Zee was beginning to regret her decision to visit her old college friend, Anastasia, out here in the Kuiper Belt. Why did Anastasia have to live so far out? Even with the incredibly fast ships that sped across the solar system, necessarily at a distant plane, it had taken Zee months to get to Theseus from her home in the crowded Earth orbit. And she wasn’t sure when she’d got there that the journey had really been worth it.

Once upon a time, Theseus had been some kind of planet or asteroid, mostly composed of frozen water and methane. It hadn’t taken very many years from the first landing to it being remodelled as a settlement to resolve the ever-pressing need for more and cheaper real estate. But it was old now, showing its age through the inefficiencies of its gravity simulators and by the evidence of its rather chunky architecture. And this far out in the solar system, there were never very many foreign visitors at all. Certainly not black ones. For whatever reason, the outer solar system had attracted mostly people from the old Central European and Russian ethnic groups, who had a reputation for their rough frontier personality. Not only her skin colour made her different, but also the fact that her hair was brushed out into an enormous afro and that she wore a tunic and trousers, unlike the dresses and skirts worn by most women in this corner of deep space.

Not that there was much for the people of Theseus to do, except stare at Zee as she walked through the spaceport with her bag of duty-free goods, followed by her luggage hovering a metre above the ground behind her. She felt like such a freak! Not something she’d ever felt before. But she knew it was only a small minority of the frontiersmen who actually had any useful work to do: those working in the media, or in fashion and design, or in scientific research. As everywhere else in the solar system, there just weren’t enough jobs to go round for the number of people who wanted them. Not that those not in work were necessarily poor. Millennia of investment and property speculation had generated more inherited wealth than could ever be consumed in a billion lifetimes.

As Zee surveyed the concourse ahead of her, trying to spot her friend in the crowd, she reflected that wealth in these outer reaches wasn’t that evenly distributed. Bizarre as it might seem in this advanced day and age, many people in Theseus had to rely on charity to survive. There were men and women actually begging at the spaceport. For whatever credit they could. These unfortunates had somehow not benefited from the legacy of wealth that continued to fuel the economic system and which, after all these hundreds of generations, was still generating a healthy percentage growth rate. One whose physical manifestation had literally spread to the stars.

And there was Anastasia with her brother Sergei and two older people, presumably her parents, standing together beneath a hovering holograph that had Zee’s name engraved on it. Zee rushed across the marble concourse toward her friend and kissed her on the lips.

 “Zee! I’m so pleased to see you!” burbled Anastasia, who was a slightly plump girl with very white skin and long red hair. She was wearing a long dress that flowed from her shoulders and whose train hovered in the air behind her. Dressed very much like her mother, in fact.

“It’s been a hell of a journey!” exclaimed Zee. “And this must be Sergei.” Zee kissed Anastasia’s brother, who was thinner than his sister and had shoulder-length hair. He was dressed more like Zee - tunic, trousers, and knee-high boots - than like Anastasia. Fashion changed very little over the solar system, but quite clearly people in Theseus were slightly more conservative.

 “Sergei’s been looking forward to seeing you ever so much!” Anastasia exclaimed, squeezing her brother’s crotch under her parents’ approving gaze. Zee blanched slightly. But this gesture of her college friend reminded her of why she’d been so keen in the first place to come out so far in the solar system to stay a while with Anastasia and her family. Not that she’d much else to do. Like virtually all her college friends she’d so far failed to find any remunerative employment. Even with a qualification as theoretically employable as a degree in linguistics, there just weren’t any jobs for her. There were only a few things left that couldn’t be done much better by machine. Education. Medicine. Construction. These were all so much better entrusted to robots, nanobots and computers.

Zee kissed the cheeks of Anastasia’s parents, who were both warm and welcoming. The mother gave her a friendly hug, her huge breasts pressed against Zee’s rather smaller bosom. “I do so hope we get on together, you and I. Anastasia said you like the company of women.”

Zee nodded her head. Anastasia had obviously told her mother about their love affair at college. However, Zee’s own parents would have been a lot less enthusiastic. For whatever accident of history, these outer regions had a reputation for sexual license. And Theseus’ reputation was one of the most licentious. A licentiousness that was not nearly as prevalent in the more ancient, slightly staid communities in the inner planets.

