Jenndora the Librarian

The green-skinned slave woman was dressed as a librarian when they put her on the auction platform. Her long dress concealed slippered feet, her blouse failed to conceal her well-endowed chest, her blue-black hair drew back in a bun, and her large rimless glasses perched on a heart-shaped face. It was ridiculous, of course. Brythonic slave women were untamable animals, unable to speak, much less read or write. Everyone knew that. But just for a moment she looked shy and erudite.

The woman snarled, breaking the illusion. She tore away the clips holding her hair back, shaking it loose. She ripped away her blouse and her dress, revealing a gold collar and a brasserie studded with cheap synthetic gems. She kicked off her slippers. The audience applauded and hooted in appreciation, and she snarled a challenge once again as she paced across the platform, a pace that turned into a dance as the auctioneer turned up the music.

William Wang (his name was an inheritance from his traditional Californian grandfather) sat in the middle of the audience and enjoyed the show. He had no intention of bidding, but these auctions were cheap entertainment, even with the cover charge the auctioneers charged. Things were different, out here on the fringes of the Confederation. He remembered the shock on the face of his university sex counselor when he first fumbled for words to describe his own preferences. If she were here, she’d pull her purple hair out in anguish. And even here, this auction was not, strictly speaking, legal. Whoever put in the winning bid would have to take physical delivery out past the 10-megameter limit from the station.

“Shall we begin the bidding, gentlemen?” the auctioneer called. “Do I hear 1000 credits?”

The bids came fast at first, but then the audience noticed that the green woman still wore her glasses. She hadn’t hurled them away, as she had the rest of her librarian’s costume. “Take off her glasses!” one of them called, and others took up the call: “Take off her glasses! Take off her glasses!”

The auctioneer pasted a false smile on his face “Come now, gentlemen! That privilege can be left to the one who tames her. Do you really need a better view of her face to see what a beauty she is? We have a bid of twenty-five hundred credits. Do I hear twenty six?”

But the mood of the audience had shifted. “Take off her glasses! Take off her glasses!” they chanted. No one was willing to raise the bid, it seemed, for a slave woman who wore glasses. William shook his head at this peculiarity of local taste, and bit his tongue against the temptation to put in his own bid. On second thought, the audience might not be so irrational after all. The Confederacy had a strict policy of returning to Brython any green-skinned lady who showed signs of sapience, and a green slave woman who constantly wore glasses might raise suspicions.

The auctioneer appeared to have the same thought. “It’s not what it seems, gentlemen! She’ll scratch and bite if anyone tries to take them. She was wearing those when we found her, as a stowaway on one of our freighters, and they seem to hold some lingering memory for her. She is allergic to occumorphin, so it’s likely that she was fitted with them back on her homeworld.”

William figured that to be about half true The part about her being a “stowaway” was pure waste-gas, but the rest of it hung together. He had been on Brython himself, a couple of times, and he had met both the horned Brython males and their green-skinned females. They were just as intelligent as any other people. Leaving the planet, however, did something unfortunate to a green-skin woman’s mind, leaving her full of passion and empty of reason. One of their women who was allergic to occumorphin might well wear glasses to correct her vision, and could easily remained emotionally attached to them after being taken off-planet and losing the ability to explain why she wore them.

The rest of the audience wasn’t buying, though, in either sense of the word. No one accepted the story, and no one raised the bid until one man climbed up onto the platform. “I’ll bid twenty-six hundred,” he shouted, “but I want to see her face.”

“Please some away, sir!” The auctioneer kept his false smile in place, but William noticed a pair of security bots drifting forward from behind the platform.

“Now lets see what you look like,” the man said, stepping forward and reaching out. The green-skinned woman hissed and crouched, pure animal, and suddenly lashed out, clawing. A scratch appeared on the man’s face, long and red, and he recoiled.

The security bots moved in then, and spat at the slave woman. She scrambled back, dodging. Too late: Capture ribbons wound around her legs and pinned her arms to her sides. She squirmed, struggling against the bindings that now held her helpless, remaining upright only because the bots supported her, maintaining a grip on the ribbons tethering her. She threw her head back and shook it, hair flying wild, and the red ribbons that wrapped her green near-nudity made her look like a holiday present.

