Dancer of Gor (37 page)

"I am pleased, if I have been found pleasing," I said. I gave the ruby on its chain, from my forehead, to Mirus. He put it in his wallet. I then began to unwind the strands of pearls from my hair.

"Receipts are up twenty percent from a month ago," he said.

"I am pleased," I said. I handed the pearls to Mirus, who put them, as he had the chain and ruby, in his wallet.

"You are finding yourself now as a dancer," he said.

"I have been in the arms of men," I laughed, "men such as you, Master, who know how to turn a girl into a woman, and a woman into a slave."

"I think," he said, "you may be one of the finest dancers in Brundisium."

This startled me.

"You are really quite good," he said.

"Thank you, Master," I said.

"Hendow's investment in you was a sound one," he said. "You are paying off well for him."

"I am pleased to hear that," I said. I was also relieved to hear (pg. 224) it. I did not know what would have been done to me, had it been otherwise. I supposed I might have been muchly whipped.

"But you still have many things to learn," he said.

"It is my hope that master will consent to teach me some of them," I said.

"Sassy she-tarsk," he said.

I laughed, but I was not altogether joking. Mirus was one of those men of a sort to whom, when my needs were enough on me, I could crawl, pleading. And he knew that, the brute. Certainly I had crawled to him enough! and, when my needs were enough upon me, of course, I was ready to crawl to any man, pleading, perhaps even to one of Earth, but they, probably, to my frustration, disappointment, and agony, would not know what to do with a slave. I was pleased to be on Gor, where men well understood the handling of imbonded females. I lifted the necklaces from my neck. I gave that of coins to Mirus, which he put on top of the coins in the sack, and I put the others in the box which was on the floor, just within the curtain.

"You are coming along well in your slavery, Doreen," he said.

"Thank you, Master," I said. I looked at him. he made me feel hot between the thighs. I was only a slave.

"You were beautiful tonight, Doreen," said Ina, hurrying by in slave bells.

"Thank you," I said.

Too, Ina wore a snatch of diaphanous yellow silk. The girls in Hendow's tavern now often went silked on the floor, not naked, as before. "We are becoming quite fashionable," had said Sita, reaching eagerly for her tiny bit of silk. Tupita, had, however, only cast me a glance of hatred. To be sure, she did not refuse her own bit of silk. In most paga taverns, of course, the girls are silked. Usually it is only in the meanest, the cheapest and lowest of taverns that the girls serve naked, much as would the females of a conquered city at the victory feast of their conquerors, now, or soon to be, their masters. Slave silk, and certainly that sort which is commonly worn in paga taverns and upon occasion in brothels, when the girls are permitted clothing there, is generally diaphanous. It leaves little doubt as to the beauty of the slave. Some girls claim they would rather be naked, claiming that such silk makes them "more naked than naked," but most girls, and I think, even those, too, who speak in such a way, are grateful for even the wisp of gossamer shielding it provides against the imperious appraisals of masters, even though it must be pulled away or discarded instantly at a man's whim. Too, I think most (pg. 225) girls know that they are very beautiful in such silk, and this, I suspect, is why they love it, and treasure it. Free women, on Gor, it seems, are frightened even to look upon such material, apparently finding it scandalously offensive, or somehow profoundly disturbing to them, let alone let it touch their body. Some free women, captured, when such stuff is thrown to them, profess to prefer death to putting it on, but when the choice is that which is acturally offered to them they put it on quickly enough. too, such women, it si said, make excellent slaves. But Goreans believe, of course, that any woman, properly handled, becomes an excellent slave. I think this may be true. It is true, at any rate, in my case. There are a large number of ways in which slave silk is worn. It can be worn, for example, on the shoulder or off the shoulder, with high necklines or plunging necklines, in open or closed garments, tightly or flowingly, and in various lengths. Sometimes it is put on the girl only in halters and G-strings, or mere G-strings. Sometimes it is done, too, in strips wound about her body. The tying of slave girdles, with such silk, and otherwise, to emphasize the girl's figure and make clear her bondage, is an art in itself. Often, too, and as usually in paga taverns, it is worn in brief tunics. Most of these are partable or wraparound tunics. Such may be removed gracefully. Some tunics, however, like some regular slave tunics, have a disrobing loop, usually at the left shoulder, where it may easily be reached by both a right-handed master and a right-handed slave. A tug on the disrobing loop drops the tunic to the girl's ankles, also gracefully.

