In a net of the sort in which I was now enclosed, it is easy to inspect the contents, to see what is held.

This is different from many slave nets, which are often so closely woven that one can scarcely put one's fingers through the mesh. The point of such nets seems to be to impress on the slave her helplessness, and, as well, to excite the curiosity of pa.s.sers-by, say, prospective buyers or such, as to the nature of its contents. Similarly some auctioneers like to bring women to the block clothed, which vesture may then, as the bidding intensifies, be progressively removed. There is also a variety of capture nets, designed with different animals in mind. I confine myself to those which are designed to net slaves. To be sure, they function quite effectively with free women, as well, who, it must be noted, unless surprised in their boudoir or bath, are often impeded by the c.u.mbersome robes of concealment.

Interestingly the very robes which are supposed to discourage predation upon them render them more vulnerable to it.

Accordingly, ironically, in a given situation, a lightly clad slave, in her fleetness, might elude a captor to whom a free woman would fall easily. And when the "free woman" is capable of matching the slave's flight, she, too, perhaps being then bedecked in a less inhibiting garmenture, it will be too late for her, for, by that time, she, too, will be a slave. The nets I have in mind then are capture nets designed for the taking of slaves, or, perhaps better, more generally, women. They are light, easily cast and weighted.

They are commonly circular, with a diameter of some eight to ten feet. The cords are commonly of silk and the mesh is normally fastened in diamonds or squares, some two inches, or so, in width. They swirl, twisting, through the air. It is like a sudden, odd cloud come between you and the sun.

One is first aware of the reticulated shadow which seems to descend and then one has it all about one.

One is suddenly caught. Usually one is running, and, in an instant, one falls, tangled, helpless. Sometimes one leaps up, only to find it all about one. One tries to tear it away. One forces it in one direction to be the more helplessly grasped by it in another. Then, commonly, one falls, or one's feet may be kicked away, from beneath one. One looks up through the mesh and sees one's captor. In an instant then one may find the net secured about one, tied closed. One is its prisoner. Or one may be pulled from the net, and braceleted, or secured as the captor wishes. It is up to him, as you are then his. I have suggested that the slave, given her garmenture, is more likely to elude a captor than a free woman, which is surely true, but it is necessary to add that it is, of course, a relative matter, and one of degree. Neither the slave nor the free woman has much hope once, in a suitable situation, the hunter-has decided upon her. We are smaller than men. We are weaker than they, we are less swift than they. It is thus that we find our place, and have our place, in the design of nature, whatever may be her mysterious purposes. Nets are, of course, but one way of acquiring women. Looped ropes, for example, are extremely common. Bolas are not unknown, too. Indeed, in the southern hemisphere, I understand that they are extremely common. I think I would fear to be taken by such a thing, it whipping about my legs, pinning them together. More cruelly the woman is sometimes stunned by a throwing stick, a method which is used, I have heard, in a place called the delta of the Vosk.

The Vosk, I gather, is a body of flowing water, a stream, or river. Similarly, chains, hoods, and such, too, have their purposes.

I lay very still in the net.

It was damp, and cold, in this place.

The free woman does have one advantage, of course, over the slave, in eluding capture, which is that she is not a domestic animal. For example, let us suppose that a given city has fallen, and that effective resistance within it is at an end. In such a situation, where a male might expect to continue the pursuit of a free woman, who is, after all, at that point, still a free person, he might not wish to tire himself pursuing a slave. He might simply, rather, instruct her to halt, and command her to him, ordering her to present herself for his chains, or his bracelets or binding fiber, and thong and nose ring. The slave might then, if she is wise, hurry obediently to her new master. Has she not been commanded? Does she dally at the wall, against which she has been trapped? Does she hesitate in the room, within which she has been cornered? Is she not a slave? Must a command be repeated? She 'kneels at his feet, putting her head down, humbly licking and kissing his feet, perhaps his dusty, ashstained, b.l.o.o.d.y boots, in timid, tender obeisance. Does she not now have a new master? And is it not he? Must she not hasten to her place at his feet, summoned even as might be another form of domestic animal, perhaps by a mere word, or whistle? She dares not disobey. She knows what might be the penalties for such. She is a domestic animal. She now, merely, has a new master. She kneels before him, submitted. She accepts, unquestioningly, as she must, her new bonds.

I heard again a movement below me, something like a twisting, a stirring, in water. It was, I conjectured, several feet below me.

I conjectured that I might be suspended over what might be the sump of a fortress.

I did not know.

Perhaps, rather, it was some sort of pool or reservoir.

I did not know.

Certainly it must be deep beneath the fortress, or city.

