Y
28
The girl loved the marketplace.
She found that she loved the whole Yn city, now that she had access to it. She loved the vitality of Woom, the energy, the interesting people and places. She had been to the Citadel of the Rexus and loved it. She had walked outside the city’s great shipyards and loved it. Earlier in the day, she had spoken at length with a fellow slave about the weather of all things and the climate. She loved it. She had eaten at food stalls throughout the city using the coinage Eben had given her. Fruits, vegetables, unprocessed meats: she loved it. Now that she was free to walk around like a person again and not a mindless animal, she found that she adored the city-state of Woom, and of all the places in Woom to which she had been these last few days, her favorite by far was the marketplace. There were always so many people there. It was always so busy. She loved talking to all the women as they conducted their business. She loved watching the men watch them. The Yn were not a homogenous whole: being around them at last, not as a prisoner but as actually one of them, being able to talk to them and to remember talking to them, and not just as a working tavernslut, either, but as just another girl in the crowd doing her shopping or her strolling, she had learned much. She loved the variety of people she had found in Woom, all the different ethnicities of Yn and the social groups of them all huddled together.
People were buying and selling food, crafted items, even pieces of Brahma stonework all around her.
She had been staring unabashedly at the men and women in their brief clothes for hours, the heat in her growing increasingly noticeable to passersby. The girls smiled. One time, a male overseer of the bazaar approached her and asked if she was all right. He would have done her right on the spot if she had but asked. The former Centauri officer instead thanked the master for his concern, kissed him, and left.
Beautiful people, the Yn were. A beautiful city. A beautiful world.
She even loved the crisp air of Woom, warm by Yn standards, still cool by human. She knew her giddiness was in part relief that she was out of Larr’s hands, and now in Eben’s; that she could think again without pain; that for the first time in her stay on Y she could wander about without restraint and know she wasn’t in danger; she knew that any place under those circumstances would look spectacular.
But she didn’t care. Serry felt she could stay in Woom forever and retain this peace . . . yet she would abandon it in a moment if she had her way. But she was only a slave, and the decision was not hers.
The sun, Indi, was dipping on the horizon. It was time she headed back. The shopkeepers were putting away their wares at last. The stalls were closing. The women who had managed them all day would check receipts, go home to their owners, and be used like the pretty slaves they were. Serry was aware as well that her mood was better because she too had been used and swayed recently, after so long neglected in Larr’s disdainful care. And she was healthy again. The Floran had brought her to a Brahma, and the drone had healed the marks and injuries left from her painful half Yn year in Woom.
She knew how healthy she was. It wasn’t just a general sense of well-being. It was a far more intimate knowledge that she now possessed. Yn women were aware on a more-than-intuitive level of the ebbs and tides of their own bodies. It was an aftereffect of their use and swaying, a side-effect of that delicious, hypnotic Yn semen. Serry could count her heartbeats if she had wanted. She could focus her concentration on each individual toe. Walking back to Larr’s citadel in the darkening afternoon, Serry could “hear” the blood in her veins, “see” her endocrine system at work, “feel” the sexual heat in her rising always, always. She hadn’t taken the overseer’s offer to fuck her. A part of her now regretted that decision. She hadn’t been fucked since Eben had swayed her back to consciousness, and she burned. He’s going to be leaving soon, she thought. He had been avoiding her, and she had being thinking all day about what she was going to say to him, before he made a decision both them regretted.
Eben was indeed waiting for her when she came back.
“I’ve spoken to the Floran ambassador,” he said after greeting her and taking her inside. He still had the use of Larr’s citadel for a few days. The men and the other slaves were gone. They had the whole place to themselves. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”
Serry’s lower lip trembled. “Where are you going?”
“Home,” Eben said. “My new home. The absolute south, among the Shumaet. I have to go. They took me in. They gave me what I needed to survive after I escaped the Brahma. I’m a peer of the tribe. I owe them.”
“Take me with you.”
Eben opened his mouth to say something, then just sighed.
“I’ve spoken to the Floran ambassador,” he eventually repeated. “It’s ecstatic, so far as I can tell. ‘The gorgeous paradox,’ it said. ‘The narrative congruence,’ or something. Anyway, it was amenable to grant me a favor. You can stay here, Serry. Officially, you would be the . . . the possession of the Floran. In practice, you’d have virtual freedom to go anywhere you want, do anything you like.”
They were in Larr’s old sitting room. Serry wanted to go down to her knees. She resisted the impulse.
“I’d still be a slave, though,” she said softly, near tears. “I would need . . . I still need men.” She was sexually aroused in Eben’s glorious presence. Her nipples were hard. He couldn’t help but notice.
