[ejenk21]

Synopsis: Somewhere north and west of the Pecos...



Author's notes: This one is very recent, much more so than some of the others.

I can't do proper footnotes in this markup language. The areas marked by smilies are footnotes.



The piano was jangling. There was the snap of cards, the slosh of whiskey, the seductive giggles of the floor girls. It was late. The regulars were well into their third drinks. The second stage show was over with.

A wet, incredibly chill wind blasted through the double doors. A man strode in, dripping methane. It lay in puddles on the floor, smoking briefly. He wore a brace of gluon blasters. Protoid miner.

"Mister, you better learn how to use an airlock." This was Pimply Joe speaking, so named because of the sucker marks on his face.

The stranger pulled off his facemask. "You gonna make me?"

The room turned silent.

Pimply Joe didn't play by the rules. He pulled out his own blaster and pointed it. "If that's the way you want it, Mister. Go back and cycle the doors right. Clean the ice off the tracks."

The man turned to the bartender. "A Weyland." He dropped a gold dekacred on the bar. A Weyland is Martian goolsh brandy with whale milk. Expensive, but the Mother Macree was the kind of place that could supply it. Macree the bartender would have to go into the back for the sterilized milk, though. He started to move.

"That's right, Macree," approved Joe. "Out of sidespray range. Don't want the citizens to pay for two funerals." He didn't play by the rules. His finger tightened on the trigger.

The man's hands moved faster than light, and Joe's blaster hammered the floor as Joe's right hand crumpled to dust. He raised his cauterized wrist to disbelieving eyes and himself crashed to the wooden slats.

Blinder's dog Kaiser raised himself out of his customary spot beneath his master's table and came over to sniff the body. He looked up expectantly, as if to say, "He's not dead. Somebody get a doctor and a biscuit."

The dog didn't know, but we did, that it was shock, the standard reaction to non-lethal blaster fire. The piano started up. Macree had Angie and another of the stronger girls haul Joe to Angie's room. She would take care of the doctor after rifling Joe's pants for the cost.

Patsy wasn't one of the show girls, but she had her own attractions. She wore a green lame dress, tight enough to fuse hydrogen. She had long green artificial tendrils flowing down around her head, the latest thing in Titanian fashion. She slithered over to the new boy on the berg. "Buy me a drink, Mister?" She hiked her dress invitingly. A hollow blue tentacle snaked out, rose to chest level, and sensuously curled around his neck. "Don't tell me I'm not your type. I can tell. It's my business." Thirty creds for the best snelletz job you ever had.

I started shivering. I just couldn't help it. I know it's how she earns a living, but she just shouldn't be showing that to a yooman. At least not in public. I mean, there is such a thing as decency.

I lost rhythm in my own tentacles. I was seated at the center of a ring of six card tables, dealing two each of blackjack, poker, and Martian faro. Six, not the normal seven. I have only a piece of number thirteen. (When I was a bleen--you know how bleens are, careless and carefree--I lost the rest to a girl I still fondly remember. I shivered then, let me tell you. Memories. Eventually they're all you've got.)

The house had to call a misdeal, and I was embarrassed. Grooglies, my kind, are famous for being able to keep seven games going at once.

The stranger disentangled himself roughly. "I'm not interested. And, for the future, I won't be. I'm not deutero. Not in the slightest. So keep your distance."

He'd won himself approval by his fast gunplay, but the crowd didn't like seeing a girl treated that way, even if she was available for rental by the minute. He heard the rumble, and spun away from the bar.

"I like women. Real women, not rubbery imitations. Anyone want to make something of it?

Angie sauntered over. At 2.5 meters (she was a native Titan) she looked down on his 1.9 with no difficulty. "I'm real." She pushed her chest in his face. "Plenty of real. Do you want to make something of it?" She wiggled her plentiful behind. The room erupted in chortles and chirps.

Enraged, the stranger flipped out his blaster and stuck it in her gut. "You'll be a woman with a new canal if you don't back off."

Angie knew how to defuse a situation like this. She raised her arms above her head. "You're a hard man. I like 'em good and hard." She tossed her hair and backed away. "Come up and see me sometime. Crib twenty-two."

