Mercenaries of Gor (46 page)

Lale groaned in pain.

"Do you understand?" asked my hostess.

Lale whimpered once.

"Take her way," said my hostess. "Delta Tunnel, Alcove Twenty-One."

That would be the left side of the tunnel, as one entered. The even numbers are on the right.

I watched Lale being conducted from the floor. Her head was down. Once or twice her head was jerked up, as the leash was tautened, Esne hurrying her along. Esne, like my hostess, was a sturdy woman. It interested me that the hostesses here were dressed in rather mannish garb. That was, I supposed, primarily to impress upon the slaves that it was a (pg. 328) masculine type discipline to which they were being subjected. Too, of course, it is easier to move swiftly, and to kick, and use a whip, in such garb. On the other hand, it did seem a bit of an empty mockery. The hostesses, when all was said and done, were not really men; they were, ultimately, like their charges, only females. To be sure, they were free females, and this well qualified them for their posts. There are few things a female slave fears more than a free female. Female slaves, so helpless in their collars, so much at the mercy of any free person whatsoever, live in terror of such females, for they know that they despise and hate them.

"Return to your places," said my hostess to the other girls.

"Yes, Mistress," they said, and, leaping up, hurried back into the shadows, at the left, from whence they had been summoned, there to crouch and kneel once more, awaiting their next call forward.

"I am sorry," said my hostess.

"Perhaps you have others?" I asked. I looked about. As yet, as nearly as I could tell, no one had attempted to contact me. I assumed that they would attempt to make the first contact, either having seen me, presumably near the Central Cylinder, or having some sort of description. I would prefer, of course, to get a look at them first, and, if necessary, to count them.

"If you care to wait," she said, "some of these other wenches, on their backs and bellies on the mats, will be relinquished."

"Have you any others, available now?" I asked.

"Not really," she said. "We do have some new girls, in cages, recently brought in. They are not yet fully trained for the floor, however. Indeed, some are only recently marked and collared. We do have the girls in the alcoves, of course."

"Who is that woman?" I asked. I indicated a nicely bodied woman, barefoot, in a calf-length, sleeveless white gown, with a low décolletage, moving among the tables. The neckline left no doubt s to certain of her excitements. They were such as men might pay for in a slave market. I found it interesting that she, in this place, though apparently not a (pg. 329) hostess, was clothed. The slaves I had seen here were stripped. Golden bangles encircled her ankles, and golden bracelets encircled her wrists. Too, she had golden armlets.

"She is a free woman," said my hostess.

"Here?" I asked.

"She has paid her tarsk bit," said my hostess. "Beware of her."

I saw the woman approaching a fellow at a table. She knelt near the table, in the position of the free woman. She smiled at him.

"Where are the cages?" I asked.

"I will show you," she said.

I rose to my feet.

My hostess paused for a moment beside one of the girls serving on a nearby fellow's mat. The chain on her neck ran to the mat ring. Becoming suddenly aware of the presence of the hostess, the girl, who was kneeling, swiftly put her head to the floor.

"Leitel," said the hostess, kindly.

"Yes, Mistress," said the girl, her voice quavering.

"You can lick and kiss more salaciously than that," she chided.

"Yes, Mistress," said the girl.

"Our customers do not come here," said the hostess, "for attentions which they could receive at home from their free companions. They come here for the kisses of slaves, and the pleasures of slaves."

"Yes, Mistress," whispered the girl.

"Are you a slave?" asked the hostess.

"Yes, Mistress," said the girl.

"Wholly?"

"Yes, Mistress," said the girl.

"And this is a customer?" she asked, indicating the house's client in question.

"Yes, Mistress," she wept.

"See, then," she said, "that you give him the pleasures of a slave."

"Yes, Mistress!" she wept.

"The total pleasures of a slave," said my hostess.

(pg. 330) "Yes, Mistress!" she cried.

My hostess then continued on her way, and I followed her. We went past the girls at the left, Yartel, and the rest. They shrank back in fear as the hostess passed them.

"You keep these females under excellent discipline," I observed.

"Yes," she said.

"You seem to enjoy making them serve men," I said.

"Yes," she said, "it is enjoyable to make such women serve men. That is what they are for."

"Such women?" I asked.

"Feminine women, slaves," she said. "It is what they should be doing. It is their nature and destiny. Every truly feminine woman desires to belong to some man. No such woman will ever be truly happy until she is helplessly in the collar of her master, and subject to his lash."

I continued to follow her.

"Through here," she said.

"I see," I said.

Within this room there were some fifteen or twenty slave cages, some four to four and a half feet square, such confines dictated by the consideration that their contents are not to be permitted to stand upright within them, or stretch out, completely, within them. They may be comfortably knelt within, and curled up within, of course, postures suitable for slaves. Seven of these cages were occupied, the occupants stripped and collared.

One of the girls, seeing the hostess, scrambled, frightened, to the back of her small cage. She cowered there, not daring to look at the hostess. Her back was marked.

"Little Ila first learned discipline today," explained my hostess. The name 'Ila' was on a small card inserted into a frame on the front of the cage, at the upper right-hand corner. "Do not disturb these two," said my hostess. "They have had a hard day," We saw two slaves curled up in their cages, asleep. They had tiny bits of blankets clutched about them. These did not, however, much cover them, or leave much doubt as to their beauty. Bits of blanket, too, floored some of the other cages. On these some of the other girls knelt or lay.

(pg. 331) From the cards in the frames I noted that the two slaves, so tempting to awaken suddenly with a master's rape, were Sucha and Takita.

