Spin Recovery, Part Two

Rufus picked up his prescriptions from the chemist that was a few doors down from the clinic, it being a matter of merely slotting the prescription card into his hand comp, specifying the chemist that he wanted to pick it up from, and handing over the card when he arrived.  Then he headed back to the garage and instructed Whitebrow to take a long route home, wanting to look over the town to see if he could spot any other major changes.

They were just passing the local amphitheater when Whitebrow spoke up unexpectedly.   “Not to be too forward, Milord, but it pleases me greatly that you’ve returned to the manor.”

“Hu?  Oh, thank you, Whitebrow.  I’m glad to be back.  Feels like I’ve been gone forever.”  He looked out the window at a new sculpture park that had been set at an angle between two apartment towers.  After a moment, he said, “I’ve been meaning to ask, how have Mother and my sister been getting on while I’ve been away?”

“Well enough, Milord.”

Something in the old servant’s voice made Rufus turned away from the window and look at the fellow’s face in the rearview mirror.  It was… rather carefully neutral he imagined.  “Care to expand on that?”

“Really milord, it’s not really my place to gossip about…”

“…your employers to their face,” Rufus finished.  “Whitebrow, I know perfectly well just how much an observant staff can gather about the lords they serve and the limits on whom they discuss such matters with.”

“Just so, Milord.”

“Nevertheless, I’ve been away for some time.  I’m a stranger in my own home.  I need to find my place here in the manor.  To that end I must know how Mother and Bethany feel about me.  Was I… missed?”  The Holy Den Mother only knew he had missed them during the truly dark times, when the urge to crawl home on his haunches and beg forgiveness had been strongest.  But his damnable pride had won out every time and he had stayed in space, alone except for the lonely company of the White Knight or whatever whore he’d paid to bed with him.

Whitebrow thought for a moment, then finally spoke.  “Very deeply, Milord.  The Lady Bethany felt your absence most keenly in the beginning.  As for the Countess, she spoke often as to how disturbed she was with your continued absence.  In more recent years they have spoken of you less often.  I believe the subject was the cause of much strife between them.”

“Oh?”

“I believe Lady Bethany had some notion of seeking you out, in an effort to bring you home, but Lady Brushtail forbade the attempt.  This was after some of your messages to them became, er, disturbing, Milord.”

Rufus frowned.  “I don’t recall saying anything particularly disturbing when I called.”  Whining and begging perhaps, but surely not disturbing.

“As you will, sir.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Nothing, milord.”

* * *

It was late afternoon when he returned home, to discover that Mother and Bethany were both out, Mother on business and Bethany with her friends.  That suited Rufus just fine, for it allowed him to hole up in his suite with the comconsole to consult the manor's communication records.

“Computer, command: List incoming comm records for Brushtail, Ru Ofanius, starting seven years ago until present time,” he ordered, after sitting down in front of the comsole's display screen.  The manor's central computer system, having already done an automatic voice check when he spoke, obediently brought up the records of all the calls he'd made to home after flying off in the White Knight.   At first they were fairly frequent, perhaps one or two a month.  He could mark just when they began to grow more sparse, and brought up the first communication he'd made back home after the Blue Horizon massacre.  It was, predictably, quite disjointed, with him looking shell shocked and speaking haltingly to Bethany and Mother.  But they both appeared relieved that he was safe, even after he tried to describe what had happened.

But you didn't tell them the truth, did you old man? he chided himself.  As with the review board, he had told them that he'd been running to get help for the liner that he had abandoned to Mavra Chan.  And like the review board they had accepted the explanation, knowing how little chance one fighter would have against a fully armed pirate galleon. All perfectly reasonable, except that the truth was that he had cut and run like a coward, leaving over four hundred innocents to face slaughter at the hands of the sadistic and greedy pirate lord.

“Next communication,” he ordered the comsole.  In this message he was positively cheerful, letting Mother know that the review board had exonerated him.  She didn't make any mention of the slight slurring of his speech, only asking when he might come home, and not displaying any disappointment when he answered he didn't know.

