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slave meat, a girl who will learn to wear a collar, a girl who will learn to
serve and obey, a girl who will learn to please, a girl who will learn that
she belongs, and rightfully, to men!
"Let us see her!" called more than one man.
The auctioneer signaled to an attendant who, from aside of the hall, brought
forth a shallow copper bowl, some two feet in diameter, filled with slender
cylinders of oil-impregnated wood. In a moment, with a fire-maker, of flint
and steel, he had ignited this wood. The girl looked at it. I do not think, at
that time, she clearly understood its significance.
"Let us see her!" called a man.
"But, of course!" called the auctioneer. He hung the long black kaiila quirt
on his belt.
The woman looked out on the crowd, miserably. She did not understand, fully, I
am sure, what was going to be done to her. She was a barbarian, her
freedom only recently terminated. She spoke no
Gorean. She had been brought into the hall and strung up so cruelly by the
wrists only after completion of the earlier auctions. Too, I had little doubt
that her masters had kept her ignorant of their occurrence. She knew little
more than the fact that she was being displayed before men, though for what
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reason and to what end, I
conjectured, she scarcely dared speculate.
"Shall we begin?" inquired the auctioneer of the crowd. "Shall we see if she
is any good?"
"Yes! Yes! more than one man. I smiled to myself the auctioneer knew his
business.
"But first," said the auctioneer, "behold the absurdity of these garments.
They seem to be a cross between the garments of a free woman and those of a
slave." Most obviously, from what I
could see, the woman wore an attractive office dress, of a sort, which is
often implicitly prescribed, particularly by female executives, for
subordinate female employees regarded as too feminine to be considered for the
executive class.
"That is very pretty, Jane. I like to see you wear things like that. Yes,
Miss Tabor." This is also a useful way, of course, for the female executive to
make it a clear to their male colleagues that such women, unlike themselves,
are only females.
It was a long, brown, white-flecked shirred shirtdress, of some soft, smooth
synthetic material, of mid-calf length. It had small, red, round buttons
securing the long, exciting frontal closure and appearing, too, at the cuffs.
It also had a brown, white-flecked, matching tie belt.
About her throat was a single string of pearls, doubtless simulated, or they
would have been removed from her by her first captors. She wore stockings or
pantyhose. On her feet were black, shiny, high-heeled dress sandals, each
secured, apparently, by a single, narrow black ankle strap.
The fact that she was dressed as she was led me to believe that the woman
worked in business and that she had been taken by the slavers on her way home
from work. I think she could forget about the office. In the future she would
have other duties.
"Are these the garments of a free woman or of a slave?" asked the auctioneer.
"Of a slave," shouted men. "Remove them!"
The Goreans probably regarded them as the garments of a slave because of their
smoothness and prettiness. Too, the shirred quality of the dress would permit
it to move, and swirl, excitingly about her body, if she chose to move in
certain ways. Too, the lower portions of her calves and her pretty ankles were
revealed by the dress. That she wore slave garments was probably also
suggested to them by the transparency and sheerness of the coverings on her
legs and, of course, from the
Gorean view, her footwear, so slight and pretty, with the black ankle straps,
was such that it would be likely to be affected only by a woman begging for
the collar.
"She came to us this way," said the auctioneer.
I myself have not yet seen her."
"Let us see her," called a man.
"I wonder if she is any good," said the auctioneer. "Begin!" "Begin!" shouted
men.
"Of course!" laughed the auctioneer. He then went to the suspended girl and,
thrusting up the ropes on her ankles, unbuckled the narrow, ankle-
encircling black straps of her high-heeled dress sandals. He drew them from
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