Tribesmen of Gor (14 page)

     
"It is depressing," I said. "Let us see the slave."

     
The slave master clapped his hands, then called through the silver curtain. "92,683," he said.

 
    
"She has a bit more fluidity, more sensuality, in her body movement now," he said. "She moves somewhat better than she did. Here are her exercises." He thrust a sheet of paper to me. I looked at it. They were familiar exercises, slave-female: exercises, designed to keep a girl supple, loose, vital, fit, for her master. "You are familiar with matters of diet?" he asked.

     
"Yes," I said. The diet of the slave girl was regulated with the same attention and care as that which a man of Earth would bestow on his prize hunting dogs, or otherwise esteemed domestic animals. Caloric intake was supervised with particular care. A common problem with slave girls was petty thievery, as they attempted to steal pastries or sweets. Many slave girls have a craving for sweets. These are commonly kept from them. A girl might have to perform superbly for hours before her master before he, in his generosity, would consent to throw her a candy.

     
"Her body, of course," said the man, "is now much more alive to the world about her."

 
    
The stimulation chamber would have accomplished this. Now her skin would be much more aware of such tiny things as a change in air movement in a room, temperature, humidity, and such; also she would now be more keenly sensitive to differences in textures with which her body might come in contact, such as the granulation of the stones on which her feet walked, whether there was slight moisture on tiles, the fall of silk, in different varieties, on her shoulder, the precise feeling of the pile of a rug beneath her thigh, the exact feeling of a strap cinched on her body, the exact feeling of slave bracelets, cool and inflexible, on her small wrists. Her entire body would, now, be alive, an organ of touch, a sheet of sentience and vitality. I was satisfied. It was a step toward sensuality.

     
"The slave, 92683," said a woman's voice.

 
    
Through the strings of the silver curtain emerged the girl. "Kneel here, little Alyena," said the slave master, in Gorean.

 
    
I observed as the girl knelt. I thought the slave master too modest. Subtly, but unmistakably, she was a different girl. She still had far to go, but there was no doubt as to the fact that improvement had heed wrought in her. Interestingly, I sensed that the girl did not really understand certain changes, which had been brought about in her. Doubtless she still thought herself the identical girl who had been placed in the pens. Certain of these changes, mostly in movements, and ways of holding the body, are, sometimes, unconscious concomitants of the training of the girl: they accompany, as pleasant consequences, a latent value, other forms of training which have rather different manifest objectives. An obvious example is the stimulation-chamber training, which is overtly, concerned with honing a physical and psychological responsiveness to surface sensation, this responsiveness, however, is reflected in the entire attitude, and expressions, of the girl. One does not, so to speak, train the girl to "look vital"; rather one makes her vital; she then, perhaps without even understanding it, or thinking about it, looks vital.

 
    
The girl knelt before the desk of the slave master. I sat to one side, in a curule chair. She knelt obediently, beautifully, as a pleasure slave. She was in the presence of free men. I saw her eyes briefly close, relishing the feel of the stone floor, as she knelt back on her heels, on her knees and the tops of her toes; I saw her body straighten itself, exposing itself, drinking in the atmosphere of the room. Her eyes were very much alive, very blue. She looked irritated.

 
    
"What about such things," I asked the slave master, "as giving pleasure to men."

     
"We have shown her some simple things," he said, "about all she is now capable of."

     
"Have you taught her to dance?" I asked.

     
"She is not yet ready to dance," said the slave master.

     
I looked at the girl, to detect how much of the conversation, in Gorean, she understood. Her grasp was imperfect.
 
"Stand, Girl," I said to her in Gorean.

Gracefully she stood. I observed her.

     
"Bracelets!" I said in Gorean, harshly.

 
    
The girl snapped to position, hands behind the small of her back, head lifted, chin up, turned to the left. In such a posture she may be conveniently put in bracelets, and leashed.

 
    
"Kneel," I told her. Again she knelt, in the position of the pleasure slave.

     
To one side, her arms folded, the quirt in her hand, in leather strips and halter, with collar and ring, with high-laced sandals, stood the large female slave, who had originally conducted the girl from the room, and had brought her back today. She smiled.

 
    
I pointed to the stones at my feet. "Crawl," I said, in Gorean.

 
    
The girl slipped to her belly, and, as a slave girl, crawled to my feet. She put her lips to my foot; I felt her hair over it. "Return," I told her. On her belly, head down, she returned to where she had knelt.

     
"Kneel," I said.

     
Again she knelt in the position of the pleasure slave. Her eyes wire angry.

Excellent, I thought to myself.

     
"She has been diligent?" I asked the slave master.

     
"Yes," he said.

     
I smiled. The girl had fallen into the rebellion of compliance. To avoid the deprivation of food, the whip, she obeyed perfectly, but outwardly. She was trying to retain an island in which she would be her own mistress. She thought she was deceiving us. I did not see that it was mine to do, but doubtless, in time, her master, when he wished, would shatter her, taking this island from her, making her completely a slave. For now, I thought I would let her think she was fooling us. Later, when a master wished, he would, when it pleased him, to her horror, break her totally to his will.

 
    
I had little doubt that the lovely Alyena would one day, in the arms of a strong man, for whom I was saving her; become a true slave, adoringly and vulnerably the property of her master.

     
I glanced to the large female slave, with the quirt, standing near the silver curtain.

     
"Why are you not in slave silk?" I asked her.

