Well, Lord, if you are testing me, help me to pass my test, she prayed to the only one who could help her at that moment.
He had them do knee-bends and push-ups and several other exercises to check them out, but when it became easy and virtually effortless to do what he instructed, he tired of the game. It was clear that they were in remarkably good shape, even if visibly bruised where the chains and restraints had held them.
It was also becoming clear that whatever had been used to turn them into nothing more than automatons had serious limits in the number and complexity of instructions that would work with them. Simple things, from “Walk forward” and “Stop” to the slightly more complex “Follow me” worked fine, but any complex series of actions had to be told one instruction at a time and then combined into a sequence that would then be repeated ad nauseam. Even “Mop the floor” was tricky, since without any judgment they would just keep mopping the floor interminably until told to stop. If you couldn’t simply define when and where to stop, it didn’t work out. Still, she had to wonder if some of the limits weren’t more than enough.
What would happen if they were told to take these guns and go back to the ship and then shoot anybody they saw who was with the Doctor? She wasn’t sure there wasn’t a stepped sequence of orders that would allow that to be done.
She also had to wonder how long it might be before she was sexually violated. It seemed to her that these kind of people would be unable to not do that, sooner or later, when they had somebody like her who couldn’t resist. Particularly because the medic would have discovered right off in his probe that although the subject was well into her twenties she was still a virgin.
The same sort of thoughts had kept going through the medic’s own mind as he got them into condition to do whatever the Captain had in mind, but, damn it, he couldn’t and hope to still wake up the next day. Not now, not yet, and certainly not without the Captain and Committee’s permission.
It was time to hand these two over and at least get a pat on the head for being competent.
And the Captain was pleased. Very much so. He sensed the medic’s reluctance to give up the control stick, which was simply one of the leech containers set up to control up to four units from one panel, but he also understood it and grinned. “Maybe later. We have a lot of girls we can have fun with.”
“Not like that one,” the medic replied. “At least, not with more than four more without doing extractions and reprogramming. Oh—and I brought their robes. Didn’t bother to put ’em on yet, though.”
“Save it. I had been thinking along one set of lines, but now that I see these two I think perhaps I’ll go a different direction. What could be more intimidating and frightening to Woodward’s bunch than to see two of their own naked and totally obedient to the bad guys? They might even think that the rest of them were that way, too, and since they probably wouldn’t know the method they have no way of knowing if we can’t do it to everybody. A little misdirection and your mark’s ignorance of your own capabilities can do wonders.”
“I dunno,” the medic sighed.
“Eh? What?”
“They sure as hell know we can’t get off this rock without ’em.”
The Captain looked like he was going to have one of his infamous and dangerous flashes of serious temper, but he caught himself right off. “That’s okay, Doc. Trust me on this one. Go now. I’ll take it from here. But, if you like her looks, hell, if it don’t go well you can have your fun.”
The medic gave a slight shrug and left.
The Captain came up to them and walked around them, examining them from head to toe as if they were some kind of strange animals or specimens. He’d used leeches before, but rarely in recent years. Too much chance of them getting broken. He’d paid dear for these decades ago on the black market in Ceberan and he never felt he’d been cheated.
He dreamed often of Ceberan, its vast bazaars and haunts and other pleasures, and what they could give to anyone who had something of serious value to trade.
Fate had played a nasty trick on him since then, giving him the address to riches beyond all his wildest dreams and then marooning him here, hiding from the others who knew not what he knew but only that he knew. After almost thirty years on this dirt ball ruling over a bunch of yokels, he was desperate to get out, to get anywhere but here.
It was still going to be damned tough. The only saving grace was that it should be easier with a loopy and tough evangelist than with a Navy cruiser or, worst case of all, some of his old comrades. Friendships died awful easy when you had the goods. A lot of his friends had died pitifully easy at his hand for those very same goods, in this case a piece of information.
“Follow me, you two,” he said into the controller. “Walk behind me but walk where I walk and stop or turn when I turn.”
He walked over to one of the lower cubicles, one on the end of the big row, and they followed him dutifully, unable to do much else.
For the next hour, the Captain prepared them. He was used to giving orders to subordinates to carry out, yet here he did not wish to relinquish the control rod at all and thus he was an active overseer.
The quarters were more like those of an officer aboard a ship than a real home, but the unit actually had running water and a small sit-down sort of ship’s shower installed. He had the male slave lather and wash her completely off, and then she him, and, lastly, she also was commanded to do the Captain. He was a bit more imaginative at that point than she’d expected, and Eve feared that this was where he was going to go into her. He didn’t, but he did force some oral acts that she found repugnant even as she did as ordered.
After, he fed both of them from a private stock that apparently came from far on the eastern side of the continent, but which was very well preserved. They were tubular fruit and a kind of thick gruel in a bowl eaten with a spoon, but they appeared to be sufficiently nutritious, washed down with a blend of some sort that was thick but filling and also quenched thirst. He clearly wanted them well prepared for whatever he intended to do.
Eve felt totally alone, totally helpless and humiliated, and she knew that the poor guy who shared her fate probably felt the same way, but, still, she had to admit, she was very curious as to how this bastard thought kidnapping even a hundred of the Arm would get the Doctor to move one millimeter. The Doctor got mad, and sometimes he got even, but he just about never compromised.
That didn’t necessarily cheer her up. It pretty much implied that she was going to be stuck down here with these monsters permanently.
“Please, sir! He’s my only child! He did nothing to you or your people! He’s only a little boy!”
The woman’s agony was apparent in her face and her trembling and tears, but Karl Woodward understood that the reason why the small group of all women had been sent was because they would be the best way to tug at his conscience and his heartstring. And, to an extent, they did just that—he could understand what they were going through.
Still, he knew that the children were not only in no danger, they were having the best meal and playing with the most toys of any point in their lives, and they were being carefully looked after. The older kids were being held apart from the small ones, but in a theater-type setting with, again, toys appropriate for their ages, holographic entertainment modules with content suited to their age groups, and, hell, even an automated beauty and makeover station from the makeup department. With the older ones all girls, this was a very popular place.