Chapter 12

“Catia, what if the women don’t fall pregnant the first time?” Emily asked.

“Then we will have to wait until they next ovulate. Their cycles may take a few months to settle down to thirty days after being restored. Our records show that in the past, the non-Therian women shifted to this cycle within a year of being here.”

“So, you might get a bit of a reprieve as the women settle into their new bodies. You are still going to have a lot of births in one go on your hands,” Boyd warned.

“Yes. As to the women’s contract, I believe we should also shift the child born to a human male to their third birth to ensure that the men can complete their contracts without being forced to complete another year while waiting for a female to be available.”

“Oh, this is all so clinical. Why can’t we just let nature take its own course?” Emily wailed.

Catia gave Emily a sad look as Mathus gave her a hug, “I’m sorry, Emily, but we are a dying race, and if we don’t enforce these conditions, then in a few hundred years, we will be right back where we started if we don’t have you people breed as well.”

“Do you wish for your race to die out with us?” Julius asked her gently.

Emily sat back up but didn’t move out of Mathus’s hug and blinked at him. “But can’t you go get more of us later?”

“Can we bank on the portal opening again? No, I don’t think we can. We had a lot of trouble holding it open to bring the last group through as it was,” Catia told them.

“I also think there is a time flux on the portal. When I opened it twenty-nine years ago, the people on your continent dressed very differently. They didn’t have motorised machines that looked like those in your time. I don’t believe our planet is in synchronisation with yours.”

“Also, with the destruction you are doing to that planet and the plague that is running rampant, there is no guarantee that you will have people left for us to take. Your older generations were not coping with it.”

“Oh, I forgot about that. They were having a lot of trouble controlling it. Are you sure you didn’t bring it here with is?” Emily asked with worry evident in her voice.

“Yes, we were very thorough in removing all harmful cancers, viruses and bacteria from your bodies. Some of your people were very sick, and it took us weeks to cleanse you all. You all had a lot of toxic chemicals in your systems that we had to remove before we could even do the regenerative spells.”

Boyd frowned, “So how long has it been since we were taken?”

“Well, that depends on when you were taken. We could only get you out when it was nighttime on your world, and we had to limit the number to a hundred people per team. We had six teams that operated for ten days across the continent. So, on average, we collected about five hundred people per night.”

“It was exhausting for our mages. If it wasn’t for the fact that I had increased the growth of the crystals in our portal cavern, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve what we did. When we got you to this end, you were put straight in the stasis rooms.”

“Then it became a process of treating you and deciding where we were going to release you. In most cases, it became a case of last into the stasis chambers the first out. Some of you have also taken longer to treat than others, and few are still being treated.”

“So far, we have only distributed six hundred of you as it is taking longer than expected to process and transport so many people to the other islands. Over the next eight to ten days, the rest are scheduled to be sent to the processing centres. It has been six weeks since we took the first people.”

“Can you stretch out taking the people out of stasis to twice as long? That would spread the births for our women and yours over nearly two months instead of one,” Boyd suggested.

Catia looked at him and then smiled, “Yes, I think we can do that if we only deliver half of those assigned. We could then make the second delivery ten days later. It will also give the processing centres a bit more of a breather in dealing with the auctions.”

She then chuckled, “Realistically, we could make three or four small delivers. It would also ensure that the auctions are well attended.”

“If word gets around that your people are settling in and if we get an announcement of several people being pregnant, that will also quell a lot of worries with regards to the slow down. We have some very anxious people out there waiting to meet your people.”

Boyd replied, “It will also give us time to get the contracts sorted out. If you say that you don’t wish to bring any more out of stasis until that is sorted, it will also give your people time to improve the processing.”

“Displaying us naked and disorientated didn’t give us a positive attitude towards you people. It would be nice if it was explained to the others exactly what is expected and why, when they are coherent and in a calm room.”

Emily said, “You could even have two parts to the contract. One that is set as we have discussed and a section where the clan and the servant can discuss other conditions, jobs and remunerations like Boyd asked about.”

“Yeah, and tell your own people what the fuck is going on. Send out leaflets or post a news item. You could even set a minimum price that way to pay for all the maternity hospitals you need,” Boyd suggested.

That got him several chuckles from around the table.

While they enjoyed their second cup of tea, they discussed money.

They even managed to find room for the small fruit pastries that appeared on the tables. Boyd wanted to establish an exchange rate, so he knew just what something was worth here.

They explained that they had moved over to the Keltrian numbers within a century of being on Gaia. They also used their monetary and barter system. Marcus gave him several coins to examine and explained their value.

He told them that square coins have a value of a number starting with one. Triangular coins were two, and round coins were five. They then rattled off the numbers and the letters added to the names to denote the higher denominations.