Before I move on with these memoirs and write about my life after Persiphone, there are just a few more things I’d like to say about my life there. One thing is that Persiphone is perhaps the most beautiful planet I have ever been on, all things considered. The climate, weather, gravity, soil fertility, education, geography — everything. I’ve never been on another planet quite like it. I guess everyone feels that way about Home, but think about it. Out of the few hundred planets occupied by humanity, only a small percentage is as close to Terran normal as is Persiphone.
    During the next eighteen months, Persiphone’s population continued to grow rapidly, passing the 600,000 mark before I left her. Almost due south of Batesville, in the equatorial region of the continent Vertiga, a new farming community/city sprang into being, called Ekwado (EK-wah-doh). Also near the equator, on the main continent of Alana, Kleenair began to grow into a powerful resort city in its own right. The previously unoccupied continent Lichten sprouted its own city — the center of a mining community — called Kracota (kruh-SOH-tuh, apparently from the word “beauty” in some obscure Terran language.) Basplace brought in the most people during that time, as the Cyr Corporation continued to move its headquarters there. Michael Cyr was now said to be living on a million-acre ranch, in a 49,000 square-foot home, most of which was underground and nuke proof.
    Harry continued on as Governor of the planet, seeing me only occasionally, except when he took me with him on a winter vacation to Kleenair. He had gained quite a bit of experience in the running of planetary governments during his years with the Colonial Commission, and he applied it wisely to Persiphone. Whenever the Planetary Legislature put up a fight on something, Harry just suggested putting the matter to a planetary vote. Almost every time, the population voted in Harry’s favor. After a while, the legislature grew more cooperative. He handily proved to the people that they were the bosses, not some stuffed shirt fat cats in the capitol.
    During the winter break of 2486, Destiny drove the getaway car while I single-handedly robbed the only bank in Midway, the only town on the continent of Troller. We got about 100,000 newdollars, not even a pimple on the body of loot we already had. That was our seventh bank robbery and our last until we left Persiphone.

*

During my senior year of high school, I worked at Mike’s about four days a week, and worked out with Lt. Colonel Jason Quivers two days a week. Sometimes we met at the gym and sometimes we met in the wild country outside of town. He told me to start calling him Jason, since I was almost grown. That only confirmed my previous suspicion, that he was only giving me the personal training because of a subconscious desire for a friend. And that was fine with me. The only other friend I had was Norman Dester, and the two of us had grown apart since I had moved into town.
    Jason and I continued sparring and practicing judo moves, just for warm up, then he began to teach me more efficient attacking moves, and ways to turn defense into offense. I picked up a lot of Aikido, karate, and other ancient fighting arts. He showed me how to fight with the quarter-staff, with a sword, with a knife and how to fight barehanded against someone who carried such weapons.
    I learned that the unarmed man always has the advantage in close-quarters combat. Even if my opponent had a pistol, I could win; Jason proved it to me. I fired tranquilizer darts at him, starting at twenty yards, and I never hit him; he got my gun away from me and had me pinned on the ground before I could fire the last dart.
    Then he set up targets and showed me how to fire a pistol the right way. He taught me how to make a real silencer for a pistol, how to make a makeshift silencer for any gun, how to shoot a rifle with a scope from long range, how to handle an automatic weapon, and how to correctly operate a hand blaster. Automatic weapons and hand blasters are illegal for civilians on most planets, but he had them nonetheless. Jason was a true believer in the rights of individual citizens, having been raised on Yurple.
    Many times, if she could work around her job and school, Destiny came out into the field with us and merely watched approvingly, like a mother watches her son pull out a chair for a lady. She saw more possible future applications for my new skills than I could possibly imagine.
    I was just enjoying myself, while she was seeing our next score in her mind. She did join in from time to time, asking a quick question, or wanting to try a certain move. She learned a lot faster than I did, and Jason said women were like that.
    “The woman is the highest animal on the food chain”, he said to me once, when Destiny wasn’t there. “It’s the highest mark that human evolution has ever achieved.”
    “How do you mean?” I asked.
    “They’re smarter, faster, stronger. They can stand more pain or gravity than you or me. That’s why most fighter pilots are women now. In fact, most space ship pilots are women. Also, they have tricks that you and I will never have. You know what I mean, Philipp. I’ve seen you stare into Destiny’s eyes, and in those moments, you’d jump off a cliff if you thought that’s what she really wanted you to do.”
    I nodded, understanding. “But you said they’re stronger, Jason. That’s one thing I don’t get.”
    “I mean by weight, pound for pound. And by capability. If you ever run into a woman who weighs what you do, and has been trained exactly the same as you, the odds are ten to one that she can lift more than you. And probably run farther, too. Of course, I’m speaking of averages here; there are exceptions to every rule. I’m just saying: In combat, never underestimate the power of a woman. My instructor on Yurple was a woman.”
    I changed the subject a little, or so I thought. “So, why did you ever leave a great planet like Yurple to come out here?”
    “I fell in love with my instructor”, he laughed, showing the wrinkles around his eyes.
    “We got found out. On Yurple, although many of the laws are liberal, militia members are not allowed to be involved with each other. We got dishonorable discharges from the Militia, and life was never the same after that. She went to Wederr, and I came here.”
    I fell into silence then, thinking about the power of a woman. I couldn’t imagine my Destiny ever being the cause of my life’s ruin. Later, I remembered how devastated I had been when she left me the first time, for Billy Donovan. I reflected that if Billy had not been an idiot, he would probably still have her today.

