Slave (26 page)

“In the slave market on Orpheseus Prime,” I replied.

“Ain’t he cool?”

“He is…different,” Ranata said cautiously. “What are you going to do with him now?” She made it sound as though now that I had found her, I would have no more use for Cat. You know, I’d sort of forgotten that my little sister wasn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.

I smiled and I believe I actually blushed. “I think I’ll keep him.”

Ranata blinked and shook her head in disbelief.

“You? Keep a man? An alien man? Jack, you don’t even like men—of any kind! You never have!”

“Well, I sure as hell don’t want to shack up with a woman, if that’s what you’re getting at.” I know I sounded more than a little exasperated with Ranata, but, hey, she was picking on my Cat! “Besides, I
love
Cat!

He’s…different,” I said, echoing Ranata for want of a better explanation, for Cat truly was different—in a multitude of ways.

“Well, he’d have to be, for you to love him!” Ranata said roundly. “You were the most confirmed man-hater I’ve ever seen!”

“I didn’t hate them,” I objected, ruffling my feathers just a bit. “I just didn’t like them—well, most of them, anyway. Some of them weren’t so bad.”

“Yes, but you never wanted to keep them around,” she reminded me. “At least, not for long.”
“True,” I admitted. I couldn’t just come out and tell her that the main reason I hadn’t stayed with one before this was because I didn’t like that loss of control I felt when I was “under the influence.” I didn’t seem to mind it when it came to being with Cat, though. He was…different.

Then I realized what the difference was. “I guess I just didn’t love any of the others enough to—” I paused as I blew out a pent-up breath, “let myself go and trust them not to take advantage of me in my, um, moments of weakness. Besides, the others always just messed up my mind to the point that I couldn’t function. Cat doesn’t affect me that way; he’s more like…well…a partner rather than a competitor. Does that make sense? I feel comfortable with him.”

“Like having a cat curled up in your lap?”

“Sort of, only he’s not always a pussycat, he’s pretty tough—you should see the way he handles a sword, Ranata! Honestly, it’s downright breathtaking! He’s very sexy, too, and—”

“Yeah, I saw the tool,” Ranata remarked dryly.

“That’s the most lethal-looking weapon I’ve ever seen.”

“Sis, you have no idea!” I exclaimed. “It’s like—well, I can’t tell you what it’s like because I have nothing else to compare it with; I mean, nothing else even comes close! Cat seems to think that his planet was destroyed because men from other worlds were losing their women to the Zetithians, and I, for one, believe it!”

“Sounds pretty cocky to me,” she commented.

“Well, you know, when a claim is true, it’s not being cocky to say so. What I mean is, when he told me he would give me joy unlike any I had ever known,
he wasn’t kidding! Honestly, Sis, if he were like anything else I was trying to sell, I’d let you try him out, but you might decide you like him too much and steal him from me.” I chuckled as I remembered how afraid I’d been that I would lose Cat to Ranata, and now that I’d finally found her, I was tickled to death that she had a husband she loved well enough to want to remain his slave. I certainly wasn’t going to let her get even a whiff of Cat’s coronal fluid—in fact, I was considering not telling her about it at all. “And I have no intention of letting that happen. Like I said, I’m keeping him.”

“And I wouldn’t dream of trying to steal him from you,” Ranata said sweetly. “I mean, I still can’t get over your falling in love with him! It’s so wonderful, and I’m so happy for you! Mom will be, too, you know,” she added. “After all, she gave up on you a long time ago.”

“Yeah, like at birth!” I grumbled. “I never was the kind of daughter she wanted. Of course, then she had you, and you were perfect! Too bad I had to go and let those damned Nedwuts run off with you.”

“Like you could have stopped them!” Ranata said scornfully. “Really, Jack! Who do you think you are?

Some kind of superwoman? Good heavens, there were six of them! You didn’t stand a chance! They probably would’ve killed you if you’d tried to stop them.” She paused for a moment, taking a deep, though rather shaky, breath before continuing. “That was the one thing I had to hold on to, Jack. They might have taken me, but at least you weren’t killed in the process. Just knowing that you were still alive and free and had your ship and could
go wherever you wanted…it’s one of the things that kept me sane.”

