I then continued on my way, pressing through the throngs.
"Master," said a woman, kneeling before me. She put down her head and kissed my feet, and then looked up at me.
I recognized her. She was the free woman whom I had seen earlier, she masquerading as a slave, with the brief bit of cloth about her hips.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"I have been in agony for two Ahn," she said. "I am now ready, of my own free will, to go to a rack."
Ilooked down at her. Women are very beautiful on thier knees.
"Please," she said, "-Master."
"precede me," I said.
She rose to her feet and, frightened, trrembling, I behind her, made her way through the crowds.
At one point we were literally stopped in the press.
"Paga?" asked a fellow, waiting beside me. We exchanged swigs. Then, in a few moments, the ccrowd loosened and, once again, I followed the female.
She came to the foot of a rack and stopped, regarding it. It was one of the strap racks, not a simple net rack, or rope rack. It was now open. Frightened, she crawled upon it, and then lay on it, on her back, on the broad, soft, flat, smooth, comfortable interlaced straps.
"I have never been on a rack before," she said.
"Not all of them are this comfortable," I assured her.
"I do not doubt it," she smiled. The comfort of the slave may or may not be taken into consideration by the master, as it pleases him. They are only slaves.
"You are a free woman," I said. "You need not go through with this."
"Touch me," she said.
"Paga?" asked a fellow. We exchanged swigs. Then he was on his way. He had not concerned himself with the woman. He had assumed she was a slave. She was, after all, half naked, in a collar and on a pleasure rack.
"I had to wait," she said, wonderingly.
"If you are going to masquerade as a salve," I said, "you should grow accustomed, at least in some respects, to being treated as a slave."
"Yes," she said.
"Suppose it were not a masquerade," I said.
"I understand," she said. Her eyes briefly clouded. I saw that she was frightened. I saw that she had just had some inkling as to what it might be to be truly a slave, to be truly, utterly, at the mercy of masters.
"Leap up," I suggested. "Flee the rack. Hurry home. If the straps are fastened upon you, it will be too late."
"No," she whispered.
"But what of respect and dignity?" I asked. "Surely you desire these, desperately."
"I have had respect and dignity for years," she said, "and they are empty! I have had my fill of respect and dignity! For years I have been betrayed and deluded by those trivializing, vacuous, negative verbalitites! I do not want respect and dignity! Obviously they are not the answer. If they were, I should be happy, but I am not! I do not want respect and dignity! I want fulfillment, and truth!"
I saw that her sexual drives were far too strong to be appropriate for those of a free woman. In her there was an eager, succumbing slave.
"Now I want to be overwhelmed, dominated. Now I want to tatke my place in the order of nature. Now I wasnt to be what I am, and have always been, truly, a woman!"
In every woman, of course, Goreans think, there is a slave. Perhaps, in the end, there is no difference.
She looked at me, pleadingly.
"You are a free woman," I told her.
She moaned.
"It would seem thus," I said, "at least according to some, that you are entitled to respect and dignity."
"I have never encountered a convincing proof to that effect," she said. "Have you?"
"No," I said.
"Oh, would that i were a slave," she smiled. "Then I owuld not have to concern myself with such matters. Then I would only have to mind my manners and make certain that I pleased my masters, totally."
"To be sure," I said, "many of the matters with which the free woman must concern herself are simply irrelevant to the slave."
"Such as dignity and respect," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"Undre those names I have gone for years," she said.
"And yet, now," I said, "you have come, and of your own free will, to a rack."
"There comes a time," she said, "when the slogans no loner suffice, a tiem when the myth is seen to be meaningless."
"And such a time came for you?" I said.
"Yes," she said.
"And then you put on a collar and came to carnival."
"Yes," she said, "and to a rack!"
"Interesting," I said.
"Are you going to touch me?" she asked.
"I do not know," I said.
"You would use me withont a second thought if I were a slave," she said. "You are puttting me through this because I am a free woman. That is why oyu are making me suffer! That is why you are torturing me! Do you want me to beg?"
"Surely that would be unseemly in a free woman," I said.
"If I were a slave," she smiled, "I would beg quickly enough."
"I do not doubt it," I said. I could sense that whe was quite hot, for a free woman. To be sure, as a free woman, she could not even begin to suspect what it might be to tbe in the throes of slave need, to be slave hot, so to speak.
"Are you going to touch me?" she asked.
"I do not know," I siad, musingly.
She twisted her head angrily, in frustration, to dhe side, on the surface of broad, soft, interlaced straps.
"You are free to leave, of course," I said. "You have not yet been fastened in place."
"And what if I were fastened in place?" she asked.
"Then you would not be free to leave," I said.
"I see," she said. She lay back on the straps, and lifted her knees, and put her hands above and behind her, hooking her fingers in the interstices of the broad straps. She looked at me.
"I think there may be a slave in you," I said.
"Very well," she said. "You win. I beg rape."
I regarded her.
"Do you find me attractive?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Do you want me?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Then take me," she said. "I am yours."
"You are a free woman," I said. "Thus, it would doubtless be improper for me to subject you to powerful uses. It is up to me, doubless, to see that you are protected from, indeed, shielded from, powerful sexual insights and experiences. You do not need to know what it is to be under male dominance. It is doubeless best that you never learn. It might change your life. Similarly, it is probably best that you learn nothing of helpless obedience, of submission and total surrender. It is difficult to tell where shuch things might lead. All in all, you had best remain on the superficial levels of sexuality, those appropriate to a free woman, unaware that anything deeper and more profound exists."
She looked a me, angrily.
"It seems thus," I said, "that I must refrain from responding to your needs, real and urgent though they may be."
"Do you think that I wll respect you for falsifying your manhood," she cried, "for denying it, for pretending it does not exist! Ultimately I would only despise you for your self-betrayal! Is honesty too much to ask from men? If you will not be a man, how can I be a woman? If I were a man, I would be a true man, and I would never betray my manhood! It would be precious to me! I would rejoice in it! And I would teach women, which is what we want, what it is to be women! I would be merciless with them! I would be their master!"
"That is what you want?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, "for without it, we cannot be women."
I reached to one of the straps. It was a holding strap. These straps are adjustable. I would take it twice snugly about her wrist and then, angling it, press the cap-topped stud at the end of the strap, from the bottom, up through one of the small, sturdy, suitable eyelets on the same strap. No buckles are used. The occupant of the rack, of course, because of the nature of the cap-topped stud and the eyelet, cannot, from her position, free herself. She is helpless. The arrangement, tus, is not only such that teh girl finds herself, when the straps are on her, held in perfect custody, but this custody, in virtue of the nature of the studs and eyelets, may be easily imposed or removed, a convenience to the handler. "If I fasten these upon you, you will be helpless," I said.