In A Starship's Wake

Chapter Two: Not Empty-Handed

Allison met Terrence more or less by chance several months earlier in a small town close to her family's farm. She was there picking up an order of supplies. It was one of the first times her parents had trusted her to make the trip alone. She'd started talking to him while getting lunch, and wound up telling him about wanting to leave her family farm to go get a degree.

Terrence offered her a way to do that. Her family didn't have enough money to pay for school, and she'd intended to get a job in a larger town for a while first. Terrence told her he ran a business in Nevarris, one of the planet's larger star ports. It earned a lot of money, and that he said he could find a job for her there.

He hadn't mentioned that the business was a strip club. It wasn't until her first shift that she learned that. She found that entire concept revolting and would never have come if she'd known. That was probably why he hadn't told her.

Once she'd moved there over her parents objections and found out, she didn't want to admit she'd been wrong and go back. She was only working in the kitchen or making drinks at the bar and told herself she could cope, and for the most part she could.

She couldn't chase away the innate sense of wrongness gnawing at her heart every time she went to work. Every time she looked up and saw one of the scantily-clad girls dancing on the stage, or going into one of the private rooms, it made her skin crawl. She had no idea how far things went there, and she didn't want to.

Despite initially promising that she could just keep working in the kitchen and at the bar, Terrence started suggesting she should be one of the dancers. She told him what she thought of it and that she wasn't interested, but he didn't listen. The suggesting became pressuring, and the pressuring threatening. It finally led to the ultimatum he'd given her in the diner that morning.

For the fifth or sixth time at least since getting into Joseph the starman's truck, Allison wondered if she was making exactly the same foolish mistake. It had started much the same way as her move to Nevarris, with a chance meeting in a diner.

There were some important differences though. Joseph had seen her clearly in trouble and offered help. Terrence on the other hand had seen her on an errand and offered to make all her dreams come true. She'd long since realized that was a warning sign she should have paid attention to.

Another difference was that Joseph, consciously or not, was making an effort to answer all her questions completely. Terrence was fond of reminding her that he'd never lied to her, and it was almost true; lies had been rare. For the most part, he'd just kept her in the dark by not explaining any more than he had to and by dodging her questions.

She'd been quizzing Joseph since they got in the truck and he had yet to do the same. After learning the cargo they were loading was rubber tree seedlings, she had asked why such a thing would be shipped to a space station. He spent several minutes explaining space-borne farming operations and the uses of rubber. He finished by saying he had only the roughest idea of how the substance was harvested from them, and if she wanted to know about that she'd have to ask the farmer when they arrived.

Another difference she'd noticed was that the two got angry about very different things. Terrence got angry whenever she disagreed with or questioned him. Joseph, in contrast, hadn't been angry or offended in the slightest when she questioned his motives. He implied she was wise to do so.

Joseph was angry about the way Terrence had treated her, and after that realization struck she felt more relaxed in his presence. He wasn't likely to shout at her. Joseph had been so distracted by being angry at Terrence that he'd forgotten to introduce himself until they were halfway across the parking lot, for which he'd sheepishly apologized.