Christmas Gift

“Now the next item,” Daniel said to his wife, Scarlett, and son, Frank, as they sat in the farm office. “We’ve been mulling over whether to get a fourth ponygirl for a while. Well, third mare. We could use one, but I’m not entirely sure of the cost/benefit yet. Scarlett?”

“I’d like to get one for my new daughter.”

David sat up straighter. “I think she’d love having one of her own, but can we afford it?”

“Hm,” Dan said. “That would kick part of the expense into personal rather than business. I take it you’ve been looking?”

“Yes,” Scarlett said. “What do you think of getting a PPO this time?”

“That’s definitely an idea. PPOs are kind of high quality for farm work, but if she’s going to be Michelle’s first and farm second it might work out, and I’ll admit to wanting to see how much of what I hear about the breed is reality-based and how much is puffery.”

“How much would we have to do for support?” David asked.

“I’ve checked,” his mother replied. “Our stable setup is pretty close to what they recommend. The only two things I can see is that Michelle would need a mentor to learn riding and possibly show stuff, and we might want to have our stallion upgraded with the Super Stud DNA modification.”

“You’re a bit closer to the show people than I am, dear,” Dan said. “See who you can find for a local mentor. As for Super Stud.” He tipped his chair back for a while to think. Then he pressed a button.

A minute later the door opened and a man walked in. He was dressed in a servant’s outfit, and wore a control collar. “You called, sir?”

“Yes. I’m wondering about the sexual situation in the stable and with the farm hands. Are they bothering the pony mares?”

“I’d hate to get anyone in trouble,” Malcolm began.

“Oh, I’m not looking for that,” his master said. “You know my policy: if the hands can settle their issues themselves I don’t want to get involved. We’re thinking of adding another ponygirl, and wondering if the stallion can handle it.”

“I really doubt if he can,” the servant replied. “From what I’ve heard I don’t think he’s up to servicing more than one of them a day. And I’ve also heard that they seem to like it more than once a day. It settles them.”

“That clarifies the situation. Thank you, Malcolm.”

Malcolm nodded his head and left.

“So Super Stud is going to be necessary. David, put that on the list. We need to get him down to the clinic so it can be installed. Scarlett, David, get together and look over their stock to find one that Michelle will like and will work out for the farm as well.”

“And of course, keep the price down,” David said.

“I think we can go a bit above rock bottom,” his father replied. “Michelle is your wife and my daughter-in-law. We want some degree of quality.”

Cindy stood watching the scenery roll by as the pickup pulled the ponygirl trailer, and therefore her, along a series of winding roads. She snorted in amusement as she thought of how she called herself: nobody else in the world knew that, and she had not the least idea of what they called her. As long as she knew when she was being called it worked out. Just don’t call her late for dinner! She tended to get really cranky if she wasn’t fed on time. Unless, of course, there was a reason.

The roads rolled past. She’d given up trying to keep track of where she was, not that knowing where she was mattered in the slightest. It was just a fun way to pass the time.

As time passed, they went onto winding country roads, and occasionally had to slow down behind a horse-drawn or ponygirl-drawn carriage or cart. She noted with bemusement that the ponygirls all seemed to be wearing tunics that had a bold pattern of diagonal black and white stripes. She also noted the occasional ponygirl on a side path, either being ridden or pulling a narrow one person cart. Her head came back as she spotted one ponygirl trotting along by herself, arms behind her in her arm binder. What was that about?

They went through a couple of small towns that had a wide mixture of cars and horse and ponygirl-drawn vehicles. There were a fair number of horses and ponygirls standing at hitching racks, apparently sharing space without any ill effects. Cindy looked at them with narrowed eyes. The herd mares had said something about parts of the country where ponygirl use was widespread enough to be out in the open, and this seemed to be one of them.

Michelle snuggled up against her new husband as they watched one of her younger sisters-in-law open a present. Beth squealed in delight at the sparkling pendant.

Now it was her turn again, and she was down to the last present, from her father-in-law. It looked like a book, and she’d been ignoring it. Books she could take or leave, and she vastly preferred to leave them.

She picked it up from under the family tree, and tore the wrapping. It was a book. The book’s title seemed to rise off the cover and burn itself into her brain: You and Your Premier Ponygirl. Subtitled: The Ponygirl Owner’s Guide to Stabling, Caring For, Training, Disciplining, Using and Showing Your Premier Ponygirl.

