Conspirators of Gor (97 page)

“We might set up a table, and sit on mats,” he said.

“But not in a certain place,” I said.

“No,” he smiled, “not in a certain place.”

That place, I gathered, quiet and secluded, with its soft grass and flowers, might be a private place, a very private place, one reserved for a master’s different feasting.

“The Lady Bina may wish to entertain again,” I said.

“I suspect so,” he said. “But eventually we must to Harfax.”

“When?” I asked.

“In a few days,” he said.

“I am naked and shackled,” I said. “I am at Master’s mercy.”

“So?” he said.

“Is it not time for shackle check?” I asked.

“She-sleen,” he smiled.

“Master?” I said.

He knelt beside me, and put his hand about my left ankle, and examined the enclosing shackle. My ankle was well grasped. I moved a little. I trembled, a little, from the closeness of my master. He then jerked the chain against the shackle ring, and then against the slave ring, set in the couch.

He then stood up, and I put out my hand to him.

“The slave is secured,” he said.

“Master!” I said.

“What?” he asked.

I put my head down. “Nothing,” I said.

He turned away.

“Master,” I said, frightened.

“What is wrong?” he asked.

I looked up.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I begin to sense,” I said, “what it might be, to be denied.”

“Just now?” he asked.

“Earlier, too, sometimes,” I said, “amongst the wagons, in camps, in the Voltai, in the Cave.”

“More so, now?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“You had subsided,” he said. “Now things are beginning, again.”

“Did you do this to me?” I asked.

“Not I alone,” he said. “You have felt such things before.”

“Yes,” I said, uncertainly.

“It is common,” he said. “Sometimes it begins as early as the block, your bare feet in the sawdust, the men bidding on you, you knowing that you are being sold, sometimes from as early as your first enclosure in a slave cage, you kneeling there, looking out, grasping the bars, sometimes with your stripping and the locking of the collar on your neck. Even on your old world you must have felt such things.”

“Restlessness, desire, curiosity, a helplessness one attempted to dismiss,” I said.

“But here it is different,” he said.

“Here I am a slave,” I whispered.

“You are aware of your vulnerability, of what is expected of you, of how you may now be, and must now be, what you have always wanted to be,” he said.

“I am afraid,” I said.

“Surely you have felt the restlessness, the agitation, the discomfort, the uneasiness of a female slave before,” he said.

“It makes me helpless,” I said.

“I expect your slave fires began to burn as long ago as the house of Tenalion,” he said.

“One cannot help such things,” I said.

“Nor should you,” he said.

“One must try to suppress them, to deny and crush them,” I said.

“You are no longer on Earth,” he said.

“One must try!” I wept.

“You are on Gor,” he said. “It is not permitted.”

“One must try!” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

“I must crush them!”

“You will not be able to do so.”

“Surely you will be understanding with me, and kind to me,” I said.

“No,” he said, “and neither will any other master.”

How pleased I was to hear this, that I would have no choice but to be, and choicelessly so, as I wanted to be, a vulnerable slave, at my master’s mercy.

“I think what you may not fully understand,” he said, “is, as I suggested earlier, that more is involved here than permissions, commands, and such. Once things have begun, as I think they have with you, they will take their course, as much as hunger or thirst.”

“One cannot die of such deprivation,” I said.

“Happily not,” he said, “or, as I gather, the population of females on your former world would be considerably diminished.”

I did not respond to this. I did know that many, if not most, women of my former world lived in a sexual desert. How astonished then were some for the discovery, on Gor, of true men, at whose feet, stripped and collared, they might gratefully kneel.

“They can, of course,” he said, “be miserable, know agony, suffer recurrent, excruciating discomfort.”

“Yes, Master,” I said. Often enough I had heard of deprived slaves, being readied for sale, moaning, and scratching at the walls of their kennels. I had heard, often enough, too, of beautiful slaves crawling to the feet of hated masters, begging piteously for the relief of a caress.

“Sooner or later,” he said, “slave fires begin to burn in the bellies of slaves. Then, over time, they become more frequent, and more intense. They will rage within you, and enwrap you, belly and body, in their enveloping, insistent flames.”

