THE MULE
Chapter 4
I was waiting only a few minutes when the white limo glided to a halt outside my office building. It looked like the type the movie stars always hired, with the blackened windows that you couldn’t see in. I opened the door and slid into the air-conditioned interior. Leaning against the other side of the wide-bodied luxury car was the one with the velvet voice, smiling quietly as I clipped up the buckle of the seat belt, similar to the one she wasn’t wearing. I glanced at my watch for reasons that escaped me right then-exactly six o’clock.
She reached forward and slid back the mini-bar, then began mixing two drinks. I watched with curious amazement as she mixed a Scotch for herself and a Rum and Coke for me. She handed it to me. I took it and grinned, my eyebrows raised in wonderment as to how she knew what I drank, but picturing her naked again and at my feet, serving me in the same manner.
‘As I said, Mister Wallace, we do our homework.’ She grinned.
I sipped the ice-cold drink and let it burn away my day’s frustrations, but the slave scene remained clear for a long few minutes before finally fading to the scenery flashing past my window.
‘What name do you go by, or do you have aliases?’ I asked between sips as the big car glided effortlessly along the highway toward the city.
She grinned at my not-so-subtle attempt at humour.
‘We don’t use any name, but our own, Mister Wallace. We are not spies, as I’ve already said. My name is Tina-Tina Clark. And I think that since we’re going to be working so closely together, we might as well be on a first-name basis. Don’t you?’
‘ If you like.’ I answered. Tina, the slave; the redheaded slave.
‘I like.’ She smiled, sipping her drink. Her eyes never left me for a moment. It was as if she was studying my reaction to everything that had happened so far: trying to work out my mind-set or thoughts as everything unfolded. I sipped again and tensed lightly as the car turned a tighter than normal corner. I saw the slight frown crease her otherwise wrinkle-free forehead as the car then straightened and smoothed out the ride. We rode the rest of the short drive in silence. Tina, the redheaded slave, I repeated mentally to myself for some inexplicable reason-but I liked it.
The building where the big car dropped us off was like most of the others. I watched the limo drive off, noting that I never had seen the driver. The darkened partition that separated front seat from back had never came down once during the drive in. I turned back and looked at Tina. She was smiling and gesturing with her right hand to follow her. I acknowledged and followed her inside the building.
There were no names on the building outside. Inside we passed a registry board with a dozen or so names on it, none of which held any special significance for me, or the type of work that I was supposedly being hired for. Tina walked slightly ahead of me and to the right. I followed her into the elevator and stood at the back, watching her press the number of the top floor-twenty six. We rode in silence as I imagined what her breasts would look like bound with fine soft rope. Twice she flashed me a smile, and curiously they had been moments when that thought had been vivid in my mind.
Then the elevator stopped silently and the doors shushed open. I followed her again as she walked from the elevator and turned right. Down a long hallway and to the left we came into a large open foyer area, centred by a semicircular reception desk, complete with receptionist. Branching off in four directions were four hallways, each seemingly lined with doors, which I presumed, opened into offices for her group. She walked up to the receptionist after asking me to wait a little way back.
‘How many are in your group?’ I asked when she approached me smiling.
‘Including myself, and you, there are now twenty-seven of us.’ She replied immediately. ‘This way.’
Again she gestured and again I followed like a little puppy, my mind stunned at the number of people who were doing the same thing as I had been hired to do. I did not like the puppy thought.
‘Why me, if you’ve already got so many?’ I asked as we walked down the hallway to the far right.
‘A quantity of personnel we never have a shortage of, Mister Wal-er... Peter-the quality of personnel we are always short of. A lot of the past people we had been using were missing the very thing in their character that we found so appealing in you.’ She said with a gay laugh.
I liked the way she said my name.
‘Which is?’ I asked slowly.
‘Your dedication to the challenge.’ She replied. ‘We know you know-and we know that to you, there’s no challenge, like no challenge.’
I grinned. She was right on that one. It was the only reason worth getting out of bed each day for-the challenge of the moment, good or bad, in whatever way it chose to express itself to see if I was up to the task of meeting it.
Tina stopped at the last office door on the right of the hallway and pointed to the nameplate on the door.
Dr. Peter Wallace, it said in bright, black-on-gold print. Then she looked at me and grinned.
‘Sure of yourself, were you?’ I smiled thinly. ‘I could walk back the way we just came right now. What would you do with your nameplate then?’ I asked.
‘Wait for you to come back.’ She grinned instantly.
I smiled thinly again. She was quick. I had to give her that, as well as beautiful-a quick, beautiful, redheaded slave. She turned the knob and pushed gently on the door, then pointed behind her shoulder.
‘I’m right across the hall.’ She added.
I turned and looked at the nameplate on her door. Dr. Tina Clark, it said.
‘I’m not a doctor.’ I told her as I followed her into my new office.
