So what was the Peace Corps for me?
Something I’d thought would be a fantastic adventure, but had turned out to be miserable Hell-ride.
What would this place be?
A miserable Hell-ride that turned into a fantastic adventure?
Well, one could hope.
The point was that I chose the Peace Corps.
I was a prisoner here.
Some choice I’d made, though.
If I had to do it all over again—?
Nope.
I wouldn’t have gone.
Maybe having someone else choose my fate would turn out better for me.
Again, I’d have to hope for this.
For better or worse I was stuck here.
I kicked Kang out of my room to undress in case he had a camera.
This is when I let myself notice I had no body hair—not even in my butt, which, you know, hadn’t been too much of an issue, but I was a grown woman.
I ground my teeth.
If it was only me, Whore, and Elentinus on the ship, then who the Hell had waxed me?
Under the soothing spray of warm water I tried to convince myself a Domestic had done it.
Maybe it hadn’t been waxing, but something like a make-your-hair-fall-out injection.
I tried to kick all these thoughts out of my mind.
When I got out of the shower the asshole was standing in my room.
Thank God I’d wrapped myself in what I determined to be a towel.
I glared at him while my hair dripped a puddle on the floor.
“You need to eat,” he said in his typical impatient tone.
“I already did.”
I pointed to my dirty dish between the wall and the foot of the bed.
His face softened.
“Oh.
Fine then.
Come with me.”
“Suuure.”
I got a wicked smile at the thought of Elentinus catching him dragging me around the ship in nothing but a towel.
Whore made his annoyed grumble and turned to leave.
“Well, get dressed first, of course.
I’ll wait outside.
Hurry up!”
“Jack-ass.”
I made sure to mutter this after the door had closed.
I dressed fast just because I didn’t want him bursting in on me half-naked if he found me to be too slow.
There was little camisole type thing for my bra, which did hold the girls up pretty well, and a girdle type thing for my bald groin.
I had to put both on to fit into the tight black dress.
It was more comfortable than the constricting undergarments should have allowed.
Once my nudity was safely concealed I looked for a hair dryer.
I didn’t find one, so I laboriously towel dried my long hair.
I was brushing it in front of the oval mirror attached to the wall when Whore burst in.
“I told you to hurry up!”
I bit my tongue and kept up with him down the corridor.
“You’re getting along fine, aren’t you?”
I was surprised at his concern.
“As well as can be expected.”
He shot a look at me.
“I expect you to be fine.
You’re eating, aren’t you?
You slept through the night.
You’re fine.”
I made an exasperated shrug.
“Sure.”
He pressed the button to summon the elevator.
“Listen, these ‘Degrees of Intimacy,’ they’re not the norm.
It’s just dragging out something that should be fairly simple.”
I followed him into the elevator.
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“Don’t start with me this morning!
By the gods, I swear I’ll zap you!”
“If you zap me for no good reason I’m telling Elentinus.”
“How dare you refer to him with such familiarity!
He’s Lord Elentinus!
Lord Elentinus!”
I cringed back.
Damn it—I knew that.
“Sorry.
I—I forgot.
Lord Elentinus.
Then husband.
I won’t forget again.”
Whore glared at me, but his tone showed me I’d appeased him.
“Anyway, my people are on the brink of extinction.
Even worse than your own.
It’s imperative that you start the breeding cycle as soon as possible.”
An icy shudder started at the back of my neck and moved all the way to my stomach.
As we exited the elevator I was hugging myself again.
(I’d stopped doing that for at least a little while).
“What…what’s the breeding cycle?”
“Kindly spare me your tiresome foreboding.
You’ll be given injections to increase your fertility.
Lord Elentinus will impregnate you twice per month.”
My jaw dropped.
“Five days after every conception the zygotes will be removed from your body to be gestated artificially.”
This brought my horror level down a few ticks.
At least they weren’t planning to turn me into a brood queen.
Now I just had to deal with the thought of—what?
Twenty-four babies a year?
“What happens to the babies?”
Whore stuck his nose in the air.
