ARCHIVE: mate.Z

[Joshua A Laff]

This story is another from the archives, and is not written by me.
Requests for just about anything concerning these posts will be ignored.
See the FAQ in a.s.s.d for more information.

Mate

(C) 1991 lauren p. burka. legal for all forms of transmission
electronic and hard-copy, SAVE those involving sale, as long as you
include this notice.

disclaimer: to continue a trend, this story involves kinky sex. it
actually has less sex than it does plot, therefore will probably piss
off both the censoriously-minded and those searching for mindless
jerkoff material. you are warned.

special acknowledgement to c&p telephone and the assholes who cracked
gnu.

Mate

On Wednesday Terry lost at chess.
He sat there staring at the game board as it faded away and
the server recorded his loss on the scoreboard. Terry didn't lose
often. His shell prompted him with several unread mail messages,
which he ignored. He pulled off the headset, blinked as his eyes
adjusted, and stared about the office.
The C3A building, where Terry worked, was a modern, terraced
office a bit smaller than a football field. The lowest and most
central area held a fountain, grass, maple trees and a small bit of
carefully reconstructed parkland, minus the insects and rodents. The
walls were lined with the balconied offices of those important enough
to merit privacy. High above, the polarized ceiling admitted the
glare of the yellow, polluted, northern Virginia summer sky.
As Terry sat in his low-walled cubicle in the center of that
glass cavern, he could never had known who was staring down from a
curtained window, smiling in triumph, knowing something that Terry did
not. The winner need not even be in the building, though the
metachess server ran off a C3A machine. Access was easy to arrange
from a remote site. Terry's conqueror could have been at Caltech, for
all he knew.
Terry was disturbed. Who on the Net was that good? Was it
Daphne?
Packing up his things for the day, Terry locked out the
console and headed for the underground, deep in through. Once out of
the Classified area, Terry passed few people. On weekday nights the
stores were nearly empty. Bored doormen lounged about the underground
taxi entrances to the hotels. Metro had finally gotten climate
control fixed in the subway. The station was cool and pleasant and
smelled only slightly of sulphur.
As Terry's train whisked out of the station and over the
Potomac River, he looked back at the spidery mass of Crystal City, its
hotels and DoD offices, restaurants built on expense account dining,
and the hulking air-conditioned fortress of the Communication
Authority. Terry wondered briefly if the metachess wizard was the
same person who was cracking the Gateway.
Daphne was already home, but scarcely lifted her head from her
console when Terry came in.
"How was your day?" he asked.
"Shitty."
Terry sighed and went to microwave dinner.
He knew why Daphne was so busy. Hers was the first class to
graduate since the phone system disasters of '98. The government had
been riding the new generation of computer geniuses hard, offering
them unlimited loans if only they'd build the talent and discipline to
keep the Net in one piece. After Daphne passed this last set of
exams, she'd be bound to a civil service job for the next three years.
How good a job depended on her GPA. Daphne was brilliant, first in
her class, and likely to graduate with all honors.
Sometimes Terry wished she still had the time to love him.
At length Daphne logged out. She tipped her chair back
against the wall and tapped her fingers against her knee. Her face
was pale and her blonde hair greenish in the fluorescent light.
"I aced Queue Theory," she said. "One more exam to go."
"That's good. I lost a game of metachess."
She chewed the end of a stylus idly.
"I don't know who to, either. They left no call sign."
Terry was watching Daphne. It still could be her. She had
been known to lie.
"You ate?" he asked.
"Yeah. Ordered a pizza."
Terry finished dinner and dumped the plate down the recycle
bin.
"They're bringing in the big guns on the Gateway security
problem," he offered. When she was silent, he continued hopefully.
"They hired lots of outside consultants and are turning the whole
Authority upside-down. They're asking all staff to submit to scan.
My turn is tomorrow morning."
She nodded as if to be polite.
And then, since words were useless, Terry went and knelt and
pressed his head against her knee. She was quite still for a long
time. He stole a glance upward at her face, and wasn't sure what
bothered him more, his sexual desperation or her indifference.
At last Daphne pushed him away and walked to the closet.
Terry scarcely drew a breath as she dropped a handful of stuff on the
couch.
"Come here and take your shirt off."
Terry obeyed. Daphne clasped his wrists in a pair of
handcuffs, then padlocked them to the eye-bolt set in the bottom of
the couch. This left Terry on his knees facing the couch. Daphne
dropped down into the couch in front of him, her denim-clad legs
spread wide, and pressed something unyielding against his lips. It
was the rubber handle of her whip.
"Eat this," she ordered.
Terry opened his mouth. Instantly Daphne shoved the whip
handle against the back of his throat. He tilted his head and
swallowed, feeling the tears drip down his face. He was never really
sure what she got out of it, aside from the obvious dominance kick.
Maybe that was enough. His own jeans were becoming unbearably tight.
Daphne fucked his mouth a few more times, then pulled the whip
out, wiping the handle on Terry's shirt. Then she stood up.
Terry rested his head against the edge of the couch. No
matter how much he begged to be beaten with her three-tailed whip, the
moment of terror before it struck was almost too much to bear. After
she began, the rising adrenaline rush would wipe out his fear. Now he
bit his lips to keep from asking for mercy. One word and she'd
release him, lose interest, and return to her console. And that
wasn't what he really wanted.
The first stroke of the whip bit into his back with the lazy
deliberation of a cat at a scratching post. Terry cringed and closed
his teeth on the couch. He could smell the oiled length of the whip
as it cut the air, then his flesh. Blow followed blow, regular as
clockwork. Daphne wasn't strong, but her whip was nasty artillery.
She was neat, almost compulsively so, in covering every inch of his
skin. Terry was getting hard, faster than the stoned feeling was
emptying the thoughts out of his brain.
Then Daphne stopped. Something bounced on the cushion before
his face. It was the key to the cuffs. Behind Terry a door shut, the
door to her bedroom, with her one one side and him on the other.
Terry knelt there, panting, not quite believing. He snagged
the keys with his teeth, brought them down to his fingers, and started
working at the locks. When he had freed his hands, he didn't stop to
take his jeans off, but pressed his erection against the edge of the
couch. He came so hard that his foot cramped and he had to step on it
before the pain went away. It wasn't the kind of pain he wanted.
Dropping his clothes in the corner of his tiny room, Terry
went to the bathroom to check his back. He was bleeding in a couple
of places, with an impressive set of welts. Terry showered briefly
and then tried, with partial success, to spread disinfectant over his
back.
Terry's room was actually a closet with a bed. It had no
windows. Most summer days he slept on the couch to catch the breath
of Daphne's air conditioner as it leaked under her door. Once he used
to sleep in bed with her. Terry lay down on his stomach and stared
out the window. The pollution made the sunsets beautiful, deep and
red. It almost made up for air too hot and harsh to breathe.
Did he really think himself lucky for having Daphne? She did
let him stay in her place, a boon in the midst of a severe housing
shortage. And Terry, the most expendable of all sexual commodities, a
heterosexual male submissive, couldn't exactly afford to be picky.
Daphne used to love him. After that she had hurt him as a favor.
Lately she did it out of simple cruelty. He considered, as he did
every night, dumping her for someone vanilla, someone less brilliant
and preoccupied and more personable, who talked to him once in a
while.
It was just Terry's misfortune to turn on to intelligence
harder than to anything else except, maybe, a touch of leather.