*

It caused a little stir at the high school when I took Destiny Dester to my senior prom; she was by far the most beautiful girl in the room, although Norman’s girl-of-the-day wasn’t too bad either. More than one student approached her for a dance; she politely turned all of them down. That was one of the happiest nights of my life: I had Destiny, I was the Governor’s son, I was part of the first crop of true Persiphone students, and I was secretly very, very rich.

*

When I graduated from high school, early in the summer of 2487, Norman Dester and I, along with a few other students, received special honors. We were the first people ever to graduate from a Persiphone public school having completed every grade in a Persiphone public school. All the students before us had attended at least one year of school on some other planet. I had started school immediately after arriving there, as had Norman and a few others. It was a sign that our planet’s population was putting down roots, becoming an established world.
    The high school band played some special songs for us, commemorating our achievement, and Governor Howard Wingate Bates III (my adopted father) made a short but regal speech about the historical sense of it all. He also mentioned that in a few years, there would be students graduating who had been born on Persiphone, true natives of the New World. He said that’s when a planet is no longer a new world, a colony world, but a fully developed world — when there are adult citizens living there, who can claim that planet as a birthplace.
    There were tears in several eyes; I know I cried. There, in the middle of the graduation ceremony, I felt my father’s hand on my shoulder, and my mother’s arm around my waist. I was glad they had decided to come to Persiphone. If I had stayed on Tuf, my graduation would have been just another ceremony.

*

The very next day, I was promoted to head dry goods clerk at the store, which meant I was in charge of all the stockers at Mike’s, during the daytime hours. And I was second only to the Dry Goods Manager, who worked pretty much whatever hours he wanted. I made 2.7 newdollars per hour, and worked about fifty hours a week, all that summer, even helping Mike to open his second store, in Midway. That meant I was making about 150nd per week, most of which went back into my savings account (the one I had opened with only ccl00, accompanied by Destiny, all those years ago.)
    Destiny worked her way up in New Planet Spacelines, which also ran a shuttle service to the other cities on the planet.
    While Destiny entered her fourth year of college, I kept working for Mike — on the very location where my parents had died; I guess in away, it made me feel close to them — and training with Jason.
    Jason said there was definitely a war coming on; since negotiations with the Sleebb people weren’t coming along well. He said that both human and Trayak historians were now in agreement that the Sleebbs were indeed the ones that had attacked and sacked both races planets around five centuries ago, and that it called for retribution.
    I didn’t really see the point. I knew they had sacked Old Home Terra — that’s what history says, I wasn’t there. And I knew that they had supposedly bombed Tuf until the Trayaks had been forced underground. But that had all been five hundred years ago. So much had happened since then and we had grown so much. In fact, we should be thanking them for forcing us off the planet.
    For those of you who are not up to date on your ancient history, let me fill you in. According to Millal Ba — the great and legendary leader who had rescued a few million people from Terra — in his autobiography, Terra had been attacked by unknown aliens a few years before the Exodus. The Forces Under Zarcon had fought them off — barely. In the few years before the next attack, the wreckage of one of the alien ships had been studied by FUZ scientists. Soon, the secret of the aliens’ star drive had been discovered, and new hyperdrive units had been installed in every FUZ ship. That had been shortly after the end of the 20th century.
    Then, the aliens had returned en masse. They had devastatingly bombed and effectively destroyed the surface of Terra. Because of the foresight and brilliant leadership of Millal Ba — which he denied in his book, a few million humans were rescued, and escaped the system. It took ninety years of war with the Trayaks, Grangers, and Strangers to figure out that we were fighting races who had also been devastated by invading aliens. I guess you could say that humanity’s main goal for the last five hundred years has been to find out who those aliens were, and where they came from.
    If those aliens had not attacked us at all, we would not have the hyperdrive that makes our space travel so easy now. Humans would still be mostly confined to the crowded, polluted and used-up surface of Terra. Of course, FUZ had sent out a few interstellar ships, powered by a primitive form of the gravitic drive we use now, but those ships would have taken a few dozen years to cover the mighty distance between even the closest stars.
    And if the aliens had not attacked the second time, completely wrecking the corrupt governments of Old Home Terra, the almost Utopian societies in which we now live would have never existed.
    Surely, five hundred years is long enough for a race to get over a grudge.

