So where do Sci-Fi writers get their ideas from? It can't be all star - gazing.

In the case of this one, I recall reading about a family on holiday on the east Coast, England - Skegness or Mablethorpe; and the ageing grandad died while they were there. As they were returning home that day (Nottingham, as I remember), they saved themselves a lot of bother and expense by placing him in the back of the car, and driving him home.

Oh, boy, did that cause bother - you can't transport a body through the jurisdiction of coroners without permission, paperwork and payment, So the book was duly thrown at them...

So, thinking about it, What if something like that happened in the Year 1,000,000, on the planet Kalclinn...?

Well, on this occasion...

The Funeral (complete story)

‘Yamiking, the billionaire Great Lady, always wanted to be buried on her birth planet, Morzel.’ So the twin Administrata Regala of Kalclinn, Inc. told me.

‘As a full-blooded Yuman, she was most determined to have her last wish come true,’ said the one with a blue rinse on her pseudo eye-facets. Fascinating, the way her antennae writhed. Sinuous-sexy sort of rhythm, they had. If it wasn’t for the palps and proboscis, I might almost have fancied that one.

‘Her estate will pay whatever expenses are necessary for her body to be escorted all the way, to make sure it isn’t lost in some back-world shipping orbit.’ So I was told by the younger one, with wrigglier frills.

To prove their earnestness and determination, they handed me an open credit charge account code and attached my iris patterning, DNAnalysis and fingerprint codes to unlimited fundings.

‘You may use this account for as long as necessary, should there be problems.’

‘Conditional upon all receipts being associated with the transport of a body, of course.’

‘And do not let the coffin out of your sight. ‘

‘Unless it’s in the vacuum hold of a ship in transit, naturally?’ I begged for the exclusion clause to be inserted in the contract.

A few moments of consultation and antenna-curling, and they agreed that I did not need to be in a sealed vacuum hold with the coffin during times in space.

Initially, being a simple soul with little experience of trade and travel beyond the local cluster, I imagined this to be a straightforward matter.

My disillusionment, however, was not long in coming.

‘What do you mean? There are no direct communications from Kalclinn to Morzel? How do I escort a body there, if there isn’t a link?’

The shipping agent, a native Kalclinian, with a full array of medal-like facets on his head plates and thorax, was most helpful. He brightened-up his burnished plates, checked his cross-scheduling, and announced, ‘You can go via Durgh. Pretty little planet. You ever been? NO? You’ll love the view from Orbit Holbex 1. Quite an entrancing sight.’

So there I went, aboard the Dotsy Ijji. It entailed a twenty-day trip in the relative luxury of a first-class Sword-Standard suite and a young lady who took a fancy to a free upgrade from her sub-cargo cubby compartment to my bed. Well, not free, exactly, but we both knew all about strings on relationships in space.

I say I went there, to Durgh. Not exactly.

‘You have a what? A corpse? A Yuman corpse? No way. Not on Durgh.’

‘It’s not exactly on Durgh,’ I pointed out, ‘We’re in orbit above Durgh. I merely need to unload into the orbit station, and transfer onto the connection for Morzel in a day or two.’

Arguing cost me a thousand cred fine, duly paid from my Cred Account. And I was obliged to remain aboard the ship with Great Lady Yamiking, and continue, to wherever the Dotsy Ijji was headed. At least they’d been right about the view over the planetary surface: it was breath-taking. And I was filled with wonder at the sight… and at the whole thought of someone else paying.

Plus, I was actually being engaged in some real travel – outside the Kalclinn Region.

‘Like proper, long-distance journeying, this is,’ I said to a very smart and very bored young lady passenger called Jocinda, when she fluttered more than her eyelashes in my direction.

‘It’s rather nice being proxy-wealthy,’ I mentioned to the ship’s cat, when it came for its daily treat and purr.

Yass Aihh was the next port-of-call. The import of any kind of flesh or creature-produce was totally forbidden there, but they sympathised.

