TEN

I screamed suddenly, startled, at the pounding of the pipe between the bars, and at the snarling at the beast. I had not been looking. I had been taken totally unawares. I had not expected either sound. I scrambled to the back of the cell and pressed myself, my body and the palms of my hands, against the stone there. It was as though I would try to press through the rock itself.

I looked back over my shoulder, wildly. I saw shadows there. "Please, no!" I cried in my native language. Then I realized in misery that such a lapse might earn me a beating. I saw the beast there, the low, large, long, heavy beast, the six-legged monster, with the triangular viperlike head. It was just outside the bars. At its side stood a corpulent, ma.s.sive male, in a half tunic, with a heavy leather belt, and leather wristlets. In his left hand he held the beast, on a short leash. The metal pipe with which he had struck the bars he threw behind him, on a shoulder strap. It was the sort of thing with which he might have subdued even a man. From his belt there hung a ring of keys and a whip. I heard the beast snuffling and growling. I heard the ring of keys, jangling, removed from the belt. He went to the side, as I could see, turning half about, past the right side of the door, as one faces outward. I heard him then, out of sight, to the right of the door. He opened, it seemed, a panel of some sort. I heard a key thrust in a lock, and turned. The locking mechanism, you see, is not visible from the cell.

It is somewhere outside, and, I conjectured, protected in a paneled niche. I was to some extent familiar with these things from the cell's having been opened several times before, in the morning. To be sure, I had then, warned by the signal bar, been p.r.o.ne at the back of the cell, helplessly spread-eagled. He had, however, as yet, not demanded any such accommodation. I crouched now at the back of the cell, turned about, looking. I saw him re-emerge into view, the keys back on his belt. He looked through the bars and, for an instant, our eyes met, and then I looked away, unable to meet his eyes. I saw him transfer the leash to his right hand and reach down and, with his left hand, in one motion, with a sound of sliding metal, lift the gate. I gasped.

This had apparently required considerable force, but it had been done easily. I suspected then that he, or another such as he, might have been with the woman, or women, earlier. The beast put its head down and moved forward, a quick, stealthy step, little more than the movement of one paw. I groaned. I trusted it was under effective discipline. I hoped the man could hold it, if it were not. But I had no a.s.surance of that. It was larger and heavier than he, by far, and had the leverage of six clawed legs. I hoped the leash would not break. I heard the growling of the animal. I flung a pleading, helpless glance at its keeper, and perhaps mine. I did not dare meet the eyes of the animal, for fear I might trigger some attack response. It could have torn me in pieces. It could have bitten me in two. Briefly again, fleetingly, in terror, begging him to control the animal, my eyes met those of the ma.s.sive male, and then, again, I looked down. He was a man not untypical of this world, in his size and strength. But, too, even more typical of this world, one could read in his eyes the absence of vacillation and confusion, the undivided nature of his character, the firmness, simplicity and unilaterality of his will. He did not belong to a world in which men, through deceit and trickery, and lies, and insidious, hypocritical conditioning programs, had been bled and weakened. On this world, at least where women such as I were concerned, men had kept their power. They had not surrendered their manhood, their natural dominance. In his eyes, you see, I saw the firmness of his character, the strength of his will, which was as iron.

In his eyes, in a sense, you see, I saw, unpretentious and untroubled, the severity, the simplicity, the strictness, the rigor, the uncompromising relentlessness of nature.

I knelt before him then, with my back straight, but my head down. I spread my knees very widely.

I wanted to beg him for permission to speak, but I was afraid to do so.

I wanted to beg his forgiveness for having cried out in my native language. After all, it would not be his language, and his language must now be my language. Our language must become that of the rights holders.

I heard the animal growl, a low, rumbling noise, and sensed it move forward another step.

I looked up, again, and then, frightened, knelt forward, putting my head to the stone flooring, my palms, too, down on the stone, in a common att.i.tude of obeisance.

I trembled.

"Look up," said he, in his language.

I looked up, frightened, crouching before him then on all fours. I did this immediately. He was the sort of man, like so many on this world, whom a woman obeys instantly.

Two gestures then did he make, in quick succession, the first indicating the left shoulder where, had I been tunicked in that fashion, there would have been a disrobing loop, and the second indicating, fingers spread, palm down, the floor. Instantly I drew the tunic over my head, stripping myself before him, and turned about, and put myself to my belly, legs and arms spread widely, spread-eagled.

I lay there thusly for some moments, regarded.

Then I sobbed as I felt the snout of the beast, prodding, rude, inquisitive, cold, pushing about my body.

"Do not move," he said.

As if I could have moved!

"May I speak? May I speak!" I begged.

"No," he said.

I sobbed, silenced.

"He is not really taking your scent," he said. "He is only curious about you."

I trembled, under the investigation of the beast. I smelled its fetid breath.

"Later," he said, "once you have been named, you will be introduced to our pets in the sleen pens."

