Chapter 5: Settling

A couple of days later I got a chance to talk to the Civil Service concubine, Nikki Holmes. The good news: there was a lot of stuff I could do around the town. The bad news: no buses to drive here. If people didn't want to walk they used transporters for long distance or cycled. It wasn't a complete washout as there were some delivery trucks for moving stuff that was too big or inconvenient for a replicator. She put my name down for that, "With your sponsor's permission," of course. That part still applied -- everything was up to Carlita. They'd relaxed a few of the general rules, like for clothes. The smocks weren't compulsory any more, though you had to keep your collar in view -- no turtle necks. But it was still about what your sponsor allowed.

The other thing Nikki put me down for was helping at school and stuff.

"Most families have a father in the Navy or Marines," she told me. "That means that their fathers are away for months at a time, leaving mostly women behind. We need men around in school and for the after-school activities, so there are some male role models. You're older, so you'd be ideal. A fourteen-year-old male concubine doesn't have the right experience."

"I can't teach anything much," I warned her. A teacher! Me! That would be a sight.

"You won't be a teacher, just an assistant. Be around in lessons and help with sports. The boys especially need to have adult men around as a role model."

Sports I could do, soccer and baseball. I wasn't tall enough for basketball or football. I certainly wasn't going to try football against a Marine team! No sir.

I stopped outside Penny and Elly's pod. No, I wasn't driving a bus no more -- no buses here. I wasn't really driving either, I was pedaling. For small local deliveries like this, we used these rickshaw things with a flatbed in the back instead of seats. A rickshaw pickup if you like. There was a small electric motor to help on the hills, but mostly it was Carlos-powered. What a come-down! Yeah, I preferred my bus.

I got their package off the back and walked to the pod door. It slid open as I got up to it, and I could see Elly waiting inside. "Hello, Carlos. Come on through."

I followed her to the kitchen, where I dumped her package into the recycler. Penny and Elly were in the early arrivals here, so their pod had a swarm of kids around; far too many to learn all their names. I recognized a couple of the older ones from school, but the others were just kids. "Where's Penny today?" I asked.

"Oh, she's running the cake stall this morning."

Penny and Elly baked cakes, which they sold on a stall in the town market. Very good cakes too, properly baked in their oven, not replicated. That was why they needed my delivery. They got the basic ingredients from their replicator and baked each batch of cakes separately, just like the real thing back on Earth.

All those cakes meant that their kitchen replicator was always running out of whatever it used to make flour, raisins, sugar and stuff. A lot of what came out of their replicator ended up in other people's recyclers, so their pod often got low on some replicator ingredients. My job was to deliver top-ups for their replicator to keep it going.

I was the guy who kept people stocked up. Without me, there wouldn't have been any fresh-baked cakes and all the kids in town would have started a revolution -- Alvaro and Tomas certainly would have.

"Is John still on deployment?" He was Penny and Elly's sponsor. Another Marine, like all the sponsors in town.

"Yes, he's due back in five weeks. Penny's due for another baby this time, and I get my nookie. Maybe I'll be able to persuade him to take on a male concubine to keep us both happy while he's away." She grinned at me, "Do you think Carlita will want to make a deal?"

That was an old joke between us. I knew that John let them both visit the town brothel if they needed to while he was away. They kept a few male concubines there to service any women who had the urge, and who had permission of course. Concubines still needed permission for pretty much everything.

"Are you sure just the two of you would be enough to keep me happy? I've got used to more than two with Carlita you know. I might wear the pair of you out."

She laughed, "Hmmm, maybe we'll just have to take that risk." Just then, some kids screaming from the main room interrupted us. Elly went to sort out whatever the problem was, and I took the chance to leave. Chat was nice, but I had other deliveries to make that shift.

Deliveries was one of my jobs. Not like driving a bus, but at least it was something. Better than sitting around the apartment all day, doing nothing.

