Skyglass: Chapter 11

PHOENIX

Moss returned without his salad.

“Somehow I doubt you ate while you were out,” I said to him from my spot on the couch. I’d been lounging there for most of the morning, munching on krakjaks and lentil giblets, scorching the ceiling with the occasional fountain of joyous sparks.

“No,” he said, looking shifty. “But I got myself a cookie.” He brandished it and took an overly large and dramatic bite.

I rolled my eyes. “Good enough, sweetling.”

“Um,” he added, and then stopped.

“What?” I asked, flicking a krakjak at him with a puff of powdered sugar.

He sat himself on the edge of the couch, beside my feet. “When I was getting food, well…I met someone. He gave me this and disappeared.”

I glared at Zinn’s p-com, nestled in Moss’ outstretched hand, then glared at Moss. “Funny,” I snorted. “Where did you get that?”

“Some–guy. Pasty white skin, really…weird. He snuck up while I was making my salad and gave it to me. Said there’s a message on it for you. I think maybe it was your father? I didn’t want to cause a scene and I didn’t have a way of contacting you…”

I snatched the thing away from Moss and squeezed it tight. That rot-cocked creep. Zinn’s com had been missing ever since my mission to Ickdrizzle. I knew I’d forgotten the com somewhere, but how had father number two gotten ahold of it? I was tempted to reduce it to carbon and be done with it. His message would only be antagonistic, annoying on a glacial scale–but he was a maggot-bellied ogre in heat. Maybe he’d made a mistake; maybe he’d left a clue…

“And why didn’t you just drag his leaky ass back here for me to mutilate?” I spat as I synced the com to the soul-paint. The home screen looked different from before–none of Zinn’s simple beauty. It had been totally reconfigured into eye-scratching whites and yellows. Father number two must have taken it to an elite hacker for a fix-up the moment he had gotten his piss-slick hands on it. No rotting wonder Zinn hadn’t been able to trace it.

“He–he dumped my salad on the ground,” Moss whined, “and while I was distracted by that he…got away. Sorry.”

I gritted my teeth very hard to keep the obscenities at bay. Moss’ capacity for thinking was always compromised when it came to parents. I had to remember that. This was his fault, no doubt, but I couldn’t blame him. There were others more deserving of my ire.

An unopened message popped up on the screen and apartment walls simultaneously. It was addressed to me. I told it to play. The sender’s name was Solsweet. My lip curled high. I wished he were in front of me so I could split open his stomach and stuff it full of hot coal.

There was a blip of muted red, then my father surrounded me on every wall and on the ceiling, a pale man backlit by a bleeding halo of sunlight.

“That’s him,” Moss muttered.

“Shut up.”

“Hello, daughter dearest,” said father number two. “Since we left each other on such…poor terms, I’ve been wanting to send you a little note–how kind of you to leave me the means to do just that! I was going to run again, really I was. But then you set fire so brightly to that first brothel. Mm,” he moaned, eyes closing. “I’ve been after you ever since. You know me so well, heating things up just the way I like–you are one of a kind aren’t you? But of course, you and I know that better than anyone, don’t we?

“I didn’t think you’d caught my scent, but when you left this com behind in Ickdrizzle, I wondered–did you know I was following you? Do you want to talk to me as badly as I long to reconnect with y–”

“Of course not, you crotch-rotter,” I interrupted, snarling. “I forgot it, since I was high on myself. I was doing the right thing.” And look where it got me.

But of course, he couldn’t hear me; he kept spewing out his bitter words: “Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I miss you, and forgive you for trying to kill me. I hope you feel the same–but don’t worry about trying to contact me. I have some matters to attend to, but we’ll be seeing each other soon.” He stopped talking, and, for the next minute, the sun set behind him until his image was all darkness, except for the golden claws of his eyelashes, faintly glimmering from some last unseen ray of sunlight. Then even that died, and the video ended.

I hunched, fuming and shaking. Through anger-narrowed eyes, I punched at Zinn’s sullied com and sent him its guts, every last little bit, so he could dissect it and send out his auto-hacks and harpoon my father. Not that it would do any good, probably. I took the com into the kitchen, put it on a plate, then set the eater-heater to XXXHOT and stuck it in.

I left it melting and spun around to face Moss. He looked terrified to see the giant, piss-slurping grin decorating my face–but it was quite genuine, whether or not he believed it. “You’re not having a cookie for dinner, Moss. Come on. I’m taking you out.”

