Hell Ship

BOOK 2
Jak

My name is Jak. I was, once, a Trader.

And this is my story.

The green-hided soldiers led Cantrell and myself through dark moist corridors of rock until we emerged into the FanTang Council Chamber.

The Chamber was high-ceilinged and awesome; it was a huge hall set within a cavern hewn out of a mountain. Its white marble walls were inlaid richly with gold and silver and precious stones, and the pillars and pilasters were decorated with bas-reliefs carved with remarkable delicacy and beauty, notwithstanding their brutal content.

The air was toxic, a blend of oxygen and gaseous cyanide, and I breathed in deep draughts, savouring the thrill of inhaling certain death with no actual peril. Cantrell stared at me sourly.

“Let me do the talking,” I said.

“Here they come,” said Cantrell.

The FanTang leader stepped up before us. He was at least a basal taller and broader than the other FanTangs we had met. His green porcupine hide was ridged with spikes, and he had glittering eyes on every part of his body except his head.

“Ears?” I whispered.

“That was covered in the briefing,” snarled Cantrell.

“I wasn’t listening. Ears?”

Cantrell sighed. “Where your girlfriend’s nipples are, those are its ears.”

And so I stared at the monster’s nipples; they were as sharp as a dagger’s point. I counted six of them; and I wondered, idly, if this creature’s aural organs could also lactate.

Then I lowered my head, and scraped my right foot on the ground five times, the FanTang ritual for greeting.

“You did hear some of the briefing then,” Cantrell hissed. I cast him a brief but brilliant smile; then looked at the FanTang leader, lowered my head, and scraped my foot on the ground five times once more. Hello, again.

But the FanTang leader did not move. His three advisers did not move either. They glared fiercely with body-eyes that appeared to be made of glass; and their open mouths dripped saliva through fangs on to the cavern floor. And I noticed that the spikes upon the bodily carapace of the FanTang leader were stained with what looked like red-celled blood.

“We wish you to hear us,” I said, in fluent FanTang, and the FanTang leader’s glassy eyes all blinked, in unison.

I took the translating pads out of my sack-having reached the limits of my idiomatic FanTangian-and knelt, then crawled on my hands and knees to the FanTang leader. I held out the translating pads.

The giant FanTang took the pads.

I touched my own chest with my hands. The FanTang copied the gesture and the adhesive pads gripped his breasts and then the listening pads were in place.

“We wish you to hear us,” I said, in Olaran, which was then translated into the FanTang’s language by the listening pads.

“Can you in fact hear and comprehend us?” I said.

The FanTang leader was still. “I can hear,” he said in his own language, and the translator did its job, and I heard the worlds in Olaran.

I crawled back on my hands and knees to rejoin Cantrell.

“Mission accomplished,” I said grinning.

“How does this work?” the FanTang leader asked, querulously.

“It’s a translator,” I explained. “It translates.”

“We have seen this device before,” said the FanTang leader. “You sent swamp-wolves into our camps and they spat these things on to our bodies and the wolves howled at us and we understood them and marvelled, and then we slew them.”

“And what did they say?” Cantrell asked, dryly.

“Don’t,” the FanTang leader admitted, “Kill. Us.”

Cantrell sighed, disapprovingly, and the translator turned the sigh into words: “[Disapproving exhalation.]”

The Fan Tang leader was startled.

“We sent the swamp-wolves,” I explained smoothly, “to prepare the way. We know that you are afraid of us.”

“We are not afraid of you!” roared the FanTang leader.

“We come from deepest space, in ships that spit fire, and you are right to be wary of us,” I said diplomatically.

“We are not wary of you!”

“You blew up,” I said impatiently, “all our scout ships with your nuclear missiles. In our culture, that counts as ‘wary.’ ”

“Wary, perhaps,” conceded the FanTang leader, “but not afraid.”

“Our ships were piloted by robots,” I said. “Non-living creatures, not alive. You did us no harm. We bear you no grudge.”

“You are our enemy, it is therefore your duty to hate and destroy us,” the FanTang leader rebuked me.

It was by now apparent that these creatures were small-minded, ignorant, bloodthirsty savages; nonetheless, I persevered.

