David Garnet - Bikini Planet

He had been gesturing at the control screen all the time. There was no longer any sense of movement, but Kiru knew the capsule was now speeding through space. Away from the debris of the convict craft. Away from James. Heading for…?

She’d been about to ask their destination, but this was a more important question.

“You’re from Earth?”

The screen vanished and the man walked back from the far end of the lifeboat, which was only several long strides away. He stood in front of her, looking down, and nodded.

Earth was just one of thousands and thousands of inhabited worlds, an average little planet with no distinguishing features—or even distinguished features. Since leaving her native planet, almost everyone Kiru had met claimed to be from Earth. The boss, Grawl, James, and now this man. But they were all men. They could all have been lying.

Kiru had been very nervous at first, but now that the man was so close that she could look up his nose and see his nasal hairs needed a trim, he wasn’t so intimidating, and she was no longer scared. Even his nose hairs were white, as were his eyebrows and lashes.

“Do you have a name?” she asked.

“Plenty of them,” he said. “Unlike you.”

“Do you have a name I can call you?” she asked.

“Eliot Ness,” he said.

There was something familiar about the man. Kiru had never seen him before, or at least not the way he looked now. But appearances could be changed, and no one was ever who they seemed to be.

In retrospect, she knew how much the boss had altered during the voyage from Clink to Hideaway, although she was now unable to picture him in any of his guises. That must have been part of his masquerade, to block the memory of anyone who saw him. He might not have changed at all, but he had controlled Kiru’s perception of his appearance: He had never been an old man, but he had made her believe that he was.

Despite his ability to transform himself, she felt sure Eliot Ness wasn’t the pirate boss.

Neither was he Grawl. Because if he was, Kiru would have lost her mind by now. Literally. And Grawl would have claimed her body.

She also knew that he wasn’t James. Because he would also have claimed her body, although in a much more pleasant and far less fatal way.

James was outside the lifeboat when the hatch had closed, by which time Eliot Ness was already inside. James was gone, dead and gone, dead and gone and forgotten.

“You should put something on,” said Eliot Ness.

“I haven’t got any clothes,” Kiru told him. “I haven’t got anything. I was a prisoner on a convict ship. That was a convict ship we left, wasn’t it?”

“Depends on your perspective.”

“From where I was, there wasn’t much of a perspective. Were you locked up?”

“Depends on your definition of ‘locked up.’ ”

“If you weren’t a prisoner, you must have been working on the ship.”

“Working? Me! You think I do manual labour?”

“How should I know? Are you going to tell me what you were doing on board?”

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

She wondered how he knew.

“As I told you, Kiru, we’re in this together. We’ve got to be friends.”

She looked around again for a weapon.

“Or at least not enemies,” Eliot Ness added. He stepped back, reached up to the bulkhead, and part of the wall slid away. Leaning inside, he took something out, threw it to her. “Not very flattering, but they’ll fit almost every known race in the galaxy.”

Kiru unfolded what he’d given her. It felt warm to the touch but looked like a huge plastal bag.

“Aren’t you going to put it on?” he asked.

“Not with you watching.”

“But you’re already naked.”

“So?”

Eliot Ness shrugged, then turned his back.

Kiru couldn’t work out where to begin. There didn’t seem to be any sleeves or legs or neck. The garment clung to her as she examined it. When she tried to pull away, it moulded itself to her skin. She twisted to free herself but instead became more entangled. The thing slid up, around, over, and suddenly she was no longer naked.

It was looser than a bodysuit, but even more comfortable, supporting her where she felt weak, warming her where she was cool. She was completely covered from toe to head, with only her face and hands exposed.

“Um,” she said. “Um, um, um, um, ummmmmm.”

“It’s called a symsuit,” said Eliot Ness, as he took out another and unbuttoned his jacket.

“You’re already dressed. Why do you need one?”

“Because I prefer survival to annihilation. The suits will slow our metabolism and allow us to live longer.”

Kiru didn’t want to turn her back on him, but neither did she want to watch him undress. As he took off his clothes, she looked away.

“What are they made of?” she asked, running her fingers across the strange material. It had felt cold and hard at first; now it was warm and soft.

“That’s like asking what are we made of.”

“You mean they’re… alive ?”

“It’s better than wearing something dead. People used to do that, did you know? They wore dead animals. Leather and fur.”

“This is some kind of animal ? Some kind of alien animal? Is it dangerous? Could it eat me?”

“More like a plant than an animal. It won’t eat you, but you could eat it. They’re dormant until they come into contact with a living creature, then they start to interact, working symbiotically with your body.”

Kiru glanced around. Eliot Ness was dressed in his own colourless symsuit. Only his face remained visible, his long white hair covered by the fabric. His hair wasn’t that colour because of his age. He was old, of course. Everyone was old to Kiru. But he wasn’t old old, really old, not the way the boss had pretended to be.

“Shall we celebrate our survival by having something to eat?” he said. “With only two of us on board, we don’t have to ration ourselves. For a while.”

“Now my chores begin, you mean?” said Kiru.

“I’ll do it,” said Eliot Ness.

In a very brief time, his whole manner toward her had changed. He must have been as surprised as Kiru was to find that there were two of them in the escape capsule, and the way he’d first spoken to her showed he had been as wary of her as she was of him.

He found the food, flasheated two meals, made two seats and a table appear out of the walls, and they ate.

“Don’t think of this as food,” he said. “It’s fuel to ensure our survival.”

“Tastes fine to me.” The meal was far better than most of what she’d eaten during her life. “How do you know where everything is? How come you can pilot this ship? Where are we going?”

“The eternal questions. Where are we going? Where do we come from? What’s the purpose of life?”

“I’ll settle for the first two. Where did we come from? No, where did you come from? Why were you on that ship? Were you being taken to Clink?”

“Clink is for common criminals. I am neither.”

Kiru was about to tell him that she’d been on Clink, but decided it was best not to say anything about herself yet.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Escape pods are designed to head for the nearest inhabited world. That isn’t necessarily where I want to go, so I reprogrammed the controls.”

“What if I want to go there?”

“Hideaway? That’s nearest. You want to go back?”

“No, not there.”

“Where do you want to go?”

It made no difference, and Kiru shrugged. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“You won’t have heard of it.”

“Where?”

He told her, and she hadn’t heard of it. Not that it made any difference because she didn’t believe him. They were probably heading somewhere else, to some other planet she’d also never heard of.