by John Norman
"Beverly," I whispered. "Is it you?"
She did not respond. Her eyes were filled with tears. Her lip trembled.
The girl who held her leash then jerked twice on the leash.
"May I serve your pleasure, Master?" asked the leashed girl.
"I thought you were a Coin Girl," I said.
"She is a Coin Girl," said the girl who held her leash. Then she jerked the leash once, against the collar ring.
"I am a Coin Girl," said the leashed girl, before me.
"Interest him," said the other girl.
"I am yours for a tarsk bit, Master," said the leashed girl.
"Open your tunic," said the other girl.
The girl then slipped loose the binding-fiber belt, letting it fall against the two belt loops in the back. Then, with her left hand and her right hand, parting the tunic, holding it open, she showed herself to me.
She was the most beautiful, and attractive, woman I had ever seen.
"It is my hope that I please Master," she said.
"Beverly," I said.
"She has no name," said the girl who held her leash. "Her master has not yet given her one. But once, it is true, that she was known as Beverly. For that reason I suggest, if you are interested in her, that you give her, for your use of her, another name."
I regarded the beautiful girl. She trembled. She did not close her tunic.
"She is an Earth slut," said the girl who held the leash. 'Some men like them."
"I could call her 'Linda'," I said.
"An Earth-slut name," said the girl who held the leash. "Excellent!" Then, suddenly, viciously, loosening the coils of the leash, she lashed the girl across the back of the thighs with the long end of the leash. "Do you not realize you are standing in the presence of a free man, Linda?" she said.
And then she who had once been Miss Beverly Henderson, of New York City, of Earth, and was now Linda, knelt before me, on the rude stones of that narrow street in Victoria. "Forgive me, Master," she whispered.
"Earth girls are so stupid," said the other girl, wearily.
"Many are not stupid," I said. "It is only that they are ignorant."
"Perhaps they may be taught," mused the other girl.
"Any woman may be taught," I told her.
"That is true," she smiled. Then she jerked the leash of the kneeling girl.
"Have me for a tarsk bit, Master," cried the kneeling girl, her tunic parted, looking up at me.
She who had been Miss Henderson, now kneeling before me, had asked to be had by me, and for a tarsk bit.
She looked up at me, piteously.
"You are a female, and he is a man," said the girl who held the leash. "Interest him."
"Please, Mistress," begged the girl.
"Bite at his tunic, and lick at his legs and feet," commanded the girl who held the leash.
"But I knew him—on Earth!" wept the girl. "Please, please, do not so demean me! Please do not so shame me!"
"Are you a slave?" inquired her lovely keeper.
"Yes, Mistress!"
"Perhaps you have some doubt about the matter?"
"No, Mistress! No, Mistress!" she said.
"You acknowledge fully and truly then that you are a slave?"
"Yes, Mistress."
"Had you forgotten it?"
"No, Mistress!"
"You are a legal slave, are you not?"
"Yes, Mistress!"
"And do you acknowledge, more interestingly, as well, fully, and truly, that you are not only a legal slave, but that you are a natural slave, fully and truly a natural slave, and are deservedly, appropriately, and fittingly embonded, that you are such as are born for the collar?"
She put her head down. "Yes, Mistress," she whispered.
I wondered if it cost the beauty much to utter such sentiments, before one such as I, who had been of Earth.
Would not such a confession have called for incredible courage on Earth; indeed, might it not have been harrowingly calamitous in its social consequences. What shrill responses from the unnatural and ugly, the entrenched and intolerant, the fanatical and close-minded, would have greeted such an admission. What sorry costs might attend such words! I wondered if truth was really so terrible. In any event, it must be rare, being so seldom found; and it must be perilous, so few dare to utter it.
Yet was this not something, that bespoken in her scarcely audible words, the slave of her, her slaveness, that she was a slave, which I, on one level or another, had long sensed in the beauteous Miss Henderson, even on Earth. And it had surely been made manifest to me incontrovertibly in the holding of Policrates, when she had thought me to be the courier of Ragnar Voskjard.
And perhaps it was this, above all, this sensing of the ready slave in her, which had drawn me so irresistibly toward her, which had called out to the master in my blood. Does not the slave in woman call piteously for its master? But, too, does not the master seek his slave? There is no fulfillment for the slave without the master, nor for the master without the slave. In the implacable decisions of nature, decisions at one with a world's journey about a star, at one with the turnings of a planet, with the alternance of day and night, and the successions of seasons, at one with storms and sunlight, with clouds and grass, with rain and tides, with manifold forms of life and their mysterious complementarities, each is destined for the other.
"Were you free on your far, strange world?"
"Yes, Mistress."
"How foolish!"
"Yes, Mistress."
"You should have been enslaved there, should you not have been?"
"Yes, Mistress!"
"But you were not?"
"No, Mistress."
"That was a mistake, was it not?"
"Yes, Mistress!"
"But here that mistake has been rectified, has it not?"
"Yes, Mistress."
