by John Norman
I watched her, my breath almost taken away by her beauty.
“She is a valuable woman,” said Hermidorus.
I did not doubt it.
“Come along,” he said.
***
“We are readying her for her sale,” said Hermidorus.
I watched her naked on the block, under the tutelage of a whip-carrying trainer. It was small, rounded room, with mirrors. He was putting her through slave paces.
“She is to be auctioned in five days,” said Hermidorus.
My eyes and those of the girl met. At that instant her weight was on the palms of her hands, her arms straight, and the sides of her feet, her body lifted from the block, her legs tight and spread widely behind her.
I realized then, with a shock, that she was going to be sold.
Then she was being put through further slave paces.
“Come along,” said Hermidorus.
I wondered what it would be like to be sold. That girl was going to be sold. Susan had been sold. The other girls, too, or many of them, I supposed, and countless others like them, passing through just such houses as this, would be sold. Such sales would not be uncommon on Gor. They would take place with little more thought than might attend the vendings of horses or cattle.
I was trembling. The hand of Drusus Rencius on my arm drew me, bodily, from the room.
***
“I have changed my mind!” wept the girl. “I will be pleasing! I will be pleasing!”
I looked through the heavy bars of the cell, some three inches in thickness, reinforced with crosspieces, to the opposite wall. It was hard to see. There, kneeling on straw, trying to pull towards us, her wrists tied behind her back to a ring set in the wall, was a blond girl. “I will be pleasing!” she wept. “I will be pleasing! I will be pleasing!”
I then turned away from her, following Hermidorus and Drusus Rencius.
“She is not yet begging to be pleasing,” said Hermidorus to Drusus.
“Correct,” he said.
I looked behind myself, following them, at the dark cells, most of them empty, along the corridor. This was certainly not my favorite part of the house. It was dark, and cold, and clammy. Occasionally my bare feet stepped in puddles of cold water, seeped to this level, and caught in concavities or irregularities in the corridor flooring. And, here and there, I could see passages, narrow, crooked and dark, leading to even lower levels. I was pleased that we were not going to traverse them. It had seemed frightening enough to me to come even to this level.
Sometimes, in our descent, on catwalks, we had even passed over pit cells, little more than holding holes, ceilinged with locked iron gates, sunk in the floor of the corridor. I had cried out with misery and terror in passing over one of these for a large hand, emerging suddenly through the grating, had seized my ankle. Drusus Rencius had pried open the fingers and thrust the hand away. I then kept closely to the center of the catwalks. There were male slaves in this house, too, I had learned.
Had the slave known I was free, I do not think he would have touched me. He might have remained crouching in his hole, thinking what thoughts he might, but I do not think he would have dared to touch me. A male slave can be slain for touching a free woman.
“She is not here for punishment,” Hermidorus had informed the dark shapes beneath the grating. I then realized that a slave girl, perhaps for purposes of her discipline, might be lowered through the grating hole, doubtless into eager hands, the grating then being resecured.
In the corridors, in our movements through them, particularly in the upper levels, we would sometimes encounter slaves, usually employed in domestic tasks, such as running errands, carrying burdens, dusting or cleaning. These women were usually naked, except for their collars, which, I gathered, was the way women were usually kept in a slaver’s house. At the approach of the free men, Hermidorus and Drusus, they would immediately position themselves, usually with their knees wide, kneeling back on their heels, their heads up, their hands on their thighs, in the position I had come to understand was that of the pleasure slave, but sometimes, instead kneeling with the palms of their hands on the tiles, their heads down, too, to the same tiles.
There was one temporary, partial exception to this, which I will mention. After we had left some carpeted corridors, higher in the house, and were moving to the lower levels, and traversing heavy, flagstone-like tiles, we approached a slender, dark-haired girl who, on her hands and knees, in chains, with a bucket of water, cloths and a brush, in that portion of the corridor, was scrubbing tiles.
As we approached, she oriented herself towards us, palms of her hands on the floor, and put her head to the tiles. But, as we neared her, she lifted her head, desperately.
“Hermidorus!” she cried, suddenly. “Hermidorus!”
He stopped before her, a few feet from her, and we stopped, too, behind him.
“Do you not know me?” she begged. The chain she wore was a work sirik. It resembles the common sink but the wrists, to permit work, are granted about a yard of chain.
Like the common sirik, it is a lovely chain. Women are beautiful in it. “Deirdre!” she cried. “Deirdre! Two years ago in Ar we lived in the same building!”
He looked at her, not speaking.
“Deirdre,” she whimpered.
“In the instant you were imbonded, you ceased to be Deirdre, Girl,” he said.
“Girl?” she said.
“What is your house name?” he asked.
“Oh, no,” she said. “Not you! Not you, of all people! You not see me as a slave! You could not see me as a slave! I know you. That would be impossible! You could not relate to me as though I might be a slave! You could not! One such as you would never enforce my slavery upon me! One such as you could never do so!”
Then she looked up at him, her lower lip trembling. “‘Renata’ is my house name,” she said.
He then removed the belt from his tunic. The accouterments on it he handed to Drusus Rencius.