They did have some big electric trucks for when they wanted big stuff moved. Like the big-ass replicators they used to make the building panels for new apartment blocks. When they finished one block, they moved the replicator a hundred yards -- sorry, meters -- down the road to work on the next block. With the Cube Ships coming by we needed a load of new apartments for all those new families. No pods on a Cube Ship, so they didn't land with their own ready-made apartments. We had to have places ready before they turned up.

They do have big-ass transporters to fit the big-ass replicators, but a replicator can't walk onto a transporter pad the same way a person can. You need to load it on a trailer, and use a truck to haul the trailer. Of course, if you've got it on the trailer and you're only going a short way down the road you don't need to bother with the two transporters. Just haul the thing down the road to where the new apartment block will be.

There wasn't much big hauling to do. No cross-country stuff either. Anything going that far went by transporter, else they flew it. I did a lot more local trips in town than I did trucking.

Next size down from the big trucks was these electric things like overgrown golf-carts. The Brits here call them "delivery-floats" and the name seems to have stuck. The floats were for bigger stuff that wouldn't fit through a kitchen replicator or on a rickshaw. There were larger replicators in the town center, and we used the floats to deliver from there out to people's pods or wherever.

The Civil Service and the colony's governor liked to keep concubines busy doing stuff. I was on deliveries while Lupe had a job working in Cammy's, learning to do nails. I kept Cammy's nail parlor stocked as well, though she didn't need as much extra stuff as Penny and Elly. There's a lot more goes into a batch of cakes than into a set of nails. The nail business was doing well for Cammy. A kitchen replicator could make a set of stick-on nails, but it couldn't do a personalized nail-job or carry on a conversation. Talking to kids all the time got stale pretty quickly. Having someone grown up to talk to was popular, so I think a lot of their customers were there more for the conversation than the nails. That was probably one of Lupe's reasons for working there too. She didn't seem too keen on spending all her time around kids.

Maria and Kim weren't like Lupe, they both wanted to look after kids, so they were working in kindergartens. Kim was shaping up to be a really good mother, and was getting plenty of practice. There was a lot of work with kids because there were a lot of young ones around. Families who'd been here for a few years, like Penny and Elly, could easily have six or eight rug-rats between two mothers.

A lot of us concubines spent a lot of time looking after kids one way or another. Everyone helped with the kids in their own family of course, and most of us spent some time helping with other people's kids as well. I certainly did. For my second job I was helping with sports and things at school. I was also doing some time with the Sutlers in the evenings. Sutlers was something Waller had set up for low CAP estimate kids age eleven and up; a bit like Guides or Scouts but for concubines. Since it was Confederacy, there was a lot more sex-ed and baby care than in the Scouts back on Earth. The kids with good CAP estimates were in a different group, called Pathfinders, but they mostly had Sponsors and high-CAP concubines helping out so I didn't get to work with them. With my score I was helping the Sutlers. Neither Rosamaria or Alvaro had the estimate for Pathfinders either, so they were both in the Sutlers too. I wasn't sure whether they liked having their Papa around or not. It seemed to switch every day or two, some evenings they smiled at me, other evenings they pretended I wasn't there. A bit like back on Earth really.

One thing I discovered about sports was that my upgrade in the med-tube wasn't just skin deep. I was a lot fitter than I'd been before. I could run around a soccer field with the best of them and not get tired or out of breath. I didn't know enough to coach, but I could be a linesman or even referee if there wasn't anyone else to do it. I enjoyed that a lot. Just being able to run and not have to stop after fifty yards was good. I'd forgotten what it was like, and it was nice to get back to it. It wasn't "soccer" here, it was "football"; real football they called "gridiron". In school the History teacher said the first people on Waller were a shipload of Brits, so people use a mix of British and American English –- like 'float' for the electric delivery trucks. Gets confusing sometimes, a "barbie" isn't a doll, it's a barbecue!

I could do some basic baseball coaching; I'd done more baseball than soccer when I was young the first time. At least the Brits didn't insist on cricket for everyone. They had an English team and an Australian team that played a few games. Me, I'd rather have watched paint dry. Play for five days and end up with a draw! Stupid.

Both Maria and Lupe were growing baby bumps by now. Carlita hadn't said the word yet, so me and Kim were still practicing while I was making sure that Maria and Carlita got their fair share as well.

