“She is from Earth, is she not?”
“Yes.”
“A good place to find female slaves.”
“Yes.”
“What did you pay for her there?”
“She was free there,” said Mirus.
“Free?”
“Legally free,” said Mirus.
“What a tragic waste of female.”
“I had her bought to Gor for my amusement.”
“A free woman?”
“The best thing about free women is that they may be made slaves,” said Mirus.
“Yes,” said the spokesman.
“I had known her long ago, and had seen the slave of her.”
“I think that would have required no great feat of perception,” smiled the spokesman.
Ellen jerked at the bonds on her wrists, and then subsided.
She had been bound by a Gorean male.
“True,” said Mirus. “Sometimes such things are obvious.”
“It would have required no great feat of perception, I should have said,” said the spokesman, “— for a slaver.”
Mirus nodded, acknowledging the compliment.
Ellen had heard that a good slaver could discern the needful, waiting slave even in cases in which, prima facie, it might seem unlikely. Behind the brandished facades of freedom, concealed within painstakingly erected ideological fortresses of denial, the victims of self-imposed starvations, a slaver might detect the ready, yearning slave. Ellen had heard of the case of a particularly lovely, young, if somewhat arrogant and condescending, psychiatrist, who believed herself to be treating an alarmingly virile male patient. Unbeknownst to herself the patient was a Gorean slaver, who was scouting her. While she was uneasily, because of her fascination with him, and the unsettling, disturbing stirring in her belly which he produced, attempting to cure him of his masculinity, he was considering if she might do, say, on a slave block or stripped at a man’s feet in slave chains. While she thought herself to be treating him, then, he was, so to speak, measuring her for the collar. He easily pierced, it seems, the facades of falsification and fabrication within which she had attempted to hide the slave of her. A slaver, he easily saw her slave. The question then was was it good enough to be brought to Gor. Yes, he considered her acceptable. Rather than simply schedule her for acquisition, however, he decided that he would force her to face her own deepest feelings. On what would be their last session, while she was earnestly, somewhat pathetically, somewhat desperately, propounding her theories, that he should repudiate his masculinity, theories dictated by policy preferences and much at odds with the insights of seminal depth psychologists, he removed an object from his jacket and threw it on the desk before her.
“What is that?” she asked, though surely she knew. What woman would not?
“It is a slave collar,” he told her.
“A slave collar?”
“The collar of a slave,” he smiled.
“I do not understand.”
“You may put it on, or not.”
“Where is the key?” she asked.
“I hold the key,” he said.
“I do not understand,” she said.
“Put it on your neck, and close it, or not. It is up to you.”
“I do not understand,” she whispered.
He rose from his chair. “I am leaving,” he said. He turned about.
“Wait,” she called plaintively.
He turned about, to face her.
She had never met such a man.
She might never again meet such a man.
In his presence she was half giddy with sensation; she felt confused, weak, overwhelmed with a sense of her femaleness, her femaleness as she had never before felt it. Her femaleness seemed to her suddenly not only nonrepudiable but the most important thing about her, and it was precious, wonderful, and needful; she understood then, in his presence, as she never had before, what she was, undeniably, radically, and fundamentally, a female.
She took the collar and came about the desk, awkwardly, she could later be taught to move well, to stand before him. She seemed very small before him, and female, he in his height, and masculinity.
“It is time you put aside your theories, and learned of reality, and the world,” he said.
She clutched the collar, piteously, in both hands.
“What am I to do?” she said.
He pointed to the rug, before him and she, scarcely understanding what she was doing, shaking with emotion, trembling with sensations hitherto experienced only in her dreams, those exotic corridors of truth, knelt before him.
“You are now as you should be,” he said, “a female — kneeling before a male.”
“Who are you? What are you?” she begged.
“I am a slaver,” he said, “from a world called Gor.”
“There is no such place,” she said.
“You might better judge of that,” he said, “should you find yourself chained at a Gorean slave ring, naked.”
“I, chained, naked?” she said.
He looked down upon her.
“You might be deemed acceptable,” he said.
Tears running from her eyes, kneeling before him, she lifted the collar to him.
“No,” he said, “I shall not make this easy for you. Put it on your own neck, and close it, if you wish.”
She did so.
“The lock,” he said, “goes at the back.”
She lifted her hands and rotated the collar.
In this way the encircling beauty of the band is best exhibited.
“Your breasts,” he said, “are nicely lifted, as you do that.”
She was startled, to hear her femaleness so noted, appreciatively, yet casually.
It was a strange contrast, doubtless, as she knelt before him, in a severe business suit, with skirt, but on her neck a Gorean slave collar. It would have looked less strange, and much better, he supposed, were she in a bit of slave silk, or a tunic, or, perhaps best, naked.
Culture prescribes certain aptnesses.
“Pronounce yourself slave,” he said, “— but only if you wish.”
“Please!” she begged.
“— Only if you wish,” he said.
“I am a slave,” she said.
“You are a slave,” he said.
She looked up at him, pathetically.
“It is done,” he said. “You have no power to reverse such things. Do you understand, girl?”
“‘Girl’?”
He did not bother to respond to such an inanity.
“Yes,” she whispered, “I am a girl.”
“And does the girl understand?”
“Yes,” she whispered, “the girl understands.”
“You are an unclaimed slave,” he said. “An unclaimed slave is subject to claimancy.”
“Claim me,” she said.
“Do you beg to be claimed?”
“Yes!”
“I claim you.”
“I am claimed!” she said, softly, in gratitude, in relief, tears coursing down her cheeks.
“Whose are you?” he asked.
“Yours!” she said.
“Mine?”
“Yours — Master,” she said.
“That is doubtless the first time you have addressed that word to a man.”
“Yes, Master,” she said. “I have never before had a master.”
“Your theories have irritated me,” he said. “Accordingly, I do not think that your bondage, at least in the beginning, will be an easy one.”
“It will be as Master wishes,” she said, a surrendered slave.
He turned about, to leave.
“Master,” she called. “May I rise?”
He smiled. In her dreams, and fantasies, as he had suspected, she had been many times a slave. “Yes,” he said, without turning about. He then left, and she rose to her feet, and hurried after him.
He decided, it is said, to keep her for himself.
It is said she became one of the loveliest house and stable slaves in Venna, a city somewhat north of Ar, famed for its tharlarion races.