Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One (53 page)

The first gnome was out of sight now, so she
aimed herself where the second was staring and paced toward the
next one, stopping midway where the glow of both creatures was in
view. She decided this third gnome stood slightly to the left of a
perfectly linear route between the two she had passed. This
established an arc.

A circle! Of course. Without thinking it
through she would have been tricked into running circles—a good
joke. But what did this new form suggest? It had to be something
easily derived from the geometry…

The gnomes circumscribed something at their
center! Taking her best estimate of the path tangent to their
bodies, she was about to assay a careful journey inward when she
realized it would be impossible to maintain a straight course for
long in the dark. She would wander. The arc established a circle of
very large circumference, so she needed some means to ensure her
path would bear straight to its center.

Here was a use for her athleticism finally;
speed. She would deviate least from an established line by
maintaining a high velocity. Momentum would guide her. Backing up,
Ione calibrated her tangency to the gnomes at either side. With a
deep breath, she sprinted forward at top speed.

There was nothing. No light whatsoever, no
sound but her own feet whispering on the floor. She consciously
cultivated her inertia, surrendering as little as possible to
lateral deviation.

She almost failed despite her careful
bisection of the area. In the distance far to her right something
briefly wavered into visibility, noticed only because she was aware
of the potential error that had accumulated. With a skidding
correction to her route she raced off to examine it.

Her breath caught as she emerged into a
surreal tableau, lit softly from within. Gathered about a round,
waist-high median of soft grass were three more glow gnomes
standing in apparently random poses. Ione circled them, fascinated
but fretfully conscious of the time elapsing. There was no obvious
logic to the scene, no clear indication of what was required,
though she sensed a potent context in operation.

What were they doing, standing here like
this? Perhaps it was a choice of some kind, but she couldn’t
imagine what it might represent. She summoned her entire reservoir
of intellect to the problem, frantically deconstructing their
lonely little society.

But they weren’t exactly
alone, Ione realized.
She
was now present; the missing piece of context. And
with that intuition she could appreciate what was actually before
her.

One gnome was leaning back against the
median, looking expectantly down as if waiting for fellatio.
Another was postured belly-in, hands planted wide for support as it
performed vaginal penetration on an imaginary partner lying in the
grass. The last was standing slightly away from the median, facing
it. Its low gaze suggested anal copulation with a back-bent
woman.

Without thinking she pushed the nipple of the
last creature and its penis swung staunchly erect, lightly sheened
with oil. Only the Metrognome had displayed this capability before
now. Ione turned apprehensively to regard the dark, verifying her
solitude. Was she prepared to do what context suggested? There was
no time to deliberate.

Accepting its implicit invitation, she
stepped before the gnome, spread her feet wide and lay her chest
down on the wet grass of the median, cautiously positioning herself
to receive its penis from the rear.

Breathing hard, Ione eased back till the tip
of its erection was planted at the fitfully clenched ring of her
anus. Closing her eyes, she pushed delicately. Its cock widened her
slightly, provoking a rush of sensation she almost automatically
encouraged. Forcing harder, she felt the head slip tremulously
within.

“
Fuck…” she whispered in
mingled fear and arousal, thighs shifting to get the best angle of
penetration. She carefully swiveled about the gnome’s erection,
using its inflexible length as a tool of her own loosening,
clenched the soft grass of the median with rigidly splayed fingers
and eased back till her rectum was filled.

With a sigh she capitulated to a gentle
cadence of self-penetration, adding speed and intensity with every
thrust till she was being hit like a slipper, grunting
rhythmically, anxiously furthering the gnome’s stoic imposition on
her dignity.

Ione copulated with herself in the dim
ambience of the test chamber, helplessly abetting a glorious dream
of climax despite the certainty of frustration. Her asshole was
loosened up now, and she made the gnome fuck her without
reservation, self-rectifying her flesh on its unyielding length to
an uncompromised linearity within. Its rhythm was perfect—her
own.

She gasped at the cusp of an astonishing
realization, then something moved deep inside. The creature was
spurting warm water, a six of keen blasts.

“
Ohhhhhh…”

The room began to rain.

Ione slowed, panting heavily, thighs running
with the gnome’s flooding exudation as her back was sympathetically
washed by warm droplets. It finished with a final, depleted spew
and promptly lost its erection.

She disengaged and stood, weaving from the
cramped curl of her midsection. The mist had cleared with the
precipitation, and she could see the entire chamber by the glow of
many gnomes circling her position. The arched doorway opened in the
distance and she sprinted over to it.

“
What happened?” the test
proctor demanded, regarding her dripping, urgently aroused flesh in
confusion as she emerged from the test chamber.

Ione blinked precipitation from her lashes,
not certain how to respond. The sibilance of rain lingered quietly
behind her.

“
You’re done,” he realized
in disbelief, belatedly checking the atrium to gauge the elapsed
time on the elevator sundial.

Not long after, she was on another floor,
seated in an office that somehow managed to seem luxurious despite
the utilitarian aesthetic of its furnishings, constructed from
smart-looking blue fabric and plastic, sparkling glass and brushed
metal gazed on by glow gnomes installed above. Through a broad
window employees of the Gnomon pursued various intellectual
endeavors, their interactions marked by an obviously mutual respect
Ione found hearteningly cooperative after her experiences in the
Dowser’s domain.

Across the steel-billet plane of a neatly
organized desk a senior manager regarded her, and Ione smiled
blandly, reflexively baffling the strange estimation of his eyes,
wondering how many applicants had won through the Gnomon’s
challenge to face him. What did it say about her? And how did they
test the men?

“
You have demonstrated an
extraordinary potential for the work of our organization,” the
administrator stated in a formal tone. “As a result, you are
eligible for employment in any of its divisions.”