The scratched man stepped forward again, menacingly, but the auctioneer intercepted him. “I’m afraid your bid must be disallowed, sir,” the auctioneer told him. The man glared for a moment, glanced at the security bots, and then nodded stiffly. Without a word, he stalked off the platform and out of the chamber.

When he left, the chant started up once more: “Take off her glasses! Take off her glasses!” The auctioneer stepped forward, reaching for the bound woman’s face, and she fought madly against her bonds. But the security ribbons continued to hold her legs together and to keep her arms pinned to her sides, with no hint of loosening. She threw her head back again and howled, a keening wail that set teeth on edge, only to have the auctioneer place a gag-ball in her mouth, silencing her. Then, despite her furious silent protests, he removed her glasses and stepped aside.

The audience applauded. The clapping and whistles went on, as the green slave struggled against her bonds and then slumped between the two bots, eyes screwed shut. The auctioneer stepped forward, professional smile once again in place. “The bid is again 2500 credits, gentlemen! Do I hear 2600?”

But despite its applause, the audience was no longer in a mood to bid. “Twenty-five-fifty,” someone called at last. And then, after a long pause, “Twenty-six-hundred,” came without enthusiasm.

William bit his tongue again. His merchant instincts told him there was an opportunity here. He remembered something his grandfather once told him: “Dude,” the old man had said in affected archaic accent, “The symbol for opportunity is also the symbol for danger. Don’t bet your ass if you can’t afford to lose it.” But that didn’t matter, he realized. He wanted that woman. Unbiting his tongue, he called out: “Three thousand credits!”

The auctioneer kept his smile in place, but William suspected the man needed to vent a long string of foul words. Three thousand was less than a third of the normal price for a green slave woman, and the audience seemed unwilling to bid further. Still the man had to try: “I have a bid of three thousand... Incredibly cheap... A terrific bargain at twice the price... Do I hear more? Do I hear thirty-one hundred? ... Sold!” the auctioneer said at last. “Sold to the gentleman with ticket number seventeen.” He waved back the assistant bringing up the next piece of female merchandise and brought the lights up. “That will be all for now, gentlemen, please relax and enjoy our refreshments. The auctions will begin again at 16:00.”

The auctioneer looked sour, professional smile gone, when William met him privately in the back office. He accepted the coded credit-chit William slid across the desk, then managed a smile – natural rather than professional. “You skinned us properly, Mr. Wang. Congratulations, and good fortune with your new purchase. Speaking of which, you haven’t purchased from us before: Are you familiar with the transfer procedures?”

“I’m skipper of my own freighter, the Sweet Mead,” William answered. He did not mention that he was also its sole crewer. “Transfer beyond the Line won’t be a problem for me.”

“Very good. Here’s the dataset, then, Captain Wang. We’ll be off-station for docking and transfers for 12 hours, starting 54 hours from now. We’ll see you then.”

“Thank you. Just one other thing.”

“Sir?”

“I’d like her glasses. You still have them in your suit pocket, there, and I’ll like to take them with me now.”

Fifty-four hours later, William was out past the 10 megameter Line and waiting for the Sweet Mead’s turn to dock with the slave ship House of Milan. It had been a busy time. Deciding he might as well play out all his hunches, William had filed for a long voyage. The Sweet Mead was a small ship, barely larger than the ancient ocean-going oil tankers. Her long suite was speed, rather than bulk capacity, and William had filled her up with a last-minute cargo of exotic fruit. Then, in a ploy to quash any problems with quarantine at the other end of his trip, he arranged to put his hold under Confederacy Seal. The official who had come aboard, a Customs Associate Bone, had been blandly professional and only incidentally female until the very end.

“What about the cabin stores?” she had asked.

“Cabin stores are cabin stores. They can’t go under seal; they’ll be used during the voyage.”

“Of course.” She paused. “I understand you have a... passenger, this voyage.”

He just looked at her.

“Speaking purely as a private person, I can’t approve. You are within your rights, I suppose, but it’s uncivic of you to contribute to the problem of Brythonic females.”

