Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Bits o' Legionnaire Business RAINBOW GIRL BOOK 17: OTHERWISE ENGAGED

CHAPTER ONE: PREPARATIONS

It was eventually decided that Ennis Jahnson would go back to Jahnson’s World on his own. Dori had a number of things to take care of on Xolnar; she was not expecting to return for some time.

“You’re sure about this?” said Alder Lokasenna, Dori’s attorney.

“Absolutely not certain,” said Dori. “But we’ve both been vacillating and trying to hide from our feelings so long; we need to resolve things once and for all, one way or another. Either I will marry Ennis Jahnson, or… or, well, I guess Jahnson’s World will be a thing of the past.”

“But you are renting out the house in Sixteenth City?”

“Yes, and I would like Seventh City First Bank to take care of the details. I have no complaints with how they have handled Dah’s old place.”

Tidying up the house in Sixteenth City turned out to be much more of a project than Dori had realized. She used her runabout to shuttle items from the surface of Xolnar to her cruiser in orbit. In addition to the items she had brought from Jahnson’s World, there was a lot of hard furniture she had brought from the old house in Seventh City. She considered renting the house as furnished, but decided to make a clean break of it.

The most vexing question was the AutoChef and Solid Printer she had just barely installed. It had been a haphazard job: no residence on Xolnar was really designed for this equipment, as far as she knew. She did not really want to take it back to Jahnson’s World, but leaving it on Xolnar felt somehow subversive. And, of course, the kitchen sink was completely inoperable.

In the end, she decided to hire a Plumber. It was difficult to get the ‘bot to understand what she wanted at first, but in the end got a second water line installed in the kitchen, running directly to the AutoChef. The Plumber expressed displeasure with the electrical loads being carried by the AutoChef and Solid Printer, so she also hired an Electrician to install heavier-duty electrical cables in both the kitchen and living room. Then she had to wait for a Xolnargov Inspector to approve and certify the architectural changes she had made in her home. Without actually expressing emotion, the ‘bot seemed to disapprove of her new household appliances, but admitted, after some digital research, that they were up to ordinary United Planets standards.

It took a full week and a half to get the house in order. She was in interstellar contact with Ennis Jahnson at least once or twice a day, but found him entirely unsympathetic to her inconvenience in dealing with the various contractors. It was apparently something he dealt with on a daily basis.

At last Dori bid her homeworld good-bye, and with a cruiser full of possessions, and her runabout in tow, headed for Jahnson’s World.

She plotted a long, roundabout course. She had a few stops to make along the way.

CHAPTER TWO: STILLWATER
It was warm in Kleintown on Thanar, warmer than Dori was really comfortable with. But she wanted to share the good news with the only real family she had left.

Dori found her uncle Gaal asleep in a small room with a large window overlooking a garden of bright flowers in various shades of purple, red, blue, and yellow. He had aged terribly. His hair was thinning, white and wispy. His face was thinner, his eyes dark and sunken, his breathing shallow.

“He sleeps twelve or sixteen hours a day now,” his nurse explained. “But I know he will be glad to see you. You can wait in the Common Room. I will escort you. It is in a separate building from the residential area.”

“You are a native Tharnaran, are you not?” Dori asked the nurse, noting his slight build and coppery skin. “I don’t often see your people mixing with Terrans. A few shopkeepers in Kleintown…”

“Yes, that is true,” the nurse agreed. “You water-people prefer such cold, wet climates. Most of us stay away from the Continent of the Southern Latitudes. I come here during the summer to work at Stillwater, when the weather is more bearable. I will soon be completing my studies in exobiology, and hope for an internship on Medicus One. My work at this facility will appear impressive on my resume, and allows me to earn U.P. credits.”

The common room was stuffy and uncomfortable. A synthetic fire burned in the fireplace, making one half of the area unbearably hot. Dori retreated to a small couch in the coolest possible part of the room. Most of the residents sat quietly, a few were in low but animated conversation. None of them looked as old as Gaal Jindrich.

