Title of Story

Lorelei Station is an odd place. An alt-Eddorian, pausing there in his extradimensional travels, once described it as a location that could only exist in a IP3+ dimension. When asked what an IP3+ dimension was, he gave the answer “Like a IP1 dimension, only with three or more immiscible ethers interfolded.”

He refused to explain further. On studying the issue, the Vulcan Science Conference concluded that further developments in Block Transfer Computation would be needed to reach understanding. And Jedi Master Xicz said, predictably, “Understand or understand not. There is no math.”

Be that as it may, Lorelei Station is famous (or notorious) for the beautiful items of female merchandise sold there, as well as for the strict zero-shoe policy imposed on that female merchandise. The Mudd-Hutt Consortium has a large presence on the station, but they’re far from the only shippers and sellers. At the display points and in the auction catalogs, one can find Earth Humans from the Federation, non-Earth humans from the Republic and the Empire, female felines and preymate species from the Patriarchy, green-skinned orionoids (a few of whom are actual Orions), blue azurites of various species, both with and without antenna-horns, and even the occasional Klingon or Romulan female, despite the isolationism of those empires.

And, of course, twileks and twilekoids.

Incey was one of those twilek female items of merchandise. Previously she’d been a crewmember on the pirate ship Obsidian Jack, one of six twilek females styling themselves the ‘Sable Sisterhood.’ Not that any of the six were melanistic. (Incey, herself, was blue.) But after the destruction of Obsidian Jack, they all ended up on Lorelei station, as items of merchandise subject to the station’s Zero-Shoe Policy.

Like the others, Incey took her change of status philosophically. It is a peculiarity of human females, particularly Earth human females, to look upon enslavement as some sort of primal horror. For twileks and other non-humans, it was just dratted thing that sometimes happened to a female. And that went double for female pirates. They knew that they were destined for a slave collar in the end, provided that they survived.

Incey had spent the voyage to Lorelei Station in an Orion Pleasure Tube. That she had found interesting. She had then spent an excessive amount of time as a collared model for Zenodal fiber-cuffs and vanishing silks. That she had found annoying. But she’d been allowed to keep her spectacles, and that was important to her. (She was violently allergic to all the Retinax variants and thus needed the passive optics.)

Finally, they put Incey on the auction block, and a melanistic human named Irving Boyd Bentley Chen had purchased her.

“Please master,” Incey asked. “How long do you intend to leave me in these?” She raised her cuffed wrists and pointed at the rest of the restraint set with her braintails.

“Until you beg prettily for me to remove them. Do you beg that, Incey?” Master Irving asked.

“Well, no master,” Incey admitted.

Master Irving had made Incey wear Prax-Symbolic restraints, in various configurations, for the entire trip from Lorelei Station to Master Irving’s home moon of Lusnik IV. They’d been comfortable enough even when first applied, and now they had come to feel familiar. He had also changed her specs. The passive optics remained the same, as did the temple-pieces with their micro-miniature gravitronics to keep them in place. (Like most twilek females, Incey lacked the ‘ears’ possessed by other humanoid species.) The change had been to the frames, making them rounder and softer. Not more feminine, but definitely less pirate-fierce. And that felt right, now that Incey wore a slave collar.

Another point that Incey had to admit the rightness of was the zero-shoe policy Master Irving had maintained after leaving the station. It was… fitting that a former pirate-woman and current slave-women be made to go barefoot.

Being made to wear Zenodal vanishing-silks would have been fitting too, despite Incey having continuously modeled them for so long on Lorelei Station. Master Irving didn’t have a gram of color sense, and the shade of yellow he’d chosen clashed embarrassingly with her blue complexion.

But that wasn’t the real annoyance, if annoyance was the right word.

Master Irving looked Incey up and down, and reached out to tease her slave collar. “Your real objection,” he observed, “is to the float function.”

“Well, yes master.” And as soon as she’d said those words, Incey realized that she had lied.

