must be what we call Madlora force.”
I turned to him with a smile. “Ah,” I said, “perhaps that corresponds with what we Maxolu call whirling force.”
“Most likely,” said Quipu One, huffily.
“That makes more sense!” I said. “A timely correction, Quipu. But how much force? How fast must our vessel rotate to create this illusion of downwardness?”
Quipu shuffled, and his five heads bobbed in disharmony, a clear sign that he was in a state of inner turmoil.
“All this has been calculated,” said Quipu One.
“The figures are recorded in my brain,” said Quipu Two.
“Since we have no paper!” grumbled Quipu Three.
“We have plenty of paper, but you stubborn four heads keep wasting it on blasted books of fantasy that no one ever reads!” grumbled Quipu Four.
“The walls of my cabin contain the equations which describe our world in its dimensions, velocity, constitution and overall mass,” contributed Lardoi, a small brown ground-hugging creature with twin snouts and fingers that could write like pens.
“All this has already been done, you fool, Sharrock!” raged Quipu Five.
“In a hundred years on this world,” said Lardoi, “I have considered and solved every scientific question that can be posed about our situation; your words are belated, and futile.”
“Teach me what you know then,” I said.
“Why?” asked Lardoi scornfully.
“Because,” I said, “I may have spotted something that you missed.”
Lardoi literally hopped with rage at my words. I stifled a smile.
“That is not even remotely credible!” said Mangan with contempt. Mangan was a mathematician of rare genius, so I had been told, to my considerable surprise. “You are just an ignorant warrior!” Mangan continued. “On this ship you will find the greatest minds in existence, and we have applied ourselves to all these topics with no possibility of error.”
“Yes, but have you unified the scientific theories of all the different species?” I asked.
“We have,” said Lardoi, proudly.
“Have you created a single mathematical system that encompasses all those different paradigms?”
“We have,” said Quipu One.
“Have you discovered the secret of the translating air?” I asked, and Quipu’s head trembled with annoyance.
“We have not,” conceded Quipu One.
“Then there is much to do,” I concluded crisply.
“It is an impossible question to solve!” Lardoi protested. “We have no evidence. No theory can explain-”
“Then let’s find a-”
“It’s a waste of time,” snorted Lardoi. “The only sensible approach is to-”
All spoke at once; the words overlapped and became a cacophony in my ears. Mangan berated Lardoi for her stupidity; Quipu’s heads contradicted each other. Then other voices joined in; ten, twenty, thirty, forty of them; then a hundred and more. All the intellects of this interior world joined in an angry debate, wrestling with problems, complaining about the absence of data, and mocking the inadequate and pin-brained extrapolations of others!
And thus the angry mob that had been pelting me with stones and shit had become a scientific forum. The lost and angry creatures of this ship had been united, once again, in a common purpose: the exploration of knowledge, the pooling of insights, the posing and testing of hypothesis and theories.
And I turned to see Sai-ias watching me. And I saw her gaze soften, as she realised what I had just done.
For I had reinstated the Rhythm of Days. I had turned Day the Last into what it always used to be; a chance for minds to engage with other minds in the solving of the darkest, deepest mysteries of the multiverses.
In Sai-ias’s absence, her world had turned to anarchy. But now, order had been restored.
And, eventually, as the babble continued, I walked across to Sai-ias, and stroked the soft skin of her face with my hand. The old Sharrock was gone. Today I was a shit-stained, blood-smeared orator who carried no weapons, other than his wits; and fought no battles, save the battle against sloth, bitterness, and Despair.
“Sharrock,” Sai-ias acknowledged.
“Sai-ias,” I said to her, warmly, “welcome back.”
Sai-ias
Sharrock was naked, his body marked with scars and muscle ridges; and he walked out into the lake and dived under the water. With a sigh from my tentacle tips, I slithered out to join him.
Ah! The touch of water on my soft skin was sublime. I swam deep out into the lake, still underwater; and Sharrock clung on to me by my side-flaps.
I surfaced, and he took deep breaths, and clambered up my body and stood upon my head Then he looked across at the Tower; his naked body gleaming with moisture, cleansed now of all the shit and blood.
I wrapped a tentacle around his body gently and lifted him higher in the air; then began swinging him around in a circle.
“This is how,” he gasped, “the whirling force creates-”
“Please, you make my head hurt. Does this give you pleasure?”
I swung him round and round in the air and he screamed and screamed as if in pain but I knew it was not pain. Finally I stopped and put him back on my head.
“That was,” he gasped, “so fucking-” And he stood up tall and roared with pleasure, “-wonderful!”
I laughed, and savoured his joy; his sensuality; his sheer delight at being alive.
Sharrock was not of course aware I could do this; for I was eating his joy. Just as I had done with Cuzco during our act of sex. It is an ability my kind possess; intense empathy, verging on emotional telepathy.
And thus, I could feel what it was to be, at this moment in time, a biped with hairless skin, alive to every taste and touch of the exterior world, naked and damp and with a pulse that raced and pounded!
I would not, I decided, ever tell Sharrock about my sensual ecstasy this day. It would, I suspected, constitute a violation of his privacy that would affront him. And so I could never tell him that I had, vicariously, for these few exhilarating moments, experienced what it was like to be
Sharrock.
That night we slept, all of us who dwelled upon the Hell Ship, a long and dreamless sleep.
And when I awoke, fear consumed me; for I knew what must have occurred during the first night’s sleep I had experienced in nearly half a century.
Another Ka’un apocalypse.
I carried Sharrock on my back to the Valley of the Kindred, and there we counted the Kindred warriors who were remaining.
Fifty had been lost in our long night-which spanned weeks or even months of actual time. Twelve of the giant sentients were also missing. The grasses of the Great Plain had grown, the snows had melted on the mountain tops. Time had passed, but we knew not how much. And warriors had been killed in battles, but we knew not in which battles, or how long it would be before they were returned to us, rejuvenated.
And then, to my dismay, I discovered there was a new one awaiting me in the confining cell in the corridor below my cabin.
“Welcome,” I said to the creature, a white-hided beast which squatted on all fours and had heads at each end.
“You bastard! You fucking bastard!” screamed the beast. “I will kill you and rape all your kin!”
Sharrock was with me, at his own request; he wished to learn how this was done.
“We are not your enemies,” said Sharrock patiently, “we are-”
