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Adult Content Warning - this material may contain adult themes, including general sexual activity, non-consensual bondage/slavery and forced sexual acts. If you are under the lawful age for such materials (18 in most jurisdictions) or if you would find such material offensive, please go elsewhere.
Safety Warning. This story may contain descriptions of practices that are decidedly unsafe, either in general, or if performed by someone without adequate training. There are a number of good books available on safety in the BDSM scene. Most large cities, and some not so large ones, have organized BDSM groups that will usually welcome a newcomer. I’m not going to point out which practices are safe, and which aren’t. Any practice is unsafe if performed by someone with inadequate training and experience, or if performed when not paying attention. Please think before you act. Don’t make yourself a candidate for a Darwin award.
Now on to the story...
Chapter 1. Judy’s Champion Loses.
Chapter 3. Lot 35 In A Slave Corral.
Chapter 4. The Slave Playground.
Chapter 9. At the Health Service Relationship Counselor.
Chapter 10. At the Gorean Slave Trainer’s.
Chapter 11. Jack wins a Games Prize.
Judy stretched slightly to relieve the tension on her arms. The tension, she thought somewhat amusedly, was completely understandable: standing at a Prize Pole with her arms tethered above her wasn’t the most comfortable pose in the world.
She looked, she thought, like a fairly typical Games Prize. At least a fairly typical Games Prize whose Champion hadn’t lost her in a bout. Yet.
She stood with her back to the pole and her arms stretched out overhead, wrists crossed and linked immovably to a ring at the top. In times past they might have been secured with rope or iron manacles. Today there was just the bracelets the Games Authority required her to wear. Most of the time the bracelets served as wrist displays; now they served their other function: they linked her wrists together immovably and clamped them to the ring.
Besides the bracelets, she wore a shirt and shorts outfit of the cheapest material she could find that didn’t make her look slutty, together with a pair of heelless toe shoes. The red band around her neck was a display collar. The collar had been permanently installed when she entered University back in 2089.
Finally, her feet were linked by a short hobble.
The shorts outfit, of course, exposed the gaily colored script kef on her left thigh. It displayed her status to the world, or at least the very small part of the world that actually cared. She’d acquired the skin decoration when she’d joined the Gorean Association. The skin modification that supported the decoration, as well as the somewhat smaller ones on the front and back of her left shoulder, was permanent. Her control collar would change the colors to match her changing status, and would make it vanish entirely when she returned to her status as a free woman when she left the Games Enclave at the end of the Games.
The pole itself stood on a small platform on one side of a sand-filled fight ring. An identical pole, currently unoccupied, stood on the opposite side. The arena itself wrapped around part of one of the large arenas in a gentle semicircle. The seats for the spectators rose behind her and behind the other pole.
She could see her husband and Champion, Jack, doing his stretching exercises. He’d already donned his armor, and had gotten to the point in his warmup where he began his sword thrusts and blocks.
Another armored warrior came out of the door to the underground locker rooms, leading a naked girl on a leash. The girl had a differently colored kef on her thigh and the front and back of her left shoulder: the green at the base of the staff proclaimed that she was from the Outlaw Nations. When they reached the pole, he spun her around so she backed into it. Then she stretched up, eyes closed and head tilted up for a kiss. He obliged. When he stepped back, she brought her arms up from where they’d been cuffed behind her to stretch over her head. He reached up and slid them into the ring where they locked.
He ran his massive hands over his slavegirl’s body, and then held a finger up in front of her face. She put her tongue out and delicately tasted it. When he stepped away, Judy could see that her nipples had gone erect. The girl’s tongue came out and touched the ring in her nose.
The warrior walked down to the arena and stopped. He looked up at her, letting his eyes slowly undress her from head to foot, as if he was already sure of his prize. She looked at him, mesmerized, almost unaware that the tip of her tongue had come out to touch her nose ring. She blushed when she realized what she’d done.
Judy watched the two swordsmen warming up and let her mind drift to what had led her, with almost the force of inevitability, to this spot. She and Jack had already had 32 years together; the last of their three children had left the nest just this last year. Jack still looked much like he had at 25 when she had met him; she looked not much older than she had at 22. One of her ancestors from a hundred and fifty years before would have guessed her to be in her early to mid 20s, and wouldn’t have believed that she could possibly be 57. The only signs of age she showed were that her breasts were beginning to sag slightly, and her eyes showed experience that no twenty year old could possibly have acquired. The first was easily correctable; she should have had her breasts regenerated a year ago.
After their youngest, Mike, had left for college they’d put their housekeeper up for sale on the national auction, and settled in to the next 80 plus years they had together. They’d decided to take a month off for one of Jack’s lifelong dreams: the Games at the Gorean Hunting Preserve.
Jack had gone through the first week like a hot knife through butter; he’d collected more purses than he’d had to spend in entry fees. He’d won at least four out of five of his matches, and finished the week well above the middle of the rankings. Jack, she thought, was in his element. She’d never seen him happier.
The beginning of the second week was the start of the real games. No more of this footling entry fee and purse stuff. That was for the beginners. Now there was only one entry fee, and only one prize: a slavegirl, a captive, or a free woman willing to wager her liberty on her champion’s prowess at arms.
They didn’t have a slavegirl or a captive, and their winnings weren’t enough to buy one. She was Jack’s entry into the real games: it had after all, been her decision.
“How do we register my wife as a Games Prize?” Jack asked the young man at the counter after he’d registered as a contestant for the Warrior events.
The clerk looked at Judy closely. He hadn’t originally paid her a whole lot of attention beyond the expected initial smile of appreciation: after all, her Beauty Index was 129, which did lift her well over the rest of the herd. He noted the sparkle in her eyes and the slight shift in her blouse over her nipples. He shifted his attention to her control collar. It showed four symbols: the affiliation symbol in the center with the Scream’s purple maple leaf and the Gorean Association’s purple kef next to it on one side, and the free woman’s script F on the other.
“You can’t.”
Jack’s eyebrows went up.
“You can only register slavegirls as Games Prizes. If you want to offer her, she has to become a Tier 2 slavegirl.”
“How’s that work?”
The clerk suppressed a sigh. Someone else who hadn’t studied the background. Well, not like it was the first one that day, or even the first one that hour. The Powers That Be did like to push the “Free Woman Offers Herself As A Games Prize” meme. It made great advertising.
“All Games Prizes are Tier 2 slavegirls whose owners have assigned their use rights to us as Games Prizes. We assign them back to their Champion to start. Since you’re from the Scream, she has to become a pseudo slavegirl. Then you can register her as a Tier 2 slavegirl, and that will let you register her as a Games Prize and provide her ransom fund. Once you’ve both agreed, we assign her use back to you as her Champion. Since you’re both Gorean Association members you know how most of it works.”
“So we just do it at a contract machine?”
“Yes.” The clerk nodded slightly to the row of contract machines that lined one wall of the office.
Judy walked over to the row of contract machines and took one next to her husband. She put the helmet on her head and placed her hands, palms down and flat, on the scanning plate. The screen lit up.
You are Judy Smith?
She let her hands come up so she could use the finger pressure code she used with her reader.
-->Yes.
You wish to enter a contract with the Games Authority to become a Games Prize?
-->Yes.
You need to answer several questions and agree to a number of statements without reservation.
She nodded slightly; she had, after all, seen that innumerable times. It was the way the contract machines worked.
The statements rolled down the screen. It went through the process of her becoming a pseudo slavegirl, and then her agreement to her husband registering her as a Tier 2 slavegirl for their visit to the enclave. She acknowledged that it meant she would be presented as a slavegirl for the duration of their visit. Then she acknowledged the risks in becoming a Games Prize, and finally agreed to his assignment of her use rights to the Games Authority. As she did it, the brain scanner in the helmet checked that she understood all of the material and didn’t have any hidden reservations.
In a couple of minutes it was over.
You are now a Tier 2 slavegirl; your owner is Jack Smith. He has assigned your use rights to the Games Authority as a Games Prize, which has assigned your use rights back to him as your Champion. He has indicated that you will live with him.
-->Understood.
The Games Authority will upgrade your control computer to the in-skull version, train you in its use, and install Core Training. This will take around four hours a day for six or seven days. You will be ready for your Champion to offer you as a Games Prize in time for the first Warrior contests which require one.
-->Understood.
Done.
The screen blanked. She took off the helmet and walked through an unmarked door. Then she turned into another room marked “Control Computer Upgrades.”
She took her place at the pole as the prize for the first of the second round contests.
Jack won.
They put the girl in a dealer’s corral, and used her as the prize in the next bout. He won again.
Then he lost, and then he won.
After four days, he’d used the last of his string of slavegirls and captives, so she took her place at the pole. He won that one as well.
This time it took only two days before he ran out of winnings, so here she was at the pole again.
She came out of her reverie and looked down again. The games official had stepped into the side of the circle that was scribed in the sand. Jack had taken his place facing away from her, his opponent on the other side facing her. The opponent raised his sword in a salute to her, and then lowered it into the guard position. The official brought his hand down in a decisive gesture and stepped back out of the circle, to stand with his arms crossed, watching.
The two warriors approached each other warily, swords at guard, waiting for the other to break and make the first move.
The opponent made the first move, sword flickering out and then back, almost like summer lightning. They circled again, and then the opponent made another feint. Jack parried it almost as if he was prescient. The swords flickered out again and again, and then the official called out: “Hit!”
It didn’t seem to matter; the two swordsmen kept their attention locked on each other, everything else totally forgotten. Judy didn’t worry about the hit; the nano-tech armor kept the swords from doing any damage. The hits only mattered if the fifteen minutes alloted for the fight ended without one or the other winning, and the officials didn’t see a reason to let it continue.
As they continued, Judy could see the red splotches as the armor marked the hits. She thought that Jack was ahead, but she couldn’t be sure, and somehow it didn’t matter. Her vision narrowed to the two evenly matched male animals in the arena below. She dimly felt her nipples threatening the cheap cloth of her outfit as the fires began to rise.
Then it happened. It looked like a simple pass, but suddenly Jack’s sword went flying, and the opponent did a perfect lunge, driving his sword into Jack’s chest. Well, not into his chest; the armor held as it was designed to do, but Jack went flying from the force of the blow.
He sat up, the entire front of his armor red.
Her Champion had lost.
She watched the Other as he slowly slid his sword into its scabbard and helped Jack to his feet. “Good fight!” she dimly heard him say as he clapped Jack on the back. Then he deliberately walked back to the other side of the arena and picked up two objects from his pack.
She watched as he walked back toward his prize. She almost felt like giggling: Judy on a stick!
He walked up and put a finger under her chin, lifting with surprisingly gentle pressure. She felt her head come back as his head came down, filling her sight before her eyes closed and she tasted his lips on her own.
She felt a gasp rise through her body, awakening echoes of something long ago and far away. He released her and gestured with just two words. “Submit, captive!”
She felt her wrists fall from the ring that had held them for so long. The motion continued as she fell to her knees in the submission posture, her arms held out over her bowed head, horizontal to the ground.
He clasped her wrists together. She felt the cuffs lock as the cuffs on her ankles locked as well. He placed a large hand on her back, sliding it under her cheap shirt, and took the cloth in his other hand. Her heart threatened to burst from her chest as the cloth compressed her breasts before ripping. He moved down and put his hand in the small of her back, sliding it under her shorts before reducing her final garment to an unwearable rag.
He put something in her hand and then he put his hand on her head. “Put this on, and then hands behind.”
Her wrists came apart and she looked at what she held. It was a leash. She felt herself shiver as she took the two pieces of the Y and held them to the sides of her collar. Then she brought her hands behind her, and felt the cuffs lock her wrists together.
The tug on her leash brought her to her feet. He put a finger under her chin and pressed up very gently. She felt her head come back, almost automatically as her eyes closed and her mouth opened slightly. A long moment later their lips met, and she felt herself fall into the sensation as if there was no end, and no desire for one.
She felt a vague sense of loss as he released her. He tugged on the leash and then walked down the aisle, leaving the rags of her old life behind. She staggered briefly and then followed, her body beginning to remember lessons from long ago and far away. As they crossed the sand of the arena, she barely spared a glance for her possibly former husband.
A minute later they stopped before the other pole with its pinioned beauty. The Other slid his hand around the still tethered slavegirl, and gave her a long, lingering kiss as well.
At a gesture, her hands fell from the ring. She picked up the end of the captive’s leash and attached it to the back of her collar, and then put the proffered leash on from the front. With a tug, the Other walked out of the arena, leading his little coffle of two naked beauties.
The noise of the street outside hit her like a blow. She suddenly came out of her dreamlike trance and almost stumbled, but recovered before the tug of her leash could pull her over. The enormity threatened to overwhelm her, and she retreated to the first thing she could think of: how to blend into the happening so she contributed to the harmony of the street.
Lessons she had let slide while raising her family came back, and she found herself studying the flow of people and things, and the tides and currents of looks and glances. Fortunately, a vagrant thought crossed her mind, she was not the first naked captive to traverse these streets. Or even the ten thousand and first. Her presence did not cause a major outcry. She finally found one of the pulses that underlay the cacophony and adjusted her stride to fall into its rhythm. Her hips swayed slightly to the beat, and she managed to find the exact counter rhythm that let her breasts fall naturally rather than wobble from side to side.
The time passed as the Other led them down one street and up another that had a subtly different rhythm; this time she managed to find it in just a few steps. She noted a few heads turning to look, and quite a few admiring glances that turned back to their business after taking in the scene and getting a slight infusion of pleasure from her passage.
Eventually, they turned into the Street of Slave Dealers. She’d been here before on other vacations when they were looking for a girl to rent. Seeing the signs as a slavegirl was a whole different experience.
The Other brought them into Happy Harry’s Sizzling Slavegirls! You Bring them In, We Fire Them Up!
