Norman, John - Gor 20 - Players of Gor.txt

Norman, John - Gor 20 - Players of Gor.txt Page 3

by Players of Gor [lit]

  collared slave.

  “Clumsy, clumsy,” said Samos. “I thought she might have the makings, somehow, of

  a pleasure slave.”

  “She is trying,” I said.

  “She does not have what it takes,” said Samos.

  “Her body is richly curved,” I said. “That suggests an abundance of female

  hormones, and that, in turn, suggests the potentialities, the capacities for

  love, the sensibilities, the dispositions of the pleasure slave.”

  “She is not acceptable,” said Samos. “She is inadequate.”

  “She is trying desperately to please,” I said.

  “But she is not succeeding,” he said.

  “She has a lovely body,” I said. “Perhaps someone could buy her for a pittance,

  for a pot girl.”

  “She is not adequate,” said Samos. “I will have to have her destroyed.” He

  looked back to the board.

  I saw several of the slave girls looking fearfully at one another. I to not

  think that they cared much for their new sister in bondage, the former Lady

  Rowena of Lydius, who perhaps in some subtle way, perhaps in virtue of her

  former background, held herself superior to them, but, too, I don nit think they

  cared to have her thrown alive, screaming, to sleen. She was, after all,

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  now, like the, only a slave. “Dance, you stupid slave,” hissed one. “Do you not

  know you are a slave? Do you not know you are owned?”

  A wild look, one of sudden, fearful insight, came over the face of the dancer.

  She had not thought, specifically, objectively, it seemed, about this aspect of

  matters. But, of course, she was owned. She was now property. She could now be

  bought and sold, like a tarsk, at the pleasure of masters.

  She belonged to Samos, of course. It had been within the context of his capture

  rights that she had, as a free woman, of her own free will, pronounced upon

  herself a formula of enslavement. Automatically then, in virtue of the context,

  she became his. The law is clear on th is. The matter is more subtle when the

  woman is not within a context of capture rights. Here the matter differs from

  city to city. In some cities, a woman may not, with legal recognition, submit

  herself to a specific man as a slave, for in those cities that is interpreted as

  placing at least a temporary qualification on the condition of slavery which

  condition, once entered into, all cities agree, is absolute. In such cities,

  then, the woman makes herself a slave, unconditionally. It is then up to the man

  in question whether or not he will accept her as his slave. In this matter he

  will do as he pleases. In any event, she is by then a slave, and only that.

  In other cities, and in most cities, on the other hand, a free woman may, with

  legal tolerance, submit herself as a slave to a specific man. If he refuses her,

  she is then still free. If he accepts her, she is then, categorically, a slave,

  and he may do with her as he pleases, even selling her or giving her away, or

  slaying her, if he wishes. Here we might note a distinction between laws and

  codes. In the codes of the warriors, if a warrior accepts a woman as a slave, it

  is prescribed that, at least for a time, an amount of time up to his discretion,

  she be spared. If she should be the least bit displeasing, of course, or should

  prove recalcitrant in even a tiny way, she may be immediately disposed of.

  It should be noted that this does not place a legal obligation on the warrior.

  It has to do, rather, with the proprieties of the codes. If a woman not within a

  clear context of rights, such as capture rights, house rights, or camp rights,

  should pronounce herself slave, ‘simpliciter, then she is subject to claim.

  These claims may be explicit, as in branding, binding and collaring, or as in

  the uttering of a claimancy formula, such as “I own you,” “You are mine,” or

  “You are my slave,” or implicit, as in, for example, permitting the slave to

  feed from your hand or follow you.

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  “Dance, fool!” cried one of the slave girls to the former Lady Rowena of Lydius.

  “See the free woman!” laughed one of the slaves. “It is the sleen for her,” said

  another.

  “Please men!” cried another. “What do you think you are for?”

  “Like this!” cried a brunette, leaping away from the tables to the tiles,

  tearing away her silk.

  “Do not interfere,” warned a man. The brunette, terrified, seized up her silk,

  and shrank back behind the tables, into the shadows, where, huddled, knelt the

  other slaves.

  She who had been the Lady Rowena fell sobbing to her knees, helpless on the

  tiles, covering her face with her hands. The music stopped.

  “You are cruel, all or you!” cried out Linda, the blond Earth-girl slave of

  Samos, springing to her feet. All eyes turned towards her. “You put us in

  collars! You take away our clothes! You make us serve you! You do with us as you

  please!” She looked beautiful, in her brief tunic, barefoot, her body filled

  with passion, her small fists clenched, in her collar.

  “And you love it!” laughed a man.

