The Warrior Victorious

5

“This is it,” Kel-Ten said after opening the door and pulling me inside by the hand he held, then closing the door behind us. “What do you think of your new cage?”

The room we had entered was Just short of enormous, and was more opulent than anything I’d seen in a very long time. Deep, luxurious carpeting and expensive drapes in gold, shimmering crystal decorations and accompaniments, couches, chairs, tables, sideboards-everything perfectly matched in varying tones of gold, a visitors’ room unlikely to find its equal anywhere but Central’s State House. Getting to the apartment had been like moving through the most expensive and exclusive visitors’ Residence ever built, and remembering the dormitory room and narrow corridors of .the women’s section of that facility, I couldn’t help but find my new surroundings annoying.

“I believe it would be more accurate to say that this is your cage,” I answered, pretending to dismiss the room after the single glance around. “After what I’ve seen, I can’t deny that you and those like you need cages; it would just be more appropriate if there were heavy bars and keepers with whips to go along with the rest.”

“What makes you think there aren’t?” he asked, looking down at me with that amusement lurking behind the light of his eyes. “This isn’t my apartment, it’s the apartment of the highest ranking male Prime, whoever that happens to be. Right now I’m it, but that could change the very next time I’m challenged. Take my word for the fact that the next lower apartment is about a third the size of this one. ”

“Oh, you poor thing,” I commiserated, shaking my head with the tragedy of it all. “If you lose you have to move into an apartment a full third smaller than this. Why, that would make its visitors’ room only ten or fifteen feet square, with a mere eight-foot ceiling. However would you stand it?”

“I get the feeling you’re not experiencing much in the way of sympathy for me,” he said, folding his arms as he tried to look stern, the effort doing nothing to extinguish his continuing amusement. “And after I went to all the trouble of finding and rescuing you from the bad guys. I think I’m going to have to remember the promise I made to punish you, but first there are other things to be taken care of. Right this way.”

He unfolded his arms to take my hand again, and then I was pulled after him toward an arch in the somewhat distant right-hand wall. The arch gave onto a short hall containing three closed doors, one directly ahead at the end of the hall, one to the left a bit before that one, and one to the right which was also the closest. The one to the right turned out to be our destination, and once we were through the doorway it also turned out to be a bathroom. Not your simple, ordinary bathroom, though, but one that went well with the acre of visitors’ room.

“The first thing you need is a bath,” my appropriator said, dropping my hand to go toward the giant’s tub sunk halfway into the thickly carpeted floor. “Water won’t do anything to counteract the reagent already absorbed through your skin, but it will get rid of what’s crystallized and clinging to the outside. The crystallized portion isn’t being diluted and washed away by your bloodstream, so that’s what’s continuing to cause you most of the pain. When we get rid of that, you’ll find yourself feeling a good deal better.”

So that was why they’d used sonics to clean me instead of taking me to the shower area. I remembered wondering about that, and now I’d been given the answer. But I’d also been given another question or two, and there was no reason not to ask them.

“How do you know what they did to me?” I asked his back as he studied the bathtub dials set in the wall behind and to the right of the tub. “I wasn’t aware of the fact that their procedures were general knowledge. And why should you care whether or not I’m in pain? Your-own kind-by the name of Jer-Mar was delighted to have me that way, and would have been more delighted still to have the pain increased. I don’t see that much of a difference between you two.”

“Now, that is an insult you won’t be getting away with,” he answered, turning his head to give me a hard look over his shoulder. “When the day comes that I’m defeated, it won’t be by a low-class incompetent like him. And even if everyone in this facility gets to the point of being able to walk all over me, he still won’t be anything like my kind. My kind is human, and Jer-Mar doesn’t qualify. As soon as the tub is full, get out of that window pane and start soaking.”

His finger poked at a stud on the wall, and water began pouring into the tub from four separate spouts, each one shaped like a golden pitcher set on its side. The faint scent of perfume began rising into the room on the warm air shimmering up from the rapidly filling tub, a scent very much like that of flower petals.

“I don’t like having perfume added to my bath water,” I said, noticing that he was walking over to a dry-chair rather than leaving. “And I also don’t like having an audience while I bathe. If you’re afraid I’ll try sneaking out with the washing only half done, you can set up a guard post and inspection station at the front door. This isn’t . . . ”

“That’s enough,” he said as he settled into the chair, loosening the golden ascot at his throat just a little. He hadn’t raised his voice to anything like a shout, but the way he was looking at me turned the two words into a flat-voiced order he didn’t seem prepared to have ignored. “I know I’ve been letting you say just about anything you cared to, but that doesn’t mean you’re in charge. I’m the one who’s in charge, so stop telling me what you do and don’t like. You haven’t been here long enough to have an opinion, and even if you had been, mine comes first. I’ll be very upset if these facts of life do anything to ruin the beautiful friendship that’s started between us, but I’m also certain I’ll survive. Now, get out of that thing and into the water.”

Once he’d said his piece he turned his attention to flipping open the arm of the dry-chair to reach the drinkorder pad, and a moment later a glass of wine rose up on the small stand put out from the right side of the chair. I turned my back as he reached for the glass, having no interest in waiting until his eyes were on me again, and then began getting out of the transparent green robe. If bathing hadn’t meant I’d be rid of that still-burning pain I would have turned and walked out of there, but I knew well enough I’d need all the help I could get once he sent me back to the women’s section. Which would probably be in a short enough time, if his annoyance meant what annoyance usually did. I felt nothing in the way of desire to be sent back, but that permanently angry, stubbornly refusing part of me would not let me do anything to make sure that I wasn’t.

