Page 14 of Owning His Pet
“Yeah,” she scowls. “But that’s illegal.”
“Not in deep space,” I remind her. “Stations are under galactic treaties, but where we are now, no laws apply but the laws of what can be gotten away with and what cannot be gotten away with.”
She pouts, but she stops arguing. She very narrowly avoided ending up being a set of delicacies on the captain’s table, I am sure.
It’s going to be time to move on from this place very soon. The whole interlude with her and the captain and the momentary lapse of my clothing illusion is going to start to sink into the consciousnesses of the crew and we might soon find ourselves on the wrong end of questions that will not be comfortable for me to answer.
“You’re a sweet girl,” I tell her. “You don’t need to be so furious at me.”
“Am I? Sweet? You don’t even know me. I could be any kind of woman. I could be the kind of woman who gets expelled from her colony and set adrift in space on a ship.”
“Is that what happened?”
“No. Of course not. I wanted to go.”
“Did you?”
“I just said I did. Didn’t I?”
She’s defensive. I could probe her mind a little more. Perhaps I should. The first time I tried to feel her, all I got was panic, but she had just been about to drown in an impenetrable spaceship, so I did not get a lot of sense from her.
Now, when I reach into her mind, I find a very different scene. I see a dusty planet with a red hue, fields of failing crops, and a whole host of people surrounding her. Older men with long beards and blue jeans.
“Go to the sun!” They are shouting the instruction at her, as if such a thing would be possible.
I think, at first, that I am understanding the memory incorrectly. But it is playing over in her mind as she attempts to deny the contents of it, and I am able to understand the darker undertones of what is happening.
It is a sacrifice, I believe. They wished to send her to the sun, to burn the shuttle, and her in the process, and to receive rain in return. There are ancient rituals of this nature, going back tensof thousands of years. But I confess, I find them barbaric and senseless in the extreme.
My reaction is stronger than hers. The energy of the memory is a mixture of misery and resignation. I do not sense fear. She was prepared to be sent out into the void of space to pay for the sins of her people. But at the last moment, she chose a different path. I wonder why.
“Pet,” I say as I slide from her mind.
“Why do you suddenly look sorry for me?” She narrows her eyes at me. “You were in my head, weren’t you? You’re some kind of psychic monster. Fuck. Get out of my brain.”
That was a quick conclusion to come to. I wonder if she felt me in there with her. She is a sensitive little thing.
“I’m sorry they did that to you.”
“I’m not. And shut up. I can get rain for them. I just have to try hard.”
“How can you get rain?”
“I’m not telling you,” she scowls. “I was right. Wasn’t I? You were in my head. You can fuck with people’s brains. You can make them think things. And you can alter what they see.”
“Yes.”
My admission takes much of the hostility out of her accusations. I see her face relax from annoyance into pure curiosity.
“How?”
“It is a function of who and what I am.”
She looks at me with wide eyes. “What am I thinking now?”
“You’re thinking that you’d like chocolate pudding, a spanking, and to be fucked to bed.”
“I am not,” she blushes. “You didn’t even try.”
