The Arrak Marigold

Every so often I wonder what poor, misbegotten soul built my shabby cabin in Arrak’s rolling mountains. Someone must have been here before me. What happened to them? Did they go mad? Or die of loneliness? Or disappear into the wilderness, eaten by a monster or poisoned by the vicious plant life on this world? I don’t know, and the question haunts me when I think about it. So I try not to think much. About anything.

I hate the planet Arrak. I’ve been stuck on this assignment with ATEMil Security—that’s the military arm of Arrak Trading Enterprises combine (ATE for short)—for more than two standard years. And I hate everything about this place. I hate the tropical heat and humidity. I hate the overgrown plant life that would as soon strangle you with their blood-red whip-vines or poison you with their highly toxic fruit as actually be useful. Or edible. Most of all I hate the colonists here. Warts they are. Warts on the face of the cosmos.

Arrak was settled in one of the first wave of diaspora expansion from Earth several hundred years ago. Many—all right, most—of those colonies were lost. They died on their decades-long voyages, or were killed by something nasty on their landing world, or lacked the skills and numbers needed to survive as an isolated outpost of humanity. But Arrack was different. The colonists somehow survived all that and created a viable society. If you can call their primitive grubbing along as “viable.” As happens with populations isolated from their native stock, the Arrakans mutated to better survive this horrible world. They now look a little off when compared with real humans, skin too much on the scarlet side, eyes too sad and woeful. They even carry the stinky forests of this world. More than that, they’re caught up in the religious mystical hoo-hah so prevalent in the uber-primitive, or maybe they’d brought it with them.

Who cares? I sure as hell don’t. Doesn’t stop me hating them. Festering Warts one and all.

The Combine twisted politicians’ arms and possibly other bodily protrusions to gain exclusive exploitation rights for a dozen or so rediscovered colony worlds, including Arrak. Still, nothing much happened here until the Combine sent a ship to scope out the place a decade or so ago. That ship, may its crew be ever cursed, discovered that despite their primitive, mud-plastered lifestyle, the mutated colonists possess one huge asset worth trillions of credits back in civilized space. The mutants’ tears, when processed into a jelly, are an astonishing anti-senescence factor.

What that means is, they can make you immortal, or near enough for any practical measure.

So ATE was set up to find ways to exploit this lode of riches. To almost no one’s surprise, except maybe the board governing the Combine, the blasted Warts object to the exploitation of Arrak’s most profitable resource. Can’t imagine why. All we want is their tears. Not their blood, or their first-borns.

Well, okay, we do want their first-borns, and second-borns too. We’re trying to set up a—how shall I put it—a facility where we can train the Wart babies to supply tears on demand. Those tears are worth at least a million credits a kilo. With proper handling of the Warts in such a facility, we can reap close to a kilo’s worth of tears every month from each one. To add to the profits, someone back in ATE headquarters decided we could run such a place for a tiny fraction of one kilo’s worth of credits. Easy peasy. After all, we don’t want the residents there to find their lives too pleasant. Why would they cry in such a situation? Nope, we want them to be, um, challenged by their situation.

The facility was no sooner thought of than implemented. Since then, there have been nothing but attacks and rebellions and raids from those hated Warts. In one sense, those have helped because the inmates—I mean the Warts in residence—found plenty to shed tears over. Our tear-jelly output first doubled, then tripled. But that also left me—a trained exo-geologist—as a guard in that hellhole. Not what I signed on for when I joined ATEMil.

So why am I here, buried in the outposts of nowhere? Because I made the mistake of believing Cmdr. Sanchez, the head of Arrak’s ATEMil personnel, when he promised me a way out of guard duty at the Wart facility—as long as I provided him with, um, shall we say, off-duty relaxation exercise?

Right. I should have known. I did know, really. I only wanted to believe this time would be different.

The fact that I’m out here in nowheres-ville proves that it wasn’t different. When I dared to remind Cmdr. Sanchez of his promises, he replaced me with an ATEMil sergeant who was younger and prettier than me, and pulled me off guard duty—as promised, you see—only to send me out here into the wilds to investigate rumors of an alternative source for the tear-jelly among the mutated variant Tagetes patula arrakana. The Arrak marigold. He gave me a promotion to Field Science Officer, as if a token improvement in rank could make exile tolerable!

Before I could utter a single protest, I was airlifted hundreds of klicks into the rolling hills that pass for mountains here. Me and my hiking pack tumbled unceremoniously to the ground outside the rattiest cabin I’d ever seen. Almost before I got to my feet, the airlift craft had soared up and away. Alone. Dumped literally and figuratively with only my pack, a few low-res images of my new topic of study, and bitter regrets to keep me company.

