Witness of Gor (46 page)

"Fellow," said the free woman.

"Yes?" said the pit master.

"What nonsense was it," asked the free woman, "your talk about another "world," or such?”

"It is no nonsense," said the pit master. "She comes from another world.”

"I have heard of such things," said the free woman. "Are they true?”

"Yes," said the pit master. He then put his hand in my hair and forced me forward, more in the light of the torch. I literally now felt the height of the wall against my thighs. I did not like standing so close to it. A small pressure could have forced me over the wall, tumbling to the dark waters below. To be sure, his hand was in my hair, holding me. I felt very helpless. My hands were still tied tightly behind my back. "Here is the proof," he said. By his grasp on my hair he pressed me further forward, more tightly against the wall, and then, holding me there, he pulled my head back by the hair, to better show my collar. "A barbarian slave girl," he said.

"Beat her!" cried the free woman. "Beat her!" She wrung her hands. "How she humiliated me!" she cried, "letting me think her free, letting me think she held caste! How demeaned I have been, speaking to one who was only bond!”

He pulled my head back, further.

I whimpered.

He held me there, thusly. And thus was I exhibited naked, and bound and collared, in the torchlight, in that dark place, before another woman, I only a barbarian slave.

"Insolent slave!" cried the free woman. "Insolent slave!”

The cage actually moved on its chain, so incensed she was.

"I was speaking to a barbarian slave!" cried the free woman, in misery, dismayed, furious.

I had not known what I should have done! I had been frightened, and bound, in the darkness. But of course I should have known what I should have done!

Certainly I had been fearful enough in the darkness, filled with enough trepidation concerning her presumptions.

Did I not know the differences between such as I and such as she? Was I not such that I would at best be privileged to serve her deferentially at table-briefly tunicked, were men present, were she a thoughtful hostess, for their pleasure-my head down, not meeting her eyes, not even daring to speak to her? Or perhaps one such as she might have me serve garbed in a long, sleeveless, demurely white serving gown, my hair bound back, that I not be too distractive to the males, save perhaps for the collar on my neck. She would not wish to remove the collar, of course, but, too, she must know its effect on males, that it says that she who wears it is kajira, in effect, theirs. Most slave garments, incidentally, are sleeveless. I am not sure why that is, but it seems to be another way of drawing a distinction between slave and free. I suppose it has to do with the baring of flesh, which is regarded not only as acceptable for a slave, but, in the case of an animal, which she is, appropriate. It is also a way of helping the slave keep in mind that she is a slave. The contrast with the robes of concealment is obvious. I think, incidentally, that the robes of concealment must be terribly uncomfortable in the summer. In hot weather free women often wear sliplike garments in the privacy of their own quarters. In slavers' raids they are not unoften surprised and discommoded in such a state of charming dishabille. Their appearance is so fetching in such garments that they are sometimes permitted to retain them until caged in the hunting camp. They might also be presented in such garments in their saleat the beginning, I should say, of their sale. One might mention, in passing, that Gorean men find the entire female sexually stimulating, not just, say, the legs, the bosom, the derriere, and so on. They can also be excited by the throat, a wrist, and certainly the arms, and so on. Too, perhaps surprisingly, from the point of view of at least some men of Earth, they are interested in what is going on inside of her, as well, in her internal world, so to speak, in her thoughts, her feelings, her emotions, and such. These women are properties, you see, and men, as is well known, take a great interest in their properties. Why not, they belong to them; they own them.

I think it is indisputable that the average Gorean master knows a great deal more about his slave or slaves, inside and out, so to speak, than the average husband does of his wife. How many husbands, for example, will kneel their wife down naked and have her talk to him for two or three hours at a time? One, of course, learns a great deal about a woman in this way, and very quickly. The whole slave is bared to the master, not just her lovely body. She cannot help this, this exposure of her so fully, for she must keep talking. She will reveal more and more of herself, regardless of her wishes. One cannot help that. The speaking, too, of course, may be directed by questions and commands, and, if necessary, with blows of the switch. A woman under this regimen, so fiercely dominated, cannot keep shut the doors of her heart. She must open them, sooner or later, whether she wishes to or not. She finds that she is helpless. She must bare more and more of herself to the master. He will have it no other way, and thus he learns her, and she, before him, on her knees, knows herself learned.

Too, this practice has its effect on the slave as, by its means, she finds herself, despite what she may initially will, becoming more and more his. After as little as a few days, subject to this enforced and prolonged intimacy, she begins to find the master irresistible, and she longs to give herself to him. But he may starve her for physical contact until one day he snaps the whip and permits her to crawl to his feet, as she fervently wishes to do, and beg to serve him. She wears his collar. Will he not permit her to please him? She begs him to effectuate the mastery, as though he had not already done so, and put her to his pleasure.

"She is new to our world," said the pit master, somewhat angrily.

"She should know better!" screamed the free woman.

"True," said the pit master.

"She is stupid!" cried the woman. "She is stupid!”

"She is extremely intelligent," said the pit master, "considering what she is, a slave." He had doubtless been expecting me here, and had doubtless been apprised of the contents of my papers. I was glad to learn that I might be thought to be intelligent, if only for a slave. Such things, I had learned, considerably improve a girl's price. The men on this world relish intelligent women. We make, it is said, the best slaves. How they make us serve and obey!

