A Slaves Strength

A Slave's Strength (Chapter 9):
A Shocking Development

by

mechgogo

The second major incident that marred Tom's training occurred two days later. Things had been going fairly well. Billy and Aaron had left earlier that day. Tom got a chance to say goodbye to them. Apparently Billy's grandparents had cashed in some old investments and been able to buy him clear. Aaron's uncle in Nebraska had done some fast maneuvering with a loan against the garage he owned. That, plus a little help from a local abolitionist group had been enough to swing the needed funds.

The day was winding down. Tom's group – smaller now with the absence of the boys and a few other lucky ones – had been brought into the gym for a post-dinner intimate services lesson. The trainer was a female staffer, not Mistress Beth, to Tom's regret. She was out on a collection run.

"Now," the lady said. She had introduced herself as Mistress Roche and did not recommend puns on her name that ended in the word 'Motel.' "As you all are aware you will be expected to serve your new employers sexually as well in other, more traditional ways. What you need to remember is that there is more to that kind of service than simply having sex with your contractors or their non-indentured friends. Some people like to watch and it is almost certain that each and every one of you will be expected to perform with another ICL for the entertainment of your betters at some point. Form a circle, everyone."

She looked around the group once they had repositioned themselves. "Let's see. Debbie, front and center, please."

Debbie obediently crawled forward. She was a cute little thing – a slightly chubby, brunette, engineering student who had let her college loans get the better of her. She knelt in the middle of the group at Mistress Roche's feet. Her legs were open and her expression a little nervous.

"Good girl, Debbie." Mistress Roche said, patting her on the head. Debbie beamed and pushed her head against the caressing hand like a cat. Tom had wondered more than once if the girl's financial troubles were as much an accident as she insisted.

"And..., Tom. Please join us."

Tom didn't move. "Just so we're clear, Mistress Roche," he said, "you expect me to have sex with Debbie here. Debbie the involuntary indent. Is that what you're after?"

"Yes, Tom." Roche said letting her slightly strained patience show in her tone. "Is there a problem?"

Tom shook his head. "Not at all, Mistress Roche. I'm just afraid I'll have to respectfully decline."

Roche let a hint of anger show in her face. "I wasn't offering you a choice, Tom. Now take your position and do as you're told."

Tom's voice lost none of its properly submissive and respectful tone. His face was a polite, passive mask that showed none of his disgust at the idea of engaging in what he considered to be an act of rape.

"I will not, Mistress Roche." He said. Then he turned to the other students kneeling around him "Y'all might wanna back off a bit. I don't want you to get hit if I flail around when she zaps me."

Tom turned back to the trainer. "Is there something I can do for you?" he asked.

Sure enough, the control unit was in her hand. "Yes," she said. "you can show the other students why it's such a bad idea to disobey a direct order."

Roche's thumb depressed the button and a surge of electricity hit Tom in the neck. He didn't try to tough it out. The effect was like being hit with a tazer. Unless you were whacked out of your mind on coke, crank or PCP the only thing you could do was scream and fall down.

Roche gave him a thirty second burst. When she let up she allowed Tom a few seconds to catch his breath. "Tom, take your position and do as you're told."

He cleared his throat and looked up at her. "I will not." He said calmly.

The next surge lasted forty-five seconds and the one after that a full minute. Tom had to spend a few seconds blinking away little silvery floaty things from his vision. He wondered if it was a bad sign that he smelled burnt bacon.

"I can do this all night, Mr. Donovan."

"So can I, Mistress."

As it turned out he was only able to do it for another half hour. That was how long it took for him to pass out. By the end of it there was a substantial betting pool going in the control center. No one was betting on Tom to give in. Instead, all the action was on how long it would take him to pass out. Agent Paul Brenneman won a hundred and fifty dollars for his bet of 27 minutes.

When Tom regained consciousness, he was being strung up to one of the pull-up bar frames. They made convenient flogging frames for when somebody like himself decided to get up on their hind legs in a way the trainers didn't like. The male IO who had warned Tom about Frenchy's vindictive nature secured his wrists over his head. He took a strap off his belt and stepped back. Before he did he whispered in Tom's ear.

"Dude, just do what she says, man. The entire staff knows what you did for Beth and those kids. Nobody wants to hurt you."

Tom shook his head. "Sorry." He said quietly. "Gotta stick to your principles."

