"Yes, Master," I said. I fetched wine, and placed it on the tiles, within reach of the girl.
"Does she not even know how to kneel?" he asked.
Quickly I instructed the girl in the position of the pleasure slave, kneeling, back on heels, back straight, head high, hands on thighs, knees wide.
"What shall we call her?" he asked me.
"Whatever Master wishes," I said.
He saw the discarded collar, inscribed "I am Judy. Return me to the Lady Elicia of Ar, of Six Towers."
He opened the collar. He approached her. "Perhaps," said he, "we shall call you 'Judy. "
She shook with misery. "Please," she begged, "Master." Flow offended and miserable she would be, the proud, former Elicia Nevins, to be forced to wear my name, I of whom she had been so contemptuous.
"What think you?" asked the free man of me, grinning.
"I think, Master," I said, "that the name is not truly fitting for this slave, given her nature and appearance."
There is often a fittingness sought between name and slave. It did seem to me that 'Judy' was not the proper name for the newly enslaved beauty who knelt before us. It was not merely my desire that she not be given a name which I had formerly worn when free.
"True," said Bosk of Port Kar, commending me on my view of the matter.
The girl breathed more easily.
"Bring from my belongings the open slave collar there to be found," said Bosk of Port Kar to me.
"Yes, Master," I said, and hurried to comply. From his belongings I fetched the collar.
He took the collar from me. It was simple, and steel, straightforward and secure.
"Read it," said he to her.
"I am the slave Elicia," she read. "I belong to Bosk of Port Kar."
She looked at him with horror. She would wear her own name as a slave name.
"Submit," he said.
She looked at me, wildly, piteously. I aided her. I showed her how to kneel back on her heels, her arms extended to him, wrists crossed, her head down, between her arms. "Say, 'I submit, " I said. "I submit," she said. He bound her wrists, tightly, before her body. "Look up," I told her. She looked up. He collared her. I was very pleased to see her in the collar of Bosk of Port Kar.
Bosk then left the room, I heard him, too, leave the outer room. I heard him outside, moving to the roof. Doubtless he, a warrior, was checking the avenue of his egress. I did not know if the tarn would be waiting on the roof, or would be summoned from the roof, by tam whistle.
I looked at the new slave girl. She knelt, miserable, collared, branded, her wrists bound before her body, on the thick furs at the foot of the couch.
She looked at the surface of the couch. She would not dare to ascend to it, unless ordered there by a master. Her place, unless commanded otherwise, was at the foot of the couch, at the slave ring. I, a slave, had spent nights at that slave ring, at the foot of my mistress's couch. Now, she who had been Elicia Nevins of Earth, who had been my mistress, knelt there, no more than a lowly slave herself.
She looked at me, disbelievingly. "We are both slave girls," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"I have been branded," she said. "My ears are pierced. I wear a collar!"
"That is true, Elicia," I said. I had used her slave name. She understood this.
I looked at her. "Your collar is very becoming," I said.
"Is it?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"It is a common collar," she said.
"It is still very beautiful on you," I said.
"Truly?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Is it more beautiful because it is locked?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. I did not doubt but what that was true. That the collar was locked did not simply mean that she could not remove it, a fact which played its important role in guaranteeing slave recognition and identification, but, perhaps even more importantly, was momentous in its significance of bondage. A brand might be concealed by clothing, even the brief garb commonly allotted a female slave, but the collar, consistently and openly, proclaimed her girl property. The collar, stressing her vulnerability as a slave, is sexually exciting to the girl who wears it, and to the men who look upon it. Perhaps that is why free women do not wear collars. The steel on her lovely throat, lost beneath her hair, glinting beneath it, contrasting so with her delicious softness, is sexually and aesthetically maddening. No girl is so beautiful, I suspect, as she who wears a Gorean slave collar.
Elicia looked at herself in the mirror across the room. She lifted her head, and turned it to one side. "It is not unattractive," she said.
"No," I said. "It is extremely exciting and attractive."
She looked at me, frightened. "What will men think?" she asked.
'That you are a slave," I said. I shrugged.
She shook with fear. Then again, she regarded herself in the mirror, turning.
"Is my brand pretty?" she asked.
"Why do you ask?" I asked.
"I was only curious," she said.
"Oh," I said.
"Is it?" she asked.
"You were a student of anthropology," I said. "You can look upon the institution of slavery dispassionately and objectively, as an interesting cultural phenomenon, characterizing certain civilizations."
"I am a slave!" she cried. "Do you not understand what that means!" She struggled with the bonds on her wrists.
"I understand very well what it means," I assured her. I thought of Clitus Vitellius. "Where is your coolness?" I inquired. "Where is your objectivity?"
"I am owned," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"I did not know it could feel like this," she said. She looked at me, wide-eyed. "It is indescribable," she said.
"You are now experiencing a cultural institution from within," I said. "So, too, one who is a master experiences it from within."
She shuddered as she thought how a master must look upon her, with what desire and power.
"In the past," I said, "you have had some verbal acquaintance with cultural institutions. Now, perhaps for the first time, you have some inkling of what it is to understand one."
She looked at me with fear.
"Do not be afraid, Elicia," I said. "You need only leam how to please men immensely." I laughed.
"I do not even like men!" she cried.
"It does not matter," I said. "The earrings are pretty," I said.
She rose to her feet, the chain on her ankle, and fumed her head back and forth.
"They are pretty," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"I never wore earrings," she said, "for they were too feminine."
"You are very feminine, Elicia," I said to her. "You should not have fought your femininity."
She looked angrily at me.
"Your days of fighting your femininity are at an end," I told her. "Men will not permit it. They will force you to yield to your femininity."
"To be feminine is to be less than a man!" she said.
"Whatever it is," I said, "it is what you are."
"Is it what I am?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Judy," she said.
I did not answer her.
"Mistress," she begged.
"Yes," I said.
"Is my brand pretty?"
I laughed. "Yes," I said. "It is deep and clean, and it marks you well."
"The beast put the iron well to my body," she said, angrily. I could also detect a bit of pride in her voice.
"Yes," I said, "he did indeed."
"I wonder if I am the first woman he has ever branded," she said.
"He is a warrior," I said.
"Oh," she said, subdued. Then again she regarded the brand. "It is deep and clean," she said, "and it marks my body well as that of a slave, but Mistress, is it pretty, is it attractive?"
"What do you think?" I asked.
She looked at me in anguish. Then she said, "I think it is beautiful."