Octavia Girl

The next day, Jenna got dressed up in aquawear and mounted a piece of marine transportation that very much resembled a Seadoo called a sea rover. The inner layer of her clothing was to protect her from rapid changes in temperature, and the outer layer was to stop her from drowning, though she couldn’t wear a helmet because it didn’t fit over her crown. Instead, she opted for a visor that kept the sun off her face. Otherwise, she went alone. The satellites above her were her security detail.

“If I get shot or something else equally stupid, I’m blaming you, Sardius.”

“Don’t fall off,” he shot back at her.

They had had arguments, and foul fights before she got on the back of the sea rover. Sardius thought she needed to practice handling the rover before she attempted a journey over the open ocean and she would have to go far to get to Excelyn’s hospital in a cave. Jenna rolled her eyes and replied over and over again that she had lived by the ocean all her life and she knew what she was doing. The only problems she would have were if there was a sudden storm. As storms were unlikely at that time of year on the Slipseed Ocean, Sardius was put down over and over again.

Besides, it wasn’t as if Sardius could make Jenna do anything. She was in the driver’s seat, literally and figuratively.

She put a pair of sunglasses over her eyes and said cheekily. “Watch me go.”

She jetted away from the dock into the saliferous cool air.

“Look at that. You didn’t fall off,” he commented dryly.

“Shut up and play me some music,” she replied.

She could practically hear him shake his head before he turned on a playlist he had copied from her phone. It had been so long since she had listened to her own music that she felt unusually happy as she skimmed across the surface of the peacock-blue water. It wasn’t that she felt at home. It was that she was home wherever she was as long as she didn’t have to cover her crown.

Besides, there was nothing to worry about. There was a navigation screen between her handlebars that helped her avoid any unfavorable ocean currents. Therefore, she did not go in anything like a straight line across the water. However, it was hours before she reached the shore. Even then, there was quite a distance to cover to get to Excelyn’s cave.

When she pulled up to a cave mouth, Sardius turned off the music and said, “This isn’t it. Keep going.”

It ended up being a running gag. Every time she saw a cave mouth, she pulled up to it and slowed her engine, and every time Sardius would chirp in her ear, “Not this one. Keep going.”

Soon, she stopped slowing. She’d just look at the different cave mouths and ask, “Is it this one?”

“No.”

“This one?”

“No. Jenna, you’ll know it when you see it.”

It turned out that the one she was looking for had a sign with an enormous H with an octopus icon beside it.

“Where do all those other caves go?” she wondered out loud.

“They’re not inhabited by Adamis above the water. They’re inhabited by creatures under the water. Hence, there are no addresses. Besides, an Adamis that lives on Octavia Prime would be smart enough not to disturb the peaceful coral life below with the noisy flutterings of an engine.”

“I’m dumb. I know,” Jenna admitted with a sorry-not-sorry tone. “Do I need to knock or ring a bell?”

“The sound of you entering the cave with that engine will wake the dead. When Octavians come here, even if they have to be brought here by underwater transport, they don’t make as much noise as your sea rover makes. They don’t hear well and they speak with gestures. The Adamis here will notice you without a bell. Don’t worry, it’s fine. There’s no other way to get in.”

Jenna maneuvered her craft into the cave. Once her eyes adjusted to the low light, she saw places to dock and in a flash, she had her transport chained to the dock and made her way down the gangway.

Inside the cave, no effort had been made to make it look less like a cave. The walls and ceiling were bare rock. Long tube lights hung from the ceiling and lit the space with enough light to see a reception desk and a door that led deeper into the hospital.

A metal cube sat on the reception desk. Jenna had been about to blow right by it, but Sardius stopped her.

“You have to announce yourself.”

“To what?”

“Hello. How can we help you today?” a voice rang out from inside the cube.

Jenna felt completely stupid. It wasn’t that different from the home automation devices tons of people had on Earth now. It wasn’t even futuristic.

“I’m Jenna Fairchild. I’m here to speak to Dr. Excelyn Factic.”

“One moment, please,” the thing chimed.

Jenna waited a minute or two, wandering around the space. Before she went back to the cube and had the same conversation over again.

“Hello. How can we help you today?”

“I’m Jenna. I’m here to see Dr. Excelyn Factic.”

“One moment, please.”

After the third run of the same conversation, Jenna gave up talking to the cube and started talking to Sardius. “Do you think it’s broken?”

