The House Where Serpents Dwell

Alpha Pyxidis Four has three moons at the moment. Two are recent arrivals, captured from the rubble of what might have become Alpha Five–if things had gone differently.

"Four," had been named Baba Yaga by Ivan Ivanovich, the Hecate company surveyor who first touched down on its surface. Ivan fancied himself successor to the ancient Romanoff Czars–just about as crazy as you can get and still make it to the powder room unassisted. The name was a less than fond memento to his seventeenth ex-wife.

Belukha City cuddles carelessly along a middle terrace of Baal Shamen in the Nehushtan Range. It’s the only real human habitation on the planet––the whole star sector for that matter.

It’s economy caters mainly to the somewhat libidinous interests of the Rockers––spacers mining the rare metals of the asteroid belt next door. You can get just about anything you might want in Belukha––for a price. Oh, yes. There’s always a price.

And that was the problem for the little street hooker stumbling into the plush lobby of Marlboro Memorial MedTech. Her name was Nikki Dee. She was Caucasian, a rather exotic confection in this particular stretch of space. Which was basically how she managed not to starve.

Champagne colored hair hung loose and dirty at her back. A bath had been some days ago, as had dinner.

The smeared trail of her progress was easy enough to follow. A bright crimson stream trickled down her legs, pooling on the shiny tiles at her feet.

"Oh, now what?" The Superintending Comptroller Nurse stormed out from behind the sanctity of her accounting console. "Security!" she screamed in exasperation.

An armed security officer glanced out from his post in the observation room.

"You idiot!" she stormed. "Look at this mess. How did this little street slut get in here?"

"Well, in the first place it looks like she’s hurt, Nurse Bull," the man rumbled. "And in the second place, you need to watch your mouth when you’re speaking to me...in the first place."

Nurse Bull sniffed nervously as she considered her options.

Sergeant Hadrian was a quiet bear of a man well over two meters tall, and none of that mass was flab. There was a rumor that he had even served with the Imperial Marines as a Special Weapons Master. Other stories said he had actually been to Old Earth–-even knew the Emperor. It was also pretty well known that he did not like Nurse Bull. No he did not––not at all.

Technically, Hadrian’s chief held a higher pay-grade than her boss. Irritating Hadrian might just conceivably cause some aggravation to her boss. He didn’t care much for Nurse Bull either.

Hadrian smiled grimly as he watched the little brain twitch out the percentages. A fresh batch of nurses had just shipped in from the Centauri Habitats. They were younger, cuter and their contracts would put a lot less strain on the payroll.

One of the medtechs picked that moment to walk through the lounge area. It had been a heavy day for prostate transplants and his attentions focused on the break lounge.

Barlow lived only to smoke. He was working on his third heart-lung set and a brand-new case of imported Alchiban cigarettes was collecting dust in the break-room.

Nikki had rudely passed out in a gruesome, but nonetheless colorful, pool of goo on the floor. The tech slipped in the puddle, losing his balance. He pawed the air awkwardly for a moment then effected a graceless prat fall squarely centered on the grisly mess.

Grimacing in distaste, he wiped blood-spattered hands on his violet smock. It took a moment, but eventually he noticed the source of the aggravation.

Curiosity tugged at his sensibilities as he crawled to his knees. Pulling a diacritical scanner from his belt pack, he ran the instrument over the little body.

"Well, well," he chuckled indifferently. "Don’t see this kind of thing too often...not in here, anyway. Split uterus, looks like. Some mangler with a green twig playing at abortion doctor." He shook his head, smiling to himself. "Little party whore’s going to be off the playground tonight...oh, tonight, for sure."

"Well, she can’t stay here, Doctor," Nurse Bull said flatly. "She obviously can’t pay, and I’m not going to have her sort dirtying up my wards. We are not running a charity for little street madams...certainly not here at the Marlboro."

The tech had gotten one foot flat on the floor at this point, and was looking down with good-natured indifference at the bleeding little girl.

