Dancer of Gor (4 page)

I moved, warming up, preparing my muscles. I was intent, (pg. 25) and careful. A dancer, of course, does not simply begin to dance. That can be dangerous. She warms up. It is like an athlete warming up, I suppose. As I warmed up, I could hear the jewelry on me, the tiny sounds of the skirt. Bells, too, marked these movements. I was belled. These I had fastened, in three lines, they fastened on a single thong, about my left ankle. Men, I sensed, somehow, would relish an ornamented woman, perhaps even one who was shamefully belled.

I went to the table where rested the small recorder. I was excited, as I always was, somehow, before I danced. I picked up one tape, put it aside, and selected another. It was to that that I should dance.

Men had always, it seemed, at least since puberty, been more disturbing, and interesting and attractive to me than they should have been to a modern woman, or a real woman. They had always seemed far more important to me than they were really supposed to be. They were only men, I had been taught. But even so, they were men, even if that were all they were. I could never bring myself to think of them, really, as persons. To me they always seemed more meaningful, and virile, than that, even the men I knew. To me, in spite of their cowardice and weakness, they still seemed, in a way, men, or at least the promise of men. Beyond this, after that night, long ago, in my bedroom, that night in which I had admitted to myself my real nature, though I had denied it often enough since, my interest in me had been considerably deepened. After my confession to myself, kneeling before my vanity in the darkness of my room, they had suddenly become a thousand times more real and frightening to me. And this interest in them, and my sensitivity to them, and my awareness of them, had been deepened further, I think, in my experience with dance. I do not think this was simply a matter of a modest reduction in my weight and, connected with this, and the exercise, a noticeable improvement in my figure, helping me to a more felicitous and reassuring self-image, that of a female in clear, lovely contrast to a male, or the dance's prosaic improvement of such things as my circulation, my body tone, and general health, though, to be sure, it is difficult for a woman to be healthy, truly healthy, and not be interested in men, but what was really important, rather, or especially important, I think, was the nature of the dance itself, the kind of dance it was. In this form of dance a woman becomes aware of the marvelous, profound complementaries of sexuality, that she, clearly, is the female, beautiful and desirable, and that they, watching her, being pleased, their eyes alit, strong and mighty, are different (pg. 26) from her, that they are men, and that, in the order of nature, she, the female of their species, belongs to them. It is thus impossible for her, in this form of dance, not to become alertly, deeply, keenly aware of the opposite sex.

Do we truly belong to me, I asked myself. No, I laughed. No, of course not! How silly that is!

I inserted the tape in the recorder.

My finger hesitated over the button. But perhaps it is true, really, I thought. I shrugged. It seemed that men did not want us, or that men of the sort I knew did not want us. If they did want us why did they not take us, and make us theirs? I wondered, then, if there were a different sort of men, somewhere, the sort of men who might want us, truly, and take us, and make us theirs. Surely not. Men did not do what they wanted with women, never. Surely not! Nowhere! Nowhere! But I knew, of course, that men had, and commonly had, in thousands of places, for thousands of years, treated us, or some women, at least, perhaps luckless, unfortunate ones, exactly as they had pleased, holding them and keeping them, as no more than dogs and chattels. How horrifying, I thought. But surely men such as that no longer existed, and my recurrent longing for them, a needful, desperate longing, as I sometimes admitted to myself, must be no more than some pathetic, vestigial residue of a foregone era. Perhaps it was an odd, anachronistic inherited trait, a genetic relic, tragically perhaps, in my case, no longer congruent with its creature's environment. I wondered if I had been born out of my time. Surely a woman such as I, I thought, might better have thrived in Thebes, or Rome, or Damascus. But I was real, and was as I was, in this time. Did this not suggest then that somewhere, somehow, there might be something answering to my yearnings, my hungers and cries? How was it that I should cry out in the darkness, if, truly, there were no one, anywhere, to hear? Be pleased there isn't, little fool, I snapped to myself. Of course there wasn't. I reassured myself. How terrifying it would be if there were. I decided I would now dance. I recalled that the man in the aisle, he in the incident which had taken place some three months ago, that in connection with Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities, had spoken of a world like one long past, a world in which, as he had said, women such as myself were bought and sold as slaves. I dismissed the thought immediately from my mind. But I knew there was another reason I had come to the library to dance, one I had seldom admitted to myself. It was here, in this place, over there to my left, where I had found myself kneeling before a man, (pg. 27) where I had found myself saying aloud, "I am a slave." I would now dance. I decided, as a pleasant fancy, that I would pretend something naughty, as I occasionally did, that I was truly a slave, on such a world, and that I was dancing before masters. Oh, I would dance well! The masters, as I dreamed of them, of course, and as they figured in my fancies, were not the men of Earth, or, at least, not men like most of those of Earth. No, they would be different. They would be quite different. They would be quite different. They would be such as before whom a girl could quite properly, and, indeed, perhaps even in fear of her life, realistically dance, and dance desperately, hoping to be found pleasing, or acceptable. They would be true men. They would be her masters.