The robe part of my outfit came off easily enough, but when I tried unhooking the golden metal girdle, I found myself with something of a problem. I’d apparently been too out of sorts to notice that Jer-Mar had reattached the short chain to the front of the thing, and I couldn’t quite see the way of opening it again. Because of that I had to reach around to the back of the girdle rather than slide it to where I could see what I was doing, and had to try getting it open by touch alone. Since it hadn’t taken long to put on it must have had a relatively simple catch, but all my fingers found were rounded links with nothing that seemed made to be opened. I worked at it long enough to begin wondering if I could slide it off over my hips once I was wet and soapy, but before I could decide definitely to try it, an alternate suggestion was put forward to me.

“Come over here, and I’ll get that open for you,” my audience said, sounding as though he’d been watching my struggles for a while. I didn’t have to think about it very long to know I didn’t like the idea, but when I tried pretending I hadn’t heard it I was firmly disagreed with.

“I said, get your tail over here,” he repeated in a harder voice, but not one that seemed totally out of patience. “If I have to come over to you, you won’t like what happens.”

“I’m not likely to enjoy it either way,” I pointed out, still not turning back to look at him. “The question I’m wondering about now, though, is which one will turn out to be the worst of the two. Since I have my suspicions, I think I’ll stay right where I am.”

I’d been fighting with that stupid girdle even as I’d spoken, hoping I could get it off and solve the problem that way, but nothing had worked out right for me since I’d opened my eyes that morning. Instead of finding the catch I was looking for, I suddenly found myself being pulled into two strong arms. A hand came to my face to turn it upward, and then I was being kissed with an odd kind of full attention, as though something in particular was being looked for. I was given two or three kisses of the same sort, and then Kel-Ten raised his brows.

“That’s strange, you do taste like a girl,” he said, sounding as though he thought I wouldn’t. “If you taste like one you probably are one, but I didn’t think there were any girls like you left in the entire universe. Backtalk instead of breathless agreement, thinking for yourself instead of expecting me to do it for you. I’d love to be able to get used to that again, but I’m afraid my enjoyment would be your eventual pain. You can’t act like that around here, soft and lovely, or they’ll take everything from behind your eyes and leave nothing but the shell. We both know they’ve tried delivering that message to you, but until now you’ve been refusing receipt. We’re going to have to work on teaching you how to be a good girl before sending you back, or you’ll end up just like all the others. And that is something I won’t allow.”

He finished his speech on a more sober note than he’d started it with, and the look in his light eyes had developed a stubbornness to match. I still didn’t understand what he was after—or trust him in any way at all—but he wasn’t waiting for a show of cooperation. As a matter of fact, he didn’t wait for anything at all. Before I knew what was happening I was turned around, the girdle was opened, and then a smack to the bottom sent me forward toward the tub.

“Now you can get into the water,” my volunteer assistant said, the amusement back in his voice. “I added the perfume to discourage myself from joining you, but if you take much longer perfume won’t be enough of a discouragement. Of course, if you want company in there . . . ”

Glancing over my shoulder showed he was grinning as he let the words trail off, but that didn’t mean he ryas joking. His one-piece, gold formal suit would not take long to get out of, and his fingering of my bottom while opening the girdle had definitely been deliberate rather than accidental. My answer to his uncompleted question was to quickly climb the tub steps and then move down into the water, and by the time I’d lowered myself into the wet, delicious warmth, he was already on his way back to the dry-chair.

I hadn’t been completely sure he’d been telling the truth about the water easing my pain, and for the first couple of minutes it didn’t. The smack to the bottom he’d given me hadn’t been gentle, and that combined with the remnants of the liquid treatment I’d had made sitting on the tile of the tub uncomfortable. I was trying to figure out what I would do if the water didn’t help, when I noticed that what had been left of the glitter on the ends of my breasts was just about all washed away. Right after that the pain began thinning in a way I could feel, and once started the withdrawal didn’t stop until there was only a shadow left of what it had been. I took a deep breath and moved myself over to a headrest, able to relax for what felt like the first time in a thousand years.

“Now that you’re rid of most of what they did to you, you might consider taking a break on the biting and scratching you’ve been doing in my direction,” Kel-Ten said, drawing my eyes to where he sat in the dry-chair with his glass of wine. “I know that the treatment you got was partially my fault, but I think I made up for it by not letting it happen a second time. Do you think you might try seeing it that way?”

What I thought was that I didn’t understand a word he was saying, and the way I frowned at him must have told him so. He sipped at his wine while showing a very faint smile, and then he shook his head.

“No, Kel-Ten, dear, I don’t think I can see it that way without having everything explained to me,” he said in a high, squeaky voice accompanied by a very bright smile. Then he changed the brightness to a wise-looking, very solemn smile and said in his own voice, “I suppose I was expecting that, girl dear. You’re not yet ready to take my word for things, foolish though that proves you to be. And by the way, what name is there for me to use in place of ‘girl’? Just in case you happen to end up in a crowd of females, and I need to call you.”

By then he was looking at me again, this time waiting patiently for an answer. I knew that everyone I’d met in that place was a good deal stranger than average, but Kel-Ten topped them all by quite a bit.

“The name I’ve so far gone through life with is Terrilian,” I grudged in reply, half wondering why I was bothering. “Are you always this crazy, or are you making a special effort on my account?”

“Sometimes I’m even crazier,” he said with more of a grin than a smile, nodding at me as though in thanks. “Not long after I got here I learned that I had to act crazy, or I’d end up going crazy. The only time I refrain is during a challenge, but that’s not what this is. Or at least not exactly. I take it, Terrilian, you’d like those questions you asked earlier to be answered now.”

