Bummers

A Star Spawn Short Story
by Thomas Nevin Huber ©1994

    I hate the city. Twenty-five million people and I’m livin’ in The Pits. The pits of despair, the pits of poverty, the pits of the worst of the worst. It can’t get any worse.
    Al-Zed is the biggest city on the most populated planet in the Alliance. It houses the headquarters of the Alliance, the most advanced medical center, and the collected works of civilization. If you want somethin’, you can find it here. If you don’t want somethin’, you’ll still find it.
    Years ago, cities used to have slums. Ghettos, they called them. They used to be out in the open – eye sores of trash-filled lots, half-burned buildings, and boarded-up windows and doors. Al-zed was like that . . . for a while. Until they decided to make it the show case of the Alliance.
    But do you think they’d make it a decent place to live? Not as long as Ragnoruk remains the prison planet and death world to us Dracs. Make a mistake, get caught, and bang! Off they send you to an early grave. Not that we can’t survive in a double-gravity environment – we can. It’s just that we can’t live very long in that situation. But then, you know all that, don’t you?
    Enough of this chatter. My story is an oddity, I suppose. First, I’m a barmaid down in The Pits. That’s what they call this place. When they built the so-called model of the universe above us, they didn’t bother tearin’ down where we lived and worked and made love. Instead, they just drove the massive pillars right down through our places – down to bedrock, where nothin’ could shake them loose.
    Then they built the city on top and left us down here – in The Pits. Where the sun don’t shine, and it stinks like I need a shower. That’s because I really do – need a shower. No water, at least, not for things like that. And the stuff we drink is enough to give a normal Drac a bad case of the runs for a month.
    Bad? You bet. But it could be a lot worse. Hell, it is a lot worse. I’ll tell you about it.
    One night, I was workin’ the night shift. Heh! There is no day shift, but this was the night night shift. A little man sat at the end of the bar and I’m watchin’ him. He’s been nursin’ that drink all night. Causin’ me no trouble, but he ain’t doing much of nothin’ either.
    Finally, I decide that he’s been alone long enough, so I go up to him and nod.
    He glances at me and then stares back at the drink.
    “Need a refill?” I ask.
    “Nope.”
    “Need some company?”
    He sighs one of those sighs. Something that sounds like the night wind on Ragnoruk’s High Plains. You know, kind of ragged and sad. I swallow at the sound and stay put. I know for certain that if I move, he’ll let me wander away. Then there will be two of us, lonely and alone. It ain’t supposed to be that way, but that’s the way it is.
    He stares ahead and finally shrugs. “‘Spose so,” he says. Just like that. Nothin’ to say yes and nothin’ to say no.
    I slide into the seat across from him and wipe away an imaginary spot with my bar rag. Not that it does any good. There are plenty of real spots on that table.
    “Ever been in love?” he asks, all of a sudden, like.
    I stare at him, but he doesn’t return my look. Just sittin’ there, that little man with his half-finished drink.
    Well, I’m not very good at talkin’ or maybe you hadn’t noticed how I can’t stay on a subject very good and I know that my grammar could use some help. So I shrug and he nods.
    “I know whatcha mean,” he replies.
    I scratch at an itch on the side of my nose and stare at one of the beams they drove through this place. Just part of it made its way into the room, so one wall is mostly beam. And crushed furniture. We sawed the ends off, ‘cause that’s all we could do.
    The stuff’s the beam’s made out of is inpreg... hell, it’s damned tough. As tough as some of the animals on Ragnoruk. And so it looks out of place here, where everything needs cleanin’ and paintin’ and...
    “I was in love once.”
    The little man’s words surprise me. After a while, I shrug and say, “Tell me about it.” I’m a sucker for a good story.
    “It was late and I’d just gotten off’n my shift. I’m the night watchman over at the Bell Tower...”
    I grunt because I know that place. It used to be a bell tower, until they took the top off when they put in the first elevated. But it still needs watchin’ and I guess that’s what he does.