After that, the number of messages he sent home dropped to perhaps once every two or three months, then the next year once every four or five.  The conversations with Mother became quite terse, as he defended himself against her questions about the expenses he was running up, ostensibly for maintenance of his fighter, in truth to support his growing drug habit.   Rufus felt himself gradually sink lower into his seat as he listened to himself spout bald-faced and obvious lies to his mother and Bethany, over and over again.  They had to have realized I was lying early on, yet the money kept coming, at least for a while.  Had they been deliberately blind, hoping he'd pull himself out of the well he insisted on flinging himself into?

The last message in the record, made about a year and half after Mother had finally frozen his access to the House accounts, was perhaps the worst.  It began with him making a call to wish Bethany a happy twenty-third birthday.  Which would have been a pleasant surprise if it wasn't for the fact that she was twenty-four when he made the call, he was two months late anyway and it was plainly obvious from his widely dilated eyes and slurred speech that he was stoned out of his mind on a combination of Juno and alcohol.  The call devolved rapidly into a three way screaming match between himself, Bethany and Mother, which ended in his mother cutting off the comm shortly after Bethany ran off sobbing, while he screamed drunken obscenities at them both.  

After the screen went blank he felt like he wanted nothing more than to pray for the Holy Den Mother to intervene and open up the earth beneath his chair, so he could be swallowed up and not have to look his family in the eye when they returned.  I don't remember ever making that call, he thought.  Maybe that was mercy.  If he had remembered after sobering up, he would have surely either have ended things by opening his wrists with a cutter or taking a walk out an airlock without a spacesuit.

A quiet cough behind him brought him out of his reverie and he said softly, “Hello, Mother.”

“Hello, Ru Ofanius.  How did you know it was me?” she asked, sitting down in the chair beside him.

He sighed and turned to face her.  “One of the servants wouldn't have entered with the door closed and I don't think Bethany could have possibly watched that last one without making a sound.  How much did you see?”

“All of it,” she answered, looking grim.  “Quite the show.  As memorable as the first time I viewed it.”

“Quite,” he said.  After a moment he added.  “So why didn't you send a team of assassins after me, after I made poor Beth run off crying like that?  I wouldn't have blamed you for trying, if only to preserve the dignity and honor of the House.”

This actually made her smile, if only slightly.  “Well, for one thing, vulgar vid entertainments aside there is no such thing as a Vulpine Assassination Bureau.  For another, even after that, Bethany would have never have forgiven me.”  Her smile dropped.  “Though I don't think she has forgiven me yet for not letting her go after you, to try and physically drag you home.”

“Why didn't you let her?”

“If she had found you, would you have returned voluntarily?”

“Probably not.  What if she just forced me to?”

“Then I would have faced the possibility of you returning here in a far worse condition than you were in the day before.  Resentful and drunk and addicted and dishonored.”

“A stain on the House,” he concluded.

“Yes,” she answered.

“And if I had died out there, in the Cold and Dark, what then?”

“Then you would have been dead.  We would have mourned and then moved on.”

Rufus nodded.  “Your honesty is refreshing at least.”  Not to mention a cut to the bone.  I do not remember her being so cold before.  How bad have things been here, with myself gone away and not supporting the House?

“If we’re to rebuild what has been destroyed, Ru, would you prefer to start with lies?”

He shook his head.  “No, no more lies.  I’ve spewed them from my mouth like they were poison and I am sick to death of them.”

“That pleases me, Ru Ofanius.  That said, could you please explain this?”  She tapped in an override code into the comsole and he his sister’s personal comm records appear on the screen.  She entered one more command and then they were both watching as his brother called Bethany, speaking eloquently and persuading her to part with the funds he required to repair Rufus’ fighter.

“That’s… a complicated subject,” Rufus said carefully, once it had ended.

