Chapter Sixteen
Exchanging Gifts
As part of the process of correcting the damage Armen had done to the eight gifts the Octavians had attempted to bestow upon her, Jenna had to meet with a council of eight Octavians. The entire council came to Jenna’s palace to talk it over. She had a hall to accommodate them. Favel was Chair of the council and he sat at the other end of a long table. The eight Octavians sat in elegant pools of water that for all the world looked like oversized crystal liquor goblets.
“Let’s begin by talking about Armen,” Favel said reasonably. “He was one in zero point zero to the trillionth power. We will never be able to recruit another man like him. Jenna, would you like to take the compatibility test yourself to see if we might be able to broaden our search and find you another husband?”
“We can skip all that,” Jenna brushed her hair off her forehead like she was brushing off Favel’s suggestion. “I’m not interested in finding a husband. I have something in mind I’d like to replace the gift of Armen.”
“Excellent. What?”
“Not a what. A who. I want Sardius.”
If they had been humans, Jenna would have been able to read their reactions, but as all their mouths were underwater, there was no sound. There was no movement that Jenna understood.
Favel answered her first. “I’m afraid I don’t understand your request. Sardius has already been given to you as your personal assistant. We can’t give him to you more than we already have.”
Jenna cleared her throat. “I disagree. I have been denied a possible partner because of the unfortunate circumstances with Armen. As has been pointed out by your compatibility test, it is unlikely that I’ll match with another human.”
“The tests we ran weren’t meant to discourage you,” Favel said in a very sympathetic tone. “It was just that you had no partner on Earth–”
“Exactly,” Jenna interrupted. “Because of the crown on my head, I have been discouraged since birth to let anyone get close to me. On Earth, other people wouldn’t understand a crown like this. People might think I ought to have it removed. They might pressure me to have it removed and my grandfather warned me most sternly that it could not be and no attempt should be made.”
“Very wise,” Favel agreed.
“The point is that I have not been raised to give in to pressure and I do not feel prepared to accept any person as a husband in my life, regardless of how much all of you feel that is something I need.”
The octopuses around the table made nodding motions. Jenna wasn’t sure if they agreed with her, but at the very least, she felt that they understood what she said.
Jenna continued, “I want you to stop recording Sardius so he can say whatever he wants. During this new chapter of my life, he has been my greatest comfort, my greatest ally, and I get the feeling that there is a lot he could tell me if he wasn’t concerned about reprobation if he says the wrong thing. I want him to be able to tell me anything.”
“I want to hear more about this,” a red Octavian named Yardling said, rising up from the water and making a sound that couldn’t be interpreted as anything other than a chuckle. “It sounds like you’re asking if you can marry him. But that couldn’t be it.”
Jenna thought about that. Octavians often had many spouses. Maybe that was how she needed to frame her request if she was serious about getting what she wanted.
“We can’t give her Sardius as a husband, can we?” an electronic voice sounded from a goblet with a yellow and white Octavian inside.
Jenna stood up. “Why don’t we go around the table and all of you can tell me about your spouses, how you met, how you fell in love, and how your marriages were approved? Maybe then we can discover how alien my request is to you. Besides, I did not ask to be married to him. I asked to have his surveillance halted. It’s not the same thing.”
“Ah,” Favel said, raising a tentacle as if to silence her. “As far as they are concerned, we would need to regard him as such. If we removed the surveillance, it would need to be for similar reasons as why we only let him monitor you when you’re in the shower or changing your clothes.”
Jenna smiled. “It sounds like you’re already giving him husbandly perks without my consent.”
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That made millions of bubbles spill over the edges of the council’s goblets into the grates below. Undoubtedly, they all thought her comment was hilarious… or maybe they were outraged by her accusation.
Jenna sat back down and sighed. “I understand. Octopuses see each other naked constantly, but humans don’t feel the same about all their skin being visible to anyone. You all know this and understand or else you wouldn’t bother to be so strict in your protection of my modesty.”
The bubbles slowly died down.
“What about work companions who are not lovers? Is there any precedent for that?” she pressed.
“That’s still marriage,” one of the other Octavians shouted.
“So what if she can never meet Sardius?” another Octavian interjected. “Who, among us, hasn’t had a lover who was in deep space for an indeterminate length of time?”
