Space Opera (Space Opera 1)

The Utorak still standing beside Dess cleared its tectonic throat politely. Decibel Jones, with some effort, stopped staring at the Predator cosplay polishing a pint glass and changing the taps. He glanced with practiced ennui back to the rock star before, or rather, above him. That odd underwater rainbow light flickered over the brute’s black marble chest. At parties like these, Decibel knew all too well, attention was currency, spendthrifts were king, and a penny saved was a penny earned.

“Metamorphic Voffi Clast,” the Utorak said, holding out a massive eight-fingered stone hand for a proper CEO-approved shake with a look that plainly said, I absolutely read the info packet.

“Buffering,” chimed that same musical voice, like an elevator arriving.

Dess shook hands with Stonehenge. His fingers disappeared into a brimstone fist. The Utorak scratched the back of his head with his other stalactite paw. “Avalanchist for Magmadick and the Hierarchy of Needs. Lads and me’re going third-to-last this year, pretty nice placement. We do a forced resonance prog-rock sort of thing. With siege cannons. Whatever. Not a big deal.”

“Decibel Jones.” He gave the mountain his best strum-hither smile. “You look like an amphitheater I used to know in Colorado.”

“Oh, I know who you are. I really dug Ultraponce, man.” The Utorak was still shaking his hand with a grip like Mt. Everest out to prove its masculinity. “I mean, I prefer the Rolling Stones, me, but still.”

“I knew it! Oort, did you hear—”

Decibel looked over the blaze of bizarre heads, but Oort St. Ultraviolet was proving, as usual, stylishly late. The Yüzosh Auto-Botanical Frockade had made quick work of him. What in Oort’s psyche could possibly be giving it this much trouble? Metamorphic Voffi Clast droned on, oblivious, still not letting go of Dess’s hand. His grip was actually getting tighter. Decibel heard his knuckles pop. The Voorpret started giggling. One of its lips sagged off like a salted slug shriveling off a damp porch railing.

“Especially ‘Another Day in the Panto Mines.’ Great hook. The key changes made me feel my own feelings and all that, yeah? My dad plays it in his waiting room for his really disturbed cases. Real lost causes, schistofrenetics, alloyed personality disorders, leadipus complexes. Says it makes them take their meds, I dunno. We’ve all been grinding on your planet’s scene lately. I’m on your side, believe me. You’re squishy and breakable and you get cancer like I get a song stuck in my head, but Mt. Rushmore looks like a right good time. Can you give me their number?”

Decibel didn’t miss a beat, though he did miss all feeling in his right hand. “Absolutely. If we get out the other end of this, I’ll set you up proper. Rushmore’s a saucy minx, though, she won’t even make you breakfast. Listen, love, you’re overdoing it a bit on the handshake.”

The Utorak’s four empty eye-holes peered down at him.

“And how does that make you feel?” he crooned in the comforting tone of a therapist who may or may not actually care.

“Like you’re wasting your time.” Decibel grinned through the shooting agony in his arm. He could hear Mira’s voice in the back hallway of his mind. I only smile when it hurts, didn’t you know that? “And maybe you didn’t read Blekky’s info packet too carefully. I don’t play an instrument, you slag. I’ll get up there with no hand at all and sing the mountains down. Makes no difference to me. A couple of crushed bones will just help me hit the high notes.”

“Damn,” Voffi grunted. He didn’t let go. “I thought you were the other one. I hate carbons. You all look the same.”

“Buffering,” chimed that pleasant, Auto-Tuned-to-a-perfect-G# voice a third time. “Load last saved game. Ready player two. Klloshar Avatar 9 has joined your party.”

That odd gummy-candy light coalesced into something like a fluffy black opal pangolin with soap-bubble fairy wings, eyes like an anime heroine, a curly foxtail, and a long, pale, mother-of-pearl unicorn horn. Klloshar Avatar 9, bassist-cleric for the 8-bit chaotic neutral blues quartet Status Buff, was holding a large, angry-looking nailbat, and the way she was holding it said she knew what she was about.

“Greetings, traveler!” the Lummuti avatar said happily. “Would you like to buy a weapon?”

Decibel really, really did. He pulled his arm back until he felt the socket start to give, but the Utorak just went on chuckling. Dust puffed out of his mail-slot mouth.

