Awakened power, understanding, begrudging acceptance…
Mandy found her there in the morning. She was curled up on the ground just under the awning by the hall door. Mandy was frightened. No other buffer woman had ever left the bedroom like this. Spacer was still asleep, sprawled on the bed in the bedroom. It was not like him to sleep this late either. What had happened? She knew this woman was strong, but had she burned Spacer out? Mandy had heard of that happening, where a woman was so strong, her partner was burned out. She hesitated but finally shook the young woman awake.
“What are you doing out here?” she demanded.
“I wanted a bath,” Sarita answered sleepily. “I need to wash.” Sarita woke completely and sensed she could compel this woman to do what she wanted. Compulsion was a rare power and those who had it were closely monitored and taught so they would not abuse it. She spoke sharply to Mandy in a voice she believed she would be compelled to obey.
“I want to go to the bathing area and clean myself and I want to do it now.”
Mandy was shaken. Her barriers had been down, and she felt herself fighting to resist the woman’s words. This young woman had the power of compulsion but had not developed the discipline to make it work, yet. She would need close supervision and training.
“Don’t use that on me, newbie! You’ll do as you are told.” Mandy swung her arm to slap Sarita. Mandy found herself flung into the bed sheets hanging on the lines. The young woman knew how to defend herself.
“No, I won’t. My name is Sarita, not newbie, and you will take me to where I can bathe.” Mandy was shaking. What had they awakened when Spacer mounted this young Pin?
“I can’t right now. Something is wrong with Spacer, and I think you did it. He is in charge of Port, and if we don’t get him back up and functioning, we both go on the block to the highest bidder. He owns both our contracts.”
Sarita was frightened. Had she done something to the man last night? She thought she had only deepened his sleep so she could escape. So many things she needed to know about her powers and so little time to learn them.
“If I help you get him awake and functioning, will you take me to the bathing place?” Sarita asked.
“We have to get him awake and functioning. You’ll have to be with him all the time to buffer his telepathy. There are things he has to do, or the rest of the ship’s crew will elect someone else.” Mandy got up and led the way back to the room. Spacer was still asleep. Sarita probed his mind. Her compulsion to sleep had been too strong. She eased it up slowly until he was in a natural sleep mode. Mandy shook him awake.
“Spacer, wake up! You’ve got a meeting after midday meal.” Mandy was alarmed at this groggy reaction. What had Sarita done to him? Why was she not under his control like the other buffer women had been?
Spacer shook his head, and then looked around the room. He stared at Sarita.
“What did you do to me, Pin?” His eyes were large, and he looked almost frightened.
“I don’t know,” Sarita whispered. “I was only trying to get you to sleep soundly so I could get away.”
“No, not that, earlier. You changed my brain. You built a wall. How did you do that?”
“My mother taught me some tricks about manifesting, so you retain your mind. You tried to get into my brain, and I stopped you. I built a wall and pushed it into your brain. Your brain stopped trying to reach me, but I forgot to pull the wall back.” It sounded so silly to Sarita. You don’t build walls in your brain, but that was the only way to describe it.
“And now, my brain is using that wall. I can block out other people’s thoughts unless I want to hear them. You earned your crew status, girl.”
“You should give that to Mandy too. She drugged me so you could rape me.” Sarita was angry.
“Whoa there girl, that was not rape. You were drugged so you wouldn’t burn out when you manifested, not so you could not give your consent. You’re a new hire, not a crew member, so you belong to me, and I can do what I want to you. I don’t like it much, either. If you don’t want your reward, that’s okay with me. You’re a strong power worker. You can help Mandy.”
Mandy stared at Sarita. She couldn’t know what she had just turned down, but to have her ask for sharing made no sense at all.
“Sure Spacer, since she won’t take crew status, she can be my assistant. Just be sure Kali and the rest know she works for me. Her name is Sarita.” She would explain to Sarita later what a stupid mistake she had just made.
