Debatable Space (3 page)

And thus, according to these insane, delusional conspiracy theorists, the powers that be knowingly allowed tens of millions
of humans to die in order to landscape a planet.

All sensible folk scoffed at these wild allegations. The Cheo himself gave an interview and carefully disproved every one
of the claims made against his administration. He was astonishingly persuasive and charismatic, and his approval ratings soared.

But I believed every word. I knew, from my own experiences as a child on Cambria, that there is literally
no limit
to the evil of the bureaucrats who run the Corporation. They are heartless, ruthless, entirely without remorse or humanity.
They are infinitely blessed, infinitely powerful, but they are also savage, bloodthirsty, murdering, raping, greedy, profit-drenched,
psychopathic monsters.

No limit whatsoever.

And so I watched the news coverage intently as, after the asteroid struck, the Galactic Corporation began its rescue operation.
Survivors of the collision were forced to burn their dead for fertiliser. Galactic Corporation engineers moved in to reshape
the planet as a global resort. The ice caps were melted to create a warm brilliant sea. Continents were broken up into islands
with picturesque coastlines. The prevailing Pixar sentient species (a two-headed earthworm) was exterminated, and replaced
with new species including colourful flying parrots, dolphins, herds of Purr (catlike herbivores) and genetically engineered
clawless koalas from old Terra.

I left Pixar, and I played a gig on a space liner in a neighbouring solar system. My Spanish guitar with hip-hop rhythms was
an unqualified success. I sang a blues song too, about an asteroid miner who lost his heart, his lungs, his liver, all four
limbs, his ears and his eyes in a series of terrible accidents, replacing them in turn with ramshackle and fairly unreliable
prosthetic equivalents, and whose sad lament was entitled “
At Least I’ve Still Got My Own Balls
”.

I went down a storm, but I couldn’t help feeling I was in the wrong line of work. After all the horror and injustice I had
experienced in my childhood, after the trauma of losing my wife and family in what was meant to be one of the civilised parts
of human space, I was still trying to make a living as a
rock star
… ?

So I loaded up the ship’s lifeboat with a year’s supply of stolen vintage wine, and made my escape. I was an outlaw from that
day on.

And now, I’m Captain of a pirate crew.

Rob was an unlicensed boxer, I was his manager, as well as his lover, as well as his wife.

They were scary days. Boxing was a capital crime, thanks to the Cheo’s latest edict. I guess he was afraid that the enslaved
masses of the Universe would be driven into revolution and dissent at the sight of two men dancing around a ring hitting clumps
out of each other.

We travelled from planet to planet, and Rob would fight all challengers. He would fight two men in a single ring. He would
fight women, he would even box with cyborgs, and beat them. He had an astonishing capacity to take physical punishment coupled
with natural speed and grace and a remarkably fluid upper body. He was, some argue, one of the greatest boxers there has ever
been.

His greatest fight was against Eduardo Muñoz. Rob was already an acknowledged champion at the cruiserweight level, but Muñoz
was a superheavyweight, a bruiser, a sheer block of human rock with the power of pistons in his arms. In training sessions,
Muñoz would pound the heavy bag so hard that the dents could not be removed. He would practise punching on concrete walls.
He routinely killed sparring partners, and only regular bribes prevented him from being charged with murder.

But Rob stepped up a weight division, bulked up, and fought like an angel. He slipped in and slipped out, ducked under Muñoz’s
sledgehammer blows, and threw so many powerful punches that the computer checker eventually lost count. Muñoz had the heart
and the wind cut out of him by Rob’s forensic dissection. By the end of fifteen rounds, Muñoz could not raise his arms. So
Rob pelted him with a thousand relentless punches before the final bell rang.

The fight went to Muñoz. The fix was in. The crowd was in uproar. But Rob calmly challenged Muñoz to an instant rematch. The
battered champion had enough pride to accept the challenge. The two men stood in the ring. Rob lowered his guard. He beckoned
Muñoz on, inviting him to give his best shot. So Muñoz threw his best punch. Rob took it head-on, without any attempt to duck.
He absorbed the blow, letting the kinetic energy flow through his head and torso and legs into the canvas. And he rocked,
and he swayed, but he did not fall.

