Dahran

This is the 19th chapter of The Reluctant Retrainer, part two of a trilogy of novels of gay sex.

Keywords: authority, control, slavery, punishment, re-training, submission, loyalty

This story is entirely a work of fiction and all rights to it and its characters are copyright and private to and reserved by the author. No reproduction by anyone for any reason whatsoever is permitted.

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The Reluctant Retrainer by Gerry Taylor

Chapter 19 -- Drilling

It was simpler than I thought to find a firm that drilled for water. I rang the one that had found the gas in the Dahran foothills, or rather their subsidiary as it had now become -- gas now having been promoted to being their bread and butter so to speak.

I explained that I had purchased a piece of desert land beside the Aloe Palace and wanted to drill for water in two locations on it to a depth of five hundred feet.

Could they do it? Yes, they could. They knew the location of the Aloe Palace on the road west, the former home of one of the al-Akhri's. Five hundred feet, did I say?

Water, if found in Dahra was usually from twenty feet to three hundred feet, but if Sir Jonathan wanted drilling to five hundred feet, then no problem!

I got the impression over the phone that they felt a fool and his money were soon to part. The cost? Normally, four hundred euro a foot, therefore five hundred feet would be two hundred thousand for one well.

I stopped their calculation there, seeing where it was going and said, 'Give me your best price for two drillings less than a half a mile apart.'

We agreed on three hundred and twenty five thousand euro, if the survey map and the Bank draft were with them before close of business that day. I had the driver bring them over a Bank draft and a copy of the survey maps. Two days later, they were drilling.

I had Yuriy set Stan up in an office off the slave-quarters. His early morning vegetable duties never took more than two hours, and he was champing at the bit to hear everything about each stage of the drilling.

One of the site engineers was a bit taken aback at finding a naked slave with as much knowledge and more of the strata than he, and a very shrewd knowledge of water drilling. When Stan showed what he knew, the site engineer was more respectful, but nevertheless seemed to look at the naked slave's body more than at his face when talking to him.

I was not there personally myself, but was told in detail afterwards by the chief engineer, when the gusher from the first well came in. Having drilled for four days -- Stan was on edge all the time - and down trough five strata of rock sediments including an upper volcanic rock, which apparently had the function of being a lid on all strata below it, that the gusher roared in and rose over two hundred feet in the air, was visible from the road, where soon a considerable line of traffic stopped to view the awesome spectacle.

The engineers stopped drilling on the second location until they had capped the first one, which took them half a day. The water coming up from just four hundred feet, though a very narrow bore, was under such pressure that part of it was converting to steam.

But finally, when it was capped, a hundred acres if not more were under six-inches of water.

They were more prepared for the second geyser which came in at four hundred and five feet and which was capped in two hours.

There was no need to test the water to see if it was seawater. The engineers simply opened their mouths and drank it as it fell to earth. It was sweet water.

Those in the fields had an excellent view of the gushers. Those in the Palace from the upper floors and the west facing windows had a grandstand view, with Food and Drink doing one of their dances of glee.

Water is big news in Dahra and one immediate outcome was that it made the headlines of the local papers. Secondly, I was invited to a lunch the following week with twenty local landowners including the second of the al-Akhri brothers, Jalal, a quiet man more like Abdou than the other two brothers.

I said to Aziz that I wanted him to come with me. He knew various of the landowners. He knew the customs. In a word, he knew the lie of the land.

For a moment, he held his breath almost imperceptibly. I was about to ask whether he thought there was something fishy about the landowners' invitation when he exhaled, looked up with a genuinely pleased expression and merely replied, 'As the Master wishes.'

It was clear to me that I was being invited to lunch over the question of water and how much of it I would be willing to sell. The invitation was never that blunt or anywhere near it, Arab courtesy being what it was. But desert land, without water is of little use, while land with even the most minimal continuous supply, is of great value.

I decided therefore to have a little fun at their expense. While all the landowners were technically my neighbours, none actually lived nearby, the nearest some ten miles or so away, and most of them in the capital.

From what I could glean from local information, such as it was, most of the tracts of land had been 'granted' by the Sheik up to one mile on either side of the road to the West. So in simple terms, I had five 'neighbours' on either side of me, and ten to the front. Their total lands were then about fifteen square miles or ten thousand acres of desert land.

I went and visited one of the better jewellery stores in Dahra, and chose a gold fly-swish, which had a totally plain handle and the softest of hair in the swish part. I said I wanted an Aloe leaf engraved on the gold hilt. Were they familiar with the Aloe leaf?

'Of course, Sir Jonathan. Absolutely, no problem.'

So, I ordered twenty of them to be delivered the day before the lunch. The number startled them just for a second until I took out my chequebook.

