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Subject: {ASSM} Zayphar - Ponygirl Transformation (3/3) (Xaltatun) [mf ff bdsm kidnap slavery pony sf]
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From Lord Zayphar's Archive:

Ponygirl Transformation (3/3)
by Xaltatun of Acheron

MF, FF, bdsm, kidnap, slavery, pony




Part 3 of 3

Driver
By Xaltatun of Acheron (A pseudonym)


Chapter 1. Introductions

Such a glorious day, charging down the interstate in my brand-new,
electric blue Thunderbolt. Even the traffic was behaving itself. My
freshman year was behind me, spring had turned itself into summer, and
daddy had been overjoyed over my grades. Hence the Thunderbolt. I felt
like bursting into song.

But which song? There weren't that many about a maid and her pony. The
one about Catherine the Great wasn't exactly what I had in mind. And I
couldn't come up with anything about a maid and her ponygirl. The song
from `Oklahoma!' would have to do.

Oklahoma did splendidly. And here was the exit for Fran Donaldson's
Ponygirl Stables. Daddy had promised me my very own ponygirl for
graduation. If. The hardest of the big "I"s to deal with. In this
case, if I learned how to race one, and stuck with it.

Fran's came into sight, right where the map said. Typical industrial
setting.

Chain link fence, guard shack, parking lot. And a huge, low building.
I supposed it had to be huge if it had a regulation ponygirl track
inside. Some construction equipment. A cherry picker with its basket
tilted back, flanked by two earthmovers with their buckets up and out.
Aaarrrggh! An abstract sculpture of the begging puppy position, done
in construction equipment?

The gate came up, the road teeth came down, and the guard waved me
through. The road went past the empty parking lot to a garage. The
door came up in front of me, I went in, and the door came down behind
me. Lots of space. I turned off the car. "Goodbye, honey. Remember to
take your keys and lock the door. That's a good girl." Some days I
could kill daddy. That voice was going to be reprogrammed. Today.

"Hi, Melissa?" The athletic looking redhead standing by the door waved
at me.

"I'm Sharon." I took her in at one glance. She was fairly tall; her
hair was done with very short sides and a fall standing out from each
side of her head, fitted white silk blouse, black leather miniskirt
and 5" heels. Classical figure. The glance turned into a full-scale
stare.

Sharon giggled. "I do look a bit, um, unusual, don't I? Which part
gets you the most?"

I finished goggling. "The hair. I think."

"It's called a pony cut. I'm an active ponygirl. Well, as active as I
absolutely have to be to finish a race and not have the judges rolling
on the floor laughing. There's not that much you can do with long
hair; I think our trainers use every trick in the book to keep from
getting bored."

"I see. I think. Or maybe I think I see." Get a grip, girl. "Our
trainers try to make their hair look more like a pony's mane. And I
know girls that would kill for that length."

"Gene manipulation. The side hair grows like that, and doesn't have to
be cut.

The ponygirl association and most of the owners are flat against a
real mane.

Too much of a problem with the days off and vacation requirements."

"Days off? Vacations?" I must have looked flustered. "Ours don't even
talk. How does the CSA apply to them?"

"It does. Compliance is one of the things I do for Fran." She paused.
I must have looked shocked. Or something. "Cheer up, kid. You're not
in any trouble.

Your father won't be if he gets his ass in gear right away when I talk
to him.

There's too much money and political influence floating around to go
after people just to prove a point."

"Damn. Oh, well. What's next?"

"We go see your pony. How much do you know about handling ponygirls?"

"I've seen ours, but I haven't done much with them."

"Driven one in a cart?"

"Not yet. It was always `next time.' Somehow, next time didn't
happen."

"Let's start at the beginning then. Here are the offices."

We turned left into a big room. A woman in a green mini-dress was
cleaning stuff at one end. Another woman in a blue mini-dress was deep
in conversation with a guy at one of the tables. The offices said
things like "Owner. Fran Donaldson,"

"Compliance. Sharon Samuels" and "Chief Trainer. Dreammaker."

"Tammy's the one in green, Karen's the one in blue. She's the chief
trainer.

Danny's the guy." Their collars said the same thing. "Hi, Karen, this
is Melissa. She's the one that's going to be learning how to drive the
Princess."

"Great. Pull up a chair. I hope you like to work."

"Uh, what needs doing?"

"Everything, actually. Really, we'd prefer it if you learned how to
take care of a ponygirl from the ground up. You don't need to; we can
make it look like the Princess comes already harnessed."

"But you don't really want to. I can see that. If I'm going to be
racing my own, I'd better know how to care for her."

"Exactly. Keeps us happy. Besides, you'll find we're very shorthanded
at races.

You'll probably wind up racing all of our ponies so whichever trainer
comes with can concentrate on the routine."

The door said "Stables and Track." It led to a brightly lit corridor
heading off to the left. Clip Clop echoed down the corridor as a pony
marched away from us, a young woman dressed in pink holding her reins.
She pulled a rein, and the pony turned left into another doorway.

We trooped into the door they had come out of. Light glinted off the
steel bars marching down the two sides of the corridor into the
distance. It looked like a jail. The cells were almost like the ones
in daddy's stable, but there were differences. Daddy's didn't have
that wall of wood drawers and cabinets, polished to a deep glow. His
didn't have the nameplates either; the one on the left read: "Red
Jaguar. Owner: Jeff Donaldson. Trainer: Danny. Captured: 1995."

The design around the outside seemed to shift until I looked at it. It
 was an array of shadowed cubes that shifted direction even as I
watched. The red jaguar in mid leap below seemed almost normal by
comparison.

"Jeff is Fran's father. The cubes are Fran's racing colors. Everyone
agrees they suck, but the stewards don't quite have the nerve to tell
Fran to change them, and Fran doesn't like to admit to making a
mistake."

"Where have I heard that before?" We laughed.


Chapter 2. Amazon Princess

The placard said: "Amazon Princess. Owner: Fran Donaldson. Trainer:
Danny.

Captured 1995." Fran's optical illusion marched around the outside.
"No picture?"

"They only get one for a first at a national or the international. The
Princess isn't a racer; she'll be Fran's second senior trainer next
year. Unless she suddenly decides you're the driver of her dreams,
she's not going to go for it."

"Then why?"

Sharon said, "Both Fran and Dreammaker think she needs to know how a
racer feels from the inside, and they think her previous training
leaves a lot to be desired. I don't know about the training, but her
current form certainly does."

Danny said, "OK, open it up."

"Uh, how?"

"Just grab it along the bar, with your thumb here." Click. I jumped.
The door followed me with perfect aplomb.

"Hidden fast release. We only use the locks when there are strangers
present."

Sharon said, "Now, look her over, and then go up and look her in the
eyes."

Amazon Princess was a brunette, about 5'10" and with the classic
hourglass figure. She was kneeling on the display stand, feet out
behind and secured with the ankle chains, head back on the headrest,
arms locked to her sides, hands out. She looked like nothing so much
as a begging puppy.

I stepped up and looked down into her eyes. Oh, my. That first look
bounced around my soul. Her eyes widened, she whinnied and tapped her
hoof twice.

"Oh, my." I came up for air. "Does it always happen like that?"

"Almost never," Sharon said. "You two are connected somehow."

"What does it mean?"

"How should I know? You'll need to talk it over when you groom her or
she's in girl mode."

"Since you're going to work her, you need to replace the ball gag with
a bit,"

Danny said. "The thing is, we don't actually use a ball gag most of
the time.

That ball is a piece of window dressing. Here's the tool you need." He
held out a tool. "You'll get your own kit shortly. Unclip the ends
from the bridle. Put it in the hole, like so, and squeeze the handle."
Click. "Now pull."

The front end of a ball came out in my hand. "Put it in the tray over
there."

Another squeeze, and the tool detached.

"Bits are in that drawer. You want one that plugs in like the ball." I
found it.

"Now peel her lips back and plug it in." A white mouthpiece with a
hole in the center stared at me. Click. The bit settled in. Snap,
Snap. It attached to the bridle. The bit had two metal pieces on the
end that came down, almost like the drooping mustaches you see in old
Chinese pictures.

"Next is to get her off the stand. That's in three pieces. First, we
do the ankle chains." The ankle chains proved to be simple snap hooks.
"Now, the headrest. That's a bolt. Tell her `head up'."

"Head up, honey." She brought her head up a couple of inches. The bolt
came out easily and the headrest lifted out.

"The next command is `up,'" Danny said. "Hold these two rings so they
don't bind."

"Up." She brought her legs forward to a squatting position, and then
rose up smoothly.

"Off the stand," Danny said. The Princess came two steps forward, and
then stood.

"You put reins on her next." He pointed. "Thread them through these
rings on her shoulder straps."

Clip Clop echoed around the cell for quite a while, interspersed with
swear words. Danny scattered things on the floor, and had me trot the
Princess around them. After a while, she was going where I wanted,
when I wanted.

"Enough for one day. Put her on her stand." I managed that without
mishap.

"Don't put in the headrest. What do you want to do next?"

I blushed.

"OK, we do sex next."

"Huh?" I'm afraid I don't think very well when I'm so wet I'm
practically dripping.

"Sex is part of their daily routine. We keep them happy, they keep us
happy. Get a ring gag from the gag drawer, take her mouthpiece out,
and put the ring in."

He had me march her over to the bucking rack. That turned out to be a
couple of parallel bars and some straps and clips. I had to bend her
over and attach her bustier so she was held between the bars, parallel
to the floor. Another rod went over her shoulders.

"OK, girl. Pull up your skirt, and have her do you." By this time, I
would have ripped it off myself, but the last shreds of sanity
prevailed. That tongue sent me right over the edge. Since Danny had
barely started on the other end, I came back for seconds. Moans,
whinnies and grunts filled the cell for the next few minutes. The
feeling bounced around and built up, and up, and up and away. That
ceiling looked so lovely. Oh, well. I scrambled to my feet.

Danny finished buckling his belt. "Put her back on her stand."

"Well," Sharon asked, "how do you feel about your first sessions?"

"Um, confused. It all feels like it's so ... inevitable? Right?
Necessary? But parts are just wrong."

"What's wrong about it?"

"Well, you just don't do sex like that. You should at least ask?"

"Why? I really mean that. She's a perfectly normal female, at least
sexually, who is in bondage 24 hours a day, six and a half days a
week. She gets just as horny as anyone else. Keeping her sexually
satisfied is just as much a part of the job as keeping her fed. She
doesn't have any choice about what and when she is fed, either. Or
about when she's worked, or for how long."

"Uh, it's still confused."

"Look at it this way, then. She's in pony mode. You don't ask a pony
anything.

Eventually, you'll have to deal with her in girl mode. Then, if you
want sex with her, you have to ask. You're confusing the two modes. In
pony mode, you need to treat her like a pony. No choices.
Distinguishing the two isn't easy."

"Oh, my. I didn't realize. I'll have to ... I'd be embarrassed out of
my mind."

Sharon laughed. "I know exactly how you feel. If it helps, everyone in
the BDSM scene has been there at one time or another. So has just
about everyone else, for that matter. Sleep on it. If you still have a
problem, talk it over with Fran or Dreammaker."

Jim Bate's two ponygirls were erect and perky. Their eyes followed us
everywhere. The place was clean and well lit.

"So what's the problem? Everything looks ok, at least on a once over."

"Staffing. I don't have the time any more. I don't even have the time
to find out what needs to be done, let alone race them. Frankly, I'd
like to get out from under, but I still want them. If that makes any
sense."

"Sure. How's this? You board them at Fran's, and she buys your staff.
You contract with her for rehabilitation. It might even be cheaper
than what this setup is costing."

We worked out the details.


Chapter 3. Staff Meeting

Karen sat on one of the tables. "OK folks. Settle down now. Everyone
remember Melissa?"

Everyone had better, since I was standing there with everyone else.

"Well, Sharon bought out her father's establishment yesterday. He's
boarding his two ponies with us; they're in numbers 15 and 16. Neither
of them speaks at all, or understands English, so expect the whole
rehabilitation mess for the next six months or so. That shouldn't be
too bad, we've been through the drill before."

"She also bought his staff. Let's welcome Faye, Sid and Terrill." Big
round of applause, whistles, catcalls. "Faye, you stick to Tammy like
glue. Sid, same with Danny. Terrill, you're Fred's shadow."

"Mostly, we're pretty loose around here. Fran is the big boss, but she
doesn't get involved with the routine, except when she's doing
training. Sharon is number two; she fills in for us when needed. The
place you're going to have the most trouble is seeing the same person
as a pony one day, and a girl the next, and acting appropriately. If
you have trouble with that, talk to Fran or Dreammaker."

"Last thing. FROG."

"RIBBIT!" They must have been practicing.

The meeting broke up laughing.


Chapter 4. My First Race

"Well, it looks like you've arrived," Sharon told me. "Security always
gets a bit antsy before giving one of these out."

`This' looked exactly like the PDA hanging on my belt next to the
prod. "So, what's different about it?"

"Guess what happens if you press *2*?"

"You get the director of Lensmen?"

She stared at it. "Somebody has too much time on his hands," she
muttered, darkly.

"Actually, it's a direct line to Ponygirls. If you don't put in
anything else, you get Security." She showed me how to set up a
teleport.

"I need this?"

"Yes. You and the Princess are ready for competition."

I goggled. "Huh? Dreammaker keeps implying I might be ready about the
middle of the 22nd century."

"I didn't say a major show. You don't fall out of the sulky, you
handle the handoff on the start ok, you don't run the Princess into
another ponygirl or sulky, you hand off to her at the end acceptably,
and you look good at the judge's line. At the junior level, half the
drivers can't even do that."

"How is this possible?"

"I'll let you in on a secret. This stable has two part-time senior
trainers, Fran and Dreammaker. Guess how many senior trainers there
are on the entire owner's circuit?"

"Uh, two?"

"Five. There should be fifty. At least. That's why Fran wants you and
the Princess to get the racing down, so she can send the Princess to
senior trainer's school."


I looked at the race assignments. "It looks like there's an open slot
in the fourth. And an open ponygirl cell."

Sharon said, "No way..." She looked over my shoulder.

From behind me, Fran said, "If it's still open, do it. Melissa didn't
fall over herself driving you in practice."

We made arrangements.

"Sharon, if we're going to make a good showing in the owner's parade,
I need both you and the Princess in a practice session first. Can you
stay over Thursday so we can get it Friday morning?"

Sharon just shook her head and marked up her schedule.

Karen and I both wore Fran's racing colors. It's a standard uniform
for all ponygirl racers, modeled, so I am told, after Community
styles. From the top down, I wore a fitted sleeveless blouse with a
neckline that showed just enough cleavage to demonstrate I was a girl,
not that the lines of the blouse left anything to the imagination in
that respect. The bottom was a leather miniskirt, with 5" heeled calf
length boots to finish it off. Karen wore a green trainer's belt, I
had a blue driver's belt, both decorated with the usual hypersonic
prod, whip, and cell phone and tool kit. From there, it went downhill
rapidly. The blouse, skirt and boots were decorated with Fran's racing
colors. Those tri-colored red cubes with the shifting perspective were
a guaranteed instant eyesore. I kept looking for the jester's cap and
balls.

Flying Squad and Amazon Princess wore Fran's colors on their boots,
bustier and puppy paw arm binders. Karen had the Squad and the owner's
cart; I had the Princess and the sulky. We were pulled up in one of
the exercise areas in the center of our home track. I punched in the
teleport. The cell phone said "One minute. I triggered Flying Squad's
and my sleepy gas canisters. Space did its usual obscenity. When we
came to, we were in the center of another track.

A young woman in a black and white diagonally striped mini-dress stood
at the edge of the practice area. "Mistress Melissa Bates? This one is
called Sally."

Her collar agreed.

Mistress? Oh, right. Square root of -2. She led us out to the
harnessing area in front of the on ramp, where we dropped the sulky
and cart. We got our ponies on the traveling display stands without
mishap. Karen pulled them down to the assigned cells, while I went to
check in.

"Kathy!" I screamed. We hugged. "I won't say you're an eyesore if you
don't tell me that."

"Ok, I won't mention you're an eyesore."

"Who are you rooming with next year?" Her face fell.

"I'm probably not. No money for tuition."

"Shit. Talk to you later." I looked at her. "I may have a deal."

I was up with Amazon Princess in the first.




Karen had the Princess in the ready circle. She came off the stand
like a dream and marched to the sulky. I managed to get her hitched
without either fouling the traces or pinching my hand. We had pole
position six; she got to the starting line in plenty of time. I got my
focus sufficiently that the starter's pistol didn't startle me; the
whole start had that dreamlike quality of inevitability.

A quick check showed that three and four had some kind of problem.
Five was away ok, but for some reason wasn't moving toward the fence.
I slowed the Princess slightly, and then cut her behind five. A burst
of speed got us to the fence in first position. The rest of the field
fell in behind on the turn, and I kept it that way.

Beginner's luck? I'll take it every time. A win is a win. And the
Princess deserved a ribbon on her award shelf, even if this wasn't
going to get her a device. She grinned at me when I took out the bit.
When I held out the filled chocolate, her tongue flicked out and
captured it. Then she giggled, and opened wide for the ball gag.

Kathy got her pony to a clear second in the second race. As far as I
could tell, the first place ponygirl and driver simply had the entire
field outclassed. No competition.




She didn't look happy. Turned out that she'd been promised next year's
tuition if she got a first. And she wouldn't be driving any more
unless she got that first.

"Not a chance in that field. Both you and your girl were simply
outclassed. Tell you what, though. You're a switch, right?"

"Yes. Somehow, I can't seem to get in the middle. I either dominate or
submit, and I have to do both."


"Got a proposition. I'll ask daddy for your tuition if you room with
me and do the usual sub stuff. Then I can get you on Fran's staff as a
driver; that should do for the dom part."

She looked intrigued. "Might work at that. What do you get out of it?"

"Not having to do my own cooking and cleaning. Daddy wants me to take
one of Mother's maids, but I won't do it. They're fine as maids, but I
need someone I can talk to, or I live alone."

She laughed. "If you can swing the money, I can swing a mop. Deal."

The fourth was rough. Flying Squad was nowhere near Amazon Princess.
We were on the outside pole again. She got to the starting line
adequately; and came off the gun ok, if not brilliantly. We lucked out
in that both four and five had problems, so I got her to the third
lane ok. Then she didn't respond to signals to speed up. That tore it;
I knew exactly what she was capable of. I'd been monitoring her
running machine just like I had monitored Amazon Princess's.

"GET YOUR FUCKING ASS IN GEAR!" Swish! Crack! Smack! First time I had
ever really used that whip with intent to make a point. She moved. We
flew into first place on the fence just in time for the turn. After
that, I had no problem.

I got enough speed out of her in the home stretch to get a good five
seconds on the second place pony. We needed four of them on form, but
we still came in first by a single point.

I looked her in the eye just before removing the bit. "Sharon, either
you fix your attitude, or we're going to have a long talk with Fran.
You see what you can do when you try." Then I took the bit out, and
held out the filled chocolate. Her eyes widened. "You came in first.
You deserve it." She took it on her tongue and savored it. I didn't
think we'd have any more problems.

Left. Clip. Right. Clop. Amazon Princess and Flying Squad led off the
owner's parade in perfect synchronization. Karen drove in brunette
splendor. Karen insisted I ride as owner; she'd had it with Sharon's
attitude and I'd done something about it. I had to keep pinching
myself to make certain I wasn't dreaming.

"Yeoweee!" Fran and Dreammaker hugged each other. They'd waited until
we got ourselves organized, and then spotted the blue ribbons I had
put on the pony's breast rings. Hugs all around.

I left Flying Squad in pony mode that night, and worked her the next
morning before letting her get into girl mode. There was a definite
attitude change during the workout. I didn't talk to her, and I don't
think Fran did. But it stuck. She let us put her nameplate up on cell
12, and scheduled regular workouts. I never heard another word about
"As little as I can to keep the judges from rolling on the floor
laughing."


Chapter 5. I Capture A Ponygirl (sort of)

Fall term came around with the inevitability of the starter's gun.
Daddy didn't come through with tuition for Kathy, but Fran did. As she
put it, the only thing she needed more than good racing drivers was
more senior trainers.

"That's home? Cool!" Kathy exclaimed as the ivy-covered granite of our
condo came into view. The circular towers on the four corners poked
their way into the sky. Daddy had bought the third floor and the left
rear tower. Now, that tower looked promising; might just be tall
enough for a teleport.

Creak! Clank! The drawbridge came down in its stately massiveness. The
Thunderbolt fit into the stall nicely. Kathy was still goggling. "The
right front tower is really an elevator." We hauled the luggage
upstairs. Two big bedrooms with attached baths, living room, dining
room, and kitchen. Daddy had gotten furniture for one. This didn't
bother us at all; a single bed was a lot friendlier.

Hamburger. Greasy. Fries. Greasy. Something in an aluminum can.
"Kathy, honey. I guess I just assumed you could cook." She looked like
she wanted to cry. "Kathy, dear," I held her. "You're here because
you're a friend, not because I need a maid. I'll do food, you just
concentrate on the rest." She relaxed. I shoveled the mess into the
garbage and we went out for lunch.

The household system showed up that afternoon. Stacks of boxes and
manuals. The only thing missing was the crew of installers. Just as
well I'd decided to cook, Kathy wouldn't come out of her trance for a
while.

Our condo system is a marvel. Fran had gotten it for us; she wanted
the same system for herself. We got to shake the bugs out. It was
actually a very high-end commercial system that she had Ponygirls'
technical crew modify to improve the voice input past recognition. The
sound front end could track several people and deal with simultaneous
voices. While it was putting its own voice on the speakers. My only
contribution was to insist on the voice actress that had done a spell
checker on an incredibly old computer game; she just sounded like a
computer should sound.

Beep. "You've got a call from Ponygirl's marketing."

"Put it on speaker, please."

"Melissa? Could you do us a favor and make a pickup tonight?"

"Who, me?" I squeaked. "Or maybe why me?"

"You're in the area, and Security just came through with your
Community IDs for the fall national. They're good until revoked, and
we usually don't revoke them.

The girl is Bernadette Brady."

"Teleport incoming." sang the system.

"Bernadette? Isn't she a student here?"

"I think I know her a bit," Kathy said.

"Well, if you talk her out of it, I won't weep. Too much. She fits the
profile beautifully, but her family may be a problem."

"Do tell," Kathy said. "Melissa had better handle that; she's out of
my league entirely."

"Bernadette, are you out of your mind?" Not the most usual telephone
greeting, but it seemed to fit.

"Huh, what?"

"I've just gotten a pickup order that says you want to become a
ponygirl. Have I got the right Bernadette Bradey?"

"Oh. Yes, that's me. Who are you?"

"I'm Melissa Bates. I'm over in that fake medieval tower on 3rd
street. Top floor. If you decide to go through with it, come on over.
You won't be seen leaving. Oh, and leave a note for your roommate. I
know I'd appreciate it if Kathy decided to become a ponygirl without
discussing it."

"She knows. She's here with me."

"Well, invite her along. One more signature on the indenture always
looks good."

Jenny led Bernadette in on a leash. Bernadette turned out to be one of
those 5'10" blondes that Ponygirls' likes so much. I'm surprised there
are any left in the wild. Jenny was a more normal 5'3" brunette, a bit
on the plump side, but then, she wasn't the one that wanted to become
a ponygirl. The rest of the story is that daddy had threatened to
disinherit Bernie if she didn't marry this guy.

Bernie, for her part, was a lesbian, and wasn't about to marry any
guy. Period.

Other than that, she kind of liked daddy's choice; as long as she
didn't have to get in bed with him. I sighed. Well into the 21st
century, and some people still didn't have a clue.

"Honey, didn't they tell you that ponygirls get screwed daily? It's in
the job description."

Jenny still had hold of the leash. Fortunately. I guess they hadn't
mentioned that.

"It's not that bad," Kathy said. "They turn you bisexual as part of
the
 process.

You'll enjoy guys."

That leash got another workout. Eventually, she calmed down, and
turned her brain on. I hadn't been sure she had one.

"Can they do that without my becoming a ponygirl?" Now that she was
back down to earth, Bernadette got right to the point.

"I don't know. System, get ponygirls' marketing, will you? And put it
on speaker."

Marketing said he thought they could, but it was going to be
expensive.

Jenny left, still leading Bernadette on her leash. Daddy had agreed to
think about it, Bernadette had agreed to clean up her affairs if she
still wanted to go through with being a ponygirl.

They were back in three days. Daddy had agreed to the medical
expenses, but he wouldn't accept a submissive with a taste for bondage
as an heir. Period.

Bernadette wouldn't give that up. Period. So we had a little indenture
signing ceremony. As her dominant, I had Jenny do the honors.

The honors started with a wide leather belt around the waist. Three
roller buckles in the front, one large and several small rings in the
back. The wrist and ankle cuffs snapped on; they would come off with
finger and thumb on two points. The wrist cuffs secured to the back of
the belt so her fingers couldn't get any leverage.

She finished up with an external gag and a hood. "Here, Melissa,
catch." She threw me the leash.

Jenny had trained her well. She started with a tug, stopped with a
shake of the leash. She didn't stumble at all on the stairs up to the
tower. I put on my breather mask. Zap. She crumbled. Hiss. I lay down
on top of her before I fell over.

I came to and levered myself to my feet. Here was now a huge cavern; I
was standing on a big number 2 painted in the middle of a square. It
must have been 50 to 60 feet wide.

A golf cart with a big, beefy man hummed to a stop. "Melissa?" I
agreed. "Care to ride, or do you want to lead her?" I got the distinct
impression he would prefer we rode.

The cart hummed off toward a tunnel framed in marble. "Stop here on
your way back." He waved at a hole in the wall with a guard station.
"They'll get you back home."

Light spilled out of Orientation Room 4 into the tunnel. "Here we
are."

Molly stuck me on a back table to watch. The whole procedure ran with
well-practiced efficiency. The two hunks picked Bernie up and plopped
her down on her stand; the ring in back of her waistband secured her
to the pole. They yanked her shoes and clipped her ankle cuffs to
short chains. She wasn't going anywhere. The shoes made a trip to the
wastebasket.

Molly took over. She gave Bernie a drink from a straw, and then hit
her with both level 1 and level 2 prods. Bernie screamed convincingly.
A few passes with a power scissors reminded me of exactly how little
stood between me and nudity.

Molly got rid of a pair of earrings, two finger rings, a bracelet and
an ankle chain. Then she spent some time making detailed measurements
and checking against readout.

She fastened livestock tags to her ears, and then put in breast rings
about an inch below the nipple. A bridle and gag was the finishing
touch. Finally, she twirled a blanket over the poor girl, and shoved
the stand into the corridor.

She maintained a relentlessly cheerful chatter the entire time. I
almost expected Igor to come up and wheel the stand away. Maybe Ms.
Igor?


Chapter 6. Fall Nationals

Next week was the Fall Nationals. They were three days, twelve races a
day, and sometimes as many as twelve ponies per race. The nationals
had senior, intermediate and junior levels with both Classic and
Miniature. With four racing styles and a variety of lengths, it could
have gone on for two weeks without repeating.

Fran took a caravan. She took ten ponies, including Dreammaker, Flying
Squad, Golden Spitfire, Amazon Princess, Red Chaser and daddy's two.
(need names).

Kathy and I came as drivers, Karen headed up a team of five trainers.
Everything packed into four owner's carts and two sulkies. Daddy and
Fran's parents came along as owners.

Dreammaker and Flying Squad pulled Fran's cart. Jeff's two pulled his
cart, the Spitfire and her pony pulled Lenore's. Daddy's two followed,
with Daddy driving, his cigar (unlit) out at a jaunty angle. I
followed with the Princess in a sulky, and Kathy pulled up the rear
with Red Chaser. Daddy was in his element; I suspect he hadn't
expected to make a national.

Our little procession came out in the big cavern, smack on the number
six. This time, we didn't need a guide, Fran, Jeff and Lenore knew
well enough where we were going. The tunnel said "Main Dome," same as
last time. When are they going to do an elevator that actually works
fast? A band, or clowns, or something should have accompanied our
procession to the track in the Main Dome. Oh, well.

At least, I was here.

Our trip from the tunnel to the track shook me, badly. I'd heard
occasional comments about the Community. In those few blocks, I must
have seen a dozen or more ponygirls, being ridden or pulling carts.
Not ours, not racing ponygirls, just ones that belonged here. It was
the first time I had ever seen a lobo-ra, let alone a ponygirl being
ridden.

Unpacking was a well-choreographed mess. Kathy and I had it easiest.
We drove our sulkies into the track area, unhitched them in the slots
we had been given, and marched our ponies up to their assigned cells.
Fran and Jeff headed to the Executive dome to unload apartment stuff;
Dreammaker and Flying Squad were going to stay there instead of at the
track. Lenore and Daddy pulled theirs up into the cell area; they had
all the tack, neatly labeled. Karen and her crew got everything
settled. I used Golden Spitfire to pull the empty carts to their
assigned resting places in the track area.

The Spitfire and I had an uneasy agreement. I had figured she wasn't
giving it everything the first time I worked her. She didn't seem like
the type for half measures, so I tracked her down on one of her days
off, got her royally drunk, and got the story. Frankly, I agreed she
had as much right to an attitude problem as anyone I knew. She
couldn't tell Fran where to stuff the indenture without going to the
pen for God knows how many years. Tough. She'd dug the pit, now she
could just admire the walls.

So I told her that until she decided to ditch the attitude and give it
100%, she was going to be my work pony. And if she gave me anything
less than she gave everyone else, she was going to be in deep shit. We
let it lie there.

The trainers stayed in an apartment in the Residential Dome. The rest
of us crammed into Fran's apartment in the Executive Dome. Kathy and I
decided right away that if I cooked, and she served, we'd minimize
hassles. It seems to have worked, at least, nobody complained about
the cooking.

