Smith's Monthly #17 Read online

  Then she vanished.

  Stan laughed and stood from behind his desk. “That’s the first time I have ever heard her give a pep talk.”

  “You’re kidding?” I asked, feeling stunned.

  “Three thousand years, never seen it happen.”

  Suddenly even more of the weight seemed to lift from my shoulders.

  Patty gave me a hug and then a big, long kiss.

  “Hey, not in my office,” Stan said.

  I broke away from Patty just long enough to say, “Then teach me how to build one of my own.” Then I went back to kissing Patty.

  “Nag, nag, nag,” Stan said.

  Conrad found Tani, the woman of his dreams. Beautiful, sexy, and soft fine hair all over her body that drove him wild.

  And Tani found Conrad, exciting, fun, and primitive, something she loved and needed to escape her boring job.

  A perfect match? It might have been, except for one minor problem. Tani wasn’t from Earth.

  Originally written and published under the pen name Dee. W. Schofield.

  SQUATTER’S RIGHTS ON THE STREET OF BROKEN MEN

  ONE

  “Fur,” Conrad Weir said, trying to keep his voice low enough that not every one of the twelve people in the Golden Dragon Bar would hear him in his excitement. “I’m not kidding. She was covered in a fine blonde fur, all over her body. Hottest thing I have ever seen. Or hell, felt.”

  “Yeah, right,” his companion and best friend, John “The Clump” Benson said, staring at his glass of beer on the bar in front of him. “You were so drunk, you just ended up in the zoo screwing one of the bears. Lucky you didn’t get your balls chewed off.”

  A woman in the booth under the fake plants looked over at them and gave them a disgusted look. John’s voice could sure carry. But hell, what did she expect being in a local bar like this one? The Dragon, as everyone called this bar, was a place for locals in the afternoons and early evenings, and college kids at night. Conrad was usually gone long before the kids arrived, moving up the street to the Elks Club bar to listen to whatever local band was playing for the week.

  The Dragon consisted of five booths against a back wall, a half dozen small tables, and a long bar across the back with ten stools, usually filled with regulars. Dave was the normal afternoon bartender, a quiet kid who had come to town to go to college and had just never left. He could pour a mean drink and listen to just about anything with a straight face. Conrad had no idea what he did outside of the Dragon.

  Conrad ignored John’s zoo comment and went on, telling him about last night, remembering every detail of the wonderful night with Tani. She had been real, very real, that much he was sure of. He had met her at the Elks when she came in with a group of about six people, one of who must have been a member. He had asked her to dance. At first she had resisted, so he bought her a drink, then another, and after a little talking, he finally got her out onto the dance floor.

  That was when he discovered the fine layer of fur all over her skin and he was hooked.

  “I couldn’t keep my hands off her,” he said, letting the memory just flow. “I drove her nuts.”

  “You drive me nuts,” John said, finishing his beer and signaling Dave for another.

  “Yeah, but with her, I did it by stroking her arms and legs and stomach and breasts. I couldn’t get enough of the fur. Softest, finest hair I have ever felt.”

  John looked at him like he had lost a bolt and his head was about to fall off. “She had hair on her stomach and boobs? Not for me.”

  Again the woman in the booth snorted and stared into her drink, trying to ignore John’s comments as much as she was ignoring the poor guy sitting beside her.

  “Fur,” Conrad said, making sure his voice didn’t carry. “Soft, golden fur, softer than anything you’ve ever touched. From more than a foot away you can’t see it. She has normal skin, wonderful skin, just coated with this fine fur. I loved it. Hell, I think I might be falling in love with her.”

  “You fall in love with light poles when you’re drunk enough,” John said. “I’ve seen it. Remember? I don’t think that pole down off of Third Street is ever going to get over you.”

  Conrad ignored him, even though John was right. Drinking did tend to lower Conrad’s restrictions and his judgment. But at the moment, he was cold sober and still felt that way about her. All he could see was her green eyes and wonderful smile. She had a bright wit, a contagious laugh, and oh, that fur. A perfect package. What more could any thirty-year-old man want?

  “This one might be real,” Conrad said, motioning for Dave to bring him something besides the sparkling soda he had first ordered. “Honest.”

  “Her last name, Einstein?” John asked, looking over at Conrad. “Or maybe a phone number?”

  Conrad had to admit he didn’t know her last name. Just her first name. Tani. And she had been gone from his apartment like a dream when he woke up this morning. She hadn’t even left a note. But that didn’t matter. He had met her once, he could find her again. This town wasn’t that big.

  “That’s what I thought,” John said when Conrad didn’t answer him, again shaking his head and turning back to his beer. He did a lot of that head shaking every time Conrad met a new woman, or had a new idea to make them both rich. But this time, Conrad was determined to prove him wrong.

  “So, you going to help me find her?” Conrad asked his friend as Dave slid his scotch and water, light on the water, onto a napkin and put it in front of Conrad.

  “And why would I do that?” John asked. “I helped you find Debbie, remember, and look where that got you.”

  Debbie had been Conrad’s wife, now his ex-wife. John had introduced them at a party up on campus. She had left Conrad for a lawyer and then got remarried and left the state. Good riddance as far as Conrad was concerned. That had been four years ago.

