Prize of Gor (35 page)

“From the wine trees of Gor,” he said.

She straightened up, as well as she could. She knew she was helpless. He had bound her well, surely as well as any Gorean might have, tightly, but not excessively tightly. There would be no danger of damaging the slave, of impairing her circulation, or risking possibilities of nerve or tissue damage, and, in the psychological dimension, she would have just enough latitude to tease her, and then frustrate her, as she might struggle, and then, eventually, realize she was, when all was said and done, utterly helpless, a slave girl bound by her master.

“You would have me drink wine, and from a glass?” she asked. “How is it that it is not water, put in a pan on the floor, which I must lap from the pan, forbidden to touch the pan with my hands?”

“You speak boldly, for a naked, bound slave,” he said.

She tossed her head.

“You have spirit,” he said. “That can be taken from a girl, if one wishes.”

She moved a little closer to him, and then, suddenly, beggingly, impulsively, as if she scarcely knew what she was doing, put her head to his right knee, turning her head and resting the side of her face, her left cheek, on his knee.

“It is not that I mind a bit of spirit in a slave,” he said. “It makes it all the more pleasant to bring them again to their belly, at your feet, kissing and begging.”

“Yes, Master,” she whispered, softly.

“But there must be not the least impairment in perfect discipline,” he said.

“No, Master,” she whispered.

He put the tiny glass on the table. She heard the small sound.

“You may speak,” he said.

“I love you,” she said, “my Master.”

“I have brought you here, that you might hate me, for what I have done to you,” he said.

“How could I hate you, Master?” she asked, her head to his knee. “You have rescued me. You have saved me. You have given me my rightful bondage. I have always been a slave, but now, at last, you have given me my brand, and my collar. You have given me to myself, in a world where I can be myself, and need not hide myself, even from myself. I am inordinately grateful to you, my Master.”

She whimpered, for she felt his hand clench in her hair, tightly, she feared angrily.

“Continue to speak,” he said, seemingly controlling his voice, keeping it calm, with an effort.

As he was holding her, she could not lift her head, to look into his eyes, to try to understand him.

She was frightened.

“Go on,” he said, quietly.

“I wanted to kneel to you,” she said, “even when you were a student. I sensed in you power, and virility, and uncompromised manhood, and, too, I think I sensed in you even then, surely on some level, then only dimly understood, the splendor and force of the mastery. Do you understand how devastating, how irresistible, how overwhelming this is to a woman? In you was manifested the very principle of masculinity to which all women, in virtue of their principle of femininity, long to succumb.”

His hand tightened even more in her hair. She winced.

“I love you, Master,” she said. “And I want to be your slave.”

“Oh!” she cried, in pain.

“Surely,” she wept, her head held down, cruelly, “you must have some feelings for me. You remembered me, after many years. You never forgot. You have brought me here. You have given me a second chance at life. You have rescued me. You have saved me. You have restored my youth, and beauty, if I be beautiful. You put me in the iron belt, that I might be protected in a house where men may do much what they please with the women at hand, where the use of slaves is little restricted. You keep me for yourself. You gave me a beautiful name. You have even inflicted peremptory and degrading usage upon me. Surely, then, you must have feelings for me. If you do not love me, Master, do you not like me, if only a little? Surely, at the least, you must find me of interest, as a master a slave. Surely you must want me. Surely you must desire me, if only as an object to rape, punish and abuse. You must find my body of interest. Look upon it, Master. You own it!”

“I own all of you,” he snarled.

“Yes, Master,” she gasped, wincing.

He released her hair, and she drew back, gratefully, her hair twisted and tangled, in disarray, kneeling before him.

She then saw his eyes rove her, her hair, her face, her throat, her shoulders, her bosom, her waist, her love cradle, her thighs.

She put her shoulders back a little, that her figure might be accentuated.

She turned a little to the side, and lifted her head.

“Brazen slave,” said he.

She knelt very straightly. She was very conscious of the steel circlet clasping her throat.

“Surely my flanks are not without interest, Master,” she said, timidly. She moved her hands a little in their bonds, futilely.

