Darks came in infected with some kind of rad-mutated STD. It nearly wiped out my zoo, killed half my adult specimens before I got control of things. No, you can’t be too careful with the pustules. I always check the new females for rad cancer, too. They can look okay on the outside, but then they ooze and drip like a dead dog’s belly once you try to breed them.”
Krysty craned her head around as far as she was able. She could see the white frizz of hair on top of Elijah’s head. He was writing with a pencil stub in a thick, cloth-bound book. Was he making some kind of measurements of her private parts? Taking notes on her general physical appearance? Was it sheer nonsense and bluster meant to impress ignorant sec men with his command of pre-Apocalyptic scientific procedure? She had no way of telling, but her instinct told her he was a fraud.
“Turn her over,” the baron said, “and hold her head real still.”
When the sec men twisted her onto her back, Krysty saw that Elijah had picked up a short, sharp knife. From the look on his face, she thought he was going to gut-slit her for sure. The situation seemed so desperate that she was on the verge of summoning her Gaia power-something she was very reluctant to do except as a last resort. She had no doubt that her unique connection to the feminine forces of the earth could give her enough strength to break free of the guards who held her spread-eagled. But then what? There were other blaster-armed sec men in the room; even with
Gala’s help, it would take several strokes of luck for her to chill them all. And if she managed it, using the power left her weak and trembly, and she still had nowhere to go. Krysty forced herself to relax. The time wasn’t right. The power had to be saved and used only when it could be most effective.
As it turned out, she made the right choice.
“I want to take a sample of hair,” Elijah told his men.
At least, Krysty thought, there were only a handful of sec men to see the show. At least the baron had cleared the room of his wives and assorted toadies. Like most malevolent despots, Willie Elijah found he enjoyed depriving his subjects of pleasure more than he liked granting it to them.
The baron rounded the side of the table, then grabbed a thick lock of her prehensile red hair. Stretching it out, he lopped it off near the root with a quick slash of the blade.
Krysty screamed in pain, and the sinuous mass of her hair retracted at the insult, coiling tightly against her skull. Krysty felt as if she had lost a finger or a toe, and the pain rushed across her scalp in burning waves.
Elijah dropped the severed strand onto a plate and watched it writhe. It didn’t bleed from the cut end. Other than the violent motion, it appeared to be normal hair. The thrashing continued for a few seconds, then it slowed and the hair gradually became still.
“Unusual,” the baron said. He reached across her
breasts for his notebook, which lay open on the table. Pulling the ledger onto her belly, he hastily scribbled something with his pencil stub.
“Which mutie are you going to mate her with first?” asked the sec man who was holding her head.
All the sec men wanted to know the answer to that; in fact they were practically drooling to find out. They considered the baron’s practice of mutie husbandry a spectator sport, a recreational activity that ranked right up there with the baiting of zoo inmates.
“Too soon to decide,” Elijah replied. “I’ll isolate her for a few months. Have Knackerman time her periods. When I figure out when she’s due to be fertile, I’ll chain her down on her back and let one of my best mutie studs have a go at her for a few days.”
“Lucky rad-ass bastard,” muttered the sec man at her head.
The prospect of being mated against her will momentarily plunged Krysty back into the primal terror of her jump dream. It wasn’t just the threat of sexual violence and victimization that scared her; it was the idea of being forced to bear live young when there was no way of telling what kind of baby would emerge at the end of term. Once again Krysty experienced the helplessness of the nightmare. Once again her enormously swollen belly contained a staggering weight and dozens of tiny legs kicking, hands scratching, needle teeth piercing, ripping. With an effort of will, she fought off the sensations.