Reality intruded the very next day. I finally got through some of the security I had been fighting in the Dannelon Nexus. I started receiving news reports from Earth. These news reports were routinely censored for the masses by the Dannelon Information Agency. I had found a channel used by government officials who needed uncensored information. It took me a while to break the encryption, but when I did, I almost immediately came across an interesting news item. There had been riots at Whitehead Station caused by refugees from Cincan Hab. Apparently, their mistreatment had reached intolerable levels, and the Habbies had taken matters into their own hands. Order had been restored, at the cost of many lives. My heart almost stopped at this news. As far as I knew, Les and Susie were still at Whitehead. They were in the middle of riots! I prayed that they were okay.
The news article went on to report that Earth had sent troops to help restore order. The leadership at Whitehead Station had been replaced, including the corrupt Captain of the station himself. This report was revealing in several respects. The fact that Earth was reporting these events, and that they had removed the OPO stooges from office, indicated that Earth and OPO had had a falling out. It appeared that the collaboration between Earth and OPO, which had been clandestine from the start, known only to a few conspirators, had been exposed. Once exposed, the collaboration collapsed, and Earth reverted to its traditional hostility toward the OPOs. Who knew the exact details of the collusion and how it was ferreted out. The fact was that the OPO plan for domination of mining in the solar system was in jeopardy.
This news petered out quickly. There were more important things for EarthNet to report, such as the most recent shenanigans of Luke Biltmore, the bad boy singer from Bent in the Middle. It seems that he and Johnny Myers, the cute boy singer from Bent in the Middle, had recently been seen together in public and rumor was rife. The funny boy singer and the serious boy singer had not been implicated. This was the hot news story of the day, but news of Whitehead had just vanished.
Our lives settled down after the Great Project. We were down to a trip a week or so to the Tank. It was really just a little too far just to get some exercise. If I had it to do all over again, I would have built the Tank closer to home, and maybe gotten Zaro to spring for free cab service to and from. But, that was water over the bridge, and at least the slum kids were getting some use out of the Tank.
Our twice-weekly sessions with Robert continued. Sandy and Darah would last about an hour, and would then turn in. Robert and I would stay and talk. I played what I called the Scheherazade game with him. When a quiet moment came in our conversation, and it looked like he was getting ready to leave, I would bring up a new subject. I knew he would want to stick around and discuss it. I considered it a personal challenge to come up with interesting topics to keep him from leaving. I didn’t want him to leave; I enjoyed these one-on-one sessions with him so much.
One week we compared OPO and Hab societies. I made the point that they were completely different. OPO society was rigid, whereas Habbie society was loose. In Cincan, you could choose whatever profession you desired once you finished schooling. OPOs were constrained to hereditary occupations. Habbie society did not have slums; oh, we had less fortunate people, but never the slums we saw here in Dannelon.
Robert disagreed. “You believe that Dannelon is unique, and that the Habs are unique in different ways. There are more similarities than there are differences. People everywhere are the same; they all have to eat, sleep, work, procreate, and play. They all have pretty much the same motivations. There are variations among societies, sure. However, our perceptions amplify those differences; its part of human nature to see others as uniquely different. But when you get down to the everyday lives of people, they’re all the same. They get up, they eat, they go to work, they put in their time, they come home, they eat, they watch the tube or read, they have sex, and then they go to bed. They do it all again the next day. How is that any different between Habbies and OPOs? The differences you see are differences in degree; not in kind. They are not significant.”
“But what about freedom?” I objected. “That is a significant issue, and it is very different between the two cultures.”
“Most people don’t really want freedom,” Robert countered. “They want their lives to have meaning in their occupations, they want their children to grow up safe, they want to be a part of a family, they want fame and glory, but freedom rarely comes up. People have demonstrated this in all cultures at all times. Freedom is a wonderful thing to talk about theoretically, but when you ask them what they really want, it isn’t on the list.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” I meekly retorted.
“You asked about freedom, I told you my opinion.” Robert could be so obstinately stubborn about some things.
I tried another tack. “Well, then, what about classes? Dannelon’s society is so much more stratified than Cincan’s society. How do you account for those differences?”
“It is wrong to compare Dannelon’s societal organization with Cincan’s society,” Robert explained. “You are comparing apples and turnips. They are at different scales. The total population of all the Jovian Habitats is on the order of 100,000. The population of Dannelon is 200 million. It is much more instructive to compare Earth’s society with Dannelon’s. Better yet would be to compare some Earthly nation to Dannelon. At those scales, you see everywhere you look all of the problems which beset humanity – poverty, disease, stratification, the gap between rich and poor, competition for limited resources, and warfare. We did not invent these problems out here in the Outer Planets. They exist everywhere there are large human gatherings.”
