“I do not doubt men have a disposition to dominate,” said Vella. “But they must control this disposition.”
“Tell a man not to breathe,” I told her. “Tell his heart not to beat.” I looked at her. “Tell a man not to be himself.”
Vella looked at me, stricken.
“I know little of rights,” I said, “for I am more accustomed to attending to realities, but permit me to ask you this question? Does a man have the right to be a man?”
“Of course,” said Vella.
“What if,” I asked, “in being a man, it was necessary to exercise the disposition for dominance?”
“Then,” said Vella,” no man has the right to be a man.”
“What if,” I asked, “in order to fulfill oneself as a woman, it was necessary, at least at crucial times, to be subject to the total domination of a male?”
“Then,” said Vella, “no woman would have the right to be a woman.”
“Under these circumstances outlined then,” I said, “neither a man nor a woman would have the right to be themselves.”
“Yes,” said Vella.
“The circumstances I have outlined,” I told her, “are reality. It is undeniable men have a genetic disposition to domination. Does it seem likely to you that this disposition could have been selected for in isolation?”
She looked at me, kneeling, not answering.
“Does it not seem likely that men and women, together, in a complementary fashion, forming a race, a kind of animal, Were conjointly shaped by the long, harsh application of evolutionary forces? Does it seem likely to you that biology would have shaped the man and neglected the woman?”
“No,” said Vella. “It does not.” She put her head down.
“Nature, in teaching man to dominate, has not faded to provide his victim.”
Vella looked up, angrily.
“Luscious and beautiful women,” I said. “And what must be the genetic dispositions of these women, beneath the overlays, the encrustations, the conditionings of impersonal, mechanistic, industrial societies, to which sex is an embarrassment and human beings a puzzle?”
“I do not know,” she said.
“There is in them, perhaps,” I suggested, “a disposition to respond to dominance, to yearn for it, to seek it out, to, by their behavior, beg for it, They try to control, but in their hearts, they yearn to be controlled, totally, for they are females.”
“What you say goes against much of what I have been taught,” said Vella.
“Do females,” I asked, “wish to relate to strong or weak males?”
“Strong males,” she said.
“Why would this be?” I asked.
She looked down, not answering. “What if, Tarl,” she asked, “I should have these feelings, these terrible, unworthy feelings? What if I should, in my heart, desire domination by Men?”
“A healthy society,” I said, “would make provision for the satisfaction of these feelings.”
She looked up at me.
“Gorean society “ I said, “makes provision for them. Surely you have heard of the relation of master and slave?”
“I have heard of it,” she snapped.
“The most complete and perfect institution for the total domination of a woman is that of female slavery,” I said. “How could a woman be more perfectly and completed dominated, more helpless, more dependent on a male, more vulnerable, more subject to a man’s will, more at a man’s mercy than to be literally his, an owned slave?” I looked at her. “Pretty Vella,” I said, “to look at you is to want you, to want you is to want to own you, completely, every bit of you, to have you completely at one’s mercy-completely.”
“It is such lust,” she wept. “It is such a complete and uncompromising desire.
What could compare with it? I had not known such passion, such desire, could exist. It overwhelms me. I can scarcely breathe. And I am to be its helpless victim.”
I heard men shouting, in the balls, not far from the door.
“No!” she wept, rising to her feet, trying to turn and run. I was on her in an instant and, taking her in my arms, put her on the floor, sitting. I took her wrists and, with the length of the tether, bent her forward and tied her wrists to her ankles. The end of the tether I knotted in and about the leather on her wrists, so that she would be unable to reach it, even with the fingers of one of her hands. I looked upon her. She sat, bound, the rag I had given her high about her thighs. She was incredibly desirable. She saw herself in the mirror. She could not rise, tied as she was, so she could not reach the other tharlation-oil lamp, high, hanging from a chain, at the side of the mirror.
“Free me!” she wept. “Free me!”
I checked the knots. They were satisfactory. She would be held perfectly.
There was the sound of scimitars clashing down the hall. “Am I not to be freed?” she asked.
On her left thigh, rather high, small and deep, was the sign of the four bosk horns. I fingered it. She recoiled. “Kamchak branded me,” she said.
“What does it mean that you have bound me?” she asked.
I decided that I would have her rebranded.
She looked at me. I took a long set of strands of her dark hair, some inch and a half in thickness. I loosely knotted them at the right side of her cheek.
“The bondage knot,” she whispered.
“This will mark you as having been taken,” I said.
“Taken?” she asked. I stood up. She struggled. I strode from her, going toward the door.
“Tarl!” she cried.
I turned to face her.
“I love you!” she cried.
“You are a consummate actress,” I told her.
“No!” she cried. “It is true!”
“It is of no interest to me whether it is true or not,” I told her.
She looked at me, tears in her eyes, sitting, bound, the loosely looped bondage knot at the side of her face, at the right cheek.
“Does it not matter to you?” she cried.
“No,” I said.
“Do you not love me!” she wept.
“No,” I said.
“But you have come here,” she said. “She struggled. “You have risked much.” She wept. “What is it then you want of me?” she asked.
I laughed. “I want to own you,” I said.
“You are a man of Earth!” she protested.
“No,” I told her. “I am of Gor.”
She shuddered in her bonds. “You are,” she whispered. “I see it in your eyes. I am at the mercy of a man of Gor.” Her beauty, helpless in its leather bonds, shuddered with the comprehension of what this might mean.
I turned away.
“Tarl!” she cried.
I turned again, angry.
“Am I to be kept as a slave?” she asked.
“Yes,” I told her.
“Under full discipline?” she said, disbelievingly.
“Yes,” I said.
“To the whip?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Could you, Tarl,” she asked, “whip me? Could you be capable of that, if I displeased you? Could you, once of Earth, be so strong?”
“You have already much displeased me,” I told her. I recalled Nine Wells, when she had smiled. I remembered the window in the wall of the kasbah, the kiss she had flung me, the token of silk.
“Am I to be whipped now?” she asked. It would have been easy, parting the back of the rag she wore, she tied as she was, to whip her then. She knew that.
“No,” I said.
I went to her and took the bit of faded silk, which I had carried to Klima and back. She looked at it, in misery. I tied it about her left wrist, above the binding fiber. She wore it as I had worn it.
“When will you whip me?” she asked.
“When it is to my convenience,” I said.
The door burst open and two men, back to me, backing through the door, embattled, fighting, others outside the door, entered the room. Scimitars clashed. One of them turned wildly. I unsheathed my scimitar. He knew me then for an enemy. We engaged. He fell back from my blade. The other fellow was cut down by the door. I threw aside the robes of the man of the Salt Ubar. Those outside the, door lifted their scimitars to me.
“I shall join you presently,” I told them.
With my boots I rolled the two fallen men from the room closed the large double door and again turned to face Vella. We were then again alone in the room, in the light of the single tharlarion-oil lamp.
