It could be purchased with the rest of me.

It is all of her, you see, the whole slave, that is sold.

"See her!" laughed a fellow.

My entire body, I fear, was a rage of subsiding arousal, and scarlet shame.

Could I help it if my body was so alive, and so much at their mercy? Too, had they not done much, the men of this world, to bring me to this helplessness? They had not permitted me to hide from myself! They had forced me to be myself!

-slave.

"She is an Earth s.l.u.t," said Dorna. "That is the way Earth s.l.u.ts are.

They are all like that!"

"I do not object," said a man.

"Nor I," said another.

There was laughter.

I wondered what I was supposed to do. Should I have tried to be unresponsive and frigid, and thus, in some absurd or perverted sense, have attempted to uphold the honor of the women of Earth? And it was not merely that in the pens many of my inhibitions had been forcibly removed from me and that my natural s.e.xuality had been freed and encouraged, permitted to grow, to thrive and blossom, but that my reflexes had actually been honed, so to speak, to greater sensitivity. I was now no stranger to arousal and responsiveness. I had even received training. Besides, I was a kajira! If I proved to be displeasing, I could be punished severely, even slain.

And so I knelt before them, naked, in a position of submission and subservience, a collared slave girl.

I had a name, but I did not know it.

"A hot, curvaceous s.l.u.t," said a man.

I knelt before them.

My body was no longer my own, but belonged now to the masters.

I must obey. I must serve.

How far away now was my old world, how far away now were the boutiques, the shops, the malls!

I wondered how my old friends, Jean, and Sandra, and Priscilla and Sally, would have looked, kneeling as I was. Doubtless much the same.

"See the whipped slave!" laughed Dorna. "See the utilized slave! See the Earth-s.l.u.t slave!"

I stared ahead. I did not look at her.

"How are you, kajira?" inquired Dorna.

"I will obey! I will try to be pleasing!" I said.

"Do women kneel thusly, before masters, on your world?" inquired Dorna.

"Some, perhaps," I said. "I do not know!"

"Did you?" asked Dorna.

"No," I said.

"What is wrong with the men of your world?" she asked. "Are they not men?"

"I do not know!" I said.

"You did not kneel before men," she said.

"No," I said.

"But now you do," said Dorna.

"Yes," I said.

"Yes, what?" she snapped.

"Yes, Mistress?" I asked.

"Yes!" she said.

"Yes, Mistress," I said. I must then, it seems, address her as 'Mistress'. She was not free, of course. It was rather that I was so much less than she. I did not think she was "first girl" over me. I would have dreaded that. It seemed rather that I was a low slave, and she a high slave.

And, perhaps she wished to be addressed as 'Mistress' by me because I was from Earth. She seemed to hate Earth, and those from Earth. I had gathered one from Earth might once have been involved in some shift in her fortunes. Now, of course, she had one before her who was from that world, and only a helpless kajira. I trusted that the men might protect me from her.

After all, it was they who were the masters of us both.

"Earth slave!" sneered Dorna.

"Yes, Mistress," I whispered, frightened.

It was true that that was what I was, and all that I was.

Dorna turned about and hurried up the steps of the dais. I did not care for the expression I detected on her countenance the moment before she turned away. Then she was at the left side of the great chair, which it seemed was where she belonged, and there she turned about, and was now facing me, looking down at me. But she addressed herself to the man in the chair. "She is the lowest of the low, is she not!

Master?" asked Dorna.

"Yes," said the man.

Dorna then leaned down, confidentially to him, and whispered something.

He smiled.

She then hurried down the stairs and, going behind me, seized my hair and held it up over my head, knotted securely in her grip. with both hands. I winced. She turned my head to the right and held it back, exposing the left side of my head to the chair.

She then, retaining her grip on my hair with her right hand, with her left, with the tips of her fingers, her palm up, indicated, and lifted slightly, the lobe of my left ear. It was almost as though she might be a slaver, or a slaver's man, calling attention to some feature which might be of interest to a buyer. I did not understand what she was doing. "Pretty?" she asked.

"Yes," said the man in the chair. Then she returned both hands to my hair and, still holding it up, over my head, twisted my head to the left, and back, thus exposing now the right side of my head to the chair. She kept her left hand in my hair, and I whimpered, at the tightness of her grip, and then displayed, in the fashion she had earlier, the right side of my head, indicating, and lifting, slightly, the lobe of my right ear.

