“Will you come back again, 35?” she beseeched him as he dressed hurriedly with only five minutes to spare.
“If I agree do I have to sign a contract?”
“Of course, 35 - once Mr Onyx approves you.”
“Will I be interviewed by him?”
“Yes – he’s always afraid that his programme will be reported to Flim-Flam authority.”
Curtis thought about the last time he’d seen Sly Onyx. He was sure Sly wouldn’t approve him, but for the sake of 17 he was willing to try.
“All right, 17, I agree,” Curtis said gruffly. She smiled at him.
Three days later, Sly Onyx phoned him and said he must come to his home at Ngahere Road for an interview the next day.
It was a hot afternoon and this time Curtis took his Fiat up the drive. He climbed the sweeping concrete steps and knocked on the door.
It was opened by Mistle. “Youse want the Master?” she said, bowing slightly.
“Yes, I have an appointment with him.”
“I remembers youse. Come inside. The Master tol’ me to make you comfortable until he arrives, isn’t it?”
Curtis followed her down the hallway to an alcove where there were two armchairs and a coffee table.
“Sit here, Mr McCoy. Does you want a drink?”
“Did you know Roscoe Chamonix?” he said, watching her closely.
Immediately her face became masklike. “Everyone knowed him, doesn’t it?”
“He died a nasty death, poor man.” Curtis shook his head.
“He was your friend, isn’t it?”
“Yes, he was a good friend,” Curtis lied.
“He was in a van what rolled over a cliff.” Her eyes had a vacant look as she spoke, her expression impassive.
“Maybe he was murdered,” Curtis said quietly.
“No, no - he fell badly, don’t it? The Master, he told me all about it, don’t he? He knows all of it, that’s what he sayed. He tell me not to speak of it.”
“What happens if you do?”
“The Master knows all of it and I can be hurt. I get locked up, isn’t it? You want cold or hot drink?”
He had never seen anyone who was so controlled and afraid - except perhaps his ex-wife, Marzy, who was controlled by her mother. So even if Mistle knew anything, he knew he’d be hard pressed to get the information out of her. “Coffee with a little milk, thanks. You are very kind.”
She hurried away, a woman who must refer to her husband as Master and obey his every command. And yet 17 had said that Sly too was investigating Roscoe’s death. Obviously he hadn’t told Mistle that yet.
When she came back with his coffee and a small jug of milk on a tray beside two jam tarts she poured in the milk carefully for him.
“Did Roscoe have enemies?” he said.
Her hand shook slightly and she put the milk jug down. Her cheeks were now flushed.
“Roscoe was Ryxin,” she said, avoiding his question, “like the man who I belongs to. He knows, so you can ask, mustn’t he? I must cook food for the Master and have it ready for him. If it’s not ready he yells at me, doesn’t it? Then I cannot eat until morning. I must obey.”
About twenty minutes later, Sly arrived in his pick-up truck. He had a young, pretty woman with him who looked about twenty-five. Curtis watched them through the window as they sat in the truck for a while, talking and laughing. Then they got out and came towards the house. Mistle came out to greet her husband.
When he saw her he stopped. “Mistle, take this young lady to my study and ask if she requires refreshments. We have business to discuss later.”
“Yes, Master,” Mistle replied, and hurried off with the woman following.
“Well, Curtis McCoy, we meet again. So you wish to help our cause and take a permanent breeding mate?”
“Yes, Master. 17 has asked me to join her.”
“17 is required to produce children, but so far she has not fulfilled her duty. Why do you think I would allow you, an enemy, to join with her?”
“I am not your enemy, Master. I wish to help our people.”
“You know what is required of you?”
“Yes, to father a Ryxin baby in the confidential breeding programme.”
“You are not permitted to know or keep it.”
“I understand, Master.”
“You must prove you can be trusted. If you join her you will be monitored.”
“Whatever you say, Master.”
“You must fulfil your obligation to father her child. For that purpose you will be given a six-month trial. If you do not fulfil your obligation she will go back to her former status and you will be banned from the programme. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Then you must arrange a meeting programme with 17, and once you have both done that she will show it to me. You must comply with the programme you have arranged once it has been approved by me and my committee.”
“Yes, Master.”
“For helping us save the Ryxin people you will be highly favoured - but I haven’t forgotten Chamonix Beach, so if you fail to comply exactly with your programme your contract will terminate immediately.”
“I will comply, Master.”
“You will be known only as 35.” He hesitated. “I am not the monster you think I am, you know, and you can call me Sly. I don’t wish to be called Master by my Ryxin brothers. With women our way has always been different.”
After setting up a visiting programme with 17, Curtis waited to have it approved. Then the following morning Janux sent him another telepathic message: she had seen Mistle going down to the beach at Moa Bay to swim. Curtis was astounded that Mistle could possibly do anything on her own or even of her own free will.
“Can I come to your place?” he sent back.