“Whoever that Vulpine was, he couldn’t have been you, Ru Ofanius.  Short of a miracle by the Holy Den Mother there’s simply no way you could look so healthy, compared to your previous calls, or how you look now.  Neither was it a computer generated image, I had it checked for that.  So who is it?”

“My twin brother,” Rufus said simply.  Before she could protest at the absurdity of this, he held up his hand.  “That is not a lie.  That person that Bethany spoke to was me, down to the genetic level, but he was not me, in that we’ve had wildly different lives.”

“I was awake when I birthed you, Ru Ofanius.  I think I would have noticed if you had a twin,” she noted dryly.

“I can’t argue with that.  Nor, unfortunately, can I offer any truth to my assertions.  The only one who could is unlikely to be willing to speak for me right now.”

“Who is this person?”

Rufus frowned.  “Captain Leeza Blake.  She’s a human naval officer in the United Systems Forces.”

His mother made an annoyed snort.  “Humans.  What were you doing, that you met your impossible identical twin, found yourself involved with the Terran military and then ended up getting your arm lopped off?”

“You’d have to hear it from her lips, Mother.  If you heard it from mine, you’d only think I was indulging in my drugs again.  If you’re serious about it though, you may have to set some diplomatic pressure against her.  The situation we were involved in had some… interesting implications for the long term politics of the Galactic Sapiens Alliance.”  

Just how closely did the humans intend to guard the secret of the re-discovery of the Varn Dominion, he wondered.  More to the point, how closely should he keep it himself?  Certainly it was going to have repercussions in Vulpine politics once the word got out.  Given the horrors that his people had suffered towards the end of the Dominion War, he couldn’t blame some of them if they chose to react as xenophobically as the humans seemed inclined to.  From what little I saw of the Galapagos, they seemed like honorable people, never mind their origins. Certainly the Varn themselves, or himself rather, pose no threat to us now.

“You’re speaking in riddles again, Ru Ofanius,” his mother noted.  “What troubles you so much that you can’t speak to me openly about it?  Are the politics of the situation that fraught?”

“More so than you can rightly imagine, Mother,” he said, opening his hand in apology.  “I beg you to try and contact Captain Blake, or someone higher in the human intelligence organizations, before asking me about it further though.  In the end this may have to be brought up to the Council of Lords to be resolved fully.”

She gave him a sharp look.  “You’re perfectly serious, aren’t you, Son?

He bowed his head to her.  “In this matter, deadly serious.  My arm was a small price, compared to the stakes involved.”

“I see.”  She stood up, gesturing for him to join her.  “Come along, dinner will be in a few minutes.  We will speak more upon this later.”

“Yes, Mother.”

* * *

”White Knight!  You can’t leave us!  We’ve got over four hundred civilians on board!”

“Smart little vulp,” the voice on the galleon interjected, “better you don’t get involved.”

“White Knight!  WHITE KNIGHT!” the liner’s XO screamed, as Rufus’ fighter accelerated past light speed and the radio channel dissolved into static.

He shot up out of bed with a yell, throwing his bed cover to the floor.  Panting, it took two tries from him to call up the lights, leaving him blinking in the sudden yellow glow.

“A dream, just a dream,” he told himself, feeling suddenly chilled as the night air came through the open window and hit his sweat sodden fur.  He was in his own room, in his own home, on a nice safe planet with a thick atmosphere, not a tiny fighter spinning out of control in an airless, limitless void.

He thought to lay down again, but knew that would be a fruitless effort.  He’d just gotten up to close the windows when he jumped again at a soft knock at his door.  Then he heard Bethany call out, “Rufus, are you all right?”

“I'm fine, Beth,” he called back, pressing his hand down on the mattress to try and stop it from shaking.  “Just a bad dream.”

“It sounded like more than that.  You were yelling out to someone.  May I come in?”

“Beth, it’s barely 0300 and I’m indecent.”

“Then pull your covers over yourself, I’m coming in anyway.”  He had just enough time to hop back into bed and yank the comforter back up over his waist before Bethany opened the door and slipped inside, dressed in a thick robe tossed over her sleeping gown.

