This file is a part of Elf Sternberg's Collected Works on ASSTR.  The
complete archive of Elf's work can be found on his website at:

http://www.drizzle.com/~elf

The author can be contacted at:

mailto:elf@drizzle.com

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                            Katherine Hawkwind

Journal Entry 025 / 00412

Elenya, Narrin 24, 00412

I'd gone back to space. No, I did not intend to find a new place and
create another Pendor, one is quite enough in this universe, thank you.
But I was in search of something to do, for once, and space, especially
the "exploring the new Frontier" type, called me once more.

Life on board The Eldarfaroth is both very much like and very much unlike
some of those classic science fiction shows I grew up on. If you don't
remember any of those old videos, that's okay. Suffice it to say it had
a lot of influence on the way I look at space travel. Yeah, there is
a bridge, and lounges, and cargo holds, and holodecks, and transporter
rooms, and yes, there are androids on board, and non-humans. But, the
crew is a racial cross-section, Felinzi and Mephits and Tindals and a
Dolphin or two, a crew of over a thousand. There is more than one lounge,
though, even one strictly for gays. And I like Captain MacNaughton,
even if his booming voice is an awful affectation, and the Eldarfaroth
isn't a bad ship.

But starships have little use for transporter engineers like me who
have nothing to do when were under Corrane drive, so on the side I teach
physics to a bunch of the staff kids.

Ever had a kid in class who already knew all this stuff? And was
waiting to get to the good parts, but who wouldn't rap about her
thoughts? Kathy's like that. Human, twenty, blonde hair and blue eyes,
but, for some reason she wasn't terribly interesting. Must have been her
folks, they're real scientists. In any event, she was a spoiled child
in my classroom, rolling off theories that would have made a Corrane
engineer blanche. Not terribly social.

But one day she rattled off this... thing. It was some sort of equation,
but I had the ship AI repeat it to me after class. If I was right, it
was a major improvement over Corrane IV theory, which could redefine a
whole line of starships!

Which meant...

Next day, in class. Two hour session. Ended well. People were leaving,
going to the rest of their day.

"Miss Hawkwing, could you please stay after class for a moment?"

Snickers ran about some of the younger ones in the classroom, and that's
all right. She had been a bit bitchy. But, when the class emptied I sat
down and told her "You're amazing, you know that, Kathy? You come in
here, and know everything already, and I don't need you in my classroom,
especially when that equation you rattled off yesterday is better than
anything we have in the line right now. Wait. Yes, I can see that you've
figured out what this means, to you, me, and Parma shipyards. It could
earn you a lot of respect. Therefore, using that equation as a starting
point, you may pass my class entirely if you prove your equation. You
may use the Bonsai labs for this project, and you may take as long as
two weeks. I suggest you start by looking up the Bennetti equations, a
series of incorrect-but-getting there thoughts proposed on Earth before
they even had spaceflight."

She looked at me, after this tirade, and looked as if she was about to
snap at me, but instead she merely said "Yes, sir." and walked out.

Little did I know that that word, "sir," was about to become the basis
of a whole new relationship.

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------

A week later, and I was cooking lambchops (or a synthesized version
thereof), the aroma filling my domicile, when Wendy said "Ahem." That
electronic throat-clearing was getting annoying. She didn't have to do
that. "There's a young lady at your door, a Miss Katherine Hawkwind,
to see you. I believe she's in your physics class."

Snapping a statis field around my meal so it wouldn't burn, I asked Wendy
to tell her to come in. She did so, and slapped a rammark onto the kitchen
counter. "There. The whole thing, proven, with footnotes and bibliography.
Happy now?"

"Almost."

"Almost? What else do you want?"

"Working proof. A working test model."

"You're kidding, right? I don't know that stuff, I'm not an engineer!" Her
chin was quivering.

"All right, then, don't bother. But you get an ninety for my class,
not a one hundred."

She wasn't listening. Odd. She was staring at my bookshelf, which,
believe it or not, is still full of old paper-pressed hardcovers. I
still like something I can carry around, or read on the beach. Much to
my surprise, so do a lot of folks. Books are comfortable, and easy, and
it's my experience that they'll be around for a long time yet. Worse,
even though any librarian AI will press you one in ten minutes, people
still insist of borrowing them from others. I guess there are some things
you can't take out of an intelligent gene pool. "Shardik?"

