ME: “Well people are a talking all over town
Telling me that the mill done broke down.
I cain’t get no grinding.
’Cause the mill’s done broke down.”
US: “What’s the matter at the mill?
“It’s done broke down.
“What’s the matter at the mill?
“It’s done broke down.
“Tell me what’s the matter at the mill?”
I feel a haunting pang as our voices merge. Alby’s natural tones have modulated into a rich, evocative bluesy groan. I strum my acoustic guitar loudly, crudely, simply, from the heart.
In Alby’s world, of course, there is no such thing as ground corn. There are no mills. There is only energy and fusion and an eternal flickering flame. But I know that once, just once, in the history of his people, disaster struck. The flame beasts’ native sun was fatally depleted. Their sun broke down. It is their only significant piece of history, their only natural disaster.
I bathe in the light and heat of my best and least likely friend, this mercurial, pedantic, infinitely loyal walking ball of fire. I segue into a wild, angry, sad guitar break, and then Alby chips in with his own bold improvisation:
“What’ssss the matter with the sun?
It’sss done broke down.
What’ssss the matter with the ssssun?
It’sss done broke down.
I can’t get no
Tell me what’sss the matter with the sssun!”
Lena
Harry and Jamie challenge me to a poker game. I spurn them initially, but then begin to weaken. I am getting bored of my state of captivity.
“But no card counting,” Jamie warns me. “We know you have that remote computer in your head. But that’s against the rules. We play the old-fashioned way.”
I smile and accept the challenge.
I don’t need a computer. I am, innately, a brilliant card counter. Ha! This new generation, they’re used to having surgically implanted computer chips to help them with their calculations. But I grew up in an era where we learned mental arithmetic in school. I was taught my times tables! And I have a naturally retentive mind.
So even now, after all this time, despite a few lapses, I can control my memory like a fluid supple living thing. I can choose to forget whole swathes of past, keeping only the record of them in my computer data chips. But when I want to recall a fact, it will appear immediately, without hesitation. It is a skill that has allowed me to retain clarity through all these hundreds of years.
And I am bound to win this game, of course, because these two are so easy to read. Jamie is a man in the body of a child, but he has nonetheless the soul of a child. He is over a hundred years old, but chose to have his puberty retarded in order to retain that precious, special clarity which only young children have. As a result, Jamie thinks more intensely than others, he feels more intensely. But he is frozen at the cusp of manhood, able to dream and desire, unable to deliver. It makes him edgy, dangerous, and desperate.
With Harry it’s different of course. If I were naked and raging, with unwaxed hairy legs, and with my arse sticking up in the air, then maybe, just maybe, he might regard me as a female of the species. But in my present beautiful, perfumed, civilised state – no chance. Harry is a Loper through and through. He was banished from the community of Lopers for eating his own father (an act of barbarity that is so typical of these lower types.) But though he is forced to belong to the world of humans, Harry is more wolf than man; more pack animal than team player. His humanity is just a facade he assumes.
Flanagan is oblivious to all this. But I can smell it on Harry. I know that he would long to devour his Captain, to eat him limb by limb and bite up his eyes, and to savour with his last bite the desperate death rattle in Flanagan’s quivering larynx.
So I have no sexual power over Harry, but I can smell his every emotion, almost his every thought.
“Raise you five, see you five.”
“I’ll see you five and raise you another ten.”
I win, and win again. At the end of the game, both Jamie and Harry are looking sheepish. Then I get a sudden whiff of something from Harry. An emotion I haven’t felt from him before. I glance at Jamie – and catch the same emotion in his eyes.
Pity.
“We’re surrendering you to the custody of the flame beasts,” Harry explains. “They will guarantee your safety. When the ransom is paid, you will return safely to civilisation.”
He’s lying. I can’t smell it now, but I just know it. Why else would he be looking at me so kindly? Why else…?
With a sudden surge of horror, I realise the ghastly truth. They let me win. I could have told you that, if you’d only asked.
“Shut the fuck up!” I scream at the voice in my head. Then I realise I have spoken it aloud. Jamie and Harry look at me kindly. The boy and the beast.
They have been humouring me. Because they know I’m doomed. These two sad, pathetic specimens are being nice to me, because they feel sorry for me.
I stifle a sob.
Flanagan
I dine with our prisoner, the cold and beautiful Lena.
I notice some interesting things. She’s fussy with her food. She talks to herself, without realising what she is doing, though that may simply be her way of communicating with her remote computer. She drinks large schooners of sherry, and even larger glasses of red wine. She picks at her food. She farts openly, without any attempt at concealment. She is taciturn, never asks questions. But when she does speak, she’s appallingly garrulous. She regaled me for several hours with stories of her time as a crime fighter in ancient Earth. A man called Tom featured frequently. The stories were rambling, but fascinating. But my, she did go on.
She is very opinionated, about everything. Society has decayed. Courtesy is a forgotten art. Television has gone downhill. Young men lack sexual charisma, they are just “boys” now, in her eyes. When she pours herself a glass of wine, it doesn’t occur to her to pour me a glass. At one point, she falls asleep when I am talking. I am halfway through a sentence, and she damn well cat-naps off. Then she wakes, farts briefly, and continues with one of her stories from half an hour previously.
She is, in short, old. Everything about her, apart from her sleek and sexual body and her shimmeringly wonderful face, exudes withered and arid age. She’s selfish, self-contained, cautious, cowardly, bigoted, small- minded, self-pitying, spoiled, self-indulgent, arrogant, uninterested in the feelings of others.
Was she always like this? I can’t tell. But I do know that she has wrapped herself in so many comfort blankets that she can no longer feel the air around her. She is cocooned.
I try to explain the reasons behind my course of action in kidnapping her. My ideals, my political imperative. She mocks me mercilessly at this point.
“You’re just a pirate,” she tells me. “A savage!”
“I’m a soldier of fortune,” I reply mildly.
“You’re a butcher. You let that beast maul and bite me, for the sake of a grisly display to intimidate my son.
