Prize of Gor

by John Norman

  Ellen, head down, continued to clear. She made as little noise as possible.

  “It has all been so exciting,” said the woman. “I have been so stimulated. I used to be so bored, but now I am not bored, at all!”

  “Excellent,” said her companion.

  “I have enjoyed the intrigue, being a secret agent!” she laughed.

  “And you have done well,” said her companion. “Because of you the politics of two worlds are now subtly different from before. The Kurii are grateful to you. In their wars with Priest-Kings you have served them well.”

  “Served?” she smiled.

  “Let us say then that you have proved yourself a useful, valuable agent.”

  “That is better,” said the woman.

  This puzzled Ellen.

  She had heard of Priest-Kings, but did not believe they existed. Supposedly they were strange men of some sort, and lived in a remote area called the Sardar Mountains. She understood them to be a part of the mythology of this strange world, nonexistent, like sleen, tarns, and such. Kurii she had never heard of, at all. Perhaps they were another sort of strange men, who lived somewhere else. Since they were mentioned in connection with Priest-Kings, she thought that perhaps they did not exist either. Such expressions, she surmised, might be code names for competitive organizations or factions. That hypothesis pleased her, though she was not clear why free persons should have recourse to code names before a mere slave.

  “Alas, now,” smiled the woman, “I fear I must return to my daily, boring round of parties, and such.”

  “Surely there must be uses to which you could still be put,” said her companion.

  “I hope so,” she said, warmly.

  “I am sure of it,” he said.

  “I do crave excitement,” she said. “I want stimulation. I hate being bored.”

  “I suspect,” said her companion, “that there is more excitement in store for you, and I doubt that you will, in the future, lack for stimulation. And whatever your problems might prove to be in the future, I doubt that boredom will rank high amongst them.”

  “You are such a dear, Jeffrey,” she smiled.

  “Surely I can be rewarded with another kiss,” said her companion, as though plaintively.

  “Naughty boy!” she chided.

  “Please,” he wheedled.

  “Very well,” she said. Again she touched him briefly on the left cheek, a flick of a kiss, a tiny peck. “There!” she said.

  How beautiful and white her shoulders, thought Ellen. How she must excite a man. I wish I were so beautiful. I wonder what a man would pay for her, a great deal I would suppose.

  “I fear it is late,” said her companion, the man called Jeffrey.

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  The woman then bid good-night to Mirus and Tutina.

  “The gold will be delivered to your chamber, where you will be spending the night,” said Mirus.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Various leave-taking pleasantries were exchanged. Ellen, in this leave taking, to her relief, was ignored.

  “On the way to your chamber,” said her companion, “there is another chamber, too, which I would like to show you.”

  “Very well,” she said.

  A moment later, Tutina, too, with a glance at Mirus, left.

  Then Ellen and her master were alone.

  He went to the long table, and took the chair at the head of the table, which he had occupied during dinner, and pulled it a bit away from the table. He then sat within it, seemingly lost in thought.

  Ellen supposed that he had drawn the chair away from the table, before reposing in it, to enable her the more easily to clear the table. It only became clear to her later that he had wanted the chair more in the center of the room, for a different reason, that there might then be a cleared space before it, on the rug.

  When the guests had departed the two guards returned and, ingot by ingot, picked up the gold, and, slowly, carefully, carried it into the next room. A broad, flat wagon was there, too large to fit flat through the smaller door, that leading from the room to the corridor and kitchen. There was another portal, one wider and more auspicious, in the room, a double door of some dark wood, that through which the guests and Mirus had originally entered. Ellen had, of course, used the smaller door in her serving, that giving eventual access to the kitchen. Interestingly, the woman’s companion, conducting her, had exited with her through the smaller door. That led to the corridor, and thence to the kitchen, and various other corridors, and to several areas more in the back of the house.

  Ellen worked to clear the table.

  She did not rush to do this.

  At times, at least, she was sure that her master’s eyes were upon her.

  Whereas a slave may be forced to humiliating haste, perhaps crawling in terror before the strokes of a whip, unseemly hurryings, the industrial frenzies, so to speak, of technological cultures, are generally alien to the Gorean consciousness. Theirs is not a clock-ridden culture; on Gor life tends to be genially paced, regulated more by the season of the year and the position of the sun; it is not conceived of in terms of metaphors drawn from factories, in material terms, in terms of input and output, in terms of units of product processed over units of time. Its rhythms are less the periodic turbulences of rush hours, the blinkings of colored, regulatory lights, carefully timed, the staccato clickings and hammerings, the stops and starts, of the assembly line, than those of tides, and winds, and clouds and rain, the appearance and disappearance of stars, the comings and goings of light and darkness, the cycles of hunger, the cycles of desire, those of the beating of the heart and the circulation of the blood.

  Ellen did not hasten in her work but took care, rather, to do it well. To be sure, she knew that clumsiness was not tolerated in a female slave. If she should drop a plate or break a glass, or spill a beverage, or even move awkwardly, she knew she might expect to be tied to a ring and beaten.

