Her Daddy and Her Master

by Katie Douglas

  Why did he want to know anything else? Surely that was the bit that he had wanted to know. The part that made her disgusting. Something compelled her to keep talking.

  “I didn’t dare tell the teacher, so I waited until playtime, and I was too scared to move, but he made me stand up, telling me I had to go outside and play, and that’s… that’s when he found out what I’d done. It was all over the chair, and the floor, and my dress. I didn’t know what to do. He told me off, then sent me home with a note for my mother. When my mother read it, she told me it said I was a vile little girl and the school didn’t want me to go back. My mother said if I was too stupid to know how to use a toilet at my age, I was too stupid to go to school, and she told me that I’d better learn how to clean a house because nobody would marry me otherwise, because I’m so stupid. And everyone would know what I did because I’d never learned to read and write. Nobody even wanted to be my friend when my mother told them what I did.” She sobbed and cried, and lost track of time in her sorrow as her heart stung with emotional pain. She became aware that Basil was still holding her, he was still letting her sit on his knee, and he had started gently rubbing her back again and rocking her back and forth. The anguish seemed to flow out of her into the air, where, having nowhere else to go, it dissipated. After a long while, Basil finally spoke.

  “Thanks for telling me, Laila. Sounds like it’s very hard to talk about and you did very well by telling me.”

  “See? Now you know, you have to take me back,” Laila said ruefully.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You don’t mean it,” she accused.

  “S’ my ship. I can do what I like. Heck, if I wanted to leave you and Flinar on some crappy gas giant, that’s entirely my prerogative, little princess. But I wouldn’t. I want you on my ship, Laila.”

  “Even though I was too stupid to go to the bathroom?” Laila asked.

  “That ain’t what happened, though, is it? And I think you need to know that. Look at it like a reasonable adult. If you had a child, and you took them to school for the first time, and they weren’t sure of the rules about when they could use the bathroom, so they had an accident and got sent home with a note, what’d you do?”

  “I would wash their clothes and clean them up and find them something new to wear, and I’d go to the school and ask them to let my child back.”

  “Now imagine you’re a teacher, and a small child wet themselves in your class during the first week. What’d you do?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not a teacher.”

  “You ain’t a parent, either, but you were able to imagine it, weren’t you?”

  “Maybe tell their mother why they were going home in wet clothes?” Laila hazarded.

  “I think it’d help you put this incident to rest if we found out what really happened,” Basil said. Laila stared at him.

  “How can you do that?”

  “Even backwards planets like Pombos have to send all their records to the Interplanetary Alliance’s Admin Center so it can all be typed up and added onto people’s Registry entry. Everything ever written about you at school should be on there, because schools are publicly accountable, even on Pombos, where I imagine there aren’t any state-funded schools,” Basil explained. “And I can access the Registry. Your school record should be on there.”

  He went to the computer terminal at the back of the cockpit, and typed in a few commands. Soon, a picture of Laila from a few years ago was visible on screen, along with lots of writing. Basil opened something up and read it out, skipping the dates, “Entry: Age six (four universal standard years). Laila attended school for one week then her mother abruptly removed her from school, stating that she intended to homeschool her.”

  Laila stared at him. She had no way of knowing whether he was telling the truth or whether her record said something different.

  “What are you trying to say?” she asked.

  “I ain’t trying to say anything. It’s right there on the screen. Soon as you’ve learned to read, you can check it for yourself. Says you were actually four in universal standard years, and it says your mother removed you from school. That means you were never expelled. C’mon, you were too tiny to know any better, Laila. Seems to me your mother left some key information out when she told you about it,” Basil said.

  Laila frowned.

  “But they sent me home with a note. She’s told me a thousand times. She tells everyone she meets about it.” Her mother, like Gar-Kon, never let Laila forget anything she had done wrong.

  “I’ll check the attachments.” He pressed a few places on the screen. “For once, the bureaucracy of the Prime planets is actually a good thing. Here’s a copy of what it said. ‘Laila wet herself at school today and will require fresh clothes for tomorrow. Please ensure your child uses the toilet in future.’”

  “That’s all it says?” Laila couldn’t believe it. She wished she could read it for herself so she would know if Basil was just trying to spare her feelings. As she thought about it, though, she realized he would have no reason to lie to her.

  “That’s all it says. Even on your home planet, I don’t think anyone would expel a child for having an accident.”

  “But my mother told me…” Laila stopped midsentence. This was the same mother who had sold her to Gar-Kon, she remembered. Laila had pleaded with her mother to let her marry anyone else, but her mother had refused to let all that money pass her by. Laila’s shame at what had happened at school, which she had been holding onto for years, subsided slightly, and a mixture of resentment, sorrow, and anger filled its space.

  “I tried to escape, you know. After she introduced me to him.” Laila spoke in a dead voice. “They caught me climbing down the drainpipe. I thought they were going to kill me.”

  She began crying again. She couldn’t tell Basil the rest; she couldn’t tell him that her mother had sent her off to live with Gar-Kon that same day, or the things he’d done. It was too horrible to talk about.

