Prize of Gor

Chapter 16 THE SUNLIT CEMENT SHELF

For a time she could make nothing out of the sounds about her. It seemed for the moment an indiscriminate babble, and, one supposes, from one point of view it was, as the sounds were then unintelligible to her, as she lay there, only dimly, distantly, vaguely conscious. She was trying to hear them with a different ear, so to speak. She was trying, we may suppose, to hear in English, but it was not English, you see, that was about her. It was a quite different language. So her puzzlement, her vague unease, her half-conscious consternation, was not really difficult to understand. Indeed, at first she did not really think of the sounds as of a language, at all, but only as human sounds, and then, gradually, she realized they must be in a language. The streams of sound bubbling about her like water, sometimes breaking forth, sometimes soothing, rippling, sometimes rushing, must be intentionally formed. There was something articulate and precise in the music, in the sounds. These were not the sounds of animals, the roars, and growls, the bleating, bellowing, shrieking, howlings, and hissings of animals, nor the sounds of nature, nothing like the dashings of branches against one another, lashed by the wind, nothing like the pattering of rain, the tumbling of rocks, the drums of thunder, the shattering proclamations of lightning. So why did she not understand them? Doubtless she was very tired, and wanted to sleep. Why could they not be quiet, these voices which must be in her dream? What a strange dream! It crossed her mind that she might complain to the building superintendent. How vigorous and remarkable, and diverse, and expressive, seemed that strange tongue, at once so lively, bright and fluent, even delicate, and then suddenly so explosively rude and brutal, at one moment loud, at another soft, at one moment rapid, even careless, at another measured and stately, at one moment melodious, at another almost inarticulate and fierce, and the dozens of voices speaking, conversing, crying out, calling out, whispering, proclaiming, announcing, arguing, haggling, querying, all this sound, rapid, torrential, swift, slow, then quick again, loud, soft, which, like flowing, sometimes rushing, water, bubbled about her, seemingly everywhere, was surely incongruous in the vicinity of her apartment.

Gradually she became apprehensive, because it began to seem to her that if one thing or another were a little different, if there were a small adjustment, a willingness, a readiness, a slight shifting of attention or awareness, the smallest acceptance or openness, that that inexplicable cacophony of sound about her might suddenly become intelligible, and this suspicion, for no reason she clearly understood, frightened her.

She continued to listen, dimly, determinedly, in English, and, in this way, reassuringly, she understood nothing, or, perhaps better, nothing she would admit to herself.

She was on her stomach, doubtless on her bed in her apartment. On the other hand, the surface seemed very hard, unpleasantly hard, even rough. I must get a new mattress, she thought. She reached for her pillow, but could not find it. It had doubtless fallen to the floor. The bed was hard, much too hard. It also seemed very warm, where she was. It was almost as though she lay on a hot surface, in direct sunlight, in the heat of a blazing summer. The sunlight must be streaming through the window in her apartment. But there was so much of it. And the angle seemed wrong, and it was so hot! How terribly unpleasant, she thought. She was uncomfortably warm, but did not want to awaken.

She reached for the covers, to press them down, and away, but she could not find them. She must have discarded them already.

She sensed redness, radiance and heat through her closed eyelids.

It was hot. There seemed to be bright sunlight.

Was there something on her neck? Had there been a tiny sound, as of the touching of one piece of metal upon another, or a tiny scraping sound?

Something seemed subtly different about her body.

She hoped that it was Saturday, for on Saturdays she had no classes.

She reached down to touch her nightgown. She knew that she should have, given her ideological commitments, affected mannish nightwear, to be more like men, the enemy, but she had not wished to do so, and her fellow ideologues, her colleagues, and such, need never know that she wore a gown to bed, one that might be thrust up, revealing her. It was of cotton. She had not dared to purchase, let alone wear, a subtle, rustling silken gown, or one of those tiny, revealing short gowns, one of those scandalous little things presumably eschewed even by prostitutes, who might wish to have a bit of respect from their clients, the sort of garment in which a master might put a slave girl.

An old dream vaguely touched her consciousness.

No, no, she murmured.

But he had emerged from his seat in the classroom, taken her in hand, and, despite her mild, weakly plaintive protests, almost ritualistic protests, expected of her, quietly, methodically, garment by garment, even to her shoes, stripped her before the class. He had then lifted her to the surface of the desk. She had squirmed beneath him, plaintively protesting, trying weakly to push him away, and then, kissing him and grasping him, had wept her surrender. The class had applauded.

No, she thought. Oh, yes, yes, yes! No! Yes! Yes!

She reached down to touch her cotton nightgown, but touched, rather, her thigh. She feared that in the intensity of her dream she had drawn it up, about her waist, or bosom. She reached to draw it down, but could not find it. She did not sleep nude! She would never do that! She was not that kind of woman! She would never permit herself to be so vulnerable!

She became more aware, then, of the sounds about her, the hardness of the surface on which she lay.

She also became more apprehensive.

She fought consciousness.

She felt her body, and was terrified. It did not seem hers, or not as it had been, when she had retired, surely. She lightly touched her breasts. How sweet and full, and delightful and felicitous, they seemed. She was embarrassed. She touched her waist which now seemed small, firm and slim, and beautifully rounded, even delicate, and she touched her hips and sensed the contrasting flare of a sweet love cradle. She sensed then, to her misery and terror, not the figure she thought she had, but one quite different, one of those figures which draws vulgar whistles and obscene catcalls from rude men, from moved, uninhibited, rude, excited men.

It is not my body, she thought!

But of course it was her body.

She moved to draw up her legs and cover herself with her hands and arms, but, suddenly, was aware of some sort of impediment on her left ankle. It was not that she could not move as she wished; it was only that there was something on her left ankle, something heavy. Too, now there seemed more clearly something on her neck. She tried to thrust the thing from her ankle with her right foot, but could not do so. It clearly was metal, and heavy, and round, and was closed, and closed closely, about her ankle. She could not slip it. Too, she heard a sound, when she moved her foot, as of heavy links of chain, drawn perhaps over a cement surface. The weight seemed to pull at the object on her foot. It seemed to be attached to the object.

She touched her neck. There seemed something there, something heavy. She jerked away her hand.

The noise about her, the sounds, the language, the speech, now seemed even more obtrusive.

She was terrified to awaken.

Yet on some level, doubtless, she was already awake, and fearfully awake.

“Buy me, Master!” she heard, the soliciting, piteously begging call of a woman, from not more than a yard or two away. The call had not been in English, as she suddenly, almost simultaneously, realized, but yet, as she also suddenly realized, as in a moment of blazing comprehension, she had not only understood it perfectly, but understood as well that she had understood it perfectly, immediately, and naturally. It was not in English, but it was in a language she spoke, and with some fluency. Most of the words she heard about her, now, though not all, made perfect sense to her. The tiny shift, the adjustment, had been made.

All this seemed to take place at the same time, and she opened her eyes wildly for an instant but, drawing back from the painful stabbing of sunlight, shut them in pain, but, in that moment, she had glimpsed a world about her, movements, colors, robes, stalls across the way, displayed goods, awnings, shouting vendors, children, men, women, hurryings, groups in converse, peddlers, some with baskets on their heads.

She rolled to her side, and sat up, with a clatter of chain, and clenched her legs together, and covered her breasts with her hands and arms, and screamed in misery.

Girls on either side of her drew back.

Some passers-by paused for a moment, some close enough to reach out and touch her, and then moved on.

She opened her eyes a little, fearfully.

She was on a narrow, sunlit cement shelf at one side of a small plaza, or square. Across the square were numerous stalls, where vendors displayed their goods. Too, here and there in the square, blankets had been spread on the stones, and other vendors, sitting at the blankets, displayed goods spread before them. There were also stalls on her side of the square. Across the way, behind the stalls, and also behind her, on her side of the square, were brick, tenementlike buildings, some seven or eight stories in height, very different from the tall cylinders she had seen before. At one end of the square she could see two of these cylinders in the distance. At the other side of the square, down a narrow street threading its way between buildings similar to those about the square, she could glimpse what seemed to be a high, broad wall.

She began to sob, shielding her body as she could.

She was on a narrow cement shelf, backed by a building on which it abutted, rather like a porch. The shelf was something like five feet in depth, and thirty feet, or so, in length. It was about a yard high. There were steps at either end, giving access to its surface. To the left of the shelf, as one would face it, there was a door at the ground level, through which access to the building was obtained. It was through this door that women could be brought to and from the shelf. Behind that door there was a hallway, with cramped, dark, narrow, cement stairs leading down for some thirty feet. At the foot of those stairs there was a basement level, and on this level there were several basement rooms, some with stout, security doors. It was within one of these basement rooms, ill-lit, musty, damp and straw-strewn, that the women were housed when not on the shelf.

There were seven sockets behind the shelf in the wall of the building, overhead, in which horizontal poles might be fixed, and there were matching sockets near the front of the shelf, into which vertical poles might be placed, from which arrangements of poles, joined together and reinforced by additional, overhead, horizontal poles near the front of the shelf, awnings might be suspended. At present, however, the poles, with their awnings, were not set, reposing rather in a storeroom of the low brick building, the tenement, or insula, as the shelf, without the awnings, rented for a lower price.

Instantly the flood of her memories had returned to her, the house, the training, the laundry, the tassa powder.

She looked down at her left thigh.

Could these things be true?

Could she have gone mad?

But there, high, just below the hip, was the tiny, graceful, cursive kef.

It was true!

She was branded! Literally, actually branded! That lovely mark was literally in her. It had been burned into her with a hot iron! She was branded, clearly and unmistakably marked!

On her right side there was a bruise. That was surely where Mirus had angrily spurned her from the dais, with a thrust of his bootlike sandal, and she, helplessly bound, turning and rolling, twisting, in pain, had tumbled rolling to the rug at the foot of the dais.

He had not been gentle with his slave.

She looked at her left ankle. About it there was a heavy shackle. Attached to a ring on this shackle was a stout chain. It was some five feet in length, and was composed of heavy links. The chain was, in turn, fastened to a large, heavy metal ring which was anchored in the cement. She was, accordingly, by the left ankle, chained to this ring.

There were five such rings on the shelf.

The shackle was hammered shut about her ankle. A large padlock, snapped about the dangling shackle ring, attached the chain to her shackle; another large padlock, at the other end of the chain, completed her securing, fastening her to the heavy ring in the cement. The shackle, as it was hammered shut about her ankle, could not be removed, save by tools.

She looked about. On the shelf there were seven girls, including herself. Each was chained as herself. Two rings had two girls fastened to them.

She put her fingers to her throat. No longer did it wear the thin, flat, light, graceful, lovely metal band with which she had become familiar, which she had scarcely been aware she had worn, until perhaps a sharp word or a stroke of the switch had recalled to her attention its significance.

She looked at the other girls.

On their throats were heavy collars of black iron, the perforated ends of each curving about the neck to come together in front, in such a way that the collar curved closely about the neck behind the two perforated ends, and the two perforated ends extended forward. These jutting ends then, with their matching apertures, were hammered flat together. Through the matched apertures a dangling iron ring had been closed. Thus, in a sense, the collar was doubly closed, having not only been hammered shut, but also secured with the ring joining the two ends of the metal. Either closure is sufficient, of course. This collar-and-ring arrangement is simply and inexpensively wrought, not requiring the fusing of metals in welding. Ring mounts, and such, on the other hand, are usually fused into, welded into, thus becoming part of, the shackle or manacle. For example, the shackle on her left ankle had a common ring mount, welded into the metal, through which the ring was inserted and closed.

The heavy metal collar on her throat was uncomfortable, quite different from the light band with which she had been familiar. Further, it was a high collar, and it was not easy for her to put her head down.

It was exactly the same sort of collar, she was sure, as that worn by the other girls. She could feel it, trace with her finger the closure, feel the extended ends, touch the heavy, dangling ring which had been put through the apertures and closed.

Such a collar, with its size and weight, perhaps four or five pounds, its discomfort, she was sure, in the house would have been used only as a punishment collar. Yet, here, all the girls wore it.

But surely they were not all being punished!

Could it be then that they were all merely the least of slaves, the cheapest of slaves, the lowest and the most meaningless of slaves?

Doubtless such girls would all be eager to be freed of such collars, and have their throats returned to the lightness, if inflexible perfection, of a master’s collar.

Could that be why the girl had called out so beggingly, so piteously, “Buy me, Master!”

Where am I, she wondered.

What bondage is this?

She looked at the other girls. They did not seem interested in her. One had regarded her with surprise, and then scorn, when she had screamed, and had then looked away. She wondered if they knew she was a barbarian, a girl from Earth.

They, too, as she, were stripped, utterly, given not a thread to wear.

On the collars of the girls closest to her, on her left and right, she could see numerous scratches, some things seemingly scratched in, and others scratched out. She was illiterate, as we may remember, but she could recognize script, both cursive and printed, and what was on the collar, that was not scratched out, was partly written, but mainly printed. The printing seemed uneducated, and crude. She touched her own collar lightly, just barely touching it, with her finger tips, and detected scratches, too, on her collar. She wondered what was written there. She was sure that numerous girls, before her, had worn that collar, and she supposed that others, after her, might do so, as well. It was very different from the neat engraving which, in a mirror, she had seen on her former color. She had been told by one of the instructrices that that collar had said, ‘I am Ellen, the slave of Mirus of Ar’. But now that collar was gone. Both brand and collar mark the woman as slave, but both do so in a somewhat different fashion. The brand stays on her; the collar may change. Not all masters brand and collar their slaves, but branding and collaring is strongly recommended in Merchant Law, and it would be a rare slave girl who was not both branded and collared.

“Buy me, Master!” called out a girl, to her right, kneeling on the cement, holding out her hands to a handsome fellow in leather, who had paused near the shelf.

