Chapter 3

Boyd stood there as shocked as his fellow earthlings.

He could see that not all of the local people had been aware of the restrictions that would be put upon the new slaves. Others were smiling and nodding. Still others were assessing the stock to see who they wanted first. One or two seem displeased with the announcement.

Boyd shivered at the hungry looks he was receiving. He was the only male with copper coloured hair and a mid-beige complexion up on the platform. He could see that quite a few of the women were fascinated by him.

When Flavia was listing the number of times that he would have to produce a child, he did some mental arithmetic. If he were on Earth, he would have to sire a kid at least every six to seven weeks. If he got more women pregnant faster, he wondered if he would get free faster.

But he didn’t know how his access to the women would be controlled or what freedom here would mean. He wasn’t sure that he liked the idea that he wasn’t expected to contribute to raising the kids or that he had no rights regarding them. To his knowledge, Becky was the only child he had ever sired, and she was a fluke.

He could only think that he had caught Mandy, the woman he married, at the start of her cycle. It had been a hot and heavy long weekend back home in ‘69, and she had been insatiable. He lost count of how many times he came over that weekend.

He had to smile, as the shifter-chick said he was back to a third of his age when they took him. That meant he was physically about twenty-seven. He’d still been a bit of a playboy about that age. Being in the Army and moving around so much in his earlier life, he took what he could get when he could find it.

Ever since his last stint in Vietnam in ‘71, he’d not been so virile. He was damn sure it was all that Agent Orange crap he breathed in that did it. While he could perform when he was stimulated enough, sex was no longer high on his agenda.

Even after divorcing Mandy, he rarely even masturbated between relationships. He could go many months before he even thought about going out and looking for some fun.

Boyd knew his lack of interest in sex was what killed his marriage. It was easy to pass off while he was still in the Army but not so much once he was back home. He’d used the excuses of his business.

Mind you, he got so darn busy that Mandy had to practically rape him to get him in the mood. The fact that he didn’t find Mandy an interesting person once he started spending more time with her and after he got out of the Army didn’t help either. He spent more time with his daughter than his wife.

Boyd suspected that Mandy had been sleeping around on him for most of their marriage but couldn’t be bothered to divorce her while he was still in the Army. Once he found out for sure, about three years after he got home for good, he just stopped sleeping with her and moved into his own room. He also took more contracting jobs out of town.

It had taken her four months to bail him up about not having slept with her in months. She had not been a happy camper when he told her that he didn’t want to catch an STD from her, and her drunken snoring was keeping him awake.

It didn’t make for a cheerful home for some time, and he spent even more time at work. At least he had been smart enough to put most of the profits he earned into a family trust with his Mum, thanks to her being a smart accountant.

Fortunately, Mandy left him before his mother died. He had been between large building contracts at the time and had dumped most of the profits into the trust while he was looking at his next project.

He’d also decided to take some time off and do some work on the house. It had desperately needed a new roof and a paint job. Most of his crew were farmed out to other jobs for other people while he took a break.

The building he kept most of his equipment in was leased, and the only real equity in the business was his name. He sub-contracted his workers, so he didn’t buy them trucks and paid them extra when they worked for him to cover the cost of them using their own vehicles.

His idea of doing business was to use other people’s money. It was rare that he purchased the materials with his own money and demanded a bond and percentage payments as he met each goal in the construction. No payment - no work.

Some people hadn’t liked it, but he was buggared if he was going to carry the debts of others, nor would he condone shoddy work by his people. He paid his taxes on time and always made sure Mandy had her housekeeping money every fortnight in her account.

Mandy was pretty pissed when she went to sue him in the divorce for half his business, the house and the cars and child support. She had no idea the cars were leased under the business, and it was all in Boyd’s mum’s name.

The trust owned the house, and Boyd paid rent to the trust. Mandy couldn’t access the trust as she wasn’t a trustee and had never been listed as a recipient of the profits either, as it all went to his mum.