Wham!

by Carol Marrs Phipps

  “This soup is delicious. I can't imagine that the rest of it isn't at least as good.”

  “Wonderful!” said Pandora before taking the skinny Benjamin had just returned with.

  “Shall I wait for it?” he said.

  Pandora nodded and turned to her ball and to Nia's astonishment, spoke directly to one of the two policemen who had arrested and beaten Jill, telling him that no further harm was to come to her. She left him choking and stammering and spoke to the Chief of Police, ordering him to execute both officers. She started to hand back the ball to Benjamin. “Oh yes,” she said, putting the ball back into her lap. “Dr. Bloodstraw, where are you?” She was speaking with him at once, telling him that under no circumstances was Jill to be allowed to die. “My personal physician,” she said, handing away the ball. “Now we can enjoy our meal.”

  “Yes,” said Nia with a wide-eyed smile. “Well if I wasn't before,” she thought as she took to her soup, “I certainly am committed now.”

  “So Nia,” said Pandora. “When your term of service is over here, do you plan to return home and resume with your fiance, if he hasn’t found someone else by then?”

  This was a fist of ice to Nia's heart. She had avoided such things. Of course he had a right to be happy, even if she never could. She set down her first fork full of chicken and shook her head. She almost blurted out that with her memory erased, she would not even know anyone named Drake, but suddenly remembered that she was not supposed know any part of this. “No,” she said. “By the time I leave here, Drake and I shall be two completely different people from the couple who fell in love. A fresh start would be the only thing that could ever work.”

  “I must say Nia, you seem wise beyond your years,” said Pandora with a thoughtful nod. “I'm most impressed.”

  “That's high praise coming from you. Though I don't deserve it, since I was merely being pragmatic.”

  “Which happens to be a cornerstone of wisdom.”

  “Well,” said Nia. “What about you? What plans have you for the future?”

  “Right to the chase then,” said Pandora with a deep and amused nod.

  “Anything having to do with you has to start at the top. I have no choice but to cut to the chase. I mean, just where does one go from a position of absolute power?

  “Well my curious morsel. The great challenge of such a position is to keep it. This position is plain dangerous, not to put too fine a point on it. Assassination and then unrest and rebellion. And then more problems and complications than we have time to list and discuss this evening, let me tell you. So. Now that we've chewed through that, what would you like for desert?”

  “I have no idea. Wait! I've always wanted to try cheesecake.”

  “Good choice. And a personal favorite of mine. Now Atlantis doesn't have room for very many crops, but for us this is cherry season. So. With cherries or without?”

  “With cherries, by all means.”

  “Excellent! Benjamin?” she said, speaking out as if he were standing just beyond the table. “Nia and I would like cherry cheesecake for desert.”

  “Where is he?” said Nia, looking about.

  “Down at the kitchen, I believe.”

  “But you don't have a skinweler.”

  “Oh, he can hear me wherever he is.”

  “I see,” said Nia. She was utterly lost by this, but not wanting to become tedious, said nothing more and returned to her meal.

  Benjamin brought their deserts and left with his book, which Nia noticed he had nearly finished in the short time since she had arrived.

  “Oh my!” she said with a moan of pleasure. “This is good.”

  Pandora's smile was disturbing. Nia did not want to think about it beyond deliberately lingering over desert to delay the moment when the potentate would expect them to be intimate.

  “How about a dip in the pool after our desert?” said Pandora.

  “Yes!” said Nia, grateful for another reason to delay what was coming.

  “The water is heated, so there's no problem with having just eaten. Yonder's the bath house. I'm sure you can find a suit inside that will fit you. Mine's inside, so I’ll be back in a jiff,” she said as she rose and undid her sash.

  “Strange, the antique way she puts occasional things,” thought Nia, grateful that they weren't about to swim naked. “It's as if she were out of the distant past or something crazy like that. She chose the only bathing suit which was not a thong amongst the bikinis. She saw that Pandora was already in the water, wearing her thong. She stepped up onto the board and dove in. When she surfaced, Pandora was waiting for her. And her smile made Nia think of some kind of water wolf. A hungry one.