The last time she saw it, she’d gotten a chuckle out of the picture of a man with ripped pants due to a bulging erection and smoke coming out of his ears, and a naked, smirking slavegirl, tongue playing with her nose ring and tickling her master under the chin. This time her attention focused, almost without her will, on the giggling slavegirl.
“Hey Jurgan! You won another one?”
“Sure did, Harry,” the Other answered. “See what you can make of her.”
“You going to need Lacy?”
“Not for a while. Haven’t decided whether I want Trica or Colette for the next match. Put her away.”
Harry gestured to a young man, who grinned, neatly unhitched Lacy from Judy and led her out back.
“Keep her as a captive, or enslave her now?”
“Keep her as a captive. Put her on the frame and let’s see what to do with her.”
Another young man led Judy over to a standing frame. He spun her around with a touch, and then gently guided her backwards onto a small platform. A minute later he had her strapped in.
Harry looked at the display panel mounted on the frame. “Now what do we have?” he mused. “Last time she was in a kennel was 40 years ago; never been in a corral. Time was...” He shrugged. “She’s got the Environmental Enhancement and standard training, so we’ll start her right off in the corral. What do you want for enhancements?”
“What’s your idea?”
Harry rubbed his chin. “She doesn’t have the Breast Countermotion Generators, and her breasts are beginning to sag just a little.” He lifted one and let it fall to illustrate the lack of bounce.
“See what you mean. Breast regeneration is a standard Health Service process, and the generators are easy. What about a beauty enhancement?”
“Have to see what the comps say on that.”
“True. What’s left for a training?”
“She’s already got most of the basics. About all that’s left is Living Doll or Sex Kitten.”
“Living Doll doesn’t do much for a girl’s price.” Jurgan looked at the girl thoughtfully as a reminiscent smile played across his face. “Sex Kitten should take a week. Do that, then I’ll have a week to test drive her. She might be a keeper.”
“Great! Name?”
“What have you got open?” Jurgen asked, and then looked at a list. “Hm. I don’t have an M. You’ve got Maybell, Mobie, Macie, Maddie...” His voice trailed off. “Let’s make her Melissa. I haven’t had a Melissa for quite a while. Lissa for short.”
He nodded. “Do it. Now I’ve got to run.”
“Great to do business with you,” Harry said, shaking Jurgen’s hand.
Melissa looked at her captor’s retreating back as the slaver gestured to another of his assistants. “Enhancements next”, he said.
The minion walked up to the display. “Beauty Enhancement, Breast Tissue Regeneration, Breast Countermotion Generators, Sex Kitten.” He motioned at the display. “We’ll need the gene scan to build the DNA mods for the Beauty Enhancement, Breast Tissue Regeneration and Sex Kitten.” He walked away and came back with a small box that had several bottles and other stuff in it. He quickly pierced her finger and placed the blood sample in an envelope.
“Open up, Melissa,” he said as he lightly swatted the inside of her thigh. She got a surprised look on her face, but obediently shifted her position so that her legs were farther apart. He reached between them and grabbed something behind her, then he pressed it up. Her eyes flew open, and then her face smoothed out a bit.
“Mouth closed,” he said as he pinched her nose. The captive’s eyes tried to cross looking at his hand, but she obediently kept her mouth closed. The subtle rise and fall of her chest and belly as she breathed stopped, and then started again.
“Great!” He stepped back and looked at the front of the device in her crotch. Several lights blinked, and then steadied to a solid green. He nodded in satisfaction. He took out several sheets of what looked like paper and smoothed them over her breasts. He sprayed them with another of the bottles, and then took the paper off.
Melissa looked down. Her right breast said: “Happy Harry’s Sizzling Slavegirls”, with a picture of a naked girl sitting on her aureole. The other said: “Lot 35. Melissa.”
“This’ll take a couple of hours,” he said. “Find something to amuse yourself.” He walked away, leaving her immovably attached to the frame.
Melissa watched him walk away, and sighed slightly. It had been years, no decades, since she’d had the life support unit attached. It was amazing that it still worked. It was a soothing feeling as it drained her and filled her at the same time. Almost as good as being held by a powerful and caring boyfriend.
She smiled a bit, remembering fun times with a school of mers in college. He’d said a couple of hours? Her fingers twitched as she selected a music program and settled in to watch people walk around while she enjoyed the songs.
Mellisa gave a small gasp and stopped.
The apprentice holding her leash had the effrontery to laugh. “First time startles you, doesn’t it?” he asked the naked captive.
“Uh, it’s not that. It’s just that I never imagined that I’d be in one.”
“Then it is the first time. Behold your new home. At least until you’re ransomed or sold,” he added.
Mellisa looked at it. It did, she had to admit, look pretty much the same as the last time she’d seen one. And none of them looked all that much different from the ones she’d seen before on her infrequent visits to the Guild of Slave Traders.
The corral fence had three meter posts every three meters, which provided a rather forbidding square impression. The posts, in turn, had two rails, set at about 2/3 and 4/3 meters from the ground. Inside the corral were naked girls. A lot of naked girls. A wide variety of naked girls. And, now that she got over her shock, a couple of naked males to round out the collection.
They had, she thought, just two things in common: they all had the bright red ribbon of control collars around their necks, they were all beautiful, and they didn’t seem to be paying attention to anything outside.
Well, three things in common, they all...
Stop that! she told herself sternly. You are not Cardinal Feng, and this is not a joke!
She giggled and then took a deep breath. “I suppose,” she said, “you’re going to put me in there now, right?”
“Exactly right.” He gave a shrill whistle. Several girls turned to look at him curiously, and one walked up to stand a half meter away from the rail. “Rafie,” he told the diminutive beauty, “show Melissa around.” He put his hand on the rail and swung it out. The leash dropped off of Melissa’s control collar, and he gave her a gentle shove toward the corral. The rails swung closed behind her.
“This your first time?” Rafie asked.
“Yes.”
“And you hope it’s your last,” she laughed.
“How can you tell?”
“Your kef shows you’re a captive. You’ll be going home in a couple of weeks. Whose home?” she shrugged.
“You don’t sound happy about being here.”
“I’m not.” She shrugged again. “I’m not an outdoors girl. I’m more the silk sheets and diaphanous draperies erotic dancer sex slave kind of girl.” She giggled. “Playing a master so he’s charged up when he takes me is soooo much fun!”
She giggled again. “Anyway, the setup is really simple. On this end,” she led Melissa to the right, “we’ve got the latrines and the showers. Squat and let go when you have to, and then take a quick shower. Stand on the spot and it’ll do the rest, including drying your hair. You’re going to have to finish the job; I’ve never seen a kennel with halfway decent automatic hairdressers. Grooming tools are in these cubbies; the system will guide your hand to your set.
“Going back, the left half from where you came in is exercise area; then there’s a walkway, a long line of displays, another walkway and a sex area next to the back fence. You find someone you want to get it on with, feel free. The people in the area between the corrals have seen it all before. Many, many times. I’d hate to have one of them as my owner. Or maybe not, getting them raring to go would be a fun challenge.” She grinned and touched the tip of her tongue to her nose ring.
“The displays are easy enough: just pick an empty slot, kneel or sit, adjust the height to where it’s comfortable, and do whatever you want. Just remember to feed the sound through your earplugs.
“Now on the other end we’ve got the feeding troughs. Well, not quite troughs, but they might as well be.” She pointed to several neat rows of bowls on low stands. “To eat you have to kneel and bend over. With hair like yours, you’re going to have to hold it to keep it out of your face. Just let yourself go and pretend you’re a hog. Or whatever. And be very glad they aren’t training out an aversion to sucking cock. Or eating out a girl.” She pointed at a series of posts.
“For you girls from the Scream,” she made it a scream, “Devotion recital is here so you don’t get in the way of the rest of us taking our morning and evening shower.”
“Did you have to make it sound like a scream?” Melissa asked, mock seriously.
“The name is a scream. Whoever came up with The American, Australian, Indian and Asian Association should have thought first.”
“At least they didn’t add Caribbean and South Pacific Islands to the name.”
Rafie shuddered theatrically. “The way the oceans are rising they won’t last all that much longer anyway.”
She paused: “So what do you have for trainings?”
“Sex Kitten.”
Rafie shuddered again. “Forget being ransomed unless you really overdid the ransom fund. Your part of the training is dead simple: the computer will make you sit somewhere for several hours a day for about a week. You won’t remember most of it. They’ll give you a VR helmet for some sessions.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s more than enough. Thank the Ancestors I’m from East Asia; I’ve got a chance of my owner freeing me some day.”
Someone giggled from behind them.
“And what’s so funny?” Rafie said as she turned.
“You think you’ve got a better chance than she does,” the girl said. “By the way, I’m Donnie. At least today. You’re?”
“Melissa. For the last few hours, anyway.”
“And how do you know?” Rafie said a bit snippishly.
“Let’s look it up,” Donnie said, and walked toward an open display slot. She dropped fluidly to her knees as the screen rose to her ideal viewing position; the other two girls knelt on either side. “Now let’s see,” she said as the screen showed charts and graphs dancing and morphing into each other.
“Hey. Slow down!” Rafie told her.
“Here it is. See?” she said, a bit smugly.
“That’s ...” Rafie trailed off.
“It’s saying I’ve got more of a chance of being freed than she does?” Melissa said.
“Two tenths of a percent is twice as much as one tenth of a percent. I wouldn’t plan on either. Not that she could.”
“She can’t what?” Rafie asked.
“Plan on it. That’s what Core Training does: a slavegirl isn’t able to want to be something else. Fantasize about it, yes, think it’s possible, no. You’ll quit being one either when the contract says or when you’re ready for the End of Life Entitlement.”
“That’s evil. Slaves have to have hope.”
“Yeah, right. Tell me another one.”
“But we do.”
“Tell me one. When was the last slave revolt in East Asia?”
“Um, about five years ago, in Yunan?”
“And in the Scream?”
“I don’t think I’ve heard of one?” Rafie said uncertainly.
“That’s because there’s only been one, if you can call it that. Someone even wrote a musical comedy about it.”
“Oh?” Rafie sounded interested.
Donnie laughed. “When they got rid of the implanted version of the Slave Devotion, they tried to get rid of reciting it at the same time. The slaves wanted to keep it. They won.
“As far as a real revolt, there hasn’t been one. Ever. And there isn’t going to be.”
“They’re that locked down?”
“I suppose, but not the way you probably think. You remember that we’re supposed to have an anti-slavery clause in our Constitution?”
“Yeah, right.”
“That’s what people think. What it does mean is that everyone gets treated the same. Health service, workplace protections, right down the line. The government monitors will be on you faster for mistreating a slave than mistreating a free person. The system finds you work you like, you can do well and that someone finds useful, with an owner whose management style matches yours. You’ve got the same workplace protections as everyone else. We bitch about our pitiful spending accounts because it’s about the only thing we’ve got in common to complain about.
“I came from the Disunion, became a slave here because of a silly bet and have been one in the Scream for over a decade. Looking back on things, gaah! Was I naïve!”
Rafie shook her head, obviously not agreeing. “What else are they doing to you?”
“Breast reconstruction, breast countermotion generators, beauty enhancement.”
“Did they feed a bunch of nanites into your collar?”
“That was the bottle of red goop?”
“Yes. That’ll take care of the countermotion generators,” Donnie said.
“That’s more than this sex slave wanted to know,” Rafie said. “Let’s do a threesome!” She came to her feet in a single, fluid movement and drew the other two girls up. Her hands did something ... interesting. Melissa felt her blood rise as her head came down almost without her willing it to meet Rafie’s lips.
Harry spotted the blinking light on the control panel and walked over to look at the display. He nodded in satisfaction. Rafie had gotten Melissa going all right, and she was still going. He checked off one item on the list, and considered what the next test ought to be. He looked at the display thoughtfully. Maybe he should consider keeping Rafie? He made a note to think about it later, and turned back to the display room.
Melissa let herself drift in the warm glow until she felt something on one of her legs. She managed to sit up enough to look. There was something strapped there? She reached down to unstrap it, and found out it was plugged into her ass. Oh. She reached down and disconnected the cable from the breather unit.
“You didn’t look like you wanted to come up for air,” Donnie said lazily. “I saw the button, so I hooked you up.”
“The last time I saw one of these was when I was playing with the mers in college. This isn’t the same unit, though? Where does it go?”
“Here.” Donnie touched an outline on the floor, and a hatch obediently opened. She took the unit and dropped it in. “Time to shower.”
Melissa stepped onto the black circle centered between the triangle of upright rods and closed her eyes. She spread her legs and held her arms out a bit. A mechanism came down to lift her hair and spread it out. The spot turned under her as the rods sprayed her with warm water, then foam, and then more warm water to clean off the foam. Then they switched to cool, and finally cold water. The blast of air came next, directed up so that it caught her hair and dried it at the same time.
She ran her hands through her luxuriant hair, or rather tried to. Rafie had been right; this hairdresser was on the bad side of awful. It was her only real regret at having sold their housekeeper when Mike left home: Tina had been excellent as a hairdresser. Or at least as a comb and brush girl, which was all that was needed for the long hair styles she and her two daughters preferred.
A minute later she walked over to the rack of cubbyholes and let the system guide her hand to one of them. Sure enough, she found a comb and brush, as well as some cheap hair ornaments she could use to hold her long hair back out of the way.
She looked at them in puzzlement, and then felt herself directed to one of the reader stalls. She turned the display into a mirror and set to brushing out her hair.
While she let her body go through the long-practiced movements, she let her mind wander. What was the purpose of that truly awful automated hairdresser? She couldn’t imagine anyone manufacturing those things. The one at home was supposed to be the cheapest one available, really the bottom of the line, and it left her hair dry and tangle free. She shrugged as she got up. They probably wanted her to practice brushing hair. It did stand to reason: if she wasn’t ransomed, her owner might want to use her as a comb and brush girl.
