5. Jarred

The meeting with Senator Mesne Marsdy went well. It always amazed Jarred how far a dollar went when it came to moneying the political process. He was familiar with the principle that it took as much brainpower to put the nut on a tire as it did to raise the fi-nancing to produce the car the tire was mounted on. The financier's activities affected a far broader spectrum of the populace than the activities of the nut turner. The difference was a product of expe-rience and positioning. The corollary was the financier's activities weren't dependent on the dribbles of funds trickling down to the individual process of placing the nut on the tire. By being at the source of the funds, the financier was exploiting a mighty river. If someone built a house, he might be able to order a double set of fau-cets and take one home to use in his own house. If someone built a town, he could steal a whole block. The only way a movie director could steal epic amounts of money was to make a monumental epic.

A politician's power was also a product of his experience and position. The politician had a stranglehold on the greatest flow of money around, the public trough. But that wasn't what fascinated Jarred. While the politician had a strangle hold on this vast flow of funds, it only took a trickle of funds to buy the soul of the politi-cian.

And once he had his soul, he had not only his hand in the vast flow of funds, he had his hand on the politician's perceived power. He could use that power to create regulations, those edicts with the force of law that multiplied like mushrooms in a dark basement, their passage being so profuse and complex, no public supervision was possible until they were in place, like Lilliputian bindings, op-pressing not by their strength, but by their very number.

Jarred supposed the price of a politician was precisely the cost of the politician's next election, which made the return on the dollar so great. However much it was, Jarred was grateful there was a price and men like Mesne Marsdy willing to stand up and be counted when his concerns were involved.

The $200,000 Jarred so selflessly provided the Senator would be multiplied a million times as it worked its way down to the indi-vidual communities, encouraging the creation of the life so precious to him, that life he'd dedicated his life to fostering and nurturing, encouraging the creation of the mystical spark wherever and when-ever he could.

He poured himself another glass of wine, looking at his watch. His smooth handling of the Marsdy business left him with a few moments to prepare to deal with Don Dorney, whose efforts to de-stroy the ostrich meat market he'd have to put the quits to. Inten-tional or not, Dorney, who'd found a method to significantly lower the costs of raising a breeder, was attempting to increase his mar-ket share by undercutting the orderly market he, Jarred, had es-tablished with extreme difficulty.

Jarred traced his understanding of market forces back to his days of penetrating the various block books with his numbers sys-tem. In extending the numbers operations on a citywide basis, he still faced the problem of local operations infringing on the overall operation.

The numbers operation was very simple. In its purest form, players selected a number with three digits, 583, 245, 679, and played a nickel or multiples of a nickel. If the number the player selected appeared in the paper as a part of one of the objective methods Jarred determined for choosing it, the last digit of stock market volume, the payoff of the parimutuel, the Dow Jones aver-age, then the player won a certain amount of money, say a dollar on a five cent bet.

The player had to believe the selection of the number was by chance. As Jarred couldn't hold a drawing each day in Times Square, a method totally beyond anybody's control, but accessible to any player, was required. Paying a dollar on the nickel appeared to be a lot for those not computing the chances, which were mathe-matically a thousand to one, but the payout had to account for hu-man nature, which tended to bet on numbers composed of births, deaths, a national event, or even loss of virginity.

If everything operated according to mathematical chance, an av-erage day's take of $150,000 produced 3 million players who would collect $3,000, leaving $147,00 in the kitty to support the various other pursuits of Jarred and his friends.

However, because human nature bet on external signs rather than in mathematically precise ways, if their was a particularly gruesome murder that occurred on 4/23, and reported on the 4/24, the book on the 24th would be filled with bets on the number 423.

Instead of the bets scattered mathematically across the avail-able numbers, perhaps a million nickels might be bet on 423, re-quiring a ball-busting payout of a million dollars on a take of $150,000. Thus, controlling the number after the bets were tallied was absolutely necessary. Another problem, though, were attempts at competition. However, he also believed letting outsiders in if the outsiders brought something to the table improving operations. Af-ter all, he'd been an outsider. He also believed those who contrib-uted to the success of the operation should be rewarded in accor-dance with their contribution. He had contributed immensely, and he expected, and in fact, had been, so rewarded. He expected to con-tinue to be rewarded as long as he continued to contribute to the productivity of the system. He also expected trouble if he used it to benefit himself at the expense of the operation.

But to operate successfully, there simply could be no competi-tion, and Jarred considered a system eliminating competition a dis-tinct contribution to the numbers enterprise. With his block moni-tors in place, it wasn't difficult to keep an eye out for potential competitors. When the first instance was reported to him, on his old block of all places, Jarred checked to see if there was anything unique involved in the operation, anything new. When he found it was just a fly-by-night knockoff, he called in The Bat and told him he wanted both of the transgressor's legs broken. He figured run-ning numbers would be pretty hard with both legs in casts.

The guy wasn't even in plaster before Jarred was faced with another transgressor, and then another. It was becoming physically impossible for The Bat to break all of the required legs. Worse, with the drainoffs occurring in the basic numbers operations, The Bat just might end up breaking Jarred's own legs, and probably more. The situation was getting out of control. Deciding broken legs weren't getting enough notoriety, he decided to have The Bat set the broken legs himself, in cement, and drop the transgressor into the Hudson. Jarred was sure when word got around, his competition would cease.

He was wrong.

When push came to shove, he had to do something about the situation. He asked around to discover who'd been skating on thin ice as far as overall favor was concerned, and got the name of a young aggressive guy named Smokey who, while appearing to play the game, was failing to turn over an appropriate percentage of profits from his cigarette smuggling operation to his boss. He was called on the carpet, but bulled his way though, all the while flash-ing an oversized diamond ring on his pinky.

Jarred's request came just as the guy's boss decided to see how many packs of the dapper smuggler's product it'd take to turn him into one big blister. Jarred had The Bench convince him to turn Smokey over to Jarred so he could use him as an example for his number running encroachers.

"I understand you're in trouble with your boss on your smug-gling operation," Jarred told him.

"Fuck him," Smokey said.

"Well, yes," Jarred said, "but I think an enterprising fellow like you would like to get into a more profitable line of business. It might take a few risks, but then, nothing ventured, nothing gained."

"What do you have in mind?" Smokey asked.

"I'm getting a lot of crap about not being able to control these little number operations springing up all over the place. That tells me one thing about the big game."

"What's that?" Smokey asked.

"It's being run too conservatively," Jarred replied.

"You're doing the running," Smokey commented sarcastically.

"I just run it. I don't make the rules. It seems to me if we could set up a independent citywide operation, the big boys would have to knuckle under. We could destroy their profits. All I need is someone who isn't worried about getting a dark glance here and there to run the day to day operations."

"Gee, I'm your man," Smokey said, agreeably.

Before long, word got around. Anyone wanting to run an inde-pendent numbers game could get together with Smokey without dan-ger of having his legs broken, cemented, and dropped into the river. The new numbers operations grew by leaps and bounds until Smokey was displaying his diamond ring, with several new ones, at every club in town, getting his picture in the paper, being mentioned in gossip columns.

When all eyes were directed on him, Jarred arranged to have him arrested. Smokey panicked and agreed to talk, implicating Jarred. The police installed Smokey in a hotel room under twenty-four hour guard. When the guard changed to the four officers who Jarred arranged the arrest with, they threw Smokey out the win-dow into the middle of afternoon traffic. Smokey dropped the forty-seven stories without a peep, having fainted passing over the win-dowsill. He landed on the front pages, cementing Jarred's undis-puted ability to cause anyone encroaching on his territory trouble to the tenth degree.

The Bench, who'd become a wee bit antsy at Smokey's rapid rise in fortune, was delighted at the outcome. It was an outcome Jarred continued to use, he thought, as the supercilious back of Don Dorney swam into his consciousness. He took a sip of wine, watch-ing Dorney not know he was being watched.

Dorney's attention was fixed unwaveringly on a woman frozen in the act of reaching up the side of a magazine rack, wriggling the corner of a tabloid, trying to shake it loose from its companions on the rack.

Jarred followed his gaze. The sight transfixed him.

The women was about five-foot eight, with light brown hair cut straight across her shoulders, hanging lower on her back than would be ordinary if her head hadn't been tilted back in an effort to free the magazine. Jarred's gaze dropped with her hair to her back, a perfect triangle, flat and compact, tapering into an impossibly thin waist from which blossomed the most perfectly proportioned pair of buttocks Jarred ever recalled seeing.

What took Jarred's breath away, however, wasn't her but-tocks, it was how they perched on two beautifully tapered legs en-cased in powdered, form fitting blue jeans that blended into her body, the material disappearing between her buttocks, leaving an opening between her legs. The site was so inviting, Jarred's tongue slipped involuntarily through his lips and darted toward the end of his nose.

With his mind suspended on the possibilities existing in that deli-ciously formed tunnel, the women succeeded in extricating the tab-loid, and, lifting it out of the rack, turned, revealing generous breasts pressing against a blue satin, armless blouse.

Jarred caught a glimpse of part of a breast attempting to escape the restraints on one side of her blouse as she turned fully, pre-senting a frontal view. Over her perfect legs, glorious hips, flat stomach and full beasts reined a face full of sparkle and brightness. Her radiating sunniness didn't warm the cold feeling clutching Jarred as he saw her walk over to Dorney and give him the maga-zine. He was outraged at Dorney for bringing someone with him, and a girl to boot.

The guy was insufferable.

Jarred remembered the man who'd been put in charge of devel-oping the gaming operations across state lines. At five foot five, the man weighed a good three hundred pounds. He'd have been con-sidered as wide as he was tall if the fat hadn't ruined the effect by actually pouring over his belt, flowing to the floor, tugged inexora-bly by gravity.

Butz Muencher came up with the idea for out-of-state gambling. With the widespread use of the automobile, Butz felt he could per-suade gamblers to motor south if there was a sufficiently glitzy casino to do the attracting. He persuaded a wide variety of hard-eyed investors to put up money, and then overran the construction costs by installing mistresses in construction trailers throughout the site. The girls didn't cost the money, his frequent absences leaving construction crews in disarray, fending for themselves, did.

When The Dream Palace was finally finished, there was little possibility out-of-state automobile traffic would make the promised fifty-percent annual return. Butz was in much the same situation Smokey'd found himself in, though Smokey could've solved the problem by forking over more profit. Butz'd already screwed his profit and had nothing left to turn over.

He called on Jarred for help.

"Listen, you jerk, I need you to put this thing in order for me," he said.

It wasn't, Jarred thought, a very good way to begin a relation-ship. But Jarred was an up-and-coming entrepreneur, while Butz was established, having won his spurs when Jarred was still learning the delight of wielding a twisted hanger at The Bench's knee.

"What's you're problem?" Jarred asked.

"I got all these investors expecting a good return on their money, and the house cut ain't going to make it," Butz replied.

"Have you considered selling it?"

"Are you kidding? This is my baby. I built it from the first shovel of dirt. This is Butz Muencher's place, and it's going to stay Butz Muencher's place."

"But if Butz Muencher is no longer alive because he's been made a part of the foundation of the Butz Muencher memorial wing, it being Butz Muencher's place isn't going to do Butz Muencher any good, is it?" Jarred asked.

"Nobody's is going to mess with Butz Muencher. Go kid some-body else, you jerk. Now how're you going to set things right."

The implication Jarred was somehow responsible for setting things right, with the accompanying accusation he'd somehow made them wrong in the first place, increased Jarred's rancor. Survey-ing the growing arcs of sweat on each side of Butz's shirt, the wet collar, the flab hanging out his wet collar, the buttons holding bursting material at every point down his ascending front, the ver-tical stripes selected for their thinning effect, the sagging cheeks and drooping eyelids, Jarred felt the urge to take a knife and slowly carve away the flesh to see the reaction, or, more appropriately, hang him on a meat hook and let him drip to death in a tallow pan, anything to relieve himself of the revulsion he felt in having to help him.

"What you need are more customers," Jarred said, smiling.

"I know that, you dink," Butz answered churlishly.

"Not just more customers, more customers with more cash."

"That's what ain't easy," Butz said.

"Well, let me give it some thought," Jarred replied.