"Kathy, call me Ken, please, something other than Shardik, huh? That's
a name for offworlders."

"Okay... Ken. Uhm, can I borrow a book?" See what I mean?

"I guess. Sure, go ahead."

"Thanks!" She reached out to the shelf, grabbed one, and headed for
the door. "Oh, and I'll see what I can do about that project. Can I ask
Andraveleskand'r for help?"

She knows Andra? I shrugged. "Sure, as long as your work is on the
testbed."

She nodded, smiling, and headed for the door. I snapped off the statis
field and resumed cooking. I glanced at my bookshelf, curious to see
what she'd taken. I was intrigued. The book she'd taken was considered
a classic of S/M literature.

The Erotic Adventures of Sleeping Beauty, vol. 1, The Claiming of
Sleeping Beauty.

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------

A few weeks later, there came another visit from Miss Hawkwind. I invited
her in. "Hi! How goes your project?"

She shrugged, her expression more nervous than studious, and I wondered.
"It's okay. Testbed's a mess, though. Ugliest pressings of circuitry I
ever did."

"I thought you weren't an engineer."

"I'm not," that shrug again. "I do know what I'm doing though in
hyperfields. But that's not what I wanted to ask you about."

"Oh?"

She sat down at the dining table, her back straight. She paused for a
minute, then began, "You know my parents, right? I'm twenty years old,
y'know, but, well... Ken, I've slept with boys and I've even slept with
girls, but, well, I read that book you loaned me, then I went and got
the others, and..."

She paused again. "I've never felt what I did when I read those books. I
mean, never. Regular sex doesn't do anything for me, it's..."

"Empty? No what you were looking for?"

"Yeah, and I thought, since you had them, I could ask you about it."

I stopped for a long time. I grabbed a glass of iced kfi, and some sugar,
and sat down at the table. "Kathy, I've had those books on my shelves for
over five hundred years. Yeah, Rice is a hot writer, and her ideas are
great, but they're just fantasies. I found them as exciting as you did...
well, maybe not, but I know how you feel."

"You mean, you don't do..."

"I didn't say that." A thought burned in my mind, like a candle. Did I
want to do this? I though about the question as we sat there silently,
her eyes saddened by what she must have thought was my rejection. The more
the though rolled around my mind, the clearer the answer became. She did.

So did I.

"Have you ever done anything like..."

"Like that? Yeah..." I smiled, wistful, I think, " a while ago, but not
from the top."

"You're a bottom?" she said, not quite believing that I'd said that.

"Well, yeah, when the mood strikes me to go out, like to Rhysh or
something, yeah, I tend to be bottom."

"Oh." She said it like that meant that it was all over.

"Kathy, the best masters and mistresses are those that were once slaves
themselves... Ask Lynn."

"Lynn?"

"Ever here of Rhysh?"

"No... oh, wait, isn't that the Valley of Rhysh? I was told by my AI that
I'd learn about that place when I was older." Which meant that when you
were younger, someone instructed your friendly neighborhood AI to not tell
you about things like that, probably under it's own discretion. That's
okay, parents should dictate what kids can and can't get into.

"Yeah, well, Lynn is The Castle's AI."

"Oh, and I take it..."

"Yeah, the Valley is a smorgasbord of stuff like that in the Beauty books.
Anyway, I used to live there."

"And what did you do there?" She asked, suddenly intensely curious.

"Well, let's see. My favorite game they had there is called the Hex Pit.
Uhm, it's an all-male game, for when I had a male trainer. It's a great
game. Some of the people call it a rape-game, but that's really unfair
to the men who play. Rape is an ugly thing; it's one of the reasons I
encourage gun use on Pendor, after all we are far from perfect. But this,
this is different.

