Miyal could no longer wear any of the clothes she had brought.

The problem had nothing to do with either their size or their quality. They were the best. They were made of the finest syncloth: smooth, satiny, dreadfully expensive but perfectly fitting, designed with special memory fabrics, in fact, capable of adjusting to almost any set of physical measurements, a useful thing among members of Miyal's class where one's measurements could be changed as the mood struck. She had clothes for all seasons, all climates, all eventualities, or so she had thought, long ago, when she first packed them.

Nonetheless, she could no longer wear them. Any of them.

They itched.

They itched horribly, intolerably, whenever she even tried putting any of them on. And it wasn't just syncloth. By no means. It was all clothing. Even the native garments she had acquired - the blue uniforms her new androthralls had been wearing, the "lawn-jar-ee" they stole for her from the mercantile complex (Shopping mall, the hateful thrallvoice inside her head reminded her) - all of them felt like they had acid mixed with their threads. Cursing in her native tongue, strange alien thoughts blasting through the back of her mind (Shopping mall. Car. Frederick's of Hollywood. Lingerie), Miyal tore away the "pan-tees" she had been trying to endure wearing and flung them viciously across the "moe-tell rhoom." She felt like she was going to go "crah-zee."

Her head ached from madly shifting vocabulary. Furious beyond 'utterances,' she stormed into the 'lavatory' and slammed the 'portal' shut, failing to 'note a consideration' as she did how her 'androthrall' Darren 'kindled up' enough from his 'thralldaze' to 'clamber' over the mattress 'fabricweave,' grab the flimsy 'weavefabric,' and 'compress' it to his 'countenance.'

The situation Miyal found herself in was not something she had anticipated. Not at all.

She looked at herself in the room's reflector (Mirror, she thought, in Brafford-English. This is a mirror), and it took all her considerable willpower not to slam her fist against it, shattering the lying image captured therein. I am not a femthrall, she thought. I am not a . . a slave!

Yet, of course, a slave was what she saw. She couldn't help it. She had seen too many of them, had produced too many of them, not to see what was plainly staring back at her. Irresistibly, her eyes were drawn to the high, half-moon curves of her now enlarged breasts and their perpetually swollen nipples, the verdant, velvet-soft skin glistening with delicately perfumed sweat.

Miyal moaned, partially in confirmed fear of her new reality, but not a little too in part to her steadily increasing randiness, the deep-seated urge she felt inside her to be fucked, to be used, to have a man's hands, or, better yet, a man's tongue, trace her gloriously huge, fan-shaped clitoris, blooming flowerlike within her glistening, inviting vulva. Her fingers roamed down and parted her soft flesh. A sudden, mad desire pushed through her, and she saw herself, felt herself, on her knees before a man, straddling a man, the blood rising to the surface of her emerald flesh, her thrallflesh, and she was fucking . . fucking . . fucking . . . .

"NO!" she screamed. Pulling her trembling hands away, Miyal clutched one to the porcelain sink and reached around with the other to the medical case she had put on the cabinet earlier.

She rummaged around inside and found the injector. Checking quickly to make sure of its contents - woe unto her if she accidentally injected herself with more thrallextract - she pressed the metal cylinder to the inside of her throat and squeezed. A numbing coolness at once swept over her, dampening but never entirely eradicating the fiery passions now constantly burning inside her. Shaking violently, Miyal let the injector fall from her fingers and turned on the tap.

She washed her green face with the cold liquid, desperately trying to hold on to her thoughts.

The encoding she had given herself earlier, the recollection data she took from the mind of the "software engineer" she had thralled, was not helping settle her enflamed nerves. "I" before "e" except after "c," she thought. What impertinent abstractions! Subjects and predicates. Nouns and verbs. Prepositions! Miyal closed her eyes, whispering unconsciously in English: "A car is a surface conveyance. A lavatory is a bathroom. Hospitality complex is a motel."

She opened her eyes and looked up, hating the blank-eyed stare of the slave she saw. "Reflector is mirror," she reminded herself. "Washbasin is sink. Fornication is fucking."

Pause. "A thrall is a slave." Even with the pharmaceutical (Drug, the English tutor inside her said), horribly, Miyal found she still needed a fornication . . fucking . . a good fuck.

Moaning, she turned and left the "bathroom." Her thralls, the Darren, the Max, and the Neil, all sat up and turned their total attention on her, thrallextract bubbling in their veins and clouding their eyes and minds. "Ediyetr momikki . . administer me," she said to the slaves. "Serve me!"

The androthralls - male slaves - stared at her uncomprehendingly. Their pupilless, green-within-green eyes tracked her, though, as they always did, and their silly, stupid grins expanded hugely.

"Serve me, You!" she repeated, and the first thrall she procured, the Max, leaped over. He was already naked, as was she, naturally. She could see he wanted her desperately, the combination of her new thrallbody's intoxicating scents and the thrallextract in him driving him to his knees before her. She joined him there, seeing his erect penis pulsing in tune with his heartbeat.

She bent low and took him in her mouth, unable, unwilling, to stop herself.

She ran her tongue over his shiny, engorged organ, licking and pulling, luxuriating in the simple, yet incredible taste. It had never been like this before. Simultaneously, though, she pressed the fingers of her right hand to the base of the thrall's stalk, squeezing violently, preventing him from ejaculating uncontrollably as he had done before. She wanted him to last longer this time.

