Clam Before the Storm

The Clam Before the Storm
By
Gary L. Quay

         The first thing I noticed was the waitress’s legs--all four of them. Perfectly shaped human like legs, they blazed pink, but were slightly oranged by the sun over Rigel Four (known as PPPPHRRAAAK by the locals). Two legs faced forward and two backward, and they joined into a set of tremendous hips that were ineffectively hidden by a white apron and mini skirt. The benefit of this anatomical quirk seemed to be that when she got tired she could lean against herself.
         “What can I getcha, sailor?” She snapped her bubblegum and gave me a toothy smile. I flinched, but managed not to cry out. She, like all PPPPHRRAAAKians, was armed with three rows of razor sharp teeth and a hollow, hard tipped tongue that could reputedly extend four feet from her face and peck through the armor of the Rigellian tree beetle--an insect the size of a Basset Hound. Her physique could have won her the Ms. Universe title on Earth, and having seen the meek, diminutive stature of the local males, I suspected that “Yes dear” was a survival trait.
         “I don’t know,” I told her truthfully. “What’s good?”
         “Everything, of course,” she said while my pocket translator fed the words into my ear. She shifted her weight onto her rear legs and cocked her shoulders.
         I had just arrived that morning on a photography tour of the Demilitarized Sector for ‘Universal Geographic’ magazine. I needed a break from war coverage, and the assignment had come just when the Phallakians started a major push into Terran space. U.G. had told me to get a feel for the locals by trying the food, and to use this knowledge to find an angle for photographing their world. Soon after my transport landed on Rigel Four, I began to wonder whom at the magazine I had pissed off. Once inside the restaurant suggested to me in the info packet, I understood plainly that I had indeed offended the food critic.
         The restaurant reminded me of a Terran seaside greasy spoon gone gonzo. The decor was done in mostly seaweed and shells with the occasional dead mammal ensconced on a plaque without the aid of fine taxidermy. They seemed to be displayed in the exact position in which they had died. The deep mucus greens and bottom-feeder browns of the walls and tablecloths did little to liven the joint up.
         “We have stir fried Cabroon, she said. “It’s served in a light squid ink sauce and served over a bed of maggots.”
         My stomach churned. “Cabroon.... From Alfirk Three?”
         “Um hummm,” she shook a stray lock from in front of her eyes. Her hair, it should be noted, would have looked great on Bob Marley had he been born a sea monster.
         “They’re sentient beings!” I let the menu slide from my hands for effect.
         “I can ask the cook,” she said, “but I don’t think so. Besides, they’re already dead. What would it hurt?” Alarmingly, she laid a reassuring hand on my shoulder and smiled wide. Her teeth glinted in the light from the window. My heart pounded. A bead of sweat ran down my nose. I dabbed it off with a napkin. I may have been put at ease had she not looked like a nightmare and smelled like a trout.
         “N-no thanks,” I told her. “How about a salad?”
         “The seafood salad is good,” she said.
I looked out at the green waves that crashed upon the shore next to the restaurant. I knew that humans had eaten from those waters and lived to tell about it. “Sure.”
         “Great!” She scribbled on her notepad. “How about some soup?”
         “What do you have?”
         “Well,” she snapped her gum again, “we have ‘Scream of Mushroom’....”
         I checked my translator batteries. Still good. “Did you say ‘Scream of Mushroom’?”
         “Yep!” she said--bubbly in much the same way as a geyser is a tad frothy. “These mushrooms have a tiny diaphragm in them. Nobody knows why, but when they’re heated for about five minutes they expel a pleasant smelling gas, and the sound they make is like screaming.”
         As if to make her point, a waitress delivered to a nearby table four steaming, lightly screaming bowls.
         “I’ll pass,” I said. “Anything else?”
         “We have the ‘Clam Before the Storm’.” She smiled at me again. I managed to not cower this time.
         After a moment of amused revulsion, I repeated the name “Clam Before the Storm”-–my inflection rising like the transport off this rock that I wished to be on.
         “It’s a house specialty,” she said. “Terra isn’t the only planet with clams, you know. We have clams to make you salivate... Among other things.” She snapped her gum and gave me a wicked grin chock full of gleaming daggers.
         I waited for her to explain.
         Unfortunately, she did.
         “The ‘Clam Before the Storm’ is made of only the strongest, most virile clams,” she said. “When a storm comes to the beaches, all of the clams hide under the sand. We take the clams that wait the longest before digging in.”
         “Virile,” I repeated. It was not a word I’d ever associated with clams.
         She winked. My skin crawled. I felt suddenly very afraid. “They make a man more potent and are said to have aphrodisiac properties.” She breathed the words at me in a dangerously seductive way. Seduction was not inherently dangerous. I had been picked up in restaurants before, but never bodily.
         “And,” she continued, “they give a man the appetite to take chances.”
         There was a savage, yet playful look in her eyes.
         But, she was, after all, a different species, and probably considered me as odd looking as I thought her. I also had never had anything with “aphrodisiac properties” effect me in the slightest. Ever. So, disastrously, I soon told myself that I was being overly cautious.
