Buying His Mate (9 page)

They had heard about the enclosures, though those who told the story didn’t have that word to call them, and instead informed the tribe that there were people living inside a big gray wall, and anyone who got close to the wall heard a voice saying that if he came in peace he should go to thus and such a place and say “I wish to live with you in safety.” On the other hand, if he touched the wall, he got a strange numbness in his hand; some device of the sky-people that showed the big wall meant nothing good.

A story had even gone around that when a tribe tried to see what the wall had inside it, and tried to bash it down with an armored tree trunk on salvaged wheels that they had used to conquer several other tribes, and of which Beth’s tribe had stood in mortal fear, they had all received terrible shocks, as if struck by lightning, and the tree trunk had burst into flames.

That first morning, Ms. Trainor had asked them, in addition to introducing themselves, to say something about how they felt about the sky-people. Beth had been astonished above all by what Gretchen had to say, though the opinions of the other girls had also varied widely.

Beth herself said, “I’m Beth, and I come from a tribe that lives on the wide river. The wide river tribe, they call us.” She said that with a little pride, since the wide river tribe was renowned among the tribes of the valley for their prowess and prosperity. The memory of the Taking party coming from the enclosure, though, and of how they had knocked the one warrior who tried to oppose them unconscious before the leader made clear in a soft voice that somehow carried all over the village that all the girls from eighteen to twenty-two who were not mothers must come with them, tempered Beth’s pride greatly.

“I guess,” she had continued. “I always thought that the sky-people just didn’t care about us. Now I guess they only care about fucking us.”

To Beth’s surprise, she heard Gretchen give a little gasp. Down the table, a girl named Yolanda, too, seemed shocked. The other girls didn’t react.

Ms. Trainor said, “Beth, the word you just used is traditionally a
dirty
word. Do you know about dirty words?”

Beth shook her head. How could words be dirty, unless maybe when you were trying to insult someone?

“Gretchen,” said Ms. Trainor, “do you want to try to explain?”

Beth looked at her new friend, who frowned a little and said, blushing, to the table, “Well, there are words that you’re not supposed to say, or you’ll get in trouble.”

Beth snorted, as did a couple of the other girls. Gretchen turned an even deeper shade of red. “I guess what matters is where you live.”

That fascinated Beth, she had to admit: the idea that she and Gretchen could be the same age and speak the same kinds of words, most of the time, but because Gretchen lived in the enclosure, some words meant different things to her.

“Here on Athena,” Ms. Trainor said, “we’ve decided to maintain traditional speech codes, which is a fancy way to talk about what Gretchen just said. That’s actually a very important point, girls, and one that some of you may have trouble with. One of your lessons here in the orientation center will be about the way we talk here on Athena, and the word that Beth used is one of the most important ones to avoid.”

“What will happen if…” another wide river girl, Georgia, began, and trailed off uncertainly.

“If you use one of those words?” said Ms. Trainor. “I imagine that your master or mistress will warn you once or twice, but if you persist you will almost certainly be punished.”

“How?” Yolanda whispered.

“That will be up to your master or mistress,” said Ms. Trainor, “and I imagine that the severity of your punishment will depend on whether you simply forgot, or you were defiant in some way.”

“But…” said Georgia.

“But what kinds of punishment can you expect,” Ms. Trainor said matter-of-factly. “You’ll learn much more about that, of course, as you get to know your masters and mistresses this week, but because that question is one that all relict girls have, and we don’t want to leave you in any doubt, I have a vid to show you now that will answer your questions for the moment, though not, I think, in a way you will find very reassuring.”

Ms. Trainor pressed a button, and a view screen like the one in the entertainment room in the enclosure came to life.

The vid had a series of five scenes, clearly taken from the real lives of five different relict girls. The scenes all showed girls of about Beth’s age being punished. The first one didn’t frighten her, at least at first: a little blond girl, naked, got a spanking over a man’s knee. The spanking did look very hard, and the girl’s bottom had gotten bright red and even purple in places, but Beth didn’t think it could really be bad enough to make the girl cry like that. Then, however, the man reached to a table at the side of the big black chair in which he sat, with his girl over his left thigh, and took an object made out of hard red plastic into his hand.