“I think the doctor is probably in surgery and it doesn’t matter how many times this little trinket tells her someone is waiting. We’ll have to wait until she finishes.”

“But there’s not even a chair out here. How am I supposed to wait?”

“You could go back to your transport and sit on that.”

“My butt hurts from sitting on that… and I’m hungry.”

“Sorry, Jenna. It’s hard to remember to feed you when I don’t eat anything myself. I should have thought of food when you were getting on the sea rover against my wishes in the first place. It would have made my argument much stronger if I’d reminded you that the trip was five hours long at the least, and you’d be eating your own arm by midday if you didn’t pack some food.”

Jenna laughed.

Sardius went on, “I just keep forgetting how hungry you’ll be because you should already have stopped eating.”

“I love eating,” she replied with a pout. “I really don’t see why I should give it up.”

“There’s bottled water in the trunk of your sea rover,” he offered.

Jenna was thirsty and got it immediately. Then, without invitation, she strolled past the reception cube and entered the hospital. Except it wasn’t at all what she expected. She had just stepped into Excelyn’s kitchen.

“Excellent,” Jenna breathed.

“You shouldn’t be back here,” Sardius complained.

“Don’t care. This is obviously a place where someone could comfortably wait for her to finish her surgery. I’m not going to eat anything, even though there is food everywhere.”

Jenna did not exaggerate. There was food everywhere. There were great bowls of food in a line. Mostly, it was a fruit Jenna didn’t recognize, but there were also tanks of live seafood. It wasn’t like Octavians were vegetarians.

In the middle of the room were four booths set up so that they opened to a central place where food could be laid out buffet style. There were food warmers and rectangular tables hanging from an iron grid that was chained to the ceiling.

“I wonder if this place used to be a restaurant. It looks a little like that.”

Jenna stretched out in the padded booth closest to her and cracked open the lid of her water bottle. It felt amazing to recline after she’d spent hours leaning forward on the handles of her sea rover.

In two shakes of a lamb’s tail, she was asleep.

***

“Wake up,” Sardius’ voice buzzed in Jenna’s ear. “She’s here.”

Jenna opened her eyes to see Excelyn Factic staring down at her with an odd expression on her face. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

Jenna sat up and looked at the woman.

Excelyn was at least seventy years old. Her hair was curly and frizzy at the same time. Her hair was also white and pink at the same time. The lines of pink were so odd, Jenna didn’t know what to make of them. It was like someone had repeatedly dyed her roots pink, then let them grow out to white, left a hefty chunk of white, before dying the roots pink again. She couldn’t figure out why anyone would bother to do that. It didn’t exactly look pretty.

Aside from that, the doctor’s eyes were blue. She was practically skeletal in her appearance with crepe-thin folds in her neck. She wore clothes that reminded Jenna of hippies who had survived the sixties only to never give up wearing psychedelic cowboy prints. She wore no makeup and very comfortable-looking rubber shoes.

“I’m Jenna Fairchild, and I’ve come to crown you a diplomat on behalf of the Octavian/Adamis Alliance.”

Excelyn laughed, showing she was missing a few teeth further back in her mouth. “Really?” She waved her hand and a TV screen flicked on. “What about that?”

The screen showed footage Sardius had given the news outlets from the night before.

Jenna smirked. “That’s not a live stream. It’s from last night. That’s me in my glorious evening wear. Do you like it?”

“You look like you’re going to eat your candidates. I had been thinking that something was wrong if no one was coming here and asking me if I liked the idea of dying for the Octavian/Adamis Alliance. Maybe someone like you thought I was too old to die.” She looked at Jenna disapprovingly. “It turns out everything is exactly the way it has always been.”

“You’re thinking about the assassinations.”

“Aren’t you?”

Jenna shrugged. “I could throw crowns on every one of those go-getters back at the Sand Palace if I wanted to test if the assassins are still out there, but if I did that… I bet not one of them would be assassinated.”

Excelyn crossed her arms. “Why is that?”

“Because all those twerps are undoubtedly very easy to bribe. I’m trying it right now. I’m not running tests to see if they’d break under torture. I’m seeing if they’d break under bribery. So far, things are not looking good. They drink too much. They’re loose with their thoughts. Already it’s obvious how greedy they are. It’s a disaster. No one would need to kill any of them to get what they want. They could bribe them with a compliment and a drink.”

“Are you saying you need to crown diplomats the assassins would want to kill?” Excelyn sputtered.

