Chapter 2: Interview

"You're sure you're OK now?" Lyn asked for the umpteenth time as she steered Mobile Three toward the CAP testing centre. She pulled the visor down against the early morning sun.

Sandy sat miserably in the passenger seat of the battered old SUV. "Yes, I'll be OK. It's just a flu bug or something."

"Or something is right. You got it all over George."

George had not been happy about that. Before they left for this early-morning interview, he'd tried yet again to drag out exactly what this "big news story" was all about. WWNN had been very pointed in their questions to him – the news channel couldn't afford to promise their audience a big story and then not deliver, and wanted confirmations and comforting levels of detail. In the end, his office reeking of vomit, he'd shoved them both out the door.

"It isn't something you ate, is it?"

Sandy shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

"You know what the rumour is?"

Sandy looked at Lyn timidly. "What?"

"Morning sickness. Who's the lucky guy?" Lyn smirked lasciviously.

"Nobody – it couldn't be morning sickness." Sandy gripped her hands tightly together, and added in a whisper, "I'm still a virgin."

Sandy almost lost the contents of her badly-abused stomach again as the truck came to a screeching halt. Behind, horns from the cars of a couple of startled morning commuters blared to indicate the occupants' displeasure.

"You – you're a virgin? You're what, twenty?"

"Twenty-two."

Blinking in amazement, Lyn slowly resumed her drive to the CAP testing centre. Only half of her attention was now focused on the road ahead. "I don't believe that. We have parents openly boasting of their mid-teen kids' sexual skills, and you're a virgin. What were you planning on doing at an extraction? Do you even give head?"

"I've never had to," Sandy confessed in a little-girl voice. "I didn't have time for relationships in college – I was spending too much time studying to allow for those frivolities."

"Geez," Lyn sighed. "Look, my brother has this friend. Let me set you up. He's supposed to be a pretty good cocksmith. He can help you over the, ah, hump." Lyn actually knew from firsthand experience that her brother's friend was a pretty good cocksmith. She'd spent last weekend at his apartment, screaming her approval of his skills to the residents of the unit one floor above.

"Right. Let's get this over with first," Sandy suggested, desperate to change the topic away from her embarrassingly non-existent love life. "There's the CAP testing centre."

The SUV pulled into the parking lot and stopped at a convenient spot. As they got out, Lyn wondered idly if they'd be done by noon. She was saving up for a deposit on a condo, and as a result routinely brown-bagged it. Lunch was in the refrigerator at the lounge at work.

Tribune William Whitefeather was waiting for them inside, bearing brown paper cups of take-out coffee from a certain popular Canadian chain. Both women accepted the peace offering gratefully.

He led the pair to the same interview room he and Sandy had used the previous afternoon. Gesturing to the guest chair, he settled his impressive bulk behind the desk. Lyn began setting up the tripod to hold her video camera.

As they sipped on their coffees, the imposingly tall Tribune addressed the pair. "I think the best thing to do is to treat this as much as possible as a routine extraction."

Lyn stopped dead in her efforts to set up the tripod. "We're being extracted?" she asked uncertainly. She didn't know whether to panic or cheer.

"No, silly, it's just for the purposes of the story. We aren't really becoming concubines," Sandy reassured her co-worker.

"Oh, it's real," nodded Whitefeather.

"See?" Sandy turned to Lyn, her smile brilliant. "Realistic."

"Yes, I see. Very realistic." Lyn was now extremely glad she brought her CAP card with her wherever she went. She kept it behind her official KROA-TV ID, in a plastic pouch dangling from her neck by a lanyard. Under her breath she muttered, "Clean your ears out, Sandy..."

As the camera came on, Whitefeather began his presentation. It was a slightly less brutal one than the version given at the typical extraction. "All right, where to begin? First of all, let's talk about concubines at the time of pickup. They're usually not unassigned, but rather have a sponsor. The only rights they have are those the sponsor grants them. It's not marriage – it's been compared to chattel slavery, and frankly there's no practical difference. The sponsor is expected to have at least two concubines and to keep all female concubines popping out babies at least every third year, preferably more often." He paused to see if Sandy actually absorbed this information.

