Prize of Gor (21 page)

“I see you are under some stress, pretty Ellen,” he said. “Accordingly I permit you some latitude in position.”

Immediately, uncontrollably, she put her head down and buried her face in her hands, weeping.

“Knees,” he cautioned, gently.

With a cry of misery she widened her knees.

“I gather,” he said, “that you found your service humiliating, but did you find that it had other aspects, as well?”

She looked at him, through her hands, as though she would cry out some hysterical denial, but did not do so.

“I see that you found your service welcome, warming, elating, reassuring, fitting, even delicious,” he said.

“Master!” she protested.

“You enjoyed serving as a naked slave,” he said. “You enjoyed, so subtly, so deferentially, so seemingly involuntarily, so seemingly helplessly, exhibiting your beauty.”

She sobbed.

“You are very beautiful,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Perhaps,” she whispered.

“So it is very natural that you would wish to show your beauty,” he said. “It is natural that it would give you great pleasure to do so. Surely, too, you must rejoice in the happiness, and pleasure, that the sight of it brings to others.”

“But it could also bring me into great peril, could it not, Master?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, “particularly on this world. It makes you an object of enormous interest, of almost uncontrollable desire. This is particularly dangerous for you, inasmuch as you are only a slave. It is not as though you were a free person, and had a Home Stone.”

“A Home Stone, Master?”

“Commonality of Home Stone extends beyond concepts with which you are familiar, such as shared citizenship, for example. It is more like brotherhood, but not so much in the attenuated, cheap, abstract sense in which those of Earth commonly speak glibly, so loosely, of brotherhood. It is more analogous to brotherhood in the sense of jealously guarded membership in a proud, ancient family, one that has endured through centuries, a family bound together by fidelity, honor, history and tradition.”

“I see,” she whispered.

“So do not concern yourself with Home Stones,” he said. “They are beyond your ken. You are only a slave.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“Surely,” said he, “you are not only aware of your beauty, but you must be excited by it, happy with it, and proud of it, and love it.”

She thought it well not to respond to his words.

She put her head down.

“And you must, too, begin to suspect what power it might give you over men.”

“I have little power,” she said.

“More than you know,” he said. “But remember this, slave. Ultimately all power is with the master. It is he who holds the whip.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

This, incidentally, is exactly and perfectly true on this world, as I have learned, forgive me, as
she
has learned.

“And, too,” he said, “you are growing intrigued by, and pleased with, your sexiness.”

“My
sexiness
, Master?” she asked.

“Do not play your silly Earth games with me,” he said, angrily. “Do not pretend to be stupid. On this world there are two sexes. Here one need not pretend to celebrate androgyny or make it a point to flourish pompous, hypocritical puritanical platitudes. Let those who are now as you once were mouth bromides in their classes and ignore realities under their very noses. The pretense to blindness must ultimately fail in a world where sight persists. To be sure, most people will see what they are told to see. So many people blindfold themselves with words; so few look upon the world as it is, radiant and real, with its own nature. The sight of a woman like you, and thousands like you, will enflame a man. Let those of Earth denounce and castigate straw for burning when it is set afire. Goreans do not. They would find that incomprehensibly stupid. You are very well aware, slave, of your sexiness. Do not feign ignorance. You are well aware that you are beautiful and desirable, that you are, whether this pleases you or not, but I do not doubt but what it pleases you, and well pleases you, excruciatingly sexually stimulatory, that men will see you and want you, that your neck calls for the collar, your flank for the brand, your wrists for slave bracelets, your ankles for the shackles of masters!”

She cried out in terror, and misery, and, shrinking down, covered her breasts with her arms, crossed before her body.

“Palms on thighs,” he said.

Then she was again in position.