I did not understand this at the time, but it would later become all too clear. The name is, of course, important, as it serves, in conjunction with other signals, to direct and target a hunt.

I did understand, of course, that I did not have, as of now, a name. I might as well have been then, I realized, in a collar. Any possible doubts as to my status had been dissipated. My brand was as meaningful as ever. It remained in full effect.

I felt his hand on my body.

I lifted it a little, to him, placatingly.

"Kajira," he chuckled.

That is one of the words in the language of the rights holders for women such as I. Indeed, as I have suggested, it is by far the most common word in their language for women such as I. The first words I had been taught on this world were "La kajira."-"I am a kajira."-"I am a slave girl."

He took the tunic I had discarded and folded it in small squares.

I had not been given permission to speak, and had thus not been permitted to beg forgiveness for having cried out in my native tongue. On the other hand, it seemed he had chosen to overlook my outburst.

I had, at any rate, not been kicked or cuffed.

I a.s.sumed he would have known, even before coming to the cell, that I was not from this world. And my outburst, under the circ.u.mstances, his sudden appearance, the noise, the beast, and such, certainly would have been an innocent enough one, a natural enough one.

To be sure, eventually, even such outbursts, I had little doubt, would be uttered in the language of the rights holders, that language, too, later, having become mine.

The men of this world are terribly strict with us, but few of them are cruel. Their pleasure is found in the manifold perfections of our service, intimate and otherwise, and in our devotion and love, not in our distress or pain. These men keep their animals under perfect discipline, as is their way, but they also, on the whole, treat them well.

I felt his eyes upon me.

"Kneel, and face me," he said.

Swiftly I complied.

He placed the folded tunic in my mouth, deeply back, between my teeth, crosswise, and I, as I knew was expected, closed my teeth upon it.

He then stood up, and I, kneeling before him, looked up at him.

"You are a pretty one," he said.

I looked at him, gratefully. Had I not been pretty, I supposed, I would not have been brought here. I gathered they tended to select "pretty ones." They liked that sort. Interestingly, on my own world, as I have indicated, I had never really thought of myself as being particularly attractive, at least generally, particularly as I had regarded my body as erring, so to speak, in approximating closely the statistical norms for a human female. Here, however, it seemed that the normal woman, well curved and luscious, was, for whatever reason, esteemed more highly than her more boyish, sticklike sisters. I did not mind this, of course. It pleased my vanity. On the other hand, my desirability, such as it was, I recognized, might place me in danger. "I would like to have you in my shackles," a guard had once told me. "I, too,"

had said another. "And I,"

had laughed another. I had been frightened. Many men, it seemed, and men such as these, such fierce, strong men, men like predators, like carnivores, might want me in their shackles!

"You are from the slave world?" he asked. I looked at him, puzzled.

"From the place called "Earth"?" he said. I nodded.

"Are there others like you there?" he asked. Tears brimmed in my eyes.

I nodded.

He laughed. He then snapped his fingers and indicated that I should rise and leave the cell, going to the right, as one faced outwards.

I leaped to my feet and, going far to the right, stopped only by the stone, put as much distance between me and the six-legged beast as possible.

Then I was outside the cell!

It was breathtakingly beautiful. The air was bracing. I bit down on the folded tunic between my teeth.

The wind blew through my hair.

I looked down to the left, and groaned, for there was a precipitate drop there, some forty or fifty feet to another trail below, and below that another such drop to another trail, and thence to another. Similarly, above me, I could see what seemed to be similar ledges, three or four of them, receding. There must have been more than a dozen such trails and ledges, several below, some above. Too, I could see several openings in the mountain, most of them barred. This was, in effect, I gathered, a place of imprisonment. I stepped back, dizzy for a moment, from the edge of the trail, and touched the rock to my right. I gasped; hundreds of yards ahead of me, where the trail led, past several barred cells, and approached by a narrow, ascending trail, there was a startling, lofty, sheer edifice that seemed to rear up from the mountains itself, its towers lost among clouds. It was walled. It was some sort of fortress or citadel. I looked again to the left. I could see the valley below now, or part of it. It was, I was sure, cultivated. Then I looked back, and trembled. The jailer was there, and the fearsome beast, held on its leash. Behind the jailer and the beast I could see the ledge trail going back around the mountain. To my right I saw the panel box, locked now, within which must lie the locking mechanism to the cell. The panel box itself, not to mention the mechanism within, could not be reached from within the cell. Other than this there was only the steepness, the side of the mountain, there on the right, rising up, and, on the left, below the ledge, the drop, forty or fifty feet, to the ledge and trail below. The rock ledge felt very hard, and granular. beneath my bare feet. It was chilly on the ledge. I looked back, again, at the jailer, and the beast.

Though I was out of the cell no leather or chain had been put on my neck.

The beast was leashed, but not I.

I had, incidentally, in the pens, been taught to walk gracefully, and to kneel, and pose, and such, in a leash. We are sometimes taken out in such fashions. There are also wrist leashes, usually worn on the right wrist of a right-handed girl, or on the left wrist of a left-handed girl, and ankle leashes, similarly oriented.

