"Is he tame?" asked a woman in the fourth tier.

"He is perfectly tame," said the Lady Tima. "I have used him even on my own couch."

I put down my head. I well remembered my humiliation on the couch of my mistress, the Lady Tima.

"Do you guarantee his tameness?" asked one of the women.

"We do," said the Lady Tima. "The House of Tima guarantees his tameness, fully."

"Prove to us that he is tame!" called a woman.

"We shall do so," smiled the Lady Tima. She turned to me. She smiled. She spoke softly. None but those on the platform might hear. "You have had your moment of sport, Jason," she said, "pretending, as is occasionally the wont of the males of Earth, to be a man, but it is now time to remember what you truly are, only a weakling of Earth, one fit to be only a woman's slave."

I looked at her, angrily.

"There are sleen in the House of Tima," she said. "Perhaps you desire to be fed to them,"

"No," I said.

She looked at me.

"No, Mistress," I said. I put my head down, frightened. Well did I recall the fearsome, curved fangs, the long, sinuous bodies, the claws, the lithe muscularity, the incredible swiftness and agility, of the sleen in the House of Andronicus, leaping upward, ferocious, eyes blazing, mouths slavering, to tear me from the rope which suspended me over their heads.

"Look into my eyes, Jason," she commanded.

I lifted my head and met her eyes. She, and those who were masters, held the power of life and death over me. They were all, and I was nothing. I was a slave.

"What are you, Jason?" she asked.

"A slave," I said.

"Do not forget it," she said.

"No, Mistress," I said.

"You may lower your eyes," she said.

"Yes, Mistress," I said. I put my head down.

"It is not necessary to hold him," she said to the two men who held me. They released me. I stood quietly on the platform. I had been well reminded that I must obey, and that I was a slave.

"Pretty Jason," said the Lady Tendite, stepping toward me. She touched the side of my face with the palm of her right hand.

I clenched my fists.

"Be warned, Jason," whispered the Lady Tima.

I opened my hands.

The Lady Tendite handed her whip to one of the attendants.

Gently, solicitously, the Lady Tendite, standing quite near to me, removed my necktie. "Is that not more comfortable, Jason?" she inquired. She then walked to the side of the platform and discarded the tie in the shallow bowl of burning wood. She then returned to me and, attentively, button by button, unbuttoned the shirt I wore, even the buttons on the sleeves. "Do not be upset, Jason," she said, sweetly. "Surely you remember me, Darlene, the little Earth-girl slave?"

"I trusted you," I said, bitterly.

"What a fool you were," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"I did not think I would be so successful in deceiving you," she said.

"Why?" I asked. "Did you fear the inadequacy of your English?"

"My English is excellent," she said.

"That is true," I said. Her English was indeed excellent. It was perhaps a bit formal and precise for a native speaker, a little too correct, perhaps, and it had been occasionally infected with certain oddities of expression and construction which had been surprising, but I had not weighed these factors heavily. I had discounted such matters in virtue of what I had conjectured were consequences of Gorean influence and a lack of practice, over years, in the language. "Why then," I asked, "did you fear you might not be able to deceive me?"

"Is it not obvious?" she asked.

"No," I said.

"Do you think that any real slave girl would even have dared to think of acting as I did?"

I said nothing.

"Do you know the penalties for such a thing?" she asked. "The little sluts know well the meaning of their collars."

"I understand," I said. I shuddered. From her few simple words I now understood more than I had before of the depth and significance of Gorean slavery.

She went behind me and removed my shirt, which she threw in the fire.

She then strode to the front of the platform. "We have a bid of a silver tarsk on this slave," she said. "Do I hear a higher bid?"

The crowd was silent.

"Come now, Ladies," said the Lady Tendite. "This is a superb silk slave. It is true he is somewhat untrained, but which of you is not capable of training a silk slave? He is from the planet Earth. He is fully tame."

But no bids were forthcoming from the crowd.

The Lady Tendite turned to me. "Remove your upper garment," she said, "that which conceals your chest."

I looked at her.

"Quickly," she snapped.

I pulled the garment, short-sleeved, of white cotton, a common T-shirt, over my head, and then held it. There is no specific Gorean word for this type of garment. The English expression for the garment was presumably unknown to the Lady Tendite.

Some of the women in the tiers had laughed, seeing my quickness in obeying the Lady Tendite.

Too, I was conscious of the women in the tiers regarding me with renewed interest, though caution. I stood very straight. I was not displeased to be regarded with interest. Too, I was not displeased to sense that certain of the women regarded me with considerable circumspection. I am large and strong. They were not certain, I conjecture, that I was fully tame. The feelings of a woman toward a man who may not be fully tame tend to be ambiguous. They are afraid of him, and yet they find him intriguing. They wonder what it would be to lie at his mercy, in his arms. What if, truly, he should not be tame? Then how would they be treated? What would be done to them? Would they not, in effect, be made his slaves, in the way of nature? But, too, I was apprehensive, for, in looking out on the tiers, I realized that one of these women could buy me, and that I would then have to obey her, and would be hers, fully, to do with as she pleased. I noted, too, that I was looked upon with a frankness, an openness of curiosity and sensual speculation, which I would not have expected from the women of Earth. I was being looked upon candidly as an erotic brute, a possible complement to their own urges and needs. Gorean women, not trained to be ashamed of their instincts, not tutored in the betrayal and suppression of their nature, tend to look upon males whom they find attractive with both honesty and pleasure. The concealment of feelings, particularly where male slaves are concerned, is a deceit not often practiced by Gorean women. Such a deceit tends not only to be rather beneath them, but, beyond this, would be almost meaningless to them. The male slave, you see, is an animal. Accordingly, he should be assessed as such.

The Lady Tendite approached me and held out her hand. I placed the T-shirt I had removed from my body in her hand and she went to the shallow bowl of burning cubes of wood and discarded it. I saw it burn.

She returned to me, speaking to the crowd. "Note," she said, "the breadth of the chest, the width of the shoulders, the narrowness of the waist, the flatness of the belly."

"One five!" called a woman. "I can use him in the stable bouts." I did not understand the reference to stable bouts. The bid, however, I gathered, was one silver tarsk, five copper tarsks.

"Stable bouts?" laughed the Lady Tendite. "Surely you jest?"

"Are you sure he is tame?" asked another woman.

"You saw with what alacrity he removed his garment at my command," said the Ladv Tendite. "You see how he stands unheld on the sales platform"

"Lower your head," whispered the Lady Tima tome.

I did so.

"Regard him," said the Lady Tendite, "a fearful slave, awaiting your command."

"One six," called another woman.

The Lady Tendite turned angrily to me. "Take off your shoes and stockings," she said. "Leave them on the platform. Then kneel."