Then Rob unleashed his counterpunch. He hit Muñoz on the jaw, and the champion literally flew through the air, over the ropes,
and landed on the three corrupt fight scorers. Two of them died, one of them was knocked unconscious. The referee – the only
conscious member of the adjudication team – declared the fight in favour of Rob. We got a purse of $11 million. But we had
to flee that night, pursued by angry gangsters.

Ah, what glorious days… Ironically, I had never liked boxing before meeting Rob. But I came to love the sport for its
speed and beauty and camaraderie, and for the fact it breached the ultimate taboo.
Brain damage.
Any other extreme sport – sky diving, sabre fighting, alligator wrestling – offered dangers and injuries that could easily
be remedied by a trip to the organ bank. But a single powerful punch could cause irreversible brain damage that couldn’t be
patched up without altering the psyche, or losing whole batches of memories.

That was the buzz. Risk everything. Live for the moment.

At least, that was the appeal for
me.
For Rob, it was more basic; he simply loved the sport. He was a natural athlete, he trained remorselessly. He trained with
hunting dogs, running with them over rugged terrain. He raced horses. He pulled tractors with ropes to improve his upper-body
strength; he once swam an entire ocean to improve his stamina. And his reflexes were superior to those of the average spacejet
pilot.

And boy, we made poetry in bed. Rob was the master of tantric, soul-shaking, buttock-trembling fucks. I was young, passionate,
blonde then, and I had orgasms like supernovae. I will miss that. I know I’ll never feel such physical joy again.

We toured the outer galaxies with our boxing show. Rob would challenge space miners and martial artists, and they would fight
five or six hours at a time, without gloves or padding, until they were covered in blood and blisters. Rob never lost.

He was my hero.

We made a lot of money, and we had a huge amount of fun.

Then I was raped by a space trooper, and Rob tracked him down and killed him. I was crazed, out of control, I wanted to kill
the trooper’s squadmates, on the grounds that they must have known what their friend was going to do, and should have stopped
him. But Rob said no, I was out of line, making accusations without evidence. He always had a strong sense of fair play. So
I calmed down, and agreed to let it be.

Then the troopers sought us out, looking for revenge, talking big to anyone who would listen about how they were
all
going to rape me this time. So we let ’em come, then killed the whole fucking lot of them. And we went on the run. That’s
how we hooked up with Flanagan and his crew.

It’s been a good life, until now.

Now Rob is dead. And I’m alone.

Let’s raise our glasses. To Rob.

I won’t sleep. That would be like death. So I endure my torment, at the hands of these wretched pirate scum.

I stand at one end of the room. I shuffle. One, step, at, a, time.

Five hours have passed. I am dehydrating. They’ve given me a tube, I suck greedily at it.

I can hear sounds outside my room. Singing. Celebrating.

A wake, for their lost colleague.

I wish we’d killed them all.

That thought is immoral. You shouldn’t…

Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

Shuffle. One. Step. At.

“I hate the idea of doing this. I guess I must.”

Rob stands before us, sheepishly, his three-dimensional hologram image blinking at the camera.

“Alliea, you’re the best. I love you. The rest of you… Ah you’re a bunch of useless fucking losers. May you die shamed.
May you choke on your beer. You’re alive and I’m dead, fuck the lot of you!”

We give a solid cheer to that.

“Sing with me, comrades.”

“There is a house in New Orleans

They call the Rising Sun.

It’s been the ruin of many a poor boy.

And me, O God, for one.”

We join in the singing, raucous and loud. Alliea’s contralto soars high above us. She does a jazz riff with the blues melody.

Rob segues into a tech-hop number by Singularity, to a rhythm guitar backing laid down by me. He sings:

“Soul sister, lover, brother, mother, feel my

Feel my!

