Quiggs rapped twice on the doorframe of the dean’s office before peering inside. “Cadet Quiggs Fallon here to see you, sir.”
Dean Cagney filled the leather chair, his portly frame encased in a flowing black robe. To conserve resources and to restrain competitive male pride, the law decreed a strict dress code for each level of a profession. A wide white collar filling the square neckline of the robe pinched his neck. In his fifties, he wore the full beard and shaved pate of an upper academic.
“Come in, Cadet Quiggs. Close the door.”
The clear-pitched, solemn tone warned Quiggs this was no birthday celebration with ale and cake. He stood at attention in the middle of the room with shoulders straight, long skinny legs apart, and hands clasped behind his back over his waist-long braid. His white tee and pants bore smudges of yellow spice from the nuts. After he registered sexually active, he’d switch to a black uniform with chunky lace-up boots. After he successfully penetrated a partner in the sex clinic his junior year, he’d be allowed to cut off his virgin’s braid.
Another stupid miserable law.
The dean deliberately ignored him and frowned at a slate on his desk. As the silence stretched, Quiggs glanced around, impatient to get this discussion over with. The office had the same boring beige walls and stone floor as every room in the academy. On Quiggs’s left was a bench beneath a rack of floggers, canes, and paddles to punish infractions. More impressive to unruly cadets was the pedestal displaying a feral skull with yellow fangs, a trophy of the deathblow the dean had delivered during his military service.
The arm that swung that killing club was not an arm a cadet wanted punishing his ass.
Dean Cagney cleared his throat, and Quiggs straightened to attention from the slouch he’d eased into while his thoughts rambled.
The dean’s piercing black eyes regarded Quiggs. “Congratulations on reaching a milestone in your life. You are eighteen and eligible for ale in the dining hall and for courtship in the visitor’s lounge.”
Invitations to meet prospective wives were an honor coveted by cadets when they began their eleventh year. But Quiggs was an inactive. He had four months to correct his problem before his junior year began.
Dean Cagney pointed to a stack of expensive black-edged cards on his desk. “The invitations are already arriving from mothers rightfully assuming you are eager to meet their daughters.”
“But I haven’t begun my junior year yet.”
The dean mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “You passed your junior year when you were eleven. You’re in advanced studies until you’ve completed twelve years under the guardianship of the academy as the law requires. Damn rude of the Mothers to rush you, but I can’t stop them.”
“Tell them I’m not interested in marriage yet.”
“The mothers don’t care if you aren’t interested,” the dean snapped back. “They don’t care if you stink like a goat and have the rolling red eyes of a sucker-toed lizard. You, my boy, with your inheritance and decorated pedigree and academic record, are expected to marry one of their virginal daughters the day you graduate. The highest service paid to the territory is siring children, and you have your pick of fertile debs. But until you are registered as sexually active, the law forbids your courtship.”
Quiggs shrugged. “Tell them the truth. I’m inactive.”
The dean slammed his palms on the desk, scattering the cards. “My academy is responsible for the sexual training of cadets. It’s the law! If you flunk, the Mothers will replace the men responsible. Not only is my position in jeopardy, but also every department head who has supervised you. You will fix this problem!”
Under such pressure, his dick would be struck by lightning before it threw wood.
“I requested physical and mental assessments from Dr. Keith and Professor Hines.” The dean picked up a thin yellow slate and rattled off the results. “No visible physical defects. Height is six foot one, same measurement as a year ago. Green eyes are sharp-sighted despite studies. Plain roundish face with long nose, wide mouth, good teeth, pale complexion. Brown hair has healthy gleam. Physique is thick-waisted with straight skinny limbs and poor posture.”
Quiggs frowned down at himself. He straightened and sucked in his stomach. Starting tomorrow, he’d run laps. He glanced up to find the dean waiting for his attention.
The dean picked up where he left off. “Physical maturation confirmed by facial hair, pit hair, pubic hair. Penis produces strong stream of normal urine. Testicles are descended, free of lumps. The cadet is healthy. There is no physical explanation for delayed penile tumescence. Mental maladjustment is suspected.”
