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"I see," I said.

"Other girls, too," she said, "must sense this sort of thing."

"Perhaps," I said.

"Do not men have some sense of what sort of girl would be their perfect slave?" she asked.

"Some girls are surely more attractive and desirable than others," I said, "and clearly this is not a simple function of physical appearance. Indeed, some rather plain girls are, for no reason that is clear to me, tormentingly attractive, intensely desirable."

"There is no simple answer," she said.

"No," I said, "I do not think so."

"Is it not true," she laughed, "that all men want a woman who will bring them their slippers in her teeth?"

"Sandals," I corrected her.

"Sandals," she laughed.

"Yes," I said, "every man wants such a woman."

"And a slave girl must," she said.

"If the master so instructs her," I said. "Of course."

"All men want," she laughed, "is a girl panting in their arms."

"Surely more than that," I said. "Any girl can be made to pant in a manes arms," I pointed out.

"That is true," she said, bitterly. She was slave. She knew she could be forced to yield to any man.

"What is it that you are trying to say?" I asked.

"You could not easily delineate for me your criteria for the perfect slave," she said, "nor I to you my criteria for the perfect master. Indeed, one might be a perfect slave to one master and not to another, as one might be the perfect master to one slave and not to another."

"Go on," I told her.

"But we both sense," she said, "that there would be a rightness, or rightnesses, about such matters."

"Perhaps," I said.

"I think I would know my perfect master as soon as his eyes met mine," she said.

"I doubt it," I said.

"I would certainly know," she said, "that it might well be he."

"Perhaps," I granted.

"Too," she said, "I suspect that you generally have little difficulty in picking from a line of chained girls those who are of the most interest to you."

"That is true," I smiled. "But such difficulties, even should they occur, are, of course, not intolerable."

"Beast," she said. "But my point, Master, if I may be permitted to continue to speak, is that both of us would sense rightnesses, fittingnesses, matches, agrecabiities. complementarities, in such matters."

"Of course," I said. Then I said, "Ah yes, your point is an interesting one."

"Yes," she said. "Suppose that a woman is, as I am, a natural slave."

"Yes," I said, "the buying and the selling."

"A girl will often have many masters, will she not?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "A comely girl may change hands many times."

"And a master, of course," she said, "is likely to own, from month to month, or year to year, several different girls."

"Yes," I said. Most Gorean masters could not afford more than one girl. The price obtained on one, of course, can be applied to the purchase of the next. In this sense, after the initial investment, provided one both sells and buys, girls are cheap.

"A man, too," she said, "buys women who are attractive to him. It is harder for the woman, but she, too, at times, is in a position to influence her sale. She will try to appear more beautiful and pleasing to the man she wishes to buy her than to one she does not wish to buy her."

"The slaver will take her hide off with the whip if he catches her at it," I said. "Too," I said, "at a public auction that sort of thing is difficult or impossible."

"Yes," said Audrey, "in a public auction, as I understand it, a woman is completely at the mercy of the men."

"Your point is an excellent one," I said. "If women are true slaves, and men are true masters, and slave exchanges are frequent, there is a resonable chance that a man may find his choice slave, and a girl her choice master."

"Or perfect slave and master," she whispered.

"Yes," I said.

The bliss of many slave girls now seemed less puzzling to me. First, as girls, natural slaves, they were in a relationship to which, in effect, they were bred by nature, that of the submitting organism in an ancient biological complementarity of male and female; female slavery is but the cultural institutionalization, the expression and perfection, to be expected in conscious, intelligent organisms, intent upon remaining true to nature, rather than violating it, of the male's control and ownership of his female. Man owns woman by nature; in a complex society, and in a world with property rights and laws, female slavery, as a legalized fact, is to be expected; it will occur in any society in which touch is kept with the truths of nature. Gorean law, of course, is complex and latitudinous on these matters. For example, many women are free, whether wisely or desirably or not, and slavery is not always permanent for a slave girl. Sometimes a girl, winning love, is freed, perhaps to bear the children of a former master. But the freedom of a former slave girl is always a somewhat tenuous thing. Her thigh still bears the brand. And, should her ears be pierced, it is almost certain she will, sooner or later, be re-enslaved. It is hard for men to leave a woman who can be a good slave girl free. She will always dread that in the night men will come again for her, hooding her, carrying her to a distant city, to be again put on the block of a steaming market, that once again her throat will be encircled by a steel collar and that she will kneel at the feet of a new master. Slavery also, of course, encompasses the ownership of male slaves, for which there is less precedent in nature. Where males are concerned the institution is primarily economic. The labor of male slaves is useful and cheap. It is applied in such places as the quarries, the roads, the great farms, in certain types of cargo galleys, on the wharves, at the walls of cities and in the forests. Male slaves are usually debtors or criminals; sometimes they are captives, taken in actions against enemy cities or facilities; sometimes they have merely accrued the displeasure of powerful men or families; some slavers, working in gangs, specialize in the capture of free men for work projects; they obtain a fee per head on a contractual basis.

The second reason for the bliss of many slave girls, that sequent upon the appropriateness of bondage for the beautiful woman itself, her female joy in being made to be true to herself, slave, was that, given the flesh transactions in a given city, sooner or later, masters tended to find girls who were, from their point of view, superb slaves, apd girls tended to find men who were, from their point of view, marvels as masters. It is a beautiful moment when the woman realizes that the man who owns her is her love master, and the man realizes that the girl he bought, looking up at him, tears in her eyes, is his love slave.

Then the only danger is that he will weaken. One must be strong with a love slave. If one truly loves her, he will be that strong. The slavery in which a love slave is kept is an unusually deep slavery. She must serve him with a perfection which would stun and startle other girls; if she should fail in any way, even in so small a way that the lapse would be overlooked in the case of another wench, or bring perhaps a mild word of reprimand, she is likely to be tied at the slave ring and whipped; there is a good reason for this; she is, you see, a love slave; no woman can be more in a man's power; and with no woman must he be stronger.

Too, of course, if a relationship should weaken, or not prove enduringly satisfactory, the girl is simply put in cuffs and taken to a market.

The relationship which does not prove satisfactory is soon terminated. This termination is completely in the power of the master.

"Enough discussion," I said. "Let us have you."

"Yes, have me, Master," she whispered. Her lips met mine, eagerly.

"You are a highly intelligent slave," I said, "Audrey."

"Thank you, Master," she said.

"You have been instructive to me," I said. "I am pleased by this."