Prize of Gor (49 page)

He lifted his hand a little, his fingers still lightly in contact with her thigh.

“Don’t!” said Ellen.

“I do not understand,” he said.

“Surely you are a man of honor!” she cried.

“I think so, I hope so,” he said.

“As a man of honor,” said Ellen, desperately, “you will not touch me without my permission.”

“I do not understand,” he said.

“— particularly as I lie helplessly before you, naked and chained, totally at your mercy, incapable of the least resistance!”

“What has honor to do with this?” he asked, puzzled. “We are not fellow citizens. We do not share a Home Stone. Too, even if we had been fellow citizens, you are now no longer a citizen, but a slave. Too, even if we had once shared a Home Stone, you are now without the rights of the Home Stone, having been enslaved. In addition, you are merely a female.”

“It seems then,” said Ellen, bitterly, “that I cannot expect gentlemanliness of you.”

“What is “gentlemanliness”?” he asked, as Ellen, in her consternation, had used the English expression.

“There is no exact word for it in Gorean,” said Ellen.

“I think I have heard the word,” said the man. “It seems to be a word for a male who subscribes to, and conforms to, codes of behavior requiring, among other things, substituting convention for nature, propriety for power, self-conquest for self-liberation, restraint for command, inaction and conformity for dominance and mastery, and, in short, a word for one who denies his biological birthright, his powers, pleasures and delights, for one who forgoes, or pretends to forgo, his manhood in order to do, or seem to do, what women pretend will please them. He belongs to his culture, and not to himself, rather like the insect to the nest, the bee to the swarm. He is unhappy, as are the confused, unwitting, lovely tyrants whom he refuses to resist, whom he refuses to take in hand and conquer, putting them to his feet, as naked, bound slaves.”

“Is it not, then, a word for “fool”?” asked Targo.

“It would seem so,” said the man.

He then looked down, again, at Ellen.

Ellen looked up at him, frightened.

The Goreans, she saw, and now well understood, were not gentlemen, or certainly not “gentlemen” in a common “Earth sense” of the term. Rather, however educated, civilized and refined they might be, they were indisputably owners of, and masters of, women.

“Please, wait! Please, don’t!” cried Ellen. “I am not as your Gorean women!”

“That is understood by me,” said the man.

“I come from a different world,” said Ellen, “a world of different values, a world on which it would be regarded as improper that I be owned, helplessly, categorically, a world on which all women must be free, must be treated with total honor and respect! I am that sort of woman! Obedience, helplessness and chains, abject slavery, are not for me! I am not a woman of your world!”

“But you are a human female are you not?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” she said.

“Do not expect me to repeat the mistakes of your world, human female,” said he.

“Master?” she said.

“Do not expect me to conform to the confusions and weaknesses of your world,” he said.

“Please,” she wept.

“You are no longer on your world,” he said. “You are now on our world, where things are different.”

“Your values are not mine!” she cried.

“I am pleased that that is true,” he said.

“I do not exist for obedience, helplessness and chains, for abject slavery!” she wept.

“You do now,” said he.

“I am not as one of your Gorean women!” she cried.

“I understand,” said he.

“I am from the world called Earth!” she said.

“I understand,” said he.

“So I am not as one of your Gorean women!” she cried.

“That is true,” said he. “You are a thousand times less, female of Earth.”

“Master?”

“You are not worthy to tie even the sandals of a Gorean woman.”

His hand lifted from her thigh.

“Don’t!” cried Ellen. “Please!”

The chains shook and rattled. She scarcely felt the cement beneath her body, the pull of the steel against her wrists and ankles.

“Oh, oh, oh!” she wept. “Please, don’t. Please, don’t!”

He desisted.

“No!” she wept. “Please, do. I mean, please, do! Don’t stop! I beg you not to stop! I can’t help myself! Don’t stop, I beg it! Please, please! No, I mean, please stop! Please stop! That is what I mean, please stop!”

He desisted.

“No, don’t stop!” she begged. “Yes! Yes! That is it! Oh, thank you, Master! No! Don’t stop! Don’t stop! I beg for more! I beg for more!”

“Who begs?” asked Targo.

“Ellen, Ellen, the slave, Ellen, the meaningless slave, Ellen, the meaningless, Earth-girl barbarian slave, begs for more!” she wept.

The man desisted.

