Markings Of Love And Death
A Short Story
When I received the credits to pay for transport, it seemed like a lot of money. But I’d been in one of the System’s less frequented regions for a while and prices had obviously gone up. Especially travel. Maybe the guy at the shipping office was skimming but it didn’t look like I had a choice. I was due on Planet Four in less than a week and there were no other ships passing this way that could get me there on time. The shipping guy reminded me of this when I hesitated. To be honest, I thought I had heard wrong when he told me the price.
“I don’t want a state room,” I said. “A bunk is fine.”
“Bunks are illegal, now,” he said. “But this ain’t no state room neither.”
We locked eyes for a moment. I hoped he might sense some of the things I had been doing recently and knock a bit off the price. After an uncomfortable silence, it was me who broke off. This guy was obviously company through and through.
“Nothing cheaper?” I said. It sounded desperate. But I was. Those credits were all I had and I wanted to arrive on Four with at least small change in my pocket.
The shipping guy closed his eyes and then nodded.
“Let me see,” he said.
“I’d appreciate it.”
“I just thrive on appreciation,” he said.
It sounded sarcastic to me. My mother always told me that sarcasm was the final refuge of the scoundrel. I think. My mother had a lot of sayings and sometimes they changed between tellings.
“There’s a double free. Well, one half of it. Mind sharing?”
That would depend on the price. When he told me, I found that I had become less fussy than I had believed. It was still more than I’d expected to pay originally but it meant I would arrive on Four with enough for a bed and a meal on my first night.
* * * * *
There were six of us joining the ship at this hold over. Some of the tourists on board had come down for a day of sight-seeing. It was a long day unless you had a thing for deserted mining installations. Most tourists ended up in the clubs along the main drag being fleeced for watered-down drinks. The really unlucky ones went back behind the curtain for special services. In most cases they woke up just in time to scuttle shamefacedly to the pick up point for the shuttle.
I saw a large guy now rush — as best he could — to join us. He had anger and shame etched on his face as surely as if he was still clutching the fake receipt from the bar he’d just been conned in. The tourists gathered on one side of the cabin and were counted back in by a tour guide, who looked so bored I thought she might fall asleep before she got to the fat guy. On our side of the cabin a local customs officer checked our tickets and papers. Then he signalled to the tour guide with a quick nod of the head and almost skipped down the ramp.
The shuttle’s engines roared, the ramp closed, and we strapped ourselves into seats. Then we rose and picked up speed and the shuttle knifed through the thin atmosphere of Eighty-Five and out into space.
Fat guy was sick as soon as the shuttle began drifting. He made a clumsy attempt at catching the vomit in his cupped hands but it was just as we hit weightlessness, so that was never going to work. I caught the gaze of the tour guide. She shook her head and mouthed across to me.
“Every time,” she said.
I smiled.
She reached up and shoved a button. A small bot appeared from the wall and span out into the cabin. Within seconds, every globule of fat guy vomit had been sucked in by the bot and it was back in its cubby hole in the wall. Impressive. I mouthed the word to the tour guide and she smiled back.
Fat guy seemed unconcerned by his recent contribution to the cabin atmosphere. I guess if he did it regularly, he knew the routine. He saw me looking his way and shrugged apologetically. Perhaps he didn’t feel responsible for his own insides. Or the drinks and rich food he must have been snaffling on Eighty-five.
* * * * *
“I smiled at you,” said the tour guide. “That doesn’t mean I want to have sex with you.”
I walked off. I had thought I was being sympathetic and offering a casual congratulations on her handling of the situation and a sweet commiseration about the trials of her job. Maybe I blew it by suggesting we could talk further over a drink in the bar later.
She seemed to think so, anyway.
My brief and fruitless chat with the tour guide meant I was at the back of the line at reception and had time to watch the fat guy make his ponderous way down into the bowels of the ship. I assumed they were the bowels. It sounded fitting, somehow.
The receptionist took my ticket and checked the name against her screen. She nodded, looked at me, and refused to smile. Word sure spread quickly on this ship. Then she nodded again and handed me a plastic tag with a number on it.
“Deck 27,” she said. “Door is programmed for print and retina.”
“Deck 27? That sounds high.” I looked up as I said it. In case she struggled with the concept.
She still didn’t smile but I could see a little happiness in her eyes.
“This is deck 1. The numbers go down.”
