by John Norman
I stepped aside to let a young girl pass, who carried two baskets of eggs, those of the migratory arctic gant. They nest in the mountains of the Hrimgar and in steep, rocky outcroppings, called bird cliffs, found here and there jutting out of the tundra. The bird cliffs doubtless bear some geological relation to the Hrimgar chains. When such eggs are frozen they are eaten like apples.
I saw a woman putting out a pan for a domestic snow sleen to lick clean.
In another place several women sat on a fur blanket playing a cat's cradle game. They were quite skilled. This game is generally popular in the Gorean north. It is played not only by the red hunters, but in Hunjer and Skjern, and in Torvaldsland, and as far south as the villages in the valley of the Laurius.
The tundra at this time of year belies its reputation for bleakness. In many places it bursts into bloom with small flowers. Almost all of the plants of this nature are perennials, as the growing season is too short to permit most annuals to complete their growing cycle. In the winter buds of many of these plants lie dormant in a fluffy sheath which protects them from cold. Some two hundred and forty different types of plants grow in the Gorean arctic within five hundred pasangs of the pole. None of these, interestingly, is poisonous, and none possesses thorns. During the summer plants and flowers will grow almost anywhere in the arctic except on or near the glacial ice.
At certain times in the summer even insects will appear, black, long-winged flies, in great swarms, coating the sides of tents and the faces of men.
Two children raced past me, playing tag.
I looked to the north. It was there that Zarendargar waited.
"Greetings, Master," said Thimble.
"Greetings," I said to her. She was dressed, save for her bondage strings, in much the same way as most of the women of the red hunters, bare-breasted, with high boots and panties. Thistle, however, behind her, was naked, in a northern yoke and on a leather leash. The northern yoke is either of wood or bone, and is drilled in three places. The one Thistle wore was of wood. It was not heavy. It passed behind her neck at which point one of the drilled holes occurred. The other two holes occurred at the terminations of the yoke. A leather strap is knotted about the girl's wrist, passed through the drilled hole at one end of the yoke, usually that on her left, taken up through the hole behind the neck, looped twice about her neck, threaded back down through the center hole, taken up through the other hole at the end, usually the one at her right, and tied about her right wrist. She is thus fastened in the yoke. From each end of the yoke hung a large sack.
"We are going to pick moss and grass," she said. Moss is used as wicks for the lamps. Grass, dried, is used for insulation between the inner soles of the boots and the bottom of the fur stockings in the winter.
"That is good," I said. "Why is Thistle yoked?"
"It pleased me, Master," said Thimble, first girl. There was little love lost between the girls.
"Was she insubordinate?" I asked.
"She said a sharp word to me," said Thimble.
"Did you switch her, too?" I asked.
"Of course, Master," said Thimble.
"Excellent," I said. Discipline must be kept in the tent.
I looked at Thistle. She met my eyes, briefly, and then looked down. She was quite attractive. I had not as yet had either Thimble or Thistle.
"Is Imnak finished yet with the new slave girl?" I asked, referring to Arlene.
"I think so, Master," said Thimble, smiling. "At least he has tied her to a pole behind the tent."
"Why is that?" I asked.
"I do not think she is much good, Master," said Thimble, one slave girl appraising another.
"Do not let me detain you from your labors," I said.
Thistle, suddenly, knelt down before me, yoked, and put her lips to my boot. Her head was jerked up by the leash in the hand of Thimble. Her eyes were moist. "Master!" she begged.
"Come, Slave!" snapped Thimble, and pulled her to her feet and dragged her away, behind her. Thistle looked over her shoulder, at me. I gave no sign of response. She stumbled away, on Thimble's leash. I smiled to myself. Thistle, as I had expected, was the first of the girls to begin to understand and feel her slavery.
"Help us, Tarl," said Akko, whom I had met earlier in the day.
"He is a big fellow," said a man.
"Yes," said another.
I followed Akko and his friends to a place where two teams of men waited, a heavy, braided rope of twisted sleen-hide stretched between them.
They put me at the end of the rope. Soon, to the enthusiastic shouts of observers, we began the contest. Four times the rope grew taut, and four times our team won. I was much congratulated, and slapped on the back.
I was, accordingly, in a good mood when I returned to Imnak's tent.
"Greetings, my friend," I said. I had noted that Arlene, her wrists crossed and over her head, bound, was fastened to the horizontal pole of a meat rack, supported by its two tripods of inclined poles.
"Have you had a good day?" inquired Imnak, politely.
"Yes," I said.
"That is good," he said.
I waited a while. Then I said, "Have you had a good day?"
"Perhaps someone has not had a good day," said Imnak.
"I am sorry to hear that," I said.
"Perhaps someone who won a wager," he said, "is not well repaid for his having won."
"Oh?" I said.
"Sometimes," he said, "it is hardly worth winning." He shrugged.
