Debatable Space (22 page)

“You’re Alliea,” she informs me, in that condescending tone she has. “The one whose husband was killed,” she says to me.

“That’s right,” I tell her.

“Killed, while trying to kidnap me.”

“No,” I correct her. “He
succeeded
in kidnapping you. But he was killed during the process.”

“Whatever. Do you grieve?”

“I loved him.”

“I read his personal record. He’s not much of a loss to the world is he?”

“Is that a psych tactic? We were warned about this.”

“Just keeping my hand in. You look tired and worn, barren, empty and unloved.”

“You overdo it. Ask the Captain to give you pointers.”

“Your Captain has nothing to teach me.”

The airlocks open. Water floods in, and we are thrown back against the wall. I am taken aback at the sheer force of water
under pressure. I also realise, with some dismay, that there are living organisms in the water – algae and small fish. For
reasons I can’t pretend to comprehend, the Dolph vessel isn’t just a spaceship. It’s a living habitat.

Lena and I swim through. She is an elegant swimmer, with a powerful stroke. I flail and splash a little, I regret having volunteered
for this mission. Flanagan is behind me. Alby, for obvious reasons, has opted to give this expedition a miss. In theory he
could safely inhabit an airtight spacesuit. But emotionally, for someone of his physiology, it’s far too stressful to
swim underwater
.

We arrive in the massive central hall of the Dolph vessel, flooded with Earth-quality salt water, and home to fishes and barnacles.
Three Dolphs swim towards us. They are beautiful and eerie, with their sleek streamlined bodies and lack of exterior genitalia.
The woman have broad nipples but their flesh is a sheeny silver. Their hair flows as they swim, but each strand is a living
thing, the Dolph’s hair is a sensory organ sensitive to vibration and able to detect movement from almost a mile away.

I’ve seen plenty of films about Dolphs, but nothing prepares you for their beauty and perfection. They are very unlike Lopers,
who are entirely utilitarian, bioengineered for strength and power and the ability to withstand extreme environments. Dolphs,
by contrast, are crafted with love. They are human evolution perfected, with all the rough edges shaved off. Streamlined,
swift, gifted, poetic, sublime.

And while Lopers are still a minority species within the galaxy, Dolphs are staggeringly prolific. There are, it is calculated,
nearly three times as many Aqueous Worlds in the inhabited Universe as there are Dry Land worlds. And the Dolphs have therefore
become the second-most-prolific human species – after, of course, Original Humankind.

Dolph pirates are rare. As a species, they have an ability to absorb tyranny, to treat it as a matter of course. Like all
the other human civilisations, they are dominated and ruled by Doppelganger Robots. But Dolphs never seem to care. They have
no “resent” gene.

We are greeted by the three Dolphs over our helmet radio. “This is Lena,” I tell them, “she’s a friend.” Lena seems more relaxed
now, and she’s openly fascinated by the Dolphs’ sleek forms.

“I am Carl,” the first Dolph says. For reasons I’ve never fathomed, Dolphs use the
ménage à trois
as the basis of their civilisation. Sometimes it’s two females and one male; on this occasion it’s two males and one female.

“We’ve come to trade,” I say, and the work begins. These Dolph pirates rarely steal their own booty. They prefer to cruise
the galaxy dealing and trading with marauders such as ourselves. We are offering the cargo from the last merchant ship we
pillaged. In return, they can give us computer wealth – energy capsules and computer programs that will allow us to generate
food, wine, TV shows, and interactive sex and tourist games. We are always hungry for something new, different sensations,
fresh ways to occupy our rest time. So we are addicts for virtual tours, which allow us to mind-explore all the sights and
pleasures of the vast galaxy, through a headset and a virtual enabler.

“Let’s swim,” says Lena. And the Dolphs swell with pride and anticipation. They shoot off like rockets through gaseous atmosphere.
We follow, slowly and awkwardly, kicking with our flippers to build up speed.

A huge white shark drifts past us. There are coral reefs, I see barnacles. A strange shimmery shape before me turns out to
be a jellyfish. We swim through, marvelling at the fanatical dedication that causes the Dolphs to stock their spaceship with
exotic flora and fauna. It’s the equivalent of us creating tropical jungles in our own ships, then populating them with snakes,
elephants, dogs and birds.