“Haven’t you heard of privacy?” he grumbled, pulling the covers up a bit higher.  Aside from the comforter he was naked, as was his habit.

She yawned widely, stretching her arms over her head.  “Haven’t you ever heard of eating?  I can count your ribs, Ru!”

“I’ve been eating.  The blasted cooking staff seems intent on stuffing me like a kin goose,” he said defensively.  “Go back to bed, Beth.  I’m fine.”

Bethany instead sat down on the edge of the bed, apparently having no intention of letting him get off that easily.  “You were saying someone’s name.  Jolly, I think it was.”

Rufus sighed and rubbed his palm against his eyes, trying to blink away sleep.  It felt as if his head was stuffed with lead right now.  “Joli.  A Creo boy, a year or two younger than yourself.”

“Oh, a friend of yours?”

He shook his head.  “I knew him for barely a week.  Seemed a decent lad, if a bit excitable.  Most children are.”  Of course he’d been all of three years older than the boy at the time.  It only feels like a thousand these days.

“What happened to him?”

“He died,” Rufus answered, a bit more sharply than he’d intended.  He took a breath and tried to gather his wooly thoughts.  “He was my wingman on the Blue Horizon run.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Bethany said, raising her hand to her lips.

Rufus drew in a sharp, pained breath, as if he’d been lanced through the stomach.  “Bethany, don’t do that.  Don’t apologize to me for anything, ever.”

“Why ever not?”

“By the Holy Den Mother do I have to give you a star chart?  I made you weep, Bethany!  After that last performance I gave over the comm to you and Mother you should hate me!”

Bethany looked shocked.  “Hate you?  Rufus, you weren’t well.  Yes, you made me cry, but it wasn’t for being cursed at, though that hurt.  I was crying because I could see how ill you had become.”

“Ah.”  He let his head hang, eyes closed, not trusting himself to look into his sister’s face.  “Bethany, dear sister, I am so sorry.  For all the pain and grief I made you feel, I am so profoundly sorry.”

He felt her arms wrap around his bony frame.  “Rufus, please, now you are going to make me cry,” she said.

He managed a chuckle.  “There, you see?”  That made her laugh, which made him laugh in turn more genuinely and wrap his arm around her.  If I can make her laugh, perhaps I am not completely worthless in the Holy Den Mother’s eyes.

Still, when she had gone, after he’d made promises to sleep, he spent several long hours staring at the ceiling until the sun came up, fearing dreams of the Blue Horizon.

* * *

Breakfast was quiet that morning.  Still short on sleep, Rufus muttered bleary greetings to Bethany and his mother, the latter confining her commentary to a brief, “You shouldn’t stay up so late, Ru Ofanius.”  He ate quickly, fortifying himself with several cups of hot tea, before excusing himself and making his way out to the stables.

It was a low slung building with a peaked roof and about a dozen individual cages containing the manor’s grass chasers.  Once a proud part Vulpine culture, the beasts were mostly kept nowadays by households or individuals with a bent for either history or anachronism.  Actually there was a wide opinion that re-domesticating Grass Chasers after recovering Vulpine Prime from the Varn had been a major case of nostalgia overcoming reason.

Rufus stopped in front of the cage of one them, a male with jet black fur that was about  three meters long and a meter and half high at the shoulder, that looked back at him with beady black eyes set above a thick snout with overhanging fangs.  Three centimeter long claws designed for snaring and pulling down prey dug into the hay at the bottom of the cage while its long furless tail whipped back and forth in perpetual irritation.

He had read somewhere that Humans had domesticated an animal called a “horse” for purposes similar to what the Vulpine had used Grass Chasers for, mainly personal transportation and hauling heavy loads prior to the invention of the steam cart.  Though apparently they were better natured than grass chasers, there being no great history of horses throwing their riders and devouring them, as had happened occasionally in Vulpine history to explorers who made the mistake of not keeping them well fed.

“Good morning, milord,” the stable master called out.  “Going for a ride?”

