Slave (3 page)

“You should have castrated him,” I said with a chuckle, which sounded rather forced, even through the respirator.

“It has never been a problem in battle,” the slave trader commented. “I suppose I might have done it if he had been a house slave.”

I nodded. “Well, it doesn’t concern me overly,” I said, in an attempt to seem nonchalant about it—though, I’ll
admit, it was difficult. “It was a bit of a surprise, though.

Perhaps you should clothe him.”

The Cylopean shook his head. “Not for the auction,”

he said firmly. “Slaves sell better unclothed.”

While I might have agreed that female slaves probably did, this wasn’t that sort of auction. Still, I had to admit, he was impressive—which is a slight understate-ment of the facts. I had no doubts that many a noblewoman would have considered buying him to add to her stable of male attendants, if for no other reason than to enjoy the distinct pleasure of looking at him.

“Aren’t you concerned that he might be burned by the sun and bring less in the sale?”

The slave had skin which was slightly darker than mine, but he was, overall, a little on the pale side when compared with most natives of hot planets such as the one upon which we found ourselves. I hoped that his covering of dirt offered some protection.

The trader shrugged. I smiled as I thought how I’d always found it odd that such a human gesture seemed truly universal. It was like saying “okay,” which was a word understood throughout the galaxy as far as I could tell. There might not have been very many humans this far out from Earth, but we’d still managed to put our stamp on the general lexicon. For example, the word “shit” was universally understood, and so, of course, was the word “fuck,” which was to my knowledge the only word referring to the act of procreation that could be used as a noun, a verb, and an expletive, all in the same sentence—unless you were to include “screw” or “nail,”

which somehow just didn’t pack the same punch as the
F-word. Generally speaking, I tended to use that one as an expletive, myself, but I must admit that after looking at this man’s equipment, I was thinking more along the lines of the verb.

Not for myself, of course. I’d never had much use for such a meaningless waste of time. I’d been far too busy working my ass off my whole life, and now that I was tracking my lost sister across the galaxy, I really didn’t have time for it! Before I’d started searching for Ranata, I’d been too busy bartering my way to a fortune—though at this point, my fortune had diminished somewhat. I still had more than enough to keep going, and along the way I’d managed to accumulate a few extra dollars, credits, markers, or whatever the currency of the area I was passing through might be called. For some reason I was pretty good at it, and had always instinctively known what was going to be the hot item wherever I traveled. I’d thought that perhaps my wealth had been the reason for Ranata’s kidnapping, but when no ransom demands ever came, I realized that whoever had taken her had other motives in mind, or they might have taken me, instead.

The Cylopean obviously didn’t consider a case of sunburn to be a problem, but I’d been buying and selling things long enough to know when it was best to leave the diamond in the rough and when it was best to give it a bit of a polish. He could have sold this particular slave for much more if he’d cleaned him up and dressed him nicely, but some people just never learn.

Feigning a lack of further interest, I wandered away after that and waited in the shade of an awning over the
outdoor café across the plaza from the slave market. I took a seat at a small, rickety table and ordered a talansk—a local beverage which was the only thing I’d tried so far on this planet that didn’t taste like shit. My dusty, tired little waiter brought it to me with a respirator-compatible straw, and I sipped it while I waited for the auction to begin. As I suspected, my slave from Zetith drew a few stares, but most of the potential buyers avoided him like the Scorillian plague.

I put my feet up on the empty chair at my table and leaned back to watch the show. The little grasshopper slave was demonstrating his jumping ability and the one that looked like a cow-chimp was showing off his strength—which, for its size, was considerable. The Cylopean was still extolling the virtues of his slave, but few appeared to be listening to him, for the Zetithian slave simply looked to be more trouble than he was worth.

I was just starting to get comfortable—well, as comfortable as one could be in a place like that—when a Drell shuffled over and tried to relieve me of my foot-stool without so much as a by-your-leave.

“Fuck off, you fuckin’ Drell!” I growled.