“Put down your hands,” said the girl to her left. “Show yourself to the men.”

“No, no, no!” said Ellen.

“Kneel facing forward, and spread your knees,” said a girl further to the right.

“No, no!” said Ellen, sitting, trying to cover herself. She did not know what posture to assume. Certainly she feared to assume the provocative posture of a kneeling female, particularly one spread-kneed, with its devastatingly shocking acknowledgment of surrender, helplessness, bondage, and submission, and she feared, too, to lie down, facing forward, covering herself, for some might look upon her face, and see her fear, or, in puzzlement, or amusement, order her to reveal herself, even if they did not put her through slave paces, commanding her to perform on the shelf. But, if she turned about, and lay down, on her side, facing away, pretending to sleep, she knew that the posterior curves of her new figure would not be likely to pass unnoticed. She considered lying on her back, but that, too, to her helpless misery, would present a perspective perhaps even more likely to be relished by any hormonally normal male, even one of Earth, let alone the untamed men of Gor.

“Targo will be returning from his tea,” said the girl to her left. “I do not know where Barzak is. I think you had better be displaying yourself, and calling to buyers by then.”

“No, no!” said Ellen.

She lay then on her stomach, rather as she had slept. Perhaps then, she thought, that would conceal most of her. To be sure, then the loveliness of her figure, so extended, would be revealed in other dimensions, the tininess of her feet, the slimness of her ankles, which took shackles so nicely, the swelling of her calves, her thighs, one bearing a slave brand, the curves, now so beautifully and subtly interrelated, of her new figure, of her fundament, her waist and bosom, her white shoulders, the slim neck, the well-shaped head, the lustrous dark hair strewn on the sunlit cement, the small, rounded forearms, the tiny wrists, seeming to call for slave bracelets, the small hands and delicate fingers, which might bring such joy to a master, in such dimensions, and in a thousand others, as small as the subtlety of her diaphragm as she breathed, the trembling of a lip, the timidity of a glance, the tense way in which the merest tip of a finger might touch a metal collar, would she be revealed, in all these ways and others would she be revealed. How could she, a beautiful stripped slave girl, not be revealed, and as the delight she was?

She covered her head with her hands.

“Targo is coming,” whispered one of the girls, she closest on the left.

Ellen kept her head down, pretending to be asleep.

“Man!” suddenly said the girl to her right.

Instantly, without really thinking, and not really understanding, at least for the first instant, why she did what she did, Ellen went to the first obeisance position. It was, you see, a matter of an instant response, one consequent on her training. She heard the girl to her right laugh. Ellen was going to break position angrily, and speak crossly to the girl, thinking herself the victim of a joke, when it occurred to her that the “Man” command might have been appropriately motivated. She looked, subtly, to her right and left and found the others girls, too, in first obeisance position.

She therefore remained as she was.

Perhaps the girl to her right had had her joke, but, too, it was not impossible that, in the joke, the girl had had her best interests in mind. Perhaps the girl had saved her a beating, or at least a tense moment. She had not really been asleep, and a master might have understood that. There were probably differences in the rhythms of breathing, and such. She had not really wanted to deceive anyone, so much as she had been afraid. Perhaps a master might have understood that, and been forgiving, but then again he might have understood it and, nonetheless, saw fit to correct her behavior, admonishing her with the leather.

She heard someone mount the cement steps to her right.

“Kneel up,” said a voice.

Instantly the chained slaves, including Ellen, went to first position.

“New girl,” said a voice, “remain as you are. The rest of you worthless she-urts may be as you wish.”

There was the sound of various chains moving, as the other girls broke position.

Steps approached Ellen, who had, of course, supposing herself the “new girl,” remained in position.

The steps seemed short, and a bit ponderous.

Then she was aware of someone standing near her, perhaps a short, heavy man. She had a glimpse of blue and yellow robes.

She was frightened for she knew herself a slave girl who was now doubtless in the presence of a free man.

He might not be a formidable man, as so many of those she had encountered on this world, but he was a man and she was a woman, and a slave.

She kept her eyes straight ahead, looking out on the crowds about. The shelf was hot, and she had moved, so her knees and toes were now muchly aware of the temperature of the cement. She hoped that she would not be burned.

“It is certainly a hot day,” he said, puffing a little. “How fortunate you all are, not to be robed.”

Ellen knelt straightly.

“Where is Barzak?” he asked someone.

“I do not know, Master,” said a girl.

“In some paga tavern,” he speculated. “I trust that you have all been presenting yourselves well.”

It was Ellen’s impression that the girls had called out only when interesting, handsome men had passed, or loitered in the vicinity of the shelf. But then the master had not been present, or Barzak, whoever he might be.

“You had been given tassa powder,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Well, Master,” she said.

“Good,” he said. “There are usually few, if any, aftereffects. Are you hungry?”

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen, after a moment. It was only as he had asked that she had realized that she was hungry. Misery and concern had been on her mind, overwhelming it, not food. Before she had been called for, to be taken to the Chamber of Preparation, to be readied for presentation to her Master at the eighteenth Ahn, she had been fed and watered in her bin. She had been chained by the neck there, as usual, and given her two pans, one containing water, the other slave gruel. She was not permitted to use her hands in drinking and feeding from the pans. She must be on all fours or on her belly. She need not finish the water but the slave gruel must be finished, even to the delicate licking out of the pan. If the guards were not pleased she would be beaten. Having been chained, she had feared that she had been forgotten, but the two instructrices called for her, shortly before the sixteenth Ahn, and the guard had freed her, that she might be taken, hands bound behind her, hooded and leashed, to the Chamber of Preparation. There were many parts of the house, which in some respects seemed almost labyrinthine, with which she was unfamiliar. She did not know for certain how long it had been since she had last eaten, presumably the preceding evening, but possibly the evening before last.

“After tassa powder,” said the man, “a girl is often ravenously hungry. But when the girl awakens in ropes, or chains, she must wait to find out if she is to be fed or not.”

Ellen sensed that the man might be holding something in his hands, something in each hand.

“Look up,” he said.

She looked up, frightened.

“Here is some bread,” he said. “Keep position,” he said, for she had begun to lift her hands from her thighs.

And so she fed, delicately, in position, from his hand.

In his other hand he held a small metal bowl.

When she had finished the bread, he put one hand behind the back of her head and held the small bowl to her lips. “This is Bazi tea,” he said.

He helped her to drink. The tea was not hot, but it was strong, and flavorful.

“Thank you, Master,” she said.

“What a day,” he said. “You will all be browned as a prairie toad, for which I could probably get more money. It is hot enough to burn the turban of a Priest-King.”

He put the cup in a pouch, slung at his belt. Most Gorean garments do not have pockets. Goods which would be normally carried in pockets are usually kept in wallets, or pouches. On the other hand, the garbs of certain artisans often have pockets, for tools, pegs, nails, fasteners, such things.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“‘Ellen’,” she said, “— if it pleases Master.”

“That is a pretty name,” he said. “To be sure, it is a barbarian name. You are a barbarian, are you not?”

“Yes, Master.”

One of the girls nearby laughed.

It suddenly occurred to Ellen, that this might be a test, administered by her master, Mirus of Ar. Perhaps it was a joke on his part.

This man did not seem unkind.

He had fed her, and given her tea.

Surely Mirus of Ar, her master, would never let her out of his collar, really! Surely somehow he would keep her as his forever! Had he not remembered her? Had he not brought her to this world? Had he not restored her youth and comeliness? Had he not given her a beautiful name? Had he not put her in the iron belt? Had it not been he who had first put her to the imperious uses of men?

“We will keep that name, at least for the time,” he said. “It should improve your price. It will be one of the few things that would.”

“Master?” asked Ellen.

“You are too youthful,” he said. “Little more than a pretty girl.”

Ellen bit her lip. Mirus of Ar, her master, she believed, in his arrogance, had done that to her.

“What is the forty-third position of joy?” asked the man.

“I do not know, Master,” she said.

“What is the sixth delight of the hair of a female slave?” he asked.

“I have no idea, Master,” she said.

“What is the title of the eighteenth love song of Dina, the slave poetess?” he asked.

“I do not know, Master,” she said.

“Do you know anything?” he asked.

“Very little, Master,” she said.

“And neither do these others, either, know anything,” he said. “Pot girls, kettle-and-mat girls, worthless she-urts, all of you! Some slaves are worth a Ubara’s ransom. Others such as you I should pay unwary buyers to take off my hands. Perhaps I could bribe the cleaners of streets to take you from my shelf, to throw into the pits, to dispose of you as refuse, as flesh-garbage! Do you know what it costs to rent this space, even without an awning!”

“No, Master,” said more than one of the girls.

“It is none of your business,” he said. “But it is exorbitant. I am destitute! How can I feed you? I shall have to put you on leashes and take you to garbage bins! And where have you been?”

A brawny fellow, in a short tunic, with leather on his wrists, had approached. He was grizzled, slovenly, and, apparently, had lost an eye.

This, Ellen supposed, was Barzak.

“The Iron Collar,” responded the fellow.

“I was having tea!” said the portly fellow in blue and yellow robes, Targo, who seemed to be Master.

“And I paga,” said the grizzled fellow.

“Unwatched, unguarded, I could have lost my entire stock!” said Targo.

“Nonsense,” said Barzak. “They are chained, and, besides, who would want them?”

“You could keep a bota of paga here,” said Targo.

“One wants both meat and drink,” said Barzak.

Most owners of paga taverns are reluctant to let the girls out of the tavern, unless suitably chained and supervised. To be sure, some send them, usually back-braceleted, about the city, soliciting trade. In the taverns the girls normally come with the price of the drink. There may be an extra charge for dancers.

“You have your pick of any of these!” expostulated Targo, waving his arms about, indicating the occupants of the shelf. Ellen realized, uneasily, that she might be included in the width of this sweeping reference. Certainly she had not been explicitly excluded.

“Ho!” snorted Barzak. “I wanted a real slave.”

Some of the girls on the shelf moved angrily in their chains.

“So,” said Barzak, “the little sleeping she-urt is awake. Widen those knees, girl!”

Ellen, in position, instantly complied.

He put out his right hand and laid it, thoughtlessly, possessively, on her left knee. “Oh!” she cried, and shrank back.

“What is wrong?” asked Barzak, withdrawing his hand.

Ellen could not even speak.

“Nothing,” said Targo. Then he turned to Ellen, reprovingly. “You must accustom yourself to being handled, and in any fashion that men please,” he said.

“Master?” she asked, looking up at him. Then she put down her head. “Yes, Master,” she whispered.

“I am going inside,” said Barzak. “It is hot here.” He went to the left of the platform as one would face it, and entered the building.

“How is it that I put up with him?” asked Targo. “It is indeed hot here,” he observed.

“We will burn and peel, Master,” said one of the girls.

Ellen gathered that Targo might be such that one might, with relative impunity, speak to him. She did not think it would be the same with Barzak. Barzak seemed to be one of those men who might as soon cuff a woman or put her to his pleasure as look at her.

“What does it matter?” asked Targo. “How could you be more worthless than you are? Do you have the coins to rent an awning?”

The woman shrank back in misery. Slaves do not even own their collars, or the chains that confine them.

“How many masters have you had?” asked Targo.

“Only one,” said Ellen.

“Can you read?”

“No.”

“You are illiterate.”

“Yes.”

“Are you not forgetting something in your responses?” he asked.

“Forgive me, Master,” she said.

“Not all men are as forgiving, as understanding, as patient, as long-suffering, as kind, as Targo the Benevolent,” he said.

“No, Master,” she said. She cringed, thinking of most of the Gorean men she had met, how fearful she was of them, how uncompromisingly and perfectly she would be owned by them.

They seemed to be born masters of women.

“Are you red silk?” he asked.

She looked down at her bared body, in consternation, startled, caught off guard, suddenly distraught, suddenly seeming to understand almost nothing. Obviously she was unclothed, completely, utterly, let alone clothed in silk, of any color. She was naked, slave naked, in her chains, uncomfortable on the hot shelf. What could he have been asking?

“Are you red silk?” he repeated.

“I do not know,” she said.

Or was it that, on some level, she refused to understand his question, or, more likely, feared to respond to it.

There was laughter from the slaves about.

“You must indeed be a little sleepyhead,” he said.

There was more laughter.

She reddened. “Forgive me, Master,” she said. “I was confused. For the moment I did not understand the words in the sense you meant. In my native language, we do not speak of such things in that way. We have other words.”

“We speak of them that way in Gorean,” he said, “and particularly in the case of female slaves.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“You are a slave,” he said. “You must learn the language of your masters.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“Quickly, and well!”

“Yes, Master!”

“Perfectly!”

“Yes, Master!”

