“And intend to stay that way, doctor. You will have the greatest difficulty in administering that drug again. I assure you I have no compunction whatsoever about killing you. Doctors who abuse their calling can expect no special pleading from me.”
“I understand. I was sent for to come to you. What do you want from me?”
“Information and possibly some drugs. Do you keep KQC2 or tetra-quesinate?”
“Neither.”
“And I suppose you have no Zestanose either?”
“You’re correct.”
“Absolutely wonderful. Thank you Doctor, there is nothing you can do for me. You may go.”
“There’s something you can do for me, though.”
“What do you want Doctor?”
“A little of your blood.”
“I’ve a couple of sailors who contracted something in Alpha I can’t treat. A nasty little virus called JIK.”
“I’ve heard of it, I’ll come over to the sick ward later and treat them for you, and anything else you can’t cope with. Now go, I want to talk to the Lieutenant.”
The doctor retreated and left them alone.
“What do you know about Zeninans, Ga’Jumtaqur?”
“Not much, they come in funny colours, are mostly female and very pretty and...”
“And?”
“And over-sexed,” he finished.
“Good, well you know enough to take in what I’m going to tell you. I don’t suppose you understood what the drugs I was asking the doctor about, were for?”
“No, I’ve never heard of any of them.”
“They’re sexual suppressants. Without sex or sexual suppressants, Zeninans start to shimmer. I’ve been several days without taking any suppressants. I didn’t need them in Alpha and without suppressants I will shimmer before a day is over. If I shimmer on board this ship, there’ll be a riot as your crew fight to get to me. I can protect myself but a riot in space is no joking matter. I hoped to get through the journey with suppressants, but there are none on board so I will need sex very regularly.”
“I’m used to my men being trained and skilled. I’ll get through far more than I normally need. I hoped to discuss this with your captain, but as he is insane I suggest you organise it discreetly. I trust you have no moral objection to pandering to me?”
“None at all, if you have no special specifications, may I be included on the list? I’m not as good as Riyal but I’m sure I could learn.”
“Specifications, try the single ones first. They should be intelligent, fit, clean and good looking in that order of importance. Tall order, I know. If ten days on a Kurgian ship doesn’t cure me of my aversion, nothing ever will. First take me to the kitchens, please.”
“I can’t take you anywhere. My orders are to keep you here.”
“I’ll rephrase myself. Escort me to the kitchens, unless you prefer I transport myself there direct. I am prepared to stay where I’m told to, within reason but now whatever you order or do, I’m going to the kitchens.”
Marina set off out the door, past the startled guards at an energetic walk. Ga’Jumtaqur followed her. The cooks jumped up from their seats as Marina entered the kitchens.
“Which one of you prepared the meal for me earlier today?” she asked pleasantly.
“I had that honour, your majesty, er royal highness.”
“Ma’am will do. You are going to have the honour to prepare my food for the duration of my stay upon this luxury liner. So watch carefully while I show you exactly what I want you to do.”
So saying she picked up one of the packets of highly nutritious unappetising powder that was the main ingredient of the meal and proceeded to demonstrate what she wanted done with it. As she suspected the cooks had secret supplies of additives, mostly spicy ones with which they disguised the taste of their own meals. Having prepared the dish to her own recipe and discovered some genuine eggs which the cooks had bought in Alpha which she cooked and consumed with no guilty feeling whatsoever. Marina felt much better.
She grabbed a piece of fruit from the cook’s hidden treasure and advised them to look after her or she would have them tortured slowly by forcing them to eat their own cooking. The joking way she said it did not lessen the underlying threat. The cooks believed she might wreak revenge on them so they were careful to vary her meals during her stay. Then she returned once more to her cabin, Jumta following one step behind. She lay back down on the bed and waited. Jumta shut the door behind him.
“Lock the door.”
“Yes ma’am.”
He did so and stood trying to decide what to do next.
“Usually one undresses first,” Marina remarked to no one in particular, “Unless you’re chickening out on me?”
“No, of course not, ma’am,” he said fumbling with his fastenings.
“My name is Marina and under the circumstances, I’d prefer you to use it. Only slaves call me ma’am in bed.”
Marina was on board Ga’Jumtaqur’s ship for eleven days and during that time went through over a quarter of the ship’s compliment. Her views on Kurgians in general were not much changed by the end of her stay. She felt extremely nostalgic for Charles’s charms and for Riyal. Jumta had begun to be quite pleasing after concentrated tuition, but she did not think Riyal would like her to enslave him.
Chapter Fifty- eight - Suffer the Children
Marina fell asleep at night and dreamed of little children. Two pretty Kurgian boys amongst other children on a Kurgian farm and a curly haired girl and another boy in the back of a travelling show. She woke knowing they were in danger and sent her thoughts far into Kochab seeking some way of protecting Prince Ga’Mazadeh’s children. The man who slept in the lorry with four small children including the pretty curly haired girl was easy to reach. Marina told him through his dream of the danger. Somehow Marina explained they must move on and hide. He must cut the girl’s curls and put her in boy’s clothes. They must be careful and never ever again must they all sleep without leaving a guard.
