Mastery of the Stars

Chapter 2

Sevan and Nadio wandered in the rough direction of where the bar owner had waved his claw. All the way, Sevan wondered why Barnes had created him. His entire life, he had encountered nothing but problems. Even on The Doomed Planet they had bullied him at work.

Just when things looked up for him and they had chosen him as the workers’ council representative, it transpired they had chosen him for his apparent lack of qualifications and the perception of others that he would be incapable of doing the job.

He would have been happy with that. The food and accommodation were excellent, not to mention the quality of the pish. But even his cushy job at the concession had to be spoiled when the resistance kidn*pped him.

Sevan had wanted none of it. His aunt had always warned him about getting involved with anything too exciting.

“Don’t get involved in anything too exciting, Sevan,” she used to say. “Only bad things can come from excitement.”

He knew he should have listened to her, but it wasn’t as if he’d chosen to do anything exciting. He hadn’t chosen to join the battle of Genzuihines; he hadn’t chosen to be imprisoned on Aitne, or stranded on Nereid. It wasn’t his fault that his friend, Ozli and Ozli’s begetter had killed each other, or that the President had blamed the murders on Sevan and his friends. It hadn’t been his idea to help President Matthews to kill President Ydna, and it wasn’t his fault they were constantly running from the Republic. It had always been his desire to return to The Doomed Planet, not go to Pallene to get stranded there as well.

Sevan looked at Nadio, leading him along the street. At least Nadio had wanted to leave Sicheoyama. He had sympathy that Nadio has lost his co-begetter, and that his partner, Scotmax, was missing, but at least Nadio wasn’t covered from antennae to claws in festering boils. He could feel the pressure of the scophumen stubornus on his back increasing.

“Where are we going, Nadio?” he asked. “The pressure on my back is building.”

“Let me ask someone.”

Nadio approached a creature that looked strange to Sevan. Instead of antennae, its head was topped with thin fur but, unlike Nadio, that was the only fur it had, the rest of its dark brown body it had covered with rags, it only had one row of teeth and had stumps where its claws should have been.

“Do you know where we can find the healer?” Nadio asked in Republic Standard.

“Whoa, are those that scophumen? You are covered, mate.”

“Yes, I know,” said Sevan. “Do you know where the healer is?”

“What do you want the healer for? Just burst them.”

“He has scophumen stubbornus,” said Nadio.

“Oh b****y hell, you’d better hurry before you explode. The healer is that way,” the creature pointed a stubby hand in the direction they had been heading.

“Thank you,” said Seven, walking away as quickly as he could manage.

The enormous boil on his back was impeding his ability to both walk and breathe. Nadio tried to help him as best he could.

“He was an odd creature, wasn’t he?” Sevan commented.

“Strange,” Nadio agreed. “I’ve never seen a creature like it and such a funny way of speaking. Strange use of Republic Standard.”

“Where is the healer?” Nadio asked every creature they passed. Some hadn’t heard of a healer, but those that had all pointed him in the same direction.

“How far?” he would ask each of them, confirming they were getting closer and closer. The buildings became less numerous until they were in the countryside and then the vegetation became more sparse until desert surrounded them.

Eventually Sevan could walk no further and lay in the road like a large green blue yellow balloon.

Nadio ran ahead and found that the healer’s home was a tent on the crossroads of two tracks, seemingly in the middle of the desert.

“Are you the healer?” Nadio shouted into the tent.

“They seek healing?” a voice emerged from the darkness.

“My friend has stubborn scophumen. Please, would you help him?” said Nadio, searching for the source of the voice.

“Where is the physical manifestation of this illness?”

“He collapsed on the road here. I’ll take you to him.”

Nadio still couldn’t see the healer. He stepped back from the tent.

A tiny figure emerged, carrying what looked like a huge blaster which was four or five times larger than the tiny figure but didn’t seem to bother it.

“Would you like help with that?” asked Nadio.

“Show me where the illness is.”

Nadio led the diminutive healer to the place where he had left Sevan. They found a large ball with roughly Sevan-like features on the surface.

“There may be an explosion,” said the healer. “Take this if you see it.”

It handed Nadio the blaster looking tool and removed a small rectangle from its robe, then unfolded the rectangle until it was as large as the healer. This, the healer stuck to the surface of the spherical Sevan before taking the blaster tool back off Nadio.

The healer plunged the end of the blaster into the centre of the rectangle, piercing Sevan’s sphere. The healer pulled the trigger on the blaster and it sucked the scophumen puss out of the boil and jettisoned it across a wide area of desert.

Slowly the balloon shrank and Sevan’s features became more discernible until he was almost his usual size, loose flaps of boil casing hanging off him. The healer removed the tool and sprayed Sevan with a misty vapour.

“Ouch, that stings,” Sevan complained.

“Explosion is preferred?” asked the healer.

“Thank you,” said Nadio.

“No, problem. That’ll be three hundred credits.”

“What? Oh... I... er.”

“Have you abandoned the concept of money?”

“Er... not exactly.”

“They always say: get the credits up front, but does that appear to happen?”

“No?”

“Oh well, all this stuff should go back in then.”

The healer picked up the tool, fiddled with some controls, and a large sack emerged from the back. He began using the tool to suck up the puddle of puss, which filled the sack.

