Chapter 4

The crowd milled about, insensate. I couldn’t catch my breath. I’d been sold. A woman with flowers in her hat strutted by, nose in the air, followed by a younger girl in a drab dusty robe like my own panting slightly under the weight of a rolled-up rug hoisted on her shoulder. A slave ... like me now. Still, it felt good to be off that damned stage, the unreality of this whole sequence of events feeling less overwhelming from the anonymity of a crowd. I closed my eyes for a few seconds, concentrating on the coarse feel of my new garment’s fabric against my otherwise naked flesh. Wool? When I opened my eyes again I found myself caught in the fixed brown stare of the woman who had called the last bid at my auction, my new <owner> apparently. The million questions I should have started asking left me dumbstruck. After a few seconds I sheepishly dropped my gaze to the ground.

“Come on” she said, and turned to leave without even a glance back to confirm her order.

We didn’t get far, sidling and twisting through the noisy crowd until she stopped in front of the same stage upon which I’d recently been displayed for her approval. Apparently I was not to be her last purchase of the day. A middle-aged woman, completely nude, weather beaten, with hands as work-hardened as lobster claws, was currently turning in place to display her muscular buttocks to the audience while her slaver advertised her as a strong and resilient all-weather field worker. Three more waited resigned behind her against the curtain. I blushed, feeling guilty that I was ogling a naked broad in broad daylight now that I wasn’t panicking on stage myself. Shivering now that the adrenaline was wearing off, I pointedly ignored the free strip-show and busied myself instead taking stock of the marketplace around us.

The town square was unbuilt except for a poorly sculpted and corroded stone statue of a woman brandishing some kind of weapon, around which milled the constantly shifting throngs of shoppers. Of various makeshift stalls around its edges only ours was devoted to slavery. Pleasant smells wafted from a smoking grill off to one side and unpleasant smells wafted from a livestock paddock off to the other. Textiles were being traded in great quantities, as were pots and farm implements. Carts continuously picked up and dropped off sets of barrels filled with various solids and liquids. I looked in vain for hints of modern technology.

My attention was snapped back by my new owner belting out a monetary amount. The middle-aged slave on stage had fallen back to the curtain. In her place up front stood a leathery-skinned, older one with gray hair (and nothing to hide the fact the carpet did indeed match the drapes) and a pair of rather unappetizing shriveled teats. She sported a wry grimace through the near absence of bids. My owner’s last call stood unopposed. At the next pause between lots we walked back to wait for her sale to be processed by the town’s bean-counter. Wordlessly, the old woman slid a robe over her wrinkles, flipped her hair out of the neck-hole, picked up a small satchel of presumably all her worldly goods and slung it over her shoulder, somehow managed to look me over with one eye while nodding submissively at our buyer and recited:

“Thank you for buying me, mistress. I hope to serve you well. May I ask your name?”

“Itoomawa. Follow me. We’ve got some things to pick up before we go.”

Belatedly, I realized I had been expected to carry out this little greeting ritual as well. I cleared my throat:

“Umm, name’s Adam...”

Our dark-haired new boss threw me a lopsided smirk over her shoulder:

“I didn’t ask.”

We both fell in behind as Itoomawa perused a few market stalls, stopping in front of one piled with rolls of fabric. Wordlessly, our elderly companion tapped my arm to get my attention and beckoned me to the side with several other slaves while our owner thumbed through the merchandise. I was starting to get the idea: don’t talk unless spoken to, don’t be in anyone’s way, and somehow, learn all these fucking rules while not speaking or getting in anyone’s way! Dropping a few coins in the seller’s hand, Itoomawa pointed at me, then casually at a roll of something off-white.

“Pick it up” whispered the old woman helpfully at my side, nudging me forward. The smooth but not particularly soft fabric (linen?) wouldn’t have been too heavy, except the weeks on the road had done little to help me rebuild muscle mass after a century of suspended animation. I hoisted it on one shoulder and shuffled after the boss until she entered a building labeled with a stylized dress and pair of scissors. Through a filmy, half-sized window, I saw her pointing at us. She emerged with a stack of clothes, shoved them under my spare arm and we moved to our next destination, the grill. My stomach audibly growled. We waited, salivating at Itoomawa buying herself a kebab from a wiry young woman with her hair in a bun, nipples shining through a sweat-soaked tank top. Seeing me staring, Itoomawa blew on the steaming meat and vegetables in my direction, smirked when I swallowed hard.

“You hungry?”

“Yeah.” I nodded.

“Yeah what?”

“Huh?”

She reached her free hand and gave me a hard tap on the cheek, not quite a slap but enough to send a message, and to draw amused whispers from other customers.

“Who are you talking to, right now?”

“What?”

“Who am I?” She added in a mocking tone, ripping off a bite of meat. I breathed deep to keep calm.

“Umm, you said your name’s Eat-um-hah-wuh?”

She grinned, swallowed her current bite, her brown eyes suddenly steely. The second was a full slap. I staggered, almost dropping the clothes and cloth.

