The girl wore Gorean dancing silk. It hung low upon her bared hips, and�fell to her ankles. It was scarlet, diaphanous. A front corner of the silk was taken behind her and thrust, loose and draped, into the rolled silk knotted about her hips; a back corner of the silk was drawn before her and thrust loosely, draped, into the rolled silk at her right hip. Low on her hips she wore a belt of small denomination, threaded, overlapping golden coins. A veil concealed her muchly from us, it thrust into the strap of� the coined halter at her left shoulder, and into the coined belt at her right hip. On her arms she wore numerous armlets and bracelets. On the thumb and first finger of both her left and right hand were golden finger cymbals.� On her throat was a collar. He clapped his hands. Immediately the girl stood� beautifully, alert, before us, her arms high, wrists outward. The musicians, to one side, stirred, readying themselves. Their leader was a czehar player.�� He looked at the girl. He clapped his hands, sharply. There was a clear�note of the finger cymbals, sharp, delicate, bright, and the slave girl� danced before us. I regarded the coins threaded, overlapping, on her belt� and halter. They took the firelight beautifully. They glinted, but were of small worth. One dresses such a woman in cheap coins; she is slave. Her hand moved to the veil at her right hip. Her head was turned away, as though unwilling and reluctant, yet knowing she must obey. The dancer was now moving slowly to the music. I turned to watch the dancer. She danced well. At the moment she writhed upon the "slave pole," it fixing her in place. There is no actual pole, of course, but sometimes it is difficult to believe there is not. The girl imagines that a pole, slender, supple, swaying, transfixes her body, holding her helplessly. About this imaginary pole, it constituting hypothetical center of gravity, she moves, undulating, swaying, sometimes yielding to it in ecstasy, and sometimes fighting it, it always holding�her in perfect place, its captive. The control achieved by the use of the "slave pole" is remarkable. An incredible, voluptuous tension is almost� immediately generated, visible in the dancer's body, and kinetically felt by those who watch. I heard men at the table cry out with pleasure. The dancer's hands were at her thighs. She regarded them, angrily, and still she moved. Her shoulder lifted and fell; her hands touched her breasts and shoulder; her head was back, and then again she glared at the men, angrily.�� Her arms were high, very high. Her hips moved, swaying. Then, the music suddenly silent, she was absolutely still. Her left hand was at her thigh;� her right high above her head; her eyes were on her hip; frozen into a hip sway; then there was again a bright, clear flash of finger cymbals, and the music began again, and again she moved, helpless on the pole. Men threw coins at her feet. The dancer moaned, crying out, as though in agony. Still�she remained impaled upon the slave pole, its prisoner. The hips of the�dancer now moved, seemingly in isolation from the rest of her body, though�her wrists and hands, ever so slightly, moved to the music. Samos, with a snap of his fingers, freed the dancer from the slave pole. She moved, turning, toward us. Before us, loosening her veil at the right hip, she danced. Then she took it from her left shoulder, where it had been tucked beneath the strap of her halter. With the veil loose, covering her, holding it in her hands, she danced before us. then she regarded us, dark-eyed, over the veil; it turned about her body, then,.. she wafted the silk about her, immeshing her in its gossamer softness. I saw the parted lips, the eyes wide with horror, of the kneeling, harnessed girl, through the light,yellow veil; then the dancer had drawn it away from her, and, turning, was�again in the center of the floor. The dancer whirled near us, then enveloped�me in her veil. Within the secrecy of the veil, binding us together, she moved her body slowly before me, lips parted, moaning... I slowly removed� her veil from her, then threw it aside. Then with my right hand, the Tuchuk quiva in it, while still holding her with my left, as she continued to move to the music, I, behind her back, cut the halter she wore from her. I then thrust her from me, before the tables, that she might better please the guests of Samos, first slaver of Port Kar. She looked at me reproachfully, but, seeing my eyes, turned frightened to the men, hands over her head, to please them. Never in all this, of course, had she lost the music in her body. The men cried out, pleased with her beauty.

