As soon as he’d heard about it, Basil had known he had to bring Laila here. There were no chronological children—plenty of other resorts catered to them—so the adult little girls and boys could play without worrying about being too boisterous or too big.
Basil ordered drinks from the waiter then turned his attention to Laila. She was sitting in the chair he’d pulled out for her, though he knew it must be killing her to wait. Her eyes were drawn to the colorful ball pit that their table was next to.
“Daddy, please, can I go and play?” she asked.
“All right, sweetheart. I’ll order food for you, is there anything you really don’t want to eat?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know what there is, so I don’t know if I like any of it,” she explained.
“Off you go then. I’ll watch you from here.”
As soon as he said it, she hopped up and ran across to the little cabin. The doors were extra wide, and it was well lit, so Basil could see exactly what Laila was doing at all times.
He watched her stand at the edge of the mass of balls, then she stepped in carefully, trying to keep her balance among all the balls.
A few minutes later she was throwing herself on them sideways and giggling. Basil enjoyed seeing her having so much fun. When the waiter came back, Basil selected food for Laila and watched her make her way back out of the ball pit to where he was.
“What did you get for me?”
“It’s a surprise,” Basil said. “Why don’t you go climb the ropes?”
Laila stared at the tall mast of the ship then shook her head doubtfully.
“That looks scary.”
“I bet it wouldn’t be scary to climb a little bit,” Basil encouraged. “What if I come with you and stand at the bottom, and when you’ve climbed higher than my head, I’ll help you get back down?”
Laila nodded and held Basil’s hand all the way to the mast. She stood in front of the rope and looked up.
“You don’t have to climb to the top, remember. Just go as far as you feel comfortable, okay?”
Laila nodded. She tentatively reached her hands out and held some of the rope, picking her feet up as well, and Basil watched her as she worked out how to climb in the flexible rope net without losing her balance.
“You’re doing really well, baby girl.” As he said it, her face came level with his; she was about a foot off the ground at this point.
“I’ve only done one step!”
He wished she would give herself a break and see her own achievements.
“That’s a step more than you were gonna take a minute ago,” he reminded her. She climbed some more, and as she got more confident, she began to go a little faster. When her feet were level with Basil’s head, he tapped one of her shoes.
“How’re you feeling about trying to get back down again?”
“I want to climb higher.”
“I’m really proud of you for overcoming your uncertainty about doing this, sweetheart, but you need to make sure you know how to get back down again before you go any further up. If you go much higher, I can’t help you if you get stuck.”
“Can I go up again after?”
“After your food arrives, and you’ve eaten it. Otherwise, if it arrives and you’re really high up that rope, your food’ll go cold.”
“That makes sense. Okay, I’ll try coming back down, what do I do?”
“Bend this knee,” he touched her right knee, “and take this other foot out of the rope. Move your arms down one square, one at a time, and then put that foot back into the rope again.”
He was ready to catch Laila if she fell. As he watched, she followed his instructions until she got to her hands.
“I’m stuck,” she said.
“You’re not stuck. You’re doing swell. Just pick up one hand and move it down a bit, then grab the rope again,” he encouraged. “I’m here if you fall, don’t worry.”
She hesitated, and he could see she was really worried about falling, but then she picked up her hand and moved it. Once she overcame that hurdle, she seemed to be able to move down the ropes more easily. When she got to the bottom, she turned and gently wrapped her arms around Basil’s waist, burying her face in his sweater. He returned the hug.
“You did really well, little princess. Let’s go back to the table and have something to drink, I think food’s going to be here real soon.” He kissed her on the top of the head; he was so proud of his baby girl.
They had barely sat down when two dishes turned up. Basil’s food came on a plate with a knife and fork. Laila’s was in a bowl, with a small spoon.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s called sketti. Give it a try.”
Laila dipped her spoon into the sauce, and put the food to her mouth. Basil watched her face, hoping she would like it.
“It’s tasty,” she pronounced, dipping in for another mouthful.
“It’s made of Anassian cornseed, which is cooked in a special way and shaped into those little stars and hearts you can see. The sauce is a blend of three vegetables which are packed full of vitamins.”
“Wow. Can we make it on the ship?”
“It’s a bit complicated without special equipment, but it comes ready made in a packet so I can buy it for you. Would you like that?”
Laila nodded as she spooned more food into her mouth.
“Yes, please,” she said through her food.
“Don’t forget to chew and swallow your food before talking next time, young lady,” Basil said.
She frowned, finished the mouthful, and said, “Sorry.”
“It’s all right. I know you get excited sometimes.”
“What have you got?” Laila turned her attention to his plate.
