she replied. “Jonathan Wyndam.”
“The entire time?”
She tried to nod, but the baron held her head firmly in place.
“Has he sired with anyone else in the past five months?” Fox asked his number-one man, Norman Bauer, who was standing quietly off to the side, observing. Bauer was an accountant by trade, and his ability to handle numbers and other statistics had made him invaluable in the successful operation of Fox Farm.
Bauer opened his ledger, leafed back and forth until he came to the page listing Jonathan Wyndam’s breeding history. “According to the ledger,” Bauer said, “Wyndam’s sired fifteen in the past two years—all norms—but none in the past five months. Either Wyndam has gone sterile, or the bitch is barren.”
In a flash, Fox pulled the riding crop from a specially designed pocket of his bathrobe and slashed the kneeling woman across the face. “You bitch!” he screamed. “When you knew you weren’t conceiving, why didn’t you turn Wyndam back to stud?”
An angry red welt appeared on the woman’s left cheek, and beads of blood were beginning to well up through the reddened skin. “He didn’t want—”
“Don’t fuck with me!” the baron roared, striking her again with the crop, this time with a backhand stroke that put a matching red line on her right cheek.
She shook her head. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, similar tears of blood leaving red streaks down her cheeks. “He didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay with me. He—”
Fox raised his hand again. “Don’t even think of saying it.”
“—loves me,” she said, her face flush with anger. “He loves me and I love—”
Fox didn’t let her finish. He struck her again and again with the riding crop about the head, neck and shoulders, much harder than before. Her T-shirt shredded and fell from her shoulders, exposing her breasts. Fox slashed at them, too, putting a series of X-like gashes across her chest.
“I don’t want to hear talk like that…ever!” Fox bellowed. He was in the business of making and trading slaves, of selling babies and love wasn’t allowed. Love destroyed everything, as evidenced by this over-the-hill bitch’s romantic notion of living happily ever after. She’d figured that if she didn’t get heavy she’d be able to spend more nights with Wyndam. She was right, of course, but the arrangement could never last long. At her age, five months without getting heavy and her days as a breeder were over. Same for Wyndam. Five months without siring a child, and he’d be on the next slave convoy out of Fox Farm. Then it would be six months to a year working in some mill or refinery and by then it would be time to board the last train west. And all for some triple-stupe notion like love.
The woman lay in a crumpled heap at the baron’s feet. He turned to Bauer, who had stood by impassively while Fox had administered the beating. “Take her to the sec men’s lounge. Tell them they can do what they like with her until the next convoy moves out.”
Bauer nodded. “Any restrictions?”
Fox shook his head. “No, just that if anyone chills her they’ll have to answer to me.”
“And what about Wyndam?”
“Put him in the sec cell overlooking the lounge. Let him watch what happens to lovers on Fox Farm.”
Bauer gave a little smile. “And after she moves out?”
“Give him a beating, then put him back in circulation. But keep an eye on him. He might get difficult.”
Bauer went to the door and summoned a pair of sec men into the room. “Take her to the lounge. And don’t chill her.”
“All right.”
“And while you’re having fun with her, find Jon Wyndam and put him in a cell with a view of the lounge so he gets a good look of his sweetheart in action.”
“Lovers?” the first sec man asked.
Bauer nodded.
“Stupe bastards,” the sec man muttered as he dragged the former breeder out of the office.
When they’d left, Baron Fox adjusted his bathrobe, retied the sash around his waist and sat behind the large oak desk in the center of his office. To his right was a foot-high pile of predark hard-core skin mags that specialized in fetishes, everything from lingerie and leather to bondage and domination. He pulled a mag off the top of the pile and opened it to a familiar pictorial in which a dark-haired woman dressed in a black corselette and stockings had her wrists bound behind her back with a heavy-gauge rope. In some of the pictures she was being whipped by a cat-o’-nine-tails. But while Fox found that exciting enough on its own, it was the spread’s final six photos that really aroused his curiosity. In each of the photos the woman was covered in blue-and-red wax, as if a burning candle had been held over her and allowed to leak hot wax onto her breasts, thighs and buttocks. Fox had wanted to duplicate the scene for months now, but quality candles were as difficult to find as working blasters, especially colored candles. He’d traded his human stock for a decent stockpile of weapons of all types, and was finally confident he had enough firepower to protect his operation from any outside attack. So maybe on the next trade mission to the east he might try to cut a deal for a few colored candles. If not, he could always use molten lead, which, as he thought about it, might even be more interesting than wax.
He replaced the magazine on top of the pile, then looked over at Norman Bauer, who was waiting patiently to be spoken to or dismissed. “What else do you have for me?”
Bauer turned the page of his ledger, but before he could speak, Grundwold, the sec chief, came in through the open door. The man was dressed in dark blue fatigues that were in good condition, and two rows of 12-gauge shells in bandoliers crisscrossed his chest. A Mossberg Persuader 500 shotgun rested in a holster belted to his thigh. It looked to be in remarkable condition.
“What is it?” Fox asked, knowing it would have to be urgent for Grundwold to walk in on him unannounced.
“A scout team spotted a group of seven outlanders approaching from the north, mebbe heading toward the falls,” Grundwold reported.
“Are they armed?”
Grundwold nodded. “Each has a blaster, mebbe more.” He paused a moment, then added, “They look like they know how to use them, too.”
“Women?”
“Two. One black, one white.”
Fox inhaled a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling as he wondered what the best course of action might be. From the sec chief’s report, it sounded as if these outlanders might be better left alone. He’d learned from experience that there was a big difference between scooping up families riding in convoys headed to the eastern villes and taking on seasoned outlanders who had learned to chill attackers on sight. While he’d gained plenty of farmworkers ambushing wag trains, he’d also lost a lot of good sec men to outlanders who preferred death over enslavement.
“Have them followed,” he said. “If there’s an opportunity to take the women, do it.” He waved his hand in the air. “Otherwise, let them go.”
“Yes,
