was sold. In the first case, she was her own merchant. In the second case, the merchant was another. Perhaps it was a prejudice of my caste, but it seemed to me that in the second case the transaction was less hypocritical, less deceitful, more open, and honest. So let her be openly put up, and openly bid upon. Surely the leader of the strangers could not be serious, if he were suggesting a straight exchange, a single, kneeling, scarlet-clad beauty for a trained sleen. On Gor beauty is cheap. It is well within the means of most.
“The sleen is on a hunt,” said Axel.
“Perhaps he is hungry,” said the leader.
“He may eat later,” said Axel. “I wish you well.”
“Remain where you are,” said the leader. He then pointed to the sleen, and gestured to one of his men, a gesture of which Axel and I took uneasy note, and then turned to the fellow, Aeson, who had come from the direction of the river.
“She has located them for us,” said Aeson. “They are only yards from the river. An altercation of sorts has apparently taken place in their camp. There are only three Panther Girls. Other than this there are only a single, shackled prisoner, a stripped female, and three kajirae, tunicked, coffled in rope.
“Who, Donna, is the prisoner?” asked the leader of his slave.
“I do not know, Master,” she said. “Please do not rid yourself of me, Master.”
“I thought,” said he, “you said there would be two kajirae with the band.”
“They must have acquired another,” she said.
I did not react to this remark, but had little doubt as to the likely identity of the unexpected kajira in the coffle.
“Here, friend,” said one of the leader’s men, returned to the group, and cast a large slab of meat, it looked like bosk meat, before Tiomines.
“No!” said Axel.
But Tiomines had snapped it up, and gorged it down. In feeding, there is little difference between a domestic and a wild sleen.
Spears pressed against Axel’s tensed body.
“Surely you do not wish your beast to go hungry,” said the leader.
Whatever marked stick we might have had to cast in this game, I feared, was no longer within our grasp.
Tiomines looked up at Axel, expectantly, ready to resume the hunt.
“Your beast is not in danger,” said the leader.
“You are hunters,” I said, “but it does not seem that you are after tabuk, tarsk, bosk, or panther.”
“Perhaps not,” said the leader.
“What then?” I asked.
“Perhaps women,” he said.
“I know something of such matters,” I said. “One hunts women where there are women, where game is plentiful, in cities, towns, even peasant villages, on traversed roads, on caravan routes, on pilgrimages to the Sardar, and such, not in the wilderness of the northern forests, not on the scattered, rocky skerries of Torvaldsland, not in the frozen expanses of Ax Glacier, not in the scalding wastes of the Tahari, far from caravan routes and oases.”
The leader smiled.
“Perhaps you search for a Ubar’s daughter, one fugitive, perhaps from Ar herself?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“I find it hard to believe that you have come this far, surely at the cost of time and coin, for a handful of Panther Girls who, as they are Panther Girls, are likely to be less appealing than your average she-tarsk.”
The kneeling slave stiffened.
“What of Donna?” he asked.
“She is beautiful,” I admitted.
The slave subsided.
“You change them,” he said. “You put them in a collar, and they learn they are women.” He then looked down at the scarlet-tunicked slave. “Are you a woman?” he asked.
“Certainly, Master,” she said, puzzled.
“Do you like being a woman?” he asked.
“At one time I dreaded it, and hated it, and loathed it, and did my best not to be a woman, but a sort of man, one who hated men, and pretended not to want to be a man, but yet wanted to be a man, but then in my deepest heart I knew I was a woman, and wanted to be a woman.”
“And now?” he asked.
“Now,” she said, “I am a woman, and want to be a woman, and am fulfilled as a woman, and rejoice in being a woman. I would not want it otherwise, even if it could be so. If it were not so, I could not be what I am, and should be, in the order of nature, the slave of a master.”
“It seems,” said he, “you are helpless in the grasp of your hereditary coils.”
“I have been given to myself,” she said.
“But it is I