Ellen, flushed, reddened, imploringly, lifted her body to him.

“I cannot stand it!” she wept. “Please touch me. Please complete your work, Master. Please complete what you have begun with me, Master. Please, please, Master. Be merciful! I beg it! Please be merciful, Master!”

“She shows promise of becoming a hot little thing,” said the man.

“Yes, in time,” agreed Targo.

“Please, Master!” she begged.

“Very well,” he said, and lightly touched her but once more.

“Aiiiiiii!” cried Ellen, and her long, wild cry, her shriek of relief, of gratitude, of helpless joy must have rung throughout the market, piercing it from end to end, from stall to stall, reverberating from the wall across the way, carrying even to the streets beyond.

She then lay shuddering, sobbing, in the chains. She was scarcely aware that the man had left her side, and that Targo, too, was no longer on the shelf.

“Hold me, touch me, please!” she sobbed. But she was alone.

“Slut, slut, slut!” hissed Cichek.

“Helpless slave-girl slut!” hissed Emris.

“Despicable, disgusting slave!” said Cichek.

“No more airs for you, slave girl,” said Emris. “You are the lowest of the low!”

Ellen lay back on the cement, frightened, and pulled a little at the shackles confining her. She looked up at the sky, and the clouds. “Come back, and hold me, a little, please,” she whimpered, more to herself than to another.

“You are a slut,” said Cichek. “Admit it.”

“Yes, Mistress,” whispered Ellen. “I am a slut.”

So he who had been her master had been right about her, even on Earth. He had seen through the severity of her costume, her mien of disinterested inertness and frigidity, through the carefully constructed defenses and facades of her aloofness and professionalism, to the helpless, waiting, naked, passionate slave girl beneath.

Later that day it rained, a long, cold rain, and it rained heavily. The market was muchly emptied, the bustling to-and-fro business of the stalls, of the spread blankets, laden with small goods, the endless, vigorous hagglings, ceasing in the devastating inclemency of the weather. Merchants and their customers, those who did not flee to their homes, or nearby doorways, took refuge against walls and under overhangs, and beneath striped canopies, which soon sagged, and bulged, and, soaking, dripped with the downpour. Ellen lay on her back, chained as she had been, between the two rings, between which, at the touch of a stranger, she had found herself, to her consternation, begging, and bucking and rocking, and squirming, piteously, in the throes of her first slave orgasm, as rudimentary and minor though it might have been. He gave me no choice, she told herself, again and again. And perhaps that was true, but she knew, as well, that she had not wanted a choice, that she had only wanted the continuance, and fulfillment, of those sensations, sensations which she had only dimly sensed, earlier, in her training, and in the hands of Mirus, might lie within her. He gave me no choice, she told herself, again and again, but she knew he had been willing to stop, and more than once, but when he had done so, she had begged for the persistence of his predations, answering to the desperate needs of her vulnerable, needful slavehood. What am I, she asked herself, moving her ankles, and her helplessly confined wrists, a little, in her shackles and manacles. She moved her neck a bit, too, in her collar, that collar which was not the typical light, graceful slave collar, the attractive collar worn by most slave girls in the city, which might merely mark her as bond and identify her master, but the large, heavy, massive collar put by Targo on his properties, that they might, to escape the discomfort and indignity of such impediments, all the more eagerly submit themselves to the consideration of prospective buyers, collars, too, which, if they strayed, or fled, assuming they might obtain the unlikely opportunity to do so, would immediately call attention to themselves.

“Guardsman! Search for an escaped slave in a weight collar, a high collar of thick, black iron, hammered shut about her neck, its two forward projections pierced, a dangling, two-hort iron ring threaded through the piercings!”

So Ellen lay on the cement shelf, chained, closing her eyes, shuddering, shivering, half blinded by the cold, driving rain. She whimpered and moaned. The rain pelted against her, mercilessly, and she felt it run about her body, and, striking the cement, splash up, against her, like spray. Her hair was soaked. Water ran within her collar, and under the constraints she wore. She was bedraggled. Her hair was soaked, and it clung about her forehead and throat. Had Targo’s women been permitted slave cosmetics, they would have run about their lips and eyes, and stained the shelf. But Targo seldom wasted slave cosmetics on his properties, claiming the honesty of his wares, and the right of a buyer to understand clearly, and in all respects, the exact nature, pure, raw and simple, of the goods he proffered. Too, to be sure, cosmetics, even slave cosmetics, were not free, but cost their coins. Ellen would later learn that slave girls would fight for a lipstick or an eye shadow, that they might enhance their beauty and prove more pleasing to masters. Too, Ellen would learn later that slaves were sometimes tied outside, exposed in cruel weather, that they might learn to better appreciate the warmth of a fire, the significance of a blanket, the snugness of a place at the foot of the master’s couch.

