2050

BY DING

Dalfor Speem was anxious. His implants were tingling, a sure sign of nerves. He got up to check the spyscreen by the door, for the tenth time in as many minutes: the corridor outside was empty, just the house robot picking up litter, whistling to itself through its charging hole – funny, they all did that, no one knew why. Speem paced restlessly over to one of the apartment’s three inner doors and stood close to it, listening. With a whisper on the edge of hearing, right under his nose, the smart-metal coating was redecorating itself, with lemon-yellow teddy bears on a background of pale lavender. It looked horrible.

‘Sandy?’

‘Yeth?’

‘Nothing. Just making sure you were OK.’

‘I’m OK, Dalfy,’ came back through the door in a distant sing-song voice. She was dressing her dolls. She always put on her ‘grown-up’ don’t-care voice when she was playing mother.

The door-buzzer sounded, then a voice, ‘Mr Speem?’ He was glad the spyscreen did not work both ways, he had jumped a mile. God, he was nervous. Speem touched a bump, one of several in a line under the skin of his left forearm, and subtle relaxants and mood-smoothers were released into his system. He waited a moment for the psydrops to take effect, then stood straight, took a deep breath and willed the main door of his apartment to open. It did so, after a slight hesitation: his devices implant was acting up again. Sandy had told him not to buy cheap US stuff, but most Chinese products were nowadays way beyond what ordinary Americans like him could afford, and since the Great Trade War of the Two-Twenties, European goods were almost impossible to find, let alone buy.

A middle-sized, quietly-dressed man, about forty perhaps but fresh-faced and bright of eye, stood framed in the doorway. In either hand he held a large soft bag, grey, banded with darker grey reinforcers. He put one bag down to offer his hand, which was long-fingered and cool, with a firm grip.

‘Good morning, Mr Speem. I am Renfrew Ableman, from the Pedophile Agency.’

‘Hi, good morning,’ said Speem, the words coming hoarsely from his dry throat.

‘And this is my robot,’ said Ableman, stepping aside and gesturing downwards. Speem’s eyes followed the gesture down.

Common tended to be crudely utilitarian, with no trace of human physiology. Most of them looked like waste-bins or oversized coffee-grinders on tracks or primitive legs. True, you sometimes glimpsed superior machines, graceful, smart, human-shaped, human-sized and fast, but they were military or the companions of the very, very wealthy – Japs, Chinese, Germans had some, maybe a few in the US.

Ableman’s robot did not fit into either category. It was not graceful but it was – roughly - humanoid, about two-thirds man height, with a cylindrical head, longer than it was wide, on one circular face of which eyes and mouth were set at the vertices of an equilateral triangle, a wide body like a flattened barrel, bulbous limbs articulated at elbow and knee, big capable hands (only three fingers and an opposable thumb), the head, body and limbs all covered with an unmarked tough-looking skin of some black chitinous stuff which shone like a beetle’s carapace.

The eyes were red. It stared at Speem in silence while its downturned mouth seemed to sneer. Something whirred quietly within the shiny black robot, like a clock mechanism just about to strike. ‘Mr Speem,’ said the robot, in a voice nearly but not quite human.

‘Er, hi,’ said Speem, unconsciously wiping his sweaty palms down his trousers.

‘Mr Speem is not used to ’ said the robot. ‘Tell him my name, Ableman.’

‘Oh, sure,’ said Ableman, ‘sorry, Mr Speem, I guess I forgot this might be kinda new for you. This robot’s name is Hector...’

The robot said something, very quietly.

‘I’m sorry Hector 3, did you want to add something?’ said Ableman, the smile on his bland pink face looking ever so slightly fixed.

The robot turned its head, quite sharply, looking not at Ableman but at Speem: ‘Hector 3 is a stupid name. Why do they give stupid names? Would you call your DOG Hector 3? I don’t think so.’

Ableman’s smile grew even larger and more toothily false as he turned it full on Speem. ‘You musn’t mind Hector, it’s just his way of expressing himself,’ he said out loud, then, whispering out of the corner of his mouth out of sight of the robot, ‘He’s OK, really, Pedo Agency designed and commissioned it, but the interface chip is third-party, unbranded. You know how it is.’

‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ said Speem, unobtrusively touching a bump on his arm. ‘Won’t you come in?’

The apartment seemed a lot smaller when Ableman, bags and robot were inside.

‘And where is the little lady?’ said Ableman brightly. The robot mooched about the perimeter of the room, contemptuously inspecting Speem’s few holograms and ornaments.

‘That’s Sandy,’ said Speem. ‘She’s in the bedroom, playing. Er, shall I...?’

‘No, no,’ said Ableman, showing the thinning top of his head as he rummaged in one of his big grey bags. ‘We’ll just sort out some paperwork first.’ He came up with a slim tablet, also grey, and a stylus. ‘Now, you’re paying by...?’

‘DNA-ID,’ said Speem.

‘Good, good,’ murmured Ableman, scribbling on his electronic pad. ‘Makes things ... a lot ... easier,’ he said, finishing with a crisp tap of the stylus.

‘Now, Dalfor,’ he said, ‘may we sit a moment?’

‘Oh, sure,’ said Speem, ‘help yourself, I shoulda...’

‘Not to worry,’ said Ableman, perching rather carefully on the edge of one of Speem’s beaten-up armchairs, which emitted a low grinding noise, made a pathetic attempt to contour itself, then gave up.

‘Dalfor,’ said Ableman, ‘we at the Pedophile Agency were most concerned to hear about your case. As you know, the law regarding pedophilia has become a lot tighter over the last decade or so.’

‘Er, yeah, I’m aware of that,’ said Speem, trying to keep track of the robot, which was somewhere behind him now. If only it didn’t start whistling.

‘You seem to have left it rather late in the day,’ said Ableman, scrutinizing the grey tablet’s display. ‘You have had the problem for ... six months?’

‘About that, I guess,’ said Speem.

‘Well now, you know, Dalfor, Mr Speem, the state takes a dim view these days of citizens who don’t act on their rights.’

‘I know, I know, I’m sorry,’ said Speem, while inside a little knot of guilt formed itself and stayed, just under his heart.

‘We didn’t spend all that time and money thirty years ago to build pedophilia and child-sex rights into the laws of this land to have them ignored, now did we?’ Ableman’s vocal and facial expression of kindly disapproval seemed well-used and Speem realized that this was a homily which the Pedo Agency man had probably delivered to many of his clients.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

‘Well, now,’ said Ableman briskly, ‘never mind that. Your problem – it’s not emotional in nature?’

‘Oh no,’ said Speem, ‘not emotional. We love each other. She’s chosen to be my partner, left her own family, all the usual stuff – no ceremony though, she didn’t want it, though her parents did, they’re old-fashioned, you know...’

‘So is she...not interested? Physically?’

‘No,’ said Speem, his ears beginning to heat up, the knot in his midriff growing, ‘it’s nothing like that. She’s got a normal interest in sex, owns the usual vaginal toys – she actually brought her own cunt-stretcher from home, said it was her sister’s.’

‘One of the “Love Tunnel” series, I guess?’ said Ableman, his face for the first time taking on an expression of professional interest, which transformed his bland features: they looked sharper, harder, and Speem found himself wondering what kind of man ended up working for the Pedo Agency. You heard stories.

‘Er, don’t think it was a “Love Tunnel”, said Speem. ‘Some foreign make, I think.’

‘So,’ said Ableman, ‘your partner is prepared to copulate and is interested in doing so. There is another man, perhaps? You know we can’t interfere if that is the case.’

Speem’s ears now felt red-hot and the knot of guilt in his belly was making it hard to swallow. ‘There’s nobody else,’ he said, ‘she loves me, tells me all the time. We have a wonderful life, playing, showering, going out, cuddling – it’s all a man could ask for. No, the problem – is me.’

‘Ah,’ said Ableman. Speem realized that he had not seen or heard the robot for the last few minutes. Just behind his right ear he heard a noise like a clock about to strike. ‘Erectile dysfunction,’ said Hector 3, with all the charm of a door grating on gravel, ‘knew it the moment I set eyes on him.’

‘Sorry,’ said Speem, ‘but could your robot...?’

‘Hector, come stand over here, please,’ said Ableman, making a wry face for Speem’s benefit.

‘Look,’ said Speem, feeling faint, his own pulse loud in his ears, ‘everything is perfect except, I can’t make love to her.’

‘Erectile dysf...,’ began the robot, who had clumped slowly around to join his master and was now staring fixedly at Speem. ‘No,’ said Speem, rather more loudly than he had intended, ‘I don’t have a problem that way, not ... normally. It’s just... I’m just – say – on top of her – between her legs – she’s happy and relaxed, giggling the way they do at that age...’

‘And she is?’ said Ableman, trying to find an entry on his tablet.

‘Five years old,’ said Speem, ‘six in April. So like I say, I’m on top of her, loving her smooth skin, her little legs, her shining hair, feeling great, wanting to – you know – stick it in, when suddenly, I see her as a little girl, a child, not a sexual partner, not an equal, just a child – and I start feeling real bad ... guilty... ashamed. And I can’t do it.’

There was silence for a few moments in Speem’s living room. Ableman was quietly entering some data into the grey pad and the robot just stared with its round red eyes just past Speem’s right shoulder. With a cold shock, Speem suddenly realized that the robot was looking at the bedroom door behind which Sandy was playing Mommy with her dolls.

‘Now Mr Speem,’ said Ableman when he had finished his data-entry, ‘you know this is a very serious charge.’