The receptionist’s demeanour told me that passengers with berths on such lowly decks were more or less expected to find their own way there, so I took my revenge by being excessively polite and accompanying my thanks for my berth number with a smile that fell just short of cheesy. Perhaps the fact that I had smiled so infrequently over the past two years had caused my facial muscles to lose some fine control. Whatever the reason, the receptionist didn’t like it. I left the desk followed by a glower of disdain.
There was a large schematagram of the ship hovering in the centre of the reception lobby. The ship itself was shaped like an old-fashioned hourglass, with the admin decks at the top and the cheapo passenger decks — 25 through 30 — near the bottom, where the sand would settle. I guessed that the exclusive decks were in the narrower waist. I spoke my cabin number to the schematagram and a small glow appeared on deck 27 and then a trail of lights led from the cabin back to the reception on deck 1. Two tubes. One to the waist and then one to the lower reaches of the ship. As I thought this, I remembered the fat man and his heading off to the bowels. For the first time, the thought crossed my mind that he could be my cabin mate. That was not a pleasant prospect. But this was a big ship and the passenger numbers were huge. It was an unlikely coincidence.
I’ve always been suspicious of coincidence. Especially highly unlikely coincidence. When I got through the door to my cabin, the fat man was sitting on what I hoped was his bed, not mine. He looked up and appeared genuinely surprised to see me. I’m sure he would have said something but he was eating. What he was eating I wasn’t sure but it was still alive. A short length of tail poked from between his lips and was wriggling. Not wriggling in the way it would wriggle if it was being rolled around by a tongue in a mouth savouring every mouthful but wriggling in a desperate bid for survival — in that panic that accompanies impending and significantly unpleasant obliteration.
I put my bags on the floor and stood by the door, feeling that it was only polite to wait for him to finish his snack before trying to make conversation. Finally, the tail slid quickly through the lips and the fat man swallowed. Then he stood and smiled.
“The language you speak?”
He spoke in old Terran. Good enough for me. I hadn’t used it for a while but I was sure it would come back quickly enough.
“Old Terran’s fine,” I said.
He stretched his hand towards me. I glanced quickly to see if it was still holding edible creatures of any kind before touching it with my own hand.
“I am Thun Grist,” he said.
The way he said it — and the name itself — told me where he was from.
“It’s a long time since I met anyone from Ten,” I said.
He nodded and smiled.
“You know Ten? Excellent. We do not travel well. I am often alone. To meet someone who recognises my origin is a welcome sign.”
I didn’t mention that of all the people from Ten I’ve met, I’ve only liked one of them. One of eight. I killed the other seven.
“And do you have a name?”
“I did but I don’t use it now. People who need to speak to me usually just call me Sheriff.”
“But that is a job description,” said Grist. “Not a name.”
I didn’t bother replying. What could I say? I picked up the bags and carried them to the far side of the cabin. That makes it sound bigger than it was. I carried the bags about two paces.
“This my bunk?” I said.
“Bunks are illegal now.”
“So I’ve heard. I don’t know what it means and I don’t know what else to call this when I’m on a ship. So, unless you’re going to report me to the captain, I’ll call it a bunk while we’re in here. OK?”
Grist nodded but didn’t seem particularly happy about it. Given that the people of Ten appear to flaunt the System’s laws at every opportunity, they have a contradictory fear of authority. Or maybe that’s not contradictory at all. I’m a Sheriff, not a psychologist.
As I stuffed my bags under my bunk, Grist sat back on his and watched.
“Are you going all the way to Four?” he said.
“Yes. You?”
“Yes.”
I wondered what I could do on the ship to avoid spending time in the cabin.
A distant gong sounded. Grist was standing before the last reverberations had dimmed.
“Dinner,” he said. “Best to get there for first sitting. The quality of the food appears to diminish the later you eat.”
“I’ll remember that. Thank you.”
Grist waited by the door.
“Are you coming?”
“You go ahead,” I said. “I just want to straighten a few things in here and then I’ll be right up.”
Grist didn’t need a second invitation. He opened the cabin door and was through it before I had closed my lips at the end of my last word. It was the quickest I had seen him move.
There was little to do in the cabin. I started to unpack and then realised there was nowhere to put anything I unpacked, so I left the few things I had in their bags. Then I realised I was hungry and followed Grist to the dining halls. True to form on this carefully segregated ship, the dining halls for the lower decks were separate from the dining halls for upper decks. At least that meant I didn’t have to go far.
When I entered the hall, I saw that Grist was sitting at a table on his own. He watched me come in and, as much as I wanted to avoid him, my conscience just wouldn’t let me ignore him. I smiled at him as I walked to the counter to queue and his expression became one of almost child like wonder. It even made me feel good.