To be sure, she doubted that she would ever speak this language perfectly. Who, even among native speakers, speaks any language perfectly? And she supposed that she might forever carry an accent in Gorean, at least a subtle accent, and that this, like fillings in her teeth, and a tiny vaccination mark, would continue, for better or for worse, to betray her barbarian origin. Fortunately few Gorean masters objected to such accents in their slaves. Perhaps they relish this tincture or soupçon of foreign flavor in the speech of their chattels, finding it charming. Too, it tended to mark them out and set them apart from native Gorean speakers. But she was certain she would soon achieve a considerable fluency in the language. This was important. It was the language of her masters, and she must learn it quickly and well. Already she often dreamed and thought in Gorean. There are, of course, a large variety of diverse accents on Gor, even among native speakers of the language. For example, the Gorean of Ar is not that of Cos, and both are clearly distinguishable from that of Turia, far to the south, and so on. One might note, in passing, however, an alleged oddity in the teaching of Gorean to barbarians in certain cities. Several words, and many of these not all that common among native speakers, are supposedly taught to the barbarians with pronunciations which are subtly different from the usual pronunciations of these words. This is sometimes spoken of as “Slave Gorean.” The girls, of course, are unaware of these differences, and, usually, that there even are any differences. Most suppose themselves to be being taught normal Gorean. Now let us suppose a girl, attempting to escape, has dared to disguise herself as a free woman, a most unwise thing to do, and is questioned. It is likely that, judiciously questioned, she would almost instantly, unwittingly, identify herself as bond, with immediate consequences as to her fate. And even if a girl knows, or suspects, that she is not being taught normal Gorean, she is unlikely to know precisely in what subtle and numerous ways her speech will betray her as slave. Similarly, a girl is sometimes taught “slave names” for objects, without being informed that these are slave names. Thus, in the most innocent and natural discourse, speaking of this or that, she is likely to show herself a slave, because that is a slave’s word, or name, for such and such an object. Ellen has asked her master if her Gorean, that taught to her in Ar, might evince such peculiarities, but he only smiled and informed her that curiosity is not becoming in a kajira. Thus she does not know. Needless to say these possible linguistic precautions and subtleties would not be effective with native Gorean women, should they find themselves put to the collar. On the other hand, once they have been embonded, slavery will inevitably work its subtle effects on them, as it does on all women, and, after a time, they, too, in glances, mannerisms, phrasings, tones of voice, tiny movements, and such, will reveal themselves slave. It is not hard to find a word in English for the difference between the free woman and the slave; the slave is extremely feminine. Sometimes a slave attempts to imitate the assertive stridencies, the masculine movements, the attitudes and gestures, the haughtiness, the mien, of a free woman, but the results are commonly, as on Earth, no more than a farcical caricature of a male. On Earth, of course, no deleterious consequences of such charades and antics are likely to occur; indeed, they may earn their practitioners commendations from pathological quarters in which it is not permitted to so much as whisper of nature and the biotruths of a species; indeed, further, such expostulations and pretenses may have actual value, as in earning their thespic practitioners a number of political and economic rewards. On Gor, of course, the situation is quite different. A woman behaving in this fashion and accordingly being suspected of the collar, of trying desperately to conceal her femininity by this ruse, may be remanded to free women for an examination. If a brand is found the woman will be stripped and bound by the free women, switched liberally, for there is little love lost between free women and slaves, and then turned over to magistrates, to be returned to the mercies of her master.

“So,” said he, “are you red silk?”

“Yes, Master!” sobbed Ellen.

“You understand what I am asking?”

“Yes, Master!”

“You have been opened for the uses of men?”

“Yes, Master!” she said.

There was laughter from the other girls on the shelf.

Ellen recalled that her master had indeed opened her for the uses of men, rudely, and with authority. She remembered her helplessness, she kneeling, facing away, head to the rug, hands clasped behind the back of her neck, astonished, affrighted, outraged, shocked, disbelieving, miserable, yet somehow simultaneously elated, willing, accepting, submitting, and the power of his hands on her body. To be sure, he had been uncaring, quick, contemptuous with her. Surely she had been given little, or no, opportunity to experience pleasure. He had not permitted that. He had seen to it. That was by his intent. The pleasure was to be his, and she was simply to be had, and to know herself had.

It was a far cry from the classroom.

She had been utilized abruptly and with contempt. She, kneeling, facing away from him, head down, hands clasped behind her neck, had learned what she was, and would be, to him, nothing, lest it be an object of derision and scorn.

How complete his triumph!

He had risen to his feet.

She had remained as she was, of course, not yet permitted to move, an unimportant, meaningless, despised, ravaged slave.

How faraway the classroom, and their former relationship! No longer was she teacher and he student. She was now slave, and he master.

And well had he taught her, in those moments, her slavery!

She recalled that afterwards he had looped a red ribbon about her collar, and, it seemed with some satisfaction, jerked it tight, meaningfully tight. She no longer wore it, of course. It was not on her heavy, uncomfortable, present collar. She wondered what had happened to it. Perhaps after she had fallen unconscious, it had been removed, and kept in the house, perhaps to be used again, later, when another virgin, another white-silk girl, might be introduced to a new aspect of her bondage.

She supposed that most slaves would be red silk, and thus that there would be little point in having such a ribbon on their collars. Perhaps if she had still been “white silk,” a white ribbon might have been put on her collar. That might, she supposed, have some effect on bids, pricings, and such.

She recalled that her master had been amused and pleased that what he had done to her, red-silking her, opening her for the uses of men, would be likely to lower her value. And she gathered that she was not of great value to begin with, a barbarian girl, ignorant, youthful, and scarcely trained. I am largely worthless as a slave, she thought. She did not doubt, however, that her master had derived much pleasure from her body. She might have wished to share that pleasure, or share it more, but had not been permitted to do so. It had clearly been with great pleasure, even with triumph, that he had taken her.

He had me, and how he had me, she thought. As a slave, a meaningless slave! What a triumph for him! And yet I cannot deny that a part of me rejoiced to be so used, to be put to his unshared, unilateral pleasure!

“Do you juice quickly?” asked Targo.

“Master?” she asked.

“Are you a tasty pudding?” asked Targo.

“I do not understand, Master,” she said.

“Do you squirm well?” he asked.

“Master?”

“Do you squirm well?” he asked. “Surely you understand me. You are a slave, are you not? You are branded, are you not? Look at your thigh. Do you whimper, and cry out, and moan, and scream, and gasp, and clutch, and beg, and shudder and kick, and spasm helplessly and repeatedly? Have you never been driven mercilessly and helplessly, as if by whips, to slave orgasm? And then to another, and another, and to as many as your master chooses to force upon you, perhaps ceasing even while you are begging for more?”

Ellen, of course, had never experienced slave orgasm, but she thought that she had some dim sense as to what it might be. Alas, how little she then knew! Little did she then realize how helpless and needful might a slave become.

One of the utilities of chaining or binding a slave, incidentally, is to multiply and intensify her orgasms. Several psychological and physical factors enter into these matters.

Perhaps the helplessness of the slave is too obvious to mention. She cannot free herself and thus must await the attentions of the master, which may be delayed, which may be intermittent, which may be prolonged, for hours, and so on.

In such ways she soon understands herself slave.

“Do you squirm well? It is a simple question. Answer it. Do you squirm well?”

“I do not think so, Master,” she said. Was she not to be permitted pride? But then it occurred to her that she was a slave girl and that slave girls were not permitted pride. Inertness and frigidity were not permitted to them. Those luxuries were reserved for free women, who might make the most of them, if they wished. Responsiveness was required of the slave. The switch dissipates inertness, and the ice of frigidity melts swiftly beneath the heat of the whip. To be sure the simple condition of bondage itself militates devastatingly against inertness and frigidity. How can one be inert and frigid when one is mastered, dominated and owned? The slave loves and yields all. She is hot, devoted and dutiful. She is at his feet, heated and moist, begging to serve and please.

“You do not think so?” he said, incredulously.

“No, Master,” said Ellen.

“Oh, wonderful!” he exclaimed, in distaste.

“She is a little ice ball!” laughed one of the slaves.

She recalled, suddenly, bitterly, that Mirus had characterized her as a tight, cold little thing.

Doubtless he had not been pleased with her.

She decided she could not help the way she was.

Then she decided, petulantly, angrily, that she would not help the way she was. She would show them! She would pride herself on her superiority to feeling and vitality. She would be one of those women who scorn feeling and vitality in others, and would try to shame them for their resources of sensibility, for their emotional richness, and their treasures of health. No man would ever make her yield!

In this way one might account an inadequacy or impoverishment, natural or willed, a mark of virtue or merit.

Particularly if one suspected that men would not be much interested in one anyway.

But she did sense that if things had been a little different, if Mirus had treated her even a little bit differently, she would have cried out and wept herself his. Her body had ached to yield itself to him.

Even now, how uneasily she recalled the sensation of her peremptory usage. Its memory lingered with her. She could not dispel it. Though she strove to feel distressed, even outraged, she failed. The sensation, curious and fascinating, provocative and insistent, continued to whisper within her tissues. She could not have asked, his hands upon her, for a better demonstration of her vulnerability and femaleness. And, too, interestingly, though she scarcely dared accept this, it seemed in its way a fascinating augury, as might be the brief sight of a bird, the finding of a branch in the water, evidence of new worlds. She had been, as the saying was, opened for the uses of men. She would never again be the same. I want such sensations now, she said to herself. I must have them!

No, no, she said to herself. I am not that sort of woman!

Yes, you are, she said to herself. You are no more than a slave!

I must resist feeling, she told herself.

Then she looked out from the shelf, at the market, so bustling, colorful and crowded, the stalls, the beasts, the carts.

In such a world the resistance of feeling would not be permitted to such as she.

She was not a free woman.

She was a beast who might be purchased for a variety of purposes, amongst them the provision of inordinate pleasure to a master.

She saw the eyes of a young fellow on her, and she looked away, terrified.

I must be strong, she thought.

What would it be to be in his arms, she asked herself.

Would I yield to him?

If this were not a cruel sport of Mirus, my master, pretending to abandon me, pretending to put me up for sale, such as he might buy me!

I will not permit myself to yield to men, she thought.

Then she recalled the lash.

She did not wish to be beaten.

Perhaps I could hold something back, she thought.

Foolish slave, she thought, do you not know that you will not be permitted to hold anything back, but that you must yield wholly, and that there are infallible signs of such yieldings?

She moaned, inwardly.

Do you wish to be tied and lashed, girl?

No, she thought, I do not want to be tied and lashed!

Do you wish to be slain, girl?

No, she thought, I do not wish to be slain!

I must strive, she thought, to see that my master is entirely pleased with me.

Indeed, I would want, and desperately, for my master to be entirely pleased with me.

Then you are a slave, aren’t you, she said to herself, no more than a slave.

Yes, she said to herself, I am a slave, no more than a slave.

She looked again toward the market, but the young fellow was gone.

She felt the heavy chain on her neck.

I have been opened, she thought. I want sex. I need sex!

Will you yield all, she asked herself.

Yes, she said to herself, I will yield all! And I want to yield all! I will beg to yield all!

“See her!” said the girl. “See the little ice ball!”

“No,” said another. “She is not a little ice ball. She is still just a little sleeping she-urt.”

“A pretty one,” said one of the girls.

“A master will wake her up,” said another.

“Yes,” laughed another.

Ellen wanted to cry out with misery, but she was in position, looking out across the square.

There was still a crowd there, passing, moving hither and yon, coming and going, though it was now late afternoon. Mercifully the sun was lower now, and, although the shelf was still in full sunlight, the sun should, in a few minutes, descend behind the building across the square.

She scrutinized the crowd, hoping for a glimpse of her master. Might that not be he, near the stall of kettles, lamps and pans? No, it was not. Perhaps he had, unbeknownst to her, sent an agent, who even now was merrily reporting to him on the success of his joke, the jest he was cruelly playing on his helpless slave.

How cruel the Masters, she thought. How much we are at their mercy!

She saw men in the crowd. It frightened her, particularly as one of them might turn about, and see her, or pause to look upon her, to think that she, as a slave, might be bought or sold. My master, Mirus of Ar, could sell me, if he wished, she thought. How that thrills me! But, of course, he would not wish to do so! Certainly he would not have brought me here, and taken all this time and trouble, merely to dispose of me, merely to have me sold!

She saw, occasionally, among the crowds, a free woman, robed and veiled. How proudly, how serenely, they moved. How she envied them their freedom! They were free! They could come and go as they pleased. They were not chained naked on a cement shelf, eyes half closed against the glaring sunlight. What they are wearing, she thought, those must be the Robes of Concealment.

Whereas in the laundry she and the others had often washed garments of free women, those garments had seldom been the cumbersome Robes of Concealment. Usually they had been house garments, garden robes, veils, hose, subrobes, and such. She had washed street himations frequently enough, however, of the sort which were sometimes worn by free women, particularly those of the lower-castes. The street himation is far less bulky and protective than the usual Robes of Concealment, less stiffness, less brocade, less embroidery and such. It is, of course, almost always combined with the veil. Gorean free women, at least in the high cities, almost always wear veils in public, although some women of the lower castes are occasionally careless in this particular, permitting lax arrangements, and such, especially the maidens. Too, some omit the veil altogether. Veils can be used, if handled and arranged in certain ways, for flirting, much as were fans, once on Earth, in less androgynous times. Slave girls, of course, being slaves, are not permitted veils. This is another way in which, aside from their revealing garmenture and collars, they are to be distinguished from free women. To a girl from Earth this matter of veiling may seem at first rather inconsequential, but she soon learns that it is a very serious matter. And I must admit that, as one becomes more enculturated here, more aware of the Gorean ethos, and Gorean customs, values and views on such matters, and comes to understand how one is viewed here, one tends to become more and more sensitive to such things. It is hard to see the contempt in the eyes of a fully clothed, beautifully clothed free woman, flashing over her lovely veil, as she regards you, and not become simultaneously aware, as you kneel before her, of the exposed nature of one’s body, your legs, your bared arms, your throat with its collar, and perhaps most acutely and painfully, difficult though it may be to understand at first, your features, the required, imposed nudity of your own visage, that your face, because you are a slave, is prohibited veiling, that it must be, in all its vulnerability, publicly bared. It is little wonder that, after such an encounter, we hurry back gratefully, tearfully, to the feet of our masters. That Earth women are seldom veiled is taken by most Goreans, at least those familiar with the second knowledge, as evidence that we are slaves. Too, there is little doubt that the fact that women on Earth, particularly in Western cultures, do not veil themselves is welcomed by Gorean slavers, and certainly facilitates their selections amongst us. Lastly it might be mentioned that it is traumatic for a Gorean woman, when captured, to be unveiled. “Remove her veil” is a command she dreads to hear, one which strikes with fear and misery to the heart of her being. The vulgar expression for this is “face-stripping.” This makes some sense to me, as the face is so expressive. In removing the veil from a woman’s face, one takes her from herself; one denies her to herself; one makes her public, so to speak, like a slave.

