The Totems of Abydos

CHAPTER 5





Brenner sipped his coffee.

He looked down at the brunette. She was kneeling beside the small table on which she had placed the tray, behind which Brenner sat.

“Remain as you are,” said Brenner.

She looked well there, in the silk.

He put the cup down on the tray and leaned forward, reaching to his right. He put his hand fully in the glossy dark hair of the brunette, grasping it, and drew her head a little forward, toward him. Then he released her hair and she knelt back again. She had knelt on the right without having been told to do so. She had been trained to do so, of course, just she had been trained to set a table in the zardian fashion, and such. Most zards, you see, like most in Brenner’s species as well, and as he was, were right-handed. In this fashion she would be more convenient to hand. It might be mentioned, however, that, as she was a highly intelligent female, the appropriateness and naturalness of this position, its convenience, significance, and such, were quite obvious to her, quite aside from the sanctions of her training.

Brenner looked down upon her. It was hard for him to take his eyes off her.

“Earlier,” she said, “I had thought it disturbed you to have me at your feet.”

He regarded her, musingly.

They were in the room to which she had conducted Brenner.

It was a comfortable room, which contained a large, soft bed. It contained no window. Brenner had locked the door on the inside.

“One grows used to it,” said Brenner.

“You learn quickly,” she said.

There was, incidentally, only one chair in the room, that in which Brenner sat.

Brenner took a another sip of the coffee, a tiny sip, a lingering sip. He continued to regard the young woman, kneeling there, in the revealing silk, beside him, attendant upon him.

“I should not have you there,” he said.

“It is where I belong,” she said.

“We are sames, identicals,” he said.

“That is a pretense I have never found either plausible or congenial,” she said.

“I am a person,” he said.

“It is my hope that you are a man,” she said.

“You are a person,” he said.

“No,” she said.

“How then should I think of you?” he asked.

“I am a girl,” she said.

Brenner looked at her.

“It is common to think of women under contract, and female slaves, and such, as girls,” she said.

“Surely you find that grossly demeaning,” he said.

“I like it,” she said.

“Oh?” asked Brenner.

“I find it appropriate, and flattering,” she said. “And surely it is fitting, and obviously so, considering our status.”

“I see,” said Brenner. “It has more to do with status, and such.”

“Yes,” she said, “and with interest, and beauty, and how it is appropriate to relate to us, that sort of thing.”

“Then I shall call you a “girl,”” said Brenner, “that being appropriate for a woman such as you.”

“Exactly,” she smiled.

“You seem submissive, and docile,” he said.

“I am submissive and docile,” she said.

“You did not seem so earlier today,” he said.

“I am now,” she said.

He regarded her.

“You may beat me,” she said. “Implements for that purpose are available in the room.”

Brenner glanced about. To be sure, on the far wall there hung a whip, and a quirt. There also hung, here and there about the room, some other articles, a coil of rope, a pair of linked bracelets, some shackles, a chain and collar, and some thongs. There was a ring set in the far wall, and one in the floor, near the foot of the bed. There was also a bar in evidence, the latter fixed in the lower portion of the stout headboard of the bed, to which he supposed a woman, perhaps by tied, crossed wrists, perhaps on her back or belly, might be fastened.

“I shall consider it,” said Brenner.

She looked at him suddenly, frightened.

He suddenly realized that he could do that, if he wished. He did not think that the zard would object, assuming, of course, that her value was not reduced. Indeed, perhaps a beating might improve her value. Brenner suspected, for example, that the blonde’s value might be considerably increased by something of that sort. In any event, it seemed, at least for most practical purposes, that the zard would not be involved. The matter was primarily between him and the girl, or, as he had gathered from her glance, actually, rather, up to him.

He regarded her.

“You can do with me what you want,” she said, “that is, within reason, as I am a free woman.”

“And if you were a slave?” asked Brenner.

“Then,” she said, looking down, “you could do with me as you want.”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“I was upset!” she said.

He looked at her.

“Earlier you said you forgave me!” she said.

“I may rethink the matter,” said Brenner.

“Do you forgive me?” she asked.

“I have not decided,” he said.

“I see,” she said.

He regarded her. Her curves seemed incredibly delicious to him.

“I was cold, out in the mud, miserable, and barefoot, and I was not looking where I was going,” she said.

Brenner finished the coffee, and put down the cup.

“I should not have lost my temper, of course,” she said. “I realize that.”

“And perhaps you realize it with a special emphasis now,” said Brenner.

“Now that I am here, at your feet, and, as you doubtless must understand, much at your mercy?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes, of course,” she said.

“You were wearing a dress,” said Brenner.

“Yes,” she said. “Women at Company Station must wear skirts, dresses, and such things. They are not permitted masculine garb.”

“But such things,” said Brenner soberly, critically, “tend to emphasize gender differences.”

“Certainly,” she said, puzzled.

“Surely you regard that as wrong,” he said.

“I regard it as wrong not to emphasize such differences,” she said.

“Surely you object to being forced to wear dresses, and such things,” he said.

“No,” she said. “I want to wear such things. I love such things. And, too, I am pleased that we are forced to wear them. I enjoy having no choice in this matter. Such garmenture, and the coercions attached to it, speak to me of my differences from men, and of my own nature, and of the rightfulness and legitimacy of these differences, and of this nature. Too, it then makes it more difficult for a certain form of woman to imitate men, and to attempt to instill guilts in others, who would prefer not to follow their perverse example.”

“You know that women on the home world do not wear such things,” said Brenner.

“Perhaps they do in secret, with their lovers,” she said.

“Surely such things do not occur,” said Brenner.

“Perhaps not,” she said. “I would not know.”

“Are you from the home world?” asked Brenner.

“Once,” she said.

“What of your silk?” asked Brenner. “Surely you regard that as deplorably feminine.”

“Why deplorably?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” admitted Brenner. He didn’t. He supposed that perhaps it was his conditioning program which, in effect, had spoken. Conditioning programs are useful in the inculcation of values. They are useful in the production of uncritical, reflexive responses. They have many advantages, such as social control, the manufacture of consensus, and the protection of particular establishments, depending on the program in question. Also, of course, from the individual’s point of view, they can produce the comfort of unquestioned certitude and the illusion of knowledge. That they save the time and trouble of thought is another considerable advantage. It is not unusual for a puppet to interpret the jerking of its strings as the deliverances of rational intuition. That is part of the jerking of the strings. How very few individuals, incidentally, are even aware of their conditioning. It is rather as though colored glasses were strapped on them at birth and, as a consequence, they lived their lives seeing the world as green, and not even knowing they saw it as green. In a sense, of course, our sensors are such, too. We see the world in a given way, and few of us suspect, or understand, that it might be seen in an infinite number of alternative fashions. Brenner’s species did not live in the same world, experientially speaking, as the zards, or the teswits, or, say, the ant, the bat, and cuttlefish. Returning to conditionings, it must be understood that not all stings and shocks, all negative reinforcements, are as simplistic as those administered through electric grids, nor all rewards as obvious and naive as the food pellet rattling about in the feed pan. And if many individuals are not even aware of their conditioning, taking their conditioned responses as the deliverances of reason, or rational inspection, or insights into the nature of reality, or whatever, it is even less surprising that fewer individuals have the audacity or courage, or simple curiosity, to inquire into the nature, justification, or validity of these programs. That, in virtue of the program itself, part of which is to the effect that it itself may not be questioned, except perhaps in a superficial or token fashion, is dangerous, being attended with various risks to the individual, internal, such as self-doubts, miseries, and guilts, and external, such as social sanctions, which may range from ridicule and exclusion to death. It is not surprising that many individuals who pretend to undertake an inquiry into the validity of their conditioning programs will not cease their endeavors nor rest easy until they find themselves securely returned to the point they started from, whatever that point happens to be in the particular case.

But if conditioning programs are so effective, how is it that they are ever changed, or transcended, even over periods of generations? The answer to this is at least fourfold. First, they are not, as yet, at least, that effective. Second, not all conditioning programs are identical. Accordingly, the inconsistency generated by the collision of competitive conditioning programs necessitates adjustments, not all of which can be resolved easily by exterminating the adherents of the alternative program. Thirdly, such programs often encounter difficulties, such as reality. Fourthly, some individuals can think.

“If you think this is feminine,” she laughed, “you should see some of the diaphanous silks in the wardrobe.” She indicated a wardrobe against one wall. “Would you like me to silk myself in such?” she asked.

“No!” said Brenner. “Of course not.”

“You must understand,” she said, “that we are given no choice in what we wear upon the floor.”

“If you had your choice, what would you wear?” asked Brenner.

“This,” she smiled, “or such, or less.”

“It is rather brief,” he said.

“Do you object?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Nor do I,” she said.

“You are a very strange woman,” he said.

“How so?” she asked, puzzled.

“It seems you do not mind being a woman,” he said.

“I love being a woman,” she said. “I rejoice that I am a woman. I want to be a woman. But I want to be a true woman, a real woman, a loving woman, a feminine woman, not some political travesty that would make my very nature and body an embarrassment or an irrelevance.”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“My silk disturbs you, does it not?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Brenner. Or, perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that she, in such silk, disturbed him.

“I am sorry,” she said.

“Are you wearing anything under it?” asked Brenner.

“A bold question,” she said, “coming from one from the home world.”

“Are you?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

Her response confirmed his conjectures.

“It exhibits you—like an animal,” he said.

“I am an animal,” she said, “biologically.” She looked up at him. “It is my hope that you are one also.”

He looked at her.

“I am not an animal legally, of course,” she said, “as I am a free woman, and not a slave.” Slaves are legally animals, domestic animals.

“Save, of course,” said he, “that animals are no longer exhibited.” He referred, of course, to the home world.

“Say, then,” she said, “that it exhibits me—like a woman.”

“Yes,” he said. “It exhibits you—like a woman.”

“Yes!” she laughed.

“Do you enjoy being exhibited?” he asked.

“I enjoy being beautiful,” she said.

“Do you enjoy being displayed—exhibited?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I enjoy being displayed. I enjoy being exhibited.”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“It is my hope,” she said, “that you like what you see.”

He looked at her.

“Do you?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“You may do with me what you want, you know,” she said.

“Within reason,” said Brenner.

“Yes,” she smiled.

“Reason as determined by the zard,” said Brenner.

“Where females of our species are concerned,” she said, “he is tolerant and has a very broad concept of reasonableness.”

Brenner did not doubt it.

“Do you want me to like what I see?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Because you then think that your chances of being punished might be less?” he asked.

She put down her head. “That, too,” she said.

“How did you come to be under contract?” asked Brenner.

“Surely you can guess,” she said.

“You were in debt?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“You needed money?”

“No,” she said.

“But surely you placed yourself under contract?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“I do not understand,” he said.

“It was done to me,” she said. “I was sentenced to contract.”

“Why?” he asked.

“I liked men,” she said.

“Of course you liked men,” said Brenner. “On the home world we not only like all life forms, men, women, sponges, insects, grubs, and such, but we love them. It has to do with the brotherhood of life.”

“No,” she said. “I liked men.”

“Oh,” said Brenner.

“I wanted to be submissive to men, and docile in their presence.”

“As you were earlier today?” said Brenner.

“Certainly you find me submissive and docile now,” she said.

“Yes,” said Brenner.