She put her hair up in a jaunty pony tail, and put the comb and brush back. Then she felt she needed to be somewhere. She let the system guide her to a spot on the floor and sat on her heels.
When she came out of her trance, with no memory of the last few hours, the Sun had sunk lower on the horizon, and there was a line of girls queued up for the feeding troughs. She felt herself get up, do a minute of stretching exercises and then add herself to the line.
The meal was something she would have preferred not to remember. It wasn’t the Slave Chow. Slave Chow was cheap, tasty, nutritious, easy to prepare and came in a large enough variety of flavors that she remembered hearing that a girl who was in a kennel for two weeks wouldn’t get the same meal twice. Unfortunately, it also had a rather narrow range of consistencies, which hadn’t kept her from having a bowl when she had to eat and run.
What bothered her was having to lie doggy fashion so she could get her head into the bowl. She managed to get the trick of getting more of it into her than on her face fairly quickly. When she got up she looked around for some means of cleaning the rest off; then she saw that the girls had paired up to lick each other’s faces.
She blushed, but turned to the next girl who got up. By the time they got done, she was almost giggling.
Dinner over, the next thing that happened was that one of the corral segments opened, and about a third of the girls walked out and went, single file, into a narrow building that seemed to be between Happy Harry’s, and, if she remembered correctly, Gertie’s Maids.
Then she got to watch the sun go down and the stars come out. The tops of the poles lit, illuminating the corral. The passionless computer directed her to an unused part of the surface, and she felt the Exerciser kick in with her exercise routine.
An hour later, feeling quite good, she took another shower and then wandered over to the displays. She knelt in front of one and thought for a minute. A quick twitch of her fingers, and she called up her personal pages. There wasn’t a whole lot, but she did find a schedule. An hour and a half before she was scheduled for Devotion Recital. Devotion Recital? She shrugged. Tina had sung the Devotion regularly, with her muffler set to suppress the sound so she didn’t disturb the family. She wasn’t sure why.
So what to do for the next hour or so? Melissa pondered. Raising her family was a closed book. It was over and done with, regardless of whether she ever saw them again. Assuming she was ransomed, Jack didn’t take that much tending. She’d better find a career of her own, or she’d be right back doing something just as silly as this next year.
And if she wasn’t ransomed? It didn’t much matter what she did. Her owners would train her for what they wanted her to do. She frowned, thinking over what she liked. Some of her university courses were really, really interesting. Unfortunately, none of those was in enough demand for the University Entitlement to allow it as a major. If she got out of this, they’d go on the top of the list to check out for career possibilities, and if she didn’t? They were still interesting. She put in a query on aquaculture, just to see what had happened in the last 35 years.
An hour later she felt the invisible nudge that told her to finish her session. She joined a group of girls who sat on one end of the corral, and sang the Devotion. When they were done, the system guided her to a spot on the floor where she lay down, stretched out and watched the lights on the poles go from pearly white through a dusk sequence. She looked at the stars for a few minutes while she pondered what she had felt during the Devotion recital.
Reciting it had been enormously comforting. It formed the core of her existence. She frowned. Not exactly. It described the core of her existence. That was better, but still not right. She let her mind drift, and finally she had it. It formed the core of a slavegirl’s existence. Slaves, after all, needed to know what their owners wanted them to do; having a set of instructions for how to be a slave had to be comforting. Being a captive wasn’t so different from being a slavegirl, after all. Whether that was her future still wasn’t decided, and it wasn’t up to her to decide that. She pondered the revelation as she slid into sleep.
“Hem.” Melissa heard a throat clear behind her as she felt a finger tap her on the shoulder. A big finger. She turned around from where she was seated in front of one of the terminals, and found herself looking at one of the three males in the corral. Or at least, she found herself looking at what she suddenly realized was the most important part of the male.
“Wrap up what you’re doing,” the voice said from above. “We need to talk. By the way, I’m Mike.”
Talk wasn’t what Melissa found she was suddenly interested in, but she obediently turned back around and dismissed the net session. Then she turned again and fluidly rose to her feet. She felt herself go into the “make lips” pose; head tilted back, eyes closed and standing on her toes.
The man in front of her laughed. “Relax, girl. I said talk, and I meant talk. I know you’re up,” he paused to flick an engorged nipple, “but I’m not going to get you off before we have our talk.”
Melissa opened her eyes and tried to relax. “Frustrating,” she muttered. The big lug laughed again.
“Of course it’s frustrating. That’s part of the lesson.” He touched her on the shoulder to turn her around and then pointed, his arm over her shoulder. “Over there.”
He wasn’t quite as imposing seated, Melissa decided. He was still imposing enough. And he still didn’t seem to be at all interested in taking her. Oh, well...
“Your task,” he started out, “is to get me to take you, and make me enjoy the process.”
“Huh?”
He laughed again. “I know you’re expecting the male to be the sexual aggressor. Or at least initiator. That’s not what Happy Harry’s about. A Sizzling Slavegirl is a lot more than a hot tart that’s ready to be eaten. A Sizzling Slavegirl is a sex toy with a brain.” Her eyes tried to cross as he placed a massive finger between her eyes. “What’s between your ears is better than the best AI in existence – as long as it’s properly trained.
“I know you’re a Gorean,” the finger moved to touch the kef symbol on the left of her control collar, the other side of the affiliation symbol from the maple leaf that signified Scream citizenship, “so you should know what a pleasure slave is about. Right?”
“Uh, not really,” Melissa confessed. “Tina was more of a work slave.”
“So those lessons were a long time ago. To recap then: a pleasure slave does something for her owner that keeps him, or her, delighted. It’s not usually sex, and it’s not work. Slavegirls are expected to be sexually available; most pleasure slaves do a fair amount of routine housework as well. What’s your image of a sex slave?” he asked suddenly.
“A blonde bimbo?”
“Right. A brainless bit of fluff. You ought to know better: a good pleasure slave may be a blonde bit of fluff, but she’s anything but brainless. It takes work to keep a master amused, and sex is no different from anything else he may be interested in. We can’t make you an expert in two weeks, but we can get you started well enough that you can continue learning once you’re sold. Of course, there’s one other thing we’re going to do...”
“Oh?”
“Harry is installing the Sex Kitten DNA mod. You’ll find your attitude toward sex will start shifting in a few days. By the time you leave here whether and when you become aroused will be completely under your control; you’ll also be able to do it several times a day, and enjoy it each and every time. How many times you can do it is individual, but most girls with Sex Kitten can keep up with a Super Stud.
“You also won’t need sex yourself more than once every few days, maybe no more than once a week. More than that will be fun and enjoyable, but not a necessity.
“That’s background. So let’s get started. Seduce me.”
“Uh,” Melissa almost stuttered.
Mike laughed. “Start with a bit of flirting. You know, the sideways glance, the smile, and just let it flow. I’m not going to make it hard.”
“Oh.” She felt her tongue flick out to tease her nose ring, almost without thinking about it.
“Time for some fun!” a girl said from above and behind Melissa.
“Huh?”
The voice giggled. “Time to get your nose out of that display, girl! This is your first time off, right?”
“Uh, yes...”
“I got tasked with showing you around. I’ll bet you’ve never seen a slave playground before.”
“Um.” Melissa got up and turned around. The girl’s name seemed to be Sharif. At least, that’s what was printed on her breast. Lot 64. “Tina used to go to one on her time off, but I’ve never seen one.”
“No time like the present.” She turned and walked toward the corral fence, which opened lazily in front of her. Melissa followed, a bit bemused by the invisible fence being down. Sharif led the way into the narrow building.
It looked, Melissa thought, like a locker room. A long row of half meter wide lockers, each with a number and a name. Sure enough, locker 35 had her name, Melissa, neatly displayed above a full length mirror.
“Today’s outfit is shorts, sandals and a blouse,” Sharif said helpfully from where she’d stopped before locker 64. “It’s the one with the advertising.”
It certainly was. Melissa slid into the brown short shorts, which quivered and then tightened, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination. The light pink blouse made her blush as she examined it. It wasn’t the Melissa or Lot 35 inscribed in bold on front and back. It wasn’t even the legend “Wouldn’t you love to own me!” followed by “I’m a Games Prize, bid on me!” It was the picture of the guy with his eyes bugged out, smoke coming out of his ears and an impossibly rampant erection coming out of ripped slacks, looking at a lasciviously posed slavegirl who looked remarkably like her.
She blushed again as she slid into it and looked in the mirror. She blushed again as she noticed how the picture fit over her breasts. She thought a moment and then fiddled with the display. She walked down the narrow corridor and back, and then ran the video. Just as she thought. The sway of her hips did some positively obscene things to the picture on the back of the blouse.
“Admiring yourself?” Sharif’s voice broke into her fascinated inspection.
“I think my husband would have a stroke.”
“Or else wouldn’t let you get across the room before taking you.” Sharif giggled. “A Sizzling Slavegirl should love the effect she has on poor, defenseless males.”
“I’m ...”
“Get used to it. Harry will have you out here until you’ve got the attitude down pat.”
“That’s ...”
“Going to be easy. Just put a bit of sway in your step and let the training AI do the rest. Let’s get to the playground.” Sharif headed toward the door to the street, Melissa following her.
“The thing to know about Slave Playgrounds,” Sharif said fifteen minutes later, “is that they’re all self service. You haven’t got the credit in your pitiful spending account for fripperies, and neither does anyone else, so the vendors stay away. The city governments provide the facilities. The food is the best you can get from a fast food autochef, which is, frankly, pretty darn good.”
“Meet and Mate quality?”
“Exactly. Beats the heck out of Slave Chow. Everything’s self service. You use it, you clean and restock it. There’s lots of tables for discussion groups, exercise courts, mating cubicles. You name it, it’s probably here if it’s cheap and doesn’t take any real maintenance.”
“Guys?”
Sharif laughed. “The males that live around here all have their regular girlfriends. Either that or their mistresses have them locked up.”
“Darn!”
Sharif laughed again. “Happy Harry isn’t going to keep you celibate, girl! You’ll get lots of practice learning to sizzle! Besides, you might have noticed that the Sex Kitten DNA mods have kicked in.”
“Something’s different,” Melissa said cautiously. “Mike mentioned it, but he didn’t say a whole lot.”
“You probably had other things on your mind,” Sharif laughed. “Sex Kitten,” she said didactically, “is a variation on Nymphomaniac. It’s intended for sex slaves who have a single owner, rather than professional sex workers. Once it’s installed a quick fuck is just boring. The juice comes from working a partner up so you’re both sizzling before you let the old instincts take over. You’ll find you don’t really need to have an orgasm more than once every few days, maybe as long as a week. On the other hand, you’ll be able to keep pace with a Super Stud, and enjoy every minute of it. And you’ll find yourself noticing people’s sexual reactions; you won’t be able to avoid it. Whether you ignore them, cool them down or heat them up will be up to you – unless, of course, your owner has his own ideas!
“Anyway, to continue the basics. Entrance is free for slaves. It’s cheap for free women who get with the program, not so cheap if they expect someone else to clean up after them, and expensive if she brings a maid. Guys get banned if all they want is quick sex. You let the comps do the scheduling in virtual space, and just flow with it.”
“Sounds interesting. Does this place run to beaches?”
Sharif laughed. “The Enclave is totally beaches, girl! You want a swim, just dive in!”
“Great! It’s been a long time. I wonder...”
“Wonder what?”
“Do they have underwater rigs?”
Sharif shrugged. “I’m not a beach bunny, but we can certainly find out.”
The dive shack looked like most of the buildings in the slave playground: a roof over some pillars, interior walls to hang stuff on, and rows of lockers.
“Experience?” a mer asked them. The mer bobbed in her individual tank, which was just a translucent cylinder with enough liquid for her to float upright, mounted on top of a wheeled base. It was the only thing they could use to get around on land. Whatever the liquid was, it was dense enough so half of her torso floated above the surface. She didn’t wear a top, not that the lack was at all startling; at least half the girls Melissa had seen in the playground went topless, and tasteful outfits consisting of a headband, control collar and sandals seemed to be surprisingly common as well. Chastity shields were less common.
“I used to do quite a bit, but that was, oh, decades ago,” Melissa said. Sharif admitted not doing anything more than surface swimming.
“Well, you should be fine,” the mer said. “This is a beginner’s area. Let’s check you out on a rig.”
The underwater rig buckled around her waist and had a crotch piece that fitted with her life support attachment. Melissa nodded as she felt the familiar weight and the sequence as the life support unit ran through its attachment checks: empty bladder, three deep breaths with the windpipe closed, and a squirt of nutrients directly into her stomach, likewise with her esophagus closed.
There was also a headband that fit over her eyes and ears. Melissa nodded in pleasure; back when she was in college something like this was a really high end rig. Owning one was so far out of her price range it might as well have been in the stratosphere; even renting one put an unacceptable dent in her entertainment budget. She’d made do with much less expensive, and much less capable, rigs.
She spent a couple of minutes becoming familiar with the controls. There was, she noticed, a novice setting; that would be what Sharif would use. She waved at Sharif; the two women ran to the water’s edge and plunged in.
The water felt warm and familiarly comforting. It took a few moments for the sound processors in the headband to sort out the constant underwater babble and translate it into something that her brain could understand. Once it did, she began to orient herself to the underwater world.
The big difference, she noticed, was that the island they were on simply ended! The beach went down several meters underwater, and then was bounded by a low wall that dropped off in a vertical cliff. She swam down the cliff, noting that it had started to become encrusted with barnacles. The top few meters seemed to be something gray, and then the next 30 or so meters were a lighter bluish gray. Then it just ... ended. The entire island seemed to be floating in the sea. Well, she thought, it did make sense. She’d heard somewhere that the entire Games Enclave consisted of floating islands tethered to the main island so they didn’t get away, somewhat like a mother tethered unusually active small children. Thankfully, none of hers had been quite that actively exploratory!