Ellen thought that perhaps the Robes of Concealment were not to be entrusted to common laundries. That was why, perhaps, she had seen few, if any, in the laundry. Perhaps special slaves, with cleaning chemicals, attended to them.

Yet, despite the bulkiness and clumsiness of the Robes of Concealment, most of them were very beautiful, in an ornate way. Some were doubtless very expensive, and even set with jewels. Too, despite their protective aspects, and she would not have cared to wear such garments on a day as hot as this, they seemed, in their way, attractive, and feminine. They seemed to suggest that something of interest, something lovely, might be concealed within. Needless to say, veils are invariably, or almost invariably, a portion of the ensemble associated with the Robes of Concealment. Robes, hoods, and veils, as might be expected, are coordinated and matched.

She wondered if the free women, wearing such garments, were happy. It was clear to her, and to all, that they were women, of course, even concealed and veiled. How different they were from the men with their large, agile, leonine bodies. How different we are from them, she thought. And how different was she, she thought, from the free women, they in their robes, resplendent in the glory of their liberty, she a stripped slave, chained on a public shelf. How could she even think of comparing herself with them? But are they, such lofty, proud creatures, happy, she wondered. She wondered, too, how many of them might one day find themselves chained in a market, or grasping the bars of a slave cage, or looking up fearfully, trembling, kneeling and bound, into the eyes of a master, to read their fate. She recalled a saying she had heard in the house, that beneath the clothes of every woman there is to be found the body of a naked slave. Once there passed through the square a palanquin, borne by large, powerful, tunicked men. In the palanquin there indolently reposed a free woman. She recalled the woman seized by the tarnsman from Brundisium and wondered if she, too, had once been carried in such a palanquin. That woman now, perhaps, with Laura, heeled her master in Brundisium, some paces behind, and to his left. She wondered if he would permit them clothing in his own city. Perhaps not at the beginning. The palanquin was then through the square. It had not stopped in this market. Perhaps this market was unworthy of the consideration of such a personage. She wondered if the bearers were male slaves, or merely servants. She supposed they might be servants. They had not been collared, or guarded. Perhaps the woman, wisely, had not chosen to surround herself with male slaves. What if they should, in the rush of their blood, heat and need, turn upon her? How she might be used then, over and over, perhaps on her belly, robes torn away, on the pillows of her then-unborne palanquin! She trembled. She had heard that slaves such as she, low slaves, were sometimes cast to male slaves in the pens, much as one might cast them food. This practice was supposedly useful in reducing restlessness in the pens.

Sometimes, in the crowd, she saw a slave girl, collared and briefly tunicked. What a striking contrast such small, lovely figures, with their tiny tunics, and bared limbs, afforded to the more common denominator of the large, massive, generally male, generally robed throngs through which they threaded their way. How exquisitely, how utterly and beautifully feminine they were! How beautifully they walked and carried themselves. How proud they seemed. How could women be so wonderful? Did they rejoice in their bondage? Did they treasure their collars? How freely and meaningfully, and delightfully, they walked! Of course there is little about the tunic of a slave which might inhibit movement. Sometimes she marveled at their beauty. To be sure, the garments of a female slave, the tunic, the camisk, the ta-teera, the Turian camisk, and such, do little to conceal her beauty. What joy they must bring to their masters, she thought. And, too, perhaps, what joy their masters must bring to them!

How beautiful, too, were their faces! And suddenly, she was delighted that her own face, too, despite the contempt this might elicit from free women, would be bared, and must be bared, on this world. She, as slave, she knew, would have no choice in the matter. And this pleased her. She knew that she had a very pretty face; she was certain of that; it was exquisite, delicate, feminine, sensitive, lovely. She was sure that men would like it. But, too, she was frightened. It was the sort of face, she had learned, that called forth the master in a man. To be sure, she might be transiently sensitive to its exposure in a given context, as in the presence of a contemptuous free woman, or perhaps before magistrates, and officials, but that was only to be expected in this culture, with its particular views. And such moments were likely to be, at most, brief embarrassments.

And there was, of course, another serious thread in the Gorean culture, that which required the display and exposure of the slave. This, too, constituted a cultural imperative, despite what might be the preferences of free women. About this, too, she, as slave, was choiceless.

And how thrilled she was that she was choiceless in this matter!

“You are owned, slave girl,” the culture might say. “There are no veils for you. You are denied the veil. It is not for you. Tremble! You will be as men please. Your face will be as bared as that of a kaiila or tharlarion! But understand that you are human females, the most delicious property a man can own. Understand at once how meaningless you are, small, soft, well-curved items of merchandise, but, too, how precious, special and wonderful you are! The tharlarion will be scrubbed, the kaiila combed. See that you, too, are groomed and cleaned! Sparkle, slave, for your master — and for all men! As the kaiila has its swiftness, and the tharlarion its strength, so you, too, have your special properties, your service, your passion, and beauty. Your face will be exposed, so that men may gaze upon it. You will be dressed, if dressed, for their pleasure. You will enhance and reveal your beauty. It will be muchly exposed. You will serve with delicacy, deference and zeal. You will respond to the master’s least touch with eagerness and gratitude. You will live for a kind word and a caress. You will be as men want you, for you are slave, for you are owned.”

All in all, Ellen suspected, frightened at the thought, that she might grow more and more delighted with her beauty, her being and condition. Could it be that she might one day accept her loveliness, wholly, and throw back her head and shoulders, and walk beautifully, in her collar, and be shameless, even joyfully, brazenly shameless? Surely not! How frightful! And yet that was common, she knew, with such as she now was, with female slaves.

No wonder free women hate us so, she thought. Are we not, fulfilled, in our collars, a thousand times more free than they?

Kneeling, in position, chained by the left ankle to a ring, her throat enclosed in a heavy, clumsy, ringed, iron collar, on a cement sales shelf, before Targo, sensitive to her nudity, and miserable, she noted one and another slave girl in the crowd.

How lovely they were!

She wished she, too, might walk about so, so garbed, and free, though in her collar, be free to move about so boldly, so beautifully. She saw men look upon the slave girls appraisingly, admiringly. The girls, heads up, moving beautifully, seemed not to notice, but surely they knew that the eyes of masters were upon them. How could they not be? They were slaves! She wondered if, sometime, they, the natural masters, might look so upon her.

To be sure, free women stiffened, and turned angrily, and looked upon the slaves disapprovingly. But what does it matter, Ellen asked herself. And suddenly it came to her again that free women hated the slaves, and envied them. Perhaps they, thought Ellen, wish they, too, were so garbed, so delightfully and sensuously, and were so free, so vital, so delicious, so desirable, so beautiful!

Too, the slaves seemed to her radiantly happy. It showed in their expressions, and in the carriage of their bodies. She saw their collars, sometimes almost lost in a wealth of swirling, tossing hair. How well mastered they must be, thought Ellen.

When will Mirus of Ar, for that is the name by which she now thought of him, come for me, she wondered. Come for me, my Master, I beg you!

“You may break position,” said Targo, with a sigh.

Ellen then sat on the cement, shading her eyes. “Master!” she called, for Targo had turned away.

He turned back, to regard her.

“Where is my collar, Master?” she asked.

“You are wearing it,” he said.

“Master!” she protested.

She had hoped that he might respond in such a way as to give away the joke of her master. If he should inform her as to its location, or even, inadvertently, by a word, or a facial movement, suggest that it was somewhere in the vicinity, that would surely show that it was the intent of Mirus to return her to it.

“What is wrong with you?” he asked.

“When am I to be returned to my master, Mirus of Ar!” she said.

“Mirus of Ar is not your master,” he said. “I am your master.”

“No!” she cried.

“I bought you last night for ten copper tarsks,” he said. “I hope to sell you for fifteen.”

“No,” she cried. “No!”

The other girls on the shelf looked at her, puzzled.

“He would not sell me!” she cried.

“It is not clear to me,” said Targo, “why he would have you in the first place.”

“I have not been sold!” she cried. “He would not sell me!”

“I own you,” said Targo.

“No, no!” she said. “No!”

“If you could read, I would show you the papers,” said Targo. “They are all in order, with the proper endorsements, and such.”

She tried to lift the heavy collar on her throat, but, of course, it was stopped almost instantly, pressing upward against her chin. She pulled at it, and then, again and again, jerked at the collar ring, wildly.

“You are making a scene,” said Targo, disapprovingly.

“Mirus of Ar is my master!” she cried. “Return me to my master! I want to be returned to my master!”

She tried to thrust the shackle from her left ankle, but could not, of course, do so. She succeeded only in abrading the ankle. Then she pulled wildly at the chain, jerking it again and again against the ring.

Men paused to stare at the hysterical slave.

“He would not sell me! He would not sell me!” she cried, jerking at the chain. “He would not sell me!”

“Be silent,” said Targo. “Do you want people to think you have been stolen? Stolen slaves are not publicly vended, not in the city of their theft.”

“Return me to my master!” she cried, putting herself to her belly, pleading, in second obeisance position, before Targo.

“Barzak!” called Targo.

But Barzak had already emerged from the building and, in his hand, he carried the five-stranded, broad-bladed Gorean slave whip, designed for use on females, to punish terribly but not to mark, or permanently mark, thus perhaps reducing the value of the errant, punished slave.

“Master, please!” begged the slave.

“Whip her,” said Targo, turning away.

“Turn about,” said Barzak. “Grasp the ring.”

“No, please!” she said. But she had turned about and grasped the ring, the ring to which the ankle chain of the girl who had been to her left was chained. The girl who was chained to the ring, who had been to her left, drew back, as far as the chain on her ankle would permit. Ellen saw fear in her eyes.

This fear exhibited by her sister slave frightened Ellen even more.

“Please do not have me beaten, Master!” she called out to Targo, over her shoulder, lying on her belly, on the cement, grasping the ring, but he had left the shelf.

“I will be good, Master! I will be good, Master!” she cried, but he, as we have seen, was gone.

Then she cried out, in disbelief, and in pain.

She could not believe the shocking fire with which, after but one stroke, she was enveloped.

Surely it could not hurt as much as it did!

She could not stand it!

It was impossible to bear!

He must desist!

She would do anything, not to be struck again!

She gasped for breath, she could scarcely speak.

“No, please!” she begged. “I am too young to be beaten, I am only a girl!”

She heard one of the slaves laugh, and then again the lash fell.

This time it terribly enlarged the pain she had felt, and intensified it, as her skin had been already enflamed and sensitized.

“No more, no more, Master!” she begged. “I will do anything!”

“You must do anything anyway,” said Barzak, lifting his arm again.

“Yes, Master! Yes, Master!” she cried.

Then the lash fell again.

Tears burst from her eyes, she sobbed, her small fingers went white, grasping the ring so tightly.

After the next stroke she shrieked for mercy.

After the next two strokes she could only sob and clutch the ring, begging in her heart that there would be no more, no more!

The beating was actually a light one, as such things go. She received only six strokes, and the blows, while sharp, had not been heavy, surely not delivered with the full weight of a man’s arm. A woman is almost never beaten with the full measure of a man’s strength. There would be little point to that, and it would be brutal. She is, after all, small and beautiful, and only a female. The point of a beating is not to hurt her but to improve her.

These considerations were nothing that Ellen understood at the time, and even if she had understood them, there was nothing in them, of course, to lessen the actual, miserable, fierce burning of the lash.

“Well?” asked Barzak.

“Master?” sobbed Ellen, a mass of flaming, stinging stripes at his feet, from the back of her neck, just below the collar, to the back of her knees.

“Thank him, thank him!” hissed the girl chained to the ring which Ellen grasped so tightly.

“Thank you, Master,” whispered Ellen.

“For what?” demanded Barzak.

“Thank you for beating me, Master,” whispered Ellen, through her tears.

“Speak up,” he said. “Perhaps your chain sisters cannot hear you.”

“Thank you for beating me, Master!” said Ellen.

“And did you deserve the beating?”

“Yes, Master!”

“And are you now more aware of what it is to be a slave?”

“Yes, Master!”

“And you are now going to try to be a good slave, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Master!”

He then left the shelf.

Ellen then lay there, on her stomach, by the ring, still grasping it, sobbing, in misery, her body rich with bright, burning stripes, a whipped slave.

She did not know how long she lay there, but the sun had descended behind the building across the way, and she could sob no more.

It seemed she could barely lift her head, the collar seemed so heavy on her. She moved her foot a little, and heard the chain she wore move a bit on the cement.

“Buy me, Master!” called a girl from the shelf, behind her as she lay, to the left of the shelf, if one were looking outward from it, the side of the shelf farthest from the door of the tenement.

Perhaps a handsome man had paused by the shelf.

Doubtless the woman would do anything to be off the shelf, to be out of the weighty collar.

She wondered if she herself could so beg. Never, she thought, never.

What a shameless tart, she thought.

I could never beg like that.

Where am I, Ellen wondered. What am I doing here? What has become of me?

She lifted her head, dully.

“Who is Targo?” asked Ellen of the girl chained to the ring she still held. “What place is this? Where am I?”

