Debatable Space Page 2

  “I demand to be released.” And don’t provoke them. Let the Cheo pay the ransom, it’s only money.

  “The Cheo will never negotiate with terrorists.”

  “Your father is a rich man. He can afford it.”

  “Surrender, or you will feel his wrath,” I tell them.

  They start to laugh at me. “Surrender or you will feel his wrath!” mimics the child, in a booming B-movie voice, hopping up and down. Flanagan, too, has to cover his face with one hand to hold his laughter in.

  “I will not be treated like this.”

  Flanagan tries to resume his previous severe look. “You’re our prisoner now,” Flanagan says, “you’ll do as we damn well…”

  I strike Flanagan in the face. He has no expectation of the blow. His skull shatters and blood flies from his nose. I whirl like the wind, claws extending from my exohands, and I slash the hamstrings of the Loper, back-kick the woman and…

  Lena

  I blame you. You gave me poor advice. Not so, Lena. I specifically told you not to lose your temper.

  But you might have guessed I’d ignore you. (Sigh.)

  How was I to know they’d be so good at fighting? These people are pirates Lena. They are deadly and seasoned warriors. You cannot defeat them with your dojo training.

  My pain is infinite, my predicament painful and harrowing. This is torment, this is hell, this is hopelessly humiliating. Lena, console yourself with…

  Shut up! I am in semi-coma. I can move, I can talk, I can breathe, I can eat. But…

  But I feel as if I’m trapped under a massive gravitational field. Every movement is slow, so slow, slo-mo with heartburn, and each breath is an achingly prolonged rasp and wheeze.

  And, I, am, ob-lig-ed, to, speak, a, syll, a, ble, at, a, time.

  It, is, un, en, dur, a, ble.

  Jamie

  Wow! She’s hot.

  What a babe! A beaut.

  I wonder if she fancies me?

  Maybe I’m too young for her.

  Or at least, I look too young. Maybe ten was a mistake. If I was eleven, or twelve, maybe I could still be a player. But women hate it when your balls haven’t dropped and you don’t need to shave. How picky is that!!!!!!

  I watch her on the hidden camera, as she shuffles from wall to wall. Her face is a frozen mask. That semi-coma must hurt like hell. I wish she could see me. Come on, look at me! Here I am! Jamie! The cute one!

  Even semi-paralysed, she still does it for me. Hornnyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

  I assume the Captain’s planning to kill her.

  Pity.

  Maybe I should call in and see her? Win her over with my banter and my rare ability to fart rhythmically?

  But maybe not. She might think I’m immature. She might not like it when I pick my nose and slurp the green bogies.

  But on the other hand… maybe I’m just too good for her.

  I prefer that. I’m too good for her!

  Nyaaahhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Brandon

  “I… have… a… complaint,” she says.

  “Take it up with the Captain,” I tell her.

  “I… can’t…………………………………….”

  I die of boredom waiting for her to finish her sentence.

  “…………… eat.”

  “I’ll inject you.”

  I take out a compressed-air syringe. Connect it up to a food vial. She is looking at me with weary eyes.

  “B……. r……. a……. a.”

  “Brandon,” I say, ending her interminable attempt at speaking my name.

  She looks at me. Her eyes are pools of sorrow. She radiates vulnerability, passion, grace, beauty, she is a woman a man could happily die for.

  “You made your bed, lie in it,” I tell her curtly. I inject the food.

  Her look curdles into one of pure hate. Speaking is too tiring for her, so she just uses the resources of her penetrating stare.

  “M… y……. f……. a……. th…”

  “I don’t want to hear about your father.”

  I leave.

  Behind me, I hear a stifled, semi-comatose sob. I feel a pang of pity for her.

  Flanagan

  My dream was to be a musician. I studied Spanish guitar, electric guitar, jazz guitar, fusion-techno guitar, keyboards, composition. After I escaped from my home planet of Cambria, and I’d got my head free of all the shit that happened there, I spent twenty years working on my music. I composed, I played, I mastered new instruments, I worked seven days a week, getting ready for my launch on galactic television. I lived and breathed music.

