Wham!

by Carol Marrs Phipps

  Nia fought down her panic and revulsion and once more took her hand.

  * * *

  Nia spent a very long time in the shower, wondering how Pandora's revelation was going to affect Sam's and her plan. She certainly had no options. She would be doing exactly as Pandora wished.

  There was a sudden knock. “I beg your pardon for disturbing your bath, but breakfast is about to be served and the potentate is expecting you to join her,” called Benjamin through the door.

  “I'll be right out,” she called out as she turned off the cocks and grabbed up a fluffy white towel. She hurriedly dried herself and slipped on the pink satin kimono Pandora had given her last night. She brushed her hair into a high pony tail, put on her slippers and padded out to the hallway where Benjamin was waiting.

  “Ah there she is,” said Pandora. “My little water nymph.”

  “I'm sorry Pandora,” said Nia. “I'm afraid the water felt so good and I had so much to think about and...”

  “Well you're here now,” said Pandora. “So have a seat. I've a full schedule today so I don't have time to dawdle, but I did want to discuss some things with you this morning before you go back to your flat.”

  “Of course,” said Nia as she looked at the muffin and fried egg covered with vinegar white sauce and wondered what it was.

  “Good,” said Pandora. “Now my pet, I do have a number of rather pressing matters to attend to, so it'll be a few days or a week until I can get everything taken care of so we can have the lab do the procedure Benjamin described to you. Once the doctors at the lab are certain that the fertilized egg is viable, they'll implant it. I understand it should only take about twenty-four hours to implantation, once they have the genetic materials, so I've decided it will be best for you to get your things packed up in the next day or two so you'll be ready to move in here with Benjamin and me at Orbis Terrae.

  Once your things are packed, let Benjamin know and he'll have the movers bring everything here.” She paused, looking at Nia. “Are you not feeling well, sweet cakes? You've not even touched your eggs dilettante. Would you like something else?”

  Nia glanced at the food on her plate with distaste. The last thing she wanted was something to eat. Now even her very limited freedom had just been taken from her, making her the property of the potentate and she wondered what that would mean when her five year service came to an end. Would she still be allowed to leave? And what of the child? “I'm afraid I'm just not very hungry right now, Pandora,” she said, feeling like vomiting. “All of this is happening so fast. And it's so much to think about.”

  “Ah,” said Pandora “Feeling a bit overwhelmed, are you?”

  Nia nodded, surprised that she understood. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose I am.”

  “You’re young and resilient, sweetling,” she said, patting her arm. “You'll adjust in a few days. I suspect that by the time you have all your things packed up you'll be anxious to get on with things. And living here at Orbis Terrae will be like a vacation resort. You’ll love it.”

  “But I'll miss my friends.”

  “You mean Jill and Sam?”

  Nia nodded.

  “I'm afraid I don't have time to talk about that just now, Nia,” she said as she rose from her chair. “But I promise we'll discuss it later and try to work out something agreeable to both of us. Now I have an important meeting, so I have to leave. Tell Benjamin what you'd like for breakfast and he'll have it fixed for you. After breakfast one of my cars will take you back to your flat. I'll be in touch in a few days.” She gave Nia a one armed hug and a peck on her cheek. “Ooh!” she squealed. “This is just going to be so much fun.” And with that she hurried out.

  Nia pushed away her plate.

  “What would you like for breakfast instead of the eggs dilettante?” said Benjamin as he began clearing the table.

  “Honestly Benjamin, I really don’t want anything. I'd just like to go home.”

  “If that's your wish, I'll take these dishes to the kitchen and then I'll arrange your car.”

  “Thank you Benjamin.”

  And with a nod, he walked away.

  Chapter 20

  The ventilator fans switched off and the rumbling closeness of the pervasive sheet metal fell silent, opening up corridors of distant voices, clangs and concrete echoes, as the guards saw Kellen to his cell and closed his door behind him. He quickly fished out the chalk from his shirt pocket and put today's mark on the wall above his bunk. “I could've missed it because of the double shift and clean lost track,” he thought. “As if it matters.” Of course it mattered. Since he had control over very little else, putting a mark a day on the wall might well have been the most important thing he did. Today was awful.