She backed away from the cliff and looked at it a bit more. It seemed like there were rather gaudy signs painted on the sides. Probably directions, she thought. That, too, made a lot of sense, especially in a resort area. People who weren’t familiar with the underwater ways could get lost. Easily.
Melissa turned off the display she’d been using, and stood with a graceful twist that managed to be both easy on her body and vaguely erotic. She found herself walking toward Happy Harry’s building almost before her mind caught up. They must want me for something, she thought.
It turned out that they did. She found herself walking toward two men standing by an open girl cage. She recognized one of them: Steve was one of the salesmen. The other must be a customer. She managed a flirt as Happy Harry’s system walked her into the girl cage and closed the door behind her.
“Buy me, master?” She managed to put a slightly plaintive note in her voice, as if she was pining for a strong man to take her in hand.
The sales prospect laughed. “You have them all do that?”
Steve shook his head. “She’s a Gorean Association member; that’s part of their Canon and some of them think it’s amusing. She did it quite nicely.”
“She certainly did. Let’s start the interview.” He turned to the girl in the cage. “I’m Jeff Smith; if I win the bidding I’m going to have you address me by name most of the time we’re in public, so you might as well get used to it.”
“Uh, yes, Jeff.”
“Good. Now what I want you for is a personal assistant. Housekeeping comes with the job. Sex is third on the list; not that it’s unimportant but if all I wanted was housekeeping and sex I wouldn’t be talking to you. Got that?”
“Uh, yes.”
“Good. Now you’re wondering why I’m looking for a personal assistant at a dealer that’s known, even notorious, for turning out really hot sex slaves. Right?”
Melissa laughed. “The thought had occurred to me.”
“Good. There are personal assistants, and there are personal assistants. A good personal assistant knows a great deal about whatever job her boss is doing, without getting in his way. That’s where you come in.
“My job title is Professor of Archeology, and my specialty is underwater archeology.” He noted that Melissa caught her breath when he said underwater.
“So I’m looking for something that isn’t exactly common enough to be a title on the occupational capabilities, like housekeeper. In fact, it’s rare. So since I was here I ran the search program with my requirements and you popped out.
“I know you don’t have any experience. That doesn’t matter; personal assistants are common enough that the search programs can tell if someone is trainable. Your grades in University were mediocre – except for the few electives you managed to take that had something to do with ocean or underwater activities. And you did reasonably well in the introductory Archeology and Paleoanthropology class you took. The fact that you’re going to make me a very happy man sexually is icing on the cake; the main course is being productive on an underwater site.
“Also, you’ve spent most of your time off here in the water, and most of your free time in the corral you’ve been looking at stuff that’s got something to do with the ocean. All of that looks like a good enough fit for me to spend some time evaluating you. Steve?”
The salesman looked over from where he had been studying Melissa’s reactions to what his prospect said. “Looks good.”
“Can I have her for a few hours?”
“Sure.”
“Have her dress for outside. Shorts, blouse, sandals. No advertising.”
“OK.” Steve looked at the display panel. His fingers twitched a bit. The cage door opened and Melissa felt herself drawn to go out back.
Two minutes later she was back, having found her hand directed to an outfit with a very skimpy thong, brown short shorts, a pink blouse, a belt and sandals with 3 cm chunk heels. The outfit came with a nice belt pouch containing a reader and phone. All in all, an outfit very similar to one that at least a third of the women on the street would be wearing. She was directed out the front of the locker room onto the street.
“Call us a cab; I need to pick up my grad student.”
“Just the three of us, sir?”
“Yes, the rest of the equipment is at the pier.”
Melissa looked at the screen on her wrist display a moment. Her fingers twitched. “About a minute, sir.”
“I thought,” he started. “Well, you’re probably right.”
“Oh!” Melissa blushed. “I was trained to address males in authority as sir. I’ll try to do better, Jeff.”
“You’re right, sir does work better.”
“Yes, sir.” Just then two ponygirls turned onto the street pulling a four person cart. Jeff gave them an address and the two of them got in.
The next half hour Melissa remembered with horrified amusement. Jeff grilled her on what little she remembered from her single survey course in anthropology, including having her look up a number of papers and interpret what they said. Melissa had started sweating by the time Jeff recognized a younger man who was walking toward them. He stopped the ponygirls long enough for the man to get in.
“Tac, this is Melissa,” he introduced them. “Simply amazing: she actually remembered enough from one survey course 40 years ago to make sense. Tac, it’s your turn. Grill her on underwater safety procedures.”
It took about fifteen minutes to get to the harbor where the archaeologists kept their boat. About the only thing Melissa remembered was a definite impression that the ponygirl on the left was smirking, which was impossible. Not the smirk, but seeing it from the back.
Melissa lazily came awake just before the dawn began to color the eastern sky. She heard the quiet breathing of the girls who slept on each side, and wondered why she was so calm. Today was, after all, The Day, and she still had no idea whether she was going to be ransomed, or was going to become someone’s slavegirl.
Jurgen hadn’t given her a hint the last time he’d used her as part of one of his nightly entertainments. His other two girls hadn’t given her a clue about how he was feeling, even assuming that they knew. Harry had displayed her a few times and had sent her out as part of an evening’s entertainment crew a few times as well. The only person who’d shown more than a cursory interest had been that underwater archaeologist fellow, and he’d gone away muttering something about too much bureaucracy. At least, she thought lazily, underwater archeology could be a field she could come to like. It was, after all, underwater.
She rose as the sun did likewise, and let the computer direct her through the morning routine. Not, she thought amusedly, that she had any choice in the matter! That was one of the things which the last two weeks had taught her: having the computer direct her had felt strange at first, like a long neglected something. Now it felt entirely natural. She supposed that it should bother her, but it didn’t.
After the morning ritual she still had three hours before the closing ceremonies of the Games started, which meant she had an hour before bidding closed on the captives. She’d managed to dig out the bidding rules, which had convinced her that looking at the bids wasn’t going to tell her enough to make it worth while. Even assuming that she could find if anyone had bid on her, let alone what. That was one of the many things that she’d been blocked from finding out.
She settled in front of one of the long row of display plates and brought up her schedule. It was, as she expected, totally uninformative. Morning routine, blank, evening routine. She brought up one of the free net courses she’d decided to take, and discovered that she couldn’t do it. It wasn’t that the system had decided to block her, oh, no. She kept making command mistakes, and once she got something interesting she found she’d read it three times without understanding a word.
She sighed, and decided not to scream. Now that she’d admitted it, she definitely felt like butterflies in her stomach. Or rather caterpillars trying to gorge themselves enough to turn into butterflies.
She gave up the unequal battle and pulled in a stupidly simple game that she could lose herself in, and that she had quit caring whether she won or not years ago.
Twenty games later, the screen blanked. She shook her head and stood up to look around. It seemed like everyone else had the same idea.
An apprentice came out with a pile of something. The fence on the back opened, and a number of girls queued up in front of the apprentice. He put something on their breasts and sprayed it. Then the girls started filing out, going one way or the other on the paths between the corrals. She noticed that the fences on other corrals had also opened, and girls were filing out, and then entering different corrals. Some girls started trickling into the back gate and queueing up before the apprentice. He checked his file and put a different appliqué on their breasts, and sprayed it. Then those girls walked into the corral.
At the same time, the fence at the front opened, and girls started trickling to the lockers between the buildings. She looked at them leaving until suddenly she felt herself walking toward the line.
This time there was a difference: the empty space by the door had one of Harry’s minions standing there. She found herself facing him while he sprayed something on her breasts and then sponged them off. He checked a sheet and used a different spray on her kef. She looked down; the slave dealer’s mark had vanished from her breasts, but her kef was still there. She shrugged and wondered who had bought her.
She wove around the line of girls getting dressed, noting in passing that they were donning a variety of styles, ranging from tunics and camasks to shorts and shirt. She stopped in front of the locker she’d used for the last two weeks, and paused to admire herself in the full length mirror on the front. She’d changed substantially in the last two weeks: her hips had become slightly wider, her waist had narrowed, her face had shifted slightly. She couldn’t describe most of the changes, but the total effect was stunning. And amazingly, they had retained enough of her old look so that family would identify her as a, possibly distant, relative. Her personal stats told her she now had a Beauty Index of 145.
She opened the door and felt her hand guided to the shorts and shirt outfit. Except that it was a different shirt; the Happy Harry’s logo on the back was missing, as was her name.
She slid into them and put on her sandals. Her hand went to a small purse. After she checked her appearance she stopped, puzzled. The system wasn’t guiding her to her new owner. She opened her wrist display and made a query: she’d been assigned to her husband and Champion, Jack.
She had been ransomed.
She swayed on her feet for a moment, and leaned against the locker to get her balance. A thought crossed her mind: nobody thought she was worth enough to outbid her ransom fund? She took a deep breath and ruthlessly suppressed it.
She walked out to the street and considered what to do next. Call Jack? Um, maybe. She found a quiet spot and lifted her left arm, where the bracelet obediently opened showing the display screen. Her fingers twitched slightly as she did several queries. She nodded in satisfaction; the Games Authority had restored all of her permissions, and Jack was still here. He hadn’t gone home. Their family association account showed that he’d bought two seats for the Closing Ceremony, which was awfully thoughtful of him. However.
She put in another query, and her mouth thinned. The second seat was registered to someone else. A female someone else. Then she shook her head slowly. Like she could expect Jack to stay celibate if she wasn’t around. Fat chance. She thought a moment and then made some more queries. The female someone else was named Naomi, and she was now a member of their family association. That was fast work on Jack’s part, unless.... Right. She actually knew Naomi; she was a member of the same Gorean City, and they had met enough times so she could recognize her on sight, but they could hardly be called acquaintances, let alone friends.
The seat next to Naomi was still available. She bought it and then considered her next moves.
She summoned a ponygirl taxi and waited the minute it took for the girl and her cart to show up. She told the pony where to go and got in; then she spent a moment looking at the ponygirl before settling down to business.
The ponygirl looked like the several ’girls she had known at Uni. She had a chestnut mane and tail, hooves instead of feet, and solidly muscled hips, thighs and back that would have been more appropriate to a professional wrestler than to the otherwise slight girl harnessed between the shafts of the cart.
She wore a crisscross strap harness, a very skimpy thong and an off the shoulder halter. Her wrists were tethered to knobs that came up off the shafts, properly positioned for the ’girl to push or pull. The thin tube of a life support unit ran between her thighs.
The kef on her shoulder proclaimed her to be a municipal slave. Judy knew she not only didn’t mind, the ’girl undoubtedly thought it was a beneficial arrangement. Ponies were notorious for lacking the wiring to handle complex human social organizations: outside of the mixed pony and human nomad tribes, their relations with their owners were similar to the one between a drowning sailor and his life raft.
A pair of reins attached to the sides of the ’girl’s control collar completed the arrangement. The reins were tied to the post at the front of the cart. Judy left them there. The girl was quite capable of getting her to where she was supposed to go without her assistance, even if she had any experience with driving a ponygirl cart, which she most certainly did not.
Once the girl got the cart moving, Judy leaned back in the seat and started working with her wrist display in earnest.
A half hour later she walked down the aisle carrying a tray with three drinks. She stopped in front of her husband, stepped up to the platform between seats, and offered him the side with his favorite drink. He took it without thinking. She turned the tray to his new wife, who took one of the other drinks. Then she bent over and kissed him. “Hi Honey. Introduce me to our new wife.”
He blinked and then stared. “I didn’t recognize you!”
“I got a beauty upgrade, all the way to 145. Like it?” She stepped back and pirouetted.
“Wow! Uh, Naomi, my wife Judy. Judy, Naomi. I’ve been going out with her while you were, um...”
“In a corral at Happy Harry’s,” she finished for him. “I’ll bet you checked, found they were doing Sex Kitten, and then people told you that meant either Jurgen was going to keep me, or I’d have my ransom fund outbid.”
Naomi looked at the drink in her hand as if it had sprouted something.
“Uh, yes.”
“I got myself a seat,” she said brightly as she sat on the other side of Naomi. “That’s what they told me, too. I’m pissed.”
“You’re pissed?” Naomi shrank back slightly, trying to avoid a scene.
“Yes, I’m pissed. After that buildup and all the training, nobody thought enough of me to outbid my ransom fund!”
“Oh!” Naomi giggled to release the tension.
“Well, I’m just as happy I’m still free and married, thank you. Still, it rankles a bit. We need to get acquainted.”
“We do?” Naomi asked.
“We do.” Judy added: “you’re a member of our family association, all nice, neat and legal, which means you have to follow procedures to leave. Unless you want to make a scene with a board hearing. I have to agree to your leaving, and I’m not going to until we get to know each other well enough to know if it’s going to work. For all I know, inviting you into the association may be the best thing Jack’s ever done!”
“I can’t just leave?”
“Are you sure you’re a Gorean? What do the codes say?”
“Free Companions can leave any time, for any reason.”
“Unless...” Judy drew out the question.
“Oh,” she said brightly. “If there’s an underlying family association, we’ve got to follow that procedure.”
“Right. Jack’s pretty easy-going when everything’s going well, but he does know his duties as head of household.”
“And one of those is to make sure my women stay on good terms with each other,” Jack put in.
“And he’ll do it too. He did when I got into it with my eldest. A month with Girlfriend was, um, interesting. At least we didn’t have to be kenneled!”
“Kenneled?”
“Teens need to find their own place,” Jack shrugged. “That doesn’t mean they should be allowed to disrupt the household before they’re legally allowed to leave. Besides, the lesson was good for Judy, and it wasn’t lost on the other two.”
