The Claiming (4 page)

After a moment, an errant thought settled in Jana’s mind.

She’d forgotten the strange message she’d received several days before. She had known it could not possibly have been intended for her, that it had somehow been incorrectly routed. She supposed that was why she’d put it from her mind.

Rising, she moved to the monitor in the wall near the outer door.

“Computer,” she whispered.

Nothing happened.

She stared at the blank screen in consternation for several moments before she realized the computer had failed to recognize her voice pattern.

“Computer,” she repeated in a quiet voice. The screen blinked on. “Bring up message dated….” Jana stopped, trying to remember the date of the message. She could not. “Bring up messages for Jana WVF366 for the past two weeks.”

“In what order?”

“Oldest to last.”

The computer recited the first message. It was from Marty, wanting to know why she wasn’t responding to his voice calls—dated the day she’d fled. She erased it. Two other messages played in rapid succession, almost identically worded. She deleted them, as well. The next several messages were advertisements for products Jana had no credit to buy even if she’d been allowed to have them. Irritated, she trashed these messages, too, wondering why anyone would bother to send advertisements to a bondage.

She was so busy deleting, she almost erased the message she was looking for.

Jana WVTF366:

Alain Camar has agreed to accept the terms of contract, per your requirements. Please proceed to nearest disembarkation point. Your passage is secured. You must present code ORL5210.

Sincerely,

John J. Dees, Att.

Savana, Orleans

1840

75th year of colonization

Jana frowned, asked the computer to repeat the message several times more, and finally told it to delete the message and then erase it from it’s hard drive. She stood puzzling over it for some time, but could not come up with a clue as to what it might mean. The designation explained why she’d received the message in error. The Jana it had been intended for had an almost identical designation.

Of course, that meant nothing at all as far as Jana was concerned. The designation could be anything. Only someone familiar with a broad range of codes would’ve been able to decipher it’s meaning, and Jana had heard very few. Her own designation stood for White Virginal Female.

It was possible the WV in this Jana’s sig. meant the same thing--it was also possible it could mean a lot of other things.

What sort of contract could a female enter into with a male? Jana wondered.

The woman the letter had been sent to must be a free-woman. She surely could not otherwise have entered into any sort of contract at all, let alone set her own terms, so it seemed unlikely, to Jana’s mind, that this was any sort of arrangement for a sexual partner.

Then again, she knew little of what went on in the outside world.

She had been bred at Bondage Inc., and had spent the past year at the House. The only contact she had with the outside world was the men who were her customers and they didn’t come to her to talk.

She moved back to the bed and sat down, thinking.

She could not decipher the message. She knew nothing about the woman it had been intended for, nor what would be expected of the woman upon arrival.

She did, however, have a code that would take her off planet.

She might know very little about the outside world, but she lived in Carter City, Earth. The message was from Savana, Orleans. Furthermore, the message spoke of disembarkation. That could only mean that the woman was expected to travel beyond Earth.

Marty had said he could pick up her IT signal anywhere on the planet.

She knew little about these devises, but it seemed very unlikely to her that he’d be able to pick up her signal if she wasn’t even on the planet anymore.

A mixture of fear and excitement filled her. She could escape! All she had to do was to find a place to disembark, use the code that had been provided, and she could go somewhere where Marty would never find her!

But doubts immediately surfaced.

Could she, after her last failed attempt, manage to elude Marty’s surveillance and leave the House?

If she succeeded, could she find a disembarkation site?

If she found a site, would the code be any good, or would she find that the other Jana, the one it had been meant for, had already used it?

Lastly, supposing everything worked out, and she escaped--what if the place, and the man, she went to was even worse than those she’d left?

***

Jana realized she had not properly appreciated the depths to which terror could plunge one until the night she escaped the House. She had not managed to leave without tripping the alarm.

The chase that had followed had pushed her to the very limits of her endurance, but it had not been her own abilities that had shaken the guards. She had managed to elude her pursuers only because she’d blundered directly into the most dangerous portion of the city—her pursuers had simply refused to go in after her.

By the luck of the truly stupid, she had blundered out in much the same manner, after hours of terror in wandering a nightmare world that seemed to be in a constant state of warfare, complete with explosions, gun and phaser fire, screams, curses, dying and wounded.

When she’d finally left the sounds behind her and discovered she was in a ‘safe’ area, she’d collapsed and thrown up. This particular act had so terrified the only bystanders, who seemed certain she had some sort of deadly disease, that everyone had steered clear of her.

It was dawn when she finally found someone willing to direct her to a disembarkation point and nearing dusk before she found it. By that time she was near to fainting from exhaustion as well as from a lack of food and water. She was also bruised, battered and filthy.

The attendant looked at her with suspicion.

Jana had not come this far, however, to be turned away. Resolutely, she gave the woman her code.

The attendant checked the code and a transformation came over her. She smiled. “Your passage is secured. In what manner do you plan to travel?”

Jana looked at her blankly. She hadn’t expected that she would have a choice and she had no idea what those choices might be. “Uh … I’m not sure. What would you do?”

The attendant shrugged. “It really depends upon how fast you need to get there. You could use the particle transporter, if you’re in a rush. Or, if you have no particular time frame, you could travel the old fashioned way.”

The woman might have been speaking a foreign tongue for all Jana understood of her speech. She no doubt looked as confused as she was.

“The particle transporter would break you down to a molecular level and transport you to your destination in a matter of hours, but I know a lot of people are still a bit squeamish about it. It’s been years since we had any problems though.”

“Well, I….”

“Here. Just let me check…. Wait. No. That isn’t available to you for Orleans. I’m afraid you don’t have an option. You’ll have to go by ship.”

“How long does the trip take that way?” Jana asked curiously, not that she cared as long as she was out of Marty’s reach. But then, if it was slow, might he catch her?

