Hell Ship

Sai-ias

I laid Sharrock’s bloodied body down upon the grass, and I bathed him in water from the water-of-life well; oozing the healing moisture on him through the spiracles in my tentacle tips.

“Can you speak?”

He grunted, and opened his mouth; inside was a bloody void. As I’d suspected, his tongue had been ripped out. His torso was bruised and bloody, and I suspected there was severe internal damage. They’d also eaten one of his eyes.

He grunted as the water drizzled on to his naked body.

Just as I’d feared, Mangan and the arboreals had taken their revenge.

For twelve cycles I tended to Sharrock; nursing his wounds, talking to him; telling him stories. His wounds healed, and his tongue grew back quickly; but he was not communicative even when he did speak.

After six cycles he was able to walk.

After ten cycles he made a sword out of a tree branch; the wood was tough and the point was viciously sharp. He killed a non-sentient grazer and skinned it and fashioned himself a scabbard. He used the hooves to make knuckle guards, to help him with hand to hand combat. For days he collected stone remnants at the quarry and from then on always carried a bag of stones and a sling.

“Will you take revenge?” I asked him.

“You want me not to?” he said mockingly; for his tongue was now regrown.

“I want you to forgive them,” I said.

“You know I cannot do that,” Sharrock said sternly.

“Please, Sharrock. For me?”

“Never!” he snarled. “Those branch-fucking savages tricked me. Ambushed me! I was trying to do as you told me, live in peace. But they attacked me anyway.”

“And now,” I said sadly, “you will attack them?”

Sharrock looked at me; his pale blue eyes were calm. And he never, I noticed, felt the need to blink as many bipeds did.

“No,” he said, calmly. “These weapons are just for self defence. I gave a beating, I took a beating. Further violence would be folly, so now I’m done. From this point on, I embrace the way of peace.”

“You really mean that?”

“I really mean it,” Sharrock avowed.

I felt so proud.

Over the next twenty or so cycles, I got into the habit of spending the early mornings with Sharrock by the lake side.

He loved to fish; he had fashioned lines and nets and captured dozens of fish each day, all of which he released back into the water. And he was a gentler spirit now, after the mauling from the arboreals. A status quo had been achieved; indeed, Mangan and Shiiaa and the other arboreals occasionally invited Sharrock to share their cabin at night, and there they told each other tales. Sharrock had passed, and survived, his brutal initiation.

Sharrock talked often to me about his family-his love-partner Malisha and his daughter Sharil, and Malisha’s brothers Tharn and Jarro, and their love-partners Clavala and Blarwan, and their assorted children-with love and tenderness. And he told some delightful stories about the stupid things that young Sharil used to do, and the even stupider things he used to do to make her laugh.

And I told him that I had been merely a child when I was taken by the Ka’un. I had never had sex, or known adult love; my adolescence ended when I was captured by alien invaders and brutally beaten by the then occupants of the Hell Ship.

He was clearly shaken by that story; it affected him sorely for days.

I talked to him also about Cuzco and his warrior code, and I tried to get him to see how unutterably foolish it was.

“My people were not like that,” Sharrock protested. “Cuzco is just a savage; from all you say, no better than the Ka’un. But we were a cultured and a civilised people.”

“Truly?”

“Truly.”

“Then tell me; how many Maxoluns have you killed in single combat?” I asked him,

Sharrock was shaken by the question. “Hundreds,” he admitted.

“And in war?”

“Thousands.”

“And you feel no guilt?”

“None.”

“You should.”

“Perhaps I should,” Sharrock conceded.

He was silent for a while, made pensive by my words.

“How can that be?” I asked him. “How does a child become so ruthless a warrior?”

“When I was eleven,” he said, “I was sent into the desert, to spend three days and three nights alone. And,” he said, his eyes sparkling at the recollection, “it was hot. Fierce hot, with air that scorched the lungs. I drank water from roots. I hid from predators, including the great Sand-Baro. And I fought the Quila. These are four-legged creatures, the size of my hand, with vicious teeth, who live in the sand itself. And every dawn on our world the Quila would emerge from their sandy burrows and bask in the sun and feed on the flesh of unwary creatures who strayed their way. I killed six thousand of them before my father came to fetch me.”

“And what did that teach you?”

“Ha! That Quila will die, if you hit them hard enough with a club. And furthermore, if you judge it right, they will squirt blood from both ends.” He laughed bitterly. “It taught me nothing. No, not true, it taught me how to survive.”

“Yours is a brutal culture.”

“I’d never,” admitted Sharrock, “thought so, before I met you.”

“Imagine,” I told him, “a world where sentient species collaborated, and helped each other, and cared for each other. Where discovery mattered more than victory. Would that be so bad?”

“Not possible.”

“We achieved it. My people.”

“Then the Ka’un came and your people didn’t know how to fight,” Sharrock taunted me.

