An easy lay, if you like.
But not, never, ever, the girl he would have any true feelings for.
Someone to be used. Then cast aside.
As his father had used his mother.
Once he’d had his experience, I thought, he’d move on to another girl.
Another girl he’d saved his love for.
A real girl.
*
When I come out of my momentary daze, the Womb Master is lumbering heavily towards me, his clenched first held out before him.
‘Take one, girl!’ he snarls, threateningly waving his fist before my face.
The ends of two pencils are protruding up from between the gap formed by his tightly clenched palm.
‘So you’re deaf as well?’ the Master storms. ‘Just how many faults do you come with? Selfish behaviour not enough for you?’
I glance back towards Joel, hoping he can give me some kind of hint of whatever it is I’m expected to do.
He nods.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says, ‘no matter which you draw, I’ll be–’
‘Draw your straw girl!’ his father viciously interrupts, thrusting the pencils up into my face. ‘Take it!’
At some point during my daze, the Master has obviously insisted we draw straws, though for what reason I’m not sure.
I pick a pencil, draw it out from the Master’s clenched hand.
It’s a full-length pencil. Whatever it is we were drawing lots for, Joel has lost.
‘Look, whatever Joel’s said, I’m the one respos–’
The Master’s laugh curtly cuts me off.
‘Oh don't go flattering yourself, girl, that you have a human morality!’ he snorts. ‘Don’t even go flattering yourself you are a girl! Yes, I know – you’re beginning to think you might actually be a real girl, aren’t you, because my idiot son has fallen for you?’
I’m not quite sure if I’m capable of blushing or not, but my skin certainly feels hot enough to be reddening. Besides which, the Master’s smirk almost cracks his face he’s so pleased by my ashamed reaction.
‘You don’t know, do you,’ he jeers, ‘just how many stupid men fall in love with my girls? If they all thought like you that that suddenly made them human, why, I wouldn’t have a single girl working for me anymore, would I now?’
He leers at me.
‘Besides,’ he announces triumphantly, ‘all your supposed morality is meaningless.’
He opens up his hand. The pencil he had still held onto there is revealed to be just slightly longer than the one I held.
To prove it, to allay any doubts, the Master snatches the pencil form me, holding it alongside the other to compare their lengths.
I’d lost; not Joel.
Joel’s startled.
‘No, wait, dad!’ He moves forward towards his father. ‘I’ve already said I’ll take respo–’
‘Enough!’
The Master’s commanding yell is so loud, so venomous, that Joel brings his advance to an immediate halt.
‘I knew you’d both waste my time with all this “No, I’m the one!”, “No, it’s me!” That’s why I let fate take you by the hand: and you should be grateful I’ve decided to punish only one of you! And why have I done this? To cause resentment: to break you apart!’
‘It won’t work, Dad!’ Joel insists, glancing my way for any sign of confirmation I might give him.
‘Have you got a stone for a brain as well as a heart, boy?’ the Master grumbles dangerously, pushing his face hard up against Joel’s.
Worried that the Master is going to assault Joel, I prepare myself to be ready to leap between them.
Not that I’m sure what I could do against man as broad as a furious bear.
Surprisingly, it’s the Master who’s first to draw back from the confrontation.
His expression is wide eyed, one of a sudden dawning of understanding.
‘Wait a minute…’
He glances my way, then turns back to Joel, his eyes now narrowed in suspicion.
‘Did you do something to her on purpose, because you…?’
He doesn’t wait for – doesn’t need – an answer from Joel.
He takes Joel’s confused, shameful face as an admission of guilt.
‘You did, didn’t you?’ he hisses softly.
‘No, I–’
The Master drowns out Joel’s useless protestations as he erupts into a growling, disbelieving laugh.
‘All that money you’ve cost me!’ He turns from Joel, whirls on me, his glare accusatory and hateful. ‘And you! That’s why you think you’re better than all those other girls – those sisters – of yours, isn’t it?’
‘Well, no, I–’
‘Yes you do! Have you ever met them? No? They’re all wonderful girls!’
His tone now is mocking, teasing.
‘I’m sure that–’
‘It’s not the sordid profession you seem to think it is,’ he persists, now surprisingly calm and reasoned. ‘But…what’s wrong with me? Why am I trying to explain all this to someone who’s supposed to be free of any scruples about all this anyway?’
He backs away a little from me, moving back towards his desk without bothering to look where he’s heading, like he’s been a part of this office for so long he instinctively knows where everything lies.
Reaching out behind him, he presses a button on his desk.
The door to his office opens.
Two incredibly beautiful girls enter, their smiles bright, incredibly welcoming.
‘I assure you,’ the Master says to me with a polite nod of his head, a knowing smirk, ‘you’ll just love working with them.’
‘No!’
Joel lurches forward, as if about to grasp and attack his father.
The Master has deftly reached back towards his desk once more.