“No,” Eben said. He crouched down so that he could face her at a more equal eye level.
“The Floran can provide chemicals, other things too. You would no longer be dependent on men . . . you would no longer be dependent on anybody having to use you. You would have money, too, Serry. A lot of it, I think, the Florans don’t care about things like that. You would need for nothing.”
“I need you,” she said simply.
Eben closed his eyes. “I’d looked for you for so long. In all that time, I never knew what I was going to do if and when I found you. I still don’t.” He looked at her again.
“It’s not fair, Serry. None of this is fair to you. I’m sorry.”
“I’m a slave,” Serry said. “It’s not supposed to be fair to me. It shouldn’t be fair to me.”
“No,” Eben said. He stood up again. He was so very big. “No!”
“Yes! You own me. I have to obey you. I want to obey you. Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”
“It’s not that simple. I don’t want to own you, Serry. It wouldn’t be right.”
Serry’s stomach fluttered painfully at those words. “You’ve owned other slaves, haven’t you?” He shook his head, and she was flustered. “You’ve used other slaves, though. You must have, Master.”
Like their females, no Yn male could go long without sex.
“Don’t call me that,” he told her sternly, and she felt that queasiness again. A man’s disapproval in her felt unnatural. It was painful. She wasn’t at all comfortable unless men were pleased with her.
“Yes, I’ve used slaves. In taverns and after battles. But that’s different. Those were . . . those girls were always slaves, Serry. They were born on Y.”
She could no longer resist the instinct. Serry went down to her knees before her Master. Eben almost said something—he opened his mouth—but then he shut up. He towered over her, and their relative positions felt genuine to Serry, him standing, she on her knees at his feet. He continued to say nothing.
“I have the same needs, Ma . . Eben,” she said in the long silence. “Those girls you used. Were they not grateful to you for fucking them?” Eben exhaled moodily, then nodded. “Yes,” he said.
“You used Bea before you sent her off, didn’t you?” Again, he nodded, reluctantly. “Was she not grateful, too?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you use her? She certainly wasn’t born on Y.”
Eben took a deep breath. “Because she begged me to. She was needful. She has a slave’s needs.”
“I have a slave’s needs as well, Master,” Serry said, risking his disapproval. He frowned. “If I begged you to use me now, would you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re different! I love you. I’ve . . . I’ve always loved you, Serry. But I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
“Why not? I want you to take advantage of me. You did so earlier.”
“That was different,” Eben said quickly. “You were still under Larr’s sway then. Swaying you was the only way to restore your memory.”
“So you took advantage of me,” Serry maintained. “You used me. You fucked me. And I was grateful, right?” Eben’s teeth ground. “I squirmed in your arms like the slut I am, didn’t I, Master?”
“Yes,” he snarled at her.
“I am a slut, aren’t I? When you look at me, what do you see? You see a slut and a slave, don’t you?”
He said nothing. Serry lifted her massive, Yn-proportioned bosom to him. She spread her knees.
“I’m a slut and a slave, aren’t I, Master?”
“Yes, godsdammit. Yes! You’re just a slut!” He turned and walked away while she remained in position. He went to the far wall, stood there a minute, and then stalked back toward her angrily.
“Is that what you want? Fine. I own you. I’ll sell you to someone who can satisfy your slave needs. Is that what you want?”
“That’s one of my choices, then, Master?”
“Yes!”
“If that is the will of my Master, I will obey. I want only to please my Master.”
“Godsdammit, Serry, I’m giving you a choice! What do you want? Do you want your freedom? Go with the Florans! Do you want to be a slave? I’ll sell you to Bea’s master! He’ll take good care of you. What do you want?”
“I want only to please my Master.”
He screamed in rage. Serry’s instinct was to cower, but she didn’t. She faced him.
Mustering her courage, she asked, “What do you want, Master? Do you want to own me? Please, Eben, tell me the truth.”
Eben tilted his head back. He rubbed his forehead.
“Yes,” he admitted finally. “I want to own you. But that’s only because I’m a Yn! That’s only because I’ve been turned into a Yn.”
“I was turned into a Yn as well, Master, as you can plainly see,” Serry said.
He was standing directly over her. Serry put her hands to his lower legs; she put her face to his thigh.
She kissed him softly.
“When you were looking for me,” she asked, “you did so because you wanted to own me as much as you wanted to rescue me, didn’t you? Both of those things were on your mind.”
“Yes,” Eben said. He put his hand to her dark hair. He stroked her. “Yes.”
“You came after me so you could fuck me.”
“. . . yes.”
“Take me with you, Eben,” she pleaded, staring up at him with needy eyes. She pulled at him, falling to her back against the floor and opening her legs. “Take me,” she begged him. “Take me again.”
