"I don't care what sex you are, if you don't care," I reassured her. "I have two sisters; I was going to share a cell with them, but this is more fun and less crowded." I considered, looking at her with a changed perception. "How old are you? You're my size—"

"Sixteen," she said. "Girls don't get as big as boys."

"I know. My sister Faith is eighteen, and she's the same size as me, and I'm not big. But I fight for her, because—you know."

"I know," she said, smiling herself. Now, with my perception of her as feminine, the expression was cute.

She wasn't as pretty as Faith—wouldn't be even if she were all garbed and coiffed like a girl—but of course no one was as pretty as Faith—but she was nice enough. There is something sort of special about any girl; they're a distinct and intriguing species. "I have no brother to fight for me, so I became a brother."

"Makes sense." It did indeed! "The way men go after Faith—that's really why we're here. I stopped a scion from getting at her."

"Scions are bad ones," she agreed. " Any man is potential trouble. I don't mean you; you're a boy. No offense."

"And you don't want to room with a man," I said, working it out. "He would make demands—I guess we should have had Faith join you. But we didn't know."

"No, I wanted you," Helse said quickly. We were still conversing in barely audible whispers, of course.

"It would look funny, a mixed couple unrelated, even at our ages, and I still have to hide my nature. I don't know who may be aboard this bubble, or what may be expected when things get dull. Please don't tell anyone."

"I promised," I said a little stiffly. "It's your secret. I'll keep it."

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"And I'll need your help, if you will give it. You see, the bathroom—"

The rest of her problem illuminated. "You'll have to use the male head! That'll be awkward, if—"

"If there's anyone else there," she finished. "Will you help me?"

"It's something no person can do for another," I pointed out, embarrassed.

She blushed. She would have to watch that, in public. "I need someone to cover for me, in case—"

"Oh, to stand by the door and make sure no man interrupts," I said. "I'll try."

"Oh, thank you! I'm most grateful."

"Actually, I'm glad to get a half share of a cell, instead of a third share. You don't have to be grateful to me." The truth was, sharing a cell with a young woman not my sister was a prospect that promised to be interesting. Like most adolescent boys, I had dreams of the opposite sex, but lacked the courage to implement them. It wasn't that I envied youths like the scion; he was obviously a heel from the outset, and should come to a bad end, if we had not succeeded in ending him. It also wasn't that I had any overwhelming procreational urge; as far as I can tell, mine is normal for my age. But there are few convenient avenues of general acquaintance with girls available to boys in my situation, and none for full sexual expression. I knew girls were not mere sex objects—after all, Spirit is a girl—but when society places a sexual emphasis on association, it is hard to relate to the opposite sex as regular people. Here was my chance to really get to know a girl who was not my sister.

Helse was looking at me as if trying to assess the nature of my agreement. I fathomed her concern.

"Don't worry," I said. "I'm a boy, not a man. I won't be grabbing for you."

"Thank you," she said, smiling wryly.

Yet I was close enough to manhood to feel the desire to grab for her. I had told myself that I valued the opportunity to have a young woman for a friend, and I did—but there was an insidious and powerful undercurrent of sexual interest too. I would have to guard myself, because if she got the notion that I might appreciate her sexual qualities, she would surely seek some other roommate, and that would abolish all speculations, licit and illicit. I had a secret of my own to keep, now.

Our turn for the head came. We slid open the panel and floated down. Head number 6 was alongside the quadruple row of cells; it was more triangular in cross section, because of the curve of the bubble shell. The Commons was a doughnut, but near the bubble's axis the chambers were lined up parallel to it.

This left a wedge-shaped space between the cellblock and the axis, where storage sheds, fuse boxes, and bathrooms were squeezed in. The bubble didn't need space for bathtubs or shower stalls, as there was no spare water in space for this sort of nonsense. People were expected to wash their bodies with small sanitary sponges that could be rinsed with half a cup of water. We didn't even bother with that; no sponges were left. People were going to have to stink. Fortunately the air recycling removed odors as well.

I was going to let Helse go in alone, but she gestured me to join her. I saw that there were other people nearby, who might deem it odd if two boys our age showed such deference to each other. Feeling a trifle guilty, I crowded in with her.

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Now the details of Helse's problem showed starkly. There were two apertures for body excretions, one for solids, the other for liquids. It was important that the functions be separated, because the recycling processes were different. Solids would clog the liquid system, and liquid would saturate the dry-compost mechanism of the other. I had known this intellectually without considering the practical side of it.

Actually, on a ten-day hop the solid recycling would not be done within the bubble; the holding tanks would be emptied elsewhere, providing rich organic material for some agricultural dome. The water, however, would be cycled through many times while we traveled.

With the facilities already being overworked by the crowding of the bubble, any abuse could be disastrous. Helse would not urinate into the solids aperture; such wrongdoing would soon be apparent as the tank fouled up. She had to use the liquids aperture—and there was a problem. Either sex could use the solid-collector funnel, as that was set in a sort of potty chair with handholds to keep the floating body proximate. But the liquids funnel was set at waist height in the vertical wall. The wall that would be vertical when spin began, I mean. At the moment, in complete free fall—for they seemed to be using the propulsive jet intermittently, saving it for some later need, so there was not even the trace thrust of acceleration—all walls were of indeterminate orientation.

I had no trouble with the liquids funnel, of course. I merely hooked my toes in the toehold slots in the floor so that my body was fixed parallel to the wall, and directed the flow appropriately. There was a slight suction that brought the fluid in; otherwise it might have floated out into the chamber in disintegrating bubbles, an obvious liability. The presence of a young woman did not bother me unduly, for our family had never been squeamish about such things; we had had to share a single bathroom, and my sisters and I had long since passed the exploration stage. But Helse—

"You'll have to hold me against the wall," she said. Her face was somewhat ruddy, as mine would have been in a similar circumstance. Obviously she hadn't wanted male cooperation; she had had to have it.

That was the solution, of course. I hooked my toes, leaned back, and caught her as she floated close.

She dropped her trousers, or rather drew them down about her legs in the absence of gravity, baring her bottom. Then she doubled up her legs and squatted against the funnel, while I held her by the shoulders and gently shoved her in to the wall. Otherwise she would simply have floated away from it, especially when—well, a rocket moves in space by jetting gas, and a person would move similarly by jetting liquid.

I closed my eyes, in deference to her modesty, after the first guilty glimpse that verified that she definitely was not male, but could still feel the slight motion of her body and hear the fluid striking the funnel. Then, abruptly, it became very exciting for me, though my reaction embarrassed me. I was lucky to have urinated first; had I done it last, I would have had more difficulty than she, albeit for a different reason. I chided myself; after all, she was only urinating. Why should this essentially pedestrian activity excite me so strongly, in that fashion? Yet there was no question that it did.

Then I opened my eyes and looked again, not to further titillate myself, though that was a consequence; I realized I had seen something odd. Yes, there it was—a small mark, or tattoo in the crease where her left leg connected to her body. Three letters: QYV.

She finished and drew her trousers back up. "Thank you," she said. "That was the help I needed."

"Sure," I mumbled, knowing I was blushing. I hoped my erection did not show. One advantage the female of the species has is the ability to conceal sexual awareness if she wishes.

"In the female section they have bidets," Helse said. "You'd have almost as much trouble using one of those."

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"Umph," I agreed, preferring to change the subject, though I was curious about what a bidet was.

We returned to our cell, and two men headed for the head, passing us in the Commons. I could tell the men didn't suspect anything; we were just two teen-age boys. My blush must have faded, or maybe it just didn't show well in the partial light, against my naturally dusky complexion.

"A female roommate couldn't have helped this way," Helse murmured as we climbed back into our cell.

She had certainly figured it well, and played it correctly. She had of course been lucky I was available, but luck is a fickle mistress that is powerless unless intelligently exploited. Helse had gambled, to the extent she had to, and won, and I respected that.

Then a complementary notion occurred. "If I ever have to use the female head—" I began.

"Yes, of course I'll help you," she agreed quickly. "There could be an occasion."

We settled down for more rest, as there wasn't much else to do. But now that my roommate's femaleness had been so unequivocally brought home to me, I could not quite relax. That sexual barrier was up between us; I kept thinking of the private glimpse of her posterior vicinity I had had. Certainly I had seen it on my sisters—though not recently, on Faith—but this was not my sister. That made an enormous difference. I wondered what the rest of her looked like, when it showed. She had done an excellent job of masquerading as a boy; nothing showed. Her chest looked just like a masculine chest.

Maybe she was flat-breasted. No, that was unlikely, because her buttocks were too rounded and her—she was at the age of nubility, and the upper part of her would certainly conform.

And my own reaction to her urination—I suppose it was because her act called more specific attention to that portion of her anatomy and the functioning of it. A person may be stimulated to hunger by seeing another person eat; why not a similar stimulation in genital matters? At any rate, I had learned something about my own organic responses. The first requirement in the understanding of other people is the understanding of oneself.

"Anyway, thanks," she said. I jumped—which didn't get me far, in free fall. I felt nervous, thinking about someone that way, when she was right there with me. I did not believe in telepathy, but my disbelief weakened at moments like that.

"Welcome," I said, and that at least was honest.

Chapter 7 — BETRAYAL

I must have snoozed—certainly I needed more rest!—because I was jolted awake when the warning klaxon went off. We had separated far enough from the planet and were about to go into spin. That meant gravity, or a reasonable facsimile, and we didn't want to be sleeping in midair when it started. I had, of course, been doing exactly that.

But it started gently enough. I heard noises from the hull and realized someone was out there in a space suit, doing something. "They're moving the drive unit around to the equator," I said, catching on. "If they angled it side-wise at the pole, it would start the bubble turning pole over pole, and it's not designed for Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

that. So they have to fasten it where it belongs for proper spin."

Then the room began to drift to the side. "Now they're starting the spin," I said, working it out in my own mind. "But at the start it's spin acceleration, so we feel it mostly sidewise. Once it gets up to proper torque, we'll feel it outwards. But it's not much of a jet, so it's slow."

"You're good at physics," Helse said.

I wasn't good at physics. I'm not, if the truth must be told—and I suppose it must, here—much good at anything apart from my judgment of people. Oh, I'm smart enough in a general way; that runs in our family, except for Faith, who got beauty instead of brains. But I owed my comprehension of the present situation more to the fact that males tune in to these things more than females do, by training and inclination. I knew Helse was gratuitously complimenting me, and the words meant nothing in themselves.

But I was flattered that she wanted to flatter me. After all, she was a year older than I, a real girl, a young woman. I was sure that in normal circumstances the likes of her would not even have noticed the likes of me. Of course, she needed my cooperation for the bathroom, so she could keep her secret; it figured that she would try to keep on my good side. Still, I was unreasonably pleased. I would have been pleased if a boy had complimented me similarly, but I knew it would not have had the same force. I wanted a genuine young woman to respect me; it made me feel almost like a young man instead of an awkward adolescent.

So she was trying to manage me—and I was eager to be managed.

Slowly the spin increased until the outer wall became the new floor and the sliding door became a ceiling exit. The slight push of the jet sidewise was constant, not increasing, while the effect of centrifugal force was cumulative, so that it came to dominate. It was good to have weight and orientation again!

In due course there was a jolt. Helse looked up, startled. "Just the drive unit being disconnected," I explained. "They have to take it back to the pole and set it up again for normal forward thrust. Now that our spin is established, it will maintain itself; the rocket is needed to continue our acceleration toward Jupiter. We'll hardly feel it pushing at right angles to our new gravity, but the bubble will get up respectable velocity in due course."

She smiled, complimenting me again, and I felt unreasonably good again. Helse had done nothing, really, to turn me on like this, but I was thoroughly turned on. For the first time in my life, I was coming to appreciate the potency with which a woman could affect a man—just by being near him.

We had been sitting on the new floor, wary of standing while our orientation was shifting. Now we stood—and I felt abruptly dizzy and had to lean quickly against a wall for support. I saw Helse react similarly. Naturally I had to set my brain scrambling for a facile explanation, lest my newfound status as a knowledgeable person suffer erosion. "The spin!" I said. "This is a small bubble, so we feel the effect.

When we stand upright, our feet are moving faster than our heads, and maybe they weigh more too. So we get dizzy, and we tend to fall sidewise, because of the physics of the situation."

"So it's not something I ate," Helse said. "I don't have to get sick."

I wish she hadn't said that word! We struggled with our equilibrium and our psychologies and managed to get ourselves less queasy and more balanced. But we could hear the sound of someone retching in a neighboring cell.

"Let me try something," I said, struck by a notion. I took my comb from my pocket, held it aloft near the ceiling just above head level, and dropped it.

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The comb took about one second to reach the floor—but it didn't fall straight down. It drifted four feet to the side and banged into the wall.

Helse gasped. "How—?"