She completely forgot she was all of 22, a graduate of a major university and the proud holder of a Goodwife Ribbon. She ripped open the envelope that came with it and squealed in delight as she took out the Certificate of Ownership for Premier Ponygirl PPO-2033-926.

Her father-in-law said a quite credible “Oof!” as she tackled him and gave him a hug. “Can we go look now?”

Malcolm cleared his throat. “It hasn’t been delivered yet, ma’am. The delivery service says about an hour.”

“And that gives Miss Analexis time to get here as well,” Daniel, who was still recovering from being tackled by his daughter-in-law, said. “I’ve contracted with her to mentor you.”

The pickup and trailer eventually pulled into a cluster of buildings, not all that different from the other clusters that dotted the landscape. The driver got out and spoke to someone, who came around back and opened the trailer. He led the ponygirl down the ramp and into the snow.

Cindy got a good look at him. He was dressed, if you could call it that, in a single-sleeve tunic like all of the slaves around her training stable wore. It had a different pattern, though. He was definitely a slave: males who wore control collars were all slaves. There was something really funny about the hair on his arms and legs.

Cindy felt the snow crunch under her hooves as her led her to the stable. Snow wasn’t bad, she thought, especially a light fall like this. Her trainers had made sure she could handle it. Traction shoes might be better, she thought idly, but they hadn’t provided them. Plain old hard rubber shoes had to do.

The groom led her into the stable. She noted the setup as she walked past: there was a grooming area that seemed to be the same as the ones she’d trained with. There was a row of horse stalls, and then a row with ponygirl stalls. By now she could tell the difference almost at a glance: ponygirl stalls were a bit narrower and a bit shorter. The workmanship was a lot better. The doors were quite different. And the corridor was quite a bit narrower: there was no way you could manage a horse in there!

There seemed to be five ponygirl stalls. Three of them held ponygirls, or rather two of them held mares and one held a stallion! That made her grin. As long as the stallion could handle three mares, she thought, she was going to like it here.

One thing she noted right away: each of the three occupied stalls had a name rather than a number on the nameplate. The mares seemed to be Daisy and Fern, the stallion seemed to be Fox.

The groom put her in the next stall, clipped a light chain to the ring on her collar and removed the arm binder. Then he spent a few minutes hanging the various items of her tack on the wall. As he did, she worked her arms to get the kinks out from having them in the arm binder. She idly noted that he put a book in a rack along with the other tack.

He’d no sooner finished putting tack on the wall before he put her arm binder back on and led her out into the attached paddock.

There were eight people standing there looking at her. Older man and woman, looked like a married couple. A second, younger, couple. The young man looked like he could be related to the older couple, the woman didn’t. Two young girls who looked like younger daughters and an older woman who didn’t look like she was related to any of the others. A slave hovered in the background; from his demeanor he probably ran the household.

The older woman and the woman in the younger couple looked like they were dressed for working with horses – or ponygirls. The rest of them seemed to be wearing holiday finery, and would be quite willing to go back into the house to get out of the cold.

The older woman gave her a measuring stare, systematically working from the top down. Ah, someone who knew ponygirls, and probably not her new owner. Someone like that wouldn’t need the mob scene. She temporarily dismissed her, not that she thought she was unimportant! Au Contrare. She was probably going to be seeing way too much of her.

The woman in the younger couple was practically eating her with her eyes. Probably her new owner. The others were clearly family; they were interested, but they’d seen ponygirls before. In fact they had three more in their stable. They were all dressed for a party, she was dressed for stable work. Good quality, but still like she expected to get dirty and enjoy every minute of it.

Her brow furrowed slightly. Something about the young woman told her she’d seen her before. Where?

She looked at her new owner steadily.

“So that’s her,” Michelle breathed as Rodney brought the girl out of the stable. “She’s, um, taller than I was expecting. Why’s she staring at me like that?”

Miss Analexis laughed. “She’s identified you as her owner, and she’s measuring you. This one’s got it. Either you make her your pony, or you’re going to have major problems.”

“I take it you’ve seen this before,” David, Michelle’s husband, said.

“Twice, both times with PPOs. The first one I ruined by making it a test of will. I won, of course, but she’s never lived up to her potential. The second one....” She paused. “She’s one of my champion show ponies. She’s the only one of the herd I can trust to give me 110% when it counts.”

