Chapter 2

Mr. Pritchett’s history lesson had taken ten minutes. I provided you with a lot more information than he went over, but I felt it was necessary so that we won’t be judged too harshly for the mistake that was made. I got the boss back on track about that right now.

“You said a mistake was made,” I said. “What kind of mistake?”

Instead of answering the question, he asked another.

“Do you remember the Yoder contract from three months ago?”

I wanted to groan. Breeders moved from one contract to the next, without any R&R in between. We were usually out for two months before we got back home, and in those two months we would service four communities. He was asking about something we’d done midway through the previous contract run, six contracts ago.

“I do,” said Charity. “I remember thinking something was off when we serviced them.”

“I’ve examined the report you made after that run, and I didn’t see anything about that,” said Pritchett, dryly.

“It wasn’t anything in particular,” said Charity. “They just acted off. When I found out it was the first time they’d had a visit from PIS I just chalked it up to that.”

I looked at her. I was the overall team chief.

“We haven’t done any first time communities in over a year,” I said, frowning.

“Of course we have,” she said. “One of the men I serviced clearly told me I was the first woman he’d ever seen naked.”

“And that didn’t make it into your report?” commented Mr. Pritchett. Now his voice was tinged with anger.

“No,” she said, her voice firm. “I specialize in virgins. You know that. It’s why I’m on the team. Why would I comment on every virgin I break in?”

“So this virgin was a stripling boy,” said Mr. Pritchett.

For the first time, Charity’s face displayed something other than confidence.

“Well ... no. As I recall, he was in his middle twenties. I remember he was engaged to one of the women Bob took care of.”

“And he wasn’t ... reluctant?”

“Every virgin is reluctant,” said Charity. “I used no more force than was authorized.”

“And do you remember how much force was authorized?” asked Pritchett.

“Not right off hand but I never use more than is needed. Come on, Sir. You know me. You know our team. We’re good at our jobs. What’s this all about?”

Again, he avoided a clear and simple answer.

“I want you to clear your calendar. You’ll be with me the rest of the day, or as long as it takes to get to the bottom of this. I have your reports on that contract here, so look them over and refresh your memories. Then I want you to tell me in as much detail as you can remember, exactly how the servicing of that contract was prosecuted.”

“So you’re not going to tell us what this mysterious problem was,” I said.

“Not yet,” he said. “I have my reasons.”

“You’re the boss,” I said.

I didn’t have to contact anybody to “clear my calendar.” I was the boss, when it came to our team, and the rest of the team was off when we were back home. We always got a week off before we went back out. As soon as we got back we received information on our next job, so they all knew when to gather back up for another trip. It wasn’t like any of them were going somewhere on vacation between jobs.

I picked up my report on the Yoder contract, and sat down to read.

It had been a standard request for service. The number of females to be serviced was fifteen, which was unusually large, but sometimes neighboring compounds chip in together to save costs and combine resources. It wasn’t unusual for there to be a cluster of compounds in an area. They were separated by doctrine or dogma. Maybe their internal politics were different. At the same time, the more land you could till and plant, the bigger the harvest. Storage was easy to come by, since most modern silos at the time of the collapse were bolt-together steel structures, and could be moved. If the compound was built around an old farm, you didn’t even have to move the silos.

There also seemed to be a sweet spot, in terms of population. If you were too small you struggled with having enough people to do the work needed for all to survive. If you got too big some of them will start thinking independently. That’s always bad for the alpha male. The answer to this was to let a beta male take some folks half a mile down the road and build his own compound. In some cases the entire group would help build it. Then, those two “related” families would cooperate in terms of expanding the amount of land being farmed.

In some cases, if possible, you wanted your young people to be able to choose mates from another compound. Since it was unlikely there would be any babies this wasn’t a matter of getting “fresh blood” into the family. Rather, it was one way (the cheapest way) to establish bonds with the neighbors so they wouldn’t attack you. It also expanded the family so that you had more people to do the work. It could reduce internal competition, which could distract young people from more important things. Like digging those potatoes and getting them into the root cellar before winter started.

So, we’d had fifteen females to impregnate. There was actually an address for the compound; 4 mile rock, Skiline Road, old Colorado. That meant there were probably multiple compounds in the area. Most isolated compounds were simply drawn on the map by whatever name they used.

Where the section “Sectarian area?” was, the “yes” was checked, but no sect was listed. All that meant was that it wasn’t an area of turmoil. We were pros and whatever religious or political issues we ran into, we adapted. For example, if a compound was communist, we happily called everybody Comrade. If it was a Muslim group, we allowed the women we bred to keep their hair and face covered. We were multicultural in every sense of the word.

My eyes moved to the “use of force” block. “Whatever force is needed” was checked. Additionally, “Females will resist” was scrawled in shaky letters on the comment line.

I frowned. There were a number of reasons why “females might resist.” The most common one was that there were religious objections to strange men coming in and impregnating your young women. Early on, those communities who clung to that tenet died out. When it became obvious that you had to let strange men come and impregnate your women, they adapted. Usually, what we used in those cases was a modified home invasion scenario, where blustery men opened the door without knocking and told the occupants there was nothing they could do. The women to be bred were identified and pulled away from “weeping” mothers. They were loosely gagged and before they were mounted, their hands were loosely tied to something. They could get free if they wanted to, but this allowed them to pretend that they were resisting, and that this was rape, not something they were consenting to.

Another reason a woman might resist was because she didn’t want to get pregnant. Just because it was your duty to procreate didn’t mean you were excited about it. And just because the world had almost ended, that didn’t mean homosexuality had ended, too. When you lived and worked and slept with each other, it wasn’t unusual for two women to fall in love. Some of them wanted nothing to do with a man, especially with a man’s penis invading her body. She did have a duty to the group, though, and if she wasn’t willing to perform it, then we were authorized to breed her anyway.