"Probably not now," I said. "But she had been given a name, or at least a house name, in the house of Samos, in Port Kar."
"What was it?" asked Boots.
"Rowena," I said.
"Thank you," said Boots. "You have been very helpful."
"Now, what about my proposal," I said.
"What proposal?" he asked.
"About my joining your company," I said.
"That?" he said.
"Yes," I said.
"Out of the question," he said.
7 The Tent; I Slip from the Tent
"Oh!" she wept, clutching me, squirming, helplessly pressing her imbonded flesh against mine. "Yes! No, don't let me go!" she cried. "Don't spurn me, I beg you. Hold me! Hold me! Please!" Her creamy flesh was hot. She was covered with sweat. Even her long blond hair, cut somewhat shorter now, half covering her face, was wet. Her body, broken out and mottled, was like a map, one recollective of my attentions. It was covered with an intense, irregular geography of scarlet patches, the capillaries near the surface of the skin swelled with blood, the red color suffusing upward as though from a light within her, as though fires raged within her, just beneath her exposed, yielding, eager softness, witnessing her excitement and arousal. She clutched me, helplessly. "What you can do to me!" she cried. "what men can do to me! I love it! Please, Master, do not stop!" She threw back her head, her lips parted, her eyes closed. "Ohh!" she gasped. "Yes! Ohhh! Yes! Yes! Oh! Oh! Yes, Master! Yes Master! Continue, I beg you, with all my heart! I plead with you not to stop! Oh, Master! Yes, Master! Yes, Master!" I heard the sound of the chain on her ankle. "Oh, Master! Yes, Master!" she said.
The chain was about a yard long. It ran between the ankle ring, locked snugly on her ankle, and a long, heavy stake. The stake was driven deeply into the ground. About five inches of it showed above the surface. It was placed about a yard within, and to the left of, facing outward, the entrance to the small, striped tent. The girls was stripped, save for her ankle ring and collar. She lay on a mat, spread on a blanket, spread over the grass. She awaits within, to see who will open the flaps of the tent. That will be he who has paid her current use fee, that set by her master. We were some two hundred pasangs west of the fairgrounds, at the edge of the woods of Clearchus, just off the road of Clearchus.
"Oh, yes," she wept, clutching me. Her collar was a simple one. It read, "If you find me, return me to Boots Tarsk-Bit. Reward." Boots used such collars for all his slaves. "Aiii!" she cried, suddenly. My touch had been light. I saw that she was ready for more. She was in a condition of slave arousal. She looked a me, wildly. "Yes," I said. "There is more." She began to squirm and shudder. "We now begin again," I aid. "How can I feel more?" she wept. "You have not yet even experienced the fullness of a slave orgasm," I said. Then, in moments, building on her earlier sensitivity, I conducted her perforce to a height where she might sense, but not yet experience, a new horizon. I held her there, on the brink, for a time, as it pleased me, sometimes permitting her to subside a bit, and then again, when I wished, with the cruelty of the master, almost as though beckoning her, a command she could not refuse, bringing her back to the edge, where, almost in madness, she quivered and pleaded for release.
"Not yet," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she wept. The decision was mine. She was totally in my power. She was a slave.
"In any event," I had said to Boots Tarsk-Bit, a few days ago, "let me show you the girl."
"That would be very nice of you," he had said.
"Perhaps, too," I said, "you will change your mind."
"Never," he had said.
I had then conducted Boots to the area where the agents of Samos had his hundred girls on sale, sent out from Port Kar for vending during the Fair of En'Kara. I had checked the location earlier in the afternoon. It was among the southwestern sections of the Pavilion of Beauty, more specifically on the Shu-27 platforms. The girls were all on their hands and knees on the long, narrow platforms, uniformly positioned, facing outwards, a short chain on the neck of each, running down to individual rings anchored in the thick planks. They had been forbidden to speak among themselves. Agents of Samos walked here and there among them, with whips. "There is the girl," I said. She had not yet been sold. A white "holding disk" was wired to her collar. Some of the collars which had held women near her earlier were empty.
"You!" she had said, earlier, around noon, when I had first seen her there.
"You remember me?" I had said.
"A girl never forgets the first man who puts the whip to her," she had smiled.
"How are the sales going?" I had asked her.
"I do not really know, Master," she had said, "as we are kept in separate slave boxes, and are usually brought forth only to be exercised or exhibited. I myself was first put on display only this morning."
"I have seen some empty collars about, on the other platforms," I said.
"Perhaps the sales, then, are going well," she said. "I dare not turn my head to look. One girl was beaten fearfully for that, only an Ahn ago."
The matter of the empty collars was not an easy one to interpret. If there are no empty collars then customers may think that no one else in interested in the merchandise, perhaps that something might be wrong with it, and then go elsewhere. If there are only y a few girls left, and many empty collars, they may get the impression, perhaps mistakenly, that nothing much of interest is likely to be left. The ideal impression to convey to the customer is perhaps that you have marvelous merchandise for sale, that even now many people are interested and buying, that it is moving fast, and that if he sees a girl he wants, perhaps he should snatch her up before someone else does. If you see a female locked in her platform collar, with its chain, of course, and in a while you see the collar empty, it is not irrational to suppose that she has been sold. Sometimes a woman who has been sold is not immediately removed from the platform but only, in one way or another, marked "Sold." There are several ways in which this can be done. For example, she may be placed in a white hood bearing the word «Sold» in red letters, a red tag, bearing the inscription, "Sold," may be wired to her collar, or the word «Sold» may be simply written in grease pencil on her body, usually, by convention, on her left breast.
"I think the sales are not going as well as they might," I said.
"Master?" she asked, frightened.
"You were put out only this morning," I said. "That suggests that the goods are not moving as rapidly as they might. Too, it is my impression, from what I have seen here and elsewhere, that there is an unusual amount of high-quality merchandise available this spring. I suspect that many of the lots, even large lots, literal bevies of luscious slaves, chained together forty or fifty in a lot, may end up being simply purchased by slavers at rock-bottom prices, for purposes of later speculation."
She groaned. "I am afraid the masters will be displeased," she said.
Her apprehension was understandable. She was a slave.
"Are you interested in this slave?" asked one of the men on the platform, coming over, his whip in hand. I did not think he was of the house of Samos. I did not, at any rate, know him. He was probably a slaver's agent, licensed for work at the fair. There are many fellows who, seasonally, do this work. At other times they normally work in slaver's houses. He may, of course, have been one of the fellows on the fairs' permanent staff. there are four such fairs, administered by the merchants, held annually in the vicinity of the Sardar, those of En'Kara, En'Var, Se'Kara and Se'Var. The girl was immediately very still, and very quiet, on all fours.
"I think I can find a buyer for her," I said.
"Who?" he asked.
"Come now," I said. "Let us not be naive."