Sablesword
TMF Master
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2001
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Here's part 6 of the Hyperticklish saga. This one is ran a bit longer than usual and is chock full of f/m foot tickling (and pretty much only f/m foot tickling)
Part 7 should get back to the m/f and */f tickling of the first five parts. But for now, fans of f/m can enjoy.
Hyperticklish, part 6
by Sablesword
The physical strength of a human male is generally slightly greater than that of a human female, but individual variation is great enough that this generalization doesn't always hold true. In the case of the six humans on the Merryweather, this generalization held true in only six cases out of the nine possible male-female comparisons. However, the strength of the energy stocks in the Merryweather's Catalyst Room was many times greater than that of any human, male or female. A human trapped in one of the Catalyst Room's three couches was not going to escape.
Lying on one of those couches, wrists pinned above his head, ankles confined at the foot of the couch, Kurt Bonner was actually looking forward to his fate. He would sooner stick his hand into an energized portal than admit it, but he liked being tickled. He might have become a Power Tech himself, but for his embarrassment over the subject - which had been even greater in his youth when he had kept his secret from everyone.
Of course, his wife May now knew his secret. And she knew his weaknesses as well. Her lips curved slightly upward and her eyes glinted with amusement as she ran the tip of the feather lightly over the most sensitive paths of Kurt's right sole. Then she repeated the treatment over his left sole. Kurt had to chuckle, had to laugh at this tickling. There was nothing else he could do. His soles were completely vulnerable, with the energy stocks set to hold his toes spread and fixed. His torso could squirm, between his pinned ankles and wrists, but he could not move his feet at all as May ran the feather-tip across his toes and up and down his insteps.
Listening to the other two male victims tweaked Kurt's sensitivity upwards. In the center couch, Captain Manning lay laughing as Princess Cecilia - formerly a prisoner and now technically the prizemistress of the Merryweather applied a soft-bristled brush. On the far side, his assistant Frank giggled like a maniac as Power Tech Ming, barefoot herself, did something amusing to Franks helpless soles.
And this was only the beginning, the initial 'calibration' for the tickle-bots that floated in the air behind the three smiling women, waiting with mechanical patience. Soon their inanimate appendages would take over the tickling, applying the teasing, caressing strokes with mechanical implacability for the first of the six necessary sessions scheduled over the next three days.
Kurt could already sense his mirth being drawn up into the overhead collector. There, he knew, it would be analyzed, and the analysis compressed and recorded. Then the mirth would be discarded - Merryweather was in orbit around Sandalwood, her engines shut down and her cans wrecked. The masculine mirth now being produced in the Catalyst Room was not being used for the usual purpose of catalyzing the ship's power systems. Instead, the purpose was to produce new, untrashed, meta-files for the male crewmembers; meta-files demanded by Sandalwood Customs before it would let the crew land and obtain the parts they needed to repair the Merryweather.
May Bonner set the feather aside and held up a plastic thingie for her husband to see. Kurt couldn't remember the official name of the thingie, but he knew, by reputation, that it could inflict terribly effective tickles when applied with skill. Now it seemed that he was about to learn at first hand - or rather at first foot - just how skilled his wife was with the... thingie.
It turned out she was quite skilled enough. True, Kurt felt slightly disappointed at the first touch of the plastic device, but as May used it to tease, and tweak and caress, it cultivated the ticklish sensitivity of the balls of his feet and his insteps, of his heels and the pads of his toes and the tender spaces between them. Under this pleasuring torment, Kurt's feet seemed to grow in size - they looked no bigger than before to eyes that suddenly widened as a clever slithering touch sent tickle-sensations running halfway up his legs. They just felt bigger; a meter long and half a meter wide. Each.
And now May stepped aside, allowing the tickle-bots in to tease and excite Kurt's enormously sensitive soles. He blubbered at the unbearably pleasant sensations being inflicted on him, only barely aware of his wife's hand running over his hairy chest and patted his shoulder. That didn't tickle, but the mechanical tentacles of the 'bots did.
The tickling slowed, allowing Kurt to catch his breath, allowing him to hear the mad laughter of Frank and the Captain as they suffered their own sweet torments. Allowing him to hear May say "Enjoy yourself, dear," and then see her step away, smirking. Allowing him to see the two tickle-bots display their manipulators, wiggling them. And then the 'bots attacked, one on each foot, deploying a dozen different fingers, quick and slow, light and fierce, soft and firm, all impossible to avoid. All impossible to withstand. All calculated to drive him into happy, giggling madness.
The male crewmembers of the Merryweather were not the only ones being tickled. The planet of Sandalwood had a large number of ticklees as well. An extraordinarily large number, in fact, relative to the total population of the planet.
The original settlers of Sandalwood had come in six great colonization ships, which they had disassembled on landing and converted into six automatic factories. A temporary expedient, since equipment designed to use mirth catalysis in hyper were notoriously inefficient on a planetary surface. The plan, then, was to replace them as soon as the colony could produce the resources to do so.
However, the presence of a HYNA in Sandalwood's solar system changed this plan, and so the six 'temporary' robotic factories continued to operate four centuries later. Mirth catalysis didn't usually work in normalspace, but Sandalwood's space wasn't usual, thanks to the system's hyperspace-normalspace anomaly. The crew of the Merryweather had taken advantage of this phenomenon to bring their damaged ship into orbit, and the inhabitants of Sandalwood had exploited it to the hilt. Mirthtech was now ubiquitous on Sandalwood, four centuries after the colonists' arrival - and it wasn't just used for catalyzing power production.
Ambassador Jared Vegia watched impassively as Tina Sultry, along with the five other ambassadorial aides, carefully inspected six pairs of boots for signs of tampering. This meeting of the Planetary Council wasn't going to be the usual meaningless squabble over national prestige - not with the Merryweather in orbit, the first starship to call at Sandalwood in decades.
Originally, the Planetary Palace had been built to be Sandalwood's seat of government, and the Planetary Council that government's executive head. This plan, however, had gone awry just like the plan to scrap the original auto-factories. The colony had split, early on, into six factions that had evolved into six nations. These nations sent ambassadors to serve on the Council, and to carefully limit its power. But now, space demons help them, the Council had to make decisions regarding the Merryweather and its requests for aid, and somehow those decisions had to be crafted so that all six of Sandalwood's nations would accept them.
