'What do you want with me!' I cried. 'What do you want with me!' I shuddered, and shook with tears, and fear. 'What do you want with me?' I begged. 'What do you want with me?'
'Miss Brinton,' he said, kindly.
I tried to breathe.
'Goreans are barbarians,' he said. 'They have compromised your modesty.' His voice was solicitous, apologetic, concerned, kindly.
Numbly I turned to face him.
He stood near the bench. In his arms he held a red-silk full-length, belted lounging robe, with a high, throat-inclosing figured, brocade collar. 'Please,' he invited.
I approached him numbly, and turned. He held the robe for me, as might have an escort. He helped me slip it on. 'It's mine,' I whispered. I remembered the robe.
'It was yours,' he said.
I looked at him. What he said was true. I could own nothing. It was rather I, who was owned.
I belted the robe.
'You are lovely,' he commented.
I fastened the high, figured, brocade collar about my throat.
I regarded him, once again my own woman.
'Yes,' he said, 'you are very lovely, Miss Brinton.'
I watched him as he went again to the side of the room, and brought forward a small table, and another small bench. He gestured that I should join him at the table. He seated me.
I sat at the table, and watched him as he threw another log on the fire. Again there was a shower of sparks, and the smoke climbing upward toward the venting. The beast now lay curled in its place, on straw. Its eyes were closed, but it did not seem to be asleep. It would move occasionally, or yawn or change its position.
'Cigarette?' asked the man.
I looked at him. 'Yes,' I whispered.
He produced two cigarettes from a flat, golden case. They were my brand. With a small match, he lit my cigarette for me, and then his. He threw the match into the fire.
I fumbled with the cigarette. My hand shook.
'Are you nervous?' he asked.
'Return me to Earth!' I whispered.
'Are you not puzzled as to why you were brought to this world?' he asked. 'Please!' I begged.
He regarded me.
'I will pay you anything,' I whispered.
'Money?' he asked.
'Yes!' I said. 'Yes!'
'Money is unimportant,' he said.
I looked anguished.
'Smoke your cigarette,' he said. I drew on the cigarette.
'Were you startled the morning you awakened and found yourself branded?' he inquired.
'Yes,' I whispered. My hand inadvertently touched the mark on my thigh, under my robe.
'Perhaps you are curious as to how it was done?'
'Yes,' I whispered.
'The device,' said he, 'is not much larger than this.' He indicated the small, flat box of cigarettes. 'A handle, containing the heating element, is fixed into the back of the marking surface. It switches on and off, much like a common flashlight.' He smiled at me. 'It generates a flesh-searing heat in five seconds.'
'I felt nothing,' I said.
'You were fully anesthetized,' he said.
'Oh,' I said.
'I personally think a girl should be fully conscious when being branded,' he said.
I looked down.
'The psychological impact is more satisfactory,' he said.
I could say nothing.
'Salve was applied to the wound. It healed quickly and cleanly. You went to bed a free woman.' He looked at me, unpleasantly. 'You awakened a Kajira.' 'The collar?' I asked.
'You were lying unconscious before the mirror,' he said. 'We re-entered your apartment by means of the terrace.' He smiled. 'It is not hard to collar a girl.'
I recalled the collar had been later removed at the location referred to as point P, before the black ship had fled the earth, through the gray skies of that August dawn.
The man who had removed the collar had said that doubtless I would have another. I shoved the cigarette irritably down on the table, breaking it, grinding it out.
I knew that I could be collared, when it pleased a man to do so.
'May I have another cigarette?' I asked. 'Of course,' he said, and solicitously, as I bent forward, he lit me another.
I drew on the fresh cigarette. 'Do you often bring women to this world as slave?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said, 'and sometimes men, too, if it should serve our purposes.' 'I see,' I said.
I was irritated.
I remembered the two men thrusting me into the narrow, transparent slave capsule, in its rack, its lid being screwed shut. I remembered my pressing my hands against its sides, the beginning of the flight from Earth, the sedating gases.
I had indeed been brought to this world as a slave.
We smoked together for some time without speaking.
I remember awakening, lying in a Gorean field, some hundred yards or so from the black wreckage of the slavers' ship. I remembered, too, that on Earth, at the location called point P, before I had boarded the ship, a heavy steel anklet, doubtless an identification device of some sort, had been locked on my left ankle. When I had awakened in the field, it had been gone.
I looked at him. 'Why was I brought to this world?' I asked.
'We bring many women to this world,' he remarked, 'because they are beautiful, and it pleases us to make them slaves.'
I regarded him.
'Also, of course,' he said, 'they are valuable. They may be distributed or sold, as we please, to further our ends or increase our profits.'
'Was I brought to this world as such a girl?' I asked.
'It may interest you to know,' he said, 'that you were marked for abduction at the age of seventeen. In the intervening years we watched you carefully, maturing into a spoiled, rich, highly intelligent, arrogant young woman, exactly the sort that, under whip and collar, becomes a most exquisite slave.' I drew on the cigarette, in fury. 'So I was simply brought to Gor to be a female slave?' I asked. 'Let us say,' he remarked, carefully, 'you have been bought to Gor as a female slave, regardless.'
'Regardless?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said.
'I do not understand,' I said.
'We lost you briefly,' he said. His eyes clouded. 'The ship crashed,' he explained.
'I see,' I said.
'After the crash,' he said, 'we detected the approach of an enemy craft. We abandoned our ship and scattered, fleeing with our cargo.'
'But,' said I,' was I not part of youra€“yourcargo?'
His eyes narrowed. I could tell he would choose his words carefully. 'We have enemies,' he said. 'We did not wish you to fall into their hands. We feared pursuit. We removed yours identification anklet and hid you in the grass, some distance from the ship. Then with the other girls, we fled, intending to rendezvous later, if possible, and return for you. There was, however, no pursuit. The enemy apparently content only to destroy the ship. When we returned there was little more than a crater. You, of course, were gone.
'How did you find me?' I asked.
'As an unprotected female on Gor, particularly a beautiful one, there was little doubt that the first male you encountered would make you his slave.' I looked down, irritated.
'I went to Laura,' he said, 'it is the largest city in the area. I expected that it would be there that you would be put up for sale.'
'And you would have bought me?' I said.
'Yes,' he said. 'Simple.' He smiled. 'But, unfortunately for us, your capture was effected by slavers, and they wished to take you south for a better price. Accordingly we used panther girls. Verna and her band, to acquire you.' He smiled again. 'It was, incidentally, must less expensive.'
I looked at him in irritation. 'You cost only one hundred arrow points.'
I shook with anger.
'That bothers you, doesn't it?' he asked.
'No,' I said.
'It would bother only a natural slave girl,' he said.
