by John Norman
Ellen noted that the woman was very beautiful. She wore an off-the-shoulder evening dress, and her shoulders were sweetly wide and soft, perhaps alluringly so. The charms of her bosom were amply but subtly, not vulgarly, suggested. She was doubtless a woman of high intelligence and exquisite taste. Her companion seemed unable to take his eyes from her. About her throat there was a tasteful, close-fitting, single strand of pearls.
Ellen thought to herself, somewhat reluctantly, that she had perhaps not minded so serving as much as she might have supposed. To be sure, there had been an intense sting of humiliation as she understood what she was to do, and that she must obey unquestioningly, and that her helpless service and abject obedience would amuse and gratify her master, but, after her initial confusion, shame and blushings, and stumbling once, and almost dropping a plate, she was aware, bit by bit, that she did not mind, so much, what she was doing. She had begun to feel warm sensations, and a sense of her place in these things, and her specialness. She was pleased, too, to be naked before her master, and she did not doubt that he “found her flanks of interest,” and the gaze of the other man had certainly been, at the least, warmly approbatory. After their eyes had met once, fully, she had not dared to look at him again, not so openly or directly. But several times during the evening, when his attentions were not completely absorbed by his charming companion, she had sensed his eyes, those of a powerful male, on her youthful, well-turned, stripped body. So she did have some sense of what it might be to serve masters thusly, and she found herself, in her way, appreciated and prized. And so she served shyly, sometimes fighting strange sensations in her body. She could not deny that serving men as a naked slave called up from deep within her strange, surprising, unfamiliar feelings. It disturbed her in some very unsettling, but warm and pleasant, and deliciously troubling, way. It made her feel terribly feminine, helplessly and beautifully feminine. She wondered if this might be an erotic experience for her. What a strange thing, she thought, and so surprisingly beautiful, to begin to feel the warmth and wonder of one’s own sex. How few women, she feared, felt their femininity. It had been denied to them for centuries by one sort of fanatics and now it was again being denied to them, on her own world, by a new form of fanatics, building on the insanities, cruelties and envy of their predecessors, utilizing the poisons of the past in the interests of unnatural, self-serving political objectives. What are these strange feelings, she wondered, which I am beginning to feel, these enticing, delightfully tormenting feelings? Will I be able to resist them? Will they take me over, will they conquer me, will they put a rope on my neck and drag me zealously, helplessly, eagerly, panting after them? Am I to become their captive, their victim and prisoner? Am I to wear their leash, their bonds, as a helpless slave? Am I to become one of those low girls who whimper and scratch at the sides of their kennels? She was beginning, she feared, to feel sensations sometimes referred to vulgarly in Gorean as the burning, or the fires, in the slave belly. If she had been alone with her master, so serving, she would have begged for his least caress. Even had he impatiently cuffed her to the side, she felt that she might, in gratitude, have crawled back, begging to lick and kiss the hand that had administered the blow.
She loved him. He was her master. She was his slave.
“Surely you are aware,” said Mirus, her master, to the woman whom she did not know, she in the lovely off-the-shoulder gown, “that in the history of Earth, for thousands of years, slavery was an accepted, approved, and prized institution.”
“No longer,” she said.
“In certain parts of the world it still is,” he said, “but, more to the point, the intelligence of the ancients and medievals, and such, was not inferior to our own, and, in many respects, most would grant, many of them, perhaps the majority, were morally superior to large numbers of our lying, cheating, thieving, greedy, envious contemporary representatives of manufactured “mass man.” Most of them had no objection to slavery, and, indeed, saw its values. Certainly you can understand how it might alleviate many social problems, one among many being that of expanding, uncontrolled populations intent on transforming a once verdant, lovely planet into arid, sterile ecological garbage. To be sure, there are many ways of solving social problems, and Earth is clearly moving to imperialistic centralization, to statism, collectivism and authoritarianism, in which, to control matters, human beings will become in fact, if not in name, slaves of the state. An alternative to both a lying world in which it is claimed that all are free, when they are not, a world hastening to disaster, and a world in which all are slaves, would be a world in which masters are masters and slaves are slaves.”
