Souls Touched - Reasonable Rates
Louise Findlay
Souls Touched – Reasonable Rates
By K.G. McAbee
Story copyright K.G. McAbee 2013
Cover art: Medusa by Michelangelo Caravaggio
An homage to C. L. Moore's immortal Shambleau
Souls Touched—Reasonable Rates
K.G. McAbee
How many times before this one has Man conquered space?
Dozens, hundred—more?
But more importantly, what does Man lose with each such conquest?
"Channn—bo?" mumbled Smith, not sure he had heard right. The shouts rose all around him in the darkness, shouts of anger and horror. More of the second than the first. But he could not quite make out the word those voices shouted, was not quite sure he could hear it right…
Not sure he wanted to hear right.
He fought against a cold feeling deep in the pit of his stomach, tried to calm the lurching fear that roiled and twisted there. He felt again, the memory as fresh and new as the instant it had happened, the soft insidious touch of wet slimy movement about his torso, his arms—his face. That ancient movement, that touch that went past skin, past muscle, past bone and deep into the very depths of his soul.
He had promised his friend that if he ever saw another one, he would kill it. Kill it. But he had known then, and he knew now, that he had lied. The feelings that those blind questing worms gave him were more, had always been more, than he could stand.
His soul cried out in fear—and remembered pleasure.
***
"Smith!"
Someone was shaking him. Long tendrils wrapped around his arm, seized his hand.
No. Not tendrils. Not snake-like masses of blind pulsing muscle.
Hands. Hands, with three cold fingers smelling of strong disinfectant and a fainter dimmer whiff of—lubricant?
Smith sat up, sheets slithering away like pale snakes, and gazed about him. He was in a white-walled room on a bed and in front of him stood a stubby machine on tracks with three articulated appendages arrayed around a central monitor. One appendage held Smith's hand just above the wrist.
"Smith. Smith," said the medic-bot, its voice-box tinny one minute, almost human the next.
A human attendant ambled into the room. At once the medic-bot released Smith's arm and rolled back out of range, reporting in its odd squeaky-human voice: "Subject Designated Smith projected signs of unconscious mental disorder, code word: dream," said the bot smugly, as if it had diagnosed some virulent plague.
"Yeh, dreaming," agreed the attendant, a pudgy male with skin a few shades darker than the ice-white walls.
"Where am I?" Smith asked, running a hand over a leathery face burnt dark by unshielded sunlight.
"This is the space port first-aid room," soothed the attendant as he tried to force Smith to lie back against the rumpled sheets. "Remember? You're here for medical treatment. You fainted just after you got off the Deimos shuttle this morning."
"Fainted?" Smith shook off the attendant's hand; he had no intention of lying back down. He had other plans.
"Yeh," agreed the attendant. "Not surprising, I guess. How old are you, anyway?"
"Subject has passed the normal limit for one of his genetic capacities," commented the medic-bot. "Projection: one hundred eighty-five years, Earth standard."
"Impressive," said the attendant with an unbelieving smile. "Not many of you old-timers ever got past a hundred fifty." He gave up trying to force Smith back down and settled for laying a pasty hand on his forehead. It looked like a dead canal fish against the dark wrinkled brow.
Smith shook it off and slung his legs over the side of the bed. He stood up, his lean taut figure towering over the attendant.
"I fainted?" asked Smith again. "What's wrong with me, besides old age?"
"Well," said the attendant, turning to the display monitor inset in the medic-bot's chest. "Looks like you've got some leftover signs of Venusian swamp fever, a touch of Titanian blood-gas poisoning, remnants of Lunar argeninian infection, your replacement heart is failing, and you've got athlete's foot. Other than that, you're in pretty good shape for a guy your age born on Earth."
"How'd you know I was born on Earth?" Smith asked, one side of his thin mouth quirking upward at the litany of ails.
"Body style," said the attendant as he eyed the lanky form quivering weakly beside the bed. "And arrogance."
Smith snorted. "I need to get to the space port."
"You're at the space port," the attendant pointed out, his words slow and measured as if speaking to a cretin.
"I need to get to the old space port, Lak—"
"Lakdrol? It's about forty klicks north of here. You can catch a jiggerbuggy, be there in a few minutes."
Smith nodded his thanks. "What do I owe you for taking care of me?"
The attendant shrugged. "Part of the shuttle service. Forget it."
Smith seized his stick from a table beside the bed. It was made from the desiccated sex organ of a tarq ramin, the barbs removed and the hook twisted over for a handle. His long fingers wrapped around the handle, Smith strode from the room.
