This work is copyright 2000-2008 by Xaltatun of Acheron (A Pseudonym). It may be posted on the Internet to any free forum. It may be reformatted to match the forum's look and feel, and the forum editor may make minor spelling and grammer corrections. Otherwise it must be posted in its entirety, including these notices. It may not be sold, or included in any compilation that is sold, or posted on any forum that requires a fee for access, without my written permission. My permission will require payment, terms to be negotiated. For purposes of this notice, sites guarded by Adult Check or similar packages are considered pay sites. Posting on any site must include this copyright notice.
Adult Content Warning - this story contains adult themes, including 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...
BANG! Neil Fain winced as the door slammed behind his live-in girlfriend, Cindy.
He sighed. He might as well admit it, he thought, this relationship was going down the drain. He could always make it up to her, but she’d find something else to complain about until she finally got up enough of a head of steam to leave permanently.
His eyes strayed to a framed certificate on the wall, headed “True Love And Eternal Devotion”, and surrounded with a wreath of roses and hearts: “To my Darling Neil, I, Cindy Pawlson, am your obedient and devoted love slave for ever and ever.” At least she hadn’t thrown that out. Yet.
His eyes narrowed. He took the frame off the wall and removed the certificate from its holder. As he thought, there was a very official looking number on the back. He put the certificate back in the frame and sat back to think.
“Hey, Dave, how’s it hanging, man?” he waved at an acquaintance. Dave had a reputation for getting things done. There were a couple of rumors that he’d made a couple of inconvenient girlfriends vanish to nobody knew where.
“Things are moving right along, guy,” Dave answered. He dropped his voice. “Heard you and Cindy are having a bit of a spat.”
“Might blow over, might not,” Neil grimaced.
“From that expression, you’d like to see the last of her, eh?”
“We had some good times, but yeah.”
“She seems like a vindictive bitch,” Dave offered.
“That’s what worries me.”
“That could be bad.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. By the way, I found this on the back of that ‘True Love and Eternal Devotion’ certificate she gave me.”
Dave looked at the number. “Think I’ve seen something like it before. I’ll ask around, guy.”
“That’s a pal.”
Dave waved at Neil from across the Student Center’s main room. Neil wandered over.
“What’s up, man?”
“Got a firm offer. Two thousand, contingent on pickup.”
“Oh? What do I have to do?”
“Exercise the option and then transfer her contract into escrow.” Dave nodded to the line of contract machines on the wall.
“How do I do that?”
“It’s simple. Stick this in the slot and the procedure will come right up.”
Neil looked at the plastic rectangle. He made up his mind and walked toward the contract booths.
“You’re Cindy Pawlson?” the man who had magically appeared in front of her asked.
“Uh, yes, I am. What’s this about?” she reacted to the vaguely official outfit more than to her questioner.
“We have a pickup order on you.”
She stared at him. “A pickup order?” she repeated woodenly. She didn’t notice the man who walked up behind her and aimed a somewhat pistol-shaped gadget at the back of her head. It brushed her hair to the side and spun a red ribbon around her neck. The ribbon tightened to where it was snug, but not overly tight.
Her hands went to her neck.
“Come along quietly,” the first man said as he backed up a step.
She took a deep breath. The second man pushed a button on his gadget. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“Those things can paralyze the vocal chords, you know,” the first man said conversationally.
She pulled her arms back to attack. The second man pushed another button and then moved forward to catch her as she slumped, unconscious.
“They also have a takedown,” the first man added, not that their victim could hear him.
Cindy suddenly realized she was sitting in a chair, her head dropped forward on her chest. She lifted her head to look around.
“I see you’re back with us, Miss Pawlson,” the man behind the desk said.
“Uh, where am I?”
“In a chair, talking to me.”
“That didn’t help,” she snapped. “What the fuck’s going on?”
“Language, language,” the man shook his head. “You may remember that the pickup team said they had a pickup order on you?”
“Yesss....”
“You struggled a bit, so they had to put you out. Now you’re here.”
“And where is here?”
“You already asked that, and I told you.”
Cindy levered herself out of the chair, and strode toward him. Halfway across the room she said: “eep” and her hands flew to her throat. She fell forward, face down.
The man came from behind the desk, picked her up and deposited her back in the chair. Then he went back and sat behind his desk again.
Cindy suddenly realized she was sitting in a chair, head forward on her chest. She lifted it and saw the same man sitting behind the same desk.
“This is Hell, isn’t it?”
“Nope. You’re still on earth, still alive and still not asking the right question.”
“And what’s the right question?” she spat.
“What you need to do next.” He paused very slightly. “I’ve got work to do, so I’ll cut the next 20 questions short.” He pointed at the wall. “You go over to the contract machine and identify yourself.”
“And what will that do?”
“It’ll tell us whether we picked up the right person.”
“And if I’m not the right person?”
“We apologize abjectly and give you an indemnity for your time and trouble.”
“Oh. And if I am?”
“We’ll do the next things specified on the pickup order.”
“Which are?”
“If you’re not the right person, it’s none of your business, so I’m not going to tell you. If you are, you’ll probably figure it out from what the contract machine tells you.”
“Oh. And you’re not going to tell me one damn thing more until I do, right?”
“Got it in one.”
Cindy levered herself out of the chair for the second time and marched over to the contract machine. She pulled her ID card from her purse and slammed it down almost hard enough to break the surface. Then she put the brain scan helmet on her head, put her hands on the plate and snarled: “well?”
The plate in front of her lit up. “Emotional level too high to confirm ID. Please calm down.”
She thought she heard a chuckle from behind her. She whirled, but the guy seemed to be absorbed with something on his display.
She took a deep breath, turned back to the machine and straightened the helmet. She put her hands back on the plate.
“Cindy Pawlson. ID confirmed.”
“Control Collar detected: Capture Collar.”
“Control Collar Authenticated.”
“Slaveholder’s Consortium ID # 678-3684-93395
“Current Owner: Premier Ponygirl Organization, Inc.
“Owner’s ID: PPO-2033-926.”
“Authentication Complete.”
She stared at it and then took off the helmet.
“I’m a what?” she asked the man behind the desk.
“You’re going to be a ponygirl. You’ll probably be a good one.”
“And if I don’t want to be?”
He shrugged. “You don’t have a choice.”
She stared at him, and then her shoulders slumped a bit. “So how did this happen?”
“Look at the display.” He pointed at a wall display. “I’m putting your contract history on it.”
She looked.
“You’re telling me that the Eternal Love declaration was a Slave Contract?”
“A six month renewable option on a slave contract, to be specific. You had to have renewed it at least once, the option can’t be exercised before it’s renewed.”
“Damn.” She looked at the next entries. “So that unmitigated antormaxy scoundrel Neil exercised the option and then sold me for only TWO THOUSAND?”
“Yes.” She could swear she heard a bit of a chuckle. “He should have waited for more bids; someone like you should fetch at least five thousand untrained.”
“So now what?”
“Ponygirls don’t wear clothes, so take them off. Right down to the buff.”
She started to say something, and then noticed that his hand was hovering over a button. She reached behind herself and unzipped her skirt.
She heard the door on her side of the room open and close. Two men had walked in, carrying stuff. “Turn around, arms behind you, hands folded,” one of them said as he took what looked like a large funnel of some kind of material and slid it over her arms. It twitched and then tightened. She felt her shoulders begin to complain. It loosened slightly. Then he took out a pair of what looked like boxing gloves. He pried her hands apart and put one glove on each hand, carefully folding the fingers and thumb.
The other man took what looked like a tangle of straps and draped it over her head. It tightened in place. The he fastened a strap between her ankles.
The second man tugged on the rope and said: “Follow.”
A ways down the corridor they turned into a room that looked like a small medical clinic. One of the technicians said: “She causing you trouble?”
“Nah, she’s going to be a ponygirl. Start her out right.”
“Oh. We don’t get a lot of them. Over here first, girl.” He pointed at something that looked kind of like an exerciser. She walked over. He adjusted the height and then strapped her to it so she couldn’t move. A minute later she gasped as the needles of a tattoo machine injected her skin with her Slaveowner’s Consortium registration number, using a DNA ink that would never come off except with a countering DNA mod or surgical removal of her skin.
Ten minutes later, it was done. The technician unstrapped her. “Sit over here, girl,” he patted a chair. Then he took out a medical light and looked in her ears. He nodded and got out a couple of small cylinders and slid them in. Then he told her to open her mouth. He looked at it, put in a dental block to keep her from closing it, and then put a device against the top. He held it there for a minute.
“OK. Now over here and lie down.” The still stunned young woman walked over to the table and tried to lie down, but her pinioned arms kept getting in the way. Finally he said: “OK. On your front will do.” She complied, and he pushed a button that sent her head-first into a robot surgeon.
Ten minutes later she came back out. The technician looked at her head and put a small glob of antibiotic and a bandage on three almost microscopic punctures in her skin. He did the same to two small punctures on her abdomen.
“All done, you can take her out.”
The new ponygirl looked around, puzzled, but obediently followed when her lead was tugged. One of the men took her to a loading dock and wrapped her leash to a handy ring, leaving her in a row of slaves that were likewise tethered to rings.
Then he walked away.
She looked around. There was a row of cages, each containing a naked slavegirl. The girls were sitting on their heels, hands bound behind them. For some reason they were either looking around curiously or else dozing off. She was in a second line standing against a wall. All the slaves in this line, except her, seemed to be dressed in some version of a single shoulder slave tunic. She was the only one that was naked. There were a few males, but not as many as she would have expected. She listened to the ebb and flow of sound. It sounded like conversation, but she literally couldn’t make out a word of what they were saying. She found she had no trouble understanding the tone of voice when someone who looked like he had to be the dock foreman started chewing out one of his subordinates.
She shook her head ruefully. It had been, what, only an hour or so since she’d been a college sophomore. Now she was a ponygirl, whatever that meant.
She kept watching. Dock workers came from somewhere, bringing more boxed slavegirls on small fork-lifts. Others were led out and were added to the line of standing slaves. In a little while a truck backed up to the dock. The dock workers unloaded several boxed slavegirls and then loaded the truck with the ones that were waiting. Then a mini-bus came for a lot of the rest.
