That ended the talking part of this confrontation. Wizard couldn't stop himself once he heard that Lucas was turning Dreamer into a prostitute. Lucas had been a pimp once; now he was preparing to be a pimp again, but this time with Dreamer.
Wizard took a wild swing. Lucas stepped inside it, put his open hand on Wizard's face, and squeezed. This wasn't the counter-attack that the boxing coach had shown him. Lucas didn't want to hurt Wizard.
"Stop it, Wizard. You had your chance with Dreamer. She's moved on." Lucas released his face squeeze.
"I don't know you anymore, Lucas. I can't believe what you've become." And with that, Wiz left.
# # # # # # # #
Dreamer and Lylah were back in the boarding house, both exhausted.
"That was great, Lylah. I learned a lot. You're so good at basketball!"
"Yeah, well, I guess. But I'm too modest to brag." Lylah laughed and Dreamer did too. "Could you do me a favour, Dreamer?"
"Sure."
"Could you let Lucas know, gently, that what he's thinking is never going to happen?"
"He's really stuck on you."
"I know, and he's a nice kid, but it's never going to happen. It can't."
# # # # # # # #
Later in her room, Dreamer checked her dream queue. Something in the queue had troubled her. Troubled her badly, actually. She was trying not to pay too much attention to her dreams, but they kept queuing up and they kept on coming true. The dream that had been at the front of the queue this morning had involved Wizard, Lucas, and Theo. She had seen some sort of physical fight in the ship. Wizard swinging; Theo pushing him to the deck; Lucas with his hand in Wizard's face. Harsh feelings. Three brothers violently disagreeing with each other.
Dreamer didn't know what the fight would be about. And she didn't know where she was at the time of the fight. She didn't see herself in the dream, but she could have been in the galley, just not directly visible in the dream. Since the dream was in her head, the fight was probably about her, but she couldn't imagine why that would be. She had tried to prevent the dream from happening today by staying away from the ship. If she wasn't ever in the galley, the dream couldn't come true.
Dreamer checked the queue again. The dream wasn't there. Not in the front of the queue. Not anywhere at all in the queue that was now ten dreams long. Staying away from the ship must have worked. She would have hated to have been the cause of three brothers becoming alienated.
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Chapter 15
It was the first full week of January. Big Momma was on the rampage at Ranch #4. Both Renfrew and Jenkins were now wearing dog collars. Renfrew would begin work as a slave in a new revenue stream soon and Jenkins was re-assigned to the cattle business, but as a slave rather than as a boss. Pililiani was demoted to the ranch's nursery. Big Momma had awarded Pililiani's head housekeeper job to Hanna who apparently had made some striking improvements inside the nursery. Pililiani was aware that this demotion would likely mean that she'd be declared redundant next year. However, with the island slave camp destroyed, that might be delayed. She didn't care; she was sure that Marie would be returning soon to kill the people Pililiani had cursed.
The young carpenter boss was promoted nine positions – eight because of the eight bosses killed by some creatures and one more because Jenkins had been dog-collared. That teenager was now Boss #15 and he would be put in charge of the new revenue stream. Boss #2 was now Boss #1 and would be the first in line to become the new Big Daddy in the event that the current Big Daddy met with an accident. Big Momma had some thoughts about that accident. Boss #1 was not only charming but he was cute too.
The twenty slaves who had been sent to the island slave camp and then returned to the ranch, were allowed to live. They'd work in the new revenue stream. With the penalty charges that Safe Haven was assessing for the loss of a transport copter on top of the loss of an important, blonde blue-eyed asset, Big Momma was looking at a serious imbalance in her books. More revenue would be desperately needed in the next few years so that she could pay off those penalties.
