Irontown 1: Student Maids (18 page)

Twisting her head round Mel saw the tunnel walls speeding past her were of painted brick, not prefabricated concrete sections. They were clean and well maintained but looked old. When had they been built? Had the girl engines been designed to fit through them, or had they been made to take their unique engines? Had Rowland himself planned the system?

After a few minutes the train emerged from the tunnel to pass through another station. The sign over the platform read: THE MILLHOUSE. Here a shorter girl-powered train was standing in the siding with slave girls supervised by an overseer unloading trolleys of boxes and cartons off flat wagons. A goods train?

Soon the tunnel widened to accommodate a second line running in parallel to theirs. Another girl-powered train went past in the opposite direction. This one carried no goods but drew three passenger carriages. Mel saw the sweating faces of the girls powering the train and the rings of their dangling breasts threaded through by a horizontal rod linking them to the frame of the engine. She also glimpsed the ordinary carefree faces of their passengers as they sped by. To them it seemed riding on a train pulled by slave girls was just normal everyday life.

They passed through a larger station called: GIN STREET JUNCTION, which seemed to be an interchange with another line. Old names like that suggested the network had been around for some time. How big was it? This was a Sunday and it seemed quite busy. Presumably it would be even more so through the week. They were running on the “circle line” so how many more lines were there? No reason why they did not serve the whole City.

The train begin to slow. It clicked over some points and pulled up at a station called: ROWLAND PARK, which boasted two loops of platform track. Another girl-train was already standing at the station disembarking a dozen people, including a party of three middle-aged couples leading a naked slave girl with a large picnic hamper strapped to her back. Was this what Bradawl had meant by being in public? The couples looked the gaggle of naked schoolgirls over with unabashed interest and Mel felt a sudden shy blush coming on. They were the first strangers to see them for nearly two weeks.

The coffles of girls were disembarked and climbed a spiral of stone stairs back up to ground level. They emerged from a low square building into warm bright sunshine. About them were rolling lawns, stands of trees, fountains, benches, statues and flowerbeds crisscrossed by loops and sweeps of gravel paths. There were people out walking or jogging and some had already laid out rugs and picnic cloths on the grass. Amongst the clothed bodies were flashes of bare flesh and the glint of cuffs and collars.

Mel shivered, acutely aware of being naked and exposed in the open before strange eyes. Suddenly the school playground seemed a very cosy place.

As he led the school party along one of the broader pathways Bradawl explained: ‘Rowland Park is only open to gynaton-using Shackleswell citizens. As you can see many bring their own girls here for exercise.’ They passed a group of slave girls throwing a beach ball about apparently unsupervised. ‘The park has a secure perimeter so gynatons can be allowed to run free within its bounds.’

Mel saw Bolt staring at the girls with sudden interest.

‘Many sporting and cultural events involving gynatons are also held here,’ Bradawl continued, pointing to a bandstand nestling between the trees and what looked like a small open-air theatre. ‘In many ways it is the true social and cultural hub of the city. It was intended as the prototype of similar parks Rowland hoped would be founded in towns across the country as others took up his eminently logical theory of gynaetics. Alas, this was not to be.’

Mel tried to imagine the whole country run on Rowland’s principles and felt dizzy at the thought. It was crazy and yet, just suppose enough influential Victorians had taken his ideas up. They had been known believe some pretty weird things. Might this scene have become normal countrywide?

‘This is the centre of the park and where we shall all meet again this afternoon,’ Bradawl said.

They had reached a spot where half a dozen paths met at a circle of gravel that surrounded a substantial monument. It was like a six-sided market cross with a small clock tower on its roof and drinking fountains mounted on the inside of the pillars. Raised on a plinth under the middle of the cross was a bronze statue of W.S.Rowland depicted seated on another of his girl-powered machines. It resembled an old-fashioned penny-farthing bike except that the huge front wheel had been expanded sideways to form an oblate cage in which a naked girl was running round hunched over like a hamster.

