That evening Skye woke up in a hospital bed. His
head felt groggy, but his arm was completely numb and in a sling to immobilize
the swollen shoulder. He reached over to the telescreen by his bed and logged
in. First there were a few messages from friends he had left behind at school,
telling him they thought he did great from what they had seen in recordings of
his fight. One of his mother's assistants had sent him his new schedule. It had
been adjusted according to the doctor's recommendations. He would read that
later.
The assistant had actually left him the decision
whether to let the wound scar or not. I suppose she really has completely lost
interest in me. His mother had chosen to have a son. She had actually
wanted him once upon a time. He wasn't sure whether he had done, or not done,
anything to disappoint her. Perhaps she had decided a son was not what she had
wanted in the first place. He remembered one time sitting on his mother's lap,
his sisters gathered around, with her singing to them all. His mother was a
busy woman though, and he was not the only person in her life.
When he was five; his mother, Victoria Dumas, had
sent him away to school. His sisters stayed with their mothers. Skye's mother
had two wives, Elizabeth and Margery, and each of them had carried one daughter
sired by each of the two others. Six sisters, only four of them were blood
related to him, but all six were his sisters. Lilly, Judith, Sara, Carmen,
Evangeline, and Cleo had thought he was a wonderful pet. Of the three mothers,
only his had chosen to have a son. He didn't know who his father was, how he
had been chosen, or if his mother had felt anything for him. His mother and
both his step mothers had all had male lovers. Sometimes they even shared them.
His mother; however, had decided that she wanted a son after all of the girls
had been born.
Skye knew there were women who just had sons with
the intention of selling them. Some even lived entirely off of the income they
made turning out boys. The serious professionals knew their own genetic
profiles and bred with men whose genes were likely to produce certain traits
when combined with their own genes to produce designer men. Long ago, direct
genetic manipulation would have been used, but almost every major religion on
Ishtar now spoke against it for one reason or another. Direct genetic
manipulation was now only used to treat disease, and often not even for that.
There were some who said that many traits now relatively common to humanity
would not have come into being if not for this meddling. They claimed
luminescent skin, most hair colors, ability to breathe water, and all sorts of
other traits had come into the gene pool by direct manipulation. Maybe this was
true, maybe it wasn't. The thought made Skye's skin crawl.
Skye's mother had never really wanted for money
though. She was a brilliant business woman. Usually a boy who was intended to
just be auctioned off would be sold at an early age either to a school or
directly to the customer; to maximize profit. Perhaps she had intended him for
some other purpose that he just hadn't lived up to, or the need for had fled. Sometimes
boys were raised so that they could be used to unite two houses through blood
without the mother having to marry anyone herself. Sometimes they were intended
as gifts. Giving a man as a gift was a rather extravagant gesture. Giving a man
of your own womb was incredible. If you wanted to train a man for espionage you
had to start from an early age to ensure his unquestioning loyalty, and if you
had him even from before birth you could ensure that he could not be poisoned
against you. He had always thought his mother had wanted to keep him though.
Some women chose to have sons even when they
could just purchase a pre-trained man because they wished them to be
undoubtedly loyal bodyguards for one of their daughters. Others had strong
positive feelings for the father and wanted a son who would take after them. Of
course, there were the fringe cults from off world who made claims that man and
woman were meant to be together as equals, and that children should only result
from their union whatever gender the child might be. (Skye had watched a
documentary about one of their societies and the bizarre lives they led.
"Equals" was an interesting term for a cruel society that wouldn't
even let their men fight in the arena, or know their worth by being appraised.)
Then there were those women who had sons because they genuinely wanted to love
them. Some ladies took it to an unhealthy degree; yes, but they said that there
could never be a better manpet than one you carried in your own womb.
Whatever reason his mother first birthed him,
when he turned five he was sent to the Monsieur Van Dam Charm School for Boys. That
wasn't ominous in of itself. Quite a few of the other boys there were wards of
individuals, be they their own mothers or someone else who had purchased them. The
boys who were wards of the school itself had been purchased for particular
traits the school specialized in helping blossom.