"Montiero! Get in the conference room now. They're waiting
for you."
Terry glanced at the console clock as Johnson's abrupt verbal
message thundered in his ear. It was 8:15 in the morning.
"But I'm early. I thought . . ."
"Someone ahead of you cancelled out. Get moving. We're
paying the team by the hour."
Paying them a good four times as much as Terry made in a day,
he thought.
That someone had decided to pass on the scan did not surprise
Terry. Their employer could not legally fire or deny promotion to
them because of it. But if Terry didn't get his raise, he couldn't
prove why.
A frustrated ACLU had tried to outlaw scanning. But they
couldn't explain to the middle-aged members of the Supreme Court, who
had never had a pickup planted next to their skulls, had never played
a coin-op VR game, nor lost their sight from poorly-tuned equipment,
how much a scan really hurt. There was no objective measurement for
that kind of feeling. Besides, this wasn't a polygraph test. Terry's
employer didn't really think he had anything to do with the security
problem, only that he might have something buried in his subconscious
that might help them find the guilty. Or name a scapegoat?
Terry took a right turn at the glass-fronted machine room.
Behind the clear wall and sprinkle of condensation, the Gateway
itself, a compound entity of Digital and SG/C machines worked
silently, routing all the communication traffic on the east coast,
switching impulses to Michigan via satellite, overseas to Europe,
under ground to Boston, and to a matching gateway in Palo Alto. The
whole world in a fish tank, Terry thought. Or all the world that
counted. The building's architects left the computers visible because
they really were beautiful. There was a symbolic map on the wall that
showed traffic all over North America. Terry remembered after the big
earthquake, when the lights tracing traffic to Boston had grown too
bright to see as everyone phoned their relatives in that city to see
if they were safe.
A harrassed-looking secretary was working a transcription set
outside the conference room. She glanced up and pointed to a chair.
Terry sat. And waited. He'd been told to hurry. Were they trying to
keep him off-balance? It was working.
Just before ten the conference door clicked open. The
secretary pulled her wire from under her hair and took her coffee up
from the warming pad.
"You may go in now."
The conference room was paneled in wood, and could have held
twenty. There were only two. One was partially hidden in a corner
behind a bank of consoles and a box of donuts. The other was a woman,
red-haired, dressed in a suit and heels just high enough to be formal.
She stood as Terry entered and smiled the exact degree calculated to
be soothing.
"Welcome." She came around the table and shook his hand.
"Terry Montiero. I'm Louisa Arnold. Would you like some coffee
before we begin?"
Terry hated coffee, but his mouth was dry. "Sure."
Arnold nodded. "Grey? Coffee for us both."
Terry glanced around. Grey wasn't a description of the
coffee, but the name of the second person, who emerged from behind the
consoles. He was small, dressed in denim, an old rock concert
T-shirt, and a cowboy hat. Terry blinked. Technicians didn't have to
dress up, but they usually did when paid as much as this pair was
getting. He transferred his attention back to Arnold, who was taking
up her coffee from Grey.
"You should already have read the disclosure form on synch
scan. We're going to ask you to read it again, and sign it."
Grey put the other coffee cup down on the table by a paper and
indicated that Terry was to sit.
Paper was an expensive, old habit of the Federal Government.
Terry took a mouthful of the coffee, grimaced, and swallowed. The
disclosure informed him in dry language that he was not entitled to
sue for any damages caused by synchronized neural scan, and that any
injury that prevented him from working was covered by his health
insurance. Terry had read it before. He signed.
Grey took the paper and dropped it into a folder. The tech
pulled a box out from under the table with his sneaker-clad foot,
reached down, and pulled out a handful of contacts. His hair was
black and shoulder-length, Terry noted. Techs usually had a
collection of skull sockets, and would either shave their heads to
show them off, or grow their hair for camouflage. Out of context,
this tech would look like no one special.
"Please finish your coffee now," Arnold said.
Terry took another small swallow and then pushed the cup away.
Grey reached for Terry's right wrist. There was a shock at
the contact. Terry jumped. It was just that, a shock from the dry
air and friction on the carpet. Neither of them was grounded, of
course. He watched Grey's face as the other wet Terry's right wrist
with saline from a squeeze bottle and clipped the band around it.
Grey's eyes were blue and sharp under his hat. His mouth was softer,
slightly open in concentration. He smelled faintly of soap.
Grey put a matching band on Terry's right wrist.
Arnold said, "Please leave your hands on the table."
Terry hastily put his palms upon the polished wood. The chair
beneath him, he noted idly, was made of leather. This conference room
was usually reserved for other, more honored guests.
A hand on the back of his neck encouraged him to tip his head
forward. Instantly he felt something cold behind his right ear as
