“Make Me a slave,” she whispered. “Please! Please!”

“There will be much risk,” said Hassan. “If Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, should hear of this, he might skin me alive.”

“Please!” wept Tama.

“It will not be easy,” I said.

“Please, Please!” she wept.

“How should we go about this?” I asked.

“One thing,” said Hassan, “prisoner rope is not appropriate. She must be put on a wrist tether.”

“I see little problem in this,” I said.

“A more serious problem,” be said, “will occur in leading her through the halls.”

“I can walk with my head down, as a slave,” said Tarna.

“Most female slaves,” said Hassan, “walk very proudly. They are proud of their slavery, and their mastery by men, They have learned their womanhood. It has been taught to them. In their way, though imbonded, totally, I suppose they are the truest and freest of women. They are closest, perhaps, to the essentials of the female, those of subservience to the masculine will, obedience, service and pleasure. In being most themselves, utter slave, they are most free. This is paradoxical, to be sure. Most girls, verbally, will object to slavery, but this half-hearted, pouting, ineffectual rhetoric is belied by the joy of their behavior. No girl who has not been a slave can understand the joy of it, the profundity and freedom. The objections of girls to slavery, I have noted, are usually not objections to the institution which, in the sweet heat of their bodies, they love dearly, and fear only to lose, but to a given master. Given the proper master they are quite content, in the proper collar a woman is serene and joyful.”

“Are slave girls truly proud?” asked Tama.

“Most,” said Hassan. “You may think only of have dominated, or seraglio mistresses, presiding over weaklings. But have you seen girls, truly, before men?”

“In a cafe, once,” she said, “I saw a girl dance before men. She was scandalous!

And the girls, too, who served in the cafe! Shameful! Scandalous!”

“Speak with care,” said Hassan, “Girl, for someday you, too, may so dance and serve.”

Tarna turned white.

“Did the girls seem proud?” asked Hassan.

“Yes,” said Tarna, sullenly. “But why should they have been proud?”

“They were proud of their bodies, their feelings, their desirability,” said Hassan, “and proud, too, of their masters, who had the will and power to put them in a collar and keep them there, because it pleased him to do so.”

“How strong such men must be,” whispered Tarna.

“Too,” said Hassan, “undeniable females, secure in their sexuality, it was difficult not for them to be proud. Too, joy can make girls proud.”

“But why, why,” wept Tarna, “should they be proud?”

Hassan shrugged. “Because they knew themselves to be the most perfect and profound of women,” he said. “That is why they are proud.” Hassan laughed.

“Sometimes,” he said, “girls grow so proud it is necessary to whip them, to remind them that they are only slaves.”

“I can walk proudly,” said Tarna. “Lead me through the halls.” She rose to her feet, and stood before us.

“There is a difference,” laughed Hassan, “between the pride of a free woman and the pride of the slave girl, The pride of a free woman is the pride of a woman who feels herself to be the equal of a man. The pride of the slave girl is the pride of the girl who knows that no other woman is the equal of herself.”

Tarna suddenly shuddered, inadvertently, with pleasure. I could see that this insight had thrilled her to the quick.

“You are no longer competing with men,” said Hassan. “You are now something different.”

“Yes, yes!” suddenly whispered Tarna. “I see! I am different! I am not the same!” She looked at us. “Suddenly. “ she said, “for the first time I love the thought of not being the same. “ “It is a start,” said Hassan.

“Do you think she is fit to be led through the halls?” I asked. I could hear men shouting outside. There was singing, the sounds of carousing.

“She cannot yet walk like, or truly seem a slave girl,” said Hassan, “for she is not yet a slave girl, but if little attention is paid, we may have a chance.” He turned to the captive. “How do you look upon men, Wench?” he asked. “How do you meet their eyes?”

Tarna gazed upon him.

Hassan moaned. “We shall lose our heads,” he said.

I dragged Tarna by the rope to her vast couch, and flung her to the yellow cushions. At the head of the couch I tied the rope which was knotted on her neck. She could not rise more than a foot from the cushions. She twisted on the cushions, turning to look at me. “What are you going to do with me?” she asked, horrified.

Hassan grinned. “She is your capture,” he said. “First capture rights are yours.”

Tarna cried out with misery.

In a short time, we led Tarna through the balls of the kasbah. We had taken the prisoner rope from her neck, to conceal the fact that she was a free prisoner. I led her by a wrist tether, her wrists crossed and bound, and the tether running to my hand. Sometimes I pulled her abruptly, making her stumble, or run or fall.

I did this for three reasons; it concealed her awkwardness; I was in a hurry; and it pleased me. The wrist tether was from the cords holding the hangings in her room. The cords were not such that they could be easily identified.

“Are these cords such that they are unique to your quarters?” I had asked her.

“No,” she had said. “No.” I had then bound her with them.

“Is she not much too clean?” asked Hassan.

I looked at the bound girl. “Yes,” I said. Then I said to the girl, “Down, down on the floor, on your belly and back, roll.”

She looked at us angrily, but then complied. When she stood again before us, Hassan took soot from one of the tharlarion-oil lamps and rubbed it, here and there, on her body. He then took some tharlarion-oil and, as she shuddered, poured and rubbed it on her left shoulder.

“Of great danger to us now,” said Hassan, “is her lack of a brand.”

“Unless you have an iron with you,” I said, “there is not much helping that at the moment.”

Still the problem was serious. Girls are branded prominently, usually on the left or right thigh. The brand on a slave girl is not something for which, when the wench is stripped, one must hunt. If it were noted, in our journey to the lower levels, that the woman we led was unmarked, it would be assumed that she was free. This would excite curiosity, and would be sure to be later recalled.

Tarna, of course, would be unmarked. Indeed, she would be likely to be the only unmarked female in the kasbah.

I tore down one of the hangings, a yellow one, and ripped a narrow strip from it. I wound this about the girl’s thighs, low, to reveal her navel. It is called the slave belly. On Gor it is only slave girls who expose, their navels. But the cloth would cover the area, on either hip, which be the likely site of the incised slave mark.

“It might be better,” said Hassan, studying the beauty, “if she were completely stripped.”

“Not without a brand,” I said.

“You are right,” said Hassan. “We cannot risk it.”

“Let them assume,” I suggested, “that we are leading her to someone to whom we are giving her, and that we wish to tear off her last veil, to her horror, only before her new master.”

“Excellent,” said Hassan. “It is at least plausible.”

“It will have to do,” I said.

“Please,” said Tarna. “Lift the cloth to cover my navel.”

I thrust the cloth down, another inch on her hips. She shook with anger, but was silent. She did not much approve either when Hassan cleaned his hands on the cloth about her hips. This dirtied the cloth, making it more fitting to be worn about the hips of a slave; too, of course, it removed the soot from his hands, from the tharlarion-oil lamp.

As we had led her through carousing soldiers, many of them reached for the girl, whom they assumed, as we had intended, was slave. “Oh,” she cried. “Oh!” She found herself much caressed, with the rude familiarity with which a slave girl is handled.