Dancer of Gor (23 page)

"Yes, Master," I said.

"Did you know that many times Earth women turn out to be superb pleasure slaves?" he asked.

"We are women," I whispered, shrugging. I saw no reason why we, properly controlled and disciplined, should not be as perfect for a man as a Gorean woman. Indeed, considering the social and political deserts in which we were sexually starved, it would not have surprised me in the least, if we, once it became (pg. 141) clear to us, to our joy, that we now had no culturally prescribed alternatives to being women, that we were now no longer subjected to social pressures to be something else, our womanhood being denied, or demeaned and despised, to coming home to our sex, and nature, proved to be every bit as good, if not in some ways better, than our Gorean sisters, or at least some of them, unaware of such deprivations. But in the end, I suppose, it all depends on the individual female. In the end, we were all women.

"Look up," he said.

I rose to my knees, and lifted my head.

"You have a beautiful face," he said.

"Thank you, Master," I said.

"And you have a luscious form," he said.

"Thank you, Master," I said.

"Kiss the whip," he said.

I did so, quickly, that I might not seem to dally, or he draw it from me, but then, as he held it in place, permitting me to continue, more slowly, more lingeringly. Then he drew it back, and I knelt back, before him.

"Are you going to be any good?" he asked.

I looked up at him, startled, frightened. He had said I had a beautiful face, and a luscious form. What more could anyone want? Then I swallowed hard, understanding him. Of course, of course, I thought. Such things would be only a beginning, perhaps only a small beginning, and doubtless not even a necessary beginning, of what men would expect of me. "It is my hope that I will be pleasing," I said.

"I have high hopes for you," he said.

I was silent.

"I think," he said, "that you will be very good."

"It is my hope that I will be pleasing to my master," I said.

"And to any to whom, in your master's service," he said, "you are explicitly, or implicitly, consigned."

"Yes, Master," I said.

"And to men, in general," he said.

"Yes, Master, of course, Master," I said. I was a female slave. I existed now for the pleasure of men. It was what I was for.

"Sometimes," he said, "one encounters an Earth female who believes, at first, for a short time, that she may be resistant, in some respect, either secretly or overtly, to masters. Are you such a female?"

"No, Master," I said.

(pg. 142) "In any way?" he asked.

"No, Master," I said.

"Such recalcitrance is detectable," he said. "It is betrayed by subtle body cues, uncontrollable, and unmistakable."

"Yes, Master," I said, looking down.

"There are drugs, too," he said, "which are pertinent to such matters."

"Yes, Master," I said. I had not known that. I had known that. I had known about the other sorts of things. They had been graphically illustrated to us in the house of my training. Some had to do with skin blotching and nipple erection. One simple test had been with five of us, one of us, not known to Ulrick, to take a ring and hide it. By holding her hands and looking into her eyes it had almost immediately determined the "guilty girl." He had then, merely by holding her arm, had her guide him, involuntarily, to where she had hidden the ring. These things were done primarily by acute observation and differential muscle tensions, indexed to the girl's knowledge and inward states. The meaning of the lessons, however, had been clear. If our slavery did not go through us, so to speak, if it was not complete, we could not conceal that from the masters. Our choice then, in effect, was to be complete slaves, whole slaves, total slaves, or die. I, and I think, my entire class, interestingly, had rejoiced in this knowledge. We knew we were slaves in our hearts, as we had learned in our training, and we wanted to be slaves. The knowledge then that we would be unable to conceal any inauthenticity is our slavery from the masters, even if we wished to do so, was a liberating insight. It imposed a welcome, healthful psychological consistency upon us. It deprived us of even the last excuse which our pride or vanity might have left to us not to be perfect in our bondage. To be sure, sometimes a master encourages open defiance or rebellion on the part of a girl, he then enjoying forcing her to serve, and perfectly, so obviously, so visibly, against her will. Too, sometimes, he is amused to indulge a girl's "secret" recalcitrance, well aware of her games, her transparent reservations, her supposedly so carefully guarded and secret resistance, letting her think it is unknown, even unsuspected. When he tires of this sport, however, he reveals to her, to her horror, that she had been all this time as open to him as a book. She can then make the decision of the slave girl, to be a true slave, a full slave, or die.

"Look into my eyes," he said.

I did so. It was not easy.

"Yes, " he said, "you are a slave."

(pg. 143) "Yes, Master," I said.

"Even though you might regret your bondage, or rage against it, from time to time," he said, "yet, in your heart, you now you are a slave."

"Yes, Master," I said, frightened.

"You were a slave even on Earth," he said."But a secret slave," I whispered.

"Here," he said, "your slavery is patent."

"Yes, Master," I said.

"What was wrong with you, at the end of your sale?" he asked. "You seemed suddenly so awkward, so clumsy, almost as though you were paralyzed."

"I do not know," I said. "Perhaps I realized, suddenly, what was being done with me, that I was being sold."

"But a slave must expect to be sold," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said.

He looked down at me.

"I was frightened, Master," I said.

"Are you frightened now?" he asked.