As her treatments had progressed she had become aware that she had become of considerable sexual interest to men. She did not think it made much difference, really, whether she had been stabilized at thirty-eight years of age, or twenty-eight, or eighteen. In each of these ages, she knew, she was lovely, and of considerable interest. In each of these ages, she had little doubt that men, thousands of men, would have enjoyed having her before them, rendering slave obeisance. She thought that many men might have preferred her at twenty-eight, the age when she had first met her master, he then a student in one of her courses. On the other hand, most Gorean slave girls, she had gathered, were as though in their early twenties. Most of the older women, she gathered, had been returned to that point and stabilized there. On the other hand, there was also doubtless something to be said for a virginal, dewy, youthful eighteen, not so much perhaps from the point of view of the slave herself, as she would tend to be looked down upon, and be regarded as relatively inconsequential, even by her sister slaves, but from the point of view of masters, who tend to be less exacting, less demanding, in such matters, generously not tending to hold her youthfulness against her, provided, of course, it is lovely and helplessly responsive to their touch, as should be the body of any slave. In any event, it was where her master had chosen to have her stabilized, and so that is exactly where she was stabilized. Perhaps he wished her so, as he had suggested, as a part of his vengeance upon her, that in virtue of her youth she might be rendered negligible, inconsequential, and thus demeaned. In any event, whatever may be the truth in these matters, she found herself by his will made a young slave, one who could be no more than a girl to his man.

“Cease your hysteria, your silliness, you narcissistic little bitch,” he said.

She regarded him, from position, tears in her eyes.

“Women are narcissistic,” he said. “Even on Earth, consider their obsessive concern with their appearance, with their ever-present desire to present themselves attractively before men, their concern with the right make-up, the right jewelry, the right earrings, the correct, fashionable clothing, their concern with their hosiery, their shoes, their concern even with the nature and lovely delicacy of their undergarments. And there is nothing critical affected in this. They should be narcissistic. They are beautiful. They are women. They wish to allure, to be attractive prey to men, the predator sex. The true woman should be pleased with her beauty, proud of it, and desirous of showing it off. My criticism of you, little slave, is not that you are narcissistic, for that, as a female, you should be, but that you are a little bitch.”

“I am sorry, Master,” she whispered.

“Surely you were aware this evening,” he said, “that our guest, Jeffrey, admired you.”

“He had eyes mostly, I thought,” she said, “for his friend.”

Mirus laughed, and she did not understand his laugh.

“But you must have noticed, sometime,” he said, “that he was looking at you.”

“It seemed so, Master,” she said.

Indeed, who could have doubted it?

“He was regarding you with desire,
sexual
desire, if you can understand that, you stupid little bitch,” he said.

I am not a stupid little bitch, she thought. Have I not seen desire in the eyes of the guards? Does he think I do not know I am a slave, and how slaves are seen by men? Does he think, truly, I am a stupid little bitch? I fear so. But I am not a stupid little bitch. Must I admit everything? Must I be so open? I am from Earth! What does he want? The collar has not been long on my neck!

“Bitch?” said he.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“Do you think you are sexually desirable?” he asked.

“It is not for a slave to say,” she said.

“Do you know you are in a collar?”

“Yes, Master!”

“Speak,” he said.

“It is a slave’s hope that she will be found pleasing to masters,” she said.

“Excellent,” he said.

“Thank you, Master.”

“You are intelligent,” he said, “actually quite intelligent.”

“Thank you, Master.”

Gorean men, she had learned, prize high intelligence in a woman, and seek it in their slaves. The intelligent woman, taken in hand, overwhelmed, subdued and mastered, taught her womanhood, wholly submitted, understanding now what she is, fully, makes an excellent slave. Certainly they sell for more.

Had she claimed she was sexually desirable, she might have been reprimanded for conceit; had she denied it she might as easily have been punished for lying.

“But in many respects,” he said, “you are quite stupid.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“Do you think you are sexually desirable?”

“I do not know, Master!” she sobbed.

“You are,” he said.

“Thank you, Master.”

“As any slave,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she whispered.

“Had his friend not been present, he might have seized your ankle and dragged you under the table.”

“So simply?”