“It is true, your flanks are not without interest, slave girl,” he said.

“Thank you, Master,” she said.

“You are a lovely slave,” he said.

“Thank you, Master!” she said.

“But there are thousands in the markets as lovely, or lovelier, than you,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said. She did not doubt but what he said was true. Indeed, in this very house, she had seen many women with whose beauty she would not have dared to compare hers. She became aware that tears had sprung afresh to her eyes.

He reached to her and put his hand in her hair.

“Please do not hurt me more,” she begged. “I am a bound slave. My neck is in your collar. Please do not hurt me more!”

But he drew her closer to him, not cruelly, but firmly. Then, without removing his hand from her hair, he lifted the small glass of ka-la-na.

He swirled the wine a little in the glass, and held it before him, inhaling the bouquet. He then held the small glass before her.

“It is lovely, Master,” she said, breathing in the wine’s bouquet.

“It is a nice ka-la-na,” he said.

He then held it before her, the rim of the glass to her lips, and tipped it, slightly, that she might sip it.

“It is wonderful, Master,” she breathed. “The smoothness, the flavor, the fragrance, the body.”

“I thought you would like it,” he said.

“Thank you, Master,” she breathed.

He is kind to me, she thought. He gives me wine. He is gentle. He is tender. He loves me. My Master loves me! I want to be a wonderful slave to him! I want to be the most wonderful and loving slave on all Gor! Let him do with me as he pleases. Let him kick and beat me. I will rejoice! I will beg to lick the boot that kicks me, I will beg to kiss the hand that strikes me! Oh dominate me, and own me, my Master! I am yours, my Master!

Then suddenly it seemed the blood froze in her veins, as she met his eyes.

“Master?” she asked.

“You will now finish your bit of ka-la-na,” he said.

She felt his hand tighten in her hair, and pull back, lifting her head and bending it backward.

She saw the tiny glass before her, her head bent back.

His eyes were hard. In them there was no longer any hint of kindness, of tenderness, of gentleness. In them she now saw only severity and anger, even fury.

“Master?” she asked, frightened.

“Open your mouth,” said he. “Widely. Do not spill a drop.”

He slowly poured the residue of ka-la-na into her obediently lifted, opened mouth.

“Swallow,” said he. “Carefully, swallow. Swallow.”

Then he released her hair and replaced the tiny glass on the table.

She looked at him. She ran her tongue over her lips. She could taste the ka-la-na.

Already she thought she could feel its effects.

He was sitting in the curule chair, in the tunic, watching her.

“Master?” she said.

“I had thought,” he said, moodily, “it might take you years, and a hundred masters, to learn your slavery, my little feminist and ideologue. I had thought that you would cry out and rage against me for years in your chains and collars for what I had done to you. How that would have pleased me, your anger, your hatred, your misery, your frustration, your suffering, until, of course, eventually, perhaps years from now, in the arms of some master, a leather worker, a peasant, a sleen-breeder, your last psychological defenses would shatter and your womanhood, released, would cry out and claim you, reducing you to the welcomed, surrendered abject glory that is the right of your sex. But, instead, after but a moment, I find you an exquisite little slab of collar-meat, a willing, content, obedient little piece of flesh-trash, no different from thousands of other meaningless, silken little she-urts. Already you grovel at the snapping of fingers, and lick and kiss the whip with not only skill, but eagerness. Almost instantly you have begun to move as a slave girl. Already, at the sight of you, guards cry out in anger, and in need. Already you kneel with perfection and have become excruciatingly, inordinately, maddeningly, marvelously feminine.”

“But I am a slave, Master,” she whispered. She was kneeling. She felt a little unsteady. She shook her head. There seemed to be a bright, hazy glow about the lamps.

“Perhaps you rushed to your ideology in order to hide your deepest feelings and needs from yourself, the ideology constituting in its way a defense mechanism, as the expression is, a hysterical denial of inwardly sensed biotruths.”

“I do not know, Master,” she said, confused. “I feel faint, Master.”

