The Wanderer

If you’re still reading, that means you’re either a little more broad-minded than most or simply titillated enough to want to know how a former toss-boy became one of the richest men in the galaxy.

My suggestion? Buy the book, take it home, settle into a comfortable place, and let me tell you.

If you’re thinking this isn’t exactly the way to drum up business, I suppose you’re right. I’m certain my agent would agree. The truth is, I’ve a chip on my shoulder. I’m balancing a fragment of resentment on the edge of my left clavicle about the size of the planet Vercengetorix-2, which isn’t a bit of space dust, believe me. I know, I was stranded there for a couple of months and let me tell you...

…on second thought, I won’t. Not now anyway. I’ll get to that, later. If you stick around long enough.

So. Decision made?

Are you shelling out those hard-earned credits yet? Leaving the booksellers with my story tucked safely under your arm, and still wondering what the hell made you purchase this epic tome? Are you patting yourself on the back for finding a place still selling paper books in this day and age?

No matter. Whatever. You’ve got the book...

...and I’ll get my royalty.

* * *

So this is home? Nice place.

Get settled. Have the refreshments within reach, cIimate-control set on Comfort, communicators in the Off position. Open the book and we’ll begin...

* * *

Let me begin by saying the only reason I ever kept my origins secret was because of my father. The last thing in the universe I wanted was to make trouble for him. The gods know I did enough of that without actually trying.

He’s a good man, no matter what my stepmother says.

I might never have written a word of this if my own children hadn’t begun their adolescent pestering...Pa, people need to know... It’s your duty to your family... you should set the record straight... you know the rumors...Yadayadayada...ad nauseum...

Right. Like I give a fuck for rumors. Still, children’s demands are like slow drips of water. Eventually, they can wear down the densest stone.

A father’s defenses are nowhere near stone-like.

So, here we go...

As someone once said, Hold on, it may be a bumpy ride.

Chapter 1

Once upon a time, there was a little boy whose mother was a whore…

* * *

On second thought, that’s not the proper way to start this story. Let’s just state the facts, in plain, unadorned Arcanian, or for those aliens in the audience, Inglaterre. My mother was a whore in the Arcanian Pleasure Dome, located in the planet’s capitol at Aljansur City. My father was a visiting Terran who decided to sample its delights before returning to his home planet.

I exist because of a computer glitch...and that’s the only reason. That’s it in a nutshell, but it’s damn sure not going to be my obituary!

Also, please bear with me a bit. This first part may seem a bit salacious and I’ll try to couch my language, I swear, but it’s a necessary part of my story and occasionally a bit of very plain speaking may sneak in.

So! You’re warned.  Caveat, caveat, caveat!

* * *

When translating from his father’s criteria for a companion from his native Inglaterre into Arcanian, the computer suffered a power surge causing a misinterpretation of certain alien words. The result made it appear he wanted his girl-for-the-night to use no contraception. The girl in question, a smart and wary young woman named Marinda, complied under protest, and nine months after her client went his merry way, Tamis was born.

There was a scandal, of course, and an investigation. Marinda was censured for this lapse in standard procedure, and suspended from further employment pending a Board of Inquiry. Of course, the investigation revealed the computer’s mistake, and also how she’d questioned it at the time and requested her protest be noted.

That was a lucky step on Marinda’s part, but she’d learned early on to document any discrepancy or oddity when dealing with visitors to the Dome, especially aliens, no matter how insignificant it appeared.

After her reinstatement, she was given leave on a work-related injury compensation.

* * *

Fast foward ahead a bit. Through the Insurrection and the plague and Reformation, which the inhabitants of the Pleasure Dome survived because during the war, no one had much time for such pleasures as sex and therefore didn’t spread the disease.

Besides, no customers were allowed in unless they were scanned by the inhouse physicians beforehand.

* * *

By the time peace eas secured, Marinda caught the eye of the Dome’s head of security, who’d been watching her from afar for quite a while. Since her current status was now whore-in-compensatory-leave, he decided to make his move. Love during a time of such political upheaval wasn’t any less passionate. Marinda married him and retired. This man, who became Tamis’ stepfather, was a gentle husband and a good parent, and the boy was twelve years old before he learned he wasn’t Gerrold Tregis’ actual child.

* * *

It’s amazing how adults assume children are either deaf or stupid and can’t understand what they say. I learned the good news from some of the staff at the Dome, a couple of boy-whores, as a matter of fact, while they strolled on the back terrace during a break between clients. I happened to be sitting on a banister above them, leaning back against the stone column of the balustrade, basking in the high morning Arcanian sun. I always liked the sun’s touch on my skin. Once I became a whore, I had to stop sunbathing. Most of my clients prefered pale skin, the whiter, the better. So...bye, bye, sunshine. Anyway, on to what those two were saying...

* * *

“That Tam’s a good-looking kid. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was full-blooded Arcanian.”

Tam’s ears perked up at that. Why should he think otherwise?

