by P. S. Power
The men sat and talked about what the job entailed, with Gwen asking what she hoped would be reasonable questions every few minutes. It seemed to her that she just needed to go where the other woman went and make certain she ate enough, got rest, and bathed regularly. The rest, making the food, doing the laundry, and so on could be done by others, they told her. People would want the work as long as they didn't have to be too close to a Westmorland personally.
A soft knock came at the door after about forty minutes of talking.
“Come in,” Peals said loudly.
The door opened and the older detective that Gwen had borrowed the truncheon from poked his head in.
“Wright cracked, sir. He's spilled a half dozen names and locations. It looks like, if this information is solid, we can finally take the ring down for good.” Seeing Peals nod, he pulled his head back out and shut the door.
“Theft ring on the East side. They've ruled the lower class areas of the city for too long. They mainly prey on the poor, using intimidation to keep their activities secret. This may be the information we need. So far no one's been willing to talk, even using... inducements, hasn't been effective, until now,” Chief Peals told them. Gwen had a strange feeling that inducements the way Peals meant it didn't include bribes or payoffs at all. Not squealing on your friends for a new toaster or anything like that. He'd mentioned beatings earlier, so was it that? It could be. The threat of harm was generally more useful than torture was in the end, if television action shows could be trusted.
Mr. Vernor offered to take her anywhere she desired to go, but Gwen didn't have any place in mind and said so, trying to sound as polite and confident as possible. This left everyone at loose ends, not knowing what to do. Gwen finally decided to simply pick a course of action, then play it by ear.
“I'll stay with Bethany, for now at least. This gives me something to do and I can, possibly, be of help in the case, even though I don't know enough about this world to help directly. If we could get the address or location identifier, whatever you use here, maybe solicitor Grimes could arrange for cleaning and meals as he mentioned? At least until I learn what to do.” She said this as if it were an actual plan, not knowing how anyone would react. Everyone simply went with it, as if moving in with a stranger seemed normal here. Then again, out of all these people, the one she'd spent the most time with so far really had been the detective and she pretty much had to move in with someone. That or find a hotel room or something. Plus she was a woman, which seemed to be important here, making her instantly more qualified to take care of a person like Beth than any of the men were. Given the way they'd botched it so far, she could see why they might think that way. How hard would it have been to walk a sandwich over and ask her to eat twice a day?
They left the office, Mr. Vernor and Grimes going off to make arrangements, and Bethany moving back to her desk. Not knowing what else to do, Gwen followed her, looking around for a chair, only to have the blond detective from the hall bring her one without being asked.
“I'm Wilbur. Pleased to meet you,” he said politely, leaving the chair for her. This caused a few of the other men to laugh a little. He didn't seem flirtatious, if Gwen could judge such things at all, which she probably couldn't here. Not knowing what else to do, she tried to smile back and muttered her thanks. At least they all knew who she was, right?
Across the room, the thief, Wright, saw her and blanched a little, so she waved to him, just moving her fingertips. He made a small moaning sound and started talking to the older detective again, glancing at her several times.
At shift change, a little over two hours later, she decided to take the other woman home, simply asking Bethany to lead the way. To her surprise it worked. She followed along with her, the woman walking as if in a dream, leading her to a door that had been left unlocked. Inside the place was still and clean, but slightly musty, as if it hadn't had good airflow for a while.
Gwen opened a window and sat down, trying not to rub at her chest. She noticed how good it felt to sit and relax. Bethany just stood, still working on her case, even at home. It hardly seemed fair, so Gwen waved toward the sofa.
“Bethany, why don't you sit down and relax? Stop working for a while and let go of things? I don't know if I can make tea or anything, but there's no reason for you to keep working for the time being. I don't know how to let you let go of work for a while, but you should do that now, at least for a bit.”
Bethany sat down and sighed.
“Oh, gods!” She said to Gwen, looking at her closely. “You don't know how good it feels to just be for a bit.”
The sudden outburst took Gwen by surprise. Mainly it was the emphatic way she said it. Filled with actual emotion.
“Hey! You speak! I thought it was all work all the time with you, from what I'd seen so far.” Stretching the other woman shook her head. The stretching worked into something more complex, like a series of real exercises, with arms twirling and mid-section twisting. She spoke while moving, a soft smile on her face.
“No, we're only supposed to be kept like that when actively working. It's actually bad for us to hold that kind of state too long. They left me like that for months. My last caretaker took over in the middle of a case, kind of like you did, but didn't ever bother telling me to stop work for a while. Not even a few minutes a day. I don't think anyone at work knows really. I was just kind of dumped on them about six months ago, sent by national, and then forgotten about, since I was where I needed to be. No one wants a Westmorland around until they need one, then we're suddenly worth our weight in gold.” She stopped suddenly, eyes going wide.