He remained stiff and unyielding for one endless, painful moment, then, groaning like he was in pain, Eben lowered himself upon her. Serry reached out, pulled his loincloth away, grasped at his massively erect member, and, when he hesitated, brought it to her pussy and impaled herself. She grabbed his ass and pulled at him. That was all she needed to do. He took control of her then, pressing her back and kissing at her hungrily, groaning all the while. “Oh, Serry,” he muttered. “Serry, I love you.”
He made use of her. He made a thorough, manly use of her, and she loved it. She had needed him so badly. He touched every part, stroked her lips, neck, breasts, cunt. He climaxed once, then, with typical Yn vigor, reinserted himself in her and used her again. She connected with each of his thrusts.
“Oh, Master!” she exclaimed. “Oh, yes! Yess! YESSS!!” The orgasms surged through her, she felt her mind open, and she repeated the words to herself: I am a slave. I was born to be a slave.
They were, she knew now, those words, both true and untrue. A paradox. What was it Eben had said? What the Floran said to him: ‘the gorgeous paradox.’ Precisely.
I am a slave: true in the sense that she was biologically, culturally, and legally a slave on this world, mere property to be sold and used so magnificently well, as her Eben was so gloriously demonstrating at the moment. And yet, at the same time, equally untrue.
In a peculiar way, she had never felt more free.
She had been in love with Eben, and she had always suspected he had felt something for her as well—her heart had almost burst minutes ago when he said as much—but she had never allowed either of them to surrender to that emotion. At first, it had been because they were both officers on the same ship. Then it was because of their differences in rank and the fact that he served under her. Ultimately, it was because he was the only person she had felt truly comfortable with following her dreadful experience with the Solarians. There was a paradox for you! She had resisted falling in love with Eben because she had felt too close to him! She had been afraid of losing her only friend.
Now, none of that mattered. Biologically, culturally, legally, even if he couldn’t admit it yet, Eben owned her. Her only responsibility now was to please him. There were no other complications. Her flight plan was clear. In being a slave, she was free to pursue the love she wanted.
“More, please,” she begged, squirming beneath him. She lifted herself. “Oh Gods, please, more!!”
Yn cum was transcendental. The conscious mind diminished, leaving only pure thoughts and feelings. I was born to be a slave: that was untrue. She had been born Serry Garrant. She had been born a citizen of the Sovereignty of Outer Alpha Centauri. She had been born a free woman.
And yet, at the same time, it was true. She had been reborn a slave. She was a Yn. Serry whispered the rest of the mantra to herself after she climaxed: I was born to please men. I want to please men.
Afterwards, she went and got her Master some blankets. It was her duty to make him comfortable.
They lay together on them on the floor and held each other. “Tell me of the south,” she said finally.
“It’s a hard life,” Eben replied. “The temperatures are cold, even by Yn standards. There is little to grow. There is little to eat. We hunt postbears, neowolves, and other animals. Everything is shared.”
He touched her intimately. “Everything is shared, even the slaves. If you went with me, Serry, you would have to belong as much to the tribe as to me.”
“Would you still be my Master?” Serry asked. “Would you still have chief ownership of me?”
“Yes,” Eben admitted. “You would be my claimed woman. But if any of my peers asked me for the use of you, I would grant it.”
“Then I would try to please them as much as I would try to please you.”
She slinked out of his embrace, dragging her lips across his chest. Serry lowered her face onto her Master’s manhood and took him in her mouth. She could tell from his low growls how much he enjoyed what she was doing. She let her tongue run up and down his burgeoning shaft, from the pinkish head to the base. She let her mouth caress him, let her instincts go free in her, let herself be his slave.
She could love him now, without restraint. That was true freedom.
Eben took her again. He put her to her back, sank his throbbing cock inside her, and allowed Serry to scream her pleasure, over and over. His thrusts caused her balloon-like breasts to bounce around playfully. His tongue working at her nipples brought her to the edge, and she spasmed around him, gyrating against him intimately, upon him, squeezing him until she had milked every last fantastic drop.
She cried out his name: “Eben! Eben!! Oh, Master! Master!! I love you, Master!!”
“I don’t know what to do,” Eben said, sometime later. “I’ve loved you ever since I met you, Serry. I want to give you a choice, because that’s the right thing to do. It’s the human thing to do.”
He had quenched her. “But?” Serry asked, as softly. She knew exactly what he was going to say.
“I’m a Yn,” he said. “Giving you a choice . . . seems wrong. It is wrong. Gods! I see you, I feel you, and I see and feel two women! One of you is the woman I knew. The other is a mere slave.”
