Renegades of Gor (31 page)

additional food she had obtained at the wall, in the basket.

“Are you afraid your pretty complexion will suffer?” asked the warder.

“Please!” said the Lady Claudia. “Please!”

The panel slid shut.

“The she-sleen!” cried Lady Claudia. “How I hate her!” she clenched her fists.

“I hate her! I hate her!” she said. She pounded her fists on the stone, the

blows softened by the intervening straw. Then she looked dismally, angrily, at

the bit of meal and the crust of bread in the pan. “Surely it is their intent to

starve me!”

“Us?” I asked.

“Yes, us,” she said.

“You are probably being fed as well as most in Ar’s Station,” I said. The men on

the walls, hopefully, would receive more. Yet those I had met had seemed half

starved. “Too,” I said, “it is not unlike the rations given to new slave girls

in their training period, when they are being taught their dependence on me for

their food.”

She made an angry noise and stood up. She made as though to move to the pan, but

stopped short. “Oh!” she said. My hand had closed about her ankle.

“Get on your belly,” I told her.

“What are you doing?” she exclaimed, angrily. She could not advance toward the

food.

“Now,” I said.

Angrily she went to her belly and I drew her back a foot or two by the ankle.

She put out her hands but could not reach the food. I then got up and went to

the pan. I picked it up and took it back, toward the back of the cell, where I

sat down, cross-legged, the pan before me. She turned about, not daring to leave

her belly, to look at me.

“You may approach,” I told her. “But do not come close enough to touch the

food.”

She squirmed forward, desperately.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

(pg.209) “Yes!” she said.

“Would you like to eat?” I asked.

“Yes!” she said.

“Perform,” I said.

“No!” she cried. “I am a free woman!”

“Very well,” I said. I paid her no more attention. I fingered some of the meal

into my mouth. It was in a glutinous, semisolid glob. It was neither sugared nor

salted.

“Please!” she cried. She had not risen from her belly.

“Do you think you are still alone in the cell?” I asked.

“Please!” she begged.

I fingered more of the meal, a good two fingersful, into my mouth.

“I will perform!” she said.

“Stand up,” I said, “back a bit, where I may see you.” I put the pan to one

side, on the straw, on the stone, and looked at her. She was not a woman of

Earth. A woman of Earth, if not beaten, and swiftly forced to learn her

womanhood, would doubtless have held out for a time, confident that Gorean men,

like those to whom she had become accustomed on her native planet, would prove

to be weak, that they would yield to her. They learn, soon enough, however, that

the average Gorean male simply does not share the conditioned political

conceptions of the female, which in so many cases have succeeded in crippling,

weakening and demasculizing the men of Earth. She finds that she is viewed

rather in the context of biology and nature. She quickly learns, too, that where

women are concerned, and thus where she is concerned, the average Gorean male

has a will of iron. She also quickly learns that he has, personally and

culturally, the power to enforce this will.

“Stand straight,” I said, “the palms of your hands on the sides of your legs.”

She did so.

The spy was lovely, though there was a kind of hardness, and nastiness, about

her.

“Perform,” I said.

“For such performances,” I said, it is hard to believe that the guards would

have fed you.”

She looked at me, angrily.

(pg. 210) “Now,” I said, “perform for me, as you did for them.”

“Not bad,” I said, fingering more of the meal into my mouth. I was, after all,

hungry, too. I had not eaten since early morning, at the small tent I had shared

with Phoebe. To be sure, Lady Claudia would not have had anything since noon,

the day before.

“Please!” she said.

“But I,” I said, “am more demanding than the guards. Do you understand?” I put

more meal into my mouth.

“Yes!” she said. She then began, again to try to please me, this time even more

desperately. She did not do badly. Then, after a time, I helped her, giving her

detailed instructions, putting her, here and there, and about the cell, through

detailed woman paces. Then she lay on her belly before me, gasping, covered with

sweat. I motioned that she should kneel near me, and I placed her hands on her

thighs. I rubbed my hand on her head. The short-cropped hair was wet with sweat.

I then, having her lean forward, eagerly. Sometimes I made her stretch, holding

the food just a little out of her reach. Sometimes I had her lick and suck my

fingers, too, which she did eagerly enough, that none of the meal would be lost.

Then we had finished the bit of meal and bread between us. She knelt back,

regarding me reproachfully.

“Stand,” I said, “back a bit, where I can see you, straightly, with your hands

on the sides of your legs, as you did before.”

I then rose up and went to her, and looked at her, walking about her. Then I

stood again before her.

I put my hands on her upper arms. “Look at me,” I said. She lifted her head.

“You are hard, and petty, and nasty,” I said.

She looked up at me, angrily.

“But you are pretty,” I said.

She did not respond.

“Yes,” I said. “You will do.”

“Do?” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“I do not understand,” she said.

“Do not tire me,” I said. I then flung her back, behind where we had stood, to

the straw, and put her to my purposes.

13
   
Food

(pg.211) “My hair,” she said, “is grown our more now.”

“Yes,” I said, rubbing the brush of it near my thigh, where her head rested.

“I want my hair to grow out,” she said.

I did not respond.

Chloe looked up at me, from where she lay, beside my thigh. “You have made me

soft, and female,” she said. “You would have it so, and have had it so. Now I

can be no other than that, nor do I desire to be other than that.”

“Kiss me,” I said.

She did so, softly, obediently, much as might have a slave.

I had given her, for my purposes, the name ‘Chloe’. Technically, of course, as

she was still a free woman, she was still Lady Claudia of Ar’s Station. She had,

however, however deceitfully, several days ago upon the wall, lowering her

message in the basket, declared for Cos. Accordingly I had given her a Cosian

name. It was a lovely name. She responded well to it, psychologically, socially

and sexually. Further, she understood the propriety of its having been put on

her.