"You are not free here, are you?"
"No, Mistress."
"What are you here?"
"I am a slave, a slave!"
"And are you aught else?"
"No, Mistress!"
"Perhaps you recall that a command was addressed to you," said her keeper.
"Please, Mistress," said the girl, "he is a man of Earth. Please do not make me be so before him."
"Need a command be repeated?" inquired her keeper.
"No, Mistress!" said the girl, frightened.
Softly then did the bell of the Coin Girl sound, and the chain and coin box on her neck, as she who had once been Miss Henderson turned her head to the side, and began, with her small, fine white teeth, to bite and nibble at the hem of my tunic. I felt these small tugs, piteous and delicate, and then she, with her lips, pressed the wet tunic against my thigh and through the wet cloth, kissed me. She then, putting her head down, began to lick and kiss at my legs and feet. She performed this submission behavior for several minutes, piteously, desperately, beseechingly, entreatingly. Then, at last, her head down, over my feet, she whispered, begging, "Please have me for a tarsk bit, Master. Please have me for only a tarsk bit, Master."
"No," I told her. "Of course not."
She looked up, startled, dismayed.
"Do you think I respect you so little?" I asked.
"You have failed to interest him," said the girl who held the leash. She shortened the leash and, her fist almost at the girl's collar, jerked it taut, pulling the girl's head up and back straight. Women are very beautiful kneeling in this position.
"But I am a slave," protested the kneeling girl, looking up at me.
"I can see that," I said. "It is obvious. Indeed, you have confessed it, have you not, pretty little slut?"
"Slut?" she asked.
"Certainly," I said. "Are you not a pretty little slave slut?"
"I hope that I am pretty, Master," she said.
"And you are surely a little slave slut," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I smiled.
How pleasant it was to have the fo
rmer Miss Henderson so before me!
"Have you not wanted to have me, many times?" she asked. "Was I so wrong in sensing that?"
"No," I said.
"Then have me," she said. "I am half-naked before you. I am yours for a tarsk bit. Take me!"
"Surely you would not expect me to press myself upon you, with you at your present disadvantage," I said.
"Disadvantage!" she said. "I am a slave! You are free, but I am a slave. I am a slave girl!"
"Yes," I said.
"Look upon me," she said. "Do you think I am to be freed?"
"No," I said.
"Gorean men will always keep me in a collar," she said.
"Yes," I said. I wondered if she knew how truly she spoke.
"Take me," she begged. "Take me!"
"Surely you do not think that I am a bounder, or a cad?" I said.
She sobbed suddenly in frustration.
"On your feet, Slave," said the girl with the leash, giving her a yard of strap, that she might rise. "You have failed to interest him."
"Please let me try further, Mistress!" begged the kneeling girl. "Please!"
"On your feet," said the girl with the leash, jerking on the leash. Sobbing, the beautiful, leashed slave rose to her feet. Fumbling, she closed her tunic, and tied shut the binding fiber which belted it. It seemed she could hardly stand. She trembled, and wept.
"What is wrong?" I asked.
"She is a worthless slave," said the girl with the leash. "Look!" She shook the coin box on the girl's neck chain and shook it. "Empty!" she said, scornfully. She then struck the girl twice about the legs with the strap. "We have been out for Ahn," said the girl with the leash, "and we have passed many masters, not one of whom would deign to have her."
"Why is she crying?" I asked.
"She fears, rightfully, her master's displeasure," she said.
I nodded. It is very natural for a slave girl, who is completely at the mercy of her master, and is owned by him, to be very sensitive as to whether or not he is pleased with her.
"Perhaps he is a lenient fellow," I suggested.
"He is a merciless brute, who has more girls than he needs," said the girl holding the leash.
"What will be done with her?" I asked.
"At the least she will receive a severe beating," said the girl with the leash. "If he is in an ugly mood, she may be tortured and slain."
The leashed girl, sobbing, fell on her knees before the girl who held her leash. She put her head to her feet. "Please, Mistress," she begged, "do not take me in yet!"
"It is late," said the girl with the leash. "It is past the nineteenth Ahn. That you should be out now is even against the agreements of the renters of Coin Girls."
"Please, Mistress!" begged the girl.
"On your feet," said the girl with the leash. "You are now to be led back to your master, as a failed slave."
"Wait!" I said.
The kneeling girl, turning, regarded me wildly.
"Yes, Master?" said the girl with the leash.
"I have a tarsk bit here," I said, opening my pouch. "She need not return with the coin box empty." I smiled at the leashed girl. "It is the least I can do," I said to her, kindly. She was looking up at me, frightened. I went to deposit the coin in the coin box on the kneeling girl's neck chain, but the hand of the other girl, she who held the kneeling girl's leash, interposed itself. "There can be no payment, without the rendering of services," she said. "The honor of my Master must not be offended."
I drew back, holding the coin.
The kneeling girl, she who had once been Miss Beverly Henderson, once a graduate student in English literature at a major university in the New York City area, eyed the coin, fearfully. She feared I would replace it in my pouch.
