Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

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.