Drake - part 2

The old spaceport was about to burst at the seams. Thousands of representatives of hundreds of different life forms from all the nooks of the universe had gathered there to listen to the incredible voice of the opera singer Kalinda. Everyone was waiting impatiently for the appearance of the famous performer. Maybe for increasing the effect of her presence, she was already late with twelve and twenty-five minutes respectively by the big and the small sun.

That was the background, where Drake and Lucash were sitting in wait, eating popcorns. None of them was great fan of opera music, but in spite of that, their expressions gave away impatience and slight uneasiness. Lucash threw a glance at his watches.

"If only the Thing doesn't show before the beginning of the concert. Then we're in trouble."

"It will save you all the troubles for the future," Drake tried to ease him.

Actually, he was quite nervous too. True, the Thing wasn't after him, but along with Lucash It could swallow the whole spaceport along with the crowd. Of course, if It was inclined to do it. And everything evidenced to the conclusion that the Thing had intelligence in some unknown degree.
Lucash took out a small disc and started a silent prayer.

"I didn't know you were religious," Drake pointed at the compact disc, on which the upholders of the digitalism believed that the digital God was scrambled and compressed.

"I'm not, and yet if there is a God, why not take advantage of that?" Lucash replied. "Besides, this disc is a keepsake from the only woman I felt strong feelings towards. More than three months..."

"What did she do to impress you that much?"

"She was my assistant when I was piloting cargo spaceships. You get into open space, set the coordinates, turn on the autopilot and when you turn off the artificial gravity you start some screwing - so ethereal, and as if immaterial. My favorite sex is at weightlessness - I forget about my pounds there, I don't get tired and I don't gasp for breath. Everything comes to be by the most pleasant and trouble-free way. Oh, good times we had with my voluptuous assistant years ago. But that time is old gone."

And then, the stage was lit by the floodlights and under thundering hand-clapping, tentacle-whistling and flipper-rubbing the fabulous Kalinda appeared - plump auntie with triple chin. She smiled at the applauding crowd and started her show with the aria from "Teyronian nailcutter" as a gesture towards the hosts.

At that time, another interesting act took place before the two Thing-seekers. A humanoid sitting in front of them suddenly cried out:

"I'm pregnant! It's coming!"

"Call 911," Drake murmured, not wanting his plan to be ruined.

"But these species breed asexual!" a connoisseur sitting next to them exclaimed.

Obviously the pregnancy had reached the final stage, because an interesting metamorphosis began happening with the humanoid. In the middle of her body formed a fold that deepened more and more. Her spine sank in, her body pinched and greasy and foul smelling mucus started oozing from the deep fissure. The fold continued to deepen, until at last it divided the body of the alien into two equal parts. With that, the fission ended successfully and the nearby crowd applauded, taken away from the beautiful singing of Kalinda for a moment.

The two new humanoids ran their fingers along their bodies and looked at each other.

"I hate opera!" one of them said. "Why have you brought me to this concert?"

"I think we came here together, darling. While we were still one entity. But obviously the good taste remained in my half, while the rudeness and the bad manners - in yours," her sister retorted maliciously.

"I have no intention to waste my time in senseless conversations. My whole life's before me, I'm going elsewhere to have fun."

"For me, the greatest fun is here, at this wonderful concert, sister, but you can go wherever you wish - I'm not stopping you."

"Yeah, I can also go have fun with men, if I want to," the newly-fissioned answered defiantly.

"I'm sorry, but it seems that God didn't grant you the required organs for that, darling."

"I was speaking metaphorically!" the sister snapped and made her way towards the exit.

During the whole dialog, the lookers-on of this family dispute focused their gazes now at one of the sisters now at the another like watching tennis match, and that distracted them from the new event that had hung over the spaceport - the giant black thing, about half a mile long, that meandered in the sky as if enthralled by Kalinda's vibrato, listening to the singing from the most luxurious sky-box. Everything near It was sucked into its volume. Cigarette smoke, flying birds and low clouds were drawn to It and disappeared inside It. The Thing had a human form - a torso, a head, arms and legs. Its measures resembled that of a tall and skinny boy that has just entered puberty. And at closer inspection, one could notice small lumps in the outlines where its face should be.

