David Garnet - Bikini Planet

“What’s it say?” asked Kiru.

“I can’t read alien.”

“You don’t have to.” She rubbed a finger across the fur.

“ A small token of my affection ,” spoke the card. “ In gratitude for your first royal performance. From an anonymous admirer .”

“Who’s it from, James?” asked Kiru.

“I don’t know,” he said. This was the most obvious lie of all.

“You’re blushing.”

“I’m not!”

A wriggling blue shape slithered from the box and dropped out, then squirmed across the floor. James yelled and jumped away. Kiru squashed the bug with the gun barrel.

“Must learn how to fire this,” she said, as she bent down to examine the dead worm. “Looks delicious. Want a taste?”

“No!” James quickly tied the box shut and put it down in the furthest corner—which wasn’t very far.

“Why not? It’s a box of chocolates.”

“It’s not.”

“It is if you’re an alien. Who’s sending you chocolates, James? Is there someone else in your life?”

“No, no one.”

“No one sent you a gift-box of worms?”

“Er… someone… er, just someone I met earlier.”

“This someone was an alien ?”

“Yeah, but—”

“And was this alien a she ?”

“Yeah!”

“Because you can’t always tell with aliens.”

“Of course she was female. Anyway, I didn’t do anything. How could I have done? With an alien!”

James was standing in one corner of the room, as far from the metal box as possible. Kiru sat on the nullbed, which floated between him and the black box.

“She was a princess,” he said.

“Did she change from an alien when you kissed her?”

“She’s a princess because she’s the daughter of an empress.”

“She told you that?”

“Yeah.”

“And you believed her?” Kiru shook her head. “What was she like?”

“I don’t want to think about her.”

“Maybe not, but she’s been thinking about you. Was she pretty?”

“No. She was ugly . With claws and sharp teeth and… and more sharp teeth.”

“She must have been gentle with you. No sign of any cuts or bruises. But if that’s what you want, James, if that’s what you like, I can bite and scratch.” Kiru beckoned him toward the nullbed. “Come on over here.”

He obeyed. She sank her teeth into him, dug in her nails. Not too too hard, but not too softly. They began again.

Then the bed suddenly dropped to the ground. For a moment, Kiru thought they had exceeded its capabilities.

“Under arrest,” whispered a voice, an inhuman voice, an alien voice.

They were surrounded by a group of ghostly figures.

But at least they weren’t pirates—or so Kiru hoped.

“Where other you?” added the voice. It had no one source, each syllable seeming to come from a different direction.

Kiru and James disentangled themselves and drew apart, gazing up at their uninvited visitors.

“Two you?” sighed the voices. “Four limbs, no eight?”

“Yeah,” said James. “Two of us. Humans. Two arms, two legs. Each.”

The newcomers were no more than vague shapes, without depth or outline. There was nothing to focus on, and at first Kiru couldn’t even work out how many of them there were.

Four guns were aimed at her and James, from four different sides. So there might have been four of the wraiths.

“Half space pirate you,” breathed the quartet.

“Half?” said Kiru.

“They mean one of us,” said James.

“Not me,” said Kiru.

“And not me,” said James.

“Two criminal. One criminal. All criminal. All capture. Hideaway safe. Hurrah!”

“Who are they?” asked Kiru.

“A security squad, I think,” said James. “Those pirates, they must all have been caught.”

“Good,” said Kiru, narrowing her eyes as she tried to focus on one of the intruders.

They were almost transparent, but they made the room seem even smaller.

“You space pirate half,” came the soft accusations. “You space pirate all.”

“I want to make a statement,” said James.

“Number,” said the phantoms. “Twelve to one.”

“What?”

This was Hideaway. A world of risk, of gambling, of random chance, and so Kiru said, “Seven.”

“Lose.”

“I want to protest,” protested James.

“Number.”

Kiru said, “Nine.”

“Lose.”

“I demand to see my lawyer,” demanded James.

“Number.”

“Six,” said James, a moment before Kiru could speak.

“Win. Who lawyer you?”

“Er…”

“Who lawyer you? No? Lose. Prisoners you. All leave. Now.”

Kiru and James looked at each other.

“We’re under arrest,” he said.

“Seems like it,” she said.

“They think I’m a pirate. But I’m not.”

“Tell them, not me.”

“It’s all a misunderstanding,” he told them. “I’m a police officer, I’m in GalactiCop.”

“All cop. All criminal. All go.”

“Can I have my clothes?” asked James.

“Yes.”

“Can I have my gun?” asked Kiru.

“Yes. No. No gun. No clothes. No thing. Yes. One thing.”

The black metal box floated up toward James, lifted by an invisible hand or tendril or mandible.

“No leave Hideaway no thing,” sighed their ghostly captors. “Everyone winner Hideaway.”

“You aren’t smiling now,” said Kiru.

“What’s there to smile about?” asked Norton.

“They haven’t killed us.”

That was something he hadn’t thought about.

“Yeah,” he said, and he gave a smile.

“Yet,” added Kiru.

Norton surrendered his smile.

He had grown used to rooms without doors, without windows, but this one didn’t even have walls. It was spherical, so small they had to curl up to fit within its contours. They lay side by side, facing one another, hip to hip, knee to shoulder.

It seemed hours since their ghostly captors had brought them here. The room was as bare as they were. There was only one other object within the sphere: the spiked box that Princess Janesmith had sent.

Every now and then, the casket would rock and sway. The worms inside must have been trying to ooze free.

Norton glanced away from the metallic box, toward Kiru, then studied their circular cell, which didn’t take long, before looking at the girl again.

“This is for real, isn’t it?” he said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I.” Norton shrugged. “Is this an illusion?”

Kiru looked at him, touched his chest, slid her fingers against the curve of the wall, then said, “How should I know?”

“I mean everything. Not just an imaginary cell. Are you a simulation?”

“Sometimes I wish I was. Are you?”

“Who knows?” Norton examined his right hand, with its three fingers. “But I think I’m real, and so are you. I think.”

“I’m glad to know it.”

“So this is actually happening, here, right now, to us. You agree?”

“I never doubted it.”

Wayne Norton had come to Hideaway to work. Even if he didn’t know what that work was. But then Kiru had arrived and it seemed he was being forced to enjoy himself, whether he liked it or not.

Which he did. Very much. Very, very much.

Because she was his dream girl, specifically designed for him.

Back in Las Vegas, if the casinos wanted to smooth over a problem with a high-roller, he would be given a free room—and a girl to go with it. Hideaway must have run a similar system, and Norton qualified as a VIP. He couldn’t remember exactly what had happened when he’d been with Janesmith. Not that anything could have happened. Of course it hadn’t.