On the way there, Curtis stopped the car at Moa Bay and got out. There were some sheep grazing on the grassy verge just inside a fence. But further over, where the lookout was, the fence ended and there was a track with some roughly hewn steps winding its way down to the beach. There was nothing in front of the lookout area to stop a vehicle from driving or rolling the short distance across the grass to a steep drop where it would plunge over the cliff.
Some of the sheep stopped grazing and stared at him. As he moved towards them they trotted away, baaing plaintively. He could see that the beach had a stretch of golden sand just along from the jagged rocks where Roscoe’s van had landed. It would be an ideal retreat for Mistle when Sly was away for the day. But how did she get there?
Ngahere Road was not a through road to this side of the island. In fact there was only thick native bush between the end of Ngahere Road and the roadside at Moa Bay. He pondered what Janux had said before getting back into his car for the last few kilometres to Chamonix Beach.
“No more unwelcome visitors?” Curtis asked as they sat in the sun sipping hot tea.
“Nah, that pig knows to stay in his own pen,” she said with a show of confidence he doubted she really felt. “Thanks to your help,” she added.
“Let’s hope it was enough to scare him off.”
She looked at him with a smile playing around the corners of her lovely mouth. He watched her face, which had a beauty most women would find hard to match. Her skin glowed with a slight suntan and her green eyes held their own secrets. “I reckon he’s not so easily scared.”
“I was speaking to him yesterday about a business arrangement and his attitude seemed different, less aggressive.” Then changed the subject, hoping Janux wouldn’t enquire what that other business was. “So you say Mistle was going down to the beach?”
“Yeah. I was biking down to the Cove and I saw her crossing the road to Moa Bay toting a rucksack.”
“So how did she get there from Ngahere Road? It’s a long way.”
“Maybe there’s a track through the bush. Though it’d be a couple of kilometres at least.”
“I’m surprised she was alone. Sly keeps strict control over her. S
he even has to refer to him as Master.”
“She’s a dumb, stupid cow then. Letting that bugger anywhere near her was a mistake from the start. She must be lacking in brain cells.”
“Perhaps Mistle isn’t as controlled as we think. Maybe when Sly goes out she has a secret life of her own. What do we really know about her? How did she end up married to Sly, for instance?” Curtis thought about Mistle holding the baby-sized doll, rocking it and talking to it as if it were a real baby. It was obvious she craved a child of her own. So how did she feel about the Ryxin breeding programme run by her husband? Surely she must know that he had access to many of these young women, believing it was his right?
“I’d like to give her a good shaking and tell her to get a life,” Mistle said.
“Or get a baby?”
“And twenty years’ imprisonment, don’t forget. You men are fixated on babies. All Ryxin men want is for us women to produce babies for them. That’s all we are to them, breeding machines.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I was thinking of Mistle with her doll.”
“She’s like a big baby herself, still playing with dolls.”
Curtis thought of 17 and the visiting programme they had arranged together. Sly had sent him a telepathic message saying it had been approved and that Curtis was to see her at 3 p.m. that day.
“I guess Human law has brought that kind of thinking about. Deprivation has caused an obsession with the very thing that is banned.”
“Every Ryxin woman I know is now expected to get pregnant. Well, I’m not going to be one of them. I’m sick of the whole thing.”
Just before three Curtis was standing outside 7 Xlesky Street for the first official visit of his approved programme. It was to finish on the dot of four.
The same rotund woman answered the door, and looked at her watch. “You’re two minutes early, 35, but you can go ahead. 17 is waiting.”
He made a mental note to delay outside in the street if he was early next time. 17 answered his knock but she wasn’t smiling.
“Are you okay? Our programme’s been approved.”
“He came to see me. The Master came to see me. He told me my duty is to become pregnant soon - otherwise I will be taken off the programme altogether.”
Curtis gritted his teeth. The woman was being kept like a slave - wasn’t that enough? “It’s all right, 17. Don’t worry.” He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her but so far no real affection had been shown between them. Deciding to risk it, he put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to him. “Don’t let him scare you. Together we can fulfil our duty.”
“We women are only permitted to leave the house once a week. I requested more time away but this was refused. I am being strictly monitored now.”
“I’ll be visiting you four times a week but it’s only for an hour. What will you do in between?”
“I am required to work in the nursery out the back of the house. There are four babies that must be fed and cared for. Their own mothers are forbidden to ever see them or care for them. Their children are taken from them at birth and the mothers are sent to another house like ours.”
“Do you like doing that, caring for them?”
“Yes, but the babies aren’t here for long. Two months at most. Then they go to a communal home and we are sent four others. No woman is permitted to form an attachment to any baby. When they are six months old they are sent away from the communal houses to different houses far away.”
“Who runs these homes?”
“Ryxin charities run the homes for abandoned babies. They keep them until they are five, and then the females are adopted by elderly Ryxin couples who need someone to care for them in old age. They train them to be their servants and to cook their meals and do almost everything for them. The Master’s wife, Mistle, was one of those babies. She was raised by an elderly couple here on the island. Everyone knows that. She’s used to being treated like a servant - that’s all she’s ever been. The male children are trained to be bodyguards and fighters in preparation for becoming soldiers in the Ryxin army.”