The slave groaned in mixed agony and ecstasy. As he did so, Miyal lifted her head up long enough to order her other servants to attend to her as well, and to "be expeditious about it!"

They did so at once, and Miyal's gene-modified body sluttishly responded. The software engineer, the Neil Brafford, still wearing Miyal's Client-made, silvery-plastic recorder around his head, came up behind her and grabbed at her breasts. His fingers tightened around her emerald nipples and pinched painfully, sending rivulets of pleasure coursing through her. He lifted her up and pressed his bare body against her, his erection bumping joyfully against her trim ass. The Max groaned again as he was forced into a more uncomfortable position, Miyal refusing to let go of his handle as she was pulled to her feet. Once there, the Darren knelt down before her, between her and the Max, and gave sweet attention to Miyal's sex. As a group, the four of them twisted and squirmed for a few moments, then collapsed together onto the bed, its springs suddenly receiving a workout such as they had never received before.

Miyal felt one of her satiny legs lifted up. The Darren dove in and buried his face between her thighs, licking deeply inside her, taking as many earnest mouthfuls of her as he could and still continue breathing. His tongue circled around her clitoris. He bit gently, though not too gently, at the delicate folds of her labia, bringing to surface a mere portion of the volcanic thralldesire imprinted into her genetic code. The Neil, meanwhile, began forcing his way up through her back passage, oozing himself in with steady, penetrating strokes of pleasure. The fullness of his organ inside her made Miyal cry out in rapture, her inherent thrallness reacting joyfully to the way her tight muscles were stretched as she was so marvelously impaled. She would have screamed out louder had she not resumed her sucking on her Max's organ. She played with the slave, drawing back with her teeth and her specially textured tongue, a tongue designed specifically for this purpose. Just as she felt her own first terrific orgasm start, she released her stranglehold on his penis. Long ropy strands of succulent sperm erupted inside her mouth, and she swallowed it eagerly, devoured it with a mania which both awed and disgusted her.

She let herself drown in his ejaculation. She wasted none of it, licking it from the corners of her mouth where it had spurted out, then fervently diving down upon her toy's depleted organ to get what was left. Minutes later, Miyal discarded the thrall as his exhaustion became apparent. She pushed him away and gave herself over totally to the ministrations of the other two.

They lifted her to her feet. The Darren kissed her breasts and abdomen as the Neil did likewise in back. Their hands and lips traced the plumpness of her sex both fore and aft. They stood, and Miyal climaxed again as they mutually penetrated, thrusting in combined and delicious rhythms, reveling in the touch of their skin against her own. She sandwiched between them, eyes closed, gasping at the ceiling, lost in the twinned sensations. Her thrallbody sent wave after wave of crushing pleasure through her enhanced nervous system. She surrendered to it utterly, grateful for the anti-aphrodisiac she had taken earlier. Without it, she would have been totally consumed, totally at their mercy. As it was, Miyal was reduced to a spent and empty vessel.

She was going to absolutely kill the traitor who had dared do this awful thing to her!

The androthralls parted eventually, Miyal feebly kicking at them in order to make more room for herself on the bed. They crawled off and fell to the carpet with heavy thuds, their minds falling back into the narcotic thralldaze to which they were becoming accustomed. Miyal felt inklings of that half-conscious state in herself, to which it was more natural, but she fought it, knowing she had to use this valuable, post-orgasmic time to think and plan her next move.

It frightened her that it took three androthralls and an anti-aphrodisiac to control her thrallbody's monstrous appetites. She grew distracted too easily. The mere sight of males, and, to a lesser extent, females, made her dyed skin come obscenely alive, tingling madly for a touch, for the stroke of a hand . . . or a whip. The hormones her body produced kept her in a constant and heightened state of sexual combustibility. Her entire endorphin system had been reworked to make her more compliant, to feel a greater pleasure in submission to another's domination.

It was more than addictive. Thralls served because they had to . . . wanted to, desperately, with every yearning, needy fiber of their beings. Decades of heredity tailoring had perfected this current ideal. Miyal's own work had contributed to it. Oh, yes! She was going to kill the man who had done this to her. She would strangle him with his own intestines! The traitor, whoever he was, would suffer in ways that boggled the imagination, would form a new Kedian epic of pain. First, though, she was going to have to cure herself. That was her main problem.

It was not at all customary to reverse the kind of DNA resequencing she had obviously been put through. Thralls lost all rights of citizenship whenever they became thralls. That was the law, common to all the Corporates, and thus she had had to leave her home for this stinking place. Its medical sciences were primitive. There was no way she would be able to find a machinate here capable of undoing a complete enthralling. On the other hand, the nation-state she was in now, this "United States of . . California(?)," had achieved a level of electronic expertise almost on par with Molos. Certainly it was as good as what many of the Colonies had, barring Client-built devices, as always, which no one but the Clients themselves ever understood.

This level of expertise was vital. Breathing deeply, relishing her moment of post-fornication serenity, Miyal got up off the bed and went through her emergency kit again. It was lying on the floor near her. She had prepared it years before and packed it with all sorts of useful items, some Client-built, others Colonial, still others manufactured by her own Corporate, and hidden it in a safe place only she had known about, just in case. It paid to be prepared in her business.

There were many in Kedia, Miyal knew, who would have loved to make her their thrall. It had never occurred to her, though, that she would actually wake up a femthrall so unexpectedly.

