Miyal materialized in the middle of a grassy field nowhere near as green as she was.

Moving hastily, though not recklessly, knowing she either had some time or none whatsoever, the resequenced Molosian picked herself up and began going through her kit. She found a vial of anti-aphrodisiac and injected herself, relishing the cold feeling it sent through her. Otherwise, she would be spending all her time thinking about how delicious those male hands had felt on her, how helpless they had made her feel, how . . how thrall-like, and submissive, and . . . .

"No, not now," she whispered, found another similar vial, and gave herself a double shot. She would be running out soon. What would she do then? Shaking her head, determined to think about it later, Miyal dug through the kit again and found a cord with which she could wrap the imager around her neck. It felt rather loose, she thought. It should be tighter, as tight, say, as a collar would be. Collars were good for thralls like . . . . Miyal pounded the dirt in disgust.

She had to get a hold of herself before they did.

She had studiously avoided using her projector. She knew how easily chronal frequencies could be traced by those who had the equipment. She had sent the trackerthralls as far as she possibly could with the Client device. In theory, she could have sent them to this planet's moon - the silvery device had the capability - but built-in safety features prevented actions like that. Even teleporting the thralls straight up wouldn't have worked. Projectors only sent living material to locations where it could survive on its own, where the conditions wouldn't automatically kill it.

Too bad.

Miyal was gambling her pursuers would follow the longest trail, not the shorter one she had just taken. She was barely five . . miles? jarrns? Her Brafford-English couldn't make the translation yet. Anyway, she wasn't all that far from her previous location. She examined her projector's touch-sensitive display and quickly input alternate programming. Then she tossed it away into the long grass. She was loathe to get rid of it - how would she ever be able to leave this rock now? - but if she didn't, Nagh and his men would be appearing by her side at any moment.

The projector gleamed for a minute under the Californian sun, warm even in winter. Then, in a burst of color and noise, the Client-built device vanished, projecting itself randomly in the first of what was going to be an entire series of small and long teleports crisscrossing this ugly little planet. The interference those multiple jaunts would produce would cover her first stop, or, at least, Miyal hoped they would. Breathing heavily, passionately, she wondered what to do next.

No pursuers materialized next to her. That was a good thing. Probably. Rix Nagh had looked so handsome in his uniform, though, and she was so needy, so thrall-like, maybe it would be better if she just . . . . No, she steeled herself. I can't think like that. I can't! I won't!

After struggling a moment, the green thrall gathered her things in her bag and walked away.

Rose's maid carried a gleaming silver tray in her hands as she stepped into the study. Sitting on top of it was a single martini glass. The drink inside had been prepared with both love and adeptness. The young woman moved quietly so as not to disturb her mistress. Putting the tray on the end table next to Rose, the maid softly went down to her knees, carefully picked up the tray again, and wordlessly offered it to the equally young woman sitting there and reading.

Rose took the glass after a minute. "Thank you, Shauna," she said, eyes not leaving the papers in front of her. She sipped delicately. The vermouth was exactly the way she liked it.

"You're welcome, Rose," the maid said.

Fluidly, she got back on her feet again and carried the tray to a nearby stand. Noticing a speck of dust on that wooden heirloom, Shauna brushed at it lightly with the edge of her skirt. It was part of her uniform, and she was hardly ever out of it. The one-piece garment fit like a babydoll over her modest bosom and flared out to just above her knees. She was bare underneath. As always in the presence of Rose, the permanently denuded space between her legs was hot and moist.

Rose hardly noticed the servant resume her usual waiting stance at the study entrance.

The meeting that afternoon had gone pretty much as Rose had anticipated. The Senior Partner had couched her new position as a promotion for hard work, but no one sitting at the table, Rose thought, had really believed it. Gordon's countenance had been too smug and condescending. The congratulations she received from the other Partners had been too carefully worded for comfort. That she was being set up was a given to everyone there. The problem was determining who was actually involved in the scheme and who was merely hoping it would succeed. Rose put aside the status reports she had been reading, sat back, and thought.

Gordon was involved, obviously. He had the subtlety of a little boy who had his hands wrapped around a jelly jar and his face smeared with jam, yet was still trying to convince you that he hadn't actually eaten any. His bluntness of character was a result of his programming, she knew. All of Gordon's higher education, so far as Rose had been able to determine, legal or otherwise, had come from encoding modules. These were Client-built devices the Firm used that enabled one to download directly any information into the brain. They were called slaving modules, too, often, since they were used to insert slave programming into the minds of captured subjects.

Rose briefly glanced at Shauna from the corner of her eye. But the modules had other uses too.