“You lifted your head from the tile position before free persons had passed you, Renata,” he said. “You also addressed a free man twice by his name. Similarly your speech has been inadequately deferential. It has not been interspersed at appropriate points, for example, by the expression ‘Master.’ You have also referred to yourself as though you might still be ‘Deirdre.’ Such falsifications of identity are not permitted to slaves. Deirdre is gone. In her place there is now only a slave, an animal, who must wear whatever name masters choose to put on her. Similarly, when asked a question, that pertaining to your house name, you did not respond with sufficient promptness. Do you understand all that I am saying, fully and clearly, Renata?”
She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “Yes, Master,” she said.
“On all fours, Renata,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she sobbed, assuming this position.
“Perhaps you should precede us a few paces down the hall,” said Drusus Rencius to me.
I moved, frightened, a few feet down the hall, not looking. Then, suddenly, I heard the belt beginning to fall, sharply, on the girl. I turned in time to see her on her side, in her chains, receiving the last few blows. She had not been pleasing. She was a slave. Of course she was being punished.
Then Hermidorus, without further ado, took back his accouterments from Drusus and slipped them on his belt. He then fastened the belt again about his waist.
I was startled that one such as he, seemingly so scholarly and gentle, possessed such uncompromising strength. The female had learned, to her sorrow, that in his presence she would not be permitted the least slackness in her discipline.
“I am sorry for the interruption,” Hermidorus apologized to Drusus Rencius.
“That is perfectly all right,” said Drusus.
The girl lay on her stomach, in her chains, in the water on the tiles. She lifted her head, gazing in pain, disbelief and awe at Hermidorus. She was a slave who had not been pleasing. She had been put under his belt
.
We then continued down the hallway.
“Master,” she called out, “I want to lay for you! I want to lay for you! Please have me sent to your rooms! I want to lay for you!”
Hermidorus did not look back.
I looked back. I saw in the girl’s eyes that she now knew she was a slave, and helplessly so, and that she loved him.
We continued on our way.
I wondered if he would have her sent to his rooms. The decision was his. She was a slave.
“As the house opens to the public at the tenth Ahn,” said Hermidorus, “perhaps I should now take you to the office of Publius, who wished to greet you before you left the premises.” The tenth Ahn is the Gorean noon.
“Splendid,” said Drusus Rencius.
We were then making our way upward from some of the lower pen areas.
I had not realized the complexities of a slaver’s house, and this house was not an unusually large one. We had seen the baths and the sales yard, which is also used for exercise; we had seen various holding areas, ranging from silken, barred alcoves for superb pleasure slaves, through cells and cages of various sorts more fit for medium-priced women, to incarceration chambers that were little more than grated pits or gloomy dungeons, areas in which a slave might be terrorized to find herself placed; other holding areas, ranging from good to bad, were no more than a ring position, in a wall or on a floor; we also saw kitchens, pantries, eating areas, some with mere troughs or depressions in the floor, storage areas, guard rooms, offices, and places for the keeping of records; there were also a laundry and an infirmary; too, there were rooms where such subjects as the care and dressing of hair, the application of cosmetics, the selection and use of perfumes, manicure and pedicure, and slave costuming were taught, and even rooms where inept women, usually former members of the upper castes, could be instructed in the small domestic tasks that would now be expected of them, small services suitable for slaves, such as cleaning, cooking and sewing.
Certain areas of the house, however, I was not shown, presumably because I was a free woman, such as the lowest pens, the branding chamber, the discipline room, and the rooms where girls were taught to kiss and caress, and the movements of love.
“I will be good! I will be good!” I heard a girl cry, from within a low, steel, rectangular box, shoved against the side of the passage, presumably that it would not be in the way. I stopped, startled. It had not occurred to me that a girl could be held within those small confines. Indeed, in the half-darkness of the lamp lit passage I had hardly noticed the box.
It was about four feet long and three feet wide, with a depth of perhaps eighteen inches. It was of steel and opened from the top. In the lid, at each end, there was a circle, about five inches in diameter, of penny-sized holes. It was locked shut, secured by two flat, steel bars, perpendicular to its long axis, padlocked, in front, in place. “I will be good!” wept the girl, from within.
“It is a slave box,” said Hermidorus.
“I beg to be pleasing, Masters!” cried the girl, from within.
“Surely she must be a very tiny woman,” I said, horrified, to Drusus Rencius.
“She is the former Lady Tais of Farnacium,” said Hermidorus. “Her house name is Didi. She is, as I recall, a normal-sized slave.”
“The box is so small,” I said.
“It is supposed to be small,” said Drusus Rencius.
“But consider the cramping, the tightness, the girl’s helplessness,” I said.
“Those are among its purposes,” he said.
“But it is so small!” I protested.
“It is not really so small,” he said.
I looked at him.
“It would be, for example,” he said, “more than large enough for you.”
“I will obey lovingly and with total perfection, Masters,” averred the woman from within the box. “I beg only to be permitted to be fully and totally pleasing to my Masters!”
“Come along,” said Hermidorus.
We then, once again, followed him.