For the rest of the time, it was hectic. Karen was working off a
printed, minute-by-minute schedule for the first time in my memory.
The track had two ready circles; we couldn't drive back-to-back races,
which didn't stop the stewards from trying to schedule them. The only
thing that saved us was that there were a fair number of riding and
light sulky races; we couldn't enter them because the riders and
drivers had to be lobo-ra. Kathy and I still did four or five a day,
Fran filled in where needed. Fran did Dreammaker and the senior races;
I did Amazon Princess, Flying Squad and Golden Spitfire. Otherwise, we
just took them as they came.

The one that stands out was the fourth race on the second day. It was
an intermediate where we had three ponies, fortunately, there was a
riding race before, and light sulky afterwards, or we couldn't have
done it. I had locked eyes with the Spitfire in our pre-race planning
meeting when she realized she and I would be racing against Fran
driving one of Jeff's ponies. OK, if she was going to pull out all the
stops for a grudge match, I was willing.

The thing about intermediate is that it is mostly either young center
ponies without much experience, older second rate center ponies with
very good trainers but without that spark that makes for first raters,
and a very few owners' ponies that had the benefit of senior trainers.
Which is why we had three ponies in this race.

We were at post position six. Kathy was in second, and Fran was in
eighth. I realized we were in trouble before I even got her off the
stand. "Careful, Carrie. Fury gets you in last, not first." That
shocked her back to sanity; she hadn't realized I knew who she had
been. After that, it was smooth. The start came off like it should.
Three, four and five were center second-raters; we blew by them on the
way to the third lane before they realized it. Kathy was running head
to head with the first pony; I decided to see if the Spitfire could do
it.

Swish, Crack. The Spitfire blew past the other two ponies into the
first lane just in time for the turn. This time, it had been her idea
to use the whip when I wanted overdrive. A quick check showed nobody
was insane enough to try to pass on the curve. The second straightaway
showed that Fran was right behind. Fran tried to pass on the next few
straightaways; a flick of the reins was enough to get the Spitfire out
in front until the next curve. The first time Fran didn't try, I
checked. Kathy was in second! She'd snuck up while Fran was trying to
pass, so Fran had to fall back to third on the turn.

The Spitfire took the home stretch at a dead sprint, slowing down only
at the finish line. I'd worried about that, but it was her grudge
match. As it turned out, she had enough reserve to make the turn to
the judges' line and go onto one knee with good form. Kathy and Fran
didn't even try to match the sprint; we beat Kathy by seven seconds,
and Fran by eight. With two lost for using the whip, and another four
for form and that final sprint, we still came in one point ahead of
Kathy and two points ahead of Fran.


Fran gave me a very strange look as we unharnessed.

"Carrie wanted a grudge match," I said, quietly.

Fran looked startled. Then she did a double take when she realized I'd
used Golden Spitfire's former name. "I see."

Eventually, it was over.

Fran demanded an explanation of that fourth race. I told her what the
Spitfire had told me.

She laughed. "I can see how she thinks I did her in. It was a joint
decision between the security head and her father; I was just left
holding the bag. Don't tell her; let me handle it. Her next career
planning meeting is coming up shortly, I'll take care of it then."


Chapter 7. Stolen Property

We settled down at school for a couple of days. Then Jenny called. 

"Hey, guys. Did you know there's a ponygirl show on this Saturday?"

"Huh? It's the weekend after the Fall Nationals. Everybody's still
catching their breath."

"Oh, right. This isn't your crew. It's a regional BDSM society."

"Then why us?"

"Well, they're advertising a real ponygirl, and I thought you might
know something about it."

Oops. "Haven't heard a word. Let me make some calls."

We pulled up in the not so new, electric blue Thunderbolt. Sharon
hadn't known a thing about it either, so she joined Kathy, Jenny and
me. Jenny wore her usual dom outfit, which was enough to make a cat
laugh, unless the cat was a male human. Then he'd be drooling so much
he wouldn't even notice when she put the collar and leash on him. The
rest of us wore a slightly augmented version of Fran's street uniform,
that is, white fitted blouse, black leather miniskirt and high-heeled
pumps. It was almost as good in the male attraction department as
Jenny's. Karen and I wore our blue driver's belts; Sharon wore a green
trainer's belt and black boots with 5" heels. We all brought our prods
and whips.

The location was a nicely secluded farmhouse. "Car turning off. Guard
system up." Much better voice. We checked in as Mistress Mayhem
(Jenny), Flying Squad, Melissa and Kathy. We hadn't figured out any
catchy names, and didn't really want to. It wasn't our scene. Jenny
and Sharon circulated; Kathy and I let a guy attach us. He wanted to
talk about details of tack, harnessing, bondage and all that stuff. We
were more than willing to listen and make the occasional intelligent
comment.

The differences were fascinating. This was a totally different world
from what we were used to. There were three ponygirls and one ponyboy
harnessed. Then two young women put up a sign "Pony for rent" and
knelt under it.

"What the?"

"Their groom and owner didn't show up. They're looking for someone to
take them on so they can see some action."

Kathy and I looked at each other. Then we spotted Jenny and Sharon
looking at us. Looked like a consensus to me. "Why not?" We headed
over to them, trailing one very confused guy.

I guess they weren't expecting the sign to get action quite that
quickly. One minute, they put it up, the next they have six people
towering over them (including one of the mistresses running the
affair.) They'd brought their own tack and a sulky each. Sharon agreed
to act as owner and show them; we'd play trainer and drive them. It
looked like a fun afternoon.

"One thing before we get started. What do your owners do for
discipline?"

"He's got a light whip." Her name turned out to be Whip Dancer.

"She yells, and then we have a screaming match afterwards." Naturally
enough, she was Blue Streak.

"I'd like to check something. This is called a hypersonic prod." I
waved the prod under their noses. "Tell me if the first level is ok
with you for discipline, or if it's too much." I stroked both of them
with the prod. They gasped.

"Is there a lighter setting?" Blue Streak asked.

"`Fraid not. This is as easy as it gets."

"Well... ok, I guess." Blue Streak looked like she was prepared to be
cooperative.

"Ok by me," Whip Dancer said, masochistically.

Their dressage could have been improved a bit. I would have given them
a 7, maybe a 7.5. Not bad at all, considering. The only problem was
when Whip Dancer acted up and had to be hit with the prod. Three
times. The fourth time, Sharon told her to cut it out; we didn't have
a sado-masochism contract. The fifth time, Sharon hit her with a level
two. After that, she behaved.

The races went off great. We didn't try to win; as I told the ponies,
we didn't know their limits. If I called for more speed or a maneuver
they didn't think they could make, and they didn't have it, so be it.

Everything wound down. We got the ponies out of harness. Sharon had
brought a jug of mash in a cooler so we shared it around. The flavor
of the day seemed to be roast turkey. It turned out to be an omen.

Sharon's FBI backup showed up looking tall and competent. They blended
in reasonably well.

The main event arrived towing a closed horse trailer. She came out
with a perfect march step. That thick head of hair down to her ass was
a dead giveaway.

"No ear tags?"

"Looks like they've been removed," Sharon said from under her
binoculars. "I can see the holes."

"Ok, let's show ourselves and see what happens."

She spotted us, stopped dead, and started whinnying and stamping her
foot.

Sharon walked up to him. "Take that gag out. I want to talk to her."

"Who the fuck do you think you are?"

"Sharon Samuels, in charge of compliance with the Consensual Slave Act
for the Ponygirl Owners Association."

"I don't give a shit who you say you are. She's mine, and you don't
monkey with her."

Flip. One of the guys had moseyed up, quiet like. "FBI. Do what she
told you.

Now."

WHINNNNNEEEEE. Both Karen and I ratcheted our prods up to level 3. He
stared at the badge like he was hypnotized. Then he tried to make a
break for his car and trailer.

"YEEEEEOOOOOOWWWWW!!!!" He went down in a tangle of convulsions.


"Gee, I've always wondered what level three would do," Karen said,
watching him in awe. The Feds picked him up, dusted him off, and
hauled him away.

Karen and I got the pony calmed down. When we took out her gag, she
told us part of the story. She was Bounding Cat. Her owner's place had
been destroyed, and all four girls kidnapped. Her captors had bragged
that they made it look like a terrorist attack; everyone thought they
were dead. The trainers certainly were.

The guy who was showing her came later; he wasn't one of the original
kidnappers. We got her indenture date and phoned it in.

I told her she was going to Fran's temporarily until things got
straightened out. She knew about Fran's; the ponygirl grapevine was
quite good. They even had their own secure web site (on Ponygirls'
server). Meanwhile, could she see her way clear to putting on a show?

She could, and we did. Sharon put her through her dressage paces. She
did a solo run, and Karen did a sulky run. Sharon and I commented on
form. Everyone was totally floored by her speed.

We tried to beg off going to dinner with the crew, pleading that we
didn't have street clothes for Bounding Cat. No dice, three of the
club members had come prepared with sweats that fit.

Fran called in the middle of dinner. Where were we? I explained. She
had the Cat's owner on the line; I tossed her the phone. The
conversation switched to high speed Spanish. I never saw a girl look
so relieved so fast.

We hit Fran's about midnight. Jerry was doing the night shift,
everyone else had gone home; all the ponies were down for the night.
Sharon decided to stay over, so I groaned and agreed to work her in
the morning. Jenny was fascinated, so I decided to use putting Flying
Squad down as a demo.

"Don't worry about talking, as long as you don't scream or anything.
The sleeping hoods are pretty good on muffling sounds."

"Sleeping in bondage?" Jenny asked. "Isn't that unsafe?"

"There's an auditory monitor checking on breathing and heart rate.
Jerry can get to any pony within less than a minute of an alarm
sounding." We reached Sharon's cell. "By the way, forget you saw this.
Since you're an outsider, you're not supposed to know there's a fast
release." I grabbed the bars in a highly specific place, and held the
door open for Sharon.

She stripped out of her clothes and put in the mouthpiece. "Hold it a
moment. I want to show Jenny this." Sharon obediently stopped and
dropped to one knee.

"She's already gone into pony mode," I said. "Head back." She tilted
her head.

"See this mouthpiece? We use it here instead of the ball gag. It's
less stressful on the jaw, but it's a lot more expensive. Each one is
custom fitted to the pony's jaw and teeth."

"To your pad." Flying Squad marched over to the pad and lay down. I
grabbed the leg binder and tossed it to Jenny. "Put it on her."

"Me?" Jenny squeaked.

"Yes, you. You're a qualified domina. Don't tell me you've never seen
a leg binder before."

"Oh." She put it on and zipped it up. "No lock?"

"No reason. These ponies wouldn't be here if we were playing control
games with them. No lock is safer in case we have to act fast."

"Here's the arm binder." She put it on. "Now put them together."
Flying Squad was now in a classic hogtie.

I tossed her the straps. She looked around, and found the ringbolts.
In a moment, Flying Squad wasn't going anywhere.

"Hood next." I put the hood over the top of her head. "This cuts out
light, and muffles sound quite well."

"Final touch. We put a pillow under her head." I knelt and kissed her
goodnight.

"Show you another wrinkle." I walked over to the trotting booth. "This
is the trotting booth. Either the trainers or I put in exercise
programs, but it has its own built in heart rate and breathing
monitor. It won't let her go over her limits." I flipped on the
display.

"The display is hooked to the audio monitors I mentioned earlier."

"She's asleep already?"

"Sure is. The monitor knows her patterns. Too much deviation will
trigger an alarm."

"Wish we had something like that at the gym."

"They're coming. These things aren't exactly custom, but they're built
specifically for a ponygirl cell."

Karen had finished Bounding Cat, so we headed out. We stopped by Jerry
on the way out. "I need to do a session with Flying Squad tomorrow
before she goes to girl mode."

Jerry pulled up the schedule. He looked at it. "Should be ready for
you at 12:30. Be here by 12."

"Can I come and watch?" asked Jenny.

"Should have asked earlier. It really requires Fran or Sharon to
approve," I said.

"I'll leave a note for whoever grooms Flying Squad," said Jerry. "She
can say yes or no then. Also leave a note on Fran's mail."

We dropped Jenny off and hit the bed by one.

"Good Morning Sleepyheads," sang the house system. Karen bounced out
of bed into the bathroom. I crawled after her to the sound of the
shower. Getting vertical helped. The aroma from the automated
coffeemaker helped even more. The kitchen came into focus as the first
cup of coffee percolated through my system. I don't understand Karen.
Computer programmers are supposed to live on caffeine; she doesn't
seem to need it. Maybe it's because she's a switch. Either she submits
to the time, or she tries to dominate it. Whatever.

An hour later, we had breakfast inside of us, and were ready to face
the day.

Fran had approved having Jenny present. "See if she's interested in
driving. Or something useful." I thought Fran might be there.

Jenny breezed in about 11:30. She wore a good looking set of jeans
that had clearly seen some hard work. "Hey, you look great."


Chapter 8. The Spitfire Spits Fire

"Hey, `lissa," Karen called. "The Spitfire wants to talk to you. She
didn't say what about."

I'd just finished working Flying Squad on starts and finishes. Sharon
was dressing. I didn't have the Spitfire on my schedule; no time
today. "Do you know what about?"

"No, she just passed a message from grooming this morning."

"Question. Did she just have her career planning session with Fran?"

"Yes, why?"

"Then I know roughly what she wants to talk about." I walked down to
the Spitfire's cell. She was in the trotting booth doing a full
gallop. Now was not the right time. "Tell her at my place on her next
day off, unless it's really urgent. Call ahead."

"Should be tomorrow, then. That's her usual day off."

I checked my schedule. "Tomorrow about 6 in the evening. Tell her not
to eat unless she absolutely hates veal scaloppini. She may be late
in; I'll take responsibility."

"OK, it's on your head."

"Incoming Teleport," the house system announced portentously.

"Give me an intercom channel up there."

"Done."

"Hey, Spitfire, is that you?"

"Uh, yes. That you, Melissa?"

"Sure is. Just go down the stairs to the first door. It's about three
floors."

The Spitfire is a 5'10" green-eyed golden blond with a complexion to
kill over.

She'd told me it wasn't her original look, Fran had redone her hair,
eyes and complexion. Her only complaint about it was that she hadn't
been asked, but then, she readily admitted, she wouldn't have agreed.
That was five years ago.

She was dressed in Fran's street uniform; black leather miniskirt,
white fitted blouse and calf length black boots with 5" heels. The
uniform tended to keep her girls out of trouble. Anyone knowledgeable
enough to spot her as a ponygirl would be knowledgeable enough to keep
hands off;
 for anyone else, the uniform and the pony cut were just bizarre
enough to induce caution.

I grabbed her on the way in and gave her a huge bear hug. She
struggled a moment, and then relaxed into it. When we came up for air,
Karen grabbed her cape and hung it up. She stared at Karen.

"Huh, what?"

Not really original, but Karen was worth staring at. We'd had one of
our rare arguments, and she'd won. She was dressed in a French maid
bondage outfit, complete with hobbles, collar and gag. The outfit was
courtesy of Jenny, who was becoming something of a regular at our
place.

I laughed. "Karen is a switch. Like Sharon."

"A switch?" she said, weakly.

"She needs to be dominant part of the time, and submissive part of the
time.

She's mostly submissive here around me, so she can be dominant at
Fran's and for school activities. I wanted her to join us as relative
equals, she wanted to serve. She won. If you don't want her to listen,
we can hood her."




"That's ok. Does being a ponygirl make me a submissive?"

"Darned if I know. I expect you're a dominant that's being sat on. But
you might be a submissive that was into rebellion big time. Or
something else."

The veal was ready. Karen served dinner. We chatted about current
shows; that's what the Spitfire had been amusing herself with on her
days off. I don't really have a "no business at dinner" rule, but I do
have a "no arguments and don't be boring" rule. Eventually, dinner was
over, and we sat back with a bottle of wine.

"So, what happened with Fran?"

The Spitfire started, then laughed weakly. "Right. First, the good
news is that they changed my sentences so they run concurrently."

"So you're out from under in?"

"Slightly less than two years."

I lifted my glass. "That sounds great."

"It is. The thing is, she hit me over the head about slacking off. And
she told me about daddy."

"Having your father send you down is a tough one to swallow, all
right. As far as slacking off goes, you know the only person you're
hurting is yourself."

"How do you figure that?"

"Well, you seem to be the kind of person that goes all out, no holds
bared, take no prisoners. Holding back just isn't in your nature.
Trying is hurting you."

She sat back for a moment. Then she carefully put her glass down, and
collapsed, crying. I picked her up and held her until she cried
herself out.

"It's been so hard... It hurts... "

"Of course it has."

Eventually, she came up for air. Something was different. The
petulance was gone. I hadn't even realized it was there in the first
place.

"Now what?" I asked her.

"I need to apologize to daddy."


 "Tell the system the phone number."

"I've... forgotten it. It's unlisted."

I got the number from Security. They're real handy, as long as you
don't overdo it. He was still at his office, working.

"Senator McWhip. What can I do for you?"

"Daddy? It's Carrie. I need to apologize." She started crying again. I
held her.

"Carrie! Fran didn't tell me you'd be calling. How are you?"

"She doesn't know. I'm calling from Melissa's. She's my driver. I'm
very...

shaky. It's good just hearing your voice."

"It's good hearing you. Where can we talk? I want to hear all about
it."

"Uh?" She looked at me.

"Senator, I'm Melissa Bates, your daughter's driver. She can meet you
anywhere, I've already told the staff she may be out late. Um, how
much has Fran told you?

"Nothing. I hate to admit to being a coward, but I didn't want to deal
with it."

"I understand. She doesn't look the same any more. Fran did a complete
makeover; hair, eye color, skin tone. My place is probably best. You
need to make the arrangements with Ponygirl's Security, they know my
teleport coordinates. And that'll protect you as well."

"OK. Try for about a half hour."

I do so love reconciliations.

---

PonyGirl?
By Xaltatun of Acheron (A pseudonym)


Chapter 1. A Bit of a Disagreement

"Timmy. How many times do I have to tell you that you can't become a
ponygirl?

That's just crazy!" I looked at my son in exasperation. He looked back
at me likewise. At 5'10, close cropped sandy hair, blue eyes and a
wiry build, he looks like a normal boy just turned 18. Except. His
voice hadn't really changed.

He had no interest in girls. And the only way you could get him into
any sport was in front of a shotgun.

"Maybe until I believe you and go crazy?" He wasn't giving an inch.

"Look, idiot. It's ponyGIRL. Look at yourself in a mirror sometime."

"I should have been a girl. How many times do I have to tell you
that?"

"Well, you aren't. You're going to the men's trainer school when it
starts. Get used to it."

"NO I'M NOT. And if you try to get a security goon to make me go,
guess who's going to follow him?" He flounced out.

Only boy I ever knew who could flounce decently. That was one of the
few ways he behaved like a girl. He didn't like shopping, and pretty
clothes bored him. And he didn't do housework, either. Not that I
could blame him for that. The pressure to be more of a boy from his
friends must have been incredible.

Trouble is, he was right. If he refused, and I forced the issue, Alice
would be on my case. And there was no way I wanted to deal with the
 Sorceress.

Much as it stuck in my craw, asking for help was marginally better
than having it forced down my throat. I reached for the cell phone.


Chapter 2. Counseling

The counselor's offices were in with the rest of services. The
receptionist was a plump little brunette. "Hi, Mrs. Stevens. You're
right on time. They can see you now." She waved at the wood paneled
door that said "Katie Smyth, Counselor."

They? I had a bad feeling about this. I twisted the doorknob and
pushed.

At first glance, it looked like a comfortable little room, just right
for a chat. A couple of small couches, a lightly stuffed chair, a
desk, a couple of lamps, bookcases, flowers. The usual. Katie was
sitting in the chair.

The redhead on the couch was the last person I wanted to see. The
Sorceress is only about 5'6", but her reputation is about 10'11". If
she was here for a first meeting, something was drastically wrong. The
other woman on the couch looked vaguely familiar. The pony cut and her
size said she was an active ponygirl. The fact she was here said she
was probably with Leprechaun Genetics. The bad feeling intensified.

Alice opened it. "I expect you're wondering why I'm here."

"I screwed up?"

"Only by not yelling for help sooner. Don't feel too bad about that.
It took me a long time to realize that finding an expert when I was
out of my depth was the only policy that worked. It took even longer
to recognize when I was out of my depth. That's why I brought Black
ThunderBolt along."

"So Timmy isn't normal?"

Katie said, "Well, normal isn't a word I like to use a lot. It brings
up abnormal, and that gets in the way of defining the situation, and
figuring out what to do about it."

"Riiiggghhttt." I can recognize the lead-in to bad news when I hear
it. "So, what's up?"

Black ThunderBolt said, "Let's follow up that notion of `normal.' You
can think of sex and gender as a lot of switches and dials. There
isn't one `standard' configuration. There isn't even one `standard'
configuration for what we think of as male or female. But there is a
recognizable pattern for each. Also for the recognized variations,
like sissy or tomboy or gay or lesbian. There are also a number of
other clusters that don't have names."

"Huh?" Now I was both confused and intrigued.

"In your son's case, it looks like the switches and dials were set by
an overly creative two year old. There's some of this and some of
that. I have to give him high marks for how well he's integrated the
resulting hodge-podge."

"The tip of the iceberg is that he thinks he should have been a
woman," she continued. "There's a small section that is responsible
for sexual identity. In his case, it is saying, `I'm a woman.'
Whenever he looks down, he sees a penis.

This is a major conflict."

"I thought he was just being difficult when he told me that."

"Well, it certainly could seem that way. You're both fairly dominant,
and you do get into power struggles. He's been telling you this for
what? Ten years?"

"About that."

Katie weighed in, "that's a major conflict. Most people with that kind
of conflict seek a sex change. We could do that. We could regenerate
the brain structure so it says, "I'm male". Or we could let it alone.
It's really his choice, and I expect he's made up his mind."

"He's certainly seems to. He's been saying he wants to become a
ponygirl."

"Which implies that he wants a sex change," the Thunderbolt said. "We
could do that. The thing to realize is that the male to female sex
change program is still being modified each time it's used. We've
gotten about a dozen a year for the last decade. Each time we use it
is a bit of an adventure. What this means is that if he does that, he
gets what we can deliver. We can't do designer sex changes yet."

"What about changing him into a more normal male?" I was grasping at
straws.

"The female to male sex change program is still highly experimental.
If he really, really wanted it, we'd do it. One of us would have to
monitor it, and we'd probably wind up doing substantial fixes on the
fly. Don't think that is an imposition on our time. At this stage,
we'd have to do the same for each subject. And we do have to get the
program working, sooner or later."

"So, do we have to do the ponygirl thing if we change him into a
woman?"

"It's not absolutely necessary," Alice said. "But if we didn't, he
couldn't stay here. Much as I've grown to like this place over the
past years, it's got its problems. I have the impression he's holding
his situation together by pure force of personality driven by
desperation. Adding the social reaction to a sex change would probably
drive him over the edge. He wouldn't be able to stay here."

"The ponygirl solution solves a number of problems," the Sorceress
continued.

"For one thing, it has the behavioral retraining all set up. For
another, she would be leaving. Even if we did her as a community
trainee, she'd be placed with one of the owners, not here. And if she
had any idea of staying, not doing her stint as a ponygirl and trainer
would simply make the social reaction worse."

"What's the next step?"

"Well, that depends on him. I've left word with Orientation Planning
that if he shows up demanding to be made a ponygirl; they should do
it. Otherwise, tell him that he's going to get his wish, he just has
to talk to one of the counselors first so we know exactly what he has
in mind."

"That's awfully ... fast."

"Well, I am known as a high handed bitch, right?"

We all laughed.


Chapter 3. Talk

Shit. Why couldn't mom see reason? I knew I made a real poor excuse
for a guy, even if I did have a dick instead of tits. But no, she knew
what she knew, and nobody was going to change her mind for her.

I laughed. That made two of us. Well, one of us was going to have to
break the impasse.

Now that I was out of my funk, I could pay a bit of attention to where
I was going. The tunnel entrance to the main dome was just ahead,
framed in marble, lights going off into the distance. I fell in behind
a pony going clip clop, her legs moving in a perfect march step, the
muscles of her ass cheeks expanding and contracting, her tail swaying
slightly side to side in time with her rhythm. The lobo-ra in the
saddle was gently swaying, keeping counter time to maintain balance.
At 2'6", the lobo-ra wasn't much heavier than a field pack.

That tail was fascinating. I'd seen ponygirls all my life, but up
until a year or so ago their tails had been attached to the ass plugs.
Then they suddenly switched to being attached to the tailbone, where
they belonged. Recently, I'd even seen a couple swishing their tails.

The latest version of tail seemed to be a compromise between a
monkey's tail and a horse's tail. It came down to just about the floor
behind her. The top was adorned with long, thick blonde hair that
matched the pony's mane. The hair got progressively shorter the
farther down the tail, until it ended just about where the actual tail
ended. The end of the tail had short blonde fur, although you had to
look closely to see it.

I'd heard rumors about that new style tail. It was supposed to be
prehensile, just like a monkey's. It was also supposed to be
detachable. How Leprechaun Genetics did that was totally beyond me; I
had enough trouble with the computer system. I'd also heard rumors
that it had almost caused a revolution. The conservatives wanted a
real pony's tail. The ponygirls weren't going to put up with anything
that affected their ability to take their days off and vacations.

It seemed that one of the geneticists had a thing about tails, and had
done some incredible things to make it work.

Was that going to be me in a few weeks? That was what I had just told
mom I wanted. I needed to think. The main dome opened out in front of
me, fake sunlight bright on the buildings. When they put it in, the
shadows had confused everyone for a couple of weeks; I'd lived my
entire life without seeing a moving shadow on a building. Sunlight
just seemed so much more cheerful.

The track complex was done up in light brown sandstone, just a two
story blank fa�ade. I hung a right on the street, and went into the
stands. Today, there were rows of empty yellow seats; people didn't
usually come out to watch practice. I found a place, and plopped my
butt in the seat.

Practice looked more disorganized than it was. One end had a starting
line.

Ponies marched up and knelt on the line. CRAAAK. The starters pistol
boomed. Up they came, driving forward for a few steps. Then they
stopped, circled back, and came up to the line again. Lobo-ra would
pull them out, move their limbs around, and then put them back on the
line.

The other end had a finish line. They'd get the ponies lined up down
the track, and start them off. They crossed the line, and then turned
left to the judge's stand. Back, and repeat. The lobo-ra pulling them
out and moving them around.

Sometimes they were pulling the drivers out and moving them around.

Well, time to think. The options seemed clear enough. Either I could
swallow my pride, and be miserable the rest of my life, a woman
trapped in a man's body, or I could get someone to turn me into a real
woman. I'd heard references on shows, but mom kept insisting that I
was nuts to even think about it. If I got someone to turn me into a
woman, then what?

Back and forth, back and forth, just like those ponies being trained
on the starting line. I felt like the donkey caught between two
haystacks. I could be miserable one way, or I could be miserable the
other way. The story never said how the donkey got a bite to eat. He
always died of starvation.

When I came up for air again, there was a woman sitting next to me.
Leather jacket. Leather skirt. Boots. Red belt. Oh, shit. She was one
of
 the senior trainers.

"Hi, Timmy. I think you need to talk to me."


I'm still not sure how it happened. I started spilling my guts. Then
she held me while I sobbed for a while. When I came up again, the fake
sun had moved against the cavern roof. I was feeling, well, empty.
Like something that had been there hurting for a long time was gone. A
missing tooth. A hole where something familiar used to be.

"So. I think you've got some questions."

"Huh? What?" Not very original.

She laughed. "Well, let me cover the options. I'm afraid this is going
to be a bit of a lecture. First, you still feel like a woman in a
man's body. Correct?"

I checked. "Yes."

"Thought so. That's due to a little chunk of brain that got built for
a woman, not for a man. So it keeps telling you "I'm a woman," and you
can look down and see a penis. Not a real fun conflict, right?"

"No fun at all." She really understood.

"You need to make a set of decisions. There are layers. On the first
layer, we can change you into a woman. We can change that chunk of
brain tissue so it thinks you are a man. Maybe. Or we can ignore the
problem, and let you continue being miserable. Questions so far?"

"You can make me quit thinking I'm a woman? But you're not sure?"

"Well, yes. The male to female program is real stable. They don't have
the female to male program working. Yet. And the brain change is part
of that. So it's real experimental. If you feel like taking a chance,
go for it."

"So what you're saying is that the sex change is the best shot for
happiness?

But once I'm a woman, I can't back out? What if I don't like it?"

"Certainly seems like it. You may or may not be able to back out.
Depends on whether they get female to male working. Don't plan on it
in the near future. As far as liking it, you won't have much of a
choice there. We fix all of those pesky little brain areas that define
sex and gender instincts so they match. So you'll be comfortable."

"So my becoming a ponygirl is ok?"

"I assume that means you want the sex change. Remember I said there
were layers?

We can do the sex change without putting you in the ponygirl program.
That's done all the time on the outside. But."

"Uh, but?"

"Yes. Leprechaun Genetics can wave their magic wand, and you'll change
sex. It starts in a day, and takes about three months for all the
changes to finish.

However. That won't teach you how to live as a woman. It also won't
adjust everyone around you to accept it. And you'll have to pay for
it."

"On the other hand, the ponygirl program will be a bed of roses.
Thorns included. If you tried to enter it from outside, we'd reject
you. The sex change will go to the passive end of tomboy, so the
athletics will be taken care of, but you're simply not the type to
enjoy the level of submission required."

"I'd been wondering. It sure didn't look all that attractive, it just
looked like the only available option."

"Well, you could handle the community trainee program. Two years and
then come out wouldn't be much worse than what you've been going
through. Facing a lifetime of that, no way. You'd bolt the first
chance you got. And in the trainee program, you'd still face the
adjustment problems."

"Looks like a miserable set of options."

"Exactly. There's one option that's less miserable. We've got a few
owners that are intrigued by owning a ponygirl that used to be a
stallion. And one owner that might accept you as a community trainee,
so you could bail out and come back here at the end of two years. The
others would want a solid commitment for a number of years. In any
case, they would handle the how to live as a woman issues, and the
acceptance issue simply doesn't exist if you don't come back."

