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  “But it’s done?”

  “All the time,” Tedla said bitterly. “Everyone condemns it, then they do it anyway. It’s the central hypocrisy of my planet. They all learn not to see it. The only thing more forbidden than doing it, is talking about it. If we were on Gammadis, I would be risking everything to tell you.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely,” Tedla said. “They would say I was inventing evil stories, slanders from a sick mind. You can’t imagine the strength of their shame.”

  “But it’s focused on you, not on themselves?”

  “Yes. The more they love us, the more they loathe us.” Tedla fell silent, its jaw clenched down.

  Val said cautiously, “Are all neuters used sexually?”

  Tedla shook its head. “Only...”

  “The attractive ones?”

  Tedla nodded.

  ***

  I exaggerated when I said they all do it. Actually, very few do it. It just seemed like everyone to me.

  The types of sex he taught me next were the hardest for me to learn. On the day he first penetrated me anally I broke down in tears. He scolded me sternly, saying I had to show enjoyment, then kissed me and caressed me. “If your guardian is attracted to you, you have to act eager for him,” he said. “It’s the best way to be sure you’ll be treated well.”

  I’m sure the other Personals must have noticed that something was going on with me. I grew tense and silent with them. Outside of Supervisor Mondragone’s quarters, I focused completely on my work, burying myself in learning things, perfecting everything I did. I began to count the days till I would be rotated away to someone else, but I felt guilty about it, since one of the others would then surely take my place. I wanted to warn them, but couldn’t bring myself to admit how far I had allowed him to go.

  It was strange, how I blamed myself. He had complete power over me; I couldn’t have rejected him. And yet, because he had persuaded me instead of ordered me—because he had secured my complicity at every step—I felt that somehow I was the one responsible. He sometimes told me that I had made him fall in love with me, that he had no power over himself when I was around, and I believed him.

  One morning as I was walking down the bland-run with a pair of shoes in my hand to fetch some polish, Motivator Jockety stuck his head out the graydoor into his office and gestured me to come in. I was quite startled. The motivator handled discipline among the blands; we rarely saw him except when we were to be punished, and I had never been punished for anything. I was very nervous stepping into his office, wondering what I had done wrong.

  He closed the door behind me and looked me over. He was not one of the humans who rated a Personal, so I knew little about him. In that small room, he seemed massive and imposing. He said, “Supervisor Mondragone says you are doing very well at your duties.”

  I looked at the floor and said nothing.

  He stepped closer. His voice took on a false jocularity. “Oh, look,” he said. “I’ve got something in my pants. What do you suppose it is?”

  I knew what it was. It was pressing stiffly against the fabric. My mouth was suddenly dry. I tried to swallow, but only felt like choking.

  He said, “Go on, why don’t you see what it is?”

  I didn’t know what else to do. I laid down the shoes I was carrying and reached out to unfasten his pants, then pulled down his underwear till he was exposed. His penis was huge and pink, and pointing straight up.

  “Oh dear,” he said. “What are you going to do about this?” He put his hands against the wall on either side of me, so I was trapped between that huge penis and the wall.

  There was only one thing I could do, if I wanted to escape. I would have to turn my mind off and simply get through it, like an awful job. I bent down and opened my mouth.

  After he let me go, I was shaking so hard I had to stop in an equipment room to calm down. They all knew what a slut I was, I thought. Despite all of Supervisor Mondragone’s warnings, I had let on. Now, just the sight of me was enough to inflame them. It was as if I were giving off some sort of signal. I was nothing more than the Brice’s prostitute.

  I had never felt so disgusted with myself.

  My only hope was that my next supervisor would save me. On the day I heard I was going to be transferred to Supervisor Calder, I went through my duties in a haze of relief. She was a sallow, gloomy woman who was always full of ineffectual complaints, but anything was an improvement.

  That afternoon, when I went to my old supervisor’s quarters for the last time, I walked in on Mondragone and Calder, both lying naked on the bed drinking liquor. I stammered an apology and began to back out, when Mondragone called out, “Come in, Tedla! We’ve been waiting for you.”

  As I closed the door behind me, my heart was laboring hard with dread.

  Mondragone’s speech was slightly slurred by drink. He came over and put his arms around me, whispering in my ear, “I thought you could use some tips on how to get along with a woman.”

  Calder strolled over, her glass in her hand, and said, “It’s very pretty when it’s scared, isn’t it?” Then, to me, “Well, take off your clothes so I can see what I’m getting.”

  That afternoon Mondragone taught me the basics of giving sexual pleasure to a woman. He taught me what parts of her body were most sensitive, and how to use the dildoes and vibrators and other tools. From the amused smile on his face as he watched me in bed with Calder, I knew with chilling certainty that he had never cared one bit for me; this was all just part of the curriculum.

  Calder had very different tastes than Mondragone. She had a hard time achieving orgasm; when I failed to excite her she would slap me and curse. I quickly learned she needed to be almost in pain to become aroused. The things she wanted me to do to her should have disgusted me; but I had already learned to absent myself and become an automaton, merely obeying, not really there. Unlike Mondragone, she didn’t really mind when I didn’t act eager; in fact, she almost preferred to think I was doing it against my will.

