Debatable Space (31 page)

All it takes to fuel this self-perpetuating infinitude of wealth is
energy
. And that, too, is available in near-limitless quantities. Over more than a thousand years (Earth Elapsed Time) the human
race has spread itself over a small part of one small galaxy; but within this area the power available within the stars is
beyond measure. For each and every star is lit and fired by a complex series of nuclear reactions which generates more energy
than the human race has ever used and will ever need.

Once you have superdense power capsules which can be hurled into the sun’s core for recharging, or arrays of solar panels
orbiting the star like satellites, you have access to as much power as you can desire. And then you create robot computers
which can build their own replacements. And then – you have plenitude. Ecological pollution is scarcely an issue; most inhabited
planets are terraformed in any case. The population explosion never registers; space is big enough for everyone, and besides,
lots of slave-class humans die doing dangerous jobs. The Sol system itself is carefully controlled so that only an élite few
become citizens; the rest are dispatched on colony ships. Or exterminated.

It’s a perfect, self-regulating system. Space, it seems, really is big enough.

When I was a young pirate, I realised nothing of this. I thought that by pillaging merchant ships I was striking a small but
significant blow against the prevailing autocracy. I squandered wealth, I burned cargoes, in the hope of giving the Cheo sleepless
nights.

It was all nonsense. We pirates are the butterflies on an elephant’s arse. We are no threat to anyone.

But we are, let’s face it, a formidable army.

Twenty thousand pirate ships have gathered, crewed by nearly a million warriors. Some are mercenary soldiers, some are sneak
thieves and con artists, making a living by cheating and defrauding the system. Many are Space Factory workers who have fled
the grind and horror of their daily lives. Some are murderers who have been repeatedly brain-fried but have still not lost
the urge to slaughter and maim. Some are merely criminals; outlaws who have cheated or stolen from their own human kind. They
are a brutal ugly gang but we need every man and woman jack of them.

We are headed for Kornbluth, which is eighteen light years from our sanctuary in Debatable Space, and will take us twenty
subjective years to reach. We have chosen not to attack Illyria, our nearest neighbour in space. The plan is that, if any
ships survive, we will lash Illyria in the course of our headlong retreat back to Debatable Space. Assuming, that is, that
any of us live that long.

The joy of interstellar warfare is that it is relatively easy to sneak up on people. Our flotilla of warships is a cloud that
fills the sky viewed from a perspective of two or three hundred miles. But in the wider scheme of things, we are a blip, a
mosquito in a vast expanse of black sky.

Our mosquito accelerates at near-light speed. Behind us we tow an asteroid and a Space Factory. Like a horde of Mongol warriors,
we steadily advance towards an apocalypse.

It will, however, be a long journey. For many it will be their entire life, from birth to death. And I am sobered at the scale
of the challenge we face. Because when we are spotted, in seventeen or eighteen years (our subjective time) the Corporation
will immediately commence its defence plans. All available warships will be marshalled.

But, even more alarmingly, new ships and soldiers will be
grown
. The space factories around Kornbluth will be diverted into the manufacture of warships and Doppelganger Robots. Raw materials
ripped out of planets and asteroids and dark matter itself will be funnelled into vast smelting vats. Metals will be sifted
or transmuted; if necessary, hydrogen will be turned into helium which will be turned into carbon which in turn will become
diamond-hard iron. But metals are only needed for the internal structures of spaceships. The hulls themselves are grown out
of organic polymers of greater-than-spider-web tensile strength. Production lines will churn out Doppelganger body parts with
all the sensitivity of human skin but with the durability of an armour-plated missile.

Within a year the factories of Kornbluth can create a million warships and five hundred million soldier DRs. It’s faster,
by far, to grow soldiers from scratch than to ship them from one part of this vast galaxy to another. This is the source of
the Corporation’s impregnable power. They have limitless energy, limitless manufacturing capacity, and they have conveyor
belts which can churn out entire armies of soldiers every few hours.

