Mind Guest (32 page)

Slavers don’t like victims who refuse to be good, obedient slaves, and usually don’t waste much time on them.

I was taken back to the tent I had originally come from, but the room was somewhat different from the others I had seen. It was small and dim, covered completely with thick luxurious fur, and held a couple of odd-shaped somethings made of wood and fur that I didn’t like the looks of. There was also a small table holding a familiar bowl, but I wasn’t given a chance to get more than a single glance at it.

“Kneel,” my golden-shirt said as soon as we were inside, and his slave obeyed him immediately. The fur felt strange to my bare legs even after the fur I’d been kneeling on on the platform, but I didn’t have time to think about that, either. The golden-shirt pulled his boots off, got out of his clothes, then made himself comfortable on the fur.

“Crawl to me, slave;” he ordered, and when I reached him he leaned up on one elbow and took my face in his hand. “You are incredibly fortunate in that you have already declared yourself slave,” he said, looking down into my eyes. “Had you not, this next lesson would have been a good deal more painful for you. Are you prepared for your next lesson?”

“I was told I might have a time of rest,” I whispered, shaken by what he had said. So Fallan had been right after all-and the dance he’d put me through had saved me from something that would have been a lot worse.

“You have already had your time of rest,” golden-shirt answered, still holding my face. “Our return here was leisurely, and you were to have rested then.” Suddenly his hand released my face, and I was slapped hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. “You must also learn that you are never to question a master. You were asked, slave: are you prepared for your next lesson?”

“Yes, master!” I gasped out at once, trembling and letting the tears roll down my cheeks-and making sure my hands didn’t curl into fists.

“I am prepared, master!”

“Excellent,” he said, leaning back from me somewhat. “Go and fetch your bowl, for it is time that you be fed.”

“Yes, master,” I sniffled, then crawled after the bowl standing on the small wooden table. The bowl held the same soup-soaked bread I’d been fed earlier in the day, and when I brought it back I was put to my belly again before it was fed to me. I’d said I was ready for the next lesson, but the only thing I was really ready for was about twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep. I felt as close to the end of the line as I’d ever been, and that had to be why the lessons were continuing. Conditioning works best on an undefended mind, and it’s hard to defend your inner self when your eyes are closing in exhaustion. I was so tired I could even feel myself reacting to the nearness of a naked male body, and that despite the release I’d so recently had. By the time my “meal” was done and I had licked goldenshirt’s fingers clean, I was almost to the point of squirming.

“And now that you are fed, we may continue,” golden-shirt said, tossing away the empty bowl. “Tell me what you are, slave.”

“I am a slave, master,” I whispered, making sure I didn’t meet his eyes. “I am your slave.”

“You are the slave of any free man who commands you,” golden-shirt corrected. “Raise yourself to kneeling beside me, slave.”

“Yes, master,” I acknowledged, pulling myself to my knees with some difficulty. The device gave me its usual trouble, and golden-shirt chuckled.

“You appear to be in discomfort, slave,” he said, reaching around to touch me. “Do you wish this removed?”

“Yes, master,” I gasped, finding it impossible to hold still against his toying fingers.

“Then you have my permission to beg me to remove it,” he said, laying himself farther back in the furs. “And, as the potion which turned me uninterested has for the most part worn off, you may also, at the same time, serve me.”

I gasped at the flaring of heat all through me at the key word, finding it considerably worse than it had been. I was too tired to fight the conditioning, and Bellna was no help at all. She lay cowering in her corner of my mind, sick with fear over the thought of serving the man who had done so much to me that day. She was triggered into wanting to please him, but she was so afraid of him that she was frozen in place. It was all up to me again, and I had absolutely no choice.

“Oh, master, please remove the device,” I wheedled, remembering the advice of the woman who had washed me. At the same time I put my hands on his body, and began gently kissing him all over. There was dark hair all over him, his body mostly hard but beginning to turn soft from easy living. I worked my way up to his throat with kisses, then licked my way slowly back down, all the while wheedling and pleading and begging in true slave style. His interest was only beginning to stir, and I found that I had no choice at all about encouraging it. I wanted to encourage his interest, and when his hands came to me, I bad to. I did to him what I’d been taught to do, and I could no longer remember when I’d been taught it or by whom.

