Prize of Gor (15 page)

“Yes,” he said.

It is not uncommon for a slave girl to ask permission to speak. She is, after all, a slave. To be sure, there is a great deal of variation in such matters, among masters and slaves. Delicate considerations are sometimes involved, and much depends on a given context, the occasion, the location, who is present and such. The slave, particularly after a cuffing or two, tends to develop a great sensitivity to such things. Some slaves are permitted a liberty of speech by their masters which is not obviously inferior to that enjoyed by a free woman, until a stern look puts them to their knees, reminding them of what they are. And it is a rare slave who has not, upon occasion, her master’s patience at an end, been put upon her knees, facing a wall, gagged, her hands tied behind her back, or perhaps, bound hand and foot, her mouth taped shut, thrown naked on a bed. Too, the Master may gag his slave “by his will,” and then she must serve in silence.

“I do not understand fully what has been done to me,” she said.

“In what way?” he asked.

“Am I — immortal?” she asked.

“Certainly not,” he said. “You are quite mortal. I might, if I wished, for example, feed you to sleen, or cast you to leech plants.”

She did not believe that the animals called “sleen” existed, thinking them part of the mythology of the world, and she had not heard of “leech plants,” but the tenor of his remarks was sufficiently clear.

“You have been returned to a former condition of your body, and have been stabilized at that point,” he said. “That is what has been done to you.”

“Will I stay like this?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, “unless your nose and ears are cut off, or such,” he said.

She looked at him with horror.

“You will try to be a good little slave, won’t you?” he asked.

“Yes, Master!” she said. “Master,” she said.

“Yes?” he said.

“Why did you make me this age?”

She was surely, as one would think, were one to look upon her, something like eighteen years of age, perhaps nineteen, at most.

“Why do you think?” he asked.

She resolved to speak boldly before him.

Her belly flamed before him. He was her master.

“I think, Master,” she said, “that you cared for me, that you remembered me, that you had never forgotten me, that you came for me, that you carried me away by force, that you made me your slave because you wanted me, because you desired me, and loved me. And that you have made me this age in order that you would now be more mature than I, that I might now be no more than a girl to your man, a most fitting object for your chains.”

“No,” he said. “I brought you here because I hate you, because I despise you, because I scorn you, because I hold you in utter contempt. That is why I have brought you here and made you a slave.”

“No!” she cried.

“But you said that you found my flanks of interest!” she said.

“That is the only thing about you which could be of the least interest,” said he, “slave.”

She buried her face in her hands, weeping.

“Knees,” he said.

Quickly she spread her knees again.

“But there are two reasons I have had you made the age you are,” he said. “First, I was curious to know what you would have looked like at this age. Now I know, and I acknowledge that you are a pretty little slave, a well-curved, youthful, little slave. The second reason I have had you made the age you are is because you will now be, though you are admittedly pretty, a meaningless, negligible little slave to almost anyone. You will not bring a high price in markets. You will be poor goods. You will be purchased, presumably, by low, ignorant fellows, for small coins, who will put you to repetitive servile labors. Most slave girls are as in their twenties. Even they will look down upon you, as no more than a pretty girl, one who need not be taken seriously, one unimportant and largely worthless.”

She sobbed, holding her face in her hands, not looking at him.

“This, too, is the reason that I have not had you taught more, the reason I have not had you more thoroughly trained. I want you to be largely ignorant and valueless. And thus I will cast you into the terrors and realities of a world which will seem utterly strange to you.”

“You hate me?” she asked.

“Stand,” said he. “Disrobe.”

She stood, her eyes burning, tears streaming down her face. She reached to the disrobing loop at the left shoulder and tugged it, dropping the garment about her ankles. She stepped from it, it lying then beside her, a small atoll of cloth on a calm marble sea. She stood before him, weeping, but erect, gracefully, as she had been taught. She knew how to stand before a man.

He took the whip, which had lain across his knees, and cast it the floor before her.

She looked down at it.

He then stood, rising from the curule chair. He put aside his ornate robes, as of state or office. He stood then above her on the dais, in a simple, belted brown tunic.

