Bikini Planet Read online

  With any other male, she’d have assumed that was because he was saving her for something. Or only one thing.

  There was another exception: the boss. He was obviously far too old to be interested in sex. Even when Kiru was naked, he hadn’t recognised she was female.

  She hated to think of old people being naked. Even worse was two naked old people. That was disgusting. Sex should be forbidden for anyone older than, say, twenty-five. There ought to be a law. Although not here, she supposed. Arazon was a planet of criminals, a world beyond the law.

  Grawl was the first man Kiru had ever known who didn’t want her for her body, which was wonderful.

  Aqa, however, did want her for her body, which was even more wonderful.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Judging by the size of her cabin, Diana must have been the captain. It was a stateroom, a complete luxury suite with facilities Wayne Norton had never imagined. There was no need for a gravity switch when she wanted to lie down. Her bed was three times the size of Norton’s cabin.

  “You’ll be safe here,” she said, as she treated his finger. “Or safer.”

  “Why wasn’t I here from the beginning?”

  “Strategic reasons, John.”

  “Why are you calling me ‘John’?”

  “Because I know your name isn’t Julius.”

  “Shouldn’t you call me ‘Sergeant’?”

  “Like when you called me ‘Major’?”

  “Yeah. And do I call you… er… ‘sir’?”

  “Call me what you want.”

  “Can I call you ‘Diana’?”

  “That’s the name I told you. Would you prefer me to have another?”

  Norton shrugged.

  “You’re not John Wayne,” said Diana.

  “I am.”

  “And you’re not Julius Winston. In our line of work, names and identities are the fastest things to change. Even faster than biofixing a finger.”

  The tip of Norton’s finger was still missing, but there was no sign of any injury. His index finger now had no nail and was half an inch shorter than before.

  “It’s as if it was always like that,” he said in amazement.

  “It’ll grow back. Unless you start shooting again.”

  “But how did I shoot? And what did I shoot? Is there an ammo clip in my wrist?”

  “You shot because you needed to. An instinctive reaction. The DDD seems to have worked well, even if it wasn’t non-lethal.”

  “Why shouldn’t it have worked?”

  “Experimental gadgets sometimes go wrong.”

  “Experimental?” Norton stared at his hand. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “Life is dangerous.”

  “Yeah, but why make it more dangerous?”

  “What’s life without risk?”

  “Longer.”

  “Hasn’t yours been long enough?”

  Norton glanced at Diana and saw she was smiling.

  “You want a coffee?” she asked.

  He hadn’t had a cup of coffee for three hundred years, and he wondered if this was a trick question.

  “You told me I couldn’t have one,” he said. “And you even reminded me I couldn’t have one.”

  “That was when you were a passenger,” said Diana. “That was when you were alive.”

  “Which means…?”

  “The Sham wanted you dead, so let’s pretend you’re dead. There’s a corpse in your cabin, so it could be you.”

  “But it’s an alien corpse. It doesn’t look human.”

  Norton tried to remember how it did look, but without much success. That must have been another disguise technique of the Sham’s: it was a hideous creature which could make itself anonymous.

  “Who cares?” said Diana. “It’s dead. It’s in a passenger cabin. It’s your cabin, so you’re dead. And if you’re dead, you’re safe. Safer.”

  “Safer?” asked Norton, noticing it was the second time she’d used the word.

  “They know you’re on board.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “The ones who sent the Sham, the ones who want to kill you.”

  “Why do they want to kill me?”

  “Because you’re on a secret mission.”

  “How can it be secret if they know?”

  “Do you know what your mission is?”

  “No.”

  “Which means it’s secret.”

  “It shouldn’t be a secret to me.”

  “It should. Because when you’re tortured, you can’t tell them what your mission is.”

  “Tortured?”

  “Don’t worry. It seems they only want to kill you. But it could be worse.”

  “How?”

  “It could be me they wanted to kill,” said Diana. “Now, about this coffee?”

  “You’re ordering it from a steward?”

  “I am a steward.”

  “But you’re really the ship’s security officer, aren’t you?”

  “No, John, I really am a steward.”

  “That isn’t your cover, a stewardess?”

  “What’s a ‘stewardess’?”

  “A girl, a female steward.”

  “In your era, they had different words for a woman and a man doing the same job?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “So a female doctor was called a doctoress, a pilot was a pilotess, and I’d have been a copess?”

  “No, girls were policewomen.”

  “Not policegirls?”

  “No.”

  “Or policesses?”

  “No.” Norton shook his head.

  “As I said, call me what you want. I’m a steward, I’m a stewardess, and that’s my job on board. Unlike you, I have to work during the voyage. I’ll fix the coffee.”

  Diana reached into what seemed to be a solid wall and pulled out an oval box. A hatch slid back, and she took out two cups without handles. She tilted the box over the first cup and a measure of brown crumbs poured into it. Norton moved closer so he could watch.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Coffee granules.”

  He took one of the cups, examining the contents.

  “Freeze dried,” said Diana. “Like you.”

