Body Shop

"We should! Bran's slavegirl slutgirl! You should want Veena! Should breed Veena! No! No breed; no fuck! Bran body want; Bran no want. Bran hate. Ugly Veena, stupid Veena!"

She got up, knocked over her seat, ran to our quarters, I heard her flop on her bunk. Crying again.

I followed slowly, not sure what to do here, just let her have some time for her emotion to burn off a little. Went in, sat on my bunk, just looking at her.

She rolled to face the back of the couch. Snuffled. Wiped her face, still angry. Feeling rejected and small and ugly.

"I do like you Veena. You're not stupid, not at all. I know that."

She didn't want to answer yet. Huffed a little, trying to ignore me.

"It's just that you are my slave girl! I own you. That means..."

She spoke to the back of the couch. "That means you can do anything you want with me. I do everything you want me to do. Work, buff, cook, clean. Everything."

Everything included, fuck, breed. Yeah. I wasn't going to do that, I knew it now.

"Its more complicated than that."

She turned over, sat up. Eyes flashing.

"Always more complicated! Nothing is simple! Always words words! Veena know, I know you don't want me because I'm ugly, and not good enough for you."

She spit those words in my face, angry words.

No, not angry. Ashamed. She wasn't good enough to be my slave girl, to have sex with.

Telling her she was wrong, wouldn't help. It never helped to tell people their feelings were wrong.

"Veena, do you know what it is, to be a slave?" said quietly, which got her attention.

A nod, looking away, looking back. "I do what you want, always."

Yes. "There's another way to say that. Being a slave means, you never get to say no, to what I want. You can't say no, not to me. Ever."

She thought about that. Shrugged. "I won't say no, not ever, because I want to do things for you. It's why I am."

"I appreciate that! You are a good slave girl. You do your job very well. So, I have to do my job well, too.

"That's why I can't ask you to do some things, things that might hurt you or get you in trouble. Not even if I want it, very much."

"Bran no...You wouldn't do that!" She was not quite sure she was right.

"I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't ask you to tape more than one time a cycle, even if I needed you to, because it would be dangerous for you."

I let her think about that. Let things occur to her.

"I wouldn't use a sting-rod on you, because I'm better than that. If I want you to do something, I'll just ask you. If you don't want to do it, or can't do it, you'll tell me.

"That's how it works. Between us."

She was startled, it had not occurred to her that such a thing was possible, that Bran could hurt her.

"Does it... work that way? With other slave girls?"

I nodded, sadly. "Between very many slave girls, and their owners. Very often."

"Why!" An anguished look, she was feeling pain for those other girls.

"Because, when you own something, you can get used to having it do everything the first time you ask. Like the buffer? The buffer will buff anything I want, never say no. It's just a tool.

"Some owners think, my slave girl is a tool, like the buffer? She should never complain; never refuse. Some owners get frustrated, get angry when their slave girl can't do something they ask. Or won't do it."

"Why not ask why? Why not understand? Just ask!"

Oh Veena, you innocent!

"Because, they don't have to? See, they own her, she doesn't have any choice, so they don't have to give her a choice. They don't have to try to understand. They just use the sting-rod, or hit her, or yell at her, get angry. Especially if they were angry already, tired and sad, they just yell and hit. Because it's so much easier than understanding."

She was shocked, to her core. Her mouth open, not a thing she could think of to say to that.

Finally, "Bran is not like that!" Sure of that; never more sure of anything. Good, we both believed that.

Now, the hard part.

"You see why I won't ask you to be my slutgirl? Because sometime you might not want that any more. But you would have to keep being my slutgirl, even if it hurt you. Even if it might get you killed. Even if you hated me, wanted to run away. You would have no choice."

"Bran would stop!"

I tilted my head. "Probably. Once you become partners that way, people have a very hard time deciding to stop. Very hard. It becomes something you want above all other things. Something you would do anything to keep.

"Like the way you want to be my slave girl. Would have a hard time, giving that up?"

"I don't want to give that up!"

"I know. But what if I did? What if I wanted to give you up, to sell you, and you still wanted to stay, you would do anything to stay. "

She nodded, following.

"Just like I might still want you to be my slutgirl, even if you didn't want it anymore."

