Chapter 5

I stepped into the transport bay of the Darjee pod transport ship to a cacophony of noise. Aside from our six selectees, we had twenty-nine concubines (well, at least twenty-seven -- if puffy nips or the babe in the peasant blouse woke up and didn't want to be here, we'd dump them off as close to the original extraction point as we could and wish 'em luck), two males, and six children, one of whom was on the verge and already spoken for. I was aware of an additional five kids that would require pickup to be with their mamas on the great adventure to come -- but who knew what we were missing? "All right! Pipe down, everybody! Concubines gather in groups with your sponsors -- there's plenty of room in here! Do it! The sooner you all make some attempt at organization, the sooner we can ALL get comfortable!"

This took, predictably, ten minutes. Somewhere, a kid was wailing, above the general din -- then shut up. I thought about it and headed over to Jeff's group; sure enough, Little Mama was breast-feeding. It simply amazed me that those tits of hers could look like that and actually function... Grandma eyed me with disgust and grunted, "Do you have ANY shame?"

"No," I replied, "and she shouldn't either. That's a necessary task and one she shouldn't have to hide, since it's downright beautiful. It's a privilege to watch."

"Well, he's on solid food," Little Mama said, "there won't be much more of this."

"This time," I retorted. I turned to Jeff. "If I were you, I'd make sure she kept them."

"I plan to," he grinned.

"Well, it's back to work," I grunted, "no rest for the wicked." Grandma got a kick out of that. I headed back to the central area and announced, my voice amplified, "Sponsors! I need to see you now!"

The six of them ambled in and I told them, "Okay, so, this is how it is -- you're responsible for whatever you ended up collecting --TOTALLY responsible. And it's life or death, as necessary. We're going to start trying to get you processed, now, and the first things are first. Go through your concubines and determine if they have children that are not with them that they -- or you -- wish to have recovered. This is under age fourteen, folks -- you should know the drill by now. Collect IDs -- we need to register them and notify their next of kin, and we'll use the data on their IDs to do that and track the kids. We're going to get everyone to medical screening today, but we may need to prioritize -- check that everybody had their meds, for instance. We don't want someone in trouble from a health standpoint because they're missing a pill or a shot. Diabetes and high blood pressure would probably be top priority. Got all that? Come see me in fifteen minutes."

Tom eyed me. "About Tina..."

"I'm just going to wake her up. Why don't you brief Vickie and come pick her up." I headed on over to where we'd laid out the three who were unconscious.

Tina was one of those skinny ones with the protruding hip bones and the legs that locked at the knee such that the whole leg curved backwards. She had brown hair, a long thin nose, not much chin -- not a top pick. I don't have to tell you that she wasn't much in the breast department, do I? Her first word was "OW!" and I couldn't blame her -- stingers set fire to your entire nervous system -- but then she kept whining. Fucking great... I decided to leave the other two unconscious for the moment.

Tom came over and took a look and shook his head. I understood; Tina looked too much like a twelve year old at sixteen. "That reminds me," I grunted, "you need to drag your crew over here and drop one off -- you're one over."

"Oh, shit."

"Yeah, sorry. I don't know how you're going to shake it out; ultimately, it's your call, but you might want Kellie to do it. Of course, it's gonna be painful..." I pointed out.

"She has to learn about the hard choices sometime," Tom grunted. He waved at Vickie and included the whole group; Vickie dragged them over.

"Okay, we have a problem," I announced. "Tom gets four women -- that's Vickie, the shy chick, Kellie, and one other. Somebody has to choose who stays with him and who doesn't."

"Oh, shit." Vickie grunted. From the faces of the others, the sentiment was universal. Even the shy chick was worried, since she could theoretically be displaced.

I nodded. "It's Tom's decision, but you girls are Kellie's friends..."

Becky had nice tits -- Hell, Becky had a lot of nice features -- but I thought I detected spoiled brat in her face. Of course, Kellie wasn't any better...

Marie had a lot of Ugly Betty in her -- except Ugly Betty is Hispanic, and I didn't see any of that in Marie. She had the braces, the unimpressive hooters, the stocky build...

"What happens to the other two?" Kellie asked.

"For the moment, they're at my tender mercies," I replied. "That probably isn't as bad as it sounds. They'll be joining those two as, well, spares, I guess you would call them. If someone doesn't work out, they're the replacement pool. Ultimately, I don't know where they're going -- but they're no longer on Earth." I crooked a finger. "Marie, Becky..." They came over to me, obviously unwillingly. I didn't blame them.

"Kellie, Vickie," Tom pulled them away for the decision-making process. At one point, predictably, Kellie eyed Shy and said "What about... ?" but Tom and Vickie nixed it. Bottom line, her friends had been along for the ride; they got more than they would have under other circumstances, by a good bit.

The decision was somewhat predictable; the group returned and Tom said, "Becky." I'd have made Kellie do it, but then I'm a known bastard. Nobody looked happy; Marie and Tina both burst into tears, as did just about every female present in the next few seconds -- the exception being Shy, who was understandably relieved.

"Give me your cards," I told the two losers. "For now, at least, you can all still see one another." I shifted my attention to Vickie, "You DID tell them what they were getting themselves into, right?" I got a solemn nod. No surprise, that -- Vickie was a solid woman. Stupid me -- I gave her to Tom; but then again, I'd have been saddled with this whole daughter-girlfriend thing. He would probably blame me for future troubles...