Dori sat for a couple of hours, fiddling with her Omnicom. Residents came and went.

“You’re Dori Aandraison, aren’t you,” one hefty, white-haired resident asked. “I’m Nansi Swinton. I worked with your Uncle Gaal for many years. I was a nurse here when he and Natalia bought Stillwater. They did wonderful things here. They weren’t afraid to invest a little money in the place.”

“Do you know what’s happened to him?” Dori asked.

“Old age,” said Nansi Swinton. “It happens to the best of us.”

“But he’s really not that old,” Dori protested. “He’s only just past ninety.”

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” said Nansi Swinton. “One-hundred-fifty is the new one hundred, they say. But that’s not true for all of us. Gaal spent a lot of his youth traveling the stars, in dodgy space ships. And, of course, prospecting, he came in contact with a lot of weird radiation. And, well, when you’re young, you don’t necessarily take care of yourself the way you ought to. He was hard-living during his youth. So Gaal’s developed a sensitivity to Rejuvium in his later years, and that just makes things worse.”
“I was sixty-five when Gaal and Nat bought this place; I was still working twenty-five years later when Gaal turned sixty-five, and retired, and they moved in here. Nat kept going; turned the books over to an outside agency, but worked as head nurse here until she died. She was pretty spry, especially compared to Gaal..”

“Then how did she die?” asked Dori.

“A Sudden-Onset Pneumonia. It surprised us all,” said Nansi Swinton. “One night, she went to bed with a little cough. The next morning, her lungs had filled with fluid, and she was gone.”

“Uncle Gaal told me he went off Rejuvium after she died,” said Dori. “Do you think he’s just given up, after losing Aunt Nat?”

“No, it’s more than that,” said Nansi Swinton. “Rejuvium is tricky stuff. It will stave off the worst effects of old age, but gradually you need to take larger and larger doses. Finally, you develop both resistance and sensitivity: small doses don’t work, and large amounts are disaterous. The contraindications are hair loss, teeth falling out, loss of muscle tone, skin becoming red and wrinkly, loss of bowel control, memory loss, and dementia. Sounds like old age again, right? But what’s actually happening is infantilization. An overdose of Rejuvium will turn you into a baby-- physically and mentally helpless, but still adult-sized. You can keep someone alive for quite a while with massive doses, but eventually they will start to develop an umbilical cord, lose the ability to eat and breathe on their own. Some people have gotten so desperate to hang onto their loved ones that at that point they have placed them in artificial wombs: but you need to keep up the Rejuvium treatments, higher and higher doses, and then they start to wither away, losing mass, becoming fetal, embryonic then… nothing. I knew one family that went through that. And, or course, if you stop the Rejuvium treatments, or don’t increase the dose fast enough, there is a catastrophic collapse back into senescence.”

“Thank you,” said Dori. “No, I’m not that desperate. I wouldn’t want that kind of life for Uncle Gaal. You were a nurse here, then?”

“No,” said Nansi Swinton. “I was one of a couple of on-site physicians.”

Gaal Jindrich’s private nurse arrived, approaching Dori. “It’s time for your Uncle’s supper,” he said. “Would you like to talk with him now?”

“You had better go,” said Nansi Swinton.

Gaal Jindrich was still sleeping when the nurse brought Dori into his room. A tray of food steamed appealingly next to his bed. The nurse took out a transdermal syringe, and gave him what was clearly a stimulant. Gaal Jindrich woke up immediately.

“Dori. I’ve been waiting for you,” said Gaal Jindrich when he opened his eyes. “Tell me, what have you been doing?”

“I’m engaged to be married,” said Dori. “To Ennis Jahnson, of Jahnson’s World.”

Gaal Jindrich chuckled weakly. “So you’re marrying a planet,” he said.

That evening, Dori checked in with Ennis on Jahnson’s World.

“Things are going well here,” said Ennis. “I expect the move the Jahnson’s Planet will be completed shortly. I have moved one of the hunting sites underground, which has opened up another possible Forest attraction.”

