Prize of Gor

Chapter 17 A BARBARIAN SLAVE GIRL IS VENDED

It was now Ellen’s third day on the shelf.

She stood at the back of the shelf, against the wall of the tenement, her back to the wall of the tenement, she then facing outward, her wrists chained over her head to a ring set in the tenement wall. Her arms were sore, and her legs ached. Targo was not much pleased with her.

Surely she should have been sold by now.

On the morning of her second day in Targo’s ownership, after his charges were coffled, and then freed from the neck-rings that held their heads so close to the floor, they had been permitted, in turn, the use of the wastes bucket, and then, afterward, fed and watered, on all fours, heads down, from two long, narrow troughlike pans. Following this Ellen had had to apply soothing oil to the backs of her sister slaves, to assuage the pain of their burns and give them some protection on the shelf. Targo had perhaps realized that miserable slaves with roughened skin, scarcely able to move, red and peeling, would have less sales appeal. On the other hand it could well have been that he now felt more financially comfortable, or even secure, having disposed of Cotina and Jasmine, and could afford this amenity. Too, as we have noted, Targo was not, all things considered, an unkind master. He would not hesitate, of course, to have a woman branded, or whipped, and such. Such things go with the mastery. None of the slaves were willing to apply the soothing oil to Ellen, but Barzak had ordered Cichek, who, with Emris, were perhaps the slaves who disliked Ellen the most, she being a barbarian, to do so. They did not care for barbarians, which was not uncommon, but, too, they, perhaps more intensely than Zara and Lydia, were sensitive to the humiliation of sharing a chain with one. Cichek, who had been deliberately assigned this duty by Barzak, that she might be the better reminded of her nothingness, her lowliness and bondage, was not gentle.

“Forgive me, Mistress,” had said Ellen, wincing.

The new slave, Jill, who had been a paga slave at the Iron Collar, had not been burned, but she, too, was treated, to protect her during the day.

“I do not wish to be touched by a barbarian,” had said Jill.

“You are no better than a barbarian,” had said Cichek. “You have a barbarian name! ‘Jill’! ‘Jill’! ‘Jill’! And it makes you hot, doesn’t it? ‘Jill’! ‘Jill’!”

“Yes, yes,” wept the new slave. “I am no better than a barbarian. I can tell it from my yieldings.”

Cichek and Emris then laughed merrily, and the new slave, kneeling, head down, submitted to Ellen’s ministrations.

Goreans, of course, are of human stock. Their presence on Gor was originally due to the Voyages of Acquisition, apparently undertaken for scientific or aesthetic reasons by the mysterious Priest-Kings, whoever they might be. This is in accord with the Second Knowledge, parts of which had been conveyed to Ellen in her training, that she might be a more comprehending slave. The point of this brief digression is merely to inform the reader that there is no reason to believe that there would be any difference whatsoever in the capacity of Gorean women and Earth women for sexual arousal and responsiveness. Physiology has dictated capacity; beyond this the differences will be those of culture and environment. There is little doubt that the average Gorean woman is raised in a culture which is much more open, much freer and much more acceptive of sexuality. If an Earth male were to encounter a Gorean woman he would undoubtedly be extraordinarily delighted by her great interest in, and desire for, frequent and profound sexual experience. Similarly, if a Gorean male were to encounter an Earth woman, free, in her own environment, he would probably be exceedingly puzzled by her inertnesses and frigidities, her culturally conditioned inhibitions, reservations, negativities and such. Indeed, he would probably regard her as defective or insane.

Putting her to her belly at his feet, of course, in her proper place, perhaps as an experiment, he might find that she, fearfully and gratefully licking and kissing, was actually a woman, a true woman, with a true woman’s needs, desires, and responses, something quite different from what he had originally conjectured. Hopefully he would then bring her to Gor, mercifully, that she might not thereafter be left behind to languish and suffer on Earth, unfulfilled, tortured by memories, afflicted by loneliness, poignantly recalling what was no longer hers, denied a master.

It is true, however, that Earth women, brought to Gor as slaves, eagerly and joyfully blossom sexually. On Gor they are free to be the women they have hitherto been commanded to deny and conceal, the women they have always wanted to be, the women they have always been in their hearts. On Gor they find that they are far freer and happier as branded chattels than they were as putatively free women on Earth. In their collars, kneeling before men, they find their liberation and freedom as females. No longer do they starve in a sexual desert. They are so eager to serve true men, which many of them had not even realized existed until they were brought to Gor, men so different from the general run of culturally intimidated, negatively conditioned, sexually crippled males they have met on Earth, that they generate an image in the markets, and the general Gorean milieu, of helpless, ready appetition, of docile, servile, eager, begging sluts, of low women hot in their collars, who give an almost new meaning to bondage. Indeed, some Gorean slave girls regard the barbarians as dangerous and hated rivals. They are furious with the interest shown in them by some Gorean males. The Gorean males, on the other hand, the monsters, tend to remain complacent, content to let these slaves compete with one another, each trying to outdo the other, each trying to see if it cannot be she who most pleases the master.

Ellen pulled a little, weakly, at her chained wrists.

Targo had come to the shelf, to assist a buyer who was examining Emris.

Please, Master,” begged Ellen. “Do not keep me chained like this.”

“Be silent,” he said, “else I will chain you facing the wall. Perhaps men would like you better then.”

Ellen put down her head.

Not a great deal had gone on, on her second day on the shelf. To be sure, Zara had been sold, though Ellen did not know the final agreed-upon price. So, she thought, perhaps Zara had been indeed the most beautiful of them all. The new girl, Jill, had been chained to her left, where Cotina had been.

Yesterday, on the shelf, however, she had had some unpleasant experiences, which had perhaps contributed to her present predicament, that of being chained upright, standing, at the back of the shelf.

In the morning, shortly after they had been brought in coffle to the surface of the shelf, thence to be chained as before to various rings, a boy, surely no more than ten or eleven years old, had come to stand before the shelf.

She was in first position, or in something rather like it, rather near the front edge of the shelf, the chain attached to her shackle ring trailing behind her to its ring.

The boy continued to stare at her.

“Go away, little boy,” she said, irritatedly. “This place is not for you.”

“Split your knees, slave girl,” said he to her.

“What?” she said, in disbelief.

He repeated his instruction, granting that she might not have heard him properly.

“Never,” she said, “you little urt.” She drew her legs together and covered her breasts with her hands.

“What is going on here?” asked Barzak, approaching. His whip, on its staff ring, blades folded back, and clipped, against the staff, which is long enough to be held with both hands, was at his belt.

“Nothing,” said the boy.

“‘Nothing’!” said Ellen. “This little urt was looking at me. He told me to split my knees!”

“And you did not do so?”

“Certainly not!” cried Ellen.

Barzak looked at her, sternly.

“He is only a little boy!” she said.

“He is a free person,” said Barzak.

“Master?” asked Ellen.

“Are you a slave girl?”

“Yes, Master!”

“And you have failed to obey a free person?”

“He is a little boy!” she cried.

“So you have failed to obey a free person,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she whispered.

“Don’t whip me, please!” she cried, seeing Barzak loosen the whip, removing the staff ring from the hook at his belt, and unclipping the blades.

“It’s nothing,” said the boy. “Do not whip her. I do not want her whipped. She is probably just stupid.”

“First obeisance position,” snapped Barzak. “Beg his forgiveness!”

Instantly Ellen went to the first obeisance position, head down, palms of her hands on the cement. “Please forgive me, Master,” she begged, frightened.

“Kneel up, first position,” said Barzak.

Ellen went to first position, with all its revelatory delights.

“Split your knees, slave girl,” said the boy.

“They are split, Master,” said Ellen.

“Split them much more widely, slave girl,” said the boy.

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen.

“Turn to the side, as you are, kneeling, put your hands on the cement behind you,” said the boy, “lean back, arch your back, have your head back, farther.”

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen.

“She has a nice line,” said the boy.

“Yes,” said Barzak. “She is a pretty she-urt.”

“You may break position,” said the boy.

Quickly Ellen knelt up, and turned to face him, closing her knees, covering her breasts with her hands.

Barzak wandered off.

“I am only eleven,” said the boy. “You are too old for me. I would prefer a slave who is nine or ten.”

He then turned about and disappeared into the crowd.

Later a small girl had drifted to the front of the shelf. She was clad in a child’s version of the Robes of Concealment. The tips of purple slippers could be seen beneath the hem of the robes. She was veiled. Her head, forehead and hair were covered, too, as is common. Ellen could see her dark brown eyes, wide, looking at her, over the white veil. Ellen and the others were in first position. A woman, similarly attired, with robes and veil, presumably her mother, hurried up to her and seized her by the hand, pulling her forcibly away. “Don’t look at those terrible, nasty, dirty things in their collars and chains!” she scolded.

Targo came about the front of the shelf. “Appeal, appeal!” he said to Ellen.

Immediately then she began to utter the allure-call to the crowd, “Buy me, Master!”

“You are very inept,” said Targo. “Have I not given you better instruction than that? Here are further considerations. Intermingle with, and enrich, your appeal, with additional phrases of enticement. For example, ‘Buy me, Master! I am needful! I want a master! I need a master! I beg a collar! Please, oh, please, Masters, buy me!’ and so on. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen, shuddering.

“Too,” he said, “do not neglect to shift position, and pose provocatively, and call attention to your body, and its charms, extremely explicitly, by both word and gesture. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master,” moaned Ellen.

How could anyone expect her to do such things?

But surely she did not wish to be again whipped!

But happily Barzak was now not about, and Targo, too, was no longer in evidence.

She was glad for the soothing lotion.

The day, however, was milder than the preceding day, and there was, now and then, a good deal of cloud cover.

She thought of her former master, Mirus.

She thought of her former life, and her teaching, the classrooms, and such. She thought of many of the men and women she had known on Earth, in particular colleagues and individuals met at various conferences and conventions having to do with gender issues, conventions which were not so scholarly, as she now understood, as political, organized to propagandize an ideology, supposedly scholarly meetings but ones in which political deviancy was not permitted, the participants each striving to outdo the others in proclaiming the prescribed orthodoxy. She wondered what some of the female participants might look like in slave silk and a collar, their small wrists confined tightly in slave bracelets, perhaps behind their back. She thought about the male feminists, the allegedly male participants in such travesties of conformist scholarship, wondering what might be their motivations. Did they really believe the absurdities of the antimenites? Were they interested, rather, in their own political futures, willing to be male camp followers, hoping to be permitted to share eventually in the loot of grants, appointments, and prestige? They had seemed so spineless, so ingratiating. Did they not know how they, such hypocrites, or pliant weaklings, were privately mocked and despised by the others? She did not think that that could be unknown to them. Would any of them, she wondered, know what to do with a woman at their slave ring? Or did they not want such power? If not, how could they be truly men? All men desired absolute power over women. Did they fear it? Would any of them, she wondered, know what to do with a whip and a woman? The thought crossed her mind of the superintendent in her apartment building. He, she thought, would have known what to do with me. And so she thought of the men and women that she had previously known, particularly those she had known professionally. How nicely and naturally she, with her affected severity of manner and her carefully chosen, mannish, businesslike tailored suits, had seemed to fit in with them! She was now chained on a shelf, a naked slave, for sale.

Targo returned after a time, perhaps having had his tea. The slaves would be fed, usually, before being brought to the shelf and after being taken from it.

Shortly after Targo had returned, a man, with a teen-aged boy with him, presumably his son, made his way through the crowd, toward the shelf.