*

Are they going to draft me, like they drafted those kids back during the Ninety Year War?” I asked Jason.
    “Oh, I doubt it, Phil”, he answered, looking into the sky. “Back then, there weren’t enough humans to hold down all the planets we occupied, and we were fighting for our lives, although a lot of it was based on a misunderstanding. But now, there are ten billion humans, a billion each of the Trayaks, Grangers and Strangers, and almost two billion Kelvods — all somewhat warlike races in their own ways, and two of which claim direct contact with the Sleebbs.”
    He hefted the sniper rifle in his arms lovingly. “With the humans and the Trayaks leading the way, and the Strangers acting as a medical corps, and supply lines from the Grangers and Kelvods — at least that’s the way I’d set it up — we would probably win fairly easily. Especially since the Sleebbs don’t know how many planets we occupy now. We got the hyperdrive from them, you know. From one of their abandoned ships in Terra’s solar system.
    “To answer your question, I think there would be enough volunteers to win. I know I’ll volunteer. You could too, you know, and have your pick of assignments, with what I’ve taught you.”
    I decided that I might participate, but only because the Sleebbs had attacked the scout ship McRay, not because of some centuries-old feeling of needing revenge. But I didn’t really want to. The Sleebbs weren’t attacking our worlds, now, were they?

*

After that discussion, Jason kept training me in all kinds of fighting tactics, along with new things he remembered from his training on Yurple. I learned how to make several different kinds of wilderness shelters, fashion weapons from primitive materials, make a bulletproof vest from items found in clothing and hardware stores, and properly kill, clean and cook a lot of small animals and fish.
    One day I said to him, “If you know all this stuff, you could probably colonize a planet by yourself. You wouldn’t need anyone’s help, or any big shipments from some home base.”
    He laughed, and it quickly turned into a guffaw. He slapped me on the back, pretty hard. “Well, yeah, except for one thing. There’s one thing I really don’t know how to do.”
    When I looked at him with a big question mark on my face, he laughed heartily again. “Philipp, you have to have women to colonize a planet. The one thing I don’t know how to do is have descendants by myself. That’s one thing you have to have women for. I told you, they’re better than we are. And it’s the women who usually want the cities, and restaurants, and video, and all that stuff, at least at first. I’d be happy on a planet with just a few guys like us, who know how to shoot, and take care of ourselves. But when we died, it would all be over. We wouldn’t have any descendants to pass our knowledge on to.”
    He looked me straight in the eye then. “You hang on to that jewel of a woman you’ve got there, Phil. You’ll go places with her. She’s smarter than most women, harder working than most men, and a better fighter than most people I know. Besides that, when you wake up in the morning, you’ll have something pretty to look at. That’s important, too. Yeah, you hang on to that one.”
    I looked at him, straight back in the eye. “I have every intention of hanging onto her.”