  * * *

  Exhausted nearly to a stupor, Nia sank into her chair and looked at the eggs in the hole, sausage and muffin toast Sam set in front of her.

  “Eat,” said Sam.

  Nia slowly discovered that she was famished, even though she might fall asleep chewing.

  “Is everything all right?” said Sam.

  “Right as rain,” she said, “But I'm going to die if I don't sleep for a few hours. When's supper?”

  “Six?”

  “Good. And after that I'll have a soak in that giant sunken bath tub.”

  Chapter 14

  Dr. Bloodstraw stood by Jill's bed, peering now and then at her monitor as he busily wrote on a clipboard. Suddenly Pandora appeared out of the air, standing directly behind him. She flicked her fingers at the door as if they were wet with dishwater. The door locked with a loud click. Bloodstraw wheeled about for a look.

  “Shit!” he gasped as his clipboard landed face down on the floor. “I, I mean, I beg your pardon, Potentate!” He stooped with his stethoscope dangling and picked it up. “I wasn't expecting you at all this soon. I had no idea you were there.”

  “And?” she said, nodding at Jill in her bed, still unconscious and covered with bandage.

  “I really wish you had brought me in earlier, Potentate,” he said, thumbing through the pages clipped to his board. “Had I seen her from the very beginning, there would've been a much greater...”

  “Chance of survival?”

  “Exactly,” he said, shaking his head without quite looking up from the pages. “I'm afraid there's very little I can do for the young woman. She's been this way for too long. I don't expect her to last more than a few more days, if she even makes the next twenty- four hours. I am sorry.”

  “That's what it looked like to me before I came over,” said Pandora, raising her chin. “World renowned and all you're going to do is let her die?”

  “Well not just let her,” he said, finally looking right at her. “I've ordered some things added to her glucose, but there's really nothing more I can do. You can bring in another specialist, but his prognosis will be the same as mine. I am very sorry. So if there's nothing else, Potentate, I do have a number of pressing appointments and I really must be going.”

  “I agree,” she said sweetly, sending a crackling red discharge from her fingertip to his chest, stopping his heart. His eyes went wide as he dropped his clipboard, grabbed at his tie with both hands and burst into a flaming purple smoke that twisted to the ceiling as he collapsed into a tinkling pile of cinders by the bed.

  The raven on Jill's cheek caught Pandora's eye as she sat on the bed. “That's no bruise,” she said, looking at her closely. “Why you've got blue tattoos all over. You're a Beak.” She carefully put her hands to Jill's temples and closed her eyes. “Yaghhe!” she commanded in the old language of Gwael. “Gront dhedha sevel yn-y...” She went on in this way for a very long time.

  “Ah!” gasped Jill as her eyes flew open.

  “I see that you're positively gorgeous,” said Pandora, opening her eyes at the same instant. “But you do need a bath.” And with a toss of her long black hair, slid off the bed and walked out.

  The nurses' station was right across the hall. “Just who are you?” said the nurse, stepping around the counter with her t
ray.

  “You have been neglecting Jill Macintyre, in that room, yonder...”

  “What?” said the nurse with an indignant nod. “I beg to differ! Is Dr. Bloodstraw still in there?”

  “Bloodstraw's no longer on the staff.”

  “That's madness!” huffed the nurse. “I saw him in there only a few minutes ago.”

  “No,” said Pandora. “He's been gone an hour. I had you unconscious. Look at the clock.”

  “I'm getting Security!” said the nurse, banging down her tray onto the counter.

  “It would undoubtedly be the very last thing you ever did in your life,” said Pandora calmly. “Look.” She began counting on her fingers. “Firstly, remove Miss Macintyre's bandages and cast. Then feed her exactly what she wants. She must be starved. And then, for the love of Fates, bathe her. But before you do any of that, run and fetch a broom and dustpan. She has pile of cinders and filth right by her bed.”

