The governor spoke up, her voice subdued. “Dean Cagney, please step outside while Cyrus and I speak to Cadet Quiggs.”
The dean looked at Quiggs. “I’ll take Rosamunde with me. Don’t sign anything before I return.”
With William and Palmer her chaperones, Rosamunde swayed past Quiggs, swishing her skirt again his leg. “I’d love to unravel your hair and spread it across my pillow.”
The governor caught his shocked gaze following her giggling daughter out the door. “Yes, she’s worth the wait.”
Not what Quiggs was thinking. A woman’s figure was pleasing, but his survival instinct warned him Rosamunde wasn’t frosted with buttercream and sprinkled with sugared berries. If he bit into her, he’d crack his teeth.
Cyrus poured himself a cup of tea. Unlike his husbands, Cyrus dressed simply. No ruffles adorned his white shirt. He wore a simple necktie with a brown jacket and striped trousers and combed his dull reddish hair straight back to hide his thinning scalp. William brought money to the marriage; Cyrus brought cunning; Palmer furnished entertainment.
Cyrus sipped a minute, wetting his throat. “It’s time we speak frankly.”
“Can a politician speak frankly?” Quiggs shot back.
“Good. He has the balls for our Rosamunde.” Governor Lyre skipped the teapot and filled a painted ceramic cup with gin from the bar. She drank the contents in a long swallow, then mopped her mouth with the back of her hand and turned to Quiggs. “I borrowed from the treasury for Rosamunde’s experiments and my campaign. I must replace the loan before an unexpected audit this afternoon. Your inheritance is yours to spend freely the moment you’re married. Marry Rosamunde now, and you can sign a draft immediately covering the loan. Cyrus will smooth the transaction. Is that frank enough for you?”
His jaw dropped. Centuries ago, the Assembly abolished prisons as a burden on the people. A serious crime like embezzlement earned an immediate death penalty for all involved—the governor, her husbands, and Rosamunde.
Cyrus placed his teacup on the sideboard. “If Rosamunde dies, twenty years of research dies with her. She has hidden the journals. You’ll never find them. Oh, eventually, you’ll rediscover the curing process. You’re ingenious. A true throwback to our ancestors. But why waste another twenty years of experiments when you could begin tomorrow? Think it over.”
The Governor poured herself another gin with a steady hand. “My dear Cadet Quiggs, what is it you want most from your life the next two years?”
Before his meet-and-greet, he’d have answered lots of ten-minute appointments in the sex clinic as soon as he healed.
Now he chose between lots of meaningless sex for two years or spending the next twenty years experimenting on boring sputternuts.
Cyrus produced a marriage contract. “Read it. We understand what you will sacrifice for two years. In atonement, the terms are generous.”
“This could have been prevented had you asked for my help in the beginning.” Quiggs hated being manipulated instead of doing the manipulation.
“You were a sheltered inactive, and the dean screened your correspondence. If not for this totally unexpected audit, we would have asked for help.” The gentle reproof in Cyrus’s tone made Quiggs feel at fault. He squelched the feeling. He wasn’t signing his life away. If he focused, he might develop a curing process on his own, but he’d rather spend twenty years inventing machines to use the fuel.
He carried the contract to the negotiating table at the back of the windowless room and pulled out a chair with a checked cushioned seat. Sighing, he eased down and propped his feet on the table. He would read the contract, then tear it in half. He would still offer to pay the fines and the loan. Maybe, if the First Family surrendered their rights to the fuel paste to the government, the Assembly would sentence them to manufacturing it for free the rest of their lives.
The governor and Cyrus chatted amiably at the sideboard, as if they weren’t wearing a noose around their necks.
He rattled the pages defiantly. Heh. What could they offer him?
The contract he read was as straightforward and without frills as Cyrus. It was so damn generous he suspected a trick.
Cyrus patted his hunched shoulder. “If you have doubts, ask Dean Cagney to review the terms.”