Finally, after her calves had started screaming at her, a pickup with a covered bed and a rather short and tall trailer backed up. One of the dock hands opened it and led her in. She discovered herself standing on some straw to the left of another naked girl, arms bound behind her the same way as hers. This girl, however, seemed like she had a tail. She wasn’t quite sure. She thought she’d seen it as the dock worker had led her in, but it was hard to be sure because the four foot high wall, topped by a loose mesh of small bars, blocked her view. The back door was only inches from her ass. That made it, she supposed, a ponygirl trailer.
The girl to her right also had her head encased in a bridle. Interestingly, the various straps merged into each other rather than being attached with rivets. There seemed to be two horizontals: a brow strap and a second strap that ran from rings on either side of her mouth. There were also two verticals: one that ran from her control collar over her head just in front of the ears and back down on the other side; the other ran from the lower horizontal in back over her head and split to join the two rings. There was also a strap that dropped from the two rings to run under her jaw. Cindy supposed it made sense: if ponygirls were at all like horses they probably did wear bridles much of the time.
As the car pulled the trailer out of the city and onto the highway, she thought she smelled something. She looked, and she was right: her companion was taking the opportunity to piss. That brought home the state of her bladder with full force. She tried to ignore it for a while, and then gave up. Her bladder emptied, and then her bowel decided to join the occasion. She thought she heard her companion giggle. When she looked, yep, there was a smirk on her face.
Cindy stuck her tongue out, and a moment later they were nuzzling through the bars that separated them.
After a while the sun started to go down, and Cindy’s stomach started to rumble in sympathy. Where was the food?
She didn’t have that long to wait. The pickup and trailer pulled into a motel whose sign said it had overnight accommodations for horses. In fact, the sign not only said that, but it also had pictures of a horse and a girl with a tail and one foot raised in the air. She supposed it was a stylized ponygirl. Sure enough, after the driver got out and vanished into a room a groom came out of the stable, opened the back and led the two ponygirls out. Cindy almost tripped as she stared: her companion not only had a tail, she had hooves!
The groom led them into the stable, past several rows of horse stalls, and then to a row of somewhat smaller stalls. He hitched Cindy’s lead rope to a post and then led her companion into the stall. He snapped a light chain to her collar, and removed the arm binder and hobbles. Then he came back out and did the same to Cindy.
She heard the click of a latch as he closed the stall’s gate. Then she looked around. It seemed to be a basic stall: straw on the floor, something in a corner that was probably one of those things you went in that she’d read about from the Dark Ages. What attracted her attention was two bowls set into a ledge inset in the back wall. One contained what looked like water, the other some kind of multi-colored pellets. The inset was barely large enough for her to stick her head in.
She looked over the wall into her companion’s stall, and sure enough, she was on her knees, ass somewhat in the air so she looked like a Z, and head plunged into the wall. Her hands were on the floor, but didn’t seem to be supporting her weight. The sounds indicated she was working on the mound of pellets with enthusiasm.
Cindy promptly decided to follow the leader. She dropped onto the floor and plunged her head into the dry food. Once she’d figured out how to use her tongue to get some into her mouth without losing too many of the pellets, she decided that it wasn’t all that bad. Not really good, but not at all bad. And it was definitely filling.
About the time she sat back, having licked the bowl of pellets clean and finished up all of the water, she heard a sound in the corridor. She stood to see what it was. It turned out to be one of the attendants leading two more ponygirls into the stable. These two, however, were a bit different. Their hair seemed to be arranged in a mohawk, or possibly a mane, and they didn’t have tails. They also wore some kind of boot with a hoof on the end, and their arms were held behind them crosswise. The other thing she noticed was that, while their breasts were larger than hers or her companion’s, they didn’t wobble when the girls moved.
She watched the attendant put them in stalls and then leave.
Cindy shrugged. Apparently there wasn’t any standard way of treating ponygirls. Larger breasts that didn’t flop around would be cool! She’d always been a bit ashamed over hers; they weren’t much larger than an ambitious A-cup.
A short while later the LED area lighting on the ceiling started to go from sunlight to evening reds. Cindy shrugged. It had been a long day, even though it had started out furious, then pure terror, then total boredom. It was time to lean back and think things over.
What did she know? First, whatever blocked her from understanding what people said didn’t apply to writing. The road signs had been perfectly clear. So was the sign telling the grooms to wash their hands after shoveling horseshit. That, in turn, meant that she wasn’t, in principle, locked out of talking with people. How remained to be determined.
The second thing was that they did seem to be serious about treating her as if she was a horse. The arm-binder, gloves and hobbles certainly said that, so did the ponygirl trailer. The level of DNA mods implied by the other girl’s hooves and tail certainly indicated that they were serious, and the way the other girl had simply went when she had to, and the way she plunged right into the food bowl said the same thing.
What else? Cindy shrugged. Tomorrow would undoubtedly bring more challenges.
Then another thing occurred to her. The way she’d taken things in stride was, to put it mildly, weird. If she was honest, her style was more scream and throw things. All the girls in the cages seemed to be taking it in stride as well. So something was definitely going on. Since the caged slavegirls seemed to be doing the same thing, it probably wasn’t anything specific to ponygirls, or to her owner. After a bit of reflection she decided it was probably a good thing; the kind of discipline they’d have to do if a girl panicked didn’t seem to be really attractive.
She drifted off to sleep.
The next morning dawned as the ceiling lighting went through a morning sequence. She woke up, turned over and froze in place: something scratched. She opened her eyes cautiously and saw she wasn’t in her bedroom. After a moment of frozen terror, the previous day came back to her. She squeaked; that’s the only way to describe the noise she made.
She looked at the gloves covering her hands and then bent over to look at her belly. Sure enough, there was the line of purple numbers that was her Slaveowner’s Consortium ID. She got up to look around. Her companion of the previous day was in the stall to her left, and one of the new girls was in the stall to her right. They were both just beginning to move. She shrugged and decided to sit down.
A few minutes later, there was a rumble of some kind of machinery from behind the wall. She heard something in her companion’s stall, and then a stream of water and a pile of pellets fell from the top of the ledge into the two bowls. Breakfast! She got back into the only position that would let her stick her head into the slot and scarf up the food.
Then she wrinkled her nose and stood up to look over the wall. Sure enough, her companion was up and squatting in the corner. She looked on the other side, and the other ponygirl was doing the same thing. She shrugged. When in Rome...
It wasn’t that long before one of the stable attendants came in and took the two other ponygirls out. Then it was their turn. She obediently let him put her in the arm binder and hobbles; there really wasn’t any point in irritating the workers at a motel! Especially when she didn’t see that she had any options or would get anything from it.
Not too long after that, she stood in the ponygirl trailer, watching the countryside roll by.
They stopped briefly a couple of times to change fuel cartridges, but otherwise rolled on to sometime past noon. She’d given up trying to hold and had emptied her bladder on the straw twice. The sounds indicated her companion had done the same thing. Eventually the driver pulled into a ‘horses welcome’ rest area with a little ponygirl on the sign. He led them out to the ponygirl section and tethered them to a post. One thing Cindy noticed almost immediately; the other girl had a second, bright emerald green, tattoo immediately under the Slaveowner’s Consortium tattoo. It said PPO-2031-148.
He took what looked like a traveling feeder from the pickup’s back and loaded it with water and pellets. The two of them lost no time in digging in.
He pulled out a picnic basket and had a leisurely lunch, leaving his two ponygirls to their own devices.
Eventually their driver finished. After he cleaned up he looked at his two ponygirls. Cindy noticed that her companion looked back, rather obviously aroused. He grinned and walked over. The other girl promptly fell forward and braced herself as he dropped his pants and took her. She came with a shout.
Ten minutes later, the car with its two ponygirls in the trailer pulled out of the rest area. Cindy had to endure her companion’s smug look for positively miles and miles.
Later that afternoon, the pickup turned off the road into a private drive that cut through woods. She saw a sign that announced they were at the Premier Ponygirl Organization’s Training Stable Number 2. By that time she was feeling a bit queasy.
However, she forgot the queasiness as the pickup towed the trailer very slowly down what might have been the facility’s main street. They had to go slow, because it was stuck in traffic behind a carriage being pulled by two ponygirls. There were more carts and carriages being pulled by one, two and occasionally four ponygirls. She also noted, with somewhat horrified fascination, that there were several ponygirls with riders, and a number of saddled ponygirls that were tethered in front of buildings, their reins tied to hitching racks. All of the ponygirls seemed to have hooves and tails; a few had the mohawk hair style she’d seen at the motel, but they were in a distinct minority. The ponygirls pulling things all had their arms tethered behind them in arm binders; the ones being ridden had their arms tethered crosswise. Of course, while mares were in the vast majority she did see several stallions. Something about them puzzled her, but she didn’t have the time to sort through it before the pickup and trailer pulled up in front of one of the buildings. She had time to note that the sign said, Training Stable 6, before a pair of grooms came to open the trailer. They led her into the stable.
They didn’t give her very much time to sight-see as they led her to one of several corridors that led deeper into the building. This corridor seemed to have ponygirl stalls on one side, and a wall with lots of hooks but not much else on the other. They put her in the fourth stall from the end, dropped a bridle over her head and removed the arm binder. Then they shot the bolt on the stall door and left.
She saw there was a sign above the stall that said: PPO-2033-926. The three stalls to her left also had numbers; two of the stalls to her right had numbers, but the other four didn’t seem to. She noted that the numbers seemed to be in sequence, but they weren’t together. She had 919, 922 and 924 to her left, and 932 and 935 to her right.
Her food bowl seemed to be full. As soon as she noticed that, she found her face planted on top of the pile of pellets almost without thought.
When she finished, she sat back to think. The queasiness she’d noticed came back. She held her arm up to her head and noted that she seemed to be running a fever. She was also feeling cruddy from not having any kind of shower, bath or whatever for over two days.
The latter turned out to be swiftly solvable. A groom came down the corridor and took her out of her stall, leading her to an open area that looked remarkably like a gym’s shower room. That’s what it turned out to be. He tethered her arms up and to the sides, removed her new bridle, and then proceeded to thoroughly wet her, lather her, scrub and rinse. He finished up with a hot air blow dry, including blow-drying and then brushing out her hair.
Once he’d finished grooming her, he put her bridle back on and then took what looked like a strip of paper and plastered it on her abdomen just under the Slaveholder’s Consortium ID tattoo. Then he sprayed it with something, and left her tethered for a few minutes.