  He had just put in a second shift without rest to replace a man who, as they put it, had turned up dead. “Turned up dead” here in the Pitmaster's Playroom usually meant beaten or tortured to death by the guards.

  Kellen's raw eyes watered from the relentless coal dust in the tunnels. He lay down and did the other important thing he always did when he closed his eyes. He longed for Cait and hoped beyond hope that she was all right. He remembered the very last moment he saw her, the day they came here.

  They were taken before the overseer, who had looked them over with a sneer and ordered Cait to be sent to the pens with the “rest of the whores.” When Kellen exploded in a fury of shouting and thrashing against his restraints, they got him with a hypodermic dart that not only immediately rendered him weak and docile, but utterly switched off any magic which he might have called forth. It was the very first thing the Children and Family police had done when they kicked in the kitchen door. They would never have gotten away with taking them into custody otherwise. He had a faint recollection from over seven hundred years ago of a drug used on blowpipe darts by the Beaks to render impossible the casting of spells. Was it just an old story? And were they sneaking the drug into his food? He certainly had not managed any sort of conjuration since he had been in here.

  On his first day of work in the mine, he had learnt that the pens where Cait had been sent were two great common galleries where the women were sorted according to how they struck the guards as playthings. All the nubile women went into the one called the whorehouse, while the ones too young or too old to serve as entertainment went into the other. Whorehouse residents were not supposed to last long. If he was awake he was worrying about her. When he was asleep he had nightmares. Cait was the most beautiful woman in the world as far as he was concerned. Would the years she was beginning to show possibly spare her? As always, these things passed through his mind, but two successive shifts had him asleep at once.

  There came a jingle of keys. By the time his cell door came open, Kellen was already sitting up.

  In sauntered a pair of guards. “Greenwood!” barked the one who always smiled. “Get up and come with us.”

  “Yes sir!” said Kellen. Smiley had a very bad reputation. He may even have been in on the beating to death of the worker whose shift Kellen was forced to take. He certainly was not worth vexing. The other guard was new enough to be swaggering in Smiley's wake, smacking the palm of his hand with his e-truncheon, spoiling for the chance to prove himself.

  The guards walked Kellen to the elevator. Smiley pushed one of the top buttons while the new guard bounced on his heels, chewed his gum and squinted at the side of Kellen's face. The gondola rumbled, pressed against their feet, dinged and opened to a carpeted hallway with potted figs and faded lithographs in frames, where they took him to the far end and opened a door to a large bare room where Cait sat on one of the only two chairs.

  “Kellen!” cried Cait, springing to her shackled feet. “I never thought I'd see you again!”

  Kellen raced across the room and grabbed her into his arms. “My everything!” he croaked, rocking her from side to side.

  “Hey Fairy!” barked the new guard, thrusting the end of his e-truncheon into Kellen's stomach and doubling him over with a j
olt.

  “Don't hurt him!” cried Cait.

  “Shut!” roared Smiley, knocking her back down onto her chair with a furious back hand, “your mouth!”

  Kellen sprang for him immediately, only to be met with both e-sticks and an injection in the neck.

  “Sit!” shouted Smiley, shoving him into the other chair.

  “Please!” cried Cait.

  “Aw!” said Smiley. “Just 'cause you let me have you, doesn't mean y' get special treatment, whore face.”

  “A lie being all you're capable of,” she said.

  “Ah!” said Smiley with a wink. “Don't want your little Fairy knowing about us.

  Righty-o. But the beans are spilt. So I won't tell him all the details. We'll just let him guess.”

  “You shit smear!”

  “Married her for her fire, what Fairy?”

  “What is this all about?” said Kellen.

  “You in a hurry?” said Smiley. “Got some place to go?”

  Kellen met Cait's eyes with a look of helplessness.

