Toxicity (18 page)

Svool stumbled forward.

“Got the firewood, I see,”
snorted Lumar.

“Where’s Zoot?”

“Not sure. He scanned this food,
said it was safe to eat, then hummed off into the jungle. Looking for your
sorry ass, I’d wager.”

Svool frowned.

“I can’t help but notice a
negative vibe emanating from you,” he said, flapping forward and sitting on a
fallen log next to the fire. He held out his hands to the warmth, and
acknowledged there was something deeply primeval and satisfying and
morale-boosting
about the simple honest beauty of a roaring camp fire.

Lumar laughed, and he realised
she was sharpening another piece of wood with a small, silver knife. Beside her
were a pile of... stakes? Spears? There was certainly a collection of sharpened
wooden spiky implements. “You think so, do you, back-stabber?”

“I am
not
a back-stabber,”
said Svool, eyes wide, pouting.

“You left me to die,
motherfucker.”

“I... I... I thought you were
already dead!”

“Bullshit. You were looking after
your own sorry carcass. You saw those beasts dive on me, you shit your pretty
little jewelled panties and hot-tailed it off across the sand like somebody had
lit a fuse under your testicles. You’re a sorry fucking excuse for a human
being, Svoolzard Koolimax XXIV. You have no honour, no nobility, and no fucking
friends. So shut up, before I stick one of these sticks up your nose.”

Svool flapped his lips for a
moment, then closed his mouth with a clack. He sat, stewing, staring into the
fire.
How did it come to this? How did it end up like this? How had his
beautiful vixen mistress, so supple and willing with hand and tongue and
orifice, how had she turned into this vile-tongued, bitchy, nasty Svool-hater?
And that was something else, the way she said his name. Her eyes shone with
mockery, and she spoke it with such emphasis as to make it sound ridiculous;
like he was a breakfast cereal, or a sexual lubricant, or something.

Svool sat, stewing, as night fell
over the jungle.

Eventually, the broth or soup or
whatever it was was ready, and Lumar poured a little into a cleverly fashioned
bowl of wrapped leaves. Svool took it from her in silence, and started eating,
then looked up at Lumar again.

“Yes?” she snapped.

“Thank you,” he said.

Lumar’s eyes widened, and she bit
her tongue. She gave a nod, and lowered her head, green dreadlocks brushed to
one side as she delicately drank from her bowl. Svool, also, drank his soup.

“It tastes like shit,” he added, “but
thanks all the same.”

Lumar snorted into her soup, and
it took a moment for Svool to realise she was laughing. She looked up, and her
face had softened, and she took a great, deep breath and let out a great, deep
sigh.

“You know something?” she said.

“Hmm?”

“That’s the first time, ever,
that I’ve heard you say ‘thank you’ for
anything.”

“Maybe I’m a changed man,” said
Svool, grinning at her.

“Your new, ahem, attire is
certainly a changed fashion statement; better than that peacock shit you used
to wear, though.”

“I am particularly proud of my
shoes,” said Svool, holding out a foot and wiggling it for Lumar to see. She
let out another laugh, and Svool realised something very, very important. Lumar
laughing was a truly beautiful thing to hear.

“Maybe you should write a poem
about it?” said Lumar.

The smile fell from Svool’s face,
and he looked away. Lumar stood, more of an uncoiling than a human movement,
and she moved to him and touched his arm. “That wasn’t a dig, Svool. It was a
genuine suggestion.”

He looked up, like a little lost
boy through his golden curls. Here was a man who had truly had the rug pulled
not just from beneath his feet, but from under his world. He was a spoiled,
pampered brat, an individual to whom every pleasure imaginable was just a click
of his fingers away. Drugs, sex, appearing on the cover of GGG TIME magazine,
all were there in an instant. And now he was half-naked and lost in the jungle
of a toxic world with burnt feet and empty veins. Lumar could see, his eyes
were haunted but also... clearer. More pure.

“You hate my poetry,” he said, voice
thick. “I see it in your eyes. Hear it in your snide comments.”

“I confess,” said Lumar, voice
level, “that to me, poetry is a pointless thing. I understand a good book, a
story, getting involved with the characters and the narrative; but in your world
of poetry, Svoolzard, all I see is bickering egotistical wordsmiths trying to
be clever, trying to outdo one another, clawing their way up the literature
ladder with no real thought of
content
or of
entertainment.
The
focus, for you, is on a manipulation of words to satisfy your ego and
narcissistic tendencies - whereas
I
am kroona, we’re tribal clans, and
we value the content of story above all else. Maybe it’s a feature of my
species, but when you look at it in the cold light of day, you have to admit,
your entire world of poetry and poets looks like one big pissing contest.”

Svool considered this, for quite
a long time.

Eventually, he said, “I cannot
agree. I have written poems with narrative strands. Poems that tell a story.
Admittedly, they are often stories of my sexual conquests, but by your
definition it is not whether the subject matter is tasteful or distasteful -
after all, that’s a subjective viewpoint - what matters is the fact that the
poetry
told
a story.”

“Tell me this, Svool. Do you spend
more time on the story, the content, or on the structure? The wordplay? Do you
clap your hands in glee when you come up with a clever little word construct?
Are you pleased with yourself when you get a particular rhyme to work, or dream
up some intelligent new metaphor? And most of all - when you look at your own
poetry, at your collected work, do you think of yourself as a genius?”

