The Academy (24 page)

“Sir—sir,” he said, letting his longer legs catch him up. “I—I really wanted to apologize. For earlier. Better than I did then. I don’t know what gets into me, sometimes. It’s like I can’t control myself.”

“That is exactly it,” Chris agreed. “When you are in control of yourself, you will not have such problems. But you didn’t need to apologize again, Michael. At least not verbally. You behaved very well at dinner, you didn’t pout, and frankly, I am grateful for being freed from the dog and pony show.”

Michael laughed as they turned into their corridor. He lowered his voice appropriately. “It was fun, actually. I liked watching it. I liked meeting the dogs, too.”

“Hm.” Chris paused and Michael darted forward to slide open the door to their room. “I should teach you how to do that formally,” the trainer mused as he moved in. “I have no doubt you enjoyed the show. But I was much too tired to properly appreciate it. I almost never work with clients like that, and it would do me no good to see them when I can’t be appropriately attentive.” He turned around to face Michael and sat carefully on his futon. “Michael—you were attentive tonight. The way I suspect you can be much more often than you are. But I think the reason why you were so attentive was because you were purely on your best behavior. You were trying to make amends for your earlier lapse. Please correct me if I am wrong.”

Michael slumped into a cross-legged position and shook his head ruefully. “I guess that’s true.”

“And that’s where all your problems really originate,” Chris said, gently. “Michael, you must learn to be on your best behavior all the time. Because nothing but your best will do for this life. I can’t explain it better than that.”

“Thank you,” Michael said with a sigh. “I’ll try to do better, sir.”

“Very well. Give me your journal and get ready to sleep. We will be running in the morning, so you need to rest. This absurd energy of yours is making me feel old.” Chris took the little book and his tea and settled comfortably to read while Michael stripped and crawled onto his futon.

“You know, sir,” he said, suddenly feeling drowsy, “you could have sent a slave to get the tea.”

“Perhaps I did,” Chris said.

Michael frowned, thought he actually heard Chris chuckle, and tried to figure out what that meant. And why Chris was suddenly mentioning his age so much—the man couldn’t be that old himself. Michael thought back to everything he knew about Chris and tried to figure out his age. Mid-thirties was what he came up with, and hell, that wasn’t old, especially in this crowd, where everyone bowed and scraped to everyone over fifty. He gave up wondering and allowed sleep to overtake his thoughts, long before Chris turned out the light.

What a difference a full night’s sleep and no alcohol made on the day! Michael didn’t even mind the morning run with Chris. It wound up with the two of them joining the early tai-chi workout that a wide-faced, smiling Hawaiian woman named Pua was leading. Michael was not surprised to find that Chris was at least a little familiar with the discipline, but he knew that Chris was surprised to find that Michael was as well.

“Learned it at school,” Michael admitted, as they went back to their room to clean up for the morning seminars and meetings. “Great way to meet chicks.”

He felt damn lucky not to get his butt kicked over that one. They split up after that, this time with Chris telling Michael that he could—if he continued to behave—attend that day’s debates.

Chris shook his head as he watched Michael enter the room where the specialty trainers were gathering. What a damn shame it always seemed to take a crisis to bring out the young man’s best instincts.
What does Anderson see in him that I don’t?
he wondered for the tenth or hundredth or thousandth time. He had set himself to discover this while he worked with Michael, and it was a constant mystery. Yes, the boy showed spirit, and he was devilishly handsome and charming in his artless way, at least when he wanted to be. But he was constantly in motion, from his hands to his mind, always flitting from one position to another, always glancing around to see what was happening around him.
That one will never drink tea from an empty cup
, Chris thought with mild amusement.
And speaking of tea...
He turned into a private meeting room to find a beautiful, Colonial tea service waiting on a sideboard. There was a man seated at the table, his back to the door, an English language newspaper open in front of him.

“May I serve you tea, Sir?”

“Hrmph.” The paper rustled.

