'Here in the Sardar,' she said, turning to face me, trembling, 'they took me into the tunnels and locked over my head a hideous metal globe with lights and wires and when they freed me they showed me a metal plate and told me that the patterns of my brain, of my oldest and most primitive memories, were recorded on that plate…'

I listened intently, knowing that the girl could, even if of High Caste, understand little of what had happened to her. Those of the High Castes of Gor are permitted by the Priest-Kings only the Second Knowledge, and those of the lower castes are premitted only the more rudimentary First Knowledge.I had speculated that there would be a Third Knowledge, that reserved for Priest-Kings, and the girl's account seemed to justify this conjecture.I myself would not understand the intricate processes involved in the machine of which she spoke but the purpose of the machine and the theoretical principles that facilitated its purpose were reasonably clear.The machine she spoke of would be a brain-scanner of some sort which would record three-dimensionally the microstates of her brain, in particular those of the deeper, less alterable layers.If well done, the resulting plate would be more individual than her fingerprints; it would be as unique and personal as her own history; indeed, in a sense, it would be a physical model of that same history, an isomorphic analogue of her past as she had experienced it.

'That plate,' she said, 'is kept in the tunnels of the Priest-Kings, but these -' and she shivered and indicated the rounded domes, which were undoubtedly sensors of some type, 'are its eyes.'

'There is a connection of some sort, though perhaps only a beam of some type, between the plate and these cells,' I said, going to them and examining them.

'You speak strangely,' she said.

'What would happen if you were to pass between them?' I asked.

'They showed me,' she said, her eyes filled with horror, 'by sending a girl between them who had not done her duty as they thought she should.'

Suddenly I started.'They?' I asked.

'The Priest-Kings,' she replied simply.

'But there is only one Priest-King,' I said, 'who calls himself Parp.'

She smiled but did not respond to me.She shook her head sadly.'Ah, yes, Parp,' she said.

I supposed at another time there might have been more Priest-Kings.Perhaps Parp was the last of the Priest-Kings? Surely it seemed likely that such massive structures as the Hall of Priest-Kings must have been the product of more than one being.

'What happened to the girl?' I asked.

Vika flinched.'It was like knives and fire,' she said.

I now understood why she so feared to leave the room.

'Have you tried shielding yourself?' I asked, looking at the bronze laver which was drying against the wall.

'Yes,' she said, 'but the eye knows.'She smiled ruefully. 'It can see through metal.'

I looked puzzled.

She went to the side of the room and picked up the bronze laver.Holding it before her as though to shield her face she approached the portal.Once more the rounded domes began to glow.

'You see,' she said, 'it knows.It can see through metal.'

'I see,' I said.

I silently congratulated the Priest-Kings on the efficacy of their devices.Apparently the rays which must emanate from the sensors, rays not within that portion of the spectrum visible to the human eye, must possess the power to penetrate at least common molecular structures, something like an X-ray pierces flesh.

Vika glared at me sullenly.'I have been a prisoner in this room for nine years,' she said.

'I am sorry,' I said.

'I came to the Sardar,' she laughed, 'to conquer the Priest-Kings and rob them of their riches and power!'

She ran to the far wall, suddenly breaking into tears. Facing it she pounded on it weeping.

She spun to face me.

'And instead,' she cried, 'I have only these walls of stone and the steel collar of a slave girl!'

She helplessly, enraged, tried to tear the slender, graceful, obdurate band from her white throat.Her fingers tore at it in fenzy, in fury, and she wept with frustration, and at last she desisted.Of course she still wore the badge of her servitude.The steel of a Gorean slave collar is not made to be removed at a girl's pleasure.

She was quiet now.

She looked at me, curiously.'At one time,' she said, 'men sought to please me but now it is I who must please them.'

I said nothing.

Her eyes regarded me, rather boldly I thought, as though inviting me to exercise my authority over her, to address to her any command I might see fit, a command which she of course would have no choice but to obey.

There was a long silence I did not feel I should break. Vika's life, in its way, had been hard, and I wished her no harm.

Her lips curled slightly in scorn.

I was well aware of the taunt of her flesh, the obvious challenge of her eyes and carriage.

She seemed to say to me, you cannot master me.

I wondered how many men had failed.

With a shrug she went to the side of the sleeping platform and picked up the white, silken scarf I had removed from her throat.She wrapped it again about her throat, concealing the collar.

'Do not wear the scarf,' I said gently.

Her eyes sparkled with anger.

'You wish to see the collar,' she hissed.

'You may wear the scarf if you wish,' I said.

Her eyes clouded with bewilderment.

'But I do not think you should,' I said.

'Why?' she asked.

'Because I think that you are more beautiful without it,' I said, 'but more importantly to hide a collar is not to remove it.'

Rebellious fire flared in her eyes, and then she smiled. 'No,' she said, 'I suppose not.'She turned away bitterly. 'When I am alone,' she said, 'I pretend that I am free, that I am a great lady, the Ubara of a great city, even of Ar -but when a man enters my chamber, then again I am only a slave.'She slowly pulled the scarf from her throat and dropped it to the floor, and turned to face me.She lifted her head arrogantly and I saw that the collar was very beautiful on her throat.

'With me,' I said gently, 'you are free.'

She looked at me scornfully.'There have been a hundred men in this chamber before you,' she said, 'and they have taught me - and taught me well - that I wear a collar.'

'Nonetheless,' I said, 'with me you are free.'

'And there will be a hundred after you,' she said.

I supposed she spoke the truth.I smiled.'In the meantime,' I said, 'I grant you freedom.'

She laughed.'To hide a collar,' she said, in a mocking tone, 'is not to remove it.'

I laughed.She had had the best of the exchange.'Very well,' I conceded, 'you are a slave girl.'

When I said this, though I spoke in jest, she stiffened as though I might have lashed her mouth with the back of my hand.

Her old insolence had returned.'Then use me,' she said bitterly.'Teach me the meaning of the collar.'

I marveled.Vika, in spite of her nine years of captivity, her confinement in this chamber, was still a headstrong, spoiled, arrogant girl, and one fully aware of her yet unconquered flesh, and the sinuous power which her beauty might exercise over men, its capacity to torture them and drive them wild, to bend them in the search for its smallest favours compliantly to her will.There stood before me insolently the beautiful, predatory girl who had come so long ago to the Sardar to exploit Priest-Kings.

'Later,' I said.

She choked with fury.

I bore her no ill will but I found her as irritating as she was beautiful.I could understand that she, a proud, intelligent girl, could not but resent the indignities of her position, being forced to serve with the full offices of the slave girl whomsoever the Priest-Kings might see fit to send to her chamber, but yet I found in these grievances, great though they might be, no excuse for the deep hostility towards myself which seemed to suffuse her graceful being. After all, I, too, was a prisoner of Priest-Kings and I had not chosen to come to her chamber.