“I would have preferred having the questions I asked earlier to be answered earlier,” I answered, splashing some of the delightful water over my shoulders. “Now I have even more questions, and since there’s going to be a wait between asking and answering, I’m going to have to keep track of them all. The only problem is, I’m getting too sleepy to keep track.”

“If that’s the only problem, you can forget about it,” he said, his grin widening. “Once you’re out of that tub, I’ll see to it that you’re feeling something other than sleepy. But to get back to our original topic of conversation. What makes what happened to you partially my fault is the fact that I heard about you not long after they let you wake up, but I couldn’t come looking until after you’d already gotten into trouble. I was in the middle of a training session when the word reached me, and even the First Prime doesn’t get to walk out of a training session.”

His expression had gone from amusement to tight-jawed anger, what seemed like the same sort of raging, burning fury feeding my own core of anger. I still didn’t know why he would feel that way, but he seemed to mentally brush the emotion aside and then went on.

“It isn’t often one of the incoming girls breaks out as soon as you did,” he said, pausing to take a measured sip of his wine. “That in itself would have started the word on its rounds, but the better part of the story made it move even faster. We heard the new girl had marked up that fat fool Gearing, and the Secs vine was confirming it even before we stopped laughing. That was when I knew I had to try getting my hands on you, but I couldn’t rush out of the training session. I couldn’t even sneak out, not when everyone else’s efforts were being measured against mine, so I had to wait until it was over. Once it was, I showered and changed clothes, then rushed over to the low dining room-only to find you’d already had a run-in with Jer-Mar. If cursing had the ability to dissolve metal, this whole facility would right then have come down on everyone’s head. ”

He allowed himself a swallow of wine that time, his expression a sour grimace, and the wine didn’t do much to sweeten it.

“I’d been hoping you would be on the unattractive side to keep the boy Primes in the low world from noticing you, but it didn’t work out that way,” he said after the wine was swallowed. “I didn’t waste my time hoping you’d be smart enough to go along with the usual routine; what you did to Gearing proved you wouldn’t be, and when I. found I was too late I thought it was all over. There have been others over the past couple of years who started making something of a fuss when they first broke out, but none of their fussing lasted beyond the first punishment. I suppose I went back to the low after dinner to see the latest ex-human I’d missed out on, and imagine my surprise when I discovered there was no ex about you. You were giving me a second chance to play rescuing hero, so I lost no time in doing it and here you are.”

“And here I am,” I agreed, pleased to find there was soap in the water as well as perfume. “Kidnapped-excuse me-rescued by a total stranger who heard about the sparkling conversation I was capable of, and who therefore rushed right over to make sure it was him I spoke to. That has to be the most touching story I’ve ever heard.”

“You’re thinking I’m interested in something other than conversation from you,” he said, crossing his legs as he grinned at me. “I can’t imagine what would give you an idea like that, because it so happens it is conversation I’m after. From someone like me, someone who remembers a real life among real worlds. You have no idea how few of us there are.”

I had no doubt that this time I could see pain in his light eyes, a kind of pain I was sure he didn’t usually show to people. He emptied his glass and ordered another glass of wine from the chair, and when it came he took it and smiled at me.

“I’ve been here more than five years,” he said, gesturing with the glass. “Exactly how much more than five years, I don’t really know. Time has a habit of moving strangely in this place, and sometimes you lose track. I grew up on Nopalt and spent my adult life working as a Prime for the Amalgamation—and then I was sent here. I thought it was just another Mediation assignment, but they gave me a room, took away my personal possessions, and told me my real name was Kel-Ten. It was the name I’d been assigned when I was born here on New Dawn, and had the sort of meaning the name I’d been using all my life didn’t. They told me I’d been brought back to see how my training results compared with the results of Primes not only born here but raised here as well. And then they told me I had my pick of the women—after the Primes of higher level first made their choices—but that I was responsible first for covering the women assigned to me. I’d most likely be able to handle pleasure as well as duty, but duty always had to come first. ”

Another swallow of wine went down his throat, one that gave me the impression he wanted to drain the glass, but he didn’t drain it. He took only that one swallow, then rested the glass on the arm of his chair.

“At first I couldn’t believe how lucky I was,” he went on, an odd smile curving his lips as his eyes examined a scene in the elsewhere. “I was going to have my ability trained beyond anything I’d ever thought was possible, and while that was going on I could have just about any female I wanted. The other men I met who had grown up among the worlds felt just the way I did, like we’d died without noticing it and had found there was such a thing as a final reward. We were worked hard in our training classes, but any time we weren’t working it was party time! Party time.”

He repeated the words with something of a small laugh that might have been part sigh, and then his eyes were on me again.

“Have you any idea how boring partying can get to be?” he asked, but not in a way that showed he expected to be answered. “I’ll admit it took a while before I found out, and the revelation came not long after I began being seriously involved with challenging. It felt as though I were going from one level to the next with hardly a pause in between, and people stopped betting on who would win when I issued a challenge. It always turned out that I won, and the defending Prime never got off easy. I finally noticed how much time my ex-opponents were spending in Medical recovering, and then I noticed that being idolized by each and every woman I took to bed was beginning to turn my stomach. I thought about it for a little while, and then I went to my section leader and told him I wanted to go back to Nopalt and the life of nothing more than a Mediator.”

He was watching me fairly closely at that point, and the expression I surely developed brought back his amusement.