Sigh. "Lets set up the ponygirl solution. Not coming back sounds
best."

"Sure. That's probably the best resolution for you. It's certainly the
easiest for us."

"Let's do it." She got up, and I followed. If I ever saw this stadium
again, it would be from the track below.


Chapter 4. Orientation.

This time we went toward the warehouse tunnel. It was the same as any
other tunnel, square, fluorescents in the ceiling. Two beefy guards
standing behind a desk built into a niche in the wall. The elevator
doors opened and she pushed a destination. Creak. This needed
maintenance. The doors opened onto another corridor. It stretched off
into the distance. We headed down it. "Orientation 1." The next door
was "Orientation 2." Then "Orientation 3." The light spilled out of
the next door onto the floor.

"We go in here." I went.

The stand dominated the room. Well, probably not, it wasn't that big.
But it sure seemed to. It was just a four foot square leather covered
platform on casters with a metal pole sticking up out of the center.
There were two men and two women in the room.

One of the men said, "Oh, hey. A stallion. We don't get a whole lot of
them."

The other guy said, "Ok, kid. Arms out and hold them there."

I stuck my arms out. He unbuckled my belt and took it off. Then he
picked up a rectangular leather thing with straps and rings from the
table.

"Pull in your stomach." I pulled in my stomach, while he wrapped it
around my waist and fastened the straps. Snick. The other guy had
fastened some kind of cuff on my right wrist. Snick. Another one on my
left wrist.

"Hands behind you, now. That's a good girl. Oops, you're still a boy."
The other guy chuckled. "Not for long."

I stuck my hands behind me. He moved them around, snick, snick. One of
them was welded to the belt. Another two snicks and the other one
couldn't move.

"Get on the platform, back to the pole." I got. "Now, squat." I
squatted. He did something behind me.

"That's about right. Now put your weight on your left leg, and bring
your right leg back. Knee on the platform. That's right."

I felt him take my shoe and sock off. Snick. I felt something cool on
my ankle.

An experimental wiggle showed it only had a little slack.

"Now the other leg. That's a good boy." He'd remembered this time. He
took my other shoe and sock off. Snick. I definitely wasn't going
anywhere.

"OK, Molly. He's all yours."


"Thanks, Dave. Kelly, you do this one."

The younger woman walked over. "Would you like some water?"

I was parched. "Yes, please."


 She got a plastic cup and straw from the table, and held it to my
mouth. God, that felt good. I hadn't realized how much time I had
spent since breakfast.

"Another?"

"No, thanks."

She unclipped a wand like thing with a handle from her belt. "You know
what this is, right?"

"Yes, it's the hypersonic prod." I eyed it very cautiously. I'd seen
it used on ponygirls. They didn't seem like they enjoyed the
experience.

"You need to know what it feels like." A low buzzing filled the room.
"This is level one." She ran it down my arm.

"Yipe. That smarts."

"Well, it's supposed to. It's not a punishment, it's simply to attract
your attention to what you're supposed to be doing." The buzzing
increased to a whine. "This is level two." She ran it down my leg.

It felt like liquid fire. YAAAAAAHHHH! I screamed.

"I'm sorry I had to do that, but you do need to know how it feels.
That's a punishment."

I looked at that rod with a lot more respect. I didn't want that
repeated.

The whine increased again. "This is level three. I'm not going to
demonstrate; it will just about send you into convulsions.
Understand?"

"Yes." I'm afraid I was beginning to be scared.

"The next step is to gag you." She looked behind me.

Molly said, "Go ahead and give him the option. He's been good."

"At this point, I can give you an option. Once I gag you, you will not
talk for the next two to four months. In fact, you won't talk at all
in pony mode as long as you remain here. If you promise me to be good,
I can leave the gag off until the end. OK?"

"I'll be good. I'd like a couple more minutes of talk time."

"Then the next step is to take off your clothes." She held up a tool.

"Dressmaker's powered sheers. Works wonders."

Kelly pulled my pants out from under the leather belt. She worked the
sheers cautiously up my leg from the bottom, all the way to the top of
my pants. Then she did the other side. The front part fell down and
she pulled it out from under my knees and tossed it into a
wastebasket. Then she pulled the back part from between me and the
pole, and tossed it out.

"Damn." My shorts were dangling from one side. Another pass of the
sheers, and they fell off.

She pulled my shirt out. Another four passes of the sheers, and it was
history.

Or maybe it was material for rag rugs.

"Well, kid, your ear tags are next." She picked up a swab, and
proceeded to massage some red stuff onto my earlobes. "Antibiotic."

"Hold still, this is going to hurt." So saying, she waved a punch like
instrument in front of my ears.

"Yeeeouch." That did hurt.

"Well, let's finish it up." She picked up some little metal things
from the table, and proceeded to stick them in my ears. "Now to clamp
them." So saying, she picked up another tool, and squeezed. My
earlobes now felt pressured.

"Now, let's see. Some decoration. How about pearl earrings?" She
picked up a pair of little pearl earrings, and popped them in.

Next was a red ball and a bunch of leather straps. "Well, kid. Talk
time is over." She held it in front of my mouth. Well, I'd asked for
it. Open wide. God, did that feel huge. She buckled the straps behind
me and under my chin.

"Headrest." She held up what looked like a dentist's headrest and a
bolt. Clank.

It was now attached to the pole behind me. "Head back, that's a good
girl." I let my head settle back. She did something behind me.
Suddenly, I couldn't move my head; my bridle had been attached to the
headrest.

Kelly turned to the table again. Then she twirled, blackness billowing
out in front of her. "Bye-bye," she said, as darkness settled.


Chapter 5. First lessons.

The blanket muffled corridor noises, but didn't eliminate them. The
clip-clop of horseshoes, occasional muttered phrases, the tic-tic of
spike heels, and the rumble and squeak of carts came and went.
Suddenly I felt myself jerk into motion. Someone was pushing my stand.


I was pulled against my waistband a number of times. We turned, and we
went up and down elevators. Eventually, the stand stopped, and stayed
stopped. I could hear the tic-tic of spike heels, and the low murmur
of voices as people moved around me.

"Let's get started." I heard that fairly clearly. Then the blanket
came up and over, and got tossed somewhere. I blinked. The first sight
of the corner between the back wall and the ceiling wasn't all that
enlightening. I brought my eyes down, and saw the same woman I had
talked to in the stands, not that many hours ago.

"Introductions first. I'm Linda. You're pony. You don't have a name
until we give you one." That shook me a moment. I wasn't Timothy any
more? Then I giggled, which isn't all that easy when you're gagged. It
came out more like a snort. Timothy wasn't a girl's name; of course it
had to change.

Tammy was a medium tall brunette with a pageboy bob. She was my
trainer. Dina was a slightly taller blonde who wore her hair loose to
the bottom of her shoulders. Alex was a stocky blonde with a puckish
smile. Jeff was another brunette with a buzz cut. Pete was the token
redhead.

Tammy said, "Boots next." Jeff grabbed a short chain with two cuffs,
and wrapped it between my legs, just above the knee. Click. Click. My
ankles were free.

Tammy pulled the bolt on my headrest, and my head came up. Then Alex
and Pete grabbed me by the shoulders and waist, picked me up and set
me face down on the mat.

The pulled my legs up at the knee, and stuffed my feet into the boots.
That was a real stretch; my feet didn't want to bend that far until
they massaged them a bit. Zip. Click. My calves were now encased in a
stretchy tightness. Then I got swung around again and set on my feet.

I almost didn't stay there. "Pretend you're on tip-toes." I tried it,
and it worked. I was more or less stable. Tammy had me walk back and
forth for a little while, until I got the hang of staying on my toes,
and letting the clip-clop of the horseshoes handle things. A tick of
heels meant I was doing it wrong.

"Next lesson," Linda said. "You know the foot taping code, right?"

I tapped my right hoof twice, and almost fell over. "Pay attention to
your balance, pony! Again."

This time I shifted balance. It still wasn't good, but at least I
didn't fall over. The next half hour was confusing, to say the least.
She worked me on foot tapping. I already knew foot tapping, but she
worked me on it anyway. Somewhere in there, she had me tapping without
asking a question. Then my head quit nodding. By the end, I was just
standing aside, and feeling my foot do its thing as she asked
questions. And I was feeling enormously good about the entire thing.

"Chair next," Tammy said. I could feel my foot do three taps for NO.
Scree SCREEEE WHIIINNNEEE! A prod swiftly made its way to level 3.

"Is that a balk?" Tammy said, a little too sweetly.


I heard the triple clop-clop-clop for another no. I walked to the
chair, turned around, and sat down. I suppose I was scared shitless;
in any case I let go as soon as I was seated. That's not as strange as
it sounds; the chair was actually a fully functional toilet, and I
hadn't gone for several hours.

Alex and Jeff came up on the sides, and tied my arms and legs to the
arms and legs of the chair. When they were done, I had about an inch
of movement. Tammy was behind Jeff, getting the reins set to her
satisfaction. When she was done, she clipped them to my bridle.

She held up a funnel with a tail. "You know what this is, right?" My
clip-clop was kind of hesitant. I hadn't been around ponygirls all
that much; we couldn't afford one of our own, and mother didn't want
to go in with several other families to get one jointly. So I really
didn't know the routine.

"It's called the funnel. This is how you are fed. I attach it to your
bridle like so." She inserted the tail into my ball gag. My eyes
threatened to cross; the thing gave new meaning to "in your face."

She held up a bottle of white goop. "This is mash. It's a perfectly
balanced mixture of everything the active ponygirl needs to keep going
practically forever. It even tastes good; we use it for snacks when
we're too busy to take a break. It's all you will eat. Staff varies
the taste. Today's is prime rib."

She held up a bottle of brown goop. "This is slop. It's the same as
mash, except that it's got a taste only a masochist could love. It's
used as a punishment for talking out of turn."

"You know what the rule is on talking, right?" Another hesitant
clip-clop.

"Basically, it's NO. As in never, or not even if all hell freezes
over.

Understand?"

This time the clip-clop was definite.

"I'm going to expand on that. No talking applies to pony mode. You're
not going to get to girl mode for a while. And your owner can let you
do anything he wants. Linda can tell you to talk if she wants. But if
you even think of talking at one of us, you get fed slop. Got it?"

Clip-Clop. I got it.

"One more clue. She's going to set it up so you can't talk in pony
mode. So there's no real reason to give you a taste of this stuff when
you won't be able to violate the talk rule. But remember one thing.
Linda is not God. Neither is Alice. If you really, truly want to find
out what slop tastes like, you'll find a way around her programming.
It's possible. It's even been done. The ponies that did it regretted
it. Got it?"

Another Clip-Clop. I got it.

"Then we won't need this." She handed the bottle back to Alex.

"Now to feed you." She poured some mash in the funnel up to one of the
marks on the side. "Twelve ounces. You're still a stallion, you might
finish that much.

Now, suck on it."

I sucked on it. After a while, I got the trick, and some squirted into
my mouth.

It did taste like prime rib.

They left, and a door came up out of the floor. I saw a naked young
man tied to a chair, with a funnel stuck in his mouth. I lay back, and
sucked on my mash.

About the time I finished, the door came down and Alex walked in.

"All done, kid?" 


Clip Clop. It was kind of obvious. He splashed in a couple of ounces
of water, and I sucked it down. Then he removed the funnel.

He set a switch. A display sprang to life. It said 80:00.

"Now, here's the drill. Bring your head up. Good. Now I'm going to put
this little headrest in behind it." He moved my head. "You've got
about an inch of slack. If you go to sleep, your head will fall
forward, and it will tug on the reins. Then you get a shock that will
wake you up." He shoved my head forward.

OUTCH. That stung.

"That's the shock. It's not very much, but it will keep you awake. You
may or may not spend the full eighty hours in here. When you come out,
you're going to be the most obedient pony that ever existed. Got it?"

I tapped yes.

He left. The mirror came up, and I watched the clock as it said 79:59.

I won't say it was the worst experience of my life. At some point, bad
goes off the scale, and then it just joins the rest of the worst
experiences. The first few hours weren't too bad. I found myself
drifting off, and I caught myself.

Time passed. Slowly. I nodded off a few times, and I got shocked for
it. My arms started aching, and I couldn't move them enough to flex
them.




I even found the space I had been in at the end of the foot tapping.
That was real nice; I was totally unaware of time passing. But I still
drifted off. And my muscles still kept cramping.

At around the five hour mark, someone I hadn't seen before came in and
swung the little headrest out of the way, and fed me. He came back in
fifteen minutes, took the funnel off, and put the little headrest
back. By the time the clock had counted down to 70:00, I was beginning
to hallucinate. At 65:00, I was having real problems. My entire world
had shrunk to staying awake.

Then Tammy and Linda came in.

"Are you going to be the most obedient pony I've ever seen?"

That clop-clop had the sound of desperation in it.

"If you so much as think of misbehaving, you're going to be back here
for the full eighty hours. Got it?"

I managed to respond again. She threw the arming switch so the chair
was off.

"When we release you, you're going to go to the grooming room on your
hands and knees. Understand?"

I managed another yes.

They untied me. I practically fell onto the floor. "Hands and knees,
remember?"

I scrambled up on them, and started crawling.

"I'm going to take that bridle off, but I'm going to leave the ball in
your mouth. Keep it there. You will really regret it if you drop it.
Go to the shower, and wash down. Soap and washcloths are in the
cabinet. Stay on your hands and knees or sit. Don't stand." The
showerhead was only four feet off the floor. I turned it on, and
washed.

"Over here. Stay on your hands and knees, stretch out." She dried me
off with terrycloth towels. "Crawl to the mat, and lie down, spread
eagle."

"In a moment, you're going to drop that ball into my hand. Then I'm
going to replace it. If I hear one sound, you're going to find out
what slop tastes like.

Understand?"

I tapped twice. She held out her hand. I shoved the ball out with my
tongue. She picked up a ball on a strap, put it into my mouth, and
buckled the strap behind me. Then she put my arms into an arm binder,
and my legs into a single boot arrangement. She bent my legs up my
back, and hooked the feet to the gloves.

Then she added four straps to keep me on the mat. For a final touch,
she put a hood on me, and put a pillow under my head. The lights went
out, and I followed.


Chapter 6. Day 2. Grooming.

I woke up to the feeling of my legs being moved. "Spread those legs
out a bit,"

Tammy said. I did. Then she took the arm binder off. "Arms out, spread
eagle."

Yesterday was coming back. I moved my arms. "I'm going to take the
strap off.

Hold the ball in your mouth, or you'll really regret it." I tapped my
foot. The lights came back on.

"Hands and knees, crawl into the grooming room," she said.

I scrambled to hands and knees and crawled forward. "Up on the toilet.
Get it out. Keep that ball in your mouth." I got up. It was a good
thing she reminded me. My penis was gone! So were my balls. Pissing
felt different. "Wipe from the front." That felt different too.

"Back down on hands and knees. Ass over the bowl, back straight. Good
girl. You may not like this next part. Tough, just get to like it,
it's part of your morning routine."

I felt her finger on my asshole, and then something slid in. Water
gurgled as it filled me. I'd had an enema before, so it wasn't
entirely a new experience. She slid the nozzle out. "Hold it."

I held it, teeth and asshole clenched tight. "Let it go." Oops. I
almost dropped the ball. The water rushed out, mixed with turds.

"Shower next." I crawled to the shower area, and started in. Gobs of
hair came off the side of my head. What little body hair I had came
off, too.

"Kneel in front of me. Good girl." She took a hair drier to my hair,
my armpits and my newly remodeled crotch. Then she got the rest of me
with large, fluffy towels. She took her time and made it a most
sensuous experience. I'd never known that being dried off could feel
this good.

Finally, it was over. "Crawl onto the mat, spread eagle." I headed to
the mat on hands and knees. She pulled each of my legs up, and
installed the boots. "Legs together and up a couple." I brought my
legs up. She slid something over them.

"Ass up." I brought myself up, and she slid the bustier up over my
hips, onto my torso. "Back down." I lay down, and she proceeded to
lace it up. God, that was tight. Zip. Click. It felt like a zipper in
back. "Bring your chest up." She brought straps up from in front, over
my shoulders and buckled them behind.

She put the gloves on me next. First, my hand fit into the mitten,
then she zipped it up to my shoulder. "Hand to your shoulder." Click.
It locked with my elbows closed. "Elbow to your waist." Another click.
My arm felt like it was glued to the side.

Then she did the other side.

"Head back." She pulled a leather collar around my neck. Snap. My
bridle came next.

"Remember. No noise or you'll regret it. Drop the ball into my hand."
I let the ball go. She slammed another one into my mouth so fast I
couldn't have made any noise even if I had wanted to. "Good pony."

"Pull your knees under you. Ass in the air." I did.

"You may not like this next. Get used to it." I felt her finger slide
something smooth and cool into my asshole. Lube? Then something else
penetrated me. She worked it in for a ways. Then I felt something
expand in my guts at the same time something else nestled between my
ass cheeks. She pulled something between my ass cheeks. "Done."

"Up on your knees." I brought myself back and up. Two brunettes loomed
above me: Tammy and Linda. "She's all yours, Linda." Tammy walked out
with a whisper of well oiled hinges.

"Up on the stand with your back to the pole, pony," Linda said. That
was easy enough. "Squat." She brought me down the same way they had in
Orientation yesterday. Click. Click. Thump. Ah, as I let my head
nestle on the rest.

She did something; I watched myself suck in my morning mash, and
luxuriate in the feeling of it filling my stomach. The funnel got put
away.

"Can you do this, pony?" She whinnied at me. I tried to whinny back.

"Lets try that again." She whinnied again. I whinnied back. This time,
whatever I did seemed to satisfy her better. She worked my whinny for
some time, asking questions, saying stuff. Suddenly, she took the ball
gag out of my mouth.

I whinnied. That got me totally flustered. I'd been sure I was going
to say something, and find out what slop tasted like. Then I whinnied
again. Get a hold of yourself, boy. No, girl. Whatever. In my
confusion, I whinnied again. Then I took a deep breath.

"Good. Open wide, now," she said. I opened, and she popped the ball
gag back into my mouth. I went back to watching myself watch the
corridor. She left.

Tammy came back with one of the lobo-ra. She waved. "Hi, pony. I'm
Terry." I whinnied back. Click. Click. Clank. The ankle chains and
headrest came off.

"Up." I pulled my leg forward.

"Stop." Huh? I stopped. Terry (at least I presume it was Terry, it
wasn't Tammy) grabbed my leg and pushed it where she wanted it. Then
she guided it with gentle pressure.

We spent time on "up" and "down." How long, I have no idea. By the
time they were done, I came on and off the stand on command, without
thinking about it.

They gave me a rest period, and then taught me to "march." This
involved bringing my leg up so the thigh was exactly parallel to the
ground, the calf exactly vertical. Tammy marched me around the room
until she was satisfied with how I reacted to the reins.

"Down." I was back on my stand. Tammy fed me, and I watched time go
by, unremarked, as my mash filled my stomach with contentment.

"Up." I came up. "March to the trotting booth." I marched. She
maneuvered me into the trotting booth. This was a mechanical marvel in
the back right corner of the cell, kind of like a treadmill. She
positioned me in the center, and hooked straps around my bustier so I
was fastened in the center, unable to move.

Reins came out the back, and got hooked to my bridle. I saw myself in
a mirror, a smooth, sexless blond with short hair, head bridled and
tilted back. There were indicators next to the mirror; one for each
thigh, one for each leg. A green dot went up and down as my legs were
supposed to go up and down. If my leg wasn't where it was supposed to
be, a red dot showed up. If that stayed there too long, I got a jolt
from a prod.

A red light flashed when I was supposed to whinny. The booth was
completely automatic. The reins would twitch, the indicators start
moving, and the floor move under me. Then some time later, the reins
would twitch again, it would bring me to a stop, and a seat would come
up for me to rest on. Repeat.

This was my day. Every day. Sometimes I was present in my body;
sometimes I was floating off somewhere watching myself. I noticed
rather quickly that my body performed better when I wasn't in it. Or
something.

I watched my body turn itself into a woman. First the slit developed,
then a vagina opened. My breasts grew. So did my hair. My waist
shrunk, my hips widened. My tail began to grow. The men on my training
team began to look interesting in ways that caused a stirring in my
crotch. So did the women.

The film began to jerk. I'd be on my stand, and then suddenly I'd be
in
 the trotting booth. Or Terry would be riding me in one of the arenas.
Somewhere in there, my breasts suddenly acquired rings. Then I lost
any awareness of being in my body; I was only the disembodied watcher.



Chapter 7. Girl Mode

I came to facing a wall filled with polished walnut drawers and
cabinets. My arms were free at my sides; I couldn't feel my bustier.
But I still had my bridle, ball gag, collar and boots. Not to mention
my two dildos and my tail.

"Hey, kid. It's girl mode time." That had to be Linda. It was.

"Here's the drill. You get to take off the rest of the bondage. Then
you get dressed, and we'll talk." The collar came off first. She
showed me how to take off the bridle and ball gag. I couldn't see my
pony boots; my breasts were in the way. Another difference to get used
to. The boots unzipped easily.

Talk? Oh, yes. Talk. It was ok in girl mode. "How do I take off my
tail?" My voice sounded a bit higher.

"Now, that tail is interesting. It's really a part of you, but it
detaches. How they did it, I have no idea. You do need to wear it a
couple of hours a day for it to survive. Just slide your finger and
thumb up on top and bottom, and then press and hold it."

It felt warm and furry. After about a minute, it seemed to squirm
slightly, and then it fell out. It looked like a rope with hair. It
had a bone on one end.

"Just hang it up there." She pointed. "They tell me it can survive for
about a month, but it's not a real good idea to let it go that long
without wearing it."

"Uh, I've never dressed in girl's clothes."

"I'm surprised. Most transsexuals at least experiment. But then, your
mother seemed awfully dominant."

"I was scared shitless at what would happen if she found out."

"Let's start out on the basics. Underwear drawer here. You need a bra,
panties, fishnet stockings and garters. That's standard for ponygirls
in girl mode."

The panties were obvious. The bra wasn't too bad once I got the idea
that I let my breasts fall into the cups. I fumbled around getting it
hooked in back. She had to show me how to do the stockings. Once I got
them on, the garters were obvious.

"Next layer." She showed me where the leather miniskirts were hung,
and the blouses. The only surprise was how to get the blouse straight
under the skirt.

Once she showed me the trick, it was obvious.

The pumps took some more effort. Horseshoes had a wider footprint
(hoofprint?), and so I wobbled a bit before I adjusted.

"That's awful," she said.

"Huh?"

"Posture, movement. We'll start dealing with that tomorrow. For today,
we've got a couple of things to discuss, and one major exercise."

She pulled a folding chair out of one of the cabinets. "Sit."

I sat.

"A bit of a lecture. You've noticed that you haven't been here for a
while?"

"Not here? Oh, yes. I seem to be missing some time."

"Quite a lot of it. I put everything that wasn't the pony aside for a
while.

That was to let the pony develop without the rest of you. She's done
that, and turned into quite a feisty filly. Terry thinks she can get
some racing wins before you leave, both riding and heavy sulky. That's
pretty unusual."

"Now it's time to put you back together. Hold out your hands, shoulder
width apart, palms up like you were holding something."

I did. "Now, pretend one hand is the pony, and the other hand is the
girl. OK?"


 I looked at them kind of doubtfully. Well, maybe she knew what she
was doing.

"Have the pony say hello to the girl."

This was getting weirder. Well, pretend.

She had me go back and forth. Pretty soon, I was feeling something in
the left side of my body. Words and answers were coming that I had
never put there.

Linda had a list of things to talk about. After a while, some things
became real clear. Understanding locked in.

She liked being a pony. She knew there were other things possible;
that was my job. She liked racing. Being driven, being ridden and
winning were what she was about. She had a lot of drive. I knew
exactly where it came from. I'd never have been able to survive
without it.

According to her, my job was to handle everything else so she could be
herself.

Something about that felt totally right. Like if I didn't, I'd be
cutting off a part of myself.

"Good girl." I jumped. "Now, just bring your two hands closer
together, slowly, very slowly." I eased them together a small bit.

It was like we now overlapped. She was no longer separate; she was a
part of me.

I kept easing my hands together; we joined even more. Then it felt
like my hands hit a brick wall. Thus far and no further.

"Good. Take a deep breath. Let it out. Another. Come back. How do you
feel?"

I shook myself and stretched. That had been ... intense? My inner
arrangements seemed to have been altered completely. They made sense,
but I had no idea how to describe them.

"That's quite enough for today," Linda said. I had to agree. I could
feel a pony stamping her hoof. Where are my stand and my mash?

"The next thing is to get you back into pony mode. It goes like this.
Get undressed." I stripped, and dumped the clothes in the recycle bin.
"Tail first.

Just slide it in and hold it by the sides this time." It took a little
maneuvering before I felt it slide in. After a minute or so, it seemed
to come to life. It felt like my awareness expanded into it, sort of
like when an arm goes to sleep and then comes back, but without the
pins and needles. I swirled it around me for a moment.

"One thing to watch out for when you put your tail in. It's going to
dump accumulated wastes and recharge its food supply. You need to plan
some kind of a rest period for a few minutes until it finishes."

"Put on your boots, bridle and ball gag." The boots, bridle and gag
were easy.

When I did, I could feel the pony stir a bit. "Go lie down on the mat
like you had just come from grooming."

Somehow, a couple of steps on hands and knees before lying down felt
right. As I lay down, I felt myself become the pony. This time, I was
there, and I stayed there. Linda came over, and put the rest of my
pony bondage on. Bustier, puppy paws, collar. "To the stand. Down."
Two clicks as she secured my ankles, a thump as she put up the
headrest. Relax into it. Suck down my mash.

Someone I don't remember ever seeing before came and unhooked the
funnel. Linda came back.

"I'll bet you're frustrated." She sat down in front of me and drew her
finger along my crack. Ooohhhhh. Nice crackles all over. "You're
ready." Clank. Then something began easing into me. Ohhhhh again. She
got up. "Have fun, pony."

Fun didn't describe it. It brought me up and then let me come down. It
did it again. Then it did it again. I discovered what else my tail was
good for. It built slowly to a climax. When I came to, I was still a
pony, but I was hanging on the stand, wiped out.

The next day, when she said "girl mode" I was ready. She took off the
puppy paws. I shifted as the bustier slithered over my hips on the way
to the floor.

Girl mode was daily. The transition got easier; the modes became more
sharply defined. It was like my body was a car. Either pony or I was
driving. When pony was driving, I was a passenger. I had this
impression I could drive pony while she was driving my body, but I
didn't follow up on it.

Every day either Terry or Linda drilled me on some aspect of women's
behavior. I had no idea women behaved that differently than men, it
was one of the many pieces of my life I had never examined.

Carla looked me over critically as I preened from my grooming. "It's
your day off. Girl mode."

"Huh?" Like I had a choice. The magic words, and I was in girl mode,
on hands and knees in front of her. Well, silly. Get up and get
dressed.

"I just love that expression the first time I pull girl mode in the
grooming room."

I scrambled to my feet and headed for the cabinets. "Terry would just
love that movement. You'd be here for the next hour redoing it." I
froze. "Well, I won't tell her. Today. Linda is taking you outside, so
the uniform is a little different."

Panties and bra were the same. "Pantyhose. Sheer is in this season."
Pantyhose weren't that different from the fishnet stockings I had been
wearing.

"Makeup next."

I froze. Makeup? I'd never worn any. She laughed again.

"Get out the chair, and I'll do you this morning. I know you haven't
been drilled on it yet. Too much to do first." One of the cabinets
opened out to reveal a makeup table, complete with mirror and lights.
I sat, and she did my face. Very light and understated for daytime.
Foundation, a light powdering, eye shadow, eyebrows, lipstick.

"Skirts are down to the knee this season." Again, not a whole lot of
difference.

The blouse was a green and blue plaid. "This is actually the training
block's racing colors. They're back in fashion this season, otherwise,
you don't see them a lot." High-heeled boots. "Boots are in this
season, even though it's summer. You can run in these if you have to."

"No white?"

"Not for outside wear." She backed up and looked at me. "Some jewelry
next." We picked a bracelet and a neat little choker necklace.

"Purse." She handed it to me. "Look at the wallet." There was an ID
and a credit card. The ID said I was Flower Coves. "That's not
actually your name. Your owner gets to name you. That's really just a
pretty form of your IPC registration number. They convert each digit
to a consonant, and then add vowels to make words. Linda can show you
the code if you're interested."

Linda walked in. She was wearing a totally different outfit today;
long skirt, silk blouse and jacket, and two-inch pumps. The scheme
seemed to be little girls, flowers and centaurs. "Didn't know I could
dress up, did you? We're going to Chicago today; it's not all that
conservative, but it's a weekday."

We walked out. I looked at the nameplate. It said: "Name: Flower
Coves." This was the first time I had ever looked at the cell as a
girl. This was home.

Somehow, I belonged here. I used to joke with the guys about girl's
nesting instinct. Now I had one.

Linda let me look. Then we walked down the corridor, past the other
cells with their ponies on their stands; each with its nameplate with
her name. Another turn. Linda stopped so I could look back. The sign
said "350 - 359." Then there was a list of cell numbers and names.
Mine was 358. Cool, I even had an address.

Another turn through a door and down a corridor. This time the sign
said "Cellblock 350 - 399." I'd been this way before countless times,
but as a pony.

I was either being ridden, or being led by my reins. The signs had
meant nothing.

We came to a blank wall with two corridors. Right turn. The first door
said `Orientation.' "I thought that was back by the warehouse."

"Kelly insisted on moving it. Both Security and Alice agreed with
her."

The end of the corridor had a desk, two rooms and a line of ponygirls
dressed like me, with a few trainers for spice. We added ourselves to
the end of the line.

"Hi, Linda. Another new girl?"

"Yep. Chicago this time. Will you check her for teleport fugue?"

"Sure. Just stand next to the door while I finish the line."

We stood aside. "Teleport fugue?"

