Chapter Fifteen
They were in the office of Mistress Aldona. The triad was assembled there, called together in an emergency session to deal with a problem which had not come up in the twenty years of Domain’s existence. Master Lestrade sat in the middle, an aging lion with powerful shoulders and a grey mane. To his left sat Master Rayburn, a younger man whose bland expression and thick glasses made him look more like an accountant than co-ruler of a ruthless slave state. Mistress Aldona sat on the right.
Mistress Gyve and Kim sat in chairs against the wall on the other side of the room. Kim was dressed in borrowed clothing, feeling alien and uncomfortable against skin that had known only nakedness for so long. Someone had given her a wig to cover her bald pate, but it felt wrong on her, like a Halloween costume. She had removed it and held it in her lap now. She looked like a concentration camp survivor, her bald head and slender neck rising above the ill-fitting tee shirt, which only emphasized the thinness of her body. She still wore her steel collar. No one had rounded up a blacksmith to cut it off. There were more urgent matters to deal with.
Flanked by two guards, Charlene Weaver occupied center stage. She had not been offered a chair, and stood looking at the floor. She was unable to meet the steady gaze of her interrogators. She wore slacks, which were too dark and heavy for such a tropical climate, a long sleeved blouse, and walking shoes. A heavy coat was over her arm.
Looking at her, Kim realized that winter must have arrived back in the city; a winter hardly noticed here. Charlene’s clothing was rumpled from travelling far and fast. She clutched a crumpled tissue in one hand, rolling it into a ball with nervous fingers.
“I was planning to submit myself to Domain when I fell in love,” Charlene explained. “My lover took control of my heart, my mind, and my life. I told him about Domain, and told him that I would forsake this place for his love. I had not signed my final contract yet, and the choice seemed easy.
“Then he told me he was carrying around a lot of anger because of a former lover. He convinced me that we would never be happy together until this anger was purged. It was his scheme to trick this woman into entering Domain in my place. He promised to rescue her after she had learned her lesson. We changed the records, substituting her photograph and physical description for mine. It worked.
“After she was gone, I began to feel guilty for the part I had played in all this. I begged him to let me reveal the truth. At night I would lie in bed and think about what she must be going through here.
“Three weeks ago, he was killed in an auto accident, and I was left alone with my conscience. I searched my purse and found the phone number, my only contact with Domain. One of your field representatives met me at the airport and escorted me here.
“Kim Victor was tricked. She didn’t know what she was getting into. She must be allowed to go home. I stand guilty before you, waiting to be judged.”
She began to sob. The Triad watched, unmoved by her emotional display.
“There is something missing in your story,” said Lestrade at last. “Your records were in a confidential file here. How did you manage to alter them?”
“I take full responsibility,” said Charlene quickly. “Domain has not been compromised.”
Lestrade tapped a pencil against the side of the desk, obviously unsatisfied by this answer. Mistress Aldona leaned forward and pressed the intercom. “Jane, bring the Charlene Weaver file in, please.”
“Miss Weaver,” said Lestrade to the girl who fidgeted before him. “You confess freely and that counts in your favor, but your offences are serious. Not only did you allow another to take your place without her informed consent, but you have placed the sanctity of Domain in danger. Up to now, we have existed only because the legitimate governments of the world knew nothing about us. What would happen to all of us if the United States Government learned that one of its citizens was a prisoner here? We are hardly prepared to defend ourselves against an invading army.”
He sighed, genuinely saddened by the hard choices he was being forced to make. When you make rules, he realized, you have to be ready to enforce them. “Are you prepared to accept the judgement of this Triad?”
Trembling and sobbing, Charlene could only nod.
“Take her downstairs and put her in a cell. I may have more questions to ask her in the morning.” He gestured to the guards. The unresisting girl was led away.
Just as they reached the door, Jane entered bearing a file folder. She shot a glance at Charlene as she passed. It might have been curiosity at the sight of an unscheduled prisoner. She handed the file to Mistress Aldona.
“Thank you, Jane. You may go.”
Jane hesitated a moment, and seemed about to ask a question, then turned to go. Mistress Aldona stopped her before she reached the door.
“Jane.”
She turned too quickly, as though expecting the call. “Yes, Mistress.”
“Who has access to the files?”
“We get the files from the field investigators. They’re kept locked in the office.”
“No one has touched them?” Mistress Aldona seemed to be less interested in the answer than she was in the girl’s reaction to the question.
“Not to my knowledge, Mistress.”
“All right. You may go.”
