“He cursed Djamrock! He will lead others to the way of death. That is not what we need,” I said, trying to keep calm, and to rein in my fury.
“Cuzco is a hero,” agreed Fiymean. “Sai-ias you are a dismal coward. You know nothing of war.”
“I know much about-”
“It’s pathetic,” said Kairi, in a shrill scornful voice, her feathers vibrating to make the sounds that the air translated. “All the things we do, and that you encourage us to do. The Days. The Temple. We demolish, we rebuild. We tell stories. The same stories. We talk about science, but we barely understand each other’s ideas, and have virtually no technology, and no way of acquiring fresh data. We talk about history, for all we have is history. There will be, for us, no more history. It is all futile. What Cuzco has done has shone a light on our world, and all we can see is shit and lies.”
“It is not futile,” I argued, in my gentlest of tones.
“Sai-ias, fuck yourself with a barbed weapon, and die in the process.”
“You turd-eating coward.”
“You pathetic fucker.”
“You’re not welcome here, you slimy sea fucking monster. Cuzco is our god.”
And so they continued; the taunting, sneering voices. I hated it so much, yet I endured the mockery patiently.
My task was all the harder because none of these creatures remembered the early years; the days of Carulha, and my two battles against him. For all the great beasts of that time had died, of Despair, or in some Ka’un battle or other. Only the Kindred remembered; and even they were starting to forget what I had truly done for this world. To this new generation, I was just a complacent fool; preaching peace and harmony to an angry lynch mob.
“Cuzco must be banished,” I insisted, “for the good of all.” And then I paused for effect, and said: “I so order it.”
But my words were like a light breeze in the midst of a hurricane; no one heeded them.
“Sai-ias,” said Quipu One, my favourite of the Quipus, and one of my oldest friends on the ship, “this is none of your affair.”
“It is my affair,” I said angrily. “You idiot Quipu, you know nothing-”
“Ah, fuck away,” said Quipu One contemptuously. “I have no more time for you.”
“Well said. Fuck away, Sai-ias,” said Quipu Two.
“Fuck away Sai-ias!” said Quipu Three.
“Cuzco is our hero now,” said Quipu Four, and his eyes gazed into the far distance, remembering the glory and the triumph of Djamrock’s demise.
“Fuck away, you black-hided beast!” said Quipu Five. “No one cares what you say, or what you think. Not any more.”
I looked at Sharrock.
“Sai-ias,” he said to me gently. “You are wrong.”
Words do not hurt me, usually.
Those words did.
Lirilla’s wings fanned my face.
“This is a cruel world,” I told her, the sweetest creature on this entire world. “But I know I am right.”
Lirilla flew away without speaking.
I found Cuzco, surrounded by acolytes in the field of green, telling his tale of victory to a mob that included Sharrock and Quipu.
I used my tentacles to hurl myself towards the crowd. I heard muttering and hissings and muttered insults. “Cuzco,” I called out.
Cuzco raised himself up, and his great wings beat and he hovered above me, baring his face whose soft features were distorted with contempt.
“You saw me fight?” he roared.
“It is Day the Fifth,” I said to him and the assembled crowd. “It is our day of music and celebration.”
“A waste,” roared Cuzco, “of fucking time.”
Laughter rocked the crowd. Sharrock stared at me sadly, his contempt merging with his pity in a toxic brew.
“We need it. It fills our days,” I said.
Cuzco pushed out his chest. And his face-or rather an illusion of a face, patterns of expression on the soft skin of the breast of his left body-bore an intrigued expression. “It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked. “ You created the idea of the Temple?”
“I did,” I said.
“And the Days, you created those too.”
“I did,” I admitted.
“And the whole structure of our lives. The gatherings. The cabins. The Guiding Council. That was you.”
“When I first came to the ship,” I said, “all was anarchy and-”
Cuzco laughed at me. And the crowd laughed. Even Sharrock laughed.
And in that terrible moment, I felt humiliated.
