Page 11 of On A Rift’s Edge (Riftworld #2)
Kat didn’t want to make a scene and run out of the event, so he tried to blend in, taking an offered canape that was shaped like a clown hat.
The server informed him the appetizer was made from 3-D printed edible paper, and Kat thanked him as he backed away.
He paused to pretend to ponder a few exhibits when the crowd was too thick to pass through.
Then he made his escape from the main room.
He slipped through a side entrance into a dimly lit and mercifully empty hallway and paused to catch his breath and set his smartwatch to ‘unavailable, text back later.’ They had come in Naomi’s new car, even though the gallery was an easy walk to the e-trolley.
He’d hop onto public transportation and try to recover from this painful event at home alone.
A clattering noise caused him to turn, and he dropped the clown hat onto the floor in surprise. The trash scorpion facing him reared back, as startled as Kat was.
The art gallery’s highest priced item wasn’t an art piece at all.
A live Riftworld animal had been transported here and displayed in a clear trash can .
Kat was outraged. They were well outside the rift and the natural laws of the Riftworld.
Unlike a phantom, this species could survive more or less unmodified in a fully Earth environment, but it couldn’t get back to the abandoned base it called home.
The trash scorpion scuttled forward, one oversized claw extending toward the clown hat canape.
Then it drew back, tilting its shell home up as if to get a better look at him.
Kat caught a glimpse of over a dozen small spheres, all a beautiful shade of iridescent blue.
He recalled some mollusks having similar eyes.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” Kat supposed that speaking an Earth language with a creature so dissimilar to himself was hopeless, but he wanted to try. “Or put you back on the display pedestal. I think I can get you back home if you follow me.”
As an afterthought, he pushed the 3D-printed appetizer forward with his foot. Maybe the trash scorpion was hungry after hours of watching humans nibbling on snacks and drinking sparkling wine while it sat in a transparent garbage can.
The trash scorpion darted toward him, a quick move that made Kat jump, seized the clown hat, and moved away from Kat with the same unearthly speed.
There was a tense pause. Although the trash scorpion was no larger than an average house cat, he had no idea if it was dangerous to humans.
The trash scorpion waved the clown hat in its dominant claw at Kat, then emitted a string of chittering sounds followed by whistle-like squeaks.
“I come in peace.” Kat had no idea what he was saying at this moment. He gestured down the hallway to a distant outside door a few times, then backed away in the direction of the exit.
The trash scorpion settled the clown hat on an empty spot on its shell, posed like a soldier on patrol with its claw in salute position, and scuttled forward to follow him.
Kat was definitely not going to tell his sisters about any of this.
Kat wasn’t sure if he had helped a trapped Riftworld creature escape or had committed a felony by stealing an outrageously expensive art exhibit.
Either way, he had no choice but to take the e-trolley out of downtown with the trash scorpion tagging along.
The only people he could call who might be able to help him with the fugitive Riftworld creature were Kaveh or Remi.
Both were in the monstertown, and a rift storm powerful enough to wipe out cell and wireless contact had been over the town since last night.
Too bad that storm hadn’t hit during Remi’s disastrous very-much-live-stream.
The creature couldn’t be hidden from view on public transportation, of course, but after people immediately began asking him about the creature, Kat came up with the implausible explanation that the trash scorpion was an animatronic art piece.
Everyone fell for it.
The crowd on the trolley was fascinated by the Riftworld arthropod and even more so when it began accepting objects from the passengers and adding them to its shell.
Kat tried to feel guilty that he was tricking people, but everyone was having a good time, especially a lanky blond man with a killer body who pulled a thong out of his pants for the trash scorpion, then followed it up with a wink and an offer to trade contacts with Kat.
Thirty minutes later, Kat exited the trolley at the stop closest to the ranch and paused on the sidewalk, trying to decide what to do next. His smartwatch buzzed, and Paul Cicero’s contacts projected above his watch’s surface.
Ugh. He didn’t want to hear from the venture capitalist now or ever, actually. A creeping fear he had been found out swept over him, but he forced himself to calm down and read the message.
Great talking with you today. Are you free tomorrow night? Love to take you out for dinner—Paul
That was followed by a standard amount of contact sharing: personal email and phone information, links to staid, respectable social media accounts, and a few personal photos and short videos, none of which included dick pics.
Paul was hitting on him in the most boring way possible.
At least the venture capitalist wasn’t accusing him of stealing an exhibit from the art show he had sponsored.
Kat glanced down at the exhibit in question.
The trash scorpion had stacked even more items on top of his shell, increasing his height to Kat’s waist. So far, the creature had been content to follow him, exhibiting no signs of either aggression or a reluctance to add more trash to its current collection.
Kat moved under the shade of one of the many solar trees that dotted the sidewalks of Tucson. The structures generated energy with photovoltaic leaves and served as a lattice for drought-resistant vines that brought the current summer temperature down from searing to barely tolerable.
It was as good a place as any to call for help.
He decided to call Javier, since he, like Kat, was a wrangler at Moon Star Ranch and accustomed to Riftworld species.
Javier’s sister and her wife lived with their Riftworld companion Flutterberry, an opinionated and talkative mothcat.
If Javier didn’t mind a talking cat with wings, he should be cool with the trash scorpion.
After a few moments of his garbled retelling of the rescue/art theft conundrum, Javier started talking with someone else and was cut off abruptly as a new voice came on the line.