The whole crowd had stared at It in wide-eyed horror. Naturally, that didn't go unnoticed by the diva. She looked up as well and her last tone turned into a piercing shriek that then died. As if that shook the Thing out of the numbness that had seized it to that moment. It dashed down, reached the stage and swallowed the diva. Swept along by the whirlwind, into his mouth went the whole stage along with the scenery, the speakers, the musicians whose only part in the concert was to pretend that they play in unison with the playback, as well as the people who sat on the first few rows.

"Great!" Drake smiled, while seeing everything going on as planned.

The many thousands in the crowd fell into all-out panic. Everyone dashed towards the exits of the spaceport like a herd of frightened hostenots. Soon the whole area cleared, not taking into account the stamped down and the injured by the destruction. Both Drake and Lucash had turned as pale as dead. But the Thing, as soon as it swallowed the diva, ascended to a safe height and relaxed. The agent took a careful look at It. His trained eye didn't miss even the slightest detail. The trouble was that besides its outlines there was nothing else to fix one's eyes on. The Thing was so black on the inside that the darkness one sees with closed eyes seemed white compared to It. Not a single detail, nor shade could be discerned. That, along with the insurmountable absorbing of all kinds of objects into the Thing, disappearing without a trace in It, made Drake compare It to a black hole. A small, human-like black hole.

In a while, they heard a sound like the clearing of a throat, but produced by a giant whale. They heard a cough and a spit.

"There, now it will talk," Drake rubbed his hands in satisfaction. "As I expected, It was impressed by the terrific voice of Kalinda and It absorbed it by its efficient approach to people. Now It has both mind and voice, so nothing stops It from talking and presenting its wishes and terms."

"Father!" a mutating voice thundered, in which could be recognized the unmistakable timbre of the diva. "I finally found you!"

This touching remark was obviously aimed at Lucash. He trembled like an aspen leaf and tried to hide behind one of the benches, specially assembled for the concert. Another ingenious thought dawned on Drake. He fastened his eyes on Lucash and asked him sternly:

"What you told me before - about the sex in weightlessness. Did you use condoms?"

"Not always. When I didn't have one near at hand, I acted on bare skin. But I finished out, you know!"

"And after that, how did you... clean?"

"Not at all. It didn't bother me the least. There were times when some metabols of the liquid floated like small balloons in the ship."

That was when the pieces of the puzzle set in their right places before Drake and he saw it in all of its dimensions. The poor fool Lucash. How could he know that his semen would float unmolested in the ship until it gets into the waste-lock and gets ejected out? Once in open space, its freedom gets unlimited. It floats with the calmness of an Indian hermit and travels majestically through space. Until it ends in some black hole.
No one has had the chance to study this natural phenomenon and reveal its essence. Well, now humankind knew more about that matter thanks to me, Drake thought. Black holes turned out to be something like living beings of the female sex. Hyper-female in character, if we have to be exact.

The first man who had inseminated a black hole was looking in amazement at his son, trying to comprehend the new reality that Drake explained to him. Definitely it wasn't easy.

"Father!" his son repeated even more persistently.

"Yes, son," Lucash' teeth rattled. "I'm so glad... to see you... after all these years. Look at how much you've grown!"

"Yes, I've grown! Like bastard!" the maturing voice of the opera singer couldn't hide its growing excitement and turned into falsetto. "Away from father's caress, embrace, even look. Did I ever mean anything to you? Did it ever happen for you to come back early from work and play football with me or wrestle with me - of course, when I was little and you were in my weight. You have never taken even the smallest notice of me!"

"But... dear, I hadn't the slightest idea... I don't even know your mother."

"That's not an excuse at all. A man must always bear the responsibility for his actions, regardless of how rash and stupid they might be."

The big black Thing began to look like a judicious young man and its beliefs and morality seemed above his tender juvenile age.