Grey held a lead against the socket set in his skull. Something in
Terry's brain clicked. He felt/heard the familiar whisper of data
traversing the wire. He glanced up briefly. Arnold had taken a seat
at the opposite end of the table and connected to the table console.
Grey made his way back to the corner, dropped into a chair, and shoved
his own wire into place behind his ear.
Instantly Terry's vision went blank.
"Please relax."
The voice was no voice, data on the wire. It didn't sound
like Arnold, but then it didn't sound like anyone in particular.
Generic voice, constructed for a commercial. Non-threatening. The
blindness resolved to a soft fall of snow, as if seen through a
window. Terry felt himself sitting back in the chair.
He gave a sharp, involuntary gasp as his welted back, almost
forgotten, hit the upholstery. Instantly something cool dripped into
his veins. Terry was safe. There was no pain. He was held as
loosely as a puppet with no strings. He couldn't hurt himself, not
even, in a fit of panic, rip the contacts away from his body and burn
out the nerves. Time passed.
"We will ask you questions. You will answer them truthfully,
and at length."
Terry nodded. Or something to that effect.
His assent was noted, recorded. Terry's brain, unoccupied,
reported a scent of leather. Smell wasn't important. They'd left him
that. This was like the time Daphne had left him tied to the bed in
the dark.
"What is your name?"
"Terry Montiero."
"Where do you live?"
"1800 Kensington Street 14A, Silver Spring, Maryland."
"What is your job title?"
They would have this information in his file, of course. But
they asked him anyway, to get a baseline response.
"Assistant to Daniel Johnson, Director of Gateway East."
"What does your job entail?"
"I . . . manage Johnson's correspondence. He dictates into a
pickup, and I have to clean up his letters to text. I edit out the
random thoughts about his kids, his feud with the Transportation
secretary, and having sex with his wife. Johnson's wife, not the
Transec's. It's still supposed to cost less than having him type it
out himself, even though the pickup records everything he thinks."
As you're recording everything I think. Do you hear this?
"Obviously," Terry continued, "my job requires a lot of
discretion, as well as good comprehension of written English. I had a
minor in literature in college . . . ."
"Do you like your job?"
"Yes. It pays well . . . ."
"Terry, we asked you not to lie."
Terry felt the first touch of real fear. Something tugged at
his mind, like a trainer jerking a dog's choke-chain. It was a
warning.
"OK. I don't like my job. The hours suck. I'm not a morning
person. And Johnson, for all that he's in charge of the most
important computers in the Capital area, is a remarkable technophobe.
He can't even reboot his own console. I'm not the least bit surprised
that things don't always work quite right. It's frustrating, and
often an insult to my intelligence. And if I hadn't fucked up my
final exams last year--I broke up with a girlfriend and got drunk the
night before--I'd be over in NASA programming something useful.
Satisfied?"
"What do you think doesn't work right about Gateway East?"
Terry noted the condescension implicit in the wording.
"We're generally over budget by a good seventeen percent.
Johnson could have got the last cable laid though the Amtrak tunnel,
but then he got in a fight with Transportation. It was all political.
The consoles are all IBM models and cost too much and don't work
nearly as well as the same thing made by Northern Telecom. They also
crash the SG/C machines. Then there's the security thing. This is
why we're here, right?"
"What security problems?"
"You know . . . . well, first there was the data leak. A
certain amount of electronic mail just wasn't getting to its
destination. As if someone were reading what was in them and
accidently messing up the addresses. That stopped really quickly
after we noticed it. But then there was that bidding scandal over the
new weather satellite, and we figured someone was still reading the
mail. That's about all I know."
"Who do you think is doing it?"
"I honestly have no idea."
"Who do you know outside of Crystal City Communication
Authority who might have the skills to crack Government security?"
"No one."
"Who do you know who works with the net on a regular basis?"
"No one. There's Daphne, my girlfriend, but she's still in
school."
Terry thought about the player who had beat him at metachess.
There was a long pause, noticeable even in Terry's disoriented
state.
There was no real pain for Terry. Compared to Daphne's whip,
synch scan was just a nuisance. Terry hated to beg for pain, and
resented the possibility of mercy. Seen that way, this non-consentual
mental strip-search was almost interesting.
Terry told himself not to get too interested. He still had to
finish up work for the day.
"Open your eyes."
Terry blinked. Grey was sitting still behind the console,
hand on chin, staring at him. The other blinked once, then stood up.
Arnold was keying her console. Grey got up and pulled the contacts
off of Terry.
"That's it," Arnold said. "Thank you for your cooperation."
Terry stood up and stretched clumsily, never taking his eyes
from Arnold.
"I hope you enjoyed it."
Arnold glanced up. "You may go now."
Terry gave a sarcastic bow and backed out the door.