That was complicated, but she was smart. She understood, we both had strong desires, it was important to keep things between us separate, at least a little. At least that part.

Anguish. "But, can I never be Bran's slutgirl? Never fuck? Never breed? I want that, so much."

"I don't see how. As long as you are my slave girl, I have to treat you as an important tool, a piece of equipment I respect, use to make our work go better."

She was crying again. She'd lost something important, to be more than just a tool to her Bran. It was going to hurt for a long time.

She pulled herself together, a sensible and resilient person really. Finished lunch and got back to work.

It wasn't the same. She was still using her skills, concentrating, doing an expert job of it. At the same time her mind was chewing something over? Rehashing her frustration and disappointment? I don't think so, no scowling or other strong emotional expressions. Just her brain, hard at work on something.

The afternoon saw her done with the buffing, a fivecycle of work for me took her barely two. After that she took a break, I suggested she should, still not up to full strength. She acknowledged that with a bare "Got to keep your tool sharp", put down her gear and retreated to the back room.

Not too bitter; she could have said so much more.

My next task was a simple axel realignment. Light haulers used independent suspension, flexible and adaptable to rough terrain but if you banged it hard enough you could still skew a support. I saw a lot of that, prospectors treated them like rented mules. Whatever a mule is; my mom used to say that.

Always the same fix: dismount that rotor from the suspension, straighten the transfer spar, align the mount point. Check the axel stub for trueness, heat and bend as needed. Replace the elastic buffer and friction rod, they always needed it so why not. Reassemble.

A new job came in just as I was checking the hub torque. A runabout three-rotor sand bike, on a flatbed, totally out of commission. He'd rolled it, still wore the neck brace and one limb in a sling. The bike had gotten the worse of it. Crumpled housing, bent control bar, smashed gauges. Cracked thermal exhaust fins. One rotor out of skew. And the pneumos looked like they'd been ripped at by a sand claw.

"A sand claw burst up in front of me, ripped the shit out of my pneumos as I passed. Lost stability, hit a basalt outcrop and ended up rolling into a basin!"

"A miracle your suit wasn't breached!" Most folks didn't survive even the simplest groundside accidents. The average Prospector's life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

He laughed. "It was! Cracked like an egg. I had to turn down the thermals, piss in my suit and let it freeze in the cracks to restore pressure. Limped back to my camp, took until the next solar maximum to get back inside, get out of the smell of my own piss!"

Not sure I could walk a sol in the sand, my helmet full of frozen piss, with a broken bone and injured neck. These guys were tough. He got a second chance anyway; most didn't.

"I'm scheduled for a tencycle ahead of this. When do you need it?"

"About then. Gotta do a round of bone calcification before I get my cert back."

The government, such as it was, at least tried to keep them from killing themselves. They had to be certified fit before they got clearance to make planetfall. A broken bone would certainly keep him off the shuttle.

We haggled over price, but his heart was not in it. He'd trashed his bike, and would have to pay what it took. Probably be pretty broke after that, have to strike paydirt next drop or he was out of the game.

I wrote his contract, scanned his embed, his bike tag which was still functional. Got my roller lift out, got the bike into my shed and he left to recuperate.

Back to the hauler job, set the hub torque by the book, close the work tag and on to the next.

By end of cycle I was feeling tired. Not so much the work, as the shadow of Veena's disappointment I would face inside. Nothing for it but to man up!

She was at the tape unit, snacking on some carbos, going through my rack of tapes. Not actually taping! She knew better. Just browsing. Noticed me.

"Bran! How do you know which is which? They all look about the same."

They were all labelled, clearly, topic and duration, saturation setting, preferred button geometry.

Oh! I've been a fool.

"I'm sorry Veena! I didn't think. You can't read yet. Those markings on the end of each tape? If you know how, you can get information off of that. I have a tape for reading, maybe you'd like to try that one tomorrow?"

She nodded, absorbing this. I rifled through them, found the one she wanted, an old primary education tape I'd got in a job lot. Might even include some biology! Stuck it in the machine, set the configuration, ready for her to use.

"You hungry?" She nodded, yes, but made no move to start cooking. I accepted that, she was supposed to be getting her strength back, no reason I couldn't lift a finger around here.

