"Slave! Slave!" laughed the slave girls.
At a gesture from Samos the two guards pulled the girl to her feet and held her before us.
"Take her away," said Samos, "and throw her to sleen."
"No, Master!" she screamed. "Please, no, Master! Mercy, Master!"
I could see that he was not too pleased with she who had formerly been the Lady Rowena of Lydius.
"Master!" she cried.
She was turned away from us. Her toes barely touched the tiles. She was utterly helpless n the grip of the guards. She looked wildly back, over her shoulder. "Why are you doing this?" she cried. She did not, of course, question his authority, or his right to do with her as he pleased.
The guards hesitated, holding her in place, her back to us, in case Samos might be pleased to respond to her. In a moment, if Samos did not speak, they would proceed on their way, she in helpless custody between them.
"It is one thing to be a slave," said Samos. "It is another to be permitted to live."
"Why would you do this to me?" she sobbed, over her shoulder. "Why would you have me thrown to sleen?"
"I think," said Samos, "there is still too much of the free woman in you."
"No!" she cried. "There is no more free woman left in me! The free woman is gone!"
"Is it true?" he asked.
"Yes," she cried, "yes, Master!"
"What, then, is left in you?" he asked.
"Only the slave!" she cried.
"What do you mean-in you?" he asked.
"I spoke loosely, Master," she wept. "Forgive me. That which I only and totally am is now a slave.!"
"It is one thing to be a slave," said Samos. "It is another to be an adequate slave."
"Master?" she asked, in misery.
"Keeping you would be a waste of collar and gruel," he said.
"No, Master," she said. "I would strive to serve well. I would strive desperately to be found worthy of being kept in my collar, and to be pleasing within it!"
"You do not have what it takes to be a good slave," said Samos. "You are too stupid, cold and self-centered."
"No, Master!" she cried.
"Release her," said Samos.
The girl, released, turned about and threw herself in supplication to her belly before the table. She lifted her head. There were tears in her eyes. "Let me prove to you that I can be acceptable as a slave!" she begged.
"Do you realize what you are asking?" he asked.
"yes, Master," she wept.
"What do you think?" Samos asked me.
I shrugged. The decision, it seemed to me, was his.
"Please, Master," begged the girl, tears in her eyes.
"Do you think you can be pleasing?" Samos asked the slave.
"I will try desperately, Master," she said.
"Stand," he said.
She stood.
"Straighten your back," said Samos. "Suck in your stomach. Thrust out your breasts."
Tears ran from her eyes.
"Remember, my dear," said Samos, not unkindly. "you are no longer a free woman. You have now entered a new life altogether, in which rigidities and inhibitions are no longer permitted you, a form of life in which, in many ways, you are strictly and uncompromisingly controlled, but one in which, in other ways, your deepest desires and needs need no longer be restrained, but may be, and must be, fully liberated, a from of life in which you, though categorically subjected to the perfections of absolute discipline, that of the total slave, are, paradoxically, freed to be yourself."
She looked at Samos, wonderingly.
"These things may now seem hard to understand," said Samos, "but they, and their reality, if you are permitted to live, will soon become clear."
"yes, Master," she said, gratefully. I saw that she, already, now a slave, deeply sensed the truth of his words.
Then his eyes were hard, and she trembled.
"Lift your hands to the level of your shoulders," he said, "and flex your knees, slightly."
She complied.
Samos then signaled to the musicians, who were seated to one side, that they should prepare to play.
"What is it that a man wants from a woman?" asked. Samos.
"Everything, and more," she whispered.
"Precisely," he said.
She trembled.
"I suggest that you do well," said Samos.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"You dance, and perform, for your life," he said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
"yes, Master," she whispered.
Samos signaled again to the musicians, and they began to play a sensual, slow, adagio melody.
"I have placed my Home Stone," said Samos, turning his attention to the board. "It is your move." That was true. It was my eleventh move. I considered the board and the placement of his Home Stone. An attack, I thought, would be premature. I would continue my development. I would attempt to secure the center, garnering thereby the mobilities and options commonly attendant on the control of these customarily vital routes. He who controls the roads, some say, control the cities. This, of course, is not strictly true, not in a world where most goods can be carried on the back of a man, not in a world where there are tarns.
"It is the sleen for her," I heard a man say.
Samos glanced at the dancer.
I, too, glanced at her. She was not trained. She did not know slave dance. Her movements were those of a virgin, a white-silk girl. She had not yet been taught slave helplessness. No man yet in his arms had taught her the exquisite, transforming degradations of the utilized slave, the wrenching surrender spasms, enforced upon her by his will, of the conquered bondwoman, experiences which, once she has had them, she is never willing to give up, experiences which she comes to need, experiences for which she will do anything, experiences which, whether she wishes it or not, put her at and keep her at, the mercy of men.
"She is clumsy," said Samos. He was irritated. I saw he did not wish, really, to have her killed.
A man laughed at her, as she tried to dance before him. "her throat will be cut within the Ahn," laughed another man. Another man turned away from her, when she approached him, to have his goblet of paga filled by a luscious, half-naked, collared slave.
"Clumsy, clumsy," said Samos. "I thought she might have the makings, somehow, of a pleasure slave."
"She is trying," I said.
"She does not have what it takes," said Samos.
"Her body is richly curved," I said. "That suggests an abundance of female hormones, and that, in turn, suggests the potentialities, the capacities for love, the sensibilities, the dispositions of the pleasure slave."
"She is not acceptable," said Samos. "She is inadequate."
"She is trying desperately to please," I said.
"But she is not succeeding," he said.
"She has a lovely body," I said. "Perhaps someone could buy her for a pittance, for a pot girl."
"She is not adequate," said Samos. "I will have to have her destroyed." He looked back to the board.
I saw several of the slave girls looking fearfully at one another. I to not think that they cared much for their new sister in bondage, the former Lady Rowena of Lydius, who perhaps in some subtle way, perhaps in virtue of her former background, held herself superior to them, but, too, I don nit think they cared to have her thrown alive, screaming, to sleen. She was, after all, now, like the, only a slave. "Dance, you stupid slave," hissed one. "Do you not know you are a slave? Do you not know you are owned?"
A wild look, one of sudden, fearful insight, came over the face of the dancer. She had not thought, specifically, objectively, it seemed, about this aspect of matters. But, of course, she was owned. She was now property. She could now be bought and sold, like a tarsk, at the pleasure of masters.