by TylerRose.
“When will you come to visit Voran?” Shestna asked.
“I don’t know. After I’m done on K’Tran, I suppose.”
“He doesn’t make you call him Prince?” Baener questioned.
“He’s never indicated to me that I should,” she replied, and looked to the man in question. “Should I?”
“No. We are colleagues. If you were to use any title, it should be Congressman.”
“Congressman Shestna,” she said.
“I hate it already. Use my name.”
The matter was dropped. He escorted her back to her room and stepped inside. Closing the door, he leaned against the wall next to it and held her hand to keep her close.
“Now I will tell you the truth.”
“I hadn’t known you had lied,” she said.
“Please let me speak, Tyler.”
She shut her mouth and waited.
“I would never let them know the truth of the matter. I do not want you to call me by my royal title because that title is insignificant to a goddess who herself should be worshiped.”
“I’m no goddess, Sta,” she denied, the notion an embarrassment.
“You are the only one who does not see that you are, Femina. Your beauty,” he stroked her cheek. “The light in your eyes, inside your soul. Your very potent sexuality. Everything about you demands to be worshiped. I cannot ask a title to pass your lips because I am far below you and my title is a falsehood when spoken by you. No Voranian male would ever let those words or thoughts be known.”
“If I was a suspicious person, I’d question your motives,” she said.
He smiled. “I have none, especially not when you carry the scent of last night’s lover to strongly on your person. Your Security Chief Arran?”
“I don’t even smell him.”
“You are not a feline humanoid. His scent covers you front and back. I’m guessing it was a long goodbye. After your visit on K’Tran, we shall work out a few days to spend on Voran.”
“So you can have me to yourself, away from the station?” she asked.
“You are not a suspicious person.”
“Not at all.”
“No ulterior motives. You enjoy learning about other worlds. You will learn best by being there. Not to mention, the less you are on this station, around Earnol, the better for you both,” he said.
“I can’t argue with that,” she groused.
He bent low to kiss her hand and left her standing at the closed door.
She went directly to the shower, thinking about what Shestna had said. After, she sat to write in her journal. Then to bed, worn out from the long night with Arran. Julian woke her in the morning with breakfast. Belgian waffles fresh from that restaurant in Los Angeles.
“I’ve been missing this,” she admitted just before her first bite. “I missed Earth foods.”
“I knew you would be. I have your official brief on your mission to K’Tran,” he said, pushing a computer memory cube across the table. “Place it on the screen and it’ll download into your vidpad.”
She did and it did. “Cool.”
It flashed when finished and she gave the inch wide cube back to him.
“The same stupid questions,” she noticed, reading down the application list. “Who is my host going to be?”
“The Rosaas will tell you when you arrive and meet with them.”
“I think I should tell them who my host will be.”
“Don’t get too mouthy with them, Tyler. The Rosaas aren’t known for their humor or their patience,” Julian told her.
“Neither am I,” she smiled. “I’ve dealt with a K’Tran male on a one-on-one basis for the last two months of my life, Julian. I can manage three K’Tran politicians for five minutes.”
She put current K’Tran fashion up on the wall screen. Strappy, sheer, revealing.
“Okay, I’m wearing pants,” she decided. “With open shoulders.”
“Why open shoulders?” Julian asked.
“To show I wear no teeth marks,” she said offhand.
“What the hell did you learn from this K’Tran on Crecorday?” he laughed.
“Everything. Including things he didn’t want me to know. The K’Tran male marks his female by leaving his teeth impressions on her neck or the top of her shoulder. Gars in particular have a need to own every female they see, so a clean neck and shoulders would drive them all insane.”
Julian laughed harder. “Are you going to evaluate an application or play sex games?”
“Both,” she fully admitted. “I will learn far more if my host is in hot pursuit. Am I allowed to visit Earth for a while?”
“Actually, yes you are. So long as you don’t go back in time.”
“Then I will. I need to go shopping for a K’Tran wardrobe. They’ve put a weather control matrix in place, haven’t they?” she asked.
“Yes. It’s generally seventy to seventy five degrees during the day. Most rains happen during the night. There’s at least one good soaking day every couple weeks.”
“What time is it in Toledo? Is Northtowne Mall still here?”
“Yes, it is. The zone of destruction starts in Downtown and goes south. The city is slowly expanding to the west and a new city center is going to go up a few streets over from where the big buildings came down.”
“The warehouse section?” she asked. “It’s the only place not built up with residences.”
“Yes. Cleanup is going to take far longer than putting up a new building over an existing warehouse and refurbishing said warehouse,” Julian said.
She made no indication or movement.
“I don’t mean to sound callous,’ he said quickly.
“You’re not. You’re apart from it and I don’t expect you to have any emotions about it. It’s fine. What time is it there?”
“About three in the aftermid.”
“Aftermid? Afternoon,” she reminded herself.
“Want me to go with you?” he asked.
“No. I need to go by myself.”
