Shelumba collected us for lunch. I stood to eat and so did Roger. There was no way I dared sit on the hard chairs even if it did make us even more conspicuous but I suspected he could if he wanted as his bad welts were across his shoulders. Sumala tried to be a macho man and sat but he found it very uncomfortable and soon he stood alongside me. Part way through the meal Shelumba waved at a portly middle-aged woman carrying a tray. She wore a bluestone too and placing her food on our table, introduced herself, Hi I’m Riku, head of IT so I’m more or less your boss at work. You must be Elaine and Roger and you are? She shook hands with all of us and Sumala introduced himself. Will you be fit enough for the grand tour this afternoon? Riku asked knowing why we were standing even though she hadn’t yet seen our backs.

“As long as we don’t have to sit on hard seats and can rest when we need to.”

We spent an hour or so looking round our work place. It wasn’t that much different to home. The computer still ran Word. Excel and PhotoShop and various other programmes I was familiar with. When I saw the email icon, I wondered if I would be able to contact Ted or my friends but Riku quickly told me that she’d had to disable the Internet connection on our machine. If you need to do searches or to send an email, I have to do it. Orders from the big boss, she said. Roger I noticed had begun to perk up again. Perhaps it was being in a work environment but I thought Riku was the more likely cause. Even at that first meeting he seemed to have a rapport with her albeit she was at least old enough to be his mother.

Tzarma called for me early in the evening and we went to a smaller restaurant where waitresses served us. I wore a skirt but no top thinking that the skirt might provide a little protection if the chairs were hard. Roger was obliged to tag along and I insisted that he wore a pair of shorts. My not wearing a top wasn’t commented on and in fact, I wasn’t the only topless woman there but the state of my back certainly brought looks of horror and even disgust. Of course a fair haired, light skinned woman also made me the centre of attention, especially with male customers. There was no doubt in my mind that they were mentally raping me but I felt safe with the Major.

Later, back in my room, Tzarma removed my skirt and undressed himself. I was no longer afraid of his prick but I did worry that he might get carried away and fuck me hard and disturb the fragile healing of my stripes. You’re learning fast Ellie, he commented when I rubbed his semi-hard prick to a full erection.

“Please take it easy Sir. Try not to hit my arse too hard. I needn’t have worried. He laid me bent over the side of the bed, spread my legs and carefully entered. Each of his thrusts seemed to stop a hair’s breadth from my bottom flesh and I soon began to enjoy the experience. In later conversations I found out that he was more concerned with impregnating me than giving himself or me pleasure. It didn’t bring me to a climax either but I wasn’t overly concerned. He stayed until a little before midnight and before he left, had a second insemination session as I then thought of them.

“Would you like to sleep in bed with me or continue lying on the floor? I asked Roger when we were alone. He didn’t answer but came into the bed.

“Mistress? Would you put some cream on my welts please Mistress? Roger asked after we’d lain awake for a while.

“Only if you cut the Mistress crap Roger and only if you do me first. I don’t need you to do what Suma did, just put the cream on carefully and I will return the favour. We’re on the same side, remember? I’ll help you, if you cooperate with me. He didn’t answer but he did smooth the cream into my skin with great care and I did the same for him. When finally we lay down again I pushed my body close alongside his and put my arm around his neck.

We awoke early, showered and used the toilet while in the same room. Roger had an erection when he first got up and I was tempted to suck him but I decided that neither of us was really ready for that. I was still a whore and a slut in his mind and to suck him would only reinforce that belief and probably disgust him. I think that at the back of his mind I was still innocent Elaine from London. Perhaps after he’d had a Tumalian girl, he would think differently. He could ask her but I would also have to give my permission. Maybe we would meet a young girl at work. They’ll all be pregnant so he won’t be able to sire a baby.

Nurse Muniba was pleased with my progress and I knew I could walk easier than yesterday but the sight of my back in the mirror still horrified me. The yellow purple bruising that covered the whole of my upper back and arse was overlaid with red stripes that bore black scabs along much of their length. They gave me a grotesque appearance. I decided to try the blouse but I had to leave the front completely undone and not use the tiny cups that should uplift my tits so as not to pull the fabric on to the welts. Roger’s back showed less severe bruising except at the top and only the first two top stripes looked angry. I have no doubt they did hurt and if he’d been the only one to have received the cane we’d have been more sympathetic but all the time his wounds were compared to mine and Sumala’s which again I suspect made him feel inferior.

I took my laptop and Riku made us welcome. She said that we needn’t start on our work if we didn’t feel up to it but both Roger and I decided that we needed something to occupy our minds and we should get it into words before the experience faded. On our allotted computer we found a folder with all the pictures of us that had been taken since our arrival. There were over sixty Jpegs. This further reinforced our belief that our abduction was planned long ago and everything that had happened to us was part of a well thought out plan. Do you think Ted knew about this when he appointed us? Roger surprised me by asking. Were we selected to work on Today’s World as a prerequisite for coming here? We always knew that only one person was needed for much of the work we did.”

