"Are you now commanding me to dance before you?" she asked.
"Yes," I said, "you dance now as a commanded slave. And if I am not well pleased have no fear but what you will be well beaten, if not slain."
"Yes, Master," she said.
I then stepped back from her. "When I clap my hands," I said, "you will dance, Slave."
"Yes, Master," she said.
I then struck my hands together, and, terrified, the girl danced.
She had not been taught the tether dance, one of the most beautiful of the slave dances of Gor, but she improvised well. Indeed, it was hard to believe that she had not had training. I am inclined to believe that the need dances and display dances of the human female may be, at least in their rudiments, instinctual. I suspect there is a genetic disposition in the woman toward this type of behavior and that certain of the movements, closely associated with luring behavior and love movements, may also be genetically based. One reason for supposing this to be the case is that a girl's growth in certain forms of dance skills does not follow a normal learning curve. It is rather like the human being's ability to acquire speech, which also does not follow a normal learning curve. It seems reasonably likely that facility in acquiring speech, which would have enormous survival value, has been selected for. Similarly, a woman's marvelous adaptability to erotic dance may possibly have been selected for. At any rate, whatever the truth may be in these matters, feminine women, perhaps to the horror of their more masculine sisters, seem to take naturally to the beauties of erotic dance. At the very least, perhaps inexplicably, they are marvelously good at it. These genetic dispositions, of course, if they exist, can be culturally suppressed.
I watched the girl dance. She was quite good.
The needs of human beings are a matter of biology. The values in a culture are the values of certain men. Many people take the values of their culture for granted, as though they were somehow a part of the furniture of the universe. They should realize that the values they are taught are the values of particular men, and often, unfortunately, of men who, long ago, were short-lived, ignorant, uninformed, unhealthy and quite possibly of unsound mind. Perhaps human beings should, from the viewpoints of contemporary information and modern medicine, re-evaluate these perhaps anachronistic value structures. Values need not be something one somehow mysteriously "knows," a result of having forgotten the conditioning process by means of which they were instilled, but could be something chosen, something selected as instruments by means of which to improve human life. It is not wrong for human beings to be happy.
"Now you are becoming a woman," I told her. She knelt on one knee, her right; her left leg was flexed; the tether was taken, in a turn, about her left thigh; her hands, too, were on her left thigh; her head was down, but turned toward me; her lip trembled. "Continue to dance, Slave," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I watched her, and marveled. It is interesting to note that such movements, those of slave dances, despite the inhibitions of rigid cultures, may occur in a girl's sleep, and may even occur, almost spontaneously, when she, nude, alone, passes before a mirror in her bedroom. How shocked she may be to suddenly see her body move as that of a slave. Could it have been she who so moved? Later, perhaps to her surprise, she finds herself standing before the mirror. She is naked, and alone. Then, perhaps scarcely understanding what is occurring within her, she sees the girl in the mirror has begun to dance. The movements are not dissimilar perhaps to those of women who, thousands of years ago, danced in firelit caves before their masters. Then, knowing well that it is she herself who is the dancer, she dances brazenly, boldly, before the mirror. Well does she present her bared beauty before it in the movements, the attitudes and postures of the female slave. Then perhaps she falls to the rug, scratching at it, pressing her belly to it. "I want a Master," she whispers.
I now stood up. My arms were folded.
The girl now was upon her knees at my feet, the tether on her neck slung back behind her to the slave stake. Still in her dance, she began to lick and kiss at my body.
I then took her by the upper arms and held her, half lifted from her knees, before me.
"Please do not whip me," she begged.
I then, by the upper arms, dragged her to the side of the slave stake. I put her on her knees there. She looked up at me. "You danced well as a slave," I said.
"Thank you, Master," she said. She looked up at me, trembling.
"What are you?" I asked.
"A slave," she said.
"Fully and only a slave? I asked.
She regarded me. Her entire body began to shake.
The secret slave in her then was summoned forth. She crept from the dungeon, into the sunlight. She knelt then on the gravel of the courtyard, small, and beautiful and naked, at the feet of masters.
"Yes, Master," said the blond-haired barbarian. "I am fully and only a slave." Then, suddenly, she threw back her head and sobbed with joy. Then she put her head to my knees and, holding them, covered them with kisses. Then she put her head to my feet. She covered them, too, with kisses. I felt her hair on my feet. I felt the hot tears of her joy. "Yes," she whispered, "I am fully and only a slave."
The secret slave, I saw, was then free of her dungeon. Never again could she be put back in it.
The blond-haired barbarian raised her head. Tears were In her eyes. The secret slave, too, had raised her head. Tears, too, had been in her eyes. "Thank you, Master," said the blond-haired barbarian. "Thank you, Master," had breathed the secret slave.
"You are my slave," I said to the blond-haired barbarian. I took her by the hair. I looked into her eyes. "You are the slave of men," I said.
"Yes, my master," she said.
The secret slave then knelt joyfully in the sunlit courtyard, on the cruel gravel. She kissed the steel collar thrust to her lips. She closed her eyes, joyfully, as it was locked upon her small, fair throat. She wore then, locked upon her neck, that for which she had yearned in the long years of her imprisonment, the sweet, liberating, uncompromising collar of public bondage.
"I am free," breathed the blond-haired barbarian. "At last I am free!"
"Beware how you speak. Slave," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
She looked up at me, tears in her eyes. "I feel so free," she said.
"In a sense you are free and in a sense you are not free," I said. "The sense, or one of the senses, in which you are free," I said, "is the sense of emotional freedom. You, a slave, have now honestly admitted to yourself, in your own heart, fully, that you are truly a slave. This eliminates conflicts. This produces a sense of emotional joy and fulfillment. You are now at peace with yourself. You are now content with yourself. The sense in which you are not free is an obvious one. You are a slave, totally, and are fully at the mercy of your master, or masters."
"Yes, Master," she said.
I seized her hair and twisted her head to the side, cruelly. "Oh!" she cried.
"Do you think you are free?" I asked.
"No, Master," she wept.
I released her. I crouched back a bit, watching her. She lifted her head. "I am very happy," she said.
I did not speak.
"I love being under the total domination of a male," she said.
I moved more closely to her. I took her by the upper arms, crouching near her.
"Did I please my master by my dancing?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"How can I please my master more?" she asked.
I then, by her upper arms, my grip tight upon them, pressed her gently but forcibly backwards. She then lay beside the thick slave stake, her shoulder blades in the dirt. The tether was still upon her throat.
"Yes, Master," she whispered.
"I have never been so happy before in my life as this night, Master," she whispered.