# # # # # # # #
I should explain to my readers how these ranches worked from a financial perspective. Ranch #4 produced three crops as did the other ranches. The first crop was the food that the field slaves grew in the land near to the house. This crop was sufficient to feed everybody on the ranch. However Big Momma had to be careful to control the numbers of slaves and bosses. If these numbers rose too high, they'd need to grow more food than they were currently producing. That would mean preparing more land for agricultural uses and irrigating it from the river. They had plenty of land but irrigating it was expensive. That was one of the reasons that she had sent the twenty old field slaves into retirement. To reduce their drain on the ranch's food and water supplies.
Ranch #4's second crop consisted of the cattle that they raised at the south end of the ranch. She didn't have the means to increase that crop. The land produced barely enough cattle feed and water was again an issue. The ranch butchered the weak cattle for their own use and sold the balance to a manager in Safe Haven's office who would buy all the cattle from surrounding ranches and sell them at the best price he could get. After marketing and sales fees were deducted, Ranch #4's share of the profits from the Safe Haven cattle sales went into Big Momma's books. She'd use this money to buy necessary equipment for the ranch.
Big Daddy was in charge of producing the third crop. That third crop? The baby slaves that they'd sell to Safe Haven. Big Momma made sure that the girls that would produce those slaves were kept close at hand; the less energy that Big Daddy had to use to find the young girls, the more energy he would have for crop production. Big Daddy approached his job with great diligence. It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it.
Big Momma expected each girl in the big house to produce one baby. After the birth, the baby would go into the nursery and the mother would be sent to the huts in the gully. From that point on, she would work as a field slave. Big Momma would buy new 14-year-old girls to keep Big Daddy's interest high. Big Daddy didn't know it yet, but that quota of one baby per young girl was about to be doubled. The baby slaves were the ranch's only revenue stream that made a handsome profit. It made sense to focus a lot of energy, Big Daddy's, onto that side of the business. Big Momma knew that he had energy to spare – the trips to the private bar and the floozies who worked there proved that. She also knew that, from time to time, Big Daddy would tire of the young teenagers and develop a hankering for somebody older, like 18 or 19 year olds. He'd wander the fields and grant some lucky teenage mom the opportunity to have another child. These moms tried to disappear when Big Daddy went wandering. The question in Big Momma's mind was whether he had the energy to double the entire harvest. If not, she might give Boss #1 the chance to work directly in the slave production business. Perhaps on an occasional basis just to see if he was suited to take over Big Daddy's role. She'd put him through an extensive interview process first, of course.
The harvesting of the crop was straightforward. At the age of 10, all their young slaves were sold to Safe Haven who would re-sell them at the age of 14 back into the system (i.e. to ranch owners), and failing that, to interested outside parties. Very few people knew what Safe Haven did with the children for those four missing years or how many of them survived those years.
None of the ranches kept birth records. Big Daddy #4 didn't know the names of any of his baby-bearing slaves. If he had to address a white woman, he simply called her girl. Big Daddy didn't know the names of his sons who had achieved boss status either. Nor did he want to know. So it should come as no surprise to you to discover that he had no idea which little white girl had given birth to which little brown son or daughter. It had never crossed his mind that the white mothers who had borne his children might recognize their sons if they were returned to the ranch. Or that the sons might recognize their mothers.
Some ranch owners liked to bring their ow
n boys back to the ranch and, in time, one of the ranch owner's sons would become the next Big Daddy. The costs for keeping the genetic records that allowed ranch owners to track each son would be added to the bill. Other ranchers didn't care. They ordered the number of bosses that they wanted and took whatever they were given.
This brings us to the new revenue stream that Big Momma was planning. Even if Big Daddy had the energy to satisfy Big Momma's new baby quota, revenue from that energy would take ten years to materialize. But Big Momma had fines to pay now. She needed a new cash crop soon. No other ranch in the area had a fourth revenue stream, so asking them for advice would be no help. Instead, she searched the records of the slaves already in the ranch's books and that search produced an interesting idea. To learn more about that idea, the reader will have to take a trip with me to a dark root cellar where two people are talking about Pililiani's new role on the ranch.
