Magicians of Gor (56 page)

not been done, at least as yet, with the lovely slave before us. She had,

apparently, been tied to a stake for the men once or twice. The usual procedure,

of course, is simply to put the girl in the common kennel after dark, where she

is utilized, serving muchly, sometimes handed about, from man to man.

“But that is not our intention,” I said.

“Master?” she said.

I put one of the vessels of water on the yoke. She had to bend down, that its

weight was on the ground. Then I put the other vessel, too, on the yoke.

She squirmed in the yoke, she sobbed.

“What is to be my second discipline?” she asked.

“Stand,” I said.

With difficulty she stood. She could hardly stand upright. She wavered a little.

“Am I not to serve?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

She looked at me in misery.

“That is the second discipline,” I said.

She closed her eyes, and tears forced themselves between those clenched eyelids.

“I am not a free woman!” she said. “I am a slave. I need your touch!”

“It is the second discipline,” I said.

“Please, please!” she wept.

“You are dismissed,” I informed her.

“Please, Master!” she wept.

“Turn about, and be about your labors,” said I, “field slave.”

She moved then a little from the vicinity of the tank, a few steps. The weight

was considerable for her. She staggered once or twice. She turned to regard us,

pathetically.

“Away, field slave!” I said, with a gesture.

“Yes, Master,” she sobbed, and turned away. We watched her moving slowly away,

staggering at times, across the fields.

“How could you do that to her?” asked Marcus.

“Cuff her?” I asked, puzzled.

“Of course not,” he said. “That was nothing.”

“She thought it something,” I said.

“She was let off easily,” he said.

“True,” I said.

(pg. 329) “Doubtless she will in time, in trembling gratitude, realize how

easily she was let off.”

“Even as easily as she was let off,” I said, “I do not think she will soon again

consider lying to a free man.”

“Probably not,” he said.

I took saddle.

“What would you have done?” I asked.

“I would have put her under the belt,” he said.

“And had it been Phoebe?”

“Phoebe knows better,” he said.

“But if it had been her?”

“A number of disciplines,” he said, “over successive days.”

“What did you meant then,” I asked, “how could you do that to her?”

“Sending her packing,” he said, “rather than putting her to use.”

“Should you speak that way,” I asked, “of the former free woman, Lavinia of Ar?”

“Be serious,” he said.

“Was it not merciful?” I asked.

“Certainly not,” he said.

“As a discipline?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“Speak,” I said.

“You dominated her, making her feel her womanhood, and its relationship to the

male,” he said, “and then, her belly ready, aching, vulnerably aflame,

helplessly stirred, you sent her packing.”

“What would you have done?” I asked.

“Nothing so heartless, so cruel,” he said.

“You are speaking of the second discipline,” I said.

“Of course,” he said.

“What, then?’ I asked.

“I would have whipped her.” He said. “Then I would have flung her to the ground,

thrust her about, let her feel the side of my foot, such things, and then, when

I wished, I would have knelt her, her head to the ground, and used her.”

“In such fashion?’ I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“I see,” I said.

“Slaves understand such things,” he said.

“Of course,” I said.

“And I do not think she would have been likely to commit the same error again.”

“Probably not,” I said.

(pg. 330) “No,” he said, “I do not think so.”

“You grant, however,” I said, “that my discipline is also likely to be

effective?”

“I would think so,” he said. “But I think mine might have been measured more

perfectly to the slave, her needs and her act.”

“You would have subjected her to use discipline?”

“Of course,” he said.

“But we do not own her,” I said.

“It does not matter,” he said.

“True,” I said.

Use discipline is within the prerogatives of a free person.

“You think my discipline was too severe?” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“I know a place,” I said, “where such would commonly not be thought to be

discipline at all but an escape from one.”

“That is hard to believe,” he said.

“A place in which it is culturally acceptable for the most basic needs of

females to be denied, frustrated and ignored.”

“Do not jest about matters of such gravity,” he said.

“There are complex ideologies involved,” I said, “the purport of which is that

nature and biology are mistaken, and the ideologies, whatever they happen to be,

for there are several of them, even if contrived and inconsistent, are correct.”

“Such a mad place cannot exist,” he said.

“Perhaps not,” I said.

“Surely you grant that your discipline, denying her slave use, was severe.”

“She is a slave,” I said. “Anything can be done with her.”

“By her Master,” he said. “Not just anyone.”

“True,” I said. One did not have the right, for example, to kill or maim the

slave of another, any more than any other domestic animal which might belong to

someone else. In this sense the slave is accorded some protection from free

persons who do not own her in virtue of certain general considerations of

property law. The power of the master over the slave, on the other hand, is

absolute. He can do whatever he wishes with her. She belongs to him, completely.

“You do grant then,” he said, “that your treatment of her was severe?”

“But intentionally so,” I said, grimly, looking after the girl, not small in the

distance.

“Unnecessarily severe?” he asked.

“I do not understand,” he said.

(pg. 331) “It was measured perfectly to her, and her act, and my plans.”

“Your plans?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “That is the difference between your measurements and mine.”

“I do not understand,” he said.

“I wish her to understand what can be done to her,” I said.

“You speak as though you intend to own her,” he said.

“I do intend to own her,” I said.

“Oh?” asked Marcus.

“Yes,” I said. “She will figure in my plans.”

“I see,” he said, softly.

“She is a field slave,” I said. “I would suppose Appanius, who does not seem

enamored of her, will let her go for a pittance, perhaps no more than a handful

of copper tarsks.”

“That is a curvaceous female to acquire for a few copper tarsks,” he said.

“You noticed?” I said.

He laughed.

“There she is,” I said, pointing.

“Yes,” he said.

