Chapter 21

Jack:

When we got in the van and started moving after our farewell performance at Ray's, the girls seemed to be in heavy conversation. Tara was distracted, and she was navigating, so I finally just got the address and fed it into the GPS. But I asked the AI to relay the conversation, and it was eye-opening. There was an AI interface kit under the passenger seat; I had Oliver get it out. "You need to hear this," I told him. Once he was rigged up with a headset, I had the AI relay the conversation from the beginning, speeding things up just a hair so we could get to real time eventually.

Oliver sat in his seat like a statue, absorbing his sometime wife and first concubine's tale. I didn't blame him; he'd been duped and lied to for a VERY long time. On the other hand, by the time the tale was over, I know I felt sorry for Vera and had some understanding of what she'd been up against and why she was how she was.

When they wound down, Oliver turned to me and asked, "How do I deal with this?"

"The secrets? I don't know," I told him. "If you're asking how to deal with it from a physical standpoint, I'd say there are several options. If you want to keep her to yourself, have yourself augmented to the point that you can carry her through several orgasms every time you fuck -- and maybe bump up your recharge rate. If you don't mind sharing, find a couple of guys to do it with. Or lead her to the Marine transient barracks every few days. Or all of the above..." I eyed him. "Can you keep it under control for now? I've orbited the same four block area four times so she could finish..." Oliver nodded distractedly and stared out the windshield as I turned the last corner and headed up the street to turn into the parking lot for Tara's apartment complex.

Tara leaned up and whispered, "Master, I'm not in trouble, am I?"

"No, why?"

"I know you've been driving around..."

"We were waiting for Vera," I told her. "It seemed important."

"It was, Master," Tara assured me. Frankly, I couldn't have agreed more.

"All out!" I announced, but Oliver pressed me back in the seat. I turned to Tara. "Start preparing the kids and get Keisha under control; I don't want us scaring her. Send Frieda back when you have things under control and Keisha is ready for me."

"Yes, Master." Tara headed out the slider, and the others emptied the back seats behind her.

I turned to Oliver, "Yes?"

"Did I do wrong? At Ray's? You know, when I told the Major to sex Vera, my main focus was on Beth; Vera was just an annoyance. Then we let those other men..."

"We didn't know," I said, shrugging. "I started it, looking at it as a way to fix her bad habits. Little did we know how important they were to her. I know you're feeling a certain amount of guilt for a momentary lapse -- but Vera has withheld this from you and manipulated you for decades, so I'd say she's owed a bit."

"On the other hand, we were happy," Oliver mused.

I shrugged. "You can deal with this however you wish. You can tell her you know -- or you can pretend you don't. You can punish her. You can forgive her. You can do both. You can take her behavior into account, or you can expose her to large quantities of sex and see if she goes wild. You can put her on the street. You can do ANYTHING! But you don't have to decide tonight. Let's go inside."

Oliver gathered himself and nodded, and we got out of the van.

Tara:

Vera was in deep shit -- that was pretty clear. I don't think anyone else knew, but when we started circling the block I realized that something was up. Oliver had a headset on and this look on his face -- and his expressions changed with Vera's words, so it didn't take much for me to realize that the private conversation Vera THOUGHT she was having with us wasn't private. But nobody exploded or anything ... We pulled up and Master Jack told me to get the kids moving and give Keisha a heads up, then send Frieda back to tell him everything was under control. So I led the girls out of the van and went inside and up the first floor hall of our apartment block with my keys in my hand, wearing high heels and black lingerie, leading three other women dressed the same way. The security guard's eyes nearly bugged out! I don't live in what you'd call a fancy place -- or even mediocre; the guard was there to keep the windows and doors in one piece and spray paint graffiti off the walls -- and he wasn't up to strong arming drug dealers or pimps -- but he knew I wasn't a hooker and he DAMNED sure had never seen me dressed like that and he DAMNED sure had NEVER seen three white women dressed like that...

I popped open the door and walked in and Keisha bounded up off the couch like it was spring-loaded. "Tara! You're..." About that time, what I was wearing registered and her eyes popped -- then popped again at the arrival of Frieda, Beth, and Vera, in that order. "Early..." bled out of her as she took everything in.

