by Mark Oliver
Waw pulled open the entrance curtain and led Charlie inside. A wave of moisture and heat greeted them. Dozens of stone baths, overflowing with water and bubbles, formed a hazy circle in the centre of the marquee. Concubines, half hidden by steam, lay inside them, their eyes closed, their muscular arms hanging over the sides.
“I’ll leave you to freshen up,” Waw said. “You look like you could do with a bath.”
Charlie waited for Waw to leave, before shedding his clothes. After the long journey across the desert they were covered in filth and sweat. Charlie was glad to peel them off. He threw them to one side and climbed into one of the tubs.
The water enveloped him in its warmth. The surface flickered and bubbles of soft foam popped through the surface. The layer of foam grew until it reached his chin and then stopped. The bubbles seemed to seep into him, erasing every ache and pain and worry. He sighed and closed his eyes.
When he opened them, the foam had all but dissolved. He breathed deeply, feeling refreshed and awake for the first time in days.
He looked around the inside of the marquee. Along the sides, naked concubines emerged from steam rooms, or sat in reclining chairs, their multi-coloured crown jewels on show for all to see. Charlie averted his eyes. If he had learned one thing after all the years showering with his rugby teammates, it was not to stare at another man's bollocks, however green or golden they might be.
He glanced behind him, and his jaw dropped. Two metres away, a trio of turen women, as naked as the day they were born, were massaging a lucky concubine. One sat astride him, kneading his shoulders, while the others knelt down rubbing his hands and feet. As they worked, their breasts and bottoms glistened with sweat and jiggled pleasantly.
All three of them were looking over at Charlie, peering into his now clear bath water. With horror Charlie felt a stirring beneath the surface. He dropped his arms into the water and tried not to think about the ladies behind him.
"Come on, Charlie," Waw called. He was stood in Marquee entrance, holding a bathrobe. "Time for the next marquee."
Charlie looked around him. A few towels hung on a stand five metres away. Charlie figured he could reach them in five quick steps. "No need for those," Waw said, shaking the robe, ten metres away.
"Can I have a minute?" Charlie shouted across the marquee.
Waw laughed. "There's no place for shyness in the harem."
Around the marquee, the concubines stirred, their attention turning to the new recruit.
Charlie took a deep breath, and climbed out of the bathtub. First day here, he thought, and I've already humiliated myself.
Yet, incredibly, as he walked, straight backed, erect, no laughter came. Nobody wolf whistled or cracked a joke. The concubines simply watched him pass, checking him out, impassively, and then returning to their heated slumber.
Waw threw him the robe and, giving a perfunctory glance downwards, said, "I see everything's in working order. Excellent."
Charlie blushed and slipped on the robe.
The second marque, deep red and single peaked, was a five-minute walk away so Waw had them push the hover cycles giving them time to admire the surroundings.
Once inside the marque, Charlie found himself surrounded by clothes. This was the concubine's dressing room. Robes, shirts, suits, kilts, underwear, pyjamas, boots, slippers, brogues, trainers, rubber bodysuits and swimwear, it seemed that every possible type of clothing could be found under the red roof. Even to Charlie's untrained eye, it was clear that the suits and shirts were the work of skilled tailors.
“Help yourself to anything you like,” Waw said, and then went off to chat with a couple of concubines being measured for new suits.
Charlie exchanged his robe for an equally soft lilac shirt and loose fitting black trousers. The feel of the material against his clean skin brought a smile to his face.
“Looking good Charlie,” Waw said, examining him with a cocked head. “You’ll surely please the ladyship tonight.”
“I hope so,” Charlie said, his brow knitting.
“She’ll go easy on you this first time. It's her pet desert stalkers that you should worry about." He laughed.
"You mean those two beasts sat beside her throne?"
“Yeah, Debel and Ius. Lady Ori shares her bedchamber with them.”
Charlie turned pale.
