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Ralkliv came out to meet them a couple minutes early. Arthur whispered one last thing to his sister. "That's him... remember, he speaks English." Arthur knelt on the floor and Ralkliv had him get up almost immediately. After introductions, Ralkliv invited them back to his personal office.
As Tee walked in front of him, Arthur spotted some double-stick tape in her hair but the rest of it looked pretty good. The tattoo above her right knee was painted over with white latex and topped in flesh tone makeup... hopefully it wouldn't show even when she sat down.
Arthur's apprehension didn't last; not one minute after they sat down, Spokesman Ralkliv's secretary interrupted. Ralkliv excused himself to take an important phone call.
Tee felt at the back of her head. "Um Arthur, it's coming loose, got any more tape?"
Arthur scoffed: "Where would I carry tape?"
"Well... you could jam it up your..."
"Wait... hey," Arthur dug through Ralkliv's junk drawer. "How about a paperclip?" Arthur heard Ralkliv coming and sat back down.
When Ralkliv came back into the room he was so nervous that without even realizing, he spoke to Tee in Danubian. He apologized for having to leave the meeting early; Ralkliv explained that he had an emergency to manage.
Tee watched Ralkliv hurry off. "What was that all about?"
Arthur was happy to cut the meeting short. "His wife's going to the hospital to have a baby, I think... Danubians are really reserved when talking about that sort of thing, so they don't come right out and say it. Good news is: we're off the hook!"
Tee shrugged. "So now what?"
"Well..." Arthur looked out the window thinking. "Mr. Jakt wants to meet you later but right now... how bout we go for a walk?"
Tee and Arthur walked down by the river and then he took his sister to see his home. Arthur gave Tee the big tour of the house, proudly pointing out his bedroom with its refinished wooden desk, his repaired table lamp and his freshly painted wooden chair.
Mr. Jakt was fascinated by Tee and she, of course, lapped up the attention. That evening Mr. Jakt broke out a bottle of homemade wine, and then he taught Tee a traditional Danubian song. What the performance lacked in quality it made up for in enthusiasm and volume. Arthur stayed busy serving as translator; not very accurate but quick enough for a lively conversation.
Early the next morning Arthur escorted Tee to the train station and then Arthur headed directly for the Ministry of Natural Resources building. It was time to check in and see what his next job was.
He hoped to stay in the city for a while but the MNR had other ideas. A ranger had requested help in clearing storm debris around one of the remote campgrounds. The job was scheduled to last three months.
---------
Samantha was waiting when Arthur came back to Rika Chorna during the first week in December. She spent her very limited free time with Arthur but she couldn't bring herself to be happy. The dread of what was to come overwhelmed her.
On December 7th Samantha went through her normal day. She got up early and prepared breakfast for her host's two kids, and then she went off to work her morning shift at the hospital. Samantha focused on her work and performed it well as she always did.
It was a long ten hours later when Samantha finished her daily rounds; she pushed a cart of dinner trays back into the kitchen beside the big stainless steel sinks. Samantha straightened her back and stretched her shoulders; it had been a long shift and Samantha was ready to leave work.
In the nurse's locker room her friend Katya was getting ready for her night shift; she waited by Samantha's locker.
"Are you going to be alright?"
Samantha barely nodded. "I'm fine."
"Are you going to see Arthur tonight?" Katya spoke softly: "You shouldn't be alone."
Samantha nodded. "He's going to meet me later."
"Good... I talked to your shift supervisor; she got you an easier shift Thursday, no kitchen or laundry... just delivering patient meals."
Samantha tried hard to smile. "I really appreciate it Katya. Thanks. I... I think I better get going... don't want to miss the bus."
Samantha left the hospital through a side entrance. Instead of the huge parking lots that surround hospitals in other countries, the Rika Chorna Medical Center was encircled by gardens and trees. But it was almost winter; the flowers were dormant, the tree limbs were bare and the sky looked like snow.
Samantha walked quickly to the bus stop. She found that the small heated shelter was almost full; she waited by the window as even more people packed inside. When the bus came she lined up last, behind the free people and a couple penitents. The bus quickly filled to capacity, so that Samantha and the last six people in line were left to wait for the next ride.
