"I will never get in such a thing!" cried Ila. "Never!"
Then the lash, from behind her, fell upon her, and she sank crying out, reaching behind her, sobbing, to her knees, and then, with the next blow, was flung by its force to her belly in the dirt before the man. Thrice there in the dirt was she struck, writhing and sobbing, begging forgiveness. Then, on her hands and knees, swiftly, at a gesture, she crawled, poked by sharp sticks, hastened by the cry "Quickly, she-tarsk!" to the first of the low, narrow cages and scrambled, weeping, within it. She was a large girl, and formidable to us, except perhaps to Gloria, but, compared to the men, she was only another female, no different from us. Compared to them, her size and strength, really only that of a woman, was, like ours, when all was said and done, simply negligible. Compared to them she was, like us, simply small and weak. Before them, and to them, she could never be any more than we, only another female, small, lovely and helpless, a mere female, totally at their mercy. We looked swiftly, wildly at one another and, in these swiftly exchanged glances, I think, honestly, there was pleasure as well as fear. We were pleased that the insolent Ila, often so pretentious and lofty with us, had been put immediately and sternly, to her instruction and anguish, in her place, that of a female slave, like us. We were glad the men had taken the action they had. We had been reassured by it. In it we had had a demonstration of their firmness and power, of the meaningfulness and reality of their mastery. It had served, too, to remind us all, graphically, of what we all were, women, and slaves, and that we were subject, as such, to them. The insolence of Ila, too, was an embarrassment to us, and, in its way, a reflection on us, and our sex. To be sure, we were also afraid. We did not wish her behavior to draw down the wrath of the men on us all. We were not eager to share the lash with her. We now saw Ila in the cage, her fingers hooked in the mesh, looking out. Her eyes were frightened. In them, too, there was grievous pain. She was a lashed slave. The rest of us then, quickly, at gestures, hurried to the cages, dropped to all fours, and entered them. Two cages sufficed us all.
I sat on the long, heavy, wooden platform, raised about a foot from the dirt, one of several in this exposition area, in this annex to the sales barn, naked, my feet tucked back, near my left thigh, my ankles crossed, my left hand on my left ankle, my weight muchly on the palm of my right hand, on the bench. A chain was on my neck, an individual chain. It was about five feet long. It ran from a ring set in the platform to my collar. On the upper portion of my left breast something was written, inscribed there with a grease pencil. I had heard that it was the number "89." I could not read it. It was my lot number.
"Out, out, hurry!" had said the man this morning, pounding with his pointed stick on the linked, metal mesh of the cage" s roof. We had mostly backed out, for the cages were narrow, and then remained there, in the dirt, in the gray light of the early morning, on all fours. During the morning and afternoon of the day before, when we had first arrived in Market of Semris, after we were caged, other wagons had arrived, and unloaded their own fair occupants, they, too, in short order, to be caged. Still later that afternoon some groups of small, fat, grunting, bristly, brindled, shaggy-maned, hoofed, flat-snouted, rooting animals had been herded in, also with pointed sticks, and they, too, had been guided into identical cages. We had looked out of our cage, our fingers hooked in the mesh, to other cages, some of them with girls in them, some with the fat, flat-snouted, grunting, short-legged, brindled quadrupeds.
"Those are tarsks," said one of the Gorean girls.
I nodded.
They were not to be sold that night, however, I had gathered. We had learned that that night tarsks were not to be sold, not «four-legged» tarsks, at any rate. I recalled the other footprints we had seen in the dirt, left over, probably, from the day before, those smaller, lovelier, daintier, high-arched prints, doubtless those of girls. I did not know where they were. I would later learn that they were in the exposition area, on the platforms, where we, the next day, would find ourselves. The day in the cage had been warm, and the night, too, had not been unpleasant, but, toward morning, it had cool. Happily it had not rained. I shivered. I was glad to be out of the cage, moving now, on my hands and knees, in the dirt, across the courtyard. I had not yet been given clothing on this planet. We had had, however, in the house where I had been trained, blankets in our kennels.
"Stop," had said our herder, he with the stick. "Wait."
