Ingenious #1

Chapter 6

Chapter Six

H is footlocker was moved into the bedroom while Quiggs waited in the hallway. He thanked the guard, then locked the door. Alone at last, he looked about his furnished apartment. The place was used for visiting dignitaries, so it was pretty damn wonderful. Now it belonged to him.

Herbs grew in the balcony planters, scenting the air. He had upholstered chairs, a desk, built-in bookcases, a stocked food cabinet, and a small eating table neatly arranged in a larger-than-average living room with wall-to-wall green carpet. Best of all was a separate bedroom with a double-width bed covered by whisper-soft white linens. He plopped down on the thick mattress, staring at a ceiling instead of an upper bunk with Beau’s rump denting the middle. He wallowed in the luxury a minute before stripping and taking a long blissful shower with the spray aimed away from his sleeved cock. In two weeks, he could remove the sleeve.

That night he enjoyed his deepest sleep since moving into the active barracks. So quiet with such sweet air. No disgusting farts, sweat, cum. No blaring whistles before sunrise.

Waking up married began the best day of Quiggs’s life.

The First Family sent a basket of fruit and breakfast muffins with a letter welcoming him into the family.

Rosamunde sent him the journals with a note in elegant penmanship.

I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, your mother wanted us to have a meet-and-greet.

They weren’t lying to him. Rosamunde had discovered the curing process. If not for the audit, the First Family would have formed a friendly business partnership so he could invent a furnace, with the likelihood he’d have developed a warm regard for Rosamunde’s intelligence and beauty. But marriage? Female plumbing terrified him. He wanted to lose his virginity with his face buried in the musky scent of a man.

Quiggs breakfasted on the balcony, enjoying the lovely view of the grassy Legislative Plaza, and listened to the heralds tout the marriage of the century and how the young couple were combining their research to bring fuel to the Triangle.

He bit into an apple, thinking his apartment—every apartment—lacked a cooking stove. What if he designed a furnace to fire a simple cooktop, a more practical application of fuel than a flying balloon?

He sent a request to Cyrus, who contacted Witters and Meeks, the top chemist and the top metallurgist in Port Paducah. The pair agreed to relocate their studio to Port Memphis if Quiggs paid their rather exorbitant wages. The amount of his wealth amazed Quiggs. His inventions had earned him some hefty revenues.

Quiggs hired Witters and Meeks within minutes of meeting them. They rented a storage tower with a retractable roof, taller than the city’s seven-story rampart and built to store floors of grain for a growing population. It had stood idle for centuries. The flat roof, constructed of a pair of glassy red panels, still opened and closed smoothly with a simple control switch. One day, his flying balloon would soar him through the opened panels.

Quiggs worried Witters and Meeks would treat him like a youngster, but both men greeted him with respect, eager to work with him.

Witters was married, in his forties, with four grown children and a wife active in the Assembly. He constantly nibbled food while remaining slim as a stick, his shoulders narrow as his hips. Meeks, a few years younger, had wedded a soldier after both completed military service. Meeks was short with the solid muscles of a man who worked metal for a living. His husband assisted him.

The collaboration launched as smoothly as he hoped his flying balloon would.

The governor’s words echoed. “ My dear Cadet Quiggs, what is it you want most from your life the next two years?”

All of this!

Two weeks passed in a blur. Cyrus’s cordiality surprised him. If Quiggs needed rules stretched, permits granted, obstructions removed—Cyrus greased the wheels.

He received daily slates from Governor Lyre updating him on Beau’s behavior. His yowling weakened after a week, and at times, he stopped and just squatted and rocked. By the second week, he paced his cell between bouts of yowling and complained about boiled grains. He begged for milk and meat. He missed his herd, especially the babies. He was angry with his Quiggs and did not want to see his mean friend. The words stung.

Rosamunde wrote him often. Each letter expressed confidence in his ability to invent the combustion furnaces. If his cooktops worked, Rosamunde would plant orchards across the canal along the outbank to meet the demand. The trees matured rapidly without special care, needing only a few goats to keep the vines from suffocating them. She confessed she enjoyed his correspondence and found herself missing him.

Huh. He was glad someone missed him. Beau continued to reject his visits.