I got angry. “Well, there’s one area where Dannelon is unique. No other society countenances the abduction of children from their homes. Taken away from their parents, their friends. Abduction and forced servitude.” I was close to tears; even though I didn’t want to be.
Robert was relentless. “Oh really? Take a look at Earth sometime; at the history of the slums of Bombay; how a father would sell his daughter to slave traders because daughters were considered a burden. Take a look at the history of the United States of America, and how they fought a war to defend slavery. Take a look at the custom of female genital mutilation in Africa. That’s all still going on in one form or another, Jen. It always has and it always will.”
His voice softened. “It’s cruel, but its reality. It’s cruel that you are a victim. I wish I could help you. I hate Zaro for what he did.”
Now my tears flowed freely. I put my head on his shoulder and cried. He put his arms around me, stroked my hair. We stayed like that for a long while. It was comforting. I stopped crying. We stayed together, eyes closed and lost in our thoughts. I impulsively looked up at his face and kissed him on the cheek. His arms tightened around me. I wanted to kiss him again, on the lips. I wanted to hug him and kiss him. Oh god, what was happening? I wanted to kiss a man ten years my senior. He was married, he would not reciprocate, I was too young, he would not be interested in me. But he was, he was stroking my arms, his face in my hair, and he was saying my name. “Oh Jen, oh Jen”.
Suddenly, he disengaged and pushed away. He mumbled something about having to go home. I just stayed there, too stunned to move. He left. I stayed in the lounge, searching my memory of the moment. Had it really happened? Did I interpret it right? It felt like he had responded to me, for just a moment. Was it just wishful thinking? Maybe he had just been trying to console me. He was saying my name like that, touching me like that, because that’s what you did with a child who was hurting. That’s all it was. I kept turning it all over in my head, getting nowhere. Another sleepless night. I wished I could turn off my brain. I finally dropped off to a fitful couple of hours of sleep, before it was time to face him, to look into his eyes and find out if last night was a dream.
I woke up and washed, pulled my clothes on. I didn’t particularly want to go to the gym, but I had skipped the past few days. I thought I would just do some spin time and save the wheel for another day. I dragged myself through the quiet house to the gym. I got into the spintrifuge and set it for twenty minutes. I thought about last night while I was spinning. It must have been my imagination. He was a grown man and I was a teen. These things just didn’t happen. But what if it had really happened? The machine stopped and I got out, and there was Dondelek staring at me.
He slapped me in the face, hard. It stung bad, it stunned me. He immediately pushed me back into the spintrifuge and came in at me. He didn’t say a word, just pushed himself against me. I shook my head and broke my stupor, and pushed him out with my arms and legs. This time he was the one who couldn’t solidly brace himself, and I pushed him out with ease. I reached behind me, into my pack, and pulled out my truncheon. It was swinging at his head before he even noticed. I swung it as hard as I could, and it landed squarely on the side of his head with a sickening splat. The recoil started me spinning in the opposite direction of the swing, and I brought the truncheon around, aimed low and caught him right in the crotch. He let out a labored gasp with his eyes wide open. Before he could recover I was jetting out the door. I went straight to my room and locked the door. I stayed there all morning.
I looked into the mirror. The entire left side of my face was a raw red and my eye was swelling and turning black and blue. I didn’t cry; I was too numb to cry. I heard a knock at my door. It was Robert. “Jen, are you all right? We need to talk.” I yelled through the door for him to go away. He went away, but came back a few minutes later. “Jen, we really need to talk. I’ve got a passkey, I’m going to come in, okay?” I yelled again for him to go away. He started opening the door. I turned away from him.
“Jen, about last night…” and then he stopped. He had seen my face. “Jen, what happened to you? Who did this to you?”
“Dondelek”, I said. “He attacked me this morning in the gym. I managed to fight him off.” I turned to look at him. His face broke in agony as he saw my face full on.
“Dondelek attacked you?” he asked in a confused voice. This was definitely not what he had come to talk about. He didn’t know what to do. I didn’t say anything, just turned away from him again to avoid the look of pain and shock in his face. But I couldn’t avoid looking at him. I peeked through the mirror at him. His face had changed, had lost its look of confusion. There was now determination there, and fury. I didn’t know he had such anger within him.
“I’ll be right back”, he said, and left the room, closing the door behind him. I hovered in my misery, wanting to cry but unable to because I knew it would hurt my face. Another knock at the door; Robert had returned. He had brought Shenda with him. Shenda immediately came to me, cooing and babying me as she examined my face.
