Chapter 3: L’ielit freed

L’ielit was sitting on the porch, reviewing the events of the past few days. Everybody had been eager for her to reach a high score but she had been unsure if she wanted the changes that a higher CAP score would definitely bring. She had finally gone to the med bay for a CAP re-test. She excused this to herself as obeying her master’s orders even though he hadn’t ordered it. He had politely asked her if she would like to do it. Remembering her earlier experiences with slave owners back on Earth she wondered how she had fallen in love with Joacim. But then there was everything about him that made her love him. That he owned her didn’t matter since he didn’t abuse his might.

Now she was free.

Joacim cried with joy when she told him that she wanted to stay and build a combined household. A new pod was located alongside their old one and, in a few days, the two pods would look like a single big mansion.

There had been so much more to decide. Governor Culhane came to congratulate her and asked her to join the Marines, of course. She found out that he had been pressing Joacim to re-test her for nearly three years. She was thankful that Joacim had resisted. First she had been surprised that Joacim had been able to resist his commander but then she remembered the big differences between the Confederacy and Earth. She took this example and resisted the Governor too. He took it with dignity when she decided to join the Civil Service. He later told her that his aides had calculated that this was the best choice for her. That or a leadership position, he had said.

Then L’ielit had a meeting with Centurion Mark Evans Benish. She knew him already as the boss of the pool of unassigned concubines. Now she learned that he was more like the town’s mayor, responsible for everything except the military part of Vandergast. The Governor was supporting everything the Centurion came up with and the Centurion supported the Governor’s plans in return. L’ielit learned that she could take over part of the civil responsibilities on the planet, like the pool of unassigned concubines, the schooling system or city development, or she could take a new job with little guidance and little restrictions that came up with the Governor’s plan for a training center for Earthen fighters. That last one sounded interesting. She would be boss of a little fleet of civilian ships, a few sponsors and a whole lot of working concubines. She would be working with a lot of sponsors of the colony. L’ielit had asked for a few days to think it over.

Afterwards the Centurion led L’ielit to the quarters of the unassigned concubines. L’ielit had four free slots and the Centurion still had several hundred unassigned concubines. They sensed a sponsor with free slots and, since L’ielit and her character were well known, a lot of them were eager to offer everything to her. This experience was a little too much for the day. She fled from the place without a single concubine.

Now L’ielit was sitting on the porch, watching the sun go down and thinking about all this. As a new sponsor she had to make more decisions than she was comfortable with.

“Ask your friends,” Tinkerbelle said.

L’ielit turned her head and watched the holographic faerie closely. “When did you learn to read people’s minds?”

“Oh, it’s obvious that you are uncomfortable with deciding everything in such a short time. Would you accept an artificial being’s opinion?”

L’ielit smiled. “Yes, I think so.”

“They are not final, you know?” Tinkerbelle said.

“What do you mean?”

“Your decisions. They are not final. You decided to make a joint household with Joacim but you can split if it turns out that you don’t cope. You decided to join the Civil Service but you can switch to the fighting forces if you come to the conclusion that it was an error. It’s uncommon but possible. You can take a certain job for a while and when you are unhappy with it ask for something else. You can select some concubines, and you can give them back if they don’t match your family.”

L’ielit frowned.

“I know, I know. You had bad experiences with slavery, much worse than anything most of the concubines on this planet have ever suffered. I figure you don’t like the idea of being a slave owner yourself now. Listen to me. You are not, as long as you treat your concubines well. Do you thing of Joacim as a slave owner?”

“No.” L’ielit remembered the last three years. “He’s noble, protective, polite and loving. He doesn’t order, he asks. He accepts a ‘no’ for an answer. He is everything but a slave owner.”

“And you and the others haven’t been slaves in his household. You were concubines in the best meaning of the word. You know the roots of the word?”

When L’ielit didn’t answer, the AI accommodated <Concubines originally were socially accepted secondary wives of the French king or other high nobles in a society that did not accept polygamy. Some of them had great influence on European history.>

Tinkerbelle laughed. “Of course Joacim has no main wife, you were all secondaries. Or you were all primaries? I haven’t found out yet. The point is that you should ask Joacim if he’s able to have sex with four more women.”

“WHAT?” Tinkerbelle’s remark had taken L’ielit off-guard.

“You have four free slots. The main purpose for concubines is to breed. I don’t expect you to take four males and have your fun. I figure you didn’t even think about a single male concubine in your household because you love Joacim. Right?”

