The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

1.

Cutting it close seemed at first to have worked out. Tandy missed most of the station-leave lecture, but figured to get credit for being there and have her debarkation chit okayed, catching no more than a frown from the first officer, Ikewa, as she slipped into Arvad’s wardroom. Most of the starship’s offwatch personnel were there, earning their certification to leave the ship when they docked. It was policy throughout the Phoinike Mercantile Cooperative’s seven-ship fleet, like any other merchant concern.

Her friend Lia, playing attendance monitor this time in the back row, tried to frown too, but on Lia’s pretty, round face it just couldn’t condense. She ended just looking worried, and even more adorable.

“Tandy, dammit!” she hissed as Tandy slid onto the bench next to her. “This is important. You missed most of the mind-control warnings, too.”

Tandy grinned at her, then widened her eyes and stared unblinkingly at Lia’ s, watching as the other girl couldn’t help staring back, transfixed. Tandy knew it wasn’t hypnosis but something warmer and moister that made Lia so helpless against her. She enjoyed the soft openness.

Before the wisp of a spell snapped, she whispered, “But I need no warning, little one. I can already control your mind, bwa-ha-ha!”

“Dammit!” Lia blinked and looked down, blushing furiously. Tandy unlimbered her waist-length hair from the coil she kept atop her head when she was working, down on the drive deck, and draped it across Lia’s shoulders like a stole. Lia stirred peevishly but didn’t shrug it off.

Ikewa was talking about the latest generation of will-suppressing drugs and which drinks were likeliest to be dosed to hide their taste. Tandy listened to make certain her own variety of gene-altered vodka wasn’t among them, then sat back, wondering idly how it felt to be doped into obeying a complete stranger in a station bar.

Not fun, she scolded herself. Things someone had to drug you to make you do usually weren’t. At least the predator didn’t think you’d enjoy it, and Tandy was willing to concede that predators had a good sense about that.

Ikewa was looking right at her now, though he spoke to them all. “If you remember nothing else about this little lecture—if you saw nothing else—please retain what I’m about to shove down your throats. This hasn’t gone to the hypercast agencies, but the bootleg’s floating around, and the Commonwealth authorities aren’t objecting. You’ll see why.”

The display came on abruptly, and there were some laughs. It was a bridge com image, someone about to make a log entry or speak from their station. The speaker was a human in her late thirties, her hair lined attractively with the premature silver of someone who’d been on relativistic ships as well as riding hyperdrive.

She was nude from the ribs up, which was all the image showed.

Tandy grinned in the dark, admiring the woman’s deep brown skin and placid breasts, the careless way her hair fell. Others gasped when the saw the transmission tag: this was coming from an Endostellar Commercial ship, from a concern huge enough to lose Phoinike Mercantile’s entire operating budget in a bookkeeping error. They must be scandalized by this.

Now Tandy herself frowned. Ikewa wasn’t showing this to be funny. What was a senior bridge officer doing . . . ? She saw others in the background, all nude, sitting still at their stations. There were lines from their necks to tiepoints on the consoles . . .

As she noticed the circles under the speaker’s eyes, the woman spoke, her dazed voice betraying the strength it used to have.

They’d made—leashes . . .

“This is Isolde Miro, acting captain of EC ship Shi Sanjuni. Captain Pereslavl does not yet . . .” she closed her eyes and shivered, opened them “. . . understand.

“We have criminally obtained this ship and its . . . cargo . . .” Her dream-speaking voice faded into what might have been a moan and she shivered again, and Tandy saw there was someone standing close behind her, holding the nape of her neck. They did something to her. Miro gasped in pleasure and her eyes widened, a strange wild joy flaring in them. Tandy swallowed, remembering that look in a lover’s eyes when she came.

“Yesss. Yes. I understand now. The cargo.” Miro’s eyes shut again for a moment, and without that joy she looked different, like she’d spent days without sleep, or in something much worse than sleep. “We have taken this ship against the law and EC regulations. We are criminals. We are fleeing the Commonwealth. We . . .”

Miro seemed to be trying to struggle, or just to stop. There was movement behind her, and her head turned as though someone were moving it against vague resistance. She blinked and in her pupils Tandy saw the reflection of something in another monitor. Something she was being forced to look at.

Then a censor block covered each eye, and Tandy’s skin crawled as she realized it meant someone wasn’t even confident the reflection of what Miro was losing herself in wouldn’t affect others seeing the tape. She held Lia more tightly and realized the other woman’s face was against her neck, hiding. Not looking.

Miro’s face was blank when she turned back. Her voice was stronger, and emptier.

“I understand. We are seeking the protection of the Eth.”

The wardroom erupted quietly, and the image froze as Ikewa waited for them to settle. Tandy wanted to put her own head over Lia’s and look away, too.

Were they insane? Someone was insane—or homicidal—to send them there. There’d never been a war with the Eth, really, but their foreign policy, economics, and visible culture as a whole basically came down to—eat.

Tandy fought her imagination, and lost, as she pictured sitting calmly at her post on that bridge, waiting to dock with an Eth ship, while some part of her mind screamed at her to blow the engines and go out quick and clean. Kept screaming, because she was obeying an order to sit still and wait to be eaten in her turn.

The Eth never ate anything after it was dead.

Things someone had to enslave you to make you do . . .

She looked at Ikewa. He started the tape again.

On the display, Miro’s eyes started to widen, her mouth tensing—and then her eyes rolled up and her mouth went slack as she shuddered, grunting. Mewing. Coming. Her eyes opened but she’d been tamed, perhaps not for the first time. She arched against the hand on her neck, her eyes staring into the pickup, boring into Tandy’s.

“We await,” Miro breathed, “the—instructions—of our Eth . . . ohhhh . . . protectors and will obey . . . obey without question—”

“Help!” Someone across the bridge called in a strangled voice just loud enough to reach Miro’s voice pickup. “Help us! It’s too strong. We—can’ t—”

Miro shook again, and the person behind her touched her once more. Her eyes closed and opened again, her expression never clearing from its dull blankness. Staring past the image pickup into infinity, she worked her console. “Obedience team to bridge,” she said in a horribly businesslike watch-officer tone. “Realign disobedient unit—” The image went dark.

There was no sound in Arvad’s wardroom. Ikewa let the silence thicken before entering it.

“That signal came from inside Eth space. Your first thought was mine—send a ship in there and get them out. But we don’t know what the Eth would do when they saw even one ship coming in, translight, at one of their frontier worlds, and by now only a very high-gain warship could catch them.

“We’re not even sure the Eth did this. They’ve never been hostile if you’ re smart enough not to land on their territory. Someone in the Commonwealth mindfucked that crew and sent them in.

“They’re thinking it was serial recruitment. Two of Sanjuni’s crew, lovers apparently, went missing briefly during a station call at Avventura last month. Once whoever it was had this couple conditioned, they programmed them to bring something onto the ship to enslave at least some of the rest, since you can’t take over an EC Shi class and fly it with just two people. Chemicals, something they put onto the ship’s intranet to alter the intercoms or blink the lights subliminally. It may have worked on them for a while—Sanjuni didn’t leave its registered course for two weeks.

“Whatever—it’s gone. And we don’t have diplomatic relations with the Eth. There’re no motions to go through to ask for it back.”

Someone asked, “Is there—?”

“A Fleet ship did head in as quietly as it could. They think they saw a pair of Eth ships on intercept.”

“Oh name of God,” someone else said. “I wasn’t even thinking. Shi class. Suspended animation—”

Tandy did nuzzle Lia now, trying to keep it out of her mind and failing. Shi class handled large-scale immigration of colony levies in hibernation. She refused to remember how many people they could carry.

People that doomed officer never had a chance to protect before her mind was taken over, people she was still fighting not to think of as cargo.

The Eth never ate anything after it was dead.

Tandy wondered if the Eth would leave the crew brainwashed, if they’d at least stay in their trances until . . .

Isolde Miro, I hope it’s quick for you.

2.

She looked at Ikewa, who was glaring at all of them. She’d expected a tale of mindless sex slaves toiling sloppily away on some resort asteroid after picking the wrong drinking buddy.

Not—this.

“If you’re careless, that’s what you could end up doing to all of us. We’ ve got filters, and detectors, and there’s always the watch crew stuck back here, trying not to be so bored and resentful at the duty that they’re open to induction, checking you out as you stagger back from leave.

“But that ship had all that too. Endostellar Commercial—they could afford the best.

“So don’t be careless.” He let them recover for a while, the display darkening while the room grew brighter, if not more cheerful.

Tandy hugged Lia closer to her. She wondered if anyone would be so freaked that they’d cancel their leave.

Not me, she thought. Fuck the Eth. She ran her hand down Lia’s back, not sure if she were soothing or claiming.

“Go for it,” whispered someone further down the row, glad for the distraction. Holding Lia, Tandy thought about how easy it would be to draw Lia after her to either of their bunks, or any place at all.

“Yeah,” said someone else, noticing, and likewise welcoming something else to think about.

“Tandy so randy,” they went on, in admiration.

Tandy sighed even as she smiled at the nickname. Lia wasn’t easy, but the voluptuous little lifesystems specialist nursed an almost hurtful crush on her. It destroyed the ability to say No that had kept Lia out of the friendly clutches of everyone else aboard Arvad who lusted after her—a fair number, of both sexes.

It wasn’t just abiding respect for Lia’s resolve that kept Tandy from taking her, or a desire to see her squirm (though watching Lia squirm was—) She didn’t want to get as involved as she knew Lia needed to, not with downtime at Labrys Delta to look forward to. Tandy wanted nothing that emotional to shadow the experience of hitting station deck there, where species mixed and traded.

And fucked.

Her friends’ jokes when she’d joined Phoinike Mercantile had been variations on see-the-universe-meet-interesting-creatures-and-have-weird-alien-sex-with-th em. Tandy had laughed, come up with a few of her own. But she hadn’t been kidding.

She liked her work and her crewmates and she loved Lia to death, but she was doing it all to get to places like Labrys Delta, and she didn’t want a girlfriend waiting for her, envying whoever or whatever she was wrapped in, or around. Feeling hurt at where Tandy wanted to go, at not being what made Tandy kick and moan.

Guilt made her listen to what was left of the cautionary lecture. She sat up next to Lia, still holding her, wondering if Lia were pleased or tormented by the comradely hug until Lia snuggled closer, still tense from what they’d seen.