“Definitely. But I’m flat broke at the moment.”

“How about some armor?” the furry pangolin offered with a manic frizz at the edges of her voice.

“Do you have layaway?” Dess could feel the rock around his hand getting hotter and tighter. It wasn’t fair, any more than it had been in school when the big kids punched him up for having girly hair just because puberty had come round early to theirs and turned them into temporary acne-spouting volcanos while he was still a cellophane flower. He’d brought a pop song to a drag-out fight. They should have sent the Red Army Choir instead.

“Hold him still, hold him still!” Puvinys Blek squealed, scrambling up the Utorak’s back, its decomposing tail helicoptering with excitement. The former Keshet bounded down Voffi’s granite arm and balanced on his fist, still squeezing the life out of Decibel Jones, rearing up on its hind legs. It gripped Decibel’s face in its festering paws. Its breath smelled like the end of time. “Now, don’t think of this as murder per se. More of a promotion. Don’t feel bad, the Alunizar were never going to let you be one of the cool kids. You only thought you had a shot because a big dumb bird told you the game is fair. Poor monkey. The clubhouse is full up. No talentless primates needed in here. But look, that’s their malfunction. I’m not like that. I’m not prejudiced against you like those stupid colonialist phlegmwads. I don’t even see species. I just think of everyone as pre-Voorpret. I love you for who you are: a viable host. Ooh, I’m gonna wear you like a power suit. This should be so much fun. I’ve never done it with a live one before! You’ll be my first. Be gentle with me now, won’t you? How does that song from your world go? So happy togetherrrr!”

The creature took a deep, stinking, honking, phelgmy breath that it clearly meant to hawk into Decibel’s delicate mucus membranes. He struggled and started whacking the two of them with his mic-cane, but the effect was mostly like tapping a toothpick against the Alps. He had time to wonder if, technically, he would still get to sing for Earth if he was possessed by an alien virus at the time before a refreshing mint scent hit the zombie directly in the face and soaked half of Decibel’s ear as well. The Voorpret choked and tumbled over backward onto a table full of bruschetta, caviar, and dainty toast points. Metamorphic Voffi Clast started laughing so hard, he had to sit down on the floor of the Hilton bar on the far side of the galaxy.

“Time’s up, let’s do this!” Klloshar Avatar 9 yelled, and swung her nailbat in a glorious circle, bringing it home hard into the Utorak’s hematite kneecap.

The stone cracked with a sharp, snare-drum snap. Voffi stared down at it. In shock, he let Decibel’s squashed hand go.

“You tosser,” he whined.

The adorable Lummuti avatar curtsied. Glowing greenish-blue numerals appeared over her head: 20. “Twenty points,” she said sweetly. “Penalty for lack of style. Boo.”

“You fat pink punter,” Puvinys snarled in the direction of the minty-fresh mist. The zombie pawed miserably at its nose. “I’m a virus, you bloody meat parka. Barely even stings. You’ve just annoyed me, that’s all. You’re a stupid wheezing shitfunnel, and I hope you . . . I hope you . . .” The corpse was crying. It put its paws over its pus-caked eyes and bawled: “I hope your proteins misfold and develop oligomers in order to form aggregate intermolecular structures!”

Oort St. Ultraviolet lowered his bottle of antibac

terial spray and tucked it into the breast pocket of the most aggressively ordinary suit imaginable. It was tweed, Decibel supposed, and well cut enough for a Cambridge lecturer. Part-time, anyway. The bow tie was plush and neat. His hair was tidier than it had ever been in his life, his collar starchier, his shoes shinier, his pocket square more . . . well, present, as, to Decibel’s knowledge, Oort had never so much as met one back on Earth. But the color of it all fell so precisely between green, tan, and gray, the lines so exactly between elegantly tailored and off-the-rack, the style so perfectly between upper-class luncheoner, middle-class striver, and working-class churchgoer that the whole affair became, functionally, an invisibility cloak. Oort St. Ultraviolet could steal your wallet and you’d never be able to describe him to the police. He looked like everyone else. He looked like the platonic template from which all BBC broadcasters spring. He looked militantly, tenaciously, cosmically average.