Ingenious #1

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Q uiggs skipped athletic training again, grabbed a carton of salted nuts from his roommate’s stash, and headed to the library. Why waste time toning his body when his inheritance and superior mind guaranteed him a marriage contract before he graduated? Cadets graduating without a marriage contract served in the military or as a concubine for three years—both services requiring fit, trained bodies. Quiggs could waddle like a stuffed gull and still win the hand of the prettiest deb in the Triangle.

With men outnumbering women ten to one, the academy trained its cadets to revere the female sex. Yet the mysteries of female plumbing sparked more fear in Quiggs than curiosity.

Presently, the only mysteries arousing his curiosity were locked inside the library’s ancient tomes.

Quiggs puffed up three flights of stairs to the library, pausing on the landing to catch his breath. He pinched an inch of belly through his white tee. Maybe he should’ve run laps around the arena this morning.

But the sunshine through the library’s corner windows warmed his favorite table, and the tangy rinse on the mopped stone floor muted the stench drifting in from the canal. Why waste a splendid morning on athletics when today might be the day he found the page explaining how to kill the vines?

Quiggs’s mother and three fathers had discovered the crate of tomes in a storage bunker during a botanical expedition in the outland before he was born. The tomes seemed to contain a detailed history of technology to ensure the survival of the colonists in the event of another series of catastrophes wrecking Earth’s habitat.

Too bad their descendants didn’t understand a single word.

A rebellion had broken out after the construction of the triangular canal and its three port cities. The original structures had withstood the fighting, but the population was decimated, and fanatics had ravaged the library and engineering rooms. A century later, their history erased, the survivors had developed a separate language, mathematics, and science.

The tomes had baffled scholars until Quiggs had enrolled in Port Memphis Academy when he was eight. Ten years later, he had roughly deciphered six of the tomes and had modified the simplest inventions using the Triangle’s limited resources.

His unique mind exasperated his professors whenever Quiggs tried to explain his methods. The alien symbols coalesced for him. It helped he remembered everything he read and effortlessly pulled the pieces together to complete the puzzles. His professors called him a throwback to the ancestors. His classmates called him a conceited prick.

Quiggs pulled a tome from a shelf marked Reserved for Cadet Quiggs Fallon . The tome was one of the thicker ones, leathery brown with metal rings binding waxy pages resistant to moisture and rot. As part of their master plan, the ancestors had created virtually indestructible materials in their underground labs. Port Memphis Academy, located at the southernmost point of the canal, was the best example. It had withstood eight centuries of cadets. Like all the original buildings, the academy was constructed of glass as hard as metal and beige stone a sledgehammer couldn’t crack. Embedded in the ceiling and walls were blue veins acting like light sensors. Whatever the power source, the sensors functioned as well now as they had when installed.

Quiggs had tried to get to the workings inside the walls of his barracks with a sledgehammer when he was a sixth-year cadet and ended up with splints all the way up his elbows. The wall hadn’t been scratched.

Sadly, the academy was built to house ten times the number of current cadets. Enrollment had steadily declined the last century. He’d heard rumors the Ruling Mothers were raising the mandatory number of children per marriage from four to five.

Quiggs leaned back in a chair with his feet on the table and the tome balanced on his belly. He nibbled nuts, licking salt off his fingers while he thumbed through the odd waxy pages for references to the broadleaved purple vine.

In other tomes he had deciphered methods of processing the sap, leaves, roots, and pods of the bioengineered vine into fuel, clothing, medicines, food. There was even a formula to distill wine from the purple sap—big, big mistake, and prohibited on pain of death today.

Quiggs had yet to find a reference on how to kill the vine. The ancestors had bioengineered it to adapt and flourish in the barren expanse of the outland across the canal. When the colonists emerged from their underground shelter, it provided a simple, self-sustaining existence—a masterpiece of bioengineering to support them while they converted the interior of the Triangle into farmland.

Then the damn fucker had turned against the colonists, and nothing killed it.