"No, I suppose not." He nodded his head still looking dispassionately at the quickly graying face. "Word gets around on these things...bad for business."

He frowned thoughtfully. "Can’t just let her die on our floor, though. Newsies, you know.... They love that kind of stuff."

Hadrian interrupted his thinking. "Look doc, there’s some kind of humane hospice over in the Pink Zone. The Rockers talk about it...run by some kind of religious group...medical mission or something. I could run her over there and be back in half a kilosec."

"The Pink Zone?" Nurse Bull’s voice dripped poison. "Oh now, of course our good sergeant here would know all about that sort of thing now, wouldn’t he?

Hadrian frowned thoughtfully at no one in particular and casually cracked the knuckles of both his hands. The ensuing quiet was somehow not restful.

The tech shrugged. "Umm, oh sure," he said, glancing nervously at Hadrian. "It’s named after some Kristen saint or other. I remember. Well, I am sure not going to waste my time on the little hustler. He chuckled a bit morbidly. Her kind of girl...she’d never see fifteen anyway. Probably wouldn’t have wattage for the taxi-fare to get there."

The tech was standing now, impersonally considering the mess at his feet. "Well look, there’s no point in our sergeant here burning up the hospital’s time over this little party favor."

Nurse Bull had brought him a wet towel and he was smearing blood clots around on his smock. "Lets just keep this simple. She’s going to be dead in another couple of hours anyway. Nurse Bull, if you would please, just stuff her in a body bag. I think we still have some of those cheap silk ones out in the supply room. I doubt she’d be even eligible for Imperial citizenship but I suppose there’s always the possibility she could have an I.D. in the registry. I’ll send in a doa-cert, just to cover our tails. Then Sergeant Hadrian here can run her out to the smelters. Then we’re done with her."

"Oh." Nurse Bull snickered as she bustled off to find a body bag. "Doctor, you’re such a comedian. ‘Done!’ Oh, she’ll be done alright."

Hadrian had been standing over Nikki during all of this, glaring blankly at the wall. No one noticed when he slid the shield off his blouse and splashed it down in the puddle at his feet. Without a word, he knelt down and gently slid his arms under the little body.

"Oh no man, you should have waited," the tech said. "You’re gonna get blood all over your uniform."

"Oh well," he shrugged helplessly. "I guess if you’re in a hurry...."

The tech was speaking to Hadrian’s retreating back.

"Oh, Sergeant," the tech shouted after him. "You might want to run a force punch through her brain before you drop her in. The heat wakes them up sometimes. Screaming would be bad for business."

________________________________________

rattrap.______________

It had been nearly a thousand years since the first of the Diaspora ships coasted beyond the halo of Earth’s star. The human community had encountered a great many unexpected things out in the star field, just never any other alien life forms. Oh, there were the occasional gooey things munching on rocks and such, but no sentients––nothing you could talk basketball with.

So, life is change, and it wasn’t the newsies that watched Hadrian load Nikki Dee into the battered bubble of the municipal air taxi.

Gudrun, the eldest of Baba Yaga’s moons, still coasted just above the horizon, bathing the city in violet. Gustavus Adolphus would not rise for several hours yet.

The night was still young yet and just full of surprises.

________________________________________

Queen of Evening Mists, had been making a perfectly ordinary realignment into normal space-time when the accident happened. The giant trader neatly brushed the heliosphere of a star that should have been somewhere else.

Actually, the star was just fine where it was. It was the Navigator who should have been somewhere else. And so she was now––five hundred Qvvt brothers and sisters kept her company there in the Great Garden.

Bsst had been in the Queen’s launch bay at the time, fine tuning the inertial null drivers of her single-ship, Dawn Rider. Even so, it had been a close thing. The bulkhead had literally melted around her as she slid through the shimmering green ribbons of the dying egress curtain. If she had not come out in its shadow, her little made-over fighter craft would have vaporized along with the mother ship.

