Prize of Gor (52 page)

How strange, she thought, to be utterly at the mercy of others, to know that you are the slave and that they are the masters, and that you must obey them, and strive diligently, desperately, to please them with all your talent, intelligence and beauty. And that you have no alternative. And that that is simply the way it is.

Ellen, of course, was an educated person, and historically informed. She knew that her fate, or condition, was not, historically, that unusual. She knew that throughout vast periods of human history, indeed by far the most of it, the human chattel had been an article of commerce. Women such as she, straightforwardly and naturally, without a second thought, save for the most practical means to accomplish the end, had been captured, raided for, seized, enslaved, and bought and sold. Such was customary in other times. Throughout most of human history, the “slaver’s necklace,” a coffle of chained beauties, was a familiar sight. Indeed, Ellen knew that, should historical conditions change on Earth, human slavery, with its various values, and its capacity to solve various social problems, might be reinstituted, might rise again. She did not doubt but that many men, on buses, at work, in restaurants, and such must have speculated on what a particular young woman, perhaps an insolent or troublesome one, might look like in slave silk and a collar, or, say, chained naked at the foot of their couch.

No, no, no, she thought. I must not think such things! Gor is different. Different! It is not Earth. It is a different place. It is rude, and primitive, uncompromising, frightening, natural and merciless, fierce. And it is on that world, Gor, not Earth, this fearful, severe, biologically honest world, so far from Earth, that I find myself a slave!

I cannot be a slave, she thought, wildly.

How brutal and rapid he was with me, she thought. With what casual, thoughtless contempt I was used!

Does he think I am a slave?

But, of course, I am a slave!

And how true that is, and how he has shown it to me! If I did not understand my brand before, that lovely, so-meaningful, incisive mark burned into my body, that mark which I cannot remove, which proclaims to all who see it what I am, I understand it now!

I am a slave, and no more than a slave.

Where was his gentleness, his tenderness, his sensitivity?

Surely he could not know my crimes against men on my own world, how I foolishly, deluded by the madness of propaganda, attempted to abet their destruction?

Doubtless I have much to pay for!

I wonder if the men of Earth will one day make the women of Earth pay similarly for their crimes.

But I have changed! I beg to be treated well, my masters!

Then she smiled bitterly to herself.

One might as well ask gentleness, tenderness, sensitivity of beasts, of leopards and lions, of alien, aggressive, different, mighty life forms, life forms, she thought, compared to which we are insignificant, even negligible, valued only for casual utilities. To men such as these, the mighty, untamed, unreduced men of Gor, what can women be but prey and quarry? What can we be before such men but intimidated, dominated slaves, but eager, yielding, responsive, supplicatory slaves? Such men are true men, men as nature intended them to be, and before them, accordingly, what can a female be but a true woman, as nature intended her to be, a begging, aroused, loving slave?

But I want masters to care for me, if only a little.

I will try to serve them well!

Then she shuddered, thinking of the power of men over her.

I am completely dependent upon them, she thought, as theirs, as a domestic animal, literally dependent on them for everything. How wondrously strange that makes me feel. It is they, not I, who will decide if I am to be fed or not. It is they who will decide if I will be given a bowl of gruel or a crust of bread. It is they who will decide whether or not I will be given a sip of water, a bit of straw on which to sleep, a blanket to clutch about myself against the cold, a soiled rag with which to cover myself, if even they see fit to permit me clothing. I am dependent upon them — even for my collar and chains!

No longer am I independent, she thought. I am now dependent, totally dependent, on men, on masters, in all ways.

I am theirs, she sobbed.

She pulled against the bracelets a little.

There is no one to save me on this world, she thought. There is nowhere to go. There is nowhere to run. This is a natural world. I was always such as to be fittingly embonded, but only here, on this frightening, strange, beautiful world, has that propriety been attended to.

I do not know what to feel, or how to feel, she thought. I am frightened. I am terrified. I am owned.

Mirus, Mirus, she thought, I am a helpless slave. Mirus, Mirus, she thought, now your vengeance on me is complete!

There was suddenly a titanic snapping in the air yards away, and it seemed that a mighty wind exploded in the area, scattering and whirling dust and straw. At the same time there was a loud, piercing, raucous, wild, annunciatory scream.

