Science Fiction and Fantasy Box Set 1: The Squishies Series

by Claire Chilton

  They had sent him a disease, a neutering for all the men near her, and he had ensured all the boys her age had been infected.

  The plan had gone catastrophically wrong. Girls were infected too. Everyone who had the injection was infected and now—after all their worrying—it seemed the girl had not even been in danger. Her blue friend had no effect on her at all without a Zoremone in his pocket, so the only danger for her had been Rhecknaw boys, and there weren’t any of those here.

  Following Carla Mainston and the foolish blue scientist had been a complete waste of his time. Everything he’d done to the colony to protect her had been for nothing. Now there were children dying, and it was his fault.

  What kind of monster have I become?

  Bob knew a lot more than he let on. He’d spent his life keeping secrets, and he could sniff out other people’s secrets with a glance, but it never hurt to sneak in and back it up with some evidence once in a while. Everyone had a skeleton in their closet. Most people had more than just one.

  He fiddled with the ID card that he’d acquired from Carla Mainston, and ran his fingers over the metallic strip on the back of it. He tried swiping it again through the locking system on Foamy Mansion, but the little red light stayed red, and the intensive security locks at the mansion gates remained closed.

  He scowled and peered around the grounds. The answers were in there. Lord and Lady Foamy had been keeping up a façade for decades, but he knew some of their secrets. Oh yes, he knew what they’d been up to.

  He knew a few things about everyone, but this was his ticket to fame and fortune. With the information in there, he could save the colony. Although, he thought it might be more profitable to blackmail the Foamys.

  He shrugged. He’d come to that decision when he got the proof he needed. He tried the card again, frustrated that it repeatedly denied him access.

  A small essence of conscience told him to use his information to save the colony, but he was ruled by his calculating mind, not a soppy conscience.

  One good deed was quite enough for a lifetime, and he’d already filled that quota by suggesting that Carla’s father sent her to Sparkle and Shine when the illness broke out. Of course, he’d had other motivations for that too, but the main reason had been so that she didn’t catch the disease that was spreading through the kids in the colony.

  That Herb Mainston was a piece of work. Bob had assumed he’d just send her there for a day or so, but he had sent her to the workhouse for a week. Good job she walked out of it on her own after a couple of days, or Bob would have gone in and got her out. Luckily, it worked out okay in the end.

  The illness sweeping the colony was a weird one, but he knew a bit about that too. He thought about her background.

  She was probably immune anyway.

  Bob really did know a few things about everyone, and their darkest secrets, sometimes more than they knew themselves.

  “That was tedious,” Lady Foamy said to her husband, as she dropped her coat on to the white leather couch and poured herself a drink.

  Lord Foamy stared at her in silence for a moment before walking away. Well, what did she expect? He was tedious too.

  “Anna,” she called out, and her maid rushed into the room.

  “Yes, m’lady?” she asked.

  “Put extra starch in Lord Foamy’s shirts, will you?” Lady Foamy smiled. He hated starched shirts.

  “Of course, m’lady.” Anna bowed and backed out of the room.

  Lady Foamy sighed. Life wasn’t quite how she had expected it to turn out. Her marriage was a sham, and her husband was an inbred outcast from another colony. Oh, he had all the right connections. He fooled everyone. He’d fooled her for the first year of marriage, but it had all come out one day, and she’d been left with a choice—lose her place in society or keep the lie alive, so they acted like the perfect couple.

  Lady Foamy was the daughter of a Lord. Her family had been leaders in this colony since the ‘Dawn of Time’. Her father had been a leading politician, her mother an ambassador for cleanliness. Her shame over her bad taste in husbands was hidden by years of deceit.

  No one knew who Lord Foamy really was, except her. Oh, he’d tried to fit in, but his constant ignorance of things like polishing the ornaments had been an embarrassment to Lady Foamy, and she had suffered it for so long.