# # # # # # # #
"Actually, I don't mind the change," Pililiani whispered. "I'll enjoy working with the moms more than the vixens in the Big House. Plus I do love the babies and the toddlers. I'll start teaching the older ones to read. I get along well with Hanna and I'll help her learn the new job – especially the snooping part. She'll keep me informed."
"For our purposes, having you in direct contact with the older slaves will help. Each one of them has lost a child, some of them two. When the time comes, they'll be better fighters."
"And you? How do you like your new job? Do you actually know anything about growing peaches?"
"Actually I do. Big Momma must have been reading my Safe Haven file. When I was in Chicago, my gang started up a peach business. Safe Haven took it over when they moved me back to the ranch. Big Momma talked with me before deciding to add peach trees to our crops. There's good soil in the gully and around the riverbank. We'll have water for the trees all year long. There are no other peach producers anywhere near us. As Wizard would say, we'll have a monopoly."
"Who's Wizard?"
"A gang kid I met. I don't know which ranch he was born into."
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Chapter 16
The Wilizy/Europe filled up quickly that first week of January when all three families, children included, came up from the satellite compound. Wolf, William, and TG were prepared to TiTr extensively as part of their duties for Team Justice. Melissa had other ideas.
"We won't exhaust ourselves," she said. "We can be away from home for a couple of weeks. I don't expect this to last longer than that. Who wants to do what?"
"I can work full time on the judge," Lucas said. "I owe him."
"I have to put in half a day on basketball every day," Theo said. Then he explained how special the offer had been for him to be put on the university's practice roster.
Dreamer had good news to share too. "Lylah talked to the assistant woman's coach for me and I have a full training load in the afternoons and evening too. I'll spend some of each day with Lylah and some of the day with the practice roster team. I can't give up those opportunities, Melissa."
"You won't have to. The judge isn't going anywhere."
Care of the children was uppermost on the women's minds. Liset would be 6 years old this year; Yo-Yo was 2; Jock, Will, and Izzy were 1; and Yollie's Hank was 3 months. Mac was approaching the five month mark in her pregnancy and was already asking for some time away from Wilizy duties. Yollie had announced that she too was pregnant but would be able to help with the children. Melissa decided to put all the women, herself included, into childcare duties while the men took on the time travel research. Dreamer already knew that was going to happen, but hadn't said anything in fear of losing that dream from her queue. Melissa assigned the men to different periods of the judge's life and told them to be thorough. "No rush. We can spend all January in Toronto and enjoy ourselves too. February is soon enough to return home."
# # # # # # # #
Back at the home compound, life had settled into a routine. All of the Wilizy returned to their business duties except for Reese who went back to school. Reese spent each afternoon after school with Annika – either alone with her or with her and her mom. For those of you who have Winnie-istic fervour, hand flesh had not connected with hand flesh yet. Speaking of Winnie, she was working as the Wilizy's chief snoop and was enjoying it. Mathias was away somewhere – only he and Wizard knew where at any given moment. Wizard said nothing about Lucas and Theo on his return to the compound. In fact, he said nothing at all. After his failure to convince his brothers to do the right thing for Dreamer, Wizard disappeared into the woods somewhere in western Canada. He ignored all queries about why he wasn't home. I'm doing my job, he mind-messaged his dad at one point. Leave me alone, he added tersely. This was most unlike Wizard.
Yolanda suggested that they back off. "We know where Wiz is from the GPS tracker and can find him if we need to. It's probably something to do with Dreamer. He hasn't been the same since the two of them broke up." She probably would have had a different reaction if Wizard had told her that Lucas was grooming Dreamer to be a prostitute.
Granny was the only one in the home compound who had time on her hands since the search for more Safe Haven bunkers had stalled. The Raging Gardeners knew that Marie had been on a Safe Haven ranch, but they were spread too thin to pursue that lead right now. Granny spent her time making sure that Marie and Nary were settled in. She moved them into one of the empty houses in the compound and then took Marie on some tours of the thrift stores in the area. Marie was very reluctant to purchase anything, even though Granny had emphasized that the cost was very low. "We don't need any of those," Marie said on one trip and walked away from a shelf of glasses. "We can drink from the tap."
