“Lying slut!” wept Aynur.
I had then been, seen kissing the fellow in the garden. I had been unable to help myself. I recalled that I, conquered as such as he can do to such as I, had done so, willingly, eagerly, gratefully, helplessly, passionately, uncontrollably.
“Slut! Slut!” cried Aynur.
Did she wish that it had been she who had been caught in the garden?
“Slut! Slut!” she cried.
Would she have behaved so differently from me?
“Slut!” she wept.
I did not think she was so different from me, in what we were, but here, in the garden, in the articulated structure of this world, we were separated by a chasm of almost infinite proportions. She was first amongst us, and I was the newest and, surely, the least of the flowers.
“Slut!” she screamed, beside herself with rage.
She raised the switch and I cringed.
But the blow did not fall.
Aynur had lowered the switch.
Then she said, quietly, her voice unnaturally calm, “Bracelet her.”
Tana, seizing me by the hair, threw me forward on my belly, on the grass. Then she and Tima, one on each side, crouched beside me. Tima jerked my hands behind my back, and held them there. I heard the clink of the bracelets being removed from Tana’s belly cord, where they had been over the cord, near her right hip. Then, with two rather clear, definitive little snaps, tiny, but quite decisive little noises, the bracelets were locked upon me. Tima and Tana then remained where they were, one on each side of me. I lay there on my belly, on the grass, my hands pinioned behind me.
The quietness which had been in Aynur’s voice, and that unnatural calm of it, had terrified me more than her rage.
“Get her on her feet,” said Aynur, quietly.
I, but Tima and Tana, one on each side of me, by the upper arms, was drawn to my feet, and held there.
Aynur slipped the base loop of the switch over her left wrist. The base loop, in certain adjustments, supplies additional control and leverage to the user of the implement. It also, of course, assures greater security in its retention. Too, by its means, obviously, the switch may be conveniently suspended, for example, over a hook or peg, or, say, as Aynur now had it, over a wrist, freeing the hands. Aynur bend down and picked up the silk and, neatly carefully, very methodically, very deliberately, folded it, until it was again in the shape of a small, soft, layered rectangle, some three inches by five inches, as it had been earlier, when the stranger had placed it in my mouth.
Aynur looked at me.
I tried desperately to read her eyes.
I could not do so.
Then she thrust the silk crosswise in my mouth.
I bit down upon it.
I could still not read her eyes.
I was again gagged.
Aynur then turned about and went toward the house. “Bring her along,” she said, over her shoulder.
I, biting down on the silk, terrified, tears in my eyes, my upper arms helpless in the grip of Tima and Tana, my wrists behind me. Locked in bracelets, stumbling was conducted toward the house.
8
I had stirred groggily.
For a moment I had expected to awaken in a former place, in a former dwelling, in a once familiar room, as I had so often before.
I lay on my stomach.
I would feel the sheets, and, with the tips of my fingers, beneath them, the familiar mattress.
Everything would be the same.
But it seemed that something hard was beneath me, not the mattress, but a surface less yielding, more severe.
I kept my eyes closed. There was light. It was rather painful. How foolish I was! I had forgotten to draw the shade last night.
Various were the memories, or seeming memories, which mingled in my confused, sluggish consciousness.
I did not know what was dream, and what was reality, if aught.
I had had the strangest dream.
I had dreamed I had somehow found myself on an alien world, one on which such as I had their purposes.
I must awaken.
What a strange dream it had been!
I could remember chains, and the cracking of whips, and others like myself.
I could remember kneeling in a dimly lit corridor, chained by the neck with others, manacled and shackled. I could remember my pressing my lips fervently, obediently, to the whip of a male unlike any I had ever known or had believed could exist. And there had been others, too, such as he. No dearth of such was there upon that world!
I stirred, uneasily.
And there was on that world an unfamiliar language in which such as I must develop a facility posthaste.
Oh, we strove desperately to learn that language! You may be sure of that! It was not we who held the whips.
Under such conditions, you must understand, such as we learn quickly.
The dream seemed very real, I thought, the lengthy training sessions, the kennels, and such.
