by W. S. Antony
Rebecca hung her head as they were led along the bustling public corridor, her shame in her enforced nakedness clearly renewed by the many eyes that passed over her body. Jeni on the other hand felt a fluttering excitement at the passing attention she received. It occurred to her that she had never consciously attracted many admiring looks in the past, and certainly not while in Rebecca’s far more glamorous company. Now they were equal, stripped of both clothes and status. Which of them made the more interesting slave?
They were led into an alcove opening off the main corridor, which proved to be a door-less lift platform. This carried them silently and swiftly down to a lower level of the great stepped pyramid. Led along another corridor they came to a series of heavy doors that slid open as they approached, and closed again at their heels. Beyond them was what was obviously a small prison block, with a ring of heavy doors opening off a central atrium. Jeni and Rebecca were checked in with a man seated behind a desk, who served the function of duty officer.
He entered their details on a handheld computer pad, and then from beneath his desk drew out a rectangular device the size of a paperback book with a handle on one side. He adjusted something on the device, moved towards Jeni, and as her guard stood behind her gripping her arms, the officer pressed the flat face of the device to her chest just below her collar.
She squeaked in alarm, but there was no pain, only a fleeting sensation of coldness. The officer pulled the device away from her skin, leaving her anxiously trying to squint down her front. A pattern of bold black marks had been stamped across her chest.
The officer adjusted the device then moved to Rebecca, whose eyes widened in alarm, and repeated the process. When he pulled the device away from Rebecca’s chest Jeni saw that a triangular symbol followed by three squared-off shapes that might be numerals now stood out starkly on her golden skin.
They had been numbered like animals.
Formalities completed, they were taken along a corridor to their cell.
It was spartan but clean and more spacious than Jeni had expected, being about three metres by four and made of blocks of plain white stone. In a recess was the low pan of what appeared to be a squat toilet, and to one side an inset basin and water faucet. Two stone slabs cantilevered out from the wall formed simple beds, each covered with a sponge-like mattress. There were more of the sets of copper plates set about the walls, the slab beds and even the ceiling and floor, leaving no doubt that if required a prisoner could be totally restrained.
The guards left them bridled and cuffed, the door sliding shut with a solid click of latches. Jeni and Rebecca sat on the beds and tried to make themselves as comfortable as possible. There was nothing else they could do. Jeni kept squinting down at the number on her chest and glancing sideways at Rebecca to see how she must look. Of course it made sense that they should carry identification numbers like all prisoners, and if they were to be kept naked then where better than their flesh. But it still took some getting used to.
After half-an-hour, just as Jeni was beginning to wonder how they were supposed to eat or drink restrained as they were, the door opened again to admit a guard and a man in a civilian tunic trimmed with a green sash, leading a naked girl on a leash. Though she was of the same physical type as the men, with reddish skin, dark hair and a strong nose, there was no doubt of her status. A green-tinted moulded plastic muzzle covered her nose and mouth, with two holes over her nostrils so she could breath. What might have been blinkers extended forward and back from her cheek straps. The style and colour of the muzzle matched her collar, chastity belt and sandals. Her wrists were cuffed in front of her while strapped to her back was a flattish black case.
The man glanced at Jeni and Rebecca with a brief look of mild interest rising above an air of routine activity. After exchanging a few words with the guard he pointed a controller that hung from his belt at his slave.
Immediately the blinkers folded over her eyes, while the rear-facing flaps closed round her ears, leaving her deaf, dumb and blind. Keeping her back straight she bent over from the hips, spreading her legs slightly and sliding her cuffed hands down between her shins until she grasped her ankle cuffs. There was a click as bracelets and cuffs locked together, bringing the case on her back level with the floor. She had become a living table. The man opened the case to reveal a neat array of plastic vials and glittering metal instruments.
Suddenly Jeni understood. The newcomer was the local equivalent of a doctor to give them a medical examination. And of course, a doctor would not carry is own medical bag if he had a slave to do it for him. She was masked and blindfolded for hygiene, and because of the sometimes personal and confidential nature of his work.
Meanwhile the guard had unhooked a controller from his belt. Motioning for Jeni and Rebecca to stand in the middle of the room over a set of copper plates he pointed the device at them and pressed a contact. They felt their wrist cuffs parting, only to have their arms jerked upward to the ceiling even as their legs were pulled wide and down.
And so they hung spread-eagled while the doctor examined them, running his odd devices over their taut bodies, occasionally prodding their flesh with probes and nodding over whatever they revealed to him. At one point he touched a metal disk with a small empty plastic tube projecting from it to their necks, and moments later removed it with the tube filled with blood. The tubes he then plugged into a socket in his case and appeared to read lines of data displayed on an inbuilt screen. Reaching some conclusion, the physician picked out a drug ampoule from his selection, loaded it into a larger tube-like device and pressed it to the upper curves of their left buttocks. Jeni felt a cold/warm sensation in her muscle, which slowly faded away. The man loaded a second ampoule, and this time pressed it to the inside of their forearms.
They had been injected with different doses of medication, one muscular and one intravenous. But what was their purpose?