But it was this very liberal sexual attitude that had saved Zee’s friendship with Anastasia after they had been an item for more than a whole term. When Zee discovered boys, and became more sure of her sexuality after having played both ways for so long, Anastasia merely shrugged when Zee told her that she had started having sex with Roy on a regular basis. “So what? What difference does that make? As long as I can taste his cock as well.” It was then that Zee learnt just how far Anastasia’s sexual permissiveness went. Boys. Girls. Two. Three. Four. All at the same time. Her brother. Her father. Her mother. In fact, Zee wasn’t convinced that Anastasia would even have drawn the line at animals. Although Zee was more than delighted to introduce Anastasia to her parents as her close friend and lover, she would not have told them about some of the wild group sex sessions they had enjoyed together.

Zee had come to miss all that in the years since she had left college on the elite campuses of Haley’s Comet and had returned to live with her parents under the rather more predictably constant glare of the Earth orbit Sun. Her parents might not mind when she brought home a boy, or even, rather less often now, a girl, but they preferred that she kept her sexual games confined to her own rooms in the condominium. If she’d brought back two or more friends at a time, her parents were unlikely to be nearly as understanding. But attitudes were rather different here.

Anastasia’s father kissed Zee gently, but she could see the lust in his eyes. “I hope we get along famously. And you’ll have plenty of opportunity to get to know every inch of us as intimately as you want to. We’re having a party tomorrow night. We’ve invited a few friends around. If you like dick, as well as my daughter’s cunt, then you’re going to have a good time, Zee sweetie.”

“And none of them have seen black cunt before!” commented Anastasia’s mother, squeezing Zee’s hand in her own. “Not for real, anyway. That’ll be ever so much of a treat!”

Zee smiled again. But there was a hint of nervousness behind her eyes and the brilliant whiteness of her teeth. She’d often wondered what Anastasia’s parents might be like, as she and her lover had rolled around together on the mattress, her tongue exploring the darker pink interior of Anastasia’s vagina. Anastasia had so often described them to her. Sergei’s long thin dick and his keenness on anal entry. An interest he shared and expressed with his male friends. Anastasia’s mother and her massive nipples. Nipples that Anastasia liked to get stiff and long and then stroke against her clitoris. And her father… There seemed to be no acrobatic feat of sexual endeavour that he wasn’t expert in. And when he and Sergei were together, her father fucking her in the front and her brother at the back… Why! You couldn’t believe the fun they had!

Zee could never, would never, imagine such behaviour within her own family. But with Anastasia’s family, out here in the Kuiper Belt, where the round trip for a videophone call took nearly a week, Zee felt she could be adventurous in a way that even at college she’d felt a little constrained.

There was no denying that Theseus was a fairly claustrophobic kind of place. Architecture in the time of its creation had simply not envisaged the five kilometre high vaults and open green spaces of more recent developments. And the worst was that there was no Sun. Zee knew that outside the settlement, where the temperatures were frighteningly close to absolute zero, the Sun was really almost exactly the same size as all the other stars in the sky. But it wasn’t just the long walkways and towering buildings that made Theseus such a claustrophobic settlement, home though it was to between five and six million souls. There was the constant brush of people’s gaze as she walked along with Anastasia and her family, astonished by her huge bush of hair and the skin-tight fit of her clothes, not to mention her skin colour. Zee was relieved when the family entered their transport pod and sped through the underground tunnels to Anastasia’s home in the outer suburbs of the second city of Agamemnon.

Compared to Zee’s own home, Anastasia’s home was enormous. Real estate was much better value here. Wide open gardens, a huge swimming pool, two or three floors of mansion with verandas for every room, and huge trees towering above the house around which were fluttering doves and gibbering monkeys. Zee knew that Anastasia’s family weren’t too badly off. The inheritance of a fortune made from low temperature nanotechnology, when exploration to these outer corners of the solar system was driven by good economic reasons. They might not be rich, exactly, but they were far from being poor. Unlike the few beggars that Zee saw at the spaceport and whose presence followed them to where the transport pod was parked.

Zee settled into her bedroom, which was one of several spare rooms on the top floor overlooking the swimming pool and with a view across the lawns to the other houses and mansions that also lined the long tree-lined avenue. She gazed out of the window and could just about make out the even glow of the powerful light generators two or three kilometres above her head, under which floated several clouds that, against the blue painted background, made the place look deceptively like a proper natural planet. Of which, of course, there was only one. And Zee had never been able to afford to go there. Earth was by far the most expensive and exclusive tourist destination in the populated universe.

