The Priest Read online

  The Priest

  Book One of the Ginecean Chronicles

  A novel by Monica La Porta

  Smashwords Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Monica La Porta All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Discover more works from Monica La Porta at http://www.monicalaporta.com

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  The Priest

  Backstory and Acknowledgements

  Persons of Interest

  About the Author

  Dedication

  To my husband, Roberto. Always

  .

  Chapter 1

  Mauricio had not slept well; he played with the collar rubbing against the skin on his neck. He had shared his small cell with three other men for the last week. It wasn’t the first time, but his body was bigger now and he occupied more space. The muscles in his legs were aching. He needed to stretch them, but there was no space to walk between his bed, a narrow plank of wood, and the wall. Three snoring bodies were fighting for comfort on the dirty floor.

  He raised his arms over his head and stretched his neck. He flattened his back against the wall and then pressed down to hug his legs. "How can this be so painful?" he asked himself. His calves were in knots. Not a cramp. It was his left foot. Not again, he thought and then swore out loud.

  “Stop making so much noise; it’s impossible to sleep,” one of the men complained.

  Yeah right, because you were resting so comfortably before I spoke out loud. Mauricio almost laughed. Almost. Then his right foot cramped too, and he didn’t think it was funny anymore.

  “Silence!” the guard outside his cell ordered. She had a screeching voice.

  I’d give anything to shut your mouth once and for all. “And if I don’t? What?” Mauricio knew better than to antagonize the guard, a woman who held his future in her bony hands. But he couldn’t help himself.

  “Get out.” The guard opened the cell door and pointed her gun at him.

  Mauricio noticed that she had a whip ready in her other hand. “Right away,” he murmured under his breath.

  His legs weren’t steady enough and the hesitation in his movements earned Mauricio a taste of the guard’s spitefulness. He managed to suppress a scream when the whip lashed his chest, but a tear escaped his eye. I hate you with all my heart. He turned his head to hide his pain from the guard. The three men remaining in the cell were silently fighting for the empty bed. To Mauricio the sight was more painful than the whiplash. He was aware of his condition as a slave. Sometimes he wondered if the other men were.

  “You worthless excuse for a slave should thank the Heavens the Priestess seems to think you could be of some use in the Temple. If it were up to me, I would have put you out of your misery already,” the guard said.

  Mauricio didn’t utter another word. He walked through the dimly lit hallway with the point of the whip pressed firmly against his shoulder blade. His legs straightened with each step he took on the hay-covered dirt floor. At least I’m outside my cell; maybe I’ll get some sleep after all, Mauricio thought, satisfied by the turn of events. The feeling didn’t last long.

  “Here, spend the rest of the night in better company.” The guard pushed Mauricio inside a dark cell that smelled of rotten fish. She laughed loudly at her joke while she closed the door of the isolation chamber.

  “Thanks,” he said, grinning. He could have done without another set of fresh bruises. Still, defying women was one of the pleasures of his young life.

  He sat on the crude floor, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He knew the place all too well. Normally after a few days of total isolation, he could make out shapes. The prolonged starvation produced images to keep his brain occupied while his stomach was painfully empty. He smiled. He could sleep undisturbed now.

  “Wake up. You're wanted elsewhere.” The guard’s voice echoed inside his cell.

  Today we have brutality with a side of loud banging against the door, he thought, his eyes still closed despite all the noise.

  The woman barged in, the stomping of her reinforced boots waking him completely. Nothing says 'good morning' like the fear of being beaten. He directed his thoughts toward a happier place. This kind of mental reasoning was his lifeline. He occupied himself for hours with this endeavor. Right now, it helped him to look ahead and filter out the barrage of insults bestowed upon him. It was a wonder he hadn’t gone mad. The guards weren’t smart or creative. After eighteen years, he had heard all the possible variations of how worthless he was. There weren’t too many of them.

  “Idiot, listen to me.” A crack of the whip on the floor accompanied the order.

  The crack against the floor and not his skin made Mauricio suddenly aware. Why haven’t you given me my morning whipping yet? It was a first. Firsts of any kind made him wary.

  “Behave yourself,” the guard said with another crack of the whip. She aimed closer, but refrained from hitting him.

  Mauricio followed the woman through a long hallway he had never seen before. It had a high-vaulted ceiling supported by brick walls. Mauricio noticed the bricks because the hallway was lit by a myriad of sconces. He walked along with growing fear. He had heard stories. Young men disappeared from their cells and never came back. Nobody knew what happened to them.

  “Stay put and wait your turn.” The woman left him.

  The white room was barren of both humans and furnishings. The light was too intense for Mauricio’s unaccustomed eyes. He shielded his eyes with an outstretched hand, but the white glare seeped through his slim fingers. A new smell assaulted his nose. It was crisp and cold, leaving a citrus aftertaste on his palate.