“At least we lost a civilisation,” I said. “You lost-what?-a barbarism?”

Sharrock’s features were pale with shock; my words had hit home.

“Perhaps,” he said, and I marvelled at his courage in accepting that his entire life might have been founded on moral error.

And so, buoyed with confidence at Sharrock’s new attitude, I decided he was finally ready to learn the real truth about our terrible world.

“It is time,” I told Sharrock, “for you to meet your own kind.”

Sharrock and I travelled up past the lake to the mountain ranges, and thence into the deep Valley where the smaller bipeds and the Kindred dwelled. The air was darker here, and clammy in the throat, and the high ground was just rock without any covering of soil. But the valley itself was rich and fertile, and twin rivers trickled and gurgled their way through it.

I had built these rivers with my own teeth and claws and the help of all the giant sentients. We created channels that were pumped with waters from the lake; and to our delight, the lake could refill itself by some unknown automatic means, so the rivers always flowed.

And further down the valley there were fields, fresh ploughed, and grazing animals on the grasslands. We proceeded on a pebbled path down a steep slope, as giants walked below us; I, slithering down on my segments, Sharrock running along beside me.

And at the gateway to the village of the Kindred, we were greeted by Gilgara, their chief warrior: a bearded colossus who was twice as tall as Sharrock, and who, like Sharrock, had upper arms as large as his head and strongly defined muscles upon his torso.

Sharrock bowed, clearly impressed by Gilgara’s military bearing and physique, and avariciously eyed the metal sword that the giant wore in a fine leather scabbard.

“You have weapons?” Sharrock said.

“Forged with fire; the metal comes from walls in cabins that we have pillaged,” said Gilgara.

“Impressive,” said Sharrock, respectfully.

Next to Gilgara was Mara; a glowering female warrior with one eye larger than the other. Mara peered at Sharrock, and a smile grew.

“Fresh meat,” Mara said, looking at Sharrock, and Sharrock’s own smile faded.

Sharrock then started to warily look around him. There were twenty or more Kindred warriors strolling out of the village to join us, each twice as large as he, wearing furs and hides over their shoulders and groins, leaving legs and arms and midriffs bare; and many were ornately tattooed.

And there were a considerable variety of smaller hairless bipeds too; some with three eyes, some with two, or five; some with two arms, some with four, some six arms, some eight; some with soft skin, some with tough hide; some were grey in colour, many pink, some blue, some purple, quite a few black, many were bronzed, and a handful of exceptional specimens had colourful striped skin. But all were of a similar morphology to Sharrock; comprising minor variations of what I firmly believed was an archetypal biological form.

And some of these small bipeds wore loose shackles with chains at their feet, to prevent them running away, and bore a haunted look. While others wore rich leathers and strode proudly; but still wore metal shackles around their upper arms, and kept their eyes averted from the members of the Kindred.

Sharrock was studying it all, with that attentive and curious look on his face; I knew it would not take him long to work out the power balance here.

“These peoples live side by side?” he whispered to me. “The giants and the similar-to-Olarans?”

“In a manner of speaking,” I explained. “The smaller bipeds are slaves to the Kindred.”

“Slaves?”

“They have no freedom; they fetch and carry; they are flogged if they disobey; slaves,” I clarified.

The sharp and angry intake of breath from Sharrock alarmed me.

“We came here,” I explained to Sharrock, “for you to see this, and to absorb the lessons it holds about the reality of power on this world, and then to leave.”

“Have you brought this squalid wretch to join us?” asked Gilgara, interrupting our private conference with arrogant brusqueness; as if we were the food on his plate that had dared to converse.

“Not so,” I explained, “Sharrock has come merely to pay his respects.”

“He must stay. All bipeds live in the Valley,” Gilgara said fiercely.

“Fuck away,” I said calmly. “This one is protected by me.”

“You’d live with this monster, not with your own kind?” roared Gilgara to Sharrock.

Sharrock stared up at the giant warrior. “Why do so many wear metal bands on their arms?” he asked.

“Each band bears a name; it denotes the master of the slave,” Gilgara said, matter-of-factly.

“We are all captives here,” Sharrock said calmly. “But none should be slaves of-”

Gilgara spat at him; it was a vast gob of green, and I admired the giant’s aim; it struck Sharrock on his forehead, and dripped down his face; but Sharrock’s stare did not falter an instant.

“We are the Kindred,” said Gilgara. “We are no creature’s slaves. We serve the Leaders of this ship freely, and voluntarily.”

It took Sharrock a few moments to comprehend what he was being told. He looked at me; I waved my tentacles to indicate agreement, and realised that made no sense to him, so I said: “That is so.”

“The smaller bipeds, however,” said Mara proudly, “ are slaves, And you shall be too.”

“Never!” Sharrock said angrily.

