Prize of Gor (36 page)

She continued to listen, dimly, determinedly, in English, and, in this way, reassuringly, she understood nothing, or, perhaps better, nothing she would admit to herself.

She was on her stomach, doubtless on her bed in her apartment. On the other hand, the surface seemed very hard, unpleasantly hard, even rough. I must get a new mattress, she thought. She reached for her pillow, but could not find it. It had doubtless fallen to the floor. The bed was hard, much too hard. It also seemed very warm, where she was. It was almost as though she lay on a hot surface, in direct sunlight, in the heat of a blazing summer. The sunlight must be streaming through the window in her apartment. But there was so much of it. And the angle seemed wrong, and it was so hot! How terribly unpleasant, she thought. She was uncomfortably warm, but did not want to awaken.

She reached for the covers, to press them down, and away, but she could not find them. She must have discarded them already.

She sensed redness, radiance and heat through her closed eyelids.

It was hot. There seemed to be bright sunlight.

Was there something on her neck? Had there been a tiny sound, as of the touching of one piece of metal upon another, or a tiny scraping sound?

Something seemed subtly different about her body.

She hoped that it was Saturday, for on Saturdays she had no classes.

She reached down to touch her nightgown. She knew that she should have, given her ideological commitments, affected mannish nightwear, to be more like men, the enemy, but she had not wished to do so, and her fellow ideologues, her colleagues, and such, need never know that she wore a gown to bed, one that might be thrust up, revealing her. It was of cotton. She had not dared to purchase, let alone wear, a subtle, rustling silken gown, or one of those tiny, revealing short gowns, one of those scandalous little things presumably eschewed even by prostitutes, who might wish to have a bit of respect from their clients, the sort of garment in which a master might put a slave girl.

An old dream vaguely touched her consciousness.

No, no, she murmured.

But he had emerged from his seat in the classroom, taken her in hand, and, despite her mild, weakly plaintive protests, almost ritualistic protests, expected of her, quietly, methodically, garment by garment, even to her shoes, stripped her before the class. He had then lifted her to the surface of the desk. She had squirmed beneath him, plaintively protesting, trying weakly to push him away, and then, kissing him and grasping him, had wept her surrender. The class had applauded.

No, she thought. Oh, yes, yes, yes! No! Yes! Yes!

She reached down to touch her cotton nightgown, but touched, rather, her thigh. She feared that in the intensity of her dream she had drawn it up, about her waist, or bosom. She reached to draw it down, but could not find it. She did not sleep nude! She would never do that! She was not that kind of woman! She would never permit herself to be so vulnerable!

She became more aware, then, of the sounds about her, the hardness of the surface on which she lay.

She also became more apprehensive.

She fought consciousness.

She felt her body, and was terrified. It did not seem hers, or not as it had been, when she had retired, surely. She lightly touched her breasts. How sweet and full, and delightful and felicitous, they seemed. She was embarrassed. She touched her waist which now seemed small, firm and slim, and beautifully rounded, even delicate, and she touched her hips and sensed the contrasting flare of a sweet love cradle. She sensed then, to her misery and terror, not the figure she thought she had, but one quite different, one of those figures which draws vulgar whistles and obscene catcalls from rude men, from moved, uninhibited, rude, excited men.

It is not my body, she thought!

But of course it was her body.

She moved to draw up her legs and cover herself with her hands and arms, but, suddenly, was aware of some sort of impediment on her left ankle. It was not that she could not move as she wished; it was only that there was something on her left ankle, something heavy. Too, now there seemed more clearly something on her neck. She tried to thrust the thing from her ankle with her right foot, but could not do so. It clearly was metal, and heavy, and round, and was closed, and closed closely, about her ankle. She could not slip it. Too, she heard a sound, when she moved her foot, as of heavy links of chain, drawn perhaps over a cement surface. The weight seemed to pull at the object on her foot. It seemed to be attached to the object.

