Explorers of Gor (53 page)

“It is strange,” she said. “I never thought that in all my life I would kneel before a man and tell him that I was ready to please him in any way he saw fit. Now I have done so, and he does not command me.”

“Perhaps, if you wish,” I said, “you might please me in some way that you see fit.”

“But I am a slave,” she said.

“Precisely,” I said.

“You know, don’t you,” she asked, “that I want to please you as a slave?”

“Of course,” I said. “That is natural. You are a slave.”

“Command me,” she begged.

“No,” I said.

“But I am an Earth woman,” she said.

“Not really any longer,” I said. “You are now a Gorean slave girl.”

“Yes, Master,” she said. She rose lightly to her feet. She lifted the tether away from the slave stake. The tether, knotted on her throat, fastened at the other end to the slave stake, was about seven feet in length.

I watched her.

“I have sexual needs,” she said. “And I want to please my master.”

I shrugged.

She looked down at the slave stake. “I note that this night,” she said, “you did not fasten me to a small tree, as to a slave post, but that you prepared a slave stake.” She then lifted the tether. “I note, too, Master,” she said, “that this tether is somewhat longer than would be needful to secure a miserable slave.”

“You are a highly intelligent woman,” I said. ‘That makes it all the more pleasant to own you.”

“You knew what I would want to do, didn’t you?’ she asked.

“Of course,” I said.

Suddenly she put her head in her hands, sobbing. “I dare not,” she wept. “I dare not! Command me! Command me!”

“No,” I said. I did not hurry her.

In time she took her hands from her face, and wiped away her tears. “Tie me for the night,” she begged.

“Very well,” I said.

“No,” she said. “No!”

“Very well,” I said.

She straightened herself. She smiled. Her eyes were moist “What I am now going to do,” she said. “I do fully and completely of my own free will. I have sexual needs. I shall exhibit the desperation of these needs before my master, in the hope that he will take pity on me and satisfy them. It is also a girl’s hope that in what she does her master will not find her fully displeasing.”

She then, gently, removed the bark skirt from her hips and dropped it to the side.

She then flexed her knees and lifted her hands, the backs of the wrists facing one another, gracefully over her head.

“Wait,” I said.

“Master?” she asked.

“Have you begged to perform?” I asked.

“No, Master,” she said.

“You may now do so,” I said.

“I beg to perform before my master,” she said.

“Very well,” I mid. “You may do so.”

“Thank you, Master,” she said.

She then danced before me, of her own free will, a girl in need, and one desiring to please her master.

Her dance grew ever more desperate and, at times, I had to throw her from me.

Then she lay at the slave stake. She held out a hand to me.

I went to her and seized her by the upper arms and threw her to her feet She looked at me, frightened.

“You did not do badly, Slave Girl,” I said. “But now it is time for you to learn how to truly dance before a man.”

“Master!” she cried in misery.

“Be as you were,” I told her.

Immediately, frightened, she stood again before me, knees flexed, hands raised above her head, gracefully, the backs of her wrists facing one another, in one of the attitudes of the slave dancer.

I jerked the tether on her throat. “This is a tether,” I said. “It is to be well incorporated in your dance. You are a tethered slave. Do not forget it. You may fight the tether, you may love it. It may confine your body, you may use it to caress your body, an invitation to your master, a surrogate symbol of his domination of you. You need not dance always on your feet. A woman can dance beautifully on her knees. moving as little as a hand, or on her back, or belly or side. In all things do not forget that you are a slave.”

“Are you now commanding me to dance before you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, “you dance now as a commanded slave. And if I am not well pleased have no fear but what you will be well beaten, if not slain.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

I then stepped back from her. “When I clap my hands,” I said, “you will dance, Slave.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

I then struck my hands together, and, terrified, the girl danced.

She had not been taught the tether dance, one of the most beautiful of the slave dances of Gor, but she improvised well. Indeed, it was hard to believe that she had not had training. I am inclined to believe that the need dances and display dances of the human female may be, at least in their rudiments, instinctual. I suspect there is a genetic disposition in the woman toward this type of behavior and that certain of the movements, closely associated with luring behavior and love movements, may also be genetically based. One reason for supposing this to be the case is that a girl’s growth in certain forms of dance skills does not follow a normal learning curve. It is rather like the human being’s ability to acquire speech, which also does not follow a normal learning curve. It seems reasonably likely that facility in acquiring speech, which would have enormous survival value, has been selected for. Similarly, a woman’s marvelous adaptability to erotic dance may possibly have been selected for. At any rate, whatever the truth may be in these matters, feminine women, perhaps to the horror of their more masculine sisters, seem to take naturally to the beauties of erotic dance. At the very least, perhaps inexplicably, they are marvelously good at it. These genetic dispositions, of course, if they exist, can be culturally suppressed.