Gordon really wasn't an attorney. He had never gone to law school. He had never passed a bar examination anywhere. He hadn't even graduated high school. He possessed, though, like Rose herself did, a more thorough knowledge of the law than almost any other lawyer in the United States. The equivalent of three years of study, plus pre- and post-doctoral work, had been downloaded into both of their nervous systems. It sat there now in Rose's mind: hundreds of hours worth of information, plus extrapolations of that information, as if she had not only studied it but thought about it too, at length, and come to her own conclusions concerning it.

For all that, though, it was also an utterly neutral mass of knowledge. It was just data. Detailed, yes; exhaustive, yes; but completely lacking in personality. There had been no real learning involved in her instant education. She still had no sense of personal growth concerning it. The problem with the encoders was that for the most part they provided one only theory. If you wanted experience too - an actual sense of "living" with the knowledge you just gained - you had to deal with someone else's memories along with it, and having someone else's recollections of him or herself in your head competing with your own memories could be a little . . . strange.

Most encoded knowledge was therefore filtered. If you relied on that kind of programmed education for everything you knew - like Gordon had - you tended to have a somewhat skewed sense of proportions. You tended to be a very wise idiot, really. Rose didn't like using encoders on herself. She hadn't allowed herself to be programmed with anything this past year, for reasons other than the obvious one of not trusting what somebody else might put in it.

There had only been her initial encoding and an uncomfortable but necessary vocabulary lesson in Language. I'm still me, she thought. It's still mostly me in here . . . Rose, only Rose, inside.

Gordon could not say the same. She knew his background. He had been, and still was, a fool.

But who was using him? Rose had a long list of suspects, and it started right at the very top with the Firm's Senior Partner. She thought for a long time about possible motives for his ill will.

As she sat there, Rose's other servant, Charlotte, quietly entered the room and took her place next to Shauna. They were dressed the same now. Her usual schedule in the mornings was to tidy up the large apartment while Shauna helped Rose dress and fix her makeup, then change into a simple business outfit and drive her mistress to work. After a few hours at the office, they would come home, and Charlotte would shed her secretarial disguise and return to normal.

She and Shauna both hated to wear clothes, but so long as they were sexy and made them look desirable to Rose, that was the important thing. Whatever Rose wanted, she must have!

Charlotte felt herself to be lucky. She got to spend the whole day with her Owner! Poor Shauna had only a few hours at the beginning and end of each day. She hardly ever left the apartment.

The telephone rang. Glancing quickly at one another, the two servants determined in slave fashion - not quite like making a decision but close enough to suit most purposes - that Shauna should enjoy the privilege of further serving Rose. It was, after all, only fair. The almost twenty-year old stepped over to the side table and picked up the receiver.

"Yes, may I help you, please?" she chimed in a soft voice. "Whom may I say is calling? Yes, she's here," looking at Rose for approval. Their Mistress got up and walked to the phone.

"It's Phillip Smith, Rose."

The Chief Slaver of the Firm's House in Amsterdam. "Thank you." Rose took the phone.

"Rose?" she heard the man on the line say. "I heard about your talk with Gordon today. I thought you should know, since you asked. I'll be taking the subjects sometime over the next two or three days. Their last concert is tonight. You should go see it, if you're interested."

Rose smiled. "Have I ever given you the impression that I like Britney Spears clones?" she asked. "I assume you obtained the necessary written permission for the two acquisitions."

"Oh, yeah, that's not a problem," the Chief said, laughing. "I have three acquisition permits, if you want to know the truth. You know . . . just in case I should see someone . . . promising."

Rose slowly lifted an eyebrow. Three you say? she thought. Two, yes, that's been in the works for a little while now, but three? "Do you have anyone particular in mind for that third permit?"

Charlotte and Shauna both frowned. Rose's voice had sounded odd asking that question.

"I have a few possibilities developing, yes. You know, in case things don't work out in other areas. Job problems, say." Rose could almost literally see the man's mirthful expression. "It's a volatile market. One day you're at the top of it all. The next you're licking someone's feet."

"Yes, I know what you mean," Rose said. Her hand tightened around the receiver. "You need to pick your friends carefully. Know with whom your best interests would be served." She saw the expression on Charlotte and Shauna's faces. Their conditioning had made them highly sensitive to her moods. "Confusing someone on the way up with someone on their way down can be a costly error."

"Indeed it can," the Chief replied. "I'll let you know how the acquisitions go. Personally."

He hung up. Rose replaced the receiver but continued standing by the table for a minute. Was he threatening me? Warning me? Who is he really working for? It can't just be Gordon.

Charlotte licked her lips nervously, sensing Rose's agitation.

"Is the mistress all right?" she asked, falling back into the third-person manner of address that was the norm for her. "How may Charlotte serve her mistress?" She whimpered needfully.