“Men are cruel,” I said.

“They are men,” he said.

“Masters!” I said.

“And women?” he asked.

“Slaves!” I said, angrily.

“I doubt that you are, at present, aware of this,” he said, “but the strongest bond on a female slave is not fiber, leather, cord, or iron. It is her slave needs.”

“Men have made her so!” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“But I would not,” I whispered, “have it otherwise.”

“It will not be otherwise,” he said.

“No wonder free women hate us so!” I said.

“They know women belong to men,” he said, “and in the slave it is manifest, for there before them is a woman who belongs to men.”

“Yes, Master,” I said.

“Too,” he said, “they are furious that the slave’s beauty is public, as they secretly wish was theirs, and that men, when they want pleasure, rather than station, opportunity, advancement, position, prestige, and such, seek out not them, but the slave. They resent it, too, that the slave’s sexual needs are deep, profound, and blatant, and that she satisfies them. Too, they suspect the slave’s erotic ecstasies, afflicting her entire mind and body, the glow imbuing her entire yielded, subdued existence, the profundity of the submitted female’s succession of uncontrollable orgasms, the raptures of a begging, thrashing chattel’s responses, the daily joy, in large things and small, she knows in a master’s collar.”

“Master,” I whispered.

“Yes?” he said.

“Take me,” I begged.

“Your slave fires have begun to burn, have they not?” he asked.

“Yes!” I said.

“You have begun to sense what might be done with you, what you might become?” he said.

“Yes!” I said.

“Perhaps I should deny you,” he said.

“Please do not deny me, Master,” I said. “Be merciful, Master!”

“Do you, a former woman of Earth,” he said, “beg for sex?”

“Yes, Master,” I said. “I beg for sex. I beg for sex!”

“As a slave begs for sex?” he asked.

“Yes, Master,” I said. “I beg for sex. I beg for sex, as a slave begs for sex!”

“Very well,” he said.

“Master, Master!” I sobbed, joyfully, gratefully.

Chapter Fifty-Three

Harfax is indeed beautiful.

This writing, as it should be, and, as I suppose is clear, is addressed primarily to Goreans.

I have written it in my native language, surely unknown to most of you, which is called “English.” My master, Desmond of Harfax, of the house of Desmond in Harfax, in the high Merchantry of Harfax, has arranged, as I understand it, to have it translated into Gorean. Thus, it is intended, at least in part, to come to the attention of at least some Gorean speakers. At least several copies will be transcribed and distributed. It is my conjecture that it is as unlikely to be taken any more seriously by them than, as I gather, the numerous warnings issued privately to various city councils on known Gor. Most, as I understand it, were dismissed as charlatanry. But perhaps some of those who so dismissed them had already been contacted by agents of Kurii. The wagons of Pausanias left the Voltai long before Lord Grendel and his party could reach civilization.

