Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: The Official Movie Novelization

CHAPTER THREE

“Touchdown on Kirian in two minutes,” Laureline announced. There was a trace of pride in her voice as she added, “I saved us some time.”

“Perhaps I should take over for a moment,” Alex said, “so you can both utilize that time to put on something more appropriate?”

While Valerian had certainly not forgotten that Laureline was in her bikini, he’d forgotten that he was sitting in the cockpit of a cutting-edge ship in nothing but swimming trunks.

“Good thinking,” Laureline said, to Valerian’s quiet disappointment. “Leaving manual.”

“Manual disarmed,” Alex replied.

Laureline rose and left to change. Valerian watched her retreating figure with all the appreciation it deserved, murmuring under his breath, “Wow! Man…”

“Do you want me to regulate your hormones, Major?” Alex offered helpfully.

For a brief instant, Valerian actually considered it. Then, “No thank you,” he replied, and rose to change as well.

They walked down the ramp to the surface of Kirian, a plain of soft, powdered sand interrupted by craggy, jutting stone. In the end, their attire was a bit more modest, but otherwise not that different. The major was in shorts, closed athletic shoes, and a yellow mesh undershirt overlaid with a gaudy flower-print shirt. The sergeant followed clad in a short, gray, flowing dress, waving at the six unsmiling soldiers who had been awaiting their arrival.

They were, at least at this moment, unmistakably that— soldiers, despite their efforts to blend in with the populace. They wore loose, somewhat messy sand-colored clothing. Their heads were wrapped with cloth—except for one soldier, whose bald pate and long, thick beard set him apart and, frankly, probably was a better disguise than a head-wrapping. Voluminous ponchos served double duty, concealing their excellent physical condition and also conveniently hiding various pieces of equipment and weaponry. Their disciplined military bearing was obviously being sorely tested by the heat of the planet, which had reddened the paler faces among them and dewed all of them in sweat.

Kirian was every bit as unwelcoming on its surface as it had looked from space. Some of the huge boulders had been contorted and shaped by time and weathering, their tops looking like the wrinkled folds of brains propped up on narrow stalks. Others erupted at angles from the ground and looked more like sharp, flat arrows. Both types reared up over flat desert like ancient witnesses to a time of tremendous chaos. The sand was soft, but hot, and it was already starting to creep into clothing and skin.

The commando unit further emphasized the incongruity of the situation by lingering near an old bus that looked almost as weathered and solemn as the boulders. It was painted in what had once been a bright yellow and was now a dull ochre, and it was decorated with insanely tacky rust-hued flames. Along its top were emblazoned the words “Kirian Tours.”

Valerian responded to the absurdity of it all by gleefully snapping a picture of the soldiers. The glowers of some of them were priceless, and would make fantastic souvenirs.

“Hey,” he asked, looking about and spreading his arms. “Where’s the band?”

Major Gibson, the officer in charge of the operation, looked at him askance. “What band?”

“To welcome us,” Valerian answered cheerfully. The soldiers looked at one another, utterly at a loss for words.

Gibson, a tall, lean man with sharp features, eyed the pair critically, his mouth turning down in an expression of distaste. “You plan on going on a mission dressed like that?”

“Hello Major Pot, I’m Major Kettle. Have you looked at yourselves in a mirror? We’re supposed to mingle with the tourists, aren’t we? What do you expect us to wear? A panda suit?”

Gibson sighed. “I’ll make this short and sweet, as we’re running late.”

Laureline threw Valerian an I told you so look as they climbed into the bus, settling in as best they could.

“Major Valerian,” Gibson said briskly, “your contact is Sergeant Cooper. He is in position and will be waiting with your equipment in the back of the suspect’s store.” Without another word, he turned to take his seat.

“Hey!” Valerian protested. “I’m only working with my partner here!”

“Is that so?”

“Yep. We’re a team.”

Gibson glanced at Laureline, raising an eyebrow. She shrugged. “Funny. Because Sergeant Laureline will arrive at the drop in precisely twenty minutes, and you will have ten seconds to make the transfer.” An unpleasant smile quirked his lips. “Or didn’t you read the memo?”

