Slave (25 page)

“No shit,” I muttered in agreement.

“Yes, well, they were constantly fighting amongst themselves, and our civilization was very nearly destroyed. It seemed that there was no hope for us as a
world to survive another generation, not once the weapons of mass destruction were invented. The planet was almost entirely laid to waste,” she said sadly. “Our males killed one another so often that there began to be fewer and fewer of them, and what males there were began taking more than one mate. But still, there were many more widows than there were brides.

“Then, one day, a young and beautiful woman whose husband had died at the hands of an enemy declared that she would not lose another husband. When she took another mate, she chained herself to him and would not let him venture forth without her.”

“Wait just a minute there,” I said. “You’re telling me that the chains were a woman’s idea? I don’t believe it!”

“Oh, yes, it is quite true!” Alanna insisted. “She did it of her own volition, never dreaming that she had stumbled upon the one thing that might save us all. Her husband lived because she was there to placate him— or his opponent—whenever their tempers got the best of them, which, unfortunately, was quite often. She discovered what many had already known, which was that our males could only be calmed by sexual means.

She was accused of being a wanton, for she would kneel before her husband and caress him in public to calm him. Nevertheless, as more women noted that she was able to keep him alive in this fashion, they began chaining themselves to their men as well.”

“And what did the guys think about that?” I inquired with a good measure of skepticism. “No nights out with the boys? Come on, now, they had to hate that!”
“Oh, no!” Alanna said. “It began to be the fashion to go about with a beautiful female in chains. The men saw it as a trophy, a symbol of high status, and were all clamoring for a chance to show off their women. The clothing you wear now is a result of that change in fashion. We women knew that our men could be placated with sex—it was the only way to keep them calm, and our style of dress developed out of that need.

It became very…functional in that respect. And also, you must understand that slavery was not frowned upon so much in those early days when we first began to travel amongst the stars. As our males became tamed, our weapons technology gave way to exploration and we could travel the galaxy and meet people of other worlds, and not fear that our men would cause trouble wherever they went. Our world itself became peaceful and prosperous as we women controlled the males and kept them from warring with one another. However, because we realized that slavery was abhorrent to so many cultures, we also began an effort to breed docility into them.”

“Selective breeding?” This was getting more amazing by the second! “How the hell did you manage that?”

“Only the most docile males are allowed to reproduce,” Alanna informed me. “We women have our ways, you know. The wives of the most belligerent males have offspring, to be sure, but the semen is obtained from those males who are more…controllable.”

“I’ve heard of underground alliances before, but this one takes the cake!” I declared. “And the men have no idea that this is happening?”
Alanna shook her head. “It is instilled in our girls from the time they are very young that the fate of our world rests upon their shoulders. Not one of us would ever betray her sisters. And we also control the birth rate of males, making certain that they never outnumber the females, so that each male can have at least four females to control him.” Alanna smiled. “After all, there must be someone left free to take care of the children and the home and the business of daily life. If we were all chained to men all the time, nothing would ever be accomplished.”

“Okay,” I admitted. “That explains a lot of things. But it still doesn’t explain why my sister is here and doesn’t want to leave.”

Alanna smiled at Ranata. “We have encouraged our males to believe that Earth women are desirable as mates—very subtly, you understand, for it must seem that they originated the idea themselves. It was discovered, quite accidentally, that humans interbreed well with many species, and that the male offspring of a human female and a Statzeelian male tended to be less…temperamental. Also, we feared that with so few of the males actually being allowed to reproduce, we might be weakening the genetic structure of our people; therefore, introducing new blood was deemed necessary.”

“Ha!” I exclaimed scornfully. “If you think human males aren’t belligerent, you should come to Earth once in a while. They’re just as ornery as the males on any other planet!”

“Oh, but you have not seen one of our males without
a woman there to control him,” Alanna said quickly. “We only allow the very young and the very old males to go about unattended, the others are much too dangerous!

Some even require more than one female.”