"I will return in a moment," I said.
I went back of the tent to Arlene.
"I want to talk to you," she said. "I will have no more of this treatment on your part. You cannot simply give me to anyone you please."
"I did not hear you say, 'Master'," I said.
"Master," she said.
"You are never again," she said, "to give me to another man." Her eyes flashed.
"I gather Imnak was not pleased," I said.
"Imnak!" she cried.
"Yes, Imnak," I said. I reached up and cut her loose. I, with my left hand, then took her by the hair.
"Please, stop!" she said.
I turned her face to look at me. With my right hand I jerked the leather at her throat. "What is this?" I asked.
"A collar," she said.
"You are a slave," I said.
"Yes," she whispered, "Master," frightened.
I threw her to my feet, on her right side, and she lifted her head, and looked up at me.
I turned away, angrily, and looked across the flat, cold tundra. I must control my temper.
I looked back upon her.
"Kneel," I snapped.
Swiftly she obeyed.
Women look well kneeling—before a man.
"As a female slave," I said.
She went to position.
Yes, they look well kneeling before men—and especially as female slaves.
"You will now crawl to Imnak," I said, "and beg to try and please him again. If he is not pleased, do you understand, I will feed you to the sleen."
"No, no!" she whispered.
"It is up to you, Slave Girl," I said. "For what do you think you are kept and fed?"
"No," she whispered.
I looked down at her.
"You would not," she whispered.
"I should have left you at the remains of the wall," I said.
"No," she whispered. Then she looked up at me, and reached out her hand. "Sometimes I feel so slave," she said. She touched my thigh with her finger tips. "Sometimes I feel I want your touch, and as a slave girl." I could scarcely hear her. "Your touch," she said, "not his."
"What you want is unimportant," I said. "If Imnak is not pleased," I said, "you will be fed to the sleen."
She looked up at me, in horror. "Would you do that?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"I do not even know how to please a man!" she wept.
"You are an intelligent woman," I said. "I suggest, if you
wish to live, that you apply your intelligence to the task."
Her tears, her head down, shaking, fell into the turf.
"Do you obey your master?" I asked.
"Yes," she whispered. "I obey my master."
She went to all fours.
"No," I said.
She looked at me, puzzled, frightened.
"On your belly," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said.
On her belly then she crawled to Imnak.
No longer was she a commander among the agents of Kurii. She was now a naked slave girl obeying her master.
* * * *
"Have you had a good day?" I later asked Imnak.
"Yes," he said, "I have had a good day."
"How is the auburn-haired slave beast?" I asked him.
"Splendid," he said. "But Thimble and Thistle are better."
I did not doubt but that this was true. But then they had been slaves longer, too.
"Make us tea, Arlene," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said. She was very pretty. I wondered what she would look like in a snatch of a slave silk, and a true collar.
* * * *
Imnak, and Thimble and Thistle were asleep. Outside the low sun, as it did in the summer, circled the sky, not setting.
"Master," whispered Arlene.
"Yes," I said.
"May I share your sleeping bag?" she asked.
"Do you beg it?" I asked.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I permitted her to creep into the bag, beside me. I put my arm about her small body. Her head was on my chest.
"Today, you much increased your slavery over me, did you not?" she asked.
"Perhaps," I said.
"You forced me to crawl to a man and serve him," she said. "How strong you are," she said, wonderingly. She kissed me. "I did not know what it was like to be a slave," she said.
"You still do not know," I told her.
"But you are teaching me, aren't you?" she asked.
"Perhaps," I said.
"It is a strange feeling," she said, "being a slave."
"Does it frighten you?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, "it frightens me, terribly." I felt her hair on my chest. "One is so helpless," she said.
"You are not yet a true slave," I told her.
"Sometimes I sense," she said, "what it might be, to be a true slave."
"Oh?" I asked.
"Yes," she said.
"And it frightens you?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, "but, too, and this is frightening, too, I—" She was silent.
"Go on," I told her.
"Must I speak?" she asked.
"Yes," I told her.
"Too," she wept, "I—I find myself desiring it, intensely." I felt her tears. "How terrible I am!" she said.
"Such feelings are normal in feminine women," I told her. "Sometimes it takes courage to yield to them."
"I must try to fight these feelings," she said.
"As you wish," I said, "but in the end you will yield to them, either because you wish to do so or because I force you to do so."
"Oh?" she asked.
"Yes," I said, "in the end you will become a true slave."
She was silent.
"You were brought to Gor to be a slave," I said. "When your tasks were finished at the wall, you would have been put in silk, collared, and placed at a man's feet."
"Do you truly think so, Master?" she asked.
"Of course," I said. "Consider your beauty, and the nature of the men of Gor."
She shuddered. "I fear slavery, and myself," she said.
"You are a true slave," I told her.
"No," she said.
"Only you do not yet know it," I said.
"No," she said.