“Well, yes,” L’ielit stuttered.

“Go ask him. In the long run you will have four concubines and they need to breed from time to time. Go ask him to visit the pool and select your concubines together. That’s my advice.”

“Oh god, do you want to kill me?” Joacim asked with a twinkle in his eyes. “My six, you and your four, that’s eleven!” It didn’t help that his concubines were all standing at the door and had a hard time not laughing out loud.

“It’s just that I’m happy with you and I don’t see me fucking another guy,” L’ielit argued.

“Ladies, let’s make a vote. Who wants to have approximately one-third less sex?” Suddenly they were all quiet. No one lifted a hand. “Okay then, who can adapt to the idea of sleeping with another man, a concubine of L’ielit?” Irene’s hand went up first, quickly followed by Anita and Prudence.

“Do we have to, or is it our decision to have sex with him?” Helga asked.

“Well, according to the laws I could order you to do it, as I could lend you to other sponsors or order you to get pregnant from a male unassigned concubine. But you know I don’t do things like that. It will be your free decision. And his, too. A male concubine of L’ielit will be family.” Three more hands came up slowly.

Joacim turned toward L’ielit again. “You see? They are comfortable with it. It’ll be a little different from our current situation but nobody will be hurt, forced or anything like that. And I won’t be degraded to a breeding bull.”

They made a date with Centurion Mark Evans Benish for the next day.

When the time came, Joacim shouted, “Ladies, time to go!” All six quickly appeared, joining Joacim and L’ielit. L’ielit looked a little puzzled, so Joacim explained, “I thought you asked for all our help, not just mine.”

L’ielit was scared since she had only thought of Joacim alone. ‘Three days and I forgot about my co-concubines. This is a question of family, not a decision among sponsors,’ she thought. She pulled herself together. “Of course you are welcome to help me find some new family members.” Together they left the pod.

Two years earlier, when it became evident that the pool of unassigned concubines wouldn’t shrink that quickly, the former barracks had been replaced by a suburb with small flats for every concubine. The flats weren’t very comfortable and lacked a replicator among other things, but it was a private place. The long term unassigned concubines were very thankful for it.

The Centurion was waiting in an open space with benches between the apartment houses. This time the crowd was even bigger, but there was something different. He had spread the word that a female sponsor was in search of a few concubines including one man. He had made clear that there was no need for a head bitch. As always, he had underestimated the concubines’ grapevine. They knew that L’ielit had left without selecting a single concubine two days ago, so they figured it must be her again. Several of them started to organize the day’s event. They talked to those who had been pushy two days ago and explained to them that this type of behavior just lowered their chances with L’ielit.

When L’ielit and her friends arrived they were greeted by the Centurion. Two concubines approached and offered orange juice to the group. Other concubines wandered among the groups of nearly two-hundred concubines and served them.

“What’s happening here?” L’ielit asked the Centurion.

“I don’t know. I’m a little surprised myself. Your last visit caused the usual crowd. This is new to me.”

A male concubine turned to them and spoke up, “It’s perfectly simple. We want to honor our former mate who became a sponsor and apologize for the little riot. Centurion Benish, you are right. Two days ago that was just our normal behavior for a sponsor searching for a concubine from the pool. It usually works. But we’ve learned that L’ielit didn’t like it, so we changed it.”

“Peter! Nice to see you! Are you volunteering for the male concubine?” L’ielit asked.

Peter looked at L’ielit in deep thought. “I’d be honored by such an offer but that would be a bad idea. You know me. I’m too dominant to be a good concubine.”

“Sorry to hear that but maybe you are right. You should work on your mindset. Then maybe you’ll find a new sponsor someday.”

“Peter, did you organize this?” the Centurion spoke up.

“I just helped a little,” Peter answered with a sheepish grin. “I suggest you let those who just wanted to congratulate L’ielit take a minute of your time. That will ease the mood a little more.”

Over the next hour, L’ielit talked to a lot of concubines, asking for their story. When she rejoined with Joacim and Centurion Benish she said “It’s no use. There are too many. We have to reduce the number. Joacim, I beg for your help here.”

“Okay sweetheart, I’ll reduce the numbers my way.” Joacim turned on an amplifier. “Dear concubines, we’ll start the main event now. I’ll explain to you what we are doing and why we are doing it. First, we want to sort out those who least match our combined household by CAP score. You all were CAP tested within the last year and I have your sub scores on my notepad here. I’ll call out the names of those who have to leave. You might take that as a hint to work on your personality.” He called out eighty names of concubines, both male and female, who were too dominant, too aggressive or had low motherly instincts.