“I do not speak of fits of anger, or petulance,” she said, “lapses to which I am occasionally susceptible, particularly under conditions of stress, as might be anyone, and for which, if you wish, I may be severely disciplined, but of fundamental, genetically determined, attitudes, and dispositions.”

“Genetically determined?” asked Brenner.

“One supposes so,” she said, “as they were utterly at odds with the prescriptions of my cultural milieu.”

“You do not believe in the “blank tablet” or “hollow body” theory?” asked Brenner.

“No,” she said. “I believe there are genetically coded dispositions to respond, and genetically coded criteria for what will fulfill the organism, doubtless the result of natural selections over millions of years, as well as genetic codings for hair and eye color, and such things. Too, I find the alternative frightful, for that would suggest, whether it is true or false, that the human being is nothing in itself, but is empty, and meaningless, that it has no nature, and, as a consequence, that it may be turned into anything those with power wish, and there is no measuring rod or standard internal to the organism with which to appraise these subsequently produced human artifacts. For example, those of the home world, the behavioral engineers, and such, seem to suppose that everyone would choose to produce the same engineered products as themselves, but that is certainly not necessarily the case. It would be just as easy, it seems, if what they believe is true, to produce populations with values quite other than those which they approve, indeed, populations with quite diverse, and perhaps even antithetical, sets of values. Moreover, there would seem to be, from their point of view, no more justification for one of these value sets than for another, except perhaps that one might be found distasteful to them, given their values, as theirs might be found distasteful to others, given their values. It is as easy to fill the hollow body with venom as it is syrup. It is as easy to write cruelty and terror upon the blank tablet as platitudes and nursery rhymes.”

“Go on,” said Brenner.

“I was curious about men,” she said. “I wondered what it would be, to be touched by them, to be held in their arms, to serve them, to have to obey them, to be owned by them.”

“Such are forbidden feminine impulses,” said Brenner, shocked.

“‘Feminine’ in the old sense,” she said.

“Yes,” agreed Brenner. ‘Feminine’ in the new sense meant, in effect, what ‘masculine’ used to mean in the old sense. On the other hand, as would be expected, ‘masculine’ on the home world now meant, in effect, what ‘feminine’ used to mean, in the old sense. These linguistic alterations were portions of the conditioning programs through which children were forced. To be sure, as we have suggested, these linguistic “reforms,” despite their political expedience, had not been successful. People tended to find new words for the old things. People, on the whole, continued to fit language to reality rather than reality to language. In such matters, reality continued to have the last word, so to speak.

“And forbidden, of course,” she said, “because they are very real.”

“Else there would be no point in disparaging such impulses, or attempting to prohibit them,” said Brenner.

“Precisely,” she said.

“But surely you are an unusual woman,” said Brenner, “that you would have such disgusting and terrible attitudes, or needs, or impulses.”

“Why are they disgusting or terrible?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Brenner. Once again, he didn’t. Once again, it seemed, something had spoken from him, which was not him. “But undoubtedly,” he said, “you are almost unique.”

“But why then the pervasiveness of the denunciations, all the social care taken to deny, or, if that is unsuccessful, to frustrate, suppress, and thwart such impulses?”

“I do not know,” said Brenner.

“I am sure they are widespread,” she said. “To be sure, most women live in terror of them, in fear of them. They are taught to pretend that such things, deep and meaningful within them, do not exist, or, if they sense them in themselves, that they must be ashamed of themselves, for being what they are. So the women think they are alone, and each feels isolated and miserable.”

“You think there are others like you?”

“Of course!” she said.

“Why then do we not hear more of this?” asked Brenner.

“Surely you do not mean in the media, which is controlled by the parties, by the establishments?”

“No,” he said.

“Many women fear to express these things,” she said, “and even those in whom they are recurrent and powerful, not just latent and insinuative, lurking in the shadows. Indeed, these things are so fearful to many that they attempt to prohibit them from even reaching consciousness, and they must do so in distorted ways, in mistakes of the tongue and pen, in recurrent images and thoughts, and, of course, in dreams, those doors to half-kept secrets.”

“How came you to contract?” asked Brenner.

“I made the mistake, if mistake it was,” she said, “of speaking of these things privately to certain friends, or those I thought were friends. I was reported to the local morality board. I should have denied everything, I suppose, but I did not. Rather I sought advice and counsel. I was given a stern scolding, and warning. Later, when I again appeared before the board, as was required, as I had been placed on probation, I was remanded to therapy, and, months later, by a higher board, to institutionalization. I tried to cure myself, but could not. Perhaps I should have pretended to be cured, but I was too honest, too frightened, too worried, to do so. I knew I was not cured. I still had impulses and feelings which I, at that time, interpreted as being symptoms of iniquity or disease. Why could I not be like others, a true person? Eventually I came under the care of a woman who was kind to me, and informed me that it was not wrong to have such impulses, only that in my case they were directed to the wrong objects, that, as I was a female, they should be directed toward other females, such as herself. I did not know what to make of this. I did not even, really, understand it. I was frightened. I had heard of such things, hints and such, but had always thought them strange, or, at least, uncongenial. Too, it did not seem to fit in with the personism I has been taught, which, presumably, she should exemplify, though she assured me, fervently, it not only did, but fulfilled exactly that personism. It seemed to me rather, however, that both of us, as females, belonged at the feet of men. She flew into a great rage at this and I realized I had touched something deep in her. I do not know if she rejected her sex and wished to be a man, having a woman at her feet, or if she, as a woman, frightened, was reacting hysterically, even savagely, against her own feelings and impulses.”

“You resisted her advances?” asked Brenner.

“Yes,” she said. “I was then, shortly thereafter, barefoot and in a hospital smock, called up before a disposition board. Based on her report, I was characterized as incurable, and as unfit to remain on the home world. I had to be dragged screaming from the room. Later, by a court, I was sentenced to contract. Months later my contract was put up for sale in Damascus, which is where my contract holder purchased it.”

Brenner regarded her. She was lovely. To be sure, he supposed it was wrong to be lovely, or, at least, a failing to be overcome. “So you are unfit to remain on the home world?” said Brenner.

“It seems so,” she said. “At any rate, it seems they do not want women like myself on the home world.”

“Are such things often done?” asked Brenner.

“It is my impression, gathered from cellmates, and such, that the home world rids itself of many women such as myself.”

Brenner thought of the tribute levies mentioned to him by Rodriguez. He supposed that they might play some similar role. Certainly the women chosen were supposed to be, at least upon the whole, if he could believe Rodriguez, sexually responsive, a feature, or defect, which would doubtless jeopardize their careers on the home world, at least if noted, or publicized. On the other hand, he supposed that many women on the home world might be sexually responsive. To be sure, it was one thing to be sexually responsive, and quite another to say anything about it, or do anything about it.

“I did see the woman under whose care I had been again,” said the brunette. “I saw her on home world, weeks later, at the holding area. We were both inside the wire, in camisks, and shackled. We pretended not to see one another.”

“What was she doing there?” asked Brenner.

“I expect it had to do with some political fallings out, or manipulations,” she said. “Competitions, eliminations of rivals, and such things. I suspect more than one woman, even highly placed women, has suffered such a fate.”

“At the hands of other women?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Perhaps the other women found it amusing.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

“Do you know what became of her?” asked Brenner.

“No,” she said. “I trust she is happy.”

“You do not hold your own contracting against her?”

“No,” she said.

Brenner nodded.

“Besides,” she said, “I have no doubt that I would have eventually, given my nature, and the openness of my case, and such, even without her, have been consigned to contract.”

Brenner nodded. That did not seem unlikely to him, given what he had heard.

“The other woman,” he said.

“She in whose care I had been placed?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Brenner. “Was she, or her contract, sold on Damascus?”

“I do not know,” she said. “But I do not think so.”

“If her fate were as you seem to conjecture,” said Brenner, “that she, too, had been contracted, and that hers was a contracting to which she was an involuntary party, then it seems that she, or her contract, would have been disposed of in a market from which she, or it, could not be traced.”

“Yes,” she said.

“You know that your contract was vended in such a market,” said Brenner.

“Yes,” she said.

“And that you cannot be traced?”

“Yes,” she said.

Brenner looked down at the liqueur, which he had not yet touched.

“There are many such markets,” she said, “Naxos, for example, and Sybaris, and Megara.”

Brenner did not take his eyes from the soft, ruby fluid in the small glass. He could see a lamp obliquely reflected in its surface. “And doubtless women might be shipped from such worlds to other worlds,” he said.

“Of course,” she said, “as I was brought to Abydos from Damascus.”

“It is interesting to conjecture the fate of such a woman on, say, an openly stratified world.”

She looked at him, puzzled.

“A world, for example,” he said, “in which pretenses are not maintained with respect to rank and hierarchy.”

“A world on which there might be slaves?” she said.

“Yes,” said Brenner.

“Doubtless on such a world she would learn quickly to obey and serve well,” she said.

“As would you?” asked Brenner.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

He gazed upon her. He found her very beautiful. She put her head down.

“Do you regard yourself as iniquitous, or ill?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I regard myself as a woman.”

“That was your crime?”

“Yes,” she smiled. “That was my crime.”

“Sexual needs do not exist,” said Brenner, quoting one of the slogans of the home world.

“I have sexual needs,” she said. “And they are such that only one such as you can satisfy them.” She looked up at Brenner. “This, you see,” she said, “puts me much at your mercy.”

“You should have knelt before my friend, Rodriguez,” said Brenner.

“He is not of the home world, is he?” she asked.

“Once, I think,” said Brenner. “But he has been many places.”

“That seems clear,” she said.

Instantly Brenner was jealous of Rodriguez.

“It is before him that you should have knelt,” he said, angrily.

“No,” she said.

“No?” asked Brenner.

“I am not discontented,” she said, “that I was called forth to kneel before you.”

“Oh?” said Brenner.

“No,” she said. “I had no choice in the matter, but had I choice, it would have been before you that I would have knelt.”

“Better Rodriguez,” said Brenner, angrily. “He knows what to do with a woman there.”

“I am sure he does,” she said.

“You would fit in well with him,” said Brenner. Then he laughed.

“What is wrong?” she asked.

“I was thinking of the women of the home world,” he said.

“In what way?” she asked.

“It is absurd!” he laughed.

“What is?” she asked.

“Think of the women of the home world,” said Brenner.

“Yes?” she said.

“Rodriguez thinks that women wish to be dominated, to be subdued, to be subjugated.”

“Perhaps they do,” she said.

“He thinks it is what females want! Can you believe that?”

“Yes,” she said.

“How can you believe that?” he asked.

“I am a female,” she said.

“Surely it is not what you want,” he said.

“I am a female,” she said.

“It is what you want?” he asked.

“Do not make me say it,” she whispered.

“Speak,” he said.

“Yes!” she whispered.

“You want it?”

“Yes!” she said.

“Do not expect such from me,” he said.

“No, sir,” she said.

“I shall respect you,” he assured her.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

He looked at her.

“You chained me well!” she said.

He shrugged, angrily.

“Quite well,” she said. “And when you unchained me you freed the clip on the floor ring first. Do you not know why you did that?”

“Why?” asked Brenner, angrily.

“To have me in the collar, and on the chain leash, longer,” she said.

“Nonsense,” said Brenner, angrily.

