Ingenious

by Barrie Farris

  The city’s austere, rectangular buildings, constructed of seamless beige stone, were erected using machinery and technology that vanished after the rebellion. Judging by the portico of the Legislative Building, the colonists had planned to beautify their city but were interrupted. The other buildings had a sleek, stripped-to-the bone look. They were functional and comfortable but needed fleshing out. The roofs looked as if more floors were to be added as the population grew.

  Walking through the city, Quiggs noted little socializing away from the plaza, pubs, and dining halls, and absolutely no children playing anywhere. He felt fortunate to have been raised on a farm with patient, doting parents.

  Quiggs’s work tower was located on the south side of the city near the rounded turn of the canal, where it began the first leg of its triangle, a twenty-mile stretch northeast to Port Paducah. The second leg was west of Port Paducah to Port Lourdes. The third leg was southeast of Port Lourdes to Port Memphis and ended where it rounded the south side and began the first leg again. The canal’s engineered current made boats the easiest mode of travel, but travel was one-way, counterclockwise.

  Quiggs polished off the last of the buns. He stared over the rampart at the vines, wondering where the lost shelter of the ancestors was buried.

  The third week of marriage passed. Quiggs left work eager to try out his horny dick after a week of patient coaxing. Tonight was the night!

  A courier waited at attention in front of Quiggs’s apartment door. He wore the tricolored armbands representing the Assembly of Ruling Mothers.

  “Cadet Quiggs Fallon?” the courier asked.

  “I am.”

  “For you, cadet.” Without further words, he handed Quiggs a scroll tied with a black braid and strode away with measured steps.

  Inside his small living room, Quiggs unrolled the scroll, expecting an invitation to a gala requiring the presence of the governor’s son-in-law. Instead, it appeared to be a formal proclamation.

  Quiggs heard a soft whine from the bedroom on his right and froze. Just when he thought he had the shower all to himself to wank his new dick.

  The scroll he read was a proclamation signed by the governor, every member of the Assembly, the justices of the territory, and the officers of the Herders Guild. The proclamation stated the untransitioned half-breed Beau was classified as non-male and could cohabit with Cadet Quiggs Fallon in the Academy without jeopardizing the cadet’s marriage.

  The whine grew louder at Quiggs’s silence.

  Quiggs rolled up the scroll, thinking he’d like to stuff half up Beau’s ass and light the other half on fire. Or maybe he’d take the scroll and beat the life out of his non-male pet.

  He stormed into the bedroom only to skid to a halt. What the fuck?

  His wonderful big bed was gone, replaced by his creaky old double bunk. Beau sat cross-legged in the shadows of the upper bunk, watching Quiggs smack the scroll against his palm.

  “Don’t like big bed,” Beau told him. His voice wasn’t the least raspy after three weeks.

  “Don’t speak to me,” Quiggs ground out.

  “Your Beau is sorry. Misses his good friend Quiggs.”

  Quiggs glared at him. He was crusted with filth.

  “You have messy braid. Need your Beau.”

  “Never mind my braid. How’d you get back?”

  “I yowl because I unhappy without my Quiggs. Goats unhappy without me. Herders really, really unhappy with law saying bad if I live with you.”

  “You want to know what unhappy is? I’ll show you unhappy!” Quiggs ran at Beau, intending to beat the shit out of him for taking away his big wide bed. Beau covered his face with his hands, whimpering. His knobby wrists were covered in rope burns. Quiggs realized the crusted filth covering Beau’s scrawny body was dried blood and dropped the scroll.

  “Come here. Let me see your face.” Quiggs squeezed the words out.

  Beau lowered his hands and eased into the light, revealing his battered features.

  Gentle discipline? Sworn promise not to hurt him however long it took?

  When Beau hadn’t stopped yowling for Quiggs, the governor had ordered her guards to break him. They had tied him to a post and lashed him until he’d bled. It had to be her guards. The herders would have wept at the cruelty. Had the Herders Guild appealed to the Assembly to save him from being whipped to death?

  The anger drained away. He missed Beau’s hands braiding his hair, the tight hugs when Beau saw him at the end of the day. He missed Beau sliding under the sheet to snuggle when the nightmares woke him. He had everything he needed for the next two years—except the affectionate touch of a friend.

