Prize of Gor (95 page)

Ellen hurried to the fire, and knelt.

Selius Arconious was there, and Portus Canio, and Fel Doron, and others, including the red-haired man, he so much like a larl, claimedly from Port Kar, it seemed of the Warriors, and his fellow, the dark-haired, lithe man, said to be of Ar’s Station, also it seemed of the Warriors, which was somewhere to the north. Ellen’s arrival was no more noticed than might have been that of a dog.

She knelt beside Selius Arconious, knees wide, her head down.

“The sought tarnster has been detected!” she heard, a cry from several yards away.

“He is escaping!” she heard.

“He has stolen a tarn!”

“Pursuit will be mounted!” called another man, from somewhere in the darkness.

“He will be apprehended!” someone shouted. “Tarnsmen will be aflight in moments!”

“Should we not exhibit some interest in these matters?” asked Fel Doron.

“Certainly,” grinned Portus Canio, and rose to his feet. “What is going on?” he called into the darkness.

“The fellow who had Cosian gold is trying to escape the camp!” said a tharlarion driver, coming into the circle of firelight.

“And well he might,” said another fellow, coming toward the fire. “He would doubtless be turned up promptly enough with the coming of daylight.”

“I wonder if they will catch him,” said Selius Arconious.

Ellen shuddered.

“The slave is cold,” said one of the newcomers.

Selius Arconious took a blanket and threw it about Ellen’s shoulders. She welcomed its warmth.

Can it be that my master cares for me, she asked herself. As much would be done for a shivering kaiila, of course, she told herself. But she then thought that it would much more likely have been done for a shivering kaiila than for a slave, the kaiila being likely to be a much more valuable animal. Indeed, sometimes the slave is left shivering, that she may the better understand herself as a slave, and all the more dependent on the master. But he gave me a blanket, she thought. Perhaps I will be able to dominate him? Then she fearfully put aside that thought, for she knew she would never be able to dominate Selius Arconious, or any Gorean male. She could never be before such anything but a docile, humble, obedient, frightened, conquered, submitting slave. They were such men. But perhaps he likes me, she thought. He has given me a blanket. I must keep clearly in mind that I hate him! Then she put her head down and tried not to move, not wishing to lose the blanket. She could not hold it, or adjust it, with her hands, as they were still braceleted behind her. There is a technique which might be mentioned, for those interested in such matters, by which a back-braceleted slave girl can wrap herself in a blanket if she is permitted to lie down. One spreads the blanket out and grasps it at the bottom between one’s feet, in the center with one’s braceleted hands, and toward the top with one’s teeth, or between the chin and neck, and then rolls oneself in the blanket. This is not taught to us but is something one learns to do quickly enough if one is cold, in a camp, say, or at the foot of the master’s couch. Ellen tried to reach the blanket with her teeth, but could not do so without breaking position. And it slipped down a little, which did not please her.

“He went toward Ar,” said a man.

“They will catch him,” said another.

Their informants then took their leave, hurrying toward other fires in the camp.

“They did not recognize you,” said Portus Canio to Selius Arconious.

“They are not looking for me here,” said Selius Arconious. “Thus they do not see me here.”

“Perhaps we should leave now,” said a man, uneasily. He rose to his feet, looking about.

Another man, too, rose to his feet.

“Yes, perhaps we should leave,” said another fellow, looking at Portus Canio.

“We could travel light,” said another.

“We could leave the baggage, and wagons,” said another.

“And the animals,” said another.

“And the slave,” said another. “She could not keep up with us.”

Ellen moved, apprehensively. The blanket fell from her. She was frightened. She moved toward Selius Arconious, on her knees, facing him, and lifted her chin.

“What is wrong?” asked Selius Arconious.

“Should we not flee, Master?” asked Ellen.

“‘We’?” he asked.

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen, leaning forward, and raising her chin yet more.

“It seems you are ready to be leashed,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen. “Leash me. I beg to be leashed!”

“A woman of Earth begs to be leashed?” he asked, amused.

“Yes, Master!” Ellen assured him.

“You are afraid you will not be taken with us?” asked Selius Arconious.

Ellen was silent.

Selius Arconious reached to the blanket and drew it completely over Ellen. She moaned, within the blanket. She dared not shrug it off, for it had been cast over her as it had, in that special way, by her master.

