Bringing Stella Home (12 page)

“
You mean—”

Stella stopped herself in
mid-sentence. Narju said nothing.

“
I’m sorry,” she said,
blushing deep red.

“
No apology is necessary,”
said Narju as he finished. “Come with me.”

* * * * *

Stella felt practically
naked in the patient’s gown. She tried to ignore that as she
followed Narju down the hallway, keeping her eyes open for any
unguarded doors or possible exits.
Bide
your time. Play the game.

He led her down a corridor similar to
the first: colorful silks, golden tassels, more bead doors, and of
course the sensual, shaggy carpet. They passed several people, most
of them servants in their crisp white smocks, though Stella saw a
couple of other women. She couldn’t escape the feeling, however,
that more eyes were watching her than she could see.

They turned a corner and came to an
elevator. Narju pulled out a card and swiped it at the access
panel, and the elevator door opened. Unlike the rest of the harem,
the interior was gray and drab—purely utilitarian.

This elevator leads to the
rest of the ship,
Stella realized. She took
note of the pocket where Narju kept his key-card.

When the doors reopened, they stepped
out into a corridor so spartanly decorated that it seemed as if
she’d set foot on a different ship. The white tiling on the walls
had yellowed with age, and there were surprisingly deep impressions
in the floor where countless feet had trod. Stella felt the grainy
indentations with her bare feet. Judging from their depth, she
realized that the ship could easily be decades old—perhaps even
more than a hundred standard years.

A pair of soldiers guarded the
elevator. At a gesture from Narju, they stood aside to let him
pass. Stella found it odd that the guards would be posted outside
the harem instead of inside—as if they were trying to keep the rest
of the ship out. She shivered in the noticeably cooler air and
tried not to think about what that meant.

At a turn in the corridor, Stella
caught sight of another woman. She was about half a head taller
than her, a little more filled out around the waist, and probably
fifteen or twenty years older, judging from the slight creases on
her forehead. She wore a long green dress with purple fringes and
long, loose sleeves. The dress had no pockets, but several small
cloth pouches hung from her belt.

The woman scowled at Stella as they
passed. For her part, Stella stared at the ground to avoid eye
contact. In a second, the awkward moment was over.

“
The medical bay,” Narju
said, opening an otherwise unremarkable door a short distance down
the corridor. With his free hand, he motioned for Stella to
enter.

The moment she stepped through the
doorway, she felt that something was wrong. On the outside,
everything seemed normal enough—clear, bright lights, spotless
white walls, the sterile smell of disinfectant. Several monitors
hung down from the ceiling, and a detachable, floating table
hovered off to one side. In the corner she saw an examining
table—old, certainly, but still functional. It wasn’t until she
caught sight of the medicine bottles on the counter that she
realized what was bothering her. More than half of them were
opened—some even lay completely empty on their side. The
instruments dangling from the hovering table were lopsided and
off-color—probably pieced together from spare parts. The walls were
spotless white, but the floor was yellow and unnervingly
sticky.

A portly man in an off-white apron
greeted them. He had a wide face and long black hair pulled back in
a ponytail like Narju’s. One of his eyelids drooped, giving him a
half-drunk expression that did little to quell Stella’s growing
anxiety. He spoke to her, but his accent was so thick that she
could barely understand him.

“
Please step up to the
examining table,” Narju translated.

Stella hesitated. She glanced from
Narju to the Hameji doctor. He gave her a vacuous smile and
gestured impatiently with his hand.

“
What if I say no?” she
asked.

“
It will not hurt,” Narju
said. “I promise.”

Stella hugged her chest a little
tighter. She made no effort to move.

“
Everyone who comes to the
ship must be examined,” Narju said in his gentle, encouraging
voice. “I was examined, too, when I first came.”

Yeah,
Stella thought.
And
sterilized.

Narju coughed. “Don’t worry—the doctor
will not…alter anything. This is only a routine
examination.”

The man motioned again with his hand.
His half-smile was quickly disappearing.

Stella glanced over her shoulder at
the door. It was closed—no way out. She swallowed and stepped
shakily up to the table.

The doctor started by checking her
pulse. She shivered as he untied the top few knots on her gown and
reached his hands underneath the fabric. The end of the stethoscope
felt frigid against her bare skin, and she dug her fingers into the
underside of the table as the he pressed it from spot to
spot.

When he was finished, the
doctor withdrew the stethoscope and slipped a thick band around her
arm.
To check my blood pressure,
Stella realized. A harsh noise sounded from some
unseen machine, and the band slowly constricted, making her fingers
tingle. She winced as it grew tighter, wondering what would happen
if it never stopped. For a few frightening seconds, it almost
seemed a reality. Eventually, however, the pressure equalized, then
gradually let up as the machine completed its discomforting
task.

Her eyes and ears were next. She
squirmed at the squishy sound the conical probe made as the doctor
jabbed it in her ears, and the device’s bright light cut into her
eyes, burning splotches of purple and green into her vision. Stella
blinked several times after the procedure was finished, but the
splotches refused to disappear.

The doctor turned to her again. In his
hand, he carried a syringe.

“
No!” Stella cried, pulling
her arms tight against her body. She scooted as far away from the
doctor as she could.

“
Have no fear,” Narju
cajoled her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “He only needs a blood
sample. You’re doing very well.”

The doctor stared impatiently at her
with his droopy eye and false smile. Slowly, she held out her arm.
As the needle burrowed into her skin, she clenched her teeth and
closed her eyes. For nearly half a minute, the invasive device
remained impaled in her body, until the doctor collected as much
blood as he needed and pulled it out.