“So what should I do now?”

“What do you think you should do, girl?”

“Make friends with her?”

“Exactly right. How would you do that?”

“Talk softly and give her something?”

“Exactly correct.” Miss Analexis reached into her purse and took out a small packet.

“Oh, a candy. I see.” Michelle gathered her self-assurance and walked into the paddock.

Yup, she’s the owner and the older biddy is the aunt or tutor or whatever, Cindy told herself as she watched the two talk to each other before the young woman walked up. She said something. Cindy, of course, couldn’t tell what it was, but the tone was both calm and non-threatening, and also held a great deal of self-assurance. She’d obviously had some experience dealing with strange horses and possibly the ponygirls in the stable. Then she held something in her hand.

Cindy looked down at it. The girl couldn’t be more than about 5’4”, even with the heels on her work boots. Yup, it was a candy. She grinned and stooped slightly to take it from the outstretched palm with an economical flick of her tongue against her upper lip. Then she brushed her cheek against her new owner’s cheek before straightening up.

Michelle looked up at her new ponygirl. The altitude was going to take getting used to. She ran a familiar hand over the girl’s skin and frowned. She definitely needed grooming.

“Groom her next?” she asked without turning.

“What would you want after a long and not very comfortable trip?” Miss Analexis answered.

“Right. Groom her.” Michelle laughed and held out her hand for the lead rope.

Cindy followed her new owner back into the stable. They went right to an open shower space. Grooming station, Cindy thought automatically. And boy, could she stand to be groomed!

Her new owner fastened the lead to a handy ring, taking enough care with the knot that Cindy figured she hadn’t been doing it for very long. The grooms she knew kind of casually threw the lead at the ring, and it almost knotted itself.

Then she went to a wall switch. Two manacles fell from the ceiling. She walked behind Cindy and removed the arm binder; Cindy felt her arms move into the grooming position, almost without her conscious volition.

The girl looked at it, shook her head, and gave the manacle switch a twist. They came down a bit. Cindy’s arms lowered to match.

Her new owner snapped the manacles around her wrists and then looked at the hand bindings. She said something, and then had a short conversation with both the old biddy and the stable hand.

“What do we do with these?” Michelle asked as she flicked one of the cylinders that encased her new ponygirl’s hands.

“Depends,” Miss Analexis said. “I know that doesn’t tell you a lot, but whether you want her to have her hands free is a major decision. Unless your stable has a policy?” She looked at the groom.

Rodney cleared his throat again. “Um, we let their hands free. The mistress likes them to have nicely done long hair for when she takes one of them into town, and it’s simpler to let them groom it themselves. She’s very particular about how whichever girl she uses is turned out.” He shrugged. “If I see them doing something with their hands that they shouldn’t, a couple of strokes gets the point across. I suppose a real trainer could settle the problem, but until we get one...” He touched the whip coiled at his waist.

“You most likely won’t have that problem with this one,” Miss Analexis said. “The PPO breed is very thoroughly trained to only use their hands for permitted activities.”

“That’ll help,” he said as he reached to take the two devices that Michelle handed him and put them on a shelf.

“Wet first,” Michelle said as she adjusted the sprayer and thoroughly soaked the tethered ponygirl. She went through the cycle of lathering her up, scrubbing and then rinsing, paying attention that she got under the manacles, behind the ears and in the other cracks and crevices.

“Since she’s going to be doing her own hair, I take it I should just dry it out and give it enough brushing to get the tangles out?”

“Right. Then take her back to her stall,” the groom instructed. “I’ll make sure she’s got enough feed and has a brush, comb and mirror to finish up.”

A few minutes later, she had her new ponygirl in her stall, tethered to the back wall with a light chain. She closed the stall door and shot the bolt.

“Something’s bothering me about her,” she said to Miss Analexis. “I’ve got this feeling that I’ve seen her before.”

“You have a specific person in mind?”

“Yes. A girl named Cindy that vanished from campus about six, seven months ago. I didn’t know her all that well; we weren’t friends or anything.”

“It’s possible. Your book will explain it in detail. The thing to know is that most of the PPO breed started out as college girls who either gave their boyfriends one of those ‘True Love and Eternal Devotion’ declarations or gave a lender a contingency indenture as security for a loan. They’re both options on slave contracts, although most of the silly girls who do them don’t know that.”

