Toxicity (2 page)

Svoolzard Koolimax XXIV, Third
Earl of Apobos, lay back, naked, oiled, pleasured and fulfilled, sipping from a
ruby-skin goblet of honeyed
titakya
as the mercury bed beneath his
languishing, pampered shell massaged his hard, fatigued muscles, and two furry gahungas
rubbed his feet with expert tentacle-pods. “Ooh,” he said, closing his eyes to
the rhythms of ecstasy. “Yes, just there. Between the toes.
Purrrfect.”
His
head lolled to the right, mouth gaping open and slack for a moment, drooling
titakya like a SLAP smuggler as he stared through the kilometre-wide portal at
the glowing, throbbing words splashed green from the light of the sun:

TOXICITY
WELCOMES

ALL

YOUR SHIT

“Oh!” he gurgled, managing to
begin to rouse himself. There was surprise there. And a glimmer of interest. “Are
we there already? I didn’t hear the back-drives kick in.”

“We slipped the snakehole an hour
ago,” crooned Lumar, reaching forward to snort kulka powder from her own flat,
green belly. She, too, was naked; lizard-skinned, she was one of Svoolzard’s
thirteen resident mistresses on the Titan-Class Culture Cruiser,
The
Literati.

Svool held out his goblet. “Lumar.
Here, girl. More wine.”

“Yes, Svool, my master.”

She poured him more wine, keeping
her gaze averted low.

“Lumar! More nibbles!”

“Of course, silly me, more
nibbles, Svool. Of course. Right away.” She crossed to a fireslab table and
picked up the bowl of nibbles, returned, and leant over him, popping them into
his mouth one by one by one. After all, she wouldn’t want his
genius
over-exerting,
pointlessly expended on having to actually
stretch
for a nibble.

Svoolzard frowned, and stared at
the words outside, chewing and popping the nibbles between his teeth; then he
rubbed drug-weary eyes - although only after considering asking Lumar to do it.

Svool sighed.
Oh, I’m too
thoughtful,
he thought, idly.

He felt suddenly and strangely
exhausted - which was odd, because for the last three weeks he’d done nothing
but snort drugs, drink kemog-wine and pleasure his many women, two men and this
creature, Lumar, a lizard-skinned alien from Thung who was blood-sworn to serve
him until she died. Or so it said in the paperwork. Very...
interesting.

Outside the ship’s portal, the
three-thousand-kilometre-high hydrogen-strand fusion-sign bubble-bobbed on
streams of diffusing hydrogen, against the pin-prickled twinkling velvet
blanket of the Manna Galaxy. Its molecule-tether was a looping, curving,
shining silver umbilical which spun away, down, down to the distant, vast lumbering
spin of Amaranth far below.

Amaranth.

The waste world. The
toxic
world.
Streetwise citywide slang and drug-fuelled paparazzi called it
Toxicity.
Home
and bedrock to all of Manna’s decadence and waste and effluence; and that didn’t
just include the shit they chose to dump there.

Intrigued by his new train of
thought, Svool hoisted himself onto one elbow, which took a lot out of him for
it was
physical effort
for sure, and Svool would rather not
do
physical
effort. The action made him whimper a little, as he brushed away an errant
golden curl from his forehead.

He dismissed the massaging
gahungas with a lazy flap of his bejewelled fingers, his feet not completely
satisfied, and the funny little creatures waddled off, trailing long brown
hair. Svool sipped his drink, keeping the drugs in his veins alive and
bubbling, and stared at the sweeping vista of the vast world below. “It
looks...”

“Yes?” Lumar’s head snapped up,
short green dreadlocks swaying. Her bright green eyes narrowed, nostrils
twitching at her sudden narcotic intake.

“Looks like the sort of place I
should
write a poem
about.”