"Young lad," Drake interfered, "speaking of responsibility, how would you rate your actions as of late? Let me remind you-" the agent opened his organizer "-7 cargo and 2 tourists spaceships; 2 villages; 34 buildings; 1 stadium and hundreds of human victims. All of which swallowed by you. Don't you bat an eye at this statistics? You've wiped it all and didn't even belch."

"I didn't want to do it. I've never liked to hurt, much less kill. I remember once, when I was little, how I had a terrible fun with a small and innocent comet. I chased it, I hunted it, and it was flying franticly through space, dying of fright. I swallowed her little by little from the tail, just like that - I was interested to see what would happen. During the chase - which was just a game to me, but a death agony to the poor comet - I felt the thrill of the hunt. And when I finally swallowed the whole of it, I felt so sorry for the poor tailed animal that I cried."

"Then why are you doing it?" Drake couldn't make out and was starting to bore with the whole story.

"Because that's the only way for me to contact other beings. Do you have any idea how lonely I am?" the cloud sighed heavily.

Drake buried his hands in his hair and shook his head in despair. Why me? he asked. Why on Earth did he have to take care of the depressed infant of a black hole and a stupid fat pervert? The agent understood that the Thing had entered a serious age, relevant to massive physical and psychological changes, for which melancholy and introversion are common occurrences. He felt for It, but that was not included in his duties as special agent. This one called for a shrink.

"I want a woman!" the voice spoke with unexpected firmness and resolution. "One that should not be sucked in me when I near her, but as it has to be, the other way round... in a way, of course," it laughed uneasy and Drake almost saw the black face turn red. "It's not fair - to swallow everyone I want to talk to or to do what people start doing at my age."

"Son," Lucash dared to speak, "can't you... so to speak... we call it 'autopilot'."

"And lose my hand? No, father, thanks! I want a woman, similar to me, with whom I would be able to mingle freely without anyone getting hurt."

"But where..."

"I don't care where! I want you to find her for me, because you're to blame for my rotten life! I want neither support money, nor inheritance. Just that. You'll bring me a woman even if you have to enter a black hole, or I'll swallow everything that I lay my eyes on. Including you."

"If we find you a suitable blacking... Sorry, don't take me for a racist," Drake started. "Will you go on a honeymoon in some other galaxy, to coo together, undisturbed?"

"I promise that after you find her you'll never see me again," the black cloud swore proudly. "We'll meet here again, but with the girl. Or else..." the Thing exemplified its threat by sucking in one breath the spaceport's restaurant along with the hotel for passengers from forwarded flights. Then It rushed at the stars and soon It passed out of the sight of the two men.

"At least one is for sure," Drake turned towards Lucash, who was sighing with relief, "the bride we find him must be sterile."



Drake spent the next few days in his hotel room, engulfed in thoughts. He was tirelessly scribbling his ideas on a pile of half-printed sheets, food packages, even toilet paper, because some voracious cockroaches had eaten his computer, used by Drake as a typewriter in the rare cases when he had to express himself in that unusual for him profession. There were scattered around him reference books on astrophysics, quantum mechanics, black hole theories, as well as an edition de luxe of the new essays of Stephen Hawking, published on the occasion of the five-hundredth birthday of the author, also known as the first cyborg.

The scattered around the agent empty bottles reminded him that it was time to augment the pile, for which he needed the help of Lucash. Despite the enormous desire of the fatty to be of aid for Drake, the help consisted only of supplying the required products, while the agent was masterminding his plan. Well, the idea had been shaped and the plan was almost ready.

The door opened and Lucash stepped into the room, carrying full up shopping basket. He dropped it on the floor and wiped the sweat off his forehead.

"What took you so long?" Drake asked.

"I had a meeting with my son, remember?"

"So?"

"The boy's pressing. It can't contain itself anymore. We need to provide It with some chick as soon as possible or we're in trouble. If only you saw what kind of tone It's using at me! As if I wasn't its father but someone of its age. Its language is so vulgar! It's obvious that It wasn't raised by me."

"Well, you know the youths these days. No respect and submission to the adults," Drake was filled with indignation and took a sip from the newly-brought bottle.

