Fiction: The Adventures of Sidekick Carl, part 21!

 Still only the fourth post I had planned for this week, another installment of Sidekick Carl, so of course, still more worldbuilding. Here's links for the first and previous installments as usual, plus another chapter I referenced. You can still take it as ambiguous....

Sparks shot from the towering combat exoskeleton as Constructor struck another blow. Then there was an blue-white arc of electricity as Carl pulled a handful of cables from the back of the frame that held its 9-foot-6 operator. “Goliath, stop!” the hero called out. “You know the Raven isn’t taking you with him! You’re just buying him time!” The clearly mechanical face of the giant contorted in a roar as he charged, just as Carl tore open a hydraulic line.

Dana shook her head and sighed. “He didn’t even have a temper,” she mused. She leaned around the edge of the dinette. “You doing okay, hon?”

In the darkness, Carl sat on her heavily adjusted seat, steering as he had for over 12 hours. “We’re fine,” he said.

* * *

 

The scene looked like something out of a book of fairy tales, perhaps a score of rustic yet brightly colored cottages lit be the setting sun. The sun reflected brightly on the bronze statue in the little park at the center, a familiar figure with large eyes and very pointed ears. A sign said cheerfully, WELCOME TO AUDREYVILLE. There was nothing to show the scale, until the shadow of Dana’s 14-foot-tall, 32-foot-long RV fell over a house barely a third its size. A figure covered in black fur peered out a window, and promptly ducked back inside.

“So this was just 20 miles from where we’re going?” Dana pondered. By then, she was in the seat, supporting Carl in her lap.

“Technically, it’s tribal land,” Carl said. “The natives let them in. I heard one of the shamans said they were nature spirits come to life. The rest of the tribe pretty much humored him, and it turned out they get along. Then there were mines and old towns, right past the edge of the reservation. Before Basiliskus’s uprising, a developer tried to reopen things, even built an outlet mall. The Raven’s operation bought them out, just before he bought it himself. The old Toxo Warriors’ company was doing renovations.”

“Huh,” Dana said. “The Raven didn’t really last long, did he?”

“He was the first big player to go down, after Galaxarian,” Carl said. “It was still 7 years after Constructor got his powers, and 5 years after he freed me. Long before that, he was already selling arms and branching into espionage and gray tech years before Constructor got his powers. Remember the Princess of Sumatra? That was one of the Raven’s fronts. Constructor’s wife was one of the passengers.”

“Jesus,” Dana said. “Did he know…?”

“Enough to guess,” Carl said. “It didn’t change anything, really. He wanted the Raven stopped, and he knew he was going to make a big move sooner or later. The only time anyone said it was personal was a stretch when a lot of people thought the Raven was dead or dropped out. Constructor didn’t buy it, really didn’t talk about it, he just waited. It was 2 years all told, between out last run-in and when he invaded the Agency. After that, everything else was moot.” He leaned back, which happened to put his head against Dana’s sternum.

“I’m not distracting you, am I?” she mused.

“Of course not,” he said. He shifted. “I suppose I’ve been noticing… proportions.”

“I notice you noticing,” Dana said. She tousled his hair.

“The thing is, with you, ah, things don’t look big. Well, not as big as they are.”

“It’s the same with all the Tall People,” Dana said. “We’re already about as big as a human body can get and still function. So, most things are no bigger than normal, or even smaller… proportionately. And yeah, that included Goliath.”

“Yeah,” Carl said, squirming. “Him.”

“Audrey told me you were going to worry,” Dana said. “I already told you, I never went where we have, with anybody.”

“It doesn’t bother me, really,” Carl said. “I’m just sorry we hurt him.”

Dana nuzzled the top of his head. “That’s why you’re a good man,” she said.

The RV was literally too large for the town’s narrow roads, so they circled on a dirt track until they reached a structure on the outskirts that had been built to human proportions. “Listen,” Carl said. “We’re here by invitation only, and the number of people who’ve been invited is barely into the double digits. The other thing to remember, this isn’t just Audrey’s home. It’s where she’s queen. If we do or say anything they think is disrespectful, they’re going to take it as an offense to her.”

“All right,” Dana said, looking bemused. “I’ll follow your lead. Trust me.”

They emerged from the RV, just as a group of furry figures came out of the house. One was clearly an adult, with somewhat patchy reddish-brown fur, wearing a dress that confirmed it was a female. Beside her was another creature with the same  black-and-white fur as Audrey’s second mate, as tall as the adult with a lingering downy look. “You can call me Henna,” the adult said. “This is my daughter Kira.” The piebald creature briefly bared her teeth.

