Fighting Slave of Gor (7 page)

"It is my business," he said. "I am a slaver."

"But have you no pity for your pathetic captures?" I asked.

"They deserve no pity," he said. "They are only slaves."

"But what of their happiness?" I asked.

"It is unimportant," he said. "But, if it is of interest to you, no woman is truly happy until she is owned and mastered."

I was silent.

"Free a woman," he said, "and she will try to destroy you. Enslave her, and she will crawl to you on her belly, and beg to lick your sandals."

"Madness!" I cried. "False! False!"

The heavy man smiled at the man behind me. "He seems a typical man of Earth, does he not?" he asked.

"He does, indeed," said the man behind me. I then felt again the draft of fresh air, which then, in a moment, ceased. The other three men then re-entered the room. "The crate is in the van, with the others," said one of them.

I was startled. There must, then, be other girls, too, who were to share the sordid, horrifying fate of Miss Henderson.

I then found myself the center of the attention of the five men. I became suddenly very frightened. I began to sweat. I realized that neither Miss Henderson nor myself had been blindfolded. The men, thus, had not apparently been concerned that we would, at a future time, be able to identify either themselves or the interior of the large structure in which we had found ourselves.

"What-what are you going to do with me?" I asked.

He who had been the driver of the cab now walked about me, until he stood some eight or ten feet in front of me. I saw, then, that he carried a revolver. From his jacket pocket he took a hollow, cylindrical object. He spunt it onto the barrel of the revolver. It was a silencer, which would muffle the report of a pistol.

"What are you going to do with me?" I demanded.

"You have seen too much, and you are of no use to us," said the heavy man.

I tried to struggle to my feet, but two men held me down on the cement.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the revolver, with its silencer. Then I felt the blunt end of the silencer pressing against my left temple.

"Don't shoot me," I begged. "Please!"

"He is not worth a bullet," said the heavy man. "Put him on his knees. Use a wire garrote."

The man who had driven the cab removed the silencer from his revolver. He dropped it back in his pocket and put the revolver in his belt. I was thrown to my knees, two men holding my arms, my hands helpless behind my back in the confining steel cuffs.

The fifth man, the one who had opened the door for the others with the crate, was then behind me. I felt a thin wire suddenly looped about my throat.

"I have another pickup to make tonight," said the fellow who had driven the cab.

"We will meet you on the highway," said the heavy man. "You know where."

He who had driven the cab nodded.

"We are to be at the new point of embarkation at four A.M.," said the heavy man.

"She gets off work at two," said he who had driven the cab. "I will be waiting for her."

"It will be close," said the heavy man, "but proceed. We can strip and inject her, and crate her, in the van."

I felt the wire loop tighten about my throat.

"Please, no, please, don't!" I cried.

"It will be swift," said the heavy man.

"Please, don't kill me!" I begged.

"Do you plead for your life?" asked the heavy man.

"Yes," .I said, "yes, yes!"

"But what are we to do with you?" asked the heavy man.

"Don't kill me, please don't kill me," I begged. I squirmed on my knees, the wire on my throat.

The heavy man looked down at me, on my knees, helpless, before him.

"Please," I said. "Please!"

"Behold the typical man of Earth," said the heavy man.

"We are not all such weaklings and cowards," said one of the men.

"That is true," admitted the heavy man. Then he looked down at me. "Is there any hope," he asked, "for males, not men, such as you?"

"I do not understand," I stammered.

"How I despise your sort," he said, "fools, cowards and weaklings, guilt-ridden, confused, smug, meaningless, pretentious, soft, males who have permitted themselves to be tricked out of the prerogatives of their sex, robbed of the birthright of their own manhood, who dare not be true to the needs of their own blood, males too weak, too frightened and ashamed, to be men."

It startled me that he had said these things, for I had thought myself unusual among the men of Earth in my manhood. Indeed, I had often been castigated and belittled for having been too masculine. Now he spoke of me as though I had not even, as yet, begun to glimpse the meaning of true manhood. I was shaken. I began to tremble. What then could be biological manhood, in the fullness of its rationality and strength? I bad, already, be begun to suspect that manhood was not a mere pretention, as I had been taught, but soomething selected for, as seems reasonable, like the nature of the eagle and the lion, in the long, harsh realities of a brutal evolution, but now, for the first time, I had begun to suspect that my conception of manhood, so advanced I had thought, did little more than begin to hint at the possible glories of a suppressed, thwarted, tortured reality, a reality genetically dispositional in every cell in a man's body, a reality feared and castigated by a counterbiological culture. I came from a world in which eagles cannot fly. I put down my head. Lions do not well thrive in a country of poisons.

"Look up at me," said the heavy man.

I lifted my head.

"I find you guilty of treason," he said.

"I have committed no treason," I said.

"You are guilty of the most heinous of treasons," said the heavy man. "You have betrayed yourself, your sex, your manhood. You are a despicable traitor, not only to yourself but to true men, everywhere. You are an insult not only to your own manhood but to that of others. You are a sniveling coward and a weakling, worthy to be held only in the most profound of contempts."

"A man must be strong enough to be weak," I said. "He must be brave enough to be sweet. True men must be gentle and tender, and considerate, and solicitous, and do what women wish. That is how they prove they are true men."

"True men give orders to women, and women obey," said the heavy man.

"It is not what I have been taught," I said.

"You have been taught lies," said the heavy man. "Surely your own misery and unhappiness should tell you that."