Now he holds a gun in his hand, unwaveringly directing the barrel at his son’s stomach.
‘Yes, Joel,’ he states firmly, his eyes locked hard on his son’s as a warning not to test him. ‘Yes; that's were she belongs – that's where she’ll go!’
*
Chapter 11
My thoroughly gorgeous guards are surprisingly strong.
Their grip on my arms feels particularly unbreakable.
Perhaps I have the potential to be just as strong too, but I’ve never thought of putting it into practice.
Despite their insistence that I accompany them towards the elevators, they’re also conflictingly eager to appear friendly, chatting to me as if this is the most exciting day of my life, as if I’m joining the sort of typing pool full of excitable women you see in the old movies.
(Wow, great: another one of those false memories clicking in!)
‘Oh, it will be all such amazing fun!’ trills the sublimely elegant girl keeping a vice-like hold on my right arm.
‘Just you wait and see, Iona!’ says the sweet little thing clamping my left arm in a grip that would squeeze juice out of a rock.
‘You were meant to join us here!’
‘Oh yes, yes! I can just simply sense it too!’ agrees her friend.
*
The ‘sweet young thing’, it turns out, is the leader of a large group of the girls, responsible for their wellbeing and regular maintenance.
Figures, when you think about it.
Why would any girl programmed to be a team leader in such a place have to be old?
Then again, in a seemingly complete contradiction to that observation, the woman in overall charge of the establishment is a slightly older woman; one who appears to have retained the most distinctive elements of her amazing beauty of course.
It’s a nod to the movie portrayals of these kinds of establishments; it’s from scenes such as these that the customers have being brought up to expect that the Rooms of Pleasure will be fronted by a kindly madam, who keeps everything firmly in order, completely dominating all the proceedings in every way.
There are customers, apparently, who pref
er their women to be older.
Some of the girls here are also terribly, frightfully young…
My stomach churns, like the maelstrom we survived deep down in Nevaeh’s waterways.
*
Chapter 12
What seems totally bizarre to me is that all the girls accept what’s happening to them as if it’s all perfectly natural, as if there’s no other way of living their lives.
But then, they have been specifically programmed to think that way, to expect nothing more but this of their lives, haven’t they?
In a way, though, that makes it seem all the more terrible to me.
Yes, okay; so I know these aren’t real girls. But they look like real girls; they – in many ways – act like real girls; they talk and laugh like real girls.
They even help and have compassion for other girls.
So what, exactly, is it they lack that means they aren’t real girls?
*
Thankfully, no one here is expecting me to immediately embrace this new life I’m fated to lead.
Eventually, of course, I’ll have no alternative; I’ll have to entertain the many ‘customers’ who flock here, through every hour of the day.
Not that anyone down here knows precisely which hour of the day it is.
There are no clocks, no way of telling the time.
There’s no obvious passing of the sun, or the moon.
Even our ‘customers’ have little idea of whether it is day or night outside.
Very few have the courage to immediately descend this low into Nevaeh’s belly. Even those who have taken advantage of the services of her Room’s of Pleasure on her previous visits to their towns rarely head straight down here, as if they retain some element of shame deep within their own rotten bellies.
I can’t see any customer who isn’t drunk, or drugged up.
They know all this wrong; oh yes, they surely do!
The girls’ sleep patterns, although regulated to be far more human that those of other droids (who automatically drift off into sleep mode once a task is completed to save energy), seem to be determined by the customers’ needs. Even so, there are still a number of girls who are neither working or sleeping, enough to eagerly gather around me asking me questions about what I think might be wrong with me.
They all think it’s terrible that I’ve been assembled so badly.
They try and recall any instances they know of other droids been so badly put together, in the hope of offering a solution to my problem; but no one can think of any other girl who has been so atrociously handled,
Their chatter, their laughter, is all perfectly natural, the equivalent of the conversations I’ve heard amongst humans; apart, of course, from this weird acceptance that this is a perfectly legitimate way to live.
The conversations I’d tried to strike up amongst the ticket girls I’d worked with were always limited to their programmed capabilities, which amounted to little more than cheerful greetings, helpful knowledge about the range of experiences offered by Nevaeh, and a mind that could work out otherwise complicated prices and terms within a split second.
Here, the girls all pity me, treating me as if I’m so unfortunate, a girl full of irredeemable faults.
The sweet young thing who’d brought me down here appears, politely making her way through the girls excitedly crowding about me.
She smiles, as brightly as she can manage; but I can recognise enough clues in her expression to determine that it’s a false smile, an anxious one (yes, that’s how well made these girls are: they have every human expression you can imagine, even the most subtle).
She wrings her hands worriedly as she begins to speak, her smile now carrying hints of shame and apology.
‘I’m ever so sorry, Iona; I know we promised you that…but, look – an important visitor, one we can’t refuse – has insisted that you go to his room!’