"Well, think fast, because I have obligations."

Jarred retired to his Long Island retreat, a bunker-like beach house he used to perfect The Bench's method of making beautiful girls loyal, to think about how he could increase the flow of funds into Butz's out-of-state casino, not because it'd benefit Butz, a feather in his cap, but because he enjoyed doing it. He enjoyed the reaction from one of his more recalcitrant acolytes as he crushed her nipple between the tightly twisted apex of a hanger. The sound of her screams coming with each twist was physical evidence the nipple was attached to the girl, the girl existed in reality, and he existed in physical reality, knowing the screams didn't exist until he moved in reality.

Where were the screams before he created them? They were a reality entirely of his making. They wouldn't exist but for him. He was their creator. He knew when he turned her out, she'd kill to get money for him, to get him to do exactly what she was screaming about now. Why couldn't he train gamblers the same way? If he could get a gambler to appreciate the pain, he could get them to come back time and again, putting them into a position where they'd be willing to rob and murder to pay what they owed.

What, he wondered, shifting his attention to her other nipple as her screams began to subside with the deadening brought on by fa-miliarity and, pausing to take pleasure in the refreshed agony the change created, what exactly is the impulse to gamble? When peo-ple invested in a numbers slip, they invested in a dream for a day, the fantasy they would be able to buy desired things with the win-nings. As long as the number was certain, the hope would drive their mind, and with it, the pleasure their mind gave their body.

It felt good to think pleasant thoughts.

But, when the number came up and they came up a looser, their stomach wrenched, the disappointment physical, the future bleak, drab and grey.

It felt bad to have to face the failure to win in reality.

The internal world was so much more pleasant than the external world. For an instant, the reality of the girl's nipple swam into his view, smallish, slightly lopsided, the nipple discolored, off center, with small warts dotting its edges at irregular intervals, burst blood vessels discoloring the blotchy flesh, trickles of blood and sweat clinging here and there. The wave of revulsion pouring over him at the sight caused his mind to clamp down on the torrent of reality and its effect on his body until he could regain the image of what he was working on, the perfectly shaped nipple atop the full breast with vibrating nerves running through the crystal clear flesh sending impulses of pleasure into his hands as he worked on it with his hanger.

The gambling loser, facing drab reality, would rush out and buy another ticket so external reality would recede in the face of the magical colors of the dreams of a future with the means of funding all desires. During the period between the time the lottery ticket was purchased and the time its number was determined, the person was in action, his internal world furnishing the images of the world to his brain. The external world was colored by the internal world being created, so the very streets took on a different hue, wet streets becoming shimmering streets, harsh street lamps diamonds in the night.

Being in action was addictive because it placed soft edges on the hard edges of reality, softening it so it fit into the mind's desires more easily. A person addicted to the action of a lottery could also be addicted to the action of a sporting event, the action giving the sporting event a meaning it otherwise wouldn't have. The drop of a coin in one of Butz's slots, or the roll of his dice, would also create a moment of being in action that would constantly have to be re-newed. Instead of the coloration being in action provided, it was being placed in action that provided the fix. The roll of the dice, the spin of the roulette wheel, the pull of the lever, the turn of the card, all jolted the body into a state of action that depended on a subsequent event to resolve. It was like a girl who wanted to be tied down. Tying her down didn't put her in action, but it was the action itself she needed, the pain to validate her existence to her-self, that made her real, taking her out of her depression.

It wouldn't matter to the gambler once his personality was al-tered, whether he was winning or losing, he was in action and he needed the constant hits facing the outcomes he created by rolling the dice, asking for another card, or watching the ball bounce to a halt on the wheel as it spun to a halt provided.

The hits reaffirmed the gambler's reality.

Why, he wondered, moving the coat hanger down between the girl's legs, wouldn't the same principles he'd found so effective in turning out girls work with gamblers? If pain could be used to bring out a hidden physical need, why not make the experience of gam-bling as painful as possible. He could create a whole new class of prostitutes.

He angled the hanger and applied an inordinate amount of pres-sure, watching the girls face twist in silent horror as she passed out. He tossed the hanger aside, feeling his manhood grow. He deftly unzipped his pants, let them fall to the floor, slipped his shorts down and stroked his shaft. When he'd brought it to maximum hard-ness, he climbed quickly onto the table, mounted the unconscious girl, and quickly brought himself to a climax, pulling himself out just before he ejaculated so he could manipulate himself to get maximum pleasure.

The twenty-four dollar question, he thought, as the last sensa-tion left the tip of his prick, was how to get the gamblers addicted to pain. How could he start them down the road to perpetual pain?

He pressed a buzzer at the side of the table and a stout, ma-tronly woman appeared immediately in the doorway.

"Clean her up for next time," he ordered.

The women nodded, going over to the sink and pouring water into a bowl, filling a sponge, fluffing out a towel. Jarred enjoyed watching her strong hands preparing for work. He preferred stout women in his operation. At first he'd tried to employ males, but soon found they didn't have the endurance for the work, exciting themselves as soon as they started with a girl, finding it impossible to keep themselves from sticking it in them before they even got down to serious business, and then losing interest once they shot their wad.

He observed until the matron began to bathe the girl, watching her stir into consciousness at the caress of the wet sponge. Satis-fied all was in order, he went to his quarters. He prepared a drink and went to the bathroom to wash the day's work off in a shower. As the water cascaded over his head, he rubbed between his legs, taking pride in his manhood. The image of a gambler impaled on the shaft of addiction brought the sound of the girl's screams to mind, causing him to enlarge. The thought of screams from nowhere, his own manhood filling space it hadn't filled before, the skewering of the gambler from below, all played around in his mind as the water cascaded over his body. The screams came from his thoughts be-cause he had to think what he'd do before he did it. His own tumes-cence came from his thoughts, the lingering imprint of the girl's contorted face causing his heart to pump blood down between his legs. The gambler's pain would come from being in action.

Where did being in action come from?

Not from thoughts, but from the disbalance in funds, from being at risk, from having funds at risk. It didn't matter whether they were winning or losing, it was having funds at risk that caused the addiction. So to cause the addiction, it was necessary to get the gambler to risk his funds, or . . . his thoughts?

How could his thoughts be funds?

By lending the gambler the money to gamble.

But people gambled on the cuff all the time, running up a house tab they converted to markers for later collection. No, only ad-dicted gamblers ran up tabs, and then only if they had credit.

He was thinking of something else.

He stroked himself, the motion of his soapy hand recalling the feeling of being inside the girl still imprinted on his mind. The men-tal imprint in turn sent messages requiring additional stroking.

Instead of giving credit to gamblers who were already at the ca-sino with depleted cash, why not run a credit operation altogether, removing cash from the equation. Why not add women, food, cama-raderie, sex, the image of a gambling vacation spurted into his mind just as it was itself drenched in the vibrations of pleasure his hand released at the thought of the agony streaking up the nerves of the girl's crystalline breast.

Jarred let the subsiding waves of pleasure erase the lingering imprint of the girl from his mind before stepping out of the shower and drying himself off. He took his drink into the sitting room, re-freshing it from the bar and, wrapped in the towel, contemplated the format a gambling vacation from reality could take through the magic of the mind-altering liquid.

How in the world was he going to sell credit gambling to people who'd dealt on a cash basis all of their lives?

The creation of something out of nothing kept crawling at the edges of his mind.

What was being created out of nothing?

What happened when a player at the tables ran out of money, but had sufficient access to funds to guarantee the house would get it back?

The player signaled a floor manager and asked for credit. The floor manager either approved it, or checked with his boss. In ei-ther case, if the credit was approved, the guy signed a marker and was issued chips. If he won, he cashed in his chips and left. If he lost, he lost the chips.

In the long run, he always lost.

And if one player didn't lose, a group of players, the type he en-visioned taking a gambling vacation, would lose as a whole.

So what occurred when the gambler signed the marker and re-ceived his chips?

The casino created money!

The gambler made a promise to pay dollars in exchange for some plastic tokens. He placed bets with the plastic tokens. When he lost, the casino ended up with the plastic tokens and the promise to pay the marker in dollars.

During the period the player was in action, he was in action with money created by the casino. It hadn't cost a single cent to allow the person to gamble on credit.

How could Butz's creditors object to funding an operation that wouldn't cost them anything and would leave Butz with a pile of markers?

Well, it would cost them something, the price of the bus, the bus driver, the girls, the food, but the costs would be negligible com-pared to the amount of money it would create.

Besides, with credit gambling, the person wouldn't go into the casino with a visible limit, the amount of dollars in his pocket. By careful research, Jarred could find out exactly how much could be squeezed out of the gambler well in advance of the vacation, and the gambler would be allowed to play to his heart's content with the plastic tokens until his limit was reached.

He could then be culled from the rest of the group, sobered up, shown his obligations, given the time frame in which they were due, told what the consequences of not complying were, and left to mortgage his house, steal from his boss, sell his wife, pilfer his parents social security, whatever it took to escape the conse-quences.

The misery the process would cause, the physical pain of fear, would be the torture driving the player back to the tables in order to produce the feeling of action that eliminated reality. The only way to relieve the misery was to place another bet. He'd do any-thing to get the money to get back into action.

"It's perfect," he concluded before a group convened by The Bench.

"I don't understand the part about it not costing us anything," one of the participants said. "The chips cost money."

"Not if the sucker doesn't end up with them," Butz commented, sold on the idea as his possible salvation.

"But what if he does?"

"You just work the house averages," Jarred said smoothly. "If the casino takes five cents for every dollar crossing the table, and a hundred players with a thousand dollars each turns it over ten times, the casino takes fifty thousand dollars, and the people walk home with fifty thousand dollars. Now take a hundred gamblers with an approved credit of a thousand dollars apiece. How much do you think they're going to take out of the casino?"

"They're going to gamble it until it's all gone," The Bench re-marked.

"Exactly," Jarred said. "So what does the casino end up with?"

"A hundred thousand dollars in markers," the man who said he didn't understand the part about it not costing them anything re-plied.

"Right. Now take out the amount for the bus, say a couple of hundred, and the girls, they'll get some chips which the casino will have to cash in, say a thousand or two, and the food, another couple of hundred, and you're talking five thousand dollars tops to get a hundred thousand dollars in markers."

"We don't have to get the credit checks. We know someone in the casino will pay back the money because he's known personally to the management," the skeptic replied.

"The credit systems evolved in the past ten years give us the information we need to make an informed decision for a standard fee," Jarred replied. "It's no big deal, but what's more important is the system of collection I propose."

"They don't pay, they don't walk," Butz blubbered.

"No. We're dealing with white-collar workers here, members of middle and upper management, people who hold positions in their community, people who are respected for what they do. We can't go around physically damaging them. For one thing, these people live on the cash flow from their jobs. We want to keep them on their jobs as long as possible, until the payments on their obligations to us consume their entire paycheck and they have to resort to steal-ing. These people have reached the upper levels of their profes-sions. They're very resourceful. They'll make resourceful crooks, reaching pots of money that'd otherwise be out of our reach."

"How do you propose to collect from them?" The Bench asked.

"I intend to apply the enterprise enforcement procedures to them," Jarred replied.

"How so?"

"We start out by signing them up. They put their X on a contract stating that, let's call it Freedom Excursions, Freedom Excursions will provide food, lodging, transportation and entertainment for the entire trip, and in addition, will grant Gold Casino Preferred Credit in an amount equal to half the credit we think the player can han-dle."

"Only half?" The Bench asked.

"Right. Let's say we think the guy can swing for ten grand, so we put down five. When the bus arrives and he checks in, he finds a young woman in his room. She prepares him a drink, fluffs his ego, and tells him she can probably pull some strings that'll get him a credit increase. Who's going to say no? He'll remember the ten grand even though he's signed for the five. In the process, the girl pops him, we get it on camera, and we have the beginning of our collection process. We obviously don't want to buy him off, this part of the process doesn't apply, and we don't want to kill him, because as long as he is gainfully employed, he's a cash cow. So, what's left but intimidation, and the pictures we get are just the first step."

"First tier stuff," Butz echoed.

