Norman, John - Gor 19 - Kajira of Gor.txt

by Kajira of Gor [lit]

  unavoidable. I would have no choice in the matter. They would simply be put on

  me. I hoped I would look well in my collar. I hoped I would look well in my

  brand. Most women are stunning in them, and I did not think I would be

  different. I wondered if I were truly a slave.

  I wondered if the collar and brand belonged on me. “Per haps,” I thought. I

  hoped it would not hurt too much to be branded. It was the mark that stayed, of

  course, not the pain.

  “You are awake,” whispered a woman to me.

  “Yes, Mistress,” I said.

  “You may be pretty,” she said, “and the men may like you, but do not think that

  you are better than us.”

  “No, Mistress,” I said.

  “You are a little slut,” she said.

  “Yes, Mistress,” I said.

  “And you are going to be a work slave, too, my dear,” she said.

  “Yes, Mistress,” I said.

  “Now go to sleep, barbarian slut,” she said.

  “I will try, Mistress,” I said.

  for a moment or two, suddenly recalling the wild sensations the driver had

  induced in me, I inadvertently moaned and moved.

  “Be quiet!” said the woman.

  “Yes, Mistress,” I said. “I am sorry, Mistress!”

  Then I lay there frightened, chained, on the blanket, on the boards of the wagon

  bed, under the overhead tarpaulin. I turned and grasped the blanket. I bit at

  it. My thighs moved.

  I was afraid.

  I feared that already slave fires had been lit in my belly.

  24 The Mill

  I stood in a long line, single-file, of some twenty girls. We were all naked. We

  were in the yard of one of the linen mills of Mintar, of Ar.

  I heard the second of the two heavy gates close behind us.

  I looked back, and about me, across the yard, at the high walls, with their

  guard stations.

  “Do not even think of escape, Tiffany,” said a girl behind me, Emily.

  “There is only one way out of here,” said another girl, behind her, “and that is

  to please your way out.”

  Almost any woman, I supposed, could become pleasing.

  And even women who, objectively, seemed rather plain, I knew, as their attitudes

  changed, and as they became submissive, and yielding to their femininity, in

  their deepest emotions, could become beautiful. Still, of course, in a mill, few

  would know this. Such a woman, I supposed, aching for a man’s touch, might be

  kept indefinitely in the mill, working her long hours of tiring labor, her left

  ankle chained to the loom. The mills, incidentally, like certain other low

  slaveries, such as those of the fields, the kitchens and laundries, serve an

  almost penal function on Gor. For example, a free woman, sentenced to slavery

  for, say, crimes or debts, may find herself, once enslaved, by direction of the

  court, sold for a pittance into such a slavery. Such slaveries also provide a

  place to utilize women who are thought to be good for little else. Most women,

  after a short time in such a slavery, strive to convince masters of their fuller

  potentialities for service and pleasure. If the woman prefers to remain in such

  a slavery, of course, that, too, is found acceptable by the masters.

  “But that, too, is dangerous,” said another girl, “for if you are too pleasing,

  the whip masters will hide you and keep you for themselves.”

  “You are all sluts,” said a large, ugly woman, Luta, a few spaces back.

  A whip cracked, and we all jumped, frightened. We were naked. We did not want to

  feel it. “No talking in line,” said a man. We were then silent. Luta need not

  have spoken as loudly as she had. I do not think the man would have minded it if

  we had spoken quietly among ourselves.

  I was afraid of Luta. She was large and strong, and I could tell she did not

  like me.

  “Next,” said a man at a table, and we moved up one space.

  Only two of the girls in this line had been in the slave wagon on the Argentum

  road with me, Emily and Luta.

  Though Emily bore an Earth-girl name she was Gorean. On Gor Earth-girl names are

  commonly used as slave names. If you have an Earth-girl name it is probably,

  somewhere on Gor, being used as a slave name. Similarly, if you were to go to

  Gor and give that to them as your name they would assume immediately that you,

  too, bearing such a name, were a slave. And, indeed, if you were taken to Gor, I

  suppose you would be.

  “Next,” said the man at the table. We moved up another space.

  I was not now collared. It had been removed from me a few Ehn ago, before I had

  been assigned to this line. I had worn it for only a few Ahn. Outside of Ar we

  had stopped at the office and holding area of a man associated with the various

  enterprises of Mintar, including his mills. There we were to be divided up and,

  with others, transferred to closed slave wagons. One does not usually take an

  open slave wagon on the streets of Ar, in deference to the sensibilities of free

  women. While others were in the holding area I was taken by Tenrak, which was,

  as I had later learned, the name of the leader of the two drivers, to the shop

  of a metal worker.

