PIRANHA
Chapter Fourteen:  The Black Hole, Part Two

It was not a good-tempered Piranha that entered the Boss’s chambers promptly at 19:15.  There was nothing prepossessing about those obsidian eyes, glowing darkly in the shadow of that large black hat like patches of half-congealed lava.  There was nothing too engaging about the way he impatiently thrust the door aside, and the hat itself had a pugnacious tilt.

Anaconda, reclining grandly upon a chaise-lounge at the far end of the dark, ornately tapestried little room, smiled sardonically at the sight of him.

“Here he is at last!  My prize possession!” he exclaimed as Piranha stalked stiffly across the carpet.

A huge, flabby human, standing beside Anaconda’s couch, turned his head a little to see what had come in.  Quite instinctively, Piranha winced, as though smacked in the face by a powerful smell.  His eyes travelled incredulously up the expanse of a bulging, brown-swathed, mountainous being that could be no one but the Slaver.

As he stared, the human’s fat-lidded, protruding eyes stared just as hard back at him.  “By the celestial arc!  What is that?” boomed the man in a powerful, slow, rather jovial voice, unmistakably the same as that Piranha had heard shaking the bridge a few hours ago.  A heavy self-satisfaction radiated through the sound, palpable as sunshine, if less warming.

Anaconda grinned (a disturbing operation, given those semihuman metal jaws).  “That?  The treasured souvenir of one of my conquests,” he purred.

The Slaver cocked his massive head, squinting at Piranha with a professional eye.  “May I?” he said to Anaconda.

“Be my guest,” the robot replied.

Piranha took a step back, half-raising a fist as the human approached.  His teeth gleamed in what was clearly not a smile.  “Back off!” he growled.

“Piranha!” Anaconda clucked with gentle irony.  

Piranha halted.  Crushing his clenched fists into his sides, he became stone, except for the molten seething of those eyes.  “Piranha,” the robot went on, “kindly show some consideration for our guest, master of the Black Hole, a great benefactor to us all – Lord Ambrose Grouper.”

“That’s Amadeus Grouper, you misbegotten pile of recyclables,” retorted the human, with the forbearance of long familiarity.  In speaking, he placed a heavy stress on each separate syllable, imbuing his speech with some indefinite but weighty significance.

Piranha’s blunt gaze took the man in, noncommittally.  Amadeus Grouper was a very large human, nearly as tall as Anaconda himself and much wider, with a broad, flattened head that blended into his fleshy trunk without any apparent need for a neck.  From the pale yet reddish face protruded a pair of puffy, slate-coloured eyes, along with a nose so small as to nearly submerge in the valley between the mountains of his cheeks.  The whole was topped with a surprising mane of auburn hair.  Though much the size and weight of a pirate, his bulk was organized differently, a concatenation of soft spheres, lumpy in all the wrong places.  Around his shapeless form was draped an equally shapeless monkish robe, of coarse brownish material – hardly the garb one would expect of a man making profits obscene enough to arouse the ire of the pirate captain of the Insurrection.

From the austere cloak the man extended a thick-fingered hand barnacled with large jewelled rings, reaching as though to take hold of Piranha’s nose.  Piranha, aware of Anaconda’s admonishing gaze on him, stood tense, vibrating as the meaty hand plucked the hat off his head.  His eyes, huge, black-hot, pierced murderously straight into the Slaver’s.

“My, but he’s cute!” the man cooed admiringly.  “And all dressed up like a pirate!  How many more of these have you got?”

“I’m afraid he’s one of a kind,” Anaconda replied with satisfaction.

“Nonsense,” the Slaver scoffed, poking closer into Piranha’s face and prying at his coat and vest.  “There can’t be only one of any species, can there, little – what did you call him?”

“Piranha,” barked Piranha himself.  “If Anaconda couldn’t dig up more than one, it’s not for lack of tearing my planet apart.”

“Oh, listen to that, now,” murmured the Slaver, “don’t they always bite the hand that feeds them?”  Then pulled back rather sharply, as the small figure looked about to take him at his word.

Piranha snatched his hat out of the man’s hand, clomped it back on his head, and folded his hands tightly across his chest, gripping his own sides.  He was literally holding himself down; he would not give Anaconda the satisfaction of seeing him erupt.

The Slaver tilted Piranha’s hat back.  “Don’t hide like that, pet.  Let me get a good look at you.  Hmm.  Very odd, very odd.  How old are you, my little fellow?”

Piranha only stared at him with incredulous, haughty distaste.