Once back into the room, the dean snatched the contract from Quiggs and sat beside him. He calmed by the second page, the one allowing Quiggs to choose his second and his third husbands after he graduated to compensate him for his loss of experience in the academy. Wives always chose the additional husbands. The concession was unheard of but legally sound, worded to prevent Rosamunde from contesting it later.
When the dean questioned aloud what he’d read, Rosamunde lost her flirty smile. Apparently, her parents hadn’t warned her about the husbands. She demanded to see the contract and flushed when her mother told her to shut up because it was a fair trade.
Without the special clause, Rosamunde could marry a second husband, even a third, and start a family without Quiggs. He’d be a father of two before he graduated. Yet if he was caught swapping blow jobs out of desperation, he dissolved his marriage and forfeited everything, including his life, if his betrayed wife insisted. The contract stated she would not seek his execution.
The same fate awaited Rosamunde if she cheated on him. Her body ripe for a husband’s attentions, Rosamunde was forced to abstain from sex and live a chaperoned life while she concentrated on building a supply of the fuel paste.
Heh. Bet she hadn’t seen that coming.
The contract covered everything to keep Quiggs alive and married. To resolve the danger of temptation, he’d be moved away from the barracks and into a comfortable apartment in the faculty’s residential wing. All male visitors were prohibited from his apartment unless a certified chaperone was present. Otherwise, political enemies could accuse him of illegal sex play.
“It is an exceptionally generous contract,” Dean Cagney admitted. “Think carefully, Quiggs. It’s permanent. Until death do you part or one of you cheats.”
Quiggs understood the terms. If he married Rosamunde, he lost the sex clinic and kept growing his braid. Meanwhile, he had a private apartment to rub one off without making an appointment. He had full control of his inheritance. He could rent a warehouse as soon as tomorrow and start work on a furnace for a flying balloon. He could even begin searching for two husbands! He couldn’t touch, but he could meet-and-greet candidates with a chaperone.
Cyrus handed him a marker. Quiggs twirled it, hesitating to sign. “If you’re lying about the paste—”
“Rosamunde will prove it within twenty-four hours, or the contract is voided,” Cyrus replied.
“Put that in writing.”
Cyrus added it, and Quiggs signed, satisfied that he gained much more than he lost—providing he kept his dick in his pants.
An officiate was brought in to conduct the simple marriage oaths and file copies of the contract. Toasts were exchanged. On an empty stomach, the alcohol went straight to Quiggs’s head. The formal marriage ceremony would occur in two years, the evening he graduated. There was no way around the law to grant him an early graduation to consummate his vows.
Since he’d fulfilled his academic studies, Quiggs was free to explore the city alone as long as he remained in the public eye—no sneaking into alleys for hookups with soldiers—and obeyed the curfew. Cadets could visit his apartment day or night, provided he arranged for a chaperone every minute of their stay. Less than a minute of unchaperoned male company violated his marriage contract. Not a problem. Except if he was restricted from having unchaperoned male company in his apartment, then—
He stared at Dean Cagney. “What about Beau, sir? He’ll want to move in with me.”
Dean Cagney scrubbed his face with his hands.
Cyrus’s brows snapped together. “Out of the question.”
“Everyone knows he’s harmless,” Quiggs pleaded.
Cyrus said, “No unchaperoned male company insi
de your apartment. Beau’s presence raises questions of sex play.”
Quiggs laughed until tears streamed. He wiped his eyes to find everyone staring grimly at him. Were they serious?
“It’s time you set aside your disgusting little pet.” The governor’s voice was overloud from bolting a few more gins. “Beau can’t live with you. Laws regarding the marriage contract are rigid.”
“He won’t understand. He’ll yowl for me.”
The dean rolled up his sleeves again, eager for an excuse to annul the rushed marriage. “The contract gives you twenty-four hours to change your mind.”
“Nonsense.” Cyrus regarded Quiggs with fatherly concern. “Security guards will confine your little friend to a jail cell where the herders will discipline him until he accepts the change.”
Quiggs protested, “I don’t want anyone hurting him.”