*

In the early part of 2488 (Galactic Standard), I turned 18, and Harry reluctantly gave me all my papers. He had my birth certificate, colonization records, immunization records, and others. He said I could stay on with him, if I wanted to, until I found something better. I did stay there a little while.
    Then Destiny turned 21 and graduated from Tarkin University with a degree in business. That degree gave her a significant raise with New Planet, and she began to have offers to transfer out to a bigger office on a more populated planet.
    I talked about these offers with her, since I was reluctant to leave Persiphone. She disagreed.
    “Philipp, you knucklehead”, she chided me. “How are we supposed to rob more banks, if we’re stuck on this planet? We’ll have to move somewhere, eventually, if were going to spend any of it, you know. Too many people know us here. If we’re on a planet where no one knows who we are, we can buy a nice house, nice cars, expensive clothes, or whatever we want. We could even get that farm, on an empty planet, that you keep talking about.”
    Again, I had to agree that she was right — I was just too slow. I guess I’m one of those men who will never figure anything on his own. When it comes to the nuts and bolts of some particular thing, I can be a genius. I can plan a perfect bank robbery, build an a-grav unit from scratch, or run a business with the ledger books in the black. I think they call that tactical thinking. What I can’t do is see the big picture sometimes. I get locked into one mode of thinking and stay there. Destiny can’t build — or even repair — an a-grav unit, or run a business without help, but she can see how the businesses, the bank robberies, the a-grav machines, and everything else fits together, in one giant economic plan.
    When Destiny thinks of the Sleebbs, for instance, she doesn’t see them as the race that attacked the McRay, or the beings who sacked Terra five hundred years ago. She wonders about their culture, their political organizations, and their level of technological development.
    In fact, she should be the one writing this account. I could just give her the facts of my life before I met her, and some dates and places, and she could wrap it all up. I see my life as a series of events, while she sees my whole life as one thread in the giant fabric of space time.
    At least, I think so. All I know is that she sees more than I do when she looks at something. That’s how she beats me at chess almost every time.

*

Norman Dester shipped out to join his father and older brothers. Mrs. Dester went with him, since some of the living quarters had been finished on the new space city, Habdes I, and she didn’t like the idea of living without her husband for such a long period of time. That left Destiny alone with her house and small plot.
    With Mr. Dester’s permission, I moved in with Destiny that summer. Even though he was a very religious and moral man, he was still understanding. I think he knew that Destiny and I had been sleeping together, although the subject was never mentioned. He had never had a bad word to say to me, and in fact had written quite a nice letter of reference to Mike, when I first started working at the supermarket. Destiny and I were both working full time, we kept the house clean, and we tended to the garden. Occasionally we invited Harry and his fianceé (Marianne Waters, the mayor of Helmston) over for dinner. About once a week, Jason Quivers visited us, with Deneen, the girl he was dating — one of Destiny’s classmates from Tarkin U.
    Jason, Deneen, Destiny and I continued to spar, to hunt, and to speak philosophically about war, colonization, women, and other things. The four of us went on a few double dates and a few campouts in Persiphone’s wild country. Deneen was a quiet young woman who obviously loved Jason very much. I think he was finally starting to get over his last lost love. I hoped so — I was starting to know too many people who couldn’t make their relationships work. Harry: divorced twice. Jason: never married, but separated from his lover on Yurple. Mike (my boss): still married, but not happily.
    It was good to see some of them hitting a streak of good luck for once.

*

One day, when Destiny and I were lying in bed in the cool of the evening, letting the night’s breeze ruffle the curtains, she brought up the subject we had left alone for nearly two years. “Remember when you talked about marriage, Phil?” Her head was nestled comfortably on my shoulder, and I could feel her eyelashes move when she blinked.
    “Yes, my dear. I remember. You said that when you graduated, and I was eighteen, if I still thought it was the right thing to do, you would marry me.”
    “Well, you’re eighteen now, and I’ve graduated.”
    “So you’re asking if I still want to get married?” I looked down at her beautiful green eyes, looking up at me.
    “No. I’m proposing. Will you marry me, Philipp Kaplan Bates? Because I want to.”
    Very gently, I moved enough so that I could kiss her softly on the lips. “Yes. You have always been my Destiny, my Fate, and I will follow where you lead. When?”
    “Ah. Not now. Not here. I mean after we leave Persiphone.”
    “Still yes, dear. When are we leaving?”
    Yes, I still wanted to stay on Persiphone. I wasn’t sure I could adjust to any other world. But I decided that I could put up with frigid winters or desert summers, high gravity or no gravity, hundred-hour days or ten-hour days, crowded city or empty planet — or any other conceivable condition, if it meant that Destiny would be by my side.
    We stayed on Persiphone for the rest of the summer, long enough to be best man and bridesmaid at Jason and Deneen’s wedding. We would have attended Harry and Marianne’s wedding, but they had decided to put that off for a while, since they were both still in office in different cities. I turned down Mike’s offer of promotion (he needed a new Dry Goods manager, since his present one went to manage his third store, in Batesville), telling him I’d look him up if I ever came back. I also reminded him that my parents had died somewhere between register 4 and register 7, near the kids’ candy stand. I made him promise never to forget.
    Mike shook my hand, looking a little misty-eyed, for once. “Well, Philipp”, he said, “if I can’t lure you into staying with a promotion, then I guess I can’t lure you at all. But I know you’ll do well wherever you go. And if you ever need a reference, look me up. Thanks for all your hard work.”
    I just nodded, a little emotional myself.
    Destiny accepted a promotion from New Planet Spacelines, to go to Junxle, one of the seven oldest worlds. We sent a letter to her parents a few minutes before we boarded our ship, all of our hoarded money and weapons in her bags.

