he ignored it.
"Hey, Cluck!" Plymouth called suddenly. "Listen here."
"What's the word, turd?"
"I think it's bad luck, fuck."
Cluck joined him at the incubator-nests. "Great flying shit and little blivets on the halfshell!" he cried. "One of 'em's pippin'!"
"That's night hatching!"
Clucker listened more carefully. "Not yet. The pips are still pretty far apart. Might be two days 'fore the shell breaks."
"But the fence ain't comin' for five days!"
"Thirteen seventy-five down the shittin' tube!" Clucker moaned. "We sure can't fence it."
They paced the floor gloomily. "That damned ET!" Clucker exclaimed. "Looked me up the nose with all three eyeballs and swore on his kingfeather those eegs were fresh! I'll piss a river down his windpipe!"
"That ET don't have a windpipe," Plymouth reminded him.
"He'll have a couple when I get through with him! It ain't just the cash. What if it'd hatched up my ass?"
"It's stuff like that, makes me think 'bout retirin' early."
"Early hatch—that's retirin' the hard way!"