“No, wait,” said Nadio. “There must be a way.”

“Why? There is a way to get three hundred credits in the next nano unit?”

“No, but...”

“So, all this stuff should go back in before it seeds.”

“Seeds?” asked Sevan. “What do you mean?”

“It appears to seed. That’s how it appears to reproduce. It’ll never fit in your boil sack if it seeds first.”

“And if it seeds after?”

“Hmmm,” the healer contemplated this possibility.

“Wait,” said Nadio. “Maybe we can come to some kind of arrangement.”

“Is it an arrangement that involves three hundred credits?”

“Well...”

“This won’t take long,” the healer carried the tool over to Sevan. “Now, there was a hole.”

“No, please. Don’t put that stuff back in me.”

“There must be some other way,” Nadio pleaded.

“Such as?”

“Maybe we could work for you?”

The healer laughed so much he dropped the tool and the collection bag burst, sending a river of puss flowing back out onto the desert sand.

“Oh well,” he cursed.

A moment later, every lump in the puddle of puss burst into several small spheres which sprouted in all directions. Some tendrils rooted themselves into the desert ground while others reached up towards the sky until, within moments, the puddle had transformed itself into a small coppice of slimy tendrils swaying slowly in the light desert breeze.

“Oh, well,” said the healer again.

Resigned to the fact that nothing more could be done, the healer took his equipment back towards his tent. Nadio and Sevan followed him.

“Still here?” the healer asked when he reached the tent.

“There must be something we can do,” said Nadio.

“There is a river between here and the settlement. Take this and wash it.”

The healer dropped his equipment at their feet.

“Of course,” said Nadio.

He and Sevan took the equipment, then found the river and washed everything thoroughly, being careful not to damage anything. When they had finished, they took the equipment back and presented it to the healer.

“Hmm, not bad,” he conceded. “There is some food. Please come and sit by the fire.”

Sevan and Nadio sat where the healer had gestured and waited while he brought them a bowl of not quite dead marine creature, and a mug of cloudy Ocrex ink each. Sevan didn’t complain. He was glad to have any food at all.

The healer gave them blankets to lie on and cover themselves with and retired to his tent, leaving them beneath the stars.

“That’s odd,” said Nadio after a while.

“What is?”

“That star we saw last night, it’s gone.”

Sevan looked and saw Nadio was right.

“Maybe it was a space station?” Nadio mused.

“The Gaia station?”

“Who knows? Or Tomorrow.”

“I hope not.”

“Why not?”

“Because if it’s the Tomorrow station, then Barnes might be there.”

“Barnes of the Corporation?”

“The same.”

“Why would that be a problem?”

“He keeps trying to kill me, or not, depending on his mood.”

“Kill you? Why would the head of the Corporation want to kill you?”

“Yeah, laugh it up, thug. I used to work on the Corporation’s concession on The Doomed Planet. Barnes selected me to be the workers’ representative on the council because he thought they could easily manipulate me.”

“And?”

“The resistance kidn*pped me.”

“None of this makes any sense, Sevan.”

“Do you think? None of it makes any sense to me either, Nadio.”

“If you don’t want to meet Barnes again, then it’s a good thing that the space station has gone, isn’t it?”

“I suppose.”

“Are you afraid of dying?” Nadio asked.

Sevan thought about it for a moment.

“I don’t particularly want to die, but if Barnes hadn’t created me, I wouldn’t be suffering now. At least when we die we can rest and criminals no longer commit crimes. The prisoners are free and the servants no longer serve.”

“So, you believe in the better place?”

“I used to believe in the Giant Cup until I discovered it was just a moon. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to die because if the Giant Cup doesn’t exist, then why should the Better Place exist?”

“But you must know, Sevan, that those who do good deeds will be rewarded by Ruthos, god of hope and evildoers will be punished by Tomos, god of revenge. And even if you have been naughty, Sevan, there is always Roraldir, god of forgiveness.”

“You really believe in all these gods?”

“When I was on Herse, waiting for you all. I never lost faith because I knew the gods would protect me.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” the healer’s voice came through the walls of the tent. “There is a god for everything. Ppark, the god of doing a poo.”

“That’s not a god.”

“It may as well be. No idea of what is going on in the universe.” He seemed to be talking to himself.

“We are all entitled you our own beliefs.”

“Even when those beliefs are wrong?”

“That’s just your opinion.”

“That’s as may be, but it’s also true.”

“What do you believe in, then?” asked Sevan.

“The universe is a single entity. We are all one. You, me, god lover and Barnes are all the same.”

“How long have you been listening to us?”

“We appear to be separated by a sheet of strun hide. It’s hardly sound proof.”

“How are we all the same thing?” asked Nadio.

“Think of the universe as a giant cosmic soup, with lumps floating within it.”

“Okay, but in a bowl of treguns bio-algae, for example, the individual lumps of algae are all separate.”

“No, they are not. Your mind just tells you they are, but your mind is an illusion. Everyone is nothing more than a group of stellar fibre vibrating at different frequencies.”

Nadio fell silent.

Sevan couldn’t get his marbles around the concept so he just did what he did with everything else he didn’t understand, ignore it and go to sleep, hoping that in the morning it would have gone away.