The governor's daughter

(Aurora, part 1)

Aurora sat in the dust under the palm tree and stared at the huge iron doors that had always been open during the day. They were now closed, and he would never again open them in the morning and stand there to look at his valley.

The tears that had been filling her eyes started to flow. Her mind replayed the same scenes over and over again.

How he discovered her in the cave, poking at a prototype of his robot.
How he lectured her, and, well... spanked her. When she thought of this, she had to laugh through her tears.
How he had discovered her interest in mechanics, and in the way nature worked.
And how he had understood her loneliness and boredom.

Now he was gone, and she was alone again. Aurora buried her head in her knees and cried.

---

It had all started when her father had been appointed governor to this small desert planet in the middle of nowhere. An important step in his career, he had claimed. The rest of his family was simply pissed, especially as his salary didn't even allow him to let them stay at Amargant, or any other decent place. No, Aurora, her mother, her sister and her little twin brothers had to come with him to Sitat, where there was nothing much but dust, stones, salty and lifeless oceans and a few oases, if you didn't count the zones where it was too hot or too cold for anybody to live. Sitat had some important mines - the only reason why people lived there at all. About fifty thousand inhabitants, all in all, two thirds of them miners and their families, the rest mostly farmers in the few oases. The so-called capital consisted of an administrational building, a bus station that connected the place to the oases, to the mines and to the space shuttle port, about twenty shops, fifty houses and the governor's residence, which was about ten miles away from the rest. Yes, the house was quite luxurious, by the rather backwards standards of this world, and it had an irrigated garden, but there was absolutely nothing to do.

Aurora's older brother had stayed at Amargant, where his father had gotten him a job as a clerk in some government agency. Aurora envied him. Unfortunately, she was only thirteen, and even in a few years' time, there would be no chance of getting a job somewhere else, because her parents didn't let her learn anything. She would just have to marry someone and hope that it wouldn't be someone from this planet. Her younger siblings were too far apart from her in age to be of any use to her. She was bored out of her mind.

After the decline of Civilization in the colonies, there was not much of a public school system left. Aurora had had a private teacher for a few years, who had taught her how to read and write, and some math. Other kids usually started an apprenticeship at about age twelve, but the Upper Class had pretty much reverted to the old role models, so her parents simply expected her to stay at home and wait till she was old enough to marry. At Amargant, that hadn't been too bad - there had been a huge library which she had frequented, and she had spent her days reading. She also collected old mechanical things and tried taking them apart and reassembling them. She suspected that her parents wouldn't approve, but they didn't really know, or care, what she did all day.

On Sitat, there was no library. In fact, there were probably about fifty books on the whole planet, and half of them belonged to Aurora - at least it seemed like that. She had tried to explore the neighborhood in the beginning, but there really wasn't anything to explore - only dust, and the ten-mile-road to the "capital", and a range of rocky hills that seemed to stretch forever.

Still, after having tried unsuccessfully to get rid of the dust in her room for three weeks, and being totally fed up with her mother's pointless laments, she decided one morning to take a walk in the hills. Anything was better than sitting in the house, listening to her siblings' squabble, and to her mother's tirades.
She put on a pair of boots, sturdy pants and a long-sleeved shirt, packed several bottles of water, grabbed her large hat to protect her against the sun, and set off. As was to be expected, it was pretty boring in the hills, and after an hour, she was very hot, out of breath and thinking about going home again. She decided to climb to the top of one of the higher hills and see if she could spot anything that would be worth going to. To her utmost surprise, she saw a beautiful garden right in the next valley.

Okay, there was a huge sign that said "Private. Get off!" But there was no one to be seen, and this was by far the most beautiful place she had ever noticed on this planet, including the garden of her own house. Aurora suspected that there must be a well here, but she couldn't see it and she couldn't hear any noises a pump would make. In any case, the garden was clearly irrigated by an expert. A lot of the plants it contained were unknown to Aurora. They didn't look out of place in a desert world, though - there was no lush green lawn here, and no plants that looked as if they belonged in a rain forest or in a moderate climate with lots of rain. Aurora had heard that it sometimes rained on Sitat, like once every three years - at that time, there were probably more plants like these to be seen.