  The nurse went very wide eyed and dashed for the broom closet, down the hall.

  “Run dear!” called out Pandora between her hands. And with that, she went to the stairway, trotted down until she was out of sight and vanished.

  Immediately she was standing in front of one of her favorite chairs in her bower in Orbis Terrae. “My delectable little Fairy,” she said with a giddy squeal. “Now it's your turn.”

  * * *

  “Samantha Bodine?” said the kitchen skinweler.

  “Speaking,” said Sam, turning Nia's Fairy book face down on the table.

  “Nursing officer's receptionist, here. I'm to let you know to come to Jill Macintyre's room at the hospital as soon as you can.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “I can't tell you that.”

  “Is she conscious?”

  “I can't tell you that. You're just on my list of names...”

  “Thank you...”

  The ball winked out.

  Sam looked across the kitchen to the open door of Nia's bedroom beyond. “She needs her sleep,” she said with a sigh as she scribbled a note to her. She was in her car at once, rushing to the hospital.

  She hurried into Jill's room and stopped short.

  “Speechless, eh?” said Jill, setting down her knife and fork. “Everyone seems to be. I don't think I can get down a whole toad in the hole. You want these other two?”

  “You don't just look conscious,” said Sam, as she walked the rest of the way in. “You look positively radiant. How...?”

  “I have no idea. They say a Dr. Bloodstraw brought me out of it. But that makes no sense at all when they say there's no Dr. Bloodstraw to be found in Atlantis. All I know is that when I opened my eyes, this fashion model of a woman in shiny metallic tights with the most incredible head of coal black hair I ever saw, tells me that I need a bath and hops off my bed and leaves. I'd think I was dreaming, but I swear, I mean I'd swear that she was the very one who brought me back. Would she be Dr. Bloodstraw?”

  Sam squinted for a moment. “Dr. Bloodstraw is a man,” she said. “Girls assigned to him object to his big heavy belly and rotten breath.”

  “Well get me out of here,” she said, setting aside her bedtable. I'm ready. Let's go. Where's Nia?”

  “She was by your bed the whole time except when she was at the potentate's last night. I let her sleep.”

  “Well let's go,” she said, swinging her legs out of bed. “Take me to her flat, if you don't mind. I'll wait for her to get up. I'll let her sleep. Aren't you staying there?”

  “I'll bring her back here this evening. If everyone in the world plus the hospital believes his eyes by then, we'll take you home.”

  “All right. All right. I'll behave. I'll behave.”

  * * *

  Tess sat in her Government class thinking about her awful morning as the sublim board raged with scenes of the civil unrest, poverty, disease and misery which the World Alliance claimed to have eradicated when it was launched.

  At daybreak, Jasmine reminded everyone of her new migraine by throwing a vase out her door and covering her head with her pillow. She would be staying home. Tess was careful to lock her room before she left for school, but she worried all day that Jasmine might pick the lock and go in for a bit of snooping about. What if she found the guns? Would she tell Children and Family? Would they try to take Tess into custody when she got home?

  She missed her breakfast, fetching things for Jasmine and had rushed outside only to find that the air was so acrid and heavy with spray that she could not possibly use her inhaler to walk or to ride her bicycle to school and was left with taking the bus, which was something she had never thought safe to do. She had no more found a seat and had resigned herself to staring out the window, when Trent bounced into the seat beside her as if it were his. At least with him there, it wasn't likely that the bus monitors would get away with pinning her down and pulling off her pants.

  Her World History class was mercifully peaceful, with Josh Burgess absent from the seat behind her, but her Careers class was no fun at all, with Amy and Mindy giggling and carrying on, keeping the back of the class disrupted all hour with their cruel banter, much of it about her. And there was not a thing she could do about it either, since her teacher was the Girls Physical Education and Cheerleading coach...

