Matadora (8 page)

He smiled at her and nodded. "My name is Colin."

"Good for you, Colin. I'm Dirisha, like the planet."

"You were named after this world?"

"Nan, Deuce, they named it after me. What do you think?"

He blushed again, and shook his head.

Dirisha's grin broadened. Not only was he her ticket to shelter from the storm, he was a sarhg-seed, fresh as a ten-year-old from the country. She could get something to drink, some flickstick toke, and a meal out of him, without letting him touch her. And if she touched him, why, he'd probably blow out before he got within a half-meter of actual fucking. No problems with the Guild on this one.

The wind picked up, and the smell of rain reached Dirisha as they neared the entrance to Kivu's. Colin here would keep the shippers off her back, she could drink and eat in cool comfort, while the rain splattered against the blue tile roof, and the lightning danced on the arresters. After the storm passed, she could maybe give him a couple of strokes to repay him for the favor; a kiss or two, a quick jack, he'd be happy enough. A good deal for both of them.

The rain began, smacking into the plastcrete in fat drops which spattered like little bombs. The dull gray surface became pocked with darker spots.

Dirisha pulled at Colin's arm. "Come on, Deuce, let's get inside!"

The cool air of the interior chilled Dirisha, but it felt good after the outside air, which was always body heat or better during the summer. She led Colin toward the back of the large room which was the shippers' rec-chem center in Flat Town.

Dirisha was well aware of the looks her body drew as she moved. She was fifteen, but she was tall and slim, and her breasts were already larger than her mother's or sister's. A lot of these men and women wanted her. One of them, a big brute wearing a freight handler's coverall, stared at her so hard that Dirisha imagined she could feel his touch. He sat with his legs spread wide, leaning back in a chair, drinking splash. When he saw Dirisha's glance, he reached down between his legs and stroked himself. The bulge there looked too big to be real; Dirisha hurriedly looked away, and back at Colin.

To her right, she heard the freight handler laugh. The sound was coarse, and full of lust. The cold air suddenly felt too cold, and Dirisha shivered. She knew that kind of man all too well—she'd learned from her mother and sister what those men wanted. That one wouldn't be above rape, and hard rape, at that. Any orifice he wanted—likely all of them—and fists and feet added in for the fun of it. You could file a complaint with the Guild or if you were really stupid, you could call the cools, but it was part of the business on this world. There were two kinds of people in a stellar ship's port like Sawa Mji: users and used. Good timers got paid for it, but they got used, that was the thing.

Dirisha looked back at the freight handler, who continued to stare at her.

She suddenly felt as if her coverlittle covered nothing; as if the man could see her naked. He grinned.

They reached a table. Dirisha sat first, a mistake. That put her looking at the freight handler. She pointedly looked away and at Colin, who was oblivious to all the byplay.

There was no waiter working the floor and the com unit set into the scarred gray plastic table had long ago ceased to operate.

"I'll get us something from the bar," Colin said. "What would you like?"

"Splash'11 do it," she said. "But no hurry." She didn't want him to leave, for she was sure when he did, the big man eating her with his eyes would move on her. And that thought frightened her. She might be able to downtalk him, but maybe not. If the dork got physical, she couldn't handle that very well, and Colin wouldn't be much help.

"I'll just be a minute," Colin said, as he stood to head for the bar.

Oh, shit.

Dirisha looked around. Six or eight pairs of eyes tried to forge a link with hers, including the handler's. No help from them, things went ugly. A short and smallish woman sat three tables down, snorting spirals of kick-dust; a few local good timers, men and women, cuddled up to clients. Hurry with the drinks, Colin, I'm alone here, really alone—

The freighter handler stood, like some big beast awakening to feed. He padded toward her.

Oh, shit! Colin, come on—!

Up close, the man looked gross. He was dirty, his coverall stained with synlube and grime; he needed a depil wash and his breath stank. He leaned over almost to the point of touching Dirisha before he spoke.

"What say we go someplace, dish? I got something special for you, a big surprise, you copy? Big."

Dirisha shook her head, afraid. "I'm with somebody." She nodded toward the bar.

Brute didn't bother to look toward the bar. "Kiddie brass won't fuss. He's uplevels, he's not gonna make ripples over the likes of you 'n' me. Come on."

