Because today is the first day of fall, and fall is my favorite season, I’ll toss a little freebie your way.
A few years ago, I sold a humorous little SF short story to an anthology called Unidentified Funny Objects. (The rights have long since reverted to me, but if you want to snag a print copy of the anthology, I’m sure Alex Shvartsman, the editor, wouldn’t mind in the least.)
The story came up in conversations on Twitter today, and a few people expressed their interest in it, so I am reposting it here on the blog today at ABSOLUTELY NO CHARGE TO YOU. I wrote it in the span of two days back in 2012 or so, based on nothing but the title–which was cooked up by Chuck Wendig and me in some casual Twitter banter. He dared me to write the story, I did, and it turned out pretty well. Putting it onto paper was one of those borderline magical things where you start writing the first paragraph, and then the whole story just unfurls in your head as you write it down.
Anyway, here’s CAKE WHORES OF MARS. Enjoy!
Cake Whores of Mars
by Marko Kloos
“All I want for my goddamn birthday is a cake with a whore popping out of it. Is that too goddamn much to ask?”
Moses Anderson pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled slowly.
“Dad, keep it down. This is a Church nursing home. I can’t have you get kicked out of another one. You’re on number three this year.”
“Ain’t nothing left but the Church ones,” his father said. Amos Anderson was a hundred and forty-nine, but could still arm-wrestle a nurse. Moses suspected that all the illegal liquor had had some preserving properties, even though Dad was on his fifth vat-grown liver. “Damn Levitican sons of bitches sucked all the fun out of life ever since they started running the damn planet. Now what about my goddamn cake?”
“Dad,” Moses said. “Cake’s made with sugar. Sugar’s illegal. Even if I don’t fill it with a whore, which is also illegal, and really expensive to boot. You want me to buy a whore in a cake, and do fifty years for smuggling her past the customs patrol?”
“You’ll only do time if they catch you, son.”
Moses pinched the bridge of his nose again. Inhale, exhale, relax. Suppress urge to smother progenitor with pillow.
“Look, Dad. Even if I could get a cake that big, fly to Mars, hire a whore, bring her back to Earth, and smuggle her past customs, there’s still the money issue. I don’t know if you’ve kept up with Martian contraband prices–”
“Of course I have,” Amos said.
“–of course you have,” Moses sighed. “Then you know that sugar is at over nine hundred a kilo right now. And you gotta use off-world flour for a cake, ’cause the Earth stuff doesn’t bind with sugar anymore ever since they passed that Dessert Precursor law. A cake that big, that’s fifty kilos at least. I sell vacuum cleaners, Dad. On commission. I don’t have a hundred large to spend right now. And that’s before you even factor in the whore.”
“I can’t believe you’re my son,” Amos said. He shook his head in disgust, and reached over to his bedside table. He put his thumb on the scanner lock, and a drawer slid out. Moses watched as his Dad rummaged through the drawer.
“Are you keeping booze in there? And…shit, is that a pistol?”
“Yes,” Amos said matter-of-factly. “1911, cocked and locked. Nothing says ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ like a forty-five caliber slug to the…ah, here we go.”
He pulled out a credstick and tossed it to Moses.
“Take that to First Celestial and exchange whatever you need. I was saving it for a rainy day, but being stuck in a damn nursing home without a whore cake for my 150th is just about as rainy as they come, son.”
Moses looked at the credstick in his hand. It had a platinum-colored band around its middle, and the data port still had the bank wrapper on it.
“Dad, how much money is on this thing?”
“Three-quarter million, give or take a few ten thousand. And another half mil in overdraft credit. Now take it and get me my goddamn whore cake, will ya? Ain’t nothing fun left on this rock to spend it on anyway.”
*
“Gateway Traffic Control, this is November Zero Eight One Five Zulu. Request departure clearance outbound Mars.”
“Five Zulu, Gateway Control. Declare cargo and purpose of your trip.”
Moses glanced at the dozen new Drek-Sukker 3000 vacuum cleaners he had just picked up from the factory on Luna.
“Gateway, Five Zulu. Cargo is vacuum cleaner units, low-grav optimized, count twelve. I’m making the monthly service run to Olympus City.”
