This work is copyright 2000-2004 by Xaltatun of Acheron (A Pseudonym). It may be posted on the Internet to any free forum, provided it is not modified in any way, and provided that this notice is included in its entirety. It may not be sold, or included in any compilation that is sold, or posted on any forum that requires a fee for access, without my written permission. My permission will require payment, terms to be negotiated. For purposes of this notice, sites guarded by Adult Check or similar packages are considered pay sites. Posting on any site must include this copyright notice.
Adult Content Warning - this story contains adult themes, including non-consensual bondage/slavery and forced sexual acts. If you are under the lawful age for such materials (18 in most jurisdictions) or if you would find such material offensive, please go elsewhere.
Safety Warning. This story may contain descriptions of practices that are decidedly unsafe, either in general, or if performed by someone without adequate training. There are a number of good books available on safety in the BDSM scene. Most large cities, and some not so large ones, have organized BDSM groups that will usually welcome a newcomer. I'm not going to point out which practices are safe, and which aren't. Any practice is unsafe if performed by someone with inadequate training and experience, or if performed when not paying attention. Please think before you act. Don't make yourself a candidate for a Darwin award.
Story codes: (MF, FF, pony, SF, little sex)
There are currently eight stories in the Freehold series:
1. A Slave Girl of Freehold
2. A Ponygirl of Freehold
3. The Field Ecologist's Ponygirl (sequel to A Ponygirl of Freehold)
4. Delivery Ponyboy
5. Carriage Team of Freehold
6. Escaped Ponygirl
7. Pyramid Scheme
8. Gor meets Amazonia
Stories 2 and 3: Ponygirl and Field Ecologist form one story and should be read in that order. Story one leads into story 4, although there isn't any real continuity of plot.
Carriage Team of Freehold, Escaped Ponygirl, Pyramid Scheme and Gor Meets Amazonia form a sequence, to some extent based on events at the end of Delivery Ponyboy. You do not need to read them in sequence, but it may help fill in gaps.
Some additional background on Freehold, in particular, how it happened, is in the story "The Curtain Falls, The Curtain Rises," the end of the Ponygirl Transformation series.
The name Freehold has no relationship to any other use of the term by any other author. No connection should be assumed, either derivative or as a base for parody.
OK - now on to the story -------
Chapter 1. It happened this way: Twenty Years previously.
Chapter 2. The Princess Arrives.
Chapter 5. Shopping Expedition.
Chapter 7. Enclave Control Committee Meeting Number 497.
Chapter 9. Unexpected efficiency causes a slight problem
Chapter 12. Bureaucratic Flashback.
Chapter 13. Back at the stables.
Chapter 16. Enclave Control Committee Meeting Number 499.
Chapter 18. I Meet the Dodecahedron. We both survive.
Chapter 21. Terri is a What???
Chapter 22. Introduction to the Dodecahedron.
Chapter 23. Interview with a ponyboy.
Chapter 24. Sojourn in Fantasyland.
Chapter 25. Conversation with the God’s Own Winemaker
Chapter 27. Taking Care of Terri.
Chapter 29. Human Rights Conference.
Chapter 31. Bonnie out-clevers herself.
Chapter 32. Back at Master Skodarian’s.
Chapter 33. Another Mob Scene.
Chapter 34. Executive Reorganization.
In the first episode of Gor Meets Amazonia, we did a bit of a flashback about how Princess (then Duchess) Annabelle introduced herself to the Gorean Enclave with a show of swordsmanship that would baffle anyone who knows swordsmanship. All will eventually be revealed. Various other things moved along; Sherry has decided to immigrate to Freehold, and has discovered a few problems in her way, like she’s illiterate. Annabelle wants to turn me into the living representative of the gods, as the gods own ponygirl. I must say I was intrigued by the idea, especially the notion that I would have apparently miraculous powers at my beck and call.
In the second episode we had the obligatory ponygirl race. I won the first two heats, and one of the twins won the third. Princess Annabelle decided we needed more staff, so she wanted a small shopping expedition.
In the third episode, we went shopping for more staff, and bought a courtesan for the Prince and Princess, a farm supervisor to take care of the place, and another groom to help Frank out. The Prince arrived, and I discovered that I was now expected to attend Enclave Control Committee meetings. They’re a trip and a half, let me tell you. In this one, we decided to install part of Freehold’s population control system in the Enclave. In any case, plans are what doesn’t happen, and all the nice ideas about how to inject me into the Enclave with maximum effect were doomed to be unraveled, as you’re about to see.
In the fourth episode, a UN official, Ser Johansen, shows up to deal with some fisheries problems, and I get injected into the Enclave early. When the dust settles, I’m ensconced in my permanent position in Animal House, which is what the apartments occupied by the followers of Dionysus is called, and have acquired titular authority over the Temple Island pony stables. I’ve gotten a semi-permanent ponygirl named Donny Brooke, and I’m the owner of a slave girl named Sasha, who is somewhat of a problem.
In the fifth episode, I settle Sasha, and then we have another Enclave Control Committee meeting, where things finally get moving. The Committee decides to expand the system to include international law enforcement, and yours truly is appointed the enforcer, with the grudging acquiesce of the Dodecahedron, which has a number of concerns with my using my “god given powers” in that endeavor. I also started picking up a number of anthropologists that had gotten stuck in one way or another and adding them to my staff.
In the sixth episode, I do some more law enforcement, pick up another anthropologist named Terrence Waters who turns out to have been turned into a very tasty she-male named Terri, get introduced to the Dodecahedron and finally recruit the last of the missing anthros, a man named Roger Thornton who’s been turned into a ponyboy and is now residing in my stables. Is this getting complicated, or what?
