Madeline, or I'm Not Crazy, I'm Divorced

By L. V. MacLean

He's working his way through school at the Premier Escort Agency.

Jared Ramirez was born in the slums of a mining planet but he found his way to the planet Haivran, the intellectual center of the Four Species Alliance, where the major universities, institutes, research facilities serving all Alliance citizens are located. Agencies are legal, licensed and regulated, and an attractive young man with a flair for pleasing a female clientele is in high demand. And Jared has an advantage; he can read minds, and sometimes influence man of the people around him. It's only a little talent, and he never talks about it, but it can be useful.

Right now he is studying for his Spring Quarter finals, and he expects a quiet night with a one-time client. Madeline, newly divorced, is going to live with her mother and prepare for a career in financial planning, and she wants a night of excitement and passion before she goes. She sounds like a sensible, stable young woman. Jared doesn't know her career plans were made for her by her mother. Madeline herself is a person who never fails to act on an impulse, and never pauses to think of consequences. Jared is in for a great deal of excitement before they ever get around to the passion.

This is a novella, one of several prequels to The Misborn, to be released in the near future. The story, about 30,000 words, is suggestive rather than explicit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: L. V. MacLean
• Release date: Dec 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465748577

L. V. MacLean

I come from a long line of story tellers and journalists, and I worked as a local journalist for years. That was fun, but my first love is fiction. Home is the eastern half of Montana, wheat fields and range land and small towns. I have a husband, two grown children, a lively grandson, and a superior cat. What more could anyone want? Just a laptop with a word processing program!

Book preview

Madeline

I'm Not Crazy, I'm Divorced

by L. V. MacLean

Copyright 2011 L. V. MacLean

Smashwords Edition

Cover Art by Taylor Steele

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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for Kathy and Matt

and Taylor

in recognition of your hard work

and endless support

on this book

Madeline

or

I'm Not Crazy, I'm Divorced

Chapter I

Jared? said someone in the hall behind him, and he glanced back before he reached the door to the parking lot. It was Phazi p'Zashi, trailed as usual by little Karen Vance. Phazi held her stylus in her fang-like teeth as she juggled her pack and her noter and her spring jacket, and Karen, likewise struggling, thrust her stylus in her own mouth in exact imitation.

Jared paused to grab Phazi's jacket and hold it for her so she could fit her right arm into the sleeve. It's nice out, he said. You won't need this now.

It is easier than carrying it, said Phazi, and Jared took hold of Karen's jacket collar, because she, too, was struggling; it was reflex on his part. He didn't care much for Karen. I wondered, said Phazi, if by chance you had notes for Dr. Morse's lecture on Monday. Tonight we plan to study, perhaps get a small distance ahead, being prepared for finals next week.

Thank you, Mr. Ramirez, murmured Karen. Her arm brushed against him as she slid it into the coat, and she blushed and peeked at him. He was aware that she often watched him instead of Dr. Morse in the lecture hall, chewing her stylus, letting her noter do the recording. She was not quite twenty, pretty inexperienced, he thought, fascinated by a man a little older than most of their classmates, and she probably knew about his work at the Agency. It was hardly a secret, and he was aware it often made girls like Karen imagine him glamorous and skillful.

He didn't feel glamorous or skillful, and he was only too happy in the relationship he already had outside of work, so he did not meet Karen's eyes as he rummaged for his noter. Here it is, he said, pushing the button to flip through the pages. You have your noter?

Yes, if you will allow me to download. Phazi took his noter and made the connection. I am so far behind, she sighed. I did not expect so much work this quarter. I believed that by taking Psychiatric Pharmacology now, I would have a smaller load next fall. I did not think of the heavy load this spring.

Jared had taken Pharm I last fall, and found it mostly memorization, tedious but undemanding; he had a good memory, but he didn't enjoy the course. He thought there was a great over-reliance on drugs in the treatment of mental disorders; he disliked drugs, especially the mind-altering drugs, as he disliked alcohol, for much the same reasons, and he felt there must be better methods.