"Hex is... well, my trainer, Borodir, took me into this room, and there
were about fifty people there, and in the center is this hex, about four
meters across, lined with ropes. He explained the rules to me, which
are very simple. I get put into the Hex with another contestant, and the
first one to fuck the other wins. So he takes off my collar... yeah, he
led me in on a collar, and put me on the pedestal leading to the Hex. I
stood there, and you gotta believe I was nervous. So he took out this
bottle of oil, and he began to rub it all over my back, and my stomach,
and my neck, and into my hair, and then down back over my legs, and then
his hands were all over my ass, really greasing me up. His palm slipped
in between my cheeks, and his finger was starting to slip its way into
me, greasing me up. Finally, he took hand and began to stroke my cock,
getting me hard.

"So there I was, this hand on my cock, fifty people staring at me, and
they lead the other guy in, and start doing the same thing to him. This
guy was a Mephit, and you know how they are, all wiry and thin? Not this
guy, he was fuckin' huge, with a cock that was well on it's way to being
as big as a soda can, and I swear he had this dark, mysterious expression.
And he grins at me. They start oiling him up, getting it into his fur, and
his trainer is stroking him like Borodir is me, and my legs are tremblin'
because I was so horny, and I knew, I was going to get this guy. So all
of a sudden, Borodir's hand is gone, and I hear some guy yell 'GO!'

"And four meters is not very far. This guy and I were on each other
instantly, trying to wrestle the other to the mat which is just as oily as
we are, and this guy has muscles. He's gorgeous, and rules say I can't
grab his cock or punch him, just wrestle, and he throws me aside. I
rolled, and he came at me again, trying to turn me over, but I slipped
out and slid away. He threw himself across the Hex at me, but I kicked
off a wall and slid out of the way again, but too hard. He went sprawling
across the mat where I'd been, but I slid into another wall and hit my
head, dazed. I looked up, and he was lying facing away from me, his ass in
the air, his tail twitching. No time to think about it, I jumped on him,
my erection humping between his legs, my hands on his biceps, holding him
down. He was snarling and hissing, and I kept trying. I didn't have a free
hand to aim, and his damned tail was in the way, but I kept on, and I felt
something press against my cockhead, and I pushed, and it gave way, I was
in! He yowled, and I felt his ass clench and try to push me out, but I was
in heaven...I heard someone yell 'ONE!' as I went in and I began to fuck
him, right there, anger and force, pounding, and the crowd was chanting,
counting each stroke... 'FIVE'... 'SIX'... he was seriously writhing,
trying to get loose, and I went on, relishing this... this... power...
'NINE'... and I went on fucking him, one hard stroke after another,
and when the crowd reached 'TWELVE!' I jammed my cock into his ass,
and I came, shooting into that heat.

"I must have rolled off of him, but I don't remember doing it. But I do
recall his rolling over and jumping to his feet, glaring at me. Then he
grinned, a good sport, and helped me up. He laughed, and I did to. It was
so funny, it really was. We were told to go clean up, and I did bring him
off in the baths, helping him clean off all that oil out of his pelt. His
name was Aaden, we still keep in touch, he's a great guy. We had a few
drinks afterwards. And when it's not oily, he does have a very sexy tail,
all white with black trim, really bushy, and it almost reaches his head
when it stands on end. And I still say he has the sexiest dark eyes I've
seen on a Mephit.

"But it's not really rape. We both knew exactly what we were getting into
when we went in there, Borodir knew I'd like that kind of game. Actually,
I've lost that game more often than I've won, and it's still just as fun.
It's very masculine, really, the predator type games that women just
don't get into for the most part. The using."

She stared at me, looking aroused. "You... you did things like that?"

"Sure, why not?" I'd decided. "Kathy, " I said, grabbing a pad of paper
and a pen, "can you remember this word?" I wrote it down, and made her
pronounce it, several times, until she had it perfect and memorized.
"Good. Let's talk. There's a lot in the Beauty books, and you're going
to have to sit here and tell me what in those books made you... hot."

"Okay, well... I liked the scene in the castle, y'know, when the queen
first punishes beauty. And I liked the scene in the dungeon. The kitchen I
didn't like, and I didn't like the scenes in public, like the bridle path.
Uhm, I don't want to be a pony," (I smiled at that- as I recall, Mrs. Rice
didn't put women in bridle-and-bit, and for that matter, neither does
Lynn), "but a tent princess sounds like fun. I liked the scenes at the
sultan's, where the slaves are isolated and restrained, y'know, the
scene with all the decorations..." She went on for a good long while,
her voice growing steadier all the time. As I listened, I took notes.