The current configuration of Incey’s Prax-Symbolic restraints had wrist- and ankle-cuffs locked on, in addition to the locking belt at the core of the system. Chains – simple mechanical unpowered chains – ran between the belt and the cuffs, and could be lengthened, shortened, and otherwise varied to limit Incey’s movement. The bands for thighs and upper arms were detached but at hand, and Master Irving could add them to the array at his whim.

Unlike the chains, the cuffs and belt were neither simple nor unpowered. They were packed with gravitronics, and Master Irving had them currently set to put Incey in a null-g bubble. She was forced to float in midair, and that hobbled her movement more than the chains between her ankles would have, if she were allowed to stand with her bare feet on the floor.

Null-grav restraints were sometimes used as high security for especially dangerous captives. Back when she was a pirate, Incey would have felt flattered to have been put in such bonds, but the null-grav setting of the Prax-Symbolic system was a broad parody of those high-security restraints.

Incey had been sure that the float-function was the source of her annoyance. But it wasn’t – especially given how effective it was, parody or no. She didn’t see any way she could possibly escape it. No, she had to admit that her true annoyance and embarrassment came from that horrid yellow she was wearing.

Now Master Irving asked in a more serious tone, “They’re not interfering with your specs, are they?”

“No master.” And that Incey was grateful for. The gravitronics in her specs were well shielded, but they had given her bad headaches before, due to interference from poorly tuned artificial gravity fields.

“Good!” Master Irving said, his dark face grinning again. “In that case, come along, Incey.”

“Yes master.”

Not that Incey had to do anything; Master Irving simply reached out a hand and towed her after him through the door.

The next room was decorated in Old Terran Occidental, with a pair of comfy chairs, a comfy couch, and side tables made of a local hardwood. Master Irving twisted Incey’s body so that she now floated on her side, some twenty or thirty centimeters above the couch. He also shortened the chains, pulling both her wrists and her ankles together. She could, awkwardly, reach down to touch the couch with her braintails, but they lacked the strength to do anything. Her arms and legs did have that strength, which was why her Prax-Symbolic restraints prevented them from reaching down.

And as a final touch, Master Irving added a pair of toe-restraints to Incey’s two large toes, as a reminder of his zero-shoe policy.

“You can stay here floating above the couch until you do beg prettily, sweet Incey,” Master Irving said. “And until I’m officially convinced that you’re safe for Freddi. And vice versa.”

Incey offered her best ‘humble slave women’ look to her owner, earning a caress of her right braintail in response. “As master wishes, of course,” she said. “But may I ask, master, who ‘Freddi’ is?”

“Mistress Winifred Melody Joy, to be formal,” Master Irving said. “Although I hope you won’t need to be. She is” – a chime interrupted him – “Ah, that should be her now.”

A few moments later, a human woman padded through the door, escorted by a serving-bot and carrying a pair of sandals in her left hand. She paused to give Incey a look of frank curiosity, one that Incey herself returned.

Her human hair was long and wavy, and as black as Master Irving’s own. Her skin was a much lighter shade than Master Irving’s: A light spice-brown, rather than ebony-black. She wore a loose and armless dress that made Incey sigh with envy. Not because of its cut or coverage, but because its light and dark greens flattered the woman’s complexion in a way that that Incey’s yellow vanishing-silks didn’t.

Master Irving gestured to one of the comfy chairs. “Hand off your sandals to Bob and make yourself snug, Freddi.”

Smiling and silent, the woman took her seat. After handing her sandals to the serving-bot, she held out both wrists and waited patiently for the ‘bot to secure her.

Incey raised one of her painted-on eyebrows. Mistress Winifred didn’t wear a slave collar, and yet was being made helpless in a set of HuttMech portable stocks. Incey recognized the model: KH25 double-anchors. When the two ornamented rods were activated, they threw out glowing force-field binders to confine wrists and ankles, along with mini-tractors to anchor themselves and their captive to the comfy chair.

