Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

“All very satisfying,” said Mohun. “We’ll set up a trading post. Have you signed the contracts with them?”

I shook my head. “Not yet; give me a few days more.”

“I have every faith in you, Trader Jak. A drink?” said Mohun.

“Always,” I avowed. Mohun poured two thimbles of rich-juice. We sniffed, then swallowed, then slammed; and I felt a familiar pin-prick in my eyes and a pounding in my brain.

We each took a deep breath, as the rich-juice entered our brains and sent our thoughts into violent paroxysm.

And then tranquillity descended upon us. Our moods became mellow. And we engaged, for a quarter hour or more, in chit-chat about our favourite colours and textures and smells; and reminisced about the soft touch of Madyouran silk upon one’s body, and the tenderness of the Laumarax star-flower, and other such memories.

“They are, the FanTangs I mean, an appalling species in many ways,” I told Mohun. “Violent. Warmongering. Scornful of other species. And yet all the indications are that they will honour a deal; and, with sufficient intimidation from us, will refrain from trespassing on other planets in the Olaran Trading Zone.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Oh the usual precautions,” I said. “One cannot be too careful.”

The celebration banquet was, as one would expect from a Trading Fleet as sophisticated and cultured as our own, magnificent.

It was held in the Banqueting Dome of the Court Ship, a glass-shelled room which offered a spectacular view of the stars around us.

I wore my Fogan life robe, made of silk from the finest queen Fogan-spiderbirds. The robe had once been a shawl that was wrapped around the new-born me; at which time it bonded with my spirit so it would always be perfectly attuned to my moods.

Tonight the robe was cheerfully scarlet and blue and bejewelled and dazzling, and swept behind me as I walked. I wore a tight tunic over my muscled torso and my legs and arms were wrapped in wool plucked from young Mantrian Shaals.

“You look wonderful,” said Averil, who wore a rich pure-white Drax-hide gown, her hair pinned back to highlight the smoothness of her high forehead. Slyly I ogled her acuity; she was indeed sublime.

“Kiss my lips,” I requested, and she did; my lips were lightly coated in electrically-charged jewel dust and sent sparks into her tongue. Beneath my robe, my entire body was coated in the same dust, which kept me in a permanent state of sensual excitation.

“A good day’s trading,” said Chief Trader Mohun, as he ushered me to my seat at the banquet table. I admired the arrangement of the dishes-a thousand tiny portions in a pyramid that hovered above the table. As each course was eaten, the pyramid would re-form into ever more appealing new shapes.

I sat, and looked around, admiring the beauty of my fellow Traders and the majesty and understated authority of the assembled Mistresses of the Fleet.

However to my dismay I saw that there were-seated directly opposite me, like black thunderclouds in a clear blue sky-two grim-faced Space Explorers. Dressed in drab grey synthetic-fabric tunics with no bodily or facial adornments and not a trace of, well, finesse. The younger one was pretty enough-though hardly beautiful by the standards of the Court Ship-but his companion was old and bald with eyes like black holes. This wizened old spacefarer had skin like withered hide, and a scowl that made me shudder. I conjured up my most charming smile, and vowed to never let myself become so decrepit.

“I am Trader Jak Dural,” I said to the Space Explorers, “and it is an honour to encounter such famed adventurers; I’ve read so much of your exploits.”

The old one glared; the younger one beamed.

“Do you even know,” the older one said, “who we are?”

“It’s on the tip of my tongue,” I said sweetly, checking my factology via murmur-link.

“I am Morval, once I was Assistant Chief Trader to the Empress,” said the one whose name, I now knew, was Morval.

“I recall your name; the honour is all mine,” I replied.

Morval! One of the most legendary arseholes in the history of the Olaran Home Court!

“My name is Phylas,” said his young companion, and flicked his tongue so I could see he did at least have a jewelled stud embedded in it.

“You have, I take it, been many years in the wastelands of space?” I asked.

“That’s what we do,” said Morval grimly.

“I’m hoping,” added Phylas, “for advancement into the Trader Fleet one day.”

“Once your suspended sentence has lapsed,” added Morval, cattily, though it was hardly a surprise to me; only the old and the criminally disgraced would serve with the Explorers.

“Is it a crime I would have heard of?” I asked brightly.

Phylas scowled, and his youthful good looks were marred. “Forgery of alien artefacts.”

“Skilfully executed?”

“Apparently not.”

“Then you deserve,” I said, uncharitably, “everything you got.”

“I gather,” said Morval, “that the negotiations with wretched FanTang have been successful?” He had, I noted approvingly, changed the conversation with some degree of tact.

“Early days,” I said modestly. And Morval grunted, with open scorn.

“This system was one of my most appalling missions,” Phylas admitted. “I found it… well, appalling in many ways.”

“They boiled us alive,” Morval informed me. “Or rather, our simulacras. It was a test of course. When we survived, they agreed to meet our trading team.”

“They’re a monstrous species,” I agreed.

“Cruel,” said Morval.

“Treacherous,” added Phylas.

“Vicious,” clarified Morval.

“Barbaric,” muttered Phylas, further clarifying what did not need to be further clarified; I realised these two had spent a great deal of time together in deep space.

“Bloodthirsty,” Morval countered.

“How,” Phylas burst out, “can you do business with monsters like these?”

I was amused at his naivety. “What would you rather do?”

“Isolate them!”

“Then they’ll never,” I pointed out, “improve.”

“Ah,” said Phylas, the light of insight in his eyes. “So we’re really using trade as a way of making barbaric civilisations more… civilised.”

“Define civilised,” I said coolly.

“Not eating your young, or enslaving a rival sentient species.”

“Fair definition,” I conceded. “But our job is not to conquer, or to manipulate societies.”

I sipped my wine, and felt a glow as it slid down my inner throat, then entered my outer throat, and then proceeded downwards into my stomach where I tasted and savoured it again.

“Our job,” I explained, “is to make the universe a better place, through the fairer distribution of its treasures and its artefacts of sentient-created beauty.”

And I showed them the jewel that hung around my neck; a diamond the size of a Toowit’s egg; a gem of the rarest beauty.

“Jewels,” said Phylas. “It’s all about jewels?”

“Pretty much,” I admitted. “Plus fabrics, objects of artistic merit, music, novels, films-mainly, though, jewels.”

And I selected and ate my first morsel of food from the aerial display; a crustacean paste spread upon the liver of a snowbird. It was, as I had anticipated, sublime.

The second bottle of wine surpassed the first; it had a rich tang like the bass notes of a stringed larura mingled with the promise of sunshine on a cloudy day.

Indeed, each course was a joy to be savoured a dozen times in each of my taste organs. I gorged myself, and drank until my vision swam. Then I circulated around the table, conversing with a wide variety of Traders and Mistresses and crew.