“And you ordered me upstairs, a female, in suitable fashion, decisively, familiarily, even vulgarly.”

“It just slipped out,” said Brenner.

“It is interesting that it slipped out that way,” she said. “Too, I liked it. I oiled when you said it.”

“‘Oiled’?” said Brenner.

“Never mind,” she said. She put down her head. She blushed scarlet.

“I must be leaving,” said Brenner.

She looked up at him, suddenly, genuinely frightened. “No!” she said.

“Yes,” said Brenner.

She crawled quickly to him and put her hands, pleadingly, at the sides of his knees. “You cannot leave!” she said. “It will be thought that I have failed, that you do not like me, that I was not found pleasing! Please show me mercy! I am sorry if I was cross with you today. Forgive me! I am on my knees before you, contrite and helpless! I beg it on my knees, helplessly! Please do not go away! Do not abandon me now, unless it be your intent to see me severely punished! Is this your vengeance upon me? To so arrange matters that I shall be severely punished? Please, no! I do not want to be punished! Have pity on me! I am a woman of your own species! If you wish to see me punished, tie me, and do so yourself! It is, after all, you whom I have offended! Teach me then that my behavior will not be overlooked. Teach me then that I may not do such things with impunity! I acknowledge that I behaved badly! I acknowledge that I deserve punishment! But I beg you to be kind, and not to turn me over to the mercies of the zard!”

Brenner regarded her, sternly.

Swiftly she knelt back, removing her hands from his knees, putting them, palms down, on her thighs, bowing her head, submissively.

“I beg you to stay here tonight,” she said. “I beg it, weeping, on my knees! The room is warm. The bed is soft. You need do nothing! I will not trouble you! You will not even know I am here.”

Brenner smiled to himself. He thought it might be difficult to overlook the fact that such a creature was with him.

“Sleep me naked, uncovered, on the floor beside your bed, or on the floor at the foot of your bed, where you would be less likely to see me,” she said.

He rather thought he would prefer to see her on the floor at the side of his bed, where he might occasionally, as it pleased him, look upon her.

“Please, sir,” she said. It pleased him to be addressed with respect by a woman. It was not an experience which he had had on the home world. Indeed, in several of the states of the home world legislation prohibited the tendering of such terms of respect by females to males. It was claimed by the morality officers, whose opinions and decisions were often fraught with significant consequences for careers, incomes and such, that they were demeaning, degrading, debasing, devolved, and such things, the usual epithets the intention of which was not to describe the world but to influence behavior. Whereas Brenner, some months ago, might have been willing to regard such terms as perilous anachronisms, or dangerous throwbacks to more primitive, violent times, he was no longer sure of it. What if it were acceptable, or even appropriate, for females to show males respect, he wondered. Certainly he knew enough ethology to recognize that deference behaviors, submission behaviors, and such, were pervasive in the animal kingdom, and were particularly prominent amongstst mammals, and amongstst them, amongstst primates. To be sure, it is one thing for something to be a fact and another for it to be morally justified, and such. For example, from the fact that a human being needs oxygen to live, as a fact, it does not follow logically that it has a right to breathe. That is an independent question. Similarly, from the fact that a male requires dominance to actualize his masculinity, rather than deny it, and thereby render himself miserable and shorten his life, it does not follow that he has any right to be himself. On the other hand, by parity of reason, it does not follow, either, that he has a duty to suffocate or shorten his own life. Two different sorts of things are involved, two realms, so to speak, that of fact and that of morality. These realms appear to be logically independent. It is not logically inconsistent, for example, to prefer the destruction of the cosmos to the fulfillment of one’s own nature. Indeed, perhaps it is better, or morally superior, or more fitting, that the cosmos be destroyed than that one be true to oneself. To be sure, Brenner was not satisfied with this approach to matters. Certainly more than logic was involved. There was even the question, an interesting one, as to whether or not there was a moral realm, so to speak, a moral order of existence, objective rights and wrongs, moral facts, like planets and stars, but intangible and invisible, etc., as opposed to preferences, rhetorics, and such. It seemed to be one thing to measure mountains and quite another to take the volume of value, one thing to ascertain the location of iron and another the coordinates of right, one thing to weigh sand and another to weigh competitive moralities. Indeed, who shall we trust to design the scales for such comparisons? But Brenner was certainly not willing to relinquish the familiar stanchions of good and right. He was rather concerned with whether or not they had been viewed askew, or misrepresented, or mislocated, or twisted into odd shapes, to become instrumentalities, or tools, for certain parties. The way people were might also be worth considering, thought Brenner, heretical though the thought was, and the way they really were, he had in mind, as opposed to how it was insisted that they be, to answer to one political purpose or another, purposes externally imposed, purposes subserving the ends of one idiosyncratic, aggressive, organized, power-grasping group or another. Perhaps there was no logical connection between, say, nature, and morality, but there were at least two interesting empirical possibilities. For example, what of a real connection, in virtue of law, such as that between a nature and what would satisfy it, just as there might be a real connection, in virtue of law, between the nature of an organism and a sort of nourishment, given which it would thrive? If there were no moral facts, thought Brenner, short of stipulating them, or creating them, there seemed as much reason to stipulate the facts conducive to health and fulfillment as those inducing to sickness and frustration. And if there are moral facts, as Brenner rather hoped, rationally or irrationally, why should this mysterious moral realm not be, one, empirically or, two, rationally correlated with nature, if not logically? Such things did not seem actually impossible. Consider, first, the interesting possibility of an empirical correlation between nature and a generated morality. Analogously, consider the mystery of the emergence of consciousness, whether in birds, frogs, or men, which seemed an order of being quite unlike that of organic circuitry. There are thoughts. Where are they in the brain? Is a thought four centimeters long? Does it weigh seven grams? If the brain could generate thought, why could nature not generate a morality? Is that any more mysterious? To be sure, the fact would not logically entail the value, any more than matter logically entails the thought. The connection would not be one of logic, one of meanings, unless one rigged the meanings, unless one, so to speak, begged the question. Rather the relationship would be one of reality. This possibility, of course, would at best generate a natural morality in the sense of a natural conception of morality. In short, strictly, nature would have it such, in virtue of law, that a given organism would conceive of right and wrong in a certain way, at least under certain conditions, such as the possession of suitable information, and such. The naturally generated morality, or conception of morality, might or might not be in the creature’s best interest. For example, if nature generated, say, a conception of morality which required the organism to commit suicide, this would not be in the creature’s best interest, at least if the creature were moral, according to its own lights. Given natural selections, of course, it is unlikely such an unusual morality would be perpetuated. There are, of course, millions of extinct species. Some of these may, in effect, throughout the galaxy, have committed moral suicide, sacrificing themselves to others, starving themselves, denying themselves, and such. Perhaps this could be the consequence of a sort of degenerative momentum, rather analogous to the incurving of a predator’s canines, which development, past a certain point, becomes not only useless but destructive, leading to extinction. The other possibility, connected with nature, is more interesting and plausible. On this approach, one devises a morality in the light of reflective consciousness, a morality which is natural in the sense of being compatible with nature and designed to fulfill it, but which is not an uncritical consequence of nature. On this approach there is a rational correlation between nature and morality, rather than a simple empirical one. This approach would possess at least four desiderata: it would preserve the requirement of commitment, the act whereby one accepts a morality; it would produce a morality subject to rational review, treating it neither as merely another myth, as another obsolescent absolutism, nor as a mere reflexive product of organic interactions; it would preserve a distinction between the realms of “is” and “ought,” i.e., between the descriptive and the normative; and it would be not only congenial to nature, but designed with its fulfillment in mind, which, to be sure, in itself, represents a value commitment, but one not obviously inferior to others. In such a morality there would be a place for values commonly neglected by other moralities, such as pride, honor, discipline, responsibility, glory, adventure and victory. Moralities need not have as their object the pacification and taming of men; they may also have as their object their heroism and greatness. To be sure, there are many other possibilities, as well, in such matters. One might accept a morality on authority, for example, one of the numerous moralities purportedly handed down by one god or another, who seem concerned, on the whole, to tell their respective priesthoods what they wish to hear. Another obvious possibility is to accept the morality of one’s milieu, as absurd as it may be. This possibility is popular with the ignorant, the simple, and the stupid. Another possibility, of course, is to pretend to accept the morality of one’s milieu, as absurd as it may be. This possibility is popular with the informed, the complex, and the wise.

Brenner regarded her.

She had lifted her head then and Brenner saw that there were tears in her eyes.

“Very well,” said Brenner. “I will stay the night.”

“You will take pity on me?” she said, hopefully.

“Yes,” he said.

“As a male upon a female?”

“If you like,” he said.

“Thank you!” she said, delightedly. “Thank you!”

“Do not approach more closely!” he warned her.

“Yes, sir!” she said.

He was not certain he could trust himself.

She leaned back, on her heels, happily. How beautiful, how sexual, she seemed!

He glanced uneasily at the large, soft bed.

“Oh, the bed is yours, of course!” she said. “I am often slept beside it, naked, on the floor. I would request a sheet, if I might, to cover myself, if you deign to grant it to me.”

He regarded her.

“I am often slept there,” she said, “when my contract holder’s client is finished with me, at least for the time. Then, later, perhaps as he awakens refreshed, he may order me again to his side.”

“And you are naked?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “In that way I am more convenient for the guest. He need not strip me.”

“Dreadful,” said Brenner, shuddering. On the other hand, he had to admit that the thought of her there, lying there on the floor, beside the bed, naked, perhaps under a sheet, summonable to his side in the night or early morning, was not without its appeal.

“Many women,” she said, “are not even permitted the dignity of the couch.”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“May I rise to my feet?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said.

There was a tiny sound of the disk against the chain. Brenner was curious to see that device more closely, but he did not call this to her attention.

She went to the door and checked it, to make certain, apparently, that Brenner had locked it from the inside. Then she stood there, with her back to the door, smiling, and her hands behind her, leaning back against the door. Her hands might have been cuffed behind her, Brenner thought. She looked at him, happily. “Thank you for remaining the night,” she said.

Brenner shrugged.

“You have not finished your liqueur,” she pointed out.

He lifted the tiny glass and stood up. He approached to where, now wide-eyed, she stood by the door.

Her shoulders were very white, and soft, and well set off by the yellow of the silk. Her hands, behind her, drawing her shoulders back, accentuated her figure, excitingly, subtly. Brenner supposed that women were sometimes tied in that fashion, for such a purpose, in slave markets.

“You may have half of it,” he said.

“No!” she said.

“Please,” he said.

“I have not had anything like that since I have been on contract,” she said.

“Please,” he said.

She drew her hands from behind her back and took the tiny glass, looking up at him. She steadied her right hand with her left. “Thank you,” she whispered. Then, carefully, she drank a little less than half of the ruby-colored beverage. “Thank you,” she said, again, handing him back the glass.

Brenner finished it, and put the glass back on the table. He then turned to look at her again, she standing by the door. The palms of her hands were now back, at her sides, against the door. “It was not too good, was it?” she smiled. “No,” said Brenner.

“This is Company Station,” she said.

Brenner grinned.

“But I loved it,” she said. “You are very kind. Thank you.”

Brenner shrugged.

“Little things mean much to us,” she said. “Some men give us a candy, or a pastry, in a wrapper.”

