But my friends were not here.

How strange, I thought, what I had become.

Yet, too, I knew it was what, in my heart, I had always been.

It was now growing dark.

The air, too, seemed to be getting chilly. I was glad there was a blanket behind me, in the cell.

I missed my friends. I wished they might know my freedom, and joy, but, too, of course, there were terrors here, and dangers. I shuddered, recalling the great bird in flight, the anonymous, helmeted warrior in its saddle. Such a man, I feared, might not be easy to please. Too, such as he doubtless owned whips. I was excited by the fullness and beauty of life, and I felt it more intensely here, even in this barren mountain cell, behind these bars, than I had ever felt it on my old world.

I felt wanton, and excited, and alive!

Too, in spite of my brand, my tunic, the cell, the bars, I felt free, more free than I had ever felt before.

There were women here who would doubtless know more than I, not merely about this world and its ways, but about the pleasing of men. I was only just out of the pens. And one’s learning, one’s training, I had been given to understand, is never to be regarded as finished, as complete. And men, too, are so different!

But I did not fear the other women!

I was sure I could compete with them.

In the pens I had been popular.

Let the other women be jealous of me! I had certainly encountered no little evidence of that sort of thing in my training. I did not care. Let them dislike me! I did not care! Perhaps they would not help me. Then I would not help them! Perhaps they would not tell me their secrets. Then I would not tell them mine, if I should discover any! Or we might bargain, and trade in such matters. Such things, you see, can be terribly important for women such as we. How amusing the men sometimes find us! What monsters they are!

But on this world I could not help but feel irremediably, profoundly, unutterably female.

Never on my old world had I been so conscious of my sex, and how important, and wonderful, and beautiful it was. It was so special, and glorious, and tender, and different from that of a man. For the first time in my life, on this world, I had rejoiced in being a woman. Gone now was the absurdity of the asserted irrelevance of the most basic fact about my being. Gone now were the acculturated insanities of pretenses to identity. Here I reveled in my differences from men, accepting what I was, for the first time, with joy.

I held the bars.

Oh, I did not fear to compete with the other women. I could compete for favor, and attention, and gifts, such as bit of food thrown to me where I was chained beneath a table, as we sometimes were in training, while the guards feasted, or the rough caress of a male hand, such things. I could compete! I had been popular! I did not fear the others! I thought again then of Sandra, and Jean, and Pricilla and Sally. They were pretty. They would bring high prices. What if we were in the same house? I could conceive of that. I had thought of it before. But then we would be slaves, all of us. I did not doubt again then that in such a situation, we in silk and collars, and such, we, even we, who had been friends, would quickly find ourselves pitted against one another. Before, you see, there had been no male to divide us, to come between us. Now, however, there would be a male, and one, presumably, of a sort appropriate to this world. How we would then compete! How each of us would strive to be first, the favorite! How we would fight for his attention, for his touch, for the opportunity to be chained at the foot of his couch! How jealous, how resentful, we might come to be of one another! How we might even come in time to hate one another! With what trepidation and watchfulness might we wait kneeling to see who was to be braceleted that night and sent to the quarters of the rights holder. With what fury we might, from within our sheets, twisting upon our sleeping mats, look upon another mat nearby, but one which was unoccupied, one which was empty.

But I did not expect, of course, to be competing with my friends, for which I was just as pleased, because I did not doubt but what they, suitably trained, and on this world, as I was, would be formidable competitors, highly intelligent, and tantalizingly and deliciously seductive, nor, indeed, did I expect to be competing even with women of my old world. I did not think it likely that there would be any such, or many such, here. Here, on this world, it seemed likely I would have to compete, if with anyone, with women of this world.

It was now almost dark.

Yes, it would be, doubtless, with women of this world that I must compete.

I would do so well, I was sure. I was trained. I had been popular with the guards, with the exception of he whose whip I had first kissed, he whom I had most zealously, even to the point of anguish, desired to please.

I did not fear the property women of this world!

I would show them what a property girl from Earth could do!

But then I was afraid. If the other women did not like me, if they were not kind to me, if they did not help me, might my life then to some extent be endangered? And what if they lied about me, perhaps telling men I had stolen a pastry, or something? I did not wish to be whipped, or killed. Perhaps I must pretend to be their friend? That might be safer. And then, in secret, I might woo the men? Would the women suspect? Yes, for they, too, were women! Too, they could certainly tell from the reactions of the men to me. But what if I were not fully pleasing, and authentically so, to the men, even before the other women, at all times? Would I not then, again, be in danger of being whipped, or slain? Yes!

For a moment, in misery, I did not know what to do!

Then I asked myself, who held the power, ultimately? It was the men, of course. And for what purpose had I been brought to this world? What, now, was the meaning of my existence? To be pleasing, and serve men! That was now what I was for. The men then must protect me from the other women. Naturally the other women would be my rivals. That was only to be expected. My best tactic for survival then would be to ignore the women, to disregard them, in effect, and set myself to please the men as best I could, letting the results fall out as they might. I must not defeat myself. I must let myself be superb. I must strive for excellence. Too, I wanted to please the men not just for the sake of my safety, or suvival, or that I might be better treated or fed, or have a better kennel, or for the sake of my vanity, or because of a sense of power, exerted over rivals, but because, ultimately, of what we were, they men, I a woman. I wanted to be myself on this world. It was the first world I had found on which such a thing was possible.

I wondered if women such as I, from Earth, might not prove to be of interest to many men here, or, at least, to some of them. We had been brought here from a sexual desert, thirsting and starving; we had not known that men such as these existed, we had never been permitted before to be ourselves.

I held to the bars.

It was now dusk.

I then put my elbows on one of the crosspieces, my forearms outside the bars, my hands grasping them above my head, and laid my left cheek against them.

I had then, having resolved these matters in my mind, felt dreamily confident.

Yes, there would doubtless be rivals.

But I did not care! Let them beware! I did not fear them! They would be nothing to me! I was excellent, I knew. I had been popular in the pens. Too, a girl must look out for herself! Too, I had desperate, peremptory needs, which required satisfaction. Too, I wanted to be excellent, to be superb!

There was nothing to fear.

Suddenly from my right emergent out of the dusk so quick so fierce so fast so large its head perhaps two feet in width the head large triangular its eyes blazing lunging toward the bars big the thing a hideous noise bars body pressing scratching I leaping back, screaming, it biting at the bars the fangs white grinding on the metal the snout thrusting against them the snarling, it couldn’t get through, the growling the snarling I falling back twisting crying out then terrified on my hands and knees seeing it long thick like a gigantic furred thing snakelike lizardlike the thing it had sex legs its snout then pushing under the bottom crosspiece of the gate, trying to pry it up, to get at me I screaming!