Starship Home

by Morphett, Tony

  ‘But from a lord…?’ Guinevere simply could not comprehend Meg’s objections.

  ‘He’d known me fully five minutes. “Hello, who are you, let’s get married, I’ll fix it up with your owner, Zachary”. I am not a prize mare to be mated at my alleged owner’s say-so!’ The basketball whizzed over her head and Harold ran to retrieve it. ‘Do you lot really have to do that inside?’

  ‘My dam first met my sire at the altar and they loved each other full well for many a year.’

  ‘My grandparents back in Greece married that way,’ Zoe told Meg. ‘Both sets. Very happy all of them.’

  ‘I’m not mediaeval and I’m not Greek.’

  ‘Think on it, Meg. Thou art 24 summers old. An old maid in middle years…’

  ‘Speak for yourself! You’re an old maid of 600!’

  Guinevere’s image on the screen went very still and stern. ‘Methinks thou dost need an husband,’ she said, ‘to teach thee gentler manners.’

  ‘Well it won’t be that Don,’ Meg said flatly. ‘I’m never going to see him again.’

  But Meg saw him again the next morning while she was eating breakfast. So much, she thought, for good resolutions. She was eating fruit and raw vegetables and Forester bread with the others when there he was on the main screen of the bridge, riding into the clearing with Father John, Ulf, the minstrel and Rocky the squire.

  Even Zachary had to admit that the Don was looking like a million bucks. He was all in black leather as usual, with black burnished half armor, shining black boots, and was mounted on a shining black horse. Irresistible, Zachary thought, to any woman whose favorite color is black.

  Guinevere was very impressed. ‘Oh ‘tis a most gentle lord, dear Meg. Marry him!’

  ‘And spend the rest of my life shining his boots? No way!’

  ‘The Moon hath turned thy senses. Behold him! How sayest thou Zoe?’

  ‘I sayest he’s hot, Guinevere. Definitely awesome. Excellent.’

  ‘Then you marry him!’ Meg said and then remembered her duty of care to a student and hastily added, ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘He’s too old for me anyway,’ Zoe said. ‘Must be 30 at least. Ancient. But if I were your age…’ she began and then saw the look on Meg’s face and stopped. ‘I think he’s perfect for you,’ she finished lamely.

  ‘This is revenge for all those Wednesday detentions I gave you?’

  Outside, the minstrel took the well-polished old 20th century Army bugle which hung round his neck and blew a challenge on it, then Rocky approached the hatchway and hammered on it with his sword hilt.

  ‘And he doth all in good style,’ purred Guinevere.

  Zachary explained to Meg that he had better go and talk to the Don, and Meg explained to Zachary what she would do to him if he agreed to the marriage. Her explanation involved threats involving blunt skinning knives and boiling oil. Zachary said he would take all that on board and into consideration and that he heard what she was saying, which in committee language meant “there there, don’t get excited” and went out to talk to the Don.

  As Zachary strolled down the ramp, he was so friendly you would have thought he had come to sell vacuum cleaners. His smile bisected his face. ‘Morning to you m’lord!’ he carolled, ‘Morning Father! Top of the morning to you,’ he added on the principle that priests were always Irish.

  ‘The terms of the marriage contract,’ the Don said in a crisp, businesslike voice, ‘I’ve had them drawn up.’

  Father John reached into the loose left sleeve of his habit and brought out a rolled up piece of paper which he handed to Zachary. The paper was thick, and somewhat coarse, and not as white as the writing paper which Zachary was accustomed to in his own time. He had had a girlfriend once, a second-generation hippie, who had done every craft, and the paper reminded him of the paper which River Skydream, as her parents had called her, had made in ecologically incorrect plastic tubs in her laundry.

  Zachary did not attempt to read the paper. He moved closer to the Don and spoke confidentially. ‘There’s a small problem, m’ lord. The Lady Henderson’s playing a bit hard to get and doesn’t actually want to get married straight off, you know?’

  ‘I can hear every word you say!’ Meg’s voice bellowed from the ship’s loud speaker system.

  The Don was delighted to hear his true love’s voice. He looked toward the ship. ‘Lady Henderson! Good morning!’

  ‘The fact of the matter is…’ Zachary continued.