‘Hardly a charge,’ said Speem, feeling himself go red in the face, ‘she’s done nothing. It’s me.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Ableman, raising a pale forefinger in the manner of a canon lawyer opining on the secret nature of angels, ‘It is not you – and the fault, since the legislation of 2027, is certainly hers. Or in her behaviour. Let me explain.

‘Pedophilia – child-loving – more or less vanished as a legal concept about thirty years ago. Oh, we keep the word as part of the agency name, but that’s merely an accident of etymology. The law was changed, recognizing all sexualities as valid, which is, of course, ultimately, the only rational position. You may say that childhood also came to an end at the same moment. Once it was acknowledged that the very young experience the full range of sexual emotions and responses, and as soon as their right to sexual expression was enshrined in law, then there was no going back. They could not, as it were, have it both ways.’

‘Your partner, Mr Speem, er... Sandy ... is probably exhibiting the kind of recidivist, self-indulgently childish behaviour not uncommon in the early days of the new legislation but rarer now, I’m pleased to say. Tell me, does she prattle?’

‘Prattle?’ repeated Speem stupidly.

‘Does she talk aimlessly and continually, in a high-pitched voice and self-consciously naive manner?’

‘I guess so.’

Ableman entered something in the little grey pad.

‘Is she warmly affectionate and fond of physical intimacy yet apparently ignorant regarding the sexual response which her body and movements induce in you?’

Speem had to think a bit, then agreed that that this was so.

Another note went into the little grey plastic tablet.

‘Does she prefer short dresses which reveal her legs right up to the buttocks, does she cry, sulk, like being tickled except for “down there”, does she play with dolls and when she does, does she play Mother and give them tea parties?’

‘Why, yes,’ said Ableman, ‘in fact, she’s in there right now, doing just that.’

The robot made an incoherent metallic sound, like a ratchet slipping, and moved towards the bedroom door. ‘Wait,’ said Ableman sharply, ‘I need to set you to record.’ His voice changed, became more formal, precise: ‘Case recording commence, authorization RA3243. Date as robot/Net interface, case of Dalfor and Sandra Speem. Advanced case of recidivism, treatable but requiring physically-enhanced NLP. Renfrew Ableman and robot Hector 3 attending.’

‘Procedure,’ said Ableman, ‘in case of complaint. There won’t be,’ he said, on seeing Speem’s expression, ‘not in a clear-cut denial-of-womanhood case like this.’

‘Denial of womanhood?’ said Speem, feeling both anxiety and excitement.

‘Yep,’ said Ableman, standing up and taking hold of the two grey bags, one in each hand as before. ‘You get a few. Move in with a man, then selfishly revert to unsexualized childlike patterns of behaviour. The man feels guilty, finds he can’t touch her.’

‘That’s just how I feel,’ said Speem with relief. ‘I can’t see her as a sexual being, a partner, she seems so ... childlike.’

‘Well now, Hector and I are here to help you in that respect,’ said Ableman, with a return of that hard expression which Speem had caught on his face earlier. ‘Your little Sandy is a revert or “fuck-shy” as some people call it. She needs to be reminded of her sexual responsibilities. You need to be taught to see her as a the sexually available female animal which she is. Stand aside, please, Mr Speem. Hector 3, you may proceed!’

The black robot instantly strode to the bedroom door, servo-motors whining, artificial carbon-fibre muscles bunching and stretching at the joints in knee and elbow. From its manner, Speem half-expected it to charge the door down but it used the house kinetic field, as Speem would have done, and the door slid quietly aside.

Sandy was sitting demurely on the edge of their big double bed, the one he had bought in honour of her moving in, as if waiting for them: did she know? She was wearing her favourite dress, pink and frilly, the low-cut top embroidered with a bunny rabbit, no sleeves, wide shoulder straps, and a plain white cotton blouse underneath. She had taken her shoes off to play on the bed and just had on the white ankle socks Speem had given her just that week. Her shoulder-length blonde curls framed her heart-shaped face, which at the moment bore an expression of docile anxiety. Never had she looked so pretty to him. ‘Darfy?’ she said, in her unbearably cute little-girl voice, ‘what is it? What’s hap’ning? Is anyfing wong?’

‘Sandy,’ he began, ‘I’m sorry, but ...’

‘Mr Speem,’ said Ableman, blocking his path, ‘you may wish to leave the room for a moment.’ And Speem found himself firmly propelled out of the bedroom and the door shut. He put his ear against it.

For a few moments all inside seemed strangely quiet, but then, what was he expecting? What kind of persuasion could this man and his irascible robot possibly have planned for an innocent five year old girl? What had Ableman called her? A revert. He had been living with a revert. Against his will, a hot, dark excitement flooded through his belly and groin, which had nothing to do with the chemical implants in his arm. His impotence wasn’t his fault, it was, somehow, hers. At that thought, the old doubts came rushing back. A picture filled his mind, of his five year old partner tossing back her mane of golden curls, of clutching a rag doll to her flat chest and lisping some childish rhyme. It wasn’t meant to be, it was not possible to penetrate a being so undeveloped, so unaware of the animal passions driving the purpled head of an adult phallus like a fleshy spear up between her plump thighs. There was an old word for someone who could do that, who could ignore the flatly unde niable message from the seat of conscience, that mounting and entering a child was wrong, wrong, wrong ... and that word was ‘pervert’. Revert, pervert, revert, pervert, the words circled stickily in his brain, throbbing in time to his pulse. Feeling sick and giddy, Speem clung to the bedroom door like a shipwrecked sailor to some piece of life-saving flotsam and pressed his ear close to hear.

After a moment he realized that he was listening to the sounds of a quiet but determined struggle, little grunts and squeaks and, once, the sound of tearing cloth. He could hear the occasional staccato whine of the robot’s servo-motors and he also sensed Ableman’s quick neat hands at work, though what they were doing was unclear. Speem thought he heard the Agency man curse at one point and immediately afterwards there was the heavy slap of a hand on bare flesh, followed by the loudly uninhibited wail of a child in pain: ‘Darfy! Dey’re hurtin me, Darfy, pweeze!’

He couldn’t stand it. That was a child in there. How could he have allowed this to happen? It took several seconds before he could concentrate enough to send the ‘open’ command from his brain implant to the apartment’s kinetic control centre and the door slid open.

He could not see Sandy at first, just Ableman, redder in the face and far less amiable, stooping over something on the floor, with the robot in close attendance. Hector 3 looked different, some change in outline which Speem could not quite identify. Then he noticed a small bare leg and foot weakly waving around on either side of Ableman’s body. Little mewings and other sounds of distress were coming from underneath him. ‘Yes?’ said Ableman, looking back over his shoulder at Speem but keeping his weight on the girl. ‘Mr Speem, you ought to remain in your...’

‘I heard...’ said Speem, ‘that is, it doesn’t seem ... I mean, I was worried.’

The robot chirred and spoke. ‘Ableman, perhaps Speem should watch. He might enjoy it.’

‘Please ignore the robot, Mr Speem,’ said Ableman, with an attempt at his former manner. ‘But either come in or stay out. This is a crucial phase in dealing with reversion.’

Speem, aware of the robot’s blood-red gaze following his every step, meekly went and sat on the bed, well out of the way.

He could see more now. He could see, for example, why Ableman had spoken to him over his shoulder: the Agency man’s outstretched hand was clamped right over Sandy’s face, the long clawed fingers gripping her forehead, the heel of the hand thrust hard up into the five year old’s mouth and nostrils, the palm covering her eyes. Her head was being crushed against the carpet by the force and weight applied by the adult male and all the girl could do was utter muffled squeaks of pain and protest. Her cotton dress had been removed and her white blouse lay open, minus a lot of its pearly buttons, exposing her chest and belly. Her white cotton pants had been partially rolled down and were bunched around the tops of her thighs, revealing her plump vulva. The robot had lowered itself, somehow shortening its legs, and was holding the girl’s stretched arms straight above her head.

His face set in an expression of calm, rather remote concentration, Ableman shifted his weight backwards, relieving the pressure on the five year old’s face and, as she opened her mouth to let out the cry of pain and resentment which had been building under the stifling hand, brought the same hand into hard contact with the five year old’s crotch, smacking her vagina with the full force of his stiffened arm behind the blow, shocking the girl into frightened silence.

‘Careful,’ cried out Speem, jumping to his feet. ‘You’ll hurt her!’

The robot’s head slowly came up and the two glowing red eyes were fixed on Speem’s anxious face.

‘Oh yes, Speem’ said the robot, ‘we shall certainly do that.’ And it tightened its metal grip on the five year old’s wrists then rotated its forearms in opposite directions, twisting the girl’s wrists until she screamed, and then it twisted them some more and the screams became the desperate squeals of an animal caught in a trap, until Ableman stopped it with a word; and all the time the red eyes were fixed on Speem’s. Who subsided, shaking.

After a while he became aware that Ableman was talking quietly to the robot. ‘Prominent vulva, you notice, it’s often this type who turn difficult.’ The agency man parted the girl’s labia with the thumb and forefinger of his free hand. ‘Nice little clitoris – think you can do anything with that?’

The robot’s long cylindrical head dipped forward a little, then, ‘I can do a lot with that,’ it said.

Ableman ran the flat of his hand up Sandy’s thighs, over her pubis and then up over her quivering belly and breasts, stopping at each point to press and squeeze in an exploratory fashion and ending with a little tug at each nipple, teasing each teat out from the surrounding areola and then stretching it, not enough to hurt, although the little girl’s whimpers and wriggles became more noticeable when he did so.

‘What do you reckon, Hector? Got all the visuals you need?’