She slowly explored the garden, carefully listening for noises and looking for signs of people all the while. But the place seemed deserted. At last, she came out of a cluster of trees and found herself looking at a steep wall that was part of the hill rising up at the other side of the valley. In the wall, there was a pair of huge iron doors. They were both open.

Hesitantly, she approached them. She knew she shouldn't really be doing this, but her curiosity won the better of her. This definitely didn't look like a miner's dwelling, and it also didn't look like a farm. She edged towards the right doorpost and peeked around the corner. At first, she couldn't see much. The contrast between the brightness outside and the darkness inside was too strong. Then, shapes began to emerge from the gloom. She saw a huge cave that looked like it was roughly hewn out of the hill. In it, there were lots of ... machines. She didn't know what kind of machines they were; some of them looked like robots, but most of them didn't look like anything she had seen before. Many were partly disassembled.

She couldn't resist. She listened one last time for noises, but couldn't hear any, and then entered the cavern. Soon, she lost track of the time while she looked at all the things that were there. Many of the machines obviously were in a state of repair; they looked battered and old. But there were others - made from new parts, with designs hanging next to them, carefully drawn with thin pencil on paper.
Then she spotted the most sensational thing of all - an actual computer! She had never been near one. She knew they had been common in former times, before the demise of Civilization, but now they were very rare, because there were so few people who had any understanding of how they worked. Technology had mostly gone back to relying on mechanics. But it was still possible to buy computers, and they were used for certain things. They were just incredibly expensive. There were some old remnants of computer technology around, too, like robots - rather primitive ones, but good for certain jobs, like hovering. They weren't produced any more, but the old ones could usually be maintained, as they were rather sturdy.

Next to the computer was something that looked like a robot, but it looked NEW. Aurora was intrigued. She looked closely at the construction - it had no legs, but four arms, as if it was made for - well, doing jobs with its arms? She couldn't really figure out what jobs those would be. Perhaps mining? But no, nobody would waste an expensive robot for work in a mine, which could just as well be done by cheap human labor.

Aurora was just trying to find out what kind of metal the robot was made of, when suddenly a hand grabbed the back of her neck, making her scream. She was still gasping for breath and trying to recover from the shock when the hand turned her around roughly, and she faced a giant of a man with dark, piercing eyes and a huge, tangled beard. With a deep voice, the giant growled: "Should I say I'm sorry I frightened you? No, all in all I don't think I should. What gives you the right to be here?"
Aurora couldn't think of any excuse for being in a stranger's house, or rather, cave. "I... I'm sorry," she stammered. "I saw the machines and I was curious. I know I should have asked. There was no one around, and I thought... but I didn't touch anything! I'll leave right now!"
"The hell you will", the giant replied, steering her towards the back of the room, where a huge desk covered with paper stood against the wall. "I'll bloody well teach you to mind other people's property before you go home to whereever you come from!"
In fact, the Professor was pretty sure that it must be the new governor's daughter he was dealing with. He had seen pictures of their arrival in the planet's only news broadcast (five minutes daily). Of course, he wouldn't have remembered the brat's face, but he remembered her vivid red curls. It gave him extra pleasure to punish a girl from one of these stuck-up supposedly-upper-class families - how upper class could they be if they had to live HERE? If her father tried to complain about the spanking his daughter was about to get, he would soon find out who was more important here - the governor or the man who could build and repair mining machines.

