Chapter 6

There wasn't much for me to do other than collect my wallet so that I had access to my ID and bank accounts. When I had the meager property that I needed (as the clothes I'd been wearing no longer fit) I was placed in a wheel chair and wheeled out the main entrance of the hospital. Why this was necessary when I'd been walking all over the hospital I didn't know but it seemed to be one of those rules that no one knew the origin of, but everyone was unwilling to challenge it because it was 'tradition.' Lori left me with the nurse at the entrance and appeared shortly with her little red truck.

When I got in I said, "I think that I need to go pick up some more clothes."

Lori nodded and began to drive away. When she had negotiated the parking lot she asked, "Do you have any particular store you use?"

"Price has always been important to me. I didn't see any reason to pay more than I had to for clothes that I was going to wear to pick up garbage cans with. Even if I don't do a lot of hand moving of them any more."

"Then any discount place will do?" Lori asked.

"So long as they don't have a reputation for selling seconds or otherwise shoddy workmanship," I said.

"Let's do this; since you don't have your current measurements why don't we go someplace a bit upscale and get you fitted for one suit then use those measurements for your other clothes," Lori said.

Something had been bothering me for some time but this was the first time that I felt comfortable asking, "Lori, how long was I in the hospital?"

"Nine days, Joe."

"Nine days!" I said shocked, "Why that long?"

"Joe you were dying. You had a massive heart attack."

I sat there in Lori's truck and pondered that while she negotiated the city traffic. After a few minutes I asked about one of my deeper fears, "Lori, is Sheba even alive?"

"Yes Joe, she's alive and moping about one of my runs refusing to eat and drink."

I breathed a sigh of relief before asking, "How did you get her to let anyone give me aid?"

"I had one of my assistants bring down a tranquilizer gun that I keep for handling feral dogs if they come after my bitches," Lori explained.

"I suppose that I should thank you for that as I expect that animal control would have possibly put her down," I said.

"I wouldn't have let that happen even if I hadn't had a tranquilizer gun. I've been watching you for at least the last three years since the announcement of the Darjee telling the President about the Sa'arm. Sheba might as well be your wife for the amount of care you show her," Lori told me. I remained silent, as I hadn't realized that my care for Sheba had been that obvious.

"I do have one question though," Lori said, "What are you going to do about Sheba if she won't accept me?"

"My first instinct is to say that she is a dog, not a person. Beyond that if I understand what I saw on our little excursion I'd say that many women who are concubines are not treated as well as she has been up to this point. What do you think happens to a concubine who has a problem adjusting to a polyamorous situation?"

"I don't know."

That answer didn't seem right to me so I asked, "How would you deal with a bitch that refused a dog you intended to put her to?"

"That would depend but if I considered it necessary she would go in a forcing block."

"I think that is something you should think about seriously. If you become a concubine you may be treated worse than that. You won't be able to defend yourself from anyone who is a sponsor. You will be dependent on me to defend you, to provide for you, to even give you permission to eat I suspect," I said.

"But what has any of that got to do with Sheba's reaction to me?"

"How does Sheba act?"

"I'm not sure what you're getting at Joe."

"Suppose you saw her with me and instead of seeing a man with a dog you saw two dogs that had packed together. What would you say about her then?"

"She's the alpha bitch... ," Lori trailed off as her eyes got big.

"And consider this as well: She behaves much more like a wolf than a dog," I said. Now that I could see Lori was thinking about Sheba in a way that would be constructive.

"In a pack, only the alpha bitch mates with the alpha male and all the other members of the pack help her raise her offspring... ," Lori mused.

"Now what am I supposed to do if Sheba doesn't accept you as the alpha bitch in the newly expanded pack I'm forming?"

"I don't know ... Joe it sounds like you're talking about putting her down. That just doesn't seem fair!"

"What do you think the survival rate is for women who are extracted as their husband's concubine?" I asked.

Lori was silent for a while as she drove but I could see that I'd convinced her to consider some things that she had been glossing over. I didn't know that women who were extracted by their husbands as a concubine had poor survival rates. But it seemed to me that very few American women were used to thinking about how they would live and work in a group of women where they had to be a team member rather than compete for the top spot.

I didn't know if I could persuade as many women as I was authorized and maybe a man or two as well to all work together as a team or not. I wanted very much to bring Sheba with me. But I'd grown up on a farm in essence and while Sheba was not now a working dog I did understand that she would have to accept Lori or some other woman would be the alpha female. Or rather more to the point in the society that the Confederacy was building several other women who would all have my children and none of them could go to battle to be the top bitch lest they all be executed in a society that considered them as livestock.

Humans and dogs have lived in a sort of armed truce for many centuries. I wasn't sure what Lori's beliefs were with regard to dogs. I knew that unless Sheba could accept Lori as the alpha bitch in the pack, there would be more than problems in the house if I tried to have them both present. First, because Sheba was large enough that I wouldn't want to try to handle her without a pistol, and second, because I knew that if Sheba refused to accept Lori I'd have no choice but to betray an old friend who could not accommodate a new ally.

"Do you know that?" Lori asked just as I thought that she would maintain her silence until it came time to pick out a suit for me.

"I'm making a guess based on what I saw today. That woman could have been a supermodel on Earth just a few years ago. So while she is visually attractive, she is also treated like a commodity. Most American women are not able to even consider sharing their man. So I'd guess that when a married woman goes as her husband's concubine, she has a high chance of ending up dead because he has no choice except to kill her when she attacks the other women he has brought along for the express purpose of procreation."