Customs didn’t often scan departing spacecraft–there wasn’t much illicit stuff to smuggle off Earth since the Leviticans got into government–but Moses still had a floating feeling in his stomach as he waited for his clearance. There wasn’t anything illegal in the back of the company service van yet, but the customs scanners would pick up the charged credstick of Mars dollars in his pocket. Carrying half a million converted New Shekels to Mars was practically a glowing sign advertising Intent to Smuggle. But it was a high-traffic day, and he counted on his vacuum service spacecraft to slip beneath the attention threshold that would merit a close pass from a customs boat–or worse, a boarding inspection.
“Five Zulu, Gateway,” the controller said after a minute. “You are cleared for departure as filed. You are number seventeen in the transit queue. Go with the Lord.”
“Gateway, Five Zulu. Thank you very much,” Moses replied, careful to direct his sigh of relief away from the microphone.
*
Moses had never hired a Martian whore, but it turned out that their services were as easy to obtain as the sugar and flour he needed for Dad’s cake. He did his service calls quickly, and then went over to the Mall of Mars by Olympus City’s spaceport. Flour and sugar: commodities level, sections five through eight. Whores: service level, sections thirteen to fifty-nine. Sexual Services Unlimited, We-B-Whores, Intercourse Incorporated, Fast & Easy, Copulation Station–the Mall of Mars had more rent-a-whore services than any two Levitican megachurches back on Earth had copies of The Ultimate, Unchanging, Unerring Word of God (Eighth Edition, Revised and Expanded) on the pews. Moses picked a place without tentacles on the marquee and went inside, clutching his credstick full of Martian dollars.
*
“I gather you’re not looking for some personal amusement, then,” the whore said. Moses found it difficult to apply the term to the woman sitting across the desk from him. She was dressed in a business suit that was formal and classy, and at the same time the sexiest piece of clothing Moses had ever seen on a woman. She wore her long dark hair in a ponytail, and her green eyes were mesmerizing. With her high cheekbones and flawless fair complexion, she was a complete knockout. She wore a little golden nametag that said KENDRA.
“Uh, no,” he said. “I’m looking to hire someone for a special job. It’s for my Dad, really.” He laughed nervously. “Why do I feel like you’re the one interviewing me?”
“Because I am,” she said. “We have full control when it comes to picking customers. This is a pretty selective business, Mr. Anderson. Now, I’m curious why exactly you picked me out of the brochure.” She gave him an encouraging smile, flashing a set of perfectly even, perfectly white teeth.
“Well,” he said. “You’re very petite. I need someone who can fit into this.” He took a brochure from his pocket and put it on the table in front of her. She looked at it and raised an eyebrow.
“Tell me about this special job, Mr. Anderson.”
He explained the situation to her. When he was finished, Kendra laughed a bright silver laugh that made him feel like he was watching the sun rise on a beautiful warm beach.
“I don’t usually do contracts on Earth,” she said. “Your government is a bit uptight when it comes to pleasure engineers. There’s also the fact that what you’re proposing is really illegal on Earth.”
She looked at his brochure again and shook her head with a smile.
“But you know what? It sounds like fun. And my legal insurance will buy me out if we get caught. Pay me my weekly rate plus twenty percent hazard surcharge, and I’m in.”
His hands shook with relief and excitement when he fished for the credstick in his pocket.
“Great. I have to apologize for all the questions I asked earlier. It’s my first time hiring a whore.”
He looked up, mortified, when he realized what he had just said.
“Gosh, I’m so sorry.”
Kendra merely smiled at him.
“That’s only a bad word where you live, Mr. Anderson. We here on Mars make it a point to, uh, rehabilitate certain Earth terms. Especially the ones your society sees as sinful. The root of the word ‘whore’ means ‘desire’. On Mars, it’s an honorable word. It’s neither shameful nor immoral to be desired.”
He nodded, relieved, but he knew without looking into a mirror that his face was the rich scarlet of a cardinal’s robe. He handed the credstick to Kendra.
“Take out whatever you need,” he said.
*
“November Zero Eight One Five Zulu, this is Gateway Control. Welcome home. Do you have anything to declare?”
Moses checked the hold behind the pilot compartment. The sealed refuse cartridges from the vacuums he had serviced in Olympus City were strapped against the cabin walls in a neat row, hazard tags hanging out.
‘Uh, negative, Gateway Control. Just some spent trash elements and a few units that didn’t sell.”
“Five Zulu, understood.” There was a brief pause. “Stand by for customs inspection. Maintain present heading and speed.”