  Basil just wrapped her up in another hug and held her, gently rubbing up and down her back with his hand, over and over.

  “Shh, shh, it’s all right. It’s all right, little one. There’s nothing to worry about now. He ain’t here, and you’re safe. They can’t find you now.” He tipped her chin up so she was facing him, and brushed away her tears with his thumb. “I promise that we won’t return to Pombos ever again unless we absolutely have to.” Laila wanted to believe him, but she didn’t believe anything like that when people said it for the first time. If they meant it, they’d say it again and again.

  “When I close my eyes, I see him,” she said. “He’s always there, hiding behind my eyelids. My mother is, too. Sometimes, I’m scared to fall asleep because that’s when they get me.”

  “I know, sweetie, I know. You sleep in my bed, remember? Just try to think about other things. If it’s still going on when we reach Minos Kerala, I’ll get a doctor to check you over and make sure you’re coping.” Basil knew what to do, and Laila was grateful. Personally, she didn’t know how to help herself feel better at this point. She hoped it would just go away with time. Perhaps it would, if she could stop thinking about it.

  “Why don’t you sit in the copilot’s chair and keep me company while we fly through this asteroid field that’s coming up?” Basil returned to his seat and gestured at the empty one.

  “What’s an asteroid field?”

  “It’s an area of space full of lots of giant rocks.”

  “Where did the rocks come from?”

  “Nobody really knows, but there’s a couple of theories that’d make sense. Some people think the universe is a bit like a jigsaw, only it was put together all wrong, and now there’s all these pieces left over, which is why we’ve got asteroids. Other people think they’re maybe remains of planets that got destroyed during the un-terraforming wars fifty years ago, although it was only the surface which was destroyed on most of the planets that were affected,” Basil explained. “Some of t
he asteroids are highly radioactive, you see, which’d be explained if they used to be a small planet, because the amount of energy released by the un-terraforming devices—machines designed to destroy entire surfaces of larger planets—was enormous. But really we don’t know. There’s maps showing asteroid fields from before humans—my species—left Earth, and Earth was one of the planets that got un-terraformed, so it’s probably…”

  Laila tuned out to the explanation, which was getting far past her level of understanding. She liked the sound of Basil’s voice. Something about the tone reassured her that maybe everything really was all right. For now.

  “Laila, you listening?” Oops; she tried to remember the last thing he’d said.

  “Sorry, I didn’t understand some of it.”

  “How could you? People’ve been telling you you’re stupid all your life. I think all you see about yourself’s the times when you’ve got something wrong or when you don’t know something. What I want you to do for the rest of the week is start noticing when you do something right, when you know the answer to something or when you understand something.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then nothing. Just notice it. See where it takes you, how it makes you feel.” Basil hit a button on the console. Laila thought this was silly. How could just noticing when she did something make any sort of difference? Still, Basil wanted her to do it, and she was eager to do what he told her.

  “So, what’s so special about an area of space full of rocks?” Laila asked, grabbing the thread of their conversation again. She was trying very hard to ignore the part of herself that was telling her that she was too stupid to understand this conversation.

  “We gotta fly in a special way to avoid them. There’ll be lots of fast turns, but you won’t notice much in the ship because it’s got two special ways of keeping us safe during changes of direction,” Basil explained.

  “What are they?”

  “They’re the artificial gravity and the inertial dampers. Don’t worry too much about what they do right now; you just need to know there’s no need to worry about falling all over the place while we avoid asteroids. Let’s get you doing the alphabet before we try any astrophysics,” Basil chuckled. “Look, here’s an asteroid.”

  He swerved the ship and Laila was surprised at what happened.

  “It looked and felt like everything else moved, and we stayed still!” she said in surprise.

  “You were probably too upset to notice the same thing happened when we left the space station near Pombos. Keep watching.”

  As they approached another asteroid, again, Laila watched everything on the view screen jump sideways. She shook her head.

  “Watching everything move around us feels weird.”

  “It’s not moving around us, that’s why it feels weird to see it. We’re moving out of the way of things; they’re just going about their business.”

  “Wow. I see what you mean now,” Laila said, as Basil pulled hard on the controls and they went up and over a particularly wide, flat asteroid. “What would happen if we hit one of them?”

  “Ever seen Jell-O?” Basil asked. Laila shook her head. “Okay, never mind. We’d all go splat and the spaceship would be left around here in tiny pieces.”

  “Oh. So it’s important we don’t hit them then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Uh… even sideways ones?” Laila knew Flin had told her not to point, but now she pointed out of the side window at the unruly asteroid that was heading their way. Basil nosedived then pulled up again to avoid it, sending space spinning around them, and Laila closed her eyes.

  “Basil?”

  “Yes, princess?”

  “I don’t like asteroids.” She felt unsettled.

  “That’s a good choice,” Basil replied, and when she looked at him, he was slightly pale. “Well done for spotting that asteroid, Laila; we’d be toast now if you hadn’t said anything.”

  Laila smiled to herself. It was the first time she’d ever been praised for talking.

  Hours later, once they were clear of the asteroid field, Basil stopped the ship.

