“Yes, Master!” she exclaimed.

“I am curious,” he said, “to see what you will look like in earrings.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“See Dorna on her knees,” said a man.

“See her beg,” said another.

“I would like to see her in earrings,” said another.

“She belongs in them,” said another.

“A bared face and earrings,” laughed one, “is a far cry from a mask of silver or gold.”

“She might make an interesting slave,” speculated another, “a common slave, I mean.”

“Yes,” said another.

“I beg to be pleasing to Master,” said Dorna.

“Hear Dorna begging to be pleasing to a man,” said a man.

“Doubtless she did not foresee this when she fled Tharna,” said a man.

“No,” laughed another.

Doubtless Dorna could not have helped, on one level or another, to have been aware of the comments of the men. But if she was aware of them, she gave little, if any, indication of it. Her primary attention was clearly on he in whose power she lay totally, as a helpless slave.

“Do you think you are capable of being pleasing?” he asked.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“And you wish to be kept?”

“Yes, Master!”

“At least for a time?”

“Yes Master!” she said.

“Tonight,” said he, “I will give you an opportunity to please me.”

“Thank you, Master,” she said.

“Your performance tonight will help me decide,” he said, “as to whether or not there is any point in keeping you among by women.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“You understand?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Do you think you will do well?” he asked.

“I shall do my best to be pleasing in all ways,” she said.

“You will endeavor to prove acceptable?” he asked.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“But I require more than mere acceptability in the performances of my women,” he said.

“That is well known amongst us, Master,” she said.

“It will be a test, will it not be?” he asked.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“What level do you think you must attain to pass this test?” he inquired.

“I know that I must be superb!” she sobbed.

“And do you think you can attain such a level?” he asked.

“I will do my best, Master,” she said.

He then spoke to one of the fellows near the great chair, the same to whom he had given the keys to my collar. “Take this slave away,” he said, indicating Dorna. “Send her to me tonight, bathed and perfumed, in earrings, with but a single veil.”

“Yes, Captain,” said the man. “Slave,” said he to Dorna, indicating a location near the wall, where a flat trap had now been thrown back, revealing a stairwell. “Yes, Master,” said Dorna to the man. Then she put her head down quickly, kissed each of the feet of the man in the chair. “Thank you, Master!” she said. Then she leaped up, and hurried to the stairwell, preceding the man down. She would not dally, nor make him wait. She was a slave.

Attention was then returned to me, and, instantly, frightened, I adjusted my position, so that I knelt with perfection. Under the gaze of he in the chair I subtly, frightened, widened my knees, slightly. One feels terribly vulnerable kneeling before men in the common position. It makes it so clear that one is a slave, and, too, so clear, the sort of slave one is.

I did not know where I was. I did not know my name. I did not know why I had been purchased. I did recall that he in the chair had speculated to Dorna, before his displeasure had been incurred, that she would not be displeased with my disposition. That did not reassure me. To be sure, perhaps it meant only that I as not to be entered into his household. I was, I had learned, a property of the state in this place, whatever place it might be. Dorna was now no longer on the terrace. She would thus, not immediately, at least, learn my disposition. To be sure, sometime or another it might well come within her purview. Perhaps then, I thought, swallowing hard, she might not be displeased to learn it. I had thought of her immediately as a rival, and doubtless she had thought of me in this fashion, as well, even though I might be a new slave. Indeed, even in the pens I had looked upon the others, and doubtless they upon me, or most of them, as rivals. But I suppose this is natural enough for women, even on my world. Even those who seem most hostile to men also seem, perhaps paradoxically, to desire to be pleasing to them. Perhaps this is an implicit recognition, even in such unlikely quarters, that men are the masters. But the matter is clear on this world, at least with women such as I, and she, Dorna. Here it is obvious that we are the slaves and men the masters, and that we are to please the masters. In this fashion it is not only the case that kajriae within the same house are likely to find themselves in rivalry, but that in the culture as a whole, wherever we are, on whatever chain, fastened to whatever wall, running whatever errand, heeling whatever masters, we tend to have a sense of such things. For example, we commonly strive on the sales block to bring the highest prices. I do not think this merely because we wish to be purchased by more affluent masters, which suggests that our life may be easier, but because of the personal vanities involved. Each wishes to be the most precious, the most costly. This is perhaps not so different from my old world, except that here women do not vend themselves, and take the profit on them. How many women, I wonder, marry truly for love, and only love? Do we not consider many other matters-the finances of our potential spouse, his education, his family connections, his positions in society, the likely location of his domicile, the presumed trajectory of his career, the prestige of the match, and such? But here, as I have suggested, we do not sell ourselves, reaping our own profits. No, here we are sold by others, and it is these others who will reap the profits. It is they who make the money. It is ours, rather, to be fully pleasing, and see that we obey with perfection.

“She kneels well,” said a man, observing me.

“She is from Earth,” said another.

“Yes,” said another.

“That is a land,” said one.

“Where is it?” asked another.

“To the south,” said a fellow.

“No,” said another. “It is a world.”

“A world?”

“Yes, a different world.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes,”

“Do not be foolish,” said another.

“No,” said another. “He is right.”

“Tarns can fly there?” asked one.

“No,” said another,” it is reached in ships.”

“Slave ships?” said one.

“Perhaps among others,” said a man.

“Tarns do not care to leave the sight of land,” said another, as though reminding his peer of something.

“Of course,” said the fellow.

“If it is another world,” said a fellow, “how can ships sail there?”

“They are special ships,” he was informed. “They float on clouds, as other ships on water.”

“Oh,” said the man.

I had occasionally heard conversations of this sort in the pens, particularly among the lower guards. The men of this world, I had gathered, differed considerably among themselves in their sophistication and information. Some seemed quiet aware of the nature of my world, its civilizations, its views as to the correct relations among the sexes, and so on, and others seemed astoundingly illinformed and naive. I suspected that the man in the chair, and certainly the higher officers and guards in the pens, were quite cognizant of most of the pertinent realities of my world of origin. This world seemed one of technological paradox. I had been brought here by a technology which currently, at least in certain dimensions, exceeded that of my own world. And yet here many men, if not most, seemed unclear as to its nature, if not completely ignorant of its very existence. How astonishingly paradoxical seemed my situation! Here on this world, where men seemed so proud, so untamed, so unbroken, so free, so mighty, so hot-blooded, on this world seemingly so primitive, so splendid and barbaric, on this world of leather, and silk and iron, not of plastics and synthetic fibers, of heat and love, not tepidity and hypocrisy, of ardor and skill, not of boredom and gadgetry, on this world where men had mastered monsters and seemed ready, at a word, to adjudicate disputes with edged weapons, I knelt before a dais, naked and collared, as a barbarian slave girl. Yet I could not have been brought here except in virtue of an obviously advance technology. It was almost as though I had been somehow magically flung into the past, into a world quite different from my own, a world whose ways I must speedily learn and in which I must learn, if I would survive, to be obedient and pleasing. But there was no magic here, no enchanted rings or sorcerer’s wands. Things here were quite real, as real as the stone flagging beneath my knees, as real as the mark in my left thigh. A sophisticated technology may have brought me here but I knelt here, literally knelt, and on my throat was a steel collar. Clearly, or, at least, so it seemed, the technology was not the property of all the men of this world but, at best, of some of the. Too, it might be furnished, I supposed, by others, say, allies or confederates, not of this world itself. That, too, I supposed, was a possibility.