"How's the plan going?"

"I've figured it all out. It's time to make our move."

Drake and Lucash exited the room. The agent made his way to the upper floor, from where there were audible characteristic for the instinct for continuation of the species groans and moans. Without knocking (which would be fatal for the door made of the fragile corroded material), Drake stormed unceremoniously into the room and was met by an interesting picture. In the middle of the ball of human bodies, the hotel whore was doing all she could to satisfy the dozen men, who were fighting for access to her flesh like some hungry little pigs trying to get to the milk of their mother. The woman was showing simultaneously strong passion and true genuine bliss. One would think that she should pay the piled upon her men for the enormous pleasure they were giving her, and not the opposite. That's what pleased Drake most of all.
"APTSE, step back!" he cried, waving a frayed card.

Impressed not that much by the card (a little later, Drake was surprised to find that he hadn't took out the official Agency identification document, but an ordinary one-day card for urban transport), but by the brooking no contradiction commanding voice, the men quickly scattered off the hooker and flinging whatever clothes they found they filed out of the room.

"I'm hiring you wholly, with all your extras, for three days," Drake informed her.

"But we don't have any time right now!" Lucash began protesting. "Well, if you insist, I could screw her hastily..."

"She's part of the plan."

"What plan?" the whore asked.

"Would you like to fuck someone who'd suck you in in such a way that your head will reel?"

"But-" Lucash tried to interrupt, but the authoritative hand gesture of his partner sealed his lips.

Drake was talking over the phone to the APTSE's head office. The gesticulations, the punches with closed fist at the cabin, the kicks and the curses showed some misunderstanding between the agent and his interlocutor.

"Where do I get this money from, out of my ass?" Drake was outraged. "Yes, of course, the budget has been cut as usual, there're no funds for additional expenses, etc. I've heard this before. Actually, I'm speaking of absolutely insignificant for the scale of the mission sum," he bit the fingers of his left hand. "But, man, I'm speaking about saving the Universe!!!" Drake was about to have a stroke. "What, nothing's forever?! I'll report about you to whoever needs to know and your position will be the most transient thing!" Drake cried at the well-fed face constricted within a necktie, then hung up on him.

He wasn't expecting that new blow from the Agency. There were other times when he had had the opportunity to enjoy the parsimony and penury of APTSE but this was too much. He was treated as if he had gone on vacation. In fact, that was the only thing that came to mind to the administrators of the Agency when they thought of Teyron.

"How much money do you have?" Drake turned to Lucash.

"About fifty Teyronian dollars."

"With the thirty I have left... They wouldn't be enough to rent even the oldest clunker. And we need to pay her too," Drake pointed at the hooker.

"Hey, call me Tessy," she smiled. "I could lend you some money. Of course, if what you said about that sex-maniac is true."

"When do you have a meeting with your vacuum-cleaner?" Drake turned to Lucash.

"Don't talk like that about my son, if you please! We'll meet tomorrow afternoon to tell It how we're doing about finding a bride for It."

"You'll inform It that everything's settled. Tell It that we'll wait for It on the next day in the eighth quadrant, measured from the center of the small sun, at six o'clock at its time."

"But that's very close to the sun. Won't it be dangerous?"

"Well, we might get our eyebrows singed, but on the other hand we'll save the world."



The spaceship they rented turned out to be a pile of scrap iron. Her owner kept her instead of giving her for recycling only because of some sentimental-romantic feeling for the clunker. And from time to time there were fruitcakes like these who would like to rent her. And for the money they offered they wouldn't find anything else, the owner cleared himself with his conscience.

"Get outside and push!" Drake called at his companions.

Lucash and Tessy clung to the stern and pushed with all they could to make the jalopy start. Drake hoped that once it started moving the spaceship would be able to pick up the required speed and lift off to the skies. If only she could start!

Despite her moderate size, the old ship was full of century-old equipment, which could now be fitted into a chip the size of a nail. That put an additional weight to her mass and Lucash, along with Tessy, had a hard time until the ancient engines finally started. The couple that successfully did the job of a few draught animals jumped on the moving ship, which rose above the spaceport under Drake's skillful steering.

