José Gómez: Super Extra Grande

“BOSS SANGAN, sludge al frente and a la derecha, ten centímetros knee,” Narbuk peevishly announces through my ear buds.

His voice reminds me unpleasantly of a screechy old machine in need of a lube job. But that’s not the worst of it. Worst is, he seems to go out of his way to mangle the grammar and syntax of the Spanglish language, stubbornly dropping prepositions and mutilating verbs like he’s doing a bad impression of a native in a third-rate holoseries.

Regardless, the Laggoru can monitor my progress from a distance, and the radar he’s using gives him the overview of the situation that I want.

The spot he’s guiding me towards flashes blue on the 3-D virtual map of the tsunami’s intestines, which I can see superimposed on the upper-right-hand corner of my helmet’s visor. Doesn’t look promising to me, but in the lower-left-hand corner I see Narbuk’s face, looking like a hypertrophied iguana, insisting, “Boss Sangan, please mira, check. Ves now. Si the damn bracelet of the gobernador’s spoiled wife be there, us probablemente leave.” For variety’s sake, he now starts in on the complaints. “Agua here smell muy strange después del morpheorol y el laxative. Hoy not be buen día for el tsunami bowel cleanse.”

You have to prep before you can operate. In this case, to tranquilize the “patient” before I started exploring its innards, we dissolved enough morpheorol in the water to sedate a small city for a whole week.

Good thing morpheorol doesn’t really affect humans.

But we never expected it would take almost half a day for the critter to absorb the sedative through its gills. If we’d known, we’d have injected it intravenously.

I feel like reminding Narbuk that I’m the one taking the risk of traveling through the tsunami’s intestines while he’s lounging around and following my “inner voyage” over remote imaging from out there. Why should he care if this was a good day for giving an eighteen-hundred-meter-long animal an intestinal cleanse?

As if any day would be.

Hey, a guy could turn that into a pretty good joke.

But no point wasting time working it out. In spite of his, let’s say, dietary restrictions, Narbuk will always be a Laggoru, and Laggorus just don’t get irony.

Not because they don’t understand our language well enough. Narbuk isn’t the best example here; some of them even speak it better than half the humans in the colonies.

It’s just that in their culture, things either are or they aren’t, and that’s that. No nuances or shades of meaning for them. That’s why they have about as much of a sense of humor as a rock does.

Funny thing is, that’s exactly what makes them so hilarious to be around. Not that they ever get why the people who hang out with them are always cracking up.

That’s why, among other reasons, they’re so appreciated in the Galactic Community.

I was really lucky I could hire Narbuk and even luckier I could keep him. Hardly an hour goes by when he doesn’t set me rolling with laughter. Besides, I have to admit, he is really sharp. Three years ago he didn’t know any more about veterinary biology than I do about classical Cantonese linguistics, but today he’s an incredibly productive secretary-assistant.

Quick learner.

Be that as it may, today I’d better warn him to keep it under his hat. There’s too much at stake to risk letting him ruin it with his bellyaching. Governor Tarkon must have at least half a dozen of his men eavesdropping on our frequency. The three or four Amphorians that hang around the dry dock might be listening in, too. We’re pretty near their area of influence, true enough, but I still think it’s kind of suspicious to find them here.

So I warn Narbuk, “Wátcha tu tongue, lagartija. This is an op oscuro.”

Then I aim the vacuum hose at the chosen spot, praying that the jewels we’ve been hunting for all day will turn up here, inside this clump of sludge.

Of course my prudent command to watch his tongue has the opposite effect on Narbuk.

“Op oscuro, Boss Sangan? La criatura es almost two kilometers de larga, central island naval repair dry dock, much many soldados when no hay guerra? Oscuro impossible. What me decir bad? Me doubt el Gobernador Tarkon only now discover tercera esposa very much spoil, no muy smart,” he insists. Narbuk is as indelicate, undiplomatic, and tactless as every other member of his species. And just as genetically incapable of taking a hint. “Bien educated, muy smart mujer no drop wedding bracelet cuesta millones de solaria. No drop bracelet al sea, no drop tsunami mouth.”

Bingo! The intake of the portable vacuum hose finally dislodges the object in question from the monster’s intestinal mucus, and…

Another disappointment. The clot of sludge doesn’t contain a platinum wedding bracelet inlaid with Aldebaran topaz but the semi-fossilized skull of some small local fish, which the tsunami no doubt swallowed thousands of years before we humans invented the González drive. Or even the wheel, most likely. These animals are really long lived. In fact, so far we haven’t seen any of them die except from accidents. Possibly only the laketons of Brobdingnag are longer lived.

Shit. How much longer am I going to have to slog through the… the shit of this oversized sea worm?

“The tsunami debió haber startled her when it yawned en su cara and ella found herself mirando at its lovely fangs de veinte metros,” I say, trying to stand up for Mrs. Tarkon out of sheer racial solidarity. Though I kind of doubt her “carelessness” was just an accident. From the little I know of female psychology, she most likely felt bored and left out while her husband was dealing with a thousand and one emergencies, and she wanted a little attention. “Olvídalo and keep your eyes en la imagen del radar. Ya debíamos haber encontrado the trinket. I’m getting cansado of this business.”

Tsunamis have a pretty rapid metabolism for such huge invertebrates. Not even six tons of morpheorol will keep this worm out of action much longer—and I’d really rather be as far away as possible when it wakes up. I don’t think it’s going to thank me for this trip through its guts, or for the eleven tons of laxative we first gave it. Orally, of course. An enema would have been too much to ask.

“Job es job,” Narbuk philosophized. “Que worth es, worth es well. Yo hope que el pago is generous, compensate very mucho dirty trabajo.”

“Te voy a dar some ‘very mucho dirty trabajo,’ you half-bit Kant. Keep your trap cerrada, or la próxima it’ll be you down the critter’s gullet,” I threaten jokingly, then trace a wide arc in front of me with the vacuum hose, the way a soldier from centuries past might have mowed down half a dozen enemies with rapid-fire tracers from his laser blaster.

Someone might say that wasting time playing games during such a serious mission is tempting fate. But the fact is, after six hours of running around inside a digestive tract that fancies itself a labyrinth, and wading sometimes shoulder deep in crap and gastric juice, and getting your hopes up every time you inspect a lump of indeterminate gunk you find stuck to the mucous membrane, anybody would have given up believing in good luck. And would be feeling sick and tired.