Betrayed (Hidden Worlds Book 1) Page 6

  Again, through my studies, I knew that on Earth, historically, some primitive tribes had marked their bodies with ink. This seemed the same sort of thing. We saw two separate kinds of birds, a few geometric designs, a leaf, another golden star. And I received further confirmation of my suspicions that such horrors were commonplace; again, the soldiers looked at the punished girls with amused nudges, but all in all walked by with an attitude that such displays were fairly normal and, in fact, somewhat cute.

  I was shaking by the time we climbed a stair and entered another waiting room. Again, another Matron sat behind a desk, and again, eyes popped as she saw us. Matron Marcelle stepped forward to converse with her, and the Matron left, to return shortly with still another woman. This one wore a star emblem around her neck. She was the only person I'd seen other than Lord Rohan who wore any sort of jewelry or ornamentation and I assumed she must be the Head Matron. She, too, looked shocked, and I realized that I was becoming heartily sick of being regarded like a talking canine.

  I turned away in disgust as I heard Matron Marcelle and Captain Jancy recite the whole tale to the Head Matron and the Matron that had been behind the desk, how we were unclean, unmarked, alone on the road, on and on. To block it out, I looked at the walls of the room we were in; they were decorated with full-color paintings.

  The art was very good and extremely realistic; I had to look closely at first to determine that they were not photographs. In one, a young woman with a covered head was supervising several young children at play, while an armored warrior beamed on proudly. A caption read, "The Fruitful Bride." Another showed a woman with her bare breast in a baby's mouth, and my mouth dropped in shock; this caption said, "Breastfed is Bestfed." Yet another showed a woman, her body fat with pregnancy sitting at a table, eating an array of foods, with the words below proclaiming, "Good Foods, Healthy Baby. It was a fourth poster, however, that caught my attention the most. Unlike the others, which obviously showed happy scenes, this one was meant as a grim object lesson. Its caption said, "Brides Caught in Mischief," and its message was most clear. A room was shown in the poster, a sitting room of some sort; it appeared to be in disarray. In the center of the room was a table with two chairs next to it and on the table was a chess board, what looked like a wine bottle, and some other foods. Also in the picture were four people, two men, two women. One man was pictured seated, a woman tossed over his knees; the other was standing, holding a woman under his muscular arm, just like the two soldiers had held Christy and me to display us to Lord Rohan.

  The women wore trousers like the girls we'd seen in the classroom, and through the widely-parted openings, they were being punished by the men. The colorful poster was meant to be as explicitly graphic as possible; the bride held under the arm was facing away from the viewer and was being punished by her husband's large, open palm. She was struggling, a leg kicked wide, and every detail of her plump, shaved, female anatomy was visible between her brilliantly red cheeks. The artist, not one to let a single detail slip by, had carefully shown even darker-finger marks against the dusky red skin. The other woman, held over her husband's knees, was shown twisting her head, gazing back, her face contorted with terror and pain, her mouth a wide "o", at her reddened bottom and her husband's uplifted arm. In this husband's hand was a small, limber-looking stick, and dark red lines had been meticulously illustrated crisscrossing her cheeks and thighs.

  I was appalled, yet horribly unable to look away. I saw Christy, next to me; she'd seen it too and looked ready to vomit. This planet was every nightmare the women on Earth had fought against for four centuries, a place where women were held in total slavery, both to the men and to their bodies. They obviously did not have the technology to control male hormones, and I realized that the men and women both must be simply at the mercy of their raging endocrine systems. It was more shocking and disgusting than anything I could have contemplated, incredibly primitive. I knew now where we were. We were in hell.

  I was startled out of my reverie with a rough hand on my shoulder, hard fingers at my chin. Against my will, my head was turned until I was looking directly into the solemn eyes of the Head Matron. "No, neither one." She looked at Jancy. "Seems we do have quite a mystery here. And neither one says anything?"