At first he had visited his family every few
weeks. His sisters still doted on him, but his mother became more and more
distant. He never really remembered his step mothers being anything but
distant. They were never cruel to him though. They treated him more like
someone who is not fond of dogs treats a terrier that their spouse brings into
the home. Maybe she really had loved him, and maybe in her own way she still
did, but there was no longer any place in her life for him, it seemed. He was
no longer even worth having a member of her staff decide what direction should
be taken with his medical care. It was his decision now, until someone else
purchased him and he became their ward.
Skye looked through some more of his messages. There
were a few advertisements for hair care products, cosmetics, skin dye and
bleach to turn his epidermis any shade that took his fancy (Guaranteed to catch
a lady’s eye!), and of course "Ten secrets you must know to make her weak
in the knees!" (All ten secrets and a day planner to keep up on your
workout, diet, and beauty treatments; as well as a subscription to their
articles and recipes for one low monthly price!) How would he ever live without
any of these products? Delete.
His sisters Cleo and Sara had each sent beaming
messages about how proud they were that he had made it to the final two in his
first professional battle. Evidently Evangeline would be congratulating him in
person tomorrow. She had decided she would be able to be there to be his
presenter at the rookie coming out ball tomorrow night. There had been some
debate as to who would present him. At first it was assumed that, since Lilly
lived the closest to the venue, she would. That had been a rather scary thought
for Skye.
Lilly was by far the most socially conservative
of his sisters, including her views on the "proper" way to train a
man. It tended to include significant, and often creative, use of the LASH
(Lingual Aural Synaptic Harness) chip. She believed that if our forbearers saw
fit to decree that all men be implanted with a chip in their heads that made it
so that hearing certain words would inflict certain amounts of pain, up to and
including enough to knock them unconscious, these chips should be used for as
much as possible. It wasn't like men felt real pain anyways. The idea of her
finding a like-minded stable owner and convincing her to buy him was not
pleasant. The times when he was growing up that she decided to take an
"interest" in his behavior had been less than enjoyable in an extreme
way. It had taught him significantly more tolerance for pain than many of his
more pampered fellows, but it was not an experience he wished to repeat; ever.
Lilly's mother in law; however, had some kind of
gala the week of the event, so she would not be able to attend. For a while it
seemed that one of mother's assistants would have the duty. Evangeline;
however, would not have it. She felt that for such a big event for him, someone
from the family should be there. Although she would definitely not be able to
get off of her work in time to be there for the fight, she was going to try her
best to be there for the ball. It seemed her scheduling had been successful.
Having gone through all of his new messages he
decided to look up news on the fight. The man who had won was a guy named
Semias Montoya from the Grigori stable. It was some little stable that had
recently moved to the City of Gascon from some small town on the other side of
the planet. Semias had been the first gladiator purchased by Estelle Montoya,
the owner, when the stable opened about twenty-five years back. He specialized
in unarmed and light blades. The stable had only four gladiators, all older
guys well past their primes, but evidently all of them had competed in one
fight or another yesterday. Grigori was one of the stables that had registered
as potential buyers for the ball tomorrow.
He would have to keep a lookout for the Grigori representatives. Semias
seemed to be a more than alright guy, and there were advantages to being bought
by a small stable that is looking to expand.
There was little said about the madman who had gnawed
half way through his arm. His name had been Kayvan and he was listed as a
casualty with a cause of non-injury cardiac failure. He was credited with the
KOs of four who had died of their injuries in that fight. He broke one man’s
neck, and the other three had cause of death listed as exsanguination. The intercontinental
mega-stable that had fielded him was called Legion. They also would be
potential buyers at the ball, and Skye would want to avoid them if Kayvan was an
example of their gladiators. Even if men all were slathering beasts deep down,
Skye doubted that kind of viciousness could have developed overnight.
This wasn't the first time he had woken up in a
hospital bed after a fight, and if his career continued it wouldn't be the
last. He sent response messages to his friends and sisters, looked up how the
other fights had gone, and read all he could find about the stables that would
be represented at the ball tomorrow. After a while though, one of the nurses
noticed he was awake and gave him a timed dose of sedative so he would sleep
until his schedule said for him to be up in the morning.
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