The first officer sighed. “Remember one other thing, please. Anticlimactic, maybe, but—I hope—less unlikely than what you just saw. Labrys and all its stations are ruled by the Gynarchy downworld.”

Someone called “Femdom forever!” and there was a mocking cheer. Ikewa looked patient.

“They have a very lenient code for mere foreigners, given that we’re not allowed anywhere but on Delta station. But they enforce it fiercely. They’ re a highly industrialized system, they have a navy that can kick ass—but one reason they’re not part of the Commonwealth is that they don’t have what we would call ‘due process.’ If you get arrested for anything, you’ll get out of it the hard way, if you get out. There’s not much we can do for you. Not the Phoinike Cooperative, not our planet of registry, not the Commonwealth Fleet.

“It’s not an unfair system, but it looks at defendants as material, not rights-bearing individuals. If you screw up, you might be looking at a term of forced service.” Ikewa smiled bleakly at them. “That’s not what you’re thinking, either. Not fun at all, from what little we hear.”

There was the ritual groan as they rose to filter out, but it was muted. That sequence had been as daunting as he’d wanted.

Putting Eth and their teeth from her mind, Tandy looked over at Lia, who was scowling at the palm unit she’d used to take attendance, which still tallied Tandy as absent.

“Give me a break, sir? Ma’am?” she said. Lia kept looking down, but when she looked up again Tandy saw her jaw set, and she worried.

“You didn’t get the full briefing, Tandy. You’re not really safe to go out there when we dock.”

Tandy heard sighs from around her, perhaps the ones urging her to take a soft bite out of Lia before. She sensed that no one else was getting decertified for leave, so there’d be no one angry if Lia let her skate.

But Lia was staring at her. She’d reacted badly to Tandy’s expansive plans for doing Delta’s fleshpots until Tandy stopped talking about them. It wasn ‘t all jealousy, to Lia’s credit, but concern. And now she could nail Tandy to Arvad’s deck. For her own safety.

Hearing about Shi Sanjuni and its mind-controlled defection to alien carnivores . . .

God. I could have shown up on time. Why did I—?

She thought about staring Lia down again, pretending to mesmerize Lia into ticking off her name, but not now.

Fuck the Eth. And whatever “civilized” scum enslaved victims to sell them.

If it were anyone else, she’d have invited her along, but Lia was a claustrophile, comfortable on a familiar ship, terrified of station concourses, the crowds and noise and risk that Tandy could almost taste . . . and might just have screwed herself out of.

She wondered if she could screw herself back into it. Would Lia let herself be seduced?

Could Tandy—so randy—make herself seduce her? Would Lia enjoy being used?

But before Tandy could even ask herself if she could really do it, exploit her unasked-for thrall over Lia, Lia looked at her, swallowed, and said, “But I know you’ve had experience on stations before.” Decisively she tapped the stylus to the pad, opening Tandy’s way to as much weird alien sex as she could stand.

Tandy wanted to hug her, but she heard a chuckle and for Lia’s sake didn’t track it and glare. They were thinking Lia was already her love slave, but Tandy knew Lia was saving herself from the humiliation of melting, for real, under Tandy’s gentle demand.

“Thank you,” she said instead, and when Lia nodded and blushed and looked down again, she turned away to get ready for docking. She knew Lia might have found even the humiliation hard to resist—hurt me use me make me certify you—and admired her self-control.

When she looked into the mirror later, admiring herself in the brief, sprayed-on-looking playsuit, she had another thought. Lia wasn’t saving herself from being seduced and used—she might dream about it.

She’d saved Tandy from seducing and using her, and now Tandy was realizing how bad that would have felt, afterward. For a few moments, she thought about shitcanning the moveable orgy, and finding Lia instead, right now. Taking her from whatever she was doing, signing for one of the baths and just seeing what happened after that, exploring that soft dark hair and those edible curves, seeing how putting Lia through climax could turn cute into unbearably beautiful, then seeing it again. Spend her downtime in love, instead of rut.

Tandy smiled. Talk about seduced, would you? Cuddly Lia had her domesticating herself, now. By remote control. Heh.

When she got back, though. Yes, then. Lia would be a smooth, soft, warm, tame welcome back to normality and home, and even when they undocked they could spend the next leg of Arvad’s trade path splitting watches and keeping each other moist and warm. Lia was such a sweet armful.

But the thought of sweet, sane Lia was stirring dirtier ideas, actually intensifying them in Tandy’s brain, as it heard from its older, more intense sister below her waist. She thought of nasty, demented sex with creatures whose species she couldn’t pronounce, appendages . . . with that igniting her pussy, the image of Lia was a pure white bedsheet she had to stain.

Tandy smiled again at herself, and seeing how that new smile looked, she wanted to drag the sleek slutty woman in the mirror to the floor and do her right there.

Mmmmm.

She almost wanted to leave her hair down, but there were so many reasons not to leave it free to be grabbed. She started to put it up—it would be part of what happened later to let it fall. Or to hold still while another unbound her hair.

Maybe, later, she could corrupt Lia: a project for the two of them. Love-slavery would only be the beginning.

3.

Tandy locked eyes briefly with one of the strapping Gynarchic troopers patrolling the docks, but the achingly handsome young woman looked through her. She cared only for weapons or contraband, not barely-dressed tourists lusting after her. It occurred to Tandy that the trooper might have all the sex she wanted off-duty with the equally-lovely amazon beside her, and she felt a brief twinge, thinking of a shipboard bunk and Lia against her.

Then she thought tentacles and remembered what this was about.

The dock area beyond Arvad’s guarded airlock was bustling and chilly under the glare of the lights. The seals were layered and secure and the air crept out in molecules per decade, but the heat bled freely through.

Tandy didn’t mind, enjoying the goosebumps and the stares as she strutted away from the ship. She barely felt the playsuit, and the fantasy of walking naked past everyone hardened her nipples visibly beneath it.

She hadn’t even left the dock zone’s crashing echoes and smells of hydraulics and metals too warm and too cold, before someone shouted to her. She didn’t know the language—sounded like something central, maybe even Wolf 359 or Earth—but How much? was easy enough to grasp.

Tandy threw him the universal humanoid finger, and they both grinned as he threw it back and turned back to his loading. She forgot him as she went through the nested doorways that baffled the rest of Delta from the noise and cold and stink of this bank of docks, but as she sighed aloud at the warmth and quiet, she still tingled with the thrill of being taken for a whore in this place.

Damn. If they take me for a local whore, who’ll try to—mmm—exploit me? She smiled hungrily. Someone would. Time enough for that.

Her hand moved to the coin pouch slung at her hip, then away, not wanting to draw attention to it. Lia hadn’t erred in certifying her—Tandy could have given the hazard lecture on Delta or the half-dozen other leave ports on Arvad’s circuit. She’d researched them, to know them before she dropped her clothes on top of her inhibitions for creature or creatures unknown. She knew the incidence of robberies, the ten most-confiscated weapon types. She knew about how much she could rely on the Gynarchic security forces up here.

Safe enough against being held up, at least, and she’d learned how to handle sneak-thieves. It was worth the risk to bring cash along. She smiled again: there were things she might want to pay for that she wouldn’t want in her credit file. Research on that had been so . . . promising.

Yes. The Cooperative’s first-line ships, Tyre and Sidon, made the high-profile stations, even Earth, and perhaps those elite crews could afford the leave facilities. Tandy’d volunteered for the secondaries, Arvad or Ugarit, because she was happy to explore a relative backwater like Labrys, where the rules were looser and everything was cheaper but just as easy to enjoy.

This part of Delta was a large open space, and the starship crewmember in her winced at it—a bitch to pressurize, especially if there were a leak here or elsewhere.

Deciding to trust the Gynarchy’s well-earned arrogance that nothing would breach the station, she put it out of her mind and started to navigate the open market area, sorting the kiosks from the carts and the open-fronted cafes from the ominously-portaled bars. Some throbbed silently with the music inside. There was more deeper in, she knew, and decided to look up the bars where the more curious species went.

Something at a jewelry cart caught her eye: a young human woman in a coverall belted around a slim waist and tight around an ass that made Tandy stop and stare. The girl was staring, too, at what the cart’s owner swung gently in front of her eyes, and in the display mirror canted before her, her face was pretty and blank. Tandy could actually see her eyes flicker in time with the necklace’s sway as its reflected light strobed dimly into her.

Someone else who’d ignored a mind control briefing? Tandy felt her mouth trying to sneer at someone who’d let herself be hypnotized by something this hackneyed.

Then the girl blinked and seemed to awaken, and as Tandy watched, fascinated, she pulled reluctantly away and started to leave. The jeweler, a short portly humanoid with a comically broad face and a beaming smile under wide yellow eyes, didn’t move, but as he let the necklace swing to a stop he said something to her. She stopped dead, blinking again and turning back with a foolish grin, nodding at something else.

The crowds flowed and eddied around the little melodrama, ignoring the girl being slowly hypnotized in plain sight.

Sighing, Tandy strode over, almost ready to let it happen but telling herself it wasn’t just about this girl. There was probably someone more sensible who’d let this ingenue get out of sight for a moment, who’d take the hurt if she came to harm. She imagined how glad she’d be if someone looked after Lia. Of course Lia, nested safely in Arvad, wouldn’t be risking her free will out here anyway.

Tandy didn’t dare think about Eth.

“What are you doing?” she asked, putting some more sway into her hips as she came within earshot. The girl didn’t so much as twitch from her rapt study of the gem as it turned slightly on the chain, but the jeweler’s friendly golden eyes brightened as they looked Tandy up and down.

In his look she realized her role in the melodrama: the Unwary Rescuer. All right. “Does she need help?”

“Help?” he asked. “Yes, my dear, she does. She’s come each day since her ship docked to choose a jewel and she can never decide. I am helping her decide.”

“Helping me decide,” the girl recited softly, her glassy stare never wavering.

“She needs help with decisions. But she has such trouble keeping the decisions in her mind. It’s as though she forgets each time and must return to me . . .”

He started unobtrusively spinning the gem a little faster, and Tandy obligingly let it catch her gaze, frowning a bit before letting her face soften. The girl next to her whined softly as it moved, and Tandy felt another pleasant chill at the sound.

“I sense you, too, need someone to help you decide. Why not just relax and enjoy the pretty gem while I try to help you?”

“But . . . why . . . forget . . .” She let her mouth hang open for a moment before slowly closing it, moving her head as through trying to look away but already captured.

