A Tale of Two Gorgeknots
By: Phil Truman
Tags: Short Story, Short Fiction, Science Fiction, Humor, Fiction

This pretty young thing called and wanted to interview me about my experience with the Gorgeknots, but I had already told a bunch of journists all that stuff way back when. More than a century passed since it all happened, and I guess folks has forgot. Besides, I don’t get to talk much to anyone outside the walls of this place they stick us olders, so I says, what the heck, I’d tell it all again.

“Mr. Kirby,” she started out. “I hope we can finish this in one day. I don’t want to make the trip out here again. It’s too — “

“Think nothin’ of it, darlin’. I don’t get to sit and talk eyeball to eyeball with pretty young women anymore.

“Right. Okay, let’s get started then,” she said through a yawn.

“Why’re you so all fired interested in my incident with the Gorgeknots?” I asked.

“Um, it’s like I told you on the fibe, my editor wants to do this series on outrageous lies of the past century, and I need one more to fill the mem. I had a woman lined up who claimed she once lived in a city with a twenty-foot-high concrete wall down the middle of it which separated people called communists from capitalists, whatever those are. But she croaked before I got to her. So, I had to settle for you and your story.

“Lies?” I says. “You think my story’s a lie? How do you think I lost ever darbloomed hair on my body? And how do you s’pose I got skin to look like this? If I’m lyin’ then my name ain’t Tishamingo Kir — ”

“Mr. Kirby, if you don’t mind, let’s just stick to the facts. It’s not important what you believe. The Pressment certified your story as a lie fifty years ago. Just look into my RC’s eyes and speak distinctly, please.”

It was then I first noticed her companion. She had auburn hair and looked very striking for a Recombinant Chimp.

“This is your RC?” I asked in amazement. “She got a name?”

“Name? Well, it’s a Bernstein 3000 Deluxe, if you must know,” the young journist sighed impatiently. “I call her Bee. She’ll record everything we say, and edit it accordingly,” she added. “Now, could we…?”

The RC stared at me impassively with its big amber eyes.

“Nice to meet ya, Bee,” I said.

No response. She continued to stare at me silently with her soft eyes; the pupils rippling in and out.

“She can vid this, you say?”

“Yes, and convert realtime to virchreal, following the Pressment Code of Standards for content, of course.

“The hell you say. Meaning returning everything the Pressment thinks should be true rather than what actually is?”

“I don’t understand the difference, Mr. Kirby. There’s no other truth than Pressment truth. That’s the law. Now, please, your story. I can’t waste my entire day here.

“Hmm,” I said, choosing to ignore her rudeness. “RC’s have come a long way since my day. Wonder what old Nixon would say? Yes sir, a long ferkin’ way.”

“Could we just get on with it?”

So, I gave the little bort this here story. And certified or not, it’s the gomdagged truth.

You can say what you want about Gorgeknots, but I’m here to tell ya, they ain’t all that bad. One sure as shootin’ saved my hide, and it don’t bother me one meg about my hide becoming whiter than a ruttin’ marsh blix because of it.

We’d worked — we being me and my RC, Nixon — one of the big rocks outside the orbit of a gas ball somewhere in the Pleiades, I believe. The system’s primary was a blue giant with a companion singularity the name of which I don’t recall, but I do remember gettin’ in and out of there took some special know-how on the crew’s part. Anyways, we’d done well, and it was time to get the hell out.

Nixon and me was all that had returned on-board when this mob started coming towards the ship. In my business, you begin to sense the moods of your clientele, especially when they traveled in packs. I knew this group probably wanted some immediate customer service concerning the product I’d sold them, like maybe their money back.

As I said, the crew was still off-ship, and I weren’t no spacer, so an L.O. wasn’t my main choice of action. I figured I could calm ’em down long enough for the crew to get back. I’d done it more than once. Nixon, on the other hand, hadn’t quite forgotten our experience on Xi Tsungtsu’s Planet, and she’d dropped in the calcs, upped the juicer, and pressed the maxtil.

Well, the next thing you know, BAM. You see us spiraling off-world in a life bucket with nothing but our gum-rubbers, half a pack of Lucky Toots in one pocket, three demi-rubes in the other, and the ship’s two working Gorgeknots. I figured we was probably fewged like a cheap squeeharl. They made life buckets to give you the maximum distance from your mother vessel in the shortest time to lessen the effects of a destruct blast. It took a desperate and calculated act to get them formed up and shot out. Nixon knew what she was doing, but it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for getting out of there. In a moment of panic, Nixon had popped us out of one critical situation and dropped us smack in the middle of another. Accelerating out of control in the neighborhood of a black hole ain’t something you’d want to do, ordinarily.