It was time to start working on the human rights leadership. They still hadn’t started their campaign; partially because they didn’t have a nice, juicy cause yet. In fact, they were more or less milling around in the dark trying to find a handle that would excite the public interest and, not incidentally, cause all of those juicy contributions and enthusiastic volunteers to keep flowing in.
I hate jumping into this kind of situation without preparation. Up to now, you may have gotten the idea that I tend not to plan things out very well, and you’d be right. My style is more to make sure I can handle whatever is likely to come up, and then plunge right in. In this case, though, my knowledge of the situation was several years out of date, and I needed a different approach.
So I’d spent the last couple of weeks collecting and studying dossiers, and making other preparations, as well as juggling several other projects. Now, I figured I was as ready as I’d ever be. There would be a major human rights meeting in another two weeks, and I needed to get myself into position to attend legitimately.
What follows is an extract of the secure mailing list that the leadership uses to communicate when they weren’t in a position to talk face to face. Both the Dodecahedron and Freehold can crack any existing encryption system by a number of methods. By now, people expect the Dodecahedron to be able to do that, we were keeping Freehold’s ability to do the same thing relatively quiet, although anyone with enough intelligence could have figured out that we had it. So I simply added myself to their mailing list without bothering to get an introduction.
I’ve made the extract look continuous, which it wasn’t. This conversation took place over two weeks, with various people dropping in and out.
Flame: Hi, folks. Let me introduce myself. I’m Scarlet Flame, and I’m handling the human pony situation in the Gorean and Amazonian enclaves for Freehold and the Dodecahedron. If you’ve got questions or issues, shoot them my way.
That stirred up a storm, let me tell you. Barging in on a high security communication link will do that. I’ll spare you the back and forth while they tried to figure out how I’d done it, and for that matter who I was. What finally quieted it down was someone with a few brain cells not entirely devoted to either idealism or ambition: they asked the Dodecahedron. The Dodecahedron admitted that they knew about me, and I was who I said I was. Since this is going out in a public forum, and since there are more than a few people that seemed to be having blonde moments (regardless of hair color, race, sex or gender,) I’ll give them their anonymity.
Anon1: Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’ll admit to being confused. Specifically, how could anyone in their right minds do such an addled thing as human livestock?
Flame: I’m not sure any of them were in their right minds, frankly. The history is rather convoluted, but at least four of the major players liked either slavery, treating humans as livestock, or both. Freehold seems to have managed to integrate them in a socially productive manner, and while I kind of understand the Dodecahedron’s view, I’m not in a position to explain it, even if I was allowed to.
The Goreans and Amazons, on the other hand, originally got it from one of the splinter groups that got it from the predecessor to the Dodecahedron; it’s not part of either one of their foundation myths. Then some other stuff happened.
Anon1: Foundation myths? I don’t understand.
Anon2: Idiot! All of the cultures on the Island started out with a group of enthusiasts who wanted to live their dreams. Look up the Amazons in your history, and Gor in your local sex shop.
Anon1: Oh. You’re right, of course. Talk about what money and seriously addled people can do.
Flame: Exactly, although there might be some hope for Amazonia. At least, it’s different.
Anon3: So what’s stopping Freehold from getting rid of them?
Flame: The enclaves or the pony program?
Anon3: The enclaves.
Flame: There is a political situation that I’m not allowed to comment on. There are also treaties from the time Freehold consolidated its hold on the Island, and one strictly pragmatic consideration: what would we do with the people?
Anon3: Politics. Feh!
Anon2: That’s a good point, what would you do with the people if you shut down an enclave?
Flame: We don’t know. There’s a certain amount of thought going into it, but we haven’t come up with any scenario that wouldn’t be incredibly messy.
Anon3: What about getting rid of both of the pony programs?
Flame: We’ve thought about it, but there are two rather pragmatic considerations standing in the way. One is that they do a considerable amount of work in the Enclaves, and removing them would be a serious economic disruption. The other is that it’s a very violent enclave, and if we removed the ponies, we think that they’d simply kill anyone that couldn’t make it as a slave.
Anon3: There are days when I think I hate reality.
Anon4: And other days when you know you do.
Anon3. I asked about both programs. What about Freehold.
Flame: Not a chance. Seriously, Freehold has been there for almost half a century, and for most of the inhabitants, it’s simply the way their society is organized. I was a pony for a good chunk of a year, and most of the ones I talked to simply don’t think of it as anything out of the ordinary. If you couldn’t hack it, that’s where you wound up, and there were enough graduates of the program that nobody thought any worse of you for having been a pony for a while. Some of us even kept the tail.
Gor and Amazonia have been there even longer, and from what I can tell, the natives have roughly the same attitude: it’s simply part of the way things are.
Anon2: Anyway, Freehold is off topic, but it does bring up an interesting question. What’s the program in Gor/Amazonia for getting them out and up somewhere else?
Flame: There isn’t one. Yet. We’re discussing it, but the social basis is different enough that we need to think about it. The basic question is: where? Turn them back into human form and then sell them in the slave market?
Anon1: There’s got to be a solution.
Flame: I suppose so, but I, for one, don’t have it. There are two other things to consider.
One is that the enclave is based on dominance. There are a few of the ponies that could probably carve out a place for themselves if they were transformed back, but most of them have always been on the bottom, and will simply stay there.
The other is that I’ve managed to get a decent anthropologist into the pony herd on Temple Island, and he tells me that most of them don’t want to be changed back. Either they were slaves before and actually consider the ponies to be a better career path, or they consider themselves to be permanently disgraced.
