"Where did you just come from?" she asked.
"Torcadino," I said. "Oh," she said, disappointed.
"What is wrong?" I asked.
"You are not a refugee, are you?" she asked.
"Why?" I asked.
"Then you might have had a difficult trip," she said.
"I see," I said.
"I do not believe things are as bad in Torcadino as they say," she said. "Oh?" I asked.
"No," she said. "They are just trying to frighten us," I saw her eye on my purse.
"I came in by fee cart," I said.
"I see," she said. I saw she liked that information. I had thought she would. It suggested I had money.
"Are you of the Merchants?" she asked.
"I have sometimes bought and sold things," I told her. I saw that this pleased her. I did not tell her that many of the things I had bought and sold were much like herself.
"May I call you Tarl? ' she asked.
"Of course," I said. She was after all, a free woman. If she were to become a slave, of course, there would be no such liberty in such matters.
I poured her more ka-la-na.
She drank. She leaned forward, her elbows on the small table. Her breasts seemed to invite my touch. Her lips were warm and soft. "There was another reason," she said, "other than the splendid dismissal of a slut slave from your presence, why I came to your table."
"Oh" I said.
"I feel drawn to you," she said.
"I understand," I said. I glanced at the fellow still slumped on the other table.
"Tarl," she whispered.
"Yes," I said. She knew her business, this woman. The sooner she was in a collar the better.
"Yes," I said, softly, encouragingly. "Oh, no," she said, drawing back, suddenly, seeming to wipe a tear from her eye, "I must not say such things to you."
"What?" I asked, kindly.
"I must leave," she said. "I must hurry away now." She put her hands out, that I might gently take them in mine, holding her at the table, restraining her sweetly, in earnest, gentle persuasion, from departing. But I, curious to see what would happen, apparently did not notice this opportunity.
She did not leave.
"I just do not know what to do," she said, turning her head from side to side. "What is wrong?" I asked, seemingly concerned.
"How terrible you must think me," she said, wiping away another tear, it seemed, from the corner of her eye.
"Not at all," I said. I certainly did not think her terrible at all. Indeed, I thought she was luscious.
"I have been too bold," she said. "I approached your table. I have spoken to you first. I have permitted you, a man I scarcely know, to buy me ka-la-na. I am so ashamed."
"There is no need to be ashamed," I said.
"But far worse," she said, "I revealed to you my feelings, I told you of my unspeakable loneliness. Are you lonely?"
"Not particularly," I said. It is normally only free folks among free folks who are lonely, each so separate from the other. It is not easy for men to be lonely who have access to slaves. Similarly the slaves, so occupied, and of necessity so concerned to please the master, are seldom given the time for the indulgence of loneliness. Too, of course the incredible intimacy of the relationship, intellectual and emotional, as well as sexual, for the master to inquire into, and command forth, and is normally inclined to do so, her deepest thoughts and feelings, which must be bared to him, as much as her body, as well as command, even casually, her most intimate and delicious sexual performances, militates against loneliness.
In slavery total intimacy is not only customary, but it can be made obligatory, under discipline. Masters like to know their girls. They want to know them with a depth, detail and intimacy that it would be quite inappropriate to expect of, or desire from, a prideful free companion, whose autonomy and privacy is protected by her lofty status. In a sense, the free woman is always, to one extent or another veiled. The slave, on the other hand, is not permitted veils. She is, so to speak, naked to the master, and fully.
There is no doubt that slaves without private masters, or slaves in multiple-slave chains, arrangements, households, institutions, and such, may experience terrible loneliness. There is doubtless great loneliness, for example, in a rich man's pleasure gardens. Indeed, the presence of a lovely slave there might not even be known to the master, but only to her immediate keepers, and the master's agents, who may have purchased her, or accountants, who keep records of the master's properties and assets. Perhaps she must beg piteously to be called to the attention of the master. Some women in such a place, even those whose existence is known, or remembered, at least vaguely, might wait for months for a summons to the couch of the master, he perhaps selecting a ribbon with her name on it, from a rack of slave ribbons, and tossing it to an attendant, that she be brought in chains to this quarters that night, the ribbon on her collar. Too, it can doubtless be lonely in the house of a slaver, especially when the guards do not choose to amuse themselves with you, or have you perform for them, or, say, when you find yourself alone at night, perhaps a work slave, in the basement of a cylinder, chained in a cement kennel. "Oh," she said.
"With you here," I said, "how could I be lonely?"
"What a lovely thing to say," she said.
I thought it has been pretty good myself. To be sure, it had required quick thinking.
"But mostly," she said, as though tearfully, "I am distressed at the boldness with which I spoke before."
"Boldness?" I asked.
"When I admitted, as I should never have done," she said, "that I was drawn to you."
" "Drawn to me'?" I inquired.
"Yes," she said, lowering her eyes.
"I understand," I said. "You were drawn to me because something within you seemed to sense, and delicately, that I might prove to be a sympathetic interlocutor, an understanding fellow with whom you might, assuaging therein to some extent your loneliness and pain, hold gentle and kindly converse."
"It was more than that," she whispered, not looking up, as though she dared not raise her eyes.
"Oh?" I asked.
She looked up, as though distressed. "I felt drawn to you," she said, and then she lowered her head, as though in shame, "a€”as a female to a male."
I said nothing.
"Free women have needs, too," she whispered.
"I do not doubt it," I said. At the moment, of course she had no real idea of what female needs could be. As with most free females they were doubtless far below the surface and seldom directly sensed. Their effect upon conscious life, because of her conditioning, would normally be felt in such transformed and eccentric modalities as anxiety, uneasiness, misery, discomfort, ill temper, imaginary complaints, frustration and loneliness. These things would be connected with her lack of feminine fulfillment, she not finding herself in her place, in her natural biological relationship, that of submissive to dominant, to the male of her species. These things, the result of her loss of sexual identity and fulfillment, too, often produced a sense of emptiness and meaninglessness. Too, they sometimes produced an envy and resentment of men, whom she, perhaps with some justice, would blame for this lack of fulfillment. When one sex needs the other to fulfill it, and the other refuses, what is to be done? One way of striving for vengeance, of course, is to attempt, socially and politically, to bring about the debilitation and ruination of anatomical males, whether they be men or not. This, of course, might prove dangerous, for it might provoke an upsurge of nature, like a natural phenomenon, in which her order, artificialities then scorned and abolished, would be harshly restored.