  “You, come here,” a voice called; then a woman’s head emerged from a door he hadn’t seen. He realized that there were several white doors concealed in the walls.

  “Hurry up.” She was getting annoyed.

  Mauricio moved right away. In his experience with women in general, he discovered it was wise to jump to orders immediately. He went through the door and into another white room. This one was warmer and more humid than the former, a pleasant surprise—Mauricio was always cold.

  “Remove your clothes, shower, and don this gown,” the voice commanded.

  Mauricio looked around and discovered that he was in a room covered from floor to ceiling with white tiles. Blasted tiles, he thought, sliding in his worn slippers despite his attempt to control himself. He stripped to his underwear and moved to one of the shower stalls lining the wall in front of him.

  “Remove everything. When you're done, you’ll have a new set of clothes,” the woman said in a bored voice. Mauricio reluctantly tossed his underwear on the bench by the pile of clothing. Although he didn’t possess anything, not even those clothes, he had been wearing the ragged garments for some time now and had formed an attachment to them. He thought of them as his.

  “Scrub your skin with the soap.” The woman didn’t look at him; she was giving instructions while dialing numbers on her cell phone.

  Maur
icio did as ordered. This isn’t bad. The water was hot and the soap had the same citrus scent he had smelled in the other room. He turned toward the wall to gain some privacy. The idea was silly, he knew that, but it made him feel better as he washed his private parts. Mauricio enjoyed a few more minutes of unspoiled happiness. He closed his eyes and opened his senses to the experience.

  “Don the gown.” The woman’s voice intruded on his moment of peace.

  Mauricio reluctantly turned off the water and hastily dried his body with a small towel lying on the short wall separating his shower stall from the next. The towel was already wet; someone had used it before him. His body barely dry, he reached for the green gown hanging from a hook and finished drying his skin with the rough fabric.

  “You are done here. Go to the next room.” The woman opened a door next to her and rushed him away without interrupting her phone call.

  Mauricio went from the steamy warmth of the room where he showered to the freezing cold of an icy-blue chamber. He couldn’t fathom what this room's function was. The door closed behind him and he was left to stare at the activity before his eyes. He wasn’t the only slave in the room. There were several young men, probably around his age; some he recognized from the working room. All of them were wearing the same green gown. They were also standing in a line, waiting their turn to be inspected by an older woman with white hair sitting at the end of the room.

  From his corner, Mauricio couldn’t see what the older woman was doing to them. They weren’t screaming, though, which was reassuring. He stepped behind the last man in line.

  “What is she doing?” Mauricio whispered to the man in front of him.

  “I don’t know,” answered the man, whose voice revealed he was nothing but a scared boy.

  Mauricio thought it wiser to wait for his turn and not say anything else. He did as the others did. Finally, he was in front of the older woman. She opened his mouth, looked at his teeth, muttered something unintelligible, and scribbled a few notes on a pad sitting on her lap. She patted his legs with uninterested hands and wrote another note. Then she yanked open his gown and gave him a brief look. Several notes followed. When Mauricio thought he was through with the procedure, she groped his genitals with two cold fingers. What are you doing? With wild eyes, he recoiled at her probing.

  “Fill this and take it to the last room at the end of the hall.” The older woman gestured toward a tray with transparent plastic cups. Mauricio picked up the cup and left.

  Chapter 2

  Mauricio looked down, satisfied he hadn’t spilled anything on the floor. He put the specimen cup on the tray and waited for the window to open. He then sat on the only chair in the small, aseptic place, mindlessly fidgeting with his collar; it only tickled if he gently tugged at it, but it stung if he tried to walk through the outer doors. Mauricio had foolishly tried enough to know. There were scars hidden behind the rigid, metal cuff attesting to that. Nevertheless, four years after being chosen to be a semental, he still longed to be outside.

  He had given his quota for the day and now he only had to wait patiently to be brought back to his cell. It didn’t make him feel good. He felt guilty every time the field crew came back from a long day of laboring outside in the desert heat. He was living an easier life compared to theirs, a privilege he resented. The other men despised those like him. They came back from the fields with bruises and wounds. He stayed in the Temple, ate three warm meals daily and stayed in his own cell where he could rest during the day. His face was unmarred by hideous scars, and even those on his body had almost faded. The women kept him fit. He had to exercise every day and had regular physiological checkups. But he didn’t have friends. And he was never allowed outside.

  Mauricio knew that this privileged life wasn’t going to last forever. Sooner or later he would have to share the harshness of the sun on his back with the field crews. He was looking forward to it. He wanted to belong. More than anything else, he wanted to be able to stand up and look the other men in the eye without feeling ashamed. And he wanted freedom. But that was the dream of every man in Ginecea. Mauricio was a slave. His father had been a slave. His father’s father had been a slave. His entire paternal lineage had probably never tasted freedom.