Jane’s exit seemed almost an escape. Mistress Aldona ignored the file before her for a moment and turned her attention to Kim. “It seems that we have all been the victims of a cruel hoax, Miss Victor.”
Kim looked down at the wig in her lap, lost in thought.
“Miss Victor?”
Kim looked up, startled to be addressed by a name she had ceased to know. “I’m sorry.” There was a flicker of fear in her eyes, the memory of punishment for inattention.
Mistress Aldona gave her a gentle smile, the first anyone had seen all night. “You have been wronged,” she said. “How can we make it right?”
“I don’t know,” Kim stammered. “This has all happened so fast.”
“You are free to go, of course. Transportation can be arranged in the morning. We can find a place for you tonight, one more pleasant than what you have come to know.”
“She can stay at my house,” said Sarah Gyve abruptly. Then she realized her outburst had revealed an unspoken wish and amended it. “That is, if she wants to, of course.”
Kim rescued her. “Thank you,” she said. She had recognized the desire of her former Mistress to spend a last night together. “I’d like that. I need time to think.”
Mistress Aldona found the exchange interesting, but decided to let the subject rest.
“You forged Charlene Weaver’s name on the final contract,” she said to Kim.
“Yes,” Kim admitted. “I thought you were a religious cult or a political group. I wanted to get inside. I was looking for a scoop. I had no idea what I was signing.”
Mistress Aldona nodded. “I believe you. You are a reporter?”
“Yes. I was. I don’t know if I still have a job.”
Master Rayburn broke into the conversation. “We have resources. A new identity could be arranged, and a lifetime income the I.R.S. would not question. You wouldn’t have to work any more.” He was thinking that Kim’s silence could be bought.
Mistress Aldona didn’t look at him. She was studying Kim. “We can work out those details in the morning,” she said. “Right now I would be interested in Miss Victor’s professional opinion concerning Miss Weaver’s testimony.”
Kim was taken aback by the question. No one here had treated her as a woman of intelligence before, and it took her a moment to change gears. “She’s protecting someone.”
Mistress Aldona smiled. She had observed Kim’s confusion, and wondered if the ordeal she had just come through had left her impaired mentally. The answer told her that Kim’s mind was still sharp.
“Of course,” she said, “but who is it, and why?”
Kim shrugged. “Someone inside Domain. Anyone else would be safely beyond your reach.”
Aldona pressed the intercom. “Jane, bring your own file in, please.”
They waited. When Jane came in she was obviously nervous, gripping her own file with white knuckles and holding it before her as a shield to her small, naked body. She handed the file to Mistress Aldona with shaking hands, not looking at anyone.
“Excellent,” said Mistress Aldona. “Stay here a moment, hands on your head, legs apart.”
Jane obeyed. Kim, sitting behind her, had a clear view of the smooth white back and bottom, unmarked by any beating. She felt a stab of envy for the privileged girl in her leather collar. Then she realized that Jane’s position now was no cause for envy.
Mistress Aldona opened the file and read aloud: “Jane Collins, Class B slave. Contract calls for oath of allegiance to Domain, mild punishment for disobedience, and oral sexual service to females only. Assigned to clerical work at the training center with full mail privileges. Married two years, divorced three years ago when she recognized her latent submissive lesbian tendencies. Height is five feet two inches, weight one hundred pounds.”
She paused and looked up at the girl before her. “Closer to a hundred ten now, I should say. I never did put you on that diet.”
No one laughed. Tension was mounting in the room. Aldona was working up to something, and everyone knew it.
“Blue eyes, light brown hair, no tattoos or blemishes. Obedient, eager to please, and intelligent.” She looked up again. “I don’t see anything here about loyalty.”
Jane’s eyes began to tear. “Please, Mistress!”
“What did they offer you for this betrayal?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jane was pleading, hoping that she would be believed.
“A slave who lies is subject to punishment,” said Mistress Aldona. “A slave who betrays her oath can be demoted. You know the law.”
Jane trembled and said nothing. Mistress Aldona sighed. “Remove your collar and set it on the desk.”
Unlike the iron collar that Kim still wore, the leather collar could be unbuckled. Jane removed it, her fingers clumsy with fear.
“As of now, you have no status here. Your rank will be determined after I am satisfied with your answers.” She pressed a button on the desk to summon the guards.
“It’s time to weigh you on the scales of justice.”
Kim was allowed to watch as Jane was questioned, since the matter was her concern as well as Domain’s. Jane was taken to a bare concrete room. The center of the room was dominated by a huge balance scale with a gambrel hanging from each arm.
