"Two!" called a fellow from behind the rail, raising his hand. "Two and fifty!" "Two and fifty!" called the auctioneer, pleased. "Two and fifty! Do I hear more?"

The house was quiet.

I looked down. The fellow who had just made the bid, whatever was its amount, was the large, gross, corpulent fellow, he who was so ugly, so frightening. "Shall I close my hand?" asked the auctioneer. His hand was open, held out to the side.

I looked down at the man.

I twisted in the manacles. I could not free myself. I was a slave!

I looked down at him.

I would wear a collar. I was branded.

I looked down at him.

I knew that in time my body would regain its sensitivity levels, that inexorably its awareness, and helplessness, would return. It would be inevitable, like the rising of water in a well. I could do nothing about it.

I looked down at him.

He looked up at me, and grinned.

"The barbarian is yours!" said the auctioneer, closing his hand.

I heard a movement of chain above me and I was then, by the manacles and chain, over the hook on the short chain, drawn across the block and, suspended, lowered to the other side. Another girl, then, would be brought to the surface on the block. In a moment, my knees giving way, I was on another platform, much like the one on the other side of the block. Here, however, the low wooden wall was to my left and front. The manacles were removed from me, and I was thrust toward another gate, and shoot. In a moment I was again crawling on the wood. I strove to maintain consciousness. I was glad, now, we were to crawl. I do not think I could have walked. I heard the auctioneer behind me, calling for a bid on a new girl. It would be she who had come to the gate behind me. I recalled seeing her face behind the slats of the gate. I did not know her. I passed a man with a pointed stick. He did not hurt me. I could not throw up. I had not been fed enough. I could not soil myself, or the wood. They had prevented that. too, the greatest danger of those things is during the early moments, or the final moments, of a sale. I moved down the shoot. My lot number was still on my left breast. I wondered if I would be picked up tonight. I supposed not, as it was late. I came to the end of the shoot. There was an opened tarsk cage there. I crawled into it. I was the first one in this particular cage. I crawled to the end of it. There would probably be five girls in this cage before it was locked. In other cages, which had been removed, I supposed, from the shoot" s exit, I could see other girls. I saw Clarissa and Gloria in the cage to my right. They had preceded me in the coffle. They looked frightened. I supposed I did, too. We had been sold. Gloria had her fingers hooked in the heavy mesh of the cage side. Ah, Teibar, I thought, you would have your vengeance on your "modern woman" now, indeed! She had been sold like a tarsk, in a sales barn! Too, you would doubtless much approve of the master in whose hands she had now come! Did they think, I wondered angrily, that I existed only to give pleasure to men? But then I thought, wryly, ruefully, that that was exactly for what Teibar" s "modern woman" now existed. That was now the whole purpose of her existence, that, and only that. it was that for which she must now live, only that. I considered my fate. Teibar had known it was to be mine. Indeed, he had chosen me for it. How amused he must be, then, from time to time, I thought, if he ever saw fit, perhaps in an idle moment, when freed of more pressing concerns, to recollect me. To what a delicious and amusingly appropriate fate he had consigned me! But no longer, now, really, was I a "modern woman." I was now only a vested slave girl. I thought of my master, and trembled. I put my fingers in the mesh of the cage, naked, the number on my breast. I pulled my legs up. Then I lost consciousness.

My head was down, my hair over his feet. I was naked, frightened. I had been summoned into his presence, and had performed obeisance at the end of the long carpet, leading to the dais. I had then, when permitted, approached the dais, head down, on all fours. I had climbed, on all fours, up the broad, carpeted steps of the dais, and now lay, on my belly, half on its surface, the lower part of my body, my right knee flexed, across the final two steps before its height.

"You like and kiss well," he said.

"Thank you, Master," I said.

"Like the other females of Earth," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said. I gathered I was not the first Earth female who had come this way.

"You may continue," he said.

"Thank you, Master," I said.

"It is not unpleasant," he said.

"A slave is grateful if her master is not displeased with her," I said. "You are very pretty," he said.

"Thank you, Master," I said.

"You wear a collar," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"Whose collar is it?" he asked.

"Yours, Master," I said.

"And whose is that?" he asked.

"The collar of my master, Hendow, of Brundisium, master of the tavern of Hendow, on Dock Street, in Brundisium," I said.

There was a slave whip across his knees.

His feet and ankles were large, and the sandals had heavy straps on them. His calves and thighs, too, were sturdy and powerful. His forearms and arms, too, were frighteningly thick, and sturdy, like trunks of small trees. They were inches greater in dimension than my own small limbs. He was of broad girth. His shoulders, too, were broad, like the beams of a house. I could not begin to conjecture the strength of such a man. He could have handled me like a doll. I felt helpless. It was like a flower before a mace of iron.

I was terrified. He was my maser. I was eager to please him.

His hand, reaching down, prevented me from licking higher than midway upon his calves.

"You already know something of what it is to be a slave, don" t you?" he asked. "Yes, Master," I said.

"Desist," he said.

I desisted in my ministrations.

"You are a virgin, aren" t you?" he asked.

"Yes, Master," I said. He knew that, of course. It had been in my sales information. Too, it had been checked by his man the morning following my sale, before I had been prepared for shipment here.

"Would you risk your virginity here, in this place, at this time?" he asked. "My virginity," I said, "belongs to my master. He may do what he wishes with it."

"I have plans for it," he said.

I was silent. It would be as he willed. He was Master.

"How do your lessons proceed?" he asked.

"I think well, Master," I said. It seemed to me in my best interests to be conservative in my estimations. Doubtless he had better information at his disposal that I could give him, from his dancing slaves, and his whip master. "You are a dancer," he said, "and have in you the makings of a superb pleasure slave."

"Thank you, Master," I said.

"It is interesting that you are from Earth," he said. "One might have thought that you were Gorean."

"I am a woman," I whispered.

"Yes," he said. "That is probably the important thing. In the end it is probably all pretty much the same. There are men, and there are women."

"Yes, Master," I said.

"Did you know that many times Earth women turn out to be superb pleasure slaves?" he asked.

"We are women," I whispered, shrugging. I saw no reason why we, properly controlled and disciplined, should not be as perfect for a man as a Gorean woman. Indeed, considering the social and political deserts in which we were sexually starved, it would not have surprised me in the least, if we, once it became clear to us, to our joy, that we now had no culturally prescribed alternatives to being women, that we were now no longer subjected to social pressures to be something else, our womanhood being denied, or demeaned and despised, to coming home to our sex, and nature, proved to be every bit as good, if not in some ways better, than our Gorean sisters, or at least some of them, unaware of such deprivations. But in the end, I suppose, it all depends on the individual female. In the end, we were all women.