In fact, none of the girls was drinking the bubble wine, though her mother had said it was extremely expensive and sure to be a hit. Lilli had ordered one of the serving girls to bring a bottle of sparkling goochi juice to the table instead and they were all sipping that, though it only cost a fraction of the other exotic vintage.
“Yes, Karn is a Kindred,” Lilli said, trying to be gracious though she was disliking Priss more and more every minute they sat at the same table together. She especially didn’t like the way the other girl had treated her bodyslave.
“A Kindred, is it? No wonder he has such a big shaft.” Priss popped a single sedju seed between her teeth and crunched noisily. “Most impressive, I must say. Maybe I’ll tell my mother to buy him from your mother for me.”
“Oh, but you can’t do that!” Lilli exclaimed. “Karn is mine. He’s my very first bodyslave—Mother bought him for me specially.”
“Karn is mine,” Priss sing-songed in a baby voice. “Honestly, I can’t believe you’re only just now getting your first bodyslave. I’ve had five already, counting H’rare.”
“Five?” Lilli looked at her in surprise. “But, well…where are they?”
Priss shrugged. “They’re all so troublesome. Every single one had to be sent to the Diluthian mines because they couldn’t behave correctly. Mother complains that I go through them too quickly but she always buys me another when I tell her to.”
Lilli was aware that the girls in her circle—the ultra-rich of Yonnie Six—didn’t even bother to recycle their expensive bodyslaves by selling them on the second-hand slave market. Instead, they treated the males they bought to serve them as disposable and threw them away, much the way one might throw away a tissue after using it.
But just because she was part of this social class didn’t mean she had to like it. She hadn’t been raised in the convent to treat people like dirt or throw them away. In fact, they had been taught that all lives were sacred—even the lives of males.
“I don’t think it’s right to send a bodyslave to the Diluthian mines just because he doesn’t please you,” she said, lifting her chin. “Do you know how long the life expectancy is there? Barely a week before the gasses do permanent damage to a male’s lungs.”
“What do I care about his lungs?” Priss demanded, frowning. “It’s his shaft and his service I’m worried about! H’rare has a good enough shaft for display—though it’s nothing like that monster your bodyslave has—and he’s generally good at service, so I’ll probably keep him for a while. At least until my quick-grow comes out.” She stroked her abdomen again, making Lilli frown.
“Your, er, ‘quick-grow’?” she asked. “What do you mean by that?”
“My daughter of course—my heir.” Priss rubbed her belly some more. “It’s all the fashion now to go to the conception center and get having your heir out of the way while you’re young. That way you don’t have to bother with it when you get older and you’re too busy with business to have a baby. Why, Mother insisted I have it done now that they have the quick-grow shots that make the whole business so much faster.”
“My mother had me do it too,” Yulla volunteered timidly. “It doesn’t take long—you’re only pregnant for about three months.”
“Do they use some kind of quick-growing sperm, then?” Lilli asked.
“Goodness, no!” Beelie, one of the twins spoke up.
“The sperm is whatever kind you choose,” Bodie continued.
“It’s the shots they give you beforehand that makes the baby grow quickly,” Beelie said.
“We only got impregnated the other day and look how far along we are already,” Bodie added as both twins rubbed their swelling abdomens.
“And we chose sperm from the same male—so our daughters can be sisters and not just cousins,” Beelie said.
“Isn’t that just perfect?” Bodie asked.
“But…but what will you do with the babies when they come?” Lilli asked. “Are you going to raise them yourselves?”
“Certainly not,” Priss sneered. “We’ll send them off somewhere or have a nannybot raise them. They have some very advanced AI tech now—some nannybots even produce milk calibrated to your heir’s nutritional needs. Why, you never even have to look in on them at all! Just give them to the nannybot the moment they pop out and don’t bother with them until they come of age twenty years later.”
She laughed and the other girls giggled along as well.
“My mother says that if there had been nannybots when I was little she would have used one,” Yulla said.
“Our mother too,” Bodie added.
“She says your mother, Lady Mirabella, was smarter that she was—never having the bother of raising you at all,” Beelie added, speaking to Lilli.
“Well, I don’t like the idea.” Lilli shook her head. “I mean, I don’t feel ready to have a baby now. But if I did, I’d want to raise her myself—not just send her off to a convent or shove her off on a nannybot.”