“What the fuck are you –”

This time she backhanded me hard on the opposite cheek. I almost threw the bolt of cloth at her until I felt fingers digging into my forearm: the old woman, expressionless, hissed softly in warning, ostensibly making sure I didn’t drop the clothes, then stepped back immediately. I took a deep breath. Itoomawa leaned back against a nearby wooden post, nibbling daintily one-handed at a bit of roast pepper while at the same time flexing her other hand’s knuckles pointedly. She returned my stare unapologetically for a few seconds, then said:

“Look behind you, boy.”

Boy? I was probably the same age as her. Taking another breath, my cheeks stinging, I wheeled my gaze among the small crowd of gawkers we’d drawn, most of their expressions openly mocking. Directly behind me had crept a stout female in blue-colored body armor twirling a club in her fingers, a pistol at her belt with a slightly flared muzzle that looked lifted off a cartoon pirate. No doubt, however, it still shot real bullets. Turning back to Itoomawa, who was halfway through her kebab, I conceded in a low voice:

“Yeah, okay, I get it.”

“Do you though? So who am I?” She licked and smacked her lips, evidently amused at this whole conversation and impromptu physical assault. I shifted my two weights, arms beginning to tremble from the strain.

“You ... bought ... me, so I guess you’re the boss?”

“Hahah!” She threw her head back, black braid waving. “Close enough for now.” She bit off a large mouthful and nodded to our companion, still chewing as she led us off. “You. Dell him ‘ow doo act ‘ater. ‘Ome on.”

The crowd dispersed as it became obvious we wouldn’t be putting on a full show. We walked to a livestock paddock where Itoomawa bought a small wooden crate lined with hay and filled with loudly piping goslings (and thankfully handed it to the other slave as I’d run out of hands) then off into a large, cobbled street away from the market to where three covered wagons waited, hitched to pairs of cows. Grunting with exertion, I was finally allowed to dump my bundles into one of the wagons. After exchanging a few words with several women, some armed, some not, Itoomawa turned to us slaves.

“How long’s it been since you ate?”

“This morning” we both replied “ma’am” added my companion, making me kick myself mentally when I realized how easily I could’ve avoided being slapped earlier.

“Feed this one something.” She left the old woman with the others, and motioned to me to follow me back to market. The sun was on its way down and it looked like the slave trade was wrapping up. Several young girls stood, firm little tits jutting into the stiff breeze, on the ill-favored stage. Instead, Itoomawa led me toward a stall whose upper tier shimmered in the afternoon light, hung with various reflective objects. When we got close, I stifled a laugh at realizing they were CD-ROMs, most of them broken. The table below was lined with dulled, sun-baked, half-rusted bits of barely-recognizable metal and plastic, each laid reverently on an ornate, colorful cloth napkin.

“You know anything about knick-knacks?” Itoomawa mumbled lowly toward me.

“Knick-knacks?”

“You know, stuff from your day. I guess you would. I’m looking for one of those things you kept drawing and writing and sound on, but not the round ones” she waved dismissively at the CDs “one of the really little ones. One of these maybe? Don’t touch them though.” She pointed to a couple of lumps adorned with USB ports. One looked like just an adapter of sorts. The other I slowly recognized as a thumb drive, though most of its plastic had cracked, crumbled and chipped away.

“That one, I guess. But ... I mean, it’s not going to work anymore, you know...”

The saleswoman squared her shoulders scowling like she was about to haul off and deck me:

“Damn right it won’t! I don’t sell cursed trash, boy!”

“I ... what?” I stammered. Itoomawa waved her hand in conciliation.

“Don’t mind him. They dug up a new tomb and he’s fresh out of the coffins.”

“Oh, yeah, heard about that. Should’ve guessed.” The merchant sniffed superciliously and didn’t favor me with another look the whole time they bartered. In the end she wrapped up the thumb drive and a couple of shards of CDs in cloth, studiously avoiding touching them directly. Itoomawa led me toward the food stands, eyeing me critically and at one point pinching my arm.

“Is this thinner than you were before you got buried?”

“Definitely. I mean, I was never all that muscular” I shrugged, wondering suddenly how much my physical condition might change as a slave “but yeah, I wasn’t born a walking skeleton.”

“Let’s put some meat back on your bones then.”

She bought a hunk of beef from the grill, garnished with lettuce between two slices of surprisingly delicious fresh bread. For herself, she stopped off for an apple pie before moving us both to sit down in the grass on one side of the square. I’d already wolfed down my lunch by the time she dug into her dessert. I licked my fingers and stared incredulously at the waning bustle of the marketplace, a scene at once medieval, catastrophic and unexpectedly mundane. She pressed a sloshing leather pouch into my hands. A water-skin.

“That one’s yours from now on. Keep it filled when you can. You’ve been a good boy so you can ask me three questions. Just three. I know you tube stiffs have a thousand of them every day, but I’m not sitting here all night.”

I took a few swigs and tried to choke down the lingering sting on my cheeks as she finished her pie, carefully gathering up all the crumbs from her leather jacket. Whatever else this was, it was not a post-scarcity futuristic society. A sunburnt woman was rolling a barrel past us, dressed in loose, plunging shirt, unconcerned about the great view of her wobbling cleavage her hunched stance gave me. Brassieres had seemingly gone out of style. Well then, that was one point in favor of this new world.