Because it was a platonically perfect lobby-bar-suite-ballroom, the walls behind the bar were covered in ill-advised mirrors so you could see just how pompous you were coming off to everyone around you. Decibel Jones was filled with a powerful, primal urge to run and save himself from the shambling zombie raccoon-corpse lurching toward him with a huge smile on its rotting face—but like Narcissus at the watering hole, he was too captivated by his own reflection to move. He hadn’t seen himself at first. He hadn’t known where to look. But he saw it all now.
The Voorpret wore gray. He wore blue.
And red. And green. And purple. And black. And electric tangerine-turquoise paisley.
He was dressed as a punch-drunk, postapocalyptic go-go-dancing Mr. Darcy. As Oscar Wilde finally stripped clean of even the thinnest vestige of English propriety, restraint, or subtlety. As Madame de Pompadour on her way to interview for a CEO position she already had in the bag. And worst, or best, of all, he could feel it all growing out of him, giving new meaning to the phrase “skintight” as it bloomed, budded, sprouted directly out of his flesh as naturally as hair or sweat. He winced a little, unused to the feeling of his skin really and actually crawling, still moving and adjusting with exquisite purpose as the useful goop of the Yüz continued to merge with his mind and churn out its idea of fashion.
Decibel seemed to be wearing Bowie’s exact metallic mango-pistachio-coconut-striped trousers from the 1975 Ziggy Stardust shoot, buckled below the knee over chartreuse stockings printed with all his worst reviews in tiny block letters. A loose, vaguely piratical, late-night neon-light shirt peeked out fetchingly beneath a savage underbust corset made of something not unlike xenomorph skin as hunted, cut, and drenched in black glitter by Versace and a cravat braided and stitched and hemmed from all the laciest underthings thrown at all the rowdiest stages he’d known. A square-cut patchwork Regency coat squeezed it all in, its tails exploding into a shower of every one of Nani’s gorgeous silk scarves, trailing all the way to the floor. His lanky, dark hair was bejeweled and beribboned like a Lost Boy who’d recently discovered Neverland’s underground club scene; he wore that lilac lipstick of his long-ago lounge room show and eyeliner fit for a raccoon in heat. He carried, to his surprised delight, a dandy’s cane that looked suspiciously like a hacked-off mic stand. Lastly, because Dess had always said Coco Chanel was full of insipidly scented shit and, before he left the house every day, looked in the mirror and put one more thing on, a huge, plush, glowing cartoon coyote-skin draped over his shoulders, its cel-animated outline wriggling and jumping and popping like an old recording played too many times.
Dess had walked his share of red carpets in far more than his share of lurid please-notice-me outfits. He’d heeded the bleats of tabloid reporters over and over, so instinctive and helpless and native to their kind. A cow goes moo; a sheep goes baa; a celebrity correspondent goes who are you wearing? But if one of those pull-string See ’n Say barnyard creatures had appeared out of the long light-years between here and home to ask him who he was wearing now, all he could have answered was: Myself.
Decibel Jones was dressed in the glorious bombed-out rubble of his whole life. He was Raggedy Dandy, big as life and twice as hard. He never wanted to take it off.
“BRAINS,” yelled the gray, oozing, hairless, pustulant Keshet as it lurched toward Decibel, dragging one munted leg behind it. He could see splintered ribs through its moldering skin. Its gums peeled back horribly from sharp yellow teeth. “BRAINS!”
“Darling!” hummed a thick, sopping voice behind him. Not one voice—dozens, a hundred, maybe, in perfect, simultaneous, harmonious diction. It oozed expensive vowels, oligarchical consonants, the poshest of diphthongs. It dripped with sincerity and wisdom. It dripped its sincerity and wisdom all over the floor and got a bit on the cold cuts platter. “Don’t you just look marvelous.”
Five feet of velvety, undulating gold lamé gumdrop waved one nub at him from beside the cheese plates. Its skin seemed to be made of Venetian glass, swirling with veins of gold and vivid color. It—he? she? zie? they?—had no face, only a round, glowing, cilia-fringed hole where a face might think about setting up shop, and another one in the general belly area. The sticker on—plausibly—its chest, read: HELLO MY NAME IS: SLEKKE5.
Decibel Jones had just met his first Alunizar.