He grabbed her ponytail and dragged her face down to his. "You think because you're a woman you can make fun of me." He kept pulling until she was fully doubled over, then booted her in her plentiful behind. "Back to your crib," he ordered. "Nobody makes fun of Slayne. Never."

I'd had enough. "You smell like your brother. I guess that stink runs in your family. Was it your Mom who smelled like that? That what attracted your Daddy?" I already had four blasters trained on him.

*****

The Earthmen were surprised to see us here on Titan. They were exploring for chemicals exotic enough to be worth shipping back home. Ethane by the lakeful did not come close enough, even with the atomic spacecraft that made interplanetary colonies a paying proposition. Of all things, they ran into an aboriginal species.

We were at the equivalent of your Stone Age. Nomadic hunters and gatherers. Not that we were stupid, but we didn't have metals. Smelting is not too obvious at minus 178 Celsius. What we did have was mathematics. Very fine, and very much advanced over yours. But all theory. The kind of thing you chirp about in a nice, cozy ammonia-ice cave, after dismembering a gloon and sucking all the mekalletz out of it. You introduced us to physics. Once we got the idea of physics, we caught up in forty years, three of our generations.

The gluon blasters were our idea. I doubt that you will match what we can do with subnuclear fields for several of your generations. Of course we have a slight advantage. We have been feeding off of quarks and their relatives ever since we evolved. We just never made the connections. Thanks, yoomans.

So what did we autochthones have to offer you besides a great way to test anthropological theories? Or alternatively, a real live problem in theology, not just a speculation? (No, Jesus didn't die for our sins. We're Jewish. Just kidding.) We had, still have, some really intriguing compounds which do wonderful things to your brain stems. Very valuable. But you don't know where to find them. We do. Ancient lore of our ancestors. We make you sit through our chants and dances (well, something like that) so you can join us digging for tubers (sort of) in the sacred parts of the desert (not sacred, and not desert, but you get the idea).

Then there's protoid. Processed protoid gives off 10 kilowatts per kilogram and comes in chunks (spheres if you pay for the milling) up to 5 kilograms. Nunh-unh. Nothing bigger. Nice clean electricity; no radioactivity and no emissions. 10 years per chunk. Perfect for those Mr. Fusion gadgets you wanted to run your vehicles and light your homes. Tell you what. I'm even going to tell you the secret. It works by gravitational collapse. There's the hint; figure it out and you can stop joining us in mining ventures.

Some really rugged men have found protoid deposits on their own. Most were killed by territorial phlems and the tkaka herds that treat protoid like salt licks. We play fair and pay for their protoid without taking a cut.

But most of you take a Titanian partner. Like me for Slayne's brother. I did not eat him, despite the bar talk. I couldn't eat him. He'd be poisonous, or at least indigestible. The fact that we eat our own surplus offspring has nothing to do with it. That's just a custom now anyway. Yoomans have the silliest prejudices.

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Long ago, Titan had much more radioactivity. First-level organisms equivalent to your plankton derived their energy from that, and predators used the forms concentrated by the radivores. As the radioactives decayed, life grew more tenuous and the predators scrabbled harder. Eventually some life evolved that directly extracted energy from subnuclear processes. The Age of Quark-Eaters had arrived.
-------------

*****

Slayne called me out. He didn't really have much choice. You don't last long on Titan if you're weak enough to buckle under insult. This moon runs by Heinlein's dictum: "An armed society is a polite society."

I was ready for some fresh air anyway. Grooglies can handle your oxygen atmosphere, but it does affect our integument. Itchy. Your temperature likings are at our high end too. So the saloon was tolerable for one four-hour work shift, but I wouldn't take more unless I was flirting seriously.

*****

New Tartarus is bigger than a standard mining town. There's a protoid refinery a dekaklik away. More distant camps bring their protoid here by spakkar cart.

Because it's bigger, New Tartarus has a fancier Main Street. The ice has been planed down, and it stretches nice and flat for over 2 kliks. In the center are the standard structures: saloons, hotel, livery, mining supply store, general store. Used to be brothels on both sides of Main Street, but we're getting more civilized now. Not an improvement, I say.