‘I want a closer look at its vagina and anus,’ said the robot.

‘OK,’ said Ableman, grabbed the girl’s ankles and unceremoniously dragged them back over her body, doubling her legs on themselves and shoved her knees under her chin. Sandy’s genitals were exposed, in a way and to an extent strange to Speem, who lived with them, as it were, but had never properly seen them – or more exactly had never really looked at them. He looked now, standing up for a better view, as Ableman and the robot’s heads were bent over the girl and partly obscuring her.

Sandy’s hips, thighs and buttocks, which he always thought of as slender, even thin, now presented a wide, wide expanse of creamy flesh, surrounding the welcoming split cushion of her sex. Somehow, without the distraction of Sandy’s personality, with her lower parts literally given prominence like this, her body was saying different things to him. Speem felt a stirring down below as blood pumped strongly into his stiffening penis.

‘Looks different like this, doesn’t she, Mr Speem?’ said Ableman, glancing up from his inspection. ‘Just think, this will be yours to do as you please with every night, once we’re finished.’

‘Uh, that’s great,’ said Speem. ‘Shall I pay now?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Ableman, ‘dear me, no - not yet. We haven’t treated her yet. We’ve hardly begun. Do sit down – make yourself some coffee, whatever – it will take some time.’

Speem did not want coffee. There was the tangy scent of sex in the air, tinged with darker accents emanating from the robot’s midnight black casing and something shadowed in the agency man’s dark eyes: it was not coffee that Dalfor Speem wanted. He sat down again on the bed, penis straining against the brown denim of his pants, his breathing quick and heavy as if he had just run upstairs, and watched as they worked on his five year old partner.

Ableman was holding the girl’s vaginal lips wide apart. The inner surfaces looked startling pink, like a fresh fig cut open. At the centre of the glistening pinkness was a small dark hole. ‘That’s never been stretched,’ muttered the agency man, then louder, ‘I said, Mrs Speem, someone’s not been entirely truthful, eh?’

Sandy’s lower lip quivered. ‘Entirewy twoothful? Don’t know what you mean. Where’s Dalfy?’

‘Here I am honey,’ said Speem automatically, earning himself a frown from Ableman and a steady glare from the robot.

‘You can cut out that baby talk,’ said Ableman curtly, ‘it won’t do you any good, Mrs Speem. Hector, she needs invaginating, take care of it, will you?’ Ableman stood up abruptly with a sour expression and for a heart-stopping moment Speem thought he was going to kick the girl but he just went and leaned against the bedroom wall, arms folded, every inch the professional following procedure and pissed off as hell with the endless duplicities of the public.

There was a buzzing hiss as the robot lengthened its legs, keeping its hands locked on the girl’s wrists so that she was dragged upright as it grew taller, and taller, until it had extended itself to more than man-height and the helpless little female was dangling two feet off the ground, with her back to the red-eyed machine. Her panties slipped down her leg and fell to the floor, leaving her lower body naked. As Speem’s gaze travelled up and down the five year old’s pale midriff and legs, he tried to recapture that vision of her wide ripe rump when Ableman had held her doubled up. He was dragged from this reverie as his eyes focused on what it was which had changed in the robot, a projection at the top of its legs, on what you would have to call its crotch – a stubby cylinder, extruded from the unguessable interior of oiled pistons and humming motors. Something was coming out of the centre of this cylinder, a thin metallic rod. It extended about four inches and stopped. A h igh-pitched whirring sounded and a pale viscous liquid spurted from the rod, some of it landing on Sandy’s wriggling buttocks. There then came an explosive hissing, suddenly cut off, and the little girl’s open blouse was briefly whipped around her ears by what was obviously a blast of air or some other gas. ‘Just testing, Speems. I’m ready now, Ableman,’ said the robot, its cylindrical head turning very slightly in the direction of the agency man, giving the impression that it was reluctant to take its eyes off the girl. ‘Just get on, will you?’ said Ableman irritably.

Speem always found it hard to describe what came next, it all happened so quickly: the sudden rotation of the terrified girl to face the robot, the metal hands with a giant’s grip transferred to the tops of her spread thighs, then the unerring mating of the rod at the mechanical man’s crotch with that tiny hole between the five year old’s legs; but he would always remember what he heard: his Sandy complaining, ‘What oo doing? Pweeze let me go,’ in that high-pitched little-girl voice, then, as the rod slid inside her with the perfect precision of two hundred years of industrial development, and the hissing began: ‘WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? STOP IT, YOU BASTARDS, GET IT OUT OF ME!’

Ableman grinned at the astounded Speem. ‘Well, well, well, what do you know?’ he said. ‘Seems our Sandy’s got another side to her after all, eh, Mr Speem?’

Speem looked at the little girl in amazement. He had never heard her use language like that before. He regarded her as if for the first time. Did he really know her at all? She knew and cared nothing about his scrutiny and obviously had other things on her mind, purple in the face with the effort of trying to lift her genitals, an impossible task, from off whatever the robot was doing to them. A louder and more prolonged hiss brought an indescribable sound from Sandy’s vocal cords and she redoubled her frantic efforts to relieve the pressure on her vagina.

‘Come take a closer look,’ said Ableman, ‘you might be interested.’ The agency man encouraged Speem with a friendly pat on the shoulder and the two men stooped to inspect what was happening between the child’s legs. The rod had gone right in to its full length and the cylinder which had extruded it was also being pushed very firmly into the fleshy pad of the girl’s vulva, making what was obviously an air-tight seal. Another hissing of high-pressure gas sounded, coming slightly muffled from inside Sandy’s vagina. With her eyes tightly closed, in obvious agony, she leaned back, arching away from the robot’s barrel chest, pawing uselessly at her own crotch, screaming, ‘FOR FUCK’S SAKE, NO, NO MORE, STOP IT YOU BASTARDS!’

‘Tell her to shut up, Mr Speem,’ said Ableman casually.

‘What?’ said Speem.

‘Tell her to shut up,’ repeated the man from the Pedophile Agency. ‘You should, you know, she ought not to be allowed to make such an annoying fuss about a simple invagination. Tell her to shut up.’

Speem felt that he too was under pressure, of a kind. ‘Sandy – do please be quiet,’ he ventured.

‘Speem, Speem,’ said Ableman in tones of kindly disappointment. Still shaking his head in a comic exaggeration of a mentor’s disapproval, the Pedo agency man seized the flimsy white material of the girl’s blouse at the shoulders and roughly stripped the garment from the child’s smooth tapering back, balled it up and, just as she opened her mouth to scream again, shoved the handful of white cotton violently into the oral cavity, cutting her off in mid-syllable to an inarticulate gurgle. ‘There we are,’ said Ableman, pinching one of the now-naked little girl’s tiny pink nipples between finger and thumb-nail then twisting it nearly 180 degrees, ‘see? She has to shut up now, don’t you, Sandy!’ The girl’s eyes nearly popped out of her head as her nipple was pinched and twisted, but not a sound could she make except a futile whining way back in her throat. ‘Go on,’ said Ableman, ‘have a go yourself.’

Hardly daring to believe what Ableman was suggesting, Speem reached out a trembling hand towards his little partner, then drew it back as if he had been stung when she turned her head his way with a mute plea in her eyes; he could almost hear her voice in his head saying, ‘Dalfie, what are you doing?’, or ‘Not there, I’m only little’ or, her favourite: ‘Let’s play a different game.’ Ableman, seeing his indecision, let out a snort of amusement or contempt, it was hard to say, and went quickly around behind the five year old, caught her arms and neck in a wrestler’s grip, wrenching her head back so that all she could look at was the ceiling. ‘Go on,’ said Ableman, nodding down to the smooth expanse of the little girl’s front, exposed from her white throat to where her reddening crotch was clamped in mechanical copulation with the robot’s strange penis. ‘She wants to shout,’ said Ableman, ‘give her something to shout about.’

‘Won’t it...you know,’ said Speem, ‘the robot ...?’

‘No, no,’ said Ableman cheerfully, ‘won’t affect the robot. Once old Hector’s got a good airtight seal on a young cunt, he’ll pump away through an earthquake. He’ll be just fine. Come on, chop her in the belly, jab her in the tits – she’s not going to look at you or say a word, are you, darling?’ And the agency man emphasized his words with a vicious upward jerk under the little girl’s chin.

Ableman gazed at his little partner’s arched-back body. She had been sweating more and more since the robot had penetrated her vagina and now her whole torso gleamed. He put out a hand and stroked the smooth slippery skin on the side of her chest, where it ran into the hollow under her arm. Delicately, he touched her nipple, watching it stir and rise at the slight friction of his forefinger. Liar. Cheat. Prick-teaser. For her, he had put up with a year of guilt and frustration. Flirty, dirty revert. A year of fear and shame. Speem’s fist seemed to clench of its own accord and without properly looking what he was doing, he smashed a crude over-arm haymaker of a punch straight down into the five year old’s taut quivering white belly, just under the ribs.

It was an amateur’s blow, or it might have killed her. As it was there was a loud harsh noise like a grown man vomiting as every cubic centimeter of air was driven in an instant from the girl’s lungs. Ableman moved quickly and professionally, hooking the panties out from her bulging throat as the five year old drew in great panicky breaths, and then freeing her arms, which were immediately wrapped around her own middle as she doubled up, sobbing. The agency man dispassionately supported the weeping girl and gazed with amused admiration at the red-faced and trembling Dalfor Speem, who was looking wonderingly at his own hand, still knotted in a fist: ‘Hoo-wee!’ said Ableman, ‘There was some anger behind that punch. Feel better, now its out?’

