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CHAPTER SIX—MOM'S
The stagecoach clattered down the middle of the dusty street, sending stray dogs scurrying out of the way. The team of eight ran directly into the setting sun, grateful for the cooler temperatures but unable to see much of anything as the sun was directly at eye level. The two lead ponies squinted and did the best they could, trusting the stagecoach driver, while the other six just closed their eyes and ran blind.
Inside the coach the passengers were gathering their belongings and stretching their cramped limbs. Two-Bore Mining's skinny accountant opened a window to get some fresh air, but closed it quickly as the coach filled with swirling dust. The two scruffy pipe-wranglers inside the coach with him, thick arms mottled with camp tattoos, glared at him evilly and waved at the dust.
Up top, the driver clicked at his team and tugged on the reins. They slowed to a walk as Mom's Saloon came into view.
The figure sitting beside the driver on the bench looked around curiously. The sidewalks to either side of the street were busy with people, and a lot of new buildings had been thrown up in the eight months since she'd last passed through JoTown. Most of the pedestrians were miners by their clothes, or metal wranglers of one sort or another hired by Two-Bore. The rest were drawn in by what the miners promised – money and men, and lots of both.
"Must've tapped a major vein," the driver said to himself, unwrapping the dust-caked scarf from around his face. "Looks like a whole different town."
The driver whoa, whoa'd the team to a stop in front of Mom's and waved a hand in front of his face as the trailing dust cloud enveloped the stagecoach and then passed it by.
"I think you're crazy for wanting to sit up here instead of back inside the coach," he said with a cough to the figure sitting on the bench beside him. The driver knew his companion was a woman, but only from her voice. She'd told him she wanted to sit up top when they were leaving Burnsville the day before. He'd told her no, saying it was against his policy (he was owner/operator of the coach and team). They'd gone back and forth for a while until settling on a price – more, in fact, than the driver thought he'd get.
She was close to his height and dressed head to toe in a tan flowing robe. Beneath the hood she'd wrapped a loose swatch of cloth around her head, covering everything but her eyes. Those were shielded by deeply tinted sungoggles. Of her body he could tell nothing, which was why he'd asked for money instead of bartering for sex. She could be covered in sores or have dropfinger disease and he wouldn't know.
"Better the open air than in there with them ," he heard the woman say, and she jerked her head backward, at the cabin. Her expression was hidden by the folds of dusty cloth.
She looked behind the coach, then down the street in front of them. "At least up here you can see what's coming," she said, her voice only slightly muffled by the cloth. She grabbed her canvas satchel in one black-gloved hand and climbed down as the other passengers began exiting the coach, grumbling, stifflegged, and sore.
The driver started tossing down the men's luggage, a few scuffed bags made of canvas and leathyr. "Where do you go from here?" the cloaked woman called up to him, patting the dust from the folds of her robe.
"North. Gravestown, Ironheart, and then finally to Greenwood. Then I start back."
She nodded curtly and turned to go, but was brought up short by the sight of the team. The double row of ponygirls was sweaty and looked exhausted after what the unseen woman considered an easy two day journey. They'd walked most of the way, and been given far too many water breaks for their own good.
The two leads were blackskinned and had powerful hindquarters, at least compared to the scrawny specimens usually seen in the Wash. If they were purebred, which was unlikely this far into the west, it was from perhaps fourth-generation stock, but the remaining six couldn't be from better than second, maybe third generation mixed stock at best. The lead two had been baked coal black by the harsh sun, while the others were a deep mahogany brown. Stringy and tired-looking, they were obviously a working team. No decorative tailplugs, no showy nipple rings. Brands on their left buttocks instead of tattoos. Their leathyrs were cracked and stained from heavy use but still serviceable, although most of their hoofboots could've used new soles.
She'd learned en route that the driver was the team's owner/operator, before he realized she had no interest in small talk. He'd told her he shaved the team's heads because he got tired of brushing eight manes every night. Between the bald heads and the distinct lack of breasts on seven out of the eight sinewy ponies, he said he didn't have much problem with passengers trying to mount his mares.
The eighth mount, the one with breasts, was third back on the right. Even with near zero body fat her breasts were respectably sized, large B's or small C's. With a normal bodyfat percentage the cloaked woman guessed they'd be immense.
He body language was hard to read under the flowing robe, but the driver kept an eye on the woman as she stared at his team and she seemed . . . disgusted by them. There was something about the tilt of her head, the set of her shoulders, that said she had little or no respect for the ponies, or worse.