“How can you say that? I mean, you can see the Terran in him. It’s as plain as the nose on your sweet little face he’s got alien blood. Look at those wide blue eyes, and...gods, he’s so damned tall. No twelve-year-old Arcanian boy should be that tall, though I understand it’s normal for Earthers.”

“All I’ve got to say is, Marinda’s damned lucky she found a man broadminded enough to ignore all the scandal and marry her. Wish I could.”

“Well, sweetie, if you can figure out a way to get yourself knocked up, you just might have a chance.”

“Oh, ha-ha. Anyway...”

* * *

And so on, and so forth, et cetera, et cetera...with more of the same at oddly-spaced intervals for the next year, while I continued to grow and grow, exhibiting more Terran heritage with each inch of height. Finally, because this secret, which wasn’t really a secret, gnawed so at my conscience, I confronted my stepfather, who responded with a curse for the ones with the loose lips, and concern for me.

* * *

“No, Tam. I’m sorry to say I’m not your father.” He placed a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder. “As for any other questions you have, you should ask your mother, since I’ve really no knowledge of the rest of it.”

And I don’t want to know. He didn’t add it was his secret belief that, upon seeing the now-absent Terran, Marinda had actually fallen in love with him and somehow conspired with one of the computer techs to falsify that report.

So Tam asked his mother about the man who was his father, and she told him what she knew, which wasn’t all that much. He was Terran, he was a blooded warrior, and he was also the uncle-under-the-law of the man who was now margrave.

* * *

A little history lesson here. About the not-so-glorious ruling family.

At the age of twelve, the present ruler had been designated heir to the throne, and taken from his mother to be raised in the Imperial Palace by his uncle, the then margrave. Completely spoiled because of his exalted position, he thought himself immune to punishment, and had gotten himself into a spot of trouble and suffered exile for it.

That’s a story that isn’t for me to tell. See the official kan Ingan Archives if you want to know more. The royals have never been shy about recording their triumphs, or their failures, those literary exhibitionists.

When the exile returned to claim the throne, the Terran, hereafter to be referred to as the Warrior, came with him. He was companion at Lord Aric’s wedding, and the groom-gift to him was a pass to the Pleasure Dome. Tamis’ mother fit the profile fed into that treacherous computer and the Warrior used his ticket with great abandon, during which time he planted the errant seed one day becoming a surprisingly adventurous weed in his own little garden.

That the weed was also related distantly to the margrave‘s wife made no difference.

* * *

You’re like him, Tam, so very like him, his mother said.

Often the boy would stand in front of a mirror, studying his image and fantasizing about the man who bequeathed him his genetic heritage. When his longing for change, his desire for knowledge, and his dissatisfaction with his lot in life began, he wondered if he’d inherited those, also.

On Tamis’ thirteen natal day, as was the custom, Gerrold took the boy aside and asked him what he wished to do with his life, since he was now considered an adult. It was a rhetorical question. As the son of a whore, even a whore who had worked in the biggest and most expensive brothel on the planet, the one owned and patronized by the royal family, his choices could be ticked off on one hand, not counting the thumb, and thus limited to lower-class, usually illegal occupations.

* * *

Another interruption.

Sorry, but you may as well get used to this. There’s a lot here needing to be explained. Don’t complain. After all, you let me sucker you into buying this book, didn’t you? Now, you’ve got to put up with my explanations. Before you get completely bored by all these asides, let me say, it’s necessary. I want you to understand my situation completely, and also what I did next.

You see, I had been keeping my eyes and ears open for opportunities, and I had a Plan.

Being only thirteen at that time, however, and still relatively sheltered from the ways of the Big Bad Universe, in spite of where I lived, I had no idea what those plans would ask of me, nor where they would eventually take me. I don’t give a damn what Arcanian law says. I was by no means an adult. But…

…even if I could’ve seen into my future, knowing what I now know, especially what I now know, I’d still do the same thing.

I think.

Maybe.

Okay, back to the story.

* * *

As both the child of an employee and a relative of the manager, Tam grew up intimately knowing the Dome, its policies and its people. The men and women working there were his friends, the acts they performed simply their way of making a living. He learned early on that though the Dome had many levels, it was theoretically separated into two wings: the East Wing housing the women, the prosties and concubines with wealthy patrons, and the West Wing with the famous boy-whores of the Pleasure Dome.

Though living in apartments set aside for non-participating employees such as Security, entertainers, servants, and those working in the casinos, the boy made the acquaintance of some of the West Wing’s occupants, visiting them as they worked out in the gymnasium or spent their leisure time in private recreation rooms. Many of them were barely older than Tamis himself and more than a few homesick for their younger siblings. Because of that, they treated him like an inquisitive little relative and in their own ways tried to protect him from the Dome’s harsher realities.

As the boy watched them exercising in the brilliant sun-lit rooms or swimming in the heated pools, he was dazzled by their sleek, trim bodies and handsome young faces.