When he came back, he took the paper off and took her back to her stall. She looked at where it had been, and there was a new tattoo, in emerald green: PPO-2033-926.
The rest of the evening was totally boring, with nothing to do but stand, sit or lie in her stall and feel sick.
Cindy woke when the ceiling lights went through their dawn sequence. She froze as she felt the prick of the straw, and then let out a long sigh as the events of the last few days cascaded through her mind. She sat up, feeling the gentle slither of the chain from her collar on her skin, and looked at her abdomen. There, in brilliant purple and green, were the two tattoos that marked her as a slavegirl and a ponygirl. She stood up and tried to shake some straw out of her hair. At least, she thought, she felt wonderful. Yesterday’s fever, headache and slight touch of nausea seemed to be past. Now where was the food?
Then she caught what she was thinking and laughed at herself.
“Think you can handle it?” Shelly asked Fidor. Shelly was the older of the two, possibly in her mid to late 30s, and dressed in a ranch hand’s weathered blue jeans and shirt. She wore her coal black hair in a single braid down her back, where it contrasted with the red of a Goodwife Ribbon around her neck.
Fidor, in contrast, was in his early to mid 20s. He also wore the faded blue jeans, cowboy boots and shirt. His close-cropped blond hair surmounted a classically angular face, complete with jutting jaw. One hardly needed to see the quirt coiled at his belt to know that he wasn’t going to wait to take no for an answer.
“I certainly hope so, Shel,” he answered quietly.
“You ought to be able to. Not having doubts the first time you’re lead trainer for a new girl is a very bad sign: the last five I remember all ruined their girls.” She grinned. “You’ll do well.”
“Oh, I know I will, it’s just stage fright.” He gave a friendly wave as he walked out of the lead trainer’s ready room, crossed the street and strode into Training Stable 6. He walked down the corridor to the stall with his graduation assignment: PPO-2033-926. A minute later he stood in front of her stall with his arms crossed and considered what he was seeing.
About 5’8”, blond hair in what would be a fetching bob once they got that far in training. Breasts a bit on the small side, but that was actually good; they wouldn’t break down quickly with vigorous exercise, and the breast regeneration procedures would work well to keep them perky for many years. Measurements about 34-26-36, but that was going to change as the DNA mods took hold. She’d probably wind up about 6 foot even, around 36-24-40. The breast size change would be due to expansion of her rib cage to hold larger lungs and get more oxygen rather than expansion of her breasts, and the waist contraction would make it easier to use a saddle harness. The hip expansion, of course, was part of strengthening her pelvis and rearranging the geometry a bit to provide more power. The fact that the exaggerated waist-hip ratio would make her much more attractive to males was a side benefit.
She’d scrambled to her feet and started looking him over at the same time. He caught her attention and looked her in the eyes. Nice shade of blue, he thought. She dropped her gaze first.
He took the arm binder off the wall, held it up and made a twirling motion with his hand. She took a step back. He kept her gaze and brushed the quirt. She shook her head with a violent ‘no’, but then turned around and put her hands together.
He slid the arm binder up on her arms, bridled her and attached a lead rope. He considered briefly and decided not to hobble her. Then he opened the door and tugged gently.
She followed nicely, he thought as he took her to Basic Obedience Training Arena 5.
Cindy suddenly became aware that there was someone standing in front of the stall, looking down at her. She scrambled to her feet and gave him a good looking over. Around 6 foot, compact muscular type, buzz cut blond hair and what looked like a coiled up whip at his belt. The guy, whoever he was, just oozed the kind of masculinity that expected mere women to fall at his feet panting ‘take me, master.’
“Like Hell,” she thought. She tried to return his gaze, but felt herself break eye contact first. He took that damned arm binder off the wall, and made a gesture. Probably he wanted her to turn around so he could put it on her. Like Hell. Then he brushed the whip. She shook her head, but something about the gesture, almost like he was making love to it, stirred a primitive part of her mind. She turned almost without thinking and brought her arms back.
He slid the binder on her waiting arms. He snapped a lead rein on her bridle and tied the other end to a post using one of those knots that was solid from one end, but would come apart at a tug from the other. Then he detached the chain from her collar, opened the door and tugged at the lead. She followed, slightly bemused at how easily he had made her obey.
After a number of twists and turns, he led her into a circular arena. This was about 20 feet across, with a couple of dozen posts around the sides. The posts had little lights on them.
A young woman, probably in her early 20s, stood there holding a mare on a lead. The woman, Cindy noted, was dressed in faded blue jeans, ranch work boots and a shirt. She wore a red ribbon around her neck with a ponygirl cameo.
“So that’s 926,” she said as Fidor walked up.
“Yup. You’ve got her for the next hour, Marge.”
“Piece of cake, Fi,” she answered. She took Cindy’s lead and looped it over a ring. Then she walked into the ring and gave her mare’s lead a shake. The ponygirl walked to the center, and then started walking toward whichever pole was lighted, all the while Marge held onto the lead.
Cindy nodded. What she was supposed to do seemed to be obvious. Too obvious, but then asking questions didn’t seem to be on the agenda.
Marge tethered her mare, and took Cindy’s lead. She attached it to the box she was using to keep the lead taut without pulling. One of the poles flashed, and Cindy walked toward it. She noted that the lead on her bridle provided a slight drag, but it didn’t really pull. The light on the pole went out and another one flashed. She walked toward that. Then another, and another, and another. She lost track of time or where she was.
Finally it was over, leaving her as confused as ever about why they’d have her doing that exercise. She became aware that crew cut was watching her. He took the lead and took her back to the stable, where he groomed her before putting her back in her stall.
Some time later he came back to take her from her stall again. This time he led her to an equipment shed, where he fastened a very strange harness around her hips. It looked something like a bikini bottom, although it came higher to fasten around her waist, and it was cut to cover her hip bones. The bottom seemed to have strategically placed holes.
He backed her in between the shafts of some kind of a rolling gadget that looked somewhat like a cross between the fabled R2D2 and a cart. Then he put reins on her bridle and attached them to a pair of toggles on the top of the machine. He adjusted the tension until he had it the way he wanted, and then gave her a swat on the ass.
At the same time, the machine tugged the reins. She decided to be a good little ponygirl, and tried to walk forward. To her surprise, the machine rolled behind her with almost no effort. The biggest problem she found was that she wanted to push, or at least feel some drag, with her upper body and there was nothing to push against, even if her arms hadn’t been bound behind her.
The next 20 minutes or so were sheer confusion as she tried to sort out the various tugs on the reins to what they wanted her to do, and avoid the jolts from her control collar. Once she’d gotten them sorted, the machine guided her from the yard she’d been crisscrossing onto a relatively pleasant path and stepped up both the drag and the pace, varying both at random intervals.
An hour later it guided her back. The nazi marine wannabe was waiting for her. He lead her back to the stable, groomed her and put her in the stall. She promptly collapsed and fell asleep.
Later that day, he led her out again for a session with what she’d dubbed the torture wagon. It ran her right up to the edge of her endurance, leaving her just enough to be led back, groomed and allowed to fall into her stall.
Cindy woke up and stretched in place. She felt the straw under her and the slight drag of the light chain that anchored her collar, and hence her, to the stall. The hope that when she woke up she’d find herself in her familiar bed, and all of this would be just a bad dream, had faded to a minor amusement.
She got to her feet and examined herself. The two tattoos were old news. What was more interesting was that her feet seemed to be shrinking at the same time her toes had joined and her toenails had started to thicken. She thought that was the first signs that they were transforming into hooves.
Also, while she wasn’t quite sure, she thought she had a short tail, maybe a couple of inches. The gloves on her hands kept her from investigating.
And the strange fact was, as she crouched and then sprang to her feet, that she felt wonderful. Physically at least she seemed to be bursting with energy. Now if there was just someplace to go with it, she mused.
As far as her training went, whatever they were doing with those lights was still confusing. The torture wagon at least made sense; she thought that she was making better time and hauling heavier loads, but there was no way she could be sure. She was more than ready for the next training exercise.
“Be careful what you wish for,” a little voice in her mind said. “Oh, shut up!” she told it.
“You’re puzzled about something,” Shelly said to Fidor.
“Well, yes. I’m wondering if it’s time to send her out to pasture.”
“Why would you?”
“We’ve been training her for five days. She’s doing fine on the strength and stamina route, and she’s reacting to her collar’s prompts before she sees the lights on the post most of the time. We haven’t moved her to the next stage there yet.
“It looks like her skin has regenerated completely as well. Her bones are beginning to shift, and she’s got a cute 2 inch tail.”
“That’s pretty standard for this time frame. Why wouldn’t you?”
“Partially because I don’t have a really good feeling that she’s ready to learn pasture discipline yet, and partially because the other ponies in that row of the stable aren’t ready, so having her go to pasture while they’re still in their stalls would confuse things.”
“Those seem to be two very good reasons. So why do you want to do it?”
“Mostly because she’s ready for a new challenge.”
“A new challenge. Hm. How about either a 50 pound pack, or start extinguishing the desire to talk?”
“Extinguishing the desire to talk has to be done, but it’s not what she’ll think of as a challenge. If she was being recalcitrant, yes, it would emphasize that I’m the one giving the orders and all resistance is doing is hurting her. 926 is being reasonably cooperative, and that might kick her into resistance.”
“Good point.”
“I’d really like it to happen without her noticing. In fact, I’m not even sure why we’re bothering any more; the muffler is adequate and we’re certainly not suppressing sign language. If anything, we’re encouraging their learning it.”
“There’s a contingency,” Shelly said. “Otherwise I’d agree that it’s no longer needed. You should know the reason we’re not that concerned about sign language.”
“Yes.” Fidor thought for a minute. “I think I’ll do both. I’m going to start the conditioning program in gentle mode; I won’t go to major jolts unless that doesn’t work. The pack should distract her from the anti-talk conditioning, and that will let me delay putting her out to pasture for another three or four days. By that time the other three should be ready, and possibly some of the others.” He nodded decisively.
This time the trainer had her mare with her again. She went through what looked like the same exercise as the first day with Cindy watching. Except. Cindy narrowed her eyes. Some of the moves that the trainer’s ponygirl was doing didn’t seem to have anything to do with the lights on the posts. She didn’t seem to be giving instructions, either.