Ione’s cynical wariness fled as her
intellectual horizon leapt word by line into fantasy.

“
These are specifically:
Material science, gnome design, gnome applications, hydraulics,
technical administration, toy design, security and maintenance,
pure research, applied research and general management.”

She leaned back, dizzily contemplating the
possibilities. “Which is considered the most ambitious department?”
she inquired, guessing there would be an accelerated channel
through the Gnomon’s interests.

“
The gnome applications
group includes the design and implementation of automobiles, our
most popular product. Its top echelon of personnel have almost
unlimited status. Along with gnome design, it is probably the most
prestigious calling.”

Ione could well imagine anything connected
with the creatures would command the highest significance here.
“The Gnomon personally oversees gnome design, I suppose.” They were
fashioned in his image, after all…

“
No.”

“
Gnome applications,
then?”

“
No.”

She was intrigued. “Is he a theoretician or
executive or something?”

“
Both, when it comes to it.
But he is
formally
associated with just one, comparatively exclusive
group.”

Ione chewed her lip, cycling through the list
in her mind. “There’s really a top-echelon unit devoted to toys?”
she skeptically inquired.

The administrator nodded slowly, guarding
something subtle in his expression. “Erotic toys, to be precise.
Their master laboratory is called the ‘style’, and it occupies the
highest known floor of the Tower.”

Her fast journey into the hierarchy of the
Gnomon’s service halted abruptly after her last interview; she was
sent to a mid-level studio to observe one of the junior toy design
teams in action. This nominally courteous gesture hid a certain
discrimination—Ione realized they were being careful not to waste
anyone’s time. Her claim that she was interested in erotic toys
didn’t mean a lot without some concept of what was involved in
their development.

After an exhilarating descent with the
Flowgnome, she debarked the elevator’s circular platform at a
tastefully accented foyer decorated with a huge technical artwork
on the wall she had been told to look for. The levels were not
named or numbered; their serial arrangement guaranteed that any
designation using an inherently ordered language would be scrambled
in dream.

Passing a watchful doorman Ione found herself
in an open space surfaced with plush blue carpeting, outfitted with
machines and instruments of such elaborate construction she
wondered if she had been misdirected. Glow gnomes were standing
around everywhere, eyes directed onto various work sites and
projects. It was a design laboratory of some kind, she could tell,
but it didn’t look very erotic.

From the company of a trix of quietly
collaborating employees a woman with mid-length dark hair and a
lean but womanly build stepped toward her.

“
Hi.” She smiled, looking
her up and down. They exchanged names.

“
I just took the Gnomon’s
challenge and decided to join the erotic toy division. I’m supposed
to hang out here for a while,” Ione explained.

“
Good. Welcome. This group
is currently developing a new device called a knocker,” she stated.
“But our lab is also equipped for biometric evaluation, and we’re
doing some of that today.” The woman explained that they were about
to measure the capacities and characteristics of a test
subject.

“
Erotic toys are quite
precise in design and function and we must go to some effort to
ensure that our work is accurately gauged for its intended use.
Follow me and I’ll show you more.”

They stepped over to a treadmill assembly, a
flexible rubber belt on rollers. A pretty blond with muscular legs
waited nearby, and Ione saw her move unabashedly to comply with
orders given by a somberly presumptive supervisor.

“
Mount the device. Now
spread your legs and bend fully at the waist.”

The blond presented her rump in this
submissive posture and an oiled rubber bulb was carefully forced
into her rectum. Something dangled from it; a leash. The man took
this to hand and sat on a stool behind the treadmill.

“
Bring her to low
inclination,” he requested.

A lab technician pulled a lever near the
front of the machine, cranking the platform to an angle that sent
the blond woman rolling gently back. She stepped forward in
automatic compensation to maintain her place at the middle interval
of the device, lengthening her stride in response to the steady
acceleration of the belt under her weight.

Ione watched the cantilevered bulge of her
rounded buttocks, their visible tension about the bulb, and the
taut leash held with casual mastery by her superior,
dispassionately gauging sphincteral competence. The blond’s
velocity leveled off for a bit, and she maintained good form, limbs
swinging easily, breath regular, knees high, big nipples tracing
lazy orbits under a dancing mass of golden hair. When the activity
was demonstrably stabilized her boss spoke again.

“
You will now attempt to
emancipate yourself from the leash.”

The blond sped forward, pulling the line
taut, and Ione saw the leash plug slip marginally from her
backside. But the sudden tension worked an integral pump and the
woman grunted. The bulb had widened inside her to thwart its
attempted ejection. Its fattened girth was regretfully swallowed
again.

“
Raise her
inclination.”

The lab assistant cranked the elevation of
the treadmill again and the blond was dragged back by the invisible
tether of gravity, almost slid off the end of the machine before
initiating a tardy burst of acceleration. Prancing back up the
incline with a high-kneed gait, she presented an arresting view of
sinuously fluctuating assflesh. Ione was impressed as she quickly
established a new equilibrium at this higher speed, moving at
considerable velocity now.

In the periphery another employee aimed an
unlit glow gnome onto the action and slapped its nipple. A warm
sidelight issued that modeled the runner’s husky anatomy with
shadowy crescents about her pouncing breasts and a tantalizingly
stark adumbration between the parted fleshes of her briskly
tumbling ass.

The blond employee exhibited a lusty
determination to be measured, exerted herself to a bounding lope up
the steepened angle of the treadmill, legs sensually hammering the
belt, sweat beading flushed cheeks. Ione stared at the flexuous
circumscription of her sphincter around its clever charge, a lone
locus of balanced forces amidst the zealously locomoting
territories of muscle at her back and thighs.