I could hear various folks outside the wagon, as the wagon now moved slowly. It seemed, now, too, to be moving on a level, on a wooden, planked surface. It sounded hollow beneath the wheels.
I realized, suddenly, that my knees were pressed closely together. That had occurred during, and I had kept them that way afterwards, the beating on the wagon of the woman, and her screaming. It had been a defensive gesture, bringing my knees together, tightly, because I was afraid. Perhaps, too, I supposed, just as a male might find the spreading of a female" s knees, appropriate, deferential or placatory, so, too, such a woman might prefer their closure, finding it respectful, or placatory. Perhaps she might be mollified to some extent by such an apparent modesty. I did not know. Still, looking down at me, I did not think she would be likely to be fooled by it. I did not think she would be stupid. She would probably know what I was, really. It was probably not hard to tell. Perhaps we were just different sorts of women. I did not know. I did realize that such women, in all their frustration and anger, would probably want me to be like them. That thought horrified me. I found it terrifying. It would be like going back to the sterilities, the barrenesses, the pathologies, of Earth. Tears formed in my eyes, in the hood. What was I to do? I recalled that Ulrick had told me that certain kinds of slaves, house slaves, "tower slaves," and such, whatever they were, might kneel with their knees together, but I had also been informed that I, and the other girls, were not such slaves. We were some other sort of slave, it seemed, though exactly what sort I was not perfectly clear. "Masters will teach you," had laughed Ulrick. For us, at any rate, for whatever sort of slave we were, the open-kneed position was commanded. Too, I felt that it was the one which was right for me, at least before me. I then decided that my best mode of action would be to pretend to be unsexual, and modest, before women such as she who had beaten on the side of the wagon but, when with men, and as they would undoubtedly require, kneel as I had been taught, placing myself shamelessly, vulnerably, deliciously, delightfully, happily at their feet. I felt the knee of the girl next to me touch my knee. She, too, I supposed, had been considering these matters. Doubtless I was not alone in my fears or concerns. She, too, was an Earth girl, Gloria. She was from Fort Worth, Texas. She had been put on the coffle before me. She had now spread her knees, the shameless slut! I then moved a bit to my left, toward the gate of the cage, and spread my own knees, doubtlessly just as shamelessly. It gave me great pleasure to do this. It was like an act of rebellion, or defiance, in my heart, to the woman who had beaten me on the wagon. To be sure, she, with her stick, could not see me. I would not have been so brave, doubtless, if she had been about. But I was now pleased to be again so kneeling. It was the way I was supposed to kneel, and it was the way I would kneel, I decided, even before free women, if a man were present, unless he ordered me to kneel differently. It was to men that I belonged, not women. Let them rant! Let them cry out with rage. I was proud to belong to men, to men such as those of this world! I would thus, rightfully, and joyously, kneel before them as what I was, a woman, and their slave. What was the problem of women such as she who had beaten on the wagon? Did she wish, in her heart, I wondered, that she, too, could kneel thusly, owned? Then I dismissed that thought as foolish, doubtlessly foolish. Not such a woman! Never such a woman! But them why was she so hostile? Did she that our service and beauty, our yielding to our hearts, lessened or demeaned her is some way? What a puzzling inference! What an absurd conclusion! What a grotesque mockery of thought that would be! Must all women be alike? Could there be legitimately only a single type of female, and that the grotesque projection of her own feminine insufficiencies, her misery and hatred? If anything, it seemed that our abjectness might have made her own status, presumably different than ours, seem even finer and more exalted. Perhaps she hated men and it was thus an insidious,half-understood way of attacking them, by attempting to spoil and ruin us, by trying to make us inert and like herself. The issues seemed complex. At any rate there seemed no objective justification for her trying to make us like her. What was so marvelous or desirable, really, about her unhappiness and harness, her cruelty and frustration, that we, lesser women, should find it preferable to love? Why did she so hate us? Did our nature, and softness, contradict her views, showing them false? Perhaps that was it, that she in some strange, almost incomprehensible way felt refuted by us, and our feelings, or threatened by us. Was it important for her, perhaps, in a war with men, perhaps in her graspings for power, I wondered, to maintain that she, in her hatred, ambition, envy and narrowness, stood for an entire sex? How ridiculous! But, if so, it was easier to understand how she might hate us so, for our very existence, and that of women like us, natural, loving women, subservient in the order of nature to masters, undermined her lies. How fearful it would be, I thought, if such a female, or such females, in all their hatred and frustration, should manage by lies, propaganda, misrepresentation, manipulation, distortion, chicanery and law, swiftly or gradually, perhaps almost unnoticeably, to bring about the ruination of the natural relationships between the sexes, to subvert the biotruths of an entire species, to impose their grotesque perversions, for their own purposes, on an entire world. Then I realized how little I knew, really, about that particular woman, doubtless a native of this world. My reflections were colored, in effect, by the pathologies of a far-off world. Her anger might have been motivated by so small a thing, but so natural a thing, as the interest that some man took in a woman such as we, and perhaps not in her. Who knew? It might be easier, then, I supposed, to be cruel to us than to him. perhaps he would have simply turned his back on her, walking away from her, ignoring her. Perhaps he would have cuffed her to silence. Who knew? I pulled a bit at the manacles which held my hands behind my back. my wrists were well locked in them. I had considered earlier how they were made for women, and that this seemed significant in this culture. In this culture it seemed that slavery, bondage such as mine, at least, was an essential ingredient, that it was unquestioned, or, if it had been questioned, that the questions had been resolved long ago, and in favor of the collar, that it was a matter of tradition institutionalized in its legal structures. Too, in this culture, where there were such men, I did not think there was any real danger of susceptibility to the debilitating, antibiological pathologies of Earth. I shuddered. In this culture, at least, women such as I had noting to fear, having everything to fear.