Mara drew her finely forged metal sword, and pointed it menacingly at Sharrock. Gilgara did the same, in a swift gesture as fast as lightning spanning the sky. Sharrock tensed, ready to fight.

I caught Sharrock with a tentacle and threw him on my back. Then I tentacle-flipped away.

The Kindred did not give chase; they knew me too well.

“The fucking bastards!” roared Sharrock.

“I wanted you to see for yourself.”

“This is why,” said Sharrock, piecing together the parts of a puzzle that, until that moment, he had not realised was a puzzle. “This is why you put me with the arboreals, not with others more akin to my physical type.”

“Nine hundred cycles ago, the Kindred enslaved all the biped species. I was unable to prevent them.”

“Why would they do such a thing? To their own kind!”

“The Kindred are the Kindred; they have no ‘kind.’ ”

“And I am the only ‘biped’ who is free?”

“Yes.”

“Why? What makes me so special?”

“You are under my protection.”

“You mean, you’d fight for me?”

“No,” I conceded. “But the Kindred rely on me; I make their rivers flow, and their crops grow; I discourage rebellion among the giant sentients; I keep the world from falling into anarchy and Despair. The Kindred rule the Valley. They have biped slaves to dominate; and so they are content. We other sentients keep apart from them. We lead our own quiet lives.”

“Well, that’s going to change,” said Sharrock, quietly smiling now.

“No, it will not change.”

“Just watch, sweet beast. Now Sharrock is here, the world will come to its senses, and freedom will prevail!”

“No! We cannot have freedom! Things must not change,” I said angrily, “For what we have achieved here is precious beyond all measure: it is equilibrium. ”

And Sharrock stood up; and his eyes shone with fury; and spittle came from his mouth when he spoke, so great was his wrath.

“Sai-ias, hear this!” said Sharrock, and I knew I was in for a poetic rant; a common foible amongst battle-worshipping warriors.

“I have come to know you Sai-ias, and I know your heart is full of love,” said Sharrock, with his usual withering condescension; oblivious to the fact I am old and wise, and large enough to keep him in my mouth for years on end and yet not notice his presence when I dined.

“And yet you are a fool,” Sharrock continued; and his voice had a rich timbre, as if he were addressing a hall of drunken wastrels who needed to be inspired to commit acts of glory. “You allow yourself to be used by these monsters, these Ka’un! You preach obedience; but that is just servitude. You teach acceptance; but that is just another way of making slaves more docile. And worst of all, you all-”

I was bored by now; so I picked him up with one tentacle and shook him as a child shakes a toy that has lost its rattle in the hope it might yet make some kind of rattling noise.

Eventually I dumped Sharrock on the ground. He was dazed, winded, dizzy, and began vomiting profusely.

“All the biped slaves on this world,” I told him coldly, “volunteered to be so. They prefer it that way. You may despise that decision, but you will respect it. Or else, I shall carry you to the valley of the Kindred myself; and watch as they bind and shackle you and put a whip to your back!”

This was an idle threat, in fact; for, however much he vexed me, I could never be so cruel to him; but I hoped that Sharrock would not realise that.

Sharrock finally managed to get back to his feet. He staggered a little, getting his balance back. He spat the last of the vomit from his mouth. His eyes were out of focus, and he was in shock; but his body was, I knew, resilient, and he would recover swiftly.

Yet though he was now standing, he did not seem to me to stand as tall as before. And when his eyes refocused, they had lost their piercing stare.

“Why would anyone,” he asked, with a bafflement like that of a child discovering that her parents are fallible, “ choose to live as a slave?”

I had no answer to give him.

The Days passed.

Day the First.

Day the Second.

Day the Third.

Day “Come,” said Lirilla, and I came.

I found Sharrock in the centre of the grass amphitheatre. He was unconscious; one arm was ripped and bloody; there were savage sword wounds in his torso; and both his eyes had been gouged out. Fray stood by, scratching the ground with her hooves.

“What happened?” I asked, after a few moments of feeling overwhelmed with sorrow.

“The aerials called me,” said Fray. “They found his body high on a mountain crag. I clambered up, and carried it here.”

I touched my tentacle tip to Sharrock’s throat; no pulse.

I lifted his body up with one tentacle and put it in my mouth. And I breathed in through my spiracles, and out through my mouth; in; out; in; out; filtering the air so that all that remained in my mouth cavity was pure oxygen.

Then I spat Sharrock out gently. His body twitched; his blood was oxygen-rich now. His heart had started beating.

“Can you heal his body?” I said to Fray, and Fray grunted an affirmative, and stood up on her huge back legs; and began to piss upon Sharrock’s bloodied body. Fray drank every day from the well of the water of life, and her piss was running clear; so I knew this was the best way to heal Sharrock.

And after a few moment’s stupefaction, he realised that that Fray was pissing on him.