“Don't worry. If you do what I tell you, you'll be okay. Now, when you first walk into her bedchamber, her ladyship will bring the beasts up to you. They'll act all aggressive and snap at you. Whatever you do, don't make any sharp movements. It's all for show, but a couple of nervous concubines have lost a finger or two in the past. You'll know when they've accepted you. They'll give you a lick. After that, you'll have nothing to worry about.”
No sharp movements, Charlie told to himself, doing his upmost to embed the information into his memory.
“Come on," Waw said. "I’m hungry. Let’s go get some food and then we can prepare for this evening.”
They floated down to the opposite end of the harem. It seemed most of the concubines had the same idea. When they reached the yellow dining marquee, and stepped inside, a large queue had already formed.
The line of rumbling stomachs led to a table, heaped high with food and drink, running river like across the centre of the marque. Behind it, servants, distinguishable from the concubines by their black kimonos and less chiselled features, piled food onto the trays held before them.
Charlie joined the line. In front of him, a boyish-faced concubine smiled and held out his hand in greeting, the way Bei had first done in the destroyer's holding cell. As Charlie progressed along the line, more and more concubines came over to say hello and welcome him to their ranks.
By the time he reached the vast river of food, his stomach was growling and his mouth salivating. Bowls, filled to the brim with glowing broths, released tails of spicy steam and vapour that wound their way to the marque roof. The rich aromas sent nostrils twitching across the marquee.
Two white furred, heavily fanged chefs, wielding carving knives, and looking very much like Bork's older brothers, stood behind succulent joints of black and brown meat. They sliced off juicy cuts to any concubine stepping up to their chopping boards. Beside them a spit turned, slowly cooking a pig-sized creature with eight legs and the head of an ant. Each turn sent a slither of fat dripping on to the green flames beneath, making a satisfying hiss.
Charlie grabbed a ceramic bowl and scanned the table for something familiar. Most dishes looked and smelled unlike anything served on Earth. However, the occasional pot contained something that might be curry or stew. With a tinge of disappointment, Charlie noted there was nothing resembling chips.
Charlie stepped up to the spit and let one of the monstrous chefs fill his plate with some of the giant ant-pig meat. Further down the table, he saw a steaming pan of meaty chunks swimming in red sauce, took a chance that it was Tikka Masala, and filled his bowl with it.
Charlie, now ravenous after seeing and smelling all that food, sat down next to Waw and tucked in. The meat was as tender as Argentinian steak and twice as tasty. The curry turned out to be a tangy fruit dessert, but he ate it anyway.
While Charlie tucked in, Waw explained how his first evening with Lady Ori would proceed, and what she would expect of him. When Waw went into the specific details of how to best pleasure her, Charlie almost choked on his ant-pig.
After lunch, Waw took Charlie to the last of the four marquees. Unlike the other three, the silhouettes of those inside remained hidden, lost behind its black velvet walls. Charlie stepped inside, unsure of what to expect.
A dozen or so rooms lined the edge of the circular marque, each separated by a thin curtain of black fabric. Charlie could see shadows twisting behind the thin material. They seemed to be engaging in the type of activity so expertly carved onto the harem door.
In the centre of the marquee, surrounded by piles of cushions, and curved sofas, lay a large circular platform, covered in anima
l furs. Charlie counted six concubines grouped around it, scratching their chins and yawning. They looked as if they were waiting for a show to begin.
"This is where the concubines receive their training in the art of love," Waw said.
Porn, Charlie thought. This is where we watch porn to get new ideas. He looked around the room and frowned when he found none of the holographic projectors he had seen outside.
“Each morning," Waw said, "female servants, the ones deemed beautiful enough, volunteer to enter the harem to assist the concubines in their training. It is seen as a great privilege to enter the black marquee."
Waw took his shoes off and hopped onto the platform. “This is where you will learn.”
Charlie bulked. “In front of other people?”
“I'll be personally giving you one to one tutorship here on the training platform.”