The Slaver glanced at Anaconda.  “He does understand Galactic, doesn’t he?  – Now, lad, tell me —” With a sudden inflation of ponderous solemnity, much like a blowfish expanding, he turned back towards Piranha.  “Boy, do you know what happens when you die?”

Piranha blinked.  Then blinked again.  His gaze travelling over the monkish hulk with deep suspicion, he said nothing.

“Well, Piranha?”  Propping himself up on one arm, Anaconda was clearly enjoying every moment of Piranha’s discomfiture.  “Answer the man.  What do you imagine happens when you die?”

There was another pause.  “Here?”  Piranha said, doubtfully.

Now it was Grouper who was taken aback.  

“What’s that got to do with it?” he rumbled.  “Here or anywhere!  Do you or do you not know what happens after death!”

Piranha’s eyes faltered a little.  He looked away, muttered, “Not here.”

The human’s sallow face flushed dark red.  “What are you babbling about, you idiot!” he choked.

Piranha swallowed.  Reluctantly, under Anaconda’s coldly grinning glare, he fumbled, “I mean – Not here.  Naturally... so far from – from home...  how could I...  know ... anymore?”

Both the human and the robot were staring at him, one with outrage, the other with something like suppressed glee.  Blushing faintly, he raised his hands a little as if longing to ward off their eyes.

“I mean,” he stammered, “Doesn’t everybody?  I mean—”

“Can you really be that much of a fool?  Do you not know to Whom to turn in dealing with life’s troubles?

Even more confounded at this apparent drastic shift of topic, Piranha gaped at him.  “Who?  Myself, of course, who else have I got left?”

The Slaver, straightening his imposing bulk up to its full monumental height, glared down on Piranha with a theatrical horror.

“Unimaginable!  The most appalling, benighted ignorance I’ve ever seen!” he bellowed.  “Anaconda, could you not have instilled at least the rudiments of understanding into this pathetic creature?  Have you taught him no religion?”

Bursting into a paroxysm of chortling, Anaconda collapsed on his couch.  Grouper, with a momentous snort, ignored him.  “My boy,” he said, bending down close to Piranha, “can it be you know nothing of the Glory of Universal Illumination?”

Piranha stared up at him, wonderingly.  Then he brightened a little.

“Oh,” he said.  “Oh!  I thought you—”  As suddenly as it had faltered, his confidence flashed back.  “That’s all you were talking about, isn’t it.  Your religion!”  

“The religion,” Grouper corrected, threatening him with a fat forefinger.

Piranha relapsed into silence.  Grouper turned his head to glare significantly at Anaconda, who merely went on quietly snickering.

The Slaver turned away from him again, shaking his head with the regretful, kindly wisdom of an unacknowledged prophet.  Then, apparently feeling he’d sufficiently made his point, he abandoned his pompous attitude and gazed with fresh interest at the small figure before him, tilting his wide, somewhat wobbly head from side to side.

“Well, regardless of the vacancy inside his skull, the outside is certainly unique,”  he said at last.  “I don’t suppose, Captain, I could talk you into letting me have him?  I’d give you a most equitable price.”

“Oh, no, no, my Lord.  I wouldn’t dream of parting with him.”

“What use is a toy like that to you?  But think what I could get for him on Atchinor!  The emperor there loves freakish dwarfs.  Huge as his collection is, I can guarantee he’s never seen anything like this!”

“No doubt.  But, after all, I’m not about to sell you my First Mate.”

The Slaver’s large jaw, along with several chins, dropped halfway to his chest. “What?  This thing isn’t really a pirate!”  

“Indeed it is.  And a most uncommonly vicious one, a murderer and slaver in his own right.  Not really the kind of toy you’re looking for.”

The Slaver gave Piranha a sharply changed look – coldly evaluative.  His hand darted into the nest of ruffles over Piranha’s silky shirt, seized and pulled at the metal oval half buried within.

“By the Eternal Luminance, that is your First Mate badge, ain’t it?  No, seriously –  this pipsqueak – Nah!  Why, you old devil, you nearly had me that time.  This little poppet a pirate!  Though now you mention it, he does have a brutish sort of eye – not so great for the novelty market.”  He pushed the small figure abruptly away, as though Piranha had been the one to come pestering him for attention.  “All right, good joke, but – be serious!  That your first mate?  Come on now, where’re you hiding Blargh?”  

A silence.  As he gazed at his first mate, Anaconda’s thin lips pressed together in an unsettling analogue of human malevolence.