“I imagine all your lovers would want to be in deep space,” the weathered octopus next to him mouthed, but honestly, from their tones of voice, Jenna couldn’t figure out which of them was male and which of them was female. The insult caused a slight uproar with more bubbles escaping to the grates below.
Jenna had a soft voice she could use on command. She always felt like it sounded like B.S. when she used it, but it felt like the perfect way to frame her words when speaking to the council. “All right then. You can all agree that I need a partner and none of you think that my having a partner who isn’t physically present is not an obstacle to my partnering up with Sardius. You tried so hard to make me happy with Armen. I appreciate it. However, he may not have been what I want despite the matching test he passed. Maybe what I want is something else. In all my life, I never had anyone I could rely on the way I have been relying on Sardius. I want him to be free to speak to me without anyone listening to him.”
The Octavians were uncomfortable. They were twitching in their goblets. A few of them were flicking water on the Octavians next to them, which Jenna thought was a hostile action, but the way the Octavian getting flicked reacted did not make it seem so. Instead, it seemed like the equivalent of placing a hand supportively on a colleague’s shoulder.
Flick.
Flick.
Flick.
She was getting wet too.
Over Jenna’s earpiece, Sardius didn’t say a word, but she thought she could hear his ragged breathing because he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“If we were to grant such an outrageous request, Jenna would need a higher level of security clearance than she currently has,” a gray council member said.
“Could I be given that security clearance to replace the other failed gift—Lucy?” Jenna suggested. “Honestly, I never would have brought her along. That was Armen’s disgusting little idea. Bringing her never felt like an act of friendship from you, but a punishment.”
The gray council member conceded, “Leaving the choosing of the gifts in Armen’s hands was a most regretful decision on our part. Making it up to you will be difficult. First, the request to make Sardius your husband is a very different request than asking for his monitoring to stop. For starters, he would have to be labeled as your third husband–a husband intended for your amusement, but since he is so far away… that seems peculiar. Before we decide on that, we need to discuss how we are going to publicly dissolve your marriage to Armen. Everyone in the universe is going to know that you and Armen are divorced. You’ll have to answer interview questions about it.”
“I’m willing to make up a reasonable story about that, saying how Armen and Lucy fell in love and it’s nobody’s fault. I can be stubborn and stick to that story publicly no matter what anyone asks me for a hundred years,” Jenna volunteered.
“That’s very generous of you,” a mottled Octavian muttered.
“Jenna,” Favel broke out. He had clearly been speaking to the other council members from a control panel in his goblet and was now prepared to speak for the whole table. “From our perspective, allowing you the security clearance necessary for Sardius to be able to speak freely is dangerous and inadvisable at this stage, but it is doable.”
“What do you mean?”
“The security measures are in place to protect you… from Sardius.”
Jenna snorted. In a different sort of council meeting, it would have been unacceptable, rude, and a slight that would be remembered for years, but among octopus delegates, a snort was meaningless. Jenna scanned the members for evidence they were annoyed. Seeing none, she continued, “You sound like you don’t trust him. Why give him a position of such trust if you think he’s unreliable?”
“We hope he’s our friend,” Favel replied. “He’s signed agreements stating that he’s on our side, but all of that may be a ruse.”
Jenna cocked her head. “You’re aware he can hear you?”
Favel nodded his mantle and dipped underwater to refresh his skin. When he came up, he said, “We’re not keeping secrets from him. We’re just keeping an eye on him. He knows why he’s being watched. He’s agreed to it. Unfortunately, we can’t tell you why those security measures are in place without you already having the security clearance.”
“So, can I have the security clearance?” Jenna persisted.
“We will need to take a vote as to whether or not you shall receive it under the terms that it is your gift to replace Lucy,” Favel stated.
“Wait,” Jenna interrupted, looking at the council members. “How can you have a vote? There is an even number of voters. What happens if it is four against four?”
“If it is a perfect split, each member will state their reasons for the vote. After the explanations, we’ll vote again. There’s a good chance that an individual council member’s reasoning will convince another council member to change their vote. It often happens that way. Sometimes, we listen to the reasoning anyway. It provides interesting discussions.”
They voted, with four out of eight voting in favor of giving Jenna the security clearance and four voting against it.
Favel raised himself out of the water. “We’ll now hear the reasoning from both sides. Rossi, you begin.”