“You’re saying the children aren’t even educated?”
“The only ones who become educated are descendants of The Ten. Those bred to be slaves and soldiers are taught how to do those things, but nothing else. If the female servants are lucky their adoptive parents may allow them to take lessons by correspondence, but mostly they’re looked down on and treated like dirt.”
“I don’t understand. Why would our people treat their own kind like that?”
“It’s because they were born from women like us. We are the lowest kind of women in Ryxin society. Even though they want us and need us we’re still considered to be sluts.”
“Did you know this when you entered the breeding programme?”
“No, I was told we would be treated like princesses because we were helping to save the Ryxin race – that we’d be highly honoured for this.”
“I’m sorry, 17. I had no idea.” Curtis began to realise that The Ten were an elite group whose offspring were probably developed, educated and taught about their ancestry so they could care about their race’s future and take an active part in it. Meanwhile all the others were mere fodder for baby-making and menial work, and given no education or emotional development, thus ensuring that the Ryxin elite could expand their race and yet keep the power in the hands of the few.
After their allotted time together 17 began sobbing.
“What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” Curtis said.
“If I don’t get pregnant I’ll be homeless. They always tell me that I will have to live without any financial support if I do not produce at least one child.”
“Listen, you told me you’ve already had a miscarriage. That means you can get pregnant. Please don’t cry, my love.” He began to wonder where 17 had come from. Did she have parents and an education or was she another Mistle?
17 sat up straight away. “You called me my love,” she said staring straight ahead away from him.
“I’m sorry, is that not permitted?”
“No one has ever said those words to me before.”
Curtis pulled her to him. “Come here. I want you to know that while we are both on this programme, you are my love. Okay?”
“I’m not supposed to fall in love. I’m always told I’m in the breeding business, that’s all.”
“So why are you allowed a single breeding partner?”
“They didn’t give me a reason.”
“You know something, 17? You’re part Human and you have a soul. You are capable of loving and you cannot be banned from it.”
“I think I love you, 35. You’re the only Ryxin man who hasn’t treated me like a prostitute.”
“That’s okay. Love can’t be banished from our lives. Perhaps I’m in love with you too. I want to call you my love. How can I come here so often and not have any feelings for you?”
“I think I fell in love with you after our first time together, on Changeover Day.”
“I have to go now, 17. Time is almost up.”
Curtis left the house at exactly four.
“My name is Mrs Duxton,” the woman at the door said, checking her watch. “You can call me Dux.”
He stepped out into the late afternoon sun feeling a kind of happiness that had nothing to do with any kind of logic.
CHAPTER 13
The village library was relatively small, but held information going back many years on the history of Muritai Island. Within a short space of time, Curtis was scanning the past thirty years of Muritai news clippings.
Mistle Stellica became an orphan at the age of fifteen when both her elderly parents died in a fire at their home in Rocky Point. Mistle had escaped the blaze, which happened in the middle of a cold winter’s night and luckily the fire brigade had arrived in time to save most of the house. The blaze had started in her parents’ bedroom where they had a small fire going to keep them warm - there w
as no electricity in Rocky Bay at the time. The mourning period throughout the island went on for some weeks. In those days, it seemed, elderly Ryxin couples were held in high esteem by their own race.
The couple’s adopted daughter, Mistle - a so-called abandoned child - was brought up by them as a servant from the age of five years. She was now expected to fend for herself though she was uneducated and considered one of the lowest of the low in Ryxin society. No one knew who her real parents were, but it was commonly thought her mother must have been a whore who slept with anyone. She was lucky to get a home at all, the women whispered to each other when she was seen in the village, where she washed dishes and cleaned for the local baker so that she could buy her meagre supply of groceries. No one ever spoke to her. Women turned their heads when she approached. She’s the daughter of a common whore, they said. Being used as a servant is all she deserves.
But Mistle was a beautiful young woman and the men on Muritai - both Human and Ryxin - took great pleasure in feasting their eyes on her whenever they could. Single men dreamed of having her as their wife. But there was one Ryxin man, visiting the island with plans to buy land there, who found out about Mistle and was told about her upbringing and her beauty. Sly Onyx was about to expand his secret breeding programme to Muritai Island and in a few short weeks was seeing Mistle regularly.
The local men hated him for taking this young beauty from their grasp, but the stories had already gone around about what kind of a man he was. Ruthless and powerful, and someone who always got what he wanted.
Janux filled Curtis in on the reported history of Sly and Mistle’s marriage according to the Muritai gossip machine, which was well oiled by women’s coffee mornings. Humans and Ryxin women who had married Humans sat and discussed the health of their jealously guarded children. Their pity for the Ryxin couples who were banned from having children was enhanced each time a new baby of their own was born. But most Humans had no time for these stupid Ryxin women, as they called them, who had married their controlling Ryxin men despite knowing they couldn’t have a family of their own.
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