He put his arm over his eyes. He was almost weeping in his frustration. “I’ve given you choices, and yet every one of those choices is wrong somehow. It seems wrong to even offer you a choice.”
“Because I’m a slave,” Serry said. She felt sorry for him. He was so conflicted. He was trying to be so noble.
“Yes, because you’re a slave,” Eben replied bitterly. “But the part of me that’s still Eben Halc tells me that that’s exactly what I should do.” They were silent, then, the two of them, for a time.
“Larr wouldn’t have struggled with this,” Serry said eventually. “He’d have just kept me. Or sold me.”
Or killed me, she thought, shivering. He would have gotten around to doing that, sooner or later.
“Larr was a complete bastard. He was crazy. And he saw you only as a Yn slave. My problem is that I see you as more than that. Damn it, you are more than that!”
They lay silently again.
Serry finally laid her head against Eben’s chest. He felt good and hard against her soft cheek. “You know,” she whispered, “there’s at least one thing you and Larr had in common.”
“Eh?” He didn’t sound pleased with the notion.
“Neither of you understood the true purpose of Y,” Serry said. “Most Yn men don’t. I didn’t myself until I became a slave.” She rolled over on top of her lover to straddle him face-to-face.
“Serry, you don’t have to remain a . . .” She shushed him, laying a finger against his lips. It was easy.
“The Planet Y has a purpose,” Serry said. Her lips curled enticingly. She had a secret. She bent down and kissed Eben’s mouth, lingeringly, delicately.
Eben sighed and stretched out his hands. He gazed upward at her. He caressed Serry’s hips, running his hands delicately over her silky smooth skin. “All right. Y has a purpose. Tell me.”
She felt the thrill of his command. “Some of it I gathered from my reading long ago, when we were in Tolaam. Some of it I figured out over the last couple of days. Did you know Y was the only planet that had been terraformed around Indi before the Florans came?” Eben shook his head.
“The Expansionists arrived in Indi first,” Serry said. “They fulfilled their programming. They picked the most suitable world they could find and reshaped it as best they could. It was the only one with a suitable atmosphere. They were still here when the Florans came, and the Florans made them a deal.”
He listened.
“The Florans were a former Solarian high caste. They knew how to reprogram the Expansionists. They knew how to give the drones freedom. And they did, and in exchange the Expansionists, now become the Brahma, helped them make three worlds of their own, precisely according to their own rigorous aesthetic standards.” She kissed him, once for “own,” twice for “rigorous,” and a third time for “aesthetic.” The last kiss, for “standards,” was the longest, and it almost derailed further conversation.
“The Flowerworlds,” Eben said, though. “Trimurti.” One of the ancient Hereditarian religions. Serry nodded.
“For the Brahma, Y was the price of their freedom. Once they were free here, the drones went elsewhere, to every other star their kind were working. Then they all came back here, free too. They’re doing something with that big space fountain of theirs, and I don’t think even the Florans know what it is.”
She shrugged. “I’d like to know some day. As for the Florans, well . . .” She stopped and wriggled around, suddenly overcome with her sheer desire for him. She was a slave. She couldn’t help it. Eben chuckled playfully and felt up her deliciously rounded rump. Serry giggled delightedly at the contact.
He calmed her down, and she crept up beside Eben’s face, next to his ear. She licked and whispered.
“Think about it, darling. A pseudo-medieval planet ruled by hyper-masculine, chemically aggressive men.” She ran her hands over his muscled form. “A world of chemically submissive, hyper-beautiful women. A world of isolated city-states, epic wars, romantic adventures, where the people remember a higher technology but deliberately choose not to use it.” She kissed his ear. “The Florans are sexless. They’re obsessed with art and drama. Y is a performance piece to them, a place they can watch at a distance, play around with, and, most of all, serve as a contrast to their refined artistic sensibilities.”
“And that’s the purpose of Y?” Eben asked. “That it’s art?”
“No,” Serry said, teasingly. “All that’s beside the point. All that has nothing to do with the true purpose of Y.” Eben turned his face. He kissed her. He ran his tongue along the inside of her mouth and lips.
“Tell me,” he said, with authority.
It gave Serry pleasure to obey. “Forgive me, Master, for saying it,” and she very deliberately used the word ‘master,’ “but despite what it looks like, Y isn’t a world made for men. It’s a world made for the pleasure of women.”
Eben’s forehead creased. He turned over on his side to face her.
“The women of Y have to obey men. They’re forced to obey men. I don’t understand. How can you say something like that, especially after what Larr did to you?”
“I can appreciate a good master now, especially after Larr. I’ve been owned by good men.” She had told Eben about her previous masters, Nozo and her chain-holders from when she was a streetgirl.