I had to laugh then, for the meaning behind the admonitions that Cat needed “two” of something finally became clear. He must have appeared to be quite ferocious with those fangs of his, and the locals obviously thought he needed more women to control him! I was dying to tell him that, but I also realized that it wasn’t possible, for I was now sworn to secrecy along with all the others. It might be best to let him go on thinking that he needed two women because he was capable of satisfying two at a time. I had no intention of ever letting that happen, of course, but he could believe it if he wished.

“Your sister was found on another world in slavery and brought here to breed with our males,” Alanna went on. “She will have many male children, but never with the same male twice—and our dear Dantonio will never know that only this first child is his.”

Apparently they had this selective breeding thing down pretty pat! “So, what, you all trade semen with your friends?” It sounded a little like borrowing a cup a sugar from a neighbor, or passing around a new flavor of chewing gum.

“Something like that,” Alanna chuckled. “We have learned to control many aspects of reproduction. We match them up physically so that the male children will appear to be the offspring of the husband, but many times, they are not.”
“Momma’s baby, Daddy’s maybe?”

Ranata laughed. “That’s exactly what I thought when I first heard all of this. Oh, Jack, it’s so good to have you here with me again!”

“Yes, well, I’m glad to see you, too, but to be honest, Ranata, you don’t look healthy enough to have a baby!

You should have waited a bit.”

“I’m doing quite well, now,” Ranata assured me. “You should have seen me when I first got here! I was a wreck!”

She still looked like a wreck to me, but then I hadn’t seen her before. I studied her closely, noting that, at the roots, her hair was much thicker than the long wispy strands which curled around her face, and that her finger-nails seemed healthier at the base than at the tip. Yes, she was improving, but a baby on top of that? It seemed much too soon to be placing that added burden on her health. I hoped these women knew what they were doing.

“Well, I’m glad you’re better, and I’m glad you’re happy here,” I said, “but wouldn’t you really rather go home where you don’t have to wear a collar and be chained to your husband? It still seems an awful lot like slavery to me, whether you women volunteered for it or not! I’ll admit, being chained to Cat hasn’t been too bad, but having to ask him to unchain me so I can go pee is just a bit much!”

They both looked at me as though I’d lost my mind.

“Why should he unchain you when you are the one who carries the key?” Alanna asked curiously.

“What do you mean?” I asked irritably. “
He’s
the one who has a pocket on his vest, not me! It’s the women who are supposed to be enslaved here, right?”
“No,” Alanna said firmly. “We may let the men believe that, but we have always been the guardians of the keys—from the very beginning. What did you think this ring on your sash was for?” she demanded, reaching out to tug at the one at my waist. “It is to carry your key.”

Slave 221107.qxd 1/30/08 4:36 PM Page 230

WELL, SUFFICE IT TO SAY THAT, AT THAT POINT, YOU

could have knocked me over with a Bregnata feather! It was no wonder I hadn’t gotten the real story about this planet, for, as luck would have it, I’d gotten my most of my information from a man!

“And the guys really haven’t figured this out, huh?” I hadn’t figured it out right away, myself, but then I’d only been here for a few days and the native males had had a considerably longer period of time to reflect upon their situation. However, if they were never alone without a woman in attendance, maybe they didn’t have many opportunities to discuss it among themselves.

Cat, for one, had suspected that the males had at least learned to work within the system, perhaps realizing that all they needed to do to get a little action was to get pissed off, but did they truly understand the whole story?

Somehow I doubted that, because the conspiracy was too universal, contained too many subtleties, and had gone on for far too long—and the men of Statzeel didn’t strike me as the type who would have turned a blind eye to such activities if they’d known about them. True, they might realize that the women were using sex to keep the peace—but selective breeding? Given the nature of the beasts, I seriously doubted that they could have known about that part and still gone along with it. Most men
don’t particularly like having to raise stepchildren, and this went far beyond that!

