"You'd best go now," Harzen said jovially as they finished dinner. "You don't want to be late."
He'd been quite a bit more personable this afternoon, since Zhair'lo's message had come.
There hadn't been any talk of rejecting the 'request'. He'd shown it to Harzen by way of wondering if he could get the evening off. Harzen had brightened considerably since that moment and explained to him quite clearly that a man should never refuse a 'request', no matter how phrased, from the Temple.
That just wasn't how things were done, foolish boy.
Zhair'lo had wanted to leave earlier and tried to explain that he wanted to take a quick bath in the river before heading to the Temple. He'd been embarrassed by his uncleanliness before and didn't want that happening again.
Harzen had simply laughed and said, "Don't worry. They'll take care of it."
So, at Harzen's behest, he put on his newest clothing and began the long walk in to town. The two girls from the Temple had apparently run all the way out to see him and then run back. He didn't think of himself as a slouch, but it seemed preposterous to do that in the afternoon heat and barely break a sweat. Besides, Harzen had given him more than enough time. A brisk walk would get him there in well under an hour.
He had all that time to fret over what it was they wanted from him and whether or not he'd get to see Talla. He knew, underneath it all, that he was probably deluding himself. He understood what that race had been. All of the girls in it had been making guys come. He had seen the pegs for the rings on the wall. After he came on Talla's face, the woman in orange had placed one ring on one of the pegs. From that alone, he assumed that Talla would have had to make eight other guys come on her.
Why would she remember him?
Talla was trying not to shake.
She now knew what was in the back of the well guarded marble office building. It was the upgrade room. More precisely, it was Endowment's "Augmentation Chamber" which, as it was the only room in the whole complex that had the word "chamber" in it, was usually just called "The Chamber". The thing she was going to do today would be done dozens of times over the next few years of her life.
The thing she was going to do?
The thing she was going to have done to her.
They had told her it might hurt a bit, but they might have been understating.
Knowing what was coming was sometimes even worse than not knowing. Maybe her imagination just wasn't vivid enough -- or cruel enough.
There were other women in the waiting anteroom, sealed off from the Chamber. Salee had gone first. Lara had just followed. Talla waited, sitting on one of several flat marble benches, with three other women for company. The room had two doors: one through which she had entered from a small shower room; and the door to the Chamber. At some point, the Chamber door would open and her name would be called.
The other women were older and calm. They'd done this before. Conversation between them was casual. She'd picked up that all three were here for Point upgrades. Two were being promoted in rank -- one of whom would be dropping her yellow clothes for orange. The third was a Keeper from Form. She'd just had her fourth upgrade in Facial and was choosing Point as her first upgrade outside her own Division. She was beautiful. Even Talla in her senses deadening state of anxiety could see it.
All it did was make Talla the odd one out. They were all here for Point, even Salee and Lara. Only she was here for Abundance.
Alone, alone, alone.
She took a deep breath. The bright light was that this was a chance to see Zhair'lo again. And not just see him...
But she remembered Kara's lesson from last night. Monogamy was a curse word, spat out of the side of one's mouth. Everyone was shared with everyone else. Monogamy was dangerous in a way that Talla could not understand. It was about possession. It was destructive to society. It led to wasteful competition, fighting, injury, even murder. Monogamy was unthinkable.
She wanted to be with Zhair'lo, but knew that this desire was wrong. Her stomach trembled.
Think positive, she told herself, willing her insides to settle.
Zhair'lo was somewhere past this door, waiting for her; waiting to do his part. She hoped he was eager, too. If she couldn't have forever, she could have now.
Another deep breath. Salee's upgrade seemed to have taken all of five minutes. Lara's was taking a bit longer. When would it be her turn?
Zhair'lo looked at the men around him, waiting their turns. They were older than he, but still quite young and strong. They seemed pleasant and happy. Why not? Zhair'lo had been briefed on his role. It seemed a pleasant thing to do.
Two things had been made clear though. The first was that it was a privilege that Talla had chosen him. The second was that the privilege would never come his way again if he violated the Protocols.
He shook off his dark thoughts. He was here to see Talla, to do what needed doing.
He inhaled deeply and tried to clear his thoughts by looking upward. The ceiling, if you could call it that, was a series of wooden beams mounted on the beige stone walls. The beams were widely spaced enough to let him see constellations. What if it rained? There must be actual roof panels hidden away somewhere. For now, he took in the fresh night air, watched the torchlight dance off the wooden ceiling beams, and tried to relax with a few deep breaths.
"First time?" a dark haired man asked him.
"Huh? Yeah."
"Do it well, you can come back."
That was curious. "You've been here a lot?"
"About once a week," he said proudly.
That would be something, doing this sort of thing often. He didn't know if he could take the stress.
The heavy door opened as it had twice before to take away the first two boys.
The same woman who had come for them now stepped through and softly spoke his name, reading it off a sheet of parchment, "Zhair'lo M'han?"
"Yes."
"Come in, please."
The three men he left behind patted him on the back and wished him luck. They were quite chipper about the whole thing. The woman he followed wore the least clothing he had ever seen on a female body. Her clothing consisted of a tiny pair of orange underwear and a strongly reinforced piece of clothing that held in her breasts. Men usually referred to the ensemble as simply a "bikini".
He followed her in to the room beyond, expecting the giant chamber he had been told about. Instead it was another small room, torchlit and open to the night sky through two or three storeys of walls. The room had two more doors, a large and serious looking one directly ahead and a smaller one to the side.
"Ella and Renia will see to you," she said to him with the officious tone of a Busy Person.