“Set me up a meal, Mandy. That way you can show Sarita around. I’m going to enjoy this next meeting with the section heads.” He left the room with a sleeping sheet wrapped around his middle. Mandy turned on Sarita.
“You idiot, you fool! How could you turn down a chance to be free like that?”
Sarita yelled back at Mandy. “I don’t know what you mean. What is a new hire? What is a crew? I haven’t even been here for a whole day. Are we his slaves?”
***
“Keep your voice down! Spacer hates yelling. I don’t know was a slave is, but he owns both of our contracts. Come on, we have to fix his fast-breaking, and then we can go get cleaned up and get you some clothes from stores.”
After they served Spacer his meal in his room off the main hall, Mandy put a hat on Sarita and led her out into the city.
“You have to stay out of the sun. If you don’t, you get the black mold, and it kills you.”
“How can sunlight give you mold? Mold is fungus and the sun kills fungus.” Sarita was puzzled.
“I don’t know why they call it that, they just do. It’s a black or dark brown growth you get on your skin if you stay out in the sun too much. Now, shut up — or at least quit asking questions every time I tell you something.”
“How else am I going to understand what’s going on here if I don’t ask questions.”
“Why do you need to understand everything? You’re not crew. You just do as you’re told.”
“So, we’re slaves?” Sarita asked.
“I told you, I don’t know what a slave is, I only know I have a contract to serve with Spacer, and sometimes he hires me out to the Port. I don’t know what he’ll have you do. But so far, no one in his house has ended up at the Tail House, so you can rest easy on that. Now just hush until we get to the bathhouse.”
Sarita complied. Later she and Mandy talked while they scrubbed each other in the bathhouse down near the beach. It was more expensive than just swimming in the seawater, but Mandy just charged it to Spacer. They enjoyed a long soak and talk. Mandy explained to Sarita how the system worked in Port: about contracts and about being crew. Mostly they spoke about how Mandy had manifested her power just like Sarita had, but hers had been with the highest bidder at the brothel where her mother had worked. And they had not given her as strong a dose of the drug. Sarita understood more of her attitude toward what had happened. To her, this was normal, just the way things were. Mandy expected to be treated this way.
***
When they finished their swim, Mandy and Sarita returned to the main house. Spacer was waiting impatiently.
“About time you two got back. Meeting is about to start.” He headed off toward a large thatch-covered open building across the main square. A crowd of men and women were lounging on benches or standing chatting in the shade. Spacer stepped up onto a raised platform and Mandy pushed Sarita to follow him.
“Council meeting will come to order. XO Spacer Wrightson presiding in the absence of the captain. All stand at ease.” Spacers assistant, Boats Olson, hit the large metal gong. Spacer was smug. How they would stare when he sent this Pin woman out of the area. They expected him to have a buffer woman and now he didn’t need one. He knew some of them suspected. Port was not that big, and rumors were flying about the new woman. He turned to Mandy and Sarita.
“Mandy, take Sarita down to stores and get her some clothes. Then take her over to the brig and see if she can talk some sense into that woman who came with her.” He loved it. The ripple of astonishment drifted across the room. He sat down behind the table on the platform.
“Now, let’s get to work,” Spacer shuffled the notes before him. “Where do we start, Boats?” He felt at least two or three tentative probes as some of the more powerful in the room tried to read him. He strengthened the wall Sarita had created in his mind and shot back a warning thought. No, you don’t. I can stop you without help. He made a mental note of those who winced in pain. Good to know who the ambitious were.
Mandy took Sarita to a sturdily built shack where she drew baggy pants and tunics like Mandy’s, a broad brimmed hat, woven sandals, and some breast bands. It was all charged to Spacer’s account. In spite of all that had happened, Sarita found herself liking this plain-spoken young woman. They hurried back to the main house to serve Spacer his supper since he would not allow Kali to do it.