"It's the spin, again," I said, pleased. "The hull is evidently providing us about half Earth-gravity, which I think is standard for a bubble this size. It has a diameter of about sixteen meters, which means a circumference of just over fifty meters, and so if it spins in ten seconds—"

"Wait, wait!" Helse interrupted. "I want to understand, really I do, because I think comprehension makes me less queasy. But I've had most of my education in Jupiter measurements, you know, inches and feet, and—"

Oh. I wondered how she had picked up that education, since it was normally affected on Callisto only by the rich landholders and politicians who had dealings with the Colossus Planet. But I did have some conversance with that clumsy system, so I rose to the challenge. "The bubble's radius in feet would be perhaps twenty-five," I said. "And its circumference, here just inside the hull, maybe one hundred sixty feet, roughly. So if it completes a full turn every ten seconds, which seems reasonable, a point on the hull will travel sixteen feet every second. That gives us a velocity of sixteen feet per second—no, I guess it doesn't because the deviation is tangential, not straight—"

"That's all right," she said quickly. "Now I understand the principle. But why did your comb fall sidewise?"

"Well, the floor of the Commons, our ceiling, is a little over six feet farther in, so while the hull moves sixteen feet, the ceiling moved only, let me see, twelve feet. So that's the velocity of my comb at that level. When I drop it, it can't match the velocity of the hull, so it falls four feet behind."

"Oh, yes!" she exclaimed. "Yes, of course!" And yet again she was flattering me.

"So when we go up into the Commons," I concluded, "We had better lean a little to compensate for the effects, and watch out how we jump, because we may not land where we expect. And our weight will be less on the Commons—about three-quarters what it is here. If this is half-gee here—and I really can't tell, now, so maybe it's quarter-gee, like Callisto—the Commons will be three-eighths gee, or three-sixteenths, or whatever. Anyway, less."

"I feel better already," Helse said. "Maybe some time I'll have the chance to explain something as useful to you."

She was giving me too much credit, but I could live with it. It was time for us to go abroad and meet our neighbors.

I reached up, opened the panel, and hauled myself into the Commons. Spirit had done the same thing, and other passengers were popping out of their holes, some of them looking greenish. Yes, I understood their nausea! Soon a number of us were standing on the new concave floor of the doughnut, meeting each other. Camaraderie was easy, for we all shared some significant experiences: fleeing Callisto and adapting to spin-gravity.

I introduced Helse formally to my family. "He's traveling alone," I explained. "His family couldn't support him any longer." I made sure I made the "he" plain, so that Helse would know I was honoring her secret.

I suppose technically this was lying, but I had given my word, and it would have been a greater wrong to Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

betray her. Still, I felt a twinge and resolved to cogitate upon the ethics next time I had cogitation time on my hands. Is a lie ever justified by circumstances? That's one you cannot answer in an offhand way.

Our neighbors, as it turned out, were basically similar to ourselves. They had been ground into intolerable poverty by the system, or had incurred the wrath of some person of power, or had simply come to the conclusion that they were on a dead-end street on Callisto. They were not the very poorest, for those could not even have raised the fare; they were the descending middle class, like us, or the disillusioned specialists who could no longer tolerate the system.

There was a lot of demand for the heads at this point, as people tried to get their motion-sick stomachs in order. Helse and I had overcome our problem, so were all right in that respect. I saw that a number of people were remaining in their cells, probably too sick to emerge. Time would help cure that, I was sure.

The immense if cloud-shrouded lure of Jupiter summoned us all. There we would somehow find the reprieve life had so far denied us. It was a giant mutual dream, and if it was short on practical details, at least it was better than dwelling on the problems behind us. How much better to float toward a dream than to sink into potential nightmare!

Now at last it was time to eat. Those of us who were not sick were famished, after the ardors of our departure from our lifetime homes. A bubble crewman dispensed packages of food and drink from the storage space in the center of the vessel, dropping them down through a hole in the net. People watched, amazed, as those items angled to the side, traveling twice as far horizontally as vertically. I spread my explanation around, but found that quite a number of people had already figured it out for themselves.

Spirit, always one to get into the spirit of these things, practiced jumping up to the net, which she could do with much less distortion by adjusting the angle and velocity of her take-off, then spreading her arms and flapping them as if flying, on the descent. Soon she had all the children doing it, and I suppose it was good experience. A person should always be properly conversant with his environment.

The food was staple stuff: all-purpose vitamin/mineral/protein cakes and globed water. No gourmet fare, but quite good enough to sustain us. This was, after all, not a pleasure excursion.

"We have to see to the orientation of the lenses," the pilot announced, as we squatted in groups on the Commons floor near our cells. "We need a volunteer to supervise the air lock while we're outside."

"I'll do it," an older man said. "I've floated a bubble before."

"Fair enough. I'll appoint you temporary captain for the interim. Your name is—"

"Diego," the man said. "Bernardo Diego."

"Take over, Captain Diego," the pilot said, making a mock salute. Then he entered the air lock with his two crewmen.

Diego settled down by the lock, and the rest of us returned to our repast. Helse ate with us, seeming almost to become part of our family, and I guess that was just as well. No one seemed to suspect her true nature, not even Spirit, who could be unconscionably perceptive when that was least convenient. But she was more interested in her flying and in the other people around us, learning their names; she was as good at that sort of thing as I was poor. My talent is judging, not remembering people. That's why I am not naming people freely here; I did know their names, but I have already forgotten them, and there is nothing to be gained by cudgeling my memory to recreate every last one.

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We finished our meal, and Helse and I took our turn at the head again, lining up by the cell numbers as before. We, as a group in the bubble, were fortunate that the male-female ratio of the total was just about even, for there were four heads of each type, and an imbalance would have been awkward. I helped Helse again; no one found it remarkable that two teen-age boys entered the room together, for that was the nature of boys. My mother and sisters went to their head together, though three was crowding it, and my father shared his turn with another family man. It was really working out quite well, considering the crowding. One person could use the liquid collector while another used the solid collector, and then they switched; in this way no more time was taken than it would have for one person at a time. We seemed to have a good group here, for all that it had been randomly assembled. Maybe there just happened to be a large percentage of intelligent, motivated people who couldn't abide the repressive Halfcal system.

Time passed. "How long does lens adjustment take?" I asked. "They can't stay out there forever."

"Lens adjustment?" a neighbor asked. "Was that what they said? I was in the head when they went out, and didn't hear."

"Orientation of the lenses," I informed him. "They appointed a temporary captain from our number while they were out."

"But a gravity lens is not oriented from outside," the man protested. I remember his name now: it was García. "The lenses are not physical objects; they are fields, generated by a unit in the center of the bubble. It has to be that way; otherwise the spin would interfere with the gravity shielding, and we'd be jerking all over the cosmos. I used to be a technician. I'm not expert, but that much I do know."

"That's right!" I agreed, chastened for not realizing it myself. I excuse myself in retrospect by pointing out that we were then in a new situation, adjusting to the spin in various ways, eating our first bubble meal, and meeting our neighbors, so that the affairs of the crewmen were not uppermost in our minds. Probably that was the way the crewmen had intended it. "They had no reason to go out for that—and one of them would have had to stay inside to change the settings if they were wrong."

"We had better investigate," my father said.

He and I and García made our way to Diego to present our concern. Diego looked stricken. "You know, you're right! They don't need the lifeboat to check the lenses!"

"Lifeboat?" I asked, experiencing a sinking sensation that my trace weight could not account for—

"This lock opens to the lifeboat," Diego explained. "That's why they didn't need space suits this time. The boat's sealed, with its own supplies. I believe they stored the gold in there, for safekeeping—" Now his face was as aghast as mine had been.

It took us some time to verify and believe it, for our resources and information were limited and we didn't want to believe it. We had to get out the space suits and go outside the air lock to search for the lifeboat that wasn't there. But it was true: The three bubble crewmen had decamped with the gold. We were abruptly on our own, without even a lifeboat, in space.

We organized a meeting to discuss the situation and work out our options. Most of the refugees were in a state of disbelief; surely the crew would come back! They couldn't leave us stranded in space! Who would pilot the bubble? How would we get to Jupiter? But as time passed, more people believed. We realized that there was close to $50,000 in gold involved, and that this old bubble, converted from a retired pleasure craft, could not be worth more than $5,000. Perhaps a similar amount was invested in Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

supplies. The crewmen had the money, so weren't bothering to carry through with their commitment.

They were thieves or swindlers—and we had been taken.

Some women became hysterical. Some people retreated to their cells, refusing to face our situation. But a solid nucleus remained to tackle the problem. After all, if we ignored it, we would all perish. We could not simply float forever in space.

Diego argued in favor of reversing our thrust and descending to Callisto and taking our chances there.

But too many people had cut their ties to the society below; return would mean harsh treatment by the government of Half-cal.

My father argued that if we could manage to operate the lenses and jet well enough to descend safely, we could use them as readily to proceed on our original mission. We could float the bubble to Jupiter ourselves!

There were arguments back and forth, but in the end we took a vote and my father was elected to be the new captain, since he had spoken for the majority. He immediately appointed Diego lieutenant captain. "If something prevents us from going forward, you will be the one to take us back," he explained to the man. "You will need experience in handling the bubble, just in case. We are still a long way from Jupiter! Meanwhile, you're in charge of bubbleboard operations."

Diego, who had been working up an irritation of temper when he saw the vote going against him, became mollified. My father had acted to preserve harmony in the bubble, and I noted this and learned from it. A person who opposes you does not have to be your enemy.

"Anyone who knows anything about navigation, come to me now," my father announced. "We need all the expertise we have, because I'm no space mechanic. We're a long way from the coffee plantation now!"

"And anyone who knows anything about supplies, atmosphere, recycling, sanitary facilities, or human motivation come to me," Diego announced. "We've got to keep this bubble healthy while it's going wherever it's going."

I hesitated, then went to join Diego. Helse tagged along with me.

As it turned out, we were fairly well off. Diego found people to monitor the pressure and oxygenation equipment and check the funnel toilets. He glanced at me, and I was about to explain that I was good at human motivation, but he spoke first. "You're Hubris's boy, aren't you? You'll be in charge of food supplies. First thing you'll want to do is get up there in the net and make a count, just to be sure we have enough."

"Uh—yes, señor," I said, realizing that he was doing the same thing my father was: appointing a potential malcontent to a responsible position. My father had made Diego second-in-command, so Diego was giving recognition to my father's son. It was a mutual backscratching operation, but I suppose it did alleviate tensions.

"And take your friend," Diego added.

Helse was glad to participate. She had been staying close to me so she wouldn't have to tell her secret to anyone else. How this suddenly critical situation would affect her personally I didn't know, but it was unlikely to facilitate her serenity.

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We clambered into the webbed chamber. I profited from my reasoning about the distortion caused by our spin, but still it took me two jumps to catch the entrance aperture in the net. Our weight was much less here, for we were near the center of the bubble. In fact, some of the packages were floating, glancing off each other like molecules in motion. It was a good place for storage, since even the heaviest article could readily be moved here in free fall. This doughnut hole space was only four meters in diameter, so just by standing on the lattice net we had our heads just about banging the globe that enclosed the lens generator. It was a strange sensation: feet with trace gravity, head with none.

But we really could not conveniently stand, because the food packs and water bags and such mostly filled it. Some refugees had stored baggage up here, sensibly enough. So counting the food packs was a problem, because they didn't stay put very well. We could end up counting some several times and missing others completely. It might average out and lead to a correct count—but this was too important to leave to chance. Without food we would be in deep and early trouble.

I stuck my head down, out of the hole of the lattice. I spied Spirit, who was naturally curious about what I was doing, and tired of playing. "Tell Señor Diego we need a bag or something to count them into; a big bag," I called to her.

Soon she was back with a voluminously bulging armful of the kind of netting used to sweep rooms clean in free fall. She scrambled up with it, using this pretext to get in on the fun. It was all right; we were able to use her help. Spirit could be extremely helpful when she wanted to be.

We counted food packs into the net. There were quite a number, but in time we got a close enough figure: about 2,800.

"How many will we need for ten days' travel to Jupiter?" Helse asked.

I did some quick computations. "Three per person, per day, for two hundred people—that's six hundred. Times ten days—" I broke off. "Oops!"

"That's not enough!" Spirit said.

I worked it out another way. "We've already had one meal, so that's two hundred. We must have started with three thousand. That's enough for a normal load of one hundred people—but we're overloaded. So there's only half enough."

"Why didn't they pack more?" Helse asked.

Suddenly it all fitted together. "They must have planned for one hundred, but twice as many refugees showed up, so they took us all. Because of the money. Then they realized they couldn't feed us all, so they took the money and flew."

"Leaving us to starve in space!" Spirit exclaimed angrily.

"So it seems," I agreed wearily. "They planned a legitimate venture, but greed overwhelmed them, and we are left to pay the price. We'd better make a private report to Señor Diego, so the people won't panic."

We glided down, hitting the Commons deck running so as not to be swept off our feet by its higher velocity. I noticed this time that there was a constant movement of air, for it had the same problem we Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

did: differing velocities at different elevations. It tended to drag at the floor and to rush at the net ceiling.

Well, that helped circulate it, so the purifiers could operate effectively.

We approached Diego. "How many?" he asked.

"Twenty-eight hundred," I murmured.

He leaned against the curving wall. "You sure?"

All three of us nodded solemnly.

He led us to my father, who was at the control section of the bubble. "Tell him," Diego said to me.

"There're only half enough food packs," I said.

My father considered the implications. "I'll call another meeting," he said grimly.

Soon it was done. My father summarized the situation. "So it seems we don't have enough food to make our journey," he concluded.

"How do we know the count's correct?" a man demanded. "Diego doesn't want to make the trip, so he could have—"

"My son made the count," my father said. And I realized how neatly Diego had arranged it. He must have suspected that the supplies would be short, so made sure no suspicion would attach to him.

