And it was the city from which Vika had come.

I believed it.

But yet tonight she had been gentle, and I had been kind to her.

Tonight we had been friends.

She went to the chest against the wall, to replace the tube of ointment.

'The ointment will soon be absorbed,' she said.'In a few minutes there will be no trace of it, nor of the cuts.'

I whistled.

'The physicians of Treve,' I said, 'have marvellous medicines.'

'It is an ointment of Priest-Kings,' she said.

I was pleased to hear this, for it suggested vulnerability. 'Then Priest-Kings can be injured?' I asked.

'Their slaves can,' said Vika.

'I see,' I said.

'Let us not speak of Priest-Kings,' said the girl.

I looked at her, standing across the room, lovely, facing me in the dim light.

'Vika,' I asked, 'was your father truly of the Caste of Physicians?'

'Yes,' she said, 'why do you ask?'

'It does not matter,' I said.

'But why?' she insisted.

'Because,' I said, 'I thought you might have been a bred Pleasure Slave.'

It was a foolish thing to say, and I regretted it immediately.She stiffened.'You flatter me,' she said, and turned away.I had hurt her.

I made a move to approach her but without turning, she said, 'Please do not touch me.'

And then she seemed to straighten and turned to face me, once again the old and scornful Vika, challenging, hostile.'But of course you may touch me,' she said, 'for you are my master.'

'Forgive me,' I said.

She laughed bitterly, scornfully.

It was truly a woman of Treve who stood before me now.

I saw her as I had never seen her before.

Vika was a bandit princess, accustomed to be clad in silk and jewels from a thousand looted caravans, to sleep on the richest furs and sup on the most delicate viands, all purloined from galleys, beached and burnt, from the ravished storerooms of outlying, smoking cylinders, from the tables and treasure chests of homes whose men were slain, whose daughters wore the chains of slave girls, only now she herself, Vika, this bandit princess, proud Vika, a woman of lofty, opulent Treve, had fallen spoils herself in the harsh games of Gor, and felt on her own throat the same encircling band of steel with which the men of her city had so often graced the throats of their fair, weeping captives.

Vika was now property.

My property.

Her eyes regarded me with fury.

Insolently she approached me, slowly, gracefully, as silken in her menace as the she-larl, and then to my astonishment when she stood before me, she knelt, her hands on her thighs, her knees in the position of the Pleasure Slave, and dropped her head in scornful submission.

She raised her head and her taunting blue eyes regarded me boldly.'Here, Master,' she said, 'is your Pleasure Slave.'

'Rise,' I said.

She rose gracefully and put her arms about my neck and moved her lips close to mine.'You kissed me before,' she said. 'Now I shall kiss you.'

I looked into those blue eyes and they looked into mine, and I wondered how many men had been burned, and had died, in that smouldering, sullen fire.

Those magnificent lips brushed mine.

'Here,' she said softly, imperiously, 'is the kiss of your Pleasure Slave.'

I disengaged her arms from my neck.

She looked at me in bewilderment.

I walked from the room into the dimly lit hall.In the passageway, I extended my hand to her, that she might come and take it.

'Do I not please you?' she asked.

'Vika,' I said, 'come here and take the hand of a fool.'

When she saw what I intended she shook head slowly, numbly. 'No,' she said.'I cannot leave the chamber.'

'Please,' I said.

She shook with fear.

'Come,' I said, 'take my hand.'

Slowly, trembling, moving as though in a dream, the girl approached the portal, and this time the sensors could not glow.

She looked at me.

'Please,' I said.

She looked again at the sensors, which stared out of the wall like black, gutted metal eyes.They were burned and still, shattered, and even the wall in their vicinity showed the seared, scarlet stain of their abrupt termination.

'They can hurt you no longer,' I said.

Vika took another step and then it seemed her legs would fail her and she might swoon.She put out her hand to me.Her eyes were wide with fear.

'The women of Treve,' I said, 'are brave, as well as beautiful and proud.'

She stepped through the portal and fell fainting in my arms.

I lifted her and carried her to the stone couch.

I regarded the ruined sensors in the portal and the wreckage of the surveillance device which had been concealed in the energy bulb.

Perhaps now I would not have so long to wait for the Priest-Kings of Gor.

Vika had said that when they wished me, they would come for me.

I chuckled.

Perhaps now they would be encouraged to hasten their appointment.

I gently placed Vika on the great stone couch.

Chapter Nine: THE PRIEST-KING

I would allow Vika to share the great stone couch, its sleeping pelts, and silken sheets.

This was unusual, however, for normally the Gorean slave girl sleeps at the foot of her master's couch, often on a straw mat with only a thin, cottonlike blanket, woven from the soft fibres of the Rep Plant, to protect her from the cold.

If she has not pleased her master of late, she may be, of course, as a disciplinary measure, simply chained nude to the slave ring at in the bottom of the couch, sans both blanket and mat.The stones of the floor are hard and the Gorean nights are cold and it is a rare girl who, when unchained in the morning, does not seek more dutifully to serve her master.

This harsh treatment, incidentally, when she is thought to deserve it, may even be inflicted on a Free Companion, in spite of the fact that she is free and usually much loved. According to the Gorean way of looking at things a taste of the slave ring is thought to be occasionally beneficial to all women, even the exalted Free Companions.

Thus when she has been irritable or otherwise troublesome even a Free Companion may find herself at the foot of the couch looking forward to a pleasant night on the stones, stripped, with neither mat nor blanket, chained to a slave ring precisely as though she were a lowly slave girl.

It is the Gorean way of reminding her, should she need to be reminded, that she, too, is a woman, and thus to be dominated, to be subject to men.Should she be tempted to forget this basic fact of Gorean life the slave ring set in the bottom of each Gorean couch is there to refresh her memory.Gor is a man's world.

And yet on this world I have seen great numbers of women who were both beautiful and splendid.

The Gorean woman, for reasons that are not altogether clear to me, considering the culture, rejoices in being a woman. She is often an exciting, magnificent, glorious creature, outspoken, talkative, vital, active, spirited.On the whole I find her more joyful than many of her earth-inhabiting sisters who, theoretically at least, enjoy a more lofty status, although it is surely true that on my old world I have met several women with something of the Gorean zest for acknowledging the radiant truth of their sex, the gifts of joy, grace and beauty, tenderness, and fathoms of love that we poor men, I suspect, may sometimes and tragically fail to understand, to comprehend.

Yet with all due respect and regard for the most astounding and marvellous sex, I suspect that, perhaps partly because of my Gorean training, it is true that a touch of the slave ring is occasionally beneficial.

Of custom, a slave girl may not even ascend the couch to serve her master's pleasure.The point of this restriction, I suppose, is to draw a clearer distinction between her status and that of a Free Companion.At any rate the dignities of the couch are, by custom, reserved for the Free Companion.