"Of course," I said. "But still you were free. If you wished you could starve for another day, or you could seek garbage elsewhere, or beg, or fish for scraps in the canals."
"Yes," she said.
"You see," I said, "you were not totally dependent on them. You were not totally helpless. You were not their slave."
"Are you going to let me eat tomorrow?" she asked, suddenly, apprehensively.
"Perhaps," I said. "I will make that decision in the morning."
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Do you begin to see what I am saying to you?" I asked.
"Yes, Master," she whispered. "I could not have earlier had the feelings you induced in me."
"Yes," I said.
"Master," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"The very nearest thing to what I recently felt occurred on the northern walkway of the Rim canal, when you, not a vagabond, but a strong, free man, who had subdued both Turgus and myself, simply took me and used me for your pleasure."
"I recall," I said. "Too, I recall that you responded well. considering that you were at that time only a free woman."
"You treated me as a slave," she chided.
"I saw the potential slave in you," I said. "Accordingly I handled you as I would have handled a slave."
"That is why I could not help responding to you as I did," she said.
"And yet," I said, "that did not compare with what you recently felt."
"No," she said.
'That is because before you were a free woman," I said. "You did not then truly belong to men."
"I do now," she said.
"Yes," I said. "Now you are a slave."
"That is the difference," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"The orgasm was rudimentary?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. "Just as you could not, as a free woman, attain to the heights of the rudimentary slave orgasm recently inflicted upon you so, too, you, as a new slave, cannot yet attain to the overwhelming and degrading ecstasies familiar to a girl longer in the collar."
"Yes, Master," she said.
"You have a long way to go in slavery, little Sasi," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"But in a year or two," I said, "I think you will be superb. And beyond that it is just a matter of continued growth."
"Does any woman ever learn her full slavery?" she asked.
"No," I said, "I think no woman ever learns the fullness of her slavery."
"I want to be a good slave," she said.
"Men will see that you are," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said. "Master," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"May I please have my ears pierced, Master," she begged.
"Would you be so degraded a slave?" I asked. Ear piercing, on Gor, is regarded in most cities as the most degrading thing that can he done to a girl. It is commonly done only to the lowest of pleasure slaves. Compared to it, fixing a ring in a girl's nose is regarded lightly. Indeed, among the Tuchuks, one of the Wagon Peoples of Gor, even free women wear nose rings. These matters are cultural, of course.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Why?" I asked.
'That I might be kept always a slave," she said.
"I see," I said. A girl with pierced ears on Gor might as well, for all practical purposes, give up even the slimmest of hopes, should she entertain them, of freedom. What Gorean man, seeing a woman with pierced cars, could treat her as, or accept her as, anything but a slave?
"Please, Master," she said.
"I will have it done in Schendi," I said. Usually, a leather worker pierces ears. In Schendi there were many leather workers, usually engaged in the tooling of kailiauk hide, brought from the interior. Such leather, with horn, was one of the major exports of Schendi. Kailiauk are four-legged, wide-headed, lumbering, stocky ruminants. Their herds are usually found in the savannahs and plains north and south of the rain forests, but some herds frequent the forests as well. These animals are short-trunked and tawny. They commonly have brown and reddish bars on the haunches. The males, tridentlike, have three horns. These horns bristle from their foreheads. The males are usually about ten hands at the shoulders and the females about eight hands. The males average about four hundred to five hundred Gorean stone in weight, some sixteen hundred to two thousand pounds, and the females average about three to four hundred Gorean stone in weight, some twelve hundred to sixteen hundred pounds.
"Thank you, Master," she said.
She then lay quietly beside me, on the blankets. The sea bag was to my right.
"Are you going to lock me in my cage tonight, Master?" she asked.
"No," I said, "tonight you will sleep beside me."
"Thank you, Master," she said.
"At my feet," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
Sailors called the watch.
The wind was soft in the triangular sails. Though it was night Ulafi had not had them furled on their yards. The sea hooks, the light anchors at stem and stern, had not been thrown out. We would not lay to. Here the sea was open and the light, from the moons and stars, was more than ample. The Palms of Schendi, though it was night, continued to ply her way southward. Ulafi, for some reason, seemed eager to reach Schendi.
"I love being a woman," said the girl. "I love being a woman." She kissed me.
"You are a slave," I told her.
She kissed me again. "They are the same," she whispered.
I rolled over and seized her. Almost instantly, this time, she attained slave orgasm. Then she looked up at me, frightened, and I touched the side of her forehead, brushing back some hair.
"I so fear the slave in me," she said.
"You so fear the woman in you," I said.
"They are the same, Master," she said. "They are the same."
"That is known to me," I said.
She lifted her lips to mine, and kissed me softly. "Yes, Master," she said.
"To my feet," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said. She crept tremblingly to my feet.
"Curl up," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I then threw the second blanket, the top blanket, over her, covering her completely. When a blanket, or cloak, or covering of any sort, is thrown over a slave like this she may not speak or rise. She must remain as she is, silent, until the master, or some free man, lifts the covering away.
I then lay on the blanket, my hands under my head, looking up at the canvas and stars. With my foot I could feel the girl. Her breathing told me that she was soon asleep.
It was the first time, since her enslavement, she had slept outside of a cage.
She was an excellent little slave. I was pleased that I had picked her up.
After a time, restless, I got up and paced the deck. Ulafi was not asleep. He was on the stem castle. Two helmsmen stood below him, on the helm deck. The only other hand awake, as far as I knew, was the lookout, some forty feet above me, on the ringed platform encircling the mainmast, the taller of the two masts.
I walked over to the cage of the blond-haired barbarian. She, I felt, was the key to the mystery, that device whereby I might locate Shaba and the fourth ring, one of the two remaining light-diversion rings, the secret of which had apparently perished long ago with Prasdak, the Kur inventor, he of the Cliff of Karrash. The fifth ring, according to Samos, was still somewhere on one of the steel worlds. It would not be risked, we speculated, on Gor or Earth. Perhaps it served to keep order on some steel world. Shielded in invisibility an executioner could come and go as he pleased. If we could acquire once more, of course, the Tahari ring, the fourth ring, which had been brought to Gor by a Kur faction intent upon preserving the planet from destruction, we could, presumably, have it duplicated in the Sardar. The use of such rings, If their use were permitted by Priest-Kings, might well make it difficult or impossible for the Kurii to function on Gor. With it their secret strongholds might be penetrated. With it one man might, in time, slaughter an army. I was pleased that the fourth ring had been brought to Gor. Without it, given to me by a dying Kur warrior, I doubted that I could have survived to prevent, some years ago, the detonation of the explosives in the steel tower, in the Tahari. Explosives that were intended to destroy Gor and the Priest-Kings, that the path to Earth might be cleared for conquest. But the faction that would have been willing to destroy one world to obtain another was, we speculated, no longer in the ascendancy on the steel worlds. Half-Ear, a war general of the Kurii, whom I had met in the north, had not been of that faction. Kurii now, it seemed reasonably clear, were again intent upon the possibilities of invasion. They sensed the weakness of Priest-Kings. Why now should they think of destroying a world which, like a ripe fruit, seemed to hang almost within their grasp?