“If you think this is feminine,” she laughed, “you should see some of the diaphanous silks in the wardrobe.” She indicated a wardrobe against one wall. “Would you like me to silk myself in such?” she asked.
“No!” said Brenner. “Of course not.”
“You must understand,” she said, “that we are given no choice in what we wear upon the floor.”
“If you had your choice, what would you wear?” asked Brenner.
“This,” she smiled, “or such, or less.”
“It is rather brief,” he said.
“Do you object?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“Nor do I,” she said.
“You are a very strange woman,” he said.
“How so?” she asked, puzzled.
“It seems you do not mind being a woman,” he said.
“I love being a woman,” she said. “I rejoice that I am a woman. I want to be a woman. But I want to be a true woman, a real woman, a loving woman, a feminine woman, not some political travesty that would make my very nature and body an embarrassment or an irrelevance.”
“I see,” said Brenner.
“My silk disturbs you, does it not?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Brenner. Or, perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that she, in such silk, disturbed him.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“Are you wearing anything under it?” asked Brenner.
“A bold question,” she said, “coming from one from the home world.”
“Are you?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
Her response confirmed his conjectures.
“It exhibits you—like an animal,” he said.
“I am an animal,” she said, “biologically.” She looked up at him. “It is my hope that you are one also.”
He looked at her.
“I am not an animal legally, of course,” she said, “as I am a free woman, and not a slave.” Slaves are legally animals, domestic animals.
“Save, of course,” said he, “that animals are no longer exhibited.” He referred, of course, to the home world.
“Say, then,” she said, “that it exhibits me—like a woman.”
“Yes,” he said. “It exhibits you—like a woman.”
“Yes!” she laughed.
“Do you enjoy being exhibited?” he asked.
“I enjoy being beautiful,” she said.
“Do you enjoy being displayed—exhibited?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I enjoy being displayed. I enjoy being exhibited.”
“I see,” said Brenner.
“It is my hope,” she said, “that you like what you see.”
He looked at her.
“Do you?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“You may do with me what you want, you know,” she said.
“Within reason,” said Brenner.
“Yes,” she smiled.
“Reason as determined by the zard,” said Brenner.
“Where females of our species are concerned,” she said, “he is tolerant and has a very broad concept of reasonableness.”
Brenner did not doubt it.
“Do you want me to like what I see?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Because you then think that your chances of being punished might be less?” he asked.
She put down her head. “That, too,” she said.
“How did you come to be under contract?” asked Brenner.
“Surely you can guess,” she said.
“You were in debt?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“You needed money?”
“No,” she said.
“But surely you placed yourself under contract?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“I do not understand,” he said.
“It was done to me,” she said. “I was sentenced to contract.”
“Why?” he asked.
“I liked men,” she said.
“Of course you liked men,” said Brenner. “On the home world we not only like all life forms, men, women, sponges, insects, grubs, and such, but we love them. It has to do with the brotherhood of life.”
“No,” she said. “I liked men.”
“Oh,” said Brenner.
“I wanted to be submissive to men, and docile in their presence.”
“As you were earlier today?” said Brenner.
“Certainly you find me submissive and docile now,” she said.
“Yes,” said Brenner.
“I do not speak of fits of anger, or petulance,” she said, “lapses to which I am occasionally susceptible, particularly under conditions of stress, as might be anyone, and for which, if you wish, I may be severely disciplined, but of fundamental, genetically determined, attitudes, and dispositions.”
“Genetically determined?” asked Brenner.
“One supposes so,” she said, “as they were utterly at odds with the prescriptions of my cultural milieu.”
“You do not believe in the “blank tablet” or “hollow body” theory?” asked Brenner.
“No,” she said. “I believe there are genetically coded dispositions to respond, and genetically coded criteria for what will fulfill the organism, doubtless the result of natural selections over millions of years, as well as genetic codings for hair and eye color, and such things. Too, I find the alternative frightful, for that would suggest, whether it is true or false, that the human being is nothing in itself, but is empty, and meaningless, that it has no nature, and, as a consequence, that it may be turned into anything those with power