He left her to it and she changed clothes. Into jeans and a shirt, pulled on her boots and leather jacket, and couldn’t leave the station fast enough.
Rather than go directly to the mall, she arrived in the rubble of downtown. Finding a tall enough building still standing, she teleported to the top to see the devastation. Cleanup was underway. Scoops and bulldozers moved huge piles of rubble into huger dump trucks. The black pit that had been Sun Oil stretched a mile in each direction, easily. St. Charles’ hospital was half gone, a wrecking ball bringing down the rest.
The East Side was flattened, a community of tents the only life other than cleanup crews. Refugees in International Park, with one tent marked with a large red cross.
Sun Oil wasn’t the only refinery. There was a Sohio plant farther up, where the Maumee River became Maumee Bay, and it had burned to the ground. All bridges across the river were gone except for the Highlevel. Its blue towers stood intact.
To the Northwest, rubble went on nearly to Bancroft street. St. Vincent’s hospital, on Cherry Street, was also gone. All the federal buildings, the department stores, the office buildings…everything was on the ground. Destruction had stopped at the convention center. The residential areas beyond were not touched. The whole region was cloaked in sadness, despair.
The smell of burned everything filled the air, even now. Burned buildings, electrical wires, asphalt, flesh. She’d seen enough.
Teleporting to an empty stall of the women’s restroom, she walked out into the all-too-familiar jagged corridor that was Northtowne Mall. It angled left and right, meandering from the big anchor store at this end down to the other big anchor store at the opposite end, with stores on either side and just two corridors to left and right. The corridor on the left from this direction went to the North parking lot. The one on the right went to the movie theater and arcade and then into the parking lot on the southern side. This was the Western end and the other was the Eastern end,
the whole place sitting a couple blocks away from the Michigan line.
To be among humans, seeing them shopping like normal, working at keeping the floor clear of litter, ringing up registers, the normalcy of it felt as weird as it could get. Like no one remembered there had been an invasion. People getting on with the business of life three, four months after millions of deaths and trillions of dollars in destruction.
She walked from store to store to see what was new, and ended up buying two more pairs of jeans. She could make copies of them as needed. She found summer shirts and a pretty shawl.
Having made her way all the way down to Lion’s, with the fabric store on one side and the chicken restaurant on the other side…
She blinked to see him. Mother’s husband, coming out with a big bag of waffle fries and a young blonde about twenty years old. He’d been seeing her off and on since Christmas, according to her memories. They walked right by Tyler without seeing her. She turned around to follow some twenty feet behind, and paused when they sat on a bench to eat the fries.
Tyler couldn’t do a Darth Vader throat closing, but she could influence him to show off and take the biggest fry and barely chew it before swallowing…and then freeze his throat so he couldn’t swallow. The blonde banged on his back. Someone tried a Heimlich.
Mother’s husband died in the mall, choking on a waffle fry, and Tyler took herself on up to Olga’s restaurant to have a gyro and an orange cream drink and thumb through the magazine she’d bought at the drug store. That was the best tasting gyro and most delicious and satisfying orange drink of her life.
She continued the shopping with an entire new set of makeup and a nail polish kit. She sent her purchases up to her room on the station and teleported to her preferred spa in California to get a massage, a manicure and pedicure, and a facial.
She returned to the station and duplicated what needed duplicating, including her old boots. They were perfectly broken in. She’d take the originals and a copy to K’Tran, and make a new copy if she had to. Same with the jeans and shirts. Brand new packs of underpants and socks, and the makeup, she would leave in their packages and copy as needed.
She started to repack her suitcase and included three of her fancier ball gown type dresses in the hanging case. Julian showed up at her door as she was deciding how many blank journals to take. She let him in, thinking aloud while continuing her packing.
“Duh,” she remembered. “I can just make copies of those too.”
She took two so she could alternate as needed. She did not, however, take Arran’s Mondragoon. That she sent to her psionic vault…and wondered if it had a size limit. Julian said nothing, so she decided it didn’t.
A pack of her original gold rings came to her hands, as she had no doubt she could copy them and sell them to get cash as needed. Or trade.
“What are you pussyfooting around?” she asked when he’d been too quiet for too long during her ramblings.
“You were at Northtowne Mall today?”
“For a while, yes. Then I went to California and did the massage and mani-pedi thing. Why?”
“Did you know your stepfather was also at the mall?”
“No,” she said, deciding to carry the rings in her pocket for safety.
“He choked on his food and died in the middle of the mall. Did you see it?”
“Did he? How bad for him. I couldn’t care less if he’s dead, Julian.”
“Did you do it?”
“Do what?”
He sighed hard. “Never mind. I really don’t care if you did. I know he beat your mother. He deserved to die regardless how it happened. I’ll be back in the morning to see you to the transporter.”
“Oh, K’Tran has teleport tech? When did that happen?”
“What do you mean?” he stopped and asked.
“Before I left for Crecorday, they didn’t like teleport technology. They preferred to have ships come and shuttles fly up and bring down passengers. So if they have teleport tech now, that means part of Arran’s mission in going back to K’Tran worked.”
