Priscilla descended the staircase with the eyes of fifty or sixty people upon her. She was in a white gown that contrasted against her deep brown skin. Her substantial décolletage was on display, and her dress opened between her legs, revealing her white, ribbed stockings, held in place with Carolina-blue ribbons. Some saw a slave. Some saw a whore. At least one saw the most important spy in America.

~.~

North America was a highly fractured continent in 1927. Lincoln’s assassination at Gettysburg in 1863 set in motion political acts of astounding moral weakness that permanently split the former United States into two. But the cleavages kept forming. Texas declared its independence, again, in 1870. California did so in 1875. British Canada absorbed the Washington territory and Oregon shortly thereafter. Mexico surged back into the Southwest, and gained ground against both California and Texas, one settlement at a time. The plains and desert territories were a region of unending turmoil among warring Texan, Confederate, and New Union settlers. The only semblance of civil order was provided by the Federated Indian Nations, which did their best to keep the savages at bay.

The border states, plus Tennessee and Kansas, had been divided haphazardly between North and South as part of the armistice agreement. They were, in theory, a demilitarized zone, but were in fact anything but. And, just as they had been during the war itself, they were a river of black marketeering, smuggling, and corrupt deal-making between the now separate countries.

The result was a weak collection of corrupt, poor nations and territories that the European powers fed upon. Leaders were bought, coups were arranged, and sparks of unity were doused, so that Britain, France, and Germany could have cheap access to the resources of the vast continent, with little fear of competition. Indeed, the uniting force of shared avarice was said to have made for an unprecedented period of peace in Europe. A peace that was beginning to fray.

In this broken political mirror, all cracks ran through Memphis, Tennessee. Sleek steam ships and personal hydrofoils passed via the Mississippi and Ohio, connecting it to cities up and downstream, including to the international port of New Orleans. Rail lines connected it to Kansas City, Dallas, and Chicago. And, the largest steam-powered dirigible field outside of Europe connected it to everywhere else. It functioned as an international free-zone, where enemies and rivals could share a drink, or a whore, without shooting one another, and business could get done. The result was a vibrant city, filled with the worst and best of a broken America, and mostly the worst of the world.

It was in Memphis that Priscilla found herself, now. As far as anyone knew, her “owner” had brought her there to entertain gathered European dignitaries with her body. And while that might very turn out to be true, W.E.B. Du Bois also expected her to disrupt German efforts to hand the Confederacy the world’s most powerful weapon.

While steam powered, English-made automatons had long since replaced most field labor in the cotton fields, the Confederacy stubbornly clung to slavery. Slaves were a crop unto themselves. They were bred for export to Portuguese and German colonies, as well as to Texas and the territories, where slavery was officially renounced, but widely tolerated. Female slaves were turned into sex workers. Bordellos lined the borders of the South. While Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans became international destinations for Europe’s wealthiest sex-starved men.

Priscilla was no common prostitute. She was a fourth generation house slave in the family of Master Samuel Calhoun — among the oldest and most regarded slave-holding families in the Confederacy. Effectively, she and her matriarchs had been bred and seasoned to be objects of sexual pleasure. While especially beautiful, that Priscilla was a bedroom slave was, sadly, not unusual. There were hundreds and perhaps thousands of others like her in the South.

What did set Priscilla apart was her education. Teaching slaves to read and write was illegal until 1892, and, even then, was culturally frowned upon at best, and dangerous at worst. But, Priscilla’s awful circumstances proved lucky in one regard. Her mistress despised her father, and her brothers, and most especially her husband, for their prurient habits with slaves. It horrified her that her young, sweet son, Tommy, would turn into a pig like them. Unlike other plantation wives, who took out their frustrations by beating and tormenting the bedroom slaves when their husbands were away, Mistress Ida chose a much more subversive path. She would educate Priscilla, and give her the tools to flee this god-forsaken country and its awful men.

