"Do you not know, you little fool?" asked Sasi. I smiled, for Sasi was actually a bit shorter than the blond girl. I would have guessed they would have weighed about the same. Sasi may have weighed a little more. Neither was a large girl.
"No, Mistress," said the blond girl. She was deferential to Sasi. If she had not been, she might have been whipped to within an inch of her life.
"Rejoice," said Sasi. "You have been found beautiful enough to be put at the prow."
"Oh," said the blond girl, uncertainly. Then she knelt back, on her heels. She smiled. Then she looked up, uneasily, at the ring in the ear of the kailiauk head, that proud adornment surmounting the prow of the Palms of Schendi, through which her wrist rope was strung.
"On your bellies," said Shoka to them, and the two girls lay on the deck.
He first crossed the blond's ankles and tied them together, and then he did the same for Sasi. This is done to improve the line of a girl's body, as she hangs at the ring.
"Up," said Shoka to them, and they again knelt. Both were now ready to be put at the rings, the blond at the left, Sasi at the right.
We were now some three pasangs from Schendi.
A light galley, two-masted, with yellow sails, was leaving the harbor, far to port.
Coming about Point Schendi, behind us, some two pasangs astern, was a round ship. She flew the colors of Asperiche. Far to starboard we saw two other ships, a medium-class round ship and a heavy galley, the latter with red masts, both of Ianda.
"What will be done with us in Schendi? asked the blond-haired girl of Sasi.
"I do not know what will be done with me," said Sasi, "but doubtless you will be marketed."
"Sold?" asked the blond.
"Of course," said Sasi.
Uneasily the blond girl squirmed a bit in her bonds, but they held her perfectly.
"Do not fear," said Sasi. "You will learn to obey men with perfection. They will see to it."
"Yes, Mistress," said the blond. And then she glanced at me, and then, quickly, looked away. I continued to regard her. She knelt back as she could, her small ankles roped, a bit frightened, lifting her upper body. She displayed herself well. She trembled. She, an Earth girl, knew herself now subjected to the scrutiny of a Gorean male. She did not dare not to display herself well. She did not wish to be kicked or beaten.
Yet, as I regarded her, I saw more in her body and beauty than the mere intelligence of a collared slave.
I saw something, incipiently, of the joy and pride of the slave girl, the girl who knows that though her body is being placed in bondage her womanhood, paradoxically, is being freed.
I continued to regard her. Surely, at the beginning of the voyage, it never would have occurred to Ulafi to have put her at the prow. Better than that she would have been chained in the hold, to a ring, or caged on deck, the tarpaulin thrown over the cage, that she might not detract from the splendor of his entrance into his harbor. But Ulafi and Shoka had, in the voyage, accomplished much with her. She was now, incredibly enough, sufficiently beautiful to be found acceptable for the prow of the Palms of Schendi. What a subtle thing is a woman's beauty. How little it has to do, actually, generally, with such matters as symmetry of form and regularity of features. It eludes scales and tapes; mathematics cannot, I think, penetrate its mysterious equations. I have never understood beauty; but I am grateful that it exists.
The girl looked up at me, and then, again, looked away. She put her head down, trembling.
I smiled, remembering her eyes. They had been those of a slave. How incredible that she did not yet know that she was a slave.
I pointed ahead, toward the harbor. It was now some two and a half pasangs away. "Schendi," I said to her.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"You will be sold there," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Men will own you," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"What do you want to do more than anything?" I asked.
"To please men," she said, recalling well her training.
"Why do you wish to do that?" I asked.
She looked up at me. "Because I am a slave girl," she whispered.
"Is it true that you are a slave girl?" I asked.
"Yes, Master," she whispered. — "Do you desire intensely to be a slave girl?" I asked.
"Am I in training?" she asked.
"Of course," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said, "I desire intensely to be a slave girl."
"You are not now in training," I said. "Do you desire intensely to be a slave girl?"
"No, no," she wept. "No, Master. No, Master!"
"I see," I said, and turned away from her. She knelt beside me, trembling, sobbing.
We were now some two pasangs out of Schendi. The traffic was heavier.
"Yes, Master," she whispered.
I looked down at her. "What did you say?" I asked.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Yes, what?" I asked.
She looked up at me, tears in her eyes. "Yes, Master," she said, "I do desire intensely to be a slave girl."
"You are not now in training," I told her.
"I know," she whispered. "But I do desire, intensely, to be a slave girl." She choked back a sob. Tears stained her cheeks. She bent her head to me and, delicately, softly, kissed me on the right thigh, below the tunic's hem. Then she again, timidly, looked up at me. I did not cuff her.
"Have no fear," I told her, "your wish is granted. You are completely and totally a slave girl."
"Yes, Master," she said. Then she put down her head. Her small fists clenched. "No," she said, suddenly, "I am not a slave girl."
"Fight the collar," I told her. "In the long run it will do you no good."
"Why?" she asked, looking up at me. "Why!"
"Because you are a slave," I told her.
"No," she said. "No!" But I saw in her eyes that she understood that I had seen the slave in her. She knew that I had recognized it. She had not been able to conceal her from me. It is very difficult for a woman when she meets a man who can see the slave in her. What then can she do? She can flee. or kneel before him.
"No," she said, "I am not a slave!"
"Be silent, Slave," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said. She knelt back. I saw her body suffuse with a subtle pleasure, that she had been ordered to silence. Her protestations had not been accepted. Her immediate realities were simple. She was silent, ordered so, and kneeling. She had not wanted her protestations to be accepted, though it had been important for her to make them. Her resistance must be overcome. How else could it be clear to her that her will, truly, was subjected to that of another? Like all women, in her heart, she wished to be owned, and mastered.
She looked straight ahead, kneeling, her body held beautifully. She bit her lower lip. She tried to look angry.
I smiled to myself.
Already I could see many signs, some subtle and some quite obvious, that the secret slave, which lurks in every woman, had begun to sense, fearfully, excitedly, that she had been brought to a world on which she might perhaps be free at last to emerge; had the chains been removed; she lifted her wrists; had her small limbs now been unfettered; she looked up from the straw, up the long, narrow stairs toward the iron door; was it now ajar; since her birth a pathological culture had thrust her into the dungeon of suppression, confining her in the darkness; her very reality and existence had been ignored and hysterically denied; but at times, sometimes in dreams, or idle moments, her screams for mercy, unheeded, had been heard from the darkness below; or was it only the sound of the wind; I suspected that the blond-haired girl, uneasily, had many times heard the cries of the imprisoned slave; the slave now, her fetters struck away by Gorean men, crept toward the iron door; could it truly be ajar; had men opened it; outside the door the blond-haired girl, tremblingly, waited; the slave was going to emerge; but the slave feared to emerge; behind her the blond-haired girl heard strong men summon forth the slave; the slave would come forth; then the blond-haired girl would gasp, for she would see that it Was she herself who was the slave. Then she would feel a collar being locked on her throat, and she would kneel in the sunlight at the feet of a master.