Drake - part 1

Agent Drake set his foot on the last step of the ship's bridge and nodded as a goodbye and thanks to the stewardess, who merrily, even with a certain dose of familiarity, was waving at him with two of her tentacles. His stomach was rumbling. The food he was given in the tourists' class saloon didn't smell trustworthy to begin with and he refrained from tasting it. After all, the change of climate he inevitably had to bear when traveling from one planet to another was reason enough for his stomach to get upset and it wasn't worth the risk of increasing the odds for it by swallowing the food of questionable quality, which the dapper stewardess offered him. So his first job after stepping on terra firma was to look for a nice fast food joint.

The flight lasted for seven hours - quite sluggishly for a self-respected space-company. Drake was always irritated by the illogical fact that for the hyperspace travel - 99.9999999% of the whole distance - were required no more than 15 minutes, including the time for bioadaptation, connected with the additional factor that corrects the Einstein's equation and permits the surpassing of lightspeed. The other six and three quarters hours were lost in customs checks (that lasted thrice the usual time for him as a secret agent, so that he shouldn't "raise any suspicions"), going out in open space and picking up the required speed and distance from Earth, needed for hyperspace jump. On top of it all, right in the middle of the track given to the space-company for accelerating to fourth space speed, the ship right before Drake's had had an engine failure and created unbelievable traffic jam until they had changed the engine.

But that was all behind him now. The agent was on Teyron - one of the most popular tourists' planets and although the object of his trip wasn't exactly tourism and entertainment, Drake didn't intend on missing them entirely - 'the key to successful accomplishment of a mission lies in the devoted dive in the local atmosphere,' were his words, when he was faced with a boring missions at interesting places.

At the spaceport, he got two watches as souvenirs from couple of girls, dressed only in garlands of artificial flowers (a legacy to the strange habits of the old earthlings to decorate themselves with the genitals of different plants). The bigger watch read 8:30, and the smaller read a quarter to three. Drake hoped that they were both exact, as he felt natural animosity toward the complex tables for conversing one planetary time into another. They looked fairly exact, because one of the suns, described in the tourists' leaflets as "the giant shining luminary, that will leave you with bronze tan and pleasant memories from the beaches of Teyron", was going down, while the smaller one - "the discreet natural light of the baby-sun will always light your way to the night clubs and then you'll easily get to your hotel, bathing in celestial light, as if it carries you, not giving you a headache with over-the-top brightness" - was sparkling high in the sky. After long and painful arguments between the governing party and the opposition as to which sun to use for measuring the time, the Teyronians had decided to reach a consensus in the name of the common good, measuring the time with two watches, corresponding to the different suns, as the leaflet said.

"Watch your steps!" a humanoid lisped, while zigzagging in the street and projecting his trajectory into a special curve in order to collide with Drake.

The humanoid in question was pouring lavishly the contents of a bottle of bourbon into his horn-like ear. The agent remembered the macrobiology textbook picture, which looked like this creature. The Sakharians lived on such a natural resources poor planet that their digestive system had adapted to absorbing everything they swallowed to the last molecule. Even the trifling dose of alcohol would be immediately assimilated in their blood, which would inevitably lead to certain death. That's why, during the rare moments in their hardworking life when they indulged themselves in rest, they consumed liquor through their ears - highly vascular organs of impressive size, again a result of the adaptation processes, because of the notorious tendency of their wives to unfaithfulness. They were able to hear the sounds of an indecent act from miles.

"This one is stoned from an early hour," Drake mumbled under his breath, after he passed the alien.

Of course, the Sakharian heard him, but his clouded mind didn't pay any attention to the remark aimed at him. He just moved his ears, at which the wastes in the nearest garbage-can flew in the air, and continued to waver down the street.

Drake was dying to follow the example of the drunken tourist, but first he had to find his hotel and check in. The reservation for Hilton, arranged by the Agency, was expecting him and while the electronic navigator was guiding him to the hotel, his mind was enjoying the images of hot electromagnetic shower and automatic massage, provided by the exquisite hotels.