Priscilla proved to be a hungry and able student. By the time she was thirteen, she was challenging Ida in mathematics and French. By the time Samuel Calhoun took her virginity on her sixteenth birthday, Priscilla was as cultured and educated as any white woman in the Confederacy.

Mistress Calhoun cried herself to sleep the night her husband took Priscilla to his “study” for the first time. She had resigned herself to her husband’s fornication habits with the other house slaves. But when he entered the parlor, smelling of bourbon and tabacco, as she and Priscilla read Flaubert aloud to one another by dwindling candle light, she flared in rage. Master Calhoun grabbed Priscilla by the hair.

“Time to season this bitch properly!” Samuel shouted. “I’m sick of this bizarre miscegenation of yours!” He ducked under flying chards of crystal as he dragged Priscilla, whimpering, from the room. Six months later Priscilla was a stowaway on a French freighter to Marseille with a fistful of Confederate silver coins, courtesy of Ida Calhoun.

~*~

Priscilla worked the Memphis hotel ballroom more like a gregarious hostess than a harlot. She knew many of the guests already. There was the French ambassador. Priscilla’s Parisian French and her skill at fellatio meant he would try to be at her shoulder all night. The New Union ambassador, a supposed abolitionist, was practically an old friend — if old friends liked to tie you up and whip you with a strap.

Daniel Bowie was Prime Minister of Texas. He had his father’s reputation for frontier manliness, but his preferences outside of the limelight were for male and female slaves to copulate in front of him as he waited to clean up the mess. In the corner was Sarah Forrest. She was the stunning, fair-haired bride of the Confederate Vice President, Nathan Forrest II. She’d been with Priscilla a half-dozen times, and called her “my Pecan Pie.”

There were at least a dozen other men and women sprinkled around the room with whom Priscilla was more than a little familiar. Those that she did not know her, knew of her. She had become notorious within months of her arrival in Memphis, and her dance card, and bed, were rarely empty. Her spectacular brown beauty and slave status, juxtaposed against her European sophistication and confidence, created a magnet that drew people of all kinds. Some wanted to slap that sophistication off of her pretty dark face and take her down. Others, consciously or unconsciously, were titillated by her exotic nature. Most were simply drawn to the most beautiful woman they had ever met.

An elegant couple entered the ballroom. The man handed his hat and cape to a butler and looked up to reveal he was square-jawed and handsome. His companion was a gorgeous, icy blonde. Priscilla looked over at her “owner” and handler to confirm that this couple was her target. He gave her a subtle nod from across the room.

~*~

The Underground Railroad had gotten her to Marseille. Her talent, wit, and beauty got her to the salons of Paris. Over the next few years she made her way as a char woman, a nanny, a piano instructor, and as dancer in the more erotically-inclined clubs. Eventually she became the central performer in an avant-garde club in the Montmartre neighborhood.

Over nearly the next ten years, Priscilla took many lovers: starving artists, brooding intellectuals, industrialists, men, women. She bed whomever engaged her mind and spirit. She posed for Matisse and Picasso. Collette wrote poems about her. Coco Chanel made her hats and traded men with her. She debated morality with Simone Bouvier and Jean-Paul Sartre dozens of times, and slept with them both nearly as often. Paris was the most free place on the planet, and for an only recently freed slave, it was pure heaven. She swore she would never leave.

And then she met Dr. Du Bois. She had been persuaded to hear him give a lecture. The audience was mostly made up of the runaway American slave refugees who crowded the 19th arrondissement, rather than the predominantly white cosmopolitans with whom she lived and interacted in bohemian Montmartre.

Priscilla had buried the shame, sadness, and anger of her childhood under the stimulating liberty of France. But, all those feelings rushed back to the surface when she saw the desperate faces of these recent arrivals, and heard the speaker’s words. Du Bois favored a return to Africa for those who wished it, and civil rights for those who did not. However, before those things could truly happen, he emphasized, the American Confederacy had to be destroyed.

