Prize of Gor (78 page)

“Yes, Mistress,” smiled Ellen.

Feike laughed.

“Feike!” snapped the whip master.

“Done!” said Feike. “Look in the mirror! See a slave!”

Feike then stood up and lifted her arms, took a deep breath, and twirled, and stamped her feet twice into the rug.

There was a jangle of slave bells.

“Thank you, Feike!” said Ellen, looking up, and then, as Feike rushed through the silk, Lois returning, Ellen turned to look in the mirror.

She gasped.

“Stand slave, face me,” said the interior whip master.

Ellen complied, frightened. How could she stand to have a man see her as she now was?

“Excellent,” said the man.

Ellen sank down to her knees, not daring to look again into the mirror.

“If I had my way,” said the man, “that is the way they would be sold off the block, at least to begin with. They could be stripped, bit by bit, during the sale, until the buyers have no difficulty seeing what they are paying for. It is too bad that they do not permit cosmetics, eye shadow, lipstick, body paint, and such, on the block. We would get a great deal more for you sluts.” Ellen had been sold from the shelf of Targo without the benefit of cosmetics, of course. And she had understood that, whereas it was not unusual to strip a woman, little by little, during her sale, to increase the heat of the bids, that the slaves were always, when all was said and done, exhibited as only slave, raw. Goreans want to know what they are buying. An auction house in Venna was once burned down, she had heard, when it was discovered that it had sold women with dyed hair, especially as the house had not called this to the attention of the buyers. In the courts the owner’s claim of inadvertence was viewed skeptically. Considering the number of slaves to be vended over the next two or three days in the camp, Ellen did not think the agents of Cos would have time for the tantalizing allures of gradual unveilings. Such luxuries in any event were usually reserved for the sales of high slaves.

“You are lovely,” said one of the girls, who had not noticed her before.

“Thank you,” murmured Ellen.

“Do you dance in the manner of Turia, or of Ar?” asked another of the slaves.

“I do not think so,” said Ellen.

“Perhaps,” said another, “in the manner of Schendi, or of the Tahari?”

“I cannot even dance!” said Ellen, suddenly.

“Oh, yes!” laughed one of the dancers, merrily.

The others looked at her, strangely, and then turned away.

“It is very crowded,” whispered one of the girls, peeping through the curtain.

Ellen rose to her feet, and suddenly stopped, frightened by the sound of bells on her left ankle. It was the first time since her training that she had worn such things. There was no mistaking the meaning, the message, of that sensuous jangle. It was stimulatory, and insistently, proclaimedly, excitingly erotic. Some masters keep their slaves in bells in their private compartments. Others may bell them sometimes before putting them to the furs, enjoying the jangle of the bells while the slave writhes helplessly, beggingly, in the throes of her slave ecstasy. The bells bespeak, and would bespeak, of course, even in total darkness, the presence of a slave. Sometimes new slaves are kept for a time in bells, that they may become all the sooner accustomed to their new condition. It is hard to be belled, without knowing oneself female, and slave. Ellen, thus, was well marked for the occasion, and the dance. She was a belled slave.

Then she, too, her movements marked by the sound of her affixed slave bells, went to the curtain.

Feike was lovely.

If only I could dance, thought Ellen, mournfully, to herself.

She could not see the outside whip master, but she had no doubt that he was there, appraisingly there, ready to snap the whip in warning, or, if necessary, or thought useful, to put it to the back of a dancer.

Ellen examined the crowd, desperately. There were many men there, perhaps better than two hundred, crowded within that rather small enclosure. In the front, in several half circles, they sat, closely together, cross-legged. In the back, they stood, some at the very poles at the rear of the enclosure. There was a variety of caste colors. Some soldiers were there, too. Many ostraka had been vended. There were no women in the crowd. Any gentling, refining influence which their presence might have exercised was thus absent. The slaves would thus be dancing for men, for Gorean men. Some of the men in the crowd she had seen before, here and there in the camp. She had served some of them near the vat of Callimachus. She saw the scribe who had been in charge of her in the exhibition cage. She did not see Mirus. “So,” she thought, “he has put me here, to be humiliated, and beaten, here where I will be exquisitely punished for my boldness before him, in daring to suggest that he might find me of interest, slave interest! And he further insults me by his absence! He does not even come to see me perform, and painfully receive the deserts he has measured out and arranged for me, as punishment for my supposed insolence. Well, noble Mirus,
of Earth
, so be it! But I think you do find this Earth slut of interest, regardless of what you might claim! Do you think a slave is not aware of the meaning of a master’s glances?”