  ‘The fact of the matter,’ Meg’s voice bellowed, over-riding what Zachary was trying to say, ‘is that I won’t marry him!’

  ‘As I said,’ Zachary explained to the Don, ‘playing hard to get.’

  ‘Is there something in my appearance which displeases the lady?’ the Don asked, puzzled by Meg’s aggressive reaction to the honor of being asked to be his lady.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ said Zachary, and dropped his voice to a whisper, ‘in fact, my lord, you can take it from me that she finds your appearance very pleasing indeed.’

  ‘What are you saying, Zachary?’

  ‘Just man talk, Meg.’

  ‘You tell him!’ Meg’s voice went on. ‘You tell him this from me! He presumes! He meets me! He decides to marry me! I know where they keep their wives! They keep them locked up in a harem with veils on, right? You tell him if he were the last man on the planet, in the Galaxy, if he looked like Johnny Depp and moved like Fred Astaire, if I were lonely, down and out and desperate, I would never, never, never marry him! Does he understand that?’

  On the bridge, Meg ran out of words and steam and slumped in her couch. On the screen she saw that the Don had leant over and whispered to Zachary, who was nodding.

  ‘What’s that fascist pig saying?’ Meg screamed.

  Zachary turned and faced the ship. ‘He said “is that a definite no”?’

  ‘You tell him he can bet his sweet shining face it is!’ Meg replied in a choked scream. Then she stared. Zachary was whispering to the Don again. After a moment, the Don turned his horse and led the Troll party out of the clearing. Zachary turned and walked up the ramp.

  ‘What did Zachary say to him, Guinevere?’

  ‘Say?’

  ‘I know you could hear what he said. What did he say?’

  ‘Nay, but I cannot tell thee Zachary’s secrets…’

  ‘You tell me or I’ll … I’ll dismantle you!’

  Zachary walked in, smiling. ‘Solved that problem.’

  ‘What did you say to him? Tin knickers here won’t tell me.’ Meg got up and approached Zachary in a menacing manner.

  ‘I said what was needed to get rid of him. I said you were lazy, bad-tempered, couldn’t cook…’ He stopped as Meg slapped his face. ‘Would you mind telling me why you just did that?’

  ‘I am not lazy.’ She turned to Zoe and Harold. ‘I’m going to the village. I’ve got school to teach.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to do that,’ Zachary said, ‘The Don…’

  ‘Our Mother won’t let you!’ shouted Zoe, as Meg stalked off the bridge and out into the corridor.

  ‘That woman’s got no respect for the High Law,’ said Zachary.

  ‘Let her walk it off,’ Harold told them. ‘You know? Sometimes you just need to be by yourself? Particularly when you desperately want to marry someone and won’t do it on some little point of pride?’

  ‘He’s a psychologist now,’ Zoe said to Zachary.

  ‘I thought that was pretty smart of him,’ Zachary said.

  ‘Not to mention being an unreconstructed sexist pig,’ said Zoe, and fell on Harold and started to tickle him to death.

  But Harold was right in several ways. Meg was starting to feel better for being alone. She strode along the path toward the village, smelling the fresh air with its ever-present hint of woodsmoke, and she was starting to feel her old sane self again. Okay, so the Don had developed a violent crush on her. She had now sorted that out, she had explained the situation to him calmly and reasonably
and sooner or later they would meet in more civilized circumstances and maybe even start to build an adult relationship. Then if it took off from there, perhaps there might be some future in it, providing they could get Guinevere fixed and keep the district safe from being turned into its component atoms. She was glad she had had this time alone, and delighted that she had worked all this out. Maybe she and the Don could be friends one day, soon perhaps. Because he’s so hot, whispered a voice in her head. ‘Shut up,’ she said to the voice. Hot hot hot, replied the voice.

  She was about this point in her thinking when the Don came galloping along the track on his shining black horse, and scooped her up and rode off toward Trollcastle with her. She screamed and yelled and struggled a lot but the Don was very strong for a man his size.

  Meg was realizing that the discussion about her marrying the Don had only just begun.

  47: WEDDING PREPARATIONS

  When Meg was scooped up onto the Don’s horse she missed seeing something which might have given her a little more peace of mind during the ensuing events. What she missed seeing was the Forester child Maze, who had been on her way to the starship to visit her friend Giniveer.

