Black-gloved hands were unfastening the straps on the prisoners' wrists and ankles; then the belt was taken off. Finally the neck chain was removed, though the leather collars, numbered dogtags hanging from them, remained in place.

"Okay, up! On your feet, the both of you!"

Christopher Elwin III winced as he tried to stand straight. He longed to massage his painfully cramped muscles. Circulation came back in an agony of pins and needles. Greta's strap slashed viciously across his thighs.

"Stand up, you scum! At attention! You want a dose of what Number Thirteen got?''

She glared into his face. Christopher Elwin III turned his gaze downward to the floor. It wasn't a good idea to look the guards directly in the eye.

"No, madam."

"Louder, maggot, I can't hear you!"

Christopher Elwin III stiffened his shoulders and raised his voice, but he didn't lift his eyes from the floor. "No, madam. I don't want what Number Thirteen got, madam."

"And what did he get?"

"Madam, he got a beating, madam."

"You think he deserved it, maggot?"

"I know he deserved it, madam. We always deserve our punishments."

The exchange seemed to satisfy Greta. She and Inga turned their attention to Female Prisoner #27.

"So how did you enjoy your night next to a man, slut? I'd imagine a promiscuous little whore like you would do anything to get next to a man, even a pathetic specimen like this."

It was one of those questions that was almost impossible to answer without the risk of an instant beating. #27 did the best she could.

"Madam, I wasn't ordered to enjoy the experience."

It was a clever answer, but it bordered on being too clever. Greta took off her mirrored aviator glasses. Her eyes were hard.

"Think you're pretty smart, don't you, slut?"

#27 had turned pale. "No, madam, I'm not smart."

"Outside!"

#27 didn't move quickly enough. The cane lashed out, leaving a red welt across her buttocks.

"Move, slut! Make schnell!"

Then Christopher Elwin III was alone with Inga and Greta.

"At attention, worm. First inspection!"

Christopher Elwin III braced himself. Greta's leather-gloved hand reached between his legs.

By that point, Christopher Elwin III should have been in the throes of guilty delight. The S&M prison fantasy was something that had turned him on for all of his adult life. The idea of powerful Germanic women using him, controlling him, subjecting him to ritualized pain had been his obsession for as long as he could remember, and he had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years having prostitutes stage approximations of it. The problem was that it no longer worked. As far as he could calculate-and the relative passage of time was very hard to estimate-he had only been in the feelie for maybe a month, and he wanted out. He was not being constantly filled with breathless cringing excitement. He was not being maintained in a continually heightened state of claustrophobic sexuality. He was merely cringing and claustrophobic. Even though it was an electronically created illusion, his only reality was life in a very uncomfortable prison with no chance of parole, constantly at the mercy of a set of brutal psychopaths, beauty notwithstanding, who had been created for him out of his own imagination. Worst of all, he had doomed himself to it for the rest of his life.

The one thing that he had no illusions about was his own value in the real world. He was a loser and that was it, the classic case of ineffectual son of the dynamic father. Christopher Elwin II had built Elwin Systems into the highly profitable component satellite of a number of major corporations. He, Christopher Elwin III-little Chris was what they had always called him-had all but run it into the ground. The family had done little to conceal their relief when he had opted for the big sleep. Now his brother Lance, who seemed to have been the one to inherit their father's smarts, could have a free hand to rebuild the Elwin fortunes.

There was a lot more to the preparation for an IE life-span contract than merely buying a ticket. In his price bracket, the feelie was custom-made to his exact requirements. There had been long sessions with the very overpriced company shrink. "Go with the fantasy," she had told him. "Push it to the limit. We can only supply you with what you give us. You want it to be perfect, don't you?" He had poured out the whole catalog of his grubby imaginings, every disgusting idea that he had reveled in from the age of eleven onward. It had to be the ultimate irony. Now that he had them made real, he didn't like them. There was a part of his mind that was becoming more and more detached from the fantasy, and the more detached it became, the closer it steered toward a state of blind panic. The difficulty was that, inside a feelie, there was no such thing as a panic button. How could he communicate to the outside world that he wanted out? There had to be some way. There just had to be. If he couldn't get free from his own fantasies, his mind was going to come unhinged. There was a definite limit to how much he could take, and that limit was drawing close.

Inga's voice dragged him back into the all-too familiar scenario. The tip of her cane was probing the crack in his ass.

"I hope you're well rested, maggot. The commandant has a party of visitors coming to the facility today, and she wants some prisoners put through their paces for them. The good news is that you're one of the lucky ones who've been selected for the display team."

Christopher Elwin III groaned inwardly. That was another problem. In a feelie crafted from his own imaginings, he always knew what was coming. This so-called display would mean a gruelling session of pain and humiliation in front of an amused audience. Suppose he fought the program? Surely there had to be something built into the software that would show that he was not responding according to the expected pattern and trigger some kind of alarm. He toyed with the idea of ripping Inga's cane out of her hand and hurling the woman across the cell. To his disappointment, he found that all he could do was follow the expected responses.

"Yes, madam. It will be an honor to perform for the commandant."

The detached part of his mind was dizzy with frustration. There had to be a way out. There just had to be.

"YEAH, WELL, A LOT OF THEM ARE JUST plain smut."

"Smut?"

"Yeah, smut. Sex. Fucking. Men fucking women, women fucking women, men fucking men. Men, women, children, animals, threes, fours, dozens. You name it, they're doing it. Any number, any variation." Ralph swung his arm in a sweeping if unsteady gesture that took in the whole of the vault. "It's just one huge electronic whorehouse."

Sam blinked twice. "It can't be that bad. Not everybody wants sex all the time."

Ralph sneered. "You think not? I'm telling you. There ain't many stiffs here plugged into the life of Socrates or St. Francis of Assisi, and that's a fact."

Sam took a while to digest all that. Then a puzzled expression wrinkled his doughy features. "What have you got against sex?"

Ralph looked at him impatiently. "Nothing, except I maybe don't get enough."

Sam's voice became morose. "I don't get any… except…"

Ralph cut him off. "I don't want to hear what you get up to when you're away from here."

It was drawing toward the end of the shift. It was that part of the day when Ralph was drunk belligerent and Sam was little short of comatose. Ralph would rant, and Sam would stare dully into space. It was the point when communication was at a minimum.

In between outbursts, Ralph would sit grim and hunched until he had worked up enough bile for another one. It was during these silences that Sam would throw out the occasional remark.