"Pretty?" she asked, again. "Yes,"

said the man in the chair.

She returned both hands to my hair and held my head back, forcibly, cruelly, before the dais.

"Let her ears be pierced!" she cried.

I heard cries of protest, of dismay, from several of the men about.

She held my head back, painfully, as she had before.

"Let her ears be pierced!" she cried.

"Yes!" suddenly said one of the men, almost inaudibly.

"She is very pretty," said a man.

"Why not?" suggested another.

"Can you imagine what she would look like, thusly?" said another.

"Excellent," said another man.

"She is only from Earth," said another.

"Yes," said another.

"Let her ears be pierced!" urged another.

"Yes!" said another, eagerly.

There was a silence.

"Yes," smiled the man in the chair, musingly, looking down upon me, with such a look of power, of possessiveness, of mastery and desire, that even held as I was I almost fainted. "Yes,"

he said musingly, "let her ears be pierced."

"Excellent!" cried Dorna, releasing my hair and stepping away from me, looking down at me with triumph.

"Excellent," said more than one man. I heard the striking of shoulders behind me. It is done with the flat of the hand, the left shoulder with the right hand.

I understood very little of this. I had not had my ears pierced on Earth, but I had considered it from time to time. I had not had the courage to do so. I suppose I regarded it as too barbaric, too sensuous. After all, I was not then owned. Such an act, too, it seemed to me, would be to make too public certain secrets of one. It would have seemed to me, in effect, to acknowledge one's inner realities, to call attention to what lay within one, to proclaim one's inner self publicly, to offer oneself for bondage, to beg, in a way, the collar. I certainly had no objection to having my ears pierced. Did this mean that I was so obviously a slave? I a.s.sumed, of course, they had in mind some natural sort of piercing, and not some grotesque mutilation. But I did not think that was involved here. The men of this world, with all their barbaric animal heat, with all their ardor, and power and mastery, loved and desired women, and relished them, and prized them. The last thing they would want to do would be to decrease the beauty or value of a woman.

Even their strictest and most severe devices of punishment and discipline were designed with the protection of such features in mind. Indeed, if anything, these men insisted on the women making themselves, and keeping themselves, as desirable, attractive and beautiful as possible. That is the way they want us and, if necessary, even to the imposition of punishments and disciplines, that is the way they will see to it that we remain. To be sure, I was so poor a woman of Earth that I did not mind being desirable and beautiful. Indeed, I was eager to be such that I would bring a high price on a slave block.

Indeed, as I am a slave, even on Earth I had wanted to be such, desirable and beautiful, and such as would bring a good price from l.u.s.tful, bidding masters. But what distressed me now was the sense I gathered of the response of the men to the suggestion that my ears be pierced. I realized now, only too clearly, that this primitive, barbaric, homely little detail, seemingly so tiny in itself, the piercing of the ears, making possible the affixing of certain forms of ornaments, seemed, for some reason, quite momentous to them. I gathered that once my ears were pierced there would then be, at least from their point of view, something quite different about me.

"Come here," said the man in the chair. I regarded him, but he was looking at Dorna.

"Master?" she said.

He pointed to the floor of the dais, before the chair.

Frightened, she hurried there, and knelt before him. He drew her more closely to him, she still kneeling, and he bent forward. He took her head in his hands and brushed back her hair.

"Master," she said, uncertainly. He turned her head to one side, and then to the other.

"Pretty," he said.

"No!" she said. "No!"

He turned to one of the men to the side. "Let her ears be pierced," he said.

"No!" cried Dorna. "No!" She leaped to her feet and turned about, fleeing stumbling down the steps of the dais and then, at its foot, half bent over, turned about, facing the man in the chair.

"No!" she cried. "No!"

He regarded her.

"No, please, no!" she said. She did not seem so haughty then, so arrogant, so imperious, so hard. She seemed then only what she was, a female, in the hands of men.

He did not speak, but continued to regard her.

She then drew herself up, proudly, as though she might be other than what she was.

"Never!" she said. "Never!"

"Perhaps," he said, "you would prefer to go to the ring." She took a step backward, aghast.

"I am Dorna," she said.

"That may be changed," he said.

"I am a high slave!" she protested.

"That, too, may be changed," he said.

"No!" she said.

"Does Dorna want to go to the ring?" he asked.

"No!" she said, shuddering.

"What?" he inquired.

"Dorna does not want to go to the ring," she whispered.