  Quiggs sat on the bottom bunk, silent a few minutes. “If we live together, you must promise to follow my rules.”

  Beau swung down, dancing foot to foot. His scrawny body was crusted with excrement as well as dried blood. “I be good. I be sooooo goooood.”

  He was too goofish to hate. How could the guards whip him?

  “Promise me you’ll never come inside the bathroom when I’m in there with the door closed.” He raised a finger to cut off Beau’s protest. “Don’t ever ask why. Don’t whine. Don’t lean your ear against the door to listen. Promise the kind of promise you won’t forget.”

  Beau nodded. “You must use your hand, or your balls swell up with seed and burst. Herders tell me this. They say Beau can’t bother you, or you will get sick balls.”

  Quiggs kept a straight face. “Yeah. I don’t want my balls getting sick.”

  Beau puffed out his chest. “I glad I don’t got balls. I not a male. Law says not bad if I live with my friend Quiggs.”

  “Come here, runt. Let me see what they did to you.”

  Beau leapt on his lap and buried his head in Quiggs’s neck with a deep sigh. Quiggs stifled a gag. “I miss my friend Quiggs. Goats miss me and bite and kick. Governor tells guards to cut out my tongue if I keep yowling and won’t work.”

  “Nobody told me this!”

  “Herders say they quit if my tongue cut out. Max comes with soldiers to stop trouble. Lots of big talk.” Beau puffed out his chest. “When talk over today, I not a male anymore. Max pat my head. He says I free to live with my friend Quiggs.”

  “Let me… get this straight. Are you saying Commander Max Bronn rescued you?”

  “Max my friend now. Tells me to call him Max.”

  “Damn. You actually met him.” Quiggs was impressed the commander stood up for Beau. Then again, the commander was a quarter feral. “What’s he like?”

  “Big. Bad. Scary. Max tells governor next skull he sews on jacket is hers, so she better fix law.”

  Quiggs snickered. “I like him. Wish I’d been there.”

  “Max tells me to send for him if my friend Quiggs need help.” Beau slanted a look through his swollen eyes at Quiggs. “He tells me you no visit because they lie to you. That right?”

  “I asked about you every day. The governor said you didn’t want me to visit.” Lesson learned. Never trust the First Family.

  “I no like her.” He licked Quiggs’s neck. “I glad I back. My Quiggs neeeeeds me.”

  “Yeah. I guess I do.” Quiggs endured a few more swipes of the nubby tongue. “Enough licking. You stink. One last shower together… then the new rules begin. Got that?”

  “You tell me when you feel sick, so I leave you alone. I no forget promise.”

  Quiggs carried him into the shower and gently washed off the blood. Crisscrossed lashes from repeated whippings bit deep, near the bone. They would have left nasty scars except Beau’s injuries always knitted cleanly.

  “This a long shower.” Beau trilled, the whippings forgotten. “Colby and Miller like this shower.”

  Quiggs snickered. “Yeah, they would.”

  Beau fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.

  Quiggs lay awake configuring a furnace for his flying balloon. One day soon, he’d soar into the sky and hope he found something besides a thousand miles of vi
nes in all directions.

  Chapter Seven

  Two Years Later

  Quiggs’s obsession with his hot air balloon infuriated Rosamunde, widening the rift between them. She had orchards of sputternuts and a warehouse filled with tubs of fuel paste. She had completed her part of their agreement. Where was the combustion valve to complete his steam engine for boats? If he killed himself, the invention died with him, and she was stuck with a glut of fuel paste.

  Actually, Quiggs had solved the valve’s design a month after signing his marriage contract. Because the First Family had never apologized for torturing Beau, Quiggs had hidden the design and devoted his time to perfecting his balloon’s furnace instead. Rosamunde and her parents deserved the angst.

  Odd how Quiggs had never experienced a single flutter at the thought of flying, yet the thought of his marriage bed churned his stomach. If his balloon exploded and he fell to his death, let it be before he graduated in four months. With the knowledge his wife would be as furious and frustrated with him for the rest of her life as he was with her and her family for the last two years, his last moment would be happy.