*

Even though Junxle is one of the oldest colonized worlds, her rotational period was nearly sixty hours, so she had never been heavily colonized, although the climate was fair to tropical. The fact that Junxle was so old meant that Junxle’s government was stricter than those I was used to (Persiphone and Justine) were. The fact that she was not too heavily populated meant that she was not nearly as strict as those of Tuf or Turner’s Planet — somewhere on the middle ground, as governments go. I had to have a passport (I had never had an ID before, except my birth certificate, from Tuf), but that was just for the sake of customs. Upon arriving, after two Jumps, my bags were run through a scanner, but not opened. Destiny’s bags were not checked at all. The man at the Customs Desk asked merely, “Do you have anything to declare?” after looking casually at my passport.
    “No, sir. Unless my girlfriend is classified as a planetary treasure from back home.” I pointed her out, standing near the New Planet desk.
    He winked at me. “Maybe you’ve got something there, son. Stay close to her, though; there are a lot of rough types around here.” He stamped the passport and we left the spaceport for our hotel.

*

The city of Farlaya, Junxle, was quite a change from Tarkin. When you’re used to a whole planet having less than a million people, one city with 1.5 million can be quite a shock. Since my toddlerhood, I had never seen a building higher than four or five stories. There were at least ten in Farlaya higher than a hundred stories, sprouting up into the sky as if defying gravity to pull them back down. There were hundreds of others, looking as if they had been thrown together in a hurry. The streets of Tarkin, Persiphone, had been drawn out beforehand, and all of them were as straight as surveying equipment could make them. In Farlaya, though, the main highways on the map looked as if a child had drawn them. In Tarkin, you could get along just by being friendly and hard working. In a city like Farlaya, it helps to have money too.
    Well, money wasn’t really a problem for us.
    Another thing that wasn’t a problem for us was the rotational period of sixty hours.
    Destiny and I had gotten along on very little sleep for a few years by then, sometimes not sleeping at all for several nights. I found that I could easily stay awake for the forty hours of daylight, and sleep most of the twenty hours of darkness. Most businesses in Farlaya scheduled their employees for ten-hour shifts, splitting them into six shifts a day. Most employees worked two shifts each day, for the three-day week.
    A Galactic Standard Year has 8,760 hours in it; that leaves exactly 146 Junxle days, which the Junxle government long ago divided into three-day weeks, making about 49 weeks per GS year. A lot of people (originally) had found it difficult to adjust to this, and took to sleeping twice a day. I met dozens of people who still did this; they slept once during the dark hours, and once again when the sun was straight up, keeping their biological clock more closely tuned to the human norm.
    I wasn’t a normal human, I guess. Neither was Destiny. Very often, she would work her two ten-hour shifts in a row, then have forty hours before her next shift.
    One thing that was unnerving for me was the amount of people. I had spent most of my childhood and adolescence living on a farm outside Tarkin, where I didn’t see anyone at all, except the other students at the small school. When I rode the bus into Tarkin, I had always thought of it as going into the big city. Later, when I lived with Harry in town, I grew used to seeing homesteaders coming into town to buy supplies or to get their farming equipment fixed. There were many businesses and shops in Tarkin, all of which had their employees. And all of those employees had homes.
    But Farlaya was a different story altogether. Every where I turned, there were hundreds and thousands of people, scurrying about their daily business. The roads and skies were packed with vehicles of all kinds, and everyone constantly seemed to be in a hurry.
    I got used to it, I guess, but I never liked it.
    One thing that I did like was seeing so many Trayaks and Grangers. At first, I was curious — it’s not every day that a person on Persiphone sees a blue-skinned man — but soon I realized that they were people too, each of them trying to make a living, just like everyone else.
    The fashions, of course, were different as well. Not as risqué as the comfortable nudity in Justine’s resorts, but not as strict as on Persiphone either. Nudity was against the law for both women and men, and the genitalia had to be covered. The courts had long ago determined that completely transparent clothing was the same as nudity, so that was also out. Other than that, though, quite a bit was allowed. I tried not to gawk at the women on the streets and in shops, wearing translucent tops or pants, or the women who wore completely clear blouses with body-paint underneath.
    It helped that Destiny was with me. Even when she wore more conservative clothing, I felt like a king with her on my arm. If I had been alone, I think I might have turned into some kind of sex-crazed stalker. Eventually, though, I grew accustomed to the social norms of Junxle’s society, and thought nothing of it.

