Protecting His Mistress - Evangeline Anderson Page 0,76
and further into the conception center.
“Yes, of course you do—out of the three acceptable candidates your mother already approved,” Mistress Martinet said briskly.
Lilli turned her head and saw with relief that Karn was with them. Mistress Martinet noticed it too because she frowned and turned her head to look back at him.
“You’re not needed, bodyslave. I’ll take good care of your Mistress and deliver her back to you in the lobby in no time,” she told him.
Karn glared at her.
“Where my Mistress goes, I go,” he growled.
The fierce look in his mismatched eyes must have unnerved Mistress Martinet because her face went noticeably paler.
“Well…as long as you stay well back and don’t touch anything,” she said at last. “Ah—here we are!”
They had been walking down a corridor and now she opened a black door at the end of it and led Lilli into another small room. Inside were more blank walls and another black viewscreen. Mistress Martinet tapped it lightly with one long nail and it came to life.
“Now then,” she said, turning to Lilli who still felt numb. “I’ve taken the liberty of creating some models of the way your DNA would mix with the DNA from the three sperm candidates your mother has chosen. Have a look and see which one you like the most.”
She tapped the screen again and a baby’s face appeared. It had a shock of black hair and big blue eyes. Mistress Martinet tapped it again and it changed to a child of around one, then ten, then fifteen, and finally it became a young woman about Lilli’s age.
“This is what your daughter will look like if you choose Candidate number one,” she told Lilli. “As you can see, the genes are extremely dominant—it was the only way to get blue eyes when yours are brown. This child will be quite beautiful as you can see, but also strong tempered and willful—something to bear in mind if you intend to raise her yourself. However, your mother tells me that you’ll probably be engaging the services of a nannybot, so you don’t need to worry about her personality for at least twenty years, until she comes of age.”
“I don’t know that I want a nannybot,” Lilli protested. “I don’t think it’s right to give your child to someone—or something else—to raise.”
“Oh?” Mistress Martinet’s purple eyebrows rose in apparent surprise. “Well then, maybe this child will be more to your liking.”
She tapped the screen again and a new baby face appeared. This one had brown hair and the eyes were brown like Lilli’s own.
“This daughter will be much more pliant and easy to deal with. She won’t want to disobey and will be subservient to you and do what you tell her.”
Mistress Martinet tapped again as she spoke, showing the child growing up in different phases, as she had with the first image.
“However,” she continued, “Those were the same characteristics your mother chose for you, and now she tells me she rather regrets it. She told me to instruct you that you do not want a ‘spineless’ daughter—you need one with some willpower and stamina to follow you into business.”
“My…my mother said I was spineless?” Lilli felt the familiar ache in her heart.
“Oh, not in so many words, my dear,” Mistress Martinet said quickly. “She just wanted you to consider that in order to make your way in the cutthroat world of Yonnite business, one needs a little, ah, how can I put it? A little—”
“Bullshit,” Karn said harshly.
“I beg your pardon?” Mistress Martinet glared at him. “That wasn’t at all what I was going to say. And how dare you interrupt?”
“I said, this whole process of planning some kind of designer child is bullshit,” Karn growled, not backing down a bit. “How can you pick out babies so coldly like this? You ought to take what the Goddess gives you and be grateful for it.”
Lilli wondered if he felt like that because he knew himself to be incapable of fathering children. Maybe this seemed like an extravagant waste to someone who just wished they could have kids and would have been happy with any child as long as they were blessed to have one.
“If you continue to interrupt I’ll…I’ll have you thrown out,” Mistress Martinet warned him, though her face was pale when she said it.
“By who?” Karn glared at her. “I don’t see anyone else around. I’m here to protect my Mistress and I’m not going anywhere. So stop messing with her mind.”