‘Better? Feel better?’ mumbled Speem. ‘I guess – yeah, matter of fact, I do. But I’ve hurt her. Here, let me help you support her.’

‘Support? Help?’ Ableman seemed disgusted. ‘I just want her conscious, with all her internal organs in place, for what we’re going to do to her in the next few hours – which, Mr Ableman, will make that little tap in the guts seem like child’s play. Eh?’ he said, shoving his face right into the weeping girl’s and gripping her cheeks so her lips stuck out, round and red and ridiculous, ‘like CHILD’S PLAY, Sandy, and we know what that means, don’t we?’

The girl just stared dumbly back at him, a lock of blonde hair, darkened by sweat, falling over and hiding one eye; it was not hiding the flicker of resentment in the other eye, which Speem wondered if only he could see.

The robot emitted a noise which sounded incongruously like a human sigh. A faint drone could be heard within the shiny black body, as of a motor running down, and a noise like a system depressurizing when a valve is popped. Sandy moaned and wriggled with discomfort but, Speem noticed, did not now seem to want to open her mouth in complaint.

‘Cycle complete,’ the robot announced through the down-turned, perpetually sneering grille that was its mouth.

‘Er...’ said Speem, and the robot whipped its cylindrical head round to face him.

Speem’s curious,’ said the robot. ‘Wants to know about invagination, don’t you, Speem.’

‘Well, actually...’

The robot’s hands unclamped from the girl’s thighs, leaving two deep red welts, and thumped closed under her arms. There were small gas escapes and wet sounds of suction and release from between her legs and then she was lifted bodily, with no obvious effort at all, off the robot’s groin and left to dangle in the air, chin on breast and weeping quietly, ignored by men and robot.

Ableman beckoned Speem closer, and pointed to part of the robot’s groin equipment with the stylus from his data pad. ‘See here, this is the invagination tube. This slides in the female and, after the robot, in this case our Hector here, makes her vagina airtight, this tough carbon-plastic sleeve inflates – like this.’ Speem heard the same hissing, but louder, as it was outside Sandra’s body now, and saw the rod inflate for most of its length like a small grey balloon, about two inches in diameter.

‘Saves you a lot of trouble and opens up a high-road to happiness. Try squeezing it,’ said Ableman.

Reluctantly, flinching from the contact, Speem put finger and thumb either side of the tight tube. He was surprised to find it warm, slightly resilient but apparently firm and solid. ‘Inert gas at very high pressure,’ said Ableman. ‘You could lift a train with that.’

Speem imagined a force that could lift a train at work inside his five year old partner’s vagina, and felt his penis stiffening.

Ableman pointed at the inch or so of fine tube which projected beyond the end of the inflated section of the invagination device. ‘Every so often, the girl gets a squirt of MD23 – it’s a cocktail of enzymes, synthetics and GM transporters – basically, it does a landscaping job on the bio-chemistry of the vaginal walls. OK, Hector,’ said Ableman,’ slapping the dangling girl familiarly on the rump, ‘finish her now.’

‘You mean, that isn’t it?’ said Speem, eyeing the thick carbon-plastic sausage with mingled anxiety and excitement.

‘Oh dear me no,’ said Ableman, winking at Speem and nodding amusedly at the girl, who was also gazing, in horrified fascination, at the inflated grey tube sticking jauntily out from the robot’s crotch. ‘A healthy five year having normal sex with an adult would hardly notice an object of that size inserted into her vagina. No, that was just the preliminary cycle – the main pumping cycle begins now, with a LOT more pressure – it’s the only way to enlarge this kiddy’s cunt quickly, to what it should be after six months of fucking with her man.’ And Ableman caught the girl by the chin and said the last few words directly into her face, then forced her to look back at the tube.

‘No, Mr Speem, this time the invagination tube will expand to three times that size, after it’s inside her of course. Hector, please demonstrate.’

There was a brief silence, broken only by a very faint ticking, a relay closed, and there came the familiar hiss as pressurized gas was pumped into the invaginating device at the robot’s groin. Both Speem and his girl-partner, the latter uttering little whimpers of terror, stared at the carbon-plastic tube as it became fatter and longer, growing steadily until it was as big round as a man’s arm and only the tip of the fluid squirt could be seen protruding from the end.

Sandy made a little noise and tried to bury her head in Speem’s shoulder. The adult man unthinkingly stepped back, avoiding contact, and said, ‘My god!’ a big smile spreading over his face.

‘Speem’s cheered up,’ said the robot. ‘He’s going to be really happy later on.’

‘Never mind about that,’ said Ableman sharply, ‘just carry on and cunt this child up to size, or we won’t be doing anything later on.’

The robot deflated the invaginating tube and began to lower the struggling child onto the slim cylinder at its core. Her futile jerks and twistings, strengthened by panic and terror, grew all the greater as she felt her thighs touch the robot’s casing and the tip of the invaginator tickled the cleft between her labia. Then, the tube and its base speared up and into the target hole, the girl squealed with shock and fear, there was an explosive hiss, much, much louder and more prolonged that before and –

‘Behold,’ said Ableman, with a grand gesture, ‘Little Sandy becomes a woman!’

Actually, Speem thought, the wet twitching thing spraddled across the robot’s pumping groin looked more a scarlet-faced frog in it death-agonies. Ableman was enjoying himself, bending down to the girl’s head-height, close to her big open mouth of agony as hoarse grunts and sub-human gurgles came welling up from the deep dark pit of her tortured sex. ‘What was that, baby Sandy?’ he said, in silly mincing tones, ‘did oo want a cuddle?’ Then, as the bestial noises uttered by the five year old settled to a regular NNNGGH! NNNGGH! NNNGGH!’ Ableman called Speem’s attention to what was going on in her lower belly. Both men watched, fascinated at the sight of the girl’s chubby belly and pubis alternately growing and shrinking, pulsing in time to the repeated inflation of the gas-powered invaginator.

‘Have a feel,’ said Ableman, watching Speem’s face carefully.

Speem put a hand on the girl’s stomach, then shifted it down to the top of her bulging vulva. He had to stand close to the robot to do this and felt a thrill of power, sensing the flow of high-pressure gas and mechanical energy into the tiny body of the five year old.

The robot startled him when it suddenly spoke: ‘Mrs Speem?’ It was speaking to Sandy yet it hardly seemed possible that she...

‘Yes?’ she said, through gritted teeth, ‘yes?’ and tried to focus bloodshot eyes on the robot’s face, supporting her body with her two small hands either side of its chest casing.

‘Try to relax, Mrs Speem,’ said the robot. Pulse, pulse, pulse went the thing inside her.

‘I’m ... trying ...,’ said Sandy, forcing the words out in the intervals between the invaginator’s expansions, ‘ can’t take ... much ...uugh ... more .. of ...’

‘You are wrong there,’ said the robot. It turned its head towards Speem and one of its eyes went blank for a second: it had winked at him. ‘You can take a lot more in there, Mrs Speem, a LOT more.’

The little girl’s eyes narrowed for an instant and then came the squealing – ‘No, please, no, NO, NO – OOOO!’

Speem’s eyes, and Ableman’s too, for he had wandered over for a look at what was going on, were riveted on the rounded pink base of the girl’s belly, where it met the shiny black shell of the robot. The top of the pubis, just above the cylindrical plug which filled her outer vaginal opening, was visibly expanding, like a balloon. Sandy looked down at herself and screamed louder than seemed possible for a five year old: the skin of her belly was taut and shiny and bulging ever further out as the robot calmly increased the size of the gas-filled penis thrusting and pumping inside her tiny loins.

‘Next cycle,’ said the robot laconically, and Ableman nodded.

There was a new sound, an intermittent muted buzzing, as of tiny servo-motors performing some delicate operation and the robot seemed to have to concentrate, all external movement ceasing, its head still too, as if all its senses were directed inward, as if it were feeling its way towards something, something hidden, something small, sensitive, elusive .....

‘AAAAAAAA GGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNN GGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!’

‘Bingo!’ said Ableman, grinning and planting a big kiss on the five year-old’s tear-stained cheek; but her sightless eyes were fixed on something no one there could see and her face had gone dead white.

‘What’s happening? What’s it done now? Is she... is she ...?’ said Speem.

‘She’s not a happy bunny,’ said Ableman, ‘but there’ll be no permanent damage. Hector’s found and penetrated the entrance to her cervix. Now the fun REALLY starts.’

Speem watched, uncertain whether to be worried or not, as the robot changed its shape again, adopting what in a human would have been a sitting position while keeping the girl firmly impaled on the invaginating equipment at its groin. The little girl was then lowered so that she was lying on her back along the bulbous segmented legs, her own lower limbs spread limply either side of the mechanical man’s waist, her splayed buttocks jammed sweatily against its hard black front.

Sandy’s obscenely bulging genitals and lower belly were more prominent in her new position. Ableman stooped over her and callously jabbed a forefinger into the distended flesh of the little girl’s pubic mound – which was rapidly turning into a pubic hill.

‘Hmm,’ he said, then did it again, several times, until he was rewarded with a deep despairing groan from the weakly bucking child. ‘Just about there,’ he said to the robot. ‘Give her a squirt of womb trank then start inflating it.’

A small clear voice suddenly filled the room and drew all their attentions, even the robot’s. ‘Dalfor, you cannot let them mess around with my womb. All right, I accept the other stuff ... I’ve been ... bad ... unkind to you, but you can’t, they can’t...’