Regardless, it was true; we didn't have enough food.

"What about oxygen?" the man asked.

"There's enough," Diego replied. "Another crew checked that. And most of the water is recycled. It's only food we're short." And I realized that, whatever his preferences, Diego was trying to do an honest job. Had I interacted with him longer and paid more attention, I would have perceived what I now did; he was an honest man, expressing honest judgments. He had not urged our return to Callisto because he wanted to be a leader, but because he truly believed that was the best course. Snap judgments are treacherous.

"We could travel on half rations," my father said. "We would be hungry, but we wouldn't starve, and for ten days it should be bearable. If it were longer, we could try to use our refuse to grow edible plants, but we really aren't set up for that, and in ten days that won't work. But we can do it on what we have—if we wish to make the sacrifice. I won't insist on that unless there's a clear consensus."

There was debate. The democratic process does take time! Then we took a vote. It was about four to one in favor of going on to Jupiter. Diego, amazingly, voted with the majority. "We have better leadership than we had before," he explained wryly to those who looked askance at him. "I think we can make it now, with Don Hubris."

My father smiled. "Thank you, Don Diego." And there was a minor ripple of appreciation, for there is this about that polite title of Don in our language: It is generally used with the given name, not the surname.

They should have said Don Major and Don Bernardo—and indeed, thereafter they did so. I am not sure why they elected to misuse it this one time; there are aspects of adult humor and interaction I have not yet mastered. Perhaps Diego had simply not known my father's given name before.

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The navigation crew had a fair notion what it was doing. Señor García explained it for those of us who were interested, and at this point most of the refugees were. All of us wanted reassurance that we were not traveling into doom. The details were somewhat technical for me, but here is the way I understand it.

Our bubble was now floating inside the orbit of Callisto—that is, closer to Jupiter—but moving ahead of Callisto because of the increased velocity of the inner orbit. We continued to jet in the reverse direction, with the paradoxical effect of increasing orbital velocity. In less than five days we would be a quarter of the way around Jupiter from our starting point. Then we would use the gravity of the sun to slow us, for we would be swinging away from the sun. That would slide us closer yet toward Jupiter. We would also try to use the gravities of Jupiter's inner moons, until we were close enough to orbit in the range of Jupiter's innermost rings. At that point the Jupiter Border Patrol would intercept us, and we would claim our status as refugees from the oppression of our homeland. They would take us in, of course. Jupiter had a standard policy of absorbing refugees in search of freedom.

Ah, but life is seldom as neat and simple as it appears! It was Hell we were so blithely floating into!

Chapter 8 — ADJUSTMENT

Jupiter Orbit, 2-10-'15—I need not repeat the sequence of the pirate raid that occurred two days before this dateline, and the horror that befell my sister Faith. It was a brutal awakening for all of us; we had not before believed in the reputed savagery of the outlaws of space. Yet for me especially it was a turning point; my belief in the fundamental goodwill of all men had been destroyed by the Horse.

The Horse! Damn that pirate for what he did to us all, to our minds as much as to Faith's body. It was necessary for me to reconstruct my philosophy of life, to cope with the ugly new reality. I did not agree with this reality, or even understand it, but I had to live with it. I am not sure I can successfully present the tides of my changed awareness, so this may be disjointed or fragmentary, but I will try.

On Callisto, in Maraud—ah, that name had a changed relevance now!—I had succeeded in defending my sister from the lust of a strange man. Here in space I had not. True, my entire family had paid a gross penalty for my prior defense, having to flee the planet—but what was the penalty for my failure this time?

I simply could not grasp it. Would it have been better to let the scion have his way? Could anything he might have done to Faith have been worse than what the foul pirate had done? I had to ask myself whether my victory over the scion had been illusory, and I was uncertain of the answer. Of course I could not have let the scion have his way—yet how could I have reacted to truly preserve my innocent sister? I had a deep and terrible guilt to settle in my own mind, apart from the other present problems of existence.

I was jogged to awareness by friends—they had been only casual acquaintances, but suddenly now they were friends who were lowering me from my prison of suspension and untying my hands. Oh, it hurt as the circulation returned, for even my trace weight had caused the bindings to constrict—but it was in my mind that I deserved such pain, as part of my punishment for my failure.

The pirates were gone. The Horse had kept his word, such as it was, departing with his crew, leaving our valuables behind. He had not promised not to rape, merely not to rob or kill, and to leave us alone.

There was, it seemed, a kind of honor among criminals, but it was subject to a savage interpretation. It galled me anew that I could not entirely condemn the Horse; he did have some spark of humanity in him, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

though he was a bad man. I would much rather have cursed him absolutely.

Faith lay as she had been left, not even trying to cover her shame. I think she was still unconscious. My mother rushed up to minister to her, and the other women closed in, as though whatever they might do was no fit matter for the eyes of males. Perhaps they were correct. The men, in turn, clustered around my father and me, as we stood chafing our hands and wrists and wincing from the pain. "We didn't know,"

they murmured. "We couldn't know!" "The pirate gave his word!"

"He kept his word," my father said, his voice oddly calm. "The agreement wasn't tight. Maybe he did us a favor—teaching us the reality of space without killing us." He turned to me, and there was something blank about his countenance. I had been concerned with my own horror—what, then, of his? He had watched his daughter ravaged! "My son was right. We should not have given up our advantage."

"But that laser—" another man protested, then halted. The deal with the pirates had, in fact, traded the lives of several men, including my father, for the violation of my sister.

An aspect of reality laid siege to my awareness at that point. Which was worse: the death of my father or the rape of my sister? If I had had the power to choose between the two, knowing...

Helse came up and took me by the hand and led me to our cell, and no one objected. They knew I needed to be out of it for a while.

She put me on the floor as a nurse might place a non-resisting patient on a bed, then jumped up to close the panel in the ceiling, separating us from the rest of the bubble. Then she kneeled beside me. "I understand," she murmured. "I can help you, Hope."

"What do you know of rape?" I flared.

She took my unresisting hand and squeezed my fingers gently. It was foolish, I told myself, but I was reassured. The cell was deeply shadowed, since only a little light filtered through the translucent panel from the Commons, and that was just as well, for admixed with my horror was the shame of unmanly tears. "I know a lot about it," she said.

"Oh, sure!" My pain was turning on her, the nearest object. I knew this was unfair, but I had little control. The savagery to which my awareness had been subjected was too much for me to control; I could not react in an intelligent manner.

She leaned down, wrapped her arms around me, and lifted me in the partial gravity and drew me close to her, my head against her chest. She wore a tight band to flatten her breasts, to make her torso look masculine; now she paused to release this, and cradled my face to her abruptly feminine bosom, and it was marvelously compelling. She was indeed a woman, and soft in the way only a woman could be, and I felt her measured breathing and heard her steady heartbeat, and I was pacified.

"I'll tell you about me," she said, speaking in a low and even tone so that others would not overhear. I think she was talking in order to distract me from the raw shock of what I had just seen, to give my soul a small time to heal, but before long the nature of what she was saying penetrated, and I really was distracted. Of course her monologue was not as succinct as I render it here from memory, but it was as important. I listened, and was slowly amazed.

Helse came from a family larger and poorer than ours, living in one of the smaller city-domes. She had been a pretty child, and in order to gain money on which to survive, they had rented her at the age of six Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

to a middle-aged bachelor landowner as concubine. This was legitimate, socially, in that dome, though it has no legal status. There was merely an understanding that permeated that limited society from the poorest to the wealthiest; it had existed thus covertly for centuries, and it seemed no one really wanted to change it.

This landowner had never married, because he was unable to relate to adult women; he liked children, and had the wealth and power to indulge his propensities. His appetite was generally known but never openly bruited about, and he was generous to those who indulged him. Thus Helse's family, possessed of a pretty female child, had not been directly coerced to put their daughter into his hands; they had seized upon the opportunity to alleviate their poverty for the few years during which they had something worth selling.

Helse had called him "Uncle" and he had called her "Niece." This was to facilitate a nonexistent relationship that would satisfy any question that might arise among occasional visitors or business acquaintances. Uncle was not a bad man, and he did not brutalize her. Far from it! He fed her well and gave her nice clothing and toys and presents. If she expressed an interest in something, she would have it the next day. He also provided her with a series of excellent tutors who set about giving her a proper upper-class education. Yet this was not an adult-child relationship; it was a courtship.

He courted her, and she was delighted. She regarded her position in his mansion as the privilege of being desirable; other girls her age had vied for it, but she had been chosen. But she knew she had to submit to whatever he chose to do with her body, and not all of that was fun. This was the price of her gifts and good life. If she ever once said no, or intimated that she objected, it would be over. She had the constant option of returning to her family—and this was not a promise, it was an unspoken threat. It was not that she didn't want to go home, but that it would be disaster to be sent home. She had to succeed. The kissing and fondling was easy enough, but the culmination was painful. He was a mature man and she was a child; no amount of gentleness could completely alleviate that.

Yet there were physical and mental devices, and she knew he did not mean or want to hurt her. He was driven by adult urges she did not understand, but he wanted to believe that she liked what he did. She learned to take relaxant medication and to dissemble her real reaction, for Uncle was most generous when most pleased. Experience made it easier, and in time she developed a certain pride in her competence. She became proficient in pleasing this man.

She was no prisoner. She was able to visit her family, sometimes for an hour, sometimes for a night. She brought them nice gifts that made all of their lives better. This was done with the approval and cooperation of Uncle, who wanted her to be happy. It seemed she pleased him more than others had, and now reaped commensurate rewards. But no direct word was ever spoken of her real place in Uncle's household; she was his niece, with certain poor relatives she liked to help.

In fact, she was now the principal provider for her family. Her father found work only intermittently, but Helse's work was steady. She became important in her own eyes, and perhaps she became arrogant, but this was her right.

For four years Helse was a little princess in Uncle's mansion, her every wish catered to by his other servants. He had an excellent staff, and they too understood their situations perfectly; there was no covert unkindness to her or embarrassing leaks of information. They were, in a fairly real sense, an extended family, each concerned with the welfare of the group. When a high official of the city visited, expressed a certain curiosity about rumors he had heard, and spread some money privately to confirm them, the staff members accepted the money and assured him with absolute sincerity that there was nothing to the rumors. When he questioned the naïve child Helse, she gave him similar assurance with marvelous Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

innocence. Yet he knew, for he had other sources of information. "I'd like to know your secret," he confessed ruefully. "How do you compel their loyalty?" And Uncle had smiled and not answered. This official was known to beat his own servants. The fact was that, apart from his sexual aberration, Uncle was a good and kind man, and his staff protected him because all its members genuinely cared for him.

Wealth alone could not purchase that.

But at age ten Helse was getting too old, past her prime, as it were, and had to make way for a younger girl. She stifled her savage jealousy, knowing there was no percentage in it. She had known this would happen from the start; the staff had made it clear. She had to master adult grace in the face of the inevitable, and if she was unable to stifle a genuine tear in parting, this was not objectionable. Uncle gave her a generous separation bonus, and it was over. She was retired.

"You liked it!" I exclaimed, appalled. "You wanted to stay with the child molester!" For, though I have rendered her narration as politely as I can, I have no sympathy with it. My family upbringing simply does not provide me with much tolerance for this sort of abuse of children.

"I liked the life, and I respected the man," she qualified. "I wish I could have been his real niece. He was not a molester, merely a person with a specialized taste. Some men like young, nubile women; some like fat women; some like other men, or boys; this one liked children. Uncle never raped anyone."

That shut me up. Obviously her "uncle" was a better man than the pirate Horse. I had to broaden my definitions.

There were, however, openings for experienced intermediate-aged children, Helse continued, and her family always needed money. So she went to work for a new employer. But this one had more violent tastes. For him there had to be humiliation and pain. It was not exactly rape, for he had paid for what he wanted and obtained prior acquiescence; it was more like submitting to necessary surgery with inadequate anesthetic. The money was good, however, and she learned to endure this too. The one thing she insisted on was that no injury be done that would leave a mark or scar on her face or any portion of her body that normally showed.

I expressed curiosity, so she showed me some of the scars she did have, on her abdomen and back. I shuddered; the origin of those must have been painful indeed. She certainly had had experience being tormented by men.

"But finally I got too old for any of that stuff," she concluded. "I could no longer earn enough to support my family. Not without risking my health or life. I had no better prospect than a life of formal prostitution.

So I squandered my nest egg on this voyage and concealed my nature, so there wouldn't be any more trouble. I've had enough sex, especially painful sex, to last me a lifetime."

That I could appreciate. I knew she was telling me the truth. Her ploy had been effective; the pirates had never even thought of raping Helse.

"But my point is, a girl can survive it," she said. "What happened to your sister is terrible, because she wasn't prepared for it, but there are worse things. I have survived worse."

Again I believed her. Obviously she had prettied up her story for me. Helse was a nice girl—but she had had experiences I had never dreamed of. She maintained her emotional equilibrium; her mind had not been devastated. I realized that if Faith could adjust her thinking similarly, she would suffer far less. "I wish you could talk to Faith," I said.

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"I will—if you want me to."

I reconsidered. "No, that would give away your secret, and I don't know that it would help her. I'll talk to her myself."

"She could learn to pass for male," she suggested. "That could save her a lot of trouble."