“We are not your enemy, we are your friends,” I said, as carefully and clearly as I was able. “We come not to fight war, but to make peace. We do not wish to conquer, we wish to trade.”

“What,” said the FanTang leader, “is this word ‘peace’? And what is ‘trade’?”

“Peace is the opposite of war.”

“Surrender is the opposite of war,” the FanTang leader explained.

“No, not-fighting is the opposite of war,” I said. “Collaborating. Being-friends-ing. Concord. Not killing each other.”

“These parent-fucking monsters have no fucking idea,” Cantrell muttered sourly.

The FanTang leader roared, but in a cheerful way; I realised it was a laugh. “Parent-fucking, that is a good phrase. We can adopt that in our own language,” the FanTang leader said gleefully.

“Trade means we give you what you want, you give us what we want.”

“We want your deaths,” said the FanTang leader, and took out a stick that was tied to his belt, and shook the stick so it became a sword, and struck off my head.

[I woke, in agony. I forced myself back down on to my couch.]

“That won’t help you,” Cantrell said mildly.

Blood poured out of my neck-stump; I made it congeal. My heart stopped beating; I made it beat again. I opened my eyes and found I was on the floor staring up at an odd angle at the entourage of green, angry, aristocratic FanTangs.

“We come in peace,” my head said mildly.

The FanTang leader jerked in shock.

My torso sat up. My hands picked up my head and put it back on my bloody shoulders. The broken blood vessels rejoined; the neck healed, leaving an ugly scar. I stood up.

“You can survive the loss of a head,” said the FanTang leader, marvelling.

“Can’t you?” I said, mockingly, and took out my ray gun and fired it, a flech to the right of the FanTang leader’s skull-protrusion.

A chunk of the marble column behind the monster vaporised, with a sharp hiss. I fired again, and the rock-table vanished. I fired a third time, at the feet of the FanTang leader’s monsterly advisors, and a hole appeared in the ground beneath them and they leaped for safety.

(“Good shooting,” murmured Cantrell.)

“If we fought a war,” I explained gently to the FanTang leader, “you would lose.”

“Yeah! You parent-fucking bastards!” added Cantrell, viciously.

The FanTang leader emitted a sad, pathetic howl. He looked around helplessly. “I am humiliated,” he said, feebly.

“Not so,” I said calmly, and handed the monster the ray gun. “Look. A gesture of trust. We come in peace. Here is my magic weapon. I give it to you to show that I trust you. We come in peace, which is not-war, which is better than war, which is-”

(“Quit while you’re ahead,” murmured Cantrell.)

“All we want to do, you see,” I said patiently, to this savage green-hided brute with skin like lava and no control whatsoever of its salivary glands, “is trade.”

“You give me your weapon!” said the FanTang leader, marvelling, holding the ray gun as if it were a-well, as if it were a deadly weapon of extra-FanTangian origin that had just been given to him as an unexpected present. “That shows much respect! And trust. And-”

He pressed the button on the side, and the gun fired.

“And folly!” the FanTang leader roared, delighted by his own rhetoric.

The blast ripped me into pieces; I flew through the air and landed in fragments, and my blood gushed on to the floor messily.

Then the monster pointed the ray gun at Cantrell, and fired again.

[I woke, in agony again. I took a moment to recover my wits. All was going according to plan.]

I returned into my shadow body. It was a perfect simulacrum of my real body, accessible to all the senses including touch. But it was, at the end of the day, no more than a computer simulation, which I could easily control with the power of my thought.

And so this time I allowed my pools of blood to coagulate and merge until they stood upright and formed a human silhouette. My severed limbs slicked across the floor and reformed and rejoined, and my arms then placed my head back on my body, until I stood before the monsters as a flaccid blood-emptied sac of skin. Then I opened my mouth…

… and I drank my own blood-silhouette, like a squelched fruit travelling backwards in time; and resumed my normal shape.

Beside me Cantrell did the same. The two of us tottered on wobbly legs, regaining our balance, then stared as terrifyingly as we could at the FanTang leader and his associates.

