Dremiks by Cassandra Davis Read Free Book Online Page A

rude gesture as she backed out the door.
    Alone in the sudden quiet of the room, Cassie returned to her silent reverie. Combing her hair was one of the little pleasures of her day. She was so busy that she had little time for reading, or playing chess, or even exercising. The simple act of pulling the comb through her slightly kinky, thick, dark hair relaxed her enough that her thoughts wandered freely. It wasn’t unusual for her to sink into sweet memories of her childhood in Jamaica. Raised by parents who had pulled themselves out of poverty by sheer luck and back breaking hard work, she enjoyed what few on her island nation did, even in the new century that politicians boasted would see the end of world poverty. Cassie Ruger and her family knew that poverty wasn’t something that could be erased by political promises and sleek new inventions. The youngest of five children, raised in a uniquely indigenous mixture of evangelical Catholicism and native island spiritualism, she’d spent her weekends in the soup kitchens and shelters.
    The hopelessness of the poor when faced with disease had driven young Cassie, like so many before her, into the field of medicine. She vowed to return to help her people, but life intervened. Now she sat millions of kilometers away from the Caribbean, brushing her hair and humming the soft calypso lullaby of her childhood. Before they left Mars orbit, she sent a long letter to her mother. Widowed four years before, Mamma Ruger lived her life through the joys of her children, nieces, and nephews. In the evenings after chores were finished and homework completed, the women of the family would gather on the porch and “visit”. The gossip sessions migrated between houses and fluctuated in length or regularity depending on the business of daily lives. The atmosphere, however, never wavered. Cassie’s memories of those evenings were infused with a warmth that had little to do with the stifling island humidity.
    The last tangle broke free, and the comb slid effortlessly through her hair. Cassie pushed the heavy mass of damp hair back over her shoulder. Reaching blindly behind her head, her fingers quickly separated her hair in a part and then plaited both sides of the part into separate French braids before joining the two sides into one thick plait of hair that hung below her shoulders. Her short cropped bangs fell softly against her forehead. She tied off the braid with a simple rubber band and hung her towel on the bar to air-dry.
    The air blowing across her damp hair and over her bare shoulders chilled her. Cassie grabbed a soft cotton long sleeve t-shirt and slipped it over her head before lying down on her bunk. She slid her hand over a flat pane on the wall. The lights dimmed accordingly. The coverlet on her bed was a handmade heirloom quilt from home. She pulled it over her shoulders and snuggled down into the bed. Sleep quickly over took her.
    The commander didn’t encounter any obstacles on her way to the laundry. She dropped her bags once inside the door. The nearest wash unit was blessedly unoccupied. Rolling her shoulder to ease a cramp, O’Connell untied the laundry bags and began feeding her clothes into the washer. The machines were the latest in water and energy saving models. They used pressurized air and water to remove soil and stains and freshen the fibers of the clothes. Colors no longer bled using the new system, but Maggie still had two loads to do. She purposely waited until she had two full bags before doing her wash. It was the best approximation of military full-pack hike that she could manage while on the Hudson .
    O’Connell knew her constant, and unique, workouts raised eyebrows among the military crew and inspired jokes among the civilian colonists. She ignored them. Once they reached Dremiks there would be plenty of heavy work to be done in an atmosphere that even the Dremikians had admitted was harsh and unforgiving. Beyond that looming burden, the very act of