A Gluttony of Plutocrats (The Respite Trilogy Book 1)

by Ella Swift Arbok

  I found myself in the presence of a horror I hadn’t anticipated, or at least hadn’t thought through. What I had hoped to do when I accepted Bandstorm’s invitation were two things: capture with my combi clear proof of everyone present, and record, without personal involvement, the nature of the abuse that would take place.

  I would then slink away, walk home if I had to, leave Draco Trading, even leave Cragglemouth, and see what benefits could be achieved from the information I had gathered. That had all changed with the distance, security, and isolation of Bandstorm’s estate.

  I faced a compliant and seductive child—an attractive child, but still a child. Why was she compliant? What torments had she endured in her twelve or however many years to make such compliance acceptable? What threats or tortures would she endure if she opposed the master?

  Janet lay back on the bed, fiddling with her buttons. One popped open.

  “No, Janet. Please leave.”

  She popped another. The dress fell open. She wore nothing underneath. “You don’t like the fruit, sir?”

  I turned my back on her. “Janet, dress and go, at once.”

  “The very best, sir. Ripe and delicious, don’t you think? Give me your hand.”

  “No, child.” I reached for the door, turned the handle, and pulled. It didn’t budge. I held out a hand. “The key please. And get dressed.”

  I waited.

  The bed creaked. Janet stepped in front of me. “Sir, you can punish me if you wish. I deserve to be spanked.” She smiled. “Or would you rather have a boy?”

  I stared into unsmiling eyes.

  A hundred thousand years ago, a female of Janet’s age might have been the ideal age for mating and breeding, before the rigorous battle for survival took its toll of her body. Even waiting for her consent was a luxury a species struggling to establish itself couldn’t afford. We were little better than beasts in those distant days.

  Should we judge through the veil of time? Male animals sometimes force themselves on an unwilling, frightened female of their kind in the exercise of their animal nature.

  We achieved a level of security, developed morality, wrote laws.

  Fifteen hundred years ago, a time known to me through the films of the day, such a girl had the protection of the law. Still there were men who chose for their pleasure the innocence, or youth, or helplessness, of a child. Legality and morality took second place to the animal need for dominance.

  Perhaps Respite lay at that same cusp. Would time alone move humanity to respect the young as individuals? Had it done so on Earth?

  Janet fumbled with her buttons. “Help me, sir.”

  “You can do it. Just go.”

  I watched until the door closed behind her.

  The product of a more civilized age, I didn’t need the threat of cameras to guide my actions.

  I sat trembling on the bed. Had I got into something more sinister than even Linnet suspected? I had been offered a child for my pleasure, an hors d’oeuvre to a party that didn’t start for six hours.

  I tested the door. It didn’t respond. I banged on it, but apart from bruising my knuckles, there was no effect.

  After an hour, it opened. Briggs had my case and the basket of fruit from his car.

  “Your baggage, sir.” He put it by the bed. “This way please. The master wishes to speak with you.”

  I hesitated. “Briggs, I’d like you to take me home.”

  “Very kind, sir. I shall be sure to ask for you on Wednesday.”

  “I mean now, at once.”

  “I know you do, sir. I was just trying to lighten the mood. This way please.”

  At around six foot two and probably built at the local shipyard, Briggs had an inflexible aura that discouraged debate. He stood taller than me and a great deal more solidly, but it was more his physical presence as he filled a doorway, the fixed half-smile, and the absolute certainty in his eyes.

  I followed him along corridors, up and down stairwells, finally to a carpeted room with two leather-clad chairs and a round mahogany table between them. On the table were a decanter and two crystal glasses.

  Briggs indicated one of the chairs. I sat. He poured green wine into one glass. “This is from the master’s own slopes. A rather fine example, I’m told.”

  I turned the glass in my hands and returned it to the table. “It’s a little early for me.”

  Briggs sighed. “You will enjoy this one, sir.” He filled the only exit. After a moment, he shook his head. “Just drink the fucking thing, sir. It’s not poison, and the master would like to think you enjoy some of the pleasures he offers.”