Brenner nodded.

“Generally we are fed only with mush or gruel,” she said. “The zard has read of diets for us.”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“For which,” she said, “we are muchly charged.”

Brenner did not respond.

“If we eat less, we are charged more.”

“You are nonetheless paying off your contract?” asked Brenner.

“No,” she said. “Things are so arranged that we cannot pay it off. I had not realized that at the time of my contracting. We are helpless. We cannot free ourselves from our contracts.”

“I see,” said Brenner. He had, of course, surmised this, from remarks of Rodriguez.

“Why did you ask for permission to rise to your feet earlier?” he asked.

“Why should I not have asked?” she asked.

Brenner found it difficult to respond to this. To be sure, she was a female, and under contract.

“Some men,” she said, “require us to keep one knee on the floor or ground at all times, except when we are lying down. To be sure, we may depart from this injunction in certain transitional movements, as in ascending to the couch, keeping our bellies in contact at all times with its side or surface.”

Brenner regarded her, she standing there, her back to the door.

“I am here for your pleasure, you know,” she said.

“You are safe,” he said.

“Thank you for staying the night,” she said. “Thank you for the liqueur.”

“It is nothing,” he said.

“Do you not find me attractive?” she asked.

“It is immoral for a man to find a female attractive,” said Brenner.

“Why?” she asked.

“Surely you know,” said Brenner, angrily.

“No,” she said.

“It degrades her,” said Brenner, “to see her in such terms.”

“Why?” she asked.

“It debases her,” said Brenner. “It makes of her a mere object.”

“Surely you know that is false,” she said.

“No!” said Brenner.

“It is not my fault that not all women are attractive,” she said. “That not all are attractive does not mean that it is wrong for some to be attractive, if they are.”

“Attractiveness in a woman, as you must know,” said Brenner, “is a most deplorable feature, a most unfortunate and dangerous property. It can detract attention from personness.”

She regarded him, puzzled.

“It is easy to see why you have been removed from the home world,” said Brenner.

“Doubtless,” she said.

“As you know,” he said, “many women on the home world have had recourse to cosmetic surgery, to control and subdue their beauty, indeed, in many cases, to remove it altogether.”

“I know,” she whispered, shuddering.

“And this sacrifice did they make in the name of personhood.”

“And thus did they improve their careers undoubtedly!” she said.

Brenner shrugged. He did not doubt that, on the whole, the women who were “persons,” usually the homely, the fat, the belligerent, and such, discriminated unmercifully against their more beautiful sisters. There seemed to be some sort of instinctual enmity between these “persons” and these other creatures, who were doubtless less than persons. Brenner was not quite clear on the source of this obvious hatred. To be sure, it was true that the more beautiful women tended to bring higher prices in slave markets and such. Did the women who were “persons” hate these others because they feared they might become like them, so pathetically needful and beautiful, or because they suspected they could never become like them?

“Attractiveness in a woman is populationally dangerous,” said Brenner.

“Surely you are aware that unattractive women can be bred,” she said, “and that conception in any woman may be controlled.”

Brenner shrugged, irritably.

“I could not conceive now, if I wished to do so,” she said. “It is chemically precluded. The zard has seen to it.”

“Doubtless,” said Brenner.

“What is personness?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” admitted Brenner.

“Surely we must not limit it to such accidents as having had a course in algebra or political science?”

“I suppose not,” said Brenner.

“Perhaps it is to be equated with subscribing to a certain platform of political values?” she asked. “Perhaps that is the touchstone of personness?”

“Perhaps,” said Brenner.

“But what if those values are treacherous, if they are inimical to, or betray, or deny, or make impossible, the fulfillment of the whole person, in her biological and emotional nature?”

“Such factors are unimportant,” said Brenner. “They may be ignored.”

“I do not regard them as unimportant,” she said, “nor do I choose to ignore them.”

“Disagreement with the prescribed values, as they exist currently,” said Brenner, “is a sign of immaturity, ignorance, stupidity, iniquity, or insanity.”

“And tomorrow,” she said, “something else will be a sign of such things.”

“Doubtless,” said Brenner.

“What is the criterion?” she asked. “What is the standard?”

“I do not know,” said Brenner.

“Surely it is what we are, really, our own nature, and what will fulfill us,” she said.

“The prescribed values are such,” said Brenner.

“You do not believe that, do you?” she asked.

“No,” said Brenner, angrily. “I don’t!”

“Nor do I,” she smiled.

Brenner looked away.

“You are angry,” she said. “I am sorry.”

Brenner did not respond.

“There may, of course,” she said, “be different sorts of human beings. That is an interesting possibility. But if that is true, then it would seem irrational to require all, or the whole, to subscribe to the values of some, or a part.”

“If it pleases you,” said Brenner, angrily, “the values of the home world are not accepted, even by members of our own species, in many places in the galaxy.” This would be particularly true, of course, on the sorts of worlds Rodriguez had characterized as “strong worlds.”

“I know,” she said.

“You seem highly intelligent,” said Brenner.

“I am intelligent,” she said. “Do you think we become less intelligent if we are put under contract, or if a brand is put in our flesh, or our throat is encircled with a locked collar?”

“Of course not!” he said.

“I am not stupid,” she said.

“I know,” said Brenner.

“Does that dismay you?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“I sense that I am not as intelligent as you,” she said, “but I am not stupid.”

“Come now,” he said. “It is well known that women are much more intelligent than men.”

“That is ridiculous,” she said.

“The tests prove it,” he said.

“As they once purported to prove that the intelligence of men and women was identical, by balancing masculine and feminine items in the test, and summating statistically. One begins with the proposition to be proved, and then designs the test in such a way as to confirm it. Very scientific! Some types of items are such that women tend to be better at them than men, but there are also types of items, though this is not much publicized, at which men tend to be better than women. All that is done now is to define intelligence in terms of tests constructed largely in terms of feminine items, on which sort of items, as might be expected, women tend statistically to do better than men, particularly masculine men. The facts seem to be that there is a feminine sort of intelligence and a masculine sort of intelligence, and that they are not identical. It is difficult then to crosscorrelate the tests without summations which blur the interesting differences. Too, intelligence seems well understood as being much richer than a set of responses to a particular test. Surely it has something to do with judgmental assessments in actual situations, sensitivity to numerous factors in a real world, organizational capacity, ability to plan, to look ahead, with creativity, with imagination, and such things.”

“Perhaps,” said Brenner.

“The fact that I am intelligent, and have feelings, and such,” she said, “would, I hope, make me more, and not less, attractive to you.”

Brenner was silent.

“I have heard that such things tend to raise the price of slaves,” she said.

“I have heard that, too,” said Brenner.

“All this talk of objects, and such,” she said, “is stupid. It assumes a man would be as content with a mindless machine, or an inflated dummy, as a live female.”

Brenner nodded. He had never really understood the value of such propaganda, even to those who devised it. On the other hand, he granted that he might be naive. Perhaps it did have an appeal to certain sorts of minds, perhaps to those incapable of reason.

“To be sure,” she said, “it is not unusual for a woman, upon occasion, wearying of the platitudes of personness, the complexities of banal, tortuous interrelationships, and such, to wish to be handled and treated as an object, not a mindless object, or an inflated object, perhaps one filled with air, one without feelings, or such, of course, but rather as an intelligent, fully sentient, fully emotional object, who understands that she is now to be put, whether she wishes it or not, to the purposes of another. In this way, she rejoices to be reduced upon occasion to her feminine essentials.”

“I shall not listen to this sort of thing,” Brenner informed her.

“It disturbs you?” she asked.

“Yes!” he said.

“But you will still stay the night?” she asked, anxiously.

“Yes,” he said.

“You would prefer the blonde?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“You do find me attractive?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Even though you suspect it may be immoral to do so?”

“Yes,” he said, angrily.

“It is not immoral to do so,” she said.

Brenner shrugged. He supposed that was true.

“It is even natural to do so,” she said, “I would think, assuming that I am attractive, and that you are sensitive to such things.”

“One supposes so,” said Brenner. It was all he could do to refrain from leaping up, seizing her, crushing her to him, bruising her lips, and flinging her to the bed beneath him, to ravish her.

“A woman prefers to relate to a male who is more intelligent than she,” she said. “This does not mean we think that we are stupid, or anything. It is rather merely that we prefer, no matter how intelligent we are, for the male to be even more intelligent. That is a difficulty faced by some highly intelligent women, to find a male to whom it is appropriate, and natural, for them to subject themselves.”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“To be sure,” she said, “the crucial matter is not really intelligence, particularly in a narrow sense, but the wholeness of the relationship, and her needs. In the human species, males, if not crippled, are dominant. There are in our species, as in all others, dominance/submission ratios, and, in ours, as in several others, a significant sexual and psychological dimorphism between the sexes. In our species, as in many others, the female cannot be fulfilled without, in one way or another, in effect, being in the power of the male. To be sure, there can be various pathological substitutes for the male, such as a myth, another woman, a movement, a religion, the state, and so on, but these are always ultimately inadequate. Accordingly the crux is the domination which she requires. And thus, for example, even slaves who doubtless upon some occasions are far more intelligent than their masters, squirm beggingly, pleadingly, helplessly, rapturously, in their arms, owned in a sense far deeper than those to which experts in property law are accustomed. To be sure, the ideal is that she shall be, or know, or sense herself to be, less intelligent, at least in a full, generalized sense of intelligence, than he within whose sphere of domination she finds herself.”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“And I,” she said, “not only in the narrower senses of intelligence, but also, more importantly, in this larger sense of intelligence, accept you as my master.”

Brenner did not respond to this. Although he certainly did not regard her as stupid, but, rather, indeed, as of extremely high intelligence, he did not, in virtue of their interactions, and his sensing of them, feel inferior to her. He was intellectually, if not ideologically, comfortable with her. He regarded himself, indeed, in some subtle sense, as her master. Certainly it was clear that she belonged at the feet of someone, and perhaps someone such as himself.

“But it is not my intention to disturb you,” she said. “Rather let me reiterate my gratitude that you will remain the night, and for the liqueur, which is much more appreciated than I suspect you can understand.” She smiled at him. “I can still taste it,” she said.

Brenner wondered if he kissed her, if he, too, might taste the liqueur, its syrupy, ruby sweetness lingering on the softness of her lips.

“Is there anything that I might now do for you,” she asked, “any way in which I might serve you?”

“You are prepared to serve me?” asked Brenner.

“Of course,” she said. “I am a female.”

Brenner regarded her, standing there, by the door.

“May I serve you?” she asked.

“No!” said Brenner. “No!”

“Then, if I may,” she said, “and you have no further need of me, I think I shall retire for the night.”

“It is early,” said Brenner.

“But if you have no further need of me?”

“Of course,” said Brenner. “You may retire.”

“Thank you,” she said, approaching him.

“What are you doing?” he cried. He stepped back, quickly, frightened.

She had come to kneel before him, and had put her head down , to his feet. She looked up at him. “It is customary,” she said, “that we exhibit deference to the clients of our contract holder, before retiring.”

“What was it your intention to do?” he asked.

“To press my lips to your feet, to kiss them, thus, in one of many ways, exhibiting deference,” she said.

“Do not do so!” he said.

“Yes, sir,” she said. She stood up, near the bed.

