She brought her hair forward, and put her head at his sandals, her hair about his feet.
“This, now,” he said, “is truly you. This is how I wanted you, and how you wanted to be, even then, so long ago, at my feet, a slave.”
She looked up at him tears in her eyes.
He removed the two golden loops from her wrist. She now wore only the steel anklet.
“Lick and kiss my feet, slave,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“And thus,” said he, “you are the living refutation of your own ideology.”
“Yes,” she whispered, “— Master.”
After a time, to her consternation, he pulled his feet away from her soft tongue and lips, her tears and her hair.
“Guard,” said he, “take this slave away, and see that the last phase of her treatment is concluded.”
“Surely there is no more, Master!” she cried.
“Oh yes,” he said, menacingly, “I have something very special in store for you, slave girl.”
She was dragged naked from the room.
Outside the door she, still held, was permitted to bend down and seize up her tiny tunic, that which she had left in this place, when she had donned the other garments. The paper wrappings, the tape, the cardboard boxes, were still there, where she had left them.
She was then drawn naked, rudely, through the corridors, her upper left arm, hurting her, in the powerful grip of the hurrying guard. She clutched her tiny tunic in her right hand, but could not put it on. She was taken through the corridors much as she had seen other naked beauties, save that she was not bound or chained.
Faces, some of them frightened, of young women, peered at her from behind bars.
In a short time she was in her kennel area and was urged up the steel ladder until she reached her tier, at which point she was forced to crawl painfully on all fours over the steel grille work until she reached her kennel.
In a moment she was locked within.
She tried, hysterically, to thrust the anklet from her, but could not do so.
She began to weep.
She turned about, kneeling, and clutched the bars, crying.
After a time she drew on her tiny tunic, and moved some straw about in the kennel. She then lay down, wrapping herself, as she could, in the short, thin blanket.
She wept.
He had had the fullness of his vengeance on her, surely. It seemed that she could not have been more thoroughly reduced and humiliated.
And yet she knew that she had been thrilled to be at his feet, a helpless, subdued, submitting, dominated slave.
It was what she was, she realized, and what she most profoundly wanted to be, and had always wanted to be, a slave.
What did he have in mind for her?
She did not know.
All she knew was that he would do what he wished with her, and that she was his slave.
Chapter 10
SHE IS PRESENTED BEFORE HER MASTER,
FOLLOWING THE FOURTH AND FINAL PHASE OF HER TRANSFORMATION
She wept, trying to hold the guard’s wrist, where it was fastened so deeply, so cruelly, in her hair, she bent over, her head at his hip, hurried forth, into the room, in a common Gorean leading position.
She was then thrown to her belly within the yellow circle, before the curule chair. Hastily, fearfully, she struggled to her knees, lifted her arms, tried to smooth and straighten her hair, and brushed it back, behind her shoulders, and knelt, before her master.
Though he was the same, clearly to her, now, he seemed older, more mature, certainly now older than she, more frightening to her.
“Are you in a suitable position, for what you have been told you are?” he inquired.
She knelt in the beautiful position that had been taught her, back on her heels, back straight, head up, palms of the hands on her thighs.
He continued to regard her.
Tears sprang to her eyes.
She widened her knees. It was the last, small adjustment that had been taught to her, and that most recently. It was a position appropriate for her type of slave, the Gorean pleasure slave.
He continued to regard her.
Sobbing, she widened her knees still further before him. She wore the same tiny tunic she had been given before, except that now it had been slit at the sides, from the hem on both sides, to both the left and right hip, so that a flash of hip might be bared as she moved, and so that, when she knelt, it might fall between her thighs, as it now did. And so she knelt before her master, in the one of the common positions of the Gorean pleasure slave, her knees spread widely, she vulnerably opened then, save for the tiny veil of cloth, before him. The same position, of course, is commonly used by naked slaves.
She looked up at him, tears burning in her eyes.
“Has Tutina been nice to you?” he asked.
She shuddered. It was a test. “She has treated me precisely as I have deserved, Master,” she said.
He smiled. His smile told her how clever he understood her to be. Could she conceal nothing from him?
No love was lost between herself and Tutina. She had hated Tutina from the first, even from the moment she had first seen her at the opera, so long ago, probably because she had seemed simple, stupid and so beautiful, but, more likely, as she was, in fact, neither simple nor stupid, because she was beautiful and was with the young man. Too, Tutina now held authority over her. Tutina wore the talmit, and was to her and, indeed, to several others, it seemed, “first girl.” And that authority was exercised over her charges, and particularly over her, it seemed, with a malicious pleasure. She, as the others, had learned to fear her switch.
Tutina, who derived from Earth, and, indeed, had once a been a native of her own nation, and city, was abundantly, natively, fluent in English. But Tutina would speak only Gorean to her. In this way Tutina, who was fluent in that language, put her, at this time, at a considerable disadvantage. Her young charge must then tensely strain to understand, struggling to apprehend the subtleties of an unfamiliar tongue, trying desperately not to miss a word. How uncertain, frightened, and ignorant her young charge so often felt. How cleverly Tutina had her then at her mercy.
But, as Tutina perhaps had not realized, she was thereby rapidly improving her charge’s Gorean.
The young charge was jealous of Tutina, of her power, her beauty, and her standing closer to the master. The young charge would have preferred to be her master’s only slave, lying contentedly, curled, licking, at his feet. But he had at least two slaves, and perhaps more. She did not know. So she knew why she feared, and resented, and hated Tutina. What she did not understand was why Tutina should seem to hate her so. After all, what had the beauteous Tutina to fear from her? What had Tutina to fear from such as she, a low slave?
Then his gaze became harder.
“Have you seen yourself, as you are now,” he asked, “in the large mirrors in the training room?”
“Yes,” she said.
Those mirrors were as fine as any she had known on Earth.
“Naked?”
“Yes,” she said, putting her head down. She had been forced to look, stunned, taken aback, by the incredible, youthful, vulnerable loveliness she had seen there.
“How old are you, or would you say,” he asked, “looking upon yourself as you are now?”
“I do not know,” she whispered.
“I would say,” he said, “that you are something like eighteen or nineteen years of age.”
She nodded. She could remember photographs of herself at that age, or near that age, and what she had seen in the mirror was the same, or much the same, save, of course, for the nudity, and, she suspected, some present superiority of figure, that from the serums, or perhaps the diet and exercise. The background reflected in the mirror had been quite different, of course, that of a training room on an alien world, with its painted lines on the floor, its rings, and whips and bars, and such, from the background of the photographs.