Another danger, and perhaps one more serious, is that a misdirected response would be provoked in which, say, angry males, perhaps unable to take direct action because of the numerous, carefully wrought political traps and snares trammeling them, would think themselves, consciously or subconsciously, to have no recourse but to engage in the undeniably masculine games of war, games which might destroy worlds, but, with them, perhaps, the walls within which they have permitted themselves to be imprisoned. It would be unfortunate, indeed, if the female, returned at last to her rightful chains, were to find herself kneeling in ashes.
"You are kind not to scorn me for my needs," she said. She looks up at me. "Sometimes they are very strong."
"I am sure of it," I said. She had as yet, of course, as a free woman, as I have mentioned, no real idea of what female needs could be. They were in her, as in all free women, muchly suppressed. She had no idea as to what they could be. Never had she confronted them wholly and directly. She was as yet alienated from the depth and richness of the extensive sexual tissues in her body; she did not understand how her entire skin, from her scalp to her toes, could awaken into life, startled and rejoicing, stimulated by the hot, surgent, wave-like irradiations emanating not only from her helpless, lovely exploited centralities, but as well from all the other sensitive curvatures and beauties of her, curvatures and beauties so much at a master's mercy; too, she could not even now begin to suspect the momentous emotional dimensions of bondage for the female, its entire, totalistic matrix, of what it was to be a slave, the nature of the slave's feelings, how she is affected by what she is, and what can be done to her, of what it is to be owned, absolutely, to be under uncompromising discipline, of what it is to know that you must, and will, under strict and uncompromising enforcements, give yourself up wholly to service and love, no alternatives permitted.
"You are very kind to take pity on a woman," she said.
"It is nothing," I said. I speculated that her needs might be rather strong, as a matter of fact, for a free woman. Certainly her body suggested the influence of a rich abundance of female hormones. One does not get curves like that by being hormonally deficient. It might be interesting, I thought, to see what those needs might be like if permitted to develop fully under bondage. "When I spoke your name before," she said, "I hesitated."
"I remember," I said.
"It was so hard to speak," she said.
"Yes?" I said.
"May I speak?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"I was thinking that I might perhaps let you see my body," she said, "that I might even permit you to touch it."
"Yes," I said.
"That I might tonight," she said, "as you have been so kind to me, and I am drawn to you, give you my body."
"I am overwhelmingly impressed," I said. This seemed to me a suitable response, as she was a free woman. It is really difficult to know what to say when one hears something so stupid. If she were a slave, I would have enjoyed hearing her try to speak in that fashion, speaking of "giving her body" and for such-and-such a period. That would earn her a swift whipping. If one could speak in that fashion, of "mere bodies," so to speak, and it was not typically Gorean to do so, she would not in bondage be considering whether or not to bestow her body, and for how long, but rather she would discover that it was his for the master to take, whenever he wished, however he wished, and for as long as he wished, for it would then belong not to her but to him, or he could order her to bring it to him, his property, in whatever attitude or posture he might please. The slave, for example, does not ask if the master now wants the body of Gloria but, rather, does he want Gloria. In Gorean thought, and, indeed, Gorean law is explicit on this, what is owned is the whole slave. It is she who is owned, the whole woman, and uncompromisingly and totally.
"How kind you are," she said, "to a woman met in such a place, one so poor she cannot afford sandals, a suitable gown, and proper veiling. Do you object that I am so revealingly clad, and am not properly veiled? Does it scandalize you?" "No," I said. "Doubtless it is an inevitable concession to the cruelties of poverty."
"Yes," she lamented. "Perhaps you could try to think of me veiled," she suggested.
"That is a thought," I said. That much, surely at least, could be said for it. I conjectured what she might look like, stark naked, save for chains, perhaps, holding her as a tight love bundle, for a master's pleasure, at a ring, and the locked, steel slave collar that belonged on her neck.
She looked at me, gratefully. In my imagination I tightened her chains a notch or two.
"Is it true that you are drawn to me?" I asked.
"Yes!" she whispered, daring to touch my hand.
"Then shall we leave this place," I asked, "and to venture to your domicile?" She drew back. As I had anticipated, she would not find a suggestion of this sort acceptable. She would not want her address known. That might put her at the mercy of furious, outraged victims. Too, it could make it simple for guardsmen, acting on complaints, to bring her in for identification and questioning, these details doubtless, in her case, to be followed by a hearing and sentencing, an almost inevitable reduction to bondage and then perhaps, initially, while her disposition is being more carefully considered, a placement in the public slave gardens.
"Perhaps then my room?" I suggested. "It is nearby."
"Sir!" she said, reproachfully. As I had thought, this would not be satisfactory either. She would prefer to complete her work here, where apparently it was tolerated, with the stealth of a drug, rather than go to the expense of employing confederates outside or take the risk of being recognized by others who might be in the vicinity of the victim's environs. "What sort of girl do you think I am?"
"Forgive me," I said, earnestly. "I did not mean to offend you." She was skillful at this type of game, it seemed, to provoke a male response, and then to claim she had been misunderstood, and was offended, thus confusing the male, keeping him off balance, and, in general, thusly guaranteeing, with a glance or tear, that she would have things her own way. She was, at least, manipulative in a feminine fashion. That I granted her. It said something for her femaleness. It is pleasant later, of course, to manipulate such women in a masculine fashion, by command and the whip.
"I knew I should not have come here," she sobbed, wiping away a tear, one at least in theory, from the corner of her eye. She made as though to rise but, as I did not restrain her, she remained where she was.
"I have been clumsy," I said.
"I do not really blame you," she sobbed. "What else could you think, meeting me here? Surely you must think me the same as these other, lower women."
"No, certainly not," I said. "You are quite different, obviously, from them." "Thank you," she whispered.
I nodded. Of course she was quite different from them. That was obvious. She was not yet nude. She did not yet have a slave collar on her neck. She had not probably never yet, in her life, felt a slave whip.
"Perhaps you are wondering," she said, wiping away yet another supposed tear, "what I, a gentlewoman, of breeding and refinement, am doing in this place?" "Perhaps," I said, encouragingly. I tried to look puzzled. Actually I had a rather clear idea what she was doing in this place.
She looked down. "I think the real reason," she said, "under everything, as you may have suspected, is that I was driven here, almost helplessly, a woman in desperate need of love, daring to enter this terrible place, but one where I knew men were, by my desire to meet a kindly man, by my loneliness."
"Yes," I said.
"But I should never have come."
"But then we would never have met." I said.
"Yes," she whispered, again touching my hand. "That is true."