“Oh my! I'm so sorry. You were attacked and taken from your whole world and here I am going on about my little difficulties. Thank you, by the way. Those morons at work would have let me starve to death. Plus Haversham, the one that came to get me from the hospital the other day? He keeps taking liberties with me, since he knows I'll do whatever he says. It wouldn't be so bad, except he treats me like dirt the rest of the time... “Westmorland, come. Westmorland, sit. Westmorland, suck my cock.” Alright, he hasn't said the last one yet, but only because he doesn't know that I could follow directions that complex, I'm sure.” She yawned, her eyes going to the clock on the wall, which seemed to say about ten minutes till eight. It didn't have numbers, just little blips of metal that you had to count instead.
“Really, I only need to be in work mode part of the time, even on a case like this. Plus, I have three different work modes, and they've only been using the analytic. I can go into an intuitive mode as well and telepathic for interviews. Intuitive is where the real payoff comes for this kind of thing. I guess no one told them all this. You'd think that detectives would have figured all this out by now, wouldn't you? I mean they seem to know I can read minds, but they hadn't even noticed that I haven't been?”
Gwen found herself amazed as information came rushing out of the woman next to her, her face lighting up as she recounted the last few months, grimacing in remembered pain and hunger at times, and at other instances laughing at things she'd found hilarious when they happened, but couldn't respond to. Gwen sat and listened, trying to take it all in.
Shaking her head, Gwen smiled at her when she finally wound down.
“You hardly need a caretaker at all, do you?” she asked.
“Oh, sure I do,” the other woman said. “I need someone to keep things like the last months from happening and to get me into the right state at the right time. If I were on a more normal assignment other Westmorlands would see to it, of course, we back each other up, but on a solo like this, I desperately need the help. When I'm in intuitive state, the right questions have to be asked, for instance, and the same for telepathic. We can't really count on the Constabulary for all that yet. I also need someone to get me out of work mode regularly. I'm not supposed to be in any given state more than a few hours at most. Obviously I can survive it in analytical, but if I got stuck in one of the other states it would probably dr
ive me mad.”
She got up and walked over to where Gwen sat.
“If it wasn't for you, who knows how long they would have kept me like that. I probably would have starved to death or died of exhaustion within another few weeks. On the good side, I get to give a few of them a piece of my mind in the morning!” She actually seemed happy about that, so Gwen smiled too.
Chapter seven
That night Gwen lay on the small single bed in the tiny room, eight by ten feet she guessed, that apparently made up her new quarters. It suited her for now, the close walls feeling safe and cozy. The single glow lamp on the wall overhead not looking too different from a normal light fixture, especially after she turned it off.
She knew she'd slept, probably for about six hours, before waking up in the dark. The feel of the blankets seemed odd, smoother and crisper than she'd been used to at home, more like what she expected from a hospital than a private bedroom. The bed itself was soft, the mattress had felt hard to the touch at first, but gave under her weight. It didn't have a box spring, just a single thick pad sitting on a hard wood frame.
It took her a while to understand what had been happening to her, why she'd acted so oddly that day at the police station. The Constabulary detectives office, she remembered. She had to use the right names for this place as soon as she could, or someone would figure out that she wasn't from around here, which could hurt Katherine's parents. If they didn't figure it out from all the other things she'd already done.
Stopping the man in the hallway, that was all her. What she'd have done at home too, had the same situation come up. The police hadn't helped her a lot back home, but most of them had at least pretended to care on some level, so she'd help them out if possible. The only reason she hadn't used a weapon at the time had to do with the fact that nothing presented itself. Over the years she'd learned not to hit anything with her fist, if she could help it, saving that for situations where she ended up unarmed. Her right hand ached, reminding her of why she needed to remember that here too, new world or not. At least nothing had broken, but she'd have a deep bruise around the first three joints on that hand she knew, come the next day.
No, what bothered her had been what she'd done later.
Threatening the man with sodomy like in some kind of B-movie? That hadn't made sense at all. Not for real life. That everyone else had gone along with it baffled her just as much. She'd walked in and started threatening the man with what amounted to torture and everyone else had just accepted it. True, the guy had kind of asked for it, but his civil rights were trampled under her own little despotic jackboot.
Heil Gwen. She'd have to grow a little mustache to keep her image up if that kind of thing kept happening.
That, of course, had been what had thrown her off, it being like a movie or something. A game. She hadn't accepted any of this as real yet. Everything seemed too different. Even the doorknobs and toilets were different. The doors opened when you put your hand on a metal plate, registering who you were, not needing a key for some reason, otherwise they barred your way solidly, without a physical locking mechanism that she could see.
The toilets looked similar to back home, but didn't use water, not for flushing. You sat and did your business, then a stream of water hit you when you were done, after that a stream of warm air, combining to leave you clean and dry. The waste just vanished somehow. She couldn't see any outlet for it at all.
