"Perhaps this one?" asked the merchant.

"I am trying to locate the whereabouts of a trader, one called Grunt," I said.

The blond-haired girl, nude, kneeling, shrank back against the cement wall. Hersmall wrists were bound tightly behind her, to an iron ring fastened in thewall.

"She is not without her attractions," said the merchant.

"Do you know where this fellow, Grunt, may be found?" I asked.

Another girl, also blond, a long chain on her neck, also fastened to a ring inthe wall, had crept to my feet. She then lowered herself to her belly before me.

She held my right ankle in her small hands and began to lick and kiss softly atmy feet. I felt her mouth and small, warm tongue between the straps on mysandals. "Please buy me, Master," she whispered. I will serve you helplessly andwell." The difference between slave girls are interesting. The first girl was afresh capture, clearly. She had not yet even been branded. The other girl,clearly, had already known the touch of a master.

"I think he has ventured north, along the perimeter," said the merchant.

"Buy me, I beg you, Master!" whispered, the girl at my feet.

I looked to the girl kneeling at the wall. Swiftly she put down her head,reddening.

"That one," said the man, indicating the girl at the wall, "was, formerly free.

She was taken only five days ago. Not yet, as you note, is her thigh evenmarked."

"Why not?" I asked. Usually a girl is marked within hours of her capture. It isusually felt that, after her capture, there is little point in permitting anypossibility that she might be confused with a free woman.

"I want her deeply and cleanly branded," he said. "An iron master travels amongseveral of the smaller border towns. He is good at his business and has anassortment of irons, ranging from lovely and delicate to rude and brutal."

I nodded. It was not unusual for the border towns, along the eastern edge of theThentis mountains, to be served by itinerant tradesmen and artisans. There wasoften too little work for them to thrive in a given town but an ample employmentfor their services and goods in a string of such towns. Such tradesmen andartisans commonly included some five to ten towns in their territory.

"Do not fret, little beauty," said the man to the girl. "You will soon beproperly marked."

The girl lifted her head, and looked at me.

"You see," said the man, "she is already curious as to the touch of a man."

I see," I said.

"What sort of brand would you like, little beauty?" asked the man. "Have nofear. Whatever brand you wear, I guarantee, will be unmistakable and clear."

She looked up at him. With the back of his hand he lashed her head to the side.

She then looked up at him, again, frightened. Blood was at her lip. "Whateverbrand you wish for me, Master," she said.

"Excellent," said the man. He turned to me. "That is her first, full, verbalslave response. She has had, of course, other sorts of slave responses andbehaviors before this, such things as squirmings, strugglings, cringings, painand fear, and behavioral presentations and pleadings, making herself pretty andholding herself in certain ways, presenting herself as a helpless, desirablefemale, trying to provoke the interest of attractive men."

The girl looked at him with horror, but I saw, in her eyes, that what he hadsaid was true. Even unbranded, she was already becoming a slave.

"Please, Master. Please, Master," begged the girl at my feet.

"What sort of brand would you like, my dear?" asked the man of the girl at thewall. "Have no fear. I am now permitting you to express a preference. I shallthen, as it pleases me, accept your preference, or reject it."

Her lip, now swollen, trembled.

"Would you like a lovely and feminine brand," he asked, "or a rude and brutalbrand, one fit for a pot girl or a tendress of kaiila?"

"I am a woman, Master," she said. "I am feminine."

I was pleased to hear this simple confession from the girl, this straightforward, uncompromising admission of the reality of her sex. How few ofthe women of my old world, I thought, could bring themselves, even to theirlovers, to make this same, simple admission. What a world of difference it mightmake to their relationships, I speculated. Yet this admission, nonverbally, wassurely made, and even poignantly and desperately, by many women of my old world,despite the injunctions and conditionings against honesty in such mattersenjoined by an antibiological, politicized society. I hoped that upon occasion,at least, these admissions, these declarations, these cries for recognition andfulfillment, whether verbal or nonverbal, might in his kindness, be heeded by amale.

It is an interesting question, the relation between natural values andconditioned values. To be sure, the human infant, in many respects, seems to belittle more than a tabula rasa, a blank tablet, on which a society, whethersensible or perverted, may inscribe its values. Yet the infant is also ananimal, with its nature and genetic codings, with its heritage of eons of lifeand evolution, tracing itself back to the combinations of molecules and thebirths of stars. Thus can be erected conflicts between nature and artifice,whether the artifices be devised or blind. These conflicts, in turn, producetheir grotesque syndromes of anxiety, guilt and frustration, with theirattendant deleterious consequences for happiness and life. A man may be taughtto prize his own castration but somewhere, sometime, in the individual or in themaddened collectivity, nature must strike back. The answer of the fool is theanswer he has been taught to give, the answer he must continue to defend andbeyond which he cannot see, an answer historically deriving from an ethosfounded on the macabre superstitions and frustrated perversions of lunatics, ananswer now co-opted to serve the interests of new, grotesque minorities who,repudiating the only rationale that gave it plausibility, pervert it to theirown ends. The sludge of Puritanism, with its latent social power, bequeathedfrom one generation to the next, can serve unaccustomed masters. The onlypractical answer to these dilemmas is not continued suppression and censorship,but a society, a world, in which nature is freed to thrive. It is not a healthyworld in which civilization is nature's prison. Nature and civilization are notincompatible. A choice need not be made between them. For a rational animal eachcan be the complement and enhancement of the other. For too long has the worldbeen under the domination of the grotesque and insidious. One fears mostly theymay begin to believe their own lies. They think they herd sheep. It is possible,unbeknownst to themselves, they walk with wolves and lions.

The merchant regarded the girl at the wall. Under his gaze she straightenedherself. "Yes," he said. "I see that you are feminine. Accordingly, you will beappropriately branded."

"Thank you, Master," she said.

"It will be the common Kajira mark," he said, "indicating that you arebeautiful, but only another slave girl."

"Thank you, Master," she said. I thought the cursive Kef, sometimes referred toas the staff and fronds, beauty subject to discipline, would look well upon herthigh.

"I am already branded, Master," said the girl at my feet. She looked up at me.

It was true. She wore the Kef high on her left thigh, just under the hip. Thisis the most common brand site for a Gorean slave girl.

"She bellies to you," said the man. "She likes you."

"Perhaps you have warned her that if she does not belly to the first man in themarket she is to be whipped," I smiled.

"No" chuckled the man, "but it is true that I have denied her the touch of a manfor two days." The sexual relief of a slave girl, like her clothing and herfood, is also something under the total command of the master.