“Fine morning,” she said. She was dressed in another immaculate white jumpsuit which was perfectly fitted to her petite form.
“Fine morning,” Lan’ara echoed, smiling politely.
“Would you like some caffeine brew?” Laxah asked, pointing to the steaming pink liquid in her own mug. “I’m not really awake in the morning before I have my first cup.”
“Oh, thank you, but we weren’t allowed to have stimulants at the Academy so I really don’t have a taste for them,” Lan’ara said. “Um, but I would love some teeka milk, if you have any?”
“Not sure about that,” Laxah said. “But if there is some, it would be in the cold storage unit.” She pointed to a tall silver box in the corner of the food prep area. “I was about to make some goo. Would you like some? I can make a double portion.”
“Um…goo? I’ve never heard of that,” Lan’ara said apologetically. “What is it?”
“It’s a kind of porridge made from the finely ground grains of the bursa wheat-flower,” Laxah explained. “It’s very nutritious—and bright blue. My mothers used to make it for me when I was a little girl on Zeta Prime.”
“Your mothers?” Lan’ara asked as the other woman took a sip from her steaming mug and then began assembling ingredients for her morning “goo.” “As in more than one mother?” she asked, wondering if she had misheard.
“Oh, yes. Where I come from, almost everyone has two mothers,” Laxah said casually. “We don’t believe in having males around, you see—most of them are a complete waste of space. Zeta Prime is a planet devoted entirely to females.”
“But then…how do you make babies?” Lan’ara asked, mystified.
“Artificial insemination, of course,” Laxah said. “So much neater and easier than actually allowing yourself to be penetrated by a male. Ugh!” She made a face as she dumped some pale blue powder into a pot of boiling water she had on the cooking-wave.
“Now you sound like Captain Glo’ll at Last Meal,” Lan’ara pointed out. “When he was asking if you had tried budding.”
Laxah let out a shout of laughter.
“So I do,” she said, grinning. The expression lightened up her gray eyes and made her look much less forbidding than she had the night before. “I just have no use for males,” she went on. “Well, except for the Kindred—I do have some grudging respect for them. Though I almost lost it last night when I thought that Needrix had bought you to use as a sex slave.”
“He isn’t…isn’t doing that to me,” Lan’ara said, feeling her cheeks get hot.
Not that she hadn’t wanted him to last night! She’d been longing for Need to penetrate her, even though she knew it would probably imperil her future. She tried to push these thoughts out of her mind, though—she was afraid they would show on her face and Laxah was much too sharp to miss her confusion and guilt.
“He’s not?” The Med Tech was eyeing her skeptically, as though she didn’t quite believe Lan’ara. “You can tell me if you’re being abused in anyway, my dear,” she said. “I can help you if you’ll let me.”
“I don’t need any help—really I don’t,” Lan’ara protested. “Though it’s very kind of you to offer. My Lord Need has been nothing but kind to me ever since he bought me at the auction. He paid forty thousand credits for me,” she added, hoping to impress on Laxah how kind the big Kindred was.
“And he’s planning to make it all back and then some, I’ll bet,” was Laxah’s skeptical reply. “Has he really already got a buyer lined up for you on Genu Six?”
“Senator Pouncenblast had already paid the first half of my contract,” Lan’ara protested. “I was always meant to go and be his Primary Bride. If the pirates hadn’t come…” She faltered, the memory of being woken in the middle of the night to screams and laser blasts and blood and smoke and fire overcoming her for a moment.
“Hey—are you all right?” Laxah stopped stirring the pot and put a hand on Lan’ara’s arm.
“I…I’m fine.” Lan’ara lifted her chin. “It’s just…a lot has happened to me in the past solar week. The pirates raiding the Academy, being crowded into the slave ship with so many others, being sold at the auction…and now I’m just trying to fit in here, on The Dark Star, until my Lord Need can deliver me to Genu Six.”
She did not mention the fact that her body seemed to be undergoing some kind of strange cycle of lust and desire because that was frankly too embarrassing to talk about.
“You poor girl!” Laxah looked genuinely distressed. “You must be so traumatized right now! How are you even walking around and talking instead of curled into a corner somewhere?”
“I don’t know,” Lan’ara answered honestly. She thought she might have gone to pieces the night before—if it hadn’t been for Need’s strong arms around her. Being close to the big Kindred—breathing in his scent—had somehow calmed her down.