“Because the stones are too pretty to remember, my dear,” the jeweler said, and suddenly Tandy was lightheaded as she realized he did have a very soothing voice and the light did almost stroke her brain as she stood there obediently letting him play it into her eyes.

“Soon you too will learn not to remember my pretty gem, but first I need to tell my other good girl what she must do now to please me. Then I will help you relax more fully.”

As he spoke to her gently, Tandy knew that if she pretended too cleverly, she wouldn’t be pretending at all after a while, and she’d spend her foray here falling more deeply under this alien’s sleazy little spell. And the poor idiot next to her . . .

“. . . deep, soothing violet, the color of a stilled and sleeping mind hearing only the voice that controls it, of the full lips of a slave girl parted to—”

“Violet,” Tandy whispered, letting her nervousness sound like passion as she gasped.

“Yes, violet, so pretty,” the jeweler said, going with the new flow.

“Violet . . . like my eyelids . . .”

“Yes. Closed in sleep, as you will—”

“Violet.” She moved her gaze from the gem to his eyes without blinking. “Like merchant’s blood.”

She enjoyed seeing his pupils dilate, and fancied she was leaning through them, looming into his mind. He smiled gamely. “My dear. Heh. No. I assure you, my blood is just as red as—”

“I don’t believe you,” she told him, and smiled—deliberately not trying for menace, but instead for the friendly twinkle she’d have given to Lia.

I’ll just have to make sure, her smile said.

The artless grin of a psychopath, and it worked. He changed color slightly, and the gem shook at the end of its chain. The girl moaned, her obedient dream blurring as the hypnotic focus moved.

Tandy wondered what to say next, had no idea, and decided not to play anymore. She took the girl by her upper arm—surprisingly soft-muscled but very warm—and pulled her as she stepped away.

The little jeweler looked suddenly pathetic with his gem and mirror and his stricken expression, and Tandy wondered what he really would have done with the girl. But then she saw the girl’s face in the mirror as they backed away, and recalled who the victim was here.

In a moment, they were in the crowd and moving inward toward a layer of concourses closer to Delta’s core. Tandy slowed down when she felt vague resistance, and turned to see the girl waking from the trance, dazedly shaking off her grip. She looked at the girl until she focused.

“Do you know where you are?”

“Um, what? Yes. No. What . . . ?” She closed her eyes and left them closed for a while as the people flowed around them.

“Do you remember your name?” Tandy asked, wondering what the procedure actually was after rescuing someone from a hypnotist.

“Of course I do. Who are you?”

She sighed. “I’m the one who just snapped you out of a hypnotic trance that I think you’ve spent the last couple of days deepening. The jeweler?”

“The—? No, that’s not possible.” But she saw the girl knew it, and was just mortified that Tandy did, too.

“What’s your ship?” She saw no insignia, or even an ID bracelet such as she wore herself.

“Oh. Oh—Venture Isle. Xiu and Winslow. We’re at—oh, god. How long have I been—?”

Tandy empathized. The woman might be marooned if her ship guessed she’d just run off and forfeited her crew bond, and pulled out. She named the Commonwealth Standard date, and the woman almost wilted with relief. “It’s still today.”

“It usually is,” Tandy said, but the woman just stared at her instead of laughing.

She didn’t look as though she were feeling either grateful or attracted to Tandy, so Tandy sighed, seeing her alternate role in the melodrama, the Heroic Rescuer (in the Smitten Rescuee’s arms), slip away too. Well, she hadn’t planned to fuck another human woman until she needed a chaser, anyway.

They were moving now, toward an office area, and Tandy guessed the woman was looking for the Xiu and Winslow branch—so she was going to report her little adventure to her chain instead of slinking back to her ship.

Tandy tried to decide whether she’d be as honest now, if she’d been as stupid before. She remembered the ship they said had flown itself helplessly into Eth space and why secrets like that were deadly. As she rode out the chill it still gave her, something near them, possibly an elevator, made a loud ringing sound.

The woman stopped dead—again—and stared into space as a familiar foolish grin reclaimed her features.

“Ping!” she said blissfully.

“No,” said Tandy, unable to look away from how quickly and thoroughly the woman had been triggered.

“I . . . must . . . buy . . . jewelry . . . now,” she intoned, and pivoted to head back to the concourse.

Tandy stared at her, completely at a loss, enjoying her ass as it twitched with her brisk walk back to . . . her master. She kept staring when the crowd swallowed the girl up.

“Fuck this,” she muttered, and went to look for a bar.

4.

Oh, fuck Ikewa and his horror stories, too. And her fucking conscience as well.

Tandy found an Enforcement office they’d passed and described the girl, the humanoid jeweler, the hypnosis. She wondered how her own role sounded, but the trooper who took the report (another heroic beauty—did they do that deliberately?) didn’t seem to care.

She offered her ID. “Do you need me to stay as a witness?”

The trooper looked at her. “No. We know this one. He’s had his warning. You can go.”

Tandy recalled no due process and wondered if the little controller would know what hit him. She succeeded in not imagining what the Gynarchy might do to male resident-alien sex criminals.

Never mind. Now she did need a drink. Between her and the nearest bars was a zone of commercial displays, and Tandy gazed at them idly as she wended a path through them. Some of it was mounted or rested on surfaces, but some floated, and she learned to spot the mostly-concealed bulk of the gravity screens. Very upscale personal items, and some machinery, polished and displayed like sculpture. She recognized some of it; if drive work had been a career instead of just what paid her way for travel, she’d have salivated.

A frostier, expensively austere way of doing it, but just as blatant as the spread wares of the hypnotic jeweler and his counterparts out there in the marketplace. Buy me.

She was still preoccupied when motion caught her eye. She looked up to find herself alone in a group of transparent display blocks, deck-to-overhead like huge tanks.

Beings floated in them.

She saw two reptilian aliens wrestling each other in slow motion, not sure if they were fighting or fucking or whether their species distinguished the two. She watched the light shift over their scales as they rippled over the musculature beneath, dreaming of the cold strength against her heat.

Her breath caught at the next tank.

What captured her first was the Shambleau herself, her tentacles spread majestically out and down, almost like a wingspan as she floated. She—Tandy knew the Shambleau were female, leaving their sessile and possibly nonsapient males back on their homeworld.

Her head was turned away, denying Tandy a look at the exquisite silvery orb that would have been a face. Tandy knew their name for themselves, unpronounceable as it was for most sane people, but didn’t even let herself think it. She heard it from a lover back at the university, as they lay together, as the other girl tried to explain that everything Tandy’d done to her had been wonderful, hot, perfect . . . but that nothing had been the same since the alien had had her.

Tandy hadn’t known whether she was more hurt or aroused, but forgot hurt as she turned in the other’s arms to see her staring sightlessly into the shadows, lost in the memory. The girl had said the name of the creature that had taken her, ridden her, imprinted her with sex she could never replace. Tandy held her close, but she was the one that cried.

Tandy wanted that.

Now she saw the Shambleau held something—someone—wrapped in her tentacles. It was smaller than a human, whatever it was, and the way the Shambleau held it kept Tandy from seeing if she were also reaching into it with other extensions. The smaller creature’s face was recognizably one, and it looked soft enough to carry expression, but there was none, just a slackness in muscles that weren’t grimacing, or smiling. Eyes that stared.

Together, the two beings pulsed. Tandy thought about the place beyond bliss where the Shambleau had taken its limp lover, was keeping it. Where another of its kind had taken her own lover, once. She tried to let the pulsing draw her in.

No. This close and not even touching—it hurt, and she almost angrily pulled her eyes away. She looked at the rest, and tried to forget the dream that floated barely three meters from her.

Most of the others swam or drifted alone, nude, staring or sleeping, not minding the empty tanks that held them, or how exposed they were.

Tandy stared at them, coveting them. It blew her mind too much to let her wonder what they were all doing there, though the answer was climbing up quietly inside.

She found herself riveted by a svelte female humanoid with bluish skin who simply stood and turned in space, rotating like a scientific display, her tapering legs straight and her posture true as a dancer’s. Her smooth cleft was just above Tandy’s eye level, and seemed more beseeching than her impassive face each time it swung across Tandy’s view. The girl’s arms hung at her sides but her hands were slightly raised, fingers spread, like the faintest beginning of a warding-off gesture.

Had she fought it? Being put into the trance they all seemed to be in? Resisted being set up there to spin?

She’s for sale. This is a slave market. Ohhh . . .

“They can get to you, can’t they?”

Tandy focused first on the woman’s reflection on the display’s glass, seeing her face overlaid on the slave girl’s thigh for a moment as she rotated. Their eyes met there, first.

The woman was older and taller than she was, dressed in a softer variant of the business coverall, with a scarf in what Tandy had heard called, for some reason, “Earth tones.”

She came to stand next to Tandy. “Still does to me, and I’ve been posted here for a Standard year.” She offered her hand and Tandy took it, grateful to break the weird fascination of the display girl. “I’m Ilene.”

“Tandy. Hi.” She breathed; this one didn’t think she was soliciting, anyway—maybe—and it was a relief. “Are they awake?” she said, as much for something to say as to know.

“Hard to say.” Ilene’s accent was clipped, but her voice was warm. “They’ re kept in some kind of trance for display.”

Tandy had to ask. “Is it involuntary? How can they just—?” Nothing she’ d seen talked about slavery, not here. She remembered this wasn’t the Commonwealth, but . . .

Ilene sighed. “At least they warned me. I’m a trade agent, so I have to deal with some of these people.

“Technically it isn’t slavery. The business is owned by a methane-breathing firm, and none of them are here. It’s all out-of-species to them. So on all the documentation, the word doesn’t appear.

“These are—animal imports.”

Ilene looked at them. “Officially, these are debtors working it off, or from non-Commonwealth worlds where’s it’s not illegal. In fact, a lot of the contracts are limited-service. Not about ownership.”

Tandy shivered. She wondered how many imported animals refused to extend their contracts when the ones who didn’t own them—told them to.

“I could use a drink,” Ilene said, sounding as tired of looking at them as Tandy felt. “It’s been a long day. May I buy you one?”

It made Tandy realize how much her mood had shifted. Very inviting, and Ilene was pretty in Lia’s gentle way. But she hadn’t come on-station to find refuge with someone friendly, and she was afraid she’d lose her edge completely if she tried.

