“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.”
