"Never!" I said. "What manner of man is he?" I asked.

"He is actually a gentle creature," she said, "save when aroused. To be sure, he is strict."

"You must loathe him," I said.

"No," she said.

"You must fear him," I said.

"Of course," she said.

"You seem to have some sort of special relationship to him," I said.

It was she who had carried the torch and a.s.sisted him, she who had fed me, and such.

"He sleeps me at his feet," she said. I shuddered.

"You will not compete with me for his favor?" she smiled.

"No, no, no!" I said, shuddering.

"You yielded well," she smiled.

"I could not help myself," I said. "I am a slave. Any man can make me yield!"

"Any man?" she asked.

"Yes!"

"Even one you resent or loathe?"

"Yes."

"Even one you dislike, or despise, or hate?"

"Yes!" I wept.

"And yield fully, even against your will, unreservedly, unstintingly, unable to help yourself?"

"Yes!" I sobbed. "I cannot help myself! I am helpless in their arms!

You must understand such things!"

"Yes," she said. "I understand them quite well."

A tear ran against the bar, against which was pressed my right cheek.

"You are beautifully vital," she said.

"Are you not, too, a slave?" I asked, my eyes burning with tears.

"Men must find you a very beautiful, and very valuable, property," she said. "You would undoubtedly bring a high price in the market."

"Are you not, too, a slave!" I wept.

"Yes," she said. "I, too, am a slave."

I put my head down a little. I could feel the two bars against my forehead. My hands, chained, continued to grasp the bars.

"Do you think you are the only one whose belly has screamed in the darkness for a man's touch?" she asked. "The only one that has desired to kneel? The only one that has desired to serve, and love, and with her whole being, holding back nothing? The only one that has cried out, and squirmed gratefully under the haughty, audacious touch of one who owns you?"

I looked up, regarding her, tears in my eyes.

"And we would not be other than as we are," she said.

"No," I said. "We would not be other than as we are."

"We are slaves," she whispered.

"Yes," I whispered.

"It is time now for you to rest," she said.

"I am afraid!" I whispered.

"There is much to fear when one is a slave," she said.

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

Then she had turned away.

I knelt in sirik, in the cage, grasping the bars, looking after her.

The "Tarsk," the pit master, or, to use his more exact t.i.tle, the depth warden, was still at the table. His small legs were under him on the bench. His large upper body, swollen and disproportionate, boulderlike, leaned forward, over the table. He had put aside the papers, which may have been mine, and was now, by the light of a small lamp, perusing a scroll. It was doubtless late.

I sat down in the cage, my knees drawn up. The sink fitted me very well. My measurements might have been sent down from above, earlier. I looked about. I was well exposed to view, on four sides, given the construction of the cage. To be sure, I might have been even better revealed, had it not been for the bars, which were thick and closely set. There are a great many varieties of slave cages, with respect to the number of occupants for which they are designed, and, within such parameters, with respect to shape, size, and materials. I was in a fairly standard, common-model, singlegirl cage, one involving a design compromise between display and security, security not from the point of view of containing the occupant, which a lighter cage would be fully effective in doing, but security against being broken into by thieves. At one end of the spectrum one has cages which are designed primarily for display, cages within which the woman is held as helplessly as a kitten but which are not thought to afford adequate resistance to men equipped with suitable tools. Cages of this sort are usually used temporarily, as during daylight hours in enclosed courts, and such, when slavers' men are about. At the other end of the spectrum are heavy cages in which the bars may be two inches in diameter and s.p.a.ced but an inch or so apart, in which the occupant can be barely discerned. Cages of the sort in which I was currently kept are sometimes spoken of as "tantalizers,"

for a great deal of the woman is displayed, surely enough to arouse interest, but, because of the bars, perhaps not enough to make a satisfactory determination. The slaver then, of course, agrees to draw the occupant forth for more careful examination. In this way, a girl's charms, she now drawn forth from the cage and displayed, are a.s.sured their due consideration. It is easy to insufficiently attend to, or even neglect, or dismiss, these charms when she is merely one of a number of others, chained, say, in a sales barn or on a cement shelf in an open market. But let the buyer now, his interest aroused, his attention focused, examine the occupant.

What now of her visage, and hair, of the delicacy of her throat, the slightness of her wrists, the trimness of her ankles, the smallness of her hands and feet, and her slave curves? And thus might an excellent buy, perhaps one even fit to be a love slave, be brought to his attention, a buy which, otherwise, might have pa.s.sed tragically unnoticed. To be sure, he might only be buying for investment purposes, or perhaps he merely wishes to pick up a gift for a friend.