  Like all respectable couples, they had decided to remain married. They had simply split Foamy Mansion, so each party had their own abode and could see as little of the other as possible.

  Lady Foamy resided in the west wing and Lord Foamy’s domain was in the east wing of the mansion. It was fortunate that the estate was so large. The couple could go entire days without having to see each other, which—given the circumstances—suited them both well and made the marriage as agreeable as possible.

  “M’lady,” the respectful voice of her butler interrupted her thoughts.

  Lady Foamy looked up, acknowledging his presence with a nod.

  “Lady Wincroft called this morning to request confirmation of your attendance to her Gala event this Friday, and a young man by the name of Mr. Carridan is waiting to see you in the reception rooms.”

  “Inform Lady Wincroft that we shall attend her event,” Lady Foamy said reluctantly. After all, image was everything, and those events were beneficial to it.

  To the outside world, Lord and Lady Foamy were the perfect couple. A fairytale wedding had inspired romantic legends about them, and they were known as the king and queen of high society in Derobmi. Naturally, the Foamys promoted this.

  It was for their image that Lady Foamy agreed to have a child with her husband. At the time, she had hoped it was a boy, so she could let her husband take care of him. She had been certain that any child they produced wouldn’t be a true Derobmi.

  In their third year of marriage, Krellin Constanople Foamy had been born. Lady Foamy had grown to love him very much and—against her better judgment—had kept him by her side in the mansion.

  It was not the instincts of motherhood that kept her close to her son, but that he was a true Derobmi and had been from the first time she had set eyes upon him.

  She looked into the mirror and smiled. He had been everything a mother could wish for, beautiful, blond, quiet and well-mannered. His face was a blueprint of traditional Derobmi characteristics with no signs of his questionable heritage in his features or personality. Lady Foamy doted on Krellin, as did many of the females in Derobmi.

  If Lord and Lady Foamy were the king and queen of Derobmi society, then Krellin was the handsome prince, which every little girl dreamed of growing up and marrying.

  Krellin had always made Lady Foamy proud of him. Oddly, the boy had never disappointed his father either.

  Lady Foamy smiled while she put on some lipstick. He was born to be a ruler and a diplomat, and he could easily rule all the colonies one day. There was nothing he ever failed at, and she knew he would make up for her bad marriage choice. Someday soon, he would rule this colony, if not all the colonies, and she would be at his side when he did.

  She examined her chiseled profile in the mirror.

  Not bad for a lady of my age, she thought as her sharp green eyes searched for defects in the reflection of her striking face.

  “I’ll see to Mr. Carridan.” She turned to the butler as she put down her drink. Then she set off for a rendezvous with her lover.

  Everyone had their secrets, and what Derobmi didn’t know about their queen of high society wouldn’t hurt them.

  Krellin Foamy hurried through the dark tunnels under the east side of Foamy Mansion. He’d discovered them at the tender age of twelve, uncovering a lifetime of secrets about his family and Derobmi, buried within the dank, mossy walls of the underground tunnels. He now knew the stone tunnels like the back of his hand because he’d wandered through them so many times over the years.

  He looked at the back of his hand in the torchlight and muttered a few words of disgust at the moss accumulating on them
from the walls.

  The tunnel was hollow-sounding and cold. It was a damp, cramped place, touched only by the dirt and grime of time. Rats frequented the tunnels, making it their home, along with an army of spiders and various other insects.

  Like Derobmi itself, Foamy Mansion also had a dark and unwashed underbelly, but Krellin had mostly overcome his disgust with the place now. Over time, he had become accustomed to it.

  He had begun exploring the old caves beneath Foamy Mansion, finding more and more secret passages leading to antechambers filled with historical treasures and secrets.

  He knew his mother had no idea these caves existed, although he had a feeling his father pottered around in the upper levels. But only Krellin knew about the hidden levels, the secret doors and caves that were now his domain.

