when she, after having been prepared for sale, was marketed from a slave block.
The master commonly has a record of such measurements and many masters, using a tarsk scale, used for small livestock, and slave tapes, periodically check their lovely properties, making certain that they are maintaining the measurements. And woe to the girl, in such a case, whose measurements are found to depart to any significant extent from the block measurements! Such a departure can be an occasion for corrective discipline, and of a quite severe sort. Sometimes, when one sees a fearful girl refusing the smallest of sweets and exercising, almost in desperation, one may suspect, in amusement, that the day on which her master plans to check her measurements is not far distant. The lovely figures of slave girls are not accidents. Only free women are permitted to become unkempt and gross.
Peggy was dancing well.
She had lovely arms, and lovely, slender wrists. They would look well roped, or clasped in slave steel.
She had now entered into the display phase of the Sa-eela. In this portion of the dance the girl calls attention to the various aspects of her beauty, from the swirling sheen of her cascading hair to her ankles, from her small feet to her tiny, fine fingers.
Women are so incredibly beautiful. It is a wonder that men do not scream with pleasure, seeing them.
It is little wonder that Goreans put them in collars, and own them.
'Oh!' gasped the naked, collared little beauty kneeling near me. I smiled. I recalled that she had seen little on Gor of the dancing of female slaves.
I looked at her.
'She is so sensuous, and female!' she whispered.
I shrugged. 'She is a slave,' I said.
Free women, incidentally, are seldom permitted to witness dances of the erotic power of the Sa-eela. The major reason for this, interestingly, is not that they might be offended or outraged, but for their own protection. Many times lovely, young free women, sometimes thinking that they have cleverly disguised themselves, donning male garments, pretending to be boys, thus seeking admission to the dances, find themselves set upon and stripped. Soon, in chains and well ravished, they find themselves as much slaves as the dancer. Perhaps, in their turn, too, they will be taught to dance. On their way to the market they may, if they wish, reflect upon what they, at that time, are likely to regard as their folly. Later, at the feet of a strong man, they may become clearer on the nature of the motivations that took them to such a performance in the first place. They were courting slavery, begging, in their way, for the steel of the collar, pleading to be subject, if they were not pleasing, to the cut of the whip. They had not truly been free women; they had only been, unbeknownst to themselves, slaves in search of their masters.
'I am hot, Master,' said the little slave kneeling beside me.
'A bold admission,' I said, 'for a former Earth girl.'
'And I am frightened,' she whispered, suddenly.
'Of course,' I said. 'You now realize, even more clearly than before, what it might mean to be a slave on Gor.'
She then clutched my arm, even more tightly, and then, she kneeling beside me, small and naked, helpless and vulnerable, her throat locked in the steel of my collar, on the tiles, we watched the dance of the female slave.
The music now, pounding and throbbing, mounted headily toward the climax of the Sa-eela.
In these, the final portions of the Sa-eela, the slave, in effect, puts herself at the mercy of the Master. She has already presented before him, almost in a delectable enumeration, many of the more external and rhythmic aspects of her beauty. She has displayed herself hitherto before him rather as an object in which, hopefully, he might take an interest.
A woman may do this, of course, from many motives, such as fear or her desire to be purchased by an affluent master, only one of which might be her authentic, poignant desire to be found pleasing by him, for her own sake. In such displays there can be, though there often is not, a subtle psychological distinction, detectable in the behavior, between the merchandise, so to speak, and the girl who is displaying herself as merchandise. In the first case, where no true distinction exists, which is the authentic case, the girl, in effect, says, 'I am for sale. Buy me, and love me!'
In the second case, the girl, in effect, says, 'Here is a fine slave. Are you not interested in her?' In the second case, of course, the Gorean is interested, though the girl may not understand this clearly, in not only the merchandise but the girl who is displaying the merchandise. She might truly be terrified if she understood that it was she herself he intended to own, and, in fact, was going to own, she the exhibitor of the merchandise as well as she, the merchandise exhibited. Goreans, as I have mentioned, are interested in owning the whole woman, in all her sweetness, depth, complexity and individuality. They, and their whips and chains, settle for nothing less. To think of the imbonded woman as a slave object is in one sense quite correct, but, in another sense, it is a perversion of, and a failure to understand, the intimate and beautiful relations which can exist between masters and slaves.
The girl now, in all her helplessness, in all her desperation, in all her sensual splendor, was dancing not aspects or attributes of her beauty before her master, but was dancing her own passions, her own needs and desires, her own piteous, needful, beautiful, intimate and personal self before him. There were no restraints, no reservations, no compromises, no divisions or distinctions. Her needs were as exposed as her bared body. She danced herself before her master.
The music swirled to its climax and Peggy, turning, flung herself to her back on the tiles before Callimachus of Port Cos. As the music struck its last, rousing note, she arched her back, and flexed her legs, and looked back at him, her right arm extended piteously back towards him.
Callimachus, sweating, overcome, trembling, fists clenched, rose to his feet. He looked down at the supine slave, sweating, her breasts heaving, at his feet.
'She is, of course, yours,' said Tasdron. 'Jason and I thought you might find her of interest.'
'Bring me binding fiber!' cried Callimachus, throatily, joyfully. 'I must tie her!'
Lola fled from the table to search out binding fiber and, in a moment, returned to the table and knelt before Callimachus, head down, handing him a generous length of soft, silken, scarlet binding fiber. In another moment, Peggy, wincing, had been helplessly trussed, hand and foot, on the tiles.
'Escape!' ordered Callimachus.
'I cannot, Master!' cried the girl, struggling futilely. 'You have tied me too well. I am helpless!'
'Escape!' commanded Callimachus.
'I cannot,' wept the girl, 'nor do I wish to, Master!'
I turned her over and examined the knots on her wrists and ankles, and then put her again on her back. 'The knots are excellent,' I said. 'She has been securely bound. She is a well-tied slave. She cannot free herself.'
Callimachus then cried out with joy and went to Tasdron, whom he embraced. He then came to me and seized my hand, and then embraced me, too, weeping. 'My thanks,' said Callimachus. 'My thanks to you both!'
In his joy he had immediately tied the slave. He had waited not a moment longer than necessary to put her in his bonds. The practical and symbolic significance of binding the woman is, I gather, clear to all. It is a joyful, meaningful way of demonstrating power over the slave, and showing that she, in effect, belongs to you. It is a thrilling, exciting act for the master who binds, and for the helpless, dominated slave, who finds herself bound. 'He who ties a woman owns her,' is a Gorean saying. To be sure, strictly, a woman might find herself tied by a man who does not own her legally, but even in such a case, she will experience herself as being owned in a rather practical and significant sense, that sense, namely, in which she is completely at his mercy and under his control, that sense in which he may do with her as he pleases. Consider then the joy of binding when the master knows that he literally, and legally, owns the woman he binds; and she knows that she is the full and legal property, with no hope of escape or rescue, of the one who binds her.
Callimachus looked down at the bound slave. 'From the first instant I saw you,' he said, 'I wanted you as my slave.'
'And from the first instant I saw you, my Master!' cried the girl, looking up at him, 'I was your slave!'
And then he reached down and seized her and, holding her by the upper arms, before him, she unable to
