And still, she glowed.
The ship’s Commander approached us. She too was wearing an exquisite white gown, and exuded effortless authority.
“Congratulations,” said Commander Laeris.
“Thank you Commander.”
“They’re a vile bunch, the FanTangs, aren’t they?” the Commander said, laughter in her voice.
“I’ve rarely seen viler,” I smiled.
The Commander kissed Averil on the temples, courteously, and the two of them basked in the joy of being female.
“He’s quite a catch,” the Commander teased, and Averil burst out laughing, and her skin glowed even more brightly.
And my spirits sank, further than-I have no metaphor for how far they sank-and I felt bleak melancholy sweep over me.
For, you see, honoured listener to my tale, whoever you might be: the females of my species always glow in the hours after passionate, love-filled sexual congress.
And yet I had not fucked Averil since yesterday.
Two of the ship’s most distinguished females stood on the stage and began to sing, unaccompanied, a melody of eerie beauty. I listened, and watched, wallowing in awe, yet sick with despair.
And I stared at Averil with desperate intensity as she listened to the delightful ditty; rapt and focused, visibly appreciating each tiny nuance; and I marvelled at the lustre of her intellect.
She glanced at me, with an unexpected look of regret. Then her eyes flickered to one side and her glow increased in radiance.
I followed her gaze.
Mohun.
Mohun!
The Chief Trader was a hundred years if he was a day. His face was old as parchment. He was physically fragile. How could she prefer him ?
I left the Banqueting Dome and walked back to my cabin. I sank into my bed, and wrapped the sheets over my face and mouth and tried to pretend I was hibernating, as my ancestors used to do.
Mohun!
My pain had an echo; for, many years before I met Averil, I had been married to a stunningly intelligent and percipient female. And she too had betrayed me.
My beloved was called Shonia, and I had asked her to be my bride when we were holidaying in the Olaran city of Pandorla, on a narrowboat on the river Kal. Amusingly, she claimed to be shocked by my effrontery in proposing to her, and pretended to slap me with rage. However, she misjudged both the distance between us and her own strength, and managed to swipe me off the boat with a single powerful blow. Still laughing, Shonia dived in after me and the two of us swam to shore, followed by the angry curses of the boatman.
We had been equals, back then. Shonia had refused to be bound by convention; and when we married, she allowed me equal rights and status. She had even tried her utmost to give me sexual pleasure, despite the frustrating limitations of our species biology. (We Olaran males, you see, cannot achieve orgasm; it is nature’s way of keeping us in our place, as my mother always said.)
For a whole year my soul nearly burst with joy. I believed I was the luckiest Olaran male in all of history; for I was in love, and I knew that the female I loved also loved me.
And then one day I had woken to find Shonia asleep and glowing, and I had realised this wasn’t my glow. She was connecting, sexually and spiritually, with another.
A month later I received a note from Shonia revoking our marriage, and asking me to leave our family home. I never saw her again. And that’s when I signed up for the Trader Fleet. To forget my grief.
Now it had happened for a second time.
And, after this second betrayal, my old grief had returned and merged with my new grief, to create a doubly-grieving knife (a metaphorical knife, I hasten to add, though perhaps I did not need to) that jutted from my soul.
“I beg pardon,” I said formally to Averil.
“You are forgiven.”
“I have proved an unworthy partner for you,” I said.
“Another has proved more worthy,” said Averil, concluding the divorce ritual. Then she grinned. “Oh come on Jak-is this really such a big deal?”
“To me it is,” I said stiffly.
“In this day and age? Many Olarans don’t mate for life any more. We could just be lovers.”
“I could not endure that.”
“They call them ‘fuck-friends.’ ”
“I could never be that. I love you, Averil.”
My words resounded like off-key notes.
“I know you do,” she said.
“Then I must leave the Fleet.”
“That’s your choice.”
“I will join the Explorer ship,” I threatened.
A wild gamble on my part; it failed utterly.
“Whatever,” she replied, casually.
“I could be killed,” I pointed out. “It’s a dangerous universe. We may never see each other again.”
“That’s too bad,” said Averil in bored tones.
I sighed, forlornly.
“Averil, I shall think of you always,” I said, with undimmed ardour.
“No doubt,” said Averil pleasantly, “you will.”
I packed my possessions into a box. Holos of my parents. A key-ring with all my metal-mind storage files, from childhood on. My identity pass. My bank folder. It was not much, after a life in service. I was well-off, admittedly, but I’d stock-piled no treasure, and I’d never been assigned my own planet. All the money I’d earned at trading, I’d spent on my women. First Shonia, then Averil.
I should have been more cunning, I realised. There were many males who kept their independence by embezzling from their own earnings before passing on their pay to their wives. I had never pursued that route; I was too much of a romantic.
Or, I mused, too much of a fool.
Mohun snorted. “You’re throwing your fornicatory life away,” he pointed out.
“I care not.”
“You have talent.”
“What do you care-you betraying son-of-a-slattern!” I sneered.
Mohun forced a smile; but I could tell he was hurt by my words.
“But you are still my friend,” I added, and the relief shone in his eyes.
“Listen Jak,” he said to me softly. “ I cannot deny that your former wife Averil has a truly gorgeous mind and lip-smackingly apt judgement. And I am, of course, privileged to be hers.”
“Indeed you are.”
“Indeed I am.”
Mohun was holding back his tears; and I respected that. For if he had wept, I would undoubtedly have done so too; and we would both have been lost.
“However, I should stress, my dear friend,” Mohun continued, “that my love affair with Averil and your consequent humiliation were not my choice, nor my desire.”
I nodded, to acknowledge that eternal truth; females choose males.
“I shall never see you again,” I said, and walked out of the Chief Trader’s cabin, to begin my new life.
BOOK 3
Sai-ias
I felt so very sorry for him.
He was, like all the new ones, angry; and savagely so. And bitter; unreachably so. Possessed by a wild desire to take revenge for what had happened to him and his people; and deranged, too, by grief and sorrow, at the loss of everything he had ever known.
And, as was always the case, he vented these feelings upon me.
“You murdering daughter-of-a-pustulent-rapist-who-fucks-whores bitch!” he roared, and then he spat at me, a rich mouthful of acidic spit that stung the soft skin of my face and left a sticky residue on my cheeks.
“You malice-tainted shit-eating-sloshy-farting father-fucker, how could you do it? How could you do it?” he roared, accusingly.
I yearned to touch him, and to soothe his rage; but I knew that my-from his perspective-monstrous appearance made my very presence an ordeal to him.
“Monster! You’re uglier-than-a-two-headed-mutant-baby monster!” he angrily told me, as he paced around his confining cabin.
“If you say so,” I replied, in the mildest of tones, but that just enraged him all the more.
All in all, my heart burst with sympathy; I knew just how this poor, sad creature felt.