"I will endeavor to be worthy of the tarsk bit, Master," she whispered.
"A Coin Girl," said the girl with the leash, "will struggle to please a man as much for a tarsk bit, as a high paga slave for a thousand gold pieces, to be paid by her master's customer for her use."
"I see," I said.
"The levels of skill in the Coin Girl, of course," said the girl with the leash, "are commonly much lower." This was true, of course. Yet it must be mentioned that sometimes Coin Girls are extremely skillful. Too, it is not unknown for a master to sometimes send even an exquisitely trained, beautiful high slave into the streets, usually as a joke or a discipline. Such a girl knows that she must perform superbly. Some of the men she falls in with may have been hired by her master, to report back on the quality of her services.
The girl with the leash drew back her hand, it then no longer shielding the opening on the coin box. "You understand the conditions?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Please, please, Master," said the kneeling girl, tears in her eyes, "put the coin in my coin box. You will not regret it."
I hesitated. I looked at her.
"I beg to please Master," she said clearly.
"You," I asked, as though disbelievingly, "you beg to please a man?"
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Whom?" I asked.
"You, my Master," she said. "I beg to please you, my Master."
"As a slave?" I asked.
"Yes, Master," she said, "I beg to please you—as a slave."
Briefly I recalled her from the campus of the university, from the halls, the cafeteria, the library, the grounds. How tight, inhibited, and unhappy she had seemed there, in her politically prescribed pseudo-male attire; was that truly her world; did she not, truly, belong elsewhere, somewhere, say, in silk and a collar; how desperate she had been to subscribe to opinions imperiously imposed upon her by others; how foolish that now seemed; and on that far world how defensively prim and prissy she had seemed; and, too, I recalled, she had often been unpleasant, impatient, tart, short-tempered, critical, captious, disagreeable, repellent, disdainful, snobbish, even nasty, so insecure she was, so unhappy within herself she was, I supposed; and how naively desperate, I recalled, had been her concern, too, to project an approved image, to appear an unquestioning, standardized paragon of ideological rectitude, so concerned she was to adhere to, and manifest, stipulated attitudes and views, designed to promote the ends of others; and how self-alienated and frustrated she had been, trying, as I now understood, to hide herself from herself. And I recalled her, too, from an evening at a restaurant, when she had worn, so seemingly unaccountably, an incongruous-for-her, lovely, off-the-shoulder, svelte, white, satin-sheath dress. This was the consequence, it seemed, somehow, of a troubling interview she had had earlier with a man whom I now knew to have been either a Gorean slaver, or one in league with such. She, confused and fearful, as a consequence of that interview, it seemed, had begun to sense her femininity, had begun to sense that she had value of a sort, that she might be lusciously special in a way she scarcely dared to recognize, and feared to contemplate, that she might be such that men might find her, say, of interest, even of considerable interest. How frightening, for her, to realize that one has such value! And yet in its way how exciting, and thrilling! Few women object to their beauty, to their desirability, to their allure, to the knowledge that they are the sort of woman whom men want, really want, truly want. Is this not something that they hope for? Yet how offensive that would have been to her grosser peers! But did they not suspect that, and was that not why she was demeaned and marginalized amongst them? Surely she did not fit in with them. She was different, so different, so extremely different. She was a woman, a true woman, something quite other than they. She was desirable, beautiful and feminine. How could they forgive her such errors, such faults? How could they forgive her her very nature, when it was a veritable defiance of their views, a repudiation of all they stood for, a nature which, by its very existence, contradicted the radical falsities which they desired to promote and from which they hoped to profit? This uniqueness, this isolation, dismayed her on one level, but on another she wanted to repudiate their uglinesses and negativities, and b
e true to herself, to the natural, inner woman. No longer could she be content with the political parodies and caricatures of womanhood insisted upon in her environment. She was a female, with her own nature, rich, complex, and deep, with thousands of years behind her of sexual selection and genetic coding, of choices and love, not a piece of vacuous clay to be twisted into a grotesquerie by the intolerant and unhappy, not an empty vessel to be mindlessly filled with noxious brews, destructive concoctions of animosity and trepidation. She wanted to be herself. Was that so terrible? But how fearful to slip outside the prescribed travesties and see oneself as one is! So few dare that. And yet, in its way, how welcome, how gloriously liberating it is to do so. Little wonder it was then that the beauty had been so confused, bewildered and distraught.
But that had been long ago.
Then I regarded her less indulgently.
I recalled how vain, how bothersome, how supercilious, and troublesome she had been on Earth.
What a superior, snobbish little bitch she had been!
How I had wanted her!
And how distant, how remote, she then was from me.
How lofty, how inaccessible, she had been!
You may well imagine then I did not mind having the same girl before me now, at my beck and call, at my mercy, a kneeling, helpless, half-naked, collared slave.
"—as a slave?" I asked.
"Yes," she whispered, "—Master." I was a free man.