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walked up to the cockpit. I let out my breath and watched him all the way up the aisle.
    It took an hour or so to reach our destination. I kept shifting positions, testing what was possible in my small kennel. I thought I had no dignity left, but I was wrong. I lost some more when we got there; I was walked on a leash in a courtyard and had to relieve myself, squatting, my hands fastened behind my back.
    They pulled me through a big doorway. There was a tug at my head, and the bit was pulled from my mouth. One keeper held the leash in one hand, and my bound wrists up high behind my back with the other. The other swabbed my face with a cloth, brushed my hair and swept the straw from my skin. I was crimson when the impersonal hands touched me in intimate areas. I wanted to pull away, or to press myself against them. I did neither, but held myself still, trembling with the effort.
    I was being held and handled by men, of course, and although I managed not to faint again, I still found their presence shattering. They were talking as they worked, about something unrelated to the chore at hand; try as I might I could make no sense of it. I shook my head in confusion.
    They drew me into the middle of a cylindrical framework, which looked for a moment like a new kind of cage; one I could stand up in. But there were gaps big enough for me to slip through. Confused, I turned to look at the keepers. One was outside. The other firmly pulled my shoulders back, making me thrust out my chest, and angled my head upward with his fingers.
    He pulled the leash through the framework at the top, so that the collar held me in place, almost in a choke hold. Then, keeping the tension on the leash, he slid himself out of the framework. Red lights all around me flashed once. Was this some kind of decontamination? They drew me out and away. When I looked back a few minutes later they had an ocelot in there, restless, its leash also stretched upward, and the lights flashed again. A tiny ocelot floated outside the frame. A holograph. I’d been holographed . Naked. Leashed. With my hands tied behind my back. I felt a helpless urge to hide.
    They left my hands fastened when they fed me in the small cage. The food tasted unfamiliar but not inedible; I suspect it was monkey chow. I was so new at eating with my hands tied behind my back that I had to take frequent rests, looking covertly at the handlers to see if they were watching my humiliating performance. They barely glanced at me. When they took the bowl away they untied me at last, and I did my best to make myself comfortable, trying to wipe my food-covered face with bits of straw.
    I slept fitfully, amazed each time I woke to be where I was. I touched and grasped the solid bars of the cage, and fingered the firm leather collar around my neck that I could not remove. I squirmed in discomfort on the prickly straw, and felt that I deserved it all.
     
    Auction
     
    The kennel courtyard boiled with activity the next day, with animals being exercised, washed and groomed. Dogs were being combed and clipped, the ocelots arching their backs like housecats as they were brushed. I was tied with my hands stretched out to each side, and was brushed down again and washed all over. I found myself panting, as if I’d been running. The bondage and all the touching were making me so agitated and excited that I couldn’t help pulling a bit on the ropes. A whimper kept rising in my throat. They rinsed me with a hose, pulled my head back to sluice down my hair, then combed and toweled me a little and left me to dry in the warm sunlight. I calmed down a little. There were several handlers now that I hadn’t seen the night before. But after their initial curiosity they barely looked at me. I began having catastrophic fantasies of no one wanting me at all.
    The air was still, and the sky was an odd shade of deep, cloudless blue, changing to green as it approached the horizon. I could feel my hair rippling around my