  I stared at him. The aggression of his words belied the calm of his voice. Helpless, friendless, and afraid, I picked up the glass, took a sip, and set it back on the table. Whether or not it was a fine example mattered to me less than the circumstances under which I had been confined.

  Briggs left the room and closed the door behind him.

  I turned the handle. The door was locked. I can’t say what I would have done had it opened, but I would have had an alternative to confinement. For ten minutes, I sat with my thoughts. They weren’t happy thoughts. How much had I already offended Bandstorm? I’d know soon enough.

  I had expected there to be children present. After the roundup, I assumed they would be disposables, but Janet’s ostensible eagerness suggested years of training, years of punishment. Whatever the name, what she offered was rape if the willingness had been forced into her through pain and threat.

  Had I not known Sy and the horrors she had endured, would I have been tempted by the child? Not would I have acted but would I have been tempted? I couldn’t honestly say. But in the obvious seclusion of the surroundings, with the added pressure of my host’s expectation, I couldn’t say I found Janet unattractive.

  It was clear to me that whatever took place in the room would be filmed or photographed. Why else the many mirrors on the walls? Was I the intended victim? Was this all a cruel game to entrap me? It made no sense. I wasn’t wealthy, at least not by Bandstorm’s standards. I had no living relatives. I had no position of power.

  I planned, once I’d gathered what information I could, to leave Draco. In time, I could live from my ring binder patents, if that was what my space drifter life decreed. Was that what made me an asset in their games, a suspicion that great wealth could be squeezed from my earthborn knowledge? If so, my value to them depended on my remaining alive.

  It was a slight comfort, and a false one. They could squeeze the knowledge from me, drip by agonizing drip.

  I drained my glass. I glanced at the decanter. What to do? Pour myself another or wait for Briggs? The booming of Bandstorm’s voice decided me against either action.

  The lock clicked, the door opened, and Bandstorm ducked through. I hadn’t seen him standing before, at least not at close range. He was taller than Briggs, broad shouldered if a little flabby, but still impressive. Ash gray showed at the roots of his black curls.

  I stood and took a firm hold of the hand he offered.

  Bandstorm smelled of sweat, butter and cigar smoke. He smiled, teeth and all and a wrinkle at the corner of his brown eyes. “Well done, Lemuel. Glad you could make it. I have great hopes of you. Sit.”

  I sat.

  Bandstorm slumped into a chair and nodded toward Briggs. Briggs poured us both a drink.

  I reached for mine as Briggs withdrew the decanter.

  Briggs left the room and closed the door.

  Bandstorm shuffled his chair closer to mine. His expression became serious but not threatening. “Lemuel, you seem uneasy. I hear you didn’t like my gift.”

  “Your gift, Hector? May I call you Hector?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No, and I’ll tell you why. Because you asked my permission. That is not the sign of a strong man, and I like to deal with the most powerful.”

  I picked up my glass, drank half, and put it back. “Mr. Bandstorm, I would like to g
o home. I don’t need transport. Let me outside your gate, and I’ll walk through day or night.” I didn’t have the evidence I had hoped for, but I no longer had the courage to endure his games.

  I finished my drink. “The girl was pretty enough, but she can’t be more than twelve years old. She seemed willing, but what had made her so?”

  “Your point?”

  “Mr. Bandstorm, I have lived my life by the law. It’s difficult to change an ingrained habit, whatever I may want.” Better to be ambiguous than antagonistic.

  Bandstorm stared at me. He picked up his glass. In his huge hand, it looked ridiculous. He sipped at the drink and considered it for a moment. “Lemuel, you’re an idiot. Have I misjudged you?” He placed his glass on the table. “I am the law within these grounds. You’ll see Dayton Heyho, the senator for justice, here tonight. Tell me then what you think. Forget the law. Go back to your room. I’ll have Janet bring a present for you. Or should I send it with a boy?”

  My hand shook as I reached for my glass. It was still empty.

  Bandstorm scowled. “Don’t wait to be asked. That’s another sign of weakness.”

  I poured enough to sip, already feeling the effects. Respite had once seemed Earthlike, if primitive. Now, it appeared as a land of horror. “Mr. Bandstorm, I am not a pedophile.”