The vine spread across the vast outland, becoming an unnavigable jungle with a towering canopy and tangled roots. It fostered vicious insects. Harvesting was dangerous and also less productive. If not for goats grazing the fringe along the outbank, the vine would have crossed the canal and infested the Triangle’s precious soil.

Quiggs’s parents had theorized the vines’ engineering perceived frequent harvesting as a threat to its survival. In retaliation, it produced a substance affecting the minds of citizens who ingested the wine distilled from its fermented sap—mainly men because women abstained from wine during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Many women were slaughtered when they protested the drinking.

The insanity infected the bloodline of male offspring, and generations of sons turned violent at the onset of puberty. When women wrested control of the Triangle, humans were on the verge of extinction. Sporadic rampages continued to break out until only stringent training suppressed the stain. Laws were passed, underscored with convoluted rules for behavior. All males required diligent guidance. The Ruling Mothers sequestered boys in the academy from the time they were eight until they graduated at twenty. Failure to graduate got a cadet executed.

Quiggs remembered kissing his mother goodbye the day he enrolled, the petal smoothness of her sun-freckled cheeks, the salty taste of her tears, the scent of her lavender sachet. He never saw her again. His parents vanished during a botanical expedition before he turned eleven, the age when a cadet was considered safely indoctrinated and allowed his first visit from family.

Stupid miserable rules. Quiggs hadn’t set foot outside the academy since he’d enrolled. The Ruling Mothers isolated sexually inactive cadets like himself from the public, and the laws tasked the academy with shielding an inactive cadet from sexual stimuli until the cadet’s acorn bloomed naturally into wood. After a cadet registered active, the Ruling Mothers required the academy to stringently manage healthy sexual releases in the sex clinic. Because of his classification, Quiggs required a chaperone to enter unrestricted areas within the building. He lowered his eyes when visitors approached.

The laws were a steaming pile of goat shit.

Quiggs thumbed the pages, scanning for vine, and stopped at an illustration resembling an inverted teardrop with a basket. Looked interesting. What did it do? He enjoyed a tickle of superiority at how easily he deciphered the description.

The inverted teardrop was a balloon filled with hot air fueled by a furnace. Suspended by cables to the balloon was a basket for passengers. The flying balloon lifted people into the clouds and traveled extended distances. As he worked out the schematics on the following pages, his pulse quickened. Sewing panels of flame-proofed material with vents was doable. He could inflate the balloon with hot air funneled from the boiling springs beneath the city. Configuring a furnace to keep the balloon filled for lengthy travel was challenging but also doable.

Feeding the furnace? Not doable without inventing an intense but compact fuel.

He drifted into one of his deep mental fogs, configuring a small combustion furnace that wouldn’t blast him into a thousand pieces when he dropped a lit fuel stick down the chute.

When a heavy hand shook his shoulder, Quiggs jerked. He sensed he’d spent little time in this fog but was never certain if minutes or hours had passed when he emerged. The younger cadets loved to play pranks when they caught him buried in one.

“Dean Cagney requests your presence,” a gruff voice said. The messenger was Cressley, ex-military with a left eyepatch and a hook for his left hand.

Quiggs returned the tome to its slot. “What does Dean Cagney want with me?” As if he didn’t know. He turned eighteen today.

“Didn’t say. Ducked his head out of the office in the middle of a conference and snapped an order to fetch you.”

Quiggs pretended he didn’t anticipate a surprise party with iced cakes and his first ale to celebrate his coming of age. He followed Cressley to the top floor of the administrative wing. In the wide hallway outside the dean’s office, Quiggs signed in at the desk with an elderly monitor. Every able male in the Triangle worked. Idleness tempted forth deviant behavior, which was a death sentence.

Cressley left to escort a senior from the athletic field to the medical clinic. With the approaching skills placements for military applicants, the competition heated up. Failure to place stuck a cadet in the concubine lottery .

Waiting for his name to be called, Quiggs strolled down the hall reading the news slates displayed on easels. Port Paducah and Port Lourdes reported no recent sightings of ferals. The Herders Guild opened nominations for officers. Port Memphis increased the fine on urination off the dock. Commander Max Bronn visited the Academy tomorrow.

