" when I was just a baby,
my mama told me, son
always be a good boy
don't ever play with guns-"
Cchh.
"- and it's Lucky Streak, coming up on Mama's Little Helper, he's gaining, he's gain -"
Ccch.
" -eptune has become the first major power to announce an embargo on Earthican trade. President LeVerrier issued a strongly-worded statement on Monday, condemning what she calls the "blatant speciesism" and "appalling sentient rights violations" of -"
Ccchh.
"- Omega Romeo, now with 20% more eagle! -"
Cccchhhh.
" -representatives this morning declared the explosion at the Binar IX Galactic Gas'n'Go a "tragic accident". An undisclosed sum of compensation has been paid to the family of slain cashier Vxxxnsss Gli. Customers are reminded once more of the volatile nature of dark matter oil and the company policy that all firearms be left in the customer's vehicle when refueling. Basic safety precautions . . ."
Fry hesitated, his hand hovering over the radio dial.
An accident. That was how they were explaining it.
Fry had killed a girl, at that gas station, and no-one cared. They weren't even looking for him.
"Kid."
He jumped. Glottus – who Fry had thought was asleep – had suddenly opened his eyes. He was staring at Fry, as if he could see right through him and read the thoughts tattooed on the inside of his brain.
"Change the station."
Fry stared back. And then he hit the off switch instead.
"I killed her," he said, into the silence.
"No."
"I did. Her and that Brain. I blew them up." Fry stared down at his hands. "I didn't even think about it."
"You were in survival mode, kid. You can't beat yourself up about it."
"I blew them up," Fry said stubbornly. "I wanted to stop the Brain following us, so I shot the fuel. I knew what would happen." He swallowed, feeling sick. "They're dead, because of me."
Glottus grabbed the side of a rack of whips, and pulled himself into a sitting position from his bed on the basement floor. Mort – who was on combination guard and nurse duty today – looked up briefly from his cards, but Glottus waved him off. His focus was still on Fry.
"I'm alive because of you, kid," he said. "And that girl? She was dead the minute the brain showed up after us. There's no fighting them, not for the rest of us. It probably killed her before it even got to me."
"You don't know that," Fry insisted. "She could've been alive back there. I could've got her out, I could've tried –"
Glottus glared.
"You wouldn't be feeling so chivalrous if she'd got her feelers round your neck, kid. And that's how it would've ended, if by some damn miracle that thing let her live. It would have used her, and woke me up before I bled to death, and the two of us would have overpowered you. And you'd be in some Brainspawn hive right now, with them dissecting you to try and figure out how the hell you work."
"Then maybe that's where I should be."
Glottus snorted.
"Considering you're the only hope for the damn sentient universe, I'm gonna take the wild step of disagreeing with you there, kid."
When Fry said nothing in reply, the captain sighed.
"Alright, alright. Maybe you killed her. And maybe you didn't. And that's the truth. So – you feel any better?"
"No."
"Yeah, didn't think so. Because here's the thing: you don't know. And even if you live long enough for the Sunset Squad to scoop you up one day, you'll never know. You can turn it over in your head every day until you die, and you won't get any answers. So tell me, what's the point? Who does it help if you hate yourself, huh? You? Her? Me?" He shook his head. "You made a judgement call. When you're in battle, kid, that is what you do. You think I haven't been there? You think it's ever pretty? There's a man down, a threat approaching, and it's all on you. You don't get to think it over, you don't get more time, you don't get to go back and do it over again after. There's just you, and the call you made. And the only way to live with that is to know you can't change it. What's done is done. You got that?"
Glottus was breathing heavily. As his tirade ended, the breathing harshened into the sick, wet-sounding cough Fry was all too familiar with.
Mort frowned.
"Lie down," he murmured.
Glottus ignored him. He was still focused on Fry.
"Do you get it?" he rasped.
There was blood at the corner of his mouth.
Fry nodded, slowly.
"Good." Glottus seemed to relax. He wiped the blood from around his mouth, and lay down again, his eyes drifting shut as if suddenly exhausted. "Then change the station, kid."
Fry cranked the radio obediently and spun the dial again, back to Johnny Cash. He watched Glottus, until the captain's breathing evened out and he seemed to be asleep again.
"He's not getting better."
Mort swept his cards up again, smoothing the edges of the deck.
"He needs time."
