Toxicity (5 page)

“Ug!” said one hairy beastman,
and waved a stick at Svool. Svool paled, noting the stripped human skull
adorning the top of the stick like some grotesque totem. It still had a small
patch of scalp and hair attached, as if the face and head had been peeled like
a fruit leaving a hairy summit, then shrunken, then stuck on a pointy stick,
then waved at
him.

It did not fill Svool with confidence
and hope.

After all, he was used to more...
sophistication
than this. He was a respected academic, dammit!

He was... a Poet.

“Er, excuse me? Excuse me! Do you
know who I am? Do you realise
who
I am? Do you actually comprehend the
magnitude of your error?
I
” - he puffed out his chest, which was quite a
feat when all the blood was in his skull - “am Svoolzard Koolimax XXIV, Third
Earl of Apobos, son of Svoolzard Koolimax XXIII, grandson of the
great
Svoolzard
Koolimax XXII, and seventh in line to the Throne of Apobos. I’m practically
royalty, I am!”

“Ug.” Another wave. Another flash
of the quite terrifying shrunk-head totem.

“Oh. I assume I don’t get a phone
call, then?”

“UG!” The stick swished past his
nose.

“Ahh. I’ll be quiet then, shall
I?”

And that’s another thing,
thought Svool morbidly as he
swung by the tight twine digging through and
ruining
the fine gloss
leather of his boots and now threatening to cut off the blood supply to his
toes.
These trees. They’re not right.
As he swung around aimlessly,
observing the trees, he tried to work out what was wrong with them. What
exactly.
The colouring was nearly right, but the trunks were made from a kind of
ribbed rubber.
Like... like... like a stack of old tyres?
he thought.
Gods!
And the massive, breeze-wafted fronds and leaves, although green as Nature
had intended, seemed to be made from...

Green plastic bags.

Like supermarket bags, folded
into leaf shapes.

Is this for real?

And then the beast-man wearing
naught but a loincloth poked Svool with the sharp end of his skull stick, and
grunted, “AG AG KAK!” and Svool realised it was definitely bloody real, and he’d
been caught as easy as a chicken in a sack, a fly in a web, a sexy starlet in
his
own bed...
and now he was to be...

Well.
Well?

He eyed the fire they were
stoking in a circle of rocks, rocks that looked, to his untrained eye,
suspiciously like rectangular lumps of lead or some other heavy metal, and he
wondered uneasily exactly
why
they needed a fire. For warmth, maybe? But
it was already warm. Warm enough to make him sweat like a cooking pig.

“I say,” he said.

The hairy men and women, many of
whom, he now noticed, seemed to be wearing bones on strings around their necks
and - horror - pierced through their very flesh, continued to ignore him. As if
he was a chicken. Or a captured pig. Or throat-slit cattle hung up to bleed.

More uneasy prickles ran up and
down his spine.

Why do I feel like a chicken on a
spit?

Why do I feel like a lamb joint
in the oven?

Why do I feel like a beef carcass
in a warehouse?

Svool had an unusual relationship
with food, indeed, as with sex. With sex, he’d fuck anything that couldn’t
crawl out of his bed. And with food, he’d spear and eat anything that couldn’t
make the leap from his plate.

And here, and now, he suddenly
began to feel like food.

It was a new one on him.

A sarcastic part of his inner
psyche snarled,
Write a poem about that, you fucker.

He suppressed the urge to giggle.

Svool swung gently, and watched
the fire being built higher and higher. Then he watched as some of the
-savages? indigenous peoples?
cannibals?
- erected a kind of
spit
with
good solid sturdy timber. The spit was a little over six feet long. Svool
anticipated it would take both his length, and his weight.

“Er. Excuse me? Can you listen to
me for a moment, good peoples?”

“Ug.”

“Ag.”

“Kak.”

“Wok.”

“Snuk.”

“Snog.”

“Dek.”

“Fak.”

“I say, I say, I am a
very
famous
poet, about to become a
very
famous film star, and I do believe I have
lots of money in a ggg Galactic Account which I could access for you if you
were to escort me, for example, to the nearest cash dispenser.”

He looked on, hopefully. The
hairy bone-clad stick-waving peoples ignored him.

“I could also offer to include a
little stanza about our meeting in a future poem? A
published
poem, I
might add.”

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

“Indeed, being a leading member
of the Culture Ministry I could perhaps bring some kind of foreign aid to your
plight? Make the people in power and with money and influence aware of your
terrible afflictions, your lack of funky clothing, your horrible predilection
for rendering your own bodies with bone piercings. How’s that sound? We could
maybe supply you with razors to get rid of all that ghastly body hair.
Especially for the women; indeed, if you are women. Lots of people in corduroys
would trot along, become involved, and start getting you medical treatment and
building schools for your children. How’s about that for a slice of fried gold?”

He beamed, pleased with his
proposition.

The cannibals, for now he was
sure they
were
cannibals on account of a toddling toddler who’d just
wobbled into view sucking on a small human skull, ignored him.

Svoolzard felt his lower lip
start to emerge; a prima donna pout. What a cheek! First, his thesis
performance was interrupted. Second, the indignity of a crashing starship!
Third, Lumar, that sexiest of sexy pliant bendable mistresses, goes all weird
and strange on him, no doubt because of a savage bump to the head, he was surer
than sure, and stalked off into the jungle in a huff like they’d had some kind
of teenage lover’s tiff!
Then
he was hit from behind by some kind of
sleeping dart, and awoke to find funny little hairy people refusing to speak to
him.

It was just...
not on.