“Well, if it helped you to believe that, I’m glad,” I said roundly, “but you couldn’t possibly have imagined for even one moment that I’d just let them take you and then go on my merry way! Not after you’d been kidnapped by those bastards! I came after you, Sis, and I’ve been searching high and low for you—all across the galaxy!

And you know,” I added reflectively, “it’s a damn good thing that humans are so rare out here, and that you were so beautiful, or I’d have never been able to track you down. Talk about your classic needle in a haystack!”

“Needle in a haystack?” she echoed. “What on Earth does that mean?”

I’d forgotten that Ranata had never shared my fascination with ancient figures of speech. Of course, the fact that I’d learned most of them while I’d been searching for her made it unlikely that she’d have heard very many of them, but none of that mattered now that I’d found her. “Something very hard to find,” I replied. “The literal meaning isn’t important, but it’s one of those near impossibilities, Ranata. Not completely impossible, mind you, but damn close to it.”

I gazed at her intently, finally beginning to see my own little sister in the face of the woman before me. It was hard seeing her that way, and though I know I might have expected it, the funny thing was, I never had. Oh, I knew she had suffered as a slave, but that she wouldn’t have remained the same pretty child I remembered was a thought that I hadn’t allowed myself to have. I’d always assumed I would simply find her,
rescue her, and then take her home. The notion that she might not only be married to someone, but also carrying his child, had certainly never entered my head.

And not wanting to come home! Well, that was the part that was hardest to swallow!

But here she was, happily married and having a baby, though she was in a condition which, while certainly improving, spoke volumes about the shape she’d been in when her husband, Dantonio, had rescued her. To be perfectly honest about it, I was still having trouble coming to grips with the fact that she’d been rescued already and didn’t need me. I was even slightly miffed that he’d gotten to her before I did. I mean, I’d been looking for her for six years! What had he done? Probably stumbled onto her in a slave market in much the same way that I’d found Cat. It was too damned easy for him, if you ask me. I’d worked much harder at finding her. He’d simply gotten lucky. It wasn’t fair.

Of course, nothing in life is ever truly fair, especially the fate that Ranata had been forced to endure simply because she’d had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’d never done anything in her life to deserve such treatment, and I very much doubted that Cat had either. Still, it had happened, and though it might have been selfish of me, I needed to know more.

“Sis,” I said, my voice sounding a bit shaky, “what happened to you? I mean, I know where you’ve been and a little about some of the people who’ve owned you, but that’s about all I know. Can you tell me about it?” I hesitated for a moment, thinking that she’d probably rather
forget about it all than report it—although you always hear that it’s best not to keep everything to yourself.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but, I—I think I need to know—so I can make it up to you somehow.

Maybe take some of your pain onto myself—possibly make it less of a burden for you by sharing it, I don’t know. I don’t know if it would help or not, but—” I was floundering just a bit there, and, fortunately, she came to my rescue this time, mercifully cutting my explanation short.

“You wouldn’t be the first one I’ve told, Jack,” she said quietly. “Alanna knows, and Dantonio has heard my story as well. It would be no hardship for me to tell it again.”

I thought she hesitated just a bit then, perhaps realizing that it might be more difficult this time around.

After all, Alanna and Dantonio had probably been virtual strangers when she told them her history, and though they might have been saddened by her tale, I was her sister, and had known and loved her since she was born. It might make a difference.

“But, please, Jack,” she went on, “just promise me one thing, will you? When you get back to Earth, would you clean it up a bit when you tell Mom and Dad? I-I’d rather they didn’t know all of the…details.”

“You don’t even have to tell me all the gory details if you don’t want to,” I said, though considering the size of the lump I had in my throat, it was surprising that I was able to speak at all.

“No,” she said. “You’re the one who’s been searching for me, Jack. You need to hear all of it, don’t you?”
I nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, I do. I mean, I don’t really
want
to know, but you’re right; I need to.”

Ranata settled back in her chair, placing her hands on her pregnant belly, though whether it was simply the position of most comfort for her or whether she was attempting to shield her child from having to listen, I couldn’t have said. Perhaps it was more comforting than comfortable—almost like holding your unborn child in your arms, somehow—though never having been in that condition myself, I couldn’t have known.

