The Seventh Desert by Gerry Taylor
This is the twelfth chapter (ex twenty two) of a novel about present-day slavery and gay sex.
Keywords: authority, control, loyalty, slavery, punishment, retraining, submission, gay, sex
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Chapter 12 - The levels of happiness
As we arrived back to the Lime Palace mid-afternoon from the trip to the opal mine, I spotted Stan Mercer, my Property Manager, coming out of his office with two of his team.
`Stan!'
`Boss, what can I do for you?'
'Find something for this slave to do and get him processed with the medics. Have those restraints taken off ,' I said turning to indicate Al Vine who had come up in the front of the Rolls from the depths of the Seventh Desert. He was still in his temporary vest and shorts.
One of Stan's assistants unshackled the slave's ankles and wrists.
'Get naked,' I ordered. 'Only Supervisors and Overseers use clothes in my Palaces.'
The slave was naked in a thrice, with the offending pants and shirt in his hand. I indicated to Jess to take the clothes off the slave.
`Boss, I have the very job for him,' and Stan hooked a finger and had the slave follow him and his team to parts unknown.
David Tuttle, my Construction Manager on the new Lemon Palace, had come out to walk with me in the gardens before dinner that evening. We were only at the level of the last of the slave quarters, when the most appalling stench hit my nostrils with a slight change in the wind.
`In heaven's name, WHAT is that?'
The Lime Palace's own sewage system I'm afraid, Boss,' David said. It backed up this morning and started coming up out of the foul sewers.'
We moved on as quickly as possible, until we were able to breathe normally again.
The following morning at breakfast the smell of the sewers was worse, or maybe it was because the wind was definitely blowing from the west all the time. I looked at my breakfast on the veranda table and it looked at me. Not even Basili and Igor's morning offering of a small but beautiful Conophytum cactus could induce me to lift toast to lips.
Bob, my normal waiter, was looking nervous. Ben Trant, my secretary, even came out of my study and looked in the offending direction.
Enough was enough! I got up and strode over in the direction of the slave quarters. While at the old Aloe Palace, the sewage system from the Palace is manual, at the newer Lime Palace not even four years built, it was supposed to be automatic, in that, operating under gravity, all the sewage would come out into a main sewer where in one low section of the grounds, almost a quarter of a mile away from the Palace, it would flow into six plots as we call them, each used on a successive day.
The sewage of the day, once hit by the heat of sun dried within hours. Within further hours, it was being eaten by dung-beetles and within a week, bingo! We would have a pit of the best cactus fertiliser. The pit was cleared out and would be filled with fresh sewage again six days later. Perfect ecology! Perfect balance with nature!
However, the blockage meant the sewage was surfacing a quarter of a mile too soon. I turned the corner of the last building and there was the property team, Stan, Wik and Jerzy, all with cloths to their faces.
A large open manhole was being peered into and as I came close with the inadequate protection of a handkerchief as a breathing mask, a naked figure emerged from the manhole holding a dead two-foot rat by the tail. The naked slave was covered from head to toe in shit. It did not seem possible that so much excrement could adhere to one person but it did.
The three members of the property team took a step backwards, as the slave threw the brown creature on the ground, a very large Acomys cahirinus, the Dahran spiny rat, and clambered the last few rungs out of the manhole.
`There was at least two more nests of them, sir. The nest we poisoned and took out yesterday wasn't the only one. This rat seems to be the last one,' he said to Stan.
`Let's try again,' and Stan nodded to Wik who twisted a valve-wheel on the wall of the slave-quarters to open it.
There was the sound of falling liquid and then something like a belch as the liquid was sucked into the sewer.
`Sir, it's flowing. It's flowing,' the slave shouted as he looked into the nether regions of the manhole.
It was only when the slave looked up and I saw his eyes that I recognised Al Vine. He saw me and as a good and well trained slave would do, he dropped to the ground and made an obeisance, his forehead touching the ground. I remember thinking that he actually looked like a six-foot long turd such was the amount excrement on him, but I said nothing.
I nodded to Stan and walked back to the veranda hoping that I could now face breakfast, which fortunately I was able to do, saying that I would continue my review of the farms when my nostrils had recovered their normal sense of smell.
