“You are not so presenting yourself,” I observed.
“No,” said the brunette. “I am afraid.”
“I, too, am afraid,” I said.
“I do not want to be sold,” she said.
“Nor I,” I said.
Yet what else might we expect, as we were slaves?
My feelings concerning my bondage, at that time, as you may have surmised, were highly ambivalent. I was frightened to be a slave. Did it not hold its terrors, to be a property, to be owned! Yet I knew myself a woman who should be a property, who should be owned! I knew that I was a slave, and should be a slave. My entire Earth conditioning had informed me that I should lament my bondage, that I should regard it as a condition of unmitigated misery and woe. But I knew in my heart this was far from so. I could not, and would not, speak for all women, but I could speak for myself. And why should I allow others to speak for me, to tell me how I should feel, to decide how I should be? I was a female. I wanted to belong to a man, a master, wholly and unconditionally, to be his in the fullest sense that a female can belong to a man, as his rightless slave. Nothing short of this could fulfill the secret needs of my heart. But now, to my terror, on this world, it was done. I was a slave! I would be subject to a collar, and bonds, the rightless chattel of a master! The sense of this was devastating and overwhelming. And I would have nothing to say as to my disposition. This frightened me, alarmed me, terribly, but, too, as I waited with the others, in the cell, filled with a slave’s anxiety and apprehension, knowing she may soon be sold, I felt an unspeakable thrill. And then, again, I was terrified! Here, on this world, I was only a slave!
“They cannot sell me, they cannot sell me,” said the former Lady Persinna.
“You are mistaken,” said the brunette.
“Your accent is not like that of the others,” I said to the brunette.
“I am of the islands, from Tabor,” she said.
“A tabor is a drum,” I said.
“It is from the shape of the island,” she said. “I and others were taken at sea, by corsairs of Port Kar, not more than five pasangs from shore.”
“They were bold,” I said.
“They were of Port Kar,” she said.
I knew little of Gor. I had heard of Port Kar. It was well to the north and west, where the waterways of the Vosk’s delta drained into the Tamber Gulf, the city’s sea walls fronting the gulf on the south, Thassa, the sea, on the west. Was it not from the sea gates of Port Kar that the galleys of the dreaded Bosk, Bosk of Port Kar, clove the dark waters of restless Thassa?
“At least,” she said, “I was not sold in Port Kar.”
It is said the chains of a slave girl are heaviest in Port Kar.
“You must have been sold, several times,” I said.
“From one slaver to another,” she said, “not like this.”
“It is my understanding that none here are virgins,” I said.
“Perhaps the Lady Persinna,” she said.
“No,” said the light blonde, bitterly. “I was first opened in a dungeon, where I lay chained in the darkness.”
“No time was wasted with me, or the others,” said the brunette. “We were first used on the deck of the corsair itself.”
I shuddered.
“What of you?” she asked.
“In a slave house,” I said, “recently, in a room set aside for the red-silking of virgin slaves.”
“How was it?” she asked.
I was silent.
“I see,” she said.
“Beasts gather,” said the light blonde.
I looked out. Some men had approached the circular cement platform to the left of the cell, four or five.
I saw there were tears in the eyes of the brunette. “Who will own me?” she asked.
The brunette who had been seated, her chin on her clasped, raised knees, now rose to her feet and stretched, lifting her hands over her head, and arching her back.
“The slut!” whispered the former Lady Persinna.
Two or three more men had now joined the few near the platform.
“It is near the Tenth Ahn, I am sure,” said the brunette with us.
The girl who was to the left, at the bars, put her hair back, about her shoulders, and then pressed a bit, softly, against the bars.
That, I supposed, the softness against the iron, the helplessness of the softness, confined, and such, would excite a fellow. She was a confined female, who would be for sale. In my training I had been chained from time to time, in one way or another, utterly helplessly, perfectly, by guards. It was clear my helplessness stimulated them. And I am sure that they, Goreans, realized that my vulnerability, my utter helplessness, stimulated me, as well. There are, after all, masters, and there are slaves.
There were now four slaves, the three brunettes and the dark blonde, at the bars. Three were standing, and one kneeling, one of the brunettes, who was clutching the bars.
There were now some ten or eleven men outside the bars. They were close. I was reminded of visitors at a zoo, peering through the bars. The analogy was imperfect, of course, as we were for sale. A better analogy would doubtless be a sales kennel.
One of the fellows reached through the bar and seized a brunette’s ankle. “Oh!” she protested, trying to draw back, but she could not free herself of the grip. He then released her, grinning.
“Buy me first, Master,” she said.
There was laughter.
They are flirting, I thought, all of them. And is not flirting, I thought, even on my former world, an act of display, hinting, alluding, presenting oneself as something vivacious, attractive, sparkling, as something of interest, something worth investigating, and acquiring, an object of desire? I had muchly enjoyed such games, the suggesting, the teasing, the luring, the playing with the feelings of men, the sensing of the power of my beauty and its effect on them, how it could arouse, disturb, excite, and torment them, and then, when weary of the sport, the pleasure one could take in the chilling, the turning away, the feigned surprise and indignation. How I had despised the boys. How pleasant it was to make them suffer. But now I was a slave, and would probably belong to a man, one who might exact from me, at a mere snapping of fingers, everything that a frightened, docile slave might give. I did remember occasions when it was I who had been rebuffed. How that had stung! Did they think I was unworthy of them, because they were richer, of a better-known, more-distinguished family, or such? How I hated them! I did not think, really, on the other hand, that they were that immune to my charm, my beauty, and such. Now, I supposed, if they might recall me, and find me of some interest, they might buy me, and hide me from their wives.
“See them!” said the former Lady Persinna of the girls at the front of the cell, those near the bars. “Disgusting! Disgusting!”
It is a received wisdom that the higher the price for which one goes the more likely it is to obtain a richer, better-fixed master, and to find oneself in a larger, better-appointed, wealthier household where the labors are likely to be lighter and less frequent. Accordingly, it is recommended, as a prudential matter, to display oneself in one’s sale as attractively as possible. There is much to be said for this, particularly when one might be sold at night, under torchlight, and one cannot well make out the buyers, save for some on the first tiers. One often hears only the calls from the darkness. Who is bidding? One might discover one’s master only when one is unhooded, in a strange domicile.
It is not unknown, of course, even on my world, for a girl to barter her beauty for gain, for access to exclusive, desirable precincts, to use it in such a way that it might obtain for her advantages and advancement, to win for her wealth and position, and such. Surely I and my sisters in the sorority were well aware of such things. I certainly endeavored to apply my beauty to such purposes, if unsuccessfully, as did they. If one were to obtain our beauty, one would pay our price. We had no intention of selling ourselves cheaply. And how furious I had been when
