by Selina Rosen
"What about those of us that have been looking forward to our retirement?"
"I'm not telling you that you can't retire. All I'm saying is that we're not going to pay for it. Many shops have retirement programs—save part of your earnings towards the goal of retirement."
"Many of us have paid into the government program . . ."
"Yes, a whole fifth of what most of you would have drawn out under the old plan. All the money will be paid back through income tax reductions to those who paid in, up to the amount they paid in, less any government support they may have received—over the next five years. Next." She pointed to a young male reporter.
"I very much approve of the idea that all can work, but do you really believe that?"
"You bet I do. If a man has no arms and no legs, he can sit at the end of an assembly line and look for defects. If he's blind, too, he can sing a happy tune for his co-workers, and if he's also mute, they can use him to hold a door open. My idea is that working makes people feel good. Knowing that you have a purpose, some place important to be every day, is worth a whole lot. Enough questions."
Drew rose and left the conference room. Her retinue followed, and Marcus turned off the TV.
Zarco sat back hard in his chair, and the cheap thing almost went over with him.
"Now, there is someone who understands the needs of the people . . ."
"Marcus! Taralin just put the poor in prison . . ."
"So?" Marcus said hotly. "You've kept us all in economic prison for years. We couldn't hope for better jobs, better homes, and hospitalization. The Queen is right. It's our turn for some compassion. We at least have worked for it."
"And what about bringing back the death penalty? We haven't had one for a hundred years! It has no place in a polite society. And a mass execution and burial—it's barbaric!"
"What's barbaric is making the victims of a crime and their families pay to keep the perpetrator alive. And just how polite is a society where hundreds of violent crimes take place every day?"
Zarco looked at Marcus then. Marcus understood what Taralin was doing. He understood Zarco's wife better than Zarco did, and Taralin understood the people better than he, their King. He might not approve of the way she was ruling, but the people did. He walked over to his cot, lay down, and stared at the ceiling.
He had already begun to believe that he had failed as a man and husband when he let the Lockhedes not only take, but also keep, his wife. But it wasn't until his wife started to run his country that he realized that he had also failed as a King. He had been too involved with the war and his hatred of the Lockhedes to notice the ills of the people he was supposed to be serving. It was easy to say "feed the poor" when the bread didn't come off your table. Easy to forgive a killer when he hadn't killed your loved one in your home. He thought about how he had gone after the Lockhedes with such vengeance, how he had wanted them all dead because they had taken Taralin. How their actions and his inability to act had made him feel helpless and impotent . . . the way commoners must feel all the time. How many men's wives had been killed while he warred with the Lockhedes, wanting revenge upon them for what they had taken from him? Had he found the men that took Taralin, he would have killed them without a second thought. Yet he had deemed it cruel for the common man to enjoy such justice.
He hadn't even known that so many of them had no medical care, or for that matter that it was so costly. And when did the farmers start growing Rash? He had failed his wife, because he refused to put his own needs above those of the people. And then he had failed the people because he refused to put their needs above his own.
"Are you all right, Sire?" Marcus asked with concern.
Zarco looked at the young guard. He now saw him as he truly was; not a traitor at all, but a good man driven to this deed by Zarco's neglect."How long did she ask you to keep me here?"
Marcus looked startled. "It wasn't her idea . . . !"
"But it was convenient for her. How long?"
"Three months. She wouldn't meet our initial demands. I said we'd kill you, but she didn't believe us. She said if we kept you out of the picture for awhile, she could fix things . . ."
"How long have I been here?"
"Eight weeks."
"Couldn't you let me go now? I mean, she's changed everything, and you seem pleased . . ."
Marcus shook his head. "Give her programs a chance to get under way. Right now, you could ruin everything. I figure if her ideas work, you're not going to be so gung-ho to run in and change things. No matter how much flack you get from your blue-blooded kin."
After the press conference, Drew dismissed everyone, went straight to her room and flopped on her bed without even bothering to turn down the covers. Margot would be livid. She was so exhausted that she couldn't go to sleep—naturally. She stared at the ceiling and wondered why she couldn't turn her brain off.
"Maybe it's the thought of all those convicts I've just ordered put to death. Maybe I feel guilty in some way." She spoke out loud and thought about it. "Nah."
She moved to a more comfortable position, and something moved at the foot of her bed. She must have been closer to sleep than she thought, because it took her several minutes to realize that there shouldn't be anything in her bed but her.
