Take No Prisoners by John Grant Read Free Book Online Page A

but the tone of that single paragraph seemed to condone the actions of the lynch mob. I feel uneasy at the ease and frequency with which our penal system carries out executions, often of people who seem to me to be more mentally ill or impaired, or simply more independently minded, than genuinely criminal. And I wish that when vagrants are rounded up they did not simply disappear.
    So, yes, sometimes I wonder.

The Glad who Sang a Mermaid in from the Probability Sea
    Sand between my toes and the songs of the seas in my ears. Two songs, two seas. The water sea belongs to me because it lives and dies with me, with its perfect blue (I made it perfect) sheening to the horizon and the pure white froth of its mighty yet playful breakers. The probability sea belongs to me as it belongs to all, and owns all, having birthed all.
    More song. Laughter-song. A mother. Her weans. The grave laughter-song of love.
    And the smell of seaweed in my nostrils, sparking a joyous hunger. I throw back my head and see that the sun fills its decreed place in the sky, and I roar my delight in my creation as I turn, stretching my arms wide to embrace.
    Oh, lady.
    Oh, weans.
    ~
    Once there was a ship that sailed the seas of The World. The ship was real – some friends once saw it sail – but now it has become in the Ironfolk mind like a myth, for all they know is that it had a name, and that it played an important part in ... something or other. That's what's been lost to them: what it was it did; why it was important. But its name is still remembered: the rusty little ferry was called the Ten Per Cent Extra Free .
    The Ironfolk revere names, though often they get them wrong.
    I slaved aboard a different vessel called the Ten Per Cent Extra Free , a vessel that sailed the probability sea. I was one of a hundred hundred slaves on a ship of crafted metal whose sleek lines and curved shine and unthinkable size – it was a month's walk from one end to the other – made a joke of its name. The joke, had the Ironfolk but realized it, was not on the dented ferry – of which they recalled so little – but on the great cargo vessel, for its presumption: it was one of many, and thereby unimportant; the ferry was one of one.
    I slaved, and like the other slaves I sometimes schemed for the overthrow of the Ironfolk, secure in the knowledge that our plans – however intricate and perfect – would never fruit; our plotting was an irresponsible sport, hardly more. We moved from system to system, picking up extra Finefolk slaves to replace those who died of pining or of beating. But, more important, we embarked Ironfolk families by the hundred; rich families and soft families, usually, but often with the look of defeat in their eyes. We were not allowed to go too close to them, for fear that we might steal their weans – as if we would wish to (although sometimes the weans fled to us, recognizing that the same light shone in us as shone in them). The families were leaving their homes and the crowding of the Galaxy, leaving to be taken to new and echoing worlds across the great ocean. The Spiral of Andromeda was beckoning them, flaunting its faded starry finery at them, promising – false-promising – that all was fresh and virginal there.
    The Ironfolk have a liking for virginity, believing it to be the natural order of things. This is one of the tapestry of beliefs that has always shielded their eyes from the reality of the universe. Virgin purity is something that must be created ; reality is rough and promiscuous and noisy, with whisky on her breath. Andromeda herself was not like that, mind you: she was flashy and could be strident, but her mother had invented her as pure, and she remained that way all her days, shining as brightly as the stars of the spiral which bears her name. The most exquisite of her many sensualities was the dirt under her fingernails.
    The Spiral of Andromeda is absent from my sky. I have no wish always to see reminders of my time