“Deer steak,” Basil said. When humans had developed terraforming technology, long before the un-terraforming wars, they had sent people away from the overcrowded Earth to colonize new lands. This meant people needed feeding, and deer, being less genetically altered than most other animals that humans liked to eat, were selected as the main farm animal to take off-world. They were lighter to carry on spaceships than cows, and once they’d started breeding, they had replaced beef and chicken as the main meat, so most of the terraformed planets had deer farms. Sheep had also been taken to a few early colonies, but they had not thrived as well due to being too dependent on humans for their management and husbandry. Lamb was a rarity around the galaxy, but beef and chicken were completely obscure now, although Basil’s parents had occasionally acquired both meats when he was a child. Basil enjoyed a good bit of deer every so often, although he often ate the many native foods on various planets. Minos Kerala was terraformed by Earth, so there was a lot of Earth cuisine available in the restaurants here.
“Why’s it got that piece of tree on top of it?” Laila asked.
“It’s an herb, it’s just there for decoration,” Basil said. “It’s just a nice touch to make the plate of food look pretty; like when you put a ribbon in your hair.” Laila nodded. “Would you like to try some of my venison?”
“I don’t know. Will I like it?” Laila stared at the meat on Basil’s plate.
“Only one way to find out,” Basil said. “Here, have some.” He cut her a small piece of the steak, and fed her from his fork. Normally, feeding someone was just a case of putting a fork near their face, but with Laila, it was one of those inherently sexual but completely innocent moments that Basil lived for. She stuck the tip of her tongue out to touch the meat, then withdrew it and opened her mouth, closing her eyes and tilting her head toward him. He put the food in her mouth, then slid the fork back out, watching as she chewed it for a minute. She swallowed with a thoughtful expression.
“I can’t decide if I like it or not. It’s nice as a little thing, but I don’t think I’d want to eat it all the time, or eat lots of it in one meal. That steak looks huge,” Laila reported, then returned to her sketti.
Basil smiled, slightly amused. That was his L
aila: trying new things, scared she wouldn’t like them, then either completely in love with the new thing or utterly undecided about how it had been. He’d not yet found any food she outright disliked, despite the fact she always worried about it.
“Thank you for letting me try your food,” she said, then she gobbled down her own.
After food, Basil let Laila play on the climbing rope again; this time she got all the way to the top, then very carefully came back down again. When it was time to leave, she went quiet and withdrawn again, and Basil could tell she hadn’t wanted to stop playing.
“Cheer up, princess, we can go to the big zoo tomorrow and see the teppalas. They’re the cutest animal that ever existed, but they’re very shy, so they don’t have any of them at the petting zoo.” He took her hand, and they walked back toward their hotel in the evening street lights.
“What’s the big zoo?”
“It’s like the petting zoo, only you can’t pet anything. There’s alien monsters, exotic delights like the teppalas; there’s a whole galaxy out there which is just full of unusual creatures. Some brave people have brought some of the friendlier species—and a few less friendly ones—to Minos Kerala, and they opened a zoo where you can see them, because some of those planets just aren’t safe for us to visit, so it’s the only way we can see these creatures.”
“I thought teppalas were a myth. Like unicorns.”
“Don’t let Flin hear you say that; he used to keep unicorns on his home planet, Telia II. He can even ride them. I think unicorns and teppalas were probably a myth on your planet, but they’re very real in other places. On the robot planets, all biological life is seen as a myth. Nobody goes there, though. Robots are scary logical.”
“Wait, robots are real too?”
Basil didn’t want to tell her more about the rumors of Artificial Intelligence living in a nearby galaxy. He had heard enough on his travels to know they must be real, but he dreaded the day when biological life finally made contact with the Artificial Intelligences, because he knew that it would cause a lot of upheaval across the Interplanetary Alliance.
“Sadly, yes. So anyway, princess, d’you want to see some of the larger and more exotic space creatures tomorrow?”
“Yes, please. What about the doctor’s appointment?”
“I sent them a communication. Their first appointment is the day after tomorrow.”
Laila seemed happy with this, and they paid and left the restaurant.
“Daddy! The road is all lit up! It’s so pretty!” Laila squeezed Basil’s hand tightly as she gazed out across the glassy street. Basil had to admit it had a very nice ethereal glow to it. He held her hand all the way back to the hotel. When they arrived at her room, Basil helped her change, then gave her Mr. Unicorn. He read her favorite bedtime story, kissed her on the forehead, and tucked her into bed, before going back to his own room.
Basil knew Flin had already had sex with her, but he wanted to take it slowly, to make sure she was one hundred percent ready for a sexual relationship with both men, before he took things in that direction. When it was just Basil and Laila doing things together, he had noticed that she let herself be more vulnerable than when Flin was around, and Basil didn’t want to damage that trust. Laila was his precious princess, and he wanted to care for her and watch her develop into the confident, decisive, and sophisticated woman he knew she wanted to be. Nothing bad should ever happen to his delicate flower.
Chapter Nine
“Laila! Laila! C’mon, sweetheart, it’s time to get up!” Basil tapped on Laila’s door. He had left his spare keycard on her desk, and she seemed to have overslept again. Keen not to stress her out about sleeping in, like yesterday’s nap had done, he was standing in the corridor waiting for her to rouse.
He tapped again.
“You need to eat breakfast before we visit the zoo.”