“They’re what?!”

“That ‘True Love and Eternal Devotion’ declaration is a six month renewable option on a slave contract. The ability to exercise the option doesn’t kick in until after the first renewal, so most of them expire without anything happening.” She paused. “It also expires when they get married. To the guy they gave the declaration to.”

Michelle looked at her ponygirl and frowned in thought for a long moment. “She got herself into it. I have no idea if there’s a DNA mod to turn her back the way she was, and she’s already been trained. She’ll just have to live with it,” she finally pronounced. “I am not giving up my ponygirl just because we happened to see each other on campus a few times.”

She paused. “I get to name her, right? Keeping her old name probably isn’t a good idea. I suppose I should continue the flower motif.” She paused again. “How’s Dahlia sound?”

“I don’t know another ponygirl named Dahlia around here,” Miss Analexis said as she looked at Rodney.

Rodney walked to a screen set in the wall where the ponies couldn’t see it. “Could you pronounce that a couple of times?” he asked.

Once all three of them had pronounced the word, he entered some commands and then nodded. “OK, that’s the name she’ll answer to. I’ll have the sign made up.”

“I thought I knew how these things worked, but that’s all you do to change her name?”

“Something you’ll find when you study the book,” Miss Analexis said. “You know they don’t actually understand what people say, right?”

“Um, yes.”

“That’s done in the earplugs: they change sound streams they identify as speech so that it’s impossible for the brain to find patterns. Which brings up the question: how do they respond to keywords?” She paused for her student to think about it.

“Oh. That must come through the collar?”

“Exactly right. The collar has a microphone, or it would be more accurate to say that the collar is a microphone. That makes it easy to change any keyword, or even the entire set at one time. The pony has no idea that anything’s changed; knowing you’re speaking her name is a conditioned reaction.”

“I see. Now what’s she doing?” Michelle asked as she turned her attention back to her Christmas present.

“She’s trying to tell you something.” Miss Analexis said. “Can you guess what it is?”

“She’s pointing at her, um, and at the stallion. Well, that’s obvious, she’s asking if she can have him.”

“Since the stallion is looking real interested, I presume that your stable policy is to let them do it while they’re loose in the pasture?”

“It is, ma’am,” the groom confirmed.

“Trying to keep her for yourself could be done; the stable management program and the ponygirl modules can make attempts for any pair to get it on together rather unpleasant. But then you’d have to deal with the consequence.”

“Why would I want to keep her for myself?” Michelle asked as she blushed.

“You probably wouldn’t,” Miss Analexis agreed. “However, there are considerations. If you want to keep her, you’ve got to form a bond with her. She knows you’re her owner, so that starts it out right, and if you keep grooming her and using her, that will strengthen it. Sex is one of the two other ways to form a bond. Sex with a stallion doesn’t count, but sex with stable attendants or anyone else will weaken the bond.”

“So you’re saying she and the stallion can have as much as they want, but she should be off limits to everyone else?”

“Yes.” Miss Analexis looked at the stable attendant.

“I understand, ma’am,” he answered the implied order. “There’s going to be a problem, though.”

“What?”

“Keeping those two satisfied,” he nodded in the direction of the two mares, who had started looking daggers at the stallion, “runs him ragged.”

“Hm. So he doesn’t have the Super Stud modification installed, I take it?”

“Not that I know of, ma’am.”

“We’ll have to talk that over with your father-in-law,” Miss Analexis told Michelle. She looked at the stable attendant. “I presume you have authority to do what you have to?”

“Um, yes, ma’am.”

Michelle asked: “You said two other major factors in forming a bond?”

“Yes. PPOs are a very different breed. They form an almost unbreakable bond with their owner – if their owner rides them, but not otherwise. Anyone else riding them doesn’t seem to work.”

“Well, I certainly intend to ride her! When can we get started?”

“Learning to ride is best done at my place rather than here. Let’s make the next sessions there. Your father-in-law has a competent stable staff from everything I’ve seen so I don’t think I’m needed here unless you’ve got problems.”

Rodney hung up the phone and looked at the four ponies thoughtfully. What master had just told him made sense: Fox had gone to the clinic a few days before and had been a bit off for the next day, so the Super Stud modification ought to be working. Why hadn’t they told him? He shook his head and then shrugged.

