"I do not know," she said.
"But you are not a secret slave," I said.
"No," she smiled, "I am openly and publicly a slave, yours or any other man's, to whom you might give or sell me."
"Absolute power is held over you," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said. "I am in your absolute power."
"Or in that of any other who should own you," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"How do you feel about this?" I asked.
"It frightens me," she said.
"Anything else?" I asked.
"It thrills me," she whispered.
"Of course," I said.
"Is this a sign that I am truly a slave?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"I feared it might be," she said. She looked up at me, chidingly. "You are bringing me along slowly, aren't you?" she asked. "You are liberating my slavery slowly, aren't you?"
"Yes," I said.
"Why do you not have done with it," she asked, "and make me a complete slave?"
"Perhaps, in time," I said.
"The girl must wait upon the will of the master?" she asked.
"Of course," I said.
"Of course," she said. "What a slave you make me!" she exclaimed, bitterly.
"Of course," I said.
"Yes, of course," she said.
People were getting up around us, but I did not let her up.
"You caught me," she said. "It is now time for the captured women to serve their captors boiled meat."
"I will choose how you will serve me," I told her.
"Of course," she smiled. "It is you who will choose. You are the master."
I lifted her up in my arms.
"Do you think I think only of food?" I asked her.
"I have never been under that delusion, Master," she said.
I took her to the side of the feasting house, out of the way, and put her on her back again in the dirt. She held my arms. "Before me," she said, "you caught Thimble in the dark."
"Yes," I said.
"Did she and you know one another?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"You caught Thistle, too," she said. "Did she, the little vixen, and you, too, know one another?"
"Yes," I told her. Thistle and I, or Audrey and I. as I usually thought of her, using her former name as a slave name, had, too, recognized one another immediately, even in the darkness.
"I would like to switch her!" said Arlene.
"Why?" I asked.
"What a little slave she is," said Arlene.
"She will indeed prove to be a superb slave," I said. "But so, too, will you."
"I would like to beat her," said Arlene.
"You and she," I said, "are quite evenly matched. Perhaps you are a little stronger. I do not know."
"I can beat her," said Arlene.
"I do not know," I said. "Perhaps she could now beat you."
"That would be terrible," said Arlene. "I could not stand to call her `Mistress.'" When one slave girl is beaten by another the loser commonly finds herself forced to call the winner `Mistress'. In slave kennels and pleasure gardens the beaten girl is often expected to obey and serve the stronger girL Such cruel devices help to keep order among female slaves.
"You and Thistle," I said, "are extremely well matched. Perhaps that is why you hate her so."
"She wants your hands on her!" said Arlene.
"Are you jealous?" I asked.
"You are my master, not hers," she said.
"You and Thistle had better watch your step," I warned her, "or I will have Thimble thrash you both."
"Yes, Master," smiled Arlene. She feared Thimble, whom she knew could easily best her.
I looked about. I saw Thimble, or Barbara, serving a hunter, and Thistle, or Audrey, bringing meat to anotber. Poalu served Imnak.
"I note." I said, "that Poalu is bringing meat to Imnak."
"That makes five times in a row," smiled Arlene, looking up at me.
"Yes," I said.
"It is possible he has not played the game fairly," she smiled.
"Yes," I said, "I think that is possible."
"I think he is a scoundrel, like all men," said Arlene.
"Beware how you speak of men, Slave Girl," said I.
"Is a slave not expected to tell the truth?"
"Yes," I said, irritably.
"Surely then you have no objection to a girl's recognizing the objective truth that all men are scoundrels."
"I suppose not," I granted.
"How outrageous that such lovely creatures as I must come into the power of such scoundrels," she said.
"I do not regard it as all that outrageous," I said.
"But that is because you are a scoundrel," she pointed out.
"Perhaps," I admitted.
"But you are sometimes a nice scoundrel," she said.
"We all have our weaker moments," I admitted.
"I am not the first slave girl you have owned, am I?" she asked.
"No," I said.
"Doubtless you have forced many girls to submit to your lust," she said.
"Of course," I said.
"Bold scoundrel," she said, "how I admire you doing what you want with us."
`That is a bold admission for an Earth girl," I said.
"I am no longer an Earth girl," she said. "I am a Gorean slave."
"That is true," I said. It was true.
I put my hand in her hair and turned her head to the side, to see the beauty of her profile.
