The Gaming Outpost

The scrum of five-year-olds, both genders, with the Alphas in red, and the Bobcats in blue, surrounded the socker ball, and squirmed it about to no good effect until I and the Alpha coach came out with our whistles to break it up before some boy got the bright idea of slugging his opponent in the nose as a viable means of winning the game.

Rich and I gave each other exasperated looks, and then began yelling the two teams back to their own sides. Ten minutes of game time later, and we had to do this twice more. At last the game-ending horn blew, and after the good game handshake ritual, which our little ones were still learning, I was able to turn the mob that was my team over to my wife who got them dressed and turned over to their parents who had been sitting in the stands and cheering us on (occasionally cursing the coaches or the referee as well.)

I taught history at Palmer Private (because getting the government into schools is as bad for free thought as getting the government into churches went the local to this universe saying.) and it seemed a universal truth across four dimensions. History teachers have to be coach as well.

I loved History. I knew the History of Earth, with a specific emphases on the defensive Crusades. I enjoyed the early history of the Galactic Empire. I had really gotten in to the court intrigues of the Land of the Golden Tree in its early years. And now, I taught how a bunch of merchant outposts became a league of city-states and then a nation. And there was so much that I had yet to learn.

But in every universe, I had to pretend to coach, which I hated. Why couldn’t the Science teacher do the coaching?

Once all the kids were gone, I fell into the arms of Lisa.

“You survived.” She murmured into my chest. “I did too.”

Lisa does not enjoy herding thirty five year olds into their clothes, either. She likes teaching one five year old at a time how to paint, or painting on her own. In this universe, she made most of our money for her paintings. In others, I did.

“Time to go home, order some BBQ from the delivery service…” I said with relief.
“Um, time to go home, real quick, take a shower, get dressed in your formal robes, and take your wife to the opening of Stellene’s art show at Monmoret’s gallery.”

“You did not tell me.” I said accusingly. Okay, I am ashamed of myself, but I had been looking forward to BBQ, and not fingersandwhiches on tasteless bread, all day, knowing I would have the horror of two games to coach. Which horror was finally done.
Still, I was ashamed for yelling at my wonderful wife.

“Stellene, the little witch, did not tell me until the last moment either. She is trying to have me miss the party, without it looking like that.”

“Ah.” I said, comprehension flooding in. In Stellene’s world, there was only enough customers for her, and any competition did not broaden the pool at all, it only shrank Stellene’s share. So she practised on means of stabbing her competitors in the heart and then making it look like professional suicide of which she was wholly innocent.

I noddded. We headed home in a rush, showered, shaved (me my face, her, her legs which I did ogle for ten seconds), and got gussied up. She fixed my oversash to be just right, and then we slowly promenaded down into the center of the small village of Palmer.

Since the locals had banned cars for aesthetic reasons, towns were tightly knit places on a walking scale.

And it simply was not done to ride a pedal cart in formal robe.

Monmoret himself greeted my wife with a kiss on the cheek, and a less friendly look my way. I smiled blandly back, well aware of his desire to ‘take that lovely woman away from that dusty clod’ as I had read his thoughts one night. I was not too worried, and if he did get a bit too frisky, I had also, as part of my historical studies learned three different martial arts techniques. One for swords, one for fists and feet, and one full of ‘accidental tumbles’ called Drunken Court Lady Style. Its a marvelous technique for accidentally stepping on someone’s foot, and grinding all their fine foot bones into splinters in their foot, and then stepping back in horror, as you slap your elbow into their nose.

So I grinned a trifle too happily at the fancily dressed Monmoret, art connoisseur. He gave me a look, and Lisa elbowed me in the ribs.

Right. I am not supposed to show the shark’s teeth at parties like this.

We passed beyond the door, and into a large, well-lit space with a pale wooden floor and white walls dotted with large and small portraits and landscapes.

Some were execrable, to be honest, but a few looked that way, and were not really. I was studying one such as Lisa made time to talk to some of the Patron of the Arts set about the differences between her art and the others here, when a lady’s hand rested on my shoulder.

It smelled of camellia flower and nail polish and clean soap. I turned, a smile fixed on my face, and found it broadening a bit on its own.

The lady, with her hair up high, and her formal robe dress down low was easy on the eyes. The two fellows with her were well dressed, but more modestly, as was the other female, a forgettable blonde.