"Yes. The thing to know about teleports is that most people can't
handle them awake. They go stark, raving mad. Fortunately, it's
temporary. Usually. About one in fifty can handle it, and it's useful
to know which ones. I'm one of the ones that can, which is one of the
reasons I shepherd new ponygirls on their first days off."

The line ended. "OK, go on in. Stand on the target and face the end of
the corridor. Each time the light flashes, tell us what you see or
feel."

Somebody had a bizarre sense of humor. Did they have to make the
target look like a dartboard?

The first few times I didn't feel anything when something popped out
of the air and dropped to the ground. Then I saw a kind of shimmer
just before they appeared. As they got closer, the shimmer got more
pronounced. I had to admit I was getting real curious about it. For
the last one, I held out my hand, and whoever was doing the test
dropped a little weight in it.

"Oh, good. We don't have to muss your makeup with a gas mask." Linda
walked over and stood next to me.

Suddenly, it seemed like we were in two places, and we didn't quite
know whether we were here or there. Then here and there reversed, and
we were still here, except that it was now there. There vanished, and
we were in a different room.

This target looked like the crosshairs on a telescopic gun sight. Some
people carry creativity a bit too far. We walked out the door. There
was a girl with bright green hair behind a desk. The chain on her
collar tinkled as she moved.

"Hi, Linda. New girl?"

I'm afraid I stared.

"Sure is, Betty. This is Flower Coves. Isn't that a new arrangement?"


 "Larry decided he wanted to try the collar to ankle cuffs thing one
more time."

"It complements your vacant expression." She stuck out her tongue.
"Enjoy."

The next door led into a white, sterile waiting room. The magazines on
the table were covered with dust. The skeleton in the nurse's cap
behind the desk had artistically arranged cobwebs decorated with
spiders. Fortunately, I noticed that they weren't moving just before I
leaped into Linda's arms. One of the doors on the other end said "Dr.
Kevorkian." The other said "YogThuthThuthThuth The Ancient One." The
path through the dust on the floor led to both doors.

"Somebody needs a better outlet for their sense of humor."

"I know what you mean. Betty enjoys keeping this up. The way out is
behind us."

When I turned, there were two doors. One had a naked lady with a
collar riding a tiger. The tiger didn't look all that happy about the
saddle, bridle and bit.

The other had a tiger licking its chops over a well gnawed skeleton.
It still wore the saddle. The skeleton still wore the collar.

The satiated tiger door lead to another corridor. This one ended in a
more normal door. In turn, that lead into what looked like a normal
business office.

Linda waved to one of the office workers, and we went out the front
door into another corridor. When I looked back, the sign on the office
said, "Doncaster Industrial Linens."

This corridor had lots of people. We went around a few turns, and
 eventually went up a wide set of stairs into the light. The statue at
the top was the familiar joke Picasso had fobbed off on the City of
Chicago.

Apparently, I had a well developed sightseeing gene that had never had
a chance to express itself. Linda had picked Chicago because she
hadn't been back for a while. I gradually got over my
self-consciousness. By the end of a day of museum hopping, Linda was
ready to drop, and I was sufficiently overloaded to look forward to my
nice, roomy cell. Betty had changed the sign on one of the doors from
"YogThuthThuthThuth" to "Seezalia - talk with the departed, $350.00
per hour."


Chapter 8. Racing

Terry had my daily schedule filled with three work sessions, one each
on riding, heavy sulky and cart, four hours on the running machine,
sex, girl practice and somewhere in there, enough display rack time to
suck down my mash and digest.

When I asked her about it, she said she wanted to try to get in a
couple of real races in the main dome arena before I was sold. She
seemed to think it was possible.

Riding practice always started with Terry saddling me. "Up." I came
off of my stand. "Sit." I marched over to the left wall, and sat back
on my heels. The saddle pad was a very lightweight carbon fiber plate
that fit over my back and shoulders. It buckled to the bustier. The
saddle went on top. Then she brought my arms back so they crossed
behind me. It looked like they were holding up the saddle, which
wasn't the case. Then
 she put another plate below the saddle and over my arms, so they
disappeared from view.

When she was done, she put her foot into the stirrup, and swung into
the saddle.

I had to shift my weight to compensate, or I would have gone right
over. Once she settled, the next step was getting up. I bent forward
so that our weight was as close to vertical over the knees as
possible, and then got to a kneeling position. From there, I brought
my left leg up, with the foot planted next to my right knee. This left
me in the same position as the "take a leg" or the race starting and
ending. That leg took the strain of coming back upright.

A tug on the reins brought me over to the cell door. She reached over
to release it, and we marched through. Then she maneuvered me back to
where she could swing it shut. The whole series of maneuvers
demonstrated precision control.

She rode me down the corridor, guiding me with subtle touches of reins
and knees. Then we turned right at the main corridor, and kept on
going. The clip-clop of my hooves on the stone, the feeling of my
muscles shifting in my hips and legs, my tail swishing as I walked,
the weight of my rider on my back, all added up to a feeling of
rightness; this was what I had been born to do.

She guided me as the corridor turned, and eventually came out into a
wide space, with sunlight rather than the artificial light I was used
to. This had to be the main dome. I'd never been here before as a
pony.

We eventually got to the track. I went down on one knee in the ready
circle.

When it was time for our race, she pulled on the reins, and I came up
and marched down to the starting line. Lining up for the start was one
of those things she had been drilling into me from before I'd come
awake again; not that it mattered. The starting positions were
carefully marked off; all she had to do was guide me toward the one
she wanted. Once I had it figured out, I adjusted my stride so that I
hit the line with my left boot, and then came down so my right kneecap
was on it.

CRAAAKKK! The starter's pistol started me up off of my knee. The
action was so ingrained that I didn't come to until my right hoof came
down on the turf. After that, Terry was in charge, more so than she
was when we were simply going down a corridor. The entire race is
total focus; I have absolutely no idea what any other pony or rider is
doing. I don't even know how far we are; the end is whenever Terry
signals me to go straight to the finish line rather than left around
the curve.

At the finish line, I take over. It's my job to slow down, make the
curve to the judges' stand, and get to the judges' line with good
form. Terry's part comes when I go down on one leg on the line; she
has to look good when she jumps down from the stirrup. And she has to
avoid fouling the next pony that is coming up to the line at the same
time.

We came in fourth. I wasn't going to know whether that was good or bad
until we did the postmortem, if we did one. To be more precise, the
girl part of me would know. The pony part was simply on a high.

When we came back up and marched out, Terry turned me back to the
ready area and rode me toward a young woman standing near a sulky.
"Make a knee." I dropped to one knee. The young woman walked over.

"Hi, Flower Coves. I'm Melissa. I'm going to be driving you in the
next race." I must have started a bit. She wasn't one of the trainers
that usually drove me.


She looked at me. "Do you want to go for it?" I stamped my hoof twice.

She got my saddle off, and then harnessed me between the shafts of the
sulky. On the way to the starting line, I learned one thing. She was
an expert driver. The difference is subtle, but it's there. This was
the first time she'd worked me, but she was not only in control, but
it felt like we had known each other for years.

CRAAAKKK! The starter's pistol got me moving again. The start for
sulky looks like the same as the start for riding; but don't you
believe it. You'll be in the hospital if you try to handle it the same
way. For riding, you've got to do a vertical lift for sixty pounds;
the forward motion is just like walking, only more so. For sulky, the
vertical lift is usually less than twenty pounds. If it's more than
that, the sulky isn't balanced properly. However, you've got a sulky
and up to 150 pounds of rider to get moving horizontally, and you have
to keep them moving against friction.

We got off successfully. Then I felt the flick of the reins that meant
"go faster." I piled on the speed. She twitched my left rein, and I
moved over promptly. Another twitch, and another lane. She got us over
to the rail smoothly. Then she gave the reins a longer tug; this
meant, "Slow down." I slowed to my distance pace. She had me speed up
a couple of times, and then slow down. About half way down the home
stretch, she gave the "all out" twitch. I piled it on again. We
crossed the finish line at a sprint.

That's a difficult maneuver. Not the sprint itself, but the final
slowdown from a sprint to the judge's line. You've got to slow down
and turn close to two hundred pounds of sulky plus driver. Without
turning the sulky out of control, or deviating from the perfect curve
between where you crossed the finish line and the judge's line.
Terry's training paid off, I made it in good order.

When we came off the line, Melissa led me back to the ready area. She
unhitched me, and saddled me. Then Terry rode me back to my cell.

That was my first day in a real race.

After that, Terry raced me every day. I had a number of different
drivers, young women named Kathy, Suzy, and Anna. Melissa again. An
older woman named Fran.


Chapter 9. Exit Interview

It felt like my time in training was ending. The usual six months was
up, I was handling myself adequately on my days off without
supervision, and both Linda and Terry were very happy with my racing
performance. Then why did it feel like there was something wrong?

"Girl mode, pet." Linda sounded a bit strained. "We've got a dinner
engagement with Leo tonight."

"What does the managing director want with us?" The girl mode drill
was ingrained enough that I was getting rid of the rest of the pony
bondage even as I spoke. I still sounded a bit shrill. I hadn't
expected to ever speak with him, let alone have dinner with him.

"Darned if I know, girl," Linda said. "It means something's happened.
The only thing I can guess is that none of the options I outlined
works, and he's got something up that Byzantine maze he calls his
sleeve."

Dinner with Leo turned out to mean getting cleaned up, a good
hairstyle and evening makeup. She also gave me a quick refresher on
which fork to use. "The one on the outside, silly. If you really don't
know, watch Alice."

"The Sorceress?" I squeaked again.

"Well, they are married. To each other. Dinner with one means with the
other."

Before dinner conversation left me floundering. The only consolation
is that Mother was floundering even worse; she had more of a sense of
place than I did.

Fran and Suzie were also there, making seven of us in all.

Alice's two ponies cum housekeepers served dinner. The meal was
excellent, my pony side's natural optimism made everything go well.
She thought she was going to get her recognition.

"Trite as the phrase is, I suspect you're all wondering why I've
called you here." Leo broke the ice over drinks. "The fact is; all of
our nice plans for what to do with Flower Coves have broken down. None
of the owners want to take a chance on buying her, and none of them
want her as a community trainee. We suspected that might happen, she's
simply too dominant to make a good pony slave. She makes a very good
ponygirl, however. Terry is overjoyed at how well she's developing."

He turned to Mother. "I expect you know the feeling."

"Well, yes. Twenty-five years later, I can laugh about it. Then, I was
absolutely miserable."

"Exactly," Leo continued. "We select our sale ponies for a high level
of submissiveness. We don't have that choice with the community
trainees. So we did something unusual with Flower, we tried to
transfer the dominance and drive to the pony side. It worked very
well. We're looking at it strongly for the community trainee program.
However, that still leaves us with what to do with Flower."

"Much as I regret having to say it, she can't stay here. The
environment is simply too hostile for her to thrive. Unless you'd like
to be point person for forcing a saner attitude toward transsexuals?"
He looked at me.

I shuddered.

"I thought not. If you were interested in that, you wouldn't have
taken the ponygirl route."

"Here's the plan. First, Flower, we're going to give you a trust fund.
It will put you on the senior technical or lower executive income
level, so you'll be able to do just about anything you want, as long
as it's not really expensive."

"The second point assumes you want to continue racing as a ponygirl?"
I nodded.

"We thought so. The problem with that is that you won't have an owner.
There's a category of "free ponygirls" here in the community; Pretty
Lemon acts as owner for things they can't handle themselves. We've
gotten Fran and Suzie to agree to do that for you."

Fran laughed. "There are a number of things I want in return. First, I
want you to be stabled at my place. You'll have to pay the standard
stabling fee, as well as your own racing entry fees, senior trainer's
fees and driver's fees. At your income level, you can afford it, and
you'd have to pay something similar to someone in order to stay in the
game."

Suzie commented, "We also expect you to work on integrating yourself
into the community outside here. That's going to take you quite a bit
of work."

"Why?" I asked. "The way my pony side has developed, she's expecting
me to stay a ponygirl until she drops."

"It won't work that way. Trust me on that," Alice said. "A racing
ponygirl is good for maybe twenty years before the body can't handle
the strain any more. No difference from any athlete, really. There's
no particular reason why you couldn't stay a ponygirl after that, but
it wouldn't be racing, and your competitive streak wouldn't have
anywhere to go. Racers have to win. There's nothing like crossing that
finish line first."

"Twenty years is long enough. Once she's had her wins, she'll let
herself be put out to pasture. That's the natural end to a pony's
life. Then you'll have to figure out what you want to do with the rest
of your life. And that's likely to be quite a while. With the
anti-aging treatments, there's no reason you can't live to 150."

"The second major thing I want is wins," Fran added. "I like
championship ponygirls. I don't think you'll have any problem there;
all of my drivers like your attitude."

"I sure hope so," I commented. "I'd hate to think I became a ponygirl
just to be mediocre." I heard a snort in the back of my mind.

"The last thing I expect is that you learn the stable routine. Within
a couple of years, you should be able to do whatever my trainers do,
and be able to do a credible job of driving in a race."

"Should be able to, although I'm a bit on the heavy side for heavy
sulky."

"That's true," Fran said. "The extra weight won't hurt in training,
though."

"You've got a deal," I said.

"I guess that about wraps it up, then," Leo said. "I'll be calling you
to do odd jobs for us at some time or other. I'd appreciate it if you
looked at some sales and biotech training. Enough to handle things for
us when we need an agent; I don't expect you to become a geneticist."

I laughed. "Somehow, I didn't expect you to hand me a trust fund, and
then tell me `get lost, kid, I don't want to hear from you again.'
You've got a deal."

We all laughed.

Fran said, "The timing on all of this couldn't be worse. Or maybe
better, depending on your point of view. There's no time for choices
if you're going to start college this term. You'll move in with Suzie
and Dione, and start at her college. You can transfer later if you
want."

The dinner eventually broke up, and I went back to my cell.


Chapter 10. School Daze.

The next morning Linda, Suzie and Tammy piled into my cell, towing a
plumpish 5'6" brunette and a box. The brunette stepped up to my stand.
"Hi, Flower Coves.

I'm Dione, your new senior trainer." She walked behind me. Clank. My
headrest came off. "Up." I came off the stand.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Zip. Zip. The gloves came off. Zip. She
unfastened the bustier. "Girl mode, kid." It slithered over my hips on
the way to the floor. I got rid of the rest of the bondage, beginning
with the collar.

"Hit the bathroom, I want to get rid of those two dildos. They stay
here, Fran's uses a slightly different system." I walked to the
bathroom and bent over. Tammy put on her rubber gloves, and took out
the two plugs. Then I relieved myself; no telling when I'd next have
the chance.

Meanwhile, Tammy and Linda had all the drawers open, and were packing
tack and clothes into the box. They'd left a change out for me. I got
myself into uniform, and we were ready to go. Almost.

I grabbed Tammy and Linda for a big three way hug. I had no idea when
I'd see them again, if ever. I didn't want them to just vanish on me.

Linda held me at arms length. "You know, this is the first time we've
ever said goodbye to one of our girls? It could get to be a habit. A
nice habit. Be good and have fun."

Dione pushed the stand with the boxes out the door. Clang! went the
door, punctuating the end of one part of my life.

"I expect this is a little sudden, what?" Suzie said as we proceeded
down the corridor.

"Sudden? Fran did say that time was very short, but this? My head's
spinning."

"Well, let me put you into some of the picture. I'm Suzie. Kind of
obvious. I'm one of the owners that stable her ponies at Fran's.
Actually, one pony, named Gold Streak. Dione is my senior trainer.
She's also my roommate at college. I drive the Streak. The three of us
are very closely bonded."

"You'll be racing under my colors. You won't have your own colors; the
stewards don't really want to deal with free ponygirls, and I can't
blame them. They've agreed to ignore the situation as long as we don't
shove it in their faces. My colors are a solid, sparkly blue. Fran's
colors are red, shadowed blocks.

They're also the stable colors."

"We'll hit Fran's first, and then get you settled into our apartment
at college.

It starts tomorrow for you. They want to get new students a week
before returning students."

Fran's track was huge. I should have expected it, but I didn't. On
reflection, it wasn't that surprising; this was the first time I had
seen a track from the inside as a girl; before I had only seen it as a
pony, or from the stands as a boy. Girders criss-crossed high above my
head; the door in the wall looked tiny in the distance. We'd arrived
in the middle of a race; two ponygirls and drivers in sulkies were
rounding the far turn as we arrived. I stared; I'd never seen a race
from this perspective before.

The door spilled golden light from the corridor. Suzie led us right,
and then right again. The steel bars down the center looked like old
home week, except that there were more of them. Fran had twenty cells
in a single corridor; the training block had shorter corridors of ten
cells each, off of a longer corridor, like fingers off of a hand.

A woman in a solid blue tunic hurried towards us, with a man in an
open shirt and slacks right behind. They both wore collars and boots.
"Hi, I'm Karen, I'm the head trainer. Danny's your trainer for now.
You're Flower Coves, right?"

"I guess so, unless Suzie wants to change it?"

"What's Suzie got to do with it? I thought you didn't have an owner,
or did I miss something?"

"Oh, right. I'm still adjusting. I get to pick my name?"

"Can if you want, but do it quickly, please."


"Flower Coves will do fine, I'm used to it."




"Just as well," Danny said, "That's what your nameplate says."

We'd gotten there. My nameplate indeed said "Name: Flower Coves" Then
it got weird. "Agent: Suzie. Trainer: Danny. Senior Trainer: Dione."
It had a background of sparkly blue behind the lettering.

Danny opened the cell, and Dione pushed the platform inside. Home. It
didn't look that different from my last one.

"Any differences?"

"How should I know?" Danny said. "I've never been in the community
training block. You tell me."

"Doesn't look like it. Everything looks like it's in the same place."

Danny got to work unpacking the boxes. Dione pulled a disk out of her
bag, and stuck it into the trotting machine. "Transfer your programs,
makes it simpler to keep going on your conditioning."

"What's the schedule from here?" Karen asked.

"We need to show Flower the rest of the setup here, and then we go get
her into my apartment at school. The rest of the week is going to be
hectic until we get the school schedule settled."

"Yeah, I know," Karen said. "We went through it with Gold Streak until
she came here full time. We still do it with Sharon, but she's fairly
consistent."

"Let's do it that way, then," Suzie said. "Flower needs sulky daily
and four hours of trotting machine time. She only needs enough cart
work to handle the owner's parade. Sharon's schedule sounds just about
right. We've got a trotting machine at the apartment."

"So she should block two hours or so daily for sulky training.
Scheduling that is more between Dione and the drivers. Then if she
spends the night here, that's a trotting session at night and one in
the morning."

I was trying to work out the schedule in my head. "So what you're
saying is that if I spend the night here, I should start the trotting
booth at about 7:00, and I'll be back in girl mode around 9:00 or so
the next morning?"

"Sounds about right," Danny said. "Just let us know which nights you
want to be here, and which you'll be at your apartment. Should work."

The office and workroom were down the corridor. There were round
tables and chairs in the center. The right wall had a big fridge,
sink, washer, drier and table space. One of the guys was doing
laundry. The left wall had offices. Fran Donaldson, Owner. Sharon
Samuels, Compliance. Dreammaker, Senior Trainer. Karen, Training Team
Leader. Melissa, Senior Driver.

We went out a door on the office side, and turned right. The next door
said "Girl Mode Lounge."

"What's that?"

"Just what it says. It's for our ponygirls when they're in girl mode.
Some of them do two or three hours of girl mode every day, to keep up
with class work, or whatever. Some of them keep party clothes here."

The next door was unmarked. "The trainers are all indentured. They
live here.

These are their apartments. You don't normally go in here unless
you're invited."

The next door said simply, "Teleport Room." It had a big red and green
signal outside. "This is the teleport room for the garage. The garage
is next. We use this room to teleport from if it's just us, no carts
or stands. It's easier.

You'll come back here tonight; you're going to need to spend two or
three nights a week here to keep focus."

The center of the floor had a painting of a big, round, black bomb
with a lit fuse. A white arrow pointed at the fuse. Suzie and Dione
picked up breather masks. We went to the center, and then space did
its confused act. When it made up its mind whether we were here or
there, we were standing in a circular room.

Arched windows opened onto empty space. A handrail introduced a
circular staircase around the inside of the wall. The view from the
windows was awesome: the tops of trees. Lots of trees. Also houses,
streets, people. I'd never seen anything from this high up. Get used
to it, girl. This is now your life.

"Daddy liked Melissa's condo, so he had this one built for me. The
teleport tower is handy. We have the entire top floor. The second
floor's like the top, the first floor is split between a smaller condo
and a garage." She looked out the window. "Doesn't look like James has
arrived yet."

She made with the cell phone. "About another fifteen minutes. I should
warn you.

James is an acquired taste. Unfortunately, he's one mother has
acquired. He likes to play a 19th century butler-coachman, and he can
be quite insufferable if you pitch in to help when he thinks it's
beneath your station. Or vice versa.

So I'm just going to stand here and watch him sweat. Also Nancy and
Dione. He absolutely won't know what to make of you, so suit
yourself."

"Or, rather, don't. I'm afraid I'm going to be insufferable and keep
you busy while he's here."

We came out into a utility room. I identified a washer and dryer. The
vertical cylinder with the pipes must have been for hot water. I
figured the rest of it would come.

The utility room opened onto a corridor. "Living spaces on the right,
function spaces on the left. Your room is right back here." We went
in. A queen-sized bed adorned one corner, the trotting machine adorned
another. A dresser, makeup table with a mirror and a chair finished
the furnishings. Lots of empty closet space. "Not much here yet. We
had to clear Gold Streak's stuff out quickly."

Dione walked over to the trotting machine, and put in the disk. "Let's
get the programs in now, then we won't have to remember them."

"We'll do shopping tomorrow," said Suzie. "None of us have our fall
outfits yet."

There was a huge bathroom next door; it had doors from my bedroom, the
hall, and the master bedroom. Suzie and Dione shared the master
bedroom, there were two makeup tables, otherwise, you couldn't tell.
Unless the king sized bed was a clue. I had a suspicion this room had
seen more than one orgy.

The bathroom next door duplicated the one we had just seen.

The room on the end was the workroom. The side facing the street was
one long table. There were three office chairs at the table, and three
recliners scattered around the rest of the room. The walls were done
in old library;

bookcases and electronics everywhere, with the bookcases slightly in
the majority.

The other side of the central corridor started out with an entrance
foyer. A coat rack adorned one wall; the outside door was set on an
angle in the corner.

I stared at it a moment; oh, right, a tower. Next to it was a big,
comfortable room with couches and chairs along the walls. I could see
this as a party room.

A formal dining room was next, and then the kitchen rounded out the
apartment.

Three girls would rattle around here, unless Suzie did a lot of
entertaining.

BRIIINNNGGG. James had arrived. Dione headed downstairs to help with
the unloading. It turned out that the entrance tower was an elevator;
everything came up with no fuss at all. Most of it went into the
master bedroom; Suzie hadn't seen any point in hauling the entire
apartment home for two months across summer vacation. James finally
left; it wasn't part of his persona to actually unpack anything or put
it away.

BRIINNNGGG. Another delivery. This one was from a local computer
outfit, shepherded by a cute guy. He made noises like he wanted to
stay and help install it. Suzie firmly shooed him out while Dione
checked the boxes against the list.

Then Suzie got onto her workstation and started checking us in.

"Teleport Incoming," The house system had a pleasantly neutral female
voice. A few minutes later another young woman walked in. I thought I
recognized Kathy.

"So that's what you look like in girl mode," Kathy gushed. "Pretty.
Well, lets get this stuff set up."

Kathy turned out to be Fran's computer wizard, as well as one of her
drivers.

Stuff came out of boxes, went into equipment racks. Cables went from
here to there. Eventually, there was a third workstation sitting on
the bench. I found the entire process fascinating. Kathy noticed, and
got me involved in running cables through the ducts. Suzie looked on,
a bemused expression on her face.

About the time Kathy came up for air, Dione came in with lunch. A
nice, thick soup, a light salad, and sandwiches. Delicious.

"I take it you were into computers before you became a ponygirl,"
Kathy said.

"Actually, not. I found them mildly bewildering," I replied. "Now, I
find them fascinating."

"That's strange. I wouldn't think becoming a ponygirl would do that,"
Kathy commented.

"I don't know; it just might. They had to reorganize me quite a bit to
make it work; dominant ponygirls aren't the usual thing. When pony is
driving, the rest of me is more analytical than I'm used to."

"Could it be the sex change?" Suzie asked.

I thought a moment. "Might be. My sexuality was fairly chaotic
before."

"I didn't know they could do something like that," Kathy said. 


"It might not be too healthy to ask, either." I added. "Leprechaun
Genetics has a reputation. There was a rumor once that they had a
genetic program to turn someone into a toad."

Kathy choked on her sandwich. We pounded her on the back, and she
recovered.

"If it holds up, you've got a major," Suzie noted.

The rest of the day went in a whirlwind. Suzie handed me a map, and
then we walked around campus. Everything went smooth as silk. The
registrar was a nice older lady; she had our student ID cards ready.
She spotted the ear tags immediately.

"You're a ponygirl? That wasn't on the application. But then, the
application just came through yesterday."

"Yes and no," Suzie said. "She is a ponygirl, but she isn't
indentured. We just haven't gotten rid of the ear tags yet. We need
the same accommodation with the athletic department, however."

"I'll have to talk to the athletic director. Don't want the same mess
as last year."

"Do tell. That was amusing. Afterwards," Suzie said.

She looked at me. "It says here you're a transsexual," she said,
doubtfully.

"Yes, I was a boy named Timothy six months ago," I said. "Mother
pointed out that ponygirl meant girl, not boy. Rather forcefully. At
some length. They did the sex change as part of ponygirl training. The
training team drilled me on how to behave as a woman an hour a day for
two months."

"So you're adjusted?"

"Not hardly," Suzie said. "They only dealt with what an indentured
ponygirl needs to know to handle a day off. She still hasn't had to
deal with boys, cleaning, cooking, laundry, mending or shopping. Just
for starters."

"You need to drop by Student Services; they're expecting you," the
registrar said.

"Might as well get it over today," Suzie said. "Clear the day for
shopping tomorrow."

The walkway curled between nicely manicured green lawns to another ivy
covered red brick building. The sign said, "Student Services." Inside
was a waiting room with a professional looking nurse behind a desk. I
handed her my ID card. She stuck it into her terminal. "What can I do
for you today?"

BEEP. Her terminal told her. "Oh, yes. You're Flower Coves?
Interesting name, what? We were expecting you, just not so soon."

She stuck her head around the corner. "Hey, Shelly. Can you see Flower
Coves now?"

"Go on in. You want Dr. Shelly Davis. She handles transsexuals."

Dr. Davis was a thirtish blonde. "Hello, Flower. How soon can you get
the medical records on your operation here?"

"Leprechaun Genetics did it. No surgery."

She stared. "Leprechaun Genetics? I've heard they could do sex
changes, but I've never heard details."

"They did whatever it is they do, and my body just changed itself. No
fuss, no muss, no surgery. They tell me I'm a completely functional
woman now, including children if I want them."

"They can do that? This, I am going to have to find out about."

"I'll see if I can get you a briefing. I think the Managing Director
wants me to do some sales work for them."

"Do that. I'd love to get rid of the surgery and hormones. By the way,
do you need hormones, or did they fix that, too?"

"They fixed it. At least, I assume so. I'm certainly not taking
anything that I know of."

"So, what can we do for you? Or what did they do?"

"Well, beside the sex change, they drilled me on behaviors for an hour
a day for two months. What they didn't do was anything about living
independently. As Suzie put it, boys, cleaning, cooking, laundry,
shopping, and so forth. Figure I'm the most naive person you've ever
met. This is the ninth day I've spent outside of a cave complex in my
life. The other eight were mostly museum hopping."

She stared. "OK, I'll schedule you for some sessions with our
therapist. She takes care of all of that. She'll just have to handle
the Real Life Test afterwards, rather than before. Now, what is this
ponygirl thing? I
 assume it's intense running?"

"Yes. I do four hours a day on a running machine, and another hour or
so practice pulling a sulky. Shouldn't be any problems there; all the
other ponygirls I'm with have no problem for years at a time."


"I'll bet. Let's just try some stretching exercises." She had me
attempt several exercises I'd never encountered before. I was totally
surprised; I couldn't do them.

"I'll schedule you for Hatha Yoga class; that'll take care of the
flexibility.

That does your Phys Ed requirement."

That took care of the medical interview. I got back to Suzie's condo
ok, and then teleported to Fran's. Danny put me back into pony mode.
That trotting machine looked awfully inviting.




They pulled a switch on me the next morning. Instead of coming out
after the trotting booth session, they fed me and then went right into
a sulky training session. Just as well, it took some adjusting for
pony to realize that the big trainer was doing all the movement work;
she wanted Tammy, darn it. We came out about 11:00, and had a
conference while I showered and dressed.

Dione and Dreammaker both agreed that I was more than ready for local
competition. In fact, they thought I was ready for the nationals, but
wanted to wait until the Winter Nationals in January. It looked like I
had my Saturdays lined up for a while.

Then I went shopping with Suzie and Dione. Another major change; I'd
always hated shopping as a boy. Now, poking around and trying things
on to see how they looked was the most natural thing in the world.
Suzie had to pull me out of the stores. Fortunately, she kept me on
target; my fall outfit only needed to be college student, plus high
heels. I wasn't going to need anything more for a while.


Chapter 11. Racing

Friday rolled around with its planning meeting for Saturday, which was
the usual local racing date. Several of the larger owners hosted them
at their facilities.

Karen usually comes as the trainer; one of the drivers comes. Karen
takes a work sulky; each driver takes a racing sulky. The stands are
stacked behind one of the sulkies. Any extra ponies are tied behind
Karen's sulky. If we only had one pony, we took the work sulky and an
extra pony anyway.

There are only three ponygirl tracks that have the facilities to host
one of the monthly regionals, the fall nationals or the international.
There are over a dozen that can do a local, however, and most of them
are in use every weekend.