She shook her head slightly. Stranger and stranger.
The trainer stopped her girl, and brought Cindy into the middle of the arena. The lights started, and then Cindy found herself moving toward an unlighted pole. She hesitated, and then let herself go. The rest of the session continued the strangeness: it seemed like she knew what direction to go. At least, her trainer kept praising her. Of course, she thought during one of the rare breaks, she couldn’t tell if her trainer was really praising her or reciting a recipe for pepperoni pizza; it was the tone that counted.
She was taken directly to the conditioning arena. This time was also different: they put a harness on her, and then put a pack on her back. She staggered a moment before she got it settled where she wanted it. Then they harnessed her to what she still thought of as the torture machine, and sent her out.
She’d managed to hold up during grooming. Barely. She was quite sure that she was asleep before she hit the straw.
That evening she thought about the day, as she usually did. That weird set of exercises seemed to be training her to get directions somehow. The how wasn’t particularly obvious, but she couldn’t see how it mattered. Network, collar, voice, whatever, it did seem like she was being trained to go where she was told without having to understand spoken directions. She shrugged. It did seem like it would be useful to train a ponygirl to do that.
“Doesn’t make much difference,” she started to mutter, but then she got sidetracked.
Once she got back on track, she thought about the stamina course. They’d put a weighted pack on her. Again, it seemed like that might be to condition her for riding, and she had certainly seen enough ponygirls being ridden, both on her first day and later. “Figures,” she started to say, but then got sidetracked.
When she came back, she started to wonder. Getting sidetracked like that wasn’t at all like her. What was she doing? She thought back and suddenly her thoughts were derailed again when she got to talking to herself.
She came back again, and thought some more. Could it be? She tried to say “Damn!” and got sidetracked.
She came back again, and decided to try one more time. Yup, something was shifting her awareness whenever she tried to talk. Not good. What could she do about it? After thinking a while, she decided that there wasn’t a whole lot: it was probably running off of something in her brain waves. Should she do anything about it? On due consideration, she decided that it probably didn’t matter.
About then, the lights started their evening sequence, and she lay down and fell asleep.
“Now I’m really wondering,” Fidor told Shelly during their daily meeting.
“More about 926?”
“Yes. She’s figured out the Go To It conditioning, and let Marge direct her all over the arena without any of the lights today. She’s reacting the same to network and voice commands. Marge says she’s done. That’s a couple of days faster than average.”
“You know what it is about averages. I take it that isn’t it.”
“True. The no talk conditioning is acting weirdly. It’s been three days, and the number of attempts isn’t going down as fast as it should. The curve isn’t right.”
“Well, you know that ‘the curve’ is more myth than reality. Let me see the data.” Shelly looked at the data and pushed it around a bit. Then she laughed.
“Oh?”
“She’s on to you, and she’s doing something. What, I’m not sure.”
“Show me?”
“See what happens if you remove the last two hours before lights out from the data set?”
“Now it looks like a textbook curve.”
“Well, closer. It’s those two hours that are the outliers. The rest of it’s going according to plan, so either she’s letting it condition her out of muttering to herself, or she hasn’t figured out what to do about it. She might not have noticed it, either.” Shelly shrugged slightly. “Most people regard talking out loud to yourself as a bad habit, so she might have decided to let it work. No way of telling yet.
“What’s interesting is what she’s doing before lights out.”
“I’m not sure I’m up to analyzing it.”
“Well, I can’t say I’m 100% sure either, but it looks like she’s wiring around it so that she doesn’t lose focus when the collar jolts her awareness.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“I haven’t either. Looks like you’ve got a real interesting challenge for your first solo trainee.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Cindy came awake as the ceiling lights played the dawn sequence. She brought her bound hands up under her head and looked at the ceiling thoughtfully. She’d been here, what, two weeks or so. She frowned. She wasn’t at all sure of the exact number of days. She did know that her hands had been unbound three times so she could have them deep massaged and perform flexibility exercises. Those exercises had hurt! They were probably necessary, though, at least if they wanted to keep her hands functional for some unknown reason.
Should she wish for something different to happen? Well, the last couple of days she hadn’t had the exercise with the lights on the posts, which probably meant they thought she was done.
About then she heard the feeder trundle into action as it came down behind the stall wall and dispensed its measured amount of water and pellets into the bowls. She laughed quietly; she could tell who was awake by the sound of munching right after the pellets stopped.
It came to her stall and dispensed what was probably carefully measured to be just what she needed. She rolled over and stuck her head in the opening. She didn’t really care what it looked like: chow time was chow time.
After she’d exhausted the food, she stood up. Several of the other girls also stood up as well as the stallion in stall 7. He began his usual routine of eying them. She eyed him back and let herself daydream a bit about what she could do to get them together. As far as she could tell, the answer was: pretty much nothing. Not that it didn’t keep her from fantasizing what he’d be like.
Once they’d finished eating and were all looking around, one of the grooms walked in, followed by an older mare on a lead. Cindy stared: she had her hands and arms free. Then three of the trainers walked in, including her wannabe nazi. The trainers walked to the three ponies that had given them the most trouble and just stared, as if to say, ‘you’d better not cause any trouble.’ Cindy nodded.
Then he did something strange. He pointed at her mouth and made a motion as if inserting a key and locking it. She furrowed her brow. Then he turned the lock the other way and winked! Her head came back: he knew.
He mimed holding a stick, turned it for best effect, and then mimed breaking it. He was good, she had to admit; his muscles had bulged as he mimed the breaking motion. The message was crystal clear: he wasn’t going to pursue how, or even whether, she’d gotten around the no talk conditioning. However, that came with a price tag: she’d better behave or else he’d break her. She looked at him and nodded.
Once the trainers had gotten their messages across, the groom walked down the row of stalls and unbolted each one. Then he threw his mare’s lead rope over her shoulder and made a gesture that seemed to mean: follow her.
The groom and three trainers watched as their nine novice ponygirls and one stallion followed the lead mare.
The mare led them down several paths into a large pasture and made a sweeping motion that seemed to mean: enjoy yourselves. Then she walked off.
While the rest of them were looking around, Cindy made her move. She eased back to stand next to the stallion and planted a firm kiss on his cheek. He turned around in surprise as she puckered up and tilted her head forward for a kiss.
After a moment of shock, he responded. One thing led to another, and pretty soon she was lying on her back, as he plastered kisses on her face while their more important bits got down to serious monkey business.
Neither one of them noticed the lead mare look back at them and laugh.
The pasture, Cindy figured out soon enough, was definitely a good deal. For one thing, it was huge. It had grass, clusters of trees, and a small brook.
The first thing she’d done was check the boundaries. To her surprise there was a double fence, the inner one set about 20 yards in from the outer one, and the invisible fence about two yards in from the outer fence. She figured out why soon enough when she saw horses moving between the two fences. It seemed there was something that the managers of this place wanted to do with their horses. After reflection it didn’t seem like it mattered a whole lot, except that the horses weren’t getting in the way.
The next thing she discovered was that there were several games going on, involving either soccer balls or plastic plates. Without hands she couldn’t join in any of the groups throwing the plates around with wild abandon, but the soccer groups seemed to be more enthusiasm and energy than plan and strategy. She wasn’t quite sure what happened when a ball went outside the fences until she saw it happen. Some kind of an insectoid robot came to life, retrieved the strayed object and heaved it back into the pasture.
Then she found herself heading for the path out of the pasture. She found she took the turns automatically, until she arrived at the equipment shed with what she still called the torture robot. One of the grooms put her arms in a binder, harnessed her to the robot, put a pack on her back, and she was off on another conditioning run.
When she got back, wiped out as usual, another groom led her to an outdoor grooming station. He did the usual efficient and passionless job of washing her down, and then swatted her ass and pointed. She found herself walking somewhere. Several turns later, she found herself in the middle of what looked like the runway between the pasture and the stable, and whatever had been guiding her quit. Totally. She had no idea what to do next. She stood looking back and forth for a moment, and then tried to go on.
Oops! Now there were invisible fences blocking her from either going forward or retracing her steps. A little experimentation showed her that she could go to the pasture, or to the stable, but nowhere else. She wasn’t, she decided, really up for the pasture. She headed for her stall and collapsed.
This could be a posh vacation, Cindy thought as she sat in her stall. Grooms to attend to my every need, I’m fitter than I have ever been in my life, I can wander out to have fun whenever I want, there are at least ten stallions just waiting to service me whenever I’m ready.
Like hell, her mind replied. First, it’s not a vacation. They’re preparing you to be sold. To the highest bidder, probably.
Well, yeah. I know that. So what? It’s easier than job hunting.
You don’t get to pick your job.
With my grades I wouldn’t have any of the choice jobs anyway.
Yeah. You were going for your Mrs. Look where that got you.
Here. And whatever they’re doing with hand training sucks. If they’d just tell me what they wanted, I’d do it. But no, they’re conditioning whatever it is into me. And mistakes hurt.
It’s not that bad, her mind replied. You know it leads to their leaving your hands free.
Yeah, right. Switch sides in the argument. Again.
Now what the fuck are they doing to me, Cindy thought angrily. I’ve been standing here for hours, and nothing’s happening.
Trying to drive you mad? her mind replied.
Nah, can’t be. There’s lots easier ways of doing that. And probably a lot more fun for them.
Well, then just do what old 1-482 suggested. Look at what’s going on in front of you.
But that’s boorrrring.
So? You’re going to be standing at hitching racks a lot. For the rest of your life. You need to learn to amuse yourself.
Cindy sighed. She hated losing arguments with herself.
That chick can sure bounce, Cindy thought as she reviewed her disastrous first attempt at being ridden.
Just as well, her mind replied, the number of times she fell off.
Yeah, that was not my most sterling performance. I just hope it doesn’t affect my training program.
Shouldn’t, her mind replied. That chick can’t be more than five foot even and 90 pounds. And the way she bounces, she’s got lots of experience with novice ponygirls who can’t seat a rider.
Well, there’s always tomorrow, she thought disgustedly.
Her mind didn’t deign to reply.
“I take it everything’s working out,” Shelly half-asked.
“Yes. The boredom elimination program is working like a charm now that she’s decided to let it. She’s acting more and more like a ponygirl, not a college student who’s being forced into doing something she really, really doesn’t want to do.”