Aurora was terrified when the giant planted himself on his huge desk chair and with one effortless tug pulled her over his lap.
"Hey," she yelled, "you can't do that! What do you - OUCH! That hurt! OWW!"
His massive hand connected with her bottom in a rapid tattoo of spanks, leaving her no time or breath to protest. Even through her pants, it hurt plenty. She struggled to free herself, but the man was immensely strong, and when she threw back an arm to protect herself, he just pinned it on her back and continued spanking her.
Her bottom started to feel really uncomfortable. She realized that her struggles were futile and feverishly tried to think of something to say to make him stop, but his spanks seemed to make thinking difficult. Her groans and yelps became louder, and tears came to her eyes - the pain hadn't really become unbearable yet, but the humiliation was immense.
Finally, she felt him stop and immediately tried to get off his lap. He didn't let her go.

"Now you've found out what I give children I discover in my garden," the giant said calmly.
"But as for entering my house without permission, that calls for stricter measures." And with this he pulled down her pants to her knees.
"Stop!" she screamed, "let me go this inst- OOOOOWWW!"
She discovered that his hand on her panty-clad bottom was a great deal more painful than it had been over her pants. She twisted and bucked frantically on his lap, kicking and screaming and pleading, but it was no good. His huge hand slapped her bottom over and over again. It was big enough to cover both bottom cheeks, but he still spanked her fast and methodically in a circle from the top of the right cheek to the place where her bottom met the thighs, and back to the top of the left cheek. Then he started spanking her upper thighs. That was when she started to sob loudly. Every will to fight left her. She just lay there and cried her heart out.
After an eternity, it was over. Her bottom was throbbing and burning so badly that she only realized he had stopped spanking her when he pulled her pants back up. She yelped when they touched her bottom, but made no effort to get up. She just lay there and sobbed.

He sighed and put her on her feet. With a clatter, several items fell out of the pockets of her pants. She hardly noticed. She was hopping up and down before him, crying and trying to rub the pain out of her bottom and not caring how ridiculous she looked. He calmly bent over and collected her screwdriver, her pocket-knife, several spanners and a matchbox. With raised eyebrows he looked at her and opened the matchbox. It contained two dead beatles.
"I wanted to find out how exactly they manage to fly," she brought out with a shaking voice.
To her great surprise, he laughed at this. He handed her her stuff and asked, in a surprisingly gentle voice: "Don't you have a hankie?"
She nodded, embarrassed beyond words, wiped her face and blew her nose.

He looked her up and down thoughtfully. "So you were curious when you saw the machines, weren't you?" he asked.
She nodded. "I'm sorry," she whispered, not trusting her voice.
He pointed towards her bulging pockets. "That's not the stuff I would have thought a governor's daughter would carry around with her," he remarked.
She blushed when she realized he had known who she was all along, and shrugged. "I'm just interested in ... well, machines and stuff. And how things work. That's not forbidden, is it?" she asked defensively.
He laughed again. "No, it isn't. Now..." He glanced at an old-fashioned clock that was fastened to the wall. "Your parents will probably miss you for lunch, won't they?"
She snorted contemptuously. "Miss me? If I didn't come back tonight, they'd probably think I was staying at a friend's place. Whoever that might be."
"Hmm," he made. "All the better. I wouldn't have relished the thought of having to bring you back in the noon heat."
"Oh, but you don't have to," she said, astonished. "I walked here by myself, I can walk back by myself."
"Oh yeah, and get lost on the way," he retorted. "Haven't you realized these hills look all alike?"
"Of course I have", she replied, "that's why I brought a compass!" She showed him the small compass she wore on a chain around her neck.
He looked mildly impressed. "Good thinking," he said, "but little as I like children, I won't make you walk back at this time of the day. You'll risk getting a heat stroke. Your skin doesn't look as if you were made for life in this kind of climate."

