Bart was all ready for her and with a sudden lunge and a single flap of his wings, he landed on her shoulder.
“You did!” she gasped. “Well certainly.” And she was on her way back across the kitchen with him at once. “But what if Maud wakes up before you get back?” She threw open the door. “I will, Bart. I promise. Be careful!”
And with that, Bart flew away into the black night.
“What on earth was that about?” said Drake.
“Didn't you hear him?” said Tess, going wide eyed. “At all?”
Drake shook his head.
“And you don't think I did either, do you?”
“I didn't say that...”
“But you don't believe me.”
“Yes I do. I just didn't hear any of it...”
“But I did! I was talking to him, Drake.”
“I know. That's how he does it, just one person at a time...”
“But why didn't you hear him?”
“I didn't hear him because he put his words directly into your head. And your ears didn't hear anything either. You just thought so. I know it sounded like it.”
“ESP?”
“No. It's 'way more than just extra sensory perception.”
“But why didn't you say anything?”
“Would you 'ave believed me?”
“Guess not. Probably not.”
“So what was he telling you? Where'd he fly off to?”
“He called me over there to let him out of the house so he could fly to the
Jutwood Forest.”
“Did he say why? And why just now?”
“He didn't tell me any of that,” said Tess. “Only that he had to. But he said to tell Maud not to worry, because he'd be back. Wow! Jutwoods. That's the place with all the Fairy tales about werebeasts. Isn't it?”
“There was something there once, but the government sterilized it some way when they rounded up all the trolls.”
“So what about the woods? Is it still there or did they bulldoze it down for more asthma land?”
“They never tell us, do they?” said Drake with a shrug. “I reckon we'll have to ask Bart when he gets back.”
“I forgot about the tea,” she said, dumping the warming water and grabbing up the tea-kettle. “You never said why you were out so late.”
“I went to see Maxi,” he said, shaking his head at the second cup she was setting out. “I was hoping he could lead me to the capitol cattle trucks and I might be able to stow away on one and find Nia some way.”
Tess's face brightened at once.
“No,” he said with a sigh. “Maxi says the trucks only go to a slaughterhouse in Loxmere and that the meat is packaged and sent to the capitol by secret means. He says that trying to find out is a guaranteed way to get killed.”
“I guess if Maxi said so with all his connections, then I don't know how we'll ever find a way to rescue Nia.”
“That doesn't mean that we'll never find a way...”
“Maud!” said Tess. “Look.”
And there was Maud, sitting on the edge of the bed, looking very white and rumpled. Tess and Drake were at her side at once, taking up her hands and patting her.
“And I went and woke up after all,” she said, feebly swinging her head from side to side, “with no Mort and no Bart. And I just cain't imagine any going on a-tall without my Morty.” And with that, she threw back her old grey head and shook and wailed.
* * *
The gibbous moon was westering overhead in the hazy starless vault above the Glasswellt, an isolated grassland of the Illusion Slope, one of the few grasslands on the Northern Continent besides Gollmoor allowed to remain as chemical free pasture for the cattle of the elite of Atlantis. Maxi quietly set his canvas bag of knives and saws in the grass, broke open his side by side double pistol and chambered a pair of ounce and a quarter twelve gauge solid cartridges, snapped it closed, cocked the hammers and began taking great silent barefoot strides toward a good sized steer in the middle of the herd, bedded down in the grass.
The steer looked up with a start when Maxi hopped astride his withers. With a great snort, he heaved up on his hind quarters. Maxi planted his gun's muzzle behind the steer's crown to instantly kick back into the air with a deafening pop that rattled away over the countryside as the brute rose and tumbled onto its back, flinging Maxi rolling off into the grass and up onto his feet to dash away amongst the stampeding cattle for his canvass bag and a knife.
Chapter 9
The rows of beacons in the acrylic dome above the city of Atlantis duplicated the seasonal angle and intensity of sunlight in a northern temperate sky, but they provided no warmth at all. And when Nia awoke back in her own bed, the light coming through her open drapes did not warm her in the least. She knew that she had set the clock which Sam had given her, but the hands made no sense at all. “How could I have slept until the middle of the afternoon?” she said as she sat up and stretched. “And why ever should I be so stiff and sore?”
Suddenly the evening before came rushing back to her with a profound sense of loss and despair. She lay back on her bed and closed her eyes. “I wish I could just go to sleep and never wake up again,” she said, pulling up the covers over her head as if she could shut out the world forever. Then the tears came, rivers of them, until she fell asleep wondering how best to commit suicide.
The next thing she knew, it was pitch black except for a sliver of light under the bedroom door. Suddenly she sat up wide eyed. Not only had she not left on a light, but she had not yet lived here long enough to have a need to move the potted fig and close the door. What was that, the oven? And that certainly was the refrigerator. “I can't protect myself with a shoe or a coat-hanger...” she thought as she grabbed up her robe. Without warning, a silhouette of a woman opened the door.