“We ask you to surrender,” I said, using the only relevant term this creature seemed to grasp.

The FanTang leader gaped; the flow of saliva became a flood; and I screamed: “SURRENDER PARENT-FUCKER OR YOU DIE!” while beside me, Cantrell grinned approvingly.

“I surrender, o mighty one,” said the FanTang leader humbly, and cravenly.

“We ask for your sword, you defeated and abject, um, defeated creature,” I demanded; and the FanTang leader took his sword from his belt, and shook it until the blade grew and gleamed, then handed it to me, hilt uppermost.

I hefted the sword. It was light, but powerful. I guessed that small-worlds technology was involved. This was, despite the aliens’ brutality and grotesque salivation, a pretty sophisticated culture.

“We ask for, nay, we demand, your life,” I said, with what I felt was considerable aplomb; and I swung the sword and lopped off the FanTang leader’s head.

The creature roared, and fell to the ground and died in evident agony, green blood spouting from its head-less torso; while the head itself rolled slowly across the cavern floor until it hit a wall.

“We now offer the hand of friendship,” I said, icily, to the surviving FanTangs. “Rebuff us again, and you will all die.” The FanTang advisers bowed their heads, in a clear gesture of submission, clearly reassured that I was finally talking their language.

“How do we,” one of the advisers said humbly, “trade?”

[Back in my simulacrum-tank, I grinned.]

My shadow-self, stained with splashed blood, bent and twisted where my body hadn’t properly reformed, still managed to retain its customary dignified demeanour.

“I shall,” I said coolly, “explain.”

“Come on, stretch,” said Averil sternly.

After five days in the simulacrum tank, I was stiff and muscle-wasted and yearned to lie down and die. But I pushed myself hard, stretching my leg muscles, shaking out my shoulder muscles, and turning my head-with a satisfying crack of my neck vertebrae-in a perfect circle, to get it nicely limber.

“Swivel those hips,” Averil ordered, and I swivelled my hips so that my groin exchanged places with my arse, and vice versa.

“And back!”

I swivelled my hips swiftly back to their normal position, and blinked, seeing stars.

“Floor jumps!” I dropped to the ground, pushed up and down, jumped into the air, and made an X shape with my arms and legs.

“Hold!”

I held my position, hovering in mid-air, breathing through my diaphragm to keep my air-sacs inflated.

“And land.”

I landed.

Sweat bathed my muscular body now, and I could see that there was a sparkle in Averil’s eyes. She was an exhilaratingly intelligent woman, squat and powerful, with a shrewdness in her features that made my heart skip.

“Run on the spot.”

I began running on the spot, my legs arcing high with each pace, and Averil followed suit. We ran side by side to nowhere, with an effortless stride.

I could see the dampness of her strong shoulders. I could see her muscles moving beneath her smooth skin as she ran. I knew her game, and I was enjoying it.

“Okay, stop,” said Averil, “and rub down.”

I grabbed her, and touched her all over with my hands.

“Rub yourself down, I meant!” she said laughing.

I kissed her lips. My tongue flicked into her mouth.

“Not here, there are cameras,” she protested, mildly, kissing back.

“I disconnected them.”

“You disconnected them huh?”

“On the offchance.”

“On the offchance of what?”

“On the offchance of this.”

I fumbled with her leotard, slipped the catch, and it fell away from her body. She was naked, her body was hot and flushed and soft. I kissed her breasts, then put my hand between her legs and touched her sex, its hardness and softness, and its pulsing heart. I slipped out of my own leotard and stood before her naked; and with her gentle fingers and warm palm she caressed both of my erect cocks.

“Yes!” she moaned as I entered her, and then she screamed, and her body gripped me, and her muscles squeezed me, and her kisses dampened my cheeks.

“I love you,” I murmured, gently, as her passion grew, and she screamed, and swore, and her body bucked and spasmed until finally she came, with adorable violence.

Averil lay panting in my arms. And I savoured the pleasure, the unique joy, of being able to liberate her joy.

“That was fabulous,” she conceded.

I smiled. I had made my female happy.

I was content.

“Let me see,” said Chief Trader Mohun, and I opened the casket.