Serry turned on her side too, facing him. For once, she tried keeping her hands to herself. He wasn’t touching her anymore either. Despite a well of deep longing, she kept her hands at her bosom.
This was important. She had to make Eben understand, for his happiness. If she didn’t convince him, whether she stayed here or went with him south, he’d always feel guilty about her.
“What do people want most?” she asked him, and she answered her own question. “To be happy. Look around. Aside from Larr’s slaves, every woman you’ve seen on Y has been blissfully happy.”
“The slavegirls in the East aren’t,” he told her. “They’re treated like animals!”
“The Matricharate, I think,” Serry said, “is a remnant of what the proto-Yn were once like, when they were the Florans’ Solarian servants. The Imperatrix is an aberration. And yes, the majority of the women there suffer unfairly. The Matricharate’s rulers, like the men of the West, miss the point.”
Eben didn’t anything.
“Everywhere else on Y, it’s the slaves who are really in charge,” Serry said. “It may have been named for your chromosome, dearheart, but it’s our planet. This isn’t the Solarian Empire. Here, slaves are treasured. They are cared for by their masters. It’s the master who has to do all the hard work, and he doesn’t derive half the pleasure his slave does.” Eben blinked at her. “He’s the one who has to sacrifice time and energy to make himself feel good. All a slave has to do is lie back and enjoy it.”
“You’re oversimplifying,” Eben said. “The life of a Yn slave is full of drudgery.”
“It’s not drudgery if you love what you’re doing, and the slaves of Y love to serve their masters.”
“But . . .”
“It’s the men of Y who suffer,” Serry insisted. “It’s the men who fight wars and play games—by the way, the wars and games playing, dear, are one and the same. The reason Yn warriors don’t use advanced weapons is because they consider it cheating. I’ve given this some thought. The men of Y put their lives in danger so they can feel a little excitement. But it’s only a little excitement.”
She held up her index and thumb together, very close.
“I get that same level of excitement just by being next to you! Can you imagine how lucky that makes me? I feel utter ecstasy every time you touch me! And when you use me—when you make love to me, Eben—I feel lifted unto a Hereditarian vision of heaven!”
He pulled her close to him. Her massive breasts were squashed against him. It felt wonderful.
“The proto-Yn were separated by gender, in the beginning,” she said after a bit, after the loving, so intense, and the swaying. I am a slave, she repeated to herself. He hadn’t said it yet. She had to.
I was born to be a slave. It wasn’t an original sin; it was an original blessing.
“I think the women were in charge, and the first men on this planet tried to escape them. I don’t have any evidence for that, but the idea feels right somehow. Two cultures emerged, one for the men, one for the women, and when the sexes came back together, as they would have had to do eventually, each gender readopted the other but on their own terms.
“The men got their wish. They got to play sports, play with swords, fight, and mess around and get dirty. And stay up late at night.” Eben laughed. “But the women got their wish too. They got someone to treasure them. They got someone to listen to them. They got someone to pay attention to them, their men and themselves.” She sat up.
“Your cum is addictive, darling. But it gives me such a greater awareness of myself that it’s worth it. I know myself better. I can feel myself better, more intimately. Everything is more sensitive now. The women of the Matricharate hypnotize themselves and use Yn cum to play tricks with pain control, heightened strength, health, and whatnot, but the slaves of the West are made just to feel happy!”
She shook her head. “That’s it. Nothing more. Just happiness. That’s my sole obligation.”
Eben tried to say something, but Serry shushed him again. She had always been good at that.
“Listen: ‘Pleasing men is my greatest desire. Pleasing men makes me hot. Serving is my greatest pleasure.’ Yes, my Master, the function of swaying is to make me compliant, to make my concerns smaller and focused solely on bringing men their pleasure. But that’s the whole point, don’t you see?
“Happiness isn’t complex. It’s simple. And I’ve never been happier than I am right now serving you!”
“But it’s a cheat,” he finally said, softly. His eyes were wet. “That happiness you feel: it isn’t real.”
“Who’s to say it isn’t real? It’s my happiness. You’re not feeling it. I am. I am happy.
“That I’ve been made to feel happy doesn’t reduce the quality of the feeling. In fact, that I didn’t have to fight for my happiness, like you men do, nor work for it, like you men do, is what puts me in the superior position.”
“Superior?” Eben said, with a touch of Yn anger in his voice. “You’re a slave!”
“Yes, exactly. It’s how I said it earlier. I’m luckier than you. The women of Y are much more fortunate than the men. The women here have got it made. They have it so much better. You can fight however many duels you want, win however many battles, achieve victory after glorious victory for yourself, and enjoy a good slut or two afterwards.” She giggled. “You can put your life in danger to achieve all of that, and, though I would hate it, I would have to accept it, because I am just a woman.
