Exit to Eden (6 page)

And just when I thought I'd go bananas from this, the blindfold was finally pulled off.

For one second my eyes were squeezed shut against the light. Then I glimpsed a narrow corridor over the heads and shoulders in front of me, and a metal ladder that led up to the almost blinding sunlight on the deck.

There was a lot of noise on the deck. Shouts, talking, even laughter, and I saw a slave being forced up the ladder and a handler beside the ladder driving the slave with his belt. It was a woman slave with very fine, full red hair, the kind that looks like a cloud, hovering around her shoulders, and the sight of her nakedness absolutely paralyzed me, and she ran very fast up the ladder and disappeared into the sun. I've never been able to make up my mind who is more naked when stripped, a man or a woman. But seeing those full feminine hips and that tiny waist made me even more frantic than before.

But we were all rushing forward.

I felt myself pushed, then lashed. I saw the dreamy blond man for a moment before he ordered me to the ladder.

"Up on deck, Elliott," he said with that same genial expression, and I felt the smack of his belt. "And keep your hands on the back of your neck."

As I reached the top of the ladder, I heard the command "Eyes down" and "Forward" and yet I saw the blue water and the white beach.

I saw the island itself.

Lush low trees, roses trellised to the whitewashed stucco walls, and terraces stacked one on top of another, like the hanging gardens of Babylon, broken everywhere with bursts of fluorescent bougainvillea, deep tropical green. There were people at tables on the terraces, hundreds and hundreds of people, maybe thousands. This is it. Really it. The lump in my throat hardened to a rock.

Martin's many warnings came back, that nothing could really prepare you for a system that worked as well as this one. They could tell you all about it but the sight of it, the size of it, was always an incalculable shock.

The commands were coming sharp and fast. Slaves right in front of me were running across the deck and down a broad gangplank. Perfect bodies, muscles rippling with the exertion, hair flying, the jiggling, prancing movements of the women in sharp contrast to the swift, powerful strides of the men.

I couldn't accept or rebel against what was happening. And for an odd moment I doubted not the reality of what was going on around me, but the reality of all that had ever happened to me before.

I had the positive sensation as I came down the gangplank with the others that all my comfortable life before had been an illusion, and that I had always been this. I can't explain how unaccountably real this was. I had always been this.

And I had to keep up with the others, do exactly as I was told. The blond kid appeared again like some kind of demon (I almost said "You again, you little bastard."), his suntanned arm flexing as he hit me almost caressingly with his belt.

"Good-bye, Elliott," he said in the most friendly voice. "Have a good time at The Club."

I flashed him my most venomous smile, but I was disoriented. Clearing the gangplank, I stared up at the vine-covered walls and that endless stack of terraces, and the soft blue dome of the flawless sky.

Another strong young menace was whipping the slaves up a zigzag path. There was nothing to do but pass him, to take the licks as I ran with the rest.

The handler shouted impatiently for us to pick up speed. And I wondered why we obeyed, why it was so important to do what he said. I mean we'd all been brought here for the pleasure of the thousands up there on the terraces. And why wouldn't it give them just as much pleasure to see somebody stumble, and be singled out for the strap?

But if anybody stumbled, it wasn't going to be me. That's the genius of it, I thought. I want to please them. We're not only acting like slaves, we're thinking like slaves too.

It was dizzyingly warm, and the grounds were so crowded I could hear the loud steady hum of conversation even in the empty corridor as I hurried to my room.

There wasn't time now for that quiet drink, or a walk in the garden, or even to see the slaves driven off the yacht.

They would be in the receiving hall in an hour and I hadn't even been through the files.

A complete description along with history and commentary is collected on every slave, along with detailed photographs, and I've learned to pay as much attention to the file as to the slave.

As soon as I opened the door, I saw Diana waiting for me, unadorned, hair brushed free, the way I like her best. Some trainers think that subtle little adornments make the slave more naked. I don't agree.

In rooms like our rooms, with the thick wool carpets and antique velvet draperies, and all the little accoutrements of civilization, a naked slave burns like a flame.

Amid the dark flowing colors, and the video screens and the low sculpted furnishings, she is purely animalian and infinitely mysterious the way only the human animal can be.

Put her in rooms as outrageously decorated as my own— among the Haitian paintings and the potted ferns, the barbaric stone sculpture—and you have something so lush and ripe that you can smell the incense where there is no incense, taste the smoke and salt of flesh on sight.

There is nothing quite like the moment of first discovering her there, no matter how many I have seen in the halls and the gardens, and seeing those heavy swaying breasts, and the moist triangle of pubic hair, as she waits for my command.

Diana was always like a dancer, sleek and languid, her snow-white hair falling straight over her graceful shoulders and back. Her face is the contradiction because it's all pluck. Large, almost pouting lips and the roundest, most alert eyes I've ever seen. But it's the French accent that really gets to me. I've tried to analyze it, the effect, tried to get used to it. But it's one of her indefinable assets that simply will not quit.

I couldn't pull her into my arms and kiss her. There wasn't time to start all that. I could see the enormous stack of manila files before the white computer screen on my desk. All the data was in the computer but I still liked to hold the photographs and the hard copy in my hands. I always sent for the folders, no matter how primitive they looked.

"Open the windows, my dear," I said.

"Yes, Lisa."

The Bombay gin was waiting, glass already packed with ice, the limes just cut. Bombay gin is the only gin I can drink straight, and I never drink it with anything else.

Out of the corner of my eye I watched her move with that same feline speed and agility, her long hands reaching slowly as if they were in love even with the cord that pulled the heavy purple drapes.