“If the Department of Sexual Hygiene weren’t so priggish about certain harmless fantasies, Brythonic females might not be such a problem.”

“Harmless! Women are meant to bind and dominate men. In fact,” she grinned briefly, “I wouldn’t mind having you on my leash, Captain Wang.” The grin disappeared. “But for men to... That’s unnatural!”

William had allowed her that last word, declining to continue the argument, and Associate Bone had left in a huff. After that had come a bit of last minute net-shopping (with a premium paid for express delivery) and some sack time while waiting for Traffic Control to clear him for undocking and departure.

Now he sat at the pilot’s controls, drifting in deep space, and waited. “Estimated time, 15 minutes.” That was Nenya, the Sweet Mead‘s computer system. Not an AI, of course, but still programmed for voice input. It had amused William, when he’d first acquired the Sweet Mead, to give the computer a mechanical-sounding voice. Something from the old tales of knights and golems.

“Initiating docking,” Nenya announced. William headed for the entry port. It would be a “soft” docking, with a transfer tube, and while Nenya could handle the maneuvers, William wanted to double-check the seals himself. Besides, he smiled, they were finally delivering his green-skinned gal.

A few minutes later, the green woman in question floated in, strapped to a backboard. Her hair was frazzled, and she howled and screamed behind a mask-gag, the noise-suppressing device turning her protests into faint mews. The assistant bringing her in ignored the sounds she made, offering William a receipt to confirm before returning to his own ship through the transfer tube. Sweet Mead maneuvered away, causing House of Milan to shrink in the viewport. “Gravity in ten seconds,” Nenya announced. The chamber had been in free-fall for the transfer.

“Brace yourself, sweetheart,” William said. The woman wouldn’t understand the words, of course, but she apparently did understand what was coming, since she braced herself as well as she could, bound as she was to the backboard. If she “offfed” as William did, when the gravity returned, the sound was lost in her gag.

“Welcome aboard, sweetheart. I have something for you.” He brought out the glasses, and she made loud sounds of desire that came out as more mews through her gag. “Here you go,” he said, placing them on her. “You can see better now, can’t you.” The glasses were functional ones, he had noticed, not just cosmetic ornaments with plain glass. “And here’s something else for you,” he added, locking a new collar around her neck. The slavers had removed her old one before the transfer, along with the fancy jeweled bra, replacing them with a bikini of plain fabric. “I’m going to name you Jenndora. I’ve been to Brython before, you know, and half the women there are Jenndoras. And now I expect you’re parched.” He removed the mask-gag and she drank eagerly from the water-bulb he offered. “That’s right, you were parched, weren’t you.” He kept talking to her, telling himself that it was all in the tone of his voice. It seemed to be working, anyway. She gave him a sunny smile, and kept smiling at him as he undid the straps holding her captive to the backboard.

Once freed, she stretched her arms and sat on the deck to rub wrists and ankles. She looked up at him and he saw a look in her eyes, behind the glasses, that he might have missed if he hadn’t been a romantic. He looked away, telling himself sternly not to get his hopes up, and at that moment she attacked.

It wasn’t an intelligently planned attack, launched as it was from a sitting position against a standing opponent. Nor was it a terribly skilled attack. It was, however, sincere with its snarling, biting, clawing, and gouging. William managed to fend off the first rush, then brought his greater weight and strength (and skill) into play. He quickly pinned her, then bound her wrists behind her with a strap from the backboard. Another strap bound her ankles, and he picked her up. “Don’t fight, or I’ll drop you,” he said, and she fell quiet, crooning apologetically and nuzzling against him. Even if she couldn’t understand the words, the threat was obvious.

As the Sweet Mead sped through warp, five days out from Lorelei Station, William sat in the converted cabin and caressed Jenndora, “gentling” her. She lay beside him in a traditional hogtie: Wrists crossed and tied behind her back, ankles bound parallel and tethered to the wrists, and a gag-ball in her mouth. This last was an expensive little toy: A chewy sphere stuffed with miniature gravitronics that anchored it to her collar, making it impossible for her to expel it until he turned it off.

