Prize of Gor (19 page)

Ellen was to one side, standing. She had not yet been given permission to clear. She had struggled, during the evening, to understand the conversation. It was in English and so there was no difficulty in her following the words, only the meanings. It was not as though they took care to speak guardedly in her presence, for she was only a slave. It was rather that they understood so much among themselves, and took so much for granted, that to the uninitiated, to the outsider, such as the slave, Ellen, it very little made sense. Too much was implicit. Ellen did gather that clandestine business arrangements of considerable scope were afoot. The concerns, or tentacles, of whatever combine or conglomerate, or organization, was involved seemed to have far-reaching ramifications, ramifications affecting worlds. Surely it had its representatives, or outposts, or offices, on her former world as well as on this, her new world. Many highly placed individuals on both worlds, it seemed, for example, on Earth, in government and business, were not only apprised of, but implicated in, these matters. They extended far beyond the trivia of harvesting lovely women for vending in Gorean markets. The business of capturing, transporting and selling well-curved, helpless living flesh might, she suspected, be little more than a byproduct of more serious enterprises. To be sure, it doubtless had its at least minimally significant place in the economy of their schemes. There was doubtless money to be made in such matters. Her collar, for example, was quite real. She accepted that she was property, and could be sold. There was no gainsaying that. On the other hand, she was confident that her master would not sell her. Surely he had not brought her here to sell her, not after their relationship of long ago. She suspected that he must somehow love her, though perhaps in his own hard, severe, uncompromising, possessive way. Surely she loved him, and, doubtless, even from the first, though such things had not been so clear to her then, as a vulnerable, submissive slave. I think he loves me, she thought, though this may now be unbeknownst to himself. And even if he did not love her, she had little doubt that he “found her flanks of interest.” And this did not dismay her. Rather she welcomed it. She, his slave, wanted to be an object of commanding, unabashed lust to him, wanted to be to him an object of powerful, violent sexual desire. On this world she had become so aware of the stirrings in her own blood, confronted with his physicality, that she, in her own complementary, soft, vulnerable, beautiful physicality, longed to be taken in his arms, longed to yield to him as the property he owned, longed to be put ecstatically, in rapture, to the ruthless pleasures of her beloved master.

“But as you know,” laughed the young woman in the white, off-the-shoulder gown, “I never joined you as a mercenary. I am not the sort of person who would work for mere pay. On Earth, I am quite amply provided for, independently. Your riches, marvelous as they may be, were not the lure that brought me to your endeavors.”

“We understand,” said her companion, “that it was not mere gain, worthless pelf, which brought you into our service.”

“Into your endeavors,” she smiled. “No,” she said, “it was for the adventure of the thing. Life was so boring for me. I had everything, and so it held so little. But here I found excitement, intrigue. I require stimulation. I thrive on danger.”

“Oh?” said her companion.

“Yes,” she said. “It was to escape boredom that I joined your cause, that I became a secret, unsuspected agent in your cause.”

“Your contacts were useful,” said her companion. “They were of great value to us.”

“I also appreciated your attention to some small details,” she said.

“The women, the debutantes, certain women who had dared to be critical of your life and behavior, certain gossips, certain rivals you disapproved of, those you called to our attention?”

“Yes,” she said. “You did not hurt them, I trust.”

“They would not be hurt by
us
,” he said.

“Not by
you
?” she asked.

“At least in no way that was not in their new long-term interest.”

“What did you do with them?” she asked.

“Guess,” he suggested.

She then caught sight of Ellen, standing to the side, unobtrusively awaiting the command to clear. Ellen looked down, immediately. Something in her belly, which she did not entirely understand, made her apprehensive in the presence of a free woman. A free woman, in her status, in her loftiness and power, in her glory and might, was another form of being altogether, quite different from herself.

“No!” exclaimed the woman, delightedly.

“Yes,” smiled her companion, “we made them slaves. Some changes had to be made in some of them, as you would suppose, recourse had to certain serums, and such, to make them acceptable for the markets, but it was all taken care of, in good order.”

“What of Annette?” she asked.

“She wears her collar on the island of Cos.”

