“Right!” Penny pasted a bright smile on her face and nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”
“Let’s go,” Claudette echoed and they headed for the Marketplace.
Forty-Five
The Marketplace wasn’t very busy this time of day, Penny thought as they entered it. It consisted of about ten or twelve neat little storefronts lined up across from each other along the perfectly paved main road.
There was a garment stall where the red and blue togas were sold—well, not really sold, as Claudette explained. Every week each breeder couple was issued coupons which were good for spending at the Marketplace. Some were for clothes or household implements, but most were for food and other necessities.
Besides the garment stall, there was a store that sold pots and pans—all made at a factory here in the Compound, and further on, a store that sold dishes and bowls and cups. Apparently there was a pottery studio in the Compound too, so everything was hand-thrown and baked in a kiln. Penny wondered why she couldn’t have been assigned there—she had always wanted to take a pottery class and had just never gotten around to it.
On the other side of the neat main street were the food stalls and stores. There was one for the fruits and vegetables, which were all grown right here in the Compound, another for milk, butter, eggs, and cheese—all made in the dairy and collected from the hatching pens where domesticated tongus and chuckas were kept.
There was also a butcher stall, which made Penny shudder. Huge slabs of suspect-looking meat were stored in refrigerated cases right out front. Fat, shiny d’zeez flies buzzed over the offal to one side of the chopping block where a butcher was working on what looked an awful lot like a human thigh to Penny.
Then she saw who the butcher was—it was Skrug, Shurla’s new husband. He looked up at Penny and grinned his snaggle-toothed grin as he chopped the thigh in half with one blow of the giant cleaver he held in one clawed hand.
“Well, hello there, pretty little one!” he growled, waving the bloody cleaver at her by way of a greeting. “If it isn’t my ‘second bride’—the one V’rex almost gave up to me by refusing to brand her!”
“What are you talking about?” Penny demanded, stepping closer to the butcher’s stall. “He branded me at the Unification Ceremony—everybody saw it.”
“Yes he did, though not properly.” Skrug frowned. “But he didn’t want to—no he didn’t! Put up such a fuss about it when our Glorious Leader was explaining how things would go before we started that he nearly lost you as his bride. The Shining Star was actually going to give you to me, you know.” He leered meaningfully at Penny. “Until V’rex finally agreed to do the deed.”
“He was?” Penny remembered how upset the big Hybrid had been about having branded her and how insistent he’d been about healing her. Clearly Kat and Commander Sylvan had been at least partially wrong about him—he didn’t want to hurt women like a full-blooded Kru’ell One.
“Oh yes, the Glorious Leader was this close to giving you over to me.” Skrug poked a bloody thumb in his own aproned chest, which was already smeared with red and brown stains. “Pity he didn’t. Old Skrug would have treated you right, so I would! Just ask Shurla—I made her almost too sore to walk last night and I’ll do it again tonight!” He laughed uproariously, then leaned over the counter to stare at Penny lasciviously. “I can breed you too, pretty one, if V’rex isn’t doing you right. You just say the word and I’ll come around this counter and give it to you right proper!”
The thought of being bred by the huge, blue-skinned, hunchbacked, snaggletoothed alien made Penny want to vomit. Beneath his butcher’s apron she could see his massive equipment swinging, like one of the fat sausages dangling from the ceiling of his shop.
“No thank you,” she said, stepping away from him. “I…I have to get to my job.”
“Oh? And where’s that?” Skrug looked interested.
“None of your business,” Claudette, who had been standing silently by until now, snapped. “Come on, Penny.”
She grabbed Penny by the arm and dragged her down to the next stall, which happened to be the bakery.
“This is it?” Penny hissed in her ear. “Right beside the butcher’s shop?”
“Can’t be helped,” Claudette muttered back. “Now put on a smile, Penny and remember to act the part.”
Penny knew there was no other choice. Pasting a big grin on her face, she walked through the outside area of the bakery, where stacks of fresh loaves of a dusky pale purple color were on display, and into the back of the shop.
It was much darker in the inside of the shop and at least fifteen degrees hotter. As soon as her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, Penny saw why. There were several huge brick ovens all ranged along the back wall and all of them appeared to be running simultaneously. Their glowing interiors looked like traditional pizza ovens to Penny and loaves of bread were being shoveled in and out of them constantly by the many workers.
Lined up along the other two walls were tables with plenty of busy women. Some were mixing huge vats of flour and water and yeast with vast wooden paddles while others were kneading and pounding the dough. The fresh dough and the baking bread perfumed the air with a delicious, yeasty scent that Penny inhaled deeply.
“There’s your supervisor,” Claudette said to her in a low voice. She nodded at a NeverBreeder who was whacking and yanking roughly at an enormous mound of bread dough, as though it had done something to personally displease her.
“It is?” Penny looked at the stern-looking NeverBreeder uncertainly.
“Uh-huh. That’s Head Baker Goone.” Claudette’s voice sounded grim. “You need to stay on the