         “So,” she put her pen to her pad, “ya want some soup?”
         “Sure,” I said, “I’ll have the ‘Clam’.”
“One ‘Clam Before the Storm’,” she scribbled it onto her pad. “But don’t get any ideas.” She gave me a playful poke to my shoulder and almost knocked me out of my seat. “‘Kay,” she snapped her gum. “What else?”
         I scanned the menu. Having no better idea of what to order, I closed my eyes and brought my finger down onto the page. I opened them, and showed the waitress.
         “Very good,” she said. “If you need anything else, just ask for HUH HUH HOOORAGH, and I’ll be here in a flash.”
         I thanked her. She hurried back to the kitchen. I hoped I had not ordered something too slimy (or deadly).
         I switched functions on my translator and looked up her name. It read, “Becky.”
         Left to myself, I looked around the restaurant. Most of the patrons were locals. A few humans sat in the corner and one snail like life form known as a Squeesh dripped slime on the floor two tables down. Its eyestalks seemed to be pointed straight at me. I looked away.
         When I peeked out of the corner of my eye a little later, it was still looking my way.
         A note for all of you who think I’m being speciesist by referring to the Squeesh as “it.” The first among you with the courage to determine its sex may do so with my blessing. Take with you a pair of tongs and a magnifying glass.
         Back to my story.
         The soup and salad arrived in the taloned grasp of my waitress. She set it on the table. “There ya go, sailor,” she said.
         I thanked her and looked around for a spoon. I found none. “Uh,” I stammered, not wanting to be rude, “I don’t see....”
         “Oh,” she cut me off, “I almost forgot.” She stuck a straw into my bowl and headed back to the kitchen.
         I thought about tree beetles, and then started in on the soup.
         Soon, however, I noticed that the Squeesh had slid from its chair / bucket-thing it had been sitting on / in and was inching decidedly in my direction.
         Five minutes later, I had finished my soup and the Squeesh was two feet closer. A male PPPPHRAAAKian with an apron came out and mopped up the trail of ooze.
         My waitress appeared again. “Here ya go, sailor,” she said and set a plate before me. “If ya need anything, just holler.”
         I had traveled half of the distance to the galactic core, had come to an exotic planet filled with exotic people and things and had somehow ordered a hamburger and fries.
         "Oh,” she said, reaching into her apron, “I almost forgot.” She pulled out a bottle of Heinz Ketchup and set it on my table. She probably thought I was a typical human.
         As I watched her walk away I discovered with a twinge of fear that the soup had indeed affected me. I pictured her naked in my mind, and actually found her somewhat attractive in a she-might-eat-me sort of way. She did have an incredible bust line. Okay, and nice legs. There were too many of them, but they were nice. Watching the bottom half of her depart was like watching her approach, but in reverse.
         The Squeesh had inched closer. Having to find some way to take my attention away from it I started in on my meal. The burger smelled familiar. It had pickles and lettuce, slabs of onion and tomato, mayo and a sesame seed bun. I took a bite. It wasn’t bad. The texture wasn’t quite right though. It was kind of squirmy and gritty. I hiccupped and a tiny tentacle fell onto my plate. They had made the burger out of ground up sea thingies or whatevers. I couldn’t identify them. My stomach rebelled, but I forced myself to eat it, and in the end it wasn’t that bad. In my line of work, with all the extraterrestrial assignments, I’d starve if I couldn’t eat the local cuisine.
         By the time I finished, the Squeesh had made it to my table. I set my translator and said, “May I help you?”
         The guy with the mop returned to swab up the rest of the slime trail.
         The snail emitted a low, flatulent sound that rose and fell in frequency and pitch. My translator crackled to life.
         “I am soooo hungry,” it said.
         I looked over to its table. It was covered with empty plates and bowls. I inspected my translator’s batteries again, but, as I suspected, they were still good.
         “Pardon?” I asked it.
         “I am soooo hungry,” it said again.
         I offered it my fries. It sucked in his eyestalks and disappeared into his shell. This seemed to be a strange reaction until I remembered that fries are salted. I had just threatened the poor thing’s life.
         “Sorry,” I called into the shell. “I have nothing worthy of a snail.” I supposed I owed it a bit of flattery.
         The eyestalks shot back out. “But the sky is green,” it said quietly, and emerged from the shell.
         I felt like I had stepped into a Dali painting. Having no better response, I said, “And the sea is blue.”
         It slimed up onto the chair opposite me. “Greetings, comrade,” it said in a low voice. “I had worried that you were not who I thought you were until you spoke the code.”
         Uh-oh. It was a Phallakian spy! I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised. After all, this was a neutral planet, and the Squeesh were known as a race of slimy bastards could make their home just about anywhere.
         “The war effort is going splendidly,” it said, “thanks to traitors like yourself.”
         “Glad to help,” I said, ignoring the insult. I was nervous, but my curiosity was piqued. I wanted to know what this gender-neutral expletive-inserted-here was up to. I had also noticed that the effect of the soup had grown, but I had a snail in front of me, and it smelled like my basement, so it wasn’t as hard to ignore.
