Conspirators of Gor (32 page)

Once, before we were to exit the domicile, Lady Bina instructed me to hitch up the tunic a bit.

“Are you beautiful, Allison?” she asked.

“A little, perhaps,” I said.

“Let us see more of your legs,” she said.

“Yes, Mistress,” I said.

“They are a little thin, are they not?” she asked.

“I do not think so,” I said.

“Show more of them,” she said.

“Yes, Mistress,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “I may have use for your beauty.”

“Mistress?” I said, uneasily.

“For men,” she said.

“Yes, Mistress,” I said.

“Come along,” she said.

“Yes, Mistress,” I said.

As it was daylight the beast did not accompany us. It seldom went out until darkness.

One reason I had been purchased, I gathered, was to have a companion for the Lady Bina when she left the house.

We were in the Sul Market one afternoon.

“Allison,” said the Lady Bina, “are you attractive to men?”

“I think so, Mistress,” I said, “a little, sometimes, perhaps.”

To be sure, I thought myself quite attractive. Had I not been one of the most beautiful girls in the sorority, a sorority in which membership, clearly, was not unrelated to beauty? And now, of course, I was enslaved, and slavery much enhances the beauty of a woman. Collared and slave-clad what woman would not be beautiful? And there is the meaning and nature of the condition which in itself enhances the beauty of a woman a thousandfold, for she is then slave.

To be sure, not every woman is attractive, or particularly attractive, to every man. Too, of course, not every woman who yearns to be at the feet of a man yearns to be at the feet of every man. A woman who might plead for the collar of one man might tremble at being placed in the collar of another.

“Do you like being attractive to men?” she asked.

“Must I answer, Mistress?” I said.

“Certainly,” she said, “and remember that you are a slave.”

Slaves may not lie.

“Yes, Mistress,” I whispered.

Every woman likes to be attractive to men. Even women who hate men like to be attractive to them, if only to humiliate and torture them. In the college I had taken great pleasure in my attractiveness to boys and men, even those I held in contempt. Now, I realized, such might own me.

An important aspect of a slave’s life is closely associated with her attractiveness to men. The quality of her life is muchly affected by her desirability. How will she be fed, clothed, treated? Who will buy her? Must she compete with other slaves for the attention of the master? It is no wonder the slave strives to make herself exciting, attractive, and desirable, and as a slave. It is no wonder she strives to be pleasing to her master.

Too, it is not unknown for the slave to discover, sooner or later, perhaps to her trepidation, that she loves the man whose chain she wears.

Let her hope then that she will not find herself hooded and returned to a market.

“I would make test of your attractiveness to men,” said the Lady Bina.

“Mistress?” I said, puzzled.

“It is one thing for which you were purchased,” she said.

“There are no men in the house,” I said.

“There are many here, in the market,” she said, “large men, strong men.”

“Mistress?” I said, frightened.

“Have you had what they call Slave Wine?”

“Yes, Mistress,” I said, “in the house of Tenalion.”

“I shall give you ten Ehn,” she said.

“My head was shaved!” I said.

“You now have less than ten Ehn,” she said.

“Surely Mistress jests,” I said.

“You were purchased for twenty copper tarsks,” she said. “I am sure, now that you are cleaned up, and such, I could get at least twenty-five for you, if I sold you to a butcher, for sleen feed.”

“Surely Mistress would not do so,” I said.

“I could then purchase another girl, perhaps again at the Tarsk Market, one more attractive,” she said.

“I do not want to die,” I said.

“You are a slave,” she said. “You are supposed to want sex, even need it.”

“Please, Mistress!” I protested.

Certainly I had felt uneasiness, and, from time to time, after I had been collared, I had felt it acutely.

But, from the lingering effects of my Earth conditioning, and my newness to the state of bondage, I was not yet the helpless victim of the raging slave fires which so frequently tormented and dominated the bellies and bodies of many slaves.

Had I been I would have begged on my knees, or belly, for sex.

“Something like nine Ehn now,” said the Lady Bina.

“Please, no!” I cried.

The blue eyes of the Lady Bina regarded me, over the street veil, seemingly pleasantly, seemingly impassively. I did not sense that she was angry, or cruel. Again the mystery of her background alarmed me.

I cried out in misery and fled away, a few yards, and put myself to my knees before a stallsman.

I put down my head and pressed my lips to his sandals. “I am a slave vessel for your pleasure!” I said. “I am docile. I will be obedient. I am sure your touch would heat me, and well!”

“Are you mad?” he said.

“No, Master!” I said. “I beg use!”

“Here?” he laughed.

“Anywhere,” I said. “But soon, soon!”

“Where is your coin box, your pan?” he asked.

“I have none!” I said.

“What do you want?” he said.

“A copper tarsk!” I said. I thought it well to say something, that I might be more believable.

He laughed.

“A tarsk-bit, a tarsk-bit!” I said.

“No,” he said. “And how do I know you would give it to your master.”

“I have no master,” I said.

He regarded my tunic. “You are a woman’s serving slave?” he said.

“Yes, Master!” I said.

“No coin, no coin, nothing!” I said.

“On your way,” he said. “I am selling.”

“Master!” I begged.

He then pushed me with his foot to the stones, and turned to a customer, a free woman.

“How disgusting,” said the free woman.

The stallsman shrugged. “She is a slave,” he said.

I looked back, to where the Lady Bina was watching.

I then leapt up, and looked wildly about.