"Call me Rose," Rose said quietly, absently. She looked up. "Let's go to the bedroom."

Never had five words so immediately lifted two people's spirits.

Eric was about midway on his drive home when he saw the woman standing by the side of the road. She was not the typical hitchhiker. For one thing, she was a woman who looked like she was in her late fifties or early sixties, around his own age or perhaps even a little bit older. Even from a distance Eric could see she was wearing way too much make-up, too, that she was trying just a little too hard to cover up some imperfection. Then there was the hairdo and the dress she wore. The woman looked as if she had stepped out of a timewarp. The floral print of her dress was a brilliant neon green. It looked like something the Beaver's mom would be wearing. Her hair was funny, too. It reminded Eric of a movie he had seen on cable not so long ago, the one about the funny invasion from Mars. One of the Martians in disguise had had that same upswept style, as if she were concealing a bowling ball underneath. She was at least thirty or forty years behind the times. She looked as out of place on the side of a highway in central California as a Californian surfer would holding a surfboard and thumbing a ride through the Bible Belt.

She was also carrying the largest brown purse Eric had ever seen.

He pulled the car over and slowed. The lady had probably had car trouble and was trying to get to a phone to call her husband. The Beaver's Dad, Eric thought and repressed a grin.

The woman stood there for a moment as if she didn't understand what to do next. Eric often picked up hitchhikers, and he had seen this reaction before occasionally. The hitchhikers couldn't believe for a second that someone had actually stopped for them. It was a bad habit, Eric knew, and his sons were always telling him to stop, he could get hurt, but once upon a time he had thumbed his way from Texas to California during the sixties when he was short of cash. He still held a certain sympathy for his fellow travelers. Over the years he must have picked up a hundred or more thumbers. He had never had trouble with any of them. The woman shifted her huge purse and hustled over to Eric's passenger-side window, which he rolled down.

"Hi there!" Eric said. "Need a ride?" The weirdly dressed woman leaned down to see him.

She said nothing for a long moment, then, haltingly, "Yes. I need a ride. Can you provide me a ride?"

"Sure! Hope on in." Eric put the car in park. "Do you need a hand with that?" he asked, motioning toward the woman's purse. He flipped on the air conditioner at the same time without really even noticing, even though it was the middle of January. He suddenly felt very warm.

The woman shook her head and opened the car door. "No. I am fine. Will you drive now?"

"Yeah," Eric said, then sighed. He ran a hand over his face, which all at once had broken out in a sweat. He shifted uncomfortably. He became aware that he was sporting a semi-hard for some reason. God only knew the woman getting in his car was unattractive . . . but all of a sudden . . . strangely, Eric had a vision of the two of them going back to his place and . . and . . . .

"Whoa, there," he muttered and wiped his face again. He hadn't felt like this in years, certainly not since his wife had passed away. He was only now starting to date again.

The woman closed the door behind her. The inside of the car had become stuffy.

Eric noticed his hands were shaking.

He turned to looked at his passenger. At close sight, he reconsidered, she didn't look all that bad. There was something about her green dress . . . about the green of her appearance in general.

It was a beautiful green. An incredibly lovely, desirable green.

He shook his head. "I'm sorry. I don't know what's come over me."

Eric's pants grew even more uncomfortable. His semi-hard had suddenly become very hard. His passenger couldn't help but notice. He felt mortally embarrassed.

"God . . Jesus, lady . . I'm sorry . . I . . I . . ." Eric groaned in equal parts dismay and longing.

The woman smiled at him. "I understand. Understanding, will you drive now?"

"Uh . . uh, yeah, sure." Eric jerkily put the car in drive. "Where . . where are you goin'?"

The woman placed a hand on Eric's shoulder. It seemed to burn right through his shirt.

"Your lodgings will do for now, I perceive." And she smiled at him.

The hunting party had taken rooms on the top floor of the Carstairs Regency, but none of them liked it very much. For one thing, they were very high up in the atmosphere. None of them had ever been in a building so tall before. None of them had ever been so high up outside of a flying craft before. It felt like they were in a flying craft. Secondly, the urban sprawl of Chicago itself was upsetting. Cities on Molos were rare since the Great Liberation - only tenants lived in them, in any case - and they were much more compact. The skyline of Chicago, on the other hand, stretched out as far as any of them could see. It was ugly. It was noisy even through the glass.

Rix Nagh would have much preferred a suite near the bottom floor. He would have preferred not having to take rooms at all, but he wasn't the one making the decisions anymore.