Samantha took it well; it was nothing really, just a little inconvenience. Being a Danubian criminal had completely changed her point of view on what constitutes a bad day. She waited patiently and looked out the window at the blowing leaves. It was the seventh of December, a year and a half after her arrest. Samantha thought of that horrible night.
The warning that Arthur had given them about Danubia's strict drug laws had scared them, though not nearly enough. Instead of throwing their drugs out immediately they kept their stash hidden in the hotel room and continued to use.
June 7th 1992 was supposed to be their last night in Danubia. They had gone into their hotel room that night and retrieved what was left of the stash. That night they got incredibly high and then did something incredibly careless.
Police were waiting for them when they returned to the hotel that night. They were forced to strip naked right out on the street. The experience only got worse with the interrogation at police headquarters, the trial, and the switching. She and Laura had endured the punishment three times already; their fourth switching was scheduled for the eighth day of December.
Samantha shivered as the bus stop's folding door opened. There were fewer people waiting for the bus this time; Samantha got aboard and in fifteen minutes she was back at her host's house.
Inside, the kids were waiting and their mother was irritable at her for being late.
"The children have been waiting for almost an hour!" The woman glared. "Where have you been?"
Samantha wanted to smash her fist right into the woman's thin nose but she knew her place as a criminal. Samantha dropped to her knees, apologized for being late and then she got to work in the kitchen.
Arthur came by after she had put the kids put to bed. Samantha's home was just a short cold walk from the criminal's club and their chance to be alone. They went straight to one of the small rooms in back. Arthur shut the door behind them; once they were alone Samantha began to cry. There was no need to explain; Arthur understood perfectly her dread of the next day's punishment. He held her tight in his arms, supporting her weight as she clung to his chest.
After a few minutes she recovered some. "I'm sorry... I thought it would get easier but... I feel just as terrified."
"I know... there'd be something wrong with you if you weren't scared." Arthur said gently. "As bad as it is, it will end; and tomorrow you'll be closer to the day when you can leave this place behind and go back home."
"But you'll still be here." Samantha looked up. "I'm not leaving you behind."
Arthur's voice rose. "Now don't even think about staying because of me. When you get the chance... go. What kind of life do you think you'd have here anyway? They'll send me off to some labor camp and you'd be all alone... think about it Samantha, you're a foreigner; you'll always be a foreigner here. You can have a good life back in the US; you have your family, your friends, your church."
Samantha spoke quietly: "But I love you."
Arthur was unable to speak for a while. "I love you too but... you can do better Samantha... I mean... do you know how messed up I am? By the time you're released I'll probably be a drooling lunatic in a padded room somewhere."
Samantha leaned forward for a kiss. "You'll be my drooling lunatic."
Arthur wiped the tears off her cheek with his thumb. "Let the other girls have the rich, successful, well- adjusted types; you want the messed up criminal who talks to himself and has to tie a rope on his collar every night so he doesn't go stomping through the neighbor's flowers."
"You do that? You tie yourself up at night?"
"Yeah, ever since last year. The judge said I don't get any more breaks, he said it was my responsibility to make sure I don't cause any more disturbances. The tether wakes me up before I can get out the door anyway. Last time I was sleepwalking a couple days ago I had one end tied to a table leg, I jerked the table over on its side but it woke me up at least. That reminds me, I need to buy a lamp tomorrow." Arthur collapsed to the mattress and looked up at Samantha, her lithe form back lit by the single light over the door.
Samantha smirked: "That was a very noble effort you made to push me away, Arthur. Like a hero out of a movie."
"Well... I try and be virtuous every once in a while. You kind of surprised me though, if I'd had more time I maybe could've come up with a better speech."
"No... it was sweet the way it was... I liked it," Samantha giggled, "but... it would have been more dignified if you hadn't had a big boner poking at me the whole time."
Arthur leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. "So are you just gonna stand there talking or are you going to do something about it?"
"Oh I'm gonna do something spyboy..."
Samantha crawled atop him, straddling his hips, enjoying the warmth of his naked skin. "You're real damned weird Arthur, but you're not so bad... for an enemy spy that is."