Inspection completed, the boots were given to Jared and his five colleagues to put on. The boots were thick and heavy, with plastic exteriors, soft-lined interiors, and lots of tech stuffed in between. They fitted perfectly on the six pairs of ambassadorial feet, and locked with a click more felt than heard when the buckles were fastened. The aides briefly inspected these buckles, and then the six ambassador-councilors entered the Hexagon, the chamber of the Planetary Palace where the Council held its meetings.
This term, by an accident of history, the councilors were all men. In addition to Jared Vegia of the Republic of New Japan, they were Sir Ian Stoneton-Gelb of the Highland Kingdom, Freeman Michael of the Southern Union, Red Rupert of the Tyranny of Edward, Sam Twain of the Free Isles, and finally Thomas 2631-45-313 of the Democratic Republic of the People. They took their places around the hexagonal table, with its six workstation terminals and its opalescent Sphere of Truth in the center. None of them looked up, but if they did, they would have seen the metallic tent of a mirth collector.
Jared felt the tingle in his soles as his boots activated at their base level. By dint of practice, he ignored the faint tickle-sensations. Instead, he checked over the colors that now flickered over the globe in the center of the table. It was part of the system: The boots provided a light tickle-probe, the overhead collector gathered and analyzed the mirth, and the sphere displayed the results, revealing any hostility or deception on the part of the councilors. Built by idealists to enforce straightforward dealing, it made for... interesting diplomacy and politics on the council. But if the system caused Jared to reveal more than he'd like, it also allowed him to better read the reactions of his other five colleagues. So on the whole, Jared thought he preferred this system - at least as long as the boots stayed at their base level.
As he always did at the start of each meeting, Red Rupert growled, "I call for a purity check." Normally the Council rejected this motion, but this time Freeman Michael spoke up as well.
"I agree," the ambassador from the Southern Union said. "These are not the usual circumstances. I make a second call for a purity check."
Jared heard Sir Ian mutter a curse under his breath, saw the gray-mustached ambassador clutch the arm of his chair. Jared did likewise as he felt his boots lock into place on the chamber's floor. The system's mechanical voice spoke: "Two calls have been made for a Purity Check. Commencing in Five, Four, Three, Two, One..."
Jared howled as the tickle-sensations exploded across the soles of his feet. The devices built into his boots inflicted direct nerve stimulation, and a squirmy giggly wave seemed to run from his heels to his toes, and especially between his toes as well.
The other ambassadors laughed as well. All six men squirmed in their chairs as the six pairs of tickle-boots gently and irresistibly tickle-teased a dozen male feet. They pounded on the table, they writhed and arched their backs, and they tried to pull their feet away in desperate, futile attempts to escape.
Now Jared felt the tickling shift to something firmer, something that felt like a stiff-bristled brush or a set of long-nailed fingers that rapidly scritched over every square millimeter of his soles. It was unbearable - wonderfully unbearable, and under other circumstances Jared would have enjoyed it immensely. In fact, a small part of his mind made a note that he should have Tina save a record of this tickle-pattern for his own private use at a later time. It was only the public nature of it that made this tickling a humiliation. Not so much because of the others around the table - they, after all, were laughing just as hard as he was. No, the problem came from the six ambassadorial aides who sat in the gallery overlooking the Chamber.
Each aide, Jared knew, had a station with a pair of molded silicone-flesh feet and a set of five viewscreens focused on the five ambassadors other than her own. The aide would watch those viewscreens like a hawk-eagle as she tickled the artificial feet, seeking to maximize each ambassador's response. The chamber's system would then integrate the tickling from the six aides and feed the results into the tickle-boots. By itself, the system could produce an intense tickle; the human touch made it devastating - and embarrassing, since it allowed the aides to learn the weaknesses of all of the ambassadors.
At last, the tickling ended. Jared rapidly pulled himself together, and let his humiliation surface as anger. He glared across the table at the counselor from the Southern Union. "Freeman Michael, you s-"
"Enough." Sir Ian's voice was just as angry, but somehow gave the impression of being much more level. "It is over, and we have work to do." He typed a command into his workstation. "Here's my proposal for policy toward that freighter, the Merryweather. First..."
Captain Manning found himself being forced to the conclusion that Princess Cecilia had a talent from the Devil Herself. It was the second day of tickling for the men of the Merryweather; the third session of six needed to establish their new meta-files.
To maintain his shipmaster's ticket, Manning needed to know how to both inflict tickling and how to endure it, but he much preferred inflicting it. On the receiving end, his ecstasy/agony ratio had always been a solid 60/40 - more than adequate in a pinch, but not nearly good enough to be a regular power tech. And that was with a professional; a clumsy amateur would do worse.
Princess Cecilia, Manning had feared, would be that clumsy amateur. She had plenty of experience on the receiving end of the feather (and the other implements of tickling), and experienced ticklees, in Manning's experience, tended to overestimate their skill on the other side. But the Princess, he had to admit, did a competent and workmanlike job with the initial calibration tickle during the first two sessions, and a more than competent job on the third. Manning had felt relief at that, even as the tickle-bots, taking over from Cecilia's initial tickling, proceeded to drive him half-mad with laughter.
But now, in the middle of the third session, Cecilia sat at the Catalyst Room's workstation and tweaked the parameters. This almost always did more harm than good, and Manning wished that May and Ming, looking over her shoulder, would tell her to stop. He wanted to tell her to stop, himself, but he was laughing too hard as one of the ticklebots ran a buzzy spinning thing in a line from heel to toe to heel and back again, six or seven times.
The tickling paused; the bots drawing back briefly to let him catch his breath. He panted, drew in a breath to call for Her Highness to stop messing around, and then "Aieee!" he howled as his feet were suddenly plunged into hell. The bots inflicted an intense, aching, horrible tickling over the entire surface of both soles. But that lasted only briefly. "Hahahahaheeheehahaha!" he laughed as an equally intense tickle-bliss devoured his feet, sending tendrils of pleasure winding up his legs. This tickling, simultaneously soft and electric, danced over his insteps and his toes, rubbed his heels and the balls of his feet, and went on for minutes "Hahahahaheeheeheehaha!"