I twisted a little. My ankles were bound, tightly, to one another. My wrists were still secured behind my back. I was helpless. I had no hope of freeing myself. When men such as those of this world tie a woman, she remains tied. I had learned that weeks ago, in the pens.

One of my first lessons in the pen was to have been bound hand and foot, and then ordered to free myself. I had then, while watched, twisted and struggled for more than an Ahn. Then at last I had wept, in futility, "Forgive me, Masters! I cannot free myself!"

"Do not forget it," said a guard.

"No, Master," I wept.

I had then expected to be freed, but they had left me as I was, helplessly bound, past the time of the evening meal and throughout the night. They freed me in the morning and I was permitted to relieve myself and crawl on all fours, as I could, my muscles and limbs stiff and aching, with the other girls, hungry, to my pan of morning gruel.

What was I doing here, I wondered.

I was to be a pit slave, it seemed, whatever that might be.

The "pit master" was spoken of as "the Tarsk." I did not understand the allusion.

Given the length of my descent, from which my body was still sore, I must be far beneath the fortress, indeed, or perhaps far beneath the city, as the descent had often seemed an oblique one. I could be hundreds of yards from the vertical axis of the tower.

The "pit" or "pits," I thought, must be near here. Surely I was at least in their vicinity.

It was dark here, and cold.

What was I doing here? Why had I been purchased, and by men who, it seemed, seldom bothered to purchase women, preferring, it seemed, to acquire them in other manners? Why did they wish a girl here who was ignorant, or muchly so? I did not want to be here.

I was supposedly beautiful. But of what use would be my beauty, if beauty it was, in this place, in the pits? Too, I was supposedly quite vital, unusually so, it seemed, even for this world. My vitality, my s.e.xuality, had, of course, been disparaged, belittled, denied, and starved on my own world. I had kept it concealed, hidden. I had even tried to be ashamed of it.

How strange was my world, one on which one was expected to pretend to numbness and insensitivity, one on which one was conditioned to be ashamed of health. Women who had feelings such as mine for men were to be denounced with all the epithets available to the anesthetic, to the perverted, to the freaks and frustrates. Did we really const.i.tute such dangers, I wondered, to the pervasiveness and mightiness of their eccentric conditioning programs? Was it not enough for them to exercise an almost perfect control over media and education? Did they fear a tiny whisper of truth so much? Was it truly so dangerous?

Must all reflection, all inquiry, all thought be suppressed? Was it truly required that the "free marketplace of ideas" be closed, except in name? What a tiny, small thing were the genetic codes of an organism! One could scarcely detect the traces of such things with the most awesome instruments. What a frail straw was truth!

So a blade of gra.s.s grew between the paving stones, one tiny, green blade of gra.s.s among the stones?

Did they fear that so much? Gra.s.s is so beautiful. It did not seem to me that feelings such as mine were really so threatening to prescribed "movements." Did it really make it so difficult for them to continue to present their particular interest as though it were the general interest? Surely I was not stopping them from doing that. Could they not even find little truths amusing, they so weak and tiny, lost among all the glittering, ma.s.sive lies? Who could fear them? They were so tiny, those little truths. But perhaps they were right. Perhaps even little truths were dangerous. A match may be seen from far off in the darkness.

The tiniest of sparks might imperil a mountain of straw. So, too, perhaps even a modest truth, no stranger to eons of history, might undermine the myths of a world. Did the moons of Jupiter not shatter the crystalline spheres? Destroy telescopes then, for they might see the truth. They see too far, and too clearly. They look too deeply into reality. Did not a handful of fossils overturn a world? Let men then not examine the earth beneath their feet, for they might learn on what it is that they truly stand. How insidious the modest, recurrent elements of a healthy organism, the components of a natural biological development. How subtle, how insistent and quiet, and yet how tenacious a foe of promulgated perversions are the whims of nature, that she should choose to be so const.i.tuted. But nature cannot read.

Thus she does not know what she is supposed to be. She is content to let others read her, if they dare.

How odd if we should truly be the end of history, if our tiny grasp of things, our demands flung into the void, should be the finality of the universe. Are we, familiar with the rise and fall of empires, who have witnessed the building of the pyramids and walked the streets of Babylon and Nineveh, who have heard the tread of the legions and watched the armada set forth, to take our moment, our brief afternoon, to be the summit and meaning of eternity? And so I was supposedly quite vital, unusually so, it seemed, even for this world. I was a palimpsest, with texts concealed beneath texts. On this world what had been written on me on my world, to obscure the underlying truths, had been sc.r.a.ped off, the dross sc.r.a.ped away to reveal the suspected, now-revealed, infinitely more precious message beneath.

