“Please!” she begged, her momentary pretense to strength and resolution gone. She felt confused and weak.
“You have seen yourself in your cell mirror, of course,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. There was a mirror in the new cell, rather like that in her former cell, on the right, of polished metal, as one faced the gate.
“How old would you say you were?” he asked.
“I do not know,” she whispered.
“If I were to see you on the planet Earth,” he said, “I would conjecture that you were somewhere in your late thirties, say, thirty-seven or thirty-eight. I would say thirty-eight. When you were acquired, you were fifty-eight.”
“Fifty-five,” she said.
“Fifty-eight,” he said.
She put down her head. It was true.
“I see that you retain something of what must once have been considerable beauty,” he observed. “Certainly many men would find you of great interest even now.”
She blushed, brightly and hotly, all of her body, that exposed, bursting into uncontrollable, involuntary flames of outrage, resentment, embarrassment, and pleasure. She was not dismayed to learn that she might be, once again, after so many years, found attractive.
“Do like your new garmenture?” he inquired.
“It is that in which you have seen fit to put me,” she said.
Her new garment was relatively modest as such garments go. Certainly a younger woman would have been likely to have been put in less. It was a tunic, but rather reserved for such. It was simple, plain and white, its material again, as that of her former garment, of the wool of the bounding hurt. Its hemline now came a bit above her knees. It had a rounded neckline, rather like that of her former garment, but it was, scooped somewhat more deeply, perhaps a bit less reluctant to hint at concealed delights. Interestingly, it was the first garment she had been given which was sleeveless. The baring of a woman’s arms, on the world on which she now was, was normally regarded as revealing and sensuous. Indeed, women of a status, or station, above her own commonly veiled themselves when appearing in public, particularly those of the high castes. She did not know this at the time, of course. Men on this world, it seems, tended to find the short, rounded, lovely arms of women attractive. It might be mentioned that in her new quarters, she was no longer permitted sandals. They had been taken from her. She now went, as had her various instructrices, in her various quarters, barefoot. Bared feet on women, on this world, are also regarded as sensuous, and provocative.
He regarded her.
She was attractive in the tunic.
It was all she wore, except, of course, the anklet. That device now, due to the absence of footwear and the shorter nature of her new garment, appeared even more striking, more meaningful and lovely, on her ankle. Aesthetics were surely involved here, but, too, other matters, matters having to do with deeper things, meanings and such. In any event, there was the softness of her small foot and then, above it, close about her slim ankle, the encircling, locked steel, and then the beginning of the delightful curve of a bared calf. It all went together, he thought, beautifully, and meaningfully. He did not find this surprising, of course.
“How are your lessons progressing?” he asked.
She shrugged, angrily. “Doubtless you have your reports,” she said.
She was not much pleased with the turn that her lessons had taken, save for her continuing instruction in the language. She was now being taught to do things, many things, rather than, primarily, to learn things, to apprehend and understand facts, lore, and such. Her education, of late, did not seem fitting for an intellectual.
“I am a not a wife,” she said, angrily.
“No,” he granted her.
Taken from her cell and instructed in special rooms, she had been given lessons in cooking, in cleaning, sewing, laundering, and such, domestic labors, labors such as were vehemently denounced and eschewed by scions of her ideology as demeaning, degrading, boring, repetitive and meaningless, who then hired other women, either directly or indirectly, to perform them for them. With respect to cooking she had prided herself on “knowing only the basics,” but it seems that here, on this world, her skills did not extend even so far. Most of the cooking seemed to be done in small ovens and over open flames, attentively, almost a serving at a time. Cooking, here, involved cooking, actually, and not, for example, the simple heating of tasteless materials extracted from colorful packages. She discovered that cooking was an art, and required mastery, as any other art. She had never thought of it in that fashion before. Similarly, she learned that the skills of needlework of various sorts were indeed skills, and not at all easy to acquire. How often her instructrices despaired of her, as being ignorant, stupid and hopelessly inept. Finally, in misery, in tears, she had denounced them as low, vulgar, stupid women, far beneath her, women who, unlike herself, might aspire to labors no higher than the menial and servile, labors unfit for such as she, an educated, highly intelligent woman, a woman important on her own world. “Ignorant, pretentious barbarian!” cried one of the instructrices, angrily. Then to her consternation she was seized by her other two instructrices and dragged to the side of the room, where she was thrown down, on her back. There was a low, horizontal wooden bar there, raised some six inches above the floor, by means of metal mounts at each end. She had not understood its meaning. She would now find out. Her ankles were placed on the bar, and lashed to it. Her hands were held on each side of her, and she could not rise. “No!” she cried. The first instructrix had fetched a supple, springy, flat stick, about a yard long, some two inches in width, and about a quarter of an inch thick. “No, no!” she cried. Then she squirmed, and writhed in misery, bound and held, crying out, weeping, begging for mercy, while the first instructrix, again and again, angrily, struck the bare soles of her exposed, fastened feet, stinging them until they burned like fire.
When the first instructrix had finished she put the stick away in a nearby cabinet but then fetched forth from the same cabinet three long, supple, leather switches, giving one to each of her fellow instructrices, and retaining one for herself.
Lying on her back, no longer held but her ankles still bound to the wooden bar, unable to rise, she looked up, apprehensively, at the switches.
“We have been forgiving, and tolerant, of you,” said the first instructrix, “because of your ignorance, and stupidity, but that is now at an end. No longer do you deserve our patience, and lenience.”
She looked up from her back, tears in her eyes, questioningly, her ankles still bound to the bar.
“Yes,” said one of the instructrices, “in this phase of your training the bastinado, the switch, is authorized.”
“Training?” she asked.
“Yes, training, little fool,” said the third instructrix, not pleasantly.
“In the next phase, and thereafter,” said the chief instructrix, “the whip, close chains, torture, anything.”
“Will you now attempt to be pleasing?” asked the second instructrix.
“Yes,” she said.
“Say it,” snapped the second instructrix.
“I will attempt to be pleasing,” she wept.
“Fully?” she was asked.
“Yes, yes!” she wept.
“Release her,” said the first instructrix.
She drew her legs, painfully, from the bar, the straps untied. “I cannot walk,” she moaned.
“Crawl,” said the second instructrix.
“Be pleased we are not men,” said the third instructrix, “or you would not only walk, but you would dance, dance, frenziedly, and to switches!”
She crawled back to her lessons.
Later in the day she could rise to her feet and walk, awkwardly, painfully.