Even so, while it might have been fairly obvious to most of the men that their women were controlling them—especially since someone was going down on them anytime they got a little testy—the fact that none of the males had seen the larger picture spoke volumes.

“Not too bright, are they?”

Alanna and Ranata exchanged a meaningful look.

“Guess not.” I thought about it for a minute, trying to process it all. What an amazing undertaking: an entire civilization kept stable by one gender without the knowledge—or even the cooperation—of the other! It boggled the mind to consider it. Your typical neighborhood grapevine was
nothing
when compared with this! “Well, I’ve got to admit, I’m impressed,” I said. Then another thought occurred to me. “So, what, are you actively recruiting on Earth, or are you just leaving it to chance?”

“So far, we have only attempted to recover those already enslaved, but active recruiting might not be a bad idea,” Ranata said reflectively.

I thought it was interesting that she already sounded like one of the natives when she said that. It obviously hadn’t taken much to win her over—enough to eat and a nice home and a man they all seemed to be fond of. It was no wonder they had taken women who were already slaves. This sort of slavery was the kind that any former slave would see as a definite step up, and making converts of them would be quite easy. Ranata herself seemed to be very happy and content and quite obviously had no intention of leaving with me—although if I’d managed to find
her a little sooner, she probably would have. I was glad she was happy, but I’d have the devil of a time explaining this to my father, since I couldn’t tell him the whole truth.

These women had kept their secret for a very long time and I had no intention of being the one to blab it all over the galaxy and ruin generations of difficult work—for it
had
been work, no doubt about that!

“Well, if you like, I might pass on the information when I get back to Earth, but it’s gonna take me a while to get there. We’re not exactly just across the pond, you know.” Then I got to thinking that they might be going about this the wrong way. “You know, you could do this a whole lot quicker if you used human males, rather than females—or not even that, just donated sperm. You could produce an entire generation of cross-bred children, and only have to do it once. Though, I have to tell you, if you think you’ll be able to set the men free and keep things as hunky dory as they are now, you’re probably dreaming. Things aren’t this peaceful on any other planet I’ve ever visited. Your males might have been extreme cases, but believe me, there are plenty of others that would just as soon kill you as look at you. Take the Nedwuts, for example. I’m surprised you even let them land on your planet!”

Alanna appeared somewhat alarmed at this. “We do not!” she said tersely. “Are you telling me you have seen them here?”

“You bet your boots I have!” I said roundly. “A whole pack of them met us on the road from the spaceport and would have taken Cat and me prisoner if Cat hadn’t been so obviously willing to pick off a couple of them.”
“This must be reported!” Alanna said, getting to her feet. “They are an evil, disruptive race. The penalty for being on the surface of our planet is death, and the Nedwuts know it.”

Well, this was a good thing. Especially since, despite my original intention to keep mum, I’d gone and blabbed about it! At least the law wouldn’t come after Cat for killing a few of them, though I hadn’t been so sure about that at the time. I’d thought he was being a bit trigger-happy, myself, but given what he knew about the Nedwuts, I couldn’t really blame him for taking the opportunity to take revenge on them for what they’d done to his planet. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have passed up the opportunity to rough up a few of them myself, and I didn’t have nearly as much of a grudge against them as Cat had. Granted, they
had
kidnapped my sister, but at least she was alive and well. You couldn’t say the same for any of Cat’s people.

“There were four of them heading back down the road we took to get here,” I told Alanna. “All mounted and armed to the teeth, and trust me, they were looking for trouble.”

“They are
always
looking for trouble!” Ranata said as a shadow of fear and revulsion crossed her face.

“You wouldn’t think I would ever welcome the idea of being sold to someone as a slave, but after being their prisoner, it made my first master seem like a real pussycat.”

“Speaking of which, where is Cat, anyway?” I asked.

“You didn’t chain him up somewhere, did you?”
Ranata rolled her eyes. “Of course not! Though he looks as though he should be. Where did you say you found him?”