As they got closer Mel saw the drinking fountains were of course fitted with phallic spouts. Below them were low wide bronze pans shaped a little like water-lily leaves with another fountain playing across them, the function of which Mel could not at first work out. Then she saw a slave girl run into the cross, squat down over one of the pans and pee gratefully and copiously. The small fountain playing over it washed her groin as she relieved herself. When she was done she unconcernedly shook the drips off her pubes and scampered away again.

They were alfresco pee pans that gynatons had to use like dogs, Mel realised. How very natural that they should relieve themselves under the gaze of Rowland’s cold bronze eyes. No doubt that was how he would have wanted it.

The Gryndstone girls were ungagged and uncuffed. Bradawl pointed to the clock tower. ‘Listen for the chimes through the day. You will all be back here by four o’clock,’ he told them. ‘In the meantime enjoy the park and have fun…’

The girls chattered excitedly as they broke up into smaller groups. Some took play items from the sports bag. In a few minutes they had spread out along the paths and between the trees.

Mel and Cam looked about them, momentarily at a loss. Suddenly they had hours of virtual freedom on their hands and did not know what to do with them. Nearly two weeks of rigid routine and confinement in the school grounds made it hard to plan for roaming about at will. Yet the teachers were no longer paying them any attention and were carrying the hamper off across the grass in search of a picnic spot. It seemed they really were free to go where they wished, as long as it was within the park. Hesitantly Cam picked a Frisbee out of the bag. ‘Maybe we can play with this?’ she asked.

Bolt, however, had a determined look on her face. She set off briskly along one of the broader pathways. Mel and Cam exchanged worried glances and hurried after her.

‘You’re not going to do anything silly, are you?’ Cam asked.

‘I’m just going to look around,’ Bolt replied noncommittally. ‘No harm in that, is there?’

‘Would this looking round have anything to do with trying to find places where you could climb a wall or slip out through a gate?’ Mel asked.

‘Bradawl said we should have fun. This is what gives me fun. You don’t have to come.’

‘You don’t really think you’ll just be able to walk out of here, do you?’ Cam asked. ‘The Headmaster said it had a secure perimeter.’

‘Then there’s no harm in me looking, is there?’ Bolt countered.

After a few minutes becoming used to seeing so many strangers around them, Mel decided it was curiously liberating walking around naked in such surroundings on warm day. Of course people looked at them as they passed, which was natural and even a little exciting, because as naked schoolgirls went they were pretty hot. However nobody was stopping them going where they wished. They were enjoying a kind of freedom.

Cam seemed to have the same feelings. ‘This is actually quite nice.’ She glanced at Bolt’s set expression. ‘Please don’t spoil it.’

They came to a junction with another path. Crossing in front of them was something that stopped them short.

An elderly man was seated in a lightweight wire-mesh chair slung between two wire-spoked wheels a metre across. Slender shafts curved up from their axel to hitch onto the harness of the ponygirl pulling him along.

The harness bound her naked body tightly, with straps about her waist and crossing between her breasts. A narrower strap ran down into her bare pussy cleft where it was threaded through her labial rings, passed between her thighs and emerged from the cleavage of her taut buttocks. Above this a fake ponytail jutted out from the base of her spine. Her arms were bent at the elbows by linked cuffs between her wrists and upper arms while her hands were balled up inside fake rubber hooves, making it look as though she was pawing the air. Similar hooves enclosed her toes and the balls of her feet, which ankle braces forced her to run upon. A web of bridle straps, rings and buckles enclosed her face and blinkers shielded her eyes. A bobbing white plume was fastened to the strap that went across her forehead. Her hair, which was long and silvery, had been pulled through a ring in her bridle and hung down the supple curve of her back. The ends of reins were clipped to her nipple rings and passed up through rings extending from the sides of her collar, where they ran down over her shoulders to her driver’s right hand. In his left he held a long carriage whip. Her bottom showed the pink stripes of its cuts,

They watched her trot away along the path in silence. Then Bolt said: ‘You want to know why I’m trying to escape. That’s why. Do you want to end up like that?’