Anon3: I was reviewing our exchanges about history, and I’m not clear about what you meant about either “the predecessor to the Dodecahedron” or the splinter group you refer to in “they got it from a splinter group.”
Flame: The predecessor to the Dodecahedron (which I’ll call the AC) is actually the one that invented much of the tech, including the biotechnology that underlies the ponies. Look up “Black ThunderBolt.” She’s rather well known in certain circles.
The splinter group established themselves on the Island so they could practice non consensual sado-masochism, including the human pony fantasy. You can dig quite a bit about them out of the archives, but it’s ancient history. The only reason they’re important is that they bought the technology to create human ponies from the AC. Since they were on the same island as Gor and Amazonia, they had a bit of commerce in slaves and human ponies. When Freehold got organized, they eliminated that splinter group although some of them escaped to the Gor/Amazonia enclave with their equipment and contacts.
Freehold made a separate deal with the AC for some of the tech, and it took over the Gor/Amazonia program from the Dodecahedron a few years ago. It did it seamlessly enough that nobody in the Enclave is aware that it happened, and I’d just as soon let that situation develop without the intrusion of too many facts.
Anon3: I think I see. So the whole mess starts with this AC organization, goes through this “splinter group” organization, and then splits in two streams.
Anon5: AC is still around, I think. At least, I think they’re behind the ponygirl fancier organizations. I looked at them a while back, and they seem to go back well into the late 20th century.
Anon2: So what? That’s always been consensual, and you know the policy on that.
Flame: Late 19th for the AC, but the tech was invented in the very late 20th and early 21st. However, we’re getting a bit far afield.
Anon3: You mentioned an anthropologist? I didn’t think they let them in to study that enclave.
Flame: That doesn’t stop them from trying to sneak in behind our backs. We know of five for certain. Two are dead, two are slaves, and one is a pony. I bought them from their former owners. The slaves are in my household, and the pony is in the Temple Island stables.
Anon2: If I understand this correctly, you’re saying two things. First is that continuing the situation as it exists isn’t a part of either Freehold or Dodecahedron policy, and second is that you’re working on it, and a blast of publicity wouldn’t help.
Flame: I think that’s a good summary. The people at the top of the Freehold hierarchy are reasonably enlightened about publicity fads and so forth, but the other stakeholders aren’t.
Anon2: We’ve got a general meeting in a couple of weeks. Is there any possibility you could attend?
Flame: I was wondering whether you’d ask. Of course. I’ll bring one of the two anthropologists with me. I won’t be the official Freehold delegate, that’s someone else from Foreign Affairs.
That’s the end of the substantive conversation. The actual stream of e-mails is about ten times the volume, of course.
Things drifted for a while. Well, drifted isn’t quite the right word. What with getting the smuggling situation under control, explaining the new fertility decrees, dealing with the human rights organizations and trying to figure out what to do, or at least what to recommend for the ponygirl program I had my hands full. Sasha, at least, was coming along well, but that added even more to my schedule since I had to nurse her past some of the problems inherent in realizing that other people mattered. At least the advisor was purring about my progress through the supervisor courses.
In between all of that, Faith and Terry decided that, attractive as being xeno-anthropologists looked, they didn’t want anything to do with the Dodecahedron, so they gracefully bowed out of the assimilation program. I, on the other hand, was still working with Cherry. I still wasn’t anywhere near the danger point, and as far as I knew, everyone was satisfied that I wasn’t going to come near it, let alone cross it, accidentally or otherwise.
A while was about a week, which seems to be par for my life.
One morning I was having breakfast in the refractory when a large man walked up and plopped himself down at the table opposite me.
“Well, girl, I expect we’d better be getting acquainted,” he said. “I’m Dion, the head winemaker for the cult. You’re Running Flame, and you’ve been raising quite a storm. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. Except maybe about the pony situation, but we can talk about that later.”
“And you’re quite good, if this is any sample of your work,” I said, raising my wineglass.
“I am that,” he said, not at all put out by the flattery. “Wine is the god’s business, and the head winemaker has to be good. There are probably a few better,” he said meditatively, “but they don’t have the calling to serve the god directly.”
“And you do,” I said.
“True. As you don’t,” he added in a lower voice.
I cocked an ear at him. He chuckled.
“Well, it’s rather obvious. Your patrons needed to put you somewhere, and we won the toss. Or lost it, depending on your viewpoint.”
“I’m not at all sure either,” I admitted. “It seemed a good idea at the time, and now I suspect we’re stuck with it.”
“The reason I’m bringing this up is that there are ways things get done around here. If someone needs me, there are channels in the cult of Dionysus that they can take. What you’re doing with the babies is the same thing: the proper channel is the temple of Hera. The thing is, there’s no proper channel for approaching you.”
“Or improper one either, I expect,” I said. “Considering the reputation I’ve been building.”
“There is that,” he said. “One of our priests has been approached with a matter for your consideration. It has to do with some merchandise that was condemned as contraband a week or so ago.”
“Oh?” I said noncommittally.
“He tried both the priesthoods of Poseidon and Hermes first, but they didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”
“I see. Ocean commerce. It makes sense. Then he probably found out that I was living here.”
“Exactly. My priest told him he’d pass the message on, but wouldn’t promise anything.”
“Do you know what he was expecting to do with it?”
“Not in detail, no.” He frowned in mild disgust. “He’s in the slave training business. Specifically, he trains males to act in all ways as females. It’s not a large business, obviously, but quite lucrative for those with rather, um, odd tastes.”
