Chapter 11

“How many mages do you have?” Boyd asked.

“Why?” Catia hedged.

“Well, you brought three thousand women here and expect them all to get pregnant in the next month. If they were spread out over your thirty-day month, then you can expect at least a hundred deliveries a day.”

“Realistically, women and babies aren’t that considerate, so on any one day, you could easily have twice that many kids wishing to be born and other days only a few.”

“That’s just the Earth women, not yours. So, you have two thousand men happily screwing your women when you say they are fertile. Now even if we took the week to get one up the duff and missed one, that’s still four each for the month.”

“That adds four thousand of you women trying to give birth at the same time as the Earth women. That’s roughly a hundred and thirty-three Therians in bed beside a hundred Earth women every day.”

“If they are considerate enough to spread the births evenly over the five weeks like that. So, who is going to get preferential treatment? After all, we are just slaves.”

“Oh dear, that many births at one time, wasn’t something we really thought about,” Catia stated.

“I’d like to say that it wasn’t such a problem because our people deliver in about thirty-five weeks or seven of our months. From what I understand, Earth women would normally take around forty-five weeks or nine of our months.”

“However, for most of your children, you will be mating with Therians. When we did the rejuvenation spell, we tried to make gestation easier and a little quicker, like for Therians.”

“I know that our children develop twice as fast in the first four months than human children do. That is why our gestation is shorter. So now I’m not sure if your people will give birth sooner or at the same time as our people.”

Emily’s gasp was audible at the silent table. “Seven months or less! Now I understand why you thought we could easily have a child a year.”

Julia added, “Boyd, Emily, not all of your people will be on Tye. While we get about half of them, they will be spread out over the nine major cities here and the others over the eleven major cities of the other islands.”

Boyd nodded and replied, “So each city has to gear up for at least fifteen births a day. I know that some women only take a few hours, but others can take a day or even two. I’d say that you people would want to have the maternity wards in operation in six months to account for the preemies and in case the Earth women do deliver sooner.”

Emily went into doctor mode and said, “Going by Boyd’s count, after the first blitz, you would still be getting roughly eight or nine Therians a day for each city for the foreseeable future.”

“Don’t forget that most first mothers are kept in the hospital for two to three days to make sure they are recovering and are producing milk. It could be longer if they have complications. Just because we are young again doesn’t mean we won’t have difficulties.”

“Then you will need after birth care for the mothers and babies. Do you have people trained to be midwives, delivery nurses, after birth carers? Do you have people making nappies, baby clothes and bottles? Have you worked out a milk substitute for women who can’t feed the children or die in childbirth?”

“You will probably find that if the women are expected to give up the child, they will refuse to feed it, so they don’t get emotionally attached to the child. Have you people trained to counsel these women as some will go into withdrawal at the loss of the child. Or suffer Post-natal depression. They may well refuse to have another child,” Emily ranted.

“But Emily, that is why we wanted the women to go to a family so they could stay with their children,” Camilla replied.

“Well, what if we don’t like that family or how they do things? Did you consider that?” Emily spat and slapped the table making everyone jump.

She sucked in a breath and then said more calmly. “Look, you people seem nice enough, but I don’t really know you. I’ve probably landed on my feet here, but I doubt that all of the other women will get an easy time of their incarceration.”

“Some of those women at the auction were downright scary, and I saw what the guard did to Boyd. So, you can’t tell me we will all be treated with respect and kindness. You are going to end up with traumatised women and men. Some will try to escape just because they can’t stand being a slave.”

Catia sighed, knowing full well that Emily was speaking the truth.

Theory, wishes and reality are not always the same things.

In their desperation, they had pushed most of the problems of what would happen once they had people to breed with to the side. Catia had no idea why they expected any of them to just comply.

Yes, they put the threat of the penal colony out there for those who were recalcitrant. Still, as Boyd had already stated, her people didn’t know how his society worked. The issue of slavery being outlawed on Earth hadn’t even been a consideration.

They hadn’t had slavery here for a thousand years either, so she wondered why they had considered it was the right way to treat these people. She remembered it being proposed that it was for their protection, but she wasn’t so sure anymore. When Boyd hit her with, ‘how would she like it done to her’, the reality had hit home.

“I’m sorry, Boyd and Emily. We have done your people a great injustice. Unfortunate, I can’t see a way to undo it at present. I am seriously concerned about your protection if we were to just set you free.”

“However, I do think we need to put in place a council so that if your people are being treated badly by the host family, you can seek to be removed from that family.”