The guard shook his head. Tom gave him a headache. The guy had no problem killing a bunch of people, but he wouldn't screw some hot little coed who probably wanted it anyhow. It made no sense.

Mistress Roche had directed the rest of the class to reposition themselves around where Tom hung waiting to be beaten. "Mr. Donovan, I don't know what your problem is, but I don't take defiance from my students. I'm going to give you one last chance to perform with Debbie here. If you don't comply, Officer Hengel will beat you until you do or we need to take you to the infirmary."

Tom took a deep breath and dug around in his skull for a good memory to lose himself in. This was really gonna hurt. "I'm sorry, Mistress Roche." He said "I'm not trying to disrespect you. But I will not have sex with any indent I don't know for a fact is a voluntary."

He turned to Hengel then. "What's your first name, man?" he asked.

Hengel blinked. "Umm. It's Ed."

"You do what you have to do, Ed. I know it's not personal. Just do me a favor? Switch off hands now and again. I don't wanna get all lopsided you know?" There was no defiance in his words. They were just the calm declaration of a man who had accepted the consequences of his choice.

Roche nodded to Hengel. Tom took a deep breath, set his jaw and threw himself into a memory of his wedding day. The rest of the class just looked on with a mix of emotions. Some admired Tom for his choice. Some were repulsed at what was about to happen. On some level, most of them didn't understand why he didn't just go along with the program. The whole center knew he was there of his own free will and he led most of the classes. Half the instructors held him up as an example of how to behave if you wanted to win favor with your employer when your contract was bought. What was up with the iron-man routine?

The first strike burned in across Tom's ass. It was painful and embarrassing but he could handle it. More rapidly followed all up and down his back. Hengel was careful to avoid his kidneys and the backs of his knees. You could cripple a person or do permanent organ damage hitting them there.

Tom hung in the cuffs. Old combat instincts came online. Adrenaline flooded his body pushing the pain back. Endorphins started flowing. The body's natural painkiller began to give him a familiar buzz.

Inside his mind it was his wedding day. The sun was shining. The march was playing. All their friends were present. The ceremony was outside and you could smell the green of the warm spring day. He stood there in his best shirt and suit jacket. A plaid kilt hung around his waist, the light wool just a little bit itchy. God, he was nervous. He was actually doing it. Tom Donovan, scumbag, street rat, arsonist and worse was getting married to not one but two of the most gorgeous, fun, all around amazing women God had ever made. It didn't make sense. They could both do so much better, but they both wanted him. His chest felt about three sizes too small with the intensity of the emotion. Somebody must be wearing some nasty-assed perfume or the pollen count must be up because his eyes were itching, wanting to water.

His girls came down the aisle. Angie, red haired and statuesque. Nicki, shorter and all warm, welcoming curves. The girls wore matching wedding dresses. Nothing elaborate, just simple white cotton affairs. Their hair had been done to match too. Each wore it in a simple French braid down the back topped by a garland of flowers. He had never seen anything more beautiful in his entire life.

There was some vague disturbance happening the periphery. Somebody off in the distance was being beaten on. The cracks of the leather on flesh were distracting. He felt his own skin light up in sympathy. It didn't matter. He was a survivor. He had inflicted worse on himself as a matter of principle. And really, how could he let anything get the tiniest piece of his attention on such a day?

"Tom? Tom!"

Tom blinked and shook his head. He was back in the center, still strung up, still naked. It wasn't the first time he had disassociated under stress. Usually it happened during fights, the product of his anger overriding his intellect like some old-time Norse berserker. There were advantages to it. You could take punishment you'd never be able to absorb normally. You were fast and mean, and the other guy had to kill or cripple you to stop you.

The problem was, there was a price to be paid for that. In the first place, a guy who kept who his wits about him could cream your ass simply by out-thinking you. In the second, you didn't negate the suffering so much as defer it. All the pain he hadn't allowed himself to fully experience came crashing in then. Everything hurt. From his shoulders to just above his kidneys, from his ass to his knees and his calves to his ankles, it all hurt!

Hot pain throbbed all up and down his rear arc. Tom bit the inside of his cheek. He was still a little buzzed on the endorphins. Everything felt vaguely floaty but his abused skin still pulsed angry heat at him.

Hengel and Roche were trying to get his attention. Both of them had looks of concern on their faces.

