He was watching me fairly closely at that point, and the expression I surely developed brought back his amusement.
“No, don’t bother telling me you said the same thing as soon as you found out where you were,” he interposed, raising one hand. “I can almost hear you doing it, but I was a bit more courteous than that. And don’t forget that I’d been here a while, and had done everything asked of me. I walked in expecting them to try talking me out of it but eventually agreeing, and very quickly found out how naive I was being. My section leader laughed and told me to go back to doing what I was supposed to be doing, and then ignored the few protests I managed to get out before the Secs showed up. I was escorted back to my apartment and left alone, after being reminded that I had a training class in a little while. I also had two women I was supposed to thrill after the class was over, but I decided then and there that I didn’t give a damn. I’d go to no more classes and issue no more challenges, and to hell with the women. When they found they couldn’t make me do things their way, they’d have no choice but to turn me loose.
“I can’t believe I really was that naive,” he said, and this time there was no doubt about the sigh. “When I didn’t show up for the class they sent someone to find out if I was sick, and when they saw I wasn’t I was scheduled for the full treatment. I didn’t find out my wine had been drugged until I woke up most of the way, and then began learning what life would be like in place of what it had been. I was in this tiny cell of a room on the floor, mainly because there was no bed or any other kind of furniture, and I’d been stripped almost naked. Refusal to participate meant removal of privileges, all of them, with nothing but duty slipped in to fill the vacancies. I was mad enough to start out not caring what they took, but that didn’t last long.
“The first thing taught me was that although I refused to go to class and learn, I wasn’t finished with challenges. The only difference was that I wasn’t the one issuing them, and the upper level Primes had been released from needing to refrain from working over someone not yet up to their abilities. Several times a day I was forced out of the cell by Secs to walk around the complex, and every time I came across an upper level Prime he slammed me. Half the time I was too groggy to know what was happening, and another quarter of the time I was in too much pain to care. The last quarter was when I made my trips to Medical, and they always made very sure I experienced every minute of the visit.”
He paused again at that point, and his eyes had gone to the wine instead of staying with me. He seemed to be having trouble putting what he wanted to say into words, and somehow I was certain that embarrassment made up a good part of his hesitation. He struggled very briefly in silence, and then, still without looking at me, forced himself to go on.
“Remember that I said duty was all they left me,” he groped, trying to make the words come out round instead of square. “One of my very first duties was seeing to the women they assigned me to, and the quality of the stock had improved as I moved higher up the ladder. When I lost everything I also lost access to those women, but I was still responsible for covering them. They dragged me to Medical every day, and-made the process less direct and a hell of a lot less pleasant. I knew damned well that it didn’t have to be every day, that just once should have taken care of the matter for a good long time, but they weren’t interested in my opinions. They waited until I was stupid enough to yell out something to that effect, and then they punished me. They gave me an injection to make sure I would be more cooperative the next time I was brought there, and locked me into a special-belt-to keep me from lessening the urge to cooperate on my own. After that I was walked around the complex again to give my former peers a chance to laugh at me, and then I was thrown back in my cell to suffer without distraction. ”
The anger in him had grown so high that it was a good thing the glass he held wasn’t really glass. If it had been, the hand wrapped around it would have been badly cut when the delicate thing shattered. The symglass actually squeaked in protest at the pressure he was putting on it, something I’d never seen happen before, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“After that the injections became a regular thing, and they added a special stop to my schedule,” he continued, still not looking at me. “Once a day I was left in a small room that was all viewing window, and given the chance to look at the higher level girls I would have been covering if I’d still been cooperating. The viewing room looked out into the falls and streams area built for the girls to play and bathe in, and although I could see and hear them, they didn’t know I was there. When the Sees discovered I was trying to beat down the walls to get to the girls, the word was passed along and from then on I was tied before being put in there. They kept me at it until I began screaming mindlessly twenty minutes or more before I was due to be put in, and then they sprang something on me I wasn’t prepared for. Instead of being sent to the viewing room, I was tied and put in a room that held six real, true, breathing girls. Six willing girls, eager to be honored.
At first I was stunned, and then I was too crazy to be stunned,” he said with a growl. “It had been weeks since the last time I’d touched a female, and I would have been hurting even without those injections. With them I was a madman, and I was so happy it didn’t even bother me that I was tied. Those girls didn’t have to be chased, they were ready to beg me to honor them, so what did a few straps matter? I ordered the nearest one to her back, went to my knees next to her—and only then remembered the belt I was locked into. I’d tried getting it off before and hadn’t even been able to dent the damned thing, not even when my hands were free. The girl I’d chosen began whimpering and begging, and the last thing I remember is her hand touching my thigh. That started the screaming again, but everything after that is a blank.”
He stopped to take another measured swallow of wine, and I couldn’t help but admire his self-control. If those had been my memories pouring out like that, I would have needed to compensate with a comparable flow of something bracing pouring in. My mind searched for appropriate comments, didn’t find any, and then it was too late.
“I don’t know how long I was out of it, but when I woke up I was in a small apartment, dressed again in civilized clothing, and no longer hurting,” he went on, slumped back in the chair with his eyes on his knees. “It was almost possible to believe I’d dreamt the whole thing, especially when the assistant section leader came in, greeted me as though I’d been away a short while on vacation, then walked with me to the challenge room. Inside the room was the Prime I’d been next scheduled to challenge, still laughing at me the way he’d been doing for weeks. I suddenly found myself with this terrible need to flatten him, and although he was harder than the ones I’d faced before him, it didn’t take long before I did it. Once he was down a whole crowd of people came in to pound my back and congratulate me, just the way they used to do, and the assistant leader waited only a few minutes before laughingly rescuing me from the crowd. After that I was led to a room where two upper level females were waiting, and was told they were all mine. It wasn’t until I was lying flat in exhaustion and the females were gone, that I really understood what had been done to me. They’d led me right back to the point I’d strayed from, and were giving me the chance to start over again with no hard feelings.”