The Pillars of Eternity

Unable to share in the thievery and robbery by which the conduit gangs survived, he spent much of his time begging at the spaceport. By the time he was fifteen he had conceived an ambition: he wanted to be a shipkeeper. Those straight-backed, steady-eyed men, owners of their own ships, able to go anywhere, were heroes to him as they strode about the spaceground. They were less liable to kick him aside with a well-shod boot than were space passengers, mechanics or even company crewmen; more inclined to give him a coin instead. Dimly Boaz guessed that there was more to the universe than Corsair’s brutish, pitiless society. When he saw a ship soar up into the blue (Corsair had a blue sky) he thought of escape.

When he was sixteen, it happened. Boaz came humping out of the conduit onto a shadowed corner of the spaceground. Half a dozen Slashers, the conduit gang he avoided most, were chasing him, shouting his name at him, the name he hated, the name that described what he was.

He might even have got away from them had not a pylon been in his way. With his mode of locomotion he could not change direction easily at speed. It gave one of them a chance to head him off. His stick was kicked from under him and went skittering away. He scrabbled after it, but they had him now. They put a prong on him to hear him scream.

He only felt one jolt. Then a change came over the scene. The Slashers paused, their yells cut short. The prong was suspended in midair. Boaz raised his eyes as he lay on the floor of the spaceground. He saw a pair of bare feet, above them bare ankles and legs bare up to the mid-thigh. Then the hem of a chiton, a toga-like garment that draped loosely from the shoulders.

It was a garment worn by professional people who did not have to work much. The young Boaz peered up over his humped, twisted shoulder. Above the white fabric of the chiton he saw blue eyes gazing from a clean-shaven face with hair cut neatly across the forehead.

The stranger must have stepped from behind the pylon. The Slashers could have dealt with him easily, but they seemed too surprised to act for the moment. The conduit gangs had a tacit agreement with the port managers: they did not molest off-world visitors on the spaceground itself. Yet that did not seem to be all that was restraining them. There was something in the unflinching look of the newcomer that was overpowering.

He made a sweeping gesture with his arm. ‘Be off with you.’

They did not move at once but after a few moments, with surly glances, they made their way back to the conduit. The stranger retrieved Boaz’s stick and handed it to him. Boaz planted its end on the floor and hauled himself up it until he was as nearly upright as he could be. He came not far above the stranger’s waist.

‘Thank you, sir. If you could spare a small coin, sir …’

The man in the chiton ignored his automatically replayed spiel. He was looking Boaz over with a professional eye.

‘Were you born in that condition, young man?’

Nervously Boaz took one hand off his stick to clutch his ragged tunic protectively to him, bunching it up at his throat. ‘Yes, sir,’ he whispered.

‘Have you ever seen a doctor?’

‘A doctor, sir?’

Boaz scarcely knew what a doctor was. Sickness on Corsair was as rare as congenital disorder; natural selection had bred it out.

‘A doctor is someone who mends a body that has gone wrong.’ The man spoke patiently, at once understanding the extent of Boaz’s ignorance.

‘No, sir.’ Boaz held out his hand but then, perceiving that he was to be given nothing, made as if to shuffle off.

‘Wait,’ the man said. ‘I wish to talk to you. Follow me.’

Wonderingly Boaz obeyed. He felt peculiar and out of place as the man escorted him into one of the hotels lining the spaceground. Soon he found himself in a well-lit, well-furnished room. It was all strange to him; he was not used to furnished interiors.

The man spoke, but not to Boaz. A minute later a servitor appeared and delivered a covered tray. Inside it was an oval plate of spiced food. The man invited Boaz to eat.

The food was delicious, but scant in quantity. Boaz did not guess that this was because his host, seeing his half-starved features, did not wish to overburden his stomach. With it was a fizzy drink, the sort Boaz liked and bought often. He gulped it greedily.

The man in the chiton let him finish before beginning to talk to him again. ‘Your body can be mended,’ he told him. ‘Your bones can be remade and straightened. Your tissues can be stimulated and adjusted, so that you will attain your proper growth. Did you not know this?’

Boaz shook his head. He had never even thought about it.

‘The process is, of course, very costly.’