  Above all, though this may seems strange to some, the female slave is not permitted to move with the abruptness, the clumsiness, the awkwardness, the gross, unconscionable, offensive, mannish motions permitted to a free woman. As a female slave she is expected to be muchly aware of her very different, very lovely, very special body, so exciting and wondrous, and to carry it, and present it, beautifully. She is not a free woman. She is a female, and must move as such. The female slave is a female, and thus femininity is required of her. She is trained to be aware of her body and to move well. Sometimes men do not know why they are so exciting, but sense, somehow, that each movement, each nuance of expression, bespeaks subtly their profound, released femininity.

  And so Ellen worked, muchly aware that she was a slave, muchly aware that she was in the presence of her master.

  She had never felt so beautiful and feminine as she had on Gor.

  Never before had she even begun to sense the depths of her sex. There had been nothing of this, surely, in the courses she had taught, in the texts she had read.

  Strange, she thought, how those who on her world made so much of women were oblivious, as far as she could tell, of these things, to these sensations, and feelings. Perhaps they had never met a true man, she thought.

  She wondered if women of her own world, or many of them, realized that they might be graceful and beautiful, and feminine. Did they understand that even small labors, like clearing a table, might be performed beautifully, gracefully? Did they understand that anytime, at their various activities, even, say, during their day, at their various forms of work, or play, or whatever, they might be beautiful, and graceful, and women?

  Or did they fear the scorn, the ridicule, the cruelty, of the female haters of their own sex?

  She hoped that her sisters on a far world might one day become conscious of themselves, truly, despite what might be the consequences attendant upon such an awakening.

  “You move well, slut,” snarled Mirus.

  She had not doubted that he was watching
her.

  “Is master aroused?” she asked.

  “You will rue that,” he said.

  “You have had me trained,” she said, “at least to some extent. I find that I move unconsciously now in certain ways. I do not even think of it any longer. Given my training, how could I help but move as I do now? Surely you do not object. And did I not move in this way now, did I not now move in a way natural for my body, would I not be beaten?”

  “Continue your work,” he said.

  “I shall be finished shortly,” she said.

  She did not know this at the time but many Goreans can tell the difference between free women and female slaves, even when the latter are clothed in the garments of the former, so internalized, so ingredient, so manifest is femininity in the female slave. Sometimes fleeing female slaves, runaways, attempting to escape hated masters in the clothing of free women are simply stopped, unceremoniously, and stripped, their brands and collars then revealed. They are then returned to the dreaded mercies of their masters. The garmenture of free women and slaves, of course, differs considerably, that of the slave tending to be far briefer and more revealing. Incidentally, a slave can be slain for putting on the garment of a free woman. It is permissible, though frowned upon, for a free woman to put on the garb of a slave. Also, it is quite dangerous to do so. Many free women, so garmenting themselves, as an adventure, thinking to have the run of the city, to go into areas forbidden to free women, to see the insides of paga taverns, and such, have, to their horror, found themselves, gagged and blindfolded, struggling futilely in the tight ropes of slavers.

  A slave may also be slain for touching a weapon.

  She did not doubt but what her master found her of interest.

  No longer, of course, did she feel it incumbent upon her to pretend to indignation or dismay, such hypocrisies and dishonesties, when she sensed a man’s interest in her. She now, as a slave, was well aware that she might be found of interest. Indeed, given her beauty, and her current status and condition, she took it as a matter of course that she would be found of interest. Who would not find a slave of interest, particularly one such as she? How boldly and with what pleasure men now looked upon her! Too, she now expected to be so viewed and hoped that she would be so viewed. Indeed, she might fear that she might not be so viewed, that she might not be found of interest. Her very life, as she now knew, might depend on such things.

  Perhaps long ago,” she said, “you imagined what I might look like, as a naked slave, yours, obeying, doing your bidding, as I am now, knowing that I had no choice, too, but to move as a female slave before you.”

  “You have not yet finished your work,” he said.

  “To be sure,” she said, “Master could not have known what I would have looked like at the age of eighteen.”

  “It seems the slave is garrulous,” he said.

  “I trust that Master is not disappointed with the body of an eighteen-year-old slave,” she said.

  “You are a pretty eighteen-year-old slave, Ellen,” he said.

  She finished the table, putting the last plates on the serving cart. How strange, she thought, that I should have this eighteen-year-old body. And yet it is mine, or, better, I suppose, it is now what I am. To be sure, its neck is in a slave collar. Or, better, I, I myself, am in a slave collar. I myself, what I now am, am in a slave collar. She dared not tell him that she loved to be in a slave collar, to be a slave. She dared not tell him that she had now come to recognize herself as a natural slave, who should, in all propriety, and in view of all rights whatsoever, wear a collar. She loved her new condition, and her collar. How could she tell him that? How could he respect her, if he knew that? She wanted his respect. Thus, surely she must pretend to be a lamenting free woman inappropriately subjected, however categorically, to an unfortunate fate.

