Fighting Slave of Gor (9 page)

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"Come along now," she said. "We are returning to the cell."

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"Kneel here," she said.

I knelt where she indicated. She took the shackles from the rear ring and snapped them on my ankles.

She came around in front of me, and crouched down. "Put your wrists here," she said.

I put my wrists where she had indicated and she snapped them into the waiting manacles, those attached to the forward ring. She had already removed the chain leash from my collar and, coiling it, slung it on her belt.

I then knelt chained before her. I was again in my cell. Again my ankles were shackled to a ring. Again my wrists were manacled to the forward ring. Things were much as they had been before, before she had called the men to fetch me forth from the cell. There was, however, one important difference. Before there had knelt on that spot a free man in chains. There knelt there now only a chained slave.

She stood up and backed away a bit, and stood there, regarding me.

"You will commonly," she said, not unkindly, "when kneeling before a free woman, keep your knees spread, unless your lady wishes otherwise."

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"That is right," she said. "I find that good. But remember, the whim of the Mistress is everything."

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"You are, as far as I know," she said, "the first male of Earth brought to Gor as a slave."

"It is an accident that I am here," I said. "I fell across the path of slavers. Please send me back to Earth."

"Be silent, Slave," she said.

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

She walked around behind me, where I could not see her.

"I was once, for a time, on your planet," she said.

"Oh?" I said.

I heard a very tiny sound, almost inaudible, metallic.

"Did you hear that sound?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"It is the sound of the whip being removed from my belt," she said.

I said nothing.

"You will learn to know it well," she said. "Yes," she said, "a year and a half ago, in the service of my superiors, I spent several months on your world. Are you afraid you are going to be lashed?"

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"It was there," she said, "that I learned the nature of the males of Earth, and to despise them."

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

I heard a tiny sound again, very similar to the first.

"I have replaced the whip on my belt," she said. Then she came again in front of me, where she might look down on me. The whip hung again at her belt.

"I'm not going to whip you now," she said.

"Thank you, Mistress," I said.

"What is your name?" she asked.

"Jason," I said. "Jason Marshall."

"You have no name," she said.

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"But `Jason' will do," she said. "You are Jason."

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"The name is now a slave name," she said, "put on you because it pleases me."

"Yes, Mistress," I said. I was now a named slave.

She went to the side of the cell. There, on a shelf, were two shallow pans. They had been there before. She carried one of them over to me. It contained, as I now saw, pieces of meat. She held the pan in her left hand and, with her right hand, picked out a piece of meat.

She looked down at me.

"The transition to slavery will be easier for you than for a true man," she said, "but it will still, doubtless, not be easy for you."

I looked up at her, miserably.

"Feed, Jason," she said, putting the piece of meat in my mouth.

"I have been to Earth," she said. "I have seen the males there. There are so few men among them. Is it so hard, I wonder, to be a man. Why is it that so many of the males of Earth have given up their manhood, and pretend to rejoice in their mutilation. Doubtless there are complex historical causes. It is interesting, the grotesque shapes into which culture can shape a tortured biology."

As she spoke, she continued to feed me.

"But I feel no pity for you sorry males of Earth," she said, "for you have permitted this to be done to you. What despicable weaklings and cowards you are. You have little left to you but the vestiges of your manhood, and you let even those, bit by bit, be taken from you."

She thrust another piece of meat in my mouth.

"Poor, pretty Jason," she said. "He does not know what to think." She smiled at me. "I will tell you a secret, Jason," she said, "you were a slave before, but did not know it. You were the slave of a culture, of values, of propaganda and women. Your chains were invisible, so you pretended they did not exist. But did you not, nonetheless, feel their weight? Are things so different here than there for you? There is, surely, little true difference. The whips here, of course, are of real leather, and the chains of honest iron. When you feel them you need not pretend they are something other than what they are." She stopped feeding me. "They are precisely what they seem," she said, "true leather and iron. And you are precisely what you seem to be, a slave."

"Yes, Mistress," I said, miserably.

She then put the pan of meat down on the stones, where I might reach it. She then went back to the shelf and brought the other pan to where I knelt. She placed it within my reach, on the stones. It contained water.

"Put your head down and drink," she said. "Do not use your hands."

I put my head down and drank.

"Stop," she said.

I stopped

She then, with her foot, white in that high, bootlike, thonged sandal, slid both the pan of meat and the pan of water out of my reach.

"The slave is completely dependent on the master or mistress," she said, "even for food and drink."

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

She then, again, with her foot, slid the pan of meat and the pan of water to where I might reach them.

"Say `Thank you, Mistress,'" she said.

"Thank you, Mistress," I said.

"Put your head down again, and drink," she said.

Again I put my head down and, frightened, drank.

"Oh," she said, "how I despise you, and how I shall enjoy working with you."

I trembled.

"Look up, Jason," she said.

I looked up.

"Look into my eyes," she said.

I did so. It was difficult to meet her gaze.

"Who is stronger?" she asked.

"You, Mistress," I said. I had never encountered such inflexible resolve in a human being. I knew I could not begin to match the power and strength of her will, her stern character. I could only bend helplessly before it. She was totally superior to me. She was mistress; I was slave.

"Do I frighten you, Jason?" she asked.

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"You need only try to be totally pleasing," she said. "You will then, to some extent, improve your chances for life."

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"The matter rests with me," she said, "with whether I am pleased or not."