The man woke remembering, believing the clarity of his dream. He shook his woman awake, leaving where he had parked among a caravan of lorries, driving fast away. As they travelled, a man was being paid by four strange men to show them where their lorry had been parked. The next day the man painted over the writing on the side of the lorry. He cut the girl’s hair though she cried at its loss and gave her boy’s clothes to wear. They headed for a large town.
In town he bought new clothes for himself, his woman and the children. A little smarter than they had worn before and less flamboyant, then he booked his family of six into a modest hotel. He told the reception clerk he was a skilled carpenter. He was just up from a town he named in the opposite direction to which they’d actually come from. He hoped to find work in the new estates being built. Every day he went out the front door to look for work and shortly afterwards, sneaked back up the fire escape into their rooms to help watch the children.
Twice they were nearly caught, but they hid from the searchers moving on, changing their names and appearance each time. Once they booked in as a man with three boys and a widow with another boy shortly after. Sometimes they stayed all day watching the street for their pursuers. They managed to stay one step ahead of those that sought them.
Marina sought the protectors of the other children, but the farmer was too stolid to accept her warnings. His wife, a little more imaginative than her square-headed husband heard Marina’s warnings and tried to persuade him, but he wouldn’t listen. In vain Marina sought some individual she could persuade to protect the children. Unable to think of anyone else she contacted the Zeninan Embassy. She woke the Ambassador, one Hannara, who had been in position there for over a hundred years. Marina had never doubted her loyalty to her mother, but where did she stand in relation to her aunt?
Hannara listened to her plea for help and promised she would do what she could. She could not leave Xagalui, the capital city of Kochab herself, but would send some of her st
aff to the children. Marina was still worried; she doubted the Zeninans would get there in time. What else could she do? She tried the children; she woke them from their dreams. “Get dressed. Dress warmly. Go tonight close to the hedges towards Xagalui, there will be women coming to protect you. Trust no men, even if they say they come from your father.”
The boys stumbled awake but obeyed the voice in their heads like sleep walkers. It was cold outside, but they wrapped up warm and the older boy grabbed a bag as they sneaked out through the farm kitchen, piling in a flask of milk, some bread, cheese and fruit. Then they silently left the farmhouse by the kitchen door. A hover-car they had never seen before landed outside the main door and the children huddled against a farm building as they watched several dark shapes enter through the front door.
They tiptoed away staying close to the hedge, as the lady in their heads told them, not lingering or running even as they heard screams from the farmer and their playmates echo through the night. They walked several miles in the dark, holding hands and thinking of their father. They hoped he would return soon, because they were frightened. Kochab was not a place for undefended royal children.
Marina’s thoughts remained with them, keeping them unseen. She showed them where to sleep the day away out of sight of men. Marina called Hannara and asked her why her helpers had not come. They had she said and found the farmer and his six dead children mostly boys. Were those not the children you sought? But Marina was wary; something in Hannara’s mind tone worried her and she confirmed they were dead.
“Who else do I know in Kochab? Who else would help? She knew the new Zigan Ambassador Danazaneev, but he was a real old fuss-pot. He would be no use. I have spies but none of them are close enough. All the Kurgians I know can be bought by a higher bid.”
Then Marina thought of Kelzina, Riyal’s grandmother, she could reach the boys in time. A Gold could transport herself. It took Marina some time to remember from Riyal’s mind Kelzina’s thought pattern, for without it she could not call her.
At last she found it and called Kelzina, who was reluctant to interfere. Ga’Mishrin’s get were not her preferred people, especially as Riyal was Mishrin’s son from the rape of her daughter Relzina when she was only a child. Kerina’s children were not high on her popularity list either for she resented having had to go into exile. At last Marina persuaded her, children were non-combatants and should be protected at all costs. She followed Marina’s thought and set out to reach the children. Half-way across the planet, transporting herself several times, the older lady went in search of two little boys who were nothing to her but trouble.
She was nearly too late, for some pursuers had spotted their trail but she broke the children’s scent and waited for the pursuers. So long as the boys remained silent whilst she dealt with themen, they would survive. There were only two men for they had split up to widen their search. When they discovered the children in the house did not include the ones they had been sent to kill, they found the boys’ empty but still warm beds and knew they would not get far alone.
Kelzina waited as the men approached. She was still an attractive woman and with her skin and hair coloured blue looked every bit as Kurgian as they did. They were surprised to find a woman alone in the woods that early in the morning, but spoke to her politely.
“Have you seen two little boys? They’ve run away and their father is looking for them.”
“I saw two boys about a kilometre to the north; they were running and seemed frightened. I hope their father will not be too angry with them.”
They couldn’t believe their luck and followed her directions, despite the dog they had brought with them being very interested in the correct direction. Quickly she woke the sleeping children. But where should she take them. She transported the oldest boy twenty kilometres ahead, picked up the younger and followed him. At least there would be no scent to follow for twenty kilometres, but the transportation across the planet had tired her and Kelzina knew she must rest soon. She did not trust Hannara either, so she set them off walking towards a small town nearby. Five kilometres along the way, she spied a ruined fort and carrying in armfuls of long dry grass the boys were soon asleep upon it, in the dark of a lower room of which the walls and ceiling remained intact.