She ended up having lunch with him, in his cool and dark kitchen at the back of the cave. The food he offered her was good. A lot of it was imported, and she knew how expensive imported goods where on Sitat. She wondered how he made his living.
"Excuse me," she said shyly, "but what is it you are doing in this cave, with all these machines?"
He shrugged. "Mainly I repair them. Sometimes I build new ones. Most of them are machines for sorting ores. All the mines need them, and I'm more or less the only person here who's any good with machines. I also take care of the occasional robot, sometimes of vehicles; all the complex mechanical stuff. It's respected work, and it's well-paid, which gives me the freedom to do whatever I like, even if others think it's bizarre, or pointless - like my garden."
"But ... but how come you have a computer?" she asked. "And how come you are building a new robot? I thought ..."
"You better don't think about these questions too much, because I'm not going to answer them," he said, and that sounded very final. But he didn't seem angry.
She couldn't figure him out. First, he spanked the living daylight out of her, and then he invited her to lunch?

He seemed quite nice now, too. He asked her a lot of questions about her life here, and at Amargant. She talked to him openly, though she didn't really know why she trusted him. Perhaps it was because of the look in his deep, dark eyes that were fixed on her thoughtfully all the time? When she told him about her life, she tried not to give him the impression that she was complaining about anything, but she had the feeling that her answers revealed more to him than she meant them to.

After lunch, he showed her around the cave. She asked a million questions, and he answered them all, seeming somehow amused by her interest. He avoided the computer and the robot, though, and she didn't ask about them again.
Then they went into the garden, and he showed her the plants and explained his irrigation system to her.
"These are all endemic plants, though many of them are rarely seen on this planet, unless it rains," he explained.
"That's what I thought when I saw the garden!" Aurora exclaimed.
He asked her why she had thought that, and she answered his question hesitantly, afraid to say something stupid. But apparently she hadn't, because he only smiled gently.

Finally, when the soon had disappeared behind the Western hilltop, they sat down on a bench next to the cave entrance.
"After we've talked all this time, can you believe I've completely forgotten to ask for your name?" he asked, smiling.
"My name's Aurora," she replied, "and yours?"
"Oh, you can call me the Professor," he said. "Everyone does that around here."
She nodded.
After the decline of the university system, the word "professor" had changed its meaning. It was now an honorary title for somebody who had a great deal of valuable knowledge. Aurora had never actually met anybody with that title - the upper class didn't tend to produce professors. They produced people like her father, who were sent to govern a planet that didn't even need a governor.

She sighed.
"What's up?" he asked.
"Well, it's just... oh, I hate this kind of life! I hate being useless!" she blurted out. "I want to learn things, and be able to do things, but there's not even a library around here! Everybody expects me to sit around at home and do nothing, and even if they didn't, that wouldn't change a thing, 'cause there's nothing to do here anyway! It's hopeless!" She realized that she had become very loud. "Sorry," she said quietly.
The Professor drummed his fingers on his knees and then abruptly asked: "Well, how would you like working with machines - like the ones in there?" He nodded his head towards the cave entrance.
She looked at him as if he was mad. "Of course I'd love to, but that's out of the question."
"Why?" he asked.
She shrugged. "My father would never allow it. That's obvious, isn't it?"
He smiled. "Your father might have no choice, if I happened to want you as my apprentice."
She looked at him disbelievingly.

