Jimmy and the Gambotian Luck Sucker
by Tamara Sheehan
Jimmy came out of the gate with an unceremonious thump.
It was always like that, projected through time and space at some unspecified velocity, only to arrive three feet off the planet’s surface and victim to the local gravity. He spat a clod of dirt and roots and grimaced at the taste. Why me?
Even in the half light of an Earth-like twilight Jimmy could see an imprint in the grass not far from where his head had come to rest. The loamy soil had given way under another impact, Rod’s, he supposed. Jimmy lay still, listening for some sign of Rod, trying to imagine what Rod would have thought and how he would have acted.
Rod would have landed hands-and-knees, looked sharply left, sharply right, then rolled, gun drawn, to some place of safety. Behind the gate, perhaps, where no one coming through would notice him until he pounced. Jimmy craned his neck. The gate hovered three feet from the ground and no one was behind it.
The green-painted aluminum reminded him of his days in the Academy, when he and Rod had met. Even then Rod had been slick.
Rod had been clever, top of the class, quick to set his stunner on prolapse, but never really broke the rules. Jimmy had always been his opposite. Whenever good luck happened to Rod, bad luck happened to Jimmy.
Jimmy envied Rod, trotted around after him at the expense of his pride, hoping that some of that might, just might, rub off on him. It hadn’t. In time things had actually got worse. When Rod got the girl, Jimmy got the tearful late-night phone calls. When Rod won the medals, Jimmy got invited to hold open the car door. When Rod ran through the gate right on schedule, Jimmy realized he’d forgotten daylight savings time had ended and scrambled through himself.
Jimmy grimaced where he lay and pushed himself onto his knees. He looked around him and something in the encroaching dark moved. Humanoid, possibly hostile. He squinted. Probably female.
He heard a laugh, sweet and soft, carried on the wind. “Hello?” the woman said.
If he was Rod, he’d have been surprised that she knew English, that she was human, that she was gendered; but he was Jimmy, and Jimmy missed it all. Instead, Jimmy became suddenly aware that he was covered in dirt, on his knees in the middle of a field and a little blood was beginning to trickle out of his banged-up nose.
“Hello? Did you get hurt?”
“Mostly my pride.” He answered.
Now she was closer to him, he could see her through the gloom. She was almost as tall as him, human, voluptuous, with dark hair that fell loose to her waist and moved with her shift in the wind. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed,” she said and offered a hand.
Accepting it, Jimmy climbed awkwardly to his feet. He cast his eyes over the darkening plain, seeking a figure silhouetted against the sky, a figure moving steadily in search of something.
“Are you looking for someone?” The woman asked.
“A friend.” Jimmy answered, and then, because he babbled when he was nervous, he added, “Rod Docking, a good man, friend of mine from school. Came through earlier. I was supposed to meet him, but you know how things go. My name’s Jimmy, by the way.”
One of her hands went to her lips. “I’m Cladis. Jimmy, I have terrible news for you. Someone came through that gate earlier today but he was killed by a rabid Boon almost as soon as he landed.” She lay a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder as she spoke. “I’m sorry.”
Jimmy was silent, stunned. The world seemed to lurch. “Rod?” He asked softly but Cladis went on, confessing.
“We’ve never had a foreigner in these parts. I stripped the luck-sucker charm from him to sell, my family is so poor I thought... I hope you understand.”
“The luck-sucker?”
“The Gambotian luck-sucker.” She looked levelly at him. “He must have been fabulously lucky. Didn’t you know he had a luck-sucker?” He shook his head and Cladis sighed. “He did. It must have failed when he came through the gate and he had the biggest bout of bad luck in the universe.”
“Death by Boon is bad luck?”
“The worst I’ve ever seen. The local tribe of Boons tend to be vegetarian.”
It seemed as if the world reeled. Jimmy put out a hand to steady himself. “You mean all that luck he had all this time, it was... mine?”
“If you were around him a lot, it must have been.”
“Well...” Jimmy turned very slowly to the woman beside him on the plain and suddenly he smiled. The world seemed to open up before him, vast and dark and promising. “Well.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Jimmy.”
He smiled at her. He felt taller, stronger than he’d ever felt before but instead of straitening he groaned and touched his leg as if it pained him.
“You are hurt!” Cladis whispered. She pulled his arm across her shoulder. Close to she was warm and sweet smelling and her hair was like satin. “Come, lean on me. You stay with me until you’re mended.”
“Why thank you.” Jimmy faked a limp more convincingly than he’d ever done before. He thought once about Rod lying somewhere under that dark sky, but couldn’t muster grief, he was too buoyed up by overwhelming confidence. He had a feeling his luck was changing.
Copyright © 2006 by Tamara Sheehan
