"I wish to speak to someone," said the girl on the end, addressing a slaver's man who was passing them. He stopped, surprised that she had dared to speak.
"Send someone to me who is in authority who speaks English," she demanded.
He cuffed her. "Be silent," he said to her, in Gorean. The girl had been struck back in her chains. She seemed utterly startled. Her eyes were wide. She put her fingers to her mouth. There was blood there.
"He hit me," she said. "He hit me."
The girls looked about themselves, frightened. The girl in the brief shorts, the blond on the other end, knelt back, making herself small.
"He hit me," said the girl who had been struck. There was a strange, frightened look in her eye. She looked after the man, and then looked again to the other girls.
"Yes," whispered the girl in the torn red pull-over, shrinking back in her chains.
The girl who had been struck again looked after the fellow who had cuffed her. There was a look in her eyes which was akin to awe. Then again they looked at one another, frightened. I gathered they had never seen a girl cuffed before. It might be done, they realized, to any one of them.
The girl in denim shorts, whom I would have originally thought would have been the least frightened of her native sexuality, looked at the others. "What if they make us kiss them?" she asked. "What will we do?"
"Kiss them," said the girl in the torn red pull-over.
"Do you think they will want anything like that?" asked the dark-haired girl in the plaid flannel shirt.
"Who knows what they will want," said the girl in the pull-over.
"We have rights!" said the blond girl in the shorts.
"Do we?" asked the girl in the red pull-over. She seemed the most feminine of all.
The girls were silent for a time. Then one spoke, the girl in the shorts. "What sort of prisoners are we?" she asked.
"Let us hope," said the girl in the red pull-over, "that we are just prisoners."
"I do not understand," said the girl in the shorts. "What else might we be?"
"Can you not guess?" asked the girl in the red pull-over.
"No," said the blond girl, in the brief shorts, frightened.
"Perhaps we are slaves," said the girl in the red pull-over.
"Don't joke," said the blond girl, aghast.
The girl in the red pull-over shrugged and looked away.
"Please don't joke," whispered the blond girl. The girl in the red pull-over did not respond to her.
I considered the slaves. The fact that the blond had worn shorts and had tied her shirt as she had made it clear to me that she was willing to display her body. From this I would have originally thought that she might have been the least frightened of her sexuality. I now understood that she, in spite of her attire, deeply feared her native drives. Indeed, perhaps she had dressed as she did to try to convince herself, and others, that she did not fear them. Her behavior, however, made manifest the nature of her terror. Doubtless she had sensed in her dreams, and in inadvertent moments, what men might do to her. But that she had displayed her body as she did, even in compensation for her fears, which she would scarcely admit to herself, indicated the strength of the drives against which she fought. She had dressed her body as a challenge to men, though she feared them. Her mode of dress suggested powerful drives, which might, by a master, be well exploited. It was interesting to note that the garb of both the blond and the girl in the red pull-over were variations of the uniform of male imitation; the blond wore the uniform. except that she altered it to brazenly display that it was she, actually a female, and an attractive one, who wore it. The garb of the dark-haired girl, the black slacks of some synthetic material and the soft, red pull-over, was also a variation from the conformist raiment of the two girls on the end. She wore pants, of course, for slacks are a form of pants, and her garments, in general, were body-concealing; these features they had in common with the male-imitation garb of the two girls on the end; on the other hand the slacks were not as body concealing as they might have been for they were cut, actually, subtly, in such a way as to betray her figure; the soft pull-over, too, would leave no doubt as to her femininity, particularly now that her masters had removed her brassiere from her. The slacks, I conjectured, were custom tailored. She had probably been rich. She was now a slave. The blond girl, I would have conjectured, would have been from the middle class. She, too, now, was a slave. Both girls were now identical, only slaves. The fact that the dark-haired girl had worn the garments she did suggested that she had felt, for some time, her femininity, though doubtless it had never been adequately exploited on Earth. She would have lived in unfulfilled frustration. Her garments, in their own way, like those of the blond girl, suggested that she, too, had deep feminine drives. She seemed more honestly to recognize them than the blond girl. I did not know which of them would have the deepest, richest sexuality. Both, I conjectured, would be prizes. I had little doubt the dark-haired girl would come most quickly to lick her chains. The other two girls, I felt, were far behind their chain sisters. They were still, in effect, almost imitation boys. It might take months for them to suddenly, in the throes of the female slave orgasm, become true women.
Another slaver's man walked past them. They shrank back.
I wondered if these girls had been in the same shipment as the girl I had met in the house of Samos. I supposed at one time each, unconscious, had worn locked on her left ankle the steel identification anklet of the Kur slaver. They wore now, as it was easy to see, only rounded ankle rings. Their feet were all bare, of course. Slavers do not put chains or bonds over stockings; similarly, if wrists are to be chained or bound, gloves would be removed; bonds are not placed over clothing. Gorean slave girls, incidentally, almost always go barefoot; it is a rare girl, and a high girl, who is permitted sandals. I looked again at the four girls. Earth-girl slaves, thanks to the raids of Kur slavers, are not as rare on Gor as they used to be. Earth girls are thought to make superb slaves. Gorean men will pay for them. Earth-girl names, incidentally, are thought of on Gor as slave names. Even many slave girls of Gorean origin wear them. That Earth-girl names are thought of on Gor as slave names is an indication of the regard in which Gorean men hold Earth girls. They are thought to be natural slaves. I believe, incidentally, that this hypothesis is true. She is not herself until she wears a collar and kneels at the feet of a master.
I turned away from the girls, for I had become hungry. I would eat at one of the public restaurants set up in the district of the fair.
I had considered buying the two girls on the end, those on the chain's left, as I faced it, the blond and the dark-haired girl in the red pull-over, but I decided against it. They were not yet broken in, and I felt my men might kill them. Both girls I felt had an amazing potentiality, even beyond that of most Earth girls, for being superb slaves. It would be unfortunate if this potentiality were to be rudely terminated while they thrashed, bound, in the canals under the teeth of urts.