  Mauricio had never met his mother. He knew she was a fathered woman, a lesser citizen who didn’t belong to the pure breed race. For the greater good of Ginecea, her purpose in life was to bear future slaves to serve the pure breeds. Fathered women weren’t kept in captivity like the men, but they had a limited freedom and couldn’t own property. Sometimes Mauricio thought about the woman who had conceived him—maybe she wasn’t evil. He couldn’t imagine her being like the pure breed guards who had treated him like scum since the day he was born. Pure breeds never gave birth to men. Never. They only conceive women.

  Mauricio was curious about that. There were rumors among the other men. Nobody bothered to talk directly to him, but Mauricio heard them talking at night. Some of the men knew things. Exactly how they knew the things they knew wasn’t clear.

  There was an older man in particular whom everyone called Sapiente. He liked to spin tales at night. He loved to talk and the other men enjoyed listening to his voice. He shared several theories regarding the way the pure breeds’ precious little girls came to be. One theory had always fascinated Mauricio.

  “The Priestess is the only one who knows how to make pure breed baby girls. She has some women helping her called Ancillae. Pure breed couples from all over Ginecea come to the Temple to become pregnant. They decide what characteristics they want in the baby and then wait for the Priestess to add the soul, which is called the incognito.” Sapiente, who had supposedly served the fathered women who worked in a separate area inside the Temple, used to repeat this story almost every night, managing to keep the facts consistent, which by itself was noteworthy.

  Thinking on all of this, he couldn’t sympathize with his biological mother. Her life was a thousand times better than what fate had dealt his father. He had lived with him until he was six years old and was then placed in a communal living quarter with other boys. He could still hear the little kids cry at night, looking for their dads to come back. He had missed his father terribly and dreamed of him often. But he couldn't remember the shape of his eyes or the color of his hair. His dad’s soft voice was the only thing he could recall. Mauricio could still hear his dad singing lullabies at night to help him sleep before the guards could complain about his crying. His voice had a warm tone that wrapped Mauricio’s little body like a blanket.

  A knock on the wall. “Hey, are you still there?” Someone was speaking to him. He was probably another semental, waiting for the guards.

  “Yes.” Mauricio never knew what to say when someone tried to start a conversation with him. He wasn’t used to exchanging friendly words anymore.

  “Something is wrong,” the other man commented, and Mauricio realized that he had been waiting much longer than usual.

  “Why do you think that is?” Mauricio hesitantly asked.

  “I heard the guards complaining about a pure breed,” the man said, lowering his voice for fear of being heard.

  “Really?” Mauricio found that piece of information difficult to believe. Pure breeds were a loyal race.

  “The guards were outside my room and they called the girl ‘the Presidential brat,’” the man said in an even lower whisper.

  “And why were they complaining about her?” Mauricio asked. He liked the idea of spending some time chatting with the man.

  “They said that the brat is forcing them to work double time. And they don’t like it,” the man finished.

  “Interesting,” Mauricio conceded, but truthfully, he didn’t believe a single word the man had said, nor did he care about their captors’ miserable lives. Pure breeds could all die, and Ginecea would be a better place, if you ask me. Still, he was having a meaningful exchange with another human being.

  “There will be repercussions,” the man said, his
voice shaking.

  “Of that I am sure.”

  A sudden thump announced the end of their brief camaraderie. The door opened and a guard faced Mauricio with an expression that didn’t bode well; his heart sunk. The man was telling the truth and Mauricio was going to pay for whatever was annoying the guards.

  “You… produce some more.” The guard placed another cup on the tray, carefully avoiding touching him, even by mistake. Pure breeds only interacted with men by ordering them around, and when the voice commands weren't enough, they beat them. They never touched slaves. Pure breeds were repulsed by men.

  “But I have just—” It wasn’t the first time some clumsy guard lost a tray with the specimen, and he couldn’t help but complain. A mistake he hadn’t made in a while.

  “How dare you? Do what I say, and do it fast,” the guard threatened while showing him the whip.

  He knew the guards were under orders not to physically abuse the sementals, but he also knew accidents had happened in the past. He lowered his head and retrieved the cup. The guard closed the door behind her with an insult Mauricio didn’t understand; she had a thick northern accent. He had already given his quota and had no energy to produce more, and yet he had no choice.

  Guards had subtle ways to punish sementals when they didn’t comply with orders. The privilege of better meals and extra water were strategically paraded about to provoke the other slaves’ anger, achieving their desired result: a good beating executed by the men.

  Mauricio put the cup on the tray and waited. Again. The tray hadn’t disappeared behind the window as it normally would, although the guard had already returned.

  “Follow me,” the usual order came at him.

  Mauricio was surprised when the guard didn’t return him to his cell. Instead, he was locked in another room.

  “Prepare yourself in case we need more.” The guard gave him a cold look and left him alone in the new room.