“Blargh?” he murmured.  “Oh yes, Blargh.  It would seem the little poppet tore that one to pieces with his bare hands.”

The Slaver’s protruding eyes swivelled slowly back towards Piranha.  His enormous bulk retreated a little, quite unawares, as though carried by a receding tide.  Then he was looking somewhere else; the small black figure didn’t so much as exist.



It was perhaps the one moment in Piranha’s life that he breathed a heartfelt, if silent, sigh of gratitude to the Captain of the Insurrection.

***

Having gotten the polite preliminaries out of the way, Anaconda and Grouper turned to business, and for the next three-quarters of an hour were oblivious to anything outside their often heated negotiations.  Forgotten and bored, Piranha stood silently by, poking surreptitiously at the carpeting with the toe of his boot; now and then deliberately looking up to meet the shadowy glares of the Boss’s and Slaver’s assistants and bodyguards, who hastily averted their eyes.  

He had no reason to be there, but he knew better than to try to leave.  He hadn’t been dismissed yet.



“Well, Condy old boy, it’s sheer piracy, haha, but I’ll let you have your price.  Let’s just get on with it.  Carting fifty thousand slaves from one ship to another is a long job, and I want to get out of here.  I’ve cooled my heels too long already in this sector from noplace.”

“Piracy!  I’ll never be able to look any self-respecting pirate in the eye again after giving such a magnificent cargo away practically for free.  There’ll be gaskets blowing right and left, when the shares are made to the crew.  But after all, I recognize a brute beast can be pushed only so far.  How can one hope to reason with the intransigence of the mentally deficient?”

“Mentally deficient?  Are you referring to your crew?  Or to me, you – non-carbon based non-life form?”

Anaconda smiled, but only replied, “As an attribute, life is entirely subjective.”

“Ah, fah, you and your highfalutin doubletalk.  I don’t think you know what it means yourself.”

“Any more than you are personally acquainted with the ‘Universal Illumination’.”

They had been scuffling at the far edge of playful insults, and now for a speechless instant seemed about to topple over into genuine anger, if not a physical fight; but after a moment, both retreated back to the more profitable zone of mere word-fencing.

“All right then,” Anaconda purred, “That’s the deal.  A bulk price of two hundred thousand goldbiks for, as you say, fifty thousand slaves, give or take a few.”

“Take is right, you electric buzzard.  I won’t accept less than fifty thousand, and I’m not counting anything substandard.  I’m tired of you palming cartloads of infants and old wrecks off on me as though they were merchandise.”

“Oh, you’ll like the crop I’ve got this time.  Topnotch, hardly any chaff.  Shall we do an inspection?”

“Inspection!  My assistants will be present during the transfer, monitoring the actual shipment in real time, thanks very much.  Quality and count.  I’m sure you won’t mind.”

“Of course not.”  Anaconda again smiled that blade-like metal smile.  “And you will of course deliver the advance payment into my hands, to be held under guard until the slave transfer is complete.  And your vessel will not be released from our docking mechanism until we have settled to full mutual satisfaction.”

The Slaver grinned rather more toothily than necessary.  “It goes without saying.  Your professionalism is a joy, Anaconda.”

The robot nodded blandly.  “Naturally.  Now, after the inspection, my Lord, at 21:00 we’ll be holding a celebration in the intake level for the whole crew.  I trust you and your officers will attend.”

“You know I wouldn’t miss a performance on the Insurrection for two year’s profits, you rusty old reprobate!  Of course I’ll be there.”

“Excellent.”

And with such guarded pleasantries, they parted.  During their conversation, Piranha had retreated gradually towards the door, hoping to slip out unnoticed.  As Grouper and his bodyguards swept past him, he did his best to be pulled along in their wake.  

“Wait a minute, First Mate.”  The voice an octave lower than usual, an ominous register Piranha knew all too well.  He halted, remaining where he was as the Slaver’s cortege trailed out of the room.  



Anaconda clasped his slender hands behind his back, his thin whip jutting from them, and began to stride slowly back and forth in front of his first mate.  Piranha stood stiffly in place, eyes blank, stolid as a soldier on review.  

Anaconda’s private chamber though luxurious was not large, longer but narrower than Piranha’s cabin.  At Grouper’s departure the lights had dimmed almost to black, the darkness broken only by one intense blue-white spotlight in the center of the ceiling, beneath which the robot moved slowly, eerily, casting a stark, ever-changing shadow that waxed and waned as he stalked into and out of the light; his black figure subtly outlined with iridescent gleams, his dark red swirling cape almost purple.  The silence, stubbornly unbroken by either the Boss or the First Mate, grew so dense even the strident beam of light seemed to be contracting, shrinking into the weight of darkness.