“Annette in a collar!” she said. “How delightful!”

“She is fetching in it, as other desirable slaves.”

“And Marjorie?”

“Sold south to Schendi, where she now serves a black master.”

“Allison?”

“To the Barrens, for two hides.”

“Michelle?”

“To Torvaldsland, as a bondmaid, for a keg of salted parsit fish.”

“And Gillian?”

“The columnist?”

“Yes.”

“The serums worked well for her. She became quite comely.”

“Do you know her disposition?”

“She was sold south to Turia, but the caravan was ambushed by Tuchuks, a fierce nomadic people. I would not worry about her. She will doubtless show up, eventually, in one of the southern markets.”

“Perhaps one of Turia’s markets itself,” said Mirus.

“I would not doubt it,” said the woman’s companion. “And have no fear but what the others were judiciously distributed, as well.”

“Did you let them know my role in this, that it was I who designated them for their fates?”

“Certainly,” he said, “and you may well conjecture their dismay, their wild cries, and tears, their helpless rage, how they pulled at their chains, trying to rise, or seized and shook, in futile fury, the bars of their tiny cages.”

“Wonderful! Wonderful!” said the woman. “Jeffrey, you are such a dear!” She then gave him a quick, affectionate kiss on the left cheek. “You are a darling!” she said.

This was the first time Ellen had heard the name of her companion.

“I will arrange to have the gold delivered to your chamber,” said Mirus, “where you will spend the night.”

“I must thank you for your hospitality,” she said to Mirus, warmly. “It was a lovely supper. It is a beautiful room. I am so pleased to make your acquaintance.” She turned to Tutina. “You have been terribly quiet all evening, my dear,” she said. “I feel so terribly guilty. But the men and I had so much to talk about. You understand. But still you should not have allowed us to monopolize the conversation.”

Tutina smiled.

“I hope your ankle improves quickly,” said the woman.

“Thank you,” said Tutina.

“You may clear, Ellen,” said Mirus.

“Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir,” she said. She set about clearing the table, putting the various utensils, vessels and plates on the serving cart. She would later clear the coffee table.

“Good-bye, Ellen,” called the woman in the off-the-shoulder gown, sweetly.

“Good-bye, Ma’am. Thank you, Ma’am,” said Ellen.

Happily, the woman’s pleasant, dismissive tone of voice had been absolutely clear. Else Ellen might have been terribly frightened. But the utterance had clearly involved no suggested recognition of Ellen as a person, suggesting that she might be a human being in her own right, instead of the animal she was, for that would have been improper, and would have frightened Ellen, particularly as she was in the presence of her master. But, happily, the utterance had been no more than a casually generous, almost thoughtless, unbegrudged gift from a superior to an inferior. And surely it was. For Ellen knew herself as her absolute inferior, as the woman was free, and she, Ellen, was bond. Ellen cast a quick, frightened glance at her master but his gaze reassured her that her response had been apt. Indeed, she saw, with mixed feelings, that he regarded her as a quick, bright slave. She feared that that might put him more on his guard against her. But surely he must understand that the intelligence of a woman did not disappear in the searing moment her flesh took the iron, or the instant that her small neck felt clasped upon it a steel band.

Ellen, head down, continued to clear. She made as little noise as possible.

“It has all been so exciting,” said the woman. “I have been so stimulated. I used to be so bored, but now I am not bored, at all!”

“Excellent,” said her companion.

“I have enjoyed the intrigue, being a secret agent!” she laughed.

“And you have done well,” said her companion. “Because of you the politics of two worlds are now subtly different from before. The Kurii are grateful to you. In their wars with Priest-Kings you have served them well.”

“Served?” she smiled.

“Let us say then that you have proved yourself a useful, valuable agent.”

“That is better,” said the woman.

This puzzled Ellen.