“Thanks,” she said, stepping away and touching Ilene’s hand. “But I have some serious debauchery to attend to.”

Ilene smiled and kept still, letting her walk away but probably not wanting to. “Happy debauching, Tandy.”

Tandy made herself ignore the twinge that came with turning her down. Anyway—if that were what she wanted, she’d have stayed with Lia. Going with a Lia-type, for all that willowy Ilene looked nothing like ripe little Lia, would have been . . . disloyal.

That thought got her to the bars, and she let a pulsating bass reach into her crotch and draw her into the dark maw of one, washing the rest of regret from her.

5.

Her eyes adjusted quickly to the contrast of dimness and strobing brightness and she got a sense of the space inside. She moved across the dance area, glad her first choice wasn’t the kind that had freefall for that, too.

She wasn’t dancing, but weaving and dodging the artful grabs of some of those who were was nearly as much fun, and it gave her a half-seen inventory of how many patrons were nonhuman. Plenty. She smiled to herself, letting the throb from the sound system walk her sinuously across the crowded space.

There was always the chance she might get stung, or brushed with a contact drug, and depending on how quickly it took effect she might find herself being helped off the floor by a dance partner she wouldn’t remember having met. Helped to a dark corner booth, or a back room. Helped out of the playsuit.

But the idea just made her skin tingle. Very few people went abroad these days without defenses. Her blood already sparkled with the antigens for most of those, and if someone had something new to zombify her with, and sent her back programmed to enslave the rest of Arvad for them, the bioscan would spot the anomaly and its alarm would probably scream her awake in the airlock.

Of course, they might not care about Arvad, just about enslaving Tandy. She let that chill slide off into the warm darkness and closed in on the bar toward the back.

One reach was too long to dodge, and she found a warm, furry arm across her back. A warm, smooth paw slid under her far arm, staying friendly instead of trying to encircle her. She found herself drawn close to something feline and tall, staring up at an imperious muzzle and oddly gentle eyes.

It waited, making a little island of stillness for the two of them, and Tandy waited too. It nodded—she wondered if that were native to its species, or learned as a gesture for humans—and loosened its grip, accepting her hesitation. She stayed near it for a moment, and rested a palm on the warmth of its chest, above the uniform vest it wore.

Later, maybe. She smiled, remembering not to show teeth, and slid away.

There were places at the bar. It seemed more like a staging area than a place for people to stay—she could see turnover even as she approached. She found a spot by a column where she felt a bit more in control and ordered, looking out at everyone, seeing it differently already from inside, having found a spot. More of the felines caught her eye elsewhere, part of someone’s crew that had come here and separated to try their luck.

Tandy smiled. Maybe someone had studied which species kept their primal hunting practices when they ventured into this kind of jungle.

After a while, something cool touched her fingers. She looked down to see another vodka by her hand, and followed the articulated limb up to the bartender’s thorax, then the compound eyes.

“Compliments,” it hummed, pitching it for her ears over the noise.

“Whose?” she asked. Its eyes didn’t move, but another jointed limb curved elegantly from behind it and pointed to a booth on the tiered slope that rose up like arena seating for giants halfway across the dancefloor. She followed the gesture, and when she saw the still figure the bartender meant, her heart nearly stopped.

A Shambleau.

No mistake. When it saw her, it raised the glass it held.

Trembling, Tandy moved her old drink aside, and looked up as she took the one bought for her. She raised it, and saw the shimmer as the alien’s head inclined. The Shambleau lowered its glass to a point below its mirrored face, and Tandy brought her own to her lips. They drank together.

A Shambleau. God—a drink was just what she needed now, too.

She breathed deeply and set the glass down, reaching for her old one. She looked back at the bartender, and barely thought to wonder what it thought of all this complexity in vertebrate sex. Or even the idea of recreational sex.

It probably didn’t, she realized, and then let herself slide off the seat, not caring if she left a stain.

A Shambleau.

This was . . .

She stared up at the booth where it sat, and as she walked to the stairway to go up there, she sensed that she was left alone, as though everyone in her path somehow knew she had no interest in playing now. Not with anyone else.

Tandy was at the booth without really caring how she’d gotten there. She found it was actually walled in something transparent, and noticed others on this tier and others that had gone opaque or where only shadows looked out.

Or moved inside together, without seeming to care what was outside.

She stepped in, and the Shambleau rose, holding out a tentacle with a grace that almost made her weep.

This close, she found it easier to think of the alien as it, but somehow it diminished none of the feminine vibe it sent out. Certainly none of Tandy’s desire for—it.

Tandy took the offered appendage in her hand, and it gripped her gently, warm and smooth and delicate and sensitive and utterly, wonderfully alien. She let it slide up and around her arm and draw her down to sit by it, though it kept Tandy at arm’s length.

My arms’ length, she thought, considering the length of tentacles, feeling the blood pound through her, knowing it felt that pulse, glad her blood could tell this beautiful creature how much she . . .

The Shambleau kept her arm, and ran two more of the gentle strands around her back, as though to support her. She felt it take hold of her gathered hair and run across it, not loosening it, following the strands to her scalp and touching her there with teasing delicacy.

Tandy felt more tentacles drift against her knees and then shyly move away. She shivered, and the alien stroked her.

It spoke.

6.

The buzzing was pleasant but soft, and as Tandy strained to hear it, yet another tentacle snaked out and adjusted a control on the table. The booth’ s walls dimmed to translucence, and the bar’s noise faded. Tandy still had to lean forward, dazingly close to the shape under the dark, satiny cloak. But she could hear.

“How are you called, beautiful one?” It sounded—felt—so lovely.

She closed her mouth, let it moisten. “Tandy.”

“Tennndyyyy.” She had to close her eyes at the music the alien made of her name. It stroked her again.

She reached up and stroked the alien, enjoying the firmness and the warmth so like her own. She almost forgot to speak, but she wanted to hear its voice again.

“What is your name?” She couldn’t top “beautiful one” and didn’t want to repeat it, true as it was.

She forgot that as the alien answered her with a sound that invited her to dream and serenaded her pussy at the same time. She shivered and leaned into the Shambleau’s grip and moaned softly.

“I can’t . . . please . . . again . . .?”

The alien’s hum was amused and friendly. It sounded its name again for her, more deliberately, and the effect on Tandy’s cleft was even stronger. She smiled weakly and relaxed against the tentacles, and the Shambleau was content to hold her. She thought of the one she’d seen floating on display and had no thought for how it might have gotten there or whether its plight might mean anything to this one.

All Tandy’s mind could grasp was the smaller creature that Shambleau had cradled in ecstasy as this one was holding her.

“Oh. That’s too beautiful even to remember,” she breathed.

“I am sorry, Tennndyyy. I have not taken a human sound yet.

“Would you give me one?”

Tandy opened her thighs, and felt other tentacles move gently up her skin. “I—” She closed her eyes. For a moment she thought she heard the Shambleau’s voice buzzing quietly into her thoughts, but the alien’s posture seemed to show it was waiting for her, so how could it be speaking?

“I—couldn’t think of anything—beautiful enough,” she whispered, and the alien stroked her face.

“Perhaps I could teach you mine, Tennndyyy.” She heard it speak through the tentacles even as the soft sound tickled her brain. “Just listen, as I speak it.”

Tandy felt herself going limp.

“Teach me,” she begged.

“Yes, beautiful one. Just listen, and concentrate. Hear me.” Then the lovely pussy-kissing sound faded to the Shambleau’s true, whispering hum. A buzzing like summer insects on Tandy’s homeworld, making her feel warm.

The tentacles stayed gentle, finding new places on Tandy to touch, and soothe, and turn her on. They seemed almost to be vibrating . . .

Tandy tried to keep her eyes open. She saw the Shambleau’s face was no longer just a mirror, that there were relaxing patterns there now, and they helped her keep her eyes open, to keep watching them, to think only of them and the sound of the Shambleau teaching her. The patterns spun gently, but like the stroking all over her body they didn’t distract her. They helped her focus.

Tandy wanted to focus. When she made love to her new friend, when her new friend took her to that blissful place only a Shambleau could guide her to, she needed to know its name, her name, so she could scream it, whisper it, repeat it in her mind when the pleasure took her voice and her wits.

The buzzing was . . . making it easier now, easier to concentrate on the soothing whisper, humming everything else into the unimportant, unheard background. It was like a stirring in the depths of her, roiling her deeper thoughts and beliefs into a froth she couldn’t see through, but buoying her up to the surface, bubbling under her like bath jets, warming and relaxing her.

Tandy moved dreamily on the couch, smiling blankly. A blob of iridescence formed at the top of the Shambleau’s head and began to move rivetingly across her mesmerizing absence of a face, and Tandy found herself focusing on it, moving her head to follow it. She glimpsed herself now and then in the tinted walls of the booth, barely able to place where that booth was, and saw that following the blob was moving her head as though she were in a fairly animated conversation.

Before she could think about that, though, it was too nice to do anything but enjoy the sensation of moving her head, gently, like a puppet on strings.

The buzzing was deeper in Tandy’s brain now, and she gasped with the pleasure of realizing that it was synchronized precisely with the rumbling pleasure the Shambleau’s tentacles were thrumming into her everywhere they touched.

As though sensing that she’d reached that point, the two that had been teasing her inner thighs braided themselves together and slid slowly, implacable between her nerveless legs. Her pussy felt their warmth before they touched it, and she was so turned-on that her clit was shamelessly out already, taking their buzz and sending it unbearably into her. It multiplied the simple, ancient hum that was destroying her will and gently, ruthlessly melted any puny desire to save it.

Part of her kept almost remembering why this was wrong, why she should be fighting it, but the pleasure was too intense to pay much attention to anything else.

There were Words on her mind, and it would have surprised her if she could still think at that level, but she did recognize that the Words were there because they weren’t her words. They were from someone she trusted, loved. Submitted to. Belonged to. Worshipped.

Obeyed.

Tandy fought back but it was more instinctive than anything else. And the pleasure-conditioning was too deep in her now to let her do more than dream of resisting. In the little awareness she had left beyond pleasure and the Words, she knew it as a feeling of losing her balance, gently tilting and never quite righting herself but never hitting the ground either, just tipping, tipping . . . spinning . . .

Freefall.

She was starcrew, though that meant nothing to her now, and her body knew how it felt to float. But this was so much nicer . . . no cramping suit, no bothersome chore to perform instead of floating and enjoying the zero-G . . .