The girl looked about but neither Targo nor Barzak were near the shelf, and the crowd, smaller now in the late afternoon, had its own concerns. Little attention was being bestowed upon the shelf. Naked slave girls are not that rare in a Gorean city. In many public places there are slave rings, to which one may chain one’s girls. To be sure, most girls chained at such rings, perhaps by their metal leashes, would be clothed, most often tunicked. The concern of the girl chained to the ring which Ellen still grasped was not unwarranted. Conversation is seldom encouraged among slave girls in public places. It is sometimes regarded as unseemly, and is sometimes, by free persons, deemed actually annoying. Slave girls, of course, are seldom reticent creatures. They, the most extraordinarily feminine of their gender, with their lively minds, their unusual quickness and high intelligence, as is well known, love to talk. It is hard to stop them sometimes, they love so to talk. Often masters charge them with prattling endlessly, mindlessly and interminably. But that charge, I think, is unfair. Certainly there are many things of interest, and worth talking about, or at least very pleasant to talk about, and delightful to talk about, other than problems of agriculture and engineering. And do not men speak among themselves, too? Are they really so different? Certainly slave girls delight in conversation. They love to talk to one another, and to their masters, until perhaps silenced. There are few slave girls, joined together, perhaps met at the fountain, or in marketing, or at the tubs, or such places, who do not relish a lengthy, lively, competitive, sparkling chat, and often the longer the better. To be sure, our conversations are not always such that men might approve of them. Perhaps we relish gossip, and fashion, and the sharing of secrets, more than men. I do not know. Is it true, as sworn by Lila, that the Lady Celestina, the free companion of Publius Major, as though inadvertently, drew back her robe, revealing an ankle to his handsome young secretary, Torbo? What will be the recommended length for slave tunics in the Fall? And how will they be cut? One could always beg the master for the latest style, for surely he would not wish the garmenture of his slave to reflect negatively on his taste or resources. Too, in what new ways might we more please our masters? Might we not be pleasantly surprised by his response, if we were sometimes to kiss his body, pressing our soft lips upon him humbly, intimately, fervently, tenderly, beseechingly, through the cascade of our loosened hair?

What a precious and glorious honor, what a coveted privilege, for a slave, to be permitted to serve her master!

“Targo is a minor slaver, of little account,” said the girl. “Once, perhaps, he was well off, but not now. He claims to have once, albeit unwittingly, sold the very tatrix of Tharna. The Cosians have robbed him of girls, some say his best, claimedly for taxes, time and time again. He must guard every tarsk-bit, as an urt its last sa-tarna seed. Targo is poor. He is nearly destitute. He is nothing.”

“But he is the master?” said Ellen.

“Yes,” said the girl. “As the master he is all, as the master he is everything.”

“In his own hovel, even the peddler is a Ubar,” said a girl from the right.

“If he has a Home Stone,” said another.

“Yes,” said the first girl.

“Does Targo, I mean, the master, have a Home Stone?” asked Ellen.

“We do not know, little she-urt,” said one of the girls. “He has not permitted us to rummage through his pack.”

“You are a barbarian, as it seems,” said the girl to whom Ellen had addressed her first queries.

“Yes Mistress,” said Ellen.

“I do not like barbarians,” she said.

“Forgive me, Mistress,” said Ellen.

“Men do,” said one of the girls.

“Some men,” said another.

“Yes,” said another.

“As you are a barbarian, and thus stupid, and ignorant,” said the first girl, “I will inform you that you are in the city of Ar.”

Ellen had thought that likely, but she did not know if she, during her period of unconsciousness, might have been moved to another, perhaps similar city. Certainly what she could see from the shelf, the market before her, the square, seemed dusty, crowded and squalid, nothing like that marvelous panorama she had glimpsed from the roof of the house, that tall, cylinderlike structure.

“Ar is the largest, most populous city in the northern latitudes,” said the girl. “But due to the disappearance of her Ubar, Marlenus of Ar, and diplomatic treachery, she has succumbed to a coalition of enemy forces, largely those of Cos and Tyros. She is supposedly now ruled by Talena, the daughter of Marlenus of Ar, a puppet Ubara in the keeping of Cos and Tyros. There is some pretense that the city is free, but in fact it is not. The true ruler is, I suppose, the military governor, Myron, polemarkos of Temos, commander of the occupational forces, or perhaps actually distant Lurius of Jad, Ubar of Cos. Where you are, specifically, in the city of Ar is in one of her most crowded and poorest districts, the district of Metellus, and in the Kettle Market, within walking distance of the Peasants’ Gate.”

“The Kettle Market?”

“Obviously much else is sold here as well,” she said.

“Yes, Mistress,” said Ellen.

She had seen that there were dozens of stalls in the square, most lining the fronts of buildings, stalls displaying an incredible variety of goods.

There were, of course, the pans, pots, utensils, lamps, pails, and such, which, on shelves and dangling from poles, she supposed might have suggested the name of the market, but there were also stalls, as well, specializing in many other forms of goods, for example, stalls of fruits and vegetables, and produce of various sorts, and sausages and dried meats, and stalls of tunics, cloaks, robes, veils, scarves, and simple cloth, and of leatherwork, belts and wallets, and such, and of footwear, oils, instruments of the bath, cosmetics and perfumes, and mats and coarse rugs, and such. She saw no stall that seemed to specialize in silk, or gold, or silver, or precious stones, or in weaponry, even simple cutlery. It impressed her as a crowded, dirty, low market, presumably frequented primarily by the poor, or by those of the lower castes, individuals who must carefully guard even their smallest coins.

“For example, slave girls,” said the girl.

“Yes, Mistress.”

Ellen looked to the left and right, on the surface of the shelf. There were seven girls there, including herself, each, as she, stripped and in a heavy collar, chained by the left ankle to a ring. Yes, slave girls, too, were for sale in this market, and she was such a girl. She, too, here, was for sale, up for sale in this cheap, miserable market, in this terrible place.

How amused must be he who had been her master, for, after her beating, she scarcely dared to use his name in her thoughts, to know that she was here. Perhaps he would lift a glass of ka-la-na and proclaim a toast, offering it to her, chuckling, laughing, relishing his triumph over her, what he had done to her, offering it to her, to his absent, discarded slave. Perhaps he would permit Tutina, though too a slave, to join in the toast.

It was now darker in the square and, here and there, torches were being lit.

The ambiance in the market was now subtly different than it had been. A difference in the crowd was detectable. Perhaps there were fewer robes and more tunics. Perhaps some who had worked during the day were coming to the market at night. If possible the crowd seemed dirtier, rougher, and meaner. Some men may not have had employment, or desired such, and now, like nocturnal animals, they came furtively from their insulae, like urts from their holes. There seemed more lower-caste women than before. Some were not veiled. Some young, drunken men staggered by. Ellen shrank back, away from the front of the shelf. She saw two men pass, guardsmen, or such, helmeted, armed, in matching tunics, and many in the crowd drew back, sullenly, to let them pass. Some shook their fists at them, after they had passed. Some children ran through the crowd. A vendor was pursuing them. She saw four women, their hands chained behind their backs, their necks fastened together with a chain, being prodded through the square by three armed men, helmeted and tunicked as had been the other two. The women were naked. Ellen supposed that they, too, then, were slaves. They looked upon the occupants of the shelf, and smiled, tossing their heads, doubtless comparing themselves favorably with what they saw there. “She-urts!” cried the girl to Ellen’s left, with a rustle of chain. One of the women being herded through the square, she who was first in the coffle, turned angrily in her chains and seemed about to reply, but the man nearest to her raised his hand, palm open, menacingly, and she put down her head, cringing, and hurried forward, turning her head so that the pressure of the collar would be at the side of her neck and not the front of her throat. This jerked against the collar of the woman behind her, pulling her collar tight against the back of her neck, causing her to stumble forward, which movement was reflected in the motion of the third and fourth members of the small coffle, who must make hurried, awkward adjustments to retain their balance. “Clumsy slaves!” cried another of Ellen’s chain sisters. At this moment, to Ellen’s dismay, and that of her companions, the lead guard, seizing the first girl by the upper arm, pulled the coffle through the crowd, bringing it to a place just before the shelf. Instantly Ellen, and the other girls on the shelf, frightened, went to first obeisance position. “Kneel up,” said a harsh voice. With a rustle of chain Ellen and the others went to first position. “These slaves,” said the harsh voice, indicating the coffle in his charge, “are to be sold in the Curulean.”

This meant nothing to Ellen, but to the other girls it seemed to have some considerable impact, producing even a sentiment which might be bordering on awe.

The neck-chained women smiled. They stood straighter.

The accent of the man, Ellen noted, did not seem the same as those accents with which she was most familiar, but he did speak Gorean, and she had no difficulty in understanding him. Not all Gorean accents, of course, are easily understood, the one to the other.

The man’s tunic was scarlet, and he wore a sword belt slung across his body, from the right shoulder to the scabbard at his left hip, facilitating the right-handed draw. This belt, and the scabbard, and the crest on his helmet, were yellow. Though this was not known to Ellen at the time, the scarlet denoted the caste of Warriors, one of the five high castes of Gor, the others being the Initiates, Physicians, Builders and Scribes. The yellow was part of the dress uniform of the occupational forces, as a whole, but was common in the Cosian military. In times of danger or imminent conflict, the sword belt is looped simply over the left shoulder, so that it, and the attached scabbard, the blade drawn, may be discarded. This prevents the belt being grasped in combat by an enemy, which might be to the disadvantage of its owner. The two men who had passed through the market earlier had been similarly attired and accoutered, as were this man’s companions.

“You may speak,” said the guard to his charges.

Instantly a fierce torrent of abuse from the chained women rained upon the occupants of the shelf, to which the occupants of the shelf did not dare to reply. “Cement-shelf girls!” “She-urts!” “She-sleen!” “Pot-and-mat girls!” “Low slaves!” “Barbarians!” “Earth-girls!” “Bondmaids!” “Plow-thralls!” “Collar meat!” “Slave meat!” “Flesh-trash!” Such were the epithets that sped forth that evening from the throats of their fair rivals. There were other names, phrases and remarks that Ellen did not even understand.

A moment’s digression may perhaps be in order, as some may find it of interest.

The Gorean slave girl, unlike free women, particularly those of lower caste, is not permitted to be vulgar. And, indeed, most are not. The virulence of the coffle, as it poured scorn on the shelf girls, was certainly clear, and its expressions vehement and explicit, but it utilized few, if any, expressions which would not have been in common use in the surrounding community. As an analogy one might note that, on Earth, it might be discourteous to refer to a woman as, say, a tart or a hussy, but it would not be regarded as vulgar to do so, whereas certain other expressions, which might come to the mind of a native English speaker, would presumably be regarded as vulgar, even quite vulgar. Bondage, of course, with its dramatic contrast between the master and the slave, brings out a woman’s femininity. It is hard to be kneeling before a man, perhaps in a scrap of silk and chained, and not be extremely aware of one’s femininity. Contrasts, of course, are sexually stimulatory. As the saying is, if one wants a man to be more of a man one should be more of a woman. This, in its folklike way, recognizes not only that the human species is radically sexually dimorphic, but that this dimorphism is profoundly relevant to sexuality. Even small enhancements of natural differences, for example, by cosmetics, can be sexually stimulatory, more readily triggering response-dispositions, rather in the nature of innate releasing mechanisms, as has been known for millennia. Studies with primates demonstrate that the testosterone levels of males who have been kept in sexually negative, sexually depressive, environments rise dramatically when the environment is changed, to include, for example, receptive females. Sexuality does not prosper in the androgynous environment. And the master/slave relationship is the least androgynous environment conceivable. It is its diametrical opposite. It, in virtue of its contrasts, is the most sexually stimulatory environment possible. In it we have the slave, vulnerable, lovely, owned and obedient, dressed, if dressed, for the pleasure of the master, at his feet, perhaps bound or chained, in the beautiful symbolism of her condition, subject to discipline, and we have the master, male, lordly and powerful. She is his to do with as he pleases. His virility races; he exults. She, knowing herself his, trembles with need and receptiveness before him. “Put me to your slave ring, Master. I beg it. I am yours. Do with me as you will, my Master!” Both find themselves within a culture’s glorious enhancement of, and celebration of, nature’s primordial determinations. But to return to more prosaic matters, the Gorean slave girl is not permitted vulgarity. She, though perhaps scarcely clad, or stripped, and kneeling, must be in many ways very “ladylike,” for lack of a better word. This, too, of course, contributes to the contrast between herself and the master, much as did the contrast between “gentleman” and “lady” in the Victorian Era, with its concealed, mysterious, romantic, latent, explosive, subterranean sexuality. Sometimes when low-caste women are enslaved they must be taught to be more ladylike, as their masters will have that of them. Their mouths, for example, may be washed out with soap, literally. That is a symbolic, but surely unpleasant, lesson they are not likely to forget. And it may be repeated as often as the master pleases. Most upper-caste women, whereas they might be smug, haughty or cruel, are not vulgar, regarding vulgar language, allusions, gestures, and such as being incompatible with the dignity of their caste. This is not to deny that an upper-caste woman, say, recently enslaved, or any slave girl, for that matter, may not be commanded upon occasion to use the most vulgar language conceivable, in referring to herself, or in begging for use, and such. Here, again, it is the contrast, as well as the understanding on the master’s part that he can exact this of the slave and on the part of the slave that it can be exacted from her, that is sexually stimulatory. Sometimes, for example, a slave’s referring to herself in a vulgar fashion, or begging for use in a very explicit and very vulgar manner, can help her to achieve a clearer concept of what she is and, of course, consequently, contribute to her readiness for use. On the whole, however, Goreans tend to be remarkably free of vulgarity, perhaps because their world is, on the whole, so much more innocent, natural and conducive to human happiness than at least one other world. There is thus a paradox of sorts which arises. The Gorean will often tend to be courteous and refined in his speech, and yet, in action, direct and forceful, sometimes even ruthless and brutal. We thus have the combination of a gentleman and an uncompromising master in one, with that of a slave and lady in one. But then I suppose that this is not really so difficult to understand. If you are a male, reading this, ask yourself what you would rather have at your slave ring, lying there naked and chained, looking up at you, cringing in the shadow of your whip, a simple, slovenly, vulgar-mouthed slut or a highly intelligent, cultured, refined lady.