Then, suddenly, the two men with the kaiila quirts struck her across the�back and, before she could do more than cry out, she was, too, pulled to� her feet and forward, on the two tethers. She then stood, held by the tethers, wildly, before the pole. Cancega pointed to the pole. She looked at him,� bewildered. Then the quirts, again, struck her, and she cried out in pain.� Cancega again pointed to the pole. Winyela then put her head down and took the pole in her small hands, and kissed it, humbly. "Yes," said Cancega, encouraging her. "Yes." Again Winyela kissed the pole. "Yes," said Cancega.� Winyela then heard the rattles behind her, giving her rhythm. These rattles were then joined by the fifing of whistles, shrill and high, formed from the wing bones of the taloned Herlit. A small drum, too, then began to sound.� Its more accented beats, approached subtly but predictable, instructed the helpless, lovely dancer as to the placement and timing of the more dramatic of her demonstrations and motions. "It is the Kaiila," chanted the men.�Winyela danced. There was dust upon her hair and on her body. On her cheeks�were the three bars of greases that marked her as the property of the Kailla.��Grease, too, had been smeared liberally upon her body. No longer was she a shining beauty. She was now only a filthy slave, an ignoble animal, something of no account, something worthless, obviously, but, nonetheless permitted, in the kindness of the Kaiila, a woman of another people, to attempt to� please the pole. I smiled. Was this not suitable? Was this not appropriate for her, a slave? Winyela, kissing the pole, and caressing it, and moving about it, and rubbing her body against it, under the directions of Cancega, and guided sometimes by the tethers on her neck, continued to dance. I whistled softly to myself. "Ah," said Cuwignaka. "It is the Kaiila!" chanted the men. "I think the pole will be pleased," I said. "I think a rock would be pleased," said Cuwignaka. "I agree," I said. Winyela, by the neck tethers, was pulled against the pole. She seized it, and writhed against it, and licked at it. "It is the Kaiila!" chanted the men. "It is the Kaiila!" shouted�� Cuwignaka. A transformation seemed suddenly to come over Winyela. This was� evinced in her dance. "She is aroused," said Cuwignaka. "Yes," I said. She began, then, helplessly, to dance her servitude, her submission, her slavery.�� The dance, then, came helplessly from the depths of her. The tethers pulled� her back from the pole and she reached forth for it. She struggled to reach it, writhing. Bit by bit she was permitted to near it, and then she embraced it. She climbed, then, upon the pole. There her dance, on her knees, her belly and back, squirming and clutching, continued. Winyela now knelt on� the pole and bent backwards, until her hair fell about the wood, and then she slipped her legs down about the pole and lay back on it, her hands holding� to the pole behind her head. She reared helplessly on the pole, and writhed upon it, almost as though she might have been chained to it, and then, she turned about and lay on the pole, on her stomach, her thighs gripping it, her hands pushing her body up, and away from the pole, and then, suddenly, moving down about the trunk, bringing her head and shoulder down. Her red hair hung about the smooth, white wood. Her lips, again and again, pressed down upon it, in helpless kisses. Winyela, helplessly, piteously, danced her obeisance to the great pole, and, in this, to her master, and to men.� In her dance, of course Winyela was understood to be dancing not only her personal slavery, which she surely was, but, from the point of view of the Kaiila, in the symbolism of the dance, in the medicine of the dance, that� the women of enemies were fit to be no more than the slaves of the Kaiila.�� I did not doubt but what the Fleer and the Yellow Knives, and other peoples,� too, might have similar ceremonies, in which, in one way or another, a similar profession might take place, there being danced or enacted also by a woman of another group, perhaps even, in those cases, by a maiden of the Kaiila.� I, myself, saw the symbolism of the dance, and, I think, so, too, did Winyela, in a pattern far deeper than that of an ethnocentric idiosyncrasy. I saw the symbolism as being in accord with what is certainly one of the deepest and most pervasive themes of organic nature, that of dominance and submission.� In the dance, as I chose to understand it, Winyela danced the glory of life� and the natural order; in it she danced her submission to the might of men and the fulfillment of her own femaleness; in it she danced her desire to be owned, to feel passion, to give of herself, unstintingly, to surrender herself, rejoicing, to service and love. "It is the Kaiila!" shouted the men. "It is the Kaiila!" shouted Cuwignaka. Winyela was dragged back, toward the bottom of the pole on its tripods. There she was knelt down. The two men holding her neck tethers slipped the rawhide, between their fist and the girl's neck, under their feet, the man on her left under his right foot, and the man on her right under his left foot. But already Winyela, of her own accord, breathing deeply from the exertions of her dance, and trembling, had put her head to the dirt, humbly, before the pole. Then the tension on the two tethers was increased, the rawhide on her neck being drawn tight under the feet of her keepers. I do not think Winyela desired to raise her� head. But now, of course, she could not have done so had she wished. It was held in place. I think this is the way she would have wanted it. This is what she would have chosen, to be owned, to serve, to be deprived of� choice. The men about slapped their thighs and grunted their approval. The music stopped. The tethers were removed from Winyela's neck. She then, tentatively, lifted her head. It seemed now she was forgotten.

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