Jarred winched, wishing Butz would keep his help to himself. "One of the tools to obtain one hundred percent on the dollar. Of course, we aren't going to turn the pictures over to his wife. We don't want a divorce to get between us and the sucker's cash flow. We just want to torment the guy with the possibility."

Jarred didn't want to go into the system's sophistication. The Bench, who, after all, was Jarred's instructor in the art of tying people down, pointed out it was only necessary to convince the in-vestors they were going to get a return on their investment, even if the investment was created out of thin air.

The gambler's reaction to finding himself in debt up to his credit limit would be one of extreme discomfort. He'd have an over-whelming urge to get back into action in order to create a fantasy world that'd drive away the mental pain of harsh reality, much as a person suffering from another in a long series of hangovers is forced back to the bottle to relieve his agony.

He could buy a lottery ticket, but after the excitement of the ta-bles, it wouldn't be sufficient to lift him into his dream world, to get him zoning, flying. He couldn't get back into the casino until he started making good on some of his obligations. Fortunately, using the casino's credit wasn't the same as using his own credit at a bank. The Casino's obligations would never be recorded in the data-banks of the national credit companies, and would thus not be a factor in obtaining and using future credit.

Jarred would have the first tier collector versed in the ways of credit extension and upon first contact, the same day reality set in, he'd instruct the debtor how to tap his credit. There might be a couple of thousand on a credit card, a personal line of credit at the bank, some untapped cash value in an insurance policy available for borrowing. Most of the players selected for the excursions would have sufficient untapped credit to pay off the obligations incurred during the first visit.

The process would then begin, the conversion of the suckers' assets into cash to satisfy the obligations created out of thin air in the process of servicing their growing addiction to being in action. Because the amount of untapped credit didn't appear on their credit rating, who knew how much cash a mother had socked away in her mattress, or how many indulgent aunts someone had, the process of conversion would be a steady one. Excursions to the casino to re-fresh the obligations would be punctuated by forced immersions into the cold reality of raising the cash to satisfy the refreshed obliga-tions.

The pain of reality increased the pleasure of being in action, the desire for the pain becoming almost as great as the need for the pleasure of immersion in the world of spun gold, and the conversion of credit to cash would become increasingly difficult as ready sources dried up and difficult sources became the only alternative. At this point, the film would be threaded into the projector and the sucker would appear on the monitor for what he was, a suckee.

This pain, added to the pain from being out of action would make the physical need to be in action stronger than the need for sex or food. The satisfaction of the desire to be in action would become a moral imperative, the only moral imperative. The desire for dignity would vanish and the player would become a machine calculating everything in terms of getting the cash needed to pay casino obli-gations to regain access to the excursion list, but eventually all sources would dry up.

"What happens after the first level, or whatever you call it?" the skeptic asked.

"When the sucker can no longer make good on his obligations, we discount it fifty percent to the next tier collector. He takes the video to his wife. When she starts crying divorce, he points out there was more than one way to break up a family, like a leg here and an arm there, with a rape thrown in for good measure. Before you know it, the wife's tapping all her credit sources to pay off the old man's debt, which, because he's now back on the excursions, is forever increasing and being discounted."

"Why don't we do the second level stuff ourselves?"

"We don't want to be responsible for any violence," The Bench replied. "Believe me, at this point, half a loaf is better than bad publicity, what with the fact some of the threats will periodically have to be carried out to keep the whole thing flowing smoothly. And you have to remember that half of loaf isn't costing us any-thing.

"It's important to note," Jarred added, "that when we turn out a girl, we get a pretty good percentage of success because we do the plucking. Here, even if we turn only 10% of the players into addicts, because it's so easy to become a player, the 10% will con-stantly be refreshed. There's an entire country out there to addict, and if we can get 10%, we'll be rolling in it."

"So, it looks good," The Bench said. "How are we going to slice it up?"

"What do you mean?" Butz barked, sweat suddenly appearing on his forehead, a rivulet running down his cheek merging with other drops appearing with amazing swiftness, his whole face in danger of becoming a cascade. He wiped himself roughly with a patterned handkerchief. "We're going to run them through the casino and let them come out according to investment."

"Freedom Excursions will be owned independently of the ca-sino," Jarred replied. "My job was to find a way to increase the casino's gross. It wasn't to increase the percentage it gets."

"You'll get 5% of the face value of the markers you collect from people on the excursions," The Bench added.

"But that only represents 5% of what they gamble," Butz whined, the moisture becoming more persistent at all of his flash points, on his back, under his arms, at his collar.

Jarred smiled as he watched the spreading blocks of sweat. This guy wouldn't even have to be hosed down to increase the effect of a cattle prod. He was a natural.

"What's gambled is the amount of the markers," Butz splut-tered. "A person doesn't lose in a straight line. He wins some, loses some. By the time he's lost it all, he may've made a hundred thou-sand in bets to lose five or ten. Why should the casino only get the 5%? I want 5% of the amount bet."

"Because that's the way I see it," Jarred replied.

"It's not fair," Butz insisted.

"Who's not fair?" The Bench asked sharply.

"I didn't say anyone wasn't fair," Butz stammered in response to The Bench's harshness. "I said it, it wasn't fair."

"That's wonderful," The Bench said sarcastically. "Here a guy goes out, borrows more money than he needs, builds a palace with it, comes asking for help when he can't pay it back, and criticizes the people who're trying to help him. I would call that a lack of gratitude."

"No, no." Butz cried. "I appreciate everything you're doing for me. I want just what's due me."

"You'll get it," The Bench said, dismissing him with a wave of his hand.

Jarred noticed with amusement Butz managed to looked dignified making his exit in spite of the massive amounts of flesh bobbing underneath his drenched clothes. He did shut the door with too much force, trying to catch it before it slammed, crushing his finger in the process. Just one of many to come, he thought, as he listened to The Bench divide up ownership in Freedom Excursions.

He was happy with his 5%. By the time he finished, the 5% would be more like 25%, but the other Freedom Excursion stakeholders were also the investors in the casino, so they'd be preserving their investment as well as making something on the side. They wouldn't be restive, as they were now. After they fin-ished dividing up the pie, they instructed Jarred to dispose of the Butz.

"Do you care how I do it?" Jarred asked.

"No. Just make him disappear. Better to remember him as he was, with a dream, than as he is, a greedy slab of meat."

Jarred had been wondering what his matrons might do to a man if they got their hands on one, so he had Butz kidnapped and hung up in a vacant warehouse, if not on a meat hook, in a manner that'd make him wish it had been. Jarred laughed at the hate pouring out the condemned man's beady little eyes. His laughter turned to awe as he watched what the matrons did to him.

And how long they were able to do it.

The memory put him in a jovial mood, erasing the black feelings he felt against Don for bringing along an unannounced companion. What the heck did he think he was engaged in, a social endeavor?

He stood up and, leaning over the planter, waved vigorously in Don's direction.

The girl saw him first and directed Don's attention to Jarred. Jarred held his anger when Don didn't respond immediately. He took his paper from the girl and, taking her by the elbow, leisurely walked over, scoping out how to get around the planter rather than reaching across it.

Jarred used the time to let the remaining traces of rage dis-solve. Business was business. Better to concentrate on the girl's beauty.

"Jeremy, this is Delusia Dorney, my bride," Don said pleas-antly.

Jarred's mind whirled. Bride? Incredible. He knew of no bride. Where'd he been? Had he blacked out?

"We were just married," Don added, sensing Jarred's surprise. "No big deal. Thought we could take advantage of a trip to the Ama-zon, sort of a honeymoon, mixing business with pleasure."

"Well, certainly," Jarred replied, reinforcing his smile while turning to Delusia. "Charmed, simply charmed." He turned back to Don. "She's absolutely breathtaking, lovely. How about a toast." He poured his remaining wine into two glasses. "To the future." he said, as they lifted their glasses and toasted.

"And now, we'd better get going. My Stratodart's gassed up and waiting." He concentrated on his hand as he took Delusia gently by the shoulder, turning her as he moved Don with his motion, getting the three of them in step, heading down the corridor to his private boarding area. He liked the feel of her touch but restrained himself from letting it linger too long.

"I hope you don't mind talking about business on the trip down," he said as they crossed the tarmac and mounted the steps of the Stratodart. "I'll give us more time to enjoy Jarrezonia."

"Yes," Don replied, "that's what I wanted to talk to you about. Every day I don't gain market penetration, I lose market penetra-tion, and penetration is the name of the game."

Jarred laughed. "That it is, or the lack thereof, at least. May I get you something to drink?" he asked Delusia directly.

"Scotch on the rocks for me, wine for Delusia," Don said.

"Wine okay?" he asked Delusia, as a gorgeous young woman in a red jumpsuit entered the cabin, waiting expectantly.

"Yes," Delusia replied in a clear melodic voice. Jarred nodded to the hostess and sat down in a lounge next to Don facing Delusia, who was also making herself comfortable.

"I don't know whether our conversation will bore you," Jarred said to her. "If you're tired from the wedding festivities, you could catch a nap in the back when you finish your wine."

"I'm more interested in how you consolidated the ostrich indus-try," Delusia replied.

"Oh?" Jarred didn't conceal his surprise.

"Sure, I came up with the feed process that made Don's breed-ers so productive."

Jarred contemplated the woman as the hostess brought the drinks. Dorney'd been a minor producer of slaughter meat, not even contributing 40% to the California market. He got his chicks from breeders just like any other operator bringing ostrich meet to mar-ket. If Jarred remembered correctly, he'd been predominantly in-volved with bringing the rednecks to maturity, slaughtering them just before they reached their full growth of approximately four hundred fifty pounds.

The rednecks, while not as tasty as the blues or blacks, were the primary vehicle to use in establishing marketing sectors be-cause they provided the most meat. However, once the market was defined and split up among its participants, the drive for market share took a backseat to market consolidation and diversification, the blacks and blues scaling down into the more upscale markets, and the methods of delivering the dressed bird parts tailored to de-mand.

Out of nowhere, however, the tastier blacks and blues had been coming to market to compete with the reds, and compete well, with a lower price than could be met by the reds. There was nothing wrong with this, because the normal evolution of market economies dictated incremental increases in the quality of the product at the same time efficiencies were dictating decreases in price.

However, the introduction of the new blacks and blues was oc-curring in such numbers, it was no longer a question of an incre-mental gain in the product, but rather market destruction. If the reduction in prices was the result of an increase in the source of supply rather than a more efficient method of marketing existing supply, the drop in price could lower the price below the level that'd be economic to raise ostrich, and ostrich would be driven from the market.

Jarred took his drink, sipped it as he felt the power of the Stratodart thrust him back into his cushion. He was well aware of the flooding occurring on the ostrich market, but he hadn't been able to determine what was going on. Then he'd discovered Don Dorney was responsible, and that the increase in slaughterable os-triches was for real, and also wasn't only a static condition, but would worsen.

He was primarily interested in preserving the market he'd cre-ated in ostrich meat. However, it was the control of the market that empowered him to put ostrich meat treated with Philbrook's gene in the school system filled from first grade to college with the millennial generation, the very generation that he intended to wipe out, and in turn, The Representative World Government. In the tur-moil following an entire generation of youth reverting to jungle mentality, he, Jeremy Jarred, would seize control of the unravel-ing strands of world power and knit them into a dictatorship, dis-pensing with voluntary acquiescence and lovingly tie the peoples of the world into a behavioral pattern that'd make them perpetually grateful to him.

The consolidation and control of the market provided him with the opportunity to take over the world, and the utilization of the market channels the control provided allowed him to inject into the minds of the millennial brain juice that, when stimulated by the electrical charges of his specially built generators, would turn them into raving, slobbering, growling beasts.

He looked at Delusia over the rim of his glass. The person re-sponsible for the potential glut wasn't Don, but his new wife Delu-sia? "It was the result of being in the right place at the right time," he said.

"In consolidating the market of ostrich meat?" Delusia asked.

"Yes," Jarred replied, smiling pleasantly.

Actually, it'd been a direct result of the Freedom Excursions. As the number and locales of casinos multiplied, the types of trans-portation and the affinities of the groups put together as targets, multiplied. In an effort to increase his percentage of the take, Jarred contracted to provide food during the travel portion. Con-stantly on the lookout for cheaper alternatives, chicken sandwiches gave way to pressed turkey meat made from the legs of the tur-keys left over as their breasts became a popular health food.

