Hell Ship

by Philip Palmer

  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.

  Sharrock

  Fifty Kindred maidens came to me in the night, longing to possess my body; despite their giant size, they were beauteous indeed. But I sent them all away.

  Ten warriors challenged me the next day, before I had broke my fast, and I declined them all. One of them sent a sly arrow aimed at my head and I was only just swift enough to snatch it from the air and smash his skull.

  I was, in truth, not much enjoying my life as King of the Kindred. I had many responsibilities; underlings constantly pestered me for decisions about matters of which I knew nothing, and cared less; and all in all, I never had a moment to myself. I felt as if I had inadvertently adopted a country full of needy children. And I yearned for my days as a nomad with a loyal wife and a small family, who would happily fend for themselves whilst I went off adventuring.

  Sai-ias was avoiding me now, I knew, and I regretted that sorely. For I had come to enjoy her company, despite her ghastly appearance and her vexing habit of sighing through her tentacles to betoken annoyance at me. And I did furthermore comprehend her unease; she feared no doubt I was becoming a dictator. Ha! No thought was further from my mind! Power for me was like sobriety for a Southern Tribesman; a state of being to be temporarily, and only briefly, endured.

  I also saw the power of Sai-ias’s argument about the need for us to avoid violence whilst upon this already-violent world. For if we kept fighting with each other, how could we ever hope to fight and vanquish the Ka’un?

  And yet I had been impelled to act. And as a result of my actions, there were no more slaves in my Kingdom. All the bipeds were now free.

  Free? Whilst the Ka’un kept us confined in this unnatural habitat?

  Yes, that irony did indeed trouble me. But I had done all I could.

  Gilgara joined me after I had broke my fast that morning, and when I went tramping in the mountains, he followed me like a limping shadow. He was pathetically devoted to me now. I had beaten him in combat so I was his “master”; that was the way the Kindred thought.

  It was however, I had to concede, an impressively well organised society. Instead of retreating to dismal cabins at night, the Kindred had used hull-metal tools to carve caves out of the smooth rocks of the artificial mountains; and they had installed artificial lights in each of these caves. Stories were told there; private caves were set aside for sexual congress; the larger caves were even decorated with artwork in what I recognised as a naive style; though abstract coloration was also a favoured mode.

  The variety of biped species here was dazzling and extraordinary, but the physical similarities between the different species also startled me. The females all had breasts with nipples and haired love-niches (and since I was King, they often flaunted them at me) and loved to discuss the minutest details about the characters of others. Whereas the males all had cocks; and walked with a swagger; and wore groin-hides and capes and boots of hues which almost but did not quite match. The numbers of eyes varied, but all the smaller bipeds, and the Kindred too for that matter, had mouths and tongues and feet and hands and ears. Some creatures however had healed-up holes on their bellies where their mother’s cord had been cut, which I found exceeding strange.

  I found many of the females attractive, but did not sleep with any. I found the males highly annoying; they were all so competitive, and whiny. And I realised I was missing the company of the giant sentients. Cuzco was a monster, but he was magnificent nonetheless. And Fray was a brute, but she inspired an awe in me, especially when she ran; that, to me, was true poetry. And Sai-ias-well. She was like no other creature I had ever met before.

  But I had chosen my destiny; to teach the Kindred to respect the rights of others. And to forge the smaller bipeds into a proud and free and unified community of individuals loyal to a common cause.

  If only the bastards weren’t so irritating.

  For the Kindred were by instinct and nature supreme bullies. And the idiot smaller bipeds had actually chosen to enslave themselves! These stupid less-pride-than-a-warrior-who-fucks-his-own-scabbard creatures-how could they have done such a thing?

  And yet, I supposed, in some ways the state of slavery simplified matters. For if you are a free spirit like myself, you will be constantly challenging the way things are.

  But when the world is intolerable, and life is irrevocably unjust; might it be better, perhaps, to just blindly serve?

  I could never pursue such a course myself of course. Nor could I truly condone the actions of these self-deluded fools. But in a curious way, I found I had acquired a sliver of compassion for my fellow bipeds and their frailties.

  I was soul-pacing-restless though. I had fought and lost and fought and lost and finally fought and won a glorious battle; and now there were no more battles to fight.

  I thought again about the biped slaves still living at the foot of the Further Mountains. I had told Sai-ias I would liberate them, and I resolved to do so; because at least that would give me an excuse to leave the village for a while.

  So I said my farewells; icily endured the tears of maidens I had not bedded, and who did not even have the same number of eyes as I did; and spent several hours pers
uading Gilgara not to follow me, before eventually breaking his stick and leaving him behind.

  Then I set out across the mountain trail, alone, except for my newly acquired hull-metal sword and my turbulent thoughts.

  The winds were cold as I walked higher up the mountains. I killed a grazer and skinned it and used its hide as my cape. And I carried the flayed body on my shoulder so I could sleep in the carcass during the icy black night when, as I knew, the heating was always switched off.

  Thus encumbered, I climbed up to the highest peak, and looked down at the strange unnatural world of the Hell Ship. I was breathing heavily now; my muscles were singing with exertion; I felt happier than I had been for some time.

  Then I slept the night inside the grazer upon the peak. And in the morning, I descended, bloody and smelly but pleasingly well rested. And after several hours of searching I found the settlement in the shadow of the Further Mountain ranges, where the nomad Kindred and their biped slaves dwelled.

  And then I saw that bitch.

  Sai-ias

  “Come,” said Lirilla, and I wearily got up, and began flinging myself through the air with my tentacles.

  This time I came upon Sharrock before the battle had begun. He had indeed, as he had pledged, journeyed to the bipeds who lived at the foot of the Further Mountains, whose high snowy peaks loomed above our nearer mountain ranges. And now he was engaged in single combat with a mighty Kindred female-twice the size of Sharrock himself and massively muscled, her long red hair streaked with silver, and as skilled at he in combat with a sword.

  Her Kindred allies had gathered round to watch, with their biped slaves sulkily stood beside them. All cheered as Sharrock and the female clashed swords, and leaped, and rolled, with grace and speed and awesome energy.

  They were well matched; the female warrior was larger and stronger but Sharrock was fast and nimble and able to leap high in the air whilst wielding his sword. Blades clashed so hard together I could see sparks; and the bodies of the two warriors spiralled in the air as they somersaulted around each other; their blades lashing and slashing as they dodged and rolled and stepped back and lunged forward in a coruscating display of martial prowess that would have been beautiful if it weren’t so godsforsakenly childish!