“Of course I did,” Valerian lied, with just the right combination of annoyance and weariness.

“You better have.” Gibson’s tone of voice and skeptical, slightly worried expression gave Valerian the distinct impression that the major wasn’t fooled.

The two agents were bumped and jostled as the vehicle made its way across the desert to their destination, moving over the endless sand and passing through shade provided by the enormous rock formations. Laureline pulled out a tablet and quipped wryly, “Hey, how about we look over the memo? You know—one last time?”

Valerian, feeling his face getting hot, shrugged nonchalantly. “Can’t hurt,” he said casually, stretching and slouching in the uncomfortable bus seat.

Laureline pulled up a map on the tablet, pointing to it with the tip of one long, elegant finger.

“Section four. Aisle 122,” she stated. “Suspect claims to be a bona fide art dealer. His name is Igon Siruss.”

She called up the suspect’s image. Valerian, like most humans, had gotten used to aliens of nearly every shape and size imaginable. Even so, he had a sneaking suspicion that in this case the suspect had a face even his mother would be hard-pressed to love.

Bald, with reddish, slightly shiny skin, Igon Siruss was jowly and sullen-looking, with eyes so tiny they were all but swallowed by rolls of extra flesh. But that was not what had caught Valerian’s attention.

“Wow!” he yelped. “What’s with the three sets of nostrils?”

“He’s a Kodhar’Khan,” Laureline explained. “There are three seasons on his planet. The dry season brings suffocating sandstorms. The rainy season results in clouds of noxious sulfur dioxide fumes. And then there’s winter, when you can breathe pretty much normally. Each nostril set has developed separate air filtration capabilities and can be sealed off voluntarily, just like we can close our eyes.”

Not for the first time, Valerian looked at his partner with open admiration of her beautiful brain. “How do you know all this?”

“I paid attention in school,” she said archly, then grew serious. “When you head in there, you should take extra precautions. Igon’s right-hand man is his son, goes by the name of Junior. He has a list of crimes almost as long as his father’s.”

“How bad can someone named ‘Junior’ be?” scoffed Valerian confidently. “Bet he got picked on at Kodhar’Khan school.”

Laureline’s lips thinned. “In addition to Junior, Igon’s said to have quite a lot of private bodyguards, and Kodhar’Khans are reputed to be very aggressive due to a lack of females on their planet.” Private bodyguards were often encountered on Kirian. The native population known as Siirts allegedly provided security, but they often did not measure up to others’ standards.

“Really?” Valerian grinned. “Aggressive because there’s competition for females, or aggressive because they don’t have to deal with them?”

“You know,” Laureline said in a conversational tone, “another thing I learned in school is that planets where women are in charge are usually eighty-seven percent more likely to be peaceful, prosperous worlds where art and education flourish, and the males think before saying really stupid things.”

Laureline patted his thigh, then, to his disappointment, rose to settle into another seat by herself. Valerian shrugged and made the best of it by stretching out more fully in his seat, fishing out a pair of sunglasses he settled over his eyes, and grabbing a catnap.

He hoped he wouldn’t dream.

Valerian blinked awake as the bus arrived outside a long, high wall of red stone that marked the parameter of Big Market. As it chugged along, Valerian could see a gargantuan ornate gate soaring into the air, covered with what looked like gold. This gate marked the main entrance to Big Market.

Valerian sat up, yawning and stretching, and watched as they pulled up beside hundreds of other tourist buses. The vast majority were similar to the decrepit workhorse of a vehicle that had ferried the two spatio-temporal agents through what looked like an empty spot in the desert. A few buses, though, were of radically different design, meant to accommodate aliens of equally radical design.

Valerian had never been to Big Market, but had heard about it, of course. Few sentient beings in the known universe hadn’t.

