Queen of Denial (7 page)

"You know," she said thoughtfully, "I have always felt lost in the world of Salvagers. Like an outsider. Like I just really didn't fit in."

Van Gar sighed and ran a hand down his face. He could see a scam coming on.

"She has been talking to the Chitzky for thirty minutes, Sire. Can't you see that she has only agreed to go home with you so that she can get her hands on your wealth?" Facto pleaded.

"Can't you see that I don't care why she is going with me, only that she is with me?"

Zarco stared at the woman standing with her back to him across the vastness of the spaceport.

"Once we are together, all will be put right. This time apart shall be erased like it never was."

"But, Sire, surely."

"No more! I told you before. Your words border on treason, and they are falling on deaf ears."

"But, my King!"

"Not one more harsh word about the Queen," Zarco ordered.

He took a deep breath.

"Please, my old friend. I need your help more now than ever I did before. All that has kept me going these long harsh years has been the hope of being reunited with Taralin. Now we have found her, and she is whole, but she no more remembers me than a drunk man remembers his balance. I am all too aware that she may never be the woman that she was. That she may never again love me as she once did. But please don't tell me that I am a fool to try. Because if she is gone to me forever, then I'd just as soon they remove my memory so that I don't have to remember what I have lost. I'd rather be dead than never feel her love again."

"An entire fleet of ships. No! Why stop there? Two fleets and our own spaceport!" Drew wiped the drool from the corner of her mouth. "All I have to do is play my cards right, and I can be Queen of the Salvagers. We'll pick these Royal bastards till their bones are clean."

"Drew. That woman is your sister. That man is your husband. They are your past." Van Gar reprimanded her gently.

"Ah, bullshit," Drew said. "I ain't buying that brain-removed shit for one minute. I know who I am."

"You know they're telling you the truth."

"They think they're telling me the truth. I know they believe I am their Queen."

"You do, too. I saw the look on your face the moment you realized that they were telling you the truth."

"You read too much into an attack of gas. I didn't come from shit like that. I couldn't. They're just flash and air. I'm real."

She paused, re-gathering her thoughts.

"Now, here's my plan. I'll go with the Royal fucks. You take the Garbage Scow and follow. Don't stay too far back, just out of detection range. Land at the space port at Delta Ray station and wait for me. I figure it will take me about a week to make them decide that they want me as no part of their Royal Court, then they'll give me any amount of money I ask for just to be rid of me."

"Why can't you just admit that you are curious about your past and your people?" Van Gar asked.

"I don't need your asteroid belt analysis, Van. Wait at Delta Ray, and I'll come for you when I've cleaned them out."

"As you wish, your Royal Majesty," Van Gar said, bowing low.

"Knock it off, fuck head."

She turned and started to walk away.

"Aren't you even going to say good-bye?" Van Gar asked in a hurt tone.

She turned to face him, and smiled.

"Ain't goin' nowhere, fur ball." She winked at him. "See you in a week."

She turned and walked towards Zarco and the others.

Van Gar watched her go.
Oh Drew, if you stay too long with this King, I'll lose you forever.
He turned away quickly and started for the Garbage Scow. She didn't even realize that this was the first time they had been apart (really apart) in over four years. She didn't even bother to kiss his cheek or hug him. She'd gotten him a navigator and she thought he should be happy with that. Like just anyone could take her place for him. Hell, he couldn't remember the last time he had flown a ship with anyone but Drewcila Qwah. In fact, for the last few years he really hadn't had any continual contact with anyone else.

He looked back just in time to see Drewcila board the Royal ship. While its lines were sleeker, it wasn't half the size of the Garbage Scow, and didn't have near the character. Van Gar dragged himself onto the ship, thinking that he couldn't possibly feel any lower—and then he met the new navigator.

"Hi! My name is Tim," he announced in a voice that would grate on gravel.

Tim was a short, slightly over-weight male in his late twenties. To put the icing on the cake, he was human.

Van Gar made an unpleasant noise in the human's direction, and then he started to make a routine check of the ship.

Tim followed him around like a stray puppy, and occasionally Van Gar told him something he thought Tim should know.

Everything was checking normal, when the computer indicated a blockage in the number two exhaust port. Van Gar started stomping down the hall leading out of the ship.

"Damned Humans, spreading their filthy vermin through space."

Tim followed closely behind him, apparently oblivious to what Van Gar had just said.

"Everywhere they go, disease, war and pestilence follow in their wake. They brought us flies, and roaches, and ants . . ."

". . . and Velcro, and duct tape, and bubble gum," Tim said defending his race.

Van Gar picked up a section of pipe off the ground, walked over to the number two exhaust port and gave it a good hard whack. When the chiming stopped, a half dozen fur-covered creatures fell from the pipe.

"And rats, Tim. Humans and rats."

Van Gar laid into the dazed rats with his feet and the pipe till they were all dead.

"There's only one thing I hate worse than rats, Tim . . . Tim?"

He found the human laying on the ground, obviously out cold. "Humans, Tim. I hate humans."

Across the spaceport he heard the Royal ship powering up.

"Shit!"

He ran over and shook the human till he opened his eyes.

"Listen to me, monkey boy. Run up and get me the rat extractor, and hurry it up, or Drew will have both of our hides."

Tim jumped to his feet with help from Van Gar, and with a little shove in the right direction he started for the ship.