Ellen stepped back.

Feike, smiling, sweating, breathing deeply, brushed back through the silk, and another slave, at a gesture of the interior whip master, hurried to the sand.

I can only be beaten so much, thought Ellen. And I do not think they will kill me. And as each is to dance thrice, it is not as though they will feel particularly cheated, for after me will come Ita once again, who is a fine dancer. They will then see that it was a joke that I be sent to the circle. I will then be drawn from the roster, beaten, and permitted, I trust, to return to the vat of Callimachus. That is what will happen. I did not ask to come to the circle. They cannot blame me. I warned them. Perhaps they will be merely amused at the clever jest. Too, a girl from another circle, say, one of the free circles, might be hurried here to take my place.

But I am frightened, terribly frightened, she told herself.

Girl after girl went to the sand and returned.

Ellen felt she could scarcely move. She was tempted to run, to try to leave the enclosure by the back entrance, through which she had been introduced into it. After all, she was not chained there, one of a set of kneeling dancing slaves, to be released, one after the other, from a shackle, to be returned to its obdurate clasp when her performance was concluded.

She looked to the back entrance, wildly.

“117, be ready,” said the interior whip master.

Ellen knew there was no escape for her. For the Gorean slave girl there is no escape.

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen.

The opening seemed inviting, seemingly beckoning her to flee into an alluring, salubrious, safely concealing darkness beyond, but for all the good it would have done her, it might as well have been sealed with granite and iron. She might as well have been chained hand and foot, and neck, to a heavy ring fixed in the bottom of a narrow, cement, well-like slave pit, looking up at the iron grating yards above her head.

But there was time. The other girl had scarcely begun to dance.

Then there was, from outside on the sand, the sudden sound of a snapping whip. Ellen started. It was not only that the sound was unexpected, and sharp, but that its significance carried a special meaning for such as she, a slave.

Outside there was some hooting, some angry cries of men.

Then, only a moment or two later, she heard the whip again, twice, and this time cries of pain, doubtless from the exhibited dancer.

In a moment, clutching her silk about her, it parted by the whip, crying, the chastised dancer fled within the preparation enclosure. It was she who had appropriated the bracelet from Ellen, and it was still on her wrist. “It serves you right, arrogant slave girl,” thought Ellen. “Now you are not so proud!” The woman knelt on the rug within the small enclosure, bent over, holding her arms about herself, weeping bitterly. There was blood on her back. She looked up at Ellen for an instant, and then looked down, miserably. No longer was she proud and beautiful. Now she was only a whipped slave. “Next time, 51, Dara,” said the interior whip master, “you will dance better.” He held his whip down and she fled to it on her knees and kissed it, and then put her head down, kissing his sandals. “Yes, Master,” she sobbed. “Yes, Master!”

“51,” thought, Ellen. “Such a high number! To be sure, she is so beautiful! What would she have done wrong? Perhaps she had been overconfident. Perhaps she had thought herself too good to be danced in this place, before such men. Perhaps she had not given her best performance? Perhaps she had held something back?”

The men were shouting angrily outside.

The interior whip master looked up from the beautiful penitent slave at his feet, as though suddenly coming to his senses. “117!” he cried. “Out, little fool, onto the sand!”

With one last look at the beaten slave, and with terror and a sinking heart, and a jangle of slave bells, Ellen, clutching her veil about her silks, rushed abjectly through the curtain and half stumbled to the sand outside.

There was a sound of interest, and laughter, from the men, and then they were expectant, quiet.

Ellen realized, suddenly, that it had not occurred to them to take her clumsiness at its face value. This was the ba-ta circle. Surely it was intentional on her part. Slave girls are not clumsy, certainly not after they have learned their collars. They are the most vulnerable, feminine and graceful of women, for they are owned, for they belong to men, and dancers, of course, are also slave girls and thus, and certainly given their special training, will presumably be in no way inferior to their more common sisters in bondage. As an incidental observation, it is interesting to note that the grace of the dancer, though, of course, not the special training of the dancer, is expected of all slave girls, and most certainly of those who like Ellen must kneel before men in the spread-kneed position, that is, the pleasure slaves.

