by John Norman
And the slave, I reminded myself, does not belong to herself. She belongs to her master. She has no self to defend, no honor to preserve, no person to strive to keep isolated and inviolate.
I am not a free woman, I thought.
In a sense, I have never been one.
I was not free.
I did not want to be free.
I was content to be a shamed slave. It was what I was and wanted to be. Then I was no longer chagrined at my behavior in the Room of White-Silk. I regretted only that I might not have been as pleasing as possible to the masters.
Too, I had begun to suspect what I might become, and was willing to become, and wanted to become, in their arms, a slave.
The hood was removed, and I drew in a deep breath, and shut my eyes against the hurtful light.
Some cloth was thrust against me, and I took it.
Blinking, clutching the cloth, I looked about myself.
I was in a cell, a relatively small cell, about eight feet square, with a wall of bars on one side, facing a street. The floor of the cell was some four feet above the level of the street. In this way what was in the cell, given the bars, could be easily viewed from the street. To the left of the bars was a cement platform, at the same level as the floor of the cell, too, about four feet high, on which was spread a worn, soiled scarlet rug. There were steps on the outside leading up to this circular, cement platform, the steps which I had doubtless recently ascended, assisted by the guard. The guards had gone. A barred gate, to the left of the cell, would open to a small passage, which connected with the platform. It was through this passage that I had been introduced into the cell.
I looked about. There were six other girls in the cell. I looked up at a large man, stripped to the waist, who was regarding me.
He would be a slaver’s man.
I clutched the cloth.
Each of the girls wore a brief, wrap-around tunic, and each had, either about herself, or at hand, a short, white sheet.
What I held was such a tunic, and such a sheet.
“She is stupid,” laughed one of the girls.
I did not know what to do.
I desperately wanted to clothe myself. Now that I was not hooded, I was suddenly muchly aware of my nudity. I stood there in anguish. I did not have even a collar. What if someone should look into the cell, from the outside? I was, of course, well marked.
“How stupid,” said another girl.
“She is a barbarian,” said another.
“May I clothe myself, Master?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, and turned away. In a moment he had left the cell, closing and locking the gate behind him.
I had remembered, belatedly, that a slave may not clothe herself without permission. Most slaves, of course, have a standing permission to clothe themselves, a permission which is subject to revocation by the master. It is a bit like speech. A slave is not to speak without permission, but many have a standing permission to speak, a permission which may, of course, be revoked at any time. For those who might be interested in such matters, the standing permission to clothe oneself is more often granted than the standing permission to speak. There are few things more likely to convince a woman of her bondage than the need to request permission to speak. Sometimes a standing permission to speak is revoked for a few Ahn or a day, or even a week, that she may be the better conscious that permission is required, and need not be granted. Perhaps she is desperate to speak. “May I speak, Master?” “No,” she is informed. She is then well reminded of her collar and mark.
I glanced through the bars, out to the street. There were men, and women, here and there, passing, and, at some stalls, shopping, these on the other side of the street, but none seemed interested in the cell, or its occupants.
I quickly, gratefully, drew the brief, wrap-around tunic about me, tucking it in on the side. It occurred to me how simply it might be parted, and removed. I then clutched the sheet about me. It came midway to my thighs.
The bars were sturdy, some six inches apart, reinforced every ten horts or so by horizontally placed, flat, narrow plates of ironwork. The cell would have held men.
That made me feel particularly helpless.
I looked out, through the bars. Save for the bars the wall was open. It was easy to look out, into the street. And I was very much aware, as well, obviously, that it would be as easy to look within. Anyone outside might simply look within, and see us. Given the shape of the cell, there was nowhere to hide. I was suddenly reminded of a shop window on Earth, a window before which passers-by might stop, and, at their leisure, peruse what might be for sale.
And I, and the others, would be for sale!
I looked to the other occupants, the other merchandise, six girls, in the cell. Each was in a wrap-around tunic. Four were brunets, and two blondes, one a darker blond, one lighter. None were collared. But I had no doubt each was well marked. Gorean merchants do not neglect such details.
I folded the sheet, and put it about my shoulders. I was tunicked, and the tunic, while “slave short,” was not unusual. A girl would not be likely to expect more, unless she were a lady’s serving slave.
I went to the bars, grasped them, and looked out.
I was not pleased with what I saw. This could be no high market. One might as well have been chained on a slave shelf!
Surely a mistake had been made.
This was not a market in which such as I was to be sold. This was surely not the Curulean, a market of which I had been apprised, a palace of an emporium with its statues, carvings, columns, fountains, tapestries, and cushioned tiers, with its exposition cages of silver bars, with its great, torch-lit, golden auditorium which might hold more than two thousand buyers, with its great central block, with its height and dignity, from which might be expertly vended even the stripped daughters of Ubars. I looked about. The slaver’s man was nowhere in sight. I must complain. I must call their attention to their mistake.
I thought of calling out, but thought the better of it.
What if there had been no mistake?
I had been the last on the coffle to be delivered.
