Prize of Gor (13 page)

“Put them on,” he told her.

She slipped them on her left wrist. He knew, of course, that that was where they went. She did not wish to be beaten.

“Return to the circle,” he said, “and, hands at your sides, turn slowly for us.”

She did as she was commanded, and then again faced him, and the others.

She knew herself displayed.

She wondered if a nude slave girl on an auction block could feel more acutely conscious of her exhibition.

She did not know these people, even these sorts of people. How different they were from what she knew, in their naturalness, in their laughter and assurances, in their colorful robes and miens, all this so different from the tepidities, apathies, lethargies, and gray conformities of her old world! She had not known such people could exist. To her they were alien, not only linguistically but, more importantly, more frighteningly, culturally. This is what human beings can be, she thought, so different from those of Earth! She was not on her own world. And she was in a very different culture, one with different laws, customs, and values. Things were so unfamiliar. What could she, given no choice, brought helplessly here, be to these people?

What could one such as she be on this world?

She feared she knew.

How strange it is, she thought, to be fully clothed, according to one’s culture, so decorously, even primly, and yet, here, in a different culture, in an identical garmenture, being presented, being put on view, to feel so exposed, to feel oneself an eccentric object of curiosity.

She would have preferred her tunic, however brief. Then she would at least have better fitted in with her surroundings; she would then have felt less anomalous, less conspicuous, more congruent with her lovely milieu. There were others of her status in the room, and surely they, at least, were appropriately garmented, were accorded the simple, natural garmentures, so brief, so clinging, so revealing, which seemed to be culturally prescribed for those of their station, which station she had no doubt was hers, as well. They were attractively, and suitably, garbed, at least for what they were.

So why not she?

Why not she?

Too, she knew, and this did not displease her, at all, that she was quite attractive, perhaps even extremely so, in the tunic. That had been evident from the appraisals of guards.

In their eyes she was clearly a female.

She had no doubt about that.

And one of great interest.

That, too, had been clear.

Sometimes the guards had bound her, with colorful cords, sometimes in exotic fashions, and had then ordered her to free herself, but she had been unable to do so. But how their eyes had glinted upon her, as she had twisted, and reared up, and fell back, and squirmed and writhed, in her unsuccessful attempts to elude her constraints! To see her so before them, bound so helplessly, so predictably and absurdly futile in her commanded struggles, had given them much pleasure. Once she had intended to defy them, to remain quite still, but she was then switched, and so, again, she had addressed herself, now stung and weeping, desperately to efforts she now realized were foredoomed.

She recalled the words of the young man, on Earth, now her master on Gor, that he had thought she would be very pretty in such cords, later, when she would be luscious, helplessly bound in them.

Certainly she had been helpless in them, in those so simple, so soft, so attractive, so colorful bonds.

Am I, she asked herself, “luscious”?

She well remembered the eyes of the guards.

Perhaps, she thought.

And she was not displeased.

What female, and particularly one such as she, on this world, would not wish to be attractive, even luscious?

She shuddered.

She recalled that the young man on Earth, now her master, had suggested to her that her very life might depend on such things.

How often in history, she thought, it had been only a woman’s beauty which stood between herself and the sword. How grateful she might be then when she felt her hands roped behind her and a leash put on her neck!

The other girls in the room, those such as she, were in their tunics!

Why was she not then in her tunic?

Long ago she had ceased to feel such a garmenture was inexcusable and insufferably improper, that it was scandalously outrageous. To be sure, she supposed in some sense it was still all these things, and by intent, but now, too, it seemed appropriate, delicious, provocative, maddeningly exciting, sexually stimulating to the wearer and doubtless, too, to the bold and appraising onlooker beneath whose gaze its lovely occupant found herself without recourse. But even on Earth she had, she was now aware, viewed such garmentures rather ambivalently, perhaps even hypocritically, viewing them, or pretending to view them, on the one hand with the prescribed indignation and rage, and, on the other, wondering curiously, and excitedly, what she herself might look like, so clad. And she wondered, too, if some of the cumbersomely clad free women in the room, several even veiled, might not envy the others, their sisters, the freedom of their simple garmentures. And, too, what woman, in her heart, does not desire for her beauty to be displayed, does not desire to be seen, and understood, and openly relished, as the special and exquisite treasure she is? Are we not all forgivably vain? In any event, it was such as men would have for them. They were dressed as men would have them dressed, such as they, if they were to be permitted clothing. But why then not she? Most were kneeling, some not. They did not wear anklets. About their throats, rather, closely fitting, locked, were flat, slender metal bands, slave collars.

She envied them their collars. Not all animals, you see, are collared. The collar is for special animals. It was a visible statement that they were worth something. They had been found of interest; they had been found worthy of being purchased and owned. The collar, thus, in its way, is a visible acknowledgment of value. A terrible insult, on this world, to a free woman, is to tell her she is not worth a collar. To be sure, how would one know that, if one had not seen her? But she herself had only an anklet, the role of which, it seems, was more notational than anything else, little more than a way of keeping track of her in this house, whatever sort of house it might be.

Why did they not let her, too, kneel, or stand, inconspicuously aside, scarcely noticed, deferent, ready to be summoned, at so little as a snapping of the fingers of the free?

“Girl!” snapped her master.

She looked up, frightened.

“Now,” he said, “you will perform. How is your Gorean?”

“Not good enough, Master!” she said.

“You will use it,” he said. “There are very few present who can understand English.”

“What am I to do?” she asked.

