"Do you think I would object," I asked, "to a slave girl's desire to please her master, to call herself to his attention, to signify to him her desire, to request his touch, to beg him for her mastering?"
"I think not, Master," she said, shyly.
"Is it not the same as the wearing of the bondage knot in the hair, the offering of fruit, the serving of wine, the moaning, the prostrations, the obeisances, the gentle, supplicatory licking of the feet?"
"Yes, Master!" she said.
"What is your master's name?" I asked.
"Teibar," she said, "of Ar."
"And what are you called?" I asked.
"Tuka," she said, "if it pleases master."
"I have seen you before," I said, "months ago, outside the walls, at the camp of refugees."
She looked up at me.
"You dance well, slave girl," I said.
"Thank you, Master," she said.
"You dance better than many women I have seen in taverns," I said.
"Thank you, Master," she said.
"But perhaps you, too," I said, "once so danced." I could well imagine her in such a place, in a bit of silk, belled, with bangles, pleasing men.
"Yes, Master," she said. "Once I so danced."
"And do you now so dance?" I asked.
"When my master chooses to put me forth," she said.
"Doubtless upon occasion," I said, "you dance privately for your master?"
"It is my hope that I please him," she said.
"And if you did not please him?" I asked.
"He would whip me," she said.
"He is strong?" I asked.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"You love to dance?" I asked.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"But as a slave?" I asked.
"It is what I am, Master," she said, looking up at me.
"I see," I said.
"Surely all women desire to appear before men as a slave, and to so move, and so serve, and to dance for them, to please them."
"Do you suggest that all women are slaves?" I asked.
"It is what I am," she said. "I do not presume to speak for all women."
"You have an accent," I said.
"Forgive me, Master," she said.
"Where do you come from?" I asked.
"From far away, Master," she said.
"What is your native language?" I asked.
"I do not know if Master has heard of it," she said.
"What is it?" I asked.
"English," she said.
"I have heard of it," I said.
"Perhaps Master has owned girls such as I?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"From Earth?"
"Yes," I said.
"I have heard of it," said Marcus. "It is far away."
"Yes," I said.
"It is an excellent source of female slaves," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"Thank you, Masters," she said.
"What was your name on Earth?" I asked.
"Doreen," she said. "Doreen Williamson."
"'Doreen'," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Is that a slave name?" I asked.
"It was the name of a slave," she smiled. "Though at that time I was not yet collared and branded."
"So you are from Earth?" I said. I had, of course, noted her vaccination mark at the camp outside Ar months before. By such tiny signs may an Earth female be recognized amongst other Gorean slaves.
"Yes, Master," she said.
'What are you now?" I asked.
"Only a Gorean slave girl," she said.
I regarded her. It was true.
"Master," she said, timidly, looking up at me from where she knelt by the roadside, to where I was high above her, in the saddle of the tharlarion.
"Yes," I said.
"Forgive a girl who does not wish to be punished," she said, "but I suspect that Master may not be native to this world either."
"He is from the place called "Earth", too," said Marcus. Marcus, of high caste, was familiar with various tenets of the second knowledge, such things as the roundness of his world, its movement in space, and the existence of other planets. On the other hand he remained skeptical of many of these tenets as he found them offensive to common sense. He was particularly suspicious of the claim that the human species had an extraterrestrial origin, namely, that it did not originate on his own world, Gor. It was not that he denied there was a place called "Earth" but he thought it must be somewhere on Gor, perhaps east of the Voltai Range or south of the Tahari. Marcus and I had agreed not to discuss the issue. I had no ready response, incidentally, to his suggestion that the human race might have originated on Gor and then some of these folks, perhaps transported by Priest-Kings, had been settled on Earth. Indeed, although I regarded this as quite unlikely, it seemed an empirical possibility. For example, anthropoidal fossils can be found on Gor, as well as on Earth, and so on. At any rate, Marcus found it much easier to believe that magic existed than that his world was round, that it moved, and that there might be other worlds rather like it here and there in the universe. In fact, in his philosophy, so to speak, the universe was still of somewhat manageable proportions. Sometimes I rather envied him.
"It is true," I said. "I am originally from Earth." Undoubtedly she had detected my accent, as I had hers. To be sure there are many accents on Gor which are not Earth accents. For example, not everyone on Gor speaks Gorean. There are many languages spoken on Gor. For example, most of the red hunters of the north do not speak Gorean, nor the red savages of the Barrens, nor the inhabitants of the jungles east of Schendi.
"Strange, then, Master," she said, "that we should meet in this reality, I, once a woman of Earth, as now no more than a kneeling slave before you, once a man of Earth."