“You sisters and brothers are still in shackles! They are dying under the brutal yoke! We must do all we can to free them! And we must do all we can to destroy the evil government which perpetuates this scourge!” Du Bois trumpeted.

Tears welled in Priscilla’s eyes. She cried for what she had been through. She cried for what her people were still going through. And she cried with grief as the idea that she might give up her libertine life for a life of duty flashed across her brain. When she patted her eyes dry with the back of her lace glove, something utterly astounding came into focus. Standing on the far right of the stage was a handful of men. Among them was none other than her little “brother” from Carolina, Tommy Calhoun.

~.~

Generalleutnant Wilhelm Bachmann and his wife, Helga, looked at Priscilla hungrily as she approached. Their hunger only increased when she greeted them with passable German. They spoke with arrogant directness.

“You have a magnificent body, negress. Like a fine horse, or a lioness. Are you an animal in bed, sklavin?” The general asked with a salacious sneer. Somehow, “slave” sounded even more demeaning in German. Priscilla suppressed the urge to scratch his eyes out.

“You have no idea, my dear Generalleutnant,” Priscilla winked.

“Mmmm. How much pleasure can you stand, I wonder?” Helga asked.

“I am here to please,” Priscilla responded, “But I assure you I can withstand as much pleasure, or pain, as Frau has in mind.”

Helga licked her lips involuntarily and looked at her husband.

“Are you … engaged… this evening?” Bachmann asked.

“Where I go or don’t go is up to my master, Generalleutnant,” Priscilla said with a nod toward Thomas. The Generalleutnant made his way across the ballroom.

“My husband is quite right. You are a beautiful animal. I look forward to having your brown body spread out before us. Before my husband, and myself, and our automat.”

Priscilla feigned a smile. She gulped as she flushed with fear, and some excitement. What was this automat?

~*~

“Why…are you here?” Priscilla asked with amazement and a bit of worry.

“Guess you could say I’m a momma’s boy,” Thomas said.

When Dr. Du Bois realized that his most recent acquisition, the youngest member of the Calhoun dynasty, could have an asset like Priscilla, he pressured them both to consider the unthinkable.

They worked out the details of their game during the three-day journey on the hydrofoil liner from Marseille to Norfolk. Would people accept that the church-going, straight-laced, recent Citadel graduate could turn into a rakish pimp with a gambling problem? Yes, if only because there were so many precedents among the plantation class. Would they accept Priscilla as his shiny whore? Yes, because they were all racist, amoral, swine.

Thomas wired ahead to the publisher of the Charlotte Observer, so that when he and Priscilla stepped from the train, a photographer was waiting. The story quickly spread to all the papers in the South. The Confederacy relished the return of uppity slaves to their proper place in the world. And, no one was more “uppity” than the beautiful, educated, Priscilla.

The result was that Thomas and Priscilla had their spy personas established for them. They could appear in any capital city as celebrities, of a sort, easily gain access to the right gambling rooms, ballrooms and bedrooms, and then funnel a font of rich intelligence back to Du Bois. In Memphis, they could capture information not just about what the Confederacy was up to, but what every entity working to maintain slavery was up to. So, to Memphis, they went.

~*~

Priscilla climbed into the Bachmann’s gleaming coach. It was called a Tennessee Walker, because of its incredibly smooth ride. With twelve fast-moving legs on each side, it looked more like a swift caterpillar than the famous Tennessee horse. Ironically, it was made in Germany by Daimler-Benz.

They proceeded north to the mansion district, on the high bluff above the Mississippi. Their way was well lit by street lamps glowing with Westinghouse direct current all along the boulevard. Plumes of steam and coal smoke drifted up from power plants on every corner, giving a strange yellow glow to the night sky.

