I knew that we were hated by free women.
I knew that men preferred slaves.
“Masters?” I said.
There was no response.
“It is a mistake, Masters,” I said. “I should not be here. I am white-silk. I am white-silk.”
The tunic was then torn from me.
Chapter Eight
It was two days after my red-silking that I was again hooded. I was aligned with other girls, I supposed some five or six. My wrists were pulled behind me and I was back-braceleted. I had not been permitted clothing after my red-silking. The ribbon, however, was removed from my collar. It is the common presumption that a female slave is “red-silk.” My head was forced up, and the house collar, now a new house collar, submitting to a bolt and key, was thrust up, under my chin. This new house collar was quite different from the original house collar in which I had been placed, the high, heavy, iron collar, which had been hammered about my neck. That had been removed in the house’s metal shop the morning following my red-silking. I was much pleased to be relieved of the original collar. The new collar was not the light, lovely, secure embondment signification of the common collar but it was a considerable improvement over its high, weighty predecessor. The removal of the original collar suggested that my sale might be imminent. This speculation had proved to be warranted. One role of the original collar was presumably to encourage a girl to do well in her lessons, that she may the sooner be brought to the block. Would such a collar not be likely to produce such an effect? Should it not make one eager to escape the house? Yet I, personally, feared to leave the house, as I knew not what might be found for one such as I outside its walls. In the house there was a certain comfort, and security. One supposes that a girl might be left uncollared, of course, between the conclusion of her training and her departure from the house, as she is marked, and in the house, and her escape is unthinkable, but Goreans, it seems, do not see it so. They feel that a kajira should be in a collar, and know herself collared. It helps her to keep in mind that she is a slave. Too, a kajira soon comes to understand that it is appropriate for her to be collared, that she belongs in a collar. Is she not a slave? Too, without a collar, she might feel naked, insecure, and frightened. What terrible things might happen to her, were she to be mistaken for a free woman! I then felt another collar, a coffle collar, for one could sense the weight of the attendant chain, a light chain, for we were women, snapped about my neck. The house collar was then removed.
“What is happening, Masters?” I asked, in the coffle, back-braceleted, unable to see, for the hood.
My question received in response only the sharp sting of a switch on my right shoulder.
I realized, then, as I should have before, that I should be silent. Had I been given permission to speak? Too, is it not said that curiosity is not becoming in a kajira?
When we began to move we began our climb to higher levels of the house, and this continued so, for some Ehn. I heard us pass through some four gates, and, from the sound of it, from the weight on the hinges, two heavy portals, and then, after the second portal, the last, I suddenly felt the fresh air, and wind, of what must be the streets, and I sensed the warmth of the sun, Tor-tu-Gor, on my body. We were out of the house!
“Surely you know what you are doing here,” an instructress once said to me.
“Mistress?” I had said.
“You are a slave, are you not?” she asked.
“Yes, Mistress,” I had said.
“And only a slave?” she said.
“Yes, Mistress,” I said, “only a slave.”
“And what is a slave?” she asked.
“Mistress?” I asked.
“A property,” she said. “Goods, merchandise.”
“Yes, Mistress,” I said.
“So now you surely know what you are doing here?” she said.
“I am being trained,” I said.
“For what?” she said.
“That I may be pleasing to a master,” I said.
“We would like you to live past your first night at his slave ring,” she said.
“I will try to be pleasing,” I said.
“Very pleasing?”
“Yes, Mistress!”
“Wholly pleasing, in every way?” she said.
“To the best of my ability,” I said.
“So, then,” she said, “what are you doing here?”
“Mistress?”
“You are goods, merchandise,” she said.
“Yes,” I said, “I am goods, merchandise.” It was true; that is what I now was.
“So now you understand what you are doing here,” she said.
“Mistress?” I said.
“You are being readied for sale,” she said.
