Prize of Gor (123 page)

“Yes, Master!”

“Is it a slave collar?”

“Yes, Master!”

“Then you are a slave?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Whose collar is it?”

“Yours, Master!”

“Then whose slave are you?”

“Yours, Master!”

“Prepare to be whipped,” said he.

“Wait, Master!” she cried.

The lash did not fall.

“Recall that I am from Earth, Master!” she wept. “That is a different culture from yours. The women of Earth, certainly most of them, are not accustomed to being slaves. They would not even understand what it is to be a slave!”

“Every woman,” said Selius Arconious, “understands what it would be, to be a slave.”

“I am other than your Gorean women!” cried Ellen. “I am more delicate, more sensitive, finer! Your culture is primitive, a culture in which such a thing as the beating of a slave may be accepted, but I am not of that culture. In deference to my background, my upbringing, my education, my refinement, such things should not be done to me! They are not for me! I am above them! I should not be subjected to such things. They are inappropriate for me! Your culture is barbaric. You are barbarians! I am not a barbarian! I am civilized! I am a civilized woman!”

“‘Girl,’” corrected Selius Arconious.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“It is you who are the barbarian,” said Portus Canio, matter-of-factly.

“It is true, Master,” acknowledged Ellen, “that Gorean is not my native tongue.”

“Thus,” said Portus Canio, “you are a barbarian.”

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen, twisting in the ropes, “in that sense.”

The usual criterion on Gor for a barbarian is one who does not speak Gorean, or, perhaps better, whose original language is not Gorean. Ellen, for example, who is now fluent in Gorean, continues to be thought of as a “barbarian.”

“In more than that sense,” said Portus Canio.

“Yes, Master,” granted Ellen. Ellen knew that those brought to Gor from Earth were accounted barbarians in a sense stronger than one merely linguistic, one having to do with a remote and commonly little-understood point of origin. Many Goreans, incidentally, assume that “Earth” is a remote locale or land on their own world.

“You speak of yourself as civilized,” said Portus Canio, “say, in contradistinction, from Goreans?”

“Yes,” said Ellen, a little uncertainly.

It is hard to participate in such a conversation when one is on one’s knees, bound naked at a pole, and has a whip somewhere behind one.

“Your world is civilized?” asked Portus Canio.

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen.

“On the trail, from time to time,” said Portus Canio, “Mirus and I whiled away many a pleasant Ahn in conversation.”

“Yes, Master?” said Ellen, apprehensively.

“You recall Mirus?” he asked.

“Certainly, Master,” said Ellen, “—
Master
Mirus.”

Ellen was now much on her guard. Had it been a trap? A slave girl does not address a free person by their name, but will use the expressions ‘Master’ or ‘Mistress’, or, sometimes, if referring to one’s owner, ‘my Master’ or ‘my Mistress.’ Similarly, in referring to a free person, one would commonly use expressions such as ‘Master Publius’, ‘Mistress Publia’, and so on. If asked, say, her master, the slave might respond, ‘My master is Selius Arconious, of Ar’, or such.

“I am not at all certain that your world is civilized,” said Portus Canio.

“Master?”

“I gather you do have mighty machines, and such.”

“Yes, Master.”

“But there are, as I understand it, no Home Stones on your world.”

“No, Master, or I would suppose not.”

“How then can it be civilized?”

Ellen was silent.

“Mirus spoke to me of monstrosities of indiscriminate death, contrived by the clever and mindless, of crowdings, of manipulations, of hatreds, pollutions, diseases and famines. He spoke of the ruination of lakes and forests, of the extinction of life forms, of a world being poisoned. He spoke to me of a world in which brothers might kill brothers, or friends friends, were a particle of power or profit to be gained, a world in which nature is scarred, wounded and betrayed, a world in which human beings do not know one another, nor do they care to do so, a world in which fidelity is scorned and honor mocked.”

Ellen was silent.

“Our world,” said Portus Canio, “is a green world, a fresh, clean, honest world. It has its terrors, but it is a beautiful world, and a natural world. I do not think it is inferior to yours.”

“No, Master,” said Ellen.

“I do not think I would care to live on your world,” he said.

“No, Master,” said Ellen.

“Do you dare to call your world civilized?” he asked.

“No, Master,” whispered Ellen.

