LotS/The Story/Because I'm the Wanderer/Everyone's a Superhero
Everyone's a Superhero
"What'll it be?"
"Whisky."
"What kind?"
"Anything without an 'e' in the word."
The barmaid's brow furrows. She turns round, revealing the slogan that dances across the back of her t-shirt in glowing letters ("Look, Love, But Don't Touch Unless You Tip Real Good!" -- accompanied by a downwards arrow), and inspects the rows of bottles arrayed along the length of the wall like a battalion of mismatched soldiers. Perhaps she's new to the job, or else used to serving nothing but cheap malt liquor. Either way, she seems lost as she tries to locate your desired beverage. But she's making an effort... She scrutinizes a collection of Neo-American bourbons, named after old states, long-dead presidents, or archaic firearms, and rejects each one in turn. They bear the insolent vowel that separates the Scottish product from those of other dominions.
"One shelf up, over on the left," you say.
Her eyes fall upon the dusty bottle. She gives a squeal of girlish satisfaction, perhaps delighted by the discovery that the fabled spelling does indeed exist, and celebrating this addition to her alcoholic understanding. Then she snatches it from the shelf and places it before you. There's a beaming smile across her face. She reminds you of a dog who's fetched something for her mistress and now wags her tail in anticipation of approval.
"Thanks."
Her smile widens. Your lips return it of their own accord, infected by a merriment that doesn't reach your eyes or mind. She reaches under the bar for a tumbler. You give the bottle an idle perusal while you wait.
According to the label, this Glenmorangie spent ten years acquiring and evolving its taste. Good old Scots... Still doing things the traditional way. An off-world distiller once moved to Scotland and set up a plant where they used artificial aging. He disappeared a week later. The rumor is that he was turned into haggis. You're not entirely certain what haggis is, but you can't imagine the process was pleasant.
From the look of the bottle, it may have spent twice as long gathering dust on the shelf as it did gathering flavor in the barrel. But it'll still work.
The bottom of the tumbler makes an unsatisfying tap against the faux wood surface of the bar. Soft glass. Designed to splat rather than shatter if you hit someone with it. This drinking hole must see a lot of fights. If one breaks out, you'll have to remember to use the bottle instead...
But if the glass is cheap, the measures aren't. The barmaid sloshes amber liquid into the tumbler until it's nearly full to the brim. Yeah, she's new all right. You make a mental note to tip high, to cover the real cost of the drink.
She trips away to serve someone at the other end of the bar, the clicking of her heels playing her off with their percussion -- leaving you alone with your scotch and your thoughts. The memory this reawakens isn't a welcome one. So you stare into the long mirror behind the bar for a distraction.
The first thing you see is a strange face. A woman, her gaze locked with yours. Only the reflection's position allows you to recognize the unfamiliar features as belonging to your own visage -- or at least the one you've adopted.
There are countless humans in the galaxy, trillions of distinct faces. Even the most famous or infamous should be able to slip into anonymity if they divorce themselves of the clothing and trappings for which they're known, and perhaps make a few minor changes -- a pair of cyberpunk goggles here, a splash of bubblegum pink hair dye there. But it's not a risk you're willing to take. There could be any number of people out hunting for you. So you're hiding behind a holographic disguise, staring into another countenance when you look in the mirror.
Maybe you should get something permanent done instead, have a surgeon slap a new identity on your skull. But first you'd have to find one you trusted well enough to let her put you to sleep and take lasers to your face.
You glug the sweet, oaky scotch. Your eyes remain fastened on your reflection's, as though challenging her to a drinking contest. Unsurprisingly, you both set an empty glass down at the exact same moment. The barmaid's heels click their way over. She flashes a smile in which sympathy, understanding, and amusement mingle, then refills the soft glass vessel with the same cornucopian generosity. You decide that you like her.
The rest of the dingy bar is spread out behind your dubious doppelganger. You focus your attention on its denizens as the second dose of whisky follows the first -- hoping to find entertainment in lieu of contemplation.
Two young women sit on either side of a small table, dressed in a way that would make prostitutes blush. The drinks before them -- one yellow, the other pink -- throb with a bright glow which brings to mind neon signs and toxic waste. Alcopops. Twice as strong as beer, as easy to drink as lemonade. Chemistry is the natural enemy of sobriety.
Judging by their laughter and high-pitched babble -- inane even by the standards of their demographic -- these aren't their first drinks of the night. The same thought has probably occurred to the two boys watching them from a nearby table, pondering whether to make their move now or wait until further inebriation will make them seem more handsome and charming.