Once more, the tickling paused. Captain Manning gasped for breath, then squealed again as he was dipped into tickle hell and then thrown up for another flight through tickle heaven. And then the cycle repeated a third time. It was the Pulse, he realized, an advanced technique that only tickle-masters and tickle-mistresses could manage to pull off with any regularity. Princess Cecilia had to have both the luck and the talent of the Devil Herself to be inflicting it on him now.
Another pause. And another cycle. "Aieee!" as the aching, scratchy tickling tormented his feet for those few eternal seconds, and then "Hahahahaheeheehee!" as angelic fingers and feathers dusted his soles in complicated patterns, bathing them in a softly overwhelming bliss.
In five of the six nations of Sandalwood, the ticklees were more-or-less volunteers. More importantly, they could, if they wished, take their own turn at inflicting tickles. The Southern Union, however, had tickle masters and mistresses - and tickle slaves.
Valanna Lamb was one of those mistresses. The Mistress, in fact; the ceremonial Head of State of the Southern Union, along with her colleague Deke Guftasen. She also was witch-beautiful, as she lay languidly on a couch in Union Great House, with her long red hair hanging down and her striking green eyes half closed.
She opened those eyes and sat up when Deke entered. She was good friends with the black and bullet-headed Master of the Union - but wasn't his lover, no matter what the romance reporters claimed. He claimed to prefer Classical Asians for that, but his personal tickle-slave, leaning against him, was a blue-eyed blonde. Barefoot, of course, and wearing very little other than her collar and the four slave bands around her wrists and ankles.
"Hello, Deke, Leonitia," Val purred at the two.
"Good morning, Mistress," the blonde tickle-slave bowed her head.
"Valanna." Deke sketched a bow, and said with his usual emphasis on the second word: "Tim promised he would come, shortly. You should put him in tickle-boots."
Val waved this aside as she had hundreds of times before. "He'll show up at the last second, like he always does." And indeed, a few minutes later, after Deke and Leonitia had departed, Tim came in and knelt before his mistress.
He was a large man, dark-skinned with tightly curled hair. In fact, he looked as if he could have been Deke's brother. He wasn't though. As a matter of fact, he was Leonitia's brother, and his resemblance to the Master of the Southern Union was a coincidence: The mothers of both men had won the coin-toss, and furthermore had had similar tastes in selecting the genes for their sons' appearance. But unlike Deke in his natty suit, Tim was mostly nude, wearing only boxer shorts, a collar, and his four slave bands.
"You were almost late, Tim," Val commented neutrally.
"Yes mistress. I'm sorry. Please don't be cruel." Even after all the time she had known him, Val was still uncertain whether his initial cringing was an affectation or stage fright. Probably some of both, she decided.
She walked around behind him, reaching down to bind his hands behind his back, and to snap a leash to his collar. "Come along now, Tim," she commanded, and he rose to follow her on bare feet to the next room, where a set of old -fashioned stocks waited, the polished wood a mismatch for the modern collector-dome set over them.
Val sat Tim on the stock's bench, and gave him a commanding glance. Reluctantly, the dark tickle-slave swung his legs around and set his ankles in the waiting semi-circles. The top of the stocks swung down, and Val fastened the latch, not bothering with a lock. A flick of a finger might open the stocks, but with his hands bound as they were, Tim could not possibly free himself.
The stock's opening was plain wood, without any visible padding, but the thick board concealed small gravitronic device that linked up with those in Tim's ankle-bands. The intangible grip so produced served to hold him in place, without damage, far better than any foam or gel padding could manage.
Val could activate more gravitronics to stop the nervous wiggling of Tim's feet, but today she decided to use an old-fashioned method. A leather thong looped around one big toe, another thong looped around the other big toe, and she tied both in place. Then, as a serve-bot wheeled up to present a tray of feathers and devices, she sat on a stool before those vulnerable feet, and considered her options.
They were handsome feet, a third of a meter long and nicely broad, with creamy soles that made a pleasing contrast to Tim's otherwise dark skin. They were clean and healthy, too, with the nails cut neat and close. And they belonged to her, just as much as the ones on the end of her own legs did. True, in theory a mistress legally owned only the tickle-rights of her slaves, but in custom and practice she had much more power over them than that.
Ignoring the feathers lay invitingly out, Val used the tips of her fingers to lightly rake the soles set up helplessly before her. "HahaheeheeHAHAHA!" Tim responded. "Please mistress, haheeheehee pleeeease heeheehahaha!" Val smiled and ran one forefinger across the toes, bumping them over the pads, while her other hand made lazy 'S' patterns on one instep and then on the other. "Heeheeheehahahahee oh don't oh stop heeheehee!"
She shook her head slightly at his pleas for mercy, knowing that they would soon come to an end. Furthermore, she had read his logs, and thus knew that his ecstasy/agony ratio never fell below fifty percent, even at the worst part of the beginning of a tickling scenario. That within a minute or two the ratio would rise into the high nineties. That she could hasten the process if she did... this.
Those handsome creamy soles crinkled and strained as Val flicked the fingers of both hands rapidly up and down the entire length of those helpless feet. Tim convulsed, howling out his mirth. He pulled at his bonds, twisting in a futile effort to escape. He pressed his lips shut, contorting his face in a very brief attempt at resistance before the laughter burst out of him.
Val paused when Tim began to turn purple, letting him gasp for air. "Oh... oh... oh... please... please, mistress... oh... please don't... please don't stop, mistress." Val's lips quirked at that confession, but she waited another minute until he had completely caught his breath. Then she selected a wide, soft-bristled brush from he tray.
"Don't worry Tim," she said, her smirk growing into a mischievous grin. "We're a long way from being finished, here." She held up the brush into his view, and saw his eyes widen and his mouth open in an 'O' of dismay. But in those wide, dark, eyes she saw his pupils dilate, a sign confirming his yearning for more.