  Maze, on the other hand, had seen Meg, and had then seen Meg abducted by the Don. Loyal as Maze was in certain very practical ways to the Don who represented the High Law of the district (this meant that he dealt with hanging offences), she had bonds of friendship with both Meg and Giniveer and Zoe. She also thought that Topclass and Zachary were quite pretty, and sometimes even showed emerging signs of having typically female traits like intelligence and physical courage. So when Maze saw the Don swoop down on Meg and carry her off, her feelings of sisterhood transcended her sense of duty to her feudal lord and propelled her toward the starship at a flat run.

  She came into the clearing yelling ‘Giniveer! Giniveer!’ and once she had reached the bridge, she quickly told the others what had happened.

  Zachary was outraged. He took this as a terrible insult to his skill as a liar. ‘But I fooled him!’ he said. ‘I told him what she was like.’

  ‘Thou didst say she was lazy,’ Guinevere said. ‘Would a lord want a wife to work? Thou didst call her shrew. Would a lord want a docile woman of no spirit? Thou didst say,’ and she almost giggled here, ‘that she was no cook. Would a lord wish to marry with a cook?’

  Zachary slumped in defeat. He was going to have to reconsider how you told lies here in the future. ‘You mean I couldn’t have sold her to him better if I’d tried.’

  ‘Didst not mean to sell him the wench?’ Guinevere said, her eyes widening in amazement. ‘Methought ‘twas done a-purpose!’

  It was just as well Meg was not present for this conversation, because she probably would have believed Guinevere’s devious suspicions, and done Zachary a permanent physical injury. As it was, she was sitting in the women’s quarters of Trollcastle, surrounded by excited Trollwives, all of whom seemed to be under the impression that Meg had won first prize in some marital lottery, and were explaining to Meg, in babbling unison, what a lucky woman she was to have been chosen by the Don, and how thousands of women now and in the future would envy her, and how fortunate she was to get a husband at all at the advanced age of 24, and how many women both within the duchy and beyond had hoped to gain the Don’s love.

  To all of this, Meg replied: ‘Let me out of here!’

  The women then explained, talking over each other like birds in a tree at sundown, that there was no possibility of Meg’s being allowed out of there, because she had to be bathed and dressed for her wedding. At this point Meg stopped reasoning with the Trollwives, and certainly stopped expecting any help from them, and made a dash for the door, only to find, as Zoe had before her, that the door had no handle on the inside.

  Meg then threw herself against the door, beat at it with her fists, used bad language, pleaded with anyone out there within earshot to open it and, when she had finished doing all this, she wept and kicked and beat the door all over again.

  Unfortunately for Meg, the Trolls spent much of their time trying to get into other people’s fortresses while trying to stop other people from getting into their castle, and therefore the art of door-making, which is really the art of keeping people both in and out of places, was highly developed among them. She was thus dealing with a solid, solid door which yielded neither to threats, nor fists, nor kicks, nor entreaties nor tears.

  When Meg had expended most of her energy on the door, Ulf’s wife tried to calm her down by explaining that she would be out of the women’s quarters in only two hours.

  ‘I will?’ said Meg. ‘Get out of here?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ulf’s wife. ‘In two hours we go to the hall for your wedding.’

  Meg screamed and threw herself at the door again.

  While Meg was throwing herself at the door of the women’s quarters, Zachary was trying to talk sense to Guinevere. ‘This is serious,’ he said to her, ‘very serious.’

  ‘True,’ Guinevere replied, ‘the blessed state of matrimony is indeed a serious business, and I wish Meg all good things in it. Now,’ she went on briskly, the matter of Meg’s marriage having been dealt with to her satisfaction, ‘as to getting alchemical substances for my healing…’

  ‘She doesn’t want to get married, Guinevere!’

  ‘A little coyness is no bad thing in a bride,’ Guinevere said. ‘Even in one of Meg’s mature years.’

  ‘You’ve got to help us get her out of there,’ Zoe pleaded. ‘I mean if she really doesn’t want to marry the guy then she shouldn’t have to, right?’

