* * * *
The whip cracked, and I jumped. But it had not touched the girl, only startled her.
She knelt behind the dark, smooth post, facing it, her knees on either side of it, her belly and breasts against it, her hands embracing it.
"This may be done to music," said Hermidorus, "and, as you know, there are many versions to the post dance, or pole dance, singly, or with more than one girl, with or without bonds, and so on, but here we are using it merely as a training exercise."
The whip cracked again and the girl, suddenly and lasciviously, became active.
I gasped.
She began to writhe about the pole. "Kiss it, caress it, love it!" commanded the trainer, snapping the whip. "Now more slowly, now scarcely moving, now use your thighs, and breasts more, moving all about it, holding it. Touch it with your tongue, lick it! Use the inside of your thighs more, your breasts, turn about it, slowly, sensuously. Lift your hands above your head, palms to the pole, caressing it. Turn about the pole! Twist about it! Now to your knees, holding it!" He then cracked the whip again. "Enough!" he said. She was then as she had been before, kneeling behind the post, her knees on either side of it, her belly and breasts pressed against it, her hands embracing it. The girl was looking at me. She was wondering, perhaps, if I were the next to be put to the post. I looked away, angrily. Did she not know I was not a lowly thing like she? Did she not know I was free?
"It is a useful exercise," said Hermidorus to Drusus. "It helps a girl learn how to address herself, naked, to a standing master."
"Obviously," agreed Drusus.
I looked back at the girl. She was now looking away. I looked at the post. It was dark, and shiny. It had been polished smooth, apparently, by the bodies of many girls.
The girl looked suddenly at me. There was a hostility in our looks toward one another. She saw, I think, in my eyes, that I thought I could have done better at the post than she. Then I looked away. What would I care for her opinions! Were we competitive women?
"Come along," said Hermidorus.
* * * *
"These women," said Hermidorus, "are practicing their floor movements."
A trainer stood among them, with a whip. Occasionally he would snap this whip near a girl. I did not doubt but what the girls on the tiles, if they were found sufficiently displeasing to the trainer, or too frequently required the admonitory signal of the cracking leather, would soon hear the snap of the lash not in their mere vicinity but on their own bared bodies. Two of the girls, I saw, had stripes on them, one on the thigh, and one on the side. The trainer was not now paying them much attention. They were now, apparently, doing well.
"Come along," said Hermidorus.
* * * *
"How beautiful!" I breathed.
Drusus Rencius looked sharply at me. I feared for a moment I might be struck.
Hermidorus, on the other hand, did not seem to notice. My exclamation, perhaps, had seemed sufficiently inadvertent, involuntary and irrepressible, to be ignored; or perhaps it was to be ignored because I was not a slave, but a free woman. I did not meet Drusus Rencius's eyes. It was not like I had just decided to speak and had spoken. In a place like this I did not know if I was subject to discipline or not. I did not think so, for I was a free woman. On the other hand I knew I was here on the sufferance of the house of Kliomenes. Indeed, on these premises, I knew that Drusus Rencius even held a license on me.
The drummer and the flautist prepared once more to play.
The girl in the long, light chain smiled at me. She, at any rate, was pleased by my response.
A wrist ring was fastened on her right wrist. The long, slender, gleaming chain was fastened to this and, looping down and up, ascended gracefully to a wide chain ring on her collar, through which it freely passed, thence descending, looping down, and ascending, looping up, gracefully, to the left wrist ring. If she were to stand quietly, the palms of her hands on her thighs, the lower portions of the chain, those two dangling loops, would have been about at the level of her knees, just a little higher. The higher portion of the chain, of course, would be at the collar loop.
The musicians began again to play. There is much that can be done with such a chain. It was a dancing chain. Its purpose was not to confine the girl but to allow her to incorporate it in her dance, enhancing the dance with its movements and beauty. It is, of course, symbolic of her bondage, this adding fantastic dimensions of significance to the dance. It is not merely a beautiful woman who dances, but one who can be bought and sold, one who is subject to male ownership. Too, of course, the wrist rings, and the collar, are truly locked on her. There is no doubt about it. It is a slave, with all that that means, who is dancing.
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 straight 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 flat 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 gir
l, 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, flagstonelike 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 sirik 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 embonded, 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 do 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 back. 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, Master!" she called out. "May Renata speak? May Renata speak?"
Hermidorus paused, almost angrily.
"Please, Master," she wept, "let Renata speak!"
It is common in Gorean bondage that a woman may not speak without permission. To be sure, as a matter of mutual convenience, she often has a standing permission to speak; most masters enjoy talking with their slaves, and listening to them; this permission to speak, of course, is revocable at the master's discretion.
"Please, Master!" she called to him.
I had gathered from this interlude that she had not known he was in the house, or he that she was here.
I suspect this had come as a revelation to her, and a surprise to him.
Too, we had been traversing, I gathered, obscure corridors, rather in the lower levels, and the house was a large one. It was possible, given slave control, that neither would encounter the other again, unless, of course, it was his will, as he now knew she was here, a house property amongst perhaps hundreds of others.
He could always look up her ring number, or perhaps the number and location of her cage or kennel.
"Please!" she wept. "Please, Master!"
Would she ever see him again?
In her voice was a pathetic, pleading note, one of almost hysterical desperation.
It was my hope that he would accede to her piteous request, but I, of course, in my guise of slave or capture, remained silent. Too, of course, Drusus Rencius did not interfere. This was a matter clearly between a mere slave, now used as a scrubbing girl and a free man, indeed, a possibly offended house master.
She was a brunette and was very beautiful in her chains, lying behind us, one arm piteously outstretched, in the half light of the corridor.
"Please, Master," she wept, "please, please!"
"You may speak," he said, angrily, not looking back.
I put my fingers to my bosom, catching my breath.
Had he turned back would he not have been softened, or even overcome, by the beauty of the prone, chained slave in the corridor?
How lovely she was!
He did not look back.
Perhaps he remembered her from a former time, when she was free, from a time of robes, and veils, and refinements, and conventions, and distances.
But such things, and times, were gone now.
"Master, Master!" she called out. "Forgive me! Forgive me! I did not know you were a master! I have always loved you, Master, but I thought you weak! I did not know you were a master! You did not make it clear to me! I know you liked me, I know you wanted me! I know you desired me! I was a fool, Master! Forgive me! I see you so differently now! I now want to please you! I want to please you! Please have me sent to your rooms! I want to please you—as a slave!—as a slave! Renata, only a slave, begs to be given the opportunity to strive to give Master inordinate pleasures! Please have Renata sent to your rooms! She begs to crawl to you, permitted to bring you your whip, in her teeth! Please, Master, have Renata sent to your rooms! She is untutored! Instruct her! She desires to give you pleasure."
Hermidorus did not look 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 heard her behind us, weeping.
I thought she had best return quickly to her scrubbing.
Surely some guard would be alo
ng soon, to gauge her progress, to inspect her work.
I could still hear her weeping.
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, while large, 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, and such, 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.
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