"Faith just isn't the type," I said. "But Spirit—"

"Your little sister is in danger too," Helse said. "This time the pirates went after the obvious, and were satisfied. Your sister Faith stands out in a crowd; every man's eye was on her from the start. You tried to shield her, but it was impossible. Next time they could go after the rest. There are men like that. I know."

She certainly did! I thought of my little sister getting raped in the manner of my big sister, and a kind of blackness clouded my mind's eye. "Spirit's a good kid. She can fight, and she can keep a secret. Will you teach her how to pass?"

"If you ask me to."

There was something about the way she said that. I realized that I did not yet completely understand her.

"What do you want in return?" I asked.

"I like you."

"I don't understand."

"That's why I like you."

"I like you too. But this is business! If there is something you—"

"What I want can't be bought. Just ask me to teach your sister."

"All right," I said, slightly nettled. "I'm asking you."

"Then I'll do it."

My sense about people, as I've mentioned, is infallible. But that's a matter of comprehending motive, not of understanding every nuance. It is possible, for example, to know that a man is honest without knowing how to operate his business. Helse was not deceiving me. Yet she did want something from me—and she would not tell me what. That was a paradox of a type I had not encountered before, and it baffled me.

Then I remembered something else. "Would you answer a question—if I asked you?"

"Yes, Hope," she said.

"When you—when we were in the head, the first time—I didn't mean to look but I saw—what is that tattoo on your thigh?"

She sighed. "I promised to answer. But you must promise not to tell."

"All right," I said.

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"I told you I used my nest-egg money to pay for my passage on the bubble, but I didn't tell you how I got the money. My family had used up all that I had from Uncle and the other employers, and they don't pay that amount for—you know. But I was still friends with Uncle, and I phoned him privately—" She paused a moment, frowning. "His current niece answered the vid. She was the second one since me. A cute little girl. I couldn't tell her I knew, of course. It jolted me, though." She shrugged, then returned to her explanation. "I asked Uncle how I could get to Jupiter. I wasn't asking for money, just advice, and he knew that. I think he was flattered that I should think of him in that connection. He sent me to a man, and the man didn't want sex. He asked me why I wanted to go to Jupiter, and I told him it was to find a better kind of work. He said he couldn't guarantee the work, but that he could facilitate my trip there. All I had to do was carry a message to a certain person, whose name was Kife, or so it sounded. For that service I would be given the money to get passage and would be protected on the way. The tattoo is my protection."

"That tattoo—three letters where no one can see them? How do they protect you?"

"They spell Kife," she said. "Hard Q, vowel Y, hard V. All I have to do is say the word to any criminal who threatens me, and he will stop. If he doesn't I can show him my tattoo—he's bound to see that anyway, if he means to rape me—and that will prove I'm authentic. But the mere spoken word is supposed to be enough. So I will not be molested by criminals, and of course law-abiding men will not bother me."

I shook my head. "You believe that?"

"No," she confessed. "Not completely. That's why I conceal my sex. But if I really am threatened, I'll try the word. Maybe criminals really are scared of Kife. After all, if he can afford that kind of money just to deliver one message, he must have a lot of power."

"What's the message?" I asked.

She shrugged. "That's the funniest part. I wasn't given any."

"You were paid a thousand dollars to deliver no message?"

"Three hundred, for an individual. The man said Kife would understand when he saw me."

I was having trouble with this. "Just the sight of you would tell him something? Are you sure you aren't—I mean, that it is you he—"

Helse laughed. "For sex? Hope, I'm hardly that special! I'm third-hand goods. No one would pay three hundred dollars for my body! For your sister's maybe; for mine, no."

She was probably right. The going rate was less than a hundredth of that—as it had been for Faith.

Pirates didn't pay for what they could take by force. "Did the tattoo hurt?"

"No. The man gave me a sniff of gas, and when I recovered consciousness it was over. It didn't even sting."

"Gas! Then he could have—"

She put her hand on my arm. "No, Hope. There was no sex. I can tell. I was surprised, because that is Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

usually a matter of course with such men. If he had wanted sex, I would have done it, and he knew that. I just wanted to get to Jupiter, the land of hope—no play on your name, Hope—whatever the price. I was put under so the tattoo wouldn't hurt; that was all."

I sighed. "I was curious about the tattoo. Now I'm twice as curious! There's something we don't know."

"That's what you get, for curiosity," she said, smiling in the shadow. She was very pretty, that way. "But please don't tell anyone. Just in case it is important."

"I won't tell." At this point I almost wished I hadn't asked. I hate unsolved riddles.

However unconnected all this may seem in retrospect, I have to say that Helse had succeeded in what she set out to do: She had broken my mood of shock, enabling me to function more or less normally, for the time being.

My father plunged into the task of navigation; evidently he had come to his own terms with the situations of the bubble and of Faith. Adults seem to have greater resources in that respect than people my age do.

Diego got to work on bubble defense. All of us who weren't otherwise occupied went to classes on combat. There was a retired martial artist among the refugees, an old man whose days of competition were decades past, but he possessed a lifetime of devastating knowledge. Had we had any warning about the raid of the pirates, he could have prepared us for them, but he too had been caught unawares.

He explained at the outset that there was little we could master in one or two days that would balk armed pirates, so it was best that we concentrate on fairly simple, crude defenses. He showed us how to fashion weapons of incidental objects, even wads of paper, and how to protect ourselves when disarmed. "A girl does not have to submit to rape by a lone man," he said, getting right down to the point.

"The one we saw—there she was helpless. But usually it is just one man at a time. She has teeth, she has knees, she has fingers. The rapist has a nose, and testicles, and eyes."

We listened doubtfully. "I will demonstrate," the instructor said. He dug in a bag he had and produced a rubber mask with bulging Ping-Pong-ball eyes and a huge beak of a nose. "A young woman for a volunteer, please."

Spirit jumped forward, naturally. I suppose she had not understood what had happened to Faith, so was not devastated. "No, not a child!" a woman protested.

I glanced at Helse, understanding something she had said. "Pirates don't worry much about age," I said.

The instructor agreed. "Unfortunately true. Children need protection most of all—male and female." That startled me and I wasn't alone. Male?

He took Spirit aside and talked to her, explaining something in a voice too low for us to hear. She grinned, enjoying it. I noticed she wasn't wearing her finger-whip; she didn't want people to know about that, any more than I wanted them to know about my laser pistol.

Then they faced the class. "I am a pirate rapist," the instructor said, donning the grotesque mask. "This child is the victim. Watch what she does."

He turned on Spirit and clapped his hands on her shoulders, hauling her off her feet in the partial gravity Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

of the Commons. "Ha, my pretty!" he cried. "I, fell pirate that I am, shall rape you to pieces!" He drew her in.

Spirit's knee came up suddenly. There was a solid contact. The man grunted and collapsed into a ball.

"Hey!" I cried, horrified. "You weren't really supposed to knee him!"

But the instructor uncurled and got up, unharmed, and Spirit was laughing joyfully. "I only kneed the outside of his hip, on the side away from you, silly," she explained. "In a real situation I would have aimed better."

The class relaxed. The point had been made. Girls had knees.

The instructor came at Spirit again, quickly drawing her in so close she could not bring her knee up effectively. His hands closed about her throat, choking her. Close as he was, this was not completely effective, but it looked bad enough.

But Spirit's own hands were free. Quickly she reached up to his face. Her fingers dug into his eye—and an eyeball popped out of its socket and flew through the air.

There was a scream from the class—followed by nervous laughter. It was not a real eyeball; it was a painted Ping-Pong ball from the mask he wore. But again the point had been made: Girls had fingers, and rapists had eyes.

A third time the instructor grabbed her. Now he pinned her arms under his own and held her close against him as they fell to the deck. No knees, no fingers were free. His leering one-eyed mask face thrust down against hers, as for a brutal kiss.

Spirit opened her mouth, jerked her head up, and bit into the huge plastic nose. The instructor roared in simulated pain, but she ripped the nose from the mask. Third point made: Girls had teeth.

The instructor let her go and got up. "So who is going to rape this child?" he asked rhetorically. "If not the nose, the tongue, or the ear. Chew hard, taste the blood, and rape will be forgotten. But when he lets go of you, flee for your life!" He paused, then added a sober qualification. "But if you are one and they are many, or the rapist is very strong, you cannot prevail. Hurt one and the others will kill you. In that case, it is better to submit. There are worse things than rape."

Which, again, was what Helse had said. The entire complement of the bubble was conscious of rape now, and trying to defuse it, to make it seem less evil. But the memory of Faith's ordeal remained fresh in my mind, and I wondered.

We practiced other techniques of self-defense, but they were less dramatic. Both throws and strikes were less effective in partial gravity than they would have been in full gravity, and we were more conscious than ever of our vulnerability to the superior weapons of the pirates. We were now much better prepared for the next pirate raid, assuming one came, but not very confident about our ability to fend them off.

Meanwhile, my father's crew kept tinkering with the gravity-lens projectors, shielding us against Callisto gravity and leaving us open to the backward pull of the sun. It took constant adjustment, but we seemed to be on schedule, and that was important, because our half rations would not last longer than we had budgeted. My description of our ongoing activities may make it seem as if we were lighthearted, but this Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

was not the case; we were distracting ourselves from the fundamental grimness of our situation.

I brought Spirit in for a quiet conference with Helse. "You're a girl?" Spirit exclaimed, round-eyed. "I don't believe it!"

Helse opened enough of her shirt to show her strapped breasts. This was the first time I had actually seen them, and I felt guilty, and slightly irritated for that feeling.

"Hope has asked me to teach you how to be a boy," Helse said.

"I don't want to be a boy!" Spirit protested. "I'm just barely getting ready to start being a girl!"

"If the pirates come again, you be a boy," I said firmly. "After what happened to Faith, and what Helse has told me of the appetites of some men—"

Spirit nodded soberly, not continuing the argument the way I had expected. "I'll do it. I saw those pirates too, you know. Poor Faith! Why don't you go talk to her now, Hope? She needs you."

Surprised, I went, leaving Helse to teach Spirit whatever was needed privately. I knew Spirit would pick it up rapidly, for she had hardly begun to develop and was boyishly lanky. She also had that spirit of adventure that made her good at new things.

Faith was alone in cell 75, and cell 76 was empty for the moment, as my parents were busy elsewhere.

None of our other neighbors were in their cells. We could talk in fair privacy.

Seeing her was a shock. My older sister had always been beautiful, but now she was not. The past two days had made an unkempt wretch of her. Her fair tresses were tangled, her clothing was creased and dirty, and her eyes were hollowed and staring. I had stayed away from her, knowing I had nothing to offer except guilt for my neglect, knowing that only my mother could do what little might be done.

"Faith..." I said tentatively, afraid she would screech at me to be gone, as perhaps I deserved. I had heard her crying, faintly, on and off, through the cell walls, and so had known she was not resting easy.

That had intensified my guilt but not my courage. What could I say to her, really?

She looked up at me. She was not catatonic, as I had half feared. "Hope!" she said, her face brightening as she reached for my hands. "I missed you."

"I failed you," I said. "I'm sorry." That was grossly inadequate, and suddenly I was hopelessly choked, the despicable tears pushing through my eyes, and I tried to pull my hands away from her. In some times past it has been socially acceptable for a man to cry, but not in this century.

"No, no!" she protested. "You tried, Hope, you tried! No one could help me. I brought it on myself."

"The pirates did it!" I ground out bitterly. "I'll kill—"

"Am I still your sister?" she asked, not loudly.

Startled, I paused for reflection. What did she mean? I am a good judge of character, but this was a matter beyond my compass.

She was looking at me, and I realized that I had to answer. She placed great importance on this matter, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

confusing as the implication might be. "Of course you're my sister," I said. "How could it be otherwise?"

"I'm not what I was," she said.

She thought the rape had degraded her! "The fault is not yours!" I exclaimed. " No fault is yours! You were the victim of—"

Again I paused, suffering an ugly realization. "Of a male," I concluded. My sister had been shamefully abused—and I was a member of the species that had done it. I had a penis, the weapon of the male; I was culpable. I had experienced an infernal excitement as I watched the horror of her humiliation; I could not pretend otherwise. It had been the same when I helped Helse in the head; my member was eager to follow the course of the pirate's.

We talked more, and I think I helped her feel better. It was the least I could do. She was still my sister, but I was not sure I was still her brother. The seed of self-aversion had been planted in me, and it grew with a smoldering persistence. I hoped God would smite me if I ever had another erection, or even thought of touching a woman sexually. Male lust had destroyed my lovely sister, and I could not afford to share any part of that evil.

Chapter 9 — MASSACRE

Jupiter Orbit, 2-12-'15—We were hungry, but we were closing on the Jupiter ring system. In three more days we should be there.

Another ship overhauled us. My father looked worried. "Friend or enemy?" he asked.

"We can't take the chance," Diego said. "We must assume we have few friends in space. We'll have to set an ambush."

"But if they're friendly—we do need food."

"I didn't mean we'd attack them unprovoked, señor. We just need to be armed and ready—and if they manifest as pirates, we'll jump them, and this time we won't let them go. If they're not pirates, we'll never show what we're ready for."

My father nodded. "Sounds good to me. That means we'll have to act normal, with the women and children in evidence."