‘Can’t?’ said Ableman, before Speem could think of a reply. The agency man went quickly to one of the bags he had brought in and took from it a square black box, which he opened. ‘There’s very little we can’t do these days, Mrs Speem, as you will find out. Hold her arms, would you, Mr Speem?’

Speem want automatically to the lower end of the robot and took hold of the girl’s small round wrists, as unmarked and pale as a doll’s. ‘No need to tug, just keep her highness from interfering for a second,’ said Ableman, poring over the silver instruments nestling in the dark velvety interior of the box he had opened. After a few moments, the agency man selected two or three items and turned his attention to the nude pink and white form of the helpless five year-old.

‘Wonderful things, implants,’ he said. ‘Don’t know what anyone did without them. Opening doors, turning the heating on and off, even making netcalls – what a brave new world, eh? What’s she got in her head,’ he said to Speem, ‘a standard US systems device?’

‘No...er...no...’ said Speem, ‘I bought her a Lucky Skies multi-channel. She...er...really likes Chinese stuff.’

‘I bet she does,’ said Ableman, ‘considering it’s three times the price. You spoil her, Mr Speem, you really do. However,’ he went on, before Speem could reply, ‘it makes what I’m about to do real easy. Lucky Skies – multi-channel, you say. OK...,’ and he made an adjustment on a small silver device, like a thick medallion, which was attached to a length of narrow black ribbon. ‘There we go,’ he said, ‘should do the trick. Now, hold still...’

He encircled the recumbent little girl’s neck with the ribbon, cinching it up to a tight fit before pressing its velcro tabs together; the chunky silver disk pressed against the child’s throat, right in the hollow between her delicate collarbones.

‘Looks kinda cute,’ said Ableman, admiring his own handiwork. ‘Kitten collar, you know? What d’ya think,’ he said to the girl, looking down on her like an uncle with his favourite niece at bed-time, ‘not too tight I hope?’

The little pre-teen, apprehensive and pale-faced, licked her lips nervously. Her tiny fingers, now released by her partner at Ableman’s injunction, crept like the fronds of a pink sea-anemone to feel the object hanging at her neck.

‘Oops!’ said Ableman, ‘almost forgot,’ and with a deft movement pressed the last item he had taken out of the box into the girl’s hand. It was a small pair of needle-nosed pliers. The five year-old looked them in puzzlement, frowning: ‘Dalfy,’ she began, ‘I’m...’

A tiny chime, like the ringing of an elfin bell, sounded from the silvery medallion at her throat, and a minute but very bright red light winked on at its centre. The child-woman frowned, tilted her head down so that she could see her own chest, carefully positioned the pliers, jaws open, then closed them firmly on her own nipple, the left one.

Tears jetted from her eyes, she was gagging with the pain, but she kept the child-sized tool clamped on her own nipple with the fierce concentration of a five year-old writing her own name; her tongue was slightly sticking out. Ableman hooted with laughter, doubling up and slapping his thigh. ‘Have you ever,’ he gasped, ‘seen anything so funny?’

Speem, for all his divided sympathies, had to agree. The naked child was going practically cross-eyed with the effort of focusing on her own nipple. Her soft little hand could not bring any great pressure to bear on the plier-handles but the wickedly sharp steel jaws did not require much effort to dig deep into the puckered coral teat, which they were visibly doing.

‘Why...but why...?’ said Speem, bemused.

‘Implant feedback,’ said Ableman, recovering. ‘Developed by the military, licensed to semi-governmental agencies like the prison service – and the Pedophile Agency. Damn useful for recalcitrant types, the mouthy ones who always know better.’

‘But she’s torturing herself!’ said Speem, who had noticed a tiny bead of crimson welling slowly from the five year old’s nipple.

‘Yeah – great, isn’t it?’ said Ableman. ‘The throat device picks up sub-vocals before she can speak them and sends commands to her nervous system and musculature via her implant. In other words, if she feels the impulse to mouth off, she immediately finds herself adjusting the tension on her own tits, or some other nice sensitive spot – like I say, wonderful!’

‘I guess so,’ said Speem slowly. Sandy had laid the pliers aside with a quivering hand and lay back, arms flung wide, apparently exhausted. A stab of warm affection for her went through him. She looked so small, so fragile, and she had been having such a hard time...’

‘Not yet, my friend,’ said Ableman softly into his ear. ‘There’ll be a time to go misty-eyed about your little lover, but she doesn’t deserve that yet.’ He squatted down beside the little girl. ‘Now then, Sandy,’ he said, in the slow firm tones of a teacher dealing with a slow pupil, ‘you have committed a very serious offence: denial of womanhood. Little girls who pretend they are not sexed up and ready for a good shafting from a nice stiff prick every night of the year need to learn different. Your vagina, or cunt as I’d like you to call it, is now more the proper size for a girl who is living with an adult man. I think you know that, don’t you? No need to speak, just nod.’

The five year old slowly inclined her head and the sweat-darkened curls swung forward and back.

‘Now,’ said Ableman, ‘we’re going to teach you a lesson using your internal reproductive organs, the parts that make you a woman, the parts you’ve been pretending don’t exist.’

The panicky little girl tried to speak and, helpless under the command of the Agency’s implant controller, was forced to grab the pliers again and stab them into her own navel before she gave up and sank back in apathetic despair.

‘You’re learning,’ said Ableman grimly. ‘Now then, Hector has penetrated you about as thoroughly as a woman can be penetrated, so you’re probably cunt-aware. Now you’re going to find out about the fertile little honey-pot to which your cunt is just the front door. And while you find out on the inside, your partner, Dalfor, is going to watch. And you will both learn a lesson you will not forget.

‘Inflate the womb?’ said the robot. Ableman gave a curt nod. The robot leaned forward, its red stare fixed on the tiny girl’s face; she for her part lay partly propped up on her elbows and gazed back at the soulless mechanism with the big blank eyes of an exhausted herbivore in a trap. Her little thighs and buttocks were quivering with terror, her mouth opened and closed but no sound came out; slowly, blindly her hand reached out, found Speem’s and held it tightly.

For a few seconds nothing seemed to be happening. The big bulge at the top of her vagina just seemed to quiver slightly while deep inside the child’s body could be heard tiny sounds, whirs and hisses. Ableman quietly handed Speem a card with several lines of printed text. ‘When it starts,’ said the agency man, ‘you’re to read this to her, say exactly what’s on the card.’

Speem read a few words and cast him a startled look,

‘Trust me, it’s all part of the treatment,’ said Ableman.

Suddenly the little girl drew in her breath in a great shocked gasp. Something was obviously happening now. Her tummy button, reddened by the brief assault from the pliers, was slowly but surely rising up, on the back of a bigger and bigger, a more and more rounded swelling. Inch by inch, in the space of a few minutes, the five year old abdomen was growing to the size and shape of full-term pregnancy.

Sandy began to scream, rhythmically, powerfully, great tearing screams, each one with a grinding component of mindless agony. Ableman nodded at Speem. ‘Now. Go on!’

Speem squatted by the pain-racked girl and read from the card.

‘This is what happens,’ he intoned, rather lifelessly, ‘to ungrateful little cows who don’t deliver on what they promise.’

Sandy didn’t seem to be listening. The naked five year-old’s bulging belly creaked with the strain as it grew, blown up by massive forces within, and she had gone past the point of screaming, producing peculiar noises from her throat, gurgles and grunts, while her eyes were either tight shut or threatening to leave their orbits completely.

‘I’d call you a whore,’ read Speem, right into one of Sandy’s perfect little pink ears, ‘only that’s too good for you. Even a whore would be ashamed to behave as you have done, you filthy debased deceitful treacherous bag of poisonous scum.’

‘Womb’s holding nicely,’ announced the robot. ‘Want me to do her nipples?’

‘Why not,’ said Ableman, ‘go ahead, it’ll save time.’

Twin red laser beams lanced out of the robot’s eyes and played with cruel accuracy on the naked child’s little pink nipples. Smoke spurted out at the base of each teat which, within a microsecond, was surrounded by weeping carbonized flesh.

‘Wow,’ said Ableman admiringly, ‘I’ve got to hand it to your wife, Speem, she hardly turned a hair. I’ve seen ‘em practically tear their own tits off when that happened. Mind you, she is having her womb inflated by a particularly pissed robot – go easy, Hector, we don’t want to rip her apart – not this time anyway, ha ha, just joking Speems. Well read by the way.’

‘Should I do the last bit?’ said Speem.

‘No, there’s something else,’ said Ableman, ‘hold on ...’ The agency man went to the robot and spoke to it quietly. Speem could only catch the occasional word: ‘...she’s big enough...yes, but what...how appropriate ... brilliant, just the job...Speem can deliver it...’

Ableman returned to where Speem squatted by Sandy’s thrashing head. ‘Got a job for you,’ he said. ‘I’d do it myself normally but I think you’ll like this, and it frees me to prepare something else.’

Prepare what?’ said Speem rudely. He was beginning to feel tired. What the hell must Sandy be feeling like. All at once, he found himself wishing the Pedo agency’s visit were over.

‘Never you mind,’ said Ableman. ‘This is the last stage, OK? Let’s get it right, and you can be fucking this little tease six times a night from here to doomsday, if you got it in ya! Now listen, I want you to grab her arms, brace your feet against the robot’s and pull like you’re in a boat race. We gotta stretch the bitch – I mean Sandy – give her insides a bit of room for what’s coming, tone her up – you’ll see.’