“We can go see your mother in the morning,” Mandy explained to Sarita. “Spacer wants us in the house after dark. Some nights, crawly things come up from the swamp. That is why we have the guards, not against the humans, but against the swamp things. Let’s get this stuff settled in your room.”
Sarita and Mandy sat on the bed of Sarita’s new room in the servants’ area of the house. It was a small room with a wall bench for a bed, and baskets for storage with pegs on the wall to hang her new clothing. Mandy had also managed to get the baskets from the ship. They had been searched, but a quick check found some of Sarita’s belongings were missing. What might be missing from her mother and uncle’s belongings, she could not tell. Mandy said she would let Spacer know, so they could get them back.
Like the rest of the house, the walls of her room were made of cut lava-stone. The floor was not smooth like in the main rooms or the room she had been in last night but here the holes in the rock were packed with sand. Mandy told her if it was kept damp with water from the sink, it would not track as badly and be more comfortable to walk on. The waste room was at the end of the hall and two sinks were set into the wall near it.
Mandy warned her Spacer would be expecting her in his bed at night unless she did something to discourage him. That evening, he was not home because he had gone to the Tail House.
“What is the Tail House? Sarita asked. “You keep talking about it.”
“That is where the whores are that the men can mount for a credit. Most are older women who can’t have littles anymore. That is why you don’t want to be sent there. Like I said, some of the men can be rough.”
Mandy when on to explain how her mother told her when spaceships made long trips like the transport, they had these departments. It was so the crew didn’t get sneak around getting involved with each other.
“Once the drugs that keep the women from getting pregnant ran out, they realized they had to know who the parents of each baby were, so there was no inbreeding. Once a woman gets pregnant, she can choose to stay in the Tail or marry the father if he wants her. There were too many men possible for my dad, so my name is Mandy Doe. Has something to do with an old Terran expression to hide a person’s name. There are others here with that last name, but we’re not kin.”
She explained that Spacer had never been able to go use the Tail before because he could not block out all the mental noise and chatter. Now, with the wall Sarita had forced him to develop, he would probably go out every evening for a while at least. Mandy was relieved but worried too.
“My job has always been to get him his buffer women and sort the incoming new hires. With him not needing a buffer woman, I don’t know what I’ll be doing for him. I could end up working for the port master sorting people, but I don’t want to end up at the Tail.”
“If we can get out of here, maybe you can come with me,” Sarita told her. “I was going to Refugio. I imagine when word gets out that we are here someone will come after us.”
“Blackie said he was going to ask the Refugio government to buy back your uncle’s contract. Most of the time the Regals do send the goods. You think they would buy back yours too?”
“I don’t know if they would. The bonding contracts were still being negotiated when we left. I know they might ransom Uncle Tony and he might be able to get someone in the family to help get us rescued.”
“Don’t know about ransom, whatever that is, but if they buy back his contract, they’ll probably take you and your mother too. That is, if someone doesn’t mug her into a brain collapse in the meantime. They sent her to the brig because she was hassling the shore patrol.”
“She can be very difficult when she wants to be,” Sarita said with a grin. “She is a very powerful healer.”
“Well, here in Port, you do as you’re told, or you get sent to field work. There are places over by the volcanoes where we grow food. They don’t make them wear hats, so they die off pretty quick from the mold.”
“If that disease is as bad as you say, I can understand why you keep raiding for more people. But why not just have them wear hats and clothing like you do?”
“I don’t know why they do it that way,” Mandy said. “When I was in school, we were told about the landing and how we’ve been waiting for rescue all these years. The crew thought the people who owned the ship would come looking for them when they didn’t come back. But it’s been years, and no one has come.”
“For my people, that was the way we wanted it, but I know the Refugio settlers and the crew were not supposed to stay here.”
“We’d better get some sleep,” Mandy said, “so we can serve Spacer first meal tomorrow.”
***
As Spacer was being served his first meal, he asked Sarita about her mother. “Shore Patrol had some real issues with that old woman who was with you on the ship. You think you might be able to talk some sense into her?”