Most of the contingencies which she had planned for now were simply unavailable. Staying in Kedia had been out of the question. Likewise, staying among the Colonies would have been impossible. They would have seen her as a biomodified slave instantly, which, technically, she grudged, she was. That left only the Property Worlds, and, of them, only this "Earth" had the necessary things she would need. Too, many of the items she had packed long ago were no longer quite so useful as they had been before. The clothes, for instance. Kedian thralls were designed to be allergic to cloth, even syncloth. The merest touch of normal fabric induced irritable sensations in them, a condition which, like their color-coding, instantly and irrevocably identified them as thralls. Owners who wanted their slaves decorated used specially prepared costumes . . . and Miyal had simply never bothered to pack any. Who would have thought?

Miyal glanced at the scientist she had just finished enjoying.

She was fortunate. The electronics she would need had been easy to procure. But the skills to actually use them? Those would have to come from the Neil, which more than any other reason had been her real motive in enthralling him. She crawled over to him - she enjoyed crawling around on her hands and knees now, and she did it almost without thinking about it - and began fine tuning the touch-sensitive controls in the silvery-plastic band circling the top of his head.

She had already used the recorder to make a holographic copy of his awful language. She made adjustments now to do the same for his computer skills. The copy would be raw, nowhere near the sophistication she would have preferred, available only had she better Client equipment, and time, more time, but what could she do? She needed to know what he knew . . . now.

Miyal's head still swam with foreign grammar and syntax. The precipitation in Spain plummets principally in the level loams, she thought in her own language, wondering briefly as she did so what a "Spain" was. A place, presumably. Then, in English, she whispered, "The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plains." That was better. Her skills were improving, She would need to know Californian language to speak to the Californians. She would need it in order to blend in.

She would need it, eventually, to get what else she needed and leave this rock, find a machinate to reverse her resequencing, return to Molos, and then crush whoever had done this to her!

As thoughts of vengeance filled her mind, Miyal began to get excited, and she found herself staring at her Neil less as the tool he was and more like a real male figure, a man who needed, deserved, to be on top of her, using her. A heavy sensation filled her breasts, and a growing longing returned between her thighs. Her tongue licked over lips which suddenly felt softer, plumper, and the Kedian constituent closed her eyes trying to will her desires away, futilely.

She knew they were unavoidable. She had designed many of the mood-altering chemicals currently in her system herself. That was the true horror and irony of it all. Cursing at the inevitability of her weakness, Miyal put her emergency tools down.

She picked up the Neil's tool and began to put it to a proper use instead.

The firmament ("sky," Miyal later thought, in dreadful Brafford-English) over the Kedia Thrall Enterprise complex on Molos was a much more pristine cobalt ("blue," the voice inside her head said irritatingly, and she seethed) than the comparatively dull air over California. Everything in California, and, for that matter, everything on this dull, blasted rock the Californian nation-state perched on, came up short when compared to their vibrant, energetic Molosian equivalents.

The sooner she was gone from here, the better . . . .

She remembered one particularly good day, one of the last before the tenant situation got out of hand and shocktroops had to be called in. She was supposed to be at the Kedia complex early that morning, but she had decided to take her time. She wanted to savor a rare experience, the culmination of a long-standing endeavor. Thus, she and her cohort of bodyguards flew in late in the day. The ruby primary was high in the firmament by then, and the cobalt was so clear it looked painted on. Miyal remembered sipping amber liqueur from a long-stemmed glass and gazing out the window of her flying craft, her escort captain Rix Nagh sitting across from her.

"We will be progressing within moments, mistress," he said. "You should ensure yourself."

Miyal waved him off, still glancing out her synsteel window. The Kedia Thrall complex was a huge thing, and every time Miyal saw it from the sky she enjoyed a mysterious little thrill down her back noting the long lines of tenants being herded in. The craft flew over the main mass of people. A handful stared up at the privileged occupants with expressions of fear or anger on their faces. The vast majority of the lower classes, though, showed only general despair, a certain foreknowledge of the fate awaiting them beyond the entrance. A uniform two-stories high, the complex itself was a single gray-and-white structure covering a hundred acres of loam. A single transparent synsteel dome hung over the circular center, and through it Miyal could see hordes of confiscated tenants wading through the decontamination pools, ridding themselves of the dirt and grime of their petty lives, preparing them for the transformations to come. Those are my thralls, Miyal thought. My thralls. I am a Constituent of the Corporate.

A curling smile formed on her face. Kana Deb was a Constituent of the Corporate, too. Miyal turned to Nagh and ordered him to refill her glass. "Have a surrey arranged for me when we progress," she added. "I want assurances the Processor Deb beholds me nearing."

Nagh guffawed. "I am undoubted, m'lady. All will behold your titleness in her renown."

He reached into the small bar and opened another bottle of absonon. The rare amber liqueur shimmered like liquid silk as he poured. He paused for a moment. "Will the mistress require her escort in the structure?" he asked, a trifle hopefully, Miyal observed. Would he never learn?

Miyal sniffed and shook her head. "No," she said coldly. "Go back to the lodgings, if you crave. Or detain. It matters little, not to me." She saw the hurt look in Nagh's face and was gladdened.

Nagh licked his lips. "Mistress . . Miyal . . . you discern I cherish you acutely. Understanding, a solitary kind account." He looked at her, his eyes watering slightly, his hand ever so slightly shaking. The captain had asked for her commitment to him twice already. Twice she had turned him down. Miyal had no desire to end up like one of those satisfied constituent cows of the Ranks, with all the luxury in the world but no power, no ability to make things happen.

