by John Norman
“What truths?” she asked.
“That woman, in her nature,” I said, “is the eternal slave, that man, in his nature, is the eternal master.”
“The men of my world,” she said, “are not masters.”
“They have been crippled.” I said, “and it seems, are being slowly destroyed.”
“Not all of them,” she said.
“Perhaps not,” I said. “Yet if one of them should so much as question the renunciatory and negativistic values with which his brain has been imprinted he will be immediately assailed by the marshaled forces of an establishment jealously presiding over the dissolution of its own culture. Is it so difficult to detect the failure of public philosophies? Are unhappiness, frustration, misery, scarcity, pollution, disease and crime of no interest to those in power? I fear the reflex spasm. ‘But we were not to blame,’ they will say, as they wade in poisoned ashes.”
“Is there no hope for my world?” she asked.
“Very little,” I said. “Perhaps, here and there, men will form themselves into small communities, where the names of such things as courage, discipline and responsibility may be occasionally recollected, communities which, in their small way, might be worthy of Home Stones. Such communities, emerging upon the ruins, might provide a nucleus for regeneration, a sounder, more biological regeneration of a social structure, one not antithetical to the nature of human beings.”
“Must my civilization be destroyed?” she asked.
“Nothing need be done,” I said. “It is now in the process of destroying itself. Do you think it will last another thousand years?”
“I do not know,” she said.
“I fear only,” I said, “that it will be replaced by a totalitarian superstition uglier than its foolish and ineffectual predecessor.
She looked down.
“Men would rather die than think,” I said.
“Not all men,” she said.
“That is true,” I mused. “In all cultures there are the lonely ones, the solitary walkers, those who climb the mountain, and look upon the world, and wonder.”
“Why is it,” she asked, “that the men of Gor do not think and move in herds, like those of Earth?”
“I do not know,” I said. “Perhaps they are different. Perhaps the culture is different. Perhaps it has something to do with the decentralization of city states, the multiplicity of traditions, the diversity of the caste codes.”
“I think the men of Gor are different,” she said.
“They are, presumably, or surely most of them, of Earth stock,” I said.
“I think, then,” she said, “that, on the whole, it must have been only a certain sort of Earth man who was brought to this world.”
“What sort?” I asked.
“Those capable of the mastery,” she said.
“Surely there are those of Earth,” I said. “who are capable of the mastery.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “I do not know.”
“Stand, Slave,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“You have moved well this night, Slave,” I said. “You have well earned a brief rag for your thighs.”
“Thank you, Master,” she said. I do not think she could have been more pleased if I had considered allowing her a sheath gown of white satin, with gloves and pearls.
I cut a length from the red bark cloth, about five feet in length and a foot in width. I wrapped it about the sweetness of her slave hips and tucked it in. I pushed it down so that her navel might be well revealed. It is called the “slave belly” on Gor. Only slave girls, on Gor, reveal their navels.
“You make me show the ‘slave belly,’ Master,” she said.
“Is it not appropriate?” I asked.
“Yes, Master,” she said, “it is.”
“Do you like it?” I asked.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“You are a slave, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Yes, Master,” she said. I liked it, too. It reveals, well, the roundness of her belly and, low at the hips, the beginning of subtle love curves.
“Do you understand the meaning of the tuck closing on the skirt?” I asked.
“Master?” she asked.
I then, rudely, tore away the garment, spinning her, stumbling, from me. She gasped, brutally and suddenly stripped. She looked at me, frightened, again naked before her master.
“Do you now understand?” I asked.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
I threw her the garment again.
Hastily she put it on again, not neglecting to thrust it well down on her hips, that the slave belly would be well revealed.
“Excellent, Slave,” I said.
“Thank you, Master,” she said.
I then reached into a sack, near the fire. I drew forth from it a handful of strings of beads. I threw her a necklace of red and black beads, which I thought was nice.
“Master,” she asked, pointing, “may I also have that string of beads.”
Tende and Alice each had two strings of beads. I saw no reason why the blond-haired barbarian might not be similarly ornamented.
I handed her the second string of beads and put the others back in the sack. She had already put the first string, that of red and black beads, about her throat. She looped them twice and still they fell between her lovely breasts, one loop longer than the other. The second string of beads was blue and yellow. Both strings were of small, simple wooden beads, suitable for slave girls. “Master,” she asked, holding out to me the blue and yellow beads, “would you not, please, put this string upon me?”
“Very well,” I said, standing behind her, looping them twice, one loop smaller than the other, about her throat. Each loop, as with the red and black beads, fell between her sweet breasts.
“Why did you want this string?” I asked.
“Are blue and yellow not the colors of the slavers?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. Blue and yellow are often used for the tenting of slave pavilions, and in the decor of auction houses. The wagons of slavers often have blue and yellow canvas. Sometimes they bind their girls with blue and yellow ropes. Sometimes their girls wear yellow-enameled collars, and yellow-enameled wrist rings and ankle rings, with chains with blue links. In his best, a slaver will usually wear blue and yellow robes, or robes in which these colors are prominent He will, normally, in his day-to-day business, wear at least chevrons, or slashes, of blue and yellow on his lower left sleeve.