"Top of my class," Daphne was saying. "I really did it."
"Work was awful today. After the scan, nothing went right."
"Uhm. How was it?"
"Like having my brains sucked out my nose."
Daphne nodded. The buzzer for the door downstairs rang.
"That's the sushi," she said.
After paying the delivery person, they sat down for dinner.
"So tell me about the scan."
Terry was startled a bit. Daphne didn't usually care enough
about his life to ask.
"They asked me lots of questions, of course. There were two
of them, a woman named Arnold and an assistant, named Grey."
Daphne chewed and swallowed her tuna.
She said, "Grey. Short guy, wearing a Stetson?"
"Yeah. You know him?"
"They put one over on you. That was no assistant. That was
d'Schane Grey."
"D'Schane . . . oh." Terry swallowed. "Oh. Wow. I feel
pretty stupid."
Daphne favored him with a rare smile.
"Yeah, he does that to people. He was a visiting professor at
Georgetown, on leave from M.I.T., when I was a sophomore. Taught a
class on Security. One of the best classes I ever had, and the
hardest."
She paused for another bite.
"First lecture he came in, in jeans and that hat, and told us
that computer security was a myth. But a marketable myth. George
Lucas got rich selling myth, and so could we. Our final exam was to
find a security hole and to exploit it. Any security hole. This one
student charged $7,000 to Grey's Citibank card. Grey thought it was
pretty funny, but only gave the guy a C because he figured out who it
was without asking, though he let the money slide.
"His whole philosophy was that it didn't matter how well you
knew your operating system, though knowledge certainly helps. If a
computer is connected to the net, any high school student can find
holes faster than you can patch them up. It's all psychology and
intuition. You have to know how they think before they hit you.
"Then he quit academics and went to work as a consultant.
He's only twenty."
"And the government hired him to sniff out C3A," Terry
finished for her.
"Looks like it. Who do you think did it?"
Terry shrugged. "I think Grey did it. He broke it, now wants
the government to pay him to fix it."
They ate in silence for a moment.
"The government of Mexico bought out my loan contract."
Terry blinked. "What?"
"I'm not working for Uncle Sam. I'm moving south of the
border to program a nice new cellular system for the 'burbs of Mexico
city. The rent on this place is paid up until the end of July. You
can stay here if you want. I'm leaving in two weeks."
Terry sighed, feeling the strength go out of him with his
breath. That was it then. He hadn't left her when he had the chance,
so now she was leaving him.
"Well," he said, "have a good time."