"Strength in men, not weakness," she said, "excites me. You are the strongest man I have ever known."
"I am sure there are many men stronger than I," I said.
"Physical strength," she said, "is only a small part of what I mean, though it is not unimportant. I mean strength of will. Many men who are strong physically are spineless weaklings, tortured and dominated by women, and ideas. Women, despite what they may feel obligated to proclaim publicly, detest such men, for they betray their dominance, their genetic heritage as male primates, thus cheating not only themselves of the fulfillment of their nature but precluding the woman from also fulfilling hers. It is no wonder that women, in their helplessness and frustration, their own confusions, turn upon such men, hurting them and making them miserable. This, of course, causes such men, who do not understand the problem, to redouble their efforts to be accommodating and pleasing to the females, to give them whatever they want, and to reassure them of anything and everything they wish to hear. A vicious cycle is thus generated."
"There is an escape from this cycle, of course," I pointed out. "Not all human beings are idiots."
"Yes," she said.
"It is called manhood, and womanhood, and nature."
"It is a long time since those of Earth recollected the many names of nature."
"It is time again, perhaps," I said, "to seek for her forgotten faces."
"It will never be done on Earth," she said.
"I do not know," I said. "I think, perhaps, that some human beings, here and there, even in the midst of the suffering, even m the very countries of confusion and pathology, will create for themselves small islands of reality and truth."
I turned her head again to face me.
"Perhaps," she smiled. Her eyes were moist.
I removed my hand from her hair.
She looked up at me, and shook her head, and laughed. She touched the leather strap on her throat with her small fingers.
"Do you find me of interest, Master?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"How can a girl who is only a slave be of interest?" she asked.
"Your question is foolish," I said. "All men desire a slave, or slaves. It is their nature. Thus, that a woman is a slave, even m itself, makes her extraordinarily interesting. Her slavery in itself, apart from her intelligence or beauty, is found extremely provocative and exciting to the male, because of his nature."
"But aren't free women more in
teresting?" she asked.
"All women are interesting," I said. "But consider the matter objectively. Anything that was interesting about you when you were free remains interesting about you now. But now you are additionally interesting because you are in helpless bondage. Too, slavery, because of its relation to a female's genetic predispositions, tends to free her to be herself, rather than an imitator of male-type values. It frees her individuality by liberating her from the necessities of pretense. Too, slavery, by removing certain inhibitions and demands alien to a female's deepest nature generally results in an increase in her beauty and energy; she is no longer as constricted and miserable, and needs no longer spend energy fighting to suppress herself and her natural desires, surely a grotesque and pathological misapplication of effort, a tragic waste of time and energy. That the girl, thus, becomes more beautiful and energetic does not, of course, diminish her interest. Indeed, similarity, routine, identity, boredom, those things which tend to make a woman less interesting, tend often to be functions of widespread conformances to externally imposed demands and images. It is thus that the free woman, though interesting, being female, is usually, sadly, a bound prisoner of her own prejudices, a rigid, constricted, ideologically restrained organism, an imitator of images and stereotypes alien to her own nature, a puppet obedient to principles foreign to herself. How can a woman be free until she obeys the laws of her own nature?"
"I do not know," said Arlene.
"Interest, of course, is somewhat subjective," I admitted. "Some men may prefer neurotic frustrated, rigid, imitative, conforming free women, mouthing the correct slogans and adopting the correct views on all matters, and eager to slander all who disagree with her, but other men, perhaps naive types, would just as soon own an intelligent, beautiful, reflective, loving slave, a girl who thinks for herself, but must nonetheless obey him, regardless of her will, in all things. The matter seems a simple one. Let men choose between such women. Let men choose between them, between the stereotype and the truth, between the pain and the pleasure, between the unhappy and the happy, between the tasteless and the delicious, between sickness and health, between suffering and joy."
She looked up at me.
"But regardless of the truth in these matters," I said, "you are objectively my slave. Thus, whether you are or are not of interest is not really much to the point. Whether you are of more or less interest than your duller sisters in their intellectual cages congratulating themselves on how free they are is not important What is important is that I own you. From my point of view I find you, and girls like you, far more interesting than your smug sisters. They seem generally much alike, even in their mode of dress, and tend in their thinking and conversation, because of their conditioning, to be repetitiously similar. Free women, though they need not be, are often boring. Who does not know, for example, what a female `intellectual' will think on a given topic, provided it is a topic on which agreement is expected?"