I took my tray to the table and sat down opposite him. The table had eight seats round it. There were now six free. I looked around the hall and couldn’t find another table with more than one or two spare seats.
“There is some sort of misunderstanding about my character,” said Grist.
“Fine,” I said. I didn’t really want to talk about it. Sitting here was enough. Watching him eat was plenty distraction and I tried to keep my eyes on my own plates. At least there was nothing that appeared to be alive on his plate.
“I appreciate your kindness in not leaving me alone.”
I was chewing, so simply held up my hand in what I hoped was a appreciative wave.
Grist had two trays in front of him. He finished the last item on the first of these and pushed it to the side and pulled the second tray closer. He looked at the food it carried for a moment and the sat back in his chair and sighed and smiled.
“You will be working on Four?” he said.
I nodded. Whatever it was I had chosen for my main meal required some real chewing. Maybe I’d lost some power in my jaw after the slightly lower gravity of Eighty-five. Perhaps what I was chewing was fighting back. I had heard enough stories about the food quality on big ships and I wasn’t in one of the top restaurants. I looked across at Grist. It didn’t seem to be affecting his appetite.
“In security? Or straight law?”
“I’m not sure there’s much difference now,” I said. “Both come down to money.”
Grist brought his hands together in an approximation of a clap.
“How true,” he said. “And how refreshing to hear someone actually involved in law — and at the sharp end, too — to say so.”
“I guess you have had some issues with both.”
“Issues.”
He seemed to think for a while. Obviously, the word was causing him a problem.
“Perhaps issues is rather understating the fact. The truth is, Sheriff, that my security is compromised wherever I go and I have no recourse to the law.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say, so forked another mess of chewy goodness into my mouth. I trusted he would continue.
He did.
“People like me face constant prejudice,” he said. “See for yourself. I eat alone.”
I could have suggested to him that it may be less to do with prejudice and more to do with eating habits but I suspected he had greater experience of such things. Me, I rarely even dribbled these days.
“How long have you been on this ship?”
“Two months.”
I looked around the hall.
“And what about most of them? The same?”
“A few,” he said. “Does it matter?’
“In my experience, prejudice affects a proportion of people. It looks like you’ve struck out with more than your fair share.”
Grist’s jaw clenched. At least I think it did. One of his chins wobbled, anyway. Of that I’m sure.
“What do you mean?”
“Tell me what happened,” I said.
He shrugged.
“People are scared of the truth. The facts.”
“OK,” I said.
I had almost finished my meal. If he didn’t want to talk about it, I didn’t mind. It sounded like he was into some religious stuff and that’s something I’m always keen to avoid. I was going to go to the view-deck and have a look at space. It had been two years since I had been off-world and I wanted to look at what I had been missing.
“I have a knack for knowledge,” said Grist.
“A knack?”
“Yes. It is a burden.”
“I bet.”
I smiled. It was my you can trust me smile. Then again, I haven’t had much practice with that, so it might have come out as my I’ve swallowed your pet lizard and don’t give a damn smile. Grist probably wouldn’t have cared either way, come to think of it.
“You will see,” he said.
We spoke no more during the meal and when I left, he was half way through his second tray of food and barely looked up.
* * * * *
There were three view-decks on either side of the ship. I found out that I was only allowed in the lower two, of course. I didn’t mind; it’s not as if the view was going to be different. And I got the deck more or less to myself. At half a mile long, it would take quite a crowd to make it feel busy but I found a spot that let me feel like I was drifting in an abandoned ship. Believe me, I know what that feels like.
I let myself focus completely on the present. Some people find the vastness of the view in space too much to take. It makes them long for company and the manageable horizons of human habitation. Not me. I find the boundless expanse both comforting and hopeful. It’s like taking my petty troubles and setting them free to drift away and assume their rightful scale in the great scheme of things. In the dozen years since my wife and girls had died I had lived a life I could never have imagined and done things — good and bad — that I would never have done before my family disappeared beneath the sand on Sixty. I never forgot and I never forgave myself for allowing it to happen but I had accepted that it had happened. It made life something I could face daily and not worry too much about the future.
* * * * *
I spent a lot of time on the view-deck over the next three days. Grist seemed to have a real fear of the sight of space, so this was about the only part of the ship I could be sure of escaping his presence. I ate every meal with him and he usually insisted on accompanying me on the walks to and from our cabin.
Grist wasn’t bad company. He didn’t talk that much and he hadn’t tried to get his knowledge out — or whatever — and use it on me in sinister ways. I think he was just grateful for some company. I may have been imagining it but I think he actually started to cut back on his snacking, too.
