Witness of Gor (16 page)

It had seemed, irregularly, but with frequency, to ascend, jolting and rocking. Within I was much bruised.

Once it had nearly tipped. Eventually it, days, perhaps weeks later, must have reached its destination, wherever that might have been. I was bound hand and foot, and then, so secured, was relieved of the wagon chains. I was wrapped closely in a blanket, which was then tied closely about me. This blanket was not the same as that which had been in the wagon. That blanket, it seemed, would be burned, and the wagon's interior scrubbed clean. There would be few, if any, traces, of my occupancy left in the wagon. I take it that even those of scent were, to the extent possible, to be eliminated. Perhaps such might have been of use to some sort of tracking animal. I did not understand the point of such precautions. It seemed for some reason that my passage here was to be as though it had not occurred. I was then removed, so bound and so enveloped, from the wagon; I was carried for a time, over a shoulder, my head to the rear, which somehow seemed, vaguely, to be the way I should be carried, however shameful or embarrassing I might find it to be; and I was then, at the end of this peregrination, placed on some sort of wooden platform. It was hard, even through the blanket. A little later I was placed in some sort of large, heavy basket, in which I was fastened down by two straps, one at my ankles and the other at my neck. The basket must have been something like a yard square. I must accordingly, bound, tied in the blanket, strapped in place, keep my legs drawn up. I was still hooded.

What a strange dream!

It seemed the basket flew!

Sometimes it seemed I heard the smiting of air, as though in the beating of giant wings. At other times I heard great birdlike cries, from above and ahead, or to one side or the other. And then I would lose consciousness again.

I decided that I must awaken, and in my own bed, on my own world.

The light seemed too bright, through my closed eyelids. I must, foolishly, have forgotten to draw the shade last night.

I was on my stomach. I pressed down with my finger tips, to feel the sheets and, beneath them, the familiar mattress.

But it seemed that something hard was beneath me, not the mattress, but a surface less yielding, more severe.

I kept my eyes closed. There was light. It was rather painful. How foolish I was! I had forgotten to draw the shade last night.

But the light did not seem to be coming from the proper direction. It should be coming more from behind me, to my left, where, as I was lying, or thought myself to be lying, my window would be. But it was not. It was coming rather from before me, and my left. I must have somehow, in my sleep, twisted about. I felt disoriented.

Everything did not seem to be the same. Many things seemed different.

I then, as I became more certain, but not altogether certain, that I was awakening, or awakened, became quite afraid.

I was not yet ready to open my eyes.

I remembered one thing quite clearly from my dream. I had been banded.

It had been put on me. I had worn, almost from the first, a light, gleaming, about-a-halfinchhigh, close-fitting steel collar. It locked in the back.

Not opening my eyes, frightened, I moved my fingers upward, little by little, toward my throat. Then, with my finger tips, I touched my throat. It was bare!

Again I felt my throat.

No band was there.

I did not wear such a circlet. I was in no neck ring, or such device.

My throat was bare. No closed curve of steel, locked, inflexible, enclasped it.

I was not collared.

It would be hard then to describe my emotions.

Should they not have been of elation, of joy, of relief? Perhaps. But instead, perhaps oddly, as I lay there, somehow half between waking and sleep, I perceived a sudden poignance, as of irreparable loss. As of isolation. As of loneliness. I felt a wave, cold and cruel, of misery, rising within me, a forlorn, agonizing cry of alienation, of anguish. It seemed that I had suddenly become meaningless, or nothing. But then, in an instant, how pleased I tried to be, as I should be, of course. I attempted, instantly, to govern my emotions, to marshal them, and break them, and align them in accordance with the dictates to which I had been subjected all my life.

Yes, how relieved I was!

How wonderful was everything now!

It had been, you see, a dream!

There was nothing to worry about.

It was over now.

I might, now, even open my eyes.

