go, what would you do?”
“I was upset,” I said. “I was not thinking clearly.”
“There is no escape for such as you,” he said.
“Need I be chained so heavily?” I asked.
“Be pleased,” he said, “that you are not placed in close chains.”
“Yes, Master,” I said.
“In your chains,” he said, “which please me, as in them you are eminently locatable, be instructed, barbarian slut. Learn from them. In them ponder the futility of escape.”
“Yes, Master,” I said. I had indeed been the fool. I had learned there was no escape for the Gorean slave girl.
He made as though he would turn away.
“Master!” I cried.
“Yes?” he said.
“I know I cannot escape,” I said.
“Good,” he said.
“But I do not wish to escape,” I said.
“Oh?” he said.
“No!” I said.
“Why?” he said.
“Because I want the collar!” I said. “It belongs on me! I fought this for years, but it is true. Some women desire more than anything to be a slave, and I am one! Call me shamed and degraded, if you wish, but it is true, as true as my sex and the color of my eyes. And what is wrong with being what you are, and want to be? What have females been to males, and women to men, for thousands of generations? Have we not been fought for and led away, on ropes, haremed and herded, bargained for and exchanged, bought and sold, for millennia? Have not the attractive been chosen and the masters the choosers? Have we not been bred together, male and female, man and woman, for countless millennia as master and slave? Is this not in the hereditary coils of our very being, that we should be at our masters’ feet? Surely I am a slave! I have known this from childhood. In how many dreams and irresistible thoughts did I kneel before a master! I am a slave! It is what I am in my heart, and desire to be. I ache for the ruthless domination of a master. I belong in a man’s collar, his to do with as he wishes! Despise me, hate me, denounce me, if you wish, but I want to kneel, and be collared, and be owned! I want a master!”
“Worthless slut,” he said.
“Buy me!” I begged. “Own me! Be my master!”
“I?” he asked.
“I want you as my master!” I said.
“A slave’s wants are meaningless,” he said. “She is a slave.”
“Yes, Master,” I wept. How true that was!
“She goes where she is sold. She does not choose the chains which will weight her fair limbs.”
“No, Master,” I said.
“Any man will do for you,” he said.
“I must serve any man who owns me to the best of my ability,” I said, “I go with the coins that will buy me, but I desire you as my master, and have, from the first moment I saw you, long ago, on Earth, in the great emporium.”
“You turned about, and fled,” he said.
“I was terrified,” I said. “I did not know what to do! Never before had I been so looked upon, looked upon as a slave!”
“You looked well in the warehouse,” he said, “on the floor, naked, bound hand and foot, at my feet.”
“We are slaves,” I said. “We want masters.”
“Do you think you will escape now?” he asked.
“Do you think I can escape the iron on my neck and limbs?” I asked.
“Why did you run from Shipcamp?” he said.
“Please do not make me speak,” I said.
“Do you wish to be shoulder-and-belly lashed?” he asked, loosening the leash strap.
“No, Master!” I said.
“Speak,” he said.
“Please,” I begged.
“Must a command be repeated?” he asked.
“No, Master,” I wept. “I longed for you, so longed for you, and then you observed me in the exposition cage in Brundisium and turned away, and then, to my hope and joy, I encountered you on the dock at Shipcamp, but you scorned me. Walked away! I was nothing! I was scorned! I was miserable, distraught, devastated, furious, helpless, my hopes vanished, my world collapsed! All the seething obstinacy my world had conditioned into me erupted; all the lies and falsities of my former world reasserted themselves, proclaiming nature a mistake and her repudiation a necessity and virtue, reasserted themselves hissing and shrieking, in all the pervasive, manufactured din contrived to drown out the songs of nature, the messages of the hereditary coils, the voice of reality. So I decided to show the masters! I would run, I would escape! They would never catch me! And I would hate you, hate you with all my