Jenna gave a weak smile. “Sadly, I don’t think they have much information on how those killings were accomplished. I’ve looked at the cases. A few of them may have been accidental… or not. They happened on Adamis planets and the only one that took place on Octavia Prime… may not have had much to do with his position as a diplomat.”

“You’re talking about Arvantis and Vinia?” Excelyn perceived. “Everyone thinks she killed him and got off the hook for it because there was no proof. She’s not in jail. They couldn’t pin her with anything.”

“That’s something I’m interested in exploring in further detail,” Jenna agreed, “but I’ve got something more pressing on my hands. Right now, all diplomacy is locked because I haven’t got enough diplomats to agree on policies and agreements. I’m up to my neck in unresolved paperwork, and I don’t have the authority to sign off on any of it. I can’t show the Octavians the rank treaties developed by the Adamis and I can’t take the demands of the Octavians back to the Adamis. I’d start a war. Not to mention, I’m not allowed. These agreements need to be handled with sensitivity and the approval of at least five diplomats with eight in council. I’ve got nothing. You are my only option right now.”

Excelyn put her hands on her hips. “How so?”

“Looking at your file, you should have been crowned twenty years ago. You were just always robbed on nomination day because the Adamis don’t think they can trust you. You go behind their backs and operate a hospital that spits in their faces when their only money-maker is healthcare. You are wildly unpopular, but that doesn’t stop you from being very popular with the other side.”

“The Octavians,” the doctor supplied.

“If you take this job, I’m not telling you that you have to shut down your hospital. Heck, I’ll let you use your floating palace any way you like. Turn it into a hospital if you want to. Don’t bother with staff meant to serve you and use your whole budget for nurses as far as I care. What I need is a person in that slot with your uncompromising attitude toward what is right for the Octavians without letting all the Adamis hangups go to your head. Yeah, you’ll be rich. Yeah, you’ll be famous. Maybe there’s more you can do from the position of diplomat than you could do here. Maybe you could train other doctors, and popularize your methods.”

“Of course, I’d be able to do more from the position of diplomat,” Excelyn agreed. “The problem has always been that the person in your position wouldn’t back me up as a nominee when the complaints started coming in. They asked me to withdraw.”

“I’ll back you up,” Jenna promised.

“I-I’m also worried about the assassinations,” she admitted with a stutter.

Jenna nodded. “Well, I can’t offer you much except that I’ll give you a personal assistant, like the one I have, and they can watch over you from space as well as in every room of your palace.”

“Sardius didn’t save Arvantis,” she said sourly.

Sardius held his tongue and Jenna appreciated it. Without pausing, she said, “Shall I give you my business card and leave then? Let you think it over?”

“Hang on. I don’t like being pushed. Don’t you have more time to talk this over with me?”

“I have all the time in the world, as long as I’m not wasting my time,” Jenna challenged as she leaned forward in her seat.

Excelyn sat down in the booth across from Jenna. “Fine. Do you think the last diplomat, Arvantis, was crooked? Do you think someone was bribing him?”

“I haven’t looked into it. There are a lot of reasons why he would make a good target. At that point, he was the only one left, and taking down one diplomat was going to be easy. It would be completely worth it if it toppled the alliance. If I hadn’t been crowned already, the system would have been toppled.”

“Aren’t you curious about who is behind these assassinations?”

“I really have to leave that to someone else,” Jenna admitted with a shrug. “I have too many other things on my mind and that’s not my job. My job is to refill the roster. See how hard I’m trying to do it?”

“And you’ll back me up?” the doctor asked.

Jenna laughed. “I’ll back you up so hard you’ll forget I’m not your mother.”

The crone laughed. “And I’ll get a personal assistant like Sardius?”

Jenna had been about to answer when Sardius chimed in using the outer speaker in Jenna’s earpiece so Excelyn could hear. “You’ll get a personal assistant, but whoever you get will not be like me. However, we can include you in the interview process and get someone who suits you.”

The doctor seemed all but convinced. At that moment, she looked around the room like each piece of furniture represented a reason for her to say no. Finally, her eyes fell on a bowl of fruit. Then her eyes cut back to Jenna. “Everything you’ve said thus far fits what I wanted to hear from you too much. I don’t know you. As far as I know, you might have studied me so hard that you planned exactly what you needed to say in order to make the best impression possible. I do that myself when I’m fundraising for my hospital. I need you to prove your conviction.”

Jenna leaned further forward, crossing her arms on the table. “How can I do that?”