"Yes, Master," I said. This was the first time I had been in his presence, to my knowledge, since my sale in Market of Semris. I kept my eyes from meeting his. I could see the vast, hairy chest, crossed by the two belts. The large, drooping mustache suggested a casual, almost indolent power. The scar at the side of his face had been wrought, I supposed, by some primitive device or weapon, perhaps even, though it seemed hard to believe for a female of Earth, in combat. From my point of view, he seemed clearly a barbarian. He would think nothing of owning women. To be sure, from his point of view, it was I, though a refined female of Earth, who, on this world, counted as being the "barbarian." He had been coming back from some place called Torcadino, or near Torcadino, where he had gone, either there, or in its vicinity, to purchase cheap girls for his tavern. I gathered that women, for some reason, were cheap in that vicinity. He had stopped at Market of Semris on his way back to Brundisium, boarding his girls overnight at the house of Teibar. He had stopped in that evening at the sales barn. There he had purchased me. He had not, as far as I knew, made any other purchases here.

"Good," he said. "It is well for a slave to fear her master."

"Yes, Master," I said. I kept my head down. What he said was rue, of course. It was indeed well for a slave to fear her master. The master can do what he wished to her. He has absolute and total power over her.

(pg. 144) I watched his fingers move idly on the butt of the whip and on its single, thick blade, coiled back, twice, against the butt.

I suppose I would have feared any Gorean maser, they are so strict with us. But I was sure, too, I feared this one more than I might have most. He was so large, and so beastlike, a complex man, I sensed, but one of simplicity in the sense of undividededness or singleness of purpose. To be sure, this lack of self-division, of self-conflict, tends to be characteristic of Gorean males. Their culture does not try to control them by setting them against themselves when they are too young to understand what is being done to them, in some cases, by half tearing them apart. To some extent, I suppose, it satisfies them, and keeps them content, rather as one might throw meat to lions, by throwing a certain sort of woman in their way, the slave. The man who owned me might indeed be, as I had first percieved him,in Market of Semris, he free, looking up at the slave block where I, a naked slave, displayed in high manacles, was being vended, too corpulent, too broad of girth, too gross, too scarred, too loathsome, too hideous, but now that I was his, and within reach of his whip, these initial perceptions were surely expanded or altered by other more pertinent, more trenchant ones. I was now aware not so much of these first-glimpsed things, things which might occur to a stranger looking casually upon him for the first time, from a distance, as other things, things which become much clearer with closeness, closeness such as when one might be kneeling, naked before him, so close he could reach out and touch you, a sense of intelligence, and power, and perception, such that one felt he could look through you, and see what was within you, anything, and uncompromising mastery, and perhaps mercilessness. The most obvious thing about him, of course, now, from my point of view, was that he owned me, that he was my master.

"But you are not so frightened now," he said.

"No," I said.

"Why?" he asked.

"The sale is over," I said. "I know that I am now a sold slave. That is behind me. I have been summoned into the presence of my master. In this he has honored me, for he has many girls. He has been kind enough to express his satisfaction with trivialities of his slave, that she has a beautiful face and form, and his belief that I may perhaps prove to be pleasing in more significant manners. Too, he has informed me that my tongue work upon his feet has not been entirely displeasing."

"For a slave new to her collar," he said.

(pg. 145) "Yes, Master," I said. "Of course, Maser. Thank you, Master."

"I think you were not too pleased to have been purchased by me," he said.

I was silent.

"Perhaps you find me gross," he said, "even hideous?"

I was silent.

"Some women do," he said.

I did not speak.

"It is amusing then to me, sometimes," he said, "to abuse them, and make them, despite their will, cry out for my touch."

"Yes, Master," I said.

"It pleases me to have them crawling on me on their belly, begging piteously to be used."

"Yes, Master," I whispered.

"Perhaps you find me gross and loathsome," he speculated.

I trembled, head down.

"But is doesn't matter," he said. "You are my slave."

"Yes, Master," I said.

"And at so much as the snapping of my fingers, you will bring yourself running to me, obediently and warmly, desperate to please me."

"Yes, Master," I said.

"But there is time enough for such things," he said.

I was silent.

"I was not displeased that your performance on the block was as ambiguous as it was, toward the end of your sale," he said.

"Master?" I asked.

"A kajira is occasionally entitled to terror," he said.

"Thank you, Master," I said, hesitantly.

"And it perhaps confused certain buyers," he said, "inhibiting them from submitting higher bids. I turned it thus to my profit."

I kept my eyes down.

"Come closer," he said.

I did so, on my knees, "Ohh," I said, touched by him. I leaned forward, tears in my eyes, pressing myself toward him, gross as he might be, my hands on the sides of the great chair in which he sat. I put my head down on his left knee.

"I thought so," he said. "Look up. Look into my eyes."

I did so, frightened.

"Yes," he said, looking into my eyes. "You are a slave. That is all you are."

"Yes, Master," I whispered.

"Kneel back," he said.

(pg. 146) I knelt then, tears in my eyes.

"Keep your knees open," he said.

"Oh, please, Master!" I begged.

His eyes were stern.

Immediately I open my knees, widely, as was appropriate for the type of slave I was, a pleasure slave.

"One might think almost," he said, musingly, "that you are not a virgin. It is interesting to speculate what you will be like when you have been adequately opened and regularly utilized."

I kept my head down.

"It will probably not even be necessary to encourage you with the whip," he said.

I did not dare to speak.

"But the whip will be always there, should you require refreshening on your status, or become to any degree less then perfectly pleasing," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"You may have fooled others in your terror," he said, "but you did not fool me."

"Master?" I asked

"Beneath the terror," he said, "I saw the beauty, and the slave."

I did not speak.

"I saw, too," he said, "the dancer, particularly in your transitions between the attitudes commanded of you in the slave paces. I knew then you were either a dancer, or had the makings of a dancer. Too, of course, your response to the slaver's caress, later, was indicative. That, of course, would have been obvious even to a tharlarion."