Mercenaries of Gor

by Norman, John;

  “There is no need to be ashamed,” I said.

  “But far worse,” she said, “I revealed to you my feelings. I told you of my unspeakable loneliness. Are you lonely?”

  “Not particularly,” I said. It is normally only free folks among free folks who are lonely, each so separate from the other. It is not easy for men to be lonely who have access to slaves. Similarly the slaves, so occupied, and of necessity so concerned to please the master, are seldom given the time for the indulgence of loneliness. Too, of course, the incredible intimacy of the relationship, intellectual and emotional, as well as sexual, for the master may inquire into, and command forth, and is normally inclined to do so, her deepest thoughts and feelings, which must be bared to him, as much as her body, as well as command, even casually, her most intimate and delicious sexual performances, militates against loneliness. In slavery total intimacy is not only customary, but it can be made obligatory, under discipline. Masters like to know their girls. They want to know them with a depth, detail, and intimacy that it would be quite inappropriate to expect of, or desire from, a prideful free companion, whose autonomy and privacy is protected by her lofty status. In a sense, the free woman is always, to one extent or another, veiled. The slave, on the other hand, is not permitted veils. She is, so to speak, naked to the master, and fully. To be sure, I am thinking of the usual master/slave relationship, that which commonly exists between a master and one slave, kept in his own domicile. There is no doubt that slaves without private masters, say, slaves in work gangs, slaves in mills and factories, in the mines, in the laundries, in tower service, in street work, in great holdings, in large households, field slaves, state slaves, and such, may experience terrible loneliness. There is doubtless great loneliness, for example, in a rich man’s pleasure gardens. Indeed, the presence of a lovely slave there might not even be known to the master, but only to her immediate keepers, and the master’s agents, who may have purchased her, or accountants, who keep records of the master’s properties and assets. Perhaps she must beg piteously to be called to the attention of the master. Some women in such a place, even those whose existence is known, or remembered, at least vaguely, might wait for months for a summons to the couch of the master, he perhaps selecting a ribbon with her name on it, from a rack of slave ribbons, and tossing it to an attendant, that she be brought in chains to his quarters that night, the ribbon on her collar. Too, it can doubtless be lonely in the house of a slaver, especially when the guards do not choose to amuse themselves with you, or have you perform for them, or, say, when you find yourself alone at night, perhaps a scrubbing slave, in the basement of a cylinder, chained in a cement kennel.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “With you here,” I said, “how could I be lonely?”

  “What a lovely thing to say,” she said.

  I thought it had been pretty good myself. To be sure, it had required quick thinking.

  “But mostly,” she said, as though tearfully, “I am distressed at the boldness with which I spoke before.”

  “Boldness?” I asked.

  “When I admitted, as I should never have done,” she said, “that I was drawn to you.”

  “‘Drawn to me’?” I inquired.

  “Yes,” she said, lowering her eyes.

  “I understand,” I said. “You were drawn to me because something within you seemed to sense, and delicately, that I might prove to be a sympathetic interlocutor, an understanding fellow with whom you might, assuaging therein to some extent your loneliness and pain, hold gentle and kindly converse.”

  “It was more than that,” she whispered, not looking up, as though she dared not raise her eyes.

  “Oh?” I asked.

  She looked up, as though distressed. “I felt drawn to you,” she said, and then she lowered her head, as though in shame, “—as a female to a male.”

  I said nothing.

  “Free women have needs, too,” she whispered.

  “I do not doubt it,” I said. At the moment, of course, she had no real idea of what female needs could be. As with most free females they were doubtless far below the surface and seldom directly sensed. Their effect upon conscious life, because of her conditioning, would normally be felt in such transformed and eccentric modalities as anxiety, uneasiness, misery, discomfort, ill temper, imaginary complaints, frustration and loneliness. These things would be connected with her lack of feminine fulfillment, she not finding herself in her place, in her natural biological relationship, that of submissive to dominant, to the male of her species. These things, the result of her loss of sexual identity and fulfillment, too, often produced a sense of emptiness and meaninglessness. Too, they sometimes produced an envy and resentment of men, whom she then, perhaps with some justice, would blame for this lack of fulfillment. When one sex needs the other to fulfill it, and the other refuses, what is to be done? One way of striving for vengeance, of course, is to attempt, socially and politically, to bring about the debilitation and ruination of anatomical males, whether they be men or not. This, of course, might prove dangerous, for it might provoke an upsurge of nature, like a natural phenomenon, in which her order, artificialities then scorned and abolished, would be harshly restored. Another danger, and perhaps one more serious, is that a misdirected response would be provoked in which, say, angry males, perhaps unable to take direct action because of the numerous, carefully wrought political traps and snares trammeling them, would think themselves, consciously or subconsciously, to have no recourse but to engage in the undeniably masculine games of war, games which might destroy worlds, but, with them, perhaps, the walls within which they have permitted themselves to be imprisoned. It would be unfortunate, indeed, if the female, returned at last to her rightful chains, were to find herself kneeling in ashes.

  “You are kind not to scorn me for my needs,” she said. She looked up at me. “Sometimes they are very strong.”