“Or Tina; she was getting a bit beyond her place. The kennel bit is what they do if Girlfriend doesn’t work by itself. They put both of them in a double wide cage. One is cuffed so the other one has to take care of her. The system switches them off randomly.”
“So we have to kiss and make up?”
“At least kiss and become friends.”
“Well,” Naomi said as if she was thinking about it, “I would except...”
“Except?”
“Your nose ring would get in the way.”
“Yike! I forgot about that! There’s got to be a way of taking it off.” She lifted her left arm as the wrist controller slid out to show the screen.
“Drat! Can’t do it until we leave.”
“Oh?”
“I’m still a Tier 2 slavegirl. The Games Enclave doesn’t allow a slavegirl to be freed, so that'll last until we leave and the Games Enclave’s Social Policy module is removed.”
“Well, in that case...”
Judy twisted in her seat to offer her lips for a kiss. Naomi came around a bit hesitantly as Judy’s arm slid across her back. Her fingers did something ... interesting. Naomi’s eyes flew open as her head tried to bury itself in Judy’s waiting mouth.
A bare minute later they parted.
“Hot enough for you?” Judy asked with a definite smirk.
“Gaaah!” Naomi said. “Where did you learn to do that?”
“You should take a stroll down the Street of Slave Dealers. The signs are a gas.”
“Huh?”
“Her captor put her in with Happy Harry’s Sizzling Slavegirls,” Jack said.
“And quite a few of them sizzled. I guess I didn’t come up to standard.” Judy mock pouted.
“Tonight?” Naomi asked hopefully.
“Probably not,” Jack said. “We’re leaving this afternoon, and we probably won’t be able to get Judy on a flight today.” He brought up his left arm so the wrist controller would slide out into a screen.
“We can! I wouldn’t have believed it.”
Judy laughed. “I suspect that there are a lot of people shifting reservations around.”
“Hm. Makes sense.”
Judy woke up, as she had every morning for the last month, when the unceasing programs in her control computer gently eased her brain rhythms to a waking state. She stretched a bit, and felt the hard floor under her rather than the softness of the bed. She frowned unhappily. Jack had leashed her to the foot of the bed again as a ‘disciplinary measure’.
The big oaf hadn’t figured out that whatever he was trying to do wasn’t working. First, sleeping on the floor wasn’t particularly a hardship. She’d learned how to get a good night’s sleep on a hard, flat surface during her time in the corral at Happy Harry’s. The leash was a minor bother, but Jack had set it to release at her wake up time. It might have had more effect if he’d set it so it wouldn’t release until he took it off her neck. It was embarrassing more than anything. It was a recognition that she was out of control and not pleasing her Free Companion.
The leash released, and she rolled to her feet to begin her morning routine while Jack and Naomi slept. The shower woke her up the rest of the way.
She padded back into the bedroom to select her outfit for the day. Something sexy, the slave tunic, or daytime casual? Daytime casual, she decided. So, it showed the kef Jack had decreed she display whenever she didn’t have to go out. Another disciplinary measure. So effing what. Shorts and shirt today.
She noticed the red light on her wrist controller while she made the coffee. Priority message? She called the message up on the wall screen.
“Judy,” it said, “The monitors say you’ve got some kind of a problem. Drop in for tea at 10:00. Aunt Narelle.” It wasn’t a suggestion. She checked her empty schedule, and sent an acknowledgment.
Steffi showed her into her Aunt Narelle’s comfortable day room. Steffi had been her aunt’s maid practically forever. At least, she’d been her maid four decades ago, when Aunt Narelle and her Companion had been assigned as her aunt and uncle when she and her then boyfriend had moved to Chicago after graduating from Uni. They both had to be close to a hundred, even though neither looked much past early middle age.
Steffi, she thought, might be the type to commit suti if she outlived Narelle. That had to be the stupidest custom in existence, but it came with the India Amalgamation. Judy ruthlessly suppressed the thought, and greeted her aunt courteously.
“So you’re in trouble. Tell me about it.” Narelle, direct as usual.
“Jack told you?”
“Jack’s probably being obtuse. The monitor AI told me about it. It told Hank two months ago.”
“Which is when Jack started trying to get me to shape up.” Judy said with a catch in her breath.
“Like I said, obtuse. Start anywhere.”
“I think it started at the Games.”
“Nonsense. Offering yourself as a prize wasn’t just idiotic, it wasn’t like you at all. Whatever is going on begins earlier. Start with Mike leaving home for university. What were you planning on doing with the rest of your life?”
“Uh...”
“So you got totally bored, right? How did it feel, girl?”
“Awful, aunt.” Judy started crying. Narelle walked over to hold her for a while.
Judy blew her nose and dried her eyes.
“Feel better?”
“Lots, aunt. Now what?”
“Well,” Narelle moved back to her favorite chair. “If you’d have come to me right after the Games, we could have kept it in the family. What you probably need is a thorough dose of career planning. As it is, the monitor thinks the Health Service monitors will throw an alarm in a week or so. You know the Codes.”
“If we need a Health Service counselor, we don’t wait for them to initiate things.”
“Right. Jack is the one that has to make the appointment, and it’s not your place to tell him. I’ll mention it to Hank. Now let’s see how much has gone sour. How’s Naomi taking it?”
“Well,” Judy sat back thoughtfully...
“It’s time to see where we are,” Lucky said. “We’ve talked to all three of you individually.”
Judy nodded to the Health Service relationship counselor. The way they sat, she thought, described the situation quite well. Jack and Naomi sat together on one of the couches, she sat on a chair next to them. Lucky was on the other side of the room, where she could maintain some neutrality.
“The central problem is that Judy didn’t handle the transition after her last child left home very well. That’s not unusual; many women have to see a career counselor after they’ve finished raising their family, and a fair number of the ones that don’t eventually show up here.
“The situation came to a head when she offered herself as a prize at the Games, lost and spent two weeks in a corral being subjected to a heavy dose of professional sex worker and sex slave training. At the same time, Jack found Naomi and invited her into the association, so when Judy was unexpectedly ransomed she found she had a third in her marriage.
“The first couple of months after that were actually pretty good, between Judy and Naomi getting to know each other, and Judy using her training to spice up their sex life. Then the contradictions in her situation began to come home to roost, and she started to get frustrated, and then depressed. At that point Jack started to try to get her to do something by applying pressure. That helped the situation spiral downwards even faster.
“So where do we go from here? The options fall into two main groups. The first one is to formalize the direction Judy’s been headed. That is, she submits to Jack and Naomi, and becomes their slavegirl rather than their senior wife. Naomi, what do you think of that?”
“Um,” Naomi said, gathering her thoughts. “I think she’d make us a great pleasure slave. Her housekeeping is good, her sex is amazing, and she’s good at research. I think she’d work out for us.” She squeezed Jack’s hand as Judy looked at her junior wife with amazement.
“Jack?”
“I agree with Naomi, I think she’d make a great pleasure slave, but I want to remember the wife I had for 35 years, and not get her confused with a slavegirl, no matter how good she is at sex. I think I’d want to sell her.”
“Judy?”
“I don’t know. It seems like it would solve things, but there’s something off, besides what Jack said.”
“Right. Even if Jack decided to keep you, you’d probably ask to be sold fairly quickly. The problem is that neither housekeeping nor professional level sex is really consistent with your core personality. They aren’t exactly incompatible, but if either was consistent, it would have filled the ‘what am I going to do with the rest of my life’ void.
“The good part is that, if you did submit and were sold, the first factor would do the career analysis to find the possibilities that really do suit you.
“Let’s leave that card on the table, and look at the other branch, which is to find a career. Naomi, what would you think if Judy found a career as a professional?”
“That would be great! Half our problem is that she’s feeling guilty about not contributing anything except housework and sex. Even though she is. I use her for research quite a bit.”
“Jack?”
“Agreed.”
“Judy?”
“I’d like to, but nothing seems to work.”
“I suspect there’s a reason, and that it’s that you might have to leave to find a career that really suits you long term. Among other things, you seem to like the ocean. You had a lot of fun with a school of mers in college, and you spent most of your time off at Happy Harry’s in the ocean with an underwater rig. The things you seemed to be most interested in getting off the net for yourself are all things that could have an underwater involvement.
“The other piece is that you’re not located close enough to a good university to attend from home, and you’re nowhere near the ocean. You’d have to move to prepare for a career.”
“I finished in the bottom quarter,” she said disgustedly.
“The bottom quarter of female university graduates is still well above average for the general population. Remember that half of the people in any group are below average; that’s what the word average means.
“Most people who come to a professional don’t need a top performer; they need someone who will do the routine work well enough to get the job done efficiently and effectively. Licensing exams and followup make sure of that, so you don’t need to worry about whether you measure up. If you’re in the profession at all, you’ll do an acceptable job.
“What’s more important is to find a profession where the work interests you. That’s what career planning is about.
“Naomi?”
“That means she’ll have to leave? I’d like to keep her, but if it’s best for her, then I’ll have to accept it. Kicking and screaming,” she giggled.
“Jack.”
“I think it’s best.”
“Judy?”
“It sounds good, but...”
“You’re not sure. That’s understandable.
“Here’s the proposal. You take the next two months or so for a career planning assessment. Since you’re members of the Gorean Association, I believe the Guild of Slave Trainers is quite good at career assessment.
“The other part, Jack, is that you need to use the Wife module on her, and otherwise back off.”
“What does that do?” he asked.
“It will focus her on making a nurturing and supportive home environment for you and Naomi. I doubt if it would work for the long term, but for a few months, combined with career planning, it should be adequate.
“Unless you’ve got questions, I think we’re done.”
“Um,” Judy said, “I’ve got one question. I know I’m still kind of pissed that nobody outbid my ransom fund. That was a hit in my self-esteem!”
Lucky laughed. “I can see that. We did some research, and there’s a perfectly mundane explanation. It starts with your being a Gorean Association member; there’s a long-standing special arrangement that means that outside factors couldn’t bid, and the Association, as a matter of policy, keeps its hands off.
“As I said, the professional level sex worker training isn’t really consistent with your core personality. You evaluated good as a family’s housekeeper, but the sex slave thing is a negative for a family with young children. The fact that you spent most of your net time researching stuff rather than looking at entertainment was a negative for the kind of people who want a sex slave. The popular image of sex slaves is that they’re empty-headed blond bimbos. It isn’t true, of course, but the image gets in the way.
“The regular factors would have looked more at what you were doing on your free time. That profile suggests a personal assistant for a single professional; the housekeeping and sex worker are real sweeteners for that position, not the main course.”
Naomi nodded thoughtfully at the description.
“Remember the guy that asked you all the questions about underwater stuff and archeology?”
“Yes. I thought he might bid.”
“We checked. He wanted to, but he’s not an association member, which meant he needed special permission. He couldn’t get everything lined up fast enough. If he had, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Oh!” Judy put her hand to her mouth.
Naomi giggled. “Now I know why she drops everything if I’ve got a research question!”
“I noticed that,” Jack said. “I’m done.”
“Likewise,” Judy said.
“Now I’ve got one,” Naomi said. “I think you’ve got an ulterior motive for sticking her with Wife. What is it?”
“Core training recognizes Wife as a slave module, so she’ll act like one for the next two months. You can consider it a time limited informal contract. It’ll give you a couple of months to discover how it would work if she was your association’s slavegirl and your research assistant.
“The thought here is that she’s shown that the research assistant thing may very well be consistent with her core personality. We’d have to look a bit deeper to see if it really is, or if that’s enough, or if either Judy’s or Jack’s attitude on keeping her as a slavegirl will change, but you will find out, and it’s useful information for the career planning.”
“Judy, what did she mean about core training and the Wife module?” Jack asked when they’d gathered in the apartment’s main room.
“Let’s see.” Judy called up the transcript of the session, and fed in a query. Then she did a couple more. “Here it is. It’s something that the fetish contingent does.”
“Fetish contingent?” Jack asked, frowning.
“Some of them like to switch their submissives in and out of slave role without having a formal contract.”
“Oh. Formal contract?”
“There’s something in here about a pseudo slavegirl association policy.”
“I’ll bet that’s the yellow we see occasionally,” Naomi said.
“I don’t think I’ve noticed that,” Jack said.
He wouldn’t, Judy thought. She hesitated a moment. “Remember Laci?”
“She submitted last year, didn’t she? Then she wasn’t around any more.” Jack hesitated. “You’re on to something; she was coming to events as a slavegirl before she submitted.”
“Her girlfriend sold her,” Judy said.
“Her girlfriend? That was Tina, right? Talk about a smooth bitch.”
“That’s her. I’d love to know what her Altemeyer-Stonebender score is.”
“Meow!” Naomi laughed.
“She’s got a point,” Jack said. “We need to look at this carefully; there may be non-obvious gotchas.”
Judy relaxed a bit further into Jack’s embrace, feeling his arm as it circled her trim waist and rested where the kef that he still insisted that she display showed below her cheap shorts. His other arm, she knew, circled Naomi’s waist and rested on her skirt.
Helen’s receptionist, Judy thought, was absolutely gorgeous. Her Beauty Index had to be somewhere in the 170s, and the black and white diagonally striped slave livery set her off perfectly. The first segments on the kef mark on her shoulder were yellow and blue, which meant she was a faux slavegirl, not a real one. Interesting. Something else, however, was definitely off.
~Naomi,~ she said over their Intercom link, ~something’s strange about that girl. You figure it out?~
Naomi shifted her position where she was snuggled up to Jack and smoothed her short skirt. ~Look at the second decoration on the right,~ she sent back.
Judy squeezed Jack’s hand and took a quick look at the red band that circled the girl’s neck. The central decoration was, of course, an affiliation symbol, and she didn’t expect to recognize it. The first symbol on the right was the kef. It was hard to make out at the distance, but that didn’t matter: it would be the same as the one on her left shoulder.