There are also, of course, a large number of other incarceratory devices, such as slave chests, or boxes, and slave sacks.

These, of course, are not designed to display the slave, but are intended for other purposes, in particular, punishment or transportation. The sort of cage in which I was held is also suitable, incidentally, for transportation. There was no need, of course, that I be chained in the cage.

That was only, I supposed, to help me keep in mind that I was a slave.

I had no blanket. The others had blankets. I hoped I might be given one later. I was a new girl. There were three women in the kennels, the brunette and the two blondes, and, at the wall, there were five women, each chained there by the neck and left ankle. Two of the kenneled women were chained, the brunette and one of the blondes. I hoped that I might, in time, be adjudged not only worthy of a blanket, but even of a kennel, for there were five such, and two were empty. I did not expect to be given such luxuries now. I was a new girl. I was not certain that I wanted to be chained at the wall for I feared the other women there. I was a barbarian, and my ears were pierced.

I lay down in the cage, curling up.

I saw the slave who had borne the torch, and who had locked me in sirik, putting out the two wall lamps. This left only the tiny lamp on the table, recently lit, where the monster read. I could see the glint of the lamplight on the bars of the kennels, and on some chains hanging on the wall. On the wall, too, I saw, briefly, for I quickly looked away, hanging on its peg, the whip.

How placid it seemed, how quiet now. Yet its very sight filled me with fear. I was subject to it.

The brunette removed furs from a chest and spread them near the table.

From the same chest she removed a coil of chain, and put it carefully, presumably not to disturb the monster, by a ring, toward the foot of the furs. She then lay down upon the furs, toward their bottom.

High status had she amongst us, certainly! She was the only one amongst us, for example-of me, and the women in the kennels, and those at the wall-who had clothing.

And she was at the foot of his furs, not that I envied her that privilege! It was not as though he were one of those powerful, handsome brutes, as many I had seen here, before whom a slave might faint with weakness and desire.

He moved the scroll a little, rolling shut what he had read, unrolling, opening, a new vista of ideas.

The slave at the foot of his furs, I thought, might be asleep.

I rose to my hands and knees in the cage. The chain from my collar dangled to my wrists, and went thence to my ankles. There were so many things I wanted to know. I did not know under what city I might be, I did not even know the name of the world on which I found myself.

I did not even know my own name. I wanted to call out to the brute at the table, But I did not dare to do so.

Then I lay down again.

I glanced toward the wall. One of the women there, sneeringly, with her blanket about her, formed words toward me. I could dimly make them out in the tiny light.

"Pierced-ear girl!" she had said. I looked away. I knew I might have to fear her, or the others. They might not only treat me badly, as I might expect, being a barbarian, a new girl, and such. But they might trick me in such ways that I might be beaten.

I moved a little in the cage. There was a tiny clink of chain.

I saw the beast put down the scroll and push the lamp a little to one side. He did not extinguish it. He turned about on the bench, and sat there, for a time, regarding the brunette.

The light, as he had placed it, fell softly upon her. I think she was asleep. He then slid from the bench and, bent over, the great body on those tiny legs, went to the ring and chain. He attached the chain to the ring, with a click. The brunette stirred in her sleep.

He then took her left ankle in his hand and she stirred again, and uttered a tiny moan, and a little, inarticulate cry, still asleep. But then, with its clear, firm, definite click, the ankle ring was upon her, fastening her to the ring. I do not think she awakened during this. But, I suspect, too, in some way, on some level, she was aware that she was chained. Is not even a free woman aware of such a thing, on some level, when, as she sleeps, she is chained to her own bed? Does this enter into her dream? Does she dream it so, fearfully? Surely its very possibility is to be rejected from consciousness with all the force of rationality! Surely it was only a dream! How amusing! But she awakens and finds herself chained. As the woman was sleeping the chain was first set to the ring and thence to her body, that the tether will be in place as soon as the restraint snaps about her ankle. Had she been awake, the procedure would presumably have been reversed. When the woman is awake the usual procedure is to put the first bond on her body, so that she will know it on her, that she is bound or shackled, and then to attach it, she now aware that she is subject to your will in this matter, to whatever one pleases.

The brute then returned to his reading, putting the lamp where it had been before, as though nothing had happened.