  "Oh, they're speaking the English right enough. But all either'll say is they don't remember where they're coming from."

  Head Matron snorted. "One wonders if the leather wouldn't help with the reminding."

  Jancy nodded. "Like enough. But until Lord decides whose they are, it's really not an option, I suppose."

  My stomach clenched. There could be little doubt to what they referred, and the idea of being subjected to what we'd seen in the classroom was terrifying.

  Head Matron looked us over, then sighed. "He said he was wanting the physician to look at them?" Jancy nodded. "Can't hurt. At least we'll know if they've been opened." She turned as if to walk away, then looked back at the three soldiers. "Will you be waiting to take them back?" At their gestures of agreement, she looked at us. "Well, come along. Doc Rono's here now. No use holding him up."

  Not knowing what else to do, we followed. What were our options? To dash into the hall? It was hardly as if they'd watch us go, shake their heads, and say, "Blazes, we lost `em." If we ran, we'd be caught within a few steps, and the Matron's reference to leather was vivid enough. It was clear from Jancy's comment that we were still not subject to that… we had some protection until they discovered who, as they put it, "we belonged to." However, I could only wonder how far their forbearance would extend if we resisted physically.

  I was pushed into a small cubicle and the door shut before I could protest my separation from Christy. Although all doors on Earth in any sort of new construction were sliding mylenar panels, I intuitively recognized a secondary click as that of a locking mechanism. I was trapped. I sighed heavily, and for the first time, I found that my fear had abated enough so that I could actually cry. Hot moisture gathered in my eyes.

  I thought of my optimism over the projects I was going to run. I reviewed my day and came up with the incredible conclusion that, only three hours previously, I'd been strolling through a forest idly explaining experimental parameters to Christy. Only three hours to go from "normal" to a nightmare that simply would not stop.

  Starting, I pricked my ears, thinking I had heard cries, but the sound faded and I heard nothing more. My body felt hot, yet cold with the sweat of fear at the same time, and I shuddered. I knew I would feel better if I could just do something, grasp control of the situation, but how I would accomplish that was a complete mystery. I was locked in a tiny room with madmen and women just outside, people that apparently whipped children nearly to death at the drop of a hat. My options seemed limited.

  Wearily, just to do something, I rose and tried the door; it was, in fact, as I had suspected, locked. I felt a sense of futility and helplessness like nothing I could ever have imagined. Unable to fathom doing anything else, I sat back down on the wooden bench and waited, letting my thoughts wander.

  Chapter 5

  Sitting on the hard chair, I wondered idly what sort of medical technology was available on Gamma Rigel. I'd had little contact with medical personnel in my life. Because everyone was inoculated at birth with the antiviral and anticancer protectives, sickness was rare. The influenzas and "colds" that I had read about were now simply that: stories in the history books. Medical personnel on Earth were, until geriatric deterioration, of course, utilized solely to treat injuries: broken bones in falls during recreation, the occasional bacterial infection from, again, an injury. I'd broken a wrist in first school and cut myself, needing closures, once at upper. Other than that, my only encounters with health care had been routine physical exams, which consisted of putting on a mylo gown and lying in a scan chamber for thirty seconds, while gowned technicians read the screens.

  I realized, with a growing trepidation, that whatever they did have on Gamma Rigel, mylo gowns and scan chambers were
not likely among them. Memories of Earth's medical history flashed through my brain, horrors of leeches and concoctions whose main ingredient was animal urine. Were they beyond that here? Not that it mattered. We weren't injured or ill; even if they did believe in bloodletting, we'd hardly be subjected to it. I remembered the comment, made twice, about the doctor telling whether we were "open." I tried to imagine what this could mean, then gave up. Some other appalling local custom, like "marked," no doubt.

