“She is new to our world,” said the pit master, somewhat angrily.
“She should know better!” screamed the free woman.
“True,” said the pit master.
“She is stupid!” cried the woman. “She is stupid!”
“She is extremely intelligent,” said the pit master, “considering what she is, a slave.” He had doubtless been expecting me here, and had doubtless been apprised of the contents of my papers. I was glad to learn that I might be thought to be intelligent, if only for a slave. Such things, I had learned, considerable improve a girl’s price. The men on this world relish intelligent women. We make, it is said, the best slaves. How they make us serve and obey!
More is expected, you see, of an intelligent slave. Demands are placed on her intelligence. It is challenged, and exploited. She is in the beginning perhaps its lamenting victim, for she is treated with such impatient severity and so much is expected of her, but is soon, as she grows, blossoms and thrives in her bondage, and as her master is more pleased with her, the joyful recipient of its attendant benefactions. Intelligent, she derives more from the uncompromising completeness of her state and the deliciousness of her domination. She is expected, you see, to serve with sensitivities, delicacies, diligences and subtleties beyond the ken of simpler women. Our intelligence, interestingly, makes us more the properties of our masters, just as one will demand, and have, more from an intelligent animal than from one less intelligent, we are more easily controlled in a thousand ways by as little as a glance or gesture, because we grasp what is required; our bodies, too, tend to be more sensitive, and this puts us the more at the mercy of our masters, and any disciplines he may choose to impose upon us; if we attempt to conceal our intelligence, in order to have less expected of us, we are whipped; our service is to be perfect, and well beyond that of a less intelligent woman; too, our faults or shortcomings are dealt with more severely, for we should know better. Too, for what it is workth, intelligent women are commonly better looking than less intelligent women, a feature which is not without its appeal to masters, and one which makes them more likely candidates for the slavers’ ropes and irons; too, they also tend to be more helplessly responsive in the arms of a master. They tend, as well, to be more in touch with their inner selves and secret needs, and less the victims of negativistic conditioning programs. The intelligent women often knows what she is missing and what she wants, whereas the less intelligent woman is often little more than the troubled, unwitting victim of the prescriptions and pathologies of a negativistic culture within which she is, unbeknownst to herself, imprisoned.
“I am a helpless free women,” said the free woman, wheedlingly, “and you are a free man. I have been insulted. I must depend upon you to see that my honor is suitable satisfied.”
“The barbarian slave will be suitably punished,” he said.
“Excellent!” she said.
The pit master, in spite of the power which he doubtless held in this place, even over prisoners, as I had been informed, seemed concerned to treat the free woman with respect. This, I gathered, might be cultural, or perhaps he, somehow, oddly, despite his grotesque appearance, might be sensitive to some subtle canons of gentility. I had noted that the guards in the pens had similarly shown great deference to free women. To be sure, those free women might have been important, and they were certainly not prisoners. This deference, it might be mentioned, had not precluded, later, and the next day, the women gone, a number of rude jokes pertaining to the, nor some rather explicit speculations as to what they might look like, chained naked to a floor ring. The respect commonly shown to free women on this world is not, of course, accorded to slaves. It would never have occurred to the pit master, or to other men of this world, to treat me as other than what I was, a slave. How different we are from free women! And yet, interestingly, how artificial, and how fragile, and how culturally precarious, is the distinction between the free women and the slave. Do the free women understand that that distinction is not part of nature, like dominance and submission, but that it depends merely on the will of men? Do they not understand that their lofty status requires the permission of males, and, in a sense, depends upon the whims of males? There is a thin line, and a short distance, between the free woman and the slave, a line as thin as slave silk, a distance as short as the three links joining slave bracelets.
“What of my ransom?” called the free woman. “Has it arrived?”
“No,” said the pit master.
“Surely it is overdue!” she cried, grasping the bars of the cage.
“I do not know,” said the pit master.
“Well, inquire!” she cried.
The pit master was silent. I did not think he was pleased. He removed his hand from my hair. Instantly I knelt, head down, near him.
“Inquire!” demanded the free woman. The pit master was silent.
“Expedite the matter!” she cried, shaking the bars. He was silent.
“Please, my handsome fellow,” she wheeled.
“Lift the torch, higher,” said the pit master, slowly, as though curious, to the lovely brunette slave beside him.
As none were paying me attention I dared to look up. Should the pit master turn to regard me I would instantly look down, and away. I did not wish to appear insolent, meeting his eyes. Too, I was not eager to behold again that visage.
The ceiling flickered wildly in the illumination of the torch.
Suddenly the pit master, that shambling creature, who had apparently been curious to look more closely upon something, uttered an angry noise.
The slave with the torch gasped.
She, too, it seemed, had noted something.
The free woman in the cage stepped back a little.
The pit master pointed toward the bottom of the cage. The cage, as the net had had, had various ropes attached to it. By these robes, I surmised, once it was lowered on its chain, perhaps by some sort of windlass, it might be drawn toward the walkway.
“What is wrong?” asked the free woman.
I gathered that she might, from her words, have some conception as to what might be wrong.
“Remove the cloth,” said he, “from the latch.”
“No!” she wept. “Please!”
But she obeyed. The cage, apparently, opened and closed from the bottom, gated by a hinged plate. She had tied something, probably a strip of cloth from the bottom of her robes, which were ragged now, in such a way as to prevent the release of the floor. A cord, coiled on the walkway, ran the latch. By drawing on this cord it seemed the latch could be released. She stood in the cage, over the water. In her hand was the piece of cloth.
The pit master reached to the cord which controlled the latch.