"I will try to please you, Mistress," I said.

"I'm sure you will, pretty Jason," she said. She then stepped back from me. "I am not so terrible," she said. "I can be kind."

I looked at her, startled.

"Oh," she laughed, slapping the whip roughly at her side, "do not think I will not be strict with you. I am strict with all my charges. All, like yourself, must obey perfectly. All must be fully pleasing."

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"But, too," she said, "I can be kind. There are worse mistresses on Gor than I."

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"On this world, as on yours," she said, "there can be rewards for pleasing slaves. For example, perhaps in the future, you need not be chained like a raw slave, naked, in a stinking cell. There are better accomodations in the pens."

I put down my head. How conscious I was of the chains I wore.

She went to the heavy door of the cell, which she had left open. There she stopped, and turned to face me. I turned to my left, to see her.

"Rewards, like punishments," she said, "lie within the prerogatives of the mistress, to distribute, both with respect to type and abundance, as she pleases."

"I understand, Mistress," I said.

"You understand, too, do you not," she asked, "that you are in my total power?"

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"Whether you live or die is up to my whim," she said.

"Yes, Mistress," I said, miserably.

"You are a slave," she said, "fully. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"But I am not cruel," she said. "If you please me, totally, I may even be kind to you."

"I will try to please you, Mistress," I said.

"It is in my power to make your life more pleasant, if I choose," she said. "Rewards can be many and varied, different sorts of chains and cells, clothing, and of various sorts, a lighter collar, different sorts of food. I can even have a woman thrown to you." She smiled. "Or would you, a male of Earth, know what to do with one?"

She turned about then and went through the heavy door of the cell, that door formed, like that wall of the cell itself, of bars and heavy, lateral crosspieces, set some six inches apart. She swung shut the door and it closed, with a heavy metallic ring that reverberated in the cells and corridor. She stood behind it, looking at me.

"Yes," she said, "you are pretty, Jason. I think you will do very nicely."

"Who are you?" I cried.

She looked at me from the other side of the bars. She was a large woman, tall and strong. She stood very straight. Her figure was striking. Her skin was very white. It contrasted vividly with the brief, confining black leather she wore. She wore, too, a headband of leather. At her waist was the heavy belt, from which hung a coiled chain, a ring of keys, a pair of manacles and a whip. "I am the Lady Gina," she said, "your trainer."

"Trainer?" I cried.

"Yes," she said.

"I do not understand," I said. "What is your work?"

"Have you not guessed?" she asked. "I train men to give pleasure to women."

I looked at her with horror.

She then took the ring of keys from her belt and thrust a key into the lock on the cell door, and turned it, locking the heavy door.

"Sleep well, pretty Jason," she said. "Your lessons begin in the morning."

She then replaced the keys on her belt, and left.

4
LOLA
AND
TELA

"Put your wrists behind you," she said.

I stood in my cell. I had been freed of my chains. I put my wrists behind me, obeying the Lady Gina. She took the manacles from her belt and expertly, almost casually, in one motion, threw them on me, snapping them shut. I gathered she had manacled many men.

She tied a belt of soft, rolled cloth about my waist. She then took a long strip of cloth, some five feet long and eight inches wide, thrust it over the cloth belt in front, took it under and between my legs, passed it under and over the cloth belt in back, and, adjusting it, drew it snugly tight.

"This is not for your modesty, Jason," she said. "It is because your lessons in Gorean will largely be conducted by slave girls."

"Slave girls, Mistress?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "They are stinking, meaningless, lascivious little sluts who have been as slaves in the arms of Gorean men. It has spoiled them for freedom. They are worthless, sensuous little beasts whose passions Gorean men have seen fit, as cruel masters, to ignite. Their sexuality, their shamelessness, their needs, their helplessness, makes them an insult to free women. I do not want them falling to their knees by you, to seize you, to fawn upon you, to hold you, to lick and kiss you."

"No, Mistress," I said.

She then removed the chain from her belt and snapped it on the metal ring attached to my collar. I had, this morning, when my chains had been removed, felt the attachment. It was as I had conjectured, a ring. It was about a quarter of an inch thick. It was sturdy. It was of iron.

"Come along, Jason," she said. She then led me, manacled and leashed, from the cell.

"This is Lola. This is Tela," said the Lady Gina, pointing, respectively, to the two girls.

I was startled. Never would I, of Earth, have believed such women could exist. I could scarcely breathe. I was stunned. I beheld, for the first time in my life, Gorean slave girls.

I met their eyes. They beheld me with a sullen interest. Both girls were incredibly beautiful, and almost naked, but that tells little about them. I suppose, if you have never looked upon a slave girl, it will be impossible for me to convey to you more than an inkling of what it is to see one, particularly for the first time. Imagine, if you will, the most exciting and desirable woman you have ever seen; then imagine her standing stripped before you in a steel collar, and that the collar is yours, and that you own her, and that she must obey. That will convey to you something of what it is to see a slave girl. I looked on the girls. Surely their bodies were graceful, curvacious and vital; surely they were both unusually, even incredibly, beautiful; surely, too, both had been limited in their raiment to the rags of half-naked slaves; yet it was not these things, strange as it may seem, which so set them apart from other women; it was not these things which made them so different. What set them so apart from other women, what made them so different, what made their beauty ten thousand times more devastating and exciting than that of other women was that they, in full actuality, in full reality, were owned slaves.