“I like your taste in art, Mr…?”
“Doctor James Lawton.” I said.
“Medical Plaza?” One of the fellows there raised a hand to shake.
“Phillip Morach.”
I shook, and shook my head.
“Just a lowly history professor. I teach at Palmer.”
“Oh, but you should teach at the college.” The divine enchantress said, putting her graceful hand to her perfectly painted lips.
I shrugged, unable to disagree. I should, but in many, many worlds, who you knew helped so much.
“What do you think of the painting behind you?” She asked, and I nodded, grateful to turn to a less embarrassing subject.
“It seems a rebuttal of love. The maiden is turning from her pleading suitor.”
“She looks triumphant with her arm cast back to him.” Phillip observed.
“Aye.” I agreed, paying more attention to him. “But in her other hand, she has clutched the ring he gave her, to her heart. Which in the symbology of the Grenix People, whom I think this artist is using, is a sign of the deepest love.”
“Not only the Grenix.” Said the divine lady, her hand over her heart, and a quirk of a smile on her face.
“True, lady.” I said coloring a bit. I could stare at her noble proportions, at the secrets hinted at by her deftly arranged robe for a day and a night.
I shook my head, and went back to the painting.
“So you say the painting says two different things.” She prompted me.
“Oh no.” I disagreed instinctively. “Otherwise its not good art. It says one thing, but a complicated thing.”
“So you don’t admit to flexible meanings?” The words came from Her lips, but they held a hidden barb all but visible in them.
“I…no, not really.”
“So you’re saying we all have our Roles on the Stage of Life to play.” She said dismissively, and now I knew where I had erred. One of the current controversies roiling the social world of conversation and arts was whether Man and Woman were equal, and essentially interchangeable.
“Would you want it not such?” I turned to her, and ran my hand up and down in the air in obvious reference to her delightful figure and gown. I felt sick inside as this was the closest I had come to flirting with another woman in ten years, but I consoled myself that it was for a good cause.
Still, it did nothing. Her eyes were hard and bright with challenge. I would not regain her favor with a simple flattery, no matter how true. I must submit to her viewpoint.

And then I saw how unfair this was. Here, the Divine Lady, an enchantress of seduction of great skill, demanded to have her powers, and yet be accounted as simply another person just like some ordinary man. She wanted her cake and too eat it too, I thought with a bit of anger stirring in me.
“I think the notion of roles had much to reccomend it, if not taken out of proper role itself. For without roles, we would be ought but a mob.”
I turned back to the painting.
“The artist here is saying that she loves him dearly, but the maiden is afraid of her love, of what it would make her willing to suffer for her suitor, and so she is pretending to disdain him even as he, the more uncomplicated figure cannot understand why she turns him aside.”

“I see.” She said coldly. “That is your opinion of the meaning of the painting.”
In for a penny, in for a pound, I thought.
“No, Lady, that is the truth.”
She glared at me, but the spell was broken and so I stared calmly back, and just sought knowledge as she went on to attempt other conquests.

Later that night, as we began to gather my darling Lisa’s stuff to leave, she hissed at me. And I remembered in full how I had ogled the Lady’s frame.

“You got Mrs. Kenneth Worthing furious at you. She was saying all sorts of crude remarks about my paintings…I nearly lost one sale.”
I sighed.
“You need to make it up to her somehow.”
“Well, I could, but I’m afraid it would involve me cooking her breakfast.” I said eilliptically enough that it took Lisa a full second to grasp my meaning. “And I’m not totally opposed to that if you really want me to, quite a woman, made an impression on me…”
I would have gone on, but the elbow came into my ribs quite hard.
“She came on to you! The conniving little cheating….” My wife ran on a bit, but we’ll spare gentle ears her fervent whispsers of wrath.
“And you led her on.” She added.
” A bit.” I said miserably. “I’m sorry.”
She thought.
“It’s okay. I forgive you.” She patted my arm. “Even the best men get their heads twisted around for a couple minutes.” She grabbed my arm. “Just so long as you’re untwisted.”
“Oh, believe me, I am. She wants slaves who pretend they are free to amuse her.”
Lisa breathed in, and her face turned cold.
“Well,we’ll just see about that.”
And somewhere I heard a judge saying ‘May God have mercy on your soul, because I won’t.’ The Divine Lady had ticked Lisa off, and I would not want to be the Divine Lady for anything in the world right now.