The Serrano Connection (73 page)

She needed clothes for them; she needed cleaning supplies. She wanted to ask . . . and she wasn't supposed to talk.

"One of us'll bring you what you need," he said. "Food and water, as long as you're obedient. Decent clothes for the babies. There's nothin' on this heathen ship fit for you to wear; you'll have to make somethin'. We'll show you pictures. You've got the sink and toilet in there; you'll wash their clothes in that."

She wondered why, when the crew laundry would return the dirtiest clothes clean, dry, and unwrinkled, in only a few minutes. She didn't ask.

The supplies came a short time afterwards. Packets of food, powdered milk to mix with the water in the bathroom, sheets and towels and a sack of children's clothes, soap and shampoo, combs and brushes. Even a few toys: two dolls, blocks, a toy groundcar. Hazel was grateful. She handed each of the littles a sweetbar, and rummaged through the sack of clothes . . . there was Paolo's tan jumpsuit, Brandy's striped shirt, Stassi's flowered one, Dris's gray jumpsuit. But none of the girls' jumpsuits, nor the shorts they wore with shirts.

The littles were so dirty—she couldn't tell which were smudges and which were bruises. As they finished their sweetbars, she herded them into the bathroom, and used the towels and soap to clean them up. Then she got them all dressed, as much as possible, and folded the rest of the clothes. Four more shirts, four more jumpsuits . . . three sets for each child, if only they'd been complete. And for herself . . . nothing but a long-sleeved pullover that was really Stinky's; it had been in her compartment because she'd traded shirts with him, this last segment. She didn't put it on because she had nothing to wear with it . . . the thought of wearing that on her top, and nothing below, was worse than nothing at all.

She stacked the clothes neatly in one corner, and put the food in another. She let the children sort through the toys. Brandy chose blocks, as always; Stassi hugged her doll to her chest, fiercely. Paolo began handing blocks to Brandy, while Dris put the other doll in the groundcar and rolled it along the floor.

The hatch slammed open, startling her; she almost looked up but remembered in time. The littles did look up, but quickly glanced away, toward her.

"Why aren't you dressed, girlie?"

She must not speak. She didn't know how to answer without speaking. She shook her head, spread her hands.

The boots moved closer, the big hands tossed aside the neat stack she'd made of the clothes, and came up with Stinky's pullover. The man threw it at her. "Put this on, girlie. Now."

She fumbled her way into it. "You wrap yourself in one of them sheets." She hadn't thought of that; she scrambled across the deck, grabbed a sheet, and wrapped it clumsily around her body. How could she make it stay? Something thumped on the deck in front of her—a small canvas bag. "That's a sewing kit—if you can't sew, better learn. Make yourself something decent from the sheets. Cover your arms, everything to the ankles. Don't make the skirt too full. Only decent married women wear full skirts. Make them girl babies skirts too; sew 'em to their shirts." He walked around, stood over the littles.

"What's this?" She didn't look up; didn't answer. "Now girlie, you got to teach these babies right. Girls play with girls; boys play with boys. Girls got dolls; boys got boys' toys. You keep 'em separate, you hear?"

But Brandy and Paolo were friends; they'd played together since infancy. And Brandy always played with blocks and building toys. Hazel crouched, scared and furious both, as the man knocked down Brandy's block tower, and moved her near her sister. "You—take this doll." Brandy took it, but Hazel could see the anger in her eyes, almost enough to overcome the fear. Paolo, left with the scattered blocks, had already picked one up and was reaching toward Brandy. "No!" the man said. "No blocks for girls. Blocks for boys." Paolo looked puzzled, but Brandy let out a furious screech. Casually, the man slapped her against the bulkhead. "Shut up—you better learn now, sissie."

The next days were, if possible, a worse nightmare. The littles could not understand any of the restrictions; Hazel struggled to keep them separated as the raiders demanded, to keep them engaged with "appropriate" toys, to keep the compartment clean enough, herself "decent," and still figure out how to make the garments the raiders demanded she furnish for herself and the girls. She had never sewn anything in her life; she had seen Donya using the sewing machine to create artworks they sold when they stopped at Corian, but clothes came from shops, or—in emergencies—the fabricator. You put in the measurements, dialled the style, and out came clothes. She had no idea how to turn flat cloth into the tubelike garment in the picture the raiders showed her.

It wasn't a practical garment anyway. Snug tubes for the arms, a long one covering her from armpits to ankles . . . no one could sit comfortably, walk comfortably, climb and play and do things in a shape like that. But she didn't argue. She struggled to figure out the odd implements in the sewing kit: dangerous thin sharp bits of metal that had no place around small children, reels of fine thread, scissors, a long tape marked off in sections that corresponded to no measuring system she knew, a short metal strip—also marked in sections—with a sliding part.

Sewing by hand was much harder than it looked, though when she figured out that the tiny cup-shaped thing would fit over her finger and protect it from pricks of the long sharp thing that the thread fit through, she got along better. The fabric seemed to have a mind of its own; it shifted around as she tried to poke through it. But finally she had a long straight skirt attached to the bottom of her pullover, and skirts on the girls' shirts. They hated them, and pulled them up around their waists to play . . . but that, it turned out, was something else forbidden to girls.

"You were reared among heathen," the man said. "We know that, and we make allowances for it. But you're among decent folk now, and you must learn to act like decent folk. It is forbidden for any female to show herself off to men; these girl babies must be decently covered at all times."

Then why, Hazel wanted to scream, won't you let us have underwear? Long pants? And how can you call a toddler playing on the floor a female showing herself off to men? She said nothing, but bobbed her head. She had to protect the littles, and she could do that only by being there—being able to sing them to sleep, to comfort them in a murmur that grew softer day by day.