  “Yes!” she cried. “I love it! You cannot know how I love it! I come from a world

  where there are almost no true men, a world where manhood is almost educated and

  conditioned out of existence. I come from a world of love-starved women. I did

  not know what true men were until I came to Gor, and w2as put in a collar! Here

  I am disciplined and trained, here I am owned and fulfilled! Here I am happy! I

  pity even my free sisters of Gor, who are so far above me, for they cannot know

  the overwhelming joys and fulfillments which are mine, and I pity a thousand

  times more my miserable free sisters of Earth, so far away, longing for their

  collars and masters!”

  There was silence. She hurried to the side of the girl kneeling on the tiles.

  She crouched beside her, putting her arm about her shoulders. She then looked at

  us. “But this is only a poor slave,” she said. “She is ne2 to her condition. She

  is trying to please. It is just that she does not yet know how. Please be kind

  to her. Give her some time. Let her learn. Is she not beautiful? Do you not

  think she could learn to be pleasing? Show her mercy!”

  It was then again silent.

  Numbly, Linda rose to her feet and walked back about the tables. She knelt

  behind our table, her head down.

  “With your permission,” I said to Samos. I rose to my feet

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  and went to the girl, now prone, red-eyed, on the tiles. I crouched down beside

  her.

  “Oh!” she cried.

  I turned her over, handling her with authority, as a slave is handled.

  She looked up at me.

  Never before, doubtless, had she been handled like this. “Her face is

  beautiful,” I said, “her body is curvaceous, her limbs are fair. It seems she

  should bring a good price.”

  She gasped, appraised as a female.

  “But what
is inside a woman is more important,” said a man.

  “That is true,” I said. Some of the most succulent and exciting slaves I had

  known were, I suppose, at least compared with some of their sisters in bondage,

  comparatively plain in appearance. Such women constitute marvelous bargains in a

  slave market. They cost far less than m any of their higher-priced sisters and

  yet, in the long run, are worth far more. Many men, upon returning home,

  thinking they have bought an average girl within their means, discover instead,

  to their delight, that they have purchased a dream. To be sure, the matter is

  complicated. Slavery, for example, marvelously, subtly, tends to bring out the

  beauty in a woman. Many women, after a year or two in bondage, become so

  beautiful that they can double or triple their price.

  “Men desire women,” I told her.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “And you belong to that sex,” I said, “which is maddeningly, exquisitely

  desirable.”

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  And you are,” I said, “I think, objectively, a beautiful member of that sex.”

  “Thank you, Master,” she whispered.

  “It therefore seems not inconceivable that men might find you desirable.”

  “Yes, Master,” she whispered.

  “Does that please you?” I asked.

  “It terrifies me,” she said.

  “Do you have normal feelings toward men?” I asked.

  “I think so, Master,” she said.

  “Now that you are a slave,” I said, “it is not only permissible for you to yield

  to these feelings, but you must do so.”

  “Master!” she whispered.

  “Yes,” I said, “for you are now a slave.”

  “Yes, Master,” she whispered, shuddering.

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  “That makes quite a difference, doesn’t it?” I asked.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “She does not have slave reflexes,” said a man.

  I pulled her by the hair up to a sitting position, and then, by the hair, bent

  her head back.

  “Oh!” she winced.

  “Keep the palms of your hands on the tiles,” I said. She did so. Her knees were

  slightly flexed.

  “Oh! Oh!” she cried suddenly.

  “Keep your palms on the tiles,” I said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said. “Yes, Master!”

  “She does have slave reflexes,” I reported.

  “Yes,” said the man.

  “Yes,” said another man.

  “Are men now of greater interest to you?” I asked.

  “yes, Master!” she said.

  “We are now going to put these things together,” I said. “First, you are an

  exquisitely desirable woman. You are the sort of woman who could drive a man mad

  with passion. You are the sort of woman to possess whom men might kill.

  Furthermore, your beauty and desirability is increased a thousandfold because

  you are a property girl, a slave.”

  “Yes, Master,” she whispered. “Oh, Master!”

  “Men are now of even greater interest to you, are they not?” I asked.

  “yes, Master!” she wept.

  “Keep the palms of your hands on the floor,” I said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “That handles things from the point of view of the man,” I said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “Now,” I said, “second, let us consider things from the point of view of the

  woman, from your point of view.”

  “Master!” she cried.

  “Keep the palms of your hands on the floor,” I said.

  “Yes, Master,” she whimpered.

  “As a slave,” I said, “it is not only permissible for you to yield to your

  deepest, most stirring, most primitive, most overwhelmingly feminine urges but

  you must do so, shamelessly, unqualifiedly, completely.”

  “Yes, Master,” she cried, and thrust herself suddenly, piteously, against my

  hand.