When ostrich meat first came on the market, only the choicest meat was allowed. Jarred wondered what was being done with all the scraps. Looking into the situation, he found nothing but disarray. An ostrich could be productive as a breeder for as long as forty years, but breeding ostriches and eating them were two different things.

The egg industry, which was a mainstay of the chicken business, with the worn out layers being ground up for soup, wasn't appro-priate to ostriches. You could jump up and down on an ostrich egg without cracking it, and the size alone went against the grain of increasing affluence reducing family size. No one could expect peo-ple to group themselves together for breakfast because of the mas-sive size of the eggs, not to mention the danger involved in collect-ing the eggs of birds that approached a quarter of a ton in weight and had two good strong legs that could be used to remove a human head from its body in the form of pulp.

So the eggs were fertilized, producing more ostriches that pro-duced more eggs. For every ostrich slaughtered, there was one less breeder, and no one wanted to chew on a forty-year old ostrich after it'd served its useful life as a breeder.

When Jarred looked into the process, with the first meat just coming to market, the price of a breeder was down to the point where it was equal to the value of its saleable parts. However, it was nip and tuck, with fluctuating prices for breeders actually de-termining how much of the meat got to market. The breeder farms, averaging about a hundred ostriches apiece, were sputtering mar-keters because they couldn't balance their need for additional breeders with the market's need for a stable supply.

Jarred realized the situation was similar to the one he'd faced in consolidating all the neighborhood numbers operations. Local op-erations eventually went broke because they combined the collec-tion function with the payout function. Jarred separated the collec-tion function, leaving it local, and operated the payout function on a citywide basis so no single payout broke the entire operation.

Why not separate the breeding operation from the slaughter op-eration, with the breeders earmarking a certain number of their produce to slaughter. A controlled stream of meat could enter the market, with efforts directed at increasing that stream rather than dividing efforts between improving breeding and the slaughter op-eration. With Freedom Excursions as an outlet, Jarred entered the market as the dominant purchaser of ostrich meat. However, he refused to purchase slaughterable ostriches directly from the breeders, instead setting up the first chick farm designed solely for the purpose of bringing ostriches up to slaughter them.

With his leverage as the major purchaser of ostrich, he took over the editorial policy of the trade association and had its journal publish articles warning against increasing the herds of breeders above ten because it would activate the ostrich's well-known sur-vival mechanism that allowed it to fake good heath no matter how sick it was. This survival technique, which prevented ostriches from laying eggs, was conclusively proven on a scientific basis ac-cording to the editorial positions of "Out of the Sand," disappearing when a herd exceeded ten breeders.

Although there was no evidence for this, and the assertion was totally specious, its repetition month after month in the only jour-nal dealing with ostrich farming eventually turned it into a reality, and the effect, desired by Jarred, was to fragment breeder opera-tions, turning it into a small cottage industry.

Before long, every one and their sister had an ostrich operation in their back yard, with chicks either going to new breeders enter-ing the ostrich place, or to Jarred, and the one or two, and then three or four and more slaughter houses growing up to service the now rapidly expanding supply of chicks available for slaughter. Jarred's restructuring allowed free market forces to take over, resulting in the rapid increase in market share. If chicks for breed-ing got scarce, the stream of chicks went directly into breeding, creating an oversupply. The oversupply would drop the price for breeders, but because of the diversion, the prices in the market rose, allowing the breeding chicks to be slaughtered.

Like any market allowed to operate freely, the swings in favor of the breeders always resulted in an increased number of breeders that in turn accelerated the number of chicks available for slaugh-ter. Before long, ostrich meat was flowing into the slaughterhouses at such a rate, Jarred was concerned the price of the meat would fall below the cost of feeding it.

"You're familiar with the forces in operation prior to the con-solidation, are you?" he asked Delusia.

"Sure we are," Don answered, "Let's get on with the meeting."

Jarred didn't divert his eyes from Delusia's level gaze.

"We had a bunch of independent producers," Delusia answered, "with a loose grouping of slaughter houses surviving on the basis of their relative efficiencies, and their proximity to markets. The flow of chicks caused slaughterhouses to spring up indiscriminately. It cost next to nothing to bring the chicks to the slaughterhouse, but fluctuations in price sent the slaughterhouses into bankruptcy on a helter skelter basis. The end result, as I remember it, was the price of ostrich was either too high for the market to bear, or too low to provide a profit."

"It was chaos, pure and simple," Jarred said, nodding his head, remembering the situation. "Fortunately, scientists discovered that if ostriches were raised in blue light, they abandoned their health feigning of ten or more and thus produced eggs. The blue light made them act healthy, and of course, the sure sign of a healthy ostrich is one that lays eggs on a regular basis."

What really happened was, after a nightlong bull session, all agreed something had to be done to drive the independent producers out of business. At the same time, they would consolidate the slaughter part of the industry. That led to the promulgation of the blue light fiction in the pages of the various journals interested in ostrich farming that appeared as its financial influence increased.

The result was predictable. The larger slaughterhouses set up subsidiaries to purchase the breeders of the independents. Jarred sat back and watched the process. The temporary consolidation drove the price of the breeders down, diverting a huge flow of chicks into the slaughterhouses, dropping the price of the marketed meat through the floor. As the slaughter houses began to go bank-rupt, Jarred bought them up, at the same time getting a ruling from the attorney general that owning a breeding operation and a slaughter operation was a vertical monopoly and a violation of the antitrust laws.

"When the smoke settled from the blue light discovery," Jarred continued, still looking levelly at Delusia. "I was able to use my leverage to buy out the slaughterhouses that were going bankrupt right and left as a result of the consolidation of the breeder opera-tions."

During the middle of the battle for the dwindling number of slaughterhouse operations, three titans emerged, two corporate operations dealing with the supermarkets, and Jarred's operation, an institutional operation, wholesaling meat to restaurants and pub-lic carriers. Jarred called the heads of the corporate operations to a meeting and discussed his desire to enter the business of market-ing meat to supermarkets. Both dared him to go ahead, they would get together and lower the price to the point he'd lose money on every pound of meat he moved.

Jarred pointed out if they didn't have some sort of agreement on market share, it was going to happen to them all. There was no rea-son they couldn't exist in the marketplace together, and even wel-come newcomers. After all, more players would increase innova-tion in moving the birds from egg to table, and innovation was the only thing that would keep chickens and turkeys from regaining their former dominance.

He pointed out his goal wasn't to fight, it was to get along and agree on market share on the basis of some sort of equitable for-mula. If someone brought innovations into the business, market share could be adjusted on a fair basis to reward those innovations while at the same time keeping the business profitable for every-one.

His conferrers wanted to know how it could be accomplished.

"My point, Delusia," Jarred continued, "is by agreeing on mar-ket share, we can control the price of the product delivered to us."

"I guess that's what I don't understand," Delusia said.

"What's to understand?" Don interrupted. "You bring a cheap bird to market, you take over the market."

Jarred turned to Don. "It's not quite that simple, Don," he said evenly. "I'm sure whatever innovation is allowing you to overpro-duce birds will soon become known to other producers, and we'll be up to our butts in ostriches."

"Ha!" Don exclaimed. "Not while my wife controls the formula."

"What formula?" Jarred asked. "Nothing's been patented deal-ing ostrich production."

"I didn't want to patent it," Delusia said. "The very act of making a patent application would divulge the formula."

"But you're protected as soon as you file the patent," Jarred argued.

"By the time Courts protected my rights, there wouldn't be enough money in the ostrich industry to hire a lawyer who works on traffic cases, let alone inventions."

Jarred looked at Delusia appreciatively. Clearly a woman who knew what she was dealing with. Sorry he couldn't say the same for her husband.

"What's to keep it from being stolen? Chemical analysis is a highly developed science. If the formula Don is talking about deals with a chemical substance, it can be analyzed even in the ostrich's system, and if it can be analyzed, it can be duplicated. Same re-sult."

"It's like researching viruses," Delusia replied, "the suckers are so small an optical microscope can't see them. That leaves the electron microscope. Unfortunately for us, fortunately for the vi-ruses, the electron microscope kills them. We never see a live vi-rus, so we never see what we're dealing with. It's like my per-fume. Analysis breaks down the components into constituent parts. There's a billion ways to put these constituent parts back together, so analysis won't help anybody in duplicating the formula."

"Just what does this formula do," Jarred asked casually, "be-sides overproduce ostriches, that is?"

"You don't know?" The tinkle of Delusia's laugh complimented the radiance of her face at the discovery she had more than the formula as a secret. She turned to Don. "I've been a success if I've been able to keep even the workings from Jeremy Jarred." She turned back to Jarred. "Not that I intended to."

Jarred smiled, sipping his drink, waiting for Delusia to fill the silence.

"Actually, it's not a perfume, at least not directly. We call it a perfume so potential industrial spies will be looking for something that doesn't exist. It's a food additive."

"And what does this food additive do?" Jarred asked patiently.

"It causes the ostrich to emit an odor similar to the odor of a dying ostrich."

Jarred continued to quietly look at her.

"You mentioned that the use of blue light restored the ostrich's innate behavioral trait to feign health even if it was raised in vast herds housed in pen houses," Delusia continued. "I researched that claim in college and couldn't find a scientific basis herding ostriches without the blue light would cause them to lose this trait."

"Did you conduct a scientific experiment?" Jarred asked.

"No one would underwrite the cost the fifty or so breeders to make the test. But that's not the point. Feigning health begged the question the ostrich might really be sick, and sick ostriches can't lay eggs. The trick was to make a healthy ostrich think she was sick."

Jarred didn't know whether to be amused or angry. Since he didn't feel angry, he figured he must be amused. "You can't test the proposition blue light prevents ostriches from showing their sick-nesses, so you look into something that'll make healthy ostriches think they're sick? I don't think I see the connection," he said.

"What's the first thing a sick ostrich is going to want to do if she realizes she's dying?"

"I really couldn't say," Jarred replied.

"What every living thing wants to do, ensure the survival of the species. The replication of genetic material, and its preservation, is the basic purpose of animals. The ostrich wants to ensure the survival of ostriches. It's a basic urge."

"So it lays an egg," Jarred said, getting her point.

"It can only lay an egg if it's a healthy ostrich. So the trick is to make healthy ostriches think they're going to die."

"Why didn't you just throw a dead ostrich into the pen house?"

"The ostrich has to think she's dying, not some other ostrich. The smell has to come from her," Delusia replied.

"So you mix this stuff into the food you feed the ostrich, the ostrich begins to smell like it's dying, and it becomes an egg laying machine."

"That's it," Delusia said, sipping her wine.

"And you're the only one who knows what goes into the feed. You mix it yourself?"

"Every batch," she said.

"So if you go, the formula goes," Jarred mused, sitting back and sipping his drink.

Delusia hesitated for a second, her sunniness becoming a bright beam of light.

"Nope," she answered brightly, "If I go, the formula goes up on every ostrich related Internet site in the world."

Jarred smiled. He was beginning to like this woman. She clearly had the ability to flood the market with ostrich meat. The flood would be sufficient to carry away all the breeders, and all the slaughterhouses in a single maelstrom.

Jarred sighed. It was extremely hard for people to realize that while competition was useful in keeping prices down, if there was an unlimited source of supply, the laws of supply and demand were suspended. Without the laws of supply and demand, there was no incentive to move goods to market. The preparation of the goods and their movement to market took facilities and incurred costs that had to be paid for by the consumer of the product. If there was no profit to be made on the actual goods because it was as plentiful as water, then without some sort of monopoly protection, no one would invest in the facilities necessary to prepare and transport the product to market.

This principle was clear when it came to such things as water, or other utilities necessary to civilization. It wasn't so clear with products that accomplished the same purpose as other products. If it became uneconomic to market ostrich simply because it was so plentiful a meaningful price couldn't support the facilities to market it, chicken and turkey would reach in and fill the gap.

