Katherine had to sign in to her children’s school, so that they would have a record of all visitors for the day. The fact that she could go anywhere on the Ring with impunity but was still held back by the stern lady on reception had never been lost on her, and she suspected had never been lost on the receptionist either based on the way she always smiled widely as she handed over the sign in book.
“Can I ask what the reason for this visit is?” asked the receptionist. “Do you have something that you need to drop off?”
“I just need to see my children,” Katherine said.
“Hmm,” said the receptionist. “You know, usually we require parents to call ahead if they’re going to be visiting by the school day. And wanting to see your children isn’t the sort of thing we like to hear – it can be very disruptive to the children’s learning to have parents suddenly appear in class.”
“Are you saying I can’t go in?” Katherine asked. She put on her general voice and said: “I would like to know your –“
“I can’t actually stop you from going in,” the receptionist said. She was one of the few people who would cut off the speech of an Empiridium general – Katherine was almost impressed. “I’m just saying what we usually recommend. It’s ultimately the parent’s choice – how important is seeing them at the moment?”
“Imperative,” Katherine said, without hesitating.
The receptionist shrugged. “Alright. I’ll let their teachers know that you’re coming.”
Katherine nodded and stepped through the doors into the school. Every time she came here, it was like stepping into a different world entirely. Most of the Ring was metallic and cold, designed for function over style, but schools were allocated special budgets for design that gave them a much different feel.
The walls were made of wood – synthetic wood, at least. Real wood was far too costly to be bought for this purpose, but she supposed the fake stuff did a good enough job. The walls were covered in artwork; pencil drawings of the exotic creatures from other planets and paintings of what were maybe supposed to be planets and maybe a representation of what happened when you sneezed on the paint.
Wide windows were set into the walls, with special lamps behind them that mimicked the daylight that came through the window on a warm summer’s day on earth. Standing in front of it, Katherine felt the side of her face growing warm, and saw the dust mites flying around the shoulder of her uniform. It was a more than pleasant feeling that made her wish she could be taking the children to the biodomes and watching them play while she soaked up the sun. She hadn’t gone in years. When had it been?
“General?” She realised she had been standing outside her youngest son’s classroom for the last few seconds. The teacher, Madame Oga, was staring expectantly at her. Oga was a millegre, a species whose bottom half was made up of a large number of tentacles. No-one knew the exact number – it varied between individuals, and it was considered rude to ask a millegre how many tentacles they had. It did make her an excellent teacher – each tentacle was extremely sensitive to vibrations and light, which meant that Oga could essentially see and hear through all of them. As she had explained at the last parents night, it meant that she could control her class even when her attention was pulled somewhere.
“Hello, Madame Oga,” Katherine said. “Can I see Oliver, please?”
“Of course,” Oga said. She heard a playful yelp from behind her somewhere in the classroom, and Oliver was presented to her with a tentacle wrapped gently around his chest and under his arms. He giggled at the feeling of being carried. He was four years old, with a shock of blond hair that he refused to let her get cut, style, or even comb. His slightly round cheeks were flush, and his blue eyes widened to see her.
It looked like the classroom was having its play period, because he had several stickers on his face and held a toy ship in his hand. It was a Model DZ60, but it was horrifically inaccurate, which wasn’t very important.
“Hi mummy!” he said.
Katherine knelt down so that she could be level with Oliver. It made her bad leg scream in protest, but Katherine would be damned if she let some old injury stop her from speaking with her child.
“Hi, Oliver. How’s school today?”
“Good!” he said. “Madame Olga is teaching us how to count all the way to a hunded!”
Katherine looked up at Olga for confirmation, but she had returned to the classroom to split up an argument between two little girls about who should be allowed to marry one of the desks. The tentacle that had been left in her place made a motion as though it was nodding.
“That’s exciting,” she said. “Those are really big numbers! But it’s hundred, Oliver, not hunded.”
He held up his fingers. “It’s fifty, sicty, seventy, eighty, ninety, hunded!” The fingers that he was holding up had absolutely no bearing on the numbers that he was saying, but he said them so proudly that Katherine felt she had no choice but to nod along.
“Very good!” she said, pulling him into a hug. Then she started tickling his sides, forcing him to shriek with delight until she let him go.
“Bye mummy!” he said, and ran back into the classroom. Apparently showing off to her was enough to convince him that this conversation was over. Besides, he had to continue to play with his inaccurate toy. Once he was a bit older, Katherine was going to buy him some more accurate model kits to put together.
“He’s doing okay,” Madame Olga said, her top half returning to the doorway.
“I know,” said Katherine, watching as Oliver engaged his ship in an epic space battle with a green, cow-like toy animal.
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
“Are you alright?” Madame Oga asked. It was clear that she knew the answer, so Katherine didn’t even bother lying.
“I’m tired,” Katherine said. “It’s been quite a day.”
“Do you need us to keep the children a bit longer today?” Oga asked.
Katherine shook her head. “No, I’ll be back in time to pick them up. And if not then I’ll make sure Robert is here. Or I’ll send one of my soldiers.”
“I won’t be able to accept a pickup by any soldiers that you haven’t introduced me to,” Oga reminded her. “Or that your children don’t recognise.”
“I know,” Katherine said. She pinched the bridge of her nose to try and focus. “I’ll sort something out. If anything changes I’ll call.”
“Very good,” said Oga. “I hope the rest of your day is better, General.” She winced suddenly. “Oh, and I needed to tell you that Oliver has picked up a biting habit recently. Perhaps you could talk to him about it at home.”
“Yes, Katherine said. “I will. Is he biting you now?”
Oga nodded. “But don’t worry. At the moment, he’s my problem.” She turned around. “Oliver, sweetheart…”
The classroom door closed behind her. Katherine sighed at another thing to deal with being added to her plate, then immediately chided herself. She should be happy that Oliver was biting. Well not happy exactly, but at least she had a problem that she would be dealing with if she were a normal person that wasn’t responsible for over a million lives.