For I was, I realised, considered by all present to be a gullible fool who believed that make-believe work was better than real work. I was the one, the only one, who did not understand that glory is to be found in heroic defeat, not in meek surrender! I understood at that moment the depth and sincerity of their scorn, and of their contempt. And I found myself consumed by self-hate. Was I really this wretched creature they despised so much?
“Sharrock, ignore them. Do not laugh at me. You and I know better about what is right,” I said wretchedly. But he grinned at me too, tauntingly.
However, I stood my ground. “Cuzco, you are banished,” I said, as firmly as I was able. “That is my irrevocable decision.”
The mob began to howl and shout, drowning out my words. I continued desperately: “You must dwell on the mountain crags, but you cannot speak to anyone or be spoken to by anyone. When you are gone, all will return to normal. Our Rhythm of Days will return.”
Few could hear me for all the baying and roaring, but still I continued: “Fighting will once more be forbidden. I do not ask this, I do not beg for it, I demand it!”
“You fucking turd-sucking bog-fucking slack-cunted bitch,” said Cuzco. “Why don’t you fuck-”
My tentacle lashed out, and unfolded in an instant to double its usual length; and I swung it in a huge loop to create momentum; then I smote Cuzco with it.
The blow was powerful and as fast as thought itself, and he was knocked across the ground like a ball struck with a bat in one of the biped’s wretched games.
There was a startled silence.
Cuzco got back on his feet. He puffed up his chest again, and showed me his face; there was glee in his expression. “I’ve been waiting,” said Cuzco, “for this for a long-”
I struck again but this time Cuzco was expecting it and he rolled out of the way. And when he came out of the roll his wings unfurled and he beat them and he was in the air and he pounced down at I wasn’t there. I used my tentacles to grip the ground and fling myself upwards. And as I flew my quills emerged and I skimmed Cuzco’s body and my quills crashed against his body armour, and we both fell to the ground.
I flipped over again and narrowly avoided a funnel of flame from Cuzco’s head. Then I fired a fusillade of quills at him from my stomach hole and he was shocked as these brutal arrows smashed against his hide. He buckled up his breast armour, burying his soft face away, so his bodies were now just two vast horned carapaces covered in impregnable scales.
He paced towards me. I slithered towards him. A quill stuck out from his hide, close to one of his heavily shielded eyes. His tread was light. He was sizing me up.
We faced each other in the field of green, and all around us a myriad alien species watched; furred, feathered, scaled, covered in hide, small, large, brightly coloured, drably coloured; a whole menagerie of strangeness, rapt in joy at the sight of this, the second great fight in two days.
I felt the ground shudder and I knew that Fray had arrived, to watch his two “friends” fight.
But then I realised, with a terrible and sudden clarity, that she and I weren’t truly friends at all. We were merely companions, and fellow captives. But she cared nothing for me, not really; not did she have any concept of who I truly am, of the real Sai-ias.
Fray and Cuzco also were bound together by sheer force of circumstance; their friendship here was a matter of convenience, no more. They were large; and savage;
and heavily armoured; that was all they had in common!
And what’s more, it now seemed obvious that despite our seeming friendship, Cuzco and I had always harboured a deep loathing of each other. He, a savage flesh-eating monster, I a cultured vegetarian; what could connect two such different beasts? The answer was clear: nothing.
Oh, now I could see it all so plainly. All was lies and cruelty and hate! Nothing on this world had any value! These truths came crashing down upon me.
But even so, I felt obliged to fight.
A funnel of flame billowed out of Cuzco’s skull and I did not move. My skin ignited and I was enveloped in a fireball and still I did not move. My flesh melted, and the burning smell of my body filled the air and still I did not move.
When the flames died down, my soft outer skin had been burned away and what remained was the jet-black diamond-hard carapace of my inner body. My tentacles were sheathed; my eyes were protected; my skin would grow back in a matter of days, and would have done so even if I had still been on my home planet.