“Now three of my concubines will select one male each. L’ielit will interview those three and might select out of that group or reject them all. In that case my concubines will select three more. My concubines were ordered to listen to their feelings on first sight.”

Anita, Irene and Prudence wandered among the concubines and picked their favorites quickly. They returned to L’ielit with their prey, telling her their first impression. L’ielit talked to them but unfortunately none of them pushed any of her buttons. On their second round, Irene stumbled over a small Vietnamese with short black hair. She thought ‘cute’ and grabbed his hand. L’ielit saw the small man walking behind Irene and he caught her attention. She dismissed the man standing before her and asked for the small man’s name.

“I’m Tran Van Ho,” he answered bowing deeply. “I was a waiter back on Earth. I have four dependents, one of them is the son of my former female sponsor who died three years ago as so many did.”

The detail that had first caught L’ielit’s attention was his smooth movements when walking. “Are you an athlete? Your movements show a great skill of body control.”

Ho showed her some kung fu shadow fighting. “I’m doing this every morning for physical and mental training. I learned that back on Earth. It’s just the basics. I would never use it against someone.”

L’ielit knew from his scores that Ho wasn’t aggressive at all. His potential for defending himself was below that of defending others and both were below average. His other sub scores indicated that he was a little slow in learning. Ho’s total CAP score was 5.9. L’ielit thought that there was still unused potential in that little Asian man. L’ielit had her first concubine.

“Sorry boys. The position of male concubine is filled,” Joacim announced. “We will now continue with the female concubines in much the same way. All my concubines will now select one female concubine and L’ielit will select among them first. This will continue until L’ielit has her four slots filled.”

Of course there were a lot of concubines that tried to get the attention of one of Joacim’s concubines. Other than the men, almost all of them looked like supermodels or sex bombs. Joacim’s concubines looked mainly at the eyes of the concubines and searched for those who had a spark of some kind. Those who had dead eyes where ignored.

This time L’ielit was able to find all three concubines among the first group. The first one she selected was Henna. “My name is Henna Claymore. I’m currently owned by my father, Commander Richard Claymore. He sent me here when he heard about today’s event. We came from Gangriel two weeks ago.”

“What’s the reason that he sent you to volunteer here?” L’ielit asked.

“He’s aghast at the idea of planting a baby in me. He just took me into his harem to get me off that planet,” Henna explained, lowering her head.

“Do you feel rejected by him?” L’ielit asked.

Henna looked in L’ielit’s eyes. “I would happily carry my father’s baby. I was broken and nearly dead when he bought me from my former owner. But I know he’s trying hard to gain back his own honor that he thinks he lost. One thing he can’t cope with is impregnating his own children. So now he is searching for an opportunity to give me to an honorable sponsor. He deeply checked your background before he sent me here.”

“Looks like he found my lovely queen trustworthy,” Joacim noted.

“He found you trustworthy too, Sir,” Henna added.

“He absolutely is,” Sabine chimed in.

The next one L’ielit selected was Carmen. “My former sponsor traded me in for another concubine from the Civil Service pool. He’s a nice guy, Navy crewman on the colony ship Pine Tree. His only weakness is his addiction to diversity. He first wanted to trade me at Gangriel but then suddenly changed his mind. Instead he sealed our quarters for the time we were near that planet. First I didn’t understand, but now I know a little about that colony and I’m thankful.”

“Navy concubines sometimes help their sponsors when on a ship. How about you?” L’ielit asked.

“I’m a trained medical technician. But I had little to do on that colony ship. I also know about evacuation procedures and how to handle a space suit - theoretically. I never had to use that knowledge.”

The third woman L’ielit selected was Miranda. “My former Marine sponsor Sam traded me in for a more motherly concubine. He came here with Olive and me. We were both fifteen-year-old cheerleaders back on Earth. When we had our first babies Olive and I tried to take care of them but we weren’t that good. Olive tried harder. I have to admit that I whined a lot at that time. When our next two babies were born the situation became even worse. So Sam took a forty-five year old woman with her three children just for her good mothering scores and I ended up here. I have worked on my mindset since then. There are a lot of children here and I spent a lot of time herding and watching several of them. I have a regular job at one of the kindergartens. I still don’t like stinking diapers but I can handle them now.”