The male seemed to sense V’s fury because he held up the Master Control again and shook his head.
“No, no, my boy—that way lies only more pain. Whereas if you’ll just listen to me for a moment, I think we can come to an equitable arrangement.”
“The only arrangement we can make is you letting me out of here before I rip your fucking head off!” V growled.
“That’s not going to happen,” the “Glorious Leader” said pleasantly. “Not for a while, at least. I won’t try to keep you here for life,” he went on. “It’s too dangerous to have a male breeder who doesn’t respond to the whispers in the compound—especially a breeder as large and strong as yourself.”
“Stop calling me a fucking breeder,” V snarled. “What in the Seven Hells does that even mean?”
“Why, it means exactly what it sounds like—you’ve been brought here to contribute your superior genetic material to our gene pool,” the “Glorious Leader” said, still smiling pleasantly. “And of course, I’ll also want to synthesize that compound you make with your tongue,” he continued thoughtfully, beginning to pace again.
“I think it will be most helpful in arousing the female breeders. We give them the Mother’s Milk, of course, which ripens their bodies for breeding, the same way we give our male breeders the Spice, which enhances their effectiveness and eagerness to breed. But we have nothing to increase the female libido and this substance you produce—what do you call it?”
V remained silent. The lust-honey which came from his stinger—his tongue when it became long and needle-sharp—was his own business and he was damned if he’d tell this little fat fuck anything about it.
The “Glorious Leader” waited a moment, his eyebrows raised, and then shook his head and continued.
“Anyway, I’d like to have a compound to give our females to increase their eagerness to breed. After all, I want my breeders to really enjoy themselves, as they support our Glorious Cause. I am a benevolent leader and I want my people to be happy as they do their duties.”
Again, V had nothing to say. What the fuck was this asshole talking about? Glorious Cause? Breeders? He had no idea, though he was afraid he was going to find out.
“We already have enough of the substance you produce to synthesize it sometime in the future—after a little more analysis, you know,” the “Glorious Leader” went on. “So what I mostly need from you is your DNA.”
“Thought you already took some,” V growled.
“No, no, no.” The “Glorious Leader” frowned and shook his head impatiently. “Not just a sample to study in the lab. As I said, I want your genetic material in our gene pool, here at the Compound.”
“Meaning?” V raised an eyebrow.
“Meaning I want you to father a child for us, of course,” the “Glorious Leader said. “Once you’ve done that, we’ll let you go. And, to sweeten the deal…” He pointed his Master Control at the blank white wall of the room and pressed a button.
At once the solid wall became translucent and V was able to see into another room. It was also sterile and white but much larger than the room he was imprisoned in.
Lined up against the far wall of the room he was looking into, were eight females of all shapes, sizes, and colors. There were many humanoid species represented, V saw, including a Tenzuran with three breasts instead of two and a Chorkay—a species which was known to have two vaginas and two wombs.
One of the bald orange mutants, dressed in a silver lab coat, was going down the line and doing some kind of checkup on each of the females in turn. They all looked straight ahead and didn’t fight as V had—probably they had been terrorized into behaving, he thought angrily.
Or else maybe they were all hypnotized by those damn “whispers” the other male kept talking about. As he stared at them, V saw most of them had a glazed expression on their faces—like they didn’t really understand what was happening to them.
“This is our newest batch of breeder females,” the “Glorious Leader” said sweeping out a plump, dimpled hand decked in several expensive rings, as though displaying valuable merchandise. “Don’t worry—you can see them but they can’t see you,” he added. “They came in when you did, actually, but all of them have responded to the whispers, so now their conditioning is almost complete and we’re ready for the Unification Ceremony.”
None of what he was saying made any impression on V. It was all just bullshit as far as he was concerned.
“What the fuck does any of that have to do with me?” he growled, glaring down at the little male.
“Why, it has to do with my proposal,” the “Glorious Leader” said, as though it should be obvious. “You stay here with us at the Compound long enough to father a child, and I’ll let you have your pick of the females to father it with. You might as well agree, you know,” he added. “That pain square on your neck will effectively keep you here in the Compound until I decide to let you leave. If you try to go beyond the boundaries of our gate, it will put you down like a rabid Chinthian canine.”
V opened his mouth to say he’d be damned if he would father a child and leave it here for this bastard to fuck around with and that he didn’t give a flying fuck for any of the assembled females…
And then the orange mutant doctor moved down the line, revealing her. The little female with the long, chestnut brown hair and big brown eyes he’d been watching back at the bar what seemed like a million cycles ago. The one with the luscious ass.
But it wasn’t her ass V was looking at this time—it was her eyes. Unlike the glassy stare of the other females, her big brown eyes were wide and frightened.
She didn’t look brainwashed like the rest—she looked scared to death, though she was obviously trying to conceal it.
Poor little female!
V felt his heart squeeze when he looked at the fear in those big, brown eyes. She looked like a small helpless animal, caught in a trap.
“Well?” the “Glorious Leader” asked, a self-satisfied smile curving his lips. “You see one you like, don’t you? One you’d like to breed?”