"Yeah, Sorry, Hon. Change of plan. I quit at Ray's," I offered by way of explanation.

"Who... ?" Keisha eyed the girls.

That stopped me for a second. "My new family, I guess," I said, finally. "Honey, we need to get Abe and Elise and Shawna into some traveling clothes."

"B--but why?"

"Because I'm leaving, Hon," I explained. "Come on, I'll try to explain while we get the kids packed." I turned my head, "Frieda?"

"I'm gone!"

"Can I help?" It was Beth.

"Sure, Honey. Follow me." I waved her forward as I followed Keisha into Abe's bedroom.

Abe is five; he sat right up in bed, awakened by the uproar, his eyes fearful. "Momma?"

"Hush, Baby -- it's all right. Be a big boy and help Keisha get you into some clothes -- we're going on a trip!" I told him.

"Wh--who... ?"

"That's Beth, Baby -- she's going to live with us when we get to where we're going. She's a nice lady!" I assured him.

"But, Momma! She's a white lady!"

"Yes she is, Baby..." Sometimes you just have to stop and work through things with a child.

"What about Keisha?"

"That's up to Keisha, Baby."

"What?" Keisha entered into the conversation.

Stymied, I stopped looking for Abe's travel bag. "Beth, the girls' room is down on the right. They'll be, well, less trouble. I need to make a lot of explanations here..." Beth nodded and looked behind her; Vera was there, following. They headed down the hall; Keisha eyed them as they passed the doorway.

"What's goin' on?" Keisha asked. Abe subsided when the white women went out of sight and began cooperating with Keisha as she put his legs into some jeans.

"I've been picked up, Keisha," I explained. "I'm collecting the kids and I'm gone, off to some Confederacy place."

"Tonight?"

"Tonight."

"And the white women?"

"They belong to my new master."

Keisha nodded to herself as she put on one of Abe's shoes. "So y'all are gone. Damn. I'm gonna miss y'all."

"You don't have to, Keisha," I told her, getting her attention and holding her eyes. "Right about now, there's probably two white men standing in the living room. One of them is my new master. We talked about you, Honey. I don't know what you think about all this, but if you go out there and you say and do the right things, you can go with us."

"What do I got to say?" Keisha asked, her face solemn. "What do I got to do?"

It was no time for bullshitting around. I looked her in the eye and said, "I got no idea what he's gonna ask you or what you might want to answer -- all I can tell you is that I think he's a good man. As to what you gotta do -- that's pretty simple -- whatever he wants. And not tonight, maybe, but real soon, you gotta fuck him -- because your job is gonna be havin' his kids and raising them and mine and Beth's."

Keisha:

With that look on her face, I knew Tara was dead serious -- but it was a lot to take in, you know? The shocks I'd got in the past five minutes, if it wasn't all tucked up under a bandana, my hair would be stickin' straight out from my head! Shit was just comin' down, "Bang! Bang! Bang!" Tara bustin' in the door with a shitload of white women, them outfits, all this pickup stuff -- and now THIS! "So, if I go see him..."

Tara rubbed her face. "Honey, you don't have to do anything. You can just go on home to your family if you want. But I'm offering -- HE's offering -- to take you with us. Thing is, if you go, there are rules, you know? You got to pay the fare."

"What 'bout my folks?" I asked. "What 'bout my family?"

Tara shrugged. "It's not up to me. I don't know what he can do. You can ask him -- but I wouldn't get my hopes up."

"An' if he says no?"

"Then it's no, Honey," Tara said, shrugging helplessly. "If they could take everybody, they would, you know?"

Yeah, I knew. They went over it at school. There was only so much time and only so many ships and colonies took time to build. If the aliens had their way nobody in my family woulda had ANY shot -- we all had shit scores ... But Tara was handing me a ticket!

Abe started tugging my arm. "Keisha! You gotta come! Pleeeze! Pleeeeze!"

"I dunno..."