*
Chapter 13
Once again, I’m walking along garishly decorated corridors, accompanied by this sweet young thing.
Rhina, she’s called, she tells me.
She isn’t gripping my arm, she isn’t pulling me along.
The only thing pulling me along is this sense that I’m a victim of cruel fate, something I can’t avoid. A sense of hopelessness.
My head hangs low.
Rhina, her head hangs shamefully too.
So, she is capable of feeling shame.
Just not the kind of shame I’m suffering right now.
And yet; how could she be so ashamed, unless she understands my own sense of shame?
Wow; just how complicated is all that?
Who is this man who’s so important they can’t refuse him?
Why is it only me who’ll he’ll accept?
How did he even know that I was down here?
Oh no, oh no!
The Master!
It can only be the Master himself!
*
Of course!
What an idiot I’ve been!
All that nonsense about drawing straws!
The two girls were already waiting outside to bring me down here!
The Master knew full well the way the drawing of lots would pan out.
How hard would it be for him to manipulate the result with those pencils? Pencils that were just about the same size anyway.
If I’d chosen the longer one, he only had to mix them up as he’d compared their lengths.
I was fated to lose, no matter what I did.
But then, Joel is his son, isn’t he?
Whereas me; I’m just an unimaginably expensive ticket girl. Who’s been specifically built to provide more profitable services.
Rhina stops outside a door to a room, knocks.
‘Come in!’ a gruff voice from inside commands.
*
Chapter 14
It’s not the Master waiting for me inside the room.
It’s the Master’s son.
Joel.
My heart (or at least, what passes for a heart) leaps.
Then; I’m hit with a sudden surge of doubt, of distrust.
The way Joel’s looking at me – surely, he’s not really here for that, is he?
No, please tell me no!
Certainly, Rhina seems to take it that that’s the only reason why he’s here.
She’s actually glaring at him almost hatefully, although she’s attempting to hide that loathing behind her most gracious smile.
She must recognise the kind of look Joel’s giving me, right?
She must have experienced it more than enough times.
And yet; I bet this is the very first time she’s felt hate for the person looking at the girl in this way.
‘Iona, is there anything…?’
She glances my way, her eyes almost tearful, apologetic.
There’s more to these girls than anyone realises, I reckon.
I shake my head, resigned to what’s going to happen
I suppose, if I have to…well, I suppose it could be far worse.
Someone far worse than Joel.
It’s just that…I’d hoped…
Nah: I’ve been foolish, haven’t I?
*
Chapter 15
Rhina smiles sickly as she backs towards the door.
She glances my way again, like she’s expecting me to rush towards her, beg her to save me.
I wonder how she’d react to that?
You know, I think she really would try and protect me. Even though it would result in her being shut down, or reprogrammed.
I even think she might be hoping I do ask for her help, even though it can only result in severe punishment for her, for me.
It’s not fair on her if I ask for her help.
I nod, letting her know it’s okay to leave me.
She gives me another sickly smile, one that says she doesn’t believe I’m okay about this, that I’m being brave, stoic.
She shuts the door behind her as she lea
ves.
Joel smiles.
I’m still not sure what he’s excepting of me; I hold back.
He rushes towards me, wraps his arms around me – embraces me, like he’s so glad to find that I’m okay.
‘Iona!’ he breaths, hints of relief and perhaps maybe even weeping in his voice.
He pulls back a little, stares intently into my eyes.
‘We have to get you out of here!’
*
Once more, I’m walking through the corridors.
I’m grateful, this time, that the Rooms of Pleasure have gone for the subdued lighting most men would be familiar with in the movies featuring similar establishments.
It’s all shaded lamps, all light forced downwards, not up.
Even so, I’m tempted to increase my pace, to rush along these corridors as quickly as I can.
But Joel had told me to resist this urge.
That would be a sure way of drawing attention to myself.
To pass off as a man, he’d told me, you have to walk like you own the world.
Confidently.
Unhurriedly.
And yes, that also meant with my head held high; not letting it droop low, trying to hide my face.
If I walked like that, he’d warned me, it would only cause people to stare.
As it is, I walk past people without a second glance. My face isn’t completely hidden, but I’ve pulled the leather jacket’s high collar up around my head as far as it will go.
My hair’s completely cropped, my long locks completely shorn. He’ll use the long strands later, Joel had said, to drape across the sheets and pillow, to make it look like I’m still lying in bed with him whenever the food or drinks he orders are brought into the room.
Joel had brought along a carefully prepared mix of vegetable dyes that made my freshly cut hair a passable imitation of his. He’d also brought along spare clothes, ones closely matching the ones he’d arrived in.
He’d paid for an expensive room, of course, to help keep up the pretence that he was here only for one reason; but he’d chosen a room as close to the exit that he could get away with without drawing suspicion. He’d also paid in advance for my ‘services’, to make sure I wouldn't be stopped as I followed the diagram he’d drawn on the back of my hand.