Slave (6 page)

“Yes,” he replied. “I understand, and I will help you—

but for my freedom only. You do not have to pay me any more than you already have. I will keep the forty credits you gave to me as payment for my…services.”

I nodded. “Fair enough,” I said. “And I’ll cover the cost of your food and clothing and whatever else you might need in the meantime.”
His lips curled into a sly grin. “And will you carve that in stone?” he inquired.

Well, at least he was learning! “If you like,” I replied, heaving a sigh of relief, and thinking that perhaps this would work, after all—but not unless we got his restraints off. I’d seen enough to know that often such things were booby-trapped to kill if you tampered with them. Slave owners, as a rule, did not want their property running off, and the promise of death if they ever made the attempt was a pretty effective deterrent. We would have to be very, very careful. “Okay, now, tell me again,”

I said. “Whenever any of your restraints were removed, did he have something else he used, like a key or other device?”

My cat shook his head. I decided that I would have to figure out something else to call him. I couldn’t just keep on calling him “Cat.” I hoped he didn’t have any strange, cultural beliefs about sharing his real name with me. You just never knew about such things. I’d met a man on some planet somewhere who said he wanted to have sex with me, but wouldn’t remove his visor because he couldn’t let me see what color his eyes were. Pretty weird, huh?

Anyway, my feline friend didn’t seem to mind being nude all the time, although I wondered if he might be getting just a bit chilly since my ship’s environmental settings were considerably lower than those we had been experiencing on the surface of Orpheseus Prime.

If he’d been like other cats and had a nice covering of fur, it wouldn’t have been a problem, but since he didn’t, he obviously needed some clothing. Of course,
this presented the same problem as before, because in order to dress him, I still had to get the damned restraints off. I thought for a moment and decided that perhaps he could wear a sheet wrapped around him like a toga. It might have looked a little silly, but it would cover up that penis of his, which, I don’t mind admitting, I found to be just a tad on the distracting side. And besides, I didn’t want him getting any funny ideas because I couldn’t keep from staring at it.

“And speaking of food and clothing,” I said, as casually as possible. “I don’t suppose you’d like something to wear in the meantime? You know, while I try to figure out how this remote works?” Then I came up with another idea. “I could cut a hole in a blanket and then you could at least have a poncho of sorts to put on.

Aren’t you cold?”

“No.”

Since I had asked two questions, I wasn’t completely sure which one he’d answered. “No, you aren’t cold, or no, you don’t want something to wear?”

“No, I am not cold, and no, I do not want something to wear.”

“We’re gonna have to teach you to speak with contractions,” I muttered. “The way you talk drives me nuts.” Judging from his expression, I’d lost him again.

“Never mind,” I said quickly. “Getting back to the original subject, are you absolutely sure you don’t know how any of this works? Never watched while he fiddled with the dial?”

He shook his head. “He never let me see what he was doing with the controls. He would threaten me by
turning the dials on the top and also with the star key. I know nothing else.”

By this time, my computer had finished searching through the known character database and with a cheery little beep reported that it had, as I might have guessed, come up with absolutely nothing. So much for technology.

It was becoming apparent that good ol’ trial and error was going to be the only way to solve this little dilemma.

“Well, okay, then, since you don’t know anything, and the computer doesn’t either, I’m afraid you’re going to have to go through a little pain here, Kittycat. I promise I’ll try not to hurt you too much.”

He didn’t say anything, or even nod, but if his stoic expression was anything to go by, I had to assume I could take that as a yes.

At first glance, the controls seemed simple enough: three rows of two buttons each—no doubt corresponding to each of the cuffs—the star key, and the two dials on the top. The central button in the top row was somewhat worn and had obviously been used the most, so I figured that it must correspond to the collar restraint. Deciding it was best to leave that one alone for now, I pressed the one next to it experimentally, and he responded with a jerk of his left arm.

“Well, if that’s the arm, this must be the foot, and so on,” I muttered to myself. I turned the dial on the top right counterclockwise and pressed the left arm button again. “Feel anything?”

He shook his head. “Almost nothing.”

