by J. Naomi Ay
To be honest, I loved my new position. I reveled in this extraordinary feeling of power. I even enjoyed speaking Mishnese again although Loman complained I had picked up a strange accent. After thirty years of roaming the galaxy as a man without a home, I loved being once more at the center of the universe.
The Captain wasn’t kidding when she said that Senya was extraordinarily busy. On most days I saw him for only a few minutes at a time and if I wanted to have an extended conversation with him, I had to run across campus with him, speaking enroute.
Sometimes though, late at night when all others had gone and his wife was away in space, we would kick back in his office with a couple of beers and dinner prepared by the Andorians who managed the kitchen. Usually, we could catch a Raven's game and would spend the evening yelling at them across the stars, as inevitably, they lost. If Berkan was in town, as he often was, he and Thad would join us, and we would all go out to a bar and drink ourselves silly.
“Hey Taner, did I ever tell you about that time that Ron sent four tornadoes into our Medical Center building?” Thad started saying, retelling some adventure I had missed in the intervening years. “Or how about the time Ron had a seizure outside of the Cowboy Corral? Remember that, Berk? Be glad you missed that, Taner. Whew,” he blew through his teeth and clapped Senya on the back, “You’re almost normal now, dude. You’re making good progress.”
“Do you remember the time I sent a fanatical Saintist flying about the parking lot?” Senya replied and tipped his glass toward Thad. “I can still do that, you know.”
“Yeah, don’t piss him off, Thad,” Berkan slurred drunkenly. “He might start making lightning balls again or even worse, get his bloody Ninja wife to take you out.”
“No, not the Ninja wife!” Thad cried and waved for another round of beers.
“That would be your future Ninja Queen,” I interjected, and we all raised our glasses to toast Captain Katie, our future Ninja Queen.
About six months after I had arrived on Rozari, Loman rang.
“This is it, Taner,” he said by way of a greeting.
“What?” I asked distractedly as I was in the middle of writing an email to Lord Dickon.
“His Majesty has taken ill. He has had a brain stroke.” Loman’s voice went so low he was nearly whispering. “We need Senya to come here immediately.”
I stopped my typing and looked up at Loman. “Is His Majesty alive?”
“Barely.” Loman frowned. “The doctors do not think it will be long.”
I was a little surprised at the despondency in Loman’s voice, the grief upon his face.
“Were they our doctors?”
“Berkan sent over his best neurologists. His Majesty is somewhat coherent but he is also ninety-five years old. It is obvious to all that even if by some miracle he were to regain most functionality, he can no longer govern. Senya has effectively been governing for the last few years. It is time now to make it official.”
“Damn,” I sighed.
“Indeed,” Loman agreed.
“I suspect Senya will want to evaluate His Majesty himself. He will want to repair His Majesty if it is at all possible. I don’t think he is ready to leave here for good.”
“I suspect Senya will want to try to do whatever he possibly can to keep His Majesty alive, even if he has to transplant another brain.”
“Poor man,” I said, and at that moment I was not certain to which man I referred.
“How quickly can you get here, Taner?”
“Senya is in surgery today as it is Wednesday. When he finishes, I’ll fetch him, and we will be on our way.”
“He will need to give up his medical practice now.” Loman sighed and nervously tapped his pen against his desktop. “We can't exactly have the King bugger out every Wednesday for surgery.”
“You’re welcome to tell him that, Boss,” I replied and began to pack up my desk in preparation for our travel.
“No thanks,” Loman smirked. “And it sounds like you’re the boss now, Lord Taner, not me.”
“You will always be my boss, Boss, except for Senya, of course, who’s always been the real boss even when we all pretended he wasn’t.”
“That he has,” Loman agreed.
“This is what I am thinking, Loman. My first order of official business is going to be to declare that everyone address Senya as the Emperor. After all, he's got multiple kingdoms. If there is any resistance from the Saintist Mishnese, the fact that he is Emperor of three kingdoms ought to intimidate them into silence.”
“That’s a good idea, Taner. The hard core Saintists cannot object to crowning a half-breed Karut when the Andorians aren’t concerned that he is not the least bit Andorian.”
“We are all Rehnorians now,” I replied. “We are all outcasts from the civilized galaxy, and who better to lead us than our spooky little street rat, Senya.”
Loman nodded. “I guess that old prophecy has come to pass after all.”
“It would never have happened without your efforts, Boss.”
“Ah, well.” Loman frowned again and looked at his hands. “I made a promise to Lydia.”
“Of course you did. Someday you and I will get a drink or two, and you will tell me about your love affair with the Princess Royal.”
“Yes, perhaps I will.” Loman smiled. “Perhaps I will.”
I was waiting for Senya at his medical office. I sat in one of the chairs with the patients who had appointments. I had told the Human woman behind the desk that Senya would not be seeing anyone else today or ever for that matter. She glared at me.
“Who are you again?” she asked.
“Taner,” I said and referred her to Thad if she had further questions. Thad was her son she told me and dared me to make her ring him.
“Please do.” I offered and so she finally called him. Thad waved at me from the vid.
“Taner, dude? How’s it shaking?”
