The Price of Pleasure (Saurellian Federation 1)

They had developed a new routine. Each day, she and Sarai would rise and prepare the morning meal for the men. Seth and Calvin would eat, then retire to the cockpit to discuss their “business” and look at maps of the mining belt. She and Sarai would clean up, then play quietly with the children.

The first day or two, Sarai, Mali and Able seemed afraid of Calla. She tried to find some vids for them in the ship’s digital library, but Calvin had burst into an angry diatribe the first time she turned one on. He didn’t want his children and wife “corrupted” by the outside world.

Instead she started reading to them during the day. Calvin didn’t seem to notice as long as they were quiet, and every time he came down from the cockpit she would stop, hiding the book behind her pantsuit. First she read them nursery rhymes and myths of past civilizations. Then they moved on to tales of the Emperor’s harem and stories written by a woman who had grown up in an early space colony. The children sat in fascinated silence, eyes widening at her tales. Sarai would busy herself with small tasks, but Calla knew she listened, too.

One evening, as they prepared dinner for the men, Calla asked her how she had come to be with Calvin.

“My father arranged it,” Sarai said shyly, not meeting Calla’s eyes. Now that she was clean, with her light blond hair held back in a thick braid, she looked rather pretty and very young. She had tendency to blush, adding color to her pale face. “We were married when I was fourteen.”

“Did you grow up in the asteroid belt?”

“Yes, I was born here,” she said. “My parents lived at Bethesda base. They’re dead now, though. Their transport decompressed and they were killed. It was after Able was born.”

“I’m so sorry,” Calla murmured. Perhaps there were some advantages to never having had parents. At least she only had Jess to lose … and Seth, of course. But he hadn’t ever really been hers in the first place, she thought morbidly.

“It’s all right,” Sarai said, flashing her a quick smile. “It’s been a long time. I think it was kind of a blessing for mama, anyway. My little sister was with them. She was supposed to marry a man who was not… kind. Sometimes I almost think she was lucky to go the way she did, quickly and without pain before she got married.”

“You aren’t happy with Calvin, are you?” Calla said, her heart melting at Sarai’s story. “Have you ever considered leaving him?”

Sarai stopped working, and Calla realized she was trying to control her emotions.

“I could never leave him,” she said finally, her smile faded. “I used to think about it, but there is no way.

This is the first time I’ve been off the rock since we got married, you know. The children have never left before now. There’s no way I could get away from him. I don’t have any money, I don’t have anywhere to go and I’ve only ever been to Bethesda base and the rock. There’s no place for someone like me out there, and I have my children to think about.”

Calla cast a glance over toward the children. They sat at the table, drawing pictures with an unnatural quiet. Both had been eating heartily, but were still painfully thin. Mali’s skin looked like white parchment stretched across her pale face. Able was delicate too, although he seemed tougher than his sister. Calla had noticed how protective he was of the little girl. Just like Jess was with me, she thought longing.

“What if you could leave?” she asked Sarai finally. “What would you do then?”

“Then I would leave,” the woman replied in a faint voice. “I would leave and take my children somewhere else. He’s already started talking to some of his friends about Mali. They’re going to marry her off, and I’ll never see her again… It will be another six or seven years before they do it, but I think about it all the time.”

“Maybe you’ll have a chance someday,” Calla said after a long pause.

“I doubt it,” Sarai answered. She looked at Calla with haunted eyes. “He’ll kill me before he lets me go, and no one will stand in his way. I’ve come to accept that.”

Turning away from Calla abruptly, Sarai walked across the room to the fresher. Calla moved over to the table and sat down next to Mali. The little girl had drawn a picture of four people standing together, holding hands. Two adults and two children. Mali looked up at her and smiled, the expression transforming her small, thin face.

“This is mama and me and Able and you,” she said. “We’re going to the palace to visit the emperor’s harem. When we get there, we’re going to have roast baka bird and eat candy all day long!”

“Don’t be silly,” Able said, looking at her scornfully. “We’re not going there. We’re going to Bethesda base, and then we’ll head back to the Rock. That’s what daddy says.”

“I want to go to the palace,” Mali said. “I hate the Rock, I don’t want to go back there.”

“It’s not about what we want,” Able said. “Isn’t that right, Devora? We gotta do what the men say.

That’s the way things work.”

“Yes,” Calla said softly, her heart aching for them. “Unfortunately, that’s the way things seem to work.”

* * * * *

Seth kept a close eye on Calvin as they approached Bethesda base, just as carefully as he’d watched the man all week. He wouldn’t put it past the man to attack him when they landed. He’d been eyeing the ship since they’d first arrived at his camp. Seth had done everything in his power to convince the crazed fool that he was sympathetic to the Pilgrim cause, but there was no way to know if he’d fallen for it or not. Seth wanted to get as much information as possible out of him before his cover was blown. Calvin was his key to finding the rest of the Pilgrims.

“It don’t look right,” Calvin said as they got closer, pointing toward the asteroid’s surface. “I told you them Sarelins took ‘em out. See that?”

Seth did see. On the surface was a small cluster of habitation domes. Two of the three had been blown open. The third appeared to be intact, but there were no signs of life. No activity, no moving vehicles, no lights. The landing field was completely empty of ships. Seth cautiously double-checked to make sure their shields were at their highest setting; he wanted to take as many precautions as possible before landing.

Calvin worked the radio, trying a variety of frequencies and codes. There was no response. By the time they’d landed, the man’s expression had grown ugly. Making his way down out of the cockpit, Seth thought through his options carefully. He hadn’t been able to detect any signs of life using his scanning equipment, but there were ways to fool a scanner. It would be best to leave the women on board. He would set the autopilot to take the ship back to the main base, so that if something happened to him, Devora, Sarai and the children would escape. He’d have to keep an even closer watch over Calvin. He seemed so unsettled by what had happened at Bethesda that Seth believed he might snap.