Sam Boone's Appeal to Common Scents

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The acrid smell of the morning wake-up call pulled Sam Boone from a deep sleep. For a second only, the bitter smell reminded him of the mornings he had enjoyed a coffee and croissant at the Place Mal du Blanc in romantic New Orleans, back on Earth. He sighed, memories of mercurial Mimi and intense Ingrid lingered a moment at the fringes of his mind, the gentle caress of their hands on his…

Abruptly Sam came fully awake as a cadre of Scrofulosans crawled unheedingly across his chest, some occasionally brushing his face with their feathery antennae in curiosity. Sam rolled out of the path of the marching aliens and began untangling himself from his makeshift bed, a mismatched arrangement he had assembled from his kit to soften the floor of the passageway where he’d slept.

The silence of the aliens’ passage was broken only by the chitinous clicking of the Scrofulosans’ limbs rubbing against one another and scrabbling against the hard floor. Sam knew that their apparent silence was an illusion, since the Scrofulosans were constantly babbling on and on about the things that mattered most to them; religion, food, prayer, food, and what Halene/ether-four inhaled from Brimstone/whiff-of-sulfide the other night. The rank scent of their discussions wafted over him like the redolent stink of an open cesspool. How had he ever let Ahbbbb, his Pequodista agent, talk him into taking this stinking assignment?

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