“It’s shaking,” I replied and then his mother hung up and scrutinized me.
“Are you sure he won't be able to see anyone else today?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I have a plane waiting. We will leave as soon as he is out of surgery.”
She quietly told each of the patients that they needed to reschedule an appointment with the other doctor.
“Where are you going?” the woman behind the desk asked when the waiting room had cleared. Her name tag said Shelly. “Are you going back there?”
“Yes, Ma'am.” I watched the door waiting for Senya to burst through it.
“Do you want me to ring Katie for you? Maybe you need her to come with you? Tim and I can mind Steven for a few days. It's no problem at all. He's a darling child.”
“The Captain and the boy are both in space.” I glanced at my watch. At this rate, the King might be dead before we even left Rozari.
“Maybe you should ring her,” Shelly suggested. “You know Taner, well maybe you don't know, but whenever Ron comes back from there, he's usually a little unbalanced for a while. It's a really good idea if Katie's around to calm him down.”
“I am confident I will be able to handle any situation that arises. I handled them long before Katie was around.”
Shelly snorted. “Good luck with that. When will he next meeting up with Katie?”
“A week from Friday at a spacebase.”
“Yeah, good luck with that then,” she said again and turned back to her vid.
I sat back down and waited for Senya, or rather, Ron. It was typical of Humans to shorten his name like this. Anything that was difficult for them to pronounce, they changed. I once had a crewman whose name was Wernerfikel and all the Humans on my ship called him Al. I called him Wernerfikel until he told me to stop because he liked Al better.
I did not have to wait long as only a few minutes later, I heard Senya’s voice down the hallway. Nodding goodbye to the indomitable Shelly, I stepped outside the door to wait while Senya spoke to a tiny and elderly woman with multiple upper an
d lower appendages.
I tried to place which planet the lady had originated from but for a moment my brain blanked, and I could not recall from my travels whether three arms and three legs were characteristic of Lumineria, Cascadia or Altaria. Her whiney, high pitched voice jarred my memory and placed her as a Luminerian for I once had carried an expensive cargo of Luminerian fruit to Talas, only to have been attacked by pirates and forced to release my entire load into space above Talas III. The Luminerian insurance company would not reimburse me, claiming a pirate attack was an excluded clause. I spent many hours on the vid arguing with the adjuster, who now I recalled had three arms and three legs and high pitched whiney voice as well. This elderly woman, I found as annoying as the Luminerian Insurance Adjuster for she complained mightily to Senya about the inability to schedule an appointment with him. Her issue it seemed was the immobility of one of her redundant arms, diagnosed by another doctor as a tumor deep within her brain.
“I have waited months for this appointment,” she declared. “And now I am told you that you are no longer available. My tumor is growing, for as you can see, my back arm is moving only sporadically and my front arm trembles whenever I do this.” She lifted up her back leg and her front arm trembled.
“I suggest you don’t do that then,” I mumbled under my breath while Senya studied her from behind his dark glasses.
“You do have a tumor growing.” Senya nodded when the lady finally shut her mouth and stopped her complaints. “It is indeed in a difficult spot. Come back to my office for a moment and I will make some notes for Dr. Jason so that he may remove it as quickly as time permits.”
“How do you know,” she cried. “When you haven’t even looked at my head?”
“The lack of movement in the back arm indicates pressure upon the Basal Ganglia. Your species also has a secondary Basal Ganglia beneath the Cerebrum. The fact that when you lift your posterior leg, it affects your anterior arm, tells me that there is pressure upon that secondary…”
“Senya,” I interrupted. “Sir.” I pointed at my watch.
“Come now,” Senya said and led the way to his office. “Shelly, please make an appointment for the lady with Dr. Jason. I’ll jot down some notes if you forward the file to me.” He disappeared into his back office, removing his scrubs as he went. I followed him, snatching up his clothing from the floor and considered that now, nearly thirty years later, my job had changed so little. I was still picking up after him.
“Loman rang,” I told him when the door slammed shut. He nodded as no further explanation was needed.
“I have clothes for you already packed,” I continued, noting that he wore only jeans and a torn t-shirt beneath his surgical gear. “Your plane will be outside within ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Taner,” he replied and brought a cigarette to his lips. He called up the Luminerian woman’s file and dictated instructions to the other doctor.
“What is that?” I asked when he had finished speaking and I saw for the first time this amazing tattoo that cascaded down his entire left arm. “What have they done to you?” There were markings on his forearm that still looked to be tender. His upper arm bore what appeared to be an eagle though this part looked as if it was done long before. “That must have been terribly painful.”
“Indeed, it was,” he replied. “The eagle was done when I was fourteen. The rest is all new.”
“What does it say?”
He took another drag on the cig and then exhaled it before answering.
“It says I am the King of Karupatani.”
I was surprised. “Are you? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Merakoma died a year ago. You never asked, Taner.”
“Fair enough, Your Majesty. We should go now.”
He nodded slightly. “And I was just starting to like it here, too. Perhaps I shall have to conquer this planet.” He walked out of the office leaving me to wonder if he was serious or joking.