The doctor closed his case and pointed the controller at his slave again, who had remained completely motionless throughout the examination. Now she straightened up and her blinkers and ear covers folded back. Catching up her leash, the doctor nodded to the guard and left the cell.
For a moment the guard contemplated Jeni and Rebecca, still suspended between floor and ceiling, with a knowing smile. Jeni heard Rebecca give a muffled whimper from behind her gag. He walked around them, running his hands over their taut bodies, feeling the smooth curves of their backs and the swell of their rumps, tweaking their nipples and running his fingers through their hair. Jeni felt her heart thudding. They were prisoners, slaves. He could do anything he liked with them...
He removed their bridles, and while they were still licking their stretched lips he cut the force that held them, so that they dropped to the floor. By the time they had picked themselves up the cell door was closed once again.
‘What did that... that doctor, inject us with?’ Rebecca asked tremulously.
‘I don’t know,’ Jeni said simply. She was feeling tired, though that could have been simply fatigue catching up with her rather than the effects of any medication. After what she had been through during the last few hours it would not be surprising. Wearily she sat down on her bed.
‘It might be something horrible,’ Rebecca persisted.
‘Why should they bother to do anything so stupid?’ Jeni pointed out. ‘We’re no good to them sick. And if they wanted to experiment on us we’d still be in that laboratory. No, I think it must have been inoculations of some sort. We might carry infections they don’t have here, as well as the other way round. Anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it. We might as well make ourselves as comfortable as possible in the meantime.’
Rebecca rubbed at the numbers stamped across her chest. The symbols remained bold and sharp. She went to the recessed basin and fumbled with the faucet until it flowed. Splashing water across her chest she rubbed harder, but without result. ‘It won’t come off,�
� she wailed.
‘I shouldn’t think it’s meant to,’ Jeni said, and Rebecca’s shoulders sagged in defeat.
For an hour after they had been taken down, Rebecca sat on her bed with her back to the wall and head resting on her knees. Jeni watched her from her own bed in silence. She could think of nothing more to say at that moment, and was preoccupied with her own thoughts. Between pangs of concern about Bradley Ash, she tried to make sense of her deeper feelings.
Her contemplations were interrupted by Rebecca, who said in a voice of weary contempt, ‘I suppose you’re loving all this. For a little masochist like you it must be heaven. You’re going to be a slave. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jeni replied honestly, ignoring Rebecca’s demeaning undertone. ‘There are moments when I feel excited by the thought, but I’m scared as well. It’s too big a step to say; great, I’m a slave at last, and give up on everything else. I don’t know what being a slave in a slave-owning society is like. I never imagined I’d find such a place.’
‘How did you want to end up, then?’ Rebecca asked. Jeni suspected she was only partly interested, driving the conversation along primarily to distract herself from her own fears.
‘Well, as somebody’s secret slave, I suppose. If you’d been nicer I might have come out to you earlier.’
Rebecca stiffened. ‘How dare you...?’ she began, then bit her lip. She was hardly in a position to take any action against Jeni now. They were employer and employee no longer. ‘Do you think I’d have kept you once I’d known what you were?’ she said after a pause.
Jeni smiled mischievously. ‘You might. Think how you would have felt having something none of your friends had. I would have been quite an accessory. I think if I truly liked somebody I could give myself to them totally. If I was your willing slave, you could have done almost anything you liked with me. You got a taste of it on the beach. Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy the feeling just a little.’
Rebecca said nothing.
‘But what I am doesn’t stop me being a person as well,’ Jeni continued. ‘There are other things that I wouldn’t want to lose.’
‘Do you really think you’ll have the choice?’
‘Maybe not. I’ll have to find out. Perhaps I’ll find the right master or mistress for me here.’
‘Oh, how romantic,’ Rebecca said contemptuously.
‘Why shouldn’t I wish for that? It might happen. It’s no more unlikely than how we came here in the first place. And meeting Cath was reassuring. She seemed quite content.’
‘Because she’s another masochist like you,’ Rebecca retorted. ‘Well, they’ll never make a slave out of me. I’d never serve anybody like that!’
‘As you said, I don’t think we’ll be given any choice,’ Jeni pointed out. ‘You may just have to make the best of it, at least until we learn how things work round here. Hopefully Cath can tell us more when she comes for the language lessons.’
A little later two trays of food were slid into the cell through a slot in the door. The portions were laid out in moulded hollows in the trays. Apart from some segments of fruit and cheese, the meal consisted of thick wafers, both sweet and savoury, or small pasty-like pastry pies. No utensils were provided, so it was clearly intended to be eaten with the fingers.
Rebecca waited until Jeni had sampled each item before trying it herself. Jeni could not place all the flavours, and one wafer was highly spiced, but it all seemed freshly prepared and the portions were adequate.
They finished the meal and slid the trays back out of the door slot. Then investigating the sanitary recess to wash her hands, Jeni found a nozzle that dispensed liquid soap and a button that blew hot air from vents. There was also a recessed showerhead in the ceiling. These discoveries delighted Rebecca and she took over the cubical for a shower and vigorous hair wash, as though trying to remove not only the dirt and grime she had accumulated over the last few days, but also the memory of strangers’ hands on her skin.
