Chapter Nine: It's Probably Best not to Ask.

Something told me that Louis was not entirely pleased to see me.

It might have been the way his left hand was fingering the ridiculously oversized gun he kept on his desk.

Or maybe the fact that he'd just nearly cut off his right thumb while fingering the ridiculously oversized hunting knife he kept on his desk next to his gun.

There was also the way he was glaring at me. As if he was going to kill me, very slowly. Smoke was coming from his ears.

Of course, what really gave it away was the fact that he'd been yelling abuse at me for the last ten minutes. Well, it had started out as abuse but had quickly turned into a general sort of incoherent yelling.

Which was alright, because I'd stopped listening about nine minutes and 50 seconds ago, found myself a seat, and was now waiting for him to pause for breath.[1]

In fact he completely forgot about breathing and finally collapsed, after 15 minutes of rage.

I waited politely until he'd come round before I said: "Is something wrong, Louis? You seem a little upset."

I knew exactly what was wrong, of course. The last time I'd seen Louis, he had lost his favourite ship. Well, "lost" might not be the right word; it didn't fall down the back of his sofa or anything. It might be more accurate to say that somebody took it. And it might be even more accurate to say that I took it. It would have been nice to be able to add that I was sorry, but I wasn't. It was a very nice ship, and Louis was not a very nice person; and neither was I, come to think of it.

This, then, was what he had been yelling, and was now quietly gibbering, about. [1.8675309]

Far too angry to actually speak, he simply pointed at the huge framed photograph on the wall behind him. It showed his precious ship the way it had looked when I'd stolen it three years ago. The last time I'd seen it, there had been rather less of it left, with rather more dents and scrapes in it.

I smiled blondely. "Oooh -- this isn't about that ship, is it? That silly old thing?" Louis wheezed furiously in reply. I knew I wasn't fooling anyone, but seeing him suffer was just too much fun. In the last 20 minutes his face had gone through a range of colours I'd never seen on anything alive before.

I waited until it had cooled to something approaching hot pink. Then I said: "Anyway, that's not what I came here to talk about." I beamed at him. "How would you like to do me a favour, darling?"

Hot pink turned to mauve, then flickered briefly, like a negative, to toxic green, before settling somewhere in the ultra-violet range. I could hear a soft hissing; it was coming from Louis' left ear.

I smiled harder. Suddenly there was a little plop, followed by a much louder plop. Then, Louis' head exploded.

For about 20 seconds after that nothing much happened.

Then, with a sound like ... well, like somebody growing a new head, Louis grew a new head. This one looked almost exactly like its predecessor, apart from its colouring[2] and its expression[3].

Louis had lost his first head at the age of 25. The regenerating head transplant they'd given him was then the latest in medical science, terribly useful in almost every respect. It had only one side effect, and it was this:

After the new head has grown, it takes a while to upload to the new brain everything it needs to know; all it starts out with is a sort of base cheerfulness, which remains until all the information is in place. For some reason this turned Louis into the smarmiest man alive.

And now I had a plan.

Louis smiled at me smarmily, and said[4]: "Well hellooooo, beautiful! What can I do for you?"

My plan was this: Louis wouldn't actually do anything to me while his brain was being updated, because he was too busy being smarmy. So all I would have to do was ask my question and hope that he'd remember the answer before he remembered who I was and what I'd done to him.

Okay, so it wasn't much of a plan, but I'd thought of it all on my own and I didn't have any others, so I would damn well stick by it.

I pulled out the photos Florg had given me and showed them to Louis. "Have these two guys ever been here at Titania Station?"

Louis would know, because he was the single most important person on this station, and had eyes and ears everywhere[5]. Louis was the janitor. This position had endowed him with a master key, a broom, and an excuse for being wherever it was that he wanted to be. And also, for some reason, with a rather nice office. And since he was a naturally nosy person, he knew what was happening on Titania better than anyone else. When he wasn't having his brain updated, anyway.

Right now, he wasn't even trying to remember. I'd felt his eyes creeping away from the photos and onto my breasts a few moments ago.[7]

"Louis!" I yelled. It was enough to momentarily draw his attention a little higher up.

"Darling! What happened to your face?" he asked, smarmily.

"The Giant Two-Headed Monster From Space's Head exploded. A bit," I added, "like yours."

He grinned smarmily.

And then he remembered.


Two minutes later I was in my ship, heading swiftly away from Titania Station. Five minutes after that, there was a transmission from Louis.

He sounded a little upset about something.

--
[1] He had ridiculously oversized lungs.

[1.8675309] Do not be alarmed! All the commas are in the right place here!

[2] Pink-ish, and definitely not hot.

[3] Pleasantly confused, as if he had no idea who I was, but was still incredibly happy to see me.

[4] Okay: purred.

[5] Not literally. That'd just be weird.[6]

[6] Yes, weirder than a regenerating head.

[7] Not literally. See [5].