Imnak, and Thimble and Thistle were asleep. Outside the low sun, as it did in the summer, circled the sky, not setting.

"Master," whispered Arlene.

"Yes," I said.

"May I share your sleeping bag?" she asked.

"Do you beg it?" I asked.

"Yes, Master," she said.

I permitted her to creep into the bag, beside me. I put my arm about her small body. Her head was on my chest.

"Today, you much increased your slavery over me, did you not?" she asked.

"Perhaps," I said.

"You forced me to crawl to a man and serve him," she said. "How strong you are," she said, wonderingly. She kissed me. "I did not know what it was like to be a slave," she said.

"You still do not know," I told her.

"But you are teaching me, aren't you?" she asked.

"Perhaps," I said.

"It is a strange feeling," she said, "being a slave."

"Does it frighten you?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, "it frightens me, terribly." I felt her hair on my chest. "One is so helpless," she said.

"You are not yet a true slave," I told her.

"Sometimes I sense," she said, "what it might be, to be a true slave."

"Oh?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"And it frightens you?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, "but, too, and this is frightening, too, I-" She was silent.

"Go on," I told her.

"Must I speak?" she asked.

"Yes," I told her.

"Too," she wept, "I-I find myself desiring it, intensely." I felt her tears. "How terrible I am!" ~he said.

"Such feelings are normal in feminine women," I told her. "Sometimes it takes courage to yield to them."~ "I must try to fight these feelings," she said.

"As you wish," I said, "but in the end you will yield to them, either because you wish to do so or because I force you to do so."

"Oh?" she asked.

"Yes," I said, "in the end you will become a true slave."

She was silent.

"You were brought to Gor to be a slave," I said. "When your tasks were finished at the wall, you would have been put in silk, collared and placed at a man's feet."

"Do you truly think so, Master?" she asked.

"Of course," I said. "Consider your beauty, and the nature of the men of Gor."

She shuddered. "I fear slavery, and myself," she said.

"You are a true slave," I told her, "No," she said.

"Only you do not yet know it," I said.

"No," she said.

"Fight your feelings," I said. "I will," she said.

"In the end it will do you no good," I said.

She was silent.

"You have been counter-instinctually conditioned," I said. "You have been programmed with value sets developed for competitive, territorial males. There are complex historical and economic reasons for this. Your society is not interested in the psycho-biological needs of human females. The machine is designed with its own best interests in mind, not those of its human components."

"I do not want to be a component in a machine," she said.

"Then," said I, "listen in the quiet for the beating of your own heart."

"It is hard to hear in the noise of the machine," she whispered.

"But it beats," I said. "Listen."

She kissed me, softly.

"You have been taught to function," I said, "not to be alive."

"How wrong it is to be alive!" she wept.

"Perhaps not," I suggested.

"I dare not be true to myself," she said.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because I think," she whispered, "deep within me, there lies a slave."

"One day you will be awakened," I said, "and will discover that it is you yourself who are that slave."

"Oh, no," she said.

"Surely you have been curious about her," I said, "about that girl, your deep and true self."'

"No, no!" she said. Then for a long time she was quiet. Then she said, "Yes, I have wondered about her."

I put my hand gently on her head.

"Even as a girl," she said, "lying alone in bed, I wondered what it might be like to lie soft and small, perfumed, helpless, in the arms of a strong man, knowing that he would treat me as he wished, doing with me whatever he wanted."

"It is uncompromising manhood which thrills you," I said. "It is found but rarely on your native world."

"It is not useful to the machine," she said.

"No," I said, "but note, interestingly, in spite of the fact that you perhaps never in your life on Earth encountered such manhood, yet you were capable of understanding and conceiving it, and longing for its manifestation."

"How can that be?" she asked, frightened.

"It is a genetic expectation," I told her, "more ancient than the caves, a whisper in your brain bespeaking a lost world of nature, a world in which the human being, both male and female, were bred. You were fitted to one world; you found yourself in another. You were a stranger in a country not of your own choosing, a troubled guest, uneasy in a house you knew was not yours."

"I fear my feelings," she said.

"They hint to you of nature's world," I told, her. 'They are inimical to the machine."

"I must fight them," she said.

"They are a reminiscence," I said, "of a vanished reality. They whisper of old songs. The machine has not yet been able to eradicate them from your brain. Such feelings, in their genetic foundations, lie at the root of women, and of men. They antedate the taming of fire. They were ancient when the first stone knife was lifted to the sun."

"I must fight them," she wept.

"Fight yourself then," I said, "for it is your deepest self of which they speak."

"It is wrong to be true to oneself!" she said.

"Perhaps," I said. "I do not know."

"One must always pretend to be other than what one is," she said.

"Why?" I asked.

"I do not know," she said.

"Gorean men," I said, "you will learn are less tolerant of pretense than the men of Earth."

"They would force me to be what I truly am, and in my heart long to be?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"I'm frightened," she whispered. We did not speak for a time. "Why are there no true men on Earth?" she asked.

"I am sure there are many true men on Earth." I said. "But it is much more difficult for them."

"I do not think there are any men on Earth," she said, angrily.

"I am sure they exist," I said.

"What of the others?" she asked.

"Perhaps someday," I said, "they will cease to fear their manhood."

"Is there much hope for those of Earth?" she asked.

"Very little," I said. "A reversal of the pathology of centuries would be required." I smiled. "The wheels are heavy, and the momentum great," I said.

"The machine will tear itself apart," she said.

"I sense that, too," I said. "How long can it continue to spread, to grow and devour? Stalemate will be achieved upon the ashes of civilizations."

"It is horrible," she said.

"Perhaps it will not occur," I said.

"Perhaps the lies of civilization are preferable to the truths of barbarism," she said.

"Perhaps," I said. "It is hard to know."

"Cannot there be a civilization that makes room for the realities of men and women?" she asked.

"A civilization that makes room for life?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"I do not know," I said. "Perhaps."

"You are kind to talk to me," she said.

"Once we were both of Earth," I said.

"How can you talk to me like this and yet keep me a slave?" she asked.

"I do not detect the difficulty," I said.