Priscilla sat between Helga and Wilhelm on the plush leather bench. They took liberties without asking. Helga snaked a hand under Priscilla’s scandalously short pantaloons, while Wilhelm loosened her bustier enough to gain access to her breasts. The three exchanged kisses of increasing intensity. With some shame, Priscilla felt her own excitement grow.

By the time they reached the large compound of the German consulate, Priscilla was nearly naked. The Generalleutnant had the chauffeur bring the carriage right up to the guest house entry as he rushed in to wave off the servants. Helga pulled Priscilla from the back seat with a huge smile. “You are spirited, fraulein. I think you are going to enjoy this.”

Priscilla appreciated being called something other than a negress or a slave, and found herself kissing Helga with a mix of attraction and gratitude. When Helga bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, Priscilla was reminded of whom she was dealing with, as well as her mission.

As soon as the trio entered the foyer, Helga and Wilhelm beckoned Priscilla up the ornate, curved stairwell. Priscilla knew this was her chance. The weapon plans were in the house, but where? She slipped the last of her clothes off, and borrowed from one of her club routines, as she began to dance through the house in nothing but her ribbed stockings and heels.

“Crazy whore!” Wilhelm shouted, half in anger, half in excitement, as he and Helga chased after her, engulfed in laughter. Priscilla spun into the front sitting room. Helga and Wilhelm danced after her with apparently not a care. Then she swung into the main salon, followed by the library, with similar non-reaction from the Bachmanns. It was when she pirouetted into the solarium that Wilhelm stiffened.

“That’s quite enough, sklavin,” Wilhelm said sternly, laughter gone from his voice. Priscilla wandered the room pretending to play a sexy keep-away game with her “hosts.” The layout was odd. A drafting table seemed out of place in a sunroom, and a metal map cabinet sat against the wall. This was where she would look first. That is, if she ever got the chance.

The Bachmanns led Priscilla up the stairs and into a large bedroom suite. The room was dominated by an oversized bed, and an odd, high chaise lounge. They offered Priscilla a brandy and then disappeared into an another room for a few moments, allowing Priscilla to steady her nerves and clear her head. She would have to find the plans, get them out to Thomas who would be waiting by the north wall, and get back without being discovered. She had no specific idea how she would accomplish any of those things, just the resolve that she would do so.

Helga emerged first. She had let down her blonde hair which was striking. But more than that, she wore nothing but an elaborate leather harness. It looked to be made of saddle leather and criss-crossed her body without actually covering much. She was also in laced boots that started with stiletto heels and terminated at mid-thigh. She strode over to Priscilla and kissed her sweetly, while simultaneously pinching and twisting her nipples. Priscilla gasped and returned the kiss.

Willhelm joined them. He was in a harness outfit similar to Helga’s. He was sporting an erect penis of moderate size, but of which he nevertheless seemed quite proud. He stroked it as he muttered, “Yes, Helga, kiss that pretty, brown whore.”

“Shall we take this to bed?” Priscilla asked, leading Helga by the hip.

“Oh no, my pretty girl, we will not be taking you tonight. Otto will.”

With something approaching glee, Wilhelm swung open the door to the adjoining room, and out walked a metal man. That is, if a “man” could have no head, and if “walking” occurred on wheeled feet. “He” had a black leather breast plate with the affectation of the shoulders, pectorals, and abdomen of Michelangelo’s David. Otto had copper arms and legs, with brass and nickel gears protruding at the joints. His hands moved convincingly under black leather gloves. But all of those features were quickly obscured for Priscilla when a spiral door whirred open at his groin, from which emerged three pulsating phalluses.

“Please,” Wilhelm said, not meaning please at all, “Let’s start with you lying on the lounge. And, I suggest you wrap your hands in these loops. You see?”

Priscilla did as she was told. Her heart rate, already elevated by the stress of the situation, jumped another twenty beats per minute as Otto rolled in her direction. She knew full well what was about to happen. Otto “walked” to the foot of the lounge. Priscilla raised and spread her legs instinctively, even though it was an automaton in front of her rather than a real man or woman.