  “Why don’t you leave it on autopilot?” Laila asked.

  “It’s not very clever; it might hit something while we’re asleep,” Basil explained. He got to his feet. “Come on, missy, it’s past time for you to go to bed.”

  Laila jumped up out of the copilot’s seat. Basil offered her his hand, and she took it. The thoughtful gesture was reassuring, and she realized she was really starting to trust Basil. After that thought, she noticed how very sleepy she was, and let Basil lead her to the bed they shared in his cabin, where he tucked her in and kissed her on the forehead before getting in himself, as he had done every night so far. When she’d first been shown that she had to share his bed, she’d been sure he would use it as an excuse to take advantage, but so far, he’d kept himself to his side of the bed, and kept his hands to himself, too. Laila cuddled Mr. Unicorn, and she drifted off to sleep thinking that maybe they might let her stay on the ship forever after all.

  Chapter Six

  Two months passed on board The Great Gig, while it made various pickups, drop-offs, trades, and deals, and Laila stopped expecting to be shouted at, hit, or otherwise attacked by the people around her. She didn’t feel tired all the time, and her fears had receded somewhat, although they were still there.

  “Try them again.” Basil pointed at the sheet in front of her.

  “A, K, B, J, C, H, M, D, W…” Laila read out. After she’d learned the sounds of the alphabet in sequence, Basil had rearranged the letters for each new reading practice session. Laila loved that he patiently read with her. When she first started reading, it was very stressful for both of them. She was so used to being shouted at when she got things wrong, that she had feared that first reading session and gotten so worked up that she had cried many times before she had finally believed, several lessons later, that Basil wouldn’t hit her for making mistakes.

  “Well done for getting them right. What was the third letter?” His voice brought her back to the present.

  She traced over it with her finger.

  “B,” she said.

  “And the fifth?”

  “C.”

  “What about the last letter, what’s that?”

  “Double you!” It was Laila’s favorite letter.

  “I think my little girl deserves a cupcake.” He opened the cupcake tin and reached inside.

  She beamed broadly, her teeth shining out, much whiter than they had been. Since living on the spaceship, she’d learned a whole lot about taking care of herself—Flin’s contribution to helping her become a capable adult, since he had more grooming rituals than Basil. Once Laila found out she was allowed to spend as much time as she liked in the shower, she used it two or three times a day for the novelty. It was showing no signs of getting old. As a result of her new cleansing habits, her hair was shinier, her teeth were whiter, and she was sure her eyelashes had grown, although Flin said that was impossible.

  “Here you go.” Basil passed her the cupcake, and she bit into it at the best angle to get a bit of cake and icing. She grinned at Basil again; the icing had spread to her chin.

  “Hold still, princess.” Basil took a napkin and wiped away the icing.

  “Thank you, Daddy.” She treasured the look that he gave her when she called him that.

  “You’ve done so well, learning your alphabet letters. Let’s practice your writing now, since we’ve warmed up with the easy stuff,” Basil said, winking at her with his twinkling lilac eyes. Laila loved how Basil had managed to teach her to read and nearly write the alphabet, although progress had been slow and difficult at the start. Never had he told her she was unteachable, and he had always praised her for what she could do rather than focusing on what she couldn’t do. She was glad to have a man like Basil around.

  “Pen in hand again. You can have the other half of your cupcake when you’ve done your writing,” Basil said,
and Laila reverentially placed her cupcake on the table so she could pick up her pen. On the tablet Basil had put in front of her, she saw the blank page she hated so much.

  “You are going to write an entire sentence today.” Laila noticed not for the first time that he spoke more clearly, with less shortened words, when he was giving her these lessons. She supposed it was to help her hear how things were meant to sound. “Start with ‘my.’ What letters do you think it has?”

  “Does it start with an m?” Laila asked. Basil nodded and she felt pleased. “Then is it an i?”

  “Not quite. What’s that sneaky letter that pretends to be other letters?”

  “Oh! It’s y!” she exclaimed, and wrote the word.

  Several minutes later, she had written ‘my name is Laila’ on the tablet. She picked it up and held it out to Basil.

  “Fantastic work! That’s really good! You’ve written an entire sentence out of letters.”

  Laila giggled with pride.

  “What else would I write a sentence with, silly?” she asked, squiggling in her chair.

  “Okay, you got me. Why don’t you show Flin your letters?” Basil suggested. Laila jumped up from the table and ran to the cockpit where Flin was currently flying the spaceship.

  “I wrote a sentence!” She held it out for him to inspect.

  “Let me see.” Flin hit autopilot, then took the tablet from her and turned it this way and that before winking at her playfully. “Yep, that’s definitely a sentence. Well done, Laila, you’ve worked really hard on your writing, and I know it’s been difficult at times. As a special reward, how about you and I have a very grownup play session together when we reach Minos Kerala? We’re staying on the planet’s surface for at least a few days; I’m sure we can find time.”

  “A play session, like with crayons and naptimes? I thought you didn’t like all of that?” Laila looked at Flin. He leaned back in his chair and swiveled it so he could face Laila better.