I knelt before him then, with my back straight, but my head down. I spread my knees very widely.
I wanted to beg him for permission to speak, but I was afraid to do so. I wanted to beg his forgiveness for having cried out in my native language. After all, it would not be his language, and his language must now be my language. Our language must become that of the rights holders.
I heard the animal growl, a low, rumbling noise, and sensed it move forward another step.
I looked up, again, and then, frightened, knelt forward, putting my head to the stone flooring, my palms, too, down on the stone, in a common attitude of obeisance.
I trembled.
“Look up,” said he, in his language.
I looked up, frightened, crouching before him then on all fours. I did this immediately. He was the sort of man, like so many on this world, whom a woman obeys instantly.
Two gestures then did he make, in quick succession, the first indicating the left shoulder where, had I been tunicked in that fashion, there would have been a disrobing loop, and the second indicating, fingers spread, palms down, the floor. Instantly I drew the tunic over my head, stripping myself before him, and turned about, and put myself to my belly, legs and arms spread widely, spread-eagled.
I lay there thustly for some moments, regarded.
Then I sobbed as I felt the snout of the beast, prodding, rude, inquisitive, cold, pushing about my body.
“Do not move,” he said.
As if I could have moved!
“May I speak? May I speak!” I begged.
“No,” he said.
I sobbed, silenced.
“He is not really taking your scent,” he said. “He is only curious about you.”
I trembled, under the investigation of the beast. I smelled its fetid breath.
“Later,” he said, “once you have been named, you will be introduced to our pets in the sleen pens.”
I did not understand this at the time, but it would later become all too clear. The name is, of course, important, as it serves, in conjunction with other signals, to direct and target a hunt.
I did understand, of course, that I did not have, as of now, a name. I might as well have been then, I realized, in a collar. Any possible doubts as to my status had been dissipated. My brand was as meaningful as ever. It remained in full effect.
I felt his hand on my body.
I lifted it a little, to him, placatingly.
“Kajira,” he chuckled.
That is one of the words in the language of the rights holders for women such as I. Indeed, as I have suggested, it is by far the most common word in their language for women such as I. The first worlds I had been taught on this world were “La kajira.” — “I am a kajira.” — “I am a slave girl.”
He took the tunic I had discarded and folded it in small squares.
I had not been given permission to speak, and had thus not been permitted to beg forgiveness for having cried out in my native tongue. On the other hand, it seemed he had chosen to overlook my outburst.
I had, at any rate, not been kicked or cuffed.
I assumed he would have known, even before coming to the cell, that I was not from this world. And my outburst, under the circumstances, his sudden appearance, the noise, the beast, and such, certainly would have been an innocent enough one, a natural enough one.
To be sure, eventually, even such outbursts, I had little doubt, would be uttered in the language of the rights holders, that language, too, later, having become mine.
The men of this world are terribly strict with us, but few of them are cruel. Their pleasure is found in the manifold perfections of our service, intimate and otherwise, and in our devotion and love, not in our distress or pain. These men keep their animals under perfect discipline, as is their way, but they also, on the whole, treat them well.
I felt his eyes upon me.
“Kneel, and face me,” he said.
Swiftly I complied.
He placed the folded tunic in my mouth, deeply back, between my teeth, crosswise, and I, as I knew was expected, closed my teeth upon it.
He then stood up, and I, kneeling before him, looked up at him.
“You are a pretty one,” he said.
I looked at him, gratefully. Had I not been pretty, I supposed, I would not have been brought here. I gathered they tended to select “pretty ones.” They liked that sort. Interestingly, on my own world, as I have indicated, I had never really thought of myself as being particularly attractive, at least generally, particularly as I had regarded my body as erring, so to speak, in approximating closely the statistical norms for a human female. Here, however, it seemed that the normal woman, well curved and luscious, was, for whatever reason, esteemed more highly than her more boyish, stricklike sisters. I did not mind this, of course. It pleased my vanity. On the other hand, my desirability, such as it was, I recognized, might place me in danger. “I would like to have you in my shackles,” a guard had once told me. “I, too,” had said another. “And I,” had laughed another. I had been frightened. Many men, it seemed, and men such as these, such fierce, strong men, men like predators, like carnivores, might want me in their shackles!
“You are from the slave world?” he asked. I looked at him, puzzled.
“From the place called “Earth”?” he said. I nodded.
“Are there others like you there?” he asked. Tears brimmed in my eyes. I nodded.
He laughed. He then snapped his fingers and indicated that I should rise and leave the cell, going to the right, as one faced outwards.
I leaped to my feet and, going far to the right, stopped only by the stone, put as much distance between me and the six-legged beast as possible.
Then I was outside the cell!
It was breathtakingly beautiful. The air was bracing. I bit down on the folded tunic between my teeth. The wind blew through my hair.
I looked down to the left, and groaned, for there was a precipitate drop there, some forty or fifty feet to another trail below, and below that another such drop to another trail, and thence to another. Similarly, above me, I could see what seemed to be similar ledges, three or four of them, receding. There must have been more than a dozen such trails and ledges, several below, some above. Too, I could see several openings in the mountain, most of them barred. This was, in effect, I gathered, a place of imprisonment. I stepped back, dizzy for a moment, from the edge of the trail, and touched the rock to my right. I gasped; hundreds of yards ahead of me, where the trail led, past several barred cells, and approached by a narrow, ascending trail, there was a startling, lofty, sheer edifice that seemed to rear up from the mountains itself, its towers lost among clouds. It was walled. It was some sort of fortress or citadel. I looked again to the left. I could see the valley below now, or part of it. It was, I was sure, cultivated. Then I looked back, and trembled. The jailer was there, and the fearsome beast, held on its leash. Behind the jailer and the beast I could see the ledge trail going back around the mountain. To my right I saw the panel box, locked now, within which must lie the locking mechanism to the cell. The panel box itself, not to mention the mechanism within, could not be reached from within the cell. Other than this there was only the steepness, the side of the mountain, there on the right, rising up, and, on the left, below the ledge, the drop, forty or fifty feet, to the ledge and trail below. The rock ledge felt very hard, and granular, beneath my bare feet. it was chilly on the ledge. I looked back, again, at the jailer, and the beast.
Though I was out of the cell no leather or chain had been put on my neck.
The beast was leashed, but not I.
I had, incidentally, in the pens, been taught to walk gracefully, and to kneel, and pose, and such, in a leash. We are sometimes taken out in such fashions. There are also wrist leashes, usually worn on the right wrist of a right-handed girl, or the left wrist of a left-handed girl, and ankle leases, similarly oriented.
The point of the leash, of course, is seldom to hold or control a woman, for we all rational, and know we must obey, but rather to make it clear whose property she is, and to display her. Too, it might be mentioned that the leash has a profoundly erotic effect upon the female, as its meaning, and its symbolism of her domination, its profoundly arousing to her.