The fact of the matter was, Nagh felt lucky to still be alive. He kept his eyes neutrally on the floor as his Mistress looked out upon that ugly view of the city. Her pet lounged at her feet next to the window. The leash she held jingled faintly as the hulking beast shifted position slightly.

Without turning around, she said, "Rationalize to my person anew why I shouldn't have you dissected and your components fed to Ealic, here." The thin silvery chain rattled again.

Behind Nagh, the two other Procurers in the room gulped nervously. Their leader's "pet" was a thickly muscled, gray-skinned, and utterly sexually dependent killing machine, a combat-thrall specially designed for the tenant wars. Its retractable claws and teeth could tear through meat and bone as though they were candy. Its wired-in, instinctual needs to serve and protect - and, in this case, kill for - its owner were as strong as any Kedian thrall's was. Stronger perhaps.

Ealic growled. It could smell their fear. Its senses were as sharp as any trackerthrall's.

"The thrall is . . ." Nagh began, then hesitated, trying to think of a way to be diplomatic. If he said the wrong thing, he would be killed instantly, and then he would never have his revenge.

He was already a walking dead man, he knew. He had known from the beginning that this expedition was to be his last, that he would never be leaving this accursed world. "The thrall is astute," he began again. "Insidious. She sent the trackerthralls a distance. By the time we reclaimed them, she had discerned a method to obscure her chronal frequency signature."

Nagh's mistress turned around to face him. "The thrall is a thrall. It is abject and pliant. For you to be ineffective in procuring her is a further insult to me." She raised her chin. "I have not misremembered your treachery. You still hold cherished feelings for this abomination."

The Procurer shook his head. "Negative. I plead you, I . . ."

"Enough!" she shouted. Ealic pounced forward, eyeing Nagh like a choice cut of slarn-steak.

"M'lady," Nagh's first lieutenant said, bravely coming to stand next to his captain. "Procurer Nagh is essential for this mission. It was only fortune that our trackers snared the thrall's odor at the circuitry complex. Nagh led them. Without his aid, we would not have found her so soon."

"Or forfeited her again," their leader said. Still, she gave a faint tug on Ealic's chain, and it halted. "Be still," she told the resequenced man. Nagh had heard a rumor that it had been a former rebel leader procured in an arcology skirmish. If so, he doubted many of its fellow tenants would recognize it now. Sweat stung Nagh's eyes, and it was by will alone that he managed to keep himself on his feet. Ealic's claws popped in and out of its hands reflexively.

"You have yet to provide me a motive to grant any of you continued respiration."

This is the moment, Nagh thought. He had known it was coming. His passing had been preordained the moment his green-skinned thrall had escaped Molos. No one was to blame for that, either, only himself. He had been careless. Worse, he had been criminal.

His obsession for Miyal had brought shame to his entire lodging.

Bear your demise proudly, Rix. He resolved to look the combat-thrall in the eyes as it ate him.

A chirping noise from the back of the room interrupted the Procurer's meditations. Ealic tried to lunge, but it was held back again. "Well?" their mistress asked impatiently. "Utterance!"

Nagh's other subordinate quickly examined the Client-built scanner that had activated.

"A further projection effect, clearer than the ones heretofore. It might be a separate device. It might not, but it's too adjacent to the original coordinates to be solely coincidence." He looked at their leader. "I have a clear frequency lock, m'lady." Nagh closed his eyes and hoped.

Revenge. All I beseech is revenge, he thought. His Mistress slowly pet her genetically-altered killing machine.

"All right, Captain Nagh," she said finally. "Fortune grants you a concluding chance to redeem your privilege. Get your team fitted." The sigh of relief in the room was audible.

She pulled Ealic back. Nagh could all but sense the beast's disappointment.

"I won't displease you again, m'lady," he said, falling to one knee before her.

"Understanding," she said, turning back to her view. "Discern you best not. Ealic starves."

Feeling a lump in his throat, the Procurer nodded, got up, and joined his men.

The apartment sat dark and still. Expensive antiques were shadows in the corners. Rare paintings hung above legal tomes were rendered all but indistinct blobs in the gloom. The two figures stalking down the halls, though, wouldn't have cared for these things even if they could have clearly seen them. They were pursuing quite another type of treasure.

They had set to memory the layout of the place. They were experts in their craft. Bypassing the numerous security devices had been an act of child's play. They moved quickly and quietly toward their target, pausing only briefly at the closed door to her bedroom. One of them raised his tranquilizer gun. The other carefully examined the door, put his ear to it, and listened.

He made a gesture to his partner, perceptible even in the half-light. Three subjects were inside the room, all asleep. He could hear their breathing. The other nodded. This fit the information their contact had provided them. There was the target cow in charge, then her two femthralls.

All three were quite harmless. They were, after all, only females.