“What gives?” Flin had opened the door to his room.
“Is Laila with you?”
“No; I haven’t seen her for two days. I thought you’d both want the space.”
“I thought so, but it was worth a shot. I left her keycard inside her room last night. I can’t get in, and I think she’s asleep.”
“She’s really sensitive about oversleeping.”
“Yeah, there’s a good reason for that, and I’m taking her to a doctor tomorrow to see if they can help.”
“Why don’t we grab a coffee from the breakfast room and you can catch me up on it?” Flin suggested. Basil looked at Laila’s door again. “There’s nothing you can do here. You’re stressing yourself out. Come on. She might be easier to wake in a half hour.”
Basil conceded and followed Flin downstairs, where they sat at a two top and Basil explained about Laila’s sleep problems over a coffee.
“That’s some heavy shit. She’s got a lot going on inside that head of hers, doesn’t she?” Flin said, when he’d heard the whole thing. “She’s just so easy to talk with, that it’s hard to remember how damaged she is inside. The other day, we were out in a restaurant and I fucked up. Forgot about the reading thing. I gave her a menu and waited for her to pick a drink, and when the server came to take the drinks order, the look on Laila’s face was pure panic.”
Basil nodded. A thought occurred to him and he looked up at Flin.
“You don’t suppose she’s upset in there, do you?”
“I don’t know, but I heard you knocking on her door from my bed, so it’s odd that it didn’t wake her. If she’s got problems getting out of bed, though, that might be all it is.”
“I’ll get the hotel receptionist to give us another key.”
“I’ll stick around until we’re sure she’s fine.”
They got another keycard from reception, then sped back to the sixth floor and opened Laila’s room.
“Laila? You okay, honey? It’s just us, Basil and Flin, we’re getting worried…” Basil trailed off as the room opened out into the sleeping area. Laila wasn’t in her bed. He checked the bathroom. She wasn’t there, either. The spare keycard was still sitting on the desk.
“Where the fuck is Laila?” Flin demanded, but Basil obviously had no answer.
“The security footage must show what happened. There’s a camera on this corridor,” Basil said.
* * *
As Basil tried to solve the problem, Flin felt himself getting angry. What happened to Laila and why hadn’t he or Basil been there? Had she just walked out on them? Why? Flin’s ego demanded an explanation.
In the hotel’s security room, the guard found the footage for the camera in the corridor outside their rooms.
“You got a twelve-hour window when it mighta happened. S’ gonna take you hours to watch that feed,” he said, eating some sort of sandwich, with indifference to their plight.
“Not really. We’ll just run it through at high speed until Flin finds a blip, then hone in on it,” Basil said. He clearly had more patience than Flin for suffering fools with stupid questions right now, so Flin said nothing. Flin wanted to act, not wait around, and until he could point himself in the direction of Laila, he was not good company.
They watched the footage sped up to sixty-four times faster than actual time, and with Flin’s faster processing brain, he saw a flash of someone walking down the corridor.
“Stop! When was that?” he asked.
Basil hit pause and took it back to where Flin had seen something.
“Six this morning,” he said, as they watched Laila skip down the corridor in her sailor dress. Flin felt sick as he watched her. She’d been told not to leave her room on her own.
“Where did she go next?” Flin demanded. The security guard switched to the camera feed in reception and jumped to the right time. Laila walked to the vending machine.
“A hot chocolate, please,” she said, and the machine whirred to life. Before it had finished, a man approached Laila and said something to her in a whisper. She shook her head. He took her wrist.
“No, please!” Sh
e pulled away from him, but another man came up behind her and pressed a metal device against her forehead. Laila collapsed, then the first man put her over his shoulder and carried her out.
“How the fuck did they get into the hotel? What use is your job if you aren’t stopping women getting kidnapped while they stay here?” Flin slammed his hand down on the security guard’s sandwich, squashing it, and threw it into the trash with enough force to make a thud sound. Basil held him back, although Flin could feel that Basil was using all his strength, while Flin was barely pushing against him. He decided to let Basil stop him; it was the civilized thing to do. Any time wasted on this useless security guard was time when Laila was still in danger. Flin ran out of the security room and through the hotel, until he found himself standing on the street.
There was the old lady dragging her cardboard box around. She hadn’t moved from this street in the whole time they’d been here.
“Excuse me,” he tried.
She looked up at him in surprise then pointed to herself. “Me? You’re talking to me?”
“Yes. I need your help. Were you here all night?” he asked.
“I was, indeed.”
“Did you see two men around six this morning… sorry, around sunup.” He realized she probably had no way of telling the time. “One was carrying a girl over his shoulder.”
“Yes. I thought it was strange, but they were agents of the orange triangle, so I couldn’t resist its hypnotic gaze. I try to keep a low profile so it won’t find me. No one asks me about the frog, and anyway, if they had, they’d get nothing from me. The orange triangle can hear your thoughts. But I know you’re not one of them; you’re sent by the Others, aren’t you?”
Her Daddy and Her Master Page 14