The Pirates’ Hall. It’s the greatest building on Captain Morgan’s Planet: a huge room with sheer brick walls and a glass roof looking up to the night sky and the double stars of the Helicon system.
The hall is shaped like a coliseum, a perfect cylinder with superb acoustics and cambered floors, which mean that those in the centre tables can be clearly seen and heard by those half a mile away near the walls.
We are at Centre Table – Lena, Harry, Alliea, Brandon, Kalen, Jamie and myself. Alby skulks around mysteriously, occasionally flowing away and reappearing as a pattern of circular lights on the glass ceiling. It’s a curious thing with Alby; normally he’s so much one of the gang, that I forget how different he really is. For Alby, socialising is bizarre; friendship is peculiar, though a welcome discovery; and it seems to him entirely natural and ordinary to move everywhere at light speed. And so, like a will-o’-the-wisp, he is here there and everywhere. No gossip eludes him; no table is a stranger to him. He even nuzzles under tables and warms the boots of huge hairy warriors.
Grendel is my host. He is a former pirate captain who is now the elected leader of the pirate haven, Captain Morgan’s Planet. He manages a team of the most gifted prostitutes in the human universe – men, women, transsexuals, duo-sexuals, castrati, Dolphs, Lopers, and more. But he’s not a pimp, in the classic sense of the word. He’s an agent, personal trainer, inspirer and motivator. These whores will cut a punter’s heart out for transgressing the binding sex contract in even the smallest particular. So, if you like it rough, you can have it rough. But if you cause an iota more pain than you have bargained for, you will die.
It adds, people say, a spice to the prostitute-punter relationship. But these whores are the best. They are the masters and mistresses of the art of love.
The planet itself is a cornucopia of hot spas and torrential waterfalls. A favourite game is to shoot the rapids from Hispanaiola to Lisbonville, then physically crawl the ten miles from the river to the hospital in order to receive limb and organ grafts. Many die, but here, life is cheap. The pirates who end up here have fought and slain and been tortured and seen their families horribly killed. Many enter a fatalistic state where death is sought in a million random ways. It all makes for a certain wildness, in a corner of inhabited space where there are no soldiers, no law officers, no Doppelganger Robots, and no rules.
Grendel and I go way back. We once fought a duel which lasted for six weeks of grisly, eye-gouging, biting and kicking hand-to-hand combat. By the end neither of us had a functioning limb, and we were reducing to biting each other’s throats. But, hey, we survived, and we’ve been friends ever since. One day I must ask him what we fought about; I made a computer note of it somewhere, but the actual memory is long gone.
Grendel bangs the Centre Table with his beer tankard, which is a two-pint glass carved out of pure 21-carat diamond. The diamond facets sparkle in the light of the overhanging candlebulbs. A hush descends over the hall. Grendel nods to me.
“A song.”
I pick up my guitar. I lightly strum it. I have tuned the instrument to play acoustic guitar with an automatic harmonic and a fluid accompaniment of harp and wah-wah guitar and drums. When I strum the strings, a band plays. If I change my touch, the guitar sound morphs into a powerful saxophone.
I play one of my favourite songs from the Golden Age of blues and rap. I begin with a soft, lyrical, beautiful chorus. My voice soars up, harsh but pure, until the words bounce lightly against the glass roof that bares to us the glittering stars.
“I never thought that I would see,” I sing,
“Such beauty and such tragedy
And foolish fucked up blazin’ wasted lives,
And un’xpected sublimity
I never thought that I would see
So much of life, and of the genius of our universe.”
A heartrending moan is ripped from the entrails of the guitar, and I move into the rap section:
“She was a two-bit crack whore, and she was working the streets
He was a psychopath and she thought he was sweet.
And she played his games, and then she asked to be paid,
And he called her a ho, and he left her for dead.
I was her sorry ass man, her oreo boy,
I was no brotha from the hood, I had my PhD.
And she played me and she lied to me and treated me mean
And so I told her, you a chicken head, I ain’t seein’ you again.
And then I saw her dead, at the hos-pi-tal.
Not smiling no more, got holes for eyes, not smiling no more, ’cause her lips been gouged.
Not smiling.
And I figure it’s my fault, for despairing, and not caring, not holdin’ and keepin’ her.
But, you see, I never thought that I would see
My baby dead.”
And again the chorus, rich, soulful, evocative:
“I never thought that I would see
Such beauty and such tragedy
And foolish fucked up blazin’ wasted lives,
And un’xpected sublimity
I never thought that I would see
So much of life, and of the genius of our universe.”
Lena is nodding her head to the melody, the whisper of a smile on her lips.
Rap again:
“I thought my life was over, when they tracked me and they captured me,
See, they sentenced me to be the only PhD on Death Row, y’know.