“Jewels,” I said, passing over an elaborate chain embedded with precious stones and tiny golden ingots carved with complex shapes and soft white things that looked to me like the teeth of FanTang infants, though I chose not to enquire too deeply.

“Fabrics,” I added, and passed over a sheet of softest silk, made from the webs of Blaga-sized creatures called Shibbols who were kept in underground FanTang farms where they wallowed in excrement and never saw the light of day.

“Weapons,” I concluded, and showed Mohun a selection of swords, axes, knives, bolas, hurlable metal spikes and throwing darts, all moulded and carved with impeccable artistry.

“We can sell these to the Kala,” Mohun said, beaming, for avarice was the candle that lit his soul. “They love weaponry of all of the sharp, nasty and stabby varieties. And body parts, too of course.”

“I know,” I said, smiling nostalgically. “I’ve seen-”

“You’ve seen their diamond eyes?”

“I’ve sold their diamond eyes. Wrested from the corpses of slaughtered Banzoi. They are, indeed, beautiful artefacts; eyeballs that can be worn as jewellery.”

“I like the Kala,” said Mohun, thoughtfully.

“They are indeed,” I concurred, “easily duped, and often overpay by huge margins.”

“And what’s this?” Mohun said, inspecting the air-image of an evil-looking body-ridged monster with hundreds of dead staring eyes and skin like food that had been hidden and forgotten about centuries ago.

“The FanTang mummify their dead.”

“Ah,” said Mohun delightedly, as if I had bathed him in Magola oil with soft hands that had never known a hard day’s work.

“They use a kind of resin that turns decaying flesh into, well, decaying flesh that doesn’t actually smell. The effect is striking. A perfect ornament for the hallway or courtyard.”

“Perfect! They’ll sell their mummies to us?”

“Not willingly.”

“But we have small print that will cover it?”

“Our print,” I assured him, “is so small that microbes can make necklaces of our Os.”

“And what do they want in return?”

“Wealth, power, and the ability to smite their enemies and conquer the universe.”

Mohun roared with laughter. “Predictable. What can we actually give them?”

“I think they’ll settle for technology that will allow them to geo-engineer the other planets in their system.”

“We can offer that,” Mohun conceded.

“And they also want access to our shadow-self technology.”

“Also not a problem.”

“And they’ve guessed we have a way of travelling instantly through space. They want us to teach their scholars the essence of rift theory.”

“Out of the question.”

“That’s what I thought. How about showing them how to teleport?”

“Yeah, I guess we can do that,” said Trader Mohun, with a sly smile.

“Good,” I said, riffling mentally through my notes. “Their animals are edible to Type 430s. Their plants are delicious, apparently, if you have a second stomach.”

“All very satisfying,” said Mohun. “We’ll set up a trading post. Have you signed the contracts with them?”

I shook my head. “Not yet; give me a few days more.”

“I have every faith in you, Trader Jak. A drink?” said Mohun.

“Always,” I avowed. Mohun poured two thimbles of rich-juice. We sniffed, then swallowed, then slammed; and I felt a familiar pin-prick in my eyes and a pounding in my brain.

We each took a deep breath, as the rich-juice entered our brains and sent our thoughts into violent paroxysm.

And then tranquillity descended upon us. Our moods became mellow. And we engaged, for a quarter hour or more, in chit-chat about our favourite colours and textures and smells; and reminisced about the soft touch of Madyouran silk upon one’s body, and the tenderness of the Laumarax star-flower, and other such memories.

“They are, the FanTangs I mean, an appalling species in many ways,” I told Mohun. “Violent. Warmongering. Scornful of other species. And yet all the indications are that they will honour a deal; and, with sufficient intimidation from us, will refrain from trespassing on other planets in the Olaran Trading Zone.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Oh the usual precautions,” I said. “One cannot be too careful.”

The celebration banquet was, as one would expect from a Trading Fleet as sophisticated and cultured as our own, magnificent.

It was held in the Banqueting Dome of the Court Ship, a glass-shelled room which offered a spectacular view of the stars around us.