"But we don't have time," Fry argued. "We have to stop the Brainspawn. I have to get to Earth before they do. I have to -"
"Vondra's working on it," Mort assured him. "But that takes time too. We're right under the nose of the DOOP here, and they're already suspicious. Not to mention, this isn't her usual operation. Most of our contacts specialize in bringing contraband in, not smuggling people out."
Fry blinked.
"You're smugglers?"
Mort shrugged.
"Liquor and cigarettes, mostly. Import taxes are high, this far out from the main shipping routes. Fifty per cent of the base value of your goods, sometimes – and all of it going in the customs officers back pocket. It's not so much smuggling as a survival mechanism. The DOOP know we do it, but they can't prove anything. And they're our best customers, so if the price is right, they're not inclined to look too cl-" He stopped suddenly, as if he was a radio and someone had spun the dial on him. "Vondra's coming," he said distantly. "She has something for you. Papers, I think."
Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and then the heavy scrape of the lock.
Despite the rotating guard on Fry and Glottus, Vondra was the only one to hold the key to the door. No-one came in or out without her knowledge. Including Fry, who had been locked in for nearly a week now. It wasn't all bad – they'd finally stopped tying him to the chair, and the radio had appeared three days in, to stop him going completely crazy – but Glottus still slept around eighteen hours a day, and Fry was starting to really miss things like fresh air. And weather. And knowing if it was day or night without the radio telling him so.
Vondra had her hair in thick spiral braids, swept up in a velvet headscarf that matched her dress. Both were deep blue, and glittered like they'd been brushed with starlight. But her eyes were starting to look tired, deep-set in her face, and there was a tightness around her mouth that betrayed her stress levels.
Her gaze went straight to Glottus, the way it always did.
"He's still asleep?"
Mort nodded.
"He was up, for a while. I can wake him, if you -"
"No. Let him sleep." Vondra paused, taking in the specks of blood on her brother's collar, and the smear of it on the back of his hand. "He's still bleeding. I thought the stitches would be holding by now."
Mort said nothing.
"I'll send Candy out for the vet again," Vondra decided, into the silence. "Better safe than sorry."
"He needs time," Mort murmured.
His voice had that strange cadence again – the one that was more than just human certainty. Vondra must have caught it too, because she cast him a look.
"Time is the one thing we don't have," she reminded him. "Yearling is already sniffing around. Friday is looking like our only window. If Eric can't be moved by then, we're all screwed. I'm sending for the vet."
She turned her attention to Fry.
"In the meantime, here."
She tossed something at him – a tiny plastic card. A fake ID, Fry realized, staring down at his own face in the picture. He was wearing DOOP fatigues again, and his hair was so long it was hitting his collar. Which wasn't such a bad thing. It hid the fact that the back of his head and neck were still tanned two shades darker than the rest of him, from the explosion, and he was peppered in tiny white scars where the shrapnel had caught him. The ragged edge of his ear, where Glottus had shot at him, was also hidden from view.
But -
"Marty McFly?" he read, disbelieving. "Seriously?"
Vondra's mouth twitched, amused.
"It fit."
"But . . . won't the DOOP figure out that's a fake name?"
Vondra rolled her eyes.
"I doubt it. Customs and Border Patrol aren't too cultured. I was Nina Simone for a calendar year once, and they didn't pick up on it. I'd say you're safe."
"Oh. Then . . . thanks, I guess."
Fry tucked the ID in his pocket, and then examined the Captain's – Elias Watergate - with interest.
But Vondra didn't seem to be done. She was regarding Fry, as if weighing him up.
"Can you mix a drink?" she asked suddenly.
Fry blinked.
"Uh . . . sure? I was a bartender on Mars, before."
It felt like a lifetime ago, that tiny apartment on Mars Vegas with Gomez and Xandri, when Fry spent every day trying to drink himself through to the next. He'd been a disaster back then. In retrospect, Glottus hitting him with the hovercar had been the best thing that could have happened to him. It had woken him up, shaken him out of his self-pitying stupor and made him realize there were more important things in the world than his broken heart.
But it had also led him here - to the other side of the universe from Leela, to this dank little room where his last remaining friend was bleeding out from a bullet wound Fry had put in him.
Fry stopped himself. What's done is done, he reminded himself. You can't change it.
Vondra was still evaluating him.
"Can you keep your mouth shut if I let you upstairs?"
Upstairs? She was going to let him out of here?