A few hours passed. Drake had the feeling that he wasn't riding a spaceship but a bicycle. The time for the denouement was closing in and they wouldn't be able to get to the rendezvous place. Despite her clumsiness and sluggishness, after she wouldn't start her engine in the beginning, the ship was behaving properly. Well, they found some minor defects, like holes in the hull, and that caused them certain troubles - putting spacesuits on and welding the holes; Drake also found some irregularities with the brake gear, but they wouldn't be fatal because of the reduced traffic as of late, as the people were afraid of the big black Thing that had the habit of swallowing their ships.

"Hey, take it easier back there, the instruments get unstable because of the strong vibrations," Drake called out.

In the back, Lucash and Tessy had indulged themselves in having fun from the very beginning of the flight. The fatty was ecstatic. The hooker was making all of his wishes come true, some of which he had kept in his mind for decades. And she wasn't doing it because of obligation - Lucash didn't even have any money to pay her - but with the true enthusiasm of the explorer, who had run into new unknown planet. Tessy even succeeded in teaching her partner some new techniques that he, despite his life full of various perversions, hadn't tried before. After all that, Lucash, who had fallen into the deepest of bliss, was ready to die - he didn't need anything anymore.

"Tessy, put on the spacesuit," Drake ordered.

"Am I going to outer space?" she asked enthusiastically.

"Of course, we have arranged you a date, haven't we?"

"Couldn't we, just a little more..." Lucash asked, while getting ready to come for the ninth time.

"We've no time. I've already told you the whole plan. Everything must happen on the dot. And here's your sonny."

The three of them got to the porthole and looked at the enormous mass, blacker than space itself, that was slowly approaching the sun.
"Wow, It's so attractive!" Tessy exclaimed.

Lucash shrugged his shoulders low-spirited:

"It's a living image of its mother."

The hooker put on the spacesuit and prepared herself to get in outer space. At the very last moment, her companions found out that her air conditioner didn't work. That made matters worse. If she stayed out longer, she would get fried like a lobster - they were very close to the smaller Teyronian sun and it was beating mercilessly with its rays.

"If you sense that you're fainting from the heat you have to cancel all activities and concentrate on your breathing," Drake was instructing her.

"But in any case, it's imperative to continue waving and making lustful and provocative gestures at the Thing. It have to be mad about you from first sight."

"Not a problem. I spent several years as a companion on a luxurious tourist spaceship, I've done it even in outer space."

The Thing was approaching more and more. It was high time they made their move or the plan would fail. Drake opened the outer hatch and shot out the packed Tessy in space, after he had tied her spacesuit to the ship by a long line.

Then the agent moved the ship full speed backwards. That turned out to be very difficult task, because the sun's gravity had started to affect them at such a close distance. Lucash was sitting nervously by the porthole, watching the first woman who had made his fantasies come true drift away from him, floating like a balloon, drawn by the sun. Would everything go as planned? Lucash by no means wanted to lose Tessy.
While Tessy and the ship, connected only by a thin thread, were drifting away from each other, the Thing was accelerating towards the sun. Obviously It was late for the date too and that fact indicated that the plan had some chances to succeed.

Suddenly, the son of Lucash was startled and stopped at its tracks.

"It's seen her," Drake commented with satisfaction. "Let's see what It'll do."

After the short amazement and the unavoidable shyness every youngster feels on his first date with the opposite sex, the Thing regained its spirits and confident in its success It dashed on top of its speed towards Tessy who was floating in space like a sex-doll. But in contrast to the lifeless dolls and the stiff frigid sex-robots, she was able to make every individual with male self-consciousness in this universe feel that his pants were getting tighter. She was wriggling passionately, touching herself, running her fingers over her erogenous zones, which she seemed to have on every inch of her body. As usual, she was doing it so naturally and casually that no one would suspect her of any conspiracy. Much less she would suspect herself.

