Chapter 3

I walked into the main room of the pod, followed by Ruth and Kellie. Phyllis, Diane, and Lizbeth waited, sitting in chairs. As I entered the room, Phyllis and Diane stood up, but Lizbeth sat back and shifted her almond-shaped eyes between me and Ruth. “Have fun?” she asked.

I caught her snarky tone and decided to deal with it immediately. “Why yes, we did.” My eyes bored into hers. “The shower felt completely refreshing and I took my concubine Ruth from behind. All in all, just what I needed. Do you have all you need?”

Lizbeth gulped and stood, “Yes ... uh ... Mr. Steward, what should we call you? The computer calls you ‘Sponsor,’ the crew calls you ‘Master Sergeant,’ and for the last year we’ve called you ‘Mr. Steward.’ I don’t mean to be rude, but seeing how we are now, well, more than your students, that sounds a little formal.”

“Good question, Lizbeth. I don’t have any desire for you to call me ‘Master’ and ‘Master Sergeant’ is a courtesy title until I find out what my new rank the Confederacy will be. For the time being, let’s stick with ‘Sir’ or ‘Boss.’”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good.” I looked around to see the rest of the girls acting innocent. Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. “Let’s go eat. Alfred, please lead us to the Dining Hall.”

“Yes, Sponsor Steward. Please follow the yellow flashing line.”

We stepped into the hall and started right. After a left turn we walked down a long hallway that was filling with some traffic by family groups, that like ours, came from a North American time zone. Many of the concubines and all the children wore the grey, formless shifts. Most of the sponsors wore a fatigue uniform like mine. I didn’t see any Confederacy rank insignia, so I didn’t know if I should be saluting anybody I encountered. I subvocalized the question to Alfred.

“You have not been formally sworn into any specific Confederacy military service, Sponsor Steward, so military courtesy is not yet an issue. But be advised that even were you sworn in, you would outrank almost all of the latest volunteers.”

“Thank you, Alfred.”

“Very good, Sir.”

Now where did that phrasing come from? Had the AI been doing a little research on master-servant relationships among the British? Perhaps I should call it ‘Jeeves.’ No, that would make me ‘Bertie Wooster’ and I needed no more suggestions that I was the idiot in the relationship.

We entered a long room with rows of what looked like little doors on one wall and tables scattered through the rest of the room. People were lining up at the little doors, so with keen insight borne of many years in the Army, I fell into line with the girls.

Surprisingly quickly, we were standing in front of one set of doors. Down one side of the door was a simple menu. I was feeling rather peckish, so I chose the lasagna, double portion. To my surprise the menu offered ‘Wine, Red,’ so I chose a glass and a tall tumbler of ice water. The plate I removed had the specified lasagna along with a rather large capsule. That must be the supplements I had been told of.

The girls dithered a bit, wondering aloud what the calorie count was for the various dishes, remembering that they ate chocolate earlier. “Don’t worry,” I said, “remember, we are all carrying busy little medical nanites, and they burn lots of fuel. And later we’ll be going back into the medbay for any physical tune-ups.”

The following moment of silence was broken by Phyllis saying, “Double lasagna, large, sweet tea, and an ice cream sundae.” The rest of them joined with their own big orders.

We carried our trays to a table about halfway down the long room and against the wall. Old habits compelled me to sit with my back to the wall (even though it hadn’t helped Wild Bill Hickok).

After bowing our heads and a short saying of Grace, we fell to. The food was quite serviceable, which was very good news. Food quality has a huge effect on troop morale. I looked around and nobody was complaining, just chewing and swallowing.

I noticed a familiar face a few tables over. It was Ben Dunn from the college. He was accompanied by his former girlfriend, whom I now remembered was named Tiffi (where do parents get these names?), and a rather pneumatic blonde. I waved and caught his eye. He saw me and nodded, a bit regally, I thought.

Tiffi turned to see who Ben was nodding to and I saw that she sported a spectacular black eye. Hmmm. No law against hitting concubines. No sir. From what I gathered, there was no law against beating the living daylights out of them and chucking them in the recycle bin. But the inability to go several hours without encountering a problem so big that it required violence? Amateur. And whaling on the woman to whom you had professed undying love not so very long ago? Shitheel.

The girls saw their friend and asked if they could go over and say hello. I looked over at Ben and he seemed to understand and nodded. I said to go ahead, but to not cause any fuss. They nodded solemnly and went over. After a few moments of awkwardness, they were all talking and laughing. Ben looked bored and pulled his blonde’s head between his legs.

There was a stumble in the girl’s conversation, but they restarted with just a bit more animation, as they tried to ignore what was happening underneath the table. I thought Ben was being rude, but, hey, he had to run his life and I had to run mine. Maybe Tiffi was having trouble accepting her new role as concubine and needed discipline. Not my affair. No sir.

I was getting bored myself, so I tried out my AI link. “Alfred,” I whispered.

<Yes, Sponsor Steward,> came the voice in my head.

“What is the situation with the sponsor, name ‘Ben Dunn’ and concubines sitting at the table three meters towards the room entrance of my location?”

<They are having lunch, Sponsor Steward, as are you.>

I sighed. I’m pretty good at getting information out of academic search systems, so I knew that the AI was actually being incredibly responsive; but with a personality interface like it had, I always felt as if it was holding back information. “Keeping what it knew behind its teeth,” as my Granddad would say.

