found pleasing. She is needful. Well she knows the restlessness and agony of slave fires, imposed on her by men. She is ready on her chain. She knows herself no more than his meaningless, begging pleasure object. She is an eager and subservient passion beast.
How utterly different is the exalted, noble, proud free woman, suspicious and demanding, bargaining and calculating, insisting on her hundred rights, jealous of a thousand prerogatives!
How strange then that men would be willing to risk their lives, even die, for the slave, no more than a collared chattel.
“Why should a man care for you, not that one does?” he asked.
“I do not know,” I said.
He turned about, and I lowered my head, unwilling to meet his eyes.
“Perhaps as an investment,” he said. “One might improve you, with chain training, whip training, slave dance, and such, and then sell you for a profit.”
“Perhaps, Master,” I said.
“You are poor stuff,” he said.
I looked up.
“Might I not now bring a good price on the block?” I asked.
“That would be easy enough to see,” he said.
“Please do not do so,” I said.
“Poor meaningless stuff,” he said, looking down upon me.
“You bought me,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, “I bought you.”
“I know you had the means to buy others, Master,” I said. “Why then did you not buy them?”
“Do you wish to be beaten?” he asked.
“No, Master,” I said.
“I do not know why,” he said. “The pens are filled with slaves, well worth collaring, and training to one’s taste.”
“Yet Master did not forget me,” I said.
“You are shoddy, inferior, meaningless merchandise.”
“Perhaps less so now than before,” I said.
“Speak,” he said.
“I remain unimportant, and meaningless, of course, as I am a slave, Master,” I said, “but I think I am different now from what I was, perhaps a little better, perhaps a bit more worth owning. Perhaps I am not now so shallow, so sly, so cunning, so petty, so selfish, so trivial, so worthless, as I once was. I have learned much in the collar. In the collar a slave is well taught. I want now to be worthy of my collar. It is a gift bestowed upon me by a man. I want now to be pleasing to my Master. I would hope to be worthy of wearing his collar, not only in service, devotion, and helpless passion, but in character. I desperately want him to approve of me. I will try to be a slave who is worthy of his ownership!”
“How clever you are,” he said.
“Master?” I said.
“Do you think I do not know you?” he asked. “From Ar, from the wagons, from the Voltai, from the small feast in the domicile of Epicrates?”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“You are a lying little slut,” he said.
“No, Master!” I said.
I wondered how much this had to do with me, and how much it had to do with him. Was he fighting his own feelings? Might that be? Was he afraid of himself, and his feelings, standing before one who was no more than a kneeling, helpless, collared, branded animal? Did he now fear that he might care for a mere slave?
How absurd!
What had he to fear? The collar was on my neck, and his was the whip.
“I have waited a long time to own you,” he said.
“And have I not waited a long time to be owned?” I said.
I looked up at him, and was suddenly afraid.
How bright his eyes were, how tense his body!
Might not a starving larl so gaze upon a tethered tabuk doe, a hungry sleen upon a penned verr?
In the streets of Ar I had once seen a leashed slave being dragged running and stumbling, weeping, toward a domicile, but the master found himself unable to wait, and she was thrown to the paving stones of the street, there to be publicly and rudely ravished. I had turned aside, and hurried away, but had been stirred. I had heard, too, of purchases made off the block which were unable even to reach the holding rings or slave cages, but were enjoyed in the very aisles of the market.
I was afraid but stirred, too, as only a slave can be stirred, for she knows herself helpless and choiceless, that it will be done with her as masters will. She is without recourse.
Gorean men, I knew, had not been culturally reduced, societally diminished, confused, crippled, taught to mistrust themselves, to doubt themselves, to castigate themselves for the simplest and most natural feelings and desires, to misinterpret and fear them, not taught to betray themselves and their manhood. As well, for the purposes of the deficient, insane, or eccentric, might one be taught the wrongness of breathing, of eyesight, of the circulating of blood, the pumping of a living heart?
It had not occurred to Gorean men, I knew, to denounce manhood, no more than to proclaim it. They just lived it, as they were men. And without men, how could there be women?
How frightening it can be to be a slave, but, too, how can one feel more female?
I looked up at him, and was frightened.
How I sensed that I was seen!
“Master?” I said.
How he was looking upon me!
He did think me unworthy, still, I realized, a liar, a would-be thief, a deceitful, self-centered, manipulative, worthless, little hypocrite.
That was how he saw me!
Perhaps I had been such, more so on Earth than here, but I did not think I was such now.
“No, Master,” I whispered, shaking my head. “No, Master.”
Of course, he was looking upon me as a purchasable chattel, for that is what I was, but, too, he seemed to see me now not as a mere chattel, but as a particularly worthless one, one suitably despised, yet one that he found, despite himself, and perhaps against his best judgment, one of interest, of slave interest, of keen slave interest.
I sensed he was angry with himself.
He was perhaps furious with himself, to find himself attracted to me. Did he despise himself for this? Could he not help himself? Was I, I wondered, as irresistible to him, as he was to me?
Could that be?
I was beneath his gaze.
I was naked before him, and kneeling.
I fear I trembled.
I knew myself desired, and not as a free woman might be desired, in all her lofty, precious, august dignity, encircled with customs, codes, traditions, conventions, proprieties, and rights, but as a slave is desired, with all the raw, uncompromising, unmitigated lust with which a slave is desired, a rightless animal whose obedience is to be instantaneous and unquestioning, who hopes to be pleasing, who hopes to serve the master, whose passion is to be unqualified and unrestrained, who exists, as a belonging, an owned female, to give him inordinate pleasures.
“You are a despicable, vain, pretentious, tormenting little she-sleen,” he said, “but, little she-sleen, your time of tormenting is now over.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“You have played your games enough,” he said.