  “It is customary for a slave to thank a free person for a compliment,” he said. “You may thank me,” he said. His remarks were not really critical; rather, they seemed instructional, their intent seeming to be merely to help an ignorant girl to better understand her collar.

  “I should thank you for making me an eighteen-year-old slave?” she asked.

  “For pointing out that you are a pretty eighteen-year-old slave,” he said.

  “Thank you, Master,” she said. She had blushed, totally, suffused with warmth and pleasure, when he had commended her. She hoped that it had not been obvious, in the subdued light of the room. Then she had pretended, of course, to be reluctant to acknowledge the compliment.

  She must keep from him what she was in her heart, a natural slave, a rightful slave.

  She would later learn to live for such things, a kind word, an approving glance, a crust cast to the floor before her, a caress.

  She had now moved the cart about the long table, and to the front of the coffee table. There, bending down, crouching gracefully, under her master’s eye, she cleared the smaller table.

  He enjoys seeing me do this sort of work, she thought. He enjoys seeing me perform such small, trivial domestic labors. I was once his teacher. Now I must clear his tables, and such. He is having an erotic experience, watching me do this, she thought. Surely she, herself, was having an erotic experience, so serving. She understood then something of the subtle, radiating, profound, pervasive eroticism of female bondage. It was an ambiance, a condition, in its way, of her life.

  “You have now reverted, I note,” said he, “to the normal modalities of discourse, the use of ‘Master’ to the master, and such.”

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “You are a bright slave, Ellen,” he said.

  “Thank you, Master,” she said.

  It had seemed to her that ‘Sir’, and such expressions, for whatever reasons they were used during the supper, would not now be appropriate, and might even be offensive, if not inexcusable. It was her sense that she should return to the normal, appropriate modalities of discourse, those normal and appropriate for such as she. That she did so without explicit permission she trusted would not be an occasion for the imposition of discipline. To have asked would have seemed to her, in the circumstances, stupid, and she did not wish to appear a stupid slave before her master. There are many delicacies, many subtleties, in the relationship in which she found herself, that of abject slave to total master, and slaves, as you may suppose, come very quickly to appreciate them. Commonly the slave will ask permission to speak, but not always; she may behave in one way before her master if a free woman is present, in another way if only another man is present, and in yet another way if she and the master are alone; sometimes she knows her master delights to hear her speak eloquently and lyrically before him, even for Ahn at a time, and is eager to attend to, share and relish, the smallest of her thoughts and feelings; at other times she knows that so little as a raised head may bring her a stroke of the lash; at times the master will wish to be alone; at other times she knows it will be acceptable for her to crawl to him and whimper, beggingly, of her needs. She soon learns, or suffers for the failure to do so, to read the whims and moods of the master. This is common, of course, in a variety of other domestic animals, as well.

  “You have finished with the clearing,” he said. “Take the cart back to the kitchen.”

  “Yes, Master,” she said. “When I have done so, should I report back to my cage?”

  “You want the leather, don’t you?” he asked.

  “No, Master!” she said.

  “You will return here, and kneel before me.”

  He indicated the place on the rug before his chair.

  “Yes, Master!” she said. Then she put down her head, quickly, that he might not see how elated she was.

  In a moment she had wheeled the cart to the smaller of the two doors, and worked it through, and was soon in the hall outside.

  There were two guards outside.

  She knelt and put her head to the stones of the floor. “I am expected to return, Masters,” she said. When she looked up she saw the expres
sions of the guards. Had she not expected to return?

  Quickly she leaped up and sped the cart down the corridor. Then she slowed her pace, as she heard the guards laugh. She was embarrassed to show herself an eager slave, hurrying to return to the master’s presence. But as soon as she rounded a bend in the corridor, she once again began to hurry. Are you an eager slave, Ellen, she asked herself, for she was now Ellen, and thought of herself as such. Of course not, she told herself! I would not run to him like a common, amorous slave, a helpless, panting bitch beside herself with heat! But she did not slow her pace. It would not do to keep the master waiting, she told herself. Indeed, it might not be wise to do so. If I dally in my return, he might give me the leather! This thought, that she might be beaten if she were late, thrilled her. It was not that she wished to feel the leather, certainly not now, but rather that she was thrilled to be such, a slave, that she must fear it. He is so strong, so commanding. I must obey him, she thought. Over me he is totally dominant. Before him I can be only what I am, a helpless, submissive slave! I wonder, she thought. I wonder if I am in heat? Could I, given what I was on Earth, that lofty, respectable, cool, remote, formal, inert, frigid thing, now be in heat, be simply in heat? Could I now be only another low girl, another common, amorous slave, another bitch beside herself with heat! Not I, surely. But perhaps I am in heat! In any event it will be wise for me to return to my master soon. It charmed her that she thought of him so simply, so directly, as her master. But then she shuddered, for she knew that in truth, in reality, he was her master. He owned her.

  ****

  She knelt naked before him, on the rug before his chair.

  She knelt before him, in her collar, in the basic position of the Gorean pleasure slave, back on her heels, her back straight, her head up, the palms of her hands on her thighs, her knees spread, widely.