Trying to do something positive again when trying to put the smell of the morning out of my mind, I instructed Ben Trant to start compiling a list of potential guests for the house warming party of my new home, the Lemon Palace. Ben looked in his element at the request and set about it immediately.
Maybe there was something to giving slaves a long leash with which to serve me, their Master. I would think about that. It was at moments like these that I could not believe how I was using other human beings in a manner, that I could never have conceived just some four or five years previously.
There are a number of slave owners in Dahra--two in particular spring to mind--whose attitude to slaves is not so much their use as their non-use, disuse and ultimate abuse. One of them, who in business is quite astute, has an attitude best summed up as `flog'em early and flog'em often'. Another has a farm close by me, which he visits twice a year if that; and his slaves there are all but abandoned. It is little wonder that when he is in residence, he has to bring household staff and slaves with him from the capital city.
As I finished breakfast, I noticed the Dahran Posts' van drive into the courtyard and pull up at my secretary Ben's office across the courtyard from me. The postman went into it with a large canvass bag, which seemed to unbalance his gait pulling him down to the left as he walked. Three or four minutes later, he was out with the bag folded in his hand and, in the other, a large bundle of white envelopes.
As breakfast had finished, I emptied my coffee cup of its last drops and strolled across in the warm morning sun to the office. I walked into a hive of activity. The post was being sorted into three piles or lots. No one seemed to notice my arrival, until Gianni, Ben's assistant looked up in alarm and said `The Master'.
Two slaves who had been with their backs to the door and inputting data into computers dropped like stones to the floor in obeisance, as did Gianni, and two others, whom I recognised as Jiri Aron, a Czech slave belonging to my Head of Household, Aziz al-Aziz and Jan Korda, the slave assistant to David Tuttle who had managed the construction of the Lemon Palace for me.
Both dropped to the floor, also in obeisance. As Ben had already seen me this morning, he just stood there. Slaves are not supposed to talk until spoken to, but a number of mine, including Ben, have never really learned that art.
`Master, is something wrong?'
`The post has arrived?'
`Yes, Master, we are sorting it. Jiri will take Master Aziz's and Gustav's to them and Jan will take Master David's to him. We will then number your post on the computer and file, or answer it. It will soon be ready.'
`Number, file?'
Ben Trant explained that he assigned a number to every incoming and outgoing letter and originals and copies were then filed as appropriate.
`Bills here, Master, reports for Supervisor Tommy Saunders here, invitations and correspondence here.'
`Whose system is this?'
`It's Ben's own system, Master,' Gianni blurted out in admiration of his boss.
Ben looked annoyed and pleased at the comment all at the one and same time.
`Is this a normal amount?' I asked looking at the pile for the Lime Palace.
`Yes, Master, about normal for the day. Seventy two items in all. We will have it sorted, with replies ready for signing by you tomorrow morning as usual,' Ben replied.
I had not realised there was so much in the back office so to speak, but then again, upon reflection how many CEO's of corporations and companies do realise that.
As I walked out of Ben's office, I spotted Stan and he me, coming out of his office.
`Where did you find him, Boss?
`Who, Stan?'
`This gem of a worker.'
`Who?'
`This Al guy.'
`At the opal mine. An interesting case. Did you not look up his file?'
`Boss, I never do. If you give me a slave to assign work to, I do just that. I don't start reading up files that may tell me he is a mass murderer. I prefer the simple life.'
`Mass murderer? No such thing, Stan, an ex-Army guy, a mercenary. He's okay is he?'
`More than okay, Boss, a gem. Have you ten minutes? You didn't finish the farm inspection this morning?'
`No.'
`Then, follow me, Boss.'
As I have mentioned previously, the Palace sewage system disembouches into one of six, what we call `plots' a little over a quarter of a mile on the far side of the new Lemon Palace. The whole system works essentially under the flow of gravity, as the Palace is on slightly higher ground and the plots on a lower section of the land.
Once the foul water and sewage exits, it starts to fill up the assigned plot, which is more like a shallow swimming pool about twenty by twenty metres, but only some centimetres deep. Within a couple of hours, with the heat of the Dahran sun, the water evaporates and scarabaei coprophaghi, the local dung-beetles, come out of nowhere to eat the excrement. It sounds horrible but it is an extraordinary sight.