Now how to verify that it was working in a way they’d understand? He thought for a minute, looked at the clock while he put schedules together in his head and then nodded. Start out by putting Fox in with Daisy, wait an hour, put him in with Fern, wait another hour, put him in with Dahlia. That ought to do it. Meanwhile he’d better get busy making Dahlia’s nameplate.

He clipped a lead on Fox’s bridle, unclipped the stall chain and brought him around to Daisy’s stall. He clipped the second stall chain to his collar, unclipped the lead and shot the bolt to the stall. Then he walked out, leaving the two ponies to their own devices.

As he walked, he thought he’d better tell the other stable hands that the two mares were probably not going to be as receptive to a quick one now and then as they used to be.

That, Dahlia thought to herself, was an interesting introduction to the rest of the herd! Or at least to the herd stallion! The one name she wouldn’t have given him was Fox. Maybe Rabbit. Or something that was a cross between a wolverine and a bear. Or wasn’t a wolverine related to a bear? Whatever. He’d been a bit doubtful when the groom had put him in with her, but once he got into it he performed magnificently. Of course, she grinned happily, that was what herd stallions were for: keeping their mares happy.

Of course, the other interesting thing was the book in her hand. She’d snitched it on her way back from the latrine. You and Your Premium Ponygirl seemed like it had oodles of interesting reading. The appendix giving background on how the collars worked and what she could and couldn’t do with them was fascinating. Especially the piece about how to use the command system by twitching her fingers, and how to practice without a reader.

The piece that said they couldn’t lock her out of using the command system by subvocalizing was equally fascinating. She wasn’t, of course, supposed to be able to subvocalize.

She turned the page, memorized a few commands to try and then put the book away where she could return it the next time she had to go to the latrine.

Of course, the recommendation in the book was that she shouldn’t have permission to do anything.

Michelle practically sang. She was due at Miss Analexis’ at ten, and she was ready to go. Since the weather had warmed up, the ponies were back in the pasture. She walked to the fence and whistled. “Yo Dahlia,” she waved, holding a lead in her hand.

Dahlia looked up from where she was sitting on her hooves and trotted over. They nuzzled briefly as she snapped the lead on Dahlia’s bridle, and brought her into the stable. She pulled a pony tunic (large size) out of the closet, unclipped the lead and tossed it to Dahlia.

Dahlia looked at it and then slid it over her head. It settled and then tightened, showing off all of her curves to perfection.

Michelle picked up the arm binder, and Dahila obediently turned, hands clasped, so that her owner could put it on. Michelle replaced the lead with a pair of reins and led her ponygirl out into the carriage yard.

A minute later she had her harnessed between the shafts of one of the plain trail carts. It was plain, at least compared to the ones the two girls used to get to and from school: those had all kinds of decorations. The other two just had the farm name on the sides.

The pony tunic made harnessing her so much easier: just pick up the shafts and touch the straps to the designated areas on her tunic. The straps attached themselves like a politician to a vote, and the built-in stress distribution patterns in the tunic did the rest. She’d been told that the tunics had originally come in because of many, many complaints about naked ponygirls on the public roads, but since then they’d more than proved themselves by simplifying workflow. Her husband, father-in-law and mother-in-law had been mulling using them to replace the regular tack, but seemed to be waiting for the rest of the people in the district to get behind the idea.

She got in the cart and checked that everything was correct. The shafts had two mirrors each. The back ones were mirrors so she could see behind herself without turning. The front ones were something else: they were some kind of display so that she could see what was in front without wishing that Dahlia was, somehow, transparent. The front of the shafts had little headlights for night driving, although taking a ponygirl out at night wasn’t the world’s best idea. At least, unless she was equipped with infrared goggles and trained in how to use them.

She put up the windscreen. It was quite nippy out, and unlike Dahlia, she was not weatherproof.

She flicked the reins, pulled right and then left. Dahlia responded like a dream. She kept her at a walk until they were on the path, and then flicked the reins to bring her up to a trot. Then she relaxed on the seat and watched her ponygirl’s hair and tail float back in the breeze as her tunic skirt showed the ripple of the muscles pumping away underneath.

The eerie thing was that her trunk was almost totally still, the only movement she could see around the arm binder was the rhythmic expansion and contraction of her torso and waist as she breathed in and out.