From a pocket on his syncloth darksuit, the first Procurer took out an analyzer. It was already set for silent mode. He scanned the room opposite, just to make sure. His partner took no offense to any implied insult to his trained senses. He would have done the same thing. There was always the possibility of hidden security measures. Even an Earthborn tenant cow like this one might have some surprise waiting an intruder. But the scan detected nothing to impede their entry. The door wasn't even locked. Carefully, slowly, they opened the portal and peered inside.

One female was in the bed. Her arm lay carelessly flung over the outside covers. Even with the limited light available, the Procurers could see she was very beautiful. Her lips formed a small, cute pout that each thought would look well wrapped around their shafts. The other two females lay sleeping on the floor next to the bed. They each wore nearly transparent silk slave garments.

The hunters walked over to the bed, no longer making so much of an effort to remain silent. The lead man raised his arm and fired a short burst into the woman beneath the covers. Her eyes opened in a sudden start, and she raised her head. "Ohh!" she gasped, a light breathy cry.

She fell back again, stunned. The two femthralls at the foot of the bed woke and tried to sit up, but the other man stood between them and grabbed them, effortlessly holding them down.

"Quar grepate!" he screamed at them, then smiled at his partner. "Slen cus! Pal! Ediyetr!"

He laughed. He didn't notice the dark-haired slave snake her hands up from underneath her.

"Jart defik, slen. Mot ad, eh . . ." The man stopped abruptly, then fell over bonelessly, eliciting a loud shriek from the other girl at his feet he was suddenly landing on top of.

The intruder with his gun out already turned, saw one of the slaves reaching toward him with something in her hand, and reflexively fired at her. In the same instant she made contact . . . and without warning an incredibly wonderful feeling came over him! A bolt of pure, undiluted, pristine, in fact, sensation - happiness, warmth, pleasure, everything! - rocked through him.

The intruder ejaculated uncontrollably, going once, twice, three times, then over and over again, without stop. His eyes widened in shock and amazement. The world filled with bright colors.

"Mamdic," he said calmly, then collapsed. He fell on top of the bed and began to twitch mildly.

With no one left holding her, Rose stood up.

"Shit," she muttered, wincing at the unexpected pain in her face, upper arm, and shoulder. Those pellets hurt! The spectrum antidote she had taken as a precaution only prevented extraneous chemicals from interacting with her system. It did nothing for the pain of them going in.

Shauna was still shrieking.

"Be quiet, please," Rose told her. "Get up from underneath there and help me." She tried kicking the one guy off she had taken out with the immobilizer, but he was too heavy to move.

"Yes, mis . . yes, Rose," Shauna said, sniffed at her tears, and with Rose's help began squeezing out from underneath the large, black-garbed intruder. Rose was sure that he was a Molosian.

She put the two Client devices she had had in her hands on the bedside table. The first was an immobilizer, a pretty standard tool, capable of restricting all voluntary movement in those it was employed against. The other was something Rose had never used before. The technician at the Firm had called it a stimulator. It sent shockwave impulses through a subject's nervous system that approximated either pain or pleasure, depending on the setting. It was a typical Client non-weapon. It was handheld, worked only through contact, and left no lasting damage.

Except possibly addiction. The technician had mentioned stimulators were very habit-forming, whether they were used for pain or pleasure. At high enough of a setting, it seemed, neither one was really distinguishable. Rose checked the eyes of the man she had left convulsing on her bed.

Technically, he wasn't really paralyzed, like his partner was. He wasn't going anywhere, though, Rose thought, at least not for a couple of hours. His eyes were glazed and unseeing, lost in utter bliss. She checked Charlotte out next. She too wouldn't be making any trips in the near future.

Rose straightened up, then shrugged out of the brief costume she was wearing.

"Get me something simple from the closet," she told Shauna, wincing again, partially from the darts, partially from having to lie on the floor for so long. "I'm going back to the office."

"Yes, Rose. At once, Rose." The young slave, still wearing her diaphanous uniform, hurried off.

Molosians underestimate women, Rose thought, or so she had learned today. But so do men in general. Her choice of sleeping arrangements tonight had been made prudently, it turned out.

Someone had made their first move. Now it was her turn.

In her own language, Miyal would have called the place she was at now a "lasper materhiz." In her Brafford-English, it was an "individual tenant dwelling," or, using Californian vernacular, a "house." It had not taken a great deal of persuasion to convince the elderly consumables processor, or "sales representative," to take her back to his "house." These Californians had virtually no resistance to her thrallbody's pheromone discharges. A Molosian male would have been aroused, but he wouldn't have been rendered quite so tractable, so needfully obedient.