“Do you have any barbarians?” he asked.

“I specialize in barbarians,” said Targo, “but, alas, I have only one on hand at the moment, lovely Ellen. Position, Ellen.”

“I do not wish to purchase one,” said the man. “I was just telling my son about them, and how to recognize them. Do you mind if we look at this one?”

“Certainly not,” said Targo.

The man and his son ascended to the surface of the shelf.

“This one is young,” said Targo. “Yet I think that it is not impossible that one might find her of interest. Certainly she is well curved and pretty. Might she not make a lovely gift for your strapping lad?”

Ellen shrank back, but this did not seem to be much noticed by the father and his son, whose minds were on other things.

“We are not interested in buying her,” said the father.

“Oh,” said Targo. He turned away.

Ellen was pleased at this confirmation that they were not interested in buying her. To be sure, they could. Targo, she was sure, was ready to let her go at the drop of a copper tarsk. Then she would belong, literally belong, to the father, or to the boy, however it was decided, presumably to the boy.

She shuddered.

She certainly did not want to belong to a teen-aged boy. Her practical age now, in terms of biology, physiology and such, was, say, eighteen, and that might have been the actual chronological age of the lad. Yet what an incredible difference there is in maturity and sexual readiness between an eighteen-year-old girl, already beautifully developed and perfectly suitable for the collar and slave bracelets, and an eighteen-year-old boy!

“Speak, in Gorean,” said the father to Ellen. “Say anything, just talk.”

So Ellen began to speak, for a little time. “I do not know what I am supposed to say,” she said. “You wish me to speak, and so I will do so. It is my conjecture you wish to ascertain something in my speech. It is doubtless different from yours. Is it acceptable, Masters, that I speak as I am speaking?” And thus, in this way, she continued, until the father indicated, by putting his finger up, in a cautionary manner, that she should desist.

“Do you hear the accent?” the father asked his son. “You see it is different?”

“There are many different accents, father,” said the boy, “even in Gorean.”

“And there are many barbarian accents,” said his father. “And this is one of them. It is not Gorean. It is not like the speech of the hated Cosians, for example.”

“Is accent so important, father?”

“No,” said his father, “particularly as some of these barbarians eventually become so fluent in Gorean, so skilled, that you could not detect, from their speech alone, that they were not native to our world.”

Ellen hoped that she could become such a barbarian.

She felt her upper left arm seized.

“Here,” said the father. “Such small scars tend to mark barbarians.”

That, of course, was a vaccination mark.

“Is it a brand?” asked the boy.

“I suppose so,” said the father. “Perhaps it is a temporary brand, put on them for shipping purposes, before they have the kef, the dina, a city mark, or such, put on them.”

“This one has the kef,” said the boy, looking.

“Most do,” said the father.

“I think that it is likely that it is one of their own world’s slave brands,” said the boy, “that they were slaves on their own world, and then they were purchased and shipped here.”

“I do not know,” said the father. “Perhaps.”

“Open your mouth,” said the father. “Widely.”

“See,” said the father, “those tiny bits of metal in the teeth. Not all barbarians have them, but many do.”

“What is their purpose?” asked the boy.

“I do not know,” said the father. “Perhaps, it, too, is a slave marking device. Perhaps it serves for purposes of identification.”

“I think,” said Targo, who had lingered about, and had now wandered back, hopefully, “that it is rather connected with a puberty ceremony, a primitive rite, like the facial scarring of the Wagon Peoples.”

“That is interesting,” said the father. “Perhaps it is both.”

“Perhaps,” granted Targo, generously, abandoning logic as socially inexpedient. After all, why should he risk alienating a possible customer.

It was interesting, thought Ellen, that no one thought of asking her about these matters.

To be sure, many Goreans do not believe that slaves are to be trusted. They think that female slaves, in particular, are sly, petty creatures against whose ingratiating, clever wiles the master must be on guard. Accordingly female slaves are to be supervised with care and subjected to the most rigorous discipline. In any event, the penalties for a slave’s lying are severe.

“Lastly,” said the father, “they are ignorant. What is the month following the month of Hesius?”

“I do not know, Master,” said Ellen. She had not been familiarized with the Gorean calendar. To be sure, chronologies, and such, can differ from city to city. The Merchants, interestingly, keep their own calendar, for purposes of contracts, delivery dates, letters of credit, and such. Many cities in the northern hemisphere use the chronology of Ar, along with their own. I understand that cities in the southern hemisphere may similarly supplement their own chronologies, but with the calendar of Turia, which, as I understand it, is the largest city in the southern hemisphere.

“Anyone would know that,” said the boy.

“Well, this little she-urt does not,” said his father. “But the point is that it is almost certain that there will be simple things that we will know that one of these barbarians will not. Thus, interrogation can also be used as a means for identifying the barbarian.”

“I see,” said the boy. “Thank you, father.”

“So do not let yourself be fooled in the market,” said the father. “Do not let an unscrupulous merchant palm a barbarian off on you.”

“No, father.”

“That would be unthinkable,” said Targo, righteously.

“Thank you for the use of your slave, sir,” said the father.

“Not at all,” said Targo. “And perhaps now, now that you are more familiar with her, you would like to think about buying this lovely bauble for your son. She is a pretty bit of fluff. Perhaps she would make a nice starter slave for him. She is a bargain. I can give you an excellent buy on her.”

“She is a barbarian,” said the father.

He and his son then descended from the shelf and went into the crowd.

This little business was not Ellen’s fault, or she supposed not, but Targo seemed miffed by it.

“You should have worked on both the father and the son,” said Targo. “It is not unusual for fathers to buy gifts for their sons which they themselves like, or think they would like. Thus, you should have lured the father, subtly, of course, as in theory he is interested in you for his son. Secondly, you should have squirmed a little for the lad, you know, pathetically, needfully, pleadingly, putting yourself before him, proffering your indisputable slave delights hopefully, when the father is looking away. That lad must be eighteen or nineteen years old, surely old enough to find your curves of interest, surely old enough to respond to them, suitably presented. Surely he was old enough for you, a pretty little slave, to stir up his blood.”

“Forgive me, Master,” said Ellen.

“You spend more time asking for forgiveness than you do in obeying,” said Targo.

“Forgive me, Master,” said Ellen. She then wished she had not said that. Surely a simple ‘Yes, Master’ would have been more judicious.

“Barzak!” called Targo.

“Do not have me whipped, Master!” she begged.

“You will spend the afternoon on your back,” he said, “chained between rings.”

“Master!” she pleaded.

“Barzak!” called Targo, again.

“Oh!” cried Ellen, moments later, as her ankles were seized by an impatient Barzak, jerked about and held closely together at her own ring. An ankle ring was snapped about her left ankle, beneath the shackle there, and a second ring, on a short chain, some six inches in length, was slipped through the holding ring and snapped shut about her right ankle. She, sitting on the cement, regarded her small ankles, chained to the ring, with dismay. Then Barzak took her arms and forced them up and back, over her head and then pulled her down to her back. Her wrists then, held together with one hand by Barzak, were pulled to the ring which had been to her left as she had faced the front of the platform, the same ring to which the new girl, Jill, was chained by the ankle. While Barzak held her small wrists together with his left hand, he snapped a wrist ring about her right wrist with his right hand. She was then, a moment later, the second wrist ring passed through the holding ring and closed about her left wrist, secured to the holding ring. She was then supine between two holding rings. She could twist to her stomach, or side, but the tensions being as they were, it was most comfortable, and most natural, for her to remain on her back.

Barzak, beside her, on his knees, looked down upon her with irritation. “You are a bother,” he said, and, without much thinking about it, touched her.

She cried out with disbelief.

He looked down at her.

“No!” she cried. “No!”

He then again, this time more curiously, touched her.

There was a rattle of chain.

She tried to pull back. She regarded him with horror. “Please do not, Master!” she cried.

“Oh!” she cried.

“You are a bother, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Yes, Master!” she said. “Forgive me, Master! No, please, do not, Master! Oh! Oh!”

“But you do not have to be a bother, do you?” he asked.

“No, Master!”

“And you will make an effort to be less of a bother, won’t you?” he asked.

“Yes, Master! Yes, Master! Please, do not, Master! No! No! Do not, please, Master! Oh! Oh!”

“You may have possibilities,” he mused.

He then rose to his feet, and left the shelf.

She looked after him, in misery and dismay.

Her knees could be drawn up a little and her elbows could be bent. Her predicament was not cruel, but Barzak’s arrangement, doubtless by intent, did not allow her a great deal of latitude. As in most chaining arrangements there is a point to the way in which they are done. In the present arrangement, as she would later come to understand, later in the afternoon, she was allowed enough latitude to squirm and writhe, but not enough to defend herself.

In this arrangement, on her back, on the shelf, above the ground level, the slave’s figure is beautifully displayed.

As she lay supine, chained, on the shelf, her knees up a little, her arms back and over her head, almost as though alone, she fought with her own thoughts and feelings. What had happened? What were the strange feelings she had experienced? She was disturbed. Were they slave feelings she had felt? Is that what they could have been? Surely not! But what else could they have been? She certainly did not love Barzak. Could any man, the brutal, massive, callous monsters, have done that to her? What had become of her, and her pride and dignity? Surely she could not become one of those worthless women who could not help themselves, who were sexually needful. It was one thing to kneel at the feet of one whom one loved, and quite another to kneel before any man, moaning in need and begging his caresses. Surely she could not be reduced to that, not she! She recalled some of the girls in the house, in various kennels, in cages, in the bins, whimpering and moaning. How they had cried out in gratitude and joy when a guard had taken pity on them. How terrible to be such, she thought, how terrible to be so sexually alive, to be so vital, to be so needful.

She looked up and saw Targo standing over her.

“Master?” she asked.

“Barzak informs me that you may not be the cold little thing we thought,” said Targo.

“I do not understand, Master.”

“— that you may be awakening,” he said.

“I do not understand, Master.”

“Perhaps our little ice ball is going to melt,” he said.

“Master?”

She felt the side of his sandal against her left side, at the waist, moving there, along her waist, not to kick her, but to caress her in a way, to let her feel a man’s foot, to let her feel herself at his feet.

“Master?” she said.

And then he put his foot gently on her body, not pressing with any weight, and moved it a bit, to let her have the feeling of a man’s foot on her body, to let her feel herself, a female, beneath the foot of a man.

She tried to withdraw in her chains but could not, of course, do so. “Master,” she said, “please, no! Oh! Oh!”

“You are not only going to awaken,” he said. “You are going to be a juicy, tasty, steaming little pudding.”

“No, Master!” she said.

“You are going to be, in time, as helpless as a she-urt in heat,” he said.

“No, Master!” she said. “No, no, Master!” But he had then turned about and left the surface of the shelf. “No, no, no,” she wept to herself. She struggled with the chains that bound her. “No, no, no,” she wept.

Several times, later in the afternoon, men came to the surface of the shelf to inspect one or another of the items of merchandise there displayed. Zara was sold, but only Zara on that second day. Too, on the second day, no new jewels were added to the slaver’s necklace, as had been Jill that morning. Twice men had inspected and, at Targo’s invitation, handled Ellen. She, in keeping with her lingering Earth values, and fearing to become merely another slave girl on the world of Gor, had attempted to remain as cold and inert as possible, trying to distract herself with irrelevant thoughts, trying not to feel, trying not to respond. She managed well enough with the first fellow.

“So what is wrong with you?” had asked Targo when the prospective buyer had left the shelf.