It wasn’t long until Anastasia wandered into her bedroom. Zee knew exactly what her friend wanted. She was wearing no clothes, and she had perfumed the blonde curly hairs of her vagina. She wandered across the room, past the bed and sofas to the veranda where Zee had been standing, smiling seductively. Zee sighed. It had been so long! And she’d last had sex with a woman ooh! months ago. In fact, if it hadn’t been for that evening with that man on the space ship who was returning from a trip to Jupiter, she’d very nearly had no sex at all for over a month. Zee put an arm around Anastasia’s naked back, who reciprocated in kind, and the two of them watched the monkeys running up and down the tall trees.

Making love with Anastasia again was so much like jumping into the same pool again. She remembered her friend’s smells and scents so well. The roll of her white flesh. The slightly thickened lips and the flattened face. The smoothness of her vagina: its folds intricate and beautiful, the curled blonde hair thick and luxurious. Her buttocks into which her fingernails sunk in so deep. And Anastasia, as always, was expert in pushing Zee to the limits of her passion. How could a tongue, teeth and fingers be all that was needed to transport her to such loud gasps of ecstasy? Their hands and legs entangled, their sweaty bosoms slid against each other, the spicy taste of whatever Anastasia had been eating on Zee’s tongue.

And all the while, the artificial dusk spread across the suburbs and Zee’s image of her lover’s ivory white skin became greyer and darker, until it was so dark that Anastasia commanded the lights to come on. Zee rubbed her vagina. It had got quite sore from the attention of Anastasia’s tongue and her crotch rubbing against hers.

“Sergei will love that. He really would,” remarked Anastasia, stroking Zee’s crotch.

“Not tonight, please,” pleaded Zee. “I really am very tired after my journey!”

“Of course you are, sweetest. I forgot. But we’re all dreadfully keen to know you better.”

This was very obvious at dinnertime, which was in the garden over the swimming pool and under the shade of some palm trees. But Zee was genuinely tired. Her lovemaking with Anastasia had truly exhausted her, as if she were not already drained after her voyage through deep space and the odd sensation of shifting through so many different gravitational forces. The wine that accompanied the excellent food, served by the almost human-looking androids, made her feel even more tired. She watched with slight amusement as Sergei began kissing his mother. And then his father pulled off his clothes, pulled down his grinning son’s trousers and began thrusting his erect penis into his son’s arse. His mother knelt down and licked and stroked her son’s erect penis, while also caressing her husband’s and guiding its tip into Sergei’s hairy arse.

Anastasia placed a hand on Zee’s arm and gestured towards the activity. “Come on, lover! Let’s get it on. It’ll be fun!”

Zee shook her head sadly. “I really am very tired. I think all I really need is a good night’s sleep.”

Anastasia frowned. She was genuinely disappointed. “Oh! Come on, Zee! Sergei’s not been talking about anything except getting his dick up your arse. And my father… You can see that he’s pretty well hung!” Anastasia could see that Zee wasn’t going to budge. She shook her head again, pulled off her dress and joined her family as they rolled around on the lawn by the edge of the swimming pool.

Zee felt slightly disconcerted as she watched Anastasia’s father push his penis into his daughter’s anus. Not that it was the first time she’d seen Anastasia penetrated in that way. But from her father! And Sergei was fucking his sister’s more commonly used orifice from underneath, while her mother kissed and licked her daughter’s face. Customs in Theseus were clearly quite different from those back home in the inner planets. It would take her a while to get used to all this. But there was the prospect of the party tomorrow at which she was determined to let everything go. Then she also would know what it was like to have Sergei’s dick in her arse. And Anastasia’s father’s dick in her cunt.

However, Zee was getting quite dizzy with exhaustion. She staggered out of her chair, dragging the length of the dress she’d chosen to wear across the grass, until the train recognised what was required of it and levitated several centimetres above the ground. She staggered into the house, partly with the intention of finding somewhere to relieve herself and partly with the intention of collapsing into bed. But as she walked in, past the androids that were as lifeless as shop display dummies now that they weren’t doing anything, she wasn’t at all sure where to go. And she didn’t want to interrupt the rather loud and abandoned lovemaking to ask directions from any of Anastasia’s family. The effects of the wine weren’t helping her sense of direction either.

It was in this way, after pushing open so many doors that really didn’t lead to anything that resembled either a lavatory or a bedroom, that she entered an unlit room on the basement floor of the house. At first she thought it was empty. In fact she thought there must be something wrong with the lighting system that it remained so dim after she’d entered it. She had to actually verbally command the light to shine brighter. And it was then that she saw Themira.

