Prologue
I crawled across the floor and picked up the whip in my teeth, gently so as not to
leave a mark. I was careful also not to get it wet; either of these mistakes would cost
me. He took the whip from my proffering mouth, replaced my bit, and arranged me on all
fours in front of him.
Then he settled back to read, his feet heavy on my back. The tip of the whip rested
lightly on my ass; it felt like a live thing vibrating, tickling, flicking me whenever I
breathed more deeply than usual through my bridle. Gradually the weight of his legs pushed
me down, solidified me into a bundle of strain and endurance. He shifted occasionally,
crossing one leg over the other, or putting one foot flat on the side of my ass.
I don’t know how long I managed to stay completely still; time isn’t something I’m
ever in a position to track. But inevitably I failed; my elbows buckled. It was only a
little, and I recovered immediately, but the whip’s reaction was instantaneous, and quite
painful. I didn’t manage to contain the little whimper in the back of my throat, but I did
manage to stay rigid and not flinch, not incur another stroke. That time, anyway.
After a while I was tired enough that it took several strokes before I could contain
my reactions and stay still. My ass throbbed, and I put all my effort into being
furniture. I tried to think like furniture: heavy, solid, without nerve-endings or an
awareness of time. But after the fourth time I couldn’t help it, my head drooped, and
tears dripped to the floor. He switched hands and flicked my breasts, and I raised my head
again obediently. I would endure this. I was glad I wasn’t impervious. He was touching me;
I could endure anything for that.
Chapter One
The Third Option
I sat on my bed, waiting.
“I am going to men to be owned, to be owned, to be owned…” The words drummed softly
but insistently through my head. Some part of me was amused at this need for drama. Still,
I had to find a way to convince myself. There had been years of fantasies, some of them so
intense they felt much more real than this. ‘This’ was a small locked room, hanging in
space, waiting. Not much different from the cell I’d lived in for months, or for that
matter from my room at home. So although my rational side – such as it was – told me I was
really on my way, there was some level on which I simply didn’t believe it. I didn’t
believe that the world outside of me was finally going to match what had been going on so
violently inside my head all those years. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to, which
didn’t help. All I had was some official information, meant to put me off, and the
pictures they had shown me briefly, six weeks before.
I could have cried when they took them away. If only I could have had them all to
myself for a day or two! Instead I had to look at them with that dour, grey woman standing
over me, muttering her disgust. I sat there trying to conceal my excitement, feeling
almost paralyzed by the throbbing between my legs, pressing myself helplessly against the
hard bench while trying to seem casual about my movements, my hands trembling as I turned
over the pages.
I suppose they were hoping I’d be appalled. As soon as I’d glanced at them without a
word, the woman snatched them away, not looking at me as she marched out, locking the door
behind her with a clang. She wasn’t stupid. I’d proved myself once again to be beyond the
pale. My shame made me long for the punishments I’d seen in the pictures.
I sat on my bed trying to remember details in those pictures. What did the man look
like who held the leash? The woman’s expression – I’d not had time to read it. The
surroundings, were they familiar or strange? What was I in for? What had I done?
The judge had been grey, but not dour; a perceptive woman. That judicial eye had
pierced my sullen armour more than once. Sullenness was my defence, at least in the
psychological sense. (In the legal sense, I had none.) I’d had such an attitude toward
authority figures that all of them – mothers, aunts, teachers – had given up in despair. I
raised attitude to an art form. I raised a lot of blood pressure, too. There had to be no
chinks to my inner life. It was so habitual that the effort to drop it was wrenching, when
that ultimate moment came in the courtroom.
Half the Reodir region seemed to have jammed itself into the long, low room, with its
faint smell of ammonia, lurking beneath the sourbean odour of all the bodies and their
breath. I refused to turn my head, but the intense half-hush of the crowd pressed palpably
on every nerve I owned. The silence imposed by the judge’s appearance was more ominous
still.
“You have been determined to be incorrigibly irresponsible toward yourself and your
community,” the judge pronounced. “I cannot recall a worse case. You have made nothing but
bad use of the privileges this society accords its members. At every opportunity you have
demonstrated that you cannot be trusted with citizenship status. You know your three
options: rehabilitation, exile or slavery on Henth. What is your decision?”
For a long moment the words wouldn’t come. They hung suspended in a tight, strangling
web of silence. After a life of concealment, three words were going to show everyone my
dreadful colours.
For months I’d been rehearsing my response to prevent myself from losing my nerve at
the last moment. I’d planned to say the words by rote, without letting myself think or
give them meaning. But my answer had to be forced through a constricted throat, and was
addressed in a hoarse whisper to the table in front of me.
“Slavery on Henth.”
There was a sharp murmur behind me in the courtroom. No one had chosen the Third
Option from my community in living memory. After a few moments the initial disbelief gave
way to a roar of indignation. I clenched my sweating hands together, eyes fixed in front
of me, my back to the crowd, trying not to cower. This was even worse than I had imagined.
