The Slave World (21)

(21): A game of worlds

“Do you mind if I smoke? Asked Rebecca/Jennifer.

“I’d rather you didn’t, but it’s your flat, not mine.”

Jennifer reached for a packet of cigarettes and produced one, lighting it with a lighter from her nearby handbag. “I never could kick the habit,” she said as she took the first puff. “Funny how things that were once socially acceptable become almost taboo in time.”

I nodded and tapped the four photos that I had laid out along the coffee table. “These are photos of you?”

“Yes they are.” Jennifer held the cigarette in a raised hand, away from her head with her other hand touching the elbow. It was a graceful pose and one you’d see on older women who smoked at tables. Despite her young appearance she no longer acted as if she was young.

“So how old are you supposed to be?”

“I was born in 1940.” She regarded me with a gaze that suggested she didn’t expect me to believe that.

“Really? Well I’d like to know the brand of skin cream you use, because I would have said you were twenty three. Which you’re not in any of those photos. Explain.”

“Carousel,” she said as she tapped ash into a tray. Now my ears certainly pricked up. THAT was a word I had heard before. “Ah, the word means something to you?” she asked.

“Possibly.”

“Good, then perhaps you may believe me eventually. Caitlin, I didn’t want to lie to you, but there wasn’t any point in telling you the truth when we met. You simply wouldn’t have believed me. What would you have said if I had told you at the outset I was born in 1940?”

“Fair point. And I’m still not convinced this is anything but some trick that I don’t understand. The photos could be faked.”

“But they’re not, and I think you know they’re not. I’m sure you verified their authenticity?”

“I did. That’s why I’m here for some answers as opposed to just phoning you and telling you to piss off.”

“I was a model in the early sixties. I suppose you know that?”

I nodded and produced a fifth photo taken maybe in 1964. Jennifer had a very different hair style to the one she had now, but the age was parallel and the resemblance uncanny. If you took her now and simply changed her hair to an early sixties style you would be looking at the woman in the 1964 photograph.

“I did a photo shoot for one of Charles’s companies. I can’t remember now which one. I probably modelled for a yacht advert or something like that. He had a lot of yachts in those days. I caught his eye, and in those days the quickest way to social advancement if you were young and pretty was to catch the eye of a self made millionaire. Charles was doing very well for himself and would soon be doing even better thanks to 'friends' he made.” She tapped her cigarette again as she continued. “The sixties for me were a blaze of colour and a lifestyle you young people couldn’t comprehend today. Luxury meant luxury back then, provided you had money, and Charles was accumulating it faster than anyone could spend it. We hired entire islands for parties. I danced with Mick Jagger and fucked Jimi Hendrix. I flew everywhere in a private jet with white shag pile carpet and dolly bird hostesses who served premium champagne in just their underwear and high heels. Charles opened doors for me. We were married in 1968. I would have married him sooner than that, but he was cautious.”

“It’s all in the file,” I said. “I know the details of your life, but what I don’t know is how you went from looking eighty something to twenty three.”

“Gor exists. It’s real. There is a savage Counter Earth on the far side of the sun.” she saw my incredulous expression and nodded. “Of course you don’t believe me. Why should you? You see why I had to lie to begin with? I wasn’t deceitful for some nefarious purpose but because I wouldn’t have been believed if I had told you the truth. Gor is real. I don't care what you think. The men who have been following me are not part of some cult inspired by the books, they are actual Goreans who have been established on Earth since the early sixties. I know this because my husband owed much of his success and wealth to their influence. And in return he did whatever they told him to do. These Goreans buy men like Charles. They seduce men like him with promises of power and wealth and keep them as puppets in place to do their bidding. You have no idea how high this goes. And they have the greatest bribe you can possibly conceive of. Its called Carousel. It’s a serum which will roll back the effects of old age. Imagine you are one of the richest most powerful men in the world and you’re seventy six years old and you think you have everything except another twenty years in which to enjoy it. You are approached by these men who wish to use your power, your resources, your influence, your authority. What can they offer a seventy six year old man who has everything? How about making him twenty three again? Young, healthy, handsome? It is a gift that is rarely refused.”

“Your husband is dead. A stroke nine months ago.”

“Yes he is. He had worked hard for these people for many decades and he had been given his reward – Carousel. But he didn’t take it immediately. It takes time to create a new identity and through complex financial transactions transfer much of your wealth so that you can access it once your original identity is dead. But before all the arrangements were finalised Charles angered his shadowy benefactors. Maybe he no longer wished anything to do with them now that he had his prize in hand. I don’t know. There is a war being fought all around us, Caitlin. It is invisible for the most part but it claims many lives. Two warring alien races vie for supremacy of our solar system and beyond, and from the expression on your face now I know I was right to not attempt to tell you any of this when we first met. You don’t believe me and that is fine, but I’ll tell you anyway. One race, the Priest Kings, controls Gor and protects Earth while the other race, the younger more aggressive one – the Kurii, seeks to establish a foothold on Earth and from there secure the greater prize which is Gor. This second race has taken advantage of a civil war fought by the Priest Kings in the late nineteen sixties which diminished its power base. The Kurii have by now become the dominant force on Earth. They grow stronger with every passing year and can even blockade the space route to the other side of the sun. The agents of the Priest Kings are for the most part cut off, stranded on our planet, while the forces of the Kurii thrive and multiply”

I didn’t believe any of this of course, but I think she believed it. I’ve got a good radar sense for people lying to me and I don’t believe Jennifer/Rebecca was lying to me.

