Ascending - James Alan Gardner [60]
“Lovely,” Festina said, turning back to the rest of us. “Now let’s get caught up, shall we? What’s been going on?”
When I told her my story, she screamed.
The Gawker
Festina did not scream loudly, nor in one continuous howl…but at key points in my tale, she yelped or winced or muttered most engaging profanities. She was not at all happy about the Shaddill hovering over Melaquin; she became all growls when I told how they shot us with a sinister unconsciousness beam; she was eyes-wide astonished when I described flying into the sun with no ill effects; but her most violent reaction came at the end, when Uclod rudely took it upon himself to fill in the “gaps” of my narrative.
I had chosen not to provide overmany details about my so-called death and the four years thereafter—if Festina learned I had lain in one place for month after month, she might mistakenly think my brain was becoming Tired. Furthermore, I omitted all mention of the Pollisand, including the description I got from the woman in the tower. Unfortunately, I had already told Uclod what the woman said; therefore, he cheekily thrust himself forward to reveal that information to my friend. This caused Festina to splutter with oaths most vile.
“A big white thing like a headless animal?” she asked.
“That’s what we were told,” Uclod answered. “Right, Oar?”
“Yes,” said I, most reluctantly. “Is this creature known to you, Festina?”
One of the mooks by the door laughed under his breath. The sergeant glared at him. So did Festina. Without taking her eyes off the mook, my friend said, “He’s known, all right.”
“Who is he?” Uclod asked.
Festina did not answer right away; instead, she pressed a button on the conference table’s surface. A section of table in front of her rolled open to reveal a vidscreen and keypad. She tapped on the keys a moment, then turned to face the false window that had been showing all those pleasant stars.
The window had changed. Now it displayed a picture of a beast I recognized all too well—a headless white rhinoceros with eyes down his throat. “That,” Festina said, “is an alien who calls himself the Pollisand. Possibly the most frightening creature in the entire galaxy.”
Cleverly feigning ignorance, I said, “This Pollisand is a wicked villain?”
“No. Not in the usual sense. But if the Pollisand is in the area, consider me officially terrified.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s a gawker. A disaster junkie. Someone who loves showing up at a certain kind of catastrophe.”
Festina pressed more keys. The picture screen shifted to a different view of the Pollisand: this time standing inside a poorly lit room filled with machinery. In front of him sat a human woman wearing a baggy green outfit of the type called overalls. She was not looking at the Pollisand, but he was definitely looking at her.
“This,” said Festina, “shows the Pollisand’s first appearance in human space. The year 2108 on the planet Meecks, in the control room of the Debba colony’s fusion reactor. Surveillance cameras recorded this headless white alien materializing behind the command console at the very moment a technician finished entering a manual override on a safety mechanism that was supposedly malfunctioning.”
Festina rose from the table, strode to the display screen, and glared at the baggy green woman. “The techie was an utter numskull. She’d misdiagnosed the problem, botched the solution, disabled a warning alarm so no one would know she’d screwed up…then kept hot-dogging with moronic attempts to stop cascading system failures throughout the installation. Result? Total reactor meltdown. Not a big boom, but the entire power generation system got slagged. Considering the outside temperature was ninety degrees below zero, it looked like the colony would freeze to death in a matter of days.
“And that’s when the Pollisand showed up.” Festina pointed to Mr. Headless Asshole on