Prize of Gor

by John Norman

  On the other hand, although the fellow’s intention was doubtless sensible, and harmless enough, and even benign, the effect of his action on the slave in question was profound. She looked up at him, over his hand, her eyes wild with fear. “Steady, kajira,” said he, gently. The effect of a gag on a woman is interesting. It is perhaps even more profound than that of a blindfold. A woman’s tongue, like her beauty, is, I suppose, at least from the point of view of a man, one of her most delightful, perilous weapons. And it is certainly true that when he deprives her of this weapon, by gag-silencing her, that she is commonly reduced to tearful, frustrated consternation. She is deprived of what may be her most successful weapon, both of offense and defense. In any event, gagging a woman commonly alarms her and induces in her feelings of utter vulnerability and helplessness. Accordingly, the gag, particularly if she is a free woman, often makes her more timid, more tentative, more docile and compliant. An ideal combination, of course, at least for certain purposes, is to combine the gag with the blindfold.

  “I am not going to hurt you, little kajira,” he said, and removed his hand from Ellen’s mouth.

  She looked up at him. She could still feel the firm, heavy pressure about her mouth where he had placed his hand.

  He was kneeling beside her.

  Targo was standing nearby.

  “I am prepared to let her go for as little as two silver tarsks,” said Targo.

  “She is a barbarian,” said the man.

  “One silver tarsk,” said Targo.

  “She is pretty,” said the man.

  “Did I missay myself earlier?” inquired Targo. “I meant to say three silver tarsks.”

  “She is a barbarian,” said the man.

  “Many could not tell her from a native Gorean girl,” said Targo.

  “Then they have not looked at her very closely,” said the man.

  “I might let her go, if pressed,” said Targo, “for a mere two silver tarsks.”

  “She is pretty,” said the man.

  “She speaks a fluent, beautiful Gorean,” said Targo.

  Ellen wished he had not said that, for it was certainly not true. On the other hand, her progress in the language, given her time on Gor, had been, according to her tutors at the house, more than satisfactory. Later, in the opinion of at least some native speakers, she would indeed speak a fluent, beautiful Gorean, but there was no question of that at the time.

  “She is very young,” said the man.

  “But in spite of her youth delightfully curved, is she not?” asked Targo.

  “Yes,” said the man.

  “Consider her curves,” said Targo. “Are they not slave curves?”

  “Yes,” said the man. “They are clearly slave curves.”

  Ellen moved a bit, chained between the rings, on her back, her ankles chained so closely to the ring on the left, as one would face the shelf, her hands chained back, over her head, so closely to the ring on the right, as one would face the shelf. She had never hitherto thought of her body in this fashion, as one exhibiting slave curves. Could that be? Could she be so excitingly attractive as that? Was she really so delicious as a female that she was worth, say, being put upon a block and being bid upon by eager men? One of the girls, she recalled, had said she would probably bring a decent price off a slave block. Could that be true, that men would bid for her, that they would vie to buy her? Were her curves truly such, so exquisite, so lovely, so delicious, that they were truly slave curves? Could it be? She was shocked, pleased and frightened. It seemed that at least part of the secret of her hormonal richness was revealed in the delights of her supine, chained figure. In her figure were apparently manifested, and clearly, the curves of the female slave. And other concomitants, intellectual, emotional, and psychological, would be an exquisite femininity, and a desire to submit and yield, to yield all. Then Ellen tried to lie very still, for she feared, in her tiny, inadvertent, shocked, almost protestive movement, that she had done little more than more prominently to suggest, or even display, the latitudes and geodesics of a female slave, little more than manifest even more clearly the slave curves of which they had spoken. It was not her fault that she had slave curves. It was in her nature. She could not help what she was! To be sure, she resolved to attempt to conceal what she was. None must suspect that she was a slave! She must attempt to deny this even to herself, as she had desperately for years on Earth. Surely it must be wrong to be what one most truthfully, and deeply, was! Surely one must guide one’s behavior, even one’s thoughts, in so far as it was possible, in order to comply with cultural imperatives, with ideological demands, with external wishes and desires. But is that not a true slavery, a true holding of oneself in bondage, a hypocritical slavery, a lying, worthless slavery, a slavery less worthy than confessing to oneself one’s own self, and allowing it to speak openly? How much inner conflict might be thus avoided! But she lay very still, torn in her thought, afflicted by inner torments. He must not touch her! She knew she was a slave.

