it is he, and not she, who holds the whip. It is she who, in the end, must kneel at the feet of a master, completely at his mercy, her will, in the final analysis, nothing. It is she who, in the end, in the final analysis, is owned, and must please, absolutely.
'Master is still looking at me,' she said.
'Be quiet!' I said. I had heard a noise.
Cautiously I crawled to the larger of the two openings in the ceiling of the pit.
'It is an urt,' I said, 'curious. It has now gone away.'
I returned to my place.
It can be nerve-racking, waiting in the pit. In our hours in the pit we had had several occasions for concern. Twice we had heard the single note of the fleer from Cuwignaka, signaling the passage, overhead, of flighted ones, the Kinyanpi. Once a tabuk, a prairie tabuk, tawny in the Barrens, singlehorned, gasellelike, had grazed nearby. It had browsed within feet of us. In a sense this had pleased me, suggesting that our quarry might be in the vicintity; in a sense it had displeased me, suggesting that abundant, alternative game might also be in the vicinity, the tabuk tending to travel in herds. Some varieties of prarire tabuk, interestingly, when sensing danger, tend to lie down. This is counterinstinctual for most varieties of tabuk, which, when sensing danger, tend to freeze, in a tense, standing position and then, if alarmed further, tend to scurry away, depending on their ability and speed to escape predators. The standing position, of course, as it is the case with bipedalian creatures, tends to increase their scanning range. The response disposition of lying down, apparently selected for in some varieties of tabuk, tends to be useful in an enviroment in which high grass is plentiful and one of the most common predators depends primarily on vision to detect and locate its prey. This predator, as would be expected, normally attacks from a direction in which is shadow does not precede it. Any tabuk, of course, if it is sufficiently alarmed, will bound away. It can attain short-term speeds of from eighty to ninety pasangs an Ahn. Its evasive leaps, in the gorean gravity, can cover fromthirty to forty feet in length, and attain heights of ten to fifteen feet. Once we had heard two notes of the fleer, but, that time, as it had turned out, the source of the signal had not been Cuwignaka but, to our frustration, an actual fleer.
I sat back, against the rear of the pit.
I looked at the hobbling log, to my left, and the rope attached to it, coiled atop it. I looked to the walls of the pit, to the ceiling, with the poles and sod, and at the light, filtering downward into the pit, and then again I looked at my naked slave.
How shamelessly she lay before me!
Surely she knew how she lay before me. She lay before me as a curvaceous slave before her master.
I forced myself to look away from her. I counted several Ehn. Idly, in the dirt, beside me, I traced designs. Then I discovered they were cursive Kegs, the common Kajira sign, sometimes called the staff and fronds, that sign which marks the thigh of so many enslaved Gorean beauties.
I looked back at the girl.
'Do I distract you?' she asked.
'No,' I said, angrily.
'Oh,' she said.
She squirmed a little, apparently merely to change her position.
I made an angry noise.
'Master?' she asked.
'It is nothing,' I said.
'Oh,' she said.
I observed how her toes were pointed, this curving her calves deliciously. Her belly, too, was sucked in a bit, accentuating the loveliness of her breasts and the flare of her hips. How lasciviously, how desirably, she lay before me, and yet with what seeming indifference, with what a seeming innocence, with what a seeming lack of awareness! she sighed, and smiled, and looked away. How inadvertently she had seemed to do that. The she- sleen! I clenched my fists. She knew ell what she was doing. She lay before me with te lascivious, apparent nonchalance of a slave who, supposedly unaware, knows well that her master's eyes are upon her.
'Master?' she asked.
'Rest,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said, and smiled. 'If master should desire aught, let his slave be summoned. She will respond with instant and perfect obedience.'
'It is well,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
She then closed her eyes, pretending to sleep.
I regarded her. I could not take my eyes from her. I owned her. Well was I pleased that she had fallen to my leather.
She opened her eyes, and smiled.
'Rest,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said, and again pretended to sleep. There was a tiny smile about the corner of her lips. How shamelessly she lay before me, and yet with what an apparent lack of awareness!
The she-sleen was cunning, and delicious. Well did she knw what she was doing to me. I looked away from her and began to sweat. Again I clenched my fists. I must not permit myself to be diverted from the business of the day.
I looked back upon the slave.
She again closed her eyes, pretending again to sleep. She squirmed a little, and made a tiny noise, as though in weariness. I saw that she expeced to conquer.
'Slave,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'You do not seem to be sleepy,' I observed.
'No, Master,' she said.
'But it does not matter, whether you are or not,' I said.
'No, Master,' she said.
'For you are a slave,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'Slave,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'Crawl to me on your belly,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said, smiling.
'Now kneel before me,' I said, 'with your knees wide, with your wrists crossed behind you, touching, as though bound.'
'Yes, Master,' she said. She was then before me, in a posture of my dictation, and, as it is said, bound by my will.
I withdrew an object from my pouch.
'Master?' she said.
I held the object before her. She regarded it with dismay. 'I have alread chewed the sip root within the moon,' she said.
'Open your mouth,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
I then thrust the object into her mouth.
'Chew it well,' I said, 'and swallow it, bit by bit.'
She grimaced, at the barest taste of the object.
'Begin,' I told her.
She began.
'Not so quickly,' I told her. 'More slowly. Very slowly. Very, very slowly. Savor it well.
She whimered in obedience.
She did not need the sip root, of course, for, as she had pointed out, she had had some within the moon, and, indeed, the effect of sip root, in the raw state, in most women, is three or four moons. In the consentrated