I watched the girl dance. She was quite good.

The needs of human beings are a matter of biology. The values in a culture are the values of certain men. Many people take the values of their culture for granted, as though they were somehow a part of the furniture of the universe. They should realize that the values they are taught are the values of particular men, and often, unfortunately, of men who, long ago, were short-lived, ignorant, uninformed, unhealthy and quite possibly of unsound mind. Perhaps human beings should, from the viewpoints of contemporary information and modern medicine, re-evaluate these perhaps anachronistic value structures. Values need not be something one somehow mysteriously “knows,” a result of having forgotten the conditioning process by means of which they were instilled, but could be something chosen, something selected as instruments by means of which to improve human life. It is not wrong for human beings to be happy.

“Now you are becoming a woman,” I told her. She knelt on one knee, her right; her left leg was flexed; the tether was taken, in a turn, about her left thigh; her hands, too, were on her left thigh; her head was down, but turned toward me; her lip trembled. “Continue to dance, Slave,” I told her.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

I watched her, and marveled. It is interesting to note that such movements, those of slave dances, despite the inhibitions of rigid cultures, may occur in a girl’s sleep, and may even occur, almost spontaneously, when she, nude, alone, passes before a mirror in her bedroom. How shocked she may be to suddenly see her body move as that of a slave. Could it have been she who so moved? Later, perhaps to her surprise, she finds herself standing before the mirror. She is naked, and alone. Then, perhaps scarcely understanding what is occurring within her, she sees the girl in the mirror has begun to dance. The movements are not dissimilar perhaps to those of women who, thousands of years ago, danced in firelit caves before their masters. Then, knowing well that it is she herself who is the dancer, she dances brazenly, boldly, before the mirror. Well does she present her bared beauty before it in the movements, the attitudes and postures of the female slave. Then perhaps she falls to the rug, scratching at it, pressing her belly to it. “I want a Master,” she whispers.

I now stood up. My arms were folded.

The girl now was upon her knees at my feet, the tether on her neck slung back behind her to the slave stake. Still in her dance, she began to lick and kiss at my body.

I then took her by the upper arms and held her, half lifted from her knees, before me.

“Please do not whip me,” she begged.

I then, by the upper arms, dragged her to the side of the slave stake. I put her on her knees there. She looked up at me. “You danced well as a slave,” I said.

“Thank you, Master,” she said. She looked up at me, trembling.

“What are you?” I asked.

“A slave,” she said.

“Fully and only a slave?’ I asked.

She regarded me. Her entire body began to shake.

The secret slave in her then was summoned forth. She crept from the dungeon, into the sunlight. She knelt then on the gravel of the courtyard, small, and beautiful and naked, at the feet of masters.

“Yes, Master,” said the blond-haired barbarian. “I am fully and only a slave.” Then, suddenly, she threw back her head and sobbed with joy. Then she put her head to my knees and, holding them, covered them with kisses. Then she put her head to my feet. She covered them, too, with kisses. I felt her hair on my feet. I felt the hot tears of her joy. “Yes,” she whispered, “I am fully and only a slave.”

The secret slave, I saw, was then free of her dungeon. Never again could she be put back in it.

The blond-haired barbarian raised her head. Tears were In her eyes. The secret slave, too, had raised her head. Tears, too, had been in her eyes. “Thank you, Master,” said the blond-haired barbarian. “Thank you, Master,” had breathed the secret slave.

“You are my slave,” I said to the blond-haired barbarian. I took her by the hair. I looked into her eyes. “You are the slave of men,” I said.

“Yes, my master,” she said.

The secret slave then knelt joyfully in the sunlit courtyard, on the cruel gravel. She kissed the steel collar thrust to her lips. She closed her eyes, joyfully, as it was locked upon her small, fair throat. She wore then, locked upon her neck, that for which she had yearned in the long years of her imprisonment, the sweet, liberating, uncompromising collar of public bondage.

“I am free,” breathed the blond-haired barbarian. “At last I am free!”

“Beware how you speak. Slave,” I said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

She looked up at me, tears in her eyes. “I feel so free,” she said.

“In a sense you are free and in a sense you are not free,” I said. “The sense, or one of the senses, in which you are free,” I said, “is the sense of emotional freedom. You, a slave, have now honestly admitted to yourself, in your own heart, fully, that you are truly a slave. This eliminates conflicts. This produces a sense of emotional joy and fulfillment. You are now at peace with yourself. You are now content with yourself. The sense in which you are not free is an obvious one. You are a slave, totally, and are fully at the mercy of your master, or masters.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

I seized her hair and twisted her head to the side, cruelly. “Oh!” she cried.