Chris draped a tea towel over his forearm and served quietly, adding a lump of sugar and a dash of cream. When he replaced the teapot, the man behind the paper chuckled.

“And who shall serve you, then, you puppy?”

“I suppose I shall have to do that myself, Mr. Dalton.” Without turning back, Chris prepared his own tea, black, and took the cup to the table. “With your permission, Sir?”

“Damn it, Parker, will you never learn not to call me that?” The paper folded neatly down. Mr. Dalton was almost completely bald now, with a carefully trimmed fringe of pure white hair and an angular face, creased with wrinkles and filled with great dignity. Only his eyes showed that he wasn’t truly upset, as he set the paper aside carefully. “Sir, indeed. I have a name, puppy!”

“Blame your sister trainer, Mr. Dalton, who instructed me to never embarrass her by showing insufficient courtesy to my betters.” Chris took Dalton’s complaint as an invitation to sit and pulled up to the table.

“Kindly inform my damnable sister that she is an arse, Mr. Parker.” He laughed, a scratchy, low sound, and sipped the tea.

“I most certainly will not, Mr. Dalton, but I will give her your warm greetings and affection, as usual.”

“Hmph. Impertinent, as usual. And what, might I inquire, has taken to nest upon your chin? You look like a junior footman, Mr. Parker. Or the gardener’s lad.”

Chris had to smile; of course Dalton would be the only one to not like his new look. He leaned forward, his eyes sharp and said, “Perhaps I deserve a good caning, Mr. Dalton,” he said.

“Perhaps you do, puppy! And don’t think I’m not the man to do it, either. But we’ll lay aside such pleasantries, shall we? And shall we also agree that the weather is dreadfully hot, the Labour Party has gone too far, your Republicans are quite a shower, and football hooligans are a sorry lot?” He folded his hands serenely as Chris laughed.

“It’s beginning to look like on ‘tokora ga’ conversation after another this week,” he said with a slight smile.

“Yes, yes, ‘as to the matter at hand’ indeed,” Dalton agreed. “Our Japanese hosts have a useful phrase for everything. And it is regrettable, since we have not had time to socialize as gentlemen for many years now. But I will engage in more banter with you, if that is why you requested this meeting.”

“Tokoro ga,” Chris replied. “I would like to hear now, in private, the reason why the United Kingdom block will not support my proposal.”

Dalton sighed and took another drink of tea. “Because we have lost enough already, Mr. Parker.”

Chris frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t understand Mr. Dalton.”

“Don’t you? I suppose not. Bless you, boy, you still see our ways as elegant reminders of civilization. As do we, of course.” His eyes looked weary as he gazed into the past. “We were the Marketplace, Mr. Parker. We laid the groundwork, we created the international scope of it all. We brought the British soul to bear in its ways—discipline, honor, tradition, loyalty, reserve—all exported like great ships laden with iron and timber. And now, we are nothing but a small special interest group; a minority, you would say, deserving of special consideration for our age, but not for our ways.”

“Forgive me, Mr. Dalton, but isn’t that exactly why you should be supporting the proposal?”

Dalton eyed the younger man with regret. “Your confidence in your fellow trainers is impressive, Mr. Parker. You see your proposal as a way to establish the ways you have been taught. And perhaps for the immediate future, that will be the case. But what will happen, Mr. Parker, ten years from now—or twenty—or fifty—if you and those who believe as you do are no longer strong enough to hold this august gathering to such high principles?”

Chris sat back with a slightly frustrated sigh. “If the commission is established firmly and supported well, that shouldn’t be an issue,” he said.

“You are correct. It is the continuing support we question. As matters stand, we of the old houses and ways—the old guard, as you would have it—may continue to train in our methods and create clients of a certain caliber. But should your proposal succeed, there may be a time in which these methods are discredited, or even banned outright. That would create a schism from which we could not recover easily, don’t you agree?”

