By the time one of Ramor's servants had brought Virdon to "his room" and told him to wait there, he was pretty sure that whatever he was going to do wouldn't involve balloons and streamers. Ramor's house had been well-lit, from what he had been able to see as the big ape had ushered him towards the ground-level buildings behind his grove, but it hadn't given the impression that some major event was about to take place in it. Virdon had seen no carriages or palanquins, or other signs that Ramor was expecting guests.
Ramor hadn't told him what exactly he was expecting him to do, when Virdon had asked him. He had just smiled and said that he'd get instructions soon enough. "Don't worry - you're well equipped to perform this job for me."
Shortly after that, he had handed him over to an elderly chimpanzee woman, who had looked him up and down, raised her brows, and muttered something under her breath before she ushered him into a room that, to Virdon's surprise, had an honest-to-God bathtub with hot water in it.
The chimpanzee slapped a hard brush and a piece of soap into his hands and just said, "I assume you're old enough that you don't need me to scrub you down."
She had also taken his clothes with her; Virdon admitted that they needed a thorough cleaning as urgently as he did, but nobody had thought of laying out new clothes in exchange. His only piece of clothing now was the towel that he had slung around his hips, a fact that just added to the many odd details that had caught his eye since he had entered Ramor's estate, and deepened his unease.
Like the fact that he had heard the voices of so many children, as he and Ramor had passed by the houses. Small children, by the pitch of their voices, and women singing them lullabies.
He hadn't seen any of them - it had been too late in the day for small children to still be playing outside - but he had the distinct feeling that they had been human children. He couldn't justify his hunch; as far as he knew, ape children didn't really sound any different. But the feeling didn't change - Ramor had many, many human children living on his estate. Virdon felt his heartbeat pick up as he contemplated the implications of this fact.
Zana and Galen were anomalies among their people. Apes saw humans as animals - capable of speech, but lacking souls. That 'soul issue' had been a common rationalization even among humans, at one time; it had to be infinitely easier to see the members of a different species as nothing but animals, if that was to your own species' advantage. And with mankind somehow having taken itself to the brink of extinction, the apes had reason to feel superior. Which they did.
Humans toiled on the fields for the apes, whose fur and inability to sweat properly would've made large-scale agriculture impossible for them. Humans waited on their simian masters as body slaves, worked as cooks and cleaners and bodyguards. Humans served as entertainment, running against each others in racing competitions... and maybe other sports that Virdon hoped were as benign as racing.
Humans were bought and sold like animals... and, at least in the case of racers, they were also bred like animals.
The door opened again. Virdon took an involuntary step back, bracing himself for whatever would appear in it...
... he wasn't really surprised when it was a young woman. But he wished he'd been wrong.
She was really very young.
And not wearing much.
"Look," Virdon said, and tried to smile, "this has been a misunderstanding between your master and... and mine. I'm not here to... I'm not going to... this is not going to happen."
The woman... the girl... the woman ignored him and steadily came closer, giving him a disinterested once-over. She didn't look drugged, just distant. She had done this before, Virdon realized, despite her young age. Probably more than once. These women only existed to get pregnant and give birth. As soon as the babies were weaned, their mothers were thrown back into the breeding pool.
He took another step back, his mouth dry. "You don't have to do this... not with me. We'll call... we'll call your master and I'll clear this up with him. No..." He caught her wrists and held them. "Listen to me. I'm not going to, to mate with you. We need to call Ramor."
Now she did meet his eyes, giving him a hazy, slightly irritated look. "What are you, a wildling?"
"Yes," Virdon said, relieved that she was at least reacting to him. Well... reacting other than physically. "We... we choose our own partners in the wild. I can't do this on command, and my," he clenched his teeth for a second, "master didn't know what he was renting me out for, and he'd never have made a deal with Ramor if he'd known. Just call him down, will you?"
With a last skeptical look, the woman drew away from him and ambled back to the door. She opened it and spoke to someone in the corridor, then closed the door again and walked to the bed that Virdon had ignored so far.
"They won't care, you know?" she said, and sat down on it. "They'll just force you to do it. It's because of your color." She stretched out and smiled up to him, a slow, lazy smile. "It's a nice color. I hope the baby will at least have your eyes. It'll be so expensive that only rich apes can buy it. Then it'll have a good life."
"I'm not going to make a baby with you," Virdon said, feeling ill.
The woman nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, you will. With me, and every jane that's fertile right now."
"... jane?" He didn't want to know, but it sounded... like a name...
The woman frowned again. "A jane - a breeding female. Jons and janes... you do know how it's done, right?"