However, it turned out that he was right.
The next day, around noon, her father came back from his office in the company of the Professor, who was riding the same motorbike he had brought her home with the night before.
Her father's face radiated utmost fury when he informed her that the Professor had asked her as his apprentice, and that she was free to start working with him if that was her wish.
The Professor grinned at her and asked: "Do you want to?"
There was one question on her mind she had to ask, but it was to embarrassing with her father nearby. She beckoned the Professor over to the window and asked him quietly: "Sorry, but I have to know this before I say yes. Do you have a habit of spanking people who work for you?"
He laughed and answered, equally quietly: "Up to now, I've never had anybody working for me. But if you mean, am I going to spank YOU - yes, I am, when you really misbehave. Whether you are spanked, and how often, depends entirely on you."
"Hmpf," she snorted and thought this over. The spanking he had given her had really hurt, and she still felt it when she sat down, but she had to admit she had somehow, in a way, deserved it. And it obviously had helped him lose any bad feelings he might have had about her trespassing. So, after having pondered the issue for a while, she decided that she trusted him, and that the opportunity to escape the boredom was really too good to pass. So she nodded and said: "Yes, I want to be your apprentice."
"Very well," her father had said stiffly, "then be so kind and work out the details between yourselves. I've got work to do." He turned on his heel and left.
Aurora stared at the Professor in awe. "HOW did you do this?" she asked.
"Oh, well," he said airily, "I've got the head of the miners' guild on my side, and if they threaten to go on strike ... a strike in the mines could well be the end of your father's career. The miners need me, and they respect me, and if I tell them I need an apprentice, and that I have found the ideal person, they see to it that I get what I need, even if it happens to be you. - Of course I wouldn't have done this if you hadn't wanted to work for me," he hastened to add, realizing how this sounded.
Aurora was tempted to pinch herself to make sure she wasn't dreaming.

---

Aurora had worked for Daylan, as his real name was, for five years, five years in which he had always been there for her and patiently answered all of her questions. Or at least, nearly all of her questions - he had never told her anything about his past, about the time before he had come to Sitat more than twenty-five years ago. She had never found out where he got his computer from, or where he had learned everything he knew - his knowledge exceeded the one that could be gained at Amargant, or in any other city of the colonies, by far.
Still, in spite of the mystery that surrounded his person, he had been like a father to her, more than her own father had ever been.

While Aurora sat there, looking at the closed doors, she remembered all the things he had taught her. She remembered the evenings they had spent talking. How he had given her advice when a boy had courted her, and she had been insecure about her feelings. How he had protected her when some of the miners had made rude remarks. How he had explained to her why beetles could fly, why birds could fly and why airplanes could fly (there weren't any airplanes on Sitat, but there were some on other planets, where several continents were inhabited). They had talked about the decline of Civilization, and he had told her about the situation on other planets he had apparently been to. When she asked him why he had chosen Sitat, of all planets, as his home, he refused to answer, though.

One year ago, her father had been called back to Amargant. Aurora had given a lot of thought to her future and had finally decided to stay. There was so much more to learn from Daylan. She probably wouldn't want to spent the rest of her life on Sitat, but with everything Daylan could teach her, she would have no difficulties finding work anywhere, and even taking on apprentices herself. Daylan had promised to buy her a ticket out of Sitat as soon as she was ready to go. Her family had been outraged, but they couldn't very well bring her to the space port in chains. When she insisted on staying on Sitat, they more or less expelled her. She didn't mind a lot. She moved in with Daylan, who had been to her what a father was supposed to be - kind, loving, and sometimes stern when it was called for. She hadn't expected him to die barely a year after her parents had left.

Aurora's mind went back to the first time she had met him, and from there to the other occasions when he'd been really upset with her. On the height of her puberty, she had been insufferable sometimes - self-opinionated, irritable and arrogant with people whom she deemed less intelligent than herself. She still blushed when she thought of the times Daylan had put her over his knee in her first two years with him. She mostly blushed because she had so richly deserved her spankings. He had never taken advantage of her, and he had hardly ever bared her bottom. Only once, in fact - about one year after she had first met him. She could still recall that incident vividly.

