Refugee

  She leaned down, wrapped her arms around me, and lifted me in the partial gravity and drew me close to her, my head against her chest. She wore a tight band to flatten her breasts, to make her torso look masculine; now she paused to release this, and cradled my face to her abruptly feminine bosom, and it was marvelously compelling. She was indeed a woman, and soft in the way only a woman could be, and I felt her measured breathing and heard her steady heartbeat, and I was pacified.

  “I’ll tell you about me,” she said, speaking in a low and even tone so that others would not overhear. I think she was talking in order to distract me from the raw shock of what I had just seen, to give my soul a small time to heal, but before long the nature of what she was saying penetrated, and I really was distracted. Of course her monologue was not as succinct as I render it here from memory, but it was as important. I listened, and was slowly amazed.

  Helse came from a family larger and poorer than ours, living in one of the smaller city-domes. She had been a pretty child, and in order to gain money on which to survive, they had rented her at the age of six to a middle-aged bachelor landowner as concubine. This was legitimate, socially, in that dome, though it has no legal status. There was merely an understanding that permeated that limited society from the poorest to the wealthiest; it had existed thus covertly for centuries, and it seemed no one really wanted to change it.

  This landowner had never married, because he was unable to relate to adult women; he liked children, and had the wealth and power to indulge his propensities. His appetite was generally known but never openly bruited about, and he was generous to those who indulged him. Thus Helse’s family, possessed of a pretty female child, had not been directly coerced to put their daughter into his hands; they had seized upon the opportunity to alleviate their poverty for the few years during which they had something worth selling.

  Helse had called him “Uncle” and he had called her “Niece.” This was to facilitate a nonexistent relationship that would satisfy any question that might arise among occasional visitors or business acquaintances. Uncle was not a bad man, and he did not brutalize her. Far from it! He fed her well and gave her nice clothing and toys and presents. If she expressed an interest in something, she would have it the next day. He also provided her with a series of excellent tutors who set about giving her a proper upper-class education. Yet this was not an adult-child relationship; it was a courtship.

  He courted her, and she was delighted. She regarded her position in his mansion as the privilege of being desirable; other girls her age had vied for it, but she had been chosen. But she knew she had to submit to whatever he chose to do with her body, and not all of that was fun. This was the price of her gifts and good life. If she ever once said no, or intimated that she objected, it would be over. She had the constant option of returning to her family—and this was not a promise; it was an unspoken threat. It was not that she didn’t want to go home, but that it would be disaster to be sent home. She had to succeed. The kissing and fondling was easy enough, but the culmination was painful. He was a mature man and she was a child; no amount of gentleness could completely alleviate that.

  Yet there were physical and mental devices, and she knew he did not mean or want to hurt her. He was driven by adult urges she did not understand, but he wanted to believe that she liked what he did. She learned to take relaxant medication and to dissemble her real reaction, for Uncle was most generous when most pleased. Experience made it easier, and in time she developed a certain pride in her competence. She became proficient in pleasing this man.

  She was no prisoner. She was able to visit her family, sometimes for an hour, sometimes for a night. She brought them nice gifts that made all of their lives better. This was done with the approval and cooperation of Uncle, who wanted her to be happy. It seemed she pleased him more than others had, and now reaped commensurate rewards. But no direct word was ever spoken of her real place in Uncle’s household; she was his niece, with certain poor relatives she liked to help.

  In fact, she was now the principal provider for her family. Her father found work only intermittently, but Helse’s work was steady. She became important in her own eyes, and perhaps she became arrogant, but this was her right.

  For four years Helse was a little princess in Uncle’s mansion, her every wish catered to by his other servants. He had an excellent staff, and they too understood their situations perfectly; there was no covert unkindness to her or embarrassing leaks of information. They were, in a fairly real sense, an extended family, each concerned with the welfare of the group. When a high official of the city visited, expressed a certain curiosity about rumors he had heard, and spread some money privately to confirm them, the staff members accepted the money and assured him with absolute sincerity that there was nothing to the rumors. When he questioned the native child Helse, she gave him similar assurance with marvelous innocence. Yet he knew, for he had other sources of information. “I’d like to know your secret,” he confessed ruefully. “How do you compel their loyalty?” And Uncle had smiled and not answered. This official was known to beat his own servants. The fact was that, apart from his sexual aberration, Uncle was a good and kind man, and his staff protected him because all its members genuinely cared for him. Wealth alone could not purchase that.

  But at age ten Helse was getting too old, past her prime, as it were, and had to make way for a younger girl. She stifled her savage jealousy, knowing there was no percentage in it. She had known this would happen from the start; the staff had made it clear. She had to master adult grace in the face of the inevitable, and if she was unable to stifle a genuine tear in parting, this was not objectionable. Uncle gave her a generous separation bonus, and it was over. She was retired.

  “You liked it!” I exclaimed, appalled. “You wanted to stay with the child molester!” For, though I have rendered her narration as politely as I can, I have no sympathy with it. My family upbringing simply does not provide me with much tolerance for this sort of abuse of children.