“A tarn!” she thought. “Birds!” she thought. “Tarns! This is a place of tarns!”

She cried out in misery and, naked, hooded, wrists braceleted behind her, chained by the neck, scrambled to the far corner of the stall, bruising herself, and tried to burrow down in the straw, trembling, trying to hide there, trying not to move.

Chapter 18

INTRIGUE

“Ellen,” said Selius Arconious, chewing on a straw, leaning against the jamb of the great portal, leading to the platform outside, “remove your tunic, to the floor, slave paces.”

“Yes, Master!” said Ellen, delightedly.

She put down her basket, heavy with layers of meat, and quickly, laughing, slipped the brief brown tunic over her head, it was all she wore save her slave collar, and went immediately to the floor, and, half kneeling, half lying, the palms of her hands on the floor, looked up at Arconious, expectantly, eager, a slave, awaiting his commands. Sometimes the slave is instructed, even commanded, to the snapping of a whip, but at other times she is permitted to display herself, as it moves her to do so. The ingenuity of the human female in such matters is well known. Most important is that she knows herself a property, and an attractive one. Then she enthusiastically and provocatively displays, with skills that might be the envy of a dancer, sometimes with seeming shyness, timidity, reluctance or fear, the well-curved, delectable merchandise which is herself. She presents herself, as goods, to her best advantage. It is in her best interest, of course, to be as beautiful and stimulating as she can. She desires, in her wonderful vanity, to be so, as all hormonally sufficient women desire to be attractive to men, though some might fear this feeling and be terrified to recognize its obvious, deeper meaning, but, even if she did not, she is subject to discipline. There is always the whip, the switch, the discipline of food, the discipline of blindfolds, gags, ropes and chains. When the slave is commanded, the slave obeys. There is nothing unusual, untoward or surprising in this. She is a slave.

“Master?” inquired Ellen, expectantly, looking up, delighted. Selius Arconious was an assistant to the tarnmaster. He was young and handsome, and no stranger to the handling of lovely slaves.

More than once she had writhed moaning, crying out, gasping, begging, in slave rapture in his arms.

“What is going on here?” called a gruff voice, that of a large, bearded man in a brown tunic, with wristlets, and a tarn goad dangling from his belt. “Dress, slut,” said Portus Canio, tarnmaster of the Tower of Corridon.

“Yes, Master!” said Ellen quickly, and scrambled to her feet. In an instant she had pulled the tiny tunic over her head, and pulled it down at the hems, as though this might conceal a thread’s width, or more, of her muchly bared thighs. She was barefoot. “Surely you have duties, slut,” said Portus Canio.

“Yes, my Master,” said Ellen, and, crouching down, for one must move carefully in so brief a garment as a slave tunic, picked up the basket of meat. It was heavy.

On Ellen’s throat was a light, inexpensive, engraved, metal collar. It was locked on her, fastened behind the back of the neck. The legend of the collar read “I am Ellen, the slave of Portus Canio.” To be sure, the reader familiar with Gorean conventions might have noted that Ellen, in her understandable unease, having been discovered, though through no obvious fault of her own, in what might seem a dalliance, or a laxity in her duties, had responded to Canio with the phrase ‘my Master’. The slave addresses all free men as “Master” and all free women as “Mistress.” The phrase ‘my Master,’ when used, is commonly addressed to one’s personal master, one’s owner. Similarly, if the slave is owned by a woman, the phrase ‘my Mistress’ is commonly addressed only to the slave’s actual mistress. To be sure, the slave commonly refers to her owner as she refers to free men and free women in general, namely, simply as “Master” or “Mistress.”

“What is your name?” had asked Portus Canio, some weeks ago, when Ellen, freed of the hood, had knelt, head to the floor, still chained by the neck, still back-braceleted, before him in the stall.

“Whatever Master pleases,” she had replied. That was the judicious response, as a slave has no name in her own right, but may be named as the Master wishes.

“What have you been called?” Portus Canio had inquired.

“‘Ellen,’” she had responded.