What am I, she wondered. What am I, truly?

And she feared she knew the answer.

After a few minutes the rain stopped, rather suddenly, as it had begun, and water dripped from awnings, and trickled through cracks in the paving stones of the market square, and the sun again blazed down, as before, yellow, hot, indifferent, merciless. Some bustle in the market resumed, though muted now, and water was brushed away from the stalls, and, in places, blankets were again spread and various goods, pans, vessels, jewelries, and such, were arranged on the dark, woolen surfaces. The sound of leather sandals and boots was softened, and subtly different now, on the damp stones. There was the sound of a heavy, trundling wheel moving through a puddle. A child splashed and was reprimanded. Ellen could hear, too, now and then, the clack of high, wooden, platformlike, cloglike footwear, such as is sometimes worn by free women, particularly of high caste, which lift the hems of their gowns a bit from the ground, and serve to protect delicately slippered or sandaled feet from dust and mud. Ellen did not look at them, for she feared free women, and, as most slave girls, avoided meeting their eyes directly, lest they be thought insolent and be punished. The water on the shelf became warm and began to steam upward in the heat.

Much then seemed to her incomprehensible.

How came I here, she asked herself, how thus?

I am on a different world, she thought, a world foreign and strange to me, an exotic world, a beautiful, frightening world, an incredible, startling, vital world, a world so different, a world so alive, a world so very different from my own.

And on this world I am chained, she thought. And I am branded and collared. On this world I find myself only a chained slave.

I can be bought and sold. I exist only to give pleasure to men. I am owned, literally owned, and I must obey, and with all the perfection I can muster.

I remember the sensations. I must have more. I cannot live without them. I want them, desperately, needfully. How the beasts, in all their brutish, careless innocence, have made me theirs! I writhe in my chains, a needful slave. Oh, buy me, Masters! I will serve you well. I will kneel at your feet and lick and kiss them, and beg for your touch!

Oh, dismiss these thoughts, she cried to herself.

You must not be a woman, you must not be so alive, you must not be so needful! You must not desire to love and serve! Castigate such temptations! Ridicule yourself for such tender, animal realities! Think yourself because of them small and disgusting! Seek redemptive frigidity! Praise inertness! Sing the glories of the dull, dismal body! Put aside feeling! Deny the deepest heart of hearts! Dare not desire to love, dare not desire to serve! How improper, how terrible, how wicked to be alive, and needful and loving!

I am chained, she thought. I am on a different world, a world foreign and strange to me, an exotic world, a beautiful, frightening world, a world so different from my own, a world on which I am branded and collared, a world on which I am a slave.

But it is appropriate that I am chained and collared, for I am a slave.

It is what I am, and what I want to be! Oh, dear world, dearest world, give me a strong master, one who will master me uncompromisingly as I desire to be mastered, that I may fulfill myself, in my pleasing of him, in my serving of him, in my delighting of him.

How terrible, how unworthy I am, she thought.

I must have those sensations again. I will do anything for them!

How terrible, how wicked I am!

Mirus, Mirus, she thought, what have you done to me?

It was a slave orgasm, she thought, or something like one. I must have it again! I will do anything for it! Could I do so, were I not so chained, I would kiss my fingers and press them to my collar. And yet it was not a matter of simple sensation, no simple episode, even lingering, of the excitation of tissues. It was muchly other than simply that. It was flames and clouds, forces of nature, winds and storms, earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanoes, floods, an entirety of experience, a coming of seasons of being, a time of wholeness. In it there burst alive a universe of significance, a world of meaningfulness. In it was the defiant rootedness and tenacity of life. In it the grass became green, and the stars sang. In those moments I became ecstatically one with the glory of the universe. In my small way I attained a level of consciousness I had not known could exist, and glimpsed the promise of endless horizons, of infinite mornings, and yet, too, I learned that I was only a slave in the hands of a master.