“Not here,” said Sharrock, calming himself visibly. “Not on this pathetic excuse for a planet. On my home world. She was part of the invading army. She serves the Ka’un.”
There was an appalled silence; and ruefully I acknowledged to myself that I had always known this day would come.
For I had recognised, of course, from Sharrock’s account of his battle with the female alien on Madagorian, the red-and-silver-haired Kindred Zala.
“Do you deny it?” Sharrock accused.
Zala laughed. “No, I do not deny it. I have no recollection of such a battle; but it may well be as you say. For I have fought, I will not deny it, many times in the service of the Masters of this Ship.”
Sharrock looked at me in triumph.
“You see?” he said savagely. “She fights for the demons who control this ship; she was a warrior in the invasion and slaughter of my world!”
“I know,” I said.
There was a terrible silence.
“You know?” said Sharrock, more stunned than if I had smote his skull with an axe.
“Yes. It is the way of this world: all of us know that the Kindred serve the Ka’un. It is why there are so many of them; they are ruled by the Ka’un, and they in turn rule us.”
Sharrock seemed to have lost the power of speech. He looked at Zala and tried to spit at her with contempt; but his mouth was too dry, and all he managed was an ugly croak.
“How could this be?” Sharrock said faintly, his eyes radiating accusation and hatred.
“We are soldiers; we serve,” said Zala, but there was shame in her eyes.
“You should also know,” I explained to Sharrock, “that I collaborate with the Kindred on a regular basis. That is how order is achieved on this world; the Ka’un speak to the Kindred, the Kindred speak to me.”
Sharrock stared at me with horror.
“Collaborate in what way?”
“Information. Discipline. The training of the new ones, and, if necessary, if they fail to settle into our world, their execution.” I spoke calmly, but inside my spirit was quaking with anxiety; I knew Sharrock was going to take this badly.
“You are the lick-cock of these craven giants?” said Sharrock.
“That is not how I would-”
“Oh Sai-ias,” said Sharrock, and my soul’s fire was quenched by his cold disdain.
“You are indeed,” said Zala to me, “our lick-cock; a phrase well chosen.” And she smiled, not pleasantly.
I bowed my head submissively; for one of the conditions of serving the Kindred was to comply with their strict etiquette of submissive behaviour.
“If you say so, Zala, then I will agree that the phrase is apt,” I agreed courteously.
“And now that Gilgara is gone,” added Zala.
“Indeed! I yield to your authority, mistress,” I said swiftly.
Zala smiled. Her look of triumph encompassed both me and Sharrock.
“Serve me well, beast,” said Zala arrogantly. And she departed.
There was a prolonged and horrifying silence. Sharrock’s unblinking blue eyes were like ice.
“How could you, Sai-ias?” Sharrock said to me. His voice was calm, which filled me with foreboding.
“If not me, then it would be someone else,” I explained. “Once it was a beast called Carulha; when he died, I took over his role, and his responsibilities.”
“And why did you not tell me all this? Before I conquered Gilgara and assumed chieftainship of the Kindred?” asked Sharrock savagely.
“It did not for a moment occur to me,” I admitted, “that you could win.”
Sharrock was silent for a long time. I waited.
“You are a traitor,” Sharrock concluded finally, in the quietest of tones.
“Sharrock,” I explained, “you cannot-”
“To deal with them, those evil conquering bastards, to do their bidding, that is truly-”
“You have to be pragmatic about-”
“TRAITOR!” Sharrock’s red face was redder still; his rage hit me like a punch.
“I do what I have to do,” I said, wretchedly.
And Sharrock drew his hull-metal sword from his scabbard in the blink of an eye; and he struck me with it in my face. The blow barely registered for me, but even so I flinched.
He struck me again, and again, hammering his sword against my carapace, my skull, jabbing my eyes, trying to hurt me and break flesh but failing.
Eventually he was too exhausted to lift his arm. He threw the sword down on the ground. Then he walked away.
Sharrock did not return to the Valley, nor did he have any further dealings with the Kindred.
And from that day on, he refused to speak to me.
Jak
It was one of those days.
I was leading the crew in an emergency drill. We performed a mock evacuation, with all five officers and ten ordinary crew members in spacesuits. A year had passed since the extermination of the FanTangs; I was Jak the Explorer now, no longer Trader Jak.
One by one the crew filed into pods and the pods broke away from the main ship and vanished into uncertain space.
I shared a pod with Albinia and Darko, an engineer. “You know this would never happen in real life,” said Darko, dourly. “If a missile ever got past our shields, we’d be dead.”
“Break away,” I said, and Darko hit the switch and the pod broke away from the main ship.
As we spiralled around weightlessly, Albinia’s hair lifted from her head in a halo. She looked at me. Just looked.
Galamea’s voice came through to me via my murmur-link implant. “ All pods detached, in fourteen point two minutes. Drill is over, return to the main ship.”
We re-entered real space, still spiralling around, with a clear view of Explorer through our window. She looked eerily beautiful.
Albinia was weeping.
“I apologise Star-Seeker, can I help?” said Drago, in terrified tones.
“It’s like being outside myself,” said Albinia, as she looked at Explorer’s exterior hull.
I was dining alone, and a tray crashed on the table next to mine.
“Can I join you?” Albinia said.
“Please do,” I said, startled.
Albinia slid into place beside me. “I have a favour to ask,” she said, in very quiet tones.
“I would be honoured,” I replied gallantly.
“You don’t know what I’m going to ask.”
“I’d be honoured anyway,” I insisted.
She looked vexed.
“Have I offended you, Mistress-”
She waved a hand; I silenced my own rhetoric. And then Albinia sat there, looking anxious, for quite some time.
“What?” I coaxed.
“I would like to be your friend.”
I nodded. And smiled, graciously, savouring the gift of her presence, and the nearness of her sublime intellect. And then:
“What?” I asked, baffled.
“Will you? Be my friend?”
“Um. Yes. Of course I will.” I was sweating now. This was indelicate beyond all measure. Friendship is the rarest gift a woman may offer to a man; and for a Star-Seeker to suggest it so openly to a mere Ship’s Master was unheard of.
“Good. That’s wonderful.” And she beamed, like a child that has a toy that can talk back.
“And indeed, I’m flattered beyond all measure that you asked,” I said.
“Good.”
“Yes, it is good.”
“What do we do now?” Albinia said hopelessly.
I smiled my most charming smile. “Well, I could tell you some stories of my days as a Trader. The duplicitous aliens; the magnificent deals! Or, if you prefer, I could tell you about the time I met the Empress, in my days at the Home Court, or-”
“You want to tell me stories?”
“Well-they’re good stories,” I said, defensively.
“And that’s what friends do?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “Friends, well. Friends take each other for granted. Interrupt each other. Give each other crap, forget each other’s birthdays, then make impossible demands at the worst possible moments. I could never treat you like that, Mistress!”