“I am afraid that will not be possible,” said the man.

“I was not optimistic,” admitted Hassan.

“You are a bandit,” pointed out the figure on the dais.

“Doubtless each of us has our own business,” said Hassan. “Being a bandit is my business. Surely you would not hold one’s business against him.”

“No,” said the man, “but 1, too, have my business, and part of my business is to apprehend and punish bandits. You would surely not hold my business against me.”

“Of course not,” said Hassan. “That would be riot only irrational, but discourteous.” He indicated me with his head. “I have been traveling with this fellow,” he said, “a clumsy, but well-meaning oaf, a boorish date merchant, Hakim of Tor, not overly bright, but good hearted. We fell together by accident.

Should you free him, your generosity and hospitality would be commended at the campfires.”

I did not care greatly for Hassan’s description. I am not boorish.

“They must find other things of which to speak at the campfires,” said the man.

He looked about himself. On the dais, with him, were several men, low tables of food, fruit, stews, tidbits of roast verr, assorted breads. He and the males were veiled. About the dais, kneeling, waiting to serve, were slave girls, some in high collars, clad in strands of slave silk. They were not veiled. Among the upper classes in the Tahari, it is scandalously erotic, generally, that a female’s mouth should not be concealed. To see a girl’s lips and teeth is a charged experience. To touch a girl’s teeth with your teeth is prelude to the seizure of her body, an act that one would engage in only with a bold, brazen mate, or with one’s shameless slave girl, with whom one can do with, to her joy, precisely as one pleases.

“I have waited long to have you at my feet,” said the man. Then he lifted his finger. Four of the girls, with a jangle of slave bells, fled to Hassan and myself. They regarded the figure on the dais, veiled, sitting cross-legged.

“Please them,” he said. We struggled. With lips, and tongue, and small fingers, the girls addressed themselves to our pleasures. The binding fiber cut into our wrists. The ropes on our neck held us in place. We could not free ourselves.

Again the veiled man lifted his finger. Other girls, with bits of food, gave us to feed, with their tiny fingers placing tidbits, delicacies, into our months.

One girl held back our head, and others, from goblets, gave us of wines, Turian wine, sweet and thick, Ta wine, from the famed Ta grapes, from the terraces of Cos, wines even, Ka-la-nas, sweets and drys, from distant Ar. Our heads swirled.

We heard music. Musicians had entered the room. “Feast,” said the man on the dais. He clapped his hands. We shook our heads, trying to clear the wines from them. We struggled. I pulled with my head away from the eager lips and hands of the slave girl who sought to hold and kiss me. “Tafa loves you, “ she whispered, kissing me. A guard’s hand held my hair, keeping my head in place. I felt the ropes burn on my neck. I closed my eyes. I felt her lips beneath my left ear, biting and kissing. “Tafa loves you. Master,” she whispered. “Let Tafa please you.” I was startled. Suddenly I realized that this was the same girl who had been one of the pair captured by Hassan in the desert, shortly before I had first made his acquaintance. She had been the proud free woman, sold at Two Scimitars, with Zina, the traitress. It was difficult now to see in this lascivious, delicious slave, who seemed born to the collar, the proud free woman whom Hassan had earlier captured, and who had been later sold at the Bakah oasis of Two Scimitars. Some Goreans maintain that all women are born to the collar, and require only to find that man strong enough to put it on them.

I tried to pull away, but was held. “Tafa loves you,” she whispered. “Let Tafa give you pleasure.” I felt the lips of another girl at my leg and waist.

The men, veiled, observed complacently.

Again the man on the dais clapped his hands. Before us now on the tiles, in the basic position of the slave dance, too, her hands lifted over her head, wrists back to back, stood a chained girl.

Hassan’s eyes were hard.

It was Alyena.

“Do you remember this one?” asked the veiled man, of Hassan.

“Yes,” said Hassan.

“This is that of which,” said the man, “I spoke earlier. This is that in which I was once interested. This is that which you once took from me. This is the trifle, the bauble. I have now recovered it.”

Alyena trembled under the eyes of Hassan. She wore graceful, golden chains.

“It was recovered,” he said, “in the vicinity of Red Rock.”

There were tears in Alyena’s eyes. She stood in the position of the slave dance, a girl waiting to be commanded to please men.

“She was with several men,” said the man on the dais. “They fought well, with skill and savagery, and broke through to the desert beyond Red Rock.”

How was it then, I wondered, that lovely Alyena stood here, on these tiles, slave? “Then, most peculiarly,” said the man, “when apparently safe, escaped with her escort, she, suddenly, turned her kaiila about, returning, fleeing back to Red Rock.”

The oasis, or much of it, I knew, would have been in flames at that time.

“She was, of course, almost immediately captured,” said the man.

“She was crying the name ‘Hasan’.”

I could see that this did not please Hassan at all. His will had been disobeyed.

Further, I recalled that the girl had, in Red Rock, under stress, cried his name, speaking it, though she was only a girl in bondage.

“I love you, master,” cried the girl. “I wanted to be with you! At your side!”

“You are a runaway slave girl,” he said.

She wept, but did not break the position of the slave dance. “Too,” said he, “at the oasis you cried my name.” These were serious offenses.

“Forgive me, Master,” she cried. “I love you!” She had risked her life to return to Hassan. She loved him. Yet a slave girl owes her master absolute obedience.

She had violated his will in two particulars. I did not think it would go easily with her. Love on Gor does not purchase a girl lenience; it does not mitigate her bondage, nor compromise her servitude, but rather renders it the more complete, the more helpless and abject.

“Master,” wept the girl.

What a beautiful piece of slave flesh Alyena was, so vulnerable, so feminine, but how could she have been otherwise when owned by Gorean men? The man on the dais languidly lifted his finger. The musicians readied themselves. Alyena looked upon Hassan, agonized.

“What shall I do, Master?” she begged. She wore a golden metal dancing collar about her throat, golden chains looped from her wrists, gracefully to the collar ring, then fell to her ankles; there are varieties of Tahari dancing chains; she wore the oval and collar; briefly, in readying a girl, after she has been belled and silked, and bangled, and has been made up, and touched with slave perfume, she kneels, head down in a large oval of light gleaming chain, extending her wrists before her; fastened at the sides of the top of the oval are two wrist rings, at the sides of the lower loop of the oval two ankle rings; the oval is then pulled inward and the wrist and ankle rings fastened on the slave; her throat is then locked in the dancing collar, which has, under the chin, an open snap ring: with the left hand the oval is then gathered together, so the two strands of chain lie in the palm of the left hand, whence, lifted, they are placed inside the snap ring, which is then snapped shut, and locked; the two strands of chain flow freely in the snap ring; accordingly, though the girl’s wrists and ankles are fastened at generous, though inflexible limits from one another, usually about a yard for the wrists and about eighteen inches for the ankles, much of the chain may be played through, and back through, the collar ring; this permits a skillful girl a great deal of beautiful chain work: the oval and collar is traditional in the Tahari; it enhances a girl’s beauty; it interferes little with her dance, though it imposes subtle, sensuous limits upon it; a good dancer uses these limits, exploiting them deliciously; for example, she may extend a wrist, subtly holding the chain at her waist with her other hand; the chain slides through the ring, yet short of the expected movement; the chain stops her wrist; her wrist rebels, but is helpless; it must yield; her head falls; she is a chained slave girl.