The Price of Pleasure (Saurellian Federation 1)
Page 17Despite Calla’s reassurances, she paced back and forth in the small House of Lilies parlor where they sat. Finally Calla actually grasped her by the shoulders, forced her to sit down and brought her a glass of fortified wine.
“Dani, I can never thank you for all you’ve done for me,” Calla said, gazing into her friend’s eyes with affection. She hated the thought of Dani worrying about her. “You’ve risked so much to help me, and I’m ready for whatever happens on this trip.”
“But honey, you need to understand this isn’t a normal contract,” Dani burst out, momentarily losing her composure. “You’re going to have to protect yourself. This man is obsessed with you, far beyond what’s normal! You’ve got to be careful, because this kind of thing can get ugly. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“I’m not sure that I do,” Calla said carefully, trying to gage Dani’s meaning. “But whatever it is, I can handle it.”
“Really?” Dani asked spiritedly. “Do you realize that men sometimes beat private contractors? There have even been murders! Usually you’re pretty safe going through the Guild, because we take contract violations very seriously. If this guy hurts you, we’ll find him and make him pay, that’s just good business.
But that won’t bring you back. You’ve got to be careful.”
“Dani, I understand that there are risks, and I also understand that this isn’t the kind of contract we’d hoped it would be,” Calla replied with feeling. “This would be a terrible contract for you, but it’s more than I’d ever dreamed could happen to me. You need to understand that.
“Remember, I was born on an imperial slave farm. It’s not like I lost my mother. I never had one. I’m the product of synthetically created human egg cells. Do you understand what that means? Do you understand how many religions don’t even consider me to be human? When I was at the hostel, Jenner could beat me any time she wanted. She could sell me to whoever she wanted, whenever she wanted.
“I lost my crèche-brother because he was a slave. Do you know what it means to be raised in the same crèche?” Calla continued bitterly. “Fifty infants were born–expelled–from incubators on the same day.
We were placed in one room, tended by two slave nurses who had raised a thousand others like us.
Thirty-five of us survived the first year… it was a higher survival rate than usual. They were very pleased with us.”
“Oh, Calla,” Dani said. She was at a loss for words–she had never heard Calla’s story before, had no idea where slaves came from. She had always just assumed they were born to slave parents and were raised like other children. It was an ugly truth to confront .
“The nurses left when we were five, and we started our training,” Calla continued, her face wooden.
“We were moved into a training camp. We spent all day, every day learning to be excellent slaves. We learned how to work, we had obedience conditioning–I wouldn’t have been able to even think about escaping if Jenner had been more regular about keeping up the conditioning sessions–and we learned not to care about each other. At night we were at the mercy of the older slaves… the oldest were only ten-year-olds, but they were twice our size, and they were hard from living in the camp for five years.
“Jess protected me,” Calla said, the pitch of her voice raising slightly. “I was small for my age, a natural target. Somehow he was always there, always taking care of me when things got rough. Sometimes he got in trouble for it, but he managed not to get in enough trouble to make the termination list…”
“Well,” Calla said in a matter-of-fact voice, “If a child caused a problem, they would cull them out and terminate them whether it was that child’s fault or not. If you complained, that was causing a problem.
Trust me, it’s an extremely efficient way to keep the peace. Those kids were willing to do a lot to keep someone like Jess from bringing trouble down on them. He did terrible things to keep us alive.”
“I had no idea,” Dani said, tears building in her eyes. No wonder the Guild wouldn’t allow members to own slaves.
“When we were ten, our entire crèche was sold in one lot to a broker,” Calla continued. “He had been taking orders throughout the mining field, and since Jess and I were born in incubators next to each other, we had sequential identification numbers. That’s the only reason we ended up together at Jenner’s.”
Calla looked up at Dani with a soft, mocking smile.
“It was easier for the accountant to give us to her, it made the books look tidy. That’s all we were, numbers in a book.”
“Calla, I don’t know what to say,” Dani whispered after a second. “I didn’t realize…”
Why should it matter?”
Dani just sat there, trying to digest what she’d heard. She had known there were slave farms, had guessed they were awful places. She never approved of slavery, never owned slaves… but she had friends who did. With horror, Dani thought of the times she’d been served by a slave in a restaurant.
How many of her clothes had been made by slaves? Public slaves cleaned the streets and corridors of most communities where she’d lived. How many times had she carelessly dropped a food wrapper? Not often, but enough.
“So you see,” Calla continued. “I’m not actually that afraid any more of what Seth might do to me. I am afraid of things. I’m afraid of the asteroid field, I’m afraid I’ll get caught, and I’m afraid that I’ll never find Jess. I’m even afraid of Seth. But I’m tired of living in fear. I got soft at Jenner’s hostel–she was actually a pretty good mistress. She fed us and she was too cheap to pay for obedience conditioning. In fact, she was so good to us that we forgot she could get rid of us. Jess wanted to escape but I talked him out of it.
I was wrong, Dani. We should have gone while we could. If I can’t find Jess, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Tears were pouring out of Dani’s eyes, running down her cheeks and even dripping on her beautiful silk tunic. She dropped her head in her hands, overwhelmed by Calla’s story. Calla seemed unmoved, carefully picking a small piece of lint off the elegant yet practical traveling outfit she wore. Her hand shook, though, and Dani realized she was not as calm as she appeared.