It was on the tip of Penny’s tongue to shout that she wanted to go! That she wanted to get out of this crazy place right now. But she remembered the other woman’s words and the sharp look she’d given Penny when she told her not to say a word when she was asked if she wanted to leave. So she bit her tongue and waited, hoping she wasn’t blowing her only chance to get out of here.
After a moment, Mother Toone nodded in apparent satisfaction.
“That’s good,” she said, smiling widely. “Very good. So you’re all happy here?”
Shurla answered for everyone.
“The Compound is our true home,” she said, smiling beatifically. “Why would we ever want to leave it?”
All the women murmured agreement and Penny pasted a smile on her face and murmured right along with them. But inside her stomach was knotted into a fist. What in the hell was going on around here and how was she ever going to get away now that her only friend had deserted her?
Penny could only hope the woman—whose name she didn’t know—was telling her the truth and that she could give her some hints on how to escape.
Because there was no way she could stay in this creepy place—no way in hell.
Twenty-Six
There was another physical where they all stripped and lined up against the wall while a NeverBreeder doctor checked their vitals. After that came the horrible internal exam on the cold metal tables where Penny’s womb was pronounced “healthy and ripening, though not yet ready to conceive.”
After the exam, their robes were taken away and they were all given shapeless pajama-like clothing to wear which looked a little like white scrubs. Then, as promised, they were herded out to the exercise yard, which was just a big, walled-off area of neatly clipped turquoise grass with a few flowering bushes around the edges.
“Now then, my sweeties,” Mother Toone sang out as the prisoners wandered around the manicured lawn and looked at the sky, which could just be seen over the high wall. “You all have a lovely time exercising and then I’ll come get you for lunch. All righty?”
She left without waiting for an answer, locking them into the yard the same way she had locked them into the dorm the night before. Presumably, they were on their own for a while.
Penny thought about trying to speak to Shurla, but her friend had an expression of blank bliss on her face. She was wandering about the exercise yard with a vacant smile, staring up at the sunlight filtering down through the shimmering atmosphere bubble and humming contentedly to herself.
So talking to Shurla was out. Penny’s other thought was to wonder if now was a good time to try and escape. But the wall around the yard was at least thirty feet high and made of a solid block of some smooth, glassy gray stone like polished marble, which provided no hand or footholds at all.
She was just beginning to despair about ever getting out or finding out what was going on around here, when the single door to the yard opened again and the woman with short, straight black hair slipped out. Carefully, she locked the door behind her and then went to tend the flowers on the bushes that ringed the perimeter of the yard.
Penny watched her for a moment, and then wandered over as though curious about the bushes.
“Hi,” she murmured to the woman, trying to keep a happy smile on her face as she spoke.
“Hello.” The woman didn’t look up from her pruning. She had a tiny, blunt pair of scissors she was using to carefully shape the leaves and buds of each bush into perfectly symmetrical shapes. “It’s a beautiful day in the Compound,” she added loudly.
“Oh, uh, yes. Yes, it is,” Penny agreed quickly. Then she murmured, “You promised me some answers. What in the hell is going on around here, anyway?”
The woman sighed and nodded.
“Fine. I’ll tell you what I can but you’ve got to be careful. If you give me away, I’ll pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She looked up, giving Penny that intense, hopeless gaze again. “I’ve been here fifteen cycles so I’m very good at pretending.”
Fifteen cycles? Does she mean fifteen years? Penny felt her breath catch in her throat.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “And I’m Penny, by the way. Penny from Earth.”
“Never heard of it,” the woman said dismissively. She clipped another bud. “My name is Claudette. I used to be from Tenga Four, but I’ll never get back there now.” She shook her head with a sad kind of resignation.
“What? Why do you say that? Haven’t you ever even thought about trying to escape?” Penny asked.
Claudette’s face hardened.
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d been here as long as I have and you knew how this place works. You know what happens to anyone who tries to escape or who loses their fertility? They get recycled.”
“What does that mean?” Penny shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
Claudette gave her a direct look.
“I heard that one of your number didn’t make the grade during her fertility inspection yesterday.”
Penny remembered the woman with purple skin and gills the guards had dragged screaming out of the exam room.
“Yes, they said they were taking her for recycling,” she said. “But I don’t understand what that is.”
“It’s exactly what it sounds like—no part of anyone or anything is ever allowed to go to waste here in the Compound. Remember how I told you not to eat the flesh on your breakfast tray this morning?” Claudette asked. “That was your friend—the one who failed her fertility test.”
“Oh! Oh, no,” Penny whispered, as the other woman’s words sank in. “That’s terrible,” she whispered, feeling sick.
“No, that’s the Compound,” Claudette said grimly. “It’s just the way things are here. So be careful what you eat.”
“What else is going on here?” Penny asked. “Why did they kidnap