All a local really requires is a regulation track, and somewhere to
put spectators. The ponygirls are put inside the track, lined up on
their stands.

There's over 60' of clearance between the two sides of the track;
that's enough for five rows the long way. They do try to keep it down
to two rows, however.


Five makes the lanes so tight that you need `one way' signs.

The other end of the inside is reserved for the teleport pad. The
storage area for sulkies and carts is between the two areas.

A typical racing day is four hours, with one race every fifteen
minutes or so, for a total of sixteen races. Local tracks can
accommodate fields of from four to eight ponies; the three big tracks
handle fields of twelve ponygirls. Most locals don't have an owner's
parade at the end; the logistics are just too much of a nightmare. It
takes around two hours to teleport the ponygirls and their trainers,
drivers and equipment in. Then it takes another two hours to teleport
them back home. If you're unlucky, that's a good ten hour day, cell
door to cell door. Ten hours on your stand, with one break for a race,
will put a strain on any ponygirl's ability to stay in pony space.
Karen took care of it by having one or two girls hitched to her sulky
at all times so they would have something to do.

We had five ponygirls entered in this race. Karen had two ponies
hitched to her sulky; she also had all five stands stacked behind it.
Kathy had the racing sulky with the extra two ponygirls hitched on
behind by their reins. When we came off the pad, they simply drove the
sulkies up the line to our assigned slots, assembled the stands, and
popped us onto them. Well, they popped two of us onto them, the other
three they kept harnessed to the cart and sulky. Karen swapped which
ones she was using during the day so that we all got our turn as work
ponies. They insured that our five slots were well separated, so that
using us as work ponies seemed reasonable.

My race was one of the early ones. Kathy drove her sulky up to my
stand, unhitched her pony, harnessed me and hitched me to her sulky.
Then she hitched her pony to the back, and drove me to her original
pony's stand, and put her onto it. Then she drove me to the starting
circle for the track. I went down on one knee, and waited. When the
race was called, she got back into the sulky, and twitched the reins.
Up I came, and marched to the starting line. They'd given us pole
position six for this race.

BANG! The sound of the starter's pistol merged into my push up and
forward.

Kathy called for more speed, I hauled ass. Then she called for a move
left, then another. Her signals flowed into my actions easily and
simply. We got into first, and stayed there. Her eventual twitch on
the right rein at the end both came as a surprise, and as no surprise
at all. We crossed the line, and I concentrated on slowing the sulky
down into the final turn to the judge's line.

The final nicety of coming to a dead stop exactly when I dropped to
one knee on the line, so that the judges couldn't tell if the sulky
stopped me, or if I stopped the sulky. I felt Kathy get out of the
sulky and stand behind me on the left.

We peeled off the judge's line on the flag, and went back to the ready
circle.

Kathy drove me back to the waiting ponies, where she unhitched me and
harnessed our next pony. I went back on my stand.

Eventually, Karen came by and gave me my mash. I drank it down, and
drowsed as it digested. When she came back, she popped me off of my
stand, and took me to a changing area. I changed into girl mode. This
was something of a surprise; I wasn't expecting it. The uniform was
Suzie's racing colors. It was basically the same girl mode uniform I
had been wearing, but this time the leather skirt had Fran's red
shadowed blocks, and the blouse was Suzie's sparkly blue. What I
didn't expect was the gold belt. Or Fran.

"How's your win feel, Flower?" Fran asked.

"Great. But also something of an anticlimax? Like there should be
something more?"

"I thought that might happen. That's why you weren't sold. Also why I
didn't want you as a community trainee. We weren't sure how long it
would be before the pony side of your personality would take before
she wanted to go out to pasture.

For what it's worth, both Alice and Linda think she'll keep running
until she gets a win at the international; then she'll lose interest."

"But where does that leave me?"

"Hanging loose. I'll tell you what I'd like. The other owners have
been after me to host races. I've been resisting them for some time. I
can build stands, but I don't have staff. I'd like you to take a look
at it, see if you want to handle that for me."

"Huh? But..."

"Not tomorrow, obviously. Just hang out with the owners here, check
out what the staff is doing, and see how it works. Get a feel for it.
Then tell me if you're interested in organizing it. If you are, we'll
look at it for after pony goes out to pasture."

As it turned out, there weren't any stands. There was a big, long room
up at the top of the space, with a floor to ceiling glass front. I
hadn't noticed it because it was some kind of specialty high-tech
one-way glass. Also, of course, I hadn't been looking in pony mode,
either. The ends were some kind of projection screen so we could see
the far end of the track. Several people stood at the bar. A couple of
uniformed waitresses circulated.

"Fran!" a handsome man exclaimed. "Good to see you. What brings you
here?"

"Stephen," Fran replied. "I'm showing Flower Coves, here, around. I
want her to get acquainted with how the tracks work during a race."

"So you're Flower Coves," Stephen said. "Didn't you just run away from
the field in the second?"

"Did I do that?" I laughed. "I only know I came in first, I have no
idea how far ahead I was."

"Quite far. You belong in intermediate, at least."

"She'll be there next week," Fran said. "She only finished training
last week."

Stephen looked a bit puzzled. "Just a minute. You're the one they
couldn't sell?"

"That's her," Fran jumped in. "She's running without an owner. No
indenture. The stewards are not really happy, but so far, they're not
complaining."

"I can imagine. So you want her to learn how we operate. Any
possibility...?"

"You're asking if I'm going to host races? I'm thinking about it.
Strongly.

Flower may be part of it, it's really her call."


"Great!" Stephen said. "We need more tracks, especially on the local
level.

Let's circulate a bit."

"OK. Oh, my. Where are my manners?" Fran exclaimed. "Stephen owns this
track.

He's got four ponies of his own here."

We both laughed. "Consider us introduced."

We circulated. The people became a blur. Fortunately, most of the
owners there were interested in Fran possibly opening her track to
racing. My win in the second took second place, and my being a free
ponygirl came in a distant third.

I suspect Fran planned it that way. We met Stephen's track manager on
his way from somewhere to somewhere else. When we got down to the
track level, I could tell why he was definitely a man in motion. It
seemed like everyone had a crisis. Right now. Reminded me of some of
my own parties from when I was a boy.

Only bigger. Lots bigger.

The next several weeks were a blur. Between a full college load, and
at least half of my time as a ponygirl, things got intense. I think I
had time to breathe. At least, I must have; I lived through it. The
only way I survived it was because Suzie organized my schedule for me.
Next Saturday, I was at another track in the Intermediate class. I
came in second in that race, and got to see another track. The next
Saturday, I was in the September Eastern Regional, again in the
Intermediate class. I won that race. One of the national stewards
located me and told me, point blank, that either I competed in the
national on the senior level, or I wasn't to show up. By the way, how
did I manage to do so well so fast?

Fran explained. It seemed that most ponies weren't trained in heavy
sulky at all before sale; there weren't enough drivers in the
community to do it across the board. I'd had two months of heavy sulky
training, and several weeks of competition, including experience with
Fran's drivers, all before I ever showed up on Fran's doorstep. The
fact that Fran had most of the senior trainers didn't hurt either. Nor
did the fact that I was living with one. He seemed to accept the
explanation. Still, it was fast; most ponies didn't get to senior
level for a year or more.

I was in three more locals and the October Eastern Regional, all on
the senior level. I won a couple of the locals, and did credibly in
the regional. Then it was time for the Fall Nationals. One thing I
should mention here; the regionals and the nationals were held at one
of the three tracks that had permanent accommodations for visiting
ponygirls. The regionals ran two days, and the nationals ran three. On
site ponygirl cells went to ponies that would be racing more than one
day, otherwise, they came in for the day and stayed in the center of
the track, just like at the local meets. Only the locals had junior
level races; the regionals and nationals were intermediate and senior
only. The international was senior only, of course.

Fran and Suzie had me in three races. I think they were determined
that I was going to get my device. We had to skip one day of class;
this wasn't a real problem. That was truly an interesting experience.
Not the racing. That was the same as usual, except that one of the
races was a distance endurance race. I won that one handily; I'm not
certain why. It just seems like my distance speed is slightly faster
than most other ponies. The interesting part is that I was in pony
mode from Thursday evening to Sunday afternoon. I hadn't been in pony
mode full time for four months. On reflection, the only complaint I
had was too much stand time; pony wanted to be worked by a trainer or
a driver!

I got my device. It was a picture of a flowered meadow going down to a
shore between two hills. The sky was Suzie's sparkly blue, the water
was a darker blue. My racing device was a buttercup against Suzie's
blue. It matched my hair nicely.

By this time, I was settling into college adequately. The chaos had
sorted itself into order. All of my classes were making sense.


Chapter 12. Real Life Tested

Well, almost all of my classes were making sense. The one that wasn't
was the Real Life Test seminar. This was a discussion group for the
pre-op transsexuals who were trying to live as women to find out if
they could hack it. Part of the problem was that I had already had the
sex change. Another part was that I didn't have a lot of the pre
change experiences they had, like electrolysis. No hormone treatments.
No
 mastectomy forms. And I was simply too good; I couldn't be clocked as
a transsexual because I was now a full-fledged woman, with all the
plumbing and instincts in place.

I could relate to the experiences leading up to that point; knowing
you're the wrong sex is no fun at all. Especially when you can't get
your parents to support you. And when you're afraid of what your
neighbors will say or do if they find out. Some of the experiences
these kids had been through appalled me.

Regardless of what you can say about our community business, that
level of cruelty is not tolerated.

The essential gap was that their miserable choice was a sex change
operation that could almost be classified as a cruel joke, except that
there was no alternative. I got a real sex change; my miserable choice
was that I had to become a ponygirl to get it. And I was reasonably
happy with the result. So I decided to do something about it.

The next session, I came in wearing my tail. This wasn't quite as easy
as it sounds. Fortunately, the style had gotten somewhat popular back
in the community among ponygirls on their day off, so I could get some
clothes professionally altered.

Sometimes the best way of getting someone to think out of the box is
to nuke the box. The tail did that wonderfully. Especially when I used
it to hold a glass of water while my hands were otherwise occupied.
The whole frame changed from `oh, misery' to `what can Leprechaun
Genetics do for me, and how much is it going to cost.' I'd brought the
presentation and the price list.

Leprechaun Genetics has radically different prices for most things,
depending on whether it's for ponygirl support (cheapest), community
(next cheapest), medical (fairly cheap) or cosmetic (if you have to
ask, you can't afford it). The sex change was priced to undercut
surgery, but not by much. Total cost was incredibly cheap by
comparison: no electrolysis, no hormones. It didn't include behavioral
training, but then, that was required either way a person went.

Attitudes varied from hope to outright skepticism, even with my tail
waving in their face. The next day, I got two firm orders. The two
guys had called home, and their parents had known someone who knew
someone who owned ponygirls. The network operated, and the word was:
it's for real. At the next seminar meeting, the difference was
obvious. Their skin looked like they had never had facial or body
hair. Frankly, I had to admire their guts. I'd had my transition in
the privacy of a ponygirl cell.

When you nuke the box, sometimes there's unanticipated fallout. In
this case, the tale of the tail spread. In it's spread, it collected
all kinds of flotsam.

Like TV reporters. And various kinds of fanatic. Security had a field
day.

The first I knew about it was when someone stuck a microphone in front
of my face and started asking idiotic questions. Of course, I pushed
the panic button.

Whoever was monitoring it for security had a brainstorm. The
microphone wilted.

I mean; it just fell over like it couldn't sustain an erection. I had
no idea that security could do that!

The newsie reacted appropriately. "What?"

I tried to suppress the giggles. "I'm sorry. I'm afraid my poltergeist
is having a van Gogh day. Things melt when that happens."

He tried to back away and fell down. That will happen when your
shoelaces are tied together. "Oh, my. I'm afraid my poltergeist really
is out of control."

The backup newswoman fell out of her shoes trying to recover the
situation. I simply turned around and left. My tail waved goodbye. The
last I saw, the TV camera and the satellite dish both looked kind of
melted. The incident didn't make the news. I suspect that wiser heads
had looked at the wreckage and decided they really didn't want to know
what would happen if my poltergeist had a van Gogh day around their
studio.

The religious nuts were next. Whoever was monitoring the situation
thought that they might look better without clothes. Somehow, they
managed to get the threads holding the seams. Their clothes just fell
off. The cops didn't agree about the fashion statement; they went to
jail for indecent exposure. That made the news; a story about the
defenders of the public morality being caught in the nude was just too
good to pass up.

The real nutcases followed. The ones with guns. Security did them up
proud. As soon as they pointed any kind of a weapon at me, it melted
around their hand.

The local emergency rooms had a bitch of a time getting them off; they
had to use power tools to cut the metal. And they had to be very
careful, because the metal still contained live ammunition. The TV
news had another field day with that one. This time they managed to
get the psychics and the skeptics involved.

Much fun was had by all.

Like all sensations, eventually it became yesterday's news. Security
put me up for a pick of the herd award; they claimed they hadn't had
so much fun in ages.

Surprisingly, the board agreed. I now had a ponygirl of my own if I
wanted one.

I had to take a rain check; I simply didn't have the time or the
money.


Chapter 13. Tempus Fugits

Time passed. With the fall nationals over, and the attack of the
crazies past, things settled down to their normal hectic pace.
Frankly, I liked wearing my tail. I only took it off when I left the
campus, mostly to go shopping.

Thanksgiving vacation occurred on schedule. I took the opportunity to
go back home and test the water. The water turned out to be fine;
Security had put together excerpts of the surveillance shots from the
attack of the crazies. They had some great shots of startled faces
when microphones melted, clothes fell off, and guns laminated
themselves around hands. The nightly excerpts had eclipsed the Wolf
and Ponygirl Show for a while. The line about "I'm afraid my
poltergeist is having a vanGogh day" still cracked people up a month
later.


The attack of the crazies had been a real headache. I mean, really.
The headache started the day after the incident with the newsman, and
continued for several weeks. By Thanksgiving, it was gone. I found out
why the day I arrived back. I was scheduled for a meeting with Alice.
The news that the Sorceress wants to see you tends to be a religious
experience; it inspires a good deal of soul searching for exactly what
you've done to screw up that badly. I'm still not sure if I screwed up
or not, but boy, did I learn about what those headaches had been.

I met her in a complex labeled `1d12.' It had a picture of a
pentagonal dodecahedron with numbers on the sides.

"Well, Flower, you're looking good."

"I'm feeling lots better since that headache quit, thank you." I waved
my tail perkily.

"You certainly seem to be attached to that tail."

"Originally it was attached to me. Now, the feeling is mutual." I
giggled a bit.

"Well, this meeting is connected to the tail, sort of. At least, it's
connected to your penchant for wearing it all the time. We can't
really afford to have security people watching you 24x7. So you're
going to learn how to do the security thing yourself."

I must have looked sandbagged. I certainly felt like it.

"You must have wondered how the security guy reacted that fast, now,
didn't you?"

"Well, yes. It was awfully fast. One moment I had punched the panic
button, the next the microphone fell over. Somebody must be on
steroids."

"Not quite. We've got several of our security monitor people hooked up
directly to the computer. They don't sit at a terminal with a
keyboard, mouse and joystick. If they want to look at something, it's
as if they're right there.

When they want to do something, they think about it, and it happens."

"Oh, wow." Weakly. "I had no idea."

"Well, you weren't supposed to. Most of our people only know about
teleportation and Leprechaun Genetics. Also that the Lemon and I can
do other odd things, but they have no idea that Security has access to
most of them."

"And you want to hand them to me?" I still must have been in shock.

"Well, if you want to live outside, we'd better. Otherwise, you have
to come back here, which still isn't a real good idea, or sooner or
later, someone gets to you before Security can react."

"Oh. I guess I hadn't thought it through."

"True. But frankly, we're just as happy. I'm not going to explain why
 yet. The immediate thing is you need some training. We'll get you
started today."

She meant it. We started right away. By the end of the first session,
I could tap directly into the entertainment channels. Vision was still
TV quality, but the audio was better than the best headphones I had
ever used.

The next day, she covered how to use the surveillance system. That was
a trip and a half. It was like I was hanging there in space, just
watching. I could go anywhere and look at anything.

"How far can I go with this?"

"You might try looking at Pluto sometime. So far, we haven't managed
to get out to the Kupier belt. And don't try looking into the Sun or
more than a few dozen miles down into a planet. Things get too intense
for the equipment to make sense out of them."

"This is kind of overwhelming."

"That it is. We've barely started, but it's enough for now. Practice,
and I'll see you again over Christmas."

I spent a day with my family over Christmas, but frankly, the
Community didn't interest me that much any more. While it's possibly
the weirdest small town in America, it's still basically a small town.
Even beyond that, it's a company town, organized around the company
business. I'd been there and done that. It was high time to leave.

Suzie and Dione spent the holidays at home; I spent most of it at the
stables learning how the ponygirl training business worked from the
trainer's side. Much of it was just getting to know the ponies. Three
different training teams had handled me; I already knew the routine
from the pony's side. Like everything else, there was more to it than
I had imagined.

A ponygirl's day is structured for sixteen hours awake, eight hours
asleep.

Sixteen hours seems like a lot to fill. Actually, it works out like
this:

Grooming. 45 minutes Morning feeding. 1 hour Morning running machine.
2 hours Second Feeding. 1 hour Working Session. 1 hour Sex. 1 hour
Third Feeding. 1 hour Running Machine. 2 hours Fourth Feeding. 1 hour
Working Session 1 hour Fifth Feeding 1 hour Running Machine 2 hours
Sixth Feeding 1 hour Put down for the night. 15 minutes

Depending on the pony, the fifth feeding and running machine session
can be replaced by girl mode time, usually spent in the Girl Mode room
studying, playing games, reading or surfing the net. Or the fifth
feeding can be dropped for a longer working session. There are lots of
variations. The constants are the start of day and end of day
routines, and at least four hours on the running machine.

Formally, there is one trainer for every two ponygirls. Actually, the
effective ratio is more like one trainer for three girls. One of the
trainers is on night duty, and another does cleaning. That duty
rotates on a daily basis, everybody mucks out the stables. Also, the
trainers are usually on for twelve hours a day, they get four hours
off, plus their days off. Only two trainers, including the trainer on
the night shift, handle the final block of four hours.

This gives each trainer about three hours to work with each girl, plus
three hours for breaks, lunch, and general stuff.

45 minutes for grooming seems like a lot. In fact, it usually takes
less, but taking your time grooming her is mandatory. It's the time
when you really should leave her purring. It helps cement the
trainer/pony bond, and it helps keep her in the mood to stay a
ponygirl.

By the end of New Years, I had gotten the hang of the routine,
including the scheduling program. I also was pretty good on driving
one of the girls around in a work sulky.


Chapter 14. International

More time passed. Fran and Suzie had me in three races in the Winter
Nationals.

I won one of them, and came in second and third in the other two. Pony
was definitely getting a bit restive. I suggested we might want to try
solo. Pony put her hoof down solidly on that one. She wanted to be
driven or ridden. She didn't want to run by herself, even with me
`driving' from the metaphorical back seat.

The middle of January, Fran called. She'd gotten a call from my old
trainer, Linda. Linda was relaying a request from Tammy. Tammy wanted
to ride me at the International. I hadn't been ridden in five months;
I had no idea if I could get into shape to do well. Pony stuck her
hoof into it. She wanted her rider back. I got the point; she liked
being ridden more than pulling a sulky.

Tammy decided to come out to our place for a while. Tammy is kind of a
force of nature. She moved in with Suzie, Dione and me. This wasn't
impossible; lots of the lobo-ra lived with their host mothers, at
least until they were in their mid thirties or longer. The community
had experience in how to put an apartment together so that 2'6" adults
could live with 5'6" adults comfortably.

Fortunately, she wanted to spend most of her time at the track. I'm
not certain I could have handled the fallout from a lobo-ra wandering
around either the campus or the town. My tail was bad enough.

Needless to say, everybody at the track had a workout. The first thing
she did was appropriate the two worst ponies as her riding ponies. She
used them on alternate days to get back and forth between the
cellblocks and the track area.

Those ponies got a workout; we usually had four and sometimes five
ponies being worked in the track area at a time. She wandered between
them observing and doing touchup.

It took a while for the training staff and the drivers to get used to
it. They hadn't lived in the community. Lobo-ra were a totally new
experience for them. I had and so had the senior trainers.

She worked me on riding daily. To create the time, she unilaterally
cancelled one of my trotting machine workouts. As far as she was
concerned, I was in top condition and the extra workout wasn't doing
anything but occupying time. So I got two workouts, one on riding and
one on heavy sulky. Then it went to three.

She had me going back to the main dome in the community for daily
riding competitions. This turned out to be fairly simple - for her.
She had me saddled at Fran's, and just rode me into the teleport spot
in the track. Then presto, I was at the main dome's track; all she had
to do was ride me to the ready circle.

We raced and then came back.

For the international, I was in two riding and two heavy sulky races.
She'd managed to get all four races on the same day. At least, I
wouldn't be bored out of my mind on my stand for ten hours at a time.

Those races were fantastic. I thought I knew how much drive pony had.
She went into overdrive. We won one of the riding and one of the heavy
sulky races. We came in second in the other riding race, and third in
the other heavy sulky race. Pony was so hot she was practically
glowing.

After the last race, I changed back to girl mode and fell over. I must
have gone into a trance, or something. The colors were brighter, the
edges sharper. I was back in the stadium the day I had met Linda. Pony
was standing next to me, big and black as the ace of spades, with
white stockings and a white blaze. I got onto her bareback, and we
galloped on a path in the air out of the stadium through the rock into
the sky. Pony thundered along the sky trail, below the azure bowl of
the heavens, with her tail and my hair streaming out behind us.

She came back to earth in Fran's track. I got off, and she turned her
head and looked me in the face. Suddenly, I was back at the track in
the Community, but this time I was riding in a cart in the owner's
parade, with my own ponygirl pulling it.

I came out of that one to see pony still standing next to me. Then she
whinnied, turned and galloped off through the roof into the distance.

When I came to, Suzie and Dione were standing over me. I'm afraid I
was incoherent for a little bit, until the reality sunk in. Pony was
gone; I could no longer feel her in my mind. I'd ridden her for a
year. She was gone. I had this feeling that I wouldn't be able to go
into pony mode again, even if I tried.

Suzie was incredulous. Dione tested; all of the conditioned reactions
that should have been available even in girl mode were gone. All I had
left was the tail. I decided to keep that; it was too much a part of
me.


Chapter 15. Post Ponygirl.

Now that I was no longer a ponygirl, my schedule opened up
considerably. That image pony had left me of my own ponygirl stuck. It
felt like a done deal, both inevitable and right, but in it's own
time. I arranged with Fran to keep working at her place both as a
trainer and as a driver.

I also had to do the coming out routine. This was fairly simple,
actually. The student medical center took the ear tags out as
outpatient surgery. Technically, I should have had them out when I
left training as a free ponygirl, but I didn't want to irritate the
stewards. Truth to tell, I was just too busy, and let it go.

Then Leprechaun Genetics got into the act with both hair regeneration
and ear regeneration programs. The hair regeneration allowed the hair
on the sides to grow; the ear regeneration fixed the holes in my ears
left by the ear tags. The doctors at the clinic were fascinated by the
results. I got to keep the tail.

Leo and the school's athletic director got to me at just about the
same time.

Leo wanted me to get oriented to what Leprechaun Genetics had to
offer. The athletic director wanted me in his program.

I dealt with Leo first. Leo wanted to make several of Leprechaun
Genetics' medical packages publicly available. This was going to be a
first; what he needed was a technical sales person. We set up a series
of classes for me in what Leprechaun Genetics had to offer, and on the
background behind the entire deal. I'd been a baby when the Sorceress
had hit the community like a runaway nuke, and was in early grade
school when the major changes hit. I didn't really remember ponygirls
that couldn't talk and didn't have days off. The fact that we used to
kidnap them and we put them down when they couldn't run simply wasn't
mentioned to children.

I knew about the group of outsiders that hung out around the Old
Heidelberg Rathskeller, but like most people, I didn't know why they
were there and what they did. I already knew where the technology came
from, but the rest was an eye-opener.

There is an old saying, "He who rides the tiger cannot dismount." I
had this sudden image of those two doors outside of the teleport
station under Chicago.

I'd just been given a free ride on the tiger.

The athletic director was easier to handle. He'd heard that I'd quit
being a ponygirl, and had this image of mopping up the conference. I
had to disillusion him; I still had the genetic mods that made me
ineligible for competition. We struck a deal. I got to ride herd on
his marathon runners on their conditioning runs. In return, he agreed
not to bring up my athletic schedule.

The first day I went with the runners was amusing. He had asked me to
come in ponygirl uniform. Well, that's X rated and I was no longer
entitled to it, so I came in a toned down version of the Community
trainer's uniform, with full accouterments. And my tail, of course.

I suspect he regretted the decision as soon as he saw me. The black
leather miniskirt had been modified for a tail. That meant it was more
than usually tight around the waist and hips. The zipper came up the
back from just above where the tail came through. The rest of the
skirt flared just enough to give me enough legroom to move and sit
without having it hike up. The green trainer's belt had the usual
whip, prod and cell phone. The whip was probably overkill, but he had
said to come in uniform, and that's part of the uniform. I'd never
used it, even for dressage training, which is what it was normally
used for.

I'd toned down the blouse slightly by wearing an athletic bra
underneath it. It was Suzie's sparkly blue, with a single cut
buttercup flower on both the front and back. I'd considered using the
full device, but I'm afraid that the design might distract the poor
boys too much, since the hills by the sides of the cove are
strategically placed so they emphasize my breasts.

Other than that, my hair was in a conservative French braid, and I was
wearing my public running boots. They were the black leather
knee-highs with the 5"

heels and the rubber grip soles. I'd brought what else I thought I'd
need in a backpack.

The reaction ranged from stunned to appreciative. The athletic
director asked if I really thought that was appropriate for a long
run. Frankly, I had to agree that it was sexier than was really in
good taste here, but then, the Community was heavily male dominant. If
a woman wasn't dressed to give every male in sight an erection, she
wasn't dressed appropriately. Needless to say, while the males all
enjoyed it, they were also more than somewhat habituated to it, so it
took some effort. I'd toned it down by leaving the fishnet stockings
at home.

In any group of guys, someone always has to play the asshole with an
inappropriate show of dominance. This one was over before it started.
He tried to tackle me to show me who was boss. I moved out of the way
and let him trip over his own feet. He hit the floor with a most
satisfactory thud. All of that security training from Alice certainly
helped.

He eventually pulled himself together, and we got started. After that
demonstration, nobody mentioned my bare arms and legs. March isn't the
warmest month in the northern U.S., and some kind of full body
protection would have been appropriate. Except for me.

All I knew originally was that I wasn't very sensitive to temperature.
That is, until I got the orientation from Leprechaun Genetics. They'd
been at it again.

One of the things the conservatives would have liked would be to keep
their ponygirls in regular stalls in an outside barn. Frankly, half of
the ponygirls would have liked a stall in a barn; that's one of the
reasons they'd become ponygirls in the first place. However, they
weren't about to stand for full body fur or hair to compensate for the
weather.

My skin was no longer even close to normal. The top layer was enhanced
with some kind of novel biological material with a strictly incredible
thermal coefficient. It had come out of a materials research lab with
Army funding, and was still too expensive to manufacture, at least for
civilian use. They told me I should be quite comfortable at 20 below
zero, Fahrenheit. They also asked me to call first before I tried that
extreme; it was still experimental.

After that start, the actual run was an anti-climax. Treadmills are
all very well, but sooner or later, you have to face actual running
conditions.


Chapter 16. Racetrack

Fran turned out to be serious about opening her track to racing. She
liked the viewing area in that first track we visited, and had her
builders run a similar one up for her. The problem was what it had
always been; staff. While Fran was very dominant, oddly enough, she
wasn't a starter. She was a maintainer and improver. She'd inherited
the track and the training staff from her parents, and had made a very
nice go of it, with improvements.

Suzie jumped into the gap. As she put it, her parents were expecting
her to inherit a reasonably sized industrial empire. She'd better get
some managerial experience in there somewhere.

Fran called a major staff meeting, including all of the ponygirls, to
thrash out organization. The biggest issue was that the track wouldn't
be available for training on racing days, what did the girls want to
do about it? Fran pointed out that she didn't want them just kneeling
on their stands all day; there was enough of that when we took them
out racing that we knew it wasn't a real good idea. One of the girls
said she'd like to serve as staff in girl mode, as long as it didn't
count as a day off. Several of the others wanted to be used as work
ponies; it fit what they wanted as ponygirls. A few of them decided to
take their day off when we had a race.

What we came up with was a list of girls that wanted to be staff,
another list that wanted to be work ponies, and some that wanted to be
both. With most of the ponies either off, or in girl mode, we could
convert some of the trainers to staff as well. That solved our
staffing problem.

Work ponies were the next problem. We really didn't need that many on
an ongoing basis. It took a couple of hours for a pony and a trainer
to smooth down the dirt track in the morning. Another pony hauled
equipment around when the trainers cleaned out the arenas, but this
was a weekly chore. Otherwise, there just wasn't a need.

What we wanted was riding ponies. During a race, staff would have to
be all over the place. Again, we didn't need too many, but a ponygirl
track isn't that small. Riding ponygirls would add to the local color.
The
 problem was, we didn't have any. The Community didn't train ponygirls
to be ridden by big people, only by lobo-ra. Some of the owners did,
but Fran wasn't one of them.

The problem with riding ponygirls was that they tended to have back
problems.

The complex of bone, cartilage, ligaments, disks and muscle in the
spinal column was adapted to vertical load bearing, not load bearing
at an angle. The lobo-ra could get away with it because the extra
weight came in on the shoulders, not the lower back.

Leprechaun Genetics had a solution that they had been trying out with
the owners that wanted to be able to ride their ponies. This time, the
problem was pure engineering; most of the girls had no objection to
being ridden. They wouldn't have become ponygirls if they had. The
adaptations to the lower back weren't at all obvious except to a real
medical expert. We asked for volunteers. Half of the girls volunteered
on the spot. The genetics program took about a week to run.