It was incumbent on all of the enterprise interests around os-trich, the breeders and slaughters, the grain providers and car-ters, to ensure an orderly market for the meat. Dorney stumbled on a way to double, perhaps even triple, the amount of chicks he could produce with a given number of breeders. Jarred split the industry into breeders and market players, the firms raising and slaughter-ing the birds. Dorney used his allocation as a market player, com-bined with his ability to produce two to three times the number of birds as other market players, to increase his market share. The market had to be allocated among the market players by agreement, not by the price of the product.

"So you intend to flood the market with your birds, drive eve-ryone out of business, and monopolize it for yourself," Jarred said to Don.

"Your darn tootin'," Don said. "That's the way you play the game."

"No," Jarred replied coldly, "that's not the way you play the game. The way you play the game is to come to an agreement what the increase in your market share should be as a result of the inno-vation, then agree to hold production to that limit."

"You're saying just because I've found a better, a cheaper way to get a bird to market, I should be penalized," Don said scornfully. "The code of the Wild West says I get the market share from the competitors I can bring down. I'm shooting with cheap prices, so I get the market share of everyone I hit."

"I'm not so sure that's the way to do it Don," Delusia said soothingly. " Why don't we . . ."

"What do you mean 'I'm not so sure that's the way to do it Don,'" Don replied, raising his voice to mimic Delusia's tone, mov-ing his shoulders and fluttering his fingers as he did so. "This is business we're talking here, not mixing up some chemicals in the bowels of a dank laboratory."

"But, I think Jarred's trying to make a point about . . ."

"Bull," Don shouted. "Market share goes to the player who can deliver the most at the cheapest."

Jarred was getting sick of the guy's arrogance. He couldn't imagine someone so trying still alive. However, as the market controller for ostrich, he had an obligation to deal with all market players on a fair basis. If word got out he didn't try his hardest to integrate new technologies into the enterprise, allocating market share on an equitable basis, his actions would cause market turmoil.

Of course, if a market player proved to be intractable, there was little other market players wouldn't approve in the form of retaliation, but the situation hadn't reached that point yet. Jarred's ability to mete out appropriate punishments was a principle reason he continued to hold his post in the enterprise.

"Don, I think it's important we understand each other. Your in-novation, or," he looked at Delusia, "perhaps I should say Delusia's innovation, has the potential for creating enough bird meat to overwhelm the entire market."

Don beamed. "I'm glad you realize it."

"I do, I do. However, I don't think you understand just what the potential for too much meat has for the market itself."

"It'll do as all markets do, adjust to the new market condi-tions," Don replied like a bulldog.

"But the new market conditions might very well be a market without ostrich," Jarred said reasonably.

"Without anything but Dorney's black and blue's, you mean," Don snorted.

"No, I mean without anybody's black and blue's, or reds for that matter. We know you've produced an innovation that'll allow cheaper birds. We can concentrate on marketing younger meat, making excellent inroads on chicken and turkey and even fish."

"Who's we?" Don asked.

"I think any alteration of the existing market structure would contemplate the licensing of the formula on a reasonable basis to all breeders," Jarred replied.

"But I'd lose my advantage in the marketplace," Don said dis-missively.

"You can't lose an advantage in a marketplace that no longer exists," Jarred insisted patiently.

"Don, listen," Delusia broke in, "I think what Jarred is saying is we'll get a bigger market share as well as royalties on the for-mula."

"Would you let me do the talking?" Don yelled, still looking at Jarred. "What you're trying to do is buy me off with a pittance. Why should I take just a little when I can have it all?"

"What do you have in mind?" Delusia, ignoring Don, asked Jarred. Jarred handed her a contract. She settled back in her chair with the agreement balanced on her knee and began to read.

Jarred signaled for the hostess and ordered another round of drinks, sinking into silence. "So how are things in sunny Califor-nia?" he finally asked Don, breaking his own silence.

"Sunny," he replied curtly.

"Like your wife. How did you meet her?"

"She put an ad in Out of the Sand saying she wanted a situation where she could test maximizing egg production. Being a small player, I'm always interested in increasing my market share."

"Perhaps a little overly interested."

Jarred lapsed into silence once again. The long hours in Strato status, first to Mahmudabad, then to Tirgo Ocna, then to New York, and now to Jarrezonia, were taking their toll. He shut his eyes and went over the agreement Delusia held in her hands as if he were Delusia, reading it for the first time.

There were seven major market players in the world and these market players were in the process of slowly absorbing the minor players. Dorney was a minor player and would probably have been absorbed by one of the major players without the innovation, an innovation that would benefit the industry as a whole.

Rather than face the destruction of the market place, and thus the market player's enterprises, the seven major players were willing to give up significant market share to Dorney in return for a reasonable licensing agreement with whatever innovation he'd come up with. Efficiencies and additional penetration into the broader market place, converting chicken and turkey consumption into os-trich consumption, would gain what each of the enterprises would lose in market share.

On the other hand, Jarred could take Dorney and turn him over to his matrons for a not-so-gentle dispatch.

But he was dealing with a legal enterprise, and legal enterprises required contributions be recognized and rewarded, in this case with an appropriate increase in market share. Dorney could guar-antee his survival by making the agreement. By shrinking the major players while enhancing his stature, there'd be eight major players rather than seven.

However, Jarred was beginning the think Dorney wasn't the player here, or at least didn't have the timber to become a major market player. Jarred was beginning the think Delusia was the per-son with major player potential. Their marriage would resolve transfer of ownership problems raised by his untimely demise. He doubted his assets warranted a prenup and if they did, his lawyers would take care of it.

The thought of an orderly market, with the slides from produc-tion to consumption glowing like crystalline threads in a chaotic economy, allowed him to drift off into a light sleep, letting his ac-tive mind to regain its equilibrium.

He visualized reality, himself the master of the crystalline system, dropping flecks of silver, invisible, but deadly, targeting destinations populated by Millennial dots of gold, corrupting them, debasing them, turning them into spots of fiery turmoil where co-operation should reign, destroying the hope for a Representative World Government in favor of the order that'd prevail from nation-alistic competition as directed by his omnipotent intelligence.

The picture of the silver flecks streaming down the crystalline paths flashed over and over in his mind, with the tiny, explosive dots of gold punctuating the system, lighting up the darkness behind his eyelids, stuck in replay like a screen with defective electronics. He drifted, his thoughts moving with the thin whine of the Strato-dart's turbines, stopping, his alertness focusing, coming awake, his mind attempting to compare what was different, sorting out the receding darkness with the lightness of reality.

The pilot had throttled back, the sudden silence intruding on his dream. Don Dorney was asleep beside him, Delusia, her mind still buried in the papers he'd given her to review. He got up noiselessly and moved to the gallery to refresh his drink. The hostess, who'd been sleeping on her feet, sensed his presence before he was there and had a smile on her face, her eyes alert.

She took his glass, refilled it, and handed it back, her body stiff with expectation. Jarred took the glass and sipped the wine, en-joying her tenseness and the discomfort he knew he was causing, reveling in his ability to induce such intense pleasure by such a simple gesture.

He let his eyes fall to her breasts, increasing the girl's self-consciousness. Knowing women considered their breasts a powerful symbol of their sexual self-worth, he snorted, abruptly turning, enjoying the despair and embarrassment the girl must feel. The ex-perience would hurl her into a world of self-pity and keep her mind occupied for days, weeks, perhaps even years, drowning her body in the sensations she'd interpret as pleasure as she tortured her-self with self-doubts.

He didn't make the rules, he thought, just exploited them.

He stuck his head in the cabin, confirmed the time of arrival with the pilot, and walked back to the lounge, being careful not to disturb Don.

"Well?" he asked, as Delusia turned the last page over and set-tled back, the package balanced deliciously on her powder blue knee. "What do you think?"

"I think this is incredible," she replied excitedly.

"In what way?" Jarred asked quietly, looking at Don and signal-ing a low tone.

"How in the world can you get the major producers to give up so much market share? They must've fought each other for years to get what they have, and then for them to just turn it over, well, it doesn't seem to agree with everything I've been brought up to be-lieve about cutthroat capitalism."

"They give up part of their market share in the face of the very real threat you provide in order to retain and be able to exploit the rest. And, of course, just because they give up market share to you doesn't mean they won't be back trying to chip away at it in the normal course of business."

"Do we really have that much power?" she asked.

"You're power is the technology, the resources you bring to the market place."

"But I would think the major producers would do every thing they could to take that technology, those resources, away from us."

"I'm sure they would," Jarred replied "or would if they had an inkling it was on the horizon. It's like the scrambling that goes on among the oil companies when new reserves are found. They kill for the right to develop those reserves. But once ownership is estab-lished, they adjust themselves to the new reality in order to pre-serve an orderly market."

"It's the need for the orderly market that engenders civilized behavior, then," Delusia commented.

"I can't see anything else doing it. Is civilized behavior a genetic trait? I don't think so. People have to be coerced into it. The need for orderly markets is one of the most potent coercers in nature."

"So you agree," Delusia said, "spontaneous, self-organizing be-havior can provide a basis for orderly commerce."

"I think that sounds good, but I think it leaves too much to chance. Markets require rule makers to generate success."

"And yet you're offering Don and me a deal that'll make us wealthy beyond our wildest imagination. If you believed in rule making, in having the upper hand, you'd have opened with an offer that allowed you some room for give. I don't see how we could ask for more."

"The way the game is played today," Jarred replied, "the play-ers realize the stakes and welcome innovation. With innovation comes new players. I want to see stable markets just like everyone else, so you, the innovator, benefit from everybody's desires. It's quite simple, really."

"What's quite simple?" Don, yawning and stretching, hitting his glass on the window to attract the hostess' attention.

Delusia tapped the contract resting on her knee. "Mr. Jarred is offering to make us a major player in the market in return for what appears to be a more than reasonable royalty for the nondiscrimi-natory licensing of the formula."

"What nondiscriminatory licensing of the formulae," he grunted, taking the drink from the hostess. "There isn't going to be any non-discriminatory licensing of the formulae for a royalty, reasonable or otherwise. It's my, our formula, and we're going to keep it."

He turned to Jarred.

"I'll tell you what," he said, pointing with his half full glass, mi-nor waves of the liquid breaking his lips and splashing onto the lounge rests between him and Jarred. "We'll buy the facilities of the majors at a penny on the dollar as they go bankrupt. That's a reasonable offer, and one that I won't make again."

"But, Don," Delusia said, "I think we should consider this. It's the chance of . . ."

"At least, nothing," he said to Jarred, ignoring Delusia, "at most, a penny on the dollar. My final offer."

"We shouldn't . . ." Delusia tried to object.

Jarred reached over and took the contract from Delusia's knees, at the same time putting a finger to his lips, then pointing it out the window. "We can talk about this later. Right now, we're coming into Jarrezonia, and the hospitality of Jarrezonia won't allow for busi-ness disagreements. You both deserve to experience the delights of my little kingdom."

"Delights?" Don repeated. "What delights? I like delights."

"I like to live, shall we say, a sensuous life. I'm sure you've heard of my R girls."

"R girls?" Don signaled the hostess for another refill. Jarred signaled her to make it universal. "What are R girls?"

"I can't help myself, but I do idealize the feminine form. None of us can say what art is, but we know that it's a combination of space, form and color, a physical representation that somehow conveys meaning to the mind, a meaning providing a physical pleas-ure coupled with intellectual understanding. I've tried to embody the essence of these eternal truths in my everyday life. I've sculpted Jarrezonia on the banks of the mighty Amazon, the majes-tically flowing river that to this day holds the key to life, with its massive rain forests, its accelerated ecosystem that allow the de-tailed study of broad sweeps of evolution.

"Jarrezonia adorns the mists of the rain forest banks with my personality just as the R girls adorn Jarrezonia with my vicarious personality. To visit Jarrezonia is to visit me, and a visit to me must be singular."

"These R girls are some chicks, eh?" Don asked.

"They serve to please, quivering with the expectation of cater-ing to your every wish," he said, winking at Delusia, "within rea-son, of course, but I'm sure we're all reasonable adults here. But not to worry. We're here, and we'll take it as we find it."

The Stratodart settled in, landing on the broad lawn in front of the pillars of Jarrezonia. Jarred escorted Don and Delusia down the steps onto the lawn. They stood for a moment, looking around at the vast portico of the building, wings extending from either side of the front, which curved out in opposition to the large half-circular driveway framing the Stratodart's landing area.