“Are blue and yellow beads then,” she asked, “not appropriate for me, for I am a slave?”
“They are very nice,” I said, “but any simple, cheap beads, say, of wood or glass, will do as well for a slave.”
“I see, Master,” she said. “But may I keep them?”
“Until I, or any free man,” I said, “sees fit to take them from you.” I held her by the upper arms, from behind. “You do not own them,” I said. “You only wear them, and on the sufferance of free men.”
“Yes, Master,” she said. “I own nothing. It is, rather, I who am owned.”
“Yes,” I said. I turned her about, to face me. “You are beginning to feel and understand your slavery, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Yes, Master,” she said. “Tonight you taught me much. For the first time in my life, tonight, I moved totally as a woman. I do not think I could go back, Master, to moving as a man.”
I held her, tightly, and looked sternly into her eyes. “You are not a man,” I told her. “You are a woman. That is what you are. Try to understand that. You are a woman, not a man.”
“Yes, Master,” she sobbed.
“It is thus permissible for you, truly, to move as a woman, and to feel and think and behave like a woman.”
“I am a slave,” she said, “and yet, strangely, I am beginning to feel so free.”
“You are breaking through the constrictions of a pathological conditioning program,” I told her.
I looked at her.
She trembled.
“Go to the slave post,” I said. “Sit there, with your back to the post, your hands crossed behind your back.”
“Yes, Master,” she said.
I took a piece of improvised binding fiber, a narrow strip of leather some five feet long, and crouched down behind her.
“You freed me of many inhibitions tonight, Master,” she said. “Was that your intention?”
“Perhaps,” I said.
“I am grateful,” she said.
“Oh!” she winced, as I knotted her hands behind her back.
“I am a woman,” she said. “I want to be a woman, truly.”
“Have no fear,” I said. “You will be.”
She looked at me.
“Gorean men,” I said, “do not accept the conceit and pretense of pseudo-masculinity in female slaves.”
“They would enforce my womanhood upon me?” she asked.
“You are a slave,” I said. “You will be given no choice but to manifest your total womanhood to your master, in all its full vulnerability and beauty.”
“But then I would have to obey, and please them,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Surely they would show me some compromise,” she said.
“The Gorean man,” I said, “does not compromise with a female slave. If necessary, you will learn your womanhood under the whip.”
“But what if, even then,” she asked, “I am not sufficiently pleasing?”
“You will then perhaps be fed to sleen,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
I fastened the free end of the binding fiber to the slave post, and stood up.
“I am a secured slave,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Master,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“There was one thing I did not tell you about my dream.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“It is something that you will not understand,” she said, “for you are a man.”
“What is that?” I asked.
“It was when I must needs please my master well, and as a slave,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“I wanted to please him,” she whispered.
“Of course,” I said. “You were desperate to please him, for you knew that if you were not pleasing to him, you would be cruelly and horribly destroyed.”
“But I wanted to please him, too, for another reason,” she said.
“What was that?” I asked.
“You will not understand,” she said. “A man could never understand.”
“What?” I asked.
“I wanted to please him,” she said, “—because he was my master.” She looked at me. “A girl can want to please her master,” she said, “because he is her master.”
I did not speak.
“Can you understand that?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“Do you think that we would make you such superb slaves if we did not want to he your slaves?”
“Perhaps not,” I said.
“A girl desires to please her master,” she said. “Can you understand that, Master?”
“I think so,” I said.
“I desire to please you,” she whispered.
“I see,” I said.
“Master,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Why did you not rape me tonight, Master?” she asked. “Am I not pleasing to you?”
“Later, perhaps,” I said.
“You’re training me, aren’t you. Master?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
33. What We Saw From The Height Of The Falls; Tende Dances; We Enter Again Upon The River; I Anticipate The Surrender Of The Blond-Haired Barbarian
We thrust the canoe upward, Kisu and I at the stern, Ayari and the girls hauling on ropes at the forequarter. It tipped up and then settled downward, and we thrust and hauled it, laden, to the level.
The sound of the falls, to our left, plunging some four hundred feet to the waters below, was deafening.
It is difficult to convey the splendor of the Ua’s scenery to those who have not seen it. There is the mightiness of the river, like a great road, twisting and turning, occasionally broken with green islands, sometimes sluggish, sometimes shattered by rapids and cataracts, sometimes interrupted by flooding cascades of water, sometimes a few feet in height and sometimes towering upwards hundreds of feet, and then there is the jungle, its immensity and wildlife, and the vast sky above it.
“I am pleased,” said Kisu, happily, wiping the sweat from his brow.
“Why?” I asked.
“Come here,” he said.
“Be careful!” I said to him. He was wading out into the water.
“Come here!” he called.
