The Pillars of Eternity

A flowing tread-rail carried him up the ship’s side to the manport. Inside, he went to the engine cabin, where he busied himself with checking out the fuel sticks, measuring their straightness (vital for smooth performance) and sampling their peculiar energy, which alone could send a ship faster than light. Finally he slammed them into the empty induction tubes (on landing there had been less than an inch of stick left).

He went to the main cabin and prepared himself a simple meal of the special foods he ate. He felt at home. The metal, the processors, the adp, the transmitters, enwrapped him. He was inside his ship like a babe inside the womb. No longer did it need to protect him from afar; there was no fear of distance, no narrow control-beam. Its emanations regulated his nervous system, his perceptions, carefully preserved him from harm, and did it all by means of a suffused ambiance of constant signalling that filled the air around him.

His ship; it was his tragedy, and his salvation, and his hope. It reached out its gentle hands and maintained him for as long as he remained within range. It gave him abnormal strength and immunity from many weapons. At ten miles its efficacy began to fade and he would fall ill. At fifteen miles he would die, in a horrible agony that was a repetition of the agony he could remember.

And the ship, just as it could reach out to regulate his ravaged body, could also reach out with its subtle beams to tell him what was happening elsewhere. Boaz settled himself in a low armchair, and without really meaning to, found himself indulging in the random spying he would sometimes resort to as a means of diverting his mind from the broodings that threatened to overwhelm him. His mind seemed to drift, as if in a waking dream, through the streets and buildings of Hondora. The sun was down; the day’s business was over. The town was giving itself over to the pursuits that mainly interested its habitants: the pursuits of aimless pleasure.

The ship’s beams lunged softly, undetectable, through metal, through walls of lithoplaster, paint and HCferric. Boaz perceived the interior of a crowded bar. Nymphgirls danced in the centre of the room, rarely with men, who held back and drank solidly.

His perspective shifted, zoomed in on a booth at the far end. A tough-looking man sat at a narrow table, a tankard in front of him. His face was broad and flat, with a spade jaw, squashed nose and widely separated eyes, as if it had been hit with a mallet. Sharing the table with him was a girl with long red hair, red lips, long cheeks. Her movements were mobile; she gestured and shifted as she talked, quite unlike her stolid partner.

There had been tease-play between them. Boaz saw that they had only met that night, but she was seeking a relationship. He was less enthusiastic, offhanded but not dismissive. Consequently they needled one another.

He looked at her in annoyance. ‘I keep thinking I’ve met you before. I have, haven’t I?’

‘Have you?’

‘Ah, I don’t know.’ He drawled his words, scarcely moved his jaw when he spoke. ‘Maybe it was your sister. You got a sister?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Yah – I guess it was somebody else. There are a million girls like you. I’ve had a hundred, at least.’

She leaned close, looked up at him from under long lashes. Her mouth hung open lasciviously. ‘You ever kill a girl like me?’

‘I’ve killed lots of girls.’

Boaz became sleepy. He dozed. The man and the girl danced, drank, drifted in and out of his awareness. There was a certain savage intensity developing between them. When he came fully awake again they were in a private room, facing one another across the mattressed floor like animals ready to pounce on one another. Both were naked.

Suddenly her eyes hardened. ‘You have killed somebody like me before. I’m Jodie. Remember?’

He looked uncertain, flexing his muscled body in impatience. ‘Jodie? But your face. It’s not the same. Not quite, anyway.’

She looked triumphant. ‘I’m altered. A hormonal imbalance in the tank. Too much thyroid. But I’m Jodie all right – and I remember.’ Her voice became fervid. ‘God, how I remember!’

With a darting movement she bent to her discarded clothing and came up with a coiled tendril of an object. It was a parawhip. Her hair swung about her shoulders as she straightened. Her words came in gasps. ‘I’ve got kinky thinking about it. But this time it’s going to be different. This time, I’m going to kill you!’

The whip sang out to reach for the man’s nerves and incapacitate him for her pleasure. But he was too quick for her. He sidestepped. Then he sprang, caught her wrist and twisted her arm, catching the handle of the whip with his other hand as it fell from her grasp.

‘Sorry, honey, I don’t go for that clone stuff.’ His voice was gruff and hot. ‘There’s only one way I want to stay alive. For you, though –’