Since he was a sequestered inactive, Quiggs had never crossed paths with the youngest commander to serve the Triangle. Who better to fight ferals than a quarter-breed? With over fifty kills to his credit, the man was a legend at twenty-four, cheered wherever he made an appearance. For each kill, his manservant embroidered a tiny red skull on one of the wide cuffs of the Commander’s navy jacket.

The cadets fell all over themselves for a close view.

Quiggs stopped at a glass-fronted cabinet with shelves of plaques etched with the names of Academic Champions stretching back eight centuries, the Fallon name prominent. He anticipated his seventh title at the end of this school year, plus two more before graduating at twenty. On the opposite wall was a cabinet for the plaques of past Athletic Champions, the Fallon name noticeably absent. Commander Bronn had held the title of Athletic Champion for an unparalleled record of eight years. He’d graduated undefeated in all competitions.

Quiggs anticipated beating him by winning nine championships to Commander Bronn’s eight.

An example of Brain winning over Bronn.

His crack of laughter at the silly pun earned a shush from the elderly monitor.

Quiggs folded his hands in apology and moved toward the end of the hall. Prominently displayed on an easel between a pair of tall windows was a portrait of newly elected Governor Anne Lyre with her family.

The governor posed regally on an ornate gilt chair with First Husband William seated beside her. Second Husband Cyrus stood behind to her right, Third Husband Palmer to her left. Her four unmarried daughters sat at her feet in extravagant pools of pink skirts.

Quiggs grinned. The youngest with the pug nose was definitely Cyrus’s offspring. The other three had William’s blond good looks. After her previous third husband fell off a flatboat into the canal, Governor Lyre had married the gorgeous dark-haired Palmer with his sulky mouth and liquid brown eyes. Bad timing for a plunge. A passing knot of eels had devoured him. Poor guy . The campaigning widow grieved a month before replacing him with Palmer.

And poor, poor Palmer, married off to the governor hours after he graduated from the academy last year. Rumor had it his mother was appointed Secretary of the Treasury for her consent.

Quiggs pitied Palmer. He pitied any third husband who was more of a toy for the other husbands if the wife had borne the mandatory four children as Governor Lyre had. After four—soon to be five if the law changed—a wife was free to cease conjugal duties and campaign for a seat in the Assembly.

Because the ratio of males to females was ten to one, two-thirds of the male population never touched the soft curves of a wife. At the turn of the second century, to prevent sexual disharmony from disturbing the peace, the Assembly of Ruling Mothers enacted laws encouraging men to form same-sex relationships, with wedlock between two men as respected as marriage. In compliance with the law, the academy trained its cadets to accept same-sex relationships. During their junior and senior years, cadets enjoyed appointments with each other in the sex clinic. When disharmony persisted, the Assembly mandated the concubine lottery.

The dean’s door opened, and Dr. Keith, in charge of medical, and Professor Hines, the chief therapist of the academy’s sex clinic, walked out. Both were flushed and clearly agitated, their unbuttoned white coats flapping behind them. They saw Quiggs and stopped, their expressions grim.

Well, fuck. Now Quiggs suspected what the conference was about .

Dr. Keith stormed over as if he’d like to grip a fistful of Quiggs’s white tee and shake him like a shoe with an irritating pebble lodged in the toe. The doctor’s dignified face puffed up in outrage, his fluffy gray side whiskers twitching from the strain. If Quiggs hooked the doctor’s mouth over a funnel into a flying balloon, he’d have a ready source of hot air for flight. He cracked a slight smile at the mental image, and the doctor’s temper exploded.

“You egotistical, stubborn brat! You think losing my position as Chief of Staff is amusing?”

A blob of spittle struck Quiggs’s chin. He let it slide. His medical condition wasn’t hurting anyone. Why the sudden urgency to cure it?