She had not realized how large he was, or exactly in this way, as he was now revealed before her, or how formidable he was, how fine, how supple and muscular he was, how sturdy were his legs, how long and powerful his arms. He had large hands. She had realized before, of course, that he was large and strong, but now she gasped, looking upon him. She had not seen him like this before, revealed in this way, in a tunic. It was a simple garment, but how revealingly, how casually, how splendidly it displayed the mighty frame it housed. She was terribly uneasy then, stirred profoundly, these thoughts disturbing her deeply, by the sturdy legs, the width of the shoulders, the strength of the arms. He was disturbingly physical and she, to her horror, found herself thrilled to the quick by the very sight of his body. How wonderful to wear the chains of such a man, she thought. How wonderful it would be to lie embonded in his arms, will-less, ravished, yielding helplessly. She looked at him, and trembled. She had not seen him this way before. She saw him now as Gorean, a scion of this world, and herself as what only such as she could be on such a world, a slave.

“Fetch the whip,” he said.

She went to her hands and knees, and, putting down her head, picked the whip up, delicately, in her teeth.

She looked up at him, the whip between her teeth.

He motioned that she should bring it to him.

Slowly, head down, she crawled to him, and then, after crawling up the steps of the dais, she lifted her head to him.

He took the whip from her and held it before her. Obediently, delicately, she began to lick and kiss the whip. There were the gentle kisses, some prolonged, some as light and quick as the shiftings of sunlight and shadow among stirring leaves, some as bright and unexpected as the pattering of momentary, shimmering drops of rain, some as tender as the falling of the petal of a flower, and the other kisses, the swirling, begging, meaningful kisses, the kisses almost beside themselves, uncontrollable, and the petitionary kisses, reluctant to draw away from the shaft; and there were the movements of the tongue, the tiny dartings, the teasings, the supplications, the tastings, the long, and the short, and the circular caresses, the placatory caresses, the caresses of yearning, and begging and total submission; and she moved her hair about the whip, and thrust the side of her face lovingly against it, rubbing against it, and then looked up, tears in her eyes, at her master.

Angrily he pulled the whip away from her.

“Position!” said he.

She backed down the steps of the dais, crawling, and then went, crawling backward, to where her garment lay on the floor and then knelt beside it, in position, looking at him.

Is he afraid, she asked herself.

He has nothing to fear from me. I am only a slave, his, and I love him with all my heart.

“You do well with the whip,” he snarled.

“Thank you, Master,” she said.

Some have suggested that there is more to the kissing of the whip, and many such things on this world, than may be readily visible on the surface, that such things, in their way, are meaningful, that they, in their way, have symbolic dimensions, that they, in their way, express truths, relationships, acknowledgments, and such. I leave such speculations to the reader.

Her belly flamed before him.

How grateful she was to him, that he had permitted her to kiss his whip.

Without symbols, she wondered, would it not be difficult to live on more than the surface of our being.

He walked about her, whip in hand. She had no doubt that she was being appraised for her value as a naked slave.

She held position, beautifully.

“Common position of obeisance,” he said.

Immediately, kneeling, she put her head to the floor, the palms of her hands on the floor, beside her head. In this position the knees are closed. It is a position commonly assumed by a slave when a man enters a room. To be sure, this varies from city to city. In some cities all that is required is the common kneeling position, instantly assumed. In other cities, a complete bellying, instantly assumed, is required. Such things may differ, of course, from master to master. The girl is, after all, his.

“You look well in a position of obeisance,” he said.

She was silent.

She was frightened.

She felt the coils of the whip lightly touch her left side, at the waist, and move lightly on her back.

Is he going to have me, she wondered. Oh, please, not like this! Surely not like this! Do not take my virginity from me in this fashion!

She remained in the position of obeisance. He stepped away from her, a little. She sensed he was standing before her.

“I think I will beat you,” he said. She sensed that the blade of the whip was shaken free.

“Please do not beat me, Master,” she begged.

She sensed now that he was behind her.

“Please, Master,” she said. “Please do not beat me, Master!”

“I think I will name you,” he said. “I have thought of names, ‘Filth’, ‘Feces’, ‘Fecal Matter’, such names.”

She moaned.

“But I think I will call you ‘Ellen’,” he said. “That is a pretty name for a pretty slave.”

“That is a beautiful name, Master!” she breathed, her head down, touching the floor.

“You are Ellen,” he said.

“Have I been named?” she asked, frightened.

“Yes,” he said. “What is your name?”

“‘Ellen’,” she said.