  He entered a hollow in the left wall of the passage. It looked to the naked eye like a natural dent of around three inches in the tunnel wall, but was actually an expertly-carved entrance to another level of tunnels. Perception and distance were funny things, as he had discovered six years ago.

  He’d been annoyed by a rat in the tunnel and had kicked out at it, but his foot had slipped on the slimy tunnel floor, and he’d fallen backwards into the dent. Instead of encountering a hard wall—as he’d expected—he’d tumbled into another passage.

  He had kept his discovery to himself, and he was glad he had. He smiled. It had been the discovery he needed to be the success he was today.

  He made his way down the now familiar slope of the caves. The air was cooler and fresher here because it left behind the dankness of Foamy Mansion and led out toward the sea.

  He adored his sanctuary by the sea. It wasn’t as grand as the upper level antechambers, which he was certain his father frequented because they were filled with records of Lord Foamy’s heritage and the history of Rhecknaw royalty, but this hidden chamber held far greater treasures for Krellin.

  Magic hummed through the walls, and it could tell you what other people were thinking. It could tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the planet.

  In his secret sanctuary, he found all the answers and knowledge he’d ever need. It was funny how the caves that time had left behind for him were still magical in his world, and he often wondered for how many centuries they had lay dormant and unused until he had discovered them, but even the caves couldn’t tell him that.

  He knew all about time. He knew all about the delights of the older world before this one. The theories of evolution were all wrong. There was no ‘Dawn of Time’. There had been times before that, millions of years of great wars and carnage. A less civilized and more violent age of destruction and self-destruction, where power had ruled all and pleasure had been the prize.

  The things he’d seen and heard in this cave were monstrous and harsh, but felt more real than anything he’d experienced outside of the caves. They told him about his nature, about who he really was and about who he could be one day.

  He walked into the cave and sat down on a granite throne. The chair was now a part of the cave. Age had ingrained it into the rock. The cave was pitch-black, but he knew every inch of it now. He sat on his throne and waited for the magic of it to pass through him once more as a myriad of secret images flashed across his mind.

  Carla stood beside Joe’s hospital bed. He stared blankly out of the window, barely aware she was there. She held his hand while she spoke to him, but he was completely unresponsive.

  “I’d best be going now, Joe.” She watched him with sadness washing over her and an ache in her heart.

  She squeezed his hand. “But I’ll come back soon with a way to make you better. I promise.” She didn’t think he’d even heard her, and it broke her heart to see him so pale and despondent.

  “I love you,” she said quietly before she turned to leave. Her hand began to slip out of his, and he gripped it for a second before letting it go.

  She turned back and glanced at him. He hadn’t moved, and he wasn’t looking at her, but she was certain he’d gripped her hand for a second there.

  “Joe?” He made no movement or indication that he heard her.

  She sighed and walked out of the room.

  She paused in the hospital corridor and stared off into space. If they didn’t find a cure soon, Joe wasn’t going to get better. She’d read everything she could find in the books, but they were so old. They referred to things she’d never heard of before.

  A loud wailing cry snapped her back to reality. In the room across from Joe’s was a woman crying over her daughter in a hospital bed. There was a doctor talking quietly to them both.

  Carla moved closer to hear what was being said. She heard the words ‘sorry’ and ‘coma’. Then the mother wailed again. The girl in the bed looked dead, to be honest.

  Carla shivered. Was that what was going to happen to Joe?

  She shook herself into action.

  No, it bloody isn’t!

  She was going to fix this somehow with the help of that Zoolaf guy.

  She straightened her shoulders and walked determinedly out of the hospital to find him.

  Parklon had an itch on the lower part of his back, and not being able to scratch it was slowly driving him insane. He was cramped under the small space of a traditional writing desk, which was made from Derobmi oak. It only had a small gap between the drawers on either side of the desk.

  He was well hidden unless someone decided to sit at the High Chancellor’s desk, which was unlikely since High Chancellor Norris had been found dead a week ago, and had been missing for days before that.