I was afraid they were going to lynch me.
“Etrin Aboia, let me be sure the court is not mistaken. State your choice again
clearly and fully.” I swallowed with difficulty, and looked down at my hands. They were
clenched together, but the thumbs made a small upward gesture, as if to tell me to get on
with it.
Taking a deep breath, I raised my head and made my hunched shoulders drop. A kind of
desperate calm came over me. For once I was going to say the truth about myself and not be
ashamed. I made myself meet the judge’s eye. The room went quiet.
I thought, this is it. Do it right, Etrin.
The words that emerged rang clear, across the court and back to me again, to echo
around inside my skull. “I, Etrin Aboia, choose the Third Option, slavery on Henth, as
punishment for my crimes of irresponsibility.” The voice sounded like it knew what it was
talking about, and I was grateful. I could see by her expression that the judge, at least,
knew the truth.
Still, I had to wait the required twenty-nine days before my choice was considered
final. Twenty-nine days of hell.
At first I was elated at my emergence. I felt buoyant, without that leaden weight of
constant concealment. I actually thought it might be possible to be who I was and say so.
But my family was let in to plead with me, and their horrified reactions shut me down
pretty fast. I went from glee to defiance, through to anger and resentment, then down into
guilt. Soon I had to reassume my sullen armour, my only protection against their
outpourings of grief and fear and anger, and my intense shame. By then I felt horribly
naked and exposed, like a calibspod out of its shell, and I did my pathetic best to get my
shell back on in a hurry.
Radiating disapproval, the authorities made sure I knew exactly what the Third Option
meant. Although I heard some interesting details that I hadn’t been able to pick up
earlier, details which scared me more than ever, I didn’t change my mind. The warder
brought the photographs, then took them away again. Doctors made me go through another
battery of tests to assess my sanity, very short with me for fooling them the last time.
Sorry, sorry, sorry. They kept commenting on my intelligence, as if that mattered.
My family would have tried round-the-clock brainwashing techniques if they’d been
allowed. The ten hours they had each day were bad enough. They were losing me forever, and
I should have been gratified that they found this so awful, in spite of everything I’d put
them through. But at the time I attributed it to their embarrassment over my appalling
choice. Then of course I could reject them for their conformity to public opinion – a gibe
that led to such a fight that the warders had to intervene.
Secretly, I suppose I wanted someone to understand and acknowledge my choice, someone
to accept me as I was. Laughable when you think about it. Pathetically unrealistic, and
far more than I deserved. I was bound to be disappointed on this one, because it was
impossible for me to tell them just how long I had felt this way (forever), and how much I
needed to go to Henth (indescribable). They thought it was just one of my self-destructive
whims. The finality of it terrified them. Understandable; it terrified me, too.
I spent a lot of time with my arms crossed over my chest, glaring at the ceiling
while they railed and pleaded. If even one of them had sat down and listened, I might have
been able to tell them the truth. At last, driven to desperation, I grabbed one of my
sisters by the shoulders and shouted in her face, “I’m doing what I must; let me be!” Too
little, too late. It didn’t help. No one really heard me. They didn’t leave me alone until
the very last minute of the very last day.
At first the solitude on the spaceship was an unbelievable relief. I could put the
guilt away and bask in the elation, having survived the ordeal. But the wait soon became
boring, imprisoned alone in my little cabin, and at the same time brutal in the urgency of
my waiting for the end of it. Finally, after those months in custody on Raniz, there was
no peephole in the door, and no one demanding my attention. They brought me my food three
times a day, that was all. I had nothing to read or screen. All I could do was think, try
to imagine what was ahead, and relieve the pulsing demands between my legs, brought on by
the memory of those photographs, and by the knowledge of what I had accomplished. The fear
made my belly tighten with surges of excitement, the fear of what they would do to me, of
whether I could stand it.
I spent hours looking at my body in the mirror. Was it pretty enough? I had no way of
knowing what men would like in a woman. My body felt oddly detached from me, as if it
wasn’t mine at all. It occurred to me with a thrill of fear that soon it really wouldn’t
be mine, in honest truth.
I watched my hands hypnotically stroking the full, pointed breasts, the slender
ribcage, the smooth buttocks. I ran my palms over the silky skin of my inner thighs, and
my breath came faster. My eyes closed, and I thought of whips. I had never been whipped,
or even slapped. Opening my eyes, I examined my face. Pale skin, reddish curls to my
shoulders, the grey eyes shadowed and fearful. I was smaller than average, and I knew men
were tall. Helpless, I’d be helpless. The word made my belly contract with arousal.
There was nothing I could do about it now. Still, now that I didn’t have to convince
anyone else, I could admit to myself that I was well and truly terrified.
I was going to men to be owned…
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