And all could now see the remarkable truth: that the inner Sai-ias is a warrior born.
I pounced.
My tentacles unfurled, I gripped the ground, I flung myself up and at Cuzco, and I caught his scaly hide with my tentacle tips and swung him round and crashed him to the ground. As he lay dazed I flipped into the air and flew downwards, my central quill extended, and I stabbed him in the fleshy skin of his stomach.
He recovered and swept at me with his powerful paws and knocked me aside, but I rolled and threw myself upright and launched again.
Cuzco took to the air but I was just as fast and I threw myself upwards and as I did my tentacle tips retracted and my inner claws were exposed and I used these claws to grip and rip his flesh in mid-air. His wings beat, he struggled to keep his flight, as I ripped away his hide and blood gouted from his body on to the field of grass below.
Cuzco came crashing to the ground, and I beat him again and again with my tentacles. He fired his flames again but they could do no harm to my chitinous body and armoured tentacles; and my eyes, too, were made of hard scales not soft flesh and could not be burned or stabbed or gouged.
I played with him for a while, smashing him with my tentacles, and mockingly absorbing his flames as if they were sunshine on a warm day. Then finally I spat, and an unfolding matrix of web embraced his body and trapped him.
Victory was mine.
“He is banished,” I told the crowd. “Take the body to the mountain top and leave it there. Fill a container with water of life and leave it beside his body. Cuzco will not be of our family until ten years have elapsed, and he has earned my forgiveness.”
No one demurred.
Sharrock was staring at me, astonished; and he smiled with open joy.
I recoiled at his approval; I was revolted by the love of the crowd.
For before, I had been right, and yet I had been mocked. And now-now I had proved I was nothing but a violent thug, with more flair for war than even the powerful Cuzco- now, the mob would follow me anywhere.
This was the quintessential predator-prey mindset; the belief that only power endorsed by violence should command respect.
And I despised them all for it.
And, in all candour, I despised myself too, for playing their pathetic game. For I believe in love and not war; yet to save my world, I have to be a monster.
And so a monster I have become.
I went to the storm zones and let a hurricane bombard my hard carapace. A few times I thought I would be swept away and smashed against the icy clouds.
I roared with rage into the hurricane’s open mouth, and felt anguish and guilt that hurt me more than the wind’s sharp knives.
My outer skin grew back. The Rhythm of our Days returned. The Temple was demolished; and then we began to rebuild it. Stories were told. Science was discussed.
And Cuzco was now a memory; he lived in solitude on a mountain-top eyrie, the very emblem of the way we should not be. And my world was safe; and, to such degree as it was possible to be content in such a place, my people were indeed content.
And I was revered now, and not despised. My smallest request was treated as a command; no one ever interrupted me. I felt like a god.
And I loathed it.
The fields had to be tilled every month. Armies of polypods thundered across the artificial soil, kicking with hooves and ripping with claws, and aerials swooped down and sifted soil. And at the end of this long process, the soil was no more fertile than it had been before.
The trees and bushes needed to be pruned every week. Some of the vegetation ran riot and grew at a terrifying rate, and the arboreals used saws and swords to hack pieces off the runaway shrubs and trees to reduce them to a manageable height.
But what would it have mattered if the trees had grown to the heavens? There would still have been space enough to move in. And though the browsing animals ate the grass, and chewed the tree bark, there was no nourishment to be gained from that. It was a squandering of time to tend this garden, for our bodies were fed by other means.
The ice clouds soaked up moisture from the air and grew daily, and so they had to be regularly milked. To achieve this, the aerials flew inside the jagged clouds-clouds which had once floated in the skies of the icy world where Quipu had lived-and pissed their hot urine downwards, melting the ice. And the urine-tainted rain fell upon the land and the lake; and the ice-clouds shrank. And all of us felt the mixed blessing of being rained upon by water filthily stained with piss.
Thus, every time it rained, bleak irony drenched me as much as did the raindrops.
And so there was always work to be done. And it was always futile, desperate, purposeless work. Such was the rhythm of our days.