  “I liked the life, and I respected the man,” she qualified. “I wish I could have been his real niece. He was not a molester, merely a person with a specialized taste. Some men like young, nubile women; some like fat women; some like other men, or boys; this one liked children. Uncle never raped anyone.”

  That shut me up. Obviously her “uncle” was a better man than the pirate Horse. I had to broaden my definitions.

  There were, however, openings for experienced intermediate-aged children, Helse continued, and her family always needed money. So she went to work for a new employer. But this one had more violent tastes. For him there had to be humiliation and pain. It was not exactly rape, for he had paid for what he wanted and obtained prior acquiescence; it was more like submitting to necessary surgery with inadequate anesthetic. The money was good, however, and she learned to endure this too. The one thing she insisted on was that no injury be done that would leave a mark or scar on her face or any portion of her body that normally showed.

  I expressed curiosity, so she showed me some of the scars she did have, on her abdomen and back. I shuddered; the origin of those must have been painful indeed. She certainly had had experience being tormented by men.

  “But finally I got too old for any of that stuff,” she concluded. “I could no longer earn enough to support my family. Not without risking my health or life. I had no better prospect than a life of formal prostitution. So I squandered my nest egg on this voyage and concealed my nature, so there wouldn’t be any more trouble. I’ve had enough sex, especially painful sex, to last me a lifetime.”

  That I could appreciate. I knew she was telling me the truth. Her ploy had been effective; the pirates had never even thought of raping Helse.

  “But my point is, a girl can survive it,” she said. “What happened to your sister is terrible, because she wasn’t prepared for it, but there are worse things. I have survived worse.”

  Again I believed her. Obviously she had prettied up her
story for me. Helse was a nice girl—but she had had experiences I had never dreamed of. She maintained her emotional equilibrium; her mind had not been devastated. I realized that if Faith could adjust her thinking similarly, she would suffer far less. “I wish you could talk to Faith,” I said.

  “I will—if you want me to.”

  I reconsidered. “No, that would give away your secret, and I don’t know that it would help her. I’ll talk to her myself.”

  “She could learn to pass for male,” she suggested. “That could save her a lot of trouble.”

  “Faith just isn’t the type,” I said. “But Spirit—”

  “Your little sister is in danger too,” Helse said. “This time the pirates went after the obvious, and were satisfied. Your sister Faith stands out in a crowd; every man’s eye was on her from the start. You tried to shield her, but it was impossible. Next time they could go after the rest. There are men like that. I know.”

  She certainly did! I thought of my little sister getting raped in the manner of my big sister, and a kind of blackness clouded my mind’s eye. “Spirit’s a good kid. She can fight, and she can keep a secret. Will you teach her how to pass?

  “If you ask me to.”

  There was something about the way she said that. I realized that I did not yet completely understand her. “What do you want in return?” I asked.

  “I like you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s why I like you.”

  “I like you too. But this is business! If there is something you—”

  “What I want can’t be bought. Just ask me to teach your sister.”

  “All right,” I said, slightly nettled. “I’m asking you.”

  “Then I’ll do it.”

  My sense about people, as I’ve mentioned, is infallible. But that’s a matter of comprehending motive, not of understanding every nuance. It is possible, for example, to know that a man is honest without knowing how to operate his business. Helse was not deceiving me. Yet she did want something from me—and she would not tell me what. That was a paradox of a type I had not encountered before, and it baffled me.

  Then I remembered something else. “Would you answer a question—if I asked you?”

  “Yes, Hope,” she said.

  “Then you—when we were in the head, the first time—I didn’t mean to look but I saw—what is that tattoo on your thigh?”

  She sighed. “I promised to answer. But you must promise not to tell.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “I told you I used my nest-egg money to pay for my passage on the bubble, but I didn’t tell you how I got the money. My family had used up all that I had from Uncle and the other employers, and they don’t pay that amount for—you know. But I was still friends with Uncle, and I phoned him privately—” She paused a moment, frowning. “His current niece answered the vid. She was the second one since me. A cute little girl. I couldn’t tell her I knew, of course. It jolted me, though.” She shrugged, then returned to her explanation. “I asked Uncle how I could get to Jupiter. I wasn’t asking for money, just advice, and he knew that. I think he was flattered that I should think of him in that connection. He sent me to a man, and the man didn’t want sex. He asked me why I wanted to go to Jupiter, and I told him it was to find a better kind of work. He said he couldn’t guarantee the work, but that he could facilitate my trip there. All I had to do was carry a message to a certain person, whose name was Kife, or so it sounded. For that service I would be given the money to get passage and would be protected on the way. The tattoo is my protection.”

  “That tattoo—three letters where no one can see them? How do they protect you?”

  “They spell Kife,” she said. “Hard Q, vowel Y, hard V. All I have to do is say the word to any criminal who threatens me, and he will stop. If he doesn’t I can show him my tattoo—he’s bound to see that anyway, if he means to rape me—and that will prove I’m authentic. But the mere spoken word is supposed to be enough. So I will not be molested by criminals, and of course law—abiding men will not bother me.”

  I shook my head. “You believe that?”

