Chapter 9: Carnage, Part 1

The Darkstream is moving him along quickly; in fact, very quickly. However, one wake-up he is amazed to find his course radically changed-by about 55 degrees. He does not know where he is going.

With a persuasive "clunk" he finds himself attached to a great silent ship. Nothing he tries can free him from the marauder-for that is what it is. He and Ronnie and his ship are taken to the mystery ship's home planet called Carnage-and not for nothing. As he exits his flute he is bundled off by his captors through the launch tunnels.

As he leaves Merkury, his flute, behind he sees several other captured common vessels. Their crews' corpses are being dragged off in carts and struggling survivors are murdered. Pulled out, hacked to death methodically on the spot. Their desperate shrieks only seem to thrill the killers wielding heavy cleavers. Their blood flows or is washed into gutters and they too are loaded into the floating white charnel carts.

Mica is horrified into silence and wonders if he will be immediately killed also. However he is hustled from the tunnels into a small airship. Above the surface, he sees a bountiful place; nature has spent herself in beauty and color of growing things thrusting up joyfully from the soil. The grim silent pilot maneuvers through a city of floating translucent spheres. These round shapes are somehow suspended fairly high above the surface at least 2,000 meters with no visible tethers. They bump gently into each other on all sides and above and below. They form clouds of hundreds of these wet spheres and look from a distance like some kind of amphibian eggs; something drips from each one.

Mica would have been overwhelmed by the generous beauty of his surroundings if he hadn't been dazed by the slaughters that had splashed him. He feels a small wet drop on his cheek, somehow he is tempted to lick it off with his tongue.S Exhausted, he is deposited into one of the egg-homes and is met by a human-like creature-Fater. Fater explains to Mica that he's only alive because they are intrigued by his new flute. The corsairs that live in this land love almost nothing more than ships and require him to explain the flute's features.

A couple of days go by as Mica takes expert darkship builders to learn the intricacies of the craft. In doing this he witnesses the brutal butchering of more captured crews and wonders how much longer he will be needed.

***********

It wasn't really arrest I was under, more like house arrest. If the pirates of Carnage didn't care so much about navigation, communication, and ships in all their manifestations I'm quite certain I'd be a dead man-because they didn't hesitate. I had been splashed by blood of instant extinction here.

In fact, I found out, murder here is considered a beneficial thing and is encouraged.

Fater is my host and he takes care of me when he thinks to. He is built like the others of Carnage I have seen. Big. He's big. Very strong and not much fat. His brownish skin is creased in many places by light pale lines and seams of scar tissue some quite deep and disfiguring. He has a new wound on his leg that looks like a nail had been driven into the meat. He wears no particular armor except for tensile shorts and shirt. The people seem to enjoy the vulnerability of bare flesh. In our years I'd judge he was about forty-five. Eyes that slant and tight curly hair. The hilt of a weapon protruded below his knee, the blade is not visible as it is under the skin of his leg. He smiles.

"Here Mica, I brought us something to eat."

"Thank you Fater," I accepted the platter greedily. Some sort of purple mushrooms surrounded a heap of bubble-meat and a bloody looking sauce. Dryloaf on the side-actually all delicious, hot, spicy-I forgot to mention the jigglins, a fruit we never saw on Marble tart, sweet, fresh; pale green or yellow with reddish tips.

"How is your leg?"

"Oh, it's coming along, the wound cauterized itself."

"There seems to be quite a lot of, ah, killing from what I've seen."

"Oh aye," agreed Fater equably, "of course that's the way it is."

"Do you—kill people?"

"Do I kill people. Does a thistlefist have sharp spines? Does a tunnelwolf have razor fangs? Does a vacbug pull out the insides of its captive? I'd better kill people. You'll notice I always carry my separator under my arm and my flenser secure in my leg; close. And still I'm not safe-I can't believe in safe."

"On Marble we also believe in suffering, but we think of life as sacred. We don't slay others of our kind without a pretty good reason. And, then gov will punish."

"We don't have gov and who said we believe in suffering? No, we have quick, we have clever, we have cruel. We value the sharpness of the blade and the wink of the separator; the last thing you'll ever see."

Fater was regarding me with a quiver of impending savagery. I could feel it. A small drop formed at the corner of his mouth.

I jumped as he slapped me on the leg and smiled; he shoveled some of the hot food into his mouth with a laugh.

"Has it always been this way on Carnage, I mean this freedom to kill?"

"You mean you don't have the freedom to kill? Ha, I'm just jesting of course, I know you people have different rules. It's been this way for generations. My great-grandfather explained it to my father like this" he waggled a fork, "it started when there got to be too many people. They were very successful, well fed, big. They stepped on each other's toes, they bumped into one another in passing, they coughed on this one-spat on that one. No one knew what to do. We are a hugely proud bunch. It got so that when bodies made maddening physical contact they cut him down. It pleased them. It became a habit and spread in the cities and everywhere. Children were taught to kill along with manners and morals; murder him or her any way handy-push, crush, poison, choke, stab, gouge. They—"

"But didn't people care? Was life so worthless that nobody noticed or felt anything when someone they loved's life was ended?" I thought of the words "his life ended", "his candle burned out", "the thread cut" and the sorrow attached to those words.

"Of course people care-what would be the value of killing if it meant nothing? In fact---"

"Does the lust to end a man's existence mean more than the suffering and agony of those who feel the loss?"

"Damn your wiggit tongue, Mica! Who's talking here? Wait till you hear me stop my speech before you interrupt me, damn you!" pant- "When the ones you love candles burn out, when the thread is cut-he looked at me keenly- when their lives are ended, you grieve and you turn yourself over to Ahalder."

"Ahalder- is that like, God?"

"Ahalder is God, Mica."

"This is interesting history, Fater, but I'm pretty eager to be on my way. Can you help me get launched again?"

"Get launched, hmm, you could easily get launched. You're lucky you're alive at all, not that it matters," he said slowly.

He looked thoughtful, his brow creased.

"But there is a way. I think we might get you on your way-and you could do us a service-once we get done looking at your pretty little craft-what do you call it?"

"A flute."

"And reassembling it."

"You took it apart?" I wanted to scream, but held my wiggit tongue.