Gothwine or no Gothwine

Dining at the House of Gothwinsor, Imperial nobleman Andro Slaker looked down at his rich meal of peppered grox fillet and considered the vast efforts that had gone into delivering it to his plate.

The hiveworld of Praetoria, a spewing metropolis of crime and poverty, at least below the high-hive, was not an agricultural world. Much of its surface was taken up by bloated city stacks, as vast and dense as mountain ranges. Overpopulated and polluted, teeming with billions of beleaguered workers, Proud Praetoria had no farmlands or cattle ranches. Instead it had factories, workhouses, hab-stacks and more factories, every shred of food imported from offworld.

Slaker had never really thought about it. Unlike the billions of commoners below the noble had food in abundance. At his merest whim his desires could be sated. A click of his fingers and the finest delicacies from across the Imperium were placed before him. He had never considered the efforts of the farmers toiling on some faraway world, the attentions of the freighter crews who kept the foodstuffs from spoiling on its interstellar journey or the kitchen staff who prepared such wondrous meals. He had certainly never spared a thought for the thousands that starved in the squalid depths of Atro-city.

Even so he set his silver cutlery down with a dismissive gesture and pushed the barely touched meal aside; mopping his mouth with a handkerchief embroiled with the Gothwinsor skulled eagle crest as a steward with the same mark branded across his cheek cleared away the plates.

“Oh Andro, I do wish you would do something about Melinda,” complained his host and step-sister in the chair opposite, the beautiful lady Lizabeth Gothwinsor.

“Isn’t that rather your father’s place?” Andro murmured across the dinner table with a cocked eyebrow.

“Oh, you know the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He’s busy trying to deal with the cost of the peasant revolts.”

“Gun them down in the streets I say,” Andro smirked flippantly. “They’ll soon see what’s best for them.”

“Well, that’s what I said, but apparently those silly humanitarians in the House of the Proletariat have my father’s ear more than the spiritual health of his own daughter,” Lizabeth glared with reproach, swirling a glass of bubbling amasec in one finely pedicured hand. “It’s bad for the family honour.”

“By the Throne, I had no idea you were so cold blooded dear step-sister,” Andro smiled, taking up his own glass as Lizabeth scoffed.

“It’s not as if I want to have them shot, but it’s the principle isn’t it? What if every commoner was to strike? The credits we would lose!”

“Your wisdom more then compensates for your sex,” Andro toasted.

“Of course father won’t listen,” she continued. “He’s far to busy to deal with Melinda, far to busy to be bothered by things like Uncle Gothwine, and I’m at my wits end. Can’t you have a word? After all, she’s only your sister.”

“Half-sister,” he corrected dryly, hiding his smirk at Lizabeth’s reaction with his glass.

“Andro, really! Your mother would be turning in her gene-crypt. Honestly though, with the way things are between you and my father you hardly ever see her as it is, perhaps it would be best if her elder brother talked to her about Uncle Gothwine.”

Andro sighed and slumped in his highchair, feeling languid and snug. The House of Gothwinsor always seemed to soften his mood, and not for the first time he wished he could call it his home. But alas, he lacked the favour of his step-father, and could only be a guest under the invitation of the lovely Lizabeth while Chancellor Gothwinsor still resided there. Andro found her refreshing company, almost an equal, and enjoyed the way her ebon dress emphasised her olive skin and the light of the glow-lamps her golden hair, and the crest of her bust.

The dinning chamber doors opened and a flock of chubby cherubs fluttered after the small girl who skipped into the room, only stopping when Lizabeth called. “Melinda! Come greet dear brother Andro, he’s come to visit.”

Melinda came to a halt with her feet crossed and her hands behind her back, and giggled a hello.

“Andro…” Lizabeth prompted.

Andro sat up and put his amasec aside, leaning towards his half-sister and putting on a friendly face. “My, my Melinda,” he smiled. “And where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“To the balcony, silly! To see if Uncle Gothwine is here today,” the girl giggled with excitement and the cherubs floating above her giggled too.

“Quite, quite. Your sister’s been telling me all about Uncle Gothwine. He sounds just dandy.”

“Oh rather, he’s just spiffing really! He’s got yellow eyes, and red skin, and claws and horns on his head! He talks awfully strange too, like an offworlder, but he’s just fabulous.” The cherubs cooed in agreement.

“He sounds it. But you know, Lizabeth was saying she doesn’t have an Uncle Gothwine, isn’t that strange?”

“Well that’s because his been away you see! In space! And Uncle Gothwine says he’s not on her side of the family, but ours!” Melinda beamed pointing at Andro, who nodded in mock understanding.

“Andro!” Lizabeth hissed. “You’re supposed to stop all this nonsense, not encourage her! Tell her you don’t have an Uncle Gothwine; tell her House Slaker has never been related to any Gothwines for the God-Emperor’s sake!”

The cherubs chirped in empathetic confusion as little Melinda frowned in puzzlement.

“Lizabeth, of course- Listen Melinda. Your sister didn’t mean to insult dear Uncle Gothwine, but you see she’s never met him, and neither have I you see. Now how about you take me and her to the balconies and we could all meet him together, wouldn’t that be a treat?”

“Oh golly no,” the girl shook her head gravely, the cherubs mumbling in dissent. “Uncle Gothwine doesn’t like family, he says you’re all snobs. He doesn’t like snobs. Only little girls. And he says I’m not to bring people from the palace to meet him, otherwise he’ll leave me with Cousin Slumm. But I just must go now; I’m late for the tea party!” And the girl departed.

