Treachery

by Richard Alexander Hall

difference in Mother's hair from Iris was the fair amount of gray.

  But Mother's amusement quickly faded, and between them all there was a long pause of breathless, anguished silence.

  Father finally broke the silence. “Well, so anyway, I'd like to apologize for all that, and make a solemn promise to you all to do my very best to never yell again.”

  “That will be very easy once the black hole consumes us, I suppose,” observed Iris.

  “Quite right, and I detect a touch of irony in your tone, you clever little lass,” said Father fondly.

  “Father?” queried Iris.

  “Yes, love,” replied Father.

  “Do you recall that last year—”

  Mother shook her head and offered a look of gentle caution to Iris, who silenced herself immediately.

  “Yes, I recall,” said Father. “I made the same promise. My rate was about thirty times per day back then, and it agonizes me that it's not zero now. This whole conversation is of course agonizing and utterly boring, isn't it?”

  “Not entirely,” said Mother, and glanced at Timothy, then winked at Father.

  “Yes, yes,” said Father. “Ha. Ha. Ha.”

  “But are you quite sure you'll ever cut that rate to zero, Father?” asked Timothy. “I think it's quite as likely that you'd ever stop yelling at us—if we ever get out of this sticky mess—as it is likely that you would ever stop lusting after other women.”

  Mother, Father, and Iris gasped. Father flushed, and scowled, furiously, at Timothy. He opened his mouth to shout, then willfully strangled back his words, to instead make an enraged sort of odd, gargling sound.

  But he did not shout.

  “What on Earth, no, what in Hell have you said to your Father, Timothy?!” demanded Mother.

  “I suppose then, Mother, that you never saw the encrypted files?” Timothy crossed to the small partition between the kitchen and living room, and logged into Father's profile on the computer—

  “What in the name of—” Father began to protest, and stepped forward to stop Timothy, but Timothy raised a hand, palm out, in a clear and forceful stop gesture to Father.

  “Tut-tut, Father, crucial revelation underway!”

  Timothy opened a folder and navigated to a file, then opened it. It prompted for a password. “You're wondering how I followed your trail despite all your safeguards. Pssh,” he said dismissively. “Like I'm telling you.” He entered the password, and the file opened to reveal many folders and files. Timothy opened one of the files, an image file—a pornographic photograph of a woman.

  Mother and Iris gasped.

  “Quite enough,” said Timothy, and closed the file. “You only need to survey the file names for an idea that all of the rest of these are like that.

  “When I found these, they thrilled me for about a day, and then I had to surrender the utter bleak despair of it all to Almighty God. But what gets me is the way you must have ignored the prompt to make a more secure password—not that I wouldn't have gotten it anyway—but am I quite right, Father?”

  Father repeated his gargled rage.

  Mother was out of her mind with shock and outrage. She turned pale. Her eyes darted around, frenzied, and she opened and closed her mouth in mute stammering. Her hands fidgeted, as if to search for either a weapon or some place to conceal themselves. Finally, one hand settled on tearing at her hair. The other became forcibly jammed in her teeth, as she bit her finger, which mildly bled.

  Iris, who thought she had now seen about everything terrible there could be to see, brushed aside her despair. “Father?” she asked. “Do you think that preternaturally intelligent children are a blessing or a curse?”

  Father curled up on the floor. “Lord, Lord,” he said, choked with anger and anguish.

  Outside the kitchen window, the last visible star smeared beyond recognition. Iris pointed out the window. Father didn't see her pointing, but Timothy and Mother looked. As they watched, the star turned deep blackish-red.

  “Father,” implored Iris.

  He did not respond.

  “Father! You must get up!”

  Father managed to get up, and saw where they all looked.

  The blackish-red, smeared star appeared to vanish to black nothingness.

  They all stared into the black nothing.

  “Temporal Stasis,” Father managed to utter. He came quickly back to his alert self. “Nothing will get us above the event horizon. Please, Dorothy, if you would lead us in a prayer for our survival, for someone or something to find a way for us to get out of here.”

  “Father, there may not be time. Please just flip the switch.”

  Father climbed down the hatch to the ship's central utilities, opened a panel, entered a password in a console, flipped a switch, entered another password, and flipped a second switch.

  They, the ship, and everything in it froze.

