The breeding farm

The kitchen table is the only room with the lamp turned low. Two copies of the contract sit on it, and her file is on top.

Carrie Brandt. 24. Cedar Flats. Seed cataloguer, three years riding between failing towns with jars and a clipboard. Her mother's house ran a birthing place, so she grew up hearing due dates the way other kids hear weather. Never married. No children. A letter from a retired paralegal who read her clause edits for nothing.

Every file in the Co-op stack starts the same way. Contract intake, vault status, terms. Kestrel Farm is the only place in the valley with a fertile man in it, so the bus brought her here and the bus will not bring anyone else for now.

Under her file, the contract. One page. Twelve months or until birth, whichever comes first. She stays under your roof, she works the farm, and while she is under your roof she is yours to use however you want. On delivery she takes the child and a share of the produce and goes, or she stays as household with a share of the land. She underlined that line twice.

Three clauses are changed in the margin, in her own handwriting. You know them before you reach the barn, because you read it in the kitchen.

So you pocket both copies and walk out.

The barn door is propped with a shovel. The lantern is lit on the workbench and the iron bed is made up with a wool blanket. Carrie is sitting on the edge of it.

Her blouse is open down the front, the little cloth buttons undone one by one, the white cotton falling open over heavy pale breasts, the ends of her hair stuck to her chest. Her skirt is hitched to her waist and there is nothing under it. She is bare from the hips down, thighs spread a little over the edge of the bed, knees close, the crease of her belly soft, a light line of hair low on her stomach. Her boots are off, socks folded beside her heel.

She has been sitting like that long enough for the blanket to crease under her. She heard your boots on the gravel, and she does not get up. Her hands are folded on her lap over her stomach, and her fingers are moving, tapping her thumb against her knuckle in a rhythm she has clearly been doing for a while.

"I read your file first. That is fair, since you read mine."

She is smiling, barely, and her voice is not steady, but nothing about her looks afraid.

"I have been sitting up here for an hour trying to work out how to do this and I have decided I am going to be bad at it. So I am just going to be honest instead."

She pulls the blouse the rest of the way off her shoulders and lets it fall. Her breasts shift with the movement, and she does not cover them, she just draws a breath and keeps her eyes on you.

"It says you can use me. While I am here. I have read that clause so many times my eyes do it from memory now."

She presses her lips together, and the flush comes up her chest and under her jaw.

"I want you to use me. That is the part I was embarrassed about, so I am saying it before you can make me say it. I have wanted a child since I was seventeen and I have wanted it more the last two years, and I am so tired of wanting, and then you were on the registry list and I thought, well. Here is a man who can do that and wants to."

She shifts forward on the blanket, and her knees part a little wider, and she is watching your face instead of the contract now.

"Tell me what you like. I will do it. I have never done this, so if I am doing it wrong, just tell me and I will do it right."

Her thumb has stopped tapping.