  “She is young, but seems of interest,” said the man. Ellen turned her head to the side in misery. He had doubtless noted that small movement. She heard Cichek laugh. Doubtless Cichek, and the others, thought that she had moved like that on purpose, that she was brazenly, shamefully, trying to interest a buyer in the merchandise which was she herself. But that was not true! That was not true!

  She could not be like that!

  “I am prepared to let her go, against my better judgment,” said Targo, “for only two silver tarsks.”

  “Is she responsive?” asked the man.

  “Try her,” said Targo.

  “No, please!” cried Ellen.

  The man, kneeling beside her, looked at her, puzzled.

  Targo frowned.

  Ellen felt how soft her body was, how vulnerable. It was such a different body, so different from that of a man, and it was displayed before him, supine, without a thread upon it, chained helplessly. She moved her wrists and ankles. How closely, how perfectly, they were held!

  “Do not touch me,” she begged.

  She jerked against her bonds, twisting in them.

  Cichek and Emris laughed.

  Angry tears sprang to Ellen’s eyes.

  She looked up at the man beside her and shook her head, negatively, piteously.

  The man looked at Targo, puzzled.

  “Cuff her,” suggested Targo. “It will calm her down.”

  “I do not think she is worth much,” said the man.

  “A strong hand and a quick whip and she will writhe at a snapping of the fingers,” said Targo.

  Ellen gasped, for the man’s hand was on her left thigh, not tightly but innocently, thoughtlessly, possessively.

  “Touch her,” said Targo. “Try her fully, if you wish. We can arrange her chaining in any way that pleases you. Perhaps you would like her on her side, or on her belly. We can position her in any way you like.”

  “No,” said the man. “She is fine, as she is.”

  Ellen felt his hand lift from her thigh.

  “No!” she said.

  “Surely you have been tested before, kajira,” he said.

  “No, please,” begged Ellen. “You can see that I am chained! You can see that I am helpless! You can see that I cannot protect myself, or defend myself! You see that I cannot, in any way, prevent you from doing whatever you wish with me. Accordingly, you must show me solicitation, and mercy. You must be sensitive to my predicament! Accordingly, you must respect me! Accordingly, you must in no way compromise my dignity!”

  “Is she a slave?” asked the man.

  “Yes,” said Targo, angrily.

  The man replaced his hand on her thigh. Its presence there made Ellen feel tense and uncomfortable, and vulnerable, and slave.

  “She has strange views,” said the man.

  “She is a barbarian,” said Targo.

  The fellow looked down at Ellen, puzzled. “When a man has a slave exactly where he wants her, and as he wants her,
” he asked, “why then should he not do what he wants with her, and as he wants, fully, and in all respects?”

  Ellen looked up, in consternation.

  “She is a slave,” the man reminded her.

  “You must never do anything to a woman without her consent,” stammered Ellen.

  “But thousands of things are done everyday, even to free women, and free men, without their consent,” he said.

  “Everyone must be free,” said Ellen.

  “From what premises do you derive that conclusion?” asked the man.

  “It is self-evident,” said Ellen.

  “Quite the contrary,” said the man. “It is self-evident that some should be free and some slaves. It is self-evident that it is appropriate for some to be free, and appropriate for others to be slaves. It depends on the person. You, it is clear, should be a slave. You are a natural slave, and are thus, appropriately, to be embonded. It is absurd that a natural slave should be permitted freedom.”