Quiggs rolled his eyes. The doctors and therapists always blamed his aggressive intellect for diverting energized blood from his limp cock to his brain. So what if it did? His studies fascinated him, and his inventions improved the lives of citizens. As Academic Champion, he won the right to a small private room instead of bunking with the baby cadets. Shower time was divided by age, which meant Quiggs, the oldest in the inactive barracks, showered last. Unfortunately, he enjoyed solving linguistic puzzles instead of wanking when he showered alone.
“Quiggs!”
Quiggs jerked from his thoughts to find Dean Cagney scowling at him. “Sir, yes, sir!”
“It is time to set aside your studies and allow your mind to pursue flights of fancy.”
Flights of fancy… like his hot air balloon. The sooner he fixed his problem, the sooner he had the freedom to leave the academy during daylight. He wouldn’t require a chaperone. He could rent a work tower outside the academy to build his newest invention. He could even walk inside a bakery and buy a shelf of treats. “Professor Hines mentioned a special therapy for me.”
The dean glanced at the closed door and lowered his voice. “It bends the rules. Strict secrecy must be maintained.”
Quiggs focused his full attention on the dean’s sweating face.
“The professor believes you need strong visual inspiration to construct sexual fantasies during your sleep. He believes even in your sleep, your mind blocks any curiosity outside of your studies. The lack of visual inspiration explains why you’ve never experienced a nocturnal emission.”
Quiggs hadn’t a clue what strong visual inspiration entailed. Where was this going?
“As of this afternoon, the showers on the floor of the inactives are under repair.”
Quiggs saw where this was going. A smile teased the corners of his mouth as he listened to the dean explain.
“The inactives will shower at an earlier hour on the floor where the actives live. Cressley will lead you upstairs when it’s your turn.” The dean cleared his throat. “Arrangements will be made for a few juniors and seniors to shower with you. You will watch their actions from behind a hole in a shower curtain Cressley will hang. Whatever you watch will not be supervised. Or ever mentioned to anyone. Are you with the plan?”
Quiggs nodded hard enough to crack nuts under his chin.
“Any questions, cadet?”
“What about Beau, sir? He won’t understand why he can’t follow me into the shower.”
“Your little roommate is on a barge to Port Paducah delivering a herd of nervous dairy goats. He thinks he’s returning by evening. The barge, however, will dock for three days of maintenance.” The dean relaxed back in his chair. “Beau will be stranded and treated as a guest by the Herders Guild.”
Quiggs lifted his eyebrows. “Sir, do you remember the last time you separated Beau and me?”
The dean rubbed the heels of his hands up and down his face.
Yeah, they both remembered the uproar...
Quiggs’s little roommate Beau was a half-breed feral, unable to transition into an aggressive adult male.
A flatboat of herders searching for stray goats had found him sitting by the outbank of the canal near Port Memphis. Six ornery brown-and-tan grazers surrounded Beau, nuzzling him for attention. Something about Beau—his happy chortles, his scent, the flicker
ing vertical pupils of green eyes too big for his face—transfixed the goats.
Beau greeted the herders with a goofy innocence. He bounded toward the flatboat with the stray goats trotting up the gangplank behind him like a line of ducklings. His flattish nose sniffed at the herders’ hands when they petted him, but he didn’t bare his teeth except to laugh when they tickled beneath his chin.
The herders suspected he was a half-breed, inheriting the gentler nature of his abducted human father. A long slender neck supported his head, which was shaped like a lopsided triangle with a receding chin, wide forehead, and lumpy jaw. He was so homely the herders thought it a good joke to call him Beau. While he sat cross-legged on the boat with the goats licking and scent-marking him, they fed him their leftover lunch.
The herders liked the little breed, but taking him to Port Memphis meant his death. The law executed half-breeds before they transitioned and turned aggressive.
Unable to turn him in, the herders forced Beau off the flatboat. He squatted on the bank and rocked on his paddle-sized feet as he yowled his distress. The goats reacted by butting, biting, and kicking the herders until the men allowed Beau back aboard. The goats immediately surrounded him, and the meanest grazers behaved as cute as newborn kids when Beau petted them.