  Bandstorm laughed. “We all say that at first, but of course you are. All men are pedophiles, though sometimes it needs to be coaxed out of us. All men want control. That’s why rape and other tortures exist. There is no easier route to power than by the regular and absolute practice of power, by the total domination—without limit, without restriction—over one terrified individual. You’ll learn this pleasure. I could see it in you when we first met.”

  My heart pounded. My hands shook. I resisted the glass at arm’s reach. “Sir, I don’t understand. Janet showed no fear of me.”

  Bandstorm smiled. “Of course she didn’t. That’s why I detest this grotesque, chronic abuse of the word pedophile. It pleased me when you turned her down. Willing victims are not what we require. No one gains power through that route. There may be pleasure, but the disposables are available to satisfy such weakness, as you know. And well done to you, getting her registered in the Heyho girl’s name.”

  He knew about our custody of Emily? Was that why I had been invited into his inner circle? No, it couldn’t be. That had happened weeks after Fifi placed the envelope in my hand.

  I brushed perspiration from my forehead and reached for my glass to drain its last drop. A tremor of my hand, and I knocked it over, slopping wine on the table.

  Bandstorm called for Briggs, shaking his head as Briggs straightened my glass and wiped the spillage. “You seem nervous, Lemuel. I hope I haven’t misjudged you.”

  Briggs looked at me, the first time he had chosen to make eye contact. After a shake of his head and the slightest frown, he left the room.

  I swayed on my chair. “Mr. Bandstorm, there has clearly been a mistake. I would like to go home as soon as possible.”

  Bandstorm pushed himself out of his chair, took a step toward the door, and thrust it open. He muttered something to Briggs then made his way back. He took a steel case from an inside pocket, opened it, and removed a cigar.

  The sound of a match being struck. The smell of sulfur. Briggs’s hand reached forward with a flaming match, far closer to my face than I enjoyed, meeting the end of Bandstorm’s cigar.

  I pushed myself back into the chair.

  Bandstorm leaned back in his seat. For a few moments, he puffed at the cigar, then he turned to me. “I have hopes for you. Your work is excellent, but high office carries high responsibility. The spokes of the wheel must turn together. You will be at the warm-up this evening, but if you choose to oppose me, I’ll crush you.”

  I glanced at the decanter. No, too much already. “My career at Draco will be over, do you mean?”

  Bandstorm shook his head. “I don’t speak in metaphors. I mean I will crush you, physically. I will crush your fingers. I will crush your ribs. I will crush your skull. I’ll do it with my bare hands. I’ve done it before. No doubt I’ll do it again.” He smiled a rigid smile that gave no hint of pleasure. “Do you believe me, Lemuel Oneway? Do you believe I could do that?”

  My tongue felt sluggish. I couldn’t speak. I hardly dared look at Bandstorm. Was it some cruel joke, something all initiates had to go through?

  Bandstorm watched me for a moment, then laughed. “Don’t worry. You’ll do well, I’m sure, once you learn to relax. There will be people you recognize here tonight, household names. And each one of them could prove they were somewhere else if they needed to.”

  I found my voice again, but it was weak. “How?”

  “Powerful men make things happen. They make things appear how they want them to appear. And we support each other. That’s the key.” He stood to leave. “Be ready at eight. Relax. Take what pleasures are offered. And remember this. Everyone here, even your enemy, is your friend within these walls. Arguments will not be tolerated. Do you understand?”

  Once again, he pushed out a hand, which I took. The handshake was less forceful than the first. “I like you a lot, Lemuel.”

  “But you threatened my life.”

  “You see? You catch on quickly. My man will look after you, and I suggest no more wine, at least not for now.” He left the room.

  A question formed in my mind, urgent, perhaps necessary to my survival. I hurried to follow Bandstorm.

  Briggs held an arm across the door. My shoving made not the slightest movement in it. I scrambled for words. My instinct was to ask the chairman of Draco Trading what was the least I must do to survive. By the time I found my voice, I realized that at last I understood him too well. “Hector, wait.” The words came out with more force than I had expected.