"Yes. But at the same time we must be armed and ready. We know the penalty for failure!"

"We know," my father agreed grimly. He hardly showed his reaction to the rape of his daughter, but I knew he had been deeply wounded. I think he maintained a firm presence because he was afraid my mother would collapse if he did not. I would have considered this mutual bracing in crisis to be a good object lesson in human nature had it not been my own family concerned. So my father carried on in a nearly normal manner, while my mother stayed mostly out of sight, and I think I understood them both and respected them for the way they handled it. Naturally I had to carry on too, so as not to weaken the family effort.

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The ship closed and locked onto our main air lock. I wished there were some way to prevent this, but the designers of bubbles had not anticipated the problem of piracy in deep space. Any ship could attach to and board a bubble; all locks were interconnectable. Thus the best of intentions led to the worst of errors—as far as we were concerned.

The lock opened, being worked from the other side, and gaudily garbed, bearded men trooped in. They certainly looked like pirates!

My father went up to them. "We're glad you have come! We're trying to get to Jupiter, but we're short of food—"

The man hardly looked at him. "Bind the men. Line up the women—the young ones. We'll loot after we're sated—"

Diego needed no more. These pirates weren't even making any pretence at honest dealing! He drew a penknife and slashed at the nearest pirate, cutting his sword arm. The pirate screamed.

Our other men pounced, two to a pirate. In moments, almost bloodlessly, our forces had made the pirates captive. Our preparation had paid off handsomely!

Then something strange happened. There was a thin, keening sound, not exactly painful—but somehow I lost volition. I had been sitting with Spirit, who was now garbed as a boy, where we could keep an eye on both the pirates and cell 75, where Helse and Faith were. We were keeping both of them out of the action, just in case, though the rest of the bubble thought Helse was male. Now I watched the pirates turn on Diego and my father and throw them against the wall near the air lock—and somehow I didn't react.

García was near us. "Oh, no," he muttered. "They've got a pacifier."

A pacifier. I knew what that was, though I had never before experienced its effect personally. It was an electronic gadget that broadcast a semi-sonic wave that interfered with the human nervous system. It did not damage people or knock them out; it merely diluted their concentration or their will to action. It was like a soporific drug. Some rich men used these devices as sleeping medication, and they were supposed to be useful in prisons and mental institutions. And yes, I had heard of them being used illicitly to make women unresistive to rape. They were far too expensive for peasants to own; the pirates must have stolen one in the course of their routine marauding and kept it in reserve for just such an occasion as this.

Probably someone in their ship had orders to watch and turn it on when things went wrong for them—as had been the case here.

I cursed that instrument—but not vehemently, for vehemence was not possible while it functioned. I damned myself for my failure to overcome the ennui, but could do no more than that. I just sat there and watched my father get knocked about and bounced into the wall.

But Spirit had more resistance than I did. She had always been a spirited girl, true to her name, though she had been named long before the trait manifested. Somehow her neural chemistry differed; she was able to assert partial free will. She began to move toward the pirates.

"They will hurt you," I warned without particular emphasis. I knew intellectually that we faced disaster, but I just couldn't get emotional about it. I was intellectually furious, but not emotionally. It was like watching a person in a drama do something stupid and identifying with that person, while being unable to influence his action.

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"They won't notice me," she replied. She didn't sound excited; the pacifier was working on her, but not quite as effectively as on me.

"Why doesn't it affect the pirates?" García asked, as though this were a matter of idle curiosity. Then he answered his own question: "The field can be disrupted by certain countercurrents. The pirates can have little generators on their bodies, giving them protection." It was strange to be discussing this so calmly, while doing nothing about it.

Then a pirate messenger came through the lock and whispered to the leader. The leader looked alarmed. Then he set himself and started giving orders.

The pirates who were rounding up our unresisting men paused, then turned them loose. The leader raised his voice and addressed us all. "There is a Jupiter Ringuard patrol boat approaching. Now, we don't want any trouble with them. If they send an officer aboard, we want you all to convince him that we are traders, making a business deal with you. We're selling you food, and we're haggling over the price, but it's friendly."

He paused, looking around. "Fetch me some children," he ordered his henchmen.

The pirates ranged out in search of children. They took Spirit and me, and we went unresisting, though I saw Spirit grimace. It was uncertainty that restrained her rather than inability to act; she wasn't sure what would happen to the rest of us if she resisted.

They took Helse out of the cell, thinking her to be a boy my age, but left Faith, who looked disreputable at this time. One tiny silver lining for her, perhaps! They rousted out several smaller children. Soon eight of us were standing together before the air lock.

The pirate leader drew a great long dagger of a knife. He caught a six-year-old girl by the hair and yanked her head back, exposing her neck. He set the blade against her throat. "Now hear this!" he cried to us all. "I'll slit this throat myself, the moment anyone squawks. And my men will do the same to the others." At his gesture, the other pirates drew their blades and menaced the rest of us.

"So you'd better convince that officer, folks," the pirate leader concluded. "Unless you figure I'm bluffing.

Then you do what you want, and we'll do what we want, because there's a price on all our heads if they recognize us, and we won't have anything to lose. If that officer catches on, he'll be dead too. So you can just take your choice between the robbery we have in mind—and your children."

The worst of it was, he wasn't bluffing. It did not require my talent to fathom that. These men really were killers, worse than the first bunch; they had made no pretence of being anything other than pirates from the outset.

"Now we'll turn off the box," the pirate leader concluded. "You will have volition—but we have your children."

The pirate by the air lock turned off the box. Suddenly I had strength of will again. But there was a blade at my back, and I knew it would be worse than futile to bolt. We had no way to coordinate, to run together, and nowhere to go if we did run. We had all been disarmed—and half of us really were children. Despite all our preparations, we were helpless.

That bothered me, I think, almost as much as our predicament. The fact that we had been caught unprepared, after thinking we were ready. Now an officer of the law—Jupiter law—the very type of Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

person we most wanted to meet—was coming, and we could do nothing.

Three pirates took the two smallest girls and a baby boy through the lock into their ship. The boy whimpered and his mother moved nervously, but he went along. These were the ultimate hostages: the most vulnerable of our number. I could have identified all their parents by their reactions, had I not already known. Until we had these children safely back, we were completely nullified.

I glanced at our martial-arts instructor and saw him standing with a grim expression. He knew better than anyone that the pirates' device of protection was too effective. All we could do was cooperate and hope for a favorable break.

The space officer arrived. He was wearing a conventional space suit emblazoned with the great red ball of the Jupiter Service. He was the representative of the foremost power in the Solar System—but in person he was a small, somewhat pudgy man, seemingly uncertain. He would have been nothing, if it weren't for the devastating guns of the Navy ship trained on both our vessels. How easy it would be to alert that ship, and maybe get us all blasted to pieces! But that would hardly be to our advantage. We had to gamble on the lesser evil of the pirates' mercy.

Lesser evil! There would be more than one woman raped this time, I was sure, and anything we had of value would be taken, and some of our men would be beaten. God, I hated this!

"What are you up to here?" the officer asked in English, the language of the dominant power on Jupiter.

There are, of course, four major languages used on Jupiter, but the speakers of the other three—French, Spanish, and Portuguese—did not maintain space patrols. That made English the most truly interplanetary one in Jupiter-space. Thus did economics translate into culture.

The pirate chief smiled ingratiatingly. "We are only traders, sir, peddling staples to these travelers."

The officer turned to face our group. "True?"

"We are doing business," my father said in halting English. This hurt me too. My father was lying, at the behest of our enemies, and I hated to see him thus demeaned. I have never liked lying, and I felt unclean for him. At the some time, I knew we had no choice. Even if Spirit and Helse and I were to bolt and escape our captors, as we might reasonably do if we acted in unison, we could not save the three smaller children, and their deaths would be on our hands. It was like a finger-bending hold that a bully puts on another child, to force him to tell the teacher the two are only playing. I hate that sort of thing, but the only practical answer I ever found to it was to avoid the situation. Once your finger is caught, it's too late for sensible solutions; you have to go along. So I understood the situation exactly—but a special kind of rage seethed in me. Pirates like this should be extirpated from the face of the universe!

The officer's brow wrinkled. I realized he did not understand my father's strongly accented English.

Quickly I spoke up, in better English. "My father says we are doing business," I explained. And realized that now I shared the lie directly. Damn! How I hated every aspect of this!

"Drug business?" the Jupe officer demanded.

"No drugs," my father assured him, honestly enough, in Spanish, and that negation needed no translation.

"See that you don't. We'll be watching you." The officer turned abruptly and departed. It seemed his shuttle craft had latched on to the other port of the pirate ship, so he had to pass through that ship to leave us.

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In a moment we felt the tremor of the shuttle craft disengaging and jetting away, back to its mother ship.

That test was over, but I did not feel much relieved.

"Now release our children," my father said.

The pirate leader considered, and in that moment he reminded me uncomfortably of the way the Horse had pondered, after we had turned his men loose. "Ah yes, the children." He turned his head and yelled into the ship. "You through with the brats?"

"Just about," a voice called back.

Just about? I experienced a new chill. What were they doing with these children?

Then they brought the children back. The two little girls were naked and crying. A pirate carried the baby boy, who was also naked, but silent. The man stepped out and threw the boy to the floor.

A paroxysm of horror passed through our group. The boy's eyes were open and staring, and his chest was still. He was dead!

Now it was apparent that the little girls had been raped.

It seemed every man in our group launched himself at the pirates. But then the pacifier box came on again, and the charge became a shambles, its impetus gone. The broadcast interference was not psychological, it was physical; no amount of determination could overcome this paralysis of the voluntary functions.

The pirate leader drew his sword, smiling grimly. He seemed to be enjoying this. He had wanted us to see the children, and to react as we did, and to be cut down to helplessness again. "You made trouble for us. We don't like that."

My father was closest to him. The pirate raised his sword in a two-handed grip and swung it savagely. I saw, as if it were in slow motion, the blade cut into my father's side. It sliced through clothing and rib cage and into the lung, and the blood poured out like the living thing it was.

I knew in that moment that we should have blown the whistle on the pirates when the Jupe officer was here. We had been held passive by a threat to hostages who were even then being savaged. We had had nothing to lose, had we but known it. We had been too trusting—and now were paying the hideous price.

Would the pirates really have dared to kill the Jupe officer? Now I doubted it, for it would have meant the end of the pirate ship, possible complete destruction by a military missile.

Now it was carnage. Ruthlessly the pirates hacked apart our men, who were unable to resist. They left none alive. Such was the enervation spawned by the devil-box that all we could do was moan in soft horror. We couldn't act!

They hurled the bleeding bodies into a pile, then sheathed the swords and came after the women. Some, unsatisfied with what they saw, started rechecking the cells. I saw someone open the panel of number 75, where Faith still hid. I remembered that Helse had taken the opportunity provided by the presence of the Jupe officer to return to that cell; no one had been paying attention to her, among the pirates, so she had Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

gotten away with it. But that minor escape had accomplished nothing, for there was the pirate at the cell.

The man looked down, then paused as if struck. Then he closed the panel and went on. What had happened? The pacifier box prevented any attack against any pirate.

Meanwhile, another pirate took hold of my mother, bringing my attention back to closer events. The cell, well around the curve of the Commons, was difficult to see anyway. I had positioned myself to have it in view without being close enough to attract attention to it.

The pirate literally tore the clothing from my mother, while she tried feebly to pull away, crying. I felt a truly terrible rage—but still it did not translate to my body. My nerves might as well have been cut, so that my limbs would not respond. It was hard enough just to turn my head.

There was a crash. My head jumped around. Spirit, possessing more volition than the rest of us, and perhaps more common sense, had reached the unguarded box, picked it up, and smashed it. Suddenly we all were free.

I ran to help my mother, who was on her back, the pirate tearing at the shreds of her underclothing as he came down on top of her. Neither he nor she realized that we refugees had been freed to fight. I leaped to land on his back, my hands reaching around to his head, trying to pull him back though my weight bore down on him. I was so crazy with grief and rage and horror that I remembered none of the precepts we had been drilled in; I just put his head in a bear-hug and shoved with my feet.

Angrily he shook me off, half rising and reaching for his sword. He was so powerful I couldn't possibly hold him. I realized belatedly I should have grabbed a hammer or something and smashed him on the head. Now I was in trouble.

But the pirate grunted and collapsed. My mother had remembered one of the lessons and jerked up her knee the moment she had leverage, and scored on his crotch. The fight was mostly out of him.

There followed an amazingly savage conflict, as the other women and children recovered their volition and sought revenge for the brutality of the pirates. They clawed at faces and bit at hands and kicked at anything in reach. The pirates were burly men, accustomed to violence and bloodshed, but they had not before been betrayed by their pacifier box. They weren't used to having the victims fight back.

There were a dozen pirates in the bubble; five times that many women pounced on them, like vicious harpies. I saw one woman kneel on the head of a pirate while another drove an iron knitting needle into his ear as deep as it would go. It took only a moment for the man to stop jerking and screaming. I saw another trying to castrate a pirate with a sharp letter opener, an antique that had surely been saved as an heirloom, since letters had not needed such service for centuries. An immense and truly horrifying well of violence had been tapped, and I saw that we were in our deepest essence no better than our enemies.

Injured and bleeding, the surviving pirates beat a disorganized retreat and slammed the air lock closed.