So we have decided to take them on at their own game. We have our own space factory, we have an asteroid’s worth of rock and
metal ore, and we have scoops that ceaselessly dredge in dark matter and space debris to fuel our smelting vats. We, too,
are growing polymer skins for warships. We too are mass-producing weapons.

And we too are growing soldiers. The Bacchanalia that ended our historic evening in the Pirates’ Hall is a memory that will
never fade for me. Hundreds of thousands of pregnancies have resulted; and artificial wombs are already growing the human
foetuses that were conceived that night. As the factories build more warships, the newborn babies will be carefully spread
among our fleet, nurtured and loved by vicious and powerful pirates. Each child will have two parents, and half a million
uncles and aunts. These children will be cherished, but they will also be hothoused, and trained. They will be strong, fit,
fast, fearless, able to multi-task in battle, able to effortlessly commune with computer intelligences while planning war
strategies.

And new babies are being conceived every day in this, our first month in space. In a year the conceptions will cease and the
new generation will be raised. In twenty years, by the time we reach Kornbluth, we will have 10 million new soldiers, ranging
in age from eighteen to nineteen, at the peak of their physical powers. We will also have 200,000 new warships, giving us
in total a fleet of near a quarter of a million vessels.

It will be the most formidable pirate horde ever seen in space. An army greater than any ever assembled in the long and bloody
course of human history.

Our fleet sweeps through space, chewing up every inch of matter and energy on our route, while raising and training an army
of magnificent warriors.

We are not just a mosquito; we are the impossibly vast mosquito swarm that grows and grows and flies up high into the sky
in an attempt to eat the sun.

We expect to burn and die in glory.

I have chosen to be a mother. I think the Captain was surprised, after all I’ve told him of my desire for celibacy and a life
lived in mourning for Rob. And, of course, on the night of the sexual Bacchanalia, I carefully abstained. I spent the evening
playing checkers with myself, as orgiastic sex erupted on all the tables around me. Annoyingly, I kept forgetting which of
me had played the previous move, due to the distracting genital imagery, so I concede the game was something of a disaster.

But I kept myself pure then, and I still do now. But as the months passed, and the deadline for the final conception loomed
closer, I found myself increasingly beguiled at the prospect of motherhood. After six months (with the help of growth-accelerating
artificial womb techniques) the first of the babies was born. I began helping out in the nursery and acting as babyminder
for a dozen or so pirate mums. I discovered I had an ability to completely lose myself in the child; time and space would
vanish in a haze of tears as the baby stared blearily and angrily at me and demanded its milk.

I opted for artificial insemination; six months later my baby was born. I called her Roberta. She was a small baby, with big
black eyes that peered out soulfully. Then she started to bawl and she became a raging pixie. Then I fed her with bottle milk
and she almost swallowed the teat in her joy and luxuriant pleasure. I got the haze of tears thing again.

I was still in combat training, obviously. But I no longer socialised so much with the others. I was rarely to be found in
the bar or the common room. I never watched movies or saw concerts. I became a baby-loving hermit. The Captain used to smile
indulgently whenever he saw me with Roberta, but I felt the jealousy surging through him. He wanted it to be
his
child; he wanted to be part of my universe. He wanted, in short, to be my true love. But he wasn’t. That could never work.

Then Roberta got an infection and I spent twelve hours by her cot, panicking. Infant mortality is almost unheard of these
days, but there are viral infections that can damage a baby’s brain and cause behavioural problems later in life. These are
almost undetectable and untreatable; some say the Cheo himself had been virally infected as a child. So I lived through twelve
hours of fearing the worst.

But it was just meningitis, easily cured. I breathed easy and hugged my baby. Hera, the woman from Hecuba who spoke that night
in the Pirates’ Hall, was on nursing duties. She made me sit down and drink some tea and lulled me to sleep with a gentle
mantra. When I woke Hera was cradling my baby. I didn’t mind. It seemed right.

That’s how it began. Hera, like me, had sworn a vow of celibacy. Sex was too traumatic for her to even consider. And neither
of us had lesbian orientation. But I didn’t want a lover, male or female. I wanted another parent for my child.