“Such things are not possible on Earth,” she said.
“They were,” he said, “and may be again. Propaganda mills, as you know, may be quickly adjusted. Reality occasionally intrudes. Houses of cards do not well withstand the winds of a changing world. Obvious historical imperatives may dictate policy, at least to those capable of understanding them, and with the power to act upon them. The media will run like dogs to the whistles of their masters, whether it be their audiences, their advertisers or the state. What is seen as necessary will be adopted. Falsity and absurdity can be defended, so why not truth and practicality? If certain words are offensive, those particular words need not be used; I prefer them because I like to speak plainly; I prefer ‘master’ and ‘slave’ to ‘servant of the people’ and ‘citizen’.”
“You have never spoken to me like this before,” she said.
“This is a memorable night,” he said lifting his wine glass to her. “I do not think you will ever forget it.”
“For me?” she asked.
“For all of us,” said her companion, he, too, lifting his glass to her in a pleasant salute.
“Putting aside deeper matters,” said Mirus, “you expressed interest in Ellen and in the fact that she must serve naked.”
The woman looked at him. She, too, had lifted her glass of wine, though, to be sure, merely to take from it a tiny, dainty sip.
“We are all familiar with war,” he said. “In war, it is a familiar practice for the victors to despoil the conquered. They take from them what they desire, whatever seems of value. For example, in this fashion, it has been a familiar practice of victors to take the women of conquered men from them and make them their slaves. Surely you are aware of this.”
“Of course,” said the woman.
Ellen wondered if the woman was aware of her companion’s gaze, of how his eyes seemed to glitter upon her.
Would she not have screamed in terror, and fled?
“You are perhaps also aware that at the victory feasts of conquerors not unoften the women of the enemy, the women of the conquered, and, ideally, those formerly of the highest station, the most aristocratic of the enemy’s women, those of the richest and most exalted blood, the noblest and the proudest, the most envied, as well as the most beautiful, all now embonded, must serve their new masters.”
“I knew something of this, vaguely,” she said.
“But did you know,” he asked, “that they must serve their new masters naked?”
“Yes,” she said, reddening, “I knew something of that.”
“Well,” said Mirus. “That is much what is the case with our little Ellen here.”
“You have taken her from conquered men?” she asked.
“In a sense, I suppose so,” he said. “For the men of her world have for the most part been conquered by their women. Thus they are conquered men, or many of them. And all I have done is to take one of those “conquering women” and bring her here, to return her, for my amusement, to her place in the order of nature. I thought I might let her see what it is like to be among true men.”
Ellen trembled.
She was a slave — utterly — and on Gor.
“Ellen, of course,” said he, “is not of the upper classes, or such, such as yourself, though we occasionally take in such, but she makes an excellent example of a type. She was a femi
nist, and was accordingly, in a sense, engaged in a war with men. To be sure, not an open war, not an honest, war. That war, however, for her, is over. And so she is for me a prize of war. She lost. To the victor belong the spoils. I have made her mine, as a slave. Thusly, compatible with historical precedent, I have her serve at my feast, my victory feast, naked.”
“Bravo!” said the other man.
“Have we not business to attend to?” asked the woman.
“But supper is not yet over,” said her companion. “Surely you would not deprive us of further courses, nor of our dessert?”
“No,” she laughed. “Of course not!”
“Ellen,” said Mirus.
“Sir?” said Ellen.
“You will continue to serve,” he said. “After dessert, we will have the coffee and liqueurs at the coffee table.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Ellen.
****
“It is beautiful,” said the woman, she in the off-the-shoulder white gown, admiring the twenty weighty double ingots of gold.
They had been carried in, ingot by ingot, and stacked on the rug, near the coffee table, by two guards.