I next approached a fellow of the Leather Workers, or so I supposed, for he had several loops of harness slung about his shoulders. I barely noticed that several of harnesses slung about his shoulders were slave harness, a form of ingenious harnessing in which a slave might be variously, pleasingly, constrained and exhibited. In such fastenings, easily and conveniently applied, attractive and adjustable, a slave is well apprised of her bondage, as would be any who might care to look upon her.

“Please, Master!” I begged.

“Why are you wearing a kerchief?” he asked.

Tears sprang to my eyes, and he jerked it away. I heard men laugh. I put down my head, shamed.

When I looked up, he had gone.

Quickly I put the kerchief once more about my head.

“A mill girl,” I heard a fellow say.

“She has a serving-slave tunic,” said another.

“Probably she looked at a man,” speculated another.

There was more laughter.

I had no better fortune with two others.

I rushed back to my Mistress, and knelt and wept, “No one wants me! I am shorn! I am shorn!”

“I am disappointed, Allison,” said the Lady Bina. “It seems to me that you would be of interest to men, not that I am a likely judge in such matters.”

“I am sure I could be of interest, Mistress,” I said.

“I am sure some would find you of interest, Allison,” she said.

“Yes Mistress!” I said.

“Perhaps sleen,” she said. “Would you like to be thrown, naked and bound, into a sunken sleen cage?”

“No, Mistress!” I said.

“Five Ehn,” she said.

I rose up, again, and ran a few feet away. I tried to tear the collar from my neck. It read, “I belong to the Lady Bina, of Emerald Street, of the house of Epicrates.” It was locked on my neck.

I did not want to die!

“Four Ehn, Allison,” called the Lady Bina.

Then I straightened by body, and, carefully adjusted the collar on my neck, the lock directly at the back. Too, I adjusted the kerchief. I put back my shoulders. I recalled my instructresses from the house of Tenalion. “Remember,” they had told me, “you are a female slave, and the female slave is the most helpless, vulnerable, exciting, and desirable of all women.” I put up my head, and walked, unhurriedly, in the measured saunter of the slave, proud of her collar, and proud of her womanhood, and well demonstrating it, toward the buildings at the edge of the market. Thus I could be pinned against them. Thus I would have nowhere to run. In its way was this not an invitation? Might it not suggest to someone a convenience, an opportunity? I recalled how the instructresses had drilled me in that gait, at once arrogant, vulnerable, and ready, a gait that said, in effect, “I am a slave, what will you make of that, Masters?” When they were satisfied, they had invited two guards into one of the large training rooms. In this exercise I had been permitted a house tunic. One must learn to wear, and move well within, tunics, camisks, gowns, slave strips, ta-teeras, and such, of various sorts. “Walk,” had said the leader of the instructresses, “walk, Allison, in the third walk of the slave.”

There are, of course, a repertory of behaviors, walks, postures, prostrations, obeisances, and such, with which a slave is trained.

They are, after all, intended to be sold as dreams of pleasure to men.

“Aii!” had cried one of the fellows, leaping up.

In a moment I had been seized by both. I struggled in their arms. I felt myself being lifted from the floor.

“No, no!” laughed the chief instructress. “She is white-silk, white-silk!”

I was much shaken by this experience, but I had learned something of the power of the slave, for she is not without her power.

The two guards left, disgruntled. Doubtless they felt cheated. I am sure they made the instructresses pay later in the “coin of the furs,” not that the instructresses would much mind that. Indeed, I suspected I might have unwittingly figured in their plans.

“Disgusting slut, disgusting, half-naked slut!” hissed a free woman. At least she did not order me to kneel, to be beaten. They so hate us! Or so envy us? She was then away, somewhere. Actually, I was not really half-naked, as many men put their slaves into the streets, but reasonably modestly garbed, as I wore the tunic of a woman’s serving slave, to be sure, one rather more revealing than most.

I walked at the edge of the market, the walls of buildings to my right.

I had been told that larls stalking tabuk would sometimes delay their charge until their prey grazed beside a cliff, a wall of stone, a dense thicket. Indeed, sometimes they would herd, and drive, their prey against such barriers.

It was not so strange then that tabuk commonly grazed in open, or lightly wooded, areas.

The walls were at my right, at my right shoulder.

I gave as little evidence as I could of my fear.

I did not know how many Ehn might be left, perhaps two, perhaps three?

Suddenly an arm, abruptly, startling me, blocked my way, the palm of its hand on the side of the building.

“Serving slave,” pronounced a voice, a harsh, masculine voice. The arm before me, and the hand, were large.

“Master?” I said, stopped.

“Where is your Mistress?” asked the man.

“Somewhere,” I said.

“You do not walk like a serving slave,” he said.

“Forgive me, Master,” I said.

“Are you running away?” he asked.

“No, Master!” I said, frightened.

I was well aware there was no escape for the Gorean slave girl.

“But you have slipped away,” he said.

“Perhaps, Master,” I said.

He removed his hand from the wall, so it no longer blocked my passage. But he now stood before me. I did not try to move about him, or turn, or run away. I was a slave.

He pulled off the kerchief, and freed it of its knot.

“I see this is not the first time you have slipped away,” he said.

I did not respond to him. I let him think that my shearing was a punishment shearing, perhaps from some indiscretion, for which a woman’s serving slave might be punished.

“Perhaps,” he said, “you were also well lashed.”

“Perhaps, Master,” I said.

My kerchief dangled in his right hand.

“Turn about,” he said, “and place your hands, crossed, behind your back.”