Helga fiddled with some switches and dials on Otto’s back, then gleefully hopped on the large bed. Otto’s phalluses whirred and buzzed. The center one appeared to grow in length and girth, as the others withdrew. The head moved against Priscilla’s lips, which were much wetter than she would have been proud to admit.

“Aaah!” Priscilla gasped as the automaton entered her. The cold phallus moved back and forth slowly.

“Ooooh. What?” Priscilla groaned as she felt the object within her swell, and then decline, and then swell again. It was unlike anything she had ever felt before. The pace of the pulsing prick increased, as did the depth of its thrusts.

“Oh…myyyyy…I… aaaaah!” Priscilla cried as the two other appendages suddenly reappeared. The one on top stretched out to caress her hooded nub, while the other pushed slowly into her anus. All three began to emit a light vibration at the same time that Otto increased the pace of his thrusts.

Priscilla looked over to see Wilhelm mounted over Helga, who was on all fours facing Otto and herself. Wilhelm matched the pace of the automaton as they both stared with fetishistic desire at Priscilla being taken by machine.

Priscilla felt the onset of an amorous contraction like no other. The stimulation was so complete, so diverse, and so intense, that pleasure overtook her entire being. As the contractions built, Priscilla stopped breathing. It was if there was her unconscious brain, her sex, and nothing else. Her heart beat slowed to nothing as each wave built, then accelerated to the point of exploding as it crested. Each wave built in its intensity until it was as if her brain separated from her spine. She was only a collection of wracked nerves, and a pile of spasming flesh. Just when Priscilla thought she would pass out, Otto slowed to a stop.

Priscilla gasped for air as she came back to reality. She could hear Helga and Wilhelm fucking and looked over to see them both smiling at her, as if they knew something that she did not. And at that moment, Otto started once more.

“Nooo!” Priscilla cried. Though as Otto’s attachments began to pulse, thrust and vibrate, once more, she soon switched to “Yes! Yes! Yessssss!”

And so it went, again and again, until Priscilla’s smooth, brown skin was covered in a sheen of sweat and her juice puddled on the tufted leather beneath her. At last, after so many rounds that Priscilla lost count, the machine whined to a halt. With the thrusting finally stopped, Priscilla freed her arms from the loops and wriggled away from Otto’s cocks.

“Please…,” Priscilla whispered involuntarily and to no one in particular.

“Had enough, sklavin?” Wilhelm asked.

“You lasted longer than anyone ever has, liebchen,” Helga said.

“Indeed!” Wilhelm said. “Otto’s has never run down before. Astounding! We will have the carriage driver take you back to your master, with our compliments.”

Priscilla stood on shaking legs, determined that she not yet leave.

“I’m not done yet, Generalleutnant. I could use some thick German cock. And some juicy German cunt,” Priscilla said as alluringly as she could, when in reality she wanted to curl into a ball.

Wilhelm and Helga looked astonished, and then both laughed.

“My, you are an animal,” Helga said, “A very, sexual, animal.” She opened her arms, inviting Priscilla to join them.

Priscilla gave them both the fucking of their lives. Despite being sore and beyond satiated, she threw herself at the German couple like the animal that they assumed her to be. When she had fucked them both to sleep, Priscilla snuck, naked, through the darkened house.

The plans for the pilotless bomb were indeed in the map cabinet. She sprinted across the lawn to a waiting Thomas, exchanged the real plans with the fake and sprinted back. She slipped back into the giant bed, knowing that if either stirred, it would mean both she and Thomas would likely face the hangman.

Priscilla stiffened with fear when Helga whispered, “What are you doing fraulein?”

Priscilla was speechless for a moment that felt like a century.

“Does my insatiable liebchen want to go again?”

“Yes, Frau Helga, that is exactly what I want,” Priscilla said as she slid into Helga’s arms.