Playing at Grown ups

A Pink Dormouse Production

Chapter Eighteen

Vila

"So what’s been happening?" He had stocked up on candles, as keeping one burning in the window required more replacements than he had expected, and was now considering finding a new piece of artwork to brighten up the flat.

"That’s usually my question," said Storme.

"Well I’ve been helping Gems clear out her spare room and thought I might have missed out on the local gossip. These pictures aren’t yours, who did them?"

"Someone who’s new in town. If they sell well, she and her friends are thinking of using the money to get their own stall."

"I like them, they draw on mythology even more than some of your work. How about I take this one and you can tell the artist I’d like to see more... what are those kids up to?" Storme looked over to where he pointed.

"I think they’re part of that same group- runaways or refugees. There’s a squat in one of the empty warehouses where a lot of them live."

"If they’re thinkin’ of nicking stuff off that stall they’re bein’ a bit bloody obvious about it. Avon was better at swiping things even before I took him in hand. He at least had the sense to haggle over one bit of tech while he pocketed another. Of course Blake either thought he’d got a really good deal on components or accused me of doin’ all the stealin’ an’ Avon of not watching me closely enough. No, I can’t stand around watching, they’re goin’ to give thieves a bad name. Hang on to that picture for me, I’ll be back later."

He sprinted across the square and skidded to a halt between the stall and the boy and girl who were appraising the goods on it. Neither of them could be more than fourteen or fifteen and they were dressed in good quality but slightly battered clothes with quite a bit of silver costume jewellery.

"I want a word with you two. Turn out your pockets." Couple of bread rolls and some fruit but no money. No point in being too hard on them... He handed some loose change to the stallholder. "That should cover it: I’ll see they don’t do it again... So what are two well-brought up kids like you doin’ robbing market stalls?"

"It’s only for a couple of days," said the girl, "then we should have money again."

"Where from?" He wasn’t sure he was going to like the answer.

"Asa’s trying to find a buyer for her necklace: it should be worth enough to keep us all until some more of us can get jobs."

"Who’s goin’ to employ a bunch of kids?"

"I can get work unloading freighters no trouble," said the boy, "what you so interested for anyway?"

"I was in trouble with the law from when I was a lot younger than the two o’ you: it’s not worth it. Why don’t you stowaway on another ship an’ go back to your families?"

"What families? They’re either dead or don’t care." The girl looked like she was about to cry.

"Okay, but you really want to look out for yourselves. If you get caught the best that will happen is you’ll get deported, at worst... well let’s not think about that now. How about you take me to this Asa and I’ll look at her necklace? I’ll probably be able to get a better price for it from the people I know than she can anywhere."

The children led him through the market to the warehouse they were living in.

Daft buggers, wouldn’t last five minutes where I grew up bein’ this trusting.

Some of them had obviously been there a while: the walls were covered with murals and they had draped fancy hangings over the windows and across the centre of the building to divide it up into makeshift rooms. They’d managed to get a generator up and running and tapped into the water supply in a very professional manner.

"Nice place you’ve got here."

"Thanks," said an older girl with slightly oriental features. A lot of the kids had dyed hair but hers was shimmering red, blue and purple (hard to say which predominated) all the way to the roots. "I’m Asa: PhD in biochemical engineering and one-time jewel thief." According to Storme’s research, pushing bright Alpha kids through university when they’d barely hit puberty resulted in thirty five percent of them being convicted of one or more major crimes; in Vila’s experience that figure didn’t allow for all the ones who evaded detection.

"Jewel thief, eh? What you stolen?"

"This for a start," she indicated the gold and emerald necklace she was wearing, "and I’ve got plenty more where no one can find it."

"Don’t be so sure. So you cleared your parents out before running away?"

"Of course, they deserved it for stopping my allowance."

"I can probably get you a few thou’ for it: that’s more than anyone else’ll give you."

"It’s worth ten times that."

"Not wi’ no provenance. An’ what does anyone round here want wi’ fancy trinkets anyway? I can get you top money for the weight of stones an’ gold, that’s all. Look I’ll give you five hundred as a deposit and do the best I can for the rest. Like I said to the other two the best you lot can do is get yourselves home an’ finish your education."

"Why should we trust you?"

Some common sense at last. "Don’t see you havin’ many other options. Ask around town, plenty of people’ll vouch for me."

"Okay." She took the necklace off and handed it to him. He gave her the money he had taken out of the bank to pay the rent (he could always get more before he saw Mac later). It was a shame that so many good kids got all the bad breaks but with any luck this lot would do reasonably well eventually.

"Look, there’s a factory opening up in the spring: I’ll see if they can give you older uns jobs. Might be able to find a few other bits and pieces in town as well. I’ll let you know when I bring the money for this."

Probably going to regret getting involved but if I can keep the majority of them out of trouble a while longer it might be worth it.

Marianne

"Can you believe it’s been twenty years?" Jayrel ran a hand over her ash-blonde hair.

"Unfortunately, I can," said Marianne. "In a lot of ways I’m amazed we both made it this far without being blown up or jailed. Well, you’ve done both but they don’t seem to have left any lasting damage." The two of them were celebrating the anniversary of their meeting in style at the only stoner bar on Lindor (in an attempt at respectability hashish was otherwise only available in coffee shops). Getting there right at the start of happy hour, they had covered their table with an array of cheap cocktails.

"So, apart from managing to stay alive and turn up here at the same time, have we made a success of our lives so far?"