"You in there, Tom?" Hengel asked.

Tom nodded. "What happened?"

"We stopped. You...went away is the only way to put it. There's limits to how far we can go. Your back is bleeding."

Tom thought. Mixed in with the memory of his wedding day there were other, distorted moments as well. He remembered watching himself get beaten on. He remembered his body crying out with the pain but feeling it only in a detached sort of way. They had asked him, again and again if he would obey the order to perform with Debbie. At first he had said he would not comply. Then, as things got more intense, he had just shaken his head. His face was wet and his eyes felt puffy. He must have been crying. No surprise that.

A team arrived with a gurney. Ed and Roche took him down. His knees started to give, but he caught himself. His legs felt wobbly. He was starting to shiver. The adrenaline and endorphins were fading and the crash was looming like a miles-high tidal wave in some bad disaster movie.

The staffers started to guide him to the gurney, but he shook them off. He had his pride, damn it. He steeled himself walked the couple steps to the rolling bed. Pulling himself up to lie face-down on the mattress was more a matter of overcoming the screaming conniption fit his nerves endings were having than anything else.

Tom spent the night in the infirmary secured to his bed. There wasn't much to be done for the minor cuts from Hengel's belt apart from cleaning them and dabbing them with a little antiseptic ointment. His welts were massaged and Icy-Hot applied to help what promised to be some serious bruising. Tom fell asleep on his stomach sore but not regretting his choice.

The next day after breakfast, Tom's class was brought into the gym again. Everyone was staring at him. The center was its own small community and his behavior of the previous night had made the rounds. His back, ass and thighs hurt but he had endured worse. The welts had mostly faded and the bruises weren't as bad as the staff had expected. Tom could have told them that would be the case. All the fights he'd been in over the years had toughened his skin and he had always been a fast healer.

Mistress Beth was present. Apparently somebody thought she could get him to listen where Officer Roche could not. He gave a mental shrug at that. People thought a lot of foolish things.

"Last night," Mistress Beth announced "Tom here was supposed to give us all a demonstration in how to perform publicly with a fellow ICL. Instead he gave us a demonstration in defiance and why that is such a bad idea. Today he is going to get a second chance. Tom?"

Tom sighed. This promised to suck. Doubly so because he genuinely did not like upsetting Mistress Beth. But there were things in this world that even a predator like him had to refuse on principle. He hadn't put himself in the system twice now to save various people from being sexually assaulted only to dive into the sewer and become a perp himself.

"I'm sorry, Mistress Beth, but I can't do as you ask."

Beth picked something up off the floor. Tom had seen it, recognized it and felt a rush of genuine fear. The object was a belt similar to the ones that went around the middle of especially difficult prisoners. It was made of heavy-duty ballistic nylon and was about six inches wide at all the way around. Wrist restraints were mounted on the sides. A series of Velcro closures were used to close it around the waist of the wearer. A seat-belt style buckle secured it to the wearer and it was possible to lock the device in place. A battery pack sat on the back of the belt right about where the base of the wearer's spine would be. Two electrodes were clearly visible.

Beth showed the stun belt to the class. "This," she said "is a stun belt. We use it when transporting particularly dangerous residents or when someone poses a continued threat to the staff. The chips in your necks deliver a thirty-five thousand volt shock. This delivers fifty-thousand volts."

She held up a remote and pressed the button. A loud warning tone sounded. After three seconds there was a loud snap! and a bright blue spark jumped between the two electrodes. Everyone winced.

"The battery pack is rechargeable and is good for 900 bursts at one second each or two hours of continuous operation. We have lots and lots of replacement batteries here at the center."

Mistress Beth looked at Tom "You know I'll use this, Tom."

He nodded. His voice was calm, level. He took real pride in the way it didn't reveal how he close he was to pissing himself at the idea of a session with that thing.

"Yes, Mistress, and you should know you're going to have to. So with all due respect, why don't we quit wasting everyone's time and get to the part where I'm screaming myself hoarse, hm?"

Beth gestured and two gaurds put the belt on him. He didn't resist. When ordered into the middle of the circle he obeyed, kneeling in front of her.

Beth held up the belts remote. "Tom," she said. "I am giving you a direct order. Pick a trainee to perform with and follow the instructions given by the rest of the class."

