by John Norman
"Poor Gail," said Aynur.
I looked at her, gratefully.
"You felt nothing?" asked Aynur.
"No!" I said. "My passion, such as it might be, is reserved exclusively for he who holds total rights over me!"
I hoped that Aynur would believe the myth.
Aynur walked around, behind me.
"Kneel up a little," she said. "And put the tops of your toes flat on the grass."
I must obey.
"Ah!" said Aynur.
I trembled.
"The bottoms of our feet," said Aynur, "are to be soft, and caressable. That is why we must consider the surfaces upon which we tread. That is the meaning of the lotions and creams with which they are treated."
I did not respond.
"But the bottoms of your feet have been roughened. They are cut, and bloody. You have been near the wall."
I did not speak.
"And apparently," she said, "you were too stupid to have trod softly."
She then walked around me again, so that she was, again, before me.
I had been alarmed at the sounds of voices. That was why I had hurried, foolishly, from the perimeter of sharpened stones. That is why my feet had been cut.
"You did not respond to the man who was here?" asked Aynur.
"No!" I said.
"How then do you explain the condition of your body, when you were found?" asked Aynur.
"I may have felt, a little," I whispered.
It would do little good, I feared, to attempt to deny, to an observer as astute as Aynur, what would have been obvious. There are so many signs, the dilation of the pupils, the helplessness, the sheen of sweat, the oils, the smells, the mottling of the body, the erection of the nipples, such things.
"You have felt the whip, and iron on your wrists," said Aynur.
"Yes," I said.
"Do you still claim to have felt little?" she asked.
"No," I whispered.
Women such as I, of course, and Aynur, and so many others, inside the walls, and outside of them, are the most responsive of all women. We are not permitted, for example, dignity and inhibitions. Such are incompatible with the collar. We know what is expected of us, and what we must be like. And we are trained. And we are under discipline. Too, we are, I suspect, selected with heat in mind. It is presumably one of the properties which those whose business it is to acquire us keep in mind. Such a consideration may, in many cases, make the difference with respect to whether or not we are to be acquired. Such a property is apparently important, for example, when want lists are compared with inventories.
"Do you think I cannot recognize a hot little tart when I see one?" asked Aynur.
"I do not know," I murmured.
"Do you think I have not read your papers?" she asked.
"I do not know," I said. I could not read them, of course. I did not even know what they said. There was apparently some remark on them pertinent to my heat. He whose whip I had first kissed, in the corridor long ago, he who had later treated me with such cruelty, spurning me, throwing me to others, he whom, in the long nights in the kennels, I had never forgotten, had told me that I was supposedly quite "vital." The matter had been confirmed in the pens, of course. I had wept with misery and shame for hours afterward. But the proper endorsements had been included, I had gathered, on my papers. Aynur, it seemed, could read.
"You were at the wall," said Aynur.
"Yes," I admitted.
"Although it may have been difficult for you to wholly refrain from feeling," said Aynur, "you undoubtedly did your best."
"Oh, yes, yes!" I said.
"And you remained totally inactive," said Aynur.
"As inactive as possible," I whispered.
"Then you did not, for example, kiss him?"
"Of course not!" I said.
Tima and Tana broke into laughter. I looked at them, frightened.
"You saw?" I asked.
"Yes!" said Aynur, in fury.
My heart sank.
I had not known how long they had been watching. Apparently it had been long enough. I had heard a voice. That of Aynur. And then, a moment later, she had cried out in fury. I had then, in terror, tried to pull back, but he had not permitted me to extricate myself. He had held me where I was, against him, in his arms, naked.
"Slut!" cried Aynur.
"He ordered me to kiss him!" I cried.
"And you did so reluctantly?" she screamed.
"Yes, yes!" I cried.
"Liar! Liar!" she wept.
I was terrified. I almost lost position.
"Naked, collared tart!" she cried.
Did not Aynur wear a collar, too? Did her collar not fit as well as mine? Did it not proclaim its message on her neck, as mine did on mine? Was it not well fixed there, and was she not as incapable of removing it as I was of removing mine?
"Naked collared slut!" cried Aynur.
Was there such a difference between us? Was she so loftily garbed? Was she not in her way almost as naked as I? Was there truly so much more to her attire than mine, other than the necklaces, and the jewelry, the earrings, and such, richer than mine? Was there so much, for example, to the silk she wore, the open skirt, held only at the left hip by a single, easily detached golden clasp, one which might be flicked away with a finger, to the scarlet silken vest, against which her beauty strained, tied at the front with a scarlet string, one which could be undone with a single tug?
"Naked collared lying little slut!" cried Aynur.
She chastised me as might have a woman other than we! Surely she knew my condition, and nature. I did not think it was much other than hers. I had surely sensed that Aynur was frustrated in the garden, and that she was, at least latently, highly and powerfully, and significantly and helplessly, sexed. Perhaps she had sensed the same of me, though I was smaller, and so much more vulnerable. Perhaps that was why we had not cared for one another. Perhaps that was why she hated me.
"Lying slut!" wept Aynur.