“It was a Gorean feast,” he said. “Surely you do not think that those women of whom we spoke earlier, serving their conquerors naked, simply returned that evening with impunity to their kennels and cells.

She lowered her head.

“They would be seized, ravished, and enjoyed,” he said. “They would be seized by the hair, knelt, wine poured down their throats, spilling over their breasts and bodies, forced to dance drunkenly, put to their bellies, their lips to the feet of men, and ordered to beg for use. Then, huddled together, kept in place with the lash, they might be gambled for. And the evening might then end pleasantly as they, the winnings of men, caressed into supplicatory beasts, thrashed on the carpets and rushes. And then, toward morning, when the fires had burned low, and the room was gray, damp and cold, when those who had won them would be asleep, sated with the repast of pleasures derived from their winnings, their hands tied behind their bodies, their necks roped to the left ankles of their new masters, they might rest. Later, bent over, held in leading position, by groggy, stumbling masters, they would be conducted to their new dispositions. They are the women of a conquered foe. Thus, as prizes, they belong to the victors.”

“Yes, Master,” whispered the slave.

“In a sense,” he said, “as I suggested earlier, it is similar with you.”

“Master?”

“I am the victor here, am I not?” he asked.

“Master?”

“And you were a woman of the enemy?”

“The enemy?”

“Of Earth,” he said, “but in a sense larger than you know.”

“Master?”

“Surely you remember my earlier remarks,” he said, “when I was explaining the lack of attire in a charming waitress.”

“Yes, Master,” she whispered.

“Your lies, your ideology, your manipulations, your slynesses, your schemings, your trickeries, your agendas, your subversions.”

“Yes, Master,” she whispered, tears in her eyes.

She wondered if the indoctrinated, servile men of Earth were even worthy to be accounted enemies.

They were so manipulable, and weak.

It was embarrassing for her to think of herself as a woman of them.

But would most not wish weak foes? Only Goreans, she supposed, desired strong foes, perhaps that they might be the better tested, that an ensuing victory might be the more worth winning.

She thought of so many of the men of Earth, such mindlessly herded dupes, taught to deny their blood, hastening sellers of birthrights, so whiningly eager to win a smile from those who despised them for the very weakness they sought to promote in them.

She wondered if it might not be better for such a subverted, betrayed world to perish.

No, she thought. Wait. Mayhap one day it will awaken, rise up, shout, and be reborn. Let it be reborn, she thought. Let it be reborn!

“Have you, woman of the enemy, been defeated?”

“Yes, Master,” she said. The answer to that was obvious, as obvious as the gleaming, snug, obdurate band encircling her throat. What she did not tell him was that she had wished, in her deepest heart, to be defeated.

“So,” said he, “should I have you slain, or kept as a slave?”

“It is my hope,” she said, “to be kept as a slave.”

He looked her over, carefully.

She reddened.

“Perhaps,” he said. “You are well-curved.”

She was silent.

“Those are slave curves,” he said.

“It is my hope,” she said, “that Master will find me pleasing.”

He laughed. “Long ago, on Earth,” he said, “in your classes, in the corridors, in the cafeteria, in your office, on the streets, on the avenues and boulevards, in the library, I suspect you did not anticipate that one day you would kneel before a man and express such a wish.”

“No, Master,” she said. She had not anticipated that. She had, however, longed for it.

He laughed, again, and leaned back in the chair.

“How did you feel, to know that you were the object of Jeffrey’s interest,
in that way
?”

“Please, Master, have mercy on a new slave!” she begged.

“Speak,” he said.

“It pleased me!” she wept.

“Of course it did,” he snarled, “for you are a slave!”

“Is it true?” she asked. “Did Master Jeffrey desire me?”

“Yes,” he said, angrily.

She looked down.

It pleased her that he was angry. Could he be jealous of another man’s interest in her? Surely she hoped so.

“And you might be sent to him,” he added.

She lifted her head, to regard him with fear.

“Yes,” he said.

She knew more then, in that moment, of what it could be, to be a slave.