“Do you think you are free?” I asked.

“No, Master,” she wept.

I released her. I crouched back a bit, watching her. She lifted her head. “I am very happy,” she said.

I did not speak.

“I love being under the total domination of a male,” she said.

I moved more closely to her. I took her by the upper arms, crouching near her.

“Did I please my master by my dancing?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“How can I please my master more?” she asked.

I then, by her upper arms, my grip tight upon them, pressed her gently but forcibly backwards. She then lay beside the thick slave stake, her shoulder blades in the dirt. The tether was still upon her throat.

“Yes, Master,” she whispered.

“I have never been so happy before in my life as this night, Master,” she whispered.

She lay on her side, her back to me. I tied her hands behind her back.

“You are Janice,” I told her, naming her.

“Thank you, Master,” she said, putting her head back.

I had used her several times during the night. And several times she had, squirming in the helpless throes of the slave orgasm, screamed and sobbed herself mine.

“I had not known such sensations could exist,” she had said.

“They are attainable only by the slave,” I told her. ‘They are the surrender and submission spasms of the owned woman, the girl who must yield absolutely and totally, holding nothing back, to her master.”

“I see, Master,” she had said.

“They cannot, in the nature of things, be attained by the free woman,” I said, “for she is her own mistress, not the slave of a master.”

“Yes, Master,” had said the girl.

“Did you like them?” I asked.

“I loved them,” she said.

“Do you like being a slave?” I asked.

“I love it,” she said. Then she had said, “Please, Master, rape me again,” and I had done so.

I checked the knots on her wrists. The girl was secured.

“Thank you for naming me ‘Janice’,” she said.

“It is a pretty name,” I said. “And it will give me a means by which to summon you, when I wish you to fetch and serve.”

“Yes, Master,” she said. Then she turned about, to lie on her right side, to face me. Her hands were tied behind her back. “I love wearing that name as a slave name,” she said.

I looked at her.

“It was the name of that girl on Earth whom I was,” she laughed, “that pretentious, foolish little slut, so haughty and smug, so proud of herself, so concerned to deny that anyone so lofty as herself could possibly be a slave. It gives me great pleasure to see that her master now puts her own name on her and forces her to wear it, openly and publicly, as a slave name.”

‘The name ‘Janice’,” I said, “apart from such considerations, is a beautiful name for a slave.”

“I will try to be worthy of it,” she said.

“If you are not,” I said, “it may be soon changed.”

“Yes, Master,” she said. A free woman’s name, of course, tends to remain constant. A Gorean free woman does not change her name in the ceremony of the Free Companionship. She remains who she was. In such a ceremony two free individuals have elected to become companions. The Earth woman, as a consequence of certain mating ceremonials, may change her last name. The first and other names, however, tend to remain constant. From the Gorean point of view the wife of Earth occupies, a status which is higher than that of the slave but lower than that of the Free Companion. The case with slaves, of course, is much different from that of free women, either those of Gor or Earth. Their names are simply given to them, as the names of animals. They may be altered or changed at will. Indeed, sometimes a slave is not even given a name. The names a slave wears, of course, are functions of the master’s pleasure. They can own a name no more than they can own anything else. It is they who are owned. Some masters have favorite names for girls. Some masters may reward a hard-working girl with a lovely name; others may torment a slave who has been insufficiently pleasing with a cruel or ugly name. Most girls, of course, are given beautiful and exciting slave names, for the masters wish the girl, too, to be beautiful and exciting. She is, after all, a slave. What names count as being beautiful and exciting, of course, is partly a cultural matter. For example, many women of Earth might be astonished to learn that their names, which they may regard as simple or common, names such as ‘Jane’ or Alice’, are found extremely beautiful to the Gorean ear. To be sure, the Gorean commonly alters the pronunciation somewhat, to conform with phonemic variations with which he is more familiar. Further, as I may have mentioned, many Earth-girl names are found extremely provocative to the Gorean male. This probably has to do with emotive connotations resulting from his familiarity with such girls in his markets. Such names may suggest to him, usually correctly, that their lovely bearer is going to be an unusually helpless and delicious slave. I once saw a girl in her chains dragged from the very market block and raped in the aisle for no other reason, apparently, than that the auctioneer had mentioned that her name was Helen. Needless to say, a slave girl, as she changes collars, may change names. Most girls, In passing from the hands of one master into those of another, will have had various names.