"Some digs," Don commented. "I'll have to get myself something similar, maybe even this."

"Yes," Jarred said, ignoring the unintended insult. "Come." He touched Delusia on the shoulder, leading her toward the massive entrance doors fronting the portico. Renell and Ronay were theatri-cally opening them, framing Ralisse, who waited to welcome them in the center of the entrance hall, Reline and Reanne, on either side, slightly behind her.

"Welcome," they said in unison.

"We thank you," Jarred replied. "See?" he said, turning to Don who'd fallen a step behind Jarred and Delusia, "aren't they gor-geous."

"But will their beauty do me any good?" Don asked, whispering to Jarred.

"If you wish, but beauty is available anywhere, wherever your wife stands, and the Amazon holds delights nonparallel anywhere else in the world. Better you save your stamina for what's exotic about the locale rather than what's merely a duplicate of the uni-versal. Come."

Ralisse stepped back as they entered, with Reline and Reanne also stepping back so each was standing on either side of the door leading into the Great Hall overlooking the Amazon. As Don and De-lusia walked into the Great Hall, Jarred hung back, conferring with Ralisse. Giving her instructions, he moved in behind the two, shut-ting the door and, taking Delusia by the arm, allowed Don to trail behind, steered them over to the giant bar to the right of the pic-ture window.

"You can fix yourselves some drinks and enjoy the view while I take care of a little business. That's Jaracuzi out on the river. We'll go over there later for dinner."

Ralisse had pulled him aside before he entered the Great Hall to tell him about Risa. He wasn't expecting a new recruit, but he'd been busy with his work organizing the coming coup. His scouts were out at all times combing the world for suitable girls to qualify for residency at Jarrezonia. Very few lived up to his specifica-tions, of course, and even those who were able to enjoy the special training wouldn't necessarily replace one of his established "R" girls. His excess of passion required replacements periodically, especially, as apparently now, when his scouts discovered someone who was an exceptional physical specimen, an evolutionary product designed specifically for his senses to feast upon.

The news such a specimen was inside his study excited him, made his pulse beat as it had beat when he'd seen his first girl un-clothed, available for his exploration, so many years before.

He could never deny that rush.

When he entered the study and saw her in the harsh light of the computer screen, still beautiful under the light's merciless scru-tiny, he was grateful for the double rush it gave him, the original burst of pleasure, with the after-burst emerging as the first burst subsided.

She was truly porcelain, something to savior robustly. Her at-tention to the computer showed she had a mind. The impulse to start working on it, cracking it, shattering it into a billion little pieces so he could pick up the pieces and reconstruct them to suit his desires, was overwhelming, temporarily blotting out the images of Delusia sipping her drink. The edges of her red dress hugging her curves inched slowly toward each other produced in his mind a picture of her perfect thighs, breasts, stomach, buttocks melding into her tiny midriff.

Delusia could wait. Don could wait. The ostrich business could wait.

He couldn't wait.

He had to get his hands on her.

Now.

He felt the dampness form between his legs as his pants tight-ened in response to his thoughts. He started to move toward her, the very movement causing him to hesitate. He remembered saying something trite as the door at the far end of the room, leading to his little chamber of pleasure opened, and two of his matrons, smartly dressed in kaki fatigues, entered.

The hesitation, the cessation of time suspended, made him real-ize the beauty he perceived would take time, lots of time, leisurely acts caringly applied, with an uncluttered mind, time he wouldn't have until he resolved his business with the Dorney's.

He sighed. Duty calls.

He delivered Risa into the loving hands of his matrons and watched as they tenderly walked her out of the room into the promise of his fantasies.

He settled down, his breath returning to normal, his tumescence subsiding, but he'd allowed his thoughts to trigger his desires and, once triggered, his desires had to be satisfied.

When he reentered the Great Hall, Don and Delusia were looking through the growing mists beginning to hug the river beneath Jaracuzi, hanging motionless, like some gigantic space ship from another planet, in the center of the large window.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" he remarked, going to the bar and mixing himself a scotch and soda.

"It sure is. What do you do out there?" Don asked.

"Oh, have romantic interludes, intimate dinners, intellectual trysts. When the sun sets, it's beautiful, the flecks of fiery light splintering through its dome."

Jarred held his glass high in a toast and drank it down, quickly remixing a second and taking a sip. "It's a sight to see," he said.

"Perhaps we can get to that when we finish up whatever busi-ness you called me down here to discuss," Don said, moving away from Delusia towards the bar.

"Have you had a chance to talk it over with your wife?" Jarred asked.

"What?" Don snorted, "the agreement for the majors to turn over a small slice of their market share to me? That's a mistake on their part. Never show weakness. It's like cutting a finger in a shark pool. I'm going to take their arms and legs, and the rest to, and I'll spit out what I don't want. Me take a slice when I can have the whole pie. Bull."

Delusia turned to Jarred. "I didn't get a chance to discuss it fully with him." She turned back to Don. "Don . . ."

"We discussed it fully," Don cut her off, "and I've fully given my answer. I've given my answer."

"Then what's to discuss?" Jarred said wryly. "You've decided to continue to use your price advantage to wrest market share from the majors."

"Our business is concluded," Don said, "it's time for . . ."

"I still think," Delusia interrupted him, "we should . . ."

Don wheeled on her, his lip curled back from his upper teeth. "I've given my decision, bitch, and it's final," he spat.

"Then," Jarred continued where he was before Delusia's inter-ruption, "there's nothing to do but pursue pleasure."

"Yes. Bring on the girls," Don agreed. "I especially liked the one in the entrance, you know, the one who greeted us when we came in."

"Ah. By making a selection, you've made an agreement for your wife's favors."

"He can't . . ." Delusia broke in.

"Of course he can't," Jarred replied to Delusia, "but it at least leaves the gate open for any advance you approve of. And you may be surprised at what I advance."

"He can't leave a gate open he doesn't control," Delusia said, ig-noring Jarred's implication that he wasn't talking about sex. "Don, you should've . . ."

"Come on Honey, this is the chance of a lifetime. Look around you. Loosen up. Join in the fun." He turned to Jarred. "Just where are these, ah, R girls did you call them?"

Jarred ignored Don, walking over to the window and taking De-lusia gently by the arm, steering her out into the middle of the Great Hall.

"I understand your desire to be you're own gatekeeper, but my interests at the moment, I'm sorry to say, aren't with women, or even with you, although your beauty exceeds the most precious of my R girls."

Delusia looked up at him as she kept step, a new partner in an old dance, perplexed at the change of step.

"You're not interested in women?" she asked, surprised.

"Oh, very interested, not just now."

"What're you interested in, then?"

"Fish."

"Fish?"

"Fish."

Don mixed himself a drink and was following them into the cen-ter of the Great Hall.

"Fish," Jarred replied, gesturing with a wide sweep of his arm at a large aquarium mounted on a pedestal several feet in front of the wall across from the picture window. Although the structure dominated the room, the vision of Jarrecuzi in the mists drew at-tention away from it. It was about five feet tall, six feet if its platform was included. Either side was draped with royal purple carpet. A seven foot band spreading out from the aquarium, it flowed across the floor's golden covering with a sunburst, the pur-ple breaking into purple strips that diminished and disappeared into the gold the further away they traveled from the base of the aquarium.

On either side, and three feet behind it from the wall, a covering of snow-white softness blanketed the rich purple, making it appear there was a second platform behind the aquarium. In the aquarium, perhaps thirty fish drifted aimlessly among the simulated con-struction of a river bottom.

Delusia stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of the fish, caus-ing Jarred's hand to slip past her elbow, bringing him to a halt, Don backpedaling behind them.

"Vicious looking suckers," Don said.

"They look like piranhas," Delusia remarked, "but they don't seem to act like piranhas. At least not the way the movies depict them."

Jarred allowed them to drink in the vision of the piranhas, al-most all teeth, the sharp edges sticking out like broken glass, giving the picture of minnows that'd attacked a crystal bottle only to have it shatter and sliver in their mouths. They just languished there, the occasional twitch of a tail wagging the teeth in the opposite di-rection, their walleyes observing the environment with placidity.

"They must be well-fed," Delusia said tentatively as Jarred re-connected with her arm, moving her gently forward toward the water penned up by the safety of the glass side of the aquarium.

"Not so much well-fed, although we do keep them satisfied. They're broken."

"Broken?" Delusia asked, surprised again.

"In spirit and mind. We take these little babies right out of the river. The idea they would strip a man clean of meat in seconds, leaving nothing but a skeleton, is more myth than fact, but the fact remains you don't want to be around a bunch of them when they're hungry. You don't even want to be around them when they're not broken."

"But why would you want to break them?" Delusia asked.

"Because I can, and because I wanted to."

"But how?"

"We put them one at a time in a little pan of water. One of my girls sticks her finger in the pan. When the fish goes for the finger, I send a shock through the water, not enough to fry its cells, just enough to get its attention. The jolt paralyzes the fish for a mo-ment. When it comes out of the daze the shock caused, it spies the finger and goes after it again."

"I hope the finger's been well insulated," Delusia said.

"But of course. After several hours, the fish finally gives up. It loses its aggression and becomes what you see, fish with broken spirits."

"But why would you want to break the spirit of a fish?" Delusia asked. "It's not like they're house pets with access to guests or the help. The piranhas are confined to the aquarium."

Jarred moved her over to the side of the aquarium and tapped rapidly on its side with his thumb. The piranhas didn't respond to either the noise or the movement.

"To make the sex interesting."

"Oh, come on," Delusia said, spinning out of Jarred's hand with a natural movement to get a better look at the fish. "No one can have sex with a piranha. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

Don walked over for a closer look. "Sex with a fish, with one of the buggers with all the teeth," he said. "This I got to see."

"Not just see," Jarred said. "Experience. There is, in my mean-derings, nothing comparable to exposing yourself, your very man-hood, to the danger of all those jagged teeth and having them ma-nipulate you to ejaculation."

Delusia put her hand, palm down, on the glass, wide-eyed, look-ing through the water at the fish, trying to picture what Jarred was describing. She could conjure up the picture of a penis floating in the water among the silvery grey bodies, but every time the bodies moved, it wasn't to masturbate the penis, it was to chomp it up in a swirl of bloody motion.

She blinked, shaking the image from her mind, only to have it reappear more strongly as soon as she tried to figure out what Jarred was up to. There was no way her mind could form a picture, because there was no picture of what Jarred was describing avail-able in her mind. She did see, however, a rubber teat on the back-side of the aquarium, a device reminiscent of the prophylactics used in laboratories to keep conditions in a controlled environment sterile.

"You aren't telling me you stick your joy stick in there among all those miserable fish?" Don asked.

"That's exactly what I mean," Jarred replied, regaining his hold on Delusia. "Danger always increases sexual excitement. Who has-n't experienced the heightened delight of an interlude knowing dis-covery and disaster were just one stroke away. Who hasn't held their stroke at the sound of an unexpected noise, then continued the stroke regardless, each sensation heightened by the risk of discov-ery. Danger increases delight, and what better way to increase de-light than to combine danger with the delight."

"But the piranhas don't look like they're very active," Delusia observed. "How do they get you off?"

"Oh," Jarred said, smiling, squeezing Delusia's arm just above the elbow and moving his gaze to the ceiling, "there's something about a man's lifeline that can't be denied. You must know that."

Delusia was able to once again spin out of his grasp. "I'm having trouble understanding just how it works," she said, becoming inter-ested in the technical aspects. When she couldn't visualize some-thing, she was driven to recreate it in reality so her mind could have structures to work with.

"Yes," Don echoed, "show us."

"Thought you'd never ask," Jarred said, smiling. He walked to the back of the aquarium, his form distorted by the water as he stepped onto the podium. Delusia bent over to get a better look at the rubber diaphragm on the back of the tank. She could see Jarred's body surrounding it. Don, too, walked over beside Delusia to get a better look.

"You don't even have to be careful," Jarred said over the frame. "When I stick it in the diaphragm, the piranhas will drift over and start to nibble. Before I know it, I'll be coming like there's no tomorrow, and while it doesn't feel as good as the inside of a woman, it's a nice way to warm up for the real thing. Here."

