Witness of Gor coc-26

by John Norman

  “But you are a free woman,” I reminded her. She looked at me, agonized.

  “There are two sexes,” I said. “One is dominant, and one is not. Each should be true to itself. On this world, this basic truth has been recognized, and, in a portion of the social sphere, institutionalized.”

  “I want to be true to my sex,” she whispered, “really true to it, fully true to it.”

  “Beware,” I said. “You are a free woman.”

  She was silent.

  “Freedom is precious,” I said.

  “I have had freedom,” she said. “I know what it is like. Now I want love.”

  “I am a slave,” I said. “And I have not found love.” A poignant memory gripped me, but I turned away from it.

  “What is wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. I need not speak the truth to her as she was to me now naught but as slave.

  “I think you are a true slave, Janice,” she said, softly.

  “Yes,” I said. “I am a true slave. I was true slave even before I was brought here and collared.”

  “You love being a slave!” she said.

  “It can be terrifying to be a slave!” I said.

  “You love being a slave!” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I love being a slave!”

  She looked down at her knees, so widely spread. She was “slave clad.” One lovely thigh, her left, as she knelt, emerged from the brown rag which had been knotted about her waist. She wore a halter. We had improvised it from a twisted, matching piece of brown rag. In its simplicity and raggedness, it was surely believable as, and suitable for, a slave halter. It was I who had decided that she should be clothed in brief tatters. Too, it was I who had decided that her midriff would be bare, and considerably so. In these arrangements was expressed, doubtless, something of my view as to her condition, which was free. That is what I think of your condition, and what you really are, you free females! Take away your veils and robes, and we shall see what you are! There, see, you are no more than we, only more slaves! Yes, perhaps I had chanced to yield, to some extent, to the temptation to take a little vengeance on her, and, though her, on all free females. Too, how often does a slave get to dress a free woman, as the slave might choose to dress her? And how often will she have the opportunity to conduct one about, “slave clad,” back-braceleted, and on a leash? What a turnabout is there! The pit master, when I had displayed her to him, had seemed startled. Certainly he had uttered a skeptical sound. Perhaps he had not realized before that the free woman was actually an attractive and desirable female, at least for a free woman, one who had not yet learned slave softness, slave helplessness. But he had let us leave the depths. She had not seemed to mind all this at all, but to find the whole matter delightful. Perhaps she would not have found it all so delightful if she had realized how she might now appear to men. Might she not then have been terrified? What free woman would dare to appear, as it is said, “slave desirable”?

  Some days ago she had been removed from the slave cage over the pool and given a cell not far from our quarters. It was a comfortable cell, some eight feet in width and height, some ten feet in depth. Though there were rings within it, she was not chained to them. She had a pallet filled with straw, a dish for food, a vessel for water, anda wastes bucket. The luxury of the straw-filled pallet was doubtless an acknowledgment of her status as a free woman. One morning I had been ordered to fold my blanket early and emerge from my kennel. I had followed the pit master to the free woman’s cell. I had been uneasy doing so, as I was afraid of her. Female slaves learn early on this world to fear free women who, for some reason, seem to bear them great malice and hatred. But it was a far different free woman I encountered in the cell than she I had recalled from the cage. She knelt at our first approach.

  “I have heard nothing of your ransom, Lady,” said the pit master to her.

  She nodded.

  I knelt behind the pit master, to his left. That is the common heeling position. I wore a typical slave tunic, brief and revealing.

  “I congratulate you on the improvement in your behavior,” he said.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said.

  “You understand,” he said, “that we may, if we wish, put you back over the pool, and assure you that that is not the worst sort of accommodation in the pits.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. She bowed her head.

  “Your behavior is particularly to be commended,” he said, “as you are not bond.”

  She lifted her head, it seemed, as though puzzled.

  “When one is bond,” he said, “one has absolutely no choice-instant and unquestioning perfection of service is required.”

  “Sir?” she said.

  “Janice!” he snapped.

  “Master!” I cried, startled.

  “Obeisance!” he said.

  Instantly I knelt forward, the palms of my hands on the floor, my head to the floor.

  “Lick and kiss,” he said.

  I scrambled forward and, head down, kissed and licked, swiftly, frightened, at his feet and sandals.

