Chapter 18 Losham
LOSHAM
Losham woke three minutes before his alarm clock would have roused him and lay in the darkness of his bedroom trying to identify what felt wrong.
Not wrong, exactly. Different.
The ceiling fan rotated overhead with its familiar whisper.
The expensive Egyptian cotton sheets felt the same against his skin.
Through the open window, he could hear the usual morning sounds—birds in the tropical gardens, the crash of waves against the island's rocky shore, the distant hum of the generators that powered this corner of Navuh's empire.
Everything was exactly as it should be, and yet he could feel that something fundamental had shifted.
Losham remained still, scanning through the sensations and the sounds, cataloging and comparing. The process took perhaps thirty seconds, and when it was finished, he had his answer.
The pressure was gone.
Whenever he was back on the island, he knew he was home because that pressure in the back of his mind returned. He'd often thought it was the oppressive heat or his father's larger-than-life presence looming over him, but it had become so familiar that he'd stopped noticing it.
Now it was absent, but something else was in the air.
Had he dreamt something that was still affecting him, even though he couldn't remember his dream?
Was it possible that Navuh had left the island and had taken the power of his presence with him? But his father never left the island. He sent others out to do his dirty work for him.
Could he be dead?
Those enhanced soldiers might have gotten free somehow and killed Navuh.
Losham should be so lucky.
Each scenario branched into sub-possibilities, each sub-possibility spawning others, the decision tree spreading through Losham's mind with the speed and complexity of fractal mathematics.
The problem was that he didn't have enough information to make his calculations, and he'd learned long ago not to commit to a conclusion until he had adequate data.
He set the speculation aside and rose from the bed.
The marble floor was cool against his feet as he walked to the window. His mansion sat on a hill overlooking the vivid green of the tropical vegetation and the ocean.
Regrettably, his beautiful house wasn't really his.
It had been assigned to him, which meant that it could be unassigned at Navuh's whim.
Thankfully, he had properties all over the world that belonged to him exclusively and that his father didn't even know about.
Losham had been quietly building his fortune through strategic real estate investments.
The house overlooking the San Francisco Bay, the apartment building in Koreatown, and several other properties in prime locations were all appreciating at rates that made his official Brotherhood salary look like pocket change.
Insurance, he'd told himself. A contingency plan.
With Navuh, one never knew what tomorrow would bring, and Losham had a feeling that today was that tomorrow.
He lifted the receiver of his bedside phone and pressed the intercom button.
"Good morning, sir," Rami answered. "Should I start your coffee?"
"Yes, please. I'll be down in twenty minutes." He paused for a moment. "Did you have a chance to check the morning reports yet? I want to know if anything unusual happened overnight."
"I haven't yet, but I will do so right away, sir."
"Thank you, Rami. If there is nothing in the reports, call Hakum."
Navuh's assistant wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was usually well informed.
"Yes, sir," Rami said.
By the time Losham descended to his private study, Rami was waiting with coffee, Jamaican Blue Mountain properly brewed, and a tablet displaying the overnight security reports.
"Well?" Losham settled into his preferred chair, the leather molding to him with the comfort of long familiarity.
Rami's expression was neutral, but Losham knew his assistant well. He could read the tension in the slight tightness around Rami's eyes, and the way his fingers gripped the tablet just a fraction too hard.
"Spit it out, Rami. Don't keep me in suspense."
"Something is not right, sir."
Losham wanted to clap himself on the back for feeling that something was off, but he was also worried.
"Elaborate."
"There was nothing in the reports, so I called Hakum.
He said that Lord Navuh hasn't returned from the harem this morning, which in itself is unusual, but he was supposed to have a conference call with a drug lord in Venezuela, and when Hakum called him to ask if he should postpone the call, Lord Navuh did not answer. "
That was a problem.
There were no phones in the harem save for the one Navuh had on him, so the only way to find out if anything had happened in there overnight was to send someone to check.
The harem was off limits to the rest of the island, including the security office personnel who monitored everywhere else.
If there was camera surveillance in there, the feed went straight to Navuh without going through the regular channels.
The human guards stationed in the harem had comms devices, though, so in case of an emergency they could be contacted that way.
"Have the harem guards been alerted?" Losham asked.
"Yes, sir. The guards talked to the maid who usually delivers the lord's breakfast each morning, and she said that the lord was already gone when she delivered it this morning. She assumed that he had returned to the mansion. The staff at the mansion reports that he is not in his quarters."
"Did anyone check his office?"
"Hakum did, but the office door is locked. That's not unusual. Lord Navuh locks his office every day before heading to the harem."
Losham took a sip of his coffee, using the moment to keep his face expressionless. "A mystery then. Perhaps Lord Navuh is on a walk? Perhaps he's visiting the lab with the enhanced soldiers? Has Hakum contacted the security office? They must have spotted Lord Navuh somewhere."
"I don’t know if he has. He didn’t say." Rami hesitated. "There is something else that is not as it should be."
"Go on, Rami. Just say it."
"When the harem guards went looking for Lord Navuh, they checked the ladies' quarters, but they weren't in their rooms or any of the spaces they usually frequent. The guards searched everywhere they could think of, and the ladies were nowhere to be found."
Losham set down his coffee cup. "Is anything missing from their rooms?"
"Hakum says that all of their belongings are still there.
He started talking nonsense about aliens beaming them up to their spaceship.
Apparently, the alien abductions lore claims that the best time to kidnap Earthlings is during the new moon, which is when the moon is almost invisible, like it was last night. "
Losham shook his head. "Hakum needs his head checked."
The most likely explanation was that Navuh had finally snapped and killed all the harem ladies and was now hiding in his office.
The question was what he had done with the bodies. The easiest way to dispose of them would have been to throw them over the cliff. Navuh could have compelled the guards to do it and then promptly forget that they had even seen the carnage.
Why he would murder his entire harem was anybody's guess, but then madness did not follow logic.
Losham felt a slight pang of pain at the thought of his mother's life ending in such a cruel way.
He didn't remember her or even know her name, but she had been part of Navuh's harem, one of his ladies, and it had given Losham a measure of comfort knowing that she was treated well, or so he hoped.
Navuh liked to brag about all the luxuries he provided his ladies with.
He'd better go to the mansion and try to salvage the situation. If anyone could talk his father down from an episode of madness, it was he. Someone also needed to do damage control and find a cover story for what had happened to the ladies.
Navuh's reputation had to be protected, and a psychotic episode of such magnitude would ruin it.
Regrettably, an alien abduction story wasn't the solution.