But at this moment it’s easy to see why. The Dolphs are supremely content in their habitat, but without the sharks, the fish,
the fronds, the coral reefs, without that rich diversity, they would be merely sailing through space in a tank of tepid water.
This way, their world travels with them, everywhere.

Boy, Lena is fast. She has mastered the knack of swimming with flippers, and she’s now racing face to snout with one of the
male Dolphs. Then he ducks down and rises up between her legs. She grabs hold of his shoulders and he’s swimming with her
now, spiralling and corkscrewing through the water like a bucking horse, with Lena holding on. She loses her grip for a moment,
and instead seizes him by his thick long black hair. Carl almost shudders with pleasure at that, since his hair of course
is a sense organ. She might as well, I mused bitterly, be holding him by the cock.

I feel detached, almost resentful. I wish Rob were here.

Flanagan swims up behind me. He watches Lena swim, her exhilaration visible even through her transparent face glass. I realise:
this is why we liaised with the Dolph ship. We’re heading for a Border planet, we can do our trading there, at better rates,
and get less wet. But Flanagan wanted Lena to have this experience. Swimming with a Dolph. She’s like a child, running in
a park on a sunny day, face smeared with ice cream. Pure joy.

I can read Flanagan like a book. I know he’s manipulating me, I know he’s playing his psych games on me. I know all that!

But the trouble is, that mf cs bastard, he can read
me
like a book too.

That night, I dream of sex with the Dolph. I see his penis flick out of his streamlined body, like a knife blade. I dream
of water orgasm. I wake feeling soiled at my own banality.

And I am covered in sweat, a soft silvery sheen of sweat that coats my entire body. Like a film of water. Like ocean on my
pores.

Campbell World. Notorious as the most free-living Border Planet in the human galaxy. Prostitutes, drugs, murder games, suicide
sects. This is the place to go if you want to go to extremes.

It’s also an unterraformable planet cursed with high winds, summer storms, and hailstones that can kill a soldier in full
body armour. Campbell World is famous for its night life. But in daytime it is bleak, hot, stormy, dangerous, and terrifying.

The atmosphere is of course unbreathable, but the core is molten, and an energy pump enables the inhabitants to easily service
and fuel a vast planetwide conservatory that houses an entire civilisation. Hard glass domes look upwards to Campbell World’s
stunning double star system. But underfloor heating and triply backed up oxygenated air make the interior world habitable
and comfortable.

The bars are underground, artificially lit, artificially stimulated, and loud. Campbell World has walls that throb with bass
rhythms. Its inhabitants regard strobe lighting as normal, and comforting. Hallucinogenic drugs are regularly fed into the
air conditioning, to lighten the ennui and despair of the long-term resident. And drunkenness is seen as a virtue.

We land in the secure landing bays used by galactic outlaws as a matter of course. We are guaranteed a departure slot, and
immunity from prosecution with respect to any illegal cargos.

And then we hit the saloon.

Lena has to be coaxed of course. She’s playing hard to get, but she loves the fact that I’m chasing her. It’s a combination
of seduction and hunt. She is my prey, and my Desired. I need her support to be unequivocal, passionate, wholehearted. And
I know I can’t appeal to her idealism, her sense of duty, or her conscience. At Lena’s age, such abstract notions hold little
appeal. No, I’m appealing to Lena’s boredom. At the time we captured her she had spent a hundred years in free space without
seeing another living soul. I want to give her a mission, a sense of purpose, a way to fill her days.

Waging war against her only son fits, in my own humble opinion, that bill perfectly.

“We don’t serve dogs,” the barman sneers at us.

“I’m a Loper,” Harry says stiffly. “I’m as human as you are, just hairier. Tequila, make it a large one.”

“Beer with a vodka chaser,” I say.

“Large vodka with a tequila chaser,” says Alliea.

“Just put lots of alcohol in one big glass and I’d like a bucket for the puke please,” says Jamie. I give him a hostile glare.
He drinks like a ten-year-old eating sweets. Because, I guess, he
is
a ten-year-old.