So. The Arrak marigold, a pretty plant, if you like plants, which I don’t particularly. My eco-geologist speciality is all about rocks and minerals, so a marigold was totally outside my interests and training. In addition, the Arrak marigold is downright repulsive, more so than other Arrak plants. The blooms are huge, about a meter across, and are a vibrant blood red with copper streaks. The worst part of the plant is its pungency. The enormous leaves constantly secrete an oil that utterly reeks. The first time I accidentally brushed one of those leaves, it took me three days and seven full-body baths to get rid of the stench, and I had to throw away and bury the fatigues I had on.

No wonder the Warts reek so badly.

I’ve been out here in the wilds so long I also think my health is affected. My vision is going funny, and my senses are off. Nothing tastes good anymore, not even my favorite ready-to-eat packet of grilled liver. The reek of that blasted Arrak marigold causes that, I’m sure.

I spend my hours glaring at the nasty Arrak marigold plants that surround this primitive cabin while visualizing every method I can think of to force Cmdr. Sanchez to haul me back to civilized life among humans. I’d even cheerily guard the Warts in the facility again, that’s how desperate I am.

As I’m thinking these thoughts, I realize the usual background squawks and squeals have gone silent. And then I hear it. A step. Shuffle. Step. Shuffle.

I grab my service weapon and open the door. Sure enough, an injured Wart stands at the edge of the small clearing around the cabin. She—definitely a she—doesn’t seem dangerous. She looks…despairing.

I approach her cautiously, still keeping my weapon out and trained on her. I know the Warts can deceive you without half trying. But this one—she’s helpless and defeated, all the more so when she abruptly collapses to the ground.

Though I take my time, I end up right beside her. She hasn’t made the slightest move to attack or hurt me and her face still holds that desperate need. Her mouth, surrounded by ugly, too-full round lips, opens and a croaky voice says, “Take me back.”

She speaks ATEMil Standard? How did that happen? “You a runaway from the facility?” My own voice, so rarely used after these weeks, is almost as rusty as hers.

She grimaces. “Not quite. You’re the…the…science person? Right?”

“Exo-geologist. How do you know that? You a Wart spy?”

Her head shakes no and her eyes squeeze shut, as if complete exhaustion is only moments away. “I’m like you.”

“No. No you’re not like me. You’re a Wart. Always have been. Always will be.” Still, her claim makes me peer closer. She wears a ragged pair of chopped-off trousers that might have once been fatigues. Her shirt, though filthy, ripped and torn, might once have borne some resemblance to a uniform shirt. “Who’d you steal your clothes from, Wart?”

Her eyes open. She stares at me. And this time I realize: brown eyes edging into purple at the pupil. When every single Wart on the planet has greeny-purple irises. I shrink away from her, losing my balance and landing on my butt in the dirt. “Who are you?” I whisper.

“I’m Sanchez’s reject. He sent me away when I got too…I don’t know. Something. Or he found someone else. Was it you?”

“Sanchez did this to you?”

Her eyes flutter closed again and her words are so faint I have to lean close. “No. Arrak did this to me. Arrak and that bedamned marigold. Did he send you here to find a new immortal serum?”

I don’t answer. I don’t have to.

“It does this to people. It’s not a new source of tear-jelly but a make-them-Warts weapon. It made me a Wart. And…” With a sigh, she collapses into death.

And…what? What did she want to say after that fateful word? I sit beside her a long time before I gather the courage to check the sealed pocket of her shredded shirt. Sure enough, there it is. Her ATEMil ID. Corporal Arlena Lee, motor pool specialist.

She is—or was—human. Not a Wart at all.

I get up, bewildered and lost. Did Sanchez use this barely livable post as his dumping grounds after he finished with his female seductions? Yeah, he’d do exactly that. Ruthless bastard.

But why did Corp. Lee claim she was like me? I’m not a Wart. Far from it. I lack the red skin, woeful eyes, and round lips of a Wart. At least I think I do. How can I tell? I haven’t seen so much as a water reflection of myself since I was dumped here.

Frantically, I race inside, rip through every drawer, shelf, and cabinet. Nothing there that can provide the slightest mirror image. I tear open my pack, despite that I emptied it weeks ago. Finally, in a long-forgotten corner there is a small round mirror, only a couple centimeters across.

My hand shakes as I bring it up to peer at it, but not enough light inside the cabin to see clearly. I run outside and angle the mirror to catch my reflection.

I can’t believe what I see. My skin isn’t reddened from a solar burn as I’ve assured myself for weeks. My mouth is rounder, with far fuller lips than I had before. And my eyes. My blue, blue eyes are now definitely purple with touches of green.

I drop the mirror on the ground and lift my forearm to give myself a sniff. The distinctive reek of Arrak clogs my nose.

I can’t absorb this, but at the same time, I believe. That snake. That rat-bastard. That demon personified. He has done this to me.

I am a Wart.