The Academy (21 page)

“Thanks, Da,” Benjamin said with a grin. He turned to Mike and asked, “Want to help?”

“Sure,” Michael said, coming forward to learn how to undo the harnesses—and what exactly one does with five sweaty, overexcited slaves who wouldn’t be able to tell you what they needed and probably wouldn’t like it if allowed to. As he listened to Benjamin tell him what to do and stop frequently to praise his team, Michael wondered even more about the roles of parent and child, trainer and trainee, master and man.

The entertainments carried on through more exhibition horsey demonstrations and some nice obedience trials, and Michael smiled a little when he saw people politely hiding yawns, as Tucker predicted. Jet lag and a long primary day caused the crowd to thin gradually and elegantly as the Canadians wrapped up their presentations.

Michael himself felt fine; the little rest he had in the afternoon had left him refreshed and feeling strong at dinner time. He wandered aimlessly for a while, and thought of just going back to the room to force some sleep. But the thought of tossing and turning while Chris slept—and possibly disturbing him—was not attractive. He decided to only go to bed when he was sure he could actually sleep.

It was a great time, though, to set down his observations of the day. He had stashed his travel journal into his breast pocket, and finding a peaceful spot to write was easy. An observant slave even found a lap desk for him, so he could sit on a veranda and feel the slight breezes that suggested rain in the distance. Twin lamps provided more than enough light. He removed his tie and rolled it up neatly into his pocket, and then draped his jacket over the railing. He was still too hot; he desperately wanted to be in shorts and a T-shirt, or just shorts, period. But if Chris could stand to be in long sleeves and a jacket every day, dammit, he could, too.

He filled several pages before he took a break and flexed his fingers. How could someone be expected to absorb so much in a few days, he wondered. Training techniques, sales records, world-wide political and social changes, it was all so... big. And the slaves themselves—Michael had never seen such an array of service-minded adults. Ranging from their early twenties to way past their sixties at least, they spanned every description of human being he could possibly imagine. It was daunting to know that these were just the slaves whose owners made them available, nominated by the trainers as the best in their fields. There seemed to be so many of them that you would be tripping over them every other minute. But instead, they kept neatly in the background, coming at a glance, a gesture, or a word, and sometimes they seemed to become available at a thought.

Like Anderson trains them,
he thought. He wiped some sweat off his forehead and decided that this was enough time spent without air conditioning. As he got up, he debated putting the tie and jacket back on, but carried them instead. He was shocked to see that he had somehow killed two hours on the porch and shook his head ruefully.

It had been months since he had that much uninterrupted time alone. And what had he chosen to do with it? His homework.
That should count for something
, he thought.

He wandered through the western wing and found that there were a few tables occupied in the main entrance area, trainers engaged in what looked like some killer games of backgammon and poker. There was even a mah-jong game going hot and heavy in one corner. This was the only indoor area where cigarettes and cigars were allowed, and the air was both chilly and bitter with smoke. As he watched a few games—and decided that most of the players would eat him for lunch and serve leftovers—he was reminded of Anderson’s evening card games and the way she genially lost to her staff until the stakes were high enough for her to care. That was when she took you for everything you had, no apologies.

The spotter Paul was dealing five card stud, and when he saw Michael, he waved him over. “Come on and grab a seat, Mike!”

“Sorry, but my allowance isn’t big enough,” Michael joked. The trainers and spotters laughed but didn’t press him, and he made his way into the hallways toward the passageway to the Eastern wing. He still wasn’t sleepy. Maybe he should go check out the hot tubs again? That was sure relaxing.

It’s so damn weird,
he thought.
Here I am at a slave trainers convention with more slaves than you can shake a stick at, and is there a single orgy going on?
Was there some sort of organized play space, a dungeon with stocks and crosses and whips and chains? No.
Instead, there’s a room full of people playing cards and board games, and a lot of people who went to bed early.
There had been two road trips he had been invited on after the demonstrations were over; one group of golf fanatics were off to a driving range, and another group of mostly younger people had headed off to Naha to find a pachinko parlor. He had thought that either one would wear him out, yet here he was, wide awake with nothing to do.

A slave passed him, carrying what looked like a banana split on a tray. He stopped her—a middle aged redhead with sharp, classically green eyes—and gazed at the ice cream longingly. “Where did that come from?” he asked.

“Fresh from Wu, the nighttime chef, Sir” she answered quickly. Her voice had a rolling lilt to it which was as charming as her face. “The kitchen is straight back from me, and the honorable Chef Wu has opened two informal dining rooms in the Eastern wing as well. Shall I send a server to you, Sir?”

Ordinarily, Michael was not one for midnight snacking. And the dinner had been lavish earlier—but the silky texture and the haze of frost from the dish of ice cream tempted him. “I’ll find it,” he said, nodding to her. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, Sir, for allowing me to be of service! Enjoy your evening, Sir.” She continued on her way after a slight, elegant dip, and Michael shook his head, watching her. Just the right combination of saucy and respectful, colorfully different, yet somehow homogeneous here.

He went through the passageway, pausing to slip out of his shoes and into sandals again. Thank goodness he had been warned to bring loafers, he thought with amusement. This was definitely not the place to be hopping around untying running shoes or tugging off your heavy boots. Not that a slave wouldn’t be happy to assist you, though. Cubbyholes for shoes and trays of indoor slippers had been available at every entrance of this wing, but cleverly shaded and set back, easy to miss, if you forgot about it. He was already used to it, and grateful that he had noticed others making the same mistake he had.