Fry opened his mouth to say "yes", then thought better of it and traded this response for some vigorous nodding.
"He won't talk, Von," Mort said mildly. "Too much on his mind. And you know Temp will keep him in line."
Vondra sighed.
"Fine. In that case, you can get dressed, Marty. Happy hour starts in five, and I need an extra pair of hands."
"I am dressed," Fry pointed out.
"Then put on some shoes. And comb your hair." Vondra watched as he scrambled to obey. "If anyone asks, you just shipped in from the Hippolate front and you're paying off a debt to me."
Fry paused in the act of combing his hair off his face.
"How come everyone here owes you money?" he asked. "What's up with that?"
"I'm generous." When Fry only looked confused, Vondra smiled thinly. "Some of it's gambling debts. But most of it's the COs, getting their revenge on any recruit they don't like. The DOOP docks wages as punishment," she explained. "Failure to salute: they dock your wages. Shoes not shiny enough: they dock your wages. Look the wrong way at a commanding officer . . . . you get the picture. Some of these sadists get bored." She smoothed the velvet on her sleeve. "You met Captain Yearling."
"The douchey British guy with the little mustache?"
Vondra laughed.
"Right. He showed up a year ago. Hates everyone and everything on this god-forsaken little waterworld, and takes it out on anyone he can. He has a special hard-on for me."
Fry broke a tooth in the comb, with a tiny little snap. He put it down hurriedly.
"His wet dream is to shut this place down," Vondra continued. "He's just itching to catch me in a crime. Smuggling, soliciting" - she cast a glance at her unconscious brother - "sheltering a fugitive. Anything would do."
"Soliciting?" Fry said blankly.
"Prostituting."
"The DOOP have a no-women rule," Mort explained. "Well. More specifically, a no-sex rule. It's lifted for shore leave, but this place counts as an active duty posting. Sex with a woman would be an infraction." He glanced at his brother-in-law. "Curiously enough, it only applies to sex with women. You can circumvent it if one party has a less human anatomy, or if your preferences run in the opposite direction."
"The dude direction."
"Yes, exactly."
Fry considered this, as he laced up his boots. No wonder the DOOP thought Captain Glottus was such a loose cannon. He questioned their phony wars, he cared about his men more than their orders, and he was trying to blow the whistle on their cover-up. Oh, and he'd married a dude, which they probably thought was him making fun of their weird, no-lady-sex policy.
Out of nowhere, Fry wondered if this was why Kif never seemed to get promoted, even though he was obviously a better leader than Zapp. Because of Amy? (Even though Amy talked a lot, and Fry had a feeling the DOOP wouldn't think what she and Kif did counted as sex.)
Something else hit him.
"Wait. Aren't you guys . . . um . . . I mean, aren't you ladies . . ." He waved his arm, miming something even he couldn't interpret. "Um. Ladies of the evening?" He frowned. Maybe that was lady Draculas. "I mean -"
Vondra raised her eyebrows.
"My girls aren't hookers," she said coldly.
"Oh."
Vondra sighed.
"They're company," she explained. "They sing, they strip, they do a little BDSM. Strictly one way." She laughed. "You'd be surprised how many men think whips and candle wax are a fair substitute for being with a woman. Throw in some dirty talk, and they pretty much take care of themselves."
Fry swallowed.
"It's surprisingly lucrative," Vondra went on, ignoring him. "No contact, see? Yearling can't penalize his men for coming here. They can do what they want with ice cubes and nipple clamps, but if there's no skin-to-skin, they're not breaking any rules. And of course, some of them only come here to game and drink and watch the girls. There's no law against that."
Mort was frowning, his fingers tap-tap-tapping on the arm of his chair,
"Vondra feels very strongly that some things can't be sold," he said quietly. "Some things can't be bought, only given." He paused. "Yearling is the opposite. I've seen men like him before. Rich men, who think the world is theirs to be bought." He locked eyes with Fry, and for the first time, Fry saw something hard in them. "He resents that he can't buy my wife."
It was Vondra's turn to frown.
"I can handle Yearling." she said.
"You underestimate him."
"And you overestimate him. He's a bully, Mort. Just another jacked-up proto-fascist who won't let himself get laid. This little vendetta of his is the only thing that gives his life meaning. He has no real power. What can he do? Shut us down? It's not like we don't have plans for that contingency. We'll start up somewhere else."
"Maybe he can't hurt us," Mort said quietly. "But he can hurt Eric."