“Yes, I believe I will,” he replied.  “I’ll take Bloodyjaw out for a stretch.  Has he eaten?”

“Took three kin geese this morning, milord.”

“Excellent.  Saddle him up for me, please.”  Rufus stepped well back as the stable master popped open the feeding hatch on the cage.  Bloodyjaw indeed had to have been fed recently, for instead of ramming his head through to try and reach the nearest food source (ie: the stable master) he stuck his face through the port with more curiosity than menace, allowing the hatch’s neck stock to pin him place so the stable master could fit him with a muzzle over his jaws and then step inside to set his saddle on his back.

“Would you like an extra goose for him, milord?  I’ve got a spare.”  The stable master's face was a study in nonchalance, but his warning was clear enough.  The reins of a grass chaser were difficult enough to control with two working hands, much less one and a fourth goose would be enough to make the beast nearly comatose.

“Thank you, but no,” Rufus replied, stifling the urge to snap at the man.  “Bloodyjaw has known me since we were both cubs, haven't you, you vile beastie?”  He grinned ferally at his mount, which narrowed its eyes and growled at him.  Rufus let the stable master hold the reins while he mounted Bloodyjaw's back and hooked his foot pads in the stirrups, taking them back a half-second before the beast leaped forward, clearing the stable doors in two bounds before charging down the dirt road.

Rufus let out a curse and hauled back hard on the reins, digging his foot claws into Bloodyjaw's sides in warning.  The beast let out an annoyed howl, stopping abruptly and nearly pitching Rufus over, even as its neck was bent backward far enough that Rufus could look it in the eyes.

“Look you,” he addressed it, as the beast yowled in annoyance.  “I may have been gone for seven years but that still isn't enough time for you to forget my scent, so pay attention.  I'm the one in charge of this relationship, so I'll be the one who decides which way we go and how fast.  Clear?”  He thumped the beast hard between the ears for emphasis and Bloodyjaw let out a surprised snort.  But when Rufus loosened the reins again they headed down on the gravel road at a much sedate and stately pace.

They followed the curve of the road, passing fields that had been freshly plowed in anticipation of spring planting on one side and the edges of a virgin forest on the other.  On a whim he diverted Bloodyjaw’s path into the forest, following a game path that wound between the trunks of tall blackwood trees, heading in the general direction of a fishing hole he remembered from his childhood.  If he’d kept going along the road he would have eventually reached the housing development of the manor’s farmers and staff, and he was in no mood for company right now.

The path opened up into a clearing that Rufus remembered edging along the shore of the pond.  Too his disappointment it appeared his old fishing hole was long gone though.  The shallow basin was a dry depression now, the rich mud at the bottom now serving as soil for tall grasses and even a scattering of saplings.  Worse from his perspective was that it wasn’t uninhabited either.  There was a small group of perhaps a dozen young males and vixens in their early twenties on the opposite side, armed with picks, shovels and hand scanners, digging at a spot about three meters from the lip of the depression.  They appeared to be under the direction an older vixen in her sixties, who turned from her work to look across the depression at Rufus and gave him a cheerful Halloo!

Well, it would be rude to just ride off again.  He guided Bloodyjaw around the edge of the depression, dreading the need to interact and be properly lordly to folk who were likely Brushtail subjects.  His mood brightened however, when he got closer and was able to recognize the vixen directing the younger folk.

The Professora Dame Dorathea Bayard, or Aunt Dottie as Rufus had always known her (and sometimes referred to as “Dotty Aunt Dottie” when his mother was in a less than charitable mood) was a tall, spare, sandy furred Vixen a half generation older than the Countess Brushtail.  As the third daughter born to his father’s house, she had managed to avoid the administrative entanglements of her family’s relatively modest holdings, instead pursuing a career in academia and archeology, exploring the ruins of Vulpine culture that had been plowed over by the Varn and piecing together even older history that had never even been discovered previously.   Rufus had always been fond of her, admiring her ability to walk her own path, unencumbered by the usual concerns of the farmer nobility.