They watched through the water as he unzipped his pants and, giving himself a few yanks to get hard enough to distend the dia-phragm, put it in. Delusia was startled how big he was. She looked out the corner of her eye to see if his size intimidated Don. She couldn't tell. He was slathering at the sight, probably thinking what it'd be like if he did it.

When Jarred's distended dick hit the cooler water, it started to recede in size, but not for long as the piranhas instinctively, but leisurely, swam over and began to nibble. Delusia was startled. She thought his dick was big when he first inserted it, but now it swelled to an immense size. She couldn't imagine herself with it in her. She knew from experience she had about an eight-inch pathway between her legs, and anything further than that was organs and pain. She appreciated size, in fact needed at least six inches, pref-erably seven, without too much girth, but Jarred seemed to have the impossible, both length and girth.

Don and Delusia watched as the piranhas became more active, some taking turns swimming back and forth, Jarred's dick benefit-ing from every movement. After an impossibly short time, Jarred let out a cry of satisfaction, and the diaphragm started to grow smaller.

"God, that's an experience you don't want to miss," he said. "I've tried to figure out how to duplicate it for a woman, but there's just no way. Let me get one of the matrons in here to change the diaphragm."

He walked around the platform and pushed a button on the aquarium's control panel. A women in military fatigues immediately entered, went to the back of the aquarium and quickly replaced the diaphragm.

"See," he said, "all ready for the next pleasure seeker. You up to it Don, that is, if your delicious wife, Delusia, doesn't object to you fucking a bunch of fish."

"Ha," Delusia said sarcastically, "if it smells like fish, he'll fuck it."

"I don't know," Don said, "they're still piranhas,"

"Well," Jarred said, seemingly changing the subject, "it wasn't a test. We can . . ."

"Don't go off half cocked," Don said, "I didn't say no."

"You didn't say no," Delusia said, "you said yes. I saw how you looked when the piranhas where going after Jarred's dick. You can't wait to get yours in there. Admit it."

"Well, I guess so." He turned to Jarred with a wink. "You said it was a good start for the real thing. You know what the real thing is, don't you?"

Jarred pushed the button on the control again, and when the matron entered, told her to send Ralisse in immediately.

"You don't mind if she watches?" he asked Don.

"Not at all," Don replied.

Ralisse slipped quietly into the room and Jarred waved her over to the front of the aquarium.

"And you," he said, turning to Delusia, "you don't mind if Don spends time with Ralisse?"

"Just so long as I don't have to reciprocate," she replied.

"I wouldn't think of intruding on your, ah, gate," Jarred re-plied, putting his arm around Don's shoulders and walking him around to the back of the aquarium. "Think you can handle it from here on out?" he asked.

"Think so," Don replied, going to the back and unzipping his pants. Jarred went around to the front and stood beside Delusia and Ralisse as they watched him repeat Jarred's actions, with much less tumescence in the diaphragm. Just as Jarred's had softened at the coolness of the water, Don's shrunk until the piranhas began to nibble. As the nibbling turned to thrusts, Don's delight was visible over the edge of the aquarium. Jarred watched his face closely, waiting for the first signs that Don was going to begin going into the irreversible pleasure of his organism.

He had seen the signs many times, and Don didn't disappoint. As they appeared, he reached into his pocket and pushed the button on his transmitter. The piranhas' thrusts turned savage and in a swirl of activity, soon obscured by a flood of blood, Don's screams re-verberated throughout the Great Hall. Delusia rushed around to find him rolling on the platform behind the aquarium, holding his hands between his legs, blood gushing from between his fingers, scream-ing, crying, cursing, yelling, tears streaming down his face. Jarred signaled Ralisse and walked over behind Delusia to watch as Don lay screaming on the rug. She followed to the side of the aquarium and pushed the call button. Four matrons immediately entered the room, one carrying a plastic roll, another a medical kit.

Jarred took Delusia gently by the shoulders and backed her away from the aquarium to give the matrons access. One immedi-ately plugged the hole in the aquarium, the other went to work on Jarred.

"Let me tell you what's going to happen to you, my friend," Jarred said, leaning over Don. "These nice ladies are going to put a bandage over the hole you used to get so much pleasure through so you'll stop bleeding. Then they're going to lay you out on a piece of plastic so they can carry you out of the room. When they get you out of the room, are you listening carefully," he interrupted him-self, shaking Don, who nodded his head, "they're going to give you a powerful stimulant to make sure you're awake for at least 24 hours.

"Then, now listen closely," he said, raising his voice to ensure Delusia could hear him, "they're going to start by putting little slivers under your nails until they fall off, then they're going to drill you teeth one at a time until there's no root to provide pain, then they're going to break every bone in your body, some of them in many, many places. After that, they'll slowly skin you alive. That's right, Don, they're going to remove every piece of skin on your body while you're fully conscious so you can enjoy and feel every, well, the whole process will take several hours. And they're not going to remove the skin, that's too fast, they're going to scrape it off inch by inch, apply salt as they go along so you'll really appreciate it. Then they're going to cart you on the plastic sheet to the edge of the Amazon and leave you there on the bank for the, oh, I'd say, maybe a million different types of insects to start eating you. We've timed this before and, hey, it can go on for about 12 hours, although we've seen it last longer. The good news is, you'll be fully conscious and feel everything as your body is slowly eaten away. When you finally die, your bones will be taken by the tidal waters and scattered in the Atlantic. You'll become what you were before you met your beautiful wife, the same wife you are so discourteous to, the same wife that would have made you one of the richest men in the world, nothing."

He stood up as the matron finished stemming the blood flow and the others moved in to load him onto the plastic sheet.

"Goodbye, Don. Enjoy the experience."

He turned to Delusia, who looked stunned as they carried her husband out of the Great Hall.

"Come on," Jarred said, "you're not going to tell me you love him."

"What happened," she stammered, "I mean the fish, what hap-pened?"

She apparently hadn't comprehended Jarred's meticulous nar-rative of Don's fate. He let it ride.

"Well, you know animals, or fish in this case. Can't predict how'll they'll behave. That's why it's makes shooting your wad so ecstatic. No danger, no pleasure."

"But . . ."

"But nothing," Jarred said, walking her over to the bar and mixing them both a drink. "You're now the sole owner of Don's in-terests, we'll rewrite the contract so you can sign it, and you'll be a rich, no, a very rich young lady."

"You mean Don is going to die?"

"No chance of survival in these cases, I'm afraid. Are you cov-ered by a prenup? No matter, we have lawyers that can take care of it if you are."

"No, Don just wanted to get in me, and the only way he could do it was to marry me. I set the conditions. You're right, I didn't love him, it was my only out from a life of scholarship, but still, this is horrible."

Jarred moved closer and put his arm around her.

"Let me comfort you," he said, gently. "I know you're the gatekeeper, but perhaps now's the time to open the gate. After all, my dick is still tingling, and the real thing would really be great."

Delusia backed away.

"No, no," she said, "I've got too much going on with Don, and with the contract, and with, oh, I just don't . . . "

Jarred reached around behind her neck, moving in to embrace her. She didn't want it, and started to back away, the hand with her glass lashing out involuntarily, the liquid spilling onto Jarred's sleeve. She started to apologize and get a napkin to wipe off his sleeve when her mind exploded in flashes of light, broken angles of reality, tentacles of darkness. One moment she'd been standing, glass in hand, fending off Jarred's advances, the next she was fal-ling backwards.

She realized he'd smacked her and she'd temporarily lost con-sciousness, reality returning as pain on the side of her face. She realized the blow had spun her to the left, her arm hitting the bar, her glass breaking.

Jarred tore her dress off and grabbed her by one of her breasts, leading her around like a beast of pray. His goal, her naked body flat on her stomach, his dick ripping her ass apart, was clear in his mind, but as he went about his business, succeeding, his stroking, fueled by his prior release with the piranhas, let him drive away relentlessly and endlessly, his mind drifting to other things.

He pictured the matrons taking the new girl, Risa. They each took her by the arms, gently, reassuringly, and led her through the door to his pleasure room. Before Risa could see what was inside, she was electrically stunned into a semi-state of consciousness. They then turned the lights on to reveal the clever sling that would become her home off and on for many, many hours to come. It was devised to support her immobilized, giving him access to almost every square inch of her body, and easy access to all the parts that contained mucus membranes or particularly sensitive nerve end-ings.

"Give her the stimulant," Ronbodlt said, "let's wake her up for the lecture."

Rogay gave Marise an injection. Her eyes opened immediately.

"What's going . . ."

"Shut your mouth, bitch," Ronbodlt said. "I'm going to tell you what's going to happen to you so there'll be no surprises. In about an hour or so, the man you just met will come in to visit with you. The first thing he'll do is strip the top of that dress off, first one tit, then the other. He has a wide variety of tools to use on you, just look around you, but my guess is he'll start on your nipples with pliers until you'll believe there's no greater pain to be felt."

"You'll be mistaken," Rogay said.

"Yes you will," Ronbodlt continued. "He's got a crush on hang-ers, and he has a lot of them made out of gold that are easily twisted into any shape he pleases, and believe me the shapes he twists them in aren't going to please you, they're going to make you wish he'd just beat you senseless."

"Which he might do anyway," Rogay added.

"Except," Ronbodlt said, "you can't be beaten senseless be-cause the stimulate we've given you will keep you bright and awake for the next 24 hours, which might be as long as it takes for him to get tired of playing with you, listening to your unending screams. He'll first use the hangers on what's left of the sensitivity of your nipples, then he'll go down and start working on what I can only imagine is a very juicy pussy, making the angles of the hanger cause agony on tender spots inside you you never knew existed. When that starts to become old, he'll go to work with it in what I can only imagine is a perfect asshole, with all those nice tissues in there to poke and prod and produce incredibly agonizing pain. As you'll see on the wall, he's got all sorts of things to work on the rest of your body, heat, electricity, paddles, canes, whips, nothing that will cause your outward beauty to be permanently damaged while causing maximum pain."

Jarred's body jerked with uncontrollable pleasure as the picture of Delusia, face up, swum into view. He had apparently tired of butt plugging her and turned her over for some good old-fashioned sex. She was sobbing uncontrollably, tears streaming from reddened eyes, her body, wracked with the sobs, stunningly beautiful as she lay in agony.

Jarred let the last waves of pleasure pass, and then got up and went over to the aquarium consol, pushing the call button. Two matrons immediately entered.

"Clean her up," he said, "and get a nice red dress for her. I've got some other business to take care of. I'll deal with her tomor-row."

He turned to Delusia.

"Go with these ladies," he said, "they'll take good care of you. We'll finish our business discussions tomorrow."

He left the Great Hall and entered his study, then his back study, and then his pleasure room for a little bit, no, a lot, a long time of simple fun seeing how many ways he could make the new R girl scream, plead, bargain, offer, oh, it'd be a great time.

Marise was lying quietly on the table, her eyes closed, breath-ing at a steady rate. She'd pretended sleep since Jarred entered the room.

Jarred came over to her side and, selecting his favorite pair of pliers, took a deep breath to steady his hands and carefully lowered the red bodice to expose her right breast.

It rose majestically, pneumatically, out of the restraint of the material.

Jarred instinctively tried to take a sharp breath, but his lungs were already filled.

He exhaled, letting out a small animal sound at the sight of the wonder rising before him.

Even though his blackness receded so he could examine the per-fectly formed breast topped off by a symmetrically placed, exqui-sitely hued, and surprisingly long and slender, nipple, he felt he'd been suspended, his mind no longer functioning, hanging in space, viewing the only reality in existence.

He had no idea how long he remained motionless, his breathing returning to normal. He didn't know whether he was blinking or just gazing with unwavering vision flowing into his mind. He was trans-fixed before a work of art, lost in the wonder of her, unable to break away, unwilling to try.

Eventually a sense of lost purpose began to unsettle him. His mind started operating again. The picture of her nipple reformed, a nipple with a blue arc of pain tickling it. The picture instinctively told him where the pliers and the stun gun were, and his hands found them without his mind losing the picture it formed of their use. He picked up the pliers and moved them to her nipple, letting their padded grasps hover just above it. He clenched the handles of the pliers seizing the nipple, anticipating her screams singing in his ears.