At Hilton's reception, a beautiful receptionist who granted him a blinding smile welcomed him.

"Good afternoon and good evening, sir," she greeted diplomatically. "What can I do for you?"

Drake lifted his sunglasses and tossed his forelock aside with the trained gesture of a playboy.

"I'll skip my first wish, honey, and I'll start with the room I'd like to get. But after that..." and his look slid a few times up and down her thigh.

"Do you have a reservation?" the palatable blond remained coolly polite.

"Of course, baby. The name's Drake, Dary Drake. And my middle name is Casanova, ha-ha. Check on it too."

"I'm sorry, but there's no reservation on your name," the girl replied impassively. "Ah, here's something... Elisaveta Ivanovna Casanova. Is that you?" she looked suspiciously at him.

"Listen, kid," Drake started a little tensely. "Let's not play cheap games. Give me the key to my room; I don't have time to play cat-and-mouse with you. My approach to women isn't that elementary," he stuck out his chest. "It's just that I am the LION and that's the bottom line. If you don't like it, that's-"

"Sir, you don't have a reservation for this hotel. If you're looking for the zoo, it's someplace else."

Look at that little babe! Drake was outraged to the bottom of his soul and his face turned into menacingly purple color. It seemed the chicks on this planet were quite street-wise. Actually, that made them more interesting than the ordinary girls he was used to. The hard-to-get women always aroused him more than the ungetable ones. But right now, he had to solve a problem before starting to think about women. It seemed that there was some mistake.

"Here's the confirmation from your hotel," and he gave the receptionist his navigator, where could be seen the affirmative answer for the reservation.

"Oh, this is not a reservation for Hilton, but for-" the girl pursed her beautiful lips in a grimace as if she had just sniffed a rotting corpse, "-Killton. Believe me, this is a whole different story."

In an instant, her expression changed to contemptibly ironical. The agent looked at his device in surprise. Obviously she was right. The Agency had thought appropriate to save a few bucks to the taxpayers by sending its employee to a cheaper and, hm... Seeing the girl's face, Drake guessed that Killton was far from luxurious. It wasn't even on the map, programmed in the navigator.

"What's your navigator?" the girl asked.

"Netscape, of course."

"Of course, baby, but I'm asking you about its version. Do you dig it?"

"Ummm..." Drake had never thought about that. He was frightened by electronics and used only what was given to him, without caring if it was new or not. "120L," he read.

The receptionist couldn't hide her laugh this time.

"Such a clunker! I'm sorry; it must be of sentimental value for you. Well, it has its good sides - that den Killton is not on its map. So, sugar, I wish you to stay that sweet there too. At least, if you survive in their hotel, you'll have something to tell your kids about."

After he received short directions about the location of the hotel, which the girl shared as if she had a ball of hairs in her mouth, the agent headed down-spirited for the new place. He took a cab and flew on. The driver, after hearing the destination, looked at him sadly and muttered a few encouraging words, with which he wanted to show that he felt for him and sympathized him for his poor lot. But despite his good attitude, the driver definitely refused to take the agent to the very hotel.

"I won't set my foot there! I have to feed kids, a wife and a hermaphrodite!" he cut.

Drake was left alone in the street. The taxi-driver explained him more or less how to get to the hotel that was some hundred yards away and the agent followed his instructions. The surrounding was very colorful. Nightclubs, striptease bars, crummy pubs and gambling halls encompassed him. The sounds of night life echoed in all of its variety - drunken laughs, clatter of bottles, women screaming, and some breathtaking shrieks that could be performed only once in a lifetime - at its very end. There was a unique mixture of different musics - from alien-folk to cyber-trance.

Drake was walking past groups of three or four guys with criminal looks and obscure alien origin. The women walking the dirty narrow streets were ready for anything, even to sell their services for small change, as long as anybody chooses them over virtual sex.