She had heard of Priest-Kings, but did not believe they existed. Supposedly they were strange men of some sort, and lived in a remote area called the Sardar Mountains. She understood them to be a part of the mythology of this strange world, nonexistent, like sleen, tarns, and such. Kurii she had never heard of, at all. Perhaps they were another sort of strange men, who lived somewhere else. Since they were mentioned in connection with Priest-Kings, she thought that perhaps they did not exist either. Such expressions, she surmised, might be code names for competitive organizations or factions. That hypothesis pleased her, though she was not clear why free persons should have recourse to code names before a mere slave.

“Alas, now,” smiled the woman, “I fear I must return to my daily, boring round of parties, and such.”

“Surely there must be uses to which you could still be put,” said her companion.

“I hope so,” she said, warmly.

“I am sure of it,” he said.

“I do crave excitement,” she said. “I want stimulation. I hate being bored.”

“I suspect,” said her companion, “that there is more excitement in store for you, and I doubt that you will, in the future, lack for stimulation. And whatever your problems might prove to be in the future, I doubt that boredom will rank high amongst them.”

“You are such a dear, Jeffrey,” she smiled.

“Surely I can be rewarded with another kiss,” said her companion, as though plaintively.

“Naughty boy!” she chided.

“Please,” he wheedled.

“Very well,” she said. Again she touched him briefly on the left cheek, a flick of a kiss, a tiny peck. “There!” she said.

How beautiful and white her shoulders, thought Ellen. How she must excite a man. I wish I were so beautiful. I wonder what a man would pay for her, a great deal I would suppose.

“I fear it is late,” said her companion, the man called Jeffrey.

“Yes,” she agreed.

The woman then bid good-night to Mirus and Tutina.

“The gold will be delivered to your chamber, where you will be spending the night,” said Mirus.

“Thank you,” she said.

Various leave-taking pleasantries were exchanged. Ellen, in this leave taking, to her relief, was ignored.

“On the way to your chamber,” said her companion, “there is another chamber, too, which I would like to show you.”

“Very well,” she said.

A moment later, Tutina, too, with a glance at Mirus, left.

Then Ellen and her master were alone.

He went to the long table, and took the chair at the head of the table, which he had occupied during dinner, and pulled it a bit away from the table. He then sat within it, seemingly lost in thought.

Ellen supposed that he had drawn the chair away from the table, before reposing in it, to enable her the more easily to clear the table. It only became clear to her later that he had wanted the chair more in the center of the room, for a different reason, that there might then be a cleared space before it, on the rug.

When the guests had departed the two guards returned and, ingot by ingot, picked up the gold, and, slowly, carefully, carried it into the next room. A broad, flat wagon was there, too large to fit flat through the smaller door, that leading from the room to the corridor and kitchen. There was another portal, one wider and more auspicious, in the room, a double door of some dark wood, that through which the guests and Mirus had originally entered. Ellen had, of course, used the smaller door in her serving, that giving eventual access to the kitchen. Interestingly, the woman’s companion, conducting her, had exited with her through the smaller door. That led to the corridor, and thence to the kitchen, and various other corridors, and to several areas more in the back of the house.

Ellen worked to clear the table.

She did not rush to do this.

At times, at least, she was sure that her master’s eyes were upon her.

Whereas a slave may be forced to humiliating haste, perhaps crawling in terror before the strokes of a whip, unseemly hurryings, the industrial frenzies, so to speak, of technological cultures, are generally alien to the Gorean consciousness. Theirs is not a clock-ridden culture; on Gor life tends to be genially paced, regulated more by the season of the year and the position of the sun; it is not conceived of in terms of metaphors drawn from factories, in material terms, in terms of input and output, in terms of units of product processed over units of time. Its rhythms are less the periodic turbulences of rush hours, the blinkings of colored, regulatory lights, carefully timed, the staccato clickings and hammerings, the stops and starts, of the assembly line, than those of tides, and winds, and clouds and rain, the appearance and disappearance of stars, the comings and goings of light and darkness, the cycles of hunger, the cycles of desire, those of the beating of the heart and the circulation of the blood.

Ellen did not hasten in her work but took care, rather, to do it well. To be sure, she knew that clumsiness was not tolerated in a female slave. If she should drop a plate or break a glass, or spill a beverage, or even move awkwardly, she knew she might expect to be tied to a ring and beaten.