She touched her neck. There seemed something there, something heavy. She jerked away her hand.

The noise about her, the sounds, the language, the speech, now seemed even more obtrusive.

She was terrified to awaken.

Yet on some level, doubtless, she was already awake, and fearfully awake.

“Buy me, Master!” she heard, the soliciting, piteously begging call of a woman, from not more than a yard or two away. The call had not been in English, as she suddenly, almost simultaneously, realized, but yet, as she also suddenly realized, as in a moment of blazing comprehension, she had not only understood it perfectly, but understood as well that she had understood it perfectly, immediately, and naturally. It was not in English, but it was in a language she spoke, and with some fluency. Most of the words she heard about her, now, though not all, made perfect sense to her. The tiny shift, the adjustment, had been made.

All this seemed to take place at the same time, and she opened her eyes wildly for an instant but, drawing back from the painful stabbing of sunlight, shut them in pain, but, in that moment, she had glimpsed a world about her, movements, colors, robes, stalls across the way, displayed goods, awnings, shouting vendors, children, men, women, hurryings, groups in converse, peddlers, some with baskets on their heads.

She rolled to her side, and sat up, with a clatter of chain, and clenched her legs together, and covered her breasts with her hands and arms, and screamed in misery.

Girls on either side of her drew back.

Some passers-by paused for a moment, some close enough to reach out and touch her, and then moved on.

She opened her eyes a little, fearfully.

She was on a narrow, sunlit cement shelf at one side of a small plaza, or square. Across the square were numerous stalls, where vendors displayed their goods. Too, here and there in the square, blankets had been spread on the stones, and other vendors, sitting at the blankets, displayed goods spread before them. There were also stalls on her side of the square. Across the way, behind the stalls, and also behind her, on her side of the square, were brick, tenementlike buildings, some seven or eight stories in height, very different from the tall cylinders she had seen before. At one end of the square she could see two of these cylinders in the distance. At the other side of the square, down a narrow street threading its way between buildings similar to those about the square, she could glimpse what seemed to be a high, broad wall.

She began to sob, shielding her body as she could.

She was on a narrow cement shelf, backed by a building on which it abutted, rather like a porch. The shelf was something like five feet in depth, and thirty feet, or so, in length. It was about a yard high. There were steps at either end, giving access to its surface. To the left of the shelf, as one would face it, there was a door at the ground level, through which access to the building was obtained. It was through this door that women could be brought to and from the shelf. Behind that door there was a hallway, with cramped, dark, narrow, cement stairs leading down for some thirty feet. At the foot of those stairs there was a basement level, and on this level there were several basement rooms, some with stout, security doors. It was within one of these basement rooms, ill-lit, musty, damp and straw-strewn, that the women were housed when not on the shelf.

There were seven sockets behind the shelf in the wall of the building, overhead, in which horizontal poles might be fixed, and there were matching sockets near the front of the shelf, into which vertical poles might be placed, from which arrangements of poles, joined together and reinforced by additional, overhead, horizontal poles near the front of the shelf, awnings might be suspended. At present, however, the poles, with their awnings, were not set, reposing rather in a storeroom of the low brick building, the tenement, or
insula
, as the shelf, without the awnings, rented for a lower price.

Instantly the flood of her memories had returned to her, the house, the training, the laundry, the tassa powder.

She looked down at her left thigh.

Could these things be true?

Could she have gone mad?

But there, high, just below the hip, was the tiny, graceful, cursive kef.

It was true!

She was branded! Literally, actually branded! That lovely mark was literally in her. It had been burned into her with a hot iron! She was branded, clearly and unmistakably marked!

On her right side there was a bruise. That was surely where Mirus had angrily spurned her from the dais, with a thrust of his bootlike sandal, and she, helplessly bound, turning and rolling, twisting, in pain, had tumbled rolling to the rug at the foot of the dais.

He had not been gentle with his slave.