I pressed the button on the tape recorder and there, in the darkness, in the library, my bare feet feeling the coarse piling of the thin, stained carpet, to the soft sounds of bells, those tied on my ankle, I danced. I danced for some time, lost in my delights, and I danced, or tried to, as would have, as I had planned, a mere slave, needful and fearful, before those who held over her the power of life and death, before her masters.

I cried out, suddenly, startled. I stopped, with a jangle of bells, and a swirl of skirt. I shrank back, my hand flung before my mouth. "Who are you?" I cried, to the figure standing in the shadows, some feet away, but I knew. I backed away, my hand at my breast. I was suddenly conscious, terribly, of my bare feet, of the bells on one ankle, the anklets on the other, of the nakedness of my legs with the swirling, veil-like skirt, of the bareness of my midriff, of my bared arms and shoulders, of the jewelry upon me. My breasts heaved, as I struggled for breath, within the scarlet halter which confined them. I put my hand out, as though to fend him away, backing yet further away. "Who are you!" I cried.

"Do you think to play games with me?" he inquired.

"What are you doing here!" I cried.

"Can you not guess?" he asked.

"You have no business here," I said. "Go away!""My business brings me here," he said.

I looked wildly about me, and was going to turn, and flee, when I cried out, again. To my right there was another man. I spun about. Behind me, a few feet, and to my left, there was another!

The man who was to my right turned off the tape recorder.