And Sharrock groaned, and sat up, and tried to dodge the torrent of healing urine; but in his confused state, he turned the wrong way, and his eyes and nostrils and mouth took the brunt of the cascade of hot, steaming Fray-piss.

“No need to thank me,” said Fray, in her kindest tones.

It took Sharrock two days to recover sufficiently to speak. When he did, though blind and scarred, he was unrepentant.

“You fought the Kindred?” I asked.

“Indeed, I fought those wretched, cowardly, viler-than-a-Southern-Tribesman Kindred,” he said, proudly.

“And lost?”

“I concede that I lost,” said Sharrock proudly, “yet I was not defeated. For Sharrock will never ever EVER be defeated!”

I sighed, from my tentacle tips. “Did you learn nothing,” I said acidly. “From your experience with the arboreals?”

“Yes,” said Sharrock. “I learned that monkeys shit a lot when they’re up trees; you really have to keep your wits about you.”

“You learned that revenge is futile!” I roared. “That was the lesson. That was why-”

“My people,” said Sharrock, “are in captivity. It’s up to me to save them.”

“Even if they don’t want to be saved?” I asked him, nastily.

“Even then,” said Sharrock proudly; and his nobility, and his courage, revolted me.

“Come,” said Lirilla, and this time I found Sharrock in the desert; stripped naked and baking in the sun. The Kindred had cut off his ears and his eyelids, and carved strange inscriptions on his bare flesh from head to toe. His red skin was burned and blistered by the sun’s rays; and he was parched, and croaking.

And his eyes, so recently healed, were now blinded once more by the sun’s rays; yet even so, there was about him a look of triumph.

“Come,” said Lirilla, and once more I came.

I found Sharrock this time in the encampment of the Kindred. His body was broken and bloodied; his teeth had been smashed out; he had lost one eye (those poor eyes!). And I began to seriously wonder if his body could continue to regenerate after these tremendous beatings; it was taking him longer and longer to return to his full warrior strength after each appalling defeat.

But today, I realised, he was surrounded by scores of kneeling Kindred; who were offering him obeisance.

I looked around. The slaves were no longer in shackles. They were free.

And Gilgara, the giant Kindred Chieftain, was on the ground; blood flowed from a terrible cut in his head; and no one paid him any heed. There was a slow thundering noise; a clapping; the Kindred were saluting Sharrock’s triumph in what had evidently been a long, and bloody, and brutal unarmed combat between Sharrock and Gilgara, the leader of the Kindred.

“What has happened here?” I asked, amazed.

“I am now,” said Sharrock proudly, “King of the Kindred.”

“It was a hard fought battle,” bragged Sharrock.

“It was indeed, sire,” said Gilgara, the former Kindred leader, who was now, despite his appalling injuries which made it so hard for him to walk, Sharrock’s loyal second in command.

“Picture the scene,” said Sharrock dramatically, “there was I! I was-”

“I do not,” I said dryly, “wish to picture the scene. Big fight; lots of blood; you won.”

“I bested the Kindred leader in single combat!”

“And why does that qualify you to be the leader?” I said angrily.

Sharrock was flummoxed. “It proves I am the mightiest-”

“It proves you are the best at hurting! That’s all. The best at brawling with a stick or sword or with bare fists. Does that make you a leader?” I was so enraged, my cape became erect and my body inflated.

“Yes,” said Sharrock. “And next, I shall unify the tribes. There are bipeds like myself living at the foot of the Further Mountains who do not acknowledge Gilgara’s authority, but rather serve the tribes of renegade and nomadic Kindred. I will go and fight these nomad giants and make them honour my leadership, and then free those slaves too.”

“You would do that?”

“I must,” said Sharrock.

I had nothing more to say to him.

By now, I was nursing a terrible rage. I had helped this creature, comforted him when he was vulnerable; and now he was aiming to become a dictator.

But what could I do to stop him? The answer was: nothing! Unless of course I was willing to challenge him to a battle, and fight and defeat him. For then he would be compelled to bend to my will.

And this of course, I could do easily; so easily it was laughable. For all his warrior pride, Sharrock was utterly puny and minuscule compared to me. I could defeat him with a single blow, or swallow him like an insect, or crush him and smash him under my feet whilst barely noticing he was there.

But I would never be willing to fight Sharrock. For I was fond of him. I thought of him as a friend. And I could not bear to hurt him.

And, too, I was fearful that in the heat of battle, I might end up hurting Sharrock so severely that he could not heal, and he would end up crippled or even dead. For violence is a madness; once you allow it to possess you, it is not easy to return to the ways of sanity.

And this was why I had, so many years ago, forsworn violence. After my two ghastly combats with Carulha, I had resolved never again to use brute force to achieve my goals.

I had been a monster twice; I would not be so a third time.