"Very well," I said.

I held her, and kissed her, and caressed her, keeping her close and warm beside me.

"Thank you, Master," she said. She looked up at me, frightened. "I did not know it could be like that," she said. "I had no idea."

I kissed her, gently.

"As a free woman," she said, "sometimes, late at night, or in my dreams, I had dimly sensed what might he the sexuality of the slave girl, but I had never remotely understood it could be anything like that, anything so overwhelming, so helpless, so total."

"It was only a rudimentary slave orgasm," I said. It had been.

"Rudimentary?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"You jest with a poor slave," she said.

"No," I said.

"Truly?" she asked.

"Truly," I said.

"What then lies in store for me?" she whispered.

"Slavery," I told her.

"Yes, Master," she said.

She lay beside me then, on her back. She looked up, a slave, at the stars and moons. She touched her collar. Her body, in the moonlight, was white on the dark blankets: "After a woman has felt anything like that," she said, "how could she ever go back to being free?"

"Not many would receive the opportunity," I told her.

She laughed. It was true. Gorean men, on the whole, do not free slaves. The freeing of a girl is almost unheard of. This makes sense. They are not free women. They are belongings, valuables, slaves, treasures. Who discards precious possessions, who surrenders treasures? If the slave girl were worth less perhaps she would be freed more. She is too marvelous to free; and if she is not marvelous, she can be slain. Too, what man who has known the glory and joy of a girl at his feet is likely to wish to exchange that for the inconvenience and bother of a free woman? No, slave girls, for all practical purposes, are not freed. They will remain in one collar or another. Men will have it that way.

"I am owned," she said, her fingers touching her collar. "You own me."

"Yes," I said.

"I do not want to be free," she said.

"Do not fear," I said. "You are too pretty to free."

She kissed me.

Sometimes when a woman is freed, for one reason or another, as can happen upon rare occasions, she becomes, sometimes after an initial elation, restless, and later, miserable. She often becomes unpleasant and irritable, consequences of her frustration. Often she attempts to inflict her dissatisfaction on others. Often she tries to dominate males in her vicinity, perhaps in an attempt to punish them for their inability or cruel refusal to understand or relieve her discomfort, perhaps, too, in an attempt to provoke them into an action which will restore her to her place in nature. She has once been in that place, and she cannot fail to recollect it. Perhaps it would have been better if she had never tasted nature. It is difficult, thereafter, to be satisfied with politics. Ignorance, as always, remains myth's sturdiest bulwark. Such women often, eventually, take to walking the high bridges or frequenting exposed areas, sometimes outside the city walls. They are courting capture and the collar. They wish to kneel again, slaves, before a man.

"I have been had many times when I was a she-urt," she said. "I have lain for paga attendants, hoping to be thrown a handful of garbage. I have been raped by vagabonds. Many times did I pleasure Turgus. Yet never did I feel anything like what you did to me."

"Of the three types of experiences you have mentioned," I said, "the nearest to what you recently felt occurred when you hoped to be thrown garbage by paga attendants."

She looked at me with wonder. "Yes," she said, "how did you know that?"

"Because in that experience you were most under the domination of a man, dependent on him even for food. Would he or would he not throw you a few scraps? Would you be sufficiently pleasing to win from him even a few shreds of garbage?"

"Yes," she said. "It is the woman in the position of submission and subordination."

"Doubtless sometimes they even ordered you to dance naked before them," I said.

"Yes," she said.

"What occurred later then," I asked, "when they had you?"

"I reached orgasm quickly," she said.

"Of course," I said. "But still you were free. If you wished you could starve for another day, or you could seek garbage elsewhere, or beg, or fish for scraps in the canals."

"Yes," she said.

"You see," I said, "you were not totally dependent on them. You were not totally helpless. You were not their slave."

"Are you going to let me eat tomorrow?" she asked, suddenly, apprehensively.

"Perhaps," I said. "I will make that decision in the morning."

"Yes, Master," she said.

"Do you begin to see what I am saying to you?" I asked.

"Yes, Master," she whispered. "I could not have earlier had the feelings you induced in me."

"Yes," I said.

"Master," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"The very nearest thing to what I recently felt occurred on the northern walkway of the Rim canal, when you, not a vagabond, but a strong, free man, who had subdued both Turgus and myself, simply took me and used me for your pleasure."

"I recall," I said. "Too, I recall that you responded well. considering that you were at that time only a free woman."

"You treated me as a slave," she chided.

"I saw the potential slave in you," I said. "Accordingly I handled you as I would have handled a slave."

"That is why I could not help responding to you as I did," she said.

"And yet," I said, "that did not compare with what you recently felt."

"No," she said.

'That is because before you were a free woman," I said. "You did not then truly belong to men."

"I do now," she said.

"Yes," I said. "Now you are a slave."

"That is the difference," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"The orgasm was rudimentary?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "Just as you could not, as a free woman, attain to the heights of the rudimentary slave orgasm recently inflicted upon you so, too, you, as a new slave, cannot yet attain to the overwhelming and degrading ecstasies familiar to a girl longer in the collar."

"Yes, Master," she said.

"You have a long way to go in slavery, little Sasi," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"But in a year or two," I said, "I think you will be superb. And beyond that it is just a matter of continued growth."

"Does any woman ever learn her full slavery?" she asked.

"No," I said, "I think no woman ever learns the fullness of her slavery."

"I want to be a good slave," she said.

"Men will see that you are," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said. "Master," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"May I please have my ears pierced, Master," she begged.

"Would you be so degraded a slave?" I asked. Ear piercing, on Gor, is regarded in most cities as the most degrading thing that can he done to a girl. It is commonly done only to the lowest of pleasure slaves. Compared to it, fixing a ring in a girl's nose is regarded lightly. Indeed, among the Tuchuks, one of the Wagon Peoples of Gor, even free women wear nose rings. These matters are cultural, of course.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"Why?" I asked.

'That I might be kept always a slave," she said.

"I see," I said. A girl with pierced ears on Gor might as well, for all practical purposes, give up even the slimmest of hopes, should she entertain them, of freedom. What Gorean man, seeing a woman with pierced cars, could treat her as, or accept her as, anything but a slave?

"Please, Master," she said.

"I will have it done in Schendi," I said. Usually, a leather worker pierces ears. In Schendi there were many leather workers, usually engaged in the tooling of kailiauk hide, brought from the interior. Such leather, with horn, was one of the major exports of Schendi. Kailiauk are four-legged, wide-headed, lumbering, stocky ruminants. Their herds are usually found in the savannahs and plains north and south of the rain forests, but some herds frequent the forests as well. These animals are short-trunked and tawny. They commonly have brown and reddish bars on the haunches. The males, tridentlike, have three horns. These horns bristle from their foreheads. The males are usually about ten hands at the shoulders and the females about eight hands. The males average about four hundred to five hundred Gorean stone in weight, some sixteen hundred to two thousand pounds, and the females average about three to four hundred Gorean stone in weight, some twelve hundred to sixteen hundred pounds.