  “Friendship,” Conrad said, sipping the sharp taste of his drink. He didn’t know why he drank scotch, other than to avoid hangovers. The stuff tasted like it could chew the enamel off his teeth. But after a few drinks, he didn’t much notice the taste. But he did notice the lack of headaches and driving the porcelain steering wheel in the morning. Made the taste worthwhile as long as he was going to drink.

  John snorted and said nothing about the “friendship” comment.

  John and Conrad had been best friends since high school, had gone to college together here. When John had started a construction firm, he had wanted Conrad to join him, but Conrad had instead just worked for him part time. Conrad had ended up going on to more school, getting a graduate degree in math, and then getting hired to teach at the university.

  Both of them had been married once and divorced once. They now had a habit of meeting every late afternoon, with a bunch of other locals, in the Dragon for a drink or two. At thirty, Conrad had never expected to end up divorced, hunting for women in bars, and unhappy in his job after only a few years. But he was.

  Tani might change that if he could find her.

  John had sworn off women after his divorce, taken up drinking beer and building homes for other people, and was slowly but surely getting a beer gut and very rich.

  He had also been a process server while in college and had developed a knack for finding people who didn’t want to be found. If anyone could find this Tani, John could.

  “So, what do you say?” Conrad asked. He took another sip of the biting taste of scotch, then turned to his best friend.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” John asked.

  “Very,” Conrad said. Again, the image of Tani’s green eyes and wonderful smile filled his mind. He wouldn’t mind looking into those eyes for a very long time.

  John just shook his head, but Conrad knew he had him.

  “Tell you what,” John finally said after taking another long drink. “You don’t find her in the next week, and you still want to find her, I’ll help you. But you’re on your own for a week.”

  “Perfect,” John said. “For a
ll I know, she might come walking back into the Elks tonight looking for me, or maybe leave a note at my apartment.”

  “Sure,” John said. He finished off his second beer and signaled for another. “But I’d check the zoo. See if one of the sheep is missing from the kids petting area.”

  Conrad tried to give his friend a serious look. “Not nice. That’s the second Mrs. Conrad Weir you’re talking about there.”

  “Baaaaaaa,” John said, loud enough to echo clear out into the restaurant.

  Conrad laughed, the woman in the booth snorted again, and the night went on.

  TWO

  Tani-Areas-Fol-Dan-Peet floated into the Doorways Bar and Fine Dining and let her robot lifts carry her around the tables and to her two friends sitting near a Punk-Tac game. From the looks of it, they had both just arrived a moment or two before her. Neither had a B of C in front of her, and since they had been here every cycle for the past thirty, the robots knew their orders perfectly.

  She drifted into her seat and a moment later, all three of their drinks appeared in front of them, freshly made with the exact liquors from any one of a thousand planets. For Tani, her B of C was the Earth drink called a “Screwdriver” made up of a fruit grown on the planet and a real distilled alcohol called “vodka” packed over frozen water cubes. Very strange but very tasty.

  Kreble, who loved her drinks sweet, had a B of C from a planet called Diken, where they drank a form of pure sugar, fermented to a degree Tani had not thought possible, then flavored with different types of plant roots.

  Too-Tight-Tootie-Two loved her drinks sour, in the same degree that Kreble loved them sweet. Too’s B of C had some mixture minerals from a planet with a name no one could pronounce, blended firmly with roots from two of the planet’s trees, then mixed with a type of acid.

  If Too had too many, her lips turned an ugly black and Tani and Kreble had to lift her back to her place for the night. Tani hated that and she didn’t want that to happen tonight. They only had two more days of their vacation on Doorway, before they had to return to their home world, Lind, and return to work.

  All three of them worked in an anti-gravity chip plant there, waiting for the right moment to take a mate, have children, and then return to work. Last year Tani had done that twice, spawning her 42nd and 43rd child. She was scheduled for two more matings the coming cycle and two more children.

  Boring didn’t begin to describe how she felt about that. Especially after last night on Earth with the man who called himself Con-Rad. She was required by custom to produce child 44 and 45 in the coming cycle, but she could pick with whom and Con-Rad might just be a likely mate. It would add to her diversity quota since seldom did anyone mate with creatures from Earth. They were considered far too primitive.

  Actually, she wasn’t even sure if it was possible, but she would be willing to find out.

  But right at this point in her life, Tani needed an adventure, and going into a backwards planet like Earth to mate might be the adventure she needed.

  Unlike her two friends, Tani had saved her money and was rich enough to not work. She only did so because she had nothing else to do, and her friends were there. But she had been unhappy with her job for a long, long time. It was time for a change.

  And it was this bar that was going to help her make that change, on this vacation.

  She looked at her two friends as they took first sips of their drinks, then blurted out, “I’m going back.”

  “Why would you go back to work two days early?” Too asked, stunned into not drinking for a moment.

  “Not back to work,” Tani said. “Back to Earth.”

  “Did you leave something there?” Kreble asked.

  “It’s that Earther you were doing rubbing with,” Tani said.

  Tani gave them both her most seductive smile.