“No, don’t bother telling me you said the same thing as soon as you found out where you were,” he interposed, raising one hand. “I can almost hear you doing it, but I was a bit more courteous than that. And don’t forget that I’d been here a while, and had done everything asked of me. I walked in expecting them to try talking me out of it but eventually agreeing, and very quickly found out how naive I was being. My section leader laughed and told me to go back to doing what I was supposed to be doing, and then ignored the few protests I managed to get out before the Secs showed up. I was escorted back to my apartment and left alone, after being reminded that I had a training class in a little while. I also had two women I was supposed to thrill after the class was over, but I decided then and there that I didn’t give a damn. I’d go to no more classes and issue no more challenges, and to hell with the women. When they found they couldn’t make me do things their way, they’d have no choice but to turn me loose.

“I can’t believe I really was that naive,” he said, and this time there was no doubt about the sigh. “When I didn’t show up for the class they sent someone to find out if I was sick, and when they saw I wasn’t I was scheduled for the full treatment. I didn’t find out my wine had been drugged until I woke up most of the way, and then began learning what life would be like in place of what it had been. I was in this tiny cell of a room on the floor, mainly because there was no bed or any other kind of furniture, and I’d been stripped almost naked. Refusal to participate meant removal of privileges, all of them, with nothing but duty slipped in to fill the vacancies. I was mad enough to start out not caring what they took, but that didn’t last long.

“The first thing taught me was that although I refused to go to class and learn, I wasn’t finished with challenges. The only difference was that I wasn’t the one issuing them, and the upper level Primes had been released from needing to refrain from working over someone not yet up to their abilities. Several times a day I was forced out of the cell by Secs to walk around the complex, and every time I came across an upper level Prime he slammed me. Half the time I was too groggy to know what was happening, and another quarter of the time I was in too much pain to care. The last quarter was when I made my trips to Medical, and they always made very sure I experienced every minute of the visit.”

He paused again at that point, and his eyes had gone to the wine instead of staying with me. He seemed to be having trouble putting what he wanted to say into words, and somehow I was certain that embarrassment made up a good part of his hesitation. He struggled very briefly in silence, and then, still without looking at me, forced himself to go on.

“Remember that I said duty was all they left me,” he groped, trying to make the words come out round instead of square. “One of my very first duties was seeing to the women they assigned me to, and the quality of the stock had improved as I moved higher up the ladder. When I lost everything I also lost access to those women, but I was still responsible for covering them. They dragged me to Medical every day, and-made the process less direct and a hell of a lot less pleasant. I knew damned well that it didn’t have to be every day, that just once should have taken care of the matter for a good long time, but they weren’t interested in my opinions. They waited until I was stupid enough to yell out something to that effect, and then they punished me. They gave me an injection to make sure I would be more cooperative the next time I was brought there, and locked me into a special-belt-to keep me from lessening the urge to cooperate on my own. After that I was walked around the complex again to give my former peers a chance to laugh at me, and then I was thrown back in my cell to suffer without distraction. ”

The anger in him had grown so high that it was a good thing the glass he held wasn’t really glass. If it had been, the hand wrapped around it would have been badly cut when the delicate thing shattered. The symglass actually squeaked in protest at the pressure he was putting on it, something I’d never seen happen before, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“After that the injections became a regular thing, and they added a special stop to my schedule,” he continued, still not looking at me. “Once a day I was left in a small room that was all viewing window, and given the chance to look at the higher level girls I would have been covering if I’d still been cooperating. The viewing room looked out into the falls and streams area built for the girls to play and bathe in, and although I could see and hear them, they didn’t know I was there. When the Sees discovered I was trying to beat down the walls to get to the girls, the word was passed along and from then on I was tied before being put in there. They kept me at it until I began screaming mindlessly twenty minutes or more before I was due to be put in, and then they sprang something on me I wasn’t prepared for. Instead of being sent to the viewing room, I was tied and put in a room that held six real, true, breathing girls. Six willing girls, eager to be honored.

At first I was stunned, and then I was too crazy to be stunned,” he said with a growl. “It had been weeks since the last time I’d touched a female, and I would have been hurting even without those injections. With them I was a madman, and I was so happy it didn’t even bother me that I was tied. Those girls didn’t have to be chased, they were ready to beg me to honor them, so what did a few straps matter? I ordered the nearest one to her back, went to my knees next to her—and only then remembered the belt I was locked into. I’d tried getting it off before and hadn’t even been able to dent the damned thing, not even when my hands were free. The girl I’d chosen began whimpering and begging, and the last thing I remember is her hand touching my thigh. That started the screaming again, but everything after that is a blank.”

He stopped to take another measured swallow of wine, and I couldn’t help but admire his self-control. If those had been my memories pouring out like that, I would have needed to compensate with a comparable flow of something bracing pouring in. My mind searched for appropriate comments, didn’t find any, and then it was too late.

“I don’t know how long I was out of it, but when I woke up I was in a small apartment, dressed again in civilized clothing, and no longer hurting,” he went on, slumped back in the chair with his eyes on his knees. “It was almost possible to believe I’d dreamt the whole thing, especially when the assistant section leader came in, greeted me as though I’d been away a short while on vacation, then walked with me to the challenge room. Inside the room was the Prime I’d been next scheduled to challenge, still laughing at me the way he’d been doing for weeks. I suddenly found myself with this terrible need to flatten him, and although he was harder than the ones I’d faced before him, it didn’t take long before I did it. Once he was down a whole crowd of people came in to pound my back and congratulate me, just the way they used to do, and the assistant leader waited only a few minutes before laughingly rescuing me from the crowd. After that I was led to a room where two upper level females were waiting, and was told they were all mine. It wasn’t until I was lying flat in exhaustion and the females were gone, that I really understood what had been done to me. They’d led me right back to the point I’d strayed from, and were giving me the chance to start over again with no hard feelings.”

