I leaned against the bars, dreamily. I would, at any rate, do my best. I knew that I had always wanted to please men, and serve them. That had seemed to me in the order of nature, and to be fitting and right. But now, suddenly, remarkably, I had found myself on a world where, literally, I must do so. On this world, I had no choice in the matter. I was subject to discipline. I did not wish to be punished. I did not wish to be killed.
I held to the bars.
I looked out, at the narrow ledge, the beautiful mountains, the vast, bright, late-afternoon cloudy sky over the mountains.
How beautiful was this world!
To be sure, I was not important. I was less than nothing within it.
I thought of my old world, and its buildings, its streets, its roads, its signs, its crowding, its people, so many of them so wonderful, so precious, so many of them so miserable and sad, their mode of dress, now seemingly so unnatural, or eccentric, the vanities, the hostilities, the offensive, disgusting mindlessness of its materialism, the abuse of serious intellect and genuine feeling, the sense of emptiness and alienation, the destructive, pathetic search of so many for toxic stimulants, the banal electronic gaudiness, the unwillingness to look within, or ahead, the culture of selfishness, comfort and distraction. I was not then so disappointed to be where I was. In my old world I had been told I was important, as one tells everyone in that world, but I had not been, of course. Here I knew I was not important, but hoped that I might, sometime, mean at least a little to someone. One need not be important, you see, not at all, for that to be the case.
But how terrible was this world!
In it I had once actually been put in a collar, a steel collar, which I could not remove!
How I had treasured it!
Oh, there were dangers here, doubtless. And I did not know how many or of what sorts. How ignorant I was!
But I did not think I was discontent, really, to be here. Did not even mind the cell, really. Such as I must expect to be kept in such places. Surely it would not do, to let us run around as we might please.
I thought of some of my friends, on my old world. We had, of course, gone about together. I had had classes with some of them. But it was interesting how I now thought of them. I did not think of them now so much as they had been, on the bus, in classes, in the library, in labs, wandering about with me in the wide, smooth halls, and corridors, and courts of one or another of an endless list of shopping malls, patronizing garish restaurants whose claim to fame was the speed with which inferior food could be served, and such, but rather how they might be now, if they, like myself, had been brought to this world. How would three rows of thronged bells look, jinkling on the left ankle of a bare footed Sandra? Wouldn’t Jean look well, in a common camisk, carrying a vessel of water, balanced with one hand on her head, as we had been trained to do? And surely Pricilla would be fetching in a tiny bit of yellow silk, all she would wear. And Sally, plum, cuddly little Sally, so excitable, so talkative, so self-depreciating, so cynical with respect to the value of her own charms, let her wardrobe for the time be merely a collar, and her place only the tiles at a man’s feet. Let her kneel there in terror and discover that her previous assessments of her desirability, her attractions, were quite in error, and that, in such matters, much depends on the health of men, their naturalness and their power. I now thought of my friends, you see, rather in the categories of my new world. I wondered what prices they might bring, on a sales block. Certainly all were lovely; certainly all would look well in collars. It was my speculation that they would all, all of them, my lovely friends, my dearest friends, bring excellent prices.
Men would want them all.
But what if I had to compete for the favor of a master with them? That would be different. It would then be every girl for herself.
I heard, suddenly, from far off, out of sight, to my right, a shrill, birdlike cry.
I grasped the bars and pressed myself against them, looking up, and to the right. I saw nothing.
They cry had seemed birdlike, but, even far off, it was too might to have had such a source.
Then, a moment later, closer, I heard the same cry.
Again I pressed myself to the bars. I could see nothing, only the sky, the clouds.
I wondered what had made that sound.
My thoughts then wandered to some of the men I had known on my world. I wondered, too, what they might look like, clad not in the enclosed, hampering, eccentric garments prescribed for them by their culture, but in freer, more natural garb, such as tunics, and, as I had sometimes seen in the house, robes, and cloaks, of various sorts, things which might, in a moment, be cast aside, beautifully and boldly freeing the body for activity, for the race, for wrestling, for bathing, for the use of weapons, for the command of such as I. But whereas it seemed natural to think of the women of my world, or some of them, clad as I was, it seemed somehow foolish, or improbably, to think of the men of my world in the garmenture of the men of this world. It did not seem appropriate for them. I doubted that they could wear it honestly, if they could wear it well. I thought that they, given what they were, might be unworthy of such garments. But perhaps I am unfair to the men of my old world. Doubtless on that world, somewhere there must be true men. And I did not think, truly, that the men of my old world were really so different from the men here. The major differences, I was sure, were not biological, but cultural. I had been given a drink in the pens, for example, the intent of which, as I understood it, was to prevent conception. This suggested surely that the men here were cross-fertile with women such as I, and, thus, presumably, that we, despite the seeming considerable differences between us, were actually of the same species. The differences between the men of this world, so self-confident, so audacious, so lordly, so natural, so strong, so free, and those of my old world, so little like them, then, I assumed, must be, at least primarily, differences of acculturation. On my old world nature had been feared. It must be denied, or distorted. Civilization was the foe of nature. On this world nature had been accepted, and celebrated. It was neither distorted nor denied. Here, civilization and nature were in harmony. Here, it was not the task of civilization to disparage, condemn, and fight nature, with all the pathological consequences of such an endeavor, but rather to fulfill and express her, in her richness and variety, to enhance her and bedeck her with the glories of customs, practices and institutions.
I suddenly then heard again, this time so much closer and terrible, from somewhere to the right, perhaps no more than a hundred yards away, that dreadful shrill birdlike cry or scream. I was startled. I was terrified. I stood behind the bars, unable even to move. Then I suddenly gasped with fear. My hands were clenched on the bars. Moving from the right toward the left, some yards above the level of the ledge, some seventy or so yards out from it, I saw a gigantic hawklike creature, a monstrous, titanic bird, of incredible dimension. It must have had a wingspan of some forty feet in breadth! It was difficult to convey the terribleness, the size, the speed, the savagery, the power, the ferocity, the clearly predatory, clearly carnivorous nature of such a thing! But the most incredible thing, to my mind, was that I saw, in the moment or two it was in my visual field, that this monster was harnessed and saddled, and, astride it, was ahelmeted figure, that of a man!
I almost fainted behind the bars.
How grateful for the bars was I then!
The figure astride the winged monster had not looked toward the mountain, the ledge, the cell.
What had lain in this direction had apparently not concerened him.
Indeed, what could be of importance here, what worth considering?