  “I am sure of it,” I said. She had as yet, of course, as a free woman, as I have mentioned, no real idea of what female needs could be. They were in her, as in all free women, muchly suppressed. She had no idea as to what they could be. Never had she confronted them wholly and directly. She was as yet alienated from the depth and richness of the extensive sexual tissues in her body; she did not yet understand how her entire skin, from her scalp to her toes, could awaken into life, startled and rejoicing, stimulated by the hot, surgent, wavelike irradiations emanating not only from her helpless, lovely, exploited centralities, but as well from all the other sensitive curvatures and beauties of her, curvatures and beauties so much at a master’s mercy; too, she could not even now begin to suspect the momentous emotional dimensions of bondage for the female, its entire, totalistic matrix, of what it was to be a slave, the nature of the slave’s feelings, how she is affected by what she is, and what can be done to her, of what it is to be owned, absolutely, to be under uncompromising discipline, of what it is to know that you must, and will, under strict and uncompromising enforcements, give yourself up wholly to service and love, not the least of alternatives permitted to you.

  “You are very kind to take pity on a woman,” she said.

  “It is nothing,” I said. I speculated that her needs might be rather strong, as a matter of fact, for a free woman. Certainly her body suggested the influence of a rich abundance of female hormones. One does not get curves like that by being hormonally deficient. It might be interesting, I thought, to see what those needs might be like if permitted to develop fully under bondage. She could probably easily be made their helpless prisoner, this putting her more in the power of males. In bondage, of course, all inhibitions to the satisfaction of the needs of the female are removed, utterly. Then they are summoned forth, and made manifest. They will then be measured, assessed, publicly discussed, nurtured, trained, deepened, improved, and developed. All this can take place under the governance of the whip. A hitherto frigid woman, even one smug in her arctic hauteur, one evincing an icy disdain, one complacently proud of her coo
l, pinioned passion, one contemptuous of her less inert, more vital sisters, once collared, once mastered, undergoes a radical transformation, one startling to those who might have known her prior to her embondment; how offensive she might then appear to her former compeers; how they would now scorn her; and how amusing she might appear to some men hitherto acquainted with her, she now at their feet, a helpless, a needful, crawling, squirming, degraded slave, much afflicted with her newly flaming needs, petitioning them, begging them, for their attention; and men who knew her not would see her now, mercifully, as no different from thousands of others, as just another slave, a common girl, needful, piteously solicitous for the touch of masters. Many are the wonders a collar can work on a female.

  “When I spoke your name before,” she said, “I hesitated.”

  “I remember,” I said.

  “It was so hard to speak,” she said.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “May I speak?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I was thinking that I might perhaps let you see my body,” she said, “that I might even permit you to touch it.”

  “Yes?” I said.

  “That I might tonight,” she said, “as you have been so kind to me, and I am drawn to you, give you my body.”

  “I am overwhelmingly impressed,” I said. This seemed to me a suitable response, as she was a free woman. It is really difficult to know what to say when one hears something so stupid. If she were a slave, I would have enjoyed hearing her try to speak in that fashion, speaking of “giving her body” and for such-and-such a period. That would earn her a swift whipping. If one could speak in that fashion, of “mere bodies,” so to speak, and it was not typically Gorean to do so, she would not in bondage be considering whether or not to bestow her body, and for how long, but rather she would discover that it was his for the master to take, whenever he wished, however he wished, and for as long as he wished, for it would then belong not to her but to him, or he could order her to bring it to him, his property, in whatever attitude or posture he might please. But it is not typically Gorean to think in this fashion. The slave, for example, does not ask if the Master now wants the body of Gloria but, rather, does he want Gloria. In Gorean thought, and, indeed, Gorean law is explicit on this, what is owned is the whole slave. It is she who is owned, the whole woman, and uncompromisingly and totally.

  “How kind you are,” she said, “to a woman met in such a place, one so poor she cannot even afford sandals, a suitable gown, and proper veiling. Do you object that I am so revealingly clad, and am not properly veiled? Does it scandalize you?”

  “No,” I said. “Doubtless it is an inevitable concession to the exigencies of poverty.”

  “Yes,” she lamented. “Perhaps you could try to think of me veiled,” she suggested.

  “That is a thought,” I said. That much, surely, at least, could be said for it. I conjectured what she might look like, stark naked, save for chains, perhaps, holding her as a tight love bundle, for a master’s pleasure, at a ring, and the locked, steel slave collar that belonged on her neck.

  She looked at me, gratefully. In my imagination I tightened her chains a notch or two.

  “Is it true that you are drawn to me?” I asked.

  “Yes!” she whispered, daring to touch my hand.

  “Then shall we leave this place,” I asked, “and venture to your domicile?”

  She drew back. As I had anticipated, she would not find a suggestion of this sort acceptable. She would not want her address known. That might put her at the mercy of furious, outraged victims. Too, it could make it simple for guardsmen, acting on complaints, to bring her in for identification and questioning, these details doubtless, in her case, to be followed by a hearing and sentencing, an almost inevitable reduction to bondage and then perhaps, initially, while her disposition is being more carefully considered, a placement in the public slave gardens.