I had then been seen kissing the fellow in the garden. I had been unable to help myself. I recalled that I, conquered as such as he can do to such as I, had done so, willingly, eagerly, gratefully, helplessly, passionately, uncontrollably.
"Slut! Slut!" cried Aynur.
Did she wish that it had been she who had been caught in the garden?
"Slut! Slut!" she cried.
Would she have behaved so differently from me?
"Slut!" she wept.
I did not think she was so different from me, in what we were, but here, in the garden, in the articulated structure of this world, we were separated by a chasm of almost infinite proportions. She was first amongst us, and I was the newest and, surely, the least of the flowers.
"Slut!" she screamed, beside herself with rage.
She raised the switch and I cringed.
But the blow did not fall.
Aynur had lowered the switch.
Then she said, quietly, her voice unnaturally calm, "Bracelet her."
Tana, seizing me by the hair, threw me forward on my belly, on the grass. Then she and Tima, one on each side, crouched beside me. Tima jerked my hands behind my back, and held them there. I heard the clink of the bracelets being removed from Tana's belly cord, where they had been over the cord, near her right hip. Then, with two rather clear, definitive little snaps, tiny, but quite decisive little noises, the bracelets were locked upon me. Tima and Tana then remained where they were, one on each side of me. I lay there on my belly, on the grass, my hands pinioned behind me.
The quietness which had been in Aynur's voice, and that unnatural calm of it, had terrified me more than her rage.
"Get her on her feet," said Aynur, quietly.
I, by Tima and Tana, one on each side of me, by the upper arms, was drawn to my feet, and held there.
Aynur slipped the base loop of the switch over her left wrist. The base loop, in certain adjustments, supplies additional control and leverage to the user of the imp
lement. It also, of course, assures greater security in its retention. Too, by its means, obviously, the switch may be conveniently suspended, for example, over a hook or peg, or, say, as Aynur now had it, over a wrist, freeing the hands. Aynur bent down and picked up the silk and, neatly, carefully, very methodically, very deliberately, folded it, until it was again in the shape of a small, soft, layered rectangle, some three inches by five inches, as it had been earlier, when the stranger had placed it in my mouth.
Aynur looked at me.
I tried desperately to read her eyes.
I could not do so.
Then she thrust the silk crosswise in my mouth.
I bit down upon it.
I could still not read her eyes.
I was again gagged.
Aynur then turned about and went toward the house. "Bring her along," she said, over her shoulder.
I, biting down on the silk, terrified, tears in my eyes, my upper arms helpless in the grip of Tima and Tana, my wrists behind me, locked in bracelets, stumbling, was conducted toward the house.
8
I had stirred groggily.
For a moment I had expected to awaken in a former place, in a former dwelling, in a once familiar room, as I had so often before.
I lay on my stomach.
I would feel the sheets, and, with the tips of my fingers, beneath them, the familiar mattress.
Everything would be the same.
But it seemed that something hard was beneath me, not the mattress, but a surface less yielding, more severe.
I kept my eyes closed. There was light. It was rather painful. How foolish I was! I had forgotten to draw the shade last night.
Various were the memories, or seeming memories, which mingled in my confused, sluggish consciousness.
I did not know what was dream, and what was reality, if aught.
I had had the strangest dream.
I had dreamed I had somehow found myself on an alien world, one on which such as I had their purposes.
I must awaken.
What a strange dream it had been!
I could remember chains, and the cracking of whips, and others like myself.
I could remember kneeling in a dimly lit corridor, chained by the neck with others, manacled and shackled. I could remember my pressing my lips fervently, obediently, to the whip of a male unlike any I had ever known or had believed could exist. And there had been others, too, such as he. No dearth of such was there upon that world!
I stirred, uneasily.
And there was on that world an unfamiliar language in which such as I must develop a facility posthaste.
Oh, we strove desperately to learn that language! You may be sure of that! It was not we who held the whips.
Under such conditions, you must understand, such as we learn quickly.
The dream seemed very real, I thought, the lengthy training sessions, the kennels, and such.
Tears had formed in my eyes as I had thought of he whose whip I had, in what must be the dream, first kissed. But how cruel he had been to me, after his first kindness, his first patience! How he had rejected me, and mocked and scorned me, how I had felt his foot, or the back of his hand, how he had thrust me to the tiles, how he would order me, angrily, to another, or even hurl me impatiently, sometimes in chains, to such a one!
But how much it seemed I had learned there, in that place, in my training! And how seldom were we even clothed, save perhaps to instruct us how to bedeck ourselves in certain garments, and how provocatively, gracefully, to remove them. I had learned much about myself there, it seemed. And I had learned, too, to my dismay, and shame, what men could do to me, and what I could become in their arms. And then I began to want this. How frightful the dream! How embarrassing, how terrifying, to learn that one cannot help oneself, that one is astonishingly, helplessly vital! And how miserable and embarrassed I had been when I had learned that this information, of such intimacy and delicacy, and secrecy, had been publicly recorded on papers pertinent to me.
The light seemed bright. Even through my closed eyelids it hurt.
Had I forgotten to draw the shade?
I must awaken.