Drake was starting to feel uneasy. Though he was special agent for APTSE (Agency for Preventing Troubles Still in Embryo), due to the delicate nature of his mission, he wasn't carrying any gun, because he was not to stand out from the ordinary tourists on the resort planet. But in this neighborhood, filled mainly with local service personnel, adventurers hiding from the law and low-budget tourists, he was the only one standing out from the rest - by the lack of a gun exactly. And in these circumstances, when finding out one is lost, it was hard to keep the nerve-crawling panic at bay.

After wandering in vain for a while, Drake entered a gambling hall to ask somebody about the way. At one of the simulators, a medusa-like creature played some space battle. It was so preoccupied with killing earthmen that it didn't react to Drake's question. The situation was no different at the other machines. The people were paying for the entertainment and they weren't happy when interrupted by sophisticated question like "How do I get to Killton?" because it would take them as much time to figure the answer, as it would take Plank to formulate the Plank's constant.

"Looking for Killton, my man?" a stinking breath stabbed him like dagger in the back of the head. "What are you going to do there, since you need to have money even in that den?"

"I have... some," Drake murmured, while turning towards the two sturdy fellows who had jumped him in the back.

"Yes, but in a while you'll have none, 'cause you'll give it to us," one of them smiled, showing a row of rotten teeth, justifying the bad breath. And to put more weight to his words, he took out tiny folding blaster.

Now I'm stuck, Drake said to himself. At this moment, he was supposed to use some of the special hyper-karate grips he was taught at the School. But the last few missions he was assigned to involved aliens and the agent was quite well prepared when he had to catch someone by the tentacles and tie them in a knot or fling the enemy, dragging him by the trunk. And for the present situation, he had to get back to his earliest years when hand-to-hand combat with humanoids was part of the essential preparation when applying for APTSE. He had to look for some kind of solution. Fast at that, because his assailants were already getting nervous.

And suddenly, the solution came from elsewhere. The door of the cyber-sex cabin, just opposite of Drake, burst open with a bang and out of the cabin flew a 300-pounder at about 40 years of age, balding, with the remains of his hair bristling.

"Jesus, what tits!" he roared, sweeping away the bandits. "Oh, I'm so sorry, I guess I knocked down your friends, but what could I do - when my time was up, I put accidentally the token not into the slot but into the electric outlet.

The "friends" of Drake were unconscious after the impact with the giant mass. He decided that it was high time to leave the sinister place. Yet, where was the damn hotel?

"Two blocks away, it's pretty close," the fatty informed him, "but let's have a drink before that. I always get thirsty after an electric shock."

The agent declined politely. He had had enough for one day. The delay, the crummy hotel, as well as the robbery attempt, were not part of his plans. All he wanted was to lie down and sleep without waking till the morning. Whatever that meant on that two-solar planet.

Soon he reached the hotel. Only the first letters of the neon sign were lit - "KILL". Drake didn't find that a good omen.



The special agent woke with a terrible headache at the bang with which his bed fell from the upper floor. After carefully examining his head to make sure it was whole, he waited for his thoughts to organize.

What he thought was nightmare turned out to be true. Drake reconstructed in his mind the registration at the hotel, the offer by the receptionist to satisfy his carnal needs with the companion on the pay-roll for five dollars. The trouble was that the hotel couldn't afford to hire more that one, so Drake had either to wait for his turn, or use just one of the serving organs of the companion, while the others were utilized by the rest of the clients. Drake refused the tempting proposal. Not that much because of revulsion - he had taken part in missions on planets, where the main living species reproduced themselves polyheterodinic-sexual, i.e. for the impregnation of the ovum were required several dozens of genetically different spermatozoa and the mating resembled the dropping of ripe pear into an ant-hill.

Actually, the agent was dying for sleep and wasn't able to think about his sexual instincts at that moment. But all was in vain, because sleep evaded him for hours. All kinds of sounds were heard from everywhere through the thin, cheap walls. They were made of semitransparent material like fiberglass that Teyron was full of and whose price was extremely low, because the self-respected constructors would never use it even for shower boxes - in contact with water the material would wrinkle and would soon start leaking. Drake noticed right above his bed a hole in the ceiling, caused, most probably, by a heavy rain, and that made him party to the outer world. Thank God, it wasn't raining.