Zee wasn’t at all sure that she was seeing correctly. Surely the wine hadn’t affected her that much. The girl was totally naked. Her neck and ankles were secured by thick iron chains and bolts to a post in the corner of the room. She appeared to be fast asleep. Zee strode over to the girl. She was quite young, certainly younger than either Zee or Anastasia, and her head was totally shaved. As indeed, Zee could see, so too was her crotch. There were huge metal rings threaded through her nipples and another ring through her nostrils. There was even a huge metal ring threaded through her vagina, right through both sets of lips. As Zee’s eyes became more accustomed to the sight of this pale skin, she became aware of red and blue marks all over the girl’s back and legs. They were long and thin, as if the girl had been hit by a cane or a whip.

Zee hovered over the girl for a few moments. She was feeling somewhat dizzy, and she wasn’t sure whether this faintness was due to alcohol or to the disorientation caused by seeing this peculiar sight. Her main thought was how very uncomfortable it must be for the girl to have to sleep on that hard floor, with all those metal rings and chains restraining her. But the girl seemed to be sleeping. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing heavily. Whatever else Zee should do, she shouldn’t wake the girl up.

Zee staggered out of the room and made her way to her bedroom, where after finally emptying her bowels, she pulled off her clothes, collapsed on the bed and was fast asleep almost as soon as she’d closed her eyes.

When Zee woke up, she found herself lying next to Anastasia, who was similarly naked and whose arms were around her. Zee smiled and dreamily kissed her friend.

“I’m oh! so looking forward to the party tonight!” Anastasia exclaimed.

Zee leaned over and rested her face on Anastasia’s bosom. It was so warm and soft. The bush of her long curly hair formed a kind of pillow, strands of which brushed against her cheeks and thick lips. “I’m sure it’ll be fun.”

“Everyone’ll be there. We’re inviting everybody. There’s Ivan. He’s got a massive cock! And you’d be amazed at what Sonya can do with a bottle! And you might remember Boris. He was a year or two below us at college.”

“Will that girl in the basement be there?”

“Girl in the basement? What are you talking about?” Anastasia frowned in genuine puzzlement.

“The naked shaven girl. The one with all the chains.”

Anastasia laughed, though Zee didn’t think it was an especially pleasant or sympathetic laugh. “Oh you mean Themira. The slave. Yeah, of course she’ll be there. She’s the main attraction. Besides you, of course.”

“Slave?” wondered Zee. Was she hearing right?

“Yeah, of course. Slave. You don’t have them in your part of the solar system, do you? Here, everyone’s got one. Well, those who can afford them, that is. We’ve had Themira for months now. She’s not worn out yet!” Anastasia laughed indulgently. “And that’s despite Father’s best attempts!”

Zee frowned. “Slave? The girl’s a slave. How can that be? Slavery’s not existed for millennia. And anyway, what’s the use for a slave? Robots and machines do everything. There’s not been slaves since the Second Millennium.”

Anastasia laughed delightedly. “You really are funny, Zee! Slaves are for sex. You can do it with machines. And you can do it with robots. And you can do it in cyberspace. But nothing beats the real thing.”

“But you don’t need a slave for sex. You didn’t need a slave for sex last night, for instance.”

Anastasia laughed again. “You mean that little bit of fun by the pool? Well, we didn’t need a slave then. But when Father got really excited, then we brought the slave out. He gave her such a good thrashing, I can tell you. Didn’t you hear her scream? No, poor dear. You were sleeping so soundly.” Anastasia kissed her lover on the shoulder. “And Sergei and Father did a double rear entry while I gave her a bit of a whipping myself. That was fun! If you’d been with us, you’d have been able to play.”

Zee’s face disintegrated into disgust and revulsion. “I just can’t believe you’re saying all this, Anastasia. What you were doing doesn’t sound like sex to me. It sounds like humiliation and cruelty. Surely, this girl, Themira, she can’t enjoy all of that.”

“Fuck what she wants!” Anastasia snarled. “She’s a slave. We bought her as one, and we can do what the fuck we like with her. Until we get tired of her, and then she’ll just be chucked out. Then she can be a beggar or a whore or whatever else slaves do when they’re not slaves any more.”