Robert said “I’m leaving now, Jen, but I’ll be back later. Shenda and Mika will take care of meals. Shenda will take care of you.” With that, he turned and left.
“Don’t do anything foolish, Robert” Shenda called after him.
“Where is he going?” I asked.
“He’s going to have a little talk with Dondelek,” she said. “Don’t worry, it will be alright. You won’t have to worry about that. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
I let Shenda nurse me for a while. She asked me if I wanted to talk about it, and I said no. She said “Let’s just make up a little story about what happened. A little white lie to tell Zaro and Vera. We don’t want them getting too worked up over this. It’s too much trouble.”
I almost got upset over what she was saying until I realized what she was intimating. If Zaro got wind of what had happened, he might think I was more trouble than I was worth. He would never take my word about what happened over Dondelek’s. He might think I was a troublemaker. He might decide to get rid of me. I realized now just how thin the eggshells were over which the domestics in this house were walking. One wrong step, and you could be cast out, out maybe into the ninth circle of hell. That explained a lot about the things Robert said and believed.
“I just got a face ball in the Tank, I should have been wearing my helmet”, I said. “It’s nothing, it happens all the time”.
“Atta girl”, said Shonda. “Here, take these, they’ll help with the pain”, and handed me a couple of pills.
The cover story would work with Zaro and Vera, who didn’t follow my movements that closely. However, I had been with Sandy and Darah last night. They would know that the story was a lie. I wondered what I was going to tell them. Probably the truth, with the additional admonishment not to tell their parents. I took the pills. Within ten minutes, I was feeling no pain and was ready to go to sleep. Shonda tucked me in to my bunk and I fell asleep.
I woke up
alone. It was past dinner time. I wondered if Robert was back yet. The house was quiet, everybody gone to their
own individual evening pursuits. I
unstrapped myself from my bunk and looked at my face. The redness in my cheek was gone, but my eye was almost swollen
shut. I was afraid to go out. I didn’t want anybody to see my face. I didn’t want to take the chance of meeting
up with Dondelek. I really didn’t think
anything Robert said could influence that psycho. A knock came at the door.
It was Darah’s voice, asking to come in. At first I wanted to refuse her.
But I realized I needed her. I
needed my friend. I let her in, letting
her see my face full on as she came in.
“Shenda told me
that you got hurt. Jen, what happened?”
I didn’t say
anything. I just went to her and hugged
her. The tears then started. I cried for the first time this awful
day. I couldn’t stop. My black eye hurt. My face hurt. Darah
grabbed a handful of tissues for me.
She patted my back as I sobbed on her shoulder. This went on for some time. I finally calmed down, sniffling and wiping
my face with the tissue.
“Okay, are you
ready to talk about it?” She asked.
I nodded. I was not ready, but I needed to get it
out. I told her everything, neglecting
only that intimate moment between Robert and myself last night. I laid it out straight. No white lies about accidents in the
Tank. I told her about the previous
incident with Dondelek. I told her
about the truncheon I had made. I told
her about this morning. I told her that
I needed her to stay mum about it, so that I wouldn’t get in trouble with her
father. She started to object; I
shushed her and told her it had to be this way, I didn’t want to end up in the
slums. That struck home with her, she
finally understood what I was saying.
She told me there had been incidents with other domestics, cast out to
who knew where when they made trouble.
She didn’t want that to happen to me.
I asked her what
had happened in the house today. She
told me. “Robert left the house late
this morning in a hurry, and nobody’s seen him since. Dondelek disappeared even before then. Mother raised Cain because that nice girl Jen wasn’t there to
serve her lunch. Shenda had to rush in
and do it herself, telling mother that you were sick. One thing you don’t want to do is sample Shenda’s cooking. It was even better at dinner time, because
Shenda and Mika had to prepare it themselves.
God, did that taste awful.
Mother complained even worse at dinner time. Shenda told mother that Robert was sick also. Mother said it was so hard to get good help
nowadays.”
As we were laughing
over this, another knock came. Robert
came in, still with that determined look on his face. I gave him my best one eyed smile and gave a Popeye laugh, arf
arf arf. That cheered him up. He stayed for a while, and we talked small
talk. He said “Jen, you don’t have to
worry about Dondelek anymore.” Finally,
he said he had to go home. Shenda came
by and gave me another couple of pills, and I was out like a lamp.
The next day,
Dondelek was nowhere to be found. Zaro
made some inquiries but apparently no leads came up. Zaro commiserated with Vera about the help nowadays. Me, I just breathed a sigh of relief. Because Dondelek was never, ever seen again.