I got my boots out of the closet, put them on, and buckled a belt with a knife on it around my waist under my robe. Baha-char was the place where you went to find things. Sometimes things found you instead and tried to take your money. On the inn grounds, I ruled supreme. Outside them, my powers dropped off sharply. I could still take care of myself, but it never hurt to expect the worst and be prepared.
Beast barked once, excited. I took my broom, pulled the hood of my robe over my head, and headed down the hallway. The inn creaked in alarm.
“I’ll be back soon,” I murmured. “Don’t worry.”
The door at the end of the hallway swung open. Bright light spilled through the rectangular opening, and dry, overbearing heat washed over me. I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the light, and Beast and I stepped into the heat and sunshine of Baha-char.
I strode through the heat-baked streets of the Galactic Bazaar, the hem of my robe sweeping the large yellow tiles of its roads. Around me the marketplace of the galaxy breathed and glittered, its heart beating fast, pulsing with life. Tall buildings of pale, sand-colored stone lined the streets, decorated with bright banners streaming from the balconies. Plants, some green, some blue, others red and magenta, spread their branches on the textured terraces, offering cascades of flowers to the sun in the light purple sky. Above me narrow stone arches of bridges spanned the space between the buildings. Merchant booths offering a bounty of goods from across the universe lined the throughway. Open doors marked by bright signs invited customers. Barkers hawked their wares, waving holographic projections of their merchandise at the crowd flowing past them.
Around me the bright, multicolored crocodile of shoppers crawled through the streets. Beings from dozens of planets and dimensions, clothed in leather, fabric, metal or plastic, tall and short, huge and small, each with their own odd scent, searched for their particular goods. A constant hum hung in the air, a cacophony of hundreds of voices mixing together into the kind of noise that could only be heard on Baha-char.
The last time I had come here, Sean was with me. I didn’t even know if he was dead or alive. It had been so fun to watch him here. He had traveled while in the military, and he thought he was worldly, then I opened the door to these sun-drenched streets, and Sean turned into a child entering Disney World for the first time. Everything was new, strange, and wondrous.
Six months and no word. Either I’d imagined things and he wasn’t at all interested, or something had happened to him. Thinking about Sean being dead somewhere out there among the stars made me angry. First my parents vanished. Now Sean was gone.
I caught myself. Yes, clearly this was all about me. Not exactly my proudest moment. As soon as I straightened out the chef situation, I needed to go back to bed before the lack of sleep made me weepy.
Ahead, the traffic slowed. I stood on my toes and glanced over the spindly shoulder of some insectoid being. A creature that resembled a Penske truck-sized maggot slowly crawled up the street. It was wearing a plastic harness along its back. Bright burgundy and gold umbrellas protruded from the harness at even intervals, shielding its wrinkled, pallid flesh from the sun. Several shopping bags hung from the hooks on the sides of the harness. One of the bags had Hello Kitty on it.
We were moving about half a mile an hour. I sighed and looked around. I’d been coming to Baha-char since I was a child, and most of the time I walked through on autopilot.
A familiar dark archway loomed to the right. I strained and heard a quiet, haunting melody playing. That shop belonged to Wilmos Gerwar, an old werewolf. Last time we were on Baha-char, Sean had stopped here. Wilmos had a nanoarmor on display, made especially for alpha-strain werewolves such as Sean. Sean saw the armor and became obsessed with it. It called to him somehow, and he had to have it. Wilmos offered him a deaclass="underline" he would give Sean the armor, but Sean would owe him a favor. I thought it was a terrible idea and told him so, but Sean took the armor, and once we dealt with the assassin threatening the inn, he went to Baha-char to repay the favor. That was the last time I saw him.
If anybody knew where Sean was, it would be Wilmos.
People bumped me. The crowd was moving, and the current of beings tried to carry me with it. To go in or not to go in? What if Sean was in there, drinking tea from Auul, his now-shattered planet? That would be really awkward. Hi, remember me? I threw you out of my house because you were an ass and later you kissed me? He’d left for a reason, and I didn’t want to be anyone’s blast from the past. Still, not knowing was worse than any potential awkwardness.
I cut through the crowd and stepped through the arch. A meticulously arranged shop greeted me. Weapons with wicked curved blades hung on the walls. Knives lay displayed under glass. Strange armor adorned mannequins lined up like soldiers at a ceremony next to high-tech guns in metal racks.
A large animal padded into view, its paws bigger than my hands. Blue green, with a shaggy mane and ears that reached to my chest, it moved like a predator. Despite the size and the mane, there was something lupine about its build. He felt like a wolf, and if you saw him on Earth, you’d think he was the spirit of all wolves come to life.
“Hello, Gorvar,” I said.
At my feet Beast opened her mouth and growled low.
“Who is it?” A man walked in from the other room. Tall, grizzled, and still fit, he moved like Sean, with natural, easy grace. His graying hair fell to his shoulders, and as his eyes caught the light from the doorway, pale gold rolled over his irises.
“Hello, Wilmos.” I smiled.
“Ah yes. Dina, right?”
“Right.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I happened to be in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by to check on Sean. Haven’t seen him for a while.” There, that didn’t sound too desperate.
“He’s out on a cruise with a Solar Shipping freighter,” Wilmos said. “He owed me a favor, and I owed a friend of mine. The friend has a shipping route and picks up credit vouchers from a couple of leisure planets, so he gets boarded a lot. He needed a good security person, so I gave him Sean for a year. It’s good for him. He wanted to see the glory of the universe, and now he gets a tour.”
Hmmm.
“You want me to get word to him?” Wilmos asked. “I can probably leave a message for him. I’ve got the codes for the freighter.”
I gave him a nice, sweet smile. “Sure! That would be great.”
Wilmos tapped the glass of the nearest counter. It turned dark, and a small circle with glowing symbols appeared in the corner. “Sorry, it will have to be text only. They’re too far out for face-to-face.” He tapped the circle, spinning it with his fingertips. An English keyboard ignited at the bottom of the rectangle. I was about to send an interstellar text.
“Go ahead,” he said.
I had to send something that only Sean would know. At least I would find out if he was dead or alive. I typed. It’s Dina. The apple trees recovered.
Wilmos touched a glowing symbol. The message flashed brighter and dimmed. Seconds ticked by. I kept my smile on.
A message flashed in response to mine. I told you I wasn’t poisonous.
Sean was alive. Nobody else would know that I nearly brained him with my broom for marking his territory in my orchard.
“Anything else?” Wilmos asked. He was trying to be nonchalant, but he was watching me very carefully.
“No, that was it. Much appreciated.”