"Surely you are aware that there are risks entailed in such behaviors?"
"I knew you could do nothing," I said. "I was protected by my freedom, my dignity, my status, my position and power!"
"And where are such things now?"
"Gone, Master."
"How you tortured me, and enraged me!"
"Forgive me, Master."
"But you were not then my slave."
"No, Master."
"But you are now my slave."
"Yes, Master."
"Things will be different now, will they not?"
"Yes, Master."
"That beautiful, desirable, troublesome, petty, insolent slut is now mine—wholly."
"Yes, Master."
"Be assured," said he, "that it will be a considerable personal pleasure for me to have you as my slave."
"Yes, Master," I said.
"You do not seem to be discontented," he said.
"Forgive me, Master," I said.
"Do you think I will be an easy master?"
"No, Master."
"Surely you should be terrified to be my slave," he said.
"I am overjoyed to be your slave," I said.
"Why do women do such things?" he asked. "Why do they arouse, and torment, men?"
"Perhaps we desire to feel your arms about us, and your chains. Has it never occurred to you that we wish to provoke you to our conquest, that we wish to be taken in hand, and claimed, and made to serve? Can we not sense our rightful destiny?"
He unfolded his arms and looked at me, with fury. "How utterly, utterly beautiful you are," he said, "and how provocative, and delicious!"
"And I am yours, and you may do with me as you please," I said.
"How you infuriate me!" he cried, suddenly, his fists clenched. He turned away. I was silent. I squirmed a little in the ropes. They held me well.
He stood by the window in his quarters. "I remember Corcyrus," he said, bitterly. He put the palms of his hands on the sides of the window, looking out.
"I, too, remember Corcyrus," I said, happily.
"Slut," he snarled.
"Yes, Master," I said.
"There are vengeances to be taken upon you," he said, angrily.
"You are certainly entitled to them, Master," I said, smiling. I loved Drusus Rencius.
He looked about at me, angrily.
"Let us put our heads together," I suggested. "Perhaps, then, we can plan certain appropriate exactions, ministrations wherewith that arrogant slut, Sheila, may be well punished for her stupidities."
"You seek to divert my wrath," he said.
"Perhaps," I smiled.
He leaned back, wearily, against the wall, by the window, looking at me.
"Surely a girl cannot be blamed for hoping to do that," I said.
"I suppose not," he smiled.
"Oh," I said, "I forgot! I am no longer Sheila, am I? My collar has been changed!" I looked at Drusus Rencius. "I do not have a name now, do I?" I asked.
"No," he said.
"Is master going to name me?" I asked.
"I will, if it pleases me," he said. "I will not, if it does not please me."
"Yes, Master," I said.
"I am a fool," he said.
"I shall maintain a judicious silence," I said. "If I agree I would seem to proclaim my master a fool. If I disagree, I should, at the very least, contradict him."
"I am a fool!" he said, miserably.
"I do not think so," I said, "but, of course, I am only a slave, and I could conceivably be mistaken."
"I should sell you," he said.
"You may do with me as you wish," I said. I had no fear, however, that he would sell me. It was not for such a purpose, I was confident, that he had bought me.
To be sure, some men speculate in women. And in such matters, as in other such matters, as with other commodities, one hopes to buy low and sell high. Knowing this helps the women to understand that they are mere properties.
But what slave does not understand that, and clearly?
In such speculation buying, it might be mentioned, the buyer often attempts to improve the woman, before resale, for example, by honing her slave reflexes, so that she becomes helplessly, spasmodically needful, or by other trainings, in services ranging from the homely and domestic to the exotically, intimately passional.
Few men, of course, who are not merchants in such venues, buy a woman to sell her. One will at least want to see how she works out. And she will do her best to see to it that she is fully pleasing.
It is easy for a woman to fall in love with her master.
I wonder if you find that hard to understand.
I trust not.
It is not merely that she is totally dependent on him, how she will be dressed, if dressed, what she will be fed, and in what quantities, what wines, if any, she may be permitted to sip, what liberties she will be allowed, to what confinements she may be subjected, and so on.
It goes well beyond such things.
She is readied for the collar, long before it is put on her.
Her heat and blood have prepared her for it.
Has she not already worn it, in her dreams?
Herein, you see, is embedded a mysterious chemistry, having to do, doubtless, with genetics, with evolution, with complementarities, with the woman's disposition to desire, and her hope to be found attractive by, an intelligent, powerful male, to whom she yearns to surrender and submit. And these inclinations on her part, obviously, are fulfilled in their full perfection only when finds herself an acknowledged slave, completely owned, fully dominated, overwhelmed, at the feet of a master.
In her dreams, and blood, you see, she is readied for the collar, long before it is put on her.
She is not unaware of her rightful disposition. It has whispered to her, and beckoned to her, since puberty.