*

Within two weeks, Destiny had settled into her new office at the spaceport, and I had bought two cars. One was a Cyr Luxury Sport — a few years newer than Destiny’s old one we had left back home, and the other was a Grumman Cruiser LX, for me. To buy my car, I used my new Junxle ID card, which read Philipp Kaplan. For the other, I used my passport for identification, which read Philipp Bates. I figured that way the financial records would be a little harder to track down.
    We bought the house under Destiny’s name. It was nothing fancy, but definitely better than most people our age could afford. It was on a small plot by itself, on the edge of town: two bedrooms, two baths, a nice modern kitchen, and two sizable living areas. There were tall hedges all around the property, and two nice porches, one facing east into the sunrise and the other facing west into the sunset. I had withdrawn all the money from my trust fund just before I left Persiphone, about 80,000nd worth, along with a couple of thousand from my personal savings account. I went around to several banks in Junxle, using the same trust fund paperwork to deposit 80,000nd in each one. In this way, I got rid of much of our extra cash. Destiny made several large deposits of her own, making sure we always had enough cash on hand at home to get us out of a sticky situation.
    I figured between the banks on Justine and the banks in Farlaya, we had about 9 million newdollars tucked away. And gaining interest too, at close to four percent on average. Destiny used some of our money to buy some stock in the Cyr Corporation, now based on Persiphone. The Cyr family had been around for a few centuries now, and their business had prospered and grown the entire time. I bought some shares in the Colonial Commission, figuring that that could never be a bad deal, since the human race would never quit having babies and sending them to new planets.

*

There is a school of thought that claims criminals (like myself) are victims of society. That may be true to varying degrees, depending on the criminal in question. There are others who blame traumatic events in the childhood years for an adult criminal life. Still others say people like me are just lazy, and are trying to beat the system, finding an easier way to make a living. Maybe for some criminals, all of these are true. If a certain boy experienced beatings from his father, and was constantly starved for attention as a child, then was let down by the government, and still later found out how easy it would be to steal; it is conceivable that he would see crime as the only way out.
    Many of these criteria apply to me, I know. My parents were taken from me. And stealing is easier than working. But I don’t think any of this is true for me, or for Destiny. We both came from good homes, although mine only lasted for thirteen years or so. We had both held good jobs on a fresh, empty planet, and found ourselves in high stations in life, with her father quickly becoming a multi-millionaire, and my father being the governor of Persiphone, and a good one at that.
    And I don’t think the lazy part applies either. From as early as I can remember, I was working, either on the farm, on homework, or at the Supermarket. Destiny worked her way through Tarkin University (except for that small scholarship), and kept her job with New Planet when we moved. Greedy? Maybe a little; I could think of many things I could do with 9 million newdollars. But perhaps the main reason we got into the trade of bank robbing was the thrill, the excitement, and the blood-boiling adrenaline rush that comes when you’re stuffing millions of dollars into a bag. (Besides, we were good at it.)
    Our society really didn’t have a lot to offer in the way of excitement. No wars going on, until the Sleebb threat came along. No famines, plagues, or anything like that. Sure, there were video shows, sports of all kinds, casinos, nightclubs, strip clubs, amusement parks, and so on. But are there really any new plots available for these video shows? And do the professional basketball players ever come up with any innovative moves? Is there a casino where you won’t find homeless losers wasting their last dime? Are there any new pickup lines to use at the nightclubs? Is there anything at a strip club that I havent seen before? Not really. To me, these things were to be experienced once, just to see what they were like, and then they were old hat.
    But robbing a bank gets my juices flowing every time, and I can tell that it does for Destiny, too. Her eyes light up, her cheeks get flushed, her breathing gets faster; she becomes even more beautiful — if that’s possible — in the middle of a bank robbery. And afterward, she is always ready to celebrate in bed. It’s robbing banks that floats my boat, rings my bell, burns my toast, gets me off — whatever cliché you want to use. And to rob banks, you’ve got to do other things, like learn how to hide money, and disguise your spending. You have to plan, practice, and prepare (Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.) You have to know your weapons, choose your escape routes, and expect the unexpected — like that one bank manager I found in the bathroom. And you might end up ending someone’s life, just to save your own or that of someone you love — like when I killed Donovan, and those other two cops in Tarkin.
    Do I feel bad about ending three lives? (Four, counting Donovan’s son, but of course I didn’t feel bad about him!) Chief of Police Donovan was miserable, separated from his wife, his son a dead rapist, and himself a failed police chief. I may have done him a favor. The other two cops? One was single and an alcoholic. The other was married, and cheating on his wife.
    Better that she should suffer from his death in the line of duty than to find out he was banging some teenager from the outer farms. Besides, what happens after you die? According to science, the molecules of your body rejoin the dust from whence they came. According to some religions, you’re either going to Heaven or Hell, based upon your own relationship with God. According to other religions, you may come back to be another living creature, or spend your days in Valhalla, or rowing along the Nile (whatever the Nile is.)
    Either way, I didn’t feel too bad about putting them down. Besides, if they had followed police procedure, all of them would be alive today. Only occasionally did I lament the fact that I, personally, had committed murder, and only because I knew my father would disapprove.