“Kat.” Lyall hadn’t called him kid, at least, but he sounded angry. “Turn on your visual location and put distance between yourself and the hostile.”
Kat switched to live holographic mode, baffled by the string of words Lyall had uttered.
To make matters more confusing, Lyall was talking on Javier’s phone, so while a video of Kat standing on the street corner was being sent to Lyall, all he could see on his end was Javier’s default phone avatar, a repeating video clip of him chugging beer.
“I’m not feeling hostile about you ignoring me for months, if that’s what you mean.
I mean, yes, I was hoping you wanted to stay in touch, but if I did anything to upset you then I’m sorry. ”
The beer-guzzling animation continued, with no further comment from Lyall.
Kat wasn’t sure what to say. They hadn’t talked in months.
Why had he jumped into a discussion of his feelings?
He had promised himself he would be cool and distant if he and Lyall met again.
Not an emotional mess asking his latest crush why they were rejecting him.
Flames roared in front of him, and a portal opened. Unlike the strange hybrid mini-rift in the monstertown, this one had the rocks and dripping lava of a typical hellhound earth mini-rift.
Lyall stepped out of the portal, wearing his living leathers and a ridiculous number of knives and other weapons Kat couldn’t begin to identify. Wings fluttered behind him, and Snow soared out of the portal, sparks flying off his feathers.
Several cars nearby screeched to a halt, and one pedestrian screamed.
A Riftworld portal opening on a busy street in Tucson, a hellhound assassin in combat gear, and the least well-behaved half-alien cockatoo in the monstertown—this was hardly the low-profile getaway Kat had hoped for. This day was getting worse by the minute.
Lyall ignored the tumult around him, scanning the surroundings before focusing his attention on the trash scorpion. “What the fuck is that doing here?”
“It was part of an art exhibit.” Kat glanced around.
Groups of passersby had gathered, many trying to film them with their watch phones.
This was a total disaster. “My sisters wanted me to meet a rich guy who sponsored the event, and I thought the trash scorpion was a sculpture, but then it followed me out and—could we please talk about this later?”
Long white swords shot out underneath both of Lyall’s wrists. He glared around at the people watching him, all of whom edged away. After furious beeping, the stopped cars resumed their driving, and the sidewalks around them emptied of people.
Lyall approached the trash scorpion, weapons drawn.
Oh no. Someone was bound to call the police, and Kat would be arrested for grand theft artwork or worse. Then his parents would find out.
The Riftworld creature scuttled forward to confront Lyall, the swaying pile of detritus on his shell featuring the commuter’s thong stretched between the clown-hat canape and an upright hairbrush. The crab-like creature paused in front of the hellhound, showing no sign of backing down.
“It likes junk.” Kat had to try to defuse this situation.
“It’s not hostile or anything.” Too late, he realized how badly he had misunderstood what Lyall had been saying.
The hellhound had been using the word hostile as a noun to describe the rift animal, and Kat had emoted all over the place.
Ugh. “I had to take the trolley and pretend it was a robot toy, and everyone started giving him…” Kat waved his hands helplessly, his anxiety spiking so high that words failed him.
“Junk, junk,” Snow supplied. The parrot flew up to the solar tree, broke off a photovoltaic cell leaf, and flapped down to present it to the trash scorpion. The Riftworld crab mounted the reflective piece on a small empty spot on the front of its shell and gave the bird a wave of its giant claw.
Then the trash scorpion reached up and plucked off the small piece of black fabric that was the thong.
After waving it at Kat to get his attention, the creature moved closer to Lyall and placed the undergarment at his feet.
It rotated its shell to reveal its myriad of spherical eyes first in Kat’s direction, then in Lyall’s.
The trash scorpion retreated a short distance and gave them its version of a salute.
“Okay, I don’t think the crab’s a threat.” Lyall used one of his short swords to pick up the thong. “Is this what I think it is?”
“Yes, it’s underwear.” Kat’s heart was pounding, and he felt like he couldn’t get in enough air. “A guy on the trolley gave it to the trash scorpion when he was trying to get my contacts. But that doesn’t matter right now. We need to?—”
Lyall interrupted with yet another question. “You were at a party on a date with a guy your sisters picked out for you, and then a different guy gave you his thong?”
“Lyall, please.” Kat couldn’t take this any longer. “I artnapped an art exhibit at the gallery, and I need to get myself and the trash scorpion back to the ranch right now. We can figure out how to return it to the military base later.”
Lyall gave a brisk nod, then sketched glowing red sigils into the air. The portal reopened with a sizzle.
It was a measure of how anxious Kat was that this rare display of Riftworld technology didn’t even pique his interest.
Getting everyone into the portal took far too long.
After an argument with Snow about how vandalism of public property was a criminal offense, Kat managed to get the parrot off the solar tree and onto his arm.
Lyall lured the trash scorpion into following him by dangling the thong in front of it.
Sirens were blaring in the distance by the time they all passed through.
Their return to the ranch was anticlimactic, which was fine with Kat. Lyall’s portal deposited all four of them onto the outdoor patio near the ranch’s mess hall.
Remi strolled out of the building, took one look at the scene in front of him and doubled over in laughter. “Kat, I’m impressed with your first foray into illicit activity. Tell me all the juicy details.”