That had all been sometime ago, and the stars had looked far different from these shoals that glared above her now. She had never been in this part of space. None of the Qvvt had.

She lifted a feathery tendril, gently caressing the little love token riding over her dominant heart. A lighted cartouche flared to life in the air above the little medallion.

Bsst had signed on with the Queen for purely scientific interests.

Well, certainly there might have been a few other factors involved; she mused, watching the air fill with meaningless squiggles and dingbats. The little toy had been a gift, and a hasty one too. There had been something of a misunderstanding regarding an old lover. Tyqqh had neglected to mention the small matter of a prior commitment to a particularly possessive and highly-placed benefactor. That personage had taken some exception to Bsst’ continued presence on her same plane of existence–-very sharp things had been involved.

Such things happen.

The Queen herself would never have been out this far, except that the company had lost its more lucrative market routes. This trip was a long shot, a desperate exploratory run to simply see what there was to see out here.

She had loved it––every minute of it.

Patience was not one of the Master Gardener’s gifts to Bsst. But this one time that failing proved providential. Her little single-ship had been loaded up long before the liner reentered space. She was looking for more busy-work when the universe blew up.

Dawn Rider was primarily an in-system planet hopper, never intended for anything more than the occasional short star jump. At their best, her drivers couldn’t fold up more than fifty light years at a time.

Bsst herself was hardly in any great shape to be blazing away at new markets. She had been burned badly in the race across the launch bay to her ship. The Rider’s medidoc did what it could to salvage her life. It had then put her in stasis while it looked for a port.

She had really expected just to never wake up but the ship actually found one––a place filled with alien creatures she could not have conjured from her worst nightmares.

And you know it always seems to be that nothing in life is ever simple.

Bsst’ departure from the Queen had ignored just about every doctrine of safe piloting ever written. The niceties seemed somewhat moot at the time. The burns very nearly killed her, but that damage had been stabilized. Her body was still horribly scarred and ugly, but that might have been remedied when she got home.

Home was not going to happen for Bsst. Not this time.

Some of the foodstuff bins had ripped open. Flavored nitrate pabulums were scattered all over the deck. That was mostly a housekeeping nightmare––obnoxious, but hardly fatal.

The real problem was that the fragile radiant panels, which mimicked the light of her home stars, had not survived. The gravitational stresses of her departure had shivered them to piles of glassy splinters–pretty piles, but piles nonetheless.

The lights were not just a homely reminder of her origins. She could not metabolize foods without their complex of spectral energies. She was a very efficient creature, and it would take some time, but Bsst was starving to death. It was something she just could not fix.

"So, sometimes the gopher wins." That was something her favorite great-grand progenitor had been fond of saying.

Bsst was not precisely a plant. She was green, and inspired carbon dioxide, but on the other hand, she was warm sapped and played key hoop-guard with the Golden Pistils in the Weedeaters Slam-Ball League whenever she was in port.

At the moment she was drifting in a rising pocket of warm air high above the monstrosities she had found in this bizarre warren of caves. Their physical ugliness and appalling behavior towards each other horrified and disgusted her. She had so much more in common with the flowers in the gardens here.

The small entity she had seen go into the big crystalline cave was losing a great deal of whatever passed for sap with such creatures. It had seemed badly damaged––possibly enough to die. As homely as it was, the thing was at least female. The scents were unmistakable. Bsst guessed that it was seeking a healer skilled enough to repair such damage.

Bsst could only assume that the healing skill was not sufficient at this place. The creature had been sent away, perhaps to another healer with greater power somewhere else.

It was a long chance, she knew. All of her assumptions could be wrong. The skills might not be the same. Her petals rustled to think that creatures of such ugliness must come near her–even to touch. Nevertheless, the healing skill was a holy gift of the Master Gardener and Bsst needed a healer. In Qvvt worlds a healer was sacred to the Master Gardener. A healer healed. It did not matter who came. She could only hope that it was so here as well.

