Prize of Gor (84 page)

“— if it is seen fit to give me a name?” she said.

“Have no fear,” said Ellen. “Masters commonly give us names. We may thus be the better referred to, distinguished from other slaves, summoned, ordered about, and such.”

The slave knelt and put her head down, her face in her hands, weeping.

“What a hypocrite you are,” said Ellen.

The slave looked up, tearfully. “I do not understand,” she said.

“You came unattended, unprotected, to a festival camp of conquerors, of Cosians. You sat with men, chatting with them. Do you not think they would be curious as to what might lie hidden beneath your veils? Do you not think they would speculate as to what delights might lie concealed within your cumbersome robes? And do you think they would fail to note the putative value of your necklace, the sparkle of your jeweled robes and veils? And surely you knew that hundreds of women were to be marketed. And did you not flirt with the men? Was your veil not disarranged as though inadvertently when you drank? Did you not sit in a certain fashion, turned to the side, legs together, as a slave girl might sit, if she were permitted to sit? Did you not insolently, haughtily, arrogantly, put a naked slave to your feet, and not realize that men would be curious as to what you yourself might look like, put similarly to their feet? Did you not know that your carriage, and demeanor, your pride and pretensions, might try the patience of men? Did you not know that such might tempt them to transform you into something of more interest to them, that they might consider taking you in hand and turning you into a luscious, cringing slave, pathetically begging to please in whatever manner they might desire? And do not think that I did not see the hem of your robe lifted in such a way as to bare an ankle!”

“No,” wept the slave. “No!”

“Perhaps they wondered what that ankle would look like, encircled with bangles, or thonged with slave bells.”

“No!” she protested.

“You were begging the brand! You were courting the collar!”

“No, no!”

“At least,” said Ellen, “they have permitted you some modesty.”

“What?” she asked.

“The wrists of a free woman, as I understand it,” said Ellen, “as generally the rest of her body, are not to be publicly exposed, to prevent that being the function of gloves and sleeves.”

“Yes,” said the slave, bewildered.

“You are wearing a manacle on your left wrist,” said Ellen. “Does that not conceal a bit of wrist, thus affording you some modesty?”

“Insolent slave!” cried the woman.

“To be sure,” said Ellen. “It is not a great deal.”

“I was not courting the collar!” said the woman.

“You were, obviously,” said Ellen.

“What is it like to be a slave?” whispered the woman.

“Much depends on the master,” said Ellen, warily.

“But we must serve our masters —
in all ways
?” she asked.

“Certainly.” said Ellen.

“
Sexually
?” she asked.

“Yes, particularly so,” said Ellen.

“I am not — white silk,” she whispered.

“Few of us are,” said Ellen. She did not inform the slave that she had been white silk herself, even when brought to Gor. She had not become red silk until Mirus, her master, had seen fit in his audience hall to open her for the uses of men. And Ellen recalled he had not done so in any way that might have been regarded as in a sensitive, or considerate, manner. To be sure, his use of her had been instructive, apprising her of the sort of thing that might be done to her as a slave. It had come to her as something of a revelation. Then he had sold her.

“He was polite, and feeble,” she said. “It was terribly disappointing.” She looked down, reddening. “Is this all there is to it, I asked myself. Is there no more? I remained dissatisfied. This could not be all! I was starving! And on my plate there was flung no more than the tiniest of crumbs!”

“You were not mastered,” said Ellen.

The slave looked at her, wildly.