The herders recognized his potential. With the support of the powerful Herders Guild, a benevolent execution was delayed while doctors in Port Memphis determined if Beau posed a danger.
Because his testicles had not descended, the doctors deemed him a half-breed incapable of transition. Males were as scarce among the ferals as women were among humans and served one purpose: stud service. Males who failed to transition into worthy breeding males were killed and eaten.
Beau had probably fled his family before he was dinner.
The doctors warned the defect shortened Beau’s lifespan. The guild accepted guardianship for those remaining years and paid to board Beau at the academy, where he’d learn basic speech and mannerisms by imitating the inactive cadets.
Instead, the cadets bewildered him by pranking him his first day in the dining hall.
After having his tray upended and milk poured over his head, Beau was working up to a yowling fit when he spotted Quiggs eating alone, watching him. Perhaps because Quiggs had green eyes or perhaps because he had recently lost his family and suffered the acute loneliness Beau felt, Beau took one look, sniffed, and attached himself to Quiggs, who wiped him off with a napkin.
Every evening after working the herd, Beau returned to be with his friend. He always shared the special treats from the herders with Quiggs. He slept in the bunk above Quiggs. Sometimes he draped himself over the foot of the bunk like a littermate, or he snuggled his friend when Quiggs had nightmares.
In the beginning, Quiggs simply tolerated Beau like a pet. How could he kick aside a happy little oddity like Beau whose silvery laugh was as endearing as his yowl was earsplitting?
Except for the loincloth Quiggs fashioned for him, Beau refused to wear a uniform. Coming under fire by shopkeepers for Beau’s public indecency, Dean Cagney expelled him from the academy and forced him to sleep in a stall with the goats until he agreed to dress properly. Beau had squatted on the straw-covered floor and rocked and yowled for a week without wearing down.
His abrupt absence upset the goat herds. Milking volume dropped. Does miscarried when he didn’t feed them their special mash. The kids bleated for him. Instead of grazing, the brown-and-tans searched the vines for their missing Beau.
The Herders Guild, with many members complaining of bites and limping from nasty kicks, confronted the Assembly of Ruling Mothers about Beau’s uniform.
What was the problem upsetting the city? Really? The Assembly fixed it by ruling the loincloth was Beau’s uniform. End of problem.
Beau had never spent another night apart from Quiggs.
The dean sighed as he regarded Quiggs’s lifted brows. “I told the herders to drug him and lock him in a cellar if he starts yowling.”
Ironically, if Quiggs told Beau he stank and needed to take a shower with him, Beau would vanish until the whistle for lights out. Telling Beau he couldn’t shower with him would set off the unhappy yowling.
Oh, well, too late now.
Chapter Two
Quiggs sat on the edge of his bunk in his small room crammed with bookshelves and models of his inventions. He wore a white bath wrap around his waist and a pair of shower sandals, his braid coiled around his head. He dug his fingers into the thin mattress to still their nervous flutters while he waited for Cressley’s knock. A delicious excitement bubbled through him, like tinkering with an invention and discovering the stubborn thing worked after all. It just needed some tweaking first.
Beau hadn’t suspected any trick. He loved riding the barges. The dean reassured Quiggs his friend was last seen hanging off the rail, his white-blond hair blowing in the breeze as he waved bye to the dock workers. With his long double-jointed fingers and toes, he’d skitter around the barge like a sucker-toe.
After an afternoon of unannounced, relentless athletic drills, the other inactives showered and slept soundly. The only sound breaking the quiet was the patter of Beau’s pet sucker-toed lizards chasing roaches on the ceiling.
His breath hitched at the soft knock on the door. He peeped outside and saw Cressley holding open the stairwell door opposite his room.
Cressley waved at the night monitor, who would write the time and reason for Quiggs leaving his floor and a note who was chaperoning.
His heart pounding so hard at breaking the rules, Quiggs leaned against the wall gasping when he reached the upper landing outside the actives’ door.
“Wait here a minute and catch your breath,” Cressley said. “You’ll be fine. You got some old friends eager to help you.”