“These, too,” said the woman’s companion, “were, as I recall, a part of our arrangement.” He produced a small leather pouch and, loosening its draw strings, opened it. Into the palm of his hand he poured a small shower of scintillating diamonds.
“Lovely!” she exclaimed.
He returned them, carefully, to the pouch, and handed them to her. She put them into her small, white, matching dress purse.
“Thusly are you paid,” said her companion.
“Even were you not heretofore a rich woman,” said Mirus, “you would be now.”
“You are surely generous,” laughed the woman.
Tutina stood nearby, smiling.
Ellen was to one side, standing. She had not yet been given permission to clear. She had struggled, during the evening, to understand the conversation. It was in English and so there was no difficulty in her following the words, only the meanings. It was not as though they took care to speak guardedly in her presence, for she was only a slave. It was rather that they understood so much among themselves, and took so much for granted, that to the uninitiated, to the outsider, such as the slave, Ellen, it very little made sense. Too much was implicit. Ellen did gather that clandestine business arrangements of considerable scope were afoot. The concerns, or tentacles, of whatever combine or conglomerate, or organization, was involved seemed to have far-reaching ramifications, ramifications affecting worlds. Surely it had its representatives, or outposts, or offices, on her former world as well as on this, her new world. Many highly placed individuals on both worlds, it seemed, for example, on Earth, in government and business, were not only apprised of, but implicated in, these matters. They extended far beyond the trivia of harvesting lovely women for vending in Gorean markets. The business of capturing, transporting and selling well-curved, helpless living flesh might, she suspected, be little more than a byproduct of more serious enterprises. To be sure, it doubtless had its at least minimally significant place in the economy of their schemes. There was doubtless money to be made in such matters. Her collar, for example, was quite real. She accepted that she was property, and could be sold. There was no gainsaying that. On the other hand, she was confident that her master would not sell her. Surely he had not brought her here to sell her, not after their relationship of long ago. She suspected that he must somehow love her, though perhaps in his own hard, severe, uncompromising, possessive way. Surely she loved him, and, doubtless, even from the first, though such things had not been so clear to her then, as a vulnerable, submissive slave. I think he loves me, she thought, though this may now be unbeknownst to himself. And even if he did not love her, she had little doubt that he “found her flanks of interest.” And this did not dismay her. Rather she welcomed it. She, his slave, wanted to be an object of commanding, unabashed lust to him, wanted to be to him an object of powerful, violent sexual desire. On this world she had become so aware of the stirrings in her own blood, confronted with his physicality, that she, in her own complementary, soft, vulnerable, beautiful physicality, longed to be taken in his arms, longed to yield to him as the property he owned, longed to be put ecstatically, in rapture, to the ruthless pleasures of her beloved master.
“But as you know,” laughed the young woman in the white, off-the-shoulder gown, “I never joined you as a mercenary. I am not the sort of person who would work for mere pay. On Earth, I am quite amply provided for, independently. Your riches, marvelous as they may be, were not the lure that brought me to your endeavors.”
“We understand,” said her companion, “that it was not mere gain, worthless pelf, which brought you into our service.”
“Into your endeavors,” she smiled. “No,” she said, “it was for the adventure of the thing. Life was so boring for me. I had everything, and so it held so little. But here I found excitement, intrigue. I require stimulation. I thrive on danger.”
“Oh?” said her companion.
“Yes,” she said. “It was to escape boredom that I joined your cause, that I became a secret, unsuspected agent in your cause.”
“Your contacts were useful,” said her companion. “They were of great value to us.”
“I also appreciated your attention to some small details,” she said.
“The women, the debutantes, certain women who had dared to be critical of your life and behavior, certain gossips, certain rivals you disapproved of, those you called to our attention?”
“Yes,” she said. “You did not hurt them, I trust.”
“They would not be hurt by us,” he said.
“Not by you?” she asked.
“At least in no way that was not in their new long-term interest.”
