“Yep—plenty of meat for the butcher shop. We’ll all be eating well tonight!” his coworker said and laughed.
Their conversation made Penny’s stomach clench. But she knew she had to act quickly. Moving by instinct, she crouched low, hoping to hide among the silver tables filled with bodies.
She was glad it was dim in the room, but what if the NeverBreeders had especially good eyesight? How could she explain being in here if they caught her? She was absolutely sure what she had seen wasn’t meant for her eyes—for the eyes of any breeder for that matter. If they caught her, she was going to be in so much trouble!
As she crept slowly backwards, through the maze of tables, she heard the workers continue their conversation.
“You want to roll the first one up here?” one worker was saying to another. “I’ll get the piecer turned on and warmed up.”
As he spoke, he flipped a switch on the side of the huge machine, which had a long silver chute at one end and a conveyer belt assembly at the other. In between, from the large metal body of the machine, protruded several clear tubes that ran down to a drain in the floor.
As soon as the first worker flipped the switch, the machine he had called “the piecer” started humming. As Penny watched, horrified, the other NeverBreeder worker rolled a table with a dead humanoid male up to the chute at the far end of the machine.
I knew him, Penny thought, looking at the corpse. He worked in the garment shop in the Marketplace, right across from me!
He was a nice looking, older gentleman who had always given her a kind nod when their eyes met as they both did their jobs. Penny had even bought a spare toga from him the day before last and though she didn’t know his name, he had struck her as a kind and courteous man, unlike a lot of the aggressive, younger male breeders.
Well apparently being kind and courteous isn’t enough to keep you alive around here, whispered a little voice in her head as she watched in fascinated horror.
Working together, the two workers lifted the male by his heels and shoulders and dumped him down the silver chute.
The humming of the machine turned into a grinding roar and the clear tubes began spouting crimson down the floor drain at once. A coppery, metallic scent drifted towards her and Penny’s eyes went wide as her nose wrinkled.
Blood, she thought, feeling sick. That’s his blood they’re pouring down the drain!
But even worse was what she saw when the conveyor belt began running at the far end of the machine. A long hairy thigh, neatly cut just above the knee and below the hip, came out from under the plastic flaps.
Like a piece of luggage on an airport conveyor belt, Penny thought faintly.
The thigh was followed by an upper arm and then a forearm and then…
But Penny couldn’t watch anymore. She knew if she saw the nice man’s head come rolling out from under the long plastic strips, she would go crazy and start screaming.
No, she thought. No, no, no, no, NO!
Turning away from the grizzly sight, she skuttled through the rows of tables and towards the door. Luckily, the loud roaring of the machine covered the sound of the door opening and closing behind her and then she was standing out in the corridor, heart pounding and stomach twisting.
“Oh God,” she whispered in a low, trembling voice. “Oh God, we have to get out of here!”
“Have to what, dearie?”
Looking up, Penny saw Nurse Zoone coming towards her.
“Sorry I took so long,” the NeverBreeder nurse said. “Those pesky—why dearie, are you all right?” She looked at Penny in concern and Penny realized she must still have a look of grief and horror on her face.
“Oh, uh, fine,” she said, straightening up and trying to paste on a smile. “Just, um, worried. I don’t want to be too late to work, you know.”
“No, of course not! That’s why we gave you a note. Come on then.” And Nurse Zoone set off at a fast pace, leaving Penny to trot after her.
As they went, Penny concentrated on having a normal look on her face though inside she wanted nothing more than to break down and cry. Poor Claudette!
“Well, here we are at the door, dearie,” the NeverBreeder nurse said at last, escorting Penny back to the entrance of the building. “I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to old Mother Toone. I know she was a real favorite with all the breeder girls she watched over and trained here in the dormitories.”
“Yes…she was.” Penny nodded distractedly. “She…she really was.”
“Well, you’d best get on to work now,” the nurse told her. “And go as fast as you can, for you don’t want to miss anything—I’m told there’s to be a bit of excitement today.”
“Excitement?” Penny asked faintly. “What kind of excitement?”
“Oh, you’ll see.” The nurse winked one yellow eye at her and gave her the jack-o-lantern grin that was so like Mother Toone’s again. “Get along with you, now. And next time you come see us, hopefully you’ll have a baby in your belly for the Glorious Cause!”
“Uh, hopefully,” Penny agreed, though the idea made her feel sick. The thought of sacrificing baby after baby to become NeverBreeders was still deeply repellent to her. Though it was somewhat eclipsed by the thought of being killed after years of producing and turned into so much chopped meat. How horrible!
“Goodbye then, dearie,” Nurse Zoone said brightly and closed the door behind her, leaving Penny to stand there in the sunshine filtering through the atmosphere dome as she tried to get a handle on her emotions.
“We have to get away,” she whispered to herself again, shivering helplessly. “We have to escape!”
Sixty-Eight
“Excuse me, your attention please, workers!” The self-important voice of Head Gardener Poone rang through the greenhouse. V stopped