Three weeks later Terry finished up work and logged into the
metachess server for a game. Terry was using his own call sign. This
tended to discourage casual players who had lost to him before. There
was a short pause as the server matched up a player good enough to be
a challenge, one who did not flash a call sign. Terry stiffened and
felt his pulse pound as if in another world.
The metachess board looked much like a traditional chess
board. The pieces were the same. The moves were simplified, but
familiar. Only one of the white pieces housed Terry's heart, and one
of the black, his opponent's. Terry picked a knight.
It was possible to win metachess on the basis of strategy
alone, or on the strength of reflex and combat skills. Terry had
both.
Terry moved a pawn, then, from his vantage point as the
knight, watched black do the same. The first few moves were simple.
Terry sent his king's bishop after a black pawn. There was a brief
contest, a flash of light, and the pawn lay bleeding upon the board,
then vanished. Which black piece was real?
Terry lost two pawns in rapid succession, then took out
another black one. Metachess was faster than its parent game. The
object wasn't to take out the king, but the mate piece, the one that
held your opponent's heart. You couldn't find that out by accident.
You had to know how your opponent thought.
A pawn slew Terry's bishop. There was a certain chance of
this happening anyway, even with a real pawn. Terry risked another
pawn to find out. But the white black, weakened, toppled before his
own piece. It wasn't black's heart. It had just been lucky the first
time.
Then Terry found the knight, his own heart, up against a black
castle. It was an inevitable risk, for surrounding this piece with
defenders would bring attention upon it, not to mention lose him a
good view of the board. Terry blocked the castle's missile of light
with an electron sword, moving his piece a half-dance to the side of
the square. Castles were big, but slow. He forced himself to take a
hit, a numbing shock that made his arms tingle, then landed a flurry
of lunges. The castle crumpled.
Good, Terry thought.
All of black's pieces had moved, and none were obvious. It
was a smooth job. Was this the same player who beat him before? It
sure felt the same. Could it be Daphne, like a ghost in the machine,
logged in from Mexico? It felt like her, just as it had that time
three weeks ago. Wishing it almost made Terry certain. Daphne
usually picked the queen.
Terry fired off a text note to his opponent. "Who are you?"
Two moves later he checked for an answer, and found none.
Terry got slow and careful. Avoiding small battles, he eased his
queen into black territory, then closed with the black queen. The
battle was beautiful, done in lightning graphics by the game server.
The black queen toppled.
Terry had guessed wrong. It wasn't the queen.
A black knight challenged his square. As Terry was bringing
up his sword, the black piece laughed.
For two, maybe three seconds, Terry froze, just long enough
for the black knight to strike him a damaging wound. The game wasn't
supposed to do that. Someone had tricked with the server.
The black sword danced before Terry's vision.
The server warned him of immanent checkmate, then forwarded a
yield request from black. That was the polite thing to do. Virtual
death tended to cause a headache, though the visual effects were
interesting.
Terry sent back, "Tell me who you are."
He received another one word message: "Yield."
In another world, Terry bit his lip. "I'll do anything to
know who you are."
A message from black: "Lounge, Crystal City Mariott, 21:30."
Terry yielded.
The game recorded mate.