Quiggs hugged his ribs to stifle his noisy gasps. He worried about the risk Cressley was taking. “What about… the other c-cadets? If… anyone… reports this… you’ll be p-punished.”
“Sure, the others suspect something’s up, but it’s a point of honor for actives not to inform on one another. Besides, they’re drunk from the ale smuggled in. They ought to be snoring away. Calm down while I check inside with the night monitor. Frank’s getting himself a tidy bonus for helping. Course, like me, he believes you deserve to marry and continue your bloodline. Otherwise, the dean couldn’t pay us enough.”
Left alone on the landing, Quiggs pushed his palms together, holding for ten seconds with his eyes closed. He focused on the bubbles of excitement flowing through his veins, willing them to leave his brain and head south. Pleasssse, pleasssse, pleasssse…
A hand tugged on his elbow. Shit! Caught alone by the night patrol! His eyes popped open, widening further when he looked down and saw Beau.
Sweaty, mud-streaked, with his white-blonde hair as stiff as a dirty mop, Beau bounced foot to foot. “No go in there. Law says bad. They whip you.”
When Quiggs shook his elbow free, Beau slithered around and plastered his back against the door. “Bad, bad, bad!”
“How’d you… why aren’t you… goddammit, Beau, you’re supposed to be in Port Paducah.”
“When captain tells me barge broke, I tell him I always sleep with my friend Quiggs.” Beau grinned revealing small sharp teeth. “I jump off broke barge into canal. I swim to bank, climb out. Then run back to you.”
Quiggs gripped Beau’s face. “You little idiot! You could have been eaten by eels!”
Beau rubbed his face against Quiggs’s hands. “Nah. Swim fast. Run faster. Good thing I come back. Why you up here?” It hadn’t occurred to Beau his friend wanted him gone.
Cressley opened the door, bumping Beau headfirst into Quiggs’s chest. Cressley bit back a curse when he saw Beau. He put an authoritative growl in his voice. “Go to your room, Beau. Quiggs is with me.”
Beau read body language like a master linguist. He’d wonder why Quiggs’s heart thudded, why the fresh burst of sweat from Cressley. Beau went perfectly
still as he stared up at Cressley. “Why you take my friend Quiggs up here? Law says no bad showers.”
Familiar with Beau, Cressley stuck to short simple truths. “Your showers are broken. Quiggs can shower up here while I guard the door. It’s okay. The law says a cadet must shower every night.”
“I be a good cadet. I mind law and take bad shower with my friend Quiggs.”
“It’s not a bad shower,” Quiggs said.
Cressley’s eyebrows pulled tight. “Beau, go to your room. You weren’t in line when the permission slips for the showers were handed out.”
Beau dropped to his knees. He wrapped those crazy long arms around Quiggs’s legs and whined, “Nooooooo! Wanna bad shower with my Quiggs.”
Quiggs patted his dirty head. “What if Cressley promises to give you a special time all by yourself after me?”
Beau flicked a look at Quiggs from beneath his sparse pale lashes. “I always take shower with you.”
Quiggs rolled his eyes. “Beau, I have to drag you to water. How about you skipping a shower tonight? Go back to our room.”
“I dirty. Law says must take shower.”
“You can have my leftover nut bread from supper.”
“Don’t want nut bread. Wanna bad shower with you. Keep you safe.” Beau clung like a sixty-pound, five-foot burr when Quiggs lost patience and tried to kick free.
“The timers are set,” Cressley reminded Quiggs. “If he doesn’t let go, you’ll miss the wet down.”
Quiggs stopped kicking before they toppled down the stairs. “Okay, runt. I give up. Go to our room, strip down, and get your shower gear.” Of course, Cressley would lock the stairs door and pretend he’d misplaced the key when Beau returned.
For a creature looking as if he were built from spare parts, Beau jumped up on his paddle feet with a boneless grace and tossed aside his loincloth. His long slender penis with the funny fleshy ring around the middle swung as he bounced foot to foot. “Okay. I naked. Don’t need gear. We go wet down now.”
Ingenious Page 2