“Charles worked with the agents of the Kurii from the late sixties. They helped him build his influence, wealth and power and in turn he did many things for them, many bad things. I was complicit in much of what he did I suppose because of my silence. Charles was not a good man.”

“You stayed with him though?”

“Yes. I had wealth and privilege in association with him, but more than that, women do not simply walk away from men like Charles Hugo Larner.”

“He’d kill you?”

“No.” She regarded me as if I hadn’t put two and two together. “Charles would have felt death too good for a wife who tried to leave him. I would have been enslaved, taken to Gor and sold in the slave markets there. Not the easy life of a pleasure slave, but rather a squalid harsh slavery. He would have wanted me to suffer. And also, if I’m being honest, there was always the tantalising possibility of Carousel. I was growing older, Caitlin. I went from the beauty you see now to an attractive middle age to a dignified old age. One day I woke up and understood that men no longer looked at me twice as I walked by. I wanted my youth back.”

“Even if I believed any of this…”

“This is why I never confided in you. Charles and I grew older and Charles began to demand his reward from the Kurii. Carousel is no use if you die before you receive it. Always it seemed that there had to be one more task, one more thing the Kurii required. But in the end they gave him Carousel. But as I said, before he could take it, there was a falling out.”

“Did they give you this Carousel?”

“No. I had hoped they would, and I begged Charles to take me with him to this new life, but he simply looked at me in that cruel way he had by then and said there were plenty more beautiful women where I came from. He didn’t need me to be twenty three again. In fact he had grown tired of me. He would not give me Carousel.”

Jennifer had finished her cigarette and with trembling hands lit another one. “One day they came for him. A death squad. They have death squads you know, always on standby. They came for him in our house in Surrey and they killed him, making it look like a stroke. They would have killed me too for I knew too much, but I hid in a secret Priest Hole in the building until they left. I knew I didn’t have much time left. If they want you dead, well, there’s no power on Earth that can protect you from their long reach. But I could hide with a new face. I knew where Charles had secured his dose of Carousel. I took it and woke up in the morning with the face and body of my twenty three year old self. And then I ran. I’ve been living this new life ever since.”

“But they’ve found you? Somehow they’ve found you?”

Rebecca/Jennifer laughed and shook her head. “I should appreciate the irony really. Of course they haven’t ‘found me’. Do you think I’d still be alive if that was the case? They have no idea who I really am. No, the irony is… after fleeing the death squads I have by chance come to the attention of the Goreans not because they wish to find and kill Mrs Jennifer Larner, but because they think Rebecca Miles is attractive enough to be abducted and shipped to Gor to be enslaved. There is a saying – out of the frying pan and into the fire. If only I had been less beautiful when I was twenty three.”

“And the story you told me? The bookseller? The interview with the police?”

“I made up the interview with the police. I couldn’t tell you I didn’t dare go there, not just because I wouldn’t be able to prove my identity, but also because the police are in the pockets of the Kurii. But the bookseller is genuine. I had been procuring Gorean books to find out more about what the forces that had killed my husband. I am used to owning nice things and I thought to buy the vintage editions. I think the bookseller was where I was first spotted.”

“You displayed yourself in nadu before him?”

Jennifer said nothing as she sat there. “Don’t judge me, Caitlin. Every woman knows a moment of madness that she later regrets. I am not a slave.”

I smiled as she said that. She had willingly knelt in nadu. At least I had been threatened, that was my excuse.

“I don’t really believe any of this, you know,” I said as I picked up the photographs and replaced them in the card folder.

“Of course. No one ever does.” Said Rebecca/Jennifer. “I hoped you might expose these men in some way or perhaps make them think it wasn't worth coming after me if you were investigating the case. Better to go after some other woman instead.”

“You realise the level of danger you put me in by not telling me any of this? You were prepared to risk my life, my freedom in order to try and save yourself?”

“I’m sorry, Caitlin. It’s not personal. I just don't want to be a slave. Why should I be a slave? Let them collar someone else. I don't mean any other girl any harm, but I have to put myself first. You'd do the same.”

“Just so we understand one another.” I wore a steel ankle ring around my left ankle because of her. There was no way I could remove it.

“What are you going to do now?” asked Rebecca nervously. “They’re still out there. They still want me.”

“I know.”

“I was genuine when I said I needed your help. They want to enslave me!”

“I know.” I got up to my feet and picked up my shopping bag containing the silk lingerie. “I’m tempted to tell you I don’t care and you can wear a slave collar for all I care. But you’re right, I wouldn’t have believed you if you had told me the truth. I probably still don’t believe you, except I can see that you believe this. I’m going to consider the options.”

“I don’t think there is much time left for me, Caitlin. I’m afraid to go to sleep at night for fear where I might wake up.”

“You could try running?”

“I’m sure they’re still watching me.”

“Yes, they probably are.” I thought of my ankle ring again and how impossible it would be for me to try and run.

“I’ll be in touch, Jennifer, that’s all I can offer you right now.”

And with that I let myself out. Outside in the hall I checked the phone for a text from Adam.

Nothing.