  “Enough!” he said. “Back!”

  I drew back, hastily. But he was no longer paying me attention.

  “You see?” he asked the free woman.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, trembling.

  “You seem to have learned something of what it is to be in the keeping of men,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “Keep in mind,” he said, “in the future, that you are still in their keeping, utterly.”

  “Sir?” she said.

  “Though henceforth,” said he, “more indirectly.”

  “I do not understand,” she said.

  “I am a free man,” he said. “I have no intention continuing indefinitely to attend to you personally. It is not as though you were my slave, a girl whose hair I might comb, or in whose feeding and watering I might take some pleasure. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sire,” she said.

  “Unfortunately,” he said, “we do not have free women to attend to such matters in the depts…”

  “I understand,” she said.

  “This, Janice,” said he, “is the Lady Constanzia, of the city of Besnit.”

  “Master,” I whispered, in misery.

  “Lady Constanzia,” said he, “the bond-maid, Janice.”

  “Janice,” she said.

  “Mistress,” I said.

  “You need not call her “Mistress,”” said the depth warden. He then turned to the free woman. “Your care, for the most part, will be in her hands,” he said. “Moreover, you will give her no trouble. And you will obey her.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  I marveled.

  “Incidentally,” said he, females-.”

  I was startled that he used the same expression to refer to us both. I supposed, of course, that we were both females, but, in a sense, within that genus, of two quite disparate species, one free, one slave. But, in another sense, of course, both of us were the same, both females, and were thus addressed, as only females, relative to his maleness.

  “-you are to exchange little or not political or military information.”

  “I know little of such things,” said the free woman.

  And I knew myself, of course, almost totally ignorant of such matters, certainly on this world. Further, a limitation on our discourse had now been imposed, a limitation which would doubtless be respected. This was not a world on which such as we, she a prisoner, I a slave, would be likely to transgress such an injunction. Who would want to be thrown, for example, to those terrible creatures in the pool?

  The pit master then turned about, and began to withdraw down the corridor. I had leapt up, and hurried to follow him. That was the first day on which I had begun the care of the free woman. That very night I took her her food and water. “Go to the back of the cell,” I told her. She complied. She had not knelt, of course. I was not a man. Still, I was her keeper. I
think she had not really known how she should behave with me. Nor, as a matter of fact, on the whole, did I. The pit master, however, had told me to have her kneel, and help her keep in mind that she is a prisoner. I had the key to the cell on a string. I put down the food and water, opened the cell, put the key back about my neck, and brought in the food.

  “There are guards about,” I informed her, though I supposed she must be aware of this.

  “Yes, she said.

  She did not seem particularly haughty or arrogant. A great transformation, it seemed, had come over her since the first time I had seen her, at the pool.

  “Do not try to escape,” I said. The door was, after all, now open.

  “I will not,” she said.

  “You cannot escape,” I said “Escape is impossible for you.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Kneel,” I said.

  She knelt.

  I let her remain kneeling for a few moments, looking at me. I then came toward her ad put the food down, on the floor, before her.

  “Do not touch it yet,” I said.

  She drew back her hands.

  I was standing before her.

  She looked up at me.

  “Remove your veil,” I said.

  She unwound the veil from her features, carefully, gently, where she had wrapped it about herself, and brushed back the hood of her robes of concealment.

  She then looked up at me. She did not seem angry, or offended.

  “You are the barbarian,” she said.

  “The one whom you had punished,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I was shipped,” I said.

  “You have face-stripped me,” she said.

  “Doubtless you did not then expect to be where you are now.”

  “No,” she said.

  “I am the one,” I said. “who speaks so terribly.”

  “You speak beautifully,” she said.

  “I have an accent,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “You have an accent.”

  “A slave accent!” I said.

  “It is a lovely accent,” she said.

  “But it is a slave accent!” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “It is a slave accent.”

  “You think my accent is acceptable?” I asked.

  “It is a beautiful accent,” she said.

  “I think you are trying to lie,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “I am trying to accustom myself to telling the truth.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It does not matter, does it?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “I suppose not,” She looked at the food. “But it is a slave accent,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “It is a slave accent.”

  I did not think she had eaten since last night. She must be ravening.

  “You may eat,” I said.

  She lost no time in addressing herself to the