"Van, I'm tired," she mumbled, half asleep. There was no answer, but she felt something move again. Suddenly wide awake, she jumped out of bed and quickly threw back the covers. Squirming at the foot of the bed, right where her feet would have been if she had jumped between the sheets, was a hideous slug-looking thing. It was about two feet long and two inches around. She grabbed the gun off the bedside table, and shot it twice.
Instantly, the guards outside her door were in her room. Not far behind them was first Van Gar and then Stasha.
Drew laughed. "Quick, someone call the Royal exterminator and have the palace sprayed for slugs at once."
"Drew, do you know what that is?" Stasha asked, pale and shaken.
"The ugliest mother fucker I've ever seen," Drew answered.
"It's a brain slug."
Stasha turned to the guards."Don't just stand there, check the room."
They started searching.
"They come from the swamps of Dildot. If it was in here, someone put it here."
"Dildot's a long ways off, then?" Drew asked.
"Several hundred miles," Stasha said, gently chiding her sister's geographical ignorance.
"So, someone put an ugly slug in my bed. It's not the first time I've slept with a slug, and it probably won't be the last."
"It could have been," Stasha said, still shaken. "Brain slugs get their names because they crawl into the ear of their victims, eat part of their brains, and lay their eggs in the still-living body."
Drew made a face and then smiled. "I wouldn't have been a whole meal, then. I decree that from this day forward we call them Lockhede slugs . . ."
"It's not funny, Drew," Van Gar said hotly.
"Certainly not. I don't have enough brains left to spare."
"You could have been killed," Stasha warned.
"But I wasn't. So, why don't you two just lighten up?"
"The room is clean," one guard said.
"Then you'd better do something quick, because it wasn't a minute ago," Drew said with a laugh.
It was funny. Drew hadn't acted like Drew in weeks, and now that she was, all Van wanted to do was stuff a sock in her mouth.
"Go back to your post. In the future, you will check the room before my sister enters it. Including the bed," Stasha ordered.
"I've got a better idea. You boys just climb right in bed with me, and don't let any long skinny things crawl in me."
"You are the biggest asshole in the fucking galaxy," Van Gar screamed.
"Then you must be my son, because you're the biggest pile of shit I've ever seen."
Drew didn't even try to keep the smile off her face. She turned to the guards. "Go back to your posts."
"How can you make
jokes?" Stasha wanted to know. "Someone is trying to kill you."
"You know, Stasha, you seem to have a real talent for stating the obvious," Drew shrugged. "Of course someone's trying to kill me, but they're going about it in really lame ways. So excuse me if I don't wet myself. I'm too damn tired to worry about someone trying to kill me. If I don't get some sleep soon I won't even know when they do it. So, go on and let me go to bed."
Van Gar started to follow Stasha out. "Not you, Van," she smiled appealingly at him. "I'm afraid to sleep by myself now."
He smiled in spite of himself, and shook his head. "You know, Drew, you really are a piece of work."
"Well I'm a piece anyway."
"I really can't believe you, Drew," Stasha screamed. "Zarco is who knows where, and you're carrying one with this alien right under the nose of everyone in the palace!"
"So, do you have a point Stasha?"
Stasha turned on her heel and stomped from the room.
Chapter 15
"No, no. Like this," she stuck her thumb in the guy's ribs and twisted. He doubled up in pain and fell to the floor.
"Ooops, sorry," she smiled apologetically and helped him to his feet. Drew turned to the group of guards. "What is the first principle of Trigade?"
"Anything goes," they repeated.
"Very good. What is the second principle of Trigade?"
"Use your anger," they repeated.
She smiled and nodded. "What is the third and most important principle of Trigade?"
"Save yourself."
"Why?"
"Because you can't hold your post if you're dead."
"And?"
"Being dead sucks."
"Very good. Now, I'm going to show you a couple of more moves, and then we'll break."
She was half-way through the first exercise when someone screamed, "What are you doing now?"
Drew smiled and wiped her face on the towel that Margot attentively handed her. "Take over for me, would you, Van?"
She went over to Facto. "What are you doing down here? Slumming?" She asked.
"Please tell me that you were not teaching the King's Royal Guard Trigade," Facto intoned heavily.
"I was not teaching the King's Royal Guard Trigade," she said.
"Good," Facto sighed with relief. "Some urgent business needs your attention."
"What?" She obviously didn't really care.
Facto shrugged. "All I was told was that it was urgent."
"What is the fourth rule of Trigade?" Van Gar bellowed.
"There is no such thing as safety in numbers," the guards bellowed back. Facto gave Drew a hard look.
Drew shrugged and smiled. "You wrote the script."