No fear.

No fear of falling away, because she was safely tethered now, her mind and will bound to the Shambleau by the Shambleau’s stronger will, her control of Tandy’s thoughts and desires.

Even as she sat in the chair, acting like a drinking companion on her way to becoming a bedtoy, she knew she only dreamed the tavern around her, the other people. Tandy knew she really floated free in a place only the Shambleau could find. where no one else could reach and interfere. Curled around the tentacles that owned her pussy, safe and controlled and asleep. Nothing touched her. She was suspended from any danger.

Finally, she could open herself, and listen. And become.

And obey.

Now that Tandy was completely hypnotized and there was no need to offer her a focus, the blob faded from the Shambleau’s head, and in moments so had the other whorls and lines and ghost-paisleys and spirals.

Tandy stared at her wide-eyed reflection in the alien’s mirrored facelessness, what was left of her self marveling at the stunned, mindless woman that looked back at her.

More Words had buzzed into her head as she sat numbly, and she didn’t know or care whether they were what was making her so painfully aroused to see the dull, bovine gleam in her own eyes.

Then the orgasm began, and she forgot everything.

7.

Soft laughter brought Tandy back to herself. It was her own laughter, relaxed and happy. She was just outside the bar’s doorway, not quite into concourse traffic, catching a few stares as she traded nods with the Shambleau, as the elegant alien thanked her for their chat with a sinuous gesture and glided off.

Ohhh, I wish I’d coaxed her into an hourly! Tandy realized she was breathing hard, and didn’t care. She had good taste, and didn’t worry who knew that. If she got another chance she’d book indefinite hours, if the Shambleau would only say yes.

She’d beg, if she had to. She’d . . .

Tandy blinked. Hmm. Hadn’t she made a date with the alien, to meet somewhere and please it? She shivered. It was an odd idea, and she was finding it hard to keep it in her mind, but that didn’t worry her. She knew there was something to keep her occupied, to keep her happy, until . . . until . . .

She realized she was already going there. Her body seemed to know what she should do, even if her mind was still spinning from her hour or whatever it had been with the Shambleau.

Yes. Oh yes. Yes indeed. I was with a Shambleau. Tandy purred to herself as she walked, not entirely sure where she was going but seeking and finding landmarks through the vastness of the larger concourse as though she were. Everyone left her alone, seeing no tourist hesitation.

In her playsuit, then, they must think she really was a whore.

The idea sent a jolt of pleasure into her crotch and the air on her skin answered the heat inside. It didn’t break her stride.

A Shambleau bought me drinks. It—she—called me over.

She—called to me, Tandy thought, feeling something new and deeper than glee. I came when called. I will come when called. The thought was relaxing, and she let her body keep walking her where she needed to go.

It occurred to her that it was right to obey her body, to hear and submit to its needs. She knew that was a lesson she needed to remember. She knew that she would.

For a moment, she thought, Well yes, that’s why I came. I’m obeying my body’s need for weird alien sex, and . . . and . . .

It felt wrong. The lesson about obeying wasn’t about whatever shallow lust she’d come here for.

Her heart quailed and she tried to remember what was important. Her new friend’s name, that she’d spent so much time and care teaching Tandy.

Tandy sighed and opened herself to the memory, and the wonderful humming filled her head.

Her mind dreamed of Shambleau and her body kept her walking.

Suddenly there was a new thought: I’m here. She looked out, seeing off a mezzanine that overhung an amphitheater space. Pearlescent walls curved down away from the span over her.

She couldn’t really pay attention to the sculpture or whatever it was that filled this public-art space. The only thing that interested her, the only thing she could keep in her mind, was the fountain down below, in the well of the theatre.

Tandy stood at the rail of the mezzanine and looked down at it, meters away and below, heedless of the people around her, of the others on the lower level who looked up at the fountain or away from it at each other. Tandy would have been astonished at how anyone could do anything but look at the fountain, but her focus on it kept her from really seeing or caring what anyone else did. All that mattered to her was what she must do.

She must look at the fountain.

It was flowing uphill over an artificial pile of rock, some of it silvery-veined black, some of it a greenish slate, some of it clear crystal lit from within, but she ignored that. It looked like a waterfall defying gravity, but that made no impression on her thoughts, either. Even the pulsing flow of the liquid too viscous to be water that might have mesmerized her another time flickered off her staring eyes.

Her thoughts had flowed out of her like the liquid flowed, but that no longer mattered. There were no thoughts now.

All Tandy could see was its color. As she lost awareness of everything else, she knew the fountain flowed blue, and the knowledge kept her still.

Part of her was trying to think, but there was a buzzing in her skull, and most of her mind waited for the echoes of that buzzing in her pussy, and the soft waves washed everything else away. It was like someone tapping her there, never bringing her close to orgasm but not letting her think of anything else.

The color changed. She knew the fountain flowed golden, and the knowledge kept her still.

She thought of someone near her, shorter and sweetly curved, but it was gone like a fever dream.

Lia, she whispered in her mind. She tried to make it mean something without knowing why.

She realized it might be a name but the only name that mattered was . . . the wonderful humming filled her head again.

The color changed. She knew the fountain flowed purple, and the knowledge pivoted her.

Purple. Her body needed to go somewhere else now.

As she walked she felt more aware. She smiled at people at random, getting used to interacting with them. She must seem natural. She must seem spontaneous. It was important. Her body needed to.

Tandy joined people on an elevator. In the press someone reached for her and began fondling her. It didn’t feel like a human hand, and she recalled a dim pleasure in that, but it just felt soothing to stand there and be used. She swallowed her moans to make sure the groper wasn’t scared off or exposed.

When she disembarked on another concourse level no one looked at her and she went her way, used and ignored. It made her hot, but her body needed to keep going.

She saw a logo in an advertisement holo and then waited for another. When her mind registered it, she felt her hands go to her belt. They removed the coin pouch and she wound the strap around it. She found her face forming a new expression, open and hopeful.

Tandy realized she was looking for a place and a group of people. Neither was clear in her mind, but the hum in her cleft reminded her to obey her body and she stopped thinking.

She was walking toward them before she knew it, but she found herself already smiling. There were two humans, man and woman, and two males from the squat species from E Eridani, all around someone in a satiny cloak who turned and oh—

The sight of the Shambleau did something to Tandy, and her strange trance wobbled. Her body was confused and she looked to the mirror of its face to see . . . see . . .

8.

Patterns flowed there, patterns she knew she’d seen before. She felt the conditioning soothe her again, restore her balance. Pleasure washed through her body, and she remembered to obey it.

“Excuse me,” she heard herself say.

“Yes?” The human woman had a pleasant voice, but still louder and harsher than the Shambleau. Nothing was as sweet to hear, as compelling, as the voice of a Shambleau.

“I’m sorry,” Tandy said, smiling brightly and naturally, gazing fascinated at the patterns dancing across the beautiful alien’s face. They taught her what to say again.

“I was behind you, back at the Export Bank and I saw you drop this.” Export Bank? She didn’t remember anything about—it didn’t matter. There were a few more words to say.

“I know it’s yours and I wanted to return it.” She stopped, empty of words until someone . . .

“Thank you,” the Shambleau said, and Tandy almost fell to her knees to hear the voice outside her head again. “I did not know.”

“You’re so honest!” the woman enthused, and there were approving noises from the Eridanians. The man just leered at Tandy in her playsuit and somehow looked disappointed.

“You should have something, a reward, something.”

Tandy waited for words. Or for Words. A pattern . . .

“No, thank you,” she heard herself say. “I’m just happy to be of service.” Something moved in her pussy and she closed her eyes, too loose to try to hide the sound she made, and they all stared at her, smiling.

She looked at them, realizing her mouth was hanging stupidly open, starting to feel deeply embarrassed and trying to rally her wits to deal with all this.

“Tennndyyy.” The voice and its erotic bending of her name drew her back to the Shambleau, and she gaped at the new patterns pulsing across its face. The mirror had returned and the swirling overlay it, and she faced her wide-eyed self through the shapes that were hypnotizing her.

“I have to leave now,” she whispered, and even in the daze she heard the mockery as they agreed. It didn’t matter.

She had to leave now.

Blinking, she sighed and smiled, and turned away. It was time to obey her body again, and she knew she would return to the fountain and wait for a color her mind would only remember when it was time. Beyond that in her mind there was only swirling, and the echo of the humming between her thighs.

Something crashed.

For a moment Tandy kept walking, more aware that she’d heard a noise than aware of what it had been, exactly, but as she saw the maintenance hauler that had run into one of the corridor walls at the mouth of this concourse and watched the work crew scramble around the spilled conduit sections, the unpleasantness hit her like cold water.

Her body ached with arousal, and she was suddenly so lonely she didn’t know what the feeling was for a moment.

Where had she gotten to, and how . . . ?

Like a messenger with awful timing, her mind suddenly exulted A Shambleau wants me!

Shambleau.

She shook her head, trying to unwrap her mind from the fragrant cobwebs and the iridescent mirror that even now drew her to—something cut across that. She’d stopped walking and it took her moment to realize. Her hand had gone to her belt and found no coin pouch.

She’d given it . . .

Tandy stood very still. Part of her was cold. I was stupid and I was robbed and I’m damned lucky to walk away it could be so much worse.

No. No. She’d been with a Shambleau, her second pickup in the first bar she’d come to, and it had felt just as to-die-for as her lover had . . .

“No.” No one looked at her as they went by. She turned and started stalking toward them. I’ll find out how hard that fucking mirror is, she thought, determined not to let herself be mesmerized by it.

Something scary inside her wondered if it would feel as good to please it if she did let that happen.

She pictured herself in the mirror, going blissful and quiet, waiting to be told what to do about her misbehavior.

But it hurt too much to know she’d been played.

When she reached them, the Eridanians looked nervous, and the Shambleau seemed to sense she was riding rage instead of sleepy lust now, and actually started to glide away.

“Give it back!” she shouted, and now people did look. The human pair moved to intercept her. “No. No! It’s not—that thing hypnotized me, it did something—” As they held her off and she hesitated to escalate, she saw their faces, remembered how they’d looked at her while she performed.

“You all just—!” They smiled at her.

But then they smiled at someone else, and she turned to find herself face to face with a pair of pretty, strapping Gynarchic Enforcement officers.

“Come with us,” said the nearer one, a blonde.