I also asked them to design a signet ring for an opal that I had received and showed them the firestone opal from Farouq al-Hamdi. There were gasps at its beauty. As I am not familiar with opals, I had not realised its true value, but the jeweller informed me that a setting for a fifty-thousand euro opal would have to be special indeed.

I brought Aziz with me as my secretary to the lunch carrying a case of the individually boxed gold fly-swishes and we left almost an hour earlier than needed. Sitting in the back of the limousine with me, he was the essence of restraint, still I could not but help observe how he was looking out the windows, albeit for the most part, at a panorama desert landscape.

I also noticed that as vehicles approached us on the road starting as specks in the distance, they at their high speed approaching us and we at our seventy or so miles approaching them, his hand would tightly clutch the seat, and then relax until the next vehicle was to be seen emerging in the distance. It was as if this aspect of technology left him on edge.

With more curiosity than tact, I inquired, `Aziz, you didn't travel around much with your former Master, did you?'

Appearing slightly embarrassed that I had perceived his uneasiness, he replied, 'Master Abdou has many responsibilities in the capital and in Europe. Long before he sold the Aloe Palace to you, it had ceased to be a home for him. The young Master, I still think of him as that, would spend one hour a month with me on the affairs of the Palace and then be gone for another month.'

`He had absolute trust in me as I had in him, but in my soul there was the well of insecurity. Those brief visits of inspection were the only times I caught a glimpse of my Master after he moved away, and my soul was always troubled.'

It dawned on me that this would have been his first time in many years that he had been away from the Aloe Palace, his home and his workplace.

So as to keep his mind from dwelling on visions of road accidents, and in a way out of interest, because it was really the first time that he and I had been placed in an enclosed space for a duration of time, I asked him about his early life. He had mentioned once to me how he had loved the big Turk who had been his protector in the Palace. But that had really been all.

It turned out that his father, also Aziz, had been head of household to the al-Akhri brothers' father whom I gathered from his tone belonged to what could be termed 'the old and traditional school'. He had been trained in his early years to read and write with Jalal al-Akhri who was nearest to him in age, and though not given a formal education as such, he would read to Jalal from Jalal's own textbooks, until there were no further new books to read. I got the impression that Jalal was into outdoor activities and not academic ones.

There was a pause at one stage in our conversation, and then Aziz said, 'Master, I have never really thanked you for Yedo.'

'Aziz, you have thanked me at least twice that I can remember.'

'My father died just after the old Master. It was as if they were both of an age, and the passing of one meant the passing of another. The young Masters were just that, quite young, so it was really a privilege for me to become the head of the Mistress's household in my early twenties. But she trusted me, and I served her with all my heart. She was of the northern tribes and loved the peace of the desert.'

`In handling the matters of the Palace over the years, since my father died, I have realised that every slave is afraid of something, but what each slave fears most, whether they know and admit it or not, is the fear of the unknown future.'

`The loss of my Turk, for that is what I always called him, was the realisation of that fear which stayed for some unknown reason with me until Yedo walked into that room.'

`It is not that the old Mistress ever threatened anything, or later on young Master Abdou, but there was not the security that my soul needed. That was made all the worse when the Sheik sent Master Abdou off to Europe.'

`I am sorry, Master, all of this will not make sense to you, and you will see it as the babbling of an old foolish slave.'

'No, Aziz, it makes perfect sense. We all have our demons. We all have our fears. I trust that now you have one less with Yedo at your side.'

'Aziz, I have many plans for the Aloe Palace, many things I want to do there. Fate has given me the means to achieve what I want to do. I shall rely on you just as much as your late Mistress, and just as much and more than the young Master Abdou. And the plain and simple reason why I shall, is that you have the wisdom of years, and at the end of the day, it can be the wisdom of knowing the difference that counts most.'

As I observed his profile against the desert sands streaming by outside the limousine, he regained the composed and inscrutable expression now familiar to me. I realised I had quite a soft spot for this most loyal, efficient, correct, but still vulnerable head of my household.

Having left the Lime Palace early for the luncheon, as we approached the capital city, the prior instructions I had given the chauffeur were followed.

We took the scenic route round by the ring motorway, down to the port, across the river -- a trickle at this time of year. I converted myself into a cicerone and gave the guided tour -- albeit more of a point-and-show than of long-winded historical explanation, even surprising myself at what I had learned of Dahra in the year and a half I had been here.

I must admit the new architecture of the capital city has its charms, particularly some of the internationally acclaimed public buildings.

I showed Aziz the white marble fountain outside the Dahran four-diamond Bilton where Fate had me placed to save Tariq al-Akhri, his former Master's elder brother, from an out-of-control car. This little tour certainly pleased me, but I think that it really and truly pleased Aziz.