“So he uses drugs as part of his program,” I said. “Given his business, I’d have thought he’d have gone through the Hercules cult.”
“Nobody, and I mean nobody, goes through the Hercules cult if there is even the suspicion of treating those touched by the gods unfairly. Her Holiness’ opinions on the matter are well known.”
“And she’s probably more peremptory than I am in acting on them,” I said. “I’m going to need to consult my superiors on this before taking any kind of action. And they are going to want to know more about this than a simple conversation.”
“Understandable,” he said. “I always find that the more I know before I lay a particularly thorny problem in Dionysus’ lap, the more likely I’m to get an answer I can use.”
“I wonder,” I asked, “is there more than one slave dealer in this corner of the business?”
“I don’t really know, and I’m not at all interested in it, either. If you decided that we could do without his services, I, for one, would not weep.”
“Nor would a great many others, I imagine,” I said. “Where can I find this paragon of dubious services?”
He gave a massive shrug. “The message came through one of my priests that serves a district outside of Glorious Ar.”
“Terri, how would you like to see your slave trainer again?”
Terri froze in the middle of reaching up to one of the high shelves. I have to admit to putting the shelves slightly higher than is really convenient; I like the way my beauties look when they stretch to reach something. They know that and play it up for all it’s worth, the minxes.
She carefully took the jar off the shelf and added a few more dates from it to the bowl of fruits near my hand.
“I’m not at all certain, mistress.”
“About what?”
“Whether I want to thank him or kill him,” she responded. “I find I like what he turned me into, but I’m not certain I should.”
“Should see him, or should like it?”
“Either, I suppose.” She turned to put the jar of dates back on the shelf. She sighed. “I suppose seeing him again might help lay a few ghosts.”
“In any case, we might be getting ahead of ourselves. Is this the place?” I transferred the map to her mind.
“That’s it,” she said after a moment. “And that’s the bastard,” she practically snarled.
“I guess you’d prefer to strangle him,” I observed.
“Maybe not.” She took a deep breath and laughed unsteadily. “Part of his technique was to make us fear him so much that we would look forward to our new owner. It worked.” She calmed down even more. “Thinking back on it now, it’s certainly an interesting technique. You find yourself working hard to master your lessons so you can be sold just to get away from him. At least, that was my reaction, and I think most of the other girls felt the same way.”
“Sounds like a real sweetheart,” I commented dryly. “I’m going to see him later today, and if you want to come along, I’d appreciate having a second viewpoint. Meanwhile, have you decided what you’re going to do now that the Dodecahedron isn’t an option?”
“It really comes down to a binary decision, doesn’t it? Either stay here as your slave girl and assistant while studying for Freehold immigration, or go back home and try to reestablish myself.”
“I hadn’t thought of it quite that way, but yes, I think so.”
“Well, if being your assistant means I can do a proper study of the enclave, I’m in. Otherwise I’ll bail out.”
“Then you’re in, because what I want from you is exactly that. A proper study of the way this miserable excuse for a society works. We should have you on the Freehold system later today.” I waved my hand in dismissal, and she turned to her next task. Well trained, I mused to myself as I watched the way her slim body twisted the cloth of her slave livery.
Enough woolgathering. I popped one of the dates into my mouth and turned to my next task.
Preparing for that visit took more time than I’d thought. As I expected, I couldn’t get a decision about whether he would be allowed to stay in business, let alone use the drugs. Annabelle wanted to wait until the next Enclave Control Committee meeting to discuss it. Whatever.
Master Skodarian’s walled villa was set back from the main road from Glorious Ar to Port Kar. The forbidding walls loomed over us as Donny Brooke pulled our chariot down the dirt access road. Those things looked like they must be at least five meters high, with a couple of strands of barbed wire for topping. I suspected that they probably had cut glass embedded in the surface as well. I asked Terri instead of looking, and she readily agreed. It seemed that the guards made very sure that the slaves being trained knew that escape was hopeless.
I didn’t know about hopeless, but I halfway expected the old “Abandon All Hope…” slogan to appear above the arched entranceway that pierced the wall. No such luck, what it actually said was: “We make the best slave girls in the world.”
Well, if Terri and Sherry were typical examples, I wasn’t going to argue the boast.
The iron bound wood doors opened on well-oiled, or at least silent, hinges. Our steed pulled us through and then stopped in the courtyard.
Master Skodarian stood there watching as Donny Brooke leaned back to stop the chariot. He stood maybe a decimeter less than two meters, and appeared even taller, possibly because of the tight fitting black leather that he affected. A beak of a nose split his face, separating two eyes that looked like they could see right through your skin into your psyche, and that had no more warmth than a slaughter house supervisor assessing a side of beef.
For once, I was glad I had the power of both Freehold and the Dodecahedron behind me. Running Flame was a role for me, but this man wasn’t playing games.
“I’m Master Skodarian,” he introduced himself in a surprisingly mellow bass that nevertheless oozed power. “I presume you’re Running Flame? You could hardly be anyone else.”
“Quite true,” I replied as we stepped out of the chariot. “The Dionysus cult relayed your message about a problem in customs. If you want a satisfactory resolution, we need to discuss it. Privately.”
He nodded gravely. “I see. I need those serums for my business. They have helped me improve the quality of my products. I trust you find Terri satisfactory,” he said in an apparent non-sequitor.
I felt Terri stiffen at my side. “She’s absolutely amazing,” I replied. “I take it she didn’t have any transsexual tendency before you began work on her?”