Teenage courtship rituals... You direct your gaze elsewhere, leaving them to their future of drunken romance and hung-over regret.
You're just in time to see a man get out of a booth, leaving a weeping woman in his wake. His stride is firm and fast. Muscles ripple under his dark flesh. A weapon bulges beneath his shirt. He's a fighter -- primal strength and deadliness radiate from him, tens of thousands of years of evolution warning the universe at large to keep its distance. And yet there's moisture at the corners of his eyes.
The woman cries something out, but it's made unintelligible by the tears which lacerate her thick makeup -- turned into a banshee's wordless wail. Her face slumps onto the table, nestled in her arms, and she shudders with the force of her sobs.
He keeps walking. By the time he reaches the door, a single tear has rolled down his cheek, leaving a glistening wound. Wherever he's going, neither of them believes he's coming back.
You drain your glass. This time the barmaid's heels are silent -- muffled by your thoughts.
"You sure, honey?" She raises the bottle and her eyebrows.
You nod. The amber pours.
"Not seen you around here before. New in town?"
"Just passing through."
"Figures. We don't get a lot of visitors in New Culverton. Except wannabe vigilantes, or supervillains trying to get in on the action. And most of both end up dead in a couple of days. Where you heading?"
"Nowhere in particular. But my ship needed fuel, and I needed a stiff drink. This seemed as good a place as any."
The barmaid waits for a few seconds. When you don't offer any further conversation, she clicks away in search of drinks to replenish.
You take another glug. This Glenmorangie deserves to be treated as a sipping whisky. But you're in the mood for gulping. As the sweet burn works its way down your throat, you return to the looking glass -- seeking interest in the mirrored world beyond.
This time you find something more pleasant than the drunken teenagers (who're now sharing the same booth, kissing and fondling with the clumsiness of drink and desperation), or the crying woman.
There's a group of men sat around a collection of pushed-together tables, the surfaces of which are littered with drained glasses -- the debris of a drinking session that must have lasted for some hours, perhaps ever since they left work for the day. Their laughter and chatter are rough and rugged, sometimes spilling into indecency. When the barmaid comes near she has to field catcalls, propositions both matrimonial and sinful, and slap away groping hands. She does this all with a pleasant laugh and a winning smile that manages to encourage without exacerbating.
The easy camaraderie is enjoyable in spite of its churlishness. You find yourself drinking the spectacle as much as the scotch, taking in the jokes and banter with the sponge-like absorbency of the solitary drinker.
The tumbler is emptied twice, but slower than before. You're savoring instead of glugging, allowing human interaction -- albeit from the perspective of an onlooker rather than a participant -- to supplement the alcohol. Sobriety, or as near to it as a woman with a few scotches in her system can claim to be, is tolerable enough with such distractions.
You're so engrossed in your voyeurism that you don't fully notice the wave of silence washing through the bar until it submerges the men you're observing. First the words and laughs die in the throats of the ones facing towards the door. Their companions follow suit the moment they turn around to see what the first lot saw.
She appears in the mirror first. A young woman, no more than eighteen from the look of her, with a blonde hair and a low-cut top. Pretty, but not good-looking or voluptuous enough to have quietened an entire bar. Perhaps she's some sort of celebrity, a singer or an actress -- part of the vast swath of interstellar pop culture which exists beyond your knowledge or concern. No... There's anger on some of the faces in the mirror. Derision. Disgust.
When you study the woman in the flesh, glimpse the right side of her face instead of the reflection of the left, you understand. There's a semi-perm tattoo on her cheek -- the kind you heat up, slap on your skin, and have to remove with a special chem. From its cheap sheen and bright colors, it's new. Probably applied tonight. And it depicts the Centurian Collective's emblem.
Your fingers tighten around the tumbler, indenting its soft glass.
You saw newscasts about this kind of thing while you were aboard the Silver Shadow. Centurian Pride, they called it. After the Collective's defeat in the war, many of its citizens around the galaxy decided to start displaying their colors. Some of them were interviewed, either crying about the deaths of loved ones and talking about shared grief or else screaming about solidarity and justice.
There's a soft murmur that increases in volume and variety as conversations pick up again. People are returning their attention to drinks or friends. As far as they're concerned, the girl and her tattoo are only of passing interest. Varlec was a neutral world in the conflict -- a collection of autonomous settlements such as New Culverton that had neither the capacity to commit military forces nor the inclination to offer support. To most of the bar's patrons, the battles and the fate of the Centurians were just things viewed on a screen or read in a holo-paper, no different from soap operas, celebrity gossip, or the plight of some unpronounceable species of quadruped on an inconsequential backwater world.
