"You may move," he said.
With a cry I began to respond spasmodically to him.
"Stop," he said.
"Master!" I cried.
"Do not move," he said.
I wept with misery. How cruel could he be. "Yes, Master!" I wept.
He had raised me to the point at which another instant's movement would have precipitated that most incredible and fantastic of sexual experiences to which a human female can attain, that in which she knows herself cognitively and physiologically submitted, fully and completely, absolutely, to a master, the psychological and somatic raptures of submission spasm, the slave orgasm.
"I must drive you from my mind," he said.
I moaned.
"What is your brand?" he asked.
"The Slave Flower, the Dina!" I cried. "The name," he had said, "for you are a common girl, and worthless, should be an unimportant name, one plain and simple, one fitting for a valueless girl, an ignorant, branded she-slave such as you."
"The Dina!" I cried.
He had begun to have me.
"Permit me to yield! Permit me to yield, Master!" I cried.
"No," he said.
I cried out with misery. I tried to hold myself immobile.
"You are going to be named," he said.
I could not even speak.
I was the only Dina among his girls. It was a common brand. Often girls who wore it were called Dina. For a low, common girl, one not to be distinguished from others, it was a suitable name. It was unimportant. It was simple. It was plain. I was common, and of little value. The name, too, was common, and of little value. It was thus not unfitting for a girl such as I, not unfitting for an ignorant, branded she-slave such as myself.
"You will not forget your name," he said.
"No, Master!" I said. I knew how he would impress my name upon me.
He had told me that I was without value, that I was worthless. I knew I could be bought and sold for a handful of copper tarsks.
I knew what he would name me.
He did not cease to have me.
At length I cried out, agonized. "I must yield, Master! I cannot help myself! I cannot help myself but yield to you!"
"Must you yield," he asked, "even though it might mean your death?"
"Yes, Master!" I cried.
"Then yield, Slave," said he.
With a cry I yielded to him.
"You are Dina," he said, laughing, his voice like a lion. "You are the slave Dina, whom I own." He laughed and cried out with pleasure in his triumph over the slave girl. "Yes, Master!" I cried. "I am Dina! I am Dina" I clutched him, joyously, his. "Dina loves Master!" I wept. "Dina loves Master!"
Later I lay in his arms, an owned slave girl, content beside the mightiness of her master.
How I loved him!
"Strange," he said, looking up at the Gorean stars.
"Master?" I asked.
"You are obviously only a common girl," he said.
"Yes, Master," I said. I began to kiss him gently about the shoulder.
"Only a common girl," he said.
It was true. He was Clitus Vitellius, a Captain, of the city of Ar. I was only Dina.
"Yes, Master," I said.
"I fear that I might begin to care for you," he said.
"If Dina has found favor with her master," I said, "she is pleased."
"I must fight this weakness," he said.
"Whip me," I said.
"No," he said.
"It is not you who is weak, Master," I said. "It is I, Dina, in your arms, who am without strength." I kissed him.
"I am a captain," he said. "I must be strong."
"I am a slave girl," I said. "I must be weak."
"I must be strong," he said.
"You did not seem weak to me, Master," I said, "when you laughed, and took me, and named me Dina. Then you seemed magnificent in your power and pride."
"It was only the conquest of a slave girl," he said.
"Yes, Master," I said, "I am your conquest." It was true. Dina, the Earth girl, she who had once been Judy Thornton, a lovely college student and poetess, was now the enslaved love conquest of Clitus Vitellius of Ar.
"You trouble me," he said, angrily.
"Forgive me, Master," I said.
"I should rid myself of you," he said.
"Permit me to follow at the heels of the least of your soldiers," I said. I truly did not fear that he would rid himself of me. I loved him. I was confident that he, too, in spite of himself, cared for me.
"Master," I said.
"Yes," he said.
"Has Dina pleased you this night?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"I want your collar," I said.
There was a long silence. Then he said, "You are an Earth girl. Yet you beg to wear a collar?"
"Yes, Master," I said.
It is said, in a Gorean proverb, that a man, in his heart, desires freedom, and that a woman, in her belly, yearns for love. The collar, in its way, answers both needs. The man is most free, owning the slave. He may do what he wishes with her. The woman, on the other hand, being owned, is institutionally and helplessly subject, in her status as slave, to the submissions of love.
I sensed my master feared his feelings for me. This gave me power over him.
"Dina wants Master's collar," I whispered, kissing at him. The collar would make me the equal of Eta.
"I decide what slaves will wear my collar," he said.
"Yes, Master," I said, chastened. If he saw fit to put me in his collar, he would; if he did not, he would not.
"Does Dina love her master?" he asked.
"Yes, yes, Master!" I whispered. I so loved him!
"Have I given you choice in this?" he asked.
"No, Master," I said. "You have made me love you, helplessly and wholly."
"Your feelings, then," he asked, "have been fully engaged, and you are now mine, at my complete mercy, fully and vulnerably, with no shred of pride or dignity left?"
"Yes, Master," I whispered.
"You acknowledge yourself then hopelessly in love with me, and as a slave girl?"
"Yes, Master," I said.
"Amusing," he said.
"Master?" I asked.
"I, and the men, and other girls," lie said, "will leave Tabuk's Ford in the morning. You will remain behind. I am giving you to Thurnus."
8
A Girl's Will Means Nothing
I fled for the cage. I must reach it!
I threw myself into the cage on my hands and knees. I turned wildly and seized the bar and flung it down behind me. The snout of the beast thrust viciously part way between the bars. It snarled, and squealed and hissed. I shrank back in the tiny cage. On the other side of the bars of the vertically sliding, lowered gate the blazing eyes of the sleen regarded me. I cried out with misery. Had I run more slowly it would have caught me and torn me to pieces. It turned its head and, with its double row of white fangs, bit at the bars. I heard the scraping of the teeth on the bars; it pulled the cage, moving it, until it caught against the chain and stake which anchored it. Then it moved about the cage on its six legs, its long, furred body angrily rubbing against the bars. It tried to reach me from another side. I knelt head down, shuddering, my hands over my head, in the center of the tiny cage. Once its snout thrust against me, and I whimpered. I smelled its breath, felt the heat of it on my flesh. The bars were wet where it had bit at them; the ground, too, about the cage was wet where the beast's saliva, in its frenzy, its lust for killing, had dampened the clawed dust.
"Back," called Thurnus, coming to the sleen and putting a rope on its neck, dragging it away from the cage. "Gentle! Gentle, Fierce One!" coaxed Thurnus. He thrust his head near the large, brown snout, cooing and clicking, his hands in the rope on its throat. He whispered in its ear. The beast became pacified. Thurnus took a great piece of meat and threw it to the animal, which began to devour it.
"Excellent," said Clitus Vitellius.