"Perhaps," she said, "those who pride themselves on the denial of their manhood deceive themselves. Perhaps it is thus they protect themselves from understanding that they have, in effect, no manhood to deny."

I kept my head down. I knew that males differed much, one from the other. Some were perhaps, for most practical purposes, without manhood. It would surely be easiest for them to pretend to expertise in its denial. Some males, I supposed, incredibly enough, did not feel strong urges and powerful appetites. There was nothing in their own experiences perhaps, which prepared them to understand drives, and desires and rages which might terrify them. There was simply nothing in their own experience, perhaps, thus, which prepared them to understand the desires and rages of natures deeper and mightier than theirs. These things would be to them simply colors they could not see, sounds they could not hear, worlds which must remain to them forever beyond their ken. But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps there lies somewhere in all men a trace of the rover and hunter; perhaps no man is so weak or lost as to have forgotten completely the feel of the grasped, bloody bone in his paw, or what it was on a windy night to throw back his head and howl at a moon.

"How can one know," asked the Lady Gina, "if one has a manhood to deny, if one has never expressed it?"

"I do not know, Mistress," I said.

"Let those who have expressed their manhood," she said, "decide then whether or not they will ever again choose to deny it."

I did not speak.

I did not know what it would be, truly, to be a man. I feared manhood. Suppose that I became a man. How then, once having dared to taste meat and blood, and victory, could I again surrender so preciously recollected a birthright? I knew that men must not be men. I kept my head down.

"Slave," sneered the Lady Gina.

I knelt naked, the steel collar of the house of Andronicus on my neck, before the small, opened slave box. On its top it had two sets of rings, each set placed along an edge of the top, through which long carrying poles might be thrust. To one side, behind Grout and to the back, stood four carrying slaves, large, brawny, collared men, two of whom held the poles, like spears, butt down, on the tiles.

"Look up, Jason, Slave," said the Lady Gina. "Look about you."

I looked up, and at the Lady Gina, and the men in the room.

"How are you regarded, Handsome Slave?" asked the Lady Gina.

"With contempt, Mistress," I said.

"Yes," she said.

It was true. All in the room looked upon me with contempt, even the slaves, I, a kneeling man of Earth.

"Put down your head, Slave," she said.

"Yes, Mistress," I said. I lowered my head.

"How fit you are to be a slave," she said, scornfully.

"Yes, Mistress," I said. I did not know why she should be so angry with me. Somehow she seemed to feel that I had disappointed her.

What did she want of one who was only a slave?

Suddenly, crying out with rage, she began to strike at me with the whip. I knelt, naked, miserable, under the blows.

She struck me, again and again.

Then, after a time, she wearied. She hooked the whip again on her belt. She pulled up my head by the hair.

"Is there a man in you, Jason?" she asked.

I did not speak.

She smiled.

"Get into the slave box," she said.

I hesitated.

"Do you obey?" she asked.

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"Then obey," she said.

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

I crawled into the tiny box, on my knees. It was barely large enough to contain me. The metal door, behind me, was lifted and flung shut. I heard bolts thrust in place. I pressed against the sides of the iron container. On both the right and left, about level with my eyes, the sides of the container were perforated with fifteen small holes, arranged in three horizontal rows of five openings apiece. Each opening was about a half of an inch in diameter. I heard the two long poles being thrust through the sets of rings on the roof of the box,

"Deliver him to the market of Tima," I heard the Lady Gina say.

"It will be done, Lady Gina," said Prodicus.

I felt the box being lifted into the air, suspended by the rings and poles.

I put my head down, and wept. I was a man of Earth. I was a slave.

"Smell a slave girl, Master!" taunted the slave. The slave box in which I was being transported to the market of Tima had been placed on the stones near a trough at which the carrying slaves, now chained, were, being watered. We were at the edge of what appeared to be a square in a city. I drew back from the perforations in the iron wall of my container as the. brown rep-cloth, a thin, single layer of cloth, covering the sweetly rounded, lower belly of a female slave, thrust suddenly against the perforations. She rubbed herself insolently, closely, across the perforations. I could smell her indeed, dirt and sweat, and the hot, moist female of her.

"Smell me, too, Master," said another slave. She, too, in brown rep-cloth, rubbed against the perforations.

"Get your filthy, stinking little bodies away from there!" called Prodicus.

The, two girls laughed and, turning about, ran swiftly, lightly, away.

Both were exciting, briefly tunicked, collared. One's tunic had been torn to the waist on her left side.

They did not stay to feel the whip of Prodicus.

"Slave! Slave!" called a small child, beating on the metal of the slave box. "Slave! Slave!" called his companion. They struck repeatedly on the box. Inside the noise was painful. Then they ran to play elsewhere.

"Master!" I called to a man who was passing by. I pressed my face against the perforations. "Please, Master," I called, "in what city am I?"

He spit against the perforations. I swiftly drew back my face. I wiped my cheek.

He was kind, I now realize, not to have had me beaten.

How insolent I had been, to have dared to speak to him. Some slaves have been slain for such acts.

"Are you a pretty one?" I heard. A woman's voice had spoken. I looked up, through the perforations.

"I can see very little of him," said another voice, also that of a woman. Two free women, veiled and in robes, stood near the slave box. They had market baskets on their arms.

"Are you pretty?" I heard.

"I do not know, Mistress," I said.

She laughed.

"For what market are you bound?" asked the other woman.

"The market of Tima," I said.

They looked at one another and laughed. "I'll bet you are a pretty one!" said one of the women.

"My companion would not even let me have a pet like you," said the other.

"Are you quite tame?" asked the first woman.

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"He probably is," said the second woman. "The market of Tima is famous for her tamed slaves."

I did not tell them that I came from a world in which almost all the males were perfectly tamed, indeed, a world in which males were supposed to pride themselves on their inoffensiveness and agreeability.

"I do not trust Kajiri," said the first woman. "They can revert. Can you imagine how fearful that might be, if one turned on you?"

The second one shuddered, but I thought with pleasure. "Yes," she said.

"Consider your danger, and what they might make you do," said the first.

"Yes," said the second.

"They might treat you as though you were little better than a slave."

"Or perhaps as only a slave," said the second.

"How horrifying that would be," said the first.

"Yes," said the second, but it seemed to me that she, beneath her robes and veil, shuddered again with pleasure.