I had dared to suppose then that I was the best, that saved for last. But what if I had been saved for last, as I had been thought not the best, but the least? Could it be that others might regard me as less beautiful, less desirable, than I regarded myself? Was I less beautiful, less desirable, than I had thought? Surely I had been regarded as one of the most beautiful girls in my sorority! But, of course, we had never been put beside Gorean slaves. I did not know my ranking in the coffle, nor if I had a ranking in the coffle. I had no idea of the quality of the coffle as I had been hooded.
I looked about.
“What do they call you?” asked one of the girls, one of the brunettes.
“Allison,” I said.
“You are a barbarian,” said one of the girls.
“I am from Earth,” I said.
“Where is Earth?” she asked.
“It is far away,” I said.
“Barbarians are ugly, and stupid,” said the darker blonde.
“I am neither ugly nor stupid,” I said.
“If she were ugly and stupid,” said another of the brunettes, “she would not have been put under the iron, she would not be here, she would not be kajira.” I could not place her accent.
“She has skinny legs,” said another of the brunettes.
“No,” said the brunette, she with the unusual accent, “they are shapely and slender. Many men like that.”
“Well,” said the first brunette, “they are well exposed.”
“True,” said the girl with the accent, “and it goes nicely with her height.”
I was not especially tall. I was of medium height. Nora was taller than I. So, too, was Jane. I had been a bit taller than Eve. I was pleased to hear that my legs might be acceptable to a man. Some doubtless bought with such things in mind.
“I do not want to be sold with a barbarian,” said th
e light blonde. “It is humiliating.”
“I would rather be sold with a barbarian than with you, traitress!” snarled the darker blonde.
“I was high in the Merchants!” said the light blonde.
“And you are now yourself merchandise,” laughed one of the brunettes.
Tears brightened the eyes of the light blonde.
“You are fortunate to be such,” said another of the brunettes. “You misread your politics. You thought Ar irrecoverably fallen. You betrayed your Home Stone, as much as Talena of Ar or Flavia of Ar. You cast your lot with the occupation, abetting their crimes, conniving with the enemy, flattering officers, feasting and jesting, profiteering, exploiting a starving citizenry, battening on the misery of a confused, leaderless, beaten, subdued populace.”
“One must do what one can! One must look out for one’s self!” wept the light blonde.
“You did not know Marlenus would return,” said one of the brunettes, unpleasantly.
“None did,” said another.
“I am not a slave,” wept the light blonde. “I am the Lady Persinna, high in the Merchants, the Lady Persinna of Four Towers!”
One of the brunettes laughed. “Listen to the branded piece of collar meat,” she said.
“No!” said the former Lady Persinna.
“You are now only goods, goods, slut,” said one of the brunettes.
“No! No!” said the former Lady Persinna.
“And you are fortunate to be goods,” said the darker blonde. “You were on the proscription lists. You should have been impaled!”
“Perhaps you were saved because you had pretty flanks,” said one of the brunettes.
“Perhaps,” said another, “because someone wanted you at his slave ring.”
She who had been the former Lady Persinna paled. Perhaps she knew of someone of which such a suggestion might be true.
I understood little of this at the time, but it became clearer later. Before I had been brought to Gor it seems a revolution had taken place in the city, Ar, in which upheaval an occupying force deriving from, or given fee by, the island ubarates of Cos and Tyros, and perhaps other states, had been ejected. It seems that a former Ubar, one named Marlenus, had returned from banishment or exile, or some prolonged absence, had rallied the city, and, in several days of fierce and bloody fighting, had cast out the invaders. Even while war was waged in the streets proscription lists had been posted and many traitors, profiteers, and such, hundreds, were seized by maddened citizens and publicly impaled. Later, the invaders flighted and the blood lust of an outraged citizenry largely spent, numbers of surviving profiteers and collaborators, as apprehended, were placed in several underground dungeons scattered throughout the city. Many were later executed by impalement, but others were embonded, men usually destined to the quarries or galleys, and women remanded to slave houses.
“It must be near the Tenth Ahn,” said a brunette.
I supposed that so. There were few shadows in the street. So what did it matter, if it were near the Tenth Ahn, noon?
Was that, in some way, important?
One girl, one of the brunettes, went to stand near the bars, sideways, fingering her hair. I saw her smile at a fellow, who seemed scarcely to notice, and did not stop from his way. She tossed her head, annoyed. Her sheet was at her ankles. Another girl stood at the bars, her hands over her head, holding to the bars, her sheet about her shoulders. Her hands might have been fastened there. She had her right cheek pressed against a bar. Another girl, one of the brunettes, now sat a bit back from the bars, her head up and back, leaning back on her hands, her knees slightly bent, her legs extended. Then she would sit differently, her knees drawn up, her hands clasped about them, looking out, between the bars. Her sheet was beside her. The dark blonde now reclined back, a few feet from the bars, on one elbow, on her sheet, her legs partly extended, one more than the other, looking out. She did this in such a way that the view of her between the bars would not be much obstructed by the positions of the other girls. It seemed she would not be much interested in what might lie outside the bars. What was that to her? Her attention seemed casual, at best. I suddenly recalled that I had been taught that pose. It is languid, but seductive. It lifts the hip nicely, in such a way that the hip-waist curve is nicely emphasized, this drawing attention to the promising delights of her love cradle.