‘We are all doctors in this industry, Peter-doctors of the mind. Wouldn’t you agree?’ She said closing the door quietly.
‘Maybe.’ I replied, not convinced whether some of my colleagues deserved such a distinguished title, going from some of the things I’d heard about them over the years.
Words failed me as my gaze roamed the entire office. To say it was large would have been an understatement. It was gigantic. It was split into an office area with filing cabinets and a computer, with three doors sectioned off to what looked like three smaller offices. On one side there was an eating area, small table and chairs, along with a very comfortable looking leather lounge. Around the wall of quiet green pain hung several landscapes of peaceful nature.
‘One of those is your bedroom. One is your en-suite and shower. The other is your therapy room.’ She told me, leading the way to my huge desk. ‘Try it out.’
She sat down in the comfortable leather chair opposite my desk as I went around and sat down in my own swivel chair. I couldn’t help but grin. Opulence like this I’d never expected to see in my days as a therapist, unless some old biddy died and left me her fortune.
I shifted and became even more comfortable.
‘Come with me.’ She said and rose quickly from the comfort of her chair, walking toward the first of the three smaller rooms. She opened the door and walked through. I followed. It was getting to be a habit-one that I could probably put up with for a while if it meant always looking at her rear as she walked.
It was the therapy room, complete with a large, soft velvet recliner, tape deck and mike. It had the lot, including a cold water fountain for dry mouths when they came up from the depths of their trance. During trance there was no need for the swallowing reflex to function in most patients, so their subconscious would shut it down and open it again when they came up-always with a dry throat, depending on the depth of trance they had achieved.
A tall, dimmable standing light stood behind the recliner chair, along with another comfortable-looking leather chair beside the larger one. Tina sat herself down on the smaller of the two chairs.
‘Well?’ She grinned, waving her right hand and arm around in a grand sweeping motion. ‘What do you think so far?’
I stared hard at her sitting there in all her redheaded beauty, trusting nothing, as I’d planned.
‘What’s to think, apart from the obvious?’ I replied.
‘I understand.’ She said after a few second’s silence during which she studied my face and eyes.
‘I’ll come and get you when it’s time for the evening meeting.’ She said, getting up out of the chair. ‘Everybody waits until the last therapist is done for the day. That way everyone is kept abreast of all progress made for the day. Make yourself at home.’ She grinned as she walked past me closer then she needed to, I thought. ‘It most probably will be on many a lonely night. Oh, and, in the top, right hand drawer of your desk you’ll find some interesting reading.’
And then she was gone. I didn’t even hear the outer office door close. The smaller of the chair beckoned my presence for some reason. I sat down in it and begin to swivel from side to side, not allowing myself to relax for an instant. Well, not completely, anyway.
It had taken me a half an hour of reading, or wading. I flipped through the history of the people who had hired me, and the activities they were involved in. I was now a part of it as well. And the more I read, the more a nagging feeling began to crawl over me. I couldn’t analyse it-not good, but not bad either. It was just there, and, the more I read, the more solidly the feeling entrenched itself into my mind-set, although taking no particular form of identification.
The name on the not-too-thin leather-bound dossier was printed in the same italic print as the nameplate on my new office door. H. M. C. E. I had already made a mental note to ask Tina what the initials stood for. I puzzled over them for only a few minutes before giving it away. Most times I didn’t have the patience for mind-games. Inside the folder were mini-files, all stapled together. And, there were many, many of them.
Preceding them and paper-clipped to the inside cover of the leather-bound dossier was an index, which listed alphabetically the given names of each of the research and development project studies. It was very lengthy, and very enlightening, to say the least. I had finished just reading the index, and then the more detailed content pages, and had only just begun to get into the synopsis of the early files on A when I heard the knock.
She came in and closed the large door behind her, walking directly to my desk and sitting down in the chair opposite me. Her eyes were bright and smiling, although looking a little tired with just a hint of telltale puffiness beneath each. I closed the leather-bound dossier and settled back into my chair, my face a mixture of my suspicion and my thoughts. It must have shown.
‘Anything wrong?’ She asked, her smile fading a little.
‘What do the initials stand for?’ I asked before I forgot, or got bogged down in some other areas.
‘You’ve glanced through the dossier, and you haven’t put that together yet? ’ She stated curiously. For some reason I felt a tinge of embarrassment at being so mentally slow in her regard.
‘No.’ was all I said.
‘Hypnotic Mind Control Experiments.’ She stated slowly, as if she were talking to a slow schoolboy. I thought about that for a few seconds while holding her gaze. Then I glanced away and began to look around the room.
‘Where do I fit in?’ I asked.
‘Right where you are now.’ She grinned. ‘Next Monday when you officially start with us you’ll be briefed on your first project. I know what it is, and I think you’ll be more than interested. But don’t ask me to tell you before time. It isn’t my place. It’s... his.’
For just a brief second her eyes glazed. Was it at the word, ‘his?’