Confident now that Tim was past his initial mixed agony, Val began to lightly paint his feet. She applied the soft bristles in long slow strokes to those vulnerable handsome soles, watching them arch and wiggle, and listening to the giggles her touch produced. Up and down she brushed those soles. Slowly. Teasingly. Knowing that she was driving Tim mad with the pleasure of it.
After a time, she stopped and considered the muscular ebony body of her tickle slave. Ribs and belly another time, she decided; she wanted to work on his feet some more, this session. But she stood and stepped around the stocks to apply an additional strap around his upper body, rendering him even more helpless than before. Sitting back on her stool, she chose a feather and then reconsidered. A minute's work with a leather thong lassoed his small toes (which were as large as the big toes on certain pairs of dainty female feet), and leashed them to a conveniently placed post set in the stocks. Picking up the feather again, she ran it along the spaces made accessible now that Tim's big toes and little toes were both pinned back.
"Ah heeheeheehahahahaha!" Tim laughed. Tears started from his eyes at this new and exquisite tickling; tears of laughter. He squirmed, and struggled against his bonds once more, but Val had secured him well, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to avoid her tickling.
"Oh heeheeheehahahahahaheeheehee!" With her right hand, Val applied the feather, stroking its tip lightly over every square millimeter of the super-ticklish skin between Tim's toes. With her left, she made occasional strokes with that wide soft-bristled brush, running it from heel to instep to ball and back again. Tim laughed and writhed and squirmed and giggled, but he no longer begged. He was, Val knew, in that happy place now. Tickle bliss. Tickle drunk. It was a point of pride with Val that she could put her slaves there. By her lights, the tickle-masters and -mistresses who deliberately inflicted an agonizing torment were all a bunch of reactionary boors and bitches. Troublemakers, who would only foster discontent and rebellion in the long run.
The session drew to a close at last, with Val ending by alternating between a chilled metal roller studded with blunt knobs, and a pad of ultra-soft quisnic fur. Tim's struggles grew weaker, as sweat made his muscular ebony body gleam. He was still a dangerous beast, though, Val thought as she finally put her tickling implements away. Lust-maddened. But she had the cure for that, before she finally released him. She pulled down his boxers, and her hands reached unhesitatingly for his hard-swollen member.
Frank Wotusu wondered how long his luck would last.
It was the sixth and final session for recreating the trashed meta-files of Frank and the other two men of the Merryweather's crew. Frank had rather enjoyed the first five sessions. For him, it had been a respite from thinking about the Merryweather's damage, a pleasant three-day vacation before he'd need to plunge into the problems of making repairs.
The only bug in the system was the growing possibility of an inversion. That had always been a possibility for him, when he endured a long tickle-session, and especially when he endured a series of long sessions. He could sense it now, lurking in the background as lay in the Catalyst Room, his arms and legs held fast by the energy stocks. Two tickle-bots floated before his bare feet, stroking and teasing them with their dozen devices, making him laugh and squirm with sensations that were both intense and intensely pleasant. And as he giggled, he prayed to all the space-demons he had ever heard of that the inversion would hold off. If he could reach the end of this last session, then all would be well. But if his ecstasy/agony ration flipped before then...
If the inversion hit, then he would suffer pure tickle-agony for at least thirty minutes. For thirty minutes that would feel like thirty years. Or thirty centuries. And there would be no cure, except to work through it. Frank knew from painful experience that it wouldn't matter if he recovered from the inversion at the rate of one minute per day for a month, or if he endured a half-hour of hell in one go. Once the inversion hit, it would not be denied until it had been given its due.
Frank shoved the though away. The tickle-bot on his right foot helped, as it ran a slick probe of chilled metal up and down his instep and back and forth across the ball of his foot. The bot on his left helped too, applying the tips of little blunt vibrators here and there and everywhere against his vulnerable left sole. Frank howled, fighting uselessly against his bonds one more time as the irresistible sense of tickle-pleasure sank into his feet and ran up his legs.
It couldn't continue forever, as much as Frank wanted it to, and the bots eventually slacked off to let him catch his breath. As he did so, he sensed the inversion once again, like a bone-breaking monster waiting to seize and devour him.
The tickle-bots stopped their lazy crazy-making caress of Frank's soles and dropped away. Ming was there next to him, kissing his brow before moving around to massage his feet. The touch of her hands was firm and soothing, and didn't tickle at all.
"Are, are we finished?" Frank panted. But they couldn't be finished; he could still hear Kurt Bonner and Captain Manning laughing as their own tickling continued.
"No," Ming told him sadly. "You have thirty seven seconds yet to go." Her hands treacherously shifted from their soothing massage to a sudden flicking, wiggling assault with the tips of her fingers.
Franks eyes went wide with surprise, and he began to giggle once more. Ming's tickling touch was light and playful, in contrast to the intense stimulation of the tickle-bots, but Frank's soles were ultra-sensitive after three solid days as a captive in the Catalyst Room. In addition, Ming knew all his weaknesses - she had insisted on learning them in exchange for all the tickling he had inflicted on her. On this very couch, in fact.
And so Frank felt himself slide into a state of sweet madness as Ming's knowing fingers danced and stroked and wiggled. He was aware of his feet, with his entire consciousness focused on them as little tickle-sensations chased over them. Thirty seconds left.
His soles became an arena where an angelic pleasure wrestled the inversion-monster. Twenty three seconds. The angle and monster grappled each other and rolled all around that arena until no part of his soles had been spared that tickle-touch. Sixteen seconds. They danced round and round, on his insteps just below the balls of his feet - exactly on the spot that had become the most sensitive of all. Nine seconds. And now the angel threw the monster out of the arena - and did a victory jig.
"Five seconds," Ming counted. "Four... Three..." and with each word she raked her fingers swiftly up and down Frank's helpless soles, making him squeal. He grinned crazily with the pure pleasure of it. "Two... One... Done!" A last, wonderful flourish, and then the restraints on his limbs fell away. Ming had hit the release button for the energy stocks that had held him captive for so long.
Now he could reach to hug her, and if he shook with weakness after his ordeal, so what? She was hugging him now, helping him to their quarters the way he had helped her so often in the past. When she had been the one left both drained and lust-crazed by an exhausting tickle-session. So he didn't mind that smug, possessive expression on her face at all, as she took him to bed. No, not at all.