But it was a required course, so he took it, and now he had Pharm II to look forward to next fall. So it went. If he wanted his degree, he had to meet the requirements.

Phazi disconnected the noters and handed his back to him. Do you study tonight? Or do you work? she asked him, and he stepped out of the way of a group of D'ubians, a family unit of five, rushing toward the door with their hooded heads together chattering in their own language, not the Trade most students at the Institute used. He couldn't follow their conversation. He was good at languages, pretty fluent in Zamuaon and Bahtan now that he had a chance to practice with native speakers, and he knew as much D'ubian as a non-D'ubian was likely to know, which was very little. The D'ubians were friendly and polite and private. They kept to themselves, they and their massive extended families packed into small living quarters, a way of life that caused claustrophobic reactions in the other three Alliance species, especially Zamuaons and Earthians, who preferred to live with only the primary family, parents, children, sometimes an older family member.

The Bahtans tended to live in family groups too, sorted by gender. Females, especially of reproductive age, usually a group of sisters, ganged up to hunt for males in a group, and the males clustered in hiding for mutual protection. There was a sisterly Bahtan threesome just outside the door right now; Jared could see them through the glass in bright spring clothes. One of them had a flower behind her ear. One of them wore a knit shirt stretched tight against the mammary glands at about waist level; Jared thought of Earthian females in close-fitting shirts with plunging necklines. It was much the same sort of thing, he thought. It was spring; the hormones were rising.

It was spring for the other species, too. Phazi was in spring clothes, with a flower-shaped earring and two tail rings of twisted gold, one with a pink gemstone and one with a flower design, flattering to her light grey body hair, but she wasn't thinking about any of the Zamuaon males who strolled the Institute hallways; she had her mind on finals week. And she was worried about it; even the tip of her tail drooped. Jared didn't need to read her mind to know this, not that he would attempt to read a Zamuaon anyway. Zamuaons had Big Ears, a species characteristic. They were the only species in the Four Species Alliance with this acknowledged ability, and if they did happen to run into Jared's Little Ears, they were slightly offended – what was an Earthian doing with Ears? – or patronizing. His Little Ears were, they felt, very cute.

They'd got him through childhood, though, through the precarious back alleys and slums of Danmira, the planet of his birth. It helped to be able to read a stranger or an enemy, to know his or her intentions and avoid trouble. Sometimes he could nudge them off course with a little hint from his mind. Sometimes he had been able to help Gram, too, keeping her on track when she had spent too much time with the brown bottle from under the bed. And sometimes, not often enough, he had been able to distract Ava, before the drugs and the booze got more important than anything else in her life, including her son. She had been dead for almost a decade now, an odd thought.

So his Little Ears were only a small talent he kept to himself. No one else knew about it. It wasn't enough ability to do anything important. Had he been able to take care of Gram, to save Ava? No, indeed, but he could still use them to read friends and acquaintances, and they were helpful in his Agency work.

He didn't need to use them with Karen; he could read her all too clearly without Ears, Big or Little, and he moved a step or two out of her way. No, I'm not studying tonight, he said to Phazi. Or working. I promised Maud an evening.

Karen gave a small sigh. He could hear her mind easily even over this little distance; she didn't like to hear about Maud or his plans with her. She wished that Maud were somewhere else, the Venusian satellite colony would be nice, and that his plans were with Karen instead. He was glad they weren't.

Oh, an evening with your lady, how very good, said Phazi politely. She did not much approve of Maud, whom she had seen several times meeting him on campus. As a Zamuaon, she saw no particular point in a love affair that precluded the possibility of children, an essential feature of Zamuaon life, carrying their heritage into the future. Maud was beautiful; Jared wasn't the only one to think so. But she wouldn't be having children, at least not without the Fetal Research lab, clone reproduction or harvested cells. She was, although he seldom thought about it, thirty years older than Jared.

Not being Zamuaon, Jared was unconcerned with children; his only thought on