Zee pulled herself off her lover, astonished by Anastasia’s callousness. “Do you mean you seriously don’t care?”

“Of course I don’t. No one cares about slaves. We give her a bit of a beating. Make her suffer. Make her hurt. That’s what slaves are for. And as long as you don’t damage them too much they’ve got everything to be grateful for. At least they’re not starving to death in the streets.”

“Starving to death? What do you mean?”

Anastasia frowned. “Things are too soft in your corner of the solar system. You have it too easy. Here in Theseus, not everything is wonderful. Many, if not most, people here are just not doing that well. They can hardly afford food. Fuck knows how they even manage to afford clothes to protect their precious privacy. What do you think a slave would rather do? Give us pleasure? At a cost. Or starve?”

Zee didn’t like this side of Theseus’ culture at all. Nor her friend’s unsympathetic attitude to it. Back home, there was no poverty. Not very many people were as wealthy as Anastasia’s family either, but everyone was cared for. Everyone had a full, rich life. There were those who worked or had a particularly fortuitous inheritance, and therefore had rather fuller and richer lives than others. Zee could count herself in that fortunate category. Her father worked as a set designer on cyber-television. But nobody starved and nobody was a slave. Zee had heard about poverty, of course, but like the other unpleasantnesses in the solar system, like the long-running war in the Asteroid Belt or that horrible plague in the Oort Cloud, she’d never really paid much attention to it. She’d just hoped she’d never have to confront it directly.

Later that day, Zee knew she had to see the slave girl again. Thoughts about her had haunted her all day. It even had a detrimental affect on her lovemaking with Anastasia, which was not as passionate as the day before. In fact, she was almost pleased when Anastasia said she had to leave to visit her friend, Natalie, and could leave Zee alone on the come- and sweat-soaked sheets. Zee wandered around her room naked and languorous for several hours, not at all sure what to do. She could log into cyberspace. She could watch a film. Even just relax on the veranda with a book. But she found she was spending most of her time staring at her naked black figure in a full-length mirror. Perky firm breasts with the large aureole, dark brown nipples. The lighter pink of the flesh inside her vagina. The trim slim figure. How was it that she was any different than the slave in the basement? Who was just as pretty as her, even if her baldness and her welts and bruises made her seem less so.

Zee eventually built up enough courage to make her way down to the basement, past the lifeless androids in the hallway and the busy domestic robots that were eating the dust and preparing the house for the evening’s party. When she arrived at the place where she’d seen the slave, she found the room just as dark and miserable as it had been the night before. And the slave, Themira, was chained up in exactly the same way, except that in front of her was a bowl of water and a bowl of some fairly unappetising gruel.

Zee was horrified to see that what Anastasia had been saying was quite true. There were fresh marks on the girl’s back and buttocks, and scratches over her face and shoulders. One scratch was quite prominent as it cut across the light blue stubble of her shaven pate. Zee stood by the door and looked across at Themira, not sure what to do or say. And then she noticed that Themira was staring at her through light blue eyes underneath pale blonde eyebrows, and the expression on her face was one of fear. In fact, the girl was visibly trembling.

“Please don’t hurt me, miss. Not now. Later this evening, you can hurt me. Then you can whip me. But not now. Please not. I’m not ready.”

Themira’s voice was soft and tremulous. And peculiarly submissive. Zee had never heard anyone speak in such a humble tone before. “Don’t worry, Themira. That is your name, isn’t it? I haven’t come to hurt you.”

The slave turned her head away and then bent down to sip the water from the bowl. For the first time, Zee noticed that the bowls were fixed to the ground and Themira wasn’t able to drink or eat by lifting the bowls to her mouth. And there were no feeding implements. Furthermore, her wrists were chained together, and the trail of the chain went through a network that pulled taut her nipples and tugged on her vagina. Even the smallest actions were at best uncomfortable, and at worst positively painful.

“So what have you come for? What else would anyone come to see me for, if it’s not to abuse me or hurt me? And why are you a funny colour? Have you had some operation to change your skin colour?”

“It’s my natural colour!” said Zee proudly. She knew that some people spent a lot of credit to change their skin pigmentation. Not just black or brown, but also blue, red or green. Zee was born black. She looked at Themira again. “In truth, I don’t know why I came here. I’m a friend of Anastasia’s. I’m visiting from the inner solar system. We went to college together. It’s just that I’ve never seen a slave before.”

“Well, you’ve seen one now, miss. Are you satisfied by what you see?”