It was Day the First and I was climbing a mountain, and I could not resist the urge; I went to see Cuzco.
My claws gripped the cliff face tightly, and I was able to clamber up the steepest slopes, despite my bulk. I enjoyed this kind of physical effort; it invigorated me.
I had no idea where Cuzco was dwelling but I followed my instincts; it would be the highest crag, the most remote spot. I reached the top of the mountain summit and looked for him in vain. Then I hurled myself off and glided to the next summit; and when I found him not, I leaped again, and reached the next summit. And then the next. Then I landed on an icy crag and found myself sliding across a glacier. Strange ice-creatures peered at me, and I marvelled that I had never seen them before.
I called out to Cuzco, again and again, with a shrill whistling noise that I knew he would recognise as my ocean-call.
The day passed, and I found no trace of Cuzco.
It was Day the Second and I was due to be at the Temple to help raise the stones. But instead I returned to the mountain peaks and searched again for Cuzco.
It was Day the Third; my search continued.
At the end of Day the Fourth I was frustrated and weary and I made a wild decision; I would not return to my cabin when the black night fell.
And so I waited, buffeted by cold winds, as the sun set and cast its rosy glow upon our fake and evil world. Then the daylight in the air was switched off; sheer blackness descended. There were no stars, there was no residual light. The entire planet was black and all the land animals sheltered in their cabins; the aquatics in the lake and rivers slowed to a sluggish pace in their swimming; the aerials cowered in their nests. Only a few, just a very few, of the echo-locating species ventured abroad, and even they were wary.
I crouched on the high plateau and listened to the sounds of the night, and at length I heard a sound I recognised: a wild howling. It was Cuzco, baying at the stars, except there were no stars.
I spent twelve cycles on the mountain tops gliding from peak to peak, following the sound of the howls; and then one day I found my friend.
“You’ve changed,” I told Cuzco.
Cuzco snorted, and I felt the heat of his flames on my soft outer skin. There was a wild
look in his eyes. He did not speak.
“I’ve missed you,” I said.
Cuzco’s claws scratched the hard rock.
“I had no choice. I had to banish you.” I said. “Otherwise-”
Cuzco roared at me. I’d never heard his roar from so close. It was a scream that possessed his whole body. He was a fierce-looking creature at the best of times-with a hide made of sharp spikes and horns erupting from his skull. And the furnace of his body-the inner heat that allowed him to spit and exhale flame-made the patches of hide that were visible beneath his body armour glow.
And yet I knew that Cuzco, in his best moments, had a generous and a gentle spirit. And, too, as well as his killing claws, he had fingers that were supple and soft and could be used to manipulate tools, or create great art works, or stroke, affectionately, a subordinate being.
“Have you become insane?” I asked Cuzco calmly, and he snorted again, and spat fire over me and I was engulfed in flame.
Once more my soft skin burned away; and I clenched my extremities into my core, and my shell joints instinctively sealed and I allowed the fire to burn down before my head re-emerged.
“You are indeed,” I concluded, “insane.”
Cuzco laughed. “Not so.”
“You murdered Djamrock.”
“We made a bargain.”
“An insane bargain.”
Cuzco snorted again, and acid dripped out of his eye sockets. This body language I knew; he was laughing.
“I’m tired of stories,” said Cuzco, as the sun set, and the blackness descended again.
“Then tell me no stories.”
“I find your company irksome.”
“I love to irk.”
“You succeed triumphantly, you ugly sentimental shittier-than-an-arsehole monstrosity.”
“Now I recall why I’ve missed you; your squalid absence of a personality makes me feel much finer and wiser by comparison.”
A spurt of acid dripped out of Cuzco’s eyeballs; he was laughing again.
We were silent together a while. A long while.
“I should return,” I said. “To my cabin.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a life down there.”
“Then go, you ignorant stealer-of-space-that-might-be-occupied-by-my-shadow.”
Hell Ship Page 19