Daphne could have taken a jump-plane up from Mexico that
quickly. Terry hated himself for wishing it. It wasn't Daphne. But
what if it was?
Terry was in the lounge by nine, a half-hour early. He got a
virgin Mary and waited. And waited. By ten no one had shown up. He
wondered if this was a joke, but then reminded himself that the chess
player had only said for Terry to be there, not that anything would
necessarily happen. It was late, though. Terry had to work the next
morning. He ordered a Coke and decided to leave at ten thirty. If it
was Daphne, she would just have to deal.
At ten twenty Terry glanced up in time to see a slight figure
in a cowboy hat drop into the chair across his table.
"D'Schane Grey," he said.
Grey flashed a wide, feral grin. "You're quick on the uptake.
Buy me a strawberry daiquiri." His voice, more than anything else
about him, was startling. Terry hadn't heard him speak last time.
"What?"
"You heard me. I won't pass an i.d. check, and a drink is a
subset of 'anything.'"
"Oh." Terry signaled the waiter and ordered. He could smell
the merest breath of d'Schane Grey's scent, soap and sweat and denim.
"You play dirty chess."
Grey's grin settled into a small, sweet smile. "Thank you.
Just remember: the first time I beat you was a clean game."
It had been Grey both times, then.
"So what else does 'anything' include?"
"Haven't decided yet." Grey folded his arms on the table and
leaned on them.
The daiquiri arrived. Grey sipped at it contemplatively.
Terry asked, "So why are you taking such an interest in me?
You think I cracked the Gateway?"
"No. In fact, I know you didn't. Your girlfriend did."
"Daphne?"
"Daphne Lawrence. Unfortunately, she's in Mexico, so we can't
indict her. Mexico doesn't recognize data theft."
"And they have her working on their phones?"
"That's what she told you? She lied. She hired out to the
same combine she was working for when she cracked the Gateway. The
Authority wanted to string you up in her place. But I know you didn't
give her your password on purpose. If I push them, they can't do a
thing to you with my data. License laws and all that."
Terry took five slow breaths under the burning glare of Grey's
amusement.
"I ask you again. Why are you taking such an interest in me?"
"Because you went under my scan with fresh, hot whip kisses on
your back."
Terry closed his eyes. "What do you want?"
Grey emptied the daiquiri. "Chill. Masochism isn't a Federal
crime, though you should watch out how you let people use you. For
now I want you to stop cutting your hair for a while. I'll let you
know when I think of anything else."
"Why my hair?"
Grey wagged a finger at him. "You ask too many questions.
Thanks for the drink."
Terry, feeling distinctly appalled, watched d'Schane Grey
leave the lounge. The man walked like a twenty-year-old, loose and a
bit hurried. And he dared order Terry around like that? Terry
sighed. What did he have to lose?