Tandy fought to gather her thoughts, to look rational, not as though she were—

“Trying to rob us, maybe,” the man was explaining to them.

“Well, she seemed more obvious than that. She may just be on something,” the woman said.

“I saw it too,” said one of the Eridanians, and Tandy read the way he stood . . . he was letting the troopers think he was a stranger.

A witness.

She was in way over her head. “Listen, I—”

The trooper’s lovely eyes found hers, and didn’t blink as the young woman raised something and held it to Tandy’s head. “You don’t want to be disruptive.”

Whatever the weapon did to her Tandy felt it all over, a warm afterglow that made her realize that she didn’t want to be disruptive. Was it the weapon, though, or just the new golden certainty that she could believe anything this beautiful girl told her?

“You want instead to conform and obey.”

I love you, she wanted to say, but said nothing. The girl’s truth meant more than her own thoughts. As it replaced them, she waited to be told what to do.

That was how she could conform and obey.

9.

The walk to the Enforcement vehicle and the ride inside it were already fading from her thoughts. Tandy hadn’t minded—had she?—being packed into the holding compartment with some other captives just as quiet and tranquilized as she was. She hadn’t wondered if the dull hum was the motor or something else to keep them all docile. She felt too docile, and it was easier not to think.

Had someone told her that, while she was entranced by the full lips that spoke it?

She was too drowsy to masturbate.

She shook herself. The idea of playing with herself was drawing her out of the fugue. She looked around, trying to realize just how bad this had gotten, letting her mind get used to thinking again.

The room was a cell, clear-sided in a row of them in a bright orange-walled room, half-full of quiescent figures, mostly humanoid and to her dazed eye all female.

No due process, she thought, and felt a pang, as it reminded her of Ikewa and Arvad.

She set her jaw, not letting herself start to miss anyone else, and clung to the upside. She hadn’t done anything really violent. What she could remember of the put-up conversation had her attempting to steal something, or not even that. Even by Labrys’ standards she hadn’t committed much more than rudeness. The thieves were unlikely to stay around to document her “attempt.”

It was reasonable to expect she’d be out of here soon enough that she wouldn’t be missed. She could decide what, if anything, to tell anyone.

The Gynarchy wasn’t out to get her. They’d probably seen this happen more than once a dayperiod, a shipcrew type drugged or otherwise disabled and robbed. When they got her they’d call her a fool, and she’d agree, and she’ d accept that the exotic alien of her dreams had turned out to be just another sneak-thief. Another pang. She’d been so open to the Shambleau, so willing, and it had drawn her along. It hadn’t even wanted her.

It wasn’t even rape.

God, this was all working out so badly.

When she crossed her arms the light rush she felt made her look down, and she saw she’d brushed her nipples. She was nude.

“It’s OK,” said a voice. She was free enough of the trooper’s stunner to jump, and someone came up as she turned. Another nude human woman, about her size but heavier, with beautifully-toned muscles and a square, open face, stood a bit away from her. It occurred to Tandy that this was a jail, and she recalled the kind of people who stayed in jails.

But the woman looked as disoriented as she felt.

“They said they keep the clothes and everything safe.”

“They . . . said? When?”

The woman looked at her, then looked puzzled and looked over at the adjoining cell. Someone very tall was there—Tandy thought for a moment of her silent, polite feline suitor in the bar (could have stayed and had a drink might still be there now oh damn oh fuck—no) but this being was smoother, its . . . her . . . head broader and gloried with low parallel crests.

“They take in Processing,” she said, staring at Tandy’s cellmate with unreadable eyes the color of dark wine. Her voice, carrying through a baffle in the transparent plastic, was deep and sounded as through she were more used to shouting. “Processing, make you sleep.” Her mouth quirked into something that could have been amusement. “You sleep, they tell. You hear. Believe. Control.

“Humans easy for control.”

Tandy stiffened, but the alien woman read it and made a human no gesture with one long-fingered hand. “Not of me. No. Laaa-breeess police humans, make control best for humans . . .” She saw Tandy nod.

Great. No offense. So the Gynarchy was best at brainwashing its own species. She didn’t even remember anyone doing that to her—it was still blank after the numbing ride with the other prisoners. Between the stunner and the Shambleau’s betraying mindfuck, maybe she was especially susceptible now.

She wondered if they’d told her to stand still while they pulled the playsuit off, or if they’d told her to strip and just watched her obey.

Obey. She gasped, and realized there was nothing to hide the wet now.

The alien grinned again and looked at her cellmate. “Kifa happy? This one play.”

Tandy looked sharply at her cellmate, but Kifa looked just as bothered. “Sorry,” she muttered. “Hierig like to watch. She’s been looking forward to my getting someone here.”

“Oh. OK.” Tandy was looking around and saw no bed here. It could mean many things: no one was kept here long enough to need one, the Gynarchy didn’t think prisoners deserved anything but hard floor, they’d be hypnotized into sleep and would be told to feel the floor was soft.

She had to stop ideas like that, because there’d only be her hand to wipe with.

At any rate, if Kifa wanted her, it was the floor, or standing up, and Tandy wondered whether she’d ask Kifa first. It was so tempting to think of touching, just to be touched. She started to think she didn’t care if the—hierig?—did watch.

“What are you in for?” Kifa didn’t sound hardened, or like she was trying to test Tandy. She just sounded tired and frightened.

Tandy was trying to decide whether she really didn’t remember when she heard herself say “Prostitution without . . . a license.”

She stared at Kifa, who looked wearily back at her. “Prostitution. That’s what they always tell the pretty ones they did.

“No. None of us seem to remember. I don’t remember sitting in a booth in Iskuhi’s agreeing to slip industrial jewels past the customs barrier.” She looked up at the hierig, who wasn’t smiling anymore. “The hierig doesn’t remember trying to kill someone in a bar fight.”

“Would,” the alien said, sincerely. “If did.”

Would remember? Or would have killed? Either way, Tandy believed it.

“Is this some kind of racket the Gynarchy has?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” Kifa said. “Not them. They don’t think like that. I wonder if they’re really human anymore.”

“Humans aren’t that consistently hot.” Tandy looked Kifa in the eye, and Kifa looked back.

She shook her head, smiling. “Been trying elsewhere?” she asked, turning to wink at the hierig.

Tandy let herself think of the Shambleau, and almost cried. She had been so stupid. It had hypnotized her, gotten into her head and changed it, but the stupidity was in letting it. “Played with the wrong tentacles,” she said, grimacing.

Kifa’s shoulders slumped. “You too? A Shambleau?” The hierig growled something as well. Tandy felt fear and hope fight for her overworked attention. All of them. “If it’s some kind of—”

“Conspiracy?” Kifa looked at her. “Of course it is. The mysterious little cunts are natural hypnotists. I’m sure they put blocks in our minds so we never mention it when we’re being questioned.”

Tandy pictured the hierig sitting still, her strength neutralized and put to sleep, her red eyes staring at the swirling mirror of her Shambleau barmate’s face as she was programmed, and didn’t look at her.

“But it just sounds like the latest incredible excuse people have when Enforcement takes them.”

Tandy stood, taking it in. It wasn’t about waiting until the Gynarchy straightened it out, now, because the Gynarchy thought it had. As far as they knew, she was someone’s crew ashore, trying to make extra cash by turning tricks without the right datawork, and for all she knew she might even have done that, when she was under the alien’s spell.

She closed her eyes, because thinking about being that alien’s mindless puppet was making her hot and wet again. It was making her remember opening her thighs and her mind to let the lovely buzzing take her.

Maybe it hadn’t meant to do more than separate her from her cash in a way it thought she’d never complain of. Witnesses, instead of just taking it and leaving her asleep and wet in the bar.

Maybe if she’d just kept walking and taken the loss, she’d have been away now. Lia would . . .

“Girl.” Kifa had taken her hand, and stood next to her.

“I’m Tandy.”

“Tandy, you’re not about to flip out on me, are you?”

Instead of speaking, Tandy reached around to pull the other woman close. The pretty ones, she thought. Kifa, have you seen your eyes in a mirror lately?

But Kifa had, of course. The face of the Shambleau that enslaved her.

Then there were Gynarchic troopers walking down the row, and Tandy felt lightheaded at seeing no reaction among the other captives. Everyone was well-behaved and dazed.

They’ve got us conditioned, all right, she thought. They don’t need the cells to keep us here—it’s probably just to keep track of which livestock’s which.

Kifa squeezed her tightly and then stepped back. “They did something to us,” she murmured. “You’ll feel it when they’re near. Makes us easy to handle.” She blinked, her strong body starting to go slack. “Hitting me faster this . . . time. Oh. Submissive.”

She tried to look Tandy in the eye but she was looking through her now.

But Tandy was drifting too much, herself, to notice, as she realized the guards were coming and how really important and sexy hot it was to do just as she was told. To wait quietly and be still until she was told.

The policewoman stopped at her cell, and she felt an urge to come to attention. She saw Kifa doing the same, and from the corner of her eye she saw the tall hierig stiffening too, her dark-red eyes going unfocused.

“Come.” The word was in her head like a driver that had stepped in to move her, and she was walking out with the Enforcement officers before she’d even realized they’d opened the door. No one said goodbye.

10.

They brought her to an interview room and left her with the young woman at the desk there. Tandy sat without having to be told, wondering how much else they’d programmed her to do. She kept to safe thoughts—isn’t it great they’ve found a public safety alternative to beating and binding detainees?—and ignored the dangerous ones.

Like how long she’d been here to have been trained this well.

Whether in that time her ship had left.

Why it was so hard to think clearly about the ship, about Arvad and the people there. Sweet, infatuated Lia was still clear to her but it hurt too much now to think of Lia . . .

Why she was so very aroused to be with this woman, or any woman wearing clothes that would look at her with that kind of contempt.

“You’re being arraigned,” the woman said. She wore her hair back and her suit was cut severely, but she looked as though she were too young for this and trying to hide it. “I’m Magistrate Farrens. I’ll play back your statement so that you can verify it or dispute it.”

She’d made a statement? It must have been during Processing. She hoped she hadn’t said too much about weird alien sex and her quest for it—maybe that was why they’d thought she was a whore.

When Tandy’d strutted down the docks she’d liked that idea. It scared her that part of her, below her waist, still liked it.

This was so small-time, she knew. Nothing like the atrocity of using people to enslave a whole ship and send it as a takeout meal to a race of carnivores. It was so demeaning. But it might be big enough to have gotten her in very, very deep here.

