Star Sex

  Star Sex

  By

  Robert T. Jeschonek

  *****

  More Science Fiction E-books by Robert T. Jeschonek

  6 Scifi Stories

  6 More Scifi Stories

  Give The Hippo What He Wants

  Lenin of the Stars

  Messiah 2.0

  My Cannibal Lover

  Off The Face Of The Earth

  One Awake In All The World

  Playing Doctor

  Serial Killer vs. E-Merica

  Something Borrowed, Something Doomed

  Teacher of the Century

  The Greatest Serial Killer in the Universe

  The Love Quest of Smidgen the Snack Cake

  The Shrooms of Benares

  Universal Language – a novel

  *****

  Star Sex

  The alien who looked like a cactus blinked his prickly pear eyes and made a noise like a screaming cat.

  At first, Dinah Ryan wasn't sure that this was a bad thing. For all she and her fellow Earthlings knew about aliens, it could have been a cry of pure ecstasy.

  But then, the cactus puked chunky blue slime all over Ben Blakey, which tipped them off. With a noise like a dental drill running at full throttle, Mr. Cactus scooted off to the next booth.

  So humanity was still screwed.

  "Ah, man!" Blakey flicked slime from his gray jumpsuit and wrinkled his nose. "This stuff stinks!"

  "You're telling me." Mahalia Davis darted away from him. "How the hell many of these species communicate by spraying shit at each other, anyway?"

  Dinah grinned and shook her head, tossing her shoulder-length sandy brown hair. "I still say it's a joke. Initiation pranks for the new kids on the block."

  "No," said Captain Alec Strayhorn. "We don't matter that much to them. Half of them don't even know we're here."

  Dinah gazed out at the cavernous hall and realized Strayhorn was right. Every imaginable shape and size of alien being walked and bounced and flew and crawled and oozed across that giant crystal chamber. There were aliens with skin like stained glass, faces like mirrors, bodies like smoke, fur crackling with electrical current...and none of them were looking or sniffing or twitching in the direction of the Earthlings' booth.

  "This is a disaster." Blakey used one end of the tablecloth to wipe slime from his arms and chest. "Three days at this debacle, and what do we have to show for it?"

  "Lots of alien freebies." Mahalia shuffled the pile of bizarre devices, objects, and pocket-sized lifeforms on the table.

  "Which we don't know what to do with!" Blakey bent down and wiped slime from his lumpy bald head. "For all we know, they're meant to kill and eat us!" Usually, Blakey was the funniest and most upbeat member of the team; his current surliness showed just how badly things were going.

  Some Worlds' Fair this was turning out to be. The Fair was designed to give the inhabitants of many planets the chance to showcase their wares and attract investors. Plenty of other species were getting attention...but for the humans, the Fair had been an exercise in invisibility. They sat at their cobbled-together plastic booth playing old Earth movies on a TV pried out of their ship's cockpit, and nobody gave them a second or even a first look.

  "We've done the best we could." Dinah tucked her hair behind her ears and shrugged. "We didn't exactly come prepared for this."

  It was true. As the crew of Earth's first deep space exploration mission, the four humans had not expected to be setting up a booth at a glorified trade show on an alien space station. They hadn't even expected to meet

  honest-to-goodness aliens, for that matter.

  Now, they'd been surrounded by so many wildly different varieties for so long, Dinah had to admit that the novelty was starting to wear off.

  "I say we pack it in," said Blakey, dropping the slime-covered end of the tablecloth. "Let's go home."

  "And tell the folks at home what?" Captain Strayhorn--a tall man with thick, dark hair, chiseled features, and haunted gray eyes--straightened the tablecloth. "That everyone on Earth will die because our trade show booth was half-assed?"

  That was enough to take the wind out of everyone's sails...and remind Dinah why she had a crush on him.

  Strayhorn was a leader. While everyone else got bent out of shape over a little blue slime, Strayhorn kept his eyes firmly on the prize.

  Which was saving humanity from extinction.

  Blakey sighed. "I just don't know what else we can do. These bastards don't care about what we have to offer."