"Fucking humans!"

He slammed the pipe again and went after the rats with deadly perfect aim.

"Fucking rats!"

He watched as the Royal ship lifted off across the spaceport, sheltering his face with his arm to shield it from the sand and dirt the lift-off kicked up. Damn. She was gone. Maybe he'd see her again, but then again, maybe he never would.

"Good-bye, Drew," he whispered into the dust, choking back his tears. His only friend was gone and he was left in a world of humans and rats.

It was a nice ship, but Drew had seen better. Drewcila indulged them by letting Stasha take her on a tour of the ship and oo-ing and ahh-ing at all the right spots. When they finally got to the bridge, Drew parked herself in the captain's seat and started playing with the terminal. The captain nervously hovered around her.

"Uh, my Queen, this is a very sophisticated piece of machinery . . ."

"Honey, I have forgotten more about flying than you ever knew. Why don't you do some bowing and scraping and shit, and leave me alone?"

The captain looked at Stasha in disbelief. Could this be their gentle queen?

"She's been through a great deal," Stasha said.

"Actually, I didn't think it was all that great. Half my brain sucked out. Left to fend for myself in a cruel and unsympathetic world. Where the fuck are they?"

"My Queen?" The captain asked.

"Uh," Drew smiled nervously, ". . . coolers, you should really have ice coolers full of beer on the bridge. Nothing gets your beer really cold like real ice. Frozen H2O. How the fuck do you stay in space for any length of time without beer? Really!"

She got up and started pacing back and forth.

"Maybe you'd like to go change into something else," Stasha suggested.

"No. Once today is quite enough."

Stasha just gave her a lost look.

"For God's sake, Stasha. It's a joke, don't you get it?"

Stasha just shrugged. Drewcila took a deep breath.

"OK," she started slowly."You asked me if I wanted to change into something different, and I said once a day is enough."

Again, Stasha just shrugged.

"OK. Let's try again. This morning, I was a Salvager, right?"

Stasha nodded her head, obviously glad to understand.

"And now I'm the fucking Queen."

Stasha forced a smile and shrugged.

"It's not funny, though."

"Of course it's not funny now. The moment is gone!"

Drew threw up her hands in disgust.

"You're hopeless, Stasha. Are you sure you're my sister?"

Stasha looked hurt.

"Yes, I'm sure. Why do you ask?"

Drew shrugged, and started walking around the bridge looking at the read-out screens.

"Oh, I don't know. I guess I just always figured that if I had a sib out there somewhere they'd be more . . . well, you know, more hip."

"Hip?"

"Yeah, you know. Cool. With it."

"Cool? With it?"

Drew threw up her hands again and headed for the door.

"That proves it," she mumbled, "there ain't no way that I am this Queen bitch, because there is no way that I could have such an uncool, uptight chick for a sister."

She stopped walking, and Stasha ran into her.

Drew jumped about a foot in the air.

"Don't follow me!"

"You know, Taralin . . ."

"Don't call me that! Don't you understand at all? Any of you? You may as well be calling me Rover or Fido. I am not Taralin Zarco. Maybe I was once; I don't know for sure anymore. But I'm Drewcila Qwah now, and Qwah I'll stay. Hey! I made a rhyme!"

"We used to be so close!" Stasha started crying. "You know, in many ways you are so different, but in other ways you are just the same." By now she was screaming. "You are still selfish, willful, and full of yourself. They keep saying you're so changed, but they didn't know you the way I did. I look at you and I see my sister; changed and yet the same. You were always strong, and you always spoke your mind. You always had things your way, or not at all. You always treated me like a baby, and I always loved you, even though you were an arrogant, pigheaded . . . Oh! One of those nasty Salvager words you use all the time!"

She turned on her heal and stomped off in the other direction.

Drew watched her go and smiled. "Then again, maybe she is my sister." Shrugging, she decided to go on a quest for alcohol of any kind. Right now she'd even settle for the rubbing kind if she could get a glass of cold water to wash it down with.

An hour of extensive searching turned up not even a bottle of isopropyl, and so, feeling defeated, she headed back for the bridge. As she passed the Royal quarters, she could hear people talking inside, so she did what any good Salvager would do, and pressed her ear to the door.

"It's too much for her to absorb all at once, can't you see that Zarco?" Drew smiled at the fact that not only could she hear through the door but she could recognize Stasha's voice.

"I see that everyone has some reason why I shouldn't be with my wife," Zarco said. "If I could be with her I know she would soon feel the same way about me as I do about her. I know I could make her remember."

"You'd probably catch something," Facto mumbled.

"Snotty bastard," Drew mumbled. "Little toady dirt-eater." She missed the next remark, then a general shuffling warned her that they were all about to vacate the cabin. She moved quickly on down the hall towards the bridge.

A few seconds later, Zarco and his entourage entered the hall. They quickly caught up to Drew.

"Why are you not resting in your quarters? Are they not suitable?" Zarco asked in a concerned tone.

"With a capital NOT. First off, there is no bar," Drew replied. "Where are you guys going in such a hurry, and why do you always go everywhere together?"

Zarco laughed and smiled at her indulgently.

"There's safety in numbers, dear one."

Drew gave him a hard look.

"I swear, if you pat me on the head I'll slug you. Where the hell are you going in such a hurry?"