“Nothing, Master,” Ellen had assured him. “Please do not have me whipped, Master!” she said.

When Targo left, she smiled to herself.

But still, even as she was congratulating herself on her success in achieving a pretense of inertness, on giving no outward sign of responsiveness, it was hard to forget the feel of the fellow’s strong hands on her small, soft body. She feared that if something had been a little different, if he had touched her a little differently or a little longer, or had looked at her in a certain way, or if he had taken her head in his hands and literally forced her to look directly into his eyes, seeing him as a male and master, she might have suddenly, willingly or unwillingly, betrayed a muchly feared aspect of herself, that of an eager, vulnerable, begging, aroused slave girl. Surely she must hide this self from the world! But it was hard to forget his hands. It was fortunate, she thought, that things had not been slightly different.

She cursed herself for being so different from a man.

Not long after, a possible buyer had examined Jill. He had knelt her in first position, except for having her hands clasped behind the back of her neck. Whereas Ellen could see little of what went on, she could certainly hear the movements of Jill’s ankle chain and her sudden, almost inadvertent gasps. Then she was clearly squirming on her knees.

Ellen moved in her own chains.

The possible buyer had then examined Lydia, whom he treated in much the same manner as he had Jill. He had her, too, squirming. Then, after a few minutes, he had left the shelf.

Ellen recalled that Jill had not wished to be touched that morning by a barbarian, in the matter of applying the soothing lotions to protect the slaves from the sun on the shelf.

“You are certainly a slave,” said Ellen to Jill.

“After this,” snapped Jill, “when I am being examined, you are not to lift your little loins to my buyer.”

“What!” cried Ellen, startled.

“You heard me, barbarian she-urt,” said Jill.

“I never did that!” exclaimed Ellen. “That is absurd! I would never do that! Never! Never!”

“We saw you,” said Cichek.

“Yes,” said Emris.

“It’s true,” said Lydia.

“No!” said Ellen.

“Perhaps you are not aware of what your own body is doing,” said Lydia.

“No!” said Ellen. “Aii!” cried Ellen, for Jill, who was chained to the same ring to which Ellen’s wrists were chained had seized her by the hair, with two hands, tightly, cruelly.

“I’m going to pull every hair out of your head,” hissed Jill. “We will see then how pretty you are to the buyers!”

“Please, no, Mistress!” cried Ellen.

“Do not hurt her,” called Lydia. “The master will not be pleased.”

“Aii!” cried Ellen.

“Beg for mercy!” called Lydia.

“Mercy, Mistress!” cried Ellen.

“Ah!” said Jill. “Does Ellen, a meaningless barbarian slave, beg a Gorean woman for mercy.”

“Yes, yes!” wept Ellen.

“Do so,” said Jill.

“I beg for mercy, Mistress!”

“Properly,” said Jill.

“Aii!” cried Ellen. “Please stop!”

“Properly,” said Jill.

“I, Ellen, a meaningless barbarian slave, beg a Gorean woman for mercy! Please, Mistress! Please do not hurt me! Aii! Please, Mistress! Ellen begs Mistress! Aii! Ellen, a meaningless barbarian slave, begs Mistress, a Gorean woman, for mercy! Aii! Aii! Please stop, please stop! Please, mercy, Mistress! Mistress! Mistress!”

Jill then, with one last twist, thrusting Ellen’s head to the side, released her hair.

Ellen tried to move further away but, chained as she was, she remained perforce within the ambit of Jill’s wrath.

Ellen wept, helplessly, fiercely.

Jill turned away, angrily.

The other slaves on the shelf ceased then to attend to Jill and Ellen. Emris called out “Buy me, Master!” to a handsome fellow in the crowd but he continued on his way.

The second possible buyer who seemed to show some interest in Ellen, the first being he with whom she had with some success kept herself seemingly inert, did not come to the shelf until late in the afternoon.

An incident occurred something like an Ahn before that, and, say, some twenty Ehn, or so, after her unpleasant encounter with Jill at the ring.

We mention it for its intrinsic interest, but also because it, in its way, assisted an Earth woman in attaining a somewhat richer understanding of the world on which she now found herself slave.

Ellen was lying on the shelf, her eyes closed against the sun, when suddenly, almost at her side, there was a loud, swift, scuffling noise and there was suddenly something large, extremely large, and alive, at least fifteen or twenty feet long, and weighing easily several hundred pounds, on the shelf beside her, something which had just arrived, scratching and twisting about, on its surface. It was almost over her. At the same time there was a powerful, feral odor, and she felt the heat of living breath on her body. She opened her eyes and screamed, and Jill, too, who was very close, screamed, and scrambled back to the length of her ankle chain. Ellen, as she was chained, had no such option at her disposal. She heard, not really understanding them for a moment or two, so wild and frightened were her own responses, similar sounds of fear and dismay from Lydia, Cichek and Emris.

“Quiet, quiet, quiet!” called Targo, trying to settle his stock. “Greetings, Torquatus,” he called.

The beast, which was long, powerful, agile, muscular and sinuous, was darkly, heavily furred, brownish with black bars. Its curious serpentine head, viperlike, moved back and forth. Its tongue, licking outward, then withdrawing, was reddish. It was fanged, these, in two rows, being white and sharp. Its tail twitched, lashing back and forth, though not seemingly in anger, rather in excitement. Its entire body seemed curious, quick, vibrantly alive. It had a heavy leather collar. It thrust its large snout against Ellen’s body, and under her arms, and between her thighs, and she screamed and twisted, and Targo told her to be quiet, and it licked her body, as though tasting her, and then drew its tongue back into the mouth, and then it moved about on the shelf, making its way over and about Ellen, sensing each of the occupants on the shelf, who were almost frozen with fear.

“Greetings, Targo,” said a bearded fellow in a rough tunic. “Back, Varcus,” he called. “Back, boy. Down, boy. Heel, boy.”

The gigantic, sinuous creature twisted about on the shelf and, its forelegs first, and then its two pairs of hind legs, following, returned to the ground, in front of the shelf. Turning to the side, twisting in the chains, trembling, Ellen could not see it any longer. She surmised it must be in the vicinity of the bearded fellow.

The beast’s fur had been glossy and oily, and some of this oil had adhered to her body, and, for a moment, she had felt her right thigh in a mighty, almost prehensile grip, within the menacing softness of which she had sensed curved, knifelike hardnesses, like short, sheathed scimitars. She could still feel the roughnesses from the beast’s swift, inquisitive investigations of her body, the forcible thrustings of its snout about her, its coldness, the rapid, exploratory movements of the hot, moist, rasplike tongue on her breasts and belly.

“Have you business for me today, dear Targo?” inquired the fellow.

“Alas, no!” cried Targo. “These little beauties, which you might examine, if you are interested, are transient stock, and accordingly it would hardly pay for me to avail myself in these instances of your invaluable services, which it is my invariable practice, at least upon occasion, to commend to all enthusiastically. Indeed, I hope to dispose of these lovely creatures by evening. Note, too, that I am not without precautions. Their little necks are well weighted and such collars would certainly be immediately noted anywhere. Too, they are stripped, which does not encourage straying. Too, they are not likely to stray, as they are well shackled, in accord with sound merchant practice. Too, of course, they are all highly intelligent and know, with the possible exception of the lovely little thing chained supine before you, whom I call to your attention, who may be uninformed, that they are truly in their collars, so to speak, that for such as they, lovely things all, there is no escape. They know that the world, if nothing else, will see to that. Accordingly, at the moment, I do not think it would be economically justifiable for me, a poor man, one on the brink of destitution, to avail myself of your services.”

“Perhaps if you have a more expensive girl, sometime,” suggested the fellow in the rough tunic.

“All of my girls are expensive,” said Targo. “It is only that I, poor business man that I am, generous creature and unwary humanitarian, let them slip from my grasp at bargain prices.”

The fellow in the rough tunic, Torquatus, we may suppose, lifted his hand to Targo in salute, and left the vicinity of the shelf.

He was accompanied doubtless by Varcus, the beast which had leaped to the surface of the shelf. To be sure, it was not easy for Ellen to ascertain this, given her encumbrances.

“What has occurred?” asked Ellen. “Please. I do not understand.”

“Have you never seen a sleen before?” inquired Jill, who had, it seemed, now regained her composure.

“Please, Mistress,” said Ellen. “I do not understand things, the beast, the man, what was said!”

But Jill turned away.

“It is a sleen,” said Lydia. “Beware of them. They are extremely dangerous. The man is doubtless a huntsman, or a renter of sleen, used for tracking. There are many varieties of training for such beasts. A common form of training is to associate a name with a scent, and then, if one wishes, to associate the name with one or more commands. In your case, if one wanted the sleen to take a scent print of you, your name, or some code name, would be associated with your scent. That name, or code name, could then be used in conjunction with another command to set the beast on your trail. They are wondrous trackers and can follow a scent several days old, even through a city. The common commands are the “kill” command and the “herd” command. Given the “kill” command the sleen pursues and kills, and eats, the quarry. Given the “herd” command, the beasts drive the quarry to a predetermined destination.”

“What if one resists being driven?” asked Ellen.

“Then the sleen reverts to the “kill” command,” said Lydia. “The quarry, if recalcitrant, is killed and eaten, almost at the first sign of resistance.”

Ellen trembled.

“Sometimes a slave is driven for miles,” said Lydia, “until, exhausted, her feet bleeding, she finds herself before a cage, into which she must hurry, crawling, closing the gate, which locks, behind her.”

Ellen lay back in the chains, and closed her eyes, in misery.

She now understood her slavery in a new dimension.

“To be sure,” said Lydia, “sometimes the sleen is leashed, and men accompany it. In this way they come upon the quarry while the sleen is still within their control. At this point a “desist” command may be uttered, which command is known, of course, only to the beast and the huntsman, or huntsmen, at which point the sleen will, or should, abandon the hunt.”

“‘Should’?” asked Ellen.

“Sleen are temperamental,” said Lydia. “One cannot always count upon them. They may, for example, have had a long, frustrating hunt and desire an elating, compensatory victory of blood and feasting; or they may just be ravenously hungry. Too, much depends on the beast and its relationship to its master. Some sleen are incredibly loyal to the master, and will die for them. Others seem to regard the master as little more than a partner in the hunt, almost as though he were another sleen, albeit an unusual one, with whom a prize might be contested.”

“What does the master do if the sleen refuses to abandon the hunt?” asked Ellen.

“The safest thing to do is unleash the animal,” said Lydia. “One might try to kill it, of course. A sword, or ax, blow at the spinal column, just below the back of the head, is the easiest way to do this, given that one has the leash in hand.”

“That would be dangerous, would it not?” asked Ellen.

“Very dangerous,” said Lydia. “A wounded sleen is not a pleasant thing to have in one’s vicinity. There are stories of sleen whose head is half severed from the body finishing the hunt, and dying across the body of the quarry, snarling defiance at the master. Too, sometimes the master is first killed by the beast, who has doubtless seen him as a surprising and unwelcome impediment to its hunt. Such sleen then normally revert to the wild. They tend to be extremely dangerous, possibly because they are familiar with the ways of men and have tasted human flesh.”

“And must they then be hunted with other sleen?” asked Ellen.

“No sleen will hunt another sleen,” said Lydia.

“She is stupid,” said Jill.

“Yes,” said Cichek.

“But then,” said Ellen, “would it not be advisable, if possible, to wrap oneself in the pelt of a sleen, or such, to elude them?”

“See,” said Lydia, “she is only ignorant, not stupid.”