“A barbarian name,” he had said. “And a pretty name, a name suitable for a pretty little barbarian slave girl.”

Ellen dared not speak.

“Very well then, you are “Ellen,” he said. “What is your name?”

“‘Ellen’, Master,” had said Ellen, now named, named again, as a sleen, or kaiila, might be named.

“Lift your head,” he said. The slave obeyed, and found a whip before her lips. Obediently, unbidden, she licked and kissed the whip, for some moments, deferentially, submissively, timidly, lovingly, until it was withdrawn.

“You will be fed and watered,” he said. “And then you will be instructed in your duties.”

“Yes, Master,” she said. “Thank you, Master.”

The pans would be put on the floor, and she, neck chained, and back-braceleted, must put down her head to feed, to drink.

She looked after Portus Canio, doubtless her master, whose name she would learn only later, and from others.

She trembled. She had, of course, kissed the whip before, and had even been trained to do so, but this time, oddly, it seemed momentously significant to her. She had knelt before a mighty man and licked and kissed his whip. The symbolism of this act, she on her knees before him, naked and helpless, chained, back-braceleted, suddenly overwhelmed her. Never before, it seemed, had she felt so radically, vulnerably, rawly female. They are the masters, she thought. We are, fittingly, their slaves.

“Ho!” said Portus Canio, turning and glaring at young Selius Arconious. “Are there not harnesses to repair?”

“To be sure, Portus,” grinned Selius.

“You do not earn your copper tarsks by amusing yourself with slave girls!”

Selius grinned.

“See if she is sent to your blankets soon,” said Portus.

Ellen, lifting the basket of meat, smiled at the discomfort of young Selius. Surely he, a mere assistant, should be more circumspect with his employer’s properties. In the last weeks she had become muchly aware of her increasing charms, though they were, of course, collared and owned. She was not insensitive to the tumult, the distress, that a smile, a glance over the shoulder, the movement of a well-turned ankle, might produce in a young man, particularly in one who did not own her. The slave girl, you see, is not without her powers.

“It matters not,” said Selius. “There are hundreds better in the paga taverns!”

Ellen, who had lingered, did not care to hear this.

“The paga taverns are being emptied,” said Portus, “the best girls being shipped to Cos and Tyros, to Brundisium, and elsewhere.”

Selius shrugged.

“If you were not one of the best tarnsters in Ar,” said Portus, “I would throw you from the platform.”

Selius laughed. “I have harnesses to repair,” he said.

Portus then turned about and left the area, going to adjacent rooms.

Selius Arconious, as we recall, at the time of his accosting a young slave, had been in the vicinity of the great portal, that leading outward to the long, curving platform, outside, ledgelike, about the cylinder or tower, with its several perches. Within the portal was the “tarncot,” so to speak, of Portus Canio, which was, in effect, for the most part, a large, lofty, barnlike area, certainly that within the great portal. To the left, as one might look outward from the great portal, barred and gated, was the general housing for tarns, with its perches and roosting areas, hooks for meat, reservoirs for water, and such. There were also, in the vicinity, similarly provisioned, some individual cages. Occasionally a tarn must be isolated, particularly a male tarn, from its fellows. Such individual cages, too, are often used with new birds, in their training, in accustoming them to saddling and harnessing, and such. They are also valuable given the occasional necessity of tending ill or wounded birds. The area directly within the great portal, a large area, as one might suppose, served for the departure and entry of tarns. In this area also, against the walls, were various stalls, slave stalls, in one of which Ellen commonly slept, now usually unchained, when not ordered to her master’s slave ring, that in which she had been originally placed, hooded, chained and back-braceleted, and a variety of storage areas. Too, to one side there were many stacked tarn baskets. The enterprise of Portus in the Corridon Tower was, so to speak, a livery stable and transportation outlet. The tarns were largely draft tarns, large, relatively slow birds, controlled either from a saddle or, by reins, from the tarn basket, slung below the bird. Birds and baskets could be rented, or purchased, and drivers, or tarnsters, hired. There were also, these accessible from the larger area, some hallways, and a number of ancillary rooms, a kitchen, a pantry, living quarters, a workroom, sometimes used, the office of Portus Canio, and so on.