The saddles looked like they fit over the hips. However, the harnesses
were designed to focus as much of the weight as possible on the
shoulders. The girls were bent over at about a 45 degree angle when
there was someone in the saddle; that brought the resultant weight
down vertically on their hips, which minimized balance problems.

Riding a ponygirl was absolutely the most satisfying experience I had
ever had.

There was something about seeing her head and torso jutting out from
under the saddle, with the reins on either side, that screamed
`horse'. It scratched an itch in a way that driving a pony in a cart
never had. The feel of her moving under the saddle, and of her
responding to pressure from my legs and my balance, just made it work.
Even the collar pitched her head at exactly the right angle.

The big day finally dawned. Suzie and I were all over the place. Fran
stayed upstairs with the owners. All of the saddle ponygirls were
absolute dears. We rode them in two hour shifts, and then gave them an
hour of stand time for mash and digest. Then we rotated, so we all got
different girls during the day. I'd drawn track supervision. We had a
mounted trainer in the ponygirl holding area, and another in the ready
circle. A third mounted trainer handled arrivals and departures.
Another mounted trainer drew the start lines between races, and
supervised the start. I cycled among them, checking on things, solving
problems and giving well dones.

Epilog.

Well, I'm still on top of the tiger, and it's behaving itself. When I
faced down Mother a year and a half ago, I had no idea I would end up
here. That year as a

ponygirl was totally different from what I anticipated. Since then,
I've developed into a fair saleslady. It helps that the product is
Leprechaun Genetics' medical miracles. They're always in demand; the
product sells itself.

My job is mostly training.

The only real question now is one the purveyors of old saws never
quite got to: is the lady or the tiger going to quit first? I like
living in interesting times. I had no idea how interesting the times
were going to become.

---

The Curtain Falls. The Curtain Rises.
By Xaltatun of Acheron


Chapter 1. A Call to Action

BRRRRIIIINNNGGG. The house system announced: "Phone call from Senator
McWhip."

"Put it on speaker, please," Leprechaun Genetics' premier (and only)
saleslady said.

"Hey, Flower. Is that you?"

"Sure is, Senator. What can I do for you?"

I know the Senator slightly. I've met him at the International
Ponygirl Gymkhana the last few years. He's Golden Spitfire's father.
The Spitfire is one of our better ponygirls. I don't know her that
well; she's one of Fran's. She's one of the ones the staff rides at
the weekly meets at Fran's track; she's well disciplined, and we have
a good rider to ponygirl relationship. But it doesn't go any further
than that.

He's also one of the people in the government that knows about the
secret technology that underlies some of what we do. The rest of the
world is barely aware that someone knows how to teleport, and that a
company called Leprechaun Genetics can do rather miraculous stuff with
genetics. He knows better.

"I need to talk to the control committee. The National Security
Council has got the wind up about this one. They think they have
several working nuclear bombs, and might have some real nasty plagues
cooked up."

"Ouch. I'll put you through. But you know that they can't do anything
without violating the agreement."

"Too true. Not much wiggle room in `not even if all Hell freezes
over'. But there's always a negotiating position."

"You sound like Alice. System, connect us with Boris Badenov."

Boris Badenov isn't his name. He's really Colonel Ilia Ivanovich
Spaski. But most of the members of the control committee go by those
awful aliases from children's comics. They say it keeps their minds
focused on the reality of what they do. In any case, Boris is the
Russian member of the committee, and the chairman for the year.
Bullwinkle is our member, Dudley is the Canadian member, and Natasha
is the French member. Uncle Guido is the Italian member, and Sun Tzu
is the Chinese member.

"Boris Badenov here. Hi, Senator. I expect you've got the Balkan
situation on your mind."

"Exactly. The NSC has gotten down to asking if I can't get
teleportation released to move Army units around quickly."

"I hope you told them why that won't work."

"Actually, I didn't. I wanted to discuss it with you before releasing
any information."

"Wise. Remember, we were established to keep this technology from
destabilizing the balance of power. We've picked up the occasional odd
task that keeps the lid on, but this is more than keeping criminal
gangs off the Island. We think we need to take action this time. We've
got three alternatives outlined."

"I assume that means you're ready to do something."

"Exactly. Plan A is ready to go, permission or not. But it's real
limited. The bombs won't go off, and the plagues won't happen.
Otherwise, it doesn't deal with the war gasses, the tanks, the
missiles or any of the rest of it. It'll still be a real nasty war.
The upside is that we will remain invisible in the background."

"If that's what we can get, it's better than nothing."

"True. Plan B is a direct attack on military hardware. We're not
certain we can carry it off; it's going to push our available
facilities to the limit. Plan C is directed at the miscreants behind
the mess. The downside of both plans is that we will be out in the
open, which is going to cause a huge uproar. It's going to destabilize
the power balance something awful."

"A military solution will do the same thing. If Plan B isn't doable,
and Plan C is, then work on it. What do you need from me?"

"Two things, Senator. First is a UN Security Council resolution asking
us to take action. Second is an agreement for political integration at
the world level. That includes military integration. This can't be
allowed to occur again."

"I'll carry the message. Nobody is going to like it."

"Nobody isn't being consulted. As long as everybody does it, it'll
work."

"The NSC is going to want some kind of a demonstration."

"That's why I left Flower on the line. They wouldn't accept one of us.
They'll accept her. Assuming she wants to do it."

Oh, boy. I'd been wondering why I was allowed to listen to this `shred
before reading' conversation. Well, it sounded like the same show and
tell I'd been doing for Leprechaun Genetics.

"Sounds interesting." Was that me talking? "What do I need to do?"
Besides keep my mouth shut.

"We'll work up a presentation on the surveillance system," Boris said.
"That should be enough for one session, shouldn't it, Senator?"

"It certainly should be, Boris. What does she need in the way of
hardware?" 


"The one she uses for her demos now will do nicely. Should scare lots
of people out of their minds."

We made arrangements.

After that, I had several conversations with Boris, the control
committee, Leo, Alice and several others. Boy, was the NSC going to be
in for a surprise. I don't think the senator realized that my
well-traveled laptop was nothing special; all the fun stuff was
controlled directly from the complex.


Chapter 2. Meeting

One final check in the mirror before leaving. A 5'10" young woman in
her early twenties with long butter blonde hair looked back at me. She
had her hair done up in a French braid. She wore a fitted silk sparkly
blue sleeveless blouse with a cut buttercup flower on the front and
back. The blouse was tucked neatly into a black leather skirt coming
to mid-thigh, with her tail coming out the back of the skirt. A red
leather belt, with gimmicked cell phone and pouch adorned her waist.

5 inch heels brought her effective height to about 6'3". I liked the
style. The height let me keep control easily, and the heels were comfy
because of the ponygirl modifications to my ankles and feet.

Light makeup, pearl drop earrings, a couple of rings, a bracelet,
watch and a necklace that looked suspiciously like a collar completed
the ensemble.

Just about right. I'd left the whip and prod off; there was no reason
to expect that I'd need them. No need to upset the animals early.

Time to go. I keyed my access to the surveillance system, and looked
around Washington for a suitable location. I found one not too far
from the Senate Office Building, and teleported in. I liked this
system a lot better than the pseudo-medieval tower I'd used in my
college days. The only thing that had going for it was that I wouldn't
leave the rest of the apartment dwellers stark raving crazy. The
Sorceress had fixed the teleports a year ago, but we weren't
advertising the improvement.

The guard in the Senate Office Building looked like he was having
trouble dealing with the tail. He called up, and the Senator met me in
the lobby. His driver got us to the next destination.

Security around the NSC offices was much better. The guard checked my
ID against his list of expected visitors.

"It says `tail' under identifying marks?" he said, doubtfully.

I waved it at him.

I must say, they do train these guys well. He only stared for a
moment. "How do you do that, if I may ask?"

"It's a real tail. It's one of Leprechaun Genetics' special jobs. It's
a cross between a pony's tail and a monkey's tail. I can even use it
to hold a drink."

"Mine not to reason why..." he said.

"Mortui et saluti," I replied.

I headed into the briefing room with the Senator.

We arrived with lots of time to spare. This looked like a major
briefing room; semicircular tables with space to walk behind the
chairs, arranged in layers focused on a table and multiple screens.
The Senator and I were in the first row, next to each other. He
introduced me to the Major in charge of the room; the Major introduced
me to the staff Sergeant who was really in charge. The sergeant looked
relieved when he found out that I didn't want any special setup.

Then he almost lost it when the center projector turned itself on and
displayed our test pattern.

The General running the NSC this year kept the introduction mercifully
short. He did ask that I give them some background.

"Those of you who were previously cleared for this material are under
the impression that there is an ultra-secret international weapons
cache somewhere for technology that is simply too dangerous for our
present level of, if you will excuse the phrase, civilization. It's
maintained in case it's needed for something like an asteroid headed
for us, and it's staffed by military officers who are idealistic
enough for the job, and realistic enough to know what would happen if
it got loose."

"That's close enough for high level discussion. The actual fact is
that the technology was invented and is currently in use by an
organization that is not connected with anybody's armed forces. There
are military and intelligence officers from several major countries on
site to make certain that nobody uses it against their interests,
which in practice means that nobody uses it for any kind of military
or political end. Over the years, we've been given one international
policing task, which we carry out completely undercover. We're the
ones that keep the situation on the Island under enough control so
that nobody feels they have to move in and `do something'."

"I'm not going to discuss the organization involved, with one
exception. They have a wholly owned subsidiary named Leprechaun
Genetics. The surveillance and manipulation technology we're going to
discuss is the same technology that Leprechaun Genetics uses to read
genomes and make genetic changes. If you think about it for a moment,
this is the real reason why they have never released their technology.
It has too many dangerous applications other than genetics."

"The technology includes teleportation, an advanced surveillance
technology and some degree of remote action. You'll see the
surveillance and remote action in the next film clip. As far as
teleportation goes, we can reach Pluto, but not the Kupier belt. I
haven't been briefed on the mass limit, but I've seen us move several
tons at one time."

"I'm sure some of you remember the television stories a few years ago
about the girl with a tail? That was me. These shots were taken with
our surveillance technology. They were put together by Security into a
real knee-slapper for internal consumption. When we go through it,
look at how many impossible things you can spot, starting with the
camera angles. Remember that all of this is public record; we just let
it blow over by totally ignoring it."

I ran the series. The first thing was Security zeroing in on me after
I pushed the panic button. I still love that shot of the microphone
just melting onto its side, like it had gotten discouraged and
couldn't stand up straight. Whoever had edited it had a real sense of
comic timing; he couldn't have gotten my ad-lib in better. "I'm sorry,
my poltergeist seems to be having a vanGogh day" usually brings down
the crowd. This wasn't the world's best audience.

The shots of the religious nuts stepping out of their clothes, and the
cops arresting them got more of a chuckle. The first time a gun
laminated itself around a hand brought a gasp of disbelief. I had to
go through that scene several times; quite a few of these people had a
touching faith in weapons.

After that, the emergency room scenes didn't get much of a reaction,
except for the one where the magazine went off, totally destroying the
guy's hand.

The ensuing discussion brought home the idea that someone had an awful
lot of power. That's a very disquieting notion to a group of people
who thought that they ran the most important chunk of the planet. I
gave a couple of `impromptu' demonstrations to illustrate several
points. They `accidentally' disclosed that we could access just about
any database around, including several that everyone thought were
locked down tight. They also brought home the point that we could do
this stuff as easy as breathing.

We got back on track when one of the Generals asked me to show him the
A-bombs.

I switched in a surveillance viewpoint and brought it down to the
building, and then cruised it around so the intelligence types could
check that it was where they thought it should be. It was. Then I
bought it in through the wall, eliciting another couple of gasps.

It's a popular illusion that these things exude an aura of menace.
They just look like any hunk of machinery with warning stickers on the
outside. When I got the viewpoint inside we got down to cases. Three
military types and two civilians moved up. I got an ID on the two
civilians; they were both senior nuclear weapons designers who had
been reviewing intelligence data on these things.

"Dr. Stephens, do you need anything else?"

"I think I recognize the design. I wish I had the plans to check."

A minute later, the second projector turned itself on and the screen
came down.

It showed the first page of an engineering design document.

"This one, Doctor?"

He bit off an exclamation. "That's the one." They told me what page
they wanted.

Eventually, I joined everyone else for coffee and rolls while they
looked at it.

I don't think they noticed that they were talking to the air, and it
was working. Eventually, they came up for air.

The General in charge asked them. "Well, gentlemen, what's the
verdict?"

"If it's built correctly, it should detonate. This design has never
been tested, but all the simulations are good."

We covered the rest quickly. I told them the control committee thought
their intelligence was good enough for the military operation. What
they couldn't know was the status of the plagues. There were six
variants on current major diseases. Leprechaun Genetics' opinion was
that four of the plagues were non-starters, and that the vaccines they
had prepared were a joke. The only vaccine likely to be effective was
for one of the duds. Of course, I qualified the opinion by saying that
Leprechaun Genetics' expertise wasn't in diseases. We agreed to send
the specs to their Bio Warfare unit for a second opinion.

The political discussion split between Plan A and Plan C. Nobody liked
Plan B; if we were going to come out into the open like that, we might
as well finish the job. Likewise, nobody wanted to vet the target
list.
 
If you didn't have your hand in it, it couldn't be slapped. Probably.

The finally settled on Plan C, mostly because they couldn't figure out
how to make this meeting absolutely leak proof. I had to agree; we'd
already spotted (and disabled) two listening devices in the walls.


Chapter 3. How to take the Fun out of War

The Security Council debated for a week before approving the
resolution. They weren't sure who "The Custodians of the Weapons
Locker" were, but the demonstrations were awfully convincing. Once
they did, Plan C went into action immediately.

The committee fed our prepared ultimatum directly into the state owned
television transmitter. It was amusing watching the bureaucrats
running around like lab rats trying to figure out how to turn it off.
The ultimatum was simple enough. We listed the top 100 people in the
country's political, economic, military, religious and information
infrastructure, and told them to turn their organizations over to
someone else, and report for detention by local midnight.

If they didn't, they'd be executed at one minute past midnight. We
weren't going to accept excuses. We also told them that anyone
attempting to start the war early would be executed on the spot.

We tossed the nukes into the Sun, and denatured both the war gasses
and the plagues. The executives and scientists working on those
projects all got put on a separate list to be tried later for
conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity and conspiracy to violate
the Geneva Accords on war gasses and biological weapons.

The reaction was about as we anticipated. International speculation
mounted throughout the day, starting with pleasure at some unnamed
resistance group committing a coup against the state television
agency, and then moving to speculation when the state television
wasn't shut down, or the ultimatum pulled.

Midnight passed. We released the transmitter. Then the death reports
started to come in. That settled most of the doubters. It was now very
obvious that there was a power somewhere that could simply reach out
and touch someone.

The next week was mop up time. Specifically, moping up several
terrorist groups that decided to stick their hand in; they wanted us
to release the few higher-ups that had opted for detention rather than
laughing at the ultimatum.

We didn't even bother giving them a return ultimatum. Death walked
among them and felled them like wheat before his scythe. That fueled
the hysteria even more, especially when it became obvious that we knew
who was behind the terrorists, and that they had kept their own
appointment with the Keeper of the Gate.

We let the public furor die down. A few people who seemed dedicated to
keeping the story alive died with it.


Chapter 4. Terraforming the Dodecahedron

To backtrack a bit. A few years ago it had become obvious to the
higher ups in the Community that the situation was unstable. We
couldn't maintain our secrecy for very many more years; when the
secret came out, the reaction would be very nasty. Regardless of
relative power, the big guy is going to win over the very small guy.
We could probably force a standoff, but the cost would be very high.

So the higher ups decided to emigrate somewhere else.

The biggest problem was where. The best the teleport could do was
somewhat beyond Pluto. They'd put together a couple of automated
probes to check out the nearer stars. They'd gotten reasonable
distance by putting two probes together and having them play leapfrog
through space. Only one nearby star turned out to have inhabitable
planets; however, Sirius was already inhabited. Their tech level was
significantly higher than ours. That's a joke; it was incomprehensibly
higher than ours. The Sirians didn't think it would be a real good
idea for us to return home to their system. After we got over the
shock of what that statement implied, we had to agree. We did get
copies of the files, however. The basic outlines of the story were
comprehensible, but the technology required to merge an essentially
alien critter into the hominid evolutionary tree had Black ThunderBolt
talking to herself for days.

What they finally decided on was terraforming an asteroid. They picked
an asteroid that was about 100 miles in diameter, and moved it into
Earth orbit, but on the other side of the Sun. Then they used the
gravity controls they got from the Sirians to reshape it into a
dodecahedron with pentagonal faces. The atmosphere was less than a
mile deep, and sealed in with a gravity fold. Some of the mountain
peaks on the edges stuck out from the atmosphere.

This left a bare, lifeless rock. Water and air came from Saturn's
rings. They dumped several species of tailored microbes in, and then
put the entire thing into a time warp, with a gravitational lens for
power. Three days later, external, the atmosphere had been
transformed. Then they repeated the pattern with the next
microorganism. It took just less than a year, external; before the
asteroid was about twelve thousand square miles of the prettiest
little paradise you had ever seen.

They had finished about four years ago. They'd been debating basic
rules ever since. The only real conclusion they had arrived at was
that to keep the technology, they had to give everyone access to it.
To keep that from becoming a madhouse with hot and cold running loose
cannons, they had to create some type of enforceable group
consciousness so that people simply couldn't go off on their own.
They'd stuck there ever since.

The perplex had two major results. One was that they had lots of time
to build the initial settlement. The other was the direct brain
connection that I enjoyed. The geneticists and computer staff had
started experimenting with integrating themselves, and had turned up
some very interesting results. The upshot was that they couldn't get a
"group consciousness." They couldn't even define it, once they tried.
What they could get was an individual consciousness of being a part of
a larger whole, and therefore being unable to violate the integrity of
that larger whole.


Chapter 5. Commitment

This was the first full Community meeting I could remember. It not
only included all of the community members, but it included all of the
community owned ponygirls in girl mode, and all of the ponygirls from
the training block. The ones that had gotten to girl mode were there
as girls, the others were lined up on their stands in rows at the
back.

It also included many of the larger owners, with their entire staff
and their ponygirls. The other communities were having their own
meetings, only on a smaller scale.

Leo laid it on the line. The technological core of the community was
moving to the Dodecahedron over the next few months. The computer
complex and all of the widgets had already been moved; the staff was
commuting back and forth. The distance didn't seem to be making any
difference, nor did the fact that there was a star in the way.

Everyone who came was going to have to make a commitment to the
Dodecahedron.

That commitment was going to make the old lifestyle commitment we
demanded of our ponygirls seem tame by comparison. The Sirians had
intervened to keep several of the first group from going insane. They
weren't going to keep doing that indefinitely. Once we were a going
concern, they were going to revert to being strictly observers.

The lobo-ra had already discussed it, and were coming along, lock,
stock and wolves. They were getting one complete face, and didn't need
to make any commitment. The Sirians said that they had the degree of
group commitment required, and in any case, they didn't have access to
a dangerous level of technology. We didn't have any argument on that
point; they were the one group in the Community that was implicitly
trusted.

What to do with everyone who didn't want to come along was the major
issue. The other major issue was what to do with the ponygirl
business. We could continue it on the Dodecahedron, or let it go. We
didn't think it could be continued with the old level of technology.
Now that it was in the open, trying to revive the old methods of
acquisition would get stomped on immediately.

My direction was kind of obvious. I didn't want to lose the computer
access, and I didn't want to lose the backing of the organization. I'd
been their girl lock, stock and tail ever since I'd taken the sex
change and ponygirl route out of the community. I didn't really want
to go completely independent. I didn't think I'd live that long if I
tried it without the umbrella.

Group meetings like that are interesting beasts. If you handle them
right, you can get lots of unanticipated results. The owners decided
to stay. I can't say this surprised anyone. What did come out of their
ranks was a suggestion that we do more general BDSM support. We could
do things like kinky vacations in paradise without worrying about the
local bluenoses.

Quite a few of the community wanted to come along, but not make the
commitment.

Eventually, we reached an agreement to give them a face, and let them
do their thing as long as they abided by serious technological and
ecological restrictions. That clarified the situation immensely. Most
of the community came one way or the other. A few younger people
decided to leave.


Chapter 6. Moving Day

I got moved into a small apartment on the Dodecahedron the next day.
The complex was nice and cozy. It was just one story, with each
apartment sharing a wall with its neighbors. It was your basic oval
around a central lawn, with trees and flower gardens. One end of the
oval had community space, the other end opened onto the main
thoroughfare.

The arrangements baffled me for a while. It was three rooms plus bath.
No kitchen. No washer or drier. The reason for the lack of a kitchen
turned out to be real simple; the apartment complex I was in had a
group kitchen and dining area at one end. The collective rotated meal
preparation duties among us. Nobody was exempt. It took me about two
seconds to decide that this didn't bother me in the least. It was more
efficient, and I got a lot of people to eat dinner with.

The lack of laundry facilities turned out to have an even better
explanation. A senior trainer named Dreammaker was allergic to
housekeeping. Well, to each her own, I suppose. However, she had
mentioned it to the staff while she was here for training, and the
idea had intrigued a couple of the computer support ponygirls. So they
put in some time investigating what detergents did, and why wrinkles
happened. The result was amazing. You just aimed the widget at the
clothes, shook them out, and hung them up in the closet. No laundry.
No ironing.

Not for sale, either.

25 and a half hour days took a little getting used to. That's the
ideal day for us. They kept the entire asteroid in a slight time warp
so that our day kept in synch with 24 hours back on Earth.

The black sky and stars during the daytime took a bit of getting used
to. The color balance was definitely off, partially due to the
gravitational lens, partially due to the lack of atmospheric
scattering, and partly due to the time warp. Shadows were SHADOWS. If
there wasn't another light source, they were pitch black.

I really looked forward to what else they had up their sleeves. I
wasn't looking forward to finishing up the commitment, or rather I was
looking forward to finishing it up. I wasn't looking forward to the
process of getting there.

The next crisis arrived right on schedule. Leo called me into a
planning meeting.

"Flower," he said, "We've got a sales opportunity for you."

Oops. When Leo said opportunity, I had this impulse to duck. "Somebody
wants a horse with a head on both ends?" I hazarded a guess.

Leo laughed. "Not quite. You know our arrangement with the Island?"

Oops again. The Island is everyone's problem child. Its population had
emigrated en masse several years ago, and it was now inhabited by the
most motley accumulation of splinter groups imaginable. It doesn't
have a government. The major nations haven't moved into the power
vacuum for fear of starting a war.

The UN wanted nothing to do with it, for exactly the same reason. We'd
been keeping organized crime off the island as a way to avoid
incidents.

"What's happened is that Prince Gregory has asked us if he can license
our technology. We're inclined to say yes. There are some real
specialized circumstances involved here. He's the head of a splinter
group where rank is based on demonstrated competence, and where that
is measured by social responsibility. They have a series of formal
tests. The Sirians are fascinated by how that works out in our
species. They think that it would be workable to let them have some of
our technology, as long as we maintained adequate controls."

Thank God for 25 1/2 hour days.

Prince Gregory turned out to be this gorgeous 6'2" hunk. He had
chestnut brown hair done up in a pageboy and muscles that would have
impressed a professional wrestler. He moved with all the grace of one
of the big cats, but you had more of the impression of a drowsing
dragon. Wisdom with an attitude. What's the difference between the
lion's share and the dragon's share? Answer: They both get it all, but
the dragon's share is toasted.

I could have fallen for him hard if the situation had been different.
As it was, we got down to discussions immediately. I had been told to
offer the surveillance system, communications and a single weapon.
They could also access the teleport system for emergencies. I wasn't
to mention anything like gravity controls or time dilation.

When I asked him what we could do for him, things turned out
differently. He wanted to talk about ponygirls, of all things. It took
a while before I understood that his interest was totally different
from ours. He was looking at a human livestock program as a place to
put people that couldn't be trusted to behave in a socially
responsible manner while performing some kind of socially useful
service. His ideas for a ponygirl taxi service were fascinating. He
was intrigued when I told him what we were doing in the Community.

His biggest problem was that he wasn't in control of the island. His
group was the biggest, but it was being challenged by a group of slave
owners that disgusted him. It seemed like their entire purpose in life
was to mistreat their slaves. That was a bit of a perplex. I didn't
think I had the authority to help him with a local war. Of course, it
wasn't my decision. I passed the buck to the Syndics.

They tossed it right back. The slave owners' acquisition policies were
skirting the prohibition on organized crime. Now that we were aware of
it, they were going to be history shortly. The problem the Syndics
tossed at me was very simple. What should we do about the slaves?

So I tossed it at Gregory. He said we'd have to treat each one
individually. It would be shirking our duty to try to apply a single
answer. I had to agree.

The slave owners were going to discover the joys of being livestock.
The next hurdle was that he didn't have the infrastructure set up. So
we worked out plans, and brought in the surveillance and
communications technology while they were building the training
facility and stables, and training staff.

Eventually, the big day arrived.


Chapter 7. Surprise!

Lady Chase paused to consider the quivering wreck strung up on the
X-frame before her. The girl's bright red hair paled beside the
bloodstains that marred what had been a pretty nice body; one might
almost say a perfect body, if such ever existed. The broken thing
mewled pitifully; its eyes blank with shock. Was there any point to
continuing? What was left of her old college nemesis was certainly not
enjoying the game any more. No, she thought. Let's finish it. She
walked over to pick up the bullwhip with the lead weighted tip. Let's
see how long I can make this one last.

Suddenly, everything started to spin around her. Colors broke up into
impossible shapes and ran into each other in ways that made her head
ache. There was nothing at all under her.

"What the fuck?" Her words lost themselves in the blackness around
her. Not an echo came back. She flailed around trying unsuccessfully
to touch something, anything. Then she stopped by sheer willpower, and
willed herself to listen.

Silence. She could hear her ragged breath and her heart beating, but
that was all. She clapped her hands and the sound was swallowed up in
the stillness around her as if it had never been.

The blackness broke up into more impossible colored shapes, and she
suddenly sprawled on a concrete floor. Sight and sound assaulted her.
She gathered her feet under her to get up.

"You might as well stay there," a voice said.

She sprang up and whirled around to face the voice. "Who the fuck do
you think you are to tell me what to do?" She started to stride toward
him.

YIIIII! Her entire front felt like it was on fire. She screamed and
fell back.

YIIIII! Now her back felt burned like it had been dipped in boiling
oil. She screamed again and jumped forward. After a moment, she found
a safe location and stood quivering in shock. "Why you... you... you,"
she sputtered.

"And now it can't even make sense," said another voice, female this
time. She looked cautiously toward the voice, and was rewarded with
the sight of a tall blonde wearing a black leather miniskirt. The
blonde's tightly fitting silk blouse had a picture of a man-eating
plant. One of the blossoms opened over her left nipple. The naked man
being swallowed by another blossom had his ass over the other nipple.
The blonde waved her tail at her cheerfully. "If you just stand there,
you'll be all right. For the moment at least." 


She stared at the blonde in shock. "I thought demons were male. With
pitchforks." Slow down girl. You're starting to gibber.

"Oh, you're not in hell. You're still quite alive in the real world.
Of course, it does depend on your viewpoint," the blonde mused,
thoughtfully. She brightened. "Especially considering what's about to
happen to you. Besides, I used to be male. I like being a girl
better." Her tail emphasized the point with a little flip.

Maybe the guy was going to make more sense? She looked over at him
again. He was sitting behind a table decorated by a pitcher of beer
and a frosted stein on one end, and a gavel and timer on the other. A
picture of a brown animal loomed over him. The animal was blindfolded,
and held a balance dangling by the pan in one paw and a machine pistol
in the other. A smaller version of the animal peeked out of a pouch.
It held a gavel in its paws. Oh, no. Nooooo....

"Well, Lady Chase," the man said, as if Lady was pronounced Offal,
"What did that girl ever do to you?"

"She stole my boyfriend!" She sounded like she was still angry about
it.

"What? She kidnapped him? Why didn't you have the law track her down?"

"She didn't kidnap him! The hussy stole him!"

"Oh, I see. You had him caged, and she broke him out. Or did she steal
the cage too?"

"He wasn't in a cage! I wouldn't do that to him."

"So you didn't have your property secured very well. I see."

"He wasn't my property!"


 "If he wasn't your slave, then how could she steal him? Theft
requires ownership of property, I would think."

"She stole him. He was mine."

"So he preferred her to you, and you're blaming her."

"I'm getting tired of this. It's obvious that you can't think
straight. For the record, Freehold has taken over the entire island.
You've been found guilty of abysmally low social responsibility,
specifically, non-consensual slavery and sadism. We've sent the
dossier to your former country, so you will face a capital charge if
you ever decide to go back. Have fun where you're going, Lady Chase."

The blonde said: "You won't need those there." She waved her tail, and
the woman's clothes fell off. She stumbled as her shoes disintegrated
under her.

YIIIII! Her heels felt as if they had been assaulted by hot pokers.
She elevated onto her toes as if levitated. "There, that's better,"
the blonde said.

The former Lady Chase stared as leather and chains rose from a table
and started circling. She flailed around as ghostly fingers pressed
her arms, her jaw, and her mouth. Click. Click. Snap. Click. Mummph!
The lady was now decorated with a big, red ball gag, and a nice solid
leather collar with rings on all four sides.

Her arms were folded behind her, hands on elbows, and secured with an
assemblage of straps and chains. More ghostly fingers pressed her
shoulders and guided her out the door. As it closed, she heard Gregory
say to Flower: "Four minutes and 37 seconds. We're improving."

"Let's see how long I can make this one last."

The redhead hanging from the X-frame was so far gone in a state of
psychic collapse that she didn't hear Lady Chase's last words. Her
body seemed to be hanging, far away, where she could barely feel the
screaming pain coming from every part. She saw Lady Chase vanish, but
it meant nothing. Then her world dissolved in a psychedelic blaze of
color and faded to black.

