I turned about to look at the street. Some twenty yards away two palanquins, heading in opposite directions, were stopped. The men in them, facing one another, were talking, presumably greeting one another and passing the time of day with genial converse. The pace of life in a Gorean city, even a large city such as Ar, does not tend to be swift. Sometimes when there is an especially beautiful sky many people will close their shops and men will flock to the high bridges to watch.
"I shall tell," said the silk slave at the ring.
Behind the palanquins, as behind several of the others I had seen this day, were several chained girls, briefly tunicked and ribboned.
"Yes, I shall tell," said the silk slave.
One of the girls was looking at me. She was small, slender-legged and exquisite. She was collared. The short, loose silk she wore was hitched high, at her left hip. She was chained by the neck, in one of two eleven-girl coffies, between two other girls, each coffle chained separately to a bar at the back of the palanquin. Her hands, like those of the other girls, were fastened behind her back.
I shook with emotion. I had never realized she could be so beautiful.
She was looking at me.
Slowly, trembling, heart pounding, I moved toward her.
"Come back," called the silk slave. "Stay at the wall! I will tell! I will tell!"
I approached the girl. The masters did not notice, for they were in converse. Some servants, too, were speaking together, near the palanquins. Neither did they notice.
Then I stood before her. Her eyes were regarding me with horror. She stepped back, in the chain.
"I did not think I would ever see you again," I said.
She did not speak.
I looked at her fair, white throat; it was lovely and delicate; it wore, snugly, locked on it, the circlet of bondage.
"That girl," she said. "You raped her."
I stepped back from the girl, to look upon her. I could scarcely believe my eyes.
"Please," she said.
Objectively, I suppose, she was no more beautiful than thousands of other girls, but to me she was the most exciting woman I had ever seen.
"Please," she said.
I examined, with wonder and pleasure, the girl who stood before me, her small feet, bare, and trim ankles, her calves and thighs, the delicious curves of her body in the loose, scant silk, the loveliness of her slender throat, locked in its collar, the delicacy and beauty of her features, the loveliness of her eyes, sensitive and vulnerable, and the marvels of her dark bair, grown longer now, tied back with a silk ribbon.
"Please," she said, "do not look at me like that."
"Are you branded?" I asked.
She turned her left side from me. She pulled at the bracelets which fastened her hands behind her back.
"Oh, how beautiful it is," I said, having stepped to her left. There, her tunic had been hitched up to her hip, presumably the better to expose her beauty and the mark which identified it as merely that of an item of merchandise.
"You raped that girl," she said.
It was hard for me to take my eyes off the beautv. Her thigh, I had noted, bore the common Kajira mark of Gor. She, I understood, in spite of her beauty to me, was only a common Kajira.
"Are you not pleased to see me?" I asked. It seemed to me Incredible that she should not be pleased to see me.
"You raped that girl," she said, angrily.
"Not really," I said. "She was paying for a drink of water which I had brought to her."
"Beast," she said.
I said nothing for a moment
I looked at her. She was in the nearest coffle of eleven girls, one of two coffles fastened to the bar at the back of the palanquin. She was the tenth girl in her coffle. The coffle chain had its own collars, rounded and rather loose, which lay below the common collars of the girls; they could not, of course, be slipped. They were similar to what I have learned are called Turian collars.
"You are very beautiful," I said. I stood more closely to her.
She tossed her head. "Doubtless did you have me at a similar disadvantage," she said, "I would have been subjected to the same treatment."
I put my hands on her tunic. It had parted somewhat, apparently, in her walking, following the palanquin. Her hands fastened as they were, behind her, she could not draw the garment closed. Briefly I wanted to rip it down from her shoulders. She was woman enough to understand this. She shuddered. Then I drew it together more closely, that the loveliness of her small breasts might be the better concealed.
"You would strip and rape me on the street, if you could, wouldn't you?" she asked.
I wanted to take her in my arms. But I did not know, truly, she fastened as she was, how to do this. Secured as she was she could be taken in one's arms only as a captive or slave girl. That, of course, scarcely seemed proper in the context.
"Wouldn't you?" she asked.
"No," I said, "of course not."
"Oh," she said.
"You are not a Gorean girl," I said.
"That is true," she said.
I looked down at her. "You are looking quite well," I said. It was true. I had never seen her before looking so relaxed and beautiful. And yet she stood before me, helpless in chains. Slavery, of course, reduces tensions in a woman.
"You are looking well yourself," she said.
"I see that you are a display item," I said.
"Yes," she smiled.
"If I owned you, I would show you off, too," I said.
"Beast," she smiled.
"You are wearing a white ribbon," I said.
"So are you," she said.
"I am not white silk," I smiled.
"The ribbon is only to match my tunic," she said. "I am not truly white silk."
"Do you wish to speak in English?" I asked. "Would it be easier?"
She looked about, uneasily. The other girls were not paving us attention. "No," she said, continuing in Gorean. We had both spoken, naturally, in the language of,our masters. Masters do not care to hear slaves speak in tongues they do not understand. The slave learns the language of the owner, and learns it well. Her Gorean was quite good. Mine, I thought, was better. Surprisingly, perhaps, we had spoken together in Gorean without really considering the matter. I do not think this was simply because we feared to irritate or offend passing Goreans, who tend to view languages other than their own as barbarous, or because slaves are expected to use a speech intelligible to their masters, but because, for most practical purposes, Gorean had become our language. I am sure, however, we could have conversed readily in English, had we so chosen. After a brief period of readjustment we would have become again at ease in it.
"I was white silk on Earth," she said.
"I did not know that," I said.
"It is scarcely the sort of thing a girl publicly discusses on Earth," she said.
"I suppose not," I said. Such information, of course, would be publicly brandished to buyers in a slave market. "Who first took you?" I asked.
"I do not know," she said. "I was hooded and thrown naked to keepers. I was raped and handed about, passed from brute to brute. They did with me what they pleased."
"I understand," I said. Her ravishing would have been thorough, accomplished by Gorean men. I looked at her. She was beautiful. I envied the brutes who had enjoyed her.
"I was then," she said, "though a girl of Earth, ready to be trained as a slave."
"Of course," I said. I did not press her on the nature of her training.
"I was trained in the House of Andronicus," she said, "and sold in Vonda."
"I, too, was in the House of Andronicus," I said. "I was later purchased by Tima, a slaver, mistress of the House of Tima. I was sold from the market of Tima. That is also in Vonda." I looked at her. "Were you naked, and auctioned?" I asked.
"Yes," she said. "And you?"
"I, too," I said.