Miyal thought of Kana Deb again. No, marriage of any kind was out of the question.

"The surrey, Procurer," she reminded her escort. "For when I near."

The captain nodded and went up front to the communications console.

The flying craft came to a roaring hover over the complex, slowly descending into the open hangar below. Workerthralls - the most common type of thrall in Kedia - swarmed around the sleek black vessel and began unhooking latches and drawing up refueling pumps. Their bright blue, purple, or stark white skins glistened sweatily beneath bioenforced musculature. Their blank, equally color-coded eyes revealed not the slightest hint of the pleasure they felt in fulfilling their primary functions in life. They, like all Kedian thralls, were well indoctrinated.

A green-skinned archivist-thrall was waiting for Miyal when she deplaned.

She strode up to the slave, knowing it couldn't speak until spoken to. She recognized Kana's brand scrolled in bioluminescent markings over the creature's naked chest. Thin and spindly, it had probably been a tenant professor or scholar before having its DNA resequenced. It was all but shaking with the urgency of its message. Miyal let it suffer a minute before giving sanction.

"Utterance."

The thrall shuddered with the force of its orgasm, released along with its message. "Mistress, the Processor Kana Deb conveys to you her displeasure at your tardiness. The council is already in session. The matters of the Central Corporate trade alliance and reallocation of arcology collaterals are awaiting your input. This thrall apologizes abjectly for its tone and accounts." It immediately went down to its knees, bent over low, and kissed Miyal's slippered feet.

"Recount to Processor Deb that Processor Miyal Cate has progressed and will be joining the council as presently as it's advantageous . . . to herself and not the Processor. Depart."

The thrall nodded, recording the message in its organic storehouse. Its penis immediately became erect again, indicating its dire need for release, and it sped off quickly in search of a satisfaction that would come now only at the behest of its owner giving it permission to speak.

The hangar adjoined a balcony overlooking the decontamination pools. As her surrey was drawn up, Miyal lingered by its side and examined this quarter's incoming stock. Hundreds of naked men, women, and children trudged hopelessly through the stinging clear fluid. On the banks to either side shocktroopers in black uniforms roamed back and forth waving controlsticks at those who hesitated too long below. Miyal saw one burly man try and grab the stick from a soldier. He missed, and the charged end of the weapon caught him in the chest. His hair - the tenant still had hair, he hadn't yet completely submerged - flew on end, and even from where she stood Miyal could hear the static crackle of electricity. The tenants to either side of the man also received a jolt, though to a lesser extent. The troublemaker fell over breathing heavily, and his fellows, still shuddering from shock, had to pick him up and carry him the rest of the way.

Miyal wondered what his DNA profile would best recommend for resequencing. Workerthrall? Androthrall pleasure unit? There were so many choices to pick from. Farmerthrall, perhaps?

The pools ran in four evenly spaced rows across the chamber. A barrier was placed along the middle of each to prevent tenants from getting past it without completely submerging their entire bodies. Most usually already had by the time they got there, but the barrier made sure. Past it, the newly denuded and sparkling clean masses plodded up waiting steps and into lines according to their age and gender. Machinates would examine each individually later, matching their DNA profiles to needs currently required of their Corporate. Some would be released to go back to their arcologies, if nothing presently fit them. Most, however, would end up in resequencing tubes before the end of the quarter. Either way, their service to the state would be appreciated.

A little bit later Miyal's surrey was ready, and she mounted the thralldrawn vehicle for a leisurely ride through the complex's breeding corridors. She knew Kana and the others would be watching through video surveillance. She made sure to give just the right look of contempt each time she passed a camera. Require her to show up early in the morning? They would learn.

The wide corridors were two-laned to allow for vehicles like the surrey. Miyal was seated comfortably in back as the two workerthralls in front pedaled, their arms and legs pumping furiously. They were both male; their lengthy penises fit into conveniently situated holes in the front column between pedal assemblies. A pressure collar inside the stirring tubes connected to a switch in the backseat. Whenever Miyal wanted to go right, she would squeeze right, and that thrall's organ would receive pressure. Whenever she wanted to go left, the left thrall would be fondled. Similar directions - combinations, rapid or slow squeezings, etc. - would get them to stop, slow down, whatever. It was an impractical system of transport, true, but it made a statement.

Miyal was a Constituent. She could do anything she wanted, have anything she wanted. She was surprised some people simply couldn't recognize that fact.

Then again, some people required harder instruction than others.

Attendants were waiting to take care of her surrey. As Miyal walked into the council chamber unannounced, her fellow members watched her with varying expressions of emotion. "It's durative," Kana Deb remarked as Miyal took her seat. "Did we kindle you too untimely?"

"Understanding," Miyal said, smiling coolly. "Rejoin to your ventures."