But the surface on which I lay did not seem soft, nor did the material beneath my finger tips seem to have the texture of cotton sheets. The light, too, was wrong. I must have twisted about in my sleep. Something seemed wrong.

Memories of the dream recurred, the movements, the metal wagon, the chains, the hood, the basket, the wind through its coarse, sturdy fibers.

My head, it seemed for the first time in days, seemed clear. I now experienced, it seemed for the first time in days, a consciousness I recognized as familiar, as my own, neither confused nor disordered. I did not have a headache. I did not know how long I had slept. It might have been a long while.

But the surface seemed wrong, the direction of the light seemed wrong.

Somehow I must be disoriented.

I opened my eyes, and gasped, shaken. I began to tremble, uncontrollably.

I lay upon stone.

That was what was beneath my finger tips. There were no sheets. There was no mattress.

I lay upon stone!

I rose to all fours.

I seemed to be in a sort of cave, carved into the living rock of a mountain, or cliff.

I looked to the opening of where I was housed, for it was from thence that came the illumination.

There was no window there. Rather there was a large aperture. It was regular in form. It was like a portal. Surely it was not a natural opening. It was in shape something between a semicircle and an inverted "U." It was flat at the bottom, rather squared at the sides and rounded at the top. It was some six or seven feet high and some seven or eight feet wide. It was barred. The bars were heavy, some two or three inches in thickness.

They were reinforced laterally with heavy crosspieces, an inch or so high, every foot or so.

My consciousness, suddenly, was very vivid, very acute. I seemed to be in a tiny brown tunic.

How had this come about? It was no more than a rag.

I would never have donned such a garment!

I would never have permitted myself to be seen so, so bared, so displayed, so exposed in such a scandalous garment!

It was frayed, and torn. It was terribly brief. It was terribly thin.

It had no nether closure, And it was all I wore!

I was outraged!

I might have torn it from me, but it was all I had.

Who had dared to put me in this garment? Surely I had not done so!

A sense of acute embarrassment, and then of fury, overcame me! What right had someone to do this, to take such liberties, to so garb me, in so little, so pathetically, and so revealingly and publicly, to so dress me, to so demean, insult and shame me, so deliberately, so grievously!

How could such a thing have been dared? Who did they think I was? What did they think I was? I realized, of course, too, suddenly, the thought almost making me giddy and frightened, that whoever had done so must have seen me bared, fully. Whoever it was must, I surmised, surely have been male. Surely it was the sort of garment that only a man would put a woman in, or perhaps observe a woman being put in, under his direction. I wondered if he had liked what he saw. I felt vulnerable. Had I been violated while unconscious? Things began to flood back to me.

Certain things now became very real.

It occurred to me that I was no longer the sort of woman who could be "violated." An animal could be put to use, but surely it could not be "violated.”

It could be done with me as others might please.

And suddenly, it tending to shock me, in my confusion, the thought rose up irresistibly within me that I should, more properly, not be distressed by the rag I wore, but rather I should rejoice that I had been granted this gift, the indulgence, the lenience, of even so minuscule a scrap of clothing! It served to give me at least a little cover. Was I entitled to any? No, I had not the least right to such, or to anything. Surely I should be heartfeltedly grateful for even so little! Surely it need not have been granted me. Had I not, in the pens, as it had seemed to me in my dreams, if dreams they were, often pleaded for so little as a thread of silk? What was I? What had I become? Something within me seemed to know.

The drug had now worn off. But it had induced a sense of confusion, an uncertainty as to what had occurred and what had not occurred, what had been dream and what had not been dream.

Had I dreamed the house, the pens, the chains, the wagon, the strange passage through cold, windy skies? Was I dreaming now? Was I delirious? Was I mad? Muchly had I been disoriented by the substance to which I had been subjected.

Was I still, unwittingly, its victim? But it did not seem so.

The stone, the close-set bars, the long, looming, tiered vistas beyond them, seemed very real.