“Quite true,” he said with an arctic smile that avoided his eyes like it was terrified of what it would find there. “True transsexuals are hardly a challenge.”
“Like Sherry?” I prompted.
He quirked an eyebrow.
“Her Holiness Annabelle’s maid.”
“Her.” He waved a hand in dismissal. “Yes, she was a transsexual. Now Terri was a definite challenge; it took all of my experience as well as the serums to convince her that she had always wanted to be female. Now she likes it, don’t you dear?” he switched to talking directly at her.
I felt a wave of pure terror well up inside Terri, followed by the beginnings of fury as the import of Skodarian’s offhand statement washed through her consciousness. The last thing I wanted was to have a scene. I waved my tail, and Terri vanished, to reappear in our apartment. I sent out an emergency call for Faith to come comfort her while I dealt with the business here.
“That was cruel,” I said.
He shrugged. “Cruelty is a tool, like any other. If there are things you won’t do, there are results you can’t get. Come, let us discuss how to get my serums through customs.”
He led the way through the buildings of his compound to his office. At first glance, it didn’t look much like an office at all. It looked more like a display room. We seemed to have come in a back door; the side on my left had several comfortable chairs in a loose semi-circle facing a raised platform. Several more chairs occupied the corner to our right, next to several low tables holding a small scroll rack, drinks and plates of fruits and sweets. I noticed that, out of the way as it appeared to be, the people seated there had a good view not only of the platform, but also of anyone seated before it.
Three slave girls knelt against the wall between us and what was probably his office, or at least, his negotiating area.
He paused in front of the trio. All three of them knelt with legs spread wide, eyes down and with their hands hanging loosely at their sides. Terri had been right; all three girls seemed to be terrified of doing anything to attract his attention. He nodded minutely.
“Suna, show us the training dance,” he commanded. “Binti, accompany her on the drums, quietly. Maeve, attend us.” He turned without another word or gesture and continued walking to the corner.
“So,” he said after we had seated ourselves in the corner office. “I’m gratified that you decided to deal with my concerns yourself.”
“They did seem to have a certain amount of validity,” I replied after taking a bite out of one of the sweet rolls.
“I presume one of your trainees baked this? It’s quite good.” In fact, it was better than good; while Bonnie was a good cook, and the chefs at Animal House took quite a bit of pride in their work, this would not have been out of place at a special fete catered by a four star restaurant.
I paused as Binti began a slow drum roll. Suna stood loosely in the center of the little stage; then she began to move in a slowly rippling rhythm.
“True. Keeping a master or mistress happy has many aspects; once my chef decides that her cooking is good enough to grace my table, she can go on to other things.”
“Like that dance?” I asked.
“Actually, we teach dance first. It’s part of how to move properly.” He frowned at the girl gyrating on the platform. “Three faults so far,” he said. “That’s actually quite good for her level of training. At least she’s going ahead rather than stopping in confusion.”
“That’s important?” I asked
“It’s critical,” he said. “She’ll be corrected later for each fault, of course. We can’t allow them to even suspect us of slackness. Recovering and keeping on is much more important, though. I expect most of them would die of sheer terror if we didn’t teach them that, no matter what they manage to mess up, not continuing would be worse. Much worse.”
“That’s an interesting point of view.”
“Oh, quite. Not getting quite the right response in an erotic massage is pardonable, breaking the mood entirely isn’t. She,” he nodded at the dancer, “will be given one stroke with a light flogger for each fault she reports. She’ll be given three strokes with the cane for each one I spot that she doesn’t report. The same is true for the drummer; they have to report on each other as well.”
“That’s rather stringent.”
“It’s essential,” he said. “What they learn is that, no matter how bad making a mistake is, overlooking flaws in their own performance simply isn’t permitted.”
I paused a moment and changed the subject. “So, I understand the medicines that mould them into a more pleasingly feminine aspect. I don’t see how you could operate without them, or something similar.
“What I don’t understand is the other ones.”
“Those serums keep them docile until the training has had time to settle in. We withdraw them gradually so that they remain docile. It helps to cloud their memory of what they were before, too. When they leave here, they’re convinced that being a slave girl was what they were born to do. Like your Terri,” he added.
This reminded me. I did a quick check. Terri was crying on Faith’s shoulder; it looked like the storm would probably finish up fairly soon.
“Well, it didn’t work on her,” I said. “Possibly because she wasn’t born here.”
“Oh?” He gave an expressive shrug, dismissing the matter as beneath consideration.
“One of my duties is to ensure that this is according to the laws of the various lands these things go through. None of the ones you need are illegal in and of themselves, but they do require approvals and authorizations. I’ll look into whether it’s allowable to continue this, and what’s necessary if so.”
“That’s important?” he asked, curiosity gaining over surprise.
“Well, they think it is,” I said. “We’ll have to get a certification that your clinic is being operated according to the standards of the Physician’s Guild.”
He snorted. “Them. They’d be lucky to know how to set bones properly.”
“Nevertheless.”
“Quite. The old jackass owes me a few favors.” He waved one hand, dismissing the matter as trivial.
That business over, I let myself relax enough to consider what had happened on the way back. It took a moment to get over my revulsion at the man and his tactics; but once I did, I saw that I really didn’t have very much against him. His business clearly fell under the rubric of a gender reassignment clinic, and the matter of consent simply didn’t come up. This was Gor, after all. The whole notion of a slave having to give consent for a procedure would strike the average Gorean as idiotic. Slaves did what they were told.
