the student problem 9

 Apologies for yesterday

Chapter 9

 

And the rest you doubtless saw on the tridcasts, or read on the web. Lady and Miss Bronteen were intercepted and replaced with body doubles on the way to greet the emperor, their hair ornaments removed, and placed into a sealed room to observe. Serenaa and I returned with her father, who had forgiven me for wanting to marry her by the time I arrived. And I agreed to teach the rest of the year, so long as I could be married first, so I had a way of dealing with the frustrations caused by other students.

The principal sighed, and agreed. Serenaa was going to get an emeritus degree in psychology for her part in uncovering the plot in any case, and she planned to write books on the psychology of fashion. I was looking forward to encouraging her.

 

From the diary of Serenaa Kerufin

 

I just looked over what I wrote in Jump Space on the way out. Well, I managed to note down everything that was said that Gunny and I overheard, with comments on intonation and what I perceived as intent, which was harder after my mother joined the conversation. However, it looks complete and dispassionate, and having delivered the report I was able to cry all over Daddy. I don’t think I cried too much on Gunny; we had that rather splendid kiss which was a most excellent distraction from my woes, but I do need to accept my mother’s rather lukewarm rejection of me [to be rejected in a positive sort of way is one thing, to be brushed off so casually is more hurtful I find. She’ll be horrified when she discovers that I’m instrumental in laying information against her; and daddy says it’s ok to do so. I just feel really hollow inside.

He was inclined to be angry with me for throwing myself at Gunny, and him letting me,but I told him that doubtless he would have brushed me off had it not been so necessary to save our lives by making like illicit lovers. And once you’ve taken that toy out of the box, it can’t be put back, which Daddy sighed and agreed.

And at least he agrees I couldn’t pick a better man.

 

Harry arrived!  Oh, my! And I just leaped into his arms with a most inappropriate squeal of delight, and he caught me, and held me tight enough it almost hurt, and I swear he was crying in relief.  And we just hung on to each other, until Daddy cleared his throat, loudly.

And then Harry blushed, and put me down, and lost himself in a welter of half sentences, which isn’t like him at all.

And then Daddy nodded.

‘I can see how much my daughter means to you, to hold her like that, rather than go straight for kisses,’ he said. And Harry said, ‘She means everything to me, sir.’  And Daddy said, ‘oh, for goodness sake, snog her into submission but please don’t let me see you groping each other, my digestion is too delicate.’

We went away to explore that concept, which was very nice, and Harry refused to let either of us shed any clothing.

We fell asleep curled up together, and I slept well for the first time since I wrote to Harry about the awful things I was hearing.

On the way home

Harry and I did not have too much time to misbehave in Jump Space as Daddy kept our noses to the grindstone covering protocols. The reason for this became obvious when we stopped off on the way and met up with the emperor and his entourage on progression, to give our reports in person. My blood ran cold when I thought that I might just have gone along with Lisilli and been talked into wearing a deadly hair ornament, had I not had my eyes opened by Harry.

The emperor asked me if there was anything I wanted, and I am afraid I made a complete idiot of myself squeaking ‘Only to marry my Harry, sire,’ which he laughed about and said that such was not within his gift, but that he suspected my wish would be fulfilled. But he did have the court women make me a wedding gown in the latest court style. Court style in general also favours jump suits, since Xander is an active and peripatetic monarch, and too much floaty stuff is a bar to keeping up with it. Tabards over with decoration on seem to be the norm for men and women both, in slightly different styles, and with cloaks for nobles. Harry wore uniform, like Daddy. Anyway, a wedding gown doesn’t have to allow as much freedom of movement, and to show it as something special, it is a contrast to the more utilitarian costumes, being made up of satin bands criss-crossing all the way down from the bust [the uppermost criss crosses going over the shoulders and encompassing a breast each] and all the way down to the knees where the skirt flared out in stiffened pleats. It is very flattering to a slender figure. I also came away with sundry tabards.

 

Back Home.

Well, it was almost anticlimactic. The Lady and Miss Bronteen who really greeted the Emperor were ringers, and you could have heard Lisilli clear to the other side of the galaxy about being deprived of her chance to meet the emperor.

And once I’d done the pretty and showed him around the campus, we could get rid of the visiting dignitaries and get back to normal. I had a wedding to go to.

 

 

Our wedding was small and fairly private, with very few guests, but Miss Ondarool and Mr. Guffah were two of them.

Miss Ondarool and Mr. Guffah were delighted that I was not dead after all. She hugged me and I’m afraid Mr. Guffah was so overcome that he licked my face. He was so embarrassed poor lad, I had to reassure him.

I would have worn uniform to get married in had I not been presented with a suit to get married in by the emperor, and it would have been churlish not to have accepted and worn it. Serenaa looked a picture in a thing which sort of hugged her figure – and what a figure to hug – with a heap of wrappings, and then exploded out like a flower’s bell from the knees. Somehow, although the top part reminded me of a figure-of-eight bandage, it looked a million credits. I wanted to unwrap it.