She looked more relaxed when she was cleaned and dried to her satisfaction, but still tugged regretfully at her hair. ‘If only I had a comb,’ she said.
‘I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to ask,’ Jeni suggested, and knocked on the cell door, trying not to sound impatient. Eventually a panel slid back revealing a guard’s face.
‘Please, can we have a comb?’ Jeni asked as meekly as she could, holding up her own tangled locks, then pointing at Rebecca’s fluffy mane and miming combing through it. The guard frowned at her antics for a moment, then grinned in sudden understanding.
‘Ka trimvo,’ he said.
‘Yes, a comb, “ka trimvo”,’ Jeni repeated. The panel closed and she heard his footsteps receding down the passage.
‘Do you think he understood?’ Rebecca wondered doubtfully, but a minute later the door panel slid open again and the guard handed through a small plastic comb.
‘That’s very kind, thank you so much,’ Jeni said warmly.
‘Why did you thank him like that after what they’ve done to us?’ Rebecca asked, after the guard had gone again.
‘Well, he didn’t have to get us a comb. And it never hurts to be polite.’
Rebecca still looked puzzled. She had never needed to think like that before. Perhaps she would learn to in Elysium.
As Jeni took her turn under the shower she wondered about the conditions of their imprisonment. On one hand they had been stripped of their normal rights and dignity and subjected to the most intimate and humiliating testing. On the other their cell was warm and clean, they had good food and basic but adequate sanitary facilities. How many prisons back in the world she had thought of as home offered so much?
But was it possible to have humanitarian scruples and keep slaves? Perhaps they maintained standards for their prisoners out of simple practicality? They might simply have decided that comfortable, well fed prisoners, or indeed slaves, were less likely to try to escape.
Or perhaps it was a matter of pride in their society. The style of their essentially simple dress and air of antiquity about the great stepped pyramid was deceiving. Jeni had to keep reminding herself that they actually possessed advanced technology. And if their civilisation was as old as Cath had suggested, perhaps they had used that technology to refine the art of slavery as they progressed. There was no need to keep slaves in squalor to exercise control over them when you had such things as magnetic collars and cuffs, or whatever the force was they used. And they would not want to have smelly unkempt servants around them if their own standards had risen accordingly.
Jeni felt her reasoning was plausible. It might help her understand this strange new land. And if one consequence was that she could keep herself clean and well fed, she was not complaining.
She finished drying herself and had just lain down on her bed when the cell lights dimmed to a dull red glow, which remained constant. Presumably it was night outside.
‘I suppose we’re meant to sleep now,’ Rebecca said. ‘But how can I sleep after what’s happened.’
‘It could be much worse,’ Jeni said, turning over on her side and trying to ignore Rebecca’s petty griping. What would the new day bring? There was so much to learn. Well, she already knew the Elysian for comb. That was a start.
Prison routine began early when the cell lights brightened, presumably with the dawn, waking Jeni and Rebecca from deep, exhausted sleep. They yawned and stretched and looked at each other uncertainly, wondering what was to come.
Rebecca became embarrassed at using the squat toilet, insisting Jeni stayed as far round the corner from the recess as the cell allowed. When it came to her turn Jeni tried not to care about whether Rebecca could see her or not, suspecting they should get used to a lack of privacy even while performing their most intimate functions. She found there was a button on the wall behind the toilet that directed cleansing water jets bidet-l
ike when she was done, and then flushed clean the shallow pan. If this was a standard fitting in each cell then it confirmed her speculations of the previous evening. This was a mature society with refined standards. That might work in their favour, but it also suggested there would be many rules to obey, and who knew what the penalties for breaking them might be.
Breakfast trays were slid through the door slot. The meal was lighter than supper, consisting of moist cubes of what tasted like cereal mixed with diced fruit. They ate quickly and returned the trays, and Jeni was just wondering if she could mime their need for toothbrushes and toothpaste when the door slid open.
The guard motioned for them to leave the cell, and they were marched down a short corridor past other cells until they came to a larger chamber illuminated by a roof light. Obviously it was the prison exercise yard. Half a dozen other naked women prisoners, also bearing numbers on their chests, were already running round a small oval track, edged with copper metal control strips.
They discovered their purpose when the guard indicated they should join the other runners, for as they stepped onto the track their cuffs sprang into life, pulling their legs forward and back while their arms pumped in contra motion, and at the same time their collars began to deliver sharp jolts of pain. By reflex they began to run round the track in time with the insistent movements of their cuffs, and as they did the jolts from their collars faded away.
It was very simple, Jeni realised. While they pounded round the track at a steady speed keeping pace with the other runners all was well, but if they slowed down their collars began to sting in warning. And so they ran on, knowing they would do so until either they collapsed from exhaustion, or else their guards permitted them to stop.
As they ran Jeni observed their fellow prisoners, and saw they were looking at Rebecca and herself in turn from the corners of their eyes. The pair of them did stand out; all the other prisoners were either copper or olive-skinned, with dark hair.