“Fuck,” Moses said without toggling the transmit button. Then he sent his reply into the circuit.
“Gateway, Five Zulu. Sure thing.”
“I’m getting a little uncomfortable back here,” a voice said from the row of refuse cartridges behind him. “I hope this isn’t airtight.”
“Sorry about that,” he told Kendra. “Your scrubber element should have thirty minutes of air in it. That should be plenty for an inspection.”
“Awesome. But if I start getting dizzy, I’m popping this lid, just so you know.”
“Fair enough,” Moses conceded, and watched as the approaching customs shuttle matched speeds on his service van’s port side.
*
“Cargo manifest and operating license, please,” the customs officer said without preamble as soon as he had stepped through the docking collar and raised the visor of his helmet.
“Here you go, officer.” Moses handed him the requested items and stood by, trying to look casual despite the audible heartbeats in his ears.
The customs goon walked into the hold and turned his helmet light on to illuminate the trash cartridges lining the walls.
“Garbage, eh?”
“And four of these vacuum units. Only sold eight this time around.”
The customs officer took out a hand-held scanner and passed it in front of the garbage cartridges.
“These show biomass inside.”
“Yeah. One of my contracts…well, they say they’re a hotel, but…” Moses lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I think they’re actually one of those houses of ill repute. I have no idea what they’re doing in those rooms, but their trash units break all the time. Once I had to crack open one of those cartridges because the seal went bad, and…you don’t want to know what kind of stuff I found in there. Disgusting.”
The customs goon backed away from the cartridge. “Yuck. And you do business with those degenerates?”
Moses shrugged. “I gotta go where the boss sends me, you know?”
“What’s in that one over there? The scanner says it’s shielded. What kind of garbage requires Class III radiation shielding?”
“That’s plutonium oxide. From the little reprocessing plant at Sagan U. We have the contract for the disposal. They can’t dump it on Mars because of environmental regs, so we haul it off for them. Don’t worry–that shielding is solid. Touch it, if you want. The alpha decay warms up the casing. It’s kind of neat.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” the customs officer said. He took another look around the hold, tapped the hand-held scanner against his leg, and then turned toward the docking collar.
“Have a good day, Mister. And next time they pick you for an inspection, make sure you warn Customs ahead of time that you have nuclear waste on board. Lord bless.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Happens once or twice a year tops. I totally forgot.”
Moses waited until the external hatch had locked behind the departing officer, and then extended a discreet middle finger out of view of the porthole.
When the customs shuttle left formation to resume its patrol pattern, he walked back to the hold and opened the latch on the second biomass container. Kendra unfolded herself out of the impossibly tight space like a slightly wilted flower.
“That guy was as dumb as a box of rocks,” she said. “I can’t believe he swallowed that.”
“Yeah, well, they don’t pick ’em for smarts,” Moses said, and helped her out of the trash capsule. “Good thing you Martian settlers are so…lithe.”
“Benefit of adapting to a low-gee world.” She straightened out her ponytail and smiled at Moses. “Let’s get planetside, shall we? I believe you have a cake to bake and deliver.”
*
Moses thought up half a dozen different plans to smuggle the cake past the front desk, and then dismissed them all in favor of naked bribery. When he pulled up to the side entrance on the lower level in the company hydrovan, the nighttime janitor opened the security lock for him as arranged.
“There’s nothing illegal in that thing, is there? I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“No, no,” Moses told him as he pushed the equipment cart through the security port. “It’s just a birthday gift for my Dad. A few of his old Army things. I had them framed and stuff.”
The cake was in a large box that used to hold an industrial-sized liquid waste vacuum. It wasn’t a huge cake, just tall enough to hold a crouching Kendra, but it represented eighty thousand New Shekels worth of sugar and flour, and fifty years in one of the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice’s megaprisons.
“I see.” The janitor glanced at the label on the box as Moses pushed the cart into the corridor beyond the security lock. The smell of sugar and vanilla extract was almost strong enough to burn through the nursing home’s olfactory aura of disinfectant and old sweat.
“Hey! Kenmore Drek-Sukker. I love those things. Use ’em all the time.”
“I sell them,” Moses said, careful to push the cart with the boxed cake away from the janitor before reaching into his pocket for a card. He handed his business card to the janitor. “Give me a call sometime. I can get you great deals on those.”
