"Samos then signaled to the musicians, who were seated to one side, that they should prepare
to play.

Samos signaled again to the musicians, and they began to play a sensual, slow, adagio melody.

Samos glanced at the dancer.

I, too glanced at her. She was not trained. She did not know slave dance. Her movements were those of a virgin, a white-silk girl. She had not yet been taught slave helplessness. No man yet in his arms had taught her the exquisite, transforming degradations of the utilized slave, the wrenching surrender spasms, enforced upon her by his will, of the conquered bondswoman, experiences which, once she has had them, she is never willing to give up, experiences which she comes to need, experiences for which she will do anything, experiences which, whether she wishes it or not, put her at and keep her at, the mercy of men.

'She, is clumsy,' said Samos. He was irritated. I saw he did not wish, really, to have her killed.

A man laughed at her, as she tried to dance before him. 'Her throat will be cut within the Ahn,' laughed another man. Another man turned away from her, when she approached him, to have his goblet of paga filled by a luscious, half-naked, collared slave.

'Clumsy, clumsy,' said Samos. 'I thought she might have the makings, somehow, of a pleasure
slave.'

'She is trying,' I said.

'She does not have what it takes,' said Samos.

'Her body is richly curved,' I said. 'That suggests an abundance of female hormones, and that, in turn, suggests the potentialities, the capacities for love, the sensibilities, the dispositions of the pleasure slave.'

'She is not acceptable,' said Samos. 'She is inadequate.'

'She is trying desperately to please,' I said.

'But she is not succeeding,' he said.

'She has a lovely body,' I said. 'Perhaps someone could buy her for a pittance, for a pot girl.'

'She is not adequate,' said Samos. 'I will have to have her destroyed.'

'Dance, you stupid slave,' hissed one. 'Do you not know you are a slave? Do you not know you are owned?'

A wild look, one of sudden, fearful insight, came over the face of the dancer. She had not thought, specifically, objectively, it seemed, about this aspect of matters. But, of course, she was owned. She was now property. She could now be bought and sold, like a tarsk, at the pleasure of masters.

'Dance, fool!' cried one of the slave girls to the former Lady Rowena of Lydius.

'See the free woman!' laughed one of the slaves. 'It is the sleen for her,' said another.

'Please men!' cried another. 'What do you think you are for?'

She who had been the Lady Rowena fell sobbing to her knees, helpless on the tiles, covering her face with her hands. The music stopped.

'With your permission,' I said to Samos. I rose to my feet and went to the girl, now prone, red eyed, on the tiles. I crouched down beside her.   I turned her over, handling her with authority, as a slave is handled. She looked up at me. Never before, doubtless, had she been handled like this. 'Her face is beautiful,' I said, 'her body is curvaceous, her limbs are fair. It seems she should bring a good price.' She gasped, appraised as a female.

'Men desire women,' I told her.

'Yes, Master,' she said.

'And you belong to that sex,' I said, 'which is maddeningly, exquisitely desirable.'

'Yes, Master,' she said.

'And you are,' I said, 'I think, objectively, a beautiful member of that sex.'

'Thank you, Master,' she whispered.

'It therefore seems not inconceivable that men might find you desirable.'

'Yes, Master,' she whispered.

'Does that please you?' I asked.

'It terrifies me,' she said.

'Do you have normal feelings toward men?' I asked.

'I think so, Master,' she said. 'Now that you are a slave,' I said, 'it is not only permissible for you to yield to these feelings, but you must do so.'

'Master!' she whispered.

'Yes,' I said, 'for you are now a slave.'

'Yes, Master,' she whispered, shuddering.

'That makes quite a difference, doesn't it?' I asked.

'Yes, Master,' she said.

'She does not have slave reflexes,' said a man.

'We are now going to put these things together,' I said. 'First, you are an exquisitely desirable woman. You are the sort of woman who could drive a man mad with passion. You are the sort of woman to possess whom men might kill. Furthermore, your beauty and desirability is increased a thousand fold because you are a property girl, a slave.'

'Yes, Master,' she whispered. 'Oh, Master!'

'Men are now of even greater interest to you, are they not?' I asked.

'Yes, Master!' she wept.

'Now,' I said, 'second, let us consider things from the point of view of the woman, from your point of view.'

'As a slave,' I said, 'it is not only permissible for you to yield to your deepest, most stirring, most primitive, most overwhelmingly feminine urges but you must do so, shamelessly, unqualifiedly, completely.'

'Yes, Master,' she cried, and thrust herself suddenly, piteously, against my hand. I then, by the hair, pulled her about and threw her lengthwise, prone, to the tiles. She looked up at me, over her shoulder. I saw wildness in her eyes. I saw that she had begun to sense what it might be to be an aroused slave.

