Debatable Space (6 page)

I see birds on fire in the sky.

They are Sparklers, sentient flying aliens, with the power of bioluminescence. They are tourists, like us.

I see carpets and robes for sale, I see men with hooked noses and gnarled faces and impossibly wrinkled flesh, I see women
whoring their bodies on the street, and boys doing the same, and half-men half-women parading their grotesquery in public,
I see so much that my head hurts.

“We’ll hitch a ride, out to the cliff,” says Flanagan.

We join a merchant’s convoy and ride horses through the desert. My body automatically adjusts to the rhythms and the skills
of bare-back horse riding. I spur my beast into a quick gallop and Flanagan easily matches my pace. The wind throws my hair
back. My arse is pounded and mashed by the horse’s bony back, and I know I will have to have my bruises removed by the autodoc
this evening. But the pain and the wind and the smell of rank horseflesh combine into an exhilarating and heady experience.

I am enjoying myself. I really am!

We reach the mountains, and pause. I stare up at the magnificent vista. In this low gravity the mountains grow high and thin,
triangles moulded out of metamorphic rock. Green and purple algae stain the bare cliff faces, and the foothills are rich in
meadowy grasses.

We take a cable car to the summit, basking all the while in astonishing views. And, finally, we step out of the cable car
and find ourselves on a plateau. Market traders are selling knick-knacks and tourist crap as well as the necessary flying
paraphernalia. After some angry bartering, Flanagan hires wings and emergency parachutes. All around us, men and women are
leaping off the mountain top and being caught up in the winds.

We are actually
above the clouds
. They are stretched out below us, like icebergs. The air up here is thin, but breathable, though I have an oxygen tube to
supplement the native air. Flanagan hands me my wings, and looks at me, with a friendly, approving glance. For weeks he’s
been polite to me, kind, respectful, charming. I almost, I must concede, have started to warm to him.

I glance out at the edge of the plateau, and see below a vast, impossible drop. We are miles from the surface; and our plan
is to
fly
?

What am I doing here? I think to myself, suddenly fearful.

“Frightened?” Flanagan asks.

“Not in the least,” I tell him calmly.

I am so very scared.

You’ll be fine.

I’ll fall, and shatter every bone in my body, and the pain will send me mad.

You won’t fall.

I might.

Well, you might.

“Put the harness on.”

I strap myself into the flying contraption. The wings are soft, malleable, made of some plastic or PVC material that is supple
yet amazingly strong. The wing spans are strapped on to my upper arms and shoulders, moulding effortlessly so that they feel
like an extension of my body. Complementing all this is a vast tail feather that stretches from my lower back to my ankles,
and in the air will extend still further. Mine is a vivid purple; Flanagan’s an angelic white.

“Press this, and the wings fly off, and the parachute will glide you to earth.”

I nod, my lips dry.

“If I die you won’t get your ransom,” I eventually manage to say.

“Don’t die then.”

I shrug and roll my shoulders, getting a feel for my new wings. Flanagan does the same. We walk together to the cliff edge.

We jump.

The thermal gusts are strong, and reliable, the gravity is low, the atmosphere is thick, the wings are wafer-light. I am caught
in an updraft and find myself soaring.

Through the sky, body arcing and bucking, legs firmly held straight, my chest and breasts squeezed and bruised by the wind.
And I fly . . .

I feel a surge of exhilaration. The planet is mapped out beneath me. I am sensitive to every gust of wind, every current of
air. I follow Flanagan’s lead, tilt my body and soar

Then up again! Soaring, skating, bucking, wheeling, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin. I fly!

While the Captain and Lena go flying, the rest of us go our separate ways. Alliea goes sightseeing, exploring the local temples
and artworks. Brandon hits the libraries. Jamie goes to a playground and makes out like a ten-year-old for an afternoon. Kalen
barters in the markets.

And I spend the day at the leisure centre. As well as a gym, and a pool, they have a competition running track. Athletes in
training limber up and stretch. A pole vaulter leaps high up in the air and skims the bar. Two runners match paces as they
cruise at an effortless sprint.