“I...don’t agree, Mr. Dalton. But now I understand your concerns. I just wish I could convince you otherwise. Your influence is hardly insignificant. Other trainers still look to the United Kingdom for guidance, and I would be much more confident if I had your support.”

“Is that so, Mr. Parker? Pray tell me then, what was served for breakfast yesterday?”

Chris lowered his eyes, and felt even worse when Dalton reached across the table to touch his shoulder. There had been no British trainers at the private early meeting.

“Thank you, Mr. Parker, you are kind to an old man. But our time has passed, I’m afraid. We must hold on to what we still possess—our traditional houses and the trainers and clients we make there. For our own safety, we cannot support a resolution which one day may make us outcasts entirely from our own creation. As we sit here in this lovely room, a new generation of British trainers is rising, based upon American and Far Eastern methods and a bit of the Continent thrown in for good measure. They would certainly welcome our quiet exit from the scene. I am truly sorry.”

Chris raised his head and forced a thin smile. “Thank you for speaking so candidly, Mr. Dalton. And for letting me play mother one more time. I will consider what you’ve said. Perhaps some sort of compromise might be in order.”

“Nothing would please me more than to find some sort of agreement with you, Mr. Parker. Although,” Dalton said, looking pointedly at Chris’s goatee, “if you persist in looking like some sort of starving artist, you win a certain sympathy vote.”

* * * *

Michael’s mind was reeling again when he left the meeting room. After an initial introduction to about a dozen different trainers, the room had broken up into special interest groups. As a trainee, he wandered from group to group, taking notes furiously.

If you had asked me what a specialty slave was, I think I could have named about a dozen,
he thought, flipping through the imprinted booklet of trainers and their areas of expertise. Pleasure slaves. Novice work—all slaves. House management slaves, like maids and butlers and cooks and drivers. Bodyguards. Fancy slaves for entertainment purposes only, like the dogs and ponies.

But architects? Marketing professionals? Pilots? Personal trainers, yes, but coaches too? Tutors in everything from childhood education to different languages—why hadn’t he thought that people might buy one of Corinne’s multi-lingual slaves not as a translator, but as a language tutor? “For,” the Frenchwoman said with a twinkle in her eye, “it is well known that we learn much of our conversational skills in the bedchamber—we might as well have a tutor to entertain us as well as engage our minds.”

Mechanics and engineers. Computer language and programming experts, and repair people. Professionals in competitive sports, like wrestling, body-building, and horse racing. Even soccer and baseball players! Writers, photographers, and film makers to create for one owner alone, or for the enjoyment of their family and friends.

Slaves as investment counselors and money managers—men of business who would never complain about spending too much time on the road, or enduring the inconveniences of accompanying a powerful person without ever gaining a rise in rank. Secretaries and personal assistants, yeah, that was easy. But a slave chief financial officer?

“Just what today’s modern executive needs—a loyal employee who can be counted on not to stab him in the back,” assured the gray-haired, square-jawed man who handed out business cards to everyone who paused by him.

Even the pleasure slaves were divided into categories. Certain slaves were trained to be suitable for general use—accepting and eager for both men and woman, for conventional as well as fairly kinky sex. But there were pleasure slaves trained for specific uses and specific people—the kind of slave an owner would keep to themselves and never offer to friends. Professional companions who could be counted on to exactly judge mood and intent at all times, molding themselves to one person—or perhaps a couple—so perfectly that it might seem that they were born for such a position. Slaves trained to top, either for their owner’s private pleasure, or for owners who enjoyed watching S/M acts performed for them. Slaves who were better at enduring pain—slaves who were sexually insatiable—slaves who were trained to struggle and resist—experienced role players who became their owners’ fantasies—it just went on and on!

“It’s too much,” Michael laughed. To his pleasure, his new pal Kim had come to the same room, her own pad ready for pages of notes.

“Yes—why can’t they just be all general purpose, huh?” she agreed, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “I will never remember all of this. I am dog meat.”