“What are you doing!” he cried.

She looked at him, puzzled. “I am preparing to retire,” she said. “I am removing my silk, that it not be soiled.”

Brenner sat down in the chair. He looked away. He heard a rustle of silk.

“May I have the use of a sheet?” she asked.

“Certainly,” he said.

He heard a sheet drawn from the bed. In a moment then, he understood that she was lying beside his chair, to the right, between the chair and the bed. She would be to the left of the bed, as one would face its foot.

He heard the movement of the sheet, a tiny noise, and the sound of her body, lying to his right, almost within reach.

“Are you naked?” he asked, not looking.

“I have the sheet,” she said. “It covers me.”

“Aside from that?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said.

He still did not dare to look at her. He found the thought of her lying there, naked, within the sheet, on the dark, hard, polished boards of the floor, disturbing.

“You do not care to look at me?” she said.

Brenner did not answer.

“Have I been displeasing?” she asked.

Brenner did not answer.

“There are instruments in the room which may be used in my subjugation,” she said.

Brenner was silent.

“What is it you fear?” she asked.

“Nothing!” said Brenner.

“Do you fear you will be tempted to call me to your side in the night?” she asked.

“No,” said Brenner. “No!”

“I would have to obey you, you know,” she said.

“Do not even speak so,” he said.

“Do you fear rather that it would be I, that it would be I who might approach you in the night,” she asked, “piteous, begging, perhaps even daring to touch you?”

“You?” said Brenner.

“Yes,” she said, “I.”

“That would be absurd,” he said.

“It is not absurd,” she whispered.

Brenner clenched his fists.

“You may prevent that,” she said, “by gagging and chaining me, and putting me where I cannot reach you. I will then be unable not only to reach you but even to beg for the assuagement of my needs.”

“Sexual needs?” inquired Brenner.

“Of course,” she said. “And in the profound and holistic sense in which a woman has such needs.”

“Such needs do not exist,” said Brenner.

“Is that why the home world must go to such lengths to deny them, to thwart, and suppress them?” she asked.

“You may have the bed, of course,” said Brenner.

“It is I who am under contract,” she said, “not you.”

“I shall sleep on the floor,” said Brenner.

“The bed is for the client,” she said, “and for me, only upon his sufferance.”

“I can order you to its surface,” he said.

She was silent. Brenner gathered that he could, indeed, do so.

“Please get into the bed,” said Brenner.

“Yes, sir,” she said. He heard the sound of the bed, receiving her slight weight.

“Please look upon me,” she said.

Brenner turned about. She was small on the large bed, kneeling on its surface, the sheet clutched about her.

“The bed is large,” she said. “There is much room. We can both lie upon it. We need not touch. You can bind and gag me, if you wish.”

“It is early,” said Brenner, uneasily.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I will sit here, and think,” said Brenner.

“May I have permission to leave the bed?” she asked.

“Of course,” said Brenner.

“May I beg to sleep upon the floor?” she asked.

“I suppose, if you wish it,” he said.

She moved gracefully, with a silken movement from the bed, and went to the wardrobe. Brenner refused to watch her at the wardrobe. He heard a tiny noise, as of a glass stopper removed from a bottle. A sudden fragrance, subtle but insinuative, indefinable, exciting, permeated the room. He heard the stopper replaced in the bottle, and the bottle returned to a shelf. She, and this scent, approached, and then she, half sitting, half lying, was again at the side of the bed, to Brenner’s right.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

“What have you done?” he asked.

“I have freshened my perfume,” she said. “We often do that, when we have a guest.”

“It is a different perfume,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“It seems you desire to appeal to many senses,” he said.

“Of course,” she laughed. “Do you like it?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Even though I am a free woman?” she asked.

“I do not understand,” he said.

“It is a perfume of slaves,” she said. Then she snuggled down on the boards.

Brenner was alarmed. The perfume was heady, and the understanding that it was a slave perfume made him almost scream with need.

“You torture me,” he said.

“I am doing nothing,” she said. “I am just lying here. You may beat me, if you wish.”

“A cuffing might do you good,” he said, angrily.

“Quite possibly,” she said.

“I think you would make an excellent slave,” he said.

“If I were a slave, I would hope so,” she said, “as I would wish to live.”

Brenner growled, angrily.

“I may one day be a slave,” she said. “It is my understanding that that is a common fate for women under contract.”

“Perhaps,” said Brenner.

“If I were a slave,” she asked, “would you like to own me?”

“No!” said Brenner, angrily.

“You are apparently not ready to retire,” she said.

“No!” said Brenner. How absurd seemed the thought of trying to rest, let alone getting any sleep, lying there in the darkness, with that perfume in the air, understanding its meaning, knowing the proximity, and the nature and femininity, of the woman who wore it.

“I gather,” she said, “that with one such as you I may do much what I please.”

“For the moment,” said Brenner, carefully.

“I am not accustomed to being treated with such lenience,” she said.

“If you are going to be up,” he said, “get dressed!”

Quickly, clutching the sheet about her, she rose up and went to the wardrobe again. He did not, of course, watch her, as he was a gentleman, so to speak.

“I am dressed,” she announced.

Brenner regarded her, stunned.

“Cover yourself!” he said.

Laughing, she put the sheet again about her. Beneath it now she wore not the yellow silk, but another, a clinging, diaphanous scarlet silk. Her shoulders and belly were bared, and her left thigh. Her breasts were beautiful, sweet and full, in a soft halter of crossed silken bands. The drape of silk, open on the left, was low on her belly. It swirled about her ankles.

She sat on the floor, her knees drawn up, her back against the side of the bed, near him, the sheet wrapped demurely about her. She even tucked it more closely, more modestly, about her. This irritated him. She looked up, smiling. He could see her bared feet, and ankles, beneath the sheet. On her left ankle was the chain, and disk. He would have liked to have looked more closely at that. He did not do so, of course. He turned his eyes away.

“It is warm in here,” she said.

That was true. It probably had to do with comfort zones somewhat other than those which those of Brenner’s species might regard as optimum.

“With one such as you, it is true, is it not,” she asked, “that I may do much what I please?”

“Of course,” said Brenner.

“May I not then remove the sheet?” she asked.

“If you wish,” said Brenner, angrily.

“Surely it does not matter,” she said, “as you do not look upon me.”

Brenner kept his eyes away, angrily.

“And as you are of the home world,” she said, “it cannot matter anyway. One such as you, a true person, of the home world, merely accidentally male, anatomically, would scarcely notice such a thing. It would be meaningless to him.

“Of course, of course,” said Brenner, sweating.

“With one such as you I am safe.”

“Of course,” Brenner granted her.

He heard the rustle of the sheet. He also sensed that she had changed her position. “There,” she said. “That is better.”

He looked upon her, and gasped. She had moved a little, and now, where she had earlier knelt, half sat, half knelt, her weight much on her right thigh and the palms of her hands. The sheet had been put on the floor about her, in a circular pattern. In this fashion it contrasted with the dark boards of the floor, and the scarlet of the silk. As she was positioned, her left thigh was bared, a consequence of the draping of the silk doubtless, which silk, it seemed, doubtless inadvertently, like the sheet, was arranged flowingly, and beautifully, one might even have thought, did one not know better, artfully.

“It seems,” said Brenner, angrily, “that you choose to torture me.”

“You are of the home world,” she said. “Surely, in virtue of your conditioning, how I am, or might appear, does not matter. In virtue of your conditioning you cannot see me as what I am, a woman.”

“It seems you wish to be seen as an object,” he said.

“A woman,” she said.

“An object!” he said.

“An object of desire, I trust,” she said.

Brenner was silent, angry.

“A woman, the whole woman,” she said, “wishes to be seen as an object of desire.”

“You are sexual,” he said, angrily.

“Is that a reproach?” she asked.

He did not answer.

“Yes,” she said. “I am sexual! I do not deny it any longer. I am tired of denying it. I am tired of pretending to be what I am not.”

“You must keep such weaknesses to yourself,” he said.

“That is no more a weakness than the fact that I can think, that I can feel, that I breathe, that my heart beats.”

“Then it is an ugliness,” said Brenner.

“No!” she said. “No more than those other things, no more than thought and feeling, no more than breathing and the beating of the heart!”

Brenner regarded her.

“It is not ugly,” she said. “It is beautiful!”

Brenner did not respond to her.

“Do you find me ugly?” she asked.

“No,” said Brenner.

“I am pleased,” she said.

“Doubtless many men have put you well to their purposes,” he said, angrily.

“Yes!” she said. “They have! And I have served them well, or to the best of my ability, and sometimes in terror!”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“They get what they want from me,” she said. “They take it, if they wish.”

“Doubtless the zard also uses you,” said Brenner.

“Certainly women of our species figure in the perversions of many other species, as you must suspect,” she said.

“I see,” said Brenner, bitterly. He did not doubt but what certain aliens could simply take the women of his species away from the men of his species, and use them as they wished. The men of his species, it seemed, were on the whole quite weak. They could not even keep their own women for themselves. On the other hand, he did not think that aliens would attempt that on the occasional strong worlds where his own species was dominant. On such worlds, as he understood it, men of his species kept their women for themselves.

“But the zard does not so touch me,” she said. “It is not that he is kind, or noble. It is just that he is not interested in such things. In this fashion he is a quite normal zard. He is not a pervert. Surely you are aware of the rareness of interspecific attraction.”

“Yes,” Brenner admitted. This rareness was to be expected, of course, given genetic selections.

“Do you think you would feel attracted to a female zard?”

“I do not think so,” said Brenner. He had once seen one, on Naxos, at a spaceport, or he thought he had seen one.

“It is the same sort of thing,” she said.

Brenner nodded.

“Would you like me better if I had scales, bulging eyes, and a tail?”

“No,” said Brenner. To be sure, this was not the answer required by his conditioning program, which was that it would not make a difference. This had to do with the equivalence of life forms, and such.

Brenner regarded her. He did not doubt but what beauty might be species relative, for example, that he and the zard might not agree on the nature of feminine charms, but that did not mean that it did not exist, either for him or for the zard. Fruit does not become unreal because there is more than one variety. Certainly Brenner found the young woman before him extremely beautiful. Indeed, she seemed to him, now, to be the most beautiful female he had ever seen. And he did not think that he was isolated in this sort of thing. Even men on Naxos, he was sure, with their rifles and whips, would agree. And even many other life forms, he was sure, though they might not find her of sexual interest, might recognize that she was an unusually lovely specimen of a human being, and would be more marketable than otherwise on that basis.

“Consider the scandalous silk you wear,” said Brenner, angrily. “It is the sort of thing in which a slave might be put. In such silk it seems you belong upon an auction block!”

“We might ascend a block in such silk, or more,” she smiled, “but it is not likely it would be upon us when we left the block.”

Brenner regarded her.

“I have been upon such a block, on Damascus,” she said, “when my contract was sold.”

She changed her position, to kneel. She arranged her silk. Then she again looked up, at Brenner.

“On the block, though we were free women, instant and perfect obedience was required of us,” she said, “even as it is of slaves.”

“Did you not demur?”

“No,” she laughed, “or at most once, briefly.”

“Oh?” asked Brenner, interested.

“They have whips,” she said.

“Not sophisticated electronic devices?”