“No more excuses, Cadet Quiggs. You will not cost me my position.” Dr. Keith strode from the hall, fists clenched at his sides before Quiggs could argue. He wiped his chin off with the back of his hand.

Professor Hines had counseled every cadet enrolled in Port Memphis Academy the last thirty years, including each of Quiggs’s fathers. The professor’s broad face, with his soft brown eyes always crinkled in a kind smile, was serious now. “Please cooperate, Quiggs. The dean has also threatened to demote me if you aren’t in the active barracks by next month.”

Quiggs gazed at him, confused. “But I’m not stubborn. I practice the exercises you prescribed. Nothing happens.”

Professor Hines patted Quiggs’s shoulder. “I suggested a new therapy to Dean Cagney and Dr. Keith. Something special for the academy’s most decorated cadet.” He lowered his voice. “It’s time we bend a few rules.”

Quiggs was all in for bending the rules to become an active. “Like what?” he whispered.

Professor Hines nudged Quiggs toward the dean’s office. “We will discuss the details later. The dean is waiting. Don’t antagonize him. Focus, listen, nod.”

Quiggs thought of the many times his logic had worn the dean’s voice down to a wisp .

“Lose the smile, Quiggs,” the professor reminded him before walking away.

Quiggs rapped twice on the doorframe of the dean’s office before peering inside. “Cadet Quiggs Fallon here to see you, sir.”

Dean Cagney filled the leather chair, his portly frame encased in a flowing black robe. To conserve resources and to restrain competitive male pride, the law decreed a strict dress code for each level of a profession. A wide white collar filling the square neckline of the robe pinched his neck. In his fifties, he wore the full beard and shaved pate of an upper academic.

“Come in, Cadet Quiggs. Close the door.”

The clear-pitched, solemn tone warned Quiggs this was no birthday celebration with ale and cake. He stood at attention in the middle of the room with shoulders straight, long skinny legs apart, and hands clasped behind his back over his waist-long braid. His white tee and pants bore smudges of yellow spice from the nuts. After he registered sexually active, he’d switch to a black uniform with chunky lace-up boots. After he successfully penetrated a partner in the sex clinic his junior year, he’d be allowed to cut off his virgin’s braid.

Another stupid miserable law.

The dean deliberately ignored him and frowned at a slate on his desk. As the silence stretched, Quiggs glanced around, impatient to get this discussion over with. The office had the same boring beige walls and stone floor as every room in the academy. On Quiggs’s left was a bench beneath a rack of floggers, canes, and paddles to punish infractions. More impressive to unruly cadets was the pedestal displaying a feral skull with yellow fangs, a trophy of the deathblow the dean had delivered during his military service.

The arm that swung that killing club was not an arm a cadet wanted punishing his ass.

Dean Cagney cleared his throat, and Quiggs straightened to attention from the slouch he’d eased into while his thoughts rambled.

The dean’s piercing black eyes regarded Quiggs. “Congratulations on reaching a milestone in your life. You are eighteen and eligible for ale in the dining hall and for courtship in the visitor’s lounge.”

Invitations to meet prospective wives were an honor coveted by cadets when they began their eleventh year. But Quiggs was an inactive. He had four months to correct his problem before his junior year began.

Dean Cagney pointed to a stack of expensive black-edged cards on his desk. “The invitations are already arriving from mothers rightfully assuming you are eager to meet their daughters.”

“But I haven’t begun my junior year yet.”

The dean mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “You passed your junior year when you were eleven. You’re in advanced studies until you’ve completed twelve years under the guardianship of the academy as the law requires. Damn rude of the Mothers to rush you, but I can’t stop them.”

“Tell them I’m not interested in marriage yet.”

“The mothers don’t care if you aren’t interested,” the dean snapped back. “They don’t care if you stink like a goat and have the rolling red eyes of a sucker-toed lizard. You, my boy, with your inheritance and decorated pedigree and academic record, are expected to marry one of their virginal daughters the day you graduate. The highest service paid to the territory is siring children, and you have your pick of fertile debs. But until you are registered as sexually active, the law forbids your courtship.”

