The Superiors (15 page)

“Okay, just go ahead and undress for me,” the man Superior said. The girl started tapping away at that little black square that Superiors always carried around and looked at.

Cali sighed and undid her shift and let it drop around her feet. She crossed her arms across her chest and waited for him to start scanning her with his little scanny-wand thing and telling her to do this or that, lift her arms, jog a minute in place, twist this way and that, bend this way and that.

Instead, he said, “Okay, good, now just get on that table. And take off your underpants, too.”

Cali just stared at him. Did he know about the picture? What if it was something big and important, not just a picture? What if she got killed for it, or sent to the blood bank again? Or maybe he didn’t know about the damp, bent picture at all. Maybe he wanted the other thing inside her underpants.

She knew what that was all about. She’d heard girls at Estrella’s talking about it. She’d even had to learn how to tell her bouncer to make the nasty-thinking Superiors go away when they said stuff about renting her. At the dirty restaurant, she’d heard a lot more about it. And she’d thought she was safe, that she’d escaped that. The Man with Soft Hair hadn’t done anything nasty to her, and she’d thought she’d gotten lucky for once. But now someone else wanted to do bad things to her—and at the Confinement, of all places, where she should have been safest.

“Go on,” the man Superior said. He didn’t look very happy to have to repeat himself. Cali did what he told her, turning around while she hooked her thumb under the picture and the band of her underwear. She folded it inside and put it on her shift. Her hands shook, her legs, too. But the doctor didn’t even glance at her pile of clothes.

He gestured for her to get on the table, and then he put on some blue gloves that just matched his clothes. She tried awfully hard not to cry while he looked at her everywhere and poked around everywhere, asking her the whole time what the Man with Soft Hair had done to her and if he hurt her or touched her private places. Then the doctor poked even in her most private places, which did hurt, and then she cried. A little. But he didn’t do the worst thing to her.

She sat up and got off the table and dressed while the doctor Superior and the big-nosed Superior talked in the other language and smiled a lot. Cali bit back her tears and wished she had something a lot bigger to put on, something that covered every inch of her body and didn’t come off. Maybe covered her head, too. The doctor Superior sat on a chair and started tapping on his little black thingy, and the big-nosed Superior put her black thingy in her pocket and led Cali out. She didn’t say anything, just took Cali outside and left her with another Superior, a skinny boy one who also looked about as old as Cali. Actually, most Superiors looked about the same age, as far as she could tell.

This one made her lift up her shift, and she thought someone else was going to do bad stuff to her, but he only scanned her hindmark and brought her in near the beds and told her where she’d sleep. She’d wanted to come back so bad, and now she had made it back. But some of her excitement was lost now that someone had molested her. She went outside, and the boy Superior pointed to the communal buildings, like she didn’t remember from three years ago where to go.

“Yeah. Three years ago. My mama is Louisa, and my sisters are Poppy, Gwen, Zinnia, and Maypull. And my brothers are Leaf and Boyd. Do you know any of them?”

The woman laughed. “Girl, there’s about ten people here with each of those names. Except maybe Maypull. Come on, eat with us, we’ll put the word out and find your family if they still here.”

After Cali ate, she went to the rows of little tin houses. They didn’t look quite as nice as she remembered. Maybe her restaurant time hadn’t been so bad. But she’d missed her mama, and she could hardly breathe from excitement while she followed the three women who had eaten with her. They bellowed out her mama’s name and after a while they found the row, two over from the one Cali thought she remembered.

Her mama came out and said, “Yeah? What you calling my name for?” Then she saw Cali and kind of stared and blinked.

“This your daughter?” the other woman asked.

“Mama? Is that you?” Cali asked, although she knew it was. Her mama looked a lot more than three years older, but she was still the same woman.

Her mama threw her arms around Cali and hugged her hard. “I can’t believe you came back,” she said. She started crying and Cali did too, a little. “I thought I’d never see you again.” She pulled back to look at Cali. “Girls, come look at your sister,” she called.

Three girls came out of the tin house, all of them looking about ten years older to Cali. The littlest one, still bony but for her chest, which looked humongous compared to the rest of her, had a baby on her hip.

“Aspen?” she said. “Holy sap-crap, it is.” She hugged Cali so hard she crushed the baby, who started crying. “Look, I had a baby. Sandy’s her name. She cries all the time.”

Cali hugged the other girls and told them all her new name, and then they brought her in the house. They wanted to hear all about the outside world, the city and the restaurants and what the Superiors looked like and more important, what the people looked like. Did they dress different? Did they get to go out alone? Did they have more things, better houses, did any of them really learn to read or get to freedom? Cali spent half the night in their house talking, telling them everything and showing them the thing she’d stolen, which they found interesting, although no one could guess its use. She wanted to stay all night, but the house was already too crowded.

“Where’s everyone else?” she asked.

Mama patted Cali’s leg. She had Cali on her lap even though Cali was nearly as big as her mama by now. “Well, Leaf got married, and he got some stuff together and made a house. He has two babies now,” Mama said.

“Boyd got taken off somewhere else,” Poppy said. “Not to a Superior though. He got taken with a bunch of guys. To work in another area on one of the food-farms, but we don’t know where. Somebody who was up front said they went south.” She waited to see if Cali would react. Cali knew the legends as well as anyone. People said in South America some saps lived free. But she didn’t really buy into all those hopeful stories. She’d heard those same stories about how the restaurants were heaven, and they hadn’t been all that great to her.

“And Maypull?”