“Awesome. You have fun with your Dad, now. Betcha he’ll be surprised, huh?”
‘Oh, I have no doubt,” Moses said and pushed the cart toward the elevator.
“That was a lucrative two minutes of work for him,” he told the cake box when the elevator doors closed behind him. “If he orders a vacuum from me, he’ll be able to pay for it with Dad’s cash. You’re turning out the most expensive cake in the history of confectionery, my dear.”
Kendra’s chuckle was muffled from inside three layers of cake and a heavy polyfiber box.
“But oh so worth it. I’m a high-quality dessert.”
“Of that I have no doubt, either, ” Moses said, and pushed the button for the fifth floor.
*
“Holy shit. The little bastard came through,” Amos said when Moses pushed the equipment cart into his father’s room. “Looks like I won’t have to disown you after all.”
“There’s not much left on that credstick for me to inherit,” Moses puffed. “Happy birthday, Dad. And just so we’re clear–this will be your birthday gift for all the rest of them, too.”
Amos eyed the big box on top of the cart. “That better be what I hope it is.”
“You’ll see.”
Moses closed the door behind him, took out the media player Kendra had given him, and placed it on the table next to the door. Then he hugged the vacuum box and lifted it upward.
“That,” his Dad said, “is one ugly-ass cake. It looks like a trashcan with a turd on top.”
“Dad, I’m a vacuum salesman, not a confectioner. That’s the best I could do. Now shut up for a second.”
He pressed the Play button on the screen of the player, and a Martian pop tune blared from the speakers at impressively high volume. The top of the cake popped off, sending bits of frosting flying, and Kendra unfolded herself out of the center, wearing a radiant smile and very little else. Then she started moving to the music, and Moses found that his overalls were getting very tight in the crotch all of a sudden.
“I take it back,” Amos shouted against the music after a few stunned moments. “That is the most gorgeous cake I’ve ever seen in my life.”
He stuck two fingers into his mouth and let out a long, piercing wolf whistle that made Moses clap his hands over his ears.
“Dad, keep it down!”
Behind him, the door opened, and a night nurse walked in. She took one look at the giant cake and the naked woman sensuously gyrating in the middle of it, gasped, and fled the room. Kendra kept on dancing, unperturbed. Moses looked around the corner and saw the nurse hurrying toward the watch station at the end of the floor.
“Great.” He reached over and turned off the music.
“She’s calling the cops right now, Dad. There’s a Vice Police station just around the corner. We’ll have the law on our heads in five minutes, tops.”
“Well, then,” Amos said, finally diverting his gaze from Kendra’s lithe form. She stepped out of the cake and gathered her hair into a ponytail again.
“We are completely going to prison,” Moses said. “There’s no way we can eat all the evidence before they get here.”
“Why don’t you step outside and keep watch, Junior?” Amos said. “Time’s a-wastin’, and I want to have a little chat with this lovely young lady here. Just stall those holy rollers for a bit.”
“Dad, I really don’t–”
“Get out, ya daft bugger. Unless you want to record this for posterity. You know, as a memento.”
Moses left the room without further argument.
*
The Vice Police came up in the elevator just a few minutes later. Moses rushed ahead to meet them, but backed off when he saw that both officers had their stun-sticks drawn.
“What seems to be the problem, off–”
“Shut. Up,” the lead officer said. He had the humorless expression that seemed to be standard issue along with those stun-sticks. “There’s illegal drugs in that room over there. And debauchery. You are under arrest, friend. Mortal Sinning, and Fourth Degree Immorality.”
They shoved him up against the wall, and Moses felt a set of polyplast restraints locking around his wrists. Then they pulled him along toward his Dad’s room, where the loud music had started again.
The lead officer didn’t bother with the formality of trying the door handle first. He raised a hobnailed boot, and kicked the door open. Then he went in, stun-stick raised.
“Freeze, sinner!”
There was an ear-splitting boom, and the cop froze in place, the remnants of his stun-stick raining onto the dingy floor.
“Freeze yourself, ya jackass,” Amos shouted back. “Hit it, lady! We’re busting out of this joint.”