Tina was going to be a hard-sell from her scores; on the other hand, Marie had beautiful scores -- at some point in the future, she probably could have volunteered, herself -- all she needed was a measly tenth of a point. Any accomplishment would have put her over, but she was still only sixteen... "Vickie tells me that she told you the price of admission," I told them. Both nodded. "It might seem sorry-assed, but the fact is that my partner and I risked our lives to bring you here, so you owe me, personally. Frankly, if Bet decides she wants something from you, you'd better up it -- understand?" I got another pair of wordless nods. "I don't have time to collect right now, but I'll get around to it. In the meantime, I'm your temporary sponsor. Does either of you have a medical problem I should get you off to the doctors for? Does either of you have kids? Are you on any meds?" I got universal negation. "Do you wanna go home?" THAT one, they thought about -- until I told them, "Tough -- the Confederacy has already invested valuable resources in your worthless hides -- and we're gonna get payback. Come with me." Their IDs were the first ones in the hopper; their folks would get a nice note telling them that they had been picked up and were now Confederacy citizens that they could use to deal with any complications generated by their disappearance. There was also contact information, but it wouldn't be valid for several weeks -- one reason being that they would make their families happier if they weren't bawling over their lost cherries or whatever on initial contact. The cooling-off period was something we learned about almost immediately; homesickness and other complaints ran rampant in the first couple of weeks, then, like basic training, everyone usually settled in and got too busy to worry about it any more. At the end of a month or so, the new situation was old news, usually, and histrionics were minimized -- and we censored mail in any case.

The other groups filtered in, and I posted the cards. There were two more kids out there, a total of seven; Bet was handling pickups. We stuck a drone out in the vicinity; it would land near a pickup site and act as a transport terminus. Bet would take the woman involved with her to make pickup; it was usually done with the absolute minimum amount of fuss, although the plain grey shift we gave women who had been separated from their clothing during pickup could be a dead giveaway. Occasionally, there were minor difficulties, including women using the opportunity to back out or some child care provider -- or, very seldom, a school official -- trying to wangle some deal -- but in general, child pickups were anonymous enough not to be a problem.

Martin and Dolly's group had the most issues -- but of course, there were more of them. The fat woman -- whose name was Noreen, I discovered -- and Lon had high blood pressure and diabetes, but that wasn't the only medical problem; while they were standing there, the stringy forty-something blonde asked, "I gotta have a cigarette -- is there anywhere around here I can smoke?"

I cracked up, which didn't make her happy. "Look, Honey, you and tobacco are through. We don't have any, and the Darjee would freak if you smoked on their fine vessel. Lucky for you, we can kill the addiction relatively painlessly." It was VERY lucky for her -- twenty minutes later, the medical diagnostic revealed that she had lung cancer. The autodoc sedated her and put some nanobots in to make repairs while they worked on the other symptoms of her addiction. Lon and Noreen were on the next two tables getting nanobot insulin processors and arterial cleanup nanobots while their initial gene-therapy workup was under way.

There were a half-dozen other minor maladies, but nothing amazing. We had five stations; genetic workups took fifteen minutes apiece and we had forty-eight people to go through, so we shuffled the three needing the most work to human sickbay and hammered away at the list. It was going to be a long day...

A little bit after the thing got going good, my hitchhikers woke up. Marie came to me to tell me that Sweet Tits, or Spider Chick, or whatever was moving and groaning a bit. I got there just in time for her to open her eyes. "Well, well," I announced, "You're back!"

"Where am I?" she groaned.

"Three guesses and the first two don't count," I replied. "What do you remember?"

"There was a pickup -- one of those Confederacy things. I was there, outside, kind of watching and hoping, and the wall or whatever came down, then people started running all over the place. I ran around the next building, but something was going on and I was in the wrong place or something; suddenly, the wall was up again and I..." -- she started feeling around for bullet holes.

"You were stunned with something called a stinger," I related. "How bad did you want to get picked up?"

She had green eyes... "I dunno. It seemed like a good idea..."

"Merry Christmas," I told her. "You've been picked up. For now, your lily white body belongs to me."

Marie ruined the effect. "He likes to pretend that he's evil -- but I think he's pulling our legs," she announced.

"We'll see what your assessment is after I've fucked you everywhere!" I retorted. Turning to the new arrival, I said, "I need you ID card." While she dug in her purse, I told her, "I'm running a special. You didn't volunteer to be here directly, so you get one pass in front of Big Mouth here and her girlfriend. If you don't want to be here, I'll dump you back off somewhere in the vicinity of where you were picked up."

She turned to Marie. "This isn't a game? I've really been picked up?" Marie nodded solemnly. "How does it work?"

I rolled my eyes. "What have you been told?"

"You get a sponsor. He takes care of you." She pursed her lips. "It sounded like a lot more than that."

"It is," I agreed. "Someone recently compared it to sex slavery -- and couldn't find much difference. We call 'em sponsors -- but you might as well call 'em owners. You have no rights. You're a body servant and baby factory. Have I scared you enough?" I leered and wriggled my eyebrows.

Sweet Tits looked at me, poker-faced, then she glanced around. The Darjee see in ranges we don't, and vice-versa, so the color scheme of the transporter room was definitely alien. Then she looked back at me, cocked her head, pouted, and said, "You don't want me?"