“You know what happened when I was taken, of course,” she began. “The Nedwuts grabbed me and hustled me out of there before anyone had a chance to react. It seemed like such a spur of the moment thing at the time, but I’ve often wondered if they hadn’t planned it because they had a transport ready and waiting—there was even a driver sitting in it, all ready to take off. I can’t be sure, of course, but if that was the case, I think I might have been kidnapped no matter where I was. And while it’s possible that being in that place with you might have made it more convenient for them, it’s also possible that my
not
being there wouldn’t have changed anything.”

I smiled at her, thanking her for the sentiment, but at the same time, it crossed my mind that she was probably only telling me this to make me feel better. I started to say, “Just the facts, ma’am,” but attempting to inject a little levity into her story would have been tactless.

Though, not understanding the reference, she might not see it as a joke anyway. I held my tongue and let her continue without comment. After all, it was her story, and it was up to her to tell it any way she wished.
“If I never see another Nedwut again as long as I live, it would be too soon,” she remarked. “They’re not only mean and hateful, but they stink, and they liked to get right up in my face and breathe their foul stench at me and tell me of all the horrors they had in store for me if I didn’t keep quiet and cooperate. Of course, I didn’t cooperate, and they had no qualms about hitting a woman, nor did they seem to consider that anyone wanting to buy me might prefer that I be in perfect condition. By the time I was finally sold, I was so beat-up I’m surprised anyone even wanted to look at me, let alone pay good money for me.

“The man who bought me apparently just thought that having a human slave would be interesting since, slavery not being an Earth custom, it’s so rare to find one of us being sold. His name was Jalavar, and he was an Econian merchant. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Econia, but the people there are more reptilian than anything, and they all gave me the creeps even more than the Nedwuts had—if you can believe that’s possible! It was a really nasty planet, too. Hot, steamy, and even the plants were hideous—sort of like prehistoric Earth is supposed to have been, only much uglier! Anyway, it was like a planet where the dinosaurs had not only not become extinct, but had evolved into intelligent beings.

Well, I
say
intelligent, and while they might have had brains, they were still a bunch of creeps, and when they got into fights, it was usually to the death, and then the winners ate the ones they killed. It was horrible!”

Suppressing a shudder of revulsion myself, I felt sort of glad that I’d managed to miss out on a visit to
that particular planet. “How did you ever get away from there?”

“Oh, Jalavar decided he’d had enough of me after a while, and thought that I would taste bad, so instead of eating me, he sold me to a slave trader who was heading to Dracus Five.”

Having heard that, I didn’t know whether to laugh or throw up, but, instead, decided to add my own part to the tale. “That’s where I picked up your trail,” I said. “Having tried, unsuccessfully, to follow the Nedwuts, I started hitting every planet around that had a slave market, but by the time I got to Dracus, you’d already been there and gone. I paid a bundle for the information that you had been taken to Sallonius, only to get there and find out I’d been taken for a ride on that deal! I went back to Dracus and beat the shit out of the little slimeball who finally admitted that he didn’t have any idea where you’d gone, only that you’d been sold to an offworlder who, from his description, looked sort of like a gorilla.”

“Celarnus,” Ranata groaned. “He was the worst, I think, and he wanted to mate with me. Have you got any idea how hard it is to discourage a horny gorilla?”

I considered this for a moment, and, having actually met the guy, I was of the opinion that nothing short of a pulse rifle would have slowed him down. “You could have ripped his balls off, I suppose,” I suggested. “That might have made him less, um, amorous.”

“Well, I did try that,” she admitted. “But it just made him mad.”

I couldn’t imagine why…. “Pissed him off enough to sell you, did it?”
When questioned, Celarnus had only told me that Ranata’s service to him hadn’t been satisfactory, but he hadn’t elaborated on just what type of service it had been.

I’d come up with some of my own—and fortunately nonsexual—reasons why she might not have pleased him, and, therefore, hadn’t killed him outright. If I’d known he’d raped my sister, I probably would have. I guess he must have realized that before he said too much.