Tom looked her in the eye. "I will not compl...aaaiiiieeeee!" His response turned into a scream as the belt went live.

Over the years Tom Donovan had endured more than his share of physical suffering. He had been punched, kicked, shot, stabbed and hit with a warehouse full of improvised weapons. He had laid down two different motorcycles and a lifetime love affair with pyromania had left its mark on his skin. At age fifteen years, six months, he had paid a friend to burn a swastika tattoo the size of a post-it note off his right shoulder blade with a propane torch. None of that compared to the belt.

Fifty thousand volts of electricity surged through him. White hot fire seized his nerves and everything became one massive wash of agony. Tom screamed and fell over, thrashing uncontrollably. Only the mats on the floor prevented him from bashing his skull open.

After what seemed like forever, but what couldn't have been more than five seconds, the misery stopped. Mistress Beth stood over him. She held up the controller and gave him an inquiring look. Tom shook his head. Beth sighed, pressed the button and Hell's own revolving door spun him back into Lucifer's lobby.

The next two hours passed in that fashion. Beth would give Tom a burst then offer him the chance to obey. Tom would refuse. Beth would hit him again and the cycle would continue. Along the way, Tom screamed his throat raw. He pissed and shat himself in front of the entire class. At one point he lay there on the floor covered in his own filth sobbing uncontrollably.

Beth offered him yet another chance to obey at that point. "Tom, please." She said "Be reasonable. No one wants to hurt you. Just do as you're told and the pain can stop."

He lay there gasping. More than once he had wondered what it would be like to be all the way on fire. Now he had a pretty good idea. He wanted to say yes. It would be so easy. Just pick a pretty girl. Follow instructions no different from those he had been given by Mistress Beth or Melanie or Harris' receptionist. How bad would it be? He opened his mouth to speak. And that's when the memory came back.

Eighteen years ago he had been a runaway scrambling to survive on the streets of Detroit. Like a lot of kids he had fallen in with a gang, this one a pack of skinheads. They had treated him better than his own family ever had. He had had food, and a place to stay. He had belonged to something bigger than himself. His friends had watched his back and he had watched theirs. It had been a great time.

Then one night they had all gathered at one of the city's many abandoned buildings. Some of the guys had been out cruising around and spotted an interracial couple: white female, black male. The pair had been snatched up and brought to the derelict house in a neighborhood where screams were generally ignored.

A much younger and stupider Tom had participated in gang-stomping the guy. Then, at the instruction of the senior man present, he had soaked the man in lighter fluid. The girl had been given a choice: take on the entire crew or watch her boyfriend burn.

Tom had thought it was all a bluff, a mind-fuck until she stripped and lay down. There had been jokes and laughter among his friends. Some good natured arguing had gone on over who went first. A couple guys thought Tom should take the first turn. He was still a virgin then and it was high time he became a man.

Tom just felt sick. Beating people or robbing them or starting fires was one thing. Rape? Especially the rape of a white woman, even a race traitor? His hands knew he'd made a choice before his conscious mind did.

The bottle of fluid had come up from his side. His Zippo, the one with the SS lightning on it that had been a present from one of the guys was in his free hand. A squeeze of the bottle, a flick of the wheel. Liquid flame splashed out over the men in front of him. There had been screams and confusion and a mad rush out of the building with his former friends in hot pursuit. The man and the woman had run off into the night, going one way. Tom went the other.

Over the years that followed, Tom would hurt a lot of people. He would rob and steal and deal drugs and do all manner of criminal things to get by. People would die in fires he set. But he never crossed that line. And on some level he had made up his mind that he'd die before he did.

Tom looked up at Mistress Beth, back in the present now. He wanted to please her. More than that, he wanted the pain to stop. But if you wanted to call yourself a human being there had to be places you wouldn't go. Ever.

Talking hurt by then. His throat was raw, his voice broken. He still managed to make himself heard. "I. Will. NOT!" The vehemence of the response startled Beth back a step. The controller came up again. The pain slammed into him and this time he blacked out.

The next thing Tom knew he was in the infirmary – again. Once again, he lay, naked and restrained using the big soft crazy-people wrist and foot cuffs. He gave a soft, painful chuckle. It was getting to where he spent more time there than his cell. A pitcher of water and cup sat on the bedside table. And his good friend Mr. Harris was there along with Mistress Beth.