Five days ago the walls of Ar’s Station had been breached. Cosians were now

within the city. The defenders, sometimes fighting street by street, and

building to building, and those who could reach it, had now withdrawn to the

citadel, bringing with them what belongings and supplies they could. In (pg.212)

the citadel now hungry and miserable, besides he defenders, were crowded

hundreds of women and children. Ar’s Station was in flames. Smoke drifted even

to our cell.

“What was that?” cried Chloe, leaping up.

I, too, leaped up.

There had been a rumbling crash from somewhere outside the citadel.

“I am not sure,” I said.

Later that afternoon there were several more such crashes, all on the land side

of the citadel.

“There is another,” said Chloe, toward dusk.

“It is Cosians,” I said. “They are clearing the ground outside the citadel,

destroying the buildings, that they may bring their engines within range.”

We heard, from somewhere outside, the long, wild scream of a woman, perhaps from

among the buildings, outside the wall.

Chloe looked up at me.

“She has been caught,” I said.

It had had a sudden wild ring about it, as though she might suddenly, to her

dismay, have felt ropes settle about her body, and draw tight.

“I, too, was caught,” said Chloe. “And then, later, you too, caught me. I do not

mind having been caught by you. I am pleased to have been caught by you.”

I pulled her up beside me, and kissed her. She snuggled into my arms,

frightened.

“The slaves are out there, somewhere, aren’t they?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“With their cages, and chains, and wagons,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“For hundreds of pasangs about,” she said, “Women will be cheap for months.”

“Perhaps,” I said.

“I envy them their chains,” she said, “especially with what I have learned in

your arms.”

I put my hand gently on her head. She was still a free woman, and in the keeping

of those she had betrayed. Well might she envy those whose fate would be merely

a brand, a (pg.213) collar and the absolute helplessness and submission of

Gorean bondage.

“Many of those captured,” I said, “might be shipped to the islands, Cos, Tyros,

Tabor, Asperiche and so on. If that is the case, they might not depress the

market as much as you feared.”

“You are kind,” she said.

“Do you wish to be beaten?” I asked.

“No,” she said quickly.

“And many, most, I suspect, of those women of Ar’s Station who had not managed

to flee earlier, at the approach of Cos, or somehow escape the city, are in the

citadel.”

“There must be hardly room to move in the citadel,” she said.’

“Our quarters are doubtless among the most luxurious,” I said.

“Why do they not take us outside and chain us to a post?” she asked.

“Perhaps that the people do not tear us to pieces,” I said.

She shuddered. The cell door, now, it seemed, so stoutly locked, might be

serving as much to protect us as confine us. On the other hand, perhaps most of

the people outside did not even know why we were here. If they did, perhaps they

would have been at the door, trying to force it open.

“The Cosians must not bring their catapults into action, at this range,” she

said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“The people,” she said. “The crowding. It would be terrible.”

“I see,” I said.

“Surely they would not do so,” she said.

“I would conjecture that the engines will be in place by morning,” I said.

“But they will not use them!” she said.

“I would expect them to do so,” I said, “with stones, and oil, and javelins.”

“There must be little food in the citadel now,” she said.

Our rations, small though they were, had been halved. We were both weak.

“Why do they bother feeding us?” she asked.

“I do not know,” I said. I had some idea as to why they (pg214) were probably

feeding her, at least. I did not, however, want to speak to her of this.

The observation panel in the door slid back. I saw the head of our warder rise

up, behind the slot, as she stepped up, onto her platform. She still had the

white, scarflike turban and veil. “Prisoners, forward,” she said. “Kneel.”

We obeyed. It was toward dusk. It was not time to be fed.

“You, Claudia, slave girl,” she said. “Knell behind him and to his left.” A

slave girl, in heeling her master, commonly follows on the left. That she

follows indicates that she is subservient, that he is master and she slave; that

she follows on the left is a cultural matter probably indexed to the fact that

most Goreans are right-handed. Her presence on the left, thus, is not likely to

interfere with his draw or the movements of his sword arm.

“You are pretty, slave girl,” snarled the warder to Lady Claudia. “How natural

you look there!”

“Yes!” said Lady Claudia to her. “I am a slave girl! He has taught me that I am

a slave girl! I know it now!”

“Slave! Slave!” snarled the warder.

Lady Claudia, of course, was not a slave, not a legal slave, at any rate. She

was still, legally, a free woman. I had seen no point in imbonding her.

Similarly, I had ordered her not to submit herself to me, of her own free will,

even when she had begged to do so. In either case, she could have been taken

from me easily enough by force, and then freed, to be made again legally

susceptible to whatever punishment they wished to visit upon her. To be sure,

they might, if they wished, make her a slave themselves, or let her be a slave,

either by my action or her own, and then, if she were a slave, do anything they

wished with her.

I found it hard to understand the warder’s hatred for Lady Claudia. It surpassed

anything which seemed rationally connected with her culpability in the matter of

espionage. The first time I had used Lady Claudia, the first day I had been in

the cell, flinging her to my feet in the straw, I had taken little time with

her. Later that afternoon, after I had slept, I had awakened and snapped my

fingers. She was over against the far wall, wide-eyed, half covered in the

straw, lying on her side, watching me. At my signal she had crawled across the

floor, through the straw, and then knelt before me, (pg.215) her head down,

submitted. I had taken her by the arms and thrown her again to the straw. I had

not expected the intensity and helplessness of her response. Within the Ahn she

had become, in effect, my slave.