The bar is based on a design by Escher. It curves round in a Moebius strip with an antigrav field so you can drift up or drift
down at will. The tables themselves are secured to bulkheads or hung from wires, but the overall effect is like being trapped
in a cave of bats most of which are hooting and howling and swapping obscenity-laden anecdotes.

I take a freshly squeezed papaya juice, stiffened with old-fashioned Earth rum. Lena sips purified water, visibly horrified
to notice there is a floor show featuring a snake, two naked women and a man with two penises.

Alliea tells a story about a boxing contest which Rob fought in a mining ship. His opponent had gone to the trouble of having
metal knuckles surgically inserted under his skin. His gloves went over the steel knuckles, but every time Rob took a punch
on the jaw there was an audible clank. Rob protested and asked for a metal-detector check of his opponent’s knuckleware. But
the referee was entirely corrupt and allowed the contest to continue. Rob’s jaw was broken in four places but he ducked and
weaved and kept landing body punches. Eventually the referee was blinded when the miner vomited blood in his face. Rob seized
this moment and with twenty consecutive powerful punches he beat the referee to death then nodded to Alliea to throw in the
white towel and concede defeat to the miner.

Alliea had, of course, bet against Rob. It was a triumphant payday. But not, Alliea explained with a sly grin,
not
, on account of Rob’s shattered jaw, a night for cunnilingus. We laugh at the vulgar punchline of her story, which she tells
with a glorious economy of phrase. Damn, I think I’m in love with this woman. I always have been, in fact. I fear that on
occasion, at some deep and warped subconscious level, I’ve allowed Rob to be in greater danger than was strictly necessary,
in the hope he’d die and leave me his woman.

Now he’s dead and his woman isn’t available after all. Alliea is in
mourning
. I’d forgotten she came from one of the Community of Christianity planets, and belongs to a sect that ritually celebrates
the mutilation and execution of the Christ Prophet. I’m an Anti-Secter myself and I’d always assumed that religion had been
discredited after the horrors of the Church of the New Millennium all those years ago. But Alliea’s people colonised their
planet with zeal and Baptist and Methodist ideals, and Alliea still has some of their juice in her blood.

But how can you remember and love the man you loved, when he’s dead and gone? Isn’t it time she moved on and forgot the bastard?

I swill another papaya and rum, struck with a sudden melancholy. Harry’s telling one of his stories now. It’s the story of
an epic run he made across the surface of his home planet during one of their interminable wars. Harry was a national hero
then, though now he’s a pariah, blacklisted and under sentence of death.

Brandon is listening intently, chipping in with witty asides that bolster Harry’s story. Kalen is slightly detached, in her
ethereal way. I wonder why I have never desired Kalen. Is it because of her cat genes? That slight air of aloofness she carries?

I realise I am drunker than I ought to be and I pop a stim pill.

Jamie attempts a story. He quickly flounders. He has no adventures to tell, he is a child-man who lives in his own head. He
starts getting resentful and angry as he realises no one is interested in his inane rambling, but nonetheless we keep up a
show of attention and responsiveness. Because he may be a brat – but he’s
our
brat, and we love him.

Lena is soaking it all up. I can tell she likes the camaraderie, the storytelling, the easy assumption that we are a gang,
and we go everywhere together.

Kalen turns to Lena. “What’s your story?”

“I’m not a great raconteuse,” Lena says easily.

“Neither is Jamie. Boy that story sucked.”

“Fuck off, I was just getting warmed up.”

“Tell us about the Bug Wars. Tell us about how you led humanity.”

“Nothing to tell. It’s in the history books.”

“Your role is traditionally underplayed.”

“That’s because I didn’t do too much.”

“You’ve always been a heroine for me. For one woman to have done so much.”

“You’re fannykissing me, please don’t.”

“Uh-oh.”

“I once went to a planet,” says Brandon, “where sex was…”

“Hostiles, two o’clock.”

Lena looks blank. I shift and see Black Jack’s men moving in on us.

“You got a problem?” I call out.

“We have unfinished business.”

“A trade’s a trade,” I say, reasonable. “
Caveat emptor
.”

Black Jack throws a knife at my throat. I catch it and throw it back. He catches it by the blade.

“We can settle this in the tournament hall,” Alliea suggests reasonably. Two of Black Jack’s crew swing at her. She ducks
and comes up punching.