I take the field. My brawny hairy Loper body feels vile to me as I see the sleek and muscular professional athletes around
me, but no one can deny that I am a magnificent runner. So I run, and run, and run. Not quite as fast as the competition-winning
athletes, who can move like mercury exploding. But when they are flagging and tiring, I am still going strong. I vary my pace;
from run to bound. I leap huge leaps along the track. I roll a forward somersault, leap ten metres in the air, backflip, forward
flip, then continue running.

I do this for eighteen hours. And slowly, hour by hour, I feel the stiffness leave my joints. I was built for this, bioengineered
to run for twelve hours a day without any need for food and drink. My home planet of Pohl was an airless wilderness, but we
man-beasts were modified so we could inhabit almost any of its terrains. We had cities in the valleys, we built temples in
the mountains. We were a low-culture, high-technology mining planet, but as far as we Lopers were concerned, we were the lords
of all we surveyed.

I miss those days. I had lovers in plenty, I savoured the cold crisp airless Pohlian nights, the blistering heat of the summers,
the icy cold of our winters. I worked all day, and slept all night. We weren’t trained to read, or watch tv or dv. We had
no interests beyond being alive. Some called us slaves, but no slave has ever been so free.

I run. I run. I run. I run. I run. I run.

I
runrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrun!

And when I run I forget all my doubts and regrets. All my hesitations and pauses. All my uncertainties. All my fears. I run,
I am the run, the run is me.

I am complete.

“How was it?” Flanagan asks me, once we are back in the pirate ship.

“You’re ingratiating yourself, please, it’s unseemly.”

“I was in fact trying to be nice,” he says, frostily.

“You are seduced, awestruck, pitiful,” I tell him, with relish. “I humour you but, in truth, I despise you.”

“Look, just because you’re my prisoner and under threat of death, humiliation and torture, there’s no need for you to be
uncivil
.”

“Cuntsucker.”

“Ooh. I’d almost forgotten – you’re a poet.”

“I am, yes, a poet.”

“
Reminiscences of Exquisite Moments
. A slim little volume, it sold in its several.”

“It’s an acclaimed piece.”

“It was excoriated.”

“Those reviews were later rescinded, once I published under my… family name.”

“Ah, so you
do
get good reviews, on pain of death? That’s a start.”

“You are a philistine and an imbecile.”

“I’ve had eleven symphonies and fourteen rock operas performed, I am considered to be one of the most accomplished popular
composers of my era.”

“And a braggart also.”

“Wizened old shrew.”

“I am, if you observe, far from wizened.”

“I see your soul. Your soul is wizened.”

“There is no such thing as a… wizened soul.”

“Bleak. Barren. A desert. That’s your soul. I can feel it from here.”

“Souls cannot be felt.”

He smiles at that. It’s a charming smile. I hate him so. And yet…

It’s true what he said about his music. He…

“Shut up.”

Chagrined, I realise I have spoken my inner thoughts aloud.

“I wasn’t speaking!” Flanagan says, indignantly.

I give him a forbidding look. I allow my charisma to wrap itself around him, like silken chains. Then I say, artfully: “It’s
not too late, Captain, for you to achieve redemption and forgiveness. Hand me back, forget the ransom, commit ritual suicide,
and you will die without a stain on your name.”

“Or – not.”

I glare. Flanagan sighs, ostentatiously. “Will you join me for dinner tonight?”

“I will face that hardship with equanimity and fortitude, yes.”

“We dine at eight. Will you need access to your wardrobe?”

“My body armour will suffice.”

“It looks a little… military.”

I smile. I can drive him wild with desire. I may be his prisoner, but it is
I
who have power over
him.
I tap my armoured breast with a finger, and hear the hollow thud.

“I like it that way,” I tell him.

“Camera, lights, action,” says Jamie. I am old enough to have some notion what he is on about.

Harry, the freak, operates the vidcam. He has a wild look about him. Alliea is standing by too, frowning. Maybe she is jealous,
because it’s clear to her the Captain is becoming infatuated with me?

Flanagan has explained that they will transmit my message via video email to the Cheo. The date of the message will reassure
him I am still alive. I have been given a script to read.