  Blues, boogie-woogie, reggae, hip-hop, techno, garage, Cuban fusion, bluegrass, flamenco soul and electro-soul, numusic, Jig Jag, gospel – I was the acknowledged master of all the revered historical musical styles. Modern styles held little appeal for me, I was the king of retro. But I was filled with an exhilarating sense that, by some magical process, I was creating my own musical synthesis. I was combining style with content, soul and rhythmic energy, and I wrote lyrics that cut and shredded the listener with their passion and which oozed and dripped and slimed sarcasm and attitude. My combo was called Flanagan’s Band, and we were going places.

  Then my wife and children were wiped out by an asteroid strike.

  We were living at the time on the planet Pixar, one of the “Free Worlds”. It was a warm, pleasant planet with gorgeous lakes and no seas. Pixar had two moons, and was subject to terrific tidal forces that caused regular flooding. But we all lived in houses that converted easily from outdoor to underwater living. And there was something about the air… it was oxygen-rich, low in impurities, and the act of breathing it in made you feel good.

  Then the asteroid hit us. It was an astonishing, epic catastrophe, which for the inhabitants of Pixar was totally unexpected and beyond our wildest imaginings. It led to the extinction of millions of species and the end of civilisation on the planet. The atmosphere leached temporarily into space, volcanos erupted, entire continents ripped into segments, and the resulting earthquakes spewed up the planetary depths on to the surface.

  I was off-planet at the time, doing a gig on a space station in orbit around Pixar’s sun. But my wife Janet, and my son Adam, and my daughters Claire and Adelaide were all on the planet. They were, I guess, obliterated within the first ten minutes. I can only hope they didn’t know what was happening to them.

  And when I heard the news, I literally couldn’t believe it. I became almost psychotic in my scepticism, convinced the Universe was playing a practical joke on me. Then I replayed the vid footage and I wept. An entire world died… and all of my family died with them!

  After this appalling catastrophe, there was mourning throughout the inhabited universe. Emails of condolence came from the remotest planets in the human domain, and the Government of Earth declared a day of mourning, in respect and homage to the dear departed.

  Then the conspiracy theorists started up. They whined and whinged and sent hysterical and fantastical texts and emails across the galaxy, in their usual (hysterical, fantastical!) fashion. According to these nutsos, the asteroid strike had been predicted decades before. But the Galactic Corporation decided to let it happen in order to give Pixar a more interesting and mountainous geography.

  And thus, according to these insane, delusional conspiracy theorists, the powers that be knowingly allowed tens of millions of humans to die in order to landscape a planet.

  All sensible folk scoffed at these wild allegations. The Cheo himself gave an interview and carefully disproved every one of the claims made against his administration. He was astonishingly persuasive and charismatic, and his approval ratings soared.

  But I believed every word. I knew, from my own experiences as a child on Cambria, that there is literally no limit to the evil of the bureaucrats who run the Corporation. They are heartless, ruthless, entirely without remorse or humanity. They are infinitely blessed, infinitely powerful, but they are also sava
ge, bloodthirsty, murdering, raping, greedy, profit-drenched, psychopathic monsters.

  No limit whatsoever.

  And so I watched the news coverage intently as, after the asteroid struck, the Galactic Corporation began its rescue operation. Survivors of the collision were forced to burn their dead for fertiliser. Galactic Corporation engineers moved in to reshape the planet as a global resort. The ice caps were melted to create a warm brilliant sea. Continents were broken up into islands with picturesque coastlines. The prevailing Pixar sentient species (a two-headed earthworm) was exterminated, and replaced with new species including colourful flying parrots, dolphins, herds of Purr (catlike herbivores) and genetically engineered clawless koalas from old Terra.

  I left Pixar, and I played a gig on a space liner in a neighbouring solar system. My Spanish guitar with hip-hop rhythms was an unqualified success. I sang a blues song too, about an asteroid miner who lost his heart, his lungs, his liver, all four limbs, his ears and his eyes in a series of terrible accidents, replacing them in turn with ramshackle and fairly unreliable prosthetic equivalents, and whose sad lament was entitled “ At Least I’ve Still Got My Own Balls ”.