Through the semitransparent walls, for a long time he had the chance to enjoy a view as if at a peep-show. The companion on the pay-roll was servicing his neighbour and the picture would be of great interest for scientists studying the sexual life of that kind of aliens (Drake had no idea what it was and which part of space it was coming from), being a hairy elliptical ball.

The next part of the show, performed before the tired agent, were the Teyronian cockroaches - giant, agile and bloodthirsty. Their only weakness was fear of water. That's why Drake moved his dirty bed in the bathroom, where the broken faucet was squirting endlessly, scaring away the local fauna. At that, accepting the lesser evil, he fell blissfully asleep. But the bathroom, of course, wasn't intended for piling up of weights for a long time, especially in the presence of humidity when made of water-corroding material. So the floor didn't last long under the pressure of both the bed and the sleeping in it Drake.

It was time for the morning breakfast - double and with three rocks. As well as for reconsidering of the tasks, plan, tactics and strategy, according to which he had to carry out the mission in the new realities.

Drake got out of the hotel with the attractive name and strode down the pavement, looking for a quiet and homey bar. The morning stroll would be good for me, he said to himself in his usual way of accepting positively and philosophically the small problems, such as, for example, that the moving pavement in the neighborhood wasn't working. The matter with the bar was settled fast. Everywhere on Teyron bars were five-six a square yard (on several stories, of course). Drake hoped that the criminal community sleeps at that time and the only visitors of the bars in the morning would be tourists with hangover, suffering from insomnia.

The agent ordered his whisky to the barman, who skillfully poured the drink with one hand and scooped some rocks, while with the other two flinging in the air he was explaining to the singed waitress not to wash the glasses with water after disinfecting them with concentrated hydrochloric acid.

"Did you hear that another village had been absorbed?" he heard from the near table, where two humanoids were talking. "What was the name... Torn... Horn... Porn... Actually, the name doesn't matter."

Drake was all ears. Here, at the very beginning of the day there came information on the subject he was interested in. In fact, it seemed that conversations between the common people would be his main source of information about the mission for the time being. Although he was special agent for APTSE, he didn't know anything more than the rest, if not less. SOMETHING, coming from space, swallowed everything that stood on its path - spaceships, meteorites, small asteroids, and lately, it had decided to take shelter on the flashy, until recently, planet of Teyron and by doing so was threatening the whole tourist business, taking place on that heavenly nook. This was all Drake knew about the case and on the basis of that information, alone, with his bare hands, he had to eliminate the problem, which was already out of APTSE's jurisdiction. (It had long gone past its embryonic state, even childhood. It was already entering the unpredictable puberty.)

"And what's left?"

"Nothing, just black flat wasteland."

"The people who lived there, too...?"

"Rednecks."

Drake looked at the glass with the amber-colored liquid and sighed. If it wasn't for this incomprehensible for some people habit - the morning whisky - may be now he wouldn't be wandering throughout the universe chasing gluttons, but would be comfortably accommodated behind a massive desk, with his feet upon it, giving orders and patting the secretary's behind.

"Hi, buddy!" a familiar voice cut his train of thoughts.

It was the fatty, who had saved his wallet the previous night, and maybe his life too. Just because of that, Drake, whose profession hadn't yet robbed him of sense of gratitude, turned his attention towards the man and allowed him to sit without pulling away his chair at the very last moment, as he liked to joke at the official Agency meetings.

"If you only knew what I lived through last night after we had split..." His tone was as if they had known each other for years. "Sex with Turkoan mossy balloons."

"Isn't that sodomy?"

"Who cares? I've paid for it after all! And the thrill is great. You keep on screwing and screwing, the animal is inflating and at the end - Bang! - it blows to pieces and pours some stinking mucus all over you. If only it could be that way with women too..."

The erotomaniac rolled his eyes and licked lustfully his lips.

"Looking at you, I see that you're a stranger here," he continued.

It takes some heavy thinking and watchfulness to see that I'm a stranger here, Drake thought, this one should get the first prize for sharpness.
"Don't be insulted, but you look like an APTSE agent, who has come here to deal with the Thing that eats Teyron."