Dr. Keith released Quiggs from the sleeve. Testing his first erection four weeks after the surgery was unpleasant, but Professor Hines reassured him the sensitivity would ease. He also counseled that two years of solitary masturbation would take care of the awkwardness of a marriage bed.

Quiggs enjoyed exploring the city. After his medical visit, he bought a sack of glazed buns and walked around the four miles of crenellated rampart, lightheaded with his freedom. A busy dock wrapped around the entire base of the exterior wall. He had studied the history of the capitol city, yet after ten years of living here, he had never walked the rampart.

When the colonists emerged from their underground shelter, they had no concept of what dangers awaited them. The pitted black surface appeared bereft of lifeforms for a hundred miles in all directions, but what had lurked beyond? To protect the farmers and their fields from predators, the ancestors designed the triangular canal. To repel invasions by intelligent carnivores, the seven-story tall rampart enclosing the city was patrolled by guards with deadly weapons. That was about all that was known of the Triangle’s beginnings.

Today, archers traced the walkway around the rampart, their eyes scanning the endless vista of tangled purple vines that had claimed the outland—vines eager to cross the canal and swallow up the Triangle.

The Triangle of land enclosed by the canal contained port cities at the points and fenced, square farms inside the mainland. Port Memphis, like its sister cities, was laid out in long blocks divided by a grid of paved streets scaled to accommodate vehicular traffic, not the current pushcarts. The four main streets ran from a corner of the Legislative Plaza, situated in the center of the city, to a gate in each wall.

The city’s austere, rectangular buildings, constructed of seamless beige stone, were erected using machinery and technology that vanished after the rebellion. Judging by the portico of the Legislative Building, the colonists had planned to beautify their city but were interrupted. The other buildings had a sleek, stripped-to-the bone look. They were functional and comfortable but needed fleshing out. The roofs looked as if more floors were to be added as the population grew.

Walking through the city, Quiggs noted little socializing away from the plaza, pubs, and dining halls, and absolutely no children playing anywhere. He felt fortunate to have been raised on a farm with patient, doting parents.

Quiggs’s work tower was located on the south side of the city near the rounded turn of the canal, where it began the first leg of its triangle, a twenty-mile stretch northeast to Port Paducah. The second leg was west of Port Paducah to Port Lourdes. The third leg was southeast of Port Lourdes to Port Memphis and ended where it rounded the south side and began the first leg again. The canal’s engineered current made boats the easiest mode of travel, but travel was one-way, counterclockwise.

Quiggs polished off the last of the buns. He stared over the rampart at the vines, wondering where the lost shelter of the ancestors was buried.

The third week of marriage passed. Quiggs left work eager to try out his horny dick after a week of patient coaxing. Tonight was the night!

A courier waited at attention in front of Quiggs’s apartment door. He wore the tricolored armbands representing the Assembly of Ruling Mothers .

“Cadet Quiggs Fallon?” the courier asked.

“I am.”

“For you, cadet.” Without further words, he handed Quiggs a scroll tied with a black braid and strode away with measured steps.

Inside his small living room, Quiggs unrolled the scroll, expecting an invitation to a gala requiring the presence of the governor’s son-in-law. Instead, it appeared to be a formal proclamation.

Quiggs heard a soft whine from the bedroom on his right and froze. Just when he thought he had the shower all to himself to wank his new dick.

The scroll he read was a proclamation signed by the governor, every member of the Assembly, the justices of the territory, and the officers of the Herders Guild. The proclamation stated the untransitioned half-breed Beau was classified as non-male and could cohabit with Cadet Quiggs Fallon in the academy without jeopardizing the cadet’s marriage.

The whine grew louder at Quiggs’s silence.

Quiggs rolled up the scroll, thinking he’d like to stuff half up Beau’s ass and light the other half on fire. Or maybe he’d take the scroll and beat the life out of his non-male pet.

He stormed into the bedroom only to skid to a halt. What the fuck?

His wonderful big bed was gone, replaced by his creaky old double bunk. Beau sat cross-legged in the shadows of the upper bunk, watching Quiggs smack the scroll against his palm.

“Don’t like big bed,” Beau told him. His voice wasn’t the least raspy after three weeks.

“Don’t speak to me,” Quiggs ground out.

“Your Beau is sorry. Misses his good friend Quiggs.”

Quiggs glared at him. He was crusted with filth.

“You have messy braid. Need your Beau.”