In moments their ship disengaged and fled.

We were left with our victory—and our grief. We had had sixty grown men in our complement; all had been slain in the pirates' orgy of killing, while we were helpless. Three pirates also lay dead in their blood, and the baby boy. The two raped little girls stood staring, not grasping any of this.

I went to my father, hoping somehow to discover him alive, but knowing better. I looked down through burning eyes at his corpse. How terrible his fall, how ignoble the deed! Nothing in my father's life or Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

philosophy justified this dreadful termination. And I, by getting my family into the trouble that forced our exodus, had been the cause.

In a moment I felt someone at my side. It was Spirit. I clutched her to me, sharing my agony with her.

We had never dreamed of desolation like this.

Now the women were scattered across the Commons, suffering their separate reactions. No trace of their violence of a moment ago remained. The departure of the pirates had excised the savagery in us.

Some had found their husbands and were keening their grief, kneeling and bending their torsos forward and back, letting out part of their pain. Others were standing absolutely still and silent, just looking down.

I realized that there is no set formula for the abatement of intolerable loss.

"We must do something," Spirit said.

I wrenched myself away from my horror, realizing she was correct. We had suffered an appalling disaster—but disorganization would only exacerbate our situation. We had to have a new leader who would see to whatever had to be done. But who, with no men remaining among us?

"Use your talent, Hope," Spirit told me.

She sounded so practical that I looked at her. Her eyes were staring out of her head like those of a little automaton, but she was right again. Her shock simply had not yet progressed to her vocal cords. How she would react when the full impact affected her I did not know. Some horrors, like some joys, seem to be too massive to grasp all at once.

I thought a moment, then recalled a woman of grandmotherly age, huge and ugly and competent. She was Concha Ortega, a dark-skinned widow who was traveling with her three grandchildren. Not one of those children ever misbehaved. None of them had been among those taken hostage by the pirates, which perhaps would enable her to be more objective than she might otherwise have been.

I saw my mother making her way toward us. She was an awful sight. Her hair was ragged, her clothing shredded, and there was a glazed look about her. "Take care of Mother," I murmured to Spirit, and departed. I knew my little sister would do what little could be done.

I made my way to Señora Ortega, who was hauling the body of a pirate toward the air lock. "Excuse me, Doña Concha," I said to her. "I am Hope Hubris, Major Hubris's son. You must be our new leader."

She viewed me contemplatively. "By what authority, Don Hope, do you appoint me to such office?" She was extremely imposing, with half-cropped gray hair, line-encased eyes, and much mass of body, and I felt like the stripling I was as that gaze fell on me.

"It's just that I know," I said. "All our men are gone, and you are the best woman. You understand discipline, you know what to do. You must lead, or we shall be leaderless, and perish in space."

She pondered briefly. "You are right, little man," she said. "It must be done. I have suffered no recent losses; I can put my mind to this problem."

"Thank you, Doña," I said, retreating.

Señora Ortega raised her voice, addressing the entire bubble. "We must provide proper burial for our dead," she announced. "We must show proper respect."

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Proper respect—she had hit a note that resonated. Grief was piercing, but respect was vital. It was the dues paid the dead.

Under Señora Ortega's direction the bodies were moved to the vicinity of the rear air lock and laid out there in such style as was possible, considering the absence of facilities and the scantness of gravity in that region. The survivors closed the eyes of the men, washed the bodies with sponges from the heads, and reclothed them for burial. The signs of devastation were removed as much as possible, so that the men appeared to be sleeping.

There was a problem with the bodies of the three pirates. No one wished to do them honor! We hauled them to the front air lock and dumped them unceremoniously. We closed the lock and made ready to use the override control to open the outer port without first decompressing the lock. That would hurl the bodies into space unburied, unlamented.

"No," my mother said, looking up from my father's body.

"Speak, Charity Hubris," Señora Ortega said. "What would you do with this rubbish?"

"I would use it to greet the next pirates who come," my mother said, and there was a note in her voice that sent a chill through me.

There was a murmur of surprised agreement among the women. How confidently would a pirate enter if he discovered three of his kind, mutilated and dead, in the air lock of the bubble supposedly waiting to be fleeced?

"Excellent notion, Doña Charity," Señora Ortega agreed. I noticed how careful she was to employ the ceremonial address, providing respect to the living as well as to the dead. She was indeed the proper leader. "We shall save those bodies for such use. We shall post the warning of the skull on the stake."

For in Earth's past, savage tribes had demarked their ranges by such means, plain warning to intruders.

Then she paused in thought. "Should we evacuate the air from that lock?"

Even the children knew the consequence of leaving bodies in air and warmth. There would come a horrendous stench.

Grimly, the women decided to leave the air in the lock.

That ugly business done, we returned to the rites for our gallant men. Normally death is a family affair in our culture—but not all the men had adult kin here in the bubble, while some families had made this trip without men, so everything was awkward, and it seemed best to handle it as a community effort. We arranged to have all the men suitably prepared, and we tore up one black gown donated for the purpose into strips for black armbands of mourning for all. Even though we were all Hispanic, there were differences in the details of our customs, so again we compromised on the single uniform service. There were suggestions of the Roman rite and the Gothic rite, with our scant and precious incense burned and the lips of some men anointed with oil. Dena Concha led us in singing the psalm De profundis : "Out of the depths have I cried to Thee, O Lord... I trust in the Lord, my soul waits for His word..." Oh, it moved me; I had to believe that the Lord would accept my father and treat him kindly. Then a few complimentary words were spoken for each dead man, and there was general praise for the group of them. Doña Concha did a good job; she had been through it with her own husband, who had died some years before, so understood the needs of the families though she had not herself been touched this time.

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I fancy myself as being not superstitious or overly emotional, but that quiet, sincere service helped me tremendously. When she praised my father, calling him Don Major and describing in a few words his integrity and bravery in leading our group toward Jupiter, tears of sheer joy mixed with those of grief in my eyes, and the terrible burden of his loss eased significantly. It is truly bad to lose one's father, but it is best that he suffer a hero's demise. I'm sure the others felt the same as she spoke of their own men.

It was of course impossible to bury them in a sanctified cemetery or to place them in crypts with flowers or to kiss the earth as it was thrown into the coffins, and we elected not to use the few simple candles we possessed, not wishing to tax the air-recycling system with so much open flame. We decided to do the best we could: to bury them temporarily outside on the bubble. A select crew donned space suits and took the bodies one by one out the rear lock. We were not relegating them to space, but securing them to the outside of the bubble in plastic wraps and whatever else could be made to serve, so that they would be preserved by the cold and vacuum until the time they could be properly interred on planetary ground. We could not keep them inside the bubble, of course, and outside was as perfect a deep-freeze as exists. They would be preserved intact for Eternity, out there.

So it was done, and we sang the canticle Benedictus with the antiphon Ego sum resurrectio et vita , I am the resurrection and the life. The earth had, figuratively, been thrown into the graves, and the necessary formalities were over.

Señora Ortega explained gently that though we all should normally be permitted to retire to our justified grief, it was nonetheless necessary for us to keep the bubble functioning and on course; we would never be able to give our men proper burial if we did not survive ourselves. So she declared an end to formal grief, leaving only the armbands, as if a year had suddenly passed. She asked those of us who were able to function to join her in operating the bubble. This would not, she assured us, signify any lack of feeling or any affront to the dead, but rather our recognition of what had to be done in a most difficult situation.

The way she expressed it, it was easy to agree. We had chosen well in this leader.

When a small crew of those women who had some grasp of the principles of gravity-shield navigation had been assembled, Señora Ortega dismissed the rest of us to our cells. "The best thing you can do right now is mourn your dead in privacy," she said. "Send them to heaven with your prayers. I know what you are feeling; my own grief is long behind me, and it occurred in better times than these you suffer now, but I remember." In this way she returned informally what she had denied formally: the timely expression of grief.

We went to our cells, but it was not a simple retirement. I realized abruptly that my mother should not be alone in her cell. I spoke to Faith, who had remained in her own cell throughout, thus missing much of the horror of the pirate encounter. It was not that she lacked feeling for our father, but that the full appreciation of his death added at this time to her existing state could have destroyed her. Yet I feared for the welfare of our mother too. "Please join her," I asked Faith. "You can understand and comfort her better than I could, for you are a woman."

Faith looked at me with a head-tilt of startlement, then swept back her hair and climbed to the next cell.

She knew her own dismay had been preempted by a greater one.

But now Spirit was alone. I hesitated, knowing this was not right for her either.

Helse arrived. "Go with your sister, Hope," she said. "I am not bereaved, except to the extent I knew and respected those members of other families who died. I will try to help someone who needs it."

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I felt a warm surge of gratitude toward her. "Thanks." I joined Spirit in her cell.

Spirit abruptly flung her arms about me, buried her face in my shoulder, and bawled. It was at that moment of letdown that the enormity of our tragedy struck me. Until then the continuing exigencies of our situation had caused me to hold much of the horror at bay, except when I thought specifically of my father.

Now it overwhelmed me too. I clung to my crying little sister and sobbed as vehemently as she.

Chapter 10 — TO LOVE AND BE LOVED

Jupiter Orbit, 2-14-'15—But a person cannot cry forever. Spirit bounced back first, somewhat wasted, having washed much of the first rush of grief out of her system. I knew she still suffered, but already she was coming to terms with it. I had to follow her in that recovery, for I was now the oldest (and only) male in our family, and that is a thing of special significance. I would not presume, of course, to order my mother around, but it would be my position to formulate family initiatives and make suggestions that I knew my mother and older sister would take seriously. So I forced my own continuing agony of soul into a compartment, like the cell I slept in, closed the panel on it as well as I could, and required myself to function. My mother and sisters could grieve; I would have to endure.

There were meals to be fetched and distributed, though our shortage was now, ironically, less acute because of our diminished number. Señora Ortega asked me to resume my prior capacity as food distributor, and to expand my activities as necessary, since I was now the oldest male in the bubble. Oh yes, that woman knew how to make a young person do her bidding! I agreed and got to work, and found that there was indeed reprieve from grief in work.

We had to reorganize the heads, for it was senseless to reserve half the bathrooms for males who no longer lived. I asked Spirit to explain to women how they might be able to use the male facilities by assisting each other as I had assisted Helse—but cautioned her that she should present this as her own idea, and to leave Helse out of it, as Helse was still considered a boy. If Señora Ortega suspected that Helse was older than I, or that she was female, Señora Ortega did not say. I think she did suspect, and did us both the quiet favor of assuming that Helse was a boy a few months younger than I. Women of grandmotherly age can be discreet; they have had a great deal of time to learn that art.

There was further cleaning to be done, removing bloodstains from the floor and walls of the Commons.

Helse and Spirit and I helped with it all, keeping ourselves constantly busy.

It may seem that my grief for my father was shallow, since I was soon functioning in virtually normal fashion, and am not referring to it in every paragraph of this narrative. I protest that this was not the case.

My father was much in my mind, but I knew I could not bring him back, no matter how much pain I felt, and it is pointless to grow repetitive here. I worked to help alleviate the suffering of the living, including especially the members of my own family, and I hope I succeeded in this. I discovered that in this effort was the most effective reduction of my own pain. So do not slight me for my seeming neglect; I have written as much of this aspect as I care to, though it hardly does justice to the reality.

Spirit had found another girl her age who, of course, had suffered similar loss, and they spent the next night together. That freed me to return to Helse—and I needed to do that, because she maintained her masculine masquerade, and only I could help her in the head. How she managed that one night by herself Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

I do not know; perhaps she borrowed a mop handle to push against the far wall and hold herself in place.

It cannot have been comfortable.

The first night I was back with her, after the slaughter, I found it difficult to relax, let alone sleep. I tossed about in the partial gravity, but it was not my own discomfort that haunted me so much as my father's. He was outside in the cold, now; was he shivering? Did he gasp for air in the cruel vacuum? Of course not—yet as I drifted off to sleep, I phased into a dream awareness of Major Hubris, alive and well, to my gratified surprise. But I knew, even in the dream, that it was not so, and that if I embraced him I would feel the absolute chill of space in his flesh. I felt it my duty to advise him of the truth that he was evidently not yet aware of, for my father always preferred to be in touch with reality even when it was not pleasant. Whereupon, surprised, he turned slowly to a staring corpse with a great red wound in his side.

He looked in that instant like Jesus Christ, and I could not scream in horror lest I defile an image I was not worthy to approach.

I shuddered awake, finding Helse holding me. Oh, death is no thing of joy! "I would help you if I could,"

Helse murmured. "But this is not like the other, not like the case with Faith. I have had no direct experience with death."

"Leave me alone!" I snapped. I shouldn't have done that, and don't know why I did it, and was sorry immediately, but unable to apologize. Grief is like that, too. Grief is not necessarily any prettier than death, and the grief-stricken do not wander like lambs grateful for the shepherd's guidance. They can be more like wounded wolves, snapping at those who would help them.

She did leave me alone, and I slept intermittently again. But I had not escaped my nightmare. It came at me again and again, like a ravening monster, its moist teeth seeking to rend my flesh. It was guilt, the personification of my neglect. Could I have done something to avert the tragedy? Why had I had such ennui when the pirates were slaughtering our men? Why had I stood silent when the pirates hoodwinked the officer from the Jupiter patrol? Certainly the pirates had held three children hostage—but those children had been doomed anyway, and by my neglect our entire group had become vulnerable. Why hadn't I screamed the truth to the officer? It seemed so simple in retrospect. I had known the pirates were not to be trusted. I banged my fist against the wall in frustration.