And, I suppose, there must be something complementary in the male. Does he not find himself most male, most fulfilled, when having absolute power over a woman, when owning her, fully, when being her master? What man, honestly, does not want a beautiful slave? Are their fantasies so different from ours? He is dominant by nature, even if by a pathological culture he is thwarted, crippled, and poisoned. An acorn placed when tiny and helpless in a pot and starved and sickened will never clutch the dark soil of reality with deep roots like talons and lift green, spreading, mighty leaf-bestrewn branches to sunlight and wind. But the men of Gor, if only the unwitting beneficiaries of an historical accident, were never confused and tricked out of their birthright of health; or, I wondered, was it only a statistical anomaly, a rare sort of historical accident, or misadventure, or wrong turning, that some cultures were twisted away from vigor and normality, and lost in sparseness and desiccation? But perhaps, I thought, the men of Gor were not the sort, under any circumstances, who could have been confused and tricked out of their natural destiny. Such men, I suspected, would hear the distant baying of nature, and the lure of the forest and jungle. Such men, I suspected, maturing, would break away the walls of the kennels and pots in which the weak and fearing, and hating, would wish to confine them. The strong man can be bound only by himself; surely the weak and fearful, and hating, know that, and that is why they are so desperate to divide him, and make him of himself his own captor, and prisoner, and his own worst enemy. But the men of Gor, I suspected, would see through such stratagems, the hope of the resentful, and ill-constituted, and become themselves. The men of Gor, I thought, were different, stronger, than the men I knew from my old world. And yet I had little doubt that the men of Gor were human, very human. And perhaps therein lay their strength, that they were fully, honestly, human. And surely, I thought, so, too, at least in possibility, were the men of Earth. Were they, too, capable of humanity, not a humanity defined to promote political agendas, but a true humanity, one of strength, biology, intelligence, and rationality, a humanity emergent from nature, rather than one engineered to negate, frustrate and poison her? Surely, I thought,
the men of Earth were not innately other than the men of Gor. Or, perhaps, more accurately, there were surely some men of Earth who were not innately different from those of Gor. I thought it even a possibility that the men of Gor were of Earth stock. That seemed not impossible. I had heard it rumored. I had been brought to this world, as, I knew, had many others. Might it not be, then, that somehow, perhaps long ago, men, or at least certain sorts of men, and doubtless other women, had been brought here, to this new, fresh, unspoiled, unstained world, perhaps to populate it, perhaps to thrive upon it?
"You do not fear me, truly, do you?" he asked.
"Not, ultimately," I said.
"Why?" he asked.
"Must I speak?" I asked.
"No," he said, angrily. "You need not speak."
He turned wearily, angrily, away.
"Master?" I asked.
He turned again to face me. "You are a beautiful, complex woman," he said.
"I am a simple slave," I said, "a man's toy, a bauble for his pleasure."
"Simple or complex, you are a slave," he said. "There is no doubt about that."
"Your slave," I reminded him.
"Why did I buy you?" he asked.
"I can think of several reasons," I said.
"Do you mock me?" he asked.
"I tease you," I said. "I do not mock you."
"I care for you," he said, suddenly, bitterly.
"I know," I said.
"And you only a slave!"
"Yes, Master," I said.
"What a fool I am!" he cried.
I was silent.
"You did it to me," he said.
"I?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, "you, with your intelligence, your beauty, your vulnerability, your sensuousness, your glances and movements, your bondage skills, your insidious slave wiles, the perfections of your servitude, made it impossible not to desire you, not to lust for you, inordinately, not to want you, not to demand you, to the point of madness, for my very own!"
I was silent, bound before him. There was some truth, of course, or at least I thought so, to these charges. At least I hoped there was. I had tried, with all the skills I had been taught, and with all the devices, and instincts, of the natural slave, which I was, to attract and lure him. The outcome of such a campaign, of course, if successful, is that the girl becomes the man's slave. She is then, of course, subject to whatever vengeances he might be pleased to take upon her.
I squirmed in the ropes. I belonged to him. I began to sweat. For the first time I felt genuine fear.
"You wrapped me about your finger," he said. "You manipulated me!"
"Forgive me, Master," I said.
"Gloat in your power, Slave!" he said.
"Forgive me, Master," I whispered.
"Even last night," he said, "in your writhing on the steps, you made me wild for you. You made me want to tear off your silk and hurl you beneath me, then to have you, uncompromisingly, like the luscious slut and slave you are!"
"Yes, Master," I whispered.
"I saw your body jerk in the hands of the soldier!" he said, accusingly.
"I cannot help what I am!" I cried, looking up at him, angrily, tears in my eyes.
"You are a slave!" he cried.
"Yes!" I cried. "And had you been there you could, later, have seen my body jerk in the hands of Miles of Argentum. That night he made me, three times, serve him well, and the third time, writhing, I cried myself his, a submitted slave. In the morning I kissed his feet in gratitude!"
"Slave, slave!" snarled Drusus Rencius.
"And do you not make women respond like that," I said, "the girls in the taverns, the girls on their mats, the girls thrown to your feet, for your sport, at the house of a friend?"
"Yes," he said, angrily. "I make them grovel and scream!"
"And why, then," I asked, "should you object if other men make me respond in the same way?"
He regarded me, with fury.
"Am I different?" I asked.
"Apparently not," he said.
"I am not!" I said.
"They are slaves," he said.
"So, too, am I!"
"I had hoped you might be more," he said.
