Speculative Sullivan: The Collected Short Fiction by Tim Sullivan

Author:Tim Sullivan [Sullivan, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

1992

Anodyne

The alien screamed like a colicky baby until it died. Its evil appearance was somehow even more grotesque because of its childlike crying and writhing. A huge, low-slung creature, it had sleek, black skin, silver gills and a fanged face. Evers was glad that it had finally gurgled its last. Not only had the thing kept him awake for twelve hours, but it had given him the creeps the whole time. It sounded so human. . . .

He stared down at the corpse now. Stretched out its hill length on the station’s largest gurney, the monster was more than four meters from rump to reptilian head. Its snaking forelimbs dangled over either side of the gurney, and five naked rabbit’s feet protruded from its plump, jet-black belly. Evers wouldn’t have wanted to deal with this gigantic, ugly, crawling thing. He was glad it was dead. Transvection killed them sometimes. Evers didn’t know why, but when he’d been training they told him it would happen every once in a while.

Once in a while. It happened to over half of the aliens that were sent to this TV station. Evers used to feel a little sorry for them, but their pitiful wails had gradually become intolerable. They all sounded weird, and that was bad enough, but this thing that had just died. . . . His jaw hurt from clenching it for so long, his stomach ached and he was shaking. Staying up a long time was nothing new to him, but he hadn’t slept in almost seventy-two hours. He needed a drink or a stim, but he couldn’t have either until he was off duty.

Evers wondered if they had sent the wrong code. Maybe he was supposed to take some special precaution with it. It wouldn’t eat or drink, and it had begun its horrible howling only a few minutes after it arrived.

“If you hadn’t died,” Evers said, “I might have killed you, just to shut you up.” That would have been impossible, of course. The zo would have analyzed the remains and reported him, if he had harmed the miserable thing. Months would have been added to his sentence. It was bad enough that Evers had to stay in this shithole for the next four years, which would make him too old to ever get offplanet, even if he could raise the money for passage to the frontier worlds. He had thought about using the TV set more than once, just zapping himself to some rim world and taking his chances. He would most likely be put on a work farm and never be sent back to earth. Sending him back would not be cost-effective. He would probably die from some alien disease hallway across the galaxy after being worked nearly to death. And even if he escaped the work farm, where would he go? No, better to stay here as a trustee, working for the zo while his time got short.

Where was the zo, now that he thought about it? It should be coming out of the OR about now.

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