Androgyny is inimical to sex; complementarity is stimulatory to sex. The greatest complementarity conceivable occurs within the rigors of the master/slave relationship. This is the secret of its capacity to fulfill, and satisfy, both partners.

To be sure, if one’s political programs require the devirilization, and consequent destruction, of the docile, obedient, duped male, then one must do all one can to confuse, deny, blur, and eliminate sexual differences, in this project having recourse to whatever distortions, lies, misrepresentations and propaganda one can manage, and, eventually, of necessity, to the bayonets and guns of a collectivistic, authoritarian state, one that can enforce, by means of executions and camps, the will of an unnatural, aggressive, self-seeking minority on the community as a whole. The destruction of nature and the ruin of human happiness presents an enormous challenge to social engineering, one to which a pathological society, by seizing control of education, the media, and such, must, if it is to be successful, address itself with courage and determination. To be sure, its ends might be achieved more easily by destroying the offspring of all males who show evidence of virility or genetically engineering a new species, a more bovine or insectoidal form of life.

These developments, however, are not likely to occur on Gor. That is because of the nature of Gorean men. Indeed, even on another world which occurs to me, such developments would seem unlikely, once the fevers and fits of madness have passed. Surely even that world, finding itself on the brink of species suicide, might be expected to draw back in horror. Let the fanatics and the insane be put to one side, not to be followed, but to be ignored, as was done before, when one emerged from the late Middle Ages, and into the light of the Renaissance.

Let manhood be reborn.

“Obeisance!” snapped the guardsman.

Instantly Ellen, and her sister slaves, went to first obeisance position, head down to the cement.

“You may now beg the forgiveness of our charges,” said the guardsman.

“Forgive us, Mistresses,” said the girls on the shelf. “Forgive us, Mistresses,” said Ellen, too, following the lead of her chain sisters, she, like the others, head down to the cement, in first obeisance position.

“You will now, in order, shelf-girls,” said the guardsman, “acknowledge your inferiority to our charges.”

And he was not satisfied until each of the slaves on the shelf acknowledged herself inferior goods to those on his chain. With the two girls who had called out derisively he was most demanding, until he had them in tears praising the beauty and value of his coffle and confessing their own comparative worthlessness, that they were unworthy to act even as the lowliest of serving slaves to such beauties, and so on. He was quick with Ellen, perhaps because of her youth, perhaps because she had refrained from participating in this small contretemps, perhaps in his eagerness to get to the culprit on her left.

“And you,” he said to her, “do you acknowledge yourself inferior to these slaves?”

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen, and so easily did she escape his further attention. She kept her head down to the cement. Too, objectively, given what she now was, collar meat, a commodity, an object for sale, she had no doubt but what it was true. She was inferior to, and much less than, any of the four neck-chained beauties who stood before the shelf. They were all more beautiful than she. She could not hope to bring the same coins to her master that any of them might. Targo, she supposed, would have rejoiced to have any one of them on his chain.

Perhaps, she thought, if I were not so young.

Then, mercifully, the Cosian dragged the lead girl in the coffle away from the shelf and began to conduct her, her chain sisters perforce behind her, through the crowd. Ellen lifted her head a little. One of the girls in the coffle, she who was last on the chain, or slaver’s necklace, turned about to cast a last contemptuous glance at the shelf, but the guardsman behind her struck her a sharp, stinging blow with the flat of his hand below the small of her back, which resounded throughout the market, and she, sobbing with humiliation, with a jangle of chain, hurried forward.

They are still only slaves, such as we, thought Ellen. At various times, in her training, and after her training, when returning to her cell, kennel or cage, one of the guards had given her a similar slap. Such attentions, of course, hurry a girl on. Perhaps that is their ostensible purpose. But they also inform her, whether she wishes it or not, that she is of sexual interest. They also remind her that she is a slave.

“So,” said Targo, appearing from the right, as one would look out toward the market, “you are all in trouble.”

“No, Master!” said more than one of the girls, still in obeisance position.

“You shall not be fed tonight,” said Targo.

There were cries of misery from several of the girls.

“You are all too fat,” said Targo.

“And it will save gruel,” said Barzak, appearing, too, from the right.

“That has nothing to do with it,” said Targo, “but, it is true, it will save some gruel.”

“You give us little to eat anyway, Master,” sobbed a girl.

“You are all too fat, and I am a poor man,” said Targo.

Ellen supposed that Targo and Barzak might have been in the vicinity during the scene with the guardsmen, but, doubtless wisely, wishing to avoid further unpleasantness, if not actual danger, did not step forward and identify themselves.

“May we break position, Master?” asked one of the girls.

“Yes,” he said, absently.

There was a rustle of chains.

Ellen, now sitting, looked at the shackle closed about her left ankle. Her ankle was abraded, where she had futilely, foolishly, struggled with the obdurate impediment.

Had she not understood that she was chained? Did she think that those who had chained her did not know their work? Did she think she might simply remove the chain?

Foolish slave!

She pulled a little at the chain, tears in her eyes.

She understood now, and very clearly, that she was chained, that she would remain where she was, precisely there, fastened there, a chained slave, until others might see fit to release her.

“The torches are lit,” said Targo.

Indeed, two torches had even been lit on the building behind the shelf, one rather at each end. The torches, and some lamps, tend to be lit toward dark by the market attendants. The two streets beyond the market were now dark. Individuals in poorer districts, leaving their homes after dark or returning to them after dark, commonly carry their own light, usually a lamp. Individuals can be hired, in squares and markets, to escort individuals to their destinations. In better districts, and on the great boulevards and such, high lamps, usually hung from poles, are usually lit after dark by employees of the city, sometimes by guardsmen.

“The light is not so good,” said Targo. “That may work in our favor. Buyers may not see what poor stuff you are.”

“I will go to the Iron Collar,” said Barzak. “I can buy some drinks for some good fellows, get them drunk, bring them back, and who knows. If they are drunk enough, we might make a sale.”

“Go then,” said Targo.

“I will need some coins,” said Barzak.

“Solicit rather in the crowd,” said Targo.

Barzak grinned and shrugged.

“What is the name of the girl in the tavern?” asked Targo, shrewdly.

“‘Jill’,” said Barzak.

“A barbarian name,” said Targo.

“She is civilized,” said Barzak, irritatedly. “The name was put on her as a punishment name. To be sure, I think it heats her loins.”

“Ladies,” said Targo to his charges, “I can diminish your rations and add weights to your collars. It is my impression that you have been listless on the shelf, save perhaps when some handsome fellow strolled by. We do not really have enough gruel on hand for you to wait until the rich, handsome master of your hottest, most squirming dreams wanders by. As soon as you spot a fellow with a wallet, whether he is misshapen, lame or whatever, of any caste, and smell, who comes within five paces of the shelf, kneel, call out, lift your hands, smile, wriggle, make yourselves as pleasant and congenial as she-urts can. You are cheap girls. You are bargains. That is a selling point. Remember, too, Barzak’s whip has already been warmed, heated nicely, and will be deliciously supple. It has already had one taste of hide today. And doubtless it is more than ready and eager to use its five tongues to lick the same, or another, pretty back.

Ellen shrank back in terror. She remembered the whip, in every tissue and fiber of her body. She had now learned, despite her background on Earth, her studies, her publications, her career, and such, that here, on this world, in her youth and beauty, she was susceptible to the whip; that she was simply and categorically subject to it, that it could be used upon her. She was slave. She was now ready to do anything to be pleasing. She was now desperately concerned to be pleasing. Perhaps this was because she had felt the whip. Let those who have not felt it fail to understand this or scorn her. Its instructive and admonitory value where slave girls are concerned is incalculable. It is one of a large number of devices and techniques for improving a girl.

Targo came about the shelf and stood before Ellen, he on the ground, she on the shelf. She went to first position, unbidden, which seemed appropriate. “I know that this is your first day on the shelf, little she-urt,” he said, kindly, “but I want you to learn quickly and make a good impression. You are not really stupid, are you?”

“I do not think so, Master,” said Ellen.

“I am not sure that you fully understand your collar,” he said, “but I think you will learn quickly. Remember you are a slave girl, precisely a slave girl, and only a slave girl.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Do you know the call?” he asked.

“‘Buy me, Master!’?” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “Now, when a man approaches, I want you to kneel as you are, though perhaps with your knees more widely spread, and smile, and lift your hands to him and call out, and beg and plead prettily. Too, try to show need. Small tongue movements are good, exposing the palms of your small hands to him, a bit of plaintive, judicious wriggling, such things.”

“Master!” wept Ellen.

“And remember,” said he, paying her no attention, “you may be touched and handled in any manner the customer wishes, and must perform for him, assume dictated postures, and such, in any way he wishes. The only thing you need not do is serve his pleasure, completely.”

“Yes, Master,” she said, in misery.

“Serving his pleasure completely must be cleared through either myself or Barzak, and there may be a charge for that.”

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen, in horror.

Shortly thereafter both Targo and Barzak disappeared into the crowd.

Ellen suspected that they were both heading for the Iron Collar. Perhaps they would pool their resources to make a bid for Barzak’s Jill. Perhaps they could sell her, unless they had other plans for such a one.

“The Masters are so stupid,” said the girl to Ellen’s left. “Do they really think we are going to attempt to allure an unwanted master?”

“Not in their absence,” laughed another, two rings to Ellen’s right.

“To make a sale they would have us interest a tharlarion,” said another.

“I’m hungry,” said another.

“There will be no gruel for us tonight,” lamented another.

“Zara and Cotina had to open their cavernous mouths and fling their little tongues about,” said another, bitterly.

“Be silent, shelf girl,” said the girl to Ellen’s left.

“We have not been ordered to silence, she-sleen,” said the first. “I can speak as I wish!”

“We would see about that,” said the girl to Ellen’s left, “if my chain could reach you!”

“You are not Mistress!” said the one.

Ellen realized that a first girl must not have been appointed, though she knew that she herself, given her youth and her newness on the chain, would be subordinate to the others.

“If I get my hands on you, we will see who is Mistress!” said the girl to Ellen’s left.

“Take one hair from my head or give me one scratch, and you will be whipped!” said the other.

The girl on Ellen’s left turned away, sitting, and looked out upon the crowd, sullenly.

“I am Ellen,” said Ellen to her.

“I do not like barbarians,” said the girl.

“Forgive me, Mistress,” said Ellen.

“I am Cotina,” said the girl.

“I am Zara,” said the girl, two rings to the right.

“I am Lydia,” said the girl who had been critical of Cotina and Zara. “I do not like barbarians either.”

“Forgive me, Mistress,” said Ellen.

“She is Cichek, she is Emris, and she is Jasmine,” said Cotina, indicating the other girls on the shelf.

“Mistresses,” said Ellen, deferentially. They looked away.

“They do not like to be shelved with a barbarian,” said Cotina. “It is insulting.”

“Forgive me, Mistresses,” said Ellen.

“What does it matter?” asked Lydia, bitterly. “We all wear collars. We are all morsels for men, all tidbits of slave meat.”

“It is still insulting,” snapped Jasmine.

“Forgive me, Mistress,” said Ellen.

“Mistress,” said Ellen, to Cotina, “what is the Curulean?”

“It was a fortress and palace, the ancestral domicile of the first Hinrabians,” said Cotina, “but, for years now, it has been the major slave market in Ar.”

“Do you think I might be sold there someday?” asked Ellen.

“You are very pretty,” said Cotina, “perhaps in four or five years, or six or seven years, or eight or ten years, you might be thought worthy of the Curulean.”

“Not for the central block,” said Jasmine.

“Who knows?” said Cotina.

“But I have been “stabilized,” said Ellen.

“You were prematurely stabilized?” asked Cotina.

“I have been stabilized,” said Ellen.

“As you are?”

“Yes.”

“It was done deliberately?”

“Yes.”

“Someone must have hated you very much,” said Cotina.

Tears came to Ellen’s eyes.

“You will never be more then than you are,” said Lydia, “only a pretty girl. No man would want you, except perhaps as a pretty little thing, a pretty little servant, a pretty little maid, to have about the house.”

“Do not underestimate the lust of men,” said Cichek.

“But who could take her seriously as a female?” asked Lydia.

“That is a different matter,” said Cichek.

Ellen put her head in her hands and wept. He who had been her master had seen, it seemed, to her lot on Gor.

He had known, undoubtedly, exactly what he was doing, and had done it.

It had been his decision, not hers, as she was his slave, and he had made it as he had.

“We could all be sold in the Curulean,” said Emris. “Surely we are as fair as those she-sleen on the chain.”

“That is for the Masters to decide,” said Zara.

“We are all worthy of the Curulean,” said Jasmine, “except perhaps the child.”

“I am not a child!” said Ellen.

“Except perhaps the girl,” said Jasmine.