“Wait. You told him to do something?”
“I just told him to get the Rosaas to start schooling its people. All of its people, not just the highborn boys,” she said.
“You interfered,” he pressed fingers to either side of his temples.
“I don’t call it that. If it means that things are better there now, so what.”
“You really don’t see why that’s a big deal?” he asked.
“Why would I? It feels right to me. You didn’t know any better until I told you. So if you don’t say anything, no one else will know any better.”
“I’m going to have to say nothing. My father would have your hide for giving people knowledge five hundred years ago.”
“Your father can go suck his own dick. I’m going to settle in and go to sleep early. I had a deep tissue massage and it’s worn me out,” she said.
He took the strong hint and said his goodnight. Curious, Tyler searched the database for K’Tran history, narrowing in on the House of Meathe, now referred to as the Ancient House of Meathe. Downloaded into her vidpad, she read that Arran had returned to his House, and had found his brother was guilty of several crimes. In reward for proving those crimes to the Rosaas, the House was awarded to him. He led the world by example, setting up his own school in his village before going to the Rosaas to insist Education for all was the way to the future.
His most famous quote: “What if one of the uneducated girls was to grow up to find the key to our worst diseases? What if an uneducated inferior was destined to discover the key to controlling our weather and without that person we never do? We limit our own selves when we limit who may learn.”
She smiled to herself and turned the vidpad off, and slept with tremendous satisfaction.
Julianreturned to his father to make his report.
“Well?” Earnol demanded.
“She says she knows nothing about it. She exudes no guilt over it, nor any gloating. She’s ready to leave for K’Tran in the morning.”
“Good. Make sure you have another assignment off station for her when she gets back. Keep her busy and out of my way.”
“Yes, Father.”
Chapter Eleven
Tyler listenedto the endless droning of the Rosaas as the Ambassador and Julian went through the tediousness of Rosaas audience protocol. She circled the chamber, looking at the portraits of the various men who had held the office, and found Arran as an old man. He had been one of the three-man panel for twenty three years, having died at age ninety two.
She turned around and thumped her boot heels over to the high bench, stopping in front of her two escorts.
“If we can dispense with this meaningless and unnecessary political blithering?” she cut in. “We have not addressed the one thing I want to know. Since you won’t, I will decide for myself. I will stay in the Ancient House of Meathe. It is near this city so I can have meetings and do research easily enough.”
“Miss Tyler—“ one of them started.
“Lar Tyler,” she corrected pointedly. “I am to be addressed as Lar Tyler and by no other words. I am not to be addressed as female, offworlder, or any other derogatory or descriptive word. Lar. And only Lar.”
“Lar Tyler,” he began again. “There is a procedure to this arrival interview.”
“Is procedure, maybe, but I see no purpose in it. Someone get me a vehicle and driver so I can be on my way and get to work. I have far more important things to do than listen to you five bluster hot air at each other and stroke each other’s egos. I’ll be waiting by the driveway and expect to be in a moving vehicle taking me to the Ancient House of Meathe inside of five minutes. If I am not, I will know none of you are serious about wanting to join the Celestial Congress and are only going to waste my time. In which case, I will go home. There are plenty of other planets I can visit right now that really do want to be part of the galactic society.”
She turned on
her heel, walked directly out so fast the Ambassador had to get out of her way or be bowled over. Her suitcase and dress case followed without being touched, pulled along by her psychokinesis.
The Rosaas stared after her with faces turned to stone in stunned silence, the Ambassador staring up at them in horror for her rudeness. Julian just smiled. Tyler could be counted on to be Tyler. Every time.
“Your Eminences, I forgot to warn you that she has something of a take-charge nature. I suggest you do what she wants. She is not bluffing about leaving. I look forward to her report when she returns to the Congress, and to working with you further,” Julian smiled.
He teleported out with his booster bracelet, leaving the unusually flabbergasted Ambassador alone in front of three pairs of hard eyes accusing him of allowing this breach of protocol.
“Your Eminences, please forgive me—“
“The envoy from the Celestial Congress will stay in the Ancient House of Meathe for the duration of her stay and is to be afforded all the privileges of a visiting Ambassador. You will conduct her there at once and make the appropriate introductions,” the 1st Chair Rosaas said.
“At once, Your Eminences,” he bowed in relief, and rushed out to catch up to her.
He found her sitting on a bench in the shade, a little bird perched on her finger while she stroked its head with a fingertip. It flew away when his car pulled up in front of them.
“The Rosaas agree you will be hosted by the Ancient House of Meathe. I daresay Gar Mankell will not be much prepared.”
“Good. I prefer it that way,” she replied, and got into the front seat of the vehicle while the driver loaded her cases.
The Ambassador, disappointed not to have her sitting beside him in the back seat, got in alone. The driver shut the door and went around. Settling into his seat, he flipped a switch to start a continuously screaming siren, and put the vehicle into gear to glide forward.