Dana said softly, without quite whispering, “I never even kept track, what were the names of Audrey’s husbands?”

Henna turned to look her in the eye. “We call them Red and Casablanca,” she said. “I’m sure you can guess which is which.”

Dana pondered for a moment. “Sure, but why Casa…” She practically winced. “Black and white.”

“Better in black and white,” Henna amended. “If you never heard him say that, consider yourself lucky.”

They followed the creatures through a door big enough for Carl but not for Dana, who came close to bowing to get through. It opened into something like a parlor, with furniture and décor that looked copied from a murder mystery. The ceiling was just high enough for Dana to walk upright. She glanced up, and confirmed that what looked like a landing was a complete level sized for the creatures. A half-dozen more played, all smaller than the adults but considerably larger than the kits they had seen with Audrey. A seventh, only a little bigger than the kits, played with a Constructor doll in the middle of the parlor floor. Kira hissed and spoke something, but her mother countermanded her. The child scuttled away, carrying both the doll and what appeared to be a high school biology textbook.

At Dana’s glance, Carl said, “They’d be the same age as elementary school kids if they were human. The lifecycle really isn’t much different from ours. They’re born after 6 months gestation, then it’s two years to reach full mobility, and fertility between age 10 and 12. They’re probably going to start hitting old age at 40 or 50. We aren’t sure, because Basiliskus accelerated things for the first generation…”

“That’s right,” Henna said. “He got us to adulthood in half the time, and we’ll be lucky if it turns out he only took a decade off our lives.”

Dana stretched out on a couch rather than trying to sit. “So I noticed,” she said, “your daughter looks a lot like Casablanca…” If she had looked over her shoulder, she would have seen a discrete but urgent gesture. It was Kira herself who spoke.

“I do,” she said. “He’s my father. And my mother and the Mistress are his mates.”

Dana belatedly looked at Carl, who shook his head. “Okay,” she said. “I… guess that’s not a big surprise. So… is this a free love thing?” She glanced belatedly at the cubs. They showed no interest.

“No,” Henna said. “That means no commitment, no responsibilities. `Creche’ would come close. We live together and take care of each other, our mates and our children.”

Dana turned to Carl again. “Did you know?” she asked.

“I never asked, but I knew it happens,” he said. “How many of you are there?”

“Seven all told, 4 females and 3 males,” Henna said. “More than most, not exceptional.”

Carl nodded. There was an awkward silence, until Kira spoke up. “Don’t act shocked, hominid!” she said. “You think you can teach us your morals, when you made us for your dirty work? Why should we even explain ourselves to you? Our Mistress let you in, but that doesn’t mean you can pry in our business!”

“Hush, kitten,” Henna said. Kira obeyed, though she was clearly unhappy. “Carl is a good spirit. So was Constructor. Besides, he will only be here a little while.”

Carl quickly managed to shift to small talk, and learned about the colony in the process. “We were trying to settle down, even before Audrey finally surrendered,” Henna said. “We made it possible, really. It started with the tribal elders accepting mothers and kits as members, then their mates, and finally any thereomorph that agreed to obey their laws and not make war against humans. Audrey and Red surrendered on the condition that they would join us here. She accepted Casablanca as her consort after.”

“She told me a story about how they met,” Carl said. “I thought it might have been a joke…”

Henna managed a laugh. “If it was what I think, then it was true enough,” she said. As she told the tale, Kira rolled her eyes and covered her ears.  “She showed him favor while I was in seclusion with our first kits, and he spent 5 nights at her door asking to be her consort. I’m guessing she left out that I dragged him home twice. At the end of it, she sent a messenger to me. She said she would take him if I agreed to be her own Second. It had its perks. I waited two days, and then accepted.”

“Then what do you do?” Dana said, clearly cautious.

“I manage the household when she’s handling her other duties,” Henna said. “In an emergency, I have the power to give the colony orders in her place, which becomes permanent if she dies or resigns her offices. Then once we’re both gone, my kits will have the same standing as hers in the line of succession. And there was another thing… Before she chose a Second, any kits Red conceived by other mates counted as hers. Once I took my place, the kits I bore by her favored consort would be counted as both his and mine. In fact, she stipulated it as non-negotiable that we would conceive. It matters more than it sounds. There was a month after we moved in when we were still guests. At the end…” she shook in silent laughter.

The sun had just gone down when they heard the hum of an approaching vehicle. Henna escorted them out, just as Audrey pulled up in a three-wheeled scooter. “I’m glad you made it,” she said curtly. “Are you ready to go?”

“Sure,” Carl said. As he followed Dana back to their RV, he looked back at Henna. She had already turned to go back into the house.