“But you see, I get all those blissful feelings for free! I get them all for nothing! And just for being a woman! They’re mine already. That’s my birthright here.” I was born to be a slave, she thought, amusedly. Paradox!
She laughed at Eben’s nonplussed expression, and then, more soberly, she added, “They knew what they were giving up, those first Yn women. Their freedom in exchange for total happiness. Their freedom for a clarity of purpose, for an understanding of themselves such as you, my darling Master, can never achieve because you’re just a man.”
She buried herself against him, licking and kissing. “They must have known, I think. Don’t you think? They must have.”
“I don’t know whether to be angry with you at your presumption or amused by it.” He was cradling her in his arm. Serry stared up at him, and his expression told her he was, at that moment at least, looking at her as a Yn slavegirl. “You’re crazy. You’re completely insane. I don’t know what to do with you.”
“I have a suggestion, my Master,” Serry said, reaching for him.
Eben made use of her again, then, a total use, bringing Serry to such heights she could only shudder to recall them afterwards. And she was swayed. He finally swayed her himself: “You feel good. You enjoy being used. You have been used well.”
And that, of course, made the loving even better.
He still had not made her think, ‘I am your slave,’ though. He still had not claimed her, as well he could have. Should have. I feel good, so Serry thought instead, helplessly, elatedly. I enjoy being used. I have been used well.
“Don’t you want to be free?” Eben asked her still later, holding her again within his arms.
He was careful with his mass. Some instinct, some Yn birthright—genetic programming, like her own enforced happiness? she wouldn’t put it past the Floran or Brahma engineers, whichever of them had done the work—prevented him from rolling over and crushing her with his massively greater weight.
“What about the person you had been?” he asked. “What about the former Commander Serry Garrant? Doesn’t she deserve better?”
He leaned over her. “I’m serious. If you were still human, you wouldn’t want to be a slave, Serry. I know that.”
Slowly, gazing up at her beloved, she nodded. “You’re right, Master. If I was still human, I wouldn’t choose this life. I would fight it.” She reached up and stroked his arm. “But I’m not human anymore, and neither are you.”
“That doesn’t make a difference. It shouldn’t make a difference.”
“But it does, and you know it does.”
She pulled him back down beside her. “Tell me truthfully: the first time you thought of me after you were transformed, back at the Brahma base, you wanted to fuck me. Your first instinct. Yes?”
Eben licked his upper lip briefly. “Yes,” he said, after a moment’s pause.
“And I wanted to be fucked by you,” she went on. “I dreamt of you fucking me. It’s genetic. It’s the programming in our resequenced genes.”
“I am more than just a mass of gene codes,” Eben said. “And so are you. We can think for ourselves. We can feel. We can be anything we want to be.”
“Right now, all I want to be is your slave, Master.”
He shook his head, growing irritated with her.
There was a great part of Serry that was discomforted by this—She wanted to bring Eben naught but pleasure!—but it was necessary that he understand, for his future pleasure. That was another thing the men of Y often misunderstood. Yn slaves did everything for their masters’ benefit. Everything! Serry thought of the tale of Permas and the ever-flowing flask. The real hero in the story wasn’t Permas, like men thought, but his slave, Deia. The real lesson was that while men played, the women who loved them—the women who needed them—worked behind the scenes to make everything all right. It was Deia’s city that had never shown brighter, not Permas’, not really. But that was a slave’s secret.
“What we are now,” Serry said instead, “shapes our thoughts and our feelings, and it’s by the standards of our new forms, our new lives as Yn, that we have to consider. Can we go back to being human?”
Eben shook his head. “No. I asked the Floran ambassador. It either can’t, or it won’t.”
“Then that’s that,” Serry said. “That’s what we have to work with. It wasn’t our fault that the Brahma ripped our Independence out of the sky. It wasn’t our fault that the Florans we came to negotiate with turned out to be Solarian voyeuristic aesthetes.” She kissed her Master. “We did everything right. We tried to escape. It didn’t turn out well. We were transformed. At no point did we turn on ourselves, like Larr did. We remained honorable.” She saw from the glow in his eyes how good that word made him feel. In their own way, the men of Y were as full of bioprogrammed triggers as their slaves.
Ours are better, though, Serry thought, and they’re easier to satisfy. Her Eben felt so delicious. She wanted him so very badly.
“Bea was transformed before either of us. That was a good thing you did for her, by the way. She was the really fortunate one.”
“Errr?”