  “We want you to tell us where the seat of your stinking underground is so we can put an end to your idiot rebellion once and for all,” said Smiley. “That's what. And if y' don't, whore face here will when she sees what we have to do to you.”

  “And at that point you'd 'ave lost, since I'm the only one who knows.”

  “Yeh?” said Smiley, taking a sudden stride up to Cait to press the muzzle of his pistol to her temple. “Hear that? That's the safety.”

  Kellen's jaw dropped agape.

  “I said: did you hear that?” roared Smiley.

  “Yes!” croaked Kellen with a rigid nod.

  “Well good,” said Smiley with a deep and ever so polite nod. “'Cause next thing, the hammer comes down, unless you tell me.”

  “I'm a... Yes! Absolutely. Please! Yes. The headquarters for the underground is beneath the ruins of the castle at Oilean Gairdin.”

  “You don't mean in the Jutwoods?”

  “Right by the lake.”

  “Shit! How can that be when there's a twenty foot high electric fence all 'round the whole damned Jutwoods?”

  “You've been drugging me to stop my magic,” said Kellen. “So do you seriously think an electric fence would keep us out?”

  “Guess not Fairy man,” said Smiley with a grin. “And I do have to thank you for making this easy for us. Even so, being in the underground is treason and treason gets the death penalty. Meanwhile, we have orders that we're to keep you alive. So for now, you're off the hook.” And without the least hesitation, he pulled the trigger.

  With a wail of anguish Kellen leaped from his chair to be beaten unconscious by the guards.

  * * *

  Nia ran barefoot up the walkway to her flat, carrying her stiletto heeled boots, as Pandora's car closed its door and turned about in the roadway with a crunch of gravel. She was fishing for her key under the twittering purple martins when the door opened.

  “Ah!” said Sam, giving her a careful look over as she stepped inside. “I thought that would be you. Are you all right? You haven't eaten, have you?”

  Nia shrugged. “I'm not hungry.”

  “We should have asked when you told us you were coming. Jill knew you'd been wanting pancakes, so she's already started them.”

  “They do smell good.”

  Jill was ladling out batter onto the griddle as they stepped into the kitchen. “There you are,” she said, picking up a spatula. “You told me that you'd always wanted real pancakes with real butter and real maple syrup. So the batter's whole wheat. That's real butter. Of course sugar maples are extinct worldwide, even down here under the dome, but I've warmed up some honey and put maple flavoring in it. The auler fowks back home in Marr used to say the combination reminded them of the real stuff. And y'd better be a-sitting doon before they cool. I've got the kettle plugged in. I'll be working on mine a-standing here.”

  “This looks wonderful, Jill,” said Nia as she started for her bedroom. “Just give me a shake to pitch my whore clothes and throw on shorts and a tank top.”

  Sam frowned with a nod at the skinweler.

  Nia was taking her chair at the table in short order, buttering her pancakes and pouring on honey from a saucepan. “These are wonderful!” she said as Jill took the last pancakes off the griddle and came to the table. “I mean. I mean it's just like we're sisters and stuff...”

  At the sound of her sniffle, Sam and Jill looked up see her wiping away a tear.

  “What I really mean is, it's a lovely morning for some exercise,” she said. “You know, like out in the Preserve.”

  “Why yes,” said Sam, sharing a look with Jill. “I was actually thinking of suggesting another day out myself.”

  “I'm for that,” said Jill. “I saw some spiderwort when we were riding and wanted to pick some next time.”

  “It's probably all right, but I'd clear it with the stable first,” said Sam. “So why don't we all go for a hike at the Preserve and look for Jill's flowers, then?”

  Soon the three of them were in Sam's car, pulling away from the curb. “What is going on?” said Jill. “What happened at the potentate's?”

  “We have to find a mushroom ring,” said Nia. “And fast. If we don't, we may never get out of here.”

  “Well if there's a mushroom ring anywhere in the preserve, we'll find it,” said Sam. “It just may take time, is all. A hundred acres is a lot of territory, yard by yard.”

  “Yeh, but I'm out of time.”

