Here Be Monsters
(a short story from the point of view of a criminal con man)
I’d seen her across the spaceport and targeted her immediately. I knew her type. She stood out from the crowd in her colorful peasant clothes. Possibly a runaway, definitely in a hurry to get off world. Young. Not as dust-ridden and dull as the rest of the people that lived and worked here. It wasn’t immediately obvious to passersby minding their own business but she was like a beacon to me. I’d done this before and I had an instinct for it.
She looked around for pilots or captains in a way that she probably thought was sneaky. It was clumsy and obvious to me. She had no gift for slyness.
Luckily, I myself was a captain and a pilot.
The suns were going down. The blue and red of them melting into the horizon threw purple light up into the clouds. That’s when I approached her.
I bumped into her roughly and caused her to drop her backpack which opened and spilled some of her belongings into the dust. I apologized profusely and helped her pick them up while the foot traffic begrudgingly made its way around us. I asked her what her name was. Mino, she said. I told her mine was Pryet and that I’d love to make it up to her.
At first, she wasn’t agreeable, until I offered to take her back to the foyer airlock of my ship for some tea. At the word ‘ship,’ she perked right up.
I don’t consider myself an artist but sometimes I think I almost deserve that title. I gave one of the best performances I’d given to date. Non-threatening, mannerly, dropping hints about my wealth, complimentary, kind, generous, and soft. I took the long way back to my ship so that we’d have more time to talk. In some ways it was like lockpicking a safe. I could sense her moving her small hand further and further away from the knife she had hidden in her belt. I could see her smile moving from polite to genuine. Her gait loosened just a little.
I hadn’t completely won her trust but it was a start.
I’m a pretty big guy but I know how to shift it. If I’m in a tavern brawl, I know how to make it all seem like brawn by sucking in my gut and standing straight-backed, letting my height help the illusion. But here I let myself seem out of shape. I needed to seem weak. I let it all hang out. I pretended to be clumsy. I seemed foolish and awkward. I fumbled my keys into the dust. A type of clowning. I laughed at her small jokes but not enough to make her suspicious.
The rest of the evening was like a dream. I was inhabiting the role. In my airlock entry, I served her tea and got her whole story. She had domineering parents plotting to marry her off to a land baron she’d never met for a generous dowry and land annexation rights. She worked hard on the farm with the cattle and the crops. She taught herself to read. All she wanted to do was get away from here and see the stars.
I’d had a dozen just like her.
It was me who brought up the idea. Like it had just occurred to me. Why, I had a ship. And I had the space to take her! I was going on a short jaunt two systems over for supplies before a long haul to the core. I told her that I knew I didn’t have beautiful quarters for her but I did have an extra berth and I was ahead enough in my savings that it would be no trouble to take her with me on my supply run and drop her off before the big trip.
Get this. She cried. She cried with gratitude at finding such a generous stranger. It was destiny, she said. It was fate, she said. She just knew she had a good feeling about me, she said.
For just a moment I felt guilty but it passed.
That’s probably when I should have realized what was happening. But I was too lost in self-congratulations on a job well done. Too proud. You know what they say about pride and falls.
We strapped in together in the cockpit. I wanted to give her a view through the front windows during takeoff. To people that had never been offworld before, this was usually what sealed the deal. Clearance was given by launch control and vectors were defined. The green light winked brilliantly on the dash and we were off. I pushed forward on the thrusters and gripped the stick. This could all be automated but I wanted her to see me pilot it. I wanted her to think of me as a valiant space captain. In a way, I thought I was entertaining her and giving her what she wanted. Pumping up the fantasy before I closed the trap.
Her fingers tightened on the armrest as the ship shuddered with acceleration. The violet clouds came closer and then smeared across the glass until parting and revealing the maroon night sky. The stars revealed themselves as the atmosphere thinned until the points of light glittered alone across the black universe.
I had to admit, even I never got tired of that transition.
I put it in autopilot, offered dinner, and prepared to get down to business.
I showed her to the cargo space and mattress where she’d be staying and the meager bathroom next to it. She said it was much bigger than back home and I shook my head. All too easy. We both freshened up before I came back to her to her room and showed her to the galley.