  I looked around the small chamber. It was little more than a closet, with a straight backed wooden chair, a small cabinet, and some hooks on the wall. I waited for some time, just sitting, wondering how I was going to get out of this. Everything was now coalescing into one picture, and it was not a pretty one. Christy and I had not walked farther than fifteen minutes from the ship, I was sure of that now. When we arrived back in the glade and saw no craft, I immediately assumed we'd made a wrong turn, in spite of Christy's doubts. I'd ignored her assertion that the ship had left, refusing to listen to her opinions. I had been too frantic to do anything else.

  But the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that, as Christy has said all along, we hadn't taken a wrong turn, that the glade was the right one. What was wrong was that there was no ship. And the reason there was no ship was because it had left. Lifted off as soon as we were out of earshot on a walk that the Primo himself had urged us to take.

  I felt myself growing cold all over. It had been some sort of set-up from the start. The fact that Christy MacCleod and I had both been slotted into this run with only hours to spare before departure was very strange. No, I told myself ruthlessly. Don't lie to yourself. It wasn't "strange." It was significant.

  Initially, I'd dismissed her questioning with a flippant reference to the Exploratory Service's being disorganized. They were… but not that disorganized. I'd been excited about going and gratified to bask in the jealousy of my friends. But I realized now I'd never been told the name of the person who could not go, and that was unusual. Since linguists specializing in historical English were hardly very numerous, in all probability I would have known the person. But no. No one ever said, "So and so had to cancel. She's broken her leg." It was always just the vague "someone."

  No, Christy and I had been selected for this flight for some reason I could not fathom, then deliberately abandoned. It was simply the only conclusion that could be drawn from all the facts.

  Escape was no longer an option, because there was nothing to escape back to. There was no ship with an anxious crew hoping desperately that we'd show up before they would have to give up and leave us. There were only two Earth women, alone, afraid, completely untrained for situations like this, abandoned in a nightmare called Gamma Rigel.

  I barely had time to consider the implications of my conclusion when the door opened and the large woman that I had assumed earlier was the Head Matron entered the cubicle. Something white was folded over her arm. She immediately reached up and draped it from one of the hooks and I saw that it was one of the split-sided tunics that the girls wore in this place.

  She looked at me rather coldly. "I've had enough trouble from your friend to last me the day, m'dear, and better things to be doing with the rest of my afternoon. Now, Doc Rono's waiting on ye, so off with it."

  "Off with what?" My voice came out as a hoarse croak.

  She put her hands on her hips. "Now how's Doc to be looking at you all trucked out like that?"

  I hadn't the foggiest and said so. However, the one rhetorical question was all the dialogue the Head Matron was willing to offer. Without another word, she reached for the fastening at my neck. When I attempted to squirm back, she caught me in an iron grip, one large hand on both my upper arms, and fixed me with a flat, brown-eyed gaze that I could not hold, even for a moment. Hating myself, I looked away.

  "I'll be saying this once." Her voice now lacked whatever minimal friendliness it had had when she first walked into the cubicle. "Lord Rohan said you were to be checked, and checked you'll be. I been dealing with the likes of you ten years now, and not a one's gotten out o' it yet. Now it can go easy for ye, or we can be cuffing you like we needed to on your friend." She glared at me coldly.

  Cuffen? Cuffing? I didn't know what she was trying to say, but my mouth went dry, not liking the sound of it in any event. And the references to Christy terrified me. What had happened to her? Was she hurt? I glanced back at the Head Matron, hating the helplessness I felt. My whole plan, vague as it had been, had centered around being cooperative so our captors would let down their guard, enabling us to escape. But with nothing to go back to… I didn't have a clue as to how I should act. Logic would seem to indicate, though, that anything that would cause me to be harmed was not in my best interest.

  The Head Matron, however, seemed to have no desire to stand around while I considered my position. Her hands were at my neck again, opening the pressed fastening, and before I could even protest, the top of my jumpsuit was down, stripped off my arms. She pointed to the floor. "All the way, now."