Quiggs shrugged. “Tell them the truth. I’m inactive.”

The dean slammed his palms on the desk, scattering the cards. “My academy is responsible for the sexual training of cadets. It’s the law! If you flunk, the Mothers will replace the men responsible. Not only is my position in jeopardy, but also every department head who has supervised you. You will fix this problem!”

Under such pressure, his dick would be struck by lightning before it threw wood.

“I requested physical and mental assessments from Dr. Keith and Professor Hines.” The dean picked up a thin yellow slate and rattled off the results. “No visible physical defects. Height is six foot one, same measurement as a year ago. Green eyes are sharp-sighted despite studies. Plain roundish face with long nose, wide mouth, good teeth, pale complexion. Brown hair has healthy gleam. Physique is thick-waisted with straight skinny limbs and poor posture.”

Quiggs frowned down at himself. He straightened and sucked in his stomach. Starting tomorrow, he’d run laps. He glanced up to find the dean waiting for his attention.

The dean picked up where he left off. “Physical maturation confirmed by facial hair, pit hair, pubic hair. Penis produces strong stream of normal urine. Testicles are descended, free of lumps. The cadet is healthy. There is no physical explanation for delayed penile tumescence. Mental maladjustment is suspected.”

Quiggs rolled his eyes. The doctors and therapists always blamed his aggressive intellect for diverting energized blood from his limp cock to his brain. So what if it did? His studies fascinated him, and his inventions improved the lives of citizens. As Academic Champion, he won the right to a small private room instead of bunking with the baby cadets. Shower time was divided by age, which meant Quiggs, the oldest in the inactive barracks, showered last. Unfortunately, he enjoyed solving linguistic puzzles instead of wanking when he showered alone.

“Quiggs!”

Quiggs jerked from his thoughts to find Dean Cagney scowling at him. “Sir, yes, sir!”

“It is time to set aside your studies and allow your mind to pursue flights of fancy.”

Flights of fancy… like his hot air balloon. The sooner he fixed his problem, the sooner he had the freedom to leave the academy during daylight. He wouldn’t require a chaperone. He could rent a work tower outside the academy to build his newest invention. He could even walk inside a bakery and buy a shelf of treats. “Professor Hines mentioned a special therapy for me. ”

The dean glanced at the closed door and lowered his voice. “It bends the rules. Strict secrecy must be maintained.”

Quiggs focused his full attention on the dean’s sweating face.

“The professor believes you need strong visual inspiration to construct sexual fantasies during your sleep. He believes even in your sleep, your mind blocks any curiosity outside of your studies. The lack of visual inspiration explains why you’ve never experienced a nocturnal emission.”

Quiggs hadn’t a clue what strong visual inspiration entailed. Where was this going?

“As of this afternoon, the showers on the floor of the inactives are under repair.”

Quiggs saw where this was going. A smile teased the corners of his mouth as he listened to the dean explain.

“The inactives will shower at an earlier hour on the floor where the actives live. Cressley will lead you upstairs when it’s your turn.” The dean cleared his throat. “Arrangements will be made for a few juniors and seniors to shower with you. You will watch their actions from behind a hole in a shower curtain Cressley will hang. Whatever you watch will not be supervised. Or ever mentioned to anyone. Are you with the plan?”

Quiggs nodded hard enough to crack nuts under his chin.

“Any questions, cadet?”

“What about Beau, sir? He won’t understand why he can’t follow me into the shower.”

“Your little roommate is on a barge to Port Paducah delivering a herd of nervous dairy goats. He thinks he’s returning by evening. The barge, however, will dock for three days of maintenance.” The dean relaxed back in his chair. “Beau will be stranded and treated as a guest by the Herders Guild.”

Quiggs lifted his eyebrows. “Sir, do you remember the last time you separated Beau and me?”

The dean rubbed the heels of his hands up and down his face.

Yeah, they both remembered the uproar.. .

Quiggs’s little roommate Beau was a half-breed feral, unable to transition into an aggressive adult male.

