girls” in some cities, usually port cities, or coin dishes beside the mat, as in great camps, and such, in which coins might be left by clients or patrons. Indeed, I had not even given a tarsk bit at the entrance. These slaves were furnished as a perquisite of the camp, to content the men who might not have their own slave or slaves. The rent money given to Torgus for his girls then, as with others, was furnished by the Pani, rather as they might have underwritten other forms of expense, clothing, bedding, housing, tools, weapons, food, ka-la-na, paga, kal-da, and such.
I continued on my way.
She whom I sought, I had learned, upon inquiries, was the former Lady Portia Lia Serisia of Sun Gate Towers, an exclusive district, near Ar’s Street of Coins, where were found most of the banking houses of the city. The name of the enclave was derived from the Sun Gate, one of Ar’s major gates, though it was better than two pasangs from the gate itself, the gate’s name being derived from the fact that it was regularly opened at sunrise and closed at sunset. Many of the larger merchant enclaves were found near the walls, within which were several warehouses. This is convenient for the receipt of goods coming into the city, and for those being sent from the city. Caravans are usually formed outside the walls. Goods from these warehouses, of course, are often later distributed for retailing throughout the city. The Lady Serisia, as we may say for short, was a scion of the Serisii, one of Ar’s older banking families. It was predominantly wiped out in the rising, it seems, for its collaboration with the occupational forces, its extending of credit to them, to meet its payrolls, when the funds for these failed somehow to reach the city, its purchases of great quantities of loot, including women, for later retailing elsewhere, its arranging for the confiscation of rival house’s assets, and so on. For a time it had become the wealthiest and most powerful house in Ar, but then had come the rising. The Lady Serisia, I suspected, might be the last surviving member of the house. Proscription lists tend to be exacting, and Gorean justice, which tends to be expeditious and efficient, tends to pursue such matters with diligence. I did not doubt but what many a profiteer, traitor, and such, burdened impaling stakes within Ahn of the rising. Free women take part in the commercial life of Gorean polities as men do, owning and managing businesses, lending coin, negotiating loans, organizing caravans, investing capital, conservatively, or risking it variously, in real estate, voyages, commodities, and such, in translating goods about to find the most favorable markets at a given time, and so on. To be sure, much of this is done through male agents, as, in theory, such concerns are regarded as beneath the dignity and attention of a free woman. She is supposedly, in her dignity and nobility, above such crass concerns. That she exists, in the glory of her freedom, that she is so different from the shameful female slave, that she adds luster to the city and its Home Stone, is enough; that she be dedicated to refined and tasteful pursuits, such as attendance at the theater, at song dramas, poetry readings, and such, is deemed sufficient. In essence, the free woman, aside from being regarded as a priceless treasure, so different from the slave who, as a beast, may be purchased for a given amount of coin, is considered an ornament to the city, an adornment to her polity. But many grow wealthy and powerful, and others fail, and so on.
I lifted the taper again, now to the left, as I made my way down the aisle, and the woman, actually now a girl, as she was a slave, put her hand before her eyes, shielding her eyes.
It was she.
There was a rustle of chain as she sought first obeisance position.
“Kneel up,” I told her.
She did so. I do not think she recognized me, at first.
“Have you not been taught the way of the mat, girl?” I asked.
“Master?” she said.
“Do you not understand the meaning of the mat and chain?” I asked. “Interest me.”
“I do not know how,” she whispered. “Is my body, before you, a male, not enough?”
I smiled. How like a stupid free woman was she still! Did the free woman not think there was nothing more to attracting a man than that she be a woman? To be sure, the hint of a bosom, the suggestion of the sweet width of hips, within the robes of concealment, was indeed attractive, and even free women understood this quite well, for not all slaves were in collars. Similarly a tone of voice, a turning of the head, perhaps provocatively, the hurried readjustment of a veil, it having somehow become inadvertently disarranged, could turn the knife in a fellow’s belly. Yes, I thought, I suppose she is right, in a way. That a woman is a woman can be a thousand times more than enough, so to speak. Had not nature, in her indifferent judgments, brought these complementarities together? Suppose there were somehow ten thousand randomnesses. Amongst these some would be more likely to result in the replication of genes than others. Is the swiftest of the tabuk not most likely to escape the sleen or larl? How is it that the vision of the tarn can discern the movement of even an urt at a thousand feet? The shark who detects the trace of blood in remote water, will he not be the first to feed? Will not the moth who detects the odor of its female four pasangs away through the warm, night air be the first to flutter to her side? The beast which, somehow, sees fit to defend its young, is likely to have young which will survive it. Amongst all adventitious assortments some embody the future, not all. Yes, I thought, I suppose it is enough for the female to be a female. Something in that luscious configuration will trigger a genetic response selected for over millennia. From the point of view of rationality one shape is presumably little different from another. What is to choose from between the circle and triangle, but blood and time are attuned to a different geometry.
And, of course, the slave, as the others at their mats, was bared to the vision of free men. How different they are from us, I thought, and was therein well pleased. It also occurred to me that women go to great lengths, almost always, unless subglandular, moronic, insane, culturally suppressed, or somehow ideologically perverted, to dress themselves attractively. For example, the robes of concealment, prescribed for, and almost universally accepted by, Gorean free women, certainly of the higher castes, were not uniform, drab garmentures imposed on them by, say, an oppressive society which regarded women as inferior, unclean, and morally dangerous, but, in their abundance, in their layers and veilings, in their arrangements and drapings, were tasteful and attractive, and, above all, surely, bright and colorful. One may not see that much of a woman in the robes of concealment but there is no doubt that there is one in there somewhere, and there is no missing that. Yes, a woman can be quite attractive in the robes of concealment, and there is no doubt of that. Once again we note that not all slaves are collared. To be sure, the robes of concealment are, in their way, a tease, a provocation. Surely the women are not unaware of that. Perhaps that is one reason that men so relish the removal of such garments and the placing of their occupants in the more revealing and delightful garmentures of slaves. “You will tease no more. I will now look upon you as I wish, for you are now no longer yours, but are now ours, the property of men. Rejoice, the games are over. You are beautiful. Know yourself exhibited, and owned.”
But the girls on the mats, of course, were not even accorded a slave strip. They were mat slaves, and bared suitably.
Was her body not enough?
In a sense, one supposed, surely, but, so far beyond that, so far indeed, were the fluidities and graces, the appetitions, the performances, the subtleties, the movements, the needs, the readinesses, the petitions, of the female slave!
“In one sense,” I said, “your body is enough, and more than enough, but, in another sense, and one more important than that of brief, mindless couplings, that body is no more than a beginning, something needed, but something not enough in itself, something far from enough in itself.”
“But, why, Master?” she asked.
“Because you are no longer a free woman,” I said. “Because you are now a slave.”
“I do not understand,” she whispered.
“Because you are now a thousand times more female than before,” I said.
“Master?” she said.
“Because you are now a slave,” I said.
“Have pity on me!” she wept.
“Display yourself,” I said, “girl.”
“I do not know how!” she said.
“It is instinctual in you,” I said. “It is in your blood. You are a female.”
“Do not so humiliate me!” she begged.
“Begin,” said I, “slave.”
“Yes,” she wept, “I am a slave!”
“Now,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she wept.