“We are your students, we are your class,” he informed her. “You will lecture to us. Tell us all about men and women, and social artifacts, and roles, and such things, how conventional everything is, and political and capricious, and how the human species, alone of all the other species, has no nature, and how genetics is meaningless, and biology false, and endocrinology irrelevant, and so on, and how anything can be anything, and everything is nothing, and nothing is everything, and how the true is false, and the false, true, and such. Raise our consciousnesses, indoctrinate us, convert us.”

She was silent, in consternation.

He had spoken to her in English, of course.

“Those garments,” said the fellow in the blue and yellow robes, “do not really conceal her figure. Surely her loveliness is detectable within them.”

“As I am sure she knew,” said the young man.

“The things on her feet are pretty,” said a fellow.

“How can she keep her hair up like that?” asked another.

“She has a very pretty face,” said another.

“She has a small, trim, excellent figure,” said another.

The young man lifted his hand for silence. These brief remarks just preceding had all been in Gorean, of course. They had been spoken casually, with no particular intent in mind that she should understand them. But, of course, by now her Gorean was sufficient to follow them. She heard them with mixed feelings, and apprehensions. It is a strange thing to hear oneself referred to in such a fashion, so objectively, so casually. Did they not know she was a person? Did they think that she was an object, an animal on display?

“Begin,” said the young man.

Hesitantly, frightened, she began.

“As I told you,” warned the young man in English.

She moaned. He would have nothing less than that she attempt to honestly and forthrightly make clear to those in the room what she had taught for many years, what her colleagues in the movement expected of her, what she had been commended for, the views on which her standing, reputation and prestige had been founded, the sorts of things she had abundantly published, in journals created specifically to accommodate and broadcast such views, the ideology to which she had, in effect, given her life.

Occasionally he helped her with a word in Gorean; occasionally he prompted her, reminding her of this or that, for clearly he wanted her to express her position as forcibly and plausibly as the subject matter might admit.

He asked her upon occasion to move about. She did so, now acutely conscious of her figure within her clothing. Never on Earth had she been so much aware of the movements of her body within her garments, or how they rested upon it, or clung about it. But here she was much aware of such things. How frighteningly, how vulnerably soft and beautiful it was, shielded within her garments, she sensed. Twice he asked her to gesture, in such a way that he might hear the tiny sound of the two bracelets striking against one another, as though so accidentally. That sound was very meaningful to her, particularly under the circumstances, and she did not doubt but what it was similarly meaningful to him.

“Thank you for the lecture, slave girl,” he said, when she was done. “Now remove your garments.”

She first removed the jacket, and put it on the floor beside her. She then removed her pumps, and put them side by side, beside the jacket.

She then regarded him.

At a small gesture, she continued.

She unbuttoned the blouse, beginning with the high collar, and then slipped it from her shoulders.

More than one of the men present struck their left shoulders with the flat of their right hand.

She looked at the young man.

“They are expressing approval,” he informed her, in English.

She wore a white brassiere, which hooked in the back, and had two narrow shoulder straps.

She then unfastened the black skirt, and dropped it about her ankles, then stepped away from it, and lifted it to the side.

Interest was expressed in the garter belt. She freed the stockings from it, unfastened it, put it to the side, and then, sitting on the marbled floor, rolled the stockings down, and removed them.

As she removed the stockings, there could be no mistaking the loveliness of her thighs, the sweet bend of her legs at the knees, the turn of her calves, these lovelinesses each, slowly, in turn, being bared.

She then, again, stood. She was clad now in only brassiere and panties, except, of course, for two bracelets, and a locked ring, on her left ankle.

“Loosen your hair,” he said.

She did so, and shook it loose. It was very beautiful, dark brown, and glossy. She swept it back behind her with two hands, with a lovely gesture.

There were expressions of pleasure, of admiration, from several of those in the room.

She was clearly a lovely slave.

She went to slip the two golden loops from her left wrist, but the young man shook his head, almost imperceptibly, negatively.

She stiffened, but obeyed.

Those it seemed would be left her, at least for the time.

She slipped the shoulder straps of the brassiere over her arms, where they hung for a moment, and then she pulled the brassiere down.

“Excellent,” said the fellow in the blue and yellow robes.

She blushed.

Even had she not known the word, she would have understood him, from his tone, and expression, only too well.

Some of the men struck their left shoulders. Some of the women present uttered small sounds of admiration.

She realized suddenly that that of which they approved, her body, was not hers, that her body, and, indeed, she herself, was another’s property.

She turned the brassiere about, until the hooks were before her, at her belly.

She then unhooked it and dropped it with her other garments.

Suddenly tears sprang to her eyes and she looked piteously to the young man in the curule chair, that he might leave her some sop to her modesty, that he would not be merciless with her, not publicly, not before this throng.

But his eyes were stern.

Then she stood bared before him, a naked slave, save for two loops of gold on her left wrist, and an anklet of steel.

“Now,” said he to her, “my lovely young instructor with your Ph.D. in gender studies, you may crawl to me, naked, on your belly.”

She went to all fours, and then lowered herself to her belly. Then, inch by inch, she approached the dais, ascended the steps, and was then before him.

“More closely,” he said, “and spread your hair over my feet.”

She brought her hair forward, and put her head at his sandals, her hair about his feet.

“This, now,” he said, “is truly you. This is how I wanted you, and how you wanted to be, even then, so long ago, at my feet, a slave.”

She looked up at him tears in her eyes.

He removed the two golden loops from her wrist. She now wore only the steel anklet.

“Lick and kiss my feet, slave,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“And thus,” said he, “you are the living refutation of your own ideology.”

“Yes,” she whispered, “— Master.”

After a time, to her consternation, he pulled his feet away from her soft tongue and lips, her tears and her hair.

“Guard,” said he, “take this slave away, and see that the last phase of her treatment is concluded.”