"I am, then, of interest?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"A girl is pleased," she said.
"I found you of interest when you were free," I said, "and I find you of much greater interest now."
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Part of this," I said, "is doubtless that I now can, and will, do with you exactly as I please."
"Oh, Master?" she asked.
"There is a sense, of course," I said, "in which you are supposedly of less interest than a free woman."
"What is that," she asked, "Master."
"Suppose," I said, "that I was, in my compartments, entertaining a free woman. In such a situation you would be expected to efface yourself, and humbly serve. You would not speak unless you were spoken to, and then presumably only to respond deferentially to commands. You would remain in the background, a mere imtrument to serve us. In no way would you in the slightest be permitted to detract from the impression or effect the free woman desires to create or compete with her in any way. You would be nothing in the room but an almost invisible convenience."
"I see," she said.
"And yet this is all on the surface," I said, "and largely a matter of theory."
"Oh, Master?" she asked.
"Yes," I said, "for in the depth of the situation your presence is felt profoundly by the free woman. Indeed, she will hate you with a ferocity which is difficult for you to understand. For you are a reproach, in the depths of your womanhood, to her superficiality. There is more excitement she knows in your slightest movement, the turning of your head, the tiny movement of a wrist or finger, that of a girl in bondage, than in her entire, tight, proud, righteous body. She can never touch you in the profundity of your existence and reality unless sometime she, too, should loam what it is to be only a collared slave. She knows that you have found your womanhood and she has not Thus she hates you. She knows the free man is anxious for her to leave that he may hurry you, his slave, to the furs. Thus she hates you. It is you whom he has put in his collar, not her. It is you he rapes in his arms, not her. It is thus that she despises and hates you. She must rise and leave. You wili remain, and serve. She hates you, and, with a depth and intensity which is diffictilt for you to understand, envies you."
"But why?" she asked.
"Because you are a slave," I said.
"I see," she said.
"Thus," I said, "that is a situation in which a free woman is theoretically of more interest than a slave, but, upon closer analysis, the center of interest, even in such a situation, because of her latency, her womanhood, her helplessness, what can be done with her, is the slave."
"I see," she said.
"Beware of free women," I smiled.
"Yes," she said, "I think I would be very afraid of them."
"And you should be," I said. `They can often be terribly cruel to slave girls."
"I do fear them," she said.
"Speaking of who is of interest and who is not," I said, "what of you, lovely slave, and men?"
"I do not understand," she said.
"Do you find men now that you are a slave more or less interesting than when you were free?" I asked.
She looked at me, startled. "I find them now a thousand times more interesting," she said, surpilsed.
"Of course," I said.
"I look at them," she said, "and I wonder what it would be like to be owned by them, or touched by them. I never looked at men so deeply or closely, or fearfully, before. I am now so sensitive to my slavery, and my vulnerability to men. Now, for the first time in my life, they seem to me of profound importance and interest. You see, they can own me, and I might have to serve them."
"Does your slavery make men more sexually interesting to you?" I asked.
"Of course," she said, "a million times more so than when I was free. I know I might have to serve their pleasure. Too, now, with many men, I find myself wanting to serve their pleasure. When I was free I could never kneel to a man and beg him for his touch. Now that I am a slave I could do so. I would need fear only whether or not you would permit it, for you are my master."
I looked down at her. She was very beautiful.
"My sexuality has been liberated by my slavery," she said. "It is now a force within me." She looked at me, chidingly, reproachfully. "You freed it," she said. "What am I now to do? It is a joy and a torment" She clutched my arms. "It makes me helpless," she said. She looked up at me, angrily. "You have made me so I now need the touch of men," she said. "I hate you!" Then, her nails digging into my arms, she said, "Touch me!"
I looked down at her.
"You did this to me," she said. "You made me a slave girl. You made me a slave girl!"
"Of course," I said.
"Touch me, Master," she whimpered.
"Do you beg it?" I asked.
"Yes, Master," she said, "Arlene, your girl, Arlene, your slave, begs your touch!"
"Oh," she sobbed. "Thank you, Master."
"It is probably time for you to get up and serve me boiled meat," I said.
/> "No, no, no, no," she whimpered.
"But it can wait, I suppose," I said.
"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," she said.
"Yes, what?" I asked.
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