  Norton crushed some of the granules between his fingers and they turned to dust. He sniffed the powder, then licked it. It was instant coffee.

  Diana pressed the cup into a recess and it filled with water. Cold water. She handed it to him. He was about to ask for boiling water when he saw the surface begin to ripple and steam to rise above the rim. The coffee was hot, the cup remained cold. It was instantaneous coffee.

  “Lightener?” asked Diana. “Sweetener?”

  Norton shook his head. Black, no sugar, that was the way he’d taken his coffee three centuries ago.

  So much had happened to him since then, so much that was strange, very, very strange. But Norton had accepted it all, let it happen, because what else could he have done?

  Sitting and drinking coffee with Diana was the most normal thing that had happened since his resurrection, and yet he felt very distant and removed from what was going on.

  “Are you listening?” said Diana.

  “Yeah.”

  “What did I say?”

  “When?”

  Diana took the medpak, found what she wanted, and stepped toward Norton.

  “Open wide,” she said.

  “No,” he muttered through gritted teeth.

  “Not your mouth,” she said, grabbing at his knees and pulling his legs apart, then slapping her right hand down on the top of his left thigh.

  “Ah!” he yelled.

  Diana removed her hand from his leg and slid something from her hand. “Didn’t feel a thing, did you?”

  “What was it?”

  “You’re in shock. It’s not every day you get attacked by an alien assassin.” Diana sipped her coffee. “But maybe you should get used to the idea.”

  “What?”


  “Next time, I’ll be there faster. I hope.”

  “So do I,” said Norton. “Next time?”

  “From now on, I won’t let you out of my sight. I had some doubts about you at first, John, but I was very impressed with how you dealt with the Sham. I was delayed, some stupid passenger asking me to…” Diana paused. “Might have been a deliberate tactic. I’ll have to check it out.”

  Norton had been sitting up, but now he felt himself sink against the back of the chair. As he did, the seat wrapped itself snugly around him.

  “You’re here to keep an eye on me?” he said.

  “Yes. We have to protect our investment. A flight across space is very expensive, and we could only afford to pay for one ticket. That’s why I’m a steward; I’m working my passage.”

  It was true what Norton had been told when he first joined the police, that no one saw the person inside the uniform. He must have seen Diana on numerous occasions while he’d been on the ship, but he hadn’t recognised her. All he noticed was the uniform, that she was a steward. Or stewardess.

  Her outfit was very different from the one she’d worn the first time they had met, but that was no excuse for not recognising her.

  She was dressed in a loose hip-length tunic, gold in colour and studded with rhinestones. Her tight silver pants stopped at the knee, and she wore a pair of white slippers, which were also decorated with ersatz gems. Or the jewels could have been genuine. By now, for all Norton knew, diamonds were no longer expensive. There must have been planets where emeralds and rubies were as common as dust in Nevada. On her head was a glittery pillbox hat, shimmering with strata of silver and gold.

  Until it revealed its true identity, the Sham had worn a similar uniform, which must have been as illusory as the creature itself.

  “And the Sham was masquerading as a steward?” said Norton.

  “No,” said Diana. “He, or it, was working as a steward. I thought his name was Heart-of-Peace and he was from Luna. Instead, he was a low-budget assassin. Which means we’re minus one steward.” She sipped her coffee and looked at Norton. “Or maybe not.”

  It made sense, he supposed. If the Sham, pretending to be a steward, had really killed Wayne Norton, pretending to be Julius Winston, then the Sham would still be alive, still pretending to be a steward. And so Norton became a steward called Heart-of-Peace.

  This meant he had a far better choice of food than the passengers—because he and Diana chose whatever they wanted. Although everything was automated, there were still buttons to press, controls to turn, dials to operate. He didn’t know what any of them did, but she made him learn.

  “I’m a cop,” he said, “why do I need to do this?”

  “Because,” she told him, “like most creatures in the universe, you need to eat to live. If you don’t know how to flasheat food, you’ll starve to death.”

  “You’d let me?”

  “Yes.”

  He believed her.

  At first, he was worried his steward’s job would entail housework on a galactic scale: cooking, cleaning, dusting, polishing, ironing, washing dishes, doing laundry, making beds. The list of chores was endless. He could never do anything like that. Firstly, it was all women’s work, which meant: secondly, he didn’t know how.

  But a steward was more like a waiter in a restaurant. He dealt with the customers, while everything else happened out of sight. A waiter would bring the menu, take the orders, deliver the meal, but he didn’t prepare the food or clear up the mess later.

  As he already knew, passengers in his class had to serve their own meals, but the stewards had to make sure all the dispensers were fully stacked. As for doing the dishes, once they were collected and racked, that was also taken care of.

  Norton soon came to hate the passengers. They did nothing but moan and complain and ask for the impossible, and even when it was possible he soon learned to be evasive. He could have done his work far more efficiently without passengers interrupting his routine.

  At least he was no longer bored.

  He was also back in uniform.

  “I wish we didn’t have to wear such stupid clothes,” he said.

  “What’s wrong with them?” asked Diana.

