Prize of Gor (118 page)

“On my world,” said Mirus, “society walls itself away from nature. It aligns its moats and stakes against the fields and forests. Sanctions, like pikes, array themselves against truth. Snares and traps are at every hand. The insects of conformity swarm and sting. All are vulnerable. Few dare speak their needs, their dreams.”

“It must be a strange world,” said Selius Arconious.

“It is a far different, far sadder, far more miserable world than this one, yours,” said Mirus.

“But this is now your world,” said Selius Arconious.

“Yes,” said Mirus. “This is now my world.”

“You must buy yourself a slave,” said Selius Arconious.

“I think I shall,” said Mirus.

“Will you buy a Gorean girl or a barbarian?” asked Selius Arconious.

“I think a barbarian,” said Mirus. “I have a score to settle with the women of Earth.”

“Excellent,” said Selius Arconious.

“Mirus, Mirus,” called the wounded man, from where he lay, to the side.

“I must go to my fellow,” said Mirus, rising from beside the fire.

“He has lost much blood,” said Fel Doron.

“Yes,” said Mirus.

At this juncture Portus Canio and Fel Doron, wiping their hands on their thighs, rose, too, and approached Tersius Major, crouching down amongst the weapons, on his knoll, in the descending darkness.

“Give me drink, give me food, old friend,” said Tersius Major to Portus Canio.

“Come down, old friend,” said Portus Canio. “Stakes and thongs await, and knives can be heated, old friend.”

“For the love of Priest-Kings,” cried Tersius Major, “give me something to drink, something to eat!”

“You have broken the law of Priest-Kings,” said Portus Canio.

“Priest-Kings are not to be loved,” said Fel Doron. “They are to be respected, and feared, and obeyed.”

“Do not approach!” suddenly shrieked Tersius Major.

“Have no fear,” then said Portus Canio, angrily, hesitating, then stepping back, “I will not cross the circle of forbidden weapons.”

“None may cross it!” cried Tersius Major.

At the edge of the camp, there was a motion in the grass, a subtle motion. We saw nothing. It was almost as though a snake, a large snake, might have moved there. A similar motion occurred a few yards to the left.

“I think we had best leave this place,” said Portus Canio, uneasily.

“None may cross the circle!” cried Tersius Major.

“Several of them, I think, are about,” said Fel Doron.

“As I understand it,” said Mirus, who now joined the group, “the Priest-Kings enforce their laws by the Flame Death.”

“When it pleases them,” said Fel Doron.

“Have you ever seen such a thing?” asked Mirus.

“No,” said Fel Doron.

“You?” asked Mirus.

“No,” said Portus Canio.

“Priest-Kings do not exist,” said Mirus.

“They exist,” said Fel Doron.

“But you have never seen one?”

“No.”

“It seems,” said Mirus, looking at Tersius Major crouching down amongst the emptied pistols on the knoll, “the Priest-Kings are silent.”

There were more stirrings in the grass.

“Perhaps there is more than one way in which Priest-Kings speak,” said Portus Canio.

“Let us break camp,” said Fel Doron. “It is dangerous to remain here.”

This said, the men returned to the wagon, and the tharlarion. The few possessions were gathered together and placed in the wagon. Portus Canio and Mirus placed the wounded man in the wagon bed.

“Get in the wagon,” Selius Arconious told his slave.

“May I not walk,” she asked, “to lighten the wagon, Master.”

“Will it be necessary to bind you hand and foot, and cast you to the wagon bed?” he asked.

“No, Master!” she said.

“Must a command be repeated?” he asked.

“No, Master!” she said, and, seizing the side of the wagon bed and, stepping on one of the spokes, supporting herself thereby, climbed hurriedly to the wagon bed, within which she knelt on the tarpaulins and supplies, and, looking out, clutched the sides of the wagon bed.

“It seems that Master is concerned with the safety of his slave,” she said.

“No,” he said, angrily. “I do not wish our journey to be delayed by the slowness of a she-tarsk.”

“Yes, Master,” she said, happily.

The tharlarion suddenly lifted its head on its thick neck, and looked about, nostrils flaring.

“Do not leave me!” shrieked Tersius Major.

“Then join us,” said Portus Canio.

“Ho, on!” called Fel Doron from the wagon box, and turned the tharlarion southeastward.

The wheels of the wagon creaked and the tharlarion began to plod southeastward.