  I knew that six months had passed when a new class of newbies came in. Now we, who had been the new ones, were the seniors teaching a confused and tearful bunch of children how to become what they really were. On their third day there, we decided to hold a collation for them, to cheer them up. We naturally had no access to liquor or drugs, so instead we smuggled pans and noisemakers into the roundroom. While some of the blands sat around the edges drumming, the rest of us joined hands in the middle and danced.

  I don’t know what happened to me that night. The deafening noise of the drumming, the wild dancing, the rhythm—it all took me out of myself. I felt lifted into a trancelike world where I could spin and spin forever. I was no longer attached to my body. The hateful things I did in the day fell away—they were no longer part of me. I danced till I became transformed.

  The next day, as I led one of the newbies through the rules of setting table, it occurred to me that I had become Laki: strict, tense, and unhappy. I no longer smiled or joked with the other blands. I held aloof from them not because I was better but because I felt soiled by human contact. I was sure they would discover me if I got too close.

  The clients’ dinner was coming up again, and I looked forward to it eagerly, because it was my passport away from Brice’s. By that time I had been rotated twice more, and was serving Supervisor Gladden. She liked to talk. She preferred to get her sexual gratification in the morning, just after getting up. The act itself was usually blessedly short, but she would sit and analyze it afterwards, asking me constant questions as I tried to get my duties done. I answered as little as possible. I wished she would just do as she pleased with my body, and leave my mind alone.

  One day, she was quizzing me, asking, “Didn’t you get any pleasure out of that? What did you like most? What’s my greatest asset?” I was impatient because we had a busy day ahead. I was dressed and laying out her clothes, hoping she would get the hint and start moving, so I wouldn’t be late
at breakfast.

  I have no idea why I finally broke. She said something like, “Tell the truth—what do you really feel?” and I simply exploded.

  “I really feel that you’re all a bunch of perverts,” I said. “You disgust me. I hate your sex. I hate you. I wish you would just leave me alone.”

  That was all I said. I was trembling too hard with rage to get any more out. But it was enough.

  She sat very still for several seconds, staring at me while the color first left her face entirely, then rushed back. Then she got up, very cold and deliberate, and put on a robe. I went into the bathroom, pretending to do something, but really because fear had replaced my anger and I was sick and quaking inside. I heard her place a call. Soon she answered a knock at the door. When I came out of the bathroom, Motivator Jockety was there. I was so frightened I froze. I couldn’t move or speak.

  Jockety took me by the skin at the back of my neck and shoved me toward the door. The pain made me cry out, and he growled, “Keep quiet, you.” He shoved me down the hallway then. We came to a room I had never been in. It looked very much like this room—tile floor, no windows. There was a bed, a table, some chairs, and an adjoining bathroom. Jockety released me, and I turned to face him. He was a good foot taller than I, and a hundred pounds heavier. He had not yet shaved, and his face was bristly with beard. I saw he was in a terrible rage.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean it. Please.”

  “Sorry’s not enough,” he said. “You think we allow insolence at Brice’s? You think blands get to talk back?”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  Two other humans came in the door—Gladden and another man. Jockety didn’t turn to look; he was completely focused on me. I expected him to strike me. Instead, he took my white shirt in his huge fists and gave it a wrench. The fabric ripped in two from collar to waist. He stripped it off my back. Then he took my pants and wrenched them violently open from waist to crotch, pulling them down around my ankles. I stood before him, quaking and naked, trying to shield myself with my hands. He and the other man took me, each on one side, and dragged me to the table. They bent me over it, crushing my face into the surface. Gladden took my wrists and stretched my arms out over my head. The other man spread my legs and tied my ankles to the table legs with my stockings. I could see Motivator Jockety unfastening his belt and trousers. Then he moved behind me and set to work.

  They raped me over and over again. In that first four hours, every human in the building came into that room to abuse me in some way in sight of the others. They raped me anally and orally, sometimes both at once—they laughed and made jokes about that. It went on till blood trickled down my legs and every thrust was agony.

  For the first hour I thought that they would stop if I only wept and said I was sorry and promised never to talk as I had done again. By the second hour I realized that nothing I could say or do would keep them away from me, though I still begged for release. By the third hour I was in hysterics—sobbing as a pure bodily reaction, like hiccups. I simply couldn’t stop.

  In the fifth hour they turned more brutal and sadistic. By then my tormentors were down to three—Jockety, Calder, and a man named Pardee. They strapped me to the table and beat me with belts and switches—never quite enough to break a bone or leave a scar. Calder had a small needle and thread with which she took stitches in my skin. The thread was soaked in something that stung like fire, and left swollen, itching red welts behind. They all laughed as she stitched their names in my buttocks, thighs, and stomach. The letters stood out in burning red.

  From time to time they rested, eating snacks to revive themselves, talking about what they ought to do to me next. They spoke of horrible things, crippling mutilations. At the time I didn’t know that anything was stopping them; all the tortures they described seemed utterly real.

