I lifted my head and gasped. I cried out, softly, in inarticulate, unrestrainable sound, one of incredible relief, even of joy, one consequent upon the release of incredible tension, one consequent upon the discharge of an almost unbearable emotion.
He was human!
He smiled and put his finger to his lips, a gesture that warned me that I was not to speak, a gesture with which I was familiar, from my own cultural background. I did not know if it were native to him as well.
I heard the voices continuing behind me, and, down the line, more gasps, and cries.
I looked up at the man near me. He was not now looking at me, but, rather, looking back, behind me, down the line.
Perhaps I was not important enough to be looked at.
But I looked at him, wildly, drinking in all that I could. He was strikingly handsome. It took my breath away, to look upon him. But this handsomeness, you must understand, was one of strong, powerful features. It was not the mild, pleasant configuration which in some localities, such as those with which I was more familiar, those more germane to my own antecedents, was often mistaken for the quality. There was a ruggedness in the features. He was handsome undoubtedly, even strikingly so, as I have indicated, but this was in a simple, direct, very masculine way. He had seemed kind. He had smiled, he had put his finger to his lips, warning me to silence. He was a large, strong, supple man. He had large hands. He had sturdy legs. The legs disturbed me, for they were strong, and, in the tunic, brief, course, and brown, much revealed. He wore the heavy bootlike sandals that I had noted before. These, with their heavy thongs, or cords, came high on the calf. This footwear somehow frightened me. Its seemed to have a look of menace or brutality.
I was unutterably relieved that he was not looking at me.
I had never seen such a man!
I had not known such a man could exist!
I did not know what I could do, or would do, if he so much as looked at me. I wondered, though I attempted to prevent the thought from occurring, sensing its immediate and inevitable appearance, what it might be to be in his arms. I tried to put such a thought from me, but I could not do so. It was more powerful then i. It was irresistible. I shuddered. I knew that, in his arms, I would be utterly helpless. Indeed, if he had even so much as looked upon me, I feared I might have begun to whimper, beggingly. Could this be I? What was I? What had been done to me? How was it that I could be so transformed, and so helpless, given merely the sight of such a man?
But then, frightened, I looked wildly ahead, and about. So, too, it seemed, were the others. I looked at the other men. Again I gasped, startled. Again I was shocked. Again I could not believe what I saw. The fellow before me was not unusual, it seemed, though, given my previous acquaintance with men, surely I would have thought him quite unusual, if not unique. The other men, too, in their way, were strong, handsome fellows, and that, too, in an almost indefinable, powerful masculine way. This much disturbed me. They were dressed similarly to the fellow near me. They, too, wore tunics, some of them sleeveless, and, invariably, the same sort of sandals, sandals which might have withstood marches. Where was I, I wondered, that such men could exist?
Again I looked up at the man near me.
Then, suddenly, he looked down at me.
I averted my eyes, in terror.
Never before anything had I felt myself so much what, irreducibly, now undeniably, I was.
I trembled.
It might have been not a man, but a beast or a god, or an animal, a cougar, or a lion, in human form.
The only relation in which I could stand to such a thing was clear to me.
Some other men passed by me, going to one part of the line or another. Some of them carried leather quirts. Others carried whips.
Then they began, along the line, and behind me, to talk to us. They did so quietly, soothingly.
The fellow near me crouched down beside me. He turned my head, gently, to face him. I looked into his eyes. He put his left hand behind the back of my neck, over the metal collar, and the fingers of his right hand lightly over my lips. I was not to speak.
“You have no name,” he informed me.
I did not understand this, but his fingers were lightly over my lips.
He then stood up, and looked down at me. My eyes were lifted to his.
“Do you wish to be fed?” he asked.
I looked up at him, frightened.
“You may speak,” he said.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Do you wish to live?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
Then he looked at me, frankly, appraisingly, unabashedly. I had never been looked at like that in my life.
It seemed he would regard every inch of me.
I could not even understand such a look.
Or did something in my understand it only too well?
Suddenly, piteously, I rose up from my heels, and, still kneeling, of course, lifted my hands to him. Tears coursed from my eyes. I wept. I could not control myself. I could scarcely speak. But he seemed kind. He must understand. I knelt before him, in helpless petition. “Mercy,” I wept. “I pray you for mercy!” I clasped my hands together, praying him for mercy. I lifted my hands to him thusly clasped, in desperate prayer, piteously. “Please!” I wept. “Please!”
He looked down at me.
“Please, I beg you,’ I wept. “Mercy! I beg mercy! Show me mercy! I beg it! I beg it!”
His expression did not change.
Then I felt unutterably stupid. I put down my hands, and my head. I sank back to my heels, my hands, in their metal wristlets, on my thighs.
I looked up at him, and then put down my head again.
“I am not to be shown mercy, am I?” I whispered.
“Not in the sense I suspect you have in mind,” he said. “On the other hand, if you prove superb, truly superb, you might eventually be shown a certain mercy, at least in the sense of being permitted to live.”
I shuddered.
“Position,” he said, gently.
I struggled back to the position which I had originally held.
How stupid I felt. How stupid I had been!
I was merely one on the chain. I had not been brought here, doubtless at some trouble and expense, to be shown mercy.
How could I have acted as I did?
I was stupid.
I hoped I was not stupid.
I hoped that he did not think I was stupid.
Once again I felt his eyes upon me. Once again, I was being subjected to that calm, appraising scrutiny which had, but a moment before, so unnerved me.
“Please,” I begged him.
He seemed to be regarding me as might one who is practiced in such appraisals, one who, in effect, might be noting points. But surely I should not be looked at in such a way. But surely I was not an animal.
My hands crept up from my sides, that I might, however inadequately, cover myself.
“No,” he said gently.
His tone, in its kindliness, its patience, suggested that he did not think me stupid, in spite of my earlier outburst. This, for some reason, gladdened me.
Then I knelt as I had before, tears coursing down my cheeks, open, exposed, to his scrutiny.
It was thus that he would have me before him, and thus it was that I would be before him.
Before men such as these I understood that I would be choiceless in such matters.
“You are supposedly quite vital,” he said. “Is it true?”
“I do not know,” I said. I did not even understand the question. Or, perhaps, rather, I somehow, in some part of me, understood it only too well.
Would he now think me stupid? I hoped not. I did not think I was stupid.
He then continued his scrutiny.
Somehow I wanted, desperately, doubtless dreadfully, for him to be pleased, genuinely pleased, with what he saw.
Was I “vital”?
What could that possibly mean?
How would I know if I were vital or not?
Had he touched me, I though I would have cried out, in helplessness.
I could not help it if I was vital! It was not my fault! I could not help it!
And at that time, of course, I did not understand how such things could be brought about, even in those initially inert or anesthetic, how such things could be, and would be, suspected, discovered, revealed, and released, and then nurtured, and enhanced, and developed and trained, until they, beginning as perhaps no more than almost unfocused restlessnesses, could, and would, become fervent, soft, insistent claims, and then, in time, implacably, inexorably, desperate, irresistible, pitiless needs, needs overriding and overwhelming, needs over which one had no control, needs in whose chains one is utterly helpless.