Tears had formed in my eyes as I had thought of he whose whip I had, in what must have be the dream, first kissed. But how cruel he had been to me, after his first kindness, his first patience! How he had rejected me, and mocked and scorned me, how I had felt his foot, or the back of his hand, how he had thrust me to the tiles, how he would order me, angrily, to another, or even hurl me impatiently, sometimes in chains, to such a one!
But how much it seemed I had learned there, in that place, in my training! And how seldom were we even clothed, save perhaps to instruct us how to bedeck ourselves in certain garments, and how provocatively, gracefully, to remove them. I had learned much about myself there, it seemed. And I had learned, too, to my dismay, and shame, what men could do to me, and what I could become in their arms. And then I began to want this. How frightful the dream! How embarrassing, how terrifying, to learn that one cannot help oneself, that one is astonishingly, helplessly vital! And how miserable and embarrassed I had been when I had learned that this information, of such intimacy and delicacy, and secrecy, had been publicly recorded on papers pertinent to me.
The light seemed bright. Even though my closed eyelids it hurt.
Had I forgotten to draw the shade?
I must awaken.
Then I remembered, too, being summoned to a room. There had been men there, of the house and not of the house. I had performed. I had been discussed. Arrangements had been made. I must drink something. I had begun to lose consciousness even as I was hooded. I had lain back, within the hood, on the floor. I was dimly aware of my limbs being placed in certain positions, and then being chained. It was almost as though it were being done to another. I remembered trembling a little, and sensing the chains, and hearing them, and realizing that it was I who wore them, and not another, and then I had lost consciousness. There had then been a nightmare, it seemed, of transitions. Once it seemed, as I determined by touch, I was lying in a low, narrow, mesh-walled space, as on the slatted bunk. There were terrible smells. There was a motion, as of a ship. There were cries and moans, as of others like myself, about me. Because of the motion and the smells I feared I might vomit in the hood. But then, again, I lost consciousness. Then later there had been a wagon, one of metal, in which I was hooded and closely chained. Sometimes it was hot. Sometimes it was cold. When it was cold I held about myself, when I was conscious, as best I could, the single blanket I had been given. Then I would lapse again into unconsciousness. I was awakened, sometimes, and unhooded, and slapped awake, or awake enough, to take drink and sustenance. Then I would again drift into sleep. Some drug perhaps, in this dream, was mixed with my food or drink. I did not know where I was. I did not know where I was going. Indeed, in one sense I did not even know who I was. I felt myself somehow bereft of identity. I knew that I was no longer what I had been. That sort of thing had been left on a former, vanished world. That sort of thing was all behind me. Who was I? What was I? What was I to be? Such things it seemed, here, on this world, were not up to me. They would be decided by others. The wagon had left smooth roads. It had seemed, irregularly, but with frequency, to ascend, jolting and rocking. Within I was much bruised. Once it had nearly tipped. Eventually it, days, perhaps weeks later, must have reached its destination, wherever that might have been. I was bound hand and foot, and then, so secured, was relived of the wagon chains. I was wrapped closely in a blanket, which was then tied closely about me. This blanket was not the same as that which had been in the wagon. That blanket, it seemed, would be burned, and the wagon’s interior scrubbed clean. There would be few, if any, traces, of my occupancy left in the wagon. I take it that even those of scent were, to the extent possible, to be eliminated. Perhaps such might have been of use to some sort of tracking animal. I did not understand the point of such precautions. It seemed for some reason that my passage here was to be as though it had not occurred. I was then removed, so bound and so enveloped, from the wagon, I was carried for a time, over a shoulder, my head to the rear, which somehow seemed vaguely, to be the way I should be carried, however shameful or embarrassing I might find it to be, and I was then, at the end of this peregrination, placed on some sort of wooden platform. It was hard, even though the blanket. A little later I was placed in some sort of large, heavy basket, in which I was fastened down by two straps, one at my ankles and the other at my neck. The basket must have been something like a yard square. I must accordingly, bound, tied in the blanket, strapped in place, keep my legs drawn up. I was still hooded.