“Feeling follows action, and thought follows feeling,” Shelly said as if it was a mantra. “The pasture is usually the turning point: it gives them a feeling that they’re more in control.”
“She’s beginning to get her hooves under her with someone in the saddle.” Fidor laughed. “I have to say I’ve never seen quite as bad a start.”
“You’re still young.” Shelly laughed. “We’ve had a couple that just couldn’t find their balance regardless. Medical finally said it was something neurological, and acquisition added it to their filters.”
I am so going to kill that bitch! Cindy fumed.
So? She’s spastic, her mind replied.
She is not spastic. She’s messing up the pace deliberately.
Fidor’s wrist alarm buzzed. He sighed. What now?
It seemed that the pasture monitor said there was a confrontation brewing between 926 and 892. He decided to head for the lead trainer’s ready room; the stallions could keep them apart if it came to blows or hair pulling.
892’s lead trainer was already seated in front of the row of monitors that lined one wall. Fiona had a classic figure, flaming red hair and green eyes. She also had a temper to match. She could show a surprising amount of patience, but she only seemed to use it when she was training one of her girls. He liked her. A lot. Unfortunately, she didn’t reciprocate.
“So what are our two problem children getting up to, Fi?”
“It looks like 926 has had it with 892’s problems with keeping a pace. I can’t say I blame her, 892 has been screwing up at least once a session with every pony we’ve matched her, and nothing I do with rhythm training seems to be helping.”
“Well, let’s see what happens.” The two settled back to watch the monitors as 926 walked across the meadow, looked 892 in the face and screamed at her.
892 gave her a couple of signs.
“Oh, nice comeback,” Fiona breathed.
926 signed: ~You’re doing it deliberately~
~So? You can’t keep up with pace changes?~
“I get it. She’s bored.” Fiona said
“Looks like it to me,” Fidor said. “What do we do about it?”
“Basic pace changes are called for by the driver,” Fiona stated as an obvious fact. “We train them so they’re automatic. Neither pony should be having problems with driver signals. Neither seems to have difficulty synchronizing a pace change when the driver calls for it.
“Anything else is show stuff, and that requires a matched team and lots of training. The owners do that if they want a show team. We don’t. Hm.” She sat back and watched the monitors as several stallions walked up behind the two mares.
“I have to admit 926 isn’t at fault,” she said finally. “I can put a note in 892’s sales file that she’s high-strung and doesn’t do well with routine, but that won’t help here and now. I’m going to pull her from the Christmas catalogs and see if she’ll settle when she’s got some post-training time to just be a ponygirl.”
“I think some discipline is in order.”
“I have to agree. Let’s put it on the schedule. I’ll confine her to her stall until then. That might get the point across.” Fiona took over the screen with an almost unnoticeable twitch of her fingers and entered some commands. Fidor nodded. That was one of the advantages of being female: all the women wore control collars, even if they pretended they were Goodwife Ribbons, and they all knew how to use them.
He wasn’t at all sure whether being able to wear a control collar and con people into thinking it was a Goodwife Ribbon was an advantage or disadvantage of being female.
That, Cindy thought, had been like an ice water bath: it had woke everyone up. They’d pulled all of the ponies into the large arena, and stood them in rows while they hauled 892 up in front, strung her up in a rack, and proceeded to whip her. Cindy was no connoisseur of whippings; in fact she would prefer not to see one ever again, but it had been impressive. When they’d finished, the poor girl’s back and thighs had been covered with welts. A medical technician had come out and put some kind of healing gel on them.
What had been even more impressive, though, was that the guy wielding the whip had started out with a two minute description of what she’d done, in perfect sign language. Both lessons had come through loud and clear. First, they probably knew everything that one of the ponies said to another one, and second, deliberately screw up and you won’t like the result.
Now what, Fidor asked himself as his wrist communicator buzzed at him. He checked. The meadow monitor said that 892 was headed for 926 with blood in her eye. He shook his head. Well, that could have been predicted. He headed into the lead trainer’s ready room to watch the confrontation on the monitors.
As he also could have predicted, Fiona was there ahead of him, watching the confrontation develop. He slid into a seat next to her. By then it had already gotten to the point where two stallions were restraining 892, and 926 was looking at her, hands on hips, as if she had gone crazy.
“This is one of those times,” Fiona said, “where I wish we could just turn a switch and listen to them hurl invective at each other.”
“We could,” Fidor countered.
“And destroy how much training?”
“There is that,” he acknowledged. “Now what are they doing?”
“Well, they’ve calmed 892 down enough that they’re letting her go. There she goes,” she said as 892 launched into a rapid-fire series of signs that would have made a contortionist blanch.
“Ooo. Nice attack. Now she’s standing back for a response.”
~I’ll bet you don’t know what you were punished for,~ 926 signed calmly.
~You got me into this.~
~Nope. What do you think you were punished for?~
~I don’t know,” 892 finally admitted.
~Well, everyone else does. I guess you had your back turned when the guy with the whip told us.~
~He told you? How?~
~They know our sign language,~ one of the stallions signed disgustedly.
~Oh.~ 892 wilted slightly. ~I’ll bet they’re watching this.~
~No bet. No way of knowing to pay it off.~
“Now there’s a stallion with his head on his shoulders,” another of the trainers chortled. “945, eh?”
892 snorted. ~So tell.~
~You screwed up deliberately. It was doing it intentionally that they got you for.~
~Oh, shit.~
The senior mare said: ~Yeah. Now kiss and make up.~
~Huh?~
~We’re going to stand here until you do.~
Cindy looked at the sky briefly. Why was she involved at all? Well, it didn’t pay to irritate the senior mares. Or the stallions. Especially the stallions. She motioned to 892 and pursed her lips briefly. 892 looked and then stepped forward. They nuzzled and then kissed. Then they kissed again. They backed off and looked at each other, startled. Then they pulled themselves into a hug and got down to some serious kissing.
Twenty minutes later, the two disentangled themselves.
Back in the ready room, Fiona noticed that one of her hands had migrated to Fidor’s leg. She pulled it back as if it was burned. Fidor managed to strangle a laugh.
“Now that those two have settled it, let’s take them out for a ride together,” he suggested.
Fiona looked at him. “Now that’s a good idea. A few rides, and then put them in harness together for a while.”
Cindy stood, arms behind her in a cross-arm binder and reins tied to the hitching rack, and calmly waited for something to happen. Her trainer walked out, accompanied by a peppery redhead. They’d been out together on rides before. This time the redhead was wearing a short skirt that flattered her unmercifully, rather than her usual faded jeans. They both carried packs.
Her trainer walked up behind her and fastened one of the packs to her side, and then freed the reins with a jerk. He put his foot in the stirrup and swung into her saddle as she automatically swung in the opposite direction to maintain balance.
He coaxed her backwards for a few steps, and then turned her in place. The redhead, riding 892, came up beside them. Cindy noted, with mild amusement, the reason for the really short skirt. Or at least one of the reasons: anything longer would have bunched up in front of her unmanageably.
The two ponygirls almost instinctively adjusted their paces to stay side by side so their riders could talk.
The two of them made a leisurely pace down one of the wooded paths that surrounded the training stables, and stopped in a little clearing. They tied their two ponygirls to trees and settled down to enjoy the picnic they’d brought in the packs. They they’d enjoyed each other. They were both extremely passionate lovers, Cindy noted, before her wandering hand ignited 892.
“Now the next item,” Daniel said to his wife, Scarlett, and son, Frank, as they sat in the farm office. “We’ve been mulling over whether to get a fourth ponygirl for a while. Well, third mare. We could use one, but I’m not entirely sure of the cost/benefit yet. Scarlett?”
“I’d like to get one for my new daughter.”
David sat up straighter. “I think she’d love having one of her own, but can we afford it?”
“Hm,” Dan said. “That would kick part of the expense into personal rather than business. I take it you’ve been looking?”
“Yes,” Scarlett said. “What do you think of getting a PPO this time?”
“That’s definitely an idea. PPOs are kind of high quality for farm work, but if she’s going to be Michelle’s first and farm second it might work out, and I’ll admit to wanting to see how much of what I hear about the breed is reality-based and how much is puffery.”
“How much would we have to do for support?” David asked.
“I’ve checked,” his mother replied. “Our stable setup is pretty close to what they recommend. The only two things I can see is that Michelle would need a mentor to learn riding and possibly show stuff, and we might want to have our stallion upgraded with the Super Stud DNA modification.”
“You’re a bit closer to the show people than I am, dear,” Dan said. “See who you can find for a local mentor. As for Super Stud.” He tipped his chair back for a while to think. Then he pressed a button.
A minute later the door opened and a man walked in. He was dressed in a servant’s outfit, and wore a control collar. “You called, sir?”
“Yes. I’m wondering about the sexual situation in the stable and with the farm hands. Are they bothering the pony mares?”
“I’d hate to get anyone in trouble,” Malcolm began.
“Oh, I’m not looking for that,” his master said. “You know my policy: if the hands can settle their issues themselves I don’t want to get involved. We’re thinking of adding another ponygirl, and wondering if the stallion can handle it.”
“I really doubt if he can,” the servant replied. “From what I’ve heard I don’t think he’s up to servicing more than one of them a day. And I’ve also heard that they seem to like it more than once a day. It settles them.”
“That clarifies the situation. Thank you, Malcolm.”
Malcolm nodded his head and left.
“So Super Stud is going to be necessary. David, put that on the list. We need to get him down to the clinic so it can be installed. Scarlett, David, get together and look over their stock to find one that Michelle will like and will work out for the farm as well.”
“And of course, keep the price down,” David said.
“I think we can go a bit above rock bottom,” his father replied. “Michelle is your wife and my daughter-in-law. We want some degree of quality.”
Cindy stood watching the scenery roll by as the pickup pulled the ponygirl trailer, and therefore her, along a series of winding roads. She snorted in amusement as she thought of how she called herself: nobody else in the world knew that, and she had not the least idea of what they called her. As long as she knew when she was being called it worked out. Just don’t call her late for dinner! She tended to get really cranky if she wasn’t fed on time. Unless, of course, there was a reason.
The roads rolled past. She’d given up trying to keep track of where she was, not that knowing where she was mattered in the slightest. It was just a fun way to pass the time.