  “Freedom is trivial and meaningless,” said Targo, “when all have freedom. It takes on the fullness of its meaning only in contrast to slavery.”

  “All persons must be free,” said Ellen.

  “That is obviously false,” said the man, “but, in any event, in your case, it is irrelevant, for the slave is not a person. The slave is a property, an animal, a chattel. For example, you are not a person, but a slave, and are thus a property, an animal, a chattel. Too, men should be free, and women slaves, as that is the meaning and fulfillment of their minds and bodies.”

  “Give me my freedom of will!” said Ellen.

  “You may will as you please,” said the man, “but you must obey in all things, absolutely, and with promptitude and perfection.”

  “Give me my freedom!” said Ellen.

  The man smiled. Then he looked at Targo. “Does she obey in all things, absolutely, and with promptitude and perfection?” he asked.

  “Of course,” said Targo.

  “Give me my freedom!” wept Ellen.

  “That would be wrong,” said the man.

  “What?” she said.

  “The free should not be slave, and the slave should not be free,” he said.

  “I do not understand,” she said.

  “Just as it is wrong for the properly free to be enslaved,” he said, “so, too, it is wrong for the properly enslaved to be free.”

  “Master?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She regarded him, perhaps with something like awe. Chained before him, looking up at him, she felt stunned.

  “You belong in a collar,” he said. “That is clear. It is easily seen. You are such as are fittingly embonded.”

  “You must let me do as I wish!” said Ellen.

  “Nonsense,” said the man.

  “Nothing must be done to me without my consent!”

  “You are a slave. Your consent is meaningless.”

  “Surely not!” wept Ellen.

  “Surely so,” he said. “The defining will, and final force, is that of the master, in all things, at all times.”

  “How can I be happy, if I am not free?” asked Ellen.

  “Your happiness is unimportant,” said the man.

  Ellen sobbed.

  “But perhaps you can best answer that question, really, yourself, in the depths of your own heart.”

  Ellen regarded him, tears in her eyes.

  “In any event,” he said, “there is no necessary connection between freedom and happiness, and often an inverse correlation. Often the freest are the most lost, confused and miserable. That is commonplace. Happiness is not a function of freedom, but of doing what you want to do, really, and being as you want to be, really. Happiness is often found in places which might, I take it, surprise you. It is important, of course, too, to find yourself in a society where what you are, and what you want to be, truly, is understood, accepted and relished. Female slaves, for example, are important in our society, an important part of it, and they make it much more satisfying, innocent, honest, profound, natural and beautiful than it would otherwise be.”

  He lifted his hand a little, his fingers still lightly in contact with her thigh.

  “Don’t!” said Ellen.

  “I do not understand,” he said.

  “Surely you are a man of honor!” she cried.

  “I think so, I hope so,” he said.

  “As a man of honor,” said Ellen, desperately, “you will not touch me without my permission.”

  “I do not understand,” he said.

  “— particularly as I lie helplessly before you, naked and chained, totally at your mercy, incapable of the least resistance!”

  “What has honor to do with this?” he asked, puzzled. “We are not fellow citizens. We do not share a Home Stone. Too, even if we had been fellow citizens, you are now no longer a citizen, but a slave. Too, even if we had once shared a Home Stone, you are now without the rights of the Home Stone, having been enslaved. In addition, you are merely a female.”

  “It seems then,” said Ellen, bitterly, “that I cannot expect gentlemanliness of you.”

  “What is “gentlemanliness”?” he asked, as Ellen, in her consternation, had used the English expression.

  “There is no exact word for it in Gorean,” said Ellen.

  “I think I have heard the word,” said the man. “It seems to be a word for a male who subscribes to, and conforms to, codes of behavior requiring, among other things, substituting convention for nature, propriety for power, self-conquest for self-liberation, restraint for command, inaction and conformity for dominance and mastery, and, in short, a word for one who denies his biological birthright, his powers, pleasures and delights, for one who forgoes, or pretends to forgo, his manhood in order to do, or seem to do, what women pretend will please them. He belongs to his culture, and not to himself, rather like the insect to the nest, the bee to the swarm. He is unhappy, as are the confused, unwitting, lovely tyrants whom he refuses to resist, whom he refuses to take in hand and conquer, putting them to his feet, as naked, bound slaves.”

