After twenty feet of light-peach blankness the hall turned to the left, to a dark green waiting area about twelve feet square. The farther end of the waiting area held four closed doors with a small but expensive desk standing guard in front of them, and someone who was probably the desk’s user was right then guiding a wide-bottomed, sarong-clad figure through the second door on the left. The one doing the guiding was female, and she wore a standard nurse’s uniform with small, matching white cap; when the door closed behind the portly woman she’d been guiding, she turned back to her desk and sat down behind it.
“Just make yourself comfortable in one of the chairs, young lady,” she said to me with the quickest, most dismissing glance I’d ever seen, her eyes and hands busy with the array of buttons and screens on the desk in front of her. “I’ll let you know as soon as they’re ready for you.”
The two other women in the waiting area had already made themselves comfortable in chairs, so I ignored the supposed nurse’s tone and did likewise. Just as I was sitting down the woman in white got to her feet again, gestured deferentially to the guest sitting not far from me, and guided her to the third door from the left. That left the woman across the room as my sole waiting companion, and the way her light eyes moved over me said I’d be better off waiting alone.
No more than five minutes passed before the second woman was conducted to the extreme right-hand door, and then it was me and the nurse and the otherwise empty waiting room. I was just shifting in my chair when my summons came, and predictably it was the extreme left-hand door I was directed toward.
Inside was one of the most efficient crews I’d ever run into, both in speed and thoroughness. Four nurses and two doctors, mixed half and half male and female, met me three steps inside the door, and went into their routine with overpowering dexterity. My sarong was replaced with a paper wrap practically in one motion, and then I was hustled to an examining table in the midst of tons of sophisticated-looking equipment. Once I was on the table bodily fluids samples were taken, including a small amount of blood from one finger. The crew worked so fast doing so many different things at the same time that I barely knew what was being done to me, but that doesn’t mean it was all over in five minutes. It was closer to an hour before they were through with me, and by then they had to know the exact condition of every cell in my body. They’d even used a biological detector on me, something I don’t think I was supposed to have noticed in the general flood of efficient investigations, and I wondered briefly why they’d tried camouflaging that particular point. How sinister could checking my age be?
I was still considering the point when they turned me loose, all but a single blond-haired female who urged me off the table and aimed me toward a door in the wall opposite to that through which I had entered.
“Just go through that door now, dear,” she said, nodding toward the exit in question. “The people out there will direct you farther. ”
“You mean they’ll give me my clothes back?” I asked, resettling that paper wrap around me. “I was told I could have my clothes back after the physical.”
“I’m sure they’ll do everything that has to be done,” she said with a neutral smile, opening the door.
“Right now we have another guest coming in after you, so if you don’t mind?”
Without waiting to find out if I minded or not she just about pushed me through the door, closing it fast behind me. I kept myself from tripping on the bottom of the paper wrap, muttered a few opinions about her personal habits under my breath, then turned around-to see the “they” who were waiting to do everything that had to be done.
“Excellent physical condition and entirely clean, Alec,” the bigger of the two men commented, glancing through the papers he held. “Also undeniably less than seventeen standard years of age.”
“Which means the request for appraisal is entirely understandable,” the second said, his light eyes moving slowly over me. Both of them were blonds, and both of them were wearing black uniforms with lilac Pleasure Sphere patches on the left breast, marking them as Management personnel. I’d temporarily forgotten about the appraisal business, but the way the second blond was looking at me would have brought it all back even without his having spoken of it.
“Which also means we can dispense with that wrapping paper,” the first one said, and his attention was no longer on the report he held. “Just let it drop to the floor, little girl. We want to see the rest of what we’ll be working with.”
I patted my lips to say something innocent and filled with lack of understanding, but a sudden, faint blurriness interrupted the intention, then chased it away altogether. I could feel my body briefly attempt a struggle against the blurriness and what was behind it, but the try was a washout; my vision cleared as suddenly as it had blurred, and most of the thoughts in my head disappeared with the distortion.
