When they took Mona to the feedlot last week, they said she needed a little exercise, after all this time in the brooder. But we know better. No one has ever come back from the feedlot.
Someday I'll go there, too. I don't know exactly when. They don't tell us. They just take tests, and if the tests aren't up to par, then we need "a little exercise."
We talk about it, of course. We have nothing else to do. After Mona was led away, Betsy said, "We ought to find out once and for all about the feedlot."
Rita laughed. "Fat chance."
"We ought to know, though," Betsy said. "It's not right to keep us cooped up here like this and not tell us what we can expect."
"Probably they don't want to worry us," I said. "It might be bad for the brooding."
We had to cut it short. They came through the brooder then, with their wagon of bottles, and gave us our inseminations. Last time mine didn't take. If it doesn't take this time, I'll be the next to go. Betsy and Rita and the others have just finished suckling, so they are ready again. They have this and one other chance.
I hate it when they make me lie down in the sling, with my legs up over the edge, my head hanging down, my body tilted so the insemination will go all the way in. They pretend to be very impersonal, but I know they enjoy checking my breasts to be sure they have recovered from the last suckling. They examine every part of me, even my mouth, stroking with their big, scaly hands and licking with their long, hot tongues.
I don't like feeling the way I do then, as if they had given me some sort of reward for doing only what they let me do anyway. I have heard that it was not always this way. At one time we were allowed to roam freely, all over the planet. There weren't any brooders or feedlots. I don't know why it all changed.
I wish I knew. Then I might understand about the insemination and the sucklings and the feedlot. Everything.
Perhaps I wouldn't like it, though. Perhaps it wouldn't make me happy. Perhaps it's better to let things go on and not ask any questions.
If this insemination doesn't take, I may find out something I'd really rather not know.
They're coming with their testing equipment now. They're doing Rita. Betsy will be next. Then me.
It doesn't take long. In a minute or two I'll know whether or not I need a little exercise.
It is my time. Number Three is pulling up by my stall. He looks at his log. I expect him to take out the little tube and make me pass my fluid into it so he can do the test. But he just stares at his log. Perhaps something is wrong with it. Perhaps he can't see what it says. It is cloudy today and dark in the brooder shed.
Rita and Betsy are watching. Their eyes are huge, worried.
Number Three shakes his big head, the long flat jowls swinging, the fins running down the back of his neck flapping first one way, then the other.
He licks me on the right ear, then the left, runs his curling tongue up and down the back of my neck. He can't speak, like Number One can. He just mumbles, grunts, and caresses me with his fingers, taking care not to scratch me with his sharp talons. Number Three has always been very good to all of us.
He is still caressing me when Number One comes in the door and glides over to my stall. He has a collar and lead in his hand.
Number One introduced me to brooding eleven short daytimes ago. From what Mona and Rita and Betsy have said, he was kind to me. I didn't know that then.
I've done well. I've produced sucklings eight times, and only two were defects, the ones that don't have slits between the legs like us. The first defect Number Three threw in the refuse bin, as usual. It was squealing the way sucklings do, but he pretended he didn't hear anything. He always pretends he can't hear when a defect has to be discarded.
The last suckling I had was a defect, but Number One let me keep it for the normal six moon times. I guess it was some sort of experiment. They run experiments every now and then.
"Do not fear," Number One says. His voice is harsh and deep; it makes my stomach tighten up. He holds out the collar, shoots his tongue out and curls it around my right breast, the way he always does when he comes to our shed.
I don't understand why he is doing it now. Before, he has done it only when I am to be inseminated.
My slit begins to throb. It is ready for the insemination, but that isn't happening. Instead, Number One slips the collar around my neck and attaches the lead. Number Three removes the restraints from my feet.
"Come," Number One says. He doesn't say come, we are taking you to the feedlot, you need a little exercise. He just says, "Come."
Number Three follows us out of the shed with his testing wagon.
Number One leaves him at another door, and leads me down a long hall. We walk and walk. That is, I walk, and he glides, with his tail dragging along the rubbery floor like the broom Number Sixteen uses when he sweeps our shed.
I am panting with fear. I feel numb. Once we pass a door to the outside, and the cold air rushes in against my skin. It prickles with little bumps.
Soon I'll know about the feedlot. Soon I'll know everything, even if I don't want to.
Finally Number One stops at a door and unlocks it. He leads me inside a shed. It has stalls like our brooder shed, but it doesn't have as many. There are only ten, but in them are strange large defects. They are covered with hair on the head and face, some even on the body, legs and arms. But I can see they are defects, because they don't have slits. They have that growth between the legs, only it is bigger than on the sucklings and hangs out from their hair.
They stare at me. Number One leads me to a stall in the middle of the room.
"You be here now," he says.
The stall is larger than the one I had in the brooder shed. Its restraints are longer, too. Number One puts them on my legs and removes the collar and lead.
"You be comfortable. You will like," Number One says.
He goes out.
The defects start to talk. I am surprised they can speak. Their voices are deep and heavy, almost as heavy as Number One's.
"Yeah," says the one in the third stall, "she's better looking than Ginny."
"That's some red hair. Look at that," says a big one in Stall No. 5.
"What's your name, honey?" asks Stall No. 8. He's covered with curly brown hair.
"Elsie," I answer.
Stall No. 3 laughs. "Some name," he says.
"What's your name?" I ask.
"Jerome." I notice his growth is swelling up. It as big as a suckling's arm.
They all tell me their names then, but I don't want to hear them. Their growths are getting big and look stiff. They must hurt, when they are like that. I sit down in the stall on the pad by the waste trough and try to not see them, but the stall has transparent sides. No matter what I do, I can't help seeing them unless I close my eyes.
So I close them.
It seems I fell asleep, as suddenly Number One is leaning over me, his red eyes gleaming, his tongue running around my right breast.
It's true. It wasn't a dream. I'm here in this strange shed with all these defects staring at me, and Number One is breathing hard on my face, as his tongue wraps first around one breast, then the other, and his hands stroke my neck, my back, my buttocks, my thighs, and his tongue flicks quickly into my mouth, my navel, along the bottom of my feet, in the palms of my hands, over, around and into my slit, curling and probing, curling and probing, until my body rises up and I expect the insemination to beput in, like it was the first time with him.
But the insemination isn't put in when I open up, or even when I throb and convulse. Number One just smiles at me, his sharp, big teeth shining, and caresses my shoulders and hair, and lays me back down on the pad.
He rises from the stall.
Then I see all the rejects have tubes on their growths and their hands are restrained. Number One goes around to each and removes the tubes, loosens the hand restraints, and looks in the tubes.
"Good," he says to me.
He puts the tubes in a cabinet on a little trolley and rolls it away.
"I'm glad that's over with," Jerome says, rubbing his wrists.
"Me, too," says Fred in Stall No. 5.
"When do we eat?" asks Marv from Stall No. 7.
"It can't be soon enough for me," says Stall No. 4. I can't remember his name.
"Well, Elsie, how do you like your new place?" Jerome asks.
I don't answer. I pull my hair over my eyes and try to hide under the pad, but it's fixed to the floor and the waste trough is too narrow.
I can hardly wait until they put the nutri-wafers and prote-gruel in my feed bin. I'm always hungry after Number One has been to see me.
I wonder when he'll be back.
T.K. Murray lives in udder seclusion in Chicago and has to write stuff like this to keep awake. It doesn't always work. His work has appeared in other issues of SOTT under another name -- you get to figure it out.
For more stories by T.K. Murray, click here.
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