Nonetheless, the whole thing left a foul taste in my mouth, not to mention that I’d have to deal with Terri when I got back. That wasn’t going to be easy; I’d barely gotten into Emergency Psychotherapy for Supervisors. Then a thought bubbled up, and I grinned. On the outside, Terri was, after all, a Ph.D. candidate in Cultural Anthropology. If she deserved the personal responsibility rating that implied, I knew exactly the course. Give “her” the tools and let “her” deal with it.
Now that I was in a much better mood, I found a secluded spot on the road, and teleported us back to Temple Island.
As I expected, Terri looked like hell barely warmed over when I got back. The first thing was to get her back in balance. I gestured to the floor in front of me. She sank to her knees.
“That’s barely adequate, Terri,” I scowled at her fiercely. “Do it again.” She flew to her feet and then sank to her knees again.
“Better, but still not good. Tell me what you did wrong.”
She looked at me in puzzlement. “Or do I have to get a cane? I believe Skodarian said three strokes for each fault you didn’t identify.”
She looked absolutely panicked, but then she took a deep breath and started in.
“When you arrived, I didn’t great you with joy at seeing my mistress again.”
“Go on.”
“I let myself get out of balance.”
As I listened to her self-criticism, she gradually returned to being the self-possessed slave girl I’d known for the last few weeks. Eventually, she wound down as both Faith and Sasha looked on in amazement.
“So, how many strokes is that?” I asked.
“Thirty-four, mistress,” she answered with a bit of trepidation.
“That’s what I counted,” I said. “I have no idea what Skodarian would have found, and I really don’t care, either. Would a flogging help settle you any?”
Her eyes widened, and she shook her head. “No, mistress.”
“I didn’t think so. Skodarian used drugs, torture, terror, a good deal of conditioning and I expect some hypnosis to shape your personality into the slave girl we all know. There are several ways we can go from here. One is to simply go on as if you’d never found out that he’d implanted some totally false beliefs about what ‘you’d always wanted’ in terms of gender affiliation.”
She nodded, clearly not at all happy with the idea.
“Or we can simply let you fall apart.”
She shook her head violently at that. “I don’t want that, mistress.”
“I don’t either. It wouldn’t be good for you.”
“We could ship you out for long term therapy. I don’t have a very high opinion of therapists outside of Freehold, though.”
She relaxed a bit. “I don’t either.”
“The final option is we could take care of it the Freehold way.”
She looked back at me quizzically. “What’s that, mistress?”
“Think about it for a minute. Where you came from, you’re a Ph.D. candidate. That suggests a rather high level of capability, at least in some areas. At that level on Freehold, you’re expected to be able to take care of these things for yourself.”
She said: “Huh?” clearly startled. “Myself?”
“Given the appropriate course. I’ve put it on your curriculum. If you run into serious problems, there will be support available. Until then, you’ll continue as Terri, the she-male slave girl. There will, of course, be a few additional tasks for you to perform.”
I made to wave my hand in dismissal, but she beat me to it.
“Additional tasks?”
“You and Faith are both cultural anthropologists. I desperately need a professional survey of this enclave. We’ll work out how to get you to where you need to be to gather the data.”
“But…” she said, touching her gleaming bronze slave collar.
“What’s a slave girl’s job?” I asked rhetorically.
“Whatever her mistress wants it to be,” the three of them chorused.
I giggled. “You must have been practicing!” I waved my hand in dismissal.
Terry flowed to her feet and glanced at the fruit bowl by my hand. Then she went to the shelf to get some more dates, giving a sexy wiggle as she walked.
I frowned slightly in thought. Soonest begun, and all that.
“Have either of you been trained as a scribe?”
“I can make ink!” Faith said brightly.
“Do you want to continue your training, or do you want to let some more time pass to forget D’rk?”
“Whatever mistress wishes,” she said demurely.
“Meaning no,” I responded. “Why?”
“Sleen had more than a bit of a reputation, mistress. I think it would be wise for it to die down.”
“Good point. I think I’m going to need a scribe to handle paperwork.” Both of them groaned.
“In fact,” I continued, “I’m going to need two scribes, one for here and one for Ancient Egypt.” I changed subjects for a minute. “Do either of you know how up to date the anthropology is in the Ancient Egypt enclave?”
“The last really adequate survey I heard of was around twenty years ago,” Faith said. “There was someone around five years ago that was working on updating it, but he vanished with his daughter. At least, that’s the last I knew before I came here.”
“Daughter’s name was Bonnie?” I asked.
“I think so.”
“He’s dead. You’ll probably meet her after the slave trainers get done with her.”
“What?”
“It’s a long story for another time. The summary is that she wound up being an enforcer for the drug trade, and tried to kill me, among others. She’s under the delusion that being trained as a Gorean slave girl is better than taking her lumps as a Freehold ponygirl.”
“I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,” Faith said, feelingly.
“So the question is; which one of you wants to take Ancient Egypt, and which one of you wants to take this enclave?”
“I don’t think either of us knows Coptic.”
“I know you don’t. Freehold has a language program that can teach it to you in about a week.”
“Then I’ll take Ancient Egypt,” Faith said. “I need a challenge, and Egyptian is supposed to be very hard to master.”
“Not as hard as you would think. As I understand it, the situation is a bit of a hodgepodge. They use the augmented Greek alphabet for administrative matters.”
“Like historical Coptic,” Faith said.
“Exactly. However, the Hieroglyphic only looks like Ancient Egyptian at first glance. The grammar is more Indo-European, but it’s very regular, almost like a computer language. It’s got as much relationship to the spoken language as written Chinese does to the various languages in historical China.”
“So it’s basically an artificial language. That is intriguing.”