I see a female caught in the same trap I am, V thought, glaring down at the other male. And I’m going to get both of us out or die trying!
Nineteen
The daily inspections were the worst.
Every day Penny and the other women who had been captured around the same time by the orange Oompa-Loompas were herded into an exam room in the Breeding and Conception Center and forced to strip. Then they had to undergo a complete physical, including a bizarre gynecological exam which involved having a lighted wand shoved inside them, which was supposed to check for “womb health and fertility” according to the Oompa-Loompa scientist who performed the check.
Penny hated that part—it made her feel so helpless, so violated. Thank goodness the orange scientists who called themselves “NeverBreeders” didn’t try to touch her in a sexual way—the exam was done with a pure, clinical detachment every time.
But that didn’t matter—it was still an invasion of her privacy, a violation of her body that made her feel sick and scared and helpless every time it happened.
It also reminded her of every cheesy abduction story she’d ever heard—I was captured by aliens and probed! Except this was no pulp science fiction novel—this was her life and it was really happening to her.
It happened every morning and every day here was the same—they were all beginning to blur together. As she stared straight ahead, trying not to think of the coming exam, Penny tried to remember how long she had been here, tried to think back to the beginning, when she had first been brought into the Compound…
She had woken from her drugged slumber just in time to see a huge white marble statue of a man looming over her head like a vengeful god.
“Wha…What’s that?” she managed to get out, her tongue still numb from the aftereffects of the drugs the Oompa-Loompas had given her.
“Hell if I know, but he’s one ugly son of a bitch, whoever he is
,” Shurla had murmured beside her.
Penny had been glad to see her new friend was awake and alert. She and Shurla and about six other alien women were crammed into a hover cart which was moving smoothly through what appeared to be a tropical jungle. Huge, fan-like leaves in shades of emerald and turquoise lined the road and the distant chattering and calls of wild animals could be heard as well. The air smelled green, if that made any sense, Penny thought to herself. Green and growing.
“Like a tropical paradise,” she muttered to herself.
Clearly they weren’t on Hell’s Gate Spaceport or on Yown Beta. So where else could they be? Then Penny remembered her last conversation with Rive and Y’lla.
“Yown Alpha,” she murmured. “This must be Yown Alpha!”
“Could be,” Shurla murmured beside her. “In which case we’re in a lot of trouble—there’s nobody here. At least, there’s not supposed to be on account of all the poisonous plants, you know?”
“That’s what I heard too,” Penny murmured back. “Do you remember coming here at all? Did they bring us in a ship?”
“Sorry.” Shurla shook her head. “Don’t remember a damn thing about how we got here, hon. I woke up myself a minute before you did. I just hope—”
“Silence!” shouted one of the orange Oompa-Loompas in his high, androgynous voice. “We have come to the statue of the Noble One—our Shining Star and Glorious Leader who has called us all to his Glorious Cause. All must gaze upon his visage and show respect.”
Penny didn’t want to show respect to whoever the statue was of, but she stared at it anyway, to avoid being drugged or attacked again. Her hands were tied behind her back and there was no way to get out of the cart, which was surrounded on all sides by the Oompa-Loompas in their silver jumpsuits.
As she studied the immense statue, which rose at least eighty feet in the air above her, she couldn’t help thinking that it looked familiar somehow. Which was crazy—there was no way she could know the man who had captured her out here so far from Earth—in a whole different solar system light years from her own. But she couldn’t shake the feeling she had seen the “Glorious Leader” before, though she couldn’t put her finger on why she thought that.
“And now that respect has been paid to our Glorious Leader, we may move on,” the head Oompa-Loompa said.
The hover-cart began to glide along again, carrying them smoothly through the lush blue, green, and turquoise jungle and Penny wondered where they were going. She was about to ask Shurla if there was anyone who might miss her and come looking for her—which was her only hope, since she had never gotten to make her interstellar call to the Mother Ship—when the cart stopped again.
Looking up, Penny saw why. There was a shimmering green barrier across the road, keeping the cart from going any further. On the other side of it, barely visible through the energy field, was yet another silver jump-suited Oompa-Loompa.
“Who goes there and why do you come to the Compound of the Glorious Cause?” he demanded, leveling a weapon at them.
“We have come to pay tribute and honor to our Glorious Leader,” the head Oompa-Loompa of their own group shouted back. “And we bring new breeders to further the Cause.”
“Welcome home then, faithful one. Welcome to the bosom of the Shining Star—he who leads all of us in the Paths of Greatness,” the guard behind the gate said. And then the barrier was deactivated, allowing the cart to have clear access forward.
The entire exchange had the feeling of a scripted call and response—as though the guards on both sides had said the same things about a thousand times. Clearly they were used to going out and capturing people and then bringing them back to their compound.
The question was, did the prisoners ever escape? Or were they stuck here for life…or death?
The thought sent a shiver down Penny’s spine.
Now, whispered a little voice in the back of her head. If you don’t get out now, there’s no getting out. Run, Penny! RUN!