Master Irving didn’t take the second comfy chair. Instead he made a show of inspecting the bonds of both his women – admiring what he saw, Incey thought. Then he said, “Freddi, this is Incey, formerly the Wicked Pirate Incey Rill-Fazle. Now she’s registered on Lorelei Station as Ladyslave Incey AOA-5233-288, and certified as tamed. But I’m taking basic precautions anyway, just in case.”

Incey smiled and offered a little wave with her right braintail and her right hand. A very little wave with her hand, given how snuggly it was held by its wristcuff and chain. And yes, she was tamed. Spending time in an Orion Pleasure Tube did things to a female. Wonderful things, when viewed in retrospect. And during the process as well. Their advertising slogan was ‘No human female can resist them,’ and Incey hadn’t been able to resist either. Of course, being a sensible non-human female, she hadn’t made the futile effort of trying.

“Incey,” Master Irving now said. “This is Mistress Winifred Melody Joy, who has asked me to court her. Everyone calls her Freddi, and you can too.”

The human woman nodded a confirmation, and Master Irving continued. “Now you need to understand our Lusnik customs on courtship and marriage. Freddi is better placed to explain about all that than I am, and anyway you need to do the girl-gossip thing. So I’ll leave you to it. I’ll want you to decide which of you is the more tightly bound, and whether the two of you can share a kitchen without trying to poison me.”

He raised a forefinger and shook it at the air between the women. “And this should go without saying, but I have to say it anyway: No escaping, and especially no cat-fights. I don’t want to see any scratches, bites, or bruises on either of you when I return.”

“Yes, master,” Incey said.

Freddi said, “As my Suitor wishes.”

Master Irving left the room. Bob the serving-bot remained behind, floating unobtrusively out of the way on its own antigrav.

A silence followed, as the two restrained females studied each other. Incey saw now that Mistress Winifred, or Freddi, did not have normal human eyes. They were copper in color, with slit pupils – eyes of a type common in Narnow and other felineoids, but not something that Incey could recall ever seeing before in humans.

Freddi was the one who finally broke the silence. “Well! We should certainly follow my Suitor Irving’s suggestion, or else we are doomed from the start. I’m Freddi, and not ‘Mistress Winifred’ or anything like that, and you’re Incey, and not ‘Ladyslave Incey’ or anything like that. Now let us get started on that girl-gossip.”

“It will be as Master Irving wishes,” Incey said, “and I am grateful for it. So thank you. What I would like to know, however, is just what the start actually is, here.”

Freddi grinned. “You want to know why you’re here if I’m here, and vice versa.” Incey nodded and Freddi went on, “Well, it’s because we’re on the Fourth Moon of Lusnik, which has unusual customs for courtship and marriage, compared to the rest of the Federation. As an unmarried female I’m a TaxedMaiden; as law and custom here both want to discourage females from going unmarried. So I asked my Suitor Irving to court me, and he accepted. And as the Test that custom allows, I asked him to go out to Lorelei Station and buy you – or not you specifically, but some slave woman. For one thing, he is too big a mand to be satisfied by just one wench, and I didn’t want to be the wench who had to try to satisfy him alone. More importantly, I needed to see just what sort of female he would bring home, and how he would treat her. So if we can be friends, Incey, if we can ‘share a kitchen without trying to poison him,’ as my Suitor and your Master Irving put it, then all will be well.”

“And if not, you’ll have avoided a horrible mistake?” Incey guessed. “I’ll be happy to tell you about myself, but maybe you can first tell me more about the marriage customs here?”

“Yes, I should do that.” Freddi nodded. “Where to start. Well, here on Lusnik – Lusnik IV that is – being an ‘old maid’ or ‘spinster’ is legally and socially discouraged, as I mentioned before. I’m a TaxedMaiden now, for being unmarried, and the tax will rise as I grow older – unless I do get married. However, marrying and becoming a wife here has its own issues. We’re not slaves – we can’t be bought or sold – but we are under the discipline of our Husbands. Yes, and of our Suitors as well, even if that part is only a matter of custom rather than law. It’s not a bad custom,” Freddi mused. “We get warned ahead of time about what our Husbands-to-be consider reasonable and proper. Like this.” A tilt of her head indicated the high-tech stocks that held her wrists and ankles. “It is exciting to be held helpless like this, isn’t it?”