She’d put on a different shirt for dinner. The same style as her other shirt but a darker colour and a little lower in the front. Perhaps this would be easier than I thought. I served up the stew and we sat down.
Occasionally they were grateful enough that my proposition wasn’t met with outright hostility. Not that it mattered either way to me.
It was after dessert when I let the mask fall.
I told her that space was a lonely place driven solely by power. I told her that laws were for planets. That here in space, all that mattered was strength and weakness. The strength of hulls, the power of vacuum. That people bartered what they had and that there was no shame in it. Defense and offense, supply and demand, strategy and execution. It was the eternal law of the universe. Predator and prey, if you wanted to look at it like that. I preferred, I said, to look at it as the economics of force.
And no one rides for free.
I reached across the table and rested my large hand on her small one.
At this point, the penny drops and they realize that they only have one thing to offer me. They also realize they’re alone. This is where the second act begins. Do they scream? Is there a chase? Would there be tears? Demure submission? Perhaps an attempt at bartering? An offered reward, maybe? Or maybe there would be scratching and a true test of athleticism. A purer, physical flexing of the universal law I attempted to educate her about earlier.
I’d yet to have a passenger be happily surprised. I wonder if it’s me that causes this. I wonder if that’ll ever happen. I don’t even know if I’d like it at this point. I’m too used to the other way.
But while I was thinking all this. I realized that she hadn’t said anything yet.
I looked at her face to try to read it.
And I couldn’t.
In fact, I couldn’t do much of anything. Nothing was coming off of her and I suddenly felt very content to just sit and watch her shoulder.
I felt my mind split into two. One of those moments of being in shock where you watch things happen with a detachment that tells you just how bad things have gotten without allowing you to feel true alarm.
I understood that my plan was a bad one. I understood that she was off limits. I understood that this ship was now her ship.
I knew with the sickening clarity of hindsight that I’d fallen into her trap, not the other way around. I’d gobbled down a lure. Like a greedy riverfish, I’d arrowed toward the bait without a second thought.
In space you hear rumours. Myths in the black. A lot like sailors of old. Reality bends when you’re in a small craft at the mercy of enormous, uncaring nature. There can be madness in long transit. Superstitions arise that seem silly on land but become iron-hard rules on a long journey. Travelers come up with things to explain the unexplainable; mermaids, krakens, harpies, gods…
…and sirens.
She spoke to me then. In a different voice. A beautiful voice. I could almost see the notes of it. The crystalline shining elegance of them. I felt the pull of addiction and dove in. Like I was doing a smiling, languid backstroke down the sides a massive whirlpool. Not a care in the universe as my mental being disappeared.
I was allowed to keep a kernel of myself in a small corner of my mind. Otherwise, I became a tool of hers as much as any hammer or wrench on this ship.
I knew that I would never tell another soul about her. I knew that I would never attempt this kind of plan again. I felt the tendrils of her song reprogramming me as we traveled through the dark and I was grateful for it. I knew that if I broke any of her rules, I would happily gouge out my own eyes and cut myself in the smallest, most painful ways for days until I died.
She left me that small pocket of myself so that after she left, I would have a role to adhere to. A personality to keep me from drooling in a corner for the rest of my life. It wouldn’t be truly me so much as a costume I’d never be able to take off. A different mask that she’d let me have. She didn’t do that to be kind. She did it to avoid suspicion. So did it so that I could still speak to tower controls during takeoff and landing.
She did it to avoid leaving a trail of victims that would lead back to her.
Maybe the worst part of it all was that I was content about it all. The horror I should have felt was missing. No panic. Just passive witnessing. Watching myself disappear. Looking at my own disassembly and reformation in an image she preferred. I even helped her here and there when I felt she’d missed a spot.
I wasn’t privy to her long-terms plans. Would she leave me at the next outpost and find a new captain to prey on? Or would she let me resupply and take me up on that long-haul journey I’d told her I was going on? Would I be food for her journey? Would she lay eggs in me? Was I a short-term or long-term investment? But puppets don’t ask questions unless they’re told to.
I wasn’t wrong about about the economics of force and strategy. Clearly. It was all that mattered out here. I suppose in a lot of ways that the old maps had it right. The space between lands is deep, mysterious, unknowable, and dark.