"Food," whispered a woman, extending her hand piteously through the bars, toward the hostess. "Please, I am hungry!"

"Learn your lesson better in the training periods," said my hostess to her, "and you may be fed."

The name of that one, I read, was 'Chelto'.

"Perhaps," I said, "she might do better if she had a more suitable name."

"What is wrong with 'Chelto'?" asked the woman.

"It is a rather masculine name," I said. "It is the sort of name which might be used as the nickname for a male sleen, or something."

"Perhaps you are right," said the woman, looking at the cage's occupant, a shapely, wide-hipped brunet. "What would you suggest?"

I shrugged. "I do not know," I said. "Perhaps 'Tula' or 'Tuka'."

"Please, no!" begged the woman in the cage, shrinking back. "They are such slave names! Mock me, if you will, with a name such as 'Chelto'. Better that a thousand times than names such as 'Tula' and 'Tuka', the names of slaves, of soft, perfumed girls who must helplessly serve in all things!"

The hostess removed a marking stick from her pouch and removed the card from the cage frame. She leaned on the top of the cage. She crossed out the name 'Chelto' and replaced it with another name. She then replaced the card in the frame.

"Mistress?" asked the kneeling slave within.

"You are now 'Tula,' " said the hostess. I saw that that was the new name written on the card.

"No, please!" begged the woman.

"What is your name?" asked the hostess.

" 'Tula', " said the woman in the cage, shuddering.

"Who are you?" asked the hostess.

"I am Tula," said the kneeling, stripped woman. She was pretty in her collar.

(pg. 332) "And tomorrow you will learn your lessons well, will you not?" asked my hostess.

"Yes, Mistress," said the woman, trembling.

"And who is going to learn her lessons well from now on?" asked my hostess.

"Tula is going to learn her lessons well from now on," said the woman.

"And who is going to be a superb slave?"

"Tula is going to be a superb slave," said the woman.

We then left her cage. I glanced back, briefly. The woman was kneeling there, shaken, wide-eyed. It was almost as though some sort of explosion had taken place within her. She knelt there, as though trying to come to grips with what had been done to her, with what had occurred within her. She was now, by the will of masters, a new person. She shuddered. Then she widened her knees, trembling. She was now Tula.

We went to the next cage. In this one there was a blond girl sitting with her left side to the back of the cage, her knees drawn up, her head down, her arms about her knees, her left hand clasped about her right wrist. She looked up, dully, and then lowered her head again. Beneath her hair I could see the steel of the collar on her neck.

My hostess tapped on the bars with the whip. The girl then came forward and knelt before us, in the center of the cage.

The hostess tapped on the bars with the whip. The girl widened her knees.

"This one," said my hostess, "was to have been trained with gentleness, but she made the mistake of expressing a concern for her privacy. We then stripped her and put her in a slave cage.

"I see," I said. There was not much privacy for a naked woman in a slave cage.

"It was a mistake to have begun gently with her," said the hostess.

"It probably depends on the girl," I said. Some women, whose hunger for bondage is just under the surface, if not manifest, are probably prepared to be superb slaves almost instantly, with no pain, or perhaps no more than a modicum of pain, perhaps only enough to assure them of the reality of (pg. 333) their condition, that they are truly slaves, and subject to the strict discipline of an uncompromising master. Such women, eager to serve, rejoicing in the achievement at long last of this profound fulfillment, hitherto only dreamed of, ask little more than what to do, and how to do it.

"True," she said.

"Did this one cause difficulty?" I asked.

"Not really," she said.

The girl in the cage looked up, angrily.

"Are you still determined to resist slavery, pretty Lupita?" asked the woman. That was the name on the cage card.

"Yes, Mistress!" said the girl.

"But you will not be successful, will you?" asked my hostess.

"No," said the girl, putting her head down, sobbing suddenly, "I will not be successful."

I looked at my hostess.

"She has had time to think in the slave cage," explained the woman.

The girl in the cage kept her head down. Tears fell from her cheeks to the bit of a blanket on which she knelt. The shadows of the cage bars made an interesting pattern on her flesh.

"For several days, I suppose as a matter of pride, she was pretending to resist slavery," said the woman, "though, clearly, to a trained eye, she wanted it, more than anything."

The girl looked up in agony.

"That is true, is it not, pretty Lupita?" asked the hostess.

"Yes, Mistress," she sobbed.

"Give me your hands," I said to the girl. She extended them through the bars. I then drew her toward me, and moved my hands up her arms, until I held her near, high on her arms, until her right cheek was pulled against the bars. I held her there. "Your resistance, or pretended resistance, is now is nearly at an end, is it not?" I asked her.

"Yes, Master," she said. I then let her loose, and she fell back, twisting, on her shoulder, to the floor of the cage. She pounded on the floor of the cage with her small fists. She tore at the blanket on the floor with her fingernails, sobbing. Then (pg. 334) she lay quietly. "Put me out on the floor," she said. "Chain me to a ring."

"Why?" asked the hostess.

"Because I am a slave," she said.

"You are not yet sufficiently skilled, slave," said my hostess.

The slave wept.

We then went to the next occupied cage.

Here a brunet, well-curved, with sweet, full thighs, knelt close to the bars, grasping them with her small hands, her face pressed between two of them. The bars in these cages are set about four inches apart, and are about an inch in thickness. They are heavy, sturdy cages. Here the card read 'Mina'.

"This is the former Lady Mina, a huntress, from the luxurious Noviminae villas in the vicinity of Lydius. But she is a huntress no more."