“They’re cherished of course.
They’ll be granted to worthy caretakers who will raise them with the utmost love and care.”
“…Really?”
Whore spun on me.
“Yes.
Really.”
I took a deep cathartic breath.
I figured I could live with that.
I had to.
If everything they’d been saying was true, if they really didn’t have many women left, and if they were really on the brink of extinction, then I had to expect to be used this way.
If I let myself get sentimental about my children then I’d probably lose it.
“I’m going to be having surgery twice a month?”
Whore gave me a dismissive wave.
“Pah, it’s nothing.
You won’t even notice anything’s been done to you.
The unit is quick and precise.
It will be a minor inconvenience at worst.”
A robot surgeon?
Well, it was probably better than having Whore cut me open.
We’d crossed the lobby and were now headed down another long corridor.
This one had several doors lining the sides.
Whore brought me to one of the larger ones.
I recognized the room inside as a clinic.
A pretty sleek one, full of a lot of rounded fixtures coming out of the walls and floors.
Whore walked over to a counter with some equipment on it.
“When was your last menstrual cycle?”
Oh, boy.
I hadn’t been sexually active since a brief indiscretion in college, so I had no reason to keep track of them.
I blinked a few times.
I remembered bleeding through my pad on the plane ride to New York.
“Uh, like, two weeks ago.”
Whore grumbled.
“Of course.
You’re probably fertile right now.
Come here.
Give me your finger.”
I gave him the middle one.
(Heh, heh).
He put it under the blue light of a scanner thing.
A black rectangle the size of a big screen TV appeared on the wall in front of us.
After a few seconds my body in the form of a laser grid appeared on the screen.
Apparently the blue light shooting into my finger was spreading all through me.
“They already found a cure for cancer, right?”
Whore shushed me.
The mapping got more elaborate, with veins and organs being displayed.
Whore tapped his fingers on a control panel and it zeroed in on my reproductive system.
A red blinking triangle pointed towards something.
Whore made the area larger.
“You’re ovulating.”
I eyed him.
He made several annoyed sounds and headed toward the door.
“Wait here.”
He left me alone several minutes.
I used the time to analyze myself on the screen.
From what I could tell there were no giant tumors anywhere.
Yay?
Whore returned with a black rectangular thing with a point on it and something else that looked like an electric shaver.
The former I recognized.
He’d jabbed it in my neck back when he kidnapped me.
I reeled back away from him, but he gave me a threatening look.
I fumed and held still for the injection.
“That will extend the amount of time you’ll remain fertile, but it won’t last for nine days.”
He waved the electric shaver over my neck and the small amount of pain I had from the injection went away.
“You need to move things along with Lord Elentinus or this egg, which represents a Dak-Hiliah life, will be wasted.”
I touched my neck.
There wasn’t any sign I’d had an injection.
“Isn’t it important for Lord Elentinus to follow the druids’ rules?”
“What would you know about that?”
He sneered and then looked away.
“The Degrees of Intimacy isn’t a rule, it’s a suggestion.
Something to be practiced if necessary, and it’s not necessary.
You’re adapting perfectly well.
There’s no need for you to be coddled.”
I pulled my finger out of the cancer machine.
“Hor-Denay,” I said, with forced restraint.
“I
do
need to be coddled.”
“Bah!”
“You know what?
It’s the least you guys can do.
This isn’t easy for me.
Just keeping it together is a huge—“
“Enough!”
Whore leaned on the counter and spoke to the wall in front of him.
“Do you have even the faintest idea how lucky you are?”
I was not amused.
“Tell me.”
“Lord Elentinus is kind, and wise, and fair.
He gives everything within him to serve our people.
He obeys our druids with joy in his heart, and reverence—even back when their rules were destroying us.
He shows your people more compassion than they deserve, and what do they give him in return?
You…you
women
.
You ungrateful, selfish, spoiled children who spit venom in his face.”
I stared at him a while after he was done.
Tears had built up behind my eyes.
I forced myself to swallow and said, “I didn’t spit venom in his face.”