And here be monsters.
tags
I’d seen her across the spaceport and targeted her immediately. I knew her type. She stood out from the crowd in her colorful peasant clothes. Possibly a runaway, definitely in a hurry to get off world. Young. Not as dust-ridden and dull as the rest of the people that lived and worked here. It wasn’t immediately obvious to passersby minding their own business but she was like a beacon to me. I’d done this before and I had an instinct for it.
She looked around for pilots or captains in a way that she probably thought was sneaky. It was clumsy and obvious to me. She had no gift for slyness.
Luckily, I myself was a captain and a pilot.
The suns were going down. The blue and red of them melting into the horizon threw purple light up into the clouds. That’s when I approached her.
I bumped into her roughly and caused her to drop her backpack which opened and spilled some of her belongings into the dust. I apologized profusely and helped her pick them up while the foot traffic begrudgingly made its way around us. I asked her what her name was. Mino, she said. I told her mine was Pryet and that I’d love to make it up to her.
At first, she wasn’t agreeable, until I offered to take her back to the foyer airlock of my ship for some tea. At the word ‘ship,’ she perked right up.
I don’t consider myself an artist but sometimes I think I almost deserve that title. I gave one of the best performances I’d given to date. Non-threatening, mannerly, dropping hints about my wealth, complimentary, kind, generous, and soft. I took the long way back to my ship so that we’d have more time to talk. In some ways it was like lockpicking a safe. I could sense her moving her small hand further and further away from the knife she had hidden in her belt. I could see her smile moving from polite to genuine. Her gait loosened just a little.
I hadn’t completely won her trust but it was a start.
I’m a pretty big guy but I know how to shift it. If I’m in a tavern brawl, I know how to make it all seem like brawn by sucking in my gut and standing straight-backed, letting my height help the illusion. But here I let myself seem out of shape. I needed to seem weak. I let it all hang out. I pretended to be clumsy. I seemed foolish and awkward. I fumbled my keys into the dust. A type of clowning. I laughed at her small jokes but not enough to make her suspicious.
The rest of the evening was like a dream. I was inhabiting the role. In my airlock entry, I served her tea and got her whole story. She had domineering parents plotting to marry her off to a land baron she’d never met for a generous dowry and land annexation rights. She worked hard on the farm with the cattle and the crops. She taught herself to read. All she wanted to do was get away from here and see the stars.
I’d had a dozen just like her.
It was me who brought up the idea. Like it had just occurred to me. Why, I had a ship. And I had the space to take her! I was going on a short jaunt two systems over for supplies before a long haul to the core. I told her that I knew I didn’t have beautiful quarters for her but I did have an extra berth and I was ahead enough in my savings that it would be no trouble to take her with me on my supply run and drop her off before the big trip.
Get this. She cried. She cried with gratitude at finding such a generous stranger. It was destiny, she said. It was fate, she said. She just knew she had a good feeling about me, she said.
For just a moment I felt guilty but it passed.
That’s probably when I should have realized what was happening. But I was too lost in self-congratulations on a job well done. Too proud. You know what they say about pride and falls.
We strapped in together in the cockpit. I wanted to give her a view through the front windows during takeoff. To people that had never been offworld before, this was usually what sealed the deal. Clearance was given by launch control and vectors were defined. The green light winked brilliantly on the dash and we were off. I pushed forward on the thrusters and gripped the stick. This could all be automated but I wanted her to see me pilot it. I wanted her to think of me as a valiant space captain. In a way, I thought I was entertaining her and giving her what she wanted. Pumping up the fantasy before I closed the trap.
Her fingers tightened on the armrest as the ship shuddered with acceleration. The violet clouds came closer and then smeared across the glass until parting and revealing the maroon night sky. The stars revealed themselves as the atmosphere thinned until the points of light glittered alone across the black universe.
I had to admit, even I never got tired of that transition.
I put it in autopilot, offered dinner, and prepared to get down to business.
I showed her to the cargo space and mattress where she’d be staying and the meager bathroom next to it. She said it was much bigger than back home and I shook my head. All too easy. We both freshened up before I came back to her to her room and showed her to the galley.
