Read The Tymorean Trust Book 1 - Power Rising Page 9

  Chapter 9 - Unfriendliness

  Zacary glanced sideways at the two new students and scowled. They had been in classes a full week and Niklas was full of praise for them. They made him sick, showing him up by working so hard. They needed to ease up a bit, and stop being so standoffish. They thought they didn’t need any help, and they wouldn’t talk about themselves or where they had come from.

  The computer screen in front of him might have vanished for all he was seeing of it. His ears were hearing one of the teachers telling some folk tale – nursery stories – he called them. On the other side, Rowan was praising the yokels for mastering the transmitting practice so quickly and apologising for being unable to take them to view the surrounds of the beam in points that were outside in the gardens. When that could be organised, they would be ready for their own transmitters. What was the rush anyway? The yokels had only been around for a week. Back when he was ten, he had to wait a month for his transmitter. It wasn’t fair.

  Now Zacary’s own resentments began to fester. The major one was still being in with the little kids when all the others his age were in the large lyceum. Well, Tobias didn’t count. He was deaf, and was only in the small lyceum to learn about plants and stuff.

  Now he recalled how the yokels were always being ‘delivered’ and ‘collected’ by personal minders. Fair enough that they didn’t have transmitters yet, and you needed one to get into the lyceum, but all other new yokels, waited outside for the teachers to bring them in. What made these two so special? Morov and the old woman must have the job to make sure they didn’t run off or something. He had encountered missionaries’ brats before. Those raised on backward planets often had pronounced ideas of their own and didn’t want to do things the way that the Governor’s insisted. He was beginning to agree with those yokels.

  He didn’t much like what he was doing either. He was learning about the menial jobs that were all they thought him capable of. If he had his way, he’d be off the estate…off the planet.

  So maybe these two were not trusted, and the hard work was an act, until they got transmitters and could run away. Well, they would find they couldn’t. There was some barrier around the estate so kids couldn’t transmit out. He’d tried.

  As he sat staring at his computer, ideas came into his head of ways he could make the yokels look bad. After considering the pleasant scenarios for a while, Niklas recalled him to his work.

  “I was considering different career paths,” he lied immediately. “Do you think I would be allowed to join the Peace Corps? It mentioned that commoners join up. I would like to see more of the world.”

  Zacary tuned out Niklas’s comments after hearing, “I will propose it for you,” in favour of listening to the yokel girl trying to wheedle Rowan into letting them walk back for lunch.

  “I don’t have the authority to allow that,” Rowan told her. “You will have to ask permission from Governor Tymoros.”

  “Everybody else does,” the boy was proposing. “At least we can learn our way from here to there. We haven’t been allowed to go anywhere much outside.”

  Zacary laughed to himself. He was now convinced the yokels wanted to run off and it might be fun to make it seem like they had. He’d have to be careful though – he wouldn’t want them identifying him.

  Two days later, Zacary watched as the two yokels walked back to the palace with their minders. Morov was acting like a tour guide, pointing out features of the garden. He considered that his ideas for causing trouble for the yokels had more chance of working now. Except that Stenn Reslic had already figured out that they were allowed to walk back to lunch. Zacary didn’t want to try anything near that one of the president’s whelps. In spite of the way Stenn carried on, acting the clown, he was too sharp by half. He saw things that his elders missed.

  It occurred to Zacary that he might be able to get back at Stenn at the same time – get all three of them in trouble. He would need to plan things carefully, and remain unseen. As he trudged back to his room in the President’s palace, he tried to think of ways to proceed - finally a brilliant idea blossomed in his mind.

  Yes. He would need to wait until his brother Yuri returned from his current duty, but that would be soon – a couple of days. Then he’d have to have a talk with him, after spiking his drink with some of the intoxicant he had found in the palace kitchen. His brother couldn’t tolerate the stuff – that’s why he was a road guard, not a palace guard. When he’d had intoxicant, he wouldn’t remember what he had talked about, would agree to anything, like giving his brother the use of his personal force shield and teaching him to use one. No one would ever know – Yuri would deny it, and he would have it back before he realised he didn’t have it.

  In the mean time, he would need to practice doing short line-of-sight flits.