Tara sighed. "Finish dressing Abe. Take him out to the living room. Talk to the man. You've got til we're packed..." I nodded; the girls were starting to make noise up the hall and needed their momma to tell 'em it was all right. I started helping Abe with his other shoe.

I finished dressing Abe on automatic while I sorted shit out. At first, there's a lot of 'What if?' shit goin' on in my head; then I looked up at my reflection in the mirror on the wall, and shit kinda came crashing down... 'Keisha! There you stand in an old yellow cotton print nightgown that's just about see-through, it's been washed so many times, and looks like a circus tent, a pair of pink granny panties that probly got holes in 'em, and flip-flops, with your hair all pinned up under a red bandana -- an' you're gonna go in there an' make some ol' white dude pant after your hot body so bad he'll lose alla his common sense an' promise to take your ol' fat mama an' three juvenile delinquent brothers, too? Good fuckin' luck!' Shit, I looked like a hippo in one'a them ballerina costumes ... Dude was gonna laugh his ass off! I wasn't goin' nowhere ... I helped Abe down off his bed and took his hand and we headed out to the living room to get it the fuck over with...

They was two of 'em in the living room -- and old guy with one of those queer beards and a young dude in a brush cut, maybe eight, ten years older than me. Shit. Tara said nice things about the dude, but let's face it, she was thirty something ... I hoped the old dude didn't have a really nasty, wrinkled, scrawny-looking dick -- that would suck ... So I say to the old guy, "Tara says..."

"That would be me," the younger dude busts in. I stop and take another look at him and I wonder, 'Is this better? The old guy might have been desperate ... Shit, now I'm REALLY fucked!' And then I realize that I'm standing there looking stupid, scratching between my tits -- could shit get any worse?

"Fuck." I look away. "This is Abe."

"Hey, Abe." Abe don't say shit, of course. There is a pause, then the guy says, "Tara tells me Abe prefers to have you around."

"Abe don't know no better." I can't even look at the guy, I'm so embarrassed.

"I'm sure he has his reasons," the guy says.

I force myself to look at him. "Look, Mister -- this ain't my Sunday best -- but then..." I shrugged.

" ... This isn't Sunday?" the guy finished. "I'm a purist -- my women generally wear less."

"Like what? A brown paper bag?" Was he nuts? "Y'all are probably waitin' to see if I moo!" I've got udders, ya know? The size of fuckin' cantaloupes! And I'm fifteen! Can you IMAGINE how big they're gonna get the first time I get pregnant? I don't HAVE to -- I've seen Mama's...

Dude looks at me and says, "You produce milk?"

"Well, not yet..." I couldn't make heads or tails of that.

"So show me."

"Why bother? Ain't you seen enough?"

"I don't know yet. Besides, I'm not really looking at that. Anyway, I got my beauty queens in the first round."

"Huh?" I was totally lost. Tara said I was gonna have to fuck this guy and make babies. Looks didn't count?

"Look," he says, "you're here on Tara's recommendation, not because I saw a photo spread on you. Did any of the other women you saw look like beauty pageant contestants?"

"Well..." I hadn't really gotten a good look, but come to think of it... "Tara isn't bad," I defended her.

"Granted," he agreed. "Look, do you want to go? You've got a CAP card, right? Let's see it."

"In my purse. I'll be right back." I shuffled off to where I usually threw my junk in the corner. I generally slept on the couch; Tara's folded out, and it was better than my bed at home.

Abe stayed with me. "What does he want?" he asked as I dug in my purse.

"He wants to know if I want to go with you where you're going, Honey."

"You do, don't you?"

"Yes, Honey, but it isn't that simple."

"It isn't?" Abe looked up at me innocently. I couldn't answer. I collected the card and took his hand and led him back to the man and handed it to him, wordlessly.

Jack:

The interview with Keisha hadn't gone well, to date -- and it wasn't really clear to me why. Apparently, she thought she needed to be hot-looking. Frankly, I didn't see anything that objectionable; oh, she was roly-poly and she DID have enormous tits. She was clearly overweight, but the nightgown molded to her in ways that said there weren't big, flabby rolls.