“She is still stupid,” said Jill. “Anyone knows that that mixture of scents disturbs and infuriates sleen and hastens their hunt.”

“She would have no way of knowing that,” said Lydia.

“How then,” asked Ellen, somewhat emboldened, “are such sleen hunted?”

“Sometimes by great encirclements,” said Lydia, “but as the sleen is commonly nocturnal in the wild and can burrow quickly that is seldom effective. The usual method is to stake out a verr or slave girl, at night, and then, when the sleen comes to feed, concealed hunters attempt to kill it, usually with the quarrels of crossbows, sometimes with long arrows, the arrows of the great bow, the peasant bow. If the hunters are successful, they regard themselves as fortunate.”

“The hunters are fortunate!” said Ellen.

“Well, the verr or slave girl, as well, of course,” said Lydia.

“Do not fear,” said Emris. “You give every sign of one who is going to wriggle well, and so you would not be likely to be staked out unless you displeased your master.”

“Let that be an additional motivation to squirm well in the furs, barbarian,” said Cichek.

“Please do not use such words of me,” said Ellen.

“‘Barbarian’?” said Cichek.

“No,” said Ellen, “vulgar words like ‘squirming well’.”

Cichek laughed.

“Do you not think a master, in a bit of time, can make you kick and squeal, and gasp, and jump, and moan, and beg?”

“Certainly not!” said Ellen.

“Why not?”

“I am not that sort of woman,” said Ellen.

“Your curves suggest you are.”

“I will not be so reduced, so humiliated!”

“Remember that in your chains.”

“I am different from you!” wept Ellen.

“Yes, who knows, you might be hotter and more helpless in your collar.”

“Even more a slave!”

“No, no!” said Ellen.

“We have seen you on the shelf.”

“Are you unaware of how your body has moved?”

“I am ladylike, cold, inert!”

“The lash will take that from you.”

“No, no, no!”

“Then you will be disposed of.”

“‘Disposed of’?”

“Certainly, what good is a cold slave?”

“See how she is frightened.”

“No!”

“See the fear in the little slut!”

“Surely you have some sense of what men can do to you, and what you will become.”

“I see she has.”

“No!” cried Ellen.

“You will probably bring a decent price off a slave block.”

“No, no, no!” whimpered Ellen.

“Within a month,” speculated Emris, “you will wriggle and squirm like a born slave.”

“No!” cried Ellen.

But she wondered if she were not, in some sense, a born slave. Indeed, often, in her most secret thoughts, she had understood herself as exactly that, a born slave. Sometimes this insight frightened her, at other times it humbled, and elated and exhilarated, her. How else could one explain her desire for a master?

“We are women,” said Lydia. “We are all born slaves.”

The girls were then silent, and it was late in the afternoon.

In the heat, after a few Ehn, Ellen fell asleep in her chains. She wished, just before falling asleep, pulling a little at her bonds, that Targo had given her a blanket, or a mat. The cement was so hard.

She awakened once, or seemed to awaken, filled with the thought of her bondage, that on this world she, now again young and beautiful, was a slave. Her youth and beauty had been returned to her. Surely that must be a cause for rejoicing. But why, she asked herself, had that been done? What was the motive of the masters, and their allies, the physicians, with their serums? Was this an act of selfless benevolence? Scarcely. She thought of many other women, too, whose youth and beauty had been returned to them. She had suspected that there were many in the house. Surely this was a joyful boon. But for what purpose had it been granted to them? Surely not meaninglessly, or gratuitously. Surely not with no interest, value or recompense in mind. Obviously, she thought, because it makes us more appealing as female slaves. It will improve our value in the markets. It has been done for their purposes, not ours. This has been done to us because this is the way men want us. So then, she wondered, would it be better to grow old, and flat, and withered, and tired, and die on Earth, free in some sense, or was it better to be young and beautiful, and healthy and eager, and richly and vitally alive, even though one might be put in a collar and have a mark burned into one’s thigh? Let each, she thought, find their own answer to such a question. Although Ellen at that time had profound ambivalences concerning her condition, which was bond, she did not regret the return of her youth and beauty, or that she had been brought to Gor. Too, as she had always considered herself, on one level or another, as she now recognized, the appropriate and natural slave of men, she was not resistant to the fact that her longed-for destiny had been, even though it were by the decision of others, and without her consent, imposed upon her. Better the freedom of slavery on Gor, she thought, than the slavery of freedom on Earth.

To be sure, these thoughts were like mists about her, and she was weary, and half asleep.

That she was chained as she was, and that she now understood something of the nature of sleen, and their possible roles in Gorean society, had helped her to further appreciate and understand her slavery. It had considerably deepened it. She understood better now than she had, how helpless, how utterly vulnerable she was. She better understood now that she and her sort truly belonged to men, that she and her sort were their property, the property of the masters. She understood herself now better than she ever had before, that she was completely in the control of men, totally in their power. It was not she who was dominant, it was they. They were dominant over her, completely and perfectly dominant over her.

This stirred her, and excited her profoundly.

She moaned softly, trying to understand sudden, warm, disturbing feelings welling up within her. Unfamiliar behavioral impulses began to overwhelm her. She knew, of course, that she must kneel before men and perform obeisance, and such things, but now, more than ever before, such things seemed not only fitting to her, but called for. Far beyond this she now felt a strong desire, literally a strong desire, to perform slave behaviors before males. She now wanted to kneel before them and be before them as their slave. In no way could she be more feminine, more female, more herself. She was a true female, fully, vulnerably and deeply. She wanted to submit, she wanted to serve, she wanted to please.

Then she was again frightened, and almost awakened, fully.

Then, again, in the heat, in her chains, on the hardness of the shelf, she fell asleep.

She awakened suddenly, to a hand placed firmly, forcibly, over her mouth, preventing her from crying out.

Doubtless the man who had placed his hand over her mouth did so because she was asleep and he did not want her to awaken with a cry of fear. In this sense he was doubtless trying to be kind to her.

Gorean warriors, tarnsmen and such, are not infrequently concerned with the abduction of women from enemy cities. It is not unusual, either in the history of Gor or of Earth, to have the women of the enemy serving one as one’s slaves. I do not doubt that there is something of a sporting cast to this sort of thing, as well, not that the warriors and such mind being served by lovely slaves for whom they do not have to pay. One is reminded of rivalries among various tribes of American Indians, who seemed to enjoy nothing more than running off with one another’s horses whenever possible.

In the abduction of a woman one has the wadding ready. When she awakes and naturally, reflexively, opens her mouth to scream the wadding is thrust into the oral orifice. This stifles the scream. The binding is then applied, being forced back, between the teeth, and fastened, usually once around the neck and tied in front, which is easier, this securing the wadding in place. She may then be turned to her stomach and, her hands pulled behind her and her ankles crossed, bound hand and foot.

On the other hand, although the fellow’s intention was doubtless sensible, and harmless enough, and even benign, the effect of his action on the slave in question was profound. She looked up at him, over his hand, her eyes wild with fear. “Steady, kajira,” said he, gently. The effect of a gag on a woman is interesting. It is perhaps even more profound than that of a blindfold. A woman’s tongue, like her beauty, is, I suppose, at least from the point of view of a man, one of her most delightful, perilous weapons. And it is certainly true that when he deprives her of this weapon, by gag-silencing her, that she is commonly reduced to tearful, frustrated consternation. She is deprived of what may be her most successful weapon, both of offense and defense. In any event, gagging a woman commonly alarms her and induces in her feelings of utter vulnerability and helplessness. Accordingly, the gag, particularly if she is a free woman, often makes her more timid, more tentative, more docile and compliant. An ideal combination, of course, at least for certain purposes, is to combine the gag with the blindfold.

“I am not going to hurt you, little kajira,” he said, and removed his hand from Ellen’s mouth.

She looked up at him. She could still feel the firm, heavy pressure about her mouth where he had placed his hand.

He was kneeling beside her.

Targo was standing nearby.

“I am prepared to let her go for as little as two silver tarsks,” said Targo.

“She is a barbarian,” said the man.

“One silver tarsk,” said Targo.

“She is pretty,” said the man.

“Did I missay myself earlier?” inquired Targo. “I meant to say three silver tarsks.”

“She is a barbarian,” said the man.

“Many could not tell her from a native Gorean girl,” said Targo.

“Then they have not looked at her very closely,” said the man.

“I might let her go, if pressed,” said Targo, “for a mere two silver tarsks.”

“She is pretty,” said the man.

“She speaks a fluent, beautiful Gorean,” said Targo.

Ellen wished he had not said that, for it was certainly not true. On the other hand, her progress in the language, given her time on Gor, had been, according to her tutors at the house, more than satisfactory. Later, in the opinion of at least some native speakers, she would indeed speak a fluent, beautiful Gorean, but there was no question of that at the time.

“She is very young,” said the man.

“But in spite of her youth delightfully curved, is she not?” asked Targo.

“Yes,” said the man.

“Consider her curves,” said Targo. “Are they not slave curves?”

“Yes,” said the man. “They are clearly slave curves.”

Ellen moved a bit, chained between the rings, on her back, her ankles chained so closely to the ring on the left, as one would face the shelf, her hands chained back, over her head, so closely to the ring on the right, as one would face the shelf. She had never hitherto thought of her body in this fashion, as one exhibiting slave curves. Could that be? Could she be so excitingly attractive as that? Was she really so delicious as a female that she was worth, say, being put upon a block and being bid upon by eager men? One of the girls, she recalled, had said she would probably bring a decent price off a slave block. Could that be true, that men would bid for her, that they would vie to buy her? Were her curves truly such, so exquisite, so lovely, so delicious, that they were truly slave curves? Could it be? She was shocked, pleased and frightened. It seemed that at least part of the secret of her hormonal richness was revealed in the delights of her supine, chained figure. In her figure were apparently manifested, and clearly, the curves of the female slave. And other concomitants, intellectual, emotional, and psychological, would be an exquisite femininity, and a desire to submit and yield, to yield all. Then Ellen tried to lie very still, for she feared, in her tiny, inadvertent, shocked, almost protestive movement, that she had done little more than more prominently to suggest, or even display, the latitudes and geodesics of a female slave, little more than manifest even more clearly the slave curves of which they had spoken. It was not her fault that she had slave curves. It was in her nature. She could not help what she was! To be sure, she resolved to attempt to conceal what she was. None must suspect that she was a slave! She must attempt to deny this even to herself, as she had desperately for years on Earth. Surely it must be wrong to be what one most truthfully, and deeply, was! Surely one must guide one’s behavior, even one’s thoughts, in so far as it was possible, in order to comply with cultural imperatives, with ideological demands, with external wishes and desires. But is that not a true slavery, a true holding of oneself in bondage, a hypocritical slavery, a lying, worthless slavery, a slavery less worthy than confessing to oneself one’s own self, and allowing it to speak openly? How much inner conflict might be thus avoided! But she lay very still, torn in her thought, afflicted by inner torments. He must not touch her! She knew she was a slave.

“She is young, but seems of interest,” said the man. Ellen turned her head to the side in misery. He had doubtless noted that small movement. She heard Cichek laugh. Doubtless Cichek, and the others, thought that she had moved like that on purpose, that she was brazenly, shamefully, trying to interest a buyer in the merchandise which was she herself. But that was not true! That was not true!

She could not be like that!

“I am prepared to let her go, against my better judgment,” said Targo, “for only two silver tarsks.”

“Is she responsive?” asked the man.