She shifted her attention to the next symbol. That was even harder to make out, but it looked like a sex symbol. Which meant she wasn’t a heterosexual true female; heterosexual true females didn’t have the sex symbol on their collars. Pink circle, which wasn’t surprising, on a lighter pink background, so she was a committed lesbian. The rest of the symbol wasn’t clear, but she thought there might be something in the upper right, and nothing on the bottom.
~She-male?~ she sent.
~Looks like it to me.~
~Whatever, she’s gorgeous.~
~Oh, absolutely. There has to be a story there, pity we’ll probably never learn it.~
The girl behind the desk got up. “Helen is ready for you now,” she announced. She led the three of them into a comfortable consulting room, got them seated and served refreshments.
“I suppose,” Helen started after they had completed the usual pleasantries, “you’re wondering why I asked all three of you to be here for Judy’s first session?”
“I presume it wasn’t just to meet us,” Jack said.
“Meeting all three of you together would be a good idea anyway, but you’re quite right, the referral from the Health Service indicated there were some other issues that it would be well to get on the table and possibly deal with today so we can have a clear field for Judy’s career assessment.”
All three of them nodded cautiously.
“Jack, you’re holding quite a bit of guilt over what happened at the Games, and the aftermath. What did you do about it?”
“I’ve decided not to go again,” he said unhappily.
Both Judy and Naomi looked at him in astonishment.
“Bad move! Do you learn to ride a horse by quitting the first time you fall off? No, you get back on and learn. I take it you discussed it with someone senior in your clan, maybe a senior warrior?”
“Not all that thoroughly.”
“Well, do it. Until then, I’ll tell you my perspective. I go to the games regularly because we do quite a bit of training there, so I know what the top warriors do. They all have a games fund that’s enough to buy several slavegirls for their initial pool. Then they set a hard limit: when they get below a certain number, they withdraw. Quite a few of them have a goal of winning enough girls so they can make their expenses and a profit when they sell them, and those aren’t always the professionals. That’s why the third week is so tough; you’ve got a lot of very good fighters that are going after profit rather than glory.”
“That makes a lot of sense,” Jack nodded thoughtfully. “So we put money aside.”
“That’s the idea. If you do it right and stick to the plan you can make going to the games pay for itself while you gain the experience to get into the semi-finals and then the finals. You’ll want to investigate the strategy yourself, of course.”
“Of course.” Jack made a note on his wrist controller.
“Now what’s the other half?”
“Making it up to Judy,” he said flatly.
“I knew what I was doing,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter. I should not have risked you the third time; probably not the second either.”
“Are you going to do it again?” Helen interjected.
“No,” he said equally flatly.
“Judy, are you feeling that he owes you anything from the incident?”
“Um,” she said thoughtfully, “not from that incident. I do wish he’d have gotten a clue about the rest of what was going on sooner, though. So I guess you’re right, I’m feeling I need something for the mess he put me through.”
“Good. Let’s put that on the table; there are more things to look at, and we don’t need to jump to action plans on incomplete information.”
Jack nodded vigorously.
“Now, Naomi, when Lucky asked you about how you felt about Judy becoming your family’s slavegirl, you agreed enthusiastically. The transcript shows that Judy was shocked, and you had a few mixed feelings afterwards about what you said. What was that about?”
“Well,” Naomi blushed, “I didn’t think I’d say that! It just popped out. You know...”
“Yeah,” Helen laughed. “Us shrinks tend to surprise interesting reactions at times.”
“I have to admit being embarrassed. The first time I saw Judy I didn’t recognize her. The Judy I’d seen in pictures couldn’t hold a candle to this girl. All I saw was this gorgeous girl holding some drinks and offering them to us. Since she had a ring in her nose and a kef on her thigh, my first thought was ‘what a gorgeous slavegirl,’ and I also noticed a bit about how well she did the service. The fact she wasn’t wearing a tunic didn’t register; there isn’t all that much consistency in slave outfits at the Games. Then I discovered she was my senior wife, or would be as soon as we left the enclave, and I tried to suppress the thought. Unfortunately, first impressions stick.”
“They sure do,” Helen agreed. “And trying to repress them just makes them stronger.”
Judy shook her head ruefully. “When I checked status after leaving Happy Harry’s I was surprised when I discovered another woman in my marriage! So I deliberately set it up to shock. Not nice of me, I’ll admit.”
“You certainly caught me flat-footed,” Jack said. “That was a beautifully executed surprise attack.”
“Why thank you!” Judy said, blushing slightly.
“So then you got really mixed feelings about it. Care to lay them on the table?”
“Well,” Judy said, “one set is fairly simple. Jack and Naomi are both bringing in income, I’m not. Being a slavegirl would resolve that issue; it wouldn’t be my responsibility to know whether I was doing enough for them to warrant their keeping me. After I sorted through it, I found I really didn’t have any objections to being a slavegirl. Granted, it would change my relationships totally, but the last year and a half has shown I don’t have that many I’d really grieve over losing. If I did, I probably wouldn’t be in this mess.
“The other side, though, is what Lucky brought up. It feels like she’s right; being a housekeeper and sex slave isn’t enough. Housekeeping is necessary, and playing Jack and Naomi to where they’ve got smoke coming out of their ears before we get down to it is fun, but one’s work and the other’s dessert. The main course is missing. Being Naomi’s assistant might fill that hole, at least if she’s got enough research to keep me busy and interested.”
“That’s what we’re going to have to find out. Now, Lucky made one other suggestion that would help immensely: doing a trial run as your family’s slavegirl. I’d recommend going the pseudo slavegirl route rather than what she recommended.”
“Pseudo slavegirl?” Jack asked. “I know it’s one of the standard options, but I really don’t know that much about it.”
“You saw my girl? She’s a pseudo slavegirl, not a real one. How we got to where we are is a long story: she used to be my husband, and we’re still married. As far as either of us can tell, we’re going to stay that way until death do us part.
“There’s a pseudo slavegirl policy in the standard policy library that we can set up. When I did the case review it looked like Judy has some studying to do to get back in shape to pick up a university refresher prior to becoming a professional. If that’s true, she’s not going to be going right off to university when we get done with the career evaluation, even if that turns out to be the recommended path.”
“That’s a standard association policy?” Jack asked. “Judy would actually be a slavegirl? It sounds more like the way to go.”
“Yes, she’ll be a slavegirl from her viewpoint as well as everyone else’s. She’ll know there are a couple of evaluation points, and of course you can stop it any time you want. She can too, but she probably won’t. We’ll also need council approval, but that’s going to be automatic since it’s coming from us as well as the Health Service.”
“Good. We need to discuss it.”
“Great! I’ll help you set it up so you don’t trip over any details. Now, the other thing we need to discuss is scheduling the career review, and we also need to schedule discussing what needs to be done to clear up the rest of the issues. We can take our time on that; the results of the career planning will help focus things.”
“Before we go on,” Naomi asked, “I’m more that a little curious. If you don’t want to tell us, I’ll live with it, but turning your husband into your slavegirl sounds more than a little extreme!”
Helen laughed. “It wasn’t that way at all. The story might help with what we’re discussing.
“It started before we met in college. Ron was a cross-dresser – he liked to take the female role at times, and he was quite good at it. I’d seen his alter ego, Ronnie, around campus and didn’t think anything of it. She had a bit better than average looks but nothing outstanding, a Beauty Index of maybe 105. I was looking for a guy, so I didn’t pay any attention to her. We finally met at an association gathering, which gave the game away immediately.”
“Um? Oh, right. The sex symbol would have been for a normal male.”
“Actually it’s yellow for people who play regularly on the other side of the street. It was easy enough to think of Ronnie as a she-male, she was that good, and she used good prosthetics. It helped that even as a guy he was pretty rather than handsome and a bit shorter than average. He also wore a control collar, which wasn’t required outside the association for females at the time, and was very unusual for males. It helped disguise his larynx, moved his voice up two octaves and changed the timbre when he wanted. The crossdressing prosthetics gave her a good shape, but she really didn’t need all that much help. She had the foot and ankle mods so she could wear heels and toe shoes without trouble.
“So we got to know each other a bit at the gathering. We went out as a normal couple and also enjoyed girls’ nights out, moved in together, set up a trial marriage, graduated, went to work and then married. By the time we got our first Birthright we’d saved up enough to buy a housekeeper, so we kept on having our girls’ nights out.
“We made sure the kids were cool with alternate sexuality, so by the time our eldest headed out to college our youngest was old enough to handle learning that her father Ron was the same person as her aunt Ronnie. Ron did the sex change to Ronnie then. I did career planning just before our second left, so I started apprenticing with the Guild while our youngest was still a middle teen. Ronnie had picked up the housekeeping, so we sold the housekeeper when our youngest was ready for that level of helping around the house. When she left for college I was close to becoming an advanced apprentice. With just the two of us, both working, we were building up a nice nest egg.
“Even though I was dominant, Ron had always taken his duties as head of household seriously, including disciplining me, our girl or our kids when it was warranted, and Ronnie’s change to a real female body type hadn’t changed that a bit.
“Which is why Ronnie surprised me when she told me she wanted to experiment with being my slavegirl. I really hadn’t seen that one coming. We went the pseudo slavegirl route, and she took a couple of years to ease into being a slavegirl full time at home. When I took my final trip to the Games before becoming a journeyman, she took a long vacation so she could come with, and spent most of it in a corral at Muriel’s Maids getting core training as well as being trained as a maid and office assistant. When we came back I got my bump to journeyman so I was making more than enough to support myself and a slave maid. She asked to make it official, so we petitioned the council to let her go full time in public. They did a bit of checking and approved it, provided we set up reevaluations and a reentry. Her public presentation has been as a slavegirl ever since.
“That was 20 years ago. One of the things about a pseudo slavegirl is that she doesn’t cede rights, so we’re still married. Since she hasn’t ceded rights, we discuss everything I plan on doing to her. Sometimes she’s enthusiastic, sometimes she’s simply willing to go along with her mistress, and every couple of years she says no to something.”
“She’s gone up quite a bit from 105,” Judy ventured after a bit of silence.
“Well, of course! One of our little traditions in the Guild is that journeymen and masters always have a girl who they use as a showpiece for what they can do. I’ll undoubtedly keep improving her for the rest of our lives.”
“You said a reentry phase?” Jack asked after another pause.
“That’s part of the pseudo and faux slavegirl sequences. Since one can be ended at will, and the other is time limited, there’s a transition back to being a free woman. You’re supposed to set up the resources to handle that first so she doesn’t show up on Public Aid’s doorstep.” Helen paused and looked at Jack. “Sometimes that takes work with several other people to reorient how they see her as well.”
“You’re being diplomatic,” Jack responded. “I think I’m going to need that. I take it you noticed where the transcript said I wanted to remember her as my wife rather than as a slavegirl?”
“Yes, and that’s something we may need to discuss. Your time together raising your family is over and done. That phase ended when your youngest left for university. Your relationship had to change. Part of the problem was trying to keep it together the same way. That’s why you and Naomi are getting along better than you and Judy; your picture of Naomi doesn’t have the baggage, and for that matter neither does Naomi’s picture of Judy. They’re just different pictures.”
“I see.” He sat there a moment and then sighed. “There’s a pattern there, isn’t there?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose it’s better we talk about it in private.”
“Talk it over with a senior Warrior first; it’s not that uncommon.”
“OK. Is there any reason we shouldn’t get started on the pseudo slavegirl thing?”
“None at all, especially since she’s already your association’s pseudo slavegirl. Let’s discuss it.” She waved at a wall; a picture turned into a display.
“She’s what?” Naomi said as Jack grunted “Huh?”
Helen laughed. “It happened at the Games Enclave. You remember that the first step you had to do when you registered her as a Games Prize was that she had to agree to becoming a pseudo slavegirl?”
“Oh. Right.”
“That’s a formal action in your association, so you would have had to agree to cancel it when you left. However, since you didn’t have any times or conditions blocked out for her to go into role as a slavegirl, it didn’t come up.”
“You mean all this time I could have?” Naomi looked across her husband at Judy.
“You’d have had to agree to it as family policy, but yes. However, your husband may have had problems with it.”
Jack frowned.
“Could you explain how the pseudo slavegirl thing works?” Naomi asked. “I’m beginning to realize I don’t understand as much as I thought.”
“Certainly. Let’s start with something analogous.” She gestured and a pair of blocks appeared on a wall screen. “This is a block diagram of how a control collar is set up for someone who’s got a job – they’re an employee of a corporation.”
Naomi nodded. “Right. There’s corporate policy and the employee handbook that they want to stick in your control collar.”
“And you don’t want it when you’re off duty, so it’s in two separate partitions.”
“So a pseudo slavegirl is something like that?”
“Right.” Helen gestured again, and the employee block changed to say ‘slavegirl.’ “The slavegirl block is set up the same way it would be for a regular faux slavegirl, or a real Gorean Slavegirl for that matter. The differences on the control collar level are really minor. Most of the differences are outside of the partition. The critical thing is that her master partition is still set up for a free woman, and that won’t change.
“Another consideration is that, since she’s a member of your family association, it’s an association policy. She has to agree to changes to the policy. That doesn’t mean every little thing! If you decided you wanted her to serve you as your maid, you’d need to get her agreement to a family policy change that specified that, and probably specific time blocks and situations. Then she’d automatically go into role when it came time to do maid stuff for you, and come out otherwise. As your maid, you could tell her what to do and train her without any further discussion. The line you can’t cross without another family policy change is anything that would be on one of the slave contract pre-approved lists. Since pseudo slavegirls don’t cede rights, there isn’t a pre-approved list.”
“I’m beginning to see. This is going to take a bit of thinking.”
“Well, it’s not entirely relevant, since we’re talking about going directly to full time.”