As time passed, they went onto winding country roads, and occasionally had to slow down behind a horse-drawn or ponygirl-drawn carriage or cart. She noted with bemusement that the ponygirls all seemed to be wearing tunics that had a bold pattern of diagonal black and white stripes. She also noted the occasional ponygirl on a side path, either being ridden or pulling a narrow one person cart. Her head came back as she spotted one ponygirl trotting along by herself, arms behind her in her arm binder. What was that about?
They went through a couple of small towns that had a wide mixture of cars and horse and ponygirl-drawn vehicles. There were a fair number of horses and ponygirls standing at hitching racks, apparently sharing space without any ill effects. Cindy looked at them with narrowed eyes. The herd mares had said something about parts of the country where ponygirl use was widespread enough to be out in the open, and this seemed to be one of them.
Michelle snuggled up against her new husband as they watched one of her younger sisters-in-law open a present. Beth squealed in delight at the sparkling pendant.
Now it was her turn again, and she was down to the last present, from her father-in-law. It looked like a book, and she’d been ignoring it. Books she could take or leave, and she vastly preferred to leave them.
She picked it up from under the family tree, and tore the wrapping. It was a book. The book’s title seemed to rise off the cover and burn itself into her brain: You and Your Premier Ponygirl. Subtitled: The Ponygirl Owner’s Guide to Stabling, Caring For, Training, Disciplining, Using and Showing Your Premier Ponygirl.
She completely forgot she was all of 22, a graduate of a major university and the proud holder of a Goodwife Ribbon. She ripped open the envelope that came with it and squealed in delight as she took out the Certificate of Ownership for Premier Ponygirl PPO-2033-926.
Her father-in-law said a quite credible “Oof!” as she tackled him and gave him a hug. “Can we go look now?”
Malcolm cleared his throat. “It hasn’t been delivered yet, ma’am. The delivery service says about an hour.”
“And that gives Miss Analexis time to get here as well,” Daniel, who was still recovering from being tackled by his daughter-in-law, said. “I’ve contracted with her to mentor you.”
The pickup and trailer eventually pulled into a cluster of buildings, not all that different from the other clusters that dotted the landscape. The driver got out and spoke to someone, who came around back and opened the trailer. He led the ponygirl down the ramp and into the snow.
Cindy got a good look at him. He was dressed, if you could call it that, in a single-sleeve tunic like all of the slaves around her training stable wore. It had a different pattern, though. He was definitely a slave: males who wore control collars were all slaves. There was something really funny about the hair on his arms and legs.
Cindy felt the snow crunch under her hooves as her led her to the stable. Snow wasn’t bad, she thought, especially a light fall like this. Her trainers had made sure she could handle it. Traction shoes might be better, she thought idly, but they hadn’t provided them. Plain old hard rubber shoes had to do.
The groom led her into the stable. She noted the setup as she walked past: there was a grooming area that seemed to be the same as the ones she’d trained with. There was a row of horse stalls, and then a row with ponygirl stalls. By now she could tell the difference almost at a glance: ponygirl stalls were a bit narrower and a bit shorter. The workmanship was a lot better. The doors were quite different. And the corridor was quite a bit narrower: there was no way you could manage a horse in there!
There seemed to be five ponygirl stalls. Three of them held ponygirls, or rather two of them held mares and one held a stallion! That made her grin. As long as the stallion could handle three mares, she thought, she was going to like it here.
One thing she noted right away: each of the three occupied stalls had a name rather than a number on the nameplate. The mares seemed to be Daisy and Fern, the stallion seemed to be Fox.
The groom put her in the next stall, clipped a light chain to the ring on her collar and removed the arm binder. Then he spent a few minutes hanging the various items of her tack on the wall. As he did, she worked her arms to get the kinks out from having them in the arm binder. She idly noted that he put a book in a rack along with the other tack.
He’d no sooner finished putting tack on the wall before he put her arm binder back on and led her out into the attached paddock.
There were eight people standing there looking at her. Older man and woman, looked like a married couple. A second, younger, couple. The young man looked like he could be related to the older couple, the woman didn’t. Two young girls who looked like younger daughters and an older woman who didn’t look like she was related to any of the others. A slave hovered in the background; from his demeanor he probably ran the household.
The older woman and the woman in the younger couple looked like they were dressed for working with horses – or ponygirls. The rest of them seemed to be wearing holiday finery, and would be quite willing to go back into the house to get out of the cold.
The older woman gave her a measuring stare, systematically working from the top down. Ah, someone who knew ponygirls, and probably not her new owner. Someone like that wouldn’t need the mob scene. She temporarily dismissed her, not that she thought she was unimportant! Au Contrare. She was probably going to be seeing way too much of her.
The woman in the younger couple was practically eating her with her eyes. Probably her new owner. The others were clearly family; they were interested, but they’d seen ponygirls before. In fact they had three more in their stable. They were all dressed for a party, she was dressed for stable work. Good quality, but still like she expected to get dirty and enjoy every minute of it.
Her brow furrowed slightly. Something about the young woman told her she’d seen her before. Where?
She looked at her new owner steadily.
“So that’s her,” Michelle breathed as Rodney brought the girl out of the stable. “She’s, um, taller than I was expecting. Why’s she staring at me like that?”
Miss Analexis laughed. “She’s identified you as her owner, and she’s measuring you. This one’s got it. Either you make her your pony, or you’re going to have major problems.”
“I take it you’ve seen this before,” David, Michelle’s husband, said.
“Twice, both times with PPOs. The first one I ruined by making it a test of will. I won, of course, but she’s never lived up to her potential. The second one....” She paused. “She’s one of my champion show ponies. She’s the only one of the herd I can trust to give me 110% when it counts.”
“So what should I do now?”
“What do you think you should do, girl?”
“Make friends with her?”
“Exactly right. How would you do that?”
“Talk softly and give her something?”
“Exactly correct.” Miss Analexis reached into her purse and took out a small packet.
“Oh, a candy. I see.” Michelle gathered her self-assurance and walked into the paddock.
Yup, she’s the owner and the older biddy is the aunt or tutor or whatever, Cindy told herself as she watched the two talk to each other before the young woman walked up. She said something. Cindy, of course, couldn’t tell what it was, but the tone was both calm and non-threatening, and also held a great deal of self-assurance. She’d obviously had some experience dealing with strange horses and possibly the ponygirls in the stable. Then she held something in her hand.
Cindy looked down at it. The girl couldn’t be more than about 5’4”, even with the heels on her work boots. Yup, it was a candy. She grinned and stooped slightly to take it from the outstretched palm with an economical flick of her tongue against her upper lip. Then she brushed her cheek against her new owner’s cheek before straightening up.
Michelle looked up at her new ponygirl. The altitude was going to take getting used to. She ran a familiar hand over the girl’s skin and frowned. She definitely needed grooming.
“Groom her next?” she asked without turning.
“What would you want after a long and not very comfortable trip?” Miss Analexis answered.
“Right. Groom her.” Michelle laughed and held out her hand for the lead rope.
Cindy followed her new owner back into the stable. They went right to an open shower space. Grooming station, Cindy thought automatically. And boy, could she stand to be groomed!
Her new owner fastened the lead to a handy ring, taking enough care with the knot that Cindy figured she hadn’t been doing it for very long. The grooms she knew kind of casually threw the lead at the ring, and it almost knotted itself.
Then she went to a wall switch. Two manacles fell from the ceiling. She walked behind Cindy and removed the arm binder; Cindy felt her arms move into the grooming position, almost without her conscious volition.
The girl looked at it, shook her head, and gave the manacle switch a twist. They came down a bit. Cindy’s arms lowered to match.
Her new owner snapped the manacles around her wrists and then looked at the hand bindings. She said something, and then had a short conversation with both the old biddy and the stable hand.
“What do we do with these?” Michelle asked as she flicked one of the cylinders that encased her new ponygirl’s hands.
“Depends,” Miss Analexis said. “I know that doesn’t tell you a lot, but whether you want her to have her hands free is a major decision. Unless your stable has a policy?” She looked at the groom.
Rodney cleared his throat again. “Um, we let their hands free. The mistress likes them to have nicely done long hair for when she takes one of them into town, and it’s simpler to let them groom it themselves. She’s very particular about how whichever girl she uses is turned out.” He shrugged. “If I see them doing something with their hands that they shouldn’t, a couple of strokes gets the point across. I suppose a real trainer could settle the problem, but until we get one...” He touched the whip coiled at his waist.
“You most likely won’t have that problem with this one,” Miss Analexis said. “The PPO breed is very thoroughly trained to only use their hands for permitted activities.”
“That’ll help,” he said as he reached to take the two devices that Michelle handed him and put them on a shelf.
“Wet first,” Michelle said as she adjusted the sprayer and thoroughly soaked the tethered ponygirl. She went through the cycle of lathering her up, scrubbing and then rinsing, paying attention that she got under the manacles, behind the ears and in the other cracks and crevices.
“Since she’s going to be doing her own hair, I take it I should just dry it out and give it enough brushing to get the tangles out?”
“Right. Then take her back to her stall,” the groom instructed. “I’ll make sure she’s got enough feed and has a brush, comb and mirror to finish up.”
A few minutes later, she had her new ponygirl in her stall, tethered to the back wall with a light chain. She closed the stall door and shot the bolt.
“Something’s bothering me about her,” she said to Miss Analexis. “I’ve got this feeling that I’ve seen her before.”
“You have a specific person in mind?”
“Yes. A girl named Cindy that vanished from campus about six, seven months ago. I didn’t know her all that well; we weren’t friends or anything.”
“It’s possible. Your book will explain it in detail. The thing to know is that most of the PPO breed started out as college girls who either gave their boyfriends one of those ‘True Love and Eternal Devotion’ declarations or gave a lender a contingency indenture as security for a loan. They’re both options on slave contracts, although most of the silly girls who do them don’t know that.”
“They’re what?!”
“That ‘True Love and Eternal Devotion’ declaration is a six month renewable option on a slave contract. The ability to exercise the option doesn’t kick in until after the first renewal, so most of them expire without anything happening.” She paused. “It also expires when they get married. To the guy they gave the declaration to.”
Michelle looked at her ponygirl and frowned in thought for a long moment. “She got herself into it. I have no idea if there’s a DNA mod to turn her back the way she was, and she’s already been trained. She’ll just have to live with it,” she finally pronounced. “I am not giving up my ponygirl just because we happened to see each other on campus a few times.”