---

Daylan was busy watering his plants, and Aurora was alone in the cave, trying unsuccessfully to loosen the screws that fastened the front-plate of an ore sorting machine, when a young miner came in.
"Good morning, Miss", he said respectfully.
"Morning," she said a bit gruffly. She was annoyed that he should watch her struggling with the spanner.
He watched her efforts for a while and finally asked: "Want me to lend you a hand?"
She turned around and asked haughtily: "And what do YOU know about machines?"
"Weeelll," he replied, "I mightn't know a lot 'bout machines, but looks like you're trying to get the front plate off of an ore sorter, and the screws are stuck."
That made her even more annoyed. "They are rusted, and I certainly won't let a pleb like you apply brute force and ruin the thread."
Pleb wasn't a nice term in the colonies. It was a very rude thing to say to somebody who had a respectable job. And Daylan, who had unfortunately just entered the cave a moment before Aurora said this, wasn't pleased.
"Is this the way you talk to people when I'm not around?" he growled.
Aurora recognized the danger signs immediately and turned red.
"I'm sorry, Daylan, I just lost my head. He was ..."
"Don't apologize to ME," he interrupted her. "Apologize to HIM."
She groaned.
"WHAT was that?" he asked icily.
She knew it was a very bad idea to argue, but she tried it anyway. "But Daylan!" she cried. "He has no right to meddle! He ..."
Daylan stepped close to her rapidly and hissed: "I don't care what he did, we don't talk to our customers, or to ANYBODY else like that. If you don't apologize to him right now, and apologize properly, I'm gonna put you over my knee here and now. It's your choice."
Well, she didn't think it was much of a choice. She apologized meekly to the grinning miner and was in a very bad mood for the rest of the morning. Luckily for her, Daylan wasn't around, as he had left with the miner to sort out some problem with a stuck wagon, and unlike other times, he hadn't taken her with him because he didn't "want her to walk around insulting people".

Aurora continued to work on the ore sorter until she thought she had found the problem, but she wasn't really sure if she knew how to solve it and decided to wait for Daylan to come back. She fixed herself some lunch and then wandered through the cave aimlessly.
Suddenly she saw that one of Daylan's desk drawers was open.
Daylan had strictly forbidden her to hunt through his personal stuff, and his desk was always locked. He must have forgotten to lock it this morning.
Aurora knew she was about to do a very wrong thing, but she just couldn't help it. She wanted so badly to find out what the big mystery behind Daylan was. She half thought he might be working for some secret service, but what would the secret service want to find out on a planet like this? Or he might be a criminal fleeing from the law - but then again, it was usually enough to move from one planet to another in order to escape the police, you didn't have to end up on such a remote world as Sitat. Anyway, she couldn't really imagine Daylan committing a crime.
So she started to poke through his desk drawers, careful not to leave any traces, and all the while listening for his motorbike.
The first drawer contained private correspondence in bad handwriting. She didn't want to read the letters, but she noticed that they were about thirty years old and that they had been sent from Irshad, on Aquitaine - a densely populated planet that had a lot of poverty, crime and general chaos, but also a rather attractive cultural life and a highly diverse entertainment business. Irshad was exactly the place you would bring in connection with a mysterious person. Much more so than Sitat.
The second drawer contained computer manuals. They bore the logo of Starbound Inc. Aurora gave a low whistle. Now she knew where the computer was from!
Starbound Inc. was the biggest company of the Colonies. They produced space ships. In order to do so, they needed a lot of highly trained employees. Aurora didn't really know where they got them from. Rumor had it that it was the company that chose the employees and not the other way round, and that they had their own training facility which resembled the universities of former times. Everybody knew it was useless to apply at Starbound; either you were picked, or you weren't. The company owned the planet it was based on, Tang Minor Seven, and access to the planet was restricted.
There were a lot of mysteries around Starbound Inc. Could it be that Daylan had worked for them? But why did he live on Sitat now? Had he stolen the computer from them and made his getaway? Aurora couldn't imagine Daylan stealing something from his employer. But perhaps he had been different when he was young?