Then I remembered, too, being summoned to a room. There had been men there, of the house and not of the house. I had performed. I had been discussed. Arrangements had been made. I must drink something. I had begun to lose consciousness even as I was hooded. I had lain back, within the hood, on the floor. I was dimly aware of my limbs being placed in certain positions, and then being chained. It was almost as though it were being done to another. I remembered trembling a little, and sensing the chains, and hearing them, and realizing that it was I who wore them, and not another, and then I had lost consciousness. There had then been a nightmare, it seemed, of transitions. Once it seemed, as I determined by touch, I was lying in a low, narrow, mesh-walled space, as on a slatted bunk. There were terrible smells. There was a motion, as of a ship. There were cries and moans, as of others like myself, about me. Because of the motion and the smells I feared I might vomit in the hood. But then, again, I lost consciousness. Then later there had been a wagon, one of metal, in which I was hooded and closely chained. Sometimes it was hot. Sometimes it was cold. When it was cold I held about myself, when I was conscious, as best I could, the single blanket I had been given. Then I would lapse again into unconsciousness. I was awakened, sometimes, and unhooded, and slapped awake, or awake enough, to take drink and sustenance. Then I would again drift into sleep. Some drug perhaps, in this dream, was mixed with my food or drink. I did not know where I was. I did not know where I was going. Indeed, in one sense I did not even know who I was. I felt myself somehow bereft of identity. I knew that I was no longer what I had been. That sort of thing had been left on a former, vanished world. That sort of thing was all behind me. Who was I? What was I? What was I to be? Such things it seemed, here, on this world, were not up to me. They would be decided by others. The wagon had left smooth roads. It had seemed, irregularly, but with frequency, to ascend, jolting and rocking. Within I was much bruised. Once it had nearly tipped. Eventually it, days, perhaps weeks later, must have reached its destination, wherever that might have been. I was bound hand and foot, and then, so secured, was relieved of the wagon chains. I was wrapped closely in a blanket, which was then tied closely about me. This blanket was not the same as that which had been in the wagon. That blanket, it seemed, would be burned, and the wagon's interior scrubbed clean. There would be few, if any, traces, of my occupancy left in the wagon. I take it that even those of scent were, to the extent possible, to be eliminated. Perhaps such might have been of use to some sort of tracking animal. I did not understand the point of such precautions. It seemed for some reason that my passage here was to be as though it had not occurred. I was then removed, so bound and so enveloped, from the wagon; I was carried for a time, over a shoulder, my head to the rear, which somehow seemed, vaguely, to be the way I should be carried, however shameful or embarrassing I might find it to be; and I was then, at the end of this peregrination, placed on some sort of wooden platform. It was hard, even through the blanket. A little later I was placed in some sort of large, heavy basket, in which I was fastened down by two straps, one at my ankles and the other at my neck. The basket must have been something like a yard square. I must accordingly, bound, tied in the blanket, strapped in place, keep my legs drawn up. I was still hooded.
What a strange dream!
It seemed the basket flew!
Sometimes it seemed I heard the smiting of air, as though in the beating of giant wings. At other times I heard great birdlike cries, from above and ahead, or to one side or the other. And then I would lose consciousness again.
I decided that I must awaken, and in my own bed, on my own world.
The light seemed too bright, through my closed eyelids. I must, foolishly, have forgotten to draw the shade last night.
I was on my stomach. I pressed down with my finger tips, to feel the sheets and, beneath them, the f
amiliar mattress.
But it seemed that something hard was beneath me, not the mattress, but a surface less yielding, more severe.
I kept my eyes closed. There was light. It was rather painful. How foolish I was! I had forgotten to draw the shade last night.
But the light did not seem to be coming from the proper direction. It should be coming more from behind me, to my left, where, as I was lying, or thought myself to be lying, my window would be. But it was not. It was coming rather from before me, and my left. I must have somehow, in my sleep, twisted about. I felt disoriented.
Everything did not seem to be the same. Many things seemed different.
I then, as I became more certain, but not altogether certain, that I was awakening, or awakened, became quite afraid.
I was not yet ready to open my eyes.
I remembered one thing quite clearly from my dream. I had been banded. It had been put on me. I had worn, almost from the first, a light, gleaming, about-a-half-inch-high, close-fitting steel collar. It locked in the back.
Not opening my eyes, frightened, I moved my fingers upward, little by little, toward my throat. Then, with my finger tips, I touched my throat. It was bare!
Again I felt my throat.
No band was there.
I did not wear such a circlet. I was in no neck ring, or such device. My throat was bare. No closed curve of steel, locked, inflexible, enclasped it.
I was not collared.
It would be hard then to describe my emotions.
Should they not have been of elation, of joy, of relief? Perhaps. But instead, perhaps oddly, as I lay there, somehow half between waking and sleep, I perceived a sudden poignance, as of irreparable loss. As of isolation. As of loneliness. I felt a wave, cold and cruel, of misery, rising within me, a forlorn, agonizing cry of alienation, of anguish. It seemed that I had suddenly become meaningless, or nothing. But then, in an instant, how pleased I tried to be, as I should be, of course. I attempted, instantly, to govern my emotions, to marshal them, and break them, and align them in accordance with the dictates to which I had been subjected all my life.