I sat down on the tiles there within the hall, near the beaded curtain, at the feet of Mirus, easily, as a slave girl, thinking nothing of it, sits at the feet of a man, and slipped the anklets from my right ankles, putting them in the box to my left.

I decide to pretend not to notice how he was looking at me.

I felt briefly like a pet at his feet, and there I supposed that a sense that I was pet, and that all we girls were, at least in a sense, pets, slave pets.

But we were a thousand times more than mere pets, we were slaves, total slaves.

I put my bracelets in the box, and then the armlet from my upper left arm.

I tried to undo the thong on the bells on my left ankle. the knows were tight, drawn by a man's hand. I fought with them. My fingers were small and weal.

(pg. 226) "Let me help you," said Mirus, and crouched down, near me.

He had put the bells on me. It is often men who put slave bells on their girls. Such bells are indicative of bondage. Accordingly I suppose it makes sense that they might enjoy putting them on us, like brands and collars. Some men even dress their girls, us, and, always, the girl's choices of such things as garb, cosmetics, perfume, jewelry, and such, and, indeed, her entire ensemble, are subject to the master's approval. Indeed, most often, whether it only a simple tunic, before she hurries forth to shop, or in luscious slave silk and exciting adornments, before she is to welcome and serve her master's guests, displaying herself as one of his treasures, she is expected to present herself before him, for his inspection. She is owned.

He held my ankle. his hands were very strong. I put down my head, so that he might not see my eyes.

He then, in a moment or two, had the thong loose, and, its loops unwound, five of them, dropped it, with its strung bells, in the box.

But his hands then were on my ankles.

I looked at him."Are you naked beneath the silk?" he asked.

"Yes, Master," I smiled. He knew that. Indeed, as the silk was diaphanous, he could, for most practical purposes, see that.

"Slave naked?" he asked.

"Yes, Master," I said. This, somehow, is a far more disturbing, or meaningful, admission than the first. Somehow the nakedness of a slave seems far more naked that the nakedness of a free woman. doubtless this has to do with her being a property, and owned. Too, 'slave naked' suggests being naked naked, so to speak, being helplessly naked, as a slave is helplessly naked. It has, sometimes, too, the connotation of being vulnerably, and arousably, naked, as a slave is helplessly, vulnerably, and arousably naked.

He looked at me.

"Yes, Master," I whispered. "Beneath the silk that is the way I am naked, slave naked."

I felt slave arousal. I could not help myself. Long ago, now, weeks ago, men had lit slave fires in my belly.

I was aroused, and as a slave.

To be sure, I had no understanding, at that time, of what could become the fuller impact of these things. I was still, at that time, in effect, a new slave.

Then he removed his hands from my ankles.

"Master?" I asked.

(pg. 227) "Stand," he said. We both stood. "Belt," he said.

I reached behind me and undo the double belt of coins, with its two loops, one high one low. The coins on the belt, as well as those on the necklace, would be counted by Mirus.

"You look well with your hands behind your back," he said.

I looked up.