Blankets, sheets, and such, of course, may be used as hooding devices. Sometimes they are placed over the head and tied about the neck; sometimes they are placed over the head and tied about the belly, the woman’s hands and arms within them. The simplest hooding with a blanket, of course, is that to which Ellen had found herself subjected, a simple covering. She did know that when she was covered in such a way she was not to be heard from. A woman might be so covered for a variety of reasons. Perhaps, as she was not now hooded, her master did not wish her to be recognized as the slave purchased the preceding night for so great a sum. But in the darkness, and such, she supposed she had been so covered merely to dismiss her, so to speak. Yes, she thought. I hate Selius Arconious. It is not unusual on Gor, however, to conceal women, either free or slave. Do not peasants upon occasion hide their daughters? Do not the men of the Tahari order their slaves to the tents upon the approach of strangers, and so on?

On Gor, it might be mentioned, that some of these things might be better understood, women tend to be regarded as goods and prizes, as loot and booty, particularly if one does not share a Home Stone with them. The capture of the enemy’s women is a common feature of Gorean warfare. Indeed, wars have been fought to obtain female slaves. And raids to obtain women are commonplace. Indeed, among men, the monsters, there is much here that has a sporting cast. Too, the possession of women is often taken as an index of wealth, rather as, in other times and places, might have been cattle or horses. There is much loneliness and misery, I suspect, in the pleasure gardens of wealthy men. Certainly Gorean cities vie with one another not only with respect to the splendor of their promenades and parks, their fountains and architectures, but with respect, as well, to the number and beauty of their slaves.

“It is not time yet,” said Portus Canio.

“Our friends from Port Kar and Ar’s Station must yet flight tarns,” said Fel Doron, “which should convince our Cosian friends that we, their undetected but suspected foes, presumed allies of the pursued tarnster, who presumably did not work alone, have also taken our departure from the camp, and similarly. But then, while Cosians scour the clouds themselves, we, below, in daylight, mixing with hundreds of others, shall quietly, unhurriedly, calmly, take our leave afoot.”

“I am afraid,” said a man.

“Morning, morning,” said Fel Doron.

“How long until morning?” said a man.

“Two Ahn, two and a half Ahn, something like that,” said Portus Canio.

Ellen, under the blanket, could see nothing, but she gathered from small sounds that the counsel of Portus Canio and Fel Doron had prevailed, and that their uneasy fellows had now returned to their places by the fire.

“Master,” she whispered, from within the blanket, “may I speak?”

“No,” he said.

She then knelt under the blanket, small and soft, in darkness, a collared slave, not permitted to speak. He is strong, she thought. He masters me. I am no more to him than a pig or dog. I must try to please him well.

He is Selius Arconious, my master!

How strange she then thought that I, of Earth, should be here, on another world, a far, beautiful world, one many of Earth do not even know exists, kneeling on its grass, naked, back-braceleted, covered with a blanket, dismissed from attention, unable to see, waiting, a slave.

How different I now am from what I was, how much has been done to me!

How much has changed!

I am now a girl, she thought, as once I was, I have seen myself in the mirror, a girl of no more than eighteen or nineteen years of age.

On Earth I might have been a freshman in college, a new student, with her books, one being noticed by upperclassmen.

A beautiful girl.

But here I am a slave.

A beautiful young slave.

My name is Ellen.

It is my hope that masters will find this girl pleasing.

If they do not, she fears she will be slain.

But how the master heated me, she thought, angrily, with the cruelty of an arousal tie, a stimulation tie! Men have done this to me. Master, be kind to me. How lordlike they are to their slaves! How much we are at their mercy! Men have made us dependent upon them, not only for our food and drink, for even a rag to wear, but, too, in other ways, ways far more profound, dependent upon them for the assuagement of cruel and desperate needs, needs routinely released in bondage, needs, insistencies, urgencies, and torments, in the grip of which we find ourselves pathetically helpless. Men, for their pleasure and amusement, kindle the tinder of our needs. As it pleases them, and doubtless because it will improve our price, they set slave fires in our belly. And then they step aside, as though noticing nothing, while these fires periodically rage. They make us the victims of our own needs, and use them to bring us choicelessly to their feet.

How cruel they are!

How I need, want and love them!

On Earth, I tried to hate them, as my sisters wished, but would not say, but even in my determination to conform to these sororal demands, and in the midst of my prescribed, routinely uttered critiques and denunciations, I found them fascinating.

I wondered even then what it would be to belong to them, fully, as a chattel, as so many women in history, my sisters, belonged to them.

I found it hard to believe that human nature was a mistake, and biology incorrect. Could an entire species be in error?