Lizabeth sighed. “At least thank Terra for Cousin Slumm, he’s been around longer then Uncle Gothwine, back when it was all rather cute. I never can get a clear description from Melinda, but she says Uncle Gothwine stops him from doing the most terrible things. If Melinda ever decides to throw a tantrum all I have to do is say I’m inviting Cousin Slumm over for tea and she’s as good as gold. You don’t have an Uncle Gothwine do you, Andro?”

Andro rose. “Not that I know of, and certainly none that Melinda would have heard about. I don’t think you need worry, Lizabeth. It doesn’t seem a danger; even the Inquisition would hardly suspect an invisible friend as any evidence of witchcraft.”

“You haven’t heard the servants whisper. I had to have the whole nursery staff purged for talk of taint!”

“Commoners are a superstitious bunch. But to join you in a House like Gothwinsor I wouldn’t miss the occasional nanny,” Andro sniggered. “But I shall return to my rented abode, I think I’ll take my airspeeder for a spin. Really why don’t you talk to your father about it?”

Lizabeth shook her heard. “If he can lock your mother in a gene-crypt and kick you out of Gothwinsor for courting my affections, Throne knows what he’d do if he heard the rumours about Melinda. I’ll not have her locked in an asylum, Gothwine or no Gothwine.”

***

Uncle Gothwine was especially friendly that afternoon. He had an itch on his horns and they kept quivering. Warp-dust he said, from tearing through the fabric of reality. He and his minions lived in a magical place on the other side of the Materium, so he had to jump through the boundaries of time and space to visit. Awfully messy, he said.

Uncle Gothwine had lots of minions, and they all had the strangest names, names it made her feel funny just to hear. That’s why he didn’t like family, because family all had the same names and don’t do interesting things. They just work, or talk or pray.

And that’s why Uncle Gothwine lived in the warp too, because things were really fun in the warp. He said that time didn’t work like a clock there, but like water, all splashes rather then ticks. And there weren’t many rules in the warp neither, Uncle Gothwine didn’t like rules. Not silly things like gravity or physics or civilisation or bedtime. There were faraway kingdoms and enchanted planets, and lots of magical creatures called entities or denizens or daemons that shared the warp with him. Some of them were his minions too, like servants. Except Cousin Slumm, he wasn’t a minion as such, not even to Uncle Gothwine.

They’d been playing tea-party on the balcony porch for an eternity- only it must have been only an hour because the new nanny hadn’t called for bath time yet but then Uncle Gothwine said warp-time was funny- when Uncle Gothwine bared his fangs in a friendly smile and said, “Melinda dear, let’s go into Gothwinsor.”

“But there are family in the house, and you don’t-”

“I know I don’t like family. That’s why we’re going into the house. Come Melinda, or I’ll bring Cousin Slumm with me next time.”

What could Melinda do?

She went into father’s study through the balcony window, and it was a strict rule that nobody ever went into father’s study, but Uncle Gothwine didn’t like rules.

The Chancellor was on the vox-link telling someone to send him the estimated expenditure of a citywide suppression. While he was talking, Uncle Gothwine went over to a table, opened a draw and took something out.

When her father cut the link, he saw Melinda first and started to be furious. He said, “Young lady, I’ve had just about enough of your tish-tosh, driving your sister crazy with talk of horned devils, now if you-”

Melinda released she hadn’t introduced them. “Father, this is Uncle Gothwine, and see, he does have horns!”

Uncle Gothwine held out the pistol he’d taken from the drawer and shot the Chancellor once through the forehead. It made a clean little hole the size of a golf ball in the front and a mist of blood erupted from the back of the old man’s head as he slumped across the desk.

“Now Melinda,” Uncle Gothwine said. “A lot of people are going to come in here and start asking questions. If you don’t tell the truth about exactly what happened, I’ll send nasty Cousin Slumm to get you.”

And then Uncle Gothwine was gone.

***

“It’s a curious case, Lord Judge,” the verispex examiner said. “It’s fortunate I’ve dabbled in a bit of psychiatry; I can at least give you a lead until you get the experts in. The child’s statement that her imaginary friend shot her father is obviously a simple flight mechanism, liable of two interpretations. A, the father shot himself; the child was so horrified by the sight that she refused to accept it and invented this explanation. B, the child shot the father, let’s say by accident, and shifted the blame to her imaginary scapegoat. B has, of course, its more sinister implications; if the child resented her father and created the ideal substitute, she might make the substitute destroy the reality… but there’s the solution to your eyewitness testimony; which alternative is true, Judge, I leave up to your researches into motive and the evidence of ballistics and fingerprints. The angle of the wound jibes with either.”

***

The man with the red skin and horns left his airspeeder and entered his rented abode by the open windows. As soon as he got inside he took off the syn-putter horns from his head, and tossed them into the roaring fireplace. When the fire crackled violently he added his clawed gloves. Then he took out his fake pseudo-fangs and tossed them in as well. Afterwards he gingerly took the yellow-irised contact lenses out of his eyes, went into the restroom, found a hammer, pounded them into powder, and washed it down the sink.

Andro went into the hall and poured himself an amasec from the decanter, he still had to wash off the red skin-dye but he could do that a little later, right now his amasec tasted of triumph. The triumph of the whole insane endeavour, from his invention of Uncle Gothwine and Cousin Slumm, the name taken from a long forgotten ancestor Andro had discovered in a family record, to his manipulation of Melinda and today’s success. He toasted his future as inheritor of Gothwinsor, with no bitter old man to stand in the way of marriage to dear Lizabeth- lovely, trusting Lizabeth. And of course, Melinda would need her elder brother to look after her.

Andro went into the bedroom. An eternity seemed to pass in the few seconds it took him to register the monster waiting on the bed, but then, warp-time was a funny thing.

“Uncle Gothwine, I presume?” said Cousin Slumm.