“Hmmm. Let me see. We don’t get many travelers out that way. Oh! A month. Goodness that must be on the outer rim!”

Jana couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or concerned that it would take so long. On the one hand, that meant it would be at least a month before she had to face the man who’d sent for her--but then, how was she to get by in the mean time? She had no credits. Could she starve in a month? “Would food and beverage be provided on the trip?”

The attendant stared at her blankly for a moment, then started to laugh. “You don’t travel much, do you?” She shook her head. “You would be asleep. You’ll be fed and fully hydrated before that, but you won’t need anything for the trip.”

“Oh, I see,” Jana said, blushing at her ignorance, for she didn’t see at all. “When would I be able to leave? I really need to go today.”

The attendant nodded and consulted her computer once more. “Well, we’ve no direct flight. I’d have to rout you through several points … but, yes. Actually, there’s a flight leaving in just a few hours if you don’t mind taking a hauler. There isn’t a first class vessel leaving until day after tomorrow.”

Jana readily agreed to take the hauler. She had no idea what a hauler was, but she rather thought Marty had a good chance of catching up with her if she had to wait. They must be aware by now that she’d gained the main part of the city. She’d be lucky if she even had hours.

The hauler, she discovered, was a commercial vessel. It’s primary cargo was supplies, not passengers. The accommodations were rough, to say the least. Jana didn’t care. The ship’s personnel were falling over themselves in their haste to depart and that suited her just fine.

A container of water and a stale meat and cheese sandwich were trust into her hands. She was told she had ten minutes to consume them before they took her to her sleep chamber.

It took her less than five minutes to eat the sandwich … she had not eaten in more than a day and had lost the contents of her stomach from her last meal. The water was a little more difficult. As thirsty as she was, it took a great deal of effort to drink it all. She was still working on it when an attendant grasped her by her elbow and began to march her down a narrow, crowded corridor.

Her clothes were removed, and she was stuffed into a ‘chamber’ that looked little bigger than the one she’d climbed in to to avoid Marty the last time she’d escaped. Tubes were inserted into orifices she would have preferred remained virginal, and the lid was slammed shut.

A tinny metal voice sounded in her ears. “We have a limited selection of entertainment for the cruise. Would you prefer ‘music through the ages’, language, science, or earth history?”

Jana pondered it for less than a second, realizing she had been given an opportunity she had never thought to have. “Could I have a mixture of education?” she mumbled around the tube that had been inserted in her throat.

“Done.”

It was the last word Jana recalled hearing before she woke up.

Chapter Three

Jana woke to a sense of choking and the realization that someone was pounding on her chest. She gagged, choked and began coughing.

“There you go! That’s it—breathe.”

Jana began shaking as if she had the ague. Partly, this was from disorientation, but mostly it was because she felt as if she were freezing. It took an effort to open her eyes and look around. Her eyelids felt as if they’d been glued shut.

When she finally did manage to pry her eyelids up, all she could see was a great white blur with dark shapes. Blindly, she felt around until she could grasp something to help her stand.

“Careful, now. You’re going to feel just a little shaky for a while.”

A little? The woman speaking was obviously an optimist. Jana turned toward the voice. All she could see was a dark blob. “I—I think I might be blind,” she said apologetically.

Someone laughed, slapping her on the back hard enough she stumbled and began choking again.

“Naw. You just haven’t used your eyes in a while. Your vision will clear. You’ll feel great by the time we land.”

“We’re there already?”

The blob, which had slowly begun to resolve itself into a stocky woman who looked to be around thirty, laughed again. “It took us six weeks, almost twice what we’d expected, but then we were broke down on Aturis for nearly a week. Then, we’d no sooner reached Palcia than we discovered we had a major hydraulic leak. We were there another week.”

That was comforting. She’d traveled across the universe in a ship that had broken down--twice. And it had taken almost twice as long to reach her destination as had been expected.

Would Marty be waiting on the ground to greet her?

She pushed the thought aside, unwilling to allow herself to yield to unfounded fears.

She wondered if there had been a specific time when she’d been expected to arrive. Would it be a good thing, or bad, that she hadn’t arrived before now? Would they still be expecting her? Waiting? Or would she find that she was completely on her own?

“How long before we land?”

“We’re on final approach now. They sent me down to wake you up, then I’ve got to go help prep the lander. If you like, you can come with me. You might want to put something on first, though.

Jana looked down at herself. She’d forgotten they’d taken her clothes. “I don’t know where they put my clothing.”

The woman walked over to a small box on the wall next to the chamber Jana had so lately occupied, pressed a button. Jana’s clothes spilled out into her hands. “Here you go. Don’t look like they’ll do much to keep you warm, though.”

Jana took the wad of cloth offered to her and stared at it in dismay. Even with her vision still blurred, she could see that her skirt and top were dirty, and wrinkled from being balled up and shoved into the tiny locker. She shook them out and put them on anyway. It was all she had. Clothing was not simply made available to anyone in her position. They were dressed as needed, for the patrons. If she hadn’t been given the outfit to wear for one of her visitors, she would’ve had to have escaped in her bed sheet.

She saw, once she had them on that the clothes did nothing to chase off the chill, not really surprising since the top covered nothing but her breasts and very little of her back, and the skirt had been designed to ride low on her hips. It was long, reaching to her ankles, but slit up both sides to the tops of her thighs.

She smoothed the wrinkles from the clothes the best she could and followed the woman, whom she’d discovered was a mechanic named Luci, down to the lower docking bay.

She found a seat on a crate out of the way of the crew members prepping the lander. After a time, Luci summoned Jana with a wave of her hand. Curious, Jana climbed down and crossed the vast, echoing chamber.