Thread: Asking for Directions {darkangel76 & Alan23}

Galvie was pleasantly surprised at the reaction - or lack thereof - by the guards to his daring action. It was almost as if his good manners had shamed them, for they simply escorted him back to his mobile cage with a gentle warning not to touch Her Excellency again unless and in the unlikely event invited! He also felt somewhat happily shocked at his own reaction. After all, Miss Hammond quite patently had been unable to fasten the zipper herself, or she would have done so. He felt a little like a white knight of old, rather than the despised criminal and assassin he in fact was! It was as well that he had something nice on which to think, for he had nothing else to divert him. It seemed that apart from Miss Hammond's visits, henceforth the highlight of his day was to be his shower! All they left him was a plastic bottle so it couldn't be used as a weapon of water. They gave him nothing to eat, and no tobacco both of which, as an old soldier, he could go without if he had to, no-one to talk to unpleasant, but just bearable and - and here was the true torture - nothing to read! To be fair, the latter was unavoidable rather than from deliberate malice, for apart from Miss Hammond's elaborate supplies, the expedition was traveling light! Thus it was that the truth of the recent discovery at Harvard University in 1970 that time was, in fact, relative, was proved to his satisfaction. For the objective six hours journey between breakfast and lunch took, for the prisoner in the barred tank, over a week! During this time, he invented certain amusements, which at least saved him from going totally mad. He played a game where he would play out imaginary sporting contests in his head, such as the all-star soccer match between the best players he had seen live and the pick of those that had played before his birth the oldies won 3-2. Then he amused himself by planning imaginary menus, or holding in his head imaginary conversations between his favorite literary characters. The best of these was when Mister Bumble from Oliver Twist got into a heated argument about the joys of older woman with Romeo Montague from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. When even these amusements palled, he went through all the women he had ever slept with, starting with Miss Medusa Debra Featherstone Bromelton, one of the young working girls at the place where he had been brought up, to Mrs Venus Lettis Haveringay Nye, whose bed he had been in when the troopers had burst in and arrested him, thus ending his days of liberty in the fair nation of Amerika. He guessed that, unless he found some way to escape soon, the plump, willing blond would go down in the ledger as his final conquest! During the intervals between these games, he carefully calculated just how and when he would make his bid for escape. Picking the lock of the mobile jail would be easy enough, since though he was guarded, the guards did not spend their entire shift of duty looking at him. And at night, it would be hard to see, anyway. But, once out, escaping from the soldiers presented a more pressing problem. It was an entire troop against just him, and he had neither arms nor horse. He might make it in the confusion, but preferred to wait until later in the journey, when the soldiers had become bored with routine and might be slacker in their duties. And in which the territory was less carefully mapped, always a consideration when on the run! But there was another reason, too, which he had tried desperately to repress, but which insisted on forcing a way into his consciousness. he had, against his finer judgement and somewhat ridiculously become - intrigued was the word he used to himself - with Miss Andromeda Hammond! Her mix of haughtiness and helplessness, her obvious need for someone to protect and cherish her, her kindness as much as she was able and intelligence, her naivete - all these things combined to make her more desirable than any woman he had encountered for many years. So, after he had eaten his lunch, he found himself eagerly waiting to see if she would keep her promise and visit him again.