Zee was puzzled and confused. She wasn’t at all sure what she wanted to achieve. “I just thought that maybe… perhaps… I don’t know… I mean… Why are you a slave? Was it a career decision?”

“‘Career decision’? I don’t know what you’re talking about, miss. My father sold me into slavery because he was in debt. He used to drink and gamble. And it went wrong. And he’d already sold my older sister. So, it was my turn.”

“You were ‘sold’! Can they do that?”

“Of course, they can, miss. I really don’t understand why you’re asking these questions. I’m a slave. Unless you’re one of the abolitionists you hear about, what are you going to do, miss? My father had no choice. If he didn’t pay his debts, he’d have been killed. That’s what these debt-collectors do. They’re ruthless, they are. He’d already lost two fingers and an ear from his last debt before he’d sold my sister. So, he had no choice. Him and my mother and my two younger sisters. They’ve got to eat, haven’t they, miss?”

“That can’t be right. It’s the Fourth Millennium. Not the Second or First. There can’t be slavery, extortion and racketeering today. It just doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t understand you, miss. Perhaps in the Martian or Terran or Venusian orbits things are different. But out here, in Theseus, when the going gets tough, there aren’t that many options. And rich folks like having slaves. They’ve had them for generations. It’s like a status symbol for them. Big house. Nice address. Set of realistic androids. And a sex slave. And while people want to buy them, there’ll always be people willing to sell them.”

“But you can’t possibly want to be a slave.”

“Of course I don’t want to be, miss. But I can consider myself lucky. Some of the richer slave-owners kill their slaves. It’s like a sport for them, miss. It’s called ‘Snuff’. Of course, only the richest ones can afford to do that. And be able to get away with it. Here, I just get beaten, humiliated, abused and fucked up the arse. Is that what you want to do, miss? Fuck me up the arse?”

“Goodness! No! Of course not.”

Zee left Themira feeling fairly dissatisfied. She’d tried to talk to the girl, tried to be kind to her, and the girl had just not been grateful or responsive or anything. When she returned to her room and immersed herself in the artificial reality of a history show, she told herself it was not surprising that someone who’d been sold into slavery by her father and was daily subjected to arbitrary cruelty and humiliation should feel somewhat bitter. She also felt that Themira should have shown some gratitude for her trying to offer her comfort even though, of course, she’d no idea what she should do. She couldn’t very well free the girl. She was Anastasia’s guest, after all. And she didn’t have a key to all the manacles and bolts that were constraining her, even if that was not the issue.

Later, Zee ventured out into the garden where preparations were underway for the party. Anastasia and her mother were giving orders to the domestic robots of where to place the buntings, balloons and other decorations. Anastasia’s father was busy supervising an android whose task was to barbecue sausages, burgers and steak. Sergei was dozing naked on a lounger by the swimming pool. Zee strode over to Anastasia.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

Anastasia smiled. “Not on the preparation front, sweetest. But you could help Sergei. He’s been dying to get to know you better.”

“Help Sergei?“ Zee wondered. He didn’t look like he needed help. As she soon found out, the assistance Sergei wanted was of a sexual nature. And so it was that for the first time in weeks, Zee once again enjoyed the taste of cock. And, Zee had to admit, Sergei was well endowed. It took very little time for him to ease off her clothes and for the two of them to get down to business under the approving eyes of Anastasia and her parents. Zee had been warned about Sergei’s predilection for anal intercourse, but she made sure she got her vagina stuffed first. She straddled Sergei as he reclined on the bed, after having brought his penis to a full erection by her sucking and chewing, and guided it into her vagina. Fuck! It felt so good! Stiff and hard and pumping! Just as a cock should be. Zee supported her weight by placing her hands on Sergei’s shoulders and pushing her buttocks up and down, up and down, as Sergei pushed up and down himself, so that each inward thrust was that much deeper and that much more urgent.

Soon, after having fallen off the lounger and onto the lawn, Sergei was able to penetrate the orifice of his choice. That dick of his! Already big enough to fill a cunt as slippery wet and willing as Zee’s, it was a much tighter fit now as he pushed into the smaller less elastic hole at the rear, parting her buttocks with his thumbs, and pushing and thrusting. And all the while grunting and snorting. Zee’s own cries were throatier, more urgent, louder, and more passionate. Where was this passion coming from? Why was she feeling so excited? Zee decided that must have been a result of seeing Anastasia and her family make love together the night before, but they weren’t intervening in Zee’s lovemaking with Sergei. It was as if they had decided the two should get to know each other exclusively. But Zee was conscious of Anastasia and her parents busying themselves around the garden, and observing her and her fucking on occasion with a kind of semi-detached interest.