“Which you apparently took,” I said, having finally found a comment to make. It might not have been the most diplomatic comment ever uttered, but I’d been waiting to hear that they’d found they couldn’t break him and had offered something to make him change his mind instead. That they’ll defeated him was something I didn’t want to hear, not then and not ever. For some reason I felt it was wrong that he’d been defeated, wrong and totally unacceptable.

“Damned right I took it,” he said, finally looking up at me again. “I’d been taught the hard way that I couldn’t hope to beat them by bashing my brains out against the walls they’d built around me. All that would have accomplished would have been to make me a smear on the floor to be washed off and forgotten about. Just in case you have no personal knowledge on the subject, let me assure you that that isn’t the best of all possible things to be.”

“You consider it better to be someone who’s sold out?” I asked, noticing almost peripherally that the water I sat in had begun to cool. I moved away from the headrest and wet my hair, then used both hands to squeeze it out. Since I knew I wouldn’t be there for much longer, I decided it would be best if I washed as much of me as fast as I could.

“The position and outfit I found you in said you did some selling of your own,” he came back, but not as sharply as I was expecting. “And Jer-Mar did mention something about you starting out the evening apologizing to him. Pain has a way of turning even someone with the most inflexible code of bravery practical, and only its easing and disappearance lets the nonsense come back. Don’t get out of the tub without first showering off in clean water. You don’t want to leave a film of that reagent still on you in places, just waiting to dry out.”

I had already begun standing when he said that, and I didn’t need to think about it to know he was right. At least about the showering part. I moved over to the white and gold shower block and stepped up onto it, waited while the clean water came at me from both above and below, then left the block to walk the tub rim to its edge. Just beyond the tub on the floor a section of the carpeting had been turned into a drip-mat, and a .fluffy white towel sat folded on a raised pedestal beside the mat. I stepped off and got the towel, and only when it was wrapped around me did I turn to Kel-Ten again.

“Sometimes pain can force you into making the wrong decisions,” I said, watching him sip his wine as he listened and watched me back. “It lies to you and tells you everything will be all right if only you give in, but everything doesn’t turn out all right- You find that giving in hurts more than the pain did, but doesn’t even allow you the luxury of unconsciousness when it reaches the unbearable level. I’ve heard it said that enough pain can kill you, even if those giving you the pain are trying to keep you alive. People do make mistakes, a possibility not too farfetched to spend your time hoping for. Or, maybe I should say it’s something I’ll be spending my time hoping for. And I’m ready to go back now.”

“To the hope of that possibility,” he said, his light eyes filled with something very much like anger. “You still don’t understand why I brought you here, do you? Did you somehow get the idea I have a thing about wanting to bathe female newcomers? Or that I enjoy being insulted by idealistic infants who have managed to move through life without learning anything about it? Come over here.”

“I can see and hear anything I have to from where I am,” I returned, holding the towel more tightly around me. “To prove it, I can show you what I’ve already seen. For you, giving in means being forced to enjoy the satisfaction of success over your competition, of having tocover-all those women, of needing to live in luxury. For me it means becoming little more than a slave, accepting constant humiliation and even more constant rape. Someone once told me you can’t enslave a free man or free a slave, no matter how hard you try. A free man will still be free even with chains weighing him down, and a slave, unchained, will soon crawl back to his fetters. I can’t quite remember who said it, but I have the feeling he meant it to refer to women as well as men. I’ve been spending enough breath saying I’m not a slave; I think the time has come to try proving it.”

I somehow had the feeling he could be swayed to my way of looking at things if I spoke with enough belief and conviction, which I thought my speech had had. When he put his wine glass aside with a sound of annoyance and got to his feet, I began wondering if I weren’t mistaken. He didn’t look very convinced, and the closer he got the less swayed he seemed to be. It occurred to me it might be wise to take a step or two back from him, but the thought came the least bit too late. Even before I could decide whether or not that would constitute backing down as well as up, he bent and lifted me off the floor in his arms.

“You’re going to learn that when I tell you to do something, you’d better do it,” he said, ignoring my yelp of startlement as he turned back toward his dry-chair. “The practice will come in handy for use around section leaders and Secs as well as the Primes you’re assigned to, and won’t turn out to be a waste with me, either. Unquestioning adoration may make me queasy, but I’ve discovered I enjoy having women obey me. Life turns out less complicated that way, and at the moment I have all the complications I need.”

By that time he was sitting back down in the chair, settling me into his lap as though carefully tending to an infant. My being all wrapped up in that towel may have given him the impression he was dealing with a child, but just because he thought it didn’t make it so. The volume of air inside the dry-chair’s radius was as moisture free as the rest of the bathroom was steamy, the object, of course, being to keep any nonbather from wilting. Being brought out of the heat like that may have felt good, but it didn’t do anything to cool me down.

“I think you’d better have your hearing checked,” I stated, trying to bring my arms out of the towel without completely uncovering myself. “I have no need to learn anything where section leaders and Secs—and most especially Primes-are concerned, because I have no intentions of being anywhere near any of them. I will not cooperate with what everybody considers unavoidable, and that decision will stand no matter how much they hurt me. Now, let me go so I can get out of here.”

“Don’t you think it’s time to leave that fantasy world behind?” he asked, his left arm firmly around my waist to hold me where he’d put me. “The leaders would enjoy having your cooperation, but the full, dirty truth is, they don’t need it. If you don’t come around permanently the second time they give you pain, the next thing they’ll give you is a vacant smile, which will mean they never have to worry about the problem again. Don’t you understand that they’d prefer having your mind left alive, but all they really need is your body? Do you want to be turned into a willing and agreeable vegetable incapable of any sort of thoughts at all?”