  "Maybe you need to diiig deeper," said a familiar voice.

  Just hearing it was enough to make Dinah's skin crawl. The voice had an oily, sinuous quality that curled around her brainstem and licked her fear center with a flickering, forked tongue.

  The voice belonged to the alien who'd brought them to the Worlds' Fair in the first place. Dinah and the other humans called him "Heavy," which was derived from his endless, unpronounceable alien name.

  "Surpriise them." Heavy looked like a five-foot long eggplant covered with writhing cilia topped with chattering faces. There were hundreds of tiny faces, every one of them representing a different alien species. Whichever face Heavy was using at a given moment--the human face, in this case--inflated to life size and spoke the loudest.

  Mahalia patted her curly black hair and snorted. "How can we surprise them when we don't even know what's not a surprise out here?"

  Heavy's human face looked like Blakey's: pinched, puffy features and a lumpy scalp. The main difference was that the lip movements didn't always match the words. "Your homeworld wiiill be uniiinhabiiitable soon, yes?"

  "You know it will," said Dinah. Hyper-accelerated climate change on Earth had already cranked up the heat and forced everyone underground. Scientists projected that humans would no longer be able to survive anywhere on or under the planet within five years.

  "You came here looking for help to fiiix the homeworld, yes?" said Heavy.

  Dinah nodded. The team had originally launched into space seeking new Earthlike homes for humanity. When all the inhabitable planets within reach had turned out to be taken, they'd jumped at Heavy's invitation to the Fair.

  "You wiiill pay any priice for that help?" said Heavy.

  "Of course," said Strayhorn. "But we don't seem to have anything anyone wants."

  Heavy made a gurgling sound that the team had decided was his way of laughing. "Are you sure you have triied everythiiing?"

  "Pretty much," said Blakey.

  "Maybe you only thiiink you have," said Heavy. "Remember, somethiiing of no value to you could be worth a great deal to one of them." With that, he twisted his eggplant body around and waved every one of his faces at the crowd of aliens in the great crystal hall.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" said Blakey.

  "You tell me," said Heavy. "Iiit iiis up to you to fiiigure iiit out."

  *****

  That night, Team Earth brainstormed in the cramped galley of their little spaceship, the Diogenes. They had only one day left of the Worlds' Fair, one day in which to make a deal to save humanity.

  "Let's go over it again." Strayhorn tipped his chair back and propped the side of his leg against the edge of the round table. "What have we offered so far?"

  Mahalia swallowed some coffee and lowered her mug. "Mineral wealth. Natural resources."

  "Plant and animal specimens," said Dinah.

  "A catalogue of genomes for life on Earth," said Blakey.

  "What else?" said Strayhorn.

  Dinah nibbled a chocolate chip cookie, then waved it at Strayhorn. "Food stocks. Pharmaceuticals."

  Strayhorn nodded. "A database of all human knowledge."

  "Strategic military rights," said Mahalia.

  "Nucle
ar and biological weapons," said Blakey.

  "Slaves." Dinah was exaggerating, but only a little; in desperation, they'd come up with an indentured servant scheme, offering a human workforce for offworld projects in return for Earth's salvation.

  Even that extreme proposal hadn't drawn any interest from the oblivious aliens.

  Strayhorn checked a list on a pad of paper in his lap. "That's everything, all right." He chucked the pad on the table and sighed. "So what else do we have to offer?"

  Blakey laughed and slapped the table. "Absolutely nothing!"

  "Heavy says otherwise," said Strayhorn.

  "Right!" Blakey leaped to his feet. "And that asshole would never steer us wrong!"

  "One more day." Strayhorn's quiet, steady voice locked in everyone's attention with high intensity. "That's all the time we have to make a deal. So let's think, people."

  "We're like amoebas to them." Blakey's face was flushed. "Like dust mites. We've got nothing they want!"

  "All right, all right." Mahalia scrubbed her fingers through her short, curly hair. "What haven't we offered so far?"