"Fight your feelings," I said.
"I will," she said.
"In the end it will do you no good," I said.
She was silent.
"You have been counter-instinctually conditioned," I said. "You have been programmed with value sets developed for competitive, territorial males. There are complex historical and economic reasons for this. Your society is not interested in the psycho-biological needs of human females. The machine is designed with its own best interests in mind, not those of its human components."
"I do not want to be a component in a machine," she said.
"Then," said I, "listen in the quiet for the beating of your own heart."
"It is hard to hear in the noise of the machine," she whispered.
"But it beats," I said. "Listen."
She kissed me, softly.
"You have been taught to function," I said, "not to be alive."
"How wrong it is to be alive!" she wept.
"Perhaps not," I suggested.
"I dare not be true to myself," she said.
"Why not?" I asked.
"Because I think," she whispered, "deep within me, there lies a slave."
"One day you will be awakened," I said, "and will discover that it is you yourself who are that slave."
"Oh, no," she said.
"Surely you have been curious about her," I said, "about that girl, your deep and true self."
"No, no!" she said. Then for a long time she was quiet. Then she said, "Yes, I have wondered about her."
I put my hand gently on her head.
"Even as a girl," she said, "lying alone in bed, I wondered what it might be like to lie soft and small, perfumed, helpless, in the arms of a strong man, knowing that he would treat me as he wished, doing with me whatever he wanted."
"It is uncompromising manhood which thrills you," I said. "It is found but rarely on your native world."
"It is not useful to the machine," she said.
"No," I said, "but note, interestingly, in spite of the fact that you perhaps never in your life on Earth encountered such manhood, yet you were capable of understanding and conceiving it, and longing for its manifestation."
"How can that be?" she asked, frightened.
"It is a genetic expectation," I told her, "more ancient than the caves, a whisper in your brain bespeaking a lost world of nature, a world in which the human being, both male and female, were bred. You were fitted to one world; you found yourself in another. You were a stranger in a country not of your own choosing, a troubled guest, uneasy in a house you knew was not yours."
"I fear my feelings," she said.
"They hint to you of nature's world," I told her. "They are inimical to the machine."
"I must fight them," she said.
"They are a reminiscence," I said, "of a vanished reality. They whisper of old songs. The machine has not yet been able to eradicate them from your brain. Such feelings, in their genetic foundations, lie at the root of women, and of men. They antedate the taming of fire. They were ancient when the first stone knife was lifted to the sun."
"I must fight them," she wept.
"Fight yourself then," I said, "for it is your deepest self of which they speak."
"It is wrong to be true to oneself!" she said.
"Perhaps," I said. "I do not know."
"One must always pretend to be other than what one is," she said.
"Why?" I asked.
"I do not know," she said.
"Gorean men," I said, "you will learn are less tolerant of pretense than the men of Earth."
"They would force me to be what I truly am, and in my heart long to be?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"I'm frightened," she whispered. We did not speak for a time. "Why are there no true men on Earth?" she asked.
"I am sure there are many true men on Earth," I said. "But it is much more difficult for them."
"I do not think there are any men on Earth," she said, angrily.
"I am sure they exist," I said.
"What of the others?" she asked.
"Perhaps someday," I said, "they will cease to fear their manhood."
"Is there much hope for those of Earth?
" she asked.
"Very little," I said. "A reversal of the pathology of centuries would be required." I smiled. "The wheels are heavy, and the momentum great," I said.
"The machine will tear itself apart," she said.
"I sense that, too," I said. "How long can it continue to spread, to grow and devour? Stalemate will be achieved upon the ashes of civilizations."
"It is horrible," she said.
"Perhaps it will not occur," I said.
"Perhaps the lies of civilization are preferable to the truths of barbarism," she said.
"Perhaps," I said. "It is hard to know."
"Cannot there be a civilization that makes room for the realities of men and women?" she asked.
"A civilization that makes room for life?" I asked.
"Yes," she said.
"I do not know," I said. "Perhaps."
"You are kind to talk to me," she said.
"Once we were both of Earth," I said.
"How can you talk to me like this and yet keep me a slave?" she asked.
"I do not detect the difficulty," I said.
"Oh," she said.
"One of the pleasant things about owning a slave," I said, "is the opportunity to converse with her, to listen to her, to hear her express herself, her feelings and ideas. One can learn much from a slave. Many slaves, like yourself, are highly intelligent. They can express themselves articulately, clearly, trenchantly, and lyrically. It is a great pleasure to talk with them."
"I see," she said.
"Then, when one wishes," I said, "one puts them again on their knees."
"You are cruel," she said.
"Kiss me, Slave," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said, and kissed me, softly.
We were then silent for a time.
"Master," she whispered.
"Yes," I said.
"I begin to sense," said she, "what it might be like to be a true slave."
"You are an ignorant girl," I said.
"I have learned some things," she said.