It's no wonder that the son of Lucash lost its mind. Without having a clue what was in store for It, It dashed towards Tessy, who was right between it and the sun. Its speed was several thousand miles per hour, much higher than the one It was reaching during its morning jogging. Obviously, its whole being was shaking with sexual energy and It couldn't wait to release it.

Right before the Thing reached the talented hooker, Drake, who was in the heated ship, waiting intensely for some seconds for the right moment, pushed the button.

When this ship, looking right now like a tank hit by a RPG, was used for space khnots hunting, naturally, she was equipped with a harpoon, shot out and rolled back by special mechanism. Due to the agility and adroitness of the khnots, who were hiding behind an asteroid the moment they sensed some danger, the device shooting out the harpoon had to be with corresponding speed. In order to prevent the animal from unhooking itself from the harpoon, it necessitated that the rolling mechanism should produce immense speed too. This system was one of the few that still worked on the ship.

That's exactly what Drake used. The reel started rolling with mind-boggling speed, pulling towards the ship Tessy, who was at the end of the line. Drake succeeded in just pulling her out from the rapacious hands of the Thing, where the hooker would meet certain death, despite her ability for turning all men in her slaves.

On the other hand, the son of Lucash suddenly turned out to be flying not towards the woman of its life, but towards the burning star. Frantic with rage, It tried to change its course and went for the spaceship. But in its reckless rash at Tessy, It had got so close to the sun, that the star's gravity had entrapped It and wasn't allowing It to reach the ship and have its revenge with Lucash and Drake for the deceit.

Then, something unseen happened. The son of Lucash, whose gravity was commensurate with that of the small Teyronian sun, started drawing the star's nuclear fuel, due to which it emitted light and warmth. The more fuel It absorbed, the more the Thing increased its volume and, respectively, increased its gravity. The process was going off with the speed of an avalanche and its size was growing bigger and bigger.

Drake and Lucash were witnessing the spectacular sight from the ship. Enormous flames, painted in all the colors of the rainbow, spread from the sun to the Thing that was thrashing wildly in its strive for freedom. The flames, along with the gas It sucked, disappeared within It, like some wizard swallowing fire. Of course, this couldn't last forever. At one moment, the star's fuel exhausted. And then, it happened, something that many scientists have described without anyone of them witnessing it. The sun died. With no energy to neutralize the gravity that was trying to shrink it in itself, the sun yielded to the gravity and the enormous mass started to shrink. A lesson in astrophysics was displayed before Drake and Lucash. When the former star decreased its volume under the critical minimum, it turned into a black hole, absorbing everything, even sunbeams.

Such thing has happened billion times in the universe. What was unique was that in the immediate vicinity of the newly-formed black hole there was another small black hole - the son of Lucash. There was an interaction between the two black holes. The Thing dashed at the former small Teyronian sun and split second before It hit it, It cried out with its puberty voice:

"Father, you deceived me!!! And I trusted you-u-u-u-u-u!!!"

After that, the two black holes annihilated themselves in gigantic orgasm, whose detonation blasted the ship far, far away...



Lucash was sniffling in his apartment, while cutting the semi-melted spacesuit with a can-opener in order to free the survived Tessy.

"My poor boy! Was it necessary to destroy It?" he was sobbing.

"Come on now," Drake was soothing him. "You're a big man, you've inseminated a whole black hole, yet you're crying like a baby!"

In a while, they managed to draw Tessy out in one piece.

"Why did you pull me out of space? You promised me that I would take care of the black one!" she was outraged.

"I'll offer you something much better than a black hole, sweetheart," Lucash cooed. "Drake, why don't you go for a walk?"

Drake strode down the black as a grave street. After the small sun died, there still wasn't any undertaker to take things in his hands and install some streetlights. Drake took a sip from the bottle of whisky that he found in his pocket. He found something else there too. It turned out to be the identification card of APTSE that established his identity as a special agent.

"Screw you, you wretched rascals," Drake murmured and threw the card into the first garbage-can he saw. "This is my new home."
After that, sipping from the bottle, he continued to stroll, experiencing long-forgotten feelings of serenity, satisfaction and joy of life.

Aleko Zhelyazkov
February, 1999