*

While Destiny worked, I studied. I don’t mean I went to college. I mean I studied the criminal element that the Customs officer had been talking about. I had a reason for wanting to learn more about the underworld. I didn’t want to associate with them. I didn’t want to be known as hanging with that crowd. I wanted to buy a ship. And after all the trouble Destiny and I went through to cover up our car and house purchases, we didn’t want to blow our cover by just calling up the Grumman Shimki Corporation and ordering a space ship. I decided that the only way to buy a ship without some government agency finding out about it would be to go through a less-than-legal process. Especially with cash. Most of the major robbery crimes throughout history have been solved because the criminals in question spent their money badly.
    At first, I just read the police blotter in the daily papers, looking for neighborhoods that had an unusual amount of crime. Then I got a bright idea. I visited several realty offices, and acted as if I was looking for a home. At each office, I asked about bad neighborhoods, saying I sure as hell didn’t want to end up in any of them. At each office, the same answers were given.
    I marked off two areas on a map as bad places to raise a family.
    Then I began hanging around in those areas, visiting local bars and restaurants, always looking sharp, always armed, always driving my new Grumman, but not always alone. Several times, I took Destiny with me. She knew why I was doing all of this, and congratulated me for thinking on my own. She said the only thing she was worried about was my safety. I assured her that after all that time with Jason Quivers, I wouldn’t have too much trouble.
    After only a few weeks, I began meeting people. I learned their names, addresses, vidphone numbers, type of vehicle — anything I could learn about them by just being observant and friendly. In return, I didn’t give away much. Anyone watching could see that I dressed well for someone my age and drove a new car. I always tipped well, and never said much. No one I met ever guessed I was only eighteen years old, since I did my best to give the impression of a refined gentleman.
    For months, I spent at least three evenings a week in these areas of town, meeting all kinds of people, eavesdropping on conversations, making friends with waitresses and bartenders. The rest of my time I spent working around the house, checking out the list prices of new spacecraft, exercising, and scoping out the city’s banks.
    I found that a brand new space ship didn’t really cost that much. A middle class family could (barely) afford an a-grav space yacht in which to tour the local solar system. A new ground car, on the average, cost about 10,000nd. One of these space yachts (a control cabin, a tiny bunkroom, a bathroom, and a galley) cost about 25,000nd. Of course, these ships were limited to the solar system, having no hyperdrive, but they made good vacation vehicles. The cheapest hyperdrive vehicles were barely larger than these a-grav yachts, but started at 200,000nd. This extra cost is for the hyperdrive itself, plus the powerful computer that keeps track of the planetary movements all over the galaxy, plus the huge tax most planets place on hyperdrive units. Small courier/cargo ships cost about 900,000nd. A medium-sized freighter was running about 2,000,000, and a small passenger ship could cost as much as 10,000,000nd. None of which would be a problem for me. Except that I didn’t want to get caught spending money that I wasn’t supposed to have.
    I thought about buying a used ship — most developed planets have a used shipyard somewhere, or a ship graveyard. In the end, though, I made a sad commentary on the state of affairs in our society by deciding that criminals were more trustworthy than used ship salesmen.
    Also, during this time, Destiny and I got married. Several times. The first time, she became Destiny Kaplan (we always considered this to be our real wedding). The second time, she became Destiny Bates. The third time, I took her name, and became Philipp Dester. In other marriages, we switched up our names in other ways, sometimes hyphenating our surnames, or using Kaplan as my first name. In this way, we acquired several legal IDs.
    Then my lucky break came; it was early in 2489 GS, sometime in the middle of Junxle’s year. Destiny and I had been sitting in a restaurant, watching people and listening, when she got up to go to the bathroom. To do so, she had to go through the bar area, where she received several whistles. Neither one of us minded that very much. What I minded was the ugly brute who stood up from his barstool and headed toward the restrooms at that point.
    When I saw him stop and wait, just outside the women’s restroom, I got up and made my way toward him, walking at a normal pace through the half-empty establishment. I got to him just as Destiny made her exit from the bathroom. I wasn’t looking for a chance to show off my fighting skills, I was merely making sure that my one and only love would not experience any unpleasantness.
    “Pardon me”, she said to him, trying to squeeze past.
    He moved, so that his bulk filled the tiny hallway. Then he said something to her that made her gasp (which I won’t repeat here), so I tapped him on the shoulder. “Shove off!” he roared, and moved to help me along.
    I grabbed his arm, and yanked him backward. “Look, mister. That’s my wife you’re talking to.”
    He just grinned sloppily, and tried to move back into the hallway. “And what’re you gonna do about it, punk?”
    My hand shot out, just as Jason had taught me, and hit the right spot on the man’s throat. And just as Jason had promised, the mountain of flesh sank to the floor, his eyes rolling up into his head. I glanced both ways to see if anyone had seen anything. No one had. I then called out, “Bartender! Please, help this man. I believe he’s had too much to drink.”
    Within seconds, several employees were dragging the limp man to the front door, where they dropped him on the sidewalk. I walked back to our table, with Destiny clinging tightly to my arm. “My hero. Again”, was all she said, in a tight whisper. After we had been sitting down for a few minutes, one of the other men that had been sitting at the bar put his cigar out, and meandered his way over to our table.
    “Do you mind if I sit down, sir?” I noticed that he too was dressed nicely, and carried himself well.
    “Not at all. Can I get you anything?” I studied him, and noticed that he was studying me in the same way. He looked to be about forty years old, short and wiry, with jet-black hair and eyes.
    “No, thank you. I saw what happened to Dan, over there.” He looked in my eyes, without expression.
    “And?” I kept the expression out of my face as well, trying to find out where he was heading with his line of conversation.
    He glanced at Destiny, then looked back at me, raising an eyebrow. “Can we talk?”
    “Go ahead. This is my wife, Destiny, and I am Philipp. And you are?”
    “Oh. Pardon my manners. My name is Gwandon. James Gwandon. I saw you hit Dan. Where did you learn that?”
    “That’s not important, is it? Maybe next time Dan will learn to be more polite to a lady. And her husband.”
    “Of course, Philipp. My point is this: if you are not presently employed, I think I may have a job for you.”