Down by the mouth of the cave, another larger creature entered into the flying transport with the little one. Its scent had a putrid edge, but there was no doubt this creature was male. Any virile Qvvt would have rendered it the sacramental courtesy of High Challenge. The larger size could mean that it was an adult. She wondered if that held true for both genders. Another female creature ran to the front of the cave waving its vines and some kind of shapeless mass of fabric. This one was larger.

Bsst rustled in horror at the realization. The small female creature was a seedling, and it had been alone when it arrived. It had been without the protection of an adult! Qvvt seedlings were never unprotected, never alone. There simply was no scent for orphan.

She had managed to break down enough atmospheric moisture to create hydrogen for her lifters. She inflated her impellers and painfully glided off into the cold night air. The transport, now carrying the seedling and her protector, flew just below her.

It headed into a less well lighted section of the warren and Bsst’ visual receptors relaxed some. It was hard to see here in these caves. The glare was too intense. Each of her compound eyes sensed in its own tight spectral packet, and most of the light here was completely wrong. She wondered what colors such creatures saw, if any. They seemed to have eyes.

She slid through the air, nearly invisible, finding shadows against the spires of the caves. The flyer made a tight approach and dropped down on a dimly lit floor. It was mercifully cooler at this altitude, and much easier to see.

The male creature carried the seedling easily, and very carefully, to the mouth of one of the caves. Bsst could not read the lines above the door, but there was a strange icon in the center. Two long creatures were twisted together around a staff.

The icon was only strange because of the way the animals were presented. She was surprised to see them here but Bsst had grown up with snakes, and numbered them with her best friends. They had kept the rodents away from her roots when she, herself, was a seedling.

Several other large creatures stepped out of the shadows as the flying transport quickly lifted off the floor of the caverns.

The creatures spread out and several moved in behind the big male and his charge. Bsst wondered if his vision could be so poor that he didn’t see them. Several carried short metal objects and they obviously meant him harm.

She lifted a few meters higher, ranging for attack. She really wanted to know where the healer was. That wasn’t entirely it, though. She herself had carried seedlings more than once and was not about to allow one to be injured in her presence––even an alien seedling.

The creature didn’t slow his pace. When one of the others moved to jab him with a sharpened piece of metal, he spun around with an outside crescent kick of one of his main roots and snapped the other creatures vine. She could hear the crunch of structural vanes even from her position across the street. Then he punched the same root backward again into the blossom of another attacker. He hadn’t even disturbed the little one unconscious in his arms.

Bsst chimed in admiration, filling the air with the scents humans would call pine and spearmint. She couldn’t have done better herself. Then he hit three other creatures that came up behind him.

Bsst knew weapons when she saw them, and the big creature definitely carried some type of power weapon lashed around his center. He hadn’t bothered to draw it, not even against so many opponents.

Despite the obnoxious scent, Bsst felt a great deal more kinship with this ugly creature.

He was walking up the steps when another creature burst through the cave entrance.

________________________________________

The tired looking woman who met Hadrian on the stairs wasted no time on formal introductions. She had a diacrit moving over Nikki Dee before he hit the top step.

"Djela!" she shouted as the doors slammed open for Hadrian. "O.R. 2. We gotta get some blood into this little tyke, stat!"

"I’m Doctor Karida." She was gesturing in the direction of a curtained off section in what looked to be an old warehouse. "And you would be her pimp, I suppose...?"

In spite of himself, Hadrian was caught off guard by that one. Actually, for where they all were, it was a sensible question. The Doctor wasn’t intending to be malicious. It was just that he hadn’t really thought any of this through. He had just dropped his badge down on the glassy floor of the clinic and picked up this dying little girl.

"No...no, Doc," he said. "I don’t even know who she is. She was on the floor at the Marlboro Center downtown. They refused to treat her...said she’s just a hooker."