On the second to the fifth days, the results are raked and raked so that every possible retained drop of water, or other liquid evaporates and fresh droves of dung-beetles sift through the residue for a fresh bit to chew on. I have heard it said by an entomologist that the true fertiliser is actually the excrement of the dung-beetle itself. But that sounds rather gross. However, on day six, the farms or my cactus gardens have available to them never less that fifteen one-stone bags of the purest fresh fertiliser, as fine and as friable as peat moss.
Because of the smell which arises from the fresh excrement and effluent flowing in each day, the plots are surrounded by a double ring of white poplars, shielding them from winds which cannot therefore blow smells around, or at least, for any distance. These deciduous poplars are the growing proof that, with lots of water, heat and fertilised soil, trees will grow almost anywhere there is sun.
As we approached, Stan, who had been filling me in on various improvements to the fabric of the various Palaces, suddenly put his finger to his lips.
There was the sound of whistling.
We approached silently and through a gap in the poplars could see Al Vine, naked but for a straw hat, walking up and down one of plots with one of the large wooden rakes of the type which we use on the farms, raking what would have been one of the earlier effluent deposits of the week.
Then he sat on the dividing wall between two ponds and swung his legs over the wall and carefully placed his feet on the residue in the next plot.
He was whistling all the time to himself, and I could not help smiling at the tune `Oh, what a beautiful morning!', which in fact the day was.
Stan and I followed the path round and stepped through a gap in the poplars. More than hearing us, I think Al Vine sensed our presence, because he turned round, saw us, jumped over the wall of the pond, leaving the rake balanced against the wall, whipping off his straw hat and running up to us to make an obeisance.
Technically an obeisance was not necessary as he had seen me earlier that day in a much smellier state, but nevertheless a good obeisance was what he made. His generally hairless body was deeply tanned and light coloured hair created a crew-cut on his scalp.
`Up'.
He got up and went to display.
`Why were you whistling?'
`Whistling, Master?'
`Yes, whistling.'
`Because it is such a beautiful day, Master and because I am so happy to be working here.'
`In a shit pit?'
`In a fertiliser manufacturing and production unit, Master.'
I looked at him and did not know if he was trying to pull my leg or not, but then I seemed to recollect that the Army had terminology all of its own to describe everything from an ashtray to a tank.
However, Stan intervened with a smile, `that is how I described it, Boss.'
`At rest.'
I walked up and looked in the ponds. Each was raked with precision, with the ridges of the rake's teeth still visible in the `fertiliser'. Over the surfaces of the sewage residue, beetles were already scurrying back and forth in the bright sunlight. It was a hive of fertiliser manufacturing activity
`Happy to be working here?' I said, as I ran my hand over his body, which had a light sheen of sweat on it. When my hand touched the smooth skin below his navel, an involuntary and immediate erection started.
`Yes, Master. After the heat of the opal mine, this is like being on a beach at a lake back home,' and he nodded in the direction of the trees.
My hand was now cupping the slave's sole ball and he had neither moved, nor blinked an eyelash. He had lost a ball like all the recent mercenaries who had gone to the opal mine. Now a large crop of precum was in his piss slit and when I smoothened it over his cock head, the precum was so thick that it was almost viscous. A strange slave I thought to myself. Would I have been that happy if the roles had been reversed and I had lost a ball?
Master,' the slave almost whispered, if you continue to do that I am going to come.'
`You should have come this morning in the showers.'
`I did, Master, that was some hours ago.'
I let my thumb circle the flange of his cockhead and it rubbed the rough skin at the back of piss slip where the foreskin had slid back on the slave.
The slave gasped and a volley of white cum shot out in a three-foot arch, followed by a second equally impressive arch.
The slave was breathing deeply.
`Sorry, Master. Thank you, Master.'
`And how long to reload again?'
The slave looked a little bemused but answered, `half an hour to an hour, Master.'
I thought to myself that it was going to be interesting looking into the background of this slave, who would load and shoot with such regularity with a sole ball and who could see beauty in shit. Perhaps, if it were to be stated in somewhat better religious terms, after being in hell, purgatory is not so bad.
`Again, Master, thank you for taking me out of that mine.'
The slave looked at the ground as if he had gone too far or had said too much, even though it was a phrase of thanks.
