Four: In Hindsight

"Gary."

"Cato? S'up my man?"

"We need to talk. Now."

That particular combination of words and tone was the relationship equivalent to a pending execution. Gary's smile faded and his brain went into overdrive to figure out what he'd done to bring about this doom.

The teal Ventrexian folded his arms across his chest and fixed Gary with a cool, cool, pissy glare. "Look me in the eye and tell me our son is playing a joke on me."

There was a definite and vaguely threatening or else tagged onto that statement. Suspecting he'd lost this round before he even knew what it was about, Gary gestured, grimacing as he probed. "Um . . . yo, could I get some context for this not-so-passive-aggressive line of questioning?"

"Sure." Avocato leaned forward slightly as he spoke, his eyes narrowing as he demanded, "Does The Drilling Factory sound familiar?"

Oh. Oh, no. The secret was out. Avocato knew. The doom bus was pulling up to the station and Gary Goodspeed had his long-distance ticket to ride. His chips were about to be cashed out for him. Crap, crap, crappity crap-crap. Near to panicking, he hemmed. He hawed. He frantically tried to think of what he could say to avoid being murdered to death in the next thirty seconds or so. "Yeeee - In my defense . . ."

"Defense?" asked Avocato, in a tone that artfully and succinctly conveyed no defense was possible.

"See, Clarence gave us a contact for a dimensional key -"

That deep voice flatlined. "And you believed him?"

"In hindsight the name Horace Furcox and District 69 is pretty telling, but . . ." Gary ran a hand through his hair as anxiety kicked in. He glanced at Avocato. "We had no reason . . . not to?" he tried, completely cowed as one eyebrow arched at him, telegraphing exactly how awed Avocato was at his naivete.

"You trusted him? Clarence Polkawitz? You're kidding, right?"

"We were kinda desperate and he said his contact was waiting for us at . . . at . . . the . . ." He closed his eyes and pulled a face, not wanting to say the name aloud. It was embarrassing in every conceivable way, made worse now that he was being confronted by the facts.

"The Drilling Factory," provided Avocato in a sharp, merciless hiss. Clearly, he wasn't about to let Gary forget it.

"Oh, yeah, gee, thanks, just scream it out loud, Avocato," he muttered. "We thought it must be some sort of . . . mining camp setup . . . thingy?"

Avocato stared at him in slack-jawed disbelief. "A mine?"

"It made sense at that moment. Kinda. To us."

"Gary, Darga is a space station. A space station! It's not a planetoid. There's nothing to mine!"

Feeling about an inch tall, Gary squeaked, "Yeee-ah, we figured that out."

"Only after you took our fourteen-year-old son to a brothel!"

"We made him and Ash cover their eyes!"

"You brought ASH?"

Gary realized his blunder instantly. Too late, klaxons went off in his head and for a few frazzled moments he couldn't remember words or what they were for or how to string them into a sentence. It was evident, too, that Avocato was seriously contemplating revoking all of Gary's dad privileges across the board. Closing his eyes, the teal Ventrexian took a deep breath and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose in a vain attempt to stave off a headache.

"Gary."

He couldn't meet his husband-the-mass-murderer-with-morals' eyes. "Yeah."

"Understand, I have nothing against prostitution. It's an old and very honorable profession on Ventrexia. Hell, I have cousins who are courtesans. That's not the issue."

"Uh-huh. Good to know."

"The issue is that children, any children, our children, do not need to be exposed to that atmosphere. Our son is far too young to go anywhere near a place like that."

"I agree, Cato. Totally not the education he needs at this point. It was a mistake. My mistake. An honest one. It won't happen again. I promise you. 'Sides, only KVN went past the foyer and we were only there for, like, half an hour."

Avocato's rage, which had simmered down as Gary threw himself under the doom bus, snapped straight back to wildfire proportions. "WHAT?"

Oh, crap. Gary bit his lip, afraid to look and wondering how to wrestle his foot out of his mouth.

"You brought Little Cato to a brothel and hung out? Seriously, Goodspeed? You knew what it was and you didn't pack up and leave immediately?"

"In hindsight, that probably would have been best," admitted Gary, only now realizing the truth.

Avocato's lethal glare could have peeled the plating off an Incinerator, but Gary could tell by the lash of his tail and the slight softening of his snarl that the Ventrexian was somewhat mollified by his ownership of the whole, disreputable situation. "You think?"

"Apparently not."

"Try it in the future. Please."

"Noted," said Gary, thinking the worst was over.

He was wrong.

So very, very wrong.

Avocato drew a deep breath, crossed his arms across his chest again, and proceeded to unlock a whole new level of trouble.

"So what's this I hear about chaos marbles?"