“Okay?” says Flanagan. He continues to be nice to me. But that of course is because he needs me to cooperate. Which I will,
but on my terms. I shoot him a fierce look, to boil his blood, and keep him hoping for the unattainable. That’s how I like
my men: desperate.

I glance at the message he has drafted: “I am being well cared for. But I am in fear of my life. Please help me. Give these
people what they want. It is only money. My dearest son, I love you.” It is cringemaking stuff, without a scintilla of wit
or rhetorical energy.

I look into the vidcam. Jamie nods. “Let me die rather than deal with these terrorist scum,” I say calmly. “Do not pay their
ransom, do not…”

And Harry slashes with his claws. My face rips open, blood spurts from my eye socket, I fight back furiously, but he has the
strength of ten. I lose myself in a maelstrom of hitting and biting and clawing . . .

He’s eating me… the fucking monster is eating me alive… !

Flanagan pulls the beast off. The vidcam is still rolling. I stare into the camera. I can feel that one of my eyes is out
of its socket, it is oozy and cold upon my cheek. I am frozen with fear.

“That went well,” says Flanagan.

I am hysterical.

Slowly I force myself to calm. My breaths become deep, composed. I figure out my error.

My error is this: they don’t need my cooperation at all. They just need to show me humiliated, in pain. So as to force the
Cheo to abandon his principles and pay the ransom. This was the message they had always planned. The script was a bluff. I
fell for it.

“Get me to the sick bay,” I say, clinging to a semblance of dignity.

In the hold of their ship is my own space yacht. I am taken to the sick bay there, which is equipped with state-of-the-art
organic repair technology. The skin cells on my face are boosted. My ripped eye is replaced with a clone from my eye bank.
My scars are healed. I am given an injection to guard against the risk of fever from the man-beast’s savage bites.

Within a month I will be as good as new. It’s a process I am familiar with.

Flanagan comes to apologise. “I want us to be friends,” he says mildly.

I fix him with my firmest one-eyed stare. And I say: “YOU FUCKING BASTARD!”

You should have warned me.

I didn’t know.

I thought he was my friend!

No, no Lena. You never thought that. You were just biding your time, lulling him into a false sense of security. You were
playing a game with him, guilefully attempting to . . .

We went flying together! We flew!

He thought he could win your trust and your confidence. He was wrong.

I trusted him.

You never trusted him.

I… No… of course I didn’t. Never. Of course! Never.

He’s just a betraying bastard.

Yes he is! What a rank betraying bastard that betraying bastard is!

Indeed.

He pretends to be my friend. But he’s not!

No, he’s not. He is merely a pathetic, evil, betraying bastard.

And yet, he took me flying. And yet, he cooked for me. And yet, he looks at me, in that way, so kind, and… and . . .
sweetly sometimes. And yet, he… desires me. I feel it. And yet . . .

None of this matters, because he is a betraying bastard.

Yes, you’re right. Of course. I know it. Of course he is! I mean, how could he treat me the way he did? Why did he let me
be mauled and beaten?

Well, since you pose the question: You did in fact pledge to read the ransom demand, without amendments. And instead, you
. . .

You dog, you cur, don’t defend that mf c!

Indeed, no.

He’s nothing but an mf cs f’ing c’ing piece of shit!

And, also, let us not forget, a betraying bastard.

Yes!

It all goes according to plan. The Cheo sends his response; he will not pay the ransom. But he offers us a deal. Less money,
fewer ships, no safe haven. It’s a good deal, we accept.

Alliea and Alby become enmeshed in the technicalities of the drop-off. We will leave Lena in neutral space, on a space station
owned by the flame beasts. We will wire her up to a remote-controlled bomb and hurry to a nearby system to retrieve the money
and the ships. Once we are satisfied, we will neutralise the bomb.

If the Cheo double-crosses us, we can kill Lena. If we double-cross the Cheo, the flame beasts are pledged to a blood feud
against us. Since they can freely enter Debatable Space, we would therefore be doomed. The Cheo knows this. Legal agreements
have also been drafted to secure the honour and integrity of the ransom deal. Everything is going according to plan.

The first stage of our dangerous game is complete.