"Do you find it unfitting?" I asked.
"No, Master," she said.
"It is as it should have been on Earth," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"But such considerations need not concern us," I said. "They are in the past. They belong to a different world. You are now of Gor, and only of Gor."
"Yes, Master," she said. "But if I am not mistaken, it is not I alone who am now no longer of Earth, not I alone who am now of Gor, and wholly so."
"Oh?" I said.
"It seems that we are both now of Gor, and wholly so."
"Yes," I said. It was true.
"I as a slave," she said, "and you as a master."
"Yes," I said.
"I am not discontent," she said.
I was silent.
"Of men who are Goreans, and such as Goreans," she said, "women are the rightful slaves!"
"And is your master such?" I asked.
"Yes!" she said, fervently.
"Do you love your master?" I asked.
"Yes, Master!" she said.
"Are you happy?" I asked.
"Yes, Master!" she said. "I am happier than I ever knew a woman could be!"
"But you are a slave," I said.
"It is what I am!" she said.
"Perhaps that is the explanation for your happiness," I said.
"It is, Master!" she said.
"The collar looks well on your throat," I said.
"It belongs there, Master!" she said. "All my life I was craving and desiring total slavery, and now I have it!"
"That is why you are so happy?" I said.
"Yes, Master!" she said.
"And has your master something to do with this?" I asked.
"Doubtless, Master," she said. "He is the most wonderful of masters!'
"But what if you had a harsh master, one cruel or unfeeling."
"I would still be a slave," she said. "I would still love my condition. It is what I am."
"I see," I said.
Her knees squirmed a little.
"She is uneasy," said Marcus.
"Yes," I said.
"May I speak, Masters?" she asked.
"Yes," said Marcus.
"I fear my master will wonder what has become of me," she said.
"Do you fear you will be whipped?" asked Marcus.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"You are not yet dismissed," said Marcus.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Your tunic is still quite damp," I said.
Her hands moved a little on her thighs, but she retained position.
I considered her slave curves, which would not in any event be well concealed by rep-cloth, and certainly were not so now that it had been splashed with water, even soaked by it.
" 'Tuka'," I said, "is a very common slave name."
"It is fitting for me, Master," she said, "who am a common slave."
"What is your brand?" I asked.
"That of most girls," she said, "the common Kajira mark. It is fitting, as I am a common girl."
"You regard yourself as a common slave?" I asked.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Yet," I said, "I think you would bring a good price, stripped, and on the block."
"I would try to perform well," she said.
"Tuka!" we heard. We looked up to the villa. From where we were, over the white-washed wall, we could see the veranda of the main building, where it was nestled back, in the side of a hill. On the veranda there was a well-built fellow, with dark hair.
The girl looked up at us, frightened, agonized.
"Your master?" I asked.
"Yes, Master!" she said.
She squirmed. She looked about. In the beauty there was great agitation. Obviously she wished to rise up and run to her master, hurrying as she could. Slave girls do not dally when their masters call. That call takes precedence, of course, over a detention by strangers, but it is a rare girl who will simply leap up, not dismissed, and flee from the presence of free men.
"You may go," I said.
"Thank you, Master!" she cried, and leaped up. She was in such a hurry that she sped past the basket of laundry a pace or two, but then, suddenly recollecting it, hurried back, picked it up, and then, balancing it on her head with two hands, sped through the gate of the villa and up the path to the house. The fellow had, in the meantime, seeing her approach, withdrawn into the house. We saw her on the veranda, where she turned once, to look at us, and then hurried within.
"A superb slave," said Marcus.
"Yes," I said.
"I expect she will be cuffed a bit," he said, "either for dallying or for permitting herself to be seen so provocatively on the road, with a dampened tunic."
"I expect you are right," I said.
"To be sure," said Marcus, "he will doubtless understand that she did not expect to meet folks about, surely not at this Ahn, and that the tunic was dampened for his benefit."
"He will presumably, if he pleases, take such matters into consideration," I said.
"By now she has probably been cuffed," he said.
"I would suppose so," I said.
"Or stripped and lashed," he said.
"Perhaps," I said.
"And now who knows to what lingering, pleasurable purposes she is being put?"
"I do not know," I said, "but it is my conjecture that she will serve well."
"I do not doubt it," said Marcus.
I looked about, turning in the saddle of the tharlarion. "I see no one on the road," I said. "Let us now retrace our steps. By noon I wish to be southwest of Ar, in the vicinity of the sul fields."
* * * *
"That is she," I had whispered to Marcus.
"I am not sure I understand your plan," he had said.