“Try her,” said Targo.

“No, please!” cried Ellen.

The man, kneeling beside her, looked at her, puzzled.

Targo frowned.

Ellen felt how soft her body was, how vulnerable. It was such a different body, so different from that of a man, and it was displayed before him, supine, without a thread upon it, chained helplessly. She moved her wrists and ankles. How closely, how perfectly, they were held!

“Do not touch me,” she begged.

She jerked against her bonds, twisting in them.

Cichek and Emris laughed.

Angry tears sprang to Ellen’s eyes.

She looked up at the man beside her and shook her head, negatively, piteously.

The man looked at Targo, puzzled.

“Cuff her,” suggested Targo. “It will calm her down.”

“I do not think she is worth much,” said the man.

“A strong hand and a quick whip and she will writhe at a snapping of the fingers,” said Targo.

Ellen gasped, for the man’s hand was on her left thigh, not tightly but innocently, thoughtlessly, possessively.

“Touch her,” said Targo. “Try her fully, if you wish. We can arrange her chaining in any way that pleases you. Perhaps you would like her on her side, or on her belly. We can position her in any way you like.”

“No,” said the man. “She is fine, as she is.”

Ellen felt his hand lift from her thigh.

“No!” she said.

“Surely you have been tested before, kajira,” he said.

“No, please,” begged Ellen. “You can see that I am chained! You can see that I am helpless! You can see that I cannot protect myself, or defend myself! You see that I cannot, in any way, prevent you from doing whatever you wish with me. Accordingly, you must show me solicitation, and mercy. You must be sensitive to my predicament! Accordingly, you must respect me! Accordingly, you must in no way compromise my dignity!”

“Is she a slave?” asked the man.

“Yes,” said Targo, angrily.

The man replaced his hand on her thigh. Its presence there made Ellen feel tense and uncomfortable, and vulnerable, and slave.

“She has strange views,” said the man.

“She is a barbarian,” said Targo.

The fellow looked down at Ellen, puzzled. “When a man has a slave exactly where he wants her, and as he wants her,” he asked, “why then should he not do what he wants with her, and as he wants, fully, and in all respects?”

Ellen looked up, in consternation.

“She is a slave,” the man reminded her.

“You must never do anything to a woman without her consent,” stammered Ellen.

“But thousands of things are done everyday, even to free women, and free men, without their consent,” he said.

“Everyone must be free,” said Ellen.

“From what premises do you derive that conclusion?” asked the man.

“It is self-evident,” said Ellen.

“Quite the contrary,” said the man. “It is self-evident that some should be free and some slaves. It is self-evident that it is appropriate for some to be free, and appropriate for others to be slaves. It depends on the person. You, it is clear, should be a slave. You are a natural slave, and are thus, appropriately, to be embonded. It is absurd that a natural slave should be permitted freedom.”

“Freedom is trivial and meaningless,” said Targo, “when all have freedom. It takes on the fullness of its meaning only in contrast to slavery.”

“All persons must be free,” said Ellen.

“That is obviously false,” said the man, “but, in any event, in your case, it is irrelevant, for the slave is not a person. The slave is a property, an animal, a chattel. For example, you are not a person, but a slave, and are thus a property, an animal, a chattel. Too, men should be free, and women slaves, as that is the meaning and fulfillment of their minds and bodies.”

“Give me my freedom of will!” said Ellen.

“You may will as you please,” said the man, “but you must obey in all things, absolutely, and with promptitude and perfection.”

“Give me my freedom!” said Ellen.

The man smiled. Then he looked at Targo. “Does she obey in all things, absolutely, and with promptitude and perfection?” he asked.

“Of course,” said Targo.

“Give me my freedom!” wept Ellen.

“That would be wrong,” said the man.

“What?” she said.

“The free should not be slave, and the slave should not be free,” he said.

“I do not understand,” she said.

“Just as it is wrong for the properly free to be enslaved,” he said, “so, too, it is wrong for the properly enslaved to be free.”

“Master?”

“Yes,” he said.

She regarded him, perhaps with something like awe. Chained before him, looking up at him, she felt stunned.

“You belong in a collar,” he said. “That is clear. It is easily seen. You are such as are fittingly embonded.”

“You must let me do as I wish!” said Ellen.

“Nonsense,” said the man.

“Nothing must be done to me without my consent!”

“You are a slave. Your consent is meaningless.”

“Surely not!” wept Ellen.

“Surely so,” he said. “The defining will, and final force, is that of the master, in all things, at all times.”

“How can I be happy, if I am not free?” asked Ellen.

“Your happiness is unimportant,” said the man.

Ellen sobbed.

“But perhaps you can best answer that question, really, yourself, in the depths of your own heart.”

Ellen regarded him, tears in her eyes.

“In any event,” he said, “there is no necessary connection between freedom and happiness, and often an inverse correlation. Often the freest are the most lost, confused and miserable. That is commonplace. Happiness is not a function of freedom, but of doing what you want to do, really, and being as you want to be, really. Happiness is often found in places which might, I take it, surprise you. It is important, of course, too, to find yourself in a society where what you are, and what you want to be, truly, is understood, accepted and relished. Female slaves, for example, are important in our society, an important part of it, and they make it much more satisfying, innocent, honest, profound, natural and beautiful than it would otherwise be.”

He lifted his hand a little, his fingers still lightly in contact with her thigh.

“Don’t!” said Ellen.

“I do not understand,” he said.

“Surely you are a man of honor!” she cried.

“I think so, I hope so,” he said.

“As a man of honor,” said Ellen, desperately, “you will not touch me without my permission.”

“I do not understand,” he said.

“— particularly as I lie helplessly before you, naked and chained, totally at your mercy, incapable of the least resistance!”

“What has honor to do with this?” he asked, puzzled. “We are not fellow citizens. We do not share a Home Stone. Too, even if we had been fellow citizens, you are now no longer a citizen, but a slave. Too, even if we had once shared a Home Stone, you are now without the rights of the Home Stone, having been enslaved. In addition, you are merely a female.”

“It seems then,” said Ellen, bitterly, “that I cannot expect gentlemanliness of you.”

“What is “gentlemanliness”?” he asked, as Ellen, in her consternation, had used the English expression.

“There is no exact word for it in Gorean,” said Ellen.

“I think I have heard the word,” said the man. “It seems to be a word for a male who subscribes to, and conforms to, codes of behavior requiring, among other things, substituting convention for nature, propriety for power, self-conquest for self-liberation, restraint for command, inaction and conformity for dominance and mastery, and, in short, a word for one who denies his biological birthright, his powers, pleasures and delights, for one who forgoes, or pretends to forgo, his manhood in order to do, or seem to do, what women pretend will please them. He belongs to his culture, and not to himself, rather like the insect to the nest, the bee to the swarm. He is unhappy, as are the confused, unwitting, lovely tyrants whom he refuses to resist, whom he refuses to take in hand and conquer, putting them to his feet, as naked, bound slaves.”

“Is it not, then, a word for “fool”?” asked Targo.

“It would seem so,” said the man.

He then looked down, again, at Ellen.

Ellen looked up at him, frightened.

The Goreans, she saw, and now well understood, were not gentlemen, or certainly not “gentlemen” in a common “Earth sense” of the term. Rather, however educated, civilized and refined they might be, they were indisputably owners of, and masters of, women.

“Please, wait! Please, don’t!” cried Ellen. “I am not as your Gorean women!”

“That is understood by me,” said the man.

“I come from a different world,” said Ellen, “a world of different values, a world on which it would be regarded as improper that I be owned, helplessly, categorically, a world on which all women must be free, must be treated with total honor and respect! I am that sort of woman! Obedience, helplessness and chains, abject slavery, are not for me! I am not a woman of your world!”

“But you are a human female are you not?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” she said.

“Do not expect me to repeat the mistakes of your world, human female,” said he.

“Master?” she said.

“Do not expect me to conform to the confusions and weaknesses of your world,” he said.

“Please,” she wept.

“You are no longer on your world,” he said. “You are now on our world, where things are different.”

“Your values are not mine!” she cried.

“I am pleased that that is true,” he said.

“I do not exist for obedience, helplessness and chains, for abject slavery!” she wept.

“You do now,” said he.

“I am not as one of your Gorean women!” she cried.

“I understand,” said he.

“I am from the world called Earth!” she said.

“I understand,” said he.

“So I am not as one of your Gorean women!” she cried.

“That is true,” said he. “You are a thousand times less, female of Earth.”

“Master?”

“You are not worthy to tie even the sandals of a Gorean woman.”

His hand lifted from her thigh.

“Don’t!” cried Ellen. “Please!”

The chains shook and rattled. She scarcely felt the cement beneath her body, the pull of the steel against her wrists and ankles.

“Oh, oh, oh!” she wept. “Please, don’t. Please, don’t!”

He desisted.

“No!” she wept. “Please, do. I mean, please, do! Don’t stop! I beg you not to stop! I can’t help myself! Don’t stop, I beg it! Please, please! No, I mean, please stop! Please stop! That is what I mean, please stop!”

He desisted.

“No, don’t stop!” she begged. “Yes! Yes! That is it! Oh, thank you, Master! No! Don’t stop! Don’t stop! I beg for more! I beg for more!”

“Who begs?” asked Targo.

“Ellen, Ellen, the slave, Ellen, the meaningless slave, Ellen, the meaningless, Earth-girl barbarian slave, begs for more!” she wept.

The man desisted.

Ellen, flushed, reddened, imploringly, lifted her body to him.

“I cannot stand it!” she wept. “Please touch me. Please complete your work, Master. Please complete what you have begun with me, Master. Please, please, Master. Be merciful! I beg it! Please be merciful, Master!”

“She shows promise of becoming a hot little thing,” said the man.

“Yes, in time,” agreed Targo.

“Please, Master!” she begged.

“Very well,” he said, and lightly touched her but once more.

“Aiiiiiii!” cried Ellen, and her long, wild cry, her shriek of relief, of gratitude, of helpless joy must have rung throughout the market, piercing it from end to end, from stall to stall, reverberating from the wall across the way, carrying even to the streets beyond.

She then lay shuddering, sobbing, in the chains. She was scarcely aware that the man had left her side, and that Targo, too, was no longer on the shelf.

“Hold me, touch me, please!” she sobbed. But she was alone.

“Slut, slut, slut!” hissed Cichek.

“Helpless slave-girl slut!” hissed Emris.

“Despicable, disgusting slave!” said Cichek.

“No more airs for you, slave girl,” said Emris. “You are the lowest of the low!”

Ellen lay back on the cement, frightened, and pulled a little at the shackles confining her. She looked up at the sky, and the clouds. “Come back, and hold me, a little, please,” she whimpered, more to herself than to another.

“You are a slut,” said Cichek. “Admit it.”

“Yes, Mistress,” whispered Ellen. “I am a slut.”

So he who had been her master had been right about her, even on Earth. He had seen through the severity of her costume, her mien of disinterested inertness and frigidity, through the carefully constructed defenses and facades of her aloofness and professionalism, to the helpless, waiting, naked, passionate slave girl beneath.