“Nia,” said the woman, stepping in to switch on a lamp. “You're up.”
Nia saw at once that it was Sam, but did not know whether to be relieved or angered by her intrusion.
“I've fixed you something to eat,” said Sam. “Should I bring in a tray, or would you rather join me at the table?”
“I'm not hungry,” said Nia. “Please. I'd rather be left alone.” She sat back heavily on the bed. A sudden splash of white hot seized her. “Wait. You've not come to get me ready for the potentate again, have you?”
Sam shook her head. “Well then,” she said, offering her hand in a way that expected compliance. “If you're not hungry, I know just the thing. There's nothing better to set a person right than a good long soak in a tub.”
Nia took her hand and followed her to the bathroom.
“And this grand sunken tub of yours, have you tried it?” said Sam with her finger to her lips as she drew her inside and closed the door. “This is the one room you have without a skinweler. We'll be able to talk freely in here so long as we don't raise our voices.”
Nia nodded.
“Let me run your water first,” she said, turning the cocks and feeling of the stream thundering into the huge tub. She added bubble bath and fragrant oils and had Nia get in, and after a time, shut off the water and sat on the edge.
“So why did you come?” said Nia, now that the room was quiet.
“I had every intention of coming 'round to see how you'd managed,” said Sam, “though I'd have waited until tomorrow so you'd have had time to rest and sort out all this that you've just been through.”
“So what came up?”
“Well your watcher contacted me, so I came right over to make certain you didn’t do anything foolish.”
“My watcher? In the skinny?”
“Yes...”
“I did think he was kind of an ass,” said Nia. “What exactly did he tell you?”
Sam's eyebrows went up. “He thought you were contemplating suicide, Nia,” she said. “Was he correct?”
Nia looked away for a moment. “Even if it's true that we're retired from this, this service after five years and allowed to live ou
t the rest of our lives as we choose, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “How could it? Everything's been ruined. It certainly has been for me. After what happened to me last night, I'll never be the same again. I can't possibly pick up where I left off with my life and marry and raise a family. I'd be better off dead. And I wish I were!”
“Hush!” said Sam with a stern nod at the door, though her face softened the moment she turned to Nia and the sight of her made her think of a beautiful broken doll.
“Nia. I do understand. I went through that very thing myself, years ago.”
“But you could've at least warned me that the potentate was… Well what she is.” “Would it really have helped?”
Nia drew a breath and stopped short, seeing that it would not have made any difference at all. She still would have gone through what she did. “I hate her!” she said when she found her voice. “And I hate her awful cousin. And I hate this place. And more than anything, I hate myself!” And with that, she was sobbing.
“Oh Nia,” said Sam as she pulled her into her arms. “You poor innocent girl. Please don’t give in to your despair. Don't let the potentate destroy you and all that you are. You have it within you to defeat her if you simply refuse to let her win.”
“How? By taking up life here, training more young women to be whores like you do?”
Sam went wide eyed as if slapped.
“I'm sorry!” said Nia. “That was awful for me to say. But I could never do what you do, especially after being put through it myself.”
“I understand,” said Sam, aloof and unreadable as ever. “I do what I do to keep the girls from having a worse time of it here than they have. I try to keep them alive so they have a chance to leave here and start over...”
“But why? Why did you stay here instead of starting over yourself?”
Sam bit her lip and turned away. “I must be a coward,” she said. “Well. I truly do work hard to steer you girls away from as much harm as I am able. That's what I do. But for me? Leaving here was out of the question. It is indeed true that five full years here gives you your freedom and allows you to do whatever you want with your life. What you don't know yet is that before you're sent back up top, your mind is wiped and you're given a new identity. But they don't just erase your memories of your time here. They take everything. You cease being the person you always were. You see? And that's simply too much. I can't see the point of living at all if I can't be me. So here I stay.”
This was not at all what Nia expected from Sam. “Would you please bring me a towel?” she said, gathering her thoughts.
“Certainly,” said Sam, rising and fetching a pair of large fluffy ones, “though you've not had much of a soak.”
Nia dried herself and put on a robe. “So you think it's wrong for them to erase every one of a woman's memories before sending her back to live out her life, then?” she said as she settled herself beside Sam on the enameled iron settee by the tub.
“It is wrong,” said Sam. “It's all your memories that make you who you are. No one has the right to rob you of your very identity.”
“It might be a kindness.”
“How can you possibly say that?”
“Well,” said Nia. “After five years here as whores, a profession I doubt any of us here would ever have chosen for ourselves, we are returned to live as we see fit. But it isn't as if we can ever ignore what has happened to us or forget where we were headed before it all began. For my part, I can't imagine going home to my friends, family and to my fiancé and trying to continue where I left off. Not only would I know and remember all that I had been through, everyone would know where I'd been and what I'd been and I could never rebuild my life there. That life has already been destroyed forever, so why would I want to remember it and be tormented with it for the rest of my days?”