“She’s inside. Now that all my babies are grown, we couldn’t all fit out here,” Mama said. “She’s got a boyfriend in there, so she wanted to go in.”

Cali looked around at her family, at Zinnia’s big stomach and Poppy’s baby. And her littlest sister had a boyfriend. Everyone would have their own families. Except her, and Gwen, who shared some of Cali’s fears about having babies. “No one else has a baby?” she asked.

Zinnia put her hand on her belly. “I lost two,” she said. “They were in there together, so the midwife said it was good, because…you know. Having two at once is bad, and I’d be cursed.”

“And then the boy thought she was cursed anyway, even though her body threw the cursed babies out, and she had to come back here,” said Poppy. “Which we like anyway, since now she’ll have a baby to play with mine. And her new boyfriend is nicer anyway.”

Poppy laughed. “That’s what you’re supposed to do. And don’t worry, we’ll show you around and you’ll have a boyfriend in no time. So, were there any cute boys in the restaurants? Did you have any babies?”

“That’s okay, we’ll find you a boy and you’ll have a baby in no time. That’s how you get out of here, if they like you enough and you have enough babies. Then someone will buy you.”

Cali looked at her mama, who’d had a lot of babies and was still there. And now she’d gotten older and probably wouldn’t have any more babies. And no Superior had ever bought her, and probably none ever would. Even if a Superior did buy one of them, they wouldn’t be free. But she didn’t have the heart to tell Poppy, who looked at her with those kid eyes. She was only thirteen. She’d have lots of time to figure out that no one was free.

Chapter Twenty

Draven had never dined with a Second Order Superior before. In fact, Seconds rarely conversed with him and never outside of business. He wasn’t sure what to expect, how to appear. He didn’t know anyone he could ask, either, since he didn’t know anyone who had encountered a similar situation. The Orders didn’t mix. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen a member of the First Order.

He dressed in neat, formal attire. In the car, he punched in the address Byron had given him and waited for the map to squiggle onto the screen on the Mert’s dash. Following the directions, he arrived punctually. He had only been inside a few houses in his life, and never one as nice as the Enforcer’s. He drove up the driveway and stopped near the end of the circle so he could continue down the hill when he left. The circular drive had a wall about the height of Draven’s shoulders, made of red brick like the drive. The bricks under his feet, arranged in a circular pattern around the small island of greenery in the center of the drive, continued up the steps and along the pathway to the front door.

Draven started up the walkway, worrying he’d not dressed according to the correct manner of Seconds. He arrived atop the sloping hill and went on the porch of the Enforcer’s house. He hesitated, took a deep breath, straightened his shirt, and knocked.

The tall woman who opened the door was younger than Draven had expected, only a few years older than him, attractive but thinner than the current curvaceous ideal for Superior women. Women like her looked fresh no matter their age, necessary to staying married for hundreds of years, he supposed. She shook his hand, taking his hand in both of hers and smiling as she spoke.

“Hi, you must be Draven,” she said. “I’m Marisol. It’s so nice to meet you. My husband talks about you all the time. Won’t you come inside and join us?”

“You have a lovely home,” he said as he followed her inside. Her hair, pinned up and veiled in intricate gold netting on the front, gave him a little shock when she turned. A section of thick, dark waves tumbled down the center of her back. He tried not to think about the blatant lack of modesty it conveyed, but it drew his attention nonetheless, like a pathway that led the eye down the sway of her lower back to the swell of her buttocks and the secret entrance hidden there. He looked away from her hair, uncomfortable with such a sexual display on his friend’s wife and his inability to control his thoughts when he saw it.

“Did you have any trouble finding it?” she asked.

“Finding what?” he asked, still thinking about where her hair led his thoughts. “Oh—no. No trouble. None at all. I look forward to meeting the rest of your family, sir. What I’ve met thus far has been quite pleasant.” He tried to keep his mind clear, but it had been seduced against his will by someone he could never have. Even if she hadn’t been a Second, women like her scared him a bit.

She laughed and gave her hair a subtle toss, as if to punctuate his compliment. She brought him into a living area roughly the size of his entire apartment. Byron sat on a heavy chair that matched the rest of the furniture. He set his cigarette on the edge of an ashtray and stood when Draven entered.

“Please, sir, keep your seat,” Draven said, bowing his head in greeting. “I am very much obliged to you for the invitation. Your home is impressive. I am honored to be present.”

Byron gave a wry smile and sat. “At ease, soldier. We’ve been friends half a year. You can relax. I’m not your superior while you’re visiting. Just your host. Have a seat, here, have a cigarette.”

Draven accepted, uncertain of the protocol in the situation. He had dressed too formally and had spoken that way, too. Byron leaned forward and lit the cigarette between Draven’s lips, and they sat smoking for a few minutes. Draven hadn’t smoked in quite some time. Byron studied him, and Draven found the scrutiny unnerving. He hoped he wasn’t doing something to offend his host. Perhaps he should not have accepted the first offer of something so expensive.

“Our livestock are quartered out back. Some people have them inside, I know, but I really detest the smell. I don’t even let ours inside to work or clean like most people. I’d rather have a messy house where I can breathe than a clean one with the stench of cattle.”

“Your house is far from messy, sir. Quite the contrary.”

“Yes, the little ones can’t work, so they take care of the house while my wife and I are working. And they don’t mind the sapiens’ smell as much, either. They’re like pets to the children, I’m afraid.” Byron shook his head and smiled in an indulgent manner, as if to say children had a mind of their own. Draven didn’t know any children and rarely saw one.