The fact was, she mused, driving a ponygirl on the side paths was only a little bit more difficult than driving a car. Driving a car wasn’t difficult at all: you punched in the destination and let it do the rest. Ten year olds got their driver’s licenses regularly. Driving this kind of pony cart was almost as easy: you set the destination, and the navigation routines in her collar took care of telling her what to do. She wondered idly whether Dahlia was even aware of where the commands were coming from. Well, that should be in the book.

They came to a crossroad. Michelle pulled the reins to get Dahlia to stop until she could check for traffic. That was one of her duties. Most of the time traffic control would take care of it, but it never hurt to be on the cautious side.

She flicked the reins once she was sure the road was clear; Dahlia brought the cart back up to a trot easily and swiftly.

Fern stuck her head over the side of the stall while Dahlia was reading her purloined book. She whinnied and then cocked an eyebrow when Dahlia looked up. Dahlia stood and signed something.

Fern looked puzzled. Dahlia tried another sign. Fern still looked puzzled. Dahlia fell back on miming something that she hoped might indicate “talking with movements,” or close enough that the idea got across.

Fern mimed a look of astonishment. Dahlia noticed that the other two ponies were standing up and looking on intently. She sighed.

Now how did the herd mares start off, she asked herself. She looked out of the stall, and sure enough, one of the stable’s cats was sitting there. She pointed at it, and then made the three finger movements that spelled c-a-t. Then she spelled the word out with strokes in the air as if she was writing on the back side of a transparent board.

Fifteen minutes later they had managed to get c-a-t down well enough that it couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. Then she’d gone through a simple alphabet drill for them so they had an idea of how flexible the fingers had to be for spelling things out.

After it was all over, she shook her head ruefully. Had she been this slow and tried her herd mare’s patience this much? She was very much afraid the answer was yes. However, it certainly had one very positive side, besides teaching her patience. Teaching them was going to take a lot of time.

“She’s doing what?” Daniel asked, somewhere between astonishment and amusement.

“She seems to be teaching them sign language, sir,” Rodney repeated.

“Have you checked the book?”

“Yes, sir. It says that it won’t create a problem. It also says I’m not to learn what they’re saying.”

“Did it give a reason why not?”

“Yes, sir. It said that stable staff shouldn’t know what the ponies are saying about them.” He sounded vaguely insulted.

“I suppose I’d better find out what the book says,” Daniel said. “Carry on.”

“Yes, sir.”

“On the sign language,” Daniel said to Rodney a few days later.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’m afraid I agree with the book; you and the rest of the stable staff shouldn’t know what they’re talking about. In any case, at the rate they’re going I doubt if they’ll be able to talk about anything for at least another month.”

“Can I ask why?”

“Just what the book says: if you’ve got a common language you could have serious difficulties maintaining the idea that you should treat them like horses. It can be very bad for maintaining the necessary emotional distance.”

Rodney made a face. “I’m afraid I see what you’re getting at sir. I’ll tell the rest of the staff.” He paused. “However, Dahlia is doing something else.”

“Oh?”

“She’s been reading the PPO book when I wasn’t watching. I’ve moved it out of her way.”

“She’s what?” Daniel laughed. “Talk about the Law of the Hidden Flaw! I know I saw that book right there myself, and it never occurred to me that she’d be able to get her hands on it to read it. In fact, it never occurred to me that she could read it if she got her hands on it. Do you know how she did it?”

“To and from the latrine is my best guess.”

“Makes sense.”

The Law of the Hidden Flaw, Daniel thought to himself as he slid into the chair behind his desk in the farm office. There’s nothing in there that she could actually do anything with, and she hasn’t shown any signs of throwing screaming fits or going up the wall from learning what they did to her. So if she did anything, what would it be... He scrolled through the table of contents looking for a hint. Well, maybe...

He used his reader to key in a command to check her collar’s command logs, and sat back to consider what they showed him.

“Dahlia is the next item on the agenda,” Daniel said. “How’s she working out for you, Michelle?”

“She’s great! I think we’re bonding really well, and I’m beginning to get some confidence in riding her.”

“The monitors are showing the emotional surge when you’re riding her, and not when Miss Analexis is riding her, so I think the bonding is going nicely. There is, however, one other thing she’s doing that’s got me concerned.”