She paused. “I get to name her, right? Keeping her old name probably isn’t a good idea. I suppose I should continue the flower motif.” She paused again. “How’s Dahlia sound?”
“I don’t know another ponygirl named Dahlia around here,” Miss Analexis said as she looked at Rodney.
Rodney walked to a screen set in the wall where the ponies couldn’t see it. “Could you pronounce that a couple of times?” he asked.
Once all three of them had pronounced the word, he entered some commands and then nodded. “OK, that’s the name she’ll answer to. I’ll have the sign made up.”
“I thought I knew how these things worked, but that’s all you do to change her name?”
“Something you’ll find when you study the book,” Miss Analexis said. “You know they don’t actually understand what people say, right?”
“Um, yes.”
“That’s done in the earplugs: they change sound streams they identify as speech so that it’s impossible for the brain to find patterns. Which brings up the question: how do they respond to keywords?” She paused for her student to think about it.
“Oh. That must come through the collar?”
“Exactly right. The collar has a microphone, or it would be more accurate to say that the collar is a microphone. That makes it easy to change any keyword, or even the entire set at one time. The pony has no idea that anything’s changed; knowing you’re speaking her name is a conditioned reaction.”
“I see. Now what’s she doing?” Michelle asked as she turned her attention back to her Christmas present.
“She’s trying to tell you something.” Miss Analexis said. “Can you guess what it is?”
“She’s pointing at her, um, and at the stallion. Well, that’s obvious, she’s asking if she can have him.”
“Since the stallion is looking real interested, I presume that your stable policy is to let them do it while they’re loose in the pasture?”
“It is, ma’am,” the groom confirmed.
“Trying to keep her for yourself could be done; the stable management program and the ponygirl modules can make attempts for any pair to get it on together rather unpleasant. But then you’d have to deal with the consequence.”
“Why would I want to keep her for myself?” Michelle asked as she blushed.
“You probably wouldn’t,” Miss Analexis agreed. “However, there are considerations. If you want to keep her, you’ve got to form a bond with her. She knows you’re her owner, so that starts it out right, and if you keep grooming her and using her, that will strengthen it. Sex is one of the two other ways to form a bond. Sex with a stallion doesn’t count, but sex with stable attendants or anyone else will weaken the bond.”
“So you’re saying she and the stallion can have as much as they want, but she should be off limits to everyone else?”
“Yes.” Miss Analexis looked at the stable attendant.
“I understand, ma’am,” he answered the implied order. “There’s going to be a problem, though.”
“What?”
“Keeping those two satisfied,” he nodded in the direction of the two mares, who had started looking daggers at the stallion, “runs him ragged.”
“Hm. So he doesn’t have the Super Stud modification installed, I take it?”
“Not that I know of, ma’am.”
“We’ll have to talk that over with your father-in-law,” Miss Analexis told Michelle. She looked at the stable attendant. “I presume you have authority to do what you have to?”
“Um, yes, ma’am.”
Michelle asked: “You said two other major factors in forming a bond?”
“Yes. PPOs are a very different breed. They form an almost unbreakable bond with their owner – if their owner rides them, but not otherwise. Anyone else riding them doesn’t seem to work.”
“Well, I certainly intend to ride her! When can we get started?”
“Learning to ride is best done at my place rather than here. Let’s make the next sessions there. Your father-in-law has a competent stable staff from everything I’ve seen so I don’t think I’m needed here unless you’ve got problems.”
Rodney hung up the phone and looked at the four ponies thoughtfully. What master had just told him made sense: Fox had gone to the clinic a few days before and had been a bit off for the next day, so the Super Stud modification ought to be working. Why hadn’t they told him? He shook his head and then shrugged.
Now how to verify that it was working in a way they’d understand? He thought for a minute, looked at the clock while he put schedules together in his head and then nodded. Start out by putting Fox in with Daisy, wait an hour, put him in with Fern, wait another hour, put him in with Dahlia. That ought to do it. Meanwhile he’d better get busy making Dahlia’s nameplate.
He clipped a lead on Fox’s bridle, unclipped the stall chain and brought him around to Daisy’s stall. He clipped the second stall chain to his collar, unclipped the lead and shot the bolt to the stall. Then he walked out, leaving the two ponies to their own devices.
As he walked, he thought he’d better tell the other stable hands that the two mares were probably not going to be as receptive to a quick one now and then as they used to be.
That, Dahlia thought to herself, was an interesting introduction to the rest of the herd! Or at least to the herd stallion! The one name she wouldn’t have given him was Fox. Maybe Rabbit. Or something that was a cross between a wolverine and a bear. Or wasn’t a wolverine related to a bear? Whatever. He’d been a bit doubtful when the groom had put him in with her, but once he got into it he performed magnificently. Of course, she grinned happily, that was what herd stallions were for: keeping their mares happy.
Of course, the other interesting thing was the book in her hand. She’d snitched it on her way back from the latrine. You and Your Premium Ponygirl seemed like it had oodles of interesting reading. The appendix giving background on how the collars worked and what she could and couldn’t do with them was fascinating. Especially the piece about how to use the command system by twitching her fingers, and how to practice without a reader.
The piece that said they couldn’t lock her out of using the command system by subvocalizing was equally fascinating. She wasn’t, of course, supposed to be able to subvocalize.
She turned the page, memorized a few commands to try and then put the book away where she could return it the next time she had to go to the latrine.
Of course, the recommendation in the book was that she shouldn’t have permission to do anything.
Michelle practically sang. She was due at Miss Analexis’ at ten, and she was ready to go. Since the weather had warmed up, the ponies were back in the pasture. She walked to the fence and whistled. “Yo Dahlia,” she waved, holding a lead in her hand.
Dahlia looked up from where she was sitting on her hooves and trotted over. They nuzzled briefly as she snapped the lead on Dahlia’s bridle, and brought her into the stable. She pulled a pony tunic (large size) out of the closet, unclipped the lead and tossed it to Dahlia.
Dahlia looked at it and then slid it over her head. It settled and then tightened, showing off all of her curves to perfection.
Michelle picked up the arm binder, and Dahila obediently turned, hands clasped, so that her owner could put it on. Michelle replaced the lead with a pair of reins and led her ponygirl out into the carriage yard.
A minute later she had her harnessed between the shafts of one of the plain trail carts. It was plain, at least compared to the ones the two girls used to get to and from school: those had all kinds of decorations. The other two just had the farm name on the sides.
The pony tunic made harnessing her so much easier: just pick up the shafts and touch the straps to the designated areas on her tunic. The straps attached themselves like a politician to a vote, and the built-in stress distribution patterns in the tunic did the rest. She’d been told that the tunics had originally come in because of many, many complaints about naked ponygirls on the public roads, but since then they’d more than proved themselves by simplifying workflow. Her husband, father-in-law and mother-in-law had been mulling using them to replace the regular tack, but seemed to be waiting for the rest of the people in the district to get behind the idea.
She got in the cart and checked that everything was correct. The shafts had two mirrors each. The back ones were mirrors so she could see behind herself without turning. The front ones were something else: they were some kind of display so that she could see what was in front without wishing that Dahlia was, somehow, transparent. The front of the shafts had little headlights for night driving, although taking a ponygirl out at night wasn’t the world’s best idea. At least, unless she was equipped with infrared goggles and trained in how to use them.
She put up the windscreen. It was quite nippy out, and unlike Dahlia, she was not weatherproof.
She flicked the reins, pulled right and then left. Dahlia responded like a dream. She kept her at a walk until they were on the path, and then flicked the reins to bring her up to a trot. Then she relaxed on the seat and watched her ponygirl’s hair and tail float back in the breeze as her tunic skirt showed the ripple of the muscles pumping away underneath.
The eerie thing was that her trunk was almost totally still, the only movement she could see around the arm binder was the rhythmic expansion and contraction of her torso and waist as she breathed in and out.
The fact was, she mused, driving a ponygirl on the side paths was only a little bit more difficult than driving a car. Driving a car wasn’t difficult at all: you punched in the destination and let it do the rest. Ten year olds got their driver’s licenses regularly. Driving this kind of pony cart was almost as easy: you set the destination, and the navigation routines in her collar took care of telling her what to do. She wondered idly whether Dahlia was even aware of where the commands were coming from. Well, that should be in the book.
They came to a crossroad. Michelle pulled the reins to get Dahlia to stop until she could check for traffic. That was one of her duties. Most of the time traffic control would take care of it, but it never hurt to be on the cautious side.
She flicked the reins once she was sure the road was clear; Dahlia brought the cart back up to a trot easily and swiftly.
Fern stuck her head over the side of the stall while Dahlia was reading her purloined book. She whinnied and then cocked an eyebrow when Dahlia looked up. Dahlia stood and signed something.
Fern looked puzzled. Dahlia tried another sign. Fern still looked puzzled. Dahlia fell back on miming something that she hoped might indicate “talking with movements,” or close enough that the idea got across.
Fern mimed a look of astonishment. Dahlia noticed that the other two ponies were standing up and looking on intently. She sighed.
Now how did the herd mares start off, she asked herself. She looked out of the stall, and sure enough, one of the stable’s cats was sitting there. She pointed at it, and then made the three finger movements that spelled c-a-t. Then she spelled the word out with strokes in the air as if she was writing on the back side of a transparent board.
Fifteen minutes later they had managed to get c-a-t down well enough that it couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. Then she’d gone through a simple alphabet drill for them so they had an idea of how flexible the fingers had to be for spelling things out.
After it was all over, she shook her head ruefully. Had she been this slow and tried her herd mare’s patience this much? She was very much afraid the answer was yes. However, it certainly had one very positive side, besides teaching her patience. Teaching them was going to take a lot of time.
“She’s doing what?” Daniel asked, somewhere between astonishment and amusement.
“She seems to be teaching them sign language, sir,” Rodney repeated.
“Have you checked the book?”
“Yes, sir. It says that it won’t create a problem. It also says I’m not to learn what they’re saying.”
“Did it give a reason why not?”
“Yes, sir. It said that stable staff shouldn’t know what the ponies are saying about them.” He sounded vaguely insulted.
“I suppose I’d better find out what the book says,” Daniel said. “Carry on.”