Processor Deb glared at the late arrival, then pounded her gavel on the table and resumed the council's business. Kana Deb had been a childhood friend of Miyal's. They had grown up together in the same enclave, shared many of the same thralls and other toys. Passing into adolescence, though, the two of them drifted apart. They found themselves rivals in the same activities, the same youthful contests. Their parents approved. Competition among members of the technocratic class was considered a good thing. It brought out those positive traits of greed, intelligence, and paranoia that were so crucial to a successful political career. As the cycles passed, though, more and more Miyal and Kana butted heads to an extent considered not quite so favorably. At first it was only about small things - the disposition of chemical brand-names, the subsidies of tenant gruel to underfunded arcologies - but eventually, as they both rose in power within the Eastern structure, to far more important issues. Kana had voted against Miyal's proposal to lend the Southern Peninsula Corporate credit on next cycle's varush-grain yields. The Southerners had had such a bad growing season that not even the most expensive and extensive heredity tailoring of their fields had helped much. They were on the brink of war with the End Island Corporates, for, in their desperation, the Southerners had had to cut back on their decades-long trade with those islands. The Islanders weren't at all sanguine about that. Miyal's suggestion had, she thought, been an elegant solution to the problem. Lending the Southern Peninsula credit would bolster their short-term assets while putting the foreign Corporate under their fiscal control . . . and it would improve relations with End Island at the same time. Miyal had lobbied for the move for weeks, put much of her own capital behind the legislation. She had made commitments to Southerners and End Islanders. She had invested her own money.

She had staked her reputation on the proposal, undoubted that it would pass council approval.

Kana voted against the measure. More than that, she sabotaged it, going behind Miyal's back to secretly meet with fellow council members and promising them her future support if they voted negatively too. The council eventually decided to support an End Island run on the Southern Peninsula's credit ventures. They seized outstanding debts. They maneuvered thrallprices and undercut Southern sales across the globe. Kana had deliberately set out to ruin Miyal's fortune and reduce her to poverty . . . to tenant status. It had been a long, slow recovery.

Miyal gazed sweetly at Processor Deb, biding her time. A few weeks ago she had met the most interesting man. He had had such interesting things to say. She had had to pay him hardly anything at all for his information. She had paid more, in fact, to keep what he knew a secret, until today, that was.

Miyal's critical eye caught the glimmers in Kana's golden blonde hair. It hung down straight and long like all proper constituent women wore it. Only femthralls had to wear their locks in braided tails . . . thralltails, they were called, one to each side and one in back.

Soon now, very soon.

The meeting dragged on and on. The Corporate technocrats - Processors and Procurers, Administrators and Overseers - talked interminably about useless Eastern and Central State politics, heard bland reports of thrallprices and manufacturing concerns, discussed petty details of arcology reconstruction, but throughout it all Miyal sat pleasantly amused, waiting, waiting.

Kana was beginning another tirade against replacing badly outdated machinate parts in Complex 14 when the doors to the council chamber suddenly burst open and a pair of black-uniformed shocktroopers stormed in. "What is the import of this?" the council leader demanded.

The troopers marched up to the front of the table. There were looks of shock on everyone's face, from Wahinan Met to Glimin Notthi . . . everyone's face except Miyal's, that was. She hoped the video cameras were recording this. She would want a copy for her amusement later.

"Processor Kana Deb," the Procurer Captain said formally. "We have a sanction for your detention on grounds of moral depravity." He handed the uniformed blonde a synsheet, and she took it with a look of outrage. "You are indicted of performing in the character of a femthrall."

Ah! Miyal brightened. The look of shock on her face! Magnificent!

"This . . this is impossible," Kana stuttered. "Where is your evidence? Who are my accusers?"

The captain beckoned to his subordinate and was handed a datatransfer chip. The shocktrooper put the small piece of crystal-plas in the desktop viewer. Immediately an image appeared on the main viewscreen. Everyone in the room, with the exception of the shocktroopers themselves, and, of course, Miyal, gasped. The three of them had seen it for themselves earlier, naturally.

"No . . ," Kana whispered. "No . . this is . . . this is unrealizable."

The image had been recorded from a hidden camera in Kana's lodgings. The man who had come to Miyal, one of Kana's illicit tenant lovers, had secured it at her direction. The screen now showed one of his and Kana's late-night sessions together.

"Ohh!" the painted figure on the wall screamed passionately, gloriously. "Ahhhh! Yes! Yes! Yes, Master! Yes!"

An ecstasy-whip came crashing down upon her naked backside. Then again. And again.

"No," the Processor repeated quietly. Then, in a sudden dash of emotion, she tried to seize the transfer chip from the machine. The junior shocktrooper grabbed her, and she began to struggle.

"No . . this is unjust! You have no right to view this! This is my . . my . . !"

"Your depravity, Processor Deb?" the black-garbed captain asked. He shook his head. "Thralls have no rights, m'lady. You fathom that." Kana shook and tried to free herself, uselessly.

Her image on the screen was naked, her large and trim body on open display. By itself this was not so bad, since, of course, it was, as she had just mentioned, recorded in the privacy of her own residence. One may do as one wishes in one's own lodgings, within certain parameters set by the Corporate. What was bad was the narcotic bodypaint covering Kana from head to toe . . . a bodypaint tinged as purplish-cobalt as any common pleasure femthrall, and likewise arranged in lined patterns - stripes - like the thrallmarks of any submissive bioslut. Kana screamed and moaned in artificial ecstasy, the electronic lash held by her lover sending bolts of energy directly into the pleasure center of her brain with each stroke. It was a common enough vice. Since their introduction into Corporate society over a hundred years ago, biologically resequenced pleasure thralls, many women had expressed in secret a curiosity about what their lives were like. Many had wanted to know - and feel - at least a portion of the same lust and reaction to physical pleasure. This curiosity had, in turn, led to the marketing of certain drugs designed to mimic the hormonal differences in fem- and androthralls. Under their influence, and under the influence of devices like the ecstasy whip, a user's orgasms were amplified tensfold, a hundredsfold, as were, as a consequence, too, one's sexual appetites. Furthermore, the more one used these devices and drugs, the better they worked. Many, if not most, of the women who experimented with them soon became thoroughly addicted . . . and this was not looked down upon as a disadvantage by their manufacturers. They were, after all, intended solely for distribution to tenants, to occupy their limited minds and slowly prepare them for the things to come.

