what you are doing. I am only a poor female slave. Please do not tor. ture me in this insidious fashion. If I have so grievously displeased you, I beg to be simply put under the honesty of a leather discipline.'
'I do not understand,' I said.
She moaned. 'Please do not subject me to these tortures, Master,' she begged. 'Lola is only a poor slave. Just tie her and whip her. Perhaps then she will learn to please. you better.'
'I am not trying to be cruel to you,' I said. 'I am trying to be kind to you.'
She moaned.
'Look up,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said. She looked up, frightened.
'I'm sorry I struck you,' I said. 'I am very sorry.'
'But Lola is only a slave,' she said. 'Slaves are meant to be struck and abused.'
'I am sorry,' I said.
'Sorry?' she said.
'Yes,' I said. 'I am truly sorry.'
She shuddered. 'Tie me and whip me,' she begged.
'Mere,' I said, hurrying to the wine, which I had left on the table behind me. I took the wine and, as the girl trembled, crouched near her, holding the wine to her lips. Shuddering, she drank. 'You see,' I said, 'you served me wine, now I serve you wine.'
'Yes, Master,' she said, trembling.
I understand now her trepidation better than I did at the time. My emotional conflicts and frustrations, my warring motivations, expressing themselves in inconsistencies in speech and behavior, had terrified her. She was a Gorean girl, and her experiences on Gor had not prepared her to understand a male who had been taught to suspect his own nature, and to torture and lacerate himself for impulses, desires and feelings as natural as the circulation of the blood and the movement of molecules through the membranes of cells. Shame she could understand, such things as the chagrin of a man who has failed in honor, but pathologically conditioned guilts, instilled neurotic anxieties, used as control devices to perpetuate sickened societies. were unfamiliar to her. I think, now, she may have feared that she was in the presence of a madman, one to whom her beauty, her vulnerability and helplessness seemed meaningless, one who seemed not to understand that she was a woman and a slave, one who seemed ignorant of her desires, impervious to her needs, one who did not seem to know what to do with her or how to handle her, one who, though ostensibly sane, and possibly dangerously strong, yet behaved unpredictably and irrationally, one who, though ostensibly a male, behaved in no fashion remotely resembling that of a man. It is little wonder she was frightened. Sorely, she must have surmised, if I were not mad, I was at least a fool. Who but a fool would not drink when he was thirsty, or eat when he was hungry? But I was not a madman or a fool. I was neither, or perhaps both. I was a man of Earth.
'Forgive me,' I begged the girl.
She shuddered, spilling a bit of wine. She looked at me with terror. I did not strike her.
'Are you finished?' I asked.
She nodded her head, frightened.
'There is some left,' I said. 'Finish it'
I held the chipped bowl, and the girl, frightened, finished the wine. I put the shallow, chipped bowl on the table.
I returned to the girl, and crouched down beside her. She feared to meet my eyes.
'Please forgive me,' I begged.
She shuddered.
'Forgive me,' I said, irritably.
'I forgive you, Master,' she said, quickly.
'I did not mean, truly, to order you to forgive me,' I said. 'I would appreciate it if you, of your own free will, would voluntarily forgive me.'
'Yes, Master,' she whispered. 'I forgive you, of my own free will, voluntarily.'
'Thank you,' I said.
'Don't hurt me, please, Master,' she begged. She refused to meet my eyes.
'Look at me,' I said.
'Please do not torture me, Master,' she said.
'Look at me,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
She lifted her head and looked into my eyes. I was startled. The girl was genuinely frightened.
I saw the slender steel collar on her neck. My eyes must have momentarily hardened, or glinted. She shuddered. Then I again controlled myself. 'You need not call me `Master',' I said, kindly.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'Do not call me `Master',' I said.
'I am a slave, Master,' she wept. Disrespect in a slave can be punishable by death.
'Do not call me `Master',' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said. 'I mean 'Yes,'' she wept.
'Call me `Jason',' I said.
She looked away from me, down, trembling, terrified. ' `Jason',' she whispered. 'Please do not kill me, Master.'
'I do not understand,' I said.
'You have scorned my beauty,' she wept. 'You refused to rape me. You have forced me to show you disrespect. Now will you not, cruelly, punish me for being insufficiently beautiful, for not having yielded in your arms as an abject slave, and for having shown you disrespect? Will you not now throw me to your feet and kick and beat me mercilessly, venting your displeasure upon me?'
'Of course not,' I said.
She shrank back. 'The House of Andronicus would not like it if you killed me,' she said. 'I am their property.'
'I have no intention of killing you,' I said.
She shook with relief. Then she looked at me. 'I am here,' she said. 'What are you going to do with me?'
'Nothing,' I said.
'I find that hard to believe, Master,' she said.
I shrugged.
'What game are you playing with me?' she said. 'For what cruel treatment and punishment are you preparing me?'
'None,' I said.
She shuddered. 'I know you ire not of Gor,' she said. 'Are all men of your world like you?' she asked.
'Most, I suppose,' I said.
'How their slaves must live in terror of them,' she said.
'Most men of my world do not have slaves,' I said. 'Our women, almost uniformly, are kept free.'
'Whether they wish it or not?' she asked.
'Of course,' I said, 'in such a matter their wishes are unimportant.'
'That is called freedom?' she asked.
'Yes,' I said. 'I suppose so.'
'But some men, strong men,' she said, 'must enslave their women.'
I nodded. I had known of such cases. Such men, I supposed, made their own laws.
'But most men of your world,' she said, 'do not have slaves.'
'Of course not,' I said.
'Did you have slaves?' she asked.
'No,' I said.
'Not even one slave?' she asked.
'No,' I said.