Later, upon injecting him with thrallextract, the sales representative proved even more malleable than he had in his vehicle. Unfortunately, he lived alone.

Miyal hoped he was still healthy enough to fuck her the way she needed to be fucked.

"Deeper, thrall!" she hissed at him, staring up into her new possession's now equally thrallblank eyes. "Harder! Harder!"

The Eric grunted and squeezed at Miyal's plump breasts, his fingers tightening around her rock-hard nipples while stabbing earnestly into her, filling her constantly aching void with his manhood. Her legs were wrapped his waist. Her hands clutched the back of his head and pulled him closer. In-between seething commands, Miyal ravished her thrall's face with kisses, plunging her tongue into the Eric's mouth and over his delicious, male-scented face.

Electric thrills rocketed her body. She needed him . . . needed the hot, thick maleness of him, of any man, inside her yearning, throbbing thrallish cunt.

She had had no idea it could be like this. The thralldesires filling her were like nothing she had ever known. And the ecstasy, ah! the ecstasy of her super-sensitive, erotically-charged flesh!

"Yes," she screamed. "By the Divine, Yes!"

Miyal moaned her thrall's name into his chest and licked at the white hairs that grew there. She squirmed underneath him, desperately trying to make contact with his skin, to touch him all over, everywhere, at once. She bit at the slave. She clawed. His maleness tasted so good. He was so dreadfully delicious. The way he fit inside her was perfect . . perfect!

She luxuriated in him, lavished him, enjoyed the feel, taste, and power of his cock inside her thrallbody. Ah, had she but known before! She could understand Kana's weakness better now. Thrallsex - not using a thrall but being a thrall, being used like a thrall - was a pleasure beyond words! If only her former rival were there now, that both could then satisfy her novel desires.

It was becoming harder and harder to achieve that satisfaction.

Miyal could sense, with the hyperacute sensitivity of the femthrall she had become, biologically imprinted as she had been with a deep, deep awareness of her femininity, what was coming in her thrall. She could feel the way her thrall's penis pulsed inside her body. She could feel its rhythms with her biotrained abdominal muscles. She squeezed with her hips, with her constantly craving, needy sex, urging him on, begging him - yes, Miyal begged her thrall! - to keep going.

She needed him. Needed him! But her Eric was old, at least forty or fifty cycles old, and without any form of cellular rejuvenation whatsoever. She knew the Californian medical sciences were primitive, but this was absurd. The thrall on top of Miyal finally gave one great decisive moan and shuddered. His sperm rocketed inside her. A wave of crashing, glorious pleasure passed through Miyal's thrallflesh. It was the programmed response, not of her head but of her flesh, her thrallflesh. Then, disappointingly, the Eric all but collapsed on top of her.

Again.

It was the fifth time that hour alone. A miserable demonstration.

"No," Miyal groaned, this time in anger and not passion. "You thrall! Get it up! Be erect! I command you. Ediyetr!" The Eric tried to get up - his skin had gone red all over, and he was breathing much too heavily - but failed in the attempt, and began crying and sobbing terribly.

Miyal slammed her head back against the thrall's bed in frustration.

How was she ever going to satisfy her enhanced lusts with this pathetic specimen? The thrall had taken a native Californian aphrodisiac - "Vi-agh-ara," he had called it - and, of course, there was thrallextract boiling in his veins, a derivative of the same chemicals her own resequenced body produced on its own now, but there was only so much sex a single, unmodified male thrall could deliver, it seemed. More and more, Miyal missed the pleasures of her homeworld.

Without a projector, she might be exiled from there forever. "Curse you!" she screamed at her thrall. She struck him with her open hand. "At least lick! and be quick about it!"

"Yes, mistress," the Eric muttered and bent his heavily perspiring face to Miyal's crotch.

Her thralldesires were growing, she realized sickly, feeling her new possession's tongue lap and probe at her. They were expanding exponentially just like they were designed to. It was yet another fail-safe of the Kedian biomodel, an improvement over their competitors which made Eastern Corporate thralls the best on Molos. It was their secret association with the Clients, and the universe of technologies that association had provided, which put Kedia on top. The other thrall enterprises had no idea their wares were marketed to offworlders. They had no idea that other worlds even existed. It was the same among all Property Worlds, Miyal had found. One Agency would secretly be in charge and reap the benefits of Client patronage while working to ensure that their Client's pleasures went uninterrupted. The advantages gained thereby were enormous. Even under these circumstances, they had worked in Miyal's favor. They had given her an option, after all, an escape from Molos, that no other thrall on her world knew about.

She had to find a way to reverse her DNA resequencing. She had to! If she didn't, the need of her thrallbody to submit - to be ruthlessly and deliciously dominated - would drive her insane.