“Yes, I spend more time on
wordplay. And I see where you are going with that. And yes, I do think of
myself as a genius; but only because my poetry has brought me galactic fame and
fortune, and so many other people
say
my work is that of a genius.” He
grinned at her, then. “I admit. I have too much self-love. But that was put
there by others; they passed me the baton, and now I run with it, Lumar. If
that makes me a bad person, if having six naked concubines suck Nutella from my
belly button makes me a bad man, then you’ll have to kill me right now.”

“I don’t need to kill you,” said
Lumar, gently, sitting down and staring into the fire. She shivered, as if she’d
seen a ghost. “There’s plenty of things on Toxic World that’ll happily do that
for you.”

“If you like, I
could
write
you a poem...”

Lumar held up a hand, and smiled.
“Not now, Svool. I need some sleep. It’s been a harrowing day. The poet in you
might have thought today adventurous, a rapturous joy of manly pursuits, o’erthrown
by the love of a good strong woman, a strangely succulent sojourn into the
misty mists of mythical majesty; but me? Personally? I thought today was a
shovelful of pigshit, and I want my bed and oblivion dreams.”

She crawled into her shelter. Her
voice echoed out. “And when Zoot gets back, tell the little sod he forgot to
bring me the mushrooms he promised.”

“Okay,” smiled Svool, and despite
being tired, weary, and filled with pain from a hundred different areas, he sat
there and looked around -
really
looked around himself - and realised
that this, here, now, this was
living.
And with a sour feeling, as if he’d
just bitten a bitter pill, cracked it open to allow reality to flood his mouth
and brain, he realised his life up to this point had been... a sham. Pampered.
Shielded. Sheltered. Protected. A spoilt only child on a truly galactic scale.

A cool wind whispered over him,
and he listened to the sounds of the jungle. The whisper of ferns, the creak of
the rubber-tyre palm trees, the chatter of insects.
What is this place?
he
found himself thinking, and could almost be lulled into the sense that he was
in some magical wonderful mystery world, instead of a once-beautiful place
poisoned beyond recognition.

Somebody had ruined Toxic World.
Somebody
bad.

~ * ~

SVOOL
DREAMED. HE was in his palace on Taj, the one built from pure gold ingots, and
in every single room hung enormous portraits of his own face on the covers of
various Manna Galactic Publications. In fact, Svoolzard’s image was everywhere:
the statues were carved in his likeness, the ruby busts chiselled to show his
strong jawline and golden curls; the tapestries were woven with the most incredible
fine detail, each one showing a scene in which Svoolzard triumphed. The
fountains trickled and spurted with his own brand of Champagne -
Zardpagne,
they
called it, completely missing the point of what Champagne actually
was
and
where it was created. Svoolzard’s own poetry recitals, the albums which had
sold hundreds of millions of copies all over the Quad-Gal, played in continuous
rotation. Softly, just at the level of hearing; he wasn’t so crass as to have
them blaring out, oh, no! And in his dream, as Svool wandered naked from golden
chamber to golden chamber, seeing his own image in every room, hearing his own
voice in every orifice, he smiled, for this was luxury, this was happiness,
this was perfection. Surely?

He padded over carpets made of SoftGlass™
and SquishDiamond™ and ToothFibre™, revelling in the feeling of his toes
sinking deep into the massaging strands.

He passed through dangling
organotubes and tickletickles, shivering and giggling as they caressed him
all
over,
and onwards into the dimly lit bedroom chamber, where not just the
bed was fluid and alive, but so were the floors, ceiling and walls. Somebody
was there, in the gloom, all naked and oiled and crooning. Svool slipped from
his gossamer robes and squelched his way across the floor, slopping onto the
bed and reaching out to touch warm flesh. She moaned, a low “ooooh,” and
wriggled seductively, and he kissed her feet, sucking her toes which wiggled
and squirmed in his mouth. He got harder and harder and harder. His need and
lust and need rose and rose and rose. He wriggled upwards, his tongue tracing a
line up her firm calves and across her quivering thighs. Both her hands were
wound in his long golden curls now, and he was crooning himself as she squirmed
and thrust against him. He found the warm wet honey place, and his tongue
darted in, and he tasted her, and smelt her, and was filled by her, and her
hands caressed his head and tugged gently at his hair as he cunnied her
cunnilingus. She was so warm and wet and willing and hot and sweet and honeyed.
And that was it. Heaven. Right there between her squirming thighs. Nothing,
nothing on Earth or in the whole of Manna could cum close to this...

~ * ~

LUMAR,
EXHAUSTED, SLEPT like a zombie. Slept like the dead. But something intruded in
her dreams. It was a dog. A huge, golden dog with flopping golden ears and
curly golden hair. It was a beautiful dog. It licked her toes, and she giggled,
and squirmed in her sleep, and then it licked her legs and she started to get
annoyed, for she knew dogs licked their own testicles and a dog’s tongue on her
flesh wasn’t exactly what she wanted, and then, in the dream, the dirty dog
went further...

She swam up through mists and
glittering oils, surfacing into the realm of dozy consciousness with her mind
fluttering and brain filled with smoke. She groaned, and then, suddenly, like a
striking cobra, she was awake. Fully awake. One instant asleep, the next,
ten-coffees-caffeine-injection-awake, sat up in the sleeping shelter.

“Oy!” she screeched, noting in
the gloom that somebody -
bloody Svoolzard
- had his head between her
legs and was sliming her with his slimy tongue. She whacked him across the head
with such force he flipped and rolled across the shelter, whining and
whimpering and clawing at his battered skull.