“Alright, Captain,” she said, rising to her feet and standing as still as her slight swaying would allow her to. “However, if you'd loosen up just a little, I think you'd find that the crew's morale would greatly improve.”
Having said what she had to say, she almost stumbled out of the room.
“Something is bad wrong with them, Rob!” Morgan exclaimed as soon as she was out of earshot.
“I know,” the traveler burst out laughing, “they are extremely drunk.”
“It's no laughing matter, man! Azure was just seriously flirting with you right in front of me!”
“I noticed that,” Robert replied with just the hint of a grin. “I was surprised you didn't say anything.”
“I was too shocked.”
“There's no need to be,” Robert chuckled. “Would you like me to explain all this?”
“Please!”
“Aright,” the traveler said, dropping into his seat and turning it toward his companion. “First off, it's important to keep in mind what we know about the girls as we do our best to work out what happened tonight.”
“What do we know?”
“We know that Cleo is not only self-confident but, also relatively certain that I'm occasionally overprotective of her.”
“She has a lot of reasons to be self-confident but, I don't think I'd call you overprotective.”
“She would say that you are, as well,” Robert pointed out. “Which is why you can't tell that I am.”
“You could be right. Go on.”
“We also know that Azure has a great deal of confidence in Cleo as well as a healthy dose of her own self-confidence.”
“Granted,” Morgan nodded.
“On top of that, we know the girls are unquestionably loyal.”
“Under normal circumstances, I'd agree.”
“Right,” Robert smiled. “So, what we have to start with is: what would make them take a drink?”
“Seems like a good place to start.”
“So, there they are, mad at us...” the traveler began.
“Why are they mad at us?” the young man asked.
“Let's see. Cleo is mad at me because of date night, the kissing plan, the fact that I would have kissed the girl if I had had to, all the women I flirted with, and that I had to ignore her.”
“True.”
“Azure is mad at you because of date night, the fact that you let Cleo outsmart her into putting the kissing onto your mouth instead of mine...”
“Hold on,” Morgan said, raising a finger. “I wasn't supposed to kiss the girl, you were.”
“Right,” Robert nodded. “I was because I convinced Cleo that you might get yourself killed, not because you refused to do it. Remember, the main reason Azure has been mad at you is because she thinks you just follow me around like my pet or something.”
“Yeah,” the young man sighed. “I do.”
“No, you don't!” the traveler asserted. “It just kind of looks that way now and then.”
“It looks that way a lot,” Morgan corrected, “but, go on.”
“Then, instead of staying with her to defend her honor, you stick by my side trying to help me make sure I don't get kissed.”
“Man! No wonder she's mad at me. I'm mad at me now.”
“Don't be,” Robert replied. “You actually managed to help me, and me not getting kissed helps us all in the long run.”
“Either way, they're mad at us.”
“Exactly! So, there they are all self-confident and angry. We've been driven away from the castle...”
“By handfuls of unpleasantness,” Morgan interjected.
“Unfortunately,” Robert nodded. “Then, Sir Galfin calls for a toast. This fires off all the I'll show him centers in their brains. Most women have more than a few of those. Cleo has loads of 'em. After a brief conversation that probably went something like: Cleo says; I can handle it, no matter what Rob thinks. Azure points out that; with Rob gone, you're basically my guardian. They both giggle about that – you know how they are. Then Cleo says; I'm sure it's safe for you to have a taste as long as I'm here to keep an eye on you. To which Azure replies; And, it would be rude to refuse to drink a toast to such a valiant – if impetuous – knight. So, they take a sip and it turns out to be pretty good.”
“It was really good, actually,” Morgan points out.
“It was,” Robert agreed. “Either way, at this point, we have them drinking.”
“Taking one drink,” the young man qualified.
“It's a slippery slope. They can't feel any effects, so they join in a few more toasts. They eat a little, thinking that will be enough to hold back the tidal wave of intoxication that's heading straight for them. It doesn't, of course. The more they drink, the more confident they get that they can handle it, the more they drink. This carries us all the way to: the girls are seriously drunk.”
“Then, what happens?”
“They go down two different paths due to differences in their physiology as well as their current dispositions. You see, Morgan, alcohol doesn't have exactly the same effect on Escargotians...”
“That's not really what they're called, Rob,” Morgan pointed out.
“Does it matter?”
“Not at all. Please, continue.”
“Thank you. Anyway, whereas drinking too much causes humans to lose some of their inhibitions, it causes Escargotians to see their former inhibitions more like dares. Like double-dog-dares on a kindergarten playground. Considering how emotional they are, this causes most of them to rush out and do things they would never dream of doing while in their right minds. Which is why, incidentally, the word for alcohol in native Escargotian – roughly translated into English – means: ‘the nectar of the madness of remorse’.
“Knowing that, I'm sure you can see why Cleo rushed up here to make me some rather interesting offers that she certainly wouldn't make under normal circumstances. After all, the vast majority of her inhibitions are centered around she and I.”
“A lot of yours are centered around the same thing,” the young man observed.