"Am I dead at last?" she thought sluggishly. "But shouldn't I be
seeing Jesus?

They say you see Jesus when you die." She barely noticed her body quit
hurting as the haze of anesthetic settled around her. A bottle with a
nipple connected with her mouth. Her sucking reflex took over, and she
sucked it. The soft texture and pleasant taste combined to fill her
stomach with content. She curled up in fetal position, and slept.

They left her sleep, floating in the gravityless space while her body
healed itself. Eventually, the wounds were healed, and she was getting
restless. The universe twisted around her again, and she dropped a few
inches into a warm tub of water. She stretched, smiled and opened her
eyes to gaze blankly around.

"Well, doctor, what's the prognosis?" 


"I can heal the trauma to her mind. In fact, you can also; we share
the same techniques. But her mind is broken. To heal that will take
time, nurturing and fate. It is beyond technique. The best you can do
is to find a non-stressful environment where she can do something
useful. If anything can be done, nature and nurturing must do it."

Bluebird finished attaching ex-Lady Chase to the end of the coffle as
a tall blonde walked in the door. "Hey, Linda. Are you guys ready for
another shipment over there?"

"Sure are, Bluebird. That's why I came over. Looks like you've got
them nicely scared."

"They ought to be. I keep looking at them and wondering how thin I can
slice them. With a blunt knife."

"Ouch. What brought that up?"

"I thought I'd gotten over being kidnapped and turned into a ponygirl
quite a while ago. But it all seems to have boiled up again."

"Well, I can't really blame you. I assume you've talked to Alice?"

"Yeah. Didn't help." 


"Try Doc Eric. He's got a lot more experience with that kind of
trauma."

"Hum. Could be. You know what gets me, however? I want to punish them.
This collection is all dominants, and they're going to regard it as a
punishment. I know it's supposed to be retraining, not punishment, but
I can't make my guts see it. Something just isn't clicking."

"Well, maybe you should talk to Flower, then. She's the only one of us
that's really inside. I can't say the situation makes a lot of sense.
Intriguing, but I don't really see it either."

"I think I will, as soon as she finishes playing bailiff to the
kangaroo court in there."


The door opened again, and a dazed looking man stumbled out, gagged,
collared, bound and hobbled. Bluebird expertly snicked a chain on his
collar, and added him to the end of the line.

"Well, let's get this lot over there." So saying, she unhooked the
first girl in the coffle from the wall.

"Get your asses out the door. Left. Right. Left. Right. Don't keep
that branding iron waiting."

Linda shook her head. Bluebird must be really pissed. There was no
branding iron waiting. Just as well, or the conservatives might think
about it for their girls.


Chapter 8. Remedial Diplomacy

Flower surveyed the clearing critically. These guys sure made a mess
of things.

"Hey, whatcha doing there, girlie?" Someone hailed from the top of the
stockade.

"Waiting to talk to your boss-man. Get his ass out here, or you're all
dead meat. Pronto."

"Riiiggghttt, cunt. You and what company of marines?"

"I don't need any marines. Just me and my tail." She waved it at him.

He stared and then recovered. "Nice tail. You get your ass over here
so I can get some of it."

"Well, you were warned," she said, menacingly. She waved her tail
again. The stockade gates yanked themselves off their hinges with a
sound of breaking wood, overwrought iron and nails regaining their
freedom. They hit the side of the clearing with a final sounding thud.

"Now, get his ass out here before I come in and drag him out."

The guy on the stockade stared. More heads popped up over the top.
Half a dozen men came boiling out the hole where the gates had been.
They were mostly dressed in faded blue jeans, ragged shirts, scuffed
boots and mean expressions. They carried a variety of assault weapons.
They moved up to grab her.

YIIIIIII. The screams were followed by the sound of retching. She
waited
 stoically for them to recover.

"Now, which one of you is the leader of this gaggle of losers?"

One of the guys yanked a thumb at another one. "Him." There was an
overtone of contempt.

"That piece of crap? He needs his mommy to finish his toilet
training."

She looked at the guy who'd spoken. "You look like you've got enough
brains to pull your pants down before you shit." She reached out and
pulled a piece of paper out of the air. "Freehold has just taken over
the island. Here's the declaration." She handed it to him.

She pulled another piece of paper out of the air. "You can stay here
on one condition. Here are the rules. There are two things to notice.
First, we don't really care what you do in your territory as long as
you don't cause trouble outside it. Second. No weapons. That's NO as
in `what part of no don't you understand.' Got it?" She looked at the
guy holding the two pieces of paper.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good. I'll be back in a couple of days, when you've had a chance to
discuss it." She waved her tail and vanished into thin air.

"Who the hell was she?" one of the men muttered.

" `Yes ma'am, whatever you say ma'am, right away ma'am,' as far as I'm
concerned," another one said.

"You got that right," a third one muttered, looking at the artistic
knot tied in the barrel of his gun. "Just as well she's not staying
here."

"You hope," said the first guy, pessimistically.

The coffle of newly minted slaves staggered into the clearing before
the training building. It was clear they weren't used to walking long
distances.

Bluebird hadn't let up on them. "Left. Right. Stop." Some of them
stopped. Some of them kept going and ran into the ones in front of
them. The whole line came crashing down like dominos. It wasn't the
first time on the march that had happened.

"Get your miserable asses back on your feet and stand there until
someone tells you to move!"

They'd learned a bit on the march. They tried to get up in unison so
they didn't jerk on their collars. It didn't look pretty, but they did
get vertical without strangling anyone.

"That was better than I expected. Maybe there's hope for you yet
sometime before the next century."

"You're going to do one more maneuver. When I tell you, and not
before, you're going down onto your right knee."

YIIIII!!! Two of the slaves had started to knee. "What part of `when I
tell you' don't you miserable excuses for assholes understand? Don't
bother to answer that." They sobbed into their gags.

"On the count of one, you will shift your weight to your left leg and
lift your right leg so the knee is forward. On the count of two, you
will bring your right leg back so the thigh is vertical and the calf
is horizontal. On the count of three, you will squat until your right
knee is on the ground. Understand?"

A couple of muffled grunts answered her.

"One!" Right legs came up, and the entire line fell over to the right.

"Get your asses back up. NOW!" They struggled back up.

"What part of balance don't you understand, dummies? Let's do it
again."

"ONE!"

This time they stayed upright.

"TWO!" Legs came back and down. Several of the slaves flinched as
ghostly fingers touched them, adjusting their position.

"THREE!" They managed to make it down.

"You only tried to kill yourselves once doing that. You're improving.
NOW STAY THERE until someone comes to move you."

They stayed. She stalked off in the direction of the training
building.

The two ponygirls trotted around the curve, tails waving gaily,
pulling their cart and driver. Prince Andy flicked the reins lightly.
"OK, girls. Time for a break." He gave a tug on the left reins, and
they trotted into the little clearing by the side of the rutted dirt
road. He unhitched them. "Sit." They sat on their heels. He took out
their bits and put in their feeding funnels, then he gave them five
ounces of mash apiece. They sat there, quietly sucking. He relieved
himself and grabbed a sandwich and a beer from the hamper.

Fifteen minutes later, he took out the feeders and snapped their bits
back in.

"Up." They rose gracefully and marched back to the cart. He harnessed
them to the shafts and got in. "Easy there, back now." They backed the
cart onto the road. "Giddiap." They trotted away.

Andy reflected that these were very well trained ponygirls. He
wondered where the Dodecahedron had gotten them; they were quite a bit
better than the ones they had inherited from the slavers. Although
those were improving with retraining. He doubted that they would ever
match this pair, however. These ponies had the intelligence of girls
who were doing exactly what they wanted to do, and got a great deal of
pleasure out of doing it well. The slaver's ponies had been beaten
into submission where they simply didn't care if they did a good job
or not.

He flicked the reins. "Show time, girls." They slowed as the
settlement came into view around the bend, and fell into a
synchronized march step. Each leg came up precisely horizontal, the
calf precisely vertical. The calf stayed vertical all the way up and
down.

A wide, well kept dirt road lead between two rows of neat frame
buildings with hitching posts before them. Tonsured monks wearing
brown robes walked intent on their business. The chapel rose above the
rest of the buildings, steeple and bell tower gleaming in the
sunlight. The map he had been given said the administrative offices
were next to it. He marched his girls down the center of the street
and turned them in toward the administrative center, leaving a wake of
startled comments and staring monks behind him.


They came up the street between the monastery compound buildings, and
stopped before the chapel, next to a pair of riding horses. He got out
and flipped their reins over the hitching rail.

It looked like the whole town had turned out to stare. Well they
might, they probably had never seen ponygirls before. In fact, they
probably had never heard of ponygirls before. He picked the least
dazed looking of the onlookers.

"Sir, I'm Prince Andy of Freehold. Would you please give my
complements to your Abbot and tell him that I have some diplomatic
business with him."

The onlookers dispersed like the dew in the sunlight. It was best to
look busy when the abbot came out. It was also advisable to look like
they were ignoring the shameful display before them. Let him deal with
Prince Andy and his ...

whatever.

After a few minutes, a tall, spare man in a black robe came out of the
chapel building. He apparently had been warned about the ponygirls,
because he studiously ignored them. The monk who carried the message
introduced them.

"What business have you got here, my son?"

"Protocol first, Abbot. I'm not your son. My title is Prince. Remember
that."

The abbot stared. He wasn't used to being put down that directly.

"Now for the diplomacy." He picked up the first paper. "As you're
probably aware, Freehold has declared sovereignty over the entire
island. That includes this enclave. Here's the declaration." The abbot
took it like he really didn't want to deal with it.

"We're going to allow all existing enclaves to stay, on condition that
they obey the rules." He picked up the second piece of paper. "Here is
a copy of the rules. Remember that we only ask substantive compliance;
we aren't dictating precise regulations. What you do internally is
really your business as long as it does not impact what's outside of
your enclave." The abbot looked a good deal happier.

"One more thing." He picked up a box. "Here's a phone. It's hooked
into our system. If you need anything, or have to discuss anything,
just call. It's also hooked up to the international phone system. You
can use it to call your order if you need to."

The abbot stared at it as if Santa Clause had arrived early.

"The Abbey thanks you for your most generous gift."

"Think nothing of it, Abbot. It was our pleasure."

"If I could ask something of you?"

"Certainly. I cannot say yea or nay until I hear it."

"We have a sick brother. We do not know what the malady is, and
nothing we do seems to help."

The prince looked into the air for a moment. "Flower?"

A lighter voice spoke out of the air, startling the Abbot and his
staff. "I see him. Just give me a moment. There. I'm not surprised
they couldn't identify it; it's not on record with us, either. He
doesn't look very good. I'm just going to zap it and let the
geneticists sort it out later."

"Abbot, I believe I've killed the disease causing organism. He still
needs to recover, of course. I'll have someone look at him in a couple
of hours to make certain I got it."

The abbot definitely looked shaken. "Who was that?"

"That was Flower Coves. She's on loan to us from ... somewhere you've
never heard of. She's a very good example of the old saying: `a
sufficiently high technology is indistinguishable from magic.' She
assures us that everything she does is strictly technological."

"Um. Well, I'm not certain what to say about the rest of this,
Prince."

"And I wouldn't expect you to without studying it, discussing it, and
possibly conferring with the head of your order. If you have
questions, just call either Flower Coves or me. We're both in the
directory. I'll
 call back in a week."

"Now, I'd better be going before my team disturbs the equanimity of
your meditations any more than it has already."

"It was a pleasure meeting you, Prince Andy."

"Entirely my pleasure, Abbot."

The prince unhitched his two girls and got into the cart. "Back,
gently now, back." They backed the cart into the street. A flick of
the reins, and Thunder and Lightning trotted out of town, legs in
perfect synchronization.

The former Lady Chase knelt in the hot sun on one knee, her collar
attached to the slaves in front of her and behind her, and waited in
stunned silence. From her point of view, it had been about an hour
since she had picked up the whip to finish off her old college enemy.
From other viewpoints, about a month had passed, but she couldn't know
that.

She watched stoically as people came up and unhooked slaves from the
front of the coffle and led them off. Slowly, she collected her
thoughts. Was this Hell?

The woman who moved things around by waving her tail had said not, but
then, if she was a demon, she'd lie about it. If she wasn't, then she
might be telling the truth. The bitch who had marched them here didn't
have a tail, but she certainly behaved demonically enough. It was
totally confusing. Finally, the guy in front of her was unhitched and
led away. She was next.

Now she had a chance to study the bitch as she walked toward her. She
was dressed in a black leather miniskirt, black leather boots with 5
or 6 inch heels, a closely fitting sleeveless blouse and a red belt.
The blouse had a picture of a bluebird flying over a rainbow on the
front. "Oh, God," she thought, "She really is named Bluebird. But this
can't be Oz. Not even Mombi is this wicked."

Bluebird walked up and stood, looking down on her. "You're next,
Rolling Surf.

That's your new name, Rolling Surf. Remember it." She reached down.
Click.

Click. Click. She unhooked the lead to the slave behind, and snicked
on a leash.

"Up," she said as she tugged on the leash. Rolling Surf came to her
feet and staggered on her toes after Bluebird. Bluebird led her to a
long, narrow table in a room that smelled of leather. "Down on the
table like a good girl."


 Rolling Surf stood there. "MUMMMFFF!" she screamed from behind her
gag as she flopped down on the table like there was a pitchfork in her
shoulders and belly.

"Now, wouldn't it have been easier if you'd just have done it when I
told you?"

asked Bluebird rhetorically. The table came up so her feet left the
floor. She felt hands on her feet, on her arms, on her head. ZIP! Her
feet were stuffed into boots. She felt her hands close around
something, and then arm sheaths zipped around them. They took off the
old collar and put a new one on her. They took off the gag. "Now,
understand something. You are not to talk to us. Ever.

If you try, you'll regret it. Even to answer a question. No talking.

UNDERSTAND?"




"Yes, mis... YIIIII!"

"What part of no don't you understand?"

"I know... YIIIII!"

"You must be a masochist. No talking means NO TALKING. Understand?"

Rolling Surf lay there with her jaws clenched.

"Better. For a moment, I thought you were brain damaged."

Suddenly the table dropped out from under her and she found herself
standing on her hands and feet. She stood there, dazed, when suddenly
it felt like a whip smacked her across the ass. She stepped forward on
all fours, and then stopped in astonishment. She had no idea that she
could walk on four feet!

"Well, keep going, idiot." Bluebird tugged on her leash, and she
trotted after her. She had a great view of the back end of Bluebird's
black leather miniskirt and red belt. They went off of the packed
earth onto grass, and then came to a fence. Bluebird looped the leash
over the fence and held out a bundle of ropes.

"This is a rope bridle. When someone holds it in front of your head,
you stick your head into it." She held it out. Rolling Surf pulled
away from it. YIIIIII!

She screamed. "Head into it. Understand?" Rolling Surf poked her head
into the bridle. Bluebird tied off the slipknots and looped the end
over the fence rail.

"We need to get a few things straight. I'm your trainer. There are
other people that will deal with you from time to time. I hope you've
noticed that when I'm unhappy with you, you hurt. I think, you hurt.
Most of the staff can't do that."

She paused. Then she reached out and pulled a long, sticklike thing
out of the air. Rolling Surf shied back. "Steady there, girl."

"This is called a hypersonic prod. Other staff members use it to
discipline you.

There are three levels. This is level one. A low whine filled the air.
She brushed it against the Surf's front leg.

"YIIIII!"

"Now, look. That wasn't that bad. That's just supposed to be an
attention getter. It's not even a punishment. Level two is a
punishment. The whine went up in pitch.

"YYYIIIIIIIII!" This time, the scream had real distress behind it.

"That was a free sample. The next time someone uses it, it will be a
punishment.

I'm not going to show you level three. That will leave you writhing on
the ground in convulsions."

She threw the prod into the air, and it disappeared.

"Another thing to know. Your collar has some really clever stuff built
into it.

It's clever enough to know when you are allowed to talk or stand, and
when you aren't. You try to when you aren't allowed, you'll hurt."

"Next thing. I'm sure you know about the circus act where the showman
asks a horse what two plus three is, and it taps it's foot five times?
I thought so.

You're going to learn the foot tapping code. Two taps is for yes,
three is for no. Understand?"

Tap. Tap.

"Good girl," she clapped. Bluebird worked the taping code for a few
minutes.

"You know what a whinny sounds like, right?"

Tap. Tap.

"Whinny."

Rolling Surf made a sound. "That was pretty pitiful. Do it higher and
louder."

Rolling Surf tried again. "Better. A little more vibrato. Good." She
worked the whinny a bit.

"Feeling OK?"

Whinny, tap, tap. Rolling Surf looked startled.

Bluebird clapped. "You've got it! Good girl!"

"I'm going to let you in on a little secret. You can think of me as
Inevitable Girl. Most of the time, I'm not going to tell you what I'm
training you to do, you'll just find yourself doing it. You know the
old phrase `Resistance is futile?' Well, it's not really futile. I can
use it to train you even faster.

I'm sure you know how to whipsaw someone into doing what you want when
they have no intention of doing it."

"Think about your choices for a while. You can resist me all you want.
That'll get you a lot of pain, and you'll wind up being mediocre. Or
you can decide to become the best ponygirl that ever existed. You'll
avoid a lot of pain, and you might even have some fun. You'll also be
a lot better than mediocre. This is going to be your life for the next
however many. Think about it."

"This is the meadow. The staff will usually put you here when you're
not being worked. Come when someone calls your name. Enjoy yourself.
You can talk to the other ponies, sleep, run around, and have sex."


Chapter 9. The Meadow

Bluebird opened the gate in front of me, and took off the halter. I
trotted in.

I had no desire to find out what Bluebird would do if I hesitated. I
stopped and looked around.

The meadow was carpeted with lush green grass and framed by two stands
of trees on top of small hills. A wooden fence marched around it on
the right and left and vanished behind the hills. I thought I heard
the sound of a brook babbling to itself in the distance. A number of
ponygirls and ponyboys lay around or walked around. There was a small
group farther up one of the hills. It looked like a teacher surrounded
by students.

The teacher flicked her tail. Tail? None of the other ponies had
tails. That looked interesting. I trotted up the hill.

The pony facing the others noticed me. "Hi, I don't think I've seen
you before. I'm Blue Waters. What did they decide to call you?"

"They're calling me Rolling Surf. What's going on?" I'm afraid I
sounded a bit plaintive.

She chuckled. "That's what you all ask. You know they shut down your
entire group? You're all here being trained as ponygirls and
ponyboys?"

"I thought so. I recognized a fair number of us."

"They did. One end to the other. They also sent dossiers on all of you
back to the police in your native countries."

"Oh, God. That means I really am stuck here."

"Probably. I'm supposed to tell you the way out."

"Way out?"

"Yes. The way they tell it to me, if you do well at this, you get a
promotion to slave girl. Then if you do well at that, you get a
promotion to the next thing.

In four or five promotions, you get to citizen and you can do what you
want."

"How do I know I'm doing well?"

"There's supposed to be a training system. There's about twenty of us
here that are helping them test it out. You'll get to it when you're
ready, which is when you quit falling down with fatigue at the end of
your day. The first couple of months are going to be quite strenuous."

"Oh, goodie. I suppose that's good news." I became aware of my
bladder. "One question. Where do I piss?"

"Technically, anywhere you like. You're not expected to be at the
level of personal responsibility where you control yourself. But the
rest of us would really appreciate it if you did it in the latrine.
I'll show you."

She got up and limped off. I followed. We went over the hill to the
far corner.

God, did the place stink. She squatted down, flicked her tail up out
of the way, and let go right on the ground. Well, when in Rome. I just
imagined I was pissing on a slave and let go. As my bladder emptied,
my bowels decided they'd had enough, and let go too.

"Where?"

She trotted over to a little fountain and squatted over it. Oh, boy.
Well, my turn next.

The cold water hit me with a shock. The surge brought me out of some
of the fog.

"Something doesn't make sense."

"Lots of things don't make sense around here," Blue replied. "Which
one has you puzzled?"

"Why would they let us go? I know I wouldn't."

"Why wouldn't you?"

I stared at her in disbelief. "I thought you knew what I like to do."

"I do. I just wanted to hear you say it. This is going to take a bit
of an explanation. The first thing you need to realize is that you're
not here as either a punishment or as a play toy. You're here so you
can perform some socially useful work while you're kept from doing
socially undesirable things.

Understand me so far?"

"Socially useful work? Me?"

"Strange as it may seem, yes. You're probably going to be part of the
ponygirl taxi service. Just like a normal taxi anywhere, except that
it's just a ponygirl and a cart. Your passenger gets in, tells you
where he wants to go, and you get him there. He may want to drive you,
he may let you handle the arrangements."

"That sounds truly awful."

"Oh, you'll get into it. Either that, or go nuts."

"That, I'll believe when I see it. If I survive it."

"You'll survive it. As I said, you're not here as a play toy. The one
thing they won't do is mistreat you for the fun of it."

"Really?" Rolling Surf said, skeptically.

"I know you would. That's partially why you're here. Most of the
reason is that you mistreated people that didn't want to be
mistreated. Believe it or not, they didn't pick you up because you
were going to whip that poor girl to death. They picked you up because
she, and a great many others, didn't want to be your play toy."

"You mean it's all about consent? They'd let me have my slaves if they
wanted to be my slaves?"

"Of course. You might find it a bit difficult to get very many people
to play with you for quite a while, however. The population just isn't
that big, and it's loaded with people who like to run their own
lives."

"I don't believe it. I didn't consent to being here."

"Too true. And you can be out of here right quick if you really
insist. But I guarantee you won't like the results. Or maybe you will,
people are weird that way."

"I wouldn't like it?" she said, skeptically.

"What they'd do is drop you off back in the States, nicely packaged,
with the arrest warrants for accessory after the fact to kidnapping.
About fifty or so of them so far. And the victim's families would be
after you if you managed to escape. With that many, some of them might
have the pull to make your life in the pen even more miserable than it
would otherwise be."

"Oh. My."

"Exactly. You're going to have to learn responsibility before they let
you out of here."

"And if I don't?"

"Enjoy swishing your tail around," Blue said.

"But," Rolling Surf sputtered, "I don't have a tail."

"You will," Blue said as she trotted away. 


Chapter 10. Interlude on the Road

"Time to stop for the night," Prince Andy said to himself. "There's
the campground." The abandoned campground looked like it was still
somewhat useable.

He turned his team into the clearing, and pulled on the reins to stop
them. "OK, girls. Night time."

He got out, and unhitched Thunder and Lightning. He took off their
bridles and bits, and unfastened their forelegs from where they were
fastened behind their backs. They bent forward into four footed mode.
"Should I hobble you so you don't wander off?" he asked himself, out
loud.

"Why would you do that?" Thunder asked. "We're not going anywhere
without you."

The Prince stared. "You talk?"

"Of course we talk," Lightning said. "We won't if you don't want us
to, but we would like to."

"I'd like you to. Maybe you can tell me what's going on with you."

"I thought you'd know more about that," said Thunder. "We're really
fairly much in the dark about you people. Interesting as you sounded."

"Well, I've been busy working on the government and diplomatic end. I
haven't gotten to know the Dodecahedron or the ponygirl end that well.
Why don't you tell me about yourselves?"

"Feed us first, then we'll talk."

He chuckled. "You're on." He got out their bowls and filled them with
the food pellets he'd been supplied with. They dug in with every
evidence of appetite. He got out his own dinner, heated it up, and
fell to. When he looked up again, they were in front of him, sitting
on their haunches.

"Leftovers?" Thunder asked.

He stared. Well, why not? There were a couple of extra pieces of
chicken he hadn't gotten to. He held one in each hand. The two blonds
reached their heads out and took a bite each. He kept holding the
drumsticks up while they polished them off.

"Dessert?" Lightning asked.

"Dessert? I didn't bring any."

"I mean, do you want us for dessert?" Thunder prompted.

The Prince had the grace to blush. "I've been trying to avoid thinking
about that. You vixens would try the resolve of a saint."

"You know how to handle temptation. Yield."

"All right! I yield. Which one of you first?"

"Do Lightning," Thunder said. "She can do me at the same time. Then we
switch off in the morning. Put you in a good mood for the day."
Lightning flipped her tail up and planted her legs. Thunder trotted
around in front of her and backed up. The prince dropped his pants,
showing a raging erection. He bent his knees and entered Lightning.
Grunts and whinnies filled the little campground for a while as the
participants came closer and closer. Finally they all came in a chain
reaction.

When they recovered, Prince Andy asked, "Well, what about you?"

"There's not really that much to tell," said Lightning. "We were
kidnapped in `96, trained as ponygirls, and became Leo's running team.
We've been ponygirls for close to a quarter century, and don't really
know anything else to do. We're too old now to race well, so we're
looking at what we want to do next."

"We've been thinking about going into training," added Thunder.
"Although we're open to other options."

"True. Right now," said Lightning, "We're just having fun seeing the
sights while you drive us around. We may stick with you for a while,
considering what's been set up."


Chapter 11. A Date With a Chair

"Rolling Surf, get your ass down here!" I was dozing when Bluebird
called. I preferred to doze. She'd just have to come get me. YIIIIII!
My ass felt like it was on fire! I pitched forward and staggered down
the slope toward the gate.

Bluebird didn't look in the least angry. She looked grimly amused. Oh,
boy, was I in for it.

She opened the gate and held the halter out in front of me. I stared
at it and then poked my head in. She tightened it and then gave it a
tug. I followed. We went back down the path, but this time turned to
the back of the stable building. It was like every stable I had ever
seen. Wood. Lots of wood. I followed her in, my horseshoes going clip,
clop on the concrete floor. She turned right into an opening. The
right seemed to be counters and the left seemed to be open doors. She
turned me into one of the open doors and then closed it behind me with
a thud and a click. I found myself facing one of the shelves I'd seen.
Time to take stock.

It looked like it might be my stall. The walls on either side towered
over me, floor to ceiling. They were awfully close in; there was maybe
three feet separation between them. The door behind me was maybe four
feet high; too high to see over in any case. The shelf in front of me
had two bowls set into the surface. One looked like it had water, the
other had food. The food looked like an assortment of vegetables and
some kind of crunchy pellets. I could see over the counter to the
other side of a corridor; more stalls with their gates open.


My stomach said it was mealtime. I considered. How was I going to eat
this stuff? Well, just dive in, I suppose. I'd made enough slaves eat
their dinner off the floor without benefit of hands. I put my head
down and shoved a carrot around with my nose until part of it was
sticking up. Crunch. That worked. I chewed and swallowed and went back
for another bite.

"Well, I see you found lunch." I jerked my head up. Bluebird was
standing in front of me. "Mealtime is whenever you're in your stall
and feel like eating.

I'd suggest you eat when you get put in, rather than waiting; they
won't check whether you've finished digesting when they take you out
for exercise."

"Don't try to stand up. You'll be punished for it. At night, we'll
close up your stall so you can get some sleep. It works like this."
She reached in and pulled a gate across the front and then dropped a
panel down. The edge of my ledge was now a solid wood panel. I heard a
noise behind me, and then darkness fell with the thud of the top half
of the gate closing.

I guess sleep is next on the agenda. I went down prone onto the straw.
Good, that damn collar let me stretch out. I wiggled around to find a
comfortable position.

It turned out that sleep wasn't on the agenda after all. The top of
the gate opened and I struggled to my hooves. Then Bluebird opened the
stall gate, and said, "back out." I backed out. She held out the
bridle and I stuck my head in.

We took a different turn on the way out.

We went back to the meadow. Then we went back to my stall. Then we
went back to the meadow. After a few more repetitions, she left the
bridle off. I trotted out of my stall and followed her to the meadow.
Then back. Then forth. Then back.

Bluebird started following me rather than leading. By this time, I
knew which was my stall. This was getting boring. The next time out of
the stable, I tried to turn right to see what would happen. I found
out. Absolutely nothing happened. I headed for the meadow like I was
on a train track. Bluebird's chuckle did nothing to dispel the shock.
I made several more trips back and forth, this time with me going
alone. At least, I didn't see Bluebird except at the start and finish.

The next time, she varied the routine. Instead of taking the normal
route out of the stables, she guided me into a narrow passage. I had
to stop in front of a barrier. WHOOSH. I got hit from all sides with
warm water. Then I got soaped and rinsed. The barrier went down. Uh,
right. Forward. Stop at the next barrier.

This time it was more of a sigh as I got dried with hot air. When the
barrier went down, I trotted out. Bluebird was standing there with her
arms crossed. I looked at her and whinnied plaintively. "Well, you
navigated that all right on your own. Head for the meadow." I did. I
knew I was headed for taxi duty, but going through a car wash?

Then she left me in the meadow.

"YE-HAH, Back to the stables, you mangy excuses for ersatz horseflesh.
Day's over for you." He woke me up, drat it. Most of the ponies were
heading for the gate. A couple of the stable lads were coming up the
hill with what looked like prods held out. I struggled to my feet and
trotted down the hill. Next stop, stall. I fell into line, and trotted
 back like we were playing follow the leader. My body turned into the
proper stall without me having to do anything to guide it. Boy, did
she have me programmed.

"Lights out in ten minutes." The recorded announcement sounded like,
well, a recorded announcement. "Lights out in five minutes." The
stable lights shifted color from natural sunlight to twilight, and
then went out. I went out with them, still wondering why an
announcement. I barely heard the thud as the upper doors closed on my
stall.

In the morning, the top barriers folded back, and then the lights came
on with a fake dawn. That was a beautiful way to wake up. Then I
almost went crazy until I remembered how I'd gotten here. Silk sheets
and one of my favorite slaves bringing me breakfast in bed was more my
style. Straw on a concrete floor with my hands encased in boots didn't
do anything to help my attitude. This had gone too far. Way too far. I
struggled to my feet with the charge of adrenaline. Then I tried to
stand. AIIIEEEE! Big mistake. I felt like my hips had been invaded by
a colony of ants. Flesh-eating ants. Now I was seriously annoyed.

