“I don’t think I blame her,” Garth said with a sigh as I stared at the tent flap feeling worse than I had earlier. “She hadn’t realized that Terry was a Prime, or she wouldn’t have said what she did. She’s always been afraid of empaths, but on Central they’re neutralized—and very few of them are Primes. Insulting Len didn’t bother her, but Terry—who is female as well as being a Prime—is another story. Apparently she doesn’t trust other females as far as she can spit.”
“I see,” Tammad said, and his quiet anger made me cringe. “Though she is mistaken in fearing one who has been taught regret through punishment, words alone will not convince her of her error. Actions are necessary to so convince her, and actions she will have. Continue with your serving, wenda.”
With his last words I turned to find all their eyes on me, their minds nothing like Gay’s had been. Len and Garth, who sat to Tammad’s left, were eagerly anticipating my service and apology. Their eyes moved over me in a way that instantly made my entire body burn red with humiliation; a reaction that the barbarian found pleasantly satisfying. I took a tighter grip on the bowl I held and moved toward Len, but he looked up at me and made a gesture.
“If you please, Terry, I prefer having my apologies tendered from knee height,” he said, grinning. “They seem more sincere that way.”
I immediately looked in outrage toward Tammad, positive he’d never give his support to so barbarous a concept, but the sudden amusement in his mind and eyes clearly showed he liked the idea. Bitterly, I waited for him to add his own gesture to Len’s, but the second gesture never came, making the situation even worse. It was Len I was to obey, a man of my own world, a man who was taking great pleasure in ordering a woman around for the first time in his life. Miserably and still with bitterness I lowered myself to my knees, making sure I avoided Len’s gaze completely.
“I am ordered to ask you to accept my apologies along with your meal,” I said in a monotone, extending the bowl with my eyes on my knees. “I shouldn’t have done what I did and I’m sorry.”
For a long moment Len didn’t say anything, then his hand came to my chin and raised my face toward his.
“If you really are sorry, I think you can make that apology a little more personal,” he said quietly, his mind calm with the decision to accept nothing but what satisfied him completely. “Make me believe what you say, Terry, or I won’t accept it.”
I swallowed hard, shocked to discover that the calm was well on the way to becoming a part of him. There was no more than a vestige left in him of concern over gentlemanly conduct, of worry over being pleasing and acceptable to women. His mind bad been encouraged to shape itself to match those around it, and the process was nearly complete.
“Len, please,” I whispered, mortified at the way his mind considered me. “You know bow I...”
“No,” he interrupted, slowly shaking his head. “I don’t want to know. I want to hear it.”
I swallowed again, terribly aware of being naked in front of him, hating the idea of what I had to do.
“Len, I really am sorry,” I whispered, wishing he would let my chin go. “I was wrong to try experimenting with people, and I was even more wrong not to care what I did to them. It never occurred to me how foolish and dangerous it was—and that I was forcing you to share that danger. Even if you don’t forgive me, I won’t stop being sorry.”
I had put it all into words, and the look in his light eyes showed he knew it. He nodded slowly, as though in answer to a question I hadn’t been allowed to hear, then turned his head toward the barbarian.
“It seems you were right,” he said with something of a smile. “Punishment does encourage a woman to think more clearly. Do I have your permission to take a liberty?”
Tammad nodded, curious as to what Len was going to do, but he didn’t stay curious long. As soon as Len had the permission he wanted, his hand left my chin to move strongly between my thighs.
“Don’t drop that bowl, Terry!” Len ordered sternly as I gasped and straightened, trying to escape the unexpected invasion of his touch. “And settle back down again, just the way you were. I have a story to tell you I don’t think you’ve heard before.”
His eyes and mind revealed an anger he hadn’t allowed himself to feel earlier, one that forced me to obey totally against my will. I slowly settled down on my heels again, biting my lip against the way he was touching me, feeling as though my hands were chained to the bowl I held. I stared at him wide-eyed, almost afraid of what he would say, miserable that he had allowed himself to change so far that he didn’t care whether or not I wanted to be touched like that. He wanted to touch me like that, and that was all that was important to him.
“Do you remember Williams Enright?” he asked, watching my eyes as he spoke. “Bill was a good friend of mine before he died, and I spent a lot of time at his house, sharing his hobby. Bill was a history buff, and he got me involved in it too, the tracking down of ancient volumes, buying private diaries of obscure periods, authenticating letters describing historical events that didn’t jibe with generally accepted knowledge, that sort of thing. Bill knew I was an empath, of course, but lie also knew what it meant to be unawakened, so when he gave me a wrapped up gift just before I left on one of my assignments I was puzzled, but once I was keyed awake and began reading the gift, I understood completely.
“The gift was a personal diary from the period before Central took charge of all empaths, their raising, training—and conditioning. We all know there was trouble between the general populace and those hell-sent, twisted spawn-of-darkness empaths, but none of us knew any of the details—until I read that diary.”
Len paused, as though he wanted to sigh, but the churning in his mind didn’t allow it.
“The writer of the diary was an obscure Neighborhood Chairman whose name I forget,” he continued. “His Neighborhood wasn’t all that far from Tallion City, and the diary was boring squared—until some of his people captured four empaths, two male, two female. The empaths had been trying to reach State House where they’d have a chance to be protected, but they never made it. Somehow—and no reason was given—they were discovered to be empaths, and that was the end of the line for them.
“The diary describes days of argument and disagreement, but only over what was to be done with the scum; no one suggested turning them loose or even turning them over to the Peacemen. The Neighborhood Chairman held out for doing things his way, and finally everyone came around and agreed to go along with it. They took the two male empaths and castrated them, then dug a large hole underneath one of the houses and put them in it, chaining them to rings set in the ground and welding them into the chains. The females were chained in the same way to the opposite wall, and then the male members of the Neighborhood began visiting them. They were raped for hours, days, until they were half-dead from the number of men who took them, until both of them were incontrovertably pregnant. They were all carefully kept alive until the women’s pregnancies were over and they’d delivered their babies—and then those babies were killed, hacked to pieces in their mothers’ arms. The next day the men showed up to start the rounds all over again, but they were wasting their time. The women were stark, staring mad, one of them catatonic, and the men had managed to commit suicide by hanging themselves in their chains. The Neighborhood people were disappointed, but all they could do was cut the throats of the women, bury all four bodies, and fondly remember a good job well done. They didn’t like either of the dagger’s edges, you see, so they sheathed the dagger in their own way.”