  Parklon shifted uncomfortably in the small space, his head resting on his knees while he listened to the High Chancellor’s second-in-command, Dennis Havitat, offering consolation to Chancellor Norris’s former personal assistant.

  By the sounds of it, Dennis should change his name to Have-at-it.

  Parklon’s muscles ached as he listened to the personal assistant wailing just a few feet away from him.

  This had been his stupidest idea yet, but he had been so certain Chancellor Norris was the man he’d seen killed in the parking lot. At the time, he’d been too confused by the missing body to report what he’d seen. Now the body had appeared, it was time to tell his story.

  Of course, the problem was that running away from the scene made him appear incredibly guilty, so he decided to check out the situation before jumping in feet first.

  He’d discovered that Chancellor Norris had been missing for a few days before he was found dead. There was also a rumor that a Rhecknaw male had killed him, which had been followed by threats of war from Rhecknaw authorities, who were claiming it was a baseless and racist allegation.

  Then there was Parklon’s own knowledge that it had been a purple beam that killed Norris. Rhecknaw males had special powers, and they were purple.

  On top of that, a new problem had developed with the sick youths all moping around the colony, doing nothing but causing trouble and making a mess, in particular street littering. It was cleaned up pretty quickly, but new cleaning crews had had to be set up to deal with it all.

  All of these things had come from Rhecknaw. The sickness and the murder were somehow connected. Everything bad was coming from that colony. Except Carla of course, she wasn’t bad. He wouldn’t admit it, but he quite liked her really.

  If there was a murderous Rhecknaw male running around the colony, she was in danger from … He swallowed a burst of anger that bubbled up inside him. The idea of a guy with Zoremones in his body going near Carla made him want to punch things.

  He frowned, trying to focus on his current dilemma, rather than worry over what might occur.

  Getting in the Chancellor’s office had been easy enough. He’d just had to fool the Bounce and Squelch about his level of authorization because the Chancellor’s office was on the Squelch Network. Getting out from under the Chancellor’s desk was proving a far more difficult task.

  Dennis had been wooing the sobbing personal ass
istant named Dorothy for over an hour now, and Parklon’s leg had gone to sleep.

  He suddenly got a cramp in his foot, and his leg shot out and slammed against the desk. Luckily, a loud knock on the office door covered up the noise of his untimely cramp. Unluckily, his foot smashed through the front panel of the desk as two huge Derobmi wardens entered the office with a small, ferret-faced detective following them.

  Damned Derobmi oak is as shoddy as their science!

  He tried to free his foot from the desk as Dorothy let out a scream. He grunted as strong arms grabbed him from behind and dragged from his hiding-place. He glanced up at the two burly wardens, who appeared to be showing no sympathy for the pins and needles that were shooting up his legs as they hauled him over to the detective.

  “Well, well,” said the ferret-faced detective. “What do we ‘av ‘ere?”

  Parklon had a sinking feeling that an immigrant hiding in a dead man’s office would look slightly suspicious. The feeling persisted as he was read his rights.

  Carla sat in the non-Derobmi bar and glanced at her watch again. He was ten minutes late. She narrowed her eyes.

  Did I just get stood up?

  She stirred her mud coffee while she tried to decide what to do. The spoon stood up on its own in the coffee.

  I could leave now. That’s what a person with any pride would do.

  The mud coffee must have started to give a little as the spoon slid through it and slipped sideways.

  Anger burned in her belly as a flush of embarrassment warmed her skin. It had only been two days ago when she’d been dragged into this whole Rhecknaw thing, and it still made no sense. Had he just been stringing her along and wasting her time?

  Damn it, I’ve got things to do, important things, a world to fix. I don’t have time to sit around waiting while Derobmi goes to hell and Joe wastes away!

  Impatient and fuelled by anger, she stood up to leave in a huff when she heard a familiar voice say, “All right, Carla. Here again, eh?”