The point of the leash, of course, is seldom to hold or control a woman, for we are rational, and know we must obey, but rather to make it clear whose property she is, and to display her.

Similarly, when a woman is leashed her status is made clear to her.

Too, it might be mentioned that the leash has a profoundly erotic effect upon the female, as its meaning, and its symbolism of her domination, is profoundly arousing to her.

In this respect it is rather like the collar itself.

It does, of course, as a simple matter of undeniable fact, and this is something which should be openly acknowledged, have its custodial aspect. In it she is held.

She is its prisoner. She is on her leash.

But I was not now leashed.

It was not necessary for one such as I, I thought then, to be leashed, perhaps for a free woman, or a new girl, or a naive girl, or an ignorant girl, but not for one such as I, who had some understanding of the world on which she found herself, and what she was upon it.

But I would soon learn how wrong I was!

I would soon learn how much that simple device, the leash, had to teach me!

He was looking at me.

I straightened my body. We are not free women; we may not be slovenly or slatternly. We must stand and walk with excellent posture. I lifted and smoothed my hair a little, and moved it back, about my head. We have our vanity. His grin showed me that he saw me as a slave I saw that he would expect perfect obedience of me, and was well aware that he would receive it.

No, a leash would not be necessary.

I understood the world on which I found myself, and what I was upon it.

How naive I was! How much I had still to learn!

Ahead of me was the trail and the looming fortress or citadel in the distance. Wisps of cloud hung about the cold trail, and the turrets, or towers, of the structure in the distance.

He drew down the gate of the cell. It locked automatically. He then gestured ahead. As soon as he did this the beast uttered a menacing growl and tugged forward. I swiftly, stumbling, turned, and hurried along the narrow ledge in the direction indicated.

The tunic was clamped between my teeth.

I looked into the cells as we pa.s.sed them. Most were empty. Some, however, were occupied.

In some were sullen men, clad in the remnants of what might once have been uniforms. Their wrists and ankles were chained. In others there were unchained men, some men sitting crosslegged, playing some game with bits of cloth. Others stood near the bars, but kept their hands well within the bars.

"h.e.l.lo, little tasta," called one of the men to me.

I hurried on.

A tasta is a kind of small, sweet candy, usually sold at fairs. It is commonly mounted on a stick. Some men use it as a slang expression for one such as I. Another such is 'vulo'. The vulo is a small, soft, usually white, pigeonlike bird. It is the most common form of domestic fowl kept on this world. It is prized for its meat and eggs. It is notoriously incapable of eluding hawks and other forms of predatory birds, by which it can easily be torn to pieces.

I pa.s.sed another cell containing such men.

"Is she to be given to us?" one of them called out.

Again, frightened. I hurried on.

It occurred to me that I might, of course, being what I was, be thrown among them, for their gratification or amus.e.m.e.nt.

Not every cell which was occupied, however, contained men.

Some contained women such as I, who looked fearfully out, often from the back of the cell, through the bars. Their fear frightened me as I thought they might know more of this place than I. Some of these were clad in tunics such as I had been, invariably brief and revealing, the sort of garments in which men might choose to clothe women such as I.

Others were clad in what appeared to be rags, some little more than castoffs, which might have been soiled even, from use in the kitchen, others in rags which, I think, were actually scandalous ta-teeras, artfully arranged rags, intended to well display the women placed in them. I was sure these women were such as I because their throats were encircled by collars, mostly of the common variety, those closely fitting, of narrow steel. But two, at least, wore the looser collars of rounded metal. the Turian collar. To be sure, it, too, cannot be slipped.

Some women in certain other cells, on the other hand, were not collared. They were, however, stripped.

Too, they were in sirik, chained hand and foot, and neck.

The sink is a common custodial device for a female, and is quite flexible in its possibilities.

The common arrangement is a collar with dangling chain, to which are attached two smaller chains, the first with wrist rings, the second, at the termination of the dangling chain, with ankle rings. Women are very beautiful in it. I had learned to wear it attractively in the pens.

As the women were not collared I conjectured that they might be free.

"Do not look upon us, s.l.u.t!" cried one. Quickly I looked away.

I wondered how she felt, locked in slave steel. Doubtless she was awaiting, or being held for, her processing. Such takes place, of course, at the convenience of the rights holders. Sometimes a captive is held in incarceration for days, being given time to reflect deeply and fully on what is to become of her. I did not think she would be as imperious should her thigh come to wear, as I suspected it might soon do, a mark like mine, identical in import if not in actual design.

In another cell I saw four women in rags of white silk. As they wore collars I gathered that they were women such as I. The combination of the collars and the white silk suggested that they might be virgin slaves. A "white-silk girl" is a virgin, one who is not a virgin is sometimes referred to as a "red-silk girl."

This need not refer, literally, of course, to the color of their garmenture. White-silk slaves, as you might suppose, are very rare.