  They and their ship unfroze.

  A field of stars of every variety of intensity, with a fainter cloud-like band of uncounted galactic stars, faded into view outside the window.

  A hail signal sounded for the visual intercom. Father clambered back up the hatch and toggled the intercom on.

  A Maiden, a very shapely woman in a ridiculous skin-tight suit, which revealed very much of her breasts, appeared on the visual intercom.

  Timothy immediately hid his face in shame. “Please, no,” he said, and kept repeating this.

  Father was goggle-eyed for a moment, then came to himself, and hid his face in shame.

  Mother and Iris shook their heads in disbelief.

  “What year is it for you?” asked the Maiden.

  “Twenty-one-twenty-one,” replied Father. “And what do you mean by 'what year is it' for us?”

  The Maiden squealed with delight. “Ooooh, we found some ancient ones, you hear that, girls?” She turned as if to speak with others, who were unseen.

  There were a lot of giggles and squeals over the intercom.

  “Well, for us, it's the year fifty-five-five-one,” said the Maiden, with relish.

  Father, Mother, Timothy and Iris all gasped. Father stammered. “But that's, but that's, that's—”

  “Well, golly, that's sure a long time you folks there have been in stasis, isn't it? How many years is that? No wait, don't do the math. I haven't done any math for such a very long time, not besides, well, one-plus-one equals two.”

  The Maiden winked at them.

  “NO, NO, NO!” shouted Timothy.

  Mother's face grew red. “What do you mean by that?” she demanded of the Maiden.

  “And I've done a lot of one-plus-one equals two,” continued the Maiden. “Well, technically, it sometimes magically makes three. But that's easily enough turned back to two.” She rubbed her belly and giggled. The other, unseen Maidens giggled. “Actually, I'm really not sure how to work the math. A lot of people might compare it to multiplication. Like maybe something like one times twenty, but then there are so often so many different factors going into different products—so I really just get lost trying to sort it out . . .”

  “What are you talking about?” demanded Mother again.

  “Polyandry. Polygamy. Polyamory. We've all evolved very much since you've all been sitting around at the edge of a black hole for I-don't-know-how-many-years.”

  “NOO!” shouted Timothy.

  “Evolved?!” demanded Iris. “De-volved!” she protested.

  “Call it what you will, cutie, but it's the law, now!” replied the Maiden. “Anybody can marry however many of anybody else they may want to, of any kind, many husbands or many wives, or whatever. So liberating. Solves so many problems.”

  “You mean it opens up so many ways to abuse,” said Mother.

  “Well done,” said Timothy. “Rightly said, Mother.”

  The Maiden gave a contented sigh. “Whatever. Heard it so many times. Can it be abuse if everyone's volunteering, and if it's all contractual, anyway? What even is being abused? But anyway, call it what you
will. Oh, also—that little scrap of paper you have that says he's married to you? Kinda no longer relevant. All the territories, worlds, jurisdictions, and laws have changed. Nobody would even know who says you're married anymore. It's off.”

  Mother looked to Father with a horrified look of pleading. “It's a contract between you and I, whatever else anyone says anymore. And with them—” she gestured to the children. “Think of them, too. We can find the proper place to get it properly arranged and certified again, in whatever territory you wish.”

  “Fuck it,” said Father. “Fuck it all.”

  Mother and Iris both looked as if they'd been fatally stabbed.

  Timothy broke down and wept.

  “Don't, Father, don't,” he pleaded. “We have so much here. We have everything. You're everything. You're everything to me! I don't know if I was too glib, or if—I don't know what to do. I just know . . . we can work it out, please . . .”

  “What's your rendezvous coordinate?” asked Father, to the Maiden.

  Iris wept. “No, Father.”

  Mother wept. “No, Dear. Please. I'll miss you. I love you. I forgive you, but don't do this. Look. Stop. Look.” She crossed to Father and took his hand. He didn't respond at all. She let go.

  The coordinates appeared on the control console, the Maiden went off-screen, and Father stepped up to the console and worked some controls.

  Mother followed, switched off the visual intercom, and desperately pleaded with him. “Stop that right now! Stop for one moment and look at me! You are making a decision that could—everything hinges on this!”

  Father ignored her. Words appeared on the panel:

  The stars outside the window appeared to blur and swirl