Life was good.
(To be continued in part 7)
Part 7 should get back to the m/f and */f tickling of the first five parts. But for now, fans of f/m can enjoy.
Hyperticklish, part 6
by Sablesword
The physical strength of a human male is generally slightly greater than that of a human female, but individual variation is great enough that this generalization doesn't always hold true. In the case of the six humans on the Merryweather, this generalization held true in only six cases out of the nine possible male-female comparisons. However, the strength of the energy stocks in the Merryweather's Catalyst Room was many times greater than that of any human, male or female. A human trapped in one of the Catalyst Room's three couches was not going to escape.
Lying on one of those couches, wrists pinned above his head, ankles confined at the foot of the couch, Kurt Bonner was actually looking forward to his fate. He would sooner stick his hand into an energized portal than admit it, but he liked being tickled. He might have become a Power Tech himself, but for his embarrassment over the subject - which had been even greater in his youth when he had kept his secret from everyone.
Of course, his wife May now knew his secret. And she knew his weaknesses as well. Her lips curved slightly upward and her eyes glinted with amusement as she ran the tip of the feather lightly over the most sensitive paths of Kurt's right sole. Then she repeated the treatment over his left sole. Kurt had to chuckle, had to laugh at this tickling. There was nothing else he could do. His soles were completely vulnerable, with the energy stocks set to hold his toes spread and fixed. His torso could squirm, between his pinned ankles and wrists, but he could not move his feet at all as May ran the feather-tip across his toes and up and down his insteps.
Listening to the other two male victims tweaked Kurt's sensitivity upwards. In the center couch, Captain Manning lay laughing as Princess Cecilia - formerly a prisoner and now technically the prizemistress of the Merryweather applied a soft-bristled brush. On the far side, his assistant Frank giggled like a maniac as Power Tech Ming, barefoot herself, did something amusing to Franks helpless soles.
And this was only the beginning, the initial 'calibration' for the tickle-bots that floated in the air behind the three smiling women, waiting with mechanical patience. Soon their inanimate appendages would take over the tickling, applying the teasing, caressing strokes with mechanical implacability for the first of the six necessary sessions scheduled over the next three days.
Kurt could already sense his mirth being drawn up into the overhead collector. There, he knew, it would be analyzed, and the analysis compressed and recorded. Then the mirth would be discarded - Merryweather was in orbit around Sandalwood, her engines shut down and her cans wrecked. The masculine mirth now being produced in the Catalyst Room was not being used for the usual purpose of catalyzing the ship's power systems. Instead, the purpose was to produce new, untrashed, meta-files for the male crewmembers; meta-files demanded by Sandalwood Customs before it would let the crew land and obtain the parts they needed to repair the Merryweather.
May Bonner set the feather aside and held up a plastic thingie for her husband to see. Kurt couldn't remember the official name of the thingie, but he knew, by reputation, that it could inflict terribly effective tickles when applied with skill. Now it seemed that he was about to learn at first hand - or rather at first foot - just how skilled his wife was with the... thingie.
It turned out she was quite skilled enough. True, Kurt felt slightly disappointed at the first touch of the plastic device, but as May used it to tease, and tweak and caress, it cultivated the ticklish sensitivity of the balls of his feet and his insteps, of his heels and the pads of his toes and the tender spaces between them. Under this pleasuring torment, Kurt's feet seemed to grow in size - they looked no bigger than before to eyes that suddenly widened as a clever slithering touch sent tickle-sensations running halfway up his legs. They just felt bigger; a meter long and half a meter wide. Each.
And now May stepped aside, allowing the tickle-bots in to tease and excite Kurt's enormously sensitive soles. He blubbered at the unbearably pleasant sensations being inflicted on him, only barely aware of his wife's hand running over his hairy chest and patted his shoulder. That didn't tickle, but the mechanical tentacles of the 'bots did.
The tickling slowed, allowing Kurt to catch his breath, allowing him to hear the mad laughter of Frank and the Captain as they suffered their own sweet torments. Allowing him to hear May say "Enjoy yourself, dear," and then see her step away, smirking. Allowing him to see the two tickle-bots display their manipulators, wiggling them. And then the 'bots attacked, one on each foot, deploying a dozen different fingers, quick and slow, light and fierce, soft and firm, all impossible to avoid. All impossible to withstand. All calculated to drive him into happy, giggling madness.
#
The male crewmembers of the Merryweather were not the only ones being tickled. The planet of Sandalwood had a large number of ticklees as well. An extraordinarily large number, in fact, relative to the total population of the planet.
The original settlers of Sandalwood had come in six great colonization ships, which they had disassembled on landing and converted into six automatic factories. A temporary expedient, since equipment designed to use mirth catalysis in hyper were notoriously inefficient on a planetary surface. The plan, then, was to replace them as soon as the colony could produce the resources to do so.
However, the presence of a HYNA in Sandalwood's solar system changed this plan, and so the six 'temporary' robotic factories continued to operate four centuries later. Mirth catalysis didn't usually work in normalspace, but Sandalwood's space wasn't usual, thanks to the system's hyperspace-normalspace anomaly. The crew of the Merryweather had taken advantage of this phenomenon to bring their damaged ship into orbit, and the inhabitants of Sandalwood had exploited it to the hilt. Mirthtech was now ubiquitous on Sandalwood, four centuries after the colonists' arrival - and it wasn't just used for catalyzing power production.
Ambassador Jared Vegia watched impassively as Tina Sultry, along with the five other ambassadorial aides, carefully inspected six pairs of boots for signs of tampering. This meeting of the Planetary Council wasn't going to be the usual meaningless squabble over national prestige - not with the Merryweather in orbit, the first starship to call at Sandalwood in decades.
Originally, the Planetary Palace had been built to be Sandalwood's seat of government, and the Planetary Council that government's executive head. This plan, however, had gone awry just like the plan to scrap the original auto-factories. The colony had split, early on, into six factions that had evolved into six nations. These nations sent ambassadors to serve on the Council, and to carefully limit its power. But now, space demons help them, the Council had to make decisions regarding the Merryweather and its requests for aid, and somehow those decisions had to be crafted so that all six of Sandalwood's nations would accept them.