On the spaceplane, we dressed for Mishnah. I had brought a couple of Senya's Armani suits that his wife so enjoyed picking out and that is how he decided to appear before his grandfather, the King.
“I am coming for a medical consultation,” he said.
This, I thought was both a bit ignorant and delusional.
“He's already been looked at by a team Berkan sent over,” I reminded him.
“Yes, but I am the best.”
“You are also the heir.”
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. His eyes were very bright now, much brighter than they were as a child.
“You know, Taner,” he said. “I'm really not ready for this. Karupatani is nothing. It means I go there a few more times a year, give them some blood and let them pay homage to me. Andorus, I let them worship me on their Holidays and then I go home and pretend all I need do is manage my company and have surgeries on Wednesdays. This will change everything.”
“It will,” I agreed. “But you are already doing the job. The change will be moving to Mishnah instead of running it from here.”
“It's not just Mishnah. It's all Rehnor now and then… and then the others, the whole damn empire.”
“What are you talking about, Senya?”
“I don't want to deal with this,” he said and held his head.
“What others?” I persisted.
“Forget it.” He pressed his thumbs into his eyelids.
“What’s the matter? Have you got a headache? Shall I get you something?”
“Yes,” he snapped. “No. Quit hovering. Go away. Leave me alone.” He got up and disappeared into a back cabin where he remained for the rest of the flight. He even turned off his cell because mine immediately started buzzing.
It was nearly midnight by the time we touched down in Mishnah. It was a brilliant night. The two moons were bright in the sky, the ocean was nearly translucent, and the Palace was lit up and glowing. It was warm, early spring, and the air smelled of jasmine and daphne adora.
We were expected of course, and the courtyard and the balconies were filled with watchers. I was the first to debark the spaceplane and there was an audible sigh of disappointment as I was not the star they were all waiting for. I was met by Loman and Lord Dickon, and we queued up at the base of the plane to wait for Senya. When Senya emerged from the door, rubbing his eyes and looking rumpled and sleepy in his Armani suit, I almost laughed. Loman smiled affectionately.
“Come on, lad, speed it up,” Loman said in a loud stage whisper, and so Senya skipped down the steps to the gold carpet which had been laid there only to keep his precious royal feet from getting dirty.
My thoughts flickered briefly back to the first time he arrived here, jumping from the limo before it had landed, being tackled by Loman’s guards, and then stripped by Prince Akan. Of course I wasn’t really all that enamored with him then either, as he had just attempted to cut off my head and had sliced a nice long gash in Loman’s arm.
“We have come a long way,” I murmured and nodded at Loman.
“We had to,” Loman agreed.
“Where to?” Senya asked, joining us and dutifully allowing Loman and Dickon to kiss his hand. He patted his coat pockets to locate his glasses and then finding them, put them on, and glanced around the courtyard at the many people on their knees in obeisance before him. “Kari-fa,” he swore under his breath. “I am really not ready for this.”
“I don’t think you have a choice in the matter, Sir,” I said and we proceeded to follow Lord Dickon and Loman into the Palace.
The King was in the medical wing in the same room that young Senya had used so many times before. I recognized it from the view of the forest to the north and the imposing rock formation just off the shoreline directly ahead. I had stared at the rocks and the forest for hours on end during twelve year old Senya’s last stay here, just before I took him to Karupatani for good.
His Majesty was surrounded by several physicians and the Queen was sitting at his side, holding his hand. He was
very pale, and his face seemed lopsided. One side had gone totally slack while the other was abnormally taut. One eye watched us approach; the other looked out the window as if studying the rock formation. Senya stopped in the doorway and didn’t move. The doctors turned and bowed to him.
“Come on, Senya,” Loman urged quietly but still Senya wouldn’t move.
“Sehron?” the King called to him, his voice strangled as only half of his mouth was working.
“Sir,” Senya replied and blinked his eyes rapidly as if he had just woken up and realized where he now was. He strode over to the King’s bed and placed his hand upon the King's temples. “Quiet now,” he said as the King attempted to speak.
Senya put his hands on various places on the King's head and then apparently satisfied, flipped through the screens on the overhead SdK scanner. He pointed at a few spots on the scans and discussed it quietly with the other doctors.
“We can fix you, Sir,” he concluded.
No one spoke.
“We can take you into surgery in the morning. It should take about six hours but you should get nearly full functionality restored. However, we will need to move you over to the hospital in New Mishnah.”
Still there was silence. Then the King opened his mouth.
“Hand,” he said although it came out garbled. “Hand. You.”
Sehron reached for the King’s hand and then quickly stepped back as if burnt. He opened his own hand and in it was the Firestone ring, the Ring of State. It glowed in his palm, brighter than it had ever shown upon Yokaa Kalila's finger.
“You,” the King said again and his head moved awkwardly as if he were trying to nod.
“I can fix you,” Senya said softly, pleadingly. “I can make you live. We don’t have to do this now.”
“No.”
“Fix him!” the Queen cried, and we all turned to her. Years ago, when last I had seen her, she was still a beautiful woman, but a life of bitterness had turned her haggard.
“No,” the King said again.
