Part 36 (1/2)

I was silent.

I lay back in the net, bound.

”Men are fools!” she cried.

It was she, of course, and not they, who seemed to be in some sort of confinement.

”They are fools!” she wept.

The men I had seen on this world did not seem to me to be fools.

Indeed, they seemed to be anything but fools. By the force and intellect in them I had often felt awed.

They did make many men of my old world now, in this perspective, seem fools. Here men seemed a.s.sured of themselves. They had not been confused, and bled, and subverted, and crippled, by a sick society. Here they had never surrendered their natural dominance. Here, for the first time, I had begun to understand what true men might be like, in all their splendor, in all their natural, b.e.s.t.i.a.l magnificence.

”How I hate men!” she cried. ”How I despise them!”

I would certainly not respond to this. Indeed, what if she were a spy, set to examine me, perhaps even, cruelly, to trap me into some insolent inadvertence, trying to tease from me some careless, thoughtless, prideful, idly arrogant remark? Too, of course, more importantly, I did not, in fact, hate the men I had found here, nor did I despise them. If anything, I tended to admire them, and feel grateful toward them.

Too, they tended to excite me, as a female, as few men of my old world had. To be sure, I did regard them with a healthy respect, even fear. They were, after all, the masters.

”But what could one such as you, of low caste,” said the voice, ”know of one of my sensitivity and nature? How could one such as you understand the feelings of one such as I?”

”Only with great difficulty, if at all, doubtless,” said I, perhaps somewhat testily.

”But have no fear,” said she. ”I will be patient with you. We are, after all, despite the discrepancies in our caste, sisters in sorrow, in misery and grief.”

I was silent.

”We have in common our precious freedom,” she said.

I did not respond to this. To be sure, I was confident that she was in some sort of confinement, and I lay bound and naked, in a net. But I did not doubt she had in mind some more serious sense of freedom, and one that made me uneasy. From things she had said, I had little doubt but what she was, in a sense important on this world, ”free.” On the other hand, in a sense also important on this world, and doubtlessly more profoundly important, I was not ”free” It was riot merely that I had a collar on my neck, close-fitting and locked as it might be, and a brand on my thigh, lovely and unmistakable, put there deeply and clearly for all to see.

Nor was it even that my nature was such as to put me helplessly, lovingly, and appropriately at a man's feet. It was rather that in the full legalities of a world, in the full sanction of the totality of its customs, practices and inst.i.tutions, in the fullness of its very reality. I was not free. I was an animal, a property, a slave.

I had had little, if anything, to do with free women. I had encountered two of them earlier, in the pens, and not pleasantly. I have briefly, as I recall, recounted the nature of that interlude elsewhere. I did know that an impa.s.sable gulf separated me from such lofty creatures, an unbridgeable chasm one of the same immeasurability that separated the lowliest of domestic animals, which slaves were, from the heights and glories of the free person.

”What is your caste?” she asked.

I was silent.

”Mine is the Merchants,” she said.

”That is not a high caste is it?” I asked. I had heard conflicting things about the Merchants.

”It certainly is!” she cried.

I was silent.

”I would take you to be of the Leather Workers,” she speculated.

I did not respond.

”Or perhaps, less,” she said, ”you are one of those boorish la.s.ses from the fields, that you are of the Peasants.”

Again I did not respond.

”That is doubtless it,” she said, seemingly satisfied.

The Peasants were generally regarded as the lowest of the castes, though why that should be I have never been able to determine. That caste is sometimes referred to as ”the ox on which the Home Stone rests.” I am not clear as to what a Home Stone is, but I have gathered that it, whatever it might be, is regarded as being of great importance on this world. So, if that is the case, and the Peasants is indeed the caste upon which the Home Stone rests, then it would seem, at least in my understanding, to be a very important caste. In any event, it would seem to me that the Peasants is surely one of, if not the, most significant of the castes of this world. So much depends upon them! Too, I am sure they do not regard themselves as being the lowest of the castes. In fact, I doubt that any caste regards itself as being the lowest of the castes. It would seem somewhat unlikely that any caste would be likely to accept that distinction.

Perhaps many castes regard themselves as equivalent or, at least, as each being the best in diverse ways.

For example, the Leather Workers would presumably be better at working leather than the Metal Workers, and the Metal Workers would presumably be better at working metal than the Leather Workers, and so on. One needs, or wants, it seems, all the castes.

”Yes,” she said, ”you are of the Peasants.”

I was silent.

I trusted she would not fall into the clutches of peasants. I understand that they are not always tolerant of the laziness and insolence of arrogant, urban free women. They enjoy using them, when they obtain them as slaves, in the fields. I wondered how the woman in the darkness would feel, sweating, harnessed naked to a plow, subject to a whip, or crawling, perhaps hastened by the jabbing of a pointed stick, into a dark, low log kennel at night. But perhaps she would be permitted to sleep chained at her master's feet, within reach, at his discretion. But I feared it might be dangerous to speak to this person.

To be sure, we were both in the darkness. But she was free. I was not free.

”Do not be sensitive that you are only of the Peasants,” said the woman. ”There is much to be said for the caste.”

”Yes,” I said. ”Those who eat are often thought to owe it a debt of grat.i.tude.”

”Surely,” she agreed.

That seemed to me quite generous on her part.

”You were doubtless picked up on a country road,” she said, ”perhaps ravished in the nearest ditch.”

”Perhaps,” I said.

”I myself was the victim of an elaborate plot, an intricate stratagem to secure a highborn prize for ransom.”

”Oh?” said I.

”As you are merely of the Peasants,” said she, ”you must fear, terribly.”

”Why is that?” I asked, not that I was not afraid. I was a slave.

”They may not hold you for ransom, you see,” she said.

I was silent.

”I hesitate to call this to your attention, but you must face the possibility, my dear,” she said.

”These men are brutes, powerful brutes! They may have another fate in store for you, one we dare not even think of!”