
There was some part of me that identified with the fell pirate, though I knew it was wrong and more than
wrong. My innocent, lovely sister Faith possessed certain attributes of Heaven, while now I knew that I
possessed, at least in part, an attribute of Hell. I looked upon the foul lust of Satan, and felt an echo of
that lust within myself.
I cannot write of this further. It is no pleasant thing to confess an affinity to that which one condemns. I
can only say that I swore a private oath to kill the pirate Horse: some time, some way. And the pirates
who followed him in the appalling act. I tried to note the details of each of them, so that I would not fail to
recognize them if ever I encountered them again. I saw that several of the pirates, however, did not
participate; they obeyed the Horse in all other things, but would not ravish a helpless woman. Even
among pirates, there were some who were not as bad as others.
Apart from that effort of identification, my mind retreated from what was happening. My sister, I think,
had fainted before the second pirate readied his infernal weapon, and that was a portion of mercy for her.
She, at least, no longer knew what was being done to her body. I knew—but chose not to see.
I fled into memory, into that sequence that was the origin of my feeling ofdéjà vu , for it related directly
to the present situation. Probably I should have commenced my bio there, instead of with the shock of
Faith's violation, for I see now that the true beginning of my odyssey was then. This bio is more than a
record of experience; it is therapy. Biography, biology, biopsy—all the ways to study a subject.
Bio—life. My life. Not only do I seek to grasp the nature of myself, I seek to strengthen my character by
reviewing my successes and my mistakes with an eye to improving the ratio between them, painful as this
process can be at times.
Therefore I will now illumine that prior sequence, demarking it with a new dateline, and will try to keep
my narrative more coherent hereafter. I would perhaps dispose of my "false start," but my paper and ink
are precious, as is my evocative effort. After all, if once I begin the process of unwriting what I have
written, where may it end? Every word is important, for it too is part of my being.
Chapter 2 — FAITH AND SPIRIT
Maraud, Callisto, 2-1-2615—My sisters and I walked home together after school, because there was
a certain safety in numbers. Faith, eighteen years old, resented this; she claimed her social life was
inhibited by the presence of a skinny fifteen-year-old little sibling. The vernacular term she was wont to
employ was less kind, and I think not completely fair, and does not become her, so I shall not render it
here. Yet she smiled as she said it, deleting much of the sting, and I think there was some merit to her
complaint. It is true that a fifty-kilo sibling is not much company for a fifty-kilo girl. Our weights were
similar, in full Earth gravity, but the distribution differed substantially. Faith was about as pretty a girl as
one might imagine, with the rich ash-blond tresses and gray eyes that made her face stand out among the
darker shades that predominated in our culture, and a generously symmetrical figure and small
extremities. I was young and not versed in social relations between the sexes, and I was her brother;
even so, I understood the impact such physical qualities had on men.
Faith was not really intelligent, as I define the concept, though she did well enough in scholastics. It was
said that a single look at her was enough to raise her grade before any given class commenced, and that
may not have been entirely in jest. She lacked that ornery attitude that passes for courage in others; these
qualities of intelligence and courage were reserved in healthy measure for her sister. Spirit was as bold
and cunning a gamin as could be found on the planet. Technically Callisto is merely the fourth Galilean
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