“Yes, sir.”
“On the sign language,” Daniel said to Rodney a few days later.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’m afraid I agree with the book; you and the rest of the stable staff shouldn’t know what they’re talking about. In any case, at the rate they’re going I doubt if they’ll be able to talk about anything for at least another month.”
“Can I ask why?”
“Just what the book says: if you’ve got a common language you could have serious difficulties maintaining the idea that you should treat them like horses. It can be very bad for maintaining the necessary emotional distance.”
Rodney made a face. “I’m afraid I see what you’re getting at sir. I’ll tell the rest of the staff.” He paused. “However, Dahlia is doing something else.”
“Oh?”
“She’s been reading the PPO book when I wasn’t watching. I’ve moved it out of her way.”
“She’s what?” Daniel laughed. “Talk about the Law of the Hidden Flaw! I know I saw that book right there myself, and it never occurred to me that she’d be able to get her hands on it to read it. In fact, it never occurred to me that she could read it if she got her hands on it. Do you know how she did it?”
“To and from the latrine is my best guess.”
“Makes sense.”
The Law of the Hidden Flaw, Daniel thought to himself as he slid into the chair behind his desk in the farm office. There’s nothing in there that she could actually do anything with, and she hasn’t shown any signs of throwing screaming fits or going up the wall from learning what they did to her. So if she did anything, what would it be... He scrolled through the table of contents looking for a hint. Well, maybe...
He used his reader to key in a command to check her collar’s command logs, and sat back to consider what they showed him.
“Dahlia is the next item on the agenda,” Daniel said. “How’s she working out for you, Michelle?”
“She’s great! I think we’re bonding really well, and I’m beginning to get some confidence in riding her.”
“The monitors are showing the emotional surge when you’re riding her, and not when Miss Analexis is riding her, so I think the bonding is going nicely. There is, however, one other thing she’s doing that’s got me concerned.”
“Oh? Not more on the sign language?”
“No, Rodney’s seen the logic of the prohibition. I can’t say he’s happy with it, but he agrees it does make sense. Anyway, they’re not far enough along to be plotting anything, even if I could imagine what those four could be plotting that wouldn’t be more amusing than problematic. We don’t have to learn it ourselves; there’s a translation program so we can tell what they’re saying if we want to run the surveillance recordings through it.”
“Oh, good. I was wondering,” Scarlett said.
“I’d like to stay on sign language for a second,” David said. “What’s going to stop them from teaching it to other ponygirls in the community?”
“Procedure is that their arms are always bound behind them when they’re outside of the stable and pasture complex,” his father said dryly. “I haven’t seen anyone getting slack there! Especially since we’ve got alarms set to check.
“Besides, now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure that Miss Analexis’ herd knows sign language; I just didn’t know what I was seeing when I’ve been over there. There might be a couple more.”
“Oh, right. That should do it. So what’s she done this time?”
“Hacked her collar.”
“She’s what?” Scarlett exclaimed as David sat up straight and Michelle suppressed a grin. Dahlia was her ponygirl, after all!
“Well, saying she’s hacked it is a bit strong. We left the permissions set for the Slaveowner’s Consortium’s recommended settings for slaves, and forgot that ponygirls should not have permission to do anything except the absolute minimum that’s legally mandated. I’ve locked down the other three’s permissions, but that leaves what to do about Dahlia.”
“Why didn’t you just lock her out?” Scarlett asked.
“That might cause more problems than it solves,” he answered. “She hasn’t been doing anything that I can see will cause major problems. She’s learned the finger code. She listened to news for the first few days and then has been ignoring it. What she’s doing now is listening to music channels, pretty much light and classical. She’s also taken to reading You and Your Premium Ponygirl off the net. She checked out the legally mandated commands, but she hasn’t done anything else.”
“Well,” David said, “I don’t see much point in locking the barn door after the horse has escaped. At least as long as all she’s doing is listening to music. I’d like to yank that damn book, but it’s something she’s probably memorized by now. Not much point.”
“I’d worry about her losing the anti-boredom conditioning,” Scarlett said.
“Hum. Scarlett, you’re our collar programming expert. See if you can come up with a set of restrictions that lets her know we’re on to her, gives her enough time on a weekly basis to show that she hasn’t lost the anti-boredom conditioning, and otherwise lets her have her music and that book, but nothing else that isn’t legally mandated.”
Scarlett nodded. “I should have that for our next meeting.”
Dahlia trotted along, the feeling of her owner more comforting than anything. She followed the path she’d been taking to her trainer’s place when Michelle pulled back on the rein for her to stop. She stopped, of course, but she was puzzled; there wasn’t any reason that she could see. Then her rider pulled the rein to signal going right.
She turned right, and saw that there was a path on the other side of the road. Her rider signaled for her to go, and she trotted across the road onto the new path. It seemed to go next to another road. She trotted on, letting herself be aware of her surroundings and the rider in her saddle.
Eventually they came into a town, and she had to slow down for the traffic. Eventually her rider guided her to a hitching rail in front of a building with the legend: “Health Service.” Her rider got off, flipped the reins around the rail, and walked into the building.
Michelle walked into the Health Service building and looked around. The receptionist was easy enough to spot: she was the one behind the desk in the little waiting room. To Michelle’s surprise, it was fairly obvious that she was a slavegirl because she was wearing the single-shoulder tunic in the Health Service’s variant of the Government’s registered pattern.
The receptionist looked at the screen perched on her desk. “Mrs. Monet, you’re right on time. Do you need to see the doctor, or are you just here for your annual birth control shot?
“The birth control shot, um, Dotty,” she answered, picking the receptionist’s name off of the nameplate on her desk.
“Good. We can take care of that right now, and send you on your way.” Dottie got up and walked over to a small cabinet. She snapped on a pair of gloves and took an injector and swab from the cabinet.
Michelle bared her arm, and the receptionist deftly injected the birth control shot.
“Just have a seat for a few minutes, and then you’ll be good to go,” she said as she threw the injector into a bin labeled “medical trash” and followed them with the gloves.
Michelle waited a few minutes to make sure that the shot hadn’t caused any problems, and then walked out. She mounted her ponygirl, and headed back.
Dahlia trotted back home, enjoying the feeling of bearing her rider. They trotted into the yard, and Michelle dismounted. She led Dahlia into the grooming room and gave her a quick wash. Dahlia nuzzled her before she trotted, tail held high, out to the pasture to wait for whatever the masters wanted her to do next. Possibly Fox would be there?
None of the other ponies were there. Fox was probably out working at something, while Daisy and Fern would be on their way to the children’s schools to pick them up. She had the pasture to herself for a while. She sat back and tuned in a music station.
“Dahlia is the next item on the agenda,” Daniel said at their weekly meeting. “Is she still working out?”
“Like a dream, daddy,” Michelle answered. “I took her to town to get my birth control shot, and she performed perfectly.”
“Great. Scarlett, what have you got for us?”
“I’ve got it set up to lock things down the way we discussed, but I’m wondering if we should bother.”
“Oh?”
“Like Dave said last time, it kind of reeks of locking the barn door after the horse is stolen. What I’m thinking of is making sure she can’t contact anyone off site, except for an emergency contact, and letting her look at anything on the public channels she wants to. That’s a fairly common setup, so I know it’s going to work.”
“What about the rest of them?” Dave asked.
“You mean special privileges?”
“Yes. That might cause a bit of a problem in the stable.”
“That’s her problem to deal with. They’re doing fairly well at their sign language; it’s not like they can’t talk it out.”
“Hm. What about setting some boundaries?”
“You mean rules? How do we tell her?”
“Send her a message,” Scarlett answered. “She knows perfectly well that we don’t talk to them because we don’t want to, not because we can’t.”
“So we simply underline that we’re holding the whip,” David said. “Let’s discuss what it should say.”
“You and Michelle get together and draft it,” Daniel said. “We’ll discuss it later. That all on Dahlia for the moment?”
“Pretty much,” Scarlett answered. “We need to get her broken in on farm work, but it’s still early in the season for that.”
“Yeah,” Dave said. “There are times when our ponies don’t have very much time for anything but work.” He laughed.
Dahlia walked into the pasture. A morning spent pulling one of the agricultural machines was certainly different! A good grooming, something to eat and she was definitely ready to relax until they needed her again.
None of the other ponies were in the pasture, so she sat back on her hooves, tail wrapped around herself, and tried to bring in a music program.
~You have a message waiting,~ the voice said in her ear.
I have a what?! she thought.
Probably spam, her mind commented.
Better not be, she told it. She hunted around a bit until she found the right command to listen to the message.
~Hi, Dahlia,~ the message started.
~I’m Michelle, your owner and rider. I suspect you’ve figured out who I am, and no, I didn’t pick you out of the catalog. That was my husband.~
I’d wondered. Voice sounds right.
~We noticed you’ve managed to hack your collar. After a lot of discussion, we’ve decided to let you keep what you’ve got, as long as you follow a few rules.~
Rules, huh.
~The first rule is that you’re not to tell the other ponies. Their access is locked down the way yours should have been; there’s nothing they can do with it except get frustrated.~
Umph. That might be a problem if they catch on.
~The second rule is that we’re letting you listen to just about anything that isn’t a current news show, but we’re not allowing you to send anything out.~
Like they’d do anything else.
~The third rule is that we’re leaving you access to the routine to send messages, but if you do it had better be a ‘someone is going to die if we don’t get help pronto’ type of emergency. Or else.~
Or else sounded pretty nasty.
~The message routine has a practice mode, you can use that to make sure you can send a message if you need to.~
That sounds better.
~The fourth rule is that you’ve got to spend a fair amount of time each week just standing around as if you didn’t have access to music channels. If you don’t, we’ll make sure you do.~
That’s ... probably reasonable.
~The fifth and last rule is that you’ve got to maintain your usual sunny disposition. As long as you do, we’ll let you have it.~
Hmmm.
~Bye.~
Humph. That sounded awfully like “don’t call me and I won’t call you.”
She sat back to think about it. After a while she figured it out: she was a ponygirl, and she would likely never be anything else. She had three other ponies to talk to and play with, a rider she adored, grooms that were pretty nice, all things considered, and work she could do. The rest of the world didn’t seem to mean anything.
She was Michelle’s ponygirl, and she was quite content.
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