“You should have been stripped and bound, and caressed for hours, until you shrieked with need and ecstasy,” said Ellen. “Then you should have been penetrated with all the imperious ruthlessness of the callous, self-serving master. You would then know yourself nothing and slave. Then you should have been chained for the night at the foot of his bed, that you might there, in that place, recollect your feelings, and what had been done to you, and what you now were. In the morning you would be freed to kneel, and kiss the whip, to belly, to wash his feet with your tongue. You would learn to be ordered about, to work, to serve, to obey with alacrity and perfection. You would know yourself owned, and by a master whom you know will have all from you. And that is what you want, a master who will be satisfied with nothing less than all from you. And soon you would learn to beg, and serve, with all the vulnerable, passionate intimacy of the slave. Your life would then be changed. You would find yourself dominated, and subject as any slave to the whip. I assure you you would strive to be pleasing, and in this service, and in this relationship, you will have feelings, and experiences, forever beyond the ken of the lesser woman, the narrower, colder, shallower, more inert, less awakened free woman. Your sexual fulfillment comes not from him alone or from yourself alone, but from the complementarities of nature, the male and female, the man and woman, the master and the slave, he who commands and she who, conquered, surrendered and loving, obliged to please, subject to discipline, serves, serves gratefully, zealously, lovingly, with every fiber of her owned being. In her service she is joyous; she desires to serve, fervently, and she knows that she must serve, and perfectly, whether she will or no. This reassures her and pleases her. She knows that she has been found attractive enough to put in chains. She rejoices that she has been found worthy of the collar. She knows she is the most intensely desired of all women, the female slave. She has been found exciting enough, attractive enough, desirable enough, to be enslaved, to be owned. At last she is at peace with her sex; at her master’s feet; she has come home to the collar.”

“Thank you, Mistress,” said the slave, and lay down in her lane.

“Perhaps you could call out from the auction block, proclaiming your freedom, seeking to attract the attention of citizens of Brundisium.”

“They would beat me,” she said.

“Nonetheless, you could try,” said Ellen.

“No,” she said. “I want to be sold.”

“I understand,” said Ellen. “But there might be another consideration.”

“What is that?” she asked, lying down, her head resting on her left elbow.

“If you do not attempt to call out, you may never know, thereafter, what might have happened.”

“Yes?” asked the woman.

“There might then be a lingering doubt left in your mind, that you might have been able to regain your freedom, at that one moment, before that opportunity disappeared forever, the price being small, only a beating, a few strokes of the lash.”

“But I do not want to be free now,” she whispered.

“But perhaps you will not fully appreciate your slavery, or understand its inflexibility, its absoluteness, unless you have made every effort to obtain your freedom, and have failed, and have come to understand the absolute hopelessness of such an endeavor. Surely then you will better understand yourself as slave. Accordingly, I recommend that you conduct this experiment, that you call out, boldly, from the block, desperately inviting rescue, zealously seeking succor.”

“Do you think I would be successful?” asked the woman, apprehensively.

“Certainly not,” said Ellen. “But in this manner you will learn the perfect categoricality of your situation and status, that you cannot alter or qualify your condition in any way whatsoever, to even the smallest possible degree, that you are helpless, absolutely helpless in all such matters, in short, that you are a complete and helpless slave.”

The woman regarded Ellen, red-eyed, her lower lip trembling.

“And if you should manage to obtain your freedom, which I assure you you will not, by calling out upon the block, that is not the end of the matter.”

“Mistress?” she asked.

“If your bondage is important to you, and you understand it as your one possibility to obtain your total fulfillment as a female, you may always again expose yourself to the risk of the collar, disarranging a veil, walking lonely bridges at night, lifting the hem of a garment, as though to avoid soiling it in puddles in the street, speaking insolently to strangers, denouncing the Home Stones of visitors to your city, accompanying ill-guarded caravans, and such.”

The gong rang again, from the vicinity of the great block. The two slaves lifted their heads, listening for the moment. The slave to Ellen’s left gazed upon the manacle on her left wrist. There was a small sound of chain. The note of the gong then faded away, with diminishing vibrations. The slaves regarded one another. Another sale had been concluded.

“And then you would not have to worry about the possibility of obtaining your freedom,” said Ellen. “You would not have to concern yourself with such matters. You could put them from your mind. The collar would be upon you as much as on any slave on Gor.”

The woman nodded, and smiled.

“What is your lot number?” asked Ellen.

“Mistress cannot read?” asked the slave.