The first informal dining room he discovered had about a dozen people in it, and he was pleased to see the Englishwoman he had met earlier with Benjamin and his dad, along with a few others he recognized. Ken Mandarin was there, too, looking for all the world like a dissolute aristocrat, her bow tie draped around the open throat of her silk shirt, the tails replaced by a light half robe. Her handsome slave Andy was kneeling to her left, his hands behind his back and a slight smile on his face. Everyone was seated on the floor, in various postures that they found comfortable, and the snacks ranged from fresh sushi and bowls of noodles to more of the luscious looking ice-cream and an assortment of what looked like French or Belgian chocolates. In one corner sat a brunette Michael had seen earlier, although he was never introduced. She had Asian eyes, but an American accent, and seemed comfortable in the background. But she was not clearly with one particular senior trainer or another, which was strange, seeing as people dropped their pedigrees quicker than their names around here. She was quietly engaged with a bowl of soba, listening to the gossip and jokes, and when Michael nodded a greeting to her, she looked surprised for a moment and then nodded gravely back.

Bronwyn, the Brit, was holding forth on what was obviously a favorite topic, and Michael folded himself comfortably down to listen in.

“Really, so much of our so-called fetish scene is based entirely upon shame, and there is no good basis for service in that, is there?”

“Shame works very well here,” laughed a young Japanese man examining a platter of raw tuna. His accent was thick, but he seemed at ease participating in the conversation. He was part of the group that came with Chris’s old friend, Tetsuo Sakai, Michael remembered.

“Oh, yes,” Bronwyn nodded, “but that is shame directed toward not failing the group, yes? I am referring to the erotic shame, the type that makes one’s client pleasantly aroused. That does not inspire hard work, I must say!”

Ken waved her hand to join in the fun. “But you British have gifted us all with the history of the rod, have you not? Indeed, our disciplinary fashions were once called the British vice!”

Bronwyn shook her curls firmly, apparently not afraid to contradict so strongly. “You can get some obedience with the cane, but not loyalty,” she said firmly.

Michael laughed out loud. He had just whispered his desires to a short-haired, deeply tanned man who crept out of the room with a remarkable agility. “You know what my trainer would say to that,” he said. “You can’t get loyalty out of Americans, either. We’re all just a bunch of hedonists who don’t care anything about service, honor, or loyalty as long as we’re getting our rocks off. So you can’t find a good basis for service there, either.”

Ken laughed, too. “Oh yes, the wild dog speaks the truth! We are nothing but decadent fools over in your old colonies!”

Bronwyn shot them both defiant glances. “Most amusing,” she said. “Especially since more decent slaves come out of your little sadistic societies now than anywhere else in the western world. Look at how many clients Matson spotted, hm?”

No one answered that for a moment, although a few of them lowered their eyes, suddenly fascinated with what was left on their trays and in their bowls.

Ken leaned forward. “Yes, Matson. A man who has been absent from these conclaves for some time, if I am not mistaken. Michael, has your trainer told you of him?”

“No, ma’am,” Michael said, taking his chocolate sundae from his server gratefully. “At least not that I remember.”

She sat back, looking annoyed. “Well, he should have,” she said. “I cannot say much, myself.”

“What a mystery,” Michael exclaimed, his spoon poised.

“Do you really want to know?”

All eyes turned to the quiet, dark-haired woman putting down her noodle bowl. “I can tell you. It’s kind of a long story, but if you want to hear it...”

“I would not miss it,” said Ken Mandarin. She gestured, and Andy fetched another bolster for her, and she draped herself over it in a dramatic flinging of her body. “Please tell us all.”

by Cecilia Tan

You don’t hear Matson’s name much anymore, but for a while his streak of hot prospects created a little buzz and earned him the nickname Bullseye. The Marketplace has many talented and scrupulous spotters, with sound instincts and sharp eyes, but he managed to build himself a little bit of a legend. His specialty was slaves culled from S/M societies and soft-world contract relationships—glorified sexual-service-cum-marriage arrangements.

Matson claimed that “picking the winners” was simple. He had an eye for the true spirit of service, he said, people for whom S/M sex was the key that could unlock their potential. Before referring a prospect for training he would test their responses for three specific things: one, whether pain would distance them from their own bodies, break down the concept of their bodies as their own or if it would heighten it, two, whether humiliation would distance them from their own ego or incite rebellion, and three, whether he could then access the deep-seated, non-rational emotional centers necessary for contentment in a slave role, either by sexual love, reward, or other means.

Here is how it began: with a slave we shall call Lily. They were introduced by her then boyfriend-cum-master at a public dungeon party and became intrigued by one another. Through a long series of flirtations, correspondence, and negotiations, it so happened that he arranged to see her shortly after she and her “significant other” had parted ways. He invited her to stay the weekend with him and she immediately accepted.

The scene began the moment she arrived at his doorstep. She stepped inside with her valise of personal articles and closed the door. He took the valise from her, and without a word, began stripping her clothing from her. She neither helped him nor hindered him in that activity and when she was naked in the foyer he asked her, “Why did you not help me to remove your clothing?”

“Because you seemed to take such pleasure in tearing it from me,” she replied. “I could not tell which was your intent, to tear it from me, or to merely denude me.”

“Why did you not ask?”

“Because I had not been given permission to speak.”

Matson was apparently impressed, for he bent the girl over his knee there and spanked her twenty times on each buttock. Then he said, “While you are with me, you always have permission to ask questions, and you always have permission to answer questions directed at you. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir. Is ‘sir’ the correct title to use, sir?”

“Yes, it is. Now come with me.”

He led her directly to a play room replete with spanking bench, raised futon, suspension rack, and various other dungeon standards. He led her to a gynecologist’s examining table and bound her feet into the stirrups. He instructed her to spread her labia wide. Lily expected to see a speculum next, but no, he probed her gently with his fingers.