“It was because of you,” said Tutina, “that I was beaten.”
Her charge remembered her outburst, on a far world, it seemed long ago now, objecting to the fact, it seemed so strange at the time, that a frightened woman in a white gown had been permitted to sit on a chair.
“I was beaten!” hissed Tutina.
“I am sorry, Mistress,” whispered her charge.
She did not doubt but what Tutina, for that lapse, had been put under discipline. She did not doubt but what the young man was fully capable of taking a whip to a woman who did not please him.
“And how I was forced to serve you, and you acting so superior to me,” exclaimed Tutina angrily, “you treating me with such contempt, and you then only an ignorant, nameless slave!”
“Forgive me!” begged the frightened, kneeling charge. “I did not know, Mistress!”
“I now wear the talmit,” said Tutina, indicating the fillet on her brow, binding back her long, luxurious blond hair. “So fear, stupid little slut. Know, ankleted little slave bitch, that upon the least provocation you will feel my switch, richly!”
“Yes, Mistress,” wept her charge, cringing, putting her head down. Like any low girl, she feared the wearer of the talmit.
“Now,” said Tutina, seemingly somewhat mollified, “remove your tunic. Open the packages. Dress.”
****
And so she stood now in the circle, before the curule chair.
The garments she wore were really muchly as they had been, so many years ago.
She wore a black, jacketed, skirted suit, with a cool, front-buttoned, rather severe, rather mannish white blouse, buttoned high about her neck. Her hair was drawn back severely, bound tight, and bunned, at the back of her head. She wore black, figured stockings, rather decorative, and shiny, black pumps, with a narrow two-inch heel.
“One thing is missing,” said the young man in the curule chair. He motioned her forward.
Into her hand he placed two small, plain, lovely golden loops, bracelets.
“Put them on,” he told her.
She slipped them on her left wrist. He knew, of course, that that was where they went. She did not wish to be beaten.
“Return to the circle,” he said, “and, hands at your sides, turn slowly for us.”
She did as she was commanded, and then again faced him, and the others.
She knew herself displayed.
She wondered if a nude slave girl on an auction block could feel more acutely conscious of her exhibition.
She did not know these people, even these sorts of people. How different they were from what she knew, in their naturalness, in their laughter and assurances, in their colorful robes and miens, all this so different from the tepidities, apathies, lethargies, and gray conformities of her old world! She had not known such people could exist. To her they were alien, not only linguistically but, more importantly, more frighteningly, culturally. This is what human beings can be, she thought, so different from those of Earth! She was not on her own world. And she was in a very different culture, one with different laws, customs, and values. Things were so unfamiliar. What could she, given no choice, brought helplessly here, be to these people?
What could one such as she be on this world?
She feared she knew.
How strange it is, she thought, to be fully clothed, according to one’s culture, so decorously, even primly, and yet, here, in a different culture, in an identical garmenture, being presented, being put on view, to feel so exposed, to feel oneself an eccentric object of curiosity.
She would have preferred her tunic, however brief. Then she would at least have better fitted in with her surroundings; she would then have felt less anomalous, less conspicuous, more congruent with her lovely milieu. There were others of her status in the room, and surely they, at least, were appropriately garmented, were accorded the simple, natural garmentures, so brief, so clinging, so revealing, which seemed to be culturally prescribed for those of their station, which station she had no doubt was hers, as well. They were attractively, and suitably, garbed, at least for what they were.
So why not she?
Why not she?
Too, she knew, and this did not displease her, at all, that she was quite attractive, perhaps even extremely so, in the tunic. That had been evident from the appraisals of guards.
In their eyes she was clearly a female.
She had no doubt about that.
And one of great interest.
That, too, had been clear.
Sometimes the guards had bound her, with colorful cords, sometimes in exotic fashions, and had then ordered her to free herself, but she had been unable to do so. But how their eyes had glinted upon her, as she had twisted, and reared up, and fell back, and squirmed and writhed, in her unsuccessful attempts to elude her constraints! To see her so before them, bound so helplessly, so predictably and absurdly futile in her commanded struggles, had given them much pleasure. Once she had intended to defy them, to remain quite still, but she was then switched, and so, again, she had addressed herself, now stung and weeping, desperately to efforts she now realized were foredoomed.
She recalled the words of the young man, on Earth, now her master on Gor, that he had thought she would be very pretty in such cords, later, when she would be luscious, helplessly bound in them.
Certainly she had been helpless in them, in those so simple, so soft, so attractive, so colorful bonds.
Am I, she asked herself, “luscious”?
She well remembered the eyes of the guards.
Perhaps, she thought.
And she was not displeased.
What female, and particularly one such as she, on this world, would not wish to be attractive, even luscious?
She shuddered.
She recalled that the young man on Earth, now her master, had suggested to her that her very life might depend on such things.
How often in history, she thought, it had been only a woman’s beauty which stood between herself and the sword. How grateful she might be then when she felt her hands roped behind her and a leash put on her neck!
The other girls in the room, those such as she, were in their tunics!
Why was she not then in her tunic?
Long ago she had ceased to feel such a garmenture was inexcusable and insufferably improper, that it was scandalously outrageous. To be sure, she supposed in some sense it was still all these things, and by intent, but now, too, it seemed appropriate, delicious, provocative, maddeningly exciting, sexually stimulating to the wearer and doubtless, too, to the bold and appraising onlooker beneath whose gaze its lovely occupant found herself without recourse. But even on Earth she had, she was now aware, viewed such garmentures rather ambivalently, perhaps even hypocritically, viewing them, or pretending to view them, on the one hand with the prescribed indignation and rage, and, on the other, wondering curiously, and excitedly, what she herself might look like, so clad. And she wondered, too, if some of the cumbersomely clad free women in the room, several even veiled, might not envy the others, their sisters, the freedom of their simple garmentures. And, too, what woman, in her heart, does not desire for her beauty to be displayed, does not desire to be seen, and understood, and openly relished, as the special and exquisite treasure she is? Are we not all forgivably vain? In any event, it was such as men would have for them. They were dressed as men would have them dressed, such as they, if they were to be permitted clothing. But why then not she? Most were kneeling, some not. They did not wear anklets. About their throats, rather, closely fitting, locked, were flat, slender metal bands, slave collars.