“Do not leave me! Do not leave me!” cried Tersius Major.

Ellen, kneeling in the wagon, clutching the sides of the wagon, saw him, as they moved past the knoll. The sleen, she knew, is a primarily nocturnal animal. Too, she was sure that there must, by now, be several in the vicinity.

“Do not leave me!” cried Tersius Major. The party then took its way from the camp. “Give me a weapon!” cried Tersius Major. “Give me a weapon!” Then, after a time, one could no longer hear him.

“Do Priest-Kings exist?” said Fel Doron.

“No,” said Mirus.

“One does not know,” said Portus Canio. “One does not know.”

Chapter 28

WHAT OCCURRED FOUR DAYS LATER

It was toward morning.

“Master,” whispered the slave.

“Yes?” said he.

“Will you not content your animal? Will you not pet her? Will you not stroke her, just a little, Master?”

“You, an Earth woman, beg as a slave to be touched?” he asked.

“Yes, Master,” whispered Ellen, “as the most abject and needful of slaves!”

“No,” he said.

“Master,” she whimpered, “I am no longer a free woman, as once I was! I can no longer pride myself on my frigidity. I can no longer base my self-respect, my self-esteem, on my sexual inertness, on my superiority to sex. I can no longer go months or years without actual sexual relief, sublimating my physical needs into petulance, negativity, irritability, nastiness, pettiness and rivalry. I now need sex. Surely you understand, Master, that I have been embonded. I am now a slave! Men have aroused me! The collar has set me aflame. Slave fires rage now in my belly. I now belong to Masters, needfully!”

He was silent.

“Use me, Master,” she whispered. “I beg to be used!”

“No,” he said, coldly.

“You have not tied me, or chained me,” she said. “You have not braceleted me, helplessly. You have not put me in slave hobbles! Perhaps I shall run away!”

“I would not advise it,” he said, and her blood ran cold.

She heard, from the side, Portus Canio turn in his sleep. Fel Doron was yards away, on watch. To another side slept Mirus and his fellow.

“Please, use me, Master!” begged Ellen.

“No,” he said.

How different it is from Earth, she thought. But on Earth the slave fires have been lit in the bellies of few women. On Earth women guard their bellies with fervor, lest they succumb to what they know lies within them, the ready tinder which might be ignited by the torch of bondage. She did not doubt, if only from her own experiences on Earth, the depth and pervasiveness, the readiness, of female sexual needs in the women of Earth. They were surely not other, physiologically, than those of their Gorean sisters. But there were surely great differences culturally and psychologically. Gor had not had centuries of inculcated denials and loathings. But sexual needs and frustrations, so much suppressed, so hysterically denied, must then express themselves in pathological transmogrifications, express themselves in a thousand disguises, conceal themselves behind the disfigurations of a thousand masks, and issue in a multitude of seemingly unrelated illnesses, miseries, petulances and hostilities! Indeed, some women were so well conditioned that they would belittle and despise the sexual needs of the normal woman, doubtless fearing such needs in themselves, and would try to make her feel guilty and ashamed, inferior and wanting, because of her actual vitality and health. Indeed, some women even pride themselves on their supposedly inert bellies and alleged superiority to sexuality. No wonder then that the human male, on Earth, often thought of the women of his species as being, however desirable, essentially sexless creatures, as being sexually minimal and torpid, as being above sex, or disinterested in it, as being, in effect, inert and frigid. But the polar wastes of so many women’s bellies are not the results of anatomical or physiological climates or impoverishments; they are rather the engineered consequences of cultural and psychological tragedies. When an Earth woman is brought to Gor, then, at least as a slave, one of the first things done to her is to enlighten her as to her own nature and that of men, so that she will understand who it is who holds the whip and whose neck it is that is encircled with the collar, and, as a part of this, the masters, callously and brutally I fear, but they are not patient men, light the slave fires in her belly. She is then, in her collar, irremediably, a needful, sexual creature. Whereas the men of Earth, like the women of Earth, are commonly starved for sex, and are, consequently, usually the most obvious or most public victims of unsatisfied sexual need, there is little parallel to this amongst Gorean males. Whereas the sexual drives of Gorean males, not undermined by, nor diminished by, pathological, sometimes even inconsistent, conditioning programs, and such, tend to be frequently insistent, urgent, powerful, and uncompromising, they usually have at their disposal the means to satisfy their needs, and with ease. Slaves may be cheaply bought, particularly in times of unrest and war. Too, there are the paga taverns and brothels. On the other hand, the sexual needs of the slave are much at the mercy of the master. Accordingly, on Gor it is usually the slave who is the beggar in these matters and not the free man. She is in the agony of her needs. Will the master satisfy her or not? Commonly she pleads, as it is up to him, not her. This is an interesting turnabout from Earth. To be sure, doubtless there are women on Earth in whose bellies slave fires have been lit, and these, as much as any Gorean slave, must kneel or belly before their masters, beg sex, and hope that he will be kind to them. Let us suppose a male is brought to Gor as a free man. Now, let us also suppose that on Earth there is a particular woman, a desirable female of interest to him, who, in a typical Earth fashion, has frustrated him and has spurned his attentions. Let us also suppose that this woman is later brought to Gor, as a slave presumably, as she is a female, either with or without his knowledge. Let us then suppose that she is collared and slave fires are lit in her belly, and that she then comes into his ownership, either by a sheer coincidence, or by design, if he has arranged or requested her abduction. You may then imagine her at his feet, beautiful and helpless, naked in her collar, begging for sex. One supposes he would find this state of affairs unobjectionable.