I stripped, grabbed some shorts but no shirt, set the foodprep to 'stuffed bao buns' and hit the shower. She didn't follow, not this time.

It was lonely, showering by myself. I've done it that way all my life, but today was different.

Food was ready when I got out, she had dished up, was sitting, waiting for me.

"Thanks! These are buns, really puffed carbo and protein paste filling. A little different!"

She nodded, watched me tear one in half, nibble on a piece. Follow suit. Smiled a little; it was interesting to have novel shapes and textures!

We watched a vid, she chose something about dogs, how she found that I have no idea, she couldn't read the index. Must have just flipped through until she saw something she liked. There were thousands of choices, had to take forever!

There were more dogs than I knew about - ridiculous in variety and behavior. I can't figure how people distinguish, why they even trust them, all those teeth and claws. Veena had a different take, she was smiling again, watching their antics, she even laughed.

No dogs in the inner system, just adapts but they had a purpose in a settlement, a particular necessary job. Natural dogs apparently needed open ground to run on. The vid was mostly about that, lots of running and jumping and catching things, on large open spaces covered in green mats of some textured material. No pressure dome! I'd go crazy, all that open space above me.

Got to be sleepcycle, we switched off and hit our bunks. Her on her couch, she removed her boots this time, kept the collar. Went and peed, slithered under her covers and faced the wall, not talking.

It was very quiet. No barrage of questions, no gleeful remarks about the work or what we'd seen or done. Subdued I guess you'd call it. Adapting to her new life.

It took me a long time to get to sleep.

I got up, her bunk was empty. I heard her in the toilet, the water cycling, then out in the shop doing something. By the time I got there I saw her in the tape chair, neural buttons attached, monitor attached, running her tape. A half-empty plate of something on the table, the remains of her breakfast. She didn't respond when I said Good Morning!

Nothing for me, made sense, it'd be cold by now. I noticed she'd changed the setting, had seen me do it, she had it on jambalay, probably at random as she couldn't yet read. Some mush of carbo particles and lots of different protein shapes. Why not.

By the time I had eaten, reviewed the job list, she was peeling her buttons off, rewinding the tape. When she spotted the markings on the tapes she lit up, examined them one at a time, reading the labels.

She turned to me, grinning! I felt relief. She was responding to me again.

"You sure have a lot of tool tapes! For stuff you don't even have!"

I nodded. "It helps to know what to buy, if I already know what it does. I was raised in a foundry, had to know how everything worked, tools were my life."

She frowned at that; it didn't sound very fun. It hadn't been. Except for the tool part, I really like tools.

"What's next for me? I've taped today, so no new tools until tomorrow and the buffing is done! Should I clean up or sort things? I can read the drawer labels now! I'll know where things go!"

That sounded just fine. I had a brainstorm.

"You do some of that, anything you organize will be welcome! I've neglected it, working alone there was only so much time in the cycle for shop maintenance. The parts room is a mess.

"After that, there's a project I meant to get going on. The main reason I, um, bought you. To get the tool mechs repaired!"

She was interested, but doubtful. "I don't know anything about them yet."

"Right. My idea is, you take them apart, learn what's inside, how they go together. It helps to do it once by hand, so you get a feel for them, know the weight of things, the texture of each part, how it fits. You don't need to be an expert to do that! Once you tape on mechs, you'll know what's right and what needs fixing, you can repair them, put them back together."

"I might ruin them!"

"Can't! I bought them broken! Scrapped! Cheaper that way. Anything you do will be an improvement."

She thought about that, but not for long. Just accepted it, her owner wanted her to do this job so no point in questions. Which made me kind of sad.

I dressed in yesterday's coveralls, the rotor job had been physically easy, not worked up a sweat. Got right to work on my next ticket: plasma sprayers. A case of used ones, a dozen, the guy wanted me to recondition as many as I could, use some for parts to rebuild the others. Something I'd spent my youth doing, scavenging and making-do. I was very familiar.

The trick with salvage and refurb is, don't spend too much time on the really worn ones, no mileage in it. Take the best parts, figure out how many good units you can complete with that. Then pick over the castoffs, maybe get one more good one.

Step one: disassemble, sort, measure. That would take a half cycle right there.