"Not if he doesn't find him. And he only finds him if someone talks, which" - Vondra's tone was cool - "no-one here is dumb enough to do. Not even Wonder Boy over there would put Eric in danger." She paused, her eyes raking over the cards in her husband's hands. "Unless you've seen something."
Mort shook his head.
"No. Not since . . ." His gaze landed briefly on Fry, then flickered away. "I can't focus. It's as if I'm trying to read for two people at once. Two futures at once. They blur together. I can't tell one from the other."
Vondra frowned.
"That's new."
"I know."
"I don't like it."
"I can't say I do either." Mort smoothed the edges of his cards, and stashed them back inside his coat. "But one thing I do know: something's coming. For all of us. And we can't be here when it does."
The Brains, Fry thought. They were the worst thing he could think of, the only thing that could inspire this much fear, or cause that much destruction. They were coming for him. And sooner or later, nowhere he stayed would be safe.
Vondra was quiet. Maybe she was thinking the same thing.
"Try and see," she said at last.
Then she stood up, gesturing tiredly to Fry.
"Alright, Marty McFly. Time to mix me a martini and show me what you're made of."
It turned out Fry's bartending skills were good enough to keep him at the bar. Mars Vegas had been all fancy cocktails and big money, but most of Vondra's customers were DOOP soldiers, and they didn't drink fancy anything. Just beer in gallon jugs, and spirits as strong as Fry could serve them. The men didn't even look at him until they found themselves staring at the bar through the bottom of an empty glass. And then all Fry had to do was top them up, and like magic, he became invisible again.
Not that they could have seen much of him anyway. In the tradition of all great dive bars, Vondra kept hers in almost total darkness. There was a strip of dim lighting in the center of the room, and waxy yellow lamps burned every ten feet or so, but the bar was mostly smoke and shadow. Even the stage was barely visible.
Tempest was sitting at the piano now, crooning some song that was sad but strangely soothing. Fry had the feeling he knew it from somewhere. His time, maybe. Or even older.
"You've got a way to keep me on your side
You give me cause for love that I can't hide
For you I know I'd even try to turn the tide
Because you're mine
I walk the line . . ."
Fry wiped down the bar, frowning absently to himself.
There was an empty stool in front of him. Someone had been sitting there cracking peanuts. The shells were snapped clean in two and arranged in tiny right angles on the counter top, every one a perfect little 90 degrees.
Bender had used to do that, back on Earth. Fry had always figured it must be a robot thing, the way he saw little patterns in everything.
There was a robot here, wasn't there? Vondra had said that, before. A robot that came in sometimes, drank her liquor, and ogled the girls. Maybe Fry would meet him. It wouldn't be the same as seeing Bender again, but it might make him feel less lonely, anyway. He missed Bender.
Fry swept away the peanut shells and moved on down the bar, gathering up abandoned glasses as he went.
There were DOOP soldiers at the end of the bar, engaged in heated conversation.
"She's crazy," a burly bald guy was insisting. He stabbed his finger in a puddle of spilled beer, splashing it onto his shirt in a drunken point of emphasis. "Crazy bitch."
The man opposite him – a younger British man, tall, and so skinny he looked like he'd been bolted together at the joints – shook his head.
"No, no, no," he said, waving an olive on a stick in the air, as if to punctuate his point. "Neptune has it right. Born on Earth, that makes you Earthican. Same rights as any of us. You can't say . . . "only humans are Earthican citizens". You can't say only humans have rights. You can't say that. Because then it all breaks down." He cast a beseeching look at his companions. "Come on, back me up."
A man next to him – broad-shouldered and covered in dense, wiry black fur – nodded his agreement.
"I'm Earthican," he growled. "Five generations my dad's family have been there, and my mother? As human as you can get. But your 'crazy bitch', Lambert? She looks more human than me. So where do you draw the line, huh? Where's the damn difference? I'm just dandy and she's genetic scum, hey? How does that work?"
A green-skinned, heavy-browed man on the left laughed.
"Right," he agreed. "And it's making Nixon enemies. Can't do business with someone who thinks you're a second class citizen." He looked squint-eyed at the man called Lambert. "Don't want to have their back in a fight neither. Sanctions are just the start. Earth pushes this any harder and this little melting pot we call the DOOP starts looking mighty lumpy."
"Wouldn't want that now, would we?"
"No siree."
There was a gale of drunken laughter.