Nearly every civilized world had its tourist clusters, and where there were tourists, there was money to be made. And there were few better ways to make money from tourists than by providing shopping opportunities. Judging from his experience, Valerian had formed a theory that the desire to shop was the driving force in the universe. Even more important than another certain driving force that most species in the galaxy shared. Not everyone procreated in pleasurable ways, but everyone did seem to enjoy returning home after traveling laden with souvenirs that were often outrageously priced and wholly unnecessary.

“So,” Valerian said to his partner as they hopped off the bus, “think you can survive twenty minutes without me?”

Laureline rolled her eyes. “Could anyone?” she replied, melodramatically. Then she sobered and touched his arm gently. “Go. Be careful. I wasn’t kidding when I said this species was aggressive.”

Valerian nodded and walked away toward the gathering crowd of tourists. He slowed and came to a stop, considering something very intently. The decision made, he whirled and briskly trotted back to a perplexed Laureline.

“You’re right,” he said. “I must be getting old.”

Her eyes sparkled. “I agree, but what makes you admit it now?”

He squared his shoulders and looked her in the eye. “I completely forgot that I have a question for you.”

She eyed him. “Okay,” she said, curious.

“Will you marry me?”

The expression on Laureline’s beautiful face shifted, darkening with a thunderous frown.

“Not funny!” she snapped, turning, but Valerian grabbed her arm.

“Laureline, I’m serious,” he said. “I was thinking about what you said earlier and—” he swallowed hard. “You’re right. I need to move onward and upward.” Then the words: “I need to commit.”

Laureline blinked in confusion, caught utterly off guard. She looked around, at the overheated crowds, red dust clinging to them, at the guards who were too far away to hear the words but were definitely watching with curiosity. At the rickety old bus and the soldiers in and around it.

“Here?” she said. “Just like that?”

“Why not?” He grinned suddenly. “They sell a zillion things here. I’m sure we can pick up a priest who’ll be happy to oblige.”

His grin faded at her expression.

“Marriage is no laughing matter, okay?” she stated flatly. Coldly. “Not for me, at least.”

Oh, shit. She assumed he was kidding. His throat constricted with the sudden awful thought: I just blew this.

“I’m not joking,” he protested.

Laureline continued with her flinty stare for a long moment, searching his eyes, then she softened ever so slightly.

“Valerian,” she said, not angry this time, “you and I get on just great. The best team ever, you’ve said. And I agree. We get along. You flirt, I smile. It’s light and it’s fine. Why reconfigure what we’ve got?”

Words tumbled out of him, erupting from some place deep inside, nearly as surprising to himself as he uttered them as Laureline seemed to be at hearing them: “Because I’ve been working nonstop since I was seventeen. I’ve fought in battle, and I’ve killed and I’ve protected. I’ve spent my whole life going on missions where I’ve saved entire worlds and peoples. But when I think about it, all I’ve got is the mission. I don’t have a world of my own. No home. No family.”

“You have coworkers,” Laureline deadpanned.

That zinger stung, and he twitched slightly. “I don’t want coworkers,” he said, honestly and intently. “I want you to be my world.”

Laureline smiled at him. His words seemed genuine, but they were almost impossible to read. She further confounded him when she leaned forward and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. Her lips were warm and soft, and Valerian trembled inside, just a little. Gently, he again caught her arm as she turned to leave.

“Hey,” he said, “a kiss is not an answer.”

Her inscrutable smile suddenly turned impish. “You’ll get your answer at the end of our mission.”

For a second, Valerian wanted to tear his hair out in frustration, and then he realized: She was not saying no.

Oh.

All at once, everything in the universe seemed possible, and he smiled back at her. “Works for me.”

A large uniformed Siirt, bulkier than was usual for the spindly-bodied species native to Kirian, came up to them. Valerian didn’t understand the words, but his hat that bore the word POLIZ, a red and black decorated baton, and a variety of gestures toward them, the bus, and the horizon made his request very clear. Laureline threw Valerian a last smile, then climbed back on the bus.

Valerian watched the ancient transport cough and chug on its way for a moment, then turned back toward the throng of tourists.

He was going to get this mission done in record time.