nature, would be:
Q: What are you?
A: I am a slave girl.
Q: What is a slave girl?
A: A girl who is owned.
Q: Why do you were a brand?
A: To show that I am owned.
Q: Why do you wear a collar?
A: That men may know who owns me.
Q: What does a slave girl want more than anything?
A: To please men.
Q: What are you?
A: I am a slave girl.
Q: What do you want more than anything?
A: To please men.
There is, beyond these, an entire set of questions and answers, some of them considerably more detailed, and involving standard responses to simple questions pertaining to such matters as history and psychology.
The truly sinister aspect of even this portion of the girls' training did not become evident to me, or to Elizabeth, until the entire week was spent again before the mirror, seeing themselves as slave girls, and repeating, aloud, these questions and answers, as though putting them to themselves; as though, with Flaminius gone, it was they themselves, the girls, who were putting these questions to themselves, and responding with almost hypnotic automatism; it was probably easiest on Elizabeth, who knew that she was playing a part, that she would be, sooner or later, carried to safety, but even Elizabeth, more than once, awakened with a cry in the night, clutching me, whimpering, 'No, no, no.'
The sixth week of the training was spent, as several of the former, before the mirror, but this time repeating over and over, aloud, 'I love being a slave girl. I love being a slave girl.' At last, after this cruel and almost interminable repetition, utilizing simple psychological principles, intended to brand into the girls' psyche the identity of a Pleasure Slave, the girls began the period of exercises, many of which would, for certain periods of the day, be carried through the next months. During the next weeks and months the lessons of Flaminius were never again touched upon, except occasionally, for her amusement, by Sura, who would suddenly cry to one of the girls, at the same time brandishing the slave goad, such a query as 'What do you want more than anything?' to which the girl, to her shame and astonishment, would find herself crying out in fear, 'To please men!' Then Sura would say, 'Then learn what I am teaching you,' and they would respond, fearing the goad, 'Yes, Mistress!'
In the hours that Virginia and Phyllis were not in training, and the training hours are only five Ahn a day, they were, particularly in the beginning, intensively drilled in Gorean. Elizabeth, on the other hand, usually assisted Caprus in his office. Later, when the girls became reasonably proficient at Gorean, they were permitted the freedom of the House baths, which they enjoyed, and the liberty to move about the House rather as they pleased, saving that they must be locked in their cells by the eighteenth bar.
The foods given them also changed with the advance in their training, and the desire to have varied, tasty fare, and sometimes a small bowl of Ka-la-na with their supper, drove them to perform well. Further, each must eat the same, so pressure was brought on each to come to a given level, for the food of all remained the same until each had attained the desired next level of training.
By the end of the twelfth week of their training they were eating well, generally low-calorie foods, nourishing, a good amount of protein, diets supervised as carefully as those of racing tarns or hunting sleen; Elizabeth was the only girl who had, so to speak, a compartment of her own, with a door that might be shut, rather than simple bars, and so the three girls often, when possible, would come to the compartment, for some moments of privacy. At these times they would, as well as possible, converse in Gorean; Elizabeth taught them much; she did not permit them to know she spoke English; I would often leave the compartment at these times but sometimes I would remain. Elizabeth led them, to some extent, not to fear me, leading them to believe that she had so well served me that she had, to some degree, engaged my affections. I think she did not realize how true her words were.
In the beginning, when moving about the house, the girls had been permitted only the garb customarily worn in the sweat and motion of the training, a rectangle of silk, about a foot long, thrust into a silken string knotted about the waist; Virginia and Phyllis would not even leave their cells so clad until Elizabeth called upon them, so clad herself, ordering them forth; Phyllis had been tearfully furious that she should be so seen, Virginia terrified; but, on the orders of Elizabeth, who spoke with authority, they followed her forth, frightened, but heads high and shoulders back, and soon they were delighting in the sights of the house, for they had seen little but the kennels, the training room and their cells; it had been a good day for them; each was female and Elizabeth had taught them that this was a permissible thing to be.
'These men are slavers,' Elizabeth confided to them. 'They have seen women before.'
