Free Slave by Cheryl Brooks Page A

That’s another old Earth expression,” I replied. “I’ve made sort of a study of them. That one refers to…well, a ball of slime. You know what a ball is, don’t you?” He nodded, and I went on, “Well, slime is goopy, slippery, sticky stuff that really grosses you out.”
    I was losing him, I could tell. My explanation was making it about as clear as mud. Then I realized I shouldn’t be giving him the literal meaning, but the figu-rative one, instead.
    “A slimeball is a real creep, Cat. You know, someone you can’t stand to be around? Dishonest, greasy, sleazy—that sort of thing.”
    The light came on in his eyes as he caught my meaning. “So it is a bad thing to be a slimeball?”
    “Well, yeah!” I said. “I mean, I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to be calling me a slimeball! It’s just about as bad as being called a blob of Redjbeck snot or a pile of Felderf dung—although I personally consider them to be much worse, and Nedwuts probably fall into that category, but it’s just quicker to say slimeball.”
    I had collected quite a few other expressions in my travels—some of them quite colorful once you understood the reference. I still preferred the old Earth expressions, though. I knew some that dated back well over a thousand years, but, hey, when something works, why drop its usage just because it’s old? I’d dug up lots of interesting idioms, some of which I’d attempted to revive, though they lost a bit of their punch when the
person you were speaking to had no idea what you were talking about. Of course, you could insult someone and smile while you did it, and they’d never even know they’d been slammed. An odd hobby, I realize, but out in space, sometimes there’s not much better to do than go through the literary database and read old texts. Occa-sionally the translator on my computer balked, but it was a way to pass the time.
    Cat merely nodded, seeming to catalog this information away for future use. I wondered if he knew just how many euphemisms there were for that erection of his, which was still there, by the way. I also wondered what it would take to make that boner disappear—well, short of being stunned with a pulse pistol, that is. It hadn’t looked like that when he’d been unconscious. If he could manage to keep it up, he would be very popular on Statzeel when he wore the crotchless trousers that the males of that planet seemed to favor. I would probably have to beat the women off of him, or at least spray a wide stun-beam with my trusty Tex.
    Well, at least I felt a little better! A bit of laughter always helps, though I’d had to look real hard to find humor in some of the situations I’d been in. Of course, Cat could probably relate to that, too. I couldn’t see him laughing about being bought and sold, for example— unless the slaves all got together later and made fun of the imbeciles out there bidding on them, which might prove to be amusing, though certainly one of the darker forms of humor.
    I looked over my shoulder again. Yep, he was still there and still had that raging hard-on, which wasn’t
appreciably smaller than the one he’d gotten out in the plaza. I guess the genital restraint hadn’t been as restrictive as it looked, after all. “Cat, what on Earth am I gonna do with you? You won’t wear clothes and you stand around looking like something out of a holographic porn shop! Don’t you have anything better to do?”
    “No,” he replied, with a shake of his mane.
    “Well, surely there’s something else you haven’t done for a long time that you might like to do now.”
    “I have already done all of those things.” He resumed his deep, soothing massage of my back, neck, and shoulders and began purring again.
    “I suppose I could stun you,” I suggested. “It seemed to help the last time.”
    “But I would not like that.”
    “I didn’t think so, but at least your dick wasn’t so hard while you were out.”
    “You do not like it