wakefulness is at best a necessary evil. One of his sidelines had been organizing orgies, since he had held orgiastic excess to be the best available soporific. (Hatch had argued about this, claiming that there was nothing to beat a good solid blow on the head for ensuring unconsciousness, but he had lost that argument, or at least Penelope had claimed he had lost it).
'Laa-mo,' hummed Penelope.
It was the going-to-sleep mantra taught to her by her previous Perfect Master.
Hatch fished a sodden sponge out of the foot-bowl by the bath. He kissed it, then let it fall. Obedient to the basic laws of physics, the sponge accelerated under the gravitational pull of the planet, and, like a meteorite dragged in from the cold and vacuumous wastelands of outer space, it went hurtling down through the atmosphere until it slammed into Penelope's face.
'Wah!' said Penelope, waking up in great hurry.
'Don't fool around,' said Hatch, allowing a hint of his anger to show, 'because I'm not in the mood. You're in debt to the tune of half a hundred scorpions, which is just a fraction less than the worth of your flesh.'
A scorpion was a gold coin issued by the Silver Emperor. It was exactly equivalent in value to the zeal issued by the Bralsh.
The zeal, however, was a small ring of nine-carat gold bearing interior and exterior banker's marks, whereas the scorpion was a thin coin with a milled edge, with a crown imaged on the face and, on the obverse, the pincer- wielding arachnid for which it was named.
'Half a hundred!' said Penelope. 'I'm worth more than that.'
'No you're not,' said Hatch. 'Polk the Cash has had a valuer take a look at you.'
'He's done no such thing,' said Penelope. 'I'd have known.'
'You wouldn't have known,' said Hatch. 'They're very discreet.'
'How can he tell what I'm worth when he never saw me with my clothes off?'
'Female, Frangoni, age 25, tall, big-breasted,' said Hatch.
'Value, 49 crowns and a fraction. I saw the report myself. You're worth just less than the money you owe.'
'So what do you expect me to do about it?' said Penelope.
'You'd better do something,' said Hatch. 'Because Polk is threatening to claim you as his slave.'
'Then let him threaten,' said Penelope.
She was either carefree or thoughtfree, one or the other.
Certainly she had never got to grips with the management of money, for this is part of that greater discipline of managing oneself, and Penelope had lived largely unmanaged either by herself or by anyone else.
'He's got a buyer already,' said Hatch, striving to make the woman see sense, though he suspected there was no more profit to be had from arguing with Penelope than in arguing with a goldfish.
'The buyer is from the Stepping Stone Islands. He'll take you north, never to be seen again.'
'That's a nonsense,' said Penelope.
'What do you mean, a nonsense?' said Hatch.
'Just that. I can't be sold, because I'm someone's slave already.'
'Whose?' said Hatch.
'The Silver Emperor's, of course.'
'What are you talking about?' said Hatch, intensely irritated by this nonsense.
'We're all his slaves,' said Penelope. 'We Frangoni, I mean.'
'No!' said Hatch, dismayed by the immensity of this error.
'You're not his slave at all. Only the men are his slaves.'
'What do you mean, only the men?'
'Just that,' said Hatch, wondering if his sister really was this ignorant or if this was her idea of a joke. 'Only the men are his slaves. The women are free. That's the law.'
'Why do the men always get the good things?' said Penelope.
'Because that's how the world was made,' said Hatch. 'So you're free, and because you're free, you can be bought and sold, which means – Penelope, you've really gone too far this time. Polk can come in here and claim you. Which is exactly what he's going to do. Then he'll sell you to this foreigner, and that man, that man can rape you at will or – or cut off your hair and sell it!'
Hatch hoped to terrify Penelope into a realization of the precariousness of her own position, and thereby to curb the increasing recklessness of her spending. It was possible that, by doing a deal with Lupus Lon Oliver in accordance with the wisdom of Sesno Felvus, Hatch would shortly be in a position to pay off Penelope's debts. But that would bring no joy to anyone if she simply went out and mortgaged herself all over again.
Yet in his attempt to terrify, Hatch proved less than adequate.
'Rape me!' said Penelope scornfully. 'Is that what he'll do?'
'Yes,' said Hatch, who truthfully thought that there was a strong probability that anyone who bought Penelope as a slave would do exactly that.
'So what do you care?' said Penelope.
'I'm your brother,' said Hatch. 'Of course I care. I don't want to see you taken, kidnapped, stolen, sold.'
'So what do you want?' said Penelope, with surprising bitterness.
'Why,' said Hatch, 'I want what any brother would want for his sister. To see you married and pregnant.'
Hatch was trying hard. Amongst the Frangoni, fecundity was highly valued, and one of the politest things one could say to a woman was 'May you soon be pregnant'. Hatch seldom said any such thing to his sister, for such formal politesse was not commonly required between brother and sister. But he felt that the stress of the moment called for an extra effort.
'Married!' said Penelope. 'Pregnant! Since when have you wanted me either? It was because of you I had to murder my husband.'
'Grief of a dog!' said Hatch. 'We're not going to go into that again, are we?'
'Why not?' said Penelope. 'This is my husband we're talking about. Not a – a flowerpot!'
'Oh come on,' said Hatch, annoyed by Penelope's quibbling pettishness. 'A fine young woman like you can always get another husband.'
'That's not the point,' said Penelope. 'I had one, and now he's dead.'
'Of course he's dead,' said Hatch, infuriated by Penelope's obtuseness. 'That was the whole point of getting him married. You knew that before you went into it.'
'Yes, yes, but you're my brother, so what could I do? You made me a murderer!'
'As I recall,' said Hatch, making a heroic attempt to govern the passion of his mounting rage, 'it was me who did the killing.
All you had to do was step outside.'
'That's all!?'
'Well, yes,' said Hatch, who thought he had now won this argument, and that Penelope should acknowledge as much. 'Stop making such a fuss! I mean, you weren't in love with him or anything. Were you?'
'What would you know about it?'
'Well of course you weren't. You never even met him till you were married, and then – '
'Then you killed him!' said Penelope.
'If it hadn't been for me,' said Hatch, deeply vexed by this continued onslaught, 'you'd never have married him in the first place. You'd never even have met him. I found him for you, so it was thanks to me – '
'Yes. You found him. So you're responsible!'
'Responsible?,' said Hatch, baffled by this display of female irrationality. 'Responsible for what?'
'For killing him!' screamed Penelope. 'For killing my husband! Murder, bloody murder, killing him, cutting his throat, stabbing him, slashing him, blood, blood, blood everywhere, you killed him, and he was mine, and – and – and I – I loved him!'
With those final words, her hysteria stammered into irreconcilable grief, and she burst into tears.
Hatch still had no clear conception of what, if anything, he might have done to upset her. True, he had killed her husband, but it should be pure pleasure for a Frangoni girl to help her brother encompass a necessary murder. And even supposing the experience did not prove to be an unalloyed pleasure, it was still a duty for a sister to thus help a brother. But… well, if marriage really meant so much to her | | 'If marriage really means so much to you,'