Inspection completed, the boots were given to Jared and his five colleagues to put on. The boots were thick and heavy, with plastic exteriors, soft-lined interiors, and lots of tech stuffed in between. They fitted perfectly on the six pairs of ambassadorial feet, and locked with a click more felt than heard when the buckles were fastened. The aides briefly inspected these buckles, and then the six ambassador-councilors entered the Hexagon, the chamber of the Planetary Palace where the Council held its meetings.
This term, by an accident of history, the councilors were all men. In addition to Jared Vegia of the Republic of New Japan, they were Sir Ian Stoneton-Gelb of the Highland Kingdom, Freeman Michael of the Southern Union, Red Rupert of the Tyranny of Edward, Sam Twain of the Free Isles, and finally Thomas 2631-45-313 of the Democratic Republic of the People. They took their places around the hexagonal table, with its six workstation terminals and its opalescent Sphere of Truth in the center. None of them looked up, but if they did, they would have seen the metallic tent of a mirth collector.
Jared felt the tingle in his soles as his boots activated at their base level. By dint of practice, he ignored the faint tickle-sensations. Instead, he checked over the colors that now flickered over the globe in the center of the table. It was part of the system: The boots provided a light tickle-probe, the overhead collector gathered and analyzed the mirth, and the sphere displayed the results, revealing any hostility or deception on the part of the councilors. Built by idealists to enforce straightforward dealing, it made for... interesting diplomacy and politics on the council. But if the system caused Jared to reveal more than he'd like, it also allowed him to better read the reactions of his other five colleagues. So on the whole, Jared thought he preferred this system - at least as long as the boots stayed at their base level.
As he always did at the start of each meeting, Red Rupert growled, "I call for a purity check." Normally the Council rejected this motion, but this time Freeman Michael spoke up as well.
"I agree," the ambassador from the Southern Union said. "These are not the usual circumstances. I make a second call for a purity check."
Jared heard Sir Ian mutter a curse under his breath, saw the gray-mustached ambassador clutch the arm of his chair. Jared did likewise as he felt his boots lock into place on the chamber's floor. The system's mechanical voice spoke: "Two calls have been made for a Purity Check. Commencing in Five, Four, Three, Two, One..."
Jared howled as the tickle-sensations exploded across the soles of his feet. The devices built into his boots inflicted direct nerve stimulation, and a squirmy giggly wave seemed to run from his heels to his toes, and especially between his toes as well.
The other ambassadors laughed as well. All six men squirmed in their chairs as the six pairs of tickle-boots gently and irresistibly tickle-teased a dozen male feet. They pounded on the table, they writhed and arched their backs, and they tried to pull their feet away in desperate, futile attempts to escape.
Now Jared felt the tickling shift to something firmer, something that felt like a stiff-bristled brush or a set of long-nailed fingers that rapidly scritched over every square millimeter of his soles. It was unbearable - wonderfully unbearable, and under other circumstances Jared would have enjoyed it immensely. In fact, a small part of his mind made a note that he should have Tina save a record of this tickle-pattern for his own private use at a later time. It was only the public nature of it that made this tickling a humiliation. Not so much because of the others around the table - they, after all, were laughing just as hard as he was. No, the problem came from the six ambassadorial aides who sat in the gallery overlooking the Chamber.
Each aide, Jared knew, had a station with a pair of molded silicone-flesh feet and a set of five viewscreens focused on the five ambassadors other than her own. The aide would watch those viewscreens like a hawk-eagle as she tickled the artificial feet, seeking to maximize each ambassador's response. The chamber's system would then integrate the tickling from the six aides and feed the results into the tickle-boots. By itself, the system could produce an intense tickle; the human touch made it devastating - and embarrassing, since it allowed the aides to learn the weaknesses of all of the ambassadors.
At last, the tickling ended. Jared rapidly pulled himself together, and let his humiliation surface as anger. He glared across the table at the counselor from the Southern Union. "Freeman Michael, you s-"
"Enough." Sir Ian's voice was just as angry, but somehow gave the impression of being much more level. "It is over, and we have work to do." He typed a command into his workstation. "Here's my proposal for policy toward that freighter, the Merryweather. First..."
#
Captain Manning found himself being forced to the conclusion that Princess Cecilia had a talent from the Devil Herself. It was the second day of tickling for the men of the Merryweather; the third session of six needed to establish their new meta-files.
To maintain his shipmaster's ticket, Manning needed to know how to both inflict tickling and how to endure it, but he much preferred inflicting it. On the receiving end, his ecstasy/agony ratio had always been a solid 60/40 - more than adequate in a pinch, but not nearly good enough to be a regular power tech. And that was with a professional; a clumsy amateur would do worse.
Princess Cecilia, Manning had feared, would be that clumsy amateur. She had plenty of experience on the receiving end of the feather (and the other implements of tickling), and experienced ticklees, in Manning's experience, tended to overestimate their skill on the other side. But the Princess, he had to admit, did a competent and workmanlike job with the initial calibration tickle during the first two sessions, and a more than competent job on the third. Manning had felt relief at that, even as the tickle-bots, taking over from Cecilia's initial tickling, proceeded to drive him half-mad with laughter.
But now, in the middle of the third session, Cecilia sat at the Catalyst Room's workstation and tweaked the parameters. This almost always did more harm than good, and Manning wished that May and Ming, looking over her shoulder, would tell her to stop. He wanted to tell her to stop, himself, but he was laughing too hard as one of the ticklebots ran a buzzy spinning thing in a line from heel to toe to heel and back again, six or seven times.
The tickling paused; the bots drawing back briefly to let him catch his breath. He panted, drew in a breath to call for Her Highness to stop messing around, and then "Aieee!" he howled as his feet were suddenly plunged into hell. The bots inflicted an intense, aching, horrible tickling over the entire surface of both soles. But that lasted only briefly. "Hahahahaheeheehahaha!" he laughed as an equally intense tickle-bliss devoured his feet, sending tendrils of pleasure winding up his legs. This tickling, simultaneously soft and electric, danced over his insteps and his toes, rubbed his heels and the balls of his feet, and went on for minutes "Hahahahaheeheeheehaha!"
