Chapter Fourteen

                                    

                                          
Chapter 14
                          
DIVA WAS IN the middle of an advanced exercise on the music square when it happened. She had just performed one of the more difficult stretches, reaching over to go up one octave, when she found her head swimming, and struggled to catch her breath.
                          
“Wh…?” But she couldn’t finish the word. The nerve gas they had released into the side chamber was very effective. She was unconscious before she had time to sink to the floor.
                          
Atheron smiled from his central console. It had been easy to find an investor, as it turned out. Xenon had been very pleased.
                          
The girl was removed remotely from the bubble and transported over to the surgical area. The client was waiting for her there, already dressed in the required green surgical robes, and accompanied by the surgeon he had brought with him. He peered down into the unconscious girl’s face, to check that she was the same individual he had decided to invest in.
                          
“Yes. Undoubtedly this is the girl. You may proceed.” He took a few photographs as graphic proof, and then stood aside.
                          
The Cesan surgeon moved in quickly. The procedure, which entailed cutting the girl open right down to the ovaries, was faultlessly performed. It was then a simple matter to extract all the desired material, and deposit it in the waiting cryopacks. The surgeon deftly sewed the girl back up.
                          
“Is she going back to the bubbles?”
                          
Xenon, present as the Sell representative, nodded. “Protocol will be followed as usual.”
                          
Protocol required that the donor be held available for the period of two months after extraction, in case the investor needed any further tissue samples or tests after delivery had taken place. At the end of that time they were normally terminated. Diva would be returned to her bubble for only a limited respite before liquidation.
                          
Xenon gave a shrug. It was not a part of his job that he liked. Sell policy was quite clear, however. No Non-Sellite may be released if in possession of information which could be used by a possible competitor to break the monopoly held by Sell. The First Valhai Voting had ordained policy for over two thousand years. He felt sorry for the girl, but he wasn’t about to change anything. Sell would hardly have maintained its market advantage if the Sellites had been loath to exercise their right of discretion.
                          
Still, Xenon felt uncomfortable. He had always thought of himself as a good person. He could see it was inevitable, but he regretted the necessity. Clearly there was no other way. All the knowledge that these children had been gratuitously given would prove invaluable in other hands. They simply could not be allowed to leave. If they did, Sell would be bankrupt with a few hundred years! The good of Sell must of course be paramount. No question. His forebears had had this same duty and not shirked it. Xenon pulled himself up to his full height. He would live up to expectations. Many people had deposited their confidence in him. His father had drilled into him that being a Sellite came with a price tag. He could not be faint-hearted.
                          
“For the good of Sell!” he muttered to himself.
                          
SIX WOKE UP confused in the middle of a wonderful dream where he was running free again on Kwaide with his sisters laughing by his side. He was disoriented; it took him a moment to remember where he was. Something had woken him up. He gazed, bleary-eyed, around him.
                          
Then he became aware of an insistent pressure against the palms of his hands, which were touching the sides of the bed, supporting him.
                          
Quickly, he pressed both hands against the sides of the bed, letting the fingers perceive the message.
                          
“… She is all bloody. I do not know what it is that has happened.”
                          
“Arcan? What is it? What has happened?”