There was a sound like a vacuum cleaner engine straining at a clogged intake hose, and then Amos’ bed came shooting into the hallway, knocking the lead cop down on the way out. The second officer looked dumbfounded–the expression seemed to come naturally to him–at the sight of an anti-grav bed with an armed centumquinquagenarian and a barely-clothed Martian whore on it. The .45 in Amos’ hand looked much more impressive than the stun-stick the second cop was holding. The bed took a sharp left turn and shot down the hallway, the music from Kendra’s media player blaring, Amos whooping and hollering all the way. Moses heard Kendra’s silver-bright laugh just before the bed crashed through the window at the end of the hallway and dipped out of sight.
There was a moment of absolute, stunned silence in the hallway.
“You have got to be shitting me,” Moses said.
The first cop picked himself up off the floor. The remnants of the stun-stick were still dangling from his wrist on a lanyard. He snatched up his hat, put it back on his head, and went back into Amos’ room. The second cop followed him, dragging Moses along.
The cake was still on the floor, an extremely obvious violation of Celestial Dietary Law. The nightstand’s drawer stood opened and empty. On top of the nightstand, there was a large toolkit in a worn nylon pouch, a glass that still had amber-colored liquid in it, and a half-eaten piece of cake. The lead cop walked over to the nightstand, took a whiff of the glass, and made a face.
“Alcohol,” he said. “Firearms. Whores. Cake. Someone’s going to do a lot of time for this. Fifty to life, and eternal damnation.”
They walked down the length of the corridor to the broken window. Moses peered outside, expecting to see a mangled mess of retiree, whore, and anti-grav bed. Instead, there was nothing below but the smooth concrete of the parking lot. He thought he heard faint Martian pop music fading into the distance.
Moses suppressed the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. He fished the credstick out of the back pocket of his overalls with shackled hands, and held it out to the lead officer.
“Take out whatever you need,” he said. “And I’m sure you’ll want to secure the evidence in the room, too. Would be a shame if someone made off with fifty pounds of Martian sugar cake. That stuff must be worth tens of thousands.”
The cop looked at him with an unreadable expression. Then he snatched the credstick and looked at it. He took out his PDA, put the stick into the transfer receptacle, and checked the balance. Then he took off his hat with his free hand, and scratched his scalp.
“Unlock those shackles, Sam. This gentleman here is obviously just an innocent bystander. Sorry for the inconvenience, sir.”
*
“November Zero Eight One Five Zulu, Gateway Control. Declare cargo and purpose of your trip.”
Moses turned around to face his passengers and put his finger in front of his headset’s microphone.
“Gateway, Five Zulu. Cargo is vacuum cleaner spare parts. I’m making a service run to Olympus City.”
It was a Saturday, and clearance came quickly. The controller sounded exceedingly bored.
“Five Zulu, Gateway Control. You are cleared for departure as filed. You are number three in the transit queue. Go with the Lord.”
“Thank you, Gateway.” Moses turned off the audio feed and punched his departure code into the Alcubierre drive’s navigation panel. Then he sat back with a sigh.
“I hope you’re aware that I’m only compounding my troubles,” he said over his shoulder. “Transporting a fugitive from celestial justice and an illegal sex worker from Mars through the customs blockade.”
“Pleasure engineer,” Kendra corrected him.
“I don’t know why you’re still all tense, son,” Amos said. “Everything turned out fine in the end, didn’t it?”
“Dad, I had to spend the rest of your credstick buying off that cop. There’s nothing left on it. You’re broke. How are you going to live on Mars?”
“Oh, no worries. Kendra here is going to put me up for a little while, until my residence papers come through.”
“Don’t tell me you’re both madly in love, and that you’re getting married. Because that would be too much for my delicate digestive system right now.”
Kendra laughed. Moses had decided a little while ago that he could listen to her laugh all day long.
“No, we’re not. I don’t make it a habit to date customers, let alone marry them. And your Dad’s a bit too old for me. No offense,” she said to Amos.
“None taken,” he said. “Kendra is going to be my sponsor for my asylum application. Once that comes through, I’ll get a Mars living stipend.”
Moses raised an eyebrow. “Asylum? On what grounds?”
“Religious persecution.”
“What?” Moses laughed. “You’re an atheist, Dad. Which denomination are you claiming?”
“Hedonism,” Amos said. “I’ve been a life-long practitioner.”
The transit light turned green, and Moses pushed the “Engage” button on the Alcubierre panel.
“Lord knows that’s the truth,” he said as they shot off toward Mars.
–END–