“Hello, Auntie,” he greeted, dismounting and knotting Bloodyjaw’s reins to a stout overhanging branch where the beast couldn’t rear up and claw at it.  “What brings you here?”

“Why hello there, Rufus, you’re an utter fright.  Your mother wasn’t joking when she said you looked like you’ve been through Hell,” Dottie said, pushing her straw hat up and peering at him over an anachronistic pence nez with dark lenses clipped to her muzzle.  “What happened to your arm?”

“I had an argument with a pressure door,” he replied.

“You should have known better. Doors are unpleasant debaters.”  She turned to address the gaggle of younger Vulpines who were staring at them, shovels and scanners temporarily forgotten.  “As for the rest of you, get back to work!  You’ve all got your assigned quadrants, now get to digging!”   The young people all turned with a bit of embarrassment back to a large grid marked out on the ground with cord and stakes and got obediently to turning over the earth.

“Who are all these folk?”

“My loyal minions, who are all trying to complete the Practical portion of their Field Archeology course,” Dottie said with a grin.  “I finally persuaded your mother to let me poke for potshards on the grounds, just so long as it was out of her sight.  I’ve been going through the Brushtail’s pre-Subjugation archive and I think I’ve found the location of the old servant quarters.  Well, the foundations at least.”

“I’d think you’d be more interested in finding the manor itself.”

“Bosh!  No point in that.  It'd be too neat!”

He raised an eyebrow.  “Too neat?”

“Neat houses leave no history!  The manor, if what we have from the historical record holds true, had its valuables cleared away and hidden when the Dominion moved it.  But if these are the old servant quarters, they would have been abandoned almost intact when the Varn started hauling people away to re-education camps to get their brains washed out.”  Her eyes brightened in cheery academic mania.  “If we can find the remnants of a home that was left untouched to collapse in on itself, we'd have a picture of a common Vulpine family's life from over fifteen hundred years in the past!”

“I see.  Well, good luck on digging then.”  He gave her a little half bow and started to turn back towards Bloodyjaw, who was raising his paws up, trying to snag a claw on his reins.

“Oh, haven’t seen your old auntie for almost seven years and you just think you can say a quick halloo and go home?” she demanded, hooking her finger in the collar of his shirt and turning him back towards her.

“It isn’t that Aunt Dottie.”  He glanced meaningfully towards the gaggle of students, who were evenly divided between ones that were actually doing work and those who kept looking towards them, apparently trying to figure out who this maimed stranger talking to their teacher was.  “Could we go someplace a bit more private?”

“All right then.”  She walked with him down the slope to where a skimmer bus was parked on the forest’s rough access road.  “What’s the matter?”

He shook his head.  “Too many people staring at me.  It was making me edgy.”

“Edgy?  You look wrung out, boy.”

“I didn’t get much sleep last night,” he said, waving away her concerns.

“Not for several nights, I’d venture.”

“Well, that’s true.”  He rubbed his muzzle in agitation.  “How much did my mother tell you about me?”

“She just said that you’d come home after being badly hurt in an accident.  Is there more to it than that?”

“Yes, but… I’d rather not discuss it right now.”

She nodded.  “I thought there might be.  Your mother has this habit of making Significant Pauses in her speech when she comes close to something she’d rather not discuss, and I was hearing, or not hearing rather, plenty of them when I chatted with her a few days ago.  But that’s your business and none of mine, so I’ll leave you to it.”

“Holy Den Mother bless you for that, Auntie.”  He paused, gathering his thoughts, then asked, “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

He waved a hand vaguely at her and then up towards the students by the pond.  “This.  Your life.  Following your own path. Being a teacher instead of a noblevixen.  Not getting tangled up in… in… the damned system we have.”

Dotty looked at him in sympathy.  “Not feeling all that noble, Viscount?”