“I can try.” Sarita decided it was safest to not tell him Rita was her mother. He dismissed the women to go down to the brig and see what they could do but warned that he expected them back to help with lunch. Sarita and Mandy crammed on their hats as they walked out into the blazing sun. Mandy grabbed Sarita’s hand and pulled her across the square toward a covered walkway leading deeper into the scattering of thatched, stilted huts.
“You said that woman is your mother, but you didn’t tell Spacer. Why?”
“I was not sure it would help, so I didn’t say anything. I don’t know how family works here. Her name is Rita and the man who was with us is her brother, my uncle Tony.” Sarita jogged along with Mandy as she led them quickly through the narrow passageways. The air was hot and still. “Is it always so hot here?” The sweat was beginning to run down her neck and soak through her baggy tunic.
“Be glad you are here in the spring. In summer, it hardly ever rains, and, in the winter, it is cloudy and cooler, but it rains every day. The brig is down here on the lagoon.” Mandy pulled the top of her tunic up toward her face as they emerged onto a narrow bridge. The stench of the rotting vegetation in the pool of sulfur-tinged water under the bridge was overpowering. “Not many people act up again after having to spend a few days in the brig.”
Sarita gagged and pulled her own clothing over her nose. Mandy was known to the watcher, and they quickly were shown to the cell where Rita was confined. She was lying on a mat and seemed to be asleep.
“Momma, wake up. Are you well?”
Rita stirred and slowly opened her eyes and began stretching when she saw Sarita. “I was in a deep trance to avoid this noxious smell. Are you well? I was appalled to hear they intended to drug you and… I can sense it! You have manifested.” Rita came quickly to her feet and reached through the door of the cell. She placed her hands on Sarita’s face and probed her. “No damage that I can sense, but how did this happen?”
“Nothing can be done now, Momma. I am not happy about it, but it has happened.”
Sarita was determined not to cry. She did not want her mother to attempt to retaliate against Spacer. As a strong psy worker, Rita could do just that. “This is Mandy, and I am assigned to work with her. If you will cooperate, I think I can get you out of here and up to the house where we are. Will you cooperate?”
“Don’t know if we can do much, Sarita.” Mandy interjected. “Spacer only asked us to calm her down. Looks to me as if she don’t need any calming.”
“Child, if you can get me out of this damp, smelly place, I’ll be as calm as a rock on the beach.” Mandy laughed and went to see if the watcher would allow them to take Rita. She was successful after a bit of compulsion. Rita’s woven cases from the ship were in the brig office and the man had Mandy sign for them. As they walked, Sarita explained to her mother what had happened.
Rita was outraged but realistic. “There is nothing we can do now. I only hope Tony can arrange for some sort of rescue. I don’t believe we’ll be able to go to Refugio, since you are no longer a virgin. Unless things have changed greatly there, only a virgin can be first wife of the Successor.” Mandy arranged for Rita to move into the last empty servants’ room, much to the disgust of Kali.
Kali snapped at her as she watched Mandy and Sarita settling Rita in the room. “Spacer ain’t going to have any more use for you, Missy. You going to end up down at the Tail or out on a fishboat like your momma. He didn’t say anything to me about adding someone else. I already got the rations for this day, so you had better find some way to feed her, cause I ain’t.”
“Kali, you know Spacer will eat at the main galley today and all you have to do is serve the house. We’ll take Rita out to swim and show her around. Spacer won’t care, if we keep her out of trouble.” Mandy sealed the room, because she knew Kali had searched the baskets and had been forced to return what she took from them. Mandy didn’t want a repeat of that. “Now, come on, Rita, let’s get a swim and see if Dr. Gupta is willing to let you work in the sick bay.”
“If that is what I have to do to stay out of this nasty jail, I will work with him,” Rita said with a laugh.
“Our sick bay officer is a woman,” Mandy said, surprised at Rita’s assumption. “She is tough but does a good job.”
Should you want to read the whole story…
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