We Titanians live on the eastern side with stone and ice and frozen organics caves. Au naturel. Yoomans live on the western side with their buttoned-up buildings. Both species gather to watch a showdown.

-------------
Spakkars are bigger versions of tkaka. You call them giantshrimp. It's easier to maintain a spakkar than the tank-treaded vehicles you would otherwise have to use on our rough terrain. And they're fun beasts, with all those constantly waving legacles.
-------------

*****

As I headed out into the street, I checked my blaster. It is a crime to use a misadjusted blaster. The penalty is rough and quick. You ruin property with a blaster, and you'll be missing a torso in the next instant. Anybody can do it. No trial, no nothing.

Part of the art of a showdown is deciding how to set your blaster. Typically I use pulsed, tenth-power, narrow beam. Makes a hole the size of a golf ball at 200 meters. Not that you need that much for a yooman. Puncture his suit and he's gone in six seconds. We are made of tougher stuff.

*****

Outside the airlock I caught up with Slayne. "You got a wife and kids?"

"No kids that I admit to," he sneered through his suit speaker. "And do I look dumb enough to get tied down to one whining woman?"

Reminiscences of my own mate3, Digger-of-Benzene, giving me pause, weren't going to soften his rocky core. I tried another tack. "You look smart enough to not lose your life over kicking a working girl. You apologize to her and this fight will go away. Tell you what. I'll apologize myself first.

"I'm sorry I said that about your brother. But I'm still raw over his gambling away our protoid claim. He put it up as just his. That's even what it said on the records. And I trusted him to file it right."

"You're a liar. He told me you weren't anywhere around when he hit the mother lode."

"That's crap. Yoomans are a lot safer with one of us close nearby. We know the territory."

"That's your crap. Or what do you Injuns call it, sproton. You ate my brother and took his claim proof."

"If I did that, would I be dealing cards for a living?"

"Don't care," he snorted. "I'm not taking the word of a blue vulture over my brother's."

"I DIDN'T eat your brother, you smelly son of a bitch. There's nothing under the rings of Saturn that wouldn't eat sproton before scraping you off the ice. Either of you."

He reached for his blaster, but I had a tentacle crushing round him just in time. "Oh, no you don't. You're gonna play this out before the whole crowd. It's what you wanted, right? Public vengeance." I called out to Mayor Ferguson. "He thinks he can skip out on the rules. Keep a blaster on him while he gets to firing range."

*****

We faced down at high noon, local time. We couldn't see the sun, naturally, because of Titan's thick, smog-like haze. In fact, there was a darkness, because we were partly shaded by Saturn itself. That was to my advantage. I was born here, so my vision is adapted. His wasn't.

The street wasn't empty of spectators, but many were in shelter. It's a situation where a stray blaster shot has no extra penalty for one of the parties. The dangers were somewhat lowered by the fact that, by design, both street sides curved away in hyperbolas. We stood in the narrowed neck. We were fifty meters apart.

The wind howled. Icicles snapped and skittered on the flat, slick surface. A boiling cloud of methane thundered to the west.

He made his move first. Jupiter, that man was fast. His shot went right through my head. I dropped to the bitter ice.

*****

That was two years ago. I lost three eyes out of seven, and the use of my third and fourth hepts. Slayne lost his skull. He was faster, but my aim was better. A Titanian's brain is not in his head.

I recovered, nurtured by Puddles-at-Night, mate2, and Strange-Yellow-Tentacle, mate1. But I was out of work. My son, Wounded-Gloon-Tracker, who was nearly mature anyway, hooked up with a yooman and set out for the protoid fields. They were lucky. Lucky enough that I can sit here now, surrounded by family, and eat my grandchildren.

I don't go down to the saloons much anymore. I'm a cripple, and getting around isn't that easy. But I still like to hear the gossip, so friends come by and tell me of the big strikes, the claim-jumpers, the stemmers, the brawls and the shoot-outs. I'm glad men came to Titan. They taught us so much. They were an inspiration.

