The Peacock Cloak

like finding water in a desert… like I’d been hollow and empty up to that point and suddenly found I had a heart.”
    His voice became a little wobbly at this point and he paused in order to get his emotions under control. The life of a space captain can be a very lonely thing.
    “Two more years,” he said. “That’s what we agreed. Two years apart. Build up the savings we need for a life we can really share together, and then no more wandering for me. Two years for me that is: it’s four for her of course, which I do feel badly about, but then I tell myself that at least for her it’s not time spent completely alone, so it’ll pass a lot more quickly.”
    Again Jacob shrugged.
    “Depends what you want, I suppose,” he said coolly. “Me, I’m going for the real money.”
    “Sure.”
    Doug gazed into the middle distance. It was painfully obvious to Jacob that the other space captain had already grown bored of him.
    “Anyway, Jake my friend,” Doug said, bringing himself, with an effort, back to the present moment, “weren’t the two of us about to have a game of cards?”
    It wasn’t much of a present moment to come back to, a plastic mock-up of an Irish bar surrounded by millions of miles of void, where the chemically synthesised drinks were served by a puppet with a broken blink mechanism. But Doug smiled kindly at Jacob, realising that, to him, this was virtually the whole world.
    “Minimum stake of five dollars suit you, buddy?” he asked.
    Jacob snorted derisively. He was determined to get one up on Prettyboy Hempleman with his pretty girlfriend and all.
    “ Five ?” he guffawed as he sat himself down at the card table. “That’s not real money. A hundred, and rising in steps of a hundred. Or there’s no point in playing.”
    “Well… uh… okay,” Doug agreed and touched the button to tell the machine to deal out the first hand. “I guess we can always stop if we want to.”

    An hour later and Jacob had lost nine thousand dollars. Things were not going according to plan.
    “You had enough, Jake?” Hempleman asked him mildly. “You’ve been a very good sport. I must admit if it’d been me, I’d have dropped out when I was five hundred down.”
    Jacob made a contemptuous sound.
    “Nine thousand is nothing. Not to a millionaire like me. Cards aren’t coming up right, that’s all. Bound to happen sometimes. Last time I played I won five million.”
    Again Doug regarded him gently but appraisingly, in a way that Jacob was rapidly growing to hate. He felt sure that Hempleman knew quite well that the five million win had been against a simulated player on the Rio Quinto ’s on-board entertainment system, set to ‘medium skill’.
    “You really want to carry on then?” Doug said.
    Jacob touched the button for more cards. Prettyboy Hempleman might be able to see right through him, but Jacob wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of proving his perceptions to be correct.
    “Yeah, sure, may as well,” Jacob said, “I guess it passes the time…”

    Jacob lived for money – money was the only measure by which he could deem his own life to have been a success – so he hated the thought of losing any part of his precious stash. But one thing he hated more was the idea that this young whippersnapper, with his class-F ship and his pretty fiancée, might think he’d got one over on him.
    How to end the game without looking like he was pulling out, though? He’d lost another five grand before a plan finally came to him.
    “Got some passengers on board my ship,” he informed the other captain archly.
    “Passengers? Really?” Hempleman was very surprised. “I could have sworn your ship was a standard C-class mineral transporter.”
    “Correct. It’s a standard C-class. No fancy F-class for me.”
    “I’m sorry Jake, I’m just not getting this. You have passengers in a mineral freight hold?”
    Then Hempleman gave a strained laugh.
    “I’m a fool,” he said. “You’re joking, aren’t you, Jake? If you’d really had passengers they’d be here with us in Vegas. They wouldn’t be waiting back on your ship.”
    “They are on my ship,” said Jacob, “and they are in the mineral freight hold, and they’re real passengers who paid their own fare. I bet you can’t tell me how come.”
    “Not a clue, but I’ve an idea that you’re about to tell me.”
    Jacob regarded Doug more archly than ever, savouring his own knowledge and the other’s