Refugee (11 page)

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.

“When 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-Pong-ball 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.

Spirit opened her mouth, jerked her head up, and bit into the huge plastic nose. The instructor roared in simulated pain, but she ripped the nose from the mask. Third point made: Girls had teeth.

The instructor let her go and got up. “So who is going to rape this child?” he asked rhetorically. “If not the nose, the tongue, or the ear. Chew hard, taste the blood, and rape will be forgotten. But when he lets go of you, flee for your life!” He paused, then added a sober qualification. “But if you are one and they are many, or the rapist is very strong, you cannot prevail. Hurt one and the others will kill you. In that case, it is better to submit. There are worse things than rape.”

Which, again, was what Helse had said. The entire complement of the bubble was conscious of rape now, and trying to defuse it, to make it seem less evil. But the memory of Faith's ordeal remained fresh in my mind, and I wondered.

We practiced other techniques of self-defense, but they were less dramatic. Both throws and strikes were less effective in partial gravity than they would have been in full gravity, and we were more conscious than ever of our vulnerability to the superior weapons of the pirates. We were now much better prepared for the next pirate raid, assuming one came, but not very confident about our ability to fend them off.

Meanwhile, my father's crew kept tinkering with the gravity-lens projectors, shielding us against Callisto gravity and leaving us open to the backward pull of the sun. It took constant adjustment, but we seemed to be on schedule, and that was important, because our half rations would not last longer than we had budgeted. My description of our ongoing activities may make it seem as if we were lighthearted, but this was not the case; we were distracting ourselves from the fundamental grimness of our situation.

I brought Spirit in for a quiet conference with Helse. “You're a girl?” Spirit exclaimed, round-eyed. “I don't believe it!”

Helse opened enough of her shirt to show her strapped breasts. This was the first time I had actually seen them, and I felt guilty, and slightly irritated for that feeling.

“Hope has asked me to teach you how to be a boy,” Helse said.

“I don't want to be a boy!” Spirit protested. “I'm just barely getting ready to start being a girl!”

“If the pirates come again, you be a boy,” I said firmly. “After what happened to Faith, and what Helse has told me of the appetites of some men—”

Spirit nodded soberly, not continuing the argument the way I had expected. “I'll do it. I saw those pirates too, you know. Poor Faith! Why don't you go talk to her now, Hope? She needs you.”

Surprised, I went, leaving Helse to teach Spirit whatever was needed privately. I knew Spirit would pick it up rapidly, for she had hardly begun to develop and was boyishly lanky. She also had that spirit of adventure that made her good at new things.

Faith was alone in cell 75, and cell 76 was empty for the moment, as my parents were busy elsewhere.

None of our other neighbors were in their cells. We could talk in fair privacy.

Seeing her was a shock. My older sister had always been beautiful, but now she was not. The past two days had made an unkempt wretch of her. Her fair tresses were tangled, her clothing was creased and dirty, and her eyes were hollowed and staring. I had stayed away from her, knowing I had nothing to offer except guilt for my neglect, knowing that only my mother could do what little might be done.

“Faith...” I said tentatively, afraid she would screech at me to be gone, as perhaps I deserved. I had heard her crying, faintly, on and off, through the cell walls, and so had known she was not resting easy.

That had intensified my guilt but not my courage. What could I say to her, really?

She looked up at me. She was not catatonic, as I had half feared. “Hope!” she said, her face brightening as she reached for my hands. “I missed you.”

“I failed you,” I said. “I'm sorry.” That was grossly inadequate, and suddenly I was hopelessly choked, the despicable tears pushing through my eyes, and I tried to pull my hands away from her. In some times past it has been socially acceptable for a man to cry, but not in this century.

“No, no!” she protested. “You tried, Hope, you tried! No one could help me. I brought it on myself.”

“The pirates did it!” I ground out bitterly. “I'll kill—”

“Am I still your sister?” she asked, not loudly.

Startled, I paused for reflection. What did she mean? I am a good judge of character, but this was a matter beyond my compass.

She was looking at me, and I realized that I had to answer. She placed great importance on this matter, confusing as the implication might be. “Of course you're my sister,” I said. “How could it be otherwise?”

“I'm not what I was,” she said.

She thought the rape had degraded her! “The fault is not yours!” I exclaimed. “ No fault is yours! You were the victim of—”

Again I paused, suffering an ugly realization. “Of a male,” I concluded. My sister had been shamefully abused—and I was a member of the species that had done it. I had a penis, the weapon of the male; I was culpable. I had experienced an infernal excitement as I watched the horror of her humiliation; I could not pretend otherwise. It had been the same when I helped Helse in the head; my member was eager to follow the course of the pirate's.

We talked more, and I think I helped her feel better. It was the least I could do. She was still my sister, but I was not sure I was still her brother. The seed of self-aversion had been planted in me, and it grew with a smoldering persistence. I hoped God would smite me if I ever had another erection, or even thought of touching a woman sexually. Male lust had destroyed my lovely sister, and I could not afford to share any part of that evil.