He was looking straight at me as he asked his question, and because of that didn’t miss seeing my shudder. Most people believed that to kill the I in someone was the same as killing their body, but what would happen if it wasn’t? What would happen if some very tiny portion of that I was left, deep down and too small to change anything, but not too small to know what was happening? How could I go on living like that—and how would I find it possible do anything else?

“Okay, now, you’re finally beginning to understand,” he said gently as he held me to him, his arms tight to keep my shuddering from getting out of control. “You thought you were ahead of the game by being able to tell them to go ahead and hurt you and be damned, but now you know that isn’t true. You weren’t lucky you weren’t cowed into submission by the first punishment they gave, you had the bad luck to be shifted into line for a lot worse. If you can bring yourself to believe that, and believe as well that you have no choice about cooperating, we’ll have exactly the starting point we need.”

“How can you call that a starting point?” I demanded, sick to my stomach as I tried to push away from him. “Is it totally impossible for you to understand what they want me to do’? I don’t want to be covered at somebody else’s direction, bred like an animal over and over and over! I can’t let them do that to me, and I won’t!”

“You can’t stop it,” he told me bluntly, the patience gone from his eyes as he refused to let me go. “You can do as they ask and be a part of the program, or you can try fighting them and be made a part of the program. The second way you haven’t any chance at all of ever stopping it; the first way you can cooperate with me as well, without them knowing it, and together we might just find some way out of this. If you don’t understand yet that I want out as badly as you do, you may not be the one I’ve been waiting for after all.”

The look in his light eyes had hardened so far I wished fleetingly that I could move back from him, and then I really heard what he’d said. He thought I might be the one he’d been “waiting” for, that he and I might do-something-together. Irrationally bright hope flashed briefly inside me, then dimmed fast when it found nothing in the way of fuel to feed on.

“Of course you’ve been waiting for someone like me,” I said, finding disbelief easier to deal with than a hope that would almost certainly be betrayed. “I’m so very special that even those who run this place were waiting breathlessly for my arrival. What sort of reward do they give you, I wonder, if you manage to talk one of the animals into being good? I believe that they’re not very anxious to burn my mind away, probably for the same reason they got such bad results from their in vitro experiment, but what do you get out of helping them? What do they give someone already so burdened with privilege and luxury?”

“What in hell was done to you to make you so full of distrust?” he asked in turn, narrowing his eyes as he ignored everything I’d said. “You can’t be reacting just to this place alone, not with only a single day behind you. After what you went through you should be confused, frightened, unsure, maybe even bitter—but not so completely unwilling to trust anyone. What were you involved in before they brought you here?”

“I-don’t remember,” I said, finding his stare uncomfortable. “For some reason they don’t want me remembering, so they took the memory away. But that doesn’t change anything at all. Since there’s absolutely nothing I can do to help you, your wanting me to ‘cooperate’ can mean only one thing: you let them buy you, just the way you let them convince you to be good. I won’t . . .”

“You won’t keep your mouth closed long enough to let anybody disagree with your flawless logic,” he interrupted, now looking annoyed. “And if I hear you tell me one more time that I sold out my humanity for comfort and reward- Well, you won’t like what happens. For now let’s talk about all that nothing you can do to help me. What makes you think there’s nothing you can do?”

“Only the admittedly obscure fact that I’m still right where they want me,” I answered, unable to understand what point he could possibly be trying to make. “And if you wonderful male Primes, with all your secret training and experience meeting challenges, can’t do anything to get out, what do you expect me to be able to do?”

“Nobody said we couldn’t get out,” he returned with a headshake and a faint grin. “We wonderful male Primes slip out of the complex all the time as a joke, but that’s all the others see it as: a joke. None of them would ever seriously try to leave, most of them enjoy it here too much. The ones who don’t enjoy it also don’t have the guts to try making a break, so that leaves me as one of a kind. I know what’s necessary to get out of here, but I can’t do it alone. I need another Prime to do it with me.”

I opened my mouth to say. something else, but suddenly the words refused to come. His expression had turned serious and the least bit strained, as though waiting for my reaction to what I’d been told. For a moment or two I had no reaction, and then I slowly shook my head.

“But I’m not whole,” I said, knowing it for a fact even though I wouldn’t have been able to explain the statement. “They’ve-done something to me, and I’m not whole. I can’t be of help to you like this, and you should know it. And if you’ve already learned what’s necessary to get out of here, you shouldn’t need anyone else. A trained Prime shouldn’t need anyone else.”

“I wish that were true,” he said with a smile, raising one hand to smooth back my still-damp hair. He didn’t seem to believe what I’d said, but I somehow knew it was the absolute truth. A trained Prime who was complete should be able to do anything she wanted to do. Had been able to do anything she wanted to do. My arms tightened the towel against my body as my mind searched for the basis of that conviction, but I simply couldn’t reach it. It was with the rest of my memories, locked away out of prodding range, closed behind a door I still battered uselessly against.

“It might be true under other circumstances that a Prime doesn’t need any help, but not when it comes to getting out of here,” Kel-Ten went on, still with an indulgent smile on his face. “This complex has the highest number of Class Zeroes ever assembled, and just about all of them are in male Prime territory. It takes a minimum of two active minds to slide around enough to avoid them, but you won’t understand that until you can see and feel the situation for yourself. Which you will when I key you awake.”

“But how can you possibly do that?” I demanded, only his hold on me keeping me from straightening indignantly. “I may not remember much about it, but one thing I can bring back is that empaths don’t have that sort of information, not even First Prime empaths.”