Whether it was my presence at the table or not, from the second night we were joined by a couple. She was a G’Sha — as indicated by the elaborate tattoos that crept up from beneath her tight costume and snaked around her neck. The G’Sha were high-class courtesans and I was surprised to see one on the lower decks. Then again, her partner or companion or client was definitely more suited to the lower decks. They made an unlikely couple. His name was Rin and he didn’t introduce the G’Sha, who was traditionally not allowed to introduce herself. Rin looked like he was more than capable of administering punishment should anyone attempt to entice her to do so. I ignored Rin as much as possible but I saw that Grist kept sneaking glances at the G’Sha. It was only a matter of time before Rin noticed. I didn’t think he would let it lie.
But for the first couple of nights Rin was content to drink heavily and then try to test Grist on his knowledge. Grist, to his credit, played along with good grace and I became quite impressed by his range and depth of knowledge about the people, places, and things of the System. Rin joked along but I could tell he was desperate to catch Grist out on something. Unfortunately, men like Rin rarely know much beyond their limited world of violence and greed. And even there I was sure that Grist could come up with examples and stories to put Rin in the shade.
Back in the cabin after our second dinner with Grist and the G’Sha I mentioned his none too casual glances at the woman.
“I’m intrigued,” he said.
“Rin doesn’t look like the sort of guy that excuses intrigue.”
“Why should he mind?”
“Rin looks on his G’Sha as property,” I said. “You stare and you wear it out.”
Grist laughed. Then he saw I wasn’t laughing.
“You’re serious?”
“I’ve met lots of men like Rin. They love violence, especially when they think the target for their violence is soft and ripe for suffering.”
“Thank you, my friend the Sheriff. I shall remember that.”
With nothing more to say, we retired to our beds and to sleep.
* * * * *
It was on the fourth night that Rin finally called Grist out on his staring at the G’Sha.
Rin had sat down in his seat as if he thought it might be moving. His breath smelled more strongly than ever of the cheap sprit that they served in the bar next door to the dining hall. I tried to signal caution to Grist but his eyes were already on the woman. And at that moment, Rin appeared to summon sobriety from deep within him and looked straight across at Grist.
“I am mightily sick of you staring at Jelma.”
At least now we knew her name. I suspected that this wasn’t a time to get better acquainted.
Grist turned his gaze slowly away from Jelma the G’Sha and looked evenly at Rin. I admired his nerve.
“Apologies,” said Grist. “I was simply admiring the quality of the tattoos around her neck.”
At the mention of the tattoos, Jelma’s right hand went up to touch her neck. She stopped herself but looked nervously at Rin. The man was still staring at Grist and hadn’t noticed Jelma’s movements.
“What about the tattoos?” said Rin.
“Copies,” said Grist. “Not done by the True Hands.”
Now Rin turned to look at Jelma, who had composed herself and remained looking at nothing but the table in front of her.
“Copies?” said Rin. “What do you mean, copies?”
Grist was smiling. “Fakes. Not real G’Sha tattoos.”
“That’s bollocks,” said Rin. “Of course they’re real G’Sha tattoos. She’s a G’Sha.”
He turned again to Jelma.
“Aren’t you, darling?”
Jelma bowed her head twice.
The True Hands are a group of artists on Twelve who perform all the official tattooing work of the System’s cults and religions. I wasn’t sure where Grist was hoping to go with this but the facts were simple; only a True Hands tattoo marked a genuine G’Sha.
Rin turned back to Grist.
“You’re insulting Jelma and you’re insulting me. You need to apologise right now.”
“I know True Hands tattoos,” said Grist.
Rin stood up. I stood up. Rin looked at me as if it was the first time he had noticed me. I just looked at him and refrained from using one of my famous smiles on him.
“Let’s give Mr. Grist a chance to explain,” I said.
“On my planet we have long been the makers of the tools for the True Hands,” said Grist. “Many of the original True Hands were of my people. My family still has connections on Twelve and is involved in trade with some of the masters of the craft. As a young man, it was thought I might become one of the True Hands myself.”
“Quite an honour,” I said.
“It would have been. My family were much excited by the prospect.”
“What happened?”
“Love,” said Grist.
“Love?”
“Love. I was young. And of course I was, shall we say, less endowed with flesh at the time.”
“A G’Sha?”
“Not quite. Like me, an apprentice. Yet to be fully marked.”
“And so?” said Rin. “This is relevant how exactly?”
“I was far advanced in my apprenticeship. Far enough to understand the full techniques involved in marking a G’Sha.”