“Oh. Right.”
“To continue, the big issue with a pseudo slavegirl is that, once she’s had Core Training and gone full time, she’ll let the situation continue without thinking about it unless you set up specific reevaluation points or the situation goes sour. I have a formal reevaluation every year with my girl; we schedule it on the anniversary of when she went full time. We bring in another guild member to do the evaluation so neither of us can ignore anything.”
“Which is why the council requires it?”
“Exactly,” Helen said. “As long as it’s a formal requirement, a girl with Core Training will treat it as a contract obligation.”
“You said something about it going sour?” Jack asked.
“A normal slavegirl could ask to be sold. A pseudo slavegirl doesn’t have that option: she’s still a member of your association, and she can’t both leave it and remain a pseudo slavegirl. She’s got to at least ask for a reevaluation, if not simply quit doing the slavegirl thing.”
“I see.”
“There’s really only one more major point here: there aren’t any preapproved trainings, activities or modifications. Having a preapproved list would be pointless: you’d have to discuss it with her anyway and get her approval.”
“The preapproved list,” Naomi said slowly, “would be things like Living Doll?”
“Good example. Living Doll is on the list for Gorean Slavegirls; you could have one of them trained to be a Living Doll without getting her permission. You’d have to get a pseudo slavegirl’s permission just like Jack would have to get your permission if he wanted you to be trained to be a Living Doll; the respective agreements don’t allow that as a pre-approved training in either case.”
“I see. So the Slave and Kennel platforms are?” Naomi asked as she looked at the screen on her wrist display. “Ah. Talk about the obvious. So when you get right down to it, all the pseudo slavegirl policy does is set up that second partition and a bunch of transition rules?”
“Right. For a pseudo slavegirl the entire difference between the slave and kennel platforms is whether your association has a kennel clause, and all family associations within the Association have that clause. It lets you, or rather your association, put a member into a kennel. It’s seldom invoked, but it’s there.”
“Speaking of that, what is the outside background?”
“Outside of the Gorean Association? It varies a lot. The Natasha Fan Club does a huge amount with it, and you find it in some really odd places. We’re more structured, but that’s because we treat it as a feeder into becoming a faux slavegirl or a real Gorean Slavegirl.”
After discussing it for a bit longer, Naomi asked: “I didn’t see anything about a submission ritual. She doesn’t submit or anything?”
“You can if you want,” Helen said. “That’s here.” She made a gesture and an optional paragraph that had been buried somewhere obscure lit up. “If you select that the policy will be effective when she submits. However, the real ritual is later: you have to display her in a girl cage at the next appropriate first level meeting.”
“That looks good to me,” Jack finally said. His agreement appeared on the form.
“Likewise,” Naomi said. Her agreement appeared below his, marked ‘verified.’
Judy looked at it thoughtfully, and then her agreement appeared, also marked ‘verified’.
A minute later a checkmark appeared beside “Council Approval.”
“That fast?” Jack asked.
Helen laughed. “She has Core Training, we’ve certified that she’s Withdrawn, the Health Service has recommended it, and the policy is being set up by a member of the Guild of Slave Trainers. That’s all the City Council’s AI needs; the Health Service recommendation is extra.”
“So all we need is...” Naomi took a couple of objects from her purse and got up. She walked to Judy, tilted her head back and snapped the leash on her collar. Then she backed up a step and gestured at the floor in front of her. Judy flowed off the couch and knelt.
“Submit!”
Judy dropped into the classic submission posture, kneeling before her mistress, back horizontal to the floor and arms outstretched over her head, wrists held apart, waiting for the ritual binding.
Naomi took the other object and swiftly looped one end over Judy’s left wrist. Then she looped the other over her right wrist. The binding cord shortened, pulling Judy’s wrists together and holding them crossed. Then she held Judy’s head down as she ripped off her shorts and shirt. Judy tried to suppress a giggle; this was the second time in a year she’d lost her clothes this way!
Naomi went back to her purse and pulled out something else. She gestured, and Judy stood up. She took the binding cord off Judy’s wrists and handed her the package.
Judy shook it out and then slid into the slave tunic.
“That’s not the same pattern, is it?” Jack asked.
“It’s colored differently,” Naomi answered. “After the session at the Health Service I was kind of expecting this, so I prepared by registering it. I think a different color scheme would help all three of us make a clean break.”
She picked up the leash and stood back, looking at her handiwork. Then she took her seat on the couch next to Jack and gestured to the floor between them.
Judy dropped to her knees. Naomi smoothed her skirt and handed the leash to Jack.
“Can I name her?”
“That’s appropriate.”
“How about Paulette?” she asked Jack.
Jack frowned. “Paulette’s fine.”
Naomi looked at her wrist controller a moment and nodded. “Paulette it is. Can I start training her as my maid and assistant?” Naomi asked.
“You’d better work out a schedule first,” Helen said, “or you’re likely to overcommit her time. Have you taken the Slave Training and Slave Management parts of the Owner’s Course yet?”
“Um, no. You have a suggestion?”
“Keep your current organization for a while. If you’re both working outside, she’ll have enough to do during the day between our career counseling sessions, housework, research you assign her, prep for sex sessions and time off.”
“It’s also a month to the next Games,” Jack said.
“Um?”
“I was thinking we’ve got enough for three girls and training, um, Paulette at what was that place, Muriel’s Maidens?”
“Muriel’s Maids,” Helen laughed. “Muriel’s is good, but you should look around. There are a couple of others that might be better. You’ll have a better idea in a month.”
“Can we do it? I mean, do we have the right?”
“If she agrees, of course. If she goes to the Games with you, she’ll automatically be in their Tier 2 slave class. The only thing you can’t do is make major changes to her permissions without her approval; she’ll regain the right to reject them when you come back.” She hesitated slightly. “You also need to be somewhat cautious about trainings and modifications; the Health Service tends to be more than a little sticky if things go wrong there and they have to pick up the ball.”
“They don’t have a problem if everything works?”
“That’s right, they don’t. Formally, it’s because of the World Government’s “Full Faith and Credit” clause, informally it’s because having that escape hatch for people with the money to use it avoids a lot of the incentives for official corruption.”
“More studying,” Naomi mock sighed.
Judy and Naomi sat comfortably side by side in the arena, watching their husband, Jack, warm up for his next match. Vickie, one of the three slaves they’d bought as prizes for the Games, sat on her heels between them, ready to serve her mistresses’ needs as the occasion arose.
The three women were a study in contrasts. Judy, who was a knockout stunning brunette, wore a simple skirt and quarter sleeve tight-fitting blouse in solid colors that complemented her long chestnut hair, currently done up in a single braid. The timeless fashion used the same nano-tech fabric as slave tunics. The garments lasted for years and could change color and, to a limited extent, style on demand. It was a favorite of women who either didn’t want to follow the latest fashion fads, or who didn’t have the money to spend on garments that wouldn’t last. Even if it wasn’t a favorite, just about every woman, except possibly the top flakes from the upper crust, had the outfit in her wardrobe.
Naomi would have been attractive enough in most circumstances, but her beauty paled besides her senior wife. She, however, wore one of the latest fashions: a short cotton dress that resembled a classical Greek chiton. The slavegirl sitting placidly at their feet wore a standard slave tunic, in the registered pattern that Judy, as Paulette, had worn a scant couple of months before. It was, in fact, the same tunic; they tended to last for four or more years of daily use.
Their second slavegirl, Wakun, stood tethered to the pole beneath them, hands outstretched over her head with her wrist displays clamped to a ring on the pole. She stood quietly waiting for the end of the match when the winner would take her back to the corral. Probably. Wakun was completely naked except for her sandals, a fact which didn’t bother her in the slightest. If her owner wanted her naked in public, she was perfectly prepared to endure the admiring gazes of the onlookers without a whimper. Trying not to giggle at the expressions was harder.
The third, Ylsa, was still in the corral at Sara’s Superb Slavegirls.
The Other’s wager stood on the far side of the arena, back to the pole and hands outstretched over her head. The rather undistinguished blonde wore a cloth shirt and shorts outfit: she had to be a free woman who was offering herself as a Games Prize.
“What do you think?” Naomi asked over their private Intercom link.
“Hm...” Judy shifted her bionic eyes to telescopic and looked at the prize thoughtfully. Then she called up the available information on the Prize, and studied it as it displayed in her mind’s eye.
“She’s an Association member.” Judy paused as she ran the standard auction compatibility programs. “Looks like she might work out. Slightly less intelligent than you, but it’s close enough that only a professional would notice the difference. Spends a lot of net time digging into stuff, doesn’t watch much entertainment, does her own housekeeping for herself and her boyfriend. Now that’s interesting. She already had Core Training; The Games Authority didn’t install it here.” She did another query. “Ah. She hasn’t taken the last step to going full time as her boyfriend’s pseudo slavegirl.”
“So we’d have to install Sex Kitten and the Bionic Eyeballs?”
“Right.” Judy sent an estimate to Naomi. Naomi winced, but then looked thoughtful as Judy adjusted the total by subtracting the permissible deduction from their subject’s ransom fund.
The two women settled back in their seats as the warriors took their places and the referee stepped up to the line.
“Did you see that?” Naomi asked just after Jack won the match with a thrust to the chest.
Judy shook her head. “You mean where the Other deliberately left himself open?”
“I hope it wasn’t deliberate.”
“We’re in the second week; warriors that get this far should be beyond that kind of mistake. Besides, the stewards have put a flag on it.”
“So they have. Which means?”
“I’m not sure. Now they’ve cleared it.” She paused a moment while she checked something. “They were checking if the match had been fixed. There wasn’t enough bet on the match for it to be likely.”
She, Naomi and Vicki got up. Vicki headed down to the locker room to assist Jack. Judy walked back to where Wakun was still tethered to the pole. She snapped a leash on Wakun’s collar. The slave girl’s arms came down from where they were tethered at a gesture. She paused a moment for the girl to work the kinks out of her shoulders, and then gestured again. The slavegirl obediently put her arms behind her, wrists crossed, so that her bracelets locked them together.
Meanwhile, Naomi walked across the arena to the other tethered girl. She was, she noticed, still a bit shocked at the sudden change in her fortunes.
Naomi pointed at the ground. “Submit,” she barked.
The girl’s hands freed themselves from the ring over her head, and she almost fell into the prescribed posture, body horizontal to the ground and wrists crossed over her head. Naomi touched her crossed wrists, locking the bracelets together, and then ripped the cloth shirt and shorts off of the girl’s body.
“Hands behind and bare your throat,” she command. The girl got to her feet and put her hands behind her, letting her bracelets lock them together again. She tilted her head back so that Naomi could leash her. Naomi led the still wideeyed girl down to the arena locker rooms, where Vickie was handing Jack a towel.
Naomi fastened the leash to a handy ring, tethering her next to Wakun. She looked at the girl who still seemed to be in a state of shock at the sudden change in her fortunes.
“Take a deep breath. You did know your ransom fund was going to be outbid?”
“Uh?” the girl answered. “But he said...”
“You didn’t research it yourself?”
“Uh, no.”
“Well, do it now.” Naomi gestured; the blonde’s hands fell to her sides as her bracelets released their grip on each other.
The girl looked up at her mistress and then lifted her left hand so she could see the small screen that slid out of her wrist display. In a moment she was lost to the world as she contemplated the images, charts and graphs that flowed over the tiny screen.
Judy grinned as she watched their captive’s research in her mind’s eye. She gave Naomi a thumbs up.
“That bastard!” the girl said as she looked up.
Naomi laughed. “That may be true, but it’s not the way to start a research report.”
The girl took a deep breath. “The first thing I found out was that my market value was higher than my ransom fund. I think he threw the match to get rid of me without being obvious.”
“Makes sense,” Jack said from where he was toweling himself dry. “At this level, the right response to that feint should have been wired into muscle memory.”
“Anything else?” Naomi asked.
“Beauty upgrades don’t cost all that much.”
“It shouldn’t have cost anything. You’re supposed to get a free beauty upgrade on joining the Association. It’s a member’s perk.”
“He said,” she started. “Oh, forget it.”
Naomi laughed. “I agree, it’s not funny.”
“It certainly isn’t,” Jack said from where he was supervising Vicki in packing his sword, armor and accouterments. “That’s a violation of the Codes. I’ll have a word with the Games Master.”
“So what’s the lesson?”
“Mistress?” the girl asked, puzzled.
Naomi reached out and lifted the girl’s chin slightly to emphasize the point. “Obeying your owner does not mean blind obedience. If we wanted blind obedience we would build robots: East Asia does a lot of that. They are, after all, the planet’s tech hub. Robots do what they’re programmed to do. Slaves, trained and treated properly, will do what you want them to do. Understand?”
“I’m not sure?”
Naomi shook her head. “What would you have done if you’d spotted the trap?”
“I’d have left!”
“That put some fire in your eye. Is that what a properly obedient slavegirl should have done?”
“Uh, no? Mistress?”
“BLEEP! Wrong answer. Tell me why.”
“I should have left? Uh? How? Why?”
“Now you’re confused. Let’s work it out like a civics problem. You’re a Gorean Association member. According to the Gorean Canon, slaves have no rights. Is that even legal?”
She frowned. “It can’t be, can it?”
“Is that a question or a statement?”
“It’s a statement. It can’t possibly be legal.”
“Exactly correct. It can’t be. The Scream does not have slavery as a matter of law; slaves have exactly the same civic rights, duties, entitlements and protections as everyone else. Our attitude is that the owner should take care of all of that so she can concentrate on pleasing him without being distracted by irrelevancies, hence the saying.
“However. It is your job to know whether your situation is satisfactory, and it’s your job to discuss it with your owner if it isn’t. If it can’t be negotiated to where both of you are satisfied it’s not only your right but your duty to ask to be sold to a different owner. Again, he’s supposed to be out ahead of you on that, but if he drops the ball you have to pick it up and run with it.”