But I didn’t give a damn, ’cause I had killed a man, this oreo boy,
I had vengeful motherfucking man-who-killed-my-girl-killing joy.
See the psychopath, he had his friends downtown, but his ass was down,
And I don’t deny, she made me cry, I was her sorry ass man, her oreo boy,
And I killed for her, I paid the bill for her, and I was prepared
To go to Hell for her.
But then they fried my brain, and they wiped my mind,
And they let me go. A hundred years ago.
Yeah, she was a two-bit crack whore and she was working the streets.
I was her oreo boy, and I knew that she was sweet.”
And the soul singing returns:
“I believe that every day will be a better day for me.
And I believe that every day will make me happier.
And I believe that every day will make the world a better place.
And every day I learn I’m wrong, but I believe!”
And the last chorus:
“I never thought that I would see
Such beauty and such tragedy
And foolish fucked up blazin’ wasted lives,
And un’xpected sublimity
I never thought that I would see
So much of life, and of the genius of our universe.”
I stop. There’s a rich, reflective silence. Then the sound of tankards hitting the wood of the table reverberates around the hall. I nod, moved, and wait.
A black-haired woman with a scarred face and angry eyes speaks.
“A fine song,” she says. And then she repeats some of the lyrics, without the rap, but with a soft, gentle verbal caress: “I’ve seen and experienced things, That’ll push the average to the edge and swan-dive to death, I’m two guys, multiplied by ninety-three guys, Evenly balanced seein’ evil equally in each eye now, Maybe I’m the most thorough worker on the job to you, Or maybe I’m the one, who was plottin’ to rob you.” She nods, appreciative. “We thank you. What is your name?”
“I’m Captain Flanagan, pirate.”
“I am Hera. This is my tale.”
Her voice is still gentle, and soft, so we all quieten as much as we can. Her words slip around the hall like butterflies, and we dart our heads and ears to hear them.
“I was born a slave, I will die a free woman.”
Tankards bang on tables.
“I was the youngest of five sisters. These are their names.
“Naomi was the eldest, she was tall and slim and she loved to run. She was a gazelle, a meteor, whenever she was with us our spirits soared. Naomi was a leader. A person you wanted to be with. We all loved her. Some say she resembled our mother though of course, we did not know our mother. For we were born on Hecuba.”
These last words are spat out like poison venom. All are chilled, for all of us know of Hecuba. A fertile paradise farmed and tended by men, and men alone.
“The second-eldest child was Clara. Clara was a sulky one. We quarrelled a great deal. I was seven years younger, I thought Clara was rude and bossy and, yes, I was wrong and, yes, I repent every cruel and horrible word I said to her, when I was five years old, and when I was six years old, and when I was seven years old and when I was eight years old, and when I was nine years old. But when I was ten years old my elder sister Naomi was taken for harvest and Clara became the mother of our family, and we stopped quarrelling. She was seventeen, and she took her responsibilities seriously. She made us laugh, she sang us to sleep. This is the song she sang.”
Hera’s soft speaking voice modulates into a sweet, unaffected singing voice. Her song is a lullaby written some time in the twenty-first century, and the melody has a haunting clinging quality. It is written in a modulated style; each note shifting through six or seven notes before arriving back at the core note. Hera sings it with huge charm:
“Expectat-i-i-i-on
Of morning’s dawn that’s
Dawning on
Our happy world
Imagine i-i-i-i-i-it.
El-ev-at i-i-i-on
Of human souls
That aren’t controlled
Into paradise.
Imagine i-i-i-i-i-it.
Time to sleep and dream and let your mind be free.
Time to sleep and dream and let your mind, oh let your mind, be
Time to sleep and dream and sleep and dream and let your mind oh
Time to sleep and let your mind and heart be free.
Be free.
Be freeeeee.
Expectat-i-i-i-on
Of better days and
Human ways that
Make our world
A happy world.
Imagine i-i-i-i-i-it.
Sleep, sister, sleep.
Sister.
Sleep, sister, sleep.
Sister.
Sleep, sister.
For you will always be my sister,
Sister.
Sleep.”
She sings a cappella. I’ve heard better voices, I’ve heard richer songs. But nothing has ever touched me so much.
Hera resumes: “For eleven months, Clara sang me and my sisters to sleep. Then, on her eighteenth birthday, Clara was taken for harvest.”
The room erupts in a rage of crashing tankards and cries of anger and bitter curses. Hera waits patiently. And continues her tale.