He let out a sharp, mirthless laugh.  “I’m no noble, Aunt Dorathea.  I’m not anything right now, except a drag on my House’s resources.  I’m…”  He bit down on the word broken.  “This isn’t the life I wanted.”

“Well, I was lucky.  I was the third daughter of a small Farmer Lord family.  My elder sisters and now their children handle running things well enough, no one cared all that much if I left everything in their hands.  You, on the other hand had the bad luck of being born into a big House with a small family.  Damn your father, if he’d had kept the good sense the Den Mother had given him and not tried to be so stoic about his troubles, I might still have my brother and you might have a few more sisters to carry the load.”

“Yes, well, I don’t.  I thought I could forge my own path, like you had, by joining up with the military and then buying my own fighter, but… that didn’t work out very well.”  He shrugged his shoulder.  “But now I don’t know what to do with myself.  I’ve no experience in administration and if my mother starts waving young marriageable vixen in my face I may very well scream.  Not that I’m exactly a hot marriage prospect right now.”

She clapped him gently on the back.  “Heal up first, Rufus.  After that, you’ll have the time and the strength to find your path.”

“And if I don’t?”

Dottie grinned.  “Then when you get your arm replaced I’ll hand you a shovel and you can explore a brand new career in ditch digging.”

He smiled briefly.  “You’re all heart, Auntie.”


* * *

Next six days passed slowly for Rufus.  Despite the prescriptions he’d been given, the nightmares continued, keeping him awake through most of the night and leaving him irritable and snappish during the day.  When he did sleep it tended to be with a heavy pillow over his head, so his nightly screech of terror would be muffled.  The last thing he wanted was to wake up Bethany again and face her concern.  He was the older sibling, it wasn’t proper that he seemed so damned fragile to her eyes.

By the time the day of his doctor’s appointment he was ready to crawl up the walls.  It had been raining for two days straight which fit the blackness of his mood.  Unfortunately he couldn’t find any relief by taking long walks around the manor grounds as he’d been doing previously.  Riding Bloodyjaw had been forbidden by his mother, who had been politely horrified that he’d taken the risk of riding a grass chaser in his current debilitated condition.

So it was with some relief that he finally escaped the manor house to allow Whitebrow to drive him to the clinic again late in the afternoon of the sixth day.  He spent the time waiting for his appointment scrolling through back issues of his Galactic Aerospace subscription on his palm comp which he hadn’t bothered reading for the past two years.  He was still puzzling over why he had maintained it instead of spending his credit on more important matters, such as healthy food, when he was called into Doctor Redfur’s office again.

“So how are you feeling today, Mr. Shorttail?” she asked, once he’d sat down on his chair.

“I haven’t slept a Den Mother blessed night for a week, my screaming tends to wake up my sister and my mother is driving me madder than I already am.  Does that sum it up for you?” he snapped.

“Reasonably well,” she said calmly.  “Have your prescriptions had any noticeable effect?”

“None whatsoever, that I can tell.  If anything, the dreams have been getting worse.”

“Ah, I should have warned you about that.  Vivid dreams are a noted side effect in some patients.”  She made a note.  “Have you experienced any suicidal thoughts?”

“What?  By the Holy Den Mother no!”

“Good.  Unfortunately I’m hesitant on increasing your dosage, even though you don’t seem to be getting the full effect.  Increasing it might interfere with the pain medication you’ve been taking in relation to your amputation.”

He hesitated.  “I suppose I could do without the pain meds,” Rufus said finally.

Doctor Redfur frowned.  “I don’t believe that’s a good idea.  You’re having a difficult enough time sleeping already.  Until you’re equipped with a base plate for your cybernetic arm that can override the mess of signals your nerve ends are receiving, taking away your pain medication might encourage you to use, er, alternative means of anesthesia.”

“Drinking myself unconscious, you mean?” he asked.

“Indeed.”  She steepled her fingers.  “Actually, that brings up another subject.  I’d like to speak to you a little more about how you are coping.  You’ve mentioned you’ve been experiencing stress with you family, yes?”