I wore my Fogan life robe, made of silk from the finest queen Fogan-spiderbirds. The robe had once been a shawl that was wrapped around the new-born me; at which time it bonded with my spirit so it would always be perfectly attuned to my moods.

Tonight the robe was cheerfully scarlet and blue and bejewelled and dazzling, and swept behind me as I walked. I wore a tight tunic over my muscled torso and my legs and arms were wrapped in wool plucked from young Mantrian Shaals.

“You look wonderful,” said Averil, who wore a rich pure-white Drax-hide gown, her hair pinned back to highlight the smoothness of her high forehead. Slyly I ogled her acuity; she was indeed sublime.

“Kiss my lips,” I requested, and she did; my lips were lightly coated in electrically-charged jewel dust and sent sparks into her tongue. Beneath my robe, my entire body was coated in the same dust, which kept me in a permanent state of sensual excitation.

“A good day’s trading,” said Chief Trader Mohun, as he ushered me to my seat at the banquet table. I admired the arrangement of the dishes-a thousand tiny portions in a pyramid that hovered above the table. As each course was eaten, the pyramid would re-form into ever more appealing new shapes.

I sat, and looked around, admiring the beauty of my fellow Traders and the majesty and understated authority of the assembled Mistresses of the Fleet.

However to my dismay I saw that there were-seated directly opposite me, like black thunderclouds in a clear blue sky-two grim-faced Space Explorers. Dressed in drab grey synthetic-fabric tunics with no bodily or facial adornments and not a trace of, well, finesse. The younger one was pretty enough-though hardly beautiful by the standards of the Court Ship-but his companion was old and bald with eyes like black holes. This wizened old spacefarer had skin like withered hide, and a scowl that made me shudder. I conjured up my most charming smile, and vowed to never let myself become so decrepit.

“I am Trader Jak Dural,” I said to the Space Explorers, “and it is an honour to encounter such famed adventurers; I’ve read so much of your exploits.”

The old one glared; the younger one beamed.

“Do you even know,” the older one said, “who we are?”

“It’s on the tip of my tongue,” I said sweetly, checking my factology via murmur-link.

“I am Morval, once I was Assistant Chief Trader to the Empress,” said the one whose name, I now knew, was Morval.

“I recall your name; the honour is all mine,” I replied.

Morval! One of the most legendary arseholes in the history of the Olaran Home Court!

“My name is Phylas,” said his young companion, and flicked his tongue so I could see he did at least have a jewelled stud embedded in it.

“You have, I take it, been many years in the wastelands of space?” I asked.

“That’s what we do,” said Morval grimly.

“I’m hoping,” added Phylas, “for advancement into the Trader Fleet one day.”

“Once your suspended sentence has lapsed,” added Morval, cattily, though it was hardly a surprise to me; only the old and the criminally disgraced would serve with the Explorers.

“Is it a crime I would have heard of?” I asked brightly.

Phylas scowled, and his youthful good looks were marred. “Forgery of alien artefacts.”

“Skilfully executed?”

“Apparently not.”

“Then you deserve,” I said, uncharitably, “everything you got.”

“I gather,” said Morval, “that the negotiations with wretched FanTang have been successful?” He had, I noted approvingly, changed the conversation with some degree of tact.

“Early days,” I said modestly. And Morval grunted, with open scorn.

“This system was one of my most appalling missions,” Phylas admitted. “I found it… well, appalling in many ways.”

“They boiled us alive,” Morval informed me. “Or rather, our simulacras. It was a test of course. When we survived, they agreed to meet our trading team.”

“They’re a monstrous species,” I agreed.

“Cruel,” said Morval.

“Treacherous,” added Phylas.

“Vicious,” clarified Morval.

“Barbaric,” muttered Phylas, further clarifying what did not need to be further clarified; I realised these two had spent a great deal of time together in deep space.

“Bloodthirsty,” Morval countered.

“How,” Phylas burst out, “can you do business with monsters like these?”

I was amused at his naivety. “What would you rather do?”

“Isolate them!”

“Then they’ll never,” I pointed out, “improve.”

“Ah,” said Phylas, the light of insight in his eyes. “So we’re really using trade as a way of making barbaric civilisations more… civilised.”