Mel could think of no reply. The pony girl had looked achingly beautiful in her way but of course it had to be wrong. It was somehow more blatant than the girl-powered trains. They at least were practical in their way. The pony girl was being driven about primarily for show, to be displayed as a man’s possession. Perhaps there was a self-indulgent side to Shackleswell life at odds with Rowland’s logical mechanistic system of slavery. It went to show how little they really knew about the city.

They reached the edge of the park. Behind a screen of trees they saw a high brick boundary wall stretching away to the left and right. Close to was a gateway through which a steady stream of visitors was filing into the park. Mel, Bolt and Cam moved closer. There was a double set of large solid offset gates that meant you could not see directly in or out. The people entering had to then pass through turnstiles under the watchful gaze of men in blue uniforms who were presumably park wardens.

In such circumstances security was very simple. Free people wore clothes and did not have part names stamped on their foreheads or collars round their necks or cuffs on their wrists. Slave girls tended to stand out in a crowd.

‘I don’t think we can just walk out of here,’ Cam said.

‘And those walls look pretty high,’ Mel observed.

They watched the flow of visitors for several minutes while Bolt scowled at the vigilant wardens. Then a couple of young woman amongst the incoming stream caught Mel’s eye. They were identically dressed in grey thigh-length belted raincoats, ankle boots, scarves around their necks and headbands across their foreheads holding back their hair. They carried a picnic bag between them. As they passed through the turnstiles they showed something hung about their necks to the warden who nodded and waved them on.

The two women walked a little way from the gate then stopped not far from the watching girls and put down their bag. Unbelting their coats they stripped them off gratefully. Underneath they were naked. They had rings through their nipples and bare labia, which were stamped with part names. Cuffs on their wrists had charm chains threaded through their securing rings. They pulled off their headbands, exposing the print of part names and unwound their scarves revealing slave collars. Casually slinging their coats over their shoulders they took up their bag again and carried on through the trees.

Mel, Cam and Bolt gaped at them and then each other in astonishment. Had they just seen apparently free people turn themselves into slave girls?

United in confusion they followed the women through the trees until they found them laying out rugs on a grassy slope. By now they had pulled off their boots revealing cuffed ankles.

Mel felt absurdly nervous but she had to know what was going on. ‘Excuse me, but are you really gynatons?’

The pair smiled up at them in good-natured amusement. The names on their foreheads were CHAIN 041 and SPINDLE 220. At least part stamps made introductions simple.

‘Well don’t we look like gynatons?’ said Chain. ‘Just like you’re obviously Gryndstone girls.’

‘Does Mr Hawk still teach PE?’ Spindle asked.

‘Er… yes,’ said Cam.

‘Has he had you yet? He’s huge!’

Bolt was not going to be sidetracked. ‘You look like slaves now, but you came in dressed like ordinary people.’

‘Well we don’t walk the streets bare-assed,’ Chain said. ‘There are sometimes visitors in the town who wouldn’t understand.’

‘Actually it’s a pain because wearing clothes isn’t very comfortable after a few years of going round stripped,’ Spindle confided.

‘But today’s our day off and the weather was good we thought we’d come here.’

‘You have days off!’ Bolt exclaimed in disbelief.

The pair looked surprised. ‘Of course,’ Spindle said. ‘Every gynaton needs time for rest and recreation. We wouldn’t work very efficiently otherwise.’

‘So you’re just allowed to walk out?’ Bolt said, still sounding suspicious.

Chain lifted what looked a small medallion that was clipped to the front of her collar. It had the current date and a code number stamped on it. ‘We have to carry day passes from our master, of course, but as long as we have these we can go where we like.’