“Your world is in many ways a thousand times more primitive than ours,” he said, “and Gor, in many ways, is a thousand times more civilized than yours, than the unnatural moral barbarism which engendered your likes.”

“Yes, Master,” whispered Ellen.

“And you, a smug, haughty product of that world, dare to speak of yourself as civilized! You are only another barbarian, a true barbarian. I wonder if such as you are worthy of being brought to our world, even as slaves.”

“Forgive me, Master,” wept Ellen.

“So,” said Selius Arconious, angrily, “you are other than Gorean women? More delicate, more sensitive, finer!”

“Forgive me, Master!” wept Ellen.

“Weaker? Nastier? Pettier? More selfish?”

“Master?”

“A meaningless, vain, pretentious, worthless slut of Earth!” he said.

Ellen’s small hands twisted in the ropes.

“You are unworthy to tie the sandals of a Gorean woman,” said Selius Arconious.

“Yes, Master,” wept Ellen.

“But,” said he, “you are well-curved.”

“Master?”

“I do not object,” said he, “that slavers bring such as you to our world.”

“Thank you, Master.”

“I think we can find a use for you on Gor.”

“It is my hope to be pleasing to my master,” said Ellen.

“Let us speak no more of your pathetic, miserable, tragic world,” said Selius Arconious.

“As Master pleases,” said Ellen.

“You are on Gor now, Earth slut,” he said, angrily. “And here you are in a collar, a slave collar!”

“Yes, Master!”

“And I will teach you your collar in a way that you will never forget!”

“No, Master, please, no, Master,” wept the slave.

“No longer are you on Earth,” said he. “Understand that, slut. Understand it well. Understand that such things are behind you! You are not on Earth now, but on Gor. And understand, as well, that despite your origin, my charming little barbarian, you are no longer
of
Earth, but are now
of
Gor, and that you are now a Gorean slave girl, only that, and that you are going to learn that you are owned.”

“Yes, Master,” wept Ellen.

What was to be done to her was, of course, nothing unusual, nor unprecedented. She was to be, simply, a beaten slave. There would be no misguided, ignorant fellows here to rush forward and stay the hand of propriety and justice, no stalwart if simple heroes who would stupidly save her from the consequences of her numerous faults, who would see to it that she yet again evaded the consequences of her acts with impunity, who would see to it that she yet again escaped a richly deserved, much-needed punishment, who would then, perhaps scarcely daring to look upon her, clothe her modestly, free her, and return her promptly and courteously, she confused, upset and unfulfilled, to the meaninglessness of her former life. No. Such would not occur. This was Gor. She was slave. No passers-by, should they be about, would think twice about what was done there.

“Please do not whip me, Master!” begged the slave.

“Master?” she said. “Master?”

And then the lash began to fall.

Chapter 30

IN AR

Ellen, kneeling, poured the wine at the small table, filling the cups but half way.

About the table, cross-legged, sat Selius Arconious, her master, Portus Canio, Fel Doron, Bosk of Port Kar, and Marcus, of Ar’s Station.

These friends were again well met.

She served silently, deferentially, unobtrusively. It was almost as though she were not there.

So serve slaves.

After the wine was poured she rose up and body bent, head down, eyes cast down, backed gracefully, silently, away, withdrawing to the side.

There she would kneel down and wait, prepared to approach and serve again, if aught else might be needed.

Bosk of Port Kar regarded her.

She dared not meet his eyes. He was such a man, and she slave.

She knelt, obedient to the protocols of her condition, slimly, beautifully, back straight, back on heels, knees spread, the palms of her hands on her thighs.

The decanter of wine was beside her, at her right knee.

“It seems your girl has learned service,” said Bosk of Port Kar.

Selius Arconious shrugged, noncommittally.

And so there, in the background, she knelt, some seven feet from the table. At this distance a girl’s presence is unobtrusive, and one might easily forget she is present. On the other hand, she is conveniently at hand, and may be promptly summoned.

The men continued to speak, paying her no attention.

