An Imperfect Princess (4 page)

“Over here,” the
Pharinae said weakly, her voice back to its normal muffled state without the
speakers to clarify it. She floated to a stick next to the passenger’s seat.
“The emergency brake is
here
.  Pull it now!”

Eneria pulled
the brake as hard as she could.  The shuttle shuddered and began to slow, but
it was too late.

The ocean loomed
in front of them.  Eneria could see towns along the coastline; farms and neat
houses were regular features just visible on the coastline of the sea.  

And then
everything went dark.

The ship landed
with an ungraceful belly flop in the ocean.

It sank rather
fast, but the material it was made of was lighter than water. Combined with the
air in the cabin, it immediately began to rise again.   Before long it was
bobbing gently on the ocean current, steaming slightly as the plastic exterior
cooled.

Inside, all the
lights on the dashboard were out.  Eneria was unconscious in her chair;
something had flown from the back storage area and hit her on her unprotected
forehead.  Aijo tended to the wound as best she could, but she was exhausted
from running the ship’s computer from the inside and couldn’t do much without a
long nap in the sunshine to recharge.

The forward
windshield had cracked on impact, and Aijo manipulated the transparent concrete
enough so that it shattered completely and fell onto the dashboard.  Cool
maritime air greeted her as the broken shuttle bobbed on the surface of the
water.  The airtight exterior, though not made for travel by water, managed to
turn it from a space ship to an ungainly life boat of sorts.

“Hello?” Aijo
called out to the uncaring ocean, her tinny voice swallowed by the silence. 
“Can anybody hear me?”

She still could
not even feel any Pharinae nearby, which was distressing.  Normally they
inhabited worlds alongside their carbon-based friends in a symbiotic
relationship, but this world seemed devoid of any at all.  If they had once
been here, they were there no longer.  That did not bode well for their odds of
encountering humanoids, either.  Without the interference of Pharinae, life tended
to evolve into diverse and strange shapes.

The starlight
above was enough to give Aijo the necessary energy to survive.  Miserable, she
settled into her gilded cage and slept, recharging her energy as best she
could.

The ship drifted toward the beach
overnight and before dawn it had washed up on the shore, gray and alien and
forlorn.

James Holding,
the 8th earl of Courtland, was annoyed at the world.

He adjusted the
brass telescope on its unwieldy tripod and tried at the same time to gesture in
the general direction of the latest discoveries by his friend and mentor
William Lassell.   The older gentleman had, in the end, been the only colleague
to maintain a friendship with him after he had abruptly dropped out of
Cambridge due to unforeseeable circumstances.

“Over there, he
has found another moon around the newest planet,” he announced to his bored
audience.  The two girls were unhappy at having to endure another science
lecture by their guardian, but he had no other means to entertain them and the
clear night was too perfect to spend indoors, so they had moved outside to the
garden.  Clarissa sat primly on the lawn chair, nodding politely at the nuggets
of wisdom he imparted to them.  Marilyn played with the cat, Galileo, who had
grown from a tiny kitten two years ago to an enormous tom the size of a small
moon himself.

Missing,
painfully, was the rest of their family.  They spoke little of the mutual
tragedy that had bonded the two girls into his care.  Life went on.

Clarissa was
anticipating her debut in London society in a few short months and was working
on making herself even more polished and refined.  Her dowry, though generous,
was not enough to secure her first choice, so she was doing everything possible
to appear as desirable a woman and wife as she could. Her natural beauty was
almost ethereal, and James felt a tug of almost fatherly, protective instinct
toward her, even though she was barely a decade his junior.

Her opposite in
temperament, Marilyn seemed to be doing everything she could to ensure her
reputation as a holy terror preceded her for her own debut, not so many years
down the road. She was not lacking in intelligence, although she was given to
flights of fancy and had more imagination than was probably healthy for a girl
her age.  However, she was unable to sit still for very long and quickly grew
bored with her studies.  She had, her governess had said in exasperation, the
attention span of her kitten. 

This evening,
however, both girls were calm and quiet.  There was no reason for the strange
discontent he sensed from them.  The moon was shining brightly, the tenants had
started working the spring fields, and he was not expecting any visitors or
packages or mail in the next few days. 

Still, he had a
sort of nervous anticipation.  What had started out as a simple star party to
demonstrate his new telescope, a hand-made gift from Mr. Lassell, had descended
into a one-man science lecture.  He missed Cambridge and Trinity College
terribly, with its halls of learning and the exciting cutting edge mathematics
and science that his colleagues had produced.   In Cornwall, he felt completely
cut off from his old life, and he chalked his disquiet up to nostalgia for the
good days.