Kelzina searched for food and water as the boys’ meagre supplies had run out. Luckily the elder boy had hung on to the bag and the can which had contained milk. Water there was in abundance but little to eat. Harvest had been, the fields were bare, but she collected some mushrooms and berries and found an overgrown plum tree on which there were still some small black fruit. As she walked back along the hedge something warned her to camouflage herself, she undressed, blending her skin and hair in with the shadowy colours of the hedges. She stayed low so she did not cast a long shadow and tight to the hedge. Her clothes she put in the bag, keeping it between her body and the hedge.
She saw the searchers, not the same pair, but the men split up, going in different directions. One of them headed in her direction; coming straight towards the fort. She hid in the shadows of a tree as he came towards her. He saw her but she was quick. She broke his neck before he could utter a sound, lowering him quietly into the ditch without his partner being warned anything was amiss. The second man searched for the boys, but instead found his partner.
The second man was surprised to see his friend fallen so called to him, but he did not answer, climbing into the ditch he turned the body over onto its back, the neck flopped at an awkward angle, eyes bulging unfocussed from their sockets. He did not have time to flee, because Kelzina reached out from behind and strangled him.
She emptied the pockets of both men taking their identity cards and money, throwing the cards in the road a kilometre in the direction they had come. She redressed, then she woke the boys. It was time to be off. They walked the rest of the way to the little town and openly joined the crowded queue waiting for the hover-bus to take them to the market town of Buolian, which was 30 kilometres away.
Kelzina hoped the men would not be missed quickly by their comrades. She had not had to kill for a very long time and it left a nasty taste in her mouth all too familiar and unpleasant. She wanted to hand the boys over to someone she could trust, wishing Riyal was here, he was such a sensible lad. “I’m much too old for these adventures,” she told herself.
Chapter Fifty- nine - Busman’s Holiday
Charles found Ziga a foreign place after all his years away. Prevela was just how the late Zigan ambassador to Zenina, Padavaneev described so he spent the days catching up with his mother and family and his nights at the Embassy. Prevela told him of Plavina’s death and Dalzina’s succession and he grieved for Plavina and for Marina who had loved her indolent sister. “At least Zadina wasn’t queen,” he thought.
He found an exclusive gymnasium where he could keep his muscles toned. His beautiful musculature was greatly admired. So much so, after his first visit the owner refused further payment, as he was such a good advertisement for his club. The female clientele of the club increased dramatically during his stay, many sought private tuition for a different sort of exercise from Charles.
Marina’s instructions on buying his brother and his bride a present had been precise. Buy a house in the best part of town with a garden and swimming pool. Have it decorated with the very best. Pay the taxes on the house and the rates for the next hundred years and furnish it from top to bottom in the best you can find in Ziga. Don’t forget to furnish a nursery, she had told him. Charles enjoyed directing the builders and decorators to his exact specifications and making sure they finished by the wedding day, even though they worked late nights to complete it to his standards.
Everyone he knew had got old. At the wedding, old school friends and people he knew from medical school came and reminded him of where they’d met. He didn’t look much older than they remembered. Healthier, more muscular, more affluent but still young, they all looked like middle-aged men. His younger brother was overwhelmed
by Marina’s present and Charles had thoroughly enjoyed choosing it.
The wedding went off in fairly traditional Zigan style. Charles escorted his mother, in place of his late father, who had died before Marina purchased him. The official ceremony before a board of Zigan officials went through a list of questions with which they determined the likelihood of the relationship succeeding. The list was always the same so Zigan couples were secretly tutored in the correct responses to appear good citizens, emotionally controlled and completely compatible.
After this uninspiring ceremony for which their blood groupings had been taken and ceremonially mixed, although even with the limitations of Zigan medical science, there was no justification to bother what the blood groupings were, they went to a hotel where a reception had been laid on. The first half of the reception was traditional. The women trouped off to one room and the men into another where they sat and ate an elaborate meal, consisting of twelve tiny courses each exquisitely presented one after the other. Each course was served with a small cup of liquor, a different colour for each course. The sensible took only a few sips of each cup but at a wedding few of the men could be considered sensible.
By the end of this feast, Charles was ravenous, for food not women and he had prepared by consuming a large meal before the ceremony. He located the hotel manager and negotiated discreetly for some good food to be served to him in another private room immediately. His hunger satisfied he returned to the reception without having been noticeably missed.
The traditional Zigan wedding reception kept the sexes apart until the last brief ceremony where the couple said farewells to their independence and to the guests. Since Charles had left Ziga this tradition had fallen out of fashion; largely because of strident female criticism of the practice being anti-women. So after the serving of the twelve good things, which Charles thought were not what he would put on a list, the two groups joined together to watch a display of Zigan dancing and to mingle with each other.
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