“You can thank the boyish high spirits this place breeds for the fact that this First Prime does have it,” he said, deep satisfaction brightening in his eyes. “A couple of years ago some of us cornered one of the medical staff, and forced a bottle of wine down his throat. We didn’t like the man, and had decided to turn him loose drunk among some high girls after telling them he was a newly-arrived Prime. That would have gotten him fried for sure, only we made the mistake of doing our own drinking while we poured his into him. Instead of setting him up, we all ended up laughing and joking like old friends, and when we mentioned our secret about what wed intended doing with the girls, he was so touched he began to cry. No one had ever told him a secret before, and after he’d heard ours he thought it was only fair if he told us one. The only secret he knew was the keying word to awaken female empaths, so he told it to us. By the next day no one could remember anything that had happened-except for one Prime who stopped drinking after getting this idea about escape . . . . ”

“Awake,” I said, feeling an oddness deep inside. “You can key me awake, and then I’ll be whole. But I don’t understand what you mean by Class Zeroes. What are they? ”

“If you’re an empath, you know them,” he answered, making something of a face. “They call them Class Zeroes around here, but out in the worlds they’re known as nulls. It was explained to us that they don’t like that name, so it’s never used. But you’d better take it slower, because you’re getting ahead of yourself. I can key you awake, but that won’t make you entirely whole. Before we can get ourselves out of here I’m going to have to give you some training, the sort of training we’ve been given. How fast you pick up on it will depend on your inborn abilities, but it has to be done. That’s why I told you you’d better get used to accepting what they have you scheduled for. Even the most basic sort of training will take time, and we can’t get along on basics. We’ll need more than that if we’re going to get out, and into a ship, and away. If you still think I’m working for the enemy you’d better say so now, and I’ll send you back to try out the plan you were talking about earlier. If you decide to go along with me you have to trust me completely and do everything I say, otherwise we’re both wasting our time. I need a decision from you now, but you can have a minute to think it over.”

He leaned back a little in the chair, his arm still around my waist, his eyes unmoving from my face. The choice of accepting or rejecting his offer was mine, but it wasn’t simply a matter of saying yes or no. If he was telling the truth I very much wanted to be a part of his plans, but if he was lying in order to get me to cooperate I would find nothing in agreement but betrayal. I could feel something inside me telling me not to trust him, that I would be sorry if I trusted him, but that something was patently ignoring the one point that kept me from outright and immediate refusal. If he was as important as he’d told me, and I had the reactions of the woman in yellow and the Prime Jer-Mar to show that he did seem to be exactly that, what would he get out of betraying me? There could be something to give him that I didn’t know about, but if there wasn’t, then he had to be telling the truth. Maybe. I bit my lip in vexation, wishing I had more than that minute to make a decision, then tried a temporization.

“You said you can key me awake,” I stated, trying to keep the eagerness out of my voice. “Do it now, and then there won’t be any doubt about our being partners. If you really do want me to help you.”

“Yes, I do want your help, but no, I won’t key you now,” he came back, firm decision in both eyes and voice. “In actual fact we will be partners, but there won’t ever be a time that I treat you like one. You have to remember that they’re not stupid, and if you forget even for a moment that I’m in complete charge they’re bound to get suspicious. Your-sisters in service-would never dare think themselves as good as a male Prime, so you won’t be given the chance to do it either. And we won’t ever discuss this unless we’re where we are right now, in a place whose usual field distorts any listening devices they may have planted. I won’t key you awake until I want you awake, and that’s it. Take it or leave it.”

He really was pushing the thing, almost as though he were trying to make me decide against saying yes—or was trying to be absolutely honest and straightforward about what I had to expect. It was much easier—and safer-believing he was hiding something, but until and unless I could find out if that was true, I couldn’t justify refusal. I had to take the only way out offered to me, no matter what I had to do to achieve it.

“All right, you win,” I grudged, not terribly happy about having to do things on his terms. “I help you after you train me, and then we leave together. It just better not take too long, or I won’t be able to keep up the pretense. ”

“Terrilian, you’d better understand right now that you won’t be pretending,” he said with a sigh, not as pleased as I’d thought he’d be. “If you try pretending it simply won’t work, so I’m going to give you my first decision as absolute leader of this effort: no matter how ready you turn out to be, we won’t make our try until after your first pregnancy. It may take even longer than that, but it won’t be sooner. Again, take it or leave it.”

The flatness in his tone brought the illness back to my middle with a stab of—I don’t know, fear, horror, flaring disappointment, maybe all three if not more. I wanted to scream out my denial of what he’d said, wanted to push away from him and just run without stopping, but his arms had closed around me again and he wouldn’t let me go.

“No, if you’re going to refuse you’ll do it in here, still in this chair,” he said, keeping me from struggling out of his hold. “I had to make you know that I don’t want your agreement unless you’re ready to commit yourself completely to my plans, just as completely as I’m committed. I’ve waited years for this chance, but I’ll wait years again rather than throw away all hope of success by having you ruin things. They know the difference between cooperation, no matter how reluctant, and a pretense at cooperation, so you can’t pretend. You have to accept the reality of one or more pregnancies before you can leave here, and you have to decide if you’re willing to pay that sort of price. One or two pregnancies against years and years of the same, and the decision has to be yours. Every other decision will be mine, but that one has to be yours.”

I still sat stiffly in his arms, trying to push away from him, but then my eyes closed, almost by themselves. I was tasting the awful sourness of defeat again, nailed tight into a box with no way out, forced to accept what he’d said or completely reject the only real hope I was ever likely to find. It felt so wrong agreeing to allow what they would do to me, wrong in a way even I couldn’t completely explain, but it was either that or fall back on the flimsy hope that was really no hope at all.

“I would rather be dead,” I said in a whisper, my arms braced flat against his chest. “The only problem is they won’t let me be dead, will they? Why won’t they let me be dead?”