"And you aren't half bad either," Arthur replied, "for a petty criminal anyway."
------------
A year and a half after their arrest Samantha and Laura were once again on their knees in Spokesman Ralkliv's office. Their arresting officers handcuffed their wrists behind their backs and quickly got the two criminals to their feet.
The officers marched the young women down to a corridor in the basement of the police headquarters. The door to the third room was open. The judge was seated at a desk along the far wall, there was a camera set up in the corner, and a metal table rested on the concrete floor near the center of the room.
Spokesman Ralkliv had a brief discussion with the judge before addressing his clients. "Laura, you must go first. Samantha you will take a seat by me."
Samantha sat and watched uncomfortably as her friend kneeled down and kissed the officer's shoe. The policeman moved Laura over to the end of the table and had her bend forward so that her bottom was presented in the direction of the judge. In a practiced efficient manner the policeman strapped her ankles securely to the metal table legs and bound her wrists and midsection firmly to the cold tabletop. There was a look of terror in her eyes but Laura remained silent.
The policeman pulled the switch from his belt and whipped it through the air, and then he moved close, trailing his hand down her spine and over the curve of her bottom. Trying to catch her off guard, he stepped back quickly and landed the first blow. Laura gasped but remained otherwise quiet.
Samantha flinched as the switch snapped against Laura's skin. Ten more fierce strikes of the switch left parallel lines swelling on the right side of Laura's bottom. The officer's cruel smile returned as Laura began crying from the pain of the switching and the humiliation of being touched by the policeman between strokes. Her pitiful sobs were punctuated by anguished screams as the punishment wore on. Samantha had to sit there and listen to it all knowing that she would be next. Ralkliv raised his hand after the fiftieth stroke. Laura sobbed hysterically as the policeman and his partner removed her restraints.
The judge called for a short break to give Ralkliv time to deal with his client, and the judge time to return to his chambers and refill his coffee cup. Samantha walked quickly to the restroom at the end of the corridor. The door shut behind her and she turned to look at her own reflection in the mirror; the young woman's skin had lost all color.
Samantha's legs trembled, fear overwhelmed and she sunk into the corner crying hard. Samantha folded forward on her knees with her head clasped in both hands. It was so hard to face a switching stoically like Danubian criminals are supposed to. It took every bit of her will power to get up off the floor and face the switching with at least some dignity.
Samantha rinsed her face in cold water from the sink and then she studied her own reflection. A limber young woman's body; gracefully curved and pretty; Samantha thought her breasts were too small and her hips too slim and boyish. Arthur loved her body though, judging from how much time he spent kissing her breasts or kneeling between her thighs. Samantha smiled at the thought. The girl in the mirror still looked awfully scared but there was also a look of determination that she hadn't noticed before.
Five minutes passed before she heard footsteps on the concrete floor. There was a knock at the door.
Ralkliv's voice was kind but firm. "Samantha; it is time."
Samantha dried her face on a towel and stepped out into the corridor. Spokesman Ralkliv offered a few words of encouragement before directing his client back into the room and shutting the door behind him. Her eyes were already red from crying when she knelt down in front of the policeman who would punish her.
The policeman ordered Samantha to position herself on the punishment table. She reluctantly placed her ankles against the leather restraints and bent forward across the cold tabletop. When all the restraints were buckled and the criminal was completely under his control, the policeman took careful aim and then struck five times across the lower curve of her bottom. Samantha shook from the pain but remained silent. Her resistance amused the officer. He traced the red lines swelling across the smooth skin of her buttocks, rubbing his fingers over sore flesh to increase the pain and further humiliate the criminal.
The policeman, unable to make Samantha cry early in the punishment, became methodical; striking hard and leaving parallel welts from the apex of her buttocks down to her thighs. Though Samantha made every effort to resist, she couldn't help but cry out and jerk at the restraints as he began to overlap the welts on her bottom and the pain became unbearable.
The last part of the punishment went at an agonizingly slow pace. He whipped the tender skin of her punished bottom and thighs with the flexible switch and then waited a full minute before he took aim and struck again.