Sandy nodded; this was common knowledge in the Era of the Swarm. "Concubines' first duty is to breed, right?"

"Exactly. They keep the home clean, which with nanite support isn't hard."

"What's a nanite?" Sandy demanded.

"Microscopic robots. Some are inside us, protecting us against medical conditions and providing support when we're injured. Others build things, or maintain ships or colony structures, that sort of idea."

She wasn't so sure she wanted that in her, but didn't press the point.

Whitefeather continued his presentation. "Usually there are only two reasons for a concubine to become unassigned: the sponsor became irritated with her and decided to place her in the Unassigned Concubine pool, or her sponsor died. Widows are regarded favourably, and are usually placed pretty quickly. Those whose sponsors kicked loose are tougher to place, but still have to breed. Breed, or be recycled."

"What does 'recycled' mean?"

Lyn winced at the stupidity of the question. What else could it mean?

"They are put down," Whitefeather advised her, some sadness in his voice. "Euthanized."

"Oh..."

"There's a third way that a concubine can become unassigned, though."

"Really?"

"Really. It's what we're going to do now, as an example for your viewing audience. We have certain colonies where the number of kids turning 14 is large, and so is the percentage of those kids getting CAP scores above six point four. You know that anyone with at least a 6.5 is a sponsor, and gets at least two concubines?"

Sandy nodded. "And if it's seven point something it's four, and eight point something it's six, and so on."

"And at breeding colonies we grant them at least one additional concubine if the nurturing factor is high enough – a combination of a high enough nurturing number in their CAP score, at least three kids, plus the kids' ages. Plus, on the typical colony, the sponsor can have any dependant that scores under the magic number as an additional concubine with no impact on their head count, which means one fewer concubine for the Unassigned pool. Between those three situations, we occasionally find ourselves with colonies that are woefully short of available concubines."

"Ah, I see."

"Now we also have colonies where the attrition rate is such that we have surpluses of unassigned concubines, so we do occasionally ship the excess from one colony to another using a Haskell-class assault transport. We're also trying to extract the maximum number of humans from Earth, so we've set up a new program called 'Filles du Roi'. It takes suitable concubines, assigns them to the unassigned concubine pool of a particular colony, and away they go. They won't know who their ultimate sponsors are until they get there, but they are assured that they're needed at that colony. If they're not required right away, then they'll be assigned in the very near future."

Sandy nodded, although she was a bit uncertain if she grasped the concept.

"Now, if I were to offer you both the chance to be extracted as Filles du Roi, what would your answer be? Do you agree to be extracted as Filles du Roi, concubines to be assigned to a sponsor when you arrive at a colony that the Confederacy sends you to? Yes, or no?" Whitefeather leaned back in his chair benignly.

Sandy blinked. "A chance to go to the stars? Yes! I've wanted to go since I was a kid watching the stars in the planetarium!"

Whitefeather tilted his head slightly and addressed the camerawoman. "Lyn?"

Lyn now knew for certain: this was an extraction. Her CAP score being 5.2, she was going to be a concubine. She'd be popping out babies, just like her mother wanted her to. As, she realized, she herself wanted to. "Of course yes!"

"Then why don't you just hand over those CAP cards, ladies," Whitefeather suggested, his voice as calm as milk.

Sandy thought that a great idea. "Just like the real thing, huh?" she whispered to Lyn.

"Do we get naked now?" Lyn fretted as she handed the precious CAP card over.

"No. Not until you're aboard ship," the tribune informed her, nodding affably.

Sandy interposed, "They wouldn't make us do that, not for a sample extraction like this."

"Sample extraction? Is there any Egyptian in you, Sandy?" Lyn wanted to know.

"Not that I know of, why?"

"Because you're swimming in denial."

Lyn caught the tall Civil Service officer's grin. At least one person in the room got her joke.

"The next step in the extraction process," Whitefeather continued, "is the trip to the ship." He added to Lyn, "You'll want to shoulder that camera."

In a trice Lyn had the tripod folded up, bagged and hung from her webbing. Just as she was about to switch the camera on again, she turned to her host. Patting the camera, she asked, "This belongs to KROA-TV, will they be getting it back?"