  When she looked up, the sublim board was blank and two strangers were in the room handing out sheets of paper with pictures of each student in the room and a check box by each picture. “Fates! What did I miss?” she thought, casting about as the papers were being handed out. “Very well. They're from Children and Family Assistance. But what are these sheets of paper for? Why are we supposed to check the boxes?” She tugged the shirt of the pimply boy known as Rat Bite, sitting in front of her. “What are we doing?” she whispered.

  “Check the box,” he whispered.

  “Which box?”

  “The one by your stupid picture.”

  “What for?”

  “Shut up! Just do it.”

  “Hurry up bitch!” said the girl behind her. “They got 'o have all these back before they let us go to dinner.”

  This was a bit frightening with Children and Family in the bargain. “I see no professional kids with checked boxes,” she thought, having a final glance each way. “And all the kids from the different barracks have checked theirs. Is this a trap?”

  The girl behind gave her a sharp poke.

  Tess checked her box and sent her paper forward. Immediately the bell rang and she found herself on the down staircase to the cafeteria, trying not to be knocked down by the rush of trotting students on the steps. “It's always the barracks kids who get stuck with the crap when things come up,” she thought. “Is that what I did?”

  She could see that there was some excitement amongst the students over Children and Family's visit as she stood in line, but she still had not figured out what it was by the time she sat at her usual table with her tray.

  “Hey Tess!” said Shanta, scooting over with her tray. “Isn't it great? Everyone with a chance at his own sublim board at home.”

  “So that's it,” said Tess, standing up to blot and whisk at the milk she had spilt on her jeans.

  “You didn't know?”

  “So the box by our picture was for a sublim board, right?”

  “Yeh, but weren't you in class?”

  “I didn't know whether it was more dangerous getting in trouble for not listening, or for what ever the box was I went ahead and checked. So that is it? A sublim board?”

  “Yeh!” said with Shanta with a bounce. “And if we keep our grades up, we can keep them...”

  “And the snot-heads won't have it over us any more!” said Zip with his freckled grin of rotten teeth. “I can't wait for mine.”

  “I'm so excited,” said Shanta. “Aren't you Tess?”

  “Delirious,” she said. But it was another trap and she knew it, just another noose for the Alliance to tighten. “Now I would give a pretty penny to have left it blank. And once again s
he vowed to herself that she would find Nia and her mom and dad and bring them home.

  * * *

  After the last bell Tess raced down the steps to her locker for the new inhaler she had been issued by the nurse. She was pleased because this one meant that she had three new inhalers in spite of Public Health's efforts to discourage people from keeping any reserve supply of them at all. With the cafeteria at the end of the hall closed for the day as well as the hall light being long broken, it was difficult to see to work her combination lock. She made several tries. She had just dropped the inhaler into her skinny bag and slammed her locker when she thought she might have heard a sob.

  “Hello?” she said into the echoes. There was no answer, but she clearly heard a sniffle and saw someone sitting on the floor in front of Mindy Peters's locker.

  “Mindy?” she said as she walked over to see.

  “Beat it!” said Mindy.

  “Righty-o. But are you hurt? I'm not going to leave you here if you are.”

  “Oh go on!” she sobbed. “I'm not hurt. But you can't do anything. And no one's about to.”

  “Maybe I can't,” said Tess, squatting beside her. “But I'm a good listener. And besides, you were nice to me that one time. And no one's around now either. Wait. Is the skinny still gone?”

  “Yeh.”

  “And besides, I can keep my mouth shut.”

  Mindy pressed her forehead to her knees for a moment. “You want to know what Children and Family was really doing when they had everybody's attention in the front, promising sublim boards all over the place?” she said, looking up suddenly. “You really want to know?”

  “Well what?”

  “They were around back in the Second School, rounding up every single second and putting each one on the bus.”

  “Taking them home?”