"Okay, Kathy," I said, "lets play this one scene at a time. I think I've
got a handle on this. Tonight, at 11:00 i.d., you will meet me at here.
Got that?"

"You mean, you're going to... tonight?" She looked and sounded bewildered.

"Yeah, tonight, you and me alone. Ready?"

"Uhm..." She was thinking fast, like I intended. If she really wanted what
she was asking for, this was the time to find out. "I'll be there. Count
on it."

"Good. Remember the first rule, though. When you get there, you're mine,
got that? No questions until after, when I release you from the game. The
moment you step into my room, you're my thrall. Clear?"

She nodded. I said, "Except... that word I gave you. Can you remember it?
It's on that slip I gave you. If you ever use that word, everything's off.
It's you're safety valve. If a scene is going places you don't want it
to, if you're too hurt or frightened, that's your way out. Okay?"

She nodded, then stood up, leaned across the table, and kissed me. "Thank
you," she whispered, and she left, to get ready.

Alone again, I sat back, and pondered. What in Hell have I gotten
myself into?

Not that it mattered. I'd made a promise, and I was going to do my Boy
Scout's best to keep it. Not that I was ever a Boy Scout.

And I sat back, and wondered.

The room was small, and shapeless. That is to say that it did not
yet have a definite shape, but it would definitely work on it. Using
every high-tech trick in the book to make this my total environment,
hyperlography for the visual, nanotech for the physical, biocybe for the
control, even a teleporter in case more sheer mass was needed. Garrett
hardware made it convincing.

I paused, and the room slowly took shape. A bedroom was what I wanted, not
a dungeon, not yet. Although at the merest thought it could be a dungeon.
Any sort of room.

I sat down at a chair of my desire, and waited. I glanced at my watch, an
object as physical and yet as unreal as the chair and the table. Nanotech
arranged in another form, the watch was a frakir, a defense weapon. I
bid it depart, and watched, fascinated as it dissolved, entering my skin
through the pores and between the molecules. I had long ago gotten used
to the thought of those tiny machines crawling around inside me. They
kept me young, strong. They countered poison, healed me, allowed me to
change if I wanted to. And besides, they were simply improvements over
my own organic hardware. And if you think that's impossible, remember,
nature only works in one field, DNA, and we've got the strength of mind
to make whatever we feel.

2:55 i.l. I waited for Kathy to show. "Ken?" said a soft, feminine voice
with just a hint of Felinze growl.

"Yes, Wendy?" I asked the ship's AI.

"Miss Hawkwind is making her way to this sector. Here's a tactical,"
and a small display on the far wall of the room showed me her path.

"Fine, thanks." I waited, and watched. She was right on time. The
doorbell rang.

"You're late!" I said, through the intercom. "For that, I want you to
strip right where you are, and leave your clothes right there on the
floor. Don't attempt to cover yourself, or hide. When you've taken off
all your clothes, get down on your knees, and kneel."

I watched, feeling a little sorry for her as she took off her clothes,
nervously watching down both ends of the curving hallway. I watched the
display. Nobody was coming, and even if someone were, Wendy would make
sure that she wasn't seen. Illusion gear's not just in the apartment.

I waited, enjoying her discomfort, then I touched the doorslide, and
the door opened. "In."

She started to rise. "On your knees. Crawl. Chin up, eyes to the floor.
Good girl." I looked at her. She was young, soft, ripe. Her blond tresses
covered her breasts. She was lovely, and I felt not at all bad that I
was about to mark that flawless skin with welts.

She crawled in, and I closed the door. "Katherine, you understand what's
going to happen to you, here. I hope you do. Good. Remember this, I will
punish you if you fail to obey me. Understand?"

Her voice was a tiny whisper. "Yes."

"What?"

Louder, "Yes."

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Do you see that chair? I want you to go and kneel in front of it,
your head on the leather." She followed my instructions, crawling over
on her knees to the chair. I stood behind her, and looked at her shapely
ass stuck high in the air. I reached between her legs and pinched the
lips of her sex, and a small squeal escaped her. I pinched her again,
a little harder, and again. She was groaning, writhing against leather. I
slapped her behind. "Stop that."