  "Souls!" said Blakey. "We haven't offered them our souls yet!"

  Mahalia grinned. "Careful. They might actually want those."

  "Then I say let's sell them," said Blakey.

  "But we can't prove they exist," said Dinah.

  "All the better!" Blakey clapped his hands. "I say let's do whatever it takes to save Earth!"

  Dinah looked across the table and caught Strayhorn's gaze. In the long trip out from Earth, she'd become addicted to that gaze. At moments like this, she felt like she would do anything to hold it, to keep it, to please him.

  Strayhorn was a strong man, a good man, a leader. He wore a sense of mystery like a dark cloak, binding all his secrets in shadows deep inside. How could she ever hope to get at them?

  "Wait." Dinah felt all eyes slide to meet her, but she didn't break Strayhorn's gaze. "Maybe you're onto something, Ben."

  "Great!" Blakey rubbed his hands together. "Tell me about it!"

  "What about imagination?" said Dinah.

  Mahalia frowned. "How can we sell imagination?"

  "Not imagination itself," said Dinah. "I mean we offer to sell something imaginary."

  "Ah." Strayhorn nodded. "You mean lie."

  Dinah shrugged. "More like exaggerate."

  Blakey smacked her on the back. "You are such a con artist!"

  "Could be dangerous," said Strayhorn. "All these aliens are more technologically advanced than we are. If we piss them off, they could wipe out humanity instead of saving it."

  "We'll have to play it just right," said Dinah. "Keep them happy. Make them think they're getting what we promised."

  "If we can even get them interested," said Mahalia.

  "Right." Dinah searched Strayhorn's eyes for some sign of approval. At first, they were just as flat, gray, and inscrutable as always.

  Then, she saw the light.

  "Okay," said Strayhorn. "Let's see if we can make this work."

  And Dinah's heart danced like a child in her chest.

  *****

  The next day started out hopefully.

  Team Earth set up early in the Worlds' Fair hall and attacked their mission with fresh enthusiasm. Strayhorn and Blakey manned the booth while Dinah and Mahalia traversed the crowd, using big smiles and chocolate from the Diogenes' stores to try to lure visitors.

  The four teammates attacked the day as if it were their first at the Fair. Every one of them dug in with new energy and intensity, casting aside the pessimism of the previous day. Even Blakey gave it his all.

  And they tried everything. Every line of bullshit they could imagine.

  "Come one, come all!" said Dinah as she worked the crowd--wondering as she did so if any of the aliens understood a word she said. "Come see the vacation paradise of Earth!" Naturally, she left out the part about Earth being a global warming hellhole. (Though it could be a paradise to some of the aliens, for all she knew.)

  "Follow me!" Mahalia said from the other side of the room. "Spiritual enlightenment awaits you on the holiest planet in the galaxy--Earth!"

  "Visit the ancient world where all life began!" said Dinah. "Meet the seers whose visions foretell your future!

  "Come to the miracle planet!" said Mahalia. "Heals all wounds, cures all diseases, and grants eternal life!"

  "Your fantasies will come to life on Earth!" said Dinah.

  "The gambling capital of the galaxy!" said Mahalia.

  "Where golf is a way of life!"

  "Be king of the world for a day!"

  "Find lost treasure!"

  "The streets are paved with gold!"

  "Whatever you want!" said Dinah. "That's what you'll find on Earth!"

  But it was all for nothing.

  Throughout the day, only a handful of aliens came close enough to the booth to see the phony presentation whipped up by Strayhorn and Blakey--computer-generated images of a paradise that was nothing at all like the modern, dying Earth. The rest of the crowd was too busy gawking at other displays to take a look. Even the booth next-door, which featured a gray blob oozing green liquid in a silver bowl, attracted more attention.

  *****

  By the time the Fair closed for the day, alien hordes rushing the doors like school kids on the way to summer vacation, Team Earth hadn't made a single deal. They hadn't fibbed up the slightest nibble of interest.

  The four teammates slouched around the booth, shaking their heads and sighing. Aliens paraded past on their way to the exits, but none of them paused or even glanced over.