“Okay, then, we at least know how to turn down the intensity.” Apparently the righty tighty, lefty loosey
thing was universal after all. I dialed down the other one, which I assumed was the duration control and examined it again. It had to have some sort of power source, obviously, and though there were no screws holding it together, I had an idea that if I could get it apart somehow and take out the batteries, all the restraints would just pop off. If we were lucky, that is.

Of course, that sounded much too easy, and I had to assume that the remote was probably booby-trapped and might explode and kill us both if I tried prying the casing apart. I toyed with the idea of just cutting the chains and leaving the cuffs on him for the time being, but that cock ring had to hurt and the cuff around his genitals couldn’t have been good for his balls. Besides, it went without saying that I couldn’t take him to Statzeel like that, which would make him pretty much useless in my search for Ranata.

“Tell me again, when he took cuffs off, he did it using the remote, right?” I asked. “Never took them off manually using a key?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, then it must be a sequence thing.” I paused for a moment as another thought occurred to me. “Tell me, did he ever actually press the star key, or did he just threaten you with it?”

He shook his head. “No, he only told me what it would do.”

I chuckled slightly. “And if you ever got hold of the remote, that was absolutely the
last
button you would ever dream of pushing to attempt to escape, right?”

“Yes.”
“Well, hold on, Cat. Here goes nothing!” I said, as I pushed the star key, followed by the left arm control.

My slave started to lunge forward to stop me and began to roar, but stopped short as the left arm cuff sprang open. If he’d been from Earth, his response would undoubtedly have been, “Well, I’ll be a sonofabitch!” but since he was from somewhere else, he just blinked and stared at his free hand in complete and total disbelief.

“Should have known a big, fat liar like that wouldn’t have told you the truth about it, now, shouldn’t you?” I chided him.

“I must be very stupid,” he remarked, still marveling at his left hand.

“Nope, just a little too trusting of a known liar,” I said with a chuckle. “Like my old Grandpa used to say, ‘A thief can only take what you’ve got, but a liar can get you killed!’”

I popped off the rest of his limb restraints and noticed that we had an additional problem: the ring through his penis didn’t appear to be removable.

“Better hold onto that chain,” I suggested, “or your ying-yang might get yanked.”

Cat did as I told him and I popped off the remaining cuffs. “Don’t worry about that ring,” I said. “I’ve got some tools and we can at least cut through the chain, even if we can’t remove the ring—although I doubt it’s made of something so hard that I can’t get it out with my bolt cutters.”

In a classic male response, I noticed him wincing when I mentioned the bolt cutters. “Don’t worry, I’ll be
very careful!” I assured him. “I won’t have to cut through your penis to get it out.” He went slightly pale when I said that. “Oh, don’t be silly! It’ll be just like taking out a pierced earring!”

“No,” he said firmly. “It will not. A penis is
nothing
like an ear lobe.”

“True,” I conceded, “but like I said, I’ll be very careful. You won’t feel a thing.”

He still appeared skeptical. “Now, where have I heard that before?”

“Ha!” I exclaimed. “So you
do
have a sense of humor!

I was beginning to have my doubts.” I went off to the storage area and, after a bit of rummaging around managed to find my tool box. It’s amazing just how much a person can accumulate during six years aboard the same ship— like a house that you’ve lived in so long that you either need to get rid of some stuff or just give up and move.

Returning triumphantly from my search, I brandished the bolt cutters with a few quick chops in the air to demonstrate how they worked. “Here,” I said, handing him the cutters, “you ought to be able to handle this yourself.” I certainly hoped so because I wasn’t about to touch his dick or even get that close to him, not after the reaction he’d had to me in the plaza!

He took the tool from me, but then just stood there, holding the chain and the cutters like he had no idea what to do with them.

“Is there a problem?” I asked, thinking that perhaps he hadn’t been paying attention to my little demonstration.