Once more, the tickling paused. Captain Manning gasped for breath, then squealed again as he was dipped into tickle hell and then thrown up for another flight through tickle heaven. And then the cycle repeated a third time. It was the Pulse, he realized, an advanced technique that only tickle-masters and tickle-mistresses could manage to pull off with any regularity. Princess Cecilia had to have both the luck and the talent of the Devil Herself to be inflicting it on him now.
Another pause. And another cycle. "Aieee!" as the aching, scratchy tickling tormented his feet for those few eternal seconds, and then "Hahahahaheeheehee!" as angelic fingers and feathers dusted his soles in complicated patterns, bathing them in a softly overwhelming bliss.
#
In five of the six nations of Sandalwood, the ticklees were more-or-less volunteers. More importantly, they could, if they wished, take their own turn at inflicting tickles. The Southern Union, however, had tickle masters and mistresses - and tickle slaves.
Valanna Lamb was one of those mistresses. The Mistress, in fact; the ceremonial Head of State of the Southern Union, along with her colleague Deke Guftasen. She also was witch-beautiful, as she lay languidly on a couch in Union Great House, with her long red hair hanging down and her striking green eyes half closed.
She opened those eyes and sat up when Deke entered. She was good friends with the black and bullet-headed Master of the Union - but wasn't his lover, no matter what the romance reporters claimed. He claimed to prefer Classical Asians for that, but his personal tickle-slave, leaning against him, was a blue-eyed blonde. Barefoot, of course, and wearing very little other than her collar and the four slave bands around her wrists and ankles.
"Hello, Deke, Leonitia," Val purred at the two.
"Good morning, Mistress," the blonde tickle-slave bowed her head.
"Valanna." Deke sketched a bow, and said with his usual emphasis on the second word: "Tim promised he would come, shortly. You should put him in tickle-boots."
Val waved this aside as she had hundreds of times before. "He'll show up at the last second, like he always does." And indeed, a few minutes later, after Deke and Leonitia had departed, Tim came in and knelt before his mistress.
He was a large man, dark-skinned with tightly curled hair. In fact, he looked as if he could have been Deke's brother. He wasn't though. As a matter of fact, he was Leonitia's brother, and his resemblance to the Master of the Southern Union was a coincidence: The mothers of both men had won the coin-toss, and furthermore had had similar tastes in selecting the genes for their sons' appearance. But unlike Deke in his natty suit, Tim was mostly nude, wearing only boxer shorts, a collar, and his four slave bands.
"You were almost late, Tim," Val commented neutrally.
"Yes mistress. I'm sorry. Please don't be cruel." Even after all the time she had known him, Val was still uncertain whether his initial cringing was an affectation or stage fright. Probably some of both, she decided.
She walked around behind him, reaching down to bind his hands behind his back, and to snap a leash to his collar. "Come along now, Tim," she commanded, and he rose to follow her on bare feet to the next room, where a set of old -fashioned stocks waited, the polished wood a mismatch for the modern collector-dome set over them.
Val sat Tim on the stock's bench, and gave him a commanding glance. Reluctantly, the dark tickle-slave swung his legs around and set his ankles in the waiting semi-circles. The top of the stocks swung down, and Val fastened the latch, not bothering with a lock. A flick of a finger might open the stocks, but with his hands bound as they were, Tim could not possibly free himself.
The stock's opening was plain wood, without any visible padding, but the thick board concealed small gravitronic device that linked up with those in Tim's ankle-bands. The intangible grip so produced served to hold him in place, without damage, far better than any foam or gel padding could manage.
Val could activate more gravitronics to stop the nervous wiggling of Tim's feet, but today she decided to use an old-fashioned method. A leather thong looped around one big toe, another thong looped around the other big toe, and she tied both in place. Then, as a serve-bot wheeled up to present a tray of feathers and devices, she sat on a stool before those vulnerable feet, and considered her options.
They were handsome feet, a third of a meter long and nicely broad, with creamy soles that made a pleasing contrast to Tim's otherwise dark skin. They were clean and healthy, too, with the nails cut neat and close. And they belonged to her, just as much as the ones on the end of her own legs did. True, in theory a mistress legally owned only the tickle-rights of her slaves, but in custom and practice she had much more power over them than that.
Ignoring the feathers lay invitingly out, Val used the tips of her fingers to lightly rake the soles set up helplessly before her. "HahaheeheeHAHAHA!" Tim responded. "Please mistress, haheeheehee pleeeease heeheehahaha!" Val smiled and ran one forefinger across the toes, bumping them over the pads, while her other hand made lazy 'S' patterns on one instep and then on the other. "Heeheeheehahahahee oh don't oh stop heeheehee!"
She shook her head slightly at his pleas for mercy, knowing that they would soon come to an end. Furthermore, she had read his logs, and thus knew that his ecstasy/agony ratio never fell below fifty percent, even at the worst part of the beginning of a tickling scenario. That within a minute or two the ratio would rise into the high nineties. That she could hasten the process if she did... this.
Those handsome creamy soles crinkled and strained as Val flicked the fingers of both hands rapidly up and down the entire length of those helpless feet. Tim convulsed, howling out his mirth. He pulled at his bonds, twisting in a futile effort to escape. He pressed his lips shut, contorting his face in a very brief attempt at resistance before the laughter burst out of him.
Val paused when Tim began to turn purple, letting him gasp for air. "Oh... oh... oh... please... please, mistress... oh... please don't... please don't stop, mistress." Val's lips quirked at that confession, but she waited another minute until he had completely caught his breath. Then she selected a wide, soft-bristled brush from he tray.
"Don't worry Tim," she said, her smirk growing into a mischievous grin. "We're a long way from being finished, here." She held up the brush into his view, and saw his eyes widen and his mouth open in an 'O' of dismay. But in those wide, dark, eyes she saw his pupils dilate, a sign confirming his yearning for more.
Confident now that Tim was past his initial mixed agony, Val began to lightly paint his feet. She applied the soft bristles in long slow strokes to those vulnerable handsome soles, watching them arch and wiggle, and listening to the giggles her touch produced. Up and down she brushed those soles. Slowly. Teasingly. Knowing that she was driving Tim mad with the pleasure of it.