Or into the arms of a master, she realized. It was only a matter of time. Pleasure thralls like her - No! Like the thrallbody I'm trapped in! - were biologically conditioned to seek out total domination. They physically needed to be dominated . . . to be used, constantly, over and over.

Without such utter domination, a thrall grew increasingly desperate. Even lacking any mental conditioning, Kedian thralls never ran away, never fought back against their owners. They loved being owned . . . needed to be owned in a way rival thrall enterprises had never been able to imprint in their own products. Miyal knew she did not have long to go before the inevitable.

But it was so hard to think without being fucked properly first!

Miyal's Eric continued to work at her. She let herself stop worrying for a little while. She twisted and squirmed beneath his attentive mouth, untrained though it was. Her hands gripped his silvery-white hair, and she moaned. She thought about faces from the past. Kana had looked so delightful upon delivery. "I exist wholly to convey you pleasure, ma'am," she had whispered, her meek, blue-within-blue eyes downcast, their shade precisely matching the hues of her newly dyed and resequenced thrallflesh. "I am so regretful for having displeasured you in the past."

Oh, the fun she had had with her former rival and childhood friend! She, at least, had proven to possess a trained mouth . . . and a trained tongue.

Miyal remembered others. Preum Siam. Arid Verndo. Even Rix Nagh, her captain of security.

The memory of Nagh seemed so much more attractive now than it had before. Weeks ago on Molos she had hardly ever noticed him. Hours ago, though, when she had seen him here in California, the image of his impeccable masculinity had seemed all but on fire in her mind.

Miyal dreamed about Rix Nagh servicing her. As she did, she fell into a thralldaze, her body producing chemicals to partially shut down her higher consciousness. This was a Kedian feature that rendered thralls docile whenever they weren't being used by their owners. They became much less active. It saved on the upkeep. This hypnotic state and Miyal's equally thrallish and growing need to submit to a master warred for some time inside her, preventing the green-hued beauty from achieving anything like a complete rest, or a fully satisfying fuck, for that matter.

The hours drifted.

So preoccupied was Miyal in her aching misery that she almost failed to notice the door to the room open. It wasn't the sound ultimately that woke her up, either. It was the smell of men.

Molosian men.

Miyal opened her eyes. Standing over her - towering over her so manfully - was one of her former colleagues from Kedia, the Procurer Wahinan Met. At first she thought it was a dream.

Then Met spoke, and she knew she was in serious trouble.

"Greetings, thrall. You've dispensed us a lengthy pursuit, understanding?" He laughed.

"No," Miyal murmured at first, then recognition hit, and the remnants of her thralldaze vanished in an instant. "No, negative!" she screamed and tried to fling herself up.

The bathroom was just to her right. She might make it! Met reached down, though, pulled the still grasping and licking Eric-thrall away, and easily caught hold of the fleeing slave.

His strength was enormous.

He pulled Miyal to her feet, one hand each gripping an upper arm. His touch felt wonderful, but nonetheless Miyal struggled to free herself. Three other Molosian Procurers were standing in the room with them. One of them - Miyal recognized Met's partner, Kal Skil - grabbed her Eric and shot him pointblank with anesthesia darts. The tranquilized thrall fell over like a slab of beef.

Miyal tried to kick Met, and, grinning, the Procurer let go with one hand, reached down between Miyal's legs, and began to fondle her vigorously.

Her urge to fight or flee passed immediately. "Oh . . ohhhh!" she moaned and trembled all over.

"Does the thrall not fathom her status?" Met asked her, in Molosian. "Sadness. But readily corrected." Roughly, he spun and tossed Miyal in the direction of Skil, who grabbed her.

She was being held by men . . real men! It was just like in her dream.

Miyal's thralloils soaked the Procurer's gloved hand when he too reached down between her thighs. He spoke to her harshly, like a Master. "Thrall-whore! You actually sought flight!"

Skil handed her off to another Procurer, then he suddenly wheeled around and slapped Miyal across the face. The cruel blow drove her to the floor.

"Mercy," she begged, unable to get up, the fact of being on her knees beneath men - real men, Molosian men - filling her body with incredibly joyful, fiery sensations. This was proper. This was what she was made for . . . had been remade for.

No, I must fight this, she resisted, struggling against her biology. This is the resequencing. This is only the resequencing. "I am Miyal Cate . . I am Processor Miyal Cate. You dare not do this."

Wahinan Met laughed. "The thrall fathoms not! She fails to comprehend the situation."

The Procurer stepped forward and picked Miyal up. One hand held the back of her neck while the other gripped her high, rounded breasts. Unconsciously, she leaned inward to give him greater purchase. He played with her brutally, and she moaned in mixed ecstasy/agony.