“Have lunch with me,” the old woman said easily.

“Is that all? I’m starving. Of course, I’ll have lunch with you.”

“As long as you’re alright with eating liplo fruit seeds for lunch.” The doctor got up and carted an enormous platter of seeds back to the table for Jenna to see.

Jenna was confused. They didn’t really look like seeds since they were the size of grapefruits. They looked like oversized pillbugs. They had a hard shell that surrounded them like a pillbug that was hiding in a ball.

“These are seeds?” Jenna questioned.

“Yes, but here they are a taboo food for most Adamis.”

“Why?”

“It turns your hair pink when you eat them.” The doctor flipped her hair. Eating the seeds had apparently dyed her hair in such an odd pattern. “Have you ever heard of food that turns your hair pink before, little girl from Earth?”

“Of course, I have,” Jenna retorted. “Flamingos aren’t naturally pink. They’re only pink because of what they eat.”

“I have no idea what a flamingo is, but it sounds like you’re on board with the concept. Good,” Excelyn said, returning the bowl to the kitchen area across the open room.

In her ear, Sardius hissed, “You shouldn’t eat--”

“You never want me to eat anything,” Jenna interrupted. “Are they poisonous?”

“No,” Sardius squeaked, “but they’re…”

“Are they not plants, like she said?” Jenna asked him.

“They’re plants.”

“Then kindly, shut up. I came here to crown her today and I’ve almost got her.”

She heard some heavy breathing on his side, but he didn’t say anything more.

In the kitchen, Excelyn had begun cooking them. It looked like she was boiling them in broth. It smelled fantastic and Jenna was so hungry her stomach felt like it was going to start digesting itself.

When Excelyn presented the food on the table, it was like everything Jenna had been familiar with all her life, a huge amount of boiled seafood with herb, garlic, and lemon butter on the side for dunking. The liplo fruit looked exactly like deveined shrimp once it was cracked out of its shell and when Jenna put the first bite in her mouth, it tasted like lobster.

“Good, huh?” Excelyn said as she cracked open a bottle of fizzy lemonade and passed it to Jenna.

“Yeah. Why don’t people want to eat this?”

“They don’t want to have hair like this,” she said pointing to her horizontal stripes. “They probably wouldn’t mind if they could eat this all year and keep their hair pink, but they can’t. There’s only one harvest a year, so you get stripes.”

Jenna realized that if she kept eating, she too would have a stripe of pink in her hair. Looking at the doctor’s hair, Jenna didn’t want to emulate her style, but she was sure something could be done later to fix the stripe. Hair dye on Earth was amazing, so hair dye in outer space was probably cosmic.

No problem.

“Where do these plants grow?” Jenna asked, interested to learn all about her new planet.

“Underwater. These were harvested from under the hospital. The Octavians who pass by do the grooming for me so I don’t have to go down. I’m not as spry as I used to be and I get lightheaded using a breathing apparatus down there.”

“You don’t take your own tank of oxygen?”

“I’m only 87, not 104,” she replied.

“We’ll get you using one too,” Sardius said in Jenna’s ear. “There’s just been a lot to do.”

That wasn’t the part of Excelyn’s conversation that stood out to Jenna. Excelyn was 87? Jenna wanted to ask questions about Excelyn’s likely lifespan, but she quickly bit it back. Excelyn had said she wasn’t 104, so Jenna could assume she could get at least fifteen years of service out of Excelyn. That gave her until she was 102. Of course, that was only if nothing tragic befell her earlier than that.

Jenna grimaced.

She had to stop thinking like that.

After eating three of the liplo fruit seeds, Jenna put a hand up and said she’d had enough.

“Are you sure?” the doctor asked. “These are about to go bad.”

Jenna shook her head peaceably and thought of how her own grandmother (if she were alive), would probably shove food close to its expiry date down her throat. It was kind of gross, but also a little endearing at the same time.

She put her hand in the cargo pocket of her pants. That was where the crown she intended to use on Excelyn was hidden. The procedure for attaching it to an adult’s head was that first, you had to make sure the head was shaved where the crown was going to go down. Jenna had practiced on wigs on dummy heads back at her palace. She had done it five times and learned how to shave a perfect diamond shape exactly on the crown of the head. She had an electric razor in her pocket as well.

“Have I satisfied you? Can I crown you already?” Jenna asked.

“You’re going to do that here without consulting anyone else or involving the media?”