I, and two others, were now at the back of the cell, by the rear cement wall. I and the brunette who had spoken for me were standing. To my right, kneeling, was the light blonde, a lovely female, the former Lady Persinna, of the Merchants. I supposed someone would be glad to get his hands on her. She seemed to be trying to make herself small. She was frightened. I, too, was frightened. The brunette with us, too, seemed frightened.
I gathered that this might have something to do with the approach of the Tenth Ahn.
“Look at them,” whispered the former Lady Persinna, regarding the others, the other three brunettes, and the dark blonde, all nearer the wall of bars. “See them! See them, the disgusting sluts!”
“They are slaves,” said the brunette with us.
“Disgusting sluts!” said the former Lady Persinna.
“You, too, are a slave,” said the brunette.
“No,” said the blonde. “I am free, a free woman! I am the Lady Persinna, of the Merchants, of Four Towers.”
“If you wish to obtain a good master,” said the brunette, “perhaps you, too, should strive to present yourself well, subtly, of course.”
“No, no!” said the blonde.
“You are not so presenting yourself,” I observed.
“No,” said the brunette. “I am afraid.”
“I, too, am afraid,” I said.
“I do not want to be sold,” she said.
“Nor I,” I said.
Yet what else might we expect, as we were slaves?
My feelings concerning my bondage, at that time, as you may have surmised, were highly ambivalent. I was frightened to be a slave. Did it not hold its terrors, to be a property, to be owned! Yet I knew myself a woman who should be a property, who should be owned! I knew that I was a slave, and should be a slave. My entire Earth conditioning had informed me that I should lament my bondage, that I should regard it as a condition of unmitigated misery and woe. But I knew in my heart this was far from so. I could not, and would not, speak for all women, but I could speak for myself. And why should I allow others to speak for me, to tell me how I should feel, to decide how I should be? I was a female. I wanted to belong to a man, a master, wholly and unconditionally, to be his in the fullest sense that a female can belong to a man, as his rightless slave. Nothing short of this could fulfill the secret needs of my heart. But now, to my terror, on this world, it was done. I was a slave! I would be subject to a collar, and bonds, the rightless chattel of a master! The sense of this was devastating and overwhelming. And I would have nothing to say as to my disposition. This frightened me, alarmed me, terribly, but, too, as I waited with the others, in the cell, filled with a slave’s anxiety and apprehension, knowing she may soon be sold, I felt an unspeakable thrill. And then, again, I was terrified! Here, on this world, I was only a slave!
“They cannot sell me, they cannot sell me,” said the former Lady Persinna.
“You are mistaken,” said the brunette.
“Your accent is not like that of the others,” I said to the brunette.
“I am of the islands, from Tabor,” she said.
“A tabor is a drum,” I said.
“It is from the shape of the island,” she said. “I and others were taken at sea, by corsairs of Port Kar, not more than five pasangs from shore.”
“They were bold,” I said.
“They were of Port Kar,” she said.
I knew little of Gor. I had heard of Port Kar. It was well to the north and west, where the waterways of the Vosk’s delta drained into the Tamber Gulf, the city’s sea walls fronting the gulf on the south, Thassa, the sea, on the west. Was
it not from the sea gates of Port Kar that the galleys of the dreaded Bosk, Bosk of Port Kar, clove the dark waters of restless Thassa?
“At least,” she said, “I was not sold in Port Kar.”
It is said the chains of a slave girl are heaviest in Port Kar.
“You must have been sold, several times,” I said.
“From one slaver to another,” she said, “not like this.”
“It is my understanding that none here are virgins,” I said.
“Perhaps the Lady Persinna,” she said.
“No,” said the light blonde, bitterly. “I was first opened in a dungeon, where I lay chained in the darkness.”
“No time was wasted with me, or the others,” said the brunette. “We were first used on the deck of the corsair itself.”
I shuddered.
“What of you?” she asked.
“In a slave house,” I said, “recently, in a room set aside for the red-silking of virgin slaves.”
“How was it?” she asked.
I was silent.
“I see,” she said.
“Beasts gather,” said the light blonde.
I looked out. Some men had approached the circular cement platform to the left of the cell, four or five.
I saw there were tears in the eyes of the brunette. “Who will own me?” she asked.
The brunette who had been seated, her chin on her clasped, raised knees, now rose to her feet and stretched, lifting her hands over her head, and arching her back.
“The slut!” whispered the former Lady Persinna.
Two or three more men had now joined the few near the platform.
“It is near the Tenth Ahn, I am sure,” said the brunette with us.
The girl who was to the left, at the bars, put her hair back, about her shoulders, and then pressed a bit, softly, against the bars.
That, I supposed, the softness against the iron, the helplessness of the softness, confined, and such, would excite a fellow. She was a confined female, who would be for sale. In my training I had been chained from time to time, in one way or another, utterly helplessly, perfectly, by guards. It was clear my helplessness stimulated them. And I am sure that they, Goreans, realized that my vulnerability, my utter helplessness, stimulated me, as well. There are, after all, masters, and there are slaves.