“Define civilised,” I said coolly.

“Not eating your young, or enslaving a rival sentient species.”

“Fair definition,” I conceded. “But our job is not to conquer, or to manipulate societies.”

I sipped my wine, and felt a glow as it slid down my inner throat, then entered my outer throat, and then proceeded downwards into my stomach where I tasted and savoured it again.

“Our job,” I explained, “is to make the universe a better place, through the fairer distribution of its treasures and its artefacts of sentient-created beauty.”

And I showed them the jewel that hung around my neck; a diamond the size of a Toowit’s egg; a gem of the rarest beauty.

“Jewels,” said Phylas. “It’s all about jewels?”

“Pretty much,” I admitted. “Plus fabrics, objects of artistic merit, music, novels, films-mainly, though, jewels.”

And I selected and ate my first morsel of food from the aerial display; a crustacean paste spread upon the liver of a snowbird. It was, as I had anticipated, sublime.

The second bottle of wine surpassed the first; it had a rich tang like the bass notes of a stringed larura mingled with the promise of sunshine on a cloudy day.

Indeed, each course was a joy to be savoured a dozen times in each of my taste organs. I gorged myself, and drank until my vision swam. Then I circulated around the table, conversing with a wide variety of Traders and Mistresses and crew.

All agreed the mission looked to be a triumph, and Mohun had already selected the Traders who would remain in the permanent trading post.

Yet, despite the pleasant company, and the sensory epiphanies of the food and the several buckets of alcohol I consumed, I carried a stone in my soul. For whenever I looked at Averil, I saw she was aglow; and I inwardly wept.

When the meal was over, the singing and music began, and the table sank into the floor. Cushions replaced our dining chairs, and some brave souls swayed in time to the rhythm of the tabadrums, moving like birds trapped in viscous air across the sway-floor.

I joined Averil and hugged her hips with my palms, and kissed her temples, and admired the diamond around her neck, which was glowing in time with her heartbeat. It was the pair of my own diamond; the two stones began to glow in synchrony.

“What are you thinking?” Averil asked, playfully.

“About how wonderful you are,” I told her.

“Flatterer.”

“It’s true.”

“All males are flatterers.”

“And all females are angels.”

“Liar.”

I smiled. “I worship you, you know that?”

Averil smiled, and picked a fruit from a floating-tray and ate it with a flamboyant swallow. “I know,” she said casually, and her hand brushed her hair, drawing my attention to the vastness of her exquisite brow.

And still, she glowed.

The ship’s Commander approached us. She too was wearing an exquisite white gown, and exuded effortless authority.

“Congratulations,” said Commander Laeris.

“Thank you Commander.”

“They’re a vile bunch, the FanTangs, aren’t they?” the Commander said, laughter in her voice.

“I’ve rarely seen viler,” I smiled.

The Commander kissed Averil on the temples, courteously, and the two of them basked in the joy of being female.

“He’s quite a catch,” the Commander teased, and Averil burst out laughing, and her skin glowed even more brightly.

And my spirits sank, further than-I have no metaphor for how far they sank-and I felt bleak melancholy sweep over me.

For, you see, honoured listener to my tale, whoever you might be: the females of my species always glow in the hours after passionate, love-filled sexual congress.

And yet I had not fucked Averil since yesterday.

Two of the ship’s most distinguished females stood on the stage and began to sing, unaccompanied, a melody of eerie beauty. I listened, and watched, wallowing in awe, yet sick with despair.

And I stared at Averil with desperate intensity as she listened to the delightful ditty; rapt and focused, visibly appreciating each tiny nuance; and I marvelled at the lustre of her intellect.

She glanced at me, with an unexpected look of regret. Then her eyes flickered to one side and her glow increased in radiance.

I followed her gaze.

Mohun.

Mohun!

The Chief Trader was a hundred years if he was a day. His face was old as parchment. He was physically fragile. How could she prefer him ?

I left the Banqueting Dome and walked back to my cabin. I sank into my bed, and wrapped the sheets over my face and mouth and tried to pretend I was hibernating, as my ancestors used to do.

Mohun!