Right, Fry remembered. Most of the soldiers here were only on Erosh as a kind of punishment. Maybe the DOOP falling apart would seem funny to them.
He wondered what Nixon had done to get everyone so riled up. Earth was always at war with someone, and most Earthicans didn't even notice. Fry had fought in that war against the sentient balls, and people still gave him blank looks when he talked about it. Then three years ago there had been that offensive against the killer arachnoids, which no-one had cared about either. And he was pretty sure they were still fighting a war against that triffid planet, only no-one ever remembered it. For people to get all worked up about this one, it must be closer to home. Maybe the Moon was trying to secede from Earth again?
Fry shrugged to himself, and went to change the barrel.
Whatever it was, he thought reassuringly, at least it wasn't his problem.
Tempest plunged her hands into the ice bucket.
"Cramp," she explained when Fry looked at her funny. "I've been playing for two hours." She flexed her fingers. "So. Vondra let you out."
"I think I'm on probation," Fry admitted. "Hey, quit melting my ice."
He wrapped some ice cubes in a towel and handed them to the Amphibiosan girl. She accepted them warily, rolling her wrists over the cold spot.
"Where's Candy?" she asked.
"Vondra made her go get the doctor again. I didn't see her come back though. She must've gone in the back way."
"That would be the smart thing to do." Tempest was trying to sound sarcastic, Fry could tell, but the edge in her voice just wasn't there. "The doctor?" she said at last. "Again?"
Fry nodded, but kept his mouth obediently closed. Glottus wasn't something he could talk about upstairs. Vondra had made that much clear, and Fry had no desire to put his friend in danger anyway. So he just stared back at the girl instead, and hoped his face communicated his concern.
It must have done, because she poured herself a drink and drank it sitting in front of him, in glum silence.
"I thought he'd get better," she said at last. "I thought . . . I don't know. It's stupid. He just always seemed like . . . one of those people who could never . . ." She shook her head. "Shit. I can't even imagine it."
"Why do you care so much?"
Fry winced. The words had escaped him without meaning to, and just like they always did when he didn't think them through, they'd come out all wrong.
But for once Tempest didn't seem offended.
"I don't," she said dully. "I mean, I do. But not so much . . . for him." She flexed her wrist again, absently testing the sensation. "Vondra is my only family. I know that sounds pathetic, I know they're not really . . . but her and Mort, they took me in when I had nothing. No-one. My name was dirt in the Cluster, no-one wanted me. I was just another stupid teenage runaway when I came out here. But Vondra took me in anyway. It might be crazy but . . . I hitched through three galaxies after I left Six, and Vondra was the first person – the only person – who even – who would even look me in the eye. She gave me a job. And her trust. And she didn't feel sorry for me. But when some guy wouldn't get the message that it's just a show and I don't swing that way, she sold his debts to the Robot Mafia and the Don Bot broke both that asshole's kneecaps." She allowed herself a small smile. "I know she seems like a hardass, but she cares. She does. And she's done more to protect me than my real family ever did, so . . ."
Fry nodded slowly.
"I get it," he said. "I lost my family," he explained, when Tempest looked skeptical. "They died, I guess. A long time ago. I couldn't . . . I couldn't go back."
He coughed, blinking back sudden tears. The stress of the last few months must be getting to him more than he realized. It had been a long time since he cried over his family. Even back on Earth, just talking about them had never been enough to set him off before. Bender and Leela had always been there then, to buffer him against the worst of that loss.
"So I found a new family," he went on hurriedly. "My friends. I'd do anything for them. That's why I need to get back to Earth. I have to protect them." He swallowed. "They need me."
"I know."
Tempest nodded.
Maybe she was just deflated by their conversation, or maybe she'd been talking to Captain Glottus on one of her watches. Either way, she'd stopped making fun of the Brainspawn. Somewhere down the road, she'd started to believe him, Fry realized.
She slid off her stool, sighing, before he could ask her any more about it.
"I better go find Candy. She's supposed to be on tonight. I know she's Amish, but that girl has no concept of time. It's like they never heard of a clock on Planet Farmstead."
Tempest pushed off through the crowd, jabbing her elbows into the ribs of anyone who got in her way.
Then someone started slamming their fist against the bar, repeatedly, and Fry realized the soldiers were sobering up. He ran a hand through his hair, grabbed a bottle of malt liquor, and set off to remedy the situation.