A flatboat of herders searching for stray goats had found him sitting by the outbank of the canal near Port Memphis. Six ornery brown-and-tan grazers surrounded Beau, nuzzling him for attention. Something about Beau—his happy chortles, his scent, the flickering vertical pupils of green eyes too big for his face—transfixed the goats.

Beau greeted the herders with a goofy innocence. He bounded toward the flatboat with the stray goats trotting up the gangplank behind him like a line of ducklings. His flattish nose sniffed at the herders’ hands when they petted him, but he didn’t bare his teeth except to laugh when they tickled beneath his chin.

The herders suspected he was a half-breed, inheriting the gentler nature of his abducted human father. A long slender neck supported his head, which was shaped like a lopsided triangle with a receding chin, wide forehead, and lumpy jaw. He was so homely the herders thought it a good joke to call him Beau. While he sat cross-legged on the boat with the goats licking and scent-marking him, they fed him their leftover lunch.

The herders liked the little breed, but taking him to Port Memphis meant his death. The law executed half-breeds before they transitioned and turned aggressive.

Unable to turn him in, the herders forced Beau off the flatboat. He squatted on the bank and rocked on his paddle-sized feet as he yowled his distress. The goats reacted by butting, biting, and kicking the herders until the men allowed Beau back aboard. The goats immediately surrounded him, and the meanest grazers behaved as cute as newborn kids when Beau petted them.

The herders recognized his potential. With the support of the powerful Herders Guild, a benevolent execution was delayed while doctors in Port Memphis determined if Beau posed a danger.

Because his testicles had not descended, the doctors deemed him a half-breed incapable of transition. Males were as scarce among the ferals as women were among humans and served one purpose: stud service. Males who failed to transition into worthy breeding males were killed and eaten.

Beau had probably fled his family before he was dinner.

The doctors warned the defect shortened Beau’s lifespan. The guild accepted guardianship for those remaining years and paid to board Beau at the academy, where he’d learn basic speech and mannerisms by imitating the inactive cadets.

Instead, the cadets bewildered him by pranking him his first day in the dining hall.

After having his tray upended and milk poured over his head, Beau was working up to a yowling fit when he spotted Quiggs eating alone, watching him. Perhaps because Quiggs had green eyes or perhaps because he had recently lost his family and suffered the acute loneliness Beau felt, Beau took one look, sniffed, and attached himself to Quiggs, who wiped him off with a napkin.

Every evening after working the herd, Beau returned to be with his friend. He always shared the special treats from the herders with Quiggs. He slept in the bunk above Quiggs. Sometimes he draped himself over the foot of the bunk like a littermate, or he snuggled his friend when Quiggs had nightmares.

In the beginning, Quiggs simply tolerated Beau like a pet. How could he kick aside a happy little oddity like Beau whose silvery laugh was as endearing as his yowl was earsplitting?

Except for the loincloth Quiggs fashioned for him, Beau refused to wear a uniform. Coming under fire by shopkeepers for Beau’s public indecency, Dean Cagney expelled him from the academy and forced him to sleep in a stall with the goats until he agreed to dress properly. Beau had squatted on the straw-covered floor and rocked and yowled for a week without wearing down.

His abrupt absence upset the goat herds. Milking volume dropped. Does miscarried when he didn’t feed them their special mash. The kids bleated for him. Instead of grazing, the brown-and-tans searched the vines for their missing Beau.

The Herders Guild, with many members complaining of bites and limping from nasty kicks, confronted the Assembly of Ruling Mothers about Beau’s uniform.

What was the problem upsetting the city? Really? The Assembly fixed it by ruling the loincloth was Beau’s uniform. End of problem.

Beau had never spent another night apart from Quiggs.

The dean sighed as he regarded Quiggs’s lifted brows. “I told the herders to drug him and lock him in a cellar if he starts yowling.”

Ironically, if Quiggs told Beau he stank and needed to take a shower with him, Beau would vanish until the whistle for lights out. Telling Beau he couldn’t shower with him would set off the unhappy yowling.

Oh, well, too late now.