Call Me Ishmael

Chapter 17

Author's Note: Look both ways before cross a busy street, and only cross at the corners.  You can buy this book at Amazon, B&N, and at Smashwords for any other device.  It's in paperback, too!

When going through an experience for the first time, I have always been the sort of person who tried to find the good in things, to look for the bright side.  On Christmas days when I was a child, I always hoped for the best, even though deep down I knew our mother could not afford presents, and the boxes under the tree would be recycled toys from under the porch, scrubbed and wrapped late at night.  My mother was that sort of person, the sort of mother who tried her best no matter how bad our circumstances, up until my sister Gertrude starting working in Hollywood.  Gertrude worked as a voice coach, but my mother was convinced she was a movie star.  She started wearing sunglasses to the Laundromat, calling everyone dahrling, and making kissing sounds on peoples’ cheeks when she greeted them. 

Riding back to the Swarm on the Bugrider, standing beside Graw the Unseemly because there was no place to sit, I tried to recapture some of that childish optimism.  I could not do it.  The thought of Finnie and her perfect, lovely shoulders roasting in an oven was too terrible to see any good in. 

“Can’t this thing go any faster?”

Graw looked at me, and I thought I saw one of the facets of his eyes wink.  Or maybe not.  He had so many of them, focusing on any one of them made me dizzy. 

“The Bugrider is not meant to carry so many.  It provides adequate transport, and it is carrying more than it should.  What is your cause to wish for greater speed?”

“Well, there’s the matter of saving Finnie.  I don’t want to see her eaten.”

“You will be unable to observe that, regardless.  The Swarm does not feed in public.”

Bety shifted his weight to scratch an itch.  “Eating in public always makes me feel funny, too.  Like people are watching.”

Splice rolled her eyes, and the very tips of her fiber optic hair flashed.  “Bety, watching you is something most people avoid.”

I returned my attention the light of the Swarm, which grew more distinct.  “How much longer, Graw?”

“The time is short, but it is of no matter.  You will not be able to prevent the consumption of your former companion.  You have intruded in our world, and you have assaulted me.  I will be delivering you all for interrogation and possible consumption as well.  ”

Bety answered this with a quick flick with his ax, directly through Graw's middle, and then tossed both pieces of Graw over the side of the Bugrider.  “Do either of you know how to run this thing?”

Splice’s eyes were as big as a super-sized discount slush drink.  “You killed him!”

“Yeah.  But I meant to, so it’s all right.  He did get goo all over my ax.  Guess I can clean it later.  Now, somebody steer this thing.”

The Bugrider was starting to list badly.  Not only had we lost the driver, but also it was hard to keep it balanced with our varying weights.  “Splice,” I said, “I don’t know anything about it.  It’s got to be you.”  We were drifting to the right, or the east, or something.  I couldn’t be sure.  Maybe the Swarm itself had shifted or moved. 

“I can try.”  Splice stepped up to the steering lever and looked over the instruments.  They were utterly alien to me, made by a mind I could not comprehend, for appendages that I did not possess.  Splice, though, took it all in, seized the steering lever and turned us back toward the Swarm.  “I don’t care for Finnie that much, but that doesn’t mean I want her to get eaten or anything.”