“Straighten your body,” I was told. “Hold position.”
“Yes, Master,” I had said.
Then again my head was up, and back. Tears formed in my eyes. Again I could see little but clouds, and the blue sky. I was aware of the men about.
“How is she?” asked the fellow who stood back a bit, he who held the board, who was taking notes.
“Are you a new slave?” asked he who was my examiner, who had handled me as a slave may be handled.
“Yes, Master,” I had said.
I had lost track of time, and did not understand the calendar of my masters. In my reckoning, it had been something like five or six weeks since I had been brought to this strange, fresh, unusual, beautiful world, brought as a slave.
“For a new slave, then, excellent,” said my examiner.
“Good,” said the fellow with the board, the marking stick.
I wanted to beg him, he closest to me, he who had touched me, as an owner of women touches women, to be again touched, but I dared not do so. I had not been given permission to speak.
“She has been well selected,” said a fellow.
“They all are,” commented another.
I later, in my turn, was told I might kneel, which I gratefully did. How natural it now seemed to me to kneel before a free male! It now seemed to me right that I should be so positioned. Before such men I, a slave, belonged so. I would have been considerably uneasy, even frightened, to be standing in his presence. How presumptuous, how insolent, how perilous that would have been! On my world, I had occasionally, though very, very seldom, felt an inclination to kneel before a man, one man or another, to assume before him this appropriate posture of respect and submission, appropriate for a female before a male, but, of course, I had not done so. I doubted if the men of my former world would even have understood this. Perhaps, confused, stammering, embarrassed, they would have chidingly hastened me to my feet, rather than commanding me, one submitted, to minister to theirs. Surely I remembered one man, one man encountered on my former world, though a man not of that world, one encountered in the aisle of a large emporium, before whom, startled, I could barely stand, and before whom I had felt I should kneel, head down, submitting myself to his survey and power, his authority, his manhood, but I had not done so. I had turned about, terrified, and fled. Later I had looked up at him, naked, on my back, bound hand and foot. It seems, after all, that I had been found of interest, if only as a slave, a property, a possession, a toy. In any event, there seemed few men of my former world before whom one would have been tempted to kneel, before whom it would have seemed appropriate to kneel. But then I had not realized at that time that such men as Goreans could exist. Perhaps they were such as men might once have been, on my old world, but no longer were. In any event I knew that I, at least as a slave, belonged at their feet. It was my place. They understood this, and I did, as well. It was reassuring to be so before them. I was then where I belonged.
I looked up at him, the free male.
“You have not been long in the collar,” he said.
“No, Master,” I said.
“You are a barbarian,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” I said.
“You do not have a name,” he said.
“No, Master,” I said.
I was as yet an unnamed animal. My name would be decided upon, and placed on me, by the free.
“How have you been known?” he asked.
“My lot number, from a market in Brundisium,” I said, “was 119.”
“A slave should have a name,” he said.
“It will be as masters wish,” I said.
“Numbers are not sensual,” he said. “A female slave should have a female name, and one which makes clear that she is a slave.”
“As masters wish,” I said.
“Were you a slave on your former world?” he asked.
When you are a female kneeling before a male, the dominance hierarchy is quite clear, even, I suppose, if you are a free woman. It is certainly clear when you are a slave. I understand that a free woman is forced to kneel naked before a man, before she is collared.