"You are only a thrall, property fem," he told her. "Less than a tenant cow fairly . . . and now you are departing to progress home." He unhitched a Client-made projector from his belt.

"Negative," she pleaded, willing her eyes to stay open despite the bliss of being manhandled like she was. "This was performed to me unjustly. I am fairly a Processor by right, a Constituent fairly." Her hands stroked the width of the Procurer's broad chest, though, an insatiate motion that detracted from her protest. Wahinan Met looked at her strangely.

"The thrall absolutely fathoms not," he said slowly, wonderingly. "How farcical this is." He let go of Miyal's tits and lifted her chin up. His touch sent fiery bolts of passion shooting through her skin. "Nagh's censure will be cruel, I warrant, for such inventive use of recollection data."

Nagh! Anger surged through Miyal to compete with her thrallish desires. Rix Nagh! He was the boil who dared do this to her! But what use this knowledge to her now when she was going to be put in her proper place? Miyal felt an urge to run, another to fight, but the most compelling emotion filling her was total surrender. She wanted to serve these men so badly!

Her loins ached as they had never ached before. Her need had become overwhelming.

I can still get out, she thought. There must be a way. There must. There must!

And, as luck would have it . . . .

Kal Skil was walking toward the two of them when for the second time that day Miyal saw the room she was in fill with projection effect. For a moment, she thought Met had triggered his device, and she was on her way back to Molos, or to the relay station here on Earth that would send her back to Molos. Instead, though, she heard multiple popping sounds, and from out of the tachyon-accelerated glare she saw Nagh again - the boil Nagh whom she was going to destroy! - appear out of nowhere with his Procurer team and their trackerthralls. It was a virtual repeat of what had happened before at the hospitality complex, only this time she had already been captured. What is this? she thought. What is this? Kal Skil yelled out in alarm and brought up his tranquilizer gun. Wahinan Met spun on his heels, carrying Miyal along with him. Captain Nagh and his men meanwhile fired a stream of tiny anesthetic slivers across the room. He and the other two armed men with him had apparently learned from their mistake earlier. They materialized firing, setting forth a stream of microscopic projectiles to blanket the area.

The barrage hit Met and the others' syncloth body armor, a material as thin as regular cloth but more than durable enough to withstand crystallized anesthesia. Screaming hoarsely, the team-in-waiting discharged their own weapons. The trackerthralls, naked as all thralls should be, went down immediately. Nagh and his men charged their assailants almost before the glare from their projector completely died away, still firing, naturally. The walls were peppered with tiny holes.

Miyal didn't know what was going on. It was all she could do to move at all, to not just submit as the rightfully seized property she had been turned into. As Met began his spin, she grabbed his syncloth uniform with both hands and added her strength to the motion, turning him entirely around again. For less than a second Miyal's naked backside flashed Nagh and his men. Then, unbalanced, surprised, Procurer Captain Met was spun in just the right direction to shield Miyal from the storm of microscopic bullets. Or, at least, the worst of it. Miyal's left leg and left arm went icy cold for a split instant, then turned completely numb. Some of the darts hit Met's unprotected scalp. The look on his face as the thrall Miyal pulled him towards herself and the bathroom now behind her was spellbinding. His heavy, numb body threatened to fall on top of her. Instead, screaming, crying, Miyal kicked out at the floor with her one good leg and leaned back, using their combined momentum to get her through the open door. Met's body acted as the perfect shield. The back of his seven-foot frame was pelted with nearly invisible darts.

The Procurers in Eric's bedroom kept on firing, mostly at random now. The room was small, especially for six large Molosian men, plus two unconscious trackerthralls, each averaging seven feet tall. The bed in the center didn't help the logistics much either. Despite the body armor, bodies began to fall. Miyal tried to slam the bathroom door shut but couldn't with Captain Met in the way. Her sedated arm and leg hung off her lovely body like two rotten tree limbs.

Reaching out with her right hand, she grabbed the projector Met was still carrying, the one he had been about to use just seconds earlier. Checking behind her to make sure her kit was within range - she had used the bathroom earlier - she one-handedly begin fiddling with the controls.

Outside, Kal Skil launched himself at Rix Nagh. "Dirty, disgusting father-fornicator!" he yelled, driving his fist into the other's face. He fired his tranquilizer gun at him at the same time.

Nagh fired back, literally and figuratively. "Hulking wreck of a tenantborn!"

Microscopic crystals of frozen anesthesia lodged in each other's exposed skin. They both keeled over seconds before the bright light of Met's projector flared out of the open bathroom.

Miyal, her kit, and Captain Met were gone. Again.