"Your hands are now bound behind your back," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said. I must now keep my hands or wrists in contact with one another, and behind my back. I was now "bound by the master's will." I could not separate my hands or wrists from one another now without permission. There are many ways, of course, of "binding by the master's will." The behind-the-back position is one of the simplest and loveliest. This exposes the girl, frames the beauty of her breasts and makes her helpless. That the bond is a "will bond," too, makes clear to her the power of the master over her. Another common bond of this sort is when the girl must kneel, grasping her ankles. another is when she is forced to sit and reach forward between her legs, passing the right arm from inside the right thigh to outside and beneath the right calf, to grasp the right ankle between her legs, passing the right arm from inside the right ankle from the outside, the left arm from inside the left thigh to outside and beneath the left calf, to grasp the left ankle in the same way. In this position she is helpless and cannot rise. Too, after a time, it becomes apparent to her that she also cannot close her legs. A girl may be kept in such bonds for hours. Too, of course, she may be tied in such a position. There are also, of course, different ways of decreeing such bonds. For example, with the behind-the-back-hands-tied bond in which I had been placed I could have been informed, but had not been, that my shoulders were pulled tightly back, which, of course, forces the breasts forward for the pleasure, or attentions, of the master.

"I think I shall find it difficult to remove the belt," I smiled, "bound as I am."

He stood close to me, and put his arms about me. "I shall remove it," he said.

Tupita came then through the beaded curtain. She glanced at me. She was not pleased to see me in the arms of Mirus, who was a desirable male, and first among my master's men. She looked at me in hatred. She did not think twice about the position of my hands. She could see I had been "bound by the master's will." It could have been done as easily to her, at a word.

She came close to Mirus. She licked at his shoulder. "Will you call for me tonight?" she asked.

(pg. 228) "No," he said. "Return to the floor."

"Yes, Master," she said, and, with a look of fury, cast at me, slipped back through the curtain.

"You are good for Tupita," he told me. "Because of you she is becoming more attentive and more desperate to please."

"I am attentive and desperate to please," I said.

"Yes," he said, "but not because of her."

"No, Master," I said.

"Because you are a slave," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said. How I loved his arms about me!

"You are a splendid natural slave," he said.

"I knew it even on Earth," I whispered to him. Indeed, I had even wondered, strangely, at times, I supposed, if I might not have been a slave in former lives, in other eras, perhaps in the Ancient World or in the Medieval Middle East, in times more in tune with the true matters of human beings, natures as they really were, in themselves, and not as they might be when denied, thwarted, twisted and perverted by ideological insanities. And, at times, recollecting, or seeming to recollect, such times and places, and their naturalness, and rightness, and their fulfillments and ecstasies. I, lonely and yearning, seemingly an exile in the sexual deserts of my own world and time, had wept. But regardless of the truth or falsity of such things, and regardless of the explanations or reasons for the things which lay so deep within me, whether they were recollective or merely the irrepressible fruits of genetic truths, so anomalous in my own time, so uncharacteristic of everything I had been taught. I had known they had lain within me. That was incontrovertible. I knew that I, who was then Doreen Williamson, had been born for the collar. I had never expected then, however, to wear it. I had never even suspected there was such a world as Gor where, as my capture master Teibar, had put it, "women such as I were bought and sold."

"Of course," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"What was you master like on Earth?" he asked.

"I did not have a master on Earth," I said.

"You, a woman like you, so obviously a natural slave, did not have a master?" he asked, interested.

"No, Master," I said.

"You were not a legal slave on Earth?" he asked.

"No, Master," I smiled. "I did not become a legal slave until I was brought to Gor."

(pg. 229) "Surely the men of Earth are somewhat imperceptive," he said.

"Some of them, perhaps, Master," I smiled.

"Here," he said, "we have made good their oversight."

"That is true," I smiled.

He looked down, into my eyes. "You should have been a legal slave on Earth," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said. I supposed that was true. But then, too, I supposed that many women on Earth should be made slaves. Certainly I had known many women who might have profited, and considerably, in one way or another, from bondage. Certainly I had sometimes speculated what one or another of them might have looked like, as a slave. Also, of course, I had often considered what I myself might have looked like, as a slave. It was for such a reason, I suppose, at least in part, as well as for the stimulation and truth, and fittingness, of it, that I had made the tiny garment of red silk I had had on Earth.