“Oh yes,” Incey agreed. She had felt that way even before becoming a pirate, and her time in the Orion Pleasure Tube had cultivated that feeling. She found her current float-restraint frustrating, not being able to lie on the comfy couch below her, but it was also undeniably exciting.

“But when we do get married, here on Lusnik,” Freddi went on, “it’s forever. We’re bound to our Husbands and our Husbands’ kitchens. Like the ‘serfs’ of Late Ancient times. So we take care in choosing our Suitors and Husbands-to-Be. My Suitor Irving is as good a man as any, and better than most, which is why I begged him to become my Suitor. Yet a female does have to be cautious, and that’s why I sent him off to Lorelei Station. His purchase of you there was an important double-check. And if we are friends, or can be friends, I can make a triple-check: I can ask you if I should let my Suitor Irving become my Husband.” *

*Freddi pulled at the stocks holding her. Incey recognized it as a testing gesture; the human woman wanted to reassure herself about her helplessness. And in response, Incey found herself doing the same, tugging at the chains of her Prax-Symbolic restraints.

“There are even more details, of course,” Freddi said, “but now I think it’s your turn, Incey. And I have a question: My Suitor hasn’t restrained your braintails. Do you know why?”

“Master Irving has restrained them,” Incey said. “He’s been deliciously subtle about it. Do you see the black paint on the tips? That’s a simple nanopaint, and it’s programmed to keep them away from the Prax-Symbolic cuffs. So if I had some clever plan to deactivate my cuffs, the black tips would foil it.” She wiggled her braintails, pleasantly frustrated at not being able to do anything with them. “My master could have bound them in some more obvious and restrictive way, but that would be like a large and unpleasant mouth-gag.”

“I see,” Freddi said, giving her hair a toss and pulling at the portable stocks in another testing gesture.

“Yes,” Incey said, giving her own chains another testing tug. “You’ve told me why I’m here, and now it’s my turn to tell you how I got here.”

With that Incey launched into the story of her reckless youthful decision to become a space pirate, her initial misadventures, and her cold and careful decision to join the Sable Sisterhood of Obsidian Jack – thus turning down a last chance to abandon the pirate path.

“I knew I was fated to wear this.” Incey pointed to her collar with the tip of her left braintail. “But in the meantime we had lots of fun. Pirate fun.” She went on to describe the swath she and her pirate sisters had cut through hyperspace, leading to a bounty being placed on Obsidian Jack.

“We underestimated the seriousness of that,” Incey admitted. “Especially when Foomu of Selnal set out to collect that bounty on us. But we did manage one last grand adventure: Our caper against the Spician Spice Consortium.”

“I’ve heard about that,” Freddi said. “That was you?”

Incey nodded. “That was us. It was a huge haul, and it’s still cached and waiting for us. Classic pirate treasure. But Foomu caught up with us, and blew Obsidian Jack into a million half-disintegrated pieces. We barely escaped – but the joke was Foomu. He only collected the bounty from Borrif II, and not the one offered by Spician Spice.”

“So how did you get caught?” Freddi asked.

Incey shrugged. She could do that much in her restraints, but not much more. “We didn’t get caught. Or not exactly. We were stranded on Gam. No ship, and we couldn’t come up with any clever way to get off-planet and start over.” She shrugged again. “So we turned ourselves in. In a sense. There are a surprising number of freighters out there who are willing to stop at places like Lorelei station with hidden female cargos, while spurning anything to do with bounty-hunting. So we split up. I made it to Lorelei station, obviously, and I believe all the others did too. It really is the best place for a female to be enslaved, Zero-Shoe policy and all.”