“I’ll be damned,” the one called Alec said as he moved nearer to peer at me more closely. “Look at that, Gil. She’s reacting to it already.”
“With the dosage they used on her, I’m not surprised,” Gil, the taller one, answered, coming up to the right even as he checked again through the papers he held. “The residue in her blood from last night’s dosing was so low that her body must have neutralized the infusion almost as quickly as it was introduced. With the appraisal ahead of her, they wanted to make sure the same didn’t happen again.
She’s got enough trystisil in her to turn a Fendian arena-beast shy and smiling.”
As the two men had been talking one of the doors behind them had opened, and a third man had entered.
He was husky and wearing the same black uniform with lilac Pleasure Sphere patch on it, but he was dark-haired and somehow didn’t seem to fit the uniform as well. Peripheral vision kept his face indistinct until he had moved up to stand behind and between the two blonds, and then my crawling blood stopped dead in its sluggish track.
“I hope you understand just how irregular this is, Mr. Radman,” the taller blond Gil said to the darkhaired newcomer, a certain nervousness in his voice. “Clients aren’t usually allowed in here during an appraisal. ”
“I know that, Gil, and I hope my appreciation was enough to let you and Alec understand how grateful I am,” Radman answered in a rumble with his eyes burning into me, his tongue all but licking his lips. “I happened to be talking with a friend of mine who told me about her, and when I heard she was scheduled for appraisal, I just hopped on back. All I want to do is look and touch a little, no harm done.
Once that trystisil wears off she won’t remember anything anyway, and we’ve all been special friends a long time. No one will mind. ”
The blond Gil chuckled in agreement, Alec also smiling faintly, but Radman was wrong; someone in that room did mind. At the first sight of him I’d tried fighting harder against the drug that already had me in its grip, the drug that had already taken most of my volition, but it was still no good. Even though my target was right in front of me, all I could do was stand there-remembering what he’d done the last time he’d been that close to me.
“She sure is a looker,” Radman went on, stepping between the two other men to get so close that I could smell his bad breath. “Let’s see what the rest of her is like.”
His hands went to the paper wrap I was still holding closed around me, and if I could have snarled or shivered or screamed, it might not have been so bad. I wanted to do all of that and a lot more, but all the trystisil let me do was watch calmly as he tore the paper wrap just below where my fists were closed on it. My thoughts were growing more and more vague; if they hadn’t been vague, they would have been frantic.
“Well, now, will you look at that,” Alec murmured, Gil’s stare and Radman’s drool saying the same thing. Radman had let the paper wrap fall to the floor at my feet, and the weight of their eyes on me was almost more than I could stand.
“You two sure have a sweet job,” Radman rumbled, his voice so thick it could have been spread on bread, his gaze all but consuming me. “After this, I just may apply for it myself.”
“They don’t usually look like that,” Gil put in with an odd, faint smile, watching as Radman reached out deliberately to touch me. His hand moved between my thighs and began caressing me, and all I wanted to do was close my eyes and shudder.
“You know, I just thought of a way for you boys to earn a little more gratitude,” Radman said suddenly, his eyes glittering. “You can even monitor her during it, and I won’t mind at all. Since she won’t remember anything that happens, there might as well be more for her not to remember.”
No, please, not again, I immediately begged in my mind, aching with the need to escape the hand that touched me in so sickeningly possessive a way, horrified that my body did nothing to try to stop it all.
Radman had raped me before putting me aboard that crippled ship, and now he wanted to do it again.
“I don’t think we ought to go quite that far,” Alec said with a frown for the back of Radman’s head, glancing at Gil. “Looking and touching are one thing, but to stick it to her-I think we’d all better remember that technically she’s a guest. ”
“Technically she’s a minor, and her uncle is the guest,” Gil disagreed immediately, his eyes still locked to me. “As long as we don’t do it to him, there shouldn’t be any trouble. Mr. Radman’s stay here will be much more pleasurable, you and I will have his gratitude, and after he’s through we can even-monitor her again a couple of times.”
