by Mary E. Lowd
An excerpt from Prodigy of the Wanderlust. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, or skip ahead to the next chapter.
The salamander stared at the small group of visitors to its station with glistening eyes for an uncomfortably long time before saying in a gloopy voice, “Sure, I can take you to the games, but… uh… you gotta realize that playing costs. I didn’t see you settle up with Attratoc, so I imagine you must have some kind of running deal or something… and that’s not gonna play at the games.”
“Our captain worked out a deal with Spindle Reef station management to cover the costs of our entertainment and recreation while here,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie intoned primly.
“Sure, yeah, I bet your captain did,” the salamander said with a smirk on its spade-shaped face. “But these games aren’t on the station.” Its glistening eyes still hadn’t blinked, and Ensign Mike was beginning to think its species didn’t have eyelids.
The discomfort of the salamander’s unwavering gaze really made Mike appreciate that their slit eyes — while they didn’t exactly have eyelids per se — at least could be squinched shut, allowing Mike to blink, wink, and simply disappear into the soothing darkness inside themself.
“What do you mean they’re not on the station?” Vossie asked, looking perturbed.
“It won’t be a problem,” Ensign Melbourne meowed in a rush, glaring pointedly at the rabbit. “We have valuables with us that we can lay down as stakes, and we don’t care where the games are, as long as they’re fun.”
Lt. Cmdr. Vossie looked like he was about to object, but the rabbit seemingly thought better of having an argument with one of his inferior officers in front of a stranger that they wanted something from. Vossie simply nodded in agreement.
The salamander shrugged and said, “Alright, follow me.”
And so they followed a salamander through the crowds, zipping one way and another through the ropes and beams of Spindle Reef, trying not to lose track of one specific amphibian. By the time they arrived at a docking port at the far edge of the massive communal area, Mike felt like a character in a pinball-style video game. The only thing missing was random power-ups for them to zip into and enemies attacking them. Hopefully, Mike thought, both of those things would continue to stay missing from this experience.
The salamander stopped beside a closed airlock, body twisting into a question mark shape with the way its tail curled. “This ship isn’t part of Spindle Reef. It’s neutral ground. Anyway, I’ve done my part; now I’m going back to my hammock at the bar. What you do from here is up to you.”
The salamander whipped its tail against the closed airlock door, pushing off, and flew away, back toward the crowds and presumably the bar.
“Neutral doesn’t sound so bad, right?” Ensign Melbourne meowed, full of charming, wheedling bravado.
Lt. Cmdr. Vossie frowned, but that didn’t stop the rabbit from securing his feet against a beam and then knocking on the airlock door.
A pair of eyes opened, only about a meter from where Vossie had knocked, revealing a chameleon-like reptilian alien who had been perfectly camouflaged against the metal airlock door. Apparently, this particular species of alien did have eyelids, unlike the salamander. “Whaddaya want?” the chameleon rasped, its silver-gray scales flushing lime green. “Whose sent ya?”
“Attratoc sent us,” Vossie said.
Mike continued to be flabbergasted. Every step along this way, the toadstool expected the rabbit to back down. This wasn’t like Vossie — but then, Vossie had been different this last year, stuck here in the Tetra Galaxy, than he’d been any time before.
At least… Mike thought Vossie was different. Maybe Mike simply wasn’t used to seeing Vossie from this angle. Maybe if they were still nestled on Vossie’s brow, hooked right into his thoughts, all of this would make sense, and Mike was simply suffering from a lack of imagination and insight, failing to understand exactly what the rabbit was thinking.
Mike wasn’t the most creative individual; they knew that about themself. They’d only ever been a technological aide (before waking up as a toadstool) — not even a fraction of a person. Maybe a reflection of a person, at best.
Whereas Vossie had always been an academically precocious, intellectually advanced Morphican. Mike should trust him more. Mike’s trust shouldn’t be dependent on having a window-view straight into the rabbit’s brain. That’s not how trust works. In fact, that’s not trust at all. It’s control — or at least, the illusion of it. And if anyone deserved Mike’s trust, it was the rabbit who’d allowed them to play passenger to his life all the way up until Mike was accidentally born as their own person.