         “You will be rewarded,” the snail said. “You will drop the plans for the Guardian Interstellar Outpost into locker 503 at the Space Terminal. Your money will be in 504.”
         It regurgitated a key to me. I wrapped a napkin around my hand and retrieved it from across the table. I knew I was being dishonest, but I felt that it was okay to fool the enemy. If I picked up a few bucks in the process, it was a bonus. I had spent years as a struggling photographer without a steady job, pension or health insurance. I needed all the “reward” I could get.
         My waitress arrived again, whereupon the snail slid from the chair and started across the floor.
         “Remember,” the Squeesh said, “We will be watching you.”
         “A friend of yours?” She asked.
         I gave her a tortured look.
         “My shift is over.” She put her hand on her hips. “You look like you could use a friend, sailor. This can be a lonely town if you’re a stranger.”
         The soup had been a set up! I looked her over again. Apart from the spiked teeth, rippling muscles, seaweed hair, extra legs, and claws like scimitars she wasn’t half bad looking for a sea monster. I dabbed more sweat from my forehead.
         “I do need a friend,” I told her. Admittedly, I had ulterior motives after my conversation with the spy.
         She smiled wide and toothy. My stomach churned.
         “But first,” I said, “I need to pick up something at the Space Terminal.”
         She drove while I scribbled onto a piece of paper the floor plans for a plastic model space station that I had built as a child. I had a hard time because that seat was not really made for me, and the motion of the car jostled me from side to side. I hit my head on the door more than once, but I managed to finish before we reached our destination. I then removed the contents from my briefcase and put them into a paper bag. Then I slipped in the plans and locked it.
         I described to Becky what had happened with the snail in the restaurant, and she seemed amiable for half the take.
         “If it’s a setup by the TFIA, these plans…” I patted my briefcase, “are fakes.”
         We arrived at the Space Terminal a few minutes later. I tried to look nonchalant, but she swaggered through the crowd of screaming children, Hare Krishnas, porters and passengers with all the grace of a Pro Wrestler. We made it to the lockers. I opened 503 and placed my briefcase inside and locked it, and then I unlocked 504 and removed another case. It was heavy. I decided that either it was a lot of money or a bomb. The Phallakians were as untrustworthy as they were vicious.
         My nerves stood on end. My hair did likewise. Somehow, however, Becky’s presence calmed me. She clearly knew how to handle herself in a crowd and seemed unconcerned by the implications of what we were doing. We left the terminal and drove away. I held the case on my lap, half expecting to be blown to bits any second.
         “Aren’t you going to open it?” She asked.
“In a minute,” I said.
         A few miles from the terminal, a desolate looking road led off toward the ocean. “Turn here,” I told her. “I want to check something.”
She obliged, and when the car reached 50KPH (as near as I could tell) I tossed the case out the window. It rolled end over end a few times then burst open against a tree.
         The car screeched to a halt. When I peeled myself from the windshield, she asked, “What’d ya do that for?”
         “Checking for bombs,” I said. “Go back.”
         We retrieved the briefcase and the few bills that scattered in the light sea breeze. We counted 100,000 Galactic Credits in all. A fine reward.
         Before we reached her car, however, a hovercraft hummed to a stop just behind it. Two large, bald men wearing black suits and sunglasses stepped out. One of them had my briefcase. I recognized them as beings from the Phallakian home world.
         They came up close to us. Becky put a protective arm around me. Caught between two horrors I was glad that one of them was on my side.
         “These plans are fakes,” the uglier one said. His partner pulled a blaster and pointed it at me.
         I was about to say something that I hoped would be brave when Becky said, “They’re the ones you’re getting, buster.”
         “Listen, lady,” the spy took on a gentler tone, “we got nothing against you. It’s him we want.”
         Both men seemed suddenly nervous.
         I looked around, and found that there was no decent shelter nearby. I had nowhere to run.
         The spies turned their attention to me. I raised the briefcase to hand it back to them. I hoped that they would take it and leave.
         But, Becky pushed my arm back down. I heard her gum snap. Suddenly, both Phallakians were on the ground, and they weren’t moving. I looked over to Becky. A rivulet of blood ran down from the corner of her mouth. She spit out two cylindrical chunks of flesh and tissue, like core samples, onto the ground.

*********

         Becky’s apartment block looked like a humungous Sea Urchin. The effects of the ‘Clam Before the Storm’ burned hot inside of me while she carried me up the stairs and into her flat. As she hauled me across her living room I saw on her coffee table a book entitled “Earth Boys are Easy.” She kicked open the door to her bedroom and slipped in without hitting my head on the frame, and then set me upon her bed. She tore my clothing from me as if it were paper, then removed her own. She smiled like a predator. I heard a growling noise, almost a purr, come from her chest. She hissed and drove herself upon me and we made something akin to love until I passed out.
         And that, doctor, is how I ended up here.

The End