  “Why?” said Sam. “What's happened?”

  “Pandora wants me to have her baby!”

  “That's cracked!” said Jill with a gasp. “Impossible for one thing. And cracked.”

  “No it isn't,” said Sam. “I mean, they can do it. I agree, cracked.”

  “But I've never heard of such a thing,” said Jill.

  “Well nobody does it,” said Sam. “But cytogeneticists with nanopipettes can do it for the misandrous, and pick out the sex of the fetus while they're at it. You don't need sperm to deliver a strand of DNA any more than we absolutely must have this car to get to the stable at the Preserve.”

  “Wow!” said Nia. “That's just what Benjamin said.

  “Benjamin?” said Jill

  “Yes,” said Nia. “He's Pandora's android servant and I think her body guard as well. He's like some kind of real person to deal with. He actually reads books on his own and he's positively brilliant. And Pandora says that unlike people, he's totally trustworthy.

  So how do you know about all this stuff Sam?”

  “Remember what's happened to the schools up top. I've been down here, going to lectures and visiting the library for years. And you can do all kinds of things with DNA.

  You can have anything you want if you have the means.”

  “Yeh,” said Nia, looking out the window at the passing mansions. “Like me.”

  “So what if you just told her you don't want a baby?” said Jill.

  Sam looked agape.

  “I reckon people don't refuse the potentate, then?” said Jill.

  “I'm not aware of a single instance ever,” said Sam as the car stopped in front of the stable. As before, she instructed the car to wait for them at Nia's.

  Jill found no objections to her picking flowers from the stable warden, so they were underway at once.

  “It gets worse,” said Nia as soon as they were well into the woods.

  “Well don't stop now,” said Sam, turning about on the path. “No matter what, even if the very worst happens and we can't find a mushroom ring, Jill and I will see you through it.”

  “You two are wonderful,” she said, breaking into tears as they gave her hugs.

  They listened to the hammering and calling of a pair of flickers as they waited for her composure.

  “Pandora says that as soon as they have implanted the fertilized egg, I'll move into Orbis Terrae with her and Benjamin,” she said as a phoebe began scolding nearby. “And she's a
ll excited and didn't offer me any choices. I'm not sure how easy it will be for us to see each other. But she did say we would work out something which would be agreeable to both of us, what ever that means.”

  “Most likely it means she'll allow us to get together and continue our friendship, but under the watchful eye of one of her trusted underlings.”

  “If 'trusted' is important, then it would have to be Benjamin.”

  “You think we could keep him far enough away for privacy?” said Jill.

  “Benjamin is exactly what he is programmed to be,” said Sam. “That's why

  Pandora trusts him. He'll do exactly what she wants. She might even be able to see what he sees on a screen, for all I know.”

  “Oh he will,” said Nia.

  “Then let's find our Fairy ring,” said Jill.

  But after spending the day, tramping each of the marked paths and seeing occasional isolated mushrooms, they found none standing in rings.

  “I swear,” said Jill as she sat in the leaves and undid her tennis shoe laces. “Pandora must've gotten ready for you by getting rid of all the mushroom rings in Atlantis.”

  “If you're serious, I've got an answer for that,” said Sam, tossing aside a stick to sit in the leaves herself.

  “I kind of am.”

  “Ridding Atlantis of mushrooms in rings, whether with magic or with sprays or pulling them up would take more time than there's been.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since Pandora saw that she had a real Fairy amongst the girls in her clinical report,” said Sam. “I was sitting right there, by the way, and I saw her look of surprise and delight. I'm certain she had no idea Nia was coming.”

  “This is the end of the last path, isn't it?” said Nia.

  “It is,” said Sam, as she tied a shoe. “But I doubt that we've seen as much as a fourth of the forest floor.”

  “Then there's nothing for it but to come back another time,” said Nia, getting to her feet. “If Benjamin allows.”

  “Yank out his wires,” said Jill. “I don't mean that, but there has to be a way we can get out here. And besides, even if you can't, Sam and I will go on looking. Won't we?”