“Because they need you,” he answered, the words completely unsoftened by pity. “Just the way I need you, and for exactly the same reason. You’re a Prime, girl, and no one in their right mind wastes a Prime. You don’t yet really know what that means, but you’ll sure as hell be finding out. And if we’re going to be working together, you’d better learn to stop the dramatics. They’re not going to be cutting you into a whole lot of bloody pieces, they’re going to have men put babies in your belly. As someone who has been doing that to women for years, I think you can believe me when I say you might even get to the point of enjoying it. Other women do, so why should you be any different?”

My eyes opened fast to look at him, wondering if his expression would match his tone, and it certainly did. He was studying me with something very much like impatient ridicule, and that made me mad.

“I can be as different as I like without needing to justify it to you or anyone, simply because I am a Prime,” I grated, wondering how well he it take to having the same done to him. “I may have to go along with all this, but I ‘sure as hell’ don’t have to like it. If you’re expecting me to force myself to the point where I do, you’re wasting your time and mine. If that’s what you need to make your plan work, we might as well forget about it now.”

“If that speech was meant to prove to yourself that success is impossible so you can simply give up, you’re the one who’s wasting time,” he came back with a snort of faint amusement. “As long as you understand and accept what will be done to you, I’ll take care of everything else. Are you understanding and accepting?”

“How about understanding and not accepting?” I asked, trying to dent his rising good humor. “Or at least not accepting on an emotional level as opposed to a physical one? What will they do to me if I take it without the requisite smiles and sighs of delight?”

“They’ll increase the dosage of your injections,” he said, a grin forming despite my attempt to deflate him. “If you think you’d rather hop around whimpering than bat your eyelashes and smile at a man, go right ahead and try it. Once you get it through your head that no one is going to let you do things any way but theirs, you’ll relax and look for the easy road instead of the hard. If you’re capable of recognizing easy, and distinguishing it from hard.”

Which, his tone suggested, he didn’t think I could. I felt the flush in my cheeks caused by his amusement over what would be done to me, added to by his obviously low opinion of my way of doing things. I was about to be insulted all over again, but he didn’t give me the chance.

“If you’re finished with your little-girl pouting exercises for today, I’m still waiting for a final answer from you,” he said, a directness in his gaze despite the amusement he still clearly felt. “Do we do it my way without argument, or do we not do it at all?”

“I’d still rather be dead,” I answered, this time glaring at him. “If I can find any way of arranging that instead, you can consider our deal canceled. Until then, though—we do it your way.”

“Do you really believe that if you mumble the words binding you to an agreement, you won’t be bound as tightly as you would if you pronounced them clearly out loud?” he asked, his wide grin showing how funny he considered that idea to be. “I think I’ll have to try that some time, to see if it actually works. Right now, though, let’s celebrate our agreement by trying something else. Raise your face to me.”

He put a hand under my chin and bent his head to kiss me, and I couldn’t help but notice how much-ownership-there was in the doing. I had committed myself to agreeing to whatever he wanted of me, and I had a terrible, sinking feeling that even that quickly it was already too late to back out. I might have told myself I was imagining things, but I wasn’t given the time to indulge in false assurances. The kiss was a brief one, and as soon as it was over his hands went to the towel I was wrapped in. I could feel myself reddening and silently choking over the swallowed protests I wanted to voice but wasn’t allowed, and that made him chuckle.

“What a good girl you’re being,” he approved even while he laughed softly, taking the towel out of my grip to open it slowly and deliberately. “Not that trying to refuse would get you anywhere. Did I mention that they switched from giving me shots to adding to my food? It was all I could do to hold back while we were talking, no matter how important I knew the conversation to be. Being First Prime means I have a lot of women to see to, and they want to be sure I’ll be up for it. They also want to keep me too well occupied with thoughts of other things, to make sure I don’t start thinking about making trouble again. Isn’t it nice of them to help me out like that?”

His voice sounded as though it wanted to be a growl, but with his palm sliding over my breast it came out as a murmur. He had uncovered me completely and was slowly moving his hands everywhere, but when he reached my thighs I had an unpleasant surprise. Despite the fact that I didn’t want to be touched like that, I was very suddenly finding it extremely hard to sit still. The heat I’d earlier thought was gone had abruptly returned, and when his fingers left my thighs to stroke elsewhere, I found myself giving in to the urge to gasp.

“Trying to push my hand away isn’t being a good girl,” he said, his grin as strong as his hand was impossible to move. “Hold onto my wrist with both of your hands, as though encouraging me to do anything I like. After all the argument I’ve had out of you, you owe me some encouragement. ”

I didn’t in any way agree with that, and found that I couldn’t even try to go along with it. I struggled against the way he was touching me, fought to dislodge his hand, but couldn’t get free or make him stop. He was so much stronger than me that even trying to fight was a useless gesture, but instead of him becoming angry with me he started to laugh.

“I knew I could count on you for what I needed,” he said through the laughter, his tone and expression full of arousal. “None of them make the least attempt to struggle, all they want to do is give me everything. But I’m tired of being given, I’m bored with it, what I need is something else. You’ll give me that something else, and no one will get suspicious because they know I really do want it. You’ll learn not to behave like this with the others, to be sure they don’t do to you what I’m going to do, but for me you’ll continue on with it, and that will be my reason for keeping you as long as I can and taking you back when your assignments are over. One day soon we’ll beat them and be gone from here, but until then we’re going to have fun.”

He pushed me off his lap, then took my wrist and pulled me out of the bathroom with him, dragging me along behind as he headed for his bedroom. The towel had fallen to the bathroom floor to lie in an abandoned heap, and even with the burning in my body I couldn’t help but think how lucky it was.