“No,” she said. “On Damascus, as on many worlds, they are very traditional.”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“But the whip is very effective,” she said, “perhaps in its primitive simplicity and meaning even more so than more complex electronic devices. We understand the whip.”

“‘We’,” asked Brenner.

“Females,” she said. “At least once we have felt it.”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“Yes!” she laughed.

“Did you demur?” he asked.

“I did not really need to feel the lash,” she said, “but I was curious about it and so once I was hesitant. Then, instantly, I felt the lash. I did not know it could be like that. Then, I assure you, I was hesitant no longer. Too, to be sure, I was stung by the laughter from the buyers, the onlookers, and such.”

“Who were the auctioneers, the brokers?”

“On Damascus, zards, of course,” she said.

“But they would presumably have, as it seems you have earlier suggested, little or no interest in your movements, your posings, and such—such things I presume being expected of you on the block—”

“Yes,” she said. “As contract women we were well put through our paces.”

Brenner looked at her.

“There were men of our own species in the house, of course,” she said, “buyers, and assistants to buyers, and such, who would help to appraise us.”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“It seems you find the vending of my contract of interest,” she said, shyly.

“Were you appraised highly?”

“I think so,” she said. “But I am not even sure of the value of the units involved, their relationship to the Commonworld credit, and such.”

Brenner nodded.

“I did not bring as high a price as she whom your friend now doubtless has well at his pleasure,” she said.

“The blonde woman?” said Brenner.

“Girl,” she said.

“Your contracts were vended in the same sale?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Was she struck?”

“Three times,” she said.

“It seems she was less quick than you, to grasp what was required of her.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

“Perhaps she is less intelligent than you,” said Brenner.

“Perhaps,” she said. “I do not know. But in the end she obeyed as quickly and perfectly as the rest of us.”

“The rest of you?”

“Yes,” she said, “all of us who were being exhibited, whose contracts were being sold.”

“I see,” said Brenner.

“Perhaps you would have enjoyed seeing her perform—naked,” she said.

“Perhaps,” said Brenner.

“As she doubtless is for your friend now,” she said.

“Perhaps,” said Brenner.

“Perhaps you would have found it amusing,” she said.

“Perhaps,” he said. To be sure, he would have been, he did not doubt, much more interested in seeing the brunette perform. He looked at her. She put down her head, and blushed, beautifully, all of her body that was not covered with the silk.

“I think that on many worlds your contract might have fetched a higher price than hers,” said Brenner.

“On the worlds of which I suspect you speak,” she laughed, “I gather that it would be we, indeed, ourselves, and not our contracts, which would be vended.”

“Perhaps,” said Brenner.

She smiled.

“On such worlds, as I understand it,” he said, “they buy the female, and that is what they are really interested in, the female, and the female female, so to speak, she who is most female, biologically, hormonally, emotionally, and such. That is what they are out to acquire, what they are bidding for, what they covet and desire, what they truly want, the real female, the female female, so to speak.”

She smiled.

“How truly frightful, how truly dreadful—for that sort of woman, the true female, for the female female, so to speak,” said Brenner.

She put down her head. “Perhaps not,” she said.

“You were exhibited—on a block,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “On Damascus.”

He regarded her. He found her face very beautiful, so softly rounded, with the dark eyes, looking up at him, questioningly, and the dark hair, so soft and glossy, framing the exquisite features, and the whiteness of her throat and shoulders, and arms, the sweetness of her breasts within the silk, the bared midriff, the rounded latitudes of her belly, the silk low on it, the hips flaring before being captured by the silk, her left thigh bared, the right under the spread silk, and, behind her, her calves, the ankles, the chain and disk on the left, her small, white feet.

“Do you wish to see what they made me do, how they made me stand and pose?” she asked.

“No!” he said. Then he said, “How?”

“Like this!” she said, delightedly, leaping to her feet. “The bed shall be the surface of the block!” she said. “It is soft, and will not give me the best of footing, but it will provide the required elevation. You will get the general idea of matters.”

“I am sure of it,” said Brenner. How could he have asked ‘How?’ he asked himself. But how could he not have asked ‘How?’ he asked himself. “Retain your silk!”

“Do you think such things are permitted to us on the block?”

“Retain it,” said Brenner.

“I shall do so,” she laughed. She seized up the sheet from the floor, and hurried to the other side of the bed.

“There are many ways in which these things may be done,” she said. “In our case, we were chained together by the neck in the waiting area, and our hands were braceleted behind our backs. We came to the block one by one, after being freed, one at a time, from the chain and bracelets. Covered with a sheet we are conducted to the surface of the block.” She flung the sheet over her head and body and crept carefully to the surface of the bed, on which she stood, upright. “Various details, then, pertinent to ourselves, and our contracts, are brought to the attention of the crowd. After this the sheet is lowered to reveal our head and face, the nature of our hair and such. At this point bidding begins. Then, little by little, cunningly, as the bids continue, the sheet is rearranged. I assure you we do our best to keep it about us. First our ankles and calves are revealed, and then our shoulders. Then the sheet is raised so that our legs are well revealed. Following this it is lowered to our hips. Then it is removed from us altogether, and cast aside, to be used by the next girl.” She then illustrated this matter, taking her time in doing so, for example, folding, and rearranging the sheet, first freeing her head and hair of it, then lifting it to reveal her calves and ankles, and so on. She even held herself motionless at times, as doubtless she had been commanded to do, that bidders might not be rushed in their assessments. Too, she behaved as though she had been turned about, doubtless that the diverse perspectives of her might adequately displayed. To be sure, she was, beneath the sheet, silked, not nude as doubtless would have been the case upon the block. On the other hand, Brenner, as she had anticipated, had little difficulty in grasping the general idea of matters. “It is at this point,” she continued, having cast the sheet aside, “that one of the auctioneer’s helpers produces a whip. The mere sound of this, when it is snapped, encourages in us a desperate desire to do whatever is required of us. We have been coached, and have been well rehearsed, of course. We know the various movements, the postures, the attitudes, and such, required of us, and the commands appropriate to their elicitation.”

“Aii,” said Brenner, softly.

“Yes,” she said, “such things, such movements!”

“Stop!” cried Brenner. “No! No! Do not stop!”

“Like this,” she said, “and this!”

“It is like a sale of slaves!” said Brenner.

“I am sure the sales of slaves are quite different,” she said, “but I think it is true that these movements and attitudes, even though we are free women, have been carefully designed, with the object in view that a potential bidder will have an excellent idea as to the value of the contract on which he might bid.”

“I do not doubt it,” said Brenner.

How marvelous were her calves and ankles. How they flashed, and turned, and moved! How marvelous were the archings and extensions of her body, how beautiful were those numerous excitements, the softnesses of her and the movements of her, the flexing of a knee, the motion of a wrist, the pointing of a foot, rounding a calf, the turning of a hip, the drawing in of her belly, the very breathing of her, its effects so subtly, yet so beautifully, so unmistakably evident in her figure; how marvelous even the upsweeping of her hair, so small a thing, and that display of curves in the bent-back bow of her body, that attendant, lovely lifting of the line of her breasts! “And then,” she said, “we were surprised! We were merely told to “be desirable.” This had not been rehearsed! The whip snapped!”

“What did you do?” asked Brenner.

“We must improvise,” she said. “We had not expected this. We were confused. The whip snapped again!”

“What did you do?”

“We must draw upon our most secret and deepest thoughts,” she said, “upon the deepest secrets of our most secret belly!”

“What did you do?” asked Brenner.

“Such things!” she said.

Brenner looked upon her, stunned. Never had he dreamed a woman could be such. Categorically it denied all he had been taught. This was no “same,” no banal, meaningless “identical”! This was something different, something utterly different, from a man. Something marvelous and wonderful in its own right, in its own nature, something not the same as a man, but complementary to a man, something special, something unique, something more precious and desirable to a man than anything else, something priceless, a treasure, a living jewel, the sort of thing to acquire which expeditions might be launched and wars fought, the sort of thing for which a man might kill, to possess which he might willingly die.

“Kneel!” cried Brenner, leaping to his feet.

Startled, she knelt where she was, on the surface of the bed, on the edge nearest to him. He seized her by the upper arms, and drew her toward him. He saw that she was frightened. Perhaps she had not understood her own marvelousness, and what she might mean to a man! Then, with a cry of rage, he flung her back, to her side, on the bed. He then turned away, facing the wall. His fists were clenched. He would not now look at her. “Remove your silk,” he said. “And begin again.”

In a little while he heard her behind him, from across the room, from the other side of the bed. “I am ready,” she said.

Brenner turned about.

She stood on the other side of the bed, the sheet clutched about her. To the left, on the foot of the bed, discarded, lying in a small, crumpled pile, partly folded over one another, were the silks she had worn, those silks with which, though they had covered much of her, she had been less clothed than adorned. Such, Brenner gathered, was the function of such silks, certainly insofar as they approximated those of slaves.

She regarded him. She trembled a little. Her eyes were wide.

Brenner clenched his fists. He must surely stop this. He must not permit her to express herself as a woman. How demeaning that would be to her, to fulfill herself, to be herself! How wrong to do what honestly, and in reality, shows oneself! Must one not forever keep the self hidden, and if not deny, at least keep, the secret of one’s own being? Must lies forever form the foundation of civilization, he wondered. Can people really be that stupid, he wondered, to believe all they are told? Do the captains, and the kings, and such, believe the people believe them? Can they believe themselves? Is hypocrisy really the price of order? It does not seem so in nature. Is self-deception so necessary, really? Is truth so dreadful, so terrible, he wondered, as to generate its own denial? Would it really, in its light and heat, so obviously pierce and melt, and thus destroy, the carefully wrought crystalline structures of a world, those conventionalized architectures of absurdity, those defenses theoretically constructed to protect us from ourselves? Even if so, perhaps it were not irrational to transcend such accidents of time, to strip away the artificial accretions of ages, to let them subside and drain away into the swamps from whence they derived their pestilential origin. Perhaps it is time for a newer, and more joyful, science, a less eccentric, apter wisdom. Perhaps it is time to recognize that reality is not held in orbit by the conventions, the declarations, the decisions, the pronouncements, or even the needs, of men, but rather that men, and their needs, are held in place, in the very cosmos, even in their most strained and grievous ellipticities, by the nature of reality.

“Sir?” she asked.

She regarded him, questioningly.

He must not permit her to do this!

A wave of resolve, of merciless volcanism, welled up in him momentarily. This thing came from his deepest brain, from the foundations of his existence, antedating conditioning, antedating politics, antedating the capture of fire, the bending of heated wood, the shaping of stone, the insight that a sound might mean, that one could make words.

He pulled the straight-backed chair before him, turning it about, so that its back was between him and the woman, like a fence, like a rail, a wall, and then he sat upon it. He was sweating. He grasped the sides of the back. He closed his eyes. He then opened them. “Begin,” he said, quietly.

She ascended to the surface of the bed, standing upon it.