Harris did not look pleased to be dealing with yet another piece of Tom Donovan-centered drama. Tom couldn't blame the man. But he wasn't backing down either. If somebody somehow managed to get him to screw a resident – and he could think of a couple ways to make it happen with ease – it would only be a matter of time before the dying started.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Donovan." Harris said. "How are you feeling?"

Tom tried to answer but his throat felt like it had been scrubbed razor blades and then packed with rock salt.

"Can I get some water, please?" he managed to croak. Just because he'd been recently tortured was no excuse for bad manners.

Beth gave him a drink. He nodded gratefully at her. "I feel like I've been hit by a truck, Mr. Harris." He said. "How're you doing?"

"I'd be doing better if I didn't have to take time out of my day to deal a crisis that had you in the middle of it every other day. Tell me, Tom, do you think your voluntary status makes you special?"

Tom laughed at that. "Oh, I'm feelin' all kinds of special, sir." He launched into his best Rain Man impression. "Eighty-two, eighty-two, eighty-two thousand volts up my spine. Yeah. Gotta go to K-Mart and get twinkle bulbs. Gonna be a Christmas tree. Definitely a tree, yeah."

Beth bit back a smile at the joke. Harris did too. "That would be a lot funnier, if you weren't being such a problem for my staff, Mr. Donovan. I'm sure you can appreciate that I can't tolerate any rebellion among the residents."

Tom nodded. "And I'm sure you can appreciate that theres things every person won't do, Mr. Harris. Well guess what? Rape is one of mine."

"It's not rape."

Tom glared at him. His strength was coming back. He strained against his cuffs. "Yes. It fucking is, Mr. Harris." He bulldozed ahead before the other man could continue. "When you fuck someone who can't say no. Or when you use force or the threat of force to get them to say yes, that is rape. When you commit rape you become a ra-pist. And before I become that I will become a cor-pse. Are we clear, sir? I will suck and fuck every free person working here. Hell, bus staffers in from other centers. I'll take em on six at a time. But I will not. Fucking. Screw a fellow indent. Ever. "

"You're not the first willful resident we've had, Tom." Harris said. "Do you honestly thing we can't break you?"

"Anybody can be broken." Tom answered. "Anyone thinks they can't is kidding themselves. " He laughed, a sound like a silent cough. "Shit, a couple roofies in the water there," he twitched his head towards the pitcher. "and a pretty little thing waiting out of sight 'til they kick in are all you'd need."

Tom snapped his fingers "Hey presto, you got me to go with the program after all. Thing is, what happens then?"

Harris gave him a confused look. The scenario Tom had described was exactly what he intended, if he couldn't get the stiff-necked voluntary to see reason.

"What do you mean, what then? Then you finish your training, you get transferred to another facility and your contract gets purchased."

Tom shook his head. "No, Mr. Harris, then you've got to worry about what I do next. We both know I don't care if any of your staff live or die." He thought about that. "Well, Mistress Beth, I suppose. But I damn sure don't care if I live. Especially after something like that. God knows I never planned to survive if things went non-verbal the day Mistress Beth and I met."

"Way I see it, you keeping me under control while I'm here will be easy. All your resources and all of it intended to keep people like me in line. Well, indentured people anyhow. But what about out in the real world, hm? What about the very first time some poor dumb bastard gets complacent with me?"

"You really think it'd be hard for me to ghost some citizen? Or to drop off the map once I dug that chip from my neck? Ten minutes and fifty dollars, Mr. Harris. That's all I need in a hardware store to make national headlines. And don't forget: this is America. You can damned near buy guns out of vending machines. You honestly believe a guy with my past has to go to a gun store to arm himself?" He laughed at that.

"Look, I'm not trying to be a hardass, ok? I honestly want to go with the program, get myself set up being the pampered little lapdog for some rich Mommy or Daddy and in seven years get back to my family. But there's places I just won't go. Period. And if you force me into them I will find a way to kill a shitload of people before I get taken out myself. I won't fucking care anymore at that point, ok? What do you do then, Mr. Harris, hm? What's your explanation to your bosses when the nice man that you personally locked into the mindset of an Al Qaeda suicide bomber goes on a spree after mentioning you by name to the media as the reason all those dead bodies are all over the news, hm?" By the time Tom finished talking he was glaring at Harris. His lips were pressed together in a thin white line and the frame of the bed was flexing as he strained towards the other man.