“This is only used in extreme cases,” Mistress Gyve whispered in Kim’s ear. Whispers seemed appropriate here. The air was heavy with solemn tension. The guards made Jane lie on her back on the concrete floor. One arm of the scale was lowered, with a squeak of metal against metal, and Jane’s hands were strapped wide apart to the gambrel. Then her legs were raised and her ankles fastened beside her wrists. Her legs were spread wide; her loins yawned at the audience. Kim could see her pink, shaved mound and the tight openings below it. She felt another twinge of envy, knowing that her own openings had no such virginal appearance. Oral service only, the file had said. This was a body that had not known men for some time.
Secured to the gambrel, Jane was left on her back. The guards brought in a galvanized cylinder and chained it to the gambrel on the other side of the scale. The way it was carried, it had to be empty. When filled it would weigh hundreds of pounds. Now Jane’s weight on the other end of the scale was enough to set it swinging as it hung above the floor. Mistress Aldona came into the room with a length of black hose under her arm. It looked like the hoses Kim remembered from the punishment rooms. She watched as the woman screwed the hose on to a wall spigot and uncoiled it. The room was hushed as she removed the threaded cap from the top of the tank and filled it with water. The weight of the water in the tank began to lift the other end of the scale. Jane’s arms and legs went taut, her shoulders lifted, then her bottom came off the floor and she was swinging. The tank dropped to the floor with a soft clunk, and Mistress Aldona shut the water off.
Jane gasped at the way her wrists and ankles were jerked when she stopped rising. She was swinging helplessly now, her split bottom three feet from the floor. Mistress Aldona produced a black rubber cone a yard long. It looked like a highway safety cone except that it was narrower. At the point was a blunt tip like a phallus. Kim flinched. She was beginning to understand what was coming.
Mistress Aldona held the cone up for Jane to see. “It is an inch in diameter at the tip,” she explained. “Its diameter increases a quarter of an inch for every inch of its length.” She opened a jar of muscle liniment, donned rubber gloves, and smeared the end of the cone liberally with grease. The odor of camphor and menthol was sharp in Kim’s nose. Jane began to whimper. Aldona set the cone between Jane’s legs and applied liniment to the loins displayed before her.
“Not my ass!” Jane cried, as the fingers penetrated her. “You know I’ve never had it there! It burns! Wash it off!”
Aldona positioned the cone. With its base on the floor it was just long enough to penetrate the girl’s anus. Jane cried out and squirmed, trying to dislodge it. The movement set her swinging and rocked the cone on its base, but she was unable to escape the impalement.
Mistress Aldona watched her antics for a moment. She appeared to be satisfied with the arrangement and turned aside. She stripped the rubber gloves off and threw them away. There was a drain valve on the bottom of the tank. She opened it a quarter turn and a slow stream of water flowed, puddling on the floor before finding a path to the floor drain. “I think in about ten minutes she will tell us everything.”
Kim watched the drama unfold. Jane stared in horror at the flowing water. As the tank drained it would become lighter, and she would be slowly impaled on the cone by her own weight.
“Mistress,” she pleaded, “you can’t do this! It will tear me apart!”
Her anus clenched around the cone, trying to resist it, but it was well greased. She moaned as the ring of muscle yielded and she slid downward the first two inches. Progress slowed then, as the diameter of the cone increased. Nevertheless, it burrowed into her inexorably.
“Take it out! Please! It’s killing me!”
Mistress Aldona stepped forward and remarked coldly. “You little coward, there is barely five inches of it inside you. I have guards here who are thicker than that.”
When another inch had penetrated her, Jane was screaming. Mistress Aldona put two hands on top of the tank and pressed downward, easing the pressure. “Are you ready to talk?”
“Please, I don’t know anything!”
Her protests became screams again as Mistress Aldona raised her hands and Jane settled once more onto the cone “Stop! I’ll talk!”
Kim let out the breath she had been holding. She had been impaled on enough members, real and artificial, to know how frightful Jane’s torture was.
With help from the guards, Aldona lifted the girl and removed the cone. Jane was set on the floor, still bound and spread.
“Talk,” Mistress Aldona demanded, “or we can start all over again.”
Between sobs, Jane confessed. Her maiden name was Weaver. She was Charlene’s sister. She had changed the records at Charlene’s request.
“Take her downstairs and lock her up with her sister,” Lestrade commanded. “I’m sure they will have much to talk about. We will pass sentence in the morning.”
As Jane was led away, Kim felt a hand fold shyly over her own. She turned and saw Sarah Gyve smiling at her.