The Thirteenth Man

by J. L. Doty

  The twenty klicks to Ellitah was an easy two-­day hike, and he timed it so that he entered the city during the anonymous hours of late evening. It wasn’t hard to find the district where spacers hung out; he just asked a cabby where a spacer went for a good time. The district itself was a maze of saloons and gambling halls and whorehouses, the streets filled with spacers and prostitutes. He wandered the streets for a good part of the night, trying to get a feel for the place. He could eat ration packs for several days, and sleep in an alley somewhere—­the weather was warm and dry—­and with the kind of men he saw wandering the streets it would be best to move cautiously.

  His second day in the city he traded a ­couple of kikkers for a heavy overcoat, which improved anonymity, and on the third day he sold some narcotics to pick up a little money. He bought a newspaper printed on old-­fashion vellum that would disintegrate in a few days and eagerly scanned it hoping for news of Cesare. Unfortunately there was nothing about the duke, though quite a bit about Aagerbanne.

  The occupation had begun with a brutal assault intended to prevent any resistance from arising. And at first it had worked, but during the fifty-­seven days he’d been in orbit approaching Tachaann, the Free Aagerbanni Resistance—­FAR—­had formed and started fighting back with guerilla tactics. At one point they’d brought down a Syndonese troop transport, killing two hundred thirty-­one soldiers. The Syndonese responded by executing a like number of civilians. Charlie didn’t think FAR could last long without someone on the outside supplying arms and equipment. It was a shame none of the Nine were interested in supporting them.

  That evening he returned to his makeshift bed rather content. He slept in the corner of an alley on a soft pile that he’d made by crumpling up carefully selected, nonsmelly bits of refuse. Burrowing into the pile hid him reasonably well from anyone who might wander down the alley.

  He lay awake for a while wondering what he would do next. His first instinct was to get back to the Realm as soon as possible, but it would take him quite a while to scrape up the money for an off-­planet ticket. And as he thought about it further, he didn’t have the protections afforded the nobility. If Charlie Cass showed up anywhere in the Realm, Nadama or Goutain would have him quietly executed. No, he’d have to bide his time and scrounge up a false identity before leaving Tachaann, which wouldn’t be cheap.

  Without a stroke of luck, his options were quite limited, so he’d have to just wait and see. Though, even with those disturbing thoughts, he had no trouble falling asleep.

  “You big, strong man. You like suck, or you like fuck?”

  Charlie snapped awake at the sound of the voice, but remained still and silent. A whore and a spacer were walking down the alley toward him, and he guessed he was about to get a rather lurid show. But then near him he heard a voice whisper in Syndonese, “Here they come. Be quiet,” and he realized three men stood in the shadows just an arm’s length from him.

  “I like ’em both, bitch,” the spacer with the whore growled. He pressed her against a wall and lifted her skirt.

  She pressed her pelvis against his hand. “You pay first. Fifty dikkas for fuck, again fifty dikkas for suck.”

  The three men near Charlie stepped out of the shadows. One of them said, “We don’t like your prices, cunt,” and all four of them grabbed her. She started to scream, but one of them slapped her hard, stuffed some sort of gag in her mouth, and tied it in place. “We’re taking the special discount rate. Four of us, for free.”

  Shit, Charlie thought. They’re going to assault her. And as much as he wanted to just lie low—­anything he did could bring attention to the fact that Charlie Cass was not, in fact, dead—­he couldn’t just lie there and let this happen.

  He’d kept the wrench and knife from the lifeboat and he waited until three of them had her pinned down, with the fourth between her legs, pulling down his pants, before he erupted from the pile of rubbish. He hit one on the side of the head with the wrench and the man went down. He caught another on the top of the head, kicked the third in the gut, and spun to face the fourth, who’d climbed to his feet and held a knife of his own. With her hands free the prostitute pulled out her gag and started screaming.