Ellen knelt then in the sand and put her head down to the sand, that it might be clear to all that she was a slave and acknowledged them her masters.

She wanted them to be in no doubt about that.

How well and perfectly she knew herself the slave of men!

It was what she was, and knew herself to be!

I am yours, Masters, she thought to herself.

I am that sort of woman, she who is, and knows herself to be, a man’s slave, only that!

Please do not beat me!

Then she rose to her feet and put her veil about her head, wrapping it closely about her head and shoulders, concealing even her face. It was much as though she might be a free woman, though surely the bells on her ankle and her silks belied that possibility. She then walked about the dancing area, erect, proudly, gracefully, but keeping herself concealed.

To be sure, her feet were bare, and there were bells on her left ankle. This created, to the Gorean thinking, a paradox.

She was sure she was beautiful, and that the men, who had glimpsed her for an instant when she entered upon the sand, had seen that, but only for a tantalizing moment. Her beauty, she hoped, might save her, compensating to a significant extent for her ignorance of slave dance. To be sure, she had seen the women moving in the circles. She could not control her body with the subtlety they manifested, but she could see some of the simpler things they did, and she had some sense of what it might be to yield to such music, to obey it, to surrender herself to it, abjectly, as an aroused, commanded slave.

She walked about the circle once more, the veil closely about her, concealing even her features.

The whip master, whom she noted with care, seemed puzzled, but tolerant. Certainly his hand was not clutched menacingly upon his whip, the coiled blade of which, visibly, bore stains of blood, that of her humbled predecessor. The first czehar player, in whose charge were the musicians, appeared puzzled as well, but continued to elicit from his instrument, held across his knees, subtle melodies which sang of life and nature, which hinted of men and women, and masters and slaves. The music followed Ellen, quietly, expectantly, enhancing her contrived mystery.

Then, suddenly, Ellen, without permission, turned about and gracefully, regally, and with a toss of her head, exited the sand, going through the parting of the silk to the preparation enclosure.

There was silence behind her.

The other dancers were awaiting her, many wide-eyed and frightened.

“I do not understand,” said Feike. “What are you doing?”

“Being a slave,” said Ellen.

Suddenly, from outside the preparation enclosure, there were shouts of pleasure, and the smiting of the left shoulder, in Gorean applause.

“Ita,” cried the interior whip master, “to the sand!”

Ita hurried through the parting in the silk.

“What were you doing?” asked the interior whip master of Ellen.

“Dancing,” she said.

“That is not dancing,” he said.

“There is more than one way to dance, Master,” said Ellen. And, as she knelt down by the cosmetics table, she thought to herself, “I have not yet been beaten. But what shall I do now? Surely I am no more than the width of a strand of slave silk from the blows of the lash.”

The second time the beaten slave, 51, Dara, had apparently danced well. She had not been permitted to change her silks, and they were parted in the back, where the whip had cut through them. In her dance she had piteously, and abjectly, made it clear to the masters that not only did she now respect them, but that she was now pathetically concerned to subject herself to their pleasure, even as though she were their own slave. Gone was now any arrogance or haughtiness. Gone now was any suggestion that she might be too good to dance for such as they. Now it was clear that she was only a humbled, punished slave who had well learned her lesson. She danced now as a grateful slave who was inordinately privileged to, and profoundly grateful for the opportunity to, be granted permission to perform for them, for those who were a thousand times, nay, immeasurably, above her. She even incorporated into her dance, turning away from the crowd, the stripes upon her back, exhibiting them, where the admonitions of the whip had recalled her to a clearer sense of her position and condition. Ellen was, on the whole, pleased that 51, she called ‘Dara’, had not been again displeasing, and had not been again subjected to the typical Gorean consequences attendant upon the least lapse into slave laxity, but, on the other hand, she realized that she herself would now find herself contrasted not with a slave who had failed to please masters but with one who had been only too obviously pleasing. Given the Gorean applause, the striking of the left shoulder, the callings out of the men, Ellen supposed that Dara, upon returning to the area of preparation area, would be flushed with insolent triumph. On the other hand, when she returned, she seemed white-faced, and shaken, and grateful that this time things had gone as well as they had.