At last, with a decisive jerk the Captain halted directly in front of his First Mate.  His small yellow eyes glowed strongly in his dark face.

“Why do I always hear wild stories about you, Piranha?”

“I suppose because people keep telling them.”

Anaconda gave a startlingly unmechanical snort of disgust.  “Today there was chatter about some sort of legal shenanigans taking place on board.  Did you have something to do with that?”

“Yes.”

“Kindly elaborate.”

“I put Hacker on trial.  For thievery, extortion, and treason.”  

“You put him on trial.”

“Yes. ”

“Anything come of it?”

A short silence.  “No.”

For a moment Anaconda remained silent.  Then burst out, “Have you finally taken leave of your few remaining senses?  What were you thinking of?  Putting a pirate on trial?  What’s he done that every other pirate on board hasn’t done?”

Piranha raised an eyebrow.  “Every other pirate on board hasn’t stolen millions from his fellow pirates.  Or stolen almost as much from you.  Or sworn loyalty to me personally and then—”

“And then what?”

“And then – I can’t prove anything.”

Anaconda flung his arms up.  “Prove anything?  Prove?  Look, you’re having a problem with that oversized rum keg?  Just deal with him!”

“Deal with him?  How?  You mean a Challenge?”

“I mean any way you want to.  But handle it like a pirate.  Like a master.  Like a commander!  Not like a – boiled oil, not like a —”  He stopped abruptly; then added, his voice low, controlled, venomous.  “Not like some book-bound, data-dotty, law-stifled, human-loving, fusty outmoded prototype of a historian.”

Piranha’s already stiff form tightened; his eyes widened fractionally, following Anaconda’s every move as the robot resumed his stride.  He said nothing.

It was clear from his increasingly jerky motions that the Boss was building up to one of his signature rages.  He strode back and forth across the claustrophobically draped and carpeted room, occasionally slashing the air with his whip.  There was no one else in the room now but the bodyguards, and they stayed posed against the walls like giant suits of armour, no doubt grateful to be uninvolved.  Piranha himself, perplexed and uneasy after Anaconda’s last remark, stood preternaturally still, awaiting the explosion.  It came.

“You, a pirate!  Melted nanocircuits!  Imagine me having to defend you to that salvation-spouting bobblebag!  What have you ever been but a failure, a joke, a ghastly embarrassment?  Savage enough to decimate my ship of half its robots, yes, but – oh, once he’s a pirate himself, the yokel’s suddenly superior to the whole universe!  Too delicate, too fine, too dainty all together!  Doesn’t like slaves, doesn’t like corruption, too fastidious even to get drunk!  

“What have you done to my tumultuous pirate world?  Where are the meaningless brawls, the pilfering?  What happened to our factions and gang wars?  Goodness, we can’t have those anymore, Piranha doesn’t like them!

“And now – trials?  What’s next, democratic elections?  You run this ship like a – librarian!  

“Yet you were so promising at first!  I saw you kill a man right in front of me!”

“Actually,” Piranha muttered, “I’m pretty sure he recovered.”

“Aargh!”  The robot flung out his hands again, striding away.  Then snapped around, cape soaring, and thrust his whip, point first like a rapier, savagely straight at Piranha.  Despite the distance between them, Piranha could not repress a flinch.  Whatever one might think of Anaconda, there was no denying the power in those long metal arms, that swift metal body, the malignant mind that propelled them.  

For a moment neither of them moved, their eyes locked in a glower, sullen yellow and flinty black.  Then, with great deliberation, Anaconda lowered his sword arm and changed from a battle stance to one of negligence; bending his arms, lounging back on one foot, tilting back his head just slightly as if to regard the little First Mate from an even higher eminence, a contemptuous smile on his hard features.  

“You can put on a decent show, little Guardian, I’ll grant you that.  For a while you had even me fooled.  I was sold a pirate and leader of pirates, and only later found I’d bought a children’s nanny.  But you’re going to reform.  We’re going to see some change.  We’ll start by having you attend the celebration at 21:00 tonight.”

“What kind of—”

“Never mind.  Just you be there.  We’ll find out if you’re a pirate or not.”