The sinks were normal, except that you ran your hand between two metal plates without touching anything to turn it on and off, instead of turning a knob.
Everything had been like that. It felt familiar, even looked about right if very old fashioned, but at the same time it worked just a little bit differently. She'd noticed that everything seemed to be made of metal, wood, or glass, with only a hint of rubber being used. She hadn't realized how much plastic her normal world contained until she saw a world without it. What this meant for her, right now at least, was that she just couldn't accept it as reality.
So instead, she'd been treating this whole experience as if it were a television program with her as the main character, or maybe a videogame. So far that had worked, no one had gotten killed or sent to prison or whatever this world did when you really messed up, but she had to remember to play it smart, treat it like a mystery, instead of a sit-com, or else she'd end up being killed by something for real. Maybe a fantasy novel instead? She had to learn more about this world and make herself adapt no matter how hard it was to do, or how awkward she felt. To do anything else would probably cause her to fold in on herself and simply withdraw from it all. Gwen could see that happening if care wasn't taken to fight against it.
She'd seen a documentary a few months before about Amish kids that tried to leave the farm, and how most of them couldn't adapt to the modern world because everything seemed too different, too alien and new. They either went back to their old life or stopped leaving the house altogether and froze in place.
Gwen thought about her old life, how she'd spent most of the time inside her small house, even going as far as to have the groceries delivered for a while, because no one wanted to see her out in public. She'd gone weeks, months even, at a time without leaving the safety of home. Finally forcing herself to leave, attend martial arts lessons and go to the store, making the world deal with her and what she was, instead of hiding herself away.
Attacks came and sometimes pain. Hurtful words, brutality, and hostility, things that you didn't see on television often at all, since everyone on TV was always pretty. Even the ugly people. The few times she'd tried to get help no one believed her about the things that happened to her regularly. She'd show up with bruises and cuts on her face from the latest attack and the police ignored her, saying they couldn't do anything about it, not even bothering to check into the attacks. Oddly, the police had also told her not to retaliate a few times, even as they hinted they didn't think there was anything to her claims. Basically a high handed way of telling her she was too ugly to matter at all. They'd protect the better looking people from her, but never the other way around.
Her own parents had thought she'd done it to herself after the first few attacks, in some kind of bid for attention, not understanding how the world really worked. Maybe regular people, attractive people, just couldn't see it. Like white people that couldn't believe that the police might go after others harder because they weren't the right color. She'd finally stopped telling them about the things that happened if she could hide it.
If she could survive that, she decided, this new world wouldn't break her. Gwen nodded, lying on her back in the unfamiliar room, on a strange bed, in a strange place. She'd adapt, learn the ways of this place and overcome any obstacle it put in her way. If she failed, then... fine.
As long as she never gave up. Anyone could fail, or not be good enough, but not everyone would bother to try and keep trying. That's all she really had here. The ability to try.
On that note, feeling better for the decision not to give up, she rolled over and went back to sleep.
When she came out of the room several hours later, the clock on the wall seemed to say it was six in the morning, which felt like a respectable time to get up here, so she softly knocked on Bethany's door. After a few moments she heard stirring inside.
“Come in.” A sleepy voice came from beyond the door.
When she entered the other room she found it to be just as small as her own, the bed identical, even the blankets matched exactly, pattern and all. At least her little room wasn't some tiny servants quarters thing then. Either all the rooms here were like this, or the little apartment was just that low rent. It worked, but Gwen felt better knowing she wasn't being treated like a second class citizen. She moved toward the glow lamp on the wall, her hand poised in front of the activation plate.
“I'm going to turn on the light, are you ready?” She asked, because she hated it when people suddenly flipped on lights in the morning herself, leaving her half-blind for a while, eyes hu
rting.
“Ready,” Bethany said from the bed. When the light turned on, Gwen saw Beth lying on the bed, covers half off, right hand over her eyes protectively.
They cleaned up and got ready quickly. She had to have Bethany help her with some of the fastenings on her clothing, since they'd obviously been designed for a woman that had a lady's maid to help her dress. She'd need to get new clothing soon, if she could afford it, since most of the stuff that Mr. Vernor had brought her the day before, while obviously high quality, didn't really lend itself to her current lifestyle and certainly not to her old one. At this rate Beth was going to have to take care of her at least as much as the other way around.
Bethany suggested that they stop at a small cafe to eat, since they didn't have any food in the apartment at the moment. It made sense to Gwen since she didn't really know how to cook here yet anyway and apparently Bethany's culinary skills weren't that much better. They found a little place near the district house which opened for breakfast and ate in what seemed a leisurely fashion, with several courses coming, each one having only a small bit of food on the plate and brought one at a time. She found herself full before the last of the food came and told Bethany this.