Wearily, Speem sat down as instructed and took each of his child-lover’s soft wrists. She turned her head up to look at him but, obviously mindful of the agency’s device at her throat, did not dare utter a word. In any case she was soon overtaken by another spasm of agony as the delicately trembling little sack within her soft belly was pumped up bigger and tighter still by the copulating robot’s questing metal proboscis. Speem leant back, snapping the girl’s arms straight, and he heard her joints crack. Because of her stark nakedness, he could follow the bunch and stretch of her protesting muscles, the bending of her fragile bones, as he put his full adult strength into racking her slim little body. He saw the robot tighten its mechanical hold on her slender thighs in two convulsive movements as it compensated for his efforts, and heaved harder on the five year old’s arms. As he saw her ribs expand and rise, her charred nipples stick out, saw her shoulder-joints rotate and f ollow her stretched upper-arms until they threatened to pop right out of their sockets, Speem felt his penis hardening and, script or no script, words came to his lips: ‘How do you like this?’ he snarled at the top of the five year-old’s curly head as he wrenched at her arms, ‘Want to complain? Play another game? Well, TOO BAD!’ he shouted, and jerked so savagely at the little girl’s wrists that her upper body left the floor completely and it could be seen from the position of her tiny shoulder blades that several major joints were at the point of complete dislocation. The child said nothing, her head flopping back and forth with his movements, her breathing rough and irregular.

‘Well done,’ said Ableman, coming back from whatever he had been doing. He was holding something, an irregular mass, roughly the size and shape of a pineapple wrapped, so it seemed, in clear plastic film which glistened as if coated with grease. ‘But just keep a steady pressure for a moment,’ he said to Speem, ‘while Hector and I sort out some internal matters.’

‘Now missy,’ said Ableman, addressing the little girl as if she were not agonized and nearly unconscious, ‘a woman’s destiny is in her cunt, tits and womb. Your cunt and tits will now never be the same again, and I hope – I know - you’ll remember your lesson whenever your husband slides his penis into your new woman-sized vagina or you see the word ‘Revert’ which has been laser-branded onto the base of each of your nipples.

‘There is one last part to your lesson, however – playing mommy, Sandy, remember? Your womb, the very centre of your womanhood, that womanhood you have tried to keep back from your poor loving partner, has now been expanded to a size, in proportion to your own, appropriate to giving birth. All it lacks is a baby. Hector is now going to put that right.’

The little girl seemed to snap back into full consciousness at this last sentence, her eyes opening wide on the word ‘baby’. Ableman meanwhile took the glistening package and introduced it into a hatch in the robot’s back – but not before he had held it up briefly for Speem’s benefit and winked: at first Speem thought it was one of Sandy’s dolls, the ones she had been playing ‘mother’ with on the Pedo Agency’s arrival; but Sandy’s dolls were not black and shiny all over, they did not have cylindrical heads, nor did they have red glowing eyes and – and this was a clincher – they did not have the segmented arms, legs and fingers which could be half-seen stirring with insectoid vitality under the glistening plastic caul.

For what Ableman was holding was nothing other than a miniature version of Hector 3, wrapped in a filmy tegument like a greasy mockery of a placenta. The hatch in the robot’s lower back received the film-wrapped horror into a kind of cartridge-chamber, with an efficient hiss and ‘pock’ of a valve closing and then there was movement at its groin and a simultaneous low wailing groan from the helpless little female whose crotch was held there by the inexorable grip of the shiny black three-fingered hands. The vacuum plug was opening up, reforming and growing in circumference. Metal slid on metal in a spiralling motion and the five year-old’s labia were stretched and stretched again as a massive aperture opened up, a gaping black hole into the child’s interior. The great-bellied girl found new energy to twitch her hips in protest but in truth could do very little with her husband tugging remorselessly on her outstretched arms and the robot so completely the master of her loins.

‘Always impressive when he does this,’ said Ableman companionably to the wondering Speem. ‘Even when you know how it’s done. For the last few seconds he’ll have been pumping a special MGA gel into the end of her vagina, building up the pressure to equal that inside the womb. At the critical moment, he’ll stimulate the mouth of the cervix to open and literally shoot that robot-baby into the kid’s guts, along with the gel, which immediately absorbs the gas that’s kept the womb inflated.’

Even as he said the words, there was an explosive hiss from the junction between robot and girl, a distinct ‘thud!’ from inside her, the taut white belly twitched and shuddered and the child roared, bellowing her pain and fear red-faced up into Speem’s smiling and finally-gratified countenance. ‘You can let go her arms,’ said Ableman. ‘Feels good, don’t it?’

The robot noisily decoupled from the girl, tendrils of various fluids natural and man-made trailing from the complicated equipment as it slid smoothly back into his groin. Sandy’s vaginal opening had shrunk back to something like normal size as soon as the expansion ring had been withdrawn, but above it the great mound of her loaded belly stood out as big as ever.

‘Upsy daisy,’ said Ableman, taking hold of the girl under one arm and signalling Speem to lift her under the other. They got her to her feet but she immediately collapsed and it was not until the third attempt that she managed to stand, on wobbly legs, her pregnant belly, with its load of gel and robot-baby, hanging enormous in front of her.

“There now,’ said Ableman, not unkindly, ‘back on your feet in no time.’

‘Of course,’ he went on, undoing his pants and motioning to Speem to do the same, ‘part of being a woman is not using pregnancy as an excuse for denying your hardworking husband his nightly fuck. On the bed, woman!’

Sandy’s lower lip quivered and she seemed about to say something but thought better of it and closed her mouth. Resignedly she trudged towards the big bed and pathetically tried, and failed, to clamber up onto it. Her bulging abdomen was just too much in the way. Ableman, who had followed her unsteady steps over to the bed, drew back his foot and kicked her hard on her small white buttocks, just at the base where the cleft broadened out into the perineum and met the vaginal pouch. The five year-old emitted a startled grunt and flew the rest of the way onto the bed where she sprawled flat on her face.

‘They’re all the same,’ said Ableman with a grin at Speem, ‘lazy little cows, unless you teach them better. Now then ...’ and the Pedo agency man, long erect penis waving from his opened pants, threw himself on the child, pulled her up by the hips onto all fours and buggered her with cruel efficiency, entering her in one merciless thrust and achieving his orgasm after about twenty deep slow stabs into the pre-teen’s bottom, each push ending with a strong upward lift which actually made the girl’s knees leave the bed for a second.

‘Whew, what a hot bitch, I swear she was humping me back, there at the end,’ said Ableman as he pulled with vicious lack of care out of the five year-old’s puckered anus, nearly bringing her tight rectum out along with the still engorged head of his penis. ‘Your turn, man,’ he said. ‘Let’s hear her scream. Fifty dollars says she comes this time.’

His heart pumping quick and hard, Speem got up on the bed and turned the little girl over on her back. She gazed at him over her enormous belly, expressionless, then slowly, mechanically, drew her legs up and opened them as far as they would go, even pulling at her own thighs with her small hands to ensure her sex was as open as physically possible. His penis had never felt so big and hard. He stared down, fixated on the pink gash between her legs, open and weeping fluids, animal and welcoming as never before – it was the split ripe rump of a female in season, ready to be subdued by a confident male - him. Speem’s blood roared in his head as he mounted what was presented to him so completely, inner thigh, pubic mound, vulva and the sweet scented target at the centre, yielding, moist, his hairy belly pressed against the pulsing furnace of the five year-old’s full womb. The head of his penis butted through the elastic resistance of the little girl’s vaginal entrance and slid sm oothly in to the lubricated paradise beyond. One – two – three – four, in harsh, jerking thrusts, he copulated with the tiny girl under him with bestial urgency. He worked his way so far up her body that her head was lost to view somewhere under his belly. Resentful, he reached down blindly, found her soft smooth breasts and clawed them in time with his rutting, then grabbed the child’s tiny buttocks and attacked her sex with full adult ferocity, driving her up the length of the bed until her neck was pressed against the headboard.

‘Don’t break her neck,’ said Ableman softly, ‘though god knows she probably deserves it. There’s more fun to come.’

It is doubtful whether Speem heard these words, for just at that moment he was emptying six months worth of semen into the warm wet folds of his little lover’s brand new vagina. Ungh, ungh, ungh ... longer and longer went on the spasms and spurts, and all the while the girl mutely held herself open to his seed, impassive. Ungh, ungh, ungh... would it never end? Then, underneath him, a miracle: first, a little quiver in the tiny loins, then a tentative upward push, then another, stronger bucking movement of the hips; a breathy moan came out of the open pink lips, then a deeper sound, a groan. ‘She’s coming!’ shouted Ableman delightedly, stooping close to have a good look, ‘what did I tell ya, you’ve brought the little bitch off! And see, she’s hating it!’ And it was true; and knowing it was true, Speem triumphed, gloating over the big-bellied little animal underneath him.

Sandy’s spectacular orgasm went on for longer than Speem would have thought possible, peaking even as the last potent spurts of his hot seed spent themselves against her tightly closed cervix. Afterwards, grinning like an idiot, Speem dismounted from the warm wet little body underneath him and wiped his penis on the bed cover.

‘I guess you won’t be having any trouble in that department in future, Mr Speem,’ said Ableman with a smile. ‘Now it’s the robot’s turn.’

‘The robot?’ said Speem, looking confusedly from the tiny figure of the girl, curled up now on the embroidered cover, to the menacing black machine where it waited in silence at the foot of the double bed.

‘Sure,’ said Ableman, ‘you’ll see, you’ll enjoy this.’ The agency man got onto the big bed and walked over it to the naked little girl where she lay, curled up around her great pregnant belly. He stirred her with his foot. ‘Wake up you ungrateful little cow,’ he said. ‘Women don’t sleep after sex, men do.’ He reached down, grabbed the little girl by her heels and hauled her bodily down to the foot of the bed and the waiting robot. ‘You disgusting little whore,’ he shouted into the girl’s face. ‘You enjoyed me sodomizing you, fucking you in the ass, me, a stranger, you loved it, didn’t you?’