The talking gumdrop looked him over appraisingly and offered him a friendly martini glass full of something that looked like raw petroleum with a disk of white lust-scented foam floating three inches off the rim. It picked up a cube of slightly sweaty Jarlsberg and delicately inserted the cheese into its stomach lumps, pulling the toothpick out clean with a satisfied grunt. “Not to say we’re entirely sure what to make of all . . . this business.” Slekke5 gestured vaguely at Dess’s cravat and leaned forward confidentially. “It’s not a completely emotionally balanced look, if you know what we mean. A bit of a mess, if we’re to be honest with ourselves, and we really think we must be, considering the circumstances. Your ensemble lacks an underlying spiritual and emotional cohesion. The carpet of the id doesn’t match the drapes of the superego, if you know what we mean. Doubtless some essential savagery afoot in there, no? And where is your friend, dear? It’s a dangerous room to take on alone.”
“BRAINS!” shouted the undeniably dead Keshet again. It picked up speed, stepping on the silky wings of a moth-person, who squealed ultrasonic indignation, causing half the room to turn and stare at the impending human-zombie collision. Decibel looked around for Oort, for the roadrunner, for Öö, for a convenient social escape hatch, but the only things within reach were this dreadful conversation and a small model of Earth made out of water crackers and what he hoped was prosciutto.
The Alunizar ignored the incoming zombie-raccoon rocket. It focused its attention on Decibel like a weaponized Eton prefect. “We presume we need no introduction,” it trilled wetly.
Something clicked in Decibel’s back-brain, and his autonomous systems switched into a new mode: after-party high-octane industrial flirt machine. Meet the fans, smile for the camera, charm the venue management, chuck anything that smacked of weakness or desperation or fear of the rapidly approaching future, secure the best possible bed for the night. The trick of it was to be ever-so-slightly too honest. No one warmed up to a perfectly professional musician, not even other musicians. They wanted you to be a little more real, a little more raw, a little more broken than they were, so they could feel magnanimous about booking you, buying your shit, promoting you, fucking you. So they could feel a little more human by osmosis. It was an equation Decibel had learned on Day One of Life with the Zeros. Pain becomes playful, playful becomes pretty, pretty becomes pleasure, pleasure becomes profit, profit becomes safety, another day not working at Mr. Five Star, another day further from invisibility. He laughed like the fate of his planet was a pickup line at a pub.
“Listen, mate, I was in a cab halfway to Adam Lambert’s beach house with my tongue halfway down the venerable old chap’s throat and my brain stem halfway to totally obliterated by rum and imposter syndrome before I knew he used to be anybody at all, and all you’ve done is buy me a drink.”
“We are not your mate, friend, nor do we understand what you mean by ‘imposter syndrome.’ Is that a popular narcotic on your world?”
Decibel Jones gave this a beautiful, ephemeral, jewel-like moment of genuine thought. “Just about the hottest one going,” he admitted. “And we all get high on our own supply. It’s that thing where no matter what you do or how high you rise in the world, you still think you’re a wet smear of nothing and everyone’s just about to find out what a grubby little fraud you really are.”
“But we are not a fraud. We don’t get it.”
Decibel tried again. “You know, sometimes, even though everything is going your way and you’re doing the whole type A overachiever shimmy, you still can’t quite believe you’re deserving of . . . well, anything. Love, success, happiness, stability.”
“But we ach
ieved.”
Jones started to sweat. It was like trying to explain what your most essential soul looked like to an atheist. “It feels like . . . you’re only doing a magic trick, see, with a bunny and a bunch of cellophane flowers and a hat, and everyone’s fooled, but really, really, you’re . . . you’re the empty hat. You’re not even the stupid bunny. You’re not even the fucking cello-flowers. You’re nobody, and sooner or later, your best abracadabras aren’t going to work anymore. Is that . . . Keshet talking to me, do you think?”
“This is an unpleasant exchange. We always know we are somebody. The Alunizar are composite entities—we do not have children per se. We bud, and our offspring remain attached in body and mind to the greater tuft. Only in times of great crisis or ennui do new tufts break away from the parent tube-sac to seek their fortune elsewhere.” The dozens of synced voices pouring out of that acoustic aquatic supergroup took on a preening, puffed-up tone. “The gorgeous, overachieving, successfully happy somebody you see before you is, in fact, five generations living in jellied domestic harmony!”