“So you reckon you can look at Jelma’s tattoos and tell me whether she’s a real G’Sha?” said Rin.
“Easily. It is a skill you don’t lose.”
“Five thousand credits says she’s the real deal.”
Grist looked at Jelma and then at Rin.
“If you can afford to lose that much, I am happy to accept it from you.”
Rin pulled out a wallet from his jacket and extracted five large notes and placed them in the middle of the table. Grist leaned under the table to somewhere thankfully hidden about his person and brought up a roll of notes. He extracted one large note and placed that on top of Rin’s credits. The men stared at each other for a moment. I just looked at Grist’s five thousand note; I had never seen one before.
“Show him,” said Rin.
He wasn’t looking at Jelma but she knew who he was talking to. She stood and removed her top in one smooth movement. Then she turned and showed her back to Grist. That put her facing me — and a large part of the dining hall. I’m sure the passengers had seen a lot of strange things in their time on board ships but a woman standing topless at her table may have been a first. I lifted my eyes from her chest and looked into her face. I saw great fear in her eyes and she looked straight at me and, with a slight tension in her jaw and and a flaring of her nostrils, I knew she was trying to send me a message. In a flash I knew that Grist had been right and that he couldn’t tell Rin. I looked away from Jelma and across at Grist. He was already looking at me. I started to try a signal of my own but he simply closed his eyes and nodded. His face had gone pale and he suddenly looked very ill. But he turned to Rin and opened his eyes.
“My sincerest apologies,” he said. “I was mistaken. Your G’Sha is as genuine as they come.”
I looked at Jelma’s face. Her relief was fleeting and then she shifted her expression back to one of placid hauteur and almost nonchalantly replaced her top. But she blinked once in my direction, which I took as thanks for me and for Grist.
Rin was laughing. He reached across the table and hauled in the pile of credits that were his winnings.
“I’ll say this for you, fat man,” he said. “You had the balls to admit you were wrong. I respect that. But your apprenticeship obviously wasn’t as advanced as you thought it was.”
Grist bowed his head in Rin’s direction.
Rin stood up, clutching his credits, and then he and Jelma left the table. Grist continued to look unwell. More unwell than usual. He certainly seemed to have lost his appetite, which was not a good sign.
“I need to lie down,” he said.
“I’ll walk back with you.”
“Thank you.”
* * * * *
I let Grist slump onto his bed before I spoke.
“So tell me,” I said.
“Not a G’Sha.”
“Sure?”
He looked at me. I realised it was a stupid question.
“Sorry,” I said. “How can you tell?”
“The final design on Jelma is near perfect but it was done over too short a time period. A year, perhaps. No more than two years.”
“And?”
“A G’Sha receives her first markings when she is thirteen. They are applied annually until she is twenty-one. The tattoos are almost layered; they seem to emerge from the body. It is subtle but those who know can see it.”
“And Jelma had none of that?”
“No. As I say, it was almost perfect but not good enough to fool an expert.” He smiled. “And Rin is no expert.”
“True enough,” I said. “But what stopped you telling him? You just lost five thousand credits.”
“That is painful, I admit,” said Grist. “But I sensed the woman’s fear. There is a good reason she is masquerading as a G’Sha. Somehow, it felt like it was worth five thousand credits to save her life. I had no doubt that Rin would have killed her. Did you?”
“I think you’re right. I suspect that death is waiting for one of them and we were close to choosing which.”
Grist sighed and closed his eyes.
“And now my good friend, I must rest. And pray that I don’t dream of the adventures I could have had with my five thousand credits. No, with the ten thousand credits I could have walked away with.”
I lay back on my own bed.
“You know, Grist, you are a decent man.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“For a guy from Ten, that is,” I said.
He started laughing and I called for the cabin lights to switch off.
* * * * *
It was another four days before they found Rin’s body. I was down on the passenger manifesto as a lawman of sorts so was invited to examine the scene. Rin was in his cabin and he was dead. It wasn’t much more complicated than that. The ship’s doctor decided he had choked on his own vomit while sleeping. I looked quickly around the cabin for signs of a second occupant. There were none. And there was no sign of the G’Sha for the rest of the journey, although just once I saw on the view-deck a woman standing alone at the screens who wore a high collar that hid her neck. I couldn’t be sure, so I let her be.
Shortly before we docked on Four, we found an envelope under our door. It contained 5,000 credits. Grist offered me some of the money but I refused. I felt I had been little more than a spectator. But I was glad Grist had got his money back.
THE END