  I went down a storm, but I couldn’t help feeling I was in the wrong line of work. After all the horror and injustice I had experienced in my childhood, after the trauma of losing my wife and family in what was meant to be one of the civilised parts of human space, I was still trying to make a living as a rock star…?

  So I loaded up the ship’s lifeboat with a year’s supply of stolen vintage wine, and made my escape. I was an outlaw from that day on.

  And now, I’m Captain of a pirate crew.

  Alliea

  Rob was an unlicensed boxer, I was his manager, as well as his lover, as well as his wife.

  They were scary days. Boxing was a capital crime, thanks to the Cheo’s latest edict. I guess he was afraid that the enslaved masses of the Universe would be driven into revolution and dissent at the sight of two men dancing around a ring hitting clumps out of each other.

  We travelled from planet to planet, and Rob would fight all challengers. He would fight two men in a single ring. He would fight women, he would even box with cyborgs, and beat them. He had an astonishing capacity to take physical punishment coupled with natural speed and grace and a remarkably fluid upper body. He was, some argue, one of the greatest boxers there has ever been.

  His greatest fight was against Eduardo Munoz. Rob was already an acknowledged champion at the cruiserweight level, but Munoz was a superheavyweight, a bruiser, a sheer block of human rock with the power of pistons in his arms. In training sessions, Munoz would pound the heavy bag so hard that the dents could not be removed. He would practise punching on concrete walls. He routinely killed sparring partners, and only regular bribes prevented him from being charged with murder.

  But Rob stepped up a weight division, bulked up, and fought like an angel. He slipped in and slipped out, ducked under Munoz’s sledgehammer blows, and threw so many powerful punches that the computer checker eventually lost count. Munoz had the heart and the wind cut out of him by Rob’s forensic dissection. By the end of fifteen rounds, Munoz could not raise his arms. So Rob pelted him with a thousand relentless punches before the final bell rang.

  The fight went to Munoz. The fix was in. The crowd was in uproar. But Rob calmly challenged Munoz to an instant rematch. The battered champion had enough pride to accept the challenge. The two men stood in the ring. Rob lowered his guard. He beckoned Munoz on, inviting him to give his best shot. So Munoz threw his best punch. Rob took it head-on, without any attempt to duck. He absorbed the blow, letting the kinetic energy flow through his head and torso and legs into the canvas. And he rocked, and he swayed, but he did not fall.

  Then Rob unleashed his counterpunch. He hit Munoz on the jaw, and the champion literally flew through the air, over the ropes, and landed on the three corrupt fight scorers. Two of them died, one of them was knocked unconscious. The referee – the only conscious member of the adjudication team – declared the fight in favour of Rob. We got a purse of $11 million. But we had to flee that night, pursued by angry gangsters.

  Ah, what glorious days… Ironically, I had never liked boxing before meeting Rob. But I came to love the sport for its speed and beauty and camaraderie, and for the fact it breached the ultimate taboo. Brain damage. Any other extreme sport – sky diving, sabre fighting, alligator wrestling – offered dangers and injuries that could easily be remedied by a trip to the organ bank. But a single powerful punch could cause irreversible brain damage that couldn’t be patched up without altering the psyche, or losing whole batches of memories.

  That was the buzz. Risk everything. Live for the moment.

  At least, that was the appeal for me. For Rob, it was more basic; he simply loved the sport. He was a natural athlete, he trained remorselessly. He trained with hunting dogs, running with them over rugged terrain. He raced horses. He pulled tractors with ropes to improve his upper-body strength; he once swam an entire ocean to improve his stamina. And his reflexes were superior to those of the average spacejet pilot.

  And boy, we made poetry in bed. Rob was the master of tantric, soul-shaking, buttock-trembling fucks. I was young, passionate, blonde then, and I had orgasms like supernovae. I will miss that. I know I’ll never feel such physical joy again.