“I gather the Egyptologists think it’s a mess, but it’s supposed to be relatively easy to learn, especially once you get the hang of processing language visually.”
“I think I want to stay around here. I might get a chance to wring Master Skodarian’s neck,” Terri said.
“OK. Expect to start training as soon as I can get it set up. Meanwhile, both of you start making notes on your experiences here, as if you were going to use them as the basis for your thesis.”
I looked at Terri thoughtfully. “You know how to drive ponygirls, of course,” I asked her.
“Yes, mistress,” she answered readily.
“I’m probably going to give you Donny Brooke so you can get around,” I told her. “Donny Brooke has one rather interesting ability. She can teleport by herself. At least, she should be able to after I get done training her. I can use one of the other ‘girls.”
The next major thing on my agenda was the human rights convention. The mail conversation I’ve summarized was still going along, and I had hopes of getting invited to some of the strategy sessions. That didn’t, of course, prevent me from attending the convention itself as the Enclave representative. Fortunately, there wasn’t anything in the enclave that would need my attention, but there were several details to attend to first.
The easiest detail was getting documentation for Terri and myself. I’d decided on Terri for the simple reason that she was going to be the one studying the enclave, so it would be more useful for her; the lesser reason was that she wasn’t likely to be recognized.
The next easiest detail was appropriate clothes. Frankly, the enclave’s clothing left a lot to be desired. Clothing was all hand made, from the original plant fiber to the end product, and while the Clothiers Guild could put out some really good garments, they cost a lot and took a long time. I simply couldn’t justify the expenditure for myself and Terri, especially since there was an alternative that was even better quality and much less expensive.
Freehold manufactured clothing to order in fully automated factories. All of the fabric was synthetic, ranging from an excellent silk that couldn’t be told from the original through the various plastics to several traditional plant fibers. That didn’t mean there were no humans in the process, but they weren’t involved in the routine fitting and manufacture of the garments. The people were designers, either of the garments themselves or of the manufacturing processes.
The automated designer is a very detailed animated model of the person that will be wearing the outfit. It can show what the outfit will look like through a full range of motion, in different lighting, and with typical activities for the intended use. It can even show you how the garment will feel when you wear it, although the visuals aren’t all that good, and I doubt that the average person does much with them except for warnings about discomfort.
Getting outfitted ran into one snag that almost scuttled bringing Terri along. I’d intended to get her input on outfits, and discovered that she didn’t really have very much of an idea of what would be appropriate or look good. On reflection, that shouldn’t have surprised me; she’d been a normal male for most of her life, and didn’t know women’s fashions from the inside, so to speak.
We looked at a few outfits, when she asked: “Mistress, can you show me with my collar?”
“You’re not wearing it,” I said a bit absently. I felt her stiffen at my side, and heard a very audible gulp.
“What’s the matter?”
She breathed deeply a couple of times and regained her composure. “I think I just hit something that I didn’t know that bastard did to me.”
“So it panics you to be without your collar?”
She closed her eyes and thought a moment. She stiffened up and her breathing became a bit ragged.
“I can see it certainly does,” I said as she opened her eyes and breathed deeply again to calm down. “How are your exercises going?”
“The advisor is quite pleased,” she said, gaining a bit of her usual sparkle. “That double dissociation exercise is really something! I’ve got most of what happened to me before I got sent to Skodarian’s neutralized, as well as a lot of what happened after. But I think I’ll need something else to handle the six months I spent in Skodarian’s little house of horrors.”
“That’s a problem,” I said.
“I don’t see why,” she responded. “You could just register me under the Consensual Slave Act. Then I could wear my collar.”
I looked up briefly as if to say: “why me, Lord?
“I can feel my allergies beginning to act up,” I mock complained.
“Allergies?” she asked, looking concerned.
“To paperwork.”
She had the effrontery to giggle. I made a mock swipe at her head in slow motion. She ducked and giggled again.
“For that, you get to take care of it,” I told her.
She faked an air of being put upon, but dutifully closed her eyes again. I watched as she accessed the system, checking how to get a Gorean slave girl registered under the Consensual Slave Act. I felt my eyebrows rise as I found that there was actually a procedure. Tourism in the enclaves was low, but not non-existent, and every once in a while a tourist bought a slave and decided to take her back.
“I think I’ve found the procedure,” she said. “You’ll have to sign some of the paperwork.”
“Rampant bureaucracy,” I snorted. “We’ll take care of it tomorrow.”
The Consensual Slave Act is one of those things that the average citizen of most nations of the world simply doesn’t think about. It started in the States in the early part of the 21st century as part of the process of normalizing various categories of unusual sexual behavior. It standardized the terms of indentures and slave contracts, and specified duties that the owner had toward the subject of the indenture, mostly to avoid having people show up as public charges when the owner got tired of them.
When the dust settled, it turned out that a small, but by no means insignificant proportion of the population liked the security that an indenture provided. It also fit into the world view of a number of fundamentalist religious sects. Not very incidentally, it prohibited ownership of indentures by other than individuals except for slave dealers, and then it gave strict limits on how long a dealer was allowed to keep a slave. Going into the later part of the 21st century, seeing someone with a slave collar was no longer an occasion for comment.
We put a bronze slave collar on her image, and continued our virtual shopping expedition.
The next problem was, of course, my hooves. My tail wasn’t an issue; tails were common enough on Freehold that the automated designers had a wide variety of styles for just about every use that accommodated them. My ears were a secondary consideration; fashionable evening wear had to meld everything into a harmonious whole.