“I beg to be pleasing!” cried the woman from within the box. “I beg to be permitted to be totally pleasing!”
“She is almost ready to leave the box,” said Hermidorus.
***
“Let me see the license on her,” said Publius. “I see,” he smiled, surveying the scrap of paper given to him by Drusus Rencius, “the Lady Lita.” He looked at me. “A pretty name,” he said.
I thought so, too.
He smiled at me, as though amused by the name. I did not understand this.
“It is not her true name, of course,” said Publius to Drusus Rencius.
“Of course not,” said Drusus Rencius.
“Doubtless, in the circles in which you travel, Lady Lita,” said Publius to me, “it would not do for your friends to know how you were brought half naked and braceleted into a slaver’s house.”
I looked away from him. I did not deign to respond to such a remark.
“It would be quite a scandal doubtless,” he said, “and make a quite good story in the telling.”
I looked away, loftily, still braceleted.
“Here, Lady Lita,” he said, “let us stand you in the light, where we can get a better look at you.” He conducted me to a pool of light, at the foot of a shaft of light, falling from a high, barred window.
I stood there, and the men stood back, looking at me.
“She is very pretty,” said Publius. “‘Lita’ would be a good name for her.”
“I think so,” said Drusus Rencius.
I stood there, being inspected. I had been afraid that Publius, when he had been conducting me to the pool of light, and placed me here, might have touched me. I could not have prevented it, in such a brief garment, with no nether closure, my hands braceleted helplessly behind my back, but he had not done so. Had he done so, of course, my condition of arousal would have been made humiliatingly and embarrassingly evident to him. I hoped that my need was not somehow evident, subtly so, in my appearance and behavior, Perhaps through body cues. I hoped, too, they could not smell it.
“Kneel down here, Lady Lita, in the light,” said Publius.
I knelt down, in the pool of light. I kept my knees closely together. I was confused, and frightened. I was kneeling before men.
“Are you sure she is free?” asked Publius.
“Yes,” said Drusus Rencius.
“Interesting,” said Publius. He then walked slowly about me, looking at me, and, then, again, stood a few feet before me, looking down at me.
“Look at her,” he said.
“Yes?” said Drusus.
“Closely,” said Publius.
“Yes?” inquired Drusus.
“Do you not see?” asked Publius.
“What?” asked Drusus.
“She has the softness, the femininity, the look of a slave about her,” he said.
“I assure you,” smiled Drusus, “she is far from a slave.”
“I do not think so,” said Publius. “I think she is a natural slave, and would train superbly to the collar.”
Drusus threw back his head and laughed at the absurdity of this thought. I myself did not find it so amusing.
“Does anyone know she is here?” asked Publius.
“No,” said Drusus.
“Why do we not then enslave her?” asked Publius. “No, Lady Lita,” he said, “do not rise to your feet.” I had almost leapt up. My wrists wildly, suddenly, had jerked against the bracelets. They had not yielded, of course. They were not made to yield. I knelt back then, in the light, on my heels.
“It would not be difficult,” said, Publius. “We could transport her from the city. Then, elsewhere, when she is suitably branded, and her neck is locked in a proper collar, when she is fully and inescapably a slave, absolutely rightness, and in your power, we might make test of the matter.”
“This woman is not a slave,” said Drusus Rencius.
“A silver tarsk says she i
s,” laughed Publius.
“How are things in Ar?” asked Drusus Rencius. “I have I not been there for a long time.”
“I will get the paga,” said Publius.
The men then drank, and spoke of small things while I knelt in the light, braceleted, and was seldom, I think in their mind or attention. Once I noticed that my knees had opened somewhat, without my really thinking about it. I quickly closed them. I hoped no one had noticed. I wondered if I was a slave. Publius thought so, and he was a slaver. He had been willing to put a silver tarsk on the matter. I looked at Drusus. Something in me seemed to say, “You lose your tarsk, Drusus Rencius. She is a slave.”
Then I hastily thrust such a horrifying thought from my mind.
***
“Please, Drusus,” I had said. “My hands have been braceleted long enough. I am beginning to feel too helpless, too much like a slave. Please release me.”
“I will release you in the room,” he had said.
I had then continued to follow him, still braceleted, through the alleys, toward the inn of Lysias.
Why did her not release me now? Why did be still keep me braceleted, like a slave? Could he not see that I was almost overcome with emotion? Could he not see my misery, my distress? Could be not see how overwrought I was? Could he not see the difficulty I was having, fighting myself?
We were approaching closer and closer to the inn of Lysias. This excited and thrilled me, but, too, it frightened and terrified me. There I would be alone with Drusus Rencius, a Gorean male, in the room. What would I do? How would I act?
I moaned to myself.
I wished to run to the room, and I wished to hang back, almost as though against a leash.
Emotions raged within me, furies and resentments lingering from my Earth conditionings, residues of masculine values which I had been encouraged to espouse and exemplify, and, released on Gor, welling up from deeply within me, from what sources I could scarcely dare conjecture, alarming me, disconcerting me, almost overpowering feelings of helplessness, vulnerability and femininity.