Without another word she turned on her heel and strode through the double doors of Mom's. The place was filling rapidly as the sun went down and the work day ended. It was always night in the mine, but there wasn't so much work that they needed to run more than two shifts. Miners, some still in their dusty work clothes, bellied up to the bar for hard liquor and whatever tobacco products might be available that week. The physical demands of the profession were just too much for most women. At a time when men were outnumbered over ten to one by women throughout the realm, mining towns offered the opposite, and were in fact gold mines for women of certain type. The prostitutes were nearly two deep around the periphery of the room.
The newest arrival headed toward the bar, brushing aside the advances of a barebreasted whore who mistook her for a man. She unwound the scarf from around her face as she leaned against the bar rail, and pulled off the goggles. A small pert nose was revealed, above two full pouty lips and bright white teeth. Her eyes were deep dark blue, but only in sunlight. Everywhere else they looked black.
Mom floated over to the new face at the bar and grabbed a glass with one of her tentacles. "What'll it be?"
The woman pulled down the hood of her robe and blew at the dust cloud that appeared. "You got any rooms available, Mom?"
"S'Leah! As I live and breathe." She set
the glass down. This one never drank. "Been a while since we've seen your
face around here."
"Eight months," S'Leah said.
Mom was nodding. "Two new veins opened up," she told her guest. "Looks like they're going to be huge. I hardly recognize the town, what with all the new faces."
"It won't last."
Mom gave her a scowl and quickly glanced around. No one had heard the comment. She floated behind the bar on her titanium chassis and pasted the smile back onto her wide face. Born without any limbs, due no doubt to her mother spending the first month of her pregnancy walking the Poisoned Lands, her father any one of the six males in the small nomadic band, Mom had been sold at six months of age to a third-rate traveling circus. She was eight when the circus went broke and found herself the property of a wealthy society matron in New Dispore. She spent the next few years as a wall hanging, a decorative flesh sculpture moved from room to room per the whims of her owner. The house servants, tasked with feeding, watering, and cleaning the twisted wall hangings and statua their mistress liked to collect, took their pleasure with those who could not or dared not protest. After a while the matron tired of her and sold her to a nearby House of Pleasure, where those in search of the unusual paid high prices to be alone with her. The women, surprisingly, were both the most tender and the cruelest. The men just spent a few minutes pawing at her limbless torso and then filled one of her orifices with seed.
She was sold from one house to the next for twenty or so years, until with the help of a man in love with her she bought her freedom. He died soon after, some say from poison, although no one suspected Mom. Ten years later she had her own House in JoTown, as well as a good-as-new floating chassis with six independent coil arms hardwired in.
Mom's blonde hair was streaked with grey, and she'd thickened up over the years, but she still could turn heads if she wanted to. Tonight she had her large breasts packed into a push-up bra beneath a low-cut white blouse that hung past the bottom of her chassis.
Occasionally, if the mood took her, she'd head into one of the rooms with a man or three, but most of the time when she was propositioned she'd just wave her six metal tentacles in the air and say "Honey, why would I settle for one when I can have six at once any day of the week?"
"You got here just in time," Mom said. "Only two rooms left. Standard or deluxe?"
"Standard.'
Mom nodded. "What I figured. You stand to make a bundle tonight. With all the traffic the girls are chargin' double what they were last time you were in town," she said in her slow drawl. She canted her head and smiled at S'Leah. "Just so's you know. Rules are still the same, don't make me kick you out."
S'Leah nodded, paid for the room, and headed upstairs with her bag. Several of the girls leaning against the rail on the second floor and called out.
"Leah! Back to help us shear the sheep?"
"Hi Leah!"
"Well, look at her. Looks like there's too many men in town tonight for even you to take care of." The snotty voice belonged to a skinny brunette dressed in black leathyr pants and a black leathyr bustier. S'Leah didn't even remember her name much less acknowledge the comment.
Most of the girls lining the barroom wore leathyr or rubber, sometimes both. They were the cheapest and most durable kind of apparel available this close to the desert, not that the miners were that interested in fashion anyway.
In the second floor hallway outside the door to her room a woman was on her knees fellating a scruffy miner. She hardly seemed to know which end of his organ to lick, and flinched as he cursed her for scraping him with her teeth. S'Leah smiled inwardly and went into her room to change, locking the door behind her.
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