  They did other things I won’t make you hear. At the end of six hours they started pretending they were going to let me go. Once they actually gave me my clothes back, but before I could leave, Jockety came in the room with an apparatus for giving electrical shocks. They all laughed and stripped me naked again. Jockety taped wires to my body, then set out to see if he could induce a convulsion while he was sodomizing me.

  It didn’t work. He tried again and again, and at least got whatever satisfaction can be got from raping a child in excruciating pain.

  ***

  Val had been trying to show no reaction, but now she finally flinched. Tedla paused, as if becoming aware of her again. Its face was very white; the words were coming out one by one, hot drops on raw skin. It said, “I’m sorry to make you listen to this. I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear. But someone needs to know the truth.”

  It drew a shaky breath. “I’ve often wondered why they chose me,” it said. “I was no ringleader. I hadn’t really rebelled, just broken under pressure. If they had wanted to ensure my obedience, the mere threat of rape would have served as well as the real thing. It simply wasn’t necessary.”

  It was silent a few moments, then said, “I think perhaps it had nothing to do with me. I didn’t know it then, but what they were training me to do was terribly illegal. They could have been punished severely, if any of the humans had testified against the others. They needed some way of ensuring silence among themselves. That’s why they all took part—they had to implicate themselves in front of the others, so all of them were equally guilty.”

  “But that doesn’t explain the torture,” Val said.

  “No,” Tedla said. Slowly, as if forcing the words out, it said, “I think that happened because they simply enjoyed it. They were evil people.”

  The last sentence was said almost in a whisper, but with such force that it could have been shouted.

  ***

  I was completely shattered. In a single day they had reduced me to an object of utter revulsion. My legs were caked with blood, filth, and semen; my face and hands reeked of their bodies. My skin was covered with red, itching welts. Even my mouth had the taste of them, sticky inside. I couldn’t move without pain, and I couldn’t be still either.

  When they finally gave me my ripped clothes back and told me to go, I wanted to find a place to hide. Not the roundroom; I couldn’t bear that the other blands should find out what had happened. The roundroom was our inviolate refuge; I couldn’t bring this new person back there, this disgusting thing they had made me into. I went to the shower, and stayed there as long as I could, washing. I washed out the inside of my mouth with soap to get rid of every trace of them. But it was still inside me.

  I didn’t take off my coveralls that night. I went off to the edge of the roundroom, against the wall, and wouldn’t speak to anyone, or let them touch me. They all knew something horrible had happened; I could feel the fear spreading out all around me. It was doubtless what the humans intended. The blands all knew if it could happen to me, it could happen to them. The fact that they didn’t know exactly what had happened made it all the more frightful.

  The next day I was still in terrible pain, but I tried to go about my duties for fear they would send me in the aircar to a clinic, and the curator would want to examine me. The thought of someone touching me again made me freeze up, as if my muscles were all locked. But I couldn’t do my work. I was too jumpy and fearful to concentrate on anything. I kept breaking down in tears for no reason. They finally sent me back down to the roundroom, and I spent the rest of the day in the shower. The cold water soothed the burning of my skin, and my shame.

  That day, the supervisors all gave the other blands a little lecture about me. They said I had shown gross disobedience, and had been punished. Everyone else would be punished too, if there was more disobedience. After that, the blands started giving me silent, resentful looks for not having known my place, for not living up to the Brice’s rules, and getting them all in trouble. Not a single one sided with me; their loyalty was all to the humans. I learned a valuable lesson: There is no solidarity among blands. We tolerate no
independence or rebellion that might jeopardize the group. We police each other as effectively as ever the humans do.

  After a week there was not a mark anywhere on my body to show what had happened—a complete void of evidence. But my mental state had gotten no better, and I think the supervisors began to be worried they had gone too far. It was not their consciences bothering them; it was money. The clients paid them to create docile, obedient, unquestioning blands; instead they had created an edgy, hysterical one. They might lose all their investment in my training if the damage couldn’t be repaired in time.

  They tried to make it up to me with kind words. But the only thing that helped was the cessation of their sexual demands. After that day, no human at Brice’s ever touched me again, or asked me to touch them.

  The client dinner was coming up fast. We had to train and prepare. On the big day I felt as brittle as an egg, ready to shatter and crack. But the other Personals pulled me through, and the night went well. The next day Supervisor Mondragone called me into his office to congratulate me. I had been chosen to go to the Polygrave’s house in Magnus Convergence. I felt overjoyed at the thought of seeing Laki again. I would actually have a friend where I was going.

  “You must do your best to represent Brice’s well,” Mondragone said.

  “I will, sir,” I said.

  We blands said our good-byes to each other that night. The roundroom, as we say in our proverbs, was spongy with tears. But I felt ecstatic to be leaving. The next morning, as we waited in our gray coveralls for the aircar to take us away, I felt like I had been reborn, as surely as if I’d been through the birthpool. Whatever I was bound for in life, I knew it had to be better.

  I was just fourteen.

  Chapter Five

  It was late before they finally fell asleep, Val on the bed and Tedla curled up in the chair. It seemed like she had scarcely closed her eyes when the sound of the door opening woke her. She sat up blearily and saw it was just a robot delivering breakfast.