"Let us approach," I had said.
The sun was now high overhead. It was much hotter here, in this area, and at this time of day, than it had been earlier in the villa districts, in the hills northeast of Ar, the Fulvians, foothills to the Voltai.
In the softness of the dust, then amongst the vines, moving across the field, our tharlarion in stately gait, we approached the girl, she at the large wooden tank, filling the vessels which would be slung over her yoke. She wore a brief, brown rag, perhaps from some other girl who had been given something better. Her hair had been cropped rather closely to her head, as is not uncommon with field slaves. She was barefoot and her feet and calves were white with dust. She lifted the large vessel from the tank with both hands, and then, her head down for a moment, rested it on the rim of the tank. She then, after a time, carefully, slowly, lowered it to the ground. It would not do to spill the water. She moved slowly, as though her body might be stiff and sore. I conjectured that her muscles ached. She was not accustomed, I supposed, to such labor.
As it was shortly before noon the shadows were small, and behind us, but she heard the movement of the feet of the tharlarion in the dirt behind her and spun about, frightened, immediately kneeling, putting her head to the dirt.
We halted the beasts some feet from her. She trembled. It would have done her no good, of course, to have run, even would it have been permitted that she do so. She could have been easily overtaken or ridden down, even trampled. It would not have been difficult to head her off or turn her back, or to have her between us in sport, like some object in a game, a terrified, confused quarry, buffeted, or struck to the ground, again and again, until perhaps she lay quietly in the dust, trembling, and the tharlarion would come and gently, firmly, place its great clawed foot on her back, holding her in place for our binding fiber. Also, had we been slavers, she might, in her hasty flight, as we overtook her, have been roped or netted. In the south, the Wagon Peoples sometimes use the bola in such captures, the cords and weights whipping about the girls legs and ankles, pinning them together, hurling her to the ground, where, in an instant, before she can free herself, the captor, leaping from the saddle, is upon her.
I let her remain in her current posture for a time. It is good for a master to be patient. Let the girl well understand the meaning of such things.
"You may look up," I said.
She kept her head low, but turned it, looking up at us. Her hair was light brown, much lighter than that of the girl we had encountered to the north, in the Fulvian hills. That girl's hair had been very dark. I remembered it from the camp outside Ar long ago. This morning, as we had seen it, freshly washed, and still wet, it had seemed almost a glossy black. They were, as I have mentioned, similarly bodied. This girl, however, I would have supposed, was not a dancer. To be sure, she could undoubtedly be trained as such. As the female by nature has feminine dispositions, needs, instincts and aptitudes, such things being genetically coded within her, functions of her behavioral genetics, as opposed to her property genetics, controlling such matters as eye and hair color, there is a template, or readiness, for self-surrender, service, sensuousness and love within her. These are, of course, familiar aspects of the female slave. Accordingly the readiness for, and the aptitude for, slave dance, so intimately associated with beauty and sexuality, displaying the female in her marvelousness, excitingness and need, scarcely need be noted. These things, incidentally, fit into a harmonious physical and psychological dimorphism of the sexes, in which the male, unless reduced, denied or crippled, is dominant. This sexual dimorphism and the dominance/submission equations do not require institutionalized slavery. It is only that that institution is an expression within the context of a natural civilization of certain primal biotruths. In this sense civilization need not be the antithesis of nature but can represent its natural enhancement and flowering.
"Kneel straight," I said.
She knelt then with her back straight, and looked up at us.
I stared down at her, at her knees, not speaking.
She put her head down, quickly, and spread her knees more widely. They made two small furrows in the dust, and there was now a ridge of dust on the outside of each knee. Did she not know how to kneel before men?
She looked up, and then lowered her head again, spreading her knees even more widely.
She looked up again, frightened
, anxiously, seeking my eyes. Then she shuddered, in relief. Her position was now acceptable.
Her skin was burned from the sun. It was red and rough, peeling. In places it was cracked from the heat and wind.
I glanced to the two vessels, to the side, now filled with water, and the associated yoke, thrice drilled, with slender leather straps wrapped about it, at the center and near the ends. The wooden vessels would be heavy in themselves for such a small, lovely creature, let alone when weighted with a filling of liquid. She, too, following my eyes, regarded these things. "Your labors seem arduous," I said.
"It is as my master pleases," she said, looking up at me once more.
"And your day is long?" I asked.
"As my master pleases," she said.
"You are a field slave," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"And that, too," I said, "is as your master pleases."
"Yes, Master," she said, "that, too, is as my master pleases."
"Your hair has been cropped, as is not unusual for a field slave," I said.
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