and its artefacts of sentient-created beauty.”
And I showed them the jewel that hung around my neck; a diamond the size of a Toowit’s egg; a gem of the rarest beauty.
“Jewels,” said Phylas. “It’s all about jewels?”
“Pretty much,” I admitted. “Plus fabrics, objects of artistic merit, music, novels, films-mainly, though, jewels.”
And I selected and ate my first morsel of food from the aerial display; a crustacean paste spread upon the liver of a snowbird. It was, as I had anticipated, sublime.
The second bottle of wine surpassed the first; it had a rich tang like the bass notes of a stringed larura mingled with the promise of sunshine on a cloudy day.
Indeed, each course was a joy to be savoured a dozen times in each of my taste organs. I gorged myself, and drank until my vision swam. Then I circulated around the table, conversing with a wide variety of Traders and Mistresses and crew.
All agreed the mission looked to be a triumph, and Mohun had already selected the Traders who would remain in the permanent trading post.
Yet, despite the pleasant company, and the sensory epiphanies of the food and the several buckets of alcohol I consumed, I carried a stone in my soul. For whenever I looked at Averil, I saw she was aglow; and I inwardly wept.
When the meal was over, the singing and music began, and the table sank into the floor. Cushions replaced our dining chairs, and some brave souls swayed in time to the rhythm of the tabadrums, moving like birds trapped in viscous air across the sway-floor.
I joined Averil and hugged her hips with my palms, and kissed her temples, and admired the diamond around her neck, which was glowing in time with her heartbeat. It was the pair of my own diamond; the two stones began to glow in synchrony.
“What are you thinking?” Averil asked, playfully.
“About how wonderful you are,” I told her.
“Flatterer.”
“It’s true.”
“All males are flatterers.”
“And all females are angels.”
“Liar.”
I smiled. “I worship you, you know that?”
Averil smiled, and picked a fruit from a floating-tray and ate it with a flamboyant swallow. “I know,” she said casually, and her hand brushed her hair, drawing my attention to the vastness of her exquisite brow.
And still, she glowed.
The ship’s Commander approached us. She too was wearing an exquisite white gown, and exuded effortless authority.
“Congratulations,” said Commander Laeris.
“Thank you Commander.”
“They’re a vile bunch, the FanTangs, aren’t they?” the Commander said, laughter in her voice.
“I’ve rarely seen viler,” I smiled.
The Commander kissed Averil on the temples, courteously, and the two of them basked in the joy of being female.
“He’s quite a catch,” the Commander teased, and Averil burst out laughing, and her skin glowed even more brightly.
And my spirits sank, further than-I have no metaphor for how far they sank-and I felt bleak melancholy sweep over me.
For, you see, honoured listener to my tale, whoever you might be: the females of my species always glow in the hours after passionate, love-filled sexual congress.
And yet I had not fucked Averil since yesterday.
Two of the ship’s most distinguished females stood on the stage and began to sing, unaccompanied, a melody of eerie beauty. I listened, and watched, wallowing in awe, yet sick with despair.
And I stared at Averil with desperate intensity as she listened to the delightful ditty; rapt and focused, visibly appreciating each tiny nuance; and I marvelled at the lustre of her intellect.
She glanced at me, with an unexpected look of regret. Then her eyes flickered to one side and her glow increased in radiance.
I followed her gaze.
Mohun.
Mohun!
The Chief Trader was a hundred years if he was a day. His face was old as parchment. He was physically fragile. How could she prefer him ?
I left the Banqueting Dome and walked back to my cabin. I sank into my bed, and wrapped the sheets over my face and mouth and tried to pretend I was hibernating, as my ancestors used to do.
Mohun!
My pain had an echo; for, many years before I met Averil, I had been married to a stunningly intelligent and percipient female. And she too had betrayed me.
My beloved was called Shonia, and I had asked her to be my bride when we were holidaying in the Olaran city of Pandorla, on a narrowboat on the river Kal. Amusingly, she claimed to be shocked by my effrontery in proposing to her, and pretended to slap me with rage. However, she misjudged both the distance between us and her own strength, and managed to swipe me off the boat with a single powerful blow. Still laughing, Shonia dived in after me and the two of us swam to shore, followed by the angry curses of the boatman.
We had been equals, back then. Shonia had refused to be bound by convention; and when we married, she allowed me equal rights and status. She had even tried her utmost to give me sexual pleasure, despite the frustrating limitations of our species biology. (We Olaran males, you see, cannot achieve orgasm; it is nature’s way of keeping us in our place, as my mother always said.)
For a whole year my soul nearly burst with joy. I believed I was the luckiest Olaran male in all of history; for I was in love, and I knew that the female I loved also loved me.
And then one day I had woken to find Shonia asleep and glowing, and I had realised this wasn’t my glow. She was connecting, sexually and spiritually, with another.
A month later I received a note from Shonia revoking our marriage, and asking me to leave our family home. I never saw her again. And that’s when I signed up for the Trader Fleet. To forget my grief.
Now it had happened for a second time.
And, after this second betrayal, my old grief had returned and merged with my new grief, to create a doubly-grieving knife (a metaphorical knife, I hasten to add, though perhaps I did not need to) that jutted from my soul.
“I beg pardon,” I said formally to Averil.
“You are forgiven.”
“I have proved an unworthy partner for you,” I said.
“Another has proved more worthy,” said Averil, concluding the divorce ritual. Then she grinned. “Oh come on Jak-is this really such a big deal?”
“To me it is,” I said stiffly.
“In this day and age? Many Olarans don’t mate for life any more. We could just be lovers.”
“I could not endure that.”
“They call them ‘fuck-friends.’ ”
“I could never be that. I love you, Averil.”
My words resounded like off-key notes.
“I know you do,” she said.
“Then I must leave the Fleet.”
“That’s your choice.”