‘And as for you coming, slut, having your filthy orgasm, pleasuring yourself when your hardworking, long-suffering man is getting the first bit of sexual satisfaction you’ve deigned to offer him in six months...well, I think you’ve still got something to learn about being a woman, a good woman, one who deserves a man like Dalfor here.’

The girl looked up at the agency man drowsily, her enormous blue eyes half-closed; she seemed about to say something, but again thought better of it and kept her mouth shut, her little hand straying unconsciously towards the thick silvery medallion tied around her neck. Instead, she lay back on the bed, put her arms straight out behind her head and, with a tiny sigh, opened her legs and shut her eyes.

Ableman quietly got off the bed. ‘Hey!’he whispered to Speem, ‘look, remember this moment – that’s how we want her, OK?’

‘OK,’ whispered Speem, feeling his penis hardening and rising again, ‘OK.’

‘Sandra Rose Speem,’ intoned Ableman out loud, standing over the passive pink and white form of the naked five year-old, ‘you are almost at the end of the treatment for your denial of womanhood. Your vagina has been upgraded to the condition it would have been left in by six months of sexual intercourse with a full-grown male. Your nipples have been burnt, scarred and branded, to remind you of your shame, and that a woman’s sensitive parts make it futile for her to challenge a male. The implant-controller at your neck may be removed by your husband if he sees fit – personally I would make you wear it for a while. Your womb which, along with your ovaries, is at the centre of your femininity, now carries an artificial baby as big in proportion to your present size as a full-term infant is to a thirty-five year old. This artificial pregnancy is to bring home to you, once and for all, your nature and responsibility as a woman. You, Sandy, as a woman, are no more than a sack of eg gs and a wet slit between two useless legs, topped by a pair of milk-teats. The only time the oozing bag slung between those big wide hips makes any sense is when you manage to get your man’s stiff cock interested in dumping a load of seed in it. The cock does not want to know what you think, it does not need to know how you’re feeling, for the erect penis and seed-filled testicles which together represent your only reason for being, your personality is just an inconvenient by-product which it would be better for everyone to erase completely – a point which I think we can make with...’

and here Ableman bent down and rummaged in one of the bags by his feet,

‘...a point which we can make with this,’ he said, and he up holding a dull black sphere, about the size of a bowling ball, with a hole some four inches across in one face. ‘Tip her forward, will you?’ he said to Speem and, as Sandy’s husband, nursing a three-quarters inflated penis and wanting to fuck his wife again, lifted the unresisting little girl’s upper body off the bed-cover, Ableman popped the sphere open along a toothed seam and then closed it over the pre-teen’s head.

‘There you go,’ said Ableman. ‘Nothing, from the neck up. C’mon, get her on her feet.’

The naked girl, her grossly overcharged belly wagging and bouncing in front of her, was slid off the bed and made to stand up, blindly feeling around her and occasionally staggering as she lost her balance.

Ableman beamed down with professional pride at the strange figure of the tiny nude body with the big black ball for a head. ‘There ya go,’ he said again. ‘All the important bits, minus the know-it-all bitch on top

‘Can she breathe?’ said Speem, ‘I mean...’

‘She’ll be fine,’said Ableman absently, searching on one of the big grey bags again and eventually producing a pair of small red and shiny high-heeled shoes. He gave the girl a cursory push in the chest and she sat down hard on the carpet with an ‘oof’ barely audible through the black ball which completely encased her head. The agency man deftly fastened the little feet into the sling-backs and then hauled the girl upright, giving her a push so that she staggered a few feet across the floor, turned her ankle on the awkward high heel, hit the wall, bounced off and tottered blindly straight into the robot’s open arms, which closed upon her.

Ableman was beside himself with laughter and Speem too was smiling broadly – the five year-old really did look stupid, blundering about on those high heels, trying to support that big sagging belly in front and just that anonymous, featureless, characterless bowling-ball for a head.

‘Go on,’ said Ableman, unwrapping a stick of chewing gum and flinging himself relaxedly into a chair, ‘give her another one. Hector won’t mind waiting for his turn – he’ll even hold her open for you, won’t you Hector?’

‘Yes,’ said the robot, ‘I’ll hold her open, if Speem can avoid ejaculating before he gets his penis inside her.’

And it was true that Speem’s sexual excitement was threatening to spend itself on the bedroom carpet. He willed himself to put off the inevitable climax and his throbbing purple organ subsided somewhat.

The robot lifted the girl with her back to his gleaming black front, supporting her with its segmented arms under the hips and thighs, its powerful hands clenched shut around her legs, grasping them in the crook of each knee. With a smooth, powerful motion it opened the five year-old’s legs so wide that the big ligaments at the inside tops of her thighs looked ready to burst through the skin. A very faint keening sound could be heard through the featureless black sphere which enclosed the little girl’s head but the odd thing was, Speem found, that you just didn’t care. Robbed of a face, that soft white body became a thing without intelligence, the hungry pink petals of its sex opening greedily between feeble white haunches which said nothing except take, crush, pierce and penetrate – anything, you may do anything, short of quenching the boiling cauldron of new life at the centre.

Speem stepped inside the broad pale vee of the girl’s splayed legs, guided his massive erection into the gaping vagina, rammed it home and found himself face to face with the robot. ‘Well done Speem,’ said the robot. ‘A few more like that and I’ll be out of a job.’

‘Wha...? Ungh! Ungh! What?’ gasped Speem, too locked-in to the accelerating cadence of his rasping thrusts into the starfish of five year-old flesh to give any serious thought to the robot’s sarcasm. He looked down at the featureless black sphere encasing the girl’s head and at the startlingly white flesh of the flat chest below it, the full belly and the stick-thin arms flopping uselessly down from the narrow shoulders and felt an intoxicating sense of power: ‘Bitch! You little cow! Whore! Take it, take it all the way, I’m gonna split you open!’ he shouted, not at the anonymous bowling-ball of a head but down between the girl’s legs, down at the sloppy soaking pink folds of her sex which hungrily sucked him back in at each withdrawal until, for the second time, a niagara of sperm filled the child’s quim, this time flooding back out again, actually spurting back under pressure through the tight seal between vaginal opening and slippery penis. He pulled the still-engorged knob of his shaft out with some difficulty and stepped back, gazing fondly at the mess that had been made of the little girl’s once neat vulva and trim tucked-in crack. Her whole pubic mound, under the larger mass of her grotesquely distended belly, was suffused with an angry red, the vulva puffed up and weeping great strings of mucous and other secretions from a ragged split, framed by fat bruised labia which could do nothing to conceal or retain the multiple wrinkles and folds of the inner lips and the red-raw opening to the vaginal tunnel which sagged open and flared like a trumpet mouth, all its secrets exposed.

Something was being put into his hand. It was the wooden handle of a tapering, three-foot whip, metal-cored rubber, Speem thought, judging by the weight and stiffness. ‘Hit it,’ Ableman whispered, ‘beat it, pulp it, it’s been laughing at you for six months and now it’s at your mercy – finish it!’

The robot pushed the girl’s pelvis and belly up to meet Speem’s first downward stroke so that the impact was actually greater even than he had been trying for – THWACK! right between the labia, cutting vertically across the vaginal opening and deep into the soft wet flesh he had so recently been humping like a madman. THOCK! a wet, more hollow impact as he changed the angle, looking to get the thin tip of the whip further inside that rudely gaping mouth, then THUD! SMACK! WHACK! belly, breast and thighs; now the robot held the forked meat completely upside down, exposing the big wound between the fleshy globes of the buttocks to the full downward force of the whip and blood and other fluids really began to fly. Ableman joined him, laughing and laying on with an evil bundle of wires like the cat ‘o nine tails from some fetishist Bounty, and shoulder to shoulder they flayed the inverted cup of fair flesh offered up to them by the mechanical servant until it overflowed with brig ht red blood.

Eventually sheer exhaustion forced Speem to lower his arm and Ableman soon followed suit. Wonderingly, Speem tried to recognize his child partner’s anatomy in the bloody ruin which now met his eyes, the fair skin of the thighs and buttocks criss-crossed with so many angry welts and pocky abrasions that they looked like the surface of some meteor-scarred moon, the separate parts of the genitals, which had received the full force of their combined rage, hardly distinguishable any more: the thing between the five year-old’s legs now looked like the wet pile of horrors which slithers from the abdomen of a big gutted fish.

Breathing hard, Ableman shook Speem’s hand. ‘Excellent cunting,’ he said, ‘haven’t seen one done so thoroughly for years. You know, you might like to think about working for the agency – they recruit from time to time. We’ll talk later – right now, I think the little whore’s body has got the message at last – look, the contractions have started, she’s aborting. Let her go, Hector.’

The robot released its hold on the slender heels of the naked inverted body and it fell straight down on the absurd bowling-ball head, bounced then crumpled and lay on its side, the thighs clamped shut, pelvis rocking a little back and forth, little pink hands balled into fists and held up rigid, level with the head; a faint moaning could be heard from the featureless round black ball. The fat belly was alive with movement, tensing and relaxing every few seconds, with more and more urgency seeking to expel the red-eyed thing with which it had been implanted.