[gonzoadrenaline]

I've only read the first part but wow! Have you had this 'verse' in your head a long time? It's so well defined. Have you seen Firefly? It reminds me a little of Trigun as well. No one ever ventures into the realm of cowboys in space. Such a great notion. If you haven't already, watch Firefly and Trigun, you'll love them. For sure!!!

I intend to finish this; I've always loved scifi. Have you read any of the Star Wars novels? There is a ton of them.

The slang is ingenious, that's one of the things I love about Firefly. Seriously, you must have been working on it for a while, eh?

She wore a green lame dress

Did you mean lime green?

Damn, there was a spot when you say HE when you mean THE, now I can't find it though. I'll reread and post it here.


Pure Gonzo Adrenaline

[ejenk21]

Did you mean lime green?

Damn, there was a spot when you say HE when you mean THE, now I can't find it though. I'll reread and post it here.

I found the "the" you were talking about. Thanks.

That is the French lame (la-May), with an accent over the e. If someone knows how to do that in this markup language, I will fix it.

[gonzoadrenaline]

Macree had Angie and another of the stronger girls hauled

Joe to Angie's room.

Thirty creds for the best snelletz job you ever had.

Ha ha, he got a snelletz job from her.

Six, not the normal seven. I have only a piece of number thirteen.

So, fourteen arms?

He'd won himself approval by his fast gunplay, but the crowd didn't like seeing a girl treated that way, even if she was available for rental by the minute. He heard the rumble, and spun away from the bar.

I love this paragraph, so western, you nailed it!

So what did we autochthones have to offer you besides a great way to test anthropological theories? Or alternatively, a real live problem in theology, not just a speculation? (No, Jesus didn't die for our sins. We're Jewish. Just kidding.) We had, still have, some really intriguing compounds which do wonderful things to your brain stems. Very valuable. But you don't know where to find them. We do. Ancient lore of our ancestors. We make you sit through our chants and dances (well, something like that) so you can join us digging for tubers (sort of) in the sacred parts of the desert (not sacred, and not desert, but you get the idea).

I love this paragraph, you really got the point across, VERY GONZO!

But most of you take a Titanian partner. Like me for Slayne's brother. I did not eat him, despite the bar talk. I couldn't eat him. He'd be poisonous, or at least indigestible. The fact that we eat our own surplus offspring has nothing to do with it. That's just a custom now anyway. Yoomans have the silliest prejudices.

That's great. You are sooo quirky. I love it!

This moon runs by Heinlein's dictum: "An armed society is a polite society."

I love that; it's real? Who is Heinlein?

That was really, really good. I really need to take a look at your profile, but how old are you? This is a very well thought out story. Very Bradbury, I love it; are there more stories in this "other verse"? I'd be interested in reading more like this. I love reading scifi!

[ejenk21]

Does anyone recognize sproton? It's the basis of a sci-fi joke. Just wondering.

[Razor]

sorry I didn't get the sproton spoof. Anywho, through most of the story, I have no idea what half the words mean, but I tend to get the idea, I'm really not suppose to, which is fine. So many times people use the same words over and over again. It's a nice to see some originality, it makes it harder because you have to explain them as you make them.

The flow of the story isn't bad, but it does meander around and while I didn't get lost, I had to reread a few things to get it straight in my head.

You did a good job of explaining things enough to allow the reader to keep up.

I like the story. Bottom line I got a shoot out because a "man's" brother thought he was killed by this 'alien.' After the blasters cooled, one was crippled and one was dead.

[jerH]

That was cool. Louis L'Amour on Titan! And you can't go wrong with quark references, at least not in my book. Throw in some positrons and you're set. The language here was great, especially the dry sense of humor that ran underneath. My personal favorite was the dog "Somebody get a doctor and a biscuit.”

This is the first piece of yours I've read, but now I'm going to go find what else you've got floating around here!

[Ravane]

Lol. French and Space Traveling. What a champloo. Anyway, Nice job in detailing all the characters. They sure are colorful. heh.

[Vorcla]

"Tight enough to fuse hydrogen." Nice line. Good characterization (which is not easy with these....ummm, characters. Interesting sci-fi.