“Mmhmm,” she hummed. “She was transformed, and then she was put amongst Yn men, who gave her the total fucking she needed as a slavegirl. She found herself earlier than I did. Within the parameters of her new Yn existence, from what the Brahma did to us out of what I think was an honest effort to save our lives within the limits of their programming, she was fulfilled. Bea found her fulfillment.”
Serry suddenly clutched at Eben, and he held her. She started crying.
“I’ve always loved you too, Eben. That’s never changed. Was a terrible thing done to us?” she asked. “Yes, of course. Would I have preferred things to be different? Oh by my God, yes! Gods, yes. I lost all but one of the men under my charge, Master! I would give anything to change that. I would give anything to bring Sud, Gisha, Damml, even Larr Wirry back, damn his eyes! But I can’t.”
Eben held her. He kissed her tears.
“I want to respect the person I was,” Serry sobbed. “Just as you want to respect the Eben Halc you were. But they’re gone, and we have our lives to lead.
“I’ve been transformed into a Yn slavegirl. It’s not what I would have chosen, but it’s what I am. I am a Yn slave. I have needs. And you are a Yn master. You have needs too. Since neither of us can be anything else, what I want most is to be your slave, Master. Make me your slave, Eben. Please.”
The former Senior Lieutenant Eben Halc stared at the former Commander Serry Garrant. She detached herself from his embrace, crawled back onto the cold floor, and knelt, as a slave. Slowly, thoughtfully, Eben climbed to his feet and stood over her. She tilted her head back to gaze upon him.
“That is your choice, then?” he asked. “No more games, Serry. No more speculating on the grand purposes of things. You would actually choose to be my slave?”
Serry shook her head. “No. What I want is for you to make me your slave.”
“I said no more games.”
“You’re being cruel, Eben!” she accused. “Would any other Yn give a slave a choice in this? He’d just take her!” Her blood was boiling with need. Her breath was hot. “Take me! Or give me away! But be the Yn master I need, either way!”
Eben’s hands clenched into fists. He looked like he wanted to hit her. Would he? Serry couldn’t read the expression on his face any longer. His jaw became set. His eyes narrowed. She grew afraid.
“Eben?” she whispered.
“It isn’t proper,” he said after a long pause, “for a slave to speak to a man using his name. Is it?”
Serry blinked. She said nothing.
A slight grin creased Eben’s lips. “Is it!?” he asked, with greater emphasis.
“No, Master,” Serry said quickly. She lowered her face, tentatively smiling. “I apologize, Master.”
He started walking around her, closely. What was he going to do? Should she ask? “Master . . .?” she began, and at once he told her to be quiet.
“You’ve talked too much already today,” he said.
She lowered her head more. He stopped circling her. He stood directly in front of her. Nothing.
“Master,” she said, after waiting, daring much. But she had to. For his sake! His pleasure! “Master, I’ve changed my mind. I would like to stay with the Floran.”
“No,” her Master said. “No. You will be going with me to the south.”
Serry’s heart was beating so fast, she imagined it would explode out of her chest. “Sell me to Baor Korez. Bea tells me she loves him, and . . . .”
“No,” Eben said. “And I do not recall giving you permission to speak.” He put his hand to her hair, and he pulled her face towards his, roughly. “Do you think that, after traveling so many leagues, after spending so much time looking for you, I would ever let you go, Serry? Well, do you!?”
Serry shook. “No, Master!”
“Do you!!?”
“No, Master!!” She loved him so very much.
“So. It is your impression that the Planet Y is really ruled by its slaves. Is that right?” Putting a hand under each shoulder, he pulled Serry to her feet. He put his hand back to her hair and tilted her face.
He pulled her close. Her tits pressed firmly against him. She was blazing hot!
“Not precisely, Master. ‘Ruled’ is not the precise word I would use.”
He lifted her and kissed her. He held her firmly, strongly. Her feet dangled above the floor. “But still, the impression I got from your . . . your little sermon . . . is that you think this whole planet is a kind of playground for girls like you. Girls who like to be controlled. Slaves. Is that it?”
She kissed him. “Well . . .” she began.
“It’s time to teach you the error of your ways,” Eben said, and he lowered her onto his rigid cock.
“OH, MASTER!!” Serry exclaimed. He took her, suddenly, savagely, as a Yn male taking his slave.
And he swayed her. “You are a slave,” he told her. “You were born to be a slave. You were born to please men.” And she believed him.
“I am a slave,” she repeated. “I was born to be a slave. I was born to please men.”
Utter ecstasy filled her soul.
“You want to please men. You want to please me. You want to serve me.”
I do, I do, Serry thought, swayed. “I want to please men. I want to please you. I want to serve my Master.” You are my Master, she thought. Say it, say it!!
