“You wish to speak to me?” I asked.

“I am keeping the girl, of course,” he said. He looked at me. “Do you wish to do contest for her?” he asked.

“I do not need to decide that at the moment, do I?” I asked.

“Of course not,” said Hassan. “You are my guest.” He grinned. “You may use her at any time you wish, of course,” he said.

“Hassan is generous.” I laughed.

“From the first instant I put my hands on her,” he said, “I decided that I would have her for my own.”

“Are you accustomed to taking what women you wish?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“If I had lost your trail,” I said, “how then would you have made contact with me?”

“You would not have lost the trail,” he said.

“But if so?” I asked.

“Then you would have been informed where to find your-my-pretty Alyena in chains. We would then have met.”

“But what if I attempt to slay you now?” I asked.

“You will not, for you are my guest,” said Hassan. “Besides, why should you bring such a slave into the desert with you, a blond-haired, white-skinned, blue-eyed wench?”

“Why?” I asked.

“Not as a simple slave,” he said. “You could buy and rent girls at any oasis.

You brought her for a purpose. You wished to sell her, or give her, to someone, in exchange for something, for aid, for information, for something.”

“You are astute,” I said.

“I hope,” he said. “That the female slave will not complicate relations between us.”

“How could a mere female slave, who is nothing, do that?” I asked.

“True,” said Hassan.

“She seems happy in your chains,” I said.

“She is a slave,” he said.

“It is unfortunate,” said I, “that she is white-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed.”

“Why is that?” he asked.

“Such women,” said I, “are cold.”

“Not when collared,” he said.

“Is she hot?” I asked.

I knew that the metal collar of a female slave, that obdurate circlet of steel, locked, which she could not remove, so contrasting with her softness, so proclaiming its vulnerability and rightlessness, often transformed even an inhibited, hostile, cold wench, hating men, into an abandoned, yielding, man-vulnerable, passionate slave girl, loving to lie helpless at the mercy of their touch, that of masters.

Hassan threw back his head and laughed. “She is the hottest thing I have ever held in my arms,” he said.

I smiled. I wondered how scandalized, how embarrassed and shamed the former Miss Priscilla Blake-Allen would be to hear her needs and her performance so boldly and publicly spoken of. The poor thing, however, could not help herself in the arms of a master.

“She loves you,” I told Hassan.

“I have given her no choice,” he said.

I supposed it true.

I supposed, further, that the rare event had here taken place of a girl meeting her true master, and a man his true slave girl. The girl, one among thousands less fortunate, had encountered a male. Surely, too, one among thousands, who could be, and was, to her and for her, her absolute and natural master, the ideal and perfect male for her, dominant and uncompromising, who could, and would, demand and get her full, yielding sexuality, which a woman can give only to a man who owns her totally, before whom, and to whom, she can be only an adoring slave. This happens almost never on Earth, where the normal male/female relationship is the result of a weak, pleasant male’s releasing of the female’s maternal instinct, rather than her usually frustrated instinct to submit herself fully to a truly dominant male as a held and owned, penetrated, submissive female; it does occur, however, with some frequency on Gor, where girls, slaves, are more frequently traded and exchanged. One tries different girls until one finds she, or those, who are the most exquisite, the most pleasing; one tends then, to keep them: this tends, too, to work out to the advantage of the women, the female slaves, but few, except themselves, are concerned with them, or their feelings: men, it is clear, have a need to dominate; few deny this: none deny it who are informed; in the Gorean culture, as it is not on Earth, institutions exist for the satisfaction of this need, rather than its systematic suppression and frustration; the major Gorean institution satisfying this need is the widespread enslavement of human females; the master/slave relationship is the deepest, clearest recognition of, and concession to, this masculine need, felt by all truly vital, sexual males: but, in the Gorean theory, this masculine need to dominate, which, thwarted, leads to misery, sickness, and petty, vicious, meaningless aggressions, is not an aberration, nor an uncomplemented biological singularity in males, but has its full complementary, correspondent need in the human female, which is the need, seldom satisfied, to be overwhelmed and mastered; in primitive mate competitions, in which intelligence and cunning, and physical and psychological power, were of biological importance, rather than wealth and status, the best women, statistically, would fall to the strongest, most intelligent men; it is possible, and likely, that women, or the best women, were once fought for literally, as well as symbolically, as possessions if this were the case then it is likely that something in the female, genetically, would respond to dominance and strength: most women do not, truly, want weak men: they wish their children to be born not to an equal but a superior: how could they respect a man who in stature and power was no more than themselves, the equal of a woman, a prize; given the choice to bear the child of an equal, or a master, most women would choose to bear the child of a master: women long to bear the children of men superior to themselves: it is a defeated woman whose body grows fat with the child only of an equal: just 39 evolution, at one time, selected for strong, intelligent men, capable of combat, because they were successful in mate competitions, so, too, correspondingly, in the transmission of genetic structures, it would be selecting for women who responded to, and yielded to, such men, women who were the biologically specified and rightful property of such men, our ancestors. The dominant male is thus selected for in mate competition: the undominant male tends, statistically, to lose out to his stronger, more intelligent foe: correspondingly, evolution selected for the female who responds to the dominant male: she who fled such men either mated with weaker men, her children then being less well adapted for survival, or, perhaps, fled away, and her genes were lost, for better or for worse, to the struggling human groups; the female who was excited by such men, and longed to belong to them, to masters, and keep by them and serve them, had the best chance of survival; she was the best protected, her children would be the best protected; further, her children would be more intelligent and stronger, being the offspring of more intelligent and stronger men; her lusts, and her love of being owned by such men, and her pride in their possession of her, would contribute substantially to not only her survival but that of her children: too, the woman would, over generations, become more beautiful and desirable, and sexually exciting, as vital males exercising their masculine prerogatives selected among the daughters of the daughters of such women; men chose for mating women who pleased them, and women who pleased them were not the ugly, the gross, the belligerent and stupid, but the intelligent, loving, desirable and beautiful; the twin dynamics of evolution, natural and sexual selection, thus formed over thousands of years the biological nature of the human female; originally there might have been only random tendencies to respond to masculine domination, but those who had them had the best chance of survival: such tendencies were then transmitted, becoming pervasive genetic characteristics of women; owned women lived; the most beautiful and best of these were selected by the strongest, most intelligent and powerful men: it is from such intricate workings of nature that has come the intelligent, beautiful, sensitive woman, the feminine woman, with full complement of normal feminine hormones, who longs in her heart to lie lovingly, obediently, excitedly in the arms of a strong man, his woman, beyond this, one might note that dominance and submission are genetically pervasive in the animal kingdom; among mammals in general, and primates universally, it is the male who dominates and the female who submits; this is not an aberration; the aberration is its conditioned frustration, possible, interestingly enough, only in an animal complicated enough to lie subject to extensive conditioning regimes, where words may be used to induce counterinstinctual responses, to the detriment and misery of the individual organism, though perhaps subservient to a given conception of economic and social relationships. We are bred hunters; we are made farmers.