She had no idea how much time had passed when the daily visitor first took the boys out of the compartment. By then, of course the raiders knew all the children's names. At first, Paolo and Dris hung back . . . but the man simply gathered them up and carried them out. Hazel was terrified—what would they do to the boys? But in the time it took to feed the girls their lunch, the boys were back, grinning from ear to ear. Each held a new toy—Paolo had a toy spaceship, and Dris had a set of brightly colored beads.

"We had fun," Dris said. Hazel shushed him, but Paolo spoke up.

"We can talk. They said so. Boys can talk all they want. It's only girls have to be quiet."

Brandy scowled. "Gimme!"

"No," Paolo said. "This is mine. Girls can't play with boys' toys." Brandy burst into tears.

After that, day by day, the boys were weaned away from the girls. Daily visits outside the compartment—they returned with glowing reports: they could run up and down the corridors; they could use the swings in the gym; they could use the computer in the schoolroom. The men fed them special foods, treats. The men were teaching them. The men read to them from books, new books, stories about animals and boys and exciting stuff. They were gone hours a day now, returning to the compartment only for baths and bed. Hazel was left with the girls, the two dolls, and the endless sewing.

"You teach those girl babies to sew," Hazel was told. "They're old enough for that."

They didn't want to learn, but that made no difference. Hazel realized that. But . . . no books at all? No vid, no computers, no chance to run and play? She didn't ask. She didn't dare. She didn't even dare tell them stories, the stories they knew, because the compartment was rigged for scan. She had been warned to talk no more than necessary . . . telling them stories would, she knew without asking, be breaking the rules.

The days dragged by. Stassi, though younger, was better with needle and thread than Brandy. Her stitches were ragged and uneven, but she could get them lined up into a sort of row. Brandy, more active by nature, fretted and fumed; her thread kept getting into knots. Hazel tried to find ways to let the child work off her wild energy, but in that small space, and hampered by a long skirt, the child was constantly being frustrated. She cried often, and had screaming tantrums at least once a day.

Hazel would like to have had a screaming tantrum of her own, and only the littles' need for her kept her quiet.

Brun Meager exchanged the squad of Royal Security guards  for ten of her father's personal militia from Sirialis with considerable relief. She had known some of these people for years, and although she would rather have travelled alone, this was the next best situation. With them, she visited the Allsystems Leasing office and chose a roomy private yacht for the next stage of her journey. If she was not going to have Fleet's respect anyway, there was no reason to endure discomfort. She chose the highest-priced food and entertainment package, and paid extra for an accelerated load-and-clearance that would get her on her way quickly. Allsystems checked her licenses, and those of the militia who would act as crew, and—in less than 24 hours—she had undocked and headed for her first destination. From now until the Opening Day of the hunt on Sirialis, she was free of schedules and demands, except those she chose for herself.

Since it was handy—relatively—she decided to check out her holdings within the Boros Consortium. It was something her father would approve of, the kind of grownup, mature behavior he claimed she didn't show often enough. And it was a long, long way from Castle Rock.

She spent two days with the accountants at Podj, feeling virtuous and hard-working as she waded through stacks of numbers, and then decided to skip Corian—where there would be more news media, since it was a shipping hub—and go straight to Bezaire. She plotted the course, calculated the times . . . and scowled at the figures. If she went to Bezaire by any of the standard greenlined routes, she wouldn't have time to visit Rotterdam before the start of the hunting season on Sirialis. But she was determined to visit Lady Cecelia and discuss with that other adventurous lady those things which she could not say to her parents. She could skip Bezaire—but she didn't want to skip Bezaire.

She looked at the navigation catalogs again. A caution route would save her five days, but that really wasn't enough. Maybe the Boros pilots that ran the circuit all the time knew of a shortcut . . . she called up their time-on-route stats. Supposedly they all took greenlined routes . . . but the on-time figures were improbably high for the Corian-Bezaire leg of the journey. They had a shortcut; she was sure of it. Now who might be willing to let her in on the secret?

For the rich and beautiful daughter of Lord Thornbuckle, a stockholder, the secret wasn't that hard to find. A double-jump-point system where the two jump points had been stable for over fifty years. Fleet had warnings about systems harboring two jump points, but Fleet had warnings about everything. Brun grinned to herself as she plotted a jump direct from Podj to the first of the double jumps. A nice slow-vee insertion in such a small-mass vessel, and she would be safe as safe—and have plenty of time to visit Lady Cecelia.

Jester
slid through the first jump point, and scan cleared. Brun checked the references, and grinned. The second jump point was right where it was supposed to be . . . an easy transit. She was tempted to make a flat run for it—nothing else should be insystem—but checked for beacons anyway.

Four popped up on the screen. Four? She punched the readout, up came
Elias Madero
, which should have cleared the system three days before, and three ships with non-Familias registry.

"Jump us out now!" Barrican said. Brun glanced at him; he was staring at the scan monitor.

"They won't notice us for another few minutes," Brun said. "Whatever's going on, we can find out and—"

"We're scan-delayed too," he said. "They aren't where you see them, whoever they are. And it's trouble—"

"I can see it's trouble," Brun said. "But if we're going to get them help, we need to know what kind—who it is, what's going on."

"It won't help anyone if we're blown away," Calvaro said. He had come up behind her. "This thing can't fight, and we don't know what those are—they might outrun us."

"We're little," Brun said. "They'll never even notice. Flea on the elephant."

"Milady—"

That did it. Her father's men, protecting her father's daughter; they probably thought she would faint at the sight of blood. When would her father realize that she was grown, that she was capable . . .

"We're going to sneak in closer," she said. "And look. Just look. Then we can jump out and tell Fleet what's happened."

"That's foolish, milady," Calvaro said. "What if they—"