"What?" I asked.
"A free woman," he said.
"I have been a free woman," I said. "Do not laud them to me!"
"Do you speak ill of free women?" he asked.
"No," I said. "I dare not!"
"Why?" he asked.
"I do not wish to be whipped," I said.
"You would be," he said.
"Yes, Master," I said.
He glared at me.
"Do you want me as a free woman?" I asked.
"It is a meaningless question," he said. "You are not a free woman, and even when you were a free woman, in some trivial legal sense, you were a natural slave, a woman who in her heart was a slave, a woman not only fit for the collar but one who belonged in it."
"Yes, Master," I said.
"And now you are in it," he said.
"Yes, Master," I said.
"As you should be," he said.
"Yes, Master," I said.
"For a woman such as you to be free," said he, "would be absurd."
"Yes, Master," I said. It was true.
I thought of the women of my old world, and sorrow coursed through me. Few of them I thought would ever be so fortunate as to know the freedom, the fulfillment, the joy of the collar. Priding themselves on their freedom they were more slaves than slaves. I wondered if they listened to the lies they were told to tell themselves, and if they managed to believe them, or if they found much enjoyment in treading the dry, narrow, walled paths set out for them.
"Look at me," I said. "I am naked and bound before you! Would you really prefer that I was a free woman?"
"No," he said, and my blood almost froze in my veins.
"You see?" I whispered.
"Yes," he said, angrily.
"I am a thousand times more than a free woman," I said, "both to a man and, in my heart and emotions, to myself."
"How is that?" he asked.
"I am a slave," I said, simply.
He looked down, sullenly.
"Master?" I asked.
"Do you speak ill of free women?"
"No, Master!"
"You think you are more than they?"
"They are a thousand times above me, and a thousand times more than I, in a thousand ways, but I, a thousand times below them, in a thousand ways, am in my way a thousand times more than they, can you not understand, for I have my collar, for I am a slave!"
"You like your collar?" he said.
"I love it, and my bondage!" I said.
"Speak," said he.
"You take free women into companionship," I said, "but you dream of slaves. You even dream of the free woman as a slave. I doubt that any glandularly sufficient male does not want us as slaves. If he doesn't, then I think he must be very short on imagination. What do you think is the meaning of your size and strength, your energy and agility, your dominance? Do you think it is all some alarming, inexplicable, statistical eccentricity? Can you not see the order of nature? Is it so difficult to disclose? Why do you think men make us slaves, and put us in collars? It is because they want us as slaves. And why do you think we make such superb slaves? Because we are born slaves!"
"If I take my place in the order of nature," he said, "then, obviously, you will be put in yours."
I pulled at the ropes. "I think I am already there, Master," I said.
He looked up at me.
"I am on my step," I said. "It is now only necessary that you ascend to yours."
"You do not even have a name," he said.
"Perhaps Master will, if it pleases him, give me a name."
"Perhaps I should name you," he said. "Doubtless you might be conveniently ordered about and referred to, if you were named."
"Yes, Master," I said. The name would be a slave name, of course. Such names, like collars, are
worn whether the slave wishes them or not. Some masters think of such names as being along the lines of verbal leashes, the utterance of the name, like the sudden tug of a leash, immediately calling the slave's attention to the master and his wishes. In any event, the slave name, and the knowledge that it is a slave name, deeply, and appropriately, informs the consciousness of the slave. Too, of course, it is the only name she has.
He turned away from me.
"You still hesitate to accept me as what I am, a total slave, don't you?" I asked.
"Perhaps," he growled.
"If you wish," I said, "relate to me as to a despised slut in bondage. You will discover that I will respond well to you in that role."
He spun about. "Do you think that you are not despised?" he asked.
"Master?" I asked.
"I do despise you," he said, angrily, "for Corcyrus, for your meaninglessness, for your pettiness and cruelty, for what you are, and for what you have done to me!"
I shrank back in the bonds.
"And you are maddeningly beautiful," he said. "You are excruciatingly desirable!"
I was silent.
"I am a free man!" he cried. "I am of the warriors! I am an officer! I am a citizen of Ar, glorious Ar! And I am a fool! What you have done to me! Such women as you are the downfall of men! You have cost me my respect and my honor!"
"Do you want me to pretend to be a free woman?" I asked. "I can do that. I did it for years. At times I even believed it. I can do it again! Command me, if you wish, to the pretense!"
"You are a slave," he said. "It is all you are. Do not mock me."
"Forgive me, Master," I said.
"Day in and day out, night in and night out, I fought my feelings for you," he said. "I immersed myself in duties. I adopted strenuous activities. I sought solace even in the taverns, and in the arms of others. I chided myself for my foolishness. I berated myself for my stupidity! I castigated myself for my madness! But I could not drive you from my mind! Ever more hotly burned the flames of my passion! And you are not even free!"
"No," I said, suddenly, angrily. "I am not even free!"
"A slave!" he said.
"Yes!" I said. "A slave!"
"Gloat, Slave," said he, "for you, with your wiles, and your insidious beauty, have brought a soldier, and a free man, low."
Kajira of Gor Page 52