He looked stunned.

“What?” I snapped, infusing my voice with danger and noxious toxins.

“Don’t you want to go after him?”

“No. Not right now,” I said. “I won’t give him the pleasure.” I bopped Moss on the head and dragged him from the kitchen, toward the exit.

Behind me, I could hear the com pop and burble. I gnashed my teeth and shut the door.

***

“You killed my com,” Zinn said flatly when I saw him next, two days later. “Why?”

“Spite.”

He laughed. “Well, that’s okay, then.” He took the string of neo-creepers I handed him, their blue light shifting across the pleasant lines of his jaw as he wound their length along the near edge of Yunayuna’s goat pen.

Devin had decided Skyglass needed a send-off party since they were leaving for the Ventriloquist the next morning, so while he hand delivered invites, the rest of us had been relegated to decoration or cooking squads. It was only mid-morning and the party wouldn’t begin ’til evening–but Devin’s aesthetic goals were extensive, and I knew how his currently chipper attitude could turn if things weren’t just so. I was trying my best not to slack.

“So…you’re planning on running the Blowup remotely when we play at Mister Quist’s the day after tomorrow?” Zinn asked.

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Obviously. As much as I’d like to be there to witness our disciplines collide with glorious artistry–well, I just can’t. I’m not leaving this wormy little dirtball ’til my father’s dead.”

“Fair enough. Does that mean you’re going to fuck me tonight?” Zinn asked. “I’ll be gone come morning, after all. Who knows if I’ll ever come back.” He was focused on unraveling another rope of neo-creepers–these ones multicolored–but I could see a wimpy yet anticipatory smile lifting his mouth.

I swept in close and squeezed his ass. “I suppose getting you all hot and squirmy this evening does sound the tiniest bit appealing.”

“I suppose,” he said. “Just don’t be late to bed when the moment comes.”

“Don’t you be late…in coming,” I told him, patting him on the groin.

“Speaking of being late–how’s your Blowup going? I’m not sure you’ve shown us anything yet. You have started it…right?”

“Obviously. I finished it days ago, don’t you worry,” I lied.

Zinn groaned. “So long as it’s ready by showtime. Just don’t let Devin catch onto your procrastination.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“Yeah, see, I’m not so sure about that. You have this way of making things far more…exciting than they need to be,” he said, trailing off into a murmur, distracted as his eyes glassed over. He froze, mouth in a hard frown. His eyes refocused and shifted toward me. “It’s your father,” he said, then trailed off.

My cheeky smile shriveled into a frown. “What?”

Zinn looked almost…angered. “He just tried sending a message to my recently deceased com. It got forwarded to my embedded one. He says he left something for you in your nursery.”

I dropped my handful of creepers. My nursery. How funny and predictably gross of him.

“Are you going?” Zinn asked.

“Obviously.” I was already striding toward Marko’s van. I glanced back at the bassist and jabbed at the vehicle. “Can you sew this thing up for me?”

He cocked his head to the side for a moment, probably needling and hacking away at the van, then said, “Done.”

“Thanks. If Marko wonders where his van went, tell him I took it with the most murderous of intentions.”

“Sure,” Zinn said dryly. “Be back before dinnertime. I hear Yunayuna’s roasting a goat.”

I bared my teeth. “If you’re lucky, I’ll have roasted father to add to the menu when I get back.”

But my father wasn’t at the satellite. He’d been there recently–I could smell his bland, slightly chalky scent–but his trail was cold by the time I arrived. He’d left me something, though: a note stuck to the scarred, amputated arm I’d once escaped from. I tore it free and clenched it in one hand, but waited to read it. First, I clambered out of the satellite, back to the sand and silt of the waste. I crouched just beyond the ship’s shadow and dug my free hand into the earth.

The sand around my fingers boiled into glass and wended toward the satellite, steaming and melting all the way. When the rivulets reached its buried form, I bent them up and on, coating and jellying the satellite’s body to begin its slow liquefaction.

Only then, with my father’s terrible machine turning to mush at my feet, did I read his message. His words didn’t surprise me in the least–not one bitter bit–but I still snarled as I read them.

Phoenix (what a lovely name!):

I just wanted to tell you that my trip went well, my matters were settled, and you needn’t worry or weep–I heard about your big day, and promise to be there no matter what. If you’re a good little sunbeam, I’ll even give you the gift I got for you!

See you at the show!

Much love,

Your daddy

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