    “I’d stopped in a tav much like this place,” he continues, “for my usual drink afore goin’ on home.” He swishes his glass a little and stares at the liquid goin’ round ‘n’ round. I watch it, too.
    “Then I saw her.” A far-away look creeps into his eyes. “She coulda stepped outter one of them beauty rags,” he says, something glinting in his eyes.
    “Blonde, clean as the air in the Heritage District. She looked like she needed a friend, so I sat down across from her. She smiled at me.”
    For the first time, the little man looks at me! As if I’m the girl of his dreams. I don’t know what he’s seeing, but it ain’t me. Not now, not with the look he’s giving me. I smile a little, back at him.
    “Yeah, like that,” he says. “She pulls out a weed and offers me one. I don’t usually smoke, but I figger one can’t hurt. She puffs on hers and I take a drag on mine. It’d been years, but I still remembered how not to breathe it in. I let it out slowly and she blows a circle with hers.
    “Funny,” he says, drifting off. I look at him as he seems to slip somewhere out of time. Like it doesn’t have any meaning for him. We sit there a minute, maybe two, I don’t know. Time doesn’t flow normal when it’s like this.
    “We both enjoyed a drink and then I asked her if she’s got any place to stay. She says she don’t, so I offered my place.”
    I raise an eyebrow at him.
    “She didn’t say why, just that she’d like that and she smiled a funny little smile. I don’t know why.”
    The little man looks at his drink and then takes a slow sip. Nice and easy, and I notice his hands. Gentle and kind. I think I understand what’s goin’ on. The girl’s on the rocks. Sometimes we see them here in The Pits. And I guess that’s kinda what he experienced.
    He puts down his drink and rubs his head. Wrinkles come and go as he rubs like he’s rubbin’ a headache away. He looks at me and shakes his head. “It was like a dream come true,” he says, gettin’ that faraway look again.
    “We walked from the tav to my place, ‘bout a block and a half. It ain’t much but it’s all I have. I keep it clean and neat, no messy dishes or anythin’ like that.” He pauses, starin’ off into space, like there’s no tomorrow.
    He takes a deep breath. “I let her in ahead of me, and she turned to face me as I followed.” A look of sadness crosses his eyes.
    “‘Come here,’ she told me. I didn’t know quite what to do. She was beautiful, and she reached out for my hand. I took it and she pulled me gently to her.”
    There’s somethin’ in his eye – I can’t tell what – and he rubs it away before I can see it plainly.
    “God, what a body,” he whispers. “So kind, so lovely, so wonderful. We kissed, then. Deep and long. Passionate like I’ve never been kissed or kissed since.”
    “As we broke apart, I asked her if she wanted anything, like something to drink or eat. She told me that would be nice, so I got out some cheese and crackers. It’s about the only thing I kept around. We shared and made a bunch of small talk.”
    A bitterness crosses his lips. “She’d been battered, she had, by some sonofabitchin’ spacer. I couldn’t seen nothin’ until she raised her skirt and I got a good look at her legs. Bruises like you wouldn’t believe.”
    He takes another drink. “You ever been battered?” he asks.
    A chill runs down my back. Sure I have. What girl hasn’t been, down here in The Pits? We get it and we see it. Nothin’ new. Except maybe for him. His eyes tell me that he ain’t one of them. There’s a pain there that you can see but can’t describe.
    The best I can do is shrug my answer and he nods. “I don’t like it when a man beats a woman. It don’t make him no man, it makes him a nothin’ – a Ragnorukian antworm.”
    I know what he’s talkin’ about. A bug that is built like an ant, but drags its body behind it, oozin’ out slime behind it, all along its trail. That’s what he was talkin’ about. A man that’s got so low that he’s an antworm. Someone that beats women.
    He continues, “I laid my hand over hers and she smiled at me. I don’t know why she did that, but it made me feel whole. I wasn’t empty no more.”
    I just sit there and look at him.
    “Later that night I turned down the lights and undressed for bed. I could see her moving against the darkness. Graceful, like an angel. Maybe she was.” His eyes look like their gettin’ heavy, so I clear my throat and swallow. He nods a knowing nod.
