'Of course,' she said, 'for we are at the mercy of our Masters, in all things.'
'Yet you are not displeased to be a slave?' I asked.
'No,' she said.
'Why?' I asked.
'That we may, at our master's whim, be subjected to miseries or terrors, even to torture and death, if he wishes, makes clear to us that we are truly slaves, that we are truly owned, that the domination to which we are subject is truly total and absolute.'
'I see,' I said.
'We would not have it any other way,' she said.
'I see,' I said.
'but we know,' she said, 'that though we are in one sense fully without power, that in another sense we may do much to control the happiness and quality of our lives. We need, generally, only be absolutely obedient and fully pleasing.'
'That is generally true,' I admitted.
'Too,' she said, 'in bondage we find that we live our truth. How else could we be happy and fulfilled?'
'I do not know,' I said.
'And I think it is obviously true,' she said, 'that men desire us, treasure us, and love us, as well as command us, in ways that a free woman can never understand or know.'
'That is a secret between masters and slaves,' I smiled.
'Perhaps,' she laughed. 'But I doubt that it is a well-kept secret or free women would not hate us so!'
'Perhaps,' I smiled.
'There are risks in all comditions,' she said. 'Free persons, men at least, for example, if need be, are expected to accept great hazards on behalf of their cities. That is not expected of slaves.'
'That is true,' I said. Slaves, like kaiila and furniture, being properties, were not expected to participate in municipal defense. To be sure, they might be ordered to strenghten walls and reinforce gates, and such.
She put her arms about my neck, and kissed me. 'Suppose you were a conqueror and found me in a burning city,' she whispered. 'You would not be likely to slay me, would you?'
'No,' I said.
'You would make me yours,' she said. 'You would tie me to the stirrup of your kaiila. You would make me march in your plunder column.'
'You might be harnessed to a wagon, to help draw loot,' I said.
'Yes, master,' she whispered. 'But I would be alive.'
'Slavery is sometimes accorded to free prisoners,' I said. 'This is particularly the case with free women who, when stripped, are found desireable enough for the collar,' This may be done in various ways. Normally, a free woman, unceremoniously, is simply enslaved. She deserves no consideration, whatsoever. She is a femal of an enemy city. Accordingly, she belongs at the feet of the conquerer, with other spoils. A warrior may secure such women with devices so simple as thumb-cuffs, like tiny, jointed rings, and snap-lock, or pronged, tension-closed, nose-rings, with strands of wire, to fasten them togeter.
The material for securing ten women, in such cases, fits into a corner of the warrior's pack and weighs no more than a few ounces. If the cities are long-time hereditary enemies snap-lock, or pronged, tension-closed, earrings might be used instead of nose-rings, as a gesture of contempt, a pierced ear, or ears, on Gor, culturally, commonly, being regarded as the mark of the lowest, the most sensous and the most despicable of slaves. To be perfectly honest, however, ear piercing for Gorean slaves is now much more common than it was a few years ago. Perhaps the time will come when the slave will be a rarity who has not felt the two thrusts of the leather-worker's needle. The growing prevelance of ear piercing probably has to do, at least singificantly, with its tendency to stimulate the sexual aggression of the Gorean male. Accordingly, girls with pierced ears, 'pierced-ear girls,' tend to bring higher prices in the markets. Slavers, thus, prior to putting their properties on the block, are more and more inclined to have this done to them.
Some girls, knowing how desirable this can make them, beg their master to have their ears pierced. The piercing of the ears is not only symbolic and aesthetic to the master and the slave but it can be tactually arousing, as well, playing with the earring, the girl feeling it brush the inside of her cheek or neck, and so on. Sometimes, however, the free woman in a captured city is not, say, simply stripped, thrown down and tied, later to be turned over to an iron master for the searing kiss of his white-hot metal. Sometimes, rather, she, stripped, and presented before officers, is offered the choice between sift, honorable decapitation and slavery. If she chooses slavery, she may be expected to step onto a submission mat, and kneel there, head down, enter a slave pen of her own accord, or, say, fully acknowledging herself a slave, belly to an officer, kissing his feet.
The question is sometimes put to her in somewhat the following fashion. 'If you are a free woman, speak your freedom and advance, now, to the headsman's block, or, if you are truly a slave, and have only been masquerading until now as a free woman, step now, if you wish, upon the mat of submission and kneel there, in this act becomming at last, explicitly, a legal slave.' She is the expected, sometimes, kneeling, to like the feet of a soldier, who then rapes her on the mat. It is commonly regarded as an acceptable introduction for a woman to her explicit and legal slavery.
'But what does such a woman know?' laughed Mira. 'They are ignorant.'
'Perhpas on such as yourself might be set to their training,' I said.
'I would make them learn quickly,' she laughed.
'Your mood now,' I said, 'seems lighter.'
'Yes,' she said. 'Thank you, Master.'
I kissed her.
'It is so ironical,' she laughed.
'What?' I asked.
'How I at one time so hated slaves and now have never been so happy as when I am a slave myself!'
'No longer do you hate them,' I said.
'No,' she said, 'for now I am, too, a slave.'
'And no longer do you envy them either,' I said.
'It is not necessary for me to envy them any longer that they are slaves,' she said, 'for that is a condition which I, too, now, helplessly share.'
'Then you no longer envy them?' I asked.
'But I do,' she laughed,' and since I so despised them and held thim in such contempt before, this seems now doubly amusing!'
'I do not understand,' I said.
'How laughable and delicious would the little collared chits find it that I, who so scorned them, am not only now,too, a slave, but a low slave, one with only a leather collar, one not even permitted clothing, a cheap, inexpensive slave, thousands of pasangs from civilization, a meaningless slave in the wild grasslands east of the Thentis mountains, one of so little worth that she may even serve as naked bait for tarns!'
'In silk, and a golden collar, and taught the lascivious, movements of pleasure slaves, you might bring a good price, even in the cities,' I said.
'Thank you, Master,' she said.
'It is the girls in the cities, I take it,' I said, 'those of the sorts with whom you were familiar as a free woman, that you envy.'
'Yes,' she said.
'Those girls whom you so scorned before?' I asked.
'Yes,' she said. 'Now, laughably, I must look up to them, for they are higher than I.'
'It is amusing, I suppose,' I said.
'As a free woman,' she said, 'never did I suspect that one day I might actually aspire, from a far lower slavery, to wear such a tunic and collar and, like them, so helpless and subservient, serve in a city.'
'These things are relative,' I said.
'Now such a thing is beyond my reach,' she said, 'unless a master should grant it to me.'
'Yes,' I said, 'for now you are a slave.'
'You see now,' she smiled, 'why it is that I envy such slaves.'