More is expected, you see, of an intelligent slave. Demands are placed on her intelligence. It is challenged, and exploited. She is in the beginning perhaps its lamenting victim, for she is treated with such impatient severity and so much is expected of her, but is soon, as she grows, blossoms and thrives in her bondage, and as her master is more pleased with her, the joyful recipient of its attendant benefactions. Intelligent, she derives more from the uncompromising completeness of her state and the deliciousness of her domination. She is expected, you see, to serve with sensitivities, delicacies, diligences and subtleties beyond the ken of simpler women.

Our intelligence, interestingly, makes us more the properties of our masters, just as one will demand, and have, more from an intelligent animal than from one less intelligent; we are more easily controlled in a thousand ways by as little as a glance or gesture, because we grasp what is required; our bodies, too, tend to be more sensitive, and this puts us the more at the mercy of our masters, and any disciplines he may choose to impose upon us; if we attempt to conceal our intelligence, in order to have less expected of us, we are whipped; our service is to be perfect, and well beyond that of a less intelligent woman; too, our faults or shortcomings are dealt with more severely, for we should know better. Too, for what it is worth, intelligent women are commonly better looking than less intelligent women, a feature which is not without its appeal to masters, and one which makes them more likely candidates for the slavers' ropes and irons; too, they also tend to be more helplessly responsive in the arms of a master. They tend, as well, to be more in touch with their inner selves and secret needs, and less the victims of negativistic conditioning programs. The intelligent woman often knows what she is missing and what she wants, whereas the less intelligent woman is often little more than the troubled, unwitting victim of the prescriptions and pathologies of a negativistic culture within which she is, unbeknownst to herself, imprisoned.

"I am a helpless free woman," said the free woman, wheedlingly, "and you are a free man. I have been insulted. I must depend upon you to see that my honor is suitably satisfied.”

"The barbarian slave will be suitably punished," he said.

"Excellent!" she said.

The pit master, in spite of the power which he doubtless held in this place, even over prisoners, as I had been informed, seemed concerned to treat the free woman with respect.

This, I gathered, might be cultural, or perhaps he, somehow, oddly, despite his grotesque appearance, might be sensitive to some subtle canons of gentility. I had noted that the guards in the pens had similarly shown great deference to free women. To be sure, those free women might have been important, and they were certainly not prisoners. This deference, it might be mentioned, had not precluded, later, and the next day, the women gone, a number of rude jokes pertaining to them, nor some rather explicit speculations as to what they might look like, chained naked to a floor ring. The respect commonly shown to free women on this world is not, of course, accorded to slaves. It would never have occurred to the pit master, or to other men of this world, to treat me as other than what I was, a slave. How different we are from free women! And yet, interestingly, how artificial, and how fragile, and how culturally precarious, is the distinction between the free woman and the slave. Do the free women understand that that distinction is not part of nature, like dominance and submission, but that it depends merely on the will of men? Do they not understand that their lofty status requires the permission of males, and, in a sense, depends upon the whims of males? There is a thin line, and a short distance, between the free woman and the slave, a line as thin as slave silk, a distance as short as the three links joining slave bracelets.

"What of my ransom?" called the free woman. "Has it arrived?”

"No," said the pit master.

"Surely it is overdue!" she cried, grasping the bars of the cage.

"I do not know," said the pit master.

"Well, inquire!" she cried.

The pit master was silent. I did not think he was pleased. He removed his hand from my hair. Instantly I knelt, head down, near him.

"Inquire!" demanded the free woman. The pit master was silent.

"Expedite the matter!" she cried, shaking the bars. He was silent.

"Please my handsome fellow," she wheedled.

"Lift the torch, higher," said the pit master, slowly, as though curious, to the lovely brunet slave beside him.

As none were paying me attention I dared to look up. Should the pit master turn to regard me I would instantly look down, and away. I did not wish to appear insolent, meeting his eyes.

Too, I was not eager to behold again that visage.

The ceiling flickered wildly in the illumination of the torch.

Suddenly the pit master, that shambling creature, who had apparently been curious to look more closely upon something, uttered an angry noise.

The slave with the torch gasped.

She, too, it seemed, had noted something.

The free woman in the cage stepped back a little.

The pit master pointed toward the bottom of the cage. The cage, as the net had had, had various ropes attached to it. By these ropes, I surmised, once it was lowered on its chain, perhaps by some sort of windlass, it might be drawn toward the walkway.

"What is wrong?" asked the free woman.

I gathered that she might, from her words, have some conception as to what might be wrong.

"Remove the cloth," said he, "from the latch.”

"No!" she wept. "Please!”

But she obeyed. The cage, apparently, opened and closed from the bottom, gated by a hinged plate. She had tied something, probably a strip of cloth from the bottom of her robes, which were ragged now, in such a way as to prevent the release of the floor.

A cord, coiled on the walkway, ran to the latch. By drawing on this cord it seemed the latch could be released. She stood in the cage, over the water. In her hand was the piece of cloth.

The pit master reached to the cord which controlled the latch.

"Please, no!" she cried.

"How," asked the pit master, "is a female prisoner who is a free woman to address her jailer?”

"As 'sir'!" she cried.

"You seem, hitherto, to have omitted that courtesy," he observed.

"Sir,' 'sir,' 'sir'!" she wept.

"You must understand," he said, "that in this place you are mine.”

"Yes, sir!" she wept.

"Hold to the bars," he said.

Desperately, weeping, she clung to them. I gathered that she might have experienced something of this sort before.

He jerked the cord and it sprang the latch, and the bottom plate of the cage, she screaming with terror, I, too, crying out in terror, dropped down, on its hinge.

She slipped partly through the opening, and then scrambled back within the cage, clinging to the bars, her feet trying to find some purchase there.