  “No,” she confessed. “Not completely. That’s why I conceal my sex. But if I really am threatened, I’ll try the word. Maybe criminals really are scared of Kife. After all, if he can afford that kind of money just to deliver one message, he must have a lot of power.”

  “What’s the message?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “That’s the funniest part. I wasn’t given any.”

  “You were paid a thousand dollars to deliver no message?

  “Three hundred, for an individual. The man said Kife would understand when he saw me.”

  I was having trouble with this. “Just the sight of you would tell him something? Are you sure you aren’t—I mean, that it is you he—”

  Helse laughed. “For sex? Hope, I’m hardly that special! I’m third-hand goods. No one would pay three hundred dollars for my body! For your sister’s maybe; for mine, no.”

  She was probably right. The going rate was less than a hundredth of that—as it had been for Faith. Pirates didn’t pay for what they could take by force. “Did the tattoo hurt?”

  “No. The man gave me a sniff of gas, and when I recovered consciousness it was over. It didn’t even sting.”

  “Gas! Then he could have—”

  She put her hand on my arm. “No, Hope. There was no sex. I can tell. I was surprised, because that is usually a matter of course with such men. If he had wanted sex, I would have done it, and he knew that. I just wanted to get to Jupiter, the land of hope—no play on your name, Hope, whatever the price. I was put under so the tattoo wouldn’t hurt; that was all.”

  I sighed. “I was curious about the tattoo. Now I’m twice as curious! There’s something we don’t know.”

  “That’s what you get, for curiosity,” she said, smiling in the shadow. She was very pretty, that way. “But please don’t tell anyone. Just in case it is important.”

  “I won’t tell.” At this point I almost wished I hadn’t asked. I hate unsolved riddles.

  However unconnected all this may seem in retrospect, I have to say that Helse had succeeded in what she set out to do: She had broken my mood of shock, enabling me to function more or less normally, for the time being.

  My father plunged into the task of navigation; evidently he had come to his own terms with the situations of the bubble and of Faith. Adults seem to have greater resources in that respect than people my age do. Diego got to work on bubble defense. All of us who weren’t otherwise occupied went to classes on combat. There was a retired martial artist among the refugees, an old man whose days of competition were decades past, but he possessed a lifetime of devastating knowledge. Had we had any warning about the raid of the pirates, he could have prepared us for them, but he too had been caught unawares.

  He explained at the outset that there was little we could master in one or two days that would balk armed pirates, so it was best that we concentrate on fairly simple, crude defenses. He showed us how to fashion weapons of incidental objects, even wads of paper, and how to protect ourselves when disarmed. “A girl does not have to submit to rape by a lone man,” he said, getting right down to the point. “The one we saw—there she was helpless. But usually it is just one man at a time. She has teeth, she has knees, she has fingers. The rapist has a nose, and testicles, and eyes.”

  We listened doubtfully. “I will demonstrate,” the instructor said. He dug in a bag he had and produced a rubber mask with bulging Ping-Pongball eyes and a huge beak of a nose. “A young woman for a volunteer, please.”

  Spirit jumped forward, naturally. I suppose she had not understood what had happened to Faith, so was not devastated. “No, not a child!” a woman protested.

  I glanced at Helse, understanding something she had said. “Pirates don’t worry much about age,” I said.

  The instructor agreed. “Unfortunately true. Children need protection
most of all—male and female.” That startled me and I wasn’t alone. Male?

  He took Spirit aside and talked to her, explaining something in a voice too low for us to hear. She grinned, enjoying it. I noticed she wasn’t wearing her finger-whip; she didn’t want people to know about that, any more than I wanted them to know about my laser pistol.

  Then they faced the class. “I am a pirate rapist,” the instructor said, donning the grotesque mask. “This child is the victim. Watch what she does.”

  He turned on Spirit and clapped his hands on her shoulders, hauling her off her feet in the partial gravity of the Commons. “Ha, my pretty!” he cried. “I, fell pirate that I am, shall rape you to pieces!” He drew her in.

  Spirit’s knee came up suddenly. There was a solid contact. The man grunted and collapsed into a ball.

  “Hey!” I cried, horrified. “You weren’t really supposed to knee him!”

  But the instructor uncurled and got up, unharmed, and Spirit was laughing joyfully. “I only kneed the outside of his hip, on the side away from you, silly,” she explained. “In a real situation I would have aimed better.”

  The class relaxed. The point had been made. Girls had knees.

  The instructor came at Spirit again, quickly drawing her in so close she could not bring her knee up effectively. His hands closed about her throat, choking her. Close as he was, this was not completely effective, but it looked bad enough.

  But Spirit’s own hands were free. Quickly she reached up to his face. Her fingers dug into his eye—and an eyeball popped out of its socket and flew through the air.

  There was a scream from the class—followed by nervous laughter. It was not a real eyeball; it was a painted Ping-Pong ball from the mask he wore. But again the point had been made: Girls had fingers, and rapists had eyes.

  A third time the instructor grabbed her. Now he pinned her arms under his own and held her close against him as they fell to the deck. No knees, no fingers were free. His leering one-eyed mask face thrust down against hers, as for a brutal kiss.