“May I—?” She stopped, but Magistrate Farrens gestured for her to go on. “May I have . . . talk to counsel? An advocate?”

Farrens shook her head. She might be young but she seemed experienced. “Only if I see an anomaly. Laws are clear enough to implement.” When Tandy said nothing, she started the tape.

The screen by her desk showed Tandy in the same chair, nude and sitting upright, staring wide-eyed into nothing.

“Begin,” said an unseen woman’s voice, and Tandy felt a twinge of need to obey it.

Tandy-onscreen did obey. Without preamble, she said, “I desire to conform and not to be disruptive. I can think only of the truth.”

“A very good attitude. What is the truth? Tell the recording.”

“I committed the offenses charged. I offered sexual services for money to five other outworlders though I am not a licensed prostitute. When they refused, I tried to claim their property as my own. I was publicly disruptive. I did not instantly comply with Enforcement commands.”

Tandy went cold, no longer knowing what was going on and terrified at the heat in her crotch as she listened to this shit pouring from her head. Thought about who might have made her let them pour it into her.

Someone had brainwashed her into slandering herself. The chill stayed with her. Her crotch warmed and dampened.

The record paused and she and Farrens looked at each other. “Uh, anomaly, I think. I dispute that. I never—” Never said that? Well, she’d just watched herself say it. “That’s not what happened. I must have been . . . acting under a posthypnotic suggestion or something. I don’t remember saying any of that. I can’t remember making a statement.”

Frowning, Farrens restarted the record. “Are you making this statement of your own free will?” the invisible interrogator’s voice asked.

Tandy-onscreen kept staring. She hadn’t blinked. “Yes. I am not under any type of control or compulsion.”

Farrens stopped it again and looked at her. Tandy didn’t know whether to scream or laugh. She managed instead to say, “That . . . that’s not true. It—isn’t it obvious?” She wondered what this young official thought was normal, watching Tandy almost burlesquing someone under mind control and wondering what the problem was.

It would help if seeing herself mindfucked weren’t such an insane turn-on.

God, this woman looked so much smarter than that. “Actually—yes. Yes. I ‘m sorry.” The Magistrate bent her head and ran a hand over her hair. “There is something odd about this. I just can’t . . . quite . . .”

Tandy was starting to get an awful feeling on top of the awful feeling she already had. She clung to Ikewa’s remembered words—It’s not an unfair system—but they were ringing an unexpected discord. She looked away and saw herself onscreen, staring, completely under someone else’s domination as she obediently recited their lesson.

Why? Who was using her to fuck herself like this? Even the thieves had gotten what they wanted . . .

She squeezed her thighs together, hoping Farrens couldn’t see her arousal—couldn’t smell it—and didn’t let herself think what was turning her on.

She took a breath. “Excuse me, please. I realize it’s not a right, but am I allowed to contact anyone? My ship, or the company, or someone—?”

Farrens looked up sharply. “That is forbidden,” she said crisply, and Tandy stopped thinking about it. The wave of heat that took her pussy banished thought for a few moments.

But the Magistrate was looking bewildered. “Why?” she asked, softly.

The door opened and another woman walked in. Farrens looked up, and rose from her seat. “Director! Is there something I can—?”

“Not at all, Magistrate,” the Director said, and her voice was so rich and exciting that Tandy was barely able to realize it was the one that had spoken to Tandy-onscreen. The one that had conjured that fucked-up “statement” from her under some kind of hypnosis.

Tandy looked up, fighting the need to beg for it again.

“Actually, I was just looking in to ask if those new concentration exercises were working for you.”

Farrens blinked. “They—they are, Director, but—they make me feel—” She inhaled suddenly, excitedly, and seemed to remember Tandy was sitting there, nude and astonished.

“Director,” she said, seeming to make a tremendous effort. “Something . . . is . . . wrong. This woman has been . . . been . . .”

“Yes, Magistrate? Focus your mind as I’ve taught you.”

“As you’ve taught me,” Farrens whispered, sighing. Her eyes closed but she dragged the lids up again. “This woman has . . . been subjected to—” She seemed to be trying to speak carefully, to avoid something. “She has been exposed to some—”

“So important to concentrate, especially when dealing with alien species, Magistrate.” Tandy loved hearing the voice so much she didn’t mind it interrupting Farrens.

Farrens’ eyes widened even as she seemed to fight sleep. “Aliens?” she asked, and her voice caught. Tandy remembered how she felt when she’d first seen the Shambleau, and knew it had seen her, wanted her.

But it hadn’t. It just wanted to use her—

Tandy gasped with the pleasure of remembering being used. The women ignored her.

“What happened to this prostitute, Magistrate?”

“She was hypnotized—” Farrens stopped. Tandy saw fear on her face. The young official hadn’t wanted to say the word, and she saw Farrens wriggle where she stood. If the Magistrate felt half as aroused saying it as Tandy did hearing it . . .

“This is wrong,” Farrens whispered. She looked to her superior in appeal. The Director stared back at her, and the younger woman slowly lost expression.

“Concentrating,” Farrens whispered sharply.

“Sleep now, child. I need to help you finish with this girl.”

Farrens’ eyes drooped once and then closed, and her head sank to her chest.

Tandy looked up, feeling oddly worse for the other woman than for herself, but finding her own eyes drawn irresistibly to the newcomer. The Director.

Who would direct her.

The woman smiled down at her. “Do you recognize this?” She held something out.

A bracelet. Starship crew ID bracelet. Tandy’d seen them so many times as she worked. Working. She tried to read the ship’s name. If she could just do that, she’d remember—what she must remember.

Arvad.

Arvad?

There had been so many.

Yes. Her pussy warmed now. She’d seen these so many times.

Working.

She . . . might . . . be . . . unlicensed, but . . . but a good whore knew her best customers.

If Tandy was anything, she was a good whore.

“Yes, ma’am.” She was shaking now, knowing she could climax if she answered correctly. She chose her words.

“That was what my last trick gave me in payment.”

Tandy looked up at the woman who’d uncovered her crimes, feeling the slow build in her loins, unable to stop. “She didn’t have currency and I can’t charge on the credit system, but she was pretty and I needed pussy.

“On my . . . tongue—”

She couldn’t speak anymore, and the smiling Director began to blur. Tandy felt her thoughts melt and happily stoked the heat inside. She wasn’t even touching herself.

Someone had changed her. Made her like it, hooked her on it. But she could no longer care.

She could no longer think.

The woman nodded and Tandy shook harder, unable to do more than mew her thanks for permission to orgasm. It hit her and she started to cry out, and it kept hitting her, whiting out her mind.

Tandy slid off the chair on the slickness of her juices and it kept hitting her.

She was on her knees, coming and writhing. It kept hitting her.

11.

Tandy stood straight, wrapped around her pussy. Dim awareness that there was a room around her came in soft waves like ripples on a pond. The room where Magistrate Farrens had started to interview her.

Words were gathered behind her lips. She had to say them, to let them out—but only when she was told to.

“This proceeding is in session,” said a familiar, arousing voice. The Director.

Tandy found she could move, with someone that erotic to attract her. She found the Gynarchic official standing by the desk, wearing only a bra, staring ahead. Her body was firm and well-kept, and her muscles were tense with the stimulation she must be feeling. The Director’s eyes were shining and unfocused. She looked fetchingly vulnerable, with her neck circled and her arms lightly bound and her crotch filled, all by supple tentacles.

Tandy’s gaze floated ahead again, to see the Shambleau draped languidly atop the desk. The mirrored head turned and passed across her view to look at Farrens, who stood completely naked on the other side similarly wrapped, and rapt, staring unseeingly through the Director. The Magistrate’s hair was still drawn back on her head, oddly arousing atop her nudity, as though she were submerged to her neck in depravity and her mind still thought she was resisting.

Tandy moaned as she saw the younger woman wasn’t taut under the Shambleau’ s controlling touch but moving, squirming, trying weakly to rub herself against the tentacles that played with her.

“The defendant has confessed,” she recited hoarsely, as though she needed to scream instead.

Tandy stared at the Shambleau, realizing it didn’t need to touch her now, to own her.

It wasn’t the same one that had seduced her, enslaved her. Hearing its buzzing voice without knowing which woman it was hypnotically instructing, she sensed a different tone, just as irresistible.

When the mirror faced her and the impulse came to stare deeply into it, Tandy knew the thought wasn’t hers. That made obeying it so much hotter.

Tandy blinked. She was nude, but no one else was. Magistrate Farrens sat primly at her desk. A trooper stood by the door more as a ceremonial prop than in case Tandy misbehaved.

There was a man she’d never seen but knew without doubting it was a representative from the Commonwealth, staring openly at her body. She felt her nipples rise and smiled at him.

He looked up, and his gaze flattened when it met hers. Now that she was part of his business here and not just something to stare at, he seemed to recall how little he thought of her.

The shame made her dizzy, and for a moment Tandy pictured him bringing her back to Arvad just like this, naked and stoned on hypnosis. It wasn’t enough to keep her from wanting to beg for that anyway, to get back home on any terms. But she couldn’t find the words.

She realized she was still smiling, and as she licked her lips slowly she realized what kind of smile it was.

“Just for the record,” he said, “you’ve waived trial?”

Now she knew she had to release the words behind her lips. “Yes, sir. Magistrate Farrens made me understand that I just needed to confess and accept my punishment and correction.” She held still to hide the thrill each syllable sent through her as she spoke it.

“I don’t want to disrupt this society. I want to obey its laws, now.” God, it felt so good to recite, like the caress of tentacles she earned as she spoke. The thought of saying anything else—wasn’t thinkable.

“And a trial would just waste time and money. My first act of atoning is to stop being a drain on Labrys.”

“Your citizen has confessed and accepted vocational correction,” Farrens said. “The combined sentence for her crimes—”

The Commonwealth official waved it away. “I’ll help her stop wasting your time, Magistrate. I’ll see the clerk to sign off on her.”

Farrens nodded, looking almost as scornfully at him as at Tandy as he left, the trooper following him out.

The door closing released something in Tandy, and she shook herself, rising a bit out of the trance. It drew the young Magistrate’s glance, and Farrens ’ intelligent gaze seemed to burn a tunnel of sanity through the thick, tranquilizing field that held her.

“Please,” she said. “What’s happening to me? Why did I say all that?”

The Magistrate’s face registered pity. “It doesn’t—no. It does matter, but knowing won’t help you.”

