'No, Master,' she said.
'or the slave other than a slave,' I said.
'No, Master,' she said.
I kissed her, gently.
'You do feel some tenderness for me,' she said. 'I am a woman. I can tell!'
'Perhaps it will be necessary, after all, tonight, to whip you,' I said.
'No, Master,' she said. 'Please, no!'
'Do not expect affection,' I said. 'Expect, rather, Slave, only to serve your master with total perfection.'
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'And even if a master, some master, sometime, should be moved to feel some tenderness, or a bit of affection, doubtlessly foolishly, toward you, remember that it changes nothing, that you remain only what you are, a slave.'
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'Even the most loved slave,' I said, 'should a master be so foolish as to love a slave, remains, in the end, and do not forget it, radically, and only a slave.'
'Yes, Master,' she said.
I kissed her again, softly.
'You can do anything with us, can't you?' she asked. 'It depends only on your will.'
'Yes,' I said.
'Do not put me out of the tether again, Master,' she begged. 'Keep me for only silken work. I will endeavor with all my heart to be a most perfect and pleasing slave.'
'Is this she who was once the lofty Lady Mira who speaks,' I asked, 'she who was once the proud free woman of Venna?'
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'And is now naught but an abject slave?'
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'Your will is nothing,' I said. 'It will be done with you, totaly, as masters please.'
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'Perhaps you understand now,' I said, 'a little better than before, what it is to be a slave.'
'Yes, my master,' she said. She laughed, ruefully.
'What is wrong?' I asked.
'I was thinking of when I was a free woman,' she said. 'How contemptuous I was of the slave girls in the cities, how I scorned them, and despised them, so helpless in their lowly, silken slaveries, and yet, now, how I envy them their slaveries!'
I smiled.
'What lucky, soft little thngs they are,' she said, 'being sold naked off sales blocks to the whips and chains of strong masters, with little more to worry about than the heat of the kitchens, the steaming water of the laudering tubs, the dangers, from young, prowling ruffians, of shopping in the evening! How warm and safe they are locked in their kennels at night or cuddling, in furs, chained at the foot of their masters' couches! What need have they to fear sleen and tarns! They need fear only thier masters!'
'The lot of a slave girl in the cities is not always easy,' I said. 'Most are owned by one master, alone, and must share his compartments with him, in complete privacy. There, as slave girls elsewhere, they are at the master's mercy, completely.'
'It is not so different in the Barrens,' she said, 'when one is alone with the master, when the lodge flaps are tied shut, from the inside.'
'Perhaps not,' I smiled.
'And in the cities,' she said, 'it is so beautiful, the towers, the bridges and sunsets, the people, the flower stalls, the market places, the smells of cooking.'
'Yes,' I said, 'the cities are beautiful.' Some of the most beautiful cities I had seen were on Gor.
'I lived in Ar for a year,' she said. 'Not far from my apartments there was a pastry shop. Marvelous smells used to come from the shop. In the evening, when the shop was closing, slave girls, in their brief tunics and collars, would come and kneel down, near the hinged opening to the open-air counter. The baker, who was a kind-hearted man, would sometimes come out and, from a flat sheet, throw them unsold pastries.
I said nothing.
How amusing I found that at the time,' she said. 'But too, I sometimes wondered if the pastries I bought at that shop tasted so good to me as those the girls had begged did to them. They seemed so delighted to receive one. It was so precious to them.'
I said nothing.
'If I were a slave in Ar,' she said, 'and I were permitted to do so, I think I shold go to that pastry shop and, in my tunic and collar, knel there with the other girls, hoping that I, too, might receive such a pastry.'
I smiled. How beautiful she was, and how helpless, a slave.
'In street shopping,' she said, 'I was always heavily veiled. The backer would not recongnize me.'
'Perhaps some of the other girls were former customers as well,' I said.
'Perhaps,' she smiled. 'That is an interesting thought.'
'The transition between a free woman and a slave girl can occur suddenly on Gor,' I said.
'I am well aware of that, Master,' she smiled. Somtimes a girl is captured in her own bed, raped and hooded, and carried to a market, all in the same night.
'But, on the whole,' she said, 'how I scorned slaves, how I hated them!'
'Oh?' I asked.
'Do you know the slaves I hated the most, those I most despised?' she asked.
'No,' I said.
'The pleasure slaves!' she said. 'How I hated them! They were so beautiful and desirable! Sometimes I would take a whip into the streets and deliberately jostle one, and then make her lie down and whip her across the legs!'
'The same thing, now, could be done to you,' I said.
'I know,' she said.
'Why did you hate them so?' I asked.
'They were lucky enough to be in a collar, and not me!' she said.
'It seems, then,' I said, 'that you hated them because you were jealous of them, that, in reality, you envied them.'
'Yes,' she said, 'I was jealous of their beauty and desirablity. Ienvied them their happiness.'
'Did you know this as a free woman?' I asked.
'Yes,' she said, 'but I do not think that I would have freely admitted it.'
'Deceit is freedom of free women,' I said.
'But it is not a freedom permitted to slave girls, is it, Master?' she asked.
'No,' I said.
'Every woman, in her heart,' she said, 'longs to kneel before a stong man, to be subject to his whip, to be owned, to be mastered, to know that she has no chice but to give him total love and service.'
'The master will not permit the girl to give him less than everytihng.'
'And the slave desires to give the master everything,' she said, 'and more.'
'Are you happy,' I asked, 'being a slave?'
'Yes, Master,' she said. 'I have never been so happy before in my life.'
'You are now in your place in nature,' I said.
'Yes, my Master,' she said. She kissed me.
'No longer, now,' I said, 'do you need to envy slave girls.'
'No longer do I envy them their slavery,' she said, 'for now I, too, and a slave. In my bondage I am rich and favored as they.'
'But surely,' I said, 'you are aware of the miseries and terrors which may occasionally characterize the lot of female slaves.'