Dirisha felt her mouth go dry as the fear climbed higher in her. "N-no. I can't."

"Am I gonna hafta tenderize you some, dish? I like it tender." He flexed the fingers of one big hand into a fist and held it under Dirisha's chin.

Dirisha rode the edge of panic. He could hurt her, maybe real bad, before anybody could pull him off—assuming anybody wanted to bother trying.

Dirisha swallowed dry-ness, and shook her head. "No. I'll go with you." She was so frightened she wanted to throw up, to pee, to scream and run. Maybe if she took good care of him, got him off fast and hard, he wouldn't beat her.

That hope fell as she saw him grin and felt his fingers clamp onto her arm tightly enough to bruise.

"What's happening here?"

Colin! Dirisha felt a rush of relief. Colin would get pounded if he tried to stop Brute, she was sure of that, but maybe she could get away while it was happening. But probably Colin wouldn't be stupid—

"Bend off," Brute said. "Me 'n' dark meat here have business, isn't that right, dish?"

Dirisha knew her eyes were wide, and she shook her head. "No, I—" Brute squeezed her arm so hard, Dirisha gasped. "Ah!"

Colin reached out and laid his hand on Brute's shoulder. "Let her go!"

The move was fast and savage: Brute released Dirisha and slammed his fist into Colin's belly; the younger man bent suddenly, trying to breathe, and before he could straighten, the freight handler clubbed downward with one thick forearm, catching Colin across the shoulders. The move flattened Colin onto the dirty floor.

Dirisha tried to bolt, but Brute was faster. He blocked her path, arms stretched wide, grinning.

Dirisha spun, looking for an exit. There was no place to go.

The small woman who had been noselining kick-dust looked at Dirisha.

The amphetaminic gleamed from the woman's eyes as she took in the scene.

For a moment, Dirisha locked gazes with the woman, in a wordless plea for help.

"C'mon, dish. Time to go make me feel good."

Dirisha turned, and Brute grabbed at her. She lunged away, pulling her arms to her chest.

"I said now, meat!"

"Back out, friend," came a quiet voice from behind Dirisha. The girl turned, and saw the woman standing there, legs wide, arms held up, and her fingers spread into claws.

The freight handler laughed. "Back out? Shit, I might— but with two dishes instead of one!" Brute grinned, but the grin faded as the small woman caught and held his gaze with her own. She looked... insolent, that was the word which came to Dirisha's mind. Not the least bit afraid.

Brute's grin faded. "Bend off, cunt. This don't concern you."

"Yes, it does," the woman said. "Let her go and back out."

Behind the bar, the tender was coding in a call for the cools, but they wouldn't get here in time, Dirisha knew. She found herself holding her breath.

The freight handler glanced around. Everyone was watching him, and Dirisha saw him set his teeth; muscles jumped in his face. "Remember, you asked for it," he said. He stepped toward the small woman, more swagger than anything else. His grin returned.

Brute's smile vanished as if slapped from his face. His mouth gaped and he groaned. It happened so fast, Dirisha wasn't sure of what she had seen, but what it looked like was the little woman snapped her foot up and kicked Brute square between the legs. The noise of her foot smacking into his groin was loud in the silent pub.

While the surprise still danced over his face, the little woman moved again.

Once, when she'd been very young, Dirisha had gone to the offworld fauna exhibit at the Flat Town Fair. There had been a lizard there, from some far world, a reddish creature no bigger than her hand, as harmless looking as could be. While she watched, one of the zookeepers dropped a grain rat into the pen. The rat was a big one, almost three times the size of the poor lizard, and Dirisha gasped, afraid for the reptile. She had once seen a big dog driven off by a pair of such rats, an alley mutt hungry enough to attack a human child. The lizard was as good as dead.

The rat spied the lizard and set to pounce; before he could, the lizard darted in, took a hunk of skin and flesh the size of a man's thumb out of the rat's throat, and was half a meter away before the rat realized he was hurt.

Three times more the lizard whipped in and out, scoring deeply on the rat, before the stunned mammal fell over and died. Dirisha had been amazed, as had most of the other watchers.