William idly wondered how gag-balls were made to work before days of gravitronics, while Jenndora made contented sounds at the way he massaged her feet. The sounds were almost wordlike, and William told himself, once again, not to read too much into that. His romantic side wanted Jenndora to turn out to be one of those rare green women who turned up with their minds intact, but his practical side told him how unlikely that was. Besides, if she did turn out to have her sapience intact, the Confederacy would only swoop down and hustle her back to her homeworld. They had no sense of humor when it came to that.

Even so, Jenndora still remembered – or had been trained – how to groom herself. She could use the shower and the air-dryer, and could brush and comb her hair. With some trepidation, he had unshielded the entertainment station in her cabin and found she could operate that as well, at least to the extent of flipping through music or vids at random until she found something she liked. She also tolerated the costumes he put her in – most of the time, anyway. Some of them she had ripped off and shredded, and the few times he tried to foist shoes on her she had thrown them at him.

Taking a cord, William tied her two large toes together. She wiggled her feet and mewed protests, but after he finished she rolled over and grinned at him around her gag. Her dark green eyes were large, behind the glasses she insisted on keeping, and William once again wondered how much of her mind was still left in there.

She had tamed to him with remarkable quickness. He knew that the stories of “untamable” green slave women were gross exaggerations, but even so... Maybe she sensed how much he had wanted her (and still did) and had returned the feeling. Maybe it was the peanut butter, which Brythonians craved the way Terrans craved chocolate. Maybe it was the return of her glasses, like that fable of the man who had pulled a thorn from the paw of a lioness. Or maybe he was just lucky.

In any case, she now would sometimes cuddle against him, warm and soft, and sometimes press hard against him, arms bound to her side, wordlessly demanding sex. Even her unprovoked attacks, he’d come to realize, had resulted from her fondness for him. He had put her in bonds for his own pleasure, of course, and it took some time for it to dawn on him that her attacks meant that she wanted more.

After that, they managed to reach an understanding: She only needed to snarl, or to make a playful swipe at him, and he would tie her.

Like now, for example. This particular session had been her idea – not that he wasn’t enjoying it immensely himself. She rolled over a bit more, presenting her breasts to him and he grinned and reached to lightly touch dark green nipples against lighter green skin. She writhed in ecstasy, pulling at the ropes holding her. Her breaths came faster and louder. “Nenya,” he called to the computer. “Gag-ball off.”

The bondage toy shut down, and she spat it out. “Yess,” she breathed, and then froze in response to his freezing. Then she made begging noises deep in her throat, pursing her lips at him, demanding to be kissed.

He relaxed and bent down. “I must have been imagining things.”

If William hadn’t been a romantic, he would have forgotten the incident by the next morning, and thus wouldn’t have followed it up. But he was a romantic at heart, and during the morning’s routine check of the Sweet Mead‘s systems, he brought up the entertainment log, only to find it erased. He frowned thoughtfully, drumming his fingers on the console, as he tried to remember. The entertainment log’s privacy configuration was set to auto-erase, and he might have set it that way himself. He couldn’t remember. After a time, he reset it to “record” and went on with the rest of the checks. They were four days from Lorelei Station, nearly at the end of their long voyage. When the Sweet Mead dropped out of warp, Captain William Wang would have to start thinking like a merchant again.

Two days out from Lorelei Station, William checked the entertainment log once again. And once again it was not there. He looked at the lack of record for a long minute, and at last went “Hmmm.” He’d have the computer run a check. “Nenya?” he called.

“Yes, Captain?”

“Um, never mind.” Instead of following his original impulse, William decided to pull out some of his more primitive utilities. This required digging out a keyboard and connecting it. Which in turn required digging out a special adapter. Once connected, William tapped in commands and went “hmm” again. Looked at more results. Swallowed. Stood up, heart pounding, and ran to Jenndora’s cabin.

Jenndora was sitting in the station chair, looking at an all-text display when the cabin door slid open. As William stepped inside, she turned to look at him, eyes huge behind her glasses, mouth open in surprise. Then she snarled and sprang up to attack.

William shot her.