While Mike was lost in their spiraling thoughts, the gray-green chameleon eyed each member of the little group thoroughly and finally said, “If Attratoc sent you, then you’re fools to actually come here, but far be it from me to stop you.”
The chameleon-like alien shuffled its way off the airlock door in an awkward sideways scurry, continuing to stick to the station’s wall. Perhaps, while its scales could change color like a chameleon’s, its feet were more like a gecko’s, able to stick to any surface they touched.
Once the chameleon alien was out of the way, the airlock door slid open. Vossie and Melbourne pitched themselves toward the door without hesitation and were inside the airlock momentarily. Mike and Lys each hesitated. The toadstool was still torn between their own instinct — that this was a bad idea — and trusting Vossie. But when it came down to it, did Mike even have instincts? The toadstool was composed of random mycelial flesh and a wayward neural implant. They weren’t a natural being, so who was to say whether they even had instincts at all.
The toadstool and caterpillar followed the rabbit and cat into the airlock, and the outer door closed behind the group before the inner door opened in front of them, revealing the inside of the docked spaceship where these black-market games must take place. The air inside was thicker — both humid and heavily perfumed. The light was dimmer but tinted with different colors that shifted slowly over time, providing a festive but muted atmosphere.
“Alright!” Ensign Melbourne meowed, rubbing his paws together with relish. “Now we’re really gonna start learning about the Tetra Galaxy.”
The cat looked like he was ready to launch himself right into the ship, but the rabbit put a waylaying paw on his breast and said, “What did you mean that we have our own valuables to offer as stakes? We’re not betting our comm-pins. That would go against Tri-Galactic Union regulations.”
The white cat rolled his clear blue eyes. “Don’t quote regulations at me, Lieutenant Commander. No one studied regulations harder than I did after I found myself thrown in prison and was hoping to find any possible sort of legal loophole to worm my way back out.”
“Okay, so if you didn’t mean our comm-pins, what did you mean?” Lys asked. The caterpillar sounded genuinely curious. “Because as far as I know, Lt. Cmdr. Vossie is right — our comm-pins are the only thing we have on us that could possibly be considered valuable. I mean, if I’d known it’d be useful, I could’ve brought some seeds from some of the more rare plants I’ve been cultivating…”
The white cat scoffed. “Seeds? Are you kidding? We need those. No, I brought something better.” Ensign Melbourne reached into his pockets and pulled out pawfuls of colorful, shiny objects.
“What’re those?” Vossie asked skeptically, his long ears skewing asymmetrically. “We’re not authorized to share any advanced Tri-Galactic Union technology with inhabitants of the galaxy.”
“Do these look like advanced technology to you?” Ensign Melbourne’s triangular white ears continued to stand tall, refusing to mirror the rabbit’s skewed expression. “Do they even look like technology?”
Lys reached out with one of her pudgy hands and touched the colorful baubles in the cat’s paw. “They look like figurines.”
“That’s right,” Ensign Melbourne agreed proudly. “I printed them up right before we left, using my own synthesizer rations that I’ve been saving for months by eating only Korvax’s food.”
“I thought you liked Korvax’s cooking…” The caterpillar’s mouthpart curled up in a prim expression.
The cat didn’t respond to her bait, instead continuing on to explain that each of the figurines represented a great figure from Earth history and culture — some were great writers or mathematicians; others were scientists or leaders; and together they represented the full array of species from Earth’s uplifted populations. Though, he also had a human figurine, representing Breanna Schweitzer, the mother of uplift herself. “And on their bases, each one is inscribed with data about the figure, explaining why they’re so important,” the cat concluded proudly. He looked so pleased with himself that his whiskers might as well have been dripping cream.
“But the data won’t be in a language that any of the people we’re playing against can read,” Vossie objected.
Melbourne shrugged. “That’s their problem. But knowing what I do of this kind of crowd, I don’t think it’ll actually be a problem. We’re offering something new and rare here — something collectible.”
“Collectible…” Vossie repeated, shaking his head with seeming bewilderment. “Alright. I bow to your expertise in this area. So, what do we do now?”
“We go the rest of the way in, and we scope out the games!” Ensign Melbourne meowed happily. When the rabbit offered no more objections, the cat kicked off the closed airlock door behind them and sailed into the gaming ship ahead of them.
Continue on to Chapter 6…