I had to agree with him and commented, That raises another unanswerable question. To have recommended us, someone on the staff at college must be on the payroll here. Who? We ran through a list of the staff but couldn’t think which one it could possibly be. I think we should start the article at the point where we left college and got jobs at the magazine. For the first article perhaps going as far as the time we were arrested.”

“They’ll censor it.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Ask Riku, she seems to like you. Roger blushed but went to the other side of the room to speak with her. It was probably stretching the notion of a chain link but I guessed that as long as we were in sight of each other, it would be okay. I noticed them both smile as they talked and then she came over to see me.

“I’m to do the initial censorship and then it has to go to Major Entembe. I’ve been told to allow everything that is factual but to delete anything that is pure speculation or even deduction. You are not allowed to speculate on who organised your being here. As far as your article is concerned you were sent here in good faith but with an immunity document that no one so far has accepted. You unwittingly broke some of our laws and have been sentenced and punished for it. You can describe your experiences in the most explicit and horrific detail and give full rein to your feelings but again no speculation about who in our government is behind it all.”

“So we can write the facts as taken at face value. Like we were stopped at customs because I didn’t show my tits and we were punished with the strap because of it. We were then arrested because I had brought in contraceptive pills and certain items of clothing and Roger brought condoms and underwear. For that we were imprisoned and flogged. We can describe all that happened but mustn’t say that the Colonel or even the General are behind it all?”

“That’s about right. Put in as much detail as you like of what happened and all the titillating details of life here especially the sex bits. By all means relate your revulsion at some of the things we do and your feelings at the severity of the punishment. Don’t be shy describing all the sex that goes on or I’ll send the draft back to you for a re-write! Perhaps if you do it well enough it will cause a few of your English readers to make a few unwanted babies. One of the purposes of your writing is to encourage white women to come and produce babies for us but we want them to know exactly what the conditions here are like so we wish you to write about the bad points as well as the good. We don’t want them to be under the illusion that they can come and have some free sex with black pricks and go home again. Riku laughed and gave a little wave as she left.

One computer between two is a pain so I set up my laptop and started writing the text. I decided to keep a password-protected file as my diary and to use it as the basis for the articles and later for this story. In my diary I could put my thoughts and reasons concerning the way we were brought to Tumali and happened to us and then censor it for the articles. Roger always preferred doing the illustrations anyway and the ones in the folder were straight downloads from the cameras and needed a fair amount of tweaking before being acceptable for printing. He turned very pale at times when he saw them and I could understand why. Some of the close-up pictures were pretty horrific. Sumala came back from collecting his belongings at the time when Roger was enhancing the pictures of us on the punishment bench in the customs hall. Fuck me, they really had it in for you right from the start, he remarked with some bitterness.

He watched us for a while but seemed to get bored although each new picture that came on the screen renewed his interest. Would you mind getting my camera from my room Suma and then you can start to learn your job or at least the photography bit of it.”

“Yes ma’am. He gave a mock salute. And bring a cushion with you. You don’t have to sit on a hard chair! I called after him only to receive another Yes ma’am and the salute. One of the good points about Tumali is the honesty. Perhaps the punishment system, barbaric as it seemed to me, really worked. No one locked their doors. In fact none of the doors to any of the in Government House bedrooms had locks. This alarmed me at first but I was assured that everything was safe and no one, but no one, went into a room without being invited in. Not even the Major entered my room without knocking and being told to come in. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised because every single item, apart from the confiscated ones, in my luggage was returned and nothing appeared to have been tampered with.

I didn’t really get much writing done that morning, what with commenting on the pictures and showing Sumala how to use the camera but by the time lunch time came I felt exhausted. I knew Sumala was feeling his stripes too after walking several miles to his home, or at least the place where he last stored his stuff, and back. I gather that he had a locker in a community house that he used to keep his few belongings in. He’d had to carry his rucksack in front of him because he didn’t dare chafe the stripes on his back. Riku sat alongside Roger at lunch and I could see she fancied him even though she was much older and knew about his wimpishness and about his prick being on the small side for Tumali. Perhaps I could get a quiet word with her soon. I did tell her that we were going to rest for a while after lunch and she gave me a knowing look but didn’t say anything.

I think Sumala was pretty exhausted too and we both lay together on the bed but neither of us did much sexually except he stroked my tits and I caressed his prick a bit. Roger lay on the other side of the bed facing away from us. I’d given him the option of lying there with us or sitting in the chair and he made a show of reluctance in deciding the bed was the softer option.

That evening was a repetition of the previous one. Dinner with the Major early on followed by an insemination session, period of quiet where we lay close and he mainly asked about my life and a final insemination about midnight. Roger seemed asleep in the chair so I very quietly asked the Major if it would be possible to loan him out so that he could experience Tumali women without being inhibited by my presence. Have you someone in mind? he asked.

“Riku.”

“She’s infertile. Lost her ovaries after her last child. She doesn’t have so many men now. He considered my request. Yes, he agreed slowly, But for the moment, no more than three nights a week and he is to physically chained to her like you were and be back with you by breakfast time in the morning. Don’t be surprised if he is shocked by what he sees. I didn’t tell Roger.