  "No one can say we didn't try our best," said Mahalia, pushing alien freebies from other booths into a box. "It wasn't meant to be."

  Blakey slumped on a folding chair with his lumpy bald head in his hands. "One good thing about the end of the world," he said. "When we go down in history as incompetent moron failures, at least there won't be much history left."

  Strayhorn sat bolt upright, staring at the alien masses as they trooped past. "We'd better be on our way." His voice was cold and flat. "We're done here."

  Dinah sat beside him and watched his face. He looked stern and impassive, unmoved...but she had a feeling that a lot more was going on inside.

  He had failed to save the human race. How could that not tear him apart? How could that not destroy him?

  "Well," said Mahalia. "How about a little clean-up music?" With a flick of her wrist, she popped a digital music player from the hip pocket of her red jumpsuit and laid it on the table. She pressed the surface of the thin, silver device, which was about the size of a playing card, and it started giving off music.

  Jazz music, which was what Mahalia listened to the most.

  "Come on." Mahalia tapped Blakey's shoulder. "Let's find a cart to haul this stuff back to the ship."

  Blakey sighed. "Might as well," he said, and then he got up and went with her.

  That left Dinah and Strayhorn sitting together in the booth. A trumpet ballad filtered from Mahalia's player, its slow, sweet notes adding to the melancholy mood.

  Strayhorn rubbed his eyes, then placed his palms flat on the table. "I failed," he said. "It was up to me to save the world, and I couldn't do it."

  Dinah laid her hand on top of his. It was the first time she'd ever touched him outside the line of duty. "Please don't give up," she said. "There must be something we can do."

  Strayhorn didn't pull his hand away. His gaze remained fixed on the aliens parading past. "We can beg, maybe," he said. "But these people out here don't seem too inclined to charity."

  "Then we'll change their inclination." Impulsively, Dinah cupped his chin and turned his face toward her. "Trust me, Alec. We'll do it together."

  Then, Dinah surprised herself. Before she could think better of it, she leaned up and kissed Strayhorn on the mouth.

  He didn't resist. In fact, after the first moment, he actively kissed her back, pressing his lips against hers.

  The res
t of the universe faded away. Heart pounding, Dinah reveled in the feel of Strayhorn's lips, the smell of his skin, the long-delayed contact between them.

  The kiss went on and on, and Dinah wished it would never end. Nothing else mattered--not the crowd of alien lifeforms in the hall, not the impending doom of humanity, not Team Earth's failure. Not what would or wouldn't happen next.

  For Dinah, it was a perfect kiss, a heavenly moment. She might never have broken the spell if not for the overwhelming new feeling that came upon her--the feeling that she was being watched.

  Guessing that Blakey and Mahalia had returned to the booth, Dinah opened her eyes...and jumped. The kiss broke, and the perfect moment ended.

  Dinah had been right about being watched, but not by Blakey and Mahalia. Instead of two pairs of human eyes, dozens of alien ones were trained on her and Strayhorn--eyes of all shapes and colors and sizes, eyes on stalks, eyes of crystal, eyes with wings.

  For the first time all week, a crowd had gathered around Team Earth's booth at the Worlds' Fair.

  "What the hell?" said Strayhorn. "What's going on?"

  Dinah thought for a moment, then grinned. She thought she understood the situation. "Congratulations," she said. "We've finally found something they want to see."

  And then she kissed Strayhorn again.

  *****

  "Come one, come all!" Blakey stood on the table of the Team Earth booth and used his best carnival barker voice. "Experience the wonders of Earth's greatest treasure--love!"

  Dinah and Strayhorn still sat behind the table, kissing...and the crowd of aliens watching them had grown into a mob. The aliens fanned out in all directions, hooting and babbling and jostling for a better view of the action.

  Mahalia, meanwhile, acted as security, backing off any onlookers who got too close or made a grab for a body part. "The natives are restless," she said as she batted away an encroaching tentacle. "We'd better make a deal soon, or they're liable to rush the booth."