She looked at her left ankle. About it there was a heavy shackle. Attached to a ring on this shackle was a stout chain. It was some five feet in length, and was composed of heavy links. The chain was, in turn, fastened to a large, heavy metal ring which was anchored in the cement. She was, accordingly, by the left ankle, chained to this ring.

There were five such rings on the shelf.

The shackle was hammered shut about her ankle. A large padlock, snapped about the dangling shackle ring, attached the chain to her shackle; another large padlock, at the other end of the chain, completed her securing, fastening her to the heavy ring in the cement. The shackle, as it was hammered shut about her ankle, could not be removed, save by tools.

She looked about. On the shelf there were seven girls, including herself. Each was chained as herself. Two rings had two girls fastened to them.

She put her fingers to her throat. No longer did it wear the thin, flat, light, graceful, lovely metal band with which she had become familiar, which she had scarcely been aware she had worn, until perhaps a sharp word or a stroke of the switch had recalled to her attention its significance.

She looked at the other girls.

On their throats were heavy collars of black iron, the perforated ends of each curving about the neck to come together in front, in such a way that the collar curved closely about the neck behind the two perforated ends, and the two perforated ends extended forward. These jutting ends then, with their matching apertures, were hammered flat together. Through the matched apertures a dangling iron ring had been closed. Thus, in a sense, the collar was doubly closed, having not only been hammered shut, but also secured with the ring joining the two ends of the metal. Either closure is sufficient, of course. This collar-and-ring arrangement is simply and inexpensively wrought, not requiring the fusing of metals in welding. Ring mounts, and such, on the other hand, are usually fused into, welded into, thus becoming part of, the shackle or manacle. For example, the shackle on her left ankle had a common ring mount, welded into the metal, through which the ring was inserted and closed.

The heavy metal collar on her throat was uncomfortable, quite different from the light band with which she had been familiar. Further, it was a high collar, and it was not easy for her to put her head down.

It was exactly the same sort of collar, she was sure, as that worn by the other girls. She could feel it, trace with her finger the closure, feel the extended ends, touch the heavy, dangling ring which had been put through the apertures and closed.

Such a collar, with its size and weight, perhaps four or five pounds, its discomfort, she was sure, in the house would have been used only as a punishment collar. Yet, here, all the girls wore it.

But surely they were not all being punished!

Could it be then that they were all merely the least of slaves, the cheapest of slaves, the lowest and the most meaningless of slaves?

Doubtless such girls would all be eager to be freed of such collars, and have their throats returned to the lightness, if inflexible perfection, of a master’s collar.

Could that be why the girl had called out so beggingly, so piteously, “Buy me, Master!”

Where am I, she wondered.

What bondage is this?

She looked at the other girls. They did not seem interested in her. One had regarded her with surprise, and then scorn, when she had screamed, and had then looked away. She wondered if they knew she was a barbarian, a girl from Earth.

They, too, as she, were stripped, utterly, given not a thread to wear.

On the collars of the girls closest to her, on her left and right, she could see numerous scratches, some things seemingly scratched in, and others scratched out. She was illiterate, as we may remember, but she could recognize script, both cursive and printed, and what was on the collar, that was not scratched out, was partly written, but mainly printed. The printing seemed uneducated, and crude. She touched her own collar lightly, just barely touching it, with her finger tips, and detected scratches, too, on her collar. She wondered what was written there. She was sure that numerous girls, before her, had worn that collar, and she supposed that others, after her, might do so, as well. It was very different from the neat engraving which, in a mirror, she had seen on her former color. She had been told by one of the instructrices that that collar had said, ‘I am Ellen, the slave of Mirus of Ar’. But now that collar was gone. Both brand and collar mark the woman as slave, but both do so in a somewhat different fashion. The brand stays on her; the collar may change. Not all masters brand and collar their slaves, but branding and collaring is strongly recommended in Merchant Law, and it would be a rare slave girl who was not both branded and collared.