Suddenly, she heard the noise of his motorcycle approaching, and then stopping abruptly. Hastily, she put the manuals in the desk drawer and shut it. She ran away from Daylan's working area, then remembered that the topmost drawer had been open, ran back, opened it and jumped away just when Daylan entered the cave.
He couldn't exactly see what was going on, coming from the bright sunshine, but he realized immediately that Aurora was back in his working area, and boomed: "What are you doing there?"
He strode over to her, took one look at her exceedingly guilty face, another look at the open desk drawer, took a deep breath to calm himself down and asked quietly: "Do you want to own up, or do you want to make things more difficult for both of us?"
She started to cry. She knew she had disappointed him immensely. "I'm sorry, Daylan," she brought out. "I didn't really read anything. I know I shouldn't've ... oh, please, I know I've messed up, but please don't send me away!"
"Don't be stupid," he snapped. "I'm not going to send you away, and I don't know where you got that idea from. But I'm damn well going to teach you to respect my privacy!"
He took her arm and escorted her to his bedroom.
"I know you are curious, and I can even understand that, but you are old enough to keep that curiosity in check!" he continued. "I made it very clear to you that my past is none of your business, and that my desk is off limits for you, whether it is locked or not. I have my reasons for this, and YOU - WILL - HAVE - TO - LEARN - TO - RESPECT - THAT!" He all but shouted the last part.
She could tell he was really, really angry, much more so than she had ever seen him before. Her stomach made a funny jolt. She knew she was in for the spanking of her life.
Daylan sat down on his bed and unceremoniously threw her over his lap. She didn't even try to struggle. Not only because she knew it was useless, but also because she felt extremely guilty. But she was surprised and dismayed when he started pulling down her pants. Until then, he had always delivered the first part of the spanking over her pants. Apparently, now he meant business right from the beginning.
Aurora was even more shocked when he grabbed the waistband of her panties. "Wait!" she cried. "You can't do that! I'm fourteen years old, for God's sake!"
"I know how old you are," he growled, "but I still want to bring this lesson home to you. I have no desire to look at your private parts, if that's what you're afraid of, but you have really earned yourself a spanking on the bare, and that's what you're gonna get."
With that, he pulled down her panties. Her pants were bunched around her knees, and her panties around mid-thigh, leaving her bottom bare and preventing her from kicking her legs.
He waisted no time in getting started, and he spanked hard from the beginning. She was sobbing after about ten spanks - she had been crying to begin with, and it didn't take much to make her feel truly punished.
Daylan saw to it that she was VERY thoroughly punished, though.
He spanked and spanked, while her sobs and wails of distress filled the bedroom.
Finally, when her bottom was cherry red with purple blotches, he stopped. In order to pull his belt out of his belt loops.
She screamed when the belt hit her sore bottom. It hurt like nothing she had ever felt before.
He made a long pause before he let the belt strike again.
And a third time.
After the tenth strike with the belt, she was in her own world of pain, not noticing anything but her throbbing bottom.
She only realized that there was no number eleven to follow when Daylan carefully lifted her off his lap and laid her on his bed on her tummy. He left the room and let her cry her misery out for a few minutes.
When he came back, he had a jar of cream in his hand. She recognized it; it was the stuff he used against bruises and other minor injuries.
He sat down next to her and very gently rubbed the cream into her burning bottom. It hurt, but she knew it would ease the pain a little, and she appreciated the kindness.
"Daylan?" she asked quietly, when she had calmed down enough to speak.
"Yes?"
"Can you forgive me? I swear I won't do it again."
"You are forgiven, my dear," he replied and patted her red curls.
"Now take a rest. I know this has been an ordeal for you, but unfortunately, I really think you deserved it."
"I know," she said softly.

---

The eighteen-year-old Aurora sat in the garden, calling memories of Daylan to her mind, and changing from quiet desparation to hysterical crying and back as they day went on. After that spanking four years ago, she had never again tried to take a look at the contents of Daylan's desk drawers. Now she had the opportunity, or possibly even the duty, to do so, but she didn't want to. She just wanted him back.

Later in the day, they brought his corpse home. The doctor quietly told her that Daylan had obviously died from a heart attack and had already been dead for several hours when Aurora had found him.
A lot of miners had come. They dug a grave in the middle of his garden, where they put him to rest.