‘Try via Moik Inko. We’ll waive costs… Contribute to your expenses. Sorry about the bother, but rules are rules.’

They stamped the paps with the name Yami King because all names and nouns are groups of four letters there. And I made a nice bit of compensatory expenses money, which I stashed in my own, newly-opened cred account. With just that one in-payment, the account was already looking healthier than most people on Yass Aihh, with their totally meat-free diet.

On Moiki we had a different story.

‘Oooh,’ they said, quivering their stamens and pistils in a virtual orgy. ‘Not in a pornwood coffin. It’s strictly forbidden here. Our forests were endangered for years, so we don’t support any kind of trade in it.’

I was up to my neck in groaning and trying to get the crew to debark the coffin while Security wasn’t looking, but they had quad guards round by then. I was caught. Fined. Paid it. Then they relented and paid it back, re-directed into my personal account.

Their reason for being generous was because they’d had the idea that the Great Laddy Yami King could be transferred into a refrigerated sarcoff.

‘In a guaranteed sealed container such as that, you can go through our transfer procedure. And get to Morzel via Toller.’

‘Half a toe,’ I said. ‘Toller’s a couple of light years out our way.’

They pistilled and stamened again, and gave me a choice.

‘If you’re going there, to Toller,’ a slightly blue-tinged one said, ‘you could deliver a condemned prisoner for us. H9-8. We’ll pay all the expenses.’

‘Alternatively, the fine stands,’ said his more turquoise colleague. ‘You will be held in orbital security for thirty-two days. And the corpse and coffin will be jettisoned in the direction of the sun, in garbage orbit.’

‘And you could accompany them when your thirty-two days are ended.’

‘Option A could work,’ I swiftly told them. ‘I don’t mind company on a trip. And I’m free now that Jocinda has debarked. I just need to confirm, you’ll pay all the expenses for H9-8? And for me and Yami King?’

Yes, that was correct. Confirmed.

‘I’m on double expenses for the same trip,’ I whispered to Yami as we transferred her into a chill-bin called a sarcophagus. ‘My account’s looking rather healthy, thanks to you, old girl.’

Come to think of it, that was when I had a message from MoneyIsUs asking if a gold business account might suit me better.

The next leg, out to Toller aboard the Katn Castle, was slightly weird. I had two bodies to look after: H9-8 was comatose almost all the way, so I left him in an under-drawer locker in my new suite.

‘You’ll never get a refrigerated anything through Customs in Toller,’ one of the maintenance crew told me as we were coming out of LightPlus. ‘They regard it as unnatural, and the gas is poisonous to them.’

‘It doesn’t have to go through Customs, just Transit.’ I could feel a familiar discussion looming here.

‘It does on Toller. If they can charge for import, then charge for release, they will. It’s not you they’re picking on; they do it whenever they can. Don’t worry about it. You have the suite still. On expenses, are you? Take it easy: stay aboard the Katn Castle; float back; drink up.’

The next orbital station was D’that, and they messed up the import forms – like everything else they dribble their palps over. They had her down as King Yami, instead of Yami King or Yamiking. ‘And the prisoner. Condemned? Killer? Is he?’

So, by the time they finished, the paperwork on my pad said “King Yami and his killer”. I mean, what does that say for our chances?

‘Jikko – his name is it?’ They asked me, pointing to the overstamp on the pap-work.

‘I vaguely thought his name was Hira. H for Hira, with his transit number.’ I told them at D’that Customs and Rituals. ‘Unless it was actually H9-8. Like some of the autrons from Squindron.’

‘It’s probably Moiki for “prisoner”,’ said a helpful officer called Korg-with-a-Bigun. That wasn’t actually his born-name, but it’s what they all called him. He lived up to it, too. Apparently.

But then, I was escorted through to the Arrivals Reception Hall, and met a D’thatian official who did know.