“Over there are
the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades,” he said, pointing at the bright blue stars. 
“Do you see them, Marilyn?”

“Yes, Uncle
James,” the girl said mechanically, dutifully glancing up at where he was
pointing his finger.

“What else do
you see up there?” he asked, wondering if anything he’d said in the last hour
had sunk in.

“A fireball!”
she piped up suddenly and clapped her hands together, scaring Galileo.  The cat
ran off with a yowl, bounding into the carefully manicured bushes of the formal
garden. “Look! A fireball in the sky!”

“Ah, a shooting
star...” he trailed off as he looked back to where the child was gazing
rapturously.  There was, indeed, a glowing orange fireball, much larger than
any shooting star he had seen before.  He felt his jaw drop as he stared at
it.  He needed no telescope.  It seemed to be coming straight for them, until
the vector changed and slowed and it went out over the sea.

It disappeared
on the horizon and then a sound like rolling thunder came at them, loud enough
to rattle the windows of the country manor of the estate. 

All three of
them stared helplessly at the sea, where the mysterious fireball had vanished
without a trace.

“Uncle James,
what kind of shooting start was that?”  Marilyn tugged on his coat, finally
fully engaged on the sky for the first time that evening.

“I don’t know,”
he said shakily, his ears still ringing from the loud noise that had followed
the fireball.  “I think I am going to have to do some research...”

The uneasy
feeling vanished abruptly with the prospect of science on his own property.  
Based on the fireball’s trajectory, it had probably not been so clearly visible
from London, even if any astronomers had been looking at the time.  They were
creatures of the night and it was too early for most of them to set up.

Perhaps this was
finally
going to get him published the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

“I think this is
enough excitement for one night, girls,” he said shakily. He started to fold up
the delicate telescope.  “Let’s write down our descriptions of what we saw, and
we’ll put together some letters for Mr. Lessell and the college tomorrow.”

Obediently, the
two young women in his charge followed him back into the house and into his
study.  Clarissa helped him compose an accurate, if poetic description of the
fireball, while Marilyn played with a disgruntled Galileo on the sofa.

“And then it
slipped into the ocean like a minor setting sun,” Clarissa finished, standing
perfectly straight, her evening house gown crisp, not a hair out of place. 
That was the sort of person she was.  James had long since raked his hair into
an uncontrollable nest that would cause his valet to have a fit of vapors, but
he didn’t care for appearances when there was
science
to be done.

“Thank you,
Clarissa.  You are dismissed, I’m sure you want your beauty sleep.”

The teenager smiled
back, pleased at how well her brother in law knew her.  “Good luck with your
letters, James.  Don’t stay up all night.”   On her way out, she plucked
Galileo off the sofa.  “Come, Marilyn.  Let us leave Uncle James to his work.”

She left the
study, and Marilyn skipped after her.  “I can’t wait to tell Mrs. Thomas about
the fireball!”

With the girls
gone, James was left to stare at the paragraph they had written.

The shooting
star appeared suddenly, streaking through the fixed stars very fast.    It burned
a fiery orange and instead of fading away as ordinary shooting stars do, it            drew
closer and closer to us, until it suddenly slowed.  The bright light dimmed to
a dull             red and then it slipped into the ocean like a minor setting
sun.

After a moment’s
thought, he added:

The heavens
boomed with thunder after a short pause but there was not a cloud    to be seen
in the clear sky.

It still made no
sense.  He had heard of meteors, of course.  He even had a copy of the booklet
from almost 70 years ago,
On the Origin of the Pallas Iron and Others
Similar to it, and on Some Associated Natural Phenomena.
 It had started
their whole understanding of meteors from space.   But he had never before
witnessed a fireball himself.  It was a pity that it had fallen into the ocean;
it would have surely been an excellent find.

He was also very
puzzled at why it had suddenly slowed.   Usually they fizzled out and
disappeared, or they burst in the air. 

He put his head
in his hands, wishing once again that he was back in Cambridge, where he could immediately
discuss the fireball with friends and colleagues in Trinity College over a good
stout.  But that was too much to ask.  He had to surrender that life and accept
responsibility after the news came back that everyone had been lost at sea. 
That
life was over, and this unwanted life was all that remained. 

The situation had
left James his father’s title and custody of the two young girls–Clarissa, the
determined debutante, and Marilyn, the bizarre and unpredictable hellion.  For
a second son, fresh from college and fully expecting to make a glorious career
in astronomy, it had been too much.  He hadn’t left his townhouse for a week,
drinking himself into a stupor in the study.

