Morton sputtered to the surface, too mad to think about his situation until a wave hit him in the vace, causing him to choke. They had deliberately dumped him in the ocean, pulling away as he was about to jump aboard the small seaplane. Orienting himself, he quickly swam to the dock where two of the girls who had been searching for Karen with him finally arrived, breathless, and helped him from the water.
"What happened?" asked Donna.
"They pulled away just as I was about to board. They dumped me in the ocean." Morton looked around and, spotting the boat on the other side of the dock, headed toward it. There was a crewmember near the gangplank.
"When are you going back to the mainland?" Morton demanded.
"We leave in just under half an hour," the young man said, "so you have time to change into some dry clothing. Or you can get a towel from one of the attendants."
Morton stomped up the gangplank and stormed aboard the boat without another word, quickly moving as far forward on the deck as he could. After a brief consultation, Donna followed him, the other girl returning to the island. Donna picked up a towel from an attendant and brought it forward to Morton, who silently accepted it and absently applied it to his dripping hair with one hand. After being ignored for several minutes, Donna moved away, towards the gangplank. She was about to leave the boat when a large group started up the dock toward the boat. It looked as if about half of the students were headed her way.
"What's happening," she asked the first arrivals.
An older boy said, "The two little girls got bit by snakes. I think they're dead. Their father and Karen Kirby and Mr. Jameson got called back to the mainland by some official called a magistrate. There's going to be some kind of investigation, then a memorial service."
"Oh, God. No wonder," Donna said.
"What? No wonder what?"
"A group of us was looking for Karen. We went a long way up the beach, over a mile. All of a sudden, Karen and Mr. Jameson jumped out from behind a big bunch of rocks, waved at us, and ran up to the dock where they got aboard a seaplane with another man. It must have been the girls' father. We all chased them all the way up the beach. Ron Morton tried to get aboard the plane and fell in the ocean. He thinks they dumped him on purpose and is madder'n hell. He's up on deck, at the bow of the boat. You'd best avoid him."
"Oh, hell. Morton thinks Karen ran off with another man, after the way he's been obsessing over her all this time. And he's just sitting up there? He hasn't gotten violent?"
"He acted upset but he didn't blow up."
"I hope it lasts."
When the boat finally arrived, Ron Morton was the first one off. Nobody wanted to get in front of him or even to stand near him. He didn't notice his isolation. What he did notice was a large number of people moving toward an open area nearby, where several buses were parked. He stopped a small group headed toward the area and asked, "What's happening?"
A man answered, "The magistrate's going to announce the medical examiner's findings on the two little girls that were killed."
A woman added, "Then they're probably going to have the funeral."
Eventually we were taken by a white car, almost a limousine, to the hotel where the magistrate had taken over a suite for her purposes. We were escorted to a conference room by uniformed Peacekeepers, who remained while we were offered food and drink by the hotel staff. I grabbed some kind of pastry but didn't get a chance to take a bite out of it before the door opened and six marshals escorted in the magistrate, their dark blue uniforms making her bright blue judicial robe stand out the more brightly.
One of the marshals in front announced in a loud voice, "The chief magistrate, Lady Goldeka Jamison, has opened this high court of the full nation and state. Draw near all who have business here." Behind him, the doors closed with a resounding bang.
With a squeal typical of a teen-ager, the magistrate threw herself at me, crying, "Great-Grandfather. I'm so happy for you. But you've brought me a mixed bag of business, haven't you?" She shook her short white hair into place as she stepped back to stare at me.
"Magistrate," I said, "I would like to introduce Karen Kirby, a visitor from Earth with no family locally, to whom I intend to join for the next year with options to continue, to be witnessed by our friends, Rob Royal, of Earth, and his joined wife, Casey O'Doull Royal, of this world, who you met earlier."
"That's typical of you, you great big clown, get right down to business. Okay. Casey, being the first of our world to marry a visitor from Earth, whatever dowry your family set up for you has had the marriage prize added to it, as I hope you have informed your husband."
"Lady Magistrate, he knows of the prize but my family's dowry is quite modest and I haven't told him about it yet."
"Well, I'm sure the subject will come up when you take him to meet your family. And you may be pleasantly surprised as well. Now you, Karen Kirby, being a visiter with no local family would normally go into this marriage with no dowry either. However, things are never normal where the Chosen One is concerned. Seven different families have offered to adopt you, each to offer a degree of kinship varying from niece to, in one case, sole heir, each accompanied by a substantial gift or dowry. Quite frankly, to refuse would be to insult some of the most influential people on this world -- nothing would be gained by it. Accepting would cost you nothing, would guarantee your place in society, and would make you one of the richest people in the world, apart from your husband.
"Meeting the family representatives, verbally accepting or refusing their offers, and signing the papers is going to take us a couple of hours. There is no way around it. It has to be done before your wedding and I want it to be done before I hold the funeral for the two little girls. Now, the two of you have just come off of the beach, or at least you look like it. I want you to look like you own the world before you do anything else, so some nice people from the hotel are going to take you away, clean you up, make you look nice in as short a time as is humanly possible, and bring you back. Try to grab a bite while you're at it, too. Andrew and I will catch up on family, we'll eat, then he'll get ready while I take you through all the oaths and witness all the stuff you sign. Run, Dove."
© Copyright 1999-2000, James E. Henderson (WordJames). All rights reserved.