  The fellow with the knife faced Charlie squarely, but one of the others tackled him from behind and he went down. Charlie slashed the arm of the one who had tackled him and he let go, so Charlie rolled away as his other opponent bore down on him with his knife. “When you’re down in a knife or hand fight,” Roacka had told him, “don’t waste time getting up. That’s when they’ll take you.”

  Charlie kicked out in a leg sweep and the man went down between Charlie and the two that were still up. Charlie scrambled to his feet, put his back to a wall, and crouched into a knife-­fighting stance. And then the alley filled with a mob of angry, shouting men. Some of them hit Charlie’s assailants from behind; others scooped up the whore carefully and carried her away crying. Still others faced Charlie, but with the knife in his hands and his back to a wall they kept their distance. The whore’s family and friends had come to the rescue. They had the four assailants disarmed and pinned to the ground, and Charlie surrounded.

  They babbled back and forth in a language Charlie seemed to recognize, but they spoke too fast, something about the spacers hurting Janice. He eventually recognized the language, a variant form of one of the more common standards. They were trampsies, and that meant they were all family, and clearly they thought Charlie was in it with the other four. A young one swaggered forward and smirked at Charlie’s knife. He pulled his own and bent into a proper fighting stance, showing off by passing the knife back and forth from hand to hand. Roacka would’ve kicked him in the ass for showing off. The young fellow’s friends shouted encouragement—­probably their best knife fighter, and they were now going to have a little show as he cut up Charlie.

  He feinted at Charlie once, then again. If he was their best he wasn’t that good, but good enough considering he’d probably learned in the streets rather than drilling for years with Roacka and two Kinathin fighting machines. He feinted a third time and Charlie pretended to react clumsily, exposed his left side a bit, and the young fellow thought he saw a weakness. His fourth lunge was a legitimate attack. Charlie feinted to the right as if protecting his weak left side and he fell for it. Charlie caught his knife hand just above the wrist, and with a quick tug pulled him forward, adding to his momentum. Then he swung his wrist back over the fellow’s head, dropping him neatly on his back in the alley with a nice thud. As his friends surged forward, Charlie bent the fellow’s wrist at an odd angle, took the knife out of his hand, leaned down and pressed the edge to the fellow’s throat. Everyone froze.

  Charlie made an effort at their language. “Me not with them Syndonese.”

  An older version of the young fellow stepped forward, spit at Charlie’s feet and spoke in standard. “You hurt him, you die slow.”

  Charlie removed the knife from the boy’s throat. “I hurt no one,” he said as he laid both knives on the ground and stepped back. The boy surged upward, grabbed both knives as he did so, and charged at Charlie. He caught one of the boy’s wrists again, but the boy drew a line of fire down Charlie’s forearm with the other knife. Someone tackled them both, then they lifted Charlie off his feet and pinned him to the alley wall. The boy stood facing him, holding both knives with no one restraining him.

  “Stopping, stopping, stopping,” the whore screamed as she came running down the alley, accompanied by two other hookers and a small girl that looked to be in her early teens. “Him not with them. Him them stopping.” The four girls pushed the men aside, shoved and elbowed their way between Charlie and the boy with the knives, forming a small cordon around Charlie.

  “You ain’t hurting him, Willie,” the first hooker shouted at the boy, smeared makeup streaming down her face, “or I cut your balls off. Momma Toofat says bring him.”

  They dragged Charl
ie off with his arms pinned behind his back, pulled him into a nearby saloon, past occupied tables and into a back room. They sat him in a chair and tied him there, then two of them sat down to watch him and wait.

  Charlie never did find out what happened to the four Syndonese spacers, though he assumed it was not pleasant and they did not survive it. But after about five minutes a big, fat woman waddled into the room and sat down facing him. The three whores, the young girl, the young knife fighter, and the older version of the younger man all accompanied her. She barked something in trampsie too fast for him to follow, and one of the men stood and approached Charlie with a knife. Charlie figured this was it, but instead the man cut his bonds, freeing his arms. The old woman reached out and took his injured arm, raised it to look at the slash there and the blood dripping on the floor. “We owe you, stranger,” she said in standard. She barked more orders; one of the whores produced a wet towel and a bottle of booze, knelt down in front of him and started cleaning the wound.