Svoolzard felt his temper flare,
aided and abetted by his cold-turkey situation from at least fifteen different
types of narcotic. One of them, SLAP, had a cold-turkey come-down period of
seven
years.
Now
that’s
what you call an addiction.

Right, he thought.
RIGHT!

“OKAY,” he suddenly bellowed,
swinging frantically as he really punched from his diaphragm, “THIS IS A BLOODY
DISGRACE AND I’M JUST NOT HAVING IT! NOT HAVING IT AT ALL! THIS IS A RIDICULOUS
SITUATION AND YOU FAIL TO UNDERSTAND THAT YOU HAVE HERE, TIED TO THIS TREE, A
BONAFIDE BLOODY
GENIUS!
I AM A POET! I AM A SWASHBUCKLER! I AM A GENIUS!
I AM REVERED THROUGHOUT THE GALAXY OF MANNA! I AM WORSHIPPED BY ALL WOMEN! I AM
WORSHIPPED BY MOST BLOODY MEN, ACTUALLY! I AM A HELL-RAISER, A DRUG-WORSHIPPER,
A LOVER AND A HIPSTER, AND YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO HOLD ME LIKE THIS! NO RIGHT TO
TIE ME TO A TREE AND SHOUT ‘UG’ AND ‘KAK’ AND WAVE YOUR POINTY STICKS AT ME,
YOU SHITTY LITTLE HAIRY HEATHEN SAVAGES! I WANT THE AMBASSADOR FOR EARTH
CONTACTING RIGHT NOW! I WANT A COMM CALL! I WANT MY RIGHTS! GET IT?”

There was a long, long pause.

In his passion at his oratory,
Svoolzard had closed his eyes, as well as drooling down his own forehead.
Passion-spittle, he called it. He knew his many lovers found it extremely sexy.

As he opened his eyes, a “shitty
little hairy heathen savage” was crouched before him, skirt of grasses parted,
long pierced penis unrolled to touch the ground. The shitty little hairy
heathen savage grinned up at Svoolzard, showing teeth filed to points and inset
with rusted twin razor blades rescued from old disposable razors.

“Yes?” said Svoolzard, hopefully.

The shitty little hairy heathen
savage held up a knife and fork, his grin getting wider at the same time as his
bulbous eyes.

“Time for supper, fancy man,” he
grinned.

~ * ~

TWO

“She’s
pretty hard.”

“Not as hard as my cock.”

Smoke swirled. Glasses clinked.
Chips clattered.

“No, really, mate, I’ve heard she’s
as tough as an iron bar.”

“Heh, I’ll give her my iron bar
up every single orifice, I can tell you. Hear her sing like a canary.”
Laughter.

“Come on, Jones; don’t talk about
the lady like that.”

“Fuck you, Zanzibar. All I’m
saying is, no matter how hard she is, my cock is harder. And bigger. And man,
would I give her a good time long time. I’d ride her like a fucking donkey. I’d
fuck her like a fucking donkey. She’s lean, and mean, and if I got my hands on
those little titties she’d be moaning and creaming in my hand before you could
squeal
‘Give it to me, Big Boy.’”

The group of squaddies laughed,
many uneasily and casting nervous glances about, and Jones threw down his cards
and cracked open another beer. It was hot, and he was bare-chested, his upper
physique criss-crossed with scars from downtown knife-fights. His dark eyes
burned with a fever as he pictured in his mind’s eye the tight hard little body
of his Squad Leader, Jenny Xi.

“Well, that’s an interesting
point of view,” came a soft voice from the shadows, and the squad - all except
Jones - jumped. “But then, there’s always one in the crew who has his brain
hard-wired to his cock. In the middle of a firefight, BAM! There he goes again,
ruining his pants.”

Jones half-turned, a sneer on his
face. “Little lady, I knew you was there all the time.”

Jenny Xi stepped forward, and
coolly lit a narrow, evil-looking cigarette. She had long auburn hair, lightly
curled, now tied back. Her face was narrow, pretty, tanned, her body tall and
lithe, powerful and athletic. She wore dark combat fatigues and a khaki shirt,
open at the neck and showing her dog-tags. Although this little unit weren’t
strictly military - or at least, not employed by Amaranth’s resident standing
army, navy or air force - they were mostly ejc-forces; all disgraced one way or
another. And somehow, they had found their way here, crawled their way into the
welcoming arms of the anti-Toxicity movement known as
Impurity.
“Good
people putting a bad world right.” That was one of the many anti-Greenstar
slogans. Anti-Company slogans.
ECO terrorist slogans...

“I wondered why you had a
hard-on,” she said, blowing out smoke.

Jones scowled. “That ain’t for
you, bitch. That’s for the killing.”

“Interesting,” muttered Jenny,
rubbing her chin, watching the group. They were all hard-nuts, with polished
guns and combat boots. Some had SMKKs, some D4 shotguns. They were a battered,
scarred, hardened bunch. She’d seen it all before. But
now
she was their
new Squad Leader and she couldn’t let the slur stand; and besides, sometimes
she just liked a fight.

Jenny moved to Jones, who refused
to turn and acknowledge her. As if, by continuing to present his broad,
heavily-muscled back, he was showing a lack of fear; as if tilting his lifted
chin and grinning was a fuck-you middle finger to authority. But there
was
no
authority. Cut the shit. They were a terrorist squad intent on bringing down
the twisted government of the Greenstar Recycling Company. Intent on restoring
their once-peaceful green and pleasant land
back
to being a green and
pleasant land. Although with every million tonnes of shit dumped in the sea,
every million tonnes of toxic sludge poured down mines drilled for this very
purpose, for every million tonnes of old tyres, smashed bottles, crap and shit
and heavy metal landfill...