  Briggs’s arm shuddered. Bandstorm stopped ten yards along the passage, but he didn’t turn.

  I took a deep breath. “Hector, I’ll do this at my own pace and in my own way.”

  Briggs’s arm relaxed.

  Briggs led me back to my room and closed me in.

  With little optimism, I tested the door. It didn’t open. I lay on the bed, alone and afraid. How could I have been so naïve? I still had no more than the vaguest notion of what would be expected of me that evening, but it wouldn’t be dancing and social chitchat.

  A warm-up, Bandstorm had called it. So, more was to come on the second evening.

  To save my own life, how far could I go? How much would Janet be harmed if I were to cast aside a lifetime’s molding into the moral channels of faraway, long-ago Earth? It would do no more than reinforce damage already done to her.

  And there it was, in that simple thought, plain for me to see, a victory for Bandstorm—a betrayal, not just of the society that raised me but of Sy, of Janet, and of the thousands, maybe millions, not yet scarred by horrific, casual abuse. And of Emily. And, above all, of my own daughter Lillibeth.

  Once I had committed that far-from-trivial act, the next, more depraved, would be a little easier, would trouble my conscience a little less. And, once immersed in the fetid quagmire of power and wealth and corruption, there would be no way out but death and whatever follows, as Bile had already discovered.

  Whatever the cost, I couldn’t let that happen.

  At eight o’clock, a boy in black-and-white shorts and a loose shirt that didn’t meet the shorts opened my door. “We need to go, Sir. Soon, but not right away.”

  We left at once. He led me, by way of an ancient, hand-cranked elevator almost as intimidating as Bandstorm, to the Great Hall.

  Marble pillars supported a high, domed ceiling. Images, some familiar, covered the dome—goatherds and piko trees suggesting a holy setting, and a horned, cloven-hoofed humanoid hinting at the darker side of Earth’s mythology.

  Tables laden with fine foods—meats, cakes, and the seedy vegetable things that I had no better word for than fruit—formed an open rectangle subdividing the arena. T
he bouquets of spices and red wine competed for dominance.

  Serving staff moved among the tables. All were young—the girls from eight to twelve, with the oldest male servers being a few years older. In black-and-white uniforms that provided little cover or warmth, they brought food or wine on demand. My escort joined them.

  Greetings echoed around the hall. I strolled among the tables, picking here and there. I glanced at fellow guests, recognizing many from the news.

  I smiled.

  I nodded.

  There were some I didn’t want to meet. The senator for justice—Sy’s father and abuser, Dayton Heyho—topped that list. I turned my back when he moved toward me.

  He called to me, his voice weak. “Lemuel. Lemuel Oneway.”

  I froze. Could I ignore so obvious a request? Not unless I wanted to upset Bandstorm again. I turned. “Dayton Heyho. Sy talks about you often.”

  With a slight stoop, he stood at about my five foot ten. Stocky, with sparse gray hair in a single braid, one cheek disfigured by scarring and an ill-set break, and eyes that peered at me through bottle-base glasses, I could imagine how fearful he would have looked to child such as Sy. But age had taken its toll. He held out a trembling hand. “Is she still sulking with me?” Even the voice lacked power. “Silly girl. Tell me…”

  He leaned forward and continued in a whisper. “The Winter Games. A new record? I’ll put a few cupros on for you.”

  Until Dick Ovid had spoken to me, after Bile’s murder, I didn’t see how taking profit alongside the dubious dealings of Senator Wellar made me a partner in his corruption, but Dick was right. I rode high on the nightmare Wellar and his kind created. I lived by their shenanigans.

  I could never undo the hurt Heyho had done to his daughter, but I could take a poke. “Between the two of us, Dayton, she’s short of funds. She’ll get to the final, then she’s aiming for fourth, maybe fifth.”

  He patted me on the back, a mere tap. “Good lad. I owe you. Will you join me in a four-hander tomorrow?”

  Not knowing what a four-hander was, I declined. I moved on and soon caught the eye of another guest, one I had no desire to speak to at such a gathering. Al Dempster lowered his gaze and turned from me, his braid bobbing, no doubt as puzzled by my presence as I was by his.