Decibel laughed. “Just so we’re clear, what you’re saying is, you’re literally full of yourself.” The Alunizar glared stonily at him. He laughed again. It felt good, even in his glitterbombed xenomorph corset. The more he laughed at this absurd lump of golden suet staring up at him with a face like a hole to hell, the better he felt. “Where is that camera when I’m being clever?”
The alien was getting visibly upset. The electric violet-white cilia fringing its face-pit quivered in irritation. Did they not like the joke? Or were they still sore that Dess hadn’t known who they were on sight?
“That is a concise explanation of our physiognomy, yes.”
Decibel Jones stopped laughing. He wasn’t meant to be making cheap puns. He was meant to be proving the value of his species. The deep reality of humankind. He was meant to shine for this cold audience. He looked the hipster sea squirt up and down, evaluating a new angle with the precision of the Terminator’s heads-up display. The trouble was, when you’d spent years knowing you were nothing but an empty hat, it was bloody hard to start pulling things out of yourself again. The only valuables he’d ever had stashed in there were a randy bunny and a heap of cellophane flowers, and since he didn’t see a stage to bloom on nearby, it would have to be ye olde standby bunny rabbit.
Jones selected aren’t-we-just-an-exclusive-club-of-two-in-the-midst-of-an-unforgivably-plebian-mob from the drop-down intimacy menu. That always worked best on posh hobgoblins who thought everyone else knew who they were. He shifted his accent a little, clenched his jaw to give it a bit of chisel, gave the knob of Venetian glass his best hothouse Casanova eyes. “As to introductions, I find it’s best not to get too familiar with mainstream culture, don’t you think? Gets in the way of one’s own art. One’s own voice.” He lifted the martini glass in a practiced, wry, world-weary toast to no one in particular.
The stained-glass blob rippled as pleasure and consternation warred within its shimmering obesity. They clearly liked this much better than picking through the bin of the primate psyche. Dess knew this type. He’d met them on the way up and the way down. Usually they claimed to have started piano lessons in utero and smoked imported artisanal cigarettes to prove that they’d rather get cancer than obey the man’s public safety campaigns. Seven thousand light-years away, this glob of gold was no different. It could not decide whether to indulge in a bit of delicious spitting on pop art, which would imply it had not actually made any popular art, or insisting that Decibel acknowledge its galactically famous ass, and risk looking like a tasteless top-of-the-shop corporate whore. It’ll go for sniffing its own space farts, Dess bet himself, and came up all cherries.
“Oh, we quite agree. We make it a practice to shun any truly successful art. Success is just another word for mediocrity in our personal thesaurus. Now, I’ve heard a deliciously revolting rumor that you sing with your mouth—is that so?”
“Do you not?”
“No, God, the very thought,” said the gaping hole in Slekke5’s head. “But you eat and vomit and kiss with it as well? Ugh. How . . . avant-garde. We’ll just have to try not to look while you do it. By the light of Old Aluno, we suspect we shall get along smashingly, you and us! We have always believed that one of the hallmarks of sentience is the ability to look down upon others. It separates us from the lichen. Well, we are Slekke5, lead singers of the Alunizar ultra-indie drip-hop nucleo-vinyl lounge band Better Than You. We’re . . . uh . . . between labels right now—”
“BRAINS!”
The rotting Keshet corpse finally closed the distance. It dodged a potted Klavaret topiary and scrambled up over a pastry tower near the clapboard welcome sign, leaving black streaks on the beignets and the unsettlingly pulsing H. Decibel tried to turn away from the festering horror without being completely rude about it, but the thing grabbed his elbow with its cold, heavy claws.
“Didn’t you hear me, ye wee perisher? Use your brains! Don’t talk to this lot for a second, they’ll only put something morbid in your drink. These Alunizar tarts know they couldn’t win Best Lump at a County Fair on their own, so they always try to flat murder you precious tiny new babies before you can sing your way out of the cradle.”