I smiled. "Slave, you told me you were not a virgin. Is this true?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, then, slave, we'll have to come up with something new." I slowly
undid my pants. I left on the shirt I'd chosen, a white linen shirt
straight out of any bad pirates movie. My erection sported from my body,
hard and straight. I got behind her, and slid my cock into her. She
sighed, with pleasure, and I brought my palm sharply down against her
buttocks, and she pealed with surprise and pain. I smiled, and reached for
the open brass jar next to the chair. With hardly one stroke, I pulled
out of her, and slowly slathered my cock with the lubricant. "Slave,
have you ever had a cock in your ass?"

"Sir... No, sir," her voice filled with panic.

"Well, then, it's nice that you have something to sacrifice to your lord,
isn't it?"

I completely expected to hear her say it, but she laid her head back
down on the chair, and said "Yes, sir."

I smiled, and positioned the head of my penis against her tight nether
hole, and pushed, very gently. Slowly, the head pushed, and I watched,
fascinated, as her asshole began to expand under the insistent pressure.
She groaned, in pain or pleasure I couldn't guess, and half the length
of my cock vanished inside her. I pushed a little harder, and then, her
newly opened anus sheathing my cock so very tightly, I sank into her,
my hips pressing against her warm buttocks. I sighed, the pleasure
obscene. I reached down for the other little device I'd brought, a
'butterfly,' a wonder of miniaturized grav devices, flex surfaces, and
biocybe. I reached under her body and pressed it against her cunt. She
groaned. The biocybe told the butterfly what worked, and the grav/flex
surfaces abused her clitoris. It was a very effective masturbator,
and now I was using it on her.

Slowly I began to fuck her, and her body spasmed wildly, uncontrollably,
and I began to feel my orgasm.

Faster and faster, ravishing her virgin anus, taking her for the first
time, and her body was wracked with the pleasure and the force. My balls
tightened and in one big, final thrust, I came, spewing into her bowels,
filling her with my seed. She screamed in time with me...

And she passed out, which meant the little red triangle that was the
butterfly deactivated automatically. The only thought running through
my mind was 'I will not pass out, I will not pass out' over and over,
as my cock slowly lost what erection it had left, and slithered out
of her asshole. I picked up the butterfly, it had fallen to the floor,
and I put it down on the table. "Wendy," I said, panting terribly, "I
need a bath drawn, and the gravity lowered to twenty-five percent." She
dropped the gravity a little fast, and my head reeled under the literal
light-headedness. I recovered, and I picked up Kathy. I walked over to
the bath I shared with my neighbor, T'Cade, and I stepped into, grateful
that the low grav let me handle her easily. It was warm, wonderful. I
held her, her head nestled against my chest, and waited.

After about ten minutes, I heard her stir. "Hey, Princess..."

She looked up. "Hi," she whispered, a little weakly.

"Hi yourself. Feel okay, Kathy?"

"Huh? Oh... Ken..." she reached up and put her arms around my neck,
and kissed me hard. "Thank you, thank you, I love you," and she held me
to her like she never would let me go. "That was so... so... perfect,
oh Gods, please, tell me we'll do that again..."

"We will. I'm so proud of my little princess," I said, slowly picking
up a washsponge and washing her back.

"Thank you," she whispered again.

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------

I won't go into great detail about the rest of our shipboard romance,
other than to say it was a subject of great rumor on the crew's part and
great discretion on Wendy's part. It wasn't always as abusive as it was
above. She passed my class, and we began to work together on projects
as friends, lovers, coworkers. I taught her Ameslan, and we worked
out a complex series of hand signals to say, privately, when we were
'in the game,' as we came to call it. There are two stories, though,
that I feel should be told, and they are included next in this string
of Journal Entries, even though they are chronologically out of sequence
with the SAP project Journal Entries.

Ken Shardik, 133/0914

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Original document is available from:
http://www.drizzle.com/~elf/journals

The Journal Entries of Kennet R'yal Shardik, et. al., and Related Tales
are Copyright (c) 1989-2000 Elf Mathieu Sternberg. Distribution limited
to electronic media not-for-profit use only. All other rights are reserved
to the author.