I must apologize to Masters and Mistresses, free Goreans, who might read this narrative. In some respects I have doubtless told what you already know. My excuse, I suppose, is my background, which is quite other than yours. Accordingly, I have remarked often, I fear, on matters familiar to you, but which I found striking, or of interest. But, too, I have been told, it might be read, in its original language, by some of my former world, as well. In a sense then, it is written for two worlds. The primary motivation of the writing, I suppose, is to carry forward, particularly for Goreans, the project of apprising citizenries of fearsome, largely unrecognized dangers. To be sure, as I understand it, my former world, Earth, despite its poisons and pollutions, its depleted resources and ecological injuries, its filths and crowdings, is not outside the purview of Kur attention. Apparently, both Earth and Gor, at least for the time, owe their precarious security to the informed self-interest of Priest-Kings, who prefer for Kurii, on the whole at least, to be restricted to distant, relatively innocuous habitats, concealed amongst the remote “river of stones.” Whereas Kurii are primarily interested in Gor, as a fresh, unspoiled world, the resources of Earth, and its relative proximity to the orbit of Gor, would make it a dangerous staging area for attacks on Gor. A great deal in this writing, of course, is very personal. My master, Desmond of Harfax, has been very indulgent in this regard. He has recognized that this writing might be of possible service not only for its monitory aspects, political and military, particularly for Gor, but for its value to a slave, permitting her to tell her story. It has done her a great deal of good to have been “permitted to speak” in such a way. How much happier we are when we are permitted to express ourselves! Sometimes my master, when it pleases him, loosens the disrobing loop on my tunic, allowing it to fall to my ankles, ties my hands behind my back, and kneels me before him, while he reclines in a curule chair, allowing me to speak. Whereas I have a general permission to speak, I love such times, for it reminds me that I am a slave before her master, and that I require permission to speak. Indeed, it was at such a time that I first asked for permission to write my story. To my delight I learned that he had already contemplated commanding me to such a writing, for three reasons, a monitory reason, contributing to informing Goreans, and others, of danger; a personal reason for me, that I might be able to profit from the ventilative salubrity of self-expression, of narration, reflection, contemplation, and confession; and, lastly, that he might know more of his slave, her innermost feelings, thoughts, and emotions. Nothing in a slave may be hidden from the master. This is not unusual, as men are often closely concerned with their possessions. Many masters, for example, are very well aware of their slave’s body, every part of it, every mark, every fault and blemish. I do not know, but I suspect very few female free companions are studied, and examined, with the same interest and thoroughness. Indeed, perhaps it would be improper. And just as, of course, a master might well know the lovely, vulnerable map of his slave’s body, he is, too, interested in the map of her history, her background, her feelings, her thoughts, and such. I have been told that even a master with a large pleasure garden, well stocked with kajirae, may force the poor slave to speak at length of herself, either before or after she is put to use. To be sure, there are also masters, as I understand it, to whom the slave is no more than a frightened, impersonal object, of less concern than a pet sleen or kaiila. Indeed, I fear many slaves start out that way. They need not, one hopes, end up that way.

I think I have made clear, however, that many masters are reluctant to admit that they might care for a slave. Who, for example, would be inclined to admit that he might care for a mere slave?

They are nothing. Buy them in any girl market. Buy them and sell them. They are cheap.

It is time to close this story.

Please forgive me, Masters and Mistresses, for my weaknesses, my failures, my foolishness, my many faults.

You expect them, of course, in a slave.

Dear Masters, remain true to the mastery.

Dear Mistresses, remember that we are not so different from you, and that you, too, one day, might be collared.

I wish you all well.

Allison, if her Master pleases.

Appendix

The text, as I have it, contains no detailed exposition of the nature of the “deck” which seems to be in question here. To those readers accustomed to the uniformities and standardizations of a modern industrial and technological society, where diversity has come to mean thinking alike and agreeing on everything, the genuine liberties and remarkable differences of a plurality of, say, municipal cultures is likely to be troubling. If one expects everything to be the same, it is easy to object when something is found not to be the same. On the other hand, if one does not expect everything to be the same, one is less likely to be troubled. To take a simple example, consider the Gorean alphabet, or alphabets. From the above text it would seem that one Gorean alphabet might contain, say, twenty-eight letters, and another perhaps more or less. That the modern English alphabet contains twenty-six letters is obviously arbitrary, and requires that several different sounds, in some cases, be represented by the same letter, say, ‘a’. One might have a different letter for these sounds. An alphabet presumably represents a pragmatic compromise between enough letters to be useful, and few enough to be manageable. In one Earth language, English, its entire vocabulary is specifiable in terms of some fifty phonemes, or sounds, out of a theoretically infinite number of sounds which a human being might make. Here, too, we see something of a pragmatic compromise between elegance and utility. Another example of Gorean difference, which some may find troubling, is that in some versions of kaissa the piece called the Home Stone is permitted to capture, and in other versions it lacks this capacity. Goreans do not object to this. They merely wish to know which version will be played. Returning to the question of cards, I will supply an account, however inadequate, of the nature of a Gorean “deck.” It is based on the only account I have been able to find in what one might refer to as the Gorean Miscellany,” a plethora of materials often accompanying, but independent of, various narrative manuscripts. Almost all of the “Miscellany” has accompanied the Cabot manuscripts, and this material, much of it unorganized, and sometimes tantalizingly incomplete, seems to have little in common other than the fact that Mr. Cabot may have found it of interest.