Afterwards, the head of the miners' guild approached her. "I hope you don't mind my asking, Miss, but you are going to take over here, aren't you?" He swept his hand around to include the cave and the garden.
She looked at him helplessly. "Well - am I entitled to? I mean, I'm not his legal heir or anything. We've never really talked about this case. He wasn't that old."
"Well," the miner said, "is it possible he left a will?"
"I don't know," she admitted. "I suppose we could have a look inside ..." She still felt uneasy at the thought of going through his things, as if he could still watch her and disapprove. But she knew she would have to do it sooner or later.
"Well, you do that, Miss," the miner said, "and if you don't find anything, then you can be certain anyway that no one will deny you the right of taking over the place, or he would be up against the whole miners' guild. We need someone for the machine work, and we are really very glad to have you here."

In the topmost drawer of his desk, she found the envelope. It not only contained his will, which made her the sole heir to everything he owned, but it also contained a short letter and a number of documents. The letter read:

"Dear Aurora,
when you read this, I'll either be out and you are exploiting the opportunity, in which case you better drop this letter right now, but I don't really believe you'd do this - or, which is more likely, I'll be dead. I haven't told you, but my heart has been giving me trouble, and there's not much the doctor can do for me here. I may still have many years before me, but as this kind of thing is unpredictable, I better take some precautions, like writing this letter.
In this envelope, you find my will which should solve any immediate practical difficulties for you. I expect the miners will be glad if you take over the whole enterprise, so no trouble there.
The key to the vault is hidden in the robot's rump. You probably know that anyway. The vault and its contents are yours.
I've included some documents that will answer your questions about me. It doesn't matter any more now that I'm dead.
Aurora, I love you like a daughter. I know you will make your way. If you ever feel like leaving Sitat, think about going to Irshad on Aquitaine and asking for Professor Kendan. I hope he still lives, he must be rather old now. Even if he's dead now, he had some apprentices who should be masters now and who'll be able to help you with whatever your plans are.
My thoughts are with you, whereever I'll be.
Love, Daylan."

Aurora was overwhelmed by tears, and what made it worse was the fact that there was no one here to comfort her. She was all alone.

It took her about an hour until she had calmed down enough to read the documents in the envelope.
It turned out that among the things Aurora hadn't known about Starbound Inc. was the fact that their employees weren't employees, they were practically slaves. Starbound apparently made its own law. Daylan had been sold to Starbound at age seven. There was a certificate about a test that had been conducted among a large number of children on Nenterris, which confirmed that the boy Daylan's I.Q. and talents qualified him for training at Starbound. There was also a contract with Daylan's parents, which had made them rich people and had made their son the property of Starbound for fifty years.
A picture of Daylan's family, on which Daylan was about five, gave Aurora the impression that they must have been rather poor. They had seven children; Daylan was number four. His father looked like a farmer.

Then, there were some of the letters she had caught a glimpse of three years ago - they were written by Professor Kendan, who apparently had been teaching at Starbound's training facility and had helped the twenty-year-old Daylan escape. The last letter told Daylan to come to Irshad, but that he could only stay there for a short while in order to try and disperse his traces, before moving on to a better hiding place. It seemed that Starbound's security unit was a force to be reckoned with.

Finally, there were the designs for Daylan's robot. She knew he hadn't counted on producing a feasible product; it had rather been a project that had given him some aim in his life on Sitat. She knew she would continue working on it.

When Aurora went to bed that night, she felt that she had never been more lonely. She not only missed Daylan, but she also missed his advice.
She knew she wasn't going to stay on Sitat forever, but how could she leave now when she was needed? On the other hand, how would she be able to live here, so alone?
What would he have advised her to do?
She saw his face before her, the tangled beard, and the dark eyes that could be so kind, and so stern. "You feel lonely, and you don't want to leave Sitat without anyone who can take your place?" he seemed to ask. "For God's sake, then take on an apprentice! You are old enough!"
Yes, that's what he would have said.

Suddenly, she knew with absolute certainty that Daylan would never leave her.