"Like there’s maybe a choice she has," Karida snapped. She hesitated, noticing the insignia on his uniform. An eyebrow arched ever so slightly and she glanced up at the coffee colored face. Karida was a small woman and Hadrian towered over her but that was not something anyone else would have ever noticed. Karida’s presence was a lot bigger than she was.

Hadrian slid the little girl carefully onto the operating table. A man dressed in surgical violet ran up to them carrying an extra gown. "Ready Doctor," he said. "I’ve got a cloning protocol set up for a run as soon as we get some blood cells."

He looked over at Hadrian, not quite as disapprovingly as the doctor. "I’m Brother Djela...Kristen Order of Healing."

Hadrian nodded as politely as he could for a man drenched in blood. "Name’s Hadrian," he said.

Karida blinked and looked back over at her assistant. "Yeah, we’re going to have to generate some uterine tissue too–might be simpler just to replace the whole thing. God, what a mess. Who’d do this...she’s a little girl?"

Brother Djela didn’t even look up as he sliced through the blood soaked clothing with a low-level force shear. "Oh well, lets see now, I can think of about twenty names within a couple of sectors...not that we’re bothering to take names anymore."

Brother Djela still didn’t look up, but his voice changed to something a little less bleak. "Hadrian, we are going to be a little busy here. This is going to be close, but I think you got her here in time. Grab some coffee...carafe in the waiting room. Just follow your nose. It’s pretty bad stuff. And you might want to clean up a little before you scare someone."

Karida chuckled grimly. "If we get to running short, we can just call you. Looks like you’re wearing most of her blood."

It wasn’t a funny joke and she wasn’t laughing. Karida was tired and angry. She glanced back over at Hadrian as though he were wearing a funny party hat. Then she turned back to the OR, not bothering to switch the drape closed behind her.

Sometime later, Hadrian snapped awake as Doctor Karida dropped tiredly into the ancient wingback chair across from him. He had fallen asleep on one of the waiting-room sofas in spite of the day-old coffee. She was watching him curiously and sipping on a cup of the steaming brew.

"You know," she said. "There is a very ancient story from Old Earth about a man like you."

"Yeah, I remember," he said bitterly. "Everything he touched turned to rat crap."

"Ah no, I think that was Midas." Karida smiled bleakly. "And I think it was gold with him." She shook her head and the smile softened ever so slightly. "It’s a much different story. Brother Djela talks about it in his sermons sometimes."

Hadrian sighed. "Yeah yeah, the guy with the donkey...name of Sam or something––the man...not the donkey. I know the one you mean. He smiled bitterly, looking off into the shadows of the structural beams above them. "So, how’s the little girl?"

"It was a little close," she said. "Djela is a medical telepath, and he had to go in and catch her. He said she was just by the door."

"The door...," Hadrian said sitting up uneasily. "I suppose that means what I think it means."

"Yeah...it does." Karida nodded to no one in particular. "I don’t know if he meant an actual door. I don’t think things always translate with what he does."

Hadrian glanced carefully at Karida’s expression. So, she’s going to be all right?" he asked.

Doctor Karida fell back in the chair and closed her eyes. "Hadrian, you have to understand we don’t have much here. The equipment is mostly old and donated from salvage. There’s an engineer from one of the downtown labs that comes over here when she can. Unfortunately, she’s mortal, and she still needs parts...parts that still work."

"I take it this is bad," Hadrian said.

"Yeah well, I got the cell cloner to run up enough blood, but it blew up when we got to the hard tissues."

"Meaning...?" Hadrian cocked his head in her direction.

"Meaning that I get maybe a dozen fairly sick or beat-up people in here every day and I can’t do much more than sew them up now. I’ve got some old outdated pharmaceuticals...and...Oh, damn, damn it to Hell." Karida stopped a moment, trying to get her voice under control. "It means I can’t fix your little friend. She needs a liver, spleen, both kidneys and several meters of intestine just to start. There’s no pain, and I’ve got her stable...even walks. But, Hadrian, she’s going to die. She’s got maybe a week. It wasn’t a botched abortion. Somebody focused a forceblade to her insides. Someone wanted her to die slow."