  “They’re not so bad on a girl,” he told her, which was true. The outfit suited Diana, and he was even getting used to her weird hairstyle. “But a man shouldn’t have to wear this kind of thing.”

  “Why not?”

  Norton looked down at his golden tunic, his knee-length silver pants, his jewel-encrusted slippers, and tried to think of an answer Diana would understand.

  After going off shift, as now, they would return to her suite. These weren’t the usual quarters for a ship’s steward, which were no improvement on Norton’s cabin. While exploring the ship, Diana had chanced upon a vacant first-class stateroom. It was going to waste and so she commandeered it.

  “When we first met,” Norton said, “you were wearing a long dress.” Or what passed as a dress. “A man wouldn’t have worn that, would he?”

  “Only if it was part of a uniform,” said Diana.

  “But that wasn’t your police uniform, was it? Is there a police uniform?” He paused, then added, “Back on Earth?”

  Back on Earth. Such a casual phrase, almost like “down the road” or “on the next block.”

  “Yes,” said Diana. “Of a sort.”

  “Good. A police officer should have a uniform. People respect a uniform. It gives authority.”

  “Like being a steward, you mean?” Diana smiled.

  So did Norton. “Is there a GalactiCop uniform?”

  “I doubt it. How can a galactic force have a uniform? Nothing can be uniform if has to be worn by officers from a thousand different planets. Cops come in different sizes, different shapes, like the planets they’re from.”

  “Planets come in different shapes?”

  “You know what I mean. What looks right on one alien race would look ridiculous on another.”

  “Each planet could have its own uniform.”

  “On many worlds, John, there’s very little respect for law and order. If they’re recognised as police officers, they’ll be killed. Wearing a uniform would make them an immediate target.”

  “Is that GalactiCop’s function, to bring law and justice to the galaxy?”

  “Definitely. Yes. Absolutely. Yes.”

  He didn’t believe her.

  “As you mentioned,” Diana said, “the day we met I was wearing a dress. You know what it’s like.”

  “To wear a dress? No, I don’t.”

  “Might suit you,” said Diana, tilting her head to one side and looking him up and down.

  “What?”

  “You have to wear all kinds of disguises when you do undercover work.”

  It seemed that a steward’s uniform was nothing compared to the clothing indignities he might have to suffer.

  “As I started to say,” Diana continued, “you know what it’s like, how seeing a cop makes most people uneasy. Not that we care about that, of course, but in many situations it’s better if everyone is relaxed and off guard. Which is why I wasn’t in uniform that day.”

  “I thought you were a waitress,” said Norton. “And now you are.” He smiled.

  “I thought you were a convict,” said Diana. “So be careful.” She also smiled.

  It was Norton’s relatively normal clothes which had made Diana believe he was from the wrong side of the law, but he asked, “Why would a convict be at an exclusive restaurant with Colonel Travis?”

  “For a meal, of course. A last meal.”

  “Taken to a restaurant before execution?”

  “Before transportation,” said Diana. “We don’t kill convicted criminals. We’re far too humane and civilised for that. Those found guilty of serious crimes are deported to Arazon, the penal planet. It’s the perfect prison. There’s no release, no escape. We don’t kill criminals. We let them kill each other.”

  “You thought
Colonel Travis was taking me for a meal before deportation? Is that normal procedure?”

  “It could have been a special occasion, like he was saying farewell to an old friend. If there were no criminals, there would be no police. It’s inevitable that our professional paths intersect, which often leads to friendship. It must have happened in your era.”

  “No. Never.”

  “Really? There was still capital punishment in your era. If you knew someone with a different perspective on criminal matters, instead of letting them dine, you let them die. How primitive and barbaric your world must have been, John.”

  “No, it wasn’t. And you’re the one who was talking about instant execution to save on paperwork.”

  “But you’re the one who did it, John. You eliminated the Sham.” She pointed her forefinger and closed one eye as if aiming.

  “That was self-defence.”

  “The ultimate self-defence.”

  Norton examined his right index finger. Half the missing fingertip had already grown back.

  He used to imagine himself as a hatchet-man for the mob. It had seemed a very glamorous way of life. A way of life, a way of death. But what kind of person would take up such a career? Maybe it was through living so long that he’d come to realise life was precious. Killing people wasn’t very nice. His own life was important, and so was everyone else’s. Although not as precious and important as his own, of course.

  “I want to talk about this,” he said, showing Diana his finger.

  “Tomorrow,” she said, yawning.

  The days had passed by, followed presumably by the nights. Day and night, light and dark, happened back on Earth. On board ship, there were no such things.

  Twenty-four hours was the time in which Norton’s native planet spun upon its axis. Everything else had become metric (which he was sure he would never get used to), but hours and minutes remained unchanged.

  He may have been bored, but as an undercover passenger Wayne Norton had a very easy job. That wasn’t the case for Major Diana Travis, undercover crewperson. One passenger, more or less, was of no consequence; but the crew were important to keep the ship operating. With the other shift steward dead, Diana needed assistance.