She’d put on a different shirt for dinner. The same style as her other shirt but a darker colour and a little lower in the front. Perhaps this would be easier than I thought. I served up the stew and we sat down.
Occasionally they were grateful enough that my proposition wasn’t met with outright hostility. Not that it mattered either way to me.
It was after dessert when I let the mask fall.
I told her that space was a lonely place driven solely by power. I told her that laws were for planets. That here in space, all that mattered was strength and weakness. The strength of hulls, the power of vacuum. That people bartered what they had and that there was no shame in it. Defense and offense, supply and demand, strategy and execution. It was the eternal law of the universe. Predator and prey, if you wanted to look at it like that. I preferred, I said, to look at it as the economics of force.
And no one rides for free.
I reached across the table and rested my large hand on her small one.
At this point, the penny drops and they realize that they only have one thing to offer me. They also realize they’re alone. This is where the second act begins. Do they scream? Is there a chase? Would there be tears? Demure submission? Perhaps an attempt at bartering? An offered reward, maybe? Or maybe there would be scratching and a true test of athleticism. A purer, physical flexing of the universal law I attempted to educate her about earlier.
I’d yet to have a passenger be happily surprised. I wonder if it’s me that causes this. I wonder if that’ll ever happen. I don’t even know if I’d like it at this point. I’m too used to the other way.
But while I was thinking all this. I realized that she hadn’t said anything yet.
I looked at her face to try to read it.
And I couldn’t.
In fact, I couldn’t do much of anything. Nothing was coming off of her and I suddenly felt very content to just sit and watch her shoulder.
I felt my mind split into two. One of those moments of being in shock where you watch things happen with a detachment that tells you just how bad things have gotten without allowing you to feel true alarm.
I understood that my plan was a bad one. I understood that she was off limits. I understood that this ship was now her ship.
I knew with the sickening clarity of hindsight that I’d fallen into her trap, not the other way around. I’d gobbled down a lure. Like a greedy riverfish, I’d arrowed toward the bait without a second thought.
In space you hear rumours. Myths in the black. A lot like sailors of old. Reality bends when you’re in a small craft at the mercy of enormous, uncaring nature. There can be madness in long transit. Superstitions arise that seem silly on land but become iron-hard rules on a long journey. Travelers come up with things to explain the unexplainable; mermaids, krakens, harpies, gods…
…and sirens.
She spoke to me then. In a different voice. A beautiful voice. I could almost see the notes of it. The crystalline shining elegance of them. I felt the pull of addiction and dove in. Like I was doing a smiling, languid backstroke down the sides a massive whirlpool. Not a care in the universe as my mental being disappeared.
I was allowed to keep a kernel of myself in a small corner of my mind. Otherwise, I became a tool of hers as much as any hammer or wrench on this ship.
I knew that I would never tell another soul about her. I knew that I would never attempt this kind of plan again. I felt the tendrils of her song reprogramming me as we traveled through the dark and I was grateful for it. I knew that if I broke any of her rules, I would happily gouge out my own eyes and cut myself in the smallest, most painful ways for days until I died.
She left me that small pocket of myself so that after she left, I would have a role to adhere to. A personality to keep me from drooling in a corner for the rest of my life. It wouldn’t be truly me so much as a costume I’d never be able to take off. A different mask that she’d let me have. She didn’t do that to be kind. She did it to avoid suspicion. So did it so that I could still speak to tower controls during takeoff and landing.
She did it to avoid leaving a trail of victims that would lead back to her.
Maybe the worst part of it all was that I was content about it all. The horror I should have felt was missing. No panic. Just passive witnessing. Watching myself disappear. Looking at my own disassembly and reformation in an image she preferred. I even helped her here and there when I felt she’d missed a spot.
I wasn’t privy to her long-terms plans. Would she leave me at the next outpost and find a new captain to prey on? Or would she let me resupply and take me up on that long-haul journey I’d told her I was going on? Would I be food for her journey? Would she lay eggs in me? Was I a short-term or long-term investment? But puppets don’t ask questions unless they’re told to.
I wasn’t wrong about about the economics of force and strategy. Clearly. It was all that mattered out here. I suppose in a lot of ways that the old maps had it right. The space between lands is deep, mysterious, unknowable, and dark.
And here be monsters.
tags