Now, ten years later, Dirisha watched this woman take out the freight handler, much as the lizard had taken the rat. Her hands and elbows slammed into the man's face and neck; her knees thudded into his crotch; her booted feet lanced across his legs and ankles. Brute tried to back away, but the woman stayed with him, pounding continuously. She was the lizard and he was the rat, and he never had a chance, for all his size and strength. It seemed like a long time, but Dirisha later reckoned it at about ten seconds.

When Brute fell, it was like a refuse chute blown down by a lightning bolt.

He hit the floor hard enough to shake Dirisha, and he did not move to rise.

The woman stood next to the fallen man for a moment, her legs splayed in a funny-looking squat, her arms and hands held rigid. Then she relaxed and straightened. Her face was serious. She turned to look at Dirisha.

"Th-thank you," Dirisha began. "That was-was—"

"—nothing, girl. Don't you have any self-respect? Why are you here? Didn't he have the price?"

"No, you're wrong, I wasn't good-timing—"

"No? But you have, haven't you? And you will again. I know you, I've seen you on a dozen worlds. I don't know why I bothered." She turned, to leave the pub.

"Wait!" Dirisha called. "I-I want to—I need to..." she stopped. What, Dirisha? What do you want to say? She's right, isn't she?

No!

Yes.

As she watched the small woman exit, Dirisha had a moment of clarity, a vision of what her life would be like: she would meet this man in one of his many forms, and paid or not, he would use her, as he had been about to do.

Who would save her, then? Would she grow used to it, like her older sister and mother had done? Learn to pop dorph for the pain when one of the dink-dorks abused her? File routine complaints with the Guild, like the others did?

Would she elect to have four or five children, to help pay the overhead, like her mother did? Carefully ease them into the business, to give herself a rest after ten or twenty years of selling herself to anybody with the price?

Yes, that was what she could do. That was all she could do, she was unprepared for anything else. What she had been looking forward to a few minutes ago now seemed a finite and futile line straight to the final chill. She was fifteen, she saw the end of the ride, and it was unbearably ugly.

Unbearably ugly.

No! She would get out! Get offworld, learn something else—!

What? How?

Dirisha looked at the fallen forms of the two men, Brute and Colin. The younger man was as a child, she knew, he could be... handled. There had to be a way. There had to be a way.

CHAPTER NINE

DIRISHA LAY ON her back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Geneva lay next to her, propped on one elbow, gently rubbing the older woman's flat stomach.

"What happened then?" the blonde asked quietly.

Dirisha blinked, turned slightly to look at the woman who loved her, and sighed. "What happened? I helped Colin up from the rec-chem pub's floor, brushed him off, then took him to a cheap quick-crib and seduced him. I was his third woman, I think, and certainly his best. I made sure of that. His ship was berthed for a month; I had that long to get from him what I had to have: knowledge. I traded my fifteen year-old body for as much as I could get him to teach me. He duped a disk from his ship—the Go Placid, I'll never forget the freighter's logo, it lit every time the holoproj accessed the damned program—and that's where I got my secondary education, from that disk.

Colin helped me set it up, he helped me start learning it, but it took two years of real-time before I could self-test a ninety percent on it. Colin was long gone, of course, but he'd been well-paid for his efforts. And by seventeen, I had a little more knowledge about the galaxy."

"What were you doing for... I mean, how did you ... manage?"

"To survive? I joined the Guild. Became a good-timer. But I knew it was only temporary. When I turned seventeen, I left the Guild and got a job—room and board and classes— in a local dojo. I started the study of Oppugnate, my first Art. I didn't have any money, I busted my butt, but I wasn't sexing boozed or stoned shippers. I was learning a skill which would buy my way out, I used it right. I knew it could be done—that woman who had saved me from the freight handler had done it, so I could do it. I was young, healthy and willing to do anything it took."

Dirisha fell silent, lost again in her memories.

CHAPTER TEN

MWAUMU SLAPPED HER across the face with the back of his hand.

Dirisha's head twisted, but she didn't cry out. It was a contemptuous strike, it stung, but there was more noise associated with it than pain; more shame than sound or hurt.

"Stupid!" Mwalimu said. "You have fecalimo for brains! You move like a cow!"