What was I?
What had I become?
Something within me seemed to know.
The drug had now worn off. But it had induced a sense of confusion, an uncertainty as to what had occurred and what had not occurred, what had been dream and what had not been dream.
Had I dreamed the house, the pens, the chains, the wagon, the strange passage though cold, windy skies?
Was I dreaming now? Was I delirious? Was I mad?
Muchly had I been disoriented by the substance to which I had been subjected.
Was I still, unwittingly, its victim?
But it did not seem so.
The stone, the close-set bars, the long looming, tiered vistas beyond them, seemed very real.
I sought something to prove, or disprove, my fears.
Where was I?
Was I no longer what I had been, as I suspected? Had my reality, as I suspected, been transformed radically, utterly?
I must know!
I knelt back. I again felt my throat. No collar was there! Madly, feverishly, I pulled up the skirt of the tiny brown tunic, to bare my left leg to the waist. Yes! Yes! Yes! There it was, the tiny, lovely mark, incised into my thigh, just below the hip. I wore it, in my body! It marked me! There was no mistaking that small, beautiful sign. How beautiful it was! How well it marked me! It was my brand. It was truly there! I had been branded!
I again went to all fours, shaking, almost collapsing, now laughing, now weeping! I was overcome with elation, with joy, with relief. These emotions, from the depths of me, burst upward, like light and lava, like the throwing open of shades and the risings of suns, like floods, like tides, like treasures, like hurricanes, like fire, powerful, irresistible, precious! No longer was I isolated, or wandering alone, apart from myself, not knowing myself, lost from myself. Forgotten then was the cry of alienation, of anguish. I had not been returned to my former condition of meaninglessness, that of nothingness, in which I, denied to my real self, it forbidden to me, must pretend to false identities, must conform to uncongenial stereotypes imposed upon me from the outside. Here I was free to be what I was! Here one need not live as if indoors, sheltered from sunlight and rain, here one might look upon truth as it was in itself, not as it might be distorted in the labyrinths of prescribed protocols, here one might touch real things, like grass and the bark of trees.
Then, quickly, I knelt back, and, hastily, furtively looking about, thrust down the brief skirt of the tunic. What if someone should see? We have our modesty! I smoothed it down, with something like the dignity which, I seemed to recall from my training, we were not permitted.
I looked about.
I was here, truly here, wherever it might be.
The nightmare of the journey was apparently over.
It was now clear to me, as it had been when I was first subjected to the substance, in some house faraway, that I had been drugged. Now, however, as nearly as I could determine, the disordering, sedative effects of whatever substance had been administered to me had worn off. The dosage, apparently, for some time, had not been renewed. Too, I was now no longer hooded, or even chained. Indeed, even my collar had been removed. I had no idea, of course, as to where I might be. It did not seem to me that the drug would have been necessary. Surely the hood would have been enough, and the metal wagon, and such. Indeed, it seemed to me that I might as well have been transported openly, for all I, given my ignorance of this world, might have been able to determine of my whereabouts. Why, then, had such precautions been taken with me? Men had not even spoken to me, and only occasionally in my vicinity. I had heard some things, some phrases, some scraps of discourse, when half-conscious, struggling with the haze of the drug, but very little, and nothing that told me what I most wanted to know, where I was being taken, and why. What was to be my fate? What was to be done with me? To what purpose was I to be applied? Why should I not at least be permitted to know where I was? What difference would it make, I wondered, if one such as I knew where she was?
But such as I, I have learned, are commonly kept in ignorance.
But I was here now, wherever it might be.
Then, interestingly, I became afraid. I was here, and in the power of others, whom I knew not. Surely there was, after all, something to be said for the tepid world from which I had been extracted. Would it not have been better then to have awakened between my own sheets, in my own bed, as I had so many times before, in those familiar surroundings? Was that world not, for all its lies, its hypocritical cant, its ludicrous, wearying pretenses, its tedious self-congratulatory self-righteousness, and such, a more secure place, a safer place? The dangers there, it seemed, were for the most part at least comfortingly slow, and invisible, such as minute quantities of poison in food, significant only over time, and lethal gases accumulating in the atmosphere, molecule by molecule. Indeed, the men of my world, in their self-concern, preoccupied with their own affairs, doubtless of great moment, seemed prepared to let their world die. I did not think, on the other hand, that the men of this world would allow their world to be destroyed. Nature, and its truths, were too important to them. And so my feelings were understandably somewhat ambivalent. Doubtless I would have been safer in my tepid, gray, polluted world, conforming to its values, being careful not to question, or to feel, or discover or know, but I, somehow, perhaps unaccountably, was not discontent to be where I was. I had no doubt that there were dangers here as, in fact, there were on my old world, but the dangers here, I suspected, at least for the most part, would be intelligible. As intelligible as the teeth of the lion, as the point of a weapon. Too, the question, I reminded myself, was somewhat academic. I was not on my old world. I was, whether I liked it or not, and for better or for worse, here.
I had quickly determined earlier that the tiny brown tunic was all that I wore. I had felt a momentary wave of embarrassment, and surely of irritation, even fury.
There had been that much of my old world left in me at that time.
But now I felt gratitude.
To be sure I was clearly dressed for the pleasure of men.
What beasts are men, what commandeering, controlling imperious beasts!
But I did not mind. I was suddenly pleased to be beautiful, and to have my beauty displayed. If one is beautiful, why should one not be proud of it? Even if men force one, for their pleasure, to show it! And are we not pleased to be so displayed, to be seen as they will have us seen? Are we not then in the order of nature, as men will have us? Must one hide one’s beauty because of the envy of the ugly? But here, I thought, men would not permit one to do so, even if one wished. But what beautiful women would wish to do so? I was pleased now, even brazenly so, to be beautiful. But I did recognize its dangers, for it excites and stimulates men. We are, after all, their natural prey. On a would such as this a beautiful woman, or at least one such as I, is in no doubt as to her desirability, her vulnerability, and, I fear, her peril.
I had however learned, in the pens, that not all women on this world were such as i. But I did not know, at that time, if they were numerous or not. I had seen, at that time, only two. I had seen them, disdainful and resplendent, in the pens. How daintily, how haughtily, how fastidiously, they had picked their way about! I shall speak briefly of them later.
But even such women I suspected, in a world such as this, were at risk.
In any even, the men here, I thought, know how to dress women, or at least my sort of women, when it pleased them to dress them.
I was not collared.
I wondered if I had been freed.
Yes, I have used the expression ‘freed’.
I do not see, now, how I could escape its use.
I have hitherto been reluctant, as you may have noticed, perhaps even foolishly, to speak explicitly of my status, and condition, on this world, which means so to this moment, but I suppose it has been evident to the reader — if this is permitted to come to the attention of the reader. I am writing this in English, of course, for I can neither read nor right Gorean. Nor does it seem likely they will permit me to learn. It seems they prefer for me to be kept as I am, illiterate. That is common with women or, better, considering our status, girls, such as i.