“Which is one of the reasons I don't drink. Either way, as intoxicated as she was, I was the only real danger she had to face. Seeing as how I also happen to be one of her most stalwart defenders, she was never really in any danger at all. Apart from the danger of utter embarrassment, of course.”
“Which leads us to Azure.”
“Absolutely. Her people metabolize alcohol much more like humans do. That being the case, we can look at her as your standard, everyday, angry, drunk woman. She was mad at you and me and had lost all of her be nice. As a result, she decided to teach us both a lesson and score a point toward her final goal. The easiest way to do all three of those things was to flirt with me.”
“How so?”
“Well, obviously, it would upset us both and, in that regard, serve as payback.”
“That part I get.”
“Since her real problem is me bossing her boyfriend around all the time and you having no will of your own, getting us into a fist-fight would be a solid first step toward getting you to act on your own.”
“She wouldn't do that.”
“Not with her inhibitions intact, no. However, all that wine freed her from that burden. Either that, or she was trying to tempt me into cheating with her, right there in front of you. Knowing her, which do you think is the more likely?”
“You're right!” Morgan smiled. “She was just trying to get me to beat your brains out.”
“Precisely,” Robert replied with a smile of his own.
“That being the case then, this was basically just another date night that went horribly wrong due to circumstances that were, in the main, completely beyond my control.”
“You could look at it that way.”
“The end result being, of course,” the young man continued, “that, after enduring countless toasts, risking my life in a medieval-style sword-fight, and being pelted with unpleasantne
ss, my reward is not getting to kiss Azure.”
“Apparently,” the traveler laughed. “Still, all things considered, there's no harm done. I just wish we'd have been able to get it all on video. Cleo would forgive me for anything – well, anything I might actually do – for the next couple of centuries if I just played her a few clips of that. But, it's too late now. I'm afraid we let a perfect blackmail opportunity slip right through our fingers.
“For one thing, I don't expect that they'll remember any of it tomorrow. If they don't, there's no way they'll believe us if we tell them about it. That being the case, it would probably be best to keep exactly what happened just between the two of us.”
“I can see that,” the young man nodded. “I can also see that the time has definitely come for Cleo to turn the program back on.”
“Possibly.”
“Certainly,” Morgan corrected. “Cleo's been mad enough at you lately that I'm sure it's perfectly safe. Not to mention the fact that Azure's lack of inhibitions, as well as Cleo's anti-inhibitions, seemed to reveal a certain level of frustration. At least, that's how it struck me.”
“You could be right.”
“We've stopped up the release valve, Rob” Morgan asserted. “Which resulted in a combination of anger, frustration, and wine leading us into the weirdness that is: both Azure and Cleo coming on to you in borderline explicit terms right in my face.”
“I take your point,” Robert laughed, spinning his chair around and pressing the buttons needed to launch the ship into space and then non-space. “Either way, Morgan, it's nothing to worry about, everything will be back to normal in the morning. Trust me.”
Everything wasn't back to normal in the morning. There were a number of reasons for this. The first was Azure getting on the intercom with Robert just as Morgan was stumbling groggily onto the bridge. She informed him that her memory had been wiped again and that she was afraid she had been poisoned. Apparently, she had a terrible headache, felt somewhat dizzy, and was extremely nauseated. She had intended to head for the medi-bay to have Doc check her out but, she was locked in her room for some reason.
Robert lied, assuring her that she had just eaten something that didn't agree with her and that the same thing had happened to him and Morgan. He also explained that memory loss was a side effect of that particular type of food poisoning, and that she and Cleo had gotten it far worse than he and Morgan had. He suggested that the locked door was probably just another system hiccup and ordered her to drink two glasses of water and wait patiently in bed until they managed to rescue her.
As the two young men made their way to the blue maiden's door, Robert explained to Morgan that the odds of her lock also failing, as Morgan's had the day before, were astronomically slim. He felt confident that she had simply changed the pass-code while still very intoxicated. This confidence was somewhat lessened over the course of the next hour, however, as Robert fought unsuccessfully to get the door opened.
During this time, the noise of Robert and Morgan working away woke Cleo up. She was also locked in her room, as well as feeling the after effects of excessive alcohol consumption. Of course, she was feeling the Escargotian after effects, which took the form of being very apologetic and extremely weepy. As a result, she begged Robert to forgive her for getting food poisoning and then collapsed on the floor on the far side of her door – crying – when she couldn't manage to unlock it.
The sound of this frustrated Robert until he actually started yelling at her door for not opening. Needless to say, the door didn't care. After several more minutes of futile attempts, Robert told Morgan to go get Vox. Vox, however, wasn't in his room. Celeste answered their door looking very tired, and very annoyed. She informed Morgan that Vox was somewhere on the ship before closing the door in his face. This hardly came as a revelation to the young man but, he felt confident that he wasn't going to get any further information out of her than that. As a result, he got on the intercom and asked Vox to meet him at the girls' rooms.
Vox arrived, along with Doc, just minutes later in what Morgan could only describe as a ‘foul mood’. He kept muttering to himself as he opened the access panel to Cleo's door and, more than once, he referred to something as a piece of junk. Morgan had never seen Vox like this before. Robert had. He advised the young man not to speak to Vox until he had finished what he was doing.
