"Let us hurry to the lodge of Canka," I said. I did not know if I could retain my control.

"Please," she said, "let me adjust my collar." She then, carefully, with her small hands, aligned the beaded collar on her throat. At certain points she ran a finger around and under it, adjusting it for comfort. She then, again, aligned it, setting the central knot under her chin. "There," she said. "That is better, and more comfortable. How does it look?"

"Fine," I said.

"Good," she said. "It is important to us that our collars both look well and be comfortable."

I was driven hald wild, seeing her small hands so carful and attentive upon that encircling badge of servitude, calling attention to it. It was, of course, a slave collar.

"Let us go," I said.

"My hair," she said, "please-Master."

I watched her putting back her head and, carefully, apparently paying me no attention, arrange her long, lovely red hair. This action, of course, raised the line of her lovely breasts.

"One of the things most startling to an Earth girl, brought to Gor," she said, "is that she finds herself the object of such ardent desire."

"Perhaps," I said. To be sure she would have encountered little on Earth to prepare her for the sexuality of Gorean men.

"Another thing which they find startling, and almost unbelievably so," she said, fussing with her hair, "is how irreservedly and passionately, and sometimes mercilessly, they are used."

I nodded. Such women, to be sue, would seldom be given much choice in the matter.

"And how ruthlessly they are owned and dominated, and made to obey," she said.

I did not speak.

"But then," she said, softly, putting her head down, her hands still at her hair, her brasts still lifted, in what was almost a delicate token of submission, "that is fitting and proper, for they are only slaves."

"Yes," I said. My fists were clenched.

"How does my hair look?" she asked, bringing her hands down and lifting her head.

"Fine," I said.

She then turned and, putting her lright leg under her and lifting her left knee, she threw aside the hide blanket. She smiled at me. She ahd done this shamelessly, as a slave. The body of a slave, of course, is public, in a way that it would be unthinkable that the body of a free woman could be public.

"I think you find me attractive," she said.

"Yes," I said.

She then knelt back on her heels, facing me, but her hands were on the robes.

"Alas," she said, in mock sorrow, "how weak and vulnerable are slaves."

"Yes," I said.

"How helpless and powerless we are," she said.

"Yes!" I said, angrily. I saw that she had allure, and power.

"But perhaps we are not completely powerless," she said. She put her hands behind her head and straightened her back. She thrust out her breasts and stretched.

"Perhaps not," I said.

She then lowered her hands and looked at me. She was kneeling, facing me, then, her hands on her thighs. Her thighs were closed.

"I am more powerful," she said, "than was that little snip and chit, Millicent Aubrey-Welles, from Earth." This was who she had once been. Then she had been enslaved.

"How is that?" I asked. At the merest word from one such as the former Miss Millicent Aubry-Welles, from Pennsylvania, a free woman, a Gorean slave girl, such as Winyela,

would have to grovel, lick her feet and serve her in any way that she might desire.

"I am much more powerful than she," she said.

"How is that?" I asked.

"I am a slave girl," she said.

"You speak in riddles," I said.

"More powerful, of course," she said, "only in certain ways."

I smiled. I saw that she did now wish to be quirted fr insolence. A slave, of course, can be quirted for any reason, or for no reason.

"In what way," I asked, "could a slave girl possibly have more power than a free woman?"

She smiled. She lowered her head, demurely. "Some men," she said, "find us attractive."

"That is true," I said. How unpretentiously, and delicately, she had put this point. I could not help, in spite of myself, but agree with her. How could the capacity of a free woman to stimulate male desire even begin to compare with that of the female slave? The female slave, in her helplessness, her vulnerability and beauty, is the most exciting and desirable of all females. Even to look upon one can drive a man mad with passion.

"Even a magnet," she said, "which may be moved about, and put where one wishes, has a little power."

"Yes," I said. How exciting. I marveled, are such women. How natural it is that they should find themselves, perhaps to their horror, perhaps to their deep excitement and pleasure, so stimulartoy to male desire. Who can begin to quantify, or measure, the attractiveness of the female slave? Does she not seem to be the object designed by nature to be at the feet of men? Wars are fought to obtain them. Tributes, in part, are levied in terms of them, along with gold and Sa-Tarna grain.

"I can see," I said, "that the female slave, in her beauty, may possess, upon occasion, at least, some meager particle of power which does not appertain to the free woman."

"I think so," she said.

My response, I thought, appropriately dismissed from serious consideration the fantastic desirablitly and attractiveness of the female slave. Let them now grow arrogant. Let them continue to fear the whip.

"But how," I asked, "in what other way, oter than in possibile attractiveness and desireability, could a slave have more power than a free woman?"

"If one can do things another cannot, and if one is permitted to do things which another, in effect, could not, then, I suppose, one has, in a sense, powers which the other does not."

"I see," I said. "Powers in the sense of capacities and permissions."

"Yes," she said. "Slave girls, for example, can, and must do things and perform acts, superbly, lovingly and unquestioningly, which would be forbidden to free woman, or unthinkable for them. Indeed, some of he performances expected of slave girls, and some of the services rendered by them to their masters, are doubtless beyond even the ken of our ignorant free sisters. They probably do not even suspect their nature."

"They may suspect," I smiled. The lberties, in certain senses, permitted to slave girls doubtless constituted as additional reason why free women so hated and envied them. The free woman, in a sense, is paradoxical. She professes to despise the slave girl; she professes to loathe her and hold her in contempt; but too, obviously, she is almost insanely jealous of her. Can it be that she, too, in her secret heart, wishes to kneel before a man, naked and in his collar, totally subject to his will?

"But some of the things they probably do not even know of," she said.

"That is probably true," I said. It was true that free women tended to be somewhat naive and ignrant. Some of them, at any rate, when enslaved, seemed quite startled to discover the nature of some of the even routine performances and services that would now be expected of them.

"Too," said he girl, "we are better at certain things than free women, such as serving and pleasing men."

"That is true," I said. The docility, deference and perfection of a slave girl's service are legendary. They had better be. She is owned. Too, the intimate and fantastic pleasures they can give men are well known, at least among free men.

"Too," she said, "we are permitted to act in certain ways in which I think it would be unlikely that a free woman could, or would act."

"Oh?" I said.

"Yes," she said. She then slid to her stomach on the robes, and rolled upon them, and then lay on her back. She lifted a leg, and put her hands to it, and then lowered it, its heel, the knee bent, on the robes. She looked at me. "I could now," she said, "pose nude before you, as I might please. I might writhe here, in a girl's mute petition for attention. I could, on my back and belly, in effect, dance for you, my head never rising above the knee of a standing man. I could crawl to your feet, begging, licking and kissing."