My pain had an echo; for, many years before I met Averil, I had been married to a stunningly intelligent and percipient female. And she too had betrayed me.

My beloved was called Shonia, and I had asked her to be my bride when we were holidaying in the Olaran city of Pandorla, on a narrowboat on the river Kal. Amusingly, she claimed to be shocked by my effrontery in proposing to her, and pretended to slap me with rage. However, she misjudged both the distance between us and her own strength, and managed to swipe me off the boat with a single powerful blow. Still laughing, Shonia dived in after me and the two of us swam to shore, followed by the angry curses of the boatman.

We had been equals, back then. Shonia had refused to be bound by convention; and when we married, she allowed me equal rights and status. She had even tried her utmost to give me sexual pleasure, despite the frustrating limitations of our species biology. (We Olaran males, you see, cannot achieve orgasm; it is nature’s way of keeping us in our place, as my mother always said.)

For a whole year my soul nearly burst with joy. I believed I was the luckiest Olaran male in all of history; for I was in love, and I knew that the female I loved also loved me.

And then one day I had woken to find Shonia asleep and glowing, and I had realised this wasn’t my glow. She was connecting, sexually and spiritually, with another.

A month later I received a note from Shonia revoking our marriage, and asking me to leave our family home. I never saw her again. And that’s when I signed up for the Trader Fleet. To forget my grief.

Now it had happened for a second time.

And, after this second betrayal, my old grief had returned and merged with my new grief, to create a doubly-grieving knife (a metaphorical knife, I hasten to add, though perhaps I did not need to) that jutted from my soul.

“I beg pardon,” I said formally to Averil.

“You are forgiven.”

“I have proved an unworthy partner for you,” I said.

“Another has proved more worthy,” said Averil, concluding the divorce ritual. Then she grinned. “Oh come on Jak-is this really such a big deal?”

“To me it is,” I said stiffly.

“In this day and age? Many Olarans don’t mate for life any more. We could just be lovers.”

“I could not endure that.”

“They call them ‘fuck-friends.’ ”

“I could never be that. I love you, Averil.”

My words resounded like off-key notes.

“I know you do,” she said.

“Then I must leave the Fleet.”

“That’s your choice.”

“I will join the Explorer ship,” I threatened.

A wild gamble on my part; it failed utterly.

“Whatever,” she replied, casually.

“I could be killed,” I pointed out. “It’s a dangerous universe. We may never see each other again.”

“That’s too bad,” said Averil in bored tones.

I sighed, forlornly.

“Averil, I shall think of you always,” I said, with undimmed ardour.

“No doubt,” said Averil pleasantly, “you will.”

I packed my possessions into a box. Holos of my parents. A key-ring with all my metal-mind storage files, from childhood on. My identity pass. My bank folder. It was not much, after a life in service. I was well-off, admittedly, but I’d stock-piled no treasure, and I’d never been assigned my own planet. All the money I’d earned at trading, I’d spent on my women. First Shonia, then Averil.

I should have been more cunning, I realised. There were many males who kept their independence by embezzling from their own earnings before passing on their pay to their wives. I had never pursued that route; I was too much of a romantic.

Or, I mused, too much of a fool.

Mohun snorted. “You’re throwing your fornicatory life away,” he pointed out.

“I care not.”

“You have talent.”

“What do you care-you betraying son-of-a-slattern!” I sneered.

Mohun forced a smile; but I could tell he was hurt by my words.

“But you are still my friend,” I added, and the relief shone in his eyes.

“Listen Jak,” he said to me softly. “ I cannot deny that your former wife Averil has a truly gorgeous mind and lip-smackingly apt judgement. And I am, of course, privileged to be hers.”

“Indeed you are.”

“Indeed I am.”

Mohun was holding back his tears; and I respected that. For if he had wept, I would undoubtedly have done so too; and we would both have been lost.

“However, I should stress, my dear friend,” Mohun continued, “that my love affair with Averil and your consequent humiliation were not my choice, nor my desire.”

I nodded, to acknowledge that eternal truth; females choose males.

“I shall never see you again,” I said, and walked out of the Chief Trader’s cabin, to begin my new life.