It could only make things worse, but the words at last broke out of him.  “Anaconda –  what do you want from me?  Surely I’ve done what I promised!  Have I ever disobeyed an order?  Haven’t I halved the mortality of the crew?  Haven’t I cleaned up the ship?  Haven’t I filled it with more booty and more – slaves than it could hold?  Aren’t you three times richer since I came here?”  

Anaconda gave a contemptuous bark of laughter.  “Right!  Every order obeyed!  Every promise fulfilled!  You’ve followed your stinking contract all right!  To the letter!”  He rounded on the small figure, bending down to speak directly into his face.  “Your contract!”  Then straightening to his full height, he thundered down on the motionless Piranha.  

“Do you think you’re dealing with that fat grocer Grouper?  Do you think being a pirate is a matter of balance sheets and inventories?  Of mere material gain?”

Piranha flashed, “Don’t try to tell me you’ve no interest in Grouper’s gold!”

“Gold! – You bookkeeper!  Contracts!  Damn you, a pirate isn’t a pirate by contract!  He is what he is because he can bend the world to his will!  A great pirate bends, the galaxy, the universe, to his will!”  His long arm swept the whip over his head in a wide arc, as if to display that universe for Piranha’s contemplation.  “Being a pirate is a matter of spirit!  Of soul!  Of power!  Not of some piddling words written on a flimsy piece of paper!  A pirate’s greatness isn’t measured by booty – he sees it in the cowering of his victims, the grovelling of his minions, the bloody death and destruction of his enemies!”

He paused, arm still raised, holding his pose, his grim little eyes fixed on Piranha.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Piranha muttered.  “Soul.  Greatness.  And the prompt and generous payments of his slave dealer.”  He raised his hands deprecatingly as Anaconda’s metal arm snapped down against his side with a clank.  “Okay, Anaconda, I get it.  I get it.”

For a moment, the robot was frozen, paralyzed with fury.  Then, as if ripping apart actual bonds, he wrenched himself away.  He flung his metal body onto the wooden couch (which let out an agonized creak), and fixed his eyes on Piranha’s.  He held them there for a considerable time.  It was astonishing, the depth of disdain that could be conveyed by those flat, blank yellow ovals.

When the robot spoke, however, his voice was quiet, calm, and precise.  “My advice to you, ‘poppet’,” he said, “is to make up your mind.  Make up that fevered, contorted little mind of yours.  I know how much booty you’ve brought in, how many slaves you’ve captured, how many lamps you’ve repaired in the hallways.  All very well – but what I see is that you still haven’t made up your mind.”  

Piranha faced him stonily.  After a moment, Anaconda flicked a hand at him, with frigid scorn.  “Dismissed,” he said.  “Get out of here.  I don’t want to see your face again.  Until 21:00, that is.  Be there.  Drunk, if possible.  And see if you can’t get a dent or two in you by then.  Try to look as though you weren’t assembled yesterday.  I want a pirate as my first mate, not a – rosy-cheeked schoolboy.”

Piranha wheeled around, but Anaconda’s voice started up again, softly, smoothly.  It slid into Piranha like a meathook, halting him instantly.

“Wait.  Have you forgotten the future?”

Piranha didn’t turn to face him.  But it was clear he was expected to answer.  “What?” he said, in a low voice.

“The future!  Naturally, it is harder to remember than the past, Piranha.  Not having happened yet.  But isn’t that also its virtue?  At least something might be done to save it.  Unlike the past – which is quite, entirely dead.  Not even you, noble posings and all, can rescue that.  Don’t get distracted, little Guardian.”

A subtle shudder went through Piranha’s body.  He had just been threatened.  Pointedly, as if with a scimitar through the chest.  Though he had no way of knowing just what the threat was.  If indeed the poisonous, gloating bastard actually meant anything at all.

He turned now, his cold eyes meeting Anaconda’s with equal arrogance.

Oh yes, the bastard meant something all right.  He meant it.  Piranha’s black gaze didn’t waver.



“What, are you still here?”  Anaconda murmured after a moment, as though only now becoming aware of his existence.  Stretching out a little on his chaise-lounge, boredly he waved Piranha away.

Piranha turned fiercely, lurching towards the exit, but had to halt again as his master spoke up once more.

“‘Piranha’,” Anaconda half-sang, with a sort of genteel derision.  “Cracking flywheels, ‘Piranha!’  More like manatee.  A dugong.  My first mate is a flaming dugong.”

Piranha half turned again.  “What’s a dugong?” he inquired, politely.

“Oh, get out!”

[End of Chapter 14, Part 2]