‘You can’t bring him here,’ he said. ‘We don’t approve of death penalties.’

‘Eh?’

‘Jikko. The overstamp here. It’s a Moik Inko term. It means “To be executed on Arrival”. So you can’t bring him here. Try Clenhis; they’ll probably do the execution for you – love their executions, they do.’

‘Yes, definitely. Clenhis is the place for you.’

‘It’s a hub orbit, so you should be able to get transport to Corvelle.’

‘I need to get to Morzel, not Corzelle.’

‘Oh.’ She checked the docs and screens. ‘It says Cor-zelle, not Mor-zel on here. You should be able to sort it on Clenhis. They’re a hub, like we said. They do all sorts like that – re-scheduling, directing, transfers, re-naming. Import anything there. Very free and open, the Clennies.’

Strangely for this venture, it worked okay, actually. The Clenhis were all agog about having a Royal Monarch, King Yami, and his murderer, come to their little planet. ‘Can you come down to the surface and run a funeral parade through town while you’re here?’

It was a pretty good parade, and it gave the crew and yardies time to get some costly repairs done on the ship. Plus, the Clennies paid for the yard time and labour, if not the actual parts. ‘Unless you might execute the prisoner here? And we’ll pay full costs.’

‘We could charge double or even triple for connoisseurs to witness the execution of an alien.’

‘Well, he’s that alright,’ I said. ‘Body is about human-sized, but segmented, with tucked-in wings behind.’

‘That’s plenty alien enough.’

Yes, it worked pretty well. Good parade, superb ghastly execution in a blaze of fireworks in the city centre. Okay, so Prisoner Hira9-8 didn’t actually get executed, but the plastic mock-up was a great substitute. And he willingly agreed to do it a few more times at some other suggested venues around the planet.

‘Er, if you could enter my death in the manifest records? I’d be off the hooks for doing the open-thorax surgery on my mother, back on Detash.’

It was a shame in a way that King Yami’s huge coach and decorated stage went up in flames during the firework display, but the crowd loved the whole performance. And we made a fortune on the concessions, posters and fake souvenir body parts. Plus a fifty percent share in the inflated yard costs that the crew members were happy to accept.

My platinum account was looking healthier than some planets’.

‘I envisage a whole new industry starting up here, H9. I can obtain a nice little coffin; and a new King Yami; preferably flammable. Something readily transportable, inflatable and realistic, I would hope. You know, a portable ceremonial coach where the new plastic corpse parades round in Imperial glory…’

‘And a cage for me,’ he suggested, ‘where I can rampage and shriek and anything else I fancy doing in front of a crowd.’

‘The more outrageous the better, I suppose, for some of the audiences we’re likely to attract. Yesss, we could offer to run a parade through the main port city everywhere we stop off. “The most travelled Royal in the Spiral Arm”, “Most vicious killer”, “Come to Wherever on the way to their fates…”

Parading round, we became billed as “The stellar-famed mass killer of the master of the universe”.

The scenery on Clenhis is wonderful – both around the planet, and the night sky views.

‘This is definitely the way to do it,’ I confided in Hira9-8.

‘Suits me,’ said the laid-back reprieved mother-killer, with all his feet up on the extra-padded buffet. He quivered his wing casings in pleasure and sipped at his glass of BornAgain.

I’m still on full expenses from Great Lady Yamiking’s open-cred account. Plus all the spin-offs like attendance fees, trade goods, welcome packages, and concessions. MoneyIsUs upgraded me to a Diamond account, and automated the payments into my accounts for anything travel-related. Yamiking’s account access can’t be cancelled until I get her back to Morzel.

I don’t imagine that the coffin and H9-8 will get there for quite some time yet. In fact, me and Hira were eyeing-up a rather smart-looking ship for sale, in orbit round Further, only the other day. Very smartly black-painted, guaranteed for a thousand years…

Yes, that should do nicely.

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