She turned to look over the side of the cart. Yes, her hands were bound but if she could throw herself out of the open cart and head into the jungle, she might get away. The undergrowth was so dense she could lose herself in it and never be found. She—
“Do you see that pretty yellow flower over there, breeder?”
Penny’s head jerked up and she realized it was one of the Oompa-Loompas talking to her.
“Wh-what?” she quavered, uncertain what he meant.
“There—just there inside the boundary of the road.” He pointed one stubby orange finger and Penny saw the flower he was talking about. It really was beautiful, she thought. Like a Tiger Lily but with a bloom as big as her head.
“Yes.” She nodded. “What about it?”
“That’s a Death Touch bloom. Barely brushing against its petals would kill you in an instant.” The Oompa-Loompa smiled at her, as though he was just making friendly conversation. “And it is one of the least poisonous plants here in the Deadly Jungle. A jungle which covers all of Yown Alpha. It is beautiful but there is death at every turn—and no way to escape, since we here at the Compound of the Glorious Cause are the only ones on the entire planet.”
“What are you saying?” Penny asked. She tried to sound defiant, though inside her heart was sinking down to her feet.
“That to escape is to die,” the Oompa-Loompa told her. “And why would you wish to die when we can offer you eternal life? Many years after your mortal body has perished, your genetic material will live on among the NeverBreeders.”
“The who?” He was saying too much, she thought—throwing too many religious buzz-words at her. “Who are the NeverBreeders?” she asked.
“We are.” He nodded at himself and the other Oompa-Loompas who surrounded the cart. “Though we never bring forth life, we will never truly die. For we live all our lives in tribute to the Shining Star.”
“Um, okay…” Penny murmured, not knowing what else to say. Was this some kind of a cult? The way he was talking made her think it had to be.
The cart was past the barrier now. The green energy field sizzled back into place and she realized that she had lost her only chance to get away. But if the Oompa-Loompa who had called himself a “NeverBreeder” was telling the truth, she would have been dead the minute she hit the jungle.
Penny wondered if death might not be better than whatever awaited her and the next minute her fears seemed to come true. Because the cart rounded a curve and came to stop beside a long, low, white building.
“Attention!” the head Oompa-Loompa shouted, “Now all must strip!”
Twenty
“What the hell are they talking about?” Shurla muttered to Penny. “I’m not taking off my clothes for nobody!”
But all around them, the other women were reluctantly removing their clothing. Even worse, the Oompa-Loompas were taking their silver jumpsuits off as well.
They probably want to rape us, Penny thought, feeling sick. They kidnapped us and brought us all this way and now they have us behind a barrier where nobody can help us and they can do whatever they want!
But the next minute, her assumptions were blown out of the water. As the NeverBreeder who had been telling her about the deadly yellow flower shucked down his silver jumpsuit and stepped out of it, Penny saw that the place between his legs was completely smooth.
He doesn’t even have a bulge like a Ken doll, she thought, unable to tear her eyes away from the smooth, hairless patch of orange skin between his legs. There’s nothing there at all—not a damn thing.
So maybe rape wasn’t on the menu after all. But then why were they being told to get naked?
“All must be cleansed of the dirt of the outside world,” the head NeverBreeder said, as though answering her question. “Come, we will go into the showers and rinse the sinful grime from our skin together.”
Though she didn’t like it at all, Penny was forced to take off her warm-skin and boots and leave them in a pile in the cart. They unfastened her hands
to make this possible but the minute she was naked, her arms were cuffed behind her back again and she and Shurla and the other women were led into the long, low, white building which turned out to be a communal shower.
They could put way more people in here if they wanted to, Penny thought, looking down the long line of showerheads which stretched through the whole building. The eight women and the seven NeverBreeders who were guarding them only took up about a fourth of the room in the showers. How many people were in this “Compound of the Glorious Cause?” And for that matter, what was their “Glorious Cause?”
Penny had a bad feeling she was going to find out.
What came out of the shower nozzles wasn’t water. It was some thin, purple liquid with an astringent reek like an industrial cleaner. After smelling it, Penny expected it to sting her skin and it did.
As the other captives yelped and screamed, trying to get away from the purple spray, the guards pushed them into it. The NeverBreeders had all suddenly produced menacing-looking pain prods and they threatened to shock their prisoners unless they got thoroughly drenched in the showers.
“In, get in and be cleansed!” the head NeverBreeder kept shouting, brandishing his prod with its sizzling arch of electricity at the end. “You must be purged of all outside filth before you may enter the purity of the Compound!”
Penny squeezed her eyes shut to keep out the stinging purple cleanser and squeezed her bound hands into fists. She kept her head down, trying not to breath in the noxious fumes from the spray, trying to endure. It wasn’t until she was soaking wet with her hair hanging limp around her shoulders and dripping purple fluid down her back that she was allowed to finally get out of the showers.
After the prisoners had been thoroughly “cleansed” the guards got into the showers voluntarily. Either their orange skins were tougher than most people’s or they were all a bunch of masochists, but whichever the case, they didn’t seem to mind the stinging purple astringent at all.
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