“Oh? Not more on the sign language?”

“No, Rodney’s seen the logic of the prohibition. I can’t say he’s happy with it, but he agrees it does make sense. Anyway, they’re not far enough along to be plotting anything, even if I could imagine what those four could be plotting that wouldn’t be more amusing than problematic. We don’t have to learn it ourselves; there’s a translation program so we can tell what they’re saying if we want to run the surveillance recordings through it.”

“Oh, good. I was wondering,” Scarlett said.

“I’d like to stay on sign language for a second,” David said. “What’s going to stop them from teaching it to other ponygirls in the community?”

“Procedure is that their arms are always bound behind them when they’re outside of the stable and pasture complex,” his father said dryly. “I haven’t seen anyone getting slack there! Especially since we’ve got alarms set to check.

“Besides, now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure that Miss Analexis’ herd knows sign language; I just didn’t know what I was seeing when I’ve been over there. There might be a couple more.”

“Oh, right. That should do it. So what’s she done this time?”

“Hacked her collar.”

“She’s what?” Scarlett exclaimed as David sat up straight and Michelle suppressed a grin. Dahlia was her ponygirl, after all!

“Well, saying she’s hacked it is a bit strong. We left the permissions set for the Slaveowner’s Consortium’s recommended settings for slaves, and forgot that ponygirls should not have permission to do anything except the absolute minimum that’s legally mandated. I’ve locked down the other three’s permissions, but that leaves what to do about Dahlia.”

“Why didn’t you just lock her out?” Scarlett asked.

“That might cause more problems than it solves,” he answered. “She hasn’t been doing anything that I can see will cause major problems. She’s learned the finger code. She listened to news for the first few days and then has been ignoring it. What she’s doing now is listening to music channels, pretty much light and classical. She’s also taken to reading You and Your Premium Ponygirl off the net. She checked out the legally mandated commands, but she hasn’t done anything else.”

“Well,” David said, “I don’t see much point in locking the barn door after the horse has escaped. At least as long as all she’s doing is listening to music. I’d like to yank that damn book, but it’s something she’s probably memorized by now. Not much point.”

“I’d worry about her losing the anti-boredom conditioning,” Scarlett said.

“Hum. Scarlett, you’re our collar programming expert. See if you can come up with a set of restrictions that lets her know we’re on to her, gives her enough time on a weekly basis to show that she hasn’t lost the anti-boredom conditioning, and otherwise lets her have her music and that book, but nothing else that isn’t legally mandated.”

Scarlett nodded. “I should have that for our next meeting.”

Dahlia trotted along, the feeling of her owner more comforting than anything. She followed the path she’d been taking to her trainer’s place when Michelle pulled back on the rein for her to stop. She stopped, of course, but she was puzzled; there wasn’t any reason that she could see. Then her rider pulled the rein to signal going right.

She turned right, and saw that there was a path on the other side of the road. Her rider signaled for her to go, and she trotted across the road onto the new path. It seemed to go next to another road. She trotted on, letting herself be aware of her surroundings and the rider in her saddle.

Eventually they came into a town, and she had to slow down for the traffic. Eventually her rider guided her to a hitching rail in front of a building with the legend: “Health Service.” Her rider got off, flipped the reins around the rail, and walked into the building.

Michelle walked into the Health Service building and looked around. The receptionist was easy enough to spot: she was the one behind the desk in the little waiting room. To Michelle’s surprise, it was fairly obvious that she was a slavegirl because she was wearing the single-shoulder tunic in the Health Service’s variant of the Government’s registered pattern.

The receptionist looked at the screen perched on her desk. “Mrs. Monet, you’re right on time. Do you need to see the doctor, or are you just here for your annual birth control shot?

“The birth control shot, um, Dotty,” she answered, picking the receptionist’s name off of the nameplate on her desk.

“Good. We can take care of that right now, and send you on your way.” Dottie got up and walked over to a small cabinet. She snapped on a pair of gloves and took an injector and swab from the cabinet.

Michelle bared her arm, and the receptionist deftly injected the birth control shot.

“Just have a seat for a few minutes, and then you’ll be good to go,” she said as she threw the injector into a bin labeled “medical trash” and followed them with the gloves.

Michelle waited a few minutes to make sure that the shot hadn’t caused any problems, and then walked out. She mounted her ponygirl, and headed back.