  There something was done to me. Then I was returned to the holding area, now a

  slave. At the holding area I was put in a transfer collar. The others were

  already in theirs. These collars were color-coded for our destinations, some

  girls being delivered to one place and some to another. There is an ordinance in

  Ar, incidentally, that all female slaves must wear some visible token of

  bondage. This is commonly a collar.

  Sometimes, too, however, it is a bracelet or anklet. This was the first time I

  had ever ridden in a common slave wagon.

  My ankles were shackled about the central bar. The girls were shackled on the

  bar in the order of the drivers’ delivery schedule, the first girls to be

  delivered being shackled closest to the wagon gate, and so on. Our wagon was

  checked at the great gate of Ar. A guardsman climbed into the back of the wagon,

  crouching down, doing this work. I, naked, in the colored-coded collar, my

  ankles chained, sheared, attracted no undue attention. I did cry out, however,

  for the guardsman, in leaving, touched me aggressively, and intimately. I

  recoiled, wildly, frightened, trying to cover myself. But he was then gone. I

  looked after him, shuddering. I was horrified. He had been so bold! But then, of

  course, I was only a slave. I saw Luta looking at me, with hatred. I dared Dot

  meet her eyes, and looked down. In a moment the wagon was passing through the

  great gate at Ar.

  “Next,” said the man at the table.

  I then stood before the table, naked.

  “Thigh,” he said.

  I turned sideways, so that he might see my left thigh.

  “Common Kajira mark,” he said, and made an entry on a sheet. “Face me, Girl,” he

  said.

  I did.

  “Arrived sheared,” he said, and made another entry. “what is your name?” he

  asked.r />
  ‘Whatever Master wishes,” I said.

  “what have you been called?” be asked. “Quick!”

  “I have been called Tiffany,” I said.

  “You are now ‘Tiffany,’” he said.

  “Yes, Master,” I said. He wrote something down, presumably the name. He seemed

  to have beard it before, unlike the drivers. Some other “Tiffany” had perhaps,

  at some earlier time, stood where I stood. I also realized that I had now been

  named. I had lost the name “Tiffany Collins” a few Ahn ago, when I had been

  marked, when I had become slave. That name was gone, as soon as the iron,

  hissing, curling smoke, had been lifted from my flesh. A free person had been

  locked in the branding rack. A mere animal was released from it.

  The name “Tiffany” had now been put on me as a mere slave name, a name which

  might be removed or changed at the whim of masters. I wore the name “Tiffany”

  now as Susan had worn the name “Susan,” now merely as a named animal, merely by

  the will and decision of masters.

  “Have you had experience in a mill, Tiffany?” he asked.

  “No, Master,” I said.

  “Come around to the side of the table and kneel here,” he said. I did so. He

  then bent over and, cupping his left hand under my left breast, held it steady

  and, with a grease pencil, across it, above the nipple, inscribed four

  characters. “That is your mill number, Tiffany,” he said, “four thousand and

  seventy-three.”

  “Yes, Master,” I said.

  “Now, go there,” he said, indicating another table, several yards away, near the

  wall.

  “Yes, Master,” I said. Tenrak and Durbar, at the office of the man of Mintar,

  outside the gate, had received ten copper tarsks for me. This did not seem to me

  much but it was, of course, enough to give them each five nights of pleasure in

  a paga tavern. I recalled that Drusus Rencius had thought I might go for

  something between fifteen and twenty tarsks. I had gone for only ten. On the

  other hand it had not been all open sale. Too, of course, I was shorn and being

  considered in terms of utilization in the mills. Some girls, Tenrak had assured

  me, go for as little as five copper tarsks. Ten copper tarsks, he assured me,

  was a good price for a mill girl.

  I now stood before a man near the wall Behind him was a table, on which there

  were, aligned, several collars, all seemingly identical in appearance and

  design. He had an aide with him.

  The man looked at my left breast, reading the characters written there.

  “Four-zero-seven-three,” he said. He was then handed a collar, the next in a

  series of diminishing rows.

  “Name?” he asked.

  “Tiffany, if it pleases Master,” I said.

  “Can you read?” he asked.

  “No, Master,” I said.

  He then showed me the collar, indicating the engraving on it. “This is a company

  collar,” he said. “It says, ‘I belong to Mintar of Ar. I work in Mill 7. My

  number is four-zero-seven-three.’”

  “Yes, Master,” I said. The collars would die then, only in the Girl Numbers.

  “Lift your chin, Tiffany,” he said.

  I did so, and the collar was placed about my neck and snapped shut. The first

  collar I had worn had been a color-coded transfer collar, put on me at the

  holding area outside the gate, probably primarily to comply with the ordinance

  that female slaves in Ar must wear a visible token of their bondage; otherwise

  we might simply have had our destinations written on our bodies. This was my

  first owner collar.