Later that day it rained, a long, cold rain, and it rained heavily. The market was muchly emptied, the bustling to-and-fro business of the stalls, of the spread blankets, laden with small goods, the endless, vigorous hagglings, ceasing in the devastating inclemency of the weather. Merchants and their customers, those who did not flee to their homes, or nearby doorways, took refuge against walls and under overhangs, and beneath striped canopies, which soon sagged, and bulged, and, soaking, dripped with the downpour. Ellen lay on her back, chained as she had been, between the two rings, between which, at the touch of a stranger, she had found herself, to her consternation, begging, and bucking and rocking, and squirming, piteously, in the throes of her first slave orgasm, as rudimentary and minor though it might have been. He gave me no choice, she told herself, again and again. And perhaps that was true, but she knew, as well, that she had not wanted a choice, that she had only wanted the continuance, and fulfillment, of those sensations, sensations which she had only dimly sensed, earlier, in her training, and in the hands of Mirus, might lie within her. He gave me no choice, she told herself, again and again, but she knew he had been willing to stop, and more than once, but when he had done so, she had begged for the persistence of his predations, answering to the desperate needs of her vulnerable, needful slavehood. What am I, she asked herself, moving her ankles, and her helplessly confined wrists, a little, in her shackles and manacles. She moved her neck a bit, too, in her collar, that collar which was not the typical light, graceful slave collar, the attractive collar worn by most slave girls in the city, which might merely mark her as bond and identify her master, but the large, heavy, massive collar put by Targo on his properties, that they might, to escape the discomfort and indignity of such impediments, all the more eagerly submit themselves to the consideration of prospective buyers, collars, too, which, if they strayed, or fled, assuming they might obtain the unlikely opportunity to do so, would immediately call attention to themselves.

“Guardsman! Search for an escaped slave in a weight collar, a high collar of thick, black iron, hammered shut about her neck, its two forward projections pierced, a dangling, two-hort iron ring threaded through the piercings!”

So Ellen lay on the cement shelf, chained, closing her eyes, shuddering, shivering, half blinded by the cold, driving rain. She whimpered and moaned. The rain pelted against her, mercilessly, and she felt it run about her body, and, striking the cement, splash up, against her, like spray. Her hair was soaked. Water ran within her collar, and under the constraints she wore. She was bedraggled. Her hair was soaked, and it clung about her forehead and throat. Had Targo’s women been permitted slave cosmetics, they would have run about their lips and eyes, and stained the shelf. But Targo seldom wasted slave cosmetics on his properties, claiming the honesty of his wares, and the right of a buyer to understand clearly, and in all respects, the exact nature, pure, raw and simple, of the goods he proffered. Too, to be sure, cosmetics, even slave cosmetics, were not free, but cost their coins. Ellen would later learn that slave girls would fight for a lipstick or an eye shadow, that they might enhance their beauty and prove more pleasing to masters. Too, Ellen would learn later that slaves were sometimes tied outside, exposed in cruel weather, that they might learn to better appreciate the warmth of a fire, the significance of a blanket, the snugness of a place at the foot of the master’s couch.

What am I, she wondered. What am I, truly?

And she feared she knew the answer.

After a few minutes the rain stopped, rather suddenly, as it had begun, and water dripped from awnings, and trickled through cracks in the paving stones of the market square, and the sun again blazed down, as before, yellow, hot, indifferent, merciless. Some bustle in the market resumed, though muted now, and water was brushed away from the stalls, and, in places, blankets were again spread and various goods, pans, vessels, jewelries, and such, were arranged on the dark, woolen surfaces. The sound of leather sandals and boots was softened, and subtly different now, on the damp stones. There was the sound of a heavy, trundling wheel moving through a puddle. A child splashed and was reprimanded. Ellen could hear, too, now and then, the clack of high, wooden, platformlike, cloglike footwear, such as is sometimes worn by free women, particularly of high caste, which lift the hems of their gowns a bit from the ground, and serve to protect delicately slippered or sandaled feet from dust and mud. Ellen did not look at them, for she feared free women, and, as most slave girls, avoided meeting their eyes directly, lest they be thought insolent and be punished. The water on the shelf became warm and began to steam upward in the heat.

Much then seemed to her incomprehensible.

How came I here, she asked herself, how thus?

I am on a different world, she thought, a world foreign and strange to me, an exotic world, a beautiful, frightening world, an incredible, startling, vital world, a world so different, a world so alive, a world so very different from my own.

And on this world I am chained, she thought. And I am branded and collared. On this world I find myself only a chained slave.

I can be bought and sold. I exist only to give pleasure to men. I am owned, literally owned, and I must obey, and with all the perfection I can muster.

I remember the sensations. I must have more. I cannot live without them. I want them, desperately, needfully. How the beasts, in all their brutish, careless innocence, have made me theirs! I writhe in my chains, a needful slave. Oh, buy me, Masters! I will serve you well. I will kneel at your feet and lick and kiss them, and beg for your touch!

Oh, dismiss these thoughts, she cried to herself.

You must not be a woman, you must not be so alive, you must not be so needful! You must not desire to love and serve! Castigate such temptations! Ridicule yourself for such tender, animal realities! Think yourself because of them small and disgusting! Seek redemptive frigidity! Praise inertness! Sing the glories of the dull, dismal body! Put aside feeling! Deny the deepest heart of hearts! Dare not desire to love, dare not desire to serve! How improper, how terrible, how wicked to be alive, and needful and loving!

I am chained, she thought. I am on a different world, a world foreign and strange to me, an exotic world, a beautiful, frightening world, a world so different from my own, a world on which I am branded and collared, a world on which I am a slave.

But it is appropriate that I am chained and collared, for I am a slave.

It is what I am, and what I want to be! Oh, dear world, dearest world, give me a strong master, one who will master me uncompromisingly as I desire to be mastered, that I may fulfill myself, in my pleasing of him, in my serving of him, in my delighting of him.

How terrible, how unworthy I am, she thought.

I must have those sensations again. I will do anything for them!

How terrible, how wicked I am!

Mirus, Mirus, she thought, what have you done to me?

It was a slave orgasm, she thought, or something like one. I must have it again! I will do anything for it! Could I do so, were I not so chained, I would kiss my fingers and press them to my collar. And yet it was not a matter of simple sensation, no simple episode, even lingering, of the excitation of tissues. It was muchly other than simply that. It was flames and clouds, forces of nature, winds and storms, earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanoes, floods, an entirety of experience, a coming of seasons of being, a time of wholeness. In it there burst alive a universe of significance, a world of meaningfulness. In it was the defiant rootedness and tenacity of life. In it the grass became green, and the stars sang. In those moments I became ecstatically one with the glory of the universe. In my small way I attained a level of consciousness I had not known could exist, and glimpsed the promise of endless horizons, of infinite mornings, and yet, too, I learned that I was only a slave in the hands of a master.

I remember you, Mirus, my master.

Mirus, you have given me to myself, she thought. I would that I could give myself to you!

But you do not want me!

You have taught me to myself, and have then cast me aside, unwanted.

You saw to it that I have been made a slave.

And how worthless and contemptible are slaves! Yes, how worthless and contemptible we are!

How right of you to have held my lying self in contempt! How shrewdly you perceived my hypocrisy, my worthlessness! How fitting, how appropriate, how right for me then that I should be a slave, naked and chained!

This you saw! This you knew!

And now that is what I am!

And now I would that I were before you, kneeling before you, head down, kissing your feet, begging to serve you!

But you do not want me!

Then Ellen began to weep.

****

It was now Ellen’s third day on the shelf.

She stood at the back of the shelf, against the wall of the tenement, her back to the wall of the tenement, she then facing outward, her wrists chained over her head to a ring set in the tenement wall. Her arms were sore, and her legs ached. Targo was not much pleased with her.

Surely she should have been sold by now.

She shuddered as she saw Barzak’s hand tighten on his whip as he passed her. She knew that she could be whipped, even without reason, if it pleased the masters. She was a slave.

An Ahn later, which is something more than an hour, she whispered to Targo, who passed, “I am thirsty, Master.”

“Did you speak without permission?” he asked.

“Forgive me, Master!” said Ellen. She supposed she should have asked permission to speak, but such things tend to be contextual. Surely not all girls invariably ask their masters for permission to speak, but such could, in theory, be required, and the failure to ask for such permission could be a cause for discipline. But habit, practice, and common sense tend to govern such matters. On the girl’s part, the knowledge that she should, in theory, ask permission to speak helps her to keep in mind that she is a slave. Ellen knew of such things, of course, but she was, as we recall, rather new to her collar, and might thus be expected to occasionally forget such niceties, particularly inasmuch as they are not always observed. A stroke of the switch or lash, of course, tends to encourage an awareness of such things, and thus to minimize such lapses.

But a bit later Targo had Barzak water his stock.

Barzak had put aside his whip, but a long, supple switch now hung from his belt. Ellen eyed it uneasily. There was little doubt about the purpose or utility of such an implement, or what it would feel like on her flesh.

When Barzak pulled the spigot of the bota, it seemed too soon, from Ellen’s wet, eager lips, she moaning and trying to cling to it, to hold it with her teeth, he patted her belly, which was then pleasantly rounded. She looked after him, tears in her eyes, tears from wanting more water but knowing she must not ask for it, and tears of shame consequent on his simple proprietary slapping of her belly.

Ellen thought that a groom might have slapped a horse in such a fashion, though on the side or back. And then she supposed that the analogy was not as farfetched as one might have supposed.

Barzak had then gone on to Cichek.

Ellen moved her wrists a little in the shackles that held them over her head. Her arms and legs were sore.

She looked out on the market.

Emris was sold toward noon. Ellen was pleased that Targo, apparently, had received a good price for Emris. It goes that way sometimes. A man sees a girl he wants and his objective judgment as to the market worth of the given property can be clouded, perhaps by simple desire, a simple desire to buy and own, totally, a particularly delightful, curvaceous property, but perhaps by something else, too, mixed with desire, and powerful lust, a subtle something that tells him that this, for him, may be a special slave, something he seriously wants in his collar, something not merely, for him, another slave, not merely something on which to slake his lust, to dominate and master, but something, too, which might, in time, prove to have the makings of something more, perhaps, say, a love slave. And, of course, if it doesn’t work out, he can give her away or sell her.

Many Goreans, incidentally, fear falling in love with their slaves. Many regard this as a form of weakness. But, in many cases, of course, it is difficult for the master not to fall in love with a slave, as the master/slave relationship is a civilized, codified, institutionalized analogue to the essentials of a natural biological relationship. The master/slave relationship frees both men and women biologically. The natural dominance of the male is not castigated, denounced, ridiculed and societally undermined but allowed to express itself and flourish. This leads to a successful, healthy manhood. Similarly, the female slave, in virtue of similar biological congruities, is the most lovely, vulnerable and needful of all women; she is the most female, the most feminine, and thus the most desirable and lovable, of all women. It is no wonder that men must struggle to resist their feelings for such owned, enticing beauties. Often the love master is most demanding and severe with the love slave, in sensing the weakness which she might produce in him. This brings joy to the heart of the love slave as she hastens to obey and please, and with suitable perfection, indeed, as she must, as though she might be no more than a new girl, frightened and intimidated, in the house. He, of course, remains the master, and she, of course, remains the slave. That is the relationship of the love master and the love slave, the fulfillment of the nature of each.

“You should have been sold by now,” snapped Targo.

He was standing beside her.

“I do not wish to be sold, Master,” said Ellen.

She drew back, with a rattle of chain, cringing, and closing her eyes, as he lifted his hand, as if to cuff her, but then he had lowered his hand, without striking her, as though such an admonition might be wasted on so stupid a slave.

“Look on the market,” he said, “straight ahead.”

Ellen did so, while Targo regarded her. “Perhaps you are just too young,” he said, “little more than a pretty girl, perhaps not even of twenty summers.”

