Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue

Picking her way across the sad mounds of prostrate bodies, Molly found herself looking forward to the lesser stench that awaited them outside. Her left foot came down between two forms and slid a little on something wet. She regained her balance, but nearly dropped her black duffle.

“And why didn’t we leave the bags in the room?” she hissed back at Cole, who lagged behind this time. The lobby had become more crowded; it favored small feet rather than long legs.

“Did you see that place? If Drummond didn’t run off with our stuff, one of the rodents would have. Besides, if all goes well we’ll be sleeping in the ship tonight. I don’t care if it doesn’t have overnight bunks, I’ll spread out on the diamond plate steel in the engine room and work on my cute snore there.”

Molly nearly retched as she passed through a small pocket of foulness that stood above the rest. It smelled like death. Like the time a bat got trapped in the ceiling above the cadet dormitory and died. It smelled like that, but times a hundred.

“Some of these people might be dead,” she whispered above the moans and shuffling of those who clearly weren’t. Yet.

“Not funny.”

“I’m serious. Who would check them for a pulse, and how often? Look at all the luggage and bundles scattered between them. Some of it looks like it hasn’t been disturbed in ages.” She considered this.

“Hey, that gives me an idea.” She veered to the side, picking her way toward one of the lobby walls. “This way,” she called back to Cole.

••••

He swerved to follow and one of his large boots pinched an arm. He pulled his weight off that foot, collapsing forward as the limb sucked in like a startled snake. No yelp. No complaint. Cole turned back, leaning down to apologize…

“Ssorry.” It was barely a whisper, a mere hiss leaking out of the prone, bundled form.

Cole teetered on the edge of apologizing back, confused. Then it occurred to him that the lobby guest may actually consider the fault theirs. They weren’t leaving enough of a clear path for the room’s intended purpose. Inconsiderately spread out. Unconscionably too comfortable.

He rose, shaking his head as he carefully picked his way to Molly; she’d come to a halt in a small pocket of floor space along the far wall of the lobby.

“We’re leaving our bags here.” She stooped to nestle her duffle between two other mounds. Cole watched, bemused, while she rounded up a few bits of trash and sprinkled them on top, as if garnishing a meal.

“Uh, why?” His backpack didn’t budge.

“’Cause my bag is heavy, for one thing,” she told him. “I’m sick of carrying it. And also, ’cause there’s a slight chance crazy boy upstairs isn’t all that crazy. I can’t see Lucin trusting my life with a deranged lunatic. Which means he either ate some bad fruit here, a possibility I rank pretty high, or the Navy is up to something, an idea you’ve been lodging ever deeper into my head.

“So, we leave the bags here, a spot where you could hide a dead body in plain sight. We’ll grab them on our way back to collect Drummond and his supplies. Trust me, nobody’s gonna touch something that people here are sleeping beside.”

“Great plan. For your bag.” Cole gave her a grin and hitched his pack further up his shoulder in protest.

“I’m serious. If you have anything important in there, it’ll be safer here. I’ve got my ID and a copy of the will and transfer papers, but everything else is staying, just in case.”

“And I’m taking my bag, just in case. Think of it as having our eggs in two baskets.”

“Whatever,” grunted Molly, leaving him behind again as she picked her way toward fresher air.

Cole made careful note of where she left her duffle and hurried after her.

••••

Outside, the slightest sense of a breeze brought a little relief. They hadn’t been on Palan for two hours and already Molly could see how a traveler could get used to pretty much anything. She wasn’t there yet, and probably wouldn’t be on such a short stay, but her imagination could piece together a sequence of events that led from disembarking the shuttle to sleeping on that lobby floor. She shivered at the thought, picturing how quickly it could happen, even to her. A simple series of bad decisions could lead to a life of prone depression in the Regal.

Cole hurried past her, waving at the first taxi in a line of four. Each was a small, completely enclosed vehicle balanced on three-wheels. The driver didn’t respond to Cole’s gestures. In fact, he appeared to be fast asleep.

The gutter between the sidewalk and the parked vehicles was too wide to step over and the small bridges arching across the gap were too eroded to trust. They looked more like sculptures than pathways, curves of cobblestones erected to protest gravity. Molly watched Cole vault over the gap and did the same, landing neatly as he turned to help her across.

“Thanks anyway,” she smiled.

Cole looked a little flushed. “No problem.”

Molly beat him to the taxi and rapped on the windshield. “Hello?” she called through the glass.

The driver slowly brought his head to a full vertical. No startle reflex, as if this happened to him dozens of times a day.

He cracked his door open. “Where to?” he asked.

“The Naval Offices. How much?” Drummond had insisted they get a price before entering a cab.

“Earth credits,” Cole added from behind her.

The driver lit up at this—almost literally. The metallic sheen of his face seemed to glow as though a dull light shone upon it. He looked past Molly. “Twenty,” he said.

Cole grasped her arm and gently pulled her away from the driver, heading back to the next taxi in line.

The driver opened his door wide. “Fifteen!” he yelled after them.

“C’mon,” Molly pleaded. The next driver was waking up from the ruckus and she didn’t want to waste time bartering them down few more bucks.

They turned back to the first cabbie, who held the door open as Molly slipped into the tiny rear seat. Cole squeezed in beside her. Their driver stepped to the back of the vehicle and Molly heard the sound of chains rattling. She tried to see if threats were being made between the two taxis, but it was too cramped to shift even slightly. The driver returned in a flash, muttering to himself and rocking the car as he pulled the door shut.

“Firsst time on Palan?” he asked as he pulled out into the light, yet frantic, traffic.

Molly looked up to meet his eyes in the rearview mirror, but there wasn’t one there. In fact, there weren’t any safety devices or indicators anywhere in the buggy. It was just a smooth shell perched on thin wheels, two narrow benches comprising the seating arrangements. The driver took up most of the front one and Molly and Cole were pressed together in the back.

There weren’t even any windows to roll down, just solid carboglass on the sides. As bad as the smell of Palan was, Molly longed for a breeze.

“First time,” confirmed Cole.

“Firsst day?”

“First day,” parroted Molly, giving Cole a smile.

“Where you gonna watch the rainss?” The driver asked, looking up at the sky through the windshield as if they were due to begin at any moment. Distracted, he almost ran into another rolling egg. He leaned on the horn and yelled through the window at the other driver, obviously not concerned with the answer, just making small- talk.

Something triggered in Molly’s memory at the mention of the rains. Something she’d learned in an old Planetary Astralogy course in Junior Academy. And then the filling lobby started to make sense, the wide gutters, the locals setting up their market in the shuttle concourse. It occurred to her why this rickety taxi seemed to have only gotten one thing right: being watertight.

Even some of the Palan smells started to register in her olfactory nerves as various types of mildew and mold and rot.

The driver performed a post-yell grumble routine in his own language, gripping the steering wheel with