Before he reached the proposal, the bill from the shipyard astonished him.
“You agreed to it,” the Executive said.
“Did I have a choice?” Qad said. “I expected...” He stopped, aghast at what he had nearly said to the Chief Executive.
“To be treated more generously by the council?” The Chief Executive laughed. “Things have changed, young adventurer, since the last time you came proffering a handful of amateur medals.”
Qad flushed with anger. “Medals honored. Conquests approved. Rewards conveyed.”
“Your lack of judgment wiped out your resources. How do you intend to pay the shipyard bill? It increases every day. With interest.”
Glory had been cut off from power, for non-payment, and lay within a berth that kept the ship from drawing on starlight. Lacking power, wounded nearly to death, Glory would deteriorate, physically and intellectually, depleting its own resources to maintain Qad and the little sisters. If it survived, the ship would return to its childhood, begging information from other ships, who complied in response to offerings that Qad never questioned or understood. That was ship’s business.
Qad might return to his own childhood, absorbing the little sisters that he no longer could maintain.
He glanced again at the paper, forcing his attention past the bill, which he could never pay. Shaky with hunger and exhaustion and disbelief, he reached the end.
“But I planned to create my own lineage,” Qad said.
“Who’s stopping you? You have three little sisters –”
“Four!” Qad glanced down. Indeed the youngest had already begun to withdraw into his body, stunted by his lack of attention. If he had been alone, he would have slipped his hand beneath the apron to stroke her brow, perhaps even to touch her orifice with his finger to let her suck his blood for sustenance. But with the Chief Executive in his presence, that was impossible. Unthinkable.
At least it was the youngest, not the oldest, his favorite.
“– And you are young. You have plenty of time.”
“And you have plenty of little sisters,” Qad said. “For your own lineage.”
The Chief Executive glowered at him, but stroked his hand across his modesty apron, proudly. “Do you understand the advantages – the honors! – I’m offering you? Your shipyard bill paid, your ship restored, my support if you appeal the council’s decision –”
“You –”
Qad stopped. Do I expect him to support me if I refuse his proposal? he thought. Why am I arguing with him? Is he correct, and I’m a fool? His hand mimicked the Chief Executive’s, passing over the four bulges, one increasingly faint, beneath his own modesty apron.
“Why?”
“Your audacity appeals to me.”
“For an interbreed?”
“Of course! What do you imagine I’m talking about? Writing about?”
Qad had met a few interbreeds. He had to admit they had a certain... audacity.
He had dreamed of his own lineage, created by him and his little sisters, spreading out amongst the stars, conquering worlds. And yet everything the Chief Executive had said was true. This was an honor, a compliment.
“Audacity must be tamed, of course,” Qad’s suitor said. His heavy lids lowered over his pale eyes. “I am up to the challenge.”
Qad froze his expression. Is that what the council did to me, with its decision? he wondered. Tamed my audacity? It’s true I won’t soon again eliminate a second order of evolution, no matter what the danger.
“Your ship has a few more hours of its own resources to draw on,” the Executive said. “After that...” A warning, not quite a threat. “I’ll come back in time for you to make your decision without too much risk to your... lineage.”
He turned. Qad had to scuttle past him to open the sphincter. It clenched behind the Executive, leaving the unreadable scrabbles of Qad’s fingers shining on Glory’s inner wall.
Following the fast-fading glow of his rush to the access tube, Qad returned to Glory’s center and crawled into his pod. Ordinarily the bedding would have been resorbed and remade, but now it smelled of his sleep. He stretched out his hand to where he had thrown his shipsilk shirt, and found an amorphous, dissolving mass littered with his medals, and his sword and scabbard. He pulled away.
Qad reviewed the proposal in his mind’s eye, wishing for light so he might read the paper a second time. He wished for the Executive to put a deposit on his shipyard bill and allow Glory a few minutes’ power for light and maintenance, but of course the Executive’s interests were better served by leaving him in darkness and silence, his ship dying around him.
Qad would be relieved of debt, Piercing Glory repaired and upgraded to current standards. Glory would like that, Qad thought. They might even win an appeal, gaining two worlds’ worth of acclaim instead of a zero balance.
He would sleep, and then make a decision, but his choice was unavoidable. He could only make it irrevocable.
The little sisters woke him again and again, begging for food. By the time he gave up and rose, he was ravenously hungry. His fingertips were pierced and sore from the little sisters’ sucking. The youngest had revived and rebounded. The oldest purred with satisfaction, eyelids heavy.
As desperate as the little sisters, Qad begged Glory for food, a bath, a new shirt. The call went unanswered.
Hoping the Artificials had some residual power, he called for one to bring cosmetics. Again, he received no reply. He searched the chambers and corridors until he found an Artificial Stupid with a store of face paint. Scratching Glory’s wall desperately to obtain a glimmer of light, he did his best to make up the little sisters. When he painted their orifices, they snapped at him with hungry little teeth. When the youngest bit him a third time, he snapped his fingernail against her face. She screeched and withdrew as far as she could. He snarled at her, not bothering to calm her.
He worked particularly diligently on the eldest, then thought again and smeared away the paint on her eyes. He gripped the youngest’s face in one hand and decorated her as formally and elaborately as he could.
She tried to bite him again.
When he had finished, he pulled on his rumpled, stained apron and swordbelt, and went to the access hatch to wait, unshirted and grubby. Even the sword-belt carried stains, none, he regretted, from duels, and the sword’s edge remained dull.
Hardly a scene from a romance, he thought. But it was the best he could do with his – and Glory’s – resources fast declining.
A scratch at the access hatch. Qad pulled open the sphincter and followed the energetic leader light into the shipyard.
The Executive’s quarters surrounded Qad with opulence, everything clean and new, sharp-edged and glittering. The lights blazed. Artificial Stupids surrounded him, herded him to a bathing room, and scrubbed him and the little sisters clean. He cupped his hand over the eldest little sister, to shield her. The Artificial Stupids did not notice.
They shaved him, pomaded his hair, dressed him in silk trousers and open-fronted shirt, and made up three of the little sisters’ faces. The eldest remained concealed and unnoticed beneath his hand.
One of the Artificial Stupids handed him an elaborate modesty apron. The Artificials departed so he could arrange it himself, which puzzled him since they had already seen him, and the little sisters, naked.
He was surprised that the apron followed his own, old-fashioned customs, concealing the eyes and orifices of the little sisters.
The Artificials returned and herded him again, to an even more elaborate receiving room. The Chief Executive, dressed in vivid white with silver apron embroidery, sprawled on a black couch, his great stomach bulging into his lap. A bottle of wine stood near, with a single glass half full.