Ellen adjusted slightly the brief yellow tunic, slit at the sides, so that she might kneel with a bit more modesty, even in the brazen position required of her, that of the pleasure slave. Sometimes, interestingly, in such servings, as when the master entertains guests, a pleasure slave is allowed to kneel in the position of a serving slave, or tower slave, the knees closely together. That is regarded, by some, as being more discreet, less distractive. It is particularly the case when a free woman is present, that she not be disturbed by, or offended by, the obvious availability and sensuality of the slave. Too, it is widely thought judicious to conceal from free women the deep, thrilling, exciting and profound sexuality of the female slave, how vulnerable, helpless, needful and passionate she is. Can they understand our feelings at the slave ring? Yet I think the masters are naive if they truly believe, which I suspect they do not, that the free women do not understand, or at least suspect, the nature of such facts. They, too, free women, after all, are intelligent, and are women. I think it is no secret that the free women, who so despise us, who hold us in such contempt, who hate us so, who are often so cruel to us, envy us our masters and our collars. Why should we be happy and they be miserable? Is it not because we have found our way home, and they are still lost in the deserts of artifice? It is the paradox of the collar, thought Ellen. In the collar we are happiest, most liberated, most free.

Then Ellen’s thoughts drifted to Earth, tragic Earth, and its negativities, and eccentricities. Compared to Earth the deserts in which the free women of Gor might roam seemed fertile meadows indeed. Compared with the worst of Gor the Earth seemed far worse, a psychosexual, psychobiological wasteland, withered as by a moral plague, the victim of an ideological tragedy. Pity the putatively free women of Earth, she thought, in their deserts, cluttered with social artifacts largely constructed by the subglandular, pathological, effete, feeble and impotent, trying desperately, unhappily, to conform to orthodoxies imposed upon them, orthodoxies invented in effect by witch doctors and shamans to exalt the weak and cripple the strong, invented by petty, resentful, jealous pygmies whose ambition it is to make themselves herdsmen to a reduced, tamed, human race, who will exalt the whole at the expense of the part, who will deny the individual in the name of the mass, in order that they themselves will be the only part that matters, and that they, the masters of the mass, will be the only individuals to truly exist. It is sad, one supposes, to see one’s species domesticated, to see this done to our race, and seemingly to be done with its consent, too, a race which might otherwise have become children of the stars. But who knows, thought Ellen, perhaps one day they will see where they are going, and they will cry out “Stop!” and remember the stars.

The men, it seemed, eating, drinking, chatting, needed nothing, and, too, it seemed they were totally unaware of her.

She smiled to herself. Her master had made it clear to her, earlier, before the guests arrived that she, even though serving, would kneel in the position of the pleasure slave. To be sure, there were only men present. But Ellen knew that she, in her way, was being shown off. This pleased her, that her master was proud of her, and wished to display her. But could he not have done this, as well, if she had been permitted to kneel more demurely? No, she thought. These men remember me from the grasslands, and it is the intention of Selius Arconious to make it clear to them that his slave is different now from what they saw then, that she is muchly changed, that she is now an acceptable slave, a well-mastered slave. Too, her kneeling position was doubtless commanded with the intent as well, that there should not be the least doubt as to the nature of the relationship in which she stood to him, her master, that she was not merely a serving slave, or tower slave, but was to him wholly and fully, and in all ways, pleasure slave.

She had been ordered to make herself up, in the bedroom, and she had done so, she hoped with taste. The cosmetics of slaves are not that different, interestingly, from those of free women on Earth. Gorean free women do not use cosmetics, or supposedly do not use them, though ankle bells, concealed by their robes, and perfumes are permitted to them.

Cosmetics, on Gor, are regarded as salacious, improper, offensive and scandalous in the case of a free woman; such things are associated with slaves. Naturally enough then, that women of Earth not unoften so adorn themselves, and may appear in public so adorned, is taken by most Goreans, at least those who believe it, as evidence that they are slaves, and thus of their fittingness to be placed upon the auction block, appearing before masters to be bid upon.

Some Goreans seem to prefer Earth women as slaves; others prefer native Gorean women; I would not think it would make much difference; they are all women; doubtless it depends on the particular woman and man, on the particular slave and master, on the particular “chemistry,” so to speak; on the other hand I think it is true that their bondage is likely to have a special, remarkable flavor to Earth women, as many of them have been extracted from a crowded, unnatural, lonely, forlorn, miserable, meaningless, frustrating, negativistic, puritanical environment and they find themselves for the first time in a fresh, open, young, vital, exotic, sensuous, joyous, natural world; too, stripped and collared at the feet of a Gorean male they are likely to have experiences and feelings for which their relationships to men of Earth have simply failed to prepare them. For the first time in their lives, they have met masters.