Chapter 2

Lucinda had decided to take thirty of her one hundred seventeen rabbits to this show. Kate had predictably gotten bored and was playing tag with some other children of the same age in the unused Exhibition Hall D, while she and her fellow competitors, some ten in all, were in Exhibition Hall E fussing with their bunnies prior to judging.

It was a small city show, not a regional one, and nobody expected much excitement. It was pleasant for her to meet her fellow breeders, all of whom she knew well from other shows and breeders' club meetings. She wondered idly as to how many at this show had high enough CAP scores to be sponsors.

The three judges were all unknown to her, which for a small unofficial show like this one was a surprise in and of itself: she knew most of the judges in not just this state but in all the surrounding ones. They were all tall, the two men handsome and the lady beautiful, built but not as sturdily as the marines she'd seen escorting James when he'd picked up her cull rabbits eight months' before. Still, there was something ... martial ... about this trio. There was none of the expertise in handling rabbits that she would have expected of experienced judges. Additionally, they weren't wearing aprons over the suits they wore rather uncomfortably — rabbits when handled by strangers, even if those strangers were experienced at handling the nervous creatures, tended to kick and a heavy cotton apron would protect your clothes from the damage from sharp nails. For another, they were unfamiliar with the nomenclature surrounding rabbits. The head of her town's breeders' club was hovering protectively and answering questions, some of which sounded insanely basic for experienced judges. Finally, every so often one or the other of them would get this faraway look, a look that rang a bell with Lucinda, she'd read about it somewhere. And then one of the male judges looked straight at her ... and looked visibly relieved.

In her head, alarm bells began to ring.

"Lacey..." she started, not taking her eyes off the "judges".

"Yes, Mom?" Lacey could see where her mother's attention was fixed.

"Get your sisters. Now! And all three of you, stick to me like glue." To mask her nervousness, she went back to fussing over Horton's cottontail, one eye still cocked on the strangers.

Victor found he was not alone in the meeting — Tri-County General Hospital Administrator Dr. Harvey Proctor had moved the proceedings over to the boardroom next door to his office. Two senior specialists, one a trauma surgeon (and hence, Victor's boss) and the other an OB/GYN, and two nurses from the maternity ward, were present. Victor's secretary June and a tall man that Victor hadn't met before rounded out the room.

Harvey opened the proceedings. "Ladies and gentlemen, before we can proceed with this meeting, our guest needs confirmation as to your identities. Please present your CAP cards."

All did. Victor was proud to hold a 7.2, none of the others around the table, except for June, held anything lower than a six point eight. June managed a six point two, insufficient to garner her volunteer status but still respectable.

"This gentleman here," Harvey began somewhat pompously — but then all his speeches tended toward pomposity — is Tribune William Whitefeather, of the Confederacy Civil Service. He has a most interesting offer for us."

"We have found ourselves with a painful need." Tribune Whitefeather began. "Simply put, our standard extraction process, of going into a large area and extracting any volunteer present and having him or her choose between the available pool of potential concubines present, provides us with plenty of warriors and breeding concubines. But people holding certain required skills or knowledge are not necessarily picked up in enough numbers, or sent to the colonies that most urgently require those skill sets. We try to cure that after extraction, but it's not easy, and indeed is not always possible." He shrugged. "In addition, those skills are not easily acquired through sleep training. In order to rectify that, I've been granted a small fleet of some of the Confederacy's smaller ships and ordered to acquire those skills by whatever means necessary."

Everyone around the table raised their eyebrows at that. What means would this man find 'necessary'?

"We are offering volunteers with medical training additional concubines as supernumeraries. If you bring on board at least two concubines with medical training, be those concubines nurses, doctors or EMT's, you will qualify for an additional head count to the total indicated by your CAP score. If your CAP score were in the sevens, you would therefore get a fifth concubine. In addition, if at least one of your concubines has what we call the 'nurturing magic number', you can add on yet an additional concubine."

"Excuse me," interrupted Harvey, "What's this 'nurturing magic number' thing?"