AllFreeNovel
Share Us
With great fanfare, the departing colonists of the new colony had bought two entire nearly intact columns from that great courthouse, and with theatrical flair had them ground into gravel. They announced to the people of Earth—and their Draconian benefactors—that Artemisia would represent something new in human civilization. As a symbol of that egalitarian revolution, which truth be told was not at all new from a historical perspective, Artemisia’s leaders would literally tread upon the institutions of Earth’s ancient patriarchy.
Draco had originally begun as the first Earth colony. The first discovery of gravitium on that world had allowed them to return home via hyperspace to find an Earth ravaged by economic collapse, disease, and war. The Draconians attributed their stability to their having turned early in their history to ancient, patriarchal norms. By favoring those partners who shared that belief—in particular offering generous subsidization for groups looking to colonize in accordance with Draconian beliefs—Earth’s new saviors had rapidly brought about massive development on their mother world. Among other essential things, they inspired the creation of an exploratory company on Earth that would eventually sponsor and govern the colonization of Magisteria, the patriarchal ice world in possession of ninety percent of the galaxy’s known gravitium.
The Artemisian colonists represented a countermovement. Alarmed by the increasing importance of what the Draconians called ‘traditional family values,’ they decided to pay the extortionate prices the Draconian charged for their assistance in the founding of a new colony not dedicated to traditional family values.
So flush with funds did they feel, the official version had it, that they elected to grind down those massive columns and haul them three hundred lightyears. In my capacity as secretary of public relations I had gained access to all the historical records of the colony, and so I knew the official version contained a good deal of whitewashing: the debate over the gravel—whether the gesture meant anything at all, how it would be used, and who would pay for the grinding—had consumed thousands of words among the already contending members of the colony’s first government.
Still, they had paved the walk that ran from the capital to the high court to the executive building—the ‘Grand Promenade of Free Artemisia’—with that marble. Then they had put the leftovers on the drive of the president’s mansion. If the debate over grinding down the columns had involved contention, the fight about whether the president should partake of the gravel put it to shame for rancor and discord.
“You know the history of this drive, I’m sure?” Major Harrow asked me as he stepped out of the van behind me and took light hold of my elbow.
My cheeks blazed up anew with heat. I shifted my weight on my feet—my bladder stood in rather desperate need of relief. Beneath me the marble made its individual pebbles felt. The stones weren’t sharp at least: one part of the huge spectacle of the grinding of the columns had involved extra expense devoted to tumbling the shards smooth—‘so that our children’s feet may walk freely and comfortably upon the ruins of the oppression of ages past,’ according to the astoundingly bombastic then-president of the colony.
Did I have to speak? I scowled down at the crushed white stone so that I wouldn’t have to look at him or Lieutenant Withers, who had just emerged from the van on my other side. Nor did I have any desire to raise my eyes to the gorgeous home—former home, I supposed—of my president. I knew what it looked like: simple but elegant in the extreme, integrated beautifully into its natural, hilly forest environment with gently sloping, green-turfed rooves and curving lines. I looked at my bare feet and waited, telling myself to defy, though quietly, these Magisterian tyrants.
Major Harrow’s hand closed more tightly on my arm, demonstrating that he must have learned the same skills as his subordinate as to the use of physical force—in that region of the female anatomy in particular. I had the same feeling I had first had back in my apartment: that this uniformed man could hurt me if he chose, so much that I would have no choice but to do as he said, but that he would only go to such a length if he judged my behavior required it.
“You’re going to learn to answer when a man speaks to you, Sara,” he said in a serious, though not at all angry, tone. “Let’s try again. Do you know the history of this drive? These stones?”
I felt my brow furrow very hard. A breeze ruffled my hair, gently licked my bare skin. I could imagine the sensation being very pleasant, under other circumstances: the capital lay in the tropical zone of the planet and though the van had been air-conditioned I could already feel perspiration beginning under my arms and, much more embarrassingly, between my thighs.
“Yes,” I said though gritted teeth, still looking down, trying to forget my nudity.
Major Harrow’s next words took on a harder edge.
“Look at me, Sara,” he said. As he spoke he used his grip on my elbow to turn me firmly toward him.
Fear shook my body as I obeyed instinctively and saw menace in his eyes—no trace of malice there, but a definite intention to make certain I received the humiliating message he meant to give.
“You will address me assirfrom this point onward, girl.”
My lips parted and my eyes went very wide. What had just happened, when I had failed to answer his question with the ready obedience he clearly expected?
He didn’t say anything else, but held my gaze for a long moment. My breath had begun to come raggedly between my lips, and I suddenly felt much, much too present in my own body—the opposite of the feeling I had had in my apartment when they had held me down and spanked me, and in the corridor when Major Harrow had displayed my punished, naked bottom to my neighbors.
I realized with a creeping, helpless, oddly retrospective dread that to my shame I had somehowenjoyedthat detachment. I gave a tiny cry, looking into the dark eyes of the handsome, impeccably uniformed officer who had such a firm grip on my body. To my horror I realized that I wanted to obey him—that I wanted to show him here in front of the president’s mansion, naked on the marble of that symbolic drive, that I could do as he commanded.
“Answer me again, Sara Granzofar,” Major Harrow said, his voice full of a terrible promise to change everything about who I thought I was. “If you learn this lesson quickly, I’ll be able to give a good report of you once we get inside the reformation center. Otherwise, I’m afraid the first thing that befalls you inside the center will be a sound whipping.”
I swallowed hard. His pointed reference to thereformation centermade me look in the direction of that beautiful house. Not the mansion of my free world’s head of state—the noble if weak woman who had betrayed me into this man’s hands. A reformation center, now: the place this man had brought me to… toreformme.
Oh, no.Suddenly the detached feeling returned, and my eyes widened. The irrepressible, shameful need that took hold of my naked body made me shudder. I mumbled, whispered, rendered unable as I was by that strange and horribly pleasant sensation to speak any other way.
“Yes… yes, s-sir.”
Major Harrow smiled. My stomach lurched, but my body felt far away, and the thrill of arousal that accompanied the butterflies in my tummy seemed to happen to a girl who didn’t mind such lewd sensations when a broad-shouldered officer from a tyrannical world smiled at her as a reward for obedience.
“Let’s try that all again, shall we?” he said in a much more agreeable tone. “Do you know the history of the gravel on this drive, Sara?”
He had loosened his grip on my elbow, but he still held me lightly there. I felt—distantly, and so, I realized with dismay, also pleasantly—a warmth emanate from his long fingers.
“Yes, sir,” I said, and swallowed hard as the words came out roughly because all the moisture seemed to have left my mouth.
The major raised his eyebrows, clearly expecting more from me—some further demonstration that I had begun to learn. Fear and anger rose in my chest: hadn’t I done enough? What did he want?
Then my detached consciousness understood, and heat rushed to my cheeks: Major Harrow wanted to see me do my job—myformerjob, I thought bitterly—as secretary of public relations. He wanted a little presentation, as a compensation for my failure to behave properly when he had first addressed me.
My mouth opened but at first no sound came out. The words sat there on my tongue, but I didn’t say them, at first, because of the dismaying idea that had just presented itself to my mind.
