I see birds on fire in the sky. They are Sparklers, sentient flying aliens, with the power of bioluminescence. They are tourists, like us.
I see carpets and robes for sale, I see men with hooked noses and gnarled faces and impossibly wrinkled flesh, I see women whoring their bodies on the street, and boys doing the same, and half-men half-women parading their grotesquery in public, I see so much that my head hurts.
“We’ll hitch a ride, out to the cliff,” says Flanagan.
We join a merchant’s convoy and ride horses through the desert. My body automatically adjusts to the rhythms and the skills of bare-back horse riding. I spur my beast into a quick gallop and Flanagan easily matches my pace. The wind throws my hair back. My arse is pounded and mashed by the horse’s bony back, and I know I will have to have my bruises removed by the autodoc this evening. But the pain and the wind and the smell of rank horseflesh combine into an exhilarating and heady experience.
I am enjoying myself. I really am!
We reach the mountains, and pause. I stare up at the magnificent vista. In this low gravity the mountains grow high and thin, triangles moulded out of metamorphic rock. Green and purple algae stain the bare cliff faces, and the foothills are rich in meadowy grasses.
We take a cable car to the summit, basking all the while in astonishing views. And, finally, we step out of the cable car and find ourselves on a plateau. Market traders are selling knick-knacks and tourist crap as well as the necessary flying paraphernalia. After some angry bartering, Flanagan hires wings and emergency parachutes. All around us, men and women are leaping off the mountain top and being caught up in the winds.
We are actually above the clouds. They are stretched out below us, like icebergs. The air up here is thin, but breathable, though I have an oxygen tube to supplement the native air. Flanagan hands me my wings, and looks at me, with a friendly, approving glance. For weeks he’s been polite to me, kind, respectful, charming. I almost, I must concede, have started to warm to him.
I glance out at the edge of the plateau, and see below a vast, impossible drop. We are miles from the surface; and our plan is to fly ?
What am I doing here? I think to myself, suddenly fearful.
“Frightened?” Flanagan asks.
“Not in the least,” I tell him calmly.
I am so very scared. You’ll be fine.
I’ll fall, and shatter every bone in my body, and the pain will send me mad. You won’t fall.
I might. Well, you might.
“Put the harness on.”
I strap myself into the flying contraption. The wings are soft, malleable, made of some plastic or PVC material that is supple yet amazingly strong. The wing spans are strapped on to my upper arms and shoulders, moulding effortlessly so that they feel like an extension of my body. Complementing all this is a vast tail feather that stretches from my lower back to my ankles, and in the air will extend still further. Mine is a vivid purple; Flanagan’s an angelic white.
“Press this, and the wings fly off, and the parachute will glide you to earth.”
I nod, my lips dry.
“If I die you won’t get your ransom,” I eventually manage to say.
“Don’t die then.”
I shrug and roll my shoulders, getting a feel for my new wings. Flanagan does the same. We walk together to the cliff edge.
We jump.
The thermal gusts are strong, and reliable, the gravity is low, the atmosphere is thick, the wings are wafer- light. I am caught in an updraft and find myself soaring.
Through the sky, body arcing and bucking, legs firmly held straight, my chest and breasts squeezed and bruised by the wind. And I fly…
I feel a surge of exhilaration. The planet is mapped out beneath me. I am sensitive to every gust of wind, every current of air. I follow Flanagan’s lead, tilt my body and soar
Then up again! Soaring, skating, bucking, wheeling, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin. I fly!
Harry
While the Captain and Lena go flying, the rest of us go our separate ways. Alliea goes sightseeing, exploring the local temples and artworks. Brandon hits the libraries. Jamie goes to a playground and makes out like a ten- year-old for an afternoon. Kalen barters in the markets.
And I spend the day at the leisure centre. As well as a gym, and a pool, they have a competition running track. Athletes in training limber up and stretch. A pole vaulter leaps high up in the air and skims the bar. Two runners match paces as they cruise at an effortless sprint.
I take the field. My brawny hairy Loper body feels vile to me as I see the sleek and muscular professional athletes around me, but no one can deny that I am a magnificent runner. So I run, and run, and run. Not quite as fast as the competition-winning athletes, who can move like mercury exploding. But when they are flagging and tiring, I am still going strong. I vary my pace; from run to bound. I leap huge leaps along the track. I roll a forward somersault, leap ten metres in the air, backflip, forward flip, then continue running.
I do this for eighteen hours. And slowly, hour by hour, I feel the stiffness leave my joints. I was built for this, bioengineered to run for twelve hours a day without any need for food and drink. My home planet of Pohl was an airless wilderness, but we man-beasts were modified so we could inhabit almost any of its terrains. We had cities in the valleys, we built temples in the mountains. We were a low-culture, high-technology mining planet, but as far as we Lopers were concerned, we were the lords of all we surveyed.
I miss those days. I had lovers in plenty, I savoured the cold crisp airless Pohlian nights, the blistering heat of the summers, the icy cold of our winters. I worked all day, and slept all night. We weren’t trained to read, or watch tv or dv. We had no interests beyond being alive. Some called us slaves, but no slave has ever been so free.
I run. I run. I run. I run. I run. I run.
I runrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrun!
And when I run I forget all my doubts and regrets. All my hesitations and pauses. All my uncertainties. All my fears. I run, I am the run, the run is me.
I am complete.
Lena
“How was it?” Flanagan asks me, once we are back in the pirate ship.
“You’re ingratiating yourself, please, it’s unseemly.”
“I was in fact trying to be nice,” he says, frostily.
“You are seduced, awestruck, pitiful,” I tell him, with relish. “I humour you but, in truth, I despise you.”
“Look, just because you’re my prisoner and under threat of death, humiliation and torture, there’s no need for you to be uncivil.”
“Cuntsucker.”
“Ooh. I’d almost forgotten – you’re a poet.”
“I am, yes, a poet.”
“ Reminiscences of Exquisite Moments. A slim little volume, it sold in its several.”
“It’s an acclaimed piece.”
“It was excoriated.”
“Those reviews were later rescinded, once I published under my… family name.”
“Ah, so you do get good reviews, on pain of death? That’s a start.”