Ellen was startled to think of this in this manner, recalling Earth. But Targo did not know what the new serums had done, it seemed, and would take her at face value, as no more than a young, pretty barbarian. And then Ellen shook with the realization that, indeed, he was in no way in error; that was all she was, literally, truthfully. Physiologically, biologically, she was clearly, simply, truthfully, quite young. Beyond that there were only a distant, now-seemingly-unreal world and conventions having to do with an invented, mechanistic time, devised for purposes of convenience, purposes irrelevant to the natural courses of nature.

“You have a nice figure,” he said, “with lovely slave curves.”

“Master?” asked Ellen.

“Barzak!” called Targo. “Turn her about. Chain her facing the wall.”

In moments Barzak had rearranged the chains, that they not be twisted, and Ellen, to her chagrin, and shame, found herself facing the wall, at the back of the shelf, her hands still chained well over her head.

“Ahh!” said Targo. “Yes, very nice!”

She felt Targo’s hands on her sides, and then at her waist, and then moving down the sides of her derrière and thighs

“Good,” he said. “We shall see if you can interest someone this way.”

Ellen shook the chains angrily, and stared ahead, into the wall, but some six inches before her face.

She heard Cichek laugh.

Time passed. Once she heard the scream of a tarn as it swept between buildings, and felt the blast of wind from its wings which half thrust her to the wall. Its shadow passed and she turned her head to the left, looking for it, but missed it between the buildings.

She did not think it was permitted to fly such beasts so low in the city.

“Tarns, tarns!” she heard cry, a few moments later, from somewhere behind her. She could turn about, twisting in the chains, and she saw men pointing upward. Half closing her eyes against the sun, looking upward, she saw some five tarns in flight.

The market returned to its normal sounds.

Once, later, she heard the measured tread of a group of men behind her, probably guardsmen.

Shortly thereafter she heard a springing, clattering, birdlike gait on the stones of the market, and a cry of “Make way, make way!” She turned about, and shuddered. A rider had reined in, turning, a light tharlarion, a delicate, quickly moving, bipedalian, reptilian mount. In the saddle he was some eight feet above the stones. He wore the common Y-visaged helmet, and carried a lance. A studded buckler, a small, round, spiked shield, was at the side of the saddle. This was the first tharlarion that she had seen, though she had heard of such beasts, and she gathered that such, this and others, were not common in the streets of cities. She did know that a large variety of tharlarion, of bipedalian and quadrupedalian sorts, were bred for diverse purposes, war, transport, reconnaissance, hunting, haulage, racing, and such. The tharlarion she saw was much as she supposed the racing tharlarion might be, though perhaps heavier limbed and sturdier. The man, she guessed, was a mounted guardsman, or messenger, or scout. He surveyed the crowd in the market, and then, with an angry kick, and blow of the lance, urged his beast away.

It was unusual, she thought, that such a beast would be in the streets of a city.

“Down with the sleen of Cos!” she heard.

“Be silent!” hushed a man, a hoarse whisper.

“Would that Marlenus were within the walls!” said a man.

“Marlenus is dead,” said another.

“He has been seen in the city!” whispered a man.

“Let the traitress Talena, false Ubara, be impaled!” whispered a man.

“Who said that Marlenus has been seen in the city?” asked a man.

“I heard it said in a tavern,” said one.

“Which tavern?”

“Do not think me so much a fool as to speak it. The Cosians would seize its goods and burn it to the ground.”

“Do not speak these things!” begged a woman. “The Cosians are now our masters.”

“Seek your collar!” snarled a man.

“Sleen! Sleen!” she wept.

“Is Marlenus in the city?”

“I do not know.”

“Can he be in the city?”

“Who knows?”

“Marlenus is dead,” said a man.

“Have you obeyed the Weapons Laws?” asked a man.

“Of course,” said a man. “The Cosians have disarmed us. It is death to conceal weapons. We are civilians and must be the tame verr of the Cosians, to be milked, or sheared, or led to slaughter, as they please!”

“The Cosians are our beloved allies,” said a man. “They have disarmed us for our own safety.”

“Cosian spy!”

“No!”

“Who knows what may serve as a weapon,” said a man, “a knife from the kitchen, a pointed stick, a stone.”

“The weather,” said a man, loudly, “may change. We may have another rain.”

A silence came over the men near the shelf.

Then, “Yes, yes,” said another man, loudly.

The group broke up, and the market became again much as it had been.

Turning about Ellen saw two guardsmen sauntering by. On their helmets were yellow crests.

Then, suddenly, there was the sharp snap of a switch across her derrière and Ellen cried out in pain, and humiliation. “Keep your eyes on the wall, slave,” said Barzak.

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen, quickly, her eyes brimming with tears.

I am an animal, she thought. I am owned. I am owned!

It was late in the afternoon, in the heat of the day, when she sensed two men behind her. She did not turn about, and kept her eyes fixed on the wall before her. She noted a tiny blemish in the stone.

“Do not turn about,” said Targo.

She continued to stare ahead, at the wall. Then she was aware of something dark being lifted over her head, and then it was pulled down, over her head. It completely covered her head. She gasped. She could see nothing. Then she felt it drawn back, under her chin, with threaded straps, and fitted closely about her throat. It was then buckled behind the back of her neck. She now wore a common Gorean slave hood.

“Unchain her. Take her inside. Remove our iron,” said Targo. “Then return her to the shelf, hooded, her hands tied behind her back.”

“It will take a little time,” said Barzak, and Ellen felt him reaching over her head, to the chains which fastened her against the wall.

Within the welcome coolness of the building, Barzak faced her away from him and, with a short thong, casually, tied her hands tightly behind her back. He then, leaning her against the wall, facing away from him, lifted her foot and positioned it on the small anvil. Then, with his hammer and wedge, and with three blows, he opened the shackle on her ankle, and slipped her foot free. He then knelt her beside the anvil, her head down, across it. In order to remove the weight collar he unbuckled the hood, and thrust it up, a few inches. He did not, however, raise it enough for her to see. She shuddered, kneeling, bent over, her head laid across the anvil, as Barzak then, with his tools, opened and removed the weight collar. The ringing of the tools on the metal was loud, reverberating, terrifying, and she remained on her knees, frightened, absolutely still. One false blow of the hammer and she knew that her head or throat, with such blows, could be broken as easily as one might crush an egg underfoot.

How good it felt to have the weight collar removed!

The hood was then drawn fully down again, about her throat, and buckled shut.

Barzak then stood her up, hooded, bound, before him. She then felt herself suddenly, lightly, lifted from her feet and carried toward the entrance of the holding chamber. In a moment, still carried, helplessly hooded and bound, her head to the rear, as a slave is carried, she felt herself brought again into the sunlight, and up the few steps to the surface of the shelf, where she was knelt down, she thought near the forward edge of the shelf.

Her small wrists pulled futilely against the thongs that bound them. Her struggles, she knew, were futile, but in her consternation and fear, in the hood, she could not help herself. And in the end, of course, she knew herself as helpless as before.

She knelt there for a time, bewildered, lost in the darkness of the hood, helpless in her confusion. Suddenly it seemed to her that there was some security lost in the removal of the clumsy, heavy collar and the shackle. None of the other slaves spoke to her, perhaps because there were men about, but she did not know if that were the case or not.

Then she felt herself lifted from the shelf, presumably by Barzak, and placed on her feet, on the stones of the market place, doubtless before the shelf.

“Look, Mother,” she heard a child say.

“Come away,” said a woman’s voice.

“Master, may I speak?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Barzak.

“What is happening?” she asked. “What is going on?”

“You silly little vulo,” laughed Barzak, “you have been sold.”

On the front of the hood strap, before the throat, there was a ring, for the attachment of a leash snap. Ellen had not realized this before. But now she felt a leash catch snap about the ring. She then felt two tugs, the signal, she knew from her training, that she was to be led, imminently, that she must be ready, at the next tug, to follow docilely, an obedient domestic animal, on her tether.

“Masters!” wept Ellen. “Masters!”

“You have been sold,” said Barzak.

She heard coins shaken, as in a hand. They were perhaps what had been paid for her. “See that she serves you with the fullness of a slave’s perfection,” said Targo.

“Masters!” wept Ellen, from within the darkness of the hood.

“You are a pretty slave,” said Barzak. “Serve your masters well and you may be permitted to live.”

Ellen sobbed. She knew that, as a Gorean slave girl, she must serve her masters not only well, but, as Targo had said, with the fullness of a slave’s perfection. And slave was what she was.

Gorean masters, she knew, were not easy with their slaves.

“To whom have I been sold?” she begged. “To where am I to be taken?”

“Were you given permission to speak?” asked Barzak.

“No, Master,” sobbed Ellen.

There was a pause then, as though a signal might have been awaited, or a permission granted, by as little as the nod of a head.

Then Ellen cried out in pain, as she was struck, three times, across the back of the thighs, doubtless with Barzak’s switch.

“Forgive me, Masters!” she sobbed.

Then, suddenly, Ellen felt a tug, a firm, no-nonsense tug, on the leash, and she stumbled forward in the direction of the taut strap.

Now she was being led from the market, and through the crowded streets of lower Ar, a naked slave girl, hooded, wrists bound behind her, on a leash.

Twice was she cuffed, and once kicked, when she inadvertently brushed against someone in the streets. Twice she fell, and, again struck and kicked, bleating pleas for forgiveness, hurriedly struggled to regain her feet.

Distant now were her seminars in gender studies.

And so she was led she knew not where.

I have been sold, she thought. I follow on my tether, fearfully, a purchased animal, obedient, and docile, as I must.

How faraway now was Earth!

How faraway now was her former life!

She was now on another world, one quite different from her former world.

On this world she was as any man would want her, and as men on this world would have her, a slave.

Men on this world had seen what was fit for her, and what she should be.

Accordingly, on this world, that was what she was.

I am a slave, she thought. I am a slave!

Are you satisfied now, Mirus, she thought. This is what you foresaw for me, what you wanted for me, what you decided for me, that to which you have consigned me, that I should be no more than a slave on a primitive world.

For better than an Ahn she was led through the streets, and alleys, and between buildings, sometimes with passages, many of them steep, downward and upward, and sometimes so narrow that she might strike her shoulders, first on one side, then on the other. Sometimes, on a pronounced declivity, she feared she would again fall, losing her balance, hurtling headlong downward, and, at other times, given an ascending steepness, she struggled, gasping, legs aching, to climb, the leash taut, mercilessly, impatiently, against the ring, drawing her relentlessly forward. There were many twists and turns, and even had she not been hooded, and even if she had known the city, which she did not, well might she have been similarly disoriented, similarly hopelessly confused as to her location. She was certain that she was still within the city, from the paving, and the sounds, the absence of challenges, and such, at gates.

What has become of me, she thought.

This is how a slave is led, she thought.

How fitting for me, for I am a slave!

Be amused, Mirus, she thought. You have done this to me. I wear a brand. I am identified, marked chattel.

A hand, a large, masculine hand, at the leash ring, stopped her, and she stood still. It occurred to her that she was standing well, an erect, slim slave girl. How naturally I am standing thus, she thought. I have been trained. It is now part of me. No more am I, now that I am a slave girl, permitted slovenliness of posture. How my ideological sisters would scorn me, she thought, to see me stand so beautifully, but I have no choice, for I am slave. Let them be put under the whip and they, too, would soon learn to so stand, to accept their beauty and see to it that it was well displayed, for the masters will have it so. We belong to them. We are theirs.

