'Earlier,' I said, 'your master, when beside the couch, said something to you. What was it?'
'it is his desire,' she said, 'that you eat.'
I quickly left the couch and went to the small table, on which the tray reposed. I did not wish to displease Ligurious.
He was the sort of man who was to be obeyed, immediately and perfectly.
I loosened my robe and sat down, cross-legged, on the cushion before the table. I picked up a piece of the yellow bread.
'Oh, no, Mistress,' said the girl, putting out her hand.
'That is how men sit. We are women. We kneel.'
'I will sit,' I told her.
'Mistress understands, surely,' said the girl, in misery, 'that I must make reports to Ligurious, my master.'
'I will kneel,' I said.
'That is much more lovely,' said the girl, approvingly.
I then began to eat, kneeling. This posture, to be sure, though I do not think I would have admitted it to the girl, did strike me as being much more feminine than that which I had earlier adopted. Certainly, at least, it made me feel much more feminine. I wondered if there was a certain rightness to women kneeling. Certainly we look beautiful, kneeling. 'Me posture, too, at least if we are permitted to keep our knees closed, permits us a certain modest reserve with respect to our intimacies. Too, it is a position which one may assume easily and beautifully, and from which it is possible to rise with both beauty and grace. To be sure, the position does suggest not only beauty and grace but also submissiveness.
This thought troubled me. But then I thought that if women should be submissive, then, whatever might be the truth in these matters, such postures would be appropriate and natural for them. In any event, the posture did make me feel delicately and exquisitely feminine. I was somewhat embarrassed, to be sure, by these feelings. Then it suddenly seemed absurd to me that I should be embarrassed, or should feel guilty or ashamed, about these feelings. I think I then realized, perhaps for the first time, fully, the power of the conditioning devices to which I had been subjected. How strange, and pernicious, I thought, that a woman should be made to feel guilty about being feminine, truly feminine, radically feminine! What a tribute this was to the effectiveness of contemporary conditioning techniques! In the world from which I came sexuality was not an ingredient but an accessory. Here, on the other hand, I suspected, men and women were not the same.
Indeed, it seemed that here I would be expected to assume certain postures and attitudes, and genuinely feminine ones, perhaps merely because I was a woman. In this world it seemed that sexuality, and perhaps a deeply natural sexuality, was an ingredient, and not a mere accessory. It might lie at the very core of this world. An essential and ineradicable ele-red to be sexuality, with its basic distinctions between human beings, dividing them clearly into different sorts, into males and females. In a world such as this I realized that I might not only be permitted to express my natural, fundamental nature, but that I might be encouraged to do so. This was a world in which my femininity, whatever it was, and wherever it might lead, was not to be denied to me. I glanced at the whip on the wall. On this world, I suspected, I might even be given no choice but to be true to my sex, and fully. For a moment this made me angry.
Surely I had a right to frustrate and deny my sex if I wished. If I was afraid to be a woman, truly and fundamentally, with all that it might entail, surely I should not be forced to become one! Yet I knew that in my heart I felt a sudden, marvelous surge of hope, a sense of possible liberation, that I might here, on this world, be freed, even if I were placed in a steel collar, to be what I truly was, not merely a human being, but the kind of human being I actually was, a human female, a woman.
'Mistress' drink is cold,' said the girl. 'Let me have it reheated or fetch you a fresh one.'
'No,' I said. 'It is fine.' I lifted the small, handleless bowl he had used the word in two hands. I was excited that she had said 'fetch.' She was the sort of girl who might carry or fetch for a Master or a Mistress. 'Mistress,' said the girl. 'You are a woman. Drink more delicately.' I drank from the bowl.
'Yes, Mistress,' she said. 'That is more feminine.' I then realized, even more profoundly than before, bow deeply sexuality must characterize and penetrate this culture. The differences between men and women were to be expressed even in their smallest behaviors. What a significant and real thing it is in this culture to be a man or a woman.
'This is warmed chocolate,' I said, pleased. It was very rich and creamy. 'Yes, Mistress,' said the girl.
'It is very good,' I said.
'Thank you, Mistress,' she said.
'Is it from Earth?' I asked.
'Not directly,' she said. 'Many things here, of course, ultimately have an Earth origin. It is not improbable that the beans from which the first cacao trees on this world were grown were brought from Earth.'
'Do the trees grow near here?' I asked.
'No, Mistress,' she said. 'We obtain the beans, from which the chocolate is made, from Cosian merchants, who, in turn, obtain them in the tropics.' I put the chocolate down. I began to bite at the yellow bread. It was fresh. 'Perhaps Mistress should take smaller bites,' she said.
'Very well,' I said. I then began to eat as she had suggested. I was a woman. I was not an adolescent boy. Again, even in so small a thing as this, I began to feel my femininity keenly. Too, again, I became very sensitive of the depth and pervasiveness of the sexuality which might characterize this world. Men and women did not even eat in the same way.
'Exceptions can occur under certain circumstances, of course,' said the girl. 'Mistress might, for example, in the presence of a man she wishes to arouse, take a larger than normal bite from a fresh fruit, and look at the man over the fruit, letting juice, a tiny trickle of it, run at the side of her mouth.' 'But why would I wish to arouse a man?' I asked.
The girl looked at me, puzzled. 'Perhaps the needs of Mistress might be much upon her,' she said. 'Perhaps she might wish to be taken and overwhelmed in his arms, and forced to surrender to him.'
'I do not understand,' I said, as though horrified.
'That is because Mistress is free,' she said.
I had understood only too well, of course. But I was terrified to even think such thoughts.
'Slaves, I suppose, occasionally have recourse to such devices,' I said. I was eager to learn.
'A device such as that with the fresh fruit,' she said, 'is more appropriate to a free woman. We do have at our disposal, as slaves, however, a number and variety of begging signals, such things as groveling and moaning, and bringing bonds to him in our teeth, wherewith we may endeavor to call our needs to his attention.'
'Begging signals?' I said.
'We are at the complete mercy of our masters,' she said.
'Are the masters then kind to you?' I asked.
'Sometimes they consent to content us,' she said.
'How horrifying to be a slave,' I said.
'Yes, Mistress,' she said, putting her head down, smiling. I saw that, again, she was answering me in the fashion in which, doubtless, I wished to be answered, doubtless with deference to my dignity, status or freedom. Sorely then I envied her her collar. My feelings now began to alarm me. I decided that it would be safest to change the subject.
'Where are the spaceships?' I asked.
'Spaceships?' she asked.
'Yes,' I said.
'I do not know,' she said. 'I have never even seen one.'
'Oh,' I said.
'Has Mistress?' she asked.
'No,' I said. I gathered that Susan, like myself, had been brought to this world unconscious. We knew nothing, or almost nothing, of how we had come here. 'The people of this world have very little evidence,' she said, 'that such things even exist. The only evidence they have, for the most part, is that of certain objects brought from Earth.'
'Objects?' I asked.