I woke again, feeling Helse's restraint on my arm. "Hope, you'll hurt yourself!" she protested.

"I ought to kill myself!" I flared. "I let my father die!"

"But there was the pacifier. You tried to—"

"Shut up!" I shouted, and spun through the same cycle of self-reproach and inaction as before.

She shut up, and again I tried to sleep. If I did, I got no satisfaction of it, for the horror and guilt stalked me relentlessly. Gradually I realized that the truths I cached away in emotional compartments during the day only gained strength to conquer me at night when my resistance was down. And the most fundamental truth was the one I had glimpsed before, when Faith was raped: A man was a creature of murderous lusts, and I was a man. I might as well have raped my sister and murdered my father myself.

Only circumstance had put me in the camp of the victims rather than that of the perpetrators. I was a damned creature, because of my anatomy and nature.

I contemplated my erect member and cursed it. "You are the cause of all this!" I ranted. "You don't care who you hurt!" For I knew that a sword is but a symbol of the phallus, and when it plunges into a living body and causes blood to spurt, that is a symbolic sexual act. That is why women are not much for Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

violence; they lack the weapon. "I ought to rip you out by the root!"

Again I woke to find Helse's hands on me, preventing me from attempting what I had threatened in the dream. My rage was swiftly replaced by chagrin, for of course she had seen me handling my aroused private.

But she said nothing, and I remembered that the male member was no stranger to her. She knew better than anyone else the nature of the lusts of the male. I turned my back on her and struggled back to a semblance of sleep once more. This time I made it fairly well through the arbitrary night of the bubble.

The following day was grueling. My intermittent night's sleep left me ill-prepared to fend off the emotional horrors. I went about my business in grim silence. Spirit tried to speak to me, but I repulsed her, then cursed myself for it when I saw her silent, hurt tears, but I did not try to make amends. It was as though my emotions were under the type of interdict the pacifier box had instilled, so that I could lash out verbally but not apologize.

I saw that there were others as morose as I, and some refused to come out of their cells to eat. One woman went into the head and did not emerge; when someone finally checked, they discovered her dead. She had cut open an artery in her thigh and bled to death on the bidet. Suicide.

I knew exactly how she felt.

Helse guided me to our cell early. "Hope, you are dying on your feet," she told me. "I think I can help you, now."

"Nothing can help me," I muttered, but I was so tired and dazed that I offered no resistance.

Then, perhaps as much to hurt her as from curiosity, I asked: "That pirate who started to go after you and Faith—why did he quit?"

"I spoke the word," she said.

That was what I had suspected. But had the pirate left them alone because he feared QYV—or because he thought they were two teen-age boys? I resented the fact that my parents had had no such magic word to protect them. What grief we all might be spared if we could deter malice with a single spoken syllable!

When Helse had secured the cell and had me alone, she used some cloth to block the faint light spilling in around the panel, putting us in darkness. Then she dropped to the floor and moved about, away from me. Two meters cubed is not a lot of space for two people, but I was in the corner and she was in the opposite corner. I could hear her without seeing her.

In a moment she was back. "Please remove your clothes," she said.

"What?" I asked dully.

"I am nude. I want you to be too."

"I don't understand."

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"I know. I can help you sleep well." She came to me and took hold of my shirt and started to remove it for me.

I resisted. "Helse, if anyone should look in here—"

"I told them I would talk to you and straighten you out. You have been bristling at everyone. No one will look, or listen—and anyway, I've blocked the cracks. They can't see in from the Commons."

"They could wrench open the panel, idiot! If you don't have your clothes on—they will know—"

"Spirit already knows."

"She's a child."

"Yes." Again she worked at my shirt.

This time I let her do it. I didn't know what she was up to, but it was better than the nightmares I faced when I slept.

After she got the shirt off, she worked on the trousers. Now I was afraid to stop her, for she seemed to know what she was doing, while I was a mass of confusion. She bid me stand, and I stood, and she undid my belt and took my clothing down. I simply let her continue until she had me naked.

She ran her hands lightly over my body in the darkness, not excluding the genital. I was aroused, of course; it could hardly have been otherwise. There was something about being undressed by a woman this way. She evinced no shock or surprise, and I was reminded again that she had done things with men I had never imagined. But such would not be the case with me; I was no pirate or seducer of children.

She made me lie on the floor, using some wadded clothing for cushioning, then lay down on her side beside me. Her warm bare thigh touched mine, and her cool soft breast rested against my left arm. I hardly dared breath.

"Hope, I want to tell you about sex," she said. "I've been listening to you talking in your sleep, and I think I understand your problem. You saw the pirates rape your sister, and you think it's your fault. You think all men are like that. You're afraid one day you'll rape someone."

She was right on target. I said nothing.

"Well, you won't," she said. "I'm not as sharp as you are about judging people, but I do know something about this. All men are not alike, in any way. Some are terrible, like the pirates—but some are so gentle and nice they would never hurt anyone. Most are in between, like your father—and you. They all like sex. That has nothing to do with the way they are. But the bad ones use sex to hurt people, and the good ones use it to make people happy. The pirates were not getting pleasure of Faith, they were punishing the people of the bubble. That's different. Just because you have this"—at this point she put her hand firmly on my rigid genital—"it doesn't mean you're bad. I know you, Hope; I know you as well as I possibly can, in a week. I know you are good. You get angry, you make mistakes, you suffer—but you are good.

You have nothing to hurt me—or anyone."

Still the vision of the pirates raping my sister haunted me, and of the one trying to rape my mother.

Between those two was the murder of my father, inextricably linked. I never wanted to share any part of Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

the life or lust of those pirates! I remembered how my member had swelled when I saw Faith raped, and it damned me at this very moment similarly. It had a will of its own, and I could not trust it.

"It's the difference between a theft and a gift," she continued. "When you steal something, or take it by force, you hurt someone. But when you accept a gift, you hurt no one, and both the giver and the receiver profit. The gracious acceptance of a gift is a gift in itself. All you have to do is decide never to steal, never to cheat or deceive or force, and always to accept a proper gift. Then you will know you are not like those pirates, and never will be. You will know that you have tamed the fires in you, and turned it to proper advantage."

I pondered that. It seemed to make sense. "All right."

She waited, but I did not move. I was holding my fire tame. "I don't think I've quite convinced you yet,"

she said. "You will still have nightmares. You still think you can hurt me if you let yourself go."

"Yes." I was afraid that if I moved at all, I would do something terrible.

"I'm going to make you know it's not true," she said. "This is the one thing I can do for you, to repay you for helping me, for keeping my secret."

I thought she was going to talk to me again, explaining how I was normal and it was all right to be normal. But she didn't speak. She shifted herself about, climbing on top of me. I refused to move a muscle, not from any antagonism to her—it was impossible to feel that now, for her sleek woman's body electrified me wherever it touched my flesh—but because any motion at all would represent a commitment, one way or the other.

She held herself above me, then lay full length on me, her breasts resting on my chest, her thighs falling outside mine. She brought her head down and touched my lips with hers, and it was as though I was being propelled through space without moving at all. I had never known that mere touch could have such an effect. Still I did not move.

She shifted herself again, getting her balance, then used one hand to catch and guide my member, pointing it the way she wanted. She raised her hips, then slowly settled on me again. So gently and easily that I could hardly believe it was real, I found myself inside her.

"Now tell me this is evil," she murmured, letting her thighs settle all the way against me, and bringing the rest of her body down so that she lay as she had before, her breasts pressing me down. Only one detail had changed, a small detail, yet with an overwhelming significance.

Still I would not move or speak. It was fear as much as stubbornness. I really did not know what to do, and was afraid that anything would be wrong, and would make her angry or hurt her.

"Tell me you are raping me," she said, putting her hand behind my head as her whole body pressed more tightly against mine. Her weight was light, less than half-gee; it might have been uncomfortable in full Earth gravity, but even so, her body was the most wonderful thing I could possibly know.

"Tell me you love me," she whispered, and now her tone of challenge had become one of urgent pleading. When I still was silent, she dipped her head and kissed me again, but this differed, as the other position differed from before, from the prior kiss. This time her mouth was open, and her tongue came through to touch mine.

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I was at last overwhelmed. "I love you!" I breathed around our tongues, and was transported by a paroxysm of amazing sensation.

I woke, it seemed, an eon later. Helse lay beside me, her hand holding mine. She squeezed my fingers, and I knew she was awake.

"What is it that you want, that cannot be bought?" I asked, remembering what she had said before.

"You know it now."

I knew it now, I discovered. "To love and be loved," I said. "But why me?"

"You're a decent person, and you need me," she said simply.

"I need you," I agreed. And slept again, my hand in hers, without ill-dream.

In the morning, bubble time, I found her still beside me, sleeping. Still I could not see her, except as the vaguest outline, and I discovered I did not dare touch her body, for fear that everything would turn out to be illusion. I realized that she had been kind to me, and more than kind; she had shown me in an absolutely believable manner that sex itself was not evil. In the time following, that realization was to expand and deepen, becoming a fundamental aspect of my philosophy. This was Helse's invaluable gift to me: my honest acceptance of my male nature.

But right then I did not perceive that essence so clearly. I was only aware of Helse herself, and of my need for her. Had she given me her body for a night, to tide me through the storm of my guilt and grief, or was there more to it than that? I had said I loved her, and indeed I did, in that overwhelming flush of feeling that a person my age and temperament is capable of; it was sudden but profound. But she, she had not said she loved me, and she was a year older than I...

In my desperation to know, I reached out and found her shoulder. She woke immediately, and caught my hand in hers.

"Helse," I said, but then could not find the phrasing for the question.

"Yes, Hope," she murmured.

"Is—will there be another time?"

She brought my hand to her lips and kissed it, sending a sweet tingle through me. "If you ask me."

"Ask you?" I repeated, perplexed.

"I won't do it for you, next time, Hope," she explained. "You will have to ask me. Then I will do it."

That wasn't enough of an answer. I struggled to formulate my objection. "I don't want your acquiescence. That could be for any reason. I want your love."

She frowned against my palm. "I never said I loved you, Hope."

"I know. But I love you! "

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She sighed. "You are less experienced than I am, Hope. You mistake rapture for love. Your emotion is shaken by tragedy. It is right for me to ease your confusion in my fashion, but not to ask too high a price.

When you are able to put it in perspective, you will know that love is not made in a single night."

I jerked my hand away from her, hurt.

She apologized immediately. "Hope, I did not mean to imply your emotion is not real or strong. Only that it is too soon to distinguish passion from love. I have been loved for a night by many men. By day they have other interests. Had I loved any of them, I would have been hurt, for my love is not just for a night.

Give me leave to protect myself from heartbreak, as I protect my body from abuse by concealing it from strangers."

I began to understand a little better. "But you could love me, if you were sure of me?"

"It is my dream, to love and be loved."

Still that gentle evasion. She was being honest with me, and I appreciated that, but still it was hard to accept. I sat up, disgruntled, wanting more than I had any right to ask.

"May I kiss you?" she asked.

"I would like that," I said, somewhat stiffly.

She got to her knees, leaned across, found my face, and kissed me. Her lips were warm and moist, and her body where it touched mine was wonderfully soft. "When you ask, and it is granted, it is good," she said.

"I wish I could ask for your love."

She smiled, a faint gleam of teeth in the dark, and separated. We dressed, then went out in the guise of two boys to visit the head. Helse had opened a door to a new dimension to me, the dimension of love, but some things had not changed.

Chapter 11 — SACRIFICE

Jupiter Orbit, 2-15-'15—Bubble life was routine, as far as possible. I still felt the terrible loss of my father, and knew it was worse for my mother and sisters. Helse had taken a huge segment of my aroused emotion and turned it positive, so that I had a kind of internal counterbalance. But my mother and sisters lacked that. I realized that, thanks to Helse's gift, I was now stronger than they, like a shipwrecked sailor who has found a barrel to cling to while others had nothing. I could not share my support with them, and could not even confess its nature, for they believed Helse was a boy like me.

Except Spirit. She caught me alone in the course of the day, and had to needle me. "How was it, brother?" she asked snidely.

A host of flip answers escaped before I could formulate any of them verbally. "I love her," I said simply.

She glanced at me a long moment, having the grace to be embarrassed. "I'm sorry."

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I put my arm about her shoulders, forgiving her. "I know how it is," I said, remembering how snappish I had been before, when my internal problem radiated sparks at other people. I had no need of that anymore. "You're still my sister. You're the only one who shares that secret."

"Still, I'm jealous," she admitted.

"You have no need to be. You aren't competing with her."

"Yes, I am! If you had to throw one of us into space, which one would it be?"

The way to counter a question like that is to reverse it. "If you had to throw Faith or me into space, which would it be?"

"That depends who I'm mad at at the moment." But Spirit turned sober, considering the implication.

"When you grow up and love a man, I'll try not to be too jealous," I said.

"Oh, go ahead and be jealous!" she muttered. But she smiled. Then, in the treacherous way she had, she returned to her opening question. "Tell me what it's like," she begged. "Please, Hope—I really want to know."