I waded after him, some forty or fifty feet out into the current. It was only to our knees there.
“Look!” he said, pointing.
From the height of the falls we could see for pasangs behind us downriver. It was not only a spectacular but also a marvelous coign of vantage.
“I knew it would be so!” he cried, slapping his thigh in pleasure.
I looked, the hair on the back of my neck rising.
“Tende! Tende!” called Kisu. “Come here, now!”
The girl, moving carefully, waded to where we stood. Kisu seized her by the back of the neck and faced her downriver. “See, my pretty slave?” he asked.
“Yes, my master,” she said, frightened.
“It is he,” said Kisu. “He is coming for you!”
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“Hurry now to the shore,” he said. “Build a fire, prepare food, Slave.”
“Yes, Master,” she said, commanded, hurrying from us to address herself to her tasks.
I looked into the distance, downriver, half shutting my eyes against the glare from the water.
Downriver, several pasangs away, small but unmistakable, moving in our direction, was a fleet of canoes and river vessels. There must have been in the neighborhood of a hundred, oared river galleys, the balance of the fleet which had been prepared for Shaba’s originally projected penetration of the Ua, and perhaps again as many canoes. If there were crews of fifty on the galleys and from five to ten men in a canoe, the force behind us must have ranged somewhere between five and six thousand men.
“It is Bila Huruma!” shouted Kisu in triumph.
“So this is why you accompanied me on the Ua?” I asked.
“I would have come with you anyway, to help you, for you are my friend,” said Kisu. “But our ways, happily, led us the same direction. Is that not a splendid coincidence?”
“Yes, splendid,” I smiled.
“You see now what was my plan?” he asked.
“Your mysterious plan?” I grinned.
“Yes,” he said, happily.
“I thought this might be it,” I said. “But I think you may have miscalculated.”
“I could not in battle beat Bila Huruma,” said Kisu. “His askaris were superior to my villagers. But now, as I have stolen Tende, his projected companion, I have lured him into the jungle. I need now only lead him on and on, until he is slain in the jungle, or until, bereft of men and supplies, I need only turn back and meet him, as man to man, as warrior to warrior.”
I looked at him.
“Thus,” said Kisu, “in destroying Bila Huruma, I will destroy the empire.”
“It is an intelligent and bold plan,” I said, “but I think you may have miscalculated.”
“How is that?” asked Kisu.
“Do you truly think that Bila Huruma,” I asked, “who owns or is companion to perhaps hundreds of women would pursue you into the jungle at great risk to himself and his empire to get back one girl, a girl whom he doubtless realizes has by now been reduced to slavery, and has thus been rendered politically worthless, and a girl who was never more to him to begin with than a convenience in a min
or political situation on the Ngao coast?”
“Yes,” said Kisu.. “It will be a matter of principle for him.”
“It might be a matter of principle for you,” I said, “but I doubt that it would be a matter of principle for Bila Huruma. There are principles and there are principles. For a man such as Bila Huruma I conjecture that the principle of preserving his empire would take precedence over matters of minor personal concern.”
“But Bila Huruma is on the river,” said Kisu.
“Probably,” I said.
“Thus,” said Kisu, “you are wrong.”
“Perhaps,” I said.
“Do you think he follows you?” asked Kisu.
“No,” I said, “I am unimportant to him.”
“Thus,” said Kisu, “it is I whom he follows.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “Perhaps you are right.”
Kisu then turned and, happily, waded back to the shore.
“Remove your garment,” said Kisu to Tende.
“Yes, Master,” she said. “Follow me,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“You others may come, too,” he said.
Wading, we followed Kisu and Tende out toward the center of the river. There was there, overlooking the falls, a large, flat rock. We climbed onto the rock. From its surface we could see downriver, and, pasangs back, the flotilla of canoes and galleys of the Ubar, Bila Huruma.
“What are you going to do with me, Master?” asked Tende.
“I am going to dance you naked,” he said. He thrust her forward on the rock, facing downriver.
Tende stood there, trembling, dressed only in her slave beads.
“Bila Huruma!” called Kisu. “I am Kisu!” He pointed at the girl. “This is the woman, Tende, who was to have been your companion! I took her from you! I made her my slave!”
Bila Huruma, of course, if he were with the flotilla, as we conjectured, could not have heard Kisu. The distance was too great. Too, had he been within fifty yards he probably could not have heard him, because of the roar of the falls. Moreover, so far away was the flotilla, I had little doubt but what we could not be seen from its position. We could see the flotilla largely because of the size of its galleys and the number of its vessels, both canoes and galleys. The canoes were almost invisible from where we stood. Had there been but a single canoe it would have been extremely difficult to detect. Similarly, from the. position of the flotilla we would be, of course, specks upon a larger speck, for most practical purposes invisible. I had never seen glasses of the builders in the palace of Bila Huruma. Shaba, however, I was sure, from Anango, would possess such an instrument. It would make him difficult to approach.
