Space Opera (Space Opera 1)

But sixteen days had passed. That small, watery, excitable world was beginning to get bored with facing the nihilism of nonexistence. The species just couldn’t sustain it.

People started to place bets.

People started to download past Grand Prix highlight reels from the Keshet database.

People started to make jokes again.

People started to root for other bands—not over Decibel Jones, of course, but there were a lot of slots above dead last, and they’d been grooving on Elakh, Escan, Yurtmak, Smaragdi, and Klavaret hits for a while now. The Keshet band Basstime Anomaly actually topped the Billboard charts with one of their moldy oldies, “Clock Lobster.” Nobody wanted to say so, but it seemed pretty unlikely that two thirds of a has-been glamrock duo was going to take first place, so why not support the best and cheer for old DJ to come in ninth or tenth, which would still keep them all safely unincinerated?

By the time the semifinals were under way, every dodged poisoning and near-miss to a murder echoed on Earth in thunderous cheers, boos, money exchanged, rounds bought, uproarious laughter, uncontrollable sobbing, kisses planted on strangers, and much shaking and rattling of homemade team merchandise full of hasty, ill-advised puns like ABSOLUTE HEROES and DROP THE BASSTIME and BIRD IS THE WORD and MY HEART BEATS AT A MILLION DECIBELS! and TAKE ME TO YOUR LEAD SINGER and WE’RE ACTUALLY VERY NICE ONCE YOU GET TO KNOW US.

Earth began to get used to the proximity of the end of everything.

It had a beat.

And you could dance to it.

27.

Unsubstantial Blues

Decibel Jones pulled up to the bar and collapsed onto a stool. He would have just laid his head down right there until the dizziness and the near-death adrenaline and the intolerably vibrating tension of keeping up some shredded semblance of his old swagger through all of it passed, but the bar remained as it had been when he first walked in: a long, deep planter full of plain black gardening-supply-store dirt. So Jones just stared at it, a really good, long, purposeful stare, as if he could make it be normal with the sheer strength of just how over it he felt on a molecular level. Be a bar, he willed the plank of potting soil. Do it. Do it for your old geezer. Be a regular, ordinary bar. Be wooden and full of soggy coasters. Grow some gum underneath. Spontaneously generate several mysterious puddles. Be Englishblokebar.

“Rough day at work?” roared the hideous chain-saw hippo-bug massacre with the body of someone’s comfortably retired uncle behind the bar. Ichor dribbled out of his mandibles. His teeth would still leave Shark Week drifting and aimless on the road of life. His name tag still read: HELLO MY NAME IS YILGAR BLOODTUB IV, ESQ. But now Decibel saw that he’d penciled in underneath: Ask Me About MLM (Multi-Level-Murder) Opportunities on Ynt—Make Friends, Create Wealth, Be Yr Own Boss! “Wanna talk about it?”

Decibel Jones could flirt with a china cabinet and talk it into a committed relationship, but everyone has limitations, and Decibel’s turned out to be that Predator vs. East Enders genetic throw-down back there polishing a pinot noir glass on the hem of his apron.

“Not really,” Jones said flatly. Behind him, an Esca threw a Klavaret bush through the air with a triumphant infrasonic screech, smashing the poor thing’s runway-ready pot against the wall. Decibel Jones smiled the kind of smile you throw out to everyone else in the queue when the cashier says the com

puter just broke.

“What’ll it be then, mister?” gnashed Yilgar Bloodtub, entirely untroubled. A glob of acidic saliva hovered on his lip, threatening to fall at any moment.

“I’m skint at the moment, thanks. I didn’t exactly get to stop by a cash point on the way out of town. Besides, it’ll be poisoned or punch me in the jaw or something.”

“Naw, this one’s on Olabil the Friendless over there. He said to put anything you want on his tab. And it’s safe. Olabil doesn’t participate in the semifinals. Wouldn’t be fair.”

Jones looked down the bar, through the rowdy throng, all the way back to the far corner by the utility closet, where an outsize, four-eared, innumerably tusked elephant covered in thousands upon thousands of fireflies was pretending to be terribly interested in a potted ficus.

“Who is that?” Dess asked.

Yilgar glanced up at the glowing green elephant. “You are feasting your eyes upon the last remaining member of the Inaki species. Wormhole 66Y71—we call her Big Bubs—took out their homeworld, since it was in the neighborhood anyway, started the whole damned war. Olabil over there was just a little kid. He skipped school and ran off joyriding around the outer planets with his Sziv friends, may the First General Unkillable Fact bless and keep his big dumb heart. He turned up with all his homework done anyway, because Olabil is just about the sweetest idiot who ever lived, and, well, the rest is the utter and fiery annihilation of total war. That’s why it wouldn’t be fair to let him do the semifinals, on account of there’s only one of him. So what’ll it be, mister?”

Decibel tore his eyes away. He had understood virtually none of what the bartender said. He contemplated the various shelves of escapism fuel, reached down into the storehouse of his soul, and found that he did not, after all, have any obligation to accept his limitations. He could push through, change his mouth guard, rinse his mouth out, and plow back in, the comeback kid.

“How about a cosmo?” he said sunnily. “I don’t even like them. I just want to see you make one, gorgeous.”

The drooling space horror blinked several times, turned round to face the diverse bottles of booze on the back wall, picked up a dainty cocktail glass in his thick fingers, glared at it in fury, then turned back around and blinked a bit more.

“So . . . yeah. How do I . . . you know . . . cosmo?”

Decibel leaned conspiratorially across the bar. “Honestly, I don’t really know either. I think you sort of . . . interfere with a cranberry. Too complicated! Let’s go for something classic. Strong, manly, easy. Whiskey neat.”

“Excellent choice.” Yilgar Bloodtub turned around again with the cocktail glass still in his hand. He stood there for several minutes. “And how do I make one of them?”

“You . . . take a glass and put a lot of whiskey in it.”

“Right, I get that, but how do I make the whiskey part? And the neat bit? I don’t really neat, if you know what I mean. I’m better at mutilate. Or impale.”