“Do you beg water?” he asked. “I am to be addressed as ‘sir’.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. She was then watered.
She was watered more liberally then the other woman. She had doubtless learned from the other’s experience. Her belly would be nicely rounded. A similar effect is obtained when a woman is wrist shackled and must pull the chain of the shackles back tightly against her waist. I had had to do this in the corridor of the pens, while kneeling, shortly after being ordered from the pitch-dark cell. It is “having one’s belly beneath the chain.” That is, of course, also a way in Gorean for referring to a girl’s bondage. For example, “I am pleased to note that Lady So-and-So’s belly is now beneath the chain.” “Excellent! How long has her belly been beneath the chain?” and so on.
A slaver’s practice is often to put binding fiber, or binding leather, about a girl’s waist, snugly, and tire her hands behind her back. This, of course, narrows her waist, rounds her belly, and contributes to the accentuation of the bosom. This is not really a slaver’s “trick” because it is obvious what is being done. It is, however, attractive. Needless to say, a slave is never bound so tightly or cruelly that she might be injured. It would be stupid to damage her in such a way; as it would reduce her value. This does not mean, however, that she may not be bound tightly. It is useful for a slave to occasionally know herself absolutely helpless.
It would be not only the second woman who had profited from the experience of the first woman, but the first woman, as well. Given the next opportunity to beg water, I had no doubt she would do so as a needful, suitably deferent suppliant. Nor would she forget the world ‘sir’. To be sure, that expression of respect would doubtless soon be changed for another, one even more appropriate, and, indeed, required, for what she as soon to be.
“I must leave now,” said the broad-bodied girl to the free woman.
The free woman, on her chain, in her shackles, looked up at her.
Suddenly the broad-bodied girl kicked her in the side and then, biting on the apricot, holding it to her mouth, took the free woman by the hair with both hands and jerked her head back and forth. The free woman cried out in misery, in pain.
The broad-bodied girl then took the apricot from her mouth and bit into it again.
The free woman looked wildly to the dock worker, a few women from her, for protection, for redress. But he, it seemed, had noticed nothing. Master do not much interfere in the squabbles of slaves, you see, and, for most practical purposes, it seems that this was at least the sort of category in which the free woman now found herself included. She seemed aghast, stunned. She began to shake. She seemed then small, and helpless. We often live in fear, of course, of the strongest girls amongst us. None of us would have dared to interfere, even if we had been so inclined. And the free woman had been insolent. Let her begin to learn her manners.
“Do you beg water?” asked the dock worker of a nearer woman. “I am to be addressed as ‘sir’.”
“Yes, sir,” said the woman.
She, too, had learned how to beg water.
“You,” said the free woman, to one of the girls who had spoken kindly to her.
“Mistress?” asked the girl.
“Can such things be done to me?” she asked.
“Unless the masters prevent them,” said the girl.
“I do not understand,” said the free woman.
“Try to be pleasing to the masters,” said the girl.
“Numbers,” said the free woman, “have been inscribed on my body. What do they mean?”
“They are to be read by the pen masters,” said the girl.
“What do they mean?” she asked.
“I suppose, Mistress,” said the girl, “that they suggest an initial category for you, your possible disposition, and such.”
“Category’, ‘disposition’?” she asked.
“Yes, Mistress.”
“What are they?” she asked.
“I do not know the meaning of the numbers, Mistress,” said the girl.
“You are stupid!” said the free woman.
“Yes, Mistress,” said the girl.
“Do you beg water?” asked the dock worker of a woman some four places before the free woman.
“Never, never!” she cried out.
He then went to the next woman in the line. “Do you beg water?” he asked. “I am to be addressed as ‘sir’.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
He then watered her, and proceeded on to the next woman in line.
In a moment, however, she who had refused to beg for water looked wildly over her shoulder.
“But I am thirsty!” she cried.
Some people, it seemed, learn more slowly then others. I wondered if she were less intelligent than several of the others. On the other hand, perhaps she had been testing a limit, and had now discovered where it was.
He paid her no attention.
In a moment, she cried out, “Yes, I beg water! Please, sir! I beg water, sir! I beg water, sir!”
But he continued on his way.
“Please,” she wept. “Please, sir!”
But he paid her no attention. Perhaps she might later obtain water from a trough in the pens. In any event, she would not now be watered. In this incident I suspected she had learned a valuable lesson.
Also, she was now doubtless better informed than before as to the nature of her life.
If nothing else, she had learned that she was not different from the others.
“What are you waiting here for?” asked the free woman, angrily. “Do you wish to hear me beg for water?”
“Yes, Mistress,” said one of our number, she who had just been denounced as stupid, who was kneeling to the side. “We would like to hear you beg for water.”
“Slut!” hissed the free woman.
“Yes, Mistress,” said the girl.
“Go all of you!” commanded the free woman.
“No, Mistress,” smiled the girl.
It was a small enough vengeance, I supposed, for the insults which the free woman had recently addressed to us, for example, in the matter of the apricots. It was not wholly for such a purpose, however, that I was waiting there.
The free woman pulled in frustration at the shackles which confined her hands behind her back.
The fellow with the water bag had now arrived at the free woman’s position, and we slaves, those still there, backed away a little. Those of us who were not already kneeling, and I was one, now knelt. We were in the presence of a free male. The free woman, though her primary attention was on the man with the water bag, from the corner of her eye, took note of our action, it seemed apprehensively.
“Sir!” she said.
“Have you requested permission to speak?” he asked. “No, sir,” she said.
“Then it seems you might consider doing so,” he said. She looked up at him.
“May I speak?” she begged.
I supposed that this might be the first time in her life the free woman had ever begged permission to speak.
“You may, if you wish,” he said, “speak two words.” She looked up at him, puzzled.
“Do you beg water?” he said. “I am to be addressed as ‘sir’.”
“Yes,” she said, hesitantly, adding, “-sir!”
These were, I gathered, the two words which she was to be permitted.
Two of our number laughed. It seemed she had begged well.
He had the water bag slung over his shoulder. With his left hand, it gripped in her hair, he bent her head back. He regarded her for a moment, for she was very beautiful, and she uttered a tiny whimper of protest, well aware of the display of her beauty and his causal regard thereof. Her long, lovely, blond hair fell behind her, even to her calves. He then with his right hand guided the spike of the water bag between her teeth. Gratefully, head back, she drank and sucked at the spike. It had been long, I conjectured, since she had had water. Water gushed from her mouth, some running over her chin and down the outside of her throat, even under the steel collar with the front and back chain on her neck, to course down her body. He pulled the spike away from her, still holding her head back, though I think she, tears in her eyes, would have fain have been permitted.