It is strange but I love genuine gratitude in a slave who realises his humble position of servitude to me and all that comes from me for his benefit, even though by the standards of the material world, what I may give him from time to time or regularly on a daily basis is little. I looked at the slave with his eyes downcast.
`I have said to you that when you speak to me, you look me in the eye. I won't say it again.'
`Yes, Master.'
`Do not give me occasion to send you back. It is a mere three hours' drive away.'
Stan and I walked out of the shelter of the poplars and we were not gone fifty paces, when the sound of low whistling was again to be heard.
We looked at each other and started to laugh quietly. Indeed, in this strange world, there are many levels of happiness.
The following day was a work day at the Bank and I had Gus Jennings in for lunch. He thought it was a follow-up on the reports on the firm which he was managing for me.
`How is your new residence coming on?'
Slowly but surely, Jonathan. All of Alia's sisters are making it their mission in life to decorate it and want to train some staff for her, now that she is marrying well', as one of them put it.'
`Avoid decoration like the plague. Take it from me, Gus, take it from me. Leave it to Alia. Thank heavens I had Pete Downings for the Lemon Palace'.
`You wouldn't think of selling a couple of your household slaves, Jonathan,' Gus said looking at me over the edge of his drink.
`You know that I don't sell on my stock and the few occasions I have done so in the past have been, to my mind, mistakes. I seem to get attached to my slaves, be that good or bad. Maybe it's the ingrained attitude of centuries here, but Dahrans generally don't seem to regard slaves as much more than hewers of wood and drawers of water, if you don't mind me being biblical about it.'
`Well, at least, I can tell Alia that I did ask you.'
`She said to ask?'
`She and her sisters. All of whom say that your slaves are the best in the country.'
I thought to myself best fed with a balanced diet, best health care, best exercised, yes. Best workers, I would not know. Best overall in Dahra, I somehow doubted. In the back of my mind, I disliked the thought that in Dahra's social corners, my slaves and possessions were being talked of and held up as paragons. I supposed it came with the territory and being dubbed `The Retrainer' by Dahra's slave owners.
When we got down to the nitty-gritty, I asked him if the source of his enquiry on Al Vine had been a guy called Sterling?
`How did you find out that it was Hal Sterling, Jonathan? He is supposedly enquiring on behalf of the wife back State-side.'
`Jim Sterling. First lieutenant Jim Sterling.'
`Not the same guy, Jonathan. A Colonel Hal Sterling.'
I looked at Gus trying to make sense of this new piece of information. It sounded as if this Colonel was the uncle from Ohio who had walked in on his nephew, Jim and Al Vine and had caught them in flagrante delicto.
I resolved to get Josh Green in the Grand Cayman and his private investigator contacts working on it as quickly as possible.
There are, at times, occasions when you can only go so far and this was one of them. I invited Gus to the Lime Palace for the weekend, saying it might be his last as a free man for a long time, with his wedding coming up. He said he would try, as he was trying to close a deal on his new home.
As I came back from the bank one evening in July, David Tuttle, the young engineer who was overseeing the construction of my new Lemon Palace, came down the steps of the veranda of the Lime Palace all smiles, followed by Pete Downings.
`Boss, I took delivery today of one completed Palace. The Lemon Palace is now ready for occupation! Do you want to take a look?'
David was clearly beside himself with happiness at the completion of his first professional job, a multi-million one at that, well inside the allotted deadline. There was a level of happiness inside him that was bubbling. It was not for me to dampen it and I said we would walk down to the Palace -- the afternoon being balmy.
The next two hours were hours of happiness as I moved from one room to the next of the Lemon Palace. It was largely unfurnished, but with the decor and colour schemes in place, everywhere I could see how things would turn out in my mind's eye.
Great use had been made of small local tiles in a variety of sizes and shapes from squared to hexagonal from triangular to trapezoidal. What pleased me greatly were the intricate and delicate geometrical and floral shapes in a profusion of colours, particularly blues and greens, but then each room, particularly the bedroom suites seemed to have its own pastel shade.
The entrance foyer was over a thousand square feet of pale marble. I had put marble as a floor material throughout for coolness and ease of cleaning. All the rooms on the ground and first floors had double doors and windows.