“Do not cover your head with the sheet,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

He supposed that sometime he, or others, might wish to hood her and use her, enforcing a decisive anonymity upon her, keeping her a prisoner in the hood, in this fashion perhaps reducing her, in their minds and in her own, to certain basic feminine essentials, but at the moment he did not wish her features to be concealed. He did not wish to lose sight of her lovely face for even a moment. Was it not, in its way, properly understood, an essential of her, as well, as was the whole totality of her? How could she be ever, in a sense, less than her wholeness? To be sure, the part is sometimes easier to relish, to appreciate and understand, when it is conceived in isolation from the whole. Too, occasional localizations, selective isolations, and such, may lead to a more enhanced understanding of, and a more appreciative comprehension of, the whole. A woman, hooded, of course, finding herself in this situation of anonymity and helplessness, is likely to waste little time in becoming sensitized to what is going on in, and with, her body. She becomes, in virtue of this device, and various devices, psychological and physical, such as respect and obedience, garments and bonds, and such, sensitized to her sensations, her feelings, and emotions, and, through these, of course, she comes to a much deeper understanding of her own sexuality, and, ipso facto, of her own life and meaning. These things tend, on the whole, to be consequences of certain biological complementarities.

“You must understand,” she whispered, “that various details, pertinent to ourselves and our contracts, have now been brought to the attention of the buyers.”

“Continue,” said Brenner.

She lifted the sheet a little, that her ankles might be glimpsed, and, shortly thereafter, her calves.

At one point Brenner half rose from the chair. “Stop!” he cried. And then he cried, “No! Do not stop!”

In a few moments she knelt upon the bed, half crouched down, the sheet discarded, her hair about her, wildly, her hands now, as though with a sudden, belated recollection of terror or reserve, incongruous with the recent demands of her display, crossed over her breasts.

Brenner rose from the chair, hurling it to the side, only seizing control of himself at the edge of the bed. She looked up at him.

Their eyes met, those of male and female.

He was angered that she knelt so, so crouched down, so covering herself.

He seized the silks from the bed and held them, clutched, in his hand, and then hurled them from the surface of the bed, to the side, to the floor. She looked after them, she naked, they no longer within her reach. He took her by the shoulders and thrust her to her back on the bed. She lay there, looking up at him. Then, perhaps fearing what she saw in his eyes, frightened at what effects she might have had upon him, she whimpered, and turned away, drawing up her knees, keeping her breasts covered with her crossed arms.

He went about the bed and, as she suddenly gasped, startled at the audacity of his action, pulled a collar and chain from the peg on which it hung. He snapped the collar shut about her throat and then fastened its chain to the bar at the head of the bed. The chain was some eighteen Commonworld inches in length. He then turned her from her side to her back. Still she kept her breasts covered, she lying there now on her back, on the bed, fastened to the bar at its head.

“Would you have bid for me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“You have chained me,” she said.

“You are in effect a slave,” he said. “It is fitting that you be chained as one.”

“I am a free woman,” she said.

He laughed. Did she not know herself? Could she not understand herself? Had she been unaware of how she had appeared, of how she had had herself seen, of how she had acted, of the obvious revelations, the obvious meanings, of her behavior? In the face of such things how suddenly pointless, how suddenly empty, irrelevant, and absurd became the accident, or mere technicality, of her official legal status.

“Would you have bid high for me?” she asked.

He went again to the wall at the side and took a pair of bracelets from their peg. He pulled her right wrist away from he body and she instantly covered her breasts with her left arm. He snapped the bracelet on her right wrist. He then turned her to her stomach and drew her right wrist behind her. He then drew he left wrist, too, behind her, and, with the second bracelet, fastened her wrists together. Three links joined the bracelets. He then turned her to her back, again, and looked down upon her. She pulled against the bracelets a little, and then lay there quietly, looking up at him.

“Yes,” he said.

Then, suddenly, he turned away from her. It was in agony that he forced himself to do so.

Surely he must immediately free her I

What mattered her needs, or wants? What mattered his?

Needs and wants were to be defined by others, not those with them, not those suffering from them, not those exalted by them, and defined in such ways as to obtain political goals frustrative of nature and biology. That much was clear from the politics of a thousand years. Certainly reason, as properly conditioned, the term shifting its meaning with the requirements of various establishments and ideologies, should take precedence over instinct, over blood, over need. What did fulfillment, satisfaction, the summons to heroism, the call to greatness have to compare with conventionalized proprieties, invented, and inculcated by the weak, the sickly, the hating, the envying, the frustrated, the resentful, the petty, and pallid, that they might remake the world in their own image? Surely the lie must be substituted for the truth, the illusion for the reality, thought Brenner, else it will not be a good world for the small, the petty, the weak, the hating, the frustrated, the resentful. Was that not clear? And surely that is the way we should pretend the world is, in order that such entities will be pleased, that they will not be alarmed, and that we shall not be denounced. How shrill are those shrieks, how frenzied and hysterical, like the squeaks of bats, fluttering about, blinking, disturbed in their caves, daring to go out only at night. Yet, thought Brenner, for those who do not fear the sun, and its light, there is much to be said for clear skies and bright mornings.

But then Brenner turned about, agonized. He seized the sheet and thrust it quickly up, muchly covering the woman, tucking it even about her neck. He then, angrily, again, turned away.

How marvelously successful are conditioning programs, thought Brenner, even in his agony pausing to admire the crime, its subtlety, its insidiousness, its sophistication, its effectiveness, that had been committed against him. Who can bind a person better than himself, and in his own name? Who can watch him more closely, and punish him more terribly, than himself? And how few individuals can transcend these programs? How few even understand what has been done to them? How few understand more than the misery, the frustration, and pain? Do not love the bats. Do not attempt to lead them from their cave. Do not tell them of the sun, and of bright mornings. They will only howl and shriek, and, as they can, lacerate you with their tiny, foul teeth.

He heard a sob from the bed.

He turned about, startled. “Do not weep,” he said.

She lay on the bed, under the sheet, red-eyed, staring up at the ceiling.

He approached her, and she turned her head away. There was the fresh path, narrow and wet, reflecting light, of a tear’s descent on her left cheek.

“I do not understand you,” she said.

Brenner was silent. He did not suppose he was so different from other men, at least those of the home world.

“Do you like the way you are?” she asked.

Brenner would not reply to this question.

“I have met men other than you,” she said. “You need not be as you are.”

“I do not think I am so different from other men,” said Brenner, “at least those of the home world.”

“Your friend does not seem like you,” she said.

“He has been on other worlds,” said Brenner.

“It is true,” she said, “that you remind me of many of the putative males I met, I do not say “men,” on the home world.”

“I have striven to be a true person,” Brenner admitted.

“I had hoped you might prove to be a man,” she said.

“I am not an uncivilized brute,” he said.

“That is true,” she said.

“Doubtless you would prefer a rough, callous, insensitive beast,” he said, “a tyrant who would make demands upon you, and treat you as a thing.”

“A thing of beauty,” she said, “whom he will have serve him according to his dictates.”

“Do not joke,” said Brenner.

“What you do not understand,” she said, “is that there is no ultimate incompatibility between refinement and the beast, nor between learning and power, that one need not languish that the other may thrive, that it is possible to be both cultivated and strong, sensitive and forceful, intelligent and strict. Civilization need not imply weakness. Civilization need not be rejected. It, rather, can be the setting in which nature finds its grandest fulfillment. There is no ultimate antitheticality between the poem and the whip, between the sonata and the chain.”

Brenner was silent.

She sobbed.

“Do not weep,” he said, angrily.

“What of my needs?” she asked.

“They are not permitted to exist,” said Brenner.

She threw her head back, against the covers.

“They are nothing,” said Brenner.

“And what of yours?” she asked.

“They, too,” said he, “must be nothing.”

“But you have chained me,” she said.

“A moment’s aberration,” he said.

He then, suddenly, turned away, again. He went to the side of the room. He kept his back to her.

“You act as though you are weak,” she said. “I wonder if you truly are.”

“Weakness is true strength,” said Brenner. “The proper employment of masculine power is self-subversion. Manhood’s greatest triumph is to overcome itself. The truest man is he who is least like a man.”

“That is stupid,” she said.

Brenner did not respond to this. The slogans he had uttered had, to be sure, rung hollowly, even in his own ears. He supposed they had been invented as political instruments, to serve one end or another. Too, they provided valuable rationalizations for certain sorts of males, for example, those whose low drive levels would never enable them to comprehend greater forces, those active in creatures of stronger passion. It seemed they did not even, really, share the same form of life. For a moment Brenner envied the creatures of low drives, those who had never experienced more than ripples and stirrings, those who had no concept of tidalities, of hurricanes, of raging seas. Then he did not envy them, no more than the hawk would envy the worm, no more than the lion the lamb.

“You chained me,” she said.

Brenner was silent.

“You chained me,” she said. “Come, look upon me.”

Brenner did not move. He did not even wish to turn about, to see her lying there, covered with the sheet.

“From the first moment you saw me,” she said, “surely you must have been curious as to what I would look like, in chains.”

Brenner was silent. There was a sense, he supposed, in which this, or something like it, was true. He had found her attractive, even as long ago as their brief encounter in the rain, in the muddy street. And chains, though they are surely, indisputably, effective custodial devices, both from the point of view of he who chains and she who is chained, are, perhaps even more, a symbol amongst symbols for a symbol-using animal. They speak of a relationship, of a propriety deeper than those of convention, of a claim of an animal of its rightful complement, and the expression of this claim in terms as graphic, as explicit and real as the piling of stones to mark a border, as the touch of steel in the conferring of knighthood, as the exchanging of a handful of earth between lord and vassal. He had, of course, wondered what she might look like, stripped, and his, and, in the sense in which chains would make clear by whom she was claimed, to whom she was subject, it was in its way true. In this sense one might, metaphorically, consider the woman as, so to speak, “in chains.” Earlier, of course, when he had imagined the directress on the ship, and later, of course, when he had been downstairs in the bar, his thoughts along these lines had been much more explicit. Then he had, not only symbolically, and metaphorically, but literally, thought of explicit signs of claiming, and ownership, and chains, of course, in their beauty, their primitiveness, their simplicity, like vines, like cords or ropes, come quickly, naturally, to mind.

“You chained me,” she said, irritably. “Surely you must have been curious to see what I would look like, in chains.”

Brenner was silent.

“So, come, look upon me,” she said.

He turned about, angrily, and went to the side of the bed. She looked up at him, defiantly.

“Look upon me!” she challenged.

He drew down the sheet a little, from about her throat. He could then see the metal collar on her neck. To the side, half lost under her hair, was the ring by means of which it was attached to the chain. Then the chain went up, behind her, to where it was fastened about the bar at the head of the bed.

“Look upon me!” she challenged.

He put his hand to the sheet, and then, after holding it a moment, tore it down and away. She cried out, startled, a little frightened, for she had not anticipated that this action would be done so suddenly, so decisively. She lay there before him. He noted that she seemed frightened, now. She was not as bold, it seemed, as she had pretended. Then, again, she spoke boldly. “Do you like what you see?” she asked.

He did not respond. Never had he seen anything so tantalizing, so beautiful, and, in its way, so ungracious, so unpleasant, so irritating.

“Unchain me!” she said.

He regarded her.

“Unchain me!” she demanded.