The leash was then dangling before her, from its ring, and she gasped, as she felt herself lifted from her feet and put lightly to a man’s shoulder, her head to the rear, again as a slave is commonly carried. She was then steadied on the shoulder with one hand and he began to move upward, climbing, surely ascending a ladder or ladderlike device. He stepped carefully, and doubtless utilized his free hand to steady them in their upward movements. When Ellen became alarmed at the height to which she was being carried, she began to count the steps, or rungs, one after the other. There were more than three hundred such steps, or rungs, after she had begun to count. She could feel wind whipping about at this height, and twice the fellow carrying her stopped in his climb when the wind was particularly fierce. She feared they might be swept from the steps or ladder. Voices from below were now far away, and, in the further ascent, they could drift up but faintly, if at all, from the streets below.

At last he had ascended to a level, some level, and, the winds whirling and blasting about them, and the leather of the hood snapping about her face, she was placed again on her feet. She was then led for several yards across this level, some sort of open, wind-blown, flat surface, and then found herself suddenly out of the wind, and, in moments, some yards within some straw-strewn, wooden-floored room, or area. Then she was put to her knees. She clenched her knees together, frightened, hoping that she might be permitted to be a tower slave. But almost instantly a heavy, bootlike sandaled foot forced her knees apart, widely, and then more widely. She then understood better the services that would be required of her in this place.

Yes, Mirus, she thought. I am to be a pleasure slave for men. But doubtless, too, a work slave. This can be no palace, no mansion, no luxurious, noble quarters, no rich man’s compartments. You had me sold as a low slave, from a common shelf, in a poor market, Mirus, she thought. You managed this thing well.

In this area, despite its openness, there was a strong odor, which she did not recognize. It must be that of some sort of living thing, or things, she thought.

A figure was then crouching before her, and she, in the hood, felt the leash removed from the leash ring, and, a moment later, the thong binding her wrists was removed. She had scarcely time to gratefully rub her wrists before she was rudely drawn by the left upper arm to her feet and taken to one side. There, as she stood, her hands were tied before her body, with a leather strap, and she heard a loop of strap strike above her, as though thrown over a beam. Then, a moment later, her bound hands were drawn upward and over her head, until she stood painfully on her toes.

“Please, no, Master!” she wept.

She then received ten lashes of the five-stranded Gorean slave whip, and she wept, and screamed, and protested, and begged, and pleaded, and turned, spinning, jerking, twisting, in the bonds, sometimes bending her knees, lifting her feet from the floor, her full weight then on the wrist tether, and then, after the tenth blow, she hung helplessly, sobbing, sagging, knees bent, on the strap, her full weight on it.

The strap was then apparently freed from the hook or ring which held it over the beam and she fell, hands still bound before her, to her knees.

She now knew that this was a place in which she would well obey, a place in which she must strive with every fiber of her being to be as pleasing as possible.

She sensed the figure before her and put out her bound hands and touched a powerful leg. She then put down her hooded head and, feeling for a foot, pressed her lips to it through the leather desperately, placatingly.

She was then dragged a few feet to the side and thrown on her belly over a smooth, rounded leather surface. It was some sort of artifact. It seemed to have rings on its side.

Then she cried out with dismay.

He was with her only moments.

He then took her to the side and threw her to a bedding of straw. There he untied her hands but, in an instant, pulled them behind her and she felt her small wrists enclosed with slim steel, slave bracelets. She then heard a rattle of chain. A heavy collar, with an attached chain, was then about her neck. This collar was locked in place.

Then, as far as she knew, sobbing in the hood, he had gone.

After a time, lying on her side, she tried the slave bracelets. They were on her perfectly, of course, the ratchet and pawl arrangement having sought unerringly the measurements of her wrists, then closing snugly, efficiently, about them. She could not slip the bracelets. They are not made to be slipped by slaves.

She lay there for a time, quietly in the straw, not moving further. She thought that the man was gone, but she did not know. What if a man were watching? She knew the effect that a naked, bound woman can have on a man, even such a woman half hidden, half buried, in a bedding of straw, such as that into which she had been cast. She lay there then, frightened, a whipped, ravished slave, trying to comprehend this change in her life, what had been done to her.

After perhaps an Ahn, she rose timidly to her knees and, as she could, hooded, explored her surroundings. The chain was fastened to a ring in the floor before her. It did not give her much play, say, some four to four and a half feet. She was on straw, certainly, and, it seemed, given low wooden walls to her left and right, in some sort of open stall.

There is the smell of animals in this place, she thought. Dampness, mustiness, acidic odors, other odors. Large animals, or many animals. This place is a barn, she thought, but it is too high for a barn. What manner of place can this be? What animals, what beasts, what creatures, could be kept here, so high?

As she explored, with her body, legs and fingers, behind her, as she could, hooded, her small wooden-floored, straw-strewn housing, which seemed clearly to be some sort of stall, she discovered, to her joy, within the scope of her chain, which was all that was permitted her, a large, porcelainlike bowl. It had been rinsed, but, from its size, she knew it could not be for feeding or watering, but must be for wastes. Her bladder had been crying for relief, but she had feared to soil the straw, even at the end of the chain. She feared to be again beaten. Masters are not patient with careless slaves. Such bowls, or vessels, of course, serve an obvious purpose, and are common in kennels and cells. The presence of the bowl there, and the ring in the floor, with the chain and collar, suggested that this small housing, or stall, had been prepared for, and was intended for, the keeping of a slave and, presumably, given its openness, a female slave. Ellen supposed that she was not the first slave, nor would she be likely to be the last slave, to be housed in this narrow, straw-strewn space. Gratefully, she squatted over the bowl and relieved herself.

Though it had surely been with pleasure that she had discovered the bowl within the reach of her chain, and she was grateful for the relief of her distress, it was shortly thereafter that she considered the simplicity, rudeness and directness of this arrangement, adequate it seemed for a lowly slave, and considered further how she must look, hooded, chained, naked, braceleted, squatting, taking advantage of such a primitive accommodation. She wondered what her ideological sisters on Earth would have thought of that. But then, she thought, let them be on a chain on Gor! Let them be a chained, braceleted, squatting slave! Let them then preserve what they can of their vanity, dignity, and sophistication! To be sure, she had been forced to relieve herself publicly before men in her training. Such is thought useful in the training of a slave. The slave is not permitted privacy, or modesty, no more than a verr or kaiila, for she, like them, is only another domestic animal.

Then she lay again still in the straw, in the leather hood, naked, chained by the neck, her hands braceleted behind her, and sobbed.

This is my new slavery, she thought.

She remembered the lash. It will not be an easy slavery, she thought. This man, or these men, will not be gentle with their slave girls. They will use us well. Within the darkness of the hood her features, and her entire exposed body, as well, suffused with shame, with humiliation. She recalled the large, smooth, rounded leather surface over which she had been thrown. She pulled angrily, protestingly, futilely, against the bracelets. Then she subsided in helplessness. She was a slave. They can do with me whatever they wish, she thought. I am only a slave. I must submit. I must obey. I am only a slave. Indeed, she thought, bitterly, my first service has already been rendered to my new master.

How strange, she thought, to be utterly at the mercy of others, to know that you are the slave and that they are the masters, and that you must obey them, and strive diligently, desperately, to please them with all your talent, intelligence and beauty. And that you have no alternative. And that that is simply the way it is.

Ellen, of course, was an educated person, and historically informed. She knew that her fate, or condition, was not, historically, that unusual. She knew that throughout vast periods of human history, indeed by far the most of it, the human chattel had been an article of commerce. Women such as she, straightforwardly and naturally, without a second thought, save for the most practical means to accomplish the end, had been captured, raided for, seized, enslaved, and bought and sold. Such was customary in other times. Throughout most of human history, the “slaver’s necklace,” a coffle of chained beauties, was a familiar sight. Indeed, Ellen knew that, should historical conditions change on Earth, human slavery, with its various values, and its capacity to solve various social problems, might be reinstituted, might rise again. She did not doubt but that many men, on buses, at work, in restaurants, and such must have speculated on what a particular young woman, perhaps an insolent or troublesome one, might look like in slave silk and a collar, or, say, chained naked at the foot of their couch.

No, no, no, she thought. I must not think such things! Gor is different. Different! It is not Earth. It is a different place. It is rude, and primitive, uncompromising, frightening, natural and merciless, fierce. And it is on that world, Gor, not Earth, this fearful, severe, biologically honest world, so far from Earth, that I find myself a slave!

I cannot be a slave, she thought, wildly.

How brutal and rapid he was with me, she thought. With what casual, thoughtless contempt I was used!

Does he think I am a slave?

But, of course, I am a slave!

And how true that is, and how he has shown it to me! If I did not understand my brand before, that lovely, so-meaningful, incisive mark burned into my body, that mark which I cannot remove, which proclaims to all who see it what I am, I understand it now!

I am a slave, and no more than a slave.

Where was his gentleness, his tenderness, his sensitivity?

Surely he could not know my crimes against men on my own world, how I foolishly, deluded by the madness of propaganda, attempted to abet their destruction?

Doubtless I have much to pay for!

I wonder if the men of Earth will one day make the women of Earth pay similarly for their crimes.

But I have changed! I beg to be treated well, my masters!

Then she smiled bitterly to herself.

One might as well ask gentleness, tenderness, sensitivity of beasts, of leopards and lions, of alien, aggressive, different, mighty life forms, life forms, she thought, compared to which we are insignificant, even negligible, valued only for casual utilities. To men such as these, the mighty, untamed, unreduced men of Gor, what can women be but prey and quarry? What can we be before such men but intimidated, dominated slaves, but eager, yielding, responsive, supplicatory slaves? Such men are true men, men as nature intended them to be, and before them, accordingly, what can a female be but a true woman, as nature intended her to be, a begging, aroused, loving slave?

But I want masters to care for me, if only a little.

I will try to serve them well!

Then she shuddered, thinking of the power of men over her.

I am completely dependent upon them, she thought, as theirs, as a domestic animal, literally dependent on them for everything. How wondrously strange that makes me feel. It is they, not I, who will decide if I am to be fed or not. It is they who will decide if I will be given a bowl of gruel or a crust of bread. It is they who will decide whether or not I will be given a sip of water, a bit of straw on which to sleep, a blanket to clutch about myself against the cold, a soiled rag with which to cover myself, if even they see fit to permit me clothing. I am dependent upon them — even for my collar and chains!

No longer am I independent, she thought. I am now dependent, totally dependent, on men, on masters, in all ways.

I am theirs, she sobbed.

She pulled against the bracelets a little.

There is no one to save me on this world, she thought. There is nowhere to go. There is nowhere to run. This is a natural world. I was always such as to be fittingly embonded, but only here, on this frightening, strange, beautiful world, has that propriety been attended to.

I do not know what to feel, or how to feel, she thought. I am frightened. I am terrified. I am owned.

Mirus, Mirus, she thought, I am a helpless slave. Mirus, Mirus, she thought, now your vengeance on me is complete!

There was suddenly a titanic snapping in the air yards away, and it seemed that a mighty wind exploded in the area, scattering and whirling dust and straw. At the same time there was a loud, piercing, raucous, wild, annunciatory scream.

“A tarn!” she thought. “Birds!” she thought. “Tarns! This is a place of tarns!”

She cried out in misery and, naked, hooded, wrists braceleted behind her, chained by the neck, scrambled to the far corner of the stall, bruising herself, and tried to burrow down in the straw, trembling, trying to hide there, trying not to move.