But the brunette was now chained!

I lay on my back in the sink. I could feel the chain from my collar, running over my body, to the wrists.

Then it continued, over my belly, and against the interior of my right thigh, until it flowed to my ankles. I moaned and turned to my side.

I tried to come to grips with my chains, and the bars, and my reality.

How could I begin to understand what had been done with me? How could I begin to understand what I had become, what I now was? How could I begin to cope with this turn in my life? I lay on the small, square iron floor of a confinement.

Here was a becaged slave. Could she be I? Here was a slave, behind bars, in this tiny prison, naked and chained.

Surely she could not be I!

She wore a slave collar, and was branded. Surely she could not be I!

But it was I!

I sobbed, afraid. I must do as I was told. I must obey. I must fear the whip.

Then, trembling, frightened, I recalled the use to which the monster had put me.

Oh, he had well had his will with me!

I recalled the feelings, uneasily. Even now they made me squirm.

My ears were pierced.

I reddened in the darkness, heated and sweating. How I had yielded to him, as such a slave!

He had made me his!

I had been conquered and enraptured, destroyed and renewed, rent in fragments and made whole, freed and enslaved, broken and created.

And in the end, overwhelmed, struggling to comprehend, I had found myself more a slave than ever. The strongest chains, you see, are not those of iron, nor the strongest bonds those of steel. How frail are such things compared to the chains of desire, the bonds of need! Even now, as fulfilled as I had been, I could sense a growing restlessness in my body. To be sure, it can be dangerous to be too importunate. One can be whipped for it. But what men can do to a woman, had surely, in me, been at least begun. How natural it is, once one understands these things, to fall to one's knees, begging plaintively.

I knew myself, as I lay there, to be wholly a slave. It was what I should be, and was.

How fortunate I was to have been made what I was!

How few women have been made what they are!

I had been named, but did not know my name.

In time the beast, the monster, closed the scroll, tying it shut with a string.

He lowered the lamp a little, but left it on the table. There was only a little light now in the chamber. His shadow seemed wild, deformed, exaggerated, on the walls.

He glanced once toward me, but I pretended to be asleep. The other slaves, I think, were asleep. I saw him crouch near the brunette and then he took her by the upper arms, and pulled her to a sitting position.

She made a little cry, half in her sleep. There was a rustle of chain. I saw her arms raise as her tunic was drawn up, over her head, and then discarded. He then pulled her by the upper arms, the chain leaving its coil by the ring, toward the center of the furs. Then her arms were about him, to my horror. But she was a slave. She must obey! I heard him grunt, in satisfaction. She uttered a tiny cry. I did not know if she were fully awake or not. But then I saw her, to my dismay, press her lips to that monstrous visage. Had she been commanded to do so? I did not know. I had heard no command. Once, in training, I had had to lavish loving kisses on a discarded sandal. To be sure, it had been appropriate to do so, and I had been pleased to do it, for it had been a man's sandal. Too, I would have begged to have done it, even at that stage of my training, and would have done it gratefully, had it been the sandal of he whose whip I had first kissed, but, alas, it had not been. I could see the two of them, together, in the dimness, in the flickering glow of the tiny lamp. She was held tightly in his arms. Escape would have been impossible for her, even had she not been chained. But, too, it seemed she pressed her beauty, even eagerly, against that grotesque body. Her curves were superb, even for those of a slave. I did not doubt her value in a market. She had been seized in her sleep, and drawn to him. He had wished her. Nothing more need be said. We are at the convenience of the master, fully, wherever, however, and whenever he may please.

I lay very quietly in the cage. I did not want to stir, and move the chain.

I could hear them together, some feet away, on the furs. They made tiny sounds. I sometimes heard the movement of the chain.

It was she, it seemed, who was slept at his feet, but, as the whim might seize him, I was sure he might have availed himself of any of the women in this place, state slaves, but here, in this place, as his own slaves. He might have drawn forth one of the blondes from her kennel, he might have utilized one of the women at the wall, perhaps she who had sneered at me, she as lowly, and as much at his mercy, as any other, or, indeed, he might have opened my cage and drawn me forth, as well, the new girl, the barbarian, to use me as he saw fit, perhaps on a blanket, perhaps on the stone floor itself.

In time he put her from him and she found her tunic and put it on, pulling it down, over her head. She then crept to the foot of the furs and lay there.

I saw her reach up, as though to touch his foot, but then she drew her hand back.