Contrary to the beliefs of the Arcanian in the street, most of them weren’t digs or double-jointed but had been forced by birth, circumstance, or the wrong combination of physical beauty, lower caste, and quick wits, to seek work at the Dome. Because of a biological oddity, a good many Arcanian men have an androgynous look until around the age of twenty-five, too pretty to be male but not delicate enough to be female.

Unfortunately, some never outgrow it, and those were the ones ending up at the Dome.

To the majority of the West Wing’s occupants, it was merely a job and nothing more, to keep from becoming a beggar or a thief, a way to earn money so they might later escape to better things.

Tam decided he wanted something better, too, but it also required money, and plenty of it, as well as leaving Arcanis. With that in mind, he knew what he had to do. He would become a boy-whore, save his earnings, escape the stigma of birth, caste, and the planet itself, and become what he really wanted to be.

* * *

Right.

There’s an old Terran saying about the best-laid plans of mice and men. That goes for thirteen-year-old Arcanian boys, too.

I was such a... (Fill in your own word here for someone who thinks he knows it all but is totally without a clue.)

* * *

So Tam told his stepfather his plan, except the part about leaving Arcanis. No need to let him in on that little secret, just in case he somehow managed to fail.

Gerrold didn’t change expression, merely asked, “You’ve thought this over carefully, I assume?” When Tam assured him he had, he shrugged. “Let’s tell your mother.”

* * *

I doubt I’d be as calm if one of my own sons told me he wanted to be a whore. Good thing none ever did.

I’d have killed the little beggar.

* * *

Not strangely, Marinda also wasn’t enthusiastic. It took some fancy verbal footwork on her son’s part to make her admit the limitation of his choices or how his idea seemed a sound way to ensure his later years.

* * *

Why is it mothers always think their children are going to go on to Bigger and Better Things than they themselves did?

Not my son. He isn’t going to stay a whore for long. Oh no.

Mother...mother... I still shake my head at your trust in Fate.

The facts themselves say otherwise. Boy-whores last only a short time. Once they mature physically or reach their late twenties, whichever happens first, their clients begin to lose interest. Only sweet, delicate features and soft-skinned, supple bodies interest those fickle creatures, not faces sprouting beards and coarsened flesh with hard muscle underneath. The only muscle those bastards are interested in is between a boy’s legs, those who don’t seek soft ass-cheeks, that is, and whichever only for the duration they’ve paid for it.

In order to stay accessible as long as possible, some of the boys dose themselves with Lovelast or Red Thunder but those drugs have a habit of turning on their users after a short time, and before a male prosti is twenty, he can be severely addicted. That’s the time to begin searching for a patron.

If a private benefactor hasn’t been found by the time a whore reaches thirty, he’s assured of swift demotion, a short slide to one of the dockside brothels, and from there to being dead, or worse, picking up merchant marine on street corners. Self-termination runs high after age thirty-one, as well as thundering cases of the black clap, since dock workers are notorious for refusing to use condoms or River Mud.

Some crap about it being unmanly.

It’s more manly to contract a deadly disease and transmit it to some poor son of a bitch trying to survive by selling his body, I suppose.

* * *

Marinda was certain her son would never have to face that problem. She convinced herself he’d find no less than a prince to keep him.

* * *

I didn’t disabuse her of that belief. If it kept her happy and from worrying about me, what harm did it do? I had my own agenda and I was determined to stick to it.

* * *

“We’ll have to find someone to train you.” Allowing herself to become immersed in the technicalities, she turned to her aunt for help.

* * *

Great-Aunt Alanna was a character in her own right. She’d been mistress of the future margrave, left destitute after his very abrupt and ignominious exile. The last time she’d seen him, he’d taken her to the palace mortuary to identify her brother’s body, after that poor bastard allowed himself to be gulled into joining a crowd terminally involved in storming the palace gates. He, along with most of those participating, were mowed down in the process, and a slab in the mortuary was his reward for his stupidity.

When her lover appeared to assure her of his own safety, he agreed to help her recover her brother’s body. A few days later, he was accused of being in cahoots with the rebels and exiled, and it was a decade-plus before she saw him again.

Breaking custom and shocking the palace, my great-aunt sought an audience with his mother, the Lady Alisiastra, who, in another moment of scandal, was extremely kind-hearted to her son’s Piece of Light. She gave her enough money to buy herself the managerial position at the Dome.

Did I mention my family has whoring in its blood? Aunt Alanna’s parents run a minor dome in Meriga. My grandparents did the same in Jestey before they retired.

* * *

When Tam’s mother spoke to her aunt concerning her son education, Great-Aunt Alanna simply said, “I know just the person. Racine Tulima.”

* * *

Racine Tulima, Star of the West Wing.

Be still, my trembling heart. Racine Tulima is the only man I could ever truthfully love. In spite of the fact I’ve nearly convinced myself I like women best.

Just about, anyway.

Well, at least forty-sixty.

So now you know.

Whores don’t just happen. They’re taught. The better ones, that is.