Our biggest problem was Lupe. Being pregnant messed up her hormones and made her horny all the time. She was always visiting Miguel or one of the other neighbors. Once Carlita even let her try out the town brothel to get her pipes cleaned. It wasn't enough though. Just getting fucked didn't do it for her; she didn't want lots of different men, she wanted a few. Really she wanted one in particular -- me. I couldn't do it. She was still my daughter, in spite of all the changes. Actually, that was part of the problem. She hadn't really changed a lot so she still looked almost the same as she had back on Earth, just a bit slimmer. I was the one who'd changed. Lupe was living with this hunky new man who looked like a long-lost young uncle, not much older than herself. I was seeing the same Lupe while she was seeing the new hot-buns Carlos, not her old Papa.

I wanted her to be happy but I wasn't able to forget that she was my little girl. I was down because I couldn't help her. She was unhappy because she was getting sex without enough love. I knew I was being stubborn, and I knew that a lot of guys here were fucking their daughters. But I wasn't them, I was me and I couldn't change that. I couldn't forget she was my little girl.

I was sure Lupe had talked to Maria. She stopped calling me 'Papa' and always said 'Carlos'. That was the kind of advice Maria would have given. Lupe was trying to get Kim in on the act too. Once when I was buried deep in Kim's pussy she started up with, "Oooh yes, Papa! Ram your big hard cock in my..." She stopped as soon as she saw the look I gave her. Kim ain't stupid, so she didn't push things when they weren't wanted. That can't have been Kim's idea, I was sure Lupe had put her up to it.

Things came to a head one day. I'd been stroking Maria's baby bump. I did that a lot 'cause I thought she needed it. We both remembered that time she'd been sure I'd leave her if she had another man's baby. I wasn't happy about it, but I wasn't blaming her either, so I had her sit next to me for a stroke and a cuddle regularly. Obvious? Yes, of course it was -– and I knew she could see right through me. Still, she was sensible enough to accept it the way I meant it. Maria and I had a long enough history that she could work these things out. We weren't legally married any more, but we still had our years together.

As often happened after I'd been with Maria, Lupe sat on my lap and gave me a daughterly kiss. She took my hand and rubbed it over the gentle swelling of her own growing belly. None of that was a problem, she'd done the same before. The problem was her ass. She was wiggling around in my lap, rubbing it all over. Of course it had the effect she'd wanted all along. "Mmmm, Carlos," she purred, "is that a burrito in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?"

I looked at her sadly. It wasn't like she was being subtle about trying to seduce me. She moved my hand up to her teta, looking into my eyes.

"I'm sorry, Lupe..." I started saying.

I didn't get to finish. She jumped off my lap and screamed at me, "You don't love me Papa!" She was so angry she forgot to call me Carlos. She burst into tears and ran to her room. The noise attracted Kim and Maria, who both looked worried. They both already knew about the problem between Lupe and me. Kim followed Lupe to her room, probably to hold her hand (or more) and moan about how stupid men in general were and how I was even worse than the rest. I managed to stand up and led Maria to my room.

As soon as we got there, I cried in Maria's arms. Macho? No, but I cried. My little girl was hurting. I was hurting because she was hurting. And I knew she was hurting because I was being stubborn. I'm good at being stubborn, not always about the right things though. I cried.

Maria held me until I calmed down. "Things can't go on like this, mi amor. You know that," she told me.

"Yeah, I know it. But what do we do?"

"Leave it to me," she said. "I'll fix it. This is family, so it's my job to fix things."

She was right of course, she usually is. And she's always right when it's about family. "OK, you fix it," I told her. I didn't know how she was going to do it but I trusted her to find a way. Actually that wasn't quite right, I did know how she was going to fix it. The solution was obvious to everyone, even to me. All she needed to do was to find a way around my stubbornness. It wouldn't be direct -- that never worked, and Maria knew it never worked. She'd have to find some other way. I relaxed a bit. It wasn't my problem any more. Maria would fix things for us.