In whispered conversation, Doc explained that Vox and Celeste had had another fight the previous evening and that, by the time the young men had gotten back to the ship, Vox had already been asleep – or trying to be asleep – in one the beds in the medi-bay. Apparently, the idea of taking a brief vacation hadn't set well with Celeste. Doc didn't know any of the details, however, as he felt it would probably be better not to press Vox about it.
This conversation was interrupted by Vox punching the wall in frustration and the lights going out in the hallway. Robert pointed out that this was a coincidence. In reply, Vox made a very sarcastic observation. Whatever had killed the power to the lights had also killed the power to the doors. Cleo broke down crying again because, according to her, she'd obviously failed to completely get rid of the Sturm Virus and that, because of that, she would be trapped in her room forever. As Robert was assuring her that this was not the case, Azure woke up again and wanted to know what had happened to the power in her room and why they hadn't opened the door yet.
This question caused Vox to go into a mini-tirade about Robert always being in a hurry and never having sense enough to take anyone's advice. Doc pointed out, very gently, that this was hardly an accurate statement and that Robert had simply made a mistake, which everyone does from time to time. Vox immediately apologized and explained that, at least for a married man, that if Momma's not happy, nobody's happy. This observation elicited laughter from most of them and more crying from Cleo.
Doc did his best to comfort her as Robert, Morgan, and Vox grabbed a few chem-lights and the tools they would need to literally manually open the doors. Less than half-an-hour later, they had both of them cranked open enough for the girls to get out. Due to her emotional distress, they let Cleo out first. She instantly grabbed hold of Robert, buried her face in his chest and apologized for causing all this trouble. No amount of his pointing out that none of it was her fault seemed to have the slightest effect on her. Finally, however, he got the idea to just accept her apology. This worked. Moments later, she was back in her bed happily asleep.
Azure had no sooner squeezed through her door than she managed to trip over her own feet, due to her remaining dizziness, and collapse on top of Robert. Morgan helped her to her feet, while Robert lay as perfectly still as possible. After this, Azure decided that she had better go back to bed until the food poisoning wore off. This caused Vox to make the observation that it was a really good thing they had rushed to get the girls' doors opened so that they could just stay in their rooms.
Robert couldn't keep himself from laughing at this, and Vox couldn't keep himself from laughing at that. With a slightly improved average mood, due mainly to a sense of accomplishment, the four companions made their way to the bridge.
“Alright,” Robert sighed, slipping into his seat. “It looks like we need to do a complete systems check.”
“Which is what I said yesterday, Brother,” Vox pointed out.
“It was,” the traveler nodded, “and I should have listened to you.”
“Yes, you should have,” Vox smiled. “Where do you want to start, boss?”
“I want you to try to figure out what happened to the power,” Robert replied. “I'm going to pull the lock out of Cleo's door and see if I can figure out what happened to it.”
“Sounds good,” Vox nodded.
“What should Doc and I do?” Morgan asked.
“Actually, Morgan,” the traveler said, “you can start by figuring out what we need to do to get that video recorded.”
“What video,” Doc asked.
“The one the girls didn't record last night,” Rob
ert laughed. “It seems they forgot to do it because, they had a little too much to drink.”
“That explains their symptoms,” Doc nodded. “I was going to ask why you lied to them about having food poisoning.”
“Well, now you know. But, they don't. I'd appreciate it if you'd make them feel better without letting them know what's really wrong with them.”
“Easily done.”
“So what do I need to do exactly?” Morgan asked.
“Contact Brother,” Robert replied. “Find out when Maria left so we'll know what kind of window we have to make our way back to the party and get her alone. We'll probably also want to take something with us that can sober her up pretty quick.”
“I can get that for you,” Doc nodded.
“Perfect. Let's get on it.”
Morgan contacted Brother, only to find out that Maria had gone back to her own time right after the girls left the banquet. As a result, they wouldn't be able to talk to her in the past without risking crossing their own time-line. However, this didn't strike either of them as a major problem as they could catch up with her in the future and get her to record it then. While he had him on the comm, Morgan let Brother know that they might be delayed for a day or two as they had decided to run a complete systems check. Brother made the observation that you could never be too careful and thanked Morgan for letting him know what was going on, pointing out that Robert never did that.
His immediate task completed, the young man tracked Vox down to see if he could help him. He could. Vox wanted him to check every fuse around the area that was out of power to see if any of them had been blown out. A quick check revealed that several of them had been. In a matter of minutes, the young man had replaced them all and successfully restored power to that section of the ship.
Vox came to the conclusion that one of the backup power systems had temporarily come online, flooding the ship's grid and blowing out the fuses in question. He couldn't, however, be certain why it had happened.
An exhaustive examination of the lock from Cleo's door revealed that nothing at all was wrong with it. Robert wasn't sure why it hadn't worked before but, he was positive that it was working properly at the moment.
Bad Behavior (The Last Time Traveler Book 3) Page 14