“Come on, Gil,” Alec said with a good deal of exasperation while Radman grinned slowly. “You don’t mean she’s got your interest, too? Aren’t there enough slaves around here for you?”
“That’s just the point,” Gil murmured, raising his head a bit with a faint smile showing. “She isn’t a slave that anyone can have. She’s . . . ”
A sudden knocking interrupted whatever he was about to say, a knocking that paled his face and immediately pulled Radman away from me. The burly slaver hurried to the far left of the room and opened a wall cabinet to rummage around in, and as soon as his face was no longer visible, Alec moved to the door that had been knocked on and opened it.
“What the hell is going on here?” Greg Rich demanded as he came through the door, leaving it to Alec to swing it closed again behind him. He had exchanged his sarong for a lilac shirt and black pants and shoes, a small Pleasure Sphere insignia on the left side of his shirt. “What are you Appraisal men doing here, Alec?”
“We’re doing our jobs, Greg,” the smaller man answered, staring at the newcomer in surprise. “This kid’s uncle requested appraisal, and we were assigned to see to it. What are you doing here?”
“I thought I was here to pick up my date,” the big, brown-haired man said with a growl, fury looking out of his eyes. “That bastard was looking for a way to screw this up, and I’ll bet he thinks he found one.
How about taking my authorization for a cancel, Gil?”
“We can’t do that, Greg,” the taller blond said with a shake of his head, looking frustrated and annoyed.
“The man has a right to ask for appraisal for his niece, and since she’s a minor, he’s the only one who can cancel. You know what would happen if we accepted your authorization and he squawked. ”
“Damn him,” the big man muttered, one hand rubbing his face as frustration glared out of his eyes.
“Yeah, I know what would happen, even better than you. Okay, you’ve got to go through with it, but how about hurrying it up a little? I had plans to fill the time until departure.”
“We’d be glad to hurry it up,” Gil said in a suddenly persuasive voice, moving toward Greg to put a hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you go back to your office or apartment, and wait there until it’s finished?
As soon as it is, I’ll give you a call and you can come right over.”
“I’m already over, so don’t go out of your way,” Greg said, moving his arm to get Gil’s hand off his shoulder. “How long do you expect it to take you to put her through her paces?”
“The situational alone will take better than an hour,” Gil answered with the frustration back, clearly wishing he could just order Greg out. “And that doesn’t count any of the rest of it. You know we’re also supposed to check to see what sort of a slave she’d make if she tests out sensual enough, and just looking at her takes all the if out of the question. Don’t you think you’d be better off going back . . . ”
“No,” Greg interrupted without waiting to hear the rest of it, his brown eyes cold. “You know that with one like her nothing but the situational will give you any real information, so why screw around with the rest of it? Why are you stalling, Gil?”
“I’m not stalling!” Gil came back sharply, his eyes flickering briefly to Alec, who stood silent behind Greg. “It just doesn’t happen to be proper procedure! The routine still gives us information, even if it isn’t complete! But if you insist we go directly to the situational . . .”
“That’s exactly what I do insist on,” Greg interrupted again, his tone entirely uncompromising. “You can blame the loss of the additional information on me.”
“And don’t think I won’t,” Gil came back, a thinly veiled hatred in his voice, and then he turned from Greg to stalk over to me. “Come with me, little girl. We’ve got to get on with it as fast as we can. There’s someone here waiting for you who can’t wait to get in with it.”
He put his hand out to me, clearly expecting me to take it, and although I didn’t want to, I dropped the crumpled ball of paper I had in my left hand and reached out to the bigger hand being offered to me.
There was no way I could have refused, and none of them seemed to expect anything else. Alec went to a door in the wall to the right and opened it, then stood aside while Gil led me through.
The room beyond the doorway was very dim, just short of being dark. Straight ahead I could see the outline of a small, raised circular platform, but instead of going to it I was led to the left, to what looked like an examining table surrounded by machinery. As we moved forward gentle lighting came on; I was given a low stool to step on to reach the table, and then was directed to lie down on the soft, pliable skinlike surface of the thing.