"Yes," Ling had answered the unspoken question, "it is a shitty world."
Petra never complained about the pain of anal sex after that. Nor did she complain this time when the customer pushed her head away and placed her on all fours, not even when lined his penis up on her anus, nor even when he thrust forward roughly. All she did was bite the inside of her cheeks and force out a false grunt of pleasure.
In her own room—she was entitled to her own room now that she was a full houri—Petra kept the letters she received from Besma. All of them spoke of how much the Moslem girl missed her sister and friend. None of them asked about Petra's life. Petra had been very clear in the first letter she'd been able to send, "Please, please, please never ask me what I do here." The letters had to go through Ishmael because Besma's father would have gone ballistic if she'd been caught receiving mail from or sending it to a famous brothel.
She reread the letters, sometimes. One in particular, she reread often.
"Fudail is dead. I could not take his manhood, but I did scratch out his eyes when he tried to do to me what he did to you. And, perhaps because I am small, he thought he didn't need his friends to help. I scratched out his eyes and then stabbed the pig through the heart.
"His mother, the lying bitch, said that her son did no such thing. My father, shortly before divorcing her, swore that it could only have been self defense. It was my word against al Khalifa's, with my father's testimony weighing heavily in the balance. The judges let me go.
"Al Khalifa, so I understand, has taken residence in the brothel here in Kitznen. Father won't discuss it, but Ishmael says it is so.
"Of course, you know I would never plan on doing such a thing to my poor, demented stepbrother."
It was that last line, coupled with the letter Besma had left in her great-grandmother's journal, that convinced Petra that Fudail had never tried to commit any crime against Besma, but that she had ruthlessly blinded and murdered him.
"Good for you, Besma," Petra said every time she reread the letter.
Petra thought upon that very letter, even as the grotesquely fat customer behind her ground his passion into her anus and squeezed the flesh over her hips hard enough to bruise. It helped . . . a little.
The fat man straining her anus was a frequent customer. She knew his name and preferences and shouted out in feigned passion, and in English, "Fuck me, Claude, fuck me!" while slamming herself backwards against him. He stank, but then they all stank. What matter; slaves had no right to object to stench. They could, however, at least think, Fuck you, you clod, fuck you.
When the customer was finished, while the filthy drool from his slack mouth dripped onto her back, Petra stayed still, remaining on all fours, his penis inside her upraised rear end. Eventually the customer pulled out, wiping his penis off on the cheeks of her ass. He stood, adjusted his robe and began to walk to the shower. Apparently rethinking it, he turned back and patted her posterior gently. "Good girl," he said, before leaving the bedroom. "Nice fuck." On his waddling way, he dropped two silver dirhem in a plate on a small table by the bathroom door.
Sex was cheap in the Caliphate, as cheap as female Nazrani slaves.
OSI Headquarters, Langley, Virginia, 17 June, 2112
"All rested up, John?"
Hamilton just snarled. Eight days, including travel time, did not amount to much of a rest.
The meeting was small, just Caruthers, Hamilton, and an unfamiliar woman who, despite wearing more or less fashionable female business garb, had something of the medical look about her, somehow. Caruthers didn't introduce her and she didn't introduce herself except as "Mary."
Hamilton was reasonably sure her name was neither "Mary" nor anything close to it. Mary was older, perhaps forty, tall, blond and . . .
Stop it! She's not Laurie and she doesn't even look much like Laurie.
Caruthers snapped his fingers in front of Hamilton's face. "Knock it off, John. Pay attention. This is important."
"Oh. Sorry."
Mary touched a button and three holographic images appeared above the table in front of Hamilton. Each was a more or less natural photo, not mug shots, of three men in white jackets of the type Hamilton associated with science and research.
Mary's right index finger pointed at the leftmost of the men Hamilton was already thinking of as "scientists."
"This is Dr. Claude Oliver Meara," she said. "Ph.D., Microbiology. He disappeared from his home near Atlanta about six months ago. He was under suspicion of committing statutory rape when he fled. A search of his house after his disappearance indicates a strong predilection for pederasty."
"We tracked him to Montreal, actually, before losing him," Caruthers added, raising a single eyebrow. You thought your little group of Frenchie separatists was so innocent and harmless, his mocking glance seemed to say.