  Beau’s sulks began at the start of Quiggs’s senior year. His little friend whined whenever reminded that their days as roommates permanently ended after graduation. He didn’t want to live at the Academy without his Quiggs and didn’t want to move into the apartments where the herders lived. He was unhappy and scared until Quiggs tried a different tactic. He explained to Beau how having privacy was the only way Rosamunde would agree to have children. Didn’t Beau want to be called Uncle Beau? Beau could rent an apartment across the hall from the married couple.

  Becoming an uncle thrilled Beau. He couldn’t wait to stroll Quiggs’s babies around the city and show them how to feed goats and tame sucker-toes for pets. He bragged about paying a tailor for a proper suit to wear to the official marriage ceremony and chortled at how surprised the guests would be to see him suited up.

  Yeah, Rosamunde’s reaction would be priceless. She wasn’t sending him an invitation.

  Despite his fear of female plumbing, Quiggs didn’t intend to kill himself flying his balloon. He was the Academic Champion and had never confronted a problem he couldn’t figure out. His gorgeous six-paneled red balloon was almost ready to launch.

  This morning, he shoved aside thoughts of his impending marriage and continued a meticulous series of tests to measure lift versus fuel intake with the balloon safely tethered to the floor of the work tower. After climbing inside the basket, he pulled on a pair of fire-proof gloves and opened the fuel valve of the compact furnace suspended from the mouth of the balloon. The intense blue-white flame shot up, lifting the balloon’s upper third through the opened roof, and the basket vibrated beneath Quiggs’s feet, straining against the tethers.

  “Moves like a glans through a slick channel,” Witters called up to him.

  Yeah, it did. A series of snaps stopped Quiggs’s laughter—the tethers had broken. Before he reached the control lines to pop the top for a rapid-deflate, the glans soared through the opened roof with a speed that knocked him to the floor. Without a harness and leader line for balance, he slid a hand through one of the safety loops around the sides of basket and held tightly until the rocking slowed.

  He felt one exhilarating moment of flight. But all things going up went down, and he hadn’t outfitted his hot air balloon for a launch, much less a hard landing. No handling lines, no rotation vents, no way of knowing if the balloon—which wasn’t fully inflated—could lift the basket above the rampart when it drifted beyond the city.

  An air current caught the balloon and lifted it. The basket steadied, and he stood, sliding his feet into the bottom loops and grasping the rail with both hands. The city appeared tiny and isolated directly below. The wind direction drifted him northeast into the vines, which would cushion his landing. He closed the valve to the furnace, then worked the lines to pop the top vent. The air rushed out. Instead of a mad downward spiral, the balloon descended gracefully in a calm wind.

  Disaster averted, Quiggs rested his elbows on the rail, both feet anchored in safety loops. Witters and Meek would have a rescue team on the way, and the archers in the watchtowers along the canal would easily track his descent. He would dismantle his balloon and transport it back to Port Memphis for improvements before the next test.

  He watched the vines getting closer, the canopy dense. A strong gust swung the balloon around, and it dropped rapidly. Instead of vines, he saw murky water ahead.

  Hundreds and hundreds of miles of cushiony vines for a landing, but Quiggs splashed down in the middle of the most treacherous section of the canal between Port Memphis and Port Paducah—where the fins spawned each spring.

  The basket sank like a stone, leaving Quiggs neck-deep in the water. The balloon floated behind in the canal instead of on land where it could be recovered. When he realized he was sinking, he had a moment of disbelief before he unhooked his feet from the safety loops and swam ashore, his strokes frantic as scaly bodies brushed his legs. At any instant, he expected to feel his flailing legs bitten off or his belly sliced by rows of triangular teeth. He reached the smooth lip of the bank and hoisted himself out, rolling blindly until he tangled himself in the vines.

  Well, fuck. It figured he’d swim toward the right bank into the outland instead of the left bank and the mainland. But he was alive, skin and bones intact.

  He got to his knees and watched the churning water as the fins attacked the bright red balloon, mistaking it for bleeding flesh. Fins reached eight feet in length and fed on eels. For a change of diet, they used their short, clawed forelegs to climb up the banks and snag passing goats or humans.