‘Last part of the lesson,’ Ableman bellowed at the faceless black head-ball. ‘Giving birth! You wanted to play Mommy, you lying treacherous recidivist little revert – well, now you can – and you are fucking going to watch as well.’ So saying, the agency man pressed the top of the black sphere and it split apart and fell away, revealing a hollow-eyed ashen-faced woman whom Speem, for a moment, did not in the least recognize.

‘Sandy?’ he said, ‘Sandy?’

The little woman did not respond; her blank eyes did not change in expression, she just lay on her side, cradling her crawling belly now in cupped hands and whimpering quietly to herself, waiting.

‘Come on Speem,’ said Ableman, ‘let’s get this whore to a mirror so she can see what being a woman really means.’

The two men grabbed the small shapely legs by an ankle each and roughly dragged the bloody rump and bulging drum-tight torso across the carpet, leaving a bloody smear all the way. Speem suggested the full length mirror in the en-suite shower-room and Ableman shoved a low bedside table against it then flung the big-bellied female flat on her back on the table, her feet, in the shiny red high-heeled ‘fuck-me’ shoes, pressed up against the reflective glass. And all the time the child-woman gazed at nothing, said nothing, was nothing, her flayed thighs flopping obediently apart to Ableman’s peremptory slaps; but when he dragged her head up off the table, by the hair, it just dropped back down with a sharp crack.

‘Damn – we’ve gotta get the cow’s head up enough for her to watch her own abortion,’ said Ableman. ‘How strong’s that rail, Speem, d’ya think?’ Within seconds, Ableman had fetched a length of thick blue nylon rope from his bag. It had a loop at one end, fastened upon itself with a metal sleeve. It was the work of a moment to throw the loop – or noose, in fact – over the shower-curtain rail and slip it around the unresisting girl’s slim neck and pull it tight under her chin. ‘Keep this for a while,’ said the agency man, throwing the implant controller to Speem, who pocketed the device.

‘Nice and easy does it,’ said Ableman cheerfuly and threw all his weight on the free end of the thick blue nylon rope, making the five year-old up sit up with the alacrity of a zombie coming back to life. Retching sounds came from the preteen’s throat, until she discovered how to brace herself and take some of the load off her wind-pipe.

‘Hector!’ cried the agency man and the robot clumped morosely in to join them in the small shower-room. ‘Now is it my turn?’ said the robot. ‘I’ve been waiting, you know.’

‘She’s all yours, Hector 3,’ said Ableman.

‘Hector 3b,’ said the robot. ‘Can you hear me?’

Speem looked in puzzlement around the crowded shower-room to see whom the mechanical man was talking to, and then looked even harder when he heard a tinny little voice responding to the robot’s question, indistinct yet near at hand.

‘:::: ... ::::: ... :::::::’

The response, Speem suddenly realized, was coming from the five year-old girl’s overloaded abdomen. Mini-Hector was answering his father.

‘One moment, Hector 3b,’ said the robot, leaned over and thrust its fat black metal fingers into the five year-old girl’s vagina, spreading them, so that the pink-ribbed vaginal tunnel opened up like the gullet of a big snake. ‘Say again Hector 3b,’ the robot boomed up the dark shaft of the supine child’s sex-hole.

‘I said, yeah, I can hear you Dad,’ Sandy’s open-mouthed vagina seemed to reply.

Ableman grinned at Speem’s amazed expression. ‘Don’t see this every day, eh?’ he said. ‘Well, you just wait: you ain’t seen nothing yet!’

‘Now listen carefully, Hector 3b,’ said the larger robot, craning its cylindrical head to look straight into the five year-old’s vaginal cavity. ‘You are in the birth-sac of a young human female and it is trying to expel you. We want this to happen, but not just yet. Do you understand?’

‘Yes Dad.’

‘You will find in your memory a 3D plan of the creature’s internal organs. Have you got that?’

‘Yes Dad,’ replied the small muffled voice inside the girl’s belly.

‘Well done, Hector 3b,’ said the robot, straightening up and pressing lightly on the girl’s lower belly. ‘Now, I want you to find the female’s bladder, coloured green on your chart, and kick it as hard as you can.’

A split second later, WHAM! The tight skin under the big black robot’s fingers bulged frighteningly and the outline of a small square foot showed briefly through. Simultaneously the girl groaned and ejected a stream of urine.

‘Excellent,’ said the larger robot. ‘You have orientated yourself correctly.’

‘Dad! Dad!’ came the tinny little voice from inside the five year old, ‘she’s trying to push us out Dad!’

‘Hold on, son,’ said Hector 3. ‘Fight it, brace your arms and legs.’

At once, four sharp little bumps appeared in the transluscent skin of the girl’s swollen abdomen. She howled and bucked, her humped belly rippling and heaving as it tried to spew its unwanted load out through the oozing birth canal between the limply spread thighs. The paroxysm gradually died down, the urge to contract the womb and drive out its contents temporarily defeated. The girl panted, her face sweaty, matted blonde hair sticking to her shiny forehead.

‘Go to her,’ said Ableman, still keeping tension on the rope which held her head and shoulders up, ‘you’re the surrogate father after all.’ Speem uncertainly went and knelt down by the low table, taking one of Sandy’s small hands in his. She did not seem to notice, just stared straight forward at her own reflection, taking quick shallow breaths.

‘Now, Hector 3b,’ said the robot, ‘between your legs you will find a multi-purpose coupling device – you may have wondered what this is for.’

‘Cor, yes dad,’ replied the muffled voice of the miniature robot from within the girl’s pain-racked body. ‘What does this do then?’

The larger robot bent down again to direct its words more intimately up the girl’s vagina: ‘When a Pedo Agency robot meets a girl ....’ it began slowly, then, straightening up, ‘I’ll tell you all about it later. For now, I want you to find the ends of her Fallopian tubes. There are two, at the top of the womb, like a couple of flared nozzles.’

The girl’s belly seethed for a moment as the robot inside moved around. ‘Got it Dad,’ came the smaller robot’s excited voice. ‘What do I do now?’

‘We’ve done our job on the girl’s vagina, cervix and womb,’ said Hector 3. ‘Now you’re going to have the honour of finishing the little cow off. Insert a Fine-Bore Electrode in each of the Fallopian tubes and keep pushing them along until they reach the ovaries, coloured blue on your chart.’

Sandy’s fingers closed convulsively on Speem’s and her whole body leaped, her buttocks actually leaving the table-top despite the weight of her overloaded belly.

‘It’s squeezing me down again,’ called out Hector 3b. ‘I’m going to grab onto something, here goes...’

Sandy’s grip nearly broke one of Speem’s fingers as she STOOD UP, propelled by a mighty spasm of her buttocks and thighs, at the same time emitting a tortured scream which, amplified in the enclosed tiled space, hurt their eardrums. Ableman was for a moment caught off guard and the taut blue nylon rope around the girl’s neck went slack; then he delightedly hauled it tight again, her neck straightened and the little blonde head was caught and held where it was. She scrabbled for a footing, her high-heeled shoes clacking and scraping on the table, which was shiny and slippery with her own sweat. Then she was standing, straight and still, head up, kept there by the terror aroused by the feeling of the rope on her windpipe, the thing in her belly temporarily forgotten.

‘Well done, Hector 3b,’ said the robot to its miniature self, ‘she felt that, whatever it was. Is your probe touching the ovary yet?’

‘Think so,’ came the reply. ‘Feels sort of – springy. Kind of nice. In fact – cor, Dad, me coupling device is charging up all by itself!’

‘Don’t worry, it’s normal. In a second or two you’ll want to discharge yourself - you just go right ahead, give her one from me as well. Good luck, son.’ They all waited, Speem, Ableman, the little girl, the last with head tilted up and with trembling legs. Then a tinny little voice from the pregnant belly, ‘Cor, FUCKING HELL!’, followed by fizzling sounds, like continuous electrical short-circuits, low down on and either side of the five year-old’s abdomen.

‘Now,’ shouted Ableman to Speem, ‘the cue-card I gave you - read the last bit now.’

Speem took the card from his pocket and read the instructions and script. He looked at Ableman, who nodded encouragingly at the now-standing little girl.

Speem spead the fingers of his right hand and grabbed the child just above the pouting lips of her vulva. Finger and thumb sank in exactly where the sizzling noises were coming from. ‘How do you like your eggs,’ he shouted into her white, drawn face, ‘boiled or fried?’

Then, as Ableman, laughing, threw his weight on the rope and hauled the little preteen blonde off her stiletto-clad feet and watched her jerking as she strangled, the little legs parted, the wet gash gaped and a black-bodied red-eyed robot kicked and elbowed its way out, talking excitedly: ‘Blimey, Dad, those tube things were steaming. It felt great, just great. Can I do it again?’

Later, when Speem said a final goodbye to Ableman and the robot, the incidents of the day were already taking on the strange glamour of a story heard in childhood.

‘She’ll sleep for a long time,’ said Ableman, ‘but there’ll be no lasting physical damage – I won’t say, ha ha, no lasting physical effects, of course. Well, goodbye, Mr Speem – and don’t leave it so long next time.’

‘Oh, there won’t be a ...,’ began Speem, but they were already walking away, the robot whistling through its charging hole.

Just as the ill-assorted pair disappeared into one of the elevators that served Speem’s floor, the doors of the other elevator next to it opened. Speem stayed at his front door, lazily tired after the strenuous day and idly curious to see who was arriving. It was a fussy little man in a dark suit, who surprised and disconcerted Speem by marching straight up to him. ‘You would be Mr Speem, I guess,’ said the little man, with a very severe expression.

‘My name is Renfrew Jeffers,’ he said. ‘I’m from the Pedo Agency. You called us, remember?’

‘Then who...,’ said Speem.