"Well, you have," said Jayrel, "you’ve got an unbeatable record for keeping out of trouble, your ship is more up to date than anything currently being built and you still have admirers falling over themselves to talk to you." She leaned forward to allow Marianne to light her cigarello. "I, on the other hand lost the best ship in the galaxy and nothing I’ve had since compares. I spent a small fortune faking my own death and making sure it applied to every alias I’ve ever used, only for the man I wanted out of my life to be so inconsiderate as to get himself killed by a jealous tart with a grudge and a death wish two months later. I’ve got three of his and my embryos on ice and no chance of finding a suitable co-parent before I’m past it, and to top it all I’m as obsessed with you as I ever was."

"It can’t be all bad," said Marianne, "your crew must be better than the pair you offloaded on me. Thanks for the compliment by the way."

"Any time. You’ve still got them then?"

"Yes, I nearly locked them on the Sappho to keep them out of trouble but I took pity on them and let them off to go shopping. At least I think they said shopping and not shoplifting. That’s the trouble with associating with habitual criminals back home, it makes me very mistrustful of anyone who looks remotely shifty." Marianne lit a cigarello of her own.

"Tell me about it: I don’t trust anyone these days, present company excepted."

"Oh I trust my boys at home with the big things. It’s just the little things like eyeliner pencils and keeping within the law outside of Astbury that I have to worry about. And the Terror Twins have calmed down a lot since I threatened to remove their arms and legs with a butter knife if they misbehaved again."

"Maybe I should try that with my crew, they’re wanting an increased percentage for danger money. Don’t suppose you fancy doing a bit of gun running for me? I was about to agree to take a consignment to the rebels on Horizon when something else came up that I couldn’t turn down. Old friend I really owe for something and all that."

"Horizon you say?" Marianne had picked up a rumour linking the planet with the favour she was supposed to be doing for Vila. "I might be able to manage that, it would only add a week onto the time I’m away from Base, I’m sure the boys won’t mind too much."

"Don’t tell me you’re answering to a couple of men these days?"

"Only in so much as it keeps them from driving each other up the wall, closely followed by everyone else. I’m still a woman’s woman at heart. And I’m only shagging one of them, the other one’s more of a baby brother."

"Talking of such things, where are you sleeping tonight?"

"That all depends on what you’re offering. But no expecting me to settle down and raise little smugglers with you, no matter how nice to me you are."

"We’ll see... another round of cocktails?"

Dayna

"So tell me, what’s happening with you and those two?" Dayna set two mugs off coffee down on the table in her quarters. Soolin looked like she had got little sleep recently and the mess hall was too busy for a girlie gossip without someone inconvenient overhearing.

"I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Come on, Soolin, Mylo’s practically all over you in the mess hall then Grant calls you into the Control Room for a vital strategy meeting."

"So?"

"They’re fighting over you. Or hadn’t you noticed?"

"I’d noticed. Doesn’t mean I’ve done anything about it; or that I plan to. I may not have Tarrant’s high ideals about not mixing business and pleasure but it doesn’t mean I’m going to jump into bed with every colleague who shows an interest in me."

"Is it true that Mylo’s only half human?" Soolin concurred. "Could be interesting."

"For an alien species to breed successfully with humans, they would have to be very similar: physically as well as genetically. I wouldn’t expect to find anything that unusual if I did decide to investigate."

"So you’ve thought about it?"

"Why not? No harm in fantasising."

"He’s very tall..."

"Doesn’t always follow."

"You have statistical evidence?"

"I’ve done some research into the subject."

"I thought you might have. So... what was Avon like then."

"I’ve told you before, we never-"

"Swear I won’t tell anyone, not even Del."

"For the hundredth time, I never had sex with Avon. We shared a bed once and that was all. Same goes for Vila before you ask."

"After all the speculating we did on Xenon, you had your chance at Avon and did nothing about it?"

"He wasn’t interested. Not that conditions were anything like ideal at the time. I thought maybe once we got back from Betafarl it might be worth investigating further but I never got the chance did I?"

"So, given the choice, who would you go for?"

"Well, I’m not going to waste time on what might have been. Out of Grant and Mylo? I don’t know, maybe I could set up a rota for the pair of them and make a proper comparison."

Storme

Vila had asked her to check on the runaways so she had gone down to the warehouse with a female medic who could be relied upon not to stir up trouble. Most of the kids were probably telling the truth when they said they had nowhere to go back to. The rest seemed to come from relatively stable homes, which surprised her as she had always assumed that runaways were escaping abuse of one sort or another rather than boredom and emotional inattention. Physically they were all in good condition: no major infections, no signs of serious eating disorders or drug abuse and the inevitable self-harm scars seemed to be mostly healed over on those who had them.

The youngest had been fostered out to families to complete their education and one or two of the others had expressed an interest in moving out to one of the farms as labourers. Storme had no doubt that the spaces would be filled sooner or later by others and resolved to speak to Dariel on his return regarding a permanent refuge for youngsters with nowhere else to go. The war was unlikely to extend all the way to Astbury so they could expect the population to continue to increase for a while.

Vila was right that the new factory would provide work for many of them both directly and through the development of secondary service industries but there was still the worry of how to feed and maintain the community in the meantime. It was probably wise for a network of trusted responsible adults to keep an eye on things and intervene where necessary. The though of Vila, responsible and adult occurring in the same sentence was intriguing to say the least...

On to Chapter Nineteen

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