'Whip,' I said, to a man. The whip was placed in my hand.

'Master?' asked the girl, apprehensively.

'I do not believe you were given permission to stop dancing earlier,' I said.

'No, Master,' she said.

'As you are a stupid girl and new to your condition, your punishment, this time, will be light. Three lashes.'

'Three!' she sobbed.

"Do not expect masters to be so lenient with your stupidity in the future,' I said.

'No, Master,' she wept.

Then, doubtless for the first time in her life, she who had been the proud free woman, the Lady Rowena of Lydius, naked, and on her belly on the tiles, felt, like the common girl she now was, the slave whip of Gor.

'Stand,' I told her. 'Back straight, belly in, breasts out. Lift your hands to your shoulders, flex your knees.'

'I have been whipped,' she said, disbelievingly.

'See the difference?' said a man to another at his table. 'How she stands?'

'Yes,' said the other.

I touched her here and there, with the whip, deftly, correcting a line, or the tension of a curve.

She shrank back from the touch of the whip. She now knew what it could to do to her. She had felt it. After, a girl has once felt the whip the mere sight of it is usually enough to bring her immediately into line. 'What hangs upon the wall?' a master might ask. 'The slave whip, Master,' she responds. 'How may I be more pleasing?'

I handed the whip back to the fellow who had had it, and returned to my place at the table of  Samos.

He signaled the musicians, and they began, again, to play.

I saw that it was a slave who danced before the men. She gyrated but inches from a burly oarsman, then leaped back, eluding his drunken grasp. She moved between the tables, a slave, an owned woman. Then she was kneeling beside a man, kissing and caressing him, and then, as though it were involuntary, as though her hands were tied behind her and she was being pulled back, away from him, by a rope, she retreated from him. In a moment she was showering another man with her hair and kisses. Then she offered a man wine, holding the goblet, pressing it Against her belly, swaying sensuously before him. She was then again in the center of the tiles, among the tables. She made as if to speak, and then, suddenly, stopped, as though startled. Then she took a wad of her long, golden hair and, swiftly balling it, thrust it, as though insolently, in her mouth. She then looked at the men reproachfully. It was as though a man, perhaps not desiring to hear her speak, had gagged her with her own hair. There was laughter. She drew the hair from her mouth, drawing some of it, in loosening it, deeply back between her teeth, with her head back, as though she might have been in the constraint of a gag strap, all this to the music, and then her hair was free, and, with a movement of her head and movements of her hands, beautifully, she draped and spread it about her. It seemed then she withdrew modestly, frightened, behind the hair, drawing it like a cloak or sheet about her, as though by means of this piteous device she might hope desperately to conceal at least some minimal particle of her beauty from the rude scrutiny of masters. But it was not to be permitted.

To a swirl of music, taking her hair to the sides, holding it, parting it, with clenched fists thrust behind her, twisting, her body thrust forward, her beauty was suddenly, it seemed as though by command, or by the action of another, brazenly based. 'Good!' said more than one man. There was a striking of shoulders in Gorean applause. Even some of the slave girls cried out with pleasure. The girl had done it well. Then she was again dancing among the tables. Her movements gave much pleasure. She entertained well. If Samos had known she would prove this good he might have put her in bells or a chain. I doubted that some of the things she had done, in all their abundance and richness, had been merely thought up on the spur of the moment. I suspected that many times in her dreams and fantasies she had danced thus before men, as a slave. Then, lo, one night in Port Kar she found herself truly a slave, and so dancing, and for her life.

As the music neared its climax she returned before our table, dancing desperately and pleadingly. It was there that was to be found her master.

She lowered herself to the floor and there, on her knees, and her sides, and her belly and back, continued her dance.

Men cried out with pleasure.

Floor movements are among the most stimulatory aspects of slave dance. I regarded her. She was not bad. She was, of course, not trained. A connoisseur of slave dance, I suppose, might have pointed out errors in the pointing of a toe, the extension of a limb, the use of a hand, not well  raming the body, not subtly inviting the viewer's eye inward, and so on, but, on the whole, she was definitely not bad. Given her lack of training, a lack which could, of course, be easily remedied, she was not bad, really. Much of what she did, I suppose, is instinctual in a woman. Too, of course, she was dancing for her life.

She writhed well, an utterly helpless, begging slave. Then the music was finished and she was before us, kneeling, her head down, in submission to Samos. She lifted her head to regard Samos, her master. She searched his face fearfully, for the least sign of her fate. It was he who would  decide whether she would live or die.

'For the moment, at least,' said Samos, 'you will not be thrown to sleen.'"