Nikki was awake when Hadrian came to look in on her. She still needed a bath and some breakfast, but she had worn the pale blue-white shades of death when he had seen her last.

"Hi, baby," she said seductively, assessing his shoulders. "I think I’m going to like you a lot better than the last guy."

Hadrian just looked at the little moppet for a moment. He was quite intact and not exactly naive. Hookers of both sexes, and in between, plied the streets of Belukha. They worked the city tracks of every planet he had ever been on and more than a few were Nikki’s age. But other than the courtesy of a, "no thanks," he couldn’t remember ever carrying on a conversation with one––never even considered how they might think. Sex is work for a hooker, and it just wasn’t for Hadrian.

"Nikki, shut up and behave yourself." Doctor Karida did know how hookers thought. "This is a different kind of man."

Nikki glared back at Karida and tried to sit up. Instantly, she gasped and fell back on the bed.

She still glared at Karida.

Karida had folded her arms across her chest. "That will have to wait, honey...but I surely do appreciate the thought." She was grinning down at Nikki––a bit sadly. "You’re going to need all that fight."

"Uh, so do you have family somewhere?" Hadrian asked. Women in general were not Hadrian’s major field of expertise. Now then, when you got into targeting protocols for low-G tactical plasma weapons....

Nikki smirked her most seductive. "Oh sure do, honey...got lots of uncles."

Karida frowned a warning and Nikki evidently decided on discretion. Karida was momentarily spared from the icy glare-of-most–gruesome-deaths.

Nikki even tried a straight answer. "No. There’s no one, I guess. I remember my mom some. I called her that anyway. I’m pretty sure she was. She didn’t come back one night." She hesitated. "You a cop or something? I’m in the registry. Mom took care of that at least."

Hadrian shook his head. "No. I’m just a security guard for the medcenter...was anyway. They wouldn’t treat you, so I brought you over here. How old are you anyway?"

"Sixteen," Nikki said casually as she dropped her head back on the pillow.

Sixteen was the age of legal consent on Baba Yaga. Fourteen people had been assassinated to keep it up there, including the syndic exec who had set it. It was eight on most other company planets.

"Oh, I don’t think so, girl," Karida said. "I’m sure you know how to pass on the street, but I didn’t just find my medical commission in a Toasty Sweet packet."

Nikki gave them all her best saint-patiently-bearing-the-injustice-of-infidel-oppressors sigh. "Old enough...yeah, alright...okay," she said finally. She glanced over at Karida–with a just ever so slight hint of respect. "I’ll be eleven soon...real soon."

"You’ll be eleven in maybe another year," Karida said. She still had her arms crossed.

Nikki looked over at Hadrian, her forehead creased in irritated confusion. "What’s this all about anyway? Why all this...bother? You brought me all the way over here. People out there in the street would cut out your heart and roast it, when you don’t know the right signs. You don’t even know me. Why would you do that?"

"Yeah well, you kind of slept through part of this story," he said. "Its not like some of your folks out there didn’t try hard."

Djela smiled benignly and filled her in. "We have been patching up several street cousins...shattered femurs mostly, a few ribs. They got out of here fast...definitely not local colors. The skull fractures are still sleeping in the Recovery Bay. They will be having to take their chances at leaving later on." He shrugged in sympathetic indifference. "The Cousins consider the clinic a neutral sanctuary, but that ends at the bottom of the stairs."

Hadrian wrinkled almond eyes in a cold smile. That might be an interesting show. But this was not Nikki’s territory either and she knew it. No one had yet told her that leaving would never be a concern for her.

Nevertheless, she had asked him a question. He had dumped a perfectly good paycheck over this little ragamuffin. Hooker she might be of necessity, but she was still a little girl.

"I don’t know, Nikki," he said. "I can’t give you a real good answer. I just never thought of not doing it."