  We toured the outer galaxies with our boxing show. Rob would challenge space miners and martial artists, and they would fight five or six hours at a time, without gloves or padding, until they were covered in blood and blisters. Rob never lost.

  He was my hero.

  We made a lot of money, and we had a huge amount of fun.

  Then I was raped by a space trooper, and Rob tracked him down and killed him. I was crazed, out of control, I wanted to kill the trooper’s squadmates, on the grounds that they must have known what their friend was going to do, and should have stopped him. But Rob said no, I was out of line, making accusations without evidence. He always had a strong sense of fair play. So I calmed down, and agreed to let it be.

  Then the troopers sought us out, looking for revenge, talking big to anyone who would listen about how they were all going to rape me this time. So we let ’em come, then killed the whole fucking lot of them. And we went on the run. That’s how we hooked up with Flanagan and his crew.

  It’s been a good life, until now.

  Now Rob is dead. And I’m alone.

  Let’s raise our glasses. To Rob.

  Lena

  I won’t sleep. That would be like death. So I endure my torment, at the hands of these wretched pirate scum.

  I stand at one end of the room. I shuffle. One, step, at, a, time.

  Five hours have passed. I am dehydrating. They’ve given me a tube, I suck greedily at it.

  I can hear sounds outside my room. Singing. Celebrating. A wake, for their lost colleague.

  I wish we’d killed them all. That thought is immoral. You shouldn’t…

  Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

  Shuffle. One. Step. At.

  Flanagan

  “I hate the idea of doing this. I guess I must.”

  Rob stands before us, sheepishly, his three-dimensional hologram image blinking at the camera.

  “Alliea, you’re the best. I love you. The rest of you… Ah you’re a bunch of useless fucking losers. May you die shamed. May you choke on your beer. You’re alive and I’m dead, fuck the lot of you!”

  We give a solid cheer to that.

  “Sing with me, comrades.”

  “There is a house in New Orleans

  They call the Rising Sun.

  It’s been the ruin of many a poor boy.

  And me, O God, for one.”

  We join in the singing, raucous and loud. Alliea’s contralto soars high above us. She does a jazz riff with the blues melody.

  Rob segues into a tech-hop number by Singularity, to a rhythm guitar backing laid down by me. He sings:

  “Soul sister, lover, brother, mo
ther, feel my

  Feel my!

  Feel it, hear it, blur it, murmur it, disinter it, whirr it, yeah that’s my spirit,

  Heart and soul, got no control, takes its toll, got no goal, ain’t a whole,

  Hate this world, spirit’s whirled, this dimension is unfurled,

  Can’t believe, cannot grieve, too tired to deceive,

  Empty life, got no strife, whored my wife, ate a knife and died and woke up

  In the organ banks, hey thanks, full of tranks,

  Wish I was

  Someone else

  Somewhere else

  Somewhat else

  Not myself

  Not with you

  Don’t feel blue

  Want to die

  So that I

  Feel my “I”

  Got no “I’, got no spirit, got no “me’, disinter it, let me die, let me be, let me be, let me be,

  The other guy

  The other girl

  Living in the other universe I curse I’m worse immersed in thirsting bursting

  Feel my spirit?

  I can’t feel it.

  I ain’t got it.

  Got no spirit.

  Got no spirit.

  Got no me.

  Got no I.

  Want to die.”

  Rob stops. He and I used to be a great double act. He was the rapper, I was the bluesman. But now… Now… No more music. No more Rob. I weep.

  “Shit guys, sorry,” says Rob’s hologram, “that one’s a fucking downer. Flanagan, you pissed yet?”

  “I am!” I call out.

  “I thought I’d finish by reading aloud all my email addresses, all 82 million of them. So keep your seats, this may take some time.” He’s grinning, foolish and silly and somehow ill at ease. “Or you know, since I’m dead now, any chance of a virtual blowjob from, ah, someone?” Rob fiddles with his trousers. But then he thinks better of it.

  “Shit what’m I talking about? I’ll outlive the lot of you. I gotta go, things to do.”