Later, in the eighteenth week of their training, they were given brief silken slave livery, sleeveless, fastened by the loop on the left shoulder. Virginia and Phyllis were give white livery, Elizabeth red. It was at this time also that Virginia and Phyllis had been given their lock collars, white-enameled, and that the slave anklets, the identification bands, had been removed from their left ankles. Elizabeth, at the beginning of her training, had simply exchanged her yellow collar for a red one. She had already been a lock-collar girl.
By the twentieth week of their training the girls could converse rather adequately in Gorean, and Virginia and Phyllis continued to improve. Elizabeth, of course, was totally fluent in the language. Elizabeth's accent was interesting, for it was, in effect, Tuchuk; the accent of the girls was that of Ar. I noted, however, that Sura had insisted that the girls not refine their accents overly much, for it must remain clear they were barbarians; further, Virginia and Phyllis were encouraged to slur and lisp certain sounds, it being thought appealing in female slaves; on the other hand Sura, who did not slur and lisp these sounds herself, did not insist on it, for some reason, with the girls; accordingly Elizabeth, Phyllis and Virginia, not being forced to do so, did not adopt this affectation. I learned independently, from Ho-Tu, that this particular form of speech defect was, however, no longer in style; perhaps if it had been Sura would have been more adamant.
Once Virginia had, in our compartment, with Elizabeth and Phyllis, shyly looked up at me, and asked if I knew the name of the blond guard, he with blue eyes, who came upon occasion to observe the training.
'Relius,' said I.
'Oh,' said she, dropping her head.
'The fellow with him often,' I volunteered, 'is Ho-Sorl.'
'The ugly one?' asked Phyllis. 'The one with the black hair and the scar on the side of his face?'
'I do not think he is ugly,' I said, 'but I think you mean the same one as I. He does have black hair and there is a scar on the side of his face.'
'I know him,' said Phyllis. 'He keeps looking at me. I detest him.'
'I thought,' said Elizabeth, 'you were dancing to him this morning.'
'I was not!' snapped Phyllis.
'And yesterday,' laughed Elizabeth, rocking back, clapping her hands, 'when Sura asked him to stand forth that one of us might approach him to administer the First Kiss of the Captive Slave Girl, it was you who first sprang to your feet.'
'I have scarcely ever seen anyone move so fast,' commented Virginia.
'It's not true!' cried Phyllis. 'It's not true!'
'Perhaps he will buy you,' suggested Elizabeth.
'No!' cried Phyllis.
'Do you think we will be sold at the Curulean?' asked Virginia of me.
'It is apparently the plan of Cernus,' I said.
'I wonder,' said Virginia, 'if someone like Relius will buy me.'
'Perhaps,' said Elizabeth.
'I doubt it,' said Phyllis. 'You are too skinny and your face has pocks.'
'I am not ugly,' said Virginia. 'And I cannot help it that I do not have a body like yours.'
Phyllis tossed her head, sniffing.
'I was afraid of men,' said Virginia, her head down. 'But now I find I am curious about them. I did not know what to do, or how to act with men. But now I am a slave, and I am being taught. I am being shown what to do. I am not so afraid of men now.' She looked at Phyllis. 'I want a man,' she said.
'Slave!' jeered Phyllis.
'Don't you want a man?' asked Virginia, tears in her eyes.
'I will have nothing to do with men,' said Phyllis.
'Oh yes you will, Pleasure Slave,' Elizabeth assured her, 'oh yes you will!'
Phyllis cast her a withering glance.
'I wonder what it would be like to be in the arms of a man,' said Virginia.
'Like Relius?' asked Elizabeth.
'Yes!' said Virginia.
Phyllis laughed.
Virginia dropped her head. 'I am ugly,' she said. 'I am unworthy of being sold at the Curulean.'
'You're a slave!' laughed Phyllis. 'Only a slave! Virginia the little slave!'
'I am a slave,' said Virginia. And she added, 'And so are you!'
'I am not a slave!' cried Phyllis.
'Pretty little slave!' laughed Virginia, pointing her finger at her.
'Never say that to me!' screamed Phyllis, leaping to her feet.
'Pretty little slave!' screamed Virginia.
Phyllis leaped upon her and in an instant the two girls were rolling and scratching on the stones, screaming at one another.