“I will not be able to hold the chain and cut the ring at the same time,” he replied.
“Well, just sit down and lay the chain across your legs and then cut the ring, dummy!” I said. “It shouldn’t be that hard to do!” He’d already claimed to be stupid; now he seemed to be proving it. Well, he only cost me five credits, I thought, and, after all, you get what you pay for…. Of course, I’d assumed that he would only be belligerent, not dumb as a box of rocks! Then it occurred to me that he might have been remembering the ring being put in—which couldn’t have been fun, and I seriously doubted that whoever did that to him had bothered to use a local anesthetic. “Are you okay?” I asked.

He swallowed hard and sat down heavily in the nearest chair. “No,” he replied.

So, of course, I just
had
to ask, “If you don’t mind my asking, how on Earth did they get you to hold still for that?”

His glittering eyes avoided mine for once and he stared down at the floor as he spoke. “My master choked me with the collar until I passed out after I lunged at him when he informed me that he was not going to set me free as he had promised, but intended to sell me at auction. When I regained consciousness, I was strapped to a table with the other restraints already in place and they were getting ready to put in the ring. It was sharp and red hot to cauterize the wound. Then they melted it together with a torch. It was…” He paused, wincing and blinking rapidly at the memory of the pain. “…the worst thing that had ever been done to me.”

I looked at all the scars that covered what should have been a truly superb body and started crying all over again. Up until that day, I thought my tear ducts didn’t
work anymore, but now I was pretty sure that they worked just fine.

His hands started shaking then and he dropped the bolt cutters. Obviously, he was not going to be able to do it himself. I dashed the tears from my eyes and picked up the tool. Then I remembered that great stuff I’d found on Derivia.

“Hold on a minute,” I told him. “I’ll be right back.”

I went into the bathroom and found the tube of ointment without too much trouble—my bathroom was a little neater than the storeroom, though not by much— and returned quickly.

“This is the best stuff ever! It prevents infection and relieves the pain just like that!” I said with a snap of my fingers. “It makes cuts and scrapes heal up almost overnight, too. Somebody gave me a tube of it when I got a little banged up on Derivia, and I liked it so well I bought several cases of it. It sells very well on other worlds, too.” Noticing his questioning look, I went on to explain, “I’m a trader, Kittycat. It’s what I do for a living—aside from chasing after my sister.”

He nodded dumbly and just sat there. Obviously, I was going to have to do most of the dirty work here. I leaned over and applied a good-sized dollop of it to his penis. “We’ll just let that set for a minute, and then you should be able to get the ring out without any problem.”

I waited for about five minutes and hoped he’d be able to relax enough to do it himself, but there were scars on this man that weren’t visible to the eye. He simply couldn’t do it. So I did. It wasn’t that hard to cut through the ring, but it did seem to be sort of stuck—though
whether from dried blood or cauterized tissue, I couldn’t be sure. I bent the ring open and slipped it out after lubricating it a bit with the ointment.

“Thank you.” The words were clear, but his head was still lowered.

“Hey,” I said gently, taking his chin in my hand and raising his face to look into his eyes. “You will never be abused like that again—at least not while you’re with me, Kittycat. I can promise you that.” I felt an overwhelming desire to kiss him just then, but I stifled it, just as I stifled most of my desires. They’d been on hold for so long already, a little longer wouldn’t make much difference. Besides, anytime I’d ever let my emotions rule me, my business dealings had suffered, and I couldn’t afford to let myself slip up now, not when I was so close to finding Ranata.

So, instead of kissing him, I decided it might be best if I introduced myself. “My name is Jacinth Rutland,” I said, holding out my hand. “Welcome aboard the
Jolly Roger.”

Not being native to Earth, he probably hadn’t gotten the joke, but he probably didn’t feel much like laughing just then, anyway. I suppose it could have been said that I was sort of like a pirate. Some of my customers might be inclined to refer to me as such, though I made it a rule never to be dishonest with anyone unless they tried to swindle me first. After that, I figured they were fair game. However, since I usually paid for things rather than stole them, I was more of a good pirate than a bad one—if there truly was such a thing as a good pirate. I wasn’t sure about that, but the ship had already had the
skull and crossbones painted on it when I bought it, hence the name. Mom had thought it was pretty funny, anyway. My, how she would laugh when I came home with Ranata! Of course, she’d probably cry her eyes out first—
then
she would laugh.