“Never mind my braid. How’d you get back?”

“I yowl because I unhappy without my Quiggs. Goats unhappy without me. Herders really, really unhappy with law saying bad if I live with you.”

“You want to know what unhappy is? I’ll show you unhappy!” Quiggs ran at Beau, intending to beat the shit out of him for taking away his big wide bed. Beau covered his face with his hands, whimpering. His knobby wrists were covered in rope burns. Quiggs realized the crusted filth covering Beau’s scrawny body was dried blood and dropped the scroll.

“Come here. Let me see your face.” Quiggs squeezed the words out.

Beau lowered his hands and eased into the light, revealing his battered features.

Gentle discipline? Sworn promise not to hurt him however long it took?

When Beau hadn’t stopped yowling for Quiggs, the governor had ordered her guards to break him. They had tied him to a post and lashed him until he’d bled. It had to be her guards. The herders would have wept at the cruelty. Had the Herders Guild appealed to the Assembly to save him from being whipped to death?

The anger drained away. He missed Beau’s hands braiding his hair, the tight hugs when Beau saw him at the end of the day. He missed Beau sliding under the sheet to snuggle when the nightmares woke him. He had everything he needed for the next two years—except the affectionate touch of a friend.

Quiggs sat on the bottom bunk, silent a few minutes. “If we live together, you must promise to follow my rules.”

Beau swung down, dancing foot to foot. His scrawny body was crusted with excrement as well as dried blood. “I be good. I be sooooo goooood.”

He was too goofish to hate. How could the guards whip him?

“Promise me you’ll never come inside the bathroom when I’m in there with the door closed.” He raised a finger to cut off Beau’s protest. “Don’t ever ask why. Don’t whine. Don’t lean your ear against the door to listen. Promise the kind of promise you won’t forget.”

Beau nodded. “You must use your hand, or your balls swell up with seed and burst. Herders tell me this. They say Beau can’t bother you, or you will get sick balls.”

Quiggs kept a straight face. “Yeah. I don’t want my balls getting sick.”

Beau puffed out his chest. “I glad I don’t got balls. I not a male. Law says not bad if I live with my friend Quiggs.”

“Come here, runt. Let me see what they did to you.”

Beau leapt on his lap and buried his head in Quiggs’s neck with a deep sigh. Quiggs stifled a gag. “I miss my friend Quiggs. Goats miss me and bite and kick. Governor tells guards to cut out my tongue if I keep yowling and won’t work.”

“Nobody told me this!”

“Herders say they quit if my tongue cut out. Max comes with soldiers to stop trouble. Lots of big talk.” Beau puffed out his chest. “When talk over today, I not a male anymore. Max pat my head. He says I free to live with my friend Quiggs.”

“Let me… get this straight. Are you saying Commander Max Bronn rescued you?”

“Max my friend now. Tells me to call him Max.”

“Damn. You actually met him.” Quiggs was impressed the commander stood up for Beau. Then again, the commander was a quarter feral. “What’s he like?”

“Big. Bad. Scary. Max tells governor next skull he sews on jacket is hers, so she better fix law.”

Quiggs snickered. “I like him. Wish I’d been there.”

“Max tells me to send for him if my friend Quiggs need help.” Beau slanted a look through his swollen eyes at Quiggs. “He tells me you no visit because they lie to you. That right?”

“I asked about you every day. The governor said you didn’t want me to visit.” Lesson learned. Never trust the First Family .

“I no like her.” He licked Quiggs’s neck. “I glad I back. My Quiggs neeeeeds me.”

“Yeah. I guess I do.” Quiggs endured a few more swipes of the nubby tongue. “Enough licking. You stink. One last shower together… then the new rules begin. Got that?”

“You tell me when you feel sick, so I leave you alone. I no forget promise.”

Quiggs carried him into the shower and gently washed off the blood. Crisscrossed lashes from repeated whippings bit deep, near the bone. They would have left nasty scars except Beau’s injuries always knitted cleanly.

“This a long shower.” Beau trilled, the whippings forgotten. “Colby and Miller like this shower.”

Quiggs snickered. “Yeah, they would.”

Beau fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.

Quiggs lay awake configuring a furnace for his flying balloon. One day soon, he’d soar into the sky and hope he found something besides a thousand miles of vines in all directions.