  The old woman let go of his arm, took his chin in one hand, and turned his head from side to side. She said something in trampsie that Charlie didn’t understand, and at the look on his face she switched to standard. “You once pretty boy.”

  Charlie shrugged. “Not anymore.”

  “I’m Momma Toofat. You saved Janice Likesiteasy.” She nodded toward the whore, who was actually quite pretty, dark curly hair down to her shoulders, big brown eyes.

  She smiled at Charlie through dark red lips, the left side of her face puffing up from the slap the spacer had given her. She said, “Thanks. Them fuckers going to hurt me.”

  Momma Toofat turned on her and shouted, “And you’re stupid girl who’s going to learn big lesson starting tomorrow.” Janice lowered her eyes.

  Momma turned back to Charlie, and nodding toward the young boy and the older man she said, “Willie Cutsgood cut your arm, and Willie’s father Nano Neverlose.”

  The whore cleaning his wounded arm smiled up at him. The opposite of Janice, she was all blond hair and blue eyes, wearing a skirt so tight it appeared almost painted on, and a bustier bursting with cleavage. “I’m Sally Wantsalot.” She pointed to the third whore, a redhead, frizzy wild hair, black lipstick, green eyes. “Trina Godowna.” Then she pointed at the little girl in blond pigtails and what looked like a school uniform. “Becky Neverenough.”

  Momma interrupted. “I think maybe we change you name to Sally Talkstoomuch.”

  Sally focused on the chore of cleaning the slash on Charlie’s arm.

  Momma said to Charlie, “What’s your name?”

  Charlie hesitated. “Frank,” he lied. “Just Frank.”

  She caught his hesitation and he suspected she knew he was lying, though that didn’t seem to bother her. “No, you Frankie Oncepretty. And we owe you debt. How we pay?”

  Charlie considered that for a second. A ticket off planet would cost far more than they were offering, and he had to lie low for a while, at least until he could sneak back to the Realm with a new identity. And all that would take money that he didn’t have. So after a few moments, he said, “How about something decent to eat . . . and a place to sleep . . . and maybe a job?”

  CHAPTER 12

  WAITING TABLES

  The saloon belonged to Momma Toofat and her clan. It was a family run combination of bar, restaurant, pawnshop, gambling casino, and whorehouse. The drinks weren’t watered down, the food was decent, the pawnshop was more of a side business, the gambling was honest, for the most part, and the whores were all carefully watched over by the family, including Jonjon Hungwell, a handsome bartender who made better money as a male hooker.

  To his surprise, Charlie learned that the profession of prostitute was the most highly prized and sought-­after vocation among the young trampsie girls. If the clan leaders chose a girl to be a whore, it meant she was among the most beautiful. And since the oldest profession brought in more money than any other job, they were highly valued, highly respected and well taken care of, and none of the girls ever had to bed a john she didn’t want to. After all, the whores were all members of the family.

  The night Charlie had met Janice Likesiteasy, she got in trouble because she’d picked up the spacer on the street and hadn’t bothered to parade him through the saloon so that someone could be assigned to keep an eye on the situation from a distance. And she paid for her foolishness. For a tenday Momma Toofat had her doing all of the dirtiest chores in the building.

  Charlie washed dishes, and for that he got three meals and a ­couple of dikkas every day, and a blanket and a mat to sleep on in the corner of the bar. It was heaven compared to a Syndonese prison camp. There were other trampsie clans in the city, and each owned one or more establishments of one kind or another. Charlie learned that Momma Toofat’s clan was one of the oldest, that there was some sort of hierarchy among the clan leaders, and Momma Toofat held a high position within that structure.

