Some are slaves, and some masters.
Why should the slave not be a slave, and the master a master?
How long we waited for our masters! How we need our masters! How precious are our masters, and how we, trembling, hasten to serve them, to please them, and as a slave!
I, for one, am content. I belong in my collar. Keep me in it.
And yet, too, I am only a slave, and sometimes tremble in terror. We cannot choose our masters. We may be bought and sold, exchanged and bestowed, wagered and stolen. We may be ignored, despised, and beaten. Who knows to whose whips we must press our lips obediently?
I was taken in the parlor of the house.
I was summoned downstairs by a man’s voice. I descended the stairs, frightened. But surely these were workers, summoned by Mrs. Rawlinson. But where was she? I shook my head. It was in the late afternoon, in the fall. I remember how the light came through the windows. Somehow, unaccountably, I had fallen asleep after lunch. Where was Mrs. Rawlinson? Where were my sorority sisters? The house, a large house, seemed empty.
Then I was suddenly very afraid, for I was now sure it was empty. I could not run past the men, and one of them was behind me. Another blocked the stairs.
“Who are you?” I asked, pleasantly enough. “What are you doing here? May I help you?”
Three of the men arranged chairs before me, the backs of the chairs facing me. They sat on the chairs, their arms on the backs, regarding me.
I stepped back a pace or two.
Where were my sisters? Where was Mrs. Rawlinson?
On one side of the room, a lamp had been overturned. Here and there, oddly, some lengths of ribbon lay on the carpet, red ribbon, white ribbon.
“What do you want?” I asked. “Doubtless Mrs. Rawlinson, she is the house mother, summoned you, but for what purpose I do not know. I think the house is in order. It is in order, as far as I know. She is not here now. She will doubtless be back later. May I help you? You could come back later.”
“Remove your clothing, completely,” said a man, he in the center chair.
I looked at him, disbelievingly.
“Must a command be repeated?” he asked.
I looked about, wildly.
There was something familiar about this question. It seemed I had heard something like this before, or read something like this, at one time or another.
I put my hand before my mouth.
“No one will hear you,” said a fellow.
I looked at the fellow in the center chair, he whom I took to be their leader.
“Now,” he said.
I remembered then where I had come upon that question. It had occurred in one or more of the books I had read, those compromising books which Mrs. Rawlinson had confiscated.
It was a Gorean question.
And I knew the sort of person, a female person, to whom such a question was likely to be addressed. Such persons were expected to comply with commands instantly and unquestioningly. Failure to do so, I suspected, was unwise.
I reached to the top button on my blouse.
“Who are you?” I asked.
In a few moments I stood naked before them.
“Stand straighter, and turn about, slowly, and then face us, again,” said their leader.
“What do you think?” asked the leader, of one of his confederates.
“Forty, perhaps sixty,” said the fellow.
I understood nothing of this.
“Back toward us,” said the leader, “your wrists crossed behind your back.”
I did so, and, shortly, with two or three encirclements of cord, snugly knotted, my wrists were tied behind my back.
I remembered the words, ‘forty, perhaps sixty,’ and gasped. This must stand for forty, or sixty, thousand dollars. I suspected then that I was to be taken to the Middle East, and would be destined for some rich man’s harem.
I struggled, futilely.
The leader came about, and stood before me. He held a generous length of ribbon, silken ribbon, in his hand, some feet in length. He wound this twice about my throat, and then knotted it, closely, under my chin. He jerked the knot tight. I felt the pull against the back of my neck. The ribbon was white.
“You are white-silk,” he said.
In my reading I recalled the significance of white-silk, but how could they know that I had not been “opened for the pleasure of men,” that I was a virgin? Then I remembered my strange dream, of several days ago, after the party. If it had been no dream, I supposed such a determination might have been easily made at that time, perhaps while I slept.
Then I stiffened, for one of the fellows was crouching beside me, on the left. I felt a metal anklet snapped about my ankle.
I had been ankleted.
“I know what you have in mind,” I said, “but you will never get me to the Middle East! You will never be able to sell me in a secret market!”
“You are not going to the Middle East,” said their leader. “And there will be nothing secret about the market in which you will be sold.”
“You are going to sell me?” I said. “Truly?”
“Your lineaments are not without interest,” said a fellow.
“That was clear from the film,” said another.
“Film?” I said.
“Taken at the party,” said a fellow.
“You look quite well in a camisk,” said a man.
“You know that word?” I said.
The fellow laughed.
“To be sure,” said another, “it was a rather generous camisk.”
I had been mortified, for I had been half naked. And I was dismayed to learn that some record of my humiliation, of my punishment, and, I supposed, of that of Eve and Jane, too, had apparently been made. I suspected Mrs. Rawlinson would not have been unaware of the filming. Perhaps she had arranged it, for a record of the party, which might later have been of interest to the guests. But how could these men have known of this, how could they have managed to see the film? Had it been stolen? Had it been given to them? Had it been sold to them?
“It may be a long time,” said another, “before you are again permitted a garment as concealing as a camisk.”
“You will never get me to the Middle East!” I said.
“You are not going to the Middle East,” said the leader. “You are going to Gor.”
“There is no such place!” I said. “There is no such place!”
I struggled.
I was aware of the metal on my left ankle, snugly enclosing it. I was aware of the ribbon twice encircling my throat, knotted there, a ribbon of white silk.
I was nude, and my hands were tied behind my back.
I was helpless.
“There is no such place!” I said. “There is no such place!”
I was then, from behind, gagged.
Two men then placed me on the rug, gently, and one crossed my ankles and another tied them together. I then lay on the rug, gagged, and bound, hand and foot.
“Put her in the van,” said the leader.
I was lifted and carried through the backdoor of the house, where a van was waiting. I was placed in the van, on the metal floor. The floor had some broad grooves. Such a feature, I supposed, was in the interests of cargo, affording a run-off for possible spillages, a higher, drier surface to protect against dampness, perhaps a less frictionated surface to facilitate the loading or unloading of boxes, crates, and such. It would not, of course, be a pleasant surface to lie on, as I would soon learn. One man climbed into the back of the van with me, and the doors were closed. Shortly thereafter the van left the driveway.
We had driven for perhaps two hours when I began to whimper. My body was sore, particularly given the recent roughness of the road, my jarring and jostling, and the hardness of the floor. In places on my body there were temporary marks, from the grooved flooring.
The man said nothing, but he removed his jacket, folded it, and placed it under my head and shoulders.