I wanted someone to share my joy at Roberta’s first smile. I wanted someone who didn’t mind me talking to them for long long
hours about the new little funny little thing my baby had just done. Puking on my nose! Rolling from one wall to another!
Having a really big shit! These were moments to be savoured, but also to be shared.

I could see the Captain didn’t approve of my new intimacy. But it was a shared love of unique intensity. A triangular affair
of baby, woman, and woman.

Hera delights me with her gentleness, and her wryly acid humour. She is a born home-maker, and has transformed our spartan
cabin into an oasis of rugs and wall furnishings and burning candles. She cooks for me, we play checkers together. We quiz
each other on galactic phenomena. We even train together. Hera is a fierce and agile warrior. I have learned much from her;
and I believe she has learned from me too.

And together we have raised my baby, Roberta. She is the most perfect baby ever born. Sometimes she cries and cries but she
always falls asleep when I sing to her. I imagine what kind of child she will be. I hope she has blonde hair, like my sister.
And Rob’s grace, and sense of humour. I hope she’ll be my best friend. She’ll tell me everything, and I’ll listen to her patiently,
and I’ll laugh when she tells me silly jokes. I’ll care about her and about her friends. And my only regret is the knowledge
that she is unlikely to ever live to be a woman, and to have a baby of her own.

I have done my best to keep her safe. I made the Captain concede that when battle eventually commences, the youngsters will
be in the rearguard. Let the old-timers like us be in the first wave to die. Let us be the cannon fodder, and spare the children
for as long as possible. And the Captain agreed, reluctantly, to this. But I’m aware that it’s a small, and a worthless, concession.
The odds are massively against us; our enemies are legion; and most if not all of us will die.

Yet I am desperate for my one and only child to live for at least a little while after I die. I want her to savour the pain
of grief, the agony of losing me. I long for that moment, for only when I am mourned, will I truly feel I have completed my
life’s journey.

Smile for me, baby. Let me wipe your poo. Let me hug you and kiss your sweet cheeks and watch you feed till you are bloated.

And then when you are a woman, or very nearly a woman, grieve for me, my baby. When the moment of my death comes, as it inevitably
will, honour and lament my demise, in those precious minutes or even hours before you, too, have to die.

“Captain?”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay?”

“No.”

“Can I help?”

“No.”

“What did Alliea say to you?”

“She had a request. I granted it.”

“Good.”

“Not good. Fuck off, please.”

“You shouldn’t get so melancholy, Cap’n. It’s bad for morale.”

The Captain stares at me. “Brandon,” he says.

“Yes?”

For the first time ever in dealing with the Captain, I fear for my life. There is a rage in his eyes that is less than sane.
But he visibly chokes back his berserker rage.

“Leave me be, Brandon,” he says wearily.

“Yes, Cap’n.”

Are you brooding?

Mulling. Reflecting.

What about?

About love. I fear the Captain is madly, dangerously, obsessively in love with me.

What? I mean, oh yes, I’m sure you’re right.

He tries to hide it of course. He always speaks roughly to me, and he has perfected an ornately sarcastic style with me. “Yes,
Lena,” he’ll say, “we are your humble servants, unworthy to polish your slightest witticism.” Or: “How can we serve to further
exalt you, O beloved mistress, in a manner that leaves us even more abased than we already, most wretchedly, are?” It’s all
sham, of course, a show of rudeness to conceal an inner awe and longing.

Indeed.

It does get wearisome though. Recall how I played my new concerto to a selected audience in my cabin, an inspired piece created
as a homage to superstring resonance theory.

Yes, you…

Indeed, I devised my own scale based on the string resonances of atomic structure; the first note is electron, the second
note is electron-neutrino, the third is up quark, and so on and so forth. The parallels I created between musical resonances
and particle resonances are, I concede, a little contrived. But I do consider it to be a profoundly revealing musical artefact.

But for days afterwards, Flanagan kept humming the melody. “Dum dum dum dum DUM DAH DAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh.” But it
wasn’t meant to be a
tune
! It is a musical symbol of the hidden structure of the Universe.