Dahlia trotted back home, enjoying the feeling of bearing her rider. They trotted into the yard, and Michelle dismounted. She led Dahlia into the grooming room and gave her a quick wash. Dahlia nuzzled her before she trotted, tail held high, out to the pasture to wait for whatever the masters wanted her to do next. Possibly Fox would be there?

None of the other ponies were there. Fox was probably out working at something, while Daisy and Fern would be on their way to the children’s schools to pick them up. She had the pasture to herself for a while. She sat back and tuned in a music station.

“Dahlia is the next item on the agenda,” Daniel said at their weekly meeting. “Is she still working out?”

“Like a dream, daddy,” Michelle answered. “I took her to town to get my birth control shot, and she performed perfectly.”

“Great. Scarlett, what have you got for us?”

“I’ve got it set up to lock things down the way we discussed, but I’m wondering if we should bother.”

“Oh?”

“Like Dave said last time, it kind of reeks of locking the barn door after the horse is stolen. What I’m thinking of is making sure she can’t contact anyone off site, except for an emergency contact, and letting her look at anything on the public channels she wants to. That’s a fairly common setup, so I know it’s going to work.”

“What about the rest of them?” Dave asked.

“You mean special privileges?”

“Yes. That might cause a bit of a problem in the stable.”

“That’s her problem to deal with. They’re doing fairly well at their sign language; it’s not like they can’t talk it out.”

“Hm. What about setting some boundaries?”

“You mean rules? How do we tell her?”

“Send her a message,” Scarlett answered. “She knows perfectly well that we don’t talk to them because we don’t want to, not because we can’t.”

“So we simply underline that we’re holding the whip,” David said. “Let’s discuss what it should say.”

“You and Michelle get together and draft it,” Daniel said. “We’ll discuss it later. That all on Dahlia for the moment?”

“Pretty much,” Scarlett answered. “We need to get her broken in on farm work, but it’s still early in the season for that.”

“Yeah,” Dave said. “There are times when our ponies don’t have very much time for anything but work.” He laughed.

Dahlia walked into the pasture. A morning spent pulling one of the agricultural machines was certainly different! A good grooming, something to eat and she was definitely ready to relax until they needed her again.

None of the other ponies were in the pasture, so she sat back on her hooves, tail wrapped around herself, and tried to bring in a music program.

~You have a message waiting,~ the voice said in her ear.

I have a what?! she thought.

Probably spam, her mind commented.

Better not be, she told it. She hunted around a bit until she found the right command to listen to the message.

~Hi, Dahlia,~ the message started.

~I’m Michelle, your owner and rider. I suspect you’ve figured out who I am, and no, I didn’t pick you out of the catalog. That was my husband.~

I’d wondered. Voice sounds right.

~We noticed you’ve managed to hack your collar. After a lot of discussion, we’ve decided to let you keep what you’ve got, as long as you follow a few rules.~

Rules, huh.

~The first rule is that you’re not to tell the other ponies. Their access is locked down the way yours should have been; there’s nothing they can do with it except get frustrated.~

Umph. That might be a problem if they catch on.

~The second rule is that we’re letting you listen to just about anything that isn’t a current news show, but we’re not allowing you to send anything out.~

Like they’d do anything else.

~The third rule is that we’re leaving you access to the routine to send messages, but if you do it had better be a ‘someone is going to die if we don’t get help pronto’ type of emergency. Or else.~

Or else sounded pretty nasty.

~The message routine has a practice mode, you can use that to make sure you can send a message if you need to.~

That sounds better.

~The fourth rule is that you’ve got to spend a fair amount of time each week just standing around as if you didn’t have access to music channels. If you don’t, we’ll make sure you do.~

That’s ... probably reasonable.

~The fifth and last rule is that you’ve got to maintain your usual sunny disposition. As long as you do, we’ll let you have it.~

Hmmm.

~Bye.~

Humph. That sounded awfully like “don’t call me and I won’t call you.”

She sat back to think about it. After a while she figured it out: she was a ponygirl, and she would likely never be anything else. She had three other ponies to talk to and play with, a rider she adored, grooms that were pretty nice, all things considered, and work she could do. The rest of the world didn’t seem to mean anything.

She was Michelle’s ponygirl, and she was quite content.