“Yes,” he admitted reluctantly.  “You must understand, I don’t particularly want to go deep into detail about them.”

“Of course not, Mr. Shorttail.”  Her use of his assumed name made him wonder just how his thin shield of anonymity could possibly hold.  In theory his identity was safe behind a series of code walls in the clinic’s computer system.  In practice…  Well, his mother was the public face of House Brushtail, and while he hadn’t been the sort to court the newsnets that centered on the various public follies of the farmer nobility, it wouldn’t take much effort to run his image through a face recognition programs to figure out who he was.

Still, she deserved as much information as he could give her.  So, hesitantly to be certain, he gave her the broad outlines.  His sister and mother’s concern, the fact that he had stolen money from his family to support his addiction, his ignoble return after his accident and his promise to make amends.

“So your mother was not happy about your returning?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t say that.”  He ran his hand through his headfur.  “It’s just… I’m a further  complication, I think.  She’s a very busy woman you must understand, and I’m not going to deny that I’m a large problem that just decided to plop into her lap.”

“You are her son.  Perhaps you don’t give her enough credit.”

“Maybe.”  He didn’t add, I am her son, but Bethany is the one that will inherit House Brushtail.  My sister does not need a sibling who is going to embarrass and distract her from her duties.

“We’ll come back to that point in a later session, I think,” Doctor Redfur concluded.  “There’s one final item I wanted to discuss with you.  I’ve heard you swear by the Holy Den Mother more than once.  Would you consider yourself a particularly religious man?”

“Well, no, not particularly.  Why do you ask?”  He decided not to mention the conversation he’d had in his head with the Vulpine race’s patron deity during that terrible, lonely evening aboard the Suhayar, when taking his life had seemed like such an attractive release from all of his pain.  It wouldn’t do to go from being judged an addict (which was true enough) to being thought mad (though he’d admit the Quorum was still debating that one.)

Before then he’d regarded the Holy Den Mother as a hands-off sort of god, remembered warmly from the massive Harvest feasts the his mother had sponsored, where as a child he was permitted to indulge in as much food and desserts that his young belly would hold.  Later it was with occasional annoyance, being obligated to stand with his mother once he’d come of age, outdoors in the early morning chill on her birthday, waiting for the sun to rise and for to complete the ritual words of submission to the Goddess before hustling back inside to eat a Blessedly warm breakfast.  After he’d left home, particularly after he began his slide into drugs and degradation, he’d barely thought of her at all.  Certainly he'd never regarded her as the sort to pop in and chat with lost souls.

“It's been found that those with higher than average devotion to some higher ideal often do better at reaching their goals during their treatment program,” Doctor Redfur told him.

He shook his head doubtfully.  “I'm not really the religious type, Madame Physician.”

“I'm not speaking of religion, though most of my patients find solace in the Holy Den Mother in some way or form.  I'm just speaking of something inherently larger than yourself, that you know you can count on to give you strength to fight your addictions when your own will falters.  Some of patients find it in their families or close friends.  Some find it in patriotism, membership in organized charitable societies, or even  alien religions.  I had one vixen swear to me that she found strength in the idea that our Wise Masters would eventually return and set right all the evils in the universe...  Are you all right?”

Rufus, who had bent over in a massive coughing fit as he tried to cover a gale of hysterical laughter, waved the doctor back and caught his breath.  “I'm fine, I'm fine, I think I just swallowed a hair or something.”  He cleared his throat noisily.  “So how did this remarkably devoted vixen do?”

“She reconciled with her family, found good employment and has been clean for twelve years.”

“How encouraging.”  Rufus shook his head.  “I'm not sure if I'm devoted to anything.  I don't have that sort of... anchor I suppose is the right word.  Not yet anyway.”

“Consider what I said at least, because there will be times when the idea backsliding will be a great temptation.  You must be prepared to fight the impulse with all the weapons you can muster.”

I hope I find something soon, he thought to himself.  At the moment, he felt like he was running through a battlefield stark naked.

TBC