“Is you goin’ to Punch out de Gorgeknots now, mon?” Nixon asked. I believe that one was her Terracarrib accent. It was a flaw in her programming. The dealer said the original owner had customized her, and I got him to knock off an extra five hundred because of it.

“What’re you talking about? They’re our only source of breathing air in this bucket. You know that. Now what’s the problem.”

“Dey ain’t preety, dey smell, and dey ate my puppy.”

Everything she said rang true enough. When the life bucket formed, it canceled the opaque force fields that filtered out most of the Gorgeknot odors, and all of their looks. One of them had accidentally eaten Nixon’s short-tail rotweasel pup the week before, and Nixon got sort of hysterical. But no one felt worser about it than the Gorgeknots.

“Garldurnit, Nixon, we’ve been through this a thousand times. It was an accident, for Jessejacks. Whyn’t ya let it lie?”

Some galley detritus floated above the secondary Gorgeknot, and it surged up to gulp it, slowly sloshin’ back into its tub like a glob of mucous.

“Cause they ate my puppy, that’s why,” she said with a look of revulsion on her simian face.

Nixon had moved into a far corner of the life bucket, as far away from the smelly Tapioca Vulgaris as the limited space would allow. For a robochimp, she exhibited excessive emotions, another offshoot of the customizing I mentioned, which enabled me to get such a good deal on her.

You see, what Gorgeknots did best was dispose of garbage: organic, inorganic, toxic, and nuclear, by ingestion. For that reason alone, they always found demand wherever humans chose to alight. We Earthians distinguished ourselves throughout the known universe for our ability to produce copious amounts of garbage and toxic waste, and Gorgeknots knew equal fame for digesting anything. So, it was only a matter of time until laws got passed that one should never go anywhere without the other.

It seemed like a natural union, except for the fact that humans have a reasonably sensitive olfactory sense, and Gorgeknots exude the smell of their digestive processes through all their known body orifices, as well as their skin… or whatever passes for Gorgeknot skin. The thing that made it work, though, was the fact that they took in all gases in the surrounding atmosphere that were bad for humans — carbon dioxide, monoxide, methane, cyanide, sulfur oxide, etc. — and gave off oxygen.

The garbage disposal part of Gorgeknots was handy, but the gas exchange attribute made it economical. It was cheaper to employ a couple of Gorgeknots than it was to build the mechanical air handling equipment for space travel. And the fact that they were peaceable and friendly critters, not to mention maintenance free, made it easier too.

The incident involving the puppy, unfortunately, happened like things do sometimes. We sat in free fall in orbit around Xi Tsungtsu’s Planet, waiting for a berth, and Nixon’s puppy was rollicking, as puppies do. He chased a rubber ball as it bounced off the cabin ceiling and followed it straight into the sleeping Gorgeknot’s ever-open mouth before either of them knew what happened. Well, like I said, nobody felt worser about it than the Gorgeknot, but you couldn’t console Nixon. She wouldn’t forgive the offending Gorgeknot, nor any of its race.

But I didn’t have time to worry about Nixon’s attitude towards the Gorgeknots. I had other things to worry about. A klaxon began blaring. As I said, we found ourselves aimed right at the event horizon of a black hole, and I didn’t have the inkling-est idea what to do about it. It didn’t look promising.

Image by deselect from Pixabay

“Yo-har man-ba throw-der-sto caan-har bay-ba mung, mung cubbed-der.”

It was never a pleasant thing when Gorgeknots tried to talk English. You couldn’t understand a damn thing they said, and their breath smelled so bad it could stop a charging snortena in heat. And you always had to ask ’em to repeat theirselves.

“Huh?” I asked.

“Yor, mung, man thrud-stohar ca-haaan, mung, booo turrrbed-ba,” the primary repeated slowly in its gravel bass.

Nixon gasped and sneezed into her hands. “Ferkin’ puke balls,” she muttered.

I wiped my eyes and tried to catch my breath. “Nixon, what’s it saying?”

“Neengle-ta roodle brrrash-bamung,” screeched the secondary.

Nixon remained rolled up in a ball, ignoring us all. I turned back to the primary Gorgeknot.

“Are you saying we can turn the engine thruster?” I gasped.

“Yosh-ba, mung. Cahn-der maaan.”

“Re-direct the main one?”

“Yoosh.”

The Gorgeknots made their jiggling gesture of affirmation, which of course looked a lot like their gesture of negation, only yellower.