She came out to the floor halfway through, dressed in her shop boots, her shirt sealed top to bottom. Asked me which were the tool mechs and I showed her. Gave her a wrench kit, demonstrated how to use one, let her loose.

I was matching parts and coming up short. The grips were all well-used and worn, actuators nearly worn through from long use, but I could reinforce them, replace a stud or two no problem. It was nozzles that were in short supply. These were scarred, chipped, heat-damaged from over-rating, trying to get the job done hotter and faster at the expense of the tool. Amateur mistake.

I remembered three spare nozzles from another job, not the right gauge but with an adapter I could make do. And maybe two of these could be reground, the chips polished out and re-heat-treated, I could end up with maybe five working out of a dozen discards. Not great, but he'd started with zero.

I started by making the adaptors. Fired up the graphene printer, modified an existing pattern to these dimensions, topped up the bin from a bag and set it going.

Veena had made good progress, one of the tool mechs largely dismembered, spread across a bench and the floor. She'd figured out, put the fasteners into a pot, don't let them get loose or you'd be chasing them. Smart.

The parts were mostly just dirty, congealed lubricants, grit caked on everything, probably never been serviced. So many folks let maintenance go, used something until it was junk instead of keeping it up, making it last forever. Well, all to my benefit as I got these 'junk' mechs for scrap, and with Veena's talents they would soon be good as new.

"Should I buff these?" She held up some rods, pretty scarred and scored. Of a material she'd not encountered - resin-impregnated graphene matrix, probably not original, what you printed to replace parts in the field. What I was making in my printer right now, those adapters.

"You can, but you have to use a low setting. They're rigid and good compression strength, but the surface is not terribly hard. Use about..."

"A sixteen pitch and minimum skew!" She knew her buffing, even without knowing what those numbers meant, she had it right. Which made her happy, she wiggled up and down on her toes like one of those little dogs. Still Veena, even though she wasn't done being disappointed in me.

I left her to it.

Poking at her parts pile, mostly disassembled into individual mech-atoms but found two stubborn sub-units still coupled. A damper assembly and an impact cylinder. Corroded from misuse, probably somebody using the wrong resins for a job, probably what finally put these mechs on the scrap heap.

"I can get these freed up, you let me know what you want." She looked up, surprised, I wasn't telling her what to do. Letting her handle her own job, keeping out of her hair. That's how it had to work in a shop, you couldn't be screwing with some other mechanic's project, or you'd trip them up.

She nodded, curt, didn't answer. Went back to buffing.

I used a coarse grit, rough-polished my salvageable nozzles, use a hand-finisher to do the fine work. When I was satisfied, I put them in the annealing oven, set the temp profile for the material and weight, set the timer.

And now, what? Adapters not finished printing, nozzles gonna be a half cycle heating up and cooling down. My spare nozzles! If I could find them again.

In the parts room, a miracle had occurred. The shelves had been scrubbed and the floor was clear! Bins were all aligned, labels out, filled and closed. Miscellaneous stuff was filed on the shelf where I'd originally planned to store Veena.

My face reddened at that recollection. I hoped she'd not figured out why I'd done that, cleared five feet of shelf space. To store a human being.

The nozzles were with the other plasma fittings, sorted by size and temper. I found what I wanted; we had four new ones! That made six sprayers I could salvage, with the two nozzles in the oven.

Next job, repairing the actuators. Revisiting my bench, I saw three easily restorable, some softsteel putty to reinforce the handles, bend the grips straight, replace the actuator nubs with cheap sealed switch pods, I had boxes of them.

The other three had individual problems, gonna take until lunchtime to address each one.

We broke for lunch, my plasma sprayer project as far as I could take it for now.

"These are pretty seized. What are you going to use? The descaler?" She was pointing at her frozen mech modules.

"Yup. Just run a narrow tip along the seam, not trying to surface-treat but just remove corrosion, maybe get in the seam, free the joint."

She understood that, had just enough familiarity now to know those words.

"What makes them do that?" I understood, she meant Why were some modules corroded and others relatively clean?

"These both are in the fluid path. Somebody must have used ammonia or something, the machine wasn't rated for that. There's a reason for all the ratings on the schedule sheet! But folks get in a hurry or get in a bind in the field, got to get a job done so they just move ahead, abuse the tool."