And so that is the name by which we may now refer to her, for it is her name. The other name, that which she bore long ago, has been concealed for the purposes of this narrative. And such things would matter little anyway. Such things are now gone, meaningless; they are irrelevant to, and far from, her current reality, that of a slave, that of the slave girl, Ellen.

“Thank you for giving me such a beautiful name, Master,” she said, not raising her head.

“It might improve your price a little,” he said.

“Surely Master has no intention of selling his slave,” she said. Surely not after having given her such a beautiful name, she thought. He must like me, she thought. He has given me such a beautiful name!

“I had thought, as long ago as the class room,” he said, “that ‘Ellen’ would make a lovely name for a slave, and, as I watched you, moving before the class, I thought of you as a slave, for that is what you are, and were, you know, and I thought of you, too, as one who might well be named ‘Ellen’. Indeed, I decided then that if I were one day to own you, be your master, that that is what your name would be, ‘Ellen’. What is your name?”

“‘Ellen’, Master,” she whispered.

“To be sure,” he said, “aside from the fact that ‘Ellen’ is a suitable name for a meaningless, pretty little slave like yourself, that name, as many similar names, has other connotations, connotations and suggestions of which I am aware but you in all likelihood are not. And I welcome those other connotations and suggestions. They fit in nicely with my plans for you.”

“Master?” she asked.

“Do you enjoy participating in a conversation while you are in a position of obeisance?” he asked.

“It is as Master has decided,” she said.

“‘Ellen’, you see,” he said, “is an Earth-girl name. An Earth-girl name. And such names are regarded here, on this world, as slave names, and names fit for the lowliest and most worthless slaves. Goreans who know of Earth, and many now do, hold it in great contempt, and enjoy having its women as their slaves. Sometimes an Earth-girl name is given to a Gorean girl to reduce, demean and punish her. An Earth-girl’s bondage on Gor is often a particularly uncompromising and harsh one.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I am not sure,” he said. “Perhaps it is because they are regarded as being pretentious. Perhaps it is because they are blamed for having collaborated in the reduction and degradation of the males of Earth.”

He was still behind her, with the whip.

“Yet,” he said, “interestingly, they are often prized and sought in the slave markets. Do you know why that is?”

“No, Master.”

“Because they make superb slaves,” he said. “In their world they have been denied their womanhood. They have been kept in a sexual desert. They have been starved for sex. On Gor, in a collar, and under the whip, meeting true men, many for the first time, they find themselves taken in hand, and taught their womanhood, at the feet of a master. They yield themselves up in joy, choicelessly. They become the helpless, obedient, zealous, flaming slaves of their masters.”

“‘Tutina’ is not an Earth-girl name, is it?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “it is Gorean. If she displeases me sometime, however, I might give her an Earth-girl name. That would terrify her. Can you imagine her fear, bearing such a name on this world?”

Still the slave kneeling head down in the position of obeisance was not displeased, even so, to have been given the name ‘Ellen’.

Besides, what had she to fear from Gorean males? Did she not know who had brought her to this world, doubtless to have her here, as his slave?

I love him, she thought. I love him so.

It had begun, of course, with anger and dismay, irritation, consternation, fascination, and then fear, when he had cuffed her about intellectually in the classroom, when he had indifferently and decisively refuted her again and again, when he had had her reeling from blows of logic and fact, until she had wanted to kneel before him and acknowledge him as her master. Many times she had dreamed that he had put her to his pleasure, mercilessly, publicly. And her fear, and fascination, had gradually turned to love and the desire to submit herself selflessly to his will. He had proved to her that he was her master. She loved him. She suspected she had always loved him. And now she was his slave, truly, on an alien world! It must be clearly understood, of course, that the relationship of master and slave, in its legal aspects, is totally indifferent to, and completely independent of, matters such as affection, caring, or love. Many masters, for example, never see the slaves they own, who may be employed in distant shops or fields, and, of course, the slaves may never see the masters who own them. So emotional relationships, of any sort, are inessential to, and immaterial to, the institution in question. What concern had the law, in all its power and majesty, with such matters? Whether he loved her or he did not, whether she loved him or she did not, did not matter. Their institutional standing was clear. They stood related as master and slave. He owned her, and she was owned. He could do with her as he wished. And so, too, of course, could any master into whose possession she might come, whose property she might find herself.