And I knew too much history, over a thousand generations, to suppose that the biography of a race was an inexplicable accident, a mere haphazard contingency that might as easily have been otherwise, that it was without meaning or foundation, that there no reason why it was as it was.

And I wondered if I had not on Earth betrayed my truths and sold my happiness to please others. What reward will compensate one for that? Lies are expensive, and sorely purchased! There are gains and losses, always, but the gain of the few may be the loss of the many, and one wonders if the few have truly gained.

Can hunger and unhappiness, sorrow and misery, hatred and pain, illness and tragedy, really be the evidential insignia of health and truth?

It does not seem likely.

But Ellen then squirmed beneath the blanket.

On her neck was a collar, and slave fires burned in her belly. But she did not envy or desire the sluggish, aloof tranquility of the free woman, so much a stranger to need and life. Let them in their pride and separateness scorn the vitality of slaves, she thought. Let them, if they wish, prize and cultivate a winter within their robes. Let them congratulate themselves on ice and inertness. What would they care for, or could they know of, the feelings of a slave? What could they know of the needs of slaves? Would such needs not be so alien to them that they must find them incomprehensible? Perhaps thought Ellen, but perhaps too, in their way, they have some sense of such things, for they, too, are women; perhaps then they have at least some dim sense of what it might be to scratch at a kennel’s walls and howl to be touched.

To be sure, how cruel these needs! With them and in them I suffer, well do I know their anguish, but I would not exchange them for the soporific quiescence, the quietude and repose, the numb and frosty serenity, of the unperturbed free woman. I would not exchange my slave needs for the world, for with them, and in them, I am intensely aware, awake and alive, a thousand times more so than I would have thought possible. With them I am a fabric spread to the weathers of the world, to its vibrant, vital multiplicity and wealth. How alive the collar makes us! How welcoming and sentient we become in so many ways in this so sentient world! We welcome its myriads of sensations, its aromas, its colors, its sounds, its textures and tastes, the feel of wet sand beneath our bared feet, that of the wind on our bared arms and legs, rushing landward from sparkling, salty Thassa, the pull on our leash as we are led behind our masters, the smell of high, rain-drenched grass in the fields, the luster of delicate talenders blossoming in the spring, the creaking of a heavy wagon, the sound of kaiila bells, the feel of the fur at the foot of the master’s couch, the feel on our belly of the tiles as we crawl toward him, close encirclements of leather on our bound wrists, confining our hands behind our body, the taste and texture of his sandals on our lips and tongue.

On this world we respond to, and welcome, its myriad sensations. Every inch of us is alive.

Slave needs, of course, as any unsatisfied need, can cause suffering, who knows better than a helpless slave, but I would not be without such needs. In this suffering, and anguish, if nothing else, I know myself intensely alive.

Imagine now, if you can, the concern, and hopes, of the slave that such needs, such cruel needs, will be recognized by the master, and that he will be moved to attend to them.

How different things are for the slave and free!

The free male, should he have an interest in free women, perhaps he has no access to slaves, usually initiates the sexual encounter. He petitions the free woman, so to speak, who may or may not accede to his petition. In the master/slave relationship, on the other hand, it is the woman, the slave, who often puts herself to the feet of the free man, begging for sex. What a pleasant turnabout this must be for the fellow who has never before owned a woman. The man, of course, in a master/slave relationship never petitions or solicits. As he is master he commands, and often that the woman will prepare herself, in one fashion or another, perhaps presenting herself in a certain manner, say, silked or belled, or putting out certain articles, or such, for his use, perhaps a given variety of chains or cuffs, and perhaps a switch, to be used upon her if she is insufficiently pleasing. If he is in a certain mood, or in a hurry, he may simply, abruptly, put her to use. A slave, of course, may be ravished in any way, and at any time and place, at the master’s pleasure. This is one of the appurtenances of the mastery. It might be added that the slave finds this lovely jeopardy appropriate and exciting. The piquancy of an unexpected encounter adds spice to the collar life. Too, it is extremely important to her, as it may not be to a free woman, to be frequently reassured that she remains sexually desirable, even disturbingly so, even maddeningly so, to her master. And his frequent uses of her leave her in little doubt as to her attractions. Neglected, she weeps and fears. Has he tired of her? Is he thinking of selling her? But she loves him! She dares not speak her love to him, of course. She is a mere slave. She does not wish to be lashed. She redoubles her efforts to please.