No sound came.

He clenched again, this time crinkling up his face, squeezing his eyes, yearning for the sound of agony.

Nothing came.

He opened his eyes and looked down at the pliers grasping her nipple. They weren't grasping her nipple. They were still hovering just above it, the padded grasps still open, framing the perfect symmetry atop the impossibly perfect breast. He closed his eyes and tried to picture his proposed action, closing the pliers around her nipple. He couldn't. As soon as a nipple began to form in his mind, his eyes opened to the perfect reality of her nipple and, with all the nipples he'd seen, none came close to the reality he was facing. If he couldn't form a picture of something, he couldn't do it. No action was possible without being able to picture himself doing it.

A small bead of sweat appeared on Jarred's forehead.

This was ridiculous, he thought. He had his pliers and something real to clasp them with, something real that would affirm the clasping by screaming in agony. All he had to do was clamp the han-dles. He sent the impulse with all of his mental might directly down his arm and into his hand.

The pliers moved, but only in response to the shaking resulting from his effort to close them conflicting with his inability to ac-complish the task.

He reached for the stun gun, brought it over to the pliers, and tried to press the trigger.

He couldn't.

The sweat was beginning to bead on his brow, combine and form rivulets streaking down his face. Marise felt the drops on her breast and, expecting pain, thought he was dropping acid on her skin. The tickling sensation they created as they rolled across her perfect skin made her open an eye a crack to get a glimpse of what was happening. She made out Jarred, his face six inches from her breast, hovering over it, staring wildly at his hands, each grasping some sort of implement.

His jaw was set, his eyes opened wildly wide, his color changing from white to red, sobs coming from his throat as he stood trans-fixed, engaged in some monumental and unfathomable mental labor. She lay there silently, watching as his whole body began to shake, his redness turning crimson, his sweat becoming torrents, the in-creasing rivulets either dying the red material to match Jarred's face, or rolling down her breast and off her bare shoulder.

She heard the door slam open and opened her other eye to see a man in a dark suit leveling a gun toward Jarred.

"No," she screamed, too late as the gun coughed. She looked down at its intended target, but Jarred wasn't there when the bul-let whizzed over her breast. He'd passed out, and, plopping on her stomach, slid off the table onto the floor.

"Don't touch a hair on his head," she barked in a commanding voice.

"Who are you?" the man asked, coming over and quickly re-storing the top of her dress to its proper place.

"Get me out of this thing," she ordered.

He signaled the two identically dressed men entering, carrying automatic weapons. They came over, examined the structure and, looking for confirmation from the first man, quickly unraveled her from the convoluted device.

"Put your computer out for identification," she instructed the man who seemed to be in charge of the crew. She rubbed her ankles and wrists, swinging her legs over the table.

The man took a computer out of his shirt pocket, opened it, keyed in something, and passed it to her.

"Is Jarred still alive?" she asked, punching in her ID code.

"Who?"

Marise pointed under the contraption she'd been locked in.

"I think he fainted," he replied.

The two men went over, one taking his pulse. "He's still alive," he said.

Marise hopped out of the contraption, giving the computer back to the man.

The man looked at it, closed it, putting it back in his pocket.

"What are your orders?" he asked, acknowledging her authority.

"What do I call you?" Marise asked.

"Skerrt"

"Well, Skerrt," she said, "the first thing I want you to do is take that guy and strap him in the same way you found me. His name is Jeremy Jarred."

Marise saw a flicker of recognition in Skerrt's face, but he si-lently motioned his two companions to carry out the order.

"Did you have any trouble reading my security alert?" Marise asked Skerrt, leading him out of the room. "I want this place closed off."

"Certainly. No, we didn't have any trouble, just a matter of di-version. There's a gigantic raid," he looked at his watch, "going on somewhere in central Europe right now, so we're a little thin, but the perimeter security force was thin and we eliminated it, so we have everything under control."

"Jarred has some personal guards, women in some kind of kaki outfits, some women servants, beautiful, all dressed in red, where are they?"

"The girls are in the house over the river. We have the matrons interred in the garage," he replied.

"Find out which ones are Ronbodlt and Rogay and put them in separate quarters. I want to talk with them about working for me here. Leave the girls to their own devices, they won't be any trou-ble. Put a double guard on the rest of the matrons until I decide what I want to do with them."

She stopped and thought a minute.

"On second thought, tell the girls Jarred has fallen into black despair, that the black dog seems to have permanently taken him over and he desperately needs their help. Use those exact words."

"Everything else has been secured," Skerrt said, and spoke into his communicator. "There's only one wild card."

"Oh? What's that?" Marise asked.

"There's a women in the main house. We thought she was one of the girls, she was extraordinarily beautiful, and dressed in red, too. I thought you were one, also, to be truthful."

"And she's not?"

"She claims to be the owner of an ostrich operation, that she came down here with her husband to do some business with Jarred, and that Jarred killed him, raped her, and, well, she was pretty cool for somebody all that happened to, but we thought we'd better wait and let you sort it out. I told the chief of private security to meet us in the library. The woman's in the big room next door."

Marise was already headed to the library where she'd drained the information on Jarred's intended destruction of the Millennial generation and set off the security alert drawing the containment by the CORWOG Stability Unit. While she'd been working for The Chairman directly on the Millennial problem, she had no idea why he'd sent her to the Amazon, and she certainly had no idea that it'd be connected with the project she was supposed to be working with Block on.

She wondered if The Chairman was aware Jarred was the prob-lem. She knew The Chairman wasn't involved in the conversion of the Amazonian basin into an international protectorate, but as one of the first efforts at cooperative international ecological preser-vation, everybody had an interest in the project's success.

The involvement of the Director of the project in an attempt to undermine the very foundation of international cooperation created a unity of interest on the part of the Council of the Representative World Government, CORWOG, to stabilize the situation. While the Amazonian Project wasn't within The Chairman's sphere, trouble shooting what could become a public relations catastrophe for fu-ture projects definitely was.

Marise walked through the adjoining door to the Great Hall. The aquarium was directly in front of her. She looked around, noting the door was closed, the bar open but vacant, Jaracuzi still floating in a halo of light in the middle of the picture window.

"Hi," someone behind her said, "are you another one of the R girls? I don't think we've met."

Marise turned to see a women dressed in a red satin evening gown standing by a stack of DVDs lined up in front of a screen cov-ering the wall separating the room from the library complex.

"No, I'm not," Marise said, introducing herself and looking closely at the girl who was far more stunning than any of the other R girls. "They must have something here besides these darn red outfits. What are you doing?"

Marise wondered not only what she was doing, but what she was doing dressed in the R girl's red. If she was raped, which seemed improbable, she must be looking to be raped again. Maybe she should try it, Marise thought flippantly. That'd be one way to get rid of her unwanted virginity. But if she was willing, how could she be raped?

She broke off the thought to concentrate on Delusia's reply.

"I'm just waiting for Jarred to come back."

"What's your name?"

"Delusia Dorney."

"I understand he raped you, Delusia," Marise said, noticeably skeptical. "Why would you want him to come back?"

"So he could rape me again," Delusia replied, showing her right hand for the first time, a short-bladed knife clutched firmly in its grasp, "and when he does, I'm going to shove this into his scrotum and continue slicing him until I've got his Adam's apple on the tip."

Marise had seen equivalent hatred many times before, espe-cially among her teachers and professors, but she'd never seen it burning so intensely out of an otherwise placidly calm demeanor.

She reached out and took the knife. "Jarred won't be coming here," she said, her words providing the catalyst that loosened Delusia's grip on the knife.

"Why?" Delusia asked. "He isn't dead, is he?"

"No. Not for a long time. But he is going to be spending that time wishing he was."

"Good," Delusia said, not pursuing it further.

"Come on," Marise led Delusia to the bar. "I need a drink. It's been a long day."

Delusia picked up the console control and followed Marise to the bar. "Scotch," she said.

"On ice?"

"No, just scotch."

Marise poured two of them. "So you were raped?"

Delusia took the glass, and, taking a healthy drink, pointed the control at the console and clicked three of the buttons in sequence. The lights went down, the curtains closed, and the screen lit up.

Marise watched, fascinated, as she found herself staring over Jarred's shoulder directly into Delusia's perplexed face.

"The bastard's got this from six different angles. This one's the best, if you could apply that word to anything about it," Delusia said.

Marise watched as Jarred's right hand swung around and caught Delusia on the side of the head, flat on the ear, with an open slap. As Delusia began to fall sideways, Jarred reached out and grabbed her by her left breast, yanking her, causing her to careen wildly to the right, spilling her drink as she hit the bar with her fist.

As she spun away, trying to get away from the pain in her breast, Jarred jerked her, still by her breast, back, using her breast to pull her entire weight against the direction of her motion. Not happy with her progress, Jarred took the bottom of his fist and began to hammer her sideways on the rib cage. When she collapsed to the floor, he let go of her breast and slapped her firmly on the left side of her face, snapping her head back as she crumpled onto the rug. He paused, taking several sips of his drink. Delusia began to stir on the rug, groggily trying to sit up. Jarred set his glass down and deftly kicked her on the side of her head with his stocking foot. He then bent over her and removed what remained of her blouse. He unbuttoned her pants, pulled them over her hips and, arching her back, down over her buttocks. He got one leg free, but the other one got caught at her knee. He lifted her up by that leg, sticking the arch of his foot in her crotch to gain the leverage needed to pry the leg loose.

Delusia groaned as her leg was freed. Jarred grabbed her by her hair, pulled her and struck her repeatedly on her face with his open palm. When he dropped his pants, took out his oversized dick, turn-ing her over to use it to tear her anus open, Marise shut her eyes.

"Turn it off, please," she sobbed. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. "I can't stand watching it. Please, please."

She was stunned by the raw brutality. She couldn't believe she'd flippantly thought only moments before rape might be one way to lose her virginity. Rape had nothing to do with sex. It was raw, un-restrained, brutal, violent force, one person exercising power over another, violating their body to the very depths of their being.

It was unspeakable.

"There's plenty more," Delusia said. "It goes on and on and on. It never seems to stop."

"Is it off?"

Delusia reversed the three buttons. The screen died and the curtain opened showing Jaracuzi hanging in the night as the lights came up. Marise tried to dry her eyes. Delusia let the tears stream down her cheeks, waiting for them to stop of their own accord.

"It's incredible one human being could do that to another," Ma-rise said, taking a gulp of scotch.

"I had no idea the pain it could create," Delusia replied, "not the pain of the rape, that heals, but the never ending pain of the exis-tence of having been raped."

Marise tossed a grey plastic card down on the bar between them. "That's yours if you want it," she said.

"What is it?"

"It's the command card for this place," Marise replied. "Jarre-zonia's been contained. No one is to come or go. Jarred's to be kept here unless he's needed in court, which will be often over the next five to ten years. He doesn't have to be able to walk into court, but his R girls are going to be looking after him and I don't want his mind altered. And I don't care if he has to be transported in an am-bulance, he has to look competent and be able to answer questions and sign his name when he makes his appearances.

"Other than that, I don't care what the girls do to him. Feel free to join in. I'm going to issue a release that he was severely injured in a boating accident and is in critical condition. It's best he cease to exist other than for legal purposes. That card'll make you his warden. The R girls will want to pleasure him non-stop, which is fine with me."

"I have my business interests to consider," Delusia replied. "Jarred was offering me a contract. I guess I'll have to contact everybody on my own and renegotiate the terms."

"Why?" Marise asked. "Jarred's here. You control him com-pletely. Make your own terms through him. Make whoever you need come to you. Just because this place is sealed off doesn't mean the warden can't carry on her business. You can come and go as you please."

Delusia hesitated, then picked up the card. "Thank you," she said.

"Good. Now let's see if we can't find something decent to wear, at least something that isn't red, and get some dinner. I'm starved.

"Can we stop by and see Jarred?" Delusia asked.

"You're the boss!"

"But what would you call any ownership interest I might have here?"

"CORWOG has title, so that makes you the de facto owner," Marise replied.

"How about Jarred?" Delusia asked.

"Oh, you own Jarred body and soul."

"Good. I'll be happy to tell him that."