"Harder!" the cobalt-striped Kana on the main viewer screamed. "Harder, Master! Harder!"

For a member of the upper classes to use them, though . . . .

The captain turned off the viewer. "There are other recordings. Multiple dozens of recordings." He straightened his uniform tunic and looked at Kana. "Processor Kana Deb, you have been indicted of performing in the character of a femthrall," he repeated. "Administrator Balk has already observed the evidence and proclaimed it. The Corporate has tendered a finding."

He took out a pair of stunlocks. Expertly, the Procurer slapped them around the Processor's wrists. Immediately the fight went out of her, the electronic impulses the locks generated rendering her tranquil. The council members began to mutter in disgust and disapproval.

Miyal had already arranged matters. She had the inside bid on any sale regarding the new thrall.

"Processor Deb," the captain said. "If you fix upon to wear the stripes and hues of a thrall, so be it. A thrall you shall be. It is the Administrator's resolve that you now be made a femthrall."

"No, no," the blonde woman whispered quietly. Her whole frame shook with emotion.

They took Kana away, and . . . .

A loud banging at the motel door interrupted Miyal's recollections, and she looked up from the Colonial image producer she had open in front of her in utter surprise, a surprise which, had she been able to see it, would well have mirrored that of her former friend and colleague.

Miyal heard a key turning in the lock a second later, and she blanched a deeper shade of green.

"Get into the bathroom," she told her thralls, whispering furiously. "Hide. None of you make a sound."

The Darren, the Max, and the Neil picked themselves up out of their thralldaze - Miyal realized coldly she had all but fallen into one herself while she worked - and she uttered a short prayer that she had managed to properly adjust the complicated mechanism before succumbing. She clicked the pieces shut, now full of Californian computer chips, and turned it on. Her head was still pounding wildly with Brafford-adjectives, Brafford-nouns, and Brafford-knowledge.

Just in case, Miyal reached down and picked up an injector she knew was full of thrallextract.

The door opened, and a young woman in an off-pink uniform started to enter. She saw Miyal, and her eyes widened. "Oh, pardon, senora. I thought the room was empty." She started to go back out again, and Miyal stood quickly. "I'll come back later, if's that be okay."

The thrall - she was obviously a thrall - was dragging behind her a cart full of linens. She must be the thrall who cleans the rooms here, Miyal realized. She had brown skin - what an amazing variety of colors there were on this planet! - and very dark hair and eyes. She was attractive.

The slit between Miyal's legs gave a great pulse of excitement. She remembered what she did to Kana.

"No, that is . . okay," Miyal said, both of her hands now held behind her. "You can clean up now." The thrall ("maid," the Brafford-voice inside her corrected) looked at her uncertainly, and, perhaps, with a little fear. "Please. I will sit right here. You can clean up now."

"I'm sorry if I interrupt," the thrall/maid said. "I saw the shades were down. I thought the room was checked out." She seemed to debate with herself a moment, looked outside, then came to a decision. The servant pulled her cart in and closed the door. "You know, checkout is at eleven."

Miyal had no idea what she was talking about. "Checkout is at eleven," she repeated back, then smiled. "Yes, I understand. Checkout is at eleven." The maid looked at her again strangely.

"You sick, senora? You don't look so good." She moved to open the shades.

"No," Miyal said sharply, and the woman turned around quickly. "Please . . . do not open . . the windows. Yes. I am sick." She was sick, actually. Sick with excitement.

The imager was working! The thrall, no . . the maid wasn't seeing her, she was seeing the image Miyal had programmed into it! Or maybe green women weren't as unfamiliar as she thought on this world?

She felt a crackling of vibration next to her skin, a warmth. No, the image producer was doing its task. The maid was seeing a clothed woman in the room with her, a female of the dominant ethnic Californian-clan. Her Brafford memory had worked! She had fixed it!

"You need a doctor, lady?" the servant said, walking toward Miyal nervously. "I should call a doctor?"

The imager was Miyal's freedom. It was a marvelous technology . . . not Client-built, of course, she would never have been able to even get it open had it been, but certainly alien, not human, traded for some alien purpose on some Colony World or other. Who needed clothes, even syncloth, now? She had language, computer skills, and appearance now. She could blend in.

Miyal wanted to celebrate. She sat down on the unmade bed. She made a pouty expression.

"I need a doctor, yes," Miyal said. "I am sick. I feel sick. Can you help me . . please?"

Please. A Brafford-word that meant nothing to her.

The maid stepped a little closer. She was a short girl, slender, with fine cheekbones. Her eyes were a shiny brown such as Miyal had never seen before. Her black hair was tied up in a bun. It wasn't thralltails, but it was exotically attractive nonetheless. When the servant got within arm's reach, Miyal whipped the hand holding the injector around and expertly got the girl in the neck.