     
Her eyes flashed. Her hand clenched on the quirt.

 
    
"She is useful in the pens," said the slave master. "She terrorizes feminine girls."

     
I turned to Alyena. "What do you think," I asked, in English, "of the female slave?"

     
"I fear her," whispered small, lovely Alyena.

     
"Why," I asked.

     
"She is so strong, so hard," said Alyena.

 
    
"What you fear in her." I said, "is masculinity, but it is not a true masculinity; it is fraudulent." I looked down at her. "The masculinity you must learn to fear," I told her, "is the masculinity of men."

     
"She is a match for any man," said Alyena. Her eyes shone with pride.

I turned to the slave master. "Fetch a male slave," I said.

 
    
One was brought. He was not a large fellow. He was however, an inch or so taller than the female slave.

 
    
"You certify to me," said I to the slave master, "that this man is neither clumsy nor stupid, nor drunk, nor an instructor in combat intent upon increasing the confidence of his pupils."

 
    
"It is so certified," he smiled. "He is used in cleaning the pens. He is a drover who falsified the quality-markings on spice crates."

     
I placed a copper tarn disk on the desk of the slave master. "Fight," I said to the slaves.

     
"Fight," said the slave master.

 
    
The man looked puzzled. With a cry of rage, shrill and vicious, the female slave leapt toward him, slashing him across the face with the quirt. She struck him twice before he, angry, took the quirt from her and threw it aside.

     
"Do not anger me," he told her.

 
    
He turned and caught her kick on his left thigh. She leapt at him, fingers like claws, to tear out his eyes. He seized her wrists. He turned her about. She could not move. Then, with considerable force, as she cried out with misery, he flung her, the length of her body, belly front, against the stone wall. He then stepped back, jerked her ankles from under her and flung her to the stones, and knelt across her back. She wept and struck the stones with her fists. Then her halter was removed and her hands pulled behind her and bound with it. He discarded her belt and the strips of leather. He removed her sandals. With one of the long, straplike laces, he crossed and bound her ankles. Then, angrily, he turned her collar, hurting her, with its ring, to the back. With the other straplike lace, run through the ring and tied to the binding on her ankles, he jerked her ankles up, high, fastening them there. Then he crouched over her and she lay bound at his feet. He turned her head, looking over her right shoulder, so that it faced him; he crouched so that she could not move; his right ankle was against her left cheek. He poised his thumbs, held downward, over her eyes.

 
    
"I am a woman at your mercy," she wept. "Please, Master, do not hurt me!"

 
    
He looked to the slave master. The slave master came to where the woman lay. He looked down at her. He called two slaves from behind the silver curtain. They looked down at the woman. Then the slave master said, "Put her in slave silk, and give her to male slaves."

 
    
She was freed of the cord binding her ankles to her collar ring.

 
    
She was jerked to her feet, and held there; she could not stand by herself for her feet were still crossed and bound. "Who are the masters," asked the slave master of her.

 
    
The woman, hair before her face, held upright by men, looked at Alyena. The woman trembled. "Men," she whispered. "Men are the masters." Alyena's face turned white.

     
The woman was carried from the room, to the pens. For a silver tarsk I purchased the male slave, and freed him.
 
"Stand," I said to Alyena, who was trembling.

 
    
I put the walking chains on her, which I had purchased a few days ago in the bazaar.

 
    
I looked down into her eyes. "Who are the masters?" I asked.

 
    
She looked up at me, angrily. Then she said, "Men--men are the masters."

 
    
I then left the office of the slave master of Tor, followed by the slave girl.

     
On the back of the kaiila, on the road to the Oasis of Nine Wells, drowsily, I listened to the kaiila bells.

     
It was in the late afternoon. We would stop in an Ahn or two for camp.

 
    
Fires would be lit. The kaiila would be put in circles, ten animals to the circle, and fodder, by kaiila boys, would be thrown into the center of the circle.

 
    
The tents would be pitched. The opening of the Tahari tent usually faces the east, that the morning sun may warm it. Gor, like the Earth, rotates to the east. The nights require, often, a heavy djellaba or an extra blanket. Many nomads build a small kaiila-dung fire in the tent, to smolder during the night, to warm their feet. I needed not do this, of course, for at my feet slept the former Miss Priscilla Blake-Allen, the girl, Alyena.

 
    
At night the kaiila are hobbled. The slave girls, too, are hobbled. With the kaiila a simple figure-eight twist of kaiilahair rope, above the spreading paws, below the knees, is sufficient. A girl, of course, is chained. When finished with her, I would cross Alyena’s ankles and, with the walking chain, suitably shortened, chain them together. That way she could not stand. I would then throw her brief djellaba against the desert cold, and order her to a position of sleep. On the mat, toward morning, she would pull the hood over her face, fold her arms and pull up her legs, knees bent; the djellaba came far up her thighs; I would watch her sleeping, sometime, for she was quite beautiful. Once she opened her eyes. "Master," she said. "Sleep, Slave," I told her. "Yes, Master," she said. In the morning I would unchain her early that she might, like the other slave girls in camp, be about her duties. Once she stole a date. I did not whip her. I chained her, arms over her head, back against the trunk, to a flahdah tree. I permitted nomad children to discomfit her. They are fiendish little beggars. They tickled her with the lanceolate leaves of the tree. They put honey about her, to attract the tiny black sand flies, which infest such water holes in the spring. When we would break camp, I would lift her to the kurdah, placing her within.