“That’s a paddle,” said Ms. Trainor. “You can count on your master or mistress having one.”

Beth winced as she watched the paddle come down hard, over and over, on the girl’s bottom. Her master said, “Will you be a good girl for me, from now on?” as he kept paddling her.

“Yes,” the girl cried. Beth realized suddenly that she felt warm between her thighs.
Why?
she wondered, remembering how warm and wet she had gotten when Ms. Feld had done those strange new things to her—things Beth hadn’t thought women would do together, that were like what men did to women in her tribe’s village, but different of course because of the way women were made differently. Was it fucking, when women did it? she wondered. What else could one call it?

She looked at Gretchen, whose eyes were fixed on the screen, and whose face still looked terribly flushed. Her master had spanked her in the Hall of Taking, hadn’t he? Suddenly Beth burned to know what it was like to have a spanking, though she had no idea why.

On the view screen the master took his girl into his lap, then, and hugged her tightly. “Good girl,” he said. “You took that well.” Beth’s tummy fluttered. Would Gretchen’s master do that for her? It didn’t seem like Ms. Feld would be that kind of mistress.

As if in answer to her question, the next scene actually showed Ms. Feld, Beth’s own mistress, standing over a girl who had been strapped down over some kind of bench. “Claudia, you were very naughty, weren’t you?” asked Ms. Feld. In her hand, she held a long, thin thing that seemed slightly flexible.

“Yes, ma’am,” came the miserable voice of the girl in the vid, her face unseen.

Ms. Trainor, in the conference room, said, “You’ve seen Ms. Feld, who runs the Maenad Club along with Ms. Renton. Pay close attention, you girls who are going to the club.” On the view screen, Ms. Feld tapped Claudia’s bottom with the thing in her hand. Surely she wouldn’t strike the girl with it? “She’s holding a cane,” said Ms. Trainor. “Many masters and mistresses have them. I must warn you club girls that the cane is Ms. Feld’s favorite way to punish the club girls because, as you’ll see, it leaves marks that club patrons like to see.”

Oh, no,
Beth thought, and then she flinched as Ms. Feld, in the vid, started to cane her girl’s bottom.

Chapter Eleven

Martin waited in the lobby of the orientation center, along with the other new owners of relict girls from the July Taking. He had been nearly the first to take his seat there, and though he had done the same the previous six days, he had a much more difficult time concentrating today on the spreadsheets he had brought to review while he waited for Gretchen.
Today, I’m taking her home to my quarters,
he thought,
and the new life will begin, if I can possibly make it work.

His sessions with her here in orientation had, Martin thought, proven that he had chosen well in the auction. In the little thirty-minute sessions in which he had asked Gretchen how she liked Athena, and what she was learning, she seemed genuinely eager to please her master. Her little smiles sent thrills of anticipation through Martin, and he even found that he seemed to get hard just looking at his relict girl and thinking about what he would do with her the first time he brought her back to his quarters.

The rules for the visits, during orientation week, were strict, and the sessions themselves closely monitored. Masters and mistresses might punish, but only with bare hand, and no sexual contact was allowed, in order to ensure that the girl established a sense of her identity on Athena. The program had been carefully designed by the psychology wing at the time of the passage of the Enclosure Act, and it had proven successful.

So, though Martin had several times had a nearly unbearable yearning to have Gretchen’s pretty mouth once again encircling his hard cock, he had merely spoken to her gently, and quizzed her on some of the key details she had begun to learn about Athenian life.

He had spanked her once; more, he supposed, because he couldn’t resist than because she had forgotten one of the five principles, and the experience had seemed almost magical in the way she accepted his discipline and thanked him for it and in the way her pretty little cheeks had squirmed and bounded under his hand, as he made her recite all five principles, five times, with a spank for each principle.

“Liberty… ah!… equality… ow!… solidarity… ow!… property… ah!… law.” Martin gave an extra hard spank, and then a little rub that made Gretchen whimper and sigh, at the end of each repetition.