When he moaned and twisted under my hands and lips the faintly disturbing thought came that I might have gone too far, but I was in no condition to worry about it. It might have been something to worry about if golden-shirt had still been in the grip of that potion and watching, but as the victim of my ministrations, he was in no condition to be cooly observant.

“Stop, s-stop,” he said at last, pulling me away from him by the hair. “You have-learned your lessons-well, slave, and I am-no longer able to bear it. Tell me again what you would have me do.”

“Master, I beg you to remove the device,” I panted, breathing almost as hard as my victim. I reached my hands out to touch him, but the distance he held me away from him by the hair was too far for the chain linking my wrists. “Also do I beg for use, master. Please, master, please!”

The words I blurted out were a shock to me, but golden-shirt must have been expecting them. He laughed softly in satisfaction, then shook his head.

“The use you beg for you may not have,” he said, reaching a hand out to tickle a moan out of me. “You have not yet earned the ultimate satisfaction, and will not till you have pleased the master you are meant for. There is another means by which you may give satisfaction, however, and it is for this reason that I am here. Now that your lessons have prepared me, we are able to continue on to it.”

He let go of my hair and reached down to untie the front leather strip of the device, then had me put my forehead to the floor while he untied the back strip. The removal of the device itself was unbelievable relief, but that only solved half my problem. I still needed what that man was nicely prepared to give me, and I was seriously considering raping him when his hand came hack to my hair and pulled me painfully to my feet. I mewled in protest, just about all I was capable of in the way of protest just then, but I was still dragged to one of those wood and fur contraptions and pushed face down across it. Before I could blink away the sleepiness clouding my thinking and stressing how much in need I was, my wrists had been pushed through holes to either side of the thing I lay on and clamped tight in place. Then wheels were turned on the thing, and I lay head down and bottom up.

“This device will hold you as I wish you to be,” golden-shirt said as he fiddled with something between my legs. “Tomorrow, after your lessons, I will return for the same, and will then expect to have no need of the device. Should I find a need for it, you will not be released from it before you have been beaten. Am I mistaken in believing that you will be pleasing?”

“I will be pleasing, master,” I babbled, feeling a desperate need to be pleasing. “I beg you to use me, master! Please, master, please!”

“I mean to use you, little slave,” he chuckled, moving around the room somewhere behind me. “Not in the manner you beg for, yet will you be used. I must, however, first prepare myself a bit further.”

I knew that what he said should have made me suspicious, but I couldn’t think clearly. A good part of the begging and groveling I’d done had been because of Bellna, but some of it was caused by the conditioning I couldn’t seem to hold off. I was so tired, and so much in need, and my body quivered at the thought that he was going to take care of me.

“I am now prepared for you,” he said from directly behind me, snapping me out of a half-doze and making my body burn even more.

Groggily I tried raising myself to receive him then was roused to the point of lifting my head.

“No, master, no!” I whimpered, feebly trying to escape, but there was no escape. His manhood was taking the place of the device, and he’d greased himself for the purpose. I tried pulling away from the penetration that was beginning to excite me terribly, knowing it wasn’t what I really wanted and wouldn’t satisfy me nearly as well, but I struck something scratchy and irritating on the device that made me jerk back I immediately cried out, simultaneously with his grunt of satisfaction; I’d lost and he had won.

I’d begged for use, but not the kind of use I was given. I couldn’t think clearly, but bodily sensations came through clear as the chime of perfect crystal. I was battered at over and over again, forced against the scratchy, irritating part of the device until I began using it to satisfy the screams of my body, accepting the pain in my desperate need for release. Eventually I found the release, just before golden-shirt found his own, and I was limp when he unlocked me from the device and dumped me on the floor.

“The potion given you in your food has done well,” he said, looking down at me where I lay curled up on the furs. “It will now make you sleep till the time comes for your lessons to continue. Sleep well, little slave, for the next lessons bring learning in earnest.”