Slekke5 blared its ultraviolet face-hole mercilessly at the zombified red panda. “Puvinys Blek, you malign us! The Alunizar are superb musicians, everyone knows that. One cannot even say the words ‘hypno-ambient crunk opera’ without reference to the incomparable Raunen6 and the Intricate Tunicate Triplicate Syndicate. They’re utterly seminal. You’ve probably never heard of them, Mr. Sapiens Sapiens, but we shall try our hardest not to hold it against you. We don’t suppose you’re related to the Aldebaran sapiens sapiens? No? Pity. They’re marvelous company, you know. Their feet come right off. Anyway”—Slekke5 turned back to the zombie panda—“what have you Voorpret ever given us? Other than last year’s invasive whole-body jazz infection? Don’t listen to that carcass, darling boy. For my people, the Grand Prix is exclusively a matter of art. The performance. The history. The abject splendor of it all. Not the . . . the . . . pregame show. Why should we lower ourselves to even participate in these . . . working-class amusements? We merely came for a bit of sheeeeese, don’t you know, before the main event. Sheez. Cheeeeese? Chis. Chooz.”
“Is that so? By the way, Jones, your martini hates you,” the Voorpret deadpanned. “And it’s ‘cheese,’ you dumb rotter.” A trickle of unmentionable yellow fluid leaked out of the corpse’s blistered mouth. “I swear, no one ever reads the info packet. I don’t know why I bother making it up every year.”
The air between Decibel’s drink and its floating foam topping caught fire with a sound like a pilot light. The black yogurty liquor lurched upward toward his face, hissing and popping, throwing up tendrils as if it meant to climb out and have its way with him. A pink acid began cheerfully dissolving the glass. Decibel dropped it into a decorative fern with an expression of practiced boredom he hoped came off.
Slekke5, lead singers of Better Than You, looked at Dess and shrugged silkily. He could swear the fluorescent hole in the middle of its head smiled.
“Worth a try,” the Alunizar purred. “We find it’s best not to get too familiar with one’s victims, don’t you think?”
The Voorpret Puvinys Blek, who happened to be the virtuoso earworm artist behind the death metal barbershop quartet Vigor Mortis Overdrive, grinned ghoulishly. It could hardly help it. Being a sentient prion infection living in symbiosis with the cadavers of other species, the Voorpret almost always do things ghoulishly. “Never trust the living, sweetmeat. Not that I don’t appreciate the effort on our behalf, Slekke! Always looking for a new set of digs, me.” The dead Keshet sniffed itself and made a face. “This one’s getting a bit . . . past expiration.”
“Rude,” rumbled a voice that hung out somewhere in the finished sub-basement beneath basso profundo. “And disgusting. You only moved in last week. And after that Keshet left her body so n
ice and tidy for you. You’re never going to get your security deposit back at the rate you’re replicating in there. My percussionist thinks you have a touch of Metastasized Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Blek. My diagnosis? You’re an asshole. Sadly, the only known cure is being set on fire and dropped off a balcony.”
An enormous ambulatory butte had appeared silently beside them, looking very pleased with its own wit, though Decibel couldn’t imagine how this beast could ever do anything quietly. It was built like a walk-in freezer, stony skin swirling with veins of precious metals, rectangularish red rock head with four eye-holes gouged out of it in a pretty arch above a straight-line slash that was, in all probability, a mouth. The gearlike black granite teeth sticking out of the top of the thing might have been a crown, or ears, or hair, or a tinfoil hat, for all Dess could tell.
But the Alunizar wholly ignored the spontaneous mountain in their midst.
“Watch your drink, Sapiens Sapiens,” the golden blob said airily as it drifted off to other targets. “Everyone imitates our groove these days. But we were into poisoning our competition and performing an extended dance sequence on their graves before it was cool.”
A sudden candy-colored light clicked on, washing out the patterns on Slekke5’s Hindenburgian body as they trailed away toward the strange dirt trough that served as a bar.
“Buffering,” chimed a quiet, musical voice just below the audible range of anyone who’s done their time gyrating in front of state-of-the-art speaker systems.
The sea squirt rummaged in its jeweled back rolls for something nearly exactly the size, shape, and color of a handful of crushed barbecue crisps and shoved them into the soil caked on to the bar top. The bartender, one of the pustulant exploded hippo heads, handed Slekke5 a huge snifter of something that looked like it had leaked out of a broken glow stick, into a puddle of petrol, then lain there helplessly while a hedgehog died in it, and stuck a festive umbrella in. The barkeep’s nametag read: HELLO MY NAME IS YILGAR BLOODTUB IV, ESQ.