Her figure was now tiny, far away. She had stopped at the crest of a small hill,

and was kneeling there, wearily, apparently to rest, her head down. The vessels

of water were on the ground.

“I am touched by your concern, or reservations, pertaining to the severity of my

discipline for her, denying her slave use,” I said.

He shrugged.

“Perhaps it is motivated by your well-known kindness toward animals,” I said.

“Perhaps,” he said.

“But I wonder, too, if your concern might not have been self-regarding in some

respect, motivated at least in part by a certain disappointment that you were,

in accordance with my decision, denied an opportunity to search out, locate and

exploit the vulnerable pleasures of the slave?”

“Perhaps,” he laughed.

“She is struggling to rise,” I said. The small figure was trying to get her legs

under her, and rise in the yoke, lifting the vessels. One does this by crouching

and lifting up, trying to do most of the work with the legs.

“The weight is really too much for her,” he said. “She is not large enough and

strong enough for such labors.”

“But those are the labors to which she has nonetheless been (pg. 332) set by her

master, Appanius, and the whip masters in the fields.”

“Much must she had offended Appanius,” I said.

“Apparently,” he said.

“She is on her feet now,” I said. She stood, unsteadily, the vessels swinging on

the yoke ends.

“Yes,” he said.

“Did you think she was pretty?” I asked.

“Very much so,” he said, “even in her present wretched condition, shorn,

roughened and burned.”

“Look!” I said.

“I see,” he said.

The girl, at the crest of the hill, had thrown her head back, to the sky. We

could not hear her, of course, but she must have cried out, or sobbed, with

misery and frustration. Her shoulders shook. Her small arms moved, at the yoke,

pulling. But she could not, of course, free them, fastened as they were in

place, by her wrists, widely separated, at opposite ends of the yoke, thonged

back against the wood.

“Her needs are still much upon her,” said Marcus.

“Apparently,” I said.

Then she staggered down the other side of the small hill, and disappeared from

sight. The sun was now well behind us.

“Surely she would make an amusing, squirming armful of slave,” I said.

“You noticed?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you not think it was cruel not to put her to slave use?” asked Marcus.

“Not nearly as so cruel,” I said, “as it might be a few months from now, when

she will have been longer a slave.”

“True,” he said. Slave needs tend to develop and deepen in the course of a

girl’s bondage. At Lavinia’s present stage of bondage she could not begin to

suspect that her needs would be like later, how helplessly she would become

their prisoner, how hopelessly she would become their prisoner, how hopelessly

they would put her at a master’s mercy. In the face of such needs, the stoutest

collars, the heaviest chains, are but as gossamer. The depths of a slave’s

sexuality, and love, I think, have never been sounded.

“She was cruelly deprived, even so,” he said.

“We will make it up to her,” I said.

“Oh?” he asked.

“Well, perhaps we will,” I said.

(pg. 333) “Oh?” he asked.

“Assuming, of course, that the intensity of her zeal, and the perfection of her

service, warrants it.”

“You are serious then,” he said, “About bringing her within the scope of your

whip?”

“Quite,” I said.

“How does she figure in your plans?” he asked.

“You will see,” I said.

He wheeled his tharlarion about, and dust rose.

“Where are you off to?” I asked.

“I want Phoebe!” he said.

“It seems then,” I said, “that it is not only the lovely Lacinia, former free

woman of Ar, who has been frustrated.”

“True,” he laughed.

“But she is helplessly yoked, and must depend upon men, even to be released,” I

said, “while you are free to ride to your slave.

“And what of you?” he asked. “Are you so unmoved by the charms of your little

field slave?”

“”I?’ I said. “I think I shall to a paga tavern.”

I, too, then turned my tharlarion.

“And perhaps some former free woman of Ar in such a place will have five pierced

metal tokens, purchasable for so little as a tarsk bit, threaded on her ankle

cord tonight?”

“I shall race you to Ar!” I said.

Losing not a moment then, eager and laughing, we raced toward Ar.

20
   
The Slave Will Obey

“I love my collar!” she wept. “I love my collar!”

“You understand what you are to do?” I asked.

“Yes, yes, yes!” she wept.

I lifted my hand and her body leaped up, to resume contact with it.

But I pushed her down, my thumb on her belly, to the blanket, spread on the

floor of our quarters in the insula of Torbon, in the Metallan district. She

squirmed, writhing there in frustration. I held her in place with my thumb. She

looked up, wildly.

“Please!” she wept.

(pg. 334) She drew back her left ankle and there was the sound of the links of

chain rattling and scraping on the floor, that chain run betwixt her ankle rings

and the stout slave ring, anchored in the floor.

“Oh, yes!” she wept, softly, in gratitude. “Oh, yes, my master! Oh, yes, my

master!”

“She is pretty,” commented Marcus, from the side of the room.

“Yes,” granted Phoebe, kneeling nearly, some sewing across her knees.

“Thank you, Mistress,” said the slave. Phoebe, of course, was first girl.

“For a cheap slave,” said Phoebe.

“Yes, Mistress,” said the girl. “Oh! Oh!”

The slave looked up at me in wonder and joy. Slaves are lovely.

“How you own me!” she wept. “I did not know it could be like this! How you have

made me feel! How you have trained me! How much you have taught me! How much

better a slave I am now!”

“Some women,” I said, “think that the joys of bondage are primarily those of

submission and selfless service, the loving and the unstinted giving, the

surrendering to the master, the being wholly his, but now you see that there are

additional feelings as well.”

“Yes, Master!” she cried. “Please do not stop!”

“Her hair is too short,” said Phoebe.

“Free women know nothing of this!” wept the slave. “They cannot begin to

understand the raptures of bondage!”

“I think they are not as ignorant as you think,” I said. “And surely you can