He looked her over. His eye rested on the chain and disk, that fastened on her left ankle. He had been curious about that. He had not dared, really, hitherto, to look at it.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He took her left ankle in his hand and lifted it, and looked at the device fastened there. He ran his finger about, under the chain. He examined the small, stout, cylindrical lock. Then he turned the metal disk, from one side to the other, it with its own link to the chain, looking at it. It was about an inch and a half in diameter, larger than that worn by the maids at the hostel. On one side Brenner read the inscription giving the name and address of her contract holder. On the other side was another inscription, perhaps with the same content, but one unintelligible to Brenner. It was, of course, in one of the several zardian languages. She tried to pull her ankle away from Brenner, but was unable to do so. In a moment, realizing her inability to free her ankle, that her strength was insignificant as compared to his, she turned her head to the side, desisting in the contest which could have been continued only to her further embarrassment. He then considered the smallness of her foot, the slenderness of the ankle, encircled by the chain and disk, the lovely curve of the calf, above the chain. He then again regarded the chain and disk. “You are under contract,” he said. He then opened his hand, letting her pull her ankle away. She put down her leg, flexed, so that the sole of her foot was on the bed.

She looked up at him, angrily.

“Unchain me,” she said.

“You are under contract,” he said.

She struggled up on her left elbow, half lying on the bed, the chain now looping back to the bar.

“You wished to see me in chains,” she said. “Now you have done so. Now release me.”

“You are under contract,” he said.

“I do not understand,” she said.

He undid the top button at his collar. “Do not protest, or make noise,” he said.

“And if I do?”

“Then you will be gagged,” he said, dropping his shirt to the side.

“What is your intention?” she asked.

“Surely you are woman enough to guess,” he said. He touched her lightly, at the side of the leg, and she pulled her leg back, higher. And then she struggled back, half sitting up, thrusting her back against the back of the bed, pulling her legs up.

“You will beg my touch,” he said.

“Is that a command?” she asked.

“No,” said Brenner, stepping from the clothing at his feet, “it is a prediction.”

“Never!” she said.

“Am I to gather,” asked Brenner, “that it is your intention to be found less than fully pleasing?”

She turned white. “No!” she said. “No! Please do not report me to the zard in the morning as not having been fully pleasing!”

“I have no intention of doing so,” said Brenner.

“Thank you!” she breathed.

“Do you know why?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Because you are not going to be less than fully pleasing,” he said.

She looked at him, startled, stunned.

He then went to the wall and took down a short, stout whip which hung there.

“Do not strike me!” she begged.

Brenner gathered that she must, at one time or another, have felt the touch of such a device, surely at least once, for example, on the block, on Damascus. “I trust that it will not be necessary,” he said.

“You, you, could not strike me!” she said.

“Do you wish to put that to the test?” he asked.

“But you are a true man,” she said, suddenly, “tender, soft, kindly, weak, gentle, mild, indecisive, vacillating, compliant, anxious to please women, obedient to their wishes!”

“I am tired,” said Brenner, “of being denied, of being hungry, of being humiliated and tormented, of being cheated of my rights.”

“You have no rights!” she cried.

“If not,” said Brenner, “I now create them.”

“It will not be necessary to whip me!” she said. “Let me rather kiss the whip, to show my deference, my respect, my submission!”

“‘Submission’,” said Brenner. “I like that word on your lips. It well becomes them.”

He held the whip to her lips, and she kissed it, and then, softly, licked it, and then looked up at him.

He then replaced the whip on the wall.

“See where it is?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“It may do you good,” he said, “from time to time, to look over here, and see it.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

He entered upon the bed.

He drew her down a little, from the head of the bed.

She looked up at him.

“If you are going to be a man,” she said, “then I will have no choice but to be a woman.”

He touched her, softly, delicately.

“Ohhh,” she said, softly.

“A woman under contract,” said Brenner, “should be beautiful, humble, and useful.”

“It is my hope that I am beautiful,” she said.

“And?” asked Brenner.

She, now on her back, turned her head to her right, and looked at the whip, on its peg on the wall.

“I am humble,” she assured him.

He again touched her, and she squirmed, helplessly. “Oh,” she said, softly, “oh!” Her small wrists, encircled in the bracelets, moved behind her back. “Oh!” she breathed.

He kissed her.

“It is my hope,” she whispered, “that I will prove useful.”

“I will see to it,” said Brenner.

“Yes, sir,” she whispered.



* * *



Some time later he had freed her wrists of the bracelets, but he had not seen fit, for whatever whim, to release her neck from the clasp of the collar, this, by means of the chain, fastening her to the bar at the head of the bed. To be sure, lest it be feared that he was showing her too little respect, and even treating her as though she might not be free, but bond, a vendible article, a property, a domestic animal, it might be mentioned that slaves are often chained not on the bed itself, but at the foot of the bed, on the floor, and used there, upon covers or furs. It is not a foregone conclusion, you see, that a slave is permitted upon the surface of a bed, or couch. It is something of an honor for a slave, or a privilege, for her to be permitted there. It is something to obtain which she may have to strive for months, for which she, though a mere slave, must try to prove herself worthy. The passage to the surface of the couch is one calling for heat, devotion, and dutifulness. It is not something, strictly, which she can earn, for its gift is in the treasury of the master, and no bargains are struck with slaves, but it is something for which she may eventually hope, assuming that her zeal and her increasing slave excellences render such a hope not unrealistic.

“If you bought my contract, would you free me?” she asked.

“I cannot afford your contract,” he said. This was clear, as she was a free woman. Such contracts were not cheap. Even a moderate one would cost some thousands of Commonworld credits. It was not like the openly stratified worlds, where slaves were numerous, and cheap, where even a poor man such as Brenner might, if he wished, have had three or four, particularly if they were merely hot and comely.

“Do you wish you could afford my contract?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, “for I should then be well-to-do.”

“But if you could buy it,” she said, “would you do so?”

“Perhaps I could be convinced,” he said.

“I would do my best to convince you,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said. “If I could afford your contract, I would buy it.”

“Let us suppose you could afford it,” she said.

“Very well,” said Brenner.

“If you bought it, would you free me?” she asked.

Brenner considered the matter. “No,” he said.

“Good,” she said, snuggling against him.



* * *



Later, Brenner, as the whim had seized him, had again back-braceleted her. This, too, if nothing else, helped to control her active, hot little hands. She was so eager, so exciting, so alive.

Then, a Commonworld hour later, after an intimacy that had taught him something of what it might be, to be a woman’s master, he had, after extinguishing the light, dozed off. Then it seemed but a moment later, though doubtless it was more, he had been awakened, by her whimpering. He became aware of her near him. He heard her pull a little, helplessly, against the bracelets which held her small wrists pinioned behind her. She was on her side, on an elbow, leaning over him. “Please,” she whispered. “Please!”

He lay there, quietly.

“Are you awake?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said.

“Please,” she said. “Please!”

“What is it?” he asked.

“I beg your touch,” she whispered. “I beg your touch!”

Brenner smiled to himself in the darkness. He wondered if she recalled his remark to her earlier in the evening. He thought that perhaps she did not now, but might recollect it later. In any event, she had often enough earlier, in one modality or another, begged his touch.

“You beg my touch?” smiled Brenner. He saw fit to remind her, thusly, of his earlier remark. His vanity might as well be indulged, he thought.

There was a pause. He sensed her recollection, and her surprise, and perhaps her chagrin, or embarrassment.

“Yes,” she said, suddenly, softly, defiantly in the darkness. “I beg your touch!” Then her voice broke. “I beg it, desperately,” she said. Brenner wondered if it had been anything in their last intimacy which had evoked this response, which had discovered something to her, something that now made her as she was. Need and vulnerability had been manifest in her pathetic accents. How much power he now sensed he had over her.

“I think I might know now what it is, or something of what it might be, to be a slave,” she whispered.

Brenner was silent.

“I did not know it could be like this,” she said.

Brenner was silent.

“I beg your touch,” she said, “I think as might a slave whose needs are upon her!”

Brenner did not break the silence.

“Please be merciful,” she said. “Do not have me suffer. Do not leave me dangling like this!”

Brenner had heard of such things as slave need, of course. He supposed it possible that something of the sort could occur in a free woman, particularly one under contract, one at the mercy of others. Such needs in the slave, of course, are generally a function of what she is, and her entire condition. Also, cruelly, the slave is sometimes given no choice in the matter of these needs, but must submit to, and acquiesce in, their release and efflorescence, until she finds herself, as was her owner’s intent, the helpless prisoner of their implacable, frequently recurrent, profound demands. It is said that such needs, and love, are the strongest bonds to which slaves are subject, that they are stronger than bars of iron and bands of steel.

“Get on your back,” said Brenner, with which command she immediately complied. He then rose up, on one elbow. He touched her, lightly.

“Oh, yes!” she said. “Yes, please!”

He then realized how helpless she was, not merely physically, but, more importantly, psychologically.

“Please, don’t stop,” she begged.

In a few moments Brenner placed his hand over her mouth, that her cries might not carry throughout the establishment, perhaps disturbing the rest of others. How she squirmed, and bucked, and writhed! How helpless she was, so much in the grip of her reflexes, so much in the careless, merciless bondage of her femaleness! Who would have thought there could be so much vitality, so much force, so much strength and power, in so small and beautiful, so soft, so deliciously curved, a body? Beneath the palm of his sweating hand, hastily placed, pressing firmly downward, Brenner felt her lips and, beneath them, her teeth. She could not, beneath his hand, open her mouth, nor could she scarcely move. What would have been screams of ecstasy became no more than tiny sounds, no more, by his action, permitted to her. Then, later, after the subsidence of her tumult, its crisis passed, she lay back, not much moving, and whimpered, pleadingly. He removed his hand from her mouth. His palm was wet, from her mouth, and from his sweat. The side of his hand, too, was wet, as tears had streaked down her cheeks, stopped by its barrier.

She did not speak.

“You yielded,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Helplessly,” he said.

“Yes,” she whispered, in the darkness.

He kissed her.

“I love being this helpless,” she said, “so much yours.”

“You speak as might a slave,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

He rose from the bed and went to the side of the room, to the lamp. He turned it on, and up, just a little, setting the shade in such a way as to diffuse the light. He looked back upon her, on the bed, now on one elbow, turned to him, her hands held behind her, in the shadows.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I was curious about something,” he said.

“Oh?” she said.

“Lie back,” he said.

She lay on her back, and turned her head to her left, to look at him.

“Yes,” he said. “It is true.”

“What?” she asked.

“You are beautiful enough to be a slave,” he said.

She half reared up, turning toward him, but then, as though she feared she might be guilty of some subtle infraction of discipline, lay back on the bed. She kept her head straight, her eyes facing upward, toward the ceiling.

“Yes,” he said, confirming his former assessment.

“Ohhh,” she said, softly, suddenly, moving, but continuing to look upward, “I gush—my Master.”

He went to the side of the bed, and, standing to one side, looked down upon her.

She kept her head as it had been, straight, looking up at the ceiling, not meeting his eyes.

“We will be your foes, you know,” she said, “if you do not make us your slaves.”

Brenner was silent.

“I would be your slave,” she said. “I am your slave.” Brenner then understood how much a woman can give, and that she will find nothing sufficient short of giving all, that she wills to give all, to give herself, all of herself, unstintingly, unreservedly, unquestioningly, that she can in her heart be content with nothing less than the fullness of love’s surrender. Brenner then joined her upon the bed, and very gently kissed her.

“I fear the coming of the morning,” she said.

“Be silent,” said Brenner.

“Yes,” she whispered, “—Master.”