"You have the look of a woman who is well and muchly mastered," I said.

She smiled suddenly, charmingly, gratefully, in embarrassment.

"It seems you have been laundering," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"I see that the water source is not far away," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"Your tunic is damp," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said, shyly.

"And it seems you are a careless laundress," I said.

"Master?" she said.

"The tunic is quite wet," I said.

She lifted her right hand a bit from her thigh, as though she might cover herself, but quickly returned it to position.

"The wet tunic sets you off well," I commented.

"Forgive me, Master," she said, frightened.

"Perhaps your master will notice it," I said, "as you return flushed from your labors, delighted, your hair washed, your body freshened."

She put down her head, quickly.

"But doubtless it is not the calculated act of a scheming slave girl, one cleverly aware of what she is doing," I said. "Doubtless it is a mere inadvertence, a merely accidental calling to your master's attention of your beauty, a totally unintentional, never-dreamed-of reminder of him of the promise of its delights."

She would not raise her head.

"What a clever little slut she is," said Marcus.

"But she did not plan on meeting two strange fellows on the road," I said. "Did you, slave?" I asked.

"No, Master!" she said.

"Do you fear our armbands?" I asked.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"Do not do so," I said.

"Thank you, Master," she whispered. Some apprehension on her part was not irrational. Those of Cos, and in the pay of Cos, could do much as they pleased in Ar and its environs, and particularly in the case of slaves. Who would have the courage, or foolishness, to gainsay them the use of such an object, to challenge the employments to which they might put such a mere fair article of property? Too, she was barefoot and slave clad. And in the garmenture of female slaves, even in spite of its customary scandalous brevity, nether shielding is almost never provided. In this way the girl is kept aware of her vulnerability and is immediately available to the attentions of the master. Also, out here, in the vicinity of the villa of her master, I doubted that she was in the iron belt. Also I did not detect, beneath her dampened tunic, any signs of the close-fitting apparatus, no sign of either its horizontal component, usually a bar or metal strap tightly encircling the waist, nor of its vertical component, usually hinged to the horizontal component in front and swung up, then, between the girl's legs, to the back, where the whole is usually fastened together, there, at the small of the back, with a padlock. She blushed, perhaps sensing the current purport of my scrutiny. She was lovely, and much at our mercy. Her apprehension was not irrational, as I have mentioned. It would not have been difficult to have her and then, with a few horts of binding fiber, leave her behind in the ditch, bound hand and foot, at the roadside. More alarmingly, we might have confiscated her, in the name of reparations, or such, bound her and put a rope on her neck and led her off, at my stirrup. In the last few months that sort of thing had happened to hundreds of slaves in Ar who had happened to catch the eye of one fellow or another. Too, if one tired of them, they could always be sold afterwards.

"Do you think I would object," I said, "to a slave girl's desire to please her master, to call herself to his attention, to signify to him her desire, to request his touch, to beg him for her mastering?"

"I think not, Master," she said, shyly.

"It is not the same as the wearing of the bondage knot in the hair, the offering of fruit, the serving of wine, the moaning, the prostrations, the obeisances, the gently, supplicatory licking of the feet?"

"Yes, Master!" she said.

"What is your master's name?" I asked.

"Teibar," she said, "of Ar."

"And what are you called?" I asked.

"Tuka," she said, "if it pleases master."

"I have seen you before," I said, "months ago, outside the walls, at the camp of refugees."

She looked up at me.

"You dance well, slave girl," I said.

"Thank you, Master," she said.

"You dance better than many women I have seen in taverns," I said.

"Thank you, Master," she said.

"But perhaps you, too," I said, "once so danced." I could well imagine her in such a place, in a bit of silk, belled, with bangles, pleasing men."

"Yes, Master," she said. "Once I so danced."

"And do you now so dance?" I asked.

"When my master chooses to put me forth," she said.

"Doubtless upon occasion," I said, "you dance privately for your master?"

"It is my hope that I please him," she said.

"And if you did not please him?" I asked.

"He would whip me," she said.

"He is strong?" I asked.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"You love to dance?" I asked.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"But as a slave?" I asked.

"I am what I am, Master," she said, looking up at me.

"I see," I said.

"Surely all women desire to appear before me as a slave, and to so move, and so serve, and to dance for them, to please them."

"Do you suggest that all women are slaves?" I asked.

"It is what I am," she said. "I do not presume to speak for all women."

"You have an accent," I said.

"Forgive me, Master," she said.

"Where do you come from?" I asked.

"From far away, Master," she said.

"What is your native language? I asked.

"I do not know if Master has heard of it," she said.

"What is it?" I asked.

"English," she said.

"I have heard of it," I said.

"Perhaps Master has owned girls such as I?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"From Earth?"

"Yes," I said.

"I have heard of it," said Marcus. "It is far away."

"Yes," I said.

"It is an excellent source of female slaves," he said.

"Yes," I said.

"Thank you, Masters," she said.

"What is your name on Earth?" I asked.

"Doreen," she said. "Doreen Williamson."

"Doreen," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"Is that a slave name?" I asked.

"It was the name of a slave," she smiled. "Though at that time I was not yet collared and branded."

"So you are from Earth?" I said. I had, of course, noted her vaccination mark at the camp outside Ar months before. By such tiny signs may an Earth female be recognized among other Gorean slaves."

"Yes, Master," she said.

"What are you now?" I asked.

"Only a Gorean slave girl," she said.

I regarded her. It was true.

"Master," she said, timidly, looking up at me from where she knelt by the roadside, to where I was high above her, in the saddle of the tharlarion. "Yes," I said.

"Forgive a girl who does not wish to be punished," she said, "but I suspect that Master may not be native to this world either."

"He is from the place called «Earth», too," said Marcus. Marcus, of high caste, was familiar with various tenets of the second knowledge, such things as the roundness of his world, its movement in space, and the existence of other planets. On the other hand he remained skeptical of many of these tenets as he found them offensive to common sense. He was particularly suspicious of the claim that the human species had an extraterrestrial origin, namely, that it did not originate on his own world, Gor. It was not that he denied there was a place called «Earth» but he thought it must be somewhere on Gor, perhaps east of the Voltai Range or south of the Tahari. Marcus and I had agreed not to discuss the issue. I had no ready response, incidentally, to his suggestion that the human race might have originated on Gor and then some of these folks, perhaps transported by Priest-Kings, had been settled on Earth. Indeed, although I regarded this as quite unlikely, it seemed an empirical possibility.