How liberating it was for me to come to this world, where I might, at last, be myself, as I truly was!

To be sure, vitality is expected in a slave. In markets, we may even be tested for it. It is not only, you see, that a profound s.e.xuality, an acute s.e.xual sensitivity, an uncontrollable responsiveness, is permitted in a slave, it is required in her. It is one of the things for which we are purchased. We are slaves, you see.

We are not free women.

But of what use would my vitality, if such it might be, be in this place? I wanted to feel the arms of a guard upon me. I wanted to lie, moaning, in his arms. But instead I lay cold, and bound, in a net.

I twisted, and sobbed.

"There is someone there!" announced a voice, a woman's voice, from somewhere to my right, in the darkness.

"Yes," I said, startled.

I heard the creak of a chain, to the right.

"I knew something descended into the net," she said. "I thought I heard it."

I turned, as I could, in the net, toward the voice. "It was I," I said.

"You are in the power of these brutes as well?" she asked.

I was silent. I did not know who was there in the darkness. I heard the chain creak once more.

"You are in the power of these creatures as well?" she asked.

"Totally," I said.

"Are you chained?" she asked.

"I am bound," I said, "hand and foot."

"They bind us well, do they not?" she inquired.

"Yes!" I said.

"I am imprisoned," she informed me.

That intelligence seemed strange to me, as it seemed her voice was quite near me. To be sure, I could not see in the darkness.

"I am soon to be free!" she a.s.sured me.

I was not certain as to how to interpret this remark, issuing from the darkness, from this unknown source.

"How I despise these fools!" said the voice. To such a remark, of course, I did not dare reply.

"How poorly they treat us!" she cried.

I did not dare respond.

"Have they treated you well?" she asked.

"I have been whipped," I said. Indeed, I had been twice whipped.

"Poor thing!" she cried. "You must be of low caste!"

I was silent.

"They would not dare to whip me!" she announced.

I thought the speaker might profit from a whipping.

"You have an unusual accent," she said, suddenly.

"I am from far away," I said, evasively.

"Are you clothed?" she asked.

"Please!" I protested.

"The beasts!" she said.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"In the pits," she said. "I think somewhere beneath the keep, somewhere beneath the fortress. I truly do not know. This place is a labyrinth!"

"What ransom are they asking for you?" she asked, suddenly.

I was silent.

"It will not be as high as mine," she informed me.

"You are from far off?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Do you know in what city we are?" I asked.

"No," she said. "I was brought here, my features wrapped in my own veils!"

I decided I should not dare to speak further to her, even in what seemed to be our common predicament.

"How were you brought here?" she asked.

"My features, too, were obscured," I said. Need she know that I had, in much of my journey, worn a slave hood? I was becoming very uneasy with our conversation.

"None of these beasts have so much as glimpsed my features," she averred.

I could make no such claim, of course. I was, and had been, public to men; I belonged to them; I was subject to their regard and whim, I had been exposed as frequently and routinely, and, I suppose, as naturally and as appropriately, as any other sort of domestic animal. Indeed, but a bit before, I had performed for men, before the dais, providing them not only with a glimpse of my beauty, if beauty it was, but with an authentic, detailed, lengthy, provocative display of it an exhibition designed to leave little to conjecture concerning at least the externals of whatever interest I might hold for them. It seemed I could have done little more unless I had stood chained on a sales platform, to be literally handled as the curved, tender little beast I was, or had perhaps been conducted behind the purple screen to be tested in a more intimate fashion. In such exhibitions, in such performances, movement, grace and rhythm are, of course, quite important. It is the moving, living, breathing, vital woman which is of interest. One must not only look beautiful, you see, but one must be beautiful.

"Such, I gather," said she, "has not been the case with you."

"No," I said.

"Men have looked, then, upon your face?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"They would not dare to look upon mine!" she said.

I was silent.

"And have they seen more than that?" she asked.

"I am naked," I admitted.

"Poor thing!" she cried. But I think she was pleased to have been concretely apprised of this intelligence.

"You, too, are at their mercy!" I exclaimed, trying to sit up in the net.

"No, no!" she cried. I heard a rattling, as though of bars. I thought she must, then, be clutching them, and shaking them. She seemed frustrated. I heard the bars shaken again. I heard, too, the creaking of the chain from the right. Below me, too, if I was not mistaken, I heard again, a stirring, in the water.

Something below, perhaps, had surfaced, or approached, hearing the sounds above.

"I am of high caste!" she cried. "I should not be here thusly, so held, so humiliated!"