No, I thought as I blurrily watched him walk to his clothes. I can’t sleep and wake up still here, still chained as a slave. I can’t. I can’t.

But my eyes were closing even then, proving that I sure as hell could.

I awoke with a start, my heart racing and my mouth dry. I jerked my head up and looked around the dim, fur-decorated room without recognizing it, not knowing where I was or what was happening. I started to get to my feet but the tinkle of chain caught my attention-and then the memory of everything that had happened came flooding back.

I sank back down on the floor, took a deep breath, then lowered my head to my hands. My system was still twanging from the emergency wake-up I’d gone through, but being awake was more than worth it.

There are a lot of drugs that have little or no effect on me, but of the ones that do, some are able to trigger emergency wake-up. The light opiate sort, mild sleeping draughts and the like, begin to break down in the body rather quickly. As soon as that breaking down starts, my nervous system triggers the release of adrenalin, which gets me up and moving even sooner than my usual fast snapback. It’s a rubbing-bare-nerves-with-a-file kind of feeling to go through, but I’ll take that any day as opposed to staying cozily asleep.

I took another deep breath then raised my head, still feeling the urge to stretch out and close my eyes, but not about to give in to it. I moved over to the device I’d been used on, keeping the chain-tinkling to a minimum, then began poking around the underside of the thing. I needed something to use as a lock pick, and I was hoping that that device wasn’t as neat and clean-lined underneath as it was above. The Lord of Luck must have come back from the lunch break he’d been on so long; the underside of the device had all sorts of thin protrusions of metal, undoubtedly the Narellan equivalent of nails. I chose one, got a good grip on it, then started working it back and forth.

Cursing under my breath did no good whatsoever; the damned thing took its own sweet time breaking free, and time was the biggest unknown I had to work with right then. By the time I had the piece of metal in my hand I was sweating, and I went to work with it without wasting another minute. I tossed my head to get the hair out of my face and eyes then began probing the lock on my right wrist, trying to figure out how a key worked on it. The locking mechanism wasn’t only primitive it was alien, and if you think all locks work on the same principle, then you’ve never opened one with anything but a key or a palm.

As I probed the lock I couldn’t count the minutes ticking past without screwing up, but it took all the control I have to keep myself patient and attentive. I knew the slavers weren’t going to let their red-haired slave sleep until she was all rested, but I didn’t know how long they would give her. Conditioning works best on an exhausted mind, but a little too much push and the mind breaks, leaving you with nothing to show for your efforts but an empty husk.

I was sure they had enough experience with twisting little girls to know how long to give it, but I didn’t know how long to give it. It was surely night outside, but that wasn’t likely to mean anything to the slavers’ plans, especially with the way they were training me.

I’d had to accept pain in order to get release again, and the thought of continuing on further with that put a tremor in my hands that I couldn’t quite ignore. If I didn’t get out of there soon, I’d be bouncing off the walls.

When the break came, I almost missed it. You can’t hear the twang of a release catch in a lock mechanism, but with enough practice you can feel it. If I hadn’t been working left-handed I would have felt the twang sooner, but having my right hand free first would speed things up more after the first cuff was open than working left-handed slowed them down before that. I caught the twang, lost it, then found it again and held it-and the cuff flipped open at my pull. Only then did I remember that light-shirt had used his key to lock me up again as well as release me, which meant that the mechanism was a variety of dead-bolt. Things might have gone faster if I’d remembered that sooner, but there was no sense in beating my breast over it. There were still the other locks to take care of.

Both ankle cuffs went first, and only then did I do the left wrist cuff. After that the only thing left was the chain around my waist, and when I dumped the whole rig in a heap I unknotted the thin piece of leather as well and flung it away from me as hard as I could. The feeling of freedom was like laughter bubbling up inside me, making me want to shout and jump around; instead of shouting or jumping I bent and retrieved the lock pick I’d dropped, then spent a minute or two tying it into my hair where it wouldn’t be seen. I would keep it until I was off that planet, and maybe even longer. A good lock pick is hard to find, a lucky one even harder.