aggressive male who pinioned her beneath him for his pleasure. He was surprised at her resistance, so he struck her, and then she was quiet, until, in a few minutes, she began to cry out with pleasure. I felt bondage strings on her throat. I did not know if it was Thimble or Thistle. In touching the hair I knew it was not Poalu, whose hair was bound high on her head, in the usual fashion of her people.
I heard more women caught. One brushed past me but I missed her in the darkness.
Suddenly a nude girl, fleeing, struck against me. 'Oh,' she cried. And my arms had closed about her. She was caught. She was helpless. I put her to the floor. She squirmed. I did not permit her struggles to be successful.
In a few moments her belly and haunches were writhing with pleasure which I had enforced upon her.
Then, helpless, she yielded.
When the lamp was relit I looked down into the face of Barbara.
I had known it was she, from the bondage strings on her throat, and the responses of her body.
'You make a slave yield well, Master,' she said. 'You make her yield totally, leaving her no dignity.'
'Did you know it was I?' I asked.
She looked up at me. She lifted her lips to mine and kissed me. 'I knew it the moment your arms closed on me, Master,' she said.
I shrugged.
'I have been many times in your arms, Master,' she said. 'And no two men, I suspect, will seize and rape a slave identically.'
'I suppose not,' I said. I looked about. Many of the women were laughing, and the men, too. Poalu, I saw, was beside Imnak. I suspected they had cheated. Thistle, or Audrey, and Arlene looked at me, still held by the men who had caught them.
'Let us feast!' called Akko.
The lamps were relit. The women who had been caught by given men must now serve them.
In the hours that followed this game was played again, and again, five times in all, interrupted by feasting.
In the second and third round I caught women of the red hunters. In the fourth round I got my hand on Audrey's neck and threw her down to the floor. She was quite good. I spent a long time with her. In the fifth round, when the lamps were relit, it was Arlene who looked up at me from my arms.
'Greetings,' I said to her, 'former agent of my enemies.
'Greetings, Master,' she said to me. 'Did you know it was I?' I asked.
'Must a girl tell the truth?' she smiled.
'Yes,' I said.
'Yes,' she said. 'I knew it was you, instantly.'
'How could you know?' I asked.
'Do you think a girl does not know the touch of her master?' she smiled.
'I suppose so,' I smiled. I supposed a girl had better know the touch of her master.
'But did you know it was I?' she asked, archly.
'Of course,' I said.
'From the strap on my throat?' she said.
'I would have known without that,' I said.
'How?' she asked.
'From the feel of you,' I told her.
'The master knows the feel of his slave,' she said.
'Certainly,' I said.
'I would have thought all slaves, all miserable girls in bondage would be alike,' she said.
'No,' I said. 'Each girl wears her bondage differently. Each girl is unique and excitingly different.'
'How can that be?' she asked.
'I do not know,' I said. 'Perhaps bondage releases a woman's uniqueness and individuality. It releases her from the constrictions of verbalisms and stereotypes and permits her to be truly herself, within of course the latitudes of her nature, that of slave.'
'Do you think women are truly slaves?' she asked.
'Ultimately and profoundly,' I said. 'That does not agree with the principles you have been taught, principles developed to facilitate a certain sort of society, or perhaps even with your immediate intuitions on the matter, a function of your conditioning to accept these principles, but it stands up to the test of life experiences.'
'I sense that it is so,' she whispered.
'Why else,' I asked, 'would women dream of chains and the collar?'
'I do not know,' she said.
'Why else do you think,' I asked, 'that many highly intelligent women, functioning brilliantly in their world, are yet in the privacy of their own homes the secret slaves of their husbands?'
'I do not know,' she said.
'But you are not a secret slave,' I said.
'No,' she smiled, 'I am openly and publicly a slave, yours or any other man's, to whom you might give or sell me.'
'Absolute power is held over you,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said. 'I am in your absolute power.'
'Or in that of any other who should own you,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'How do you feel about this?' I asked.
'It frightens me,' she said.
'Anything else?' I asked.
'It thrills me,' she whispered.
'Of course,' I said.
'Is this a sign that I am truly a slave?' she asked.
'Yes,' I said.
'I feared it might be,' she said. She looked up at me, chidingly. 'You are bringing me along slowly, aren't you?' she asked. 'You are liberating my slavery slowly, aren't you?'
'Yes,' I said.
'Why do you not have done with it,' she asked, 'and make me a complete slave?'
'Perhaps, in time,' I said.
'The girl must wait upon the will of the master?' she asked.
'Of course,' I said.
'Of course,' she said. 'What a slave you make me!' she exclaimed, bitterly.
'Of course,' I said.
'Yes, of course,' she said.
People were getting up around us, but I did not let her up.
'You caught me,' she said. 'It is now time for the captured women to serve their captors boiled meat.'
'I will choose how you will serve me,' I told her.
'Of course,' she smiled. 'It is you who will choose. You are the master.'
I lifted her up in my arms.
'Do you think I think only of food?' I asked her.
'I have never been under that delusion, Master,' she said.
I took her to the side of the feasting house, out of the way, and put her on her back again in the dirt. She held my arms. 'Before me,' she said, 'you caught Thimble in the dark.'
'Yes,' I said.
'Did she and you know one another?' she asked.
'Yes,' I said.
'You caught Thistle, too,' she said. 'Did she, the little vixen, and you, too, know one another?'
'Yes,' I told her. Thistle and I, or Audrey and I. as I usually thought of her, using her former name as a slave