“Can you?” Tandy was so desperate she couldn’t feel anything, and she felt lucky. The other woman didn’t answer.

“Please. I’ll do anything. Anything you tell me to.” It wasn’t what she’ d meant to say—even this fucked-up she could see that Farrens didn’t exploit people, the way the Commonwealth pig would be happy to—but now that she’d said it, she couldn’t help herself. “If you help me—there are so many things I know how to do for you. You can tie me . . . up . . .”

Farrens sighed. “You’d do anything I tell you to, no matter what I do,” she told Tandy. Her eyes closed and she took a shuddering breath. “Like this.

“Kneel.” Tandy folded and felt the deck with her knees, shimmying a little as she guessed what she was going to be told to do. Farrens was right—it didn’t matter whether she helped Tandy or not.

In fact, it was better to be abused than just used. The knowledge buzzed pleasantly in her head. She stopped fighting, waiting to learn what the Magistrate tasted like.

The Magistrate moaned. She was fighting.

She looked down at Tandy and her eyes were haunted. “This is not supposed to happen,” she whispered. “This is not what the Gynarchy is about. Stand up—”

“Stay as you are.” Both women had been too riveted on each other to hear the Director come in. Now her voice thrummed through Tandy’s mind and it was like sinking into a warm pool. She was happy to kneel.

She looked over and started to juice: the Director was wearing a miniskirted uniform, and standing very straight beside a Shambleau. The Director looked at Farrens and started to speak to the Shambleau, and her voice was different now, soft and humble and a little drowsy.

“i’m sorry, Mistress. This one has been resistant to the Assignment from the beginning. i have applied Your techniques and i can control her for short periods, but—” She gasped and was still as a tentacle slipped under her skirt and the Shambleau’s voice hummed too quietly for anyone else to hear.

The Director’s face softened and she stood, gazing ecstatically at nothing. Tandy dragged her eyes to Farrens, but the younger official was deeply hypnotized, staring at whatever mindbending patterns the Shambleau was showing her on its shining face. She nodded slowly, remembering old commands.

Tandy stayed on her knees. When she realized she didn’t need any active control to keep her kneeling and obedient, she shook through a gentle orgasm and then forgot it as she watched the other two submitting to the alien.

“Yes, Mistress,” the Director breathed. “You will indoctrinate her and i will dispose of this whore. i hear and obey.” Pride competed with lust in her voice.

The Shambleau glided toward Magistrate Farrens, slipping its tentacle from the Director’s crotch. Farrens stared at the alien unblinkingly even as she began to undress. Tandy looked at the voluptuous body that Farrens was revealing, but when the Director snapped her fingers she forgot everything but the need to do as the Director told her.

She rose and followed the Director from the room, ignoring the soft cries and the pleading until the door closed behind her.

Her mind was open and quiet. Things filled it—divinely-arousing strokes on her body and inside it, buzzing commands burrowed into the deepest parts of her brain, the way the Director’s thighs swung under the hem of her skirt. She was in the vat of dark liquid before she knew she’d reached it, barely aware of the other human women dipping themselves in it, and knelt to immerse herself. It tingled, though nothing like a Shambleau’s caress, even when she stepped back out and walked to the shower.

When she looked down she wondered if baby Shambleaus were trying to seduce her from the feet up, but she saw it was long hanks of her hair, sliding off her as the water sluiced it and the depilatory from her skin.

She walked with the other women to a drying room and stood as the warm air tickled her. They were all bald and nude and moving slowly, dreaming together.

We are detainees, she thought. We are content. We will be obedient and easy to tend. We will learn to be productive and compliant. It makes us happy to obey.

She thought she heard it echo in the chamber, as though she was hearing on loudspeakers, but she was sure it was inside her head, her own mind helping her begin her sentence for unlicensed prostitution. She wondered where the Director was but it was more important to stand and be dried and wait for instructions with the other warm soft naked sexy women.

Tandy fixated on one women in front of her. The back of her head was dimpled in a way that mesmerized Tandy, and each time she tried lazily to look away the smooth curve of the woman’s skill or the lines of her neck drew Tandy’s gaze back.

Then she turned, and smiled. “Tandy.”

Kifa. Kifa was very happy and she was thrillingly beautiful, and Tandy felt her pussy and her breasts grow warm. A familiar thought crept into her mind: she must obey her body.

Kifa was obedient, too: they came together in the room, losing interest in the other women and letting the echoing voice in their heads command them without really hearing it. They held each other and kissed deeply, rubbing their smooth bodies together, whining and moaning into each other’s mouths until neither knew her own cries from the other’s. They might be climaxing. Tandy couldn’t sort her thoughts.

As she felt thoughts starting, she felt fingertips warm on her scalp, and the thoughts faded.

Then they were standing near each other, staring at the mirrored wall of another room. Tandy didn’t know how she’d gotten there, though her mind knew it didn’t matter. Besides, seeing herself and the rest waiting at attention, denuded and completely under control, melted any other thoughts she could come up with.

Someone was speaking. Her words were in Tandy’s mind and in her cunt, too, and Tandy vibrated to them.

She was serving. She was sentenced to serve. She was a whore, so she would serve as a whore.

She had been bought. She was material, and someone owned her now. It felt good, and when she was used she knew it would feel ever so much better than good.

The voice was explaining about “consent” and Tandy worried but the voice reassured them all that they would be told how to consent. After a while she was in a line, looking at the delightful back of the woman ahead of her, at the convexity of the line that ran so straight but so curving from the skull, down her tapering dark-skinned back to the pert swell of her ass.

Tandy enjoyed her ass, following happily each time the line advanced and it moved a little away from her. As she tried to put together her various twinges and warmths into want to kiss it lick it feel it heat my face it would recede and its gentle motion would hypnotize her out of thought again.

Then at the head of the line the beautiful ass was gone and Tandy remembered “consent”. She looked at a canted screen with a glowing pad beside it, and she saw brightly printed words like “slave” and “indenture” and “surrender all rights” and it all faded in a sexual blur.

A voice told her to put her hand on the pad. She obeyed. Another voice suggested she speak.

“I consent,” she said.

They caught her before the orgasm dropped her to the floor.

They’d pulled her out of the way when the woman behind her recovered from the trance Tandy’s ass had put her into, and looked at the screen.

12.

Tandy floated.

She was in a warm, bright world of silent motion and constant, unbearable arousal. She spun slowly, sometimes feeling a touch on her skin, between her legs on her bare pussy that made her spasm and shift. Her limbs moved sluggishly, like a languid swimmer, and it seemed as though the touches were to make her move differently. She felt herself respond, learning how to earn more touches, but she let her body learn, and relaxed.

Something touched her mind, too, but there didn’t seem to be much of it. When something made her climax her mind disappeared completely.

Others floated with her in the warm bright space, erotic shapes she had no will to pursue, and her own longing for them was a new thing she didn’t remember each time an orgasm wiped the last one’s memory from her. Some were like her, some were alien. All were beautiful.

Once, as she spun, she saw someone darker than the rest. A woman, sleek and nude and bald, with tattoos or bodypaint around her full breasts, her eyes shadowed and dark-lined and staring. More tattooing around her throat like a collar, around her wrists and thighs like leather fetters. A spiral across her hairless scalp.

Her mouth’s lips and her pussy’s were equally plump, equally blood-red. She told them apart because her pussy wore bells she couldn’t hear ring, and her mouth kept pursing, trying to suck. Her slick hand sometimes visited her lips, all of them.

Tandy tasted her hand and realized the painted slut was herself, reflected on the wall of the place where she floated.

The orgasm was strong, and when her eyes focused she saw the painted slut recovering and wet. She orgasmed again.

Then once more.

A tentacle had grasped her and moved her, and she was looking at two other creatures locked together before she realized she’d stopping coming.

She curved toward the tentacle and saw the Shambleau floating beside her. She longed to relax and feel it engulf her with its coils, wrap her in ecstasy until she wisped away.

Someone was already in its clutches, a woman with hair that floated, whipping slowly back and forth obscuring her face as she bucked, lost. Her eyes, when Tandy glimpsed them, were rolled up into her head.

The Shambleau squeezed Tandy and she spun to face another side of the floating space. She saw . . . a svelte female humanoid with bluish skin who simply stood and turned in space, rotating like a scientific display, her tapering legs straight and her posture true as a dancer’s. Her arms hung at her sides but her hands were slightly raised, fingers spread, like the faintest beginning of a warding-off gesture.

Tandy enjoyed the orgasm that loomed, accepted its pause.

She saw motion and tracked it, gradually realizing there was a place beyond the walls, that she could only see herself and the others reflected but could see through, to where people walked and stood instead of floating.

She spun and came.

She opened her eyes and saw the painted slut, but somehow she’d been taught not to come automatically at the sight of herself now. She looked past the reflected Tandy and down. Someone was standing there, and the sight of them reached a part of her so different from the mindlessly juicing whore she was that the sheer oddness of it caught what was left of her attention.

Tandy blinked and peered outward, seeing the woman beyond the wall looking up, then around. She spoke with someone next to her, more than one, but Tandy had eyes only for her, for her wonderfully curved little body and the eyes that shone even through the dark walls and bright internal glow of the floating space.

Lia.

Looking.

Looking for . . .

. . . Tandy.

For a few moments just the warmth of that paralyzed her and she turned slowly. Praying not to be touched, not to be sent mindlessly into orgasm again.

As she rotated back she saw Lia was still there.

Lia was looking inside.

She was looking at Tandy.

She wasn’t looking away. Tandy looked back at her. Like a ghost over Lia’ s head, she saw what Lia was looking at.

A woman, sleek and nude and bald, tattooed and staring. Mouth and pussy wet and open.

A painted slut, dancing slowly in the air around the need between her thighs.

Her.

Lia looked away, looking for Tandy.

Tandy didn’t feel anything touch her. She didn’t have to. She reached for her ankles and bent back, the spasms already claiming her, her body jerking against her grip. She made a taut bow of herself as she came, hard, so hard and so sweetly, and slowly somersaulted through the orgasm.

Lia looked back at her, at the painted whore’s acrobatics, and her eyes . . .

Tandy saw herself on the wall as she writhed and gave in to the pleasure, her painted face and body contorting with the intensity. She lost track of the number of times she spun before her hands relaxed and she swung into a different movement.

When she remembered to look out again Lia was gone.