to wash away, even in the chill, moving water, the sweat, grime, and dust of the trekking. Whereas the mistresses had occasionally availed themselves of the river to cleanse themselves, we had not been allowed to do so. We had been kept filthy, and roped. Free women, for whatever reason, are commonly cruel to slaves. Men are much kinder to us. They are our natural masters. They even like us, at least as pleasure objects and slaves. We had submerged our bodies fully several times, and washed our hair as we could. It was sopped and clinging, about our shoulders. We had removed our tunics at the water’s edge, and, kneeling there, had soaked and rinsed them, twisting what water we could from the cloth. As only small pebbles and gravel were about, we could do little more. Then, laying the tunics out to dry, we had waded into the water. Several of the men had come down to the shore, to watch. There was nothing furtive, or clandestine, about this. They enjoyed looking upon us, and so looked upon us. Similarly we were neither surprised, nor shocked, at this attention. As we were slaves, our bodies might be looked upon with the same freedom as those of verr or kaiila, though we were well aware that looking upon us would be likely to provoke interests and excitements quite other than those likely to follow upon the scrutiny of those other beasts.
“See how the men look upon us,” said Tula, pleased.
“Of course,” laughed Mila. “There are collars on our necks.”
How different we are, I thought, from those precious, glorious free women, at least of the high castes, in the cities, of whom I had often heard, who might faint with mortification should a sudden breeze disarrange a veil, or attack a fellow suspected of considering an ankle, or hire public avengers to respond to an inadvertent jostling in a public place. To be sure, it is probably a matter of degrees and extent. Free women on my former world, for example, while more open with respect to their bodies than their Gorean sisters, even to the extent of commonly forgoing facial veiling, would be unlikely to consider bathing naked before men. Certainly I would not have considered such a thing. It would have been unthinkable. But now I was on Gor, and, as Mila might have noted, there was a collar on my neck. I was now a collared beast, no different from other collared beasts, and might be bought and sold as such.
I wondered if anyone could be more woman, or female, if not in her collar.
Whereas there are doubtless terrors associated with the collar, there is also a certain freedom, from our own self-imprisonments. Certainly a thousand frustrations, fears, lies, and conflicts were avoided. I had the sense that wars were done and, in losing, I had won. I had come home to myself, and could not again leave myself, even if I had wished to do so, but I did not have that wish. I was choiceless, and would have it no other way. It would have been my choice to be choiceless. How free I then was! Everything was now objective, and natural. I was in my place, and I wanted to be there, for in it I was myself, and fulfilled. I loved being a slave. It was what I was!
We have our feelings and emotions, deep and profound feelings and emotions. I wonder if a woman can even have such feelings and emotions if she is not aware of how vulnerable and helpless she is, if she is not in a collar. They may do with us as they please. We are to be done with as they please. We are collared.
How helpless we are!
But we are not without our weapons, those of our wit and beauty. And such weapons are not inconsiderable.
Perhaps that is one reason free women hate us so.
Some men were watching.
We were slaves.
I recalled a man, one seen long ago, a man whom I had seen somehow, even so long ago, on a far world, as a master. I recalled I had lain at his feet in some large structure, stripped and bound. He had later looked upon me, appraisingly, in an exposition cage in Brundisium, and had then taken his leave, abandoning me, leaving me separated from him, behind bars, a chattel, caged. He had scorned me on the dock at Shipcamp. How I hated him! And I remembered