I stood there, in swirling skirt and bells. Then suddenly I fled between the man before me and he on my right, running between the tables and toward the shelves. The fellow on the right, I (pg. 28) think, came after me. I fled, with a jangle of bells, down the stairs, to the lower level. I yanked wildly on the heavy door there. I was terrified. I would run out into the night, even as I was. It did not budge. The handle seemed warm. The bolt area, too, was warm. I gasped. It was rippled. It had apparently been exposed to great heat, in a small area, and it had melted there, and then hardened. The door would not open. In effect, somehow it seemed welded shut. Hearing the men, or one of them behind me, I then fled to the others stairs, and thence upward again, to the main level of the library. I hurried toward the front entrance. The fellow whom I had first seen was now standing there, before the door. He looked at me. He slipped a small object into his pocket. That door, too, I thought wildly, is now sealed! Thusly they could close a door. Similarly, doubtless, with heat, they could as easily open one! There was a technology here which frightened me. I turned and fled back, again, toward the area where I had originally been surprised. The return desk was on my left, the information desk ahead and to my right. I turned suddenly to the left and fled down the hall-like way between the shelves and the washrooms. At the end of this I saw another man. I think he who had originally followed me. I turned to the left, to lock myself in the ladies' room, but the door hung awry on one hinge. I had not heard breakage. It must have done, again, with heat. The door was useless! I could not hide there! I cried out in misery. But then, too, I realized, suddenly, if I had hidden there I would have been trapped. They could open that door, surely, as easily as they opened and closed others. Why then had they set the door awry? With a sinking feeling I realized perhaps it had amused them, that it must have been merely to inform me that there was no place, really, to hide! Too, there seemed something symbolic in this. In my culture men could not enter the ladies' room. Its precincts were not permitted to them. It was a place where women could go, and be safe. But now, it seemed, that I had not even this symbolic security, this pathetic figment of a convention, to protect me. There was no place to hide! There was no place to be safe! These men, I feared, came from a place where perhaps no woman, or no woman of certain sorts, was fully safe. They came, I feared, from a place where they might follow a woman, or such a woman, anywhere, where they might pursue her anywhere, where they might go after her anywhere. I fled back down the hall-like way toward the information desk, stopping suddenly, with a jangle of bells, near the end of the hall-like way. I looked wildly about. I was fearful of precipitously flinging (pg. 29) myself into the arms of a man. I threw a wild look over my shoulder. The fellow was approaching. I turned wildly right, toward the main doors again. Perhaps the first man, he I had first seen, he whom I knew, no longer blocked them! But he was still there! I cried out in misery and darted across the open space, past the information desk and the office, past the periodicals and into the reading area, toward the main-level porch, overlooking the lake. That door, too, was sealed. I tried to pick up one of the small armchairs, to smash through, and perhaps squeeze through, one of the high, narrow windows, but it was too heavy for me, and the man was now close behind me. Even if I could have lifted the chair he would have been upon me before I could have reached the glass. I darted back again toward the main section of the library. They were in no hurry, it seemed, to close in on me. They were letting me run, letting me learn perhaps, learn as a female, what it was to run. I fleetly crossed the open space of the central section of the library and ran up to the iron, iron-and-wood-banistered stairs to the upper level, where we keepbiographies and fiction. My bare feet sounded strange to me, striking on the surface of the stairs. I wondered if anyone had ever ascended them barefoot before, here, in this place. I suspected not. The corrugated surface of the stairs, too, felt strange on my feet. My soles stung at the top. Then I was again on carpeting. I fled down the aisle. I heard a man coming up, behind me, slowly. I hid between two of the shelves perpendicular to the main aisle. My ankle moved, slightly. There was the tiny sound of bells. They would know where I was! Again I must run! I leapt up, crying out, and fled again, irrationally, terrified, wildly, miserably, weeping, my every step again betrayed by bells, this time about the far end of the tiny side aisle between the shelves, away from the main aisle, away from where I thought the man would be. Then I hid again, between two shelves, and fumbled, feverishly in the darkness with the tie on my bells. I could do nothing with it in the darkness. I had belled myself well, I thought bitterly. I had belled myself as might have a slave, who knows that her bells must be on her tightly, firstly for psychological reasons, that she knows herself belled, and is conscious of all the erotic and humiliating richness of this, she, a belled animal, and secondly and thirdly, of course, for mechanical reasons, that they be responsive to her slightest movements, as in the slowest, subtlest portions of her dance, and will not slip, or come loose, in the more rapid portions of her dance, despite her swiftest gyrations. I wept. I could not free the bells. Even as I tried they would make their tiny sounds. I tried to remain absolutely still. I (pg. 30) held them with both hands, trying to keep my ankle absolutely still. But I was breathing heavily. I could not help myself. Tears ran down my cheeks. Surely my breathing, if nothing else, would betray me. Too, in the tiny movements of my body, even in breathing, the bells would sometimes make a tiny sound. I looked up. there, at the opening to my side aisle, in the main aisle, tall in the darkness, looking down at me, loomed a man, one of the three whom I had seen, he, I think, who had followed me about so quietly and tenaciously, originally to the lower level, up again by the other stairs, down the hall-like way, across the open space, toward the porch area, back again across the open space, and now up the stairs. I leaped up and fled away from him, utilizing the narrow space at the edge of the porchlike upper level, between the safety bannister and the shelves, to the second stairs, on the east side of the upper level, leading down to the main floor. No one was there. I hurried down the stairs. I darted between tables, toward the first-floor shelves on the east side of the building, where we keep most of our reference materials. I heard him coming down the iron stairs behind me. I hurried into one of the aisles, between the reference shelves. I crouched down there, at the far end. I looked behind me. He had entered the aisle. With a cry of misery I leapt up and fled about the end of the shelving area turning wildly with a swirl of skirt and a jangle of bells into the adjacent aisle and was caught! He had apparently been waiting in this place. His hands were on my upper arms. I was held as helplessly as a child, I had literally, running, unable to stop, stumbling, with a cry of misery, struck against him. I had flung myself, it seemed, into his arms. He had thrust me back a bit, and now held me, helplessly, by the upper arms, his hands like iron on my arms, but inches from him. It was he whom I had encountered some three months ago in the library, he, of course, of the incident in the aisle, this very aisle, even, and in this very place in this aisle, that puzzling, frightening incident involving Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities. Minutes ago, in terror, before running, I had recognized him. I had recognized him even before he had spoken. I had known him unmistakably in my woman's heart, even in the darkness. I feared him terribly. Now Iwas in his grasp. He lifted me up a little, easily before him, so easily that I might have been a child. I squirmed, helpless. Only my toes, their very tips, could touch the carpet. He looked at me, peering into my eyes, his hands so tight on my arms. I began to tremble, and could not look at him, and was terrified and weak. He let me down, so that I might stand, but I could not do so. It was only (pg. 31) his hands which kept me on my feet. The other man was now behind me. He then released my arms and I, weak and frightened, unable to help myself, sank to my knees before him.