 

We withdrew to our quarters, where Serenaa proceeded to leap my bones.

“I missed you, I missed you, and then we were with Daddy,” she said. “And I was so scared someone might try to do away with you. I’m so glad they didn’t.”

I decided that I would do everything in my power to make sure that she never found out about any of the attempts on my life.  I doubted Kassi Ondarool wanted to say how she had gone looking for her friend; it had not been a pleasant experience.

I made soothing noises and kissed her.

And she was just as delectable to unwrap as I had imagined, even if it was a whole dress and not wrappings at all.

She seemed to enjoy unwrapping me as well, and tracing the muscles on my belly all the way down to where she might provoke a reaction, and then letting her fingers wander off to seek out my scars and make me growl at her.

We had a great deal of fun winding each other up something rotten before we decided to get on with the fundamentals of the case, which was also sufficiently good fun we had to try it again in various configurations to see if it was as good as last time.

It always was.

I didn’t really want to get up to teach, but I had promised. And Serenaa was going to continue coming to classes anyway, because she felt she had more to learn.

 

It was a bit odd to be back in the classroom, looking at the sea of now familiar faces, albeit some of them now missing forever. And I grieved for those young people so led astray as to have willingly got themselves into this situation.

Most of the class cheered me, and were glad I had been instrumental in stopping a civil war, which was what would have happened; and most of them were aware that this would have meant their deaths in one military or another.

 

Miss Bronteen was not grateful in the least that her life had been saved more directly;  apparently she blamed me for spoiling her opportunity to show off her new fashion to women of the court. At least she was no longer in my class, but in a secure unit where she could be more gently helped. Miss Faruu turned out to have known exactly what was going on, as did Mr. Dretanaar; and for their youth were merely serving a life sentence in the sort of penal battalions where high fashion meant being clean.

“What did you learn from this whole business?” I asked the class. Miss Ondarool put her hand up right away. I nodded to her.

“To marry an industrialist with no interest in politics,” she said, earnestly.

“And knowing one’s limitations is an important lesson too,” I said.

“Sir, what alerted you to how it would be done?” asked Mr. Ruhe.

“Well, Mr. Ruhe, you will laugh at me, because it was a coincidence,” I said. “The brain puts together clues, but sometimes makes a shortcut jump from what one is seeing, to something which makes sense of what one is seeing. I had the accounts of Lord Bronteen examined, noted that he had a new swimming pool, and also, looking at the new fashion, thought how like certain poisonous flowers the hair ornaments looked. Especially the ones with green globes. In my head I linked this to chlorine, used to clean swimming pools, but also deadly as a gas. However, that was where the coincidence lay, because I knew chlorine would not be deadly enough, especially in small quantities. So I asked Miss Ondarool to ask Miss Bronteen how she came up with the idea, and I apologise to Miss Ondarool for putting you potentially at some risk; but Miss Bronteen was happy to brag that her daddy had bought her a snowglobe, and had remarked how pretty it would be as a hair ornament. That it was his idea was confirmation.”

“Thank you, sir, for being honest about the way you got there. What was the gas?”

I shuddered.

“H14,” I replied.

I wasn’t the only one shuddering. H14 was banned, because although it was supposedly a fast-acting, fast-dispersing gas, it could also enter the water systems of a world and cause horrible birth defects for years afterwards.

It would have been unkind to even speculate that this explained a lot about Miss Bronteen.

There were other people who spoke up.

One of them had been one of Miss Bronteen’s disciples, Miss Aadniraa.

“I’ve learned that there’s a big difference between resenting those of different background and wanting to kill them,” she said. “I’ve been looking into genetic differences to try to prove inherent superiority, but I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” I said, surprised and genuinely pleased that she had been so big as to apologise. “It takes a big person to admit that they have been misled. I hope you will always continue to read and study and find things out for yourself, rather than let others lead you.”

“I want to repeat this year,” she said. “And come back one day to teach this subject. I can give more personal views on how easy it is to be led astray; I’ve been reading and making notes on Yin G’warz to see where he was bedazzled and blinded by those his parents associated with, so that he missed a lot of fundamentals of what was going on at his own social level and above, even whilst noting the poverty his parents ignored.”

“That, one day, may be a most excellent doctorate thesis and seminal work,” I said.

She looked pleased.

Most of them felt that they had learned not to be taken in by apparent superficiality. I hoped they were right.

I, however, got to go back to my lovely wife where there was very little debate until we were quite satiated.

I was a very happy man.

 

Being a very happy man lasted until I received the big parchment letter covered in seals which was a patent of nobility making me count of the damn planet in Faruu’s place. And promoting me to general.

The personal note apologising and explaining that he had to exploit his most loyal subjects was no help at all.

 

Bloody aristocracy and emperors. No gratitude.