“You may break position,” he said.

She sank to her side on the steps, before the curule chair.

“It is not simply ka-la-na which you have imbibed,” he said. “It was mixed with tassa power. You had some weeks ago, on Earth.”

She shook her head, trying to retain consciousness. She looked up at him, tears in her eyes.

“You have wondered why I brought you to Gor,” he said. “I will tell you. I brought you here because I hold you in contempt, because I despise you, because it amuses me to bring you here and make you a meaningless, youthful slave. Surely in your bracelets and chains you must understand how amusing that is, particularly given your subject matter, your teaching, your publications, your ideology. Here, in a collar, you can at last learn something true about men and women. You can at last learn your proper place in nature. You can learn it with a branded thigh, and an encircled neck, kneeling before masters.”

“Do you not love me, Master?” she gasped.

“No,” he said.

“Do you hate me?” she wept.

It seemed to be growing dark, about the edges of her vision.

“No,” he said. “You are not worth hating.”

“I love you!” she wept.

“Lying slut!” he said, in English. Then, rising angrily from the chair, with his bootlike sandal, he thrust her forcibly, rolling, down the steps of the dais to the floor at its foot.

He came down the steps, and, it seemed, was ready to spurn her yet again with the bootlike sandal.

She crawled, squirmed, as she could, to his feet, and, summoning what little strength remained within her, pressed her lips to the bootlike sandal which had spurned her.

She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

“What am I going to do with you — what?” he snarled.

“What are you going to do with me —
Master
?” she whispered.

“What I planned to do with you from the beginning,” he said.

“Master?”

“Complete my vengeance upon you.”

“Master?” she whispered.

“Can you not guess?” he said.

She put her head against the rug. She pulled a little against her bonds. Then she lost consciousness.

Chapter 16

THE SUNLIT CEMENT SHELF

For a time she could make nothing out of the sounds about her. It seemed for the moment an indiscriminate babble, and, one supposes, from one point of view it was, as the sounds were then unintelligible to her, as she lay there, only dimly, distantly, vaguely conscious. She was trying to hear them with a different ear, so to speak. She was trying, we may suppose, to hear in English, but it was not English, you see, that was about her. It was a quite different language. So her puzzlement, her vague unease, her half-conscious consternation, was not really difficult to understand. Indeed, at first she did not really think of the sounds as of a language, at all, but only as human sounds, and then, gradually, she realized they must be in a language. The streams of sound bubbling about her like water, sometimes breaking forth, sometimes soothing, rippling, sometimes rushing, must be intentionally formed. There was something articulate and precise in the music, in the sounds. These were not the sounds of animals, the roars, and growls, the bleating, bellowing, shrieking, howlings, and hissings of animals, nor the sounds of nature, nothing like the dashings of branches against one another, lashed by the wind, nothing like the pattering of rain, the tumbling of rocks, the drums of thunder, the shattering proclamations of lightning. So why did she not understand them? Doubtless she was very tired, and wanted to sleep. Why could they not be quiet, these voices which must be in her dream? What a strange dream! It crossed her mind that she might complain to the building superintendent. How vigorous and remarkable, and diverse, and expressive, seemed that strange tongue, at once so lively, bright and fluent, even delicate, and then suddenly so explosively rude and brutal, at one moment loud, at another soft, at one moment rapid, even careless, at another measured and stately, at one moment melodious, at another almost inarticulate and fierce, and the dozens of voices speaking, conversing, crying out, calling out, whispering, proclaiming, announcing, arguing, haggling, querying, all this sound, rapid, torrential, swift, slow, then quick again, loud, soft, which, like flowing, sometimes rushing, water, bubbled about her, seemingly everywhere, was surely incongruous in the vicinity of her apartment.

Gradually she became apprehensive, because it began to seem to her that if one thing or another were a little different, if there were a small adjustment, a willingness, a readiness, a slight shifting of attention or awareness, the smallest acceptance or openness, that that inexplicable cacophony of sound about her might suddenly become intelligible, and this suspicion, for no reason she clearly understood, frightened her.