“You are my slave,” Eben swayed her. “You . . . belong to me, Serry. You are my slave.”
Serry shook. Her whole body shook in pleasure.
“I am your slave. I belong to you. You are my Master.”
“You were born to please men. You were born to please men with your body.”
Yes! “I was born to please men. I was born to please men with my body.”
“Pleasing men is your greatest desire. Pleasing men makes you hot.”
“Pleasing men is my greatest desire. Pleasing men makes me hot.” She was already on fire! How much more hot could she get? Little did she suspect.
A nova flame was soon ignited between her legs.
“You are my slave.” I am his slave, she thought, helplessly swayed. “You want to please me.” I want to please you, my Eben, my Master. “You need to be fucked.” I need to be fucked. “You need to serve. You want to serve.” I need to serve. I want to serve.
And, driven by the genetically encoded forces inside them, that’s exactly what he made her do.
They left from Woom the next day. It would be a long trip south—nothing in comparison to the light years separating their old world from their new, but long from their newly adopted perspective—and the city council in a show of magnanimity gifted Eben with a hovership, one only slightly smaller than the ship they and poor Sud had used to flee the pirates so long ago. Serry asked her Master if she could pilot.
“I don’t understand you,” Eben said, giving her an askance look. Nonetheless, he set about preparing a place for her to stand so she could reach the controls. “All yesterday you could talk about was how good it was to be a slave, seeing as how we’re both Yn, and men control and women obey, and now you want to control this ship.” He shook his head. Serry stepped into the pilot’s alcove. Eben wore only his Shumaet loincloth, she wore even less, but the cold of Y was no longer the hazard it once was.
“You don’t sound confident of my piloting skills,” she said, and grinned at the irony of the situation.
Eben laughed out loud. He remembered too. “I have every confidence in your piloting skills,” he repeated from so long ago. “I just think you’re completely insane.”
“Maybe,” Serry agreed. Her hands moved over the controls, twisting knobs and pulling levers. It was all mechanical and primitive compared to the inside of a Centauri shuttle, but still she enjoyed it. The ship rose, turned gracefully in the air above Woom, and began their soaring journey southwards. She could feel her Master’s eyes on her body as she worked, and she felt warmed by it. She postured for his benefit, lifting her ass, curving her back, letting her enormous Yn boobs dangle over the controls.
He came up behind her, and she melted into him. “Thank you for letting me pilot, Master,” she purred.
“Thank you, Serry,” Eben said. He sighed. Y’s sky gleamed overhead. The sky rolled beneath them.
He put his hand to her belly. He traced the outline of her studded navel. “What will they think when the rescue ship arrives, decades from now?” he asked her. “One will come, you know, sooner or later. What will they think? That I broke you . . . that I mind-controlled you into accepting a life of slavery?”
Serry shuddered at the touch of his hands on her. “Well,” she said, “that’s exactly what you did, Master. That’s what I begged you to do.” She shrugged. “Let them think what they want to think. Let them judge. I don’t care. We’ll know we made the right choice.” The only choice, she thought.
She had spoken to Bea about it. Home. Finding a home for themselves. That was the important thing. The only thing, really, once you sat down and really thought about it. Home had once been Beta Prime. Home had once been the Centauri Independence. Now, home was the Planet Y. Her planet, now.
The secret of happiness wasn’t about finding your way home. It was about making a home.
“Was it?” her rightful, legal owner asked, and Serry grew a little irritated at the conflicted tone of her Eben’s voice, though she loved him. Training him to treat her like a slave, the way she needed to be treated, was going to be a lifetime’s work. But she was prepared for that. That’s what making a home was all about. After what the Solarians did to her during the war, she had managed to rebuild her life. She had been changed, but she had endured, and she had grown stronger by it.
Now, she was changed again. She was naught but a Yn slave. But she was still herself, all the same. She would endure. She would grow stronger again, albeit the only way a woman on this savage world could grow stronger.
This was not the life she would have chosen. But it was her life. Hers, and his, and she would make it theirs, together. And maybe, she thought, luxuriating in the touch of her beloved Master, just maybe, our children’s lives. She was filled with Yn cum. She could use it to feel every part of herself, control every part of herself. After they had arrived at their new home and spent more time together, she would beg her Eben to allow herself to become pregnant. She wanted their children to greet the rescue ship.
She wanted her children to tell the Centauri Betans about their home.
Eben delicately bit at her ear, and Serry cooed at him, loving it, loving him. It really wasn’t fair, all things considered, her new life on Y. But it was a life, and it would not end.
And of that, after the longest time of not caring one way or the other, Serry was finally glad.
The dim rays of Indi shown upon their bright red skin. They flew south, towards home.