“No,” said Ellen, irritatedly. Here she was not quite fair to herself. She could, of course, read some numbers, for example, her own and, now, some similar numbers. They were easy enough. The other slave’s number, however, was rather complex, or at least seemed so to Ellen at the time. Indeed, for all she knew, one or another of those signs might have had a significance more than merely numerical. Common Gorean, you see, does not use an “Arabic notation,” but represents various numbers by letters, combinations of letters, and such. Most figuring is done on an abacus. It is said, interestingly, that some of the higher castes, for example, the Scribes and Builders, have a secret notation which facilitates their calculations. Ellen does not know if that is true or not.

“1242,” said the slave.

“That is a high number,” said Ellen.

“I received it late, after most numbers were assigned,” she said.

Ellen nodded.

“Had I been embonded earlier I might have had a lower number,” she said.

“I think so,” said Ellen.

“Am I beautiful?” she asked.

“That is for men to decide,” said Ellen.

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Yes,” said Ellen. “You are beautiful.”

“Thank you, Mistress,” she said.

“I think you will bring a high price.”

“Thank you, Mistress,” she said.

Ellen noted, to her interest, that two lanes, not one, were now being readied for moving forward, to the block area. And the two lanes thus emptied were shortly thereafter repopulated with new chains.

“The sales,” she thought, “might be moving too slowly.”

Ellen lay then on the grass between the stakes, on which ribbons were strung, marking the lanes.

“We will soon be moved forward,” she thought. “I have been starved for a master’s touch. The Cosians have seen to that. These Gorean beasts have released the slave in me, as they wished. They have fanned the slave fires in my belly which now rage fiercely, tormenting fires I cannot control, putting me helplessly at their mercy. The beasts! They have made me healthy, and now I suffer from my vitality. I need the touch of a master. I fear I might die in another day without it. I must be soon owned, or I may perish in need. I do not care who buys me. I hope he is rich. Whoever it is, I will beg prettily, helplessly, plaintively, to serve. Please be merciful to your slave, future master! I am suddenly so miserable. I cannot help myself. Why do they do this to a poor slave? That former free woman! What does she know of what will be done to her, of what passions will be kindled within her! What does she know now of being transformed into a man’s plaything, a helpless, piteous, begging, pleading toy?”

She looked at the former free woman lying near her. “What an unaware, simple, naive thing, you are,” she thought. “Rest in ignorance. You will learn. You will learn, my dear. I am so miserable, so terribly miserable!”

She thought of the scorn with which Mirus would regard her, the contempt in which he would hold her, she, his former teacher, with her once smug, prim attitudes, now the helpless victim of slave needs. But then she was not dissatisfied to be so female, and so alive. “I would rather feel than not,” she thought. “It is better to feel than not to feel. But I am miserable. Oh, future master, have pity on the slave you will buy! Assuage my needs! Content me, if only a little! Would you not caress any pet animal upon occasion, particularly if she begs prettily enough?”

“Squat!” she heard, a man’s voice, from several yards away, from somewhere behind her. He was at the end of the line adjacent to hers.

There the man had had the last slave in the line, that next to hers, on the left, stand and put her legs apart. Between them he had then thrust a large, round, porcelain vessel.

Notice of this quickly coursed down both chains, and the girls looked back.

Near the keeper was a slave with water, and a dipper.

The line to the left will be moving out first, thought Ellen. But then she noted that the porcelain vessel was moved to the right and the last slave in her own line must assume the posture and perform the expected behavior, as well. Both lines would apparently be taken forward rather at the same time.

The vessel then began to pass back and forth between the two lanes, moving forward. Following the wastes vessel was the slave with the water. Each slave in the chain, following her use of the wastes vessel, must kneel and drink from the dipper, draining it. Ellen looked forward to the water. She was thirsty, and she did not doubt but what this state was common on the chain. Soon, mercifully, the thirst of the chain would be assuaged. More importantly, she supposed, from the point of view of the keepers, the appearance of the girls would be freshened and improved. It is common to water stock, she knew, prior to its sale.

“Stand,” said the keeper to the slave across from Ellen, the former free woman. “Get the bowl between your legs!”