*

As it turned out, Dan had been a good friend of James Gwandon. Gwandon worked for one of the two main crime bosses in Farlaya, and was head of the bodyguard service. Dan had been a recent addition to the bodyguard crew, mainly because of his imposing size. I took the job, after a lengthy examination by Gwandon.
    He tested my accuracy with several weapons, had the organization’s physician give me a complete checkup — which I passed with flying colors, and briefly tested my skill in hand-to-hand combat. Then he outlined my job duties: Never let anyone touch the boss, not even cops with warrants (unless the judge had personally called first.) While at home, the boss was not to be bothered, except by those on a short list. While the boss was traveling, or visiting business contacts, I was to keep my eyes peeled for possible members of the opposing organizations or secret police. The boss was The Boss; if he told me to get coffee or clean the toilet, that was my job. I was to be paid 200nd a week, plus a 1,000nd bonus for every assailant I personally apprehended.
    After all that rigmarole, I found myself playing cards most of the time. I learned that The Boss stayed at home most of the time, and that the home pretty much guarded itself. There were dozens of security cameras, which I took turns watching and there was a high wall around the place, with a security mesh overhead (to keep cars from flying over the wall.)
    Once in a great while, I took a turn standing with another goon outside the Boss’ door, and on even more rare occasions, I played a game of chess with Gwandon.
    Then I began asking around about a ship.

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