"Are blue and yellow beads then," she asked, "not appropriate for me, for I am a slave?"

"They are very nice," I said, "but any simple, cheap beads, say, of wood or glass, will do as well for a slave."

"I see, Master," she said. "But may I keep them?"

"Until I, or any free man," I said, "sees fit to take them from you." I held her by the upper arms, from behind. "You do not own them," I said. "You only wear them, and on the sufferance of free men."

"Yes, Master," she said. "I own nothing. It is, rather, I who am owned."

"Yes," I said. I turned her about, to face me. "You are beginning to feel and understand your slavery, aren't you?" I asked.

"Yes, Master," she said. "Tonight you taught me much. For the first time in my life, tonight, I moved totally as a woman. I do not think I could go back, Master, to moving as a man."

I held her, tightly, and looked sternly into her eyes. "You are not a man," I told her. "You are a woman. That is what you are. Try to understand that. You are a woman, not a man."

"Yes, Master," she sobbed.

"It is thus permissible for you, truly, to move as a woman, and to feel and think and behave like a woman."

"I am a slave," she said, "and yet, strangely, I am beginning to feel so free."

"You are breaking through the constrictions of a pathological conditioning program," I told her.

I looked at her.

She trembled.

"Go to the slave post," I said. "Sit there, with your back to the post, your hands crossed behind your back."

"Yes, Master," she said.

I took a piece of improvised binding fiber, a narrow strip of leather some five feet long, and crouched down behind her.

"You freed me of many inhibitions tonight, Master," she said. "Was that your intention?"

"Perhaps," I said.

"I am grateful," she said.

"Oh!" she winced, as I knotted her hands behind her back.

"I am a woman," she said. "I want to be a woman, truly."

"Have no fear," I said. "You will be."

She looked at me.

"Gorean men," I said, "do not accept the conceit and pretense of pseudo-masculinity in female slaves."

"They would enforce my womanhood upon me?" she asked.

"You are a slave," I said. "You will be given no choice but to manifest your total womanhood to your master, in all its full vulnerability and beauty."

"But then I would have to obey, and please them," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"Surely they would show me some compromise," she said.

"The Gorean man," I said, "does not compromise with a female slave. If necessary, you will learn your womanhood under the whip."

"But what if, even then," she asked, "I am not sufficiently pleasing?"

"You will then perhaps be fed to sleen," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

I fastened the free end of the binding fiber to the slave post, and stood up.

"I am a secured slave," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"Master," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"There was one thing I did not tell you about my dream."

"What was that?" I asked.

"It is something that you will not understand," she said, "for you are a man."

"What is that?" I asked.

"It was when I must needs please my master well, and as a slave," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"I wanted to please him," she whispered.

"Of course," I said. "You were desperate to please him, for you knew that if you were not pleasing to him, you would be cruelly and horribly destroyed."

"But I wanted to please him, too, for another reason," she said.

"What was that?" I asked.

"You will not understand," she said. "A man could never understand."

"What?" I asked.

"I wanted to please him," she said, "-because he was my master." She looked at me. "A girl can want to please her master," she said, "because he is her master."

I did not speak.

"Can you understand that?" she asked.

I shrugged.

"Do you think that we would make you such superb slaves if we did not want to he your slaves?"

"Perhaps not," I said.

"A girl desires to please her master," she said. "Can you understand that, Master?"

"I think so," I said.

"I desire to please you," she whispered.

"I see," I said.

"Master," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"Why did you not rape me tonight, Master?" she asked. "Am I not pleasing to you?"

"Later, perhaps," I said.

"You're training me, aren't you. Master?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

33

What We Saw From The Height Of The Falls; Tende Dances; We Enter Again Upon The River; I Anticipate The Surrender Of The Blond-Haired Barbarian

We thrust the canoe upward, Kisu and I at the stern, Ayari and the girls hauling on ropes at the forequarter. It tipped up and then settled downward, and we thrust and hauled it, laden, to the level.

The sound of the falls, to our left, plunging some four hundred feet to the waters below, was deafening.

It is difficult to convey the splendor of the Ua's scenery to those who have not seen it. There is the mightiness of the river, like a great road, twisting and turning, occasionally broken with green islands, sometimes sluggish, sometimes shattered by rapids and cataracts, sometimes interrupted by flooding cascades of water, sometimes a few feet in height and sometimes towering upwards hundreds of feet, and then there is the jungle, its immensity and wildlife, and the vast sky above it.

"I am pleased," said Kisu, happily, wiping the sweat from his brow.

"Why?" I asked.

"Come here," he said.

"Be careful!" I said to him. He was wading out into the water.

"Come here!" he called.

I waded after him, some forty or fifty feet out into the current. It was only to our knees there.

"Look!" he said, pointing.

From the height of the falls we could see for pasangs behind us downriver. It was not only a spectacular but also a marvelous coign of vantage.

"I knew it would be so!" he cried, slapping his thigh in pleasure.

I looked, the hair on the back of my neck rising.

"Tende! Tende!" called Kisu. "Come here, now!"

The girl, moving carefully, waded to where we stood. Kisu seized her by the back of the neck and faced her downriver. "See, my pretty slave?" he asked.

"Yes, my master," she said, frightened.

"It is he," said Kisu. "He is coming for you!"

"Yes, Master," she said.

"Hurry now to the shore," he said. "Build a fire, prepare food, Slave."

"Yes, Master," she said, commanded, hurrying from us to address herself to her tasks.

I looked into the distance, downriver, half shutting my eyes against the glare from the water.

Downriver, several pasangs away, small but unmistakable, moving in our direction, was a fleet of canoes and river vessels. There must have been in the neighborhood of a hundred, oared river galleys, the balance of the fleet which had been prepared for Shaba's originally projected penetration of the Ua, and perhaps again as many canoes. If there were crews of fifty on the galleys and from five to ten men in a canoe, the force behind us must have ranged somewhere between five and six thousand men.

"It is Bila Huruma!" shouted Kisu in triumph.

"So this is why you accompanied me on the Ua?" I asked.

"I would have come with you anyway, to help you, for you are my friend," said Kisu. "But our ways, happily, led us the same direction. Is that not a splendid coincidence?"

"Yes, splendid," I smiled.

"You see now what was my plan?" he asked.

"Your mysterious plan?" I grinned.

"Yes," he said, happily.

"I thought this might be it," I said. "But I think you may have miscalculated."

"I could not in battle beat Bila Huruma," said Kisu. "His askaris were superior to my villagers. But now, as I have stolen Tende, his projected companion, I have lured him into the jungle. I need now only lead him on and on, until he is slain in the jungle, or until, bereft of men and supplies, I need only turn back and meet him, as man to man, as warrior to warrior."