Spirit was twelve. Did I have the right to tell her about sex? I had just learned about it myself! Of course we both knew the sterile mechanics as taught in school, and the applicable terms; we also both knew that such things had almost nothing to do with real sex or love.

I remembered the way older children, both male and female, had teased me in past years about my curiosity and ignorance. It seemed to be a conspiracy of silence, and I had never believed it was justified.

I resolved not to do that to my sister. "I was inside her," I said carefully. "And heaven was inside me. I wish it could have lasted forever."

"What about all the pain and blood?" she asked, and I saw that she was really worried. She, too, had seen the rape of Faith. I should have been aware of her natural reaction before. I had to reassure her about the other side of sex, as Helse had reassured me, so she would not fear it.

"There was no pain or blood. Nothing but joy."

"But—"

"Give me your hand." I took her small hand in mine and squeezed it cruelly.

"Ouch!" she shrieked.

"That's rape," I said. Then I took her hand again, smoothed it out caressingly, and kissed it. "That's love."

She looked at her extremity. "But that's only my hand!"

"Just one part of you—and me," I agreed. "Another part was used to hurt Faith terribly—but last night I used it to love Helse. The difference is in how you use it. That's what she taught me."

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Spirit smiled quirkily. "I thought you used it to pee." She was being humorous, resisting the notion, as I had resisted it during the night. Too simple a telling does not necessarily get the point across, because the listener isn't ready to believe. So I took stock again, pretty much as Helse had.

"That too," I agreed. "But not last night. Just about every part of the body has more than one use, like the mouth that is used to eat and to talk or the nose used to breathe and smell. You just have to keep in mind which use you want."

"Yes, it's hard to talk with your mouth full," she agreed. She still didn't accept it.

I caught her shoulder, making her face me, suddenly finding it vitally important to spread the new message. "When you grow older, Spirit, and you love a boy, and he loves you, don't be afraid of his body. What he has for you is not cruel and not dirty; it's a form of love. The great crime of the pirates is that they take something perfect and abuse it, making it terrible. Don't judge all men by them!"

"Oh, I don't judge our father by—"

"And how do you think you and I came to exist?"

"There is that," she agreed, with a wan smile. But her brow furrowed again. "Still, I don't know."

"Ask Helse," I said. "She will tell you."

"I will." Spirit left me. I hoped I had not wished something on Helse she would have preferred to avoid.

I talked with Señora Ortega, to learn how we were doing on our voyage. She squinted at me. "You're the lad who appointed me captain," she said with the trace of a grim smile. "Yesterday you looked ready to die; today you are alive."

"You're the right person," I agreed. "That funeral service really made me feel better. And I had a good night. I'll be all right now. Are we on course?"

"A good night," she repeated. "If I didn't know better, lad, I'd think you had discovered love." Maybe she was teasing me; it was impossible to know how much she had guessed.

She got down to serious business quickly. "No, we're not on course," she said frankly. "Our girls aren't as apt as the men were; we haven't had the training. The mechanism is simple, but the application takes practice. So we're handling the vectors clumsily. Oh, we're getting there, but it won't be on the original schedule. We'll have to stay on half rations."

Well, it could have been worse. I moved on to talk with children. I did not consider myself a child anymore, and certainly it had been a man's duty I did with Helse, but my talent related well to the young folk. I tried to cheer them, for they had the least resources to comprehend or deal with the calamity that had befallen us all. We set up games in the Commons, even organizing a soccer match, using a tightly wrapped bundle of paper refuse for the ball. It really wasn't much, in this confined and curvaceous space and with the trace gravity, but it did bring a few smiles to some faces and kept the kids occupied. I felt this was the most useful thing I could do, for now, spreading some of the balm Helse had provided me, as it were.

Helse joined me in the afternoon. She still looked just like another boy, but now I fancied I could perceive feminine contours and mannerisms in her, hidden from other eyes. I still had not seen her body Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

clearly in its natural state, and now I wanted to, knowing the rapture it offered me. "I have been talking with your sisters," she said with a wry smile.

"I don't like keeping secrets from Spirit," I said, knowing my little sister had wasted no time on her fact-finding mission.

"She said you said you love me, and had great joy last night."

"It's true," I admitted. "She asked me and I told her. I wouldn't lie to my little sister. I didn't think you would mind. Spirit's curious about everything, but she never betrays a confidence."

"Then you don't mind if I tell her—" She shrugged. "—Anything?"

"No, of course I don't mind! I sent her to you. I don't want her to be afraid."

She shook her head. "You are remarkably open."

I frowned. "No, I'm not open with everyone. Spirit is special. We don't deceive each other. We fight sometimes, but we always understand. If she had a similar experience, she would tell me. Now that she's seen her sister raped, she needs to understand that it doesn't have to be that way."

"Yes, of course. I was surprised, that's all. Men usually talk about such things to other men, not to their sisters."

"Spirit is different," I repeated firmly.

"Not Faith?"

"Faith is more like an ordinary sister."

"She braced me," Helse said. "I had to tell her my secret."

"I don't see why," I said, annoyed. "I try to protect Faith, but I don't share secrets with her."

"She really cares for you, Hope. She appreciates what you've done for her. The siblings are much closer in your family than they were in mine; I envy you that. Faith saw the change in you today, and she worried."

"But I didn't talk with her today!"

"Still, she noticed. She's not totally out of it, Hope; she's recovering. Your support really helped her."

"Oh." I was pleased. "She must have figured it would take more than a talking-to to put me back on track."

"Yes. She guessed there was a liaison. And she thought I was male."

I felt myself abruptly blushing. "She thought—?"

"She hoped it wasn't so. But she feared for your orientation, right now, under this terrible stress. So I had to tell her."

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"I guess you did!" I agreed, still embarrassed. "I'd better talk to her."

"No need. She was relieved. I think she thought she could be responsible for you turning away from the opposite sex, because of the rape."

"She was concerned for my reaction to what happened to her?" I asked, amazed. "Rather than for her own horror?"

"She's got that basic Hubris spirit of unity. It's a precious quality. She would do anything to spare the others in her family the humiliation she suffered."

"I guess I didn't give her enough credit," I said ruefully. "She, worried about me!"

"I was concerned too, maybe in a slightly different way. That's why I acted."

"You sure did!" I agreed. "In one hour you changed my life forever."

"I think Faith and I are going to be friends."

"Yes, I think so." I was both embarrassed and gratified: embarrassed for the way I had evidently seemed to those who were close to me, and gratified for the way they had tried to help.

After that I talked with Faith myself, explaining what Helse had done for me. "I'm not ashamed to be a man," I told her. "I don't for a moment condone what happened to you, but—"

"It's all right, Hope," she said. She looked better now; she had washed herself and brushed out her hair.

She was indeed recovering, having more inner strength than I had credited. "We have all had a terrible education in the past few days. I'm glad you found her. I should have known better than to worry."

"How is Mother?" I asked cautiously. I was glad to see Faith regaining her equilibrium, but I wasn't certain how far it went.

"Hope, we have to take care of her! I thought I was badly off, until—it's so much worse for her!"

"What can we do for her?" I asked, surprised by my sister's animation. Faith had always been relatively sedate and retiring; Spirit was the wild one in our family, and I was in between. Now Faith was turning more decisive. Could her awful experience have changed her outlook?

"Helse told me a pirate tried to rape Mother, and you fought him off."

"More or less," I agreed. "Spirit smashed the pacifier box, so the rest of us could fight. I wasn't very effective. Spirit really saved us all."

"I don't want—that—to happen to Charity Hubris," Faith said firmly. "She's our mother , Hope! So if the pirates come again, and we can't stop them—" She broke off, evidently not finding it easy to speak her thought.

"We'll stop them somehow!" I said with a certain bravado.

"If they have that awful pacifier box, or something—" She took a breath and swallowed. "If it comes to Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

that, Hope, I want you to send them my way, not Mother's way."

I stared at her, horrified. "Faith! You know what they do!"

She smiled wanly. "I think I know as well as any woman can. But what have I to lose, now? Hope, we can't let our mother be defiled."

"I hate even to think of this!" I exclaimed. "We should kill every pirate who comes into this bubble!"

"Yes. We should. But if we can't—then we must handle them another way. Promise me you will do it, if it needs to be done."

I resisted, but she kept at me, somewhat the way Helse had—and in the end I had to yield and give my promise. There is something about the way a woman can importune a man, even if she is his sister. But I felt unclean.

Perhaps it was prophetic, for within an hour after that the pirates did come again. Not the same ones—but already the term "pirate" was generic.

We did not know at first that they were pirates. Their ship was in good repair and bore the emblem of the Mars Merchant Marine. That did not signify much, because for reasons of interplanetary commerce many non-Martian vessels elected to register with Mars. Martian taxes were less than those of Jupiter, Uranus, or Earth, and fuel was cheap there, as the so-called Red Planet had much of the fuel of the Solar System. But mainly, as I understood it from my school studies, Mars had extremely lax laws governing the wages and treatment of spacemen. The large trading companies could operate more profitably by economizing on safety measures and payrolls and retirement benefits, so they enlisted with the planet that permitted this. The maritime powers of Jupiter professed to deplore such shoddy mechanisms—yet quite a number of their ships operated under the emblem of Mars. So a Martian trader ship could be anything.

Except, we naïvely supposed, a pirate.

They locked onto us and opened the air lock. There was a pause before the inner door opened, and we knew they had discovered the dead and spoiling pirates. But soon the inner panel slid aside, and a man in a white uniform stood before us.

We had an innocent-seeming group of women near the lock to greet the intruders. Hidden around the curve of the Commons we had armed women, ready to fight viciously if that proved to be necessary.

Normally women were not warriors, but the brutal experience of rape and murder had forged a new temperament in many. Before we allowed more of the same, we would fight and kill. We all understood that. Twice we had overcome intruders, and twice had our situation reversed—and twice suffered grievously. Experience is a cruel but effective teacher.

Spirit, garbed as a boy, was one of the display children. They were innocently playing—but she was armed with her finger-whip, and the others had small knives. If the others turned out to be pirates, she and the children were supposed to scream in simulated or genuine panic and flee, clearing the way for our fighting forces. If anything resembling a pacifier box made an appearance, Spirit would go for it. But if the children were caught, they would fight. We had to give the outsiders a chance to prove they were legitimate, just in case they were, for we were in desperate need of food and help. We dared not alienate legitimate visitors.

"You folk must have had a bad time," the Martian officer said in Spanish, looking about as his men followed him through the air lock. All were clean-cut and wore side-arms, not swords. "We discovered Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

quite a mess in your air lock. It's all right now; we dumped the stuff in space and fumigated the lock."

My mother was in the "innocent" group of women. She had roused herself from her grief to participate in this, for she knew she was only one of many who had been abruptly widowed, and that someone had to carry on. Even as we children had to protect her, she tried to protect us. That was part of what it meant to be a family; I was coming to appreciate the full significance of it in this adversity. Major Hubris had been lost, but his family carried on, as if his strength had been bequeathed to each of the survivors. "We were raided by pirates," she said. "All our men were killed."

"Well, that's over now," the officer said. "We shall carry you on in to Jupiter, where you will be granted refugee status. Collect your things; we're on a schedule and haven't much time. Don't bother with extra clothing; we'll issue you uniforms from our stores."

Slowly I relaxed. This was almost too good to be true! If they towed us the rest of the way in to Jupiter, our hunger and fear was over!

I turned to meet Helse's eyes. The two of us had been relegated to the center chamber of the bubble, the doughnut hole. We were deemed too old to be innocent children and too young to fight. But we would fight, if it came to that, to protect the precious remaining food stores. As it was, we were out of the action but could see everything plainly.

Helse did not seem to share my relief. Her eyes were squinting, her mouth grim. That renovated my alarm; did she know something I didn't?

Uncertain, the women in the Commons below looked at each other. "Leave the bubble?" my mother asked, and I realized the officer had not actually spoken of towing, but of carrying.

"Obviously you can't remain here," the officer said reasonably. "Drifting in space, your supplies diminishing, vulnerable to the vagaries of fate. You are fortunate we spotted you. Fetch your valuables; you don't want to be classed as paupers when you arrive."

The women seemed almost reluctant to believe their good fortune. Slowly they dispersed while the merchantmen smiled at the children. One man produced a box of bright candy balls and proffered it. He was promptly the center of juvenile attention, as the youngest flocked to accept the goodies. We had not seen candy since leaving Callisto! Even Spirit, suspicious at first, in due course sidled close to the friendly man and accepted a treat.

My mouth watered. I was not yet so old that candy didn't appeal. "Look what we're missing!" I muttered.

"Never accept candy from a stranger," Helse said grimly. I thought at first she was joking, then was doubtful.

The smallest child abruptly sat down. She had been greedily consuming the candy. She did not seem sick, but she did not get up.

Another child joined her, then a third. Soon all of them were sprawled on the deck. Spirit was one of the last to go, and I could see she was fighting it, but her knees buckled and betrayed her.

Señora Ortega marched up. "What is the matter?" she demanded, alarmed.

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The officer faced her. "The candy is drugged. But don't worry; we have the antidote. The children will not die if it is administered within an hour."

"Drugged!" Señora Ortega gazed on him with wild surmise. "Then you are—"

"Merely men who labor hard on short wages, and who have been too long in space," the officer said.