the bushes.
“Hi,” she murmured to the woman, trying to keep a happy smile on her face as she spoke.
“Hello.” The woman didn’t look up from her pruning. She had a tiny, blunt pair of scissors she was using to carefully shape the leaves and buds of each bush into perfectly symmetrical shapes. “It’s a beautiful day in the Compound,” she added loudly.
“Oh, uh, yes. Yes, it is,” Penny agreed quickly. Then she murmured, “You promised me some answers. What in the hell is going on around here, anyway?”
The woman sighed and nodded.
“Fine. I’ll tell you what I can but you’ve got to be careful. If you give me away, I’ll pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She looked up, giving Penny that intense, hopeless gaze again. “I’ve been here fifteen cycles so I’m very good at pretending.”
Fifteen cycles? Does she mean fifteen years? Penny felt her breath catch in her throat.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “And I’m Penny, by the way. Penny from Earth.”
“Never heard of it,” the woman said dismissively. She clipped another bud. “My name is Claudette. I used to be from Tenga Four, but I’ll never get back there now.” She shook her head with a sad kind of resignation.
“What? Why do you say that? Haven’t you ever even thought about trying to escape?” Penny asked.
Claudette’s face hardened.
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d been here as long as I have and you knew how this place works. You know what happens to anyone who tries to escape or who loses their fertility? They get recycled.”
“What does that mean?” Penny shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
Claudette gave her a direct look.
“I heard that one of your number didn’t make the grade during her fertility inspection yesterday.”
Penny remembered the woman with purple skin and gills the guards had dragged screaming out of the exam room.
“Yes, they said they were taking her for recycling,” she said. “But I don’t understand what that is.”
“It’s exactly what it sounds like—no part of anyone or anything is ever allowed to go to waste here in the Compound. Remember how I told you not to eat the flesh on your breakfast tray this morning?” Claudette asked. “That was your friend—the one who failed her fertility test.”
“Oh! Oh, no,” Penny whispered, as the other woman’s words sank in. “That’s terrible,” she whispered, feeling sick.
“No, that’s the Compound,” Claudette said grimly. “It’s just the way things are here. So be careful what you eat.”
“What else is going on here?” Penny asked. “Why did they kidnap us in the first place?”
“Why do you think? They call us all breeders, don’t they?” Claudette’s voice was harsh. “You’re here to bear babies for the Glorious Cause. Only you’ll never get to see any of them—not as they ought to be, anyway.”
“What? Why not?” Penny demanded. “And if this is some kind of a…a breeding farm, how come none of the women I saw in the town was pregnant?”
“They take the baby out of you after the first trimester, that’s why,” Claudette told her. “That way you can keep bearing more and more babies—at least four a year is what they like. Or more if you’re fertile enough to have twins.”
“Four babies a year?” Penny was aghast. “But you never get to carry any of them to term? Why not?”
“They have to take them out so they can treat the fetuses in the chemical baths until it changes them into what they want,” Claudette said darkly.
“What they want?” Penny looked at her blankly. “What do you mean? What do they change the babies into?”
Claudette gave her a dark look.
“Where do you think the NeverBreeders come from?”
“What?” Penny shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, that can’t be right. I…I don’t believe you!”
“Believe what you want.” Claudette shrugged, as though it didn’t matter what Penny thought. “But ask yourself this—how else could they reproduce? Have you seen between their legs? They’re bare down there—completely smooth.”
Feeling sick, Penny remembered thinking how strange the smooth orange patch of skin between the NeverBreeder guards’ legs were when she’d seen them in the showers the day before.
“You’ve seen them.” Claudette nodded. “I can see it in your eyes—you know I’m telling the truth.”
“But…why?” Penny shook her head. “Why keep a whole Compound full of people who are fertile just to have babies and make them into people who are infertile and incapable of reproducing themselves?”
“For the ‘Glorious Cause,’ of course,” Claudette said sourly. “Someday our Glorious Leader will lead an army of NeverBreeders out