“He will doubtless be about, as before,” I said. “It was the usual time. We have had our walk, and now is the time I put you here.”
I looked up. I could see the tarns, in the distance, one by one, approaching. They are frightening, but very beautiful. There must have been more than a hundred. They would alight on the docking area, between the cliff and the warehouses. Numbers of citizens were moving even now across the terrace, and bridge, to the docking area. It is something like “festival,” when a large raiding part returns. But the free woman, rising up on her toes, straining, had eyes only for those on the terrace, scanning them.
“Must a command be repeated?” I inquired.
“Please, Janice,” she begged, looking about.
“It seems we must return to the depths,” I said, angrily.
Quickly she knelt, her back toward the wall. Her wrists were pinioned behind her, in slave bracelets, as usual. Today she wore a simple brown slave tunic. It was a brief, sleeveless, pullover tunic with a deep V-neck. In virtue of such a tunic a free man has little difficulty in conjecturing the delights of a slave’s figure. The skirt was also cut at the sides. This made it easier to spread the knees in kneeling.
As she was in my keeping, I had thought it only fitting that I wear a somewhat more modest tunic myself, one with a higher neckline, a lower hemline, but the pit master, this day, would not hear of it. He had taken his whip and hurled it across the room. I had then, on all fours, fetched it back to him, in my teeth, and, lifting my head, delivered it into his grasp.
“Do you beg to be clothed?” he asked.
“Yes, Master,” I said, before him, on all fours.
“Who begs to be clothed?” he asked.
“Janice begs to be clothed,” I said.
He shook out the blades of the whip.
“And how does Janice beg to be clothed?” he inquired.
“Janice begs to be clothed in any way that Master sees fit,” I assured him.
He then threw an identical tunic to the floor.
I put my head down to his feet and kissed them, gratefully. “Thank you, Master,” I said.
I had then donned the garment. So now the free woman and I were identically tunicked, in spite of the fact that it was I who held the leash. We might have been, I supposed, a matched set. Indeed, some viewers may have taken us for such a set. Slaves, incidentally, even on this world, where they are common, tend to attract masculine attention. There are few men who do not enjoy looking upon them. That is one reason that it is important for us to pay attention to our posture, and such. Strangers will reprimand us, and even strike us, if we do not hold ourselves well. In a sense, I suppose, we are part of the beauties of the city, an aspect of its scenic delights, part of the attractions of the area, as might be her flower trees and brightly plumaged birds.
This sort of thing may be difficult for those of Earth to understand. Perhaps they must content themselves to do the best they can with it.
The slave is a lovely animal-can those of Earth even understand this? — tender, vulnerable, graceful, needful-and she can think, and feel, and speak, and serve, and love! Surely then it is easy to understand how her presence might be thought to improve a cityscape, a villa, a bench.
What red-blooded male would object to viewing us? What truly virile male would object to owning one or more of us?
And suppose that we were not that rare. Think of the flower trees, the brightly plumaged birds!
Surely, in some way, we not only characterize, but adorn a city.
One of the pleasures of fellows coming in from the country is to look upon the urban slaves, for which purpose they will stroll the avenues and loiter about in the plazas, the markets, and bazaars. We are apparently much different from the slaves they are used to, usually sturdy, large-boned girls, often of peasant stock, the sort which are most useful in the fields. And certainly few men will visit an unfamiliar city, on business or otherwise, without comparing the girls of that city with the girls of their own. Sometimes when important visitors arrive in a city, perhaps to negotiate trade agreements or contract alliances, many slaves are walked, or even sent on meaningless errands, to certain quarters, that they may be viewed. They are part of the display of the city, and are exhibited as an aspect of its wealth and abundance, intended to produce a favorable impression. Just as a city prides itself on the ebullience, variety, and colorfulness of its architecture, on its spacious plazas and broad avenues, on its numerous parks and gardens, to, too, it prides itself on the number and beauty of its slaves. Indeed, sometimes cities compete in such modalities, each seemingly eager to stimulate the admiration, if not excite the envy, of her neighbors. There is some speculation that this sort of thing has motivated more than one clandestine, intermunicpal slave raid. To be sure there is little need for covertness in these matters for there are many cities on this world, mostly small, but some quite large, and each city usually will have its quota of, or plenitude of, allies and enemies. Furthermore, there is no dearth of women, and on this world women, even free women, are regarded as legitimate and appropriate booty. A common recreation for a tarnsman, for example, particularly when not on duty, not on maneuvers or campaign, is to steal women from a “fair city,” that is, one at war with, or on poor terms with, his own city. These women may be either slave or free. Most commonly, of course, they will be slaves, as they, often beautiful, are the commonly desiderated quarry of the net and rope, but, too, of course, doubtless, at least in part, because free women are more difficult to obtain, being more carefully sheltered, protected, and guarded. He brings the captives back to his city, where he may dispose of them as he wishes, often keeping them for a time, until, say, he tires of them, and then selling them. I might mention, briefly, in passing, what seems to be a variation on this custom. Spies in one city ascertain, by rumor, and such, who are supposedly the most beautiful free women of a city. One need not have recourse to rumors, of course, where slaves are concerned. One need only look. These women, then, the allegedly beautiful free women, preferably of high birth and considerable position, are regarded as prize game. They are “trophy catches.” Tarnsmen draw lots and the winner sets out to obtain the particular woman. If he has “chain luck” he brings her back and presents her, stripped, to a committee of peers. They decide whether or not she is worthy to be a slave girl in their city. Is she desirable enough, beautiful enough, to ear a collar in that city? One would not wish her to reflect poorly on the city, of course. There seems, incidentally, to be a general view among hostile cities that the women of the enemy belong to them in some sense, that they are already in some sense their slaves-it is then just a matter of bringing them into their rightful collars. The committee of peers, so to speak, in the “trophy case,” may either rule favorably or unfavorably on the catch. Let us suppose they rule unfavorably. The woman is then placed in a coarse, sacklike garment, usually a sul sack with holes cut in it for the head and arms, and returned scornfully, rejected, her wrists thronged behind her, to the vicinity of her city. Occasionally this is done with a stunningly beautiful woman, which is to say to the enemy, “even the most beautiful of your women is not worthy of a collar in a city such as ours.” The effect on the woman, of course, is often pathetically unsettling. It is not unusual that such a woman will afterwards take to wandering the high bridges and lonely streets, the hem of her garments hitched above her ankles, perhaps that she not soil them, her veils disarranged a bit, perhaps by the wind. She then, so to speak, courts the collar, eager to reassure herself of her beauty, her desirability, her fittingness to be owned, she wants to prove to herself now that she does have some value, after all, as she had hitherto thought; had she been mistaken; had her arrogant surmise been no more than a little she-tarsk’s vanity; too, now, after her experience, her abduction, her subjection to male domination, and such, she ahs some inkling of what it might be to be a slave; and she longs now, on some level, to belong to a man, she wants now, though she may not be fully aware of this, that she wants, and needs, a master; she wants now to be helplessly owned, and to serve and love. There are, of course, many differences among slaves, ranging from the preferred slave of a ubar, often a witty, literate, talented, highly educated, brilliant woman, though she, too, is at his feet, to the simplest kettle-and-mat wench, who, too, of course, is expected to be throbbing, kicking, helpless delight in the furs, or blankets.