Drells are notoriously rude, but, for some reason, can’t abide being sworn at. The hairy little lump drew back with a squeal and scuttled off to stand quivering in the shadows near the bar. Damn thing should have known I’d be grumpy. I was about to starve to death, but didn’t dare take off my respirator for so much as a bite.

My pack had food in it, of course, but I’d have had to breathe the foul air in along with it, which would
undoubtedly have rendered even the most succulent meal completely inedible. I would eat when I got back to my ship.

Gods above, but I was getting tired, and I was nearly at my wit’s end! I’d come up with this plan to get to Statzeel to find my sister, but so far, it wasn’t progressing very rapidly. It seemed that all I did these days was wait, and this was simply one more place to wait out the time in, just like a thousand other places I’d patronized during my search. Ranata had been moved from planet to planet so many times, I’d lost track of the number—but I
did
know how long I’d been searching. I’d been on the move for six long, dirty, dusty, uncomfortable, and stress-filled years! If I hadn’t sworn to my father that I would find her, I’d probably have given up long ago. I’d been sort of hard-bitten, as women go, even before this started, but I was a true cynic now. I trusted less and didn’t hesitate to take the advantage whenever it offered itself. I’d gotten in and out of a lot of tight spots and had even had to kill a time or two, and while those things weighed upon my soul, they affected me less than the terror in Ranata’s eyes when she was taken. I still had trouble sleeping, sometimes waking in a sweat as though I had been desperately running after the pack of Nedwuts who had snatched her right out of my hands.

“Stay close,” I had urged her. “This is no place for a woman like you!”

The poor kid had followed me into a meeting with some other traders, and I knew from the moment she set foot in that dive that every eye was upon her, for Ranata, as a woman, is everything that I am not. Taller than I, and
with our mother’s willowy build, she is blonde and fair like our father, while I, on the other hand, am dark like my mother and, unfortunately, built more along the lines of our father. “Amazon,” had been a frequent epithet applied to me, and though the origin of the true meaning of the word had been lost with the passage of time, it still meant a tall and rather tough-looking woman. It was no wonder that with my face covered the Cylopean had assumed I was male. No one seeing the vision that was Ranata would have ever mistaken us for siblings, either, for Ranata was ethereally beautiful, and I was anything but. I should have considered myself fortunate to have been blessed with plain features, for, as a result, I had never been a target for male attentions, and didn’t want to be. It was a curse to be beautiful, I decided. If you doubt me, just pause for a moment to consider what had happened to my lovely sister Ranata.

Her trail hadn’t been too hard to follow, for no matter where she went, the inhabitants always seemed to remember her and how beautiful she was. Once I had gotten a line on her on Dracus Five; the trail might have been a bit chilly, but not impossible to follow. The trouble was, whoever had her always seemed to know that I was on their tail; just when I was about to pounce, she would be spirited away once more, and then I had to pick up her scent all over again, which isn’t an easy thing to do in space! I’d had to do more lying, conniving, and wheeling and dealing than I would have thought a person could do in a lifetime, let alone in six years.

And now, rumor had it that she was on Statzeel, a planet which women avoided like death itself, for on
that planet, the women were all slaves. It could be argued that the same could be said of many worlds, but Statzeel had a reputation like no other. I had once observed a discussion between two men, one from Statzeel and the other who, from his style of dress, I took to be a Davordian prince. The Statzeelian male had a woman with him, held to his wrist by a chain connected to a collar around her neck. I’d been in a café similar to the one in which I now sat, and had watched from a dark corner as the heated discussion progressed to a dangerous argument, whereupon the woman—a scantily clad beauty, I might add—was thrust to her knees by the male and ordered to suck his cock while their talk continued. She complied, getting on her hands and knees to lick and suck him until he ejaculated right in her face. When the prince objected at such scan-dalous treatment of a female, the man had said of his slave, “Be thankful that she was here to allay my anger, or you, my good prince, would no longer be living.”

