Cantilever Jones Swings Low, Part 2
By Albert Kuhawlik
No one on Senel-4 wanted to go to the polar zone. I could have told them that, but it became
very clear to me after a night’s prana-rat-shooting that it was pointless to tell any of them that.
Reaching total self-awareness and then shooting rodents with a sling gun is one of my favorite
ways to process uncomfortable realities. And it keeps Norl fed.
The reality was, I had taken on this client without the full extent of their weirdness read out
to me, but with enough signs so that I should have known there was weirdness untouched. So I
bore a certain responsibility to myself to see the thing through. It had to be done, because it was
being done. I had facilitated it so far. I was bound up in it, regardless of what happened.
So it was that I went about the town of Asport, in the warm season, when the blue leaves are
bursting on the tumwul trees, and the lazy are drunk in the middle of the day on bishka, a kind of
spice rum, singing songs about cane harvesting they weren’t doing, as that kind of cane doesn’t
grown on this world. All in all, a merry sort of town. Even the freighter captains and smugglers
had an air of bucolic ease, as opposed to the usual paranoia. So I went among them, and spoke in
cheerful tones, and we bore each other’s wit as best we may.
The first set of locals who ran a shipping concern out along the Great Blue Way (for such the
road north out of Asport is called) were very friendly when I enquired about passage northward,
and when I said I had a long way to go, they asked with innocent brightness just how far I had in
mind.
“The polar zone,” I said lightly.
They did not throw me out so much as simply refuse to acknowledge my presence any
longer. I walked out after a few minutes and it was as though I had never been in there in the first
place.
{That was friendly}
“It was expected”
{Then why did you have to do it?}
“Because I am performing my due diligence”
{Are you okay? Did that Girl put some kind of spell on you?}
“Possible, but you know when my mind is being messed with. Do you sense any such
fuckery?”
{No, but I’m confused. If this girl was a bit older, I’d understand your actions. But as it is…}
“Nothing for it, Norl. I must see this thing through.”
And I did, through four or five more establishments, each getting the same ghosting. No one
jibbered at me that the Polar Zone was forbidden, or called me a fool for wanting to go there. No
one warned me of anything. No one breathed a word to me. The Polar Zone was not only
Forbidden, it may not be spoken of, and whoever spoke of it was Already Dead in their eyes. In
my journeys to this place, I’d heard some things of course - many planets recently colonized by