At one stage, I had an arm over Pete Downings', my Head of Household, shoulders and he radiated happiness at my happiness. For such a quiet Australian, he has the colours of the rainbow in his mind and his schemes always seem to end up matching perfectly.
Each of the bedrooms had been done, as I had first attempted to do at the Lime Palace but not too successfully, in the style of a Middle Eastern country. This time with a judicious use of wall tiles, we had got the balance right.
`So what did Randy say when you gave him the grand tour,' I jokingly asked Pete.
`How did you know that, Boss? Who told you?'
`The look on your face, Pete. I know you better than you know yourself.'
I think he liked it, Boss, cos when he wasn't kissing me, he kept saying that it would blow your mind.'
`It does, Pete. It does. David has created the masterpiece and you have completed it.'
We were standing in a room on the first floor which had a ceiling to floor glass wall overlooking the new gardens. The sprinklers were just coming on. I could see some of the slaves running out of way of the pulsating jets of water. It was an idyllic scene and for me the cause of great happiness.
`Things must be running very smoothly for you, Pete and for Komil.'
`Why do you say that, Boss?'
I pointed out two unmanned water-wheels in the gardens.
`Komil put them in Boss because you like them. But we really have had little cause to seriously punish the slaves of late here.'
I looked at him. Pete looked at David Tuttle, whose two assistants had joined us as some stage.
`Don't tell me that you're using his no-punishment tactics?'
Actually, yes, Boss,' Pete replied, and in nine out of ten cases it works.'
`Pete, a good flogging even a small number of strokes will always get a slave to move. Two strokes alone with a six foot camel cane will be remembered for a year. It is human nature to want to avoid punishment of all sorts.'
`Boss, I agree with you because you are the Boss, but I have also seen the results of giving the slaves their head to do things they are good at and for what they are well trained and they enjoy doing.'
Enjoy doing!' Pete, slaves are here to obey whether they enjoy doing it or not.'
`Sir.'
So, it's sir' now, Pete, is it, when you're losing the argument?'
`Boss, I am your slave and I enjoy what I do and I work far longer hours than ever I worked before and all of this is for you as my Master. If I did not enjoy it as much as I do, I would most likely do less. I try to get every slave into a similar type job for each one of them. It means I have to supervise very little and I get a lot more done.'
I turned to David Tuttle.
`Your philosophy has had a convert, I think.'
I put my arm over Pete's shoulder again.
`Pete, never forget fear as both a deterrent and as an encouragement. However, that said, whatever system you are using here, it appears to work.'
`Thanks, Boss. I know.'
But I thought to myself that some Lemon Palace slaves have a history of doing stupid things, being punished for it and doing the same stupid things again. Not all slaves are that motivated!
As I breakfasted, I had Flavio, my Chef, come out and I quizzed him on putting together food for a party of a hundred to launch the new Palace.
Flavio positively beamed.
`Will you be able to handle the transition to the new kitchens?'
`Boss, I chose them with you, remember?'
`It will be a trial run for you as my new Head of Kitchens.'
`Boss, it will be a party to remember and the food to be talked about for years.'
I was not as convinced as he was in his enthusiasm but over the following ten days we had two dry-runs so to speak as I entertained two different dinner parties of twenty each night, and Flavio tested out his menus and Bob Conrad the use of one slave per guest at the table. It went swimmingly.
Gus and Alia's wedding was quite a Dahran affair at their new home some four miles from the capital city. It was a small palace, and was very tastefully furnished, at such a short time after its purchase. But as Alia has a large family including several sisters; they had all helped get the furnishings.
Her family's business as dry cleaners meant that they were well known. Alia looked beautiful as only a bride can look. Gus dressed in a blue suit looked the perfect groom. It sort of took me by surprise that the ceremony, which was essentially a civil contract and not a religious one, was the only one at their palace and meant that Gus could in fact by Dahran and religious law have a further three wives--if he could support them socially and financially.
I did not stay for the full celebrations but made as quick an exit as politeness would allow. Amid all his excitement, I thought that Gus was as happy as I had ever seen him. Alia did not feel confident enough to speak much English, but her Arabic was educated and both she and Gus thanked me for the gift of their home. I thought that it was a good long-term investment in a good man. I trusted that time would not prove me wrong.
End of Chapter 12
To be continued...
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