“They’ll place him on a diet of water and plain boiled grains to wear him down. They’ll brag how happy you are. He can’t yowl forever.”
“Promise you won’t hurt him.”
“You have my promise,” the governor slurred.
Quiggs thought of a quiet, clean apartment all to himself that didn’t smell like a barn when Beau skipped a shower. That didn’t have sucker-toes skittering about leaving pellets. He could jerk off in bed without Beau peering upside down at him from the upper bunk. He could hump his fist in the middle of his living room in broad daylight if the mood struck. Or spend an hour wanking in the shower.
Eventually—even if it took a month—Beau would yowl himself hoarse and accept the change.
Quiggs returned to his barracks before curfew with six guards: one to help him move his footlocker, the other five to subdue Beau.
The actives had heard the news. He braced himself for jokes about his braid reaching his ankles when he graduated. Instead, they slammed him with pillows and cheered him for winning what they all dreamed of when jerking off—an untouched deb for a wife.
Miller wrapped an arm around his shoulder, “Congratulations, Quiggs. Too bad you lost your chance to nail my ass.”
Quiggs leered up at him. “Maybe not. I get to choose both husbands.”
“Uh-uh. No way. The wife always picks.”
“Nope. My reward for giving up the clinic.”
Miller’s arm tightened. He licked his lips. “I saw Rosamunde at a rally once. Dammmmn. I’d like me some.”
Uh-uh. No way. The second husband would like him some Quiggs, not Rosamunde.
Beau slipped between them, pushing Miller away. He bared his small sharp teeth. “No touching. My friend Quiggs married.” He tugged on Quiggs’s arm. “We go move now.”
“Uh… Beau… married means I can’t share a room with another male. It’s a special law.”
“Law says you no make babies with wife yet. You got to grad-u-ate first. So okay if we share a room.” He rubbed his face on Quiggs’s arm.
Miller backed away, his hands raised in surrender. The cadets gave them a wide circle.
Quiggs watched the guards inch closer. “Not okay. It’s a bad, bad thing if you live with me.”
Beau dropped to his knees. His lips quivered. The tendons in his neck tightened.
The cadets widened the circle.
The guards dropped a net over Beau, then wrapped a rope around him before he wriggled free. He hissed at being trapped and yowled pitifully as they dragged him away. Quiggs gritted his teeth. Whether now or after graduation, a separate living arrangement was inevitable.
Chapter Six
His footlocker was moved into the bedroom while Quiggs waited in the hallway. He thanked the guard, then locked the door. Alone at last, he looked about his furnished apartment. The place was used for visiting dignitaries, so it was pretty damn wonderful. Now it belonged to him.
Herbs grew in the balcony planters, scenting the air. He had upholstered chairs, a desk, built-in bookcases, a stocked food cabinet, and a small eating table neatly arranged in a larger-than-average living room with wall-to-wall green carpet. Best of all was a separate bedroom with a double-width bed covered by whisper-soft white linens. He plopped down on the thick mattress, staring at a ceiling instead of an upper bunk with Beau’s rump denting the middle. He wallowed in the luxury a minute before stripping and taking a long blissful shower with the spray aimed away from his sleeved cock. In two weeks, he could remove the sleeve.
That night he enjoyed his deepest sleep since moving into the active barracks. So quiet with such sweet air. No disgusting farts, sweat, cum. No blaring whistles before sunrise.
Waking up married began the best day of Quiggs’s life.
The First Family sent a basket of fruit and breakfast muffins with a letter welcoming him into the family.
Rosamunde sent him the journals with a note in elegant penmanship.
I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, your mother wanted us to have a meet-and-greet.
They weren’t lying to him. Rosamunde had discovered the curing process. If not for the audit, the First Family would have formed a friendly business partnership so he could invent a furnace, with the likelihood he’d have developed a warm regard for Rosamunde’s intelligence and beauty. But marriage? Female plumbing terrified him. He wanted to lose his virginity with his face buried in the musky scent of a man.