“What did you do with them?” she asked.
“Guess,” he suggested.
She then caught sight of Ellen, standing to the side, unobtrusively awaiting the command to clear. Ellen looked down, immediately. Something in her belly, which she did not entirely understand, made her apprehensive in the presence of a free woman. A free woman, in her status, in her loftiness and power, in her glory and might, was another form of being altogether, quite different from herself.
“No!” exclaimed the woman, delightedly.
“Yes,” smiled her companion, “we made them slaves. Some changes had to be made in some of them, as you would suppose, recourse had to certain serums, and such, to make them acceptable for the markets, but it was all taken care of, in good order.”
“What of Annette?” she asked.
“She wears her collar on the island of Cos.”
“Annette in a collar!” she said. “How delightful!”
“She is fetching in it, as other desirable slaves.”
“And Marjorie?”
“Sold south to Schendi, where she now serves a black master.”
“Allison?”
“To the Barrens, for two hides.”
“Michelle?”
“To Torvaldsland, as a bondmaid, for a keg of salted parsit fish.”
“And Gillian?”
“The columnist?”
“Yes.”
“The serums worked well for her. She became quite comely.”
“Do you know her disposition?”
“She was sold south to Turia, but the caravan was ambushed by Tuchuks, a fierce nomadic people. I would not worry about her. She will doubtless show up, eventually, in one of the southern markets.”
“Perhaps one of Turia’s markets itself,” said Mirus.
“I would not doubt it,” said the woman’s companion. “And have no fear but what the others were judiciously distributed, as well.”
“Did you let them know my role in this, that it was I who designated them for their fates?”
“Certainly,” he said, “and you may well conjecture their dismay, their wild cries, and tears, their helpless rage, how they pulled at their chains, trying
to rise, or seized and shook, in futile fury, the bars of their tiny cages.”
“Wonderful! Wonderful!” said the woman. “Jeffrey, you are such a dear!” She then gave him a quick, affectionate kiss on the left cheek. “You are a darling!” she said.
This was the first time Ellen had heard the name of her companion.
“I will arrange to have the gold delivered to your chamber,” said Mirus, “where you will spend the night.”
“I must thank you for your hospitality,” she said to Mirus, warmly. “It was a lovely supper. It is a beautiful room. I am so pleased to make your acquaintance.” She turned to Tutina. “You have been terribly quiet all evening, my dear,” she said. “I feel so terribly guilty. But the men and I had so much to talk about. You understand. But still you should not have allowed us to monopolize the conversation.”
Tutina smiled.
“I hope your ankle improves quickly,” said the woman.
“Thank you,” said Tutina.
“You may clear, Ellen,” said Mirus.
“Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir,” she said. She set about clearing the table, putting the various utensils, vessels and plates on the serving cart. She would later clear the coffee table.
“Good-bye, Ellen,” called the woman in the off-the-shoulder gown, sweetly.
“Good-bye, Ma’am. Thank you, Ma’am,” said Ellen.
Happily, the woman’s pleasant, dismissive tone of voice had been absolutely clear. Else Ellen might have been terribly frightened. But the utterance had clearly involved no suggested recognition of Ellen as a person, suggesting that she might be a human being in her own right, instead of the animal she was, for that would have been improper, and would have frightened Ellen, particularly as she was in the presence of her master. But, happily, the utterance had been no more than a casually generous, almost thoughtless, unbegrudged gift from a superior to an inferior. And surely it was. For Ellen knew herself as her absolute inferior, as the woman was free, and she, Ellen, was bond. Ellen cast a quick, frightened glance at her master but his gaze reassured her that her response had been apt. Indeed, she saw, with mixed feelings, that he regarded her as a quick, bright slave. She feared that that might put him more on his guard against her. But surely he must understand that the intelligence of a woman did not disappear in the searing moment her flesh took the iron, or the instant that her small neck felt clasped upon it a steel band.