I well knew myself a slave, of course. I had sensed this even on Earth, and there was obviously no doubt about it here, on Gor. Here I might or might not wish to be a slave, but, in either case, it was what I was. Here my will was nothing. Whether I might kiss my fingertips and press them to my collar, or sob and scream, and try to tear it from my neck, it was on me. And my thigh was marked, with the Kef, the most common slave brand on Gor, a mark which showed all who might look upon it what I was, and only was, kajira. Still I had not thought, actively, or very actively, of being sold.
Now, as I was being marched through streets I could not see, naked, back-braceleted, a bead fastened in this small slaver’s necklace, the wind and sunlight on my bared body, I knew I was being taken, for the first time, to market, a market where I would not buy but be bought, as much as a verr, or a basket of suls.
Still I was delighted to be out of the house.
I wondered who might buy me.
I was soon to be owned, the property of a particular master.
“I regret,” had said one of the mistresses, “that we did not have more time to train you.”
“You are pretty,” said another, “and you will do your best to please, will you not?”
“Yes, Mistress,” I said.
“Many men do not object to a half-trained girl,” said another. “They are cheaper, and they may train them to their taste.”
“There are others coming in,” said another, “who must be prepared.”
“A city fell,” said another.
“You are a barbarian, Allison,” said another, “and barbarians are apt pupils, as they are already three-quarters slaves, but the new arrivals will be former Gorean free women.”
“I see,” I said.
“How we will love to have them under our switches,” said another.
“We will teach them that they are now slaves,” said another.
It was hard for me to imagine such women as slaves, from what I had heard of them, but I knew, too, that there were few bred slaves, at least in the sense of being the products of the slave farms. The overwhelming majority of female slaves on Gor would have once been Gorean free women, of one caste or another. Too, Gorean free women, whatever might be the expectations of their society concerning them, were surely women, with all the instincts, needs, desires, and drives of the human female, all the complex genetic codings of such latent in each cell of their bodies. And I had heard guards exchanging remarks, after the passage of one free woman or another in the house, perhaps shopping for a serving slave, or a silk slave, speculating on her possible value on the block. It was just as well our exalted visitors had remained oblivious of such conversations. Within the robes of concealment, it seems, following the views of the guards, there was always a slave, lacking only the collar.
“The slave, Allison,” I said, “thanks Mistresses for the training they have given her.”
They had kissed me, and, shortly thereafter, one of the guards arrived, the hood dangling in his hand.
We continued to make our way through the streets.
At that time, hooded, I did not realize the striking beauty of a Gorean city, how so many of its buildings, the lofty towers and graceful bridges, the spacious porticoes, the splendid colonnades, and such, were bright with color, nor was I aware of the wealth of colors in clothing, both that of men and women. I did realize, of course, from the house, that slave tunics came in a variety of cuts and colors, in samples of which I had been forced to pose before mirrors, but each was commonly of one color. They were, after all, slave tunics. The house tunics, incidentally, those worn in the house, were commonly drab, usually being brown or gray. There are fashions in such things, of course, for both the free and the slaves, with respect to colors, textures, materials, cuts, hemlines, and so on. How and when fashions changed, and why they changed, was not clear. Doubtless there were setters of trends, say, highly placed officials, wealthy Merchants, Actors, Singers, and Poets, certain women of noble family and high caste, and such, but why should one option rather than another succeed in being adopted, however transiently? Perhaps the higher, better fixed, more established or influential members of the Cloth Workers had something to do with it, with hints, with words dropped now and then, with boulevard posters, with some judiciously distributed free garmenture, here and there, and so on. Doubtless each time a fashion changed at least the high Cloth Workers, masters of the foremost garment houses, would sell more garmenture, at least to the fashion conscious, to those who were concerned to keep up with the times, to those who feared to be pitied or ridiculed for being out of style, and such. With respect to slave tunics, for example, it was several years, apparently, since the common slave tunic was white with black striping, usually with a diagonal striping. And, of course, if masters and mistresses might be concerned with the garmenture of their kajirae, as simple and brief, and as revealing and demeaning, as it might be, one can well imagine their concern with their own garmenture, particularly if they were of high caste.