Granny did convince Marie to give herself and Nary enough clothes to last a week before she needed to start a wash. But on frivolous objects like hairbrushes, or an extra face cloth, or a pillow for the bed, Marie acted in a way that was uncharacteristic for her gender. She refused to buy something that she didn't need. Even when it was on sale! Obviously Marie had not been ordained in the church of the Shopping Gods yet.
It's probably fair to say that, given the money to buy something, most women will consider spending that money as a religious duty. Buying, acquiring things, and shopping are widely accepted as part of the Shopping Gods religion. After all, the test for entering that religion's afterlife was: How much useless stuff did you acquire during your lifetime? And, was it on sale? For the men married to adherents to the Shopping Gods religion, they were hopelessly restricted to asking their wives questions like: "Why do we have different coloured sheets on our bed this year? Weren't the old ones good enough?"
Nary spent most of the day either lounging in the sun or hunting. The first in her human skin, the second in her panther skin. She had lost interest in reading the picture books. When Granny tried to encourage her to read and even offered to help, Nary answered, "Why should I learn to read?" She'd listen politely to the answer and ignore it. She had the same response for learning to count. Nary did work on her manners, her personal appearance, and on using civilization's conveniences like toilets, sinks, and shoes. She helped Marie with the meals – that being their contribution to the family's daily duties. But otherwise, she'd just lie in the sun.
Once Granny had explained how she could always find her way home, Nary spent more and more time prowling the woods in panther form. (On her first excursion, Nary had lost her way and had had to mind-message Granny for help.) After a couple of days, Granny asked her to take her hunting further away from the home compound as the panther was proving to have a voracious appetite. Contrary ended up hunting in the remote and very animal-abundant lands in northern B.C.
After three days of such a hunting trip, one in which Nary did not respond to mind messages, Marie went to Granny. "We have to find Nary and bring her back. If Contrary takes over her body for too long, she won't let Nary back in."
Indeed, that was what had happene
d. They found Contrary easily enough, but they couldn't get her to change form. Granny decided to call Momaka for help. Bob the invisible dragon made his appearance and talonized the panther into the air. The panther and Marie were duly impressed. When Marie asked Nary why she had let Contrary take over the body, Nary responded, "Why not? At least Contrary has something to do."
Granny and Marie had a long discussion. Much of that discussion centered on Theo. In spite of severe apprehensions, Marie agreed that Nary would be better with people her own age in Toronto. However she did insist that Nary re-start her reading and that she begin to learn math. Nary agreed but only if it was Theo who helped her.
Granny's conversation with Marie allowed her to ask some questions about Marie's health. "Do you become tired often?" she asked.
"Yes," Marie admitted. "I'm getting old."
"Are you tired physically or tired as in being sleepy?"
"Both. Why?"
"Perhaps Doc could help. He knows a lot about medical problems."
"Your husband is a doctor?"
"Yes."
"As in a doctor who wears a white coat and has shiny tools."
"Yes, I suppose."
"Then, No."
"He's a good doctor."
"No man will touch me like that again."
"You had a bad experience?"
"When I was kidnapped."
"I've had medical training too. How about I do any touching that needs to be done and Doc tells me what to do?"
# # # # # # # #
"Less than one-quarter of your heart is working properly," was Doc's verdict. "Avoid any strenuous activity or you'll die before your time," he added.
Marie shrugged it off. "I know where I'll die and I know how I'll die. I just don't know when."
Later when Doc and Granny were alone, he asked about the scars on her chest and stomach. "Who did that to her body?"
"A friend so that she'd avoid being raped. Marie told us about it in a Raging Gardeners meeting. Showed us too."
"Her body has the age of a 70 year old. That would make her about 55 when she gave birth to Nary. Theoretically possible, but unlikely. Here's another curiosity. Did anybody ask her how she fed baby Nary when she had no breasts and there was no milk of any kind on that island?"