“Please do not tell on me,” pleaded Nelsa.
“I think Gart likes me,” said Ellen.
“Please do not tell on me!” begged Nelsa.
“Please, what?” asked Ellen.
“Please — Mistress,” said Nelsa.
“I shall give the matter thought,” said Ellen, tossing her head.
“Thank you, Mistress,” whispered Nelsa.
“Now, get back to your work, slave,” said Ellen.
“Yes, Mistress,” said Nelsa.
“You are a stupid little slave, Ellen,” said Laura, the redhead.
“I think that Gart likes me,” said Ellen.
“Do not speak his name!” warned one of the sisters from Venna. “You could be beaten. One refers to free men as “Master” and free women as “Mistress,” unless given permission to use their names.”
“And that permission,” said the other sister, “is almost never granted. What free person would want their name soiled by the tongue of a slave? I never let my slaves refer to me by my name.”
“I think that Gart likes me,” said Ellen. “I have never been out of the house. Tomorrow I think will ask him to let me be one of the girls who airs and dries the washing, on the roof.”
“Bold slave!” said Laura.
“I think I can have men do what I want,” said Ellen.
“Beware,” said Laura. “Do not forget you are a slave!”
“Men are the masters,” said one of the sisters from Venna.
“They are the masters,” said the other sister, pleadingly.
“Perhaps,” said Ellen, lightly, tossing her head. “But we shall see, shan’t we?”
“Have no fear but what you will see, you stupid little slave,” said Laura.
“But I am a pretty slave, and a clever slave,” said Ellen.
“You are a pretty slave, yes,” said Laura. “You are a very pretty slave. But you are not a clever slave. You are a stupid slave.”
Ellen smiled, and tossed her head, dismissively.
When Gart returned to the room, the slaves, including Ellen, returned to their work.
Chapter 13
THE ROOF;
SHE IS SUMMONED BEFORE HER MASTER
“How beautiful!” exclaimed Ellen.
The wind swept about her, whipping the long, white, ankle-length, sleeveless gown she wore about her body. She was barefoot.
She looked out, over the city.
Above her there raced white clouds in a bright blue sky.
“I have never seen anything like this,” whispered Ellen, touching her collar.
“Do not go too near the edge,” said Laura.
There was no railing.
“This world is so beautiful, and so fresh, and so marvelous,” said Ellen, “and here I am a slave.”
To tread such a world, thought Ellen, is worth a brand and a collar, a thousand brands and a thousand collars. What a privilege and joy to be brought here! Do those who are native to this world understand how wonderful it is? I did not know such a world could exist! She reveled in the freshness of the air and the beauty of the sky, and city. How different this was from the gray, crowded, unkempt, polluted, unloved, filthy, squalid city with she was most familiar from her former world.
“How beautiful it is,” she called to Laura.
Laura came to stand beside her. “It is beautiful,” said Laura.
“It is so much more beautiful than most of the cities of my former world,” said Ellen.
“Perhaps those cities have no Home Stones,” said Laura.
“You two had best be attending to your work,” called Nelsa.
On the broad, circular roof, some fifty yards in diameter, there were numerous, sturdy, tiered racks of poles on which levels of laundry might be dried, and, between these racks, were numerous swaying lines, from which a great deal more wash, like flags, shook, flapped and fluttered in the wind, held to the lines with simple, numerous, wooden, hand-carved clothespins.
Gart, when he had acceded to Ellen’s request to work on the roof, had assigned several of the girls close to her the same duty. Perhaps he thought they were friends. He would not know that Nelsa hated Ellen, fearing that she might tell her secret, about the threatened scalding. Nor would he know that Ellen, in Laura’s opinion, was little more than a petty, vain, stupid, self-important, ignorant, scheming, meaningless little bit of slave fluff. On the other hand, as an astute work-master, well accustomed to dealing with female slaves, he may have assigned the group as he did in order to reduce jealousy, diminish resentments, and such. After all, he could not always be in the laundry. Perhaps, too, he recognized Ellen’s youth and vulnerability, her newness to the collar and such, and thought he might as well do what he could, within reason, to protect her. Too, there was no denying that she was an extremely pretty little slave, and this may have had something to do with it. This is not to say that she did not feel his whip when she shirked her work. It is one thing to be very pretty; it is quite another not to be fully pleasing. Another possibility, of course, is that this would be Ellen’s first venture to the roof, and he thought it well to have some of her associates, slaves she knew, slaves with whom she would be expected to be able to communicate, for whatever reason, in her vicinity.
Ellen stood rapt on the roof, the wind moving her long, sleeveless garment about her, gazing across the city, in awe, tears in her eyes.
“You had best return to your basket and begin to hang the clothing,” said Laura, turning away, going back to her own basket.
Ellen lifted her arms gratefully to the city, the sky, the world. “I love you, planet Gor,” she cried. “You are so beautiful. Here the world is new. Here one begins again. What an honor, what a privilege, what an incredible gift, just to be able to see you, just to be permitted to be here! How unworthy are the women of Earth to know your glory and beauty! What could a woman such as I be on a world such as this but a slave? On such a world what else could we be? Oh, thank you, Masters, for bringing us here, if only for your own purposes, if only to have us as slaves, if only to have us in our collars, abjectly serving, licking and kissing, naked at your feet! I thank you, oh Masters! I thank you, I thank you!”
“Ellen!” called Laura, impatiently, from back amongst the lines of swaying, fluttering clothes.
“Yes, yes!” said Ellen.
She looked out across the city. The building on whose roof she stood, and it had been a long climb to the roof from the laundry, bearing the heavy basket, was very similar to most of the other buildings she saw in the city. It was one of the “high cities,” a forest of cylinders, a city of towering, spaced cylinders, many of them in bright colors, and, joining these cylinders, at various levels, like light curving, colored, rail-less traceries in the sky, were numerous bridges. She could see individuals on many of the bridges. Too, there were individuals in the streets below. In the distance, too, between the cylinders, many of which must have been twenty or thirty living tiers, or stories, high, she could see walls. She thought they, too, must be very high. Too, their tops seemed almost like roads. She did not doubt but what two wagons might pass on them. Though it was far off, she thought she could see, like specks, some individuals here and there on the walls. Occasionally there was a flash, as might have resulted from the sun’s being suddenly reflected from a metal surface, perhaps a helmet, a spear point, a shield. There must have been parapets, and, discernibly, here and there, there were small towers, which may have been guard stations. Some of these towers jutted partly out from the walls, which would expose the sheer declivity of the architectural escarpment to view. Why would a city need walls, she asked herself. Ellen, who at that time was not only new to her collar, but largely ignorant of the nature of the world on which she found herself, did not understand the darker or more problematic meanings of what she saw, or, perhaps better, the full implications of what she saw. She saw little more than the beauty of the city, its style, its color, its grace, its splendor. She did not understand at that time that the considerations which had been involved in the design of the city were not merely aesthetic, and such, but military, as well. Most of the towers were, in effect, keeps. They were stocked, fortress towers. Many could not be entered at the ground level. The bridges amongst them were narrow and could be successfully defended by a handful of men against hundreds. And the bridges, given their construction, could be easily broken, thus isolating the individual fortresses from other, similar fortresses, which might have fallen to an enemy. To reduce such a city, with primitive weaponry, tower by tower, might well require an army, and, conceivably, an investment of years of effort and expense.