“I could have left him?”
“Let’s review your situation. You were living with him without a family association contract. That’s not unusual; lots of Free Companions live together without a family association. Right?”
“We were Free Companions?”
“Yes. You were a pseudo slavegirl, but since you hadn’t gotten the approval of your City Council to go full time, as far as the Gorean Association was concerned you were still Free Companions. The Association, after all, was originally a group of people who liked to practice dominance and submission, and our membership is still notably, not to say notoriously, more into that than the general population.”
“Oh.”
“Right. Oh. Now when you came to the Games Enclave your situation changed. To be a Games Prize, you have to be a Tier 2 slavegirl. The Gorean Hunting Preserve, and consequently the Games Authority, does not allow slaves to be freed, so that’s your status until you leave.”
She frowned in thought.
“Tier 2 slavegirls can’t be used directly as prizes in a Games contest. They, or rather their owners with their verified consent, are allowed to sign a contract with the Games Authority for them to become a Games Prize. So when you put it all together, what does it mean?”
“I’m going to leave here as someone’s slavegirl.” She shrugged as if it didn’t matter that much. “Yours?”
“Maybe.” Naomi paused to query both Judy and Jack on their private Intercom connection.
~She’s going to need a bit of assertiveness training,~ Judy signaled. ~Otherwise, she should work out.~
~Have Judy take her to Happy Harry’s,~ Jack ordered. ~She can take Wakun back at the same time. I’ll use Ylsa for the next bout.~
Judy swiftly tethered the two slavegirls together in a coffle and then hobbled them.
“If mistress would answer a question?” the new captive asked.
“Ask. I can always say no,” Judy answered.
“Why the leash and hobbles? I’m not going anywhere.”
Judy laughed. “The Games Enclave requires that naked slavegirls must be kept on leash when they’re in public. The hobbles? I suspect it’s partly custom, and partly to remind new captives of their status. The drag before the link hits its limit is noticeable enough that it sinks in after a while.”
“Oh.”
Judy picked up the leash and walked to the door, the two naked slavegirls following.
~We need to talk,~ Judy told her captive over the Intercom link. The girl stumbled slightly and then picked up.
~Mistress?~
~There was something we didn’t want to talk about in front of the other two girls. We are looking for a new girl, and neither Wakun nor Ylsa are suitable. We’ll be selling them back to the dealers when Jack withdraws from the Games, and we don’t want to create any unrealistic expectations by discussing it in front of them.
~We’ll keep Vicki until the end of the games and then probably put her up for sale in the auction. She’s really marginal for long term; she’s got the intelligence for what we want but she doesn’t have the right outlook; so far she hasn’t picked up the hints we’ve dropped in front of her.
~You, on the other hand, mesh well with us according to the auction compatibility programs, and you passed our little quiz. We’re looking for three things in a new girl: a research assistant for Naomi, housekeeping and professional level sex. If you think that’s you, we’ll have you trained at Happy Harry’s Sizzling Slavegirls, and drain your ransom fund by loading you up with modifications and trainings.~
~Can you do that? Drain my ransom fund, I mean.~
Judy laughed. ~Normally, at least 50% of your ransom fund, minus the corral fees, would go to the surviving Games Prizes. However, if we enslave you immediately that part of your ransom fund goes into escrow. If we’ve still got you after a year and can testify under verification that we intend to keep you for at least ten more years, we get as much of the fund as needed to cover our expenses. In other words, there’s no real point in not loading you up with modifications and trainings while we’re here.~
~Hmmm.~ The still nameless girl paused to think as they turned into the Street of Slave Dealers. ~Housekeeping, sex slave and personal assistant for your senior, um, junior, wife?~
~Junior, however I’ll be leaving the family association when the Games end.~
~What’s the sex slave bit like?~
~See Happy Harry’s?~ Judy pointed her at the sign as they passed. ~A Sizzling Slavegirl is really the Sex Kitten modification, plus his training. That’s almost the same as a professional sex worker’s Nymphomaniac modification, but it and the training are focused on a personal relationship with one or a few owners rather than a large and ever-changing set of clients. You’ll probably be spending a few hours a week dreaming up and researching new things to try on them.~
~Hmm. Housekeeping? Expected. Personal research assistant could be fun. Sex? Do I get mine out of it?~
~Oh yes. I was trained as one of Happy Harry’s Sizzling Slavegirls before I was ransomed. That’s why Jack and Naomi want it; they know what a Sizzling Slavegirl does for their sex lives. There’s a feedback loop: the better you make it for them, the better it’s going to be for you.~
~You know, now I know what a girl waiting for the auction feels.~ She giggled.
Judy led her little coffle almost to the end of the street, and turned into Sara’s Superb Slavegirls. When she walked in, the young man at the front asked: “New girl for us?”
“She’s going to Happy Harry’s. I’m putting Wakun back. Jack’s got one more match today; we’ll use Ylsa for that.”
“Great! I’ll make sure that Ylsa’s available.” He busied himself for a moment checking schedules, and then took Wakun off the end of the coffle and handed the coffle leash and hobbles to Judy. “Good doing business with you,” he added as Judy walked out, towing her captive behind her. Judy waved at him.
Judy moved a bit slowly back up the street to allow her girl to take in the various slave dealers’ signs, which she still thought were hilarious. Eventually they arrived. Happy Harry’s was as she remembered it from a year and a half previously: a large showroom dominated by three girl cages on the left side and three slave display racks on the right.
One of the cages had a naked slavegirl who was talking to two customers, with one of Harry’s salespeople standing aside, looking ready to write up the sale. One of the racks on the other side held a slavegirl who was trying not to look bored. Judy felt a twinge of sympathy when she saw the bottle of red goop feeding so very slowly into her control collar. That took hours.
“A new customer!” one of the unoccupied salesman said as he hurried toward her. “You’d like Happy Harry’s Sizzling Slavegirls to corral and train your captive?”
Judy almost laughed at the blatant commercialism. It was, at least, open and honest. “Corral and train, yes, but she’s not mine; my husband just won her in the warrior’s sword competitions. We’re thinking of keeping her.”
The salesman started in on his pitch. Judy held up a hand. “Hey, slow down! You trained me a year and a half ago; I know what you do, and the rest of the family is very satisfied. I’m leaving in a few weeks, and we want a replacement.”
“Can I show you some of our inventory later?”
“Sure, looking doesn’t hurt, but we’re already fairly sure she’ll do nicely. The auction compatibility programs agree.”
“So let’s see what we’ve got.” He led the captive over to one of the empty frames and mounted her on it. He flipped on the display screen with a gesture. Then he walked back to the front and gently lifted one of the girl’s breasts. “See the sag? She needs a breast regeneration.”
“That’s standard Health Service maintenance. We’ll do it when we get back, unless it’s no charge.”
“It’s free if we have to do any other gene changes. So what else do you want?”
“Turn her into a Sizzling Slavegirl, of course.”
The salesman laughed. “Of course. That’s what we’re famous for.”
“Then I want the Mark IV Bionic Eyeballs.”
The girl stared at her from where she was bound to the rack.
“You want the what?” The salesman turned to look at her. Then he looked around. “Hey, Wanda! I need some expertise over here.”
“You called?” a lady walked up.
“She wants the Mark IV Bionic Eyeballs.”
“Hm.” The woman walked over to the display. “Sex Kitten and Breast Regeneration. What’s the rest of the list?”
“Give her a beauty upgrade. She doesn’t have to look the same, although I think Naomi will want to check the new look if it’s going to be very different.”
“How about Breast Countermotion Generators?”
“Good idea,” Judy smiled briefly at the memory of some of the things she’d done with hers.
Wanda looked at the display thoughtfully. “We can’t do what you’re asking for here, or in two weeks. It takes at least a week for the Bionic Eyeballs to shake down, sometimes longer, and she’ll have to be in a support facility while it’s happening. That doesn’t give us enough time for Sizzling Slavegirl before the games end.”
She nodded again. “Are you sure you actually want the Bionic Eyeballs? We can do Personal Virtual Reality without them, and that won’t interfere with the Sizzling Slavegirl training.”
“You can do them separately?”
Wanda laughed. “Those are really two separate features. They almost always install Personal Virtual Reality with the Mark IV Bionic Eyeballs because it provides the display capability, but it’s also installed separately a lot of the time. It takes a couple of days for the brain connections, and then one three or four hour session a day for four to six days to tune it up so it works properly. We can do it at the same time as Sizzling Slavegirl. It just won’t leave her a whole lot of free time that week.”
“That’s what they did for me,” Judy said. “I didn’t really inquire what the Health Service was doing.”
“Eye problems they didn’t catch in time?”
“Exactly. It’s the Personal Virtual Reality displays I’m after; the Bionic Eyeballs are useful but I think we could live without them. We can always have them installed later.”
“Only if she agrees,” Wanda said a bit dryly.
“Oh?”
“Both of your collars say you’re Gorean Association members from the Scream. Bionic Eyeballs isn’t on the pre-approved list.”
“Oh, right.” Judy thought for a moment.
“If mistress would allow me to give an opinion?” the girl on the rack said.
“Oh?”
“You said you wanted a research assistant. If the Personal Virtual Reality displays do what I think they do, I can see how they’d be useful. The Bionic Eyeballs might be amusing, but unless mistress needs me to have them I’d rather not.”
Judy looked at her a moment. “If we find we want to install them later, will you agree without arguing too much?”
“If mistress needs me to have them, of course.”
“Good.” She turned back to the salespeople. “Can you run another compatibility check using your own programs?”
“Sure.” He entered the query and looked at the result thoughtfully. “You said you’re leaving your association, so you won’t be one of her owners long term?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Two Sizzling Slavegirls in one family, with one of them being the senior wife, is just asking for trouble.”
Judy giggled. “Now that you mention it ...”
“It looks good. You want to enslave her now?”
“Yes, let’s do it.”
He entered another form. Judy got Jack and Naomi on a three-way conversation. They entered the agreement, and she saw several of the kef segments on her new slavegirl’s control collar change, including the rights segment, which changed from yellow to purple with a red modifier. The kefs on her shoulder and thigh changed slowly as the faux-melanin dyes were replaced.
“That changes her status here in the Enclave to Tier 1. What name do you want her to have?”
“How about Millie?”
The salesman looked at the screen and entered another command. “We don’t have one of those. Millie it is.”
The two laboring ponygirls pulled the taxi into a loading slot in front of the auxiliary airport. Millie bounced out of the cart and loaded their luggage into a baggage trolley while Jack, Judy and Naomi got out a bit more sedately, and then got out of the way as the two ponygirls pulled the taxi out of the slot and headed back to the visitor’s area to pick up another group of departing passengers.
Millie pushed the cart up to the outgoing baggage stand, where she efficiently put Jack and Naomi’s luggage into a container, sealed it and transmitted her, Jack and Naomi’s destination code. Then she put Judy’s luggage into a much smaller container, transmitted the destination code and sent it on its way.
The four of them walked up to the platform whose sign said: Live Baggage. Millie pouted a moment while Judy laughed. She shrugged as her tunic suddenly sagged and then puddled at her feet. She bent down, neatly folded it and stowed it in her purse.
The attendant held out a crotch piece. She snapped it into place and then got into the waiting slave box with a theatrical sigh. The attendant checked the indicators to verify that the life support unit was working, flipped up the front, put her purse inside with her, installed a display screen and flipped the top closed. He dropped a cover over it, and sent it into the baggage system with a slight shove.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think she really didn’t want to go baggage class,” Naomi laughed.
Judy laughed with her soon to be ex-wife. “I’ll bet she’s got her next six hours of shows and research already lined up.”
“No bet.”
“Well,” Judy took a deep breath. “This is it.” She pulled the other two into a hug.
“So it is,” Jack replied. “Keep in touch, and let’s get together if we’re in the same city.”
“I’ll do that,” Judy, suddenly a bit teary-eyed, answered her ex-husband.
The three of them broke apart. Judy walked across the red line. Jack and Naomi saw the subtle change in her posture as the airport’s computer took over control of her movements. She stepped onto a transfer plate, which separated from the platform and carried her off and out of sight.
The two of them looked at each other and crossed the line, letting the computer guide them to their waiting plane.
Judy felt amused as the transfer plate slid along the floor, taking her to her plane, her body automatically shifting its balance to compensate for twists and turns. It arrived, and the airport’s computer guided her onto the waiting plane, leaving her standing beside the row where she’d been assigned a seat. She dropped her purse into the overhead bin and sat, automatically smoothing her skirt.
She relaxed into the seat and laughed quietly to herself. The last four decades had brought a lot of changes; she let her impressions of the airport experience match with her first plane trip, from her University to Chicago, almost four decades before. And then she thought of what plane trips had been like in the historical dramas she had seen. The difference was, she thought, amazing. Four decades previously getting in and out of the airport had been a real mess; she didn’t want to imagine what the experience had been like a hundred years previously.
It was really nice that the Games Enclave’s Airport Authority had a separate section for direct flights to the Scream and the Outlaw Nations. The transfer plates were very efficient, and having the computer handle boarding was equally efficient. If she had been by herself she could have walked right from the cart, dropped her luggage into a container and then walked onto the plane without stopping for anyone. And she knew that she’d pick up her luggage at the other end with just as little hassle.
She felt the plane’s control system briefly take over her body, making sure she was secure, as it pulled away from the gate and took off. When it circled to get on its course she looked down and saw the plane with Jack, Naomi and Millie still sitting at the gate, waiting for the last passengers.
The airport vanished. She turned away from the window and began looking at the series of exercises that Helen had recommended; exercises she knew would put the last four decades in perspective as over and done with, and free her up to begin the next 80 or so years of her life.
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