She made her way down the corridor to the older end of the school. Here the artwork was less juvenile and took on more of a sophisticated tone. It was still made by children who were nine or ten years old – or whatever the equivalent for their species was – so it wasn’t quite museum quality, but there was a definite intention behind the paintings.
One of them caught her eye. It was a painting of herself, or at least someone who looked vaguely like her and had a slightly misshapen head. She was standing in a field of flowers on a bright summer day – it looked like one of the biodomes, though a little prettier than it usually appeared.
The General, by Sophia Copper-Graham, said the card underneath.
Katherine smiled and opened the door to her daughter’s classroom. This door was at the back of the room, behind the neat rows of desks, which meant that most of the students didn’t see her come in. A few turned around and looked shocked to see her there, but no-one said anything.
They were focused on a student in the front of the room, who was stood facing the rest of the class and reading from a book. She noticed Katherine come in, but didn’t give her anything more than a quick glance before returning to her reading. She was tall for her age, with brown hair made up in elaborate braids that Katherine didn’t even think she could have replicated herself, and dark eyes that were narrow and focused.
Sophia was reading from a text that Katherine knew well. It was an old play, one that was typically performed on holidays. She was reading the monologue given by the star sailor Luxia towards the beginning of the play, the one that came just after she left her home planet for the first time.
“Goodbye, world of mine. What has our partnership been, if not that of the parent and the child. You the parent who bore me and loved me, and I the child who always rebelled. I have walked on your soils and swam in your oceans, but the greatest joy you have given me is to bear me into your skies and beyond. I will not return to you, mother world, but all shall know that I come from you.”
Sophia delivered the monologue perfectly. Katherine wasn’t surprised – she had first taken her daughter to a production of this play five years ago and had been told emphatically afterwards that Sophia would be an actress one day. In true Graham family fashion, this hadn’t just been an empty statement; Sophia spent much of her free time imitating the actors she watched on recordings of plays, and audiovisual programs. She clapped when she was finished, and the rest of the class quickly followed at the prompting of their teacher, Mrs Brown.
“That was excellently delivered, Sophia,” said Mrs Brown. “Full marks on performance. Hopefully that will help the rest of you connect to the material in time for the upcoming exams. Sophia, why don’t you step outside and speak with your mother while Zogin does his reading of Act Seven, Scene Three.”
Sophia met Katherine in the hallway. She stood straight backed, with her chin up, as though she was standing to attention.
“That was wonderful, Sophia,” Katherine said.
“Thank you mum,” said Sophia. She smiled slightly before frowning. “Why are you here?”
Katherine didn’t feel like being coy with Sophia, so she led her to a small bench in the hallway. “This is a secret,” she warned.
Sophia nodded. Katherine well knew that she could keep a secret. “A technician found a body in a sealed off room,” she explained.
Sophia gasped. “That’s terrible. Do you know what happened?”
“Not yet,” Katherine said. “It’s being looked into. It just threw me a bit, so I wanted to come and see you and Oliver to ground myself.”
“That makes sense,” said Sophia. “Has it helped?”
“It has,” said Katherine. She reached up and plucked a single hair that dangled in front of Sophia’s eyes. “My first thought was that I’d give you a hug. But don’t worry –“ she clarified, as Sophia started to pull away, “- I won’t make you do that in front of your friends.”
“Thank you,” said Sophia.
Katherine smiled. The days of school politics seemed like an eternity ago now, though based on what she remembered she thought she would still take her current life over them.
“I’ll let you get back to your classes,” she said.
Sophia nodded and started to go, but she hesitated. “Mum, I know you’re busy. But, are we still going to be having dinner with dad tonight?”
Katherine did everything in her power to hide the fact that she had forgotten. “Of course,” she said. “I know he’s really looking forward to it. Maybe you can perform your monologue to him at dinner.”
“He actually helped me practice it the other night,” said Sophia. Her tone had shifted ever so slightly. Katherine knew that it wasn’t blame that she was expressing, but a very slight hint of “I didn’t get to practice it with you.”
“That’s probably for the best,” she said. “He’s much better with theatre than I am. I wouldn’t have been able to give you any advice at all.”
“He was very helpful,” Sophia agreed.
“I know,” Katherine said. “I heard you practicing a song in your room the other day. Has he heard that one yet?”
Sophia blushed. “No.”
“Well, then if you feel okay with it maybe you could show us,” Katherine suggested. “It’s the song from that show we saw a few months ago, isn’t it? The Caves of Hintram, I think.”
“Right,” Sophia said. “It’s Silcra’s Lament – the song she says after she has to say goodbye to her brother and the man she was going to marry on the same day.”
“I remember,” said Katherine. “I’d love to hear you perform it.”
Mrs Brown stuck her head out of the door and told Sophia that she should be getting back to class. Katherine let her go but lingered on the bench for a little bit longer.
What she had said before was right. She had needed her children to ground her after what had happened to Calira. She was a general of a Ring – being grounded was the most important thing she could do.
Some people would have called it a weakness that she needed her children to command a Ring, and there were days when Katherine saw that argument. She had never needed to do this before she had children, so had they made her weaker?
On her saner days, she knew that she was as strong as ever. Her children were on her Ring, which meant that anything that threatened it threatened them as well. As far as she was concerned, there was no better reason to do her job.
She could feel it now, that old rage from her times in war, the one that had led her to victory more times than she could count. Someone was threatening her crew, and therefore threatening her Ring, and therefore threatening her family. She would make sure that they were sorry they ever did.
Her communicator alerted her to a message. Seraphina was beginning her autopsy. It was time for her to go.