Quiggs breakfasted on the balcony, enjoying the lovely view of the grassy Legislative Plaza, and listened to the heralds tout the marriage of the century and how the young couple were combining their research to bring fuel to the Triangle.
He bit into an apple, thinking his apartment—every apartment—lacked a cooking stove. What if he designed a furnace to fire a simple cooktop, a more practical application of fuel than a flying balloon?
He sent a request to Cyrus, who contacted Witters and Meeks, the top chemist and the top metallurgist in Port Paducah. The pair agreed to relocate their studio to Port Memphis if Quiggs paid their rather exorbitant wages. The amount of his wealth amazed Quiggs. His inventions had earned him some hefty revenues.
Quiggs hired Witters and Meeks within minutes of meeting them. They rented a storage tower with a retractable roof, taller than the city’s seven-story rampart and built to store floors of grain for a growing population. It had stood idle for centuries. The flat roof, constructed of a pair of glassy red panels, still opened and closed smoothly with a simple control switch. One day, his flying balloon would soar him through the opened panels.
Quiggs worried Witters and Meeks would treat him like a youngster, but both men greeted him with respect, eager to work with him.
Witters was married, in his forties, with four grown children and a wife active in the Assembly. He constantly nibbled food while remaining slim as a stick, his shoulders narrow as his hips. Meeks, a few years younger, had wedded a soldier after both completed military service. Meeks was short with the solid muscles of a man who worked metal for a living. His husband assisted him.
The collaboration launched as smoothly as he hoped his flying balloon would.
The governor’s words echoed. “My dear Cadet Quiggs, what is it you want most from your life the next two years?”
All of this!
Two weeks passed in a blur. Cyrus’s cordiality surprised him. If Quiggs needed rules stretched, permits granted, obstructions removed—Cyrus greased the wheels.
He received daily slates from Governor Lyre updating him on Beau’s behavior. His yowling weakened after a week, and at times, he stopped and just squatted and rocked. By the second week, he paced his cell between bouts of yowling and complained about boiled grains. He begged for milk and meat. He missed his herd, especially the babies. He was angry with his Quiggs and did not want to see his mean friend. The words stung.
Rosamunde wrote him often. Each letter expressed confidence in his ability to invent the combustion furnaces. If his cooktops worked, Rosamunde would plant orchards across the canal along the outbank to meet the demand. The trees matured rapidly without special care, needing only a few goats t
o keep the vines from suffocating them. She confessed she enjoyed his correspondence and found herself missing him.
Huh. He was glad someone missed him. Beau continued to reject his visits.
Dr. Keith released Quiggs from the sleeve. Testing his first erection four weeks after the surgery was unpleasant, but Professor Hines reassured him the sensitivity would ease. He also counseled that two years of solitary masturbation would take care of the awkwardness of a marriage bed.
Quiggs enjoyed exploring the city. After his medical visit, he bought a sack of glazed buns and walked around the four miles of crenellated rampart, lightheaded with his freedom. A busy dock wrapped around the entire base of the exterior wall. He had studied the history of the capitol city, yet after ten years of living here, he had never walked the rampart.
When the colonists emerged from their underground shelter, they had no concept of what dangers awaited them. The pitted black surface appeared bereft of lifeforms for a hundred miles in all directions, but what had lurked beyond? To protect the farmers and their fields from predators, the ancestors designed the triangular canal. To repel invasions by intelligent carnivores, the seven-story tall rampart enclosing the city was patrolled by guards with deadly weapons. That was about all that was known of the Triangle’s beginnings.
Today, archers traced the walkway around the rampart, their eyes scanning the endless vista of tangled purple vines that had claimed the outland—vines eager to cross the canal and swallow up the Triangle.
The Triangle of land enclosed by the canal contained port cities at the points and fenced, square farms inside the mainland. Port Memphis, like its sister cities, was laid out in long blocks divided by a grid of paved streets scaled to accommodate vehicular traffic, not the current pushcarts. The four main streets ran from a corner of the Legislative Plaza, situated in the center of the city, to a gate in each wall.
Ingenious Page 6