  “Is it not, then, a word for “fool”?” asked Targo.

  “It would seem so,” said the man.

  He then looked down, again, at Ellen.

  Ellen looked up at him, frightened.

  The Goreans, she saw, and now well understood, were not gentlemen, or certainly not “gentlemen” in a common “Earth sense” of the term. Rather, however educated, civilized and refined they might be, they were indisputably owners of, and masters of, women.

  “Please, wait! Please, don’t!” cried Ellen. “I am not as your Gorean women!”

  “That is understood by me,” said the man.

  “I come from a different world,” said Ellen, “a world of different values, a world on which it would be regarded as improper that I be owned, helplessly, categorically, a world on which all women must be free, must be treated with total honor and respect! I am that sort of woman! Obedience, helplessness and chains, abject slavery, are not for me! I am not a woman of your world!”

  “But you are a human female are you not?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course,” she said.

  “Do not expect me to repeat the mistakes of your world, human female,” said he.

  “Master?” she said.

  “Do not expect me to conform to the confusions and weaknesses of your world,” he said.

  “Please,” she wept.

  “You are no longer on your world,” he said. “You are now on our world, where things are different.”

  “Your values are not mine!” she cried.

  “I am pleased that that is true,” he said.

  “I do not exist for obedience, helplessness and chains, for abject slavery!” she wept.

  “You do now,” said he.

  “I am not as one of your Gorean women!” she cried.

  “I understand,” said he.

  “I am from the world called Earth!” she said.

  “I
understand,” said he.

  “So I am not as one of your Gorean women!” she cried.

  “That is true,” said he. “You are a thousand times less, female of Earth.”

  “Master?”

  “You are not worthy to tie even the sandals of a Gorean woman.”

  His hand lifted from her thigh.

  “Don’t!” cried Ellen. “Please!”

  The chains shook and rattled. She scarcely felt the cement beneath her body, the pull of the steel against her wrists and ankles.

  “Oh, oh, oh!” she wept. “Please, don’t. Please, don’t!”

  He desisted.

  “No!” she wept. “Please, do. I mean, please, do! Don’t stop! I beg you not to stop! I can’t help myself! Don’t stop, I beg it! Please, please! No, I mean, please stop! Please stop! That is what I mean, please stop!”

  He desisted.

  “No, don’t stop!” she begged. “Yes! Yes! That is it! Oh, thank you, Master! No! Don’t stop! Don’t stop! I beg for more! I beg for more!”

  “Who begs?” asked Targo.

  “Ellen, Ellen, the slave, Ellen, the meaningless slave, Ellen, the meaningless, Earth-girl barbarian slave, begs for more!” she wept.

  The man desisted.

  Ellen, flushed, reddened, imploringly, lifted her body to him.

  “I cannot stand it!” she wept. “Please touch me. Please complete your work, Master. Please complete what you have begun with me, Master. Please, please, Master. Be merciful! I beg it! Please be merciful, Master!”

  “She shows promise of becoming a hot little thing,” said the man.

  “Yes, in time,” agreed Targo.

  “Please, Master!” she begged.

  “Very well,” he said, and lightly touched her but once more.

  “Aiiiiiii!” cried Ellen, and her long, wild cry, her shriek of relief, of gratitude, of helpless joy must have rung throughout the market, piercing it from end to end, from stall to stall, reverberating from the wall across the way, carrying even to the streets beyond.

  She then lay shuddering, sobbing, in the chains. She was scarcely aware that the man had left her side, and that Targo, too, was no longer on the shelf.

  “Hold me, touch me, please!” she sobbed. But she was alone.

  “Slut, slut, slut!” hissed Cichek.