Zee didn’t really notice the start of the party or the guests arriving. In fact, her evening seemed to be an unending sequence of sexual encounters all in the large expanse of Anastasia’s garden. There was little pause between partners. Just enough time to drink, smoke or pop a pill. Zee was certainly a very popular guest. Her black skin, her enormous bush of thick curly hair, there wasn’t a guest who didn’t want at least a taste of it. Zee’s arse was penetrated again. Dicks queued up to penetrate her vagina. There was a splatter of semen on her chest. Both men and women, boys and girls, took advantage of her body. And Zee was more than up for it. Her body was one hot, perspiring, sex-smelling, slippery mass of black love flesh. She rolled around on the grass in a huddle of bodies. At one stage, Anastasia rejoined her friend. At another time, there was Anastasia’s mother. Zee had absolutely no idea which of the other men fucked her or which women licked, sucked, and chewed her. Often she didn’t even see their faces. Just their genitals, breasts and the intimate details of their bodies.

But Zee was not a sexual athlete. However hot she was, (and she guessed that some of the drugs she’d had made her even hotter), she didn’t have the stamina for too many hours of passion. She tired, no longer really enjoying the sex. She let the last dick come inside her and then slumped exhausted on the grass, closing her legs as a sign that shop was shut for the moment. But although her physical strength was depleted, she was still in a heightened state of arousal. She lay on the ground with her friend Anastasia who was naked and hot herself.

It was then that she noticed Themira. Well, there was no mistaking that naked white flesh with the shaved head. She was roped up in a most uncomfortable position and surrounded by several men, none of whom she recognised. Not that it was at all unlikely that she’d only recently enjoyed sex with one or all of them. There were two dicks poking at Themira’s face, one man was thrusting into her vagina from the front, and Zee could see another dick penetrating her anus from underneath. Zee had never seen that kind of multiple sex orgy on one person before, although it was quite possible that moments ago she herself had been the centre of a similar number of male admirers. However, it was obvious that Themira was not enjoying this attention at all. Her eyes were red. There were streaks of tears down her cheeks. Her face was also splattered by thick creamy splotches of what Zee could only assume was semen.

“Do you like what you see?” wondered Anastasia, nonchalantly sipping from her glass.

“What do you mean?” Zee wondered.

“The slave. Do you like what you see? The bitch is having a bit of fun now. But she can’t enjoy herself too much. She has to be punished again soon.”

“It doesn’t look like it’s much fun for her at the moment.”

“Fuck! Zee! It’s no different to the sex you were enjoying a moment ago. If you enjoyed it, then why wouldn’t she?”

“It’s different. It’s a question of choice.”

“Is choice a privilege or a curse, Zee? Our little slave doesn’t have to do fucking anything except what we tell her to. Anyway, it looks like her friends are finishing now. And look! Our little slave’s been a little tardy in licking the shit off that dick. She’s gonna get it now.”

Zee watched with Anastasia’s arms around her as Themira was roughly tied to a steel frame by cords, her arms and legs spread out to the four corners. Weights were tied to the rings in her nipples and her vagina, which must have added to the discomfort she was already experiencing. In fact, Zee was sure that ‘discomfort’ was too weak a word to describe the pain the slave was suffering. Her head drooped down helplessly. Her eyes stared out. A blank, bitter, almost unseeing gaze.

Then Anastasia’s naked father strode up to the girl, with a penis no longer fully erect but which he stroked with one hand. In the other hand he was carrying what looked like a cane. It was a long length of flexible wood with a curved handle. Did such things really exist? Zee wondered. Then Anastasia’s father addressed the guests.

“As you have no doubt had the pleasure of seeing or even enjoying directly, our sluttish slave here has had the honour and privilege of providing you with her services all evening. It is now the time to decide whether she has served you well. She has been fucked and sucked and buggered for many hours now. Has she provided a good quality of service? Or do you think she should be punished for her shoddiness, her lack of willingness and her general sluttishness? How do you vote?”

Zee watched with morbid fascination as the guests trotted out reasons why Themira should be punished: reasons that really didn’t seem at all credible to Zee. She had not expressed gratitude after sucking shit off a penis. She had objected to having a guest piss in her mouth. She had not smiled when a guest squirted his semen into her eyes.