“My third sister was Shiva, named after the Indian goddess. She was a happy and a very beautiful child. But she was, still, only a child, younger than her years really. Shiva was sixteen when Clara was harvested. She had only two years to wait before her own Special Day. But she became melancholy, and listless. It was up to me and my other sister, Persephone, to manage the family. We did the shopping and cooking and cleaning, we hosted all our family parties in the harem. We treated Shiva like a princess, she wanted for nothing. Every night we told her stories of magical faraway places and handsome princes and princesses who lived happily ever after. I was eleven by this time, Persephone was thirteen. But we were women. We began every day with a smile on our lips, we sang, we made our house a beautiful and treasured place. And Shiva, for much of the time, was happy. But then she went to harvest.”
I can see tears rolling down Hera’s face. She has to stop, because the teardrops are splashing on the table in front of her. Grendel walks over and gently wipes her face dry. Then he embraces her – this huge hairy giant of a man, gently caressing the small, fragile, frightened young woman.
Hera takes a large draught of wine. She speaks, but her voice is cracked and she takes a few moments to collect herself. But then she resumes her tale, and she has her voice and her rhythm back.
“After Shiva went to harvest, Persephone and I decided to apply our minds to an understanding of the world. There was a library in the harem, kept under lock and key, but we found a way to escape from our rooms each night and we spent many hours in the library reading the printouts and computer files and even books. We learned about physics and astronomy and history and culture and fashion. We read books about love and romance. I found an author who, even now, I still adore. Her name is Jane Austen. She wrote books about men and women in love.” Hera laughs a hollow laugh. “It was my pornography, my glimpse of the forbidden.
“Then Persephone went to harvest. I had two years of living alone. The other girls were wonderful with me. But I refused to be adopted into another family. I kept my own home, I hosted parties, I cooked glorious six-course meals which I ate alone. I thought a lot about Darcy, and whether he had brown hair, or fair.
“Then it was my eighteenth birthday and I was taken to the harvest.
“You must remember that at this point I had never been out on to the surface of my own planet. We lived in the harem, a massive complex of beautiful buildings with light conducted down funnels from the sky but with no views, anywhere, of anything. So my first voyage on a jet was a terrifying experience. I had to walk across an airfield with this vast yellow fire burning in the sky and actual animals skeetering and running on the ground. I saw men, too, human men, with lazy seductive eyes who looked me up and down as if I were a goddess. I know, now, that life on Hecuba for the men is a strange and barren existence. They work in fields and factories, they sing as they work, they paint paintings and write poems about their love for women. But, of course, they are homosexual by necessity. It isn’t such a bad life, for men. They can live until eighty or ninety or even beyond. They have a culture and community, and they feel the heat of the sun. But to my mind, it is no life for men to live without women. We are the lock and the key, the Yin and the Yang. We are the breath and the breather. Men, and women. We are one species.”
The words reverberate. The tale continues. Each word is unfurled for us, like a flower opening in the morning light. Hera has the gift of capturing our hearts with her every gesture; we feel her anxiety as she walks across the airfield. We feel her terror as the jet lifts up into the air and flies. We feel her rising trepidation as she is ushered into the palace.
“I was bathed and clothed by manservants. They took obvious joy in the sight of my naked body. That night I was stripped and perfumed and massaged and oiled and then laid down to sleep. In the morning, the process began again; the massage, the perfumes, the oils. My skin became a repository of rich scents; my body tingled with sexual and sensual awakening.
“I didn’t, entirely, know what to expect. I think I would have been accepting if I had been disembowelled or beheaded or tortured on some rack. Instead, I was wined and dined in the company of a hundred beautiful eighteen-year girls. Our hosts were giants, huge men and women of incomparable beauty and formidable strength. We girls were asked to dance and sing, which we did. Then the first girl was called before the Sultan and he took his clothes off and he pleasured himself on her naked body.”
She paused. Then “We Hecubans were, as you may all know, bred for our durable hymens. And the masters of our planets – the Doppelganger Robots who ruled us – were bigger than human size in all respects. So after her rape, the girl inevitably bled to death. And that, I realised, was in fact our fate.
“I shall speak no more of what happened on that evil, terrible night.”
We nod, soberly, imagining, choking back our horror.
“But I survived. I woke at the bottom of a mountain of the dead deflowered. I crawled my way out. I escaped into the hills. And, one day, I was able to steal a jet and fly up into the stars. My reading in the library had equipped me with a basic notion of astronomy. And the jet was, paranoidly, equipped to cope with years of deep-space travel. So I flew into the stars and was found some eighteen months later, more dead than alive, by a pirate vessel. And here I am today.”
Hera lifts her glass. “I propose a toast.” We raise our glasses.
“To Naomi. To Clara. To Shiva. To Persephone. And to all the other girls of Hecuba. To my sisters.”
The throng echo her toast in a full-throated shout: “To your sisters!”
I look at Lena. She is pale and trembling.
“How,” she whispers to me. “How did we let it come to this?”