“What?' Charlie said. "You’ll be standing next to me the whole time, pointing out what I’m doing wrong.”
“Of course. How else do you expect to learn?”
"What about the guys over there?" Charlie indicated the concubines with a hooked thumb.
"They'll be throwing out some suggestions too."
Charlie said nothing. The freakiest thing he had ever got up to in the sack would barely raise an eyebrow even back on Earth. Now he was about to shag a random alien while a tutor took notes and six others threw pointers at him. He tensed up. Christ, he thought, I hope I get one of the women from the bath marquee. If I get a furry lady, there's no way I'll be able to go through with it.
"We don’t have much time and I need to see your current skill level. We can't have you going into her ladyship's bedchamber at half-cock."
“What?" Charlie said. "Now? Here?"
Waw sighed. He scanned the outer rooms and said, "Okay. For your first day, let's use a private room."
A wave of relief flooded through Charlie. "Thank you."
"But only for today. You'll have to get over that shyness if you want to improve." Waw clapped his hands three times and from one of the curtained off rooms, two female turen, green and purple, stepped out, dressed in plain cream robes. They walked into the inner circle and with a flick of their wrists let their robes fall to the floor, revealing hairless, slender shoulders, pert breasts, and round behinds.
They strode up to Charlie and at Waw's signal grabbed him by the shoulders and led him into one of the curtained rooms. A round bed lay in the middle of the room. The girls laughed and pushed him onto it.
The curtain opened. Waw stepped inside. He took a seat in the corner of the room. From his pocked he withdrew a small slab and pen. "Begin."
At his command, the two girls climbed onto the bed and, licking their pouting lips, crawled on all fours towards Charlie.
Charlie swallowed. “Oh boy.”
Chapter 15
Days went by. Slowly but surely, Charlie grew more confident in his role as palace concubine. Lady Ori had taken a shine to him, and against all expectation she had proven to be an exciting, if not rather stern, bed partner. To Charlie's relief she had no interest in him at all besides sleeping with him. And so she asked him no awkward questions about his childhood on Moon One or how he had come to find himself in Bei's company.
Now, when he entered her bedchamber, he no longer felt the cold dread he had experienced that first night. He knew what to expect, and how to best perform his duties. And also, thanks to the rashers of meat he kept in his pockets, Lady Ori's two pets greeted him with purrs of pleasure instead of growls of disdain. Each night, he would dangle the barbeque meat in front of them and let it drop into the snapping jaws. Then he would rub their scaly bellies, with Lady Ori smiling on.
During their lovemaking, Charlie pushed all thoughts of his mission, and his fears of being caught to the back of his mind. He concentrated solely on the job at hand, performing it with almost religious zeal, like some Shaolin sex monk. It was tiresome work, but highly enjoyable all the same, even if it did feel like he was shagging a horny headmistress.
Afterwards, Lady Ori usually sent him back to the harem. However, twice she had let him stay, wanting him immediately at hand for a morning session. It was on these nights that Charlie should have completed his mission. She kept her personal computing device, no larger than a DVD case, with her at all times, and when she slept, she placed it on the bedside table.
Both nights he had lain there, wide awake, running through the plan in his head; slip her hand against its surface to activate it, carefully so as not to wake her, take out his tooth chip, attach it to the device, upload the data, unencrypt it and download it. Simple. Yet each time he had bottled it.
Instead of successfully slipping the tooth back inside his mouth, and sneaking out into the night, he would stare up at the ceiling, conjuring up excuses to tell Bei the next morning.
How he dreaded those conversations, nervously carried out in the harem toilet. Bei was growing more and more impatient. Each time Charlie told him he had failed, Bei would groan into his ear shell. His days and nights spent out hiding on the edge of town were boring him to tears. And the longer he was out there, the more likely a palace spy would discover him and work out that his gift to Lady Ori was more than it seemed.
Also, although Lady Ori had requested Charlie's presence every night so far, soon she would lose interest and his visits would become less frequent and shorter. Charlie's time was running out. He had to act quickly. Otherwise he would be stuck in alien servitude forever.