Eventually, the stable lads came by to open our stall doors so we
could begin our morning. I charged out like a raging rhinoceros. I
never heard the WHINE of the prods. Some time later, I stopped
twitching.

"You're OK now. Get your mangy body up on your hooves and move it!" I
could hear

the whine of those prods all too clearly. I staggered up and moved to
where they wanted to herd me. This turned out to be a row of alcoves,
each of which had a weird looking chair installed. "Get your ass
planted on that seat! NOW!" I did.

The damn thing looked like a toilet. They strapped me in with ruthless
efficiency. By the time they were done, I looked like those pictures
of Gulliver staked out on the ground by the little people. I had about
an inch of wiggle room, which seemed to be deliberate.

One of the guys put a halter on my head. "Open up wide." I stared at
the bright red ball gag. No way in hell. YIIIEEEEE! It felt like he
was doing open heart surgery with no anesthetic and a dull machete.
When the pain died to where I could see again, I had the ball gag in
my mouth.

The halter got attached to a set of straps that lead back behind me.
Then they put a too small headrest behind my head and left. The door
slid closed, plunging the room into utter blackness. Except for a red
display that said 80:00. After I stared at it for a while, it changed
to say 79:59. Then after another immeasurable time, it said 79:58.

They had put me in here for over THREE DAYS? The nerve of those
twerps. There would be a payback. That I promised myself. There would
be a BIG payback.

Starting with Bluebird. I'd gotten past turning her feet into a bloody
mess with bastinado, and was imagining making her watch the branding
irons getting hotter, and hotter, and hotter, and having her describe
the color changes in the iron, when I dozed off. AIIIIII! I jerked
awake. What had caused that? Suddenly suspicious, I moved my head
forward. AIIIIII! That hurt! It seemed that sleep deprivation was on
the agenda. Oh, my. These people were serious. Seriously addled to be
inconveniencing me, but definitely serious.

The clock continued its remorseless countdown. I'd gotten to
contemplate how many ways I could do lashes. Lashing her eyelashes
while she was lashed to a lashing frame. Oh, my. I was beginning to
get silly. And my arms and legs hurt.


And I'd been jolted awake at least a dozen times.

The clock hit 75:00 and the door opened. One of the stable lads came
in, and pulled the headrest away. My head fell back. Then he took a
funnel and stuck it through a hole in my ball gag, and poured some
white stuff into it. He left and the door closed. After a moment
sanity prevailed. Maybe it was food? Oh, well.

If they wanted to play mind games with me, I'd just add it to the
account. I sucked and eventually a squirt of something filled my
mouth. Oh, my! It tasted like vanilla ice cream. Not exactly my
favorite, but better than anything else I'd had here. Maybe they'd try
pistachio next? After a while I finished. He came back in, and dumped
water into the funnel. I sucked it down. Then he removed the funnel,
shoved my head forward to set the too small headrest, hit the switch
and left me in darkness. The clock said 74:57 with robotic aplomb.
Then it said 74:56.

After a while I came to when I realized I couldn't find a torture that
began with Z. I must have been hallucinating, because I couldn't
remember anything past tweezing. My jaw ached. My head ached. My neck
ached from the strain of trying to keep my head from falling. My arms
and legs ached and cramped. My shoulders ached. Maybe I could pass
some time by checking out what didn't ache?

The clock had counted down to around 69:50 when the door opened again.

Another guy, another feeding.

The clock kept counting down. Every five hours or so, they fed me. I
quit wondering if they would change the flavor. Anything to stop the
torture.

Belladonna. Ptomaine. Strychnine. Arsenic. Old Lace. Anything. Mommy.
What did I do to deserve this? Unfortunately, I knew all too well.
Well, the hell with them. I'd do what I damn well pleased, and if they
got hurt, too fucking bad.

Anger wiped out the hurting for a moment. Then I sagged in reaction.
YIIIIIII!

I'd let my head fall again.

My world dissolved into trying to stay awake and keep my head up. And
unremitting agony from every part of my body I could name, and quite a
few I had no idea about. Eventually, the clock came down to 0:00 and
started blinking at me. After a while, the door opened, and two guys
came in and untied me from the chair. I fell down. "On your feet!
NOW!" I didn't move. WHINE! AIIIII! I came to my feet and weaved back
and forth. "Back to your stall. That's a good girl."

They got me back to my stall where I fell down in a dead faint.


Chapter 12. The South Will Rise Again

Prince Andy looked at the tangle of brush that choked the old coast
road.

Fortunately, they'd checked his entire route with the surveillance
system before he left. He pulled out a long, black plastic cylinder
that looked like it belonged in someone's attic. WHOOSH. A six-foot
lance of solid looking light stabbed out the front. He considered for
a moment, and adjusted a slider. The bar of light developed a bend. He
adjusted it until the bar of light was bent

properly for clearing brush. "Now what," he reflected as he used it to
clear brush, "did anybody on the Dodecahedron want a real light saber
for?"

Thunder and Lightning followed as he cleared the way.

A couple of trees that had fallen along the old road yielded to the
light saber and a block and tackle powered by two ponygirls.
Eventually, they hit the blacktop. Time to clean up and look like a
diplomat, not like a peddler. He got out the cleaning widget, and
turned it on. A quick shake, and all the dust, dirt and wrinkles fell
out. Thunder and Lightning shook themselves, and then gave the cart a
yank. Good. Everything looked like it had just come from the cleaners.

He shook his head as his team trotted past the fields. Tobacco he
could understand, and growing your own food was pretty obvious. But
cotton? That was a glut on the world market; synthetics were cheaper
anyway. Cotton just wasn't that good a fabric. He left a trail of
staring eyes and swearing overseers behind him.

A mile further on, he found a reception committee blocking the road.
The guy in front sat his black gelding like he had been born in the
saddle. His face looked like he was suffering from saddle sores. Or
something.

"Now, just you stop right there, sonny boy. Where do you thing you're
going?"

"As to that, I'm Prince Andy of Freehold. I'm on a diplomatic mission.
Stand aside."

"Freehold, Shmeehold. You're going straight to the lockup while we put
your two whores up for auction."

Andy shook his head sadly. "Your mother really should have taught you
better manners. Last warning. Stand aside."

They surged ahead. Then they went flying out of their saddles like
they had been shot out of a cannon. Two of them hit the ground in a
roll. Most of the rest hit the ground with a dull thump and the sound
of breaking bones.

Their leader hovered in front of the horses. "Bad manners, my foot!"
Flower said out of the air. "He needs a spanking." So saying, his
pants ripped off, and a thick strap occurred. "Forty whacks."

THWACK. Scream. Another THWACK and another scream. Eventually, he quit
screaming and just whimpered. "Enough of this. Let's get on with the
show." The strap vanished, and the strapee described a lazy arc to the
side of the road, where he

hit with a dull thump.

"Uh, sir?" one of the two guys who had rolled said. "These guys need
help bad."

"Well, one of you go get a medic. The other one gets to show me where
there's some kind of authority with a brain in its head."

"Hey, Dennis. You go for the Doc. I'll take the prince to the mayor."

Eventually they got into motion, leaving moans and grazing horses
behind.

"Um, Prince. I'm Jeff."

"Pleased to meet you, Jeff. It's a pleasure to find someone with some
brains in their head."


"Some days I wonder about that. If I was as smart as I thought, I
wouldn't be here."

"Oh, how's that?"

"Well, I thought that recreating the Old South would be fun. Now that
I'm in it, I don't like what we're doing to these people at all."

"That was our thought. Tell me, how many of them do you think would
leave if we gave them a ticket home and a few hundred dollars?"

"A while ago, I'd have said all of them. Now, I'm not so certain. Some
of them can't go home without being in a lot of trouble, and some of
them, well, this is better than what they left."

"That's what we thought when we checked out this place. Well, we'll
see what happens when I talk to the mayor."

They rode on in silence for a few minutes.

"Um, Prince. If I could ask a question about those two girls you've
got pulling your cart?"

"Certainly. They're ponygirls. Very well trained."

"How did you ever get them? They certainly look like they like what
they're doing."

"Well, there's a story behind that. A while ago, there was a group
that kidnapped girls and trained them this way. Then they switched to
open recruiting and became somewhat more legal. They're shutting down
now, and some of the ponygirls decided to come to us since we're
starting a ponygirl program. These two may stay with us, or they may
go somewhere else. Or they may just decide to hang up their horseshoes
and do normal stuff for a while. It's really their choice."

The white marble of the town hall gleamed in the sun as they rode up.
Jeff swung out of the saddle and threw the reins of his roan over the
hitching rack. Prince Andy was a little more sedate in stepping out of
the cart and hitching his girl's reins to the rack. The mayor and
several notables met them on the steps.

Jeff did the introductions.

"If you'd accept our hospitality, Prince, we can get out of this sun,"
the mayor said.

"It would be my pleasure, your Excellency."

They went in. Two modestly dressed servants hurried around with drinks
and snacks.

"So, what brings you here," the mayor asked.

"As you're probably aware, Freehold has claimed sovereignty over the
entire island. Here's a copy of the declaration. You're invited to
stay as a partially independent enclave under Freehold sovereignty, as
long as you agree to a few rules." He handed the mayor a copy of the
rules. "Notice that these rules are actually principles. What you do
within your enclave is your business, as long as it satisfies the
principles here."

The mayor looked at the list and turned a shade paler. "I think we
need more copies so we can discuss them."

Flower spoke from the empty air. "I thought you might." Prince Andy
reached out his hand, and paper appeared in it. There was a dead
silence. He handed the sheaf of paper to one of the servants, who
handed it around.

The mayor broke the silence. "If I may ask?"

"Of course. I assume you know the old saw `a sufficiently high
technology is indistinguishable from magic?' The lady you heard is
named Flower Coves, and she's quite proficient in that technology. She
dealt with your welcoming committee back on the road; I just stood
there and looked like I knew what I was doing. The same thing happened
here. I can't actually pull stuff out of the air.

I reached out like I could, and she made the paper appear in my hand."

Some of the people in the room looked relieved.

"Before we go on, I need to tell you one other thing. The tobacco crop
has to go. One of the things Flower's people do is keep organized
crime off the island.

Since tobacco is illegal just about everywhere, you have to be dealing
with organized criminal elements to smuggle it out and sell it. You've
come real close to being obliterated several times."

There was another shocked silence. "Obliterated?" one of the women
asked, shakily.

"Obliterated. Criminal gangs were simply killed out of hand. The
slaveholder group didn't just vanish a month ago. They and their
slaves were picked up and are being processed. They are being trained
as ponygirls and ponyboys. Their toys are being rehabilitated as far
as possible."

"Oh, my. I never realized."

"Those actions are never publicized. Everyone wants to keep public
reaction down."

"If the tobacco crop goes," the mayor asked, "what are we going to use
for foreign exchange?"

"Have you considered tourists?" asked Prince Andy.

"Tourists? Why tourists?"

"Why not tourists? They've got money, and they're expecting to spend
it."

"But it wouldn't be very authentic."

"Very true," said the prince. "But you can't do authentic anyway. We
won't let you. You can certainly do a generic recreation. Remember
that there was plantation agriculture with imported or impressed
agricultural workers all over the world."


Chapter 13. Learning to Live With It

I woke up again with the false dawn. My body hurt. It took a little
while for me to remember why I was here on a straw covered concrete
floor rather than in my nice, comfortable bed. Absolute fury contested
with fragmentary memories of the last few days. Eventually, the fury
collapsed in on itself and I lay there shaking in reaction. Then I got
up and looked in the bowls. Food. Was it real food? Who cared? I was
hungry. I plunged my head in and began munching.

When the stable lads came by and opened the stall gates, I trotted out
like a good little ponygirl and followed the herd through the ponygirl
wash. Bluebird met me outside with a bridle. I stuck my head in, and
she led me to a new section of the stable.

"Up on two legs, now. Arms behind you." I obeyed. She brought my arms
back to where my forelegs were crossed behind me, hooves sticking out.
"Let's see how far we can get them today. Bring your shoulders back,
arch your back. Good." My arms didn't come very far back at all; they
never have. She tied them so they were immobile. Then she released
them, and had me get back onto all fours. Then she had me get back up,
and tied my arms behind me. Repeat. She kept repeating until I came up
and down on command, without really thinking about it.

"Harness next, girl." I was standing up. She brought over an
assemblage of straps. One thick strap went around my waist. "Suck it
in." she pulled it tight.

Then the rest went over my shoulders, back and forth. It was actually
very traditional; I'd put that type of harness on slaves many times.
Straps to outline my breasts, straps around my chest, straps crossing
in a big X. She checked it out. Then she brought out a bridle. I'm
afraid I shied a bit, I remembered that ball gag. "Steady, girl,
steady." She put the bridle around my head. She held up a bit in front
of me. "Open up, that's a good girl." I surprised myself. My mouth
opened for the bit as if I had actually wanted it to.

She put it in and hooked it to the bridle. I can't say it was
comfortable, but it was a lot better than that damn ball.

"I'm going to teach you a march step next," she said. Oh, my. A
complete sentence. "Right leg up." I felt ghostly fingers on my leg.
It came up as the fingers shaped the movement. Then it came down, and
the fingers brought my left leg up. She had me march in place for a
while, until I couldn't feel the fingers any more. Then she shook my
reins. "Forward. The fingers were back, shaping the movement as I went
forward. She marched me around the room for a while, until I responded
to the reins without thinking about it.

"Well, let's start conditioning you." She shook the reins and guided
me out of the room where we had been practicing to another part of the
stable. I saw rows of gleaming machines, some of which had ponygirls
and ponyboys in them. They looked like treadmills, except that they
didn't look like any treadmills I had ever seen. The booths had four
foot high sides, and front and back sections that were at least six
feet tall and about two feet wide. She marched me over to an
unoccupied booth, opened the side, and put me in.

Next, I got my waistband hooked to straps that came out of the side,
so that I couldn't move forward or backward at all. She clipped straps
from the back to my bridle. Then she walked over to the front panel,
adjusted something, and walked away.

I felt my reins shake, so I got moving. The floor moved under me at
the exactly right speed. The front panel had two green indicators that
went up and down, and two other green indicators that rocked back and
forth. I discovered that if I kept my legs in synchronization with
them, everything was fine. If I didn't, red indicators came on that
showed where my legs were, and shouldn't be. If I left them that way
too long, I got a shock.

The machine stuck in rest breaks just about when I thought I couldn't
move another step. It kept me going until I was thoroughly wrung out.
When I finally just stood there, dazed, one of the stable lads came by
and opened the machine.

Back to my stall in four footed mode. Collapse. Finally, hunger got
its signal through, and I fed myself. Then I got another session on
the machine. Repeat.

Collapse at night. Bluebird came by occasionally to train me in
another movement.

After several days of this, one of the stable lads sent me out to the
meadow.

The meadow fairly glowed, greenly manicured, under the sun. Blue
rested in her favorite position under one of the trees. A worker
guided a ponygirl who was pulling a grass cutter. Another pair worked
with a roller. A herd of ponygirls and ponyboys were charging back and
forth in one of the corners. I looked closer at what they were doing.
Suddenly, a black and white ball popped out. Ponygirl

soccer?

Something about Blue puzzled me. After a moment, I got it. She had her
head back, as if she was the Sphinx, or a housecat. It didn't look
like she was straining. I trotted up the hill.

"Yo, Blue. How's the leg?"

"Getting better. You're Rolling Surf. Right. How are you doing?"

"You probably know better than I do. They aren't telling me a damn
thing."

"Standard practice," she laughed. "They don't tell ponygirls anything
they don't have to. How has your week been?"

"Horrible and strenuous, about half of each."

"Well, you earned it. They don't put you in the chair because they
enjoy seeing you becoming a gibbering wreck."

"Oh, they did it to me."

"And you know exactly why, if you let yourself think about it," Blue
said.

"Rebellion?" I hazarded a guess.

"Not this time. You can do better." 


"I've got a bad feeling about this one."

"Well, spit it out, girl."

"Letting myself get out of control."

"Bull's-eye. Rebellion requires intention."

"Damn. That's almost the story of my life. I get frustrated, and have
to take it out on something. Or someone."

"Well, plan on getting over it. Or on becoming compost."

"They'd kill me?"

"Believe it. Ten counts of conspiracy to kidnap, forty counts of
buying kidnap victims, a dozen murders and so many counts of
non-consensual torture that they quit counting? Most people would say
that they've been tolerant so far above and beyond the call of duty
that they must be saints."

"So whom do I talk to about it? You?"

"It's a start. I'm a ponygirl with a direct tap into the data banks.
I'm not a shrink."

"Bluebird?"

"Probably not. She's a very good trainer, but she doesn't have very
much experience with heavy duty shrink stuff."

"That girl in court, Flower, whatever her name is? She seems to be
powerful."

"Flower Coves? Don't make me laugh. She's good at sales and sales
support.

Outside of that, she tends to see everything as a nail."

"Sees everything as a nail. Oh." I laughed. That did seem to describe
what little I knew of her. "Then where do I start?"

"We'll start at the top, with the Sorceress." She lifted her head.
"Yo, Alice!"

YIPE! Suddenly this woman was sitting in front of me. She was about
5'6", maybe fortyish, and dressed the same way everyone else seemed to
be. Leather miniskirt, high heeled boots, blouse so tight she could be
arrested for indecent exposure.

"So you're ready," this apparition asked me. "How would you describe
it?"

"I want to get back at them!" I realized I was shaking.

"Who are they? Be specific."

"Well, just they. Everybody." She had me confused now.

This went on for a while. I said things, and she asked questions. Lots
of questions. My answers started connecting the dots for me. After a
while I started sobbing and she held me. When I finished, I sat up
again.

"So I'm all better now?"

"Not hardly. That's one of the big delusions. When it stops hurting,
everything's going to be all right. There's two things left. First,
I'm going to teach you some new ways of handling frustration. Then
you're going to have to learn how to live in the real world."

"Well, I suppose I can't have everything at once."

She clapped her hands in delight. "Great answer! You've learned one of
the new ways already!" She vanished.

I looked at Blue. "I wish she wouldn't do that!"

"Well, she likes to be mysterious. Part of it's pure showmanship. Like
Flower's tail. She doesn't really do what she does by waving that
thing, but it has a certain pizzazz to it."

"Oh, well. What's next?"

"Whatever you want, within limits. Go play soccer. Find a stallion and
get laid.


Eat. Sleep. Just do it somewhere else, please."

The closer I got to the soccer game, the more it looked like a chaotic
grudge match. I spotted a fair number of my peers on one side. The
other had a disquieting number of ponygirls and ponyboys I'd seen at
shows. Including two from my own stable. If anybody actually knew how
to play the game, it wasn't exactly obvious. Fortunately, it was
impossible to foul out by using your hands; nobody had any hands to
use. The ball came flying out at me, so I did the obvious thing. I
slashed at it with my
 whip. Except that I didn't have one.

Something connected, however, and the ball went flying back in and hit
my former ponyboy in the head, right where he wasn't looking.

He staggered out of the mess, and lay down.

I trotted over. "Sorry about that, I didn't mean to hit you."

He looked up at me and did a double take. "That's got to be a first,
mistress."

"I'm not Lady Chase any more. I'm Rolling Surf. What are they calling
you? And why are you here? I'd have thought they'd have shipped you
all back to your families or something."

He laughed. "I'm still Driving Rain, mistress. Oh, damn. Got to quit
that."

"Too right. I'm nobody's mistress. In either sense of the term."

"Why I'm here? They decided to keep all of the ponies here until they
could figure out what to do with us."

"Pissed about that?"

"Yes and no. Fact is, I've got nothing to go back to. I was drifting
when I was kidnapped. I needed a new start; I just didn't think it
would be as a ponyboy. I figure you owe me an apology, at least."

"For what, specifically? I probably do owe you one, but I like to know
what I'm apologizing for."

He looked at me like I was crazy. "Everything, damn it!"

"For your being born? I'm not your mommy. For your being kidnapped? I
didn't order it. Be a bit more specific."

He looked shocked. Then he looked thoughtful. "Well, the biggest gripe
I have over the whole thing is not being asked! And the more I think
about it, the more it looks like I want to take the kidnappers apart,
but I don't have that much against you." He grinned. "With one
exception."

"Oh?"

"I've wanted to get you on your back and screw the hell out of you
ever since I saw you."

Boing! I hadn't been laid in over a week. "Well, are you stallion
enough to do it?" I bounced up to move away. He scrambled to his
hooves and charged me. I moved away, and he charged me again. What the
heck? Then the light dawned. He was herding me!

I let myself get into the game, and led him all over the pasture.
Eventually, he herded me so my head stuck out between a pair of trees
that my shoulders wouldn't go through. I'll bet he'd planned it that
way! When he leaped up on my back and entered me, it felt like he was
going to come all the way through my head! AHHH! In and out, up and
down, his strokes kept time with my whinnies. Or maybe the other way.
Eventually, I came with a scream, and so did he. He backed off of me,
and then I backed out of mother nature's stocks. We kissed and then
collapsed.

"Well, big guy, did that satisfy you?"

"Gaaah! You give a stallion quite a ride! It's at least a down
payment."

"Come collect the next installment whenever you're ready."

The next challenge arrived with blood in her eye. I'd given Bouncing
Betty her high school nickname when I'd had her kidnapped for my
stable. She'd gone well out of her way to make my life miserable; I
figured I'd return the favor.

"You miserable ... slut." She stopped short and stared.

"Do tell." She hadn't exactly been celibate.

"What did I ever do to you to deserve this?"

"Besides be nasty to the rich kid that had the misfortune to be
smarter than you? Not a whole lot, really. Anyway, I gave you a job
you could handle."

"What!" she sputtered nicely.

"Let's see. Three jobs in three years as a file clerk for companies
that were so backward they needed a file clerk. Husband ran away with
his boyfriend, and took your daughter with him. You did quite well for
me in dressage competitions; showing off seems to be your main
talent."

She sputtered for a moment. "Let's see how you like that damn chair!"
as she stalked off in Blue's direction.

"Insubordination was her other talent." I commented to Driving Rain.

"I noticed."


Chapter 14. Tourists? Oh, my


A few weeks later, Blue called me over when I hit the meadow for my
day off.

"How'd you like an offer you won't want to refuse?"

"What is it? Assistant meadow monitor? I can refuse that easily."

"A little bit more responsibility than that. How'd you like to be Lady
Chase again?"

Good thing I had all four hooves planted on the ground. "Of course I
would.

What's on top of the list of catches?"

Blue laughed. "Well, of course there's a catch. We'd be shirking our
responsibility if we didn't keep you on some kind of leash. Here's the
deal. The Freehold authorities aren't real happy about what they did
with some of you.

This isn't the best program for dominants. You've only been chaired
once; the average seems to be around three times. In less than six
weeks. They're discussing what to do next."

"In your case, they also like how you've been handling yourself with
your former slaves. So they want to discuss setting you up as a
tourist attraction."

"A tourist attraction? Me? Someone has got to be out of their minds."

"Their marketing department thinks it would be an attraction. Not a
huge attraction, but then, Freehold doesn't really want tourists in
their millions.

Hundreds will do just fine, thank you. And your little corner of
things would only get a few of those."

"More of a dungeon and breakfast? I've heard of those."

"Something like that. You'll get some guests for the guest rooms, and
some for the dungeons."

"There's still got to be a catch."

"Well, of course. You'll have to treat your slaves better. That
doesn't mean let up on discipline. It does mean cutting out the
abuse."

"I think I can handle that."

"We do too. The other thing is that you'd have to handle some of the
walking wounded you created. The ones that can't function on their own
any more."

"Yuck. But you're right. We screwed them up; we've got to make amends
somehow.

So what's the next step?"

"Discussions. You keep on with your training as a ponygirl. There'll
be a topic on the system for you to check in and work on at night
setting this up."

"Yeah-Hah!" Fran shouted as Little Green Apples crossed the finish
line first.

"I thought that filly was a winner!"

"She'd never live that name down if she wasn't," said Prince Andy.
"This is a tourist race, isn't it?"

Lady Chase said, "Sure is, Prince. She's on a month vacation as a
ponygirl. This is actually her third time here; she seems to like it."

"Also quite good form," added Fran. "Pity this isn't a claiming race.
I'd love to bid on her."

"Interesting idea," said Lady Chase. "Now that I think of it, they may
do that over in the Old South."

"This is a beautiful layout," Fran said. "How ever did you do it this
fast?"

"Well, fast is relative. It took two years of hard labor to get here.
Of course, I had most of the money from my colleagues that didn't make
it. For the rest, I just copied what the Old South group did, with
modern amenities. Keeping the slave labor happy is tricky, especially
since Freehold insists that they have the right to leave any time they
want."

"You certainly succeeded," Fran said. "I'm enjoying myself
tremendously. Of course, part of that is being able to bet on the
races without worrying about how my track or my ponygirls are doing.
And the maid you loaned me is great. Is she for sale?"

"Could be," Lady Chase said, thoughtfully. "She told her supervisor
she was looking for a change. I don't know if it's vertical or
horizontal. Ask her if she wants to be sold to you. If she says yes,
we'll negotiate the details."

"You might even get that pony you were admiring," added Prince Andy.

"Oh? I thought she was a tourist."

"So she said. We just discovered a material error on her declaration.
If it proves out, she's put her hoof into it up to her eyeballs."

"Now this is quite a bit different from my stables," said Fran as they
walked down the columns of stalls. "It looks more like a stable. Mine
looks more like a prison."

"I understand that's the way your style started," said the Prince.
"This is a variant on our training stables, suitable for guests that
want to experience being ponies. Let's see, the directory says she's
in stall 26." They went down the wide walkway past three openings to
their left, and then turned into the fourth.

"I thought she was in the third column," said Fran. "Oh, I see. Her
head's on the fourth row, her tail's on the third." Each of the stalls
on the left had a shelf about two and a half feet high, and a foot and
a ha lf deep. The top had a bowl of pellets and a bowl of water set
into the wood. Metal numerals decorated the front of the shelf.

The stall itself was about three feet wide and seven feet deep, with
sides that ran from floor to ceiling. The other end had a four foot
tall swinging gate with a sliding bolt on the outside. Once in, the
pony couldn't turn herself around while standing on all four hooves.
There were several other ways she could turn herself around, but the
exercise was kind of pointless, since she couldn't see over the gate
without standing, and she would be punished severely for attempting to
stand in the stall.

Most of the stalls were empty. Little Green Apples was eating at her
food bowl as the party walked up. She kept on eating until Lady Chase
cleared her throat.

Then she looked up, smiled and whinnied.

"Nice win, Green," she said as she held out her hand with a sugar cube
in it.

Little Green Apples snuffled at the hand for a moment, and then took
the sugar cube in her teeth, crunched it, and swallowed it. She
whinnied again.

"We need to talk. There's a discrepancy in your customs declaration.
Prince Andy will explain." Little Green Apples froze for a moment.

"What?" she said.

"Visitors are required to have a return ticket. We can't find any
evidence that you have one."

She wilted on her hooves. "Oh. I can't go back. I ran out of money. I
almost got kicked out of my apartment. Everything is in storage with
my sister. She won't lend me a dime, but she will store my stuff for
me. It took the last of my money to get a one way ticket and pay for a
week's experience as a ponygirl."

The Prince looked at her. "You're telling me you haven't paid Lady
Chase for the last three weeks? That's theft of services."

"No, I haven't. I'm sorry," she sobbed. "What's going to happen to
me?"

"Well, normally, you'd become a ponygirl, and work your way up to
citizen before you could leave. You'd also have to make restitution to
Lady Chase for three weeks, but that shouldn't be too hard. Since I
haven't filed my report, however, you've got some room to maneuver. I
take it there's no possibility you can get the money from someone in
the next couple of days?"

"I'll try, but my family has written me off," she sobbed.

"The other option is that Fran, here, has expressed an interest in
buying you for her ponygirl stable."

Green's head came up. "What? Why would she do that? And why would I do
that?"

Fran said, "I liked the way you ran that last race. You're going to be
a ponygirl for a while, one way or another. If you decided to go with
me, you'll sign an indenture that will be administered under the
Consensual Slave Act.

That's a minimum five years to get out from under the training
expense. You get weekly days off and an annual vacation. Our style is
much heavier on the bondage, but Freehold doesn't give you the days
off or vacations. With me, you also get career training and regular
payments to a retirement fund. Freehold, of

course, has it's own system for that, but it only works if you intend
to stay here. If you sign the indenture, I'll pay Lady Chase, and
getting you back will become my responsibility."

"I need to think," she said, shakily.

"You can take a couple of days, as far as I'm concerned," said Prince
Andy. "I don't need to file my report immediately. I believe Fran will
be around for a while."

"A couple of days works for me," said Fran. "If you've got questions,
I'll drop around to talk to you."

The End

---

Author's Afterword

This is the end of the Community. The caverns are empty; the power
plant is shut down. Leo's ranch has new owners who have no idea that
there was a tunnel to the caverns. Some day, an explorer may stumble
across them, or the Army may decide to make use of them.

The story sequence runs from about 2000 to 2021. There is a lot of
room for more stories. Interested authors should contact me first;
I've got a background document that explains the layout, the people,
the technology and the time line.

I've already had one person ask me what happened to Selma, the main
character of Raw Material.

The main action moves to the Dodecahedron, which is normally located
somewhere between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. Dodecahedron
stories are all about people's experiences with the Dodecahedron; the
people of that place are simply too powerful to make good focus
characters. I mean, who can sympathize with Flower Coves at the end?
She waves her tail, and the doors fly off of a well-built palisade.

Freehold has been set up as a framework for a number of interesting
subgroups, as well as being interesting in its own right. The Old
South recreation with ponygirls is one. Lady Chase's slaveholder's
fantasy is another. There may be a Gorean recreation lurking around
somewhere. Freehold is adamant about no powered vehicles, so all of
them either have real horses or ponygirls.


---

This post is brought to you from Lord Zayphar's Archive.
This archive primarily consists of erotic writings of
the Dom/Sub variety. If any of these stories belong to
you, and you don't want to see them reposted, or you 
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Enjoy!

Lord Zayphar

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
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