Wilkins had
finally told him that if he was going to kill himself, he had best do it
quickly so they could include him in his parent’s memorial service.

He had sobered
up and faced the grief, then forced himself to face the reality.  He informed
Trinity that he would be leaving.  He had missed the honors ceremony and had
never received his robe. They’d mailed it to him with their condolences on his
loss.

He had said
goodbye to Cambridge, but it had been too much to process all at once.  He hadn’t
realized that the guardianship of the two young girls meant they were going to
live
in Cornwall with him and that he was now responsible for their livelihoods.

It was
still
too much.  He did not know how to handle them.  Tonight’s attempt at an
astronomy lesson with the telescope from his mentor Mr. Lessell had seemed like
a good idea, but Clarissa had been bored and Marilyn too young to stay
interested for long.

Soon enough,
however, Clarissa would marry and leave him with only Marilyn to deal with. 

And, well,
himself.

He also needed
to get married soon.  It was the way things were done, as Clarissa had
pronounced firmly.  Never mind that he would rather go back to the university,
where his own studies were all he needed to keep himself happily occupied. His
friends would keep him grandly entertained; an easy barmaid all the female
company he needed. 

He sighed as he
sanded down the parchment and set it on the stack of paperwork his steward had
wanted him to deal with for some time.  Responsibility was no picnic.

He’d write those
letters tomorrow.  Perhaps he might be able to make some contribution to
science, despite being in the middle of nowhere in Cornwall. In the meantime,
he wanted to think some more about exactly what he had witnessed in the garden.

His main
sanctuary was in the basement of his ancestral home. After he had moved back
here from Cambridge, he had purchased all manner of lab equipment and taken
donations from friends and faculty alike.  At twenty five, taking close to top
honors in mathematics, his only goal in life was to contribute to science–to
add to the body of knowledge that was ever growing as man explored God’s
world. 

Now, at twenty five,
that dream seemed childish, but he just couldn’t let it go.

The basement,
which had once been a larder for the estate before the addition of a new
kitchen wing a century ago, still doubled as storage.  His childhood was packed
away here, along with all the memories.  He remembered sliding down the oaken
banister, chasing his older brother and fighting over toys.  Their father had
given them a velocipede, which was now tucked away in a corner, forbidden to
the girls who inhabited the house now.

The rest of the
house still felt like it belonged to other people.  It had always been his
father’s house, his mother’s house, and it was always destined to be his
brother’s house.  Henry Holding, who had been involved in the British
negotiations for the acquisition of Tranquebar, had taken his wife, his oldest
son, and his wife there, after the final signing.  The family had strong
business interests there. It was supposed to be a vacation for them, to see the
exotic ports of India.  They had left behind Marilyn in the company of Mrs.
Thomas, as she was only five.

They had never
returned.

No one knew what
happened to the ship, but reports came from the island where they had been
destined to dock that there were strong wind storms which blew other ships
around the port, some of them aground.  Knowing the fickle sea, it was entirely
possible that a much stronger storm had swallowed their ship whole.

James gripped
the old wooden table that held his latest experiment, frustrated at that
painful memory.  He had never been fond of the sea, unlike his father and
brother.  Now he hated it.  It had taken them away from him, taken his
life
away from him.   Both his father and his brother George had loved the sea; his
mother had been most alive at the helm, his sister in law, Clarissa’s older
sister, leaning over the edge waving goodbye. 

They had loved
sailing.  They had died because of it.

He hadn’t set
foot on a boat since the accident.

He had, in fact,
sold his family’s small collection of ships, wanting no reminder of them.  The
old marina on the estate was empty, save for fishermen who had been granted
permission to use it temporarily.  He had pulled out his family fortunes from
shipping and invested it in domestic manufacturing instead.

But there was no
use dwelling too much on the past.  Even if his dreams of being a great
scientist were not to be, he could still contribute.  He touched the precious
brass telescope, grateful once again that Mr. Lassell still had high hopes for
him. Maybe he wasn’t quite so out of the loop after all.

If he could just
figure out what that fireball had been, he would be able to document it as more
than a mere curiosity and perhaps send that off to the Royal Society.  They
hadn’t published anything he sent in yet; he was still a junior member, and
while he would have been destined for great things had he been able to stay in
Cambridge, out here in Cornwall he lacked the support of his friends and
fellows. 

Or maybe they
would not publish his notice about the fireball.  It was an interesting
phenomena, and it was possible no one further east of Cornwall had seen it, but
it wasn’t exactly new.

He sighed and
sat down with a book published by another society member just last year. Well,
anything was possible.