  His wonderful balloon was being eaten.

  A raft of excited herders picked him up minutes later.

  The week after his accidental launch, Quiggs noticed new changes in Beau. He moved slowly as if his joints ached. He slept later, retired earlier. He clapped his hands over his ears when Quiggs asked questions. He hid when the symptoms worsened, and Quiggs begged him to visit Dr. Keith.

  When patches of Beau’s white-blond hair fell out, Quiggs did what he had to. He faked a stomachache, bending over and moaning. Scared, Beau rushed him to the hospital. Once they were inside the exam room, Quiggs straightened and snapped at Beau to hop on the table and shut up about it. They weren’t leaving the room until the doctors examined him.

  Watching Beau submit without a yowl, Quiggs knew something was seriously wrong. His stomach cramped for real.

  After the exam, the team of doctors led by Dr. Keith gently explained what Quiggs had always avoided by hiding it behind a stone wall of denial. Beau’s body was shutting down. Failure to transition led to early death. Soon, Beau would disappear, like the animal he was, to seek a quiet place to die.

  Beau’s big green eyes gazed at Quiggs, who was sniffling back tears. “Don’t cry, my Quiggs. Don’t cry. I always know this bad happens. This why I leave my den. My family kills weak males.”

  Quiggs held Beau’s thin body close to his in bed that night. “Promise me you won’t hide when it’s… when it’s your time. Don’t wander off and die alone.”

  “I not run away. Promise.” Beau snuggled closer, burying his face against Quiggs’s shoulder. Quiggs heard a tiny sniffle. He stroked Beau’s back. “It’s okay to be scared.”

  “Not scared. I sad I never be Uncle Beau.”

  “If I have a son, I’ll name him Beau.” Quiggs meant it.

  “Ros-a-munde will yell at you.”

  Quiggs snickered. “Yeah, she will.”

  It was the last joke shared. The following morning, Beau led his herd of eight goats across the south side’s drawbridge into the vines and vanished.

  The herders searched two days before giving up. From the city’s balustrade, Quiggs watched the sky for signs of carrion feeders. He hoped Beau died in a peaceful sleep surrounded by his herd.

  Rosamunde sent a letter to his work tower on the fourth day, e
xpressing shallow condolences along with a fervent reminder not to slake his grief with a binge of sweets, or the marriage vest she’d ordered wouldn’t fasten over his stomach.

  Quiggs pitched the letter in a waste bin and sat at his work table surrounded by yards of red material needing fire-proofing before he sewed them into panels. He unwrapped a sandwich piled with spicy slices of goat and slathered with soft cheese.

  Fuck his fancy vest. He’d lost his best friend. He wasn’t losing bread.

  “Cadet Quiggs Fallon?” The lean sun-weathered man striding toward him wore the scarlet shirt and blue knee-length shorts of a master herder.

  “Yes?” Quiggs braced for the worst.

  “I am Brooke, sir. We found Beau. The local guild voted to let you see him before we put him down. They wanted you to understand why. Follow me, please.”

  The herder sounded as if Beau were an animal. His little friend deserved gentle handling.

  Quiggs stuffed his sandwich inside the pocket of his black pants. For four days, he’d grieved how Beau had wandered off to die alone. His throat too tight to ask questions, he followed Brooke outside, struggling to keep up with the herder’s lengthy strides.

  Brooke led him toward the east side, where underground passageways led to a network of caves with boiling springs. The colonists piped the steam and water to the kitchens, baths, and laundries. The doctors had suggested Beau would require the warmth of the underground steam baths as his organs shut down.

  Storefronts had lowered their awnings and placed closed signs on their doors. Where was the mid-day foot traffic? A herald rushed past Quiggs, scribbling on a slate as he ran,

  Brooke bypassed the side street to the bathhouses and rounded the corner toward the jail. Here citizens packed the street. Six policemen in dark blue uniforms and helmets formed a barricade in front of the tunnel to the jailhouse, wielding their batons as they yelled at citizens to stand back and wait for an opening.

  A herder walked back and forth in front of the barricade, jangling a bulging bag.