"Lie still," said a woman.

"Yes, Mistress," I said. "Forgive me, Mistress."

I must not let them make me a slave, I thought. I must fight these feelings, these sensations. I must try to be more like a free woman, I told myself. I must try to be inert and cold.

But what chance will I have, I asked myself, if I am branded and they put a collar on my neck, and I am subject to the whip, and to the uncompromising disciplines of Gorean masters?

I must not permit them to light slave fires in my belly, I thought.

But what can I do if they should simply choose to do so, I thought. Then they would be lit, and that would be all there was to it, I told myself. Then, Tiffany, poor girl, you would be a slave for certain. "You are already a slave for certain, Tiffany, and you know it, a voice seemed to say from within me, that voice which in the past had seemed to speak to me, too, though usually in the quarters of the Tatrix, as when it had ordered me, and I had complied, to kiss a whip or the slave ring. "Perhaps," I said to the voice, to myself. It was near dawn now. The wagon would proceed east on the Argentum road, reach the Viktel Aria, and turn south.

Then, in time, it would arrive in Ar. Soon I would be enslaved, legally. I would be, totally, legally, a slave on Gor.

I found myself looking forward to the collar and the brand. They were now unavoidable. I would have no choice in the matter. They would simply be put on me. I hoped I would look well in my collar. I hoped I would look well in my brand. Most women are stunning in them, and I did not think I would be different. I wondered if I were truly a slave.

I wondered if the collar and brand belonged on me. "Per haps," I thought. I hoped it would not hurt too much to be branded. It was the mark that stayed, of course, not the pain.

"You are awake," whispered a woman to me.

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"You may be pretty," she said, "and the men may like you, but do not think that you are better than us."

"No, Mistress," I said.

"You are a little slut," she said.

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"And you are going to be a work slave, too, my dear," she said.

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"Now go to sleep, barbarian slut," she said.

"I will try, Mistress," I said. for a moment or two, suddenly recalling the wild sensations the driver had induced in me, I inadvertently moaned and moved.

"Be quiet!" said the woman.

"Yes, Mistress," I said. "I am sorry, Mistress!"

Then I lay there frightened, chained, on the blanket, on the boards of the wagon bed, under the overhead tarpaulin. I turned and grasped the blanket. I bit at it. My thighs moved.

I was afraid.

I feared that already slave fires had been lit in my belly.

24 The Mill

I stood in a long line, single-file, of some twenty girls. We were all naked. We were in the yard of one of the linen mills of Mintar, of Ar.

I heard the second of the two heavy gates close behind us.

I looked back, and about me, across the yard, at the high walls, with their guard stations.

"Do not even think of escape, Tiffany," said a girl behind me, Emily. "There is only one way out of here," said another girl, behind her, "and that is to please your way out."

Almost any woman, I supposed, could become pleasing.

And even women who, objectively, seemed rather plain, I knew, as their attitudes changed, and as they became submissive, and yielding to their femininity, in their deepest emotions, could become beautiful. Still, of course, in a mill, few would know this. Such a woman, I supposed, aching for a man's touch, might be kept indefinitely in the mill, working her long hours of tiring labor, her left ankle chained to the loom. The mills, incidentally, like certain other low slaveries, such as those of the fields, the kitchens and laundries, serve an almost penal function on Gor. For example, a free woman, sentenced to slavery for, say, crimes or debts, may find herself, once enslaved, by direction of the court, sold for a pittance into such a slavery. Such slaveries also provide a place to utilize women who are thought to be good for little else. Most women, after a short time in such a slavery, strive to convince masters of their fuller potentialities for service and pleasure. If the woman prefers to remain in such a slavery, of course, that, too, is found acceptable by the masters.

"But that, too, is dangerous," said another girl, "for if you are too pleasing, the whip masters will hide you and keep you for themselves."

"You are all sluts," said a large, ugly woman, Luta, a few spaces back. A whip cracked, and we all jumped, frightened. We were naked. We did not want to feel it. "No talking in line," said a man. We were then silent. Luta need not have spoken as loudly as she had. I do not think the man would have minded it if we had spoken quietly among ourselves.

I was afraid of Luta. She was large and strong, and I could tell she did not like me.

"Next," said a man at a table, and we moved up one space.

Only two of the girls in this line had been in the slave wagon on the Argentum road with me, Emily and Luta.

Though Emily bore an Earth-girl name she was Gorean. On Gor Earth-girl names are commonly used as slave names. If you have an Earth-girl name it is probably, somewhere on Gor, being used as a slave name. Similarly, if you were to go to Gor and give that to them as your name they would assume immediately that you, too, bearing such a name, were a slave. And, indeed, if you were taken to Gor, I suppose you would be.

"Next," said the man at the table. We moved up another space.

I was not now collared. It had been removed from me a few Ehn ago, before I had been assigned to this line. I had worn it for only a few Ahn. Outside of Ar we had stopped at the office and holding area of a man associated with the various enterprises of Mintar, including his mills. There we were to be divided up and, with others, transferred to closed slave wagons. One does not usually take an open slave wagon on the streets of Ar, in deference to the sensibilities of free women. While others were in the holding area I was taken by Tenrak, which was, as I had later learned, the name of the leader of the two drivers, to the shop of a metal worker.

There something was done to me. Then I was returned to the holding area, now a slave. At the holding area I was put in a transfer collar. The others were already in theirs. These collars were color-coded for our destinations, some girls being delivered to one place and some to another. There is an ordinance in Ar, incidentally, that all female slaves must wear some visible token of bondage. This is commonly a collar.

Sometimes, too, however, it is a bracelet or anklet. This was the first time I had ever ridden in a common slave wagon.

My ankles were shackled about the central bar. The girls were shackled on the bar in the order of the drivers' delivery schedule, the first girls to be delivered being shackled closest to the wagon gate, and so on. Our wagon was checked at the great gate of Ar. A guardsman climbed into the back of the wagon, crouching down, doing this work. I, naked, in the colored-coded collar, my ankles chained, sheared, attracted no undue attention. I did cry out, however, for the guardsman, in leaving, touched me aggressively, and intimately. I recoiled, wildly, frightened, trying to cover myself. But he was then gone. I looked after him, shuddering. I was horrified. He had been so bold! But then, of course, I was only a slave. I saw Luta looking at me, with hatred. I dared Dot meet her eyes, and looked down. In a moment the wagon was passing through the great gate at Ar.