“In that case,” Anastasia’s father announced, “our slave deserves to be whipped. And I think it’s only right that my daughter’s visitor from the distant Earth orbit should be given that opportunity.”

“Ooh! That’s you, Zee!” said Anastasia excitedly. “Come on, Zee! Give the slut what she deserves.”

“What? Me? I can’t do that! It’s wrong. I can’t hit someone else.”

“Do you want Father to do it? He’ll beat the girl so hard she’ll bleed. He can get really brutal.”

“It’s still wrong.”

“If you don’t do it, someone else will. Someone with less compassion than you. If you worry about hurting the girl, do it yourself. Then you can temper your blows. Keep them on the soft side of vicious.”

Zee was not convinced, but Anastasia’s coaxing and that of the other guests pulled her onto her feet. She wandered unsteadily over to Anastasia’s father, hardly able to focus on anything or anyone. She was still disorientated by all the sex and drugs and drink she’d had. Semen coated her pubic hairs and the top of her thighs. There was dried sticky semen on her cheeks and chin. She took the cane that was proffered and held it awkwardly in her hands. It was long and flexible. She flexed it slightly. It was made of real wood. Not plastic.

“What do I do?”

“You slap her, of course,” Anastasia’s father said. “You bring it back like this, “ he drew back his arm in demonstration, “and then thwack it sharply like this.” He brought his arm forward with a pretend swing, like someone demonstrating how to use a tennis racquet. “Thwock!”

Zee was still very unsure. She wandered over to Themira, tied up with her head drooping. She was clearly suffering from the strain of being strung up in this totally unnatural way. Zee put her face towards the girl. It didn’t look very pretty now. Thick scabs of dried semen caked onto her cheeks and her forehead. Snot was running from her nostrils and streaming down into her mouth and off the end of her chin to drop on her breasts. Her eyes were red and raw, but there were no tears now. Plenty of streaky evidence that she’d been crying, though.

“I don’t want to do this, you know,” she whispered to the girl.

Themira raised her head and looked at Zee with a pleading expression. Her voice was soft and croaking. “Then please don’t do it, miss. Please don’t. I’ve suffered so much.”

“But I have to, Themira. If I don’t, then someone else will. And they’ll be brutal. And cruel.”

“And you aren’t, miss?” asked the girl in a weak almost inaudible voice. “You’re no different if you beat me. You’re just the same as the others. Just a lot more sanctimonious!”

Fuck! That hurt. Totally out of order. Zee had tried to express sympathy to the bald, filthy slut, and the girl was so insolent. Red anger boiled in Zee’s eyes. She stood back with the cane and slapped Themira’s buttocks with it. The cane whistled through the air and hit the buttocks with a reassuring crack. Themira’s body shivered and shook with the pain, and she struggled in vain against the cords that tied her and held her in place. She gave vent to a sharp cry. Something like the cry of an orgasm, but sharper and louder.

And then Zee’s recollection of her chastisement of Themira became unclear. She was egged on by the cheers and chortles of Anastasia, Sergei and the other guests, as she beat at Themira’s buttocks with the cane, feeling a vicarious and peculiar spasm of ecstasy with each crack of the cane and the slave’s answering shout of pain and agony. The tears began flowing again. Snot spluttered out like gobbets of come onto her breasts. Her body jerked, spasmed and kicked in her confinement with each crack. And with the guests’ encouragement, she caned Themira’s breasts, thighs and cunt with the same vigour as she did the buttocks.

After this session, Zee was not able to look at Themira in the same way. She was now herself a torturer. She was complicit with the abuse and violence of Theseusian society. And, what was worse, she’d enjoyed it.

She spent the rest of the party luxuriating without urgency and with little actual sex in the company of a body of men and women, including Sergei and Anastasia. Her breasts were licked, her nipples sucked, her clitoris chewed, her face lavished with kisses. And what of Themira? Zee saw the slave taken down from the harness and tied at its base. For the rest of the party she was used as a toilet. Guests would shit or piss on her, or even into her mouth. And all the while she looked even more miserable and unhappy. Even as she thanked the guests as they pissed down her throat or shat on her breasts.

Zee looked at the sight with pity. She was not so far gone that she would herself choose to excrete or urinate on the girl. But she knew now that there was a part of her that would not now rest so easily when she went to sleep.