The big gun spat the same red ribbons as the security bots had, back in the auction chamber. Jenndora wailed as they wrapped around her. pinioning arms and legs. William dropped the gun and stepped forward to catch her before she fell. Even then, she still continued to struggle, so William sat her back in the chair and dug out a roll of vac tape (“The Spacer’s Friend!”). Soon Jenndora was doubly helpless, her arms pinned to her sides and her legs bound together by the red security ribbons, and the vac tape pinning her further and strapping her to the chair. The combination left her half-mummified, with her head sticking out at one end and her bare feet at the other.

William picked up her glasses, which had fallen off in the struggle, and put them back on her before taking a seat facing her. “I sure you have a good reason for your secret, Jenndora,” he told her gently, “and I’ll help you keep it. I promise.”

“Yrowl.” She made a pure animal noise, lacking any comprehension.

“You’re not fooling me any more. Don’t you think it’s time to stop?”

“Yes master,” she said in a small voice. Her face flushed a darker green with embarrassment, but she couldn’t stop watching him. Well, that was fair enough; he couldn’t stop looking at her, either. Stars of the Dog! How he wanted her!

“What’s your name?” he asked at last. “Your real name, I mean.”

“Jenndora, master.” She managed a half smile. “As you said, half the women on Brython are Jenndoras.”

“So you were Jenndora even before you were kidnapped from Brython.”

“We weren’t kidnapped, master. We paid the smugglers to take us off planet. Only a token fee, but still enough to make it morally binding. No pun intended.” She flashed a quick grin. “You’ve been on Brython, master. You know what Confederacy security is like, there. The smugglers could never succeed if the women didn’t help.” She paused, remembering. “There were six of us. We all agreed that even what happens to Brython women, off-planet, would still be better than staying there. Brythonian males are so patronizing. If one of them were cut in half with a shear-plane he would refuse to bleed, if he though a female had been at the controls. They simply can’t believe that a mere female could possibly harm them. Even men who think you’re a wild animal will give you more respect than that.”

“But you weren’t an animal. You got off-planet, and found you still remained yourself.”

“I was terribly confused for the first few days, before my mind cleared again. Then I realized that I had to act like a wild animal, or the Confederacy would send me back. But when I saw all the old novels you have here, I couldn’t resist reading them. Even though I knew it was a stupid risk. I love those stories, master.”

“And so I caught you,” William said. “But why do you keep calling me ‘master’?”

“What else should I call you?” she asked reasonably. “You did buy me at auction, and I am your green Brythonian Slave Woman. And I love you, master. I’ve loved you since I first heard your voice. I couldn’t see you because they had taken my glasses, but my heart was in my throat for fear that you’d be outbid.”

William swallowed. “You’re just saying that,” he said huskily, “because you know I have you at my mercy.” He reached out, very gently, and touched her face. Jenndora didn’t answer, but her eyes shone, behind her glasses, as they drank in his face in return.

“You’ve told me your story,” William said at last. “Now let me tell you one of mine. No, don’t run away,” he told her as she squirmed in her bonds. He sliced away some of the vac tape holding her legs, and lifted her feet into his lap. “Just relax and listen.” A quick tickle made her giggle, and then she sighed as he began to massage her feet. “It’s a elves-flying-in-black-helicopters conspiracy theory, but I heard it on Brython itself. In a spaceport bar. According to the story, none of you green women lose yourselves when you travel off-planet. You get confused for a few days when you first experience warp, and that’s it. But you all have to pretend, or else the Confederacy will round you up and send you back.

“Except that none of you want to go back. So you’ve formed a secret society to help each other. To support each other. You talk with each other, when you’re brought together, as long as no outsider is around to listen. Or when we outsiders are around, you dance at each other, and your dances are a secret code. Some even claim that you’ve developed telepathy, and can talk to each other directly in a way that no instrument can tap into, or even detect.

“What do you think of that?”

“I think that story about telepathic powers is ridiculous, master,” Jenndora answered at once.

“That’s what I though,” William said. “There’s just one more thing: When we reach Lorelei Station, you’ll have to pretend to be wild again. Can you do that?”

Jenndora lifted an eyebrow at him, then lowered it again. Suddenly her expression was once again that of a wild green she-beast. She snarled at him, challenging him to tame her.