She didn’t need to explain that, once enslaved, a female couldn’t be tried for her previous acts of piracy.

“I’ve heard of captured pirates being cloned,” Freddi said. “And the clones enslaved too.”

Incey shrugged a third time. “That only happens to the most notorious of female pirates. We weren’t quite that bad. Almost,” she said in a tone of remembrance, “but not quite.”

“And you know about a hidden pirate treasure. Do you plan to buy back your freedom with it?”

“Of – No. I was about to say ‘of course not’ but it’s not obvious. Not from the outside. For one thing, my share of the treasure now belongs to Master Irving. For a second thing, if I did escape, or get manumitted, or whatever, the piracy charges against me would get picked up again – and so I’d end up back on the auction block, if Foomu or some other bounty hunter didn’t disintegrate me first. And most of all, I’ve been through an Orion Pleasure Tube.” Incey couldn’t help smiling at the memory. “That’s not something a female can reverse.”

Freddi grimaced. “Oh. I didn’t think of that. Stupid of me.” She brightened. “Although I’m sure my Suitor Irving will be glad to get your share of pirate treasure.”

“That was our plan, actually,” Incey said. “Master Irving and the other masters will be pleased with the treasure, and so pleased with me and my former-pirate sisters. And it is better to be owned by a wealthy master.”

“By a more-wealthy master in this case,” Freddi said. “My Suitor Irving is already a wealthy man. And in a way, I’m in the same position that you are. I have a block of Prax-Symbolic stock, and as a TaxedMaiden I can’t benefit properly from it. But if my Suitor becomes my Husband, he can take advantage of it.” Freddi looked over Incey, as she floated above the couch. “In fact, I’ll guess that’s why my Suitor made the restraint choices he did. He has a bunch of HuttMech devices to secure me with, because it offends his sense of propriety to use Prax-Symbolic restraints on me. But for you, the use of that Prax-Symbolic set pleases his sense of propriety. So if you want, you can blame me for your floating there.” She cocked her head and asked, more seriously, “Does it bother you?”

Incey squirmed, as much as the shortened chains of her Prax-Symbolic restraints would let her. “It’s embarrassing,” she admitted. “But I can’t blame you for that. Well, I could, but it would offend my sense of propriety to do so.”

“Are slave wenches allowed a sense of propriety? I didn’t think they were.”

“We’re allowed as long as it pleases our masters. And I’m sure Master Irving wouldn’t be pleased by my blaming you. In any case,” Incey went on, “HuttMech makes antigrav restraints too, along with Zenodal and a number of other companies. I made a study of that, as a hobby in my pirate days.”

“Because you knew you would someday have first-hand experience?” Freddi asked.

“Well, yes.”

“I studied that too, but in my case it was required schoolwork. It’s part and parcel of those marriage traditions here on Lusnik.” Freddi then changed the subject. “Would you like something to drink? I’m going to ask Bob for a bulb of water.”

“Yes please? Just water please.”

Freddi confirmed Incey’s guess. “Bob is the serving ‘bot my suitor left here to chaperone us.” She went on to order for a pair of water bulbs, on float coasters. That would allow the two captive females to drink hands-free.

Once their dry mouths were moistened, the women turned to the Kitchen Question. Two more bulbs of water later, (consumed without the use of hands, of course) they had verbally sketched out a kitchen they could share, from the incised ceiling lights to the padtile floor.

“It’s going to be a large kitchen,” Incey commented. “On Obsidian Jack, the galley was barely big enough to turn around in. Not that we really needed more.”

“And you had to have footwear in it too,” Freddi said.

Incey nodded. “Yes, ship-boots. We wore ship-boots everywhere, outside our bunks and in the ‘fresher. The zero-shoe policy on Lorelei Station was something of a shock, at first. But in a good way,” she added quickly.