    “I watched her,” he confesses to me. “I watched her get undressed in the dark. She did it at the end of the bed, knowin’ that I was watching her.”
    I watch his eyes. They’re deep and green. Gentle and kind – no malice, no hatred – no lust. He glances at me and I hastily look down.
    “She crawled into bed next to me all naked and warm. I could feel her warmth next to me. Dry and clean, like a newborn babe. I felt for her hand and found it. We held hands for a long time.”
    I watch him as he swirls his drink again. His hands – no calluses – are just gentle hands, like his eyes.
    “Pretty soon, she drew my hand to her and asked me to rub her softly. I did, rubbing her back as she cuddled next to me, purring like some kitten in ecstasy. It didn’t take her long before we really got together.”
    He shakes his head and murmurs the words to an old, old song. “Her kisses were sweeter’n wine...”
    He’s sittin’ there for a long time, just starin’ into emptiness. My heart goes out to him as he finishes his story.
    “I never felt so whole,” he repeats. He’s gentle and decent and don’t go into the details of their love, but I know they did it. All natural and gentle as you please. You can see it in his face.
    He finishes his drink in one gulp, then sets down the glass. “The next morning, the sun was shinin’. That was before they built the city on top o’ us. It had been rainin’ the night afore, but now it was shinin’ like nothing was wrong with the world.
    “I turned to her and found her gone. In her place was a six-word letter: ‘I’ve got to be movin’ on.’”
    That’s all he says. “I’ve got to be movin’ on.”
    His gentle eyes fill the room before me and his hands lay there empty. He’s never felt so whole. What I would give to be like that.
    I’ve never been much of a looker, and I ain’t had no men like him in a long, long time. I reach over and take his hand in mine, and slowly bring it to my lips. “I know I ain’t much to look at,” I tell him, “and I’m twenty years too old, but damn! I sure wish I was that girl.”
    “Well that’s okay,” he replies, taking my other hand in his. “I don’t mind at all. I’ll wait around ‘till you get off, then if you don’t mind an old bachelor, why don’t you come over and sit a spell.”
    “I’d like that,” I tell him and then give him a little smile – just like I did some twenty years ago.

Even though “The Writer” (the story previous to this one) carries the 1994 date, it was initially written the previous year. I had made no dent in the “print” marketplace. In search of any means to get my name out, I started looking seriously at electronic magazines. This was still before the internet hit its stride, and the electronic outlet was typically through bbs’s (bulletin board systems).
    I was working one of the later drafts of Star Spawn, and wanted to do another short story. I had become a regular on EPubNet (the Electronic Publisher’s Network), and was exchanging messages with one of  the e-mag editors. He mentioned a challenge, and so I said I was game. He set the scenario of a girl in a ghetto, facing a “real” problem, and how she overcomes that problem.
    I didn’t want to write a common story set in today’s world. It’s depressing enough, as it is. So, I set the story in my Star Spawn Universe. Part of this comes from my own “anti-Star Trek” campaign that says that the future of mankind is not going to be the utopian “we have risen above that,” Gene Roddenberry dream, but rather, it will likely be a lot like the world of today. We will be dealing still with the same social issues, but with, perhaps, our own versions of the Johaicom and Norris laws of the Star Spawn universe, as told in “Bradley.” Will these laws really do any good? How will we eliminate our own slums and ghettos?
    Seattle, Washington, has an “underground” city, and that gave me the idea of one possible solution... and what a future slum/ghetto might be like. And so you have the genesis of the following story. That, and a Harry Chapin song called, “A Better Place to Be.”
    One final note. I enjoyed writing the Henroid story in first person, so I decided to do another one. But this time, there is a story within a story, and so the story is told with a ‘double’ first person approach.
    A couple of years after writing this story, I decided to use this same unnamed bar as the setting to start another story. From this bar comes Annie, who appears in the third Star Spawn novel and has two independent novels of her own.
    I like to see a full universe, in which people’s paths cross each other. The barmaid becomes a fixture, as does the little man (just as in real life), and through this setting travels the world.
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