She then, lying at his thigh, bit her lip, and choked back a sob. Tears rushed through her lashes. She rolled angrily, in frustration, away from him, and from the blanket, damp with dew. She pressed the side of her face, sobbing, into the grass. She felt the narrow, fibrous, cool, dawn-moist, living blades against her tear-streaked cheek.

He has not bound me, he has not shackled me, she thought. Is he so arrogant, so sure of me! Perhaps I shall run away! I could show him! I could teach him not to take me for granted! Does he think I am a slave? But, alas, I am a slave! Let him awaken and find me gone! How he treats me! I do not want to be a slave! I am miserable! But where could I, a slave, run? Should I be lost in the grasslands, or be eaten by ravaging sleen? And I am tunicked, branded, collared! There is no escape for me on this world! There is no escape for the Gorean slave girl! If I were not eaten, or did not die of exposure, nor of thirst or starvation, I would be caught and acquired, if not by him, by another, like a stray kaiila. Would my collar not show me slave? And even if I could somehow get it off, might not a man simply seize my leg and examine my thigh, noting there my brand? That would not be difficult. I am clearly marked. And what if he, my master, followed and recovered me? What would then be my fate?

She felt the wet grass on the side of her cheek. She was not then on the blanket, at the thigh of her master.

I must not displease him, she thought.

She then crept back on the blanket, to lie docilely at his thigh. She kissed his thigh, penitently. “Forgive me, Master,” she whispered. She hoped she would not be beaten in the morning. He was master. She was slave. It will be done with me as my master pleases, she thought. Let me suffer agonies of need. It matters not. I am a slave. Perhaps sometime he will caress me. I hope that I shall not be beaten in the morning.

“Am I to be whipped, Master?” she asked.

“Perhaps,” he said.

“Master?”

“Go to sleep,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said, and pressed her lips again, softly, to his thigh.

Yes, she thought. He is my master, and he does with me as he pleases. Oh, would that he would take pity on his slave! Please caress her, Master. Please caress her, Master. She loves you.

Why does he, a powerful, virile man, not caress me, she asked herself.

Am I so distasteful to him?

Does he wish to torture me?

How fearful it is sometimes, she thought, to be a slave. We are so vulnerable, and helpless!

Sometimes I am terrified that I am in a collar.

But, too, it is unutterably beautiful to be in a collar. I want it on my neck, with all it means.

I am a slave, and that is what I want to be. I would not be otherwise. I love being a slave, she whispered to herself. I love being a slave. And I love my master.

But would that he caressed me! But even if I hated him I would want him to caress me.

I need to be caressed.

I am a slave!

We had begun to move generally southeastward, across the grasslands. We did not encounter more sleen. Such beasts, burrowing, six-legged, sinuous, carnivorous, unless on a scent, tend to be territorial. Perhaps as early as the morning following our departure from our earlier camp, that which had been the scene of such conflict and carnage, we had traversed, and left behind, their usual hunting range. The prairie sleen is, incidentally, I have been told, much smaller than the forest sleen, which can upon occasion reach lengths of eighteen feet and weights of several hundred pounds.