The maid gasped and tried to scream. Miyal stood. She let go of the imager behind her, and the warm crackling vibration about her skin immediately ceased. The cleaning woman, who had just finished with the east wing's first three rooms and had wanted to do the remaining four after lunch, gave out another aborted yelp. The bosomy white woman with the funny voice and the funny hairdo melted away in front of her. When she first came into the room, the lady had looked like one of those stupid women on the Sunday morning religious shows, the ones where the guests wore the bright polyester colors - green, this one wore, a deep, deep shade of polyester green - and beehive hairdos from the 1950s. She was wearing too much makeup, too. Her face looked like she had caked it on. Then, horribly, this 1950s woman turned really green, all-over green! and the short, attractive maid tried to scream a third time, only before she could a rising tide of heat swept through her, the room temperature shot up like an inferno! and suddenly the green woman was doing things to her, to her body! that the maid's mind collapsed upon itself.

She felt her uniform torn away. She had paid for it, she was responsible for it, but suddenly she didn't care, all she wanted was to touch, to be touched, to fuck, Oh dear Jesus! I need to fuck!

"Hurry up! I need it. I need it!" The maid felt her pert little breasts seized. The green woman squeezed them, pinched her nipples, and laughed, bending toward her. Lips pressed against her mouth. The woman's tongue flew down her throat, tickling her own tongue wonderfully.

It was so good! So good! She reached down, tore, ripped her skirt open. Her panties flew.

The green woman's fingers found the maid's thickly furred sex and stroked it, began pulling on her delicate hairs, twisting them, then reached in and parted the servant's soft petals, the slave, the thrall, deeply, obscenely. "Ohh, yes, YES! Oh, Madre de Dios! YESSS!"

A green, velvet-smooth hand traveled over and then into the maid's ass. She pressed her mouth against the strange woman's enormous breasts. Her tongue savagely stroked the woman's nipples. Electric sensations, unbelievable sensations, shot through her. An expert finger passed through her drenched cunt, hooked inside her, and then pulled, thrust! pulled! thrust!

Oh, she had never been touched like this before! Never, never, ever . . . !

The maid's orgasm was explosive, fiery, all-consuming. It spread from her crotch outward in an ever-expanding wave of pleasure. It made her skin feel incredibly ripe, like ripe fruit, overly ripe fruit on the edge of bursting, with moisture, fluid, and she did burst! did die a little in marvelous ecstasy, moaning incoherently. "Oh, yesss," she squealed. "Yessssss." Everything was good.

Everything was fine.

Everything . . everything . . . . "Ediyetr momikki," she heard. It was all so good.

"Ediyetr . . . Serve me."

Miyal took the new femthrall by the head and turned her face toward her open crotch. She guided the thrall, whispered instructions to her in a broken mix of Molosian and English, and let her find the good spots. Her hands traced Miyal's swollen areolas. Her tongue caressed Miyal's swollen clitoris, wagging in various directions. Her fingers found and then pushed downward into her vagina, stroking roughly the way Miyal favored thrallsex with females.

The maid's tongue, and Miyal imagined it was Kana's tongue playing at her, danced across her delicate, enflamed flesh. Kana had made such an excellent femthrall after resequencing. Her skin had been remade so soft - like Miyal's own skin now - and the taste beneath her own lips . . . exquisite. She knew the electric thrill the girl serving her now must be having. Aside from the heightened sexual effect of thrallextract in her veins, she was fucking DNA resequenced flesh, flesh that had been redesigned expressly for the giving and taking of immense pleasure.

Femthrall sweat - her sweat now - was perfume. Her skin was practically a narcotic. The firmness of her flesh in some places, its softness elsewhere, was like nothing nature could ever produce on its own. Her appetites were beyond the norm . . . radically beyond the norm.

Ohh, she has a wonderful bite! Imagine if she were only resequenced too!

The thought of two femthralls at play on the bed, herself and the transformed maid, invoked yet another screaming orgasm in Miyal, and she resolved to try out the experiment before having the transformation reversed in herself. She thought about ordering her androthralls in and having them all fuck her, and she was just about to give this order when the room filled with light.

A bright, incandescent light, with no visible source. Miyal's eyes widened in shock and pain.

No! It's impossible. How could they find . . . ? But, then again, that was what they did.

They were Procurers.

Projection effect illuminated the small motel room. Amid the loud popping noise of displaced air, five tall figures coalesced out of the brightness. Miyal knew she had no time to spare.

"Thralls! Ediyetr! Help! Save me!"

The androthralls - who had been playing with themselves and moaning and all but ready to crash through the door anyway at the sound of sexplay in the next room - flew into the room just as Procurer Rix Nagh and his retrieval squad finished materializing. "We're under skirmish!" the captain said, in Molosian, and fired his tranquilizer gun reflexively. He was the only one who got off a shot.

Microscopic shards of frozen chemical anesthetic sprayed into Darren, who had been the first to burst in. The green-eyed security guard went numb instantly, but his momentum kept him going, and he hit Procurer Nagh like a football player hitting a tackling dummy. Both went down in a heap. The Neil and the Max jumped over them without even stopping.

"Foul-stench!" one of the other agents said and braced for impact. His partner closed his eyes.

Miyal shoved the femthrall off of her - the maid had probed so deliciously deep she came out of Miyal with a loud popping noise of her own - flipped her around, and kicked her in the direction of the sudden melee. Miyal saw three Procurers and two trackerthralls, specially designed slaves with enhanced olfactory and tactile senses. Their yellow-striped skin glowed fluorescently.

The Neil hit the first Procurer in the throat, then began clawing at him like a wild animal. His Green Mistress was in danger! Chemically enhanced passion burned within him. He bit and he scratched and he chewed. The Procurer, for his part, yelled out, then brought a massive fist down on top of the slave's head. Neil heard a crunching noise inside his ears, and then he knew no more. The Procurer looked up, and at that moment the female slave pounced on him, her nails shredding his face. "Foul-stench!" he shouted again, tripped, and fell over his captain.

