The Great Hydration

“That market is the secret of their power. They created it and they manage it, as the only real centre of trade on the whole planet. It gives them their wealth and their prestige, and makes it possible for them to impose their own conditions on anyone who wants to come there. Physically they could be wiped out overnight, but they’ve been there right through the evolution of the desert species, whose history they have practically managed, and that gives them enormous psychological pull. They rule by nerve.”

“That’s what I don’t understand,” Krabbe complained. “There’s a whole crop of intelligent species now. We probably haven’t even seen them all yet! How could that happen in only fifty thousand years?”

“Fifty thousand is the lower limit, sir. It could be as much as a quarter of a million, though that’s an equally ridiculous period from our point of view. I suspect the losters had a hand in that, too. They needed servant species to help them survive. To that we can add that there must be a terrific rate of mutation. There’s an awful lot of radium down there. They even use it to power their engines.”

“Were you surprised to find a waterless biology, Spencer?” Bouche asked.

“Yes sir, I was. We picked up a couple of specimens. Seeing as how they evolved from water-based animals in the first place, the body chemistry is pretty ingenious. Their bodies do hold tiny quantities of water, but it’s held in a glycerine-like gel. They don’t perspire or excrete liquid waste. Their blood doesn’t circulate, if you can believe it. Oxygen and nutrients and all the rest migrate chemically through gelatinous blood, the molecules being passed hand to hand through the gel, so to speak. I’d swear it was impossible if I hadn’t seen it.”

Krabbe stared at the interferoscope plate, where the ‘lobster’ was disappearing inside the building which was the market overlords’ special retreat and where, presumably, they could be permanently drenched in water.

“Tenacity,” he murmured. “That’s what those old boys have got, all right. So that’s what we’ll call this planet, okay? Tenacity.”

“All right, if you want,” Bouche said sourly. “Tenacity it is.”

The food tray supported nonchalantly by the flat of one hand, Joanita Serstos walked the corridors of the gogetter ship with an easy, lank stride. She smiled on coming to the locked titanium alloy door.

Licking her lips, she fingered the lock tab.

“Hi, honey,” she said. “How goes it?”

“Hello, Jo,” a good-natured, if weary, male voice answered. “Why don’t you come in?”

A miniature oval image had appeared on the door. It showed the interior of the prison cell. Roncie Reaul Northrop lounged in an easy chair, one foot plonked on an occasional table. She tut-tutted to see how careless he still was with the furnishings, despite her admonishments. There was a big coffee stain on the carpet. The place was a mess.

He looked up from the book he was reading and smiled in greeting as she walked in, letting the door swing shut behind her. The vidset in the corner was switched on; involuntarily she glanced at the living, glowing flesh-tones it showed.

He followed her gaze and his smile became broader. It was a tape of her visit the day before. Their naked bodies were working away, her fleshy buttocks gyrating and nearly filling the screen.

She watched interestedly for a few moments, then waved her hand to turn the set off. She swept Northrop’s feet off the table to make room and laid down the tray.

“Really, Roncie.”

“Only trying to bring a blush to those maidenly features.”

“No chance.”

She lifted the cover off the tray to arrange the meal the way she knew he liked it. Knife, fork, mustard and chile sauce for the steak, chopsticks and soya sauce for the bowl of fried rice and prawns, a gold-plated spoon for the tangy lemon marsala custard. Northrop breathed deeply. The tang of the chile sauce somehow reminded him of her. Her skin was copper, almost orange, her face high-cheekboned. What he liked especially were her muscular, lithe legs and her long sexy stride.

“Tell me something. Did Krabbe & Bouche order you to keep me serviced while I’m in the brig? Or is that a bonus?”

“Shut up and eat.”

Patiently she began picking up the books that were scattered about, placing them back in the shelves. She smoothed out the bed and vacuumed the carpet. By the time he had dealt with the steak, she was cleaning off the coffee stain with a remover pad.

There was more than idle curiosity to his question. She had never consented to take a tumble with him until his incarceration. It could be out of sympathy of course, but equally it was possible his masters wanted him in a receptive frame of mind. After all, she was a Krabbe & Bouche bondwoman, one of about fifty bonded people on the gogetter ship. The entire staff, the entire ship’s complement, was bonded—Krabbe & Bouche did not recruit staff on any other basis. They wanted reliability.