  ‘If I should self-destruct, hundreds will die. Should we place Meg’s vixenish self-will above those deaths?’

  ‘We’ve got 38 days left for that,’ Zoe said. ‘Harold, reason with her.’

  ‘Well, maybe Guinevere’s right, maybe it’s time we played the Meg card,’ Harold said. ‘It’ll put the Don on our side, he may be able to help us find some of these metals…’

  ‘Harold, she never even gave you any detentions, you were a slimy little Spock, you never got kept in…’

  ‘I’m just saying this could tip the balance, Zoe! You give the Don what he wants on this one small bargaining point…’

  ‘Meg is not a card, she is not a small bargaining point, she is a woman! A human being, Harold. If the Don wanted to marry you…?’

  ‘Oh come on!’

  ‘If the Don wanted you as a slave, would you be calling yourself the “Harold card”? The “Harold bargaining point”? Join the human race, Harold.’

  Harold saw that Zoe might just have a point here. He would perhaps be feeling differently about it were he in Meg’s shoes. Besides, Zoe was very angry and Zoe was capable of physical violence when she was angry. He decided to join the human race, even if only temporarily. ‘Okay. You made your point. We try and get her free. Guinevere?’

  ‘What can I, a weak woman, do in such a case?’

  Zachary laughed. ‘We’re a weak woman now are we Guinevere?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Guinevere with such pathos in her voice that the Wyzen’s empathy was instantly aroused and she leapt onto the main console and rubbed herself against it, purring. ‘Dear Wyzen, thou art the only one who understandeth.’

  Zachary thought he might be sick. ‘I’m going to be sick,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe you could project your image over there?’ Zoe suggested to Guinevere. ‘Like you did for Maze? Maybe you can throw a scare into them?’

  ‘Not in my present health,’ said Guinevere.

  Harold now thought he had the solution. ‘The Slarnstaffs. What we used to cut and paste your insides when we were coming home. What the Slarn used when they captured us. We go over there in the bus, we walk in with those in our hands … who’s going to argue?’

  There was silence on the bridge. Like a lot of people who have actually seen what weapons can do to human flesh and bone, Zachary had a deep distaste for weapons, but he could not stand by and see Meg kidnapped and subjected to w
hat amounted to legal rape. Slowly, very reluctantly, Zachary said: ‘I think he’s right, Guinevere.’

  ‘I would not have any of ye slay a man,’ she said.

  ‘I wouldn’t have any of us slay a man either,’ Zachary said. ‘I’m really not into all that stuff.’

  ‘They can be set to stun,’ Harold said persuasively. ‘The Slarn stunned me with one, right?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Guinevere, very doubtfully. She had seen much of warfare over the centuries and she knew how easily the threat of violence could turn into the real thing.

  ‘Is it right that Meg be forced to marry?’ Zoe asked her.

  Guinevere remained silent for a moment. She knew that the cause was just, and that just means to fight it lay within her gift. Slowly she opened the locker which contained the Slarnstaffs. ‘Come,’ she told them, ‘learn their use for putting men to sleep. But,’ she added sternly, ‘take human life with them, and ye shall never enter in these doors again.’

  As Guinevere began to instruct her crew in the use of the Slarnstaffs, Meg was being put into her wedding dress. The custom of white bridal dresses, which had grown up in the 19th century, had survived among the Trolls and thus it was a white dress into which Meg was being forced. It was, Ulf’s wife told her, the same dress she herself had worn when Ulf had stolen her to be his bride.

  ‘He stole you?’ Meg yelped in outrage.

  ‘It was very romantic,’ Ulf’s wife answered. ‘Stole me, paid the bride price, and then we were married in the hall by Father John.’

  ‘Bride price. So in fact he bought you.’

  ‘I am not a slave!’ Ulf’s wife replied angrily. ‘Ulf abducted me in good style, and then paid compensation to my father for the loss of his property.’

  ‘Most marriages aren’t as romantic as that,’ said another Trollwife wistfully, ‘most are just arranged by the parents.’

  ‘I don’t consider being kidnapped and raped romantic,’ said Meg as the Trollwives held her down and fastened the delustered-satin-covered buttons of the wedding dress.

  ‘Well how do your people marry?’ asked Ulf’s wife.