by Sheila Crosby
A trillion miles was a long way to come for revenge. I grinned. The Cult of the Bathtub would have to go much further than the Oort cloud to escape me.
I maneuvered my space ship into orbit around the comet core. If it ever got inside the orbit of Jupiter, the ice would boil off in a spectacular tail, but out here, where Sol was indistinguishable from any other star, the core was a solid lump of ice, big enough to cool a cocktail for God. Big enough to fill lots of bathtubs, too, if they could get the water to stay in without gravity.
There was no sense trying to sneak in the back door. I landed at the one obvious spaceport. The gigantic ice-sculpture of a bath was visible from 5 miles up. Close to, I could see they’d even sculpted in the ripples on the surface, and the plastic boats. One was sinking.
The comet was spinning fast. Presumably they’d speeded it up, so that the centrifugal force would provide a good artificial gravity inside. It made it hard to land, but I wasn’t stopping now. I suited up and floated from my ship to their airlock. A mobile of rubber ducks swung in the tiny gravity, gyrating wildly and then deflating as the air rushed in. Bastards.
They were waiting for me inside, four of them, in fluffy pink bathrobes. The smell hit me before their fists. Nail-varnish remover. I grabbed one, and found he was only skin and bone. They had fasted to starvation. When the human body runs out of fat to burn, it starts on muscle, and the by-product is acetone — the main ingredient in nail-polish remover — on the breath.
I beat them off, yelling, “Take me to your filthy leader!” Filthy being their worst insult.
The tallest shook his skinny fist. “Blasphemer! You shall pay!” But he led the way.
Of course The Great Hygienist was taking a bath. Colored water, bubbles, the lot. I felt sick, and not just because his breath smelt even worse than his followers’ did. He was so thin from the constant fasting, it looked as though I could huff, and puff, and blow him away.
He made the sign of Shampooing, saying, “Bubbles to you, O Stranger.”
I snarled, “May you spend years in the desert, unable to wash!”
He raised his eyebrows, then turned to his followers. “Leave this stranger’s enlightenment to me.” I heard the door shut behind them.
Enlightenment! This was too much. I shouted, “Your poisonous cult is so successful that all the stores are selling baths. I can’t buy a shower anywhere! I spend a fortune on baby-wipes.”
“Showers cleanse the body alone. Linger in the sacred tub, to cleanse your very soul from sin.”
I clenched my fists. “I get car-sick on roller skates. I get sea-sick in the bath. Even wet grass makes me queasy.”
He laughed. He was responsible for my suffering, and he didn’t care at all.
I lunged at his neck and shoved his face beneath the foam. A patch of large bubbles grew between my hands.
“How dare you!” I screamed, as the bubbles stopped. “I will not be patronized by a super-callous, fragile mystic, hexed by halitosis!”
Published in Alien Skin, June/July 2005