"So, when did you start listening to me?" Facto shook his head and started following the Queen and her servant as they started back for the palace. "Do you really think it's proper to teach the King's Guard a fighting style which teaches self-preservation over all else?"
"Someone's trying to kill me, Facto," she said in a whisper. As if it were something only she, and now he, knew. The truth was that it had been splattered in the news all through the last week. "Trigade teaches you to be aware of every sound around you, a change in the breeze, a different scent. To run and get help if you sense danger, rather than to stand by your post, die, and leave a hole in the defense of what you are supposed to be guarding. To sound the alarm at the first sound instead of the first shot. Trigade is the fighting style of a country which has lived with war for twenty generations. The fighting style of a people under siege. I think the King's guard will benefit from the teachings of Trigade. And I, for one, will feel safer."
"It is, of course, your decision," Facto's tone was resigned.
"Excuse me," a voice called out. They both turned. A young page was running up behind them, obviously out of breath. "Councilor Facto, there is a problem in the household. The head butler has just had a terrible row with the cook, and they are both threatening to resign."
"If you'll excuse me, my Queen," Facto bowed low and at Drew's nod, he took off after the boy.
"I thought he'd never go," Drew said. Margot laughed.
"You really shouldn't go out of your way to anger him. He can be a rather pleasant man when things are going his way." Margot said. "Now that's odd."
"Yes, well that does seem to be the way it is with men. What's odd?"
"I thought I saw . . ." she laughed, "but that's not likely." She shrugged and they continued their trek to the palace. As they walked under one of the three archways leading to the castle from the guard house, Drew heard a sound from above them like the crack of a pistol, and she looked up just in time to see the keystone splinter and start to fall."Margot look out!" She pushed the girl one way, and jumped the other, rolling as she hit the ground. When she looked back at the spot where they had been standing a second before, she saw the huge keystone crash into the flagstones below, splintering both. The debris splattered all around her like a hard rain, and then the remains of the archway started to rock. She jumped up and ran, only aware of having done so when the stone arch crashed just behind her. She looked down at the rubble for a minute before she saw the body tangled in the wreckage.
"Margot—no!" Drew scrambled through the stones and pulled the stones off the woman. "Margot, can you hear me? Help! We need a doctor over here!"
"Margot, can you hear me?"
"My . . . Queen . . . are you all right?" Margot coughed out.
"I'm too fucking mean to die. Listen, kid, you're going to be all right. You're not going to be dancing in the near future, but you're going to be fine. Just lay very still."
The guards ran up, lead by Van Gar. "Turj, go for the Doctor. The rest of you, scour the grounds. Leave no stone unturned. I want to know how this happened, and who did it. Van, stay here and protect my butt."
"I came running as soon as I heard the explosion," he pulled his laser and scanned the whole area. Then looked back at her. "Your cheek is bleeding a little. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," she brushed the dust off Margot's face. "Where the hell are they with the doctor? Margot, can you hear me?"
This time, she didn't even groan, and Drew quickly checked her pulse. "Hang on, kid."
She saw the doctor and his staff run out of the palace then. "Hurry, man," the doctor got there first and immediately started to check Drew out. She jerked her face out of his hands. "I'm fine, take care of Margot." The doctor knelt beside the fallen woman and was soon surrounded by his staff.
"Who would want to hurt Margot? They had to know she'd be with me . . . Hell she's always with me."
"I hate to say this, Drew, but . . . Whoever wants you dead doesn't seems to care who goes down with you."
"Then maybe you shouldn't stand so close," Drew said in a harsh whisper.
"There's a chance that Margot is the assassin. That having had her last attempt foiled she was willing to go down with you."
"You're fucking out of your tiny little mind!"
"Who else has access to your room?"
"You, my sister, and probably most of the cleaning staff. Margot is my friend!"
"Margot is Taralin Zarco's friend. She might well think of you as the person who murdered her."
"You are really grasping at straws. I tell you, Margot is no killer."
"How is she, Doctor?" Drew saw that Margot had been loaded on to a stretcher.
"I won't know till I can get her X-rayed. I think there is some internal bleeding. The thing that worries me most right now is the head trauma. OK, boys, get her to the infirmary. Now, about your injury, my Queen . . ."
"Fuck it. I can put on my own bandage. You just take care of Margot."
She looked hard at Van Gar and whispered. "I think Margot saw who did it."
They watched them carry her inside.
"Why do you think that?" Van asked curiously.
"She said something . . . she thought she saw something or someone just before the fucking arch blew up in our faces."
>
"Well, whoever it is, we know one thing. He or she is in here with us."