Virdon didn't know what to say. This whole conversation felt unreal.
Before could find his voice again, the door opened, and Ramor entered, flanked by a pair of gorillas. "What's this here," he growled at the girl. "You're disrupting my schedule with your special sensibilities!"
Virdon swallowed and tried to ignore the gorillas. "This has been a misunderstanding, sir, I'm not..." he gestured towards the mattress, "... doing this."
Ramor laughed. "Oh, but you will. I paid good money for it."
"I'm sure that..." Was Galen operating under his real name here? Virdon had been too far away when Galen and Ramor had struck that deal. "I'm sure that my master hasn't agreed to this kind of... work. And you were very vague about it, too."
Ramor drew a deep breath and smiled. "You're a smart one, huh? I could see it in your eyes, down in that market hall. And I bet your master likes it when you talk back, or you would've stopped with that habit. Well, far be it from me to housebreak other people's humans." He slung an arm around Virdon's shoulders and gave him a companionable squeeze.
"So just for you, and just today, I'm going to explain to you what is going on here," he said with a bright grin, as bright and sharp as a steel blade. "I'm the biggest breeder and seller of human cubs from here to the southern ocean, and up to the northern badlands. I have the finest cubs, all builds, all colors. You need a racer - I have it. You need a worker, I have it, you need a fine, rare breed to decorate your receptions, or fit with the color of your horses, you come to me."
He let his arm fall from Virdon's shoulders, and patted his butt. "And your master didn't really care what kind of work I had in mind for you. All he was interested in was how much I was going to pay him. And I paid him well - a thousand sembles for each day I have you under my roof. The deal is valid, I paid the money, and you - will - go and mate with my janes, and you'll do so eagerly and vigorously, or I'll tie you a mating rack and have them ride you like a horse." He stepped back and with a quick motion, ripped the towel from Virdon's hips.
"He don't look excited," one of the gorillas remarked with a meaningful nod at Virdon's crotch.
Ramor ignored him. "I have eighteen janes that will be fertile in the course of these five days. In my experience, only about half of them will take. Chances will rise if you mate with them more than once, so..." he clapped his hands, "there's much to do, and we already wasted almost a whole atseht . This one here should've already been done."
He turned to the woman. "Get him ready, you know how to do it. Hands or mouth, whatever he likes best."
Virdon evaded the girl who had risen without a word and was now reaching for him, and backed away from Ramor and his gorillas. He felt strangely calm, as if this whole conversation, and everything else, was happening to someone else. He even contemplated fleetingly if he should educate Ramor that there was just no way a human male could continuously mate with that many women in such a short time. But maybe the apes had even found a solution for that problem...
"I can't do this," he heard himself say as if from far away. He knew he had no chance, not with two gorillas in the room, and no window, and only one door, and so many apes in the room and outside the room, so many apes...
Ramor shook his head. "Have it your way, then. Once your animal instinct takes over, you'll like it well enough." He nodded to the gorillas, and there wasn't even much of a struggle, not against four hundred pounds of muscle, each, and suddenly Virdon found himself on his back, the gorillas' hands like iron bands around his wrists and ankles, and the scent of the girl's skin all over him, all over him and moving down...
Virdon squeezed his eyes shut and began to pray.
Despite Len's warning, Burke had of course felt for the lock of his cage and tried to pry some splinters from the bottom of his cage. But the planks had been hewn from some hard wood, and had been glued together seamlessly. Burke didn't know if they had been polished by the dozens of bodies shifting around as they tried to find a comfortable position in the damn cage, or if someone had taken the trouble to sand them down, but the result was a perfectly smooth surface that offered no point of attack for his fingernails.
Even after he had given up on digging his way out of his trap, Burke couldn't find any sleep. Part of it was his own insomnia; part of it was the dimensions of the cage that were too small to let him stretch his legs.
But the biggest part was the fact that he was inside a cage again, made by apes, on a planet ruled by apes. That... that stirred some memories Burke wasn't eager to revisit.
Instead he tried to focus on planning for his escape, sketching and discarding different scenarios until his eyes burned and finally drooped shut. His sleep was light and fitful, a jumbled mess of memories of Urko's secret prison and desperate fights in some underground tunnel against invisible attackers. As always in these dreams, Burke was vaguely aware that he was dreaming, but unable to either fight his way back to the surface of waking, nor to sink down into dreamless sleep. When loud banging jerked him awake, he felt wrung out and dizzy, and his headache seemed to have gotten worse.