The femthrall fell over with him, still clawing at his face.

Miyal didn't look back. Fighting a deep-seated biological urge to just kneel down and accept her rightful punishment, she jumped over the bed and toward her survival kit. She specifically made sure to grab the image producer on her way. The trackerthralls, both of whom had been attuned to Miyal's scent, leapt after her. Their reflexes and speed were enhanced, but so too, in a way, were Miyal's. She grabbed her own Client-built projector just as they grabbed her.

Twin bolts of passion passed through her femthrall flesh.

The touch of forceful males on her helpless body! How incredibly delicious! It felt much better than casually using androthralls to satisfy her lust. She was being put in her rightful place!

"Nooo!" Miyal screamed and swung the silvery-plastic device around like a mace. It crashed against the skull of one of the trackerthralls, but all the blow did was make him angry. The skirmish slave delivered a roundhouse slap to the green woman right across her breasts. It was exquisitely painful, yet, like grabbing her, it felt so damn good too! Miyal moaned and fought, absolutely refusing to let go of either the projector or her imager. The trackerthralls jumped on top of her, and the three of them together fell off the bed and onto the survival kit lying next to it. She screamed again, though whether in passion, fear, or anger she couldn't tell.

Across the room, the third Procurer and Max fought viciously. Dagh tried to get up, but he was pinned down by the combined weight of Darren, his lieutenant, and the fighting maid.

"Get sheer me, you imbeciles! The thrall's getting beyond!"

"Grecia, are you all right in there?" someone called from outside the room. The front door opened, and the second maid standing there let out a bloodcurdling scream. "Murder! Murder!"

The third Procurer finally managed to shove the Max off him and grab his gun. Snarling, the seven-foot, mustached figure first fired a stream of anesthetics point-blank into his attacker, then swung toward the open door. Another cloud of invisible darts flew. The maid outside fell back into the courtyard as if poleaxed. The Molosian turned around trying to gauge the distance across the room - find his real target - and so missed the bystanders outside alerted by the screams and the noise. Barely thirty seconds had passed since they had first materialized.

"Help me!" Miyal screamed, in English. She had seen the bystanders.

"Get sheer me!" Nagh yelled again. Straining, he pushed the unconscious Darren off and tossed him to the side. His lieutenant, still all but leaning on top of him, gave his attacking maid a strong slap. She too suddenly stopped fighting. "My pardons, Procurer," the subordinate said.

"Never reason! Secure the thrall!"

A tourist with a camera around his neck poked his head around the open doorway. He goggled at the sight displayed before him and let out his own yell. Nagh and his subordinates spun in that direction, their combat instincts taking over, and fired simultaneously with their tranquilizers.

Another body slumped to the ground.

Miyal's hand squeezed the image producer. Beneath the trackerthralls, the green woman they were manhandling suddenly blurred and distorted like a desert mirage. Had they but known it, the beautiful, exquisitely desirable thrallflesh they were pinning down transformed into a picture resembling not just a little the likeness of Tammy Faye Baker. The thralls jumped off Miyal as if they had each poked their feet into boiling hot water. Miyal lifted her projector and fired.

The trackerthralls were wrapped in tachyon-accelerated photons and vanished.

"Secure the thrall!" Nagh cried and leaped in Miyal's direction. He fired his tranquilizer gun in a steady stream. The microscopic bullets sailed over the bed and into the far wall, though, completely missing Miyal below.

Miyal dropped the imager onto her kit, which she herself was on top of. She reached up and pressed another touch sensitive control on the projector, then aimed and fired it at herself. The room exploded into light. Dagh leapt over the bed, fell face forward on top of it, and fired his gun over the side directly into the rising field of color. His eyes burned with the effect, as if he were staring into a lit magnesium flare within hand's reach. In a manner of speaking, he was.

There was a loud popping noise. Air displaced, then fell back into a sudden vacuum.

"Fornication!" Nagh cried, his teeth grinding, hand gripping his weapon hard enough to crack it.

All he could see were red spots. "Trace her!" he yelled over his shoulder. "Gain the analyzer! Trace her projection!" He pressed his fists against his eyesockets. His eyes felt as if they had been gouged out. He would be skinned alive if he lost her again. "Confirmation? Account!"

"The constituency gathers, Procurer," his lieutenant said, wiping blood from his face. He pointed toward the open door. People were running around, many pointing in their direction.

"Dual projection effects, Procurer," the other said close after. He held up a Client scanning device. Nagh could just barely see it through his tear-soaked vision. "The chronal coordinates are disordered, determinedly. Two open frequencies were laid bare." He shrugged helplessly.

They had a choice. One set of coordinates would lead to the thrall, the other to their own trackers.

"Fornication!" Nagh rose to his full seven-and-a-foot height. "Determine one! Project us!"

"At once." The subordinate quickly compared the results from his analyzer with the readout on his projector. "Set, Procurer." Seeing the expression on his superior's face, the subordinate didn't waste any more time. He adjusted the focus to include just the three of them and fired.

Again, the motel room exploded into light and popping sounds. Nothing moved for quite a bit after that.

After fifteen minutes, the motel super very carefully stuck his head in. Eventually the police were called.

The authorities didn't know quite what to make of it, and this was before the thralls woke up.