“Uncle Gaal is pretty ill,” said Dori. “In fact, it looks like he is at the end of life. I would like to stay here until he passes. Probably no more than a few months.”

“Of course. I completely understand,” said Ennis. “We were anticipating a long engagement.”

“But I want to spend time getting to know you,” said Dori.

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Ennis. “Take all the time you need.”

Gaal Jindrich’s garden faced the rising sun. Dori was always there to welcome it with him; Nurse Werm made sure he was up to see it each morning. The window to the garden was also a door; Dori would go out to collect some of the soft silvery-white fruit that grew on the trees against the garden wall. Nurse Werm, after some initial apprehension, heartily approved, as Gaal Jindrich would eat the ambrosia fruit when nothing else appealed to his palate.

They spent a great deal of time staring at the sky in silence. Occasionally Uncle Gaal would begin to tell a story from his youth, or something he remembered about his sister’s childhood. Dori knew that at this point he was not far from falling asleep again.

She explored Kleintown’s shopping district a bit more, but the native shopkeepers were taciturn, and the Terran shopkeepers somewhat suspicious of her. She spent a great deal of time at Stillwater, which really was a comfortable and homey facility.

She fully expected to stay on Thanar for a couple of months at least, but after only a couple of weeks, one evening Uncle Gaal roused himself, looked deeply into her eyes, smiled, and passed without a word.

Dori had expected a small, quiet funeral, but nearly all the nurses, doctors, and residents at Stillwater, with their families, filled the cemetery. He was buried beside his beloved Natalia.

CHAPTER THREE: PAYING RESPECTS

Dori’s route back from Thanar to Jahnson's World brought her past Aelffrith Cemetery Asteroid. Relatively large, about half-way between Ceres and Vesta, Aelffrith was the home of the United Planets Military Cemetery. Nearly ten billion sentients were interred here. But this was not Dori's goal. Orbiting the tiny, airless world was its even smaller asteroid-moon, Shanghalla. Dori had come to pay her respects again.

There were plenty of Legionnaires here. Lluornu Durgo-Taine had four of the missile-shaped headstone / urns, even though she was still living with her husband on Wondil IX. Val Armorr had six, although his body- or bodies, Dori had never been sure about that- was actually buried in the sepulchres of Orando. Dori noted other Legion monuments as she passed. Ferro Lad, Invisible Kid, Chemical King, Mentalla, Sun Boy, Star Boy, Blok, Alchemist, Kirt Niedrich, Double-Header… Dori walked on.

"Berta Skye Haris of Earth", the little monument read. "Known as Nightwind. Although her powers were vastly increased by the atmosphere of Xolnar, she fell to an ambush during the Second Khundish Invasion. Her sacrifice will always be remembered."

"I never knew you personally, Berta," said Dori to the empty air. "But we share a Legion bond. Thank you, and all those who fought with you for keeping my Homeworld free."

Her next stop required a little more caution. She parked her cruiser a good hundred A.U. from the star, and took her stealth-cloaked flyer down to the dead world of Lexor. Destroyed by an ancient climate disaster, it now housed another private cemetery known as Malhaya. Kirt Niedrich had a memorial here, as well. Dori knew that somewhere near the center was a centuries-old statue of Luthor, now dwarfed by the monuments erected to other great villains. Demo’s statue, for example, towered above the rest, and was a notable landmark.

But she was looking for just one small, non-descript grave. The inscription was terse.

Roy Travich
The Legion of Super-Villains
The Justice League of Earth
The Workforce
b. 2945 d. 2973
Hired Killer

“Oh, Roy,” said Dori. “I remember you from when Irv and I were first dating. The poor little rich kid, an orphan, always in the company of your aunt and uncle. Then when you came of age, spent your parents’ fortune trying to become radioactive. After you were finally cured on Takron-Galtos, you underwent the procedure all over again, joining McCauley’s workforce as Radion.You were quite a joiner. I’m afraid I may have given you the idea with my application to the Legion. And your crazy quest ended up killing you. I’m sorry.”