| "It isn't fair!" Nine said for the umpteenth time. And after days of
his whining, the Mayor was getting more than a little peeved.
It had begun with the arrival of the Pack. Ever since the animal men had taken Panaras as their own, the souls of the dead had been departing in droves for that great Light in the sky. Padre Fin had been officiating funeral ceremonies around the clock. And every time a new grave had been dug and he had finished the last prayer and the final shovel of dirt had been cast, a dazzling ray of light would shoot down from the sky and a voice would cry out in epiphianic joy, "Yippeeeeeee!" Nine had no clue what yippee meant, but after hearing it more than a thousand times it was beginning to get on his nerves. "Yippeeeeeee!" a voice cried out in the distance as a bolt of light shot down from the blue sky. "And I wish they'd stop saying that," Nine added grumpily. "Now listen here," the Mayor frowned, "just because there's no direct equivalent in your language doesn't mean you have to get so hot and bothered. And I've tried explaining it to you a hundred times. But you're too stubborn to listen. You'd rather just sit there and sulk. Why don't you just forget about them and get on with your life?" "Because I'm DEAD!" Nine retorted angrily. "Well atleast your bones aren't spread from here to God knows where," the Mayor responded. "When they pull your sad butt out of that cold box downstairs and throw it on the burning heap like they did with all your friends, you'll be able to move on to your Eternal Paradise. Me, I've got to wait for my bones to crumble to dust before I get to leave here." Nine's eyes nearly bulged out of his head in frustration, "But they haven't even touched the cryo-freezer yet! In fact, they haven't gone down there at all since they checked the place out the first time. They act like they're afraid to go near any of our equipment!" The Mayor looked at him with an exasperated grin, "Well of course they're afraid. Your magic is something out of this world." "It's not MAGIC!" Nine screamed back. "Oh, and I suppose you're not a ghost, either," the Mayor mumbled under his breath. The two spirits sat together in an uncomfortable silence. It was broken only by the euphoric shouts of other ghosts which would be heard every now and then through the open windows of the mayor's office. Soon, they both knew, they would be the only phantoms left in town. "It's such a pretty sight, don't you think?" the Mayor said absently. Nine ignored him. "It's too bad that the living can't see it," the Mayor continued. Still Nine kept silent. The Mayor waited and then offered his comments yet again, "The divine light coming down from the heavens. Oh, there is so much beauty the living are unaware of. If only they knew...But they do know how to throw a good party, hmm? Wasn't that wedding just magnificent?" "We don't have weddings," Nine finally spoke up. "You don't have weddings?" the Mayor said, astonished. "What do you do when your people get married?" "We don't GET married," Nine said irritably. "Oh my," the Mayor said thoughtfully. "But what about when a man and woman want to join together to consolidate their families' property and to beget heirs, what do you do then?" Nine looked at the Mayor with a mixture of annoyance and disgust. "We don't hold private property and we don't have sex to produce offspring. Everything belongs to the Empire and the Empire belongs to us all." The Mayor thought about this for a moment, "Very interesting...but what was that about not having sex?" Nine shook his head resignedly, "My people are hermaphrodites, we are asexual. When the Empire requires more citizens, we lay our eggs and viola, more citizens. It's nothing we get very excited about." "Well I prefer the human way," the Mayor quipped, "and by the way that Fred and Alicia snookered up to each other up on that altar, I imagine that they do too." The Mayor chuckled at the thought. He only wished that he had been able to join in with the festivities, but unfortunately he had no power to touch the living while the sun shone and Padre Fin had set up some powerful wards against the ghosts of the dead that kept him from getting too close during the night. 'Oh well,' he thought, 'their protections aren't everywhere, and I've gotten in a few good scares so far. Maybe tonight will be a good night.' Nine looked at the Mayor sitting there, chuckling to himself, and he
shook his head. Humans...nasty little animals. "The sun is about
to set," Nine said, looking out of the window. "Why don't you go haunt
someone and leave me alone." The Mayor looked at the Lizard Man and smiled.
"That is exactly what I had in mind."
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