Tom lay back, closed his eyes. "You do what you have to do, Mr. Harris." He said "I'll do the same. Now if you don't mind, I've had a rough couple days and could use a nap."

In the end, Tom never did have relations with any of the other trainees. Instead he lost most of the few privileges he had. His uniforms were permanently confiscated apart from a pair of shower shoes and small, hand-sized towel for sitting on. His email privileges were revoked and he was put on administrative rationing. All of these were subject to reversal the minute he agreed to perform sexually with a fellow resident.

Tom burned his marker on the food issue. Administrative rationing was a fancy way of saying three meals a day of prison loaf for the next ten days straight. "The loaf" as it was commonly known had been the subject of lawsuits by prison inmates in several states. It was a dense, compact food substance roughly the size, shape and weight of a pound cake. The loaf was normally used to punish prisoners who were habitual staff assaulters or throwers of their own bodily waste. It had all the nutrition of a typical prison meal. And all the flavor of a typical prison tube sock.

Harris dug in his heels. In the grand scheme of things, being naked 24/7 wasn't that big a deal at the center. It certainly didn't bother Tom any. The loss of email stung but it wasn't exactly visible. Part of the point was to show the other residents that defiance would not be tolerated. So the two worked out a compromise.

Tom agreed to go on ad-rats for half his remaining stay. Each day a small, but increasingly larger amount of laxative or purgative would be added to his food. This would simulate a previously undiagnosed food allergy that would justify his ultimate return to normal dining. It would also make for a very graphic example of why it didn't pay to get too far up on one's hind legs. The sight of Tom either puking or shitting his guts out towards the end of his time on the loaf would make the rest of the ICLs extremely reluctant to do anything that got them put on it. Spending his last five days back on normal meals would give him time to recover so that he could actually be of some use to whoever ultimately bought his contract.

The rest of his stay was fairly uneventful. He continued to excel at most of his classes. That was a combination of personal pride and enlightened self-interest. If he was going to do something for a living it only made sense to be good at it. And demonstrating himself to be ahead of the curve in the skills sought after by those wanting a tame domestic, increased his chances of not winding up at a brothel or porn studio.

He sat in quiet passivity as he fellow students were forced to pair off in various combinations and with varying degrees of willingness. He refrained from calling out suggestions during those times, but the staff didn't push it. And he learned that it was possible for a cafeteria worker to hide three slices of bacon inside a single serving of loaf if they knew what they were doing. He never did work out whose idea that was.

Mistress Marie made regular use of his body. They talked repeatedly at other times as well. One day she instructed him to write down the recipe he used at home for making his breakfast rice as well as some other personal information. That was a bit confusing but he didn't reckon he needed to understand.

Mistress Beth came to him on his second to last night at the center. She didn't use him except to enjoy his mouth. Word had come down that a prospective buyer wanted to interview him immediately upon transfer. They also wanted him with several rounds in the chamber if they decided he was a keeper. It was frustrating for Tom, but he was a commodity and the customer was always right.

Beth took Tom over her knee one last time. He'd grown to enjoy that. There was an intimacy in being spanked that way which was a significant turn-on. They talked as well. Tom apologized for being so difficult at times. Beth forgave him. She expressed regrets that she had not been able to pull the financial strings needed to take him home with her.

It was a shared regret. Indents never wound up serving in their home towns. The temptations and risks for escape or familial reprisal were just too great. But if it could have been swung he would have gone along gladly. He said as much, making her beam with pleasure. He also warned her to be careful. Nicki and Angie would probably honor his request to not come after her but you never knew.

After lights out on his final night at the center Tom lay on his bunk staring up into the dark for what seemed like hours. His nerves were jumping off worse than they had since his arrival. The center was nowhere any sane person wanted to live, but it wasn't any worse than a stretch in county. If nothing else it was familiar by now. God only knew where he'd be in a few days.

Still, he wouldn't do himself any favors tossing and turning all night. He closed his eyes, slowed his breathing. He found something pleasant to think about: how he would settle up with Frenchy when the time came. A cheese grater, extension cord and poison ivy plant all featured prominently. The officer working nighttime monitor duty checked the feed from Tom's cell a little later. He saw Tom was fast asleep and wondered what he was dreaming about that put such a smile on his face.

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