From other reports I’d heard, this type of behavior was typical of the men of Statzeel, so, essentially, my sister had been enslaved on a planet populated with belligerent, pompous, controlling assholes. I think “asshole” is another of those Earth words that has become universal over the thousand or so years since we Terrans first began to explore the galaxy. I hadn’t found anyone yet who didn’t know what it meant.

The Standard Tongue had gradually developed over that period of time, and it incorporated words and phrases from many worlds, including a good chunk of words from my own planet. There were regional dialects
and colloquialisms, just as there were in any country on any world, and there were local accents, as well, but it was easily understandable throughout the known galaxy.

Some planets had adopted Stantongue, as it was often referred to, as their primary language, which made things much easier when other species came to visit.

There was also a universal sign language for those intelligent beings incapable of articulated speech, though I’d seldom had cause to use it.

The galaxy had come a long way, but there was still war, still crime, still poverty, and still the occasional abduction of a beautiful woman. There was no united governing body to regulate space trade or travel, and, for those like myself who roamed through space, there was a greater freedom, but a little law and order might have improved things a bit. Most star systems had a central government which regulated their own territory, but, for the most part, space travelers were pretty much on their own. It was a bit like Earth’s Wild West in that respect, with distances so vast that patrolling an area of space was even more difficult than what the cattle barons had faced on the open range, and it was rare that anyone even bothered to attempt it.

The slave trade was something I would have preferred to see abolished entirely, but, there again, every planet had its own culture, and the rules that worked quite well for one didn’t always work for another. Take Orpheseus Prime, for example. This particular slave market was typical of many of the more backward planets, though on Earth, such a thing was considered abhorrent, and hadn’t been an accepted practice for nearly two thousand
years—ancient history, as they say, and we Terrans had learned a few things in that time. Slavery was a bad thing, of course, but human nature being what it is, our society wasn’t perfect by any means, and there were still a few bad apples in every basket.

Like the one I was about to bid on. My only hope was that I could deal with him, find out what it would take to motivate him, or I was simply going to have to take a loss on him and let him go. I wouldn’t dream of selling him again unless I was desperate for funds, which, at the moment, I was not. No, I would give him a few credits and some decent clothes, and then set him free. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have considered buying a slave at all, but at that point, I simply didn’t see any alternative.

Hiring someone to pose as my “master” was dangerous, though buying a slave wasn’t much better, for either way, I might very well end up as a slave myself.

Damn! Of all the places she had to wind up! If the bastard that took her was looking for a place where he knew I wouldn’t follow, he’d probably chosen the right planet. My only other option was to pretend to be male myself, which I had considered since the males of Statzeel and I were of similar height and build; however, they had a tendency to dress in a fashion which left little to the imagination when it came to their gender. The female I’d seen suck off her master hadn’t had to look far to find his penis, for it had been hanging right out in plain sight. Cocky bastards! I thought with a chuckle.

Some women might like it, though. Of course, my future slave—I was that confident I’d get him—had a much more interesting phallus than any I’d ever seen before.
Not that I’d seen every species, mind you, but I had seen quite a few—enough to know that it would either hurt like hell to be fucked with it, or it would be the best ever.

I was fortunate that there weren’t any women there to buy slaves, or I would have undoubtedly had more competition for him.

The auction began and the little grasshopper went first, followed by two others that were unremarkable except that they appeared to be denizens of Orpheseus—a squat, toad-like species that didn’t seem to mind the smell. I wondered how they had managed to become slaves. Had they gambled their way into debt and been subsequently taken in payment, or had they been born into slavery?

The Zetithian slave had been a soldier, which was unusual among slaves, and I hoped no one was in the market for a promising gladiator, or I was going to have to shell out far more credits to get him than I’d hoped.

I crossed the plaza as the cow-chimp went on the block, knowing that the Zetithian would be next. The Cylopean looked nervous, twisting his ugly, gnarled hands in a gesture which was also universal: sweaty palms. They occurred on nearly every world in every system in one form or another—you just had to know where to look.