Ellen could not deny that she was a girl, in at least two senses, first in the sense of her youth, the sense which Jasmine had undoubtedly conceded, and, secondly, in the sense that she, as the others, was a female slave. In the first sense, her youth certainly did not militate against her sexual desirability. She knew that. There had been large, full-length mirrors, sometimes wall-size, in several of the training rooms. There had been no mistaking the lovely, exquisite, sweetly curved, collared image that she had seen reflected in the mirror. Too, the responses and attitudes of her male trainers, as well as the frequent condition of their bodies, had left no doubt in her mind that her body, whether she wished it to or not, now constituted a powerful stimulus in the sexual equation, a stimulus of considerable potency. Whether she wished it or not she knew that she was now extremely stimulatory to men, extremely attractive, extremely desirable. And, too, of course, her desirability was considerably increased by what she was, that she was a female slave. Men saw her, and wanted her, badly. She had even been put in the iron belt. Secondly, aside from her youth, as noted, she was a girl in the sense that she was a female slave, the sense in which all female slaves are girls. The expression ‘girl’ in such contexts is rich and delicious. It has a lovely reductive or demeaning sense in which it discriminates between the slave and the free woman, and calls attention to the lowliness, the unimportance and the meaninglessness of the slave. Indeed, free mistresses will invariably refer to, and address, their serving slaves, and such, even those of their own age, as “girl.” Secondly, the expression ‘girl’, at least in the usage of men, has not only the aforementioned connotation but, even more powerfully, and independently of the age of the female, the commendatory suggestion of extreme sexual desirability. It functions as a term of interest and praise. It is not a chronological classification; it is a signal that he regards her as lying within an ideal prey range for his aggressive dispositions. Of two women the same age, a man will think of one as a girl and the other as a woman. The one he wants will be the one he thinks of as the girl, for he sees her as young and desirable, still young enough to be eager and ready, and sexually stimulating, and the other, in which he has no interest, he is content to let call herself a woman, or whatever she wishes. It is interesting to note, in passing, that women who are interested in men, and are still in the sexual market, so to speak, often think of, and speak of, themselves and their female friends as “girls.” At one time Ellen, in virtue of her ideology, was forced to denounce this, but she now understands it. In any event, the female slave is thought of as a girl, a slave girl.

“But we find ourselves chained on a shelf,” said Cotina.

“I do not want to be a slave,” said Zara. “I do not want to be chained on a shelf!” She jerked at her ankle chain, but as helplessly as had Ellen. She, too, was a helpless, chained slave.

“Be grateful that you are permitted to live, slave girl,” said Cotina.

Ellen wondered if she herself desired to be a slave or not. Certainly she did not want to wear so cruel, high, thick, and heavy a collar, one in which she could scarcely lower her head, in effect, a punishment collar. She did not want to be chained on a public shelf. On the other hand, it seemed clear to her that whether she wanted to be a slave or not, she was a slave, and not by dint of the collar, or brand, but by dint of her deepest nature. What was wrong with her? Don’t you want to be free, she cried to herself. Was she not supposed to cry such things to herself? Was it not expected? Didn’t she want to be free? Surely she knew that her society had insisted that she must want to be free, so what was it, deep within her, deeper than her society, more profound than convention, that wanted rather to love and serve, to be owned will-lessly, to be mastered and dominated? But then she realized that her male-dominated society had imposed its values on both sexes, that it had generalized its own preconceptions. What was good for the male must be good for the female, and so on. Were they not the same, were they not identical? Was it not like the foolish, ignorant male who, finding his female lover suddenly, impulsively, on her knees before him, looking up lovingly, rendering him the homage and obeisance her nature yearns to give, sweatingly, embarrassedly hurries her, scolding, to her feet, admonishing her, in effect, to act more like a man. And so she, shamed, rises up, still trying to please him, despite his denial of her momentarily exposed depths. His will, it seems, is that she not be a woman before him, for that seems to frighten him, but something else. Is it a woman he wants, truly, or not a woman, really, but something else, perhaps a pseudo-male? So Ellen lay on the cement shelf. No, she thought, the thought charming her, I do not want to be free. Is that truly such a heresy, for a woman, or only a heresy for those who insist that women are to be like men, and for male impersonators, so to speak? I have been free, I know what it is like, and its values. I know what it is to be free. I have experienced freedom. I know what it is like. But I have also been, and am, a slave, and know what that is like, at least to now, and its values. And, oh, there are values, profound values, connected with my bondage. I suspect that I have only begun to sense them. Let those who wish to be free, be free, and let those who would be slaves be slaves. Are we not even to be allowed the freedom to be what we most wish to be? If not, what sort of freedom is that? The freedom to conform to an alien stereotype, an image imposed from without? I am a natural slave. I think I have known that for many years, but my slavery was denied me. Now, at last, I find myself on a world on which I can, and indeed must, express my deepest, most fervent nature. I am a slave, and I love being a slave, but surely I dare not admit that to any man. How fearful to be at the feet of a man who knows you are a true slave! How would he treat you? With what contempt, and lust?

But, lying on the shelf, looking out on the crowd, she became apprehensive. I am a slave, she thought. I am chained. I am naked. I am at their mercy. They can do with me what they want. And she suddenly felt very vulnerable. She no longer wore the iron belt. She drew her legs up, close to her body. The cruel security, the protection, the safety of the iron belt was gone. All her softness now, with its sweet, delicious curves, with its delicate intimacies, was exhibited openly. She, the whole of her, was chained on a public shelf. She was vulnerably displayed, well displayed, completely displayed.

“A warrior,” whispered Emris. Then she called out, “Buy me, Master!”

Ellen looked up, and gasped. A tall, broad-shouldered man in scarlet, massively handsome, had approached the shelf. His sword belt, scabbard and helmet crest were black.

“He is of Ar,” whispered Cotina to Ellen. Then she knelt, knees wide, and called out, “Buy me, Master!”

Zara scrambled forward, as she could.

Emris, Cichek, Jasmine and Lydia, too, almost instantly knelt, and drew as close to the man as their chains would permit. Only Ellen, frightened, remained lying down, her knees drawn up. She had not seen her sister slaves like this. “Buy me, Master!” called out Zara. “I am Zara, if it pleases Master! I beg to be purchased! I am skilled! I can serve you well! Oh, buy me, Master! I beg to be permitted to serve you!”

“Do not concern yourself with her, Master!” called out Lydia. “I am better!”

“No!” cried Zara.

“I saw him first,” said Emris.

“Be silent,” said Cotina.

“I beg your collar, handsome Master!” cried Cichek.

“See my blond hair and blue eyes,” called Lydia, lifting her hair and displaying it. “I alone am fair of these on the shelf.”

“She is cold,” said Jasmine.

“My belly is hot,” said Lydia. “I juice at a touch!”

“I am from the valley of the Vosk,” said Jasmine. “My belly flames!”

“I would juice at the sound of your footfall,” cried Zara. “I would tear at my chains to reach you!”

“I beg to writhe in need before you!” said Emris.

“See my shapely limbs,” said Cotina, presenting her right side and leg for his consideration.

How different were the slaves before such a man, thought Ellen. Look at Zara, thought Ellen. She is as much a slave as the others. A moment ago she was protesting her bondage and now she is half beside herself, beseechingly, with the desire to be this man’s slave. Clearly what she wanted was not freedom but a slavery of her choice.

“Put me through slave paces, Master,” called Emris. “Let me exhibit a slave before you!”

“Buy me, Master!” begged Cichek.

“No, me!” said Cotina, lifting her hands, pleadingly.

“No, me!” said Lydia.

“I!” called Jasmine.

“I am a natural slave, a slave in my heart,” said Zara. “I have wanted to be a slave since childhood, Master! Buy me! Make me your slave!”

“She is no different from us,” said Cotina. “We are all natural slaves. Choose then the best and most beautiful of us all, Cotina, me!”

Ellen was startled at the eagerness, the zeal, the openness, the competitiveness, of the slaves. The man was not of the Merchants. He would not be rich. Would they not want to be purchased by rich men, that they would have a softer, easier, more pleasant life? Would a rich man not have many slaves, so that there would be less work for any given girl? Would such then not be the ideal master for any slave, a rich man? What then was it about this man? He would not be rich. And yet they wanted to throw themselves to his feet.

Ellen looked into his eyes, and then, quickly, looked down, frightened. In his eyes, she had seen that he was one before whom a woman could be only a slave, one who would know well how to master a woman.

Is that why they are so eager, so zealous, she asked herself. Had they had such a master, or dreamed of such a one?

He was one, she did not doubt, who would own the fullness of a female, one who would exact the fullness of her slavery from her.

She felt a sudden tremor in her loins. She had not meant to do that. It was nothing over which she had any control. It was reflexive. She repudiated it, embarrassed. It shocked her.

“Look up,” he said.

Ellen lifted her eyes, unwillingly, to his.

The other girls were then instantly silent.

She held her eyes to his for a brief moment, and then could do so no longer, and quickly, frightened, overcome, looked down, and away.

“Please do not make me look into your eyes, Master,” she said.

She hoped she would not be cuffed.

“You are very pretty,” he said.

She shrank back, frightened. “Thank you, Master,” she said.

“Who thanks me?” he asked, gently.

“Ellen, if pleases Master,” she said, “Ellen, the slave of Targo, dealer in slaves.”

“You are new to the collar, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Yes, Master.”

“What is your brand?”

“The common kef, Master,” she said.

“Show me,” said he.

Ellen turned so that he might read her brand.

“Well, Ellen,” said he, “who is the best and most beautiful slave on the shelf?”

“Masters will decide that,” she said, “not I, Master.”

“You are a clever little beauty,” he said. “You know you must share the same straw with them tonight.”

“It is true, surely, nonetheless, Master,” she said.

“True,” he said. “Do you know slave dance?” he asked.

“No, Master.”

“Are you trained?”

“Very little, Master.” That was another thing her master had seen to, that she would not be well trained. In this way, too, she would be of less worth as a slave.

“You are a barbarian,” he said.

“Yes, Master.” Presumably that had been clear from her accent.

“I once had a barbarian,” he said. “She thought she was going to be free, but she quickly learned to kiss the whip.”

“Master?”

“I lost her at dice, but won her back. I was going to breed her, but a subordinate wanted her, and so I gave her to him. I think she was afraid of me. As far as I know she is happy in her collar. He is now stationed near Venna, and she cooks and serves in his quarters.”

“Have you been sold much?” he asked.

“Only once, to my current master, Targo, dealer in slaves.”

“When were you first collared?” he asked.

“I was enslaved some weeks ago, but I was only collared some days ago.”

“You are going to be a good slave, aren’t you?” he asked.

“I will try to be a good slave, Master,” she said.

“Belly,” he said, gently, and held out his hand, palm downward.

Instantly Ellen bellied, and, hands to the sides, lowering her head, frightened, began to lick and kiss the back of his hand.

“You have clearly had some training,” he said.

“Very little, Master,” she said.

“On your world,” he said, “is there slavery?”

“Very little, Master, at least on the surface.”

“On the surface?”

“Yes, Master.”

“There are perhaps secret slaveries?”

“Yes, Master, I have little doubt that many women are held in bondage, though this is concealed from the world.”

“Were you free on your world?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Did you anticipate that you would one day be a slave on another world, publicly and legally, stripped on a public shelf, chained, affording small ministrations to the back of a man’s hand?”

“No, Master,” said Ellen, pressing her lips to the back of his hand, softly.

“Let me lick the palm of your hand, Master,” whispered Cotina.

“No, let me!” begged Zara, quickly.

“No, me!” cried Emris.

Ellen then realized that it was presumably no accident that he had extended the back of his hand to her, and not the open hand. That was doubtless deliberate, a way of keeping her at a distance, of precluding involvement with a pretty little slave, perhaps because of her youthfulness, or her collar immaturity.

She recalled how she had been taught in training to kiss the palm of a man’s hand, sometimes darting her tongue softly in and out of it, suggesting subtly, and begging for, her own penetration. More than once a guard then, in fury, had flung her from him and stormed away, to seize another slave. She had been in the iron belt. She had been left vaguely uneasy, vaguely unsatisfied, but, at that time, slave fires had not been lit in her belly. Another technique is to kneel before the man and take the palm of his right hand, if he is right handed, and press it to your face, firmly, as though you had been cuffed with it, and then to hold the hand, humbly, as in gratitude, similarly licking and kissing the palm.

As has been suggested it is expected, at least by some masters, that the slave is to be grateful for her beatings. She has, after all, received the master’s attention. Similarly, she should rejoice that she has been improved.

But Ellen did not doubt but what the warrior was pleased to have her before him, as she was, even though she was licking and kissing merely the back of his hand. After all, she was prostrate before him, a slave, naked, in a posture of abject submission.

“I have seen the shelf of Targo last week,” he said. “The lot today is better than the lot then.”

“Thank you, Master!” said several of the girls on the shelf, elated.

What occurred to Ellen, instantly, of course, and this frightened her, was that there must have been a considerable turnover in the interim. To be sure, Targo would have to make sales or go out of business.

“Do you want to be sold?” he asked.

“No, Master!” said Ellen, who feared her sale.

“Then you want to remain here, in a weight collar, on the shelf?” he said.

“No, Master!” said Ellen.

He laughed, and drew back his hand, turned about, and disappeared into the crowd.

“You let him go,” said Cotina, angrily.

“You are stupid, Ellen,” said Emris.

“You are clever in your virgin ways,” said Zara.

“I am not a virgin,” said Ellen.

“Pretending not to want to be bought, pretending to be so naive!” said Zara.

“Wily little she-urt!” said Jasmine.

“When will such a man come to the shelf again?” asked Cichek.

“You let him get away,” said Lydia.

“I did nothing!” said Ellen. “He did not want me!”

“Did you not see him caressing your pretty little flanks with his eyes?” said Zara.

“I do not want to be chained with her,” said Jasmine.

“He looked upon all of you, beautiful Mistresses!” said Ellen.

“Do you think you are better than we?” demanded Emris.

“No, Mistresses!” said Ellen.

“Hereafter,” said Cotina, “if you do not want a buyer, give him, as you can, to us.”

“Selfish she-urt!” snapped Lydia.

“We will tear you apart in the straw,” said Cichek.

Ellen moaned.

“Targo!” whispered Cotina.