  “Perhaps then my room?” I suggested. “It is nearby.”

  “Sir!” she said, reproachfully. As I had thought, this would not be satisfactory either. She would prefer to complete her work here, where apparently it was tolerated, with the stealth of a drug, rather than go to the expense of employing confederates outside or take the risk of being recognized by others who might be in the vicinity of the victim’s environs. “What sort of girl do you think I am?”

  “Forgive me,” I said, earnestly. “I did not mean to offend you.” She was skillful at this type of game, it seemed, to provoke a male response, and then to claim she had been misunderstood, and was offended, thus confusing the male, keeping him off balance, and, in general, thusly guaranteeing, with a glance or tear, that she would have things her own way. She was, at least, manipulative in a feminine fashion. That I granted her. It said something for her femaleness. It is pleasant later, of course, to manipulate such women in a masculine fashion, by command and the whip.

  “I knew I should not have come here,” she sobbed, wiping away a tear, one at least in theory, from the corner of her eye. She made as though to rise but, as I did not restrain her, she remained where she was.

  “I have been clumsy,” I said.

  “I do not really blame you,” she sobbed. “What else could you think, meeting me here? Surely you must think me the same as these other, lower women.”

  “No, certainly not,” I said. “You are quite different, obviously, from them.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  I nodded. Of course she was quite different from them. That was obvious. She was not yet nude. She did not yet have a slave collar on her neck. She had probably never yet, in her life, felt a slave whip.

  “Perhaps you are wondering,” she said, wiping away yet another supposed tear, “what I, a gentlewoman, of breeding and refinement, am doing in this place?”

  “Perhaps,” I said, encouragingly. I tried to look puzzled. Actually I had a rather clear idea what she was doing in this place.

  She looked down. “I think the real reason,” she said, “under everything, as you may have suspected, is that I was driven here, almost helplessly, a woman in desperate need of love, daring to enter this terrible place, but one where I knew men were, by my desire to meet a kindly man, by my loneliness.”

  “Yes?” I said.

  “But I should never have come.”

  “But then we would never have met,” I said.

  “Yes,” she whispered, again touching my hand. “That is true.”

  “You spoke of a ‘real reason,’” I said, “that having to do with your need of love, and such. That suggests, then, I take it, that there was some other reason, or pretended reason, for coming.”

  She smiled, ruefully. “Yes,” she said. “I am a proud free woman. I could not permit myself to recognize such things as my loneliness, or need for love. I must tell myself there was another reason for coming.”

  “And what was that?” I asked.

  “I am in need of money,” she said. “I have a ring. I told myself that I would try to sell it, that I would try to find a buyer in this place.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “But I have never been able to bring myself to part with it,” she said. “It is one of the few things left to me from the time when I was proud and wealthy. It is so laden with memories. I could never really bring myself to part with it.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Would you like to see it?” she asked.

  “It is not necessary,” I said.

  “Please, let me show it to you,” she said.

  “Very well,” I said.

  From the tiny pouch, hung on strings at her belt, she produced the ring. She slipped it on her finger.

  “Lovely,” I said. Its oval “stone” was of white porcelain, mounted in a red-metal bezel. On the porcelain, very delicately done, in red, was the representation of a Tur tree. The band was of gold.

  “It was wrought in Turia,” she said. I found that easy to believe. It had the Tur tree,
emblem of Turia, in the southern hemisphere, on the porcelain “stone.” Too, I knew such rings were manufactured in Turia. Indeed, I had even seen them there. Rings of this design, however, though perhaps not of this purpose, were rare in Ar, in the northern hemisphere. Most fellows of Ar would not recognize the ring, or suspect its purpose. She had probably purchased it in an import shop on the Avenue of Turia, which was nearby. To be sure, perhaps the setting was solid, and not hollow. Many rings of this appearance are totally innocent.

  “Would you let me buy it?” I asked. “Surely you could use the money.”

  “Do not tempt me,” she smiled. “I could never bring myself to part with it.”

  “I am sorry,” I said.

  “How fortunate I am to meet a man such as you,” she said. “How understanding you are.”

  I shrugged.

  “I am becoming excited,” she whispered.

  “Oh?” I said.

  “I want to go to your room,” she whispered.

  “Let us go,” I said.

  “Oh, the wine is gone,” she pouted.

  That was true.

  “May we have more wine?” she wheedled. “It would help me to get even more into the mood. With a little more wine I do not know if I could control myself. I might find myself hurrying after you, going to your room, heeling you through the streets like an amorous slave!”

  “I will get some more wine,” I said. I glanced over to the left. In a moment or two, I had managed to catch the eye of Louise. She had not, of course, after her initial command, been concentrating on our table. I was pleased that she was not in use. I enjoyed having her serve me. Had she been, of course, I would have made do with another girl, say, Ita or Tia. They were both very nice slaves. Louise was now looking at me, aware that I was looking at her. I lifted my hand. She leaped up, hurrying toward me. I noticed the fellow nearby, slumped over the table. He had not yet stirred. He might be out for another Ahn or so. I leaned over to where Louise now knelt and gave her the wine order. The collar, such fine, strong steel, looked nice under her right ear.