“Lord Nishida!” she cried. “Let this cruel jest proceed no further. I am naked, and men may look upon me!”
“Of course,” said Lord Nishida, “you are a slave.”
“You freed me of a collar!” she insisted.
“Only that it may be replaced with another,” he said. “Mine.”
“I am willing to pretend to be a slave!” she cried. “Let me reassume my disguise. I am exposed! I will willingly wear again even that shameful tunic, though it be but a humiliating badge of degradation!”
“You are a slave, stupid slut,” said Thrasilicus.
“No, no!” she cried. She struggled vainly in the grip of the two guards.
Tajima had retrieved the sheet and had now refolded it, and held it over his arm.
“See how fair-skinned is my new slave,” said Lord Nishida, over his shoulder, to the two contract women.
Both giggled.
The contract woman on the left, as one looked toward the dais, said, “Does she not smell, Lord Nishida?”
“She will have to be scrubbed,” said Lord Nishida.
“Please, please,” begged she who had once been Miss Wentworth, “give me the tunic!”
“Do you beg it?” asked Lord Nishida.
“Yes, yes!” she said.
“That shameful tunic, which is but a humiliating badge of degradation?” he asked.
“Yes,” she cried, “yes, please!”
“One must strive to become worthy of a tunic,” said Lord Nishida. Then he said to the two fellows who had the blond, distraught slave in custody. “See that she is cleaned, thoroughly, and then see to her branding and collaring. Let the brand be the Kef.”
That was the most common slave brand on Gor. Most female slaves bore it. It is commonly sited on the left thigh, just under the hip, perhaps because most masters are right-handed. Similarly the disrobing loop of certain tunics is at the left shoulder, presumably for the same reason.
“White! Gregory! Gregory!” cried she who had once been Margaret Wentworth.
“I am now ‘Gregory’?” he said.
“Yes, Gregory, Gregory! Please, Gregory, explain to them that a terrible mistake is taking place.”
“I was never Gregory before,” he said.
“Help me, Gregory!” she wept.
“Why?” he asked.
“I will let you hold me in your arms!” she said. “I will let you kiss me! I know you always wanted to do that! Help me! Help me!”
“You think to bargain with a free man, slave?” inquired Lord Nishida. “Get on your knees, and lick and kiss his feet, begging forgiveness.”
The guards released the slave, and she knelt, terrified, before Pertinax, and put down her head and began to lick and kiss his feet. “I am sorry,” she said. “Forgive me, Gregory.”
“I am Pertinax,” he said.
“Yes, yes,” she said. “You are Pertinax. Please, Pertinax, forgive me.”
“A slave,” I said, “does not use the name of the master to the master. All free men are to be addressed as ‘Master’, all free women as ‘Mistress’.”
The slave looked up at me, in misery, her eyes bright with tears, and put her head down, again, to the feet of Pertinax. “Forgive me, Master,” she said.
“More,” said Pertinax, sternly.
And the former Miss Wentworth again, softly, frightened, addressed her fair lips and small, soft tongue tenderly, for several moments, to the feet of a free man.
I thought I saw a small movement of sudden comprehension, of profound understanding, pass through the slave’s body.
Undoubtedly this was the first time she had ever knelt thusly before a man, let alone addressed herself in such a manner to his placation.
Outside the guard had apparently put her to her knees before him, as a matter of convenience or discipline, but this, obviously, was quite different.
She looked well at his feet, as a slave, but, then, do not women look well at the feet of men, as slaves?
“Please, forgive me, Master,” she whispered.
“I do,” said Pertinax, kindly.
She looked up. “Help me,” she begged.
“I fear I can do nothing,” said Pertinax.
“Please tell them I am not a slave,” she begged.
“I gather,” said Pertinax, “that you are a slave, or will soon be one.”
Kneeling, she put her head in her hands, and wept.
“Take her away,” said Lord Nishida.
One of the guards reached down, and jerked her to her feet by the upper left arm.
She turned wildly to me. “Save me!” she cried. “Do something! Fight for me! Rescue me!”
It interested me that the former Miss Wentworth, in this milieu, if in no other, suddenly understood the dependence of women upon men. Men might, if they wished, do with women as they wished. This simple, obvious fact had not been so clear on her former world, though it was a fact there, as well as here. That world was one in which women stood commonly within the shelters of civilized proprieties, within the fences of society, encircled by innumerable customs and laws, with their diverse enforcements and sanctions. In such a situation women take much for granted, not even understanding that it is being taken for granted.
“I fear, Lord Nishida,” said Tajima to Lord Nishida, “the woman is unutterably stupid.”
“No,” said Thrasilicus, “she is not stupid. She is merely ignorant. At present, it is true, I fear, that she knows little of the collar, and nothing of the furs.”
“She must learn, quickly,” said Lord Nishida.
“The whip will teach her, and quickly,” said Tajima, with, oddly, a glance at Sumomo, the contract woman who was on the right, as one would look to the dais. She was, indeed, a lovely young thing.
She sneered at Tajima. I gathered he had low status, for the women of the “strange men” are taught much respect to males. Even an older sister must bow first to a younger brother.
“Tarl Cabot, tarnsman,” said Lord Nishida, “what do you think of my new slave?”
I shrugged. There seemed little to say.
“I see,” said Lord Nishida. “Would you like her?”
The slave looked at Lord Nishida with disbelief. In that moment I think she first understood herself as property, which might be handed about, exchanged, bought and sold, and so on.
Cecily looked up, too, distressed. She knew herself as property, as well. She loved being property, and knowing herself property, but I did not think she was eager to be bestowed or vended. She loved being a possession, but, rather clearly, if I am not mistaken, she wished to remain the possession of a particular master, wished to remain my possession. Her distress, I think, had to do with the apprehension, this now again made clear to her, that she might without a second thought be given or sold to another. The slave, totally, is property, at the mercy of the master. Too, she may have feared that I might accept Lord Nishida’s offer, and then she would no longer be my only slave. Most slaves desire, fervently, to be a man’s only slave. That she might become, in such a situation, “first girl,” over the formerly insolent “Constantina” would be small consolation for sharing the attentions of a master with a rival. Some masters, of course, as it can be afforded, have more than one slave, that each may try to outdo the other, to please him the more. My own feeling is that it is best to have one slave, so that she will strive to be so loving, so pleasing, so hot, so needful, that the master will feel no desire for another. A master may have many slaves, of course, a merchant, say, may have dozens, a Ubar hundreds, and so on, but the slave, in her needful femininity, commonly wants to be the single property of a master, whom she need not share with another.
“My thanks, great lord,” I said, “but I am content with she who kneels to my left.”