“I see what you're saying and it makes sense, I suppose,” said Sam. “But there is still the fact that they could simply erase the memories of the time spent here and send girls back, but instead they obliterate their entire identity.”
Nia shook her head. “To suddenly find yourself with five years completely gone from your memory might be as bad as being sent back with all of them. You'd always be wondering and seeking, driven mad trying to remember or to find a clue or find someone who just might know something, anything about your missing years. And since the word out and about everywhere happens to be that girls are taken to the capitol to be sex slaves, you'd be confronted with that possibility every blooming step of the way. No way would it be any better than sending women back with all their memories. And I'll bet that the memory erasing has nothing at all to do with what is kind treatment for us.”
“True,” said Sam.
“It's to keep us from exposing this little underwater paradise, isn't it?”
“True again,” said Sam. “So, wouldn't you like to expose it?”
“Who wouldn't! I doubt if there's ever been anyone forced to come here who wouldn't, if there was a way.”
“Well there hasn't been, until now.”
“Wow!” said Nia.
“The DNA from your blood sample. I studied the write up...”
“What about it?”
“It shows that you're half Fairy and half Human…”
“You and the potentate!” said Nia. “Why are people suddenly convinced I'm a
Fairy? I'm half Elf and half Human. Fairies have been extinct for the past two centuries.”
“Fairies are immortal, dear girl,” said Sam. “They also look like Elves, except that they have natural green hair while Elves have many different colors, but never green.”
“How do you know this?”
“There's an extensive library here in Orbis Terrae. In fact, I'd be delighted to take you there so you could see for yourself.”
“Perhaps,” said Nia. But if I turn out to be a Fairy, what difference does that make?”
“All the difference in the world. It means that you just may be able to escape this place and tell others where it is. And if so, it suddenly becomes possible to mount an invasion and overthrow this rotten World Alliance.”
“My!” said Nia, shooting to her feet to begin pacing. “Very well. Let's say I'm a Fairy. How does that make an escape possible?”
“I've put in some time at this,” said Sam, following Nia with her eyes. “According to what I've found, Fairies have a magical way to travel that allows them to go great distances in the blink of an eye.”
“Magic! You should know there isn't any magic in the world anymore, Sam. Hasn't been for ages, if there ever was. They say at school that magic was no more than wishful and fanciful imagination of the uneducated of a bygone age. And no matter. I certainly haven't the teensiest shred of magic in me.”
“That you're aware of,” said Sam. “You possess magic by your very nature, since you're a Fairy. Look. Why don't you let me take you to the library tomorrow and you can see what we find?”
Nia gave her lip a thoughtful chew and decided that there could be no harm in going along with her. “All right,” she said. “Let's go to the library tomorrow and you can show me this information. And then we'll see, all right?”
Sam smiled and nodded, though she could see that Nia was simply humoring her. It didn't matter though, since all she needed to do was get her there. Then she would see. And then they would have to work on a plan. “Well,” she said, planting her hands on her knees. “We've been in here for a while. Too long away from a skinweler has a way of looking suspicious.”
“Didn’t you fix something to eat?”
“It's gone cold by now, but it won't take long to warm. Then we can eat and relax a bit before calling it a night. You don't mind if I sleep in your guest bedroom, do you?”
“You want to spend the night here?”
“Actually I'm afraid I must, though I didn't know how else to put it,” said Sam with a sigh. “You've been put on suicide watch for at least a week. After that, if your watcher and I agree that you're
not likely to harm yourself, you'll be taken off the watch.”
“So you'll be my guest for a week, then?”
“Looks like it.”
“I'm fine, you know. You may even have given me some hope.”
Sam gave a knit to her brow along with her smile to remind Nia of the skinny and set about putting their supper into the oven.
Nia set the table and settled into a chair before it.
“I've set the bell for fifteen minutes,” said Sam, taking the chair across from her.
“So if there's something you need to do, now's the time.”
Nia shook her head.
“Then there's something we need to discuss.”
“Good,” thought Nia. She despised small talk in front of skinnies.
“You're probably not going to like it at first,” said Sam. “But after you think about it, you may decide it's better than your other choices. Well actually, those other choices are the same as gone already.”
“You make it sound ominous.”
“It might. You see, the potentate is so taken with you that she's reserved your services strictly for herself. And of course for any of her other partners she wishes to include.”
“She has more than just awful Alex?”
“I'm afraid there are a number of others, Nia, male and female, whom she entertains fairly often. But none of them are exclusive, as she plans for you to be. The advantage for you of course is that you'll be called into service less often than the other girls and you'll soon know what to expect from the potentate and her friends.”
“But I'm revolted by her.”
“I know,” said Sam with a flicker of a frown and her finger to her lips, “and I am sorry, but you're just going to have to accept what you've been dealt. There will be advantages. And there will be girls who envy you in your position.”
“Mercy!”
“Some of the men here are, shall we say, rough on the girls. Perhaps most of them. It's a major challenge to cope with...”
Wham! Page 9