“Absolutely,” Jenna said confidently. “I don’t have time for the stupid media circus that is on the horizon that will happen whether we do this now or later. I’d rather that we asked for forgiveness rather than permission. Like I said, I’ll back you. You might not even need to say a word.”

Excelyn nodded. “What’s the first thing we have to do?”

Jenna took the razor from her pocket. “I have to shave your…” Jenna felt an odd lurching in her gut. She dropped the razor. “Did you just feel something?”

“Yeah,” Excelyn said slowly as she glanced at the uneaten seeds on the table and then at the uncooked ones still in the kitchen.

They were moving.

“What’s happening?” Jenna asked, feeling a squirming feeling in her innards she’d never felt before.

“Some people have a strong aversion toward their food moving. Either they don’t like the food moving in their mouths or they don’t like the feeling of their food moving around in their guts. I guess you’re one of the people who don’t like it moving around in their guts.”

“But it was a plant. Why is it moving at all?”

“These plants,” Excelyn explained, “are delicious. But once it’s time for them to plant, their insides push against their outsides like muscles. They do this on a microscopic level, so even if you chew them to bits, they still move around in your stomach. Sometimes, they can still move even after they’ve been digested.”

Jenna clutched at her solar plexus. It felt like the liplo seeds in her stomach were trying to climb up her esophagus. Jenna couldn’t hold it in another second. She folded herself in half and hurled in gagging fits creating a pink pile on the floor.

Even though she and Excelyn had eaten the same thing, the old woman was much more accustomed to the wiggling inside her. Unbothered, she snapped up the razor Jenna had dropped and without waiting for help, she began shaving the top of her head. “You’re being really brave now,” she praised as strands of her hair fell to the floor. “Not many people would eat what they’re given, especially when their personal assistant has forbidden it. I’m very convinced of your sincerity.”

Jenna could see what Excelyn was doing with the razor and that she was doing it all wrong, but Jenna couldn’t stop her. It felt like her stomach was full of minnows swimming in her guts, making her insides itchy. She kept hurling on repeat.

Sardius was completely quiet in her ear. He couldn’t have sounded more superior to Jenna if he’d actually said, “I told you so.”

When she had thoroughly finished vomiting. She took a dishcloth from the kitchen counter and dabbed at her mouth and chin. Then she took a sip from her water bottle and swished out her mouth three times before spitting it out into the sink.

A sideways glance at the floor showed her vomit oozing its way toward the entrance to the ocean in the cave entrance. The larger uneaten seeds had escaped their bowls and rolled along the floor much faster. She could hear them plopping into the water in the next room.

Excelyn showed Jenna the top of her head, the hair was cut in uneven hacks.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I think you missed a spot,” Jenna said as she took the razor from her and made a few necessary places a bit balder. “After this, hair won’t grow where I put the crown.” Without waiting for permission, Jenna pulled the crown out of her cargo pants, ripped off the strip that stopped the adhesive from sticking to everything, and stuck it firmly to Excelyn’s head. “There, all done.”

Excelyn went to look at herself in the mirror.

Jenna watched from a distance, then whispered, “Sardius, tell Misha to gather up the wigs that I cut when I was practicing shaving the crown shapes. I’m going to need her to send them over here.”

“Weren’t you just going to put the good doctor on the back of your sea rover and head back?”

“If she hadn’t messed up her hair and my guts I would have. As it is, I want a full Octavian transport. Ask Favel if he’s available to come get us, but don’t forget to ask him to make a quick stop at my palace to get the wigs from Misha. We have to make Excelyn look like a lady.”

“Will do.”

Jenna turned to her new diplomat. “Excelyn, the Octavian Council is sending someone to pick us up. We need to make an announcement. After that, you’re on your own for a bit. You’re free to come at your leisure between here and your palace. I’ve decided to assign you the Stone Palace, but if you have an objection, you may say so now.”

“No. I like the Stone Palace,” Excelyn said. Clearly, she was familiar with the whole outfit of palaces since she’s almost been crowned so many times.

“Great. Why don’t you go get changed into something more formal, if you have anything? Sardius will create news footage of us and it will be seen by so many people, you’ll want to look presentable.”

“Do you need a bathroom to freshen up in?” Excelyn offered.

“I’ve got something in the trunk of my transport,” Jenna replied.

Jenna left the kitchen and returned to the cave entrance, just in time to walk alongside her vomit that still hadn’t quite made it to the water. When she got to the side of her sea rover, she got down on all fours and threw up directly into the water.