Feel it, hear it, blur it, murmur it, disinter it, whirr it, yeah that’s my spirit,

Heart and soul, got no control, takes its toll, got no goal, ain’t a whole,

Hate this world, spirit’s whirled, this dimension is unfurled,

Can’t believe, cannot grieve, too tired to deceive,

Empty life, got no strife, whored my wife, ate a knife and died and woke up

In the organ banks, hey thanks, full of tranks,

Wish I was

Someone else

Somewhere else

Somewhat else

Not myself

Not with you

Don’t feel blue

Want to die

So that I

Feel my “I”

Got no “I’, got no spirit, got no “me’, disinter it, let me die, let me be, let me be, let me be,

The other guy

The other girl

Living in the other universe I curse I’m worse immersed in thirsting bursting

Feel my spirit?

I can’t feel it.

I ain’t got it.

Got no spirit.

Got no spirit.

Got no me.

Got no I.

Want to die.”

Rob stops. He and I used to be a great double act. He was the rapper, I was the bluesman. But now… Now… No more
music. No more Rob. I weep.

“Shit guys, sorry,” says Rob’s hologram, “that one’s a fucking downer. Flanagan, you pissed yet?”

“I am!” I call out.

“I thought I’d finish by reading aloud all my email addresses, all 82 million of them. So keep your seats, this may take some
time.” He’s grinning, foolish and silly and somehow ill at ease. “Or you know, since I’m dead now, any chance of a virtual
blowjob from, ah, someone?” Rob fiddles with his trousers. But then he thinks better of it.

“Shit what’m I talking about? I’ll outlive the lot of you. I gotta go, things to do.”

The hologram vanishes.

Tears are streaming down Alliea’s cheeks.

I’m feeling horny. I want her. I want that woman so bad, and now that Rob is dead—

Oh shit, what did I just think? Stop it, stop it!

Alliea comes to me, I hug her. I shuffle her body round so she can’t feel my erection. I imagine taking her. But I keep my
face deadpan, I cage my heart.

The crew sing another song. It is a heartbreaking lament about a space warrior who turns on his masters and leads an army
to liberate his home planet. He fails and dies horribly, but the chorus has a nice melody and a great deal of oomph.

I’ll miss you Rob.

I am released from semi-coma. Captain Flanagan sits opposite me. His crewmen are near, ready to immobilise me again if necessary.

“How’s the nose?”

Flanagan winces at my words. “Broken in eleven places, jaw was shattered,” he says, carefully. “And I’m taking shots twice
a day till the bone heals.”

I reach out and slap him in the face. I’m so fast, no one ever registers what has happened until—

“Jesus fucking Christ!” screams Flanagan.

I beam.

Flanagan is red in the face.

“I have some questions to ask you,” he snarls.

“I’ll give you some painkillers, Cap’n,” says the scrawny big-nosed woman.

“I’m fine. Lena, this is our profession. We’re not going to hurt you. We’re just going to ransom you.”

I flicker, as if about to strike again, and he flinches.

“Do you know who I am?” I say.

“Yes I think we do.”

“And do you know who you are?”

“We’re a freelance capitalist group.”

“You are the dregs of humanity. You are less than human.”

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

“You are less than animal. You are a viral infection. I’m glad we killed one of your men. I laugh myself to sleep thinking
of that.”

“We’re asking for a trillion galactic credits, plus a fleet of warships, and our own sector of inhabitable space.”

I pause, stunned.

“You won’t get it,” I say coolly.

“The Cheo is a rich man.”

“He won’t pay.”

“If he doesn’t pay, you’ll die.”

“Then I’ll die, because he won’t pay. The Cheo doesn’t negotiate with kidnappers. That’s one of his rules.”

“He’ll make an exception in your case.”

“You’d be surprised.” I smile, taunting them.

Shut up, Lena, you’re just giving them reasons to kill you.

“Do you know how old the Cheo is?” I ask, tauntingly.

“He’s about… a hundred?”

“Two hundred and ten. He’s had eighteen wives. Dozens of mistresses. Countless lovers. Do you know how many children he has?”

Flanagan is silent, sizing me up, apparently confused.

“You could populate a country with his children,” I explain. “He is concupiscent, fruitful, and very old. Why should he jeopardise
everything for the sake of me? One daughter among thousands?”