And through the crowd, from the right, came Targo, followed by Barzak, who had a figure with him, closely behind him, which he was pulling through the crowd by means of a tightly coiled, muchly shortened leash, his hand gripping it not six inches from the lock at its captive’s neck, the figure of a naked, hooded, back-braceleted woman.

That must be, Ellen supposed, Barzak’s “Jill.”

“Targo does not seem pleased,” warned Zara.

“Perhaps the new she-urt cost him too much,” said Jasmine.

“Remember,” said Cotina to Ellen. “You will be less than she, barbarian.”

“Yes, Mistress,” said Ellen.

“Buy me, Master!” called out Cotina, as though to anyone.

The other girls, too, Targo approaching, began to appeal to the crowd, uttering the attraction call of the common girl for sale.

Such a change, thought Ellen, wrought by the imminence of the masters, formerly inert female merchandise, suddenly, in fear of the whip, become luscious, active flesh goods, attempting to allure buyers, attempting to entice customers for their master.

How I despise them, the slaves, thought Ellen. How lowly, how meaningless they are!

But quickly, she, too, went to her knees and spread them widely. Ellen lifted her hands to the crowd, not daring to meet anyone’s eyes, and hoping no one noticed her. “Buy me, Master!” she called. “Buy me, Master!”

Barzak conducted his new charge into the building.

Is she not to be for sale, wondered Ellen. Why is she not to be for sale? I am for sale. Then she almost fainted with shock, for she understood what she had said, that she was for sale.

Oh, Mirus of Ar, she thought, bitterly. What you have done to me!

Targo she saw, to her dismay, was standing before her. She did not meet his eyes but continued to appeal to the crowd.

“Smile,” said he, not pleasantly. “Catch their eye. Tongue movements! Helpless movements of your knees and thighs! Pretend you are a hot little urt. Wriggle! Squirm!”

Ellen shrieked with misery and collapsed, sobbing, to the shelf.

“Ten copper tarsks were too much for you,” said Targo. “Ten copper tarsk-bits would be too much for you!”

Ellen’s body, lying on the shelf, was wracked with sobs.

“You are begging for the leather, slave girl,” said Targo.

“No, Master,” she sobbed. “Please do not have me whipped, please, no, Master!” She was terrified. She had felt the whip. She did not wish to feel it again. “Please, no, Master!” she begged. “I will do anything, Master!”

“My patience is not inexhaustible,” said Targo. “You will do better tomorrow, flesh-trash.”

“Forgive me, Master,” wept Ellen. “Yes, Master.”

“Behold, kind sir,” said Targo, turning to a fellow nearby, “the loveliness of Cotina, the sweetness of her thighs, her well-turned ankles, and note Lydia, a beauty who might have been from the north, the only one so fair, with blond hair and blue eyes, on the shelf, and see delicious, cuddly Jasmine. She is from the valley of the Vosk, and you know what they are like, particularly the ones from Victoria, only a stone’s throw from Jasmine’s native village. That is Emris and Cichek who beg you to buy them. Zara, so slim and shapely, pleads for your collar. These are prize slaves, sought by the Curulean, but withheld, due to my popular propensities, for the district of Metellus, and our beloved Kettle Market. Any one of these is worth a Ubar’s medallion, a thousand golden tarn disks, but I am a destitute man, who, due to personal exigencies am in sudden dire need of ready cash. I am prepared to let any of these unparalleled beauties go for as little as a dozen silver tarsks!”

“Shelf girls!” snorted a man, turning away.

“Have that one stand, to be examined,” said a man.

“Cotina, stand, examination position!” snapped Targo.

Cotina stood, her legs widely spread, her head back, her hands clasped behind the back of her neck. It is hard for a woman to move from this position and she must be concerned with her balance. The subtle adjustments and tenseness required to maintain her balance keep her even more helplessly in place, and these adjustments and this tenseness will also be expressed in her posture, providing body-language cues bespeaking obedience and servitude. Too, obviously this posture bares her vulnerably, and her hands cannot interfere with the examination. The position of the arms, the hands clasped behind the back of the neck, or, sometimes, behind the back of the head, lifts the bosom, exhibiting it beautifully.

The fellow came to the surface of the shelf, climbing directly onto it, whereas Targo hurried about, to the side, went up by the steps, and joined him near Cotina.

“Is she barbarian?” asked the man.

“Certainly not,” said Targo, offended.

“Open your mouth,” said the fellow to Cotina, who presumably obeyed. Ellen kept her eyes away.

“Wider!”

“You do not think I would handle barbarians, do you?” asked Targo.

“Yes?” said Targo, for another fellow had clambered to the surface of the shelf.

“Is this one truly blond?” asked the new fellow, presumably of Lydia.

“Certainly,” said Targo.

There was a sudden, sharp little cry from Lydia, as, Ellen supposed, some hair was drawn from her head to ascertain the veracity of Targo’s asseveration.

“I am going to put this one through slave paces,” said the man who was near Lydia.

He then began to issue a set of rapid commands to Lydia, almost as quickly as the trainers in the house had accustomed Ellen to respond. Lydia complied as well as she could, chained, and on cement. Slave paces are much more easily performed on a smooth surface, or on furs at the foot of a master’s couch, such places. Sometimes they are performed on a rug, say, a Tahari rug, before the master who, seated, observes, or perhaps in the center of such a rug, for the interest of the master’s encircling guests. In such cases, often the paces are not called, but performed silently, save perhaps for small gasps and moans, by the slave.

“Oh!” suddenly cried Cotina.

“Yes, she is vital,” said Targo. “Hold position,” he warned Cotina.

“Master!” wept Cotina.

“Hold position,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she sobbed. “Ah! Oh! Please, no! Oh, do not, I beg you! Oh! Ohhhhh!”

Ellen covered her head with her hands, and lost consciousness.

It was later that night, when the market was mostly deserted, and several of the torches had burned out, that Ellen awakened, to a sound of chain. She felt a tug at her ankle, through the shackle. Barzak was unlocking the padlock that held her shackle chain to the ring. “Stand up,” he said to her, “and get behind Lydia, holding your left wrist with your right hand, behind your back.” Ellen went to stand behind Lydia, who was standing behind Zara. Both girls were grasping their left wrist with their right hand behind their back. Zara’s ankle chain had been lifted and padlocked to the large ring dangling from her collar. On the other hand, Lydia’s ankle chain had been padlocked into the shackle ring of Zara. In a moment, Ellen’s ankle chain had been padlocked into the shackle ring of Lydia. Shortly thereafter, Cichek and Emris had been freed of the shelf ring, and Cichek was standing behind Ellen, her hands behind her, as ordered, and her ankle chain had been padlocked into the Ellen’s shackle ring. Emris took her place behind Cichek, standing as the others, and her ankle chain was padlocked into Cichek’s shackle ring. “You will move with the left foot first,” said Barzak, who did not know if Ellen was familiar with shackled-ankle coffle procedure.”

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen. “May I speak, Master?”

“No.”

“Be careful on the steps,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

There were only one or two men left in the market. Almost all of the goods were gone, taken away to be stored safely somewhere. Across the way a man, presumably drunk, lay near one of the stalls, its shelves now bared, its covering gone, as well.

Ellen, between Lydia and Cichek, descended the shelf steps and, in a moment, entered the building. It was dark, and there was an unmistakable smell of urine.

“The steps are to the left,” said Barzak. “You may hold out your hands. Do not fall. At the foot of the steps be again as you were.”

They would keep their hands in that fashion until they were secured for the night.

The steps were of cement, and narrow, steep and dark.

After moving a few feet down the dark hall, they came to an opened, heavy door, and through this Zara, leading, made her way.

The room, which was large, was lit by a small lamp in a niche on the wall. The room had one occupant, doubtless the woman brought back by Barzak and Targo. She now wore a weight collar, as the others, and this collar, by its ring, was padlocked to a ring anchored in the stone floor. She could not lift her head more than two or three inches from the floor. The hood and leash were gone. She was still stripped. Her body was delicate. Her features were exquisite.

The floor was strewn with straw. It was damp to Ellen’s bare feet.

“Surely we are not to be neck-ringed tonight, Master,” said Zara.

“And you will not be fed either,” said Barzak. “You should understand that, for you were one of the two who precipitated that scene with the Cosians. Do you not understand that we might have been fined, or imprisoned, or killed, or our entire stock confiscated. Do you think the Cosians do not have that power?”

“Forgive me, Master,” said Zara, but he had forced her to her knees, and then to her side, her right hand still grasping her left wrist behind her, so bound by the master’s will, at one of the rings anchored in the floor. He removed the padlock holding her ankle chain to her collar ring and then used it to padlock her collar ring to the floor ring. He then removed the ankle chain from her shackle, and put the chain with its padlock to one side. He then removed Lydia’s ankle chain from Zara’s shackle ring. In a moment Lydia then, too, her ankle chain removed, was neck-ringed to a floor ring by one of its padlocks, the chain put, too, to one side. Ellen was next, and then Cichek and Emris. All were then neck-ringed to a floor ring, and freed of their ankle chains. They retained, of course, the shackles with the shackle rings on their left ankles, as the shackles had been closed about their ankles, hammered shut. The weight collars they wore, too, with the dangling rings, by means of which they were fastened to the floor rings, could not be removed either, except by tools. Barzak, who was brawny, had managed this, she supposed. There was a small anvil in one corner of the room. A girl could be knelt there.

“Your hands are freed,” said Barzak, and the girls gratefully released their grips on their left wrists, held behind their back.

Barzak put the extra chains and padlocks to one side, took the lamp and left the room. Ellen heard the door being closed and locked. She had seen several rings in the room, on the floor, like that to which she was fastened, and about the walls. There may have been as many as fifty such rings. She had thought that there might have been one small window, high in the wall, closely barred. It was dark now, of course. Perhaps that window opened to a narrow passage between the tenements, or to a small, narrow yard, concealed from the street. Gorean buildings of this sort often present a solid front to the street, this discouraging traffic, trespassing, burglary, and such. It was a large, simple, heavy, dark, stonelike room, designed for slaves or captives. Surely it did not resemble the luxurious boudoirs she had heard of in her training, those sometimes permitted to high slaves, the pampered, perfumed treasures of Ubars and generals, sometimes said to even influence the policies and fates of states. Such were prize acquisitions of conquerors, who might enjoy stripping them and putting them in common collars, and giving them to their lowest soldiers, first, of course, having them perform naked before these soldiers, in the presence, naturally, of their former masters, and the conquerors.

Ellen tried to lift her head, but she could do so only a tiny bit, as it was held, by the rings and padlock, close to the floor.

She had been given bread and tea by Targo in the afternoon. Her hunger then, she supposed, while certainly active, would be less than that of her chain sisters.

Her back still hurt from the lashing she had been given hours earlier.

Tears came to her eyes.

She had felt the whip.

She would obey, and obey instantly and perfectly.

The fiery lesson of the broad-bladed, five-stranded Gorean slave whip, designed to be applied to such as she, had not been lost on her.

Earlier in the day the sun had been fierce. She had scarcely been able to keep her eyes open. She feared that she, and doubtless the others, had burned on the shelf. Surely that would not improve her price, she thought, bitterly. She remembered the coolness of the house, the baths required, and the creams and lotions, designed to keep the skin of a slave girl soft, smooth and caressable, pleasing to the touch of a master.

In the coffle she had been between Lydia and Cichek, and she was now between them, as well, each neck-ringed to their respective floor rings.

She was pleased in a way, because, as they were secured, neither they nor the others could attack her, as Cichek had threatened. Certainly she had not deliberately tried to distract the soldier from attending to the others. Or, at least she did not think so, at least not on a conscious level! She was a bit frightened, however, and was uneasy, that her behavior may have belied her conscious intentions, that a deeper self, or a deeper need, or a deeper desire, without her knowledge, without her consent, had presented her, and revealed her, to his consideration as rightfully and natively bond. Perhaps her slavery, beneath the level of her conscious awareness, unbidden, had insisted on calling itself to his attention, presenting itself, offering itself, for his consideration. Perhaps her slavery had spoken to him in a language she did not even dare to consider, let alone recognize. Certainly her sister slaves had been furious. Had they seen something she had not? But surely she could not help it that it was she whom he had put to second obeisance position, bellying, before him, that it was she to whom he gave the back of his hand to lick. It was not her fault, at least by intent, as far as she knew. She did not want to be bought by him. She would be terrified to belong to such a man.

“Cichek,” she whispered.

“Be silent, barbarian,” said Cichek.

“Lydia,” she whispered.

“What do you want?” asked Lydia.

“Do not speak to her,” said Emris.

“We have not been ordered to silence,” said Lydia.

“We are hungry,” said Emris. “She was fed!”

“I am hungry, too,” said Ellen.

“Not so hungry as we,” said Zara, unpleasantly.

“Forgive me, Mistresses,” whispered Ellen.

“What do you want?” asked Lydia.

“You are crying,” said Ellen. “What is wrong?”

“She was put through slave paces, and not purchased,” said Emris.

“She was found wanting,” said Cichek.

“So much for your blond hair and blue eyes,” said Emris.

“She is an ice maiden,” said Cichek.

“No,” said Lydia, “I need and want a master as much as any of you!”

“Men often put a woman through slave paces, when they have no intention of buying her,” said Zara. “They simply enjoy exercising their power over her, and it amuses them to see her perform, at their mercy, not knowing their will or intent. Perhaps they are just bored and are looking for something to do. It has been done to me, and I am the most beautiful of you all.”

“Why then are you still on the chain?” asked Cichek.

“What is it that you wanted to know?” asked Lydia.

“Where are Cotina and Jasmine?” asked Ellen.

“Gone,” said Lydia.

“Gone?” asked Ellen.

“Sold,” said Lydia.