I was more’n a little skeptical. Like everyone else, I figured Gorgeknots had little brains ’cause their lifes’ work was garbage disposal, and they didn’t practice what you’d normally call hygiene, nor did they dress well. But then, I thought, who’d know the workings of a ship, even a life bucket, better’n a Gorgeknot? They oozed into every part to clean it, so they must know some things.

“Okay, so how is it I turn the main thruster?” I asked as my hands paused over the small bank of cryptic lights and buttons.

“Nome-ba oddi-har dee, mung, dere.”

My sight was a watery blur, and nausea swept from my toes to my hair bun. I felt faint. The primary Gorgeknot looked at me with what I took to be an apologetic smile curving its huge green lips.

“It say you should open dee panel by dee bulkhead and shut down dee green laser. You can’t do it from dee control panel, mon.” Nixon decided to give us a hand.

“How am I supposed to do that? You got any tools on ya?”

“Meek-frooooobush,” added the secondary.

The little RC sprang from her corner, bounced across the ceiling to the bulkhead, grabbed a vent panel with both long-fingered hands and snapped it open. She studied the glowing innards for a few seconds and pushed the panel of colored buttons in a quick sequence. The silky blue-green beam inside bounced off one flat mirrored surface and onto another, and the bucket lurched sharply to starboard.

I banged noggin-smartin’ hard into the opposite wall of the hull; the Gorgeknots sloshed noticeably portward leaving greasy brown slime puddles on the deck before discreetly licking them back up. Nixon looked at me with disdain and leaped back to her corner.

“Well, shoot, Nixon,” I said. “I ain’t no gomdarged technic. I’m a drumsman.”

She peeked one amber eye up over her enfolded hairy forearms and snorted.

“Thor kraapt-har, mung,” boomed the primary. “Weeble-ba, frit, nang-ger toll.”

Image by Ulrike Mai from Pixabay

The small cabin filled with an acrid sulfuric miasma enough to kill an Ioan rumpbeast.

“Jeezle, Nixon, what’s it saying now?”

“It vas zaying vee are not out of der voods yet. Vee shtill haf to cancel a great deal of momentum. It zaid vee should reverse der Oppenheimer Drive mit der Schroterberger shpanner. Und den ve should realign der rescue beam, of course.”

“For the love of two ferkin spitsnakes, Nixon. Will you quit with the accents?”

“Oogah dum-ba, mung! Reedle rum, gum-ba moooon.”

“Holy minxnuts, Nixon. I don’t think I can take much more of this. Whew.”

“I’m afraid it’s given us a bit of bad news, gov.”

“Bad news?” I sniffed. “This your idea of a joke?”

“It seems, old boy, this bucket comes equipped with the old line therm-struct mechanism which appears corroded and quite old. Very unstable, I’m afraid. Nasty business. Looks as if we shall all soon be stripped of our electrons. Pity, wot?”

“How soon?”

“Rooogle dem-ba…”

“Quiet, ye slaverin’ pig glob! I’ll do the talkin’ for the lot of us. Bleedin’ tub of murderin’ goo, ye are. I’d like to pour the both uh ye snotballs down the waste slew, I would. Cold space is where the likes uh ye belongs.”

“Nixon, cut the crap. We ain’t got time for that. Start figuring some plan of action for us. Ain’t that why you’re here?”

“Well, I reckon this here sitchi-a-shun calls for the onliest thang fittin’ for man or beast,” Nixon paused and spat towards the torpid Gorgeknots. The secondary rose in a lump and snapped its yard-wide slimy lips around the arcing ball of saliva.

“And?” I asked.

Nixon looked square at me and bared her teeth to show her seriousness. “We all need to bend over as far as we can and kiss our sweet asses g’bye. ‘Cept fer them Gorgeknots, which ain’t got no asses to speak of anyways.”

The small interior of the life bucket suddenly became flooded with red light. The main view screen above the console started flashing a bright yellow rectangle with the red message:

DESTRUCT SEQUENCE STARTED…

PLEASE EXIT IMMEDIATELY IN AN ORDERLY FASHION…

EMERGENCY EXITS ARE LOcated imMedIATELY AFT OF THE FORWARD

AFTERBURNERS… ALL CARRY-off ITEMS MUST BE STORed in the overhead BiNS

located UNDER THE SEAT IN FRONT OF YOU… WE WILL BE SERVING

COMPLIMENTARY BEVERLEYS AFTER DETONATION…

THANKS FOR CHOOSING US FOR YOUR FINAL DESTINATION…