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‘marriage’.
    Briefly, marriage is a form of slavery. You know how sometimes one twin doesn’t evolve during pregnancy and ends up as a lump on the other twin’s side? It’s like that, except they get lumpier over the years.
    Usually the duties of the male and female are fairly evenly divided. The man has to remove the garbage from the place of residence, watch vast numbers of sporting events on television and secrete huge quantities of gas from his rectum. The woman, usually, is required to do everything else.
    This does not always lead to harmonious living. For Blake Carter it had led to the next stage of marriage, known as ‘divorce’. This is when the man and woman separate from each other. They each take out their own garbage, and the woman is allowed to secrete gas from her rectum without fear of retribution.
    Long hours of work had been a contributing factor to Blake’s divorce. Too late he had realised that being a PBI agent was a twenty-four-hour-a-day job.
    ‘Hey, yourself,’ Astrid said.
    ‘What’s up? Has your broom broken down? Or is your cauldron on the blink?’
    ‘Normally I wouldn’t call you—’
    ‘I hadn’t noticed.’
    ‘—but Lisa hasn’t come home.’
    Lisa.
    The sound of his daughter’s name produced a twinge in Blake’s heart. The worst part of his divorce three years ago hadn’t been the loss of his wife—although that had been painful—but the separation from his daughter. He had not spoken to Lisa since the breakup, but he would sometimes visit her school at the end of the day just to watch her leave.
    Whoever it was that said love hurts was right.
    He was worried, but now he had to think like a PBI agent and not like a father. Most missing persons turned up within twenty-four hours. Lisa was twelve, just the right age to start causing problems.
    ‘Have you rung her friends?’ Blake asked.
    ‘What do you think?’
    ‘If you don’t want my help—’
    ‘I do. I’m sorry.’
    ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,’ Blake said. Then an unsettling thought occurred to him. ‘Does she have a boyfriend?’
    ‘Are you kidding? She’s not even a teenager!’
    ‘They start early these days.’
    ‘Well…there is a boy she’s very friendly with, a boy from her scarmish team.’
    ‘You’re letting her play scarmish?’ Blake asked. ‘Are you insane?’
    Zeeb says:
    Blake’s question was rhetorical, but it need not have been. Scarmish has been voted the most dangerous game in the entire southern arm of the Milky Way. Two hundred people die every year, with many thousands suffering serious injuries.
    It’s also fun as hell.
    The rules are simple. First, there are no rules. Or very few. You know that old game called soccer that people used to play? Scarmish is similar, but it’s contested in a zero-gravity environment, and the players wear rocket packs. The ball is magnetised and players have magnetic disrupters that fire charges at the ball, propelling it across the field.
    But it’s the antics around scarmish that get the real attention. Riots occur on a daily basis at matches, the worst ever being on Mixamus Nine, where fans started decapitating rivals and using their heads as balls.
    Authorities did little to stop the riot until they realised one of the heads was that of the prime minister.
    No one likes to see their prime minister’s head used as a scarmish ball. Even if you didn’t vote for him.
    ‘No, I’m not insane,’ Astrid said. ‘She wears full body gear, the same as her friends. She’s never been hurt.’
    Of course she lets Lisa play scarmish , Blake reflected. Astrid had played it for eight years, representing Earth in the Galactic finals. But that was twenty years ago. These days she lived a more peaceful life teaching literature at university.
    ‘Scarmish is too dangerous,’ he now muttered.
    ‘Don’t act like you’re her father!’
    ‘I am her father—’
    ‘Fathers turn up for their daughter’s birthday parties.’
    Not the