Terry found a new apartment. It was even further from the
Metro than Daphne's had been. The ten minute walk out in the open air
did his health no good.
Nothing happened at C3A, not a whisper more about security
problems. Terry got his microscopic raise on schedule.
He dated a woman named Janet for a month. Janet worked in
another department, and was very nice. Too nice. They went out to
movies, slept together on occasion, then both seemed to get bored of
each other. He and Janet stayed friends, though.
Terry mostly forgot about d'Schane Grey, but he did not cut
his hair.

One day in January Terry was at work at C3A when his console
cut out abruptly, leaving him blinking in the fluorescent lights.
Terry looked up to see d'Schane Grey sitting on the corner of his
desk, finger on the disconnect switch.
Grey held up a narrow leather strap. "Let me see your neck."
Terry interposed a hand. "No!"
Around him people were pausing in their work to watch.
Grey was smiling. Terry was starting to hate that smile. He
didn't say, as Terry expected, 'I could have you fired' or 'I could
destroy your credit rating with a wish.'
"Are you good for you word, or aren't you?"
Terry bit his lip. "But . . . ."
"Aren't you?" His blue eyes narrowed, hard and bright as
diamonds.
"Yes."
Grey snapped the collar around Terry's neck. It was thin and
soft, with cold metal along part of the inside surface and a D-ring
set in the side.
"Come with me, or do I need to leash you?"
It was only two thirty. Leaving work would not please
Johnson, especially since Terry had seven megs of notes to transcribe
by tomorrow morning.
Terry stood and followed Grey from the office. Grey was the
smaller of the two, Terry noticed with a start. They went first to
the underground garage, to a nice new Pontiac parked in a reserved
space.
"Get in the back. Do you have a preference for radio
station?"
"No," Terry said, and struggled into the seat harness.
Grey took the car out of Crystal City and onto 395. Once they
had settled into the express lane, the highway's automatic navigator
pulled them along gently at 110 miles per hour. Grey fiddled with the
radio, then popped a disc into the player. Twenty minutes later they
pulled off the highway into a far suburb of Virginia.
Terry glanced out the window. The streets were narrow and
winding. Houses were set back on hills, surrounded by careful
planting and kept lawns, brown with winter. These were luxury homes
built back in the 80's on what once was farmland.
Grey pulled into the driveway of a comparatively small house.
It was built of brick and had a fantastic glass-sided tower at one
corner. Grey shut off the car.
"Last stop," he said.
Inside the house was empty of people and sparsely furnished.
"No servants?" Terry asked. He walked through a doorway into
a large living area.
"No. I just rent this place. A housekeeper comes in once a
week when I'm not here. Want something to drink?"
"Just water."
Grey vanished into the kitchen and came back with two glasses
of icewater, handed one to Terry, and sat down on a couch.
"Now."
Grey wasn't smiling. Terry swallowed, feeling his throat move
against the collar.
"Your hair is passable. See, I don't usually do men, though I
apprenticed to a male top two years ago. By the way, you can be sure
anything I might want to do to you has been done to me at least twice
over. I wanted to see if long hair would soften your face a little
bit. I think it does."
Terry did not like the direction of this conversation.
"A couple of things about that collar you're wearing. It
doesn't come off easily. It's leather, but with a mylar and steel
core and a permanent snap closure. I figure if you want it off enough
to take bolt cutters to it, then you can have it off."
"This is too far, d'Schane Grey. Tell me what you want."
Grey laughed. "You know what I want. And you know what else?
There's a pickup chip on the inside of your collar. It's very
sensitive. Needs no saline, just your sweat. And you're sweating
quite a bit, aren't you, Terry? You can't fool me with your coy
little protests. You put up a really good show of fighting the scan
last summer. The whole time you were just itching for me to hit you
harder. I would have done it, but the Authority wasn't paying me to
get their employees off."
D'Schane Grey pointed to the ground in front of his feet. "On
your knees."
In that instant Terry learned something Grey already knew.
Terry knelt before one who was younger and smaller, but infinitely
more sure of himself. Fingers tapped his chin.
"Look up. You have a pretty face, and I want to see it.
That's better."
Terry looked up into the blue eyes, narrowed with
concentration. A finger stroked Terry's cheek and circled the outside
of his ear. Terry shivered. Grey set his hat aside and reached
behind his ownear, checking for the lead that matched the one at
Terry's throat.
Kiss me, Terry thought.
The corner of Grey's mouth twitched with amusement.
"I approve of your change in attitude. But I won't kiss you
yet."
Grey hooked his finger in the top button of Terry's shirt.
"Nice arms. Nice upper body," he said, unbuttoning the rest.
"What do you do besides sit in front of a console all day?"
"I swim, mostly. C3A has a pool."
Grey drew a line with his finger down the center of Terry's
chest. The cold air tightened the flesh of his nipples. Grey took
the shirt the rest of the way off and dropped it on the floor.
A hand supported the back of Terry's head as Grey leaned
forward and brushed his lips against Terry's own. They held there for