"He has been found guilty of treason," said one of the men holding my arms. "What is the sentence?"

The heavy man looked at the others. I felt the wire on my throat. "What should the sentence be?" he asked.

"The termination of his miserable existence," said one of the men, "death."

The heavy man looked down at me. "I wonder," said he, "if there is any hope for such as you."

"Let the sentence be death," said another one of the men.

"Or something else," said the heavy man.

"I do not understand," said the fellow who had first suggested that I be slain.

"Look at him," said the heavy man. "Does he not seem a typical male of Earth?"

"Yes," said one of the men. "Yes;" said another.

"Yet, beyond that," said the heavy man. "his features appear symmetrical and his body, though soft and weak, is large."

"Yes?" said one of the men.

"Do you think a woman might find him pleasing?" asked the heavy man.

"Perhaps." smiled one of the men.

"Throw him on his belly and tie his legs," said the heavy man. I felt the wire whipped from my throat. I was thrown forward on the cement. My belt was loosened and torn from its loops. My ankles were crossed and, with the belt, lashed together, tightly. In a few seconds I felt my shirt being jerked away from my left side, and felt the cold swab of the cotton and alcohol and, a moment later, the entrance of the needle, deeply, into my flesh.

"What are you going to do with me?" I asked, terrified.

"Do not talk now," he said.

I felt the fluid, entering my body. It was apparently considerably more than he had injected into Miss Henderson. It was painful. Then he withdrew the needle from my back and swabbed the area again with alcohol and cotton.

"What are you going to do with me?" I whispered.

"You are going to be taken to the planet Gor," he said. "I think I know a little market where you might be of interest"

"Gor does not exist," I said.

He rose to his feet and discarded the cotton and the second syringe.

"Gor does not exist!" I said.

"Put him in the van," he said to the men.

"You are mad, all of you!" I cried. I was lifted by two men. "Gor does not exist!" I cried. I was being carried toward the door. "Gor does not exist!" I cried. "Gor does not exist!"

Then I lost consciousness.

3
         
THE
LADY
GINA

I screamed with pain, awakening suddenly. I tried to get to my feet. I could not do so. My wrists and ankles seemed confined. There was something heavy on my neck. I got to my hands and knees. I could not believe my senses. I was collared, and naked and shackled. Then the lash fell again, and I cried out with misery, slipping to my stomach. I lay on a flooring of large blocks of fitted stone. My wrists were chained to one iron ring, my ankles to another. I felt wet straw beneath my body. The stones were damp. There were no windows in the room. The light was dim, being furnished by a tiny lamp in a small niche. The place was dank, and smelled of wastes. I thought it might be far below the ground. I was intensely conscious of the heavy metal collar I wore. There was, attached to it, as I conjectured, hearing the tiny sound of its movement and its clink on the stone beneath my body, a smaller piece of metal, perhaps a ring of some sort.

Then the lash, as I wept from the pain, struck me again and again.

"Please, stop!" I begged. "Please, stop!"

Then I no longer felt the disciplinary tearing of the leather at my flesh.

The gravity of this world was different from that of my own, being slightly less. I knew then I was no longer on Earth.

I turned, frightened, in the chains, to see who had struck me.

A strong woman stood there, perhaps some five feet ten inches in height and one hundred and forty pounds in weight. She was breathing heavily and, in two hands, held the whip tightly gripped. She was dark-haired and dark-eyed. She was muscular and strong, but her figure was striking. She wore a leather halter and tights of black leather. Her midriff was strikingly white, and her arms and legs. There was a golden armlet on her left arm. Her hair was held back by a leather band. She wore a heavy, studded belt, tightly buckled, and heavy sandals, almost like boots, with thongs. From her belt there hung a ring of keys and a coiled chain, with a snap. On her belt, toward the back, on her right side, in a snap strap, hung a pair of steel manacles.

I tried to turn away from her, for I was naked, but she drew back the whip and, suddenly, again struck me.

"You are a woman," I said, half turned from her, stung by the fierce stroke of her whip. There were tears in my eyes.

"Do not insult me," she said.

She then struck me again with the whip. I cried out with misery.

She then changed her position, walking about me, until she stood a few feet ahead of the forward ring, that to which my hands were chained. Again I tried to turn to the side, that I might not be so shamefully exposed to her.

"Kneel facing me," she said. "Spread your legs"

I did so, miserable with embarrassment.

"Free persons may look upon you as they please," she said.

"You speak English," I said.

"A little," she said, "not much. Some four years ago my superiors thought that it might be useful for me to learn the language. A female captive, a graduate student in linguistics, kept under close discipline, was acquired to teach me. When I had learned a sufficient amount she was disposed of."

"Slain?" I asked.

"No," she smiled. "She was intelligent and attractive. Thus we made her a slave and sold her. She was purchased by a strong master. She will serve him well."

"But you do not much use your English?" I asked.

"No longer," she said. "For a time we used it in the training of Earth wenches, slave girls. But now, from this facility, as from others, they are simply scattered, after two or three days' training, to various markets, sold, for most practical purposes, ignorant and raw. They are then forced to learn the language of their masters directly, as a child learns, not through the medium of their old tongue. The method is efficient. The girls become quickly acclimated to their chains and collars in a unilingual environment, that of their masters."

"Are you holding, here," I asked, "an Earth girl named Beverly Henderson?"