“Alfred, one of his concubines is displaying bruising on her face. Tell me how that happened.”

<Sponsor Ben Dunn struck the concubine Tiffi two hours ago.>

I sighed. “Describe the triggering circumstance.”

<The Sponsor Ben Dunn ordered the concubine to perform a specific act. She refused. He struck her several times until she performed the act.>

“And so, Alfred, we come to it. What was the sexual act that she refused?”

<It was not a sexual act, Sponsor Steward. The concubine Tiffi was directed to strike the concubine Lorraine.>

Oh. Hmmmm. This was much more complex than I could unravel at lunch.

“Alfred, you mentioned earlier that there are instructional videos for the concubines to watch?”

<Yes, Sponsor Steward. The first video concerns that portion of Confederacy law that deals with the behavior required of concubines. There is also a video for newly arriving sponsors. Although, may I say, I was monitoring your handling of the concubine Lizbeth before you left your pod. Well done.>

“Thank you, Alfred. How long are these videos?”

<There is a series of six. Each unit is from 45 to 65 minutes long.>

The blonde had finished blowing Dunn. She sat back up, wiped her mouth, and started fixing her hair, ignoring the conversation around her.

“Then I think that I had better gather the chicks. Thank you, Alfred.”

<Very good, Sir.>

I realized that I had fallen, without realizing it, into a conversation with the AI. Humph. I understood the human drive to anthropomorphize their tools, but this was a tool that actively encouraged it. A moment’s whimsy had become a kind of relationship. I’m no Luddite, but this was something to watch out for.

I rose and walked over to Ben’s table. “Girls, we have to finish up our meal and get back to the pod. Now.” The girls jumped up and took turns hugging their friend Tiffi, and then walked back to our table. I stayed for a moment and spoke to Ben.

“So, how’s it going, Dunn?” I asked.

“Like paradise, Mr. Steward,” he laughed. “I’ve got hot and cold running women!” His old girlfriend looked down at her hands in her lap, while the blonde lightly licked Ben’s ear and ran her fingers through his hair. “I’m surprised to see you, Mr. Holy Joe, in this den of iniquity.”

“Yeah, I’m kind of surprised myself.” I smiled tightly. “I hope this all works out for you. If you want to talk, give me a call. Remember, I wasn’t always a teaching assistant.”

He waved me away. “Yeah, no offense meant, but I see that you are living on my leavings. I don’t think that you’ve got anything more to teach me. C’mon girls, let’s get back and finish watching that training video.”

I nodded and walked back to my table. I wasn’t so good a teacher that I could teach someone who thought he already knew it all. It looked like the blonde was well on her way to running that little group.

The warning video was required viewing by both concubines and sponsors. It was a kind of police procedural video showing the surveillance footage (from another colony transport ship six months earlier) of a concubine (the sponsor’s former wife) losing her composure and attacking her sponsor. As the video showed, because of the surveillance, there was no doubt about her guilt; there was a ‘trial’ that consisted of the captain of that ship reviewing the recording, and the immediate execution of the sentence; the concubine was spaced. She was screaming and pleading that she would be good and never do that again right up to the point where the hatch popped open, and she was blown out.

I woke unsure of where I was. I felt the warmth of another person in bed with me and for a moment I thought it was Beth. I wanted to tell her about the crazy dream that I was having, but then the last day came rushing back into memory and my spirits fell. My hip was aching where it had caught the bullet. I tried to lie quietly and not disturb Ruth, who was sharing my bed, but I felt restless, confined.

I eased myself out of the bed and watched Ruth’s breathing to make sure that she was still asleep. When she didn’t stir, I tip-toed out into the main room and sat on the sofa, staring at the blank wall. I tried praying, but the “skies were as brass.” I tried to fall back on recalling scripture from memory, but I couldn’t stay focused.

<Alfred?> I sub-vocalized.

<Yes, Sponsor Steward?> came the reply.

<Display the planet Earth on the video area.>

<Yes, Sponsor Steward.>

The wall lit up with a view of Earth from space. The entire globe hung before me, silent, turning imperceptibly. We were still in Earth orbit, just a few hundred miles up, but I would never go back. For some reason, I needed to mourn, and my eyes filled with tears. I sat there for a long time, feeling very alone as if I were hanging in space above the planet, watching the sunrise creep across the Horn of Africa. Sometime later, I don’t know how much later, Ruth came out of my bedroom and, without a word, curled up on the sofa underneath my left arm. She took my arm and wrapped it around her shoulders. I sighed and felt less lonely.

After a long time Ruth said softly, “You made the right decision, you know.”

“Did I?” I replied, “I made a decision, which is better than no decision. But I am far from sure that it was the right one.”

“But, isn’t the Swarm coming to Earth?”

“I believe that it is.”

“And doesn’t that mean that if you stayed, you would die?”

I sighed again. “At least I would die fighting for what I know, what I’ve stood on and seen. I left friends back there. I left my mother’s grave back there; God, I even left my father’s grave back there, the old blackguard.”

I recited from memory:
“Then out spake brave Horatius,

The Captain of the gate:

‘To every man upon this earth

Death cometh soon or late.

And how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds,

For the ashes of his fathers,

And the temples of his Gods.”