By the time the switching ended Samantha was completely broken down, too lost in the pain to care about anything else. Samantha's beaten backside was presented before the judge so he could certify the punishment, and like any criminal she had to kneel down, kiss her tormentor's shoes and thank him for the punishment he had inflicted upon her. With her fourth judicial punishment completed, a violently sobbing Samantha took the painful humiliating walk back to her spokesman's office.
---------
Arthur knocked on the door and waited in the frigid night air. He was wearing his orange work boots but not the insulated poncho that criminals are issued. During his first winter working for the Ministry of Natural Resources he wore the poncho nearly every day. It was drafty, the lining itchy, and it made a person look like a road-cone with legs but despite its faults it did keep a criminal working outdoors dry and reasonably warm. When Arthur was back in Rika Chorna he rarely used it, the inconvenience of having to take it off and hang it somewhere every time he went indoors was often worse than being temporarily cold.
Over a minute passed before the door opened and the head of Samantha's host family stepped outside. The man always insisted that Arthur acknowledge his superior status as a government bureaucrat by kneeling down to him no matter the temperature. Arthur pressed his forehead against the concrete and waited. The man stood in his warm winter clothes and let Arthur shiver at his feet for a completely unnecessary amount of time before bothering to invite him in.
Once inside the house, Arthur and the wife exchanged greetings that neither of them meant, and then he was at last allowed to see Samantha. A room toward the back of the house contained a sort of a nursery, with a child's bed along one wall, a crib, and toys strewn about. Along the wall opposite the bed was a canvas cot.
Arthur knocked on the door frame to announce his presence. The six-year-old girl sitting on the floor next to Samantha's cot threw her book aside and jumped up. "8!"
In one of many spiteful moves, Samantha's hosts didn't want Arthur's given name used, in their household he was criminal # 88588. To the kids he was simply 8. Arthur noted that the three-year-old boy was nowhere to be seen; a worrying thought since he treated Arthur like a human crash test dummy. Sneaking up behind a person with weapon in hand was his usual mode of operation.
Samantha lifted up on one elbow. "Arthur, I'm glad you're here."
Samantha had received the usual severe beating. The crimson welts covering her bottom and the backs of her thighs contrasted starkly with her pale skin. Arthur sat down in the floor next to her cot and took her hand.
"Ooh... your hands are like ice!"
"Yeah, that fucking yahoo kept me waiting out on the porch forever, and of course he made me kneel down to him out in the cold."
It was sometimes a nice advantage speaking a language that very few other people understood, so long as they spoke in a pleasant tone of voice no one had any idea what they were really saying. Sometimes Arthur and Samantha had a contest to see who could come up with the most vulgar way to describe her hosts. Samantha usually won; having to stay under the same roof with the hated couple gave her plenty of time to exercise her creative side.
Arthur looked down at the little girl, who was staring at him with big brown eyes. He changed to the Danubian language. "It looks like you're in good hands here though. Got your own nurse to take care of you."
"I'm a doctor 8, not a nurse!" The little girl stood with her hands on her hips, and then she spotted a bruise on Arthur's back.
"Please excuse me doctor. Uh... there's nothing wrong with me is there?"
The girl poked at his shoulder. "8, you have a bear bite. Wait here." The girl quickly returned with a first-aid kit.
"A... bear? Thought I would have noticed that. Doctor are you sure a bear bit me?"
She slapped Arthur on the back. "Uh-huh, now stay still 8."
"She never leaves my side." Samantha smiled at the girl then spoke in English, "The first time she saw me after a switching, last December, she thought I was attacked by a bear too. She's terrified of bears for some reason. 'Sanka clawed by bear' she screamed to her mother. She wanted to take me to the hospital, and couldn't understand why no one else wanted to help. She sort of understands now, her mother told her how 'naughty' I had been, how I deserve this. I think her mother's jealous because she likes me better than her. She doesn't... Watch out!"
At full speed the three-year-old boy rounded the corner with a big stick in his hand. "Die monster!" He swung and connected with the monster's head just as it was turning around.
"Got you 8, killed you monster!" The boy giggled as Arthur disarmed him.
Arthur rubbed the sore spot on his forehead. "I can't imagine why they wanted help with the kids."