  The laws of Ar, incidentally, do not require a similar visible token of bondage

  on the bodies of male slaves, or even any distinctive type of garments. The

  historical explanation of this is that it was originally intended to make it

  difficult for male slaves to make contact with one another and to keep them from

  understanding how numerous they might be. On the other hand, male slaves are not

  numerous, at least within the cities, as opposed to the great farms or the

  quarries, and they are, in fact, usually collared. Some, however, depending on

  the whim of the master or mistress, may wear a distinctive anklet or bracelet. A

  consequence of this ordinance from the point of view of a female slave is that

  she cannot now even permit herself to be taken for a free woman by accident; her

  bondage is always manifest; it is helpful from the man’s point of view, too; he

  always knows the status of the woman to whom he is relating; one relates to free

  women and slaves quite differently, or course; one treats a free woman with

  honor and respect; one treats a slave, commonly, with condescension and

  authority.

  “Kneel and kiss the whip of Mintar,” he said. He took a Whip from the table and

  held it before me. “Again and again,” he said, “tenderly, lingeringly.”

  I did so. I trembled, thrilled, forced to kiss a man’s whip, and in the intimate

  manner of a slave. I supposed that I would never see the man whose whip I was

  kissing.

  “what is your name?” he asked. “Tiffany,” I said.

  “In what mill do you work?”

  “Mill 7.”

  “What is your girl number?”

  “4073,” I said.

  “Whose collar do you wear?”

  “The collar of Mintar of Ar.”

  “Who owns you?”

  “Mintar of Ar.”

  “Who do you love?”

  “Mintar of Ar.”

  “Welcome to Mill 7, Tiffany,” he said.

  “Thank you, Master,” I said.

  He then replaced the whip on the table and handed me, from a basket, two tunics.

  They were folded, and washed, and brown. “Thank you, Master,” I said. I held

  them close to me. I would later discover that they were rather common slave

  tunics, brief, with no nether closure. Too, they were sleeveless, slit at the

  sides, and with a plunging neckline. Oil the front of the left shoulder there

  was a design, in white and yellow, bearing what I would later learn was an

  inscribed “Mu.” This was a design, I would later learn, which was common to many

  of the different enterprises of Mintar. “Mu” is the first letter of the name

  Mintar. White and yellow, or white and gold, are the colors of the merchants.

  The tunic had nothing specific to the mills, of Mill 7. Such a tunic might have

  been worn by girls laboring or serving in almost any of his holdings. It was

  thus, in a broad sense, a company tunic. I wondered how many girls Mintar owned,

  or were owned by the enterprises of Mintar.

  “Go now, over there,” he said, pointing, “and get in that line, where you see

  that small yellow flag. You wrn be in the chain of Borkon. He will be your whip

  master.”

  “Yes, Master,” I said. Borkon, I realized, whoever he was, was he whom I must

  now strive to please. “Is that all, Master
?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Did you expect to be intricately measured, to be toe-printed,

  and such? You are not a high slave. You are a low slave, a mill girl.”

  “Yes, Master,” I said. “Forgive me, Master.” I then leapt up and ran to stand in

  the indicated line. In a few Ehn I was joined there by Emily and Luta. The other

  girls were being sent to other lines.

  In a few Ehn more we were approached by a short, muscular man in a half tunic.

  He came walking towards us, across the yard. He had emerged from one of the mill

  buildings. His arms were extremely thick. There was a whip at his belt.

  When he stopped near us, we knelt, a common behavior for slave girls in the

  presence of a free man.

  “Stand,” he said.

  We stood. We straightened our bodies. He walked about slowly.

  “So,” he said, “it is the usual collection of she-urts and she-tarsks. Strn, I

  see at least two of some interest. What is your name?”

  “Tiffany, Master” I said, frightened.

  “We are going to get on well, aren’t we, Tiffany?” he asked.

  “Yes, Master,” I said, shuddering. He felt me.

  “What is your name?” he asked.

  “Emily,” said the girl behind me.

  “We are going to get on well, aren’t we, Emily?” he asked.

  “Yes, Master!” she said.

  He then stepped back from us. “You are slaves,” he said.

  “I am Borkon, your whip master. Within these walls you will be to me as my own

  slaves, in all ways. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Master,” murmured several of the girls.

  “Louder,” he said, “all of youl”

  “Yes, Master!” we shouted. -

  “You will work, eat’ drink, juice, sleep, dream and excrete upon my command,” he

  said.

  “Yes, Master!” we said.

  “if any of you retain any pride or courage,” he said, “I will remove it from

  you. It will get in the way of your being a good slave. Do any of you retain any

  pride or courage?”

  “No, Master!” we cried.

  “I do,” said Luta.

  “Step forth, and kneel,” he said.

  Luta obeyed. Although she was a large, strong woman and could have beaten any of