When will this be
over?

As if in answer to her unspoken question,
the doctor motioned for her to lie down lengthwise across the
table. Stella did so slowly, careful to keep her gown from hiking
up. When she was lying flat on her back, the doctor took her feet
and put them in some sort of device, so that they were locked in
place.

What is he doing?
she wondered with alarm. The next thing she knew,
she felt a sharp pain in her ankle—the pain of an
incision.

“
What are you doing to me?”
she screamed in New Gaian, sitting up at once. Narju took her by
the shoulders and forced her down, holding her against the
table.

“
Don’t struggle,” he said.
“If you struggle, the doctor might make a mistake.”

“
You told me he wouldn’t do
anything!”

Narju said nothing. Stella’s whole
body shook, but she kept still as the doctor inserted something
small and hard into the flesh between her Achilles tendon and the
bone. He applied a thick balm to the incision, and the pain quickly
faded, though she lost all feeling in her foot.

“
You lied to me,” Stella
cried, staring up at Narju with tears of fright in her eyes. “You
said it wouldn’t hurt.”

“
I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“He won’t do anything more.”

The doctor unbound her ankles and left
the room. Stella swung her legs over the edge and gingerly tested
her foot. It felt awkward to stand on, as if it had fallen asleep,
but she could still walk.

As she followed Narju out of the room,
however, her movements were wooden and without feeling. This wasn’t
a game anymore—how could it be, when the Hameji had more control
over her own body than she did?

* * * * *

Narju returned Stella to the bathing
room and had her change into new clothes—a blue knee-length skirt
with a white blouse and an ornate, gold-embroidered vest. She found
it a little ostentatious, but after the burlap tunic and the skimpy
doctor’s gown, she was happy with whatever she could get. When she
was finished, Narju once again led her out into the
corridor.

“
These are your quarters,”
said Narju, parting a bead curtain that covered the doorway to one
of the bedrooms. “If you need anything, press the red button on the
access panel. I live to serve you.”

Stella stepped into the room, and
Narju bowed and left. The beads made a light clattering noise as
they fell shut. Stella could see through them to the corridor
outside, giving her the feeling that she was still in a public
place. The general lack of privacy unnerved her—all of the doors
across the harem had been replaced by bead curtains, so that every
space felt exposed to view. It was probably one of the ways the
Hameji controlled them.

She looked around the room, not sure
what to think of the place. It seemed comfortable enough, if a
little small. The walls were covered in light pink silks, golden
tassels hanging in patterns from the ceiling. In the far left
corner she saw a set of white pillows, piled at random on top of a
threadbare couch. A double bunk bed jutted out from the wall on her
right, while an arabesque Auriga Novan chess table stood off to her
left, next to the couch.

“
Well, hello,” came a voice
from the bunks.

Stella jumped a little. It was a
woman’s voice, speaking in New Gaian.

“
Hello?” Stella tentatively
replied, also in New Gaian. She peered in the direction of the
voice, and soon caught sight of the unknown woman lying on the
upper bunk.

She was fairly young, perhaps in her
early thirties, with light blond hair that barely reached her
shoulders. While she wasn’t exactly fat, she was a bit heavier than
Stella had expected. She wore a fluffy blue bathrobe, tied loosely
around the waist and open enough to show that she wasn’t wearing
anything else. Her breasts were much larger than Stella’s, and she
didn’t seem to have any qualms about letting them hang
out.

“
Well, what’s your name,
honey?”

“
My name?”

“
That’s right, darling.
Don’t be shy.”

“
My name is Stel—I mean,”
said Stella, taking a breath, “my name is Sholpan.”

“
Is that the name they gave
you?”

“
Yes.”

“
Sholpan. A pretty name, as
far as Hameji names go.” She sat up and grinned. “My name’s
Tamurin, dear, but you can call me Tamu.”

“
Is—is that what they named
you?”

“
Of course,
sweetheart.”

“
Are we
roommates?”

“
You guessed it.” She
slipped her feet over the edge of the bunk and slid to the ground.
As she did so, her bathrobe fell open, completely exposing one of
her enormous, pasty white breasts. Stella’s eyes
widened.

“
Something the matter,
dear?”

She gestured with her eyes at the open
bathrobe. Tamu laughed, and without any concern in the least,
closed it—though not so tightly that it wasn’t in danger of falling
open again.

“
Just a bit of flesh,” she
said. “Nothing between roommates, eh? Believe me, honey, you’ll get
used to it after a while. How old are you?”

Stella took a second to recover. She
hoped she never got used to letting herself hang out in that
way.

“
I’m seventeen,” she said,
her voice coming out as a croak.

“
So young!” Tamu shrieked,
making Stella jump. “So very young. I would have guessed eighteen
or nineteen. You’re quite beautiful for your age,
darling.”

“
Thanks,” said Stella. She
didn’t want to know whether that was a good thing.

Tamu parted the bead curtain door and
stepped outside. Still holding it open, she turned to face Stella
with a hand on her hip.

“
Well, honey, are you going
to stand there staring all day, or are you going to let me show you
around?”

“
Oh,” said Stella, quickly
stepping through. Tamu fell in step with her, and together, they
walked side by side down the corridor.

“
The decor here might be a
little different than what you’re used to,” said Tamu, gesturing to
the kitschy silk hangings, “but it grows on you. Hi,
Erdene.”

“
Hello, Tamu,” said a
young, black-haired woman in a translucent green dress. She stopped
in front of them. “Who’s the new girl?”