Chapter 7: Joyful Surprises

The girl walked up behind Steve. She whispered something to him. He just nodded. The girl looked at me. “What was the largest tip ever given to Passion at the Pink Poodle?”

“Besides the young man who brought her out of that place?” I asked back.

The girl looked surprised. “Men have names,” she muttered.

“Not in a strip club,” Jade said. “Three quarters of the men won’t give you a name for any reason and the rest are more likely to lie than give you a real name. They don’t want a lawyer showing up at their house someday. Besides, Savannah never met the young man who claimed Passion. They were working at different stages.”

“Stages?” Steve asked.

“What, you want every stripper on the same stage even when one hundred men are in the club?” I asked.

Jade giggled. “Savannah, you can give people straight answers now. I think you are confusing everyone, including your concubine.”

I looked over at Bryn who was chewing on her lower lip. From the movement of her hands she was trying to figure out what my responses meant. I put an arm around her and pulled her body against him. “Sorry, Bryn,” I said. “I forget that my game can confuse people.”

“Why play it?” Pabiola asked.

“Because if you are working at a strip club and have blond hair, guys think you are stupid and will ask questions trying to trip you up,” I replied. “Sometimes its fun, but more than a few of the guys were hoping to eventually force me to go home with them. If I answered every question with a question, they would never get the answers they wanted.”

“Plus it was entertaining to a lot of the old timers,” Jade said with a giggle. “Savannah, remember that one night were that frat decided to descend on our club. Wasn’t it the night before USC played some big football game?”

“The one that happened two days before Passion found her man? Is that the one you are thinking of?” I replied.

Bryn giggled. “You realize that you are talking about events in a strip club while riding in a spaceship to some planet we’ve never seen?”

“And?” I asked.

“Tanya!” she said with another giggle. “I’m just trying to figure out what this conversation is about.”

Tawny raised her hand. “Oh, pick me. I have the answer to this one.”

Jen put her hand on the shining red hair of her young concubine. “Concubines...” she muttered. Bryn leaned forward. Jen noticed and just shook her head before turning to Tawny. “If you know the answer, why don’t you enlighten the rest of us.”

Tawny grabbed a strand of her red hair and started to chew on it. “Well, what I understand is that Tanya and Jade are old friends, and both once worked as strippers. They were mentioning someone named Passion, and it seems that Steve and at least one of his concubines know a woman using that name who might have known them, but they aren’t sure.”

The girl nodded. “There was one girl who came to all our competitions. She’s amazingly good at the dance games and can do well on a lot of the side-scrolling games if there is no real combat. Race games or some of the Sega ones are the only others she’ll even look at. She never plays the combat games.”

Jade smiled. “Let me guess she’s about five foot two, eyes of blue and blond hair she has in a short and sassy pixie cut.”

“Don’t forget that she has huge ... Tracts of land,” I added holding my hands several inches in front of my own breasts.

“How did you know?” the girl asked.

“Passion,” Jade and I said together.

“Is she really your former friend?” Steve asked. “I mean Mark always said he met her in a place and way that was to embarrassing to talk about. And she always said she knew a blond woman who could destroy her in any of the games she loved to play. But she always said the woman’s name was Vanna.”

“Which is a shortened version of Savannah,” Jade said with a nod. “Passion loved to give all the other girls nicknames. And I’m pretty sure she never knew Tanya’s real name.”

“I never told her,” I said. “She was nice, but we never became all that close. I was too willing to take on the jerks.”

“What happened to Passion?’ Jade asked. “Obviously you’ve seen her more recently than we have.”

“She’s on this ship,” Steve’s second concubine said as she moved over to join us. “Mark has the CAP to enlist. At least she got picked up with him. We haven’t tried to find out where he ended up. It’s a big ship.”

“Well, if you see her, you can tell her that Savannah and Jade are on board. I think the AI will know who she’s trying to get in touch with if she tries to contact us,” I replied.

Steve looked at me. “You could ask the AI to contact her.”

“No,” I said firmly. “She’s not my concubine and I don’t know her sponsor. He may not want outsiders talking to her.”

“Tanya’s right about that,” Jen said. “Any communication would have to start with Tanya and Mark talking. That’s one thing that takes a while to get used to especially for some concubines. They think they should be able to call all their old friends.”

Steve shrugged. “Well, I know some of the members of our gaming circle were going to see if we can get together and have a mini-tournament tonight. If Mark shows I’ll talk to him.”

Jade jumped out of her chair and walked over to give Steve a hug. He looked very uncomfortable, but I just laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. Jade giving a man a hug is nothing. Once we get the pod setup the way I want, we’ll have a full stripper stage and will probably offer shows.”

“And lessons,” Bryn chirped. “I’m going to be the first student.”

“You’ve already got your masters in sensuality,” Jade said. “Now we just give you rhythm and a few moves.”

Jen giggled. “Be careful about offering too much too freely. You’d be surprised how quickly some sponsors grow bored of their concubines.”

“What?’ one of Steve’s girls asked.

Bryn sighed. “Um, could you introduce yourselves? I know Jen, and her girls Tawny and Pabiola.”

“Students two and three if Jen lets us take the classes,” Tawny said

“Oh, we definitely can persuade her,” Pabiola said turning and kissing Jen lovingly on the neck.

“Girls,” Jen said. “I’ll agree to this, but back off on the sexual pressure just a little. My father was a preacher and he always said that woman lying with other women was evil.”

“If its evil, I don’t want to be good,” Jade said. “But I can understand how you might struggle a bit in dealing with an attraction to women if you heard that for eighteen years.”

Jen smiled sadly “It was one of my father’s most common speeches. The funny thing is he never was against two men together, only two women. When I was nineteen he was caught offering drugged wine to one of the young men working in the chapel.”

“Ouch,” I said.

Steve just shook his head. “To much information,” he said. “Well, I guess I should introduce my girls.”

He helped the smaller of his two concubines up and into his lap. She had curly brown hair that appeared to have suffered from the effects of a few too many home permanents and curling irons. It was a bit snarled and lifeless as she turned her green eyes to look at us. “This is Janet. She and I actually lived on the same street.”

Steve moved his right hand to touch the other girl’s shoulder. She was taller than Janet with a fuller figure. Her brown hair fell straight down her back, but was cut barely an inch past her neck, making it seem too long and too short at the same time. “This is Lindsay. She and Janet met two summers ago at a girl’s only computer camp. They kept in touch and she was out here to see the gaming club meeting.”

“I was out here to get picked up,” Lindsay admitted. “There were rumors that one of those gaming club meetings was going to be picked up. I hear that the Confederacy has been looking for people with a lot of skill at console gaming.”

Jen laughed at that. “I remember that rumor. We planted that one.”

“What?” Steve asked.

“The rumor that there would be pickups at gaming events. It’s a rumor that was planted. Some of the gunner and pilot positions require people with great reflexes, and someone noticed that gamers have already trained their reflexes. The additional training to handle guns is reduced if you can find someone with experience in gaming or sports. That’s also a reason the basketball camp got tagged with a pickup. Forty-eight teams and each one seemed to have at least two volunteers. It was a quick pickup of over one hundred citizens who should be very good in naval gunnery,” Jen said.

“So there is a plan around the pickups,” I observed.

“Some,” Jen said. “If a pattern shows up that certain people are easier to train, we can plant rumors to try to get that kind of person to gather. DECO is also always looking for venues where there will be many volunteers, so that fewer pickups are required to fill a ship. They will never give up the coffee shops and small restaurants though. When you only need a couple more people to fill a ship, they are a solid way to handle the pickup.”