not master the slave in her.'
'She is a person,' I said. 'She has feelings.'
'Of course she has feelings,' said the Lady Gina. 'She has the deep, exciting, profound feelings of a woman who knows herself a slave. Have you answered those feelings in her?'
'No, of course not,' I said.
'You area male of Earth,' she smiled.
'Yes!' I said. 'She is not supposed to have those feelings!' I said. 'She is supposed to be a person!'
'Women are slaves,' said the Lady Gina. 'They long for their masters. That is far deeper than your myths and political inventions, regardless of their expediency in your form of society.'
'How can you speak in such a fashion?' I demanded. 'You yourself area woman!'
'Look upon me, Jason,' she said. 'See my size and strength, my severity. I am not as other women. I am for all practical purposes a man, but one trapped by some cruel trick of nature in a woman's body. It is painful, Jason. That is perhaps why I hate both men and women so.'
'I do not think, Mistress,' I said, 'that you truly hate either.'
She looked at me, puzzled. Then she said, 'Beware how you speak, lest you be lashed and burned with irons.'
'Yes, Mistress,' I said. 'Yet I think you are, strangely, a woman of both vision and kindness.'
'Beware, Slave,' she warned me.
'Forgive me, Mistress,' I said.
'Keep clearly in mind, Jason,' she said, 'that women are slaves, longing for their masters.'
'They are persons!' I insisted.
'You insist on seeing women through sexless and demeaning categories,' she said. 'By doing so, you will prevent yourself from knowing them and understanding them. You will, by using such categories, miss their richness, their depth, their latency, their womanhood, and you will be forever unable to satisfy them in the fullness of their biological needs, which include the need to submit themselves as a slave to a strong male.'
'False! False!' I cried. 'False! False! False!'
'I am sorry if I have caused you distress, Jason,' she said. 'That was not my intention. You have had a difficult and cruel day. Doubtless I should not speak to you as I sometimes do. Sometimes, for some reason, I seem to forget that you are only a male of Earth, and a slave.'
I did not speak.
'You are large and strong to be a slave, Jason,' she said. 'Perhaps that is why I sometimes forget that, as a male of Earth, you are small and weak inside.'
'It requires courage and strength to be small and weak,' I said, angrily.
'Perhaps,' she said. 'I would not know. I am neither small nor weak.'
I put my head down, angrily.
'It is an interesting way to view matters,' she said. 'Perhaps the fool has the strength to be a fool. Perhaps the coward has the courage to be cowardly.'
I looked at her.
'It is sad enough to be a fool and a coward,' she said, 'without making virtues of these sorry flaws. Can you not see that you have been conditioned into a morality of weakness, an invention of the weak to undermine and inhibit the strong? Is not the social utility of such a device, so congenial to the fears of the small and weak, obvious? Can you not see that a morality designed to cripple and thwart the strong, to turn them against themselves, is an ideal instrument to advance the ambitions of the small and weak? While the strong lacerate themselves and tear themselves apart with misery and guilt the small and weak, swarming unabated over the world, proceed unimpeded with their small projects and gnawings.'
'No, no,' I said.
'Rest now, Jason,' she said. 'Tomorrow you are to be appraised by woman slavers from the market of Tima.'
'What is the market of Tima?' I asked.
'You will discover, soon enough,' she said. Then she said, 'Lie down, Jason.'
'Yes, Mistress,' I said. I lay down.
She stood there for a moment, looking at me. 'Lola should not have attempted to embroil you in difficulties with me,' she said. 'The slave oversteps herself. I am growing rather dissatisfied with her performances. She is treading a thin line. I think she is growing too bold, too pretentious. The next time she displeases us in the pens, even in the least way, I think that I will have her disciplined.'
I looked at her.
'We are not of Earth here, Jason,' she said. 'We punish slaves when they are not pleasing. Indeed, sometimes we punish them even if they are pleasing.'
'But why, Mistress?' I asked.
'Because they are slaves,' she said.
'Yes, Mistress,' I said.
'Rest now,' she said.
'Yes, Mistress,' I said.
'Incidentally, Jason,' she said, 'I commend you on your progress in Gorean. You have a skill with languages.'
'Thank you, Mistress,' I said.
'And your body, too,' she said, 'with the exercises and the diet, is shaping up nicely. You have gained weight but look more trim, for the weight now is more that of muscle and less that of fat.'
'Thank you, Mistress,' I said. Muscular tissue, to be sure, was both heavier and more compact than fatty tissue. This accounted for the paradox of increased bodily weight coupled with a thinner appearance.
'You are as large as many Gorean men, Jason,' she said. 'Indeed, you are even larger than many of them. It is too bad you are fit to be only a slave.'
'Yes, Mistress,' I said.
'Go to sleep now, Jason,' she said.
'Yes, Mistress,' I said.
6 THE LADY TIMA
'Interesting,' said the woman. 'Promising.'
I trembled, involuntarily, as the coolness of the leather of the woman's whip, its blades folded back against its handle, moved upward against my right side.
'We call him `Jason',' said the Lady Gina, standing in the background.
My hands were manacled over my head to a ring in the low-ceilinged, torchlit room. My ankles, too, were manacled. They were fastened closely to a ring on the floor, near my feet. I was stripped naked.
'A nice name,' said the woman, 'but we can call the tarsk anything.'
'Of course,' said the Lady Gina.
Extending in a line to my left, the same line in which I formed the initial point, stripped, secured as I was, were twenty more male slaves. We were being examined by five women, veiled and robed, woman slavers.
'Open your mouth,' said one of the women to me.
I opened my mouth.
She pushed up, under my upper teeth, with her thumb. The robes and veils the women wore were graceful and of silken sheens. They were predominantly blue and yellow in their colors, which are the colors of the slavers. As the lovely sleeve of her robe dropped back I saw, on her left wrist, a heavy, metal-studded wristlet of black leather. Her eyes were dark and shrewd, fierce, objective, appraising, merciless. I had little doubt but what, in her own pens, she would be as formidable, if not more formidable, than the Lady Gina. I did not meet her eyes. She,