  “Did you show him your true form?” Kreble said.

  “No,” Tani said. “I maintained human form. But Earth excites me. Earthers excite me.”

  “So you’re going to use another day of your vacation there?” Too asked. “After we planned on hitting Solo-Prime for their chalk baths and system-clearing tongue-licking?”

  “Sounds heavenly,” Tani said, not mentioning to her friends they had done the same thing for the last five cycles and once you’ve had one Solo-Prime insect-tongue clear your system, you’ve done it more than enough.

  “Actually,” Tani said. “I’m going to spend the next cycle on Earth exploring the wilderness. I’m going to take a leave from work.”

  Both her friends just sat staring at her.

  Then Too looked like she might get sick. “Seriously, you are considering mating with an Earth creature?”

  Tani nodded, sipping the wonderful-tasting screwdriver. “Two of them, actually.”

  “Is that even possible?” Kreble asked.

  Tani just smiled. “I’m sure going to find out.”

  THREE

  After a couple more drinks and then an hour searching through the phone book for any first name that even resembled the name Tani, Conrad gave up and told John that he would buy him dinner if he joined him again at the Elks.

  “The Golden Dragon here isn’t good enough for you?” John asked.

  “Tani can’t find me here,” John said.

  “How can you be so sure?” a woman’s voice asked from behind Conrad.

  Both men spun on their bar stools, Conrad a little faster than John. He knew that voice anywhere. Even being drunk last night, that voice could soothe even the wildest beast. And excite the hell out of him.

  “Tani!” Conrad said, standing and giving her a long hug, which she returned in a wonderful fashion. “I’ve been looking for you, hoping to see you again.”

  “You mentioned you liked this place,” Tani said, smiling. “So I took a chance.”

  Conrad almost fainted with that smile. Wow, she was far, far more beautiful than he remembered. And she had done something different with her hair tonight. It was a light brown and looked longer. Clearly the booze last night had done him no good. But right now he was only two scotches into the evening and he planned on doing no more.

  Tonight she had on a thin sweater that showed most of her assets and tight slacks that looked more painted on that anything.

  “I’m John,” he said, extending his hand.

  Conrad could tell John was stunned at Tani’s beauty as well.

  Tani smiled and Conrad thought John’s knees might just melt out from under him as he shook her hand.

  “Conrad mentioned you,” Tani said. “So I brought two friends tonight that you just might find interesting.”

  Tani turned as two women just as stunning as Tani walked in, looking around at the small bar. Both also had on pants that left nothing to the imagination and tight blouses.

  “This is Too,” Tani said, introducing the woman with long red hair. “And Kreble.”

  The woman with short blonde hair shook Conrad’s hand, then smiled at John with a smile as powerful as Tani’s.

  Then Tani looked directly at John and smiled. “Think you can handle my two friends?”

  John’s mouth opened, then closed, then he just nodded as he swallowed.

  Both women giggled as each took one of John’s arms and headed for the door.

  Tani took Conrad’s arm as he stood there, mouth still open, just staring in shock at his best friend. “Let’s go with them, find a more private place.”

  “We can go back to my apartment again,” Conrad managed to croak out.

  “Perfect,” Tani said, stroking his arm as they headed for the door. “My friends want to know if we are compatible. After last night, I’m fairly certain we are. You willing to try that again?”

  Flashes of the wonderful night in bed with Tani appeared in Conrad’s mind like a movie and he just nodded.

  Actually, he just kept nodding all the way to his apartment.

  FOUR

  Somewhere around six in the morning the squeals and moans from John
and the other two women in Conrad’s second bedroom stopped.

  Conrad was just trying to catch a third or fourth wind. It might be more but the sex and the night had become a long, wonderful blur. Tani didn’t seem to be slowing down at all.

  “Tani,” the woman named Kreble said from Conrad’s bedroom door. Conrad was so tired, he didn’t even try to cover up the fact that he was nude and sprawled on his back on the bed.

  “Yes,” Tani said, smiling up at her friend.

  “It seems you were right,” Kreble said as the other woman appeared beside her. “This species seems to be suitable for mating. And they are fun.”

  “That they are,” Tani said, giving Conrad junior a tug right there in front of her friends.

  Conrad just didn’t care. Far, far too tired. He hadn’t had a night like this ever, let alone at his age.

  “Have fun,” Kreble said. “We’ll see you next cycle.”

  “If not before,” Tani said, smiling.

  Then it was if the two other women just vanished. Conrad blinked then started to say something as Tani went back to the job of trying to revive him for another round.

  They couldn’t have just vanished. He must have dozed off for a micro second.

  He reached for Tani to indicate she might want to give him a little more rest, but then his hand found the fine hair on her back and he started stroking it and even to his own surprise, he was soon ready to go again.

  John left a few hours later with a smile on his face and an “I owe you, buddy.”

  Tani didn’t leave.

  She also didn’t know how to cook or even use some basic household appliances like a faucet on the sink or an electric toothbrush. She kept saying that where she was from they didn’t have those sorts of things.

  But she wouldn’t tell Conrad where she was from, other than a name that didn’t sound very real. When asked she said her last name was Peet.