the longest moment. Grey kept his eyes closed when he kissed. His
tongue gently pressed between Terry's lips and teeth and into his
mouth. A hand stroked his back, trailing nails along his ribs. Grey
tickled the roof of Terry's mouth and sucked on his upper lip, then
broke the kiss.
"Let me see your back."
He turned Terry so that he was draping his upper body across
Grey's left thigh. Terry circled the leg with his arms as Grey
inspected the old scars.
"You've played rough. Daphne did this?"
"Yes."
Grey whistled. "Six months old and I can still see them." He
tugged Terry's hair. "I will love you so much better than Daphne did.
No matter how you cry, there will be no mercy."
Terry sighed and pressed his cheek against Grey's leg. Grey
was reaching over. He hooked a finger through the ring on the collar,
holding Terry pinned halfway over his lap. Something touched Terry's
back.
He froze, trying to tell what it was from sense of touch. The
hand on his collar kept him from looking. The touch vanished.
The first blow of the riding whip was louder than it hurt.
Terry gasped. The muscles of his back tightened like bowstrings.
Nothing happened for a moment, and Terry started to relax again. The
second blow hit. Terry screamed.
Grey laughed, leaned over to kiss Terry's ear, and whispered,
"You aren't as hurt as you are scared, you know that?"
The toe of Grey's other foot pressed between Terry's legs to
the spot right behind his balls. Blows three and four fell abruptly.
Pain and heat washed over Terry's skin.
Daphne used to whip until she got tired. Grey spaced it out
more, letting Terry savor most of it, occasionally pushing him off
balance with a flurry of blows that kept getting harder and harder as
his resistance broke down. Terry wept and clawed at Grey's leg,
twisting the flesh between his fingers. This was a mistake.
Grey peeled his fingers away and pulled him around by an arm.
The whip bit Terry's chest, catching his nipple. Grey smacked Terry
across the face twice, then concentrated on his chest and belly. The
last blow fell upon Terry's crotch and the erection that pressed
against his jeans. Terry's body snapped. He sobbed. Grey put down
the whip.
Breathing hard, Grey forced his tongue into Terry's mouth
again. The kiss was violent and sloppy. Grey was unbuttoning his
jeans with one hand. With the other, he pushed Terry's head down to
his crotch.
Grey's erect penis was much thicker than the handle of
Daphne's whip. It was hot and tasted of salt and something sweeter.
Grey gasped and swore as Terry went all the way down on it.
"I didn't think you could do this." He clutched at Terry's
head. "Slower!"
Terry backed off and teased the head with his tongue, stroked
the balls with his fingers. Grey took his hair and forced his head up
and then back down. They both moved slightly, changing angles. Terry
wrapped his arms around Grey's hips and sucked.
Until Grey's back arched and he cried out and his hips bucked
so hard that Terry almost choked. He swallowed. Grey went quietly
limp.
Terry reached for where he had left the glass of water and had
a drink. Grey took the water away and finished it, then shoved Terry
back on the floor. Grey unfastened Terry's pants, closed a hand
around his penis, then lay down beside him and fastened his mouth to
Terry's sore nipple.
It was the longest, slowest, hottest hand job Terry had ever
experienced. Grey stopped in the middle to go get some more ice,
which he applied to Terry's nipples and balls, then put a cube in his
mouth and licked Terry's ears. Grey was kissing him when he came, so
that Terry screamed into Grey's mouth.
They lay on the floor until the sun vanished from the window,
leaving them in darkness. Grey stood up, flipped the light switch,
and stretched.
"Well, I may as well show you the rest of the house. Like the
bathroom. And I've got some food in the fridge. Are you hungry?"
An hour later, showered and dried, they were sitting on Grey's
bed eating fried chicken. Terry felt the bruises on his back and
chest when he moved, sharper than the sweet feeling of sexual satiety.
Grey was saying, "The pickup in your collar is keyed to the
lead I'm wearing right now. It's short range, and I won't wear it
often."
"So Grey," Terry said, fingering his collar, "depending on
Johnson's mood, you may have just gotten me fired."
"Was it worth it? Don't answer that. I'll have my pet lawyer
draw you up a contract tomorrow, and you can join Grey Consulting
Enterprises. By the way, my name is d'Schane. Use it."
"Don't do me any favors, d'Schane."
"This isn't a favor. I looked up your school records. The
government isn't paying you half of what you're worth. And anyone
I've fucked is entitled to call me by my first name."
Terry smiled. Daphne only got to work for data thieves in
Mexico. They'd be on the opposite sides of the business now. He knew
how she thought. Perhaps their spoiled relationship would work to his
advantage?
He wondered if d'Schane liked having tables turned on him, and
how his lean, small body would feel pressed down on the bed, beneath
Terry's weight.
D'Schane looked up sharply. The excitement and the fear in
his eyes were clear to Terry, even without a wire to his mind.
"I'd like to see you try it, love. If you can checkmate me,
well then, you can have me."

--
I will ignore all requests for: reposts, e-mailing missing parts, archive
locations, ftp sites, gif sites, and subscription requests. These stories get
deleted immediately after they are posted. For more info on the ARCHIVE
postings, read the FAQ posted bi-monthly to a.s.s.d