I sought something to prove, or disprove, my fears.

Where was I? Was I no longer what I had been, as I suspected? Had my reality, as I suspected, been transformed radically, utterly? I must know!

I knelt back. I again felt my throat. No collar was there! Madly, feverishly, I pulled up the skirt of the tiny brown tunic, to bare my left leg to the waist. Yes!

Yes! Yes! There it was, the tiny, lovely mark, incised into my thigh, just below the hip. I wore it, in my body! It marked me!

There was no mistaking that small, beautiful sign. How beautiful it was! How well it marked me! It was my brand. It was truly there! I had been branded!

I again went to all fours, shaking, almost collapsing, now laughing, now weeping! I was overcome with elation, with joy, with relief. These emotions, from the depths of me, burst upward, like light and lava, like the throwing open of shades and the risings of suns, like floods, like tides, like treasures, like hurricanes, like fire, powerful, irresistible, precious! No longer did I suffer the sense of loss. No longer was I isolated, or wandering alone, apart from myself, not knowing myself, lost from myself. Forgotten then was the cry of alienation, of anguish. I had not been returned to my former condition of meaninglessness, that of nothingness, in which I, denied to my real self, it forbidden to me, must pretend to false identities, must conform to uncongenial stereotypes imposed upon me from the outside. Here I was free to be what I was!

Here I might feel, truly feel! Here one need not live as if indoors, sheltered from sunlight and rain, here one might look upon truth as it was in itself, not as it might be distorted in the labyrinths of prescribed protocols, here one might touch real things, like grass and the bark of trees.

Then, quickly, I knelt back, and, hastily, furtively looking about, thrust down the brief skirt of the tunic. What if someone should see? We have our modesty! I smoothed it down, with something like the dignity which, I seemed to recall from my training, we were not permitted.

I looked about.

I was here, truly here, wherever it might be.

The nightmare of the journey was apparently over.

It was now clear to me, as it had been when I was first subjected to the substance, in some house faraway, that I had been drugged. Now however, as nearly as I could determine, the disordering, sedative effects of whatever substance had been administered to me had worn off.

The dosage, apparently, for some time, had not been renewed. Too, I was now no longer hooded, or even chained. Indeed, even my collar had been removed. I had no idea, of course, as to where I might be. It did not seem to me that the drug would have been necessary. Surely the hood would have been enough, and the metal wagon, and such. Indeed, it seemed to me that I might as well have been transported openly, for all I given my ignorance of this world, might have been able to determine of my whereabouts. Why, then, had such precautions been taken with me? Men had not even spoken to me, and only occasionally in my vicinity. I had heard some things, some phrases, some scraps of discourse, when half-conscious, struggling with the haze of the drug, but very little, and nothing that told me what I most wanted to know, where I was being taken, and why. What was to be my fate? What was to be done with me? To what purposes was I to be applied? Why should I not at least be permitted to know where I was? What difference would it make, I wondered, if one such as I knew where she was? But such as I, I have learned, are commonly kept in ignorance.

But I was here now, wherever it might be.

Then, interestingly, I became afraid. I was here, and in the power of others, whom I knew not. Surely there was, after all, something to be said for the tepid world from which I had been extracted. Would it not have been better then to have awakened between my own sheets, in my own bed, as I had so many times before, in those familiar surroundings? Was that world not, for all its lies, its hypocritical cant, its ludicrous, wearying pretenses, its tedious selfcongratulatory self-righteousness, and such, a more secure place, a safer place? The dangers there, it seemed, were for the most part at least comfortingly slow, and invisible, such as minute quantities of poison in food, significant only over time, and lethal gases accumulating in the atmosphere, molecule by molecule. Indeed, the men of my world, in their self-concern, preoccupied with their own affairs, doubtless of great moment, seemed prepared to let their world die. I did not think, on the other hand, that the men of this world would allow their world to be destroyed. Nature, and its truths, were too important to them.