For three years, she has lived within these walls, as the expression goes. Once a year for a six-week vacation, she vanishes. And I have to confess I have wondered where she goes, what she does, what she is like during that time. I'm told that Club members have offered her film contracts, marriage, luxurious private arrangements in exotic places. But that's nothing too extraordinary for the slaves here. That's one reason we make them sign up to stay for a while and pay them so much.

I saw her once, dressed and on her way out for her holiday, walking arm in arm with another slave to the waiting plane. Someone said that five of them had clubbed together to rent a castle in the Swiss Alps. And Diana was already dressed for snow in a white fur-trimmed coat and a white fur hat. She looked Russian, like a giant of a ballet dancer, dwarfing the other girl as she moved in big easy strides over the landing field, her chin up, her little French mouth puckered naturally as if always ready to be kissed.

But I don't know that Diana. I know only the naked subservient slave who is here for me night and day. She is perfection if there is such a thing, and in the unbroken quiet of the night I've often told her so.

The sunlight poured in through the french windows, the great leafy limbs of the California pepper tree like a veil over the blue of the summer sky.

It was too clear, that sky. The faint sound of wind chimes came from the garden; a wisp of cloud gusting south suddenly disappeared.

And as she crouched near me, I reached down, slipping my fingers over her breasts—perfect breasts, not too large—and felt her silent yielding as she knelt, her bottom back on her heels as I liked her, her eyes moistening as she looked down.

"Pour," I said, and started with the files. "You behave yourself while I was gone?"

"Yes, Lisa, I tried to please everyone, Lisa," she said. I took the glass from her hand, waiting a few painful seconds for the gin to chill, and I drank a deep cold swallow, letting the immediate warmth spread through my chest.

She was poised like a cat, ready to spring and slip her arms around my neck. I should have been unable to resist it really, but I still hadn't shaken the anxiety of the vacation. It was as if we were still circling up there.

I went ahead and made the little indescribable gesture that said all right to her. And she knelt up and pressed against me, the incarnation of softness, and I turned and kissed her large and puckering mouth. I could see the feeling penetrating her, coursing through her limbs, her nakedness offering up everything. Could she feel the stiffness in me? She tightened her eyebrows, her lips open, when I let her go.

"There's no time now," I whispered. It wasn't necessary, really, to tell her that. She was as well trained as any slave I'd ever had. But there was that softness between us, and it excited her just as much as the remoteness that always brought the tears to her eyes.

I turned on the computer video display, quickly tapping out Preliminary Report on the bed of white plastic keys. At once the silent string of glittering green letters began its march across the screen. Fifty new slaves. I was astonished at the number.

Thirty I knew about from the auction, but there were twenty independent sales.
All
two-year contracts! So our new rules and regulations were working. I hadn't expected it so early, I'd thought surely we'd be stuck with some six-monthers or at least yearlies who would be released just when they had reached their prime. We need two years really to train a slave, and get our money's worth out of him or her, but many just aren't ready for that.

Now time for the hard copy.

Each file has a large picture of the slave on the inside cover. I went through them fast. I threw aside six, seven, ten immediately. Beauties all, and someone would love them and torment them. But not me.

But here was a gorgeous woman, with heaps of brown hair in big natural ringlets, American oval face.

I released myself slowly from Diana, guiding her down to put her arms around my waist. I could feel her delicious weight against me, her forehead nudging my belly, and with my right hand I stroked her hair. She was trembling. She was always jealous of the new slaves. And her breasts felt very hot. I could almost feel her heart beating.

"Did you miss me?" I asked.

"Desperately, Lisa," she said.

Kitty Kantwell, I memorized the name of the slave in the file. She was tall by the chart, five foot six inches, that would make her fun to handle, and the IQ was listed as remarkably high. Master's Degree in journalism, well traveled, television weather girl in Los Angeles, own talk show in San Francisco for a while, trained in a private club in Bel Air by a Parisian named Elena Gifner. I didn't know the trainer. But we had bought good merchandise from Gifner before. I flipped back to the picture.

"And were you worked much?" I asked. I had deliberately left permission Diana could be worked. She needed it. Maintenance wasn't enough.

"Yes, Lisa," she said. I could hear the break in her voice. I lifted her hair back from her neck. She was hot all over. I knew the hair between her legs would be drenched.

The brown-haired girl in the picture was definitely an American Beauty-
Playboy
centerfold type, perfect weather girl all right. I could see her on the nightly news. Round-eyed, big-eyed, like Diana, but something mundane about her, even with the lovely bone structure. But then, there was the strong intelligence in the face, the touch of inquisitiveness. Wholesome American girl, with cheerleader breasts.

Definitely have a look at this one.

I sipped the gin and hurried, cracking back the stiff covers one after another. Diana was kissing me.

"Be still."

I was staring at a photograph of a man.

Blond-haired, six foot two by the chart. But I looked back to the photograph, unable for a moment to understand my reaction, its intensity, unless it was the expression on the man's face.

They don't often smile in the pictures. They stare straight forward as though they were being photographed by the law. Sometimes all the vulnerability is revealed there, the fear. They're going into captivity, they don't know what's going to happen, maybe it's all a mistake. But he was smiling, or at least there was some amusement, some cleverness there.

Thick blond hair, almost curly, falling a little down on the forehead, well shaped around the ears and the neck. And his eyes gray or blue maybe, behind the pale smoke tint of a large pair of glasses, the kind shaded only lightly at the top so that the glass is clear over the cheeks. And that smile. He wore a black turtleneck for the picture, arms folded instead of at his sides. An amazingly relaxed picture.