We had come to a long, narrow, wooden, calked, semicircular tanklike container, about two feet wide and ten feet long, half buried in the dirt, its forward edge reached by a low ramp. It was filled with a dark fluid. Here we had to wait while a group of fifteen tarsks, one by one, herded up the ramp, plunged into the fluid and swam to the other side where, scrambling out of the container, they shook themselves, and hastened down the descent ramp.
"Now you two-legged tarsks," said the man, waving toward the container with his stick.
We shuddered. None of us, I am sure, cared to enter that dark fluid.
"Do not swallow the fluid," he said.
We looked at one another, from our hands and knees. We would be sure not to do so. We needed no encouragement in the matter. Clearly it would not be simple water.
"You, first, two-legged tarsk," he said to Ila.
"Yes, Master!" she said, hastening to obey, hurrying up the ramp on all fours and plunging into the dark fluid. In an instant she was in the center of the container. A little past that point, one of the men, reaching over the side of the structure, thrust her head under the fluid. Then, in a moment, she was scrambling out of the container.
"Stay on your feet," she was told.
"Yes, Master," she said, now at the foot of the descent ramp, shivering, holding her arms about herself. Ila, we noted, to our satisfaction, was now properly deferential. Too, she was quick to obey. It seemed she had learned her lesson yesterday, that she was, like us, a woman and a slave. As she had been the first into the first cage yesterday, and we had had, for the most part, to back out of the narrow enclosures, it was natural that she had been at the head of our group this morning. i, for what it was worth, whether it was meaningful or not, whether it was a tribute to my beauty, or an indication of my assumed esthetic inferiority to the others, or a matter of accident, of simple happenstance or original positioning, with no significance, or height or whatever, was again at the end of the group. To be sure, I was neither the tallest nor the shortest of the group. One of the Gorean girls, Tutina, was smaller than I. It was, thus, I think, only an accident in its way, at least with respect to what was going on this morning, that Ila had been chosen to be the first to enter the fluid. The man had not even seemed to remember that she had been refractory, or resistant, the day before. He was thus kindly, I think, letting her begin again. I plunged from the incline of the ramp, from my hands and knees, into the dark liquid, on my belly, as had the others before me, and the tarsks before them. I was suddenly almost totally immersed. I cried out, sputtering, raising my head. It was shockingly cold. It seemed foul. My head went under again and again I desperately raised it. I then had my feet under me, and stood up, the fluid about my waist. I was then, by a man" s hand in my hair, pulled from my feet forward, and again into the liquid. It was stinging my eyes and nose. My eyes were filled with them. I could barely see. I thrashed forward and then, wildly, reaching about, seized the side. I pulled myself, then, clinging to the side, the fluid swirling about my neck, toward the other end. Apparently they wanted us well immersed. At the center point a man seized me by the hair and, to my acute distress, forced my head under the fluid, for a terrible second or two, and then released me. I then, moving forward, getting my feet under me, climbed stumbling, falling, splashing, up the end of the container, and pulled myself, at last, gratefully, onto the descent ramp. In a moment I was standing with the others, in the dirt, in the open courtyard, near the foot of the descent ramp. I was freezing. My teeth were chattering. I held my hands about myself, trembling with cold.
"This way," said the man.
Hurriedly we followed him. I looked about. I wondered if the others could possibly be as miserable as I was. I was extremely sensitive to cold, and to feelings of almost all sorts. I wondered if one of the criteria for selecting a woman for slavery might be her tactile sensitivity. I myself, I know, am extremely sensitive to such things as textures, for example, the feel of silk or leather, or a manacle, on my body. It is sometimes almost as though my entire skin was a single, extensive, sheetlike, marvelous tactile organ. Too, I reacted to the feel of a man" s hands on me, even in handling me in so simple a manner as to put me in a cage. These types of skin sensitivity, of course, make us much more alive to our environment. Indeed, part of our training was to increase our awareness of subtle sensations. These features and capacities, too, of course, made us more sensitive to both pain and pleasure. Thus, they put us all the more, it seemed, at the mercy of masters. I looked about. Surely none of the girls could be as miserable as I! But I saw them, in their misery, in their cruel discomfort, regard me as well. I wondered if they were thinking the same thoughts as I. We were all terribly miserable. We were all such, it seemed, as to be helplessly at the mercy of our sensitivities, tactile and otherwise, of our helpless responsiveness, and our feelings.