  I then, by the hair, pulled her about and threw her lengthwise, prone, to the

  tiles.

  page 25

  She looked up at me, over her shoulder. I saw wildness in her eyes. I saw that

  she had begun to sense what it might be to be an aroused slave.

  “Whip,” I said, to a man, the fellow who had earlier disciplined the foolish

  slave who had permitted herself, without permission, to display merriment over

  the plight of a free woman.

  The whip was placed in my hand.

  “Master?” asked the girl, apprehensively.

  “I do not believe you were given permission to stop dancing earlier,” I said.

  “No, Master,” she said.

  “As you are a stupid girl and new to your condition, your punishment, this time,

  will be light. Three lashes.”

  “Three!” she sobbed.

  “Do not expect masters to be so lenient with your stupidity in the future,” I

  said.

  “No, Master,” she wept.

  Then, doubtless for the firs time in her life, she who had been the proud free

  woman, the Lady Rowena of Lydius, naked, and on her belly on the tiles, felt,

  like the common girl she now was, the slave ship of Gor.

  “Stand,” I told her. “Back straight, belly in, breasts out. Lift your hands to

  your shoulders, flex your knees.”

  “I have been whipped,” she said, disbelievingly.

  “See the difference?” said a man to another at his table. “How she stands?”

  “Yes,” said the other.

  I touched her here and there, with the whip, deftly, correcting a line, or the

  tension of a curve.

  She shrank back from the touch of the whip. She now knew what it could to do to

  her. She had felt it. After a girl has once felt the whip the mere sight of it

  is usually enough to bring her immediately into line. “What hangs upon the

  wall?” a master might ask. “The slave whip, Master,” she responds. “How may I be

  more pleasing?”

  I handed the whip back to the fellow who had had it, and returned to my place at

  the table of Samos.

  He signaled the musicians, and they began, again, to play.

  I gave my attention to the board. It was my move. I did not bother, then, to

  glance at the former Lady Rowena of Lydius. She was a mere slave, dancing for

  masters. Doubtless, too, as the evening wore on, other girls, too, perhaps Tula,

  and Susan, and Linda, would be ordered to the floor, to dance before strong

  page 26

  men, then perhaps, each in her turn, one by one, to be dragged to the tables.

  I moved my Ubara’s Rider of the High Tharlarion to Ubara’s Scribe Three. This,

  supporting the center, would also open a file, developing the Ubara’s Builder.

  The Gorean dancer is expected, usually, to satisfy the passions she arouses. “It

  is your move,” I said to Samos. I gathered, from the cries of pleasure, from the


  clapping of hands, the striking of hands on shoulders, that the new slave might

  be proving not unacceptable. “How is she doing?” I asked. “I do not think it

  will be necessary, at least immediately, to throw her to sleen,” said Samos. He

  was regarding the dancer. “It is your move,” I said. Samos put his chin on his

  fists and examined the board. I lifted my head and looked across the room.

  I saw that it was a slave who danced before the men. She gyrated but inches from

  a burly oarsman, then leaped back, eluding his drunken grasp. She moved between

  the tables, a slave, an owned woman. Then she was kneeling beside a man, kissing

  and caressing him, and then, as though it were involuntary, as though her hands

  were tied behind her and she was being pulled back, away from him, by a rope,

  she retreated from him. In a moment she was showering another man with her hair

  and kisses. Then she offered a man wine, holding the goblet, pressing it against

  her belly, swaying sensuously before him. She was then again in the center of

  the tiles, among the tables. She made as if to speak, and then, suddenly,

  stopped, as though startled. Then she took a wad of her long, golden hair and,

  swiftly balling it, thrust it, as though insolently, in her mouth. She then

  looked at the men reproachfully. It was as though a man, perhaps not desiring to

  hear her speak, had gagged her with her own hair. There was laughter. She drew

  the hair from her mouth, drawing some if it, in loosening it, deeply back

  betw4een her teeth, with her head back, as though she might have been in the

  constraint of a gag strap, all this to the music, and then her hair was free,

  and, with a movement of her head and movements of her hands, beautifully, she

  draped and spread it about her. It seemed then she withdrew modestly,

  frightened, behind the hair, drawing it like a cloak or sheet about her, as

  though by means of this piteous device she might hope desperately to conceal at

  least some minimal particle of her beauty from the rude scrutiny of masters. But

  it was not to be permitted.

  To a swirl of music, taking her hair to the sides, holding it, parting it, with

  clenched fists thrust behind her, twisting, her body thrust forward, her beauty

  was suddenly, it seemed as

  page 27

  though by command, or by the action of another, brazenly bared. “Good!” said

 

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