  Under the jumpsuit, I'd been wearing a tank and panties. The panties, of course, were already in shreds; I could feel the torn scraps of fabric bunched around my ankles, above the gathers in the jumpsuit, and the tank only reached my waist. Once the jumpsuit was gone, I'd be naked from the waist down. "But…" I tried to frame my protest.

  She rolled her eyes. "Och, enough. You're as bad as the other. You'd think you'd never… Off with everything now, and be quick, or I'll be calling yon' Captain to help me."

  I could hardly accept what I was hearing, but after what I'd already seen, I believed her. In the last twenty minutes, I'd seen two girls whipped with every detail between their spread legs fully exposed, and no one acting like it was anything special. I'd seen at least eight more girls standing, with red bottoms bare in a hallway… again, a commonplace sight, apparently… and I'd stood in a waiting hall, with an explicit painting of two women being tortured and Christy and I'd been the only ones who'd even glanced at it. She'd call Jancy to strip me in a heartbeat. Turning away, I reached down, unlaced my boots, and pulled off my jumpsuit. Within moments I stood in only my socks and a tank that barely reached my waist.

  "That too." She pointed to my tank and held out the tunic. Humiliated at having to stand before the woman completely naked, but realizing that the tunic she was offering was longer than the tank, blushing scarlet, I removed the tank and quickly drew the white tunic over my head.

  It felt odd. The fabric was light and soft, like the silk/cotton mix of Earth nightwear. I still felt horribly exposed, though, for while the tunic reached nearly to my knees, with the slits that ran up the side, past my hips to my waist, I felt like I was covered with only the flimsiest of flaps.

  "All right." She grabbed my arm and pushed me out back into the hall. The flaps of the tunic moved when I walked and I felt completely naked. We took several steps, then entered another small chamber. A flat, padded leather table, rather narrow and very high, was in the middle of the room, and several cabinets lined the walls. There was a sink and a straight-backed chair as well. I noticed that two ropes hung down from the ceiling near the end of the table. The room had an odd odor, not bad, but very sharp. "Up with ye now. Doc'll be here in a minute."

  Obediently, I climbed up onto the narrow table, using the step stool that was provided. Turning to sit, I was horribly conscious of my nakedness. It was only made worse when, without warning, she jerked up the front of my tunic and looked directly at my lower belly. Although I had my legs clenched tight, I could tell she was looking at the dark curly hair still visible at the top of my thighs. "Wish I had time to clean you up properly, before the Doc sees ye." She shook her head, her expression one of amazed disgust. "Never seen the like."

  She looked at me straight on, her eyes suddenly a little friendlier. "If you'd be telling us what man's done this to you, kept you apart like this, no one's will be blaming ye. I'm thinking ye've been kept as slaves. Were you and your sister ta
ken from family as wee babes? or sold when just children? Is that it, m'dear? The other girl'd say nothing to us, but it's not your fault ye were kept like this, with no husband or proper care, as is your right. If only ye'd be telling us the truth, we'd help ye."

  Her words almost seemed kind, and I knew they were sincere. I received the same feeling I had from Jancy and Mixal out on the road. The men simply had to have some answers from us; this woman was the same. Suddenly, I saw a way that might buy some time. I nodded slowly. "It's as you say. But I'm not going to talk to anyone but Rohan."

  She shrugged and turned away, opening a cabinet door. I saw her remove a tray, and knew that my weak ploy had failed; they still intended to examine me. Then my attention was drawn to the door, which opened to admit an older man, wearing a long black robe. "So this is the other one?" He eyed me rather flatly, then turned to the Head Matron. "I'm off to a birthing. One of the midwives is thinking we may need a surgical, so I've no time for as much nonsense from this one as we had from the first." He glanced at me. "Any sign of trouble, missy, and we're putting you in the cuffs. Now lie down for me."

  Sweat poured off my back. For the first time, I truly understood that to examine me, he was going to… touch me. Swallowing hard, I gingerly lay back on the narrow, padded leather, my legs clamped together tight. He came around to the top of the table. "Do ye have a name, missy?"