“Thank you, sir,” she whispered as he rubbed, and she seemed to try to part her knees a little, but Martin said, “You know you must keep your legs closed until I have you open them, my dear.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Gretchen murmured guiltily, closing her knees tightly.

Martin couldn’t resist saying, as he rubbed the delightful little bottom, “I promise you will keep them open for a very long time the day I take you home.”

Gretchen made an ambiguous sound in her throat, then, as if she didn’t know how to respond, torn between shame, fear, and arousal. Martin stood her up, took her onto his lap, and held her close. She had not cried, really, but her eyes were bright with tears that didn’t fall but made her look so bewitching that Martin had to shift in the chair so that his erection would be less noticeable. Part of him, of course, wanted Gretchen to feel it there, as a reminder of how she had taken him in her mouth in the Hall of Taking, and would again soon.

Heather came into the lobby and sat in the chair next to Martin’s. “How’s your little Gretchen doing?” she asked without preamble. “Diana and I both think you got a wonderful bargain.”

Martin felt torn between pride and annoyance. “She wouldn’t have been good for the club,” he said, hearing a slight defensiveness in his tone that he had tried hard to keep out.

Heather laughed. “Oh, I think she would, actually. The way she smiles at you… well, our members like girls who smile at them that way, too.”

Martin looked into her eyes, wondering what she meant by her words. Her expression didn’t seem mocking or even rivalrous. He felt himself frown a little, and he held his peace.

“We can see what you’re doing, Martin,” she said softly and confidentially. “It’s very sweet, and Diana and I certainly won’t turn you in.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Martin said, forcing a smile onto his face.

“Don’t think we don’t remember culture class. I don’t know if anyone else does, because Diana and I had our own reasons for paying attention in those discussions.”

Now Martin felt himself flush a little. Maybe they
did
know what he planned.

“Look,” Heather said. Martin saw through the glass doors that led to the main part of the orientation center that Susan Trainor, the director, was coming toward them. “I think you should be allowed to give an old-timey nuclear family a try. I think you’ve got the right girl for it, too. I want you to know that if the council doesn’t see it that way, you can send Gretchen to the club.”

“What?” Martin said, feeling his frown deepen. “Even if I were to admit to what you’re saying—which I’m most certainly not doing—how could sending my girl to the Maenad Club help?”

“I’m guessing you may figure that out,” Heather said quickly, as Susan swung the door open. Heather turned her attention to Diana, who had come into the lobby just a moment before. Martin looked up at Susan, who looked right at him with a bright, eyebrows-raised expression on her face.

“Good afternoon, Martin,” she said in a chirrupy voice. “Ready to take Gretchen home?”

* * *

As they walked the corridors that would take them to Martin’s quarters in Residential C, with Gretchen two steps behind him, just as she had learned in orientation that she must be at all times, her naked beauty evoking appreciative glances from male and female Athenians alike, Martin considered what Heather had said.
Send her to the club. You’ll figure that out.

What could the woman possibly have meant?

“Martin!” said the occupant of the elevator into which he and then Gretchen stepped.

“Hello, Joseph,” Martin said, bowing to his colleague in agricultural systems who also happened to be his next door neighbor, Joseph Chang, three years Martin’s elder.

Joseph returned the bow, and looked at Gretchen. “Oh, she’s adorable, Martin,” he said. “You didn’t do her justice when you told us you’d bought a girl!”

Martin watched a blush overspread Gretchen’s cheeks. He hadn’t said much about her at work, it was true—not the way some men did when they bought a relict girl, telling their colleagues all about her charms and the way they planned to use her in bed.

“Say thank you to Mr. Chang, Gretchen,” Martin said automatically, knowing that the trial of the pretense he must maintain in public had begun.

“Thank you, Mr. Chang,” Gretchen whispered.

Joseph reached out a hand toward the place between Gretchen’s legs that the orientation staff had depilated, according to Martin’s specifications. “And you’ve bared her, too. Very nice. May I?”