After a time, she stopped and considered the muscular ebony body of her tickle slave. Ribs and belly another time, she decided; she wanted to work on his feet some more, this session. But she stood and stepped around the stocks to apply an additional strap around his upper body, rendering him even more helpless than before. Sitting back on her stool, she chose a feather and then reconsidered. A minute's work with a leather thong lassoed his small toes (which were as large as the big toes on certain pairs of dainty female feet), and leashed them to a conveniently placed post set in the stocks. Picking up the feather again, she ran it along the spaces made accessible now that Tim's big toes and little toes were both pinned back.
"Ah heeheeheehahahahaha!" Tim laughed. Tears started from his eyes at this new and exquisite tickling; tears of laughter. He squirmed, and struggled against his bonds once more, but Val had secured him well, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to avoid her tickling.
"Oh heeheeheehahahahahaheeheehee!" With her right hand, Val applied the feather, stroking its tip lightly over every square millimeter of the super-ticklish skin between Tim's toes. With her left, she made occasional strokes with that wide soft-bristled brush, running it from heel to instep to ball and back again. Tim laughed and writhed and squirmed and giggled, but he no longer begged. He was, Val knew, in that happy place now. Tickle bliss. Tickle drunk. It was a point of pride with Val that she could put her slaves there. By her lights, the tickle-masters and -mistresses who deliberately inflicted an agonizing torment were all a bunch of reactionary boors and bitches. Troublemakers, who would only foster discontent and rebellion in the long run.
The session drew to a close at last, with Val ending by alternating between a chilled metal roller studded with blunt knobs, and a pad of ultra-soft quisnic fur. Tim's struggles grew weaker, as sweat made his muscular ebony body gleam. He was still a dangerous beast, though, Val thought as she finally put her tickling implements away. Lust-maddened. But she had the cure for that, before she finally released him. She pulled down his boxers, and her hands reached unhesitatingly for his hard-swollen member.
#
Frank Wotusu wondered how long his luck would last.
It was the sixth and final session for recreating the trashed meta-files of Frank and the other two men of the Merryweather's crew. Frank had rather enjoyed the first five sessions. For him, it had been a respite from thinking about the Merryweather's damage, a pleasant three-day vacation before he'd need to plunge into the problems of making repairs.
The only bug in the system was the growing possibility of an inversion. That had always been a possibility for him, when he endured a long tickle-session, and especially when he endured a series of long sessions. He could sense it now, lurking in the background as lay in the Catalyst Room, his arms and legs held fast by the energy stocks. Two tickle-bots floated before his bare feet, stroking and teasing them with their dozen devices, making him laugh and squirm with sensations that were both intense and intensely pleasant. And as he giggled, he prayed to all the space-demons he had ever heard of that the inversion would hold off. If he could reach the end of this last session, then all would be well. But if his ecstasy/agony ration flipped before then...
If the inversion hit, then he would suffer pure tickle-agony for at least thirty minutes. For thirty minutes that would feel like thirty years. Or thirty centuries. And there would be no cure, except to work through it. Frank knew from painful experience that it wouldn't matter if he recovered from the inversion at the rate of one minute per day for a month, or if he endured a half-hour of hell in one go. Once the inversion hit, it would not be denied until it had been given its due.
Frank shoved the though away. The tickle-bot on his right foot helped, as it ran a slick probe of chilled metal up and down his instep and back and forth across the ball of his foot. The bot on his left helped too, applying the tips of little blunt vibrators here and there and everywhere against his vulnerable left sole. Frank howled, fighting uselessly against his bonds one more time as the irresistible sense of tickle-pleasure sank into his feet and ran up his legs.
It couldn't continue forever, as much as Frank wanted it to, and the bots eventually slacked off to let him catch his breath. As he did so, he sensed the inversion once again, like a bone-breaking monster waiting to seize and devour him.
The tickle-bots stopped their lazy crazy-making caress of Frank's soles and dropped away. Ming was there next to him, kissing his brow before moving around to massage his feet. The touch of her hands was firm and soothing, and didn't tickle at all.
"Are, are we finished?" Frank panted. But they couldn't be finished; he could still hear Kurt Bonner and Captain Manning laughing as their own tickling continued.
"No," Ming told him sadly. "You have thirty seven seconds yet to go." Her hands treacherously shifted from their soothing massage to a sudden flicking, wiggling assault with the tips of her fingers.
Franks eyes went wide with surprise, and he began to giggle once more. Ming's tickling touch was light and playful, in contrast to the intense stimulation of the tickle-bots, but Frank's soles were ultra-sensitive after three solid days as a captive in the Catalyst Room. In addition, Ming knew all his weaknesses - she had insisted on learning them in exchange for all the tickling he had inflicted on her. On this very couch, in fact.
And so Frank felt himself slide into a state of sweet madness as Ming's knowing fingers danced and stroked and wiggled. He was aware of his feet, with his entire consciousness focused on them as little tickle-sensations chased over them. Thirty seconds left.
His soles became an arena where an angelic pleasure wrestled the inversion-monster. Twenty three seconds. The angle and monster grappled each other and rolled all around that arena until no part of his soles had been spared that tickle-touch. Sixteen seconds. They danced round and round, on his insteps just below the balls of his feet - exactly on the spot that had become the most sensitive of all. Nine seconds. And now the angel threw the monster out of the arena - and did a victory jig.
"Five seconds," Ming counted. "Four... Three..." and with each word she raked her fingers swiftly up and down Frank's helpless soles, making him squeal. He grinned crazily with the pure pleasure of it. "Two... One... Done!" A last, wonderful flourish, and then the restraints on his limbs fell away. Ming had hit the release button for the energy stocks that had held him captive for so long.
Now he could reach to hug her, and if he shook with weakness after his ordeal, so what? She was hugging him now, helping him to their quarters the way he had helped her so often in the past. When she had been the one left both drained and lust-crazed by an exhausting tickle-session. So he didn't mind that smug, possessive expression on her face at all, as she took him to bed. No, not at all.
Life was good.
(To be continued in part 7)
