The Blue Marble

Jadis knew the restaurant wasn’t particularly fancy, or even very friendly. That’s why she chose it. No-one asked questions at this far end of the galaxy, not if they wanted to stay alive. 

Zark sat down opposite her in a cloud of tentacles and body odour.

“Zelgfish pie?” He asked, holding the plate out on one globular tentacle.

Jadis shook her head, her stomach revolting at the sight. “Look, I just want to go home. OK?”

“Favours ain’t free,” Zark said as he shovelled the pie into each of his mouths.

“I’ve got the goods.”

One white whiskered brow rose over Zark’s skeptical eye. “Show me.”

With a furtive glance around the dingy diner, Jadis leaned forward and opened her palm slightly to show him a blue marble.

“Is that a whole world?”

“Yeah.” The whole world was right there in her hand. She admired the gem-like surface, its blues and greens sparkling in the lazy light. “It’s yours if you can take me home.”

“Going home means that much to you?”

Jadis sighed. It was all she had dreamed about in the long years since her abduction.

“There’s no place like it,” she told him, her tone full of longing.

“And you’ll give me that world if I take you to yours?”

“Just as we agreed.”

Zark licked his four lips to savour the last crumbs of pie remaining on his fleshy face, burped once and slipped from the booth.

“Come, girl-earthling. I will show you what I can do.”

Zark lived on the edge of the busy space port, on the seedy side of town. Jadis followed him as he tentacled down the side street (when one perambulated via twelve slimy appendages, one could scarcely call it walking). The size of his body gave the scum of the universe pause. No-one bothered him, and by association, no-one bothered her. His abode was multi-storied and smelt of his peculiar odour—fish, and stale, male mollusc musk. Jadis tried to breathe through her mouth, but even her tastebuds could smell it.

“Bring that little world to me, earth girl,” Zark said, flapping one tentacle in her direction. “Let me analyse it to see what it is worth, hmmm?”

Jadis eased the little marble from her pocket, rolling it between her fingers for a moment. Her breath caught as she handed it to Zark. He wrapped a tentacle around it as he carefully placed it in a small cup attached to a machine, humming a little ditty to himself as he worked. His other tentacles wafted about, flicking switches and adjusting dials. The entire machine was very rudimentary and primitive, relying on manual manipulation.

While Zark was engrossed with his machine, Jadis let her eyes wander the room. A cabinet on the far side contained dozens of small cubby holes, each one illuminated by a tiny light source. In each of the holes, she could see a small, coloured marble. It made sense. Zark was a collector, after all. Some marbles were large, about the same length across as her thumb, others quite tiny, only the size of the tip of her finger, but all of them sparkled and glittered. Little worlds caught in a moment of time and displayed here as a collection.

“Well, well, well,” Zark murmured, his eye peering into the optical lens. “What have you brought me, little earth girl?” He raised his head to stare at Jadis with his single red-rimmed eye. “Where did you obtain this little treasure?”

“I found it where you said it would be, in a Spanglor’s shop on the moon of Cret.”

“No, you did not. I would know a world from Cret. You can’t fool me. I own the finest collection of worlds in the universe.” He picked the tiny marble out from his machine, holding it between two tentacles so that she could see it. “Now, where did you really get this little world from?”

“I… I… bargained for it with a Locrian on Kimmi,” Jadis said, her voice wavering.

“Why in all the stars would a Locrian have a world in its possession with which to bargain?” Both of Zark’s mouths twisted in confusion.

Fidgeting, Jadis avoided his gaze. “I may have convinced Murgtap to fabricate a world,” she admitted. “And when I couldn’t pay, he on-sold it to the Locrian. I made a good bargain with the Locrian—if he gave me the world, I wouldn’t kill him. I think he got the best of that deal.”

Zark shook his bulbous head slowly, tentacles twitching in disbelief. Both of his mouths opened and closed in shock. “You asked Murgtap to fabricate a world?” His singular eye narrowed as he leaned forward. “Did you think I wouldn’t know the difference?”

“I hoped you wouldn’t,” she muttered, shifting uneasily in her seat.

Leaning back, Zark rhythmically tapped his tentacles on the table in agitation, his single eye studying her intently. “Do you have any idea how Murgtap runs his business?”

She shook her head.

“He’s shady at best,” Zark continued, voice growing more ominous. “Did he ask you to imagine a world so that he could fabricate it?”

“Well, yes, he did.”

“And of all the worlds you’ve been to, which one did you think of?”

“Mine, naturally. I thought of Earth.”

Zark sighed, a strange hissing that was long and slow, filling the air with a fetid aroma. “Of course you did. What else would you think of?”

He shuffled his body to a new machine and gently dropped the marble into the receiver. Once he flicked a switch, a whirring noise filled the air as an illuminated beam from the machine projected upon the opposite wall. In this steady stream of light, images emerged.

Jadis smiled with unconcealed joy, and a pang of homesickness gripped at her heart. “That’s Earth!”

“Yes, my little impetuous Earth-girl. That is the Earth.”

In the light, she could see people moving, going about their daily lives. She remembered the cars and planes that ran on fossil fuel, so primitive compared to the entire universe that she had travelled since her abduction, but it was her home.

“Look, you have a world. It may not be the one you wanted, but it’s a good one. Now, can you please send me home?”

“I’m not sure that you understand the magnitude of the problem here,” Zark said, his tentacles rubbing wearily at his head. “That is the Earth. I cannot send you home to a tiny world. Your little blue marble planet is now in my collection.”