a quarter of an inch thick. It was sturdy. It was of iron.
'Come along, Jason,' she said. She then led me, manacled and leashed, from the cell.
'This is Lola. This is Tela,' said the Lady Gina, pointing, respectively, to the two girls.
I was startled. Never would I, of Earth, have believed such women could exist. I could scarcely breathe. I was stunned. I beheld, for the first time in my life, Gorean slave girls.
I met their eyes. They beheld me with a sullen interest. Both girls were incredibly beautiful, and almost naked, but that tells little about them. I suppose, if you have never looked upon a slave girl, it will be impossible for me to convey to you more than an inkling of what it is to see one, particularly for the first time. Imagine, if you will, the most exciting and desirable woman you have ever seen; then imagine her standing stripped before you in a steel collar, and that the collar is yours, and that you own her, and that she must obey. That will convey to you something of what it is to see a slave girl. I looked on the girls. Surely their bodies were graceful, curvacious and vital; surely they were both unusually, even incredibly, beautiful; surely, too, both had been limited in their raiment to the rags of half-naked slaves; yet it was not these things, strange as it may seem, which so set them apart from other women; it was not these things which made them so different. What set them so apart from other women, what made them so different, what made their beauty ten thousand times more devastating and exciting than that of other women was that they, in full actuality, in full reality, were owned slaves.
Both girls knelt before the Lady Gina. She spoke to them in Gorean. I heard the word `Kajirus', which I would later learn was an expression for a male slave, and I heard the expression `Jason', which was the name I had been given. How I envied the Lady Gina, having two such beauties kneeling before her.
The two slaves looked up at her, deferentially, attending to her every word.
I could not take my eyes from the two slave girls. They were the first slave girls I had ever seen.
The Lady Gina spoke to them rapidly, and in detail.
Slave girls are unlike and beyond all other women. Earth, with its frigid, competitive, frustrated females, trying to be men, has not even prepared one for the understanding that such fantastic, owned beauties could exist. What wonders does the collar work upon a woman! How it transforms herl The Goreans say that no woman is a true woman until she has submitted as a slave, and that no man has experienced his full sexuality until he has thrown her to the foot of his couch. Looking upon the girls I wondered if it were not a madness that any woman is let out of the collar. Are they not all, truly, the property of men? Should they not all, truly, be owned by men?
One of the girls, Lola, asked a question of the Lady Gina, to which she promptly replied. She continued then with her instructions, whatever they might be.
I clenched my fists in the manacles that confined my hands behind my back. I wanted to scream with pleasure that I had been brought to a world on which such women could exist. They were deeply sensuous, profoundly feminine, excruciatingly luscious, and slaves.
The Lady Gina turned her right hand, back down, to the floor, and lifted it slightly. Both girls, obedient to the gesture; rose together to their feet.
They turned to regard me. Both girls were dark-haired and dark-eyed. Lola's hair was darker than that of Tela. Goreans, male and female, like most of those of Earth stock, from which they are doubtless derived, or derived for the most part, are brunet types. Statistical deviations in large numbers from this type occur only in Torvaldsland and in certain other areas in the northern latitudes. Lola, I conjecture, was in the neighborhood of five feet four inches tall and would have weighed about one hundred and twenty pounds; Tela, who was a bit smaller, I would conjecture would have been about five feet three inches tall and would have weighed a pound or two less, perhaps about one hundred and eighteen pounds.
'Do you like the girls, Jason?' asked the Lady Gina.
I looked upon the two girls. They were sweetly slung, with truly feminine bodies, luscious and curvacious. Their breasts were bared. Each, about her hips, wore a gray rag, knotted high on the left hip, to expose the left hip and thigh. Each, on her throat, wore a light, locked steel collar. The collars had writing on them, incised in the steel, which I could not read. The rag at their hips and the steel on their neck were all they wore. Both were barefoot.
'Yes, Mistress,' I said.
'They will be your principal tutors in Gorean,' she said.
'Yes, Mistress,' I said. 'Thank you, Mistress.'
'Beware of them,' she said.
'Mistress?' I asked.
I saw quirts thrust in their hands.
'Kneel, Jason,' said the Lady Gina.
In consternation I knelt.
The quirts were thrust to my face.
'Kiss the quirts,' she said.
I did so, commanded by the woman whom I feared, who was my mistress.
'In the time of your lessons,' she said, 'they will be to you as I, your mistresses. You will obey them, perfectly. You will learn swiftly and well'
'Yes, Mistress,' I said.
'Look upon these slave girls,' said the Lady Gina.
I looked upon them. What fantastically attractive women they were, their lovely faces framed in cascades of dark hair, their throats, closely encircled by steel collars, their shoulders, their breasts, bared, their narrow waists and sweetly flared hips, the bit of rag they wore, their thighs, calves, ankles and small, high-arched feet.
'Do you find them beautiful?' asked the Lady Gina.
'Yes, Mistress,' I said.
'Do you desire them?' she asked.
'Yes, Mistress,' I said.
The Lady Gina nodded to the two girls and they, suddenly, viciously, began to lash at me with the leather quirts.
I put my head down, miserably. I was startled. When I looked up, confused, frightened, my body stung in a dozen places.
The Lady Gina spoke to the slave, Lola. Immediately the girl placed her hands behind her head and threw her head back, arching her back and body, legs flexed, before me. I supposed that it was sometimes in such a fashion that slave girls were ordered to display themselves for the pleasure or inspection of masters. I almost sobbed with the pleasure of seeing her.
'Your hands are manacled, Jason,' said the Lady Gina. 'Too bad. You would like to touch her, wouldn't you?'
'Yes, Mistress,' I said, miserably.
The Lady Gina nodded to the girl Tela who then, crying out angrily, struck me twice with her, quirt. Lola meanwhile broke her pose and looked at me, impassively.
I looked up at the Lady Gina. There were tears in my eyes, from the stinging of the blows of the quirt.
'Poor Jason,' she said, soothingly. Then, again, she spoke to Lola. Lola, the beautiful slave girl, then tore away the rag from her hips and lowered herself to the tiles. She lay then on her back before me. She threw her ankles apart and put her wrists to her sides, their backs to the tiles. It seemed she struggled, as though she might be chained in place, and then resigned herself to her helplessness, and turned her face to me. I looked down at her. It was as though she lay chained before me. Again, suddenly, it seemed she tried to free herself, but could not do so. Then her struggles, it seemed, grew weaker, and she lay before me, as though awaiting whatever fate a master might choose to bestow upon her. Suddenly tears sprang to her eyes. She tried to hold herself still. She bit her lip, to control herself. She, a slave girl, lay before a man.
The Lady Gina, suddenly, viciously, kicked her, and spoke sharply to her. The girl closed her eyes and lay perfectly still. Again the Lady Gina spoke to her. She opened her eyes and looked up at me. She lifted her body to me. Then she lay back on the tiles, watching me, her sweet breasts rising and falling with her breathing.
I could scarcely believe how beautiful, how desirable, was the female slave lying before me. I, a man of Earth, wanted to cry out with wonder that a woman could be so beautiful. I, a man of Earth, wanted to scream with joy that a woman could even begin to be so desirable. And what I did not understand at the time was that the girls, Lola and Tela, though surely astoundingly lovely, were only a little above the average for Gorean slave