  When he’d asked for a job Charlie hadn’t realized he’d be, in effect, adopted into Momma Toofat’s clan. It was kind of nice, being family. Cesare and Arthur had always loved him as a son and brother, but he’d never truly been family, and he quickly learned that the trampsies made no such distinction.

  Gaida rode Cesare’s physician like she’d ridden horses as a young girl on her father’s estates. A good rider paced an animal, didn’t ride so hard it collapsed prematurely, prepared for and carefully timed the sprint for the finish. As he thrust into her and nibbled playfully on her nipples, she sensed when he was close to exploding within her. Where previously she had backed off the pace to prevent him from climaxing, now she too was ready so she rode him hard toward the finish line, grinding her hips against his erection as he thrust into her frantically. Suddenly he cried out and arched his back; his spasms of ecstasy drove her over the edge and she growled like an animal as waves of pleasure crashed through her. They both rode the tide of physical pleasure for long, glorious moments, then collapsed into the weak lethargy that followed.

  After long seconds of silence, punctuated only by heavy breathing as they both tried to catch their breaths, he said, “Oh, my love. That was glorious.”

  It was good to be back on Traxis, with Cesare still weakened from his wounds, and her own authority greatly expanded because of that. “Yes, my darling Stallas, it truly was.”

  She rolled off him, lay beside him panting for a moment, then stood unashamedly naked and crossed the room to look in the mirror above her dresser. Her waist was still thin, hips trim, belly flat, breasts firm and glistening with sweat. She had whored herself for many things, had been raised to whore herself for her family; whored herself to Cesare for her father’s benefit, but now she whored herself to the fool physician for her own gain. She was much too good for that wrinkled old duke. After he was gone she’d take as many lovers as she chose, men and women, perhaps more than one at a time in her bed, perhaps several. She’d be one of the most powerful women in the Realm.

  Without looking over her shoulder, she asked, “How is Cesare, my darling?”

  Stallas stood, and she saw in the mirror that his erection had begun to contract. He crossed the room to stand behind her, reached around her and cupped her breasts in his hands. Still breathing hard he had to speak between breaths. “I’m making sure he . . . grows weaker . . . every day. It shouldn’t be long now.”

  “Oh, my love,” she said, turning to face him, pressing her breasts against his chest. She grasped his shrinking penis in one hand, stroked it carefully and it started to respond. “When my son inherits the ducal seat, nothing will stand between us.”

  “Yes, my darling,” he said. “Nothing.”

  She was always amazed at how easy it was to manipulate fools such as Stallas. At least he managed to provide some physical pleasure, though once he’d served his purpose, she’d find a younger man to satisfy those needs.

  She knelt down, took him in her mo
uth, and his erection returned quickly.

  Nano pulled Charlie away from dishwashing and asked him in standard, “You know how to pour drinks?”

  Charlie shrugged. “You put a glass on the bar in front of a spacer and you fill it with whiskey, or gin, or whatever he wants.”

  “No. You don’t fill it. You put in a measure. You don’t under fill it, you don’t overfill it.”

  Nano handed him a white shirt and a black vest and dragged him to the bar. “Today, you’re bartender. Jonjon Hungwell got the clap.”

  Charlie hoped that would mean a little increase in pay, which would get him the off-­planet ticket that much faster.

  His first night behind the bar during the evening shift, Becky Neverenough, the little schoolgirl, sashayed up to the bar with a big spacer on her arm. Becky and the spacer downed a ­couple of drinks, then she took him into one of the back rooms with a bottle. It was an appalling thought to think they’d whore out a little girl just barely into her teens.

  The next morning while seated next to Sally at the bar, both of them eating breakfast, Charlie tried to broach the subject. “Sally,” he said cautiously. “Are things so bad that you need to pimp out a little girl?”

  She stopped eating, frowned at him and asked, “Little girl?”

  “Ya, Becky.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she spoke standard with a thick street accent. “How little you think she is?”

  He shrugged. “She can’t be more than thirteen or fourteen.”