He rubbed his sandy eyes and pushed himself up on his elbow to see what the noise was all about. A cold gust of morning fog hit his face and kissed him awake completely. Their humble abode had gotten visitors. Burke sat up completely and craned his neck to see what was going on.
A small crowd of apes was strutting down the aisle between the cages, three chimpanzees and a gorilla, taking up as much space as possible, and glancing haughtily down at the humans crouching in the mouldy straw. It wasn't difficult to spot the leader of the posse: a scar-faced chimpanzee whose gaze was filled with jovial possessiveness, the look of a man who was admiring his collection.
The ape's eyes fell on his latest acquisition, and Burke felt the old rage flare up inside him. The ape stopped short when he caught his glare, regarded him more closely, and smiled a slow, ironic smile. Then he nodded to his followers. "Let's see what you dragged in from the sewers. Seems you brought me a rebel."
Burke tensed when the gorilla bent down to unlock his cage, but he didn't harbour any illusions about his chances to get past four apes in this confined space. The cage wasn't big enough to escape the gorilla's arm, and Burke found himself dragged out by the neck like a wet kitten.
To his embarrassment, the gorilla's grip proved to be necessary - after being hit over the head, and forced to spend the night in a cage that didn't let him stretch his legs, Burke found that he was swaying on his feet. He blinked, trying to get his eyes to focus.
The chimpanzee - Asar, Burke remembered hazily, must be Asar who was inspecting him - frowned at his display of weakness. "Did you break its skull, you idiots?"
"No, boss," the gorilla rumbled. "But he struggled a lot. Had to club him twice."
"Hm." Asar didn't seem to be convinced. He held up his hand before Burke's face. "How many fingers?"
"Take your stinking paw outta my face, monkey," Burke growled.
"And not even housebroken," Asar grinned. "You know, training these beasts is almost as much fun as taking them to the pits." He casually backhanded Burke, a motion that still snapped his head around and sent an electric prickle through his sinuses, followed by the sensation of hot blood rushing over his lips and chin.
"Take him outside and exercise him a bit," Asar said to the gorilla. "You can bring Todan out to play later."
"Yes, boss," the gorilla rumbled, and waved for one of Asar's chimpanzee goons. The ape stepped forward, stretching a short metal chain between his hands. He bent down to shackle Burke's legs, and Burke played with the thought of kicking his face, but... no. No point in inviting another punch for nothing. He'd get his chance later; they'd unshackle him as soon as Todan would join him to "play."
He let himself get dragged outside, stumbling from the too-short chain. Behind him, he could hear another cage be opened - that of the kapo.
The sun had come out somewhere above the fog, and the backyard was a gleaming white hell that stabbed his eyes and cranked up his headache.
Damn concussion. Burke shook his head, then wished he hadn't.
The gorilla finally released him, and Burke stumbled another two steps into the middle of the yard before he came to a swaying halt. "Now what, Koko - 'm I supposed to do my jumping jacks with the irons on?" He nodded at Todan, who was already limbering up. "He doesn't wear them, either."
"Tha's because he knows how to behave," the gorilla grumbled.
"Look," Burke tried to reason with him. "Your boss wants to win money with me - how's he supposed to know how good I am if you don't give me a chance to show you what I'm capable of? I can beat your guy, easily."
At the other side of the yard, Todan scoffed. He was old enough to show gray strands at the temples, and his face and hands were full of scars.
Burke ignored him. "But I can't fight with the damn chains around my legs. I can't even walk!"
The gorilla hesitated, but couldn't deny the logic of Burke's argument, because he bent down to unlock the chains. "If you run, I'm gonna-"
Burke didn't wait to hear what the thug was going to do if he ran.
He ran.
After three steps, a rocket rammed into his kidneys and made his spine explode. Burke's knees buckled and he fell facedown into the mud. Another blow crashed into the base of his skull, and Burke knew that this was it.
Broke my neck...
Then everything when white and silent.
When he came to, he was back in his cage, his wrists chained to the bars. The back of his skull was a burning ball of pain, only slightly topped by the pain where his kidneys had been. Now he was grateful that the monkeys hadn't given him anything to eat; at least he was unable to throw up, although his stomach valiantly tried to climb out of his mouth.
Movement on the other side of the bars pulled him out of his agonized meditation. Burke opened his eyes a bit and squinted at the ape crouching before his cage.
"That was really stupid," Asar said conversationally. "But I like your spirit. Tulko will bring you water, in a bit, but food will have to wait until after the fight. If you win, you'll get roasted meat - pigeon, or rat, whatever the kitchen has on offer. If you lose..." He rose.
"If you lose, I won't have wasted a piece of good meat on you."