The lunch was politeness itself in the new four-diamond Dahran Bilton. As business usually starts, just before the dessert, I pretended to have been absent-minded and said 'Aziz, you let me forget my presents for my luncheon hosts' and I gave each their individual box. The symbol of the Aloe leaf was not lost on them being the sign of the Hajji - those who had made the sacred journey of pilgrimage to Mecca.

'My dear neighbours,' I said -- perhaps a bit flowery for people whom I had not met before except for Jalal--'you will have undoubtedly heard of my good fortune in the discovery of water on my land. For such good fortune to continue, I believe it should be shared with one's neighbours so that all our lands can flourish.'

'I have met Jalal al-Akhri here, at his brother's fiftieth birthday' -- I was letting them know that I was in with the al-Akhri family -- 'so if you can agree a price among you, say twenty euro per cubic meter, with Jalal for all the water you want as you want it, that will be the price and will stay at that price for five years.'

There were one or two gasps, but smiles all round.

I went on, 'There are only three conditions if you can call them that. One, the water must only be for yourselves for the neighbouring lands to the Aloe Palace in that you must not sell it on to others. Two, the water is yours in the amounts you want, no minimum and no maximum, until the pressure stops and I have to pump it from the ground. On that day, we will have to agree on another price. Three, all payments for water received the previous month are made to Jalal al-Akhri on the first day of the following month.'

There was a silence in the room. And then a deafening applause. I do believe that they thought that there would be hard bargaining from me. I prefer to think that they would have to bargain hard with Jalal.

A rough calculation of a cubic meter of water per day needed for sprinkling per acre at 20 euro per cubic meter for 10,000 acres of desert land would give a revenue of six million euro a month or just seventy million euro a year.

The only question they had to ask was when would the water be available and I said within the month and that we would split the cost of pipelines to their properties. There were smiles all round.

I caught Jalal's eye and he came over.

He smiled when he said, 'I think you have outmanoeuvred us your neighbours. We were expecting a fight and have got a fly-swish and bargain-priced water.'

I thanked him for his comment and said that I hoped he would not object to being the negotiator for the price of the water.

He said 'Not at all. Twenty euro per cubic meter is very fair, and even fairer at a fixed price over the next five years.'

'As for your fee, in the matter both of the negotiation of the water rate, and the handling of the payments each month, please deduct 5% from the balances you receive and send me on the other 95%. I would calculate that that will be over three and a half million euro, almost four million dollars per year for you each year for the next five years,' I said.

I think Jalal was taken aback by the size of the proposed handling fee, which involved nothing more than making one Bank transfer a month.

At my end, as there was no income tax in Dahra, it would be a clear profit of over sixty million euro a year.

Stan just loved his office and over the next month was the effective manager of the construction of the connecting water pipelines to the fifteen neighbours. It was quite simple straight-line construction. The main road west did not have to be disturbed even as there were culverts under it - eight per mile - to take desert floodwaters from one side of the road to the other whenever they flooded and that was once every five years or so.

Stan accomplished all of this with a team of fifteen engineers all clothed who sat around in a semi-circle and tried not to look at his cock and his balls. `Stan the man' was in his element and was highly effective.

At each of the wells, a water meter station monitored the upward flow and pressure and fifteen meters monitored the outward flow of four hundred cubic feet of water an hour to the neighbours. It was all automatic and when it went on line at the end of three weeks, it was Stan who pressed the button in the office surrounded only by myself and the slaves of the Aloe Palace.

I do not think that even Stan realised the sums of money involved. The piping and stations and all the controls had cost less than ten million in all - and half of that was paid for by the 'neighbours'. So effectively pipe outlay would be paid for by incoming revenue in less than thirty days.

One thing I did for Stan, who had not yet got a buddy, was to get the catalogues from the two slave dealers at al-Qatim and al-Mera. I told him I wanted some more new slaves for the household, and as if taking him into my confidence, I asked him to flick through the catalogues quickly and just give me the numbers of three of those who took his fancy. It was a repeat of what Gus Jennings had once done with me.

With Stan's quick New Zealand humour, he quipped, 'No chance of a woman being in here, I suppose.'

He chose two blond Polish guys who looked, and turned out to be a bit effeminate, and a minor league Brazilian porn star who had fallen on more than hard times, but who had a penis like a bell clapper. All three were from the al-Qatim catalogue.

'Polish and Brazilian. I wonder how I am going to talk to these guys, Stan,' I said.

`Who's going to have time to talk with three beauties like these?' was all that he replied.

I had one last gift for Stan and that was a white ivory fly-swish, the symbol of an assistant overseer. He had an office. He might as well have the power that went with it.

He took it quietly and said 'So who, Boss, am I going to oversee?'

to be continued...