You avert your gaze, throwing your attention back at the mirror. Just a stupid kid. Not worth starting anything over... You swallow a glassful of whisky. The flavors pass you by, leaving only a quick burn.
The group of reflected men, who provided such entertainment just a moment before, haven't returned to their light banter and merriment. One of them is glaring at the girl and muttering to the others in a low voice. Your aural implant relays a torrent of slurred vitriol from the movement of his lips.
"What'll it be, honey?" the barmaid asks.
Her eyes flick between the girl and the men. She's noticed it too. The sign of impending trouble.
"Tyger, Tyger." The Prider says the brand name as though it were a challenge. Her eyes are practically smoldering.
She seems disappointed when the barmaid sets a cylindrical bottle before her, containing a bright orange liquid marred by oily black stripes. Yes... She wanted to be refused service, so she could make a fuss. You've seen her type before. Young, stupid activist out looking for a reason to throw her cause in someone's face. The kind that keeps going until they get what they want or get punched in the face -- which sometimes amounts to the same thing.
The men are leaning in close to each other, their mannerisms reeking of collaboration and conspiracy. The ringleader's face is hidden by someone's shoulder now, concealing his words.
"Honey, you want to be careful-" the barmaid begins.
The Prider glares at her. If looks could kill, the ranks of bottles would be festooned with the barmaid's innards. She takes the hint, stops talking, and clicks away. The Prider takes a long drink of her Tyger, Tyger, as if in celebration of a victory or as a taunt. When she sets it back down, the sloshing black stripes reassert themselves into the 'fearful symmetry' proclaimed in the ads.
Her eyes meet yours in the mirror.
"What're you looking at?" she asks.
In your mind's eye you lunge over, grab her by her blonde hair, and smash her face against the bar until the tattoo is drowned in blood. In reality you look away, leaving her to take another celebratory drink at the thought that she's stared you down.
"Oi, Cent-bitch!"
The men are on their feet now. The dark-haired ringleader calls out again.
"Your lot killed my cousin!"
"Yeah? And both my parents were killed guarding Zhen Bao," she replies, without turning round. "Screw you."
The man's eyes blaze. Red lights flicker at his wrists and shoulders. You can't tell if they're genuine cybernetic implants or just fashion statements. But either way, the Prider's in for it now...
The men march towards the bar, knocking chairs out of their way, bumping against tables and sending glasses tumbling to the floor -- where they make a series of anticlimactic splats. The girl keeps drinking. As much as you hate her, you can't help admiring her guts.
But even if she's nonchalant about her impending homicide, the establishment isn't. Two big heaps of flesh lumber out from a darkened corner. They stop between the men and the Prider, their muscles undulating like boulders shifting through treacle. The bar's Snuuth bouncers.
"Time to go, boys," one of them says. His tone is friendly, but when he cracks his knuckles it sounds like a skull being smashed open. An inauspicious omen for anyone who's thinking of starting trouble.
There are only two bouncers. The men have them outnumbered three to one. But the Snuuth are big. And if this lot are regulars, they'll want to drink here again. So the ringleader raises his hands in a palms-out gesture of acquiescence.
"Fine! Don't wanna drink in the same bar as a Collective whore anyway!"
His friends echo that sentiment as they bustle towards the door. The bouncers bring up the rear, escorting them from the premises.
The girl finishes her drink with a sharp, flourishing upturn of the bottle. She gestures for another before the last drop has slipped into her mouth, the empty cylinder still extending straight up from her face as though she were performing a balancing trick.
A fresh Tyger, Tyger is placed in front of her. Your tumbler is refilled.
The two of you drink.
After a few gulps of her burning bright, symmetrical beverage, she scans the mirror -- taking in the entirety of the bar. From the snort she makes, it doesn't please her. Of course not... With those men gone, there's no one left to hassle her. No chance for her to play the aggrieved martyr, and take a kicking for her allegiance. No bruises to show off when she meets with other Priders.
"We may've lost the war," she says, her raised voice cutting through the conversations floating behind her, "but those Sian bastards don't have their Emperor anymore, do they? Or their damn Princess! Let 'em celebrate the win in hell!"
The tumbler crumples in your grasp. Whisky sloshes over your hand like spilled blood.
She gazes around, making eye contact with everyone who can be bothered looking in her direction. But none of them take the bait. No one's interested. So she snorts again, polishes off her drink, swipes her credits to settle her tab, and heads out the door.
You settle up as well. Then you make for the exit, fists clenched at your sides.
Your Enemy's Keeper
