Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

Cuzco blew flame from his skull again, and we could smell and taste the aroma; it was the reek of the remnants of the burnt brain of Djamrock being expelled from Cuzco’s body.

Djamrock’s other two heads stared at the sight. He was in dire agony, but his dark hide was recovering its normal lustre. The fire in his body was being extinguished, his flesh was healing again. He was recovering. And even though he’d lost a head, he still had enough power to rip the crippled Cuzco into pieces.

But Djamrock did nothing.

Cuzco pounced again and ripped off a second head. And he ate that too. And he billowed steam from his neck to sluice his system of the last traces of alien skull and brain.

“No!” screamed a voice. “No!” screamed another voice.

But these were lone voices in the mob. I heard a drumming sound, as the crowd clapped and stamped their feet and chanted: “Kill him, kill him, kill him!”

Cuzco pounced one final time and ripped off Djamrock’s third head.

And ate it.

And shat out the remnants through his neck-holes.

And then Cuzco looked at me, with triumph and sorrow in his old eyes. And I knew then: this had been planned. This was a death pact between Cuzco and Djamrock.

And Djamrock had won. His victory in battle had entitled him to the ultimate reward: his irrevocable death.

Except that Djamrock was not truly dead. His sentience and his soul lingered on in his headless corpse. It endured in the particles of brain-ash that still floated in the air. Djamrock was thus doomed to an eternity of torment.

But he had died fighting; and that was enough for him.

The thought of what he had done, and what Cuzco had aided him in doing, appalled me.

I slithered away.

I was ashamed, so deeply ashamed, of Cuzco, of Djamrock, and of the rest of my fellow sentients. Could they not see that defeat was preferable by far to this kind of terrible victory?

That night, I crept out of my cabin and made my way through the pitch blackness of the interior planet’s artificial light, using memory to guide me, until I reached the lake.

And I there I sat, and listened to the waters lapping.

In the morning, as the sun rose. I watched the first fish leap from the water. I watched the aerials flock in the sky above, dancing patterns in air.

“Do you not see,” I argued, “that Cuzco must be banished? An example must be made.”

I was addressing the Guiding Council of the Sentients; twelve of us in all. Quipu, Biark, Sahashs, Loramas, Thugor, Amur, Kairi, Wapax, Fiymean, Krakkka, Raoild. And Sharrock, too, was there; for he had, unknown to me, been elected as a thirteenth Council Member and hence now had a responsibility for the government of this world.

The meeting was going badly. Quipu’s five heads were all laughing at me for my attempt to actually punish Cuzco for achieving a glorious victory.

Sharrock’s scorn too was evident in his every cold glare.

And the others-sentients I had known and regarded as friends for so many years!-treated me with a contempt that they barely bothered to disguise.

Thugor made a pacifying gesture. His words were silken, we felt them as much as we heard them. “You, my Sai-ias,” he said, “you, kind and gentle being, have always been a kisser of the arse of your enemy. Cuzco however is a hero. He showed us a way out. Through war and glory. You should celebrate him, not censure.”

“What he did was wrong,” I insisted.

“He enabled Djamrock to escape.”

“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-”