"14 - Fighting Slave of Gor v2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

"I must not listen to you," she said. "I must be a true woman!"

"I have little doubt that you are more intelligent, and have a greater grasp of reality, than they," I said, "but you will not, in all likelihood, compete successfully with them. You lack their aggressiveness and belligerence, which are probably indexed to an unusual amount, for a woman, of male hormones in their bodies. They will, through their cruelty and assertiveness, crush you in discussion, and, when it is to their purpose, demean and humiliate you."

"I do not even enter into discussion with them," she said. "I am afraid."

"You do not wish to be verbally whipped," I said.

"I do not know what to think," she said.

"Try to understand and interpret your feelings," I said. "Consider the possibility of being true to yourself."

"Perhaps they are really women, only latently so," said the girl.

"Perhaps," I said. I shrugged.

"What is a woman, truly?" she asked, angrily. "A slave?"

I was startled that she had asked this. I looked down at her. She was emotionally overwrought. There were tears in her eyes. I knew that I was supposed to reassure her and deny vehemently what had been suggested in her fantastic question. But I did not reassure her nor deny, as I was expected to, what she had suggested. Indeed, it suddenly struck me as not only strange that she had addressed this question, presumably a rhetorical question to me, but, too, that this was precisely the sort of thing which, for no reason I clearly understood, women of her political persuasion spent a great deal of time, excessively in my mind, denying. I wondered why they should be so concerned, so frequently and intensely, in denying that they were slaves. Why should they feel it necessary to deny this apparently fantastic allegation so often and so desperately?

"Do you think we are slaves?" she demanded.

I looked down at her. She was small and exquisitely beautiful. She wore a bit of lipstick and eye shadow. I could smell her perfume. The whiteness of her breasts, as I could see them, and of her throat, was striking. How marvelously the white sheath concealed and yet suggested her beauty. I wanted to tear it from her.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Perhaps," I said.

She spun away from me, in fury and rage.

I did not speak to her then, but watched her, as she stood, angrily, outside the restaurant.

I considered her. Thoughts slipped through my mind. I wondered what she might look like, her clothing removed, standing on the tiles of a palace.

How strange it then seemed to me that society should ever have developed in such a way that such delicious and desirable creatures should have ever been permitted their freedom. Surely they belonged in steel collars at a man's feet.

She was aware of my eyes on her, but she did not look at me directly. She tossed her head. It was a lovely gesture I thought, of a girl who knew herself inspected, a slave's gesture.

"Are you going to apologize?" she asked.

"For what?" I asked.

"For saying that I might be a slave," she said.

"Oh," I said. "No," I said.

"I hate you," she said.

"All right," I said. I continued to regard her, her clothing removed in my mind. I tried, in my mind, various sorts of collars and chains on her.