So I asked Annabelle for permission to engage a human designer. She chuckled and granted it without any fuss. The final result was definitely different. The thing that surprised me was the boots: they fit over my hooves very comfortably, and gave me as much traction as I was used to without damaging the floors. I made certain the designer got an award.
Terry wasn’t nearly as hard to outfit, fortunately. Once the human fashion consultant programmed the new design into the system and we settled on my evening outfits, she ran off several complementary outfits for Terri.
The hard part was the meeting with the Temple Island Council. While I was on good terms with the council, we all knew that setting policy for the program was going to be strenuous, to say the least. It didn’t help that they knew that whatever came out of our discussions wasn’t going to be final, either, and that a group of foreign enthusiasts over which they had no control was going to have significant input. The Enclave Control Committee didn’t bother them anywhere near as much. They’d lived with Annabelle for twenty years, and I had proved to be relatively easy to work with.
So we had the whole afternoon blocked out. Not only was the council chamber packed, but there were several notables from the guilds, as well as delegates from the Ubar of Glorious Ar and the Queen of the Amazons.
Needless to say, everyone wore their most formal robes, and there were enough Holiness’s floating through the conversation to send everyone to heaven on short notice. I didn’t have any formal robes, so I got together with the winemaker that actually headed the cult and we designed something that had a brown skirt and a green top with a pattern of grape vines and bunches of ripe grapes. We put a bunch of grapes over each breast, with the vines coming out of the general vicinity of my naval. He’d wanted to decorate my tail as a grape vine, and add leaves and vines through my air, but I demurred. Strongly. Well, it was the Dionysus cult, after all. I wore my new boots, and held my hair back with a simple turquoise circlet.
His Holiness Tarl had set up a throne at the far end so that he could run the meeting with something like dispatch.
As I expected, the meeting dragged on, and on, and on. I think the only thing that kept it from turning into a holy war was the air conditioning I’d surreptitiously set up. That, and the fact that several of the Holinesses had caught on to the technique of finding the boundaries of common ground before trying to come up with concrete proposals.
We didn’t settle anything. I don’t think anyone expected we would. At least, though, we got the possibilities thoroughly explored, and there was more of a feeling that people were singing from the same hymnal.
Annabelle had made herself conspicuous by her absence. That turned out to be a good thing, especially once it got through to everyone that while I knew roughly what her position was, I wasn’t in any hurry to either get people to agree to it or implement it.
I think, for me the high point came at the end. As people were leaving, I saw the delegate from the Queen talking quietly with the delegate from the Ubar. She caught my eye, and I went over to see what they had to say. It turned out that they actually agreed that a meeting between their principles might be possible – at least if one or more of the more diplomatic Holinesses was there to mediate. Of course I agreed! Getting an enclave council set up was the next thing on Her Holiness’ agenda, after all.
That evening I found the next curve. I brought over the new outfits so Terri and I could get familiar with them. When we unpacked them, I saw Terri looking at them with a bit of a frown on her face.
“I suppose it’s time for makeup class.”
“I can do makeup,” she said. “He never trained us on wearing anything but slave livery and sexy lingerie.”
“Then we practice. We’ll start with the traveling outfit.”
I gestured, and she pulled the tie that kept the slave tunic together at the shoulder. A moment later, it puddled at her feet.
“Start out with the gaff,” I said.
“The gaff?”
“This.” I pointed at it. “The well dressed she-male needs to look female in public.” She struggled with it and finally got herself properly tucked in. A few minutes later, she had finished dressing herself in slacks and a blouse. She picked out her accessories herself.
“Pretty good,” I complemented her. She blushed prettily. We both knew that the blush was a conditioned reaction, but I still thought that it made her a bit more likeable.
“Now practice walking,” I told her. “You’ll do an hour in those heels, and then you’ll change to your conference outfit and the three inch heels, and practice for another hour.”
“Slave driver,” she grinned at me.
“Slave,” I grinned back. “Start now while Sasha fetches our dinner. We’ll eat in tonight. You won’t be wearing your slave tunic until we come back.” Sasha got up from where she was sitting on her heels, and left, giving us an exaggerated hip sway as she left as if to show us who the real woman was.
That night, I locked Terri’s and Faith’s slave collars to the chains at the foot of the bed while I had Sasha pleasure me. Sasha is, of course, exquisite, but that wasn’t the reason for the arrangement. I was going to have Terri all to myself for the week of the conference, and while Sasha is a trained bisexual, Faith still has a way to go both to enjoy sex with a woman, and to do it well. While Terri looks and acts female, sexually she’s still very male, and as long as Faith is making progress on pleasuring women, I’m going to reward her with Terri.
The next morning, we got an early start. Sasha brought up a tray while I checked that Terri was presentable. I needn’t have worried; Terri was obsessive about presenting a pleasing image, and the walking practice last night was all she needed to find her balance and settle on graceful movement with both outfits.
We teleported directly to customs, arriving in a bit of a shadow so we wouldn’t be noticed, and then added ourselves to the line. Eventually, we got to the head and walked to the customs examiner. He made to wave Terri off until he noticed her slave collar. I handed him both of our IDs. He put them in his machine, and I watched his eyebrows go up.
“I’ve never seen a Dodecahedron endorsement,” he said. “Normally, they don’t bother going through customs.”
I shrugged. “I’m on a joint project between Freehold and the Dodecahedron.”
He shook his head and then handed our IDs back. “The system accepted it, so you’re done here. Enjoy your stay.” Terri grabbed the handle of our luggage, and we walked through the gate.
So what’s going to happen in the conference? And we do seem to be getting the political pot stirred a bit. Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of Gor Meets Amazonia!
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