“We can’t have that sort of ‘zero-shoe’ policy here on Lusnik,” Freddi said. “We have too much open-sky environment to allow it. We do come close inside our buildings, however – and especially in kitchens. That’s why padtile flooring is so popular here.” She paused to give Incey a look. “There’s also a strict zero-shoe policy – of a sort – for weddings. Even those held outside. You should be warned about it, and there’s no time like the present.”

“Everyone carries shoes but no one wears them? That’s a guess,” Incey added quickly.

Freddi tried to gesture, looked down at her hands in the portable stocks. “It’s a good guess. None of the females at a wedding wear shoes, but we all carry a pair in our hands, or on a cord. Sometimes two pairs, depending. Then at the proper time we throw them into the shoe-fire to destroy them.”

Incey felt her toes wiggle, pulling against her toe-binders. “That sounds like someone really wanted to hammer the point home. And with a fire instead of a disintegration chamber… Oh, but I suppose you have the fire in an open-sky location.”

“Or at least in a big fireplace vented to the open sky. My point is that you’ll need a pair too, for the shoe-fire. I insist that you be one of the female guests.” Freddi grinned. Then her grin faded “But first I need to ask a possibly embarrassing question. Do you find human color-sense to be odd and alien? Do the vanishing-silks you’re now wearing please your twilek sense of color-matching? Or is that a color my Suitor chose for you?”

“Well…” Incey felt herself flush. “A slavegirl must be grateful for whatever clothing her master allows her.”

“But you’d also be grateful if he had chosen a different color?”

Incey nodded. Freddi sighed. “Maybe you can’t say it aloud about your Master Irving, but I can say it about my Suitor: He doesn’t have a gram of color sense.”

“I really am pleased with the cut of my dress and even the material.” Incey pointed at her yellow vanishing-silks with the tips of her braintails. “Do you find this odd – gauche – as a human female?”

“No, no I don’t,” Freddi said. “I couldn’t wear what you are wearing, but it really does suit you. Except for the color.” she sighed again. “I’ll have to wheedle my Suitor about that. It’s something I’m allowed to do as your – what’s the term? The umbrella one, that isn’t just limited to Wives or to slave wenches.”

“Sisters-in-custody?” Incey suggested.

Freddi nodded. “That’s the term. Since we’re sisters-in-custody, I can wheedle your Master Irving for your sake, and you can beg piteously to my Suitor Irving for my sake.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Incey said. “And now I hear Master Irving coming.”

A minute later, Master Irving entered the room. “Still here, I see, and you haven’t scratched each other’s eyes out yet.” He stroked Incey’s braintails and gave Freddi’s hair a caress before sitting in the second comfy chair. His fiddling with a remote released Freddi’s wrists from the portable stocks while leaving her ankles bound. More fiddling lowered Incey to the couch, canceling the antigrav. Another command gave slack to Incey’s wrist-chains, and Master Irving gestured for her to sit up.

“Thank you, master,” Incey said.

“Thank you, my Suitor and Husband-to-be,” Freddi said.

Master Irving’s ebony face grew even more cheerful. “So, you’ve decided that you can share a kitchen, have you?”

“Yes, master,” Incey said.

“If it’s a large enough kitchen, my Suitor,” Freddi said.

“Oh ho, so you have another little project for me, do you?”

“Two projects my Suitor,” Freddi said. “One from me and one from my sister-in-custody. Mine is to provide Incey with a proper wardrobe.”

“What’s wrong with what she has on now? Never mind.” Master Irving waved a hand in response to Freddi’s eye-roll. “Go ahead and decide on a wardrobe between the two of you, and submit it for my approval.” He turned to Incey. “And if I don’t approve, you can go naked.”

“As master wishes,” Incey said, perhaps a shade too innocently.

Freddi said, “I’m sure my Suitor will approve whatever new colors we choose.”

Master Irving shared a look between the two. “Very well then, my fine fettered females. Since you are doing such a good job of wheedling me, suppose you tell me what your second project is?”

“I think you’ll like it, my Suitor,” Freddi said. “Incey, why don’t you tell us more about your hidden pirate treasure?”

(end)