Originally, that had not seemed too terrible a prospect. He spent his days lounging with the concubines. A friendly, warm-hearted, hilarious bunch of men, they were always quick to crack a joke and share an anecdote. Charlie loved the banter. It reminded him of the rugby tours he had gone on, spending every waking hour with his teammates. He had taught some of the men the basics of touch rugby, claiming it as a new sport developed on Moon One. They had taken to playing regular games after lunch. The concubines loved it.
Charlie's only task during the day was to perfect his techniques with palace servants under Waw's watchful eye. At the start, Waw had let him use the private rooms. But eventually he lost patience and made Charlie have sex on the platform.
The first time was beyond embarrassing. If the volunteer had not been one of the hottest servant girls in the palace, he doubted he would have been able to do it. But in time, he realised the concubines barely looked at him and he stopped worrying. In the end it was just sex, as Waw said.
In the first four days in the harem, he quadrupled the number of women he had ever slept with and learned enough positions to write a second Karma Sutra. He had even shagged a couple of furry females and to his surprise had rather enjoyed it. He wondered if that made him a pervert, and vowed never to tell anyone back on Earth, if he ever returned.
But on the fifth day, the realisation that he was a prisoner, a pampered one but a prisoner nonetheless, finally set in. The silver bracelets served as a constant reminder of his imprisonment. He had asked a concubine, one he knew he could trust, whether anyone had successfully cut them off. The concubine shook his head and told him that the bracelets were lined with explosives and any incision would leave the unlucky servant with a bloody stump for a hand.
Knowing his Robundee blade would be no help with the bracelets, Charlie had tried sliding them off by covering his wrists in an array of dishes that included meat sauce, animal fat dessert, jellied insects and the slime filled testicles of an edible rodent species, a Seenthee delicacy. But nothing worked. After minutes of tugging and yanking, they remained stubbornly wrapped around his wrists, shiny, beautiful and deadly.
Lying beside the sleeping monarch that night, he accepted he would probably be stuck in this harem, on this strange alien planet forever. And for the first time he missed home. He counted the days since that fateful surf. Assuming he had been on Yojim's ship a day before the Corporation caught him, he had been away a week. It felt much longer.
He wondered about his friends. Wha
t did they think happened to him? The thought of them mourning his death brought pricks to the back of his eyes.
And home was not all he missed. There was Awani too.
Despite the almost constant supply of beautiful women in the black marque, he found himself thinking of Awani more and more often. He would remember her mischievous smile or the way her face flushed pink when she was angry. He would smile at the memory. And then he would feel like an absolute bastard for sleeping with all the servants instead of completing his mission.
He would try and shake it off, telling himself that she probably was not even interested anyway. But the feeling would stubbornly remain. There was no way around it. He would have to get off here, man up, and confess his feelings for her.
Doctor Sree cleared his throat. A circle of silver faces stared at him from around the table. Outside the nightlights of the Corporation domestic zone glittered like stars. Beyond them, like a monstrous shadow, the zone wall climbed out of the earth and loomed silently over the flickering lights. On the other side of the century old barrier lay Jajag city, Seenthee's wretched capital, and his hometown.
The Corporation's ten most powerful men and women faced him, professional indifference on their silver faces. Doctor Sree scratched his chin and rested his gaze on the warm, reassuring face of the CEO. The petite leader sat at the head of the table, her bird-like frame perched on the edge of her seat.
"I'm happy to say," he said, his voice full of pride, "that the tests were a success, Ma'am. Of the four shadow fighters fitted with rift engines, three reached speeds of up to fifteen per cent the speed of light. That's a thousand times faster than the speed our current ships travel at."
"What happened to the fourth?" asked the most powerful woman on the planet.
"Unfortunately, it strayed too far into the Wrake Pass and a roller disappeared with it. We lost all contact with it and the pilot is assumed dead."