"Oh...!" Doctor Karida’s left hand flew up to cover her mouth. She had to bite something and her index finger was closest.

Nikki just looked at him like he had sprouted pink elephant ears and a trunk.

Hadrian made a mental note to think up something a little less lionhearted for the next time around.

#

Bsst shifted restlessly, drifting on the breezes high up in the shadow of a cave spire.

Others of the creatures below had gone into the cavern. The injured ones left on the ground had later picked themselves up and gone in as well. She could not be sure about all of them but several had come back out, and those appeared to have been repaired.

The little seedling and her protector had not come out but the seedling seemed more severely damaged than those others. It was a very long stretch of the data but she felt that could indicate that the healer here was adequately skilled.

Bsst had little choice. Without help, she would shortly fall into coma. Death was certain then and would follow very shortly.

There was very little she could do now but take a chance. Death comes to all at the appointed time and if she died here among these monsters then it was the Gardener’s will.

She slid down the light breeze to the top of the steps and watched as the entrance slid open. As tired as she was the engineer in her still wondered what detector fields the portal used. Infra-red perhaps–her temperature was only slightly above that of the creatures here.

At any rate, her root pads settled lightly to the floor of the cave. The entrance lighting radiated at a mercifully low level. The spectrum extended some even into the far infrared where her basal compound receptors saw best.

Then she met her first monster, blossom to blossom. The creature had stopped stock still.

She knew she wasn’t being fair about any of this. The thing might be very civilized and ethical by its own standards–-possibly even her own. But right at the moment Bsst herself was absolutely terrified. She could smell the rancid scents of fear from her own body.

The thing was male but not the seedlings protector. The stench of the creature saturated the air in this closed space. That was going to take some getting used to.

She had learned only a few concepts in their sonic communication system. The thought of communicating in belches and bleats seemed crude to her, but it was not an unknown. Biologists had found other low order creatures who modulated gases to communicate. Normally the Qvvt conversed in scent and light wave forms, but they could make a fair number of sounds using their gas impeller system. She was no linguist, but the ship had thought she would be understandable enough to at least get a dialogue started. She was about to find out whether or not she had it right.

________________________________________

Hadrian had just picked himself out of a chair when he saw Brother Djela stop at the entrance doors and stand stock still.

He was obviously surprised about something and Hadrian quickly moved over to where he could see why. The doors were sliding closed as Djela faced off with what could only be described as an animated orchid–a two meter tall animated orchid.

They had all been burning the candle at both ends for a long time and sleep deprivation can sneak up on even the most pragmatic. Nevertheless, Brother Djela had just made a fresh pot of coffee and seemed reluctant to drop it for any reason–-even a hallucination.

The orchid folded up on the floor and then the air filled with the scent of burnt sugar and lightly toasted antique gym socks.

"Hhhelllp Meee...pleeezz." The sound was a cross between Aeolian wind harp and carillon bells, but the meaning was there.

"Hey Doc!" Djela yelled.

Doctor Karida rounded the corner into the ante room. Hadrian arrived with her. Both of them came to a dead stop beside Djela.

"What...?" Karida said.

"Hhhelllp meee...pleeezz." The scent shifted slightly towards the lemon family and something sweet and musky, much harder to classify. The socks stayed.

Hadrian had pulled a force punch from its holster as soon as he had seen Brother Djela’s shoulders tighten up. Now he let it slide back.

Brother Djela knelt on the floor and set his coffee cup down beside the creature. Carefully he reached out a hand and gently smoothed one of the petals. Just as gently, the petal folded over his hand and then unfolded.

"Pleezz...hhhelllp," the voice sang.

"Brother Djela...?" Karida said.

"Un huh," he said glancing up at her. "I don’t know what it is or how it got to us, but, Doc, I do believe we are about to treat our first ever alien customer." He turned back to the petal he still held. "I do hope," he added, a little less confidently.