"How did you know that?" Drake lost his nerves and started looking around for possible ambush, suspicious of instigation. But from whom?

"The sunglasses, the shorts and the gaily colored shirt give you some of the outlook of a tourist, who had gone astray in hyperspace and stayed there for some centuries before coming out of it, but the trouble is that you've not removed the tag of the straw hat."

Drake removed his hat and read: "Tourist camouflage (head size: C-6), reserved for APTSE agents". Someone had added by hand "brain size: C-0.3".

"Maybe you should introduce yourself too," Drake replied angrily, "because there're no tags upon you and with my brain size C-0.3, I'm far from guessing everything."

"Nice to meet you. Lucash."

"Lucash? That sounds familiar. Do you have something in common with-"

"Lucas. Yes, my grandfather Peter Lucas made the minus twentieth episode of "Star Wars". And by doing that, he ruined his life. The native people of the asteroid Dairadan sued the movie company for racism. It caused a great outcry, bigger even than the scandal about the capillary sex that the then president had made with some alien whore. You'll probably ask why Lucash and not Lucas."

"Actually-"

"Well, it's simply because when my father found out that the woman he had accidentally slept with had pierced a hole in his condom right before they did it he gave her a hard beating and knocked out her two front teeth. Nevertheless, my mother (devoted movie fan) was extremely happy to be pregnant by Lucas. But when she was naming me in the maternity ward, her toothless mouth lisped out Lucash with 'sh' instead of 's'."

"That's very interesting," Drake wearily answered, "but I have a job to do and-"

"I can help you."

"Help me?" Drake couldn't hold back his sarcasm. "I don't need a guide on the matters of the offbeat sex."

"I can bring It to you," Lucash continued. "It's chasing me. I'm sure about that. Everywhere I go the Thing is breathing down my neck. Here, yesterday I returned from sex-safari in the neighborhood of Morn and bang, bang, there is no Morn anymore."

"But how come that there still is Lucash, who knock-knock knocks in the sexclubs?"

For the first time, the fatty showed a sullen face.

"I think It wants me alive. As if It wishes to tell me something."

"Then why isn't It telling it to you?" Drake attacked him.

"Because It can't speak, my dear C-0.3!"

Drake thought about this new problem.

"Maybe It could type?"

"I doubt it. You see, when It touches the keyboard it would be absorbed in It."

"Yes," Drake talked to himself, "and the black cloud will continue to be just as black and obscure as the very space it comes from. Only It will get fatter by a keyboard. Then by some house or two, some mountain, planet, star..."

Drake shook his head as if to drive off the dark thoughts that threateningly took on the road to the Void. That had to be stopped. Even with the price of some abstinence in the morning. Only if it was necessary, of course. And Lucash could be used as bait, thought the agent. The Thing's attraction to him had to be used. But how? First of all, he had to understand the nature of this attraction. If only It could speak.

"I just couldn't see what you'll gain by helping me."

"Only you can save me from this scourge," Lucash answered. "It wouldn't leave me alone, It bothers me. I'm not sure if I won't wake up one day somewhere in the belly of the cloud. Even my libido is diminishing with worry."

"Wow, you're even bigger scourge than the Thing," Drake inserted.

Lucash let it go without a comment.

"I guess, there's no need to hang here any more," Drake said, after finishing off his drink.

"As your guide, let me show you the city's landmarks. I can take you to wonderful places. You won't long for a human female for years. And there're two main events that will take place tonight. One is the opera concert of the universe-famous Kalinda, which, in my opinion, we can easily miss. While the other thing that awaits us is the boxing match-up between..."

"We're going to the concert!" Drake said curtly, because a terrific idea suddenly dawned on him.

Exhilarated and enthusiastic, he stepped over the threshold, stumbled over the drunkard sleeping there but kept his balance and strode vigorously down the street.

"Drake," Lucash called out.

"Yes?" the agent turned around.

"Get rid of the tag, please. You're making me blush when I'm with you."


Part 2 - http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2078118-Drake---part-2