Svoolzard Koolimax XXIV was a
celebrated poet across the whole of the Manna Galaxy, that vast unity of
universes which formed the Collective. In fact, he was probably the most famous
and celebrated poet who had ever lived. He was certainly the wealthiest. The
most talked about. The most
revered.

“Lo! Yonder green and pleasant
star”
he began,
brow furrowing a little at the effort of composition, and watched as Lumar
settled back on her cushions, forked tongue licking her black lips, her hands
folding over her lizard breasts as a display of rapturous ecstasy crossed her
features. After all, it wasn’t
every day
a lowly norm, a prole, a liz or
dwat got to observe a
genius
in the act of Poetic Synergy.

“Oh,
how I wonder what ye are,

Is
thine lone eye all green and round,

O’erlookin’
every mollusc on the ground?”

Svoolzard gave a little shiver,
and opened his eyes, which had closed in this fabulous moment of rapturous
ecstasy. To Svool, nothing beat the act of composition. The act of fucking
creation,
baby.
Creation.
To Svool, it was better than drugs, sex and money -
all rolled into one. There could be no greater achievement. No superior
satisfaction. No greater... worth.

“Magical,” purred Lumar.

Svool extended one hand toward
her as his chin tilted upwards, eyes closed, golden curls spreading down his
chest. Lumar took his hand and kissed his fingers and their jewels.

“I
am
the Poet Master,” he
said, without irony.

“You are,” crooned Lumar,
nodding, green eyes gleaming.

“Kiss me again.”

She kissed his hand again.

“Still. Despite the obvious
enjoyment in this little endeavour, in these little sexual buzzes of
electricity, we are here, now, at Amaranth, and it is time to deliver my
speech. Do you still feel that my words - my ideas - my writing - buzzes with
the electric of a billion different stars?”

“Oh, I do,” said Lumar, sucking
his fingers, her forked tongue a sultry and enticing thing. Her face beamed up
at him. She was glowing. In awe.

“Does my monologue sparkle like
starbeams from the hull of the
New Pink Titanic?
Is my wordage suitably
academic in nature to please even the most nihilistic of today’s gathered
post-grad researchers? Hmm?”

“Svool,” she mumbled, sucking his
digits most erotically as her hand roved over his naked belly, stroking, and
nipping, and kneading, “you are without shadow of a doubt, the most educated,
the most daring, the most inspired and the most brilliantly genius writer
ever
to crawl from the womb of a human. When you enter Tennyson Hall, you will
see; they will worship you as the God you are! When you enter Tennyson Hall, it
will be like the perfect sexual climax of every man and woman and alien there
present!”

“Yes, yes. Of course, of course.”
He ran a hand through his curls, leaving a V through the thick wax, as Lumar’s
hand strayed like a green spider across his belly and began a teasing taunting
crawl towards his bulging HotShorts. Poetry always made him hard.

Lumar’s eyes met his. Her tongue
flickered in that teasing way he knew and loved. He imagined it, flickering
over him... and shivered.

Lumar winked. “Have we time for
another...?”

“No!” Suddenly, Svoolzard’s eyes
were hard like flint, and he gently pushed her hand away. “I am
a...professional! I must prepare...” - he licked wet, panting lips, and again
his eyes went distant, and hazy - “for my fans.”

~ * ~

THE
TENNYSON HALL of the
The Literati
was a truly grand affair. A
kilometre-high cube, its walls were lined with tumbling gold and blood-red
fabrics, the ceiling lights vast green globes in honour of the planet around
which they now weighed anchor, and the floor surface had been specially
constructed for this wonderful, opulent, magical occasion, tiled with specially-hardened
pages taken from the self-published pamphlets of
lesser
poets. Never one
to miss an opportunity to bask in the glory of his own genius, Svool was the
first (and most vocal) to recognise his superiority to every other living (and,
debatably, dead) novelist, playwright and poet in the long, long history of
Humanity.

Gathered around the many tables
on hollow stools, made of green glowing glass and filled with the finest of
tolka wines (so all one had to do was dip one’s Drinko-Straw™ between one’s own
legs to savour the fine green liquid and, as had been pointed out by Svool in
his opening speech, thus precipitate a vision of near-circulatory
catheterisation which required only one more tube and a little imagination,
a-ha-haha) were the
crème de la crème
of Old Earth’s resident academic
royalty. Thousands of people were present; most of the educated and
most-respected academic brilliance of Manna, the Galaxy which had first
consumed
and then
elevated
Earth to its rank as one of the Prime Planets sporting
life. Earth was recognised as a Seat of Power for the Arts in Manna, and here
on this Culture Cruise, the gathered Who’s Who of the arts had been brought
together (in fact, had paid extortionate fees from university coffers just to
be included) in order to
meet
and
celebrate
Svoolzard Koolimax
XXIV. The fact Svool was about to narrate for the first time his no-doubt
incredibly ground-breaking paper,
On Literature,
which obviously would
celebrate himself above all others, was simply an added bonus.

There was an excited buzz around
Tennyson Hall. Males and females from every primary species wore their finest
outfits, their most glittering of jewels, their greatest displays of wealth and
culture and sophistication. Tall flutes of janga juice were sipped from
jewelled kalka rat skulls, and most sophisticates gathered, nibbling on dog-da
balls, whilst chatting politely (the consequence of a prescribed seating plan).
The hall was alive with wonder, and as the lights suddenly dimmed, so the
ruckus receded to a white noise of hushed expectation.

By the edge of the stage, visible
to anybody willing to look, fluttered a small black PopBot. This was Zoot. Zoot
was Svool’s PR bot, agent, manager, bodyguard and, dare he say it with a
digital blush,
friend.
Zoot made sure good things happened to Svool.
All. The. Time.

And Zoot made sure jealous lesser
poets didn’t hack off his master’s head with a blunt axe.

Zoot’s deep, resonant voice
spoke:

“And lo! To humanity was born the
greatest writer of not just This Age, but of Every Age. From the delicate
position of just one year old he wielded a pen like a sword, wrote his first
novel at the age of four, won his first global prize aged six, and the Manna
Galactic Trophy for Contributions to Galactic Literature aged
only thirteen.
No human, no gahunga, no falfa, no bozra has contributed more to the realms
of literature than Svoolzard Koolimax XXIV.” Zoot’s voice had to pause as a
roar went up, and every person in the room stood, some knocking over their
glugging stools, and clapped with a thunderous round of applause - enough to
raise the ceiling, in fact. “I now bring you, the Man Himself!”

Onto the stage strode Svoolzard
Koolimax XXIV.

Everybody cheered and waved!

The skilfully manipulated lights
picked out Svool’s best features. His proud, strong, utterly handsome face. His
long, golden, curled hair which bobbed all the way to his shoulders. His hands
were manicured, nails painted in delicate rainbows of colour. His lips were
glossy, his eyes lined with black. He looked at the same time powerful, and
brooding, and sexy; he oozed charisma more than a ten-week-septic wound oozes
pus. He wore an incredible glass and diamond suit that left nothing and
everything to the imagination. It tinkled softly as he walked, like shell
windchimes in a cool Japachinese garden by the ocean. Yes, the glass in the
suit showed off his muscular ass, but this was counter-acted by the diamond
shards, which diffracted light and made the sensuous bunching of muscles
alluring rather than crass. Yes, the glass in the suit showed off his hairy
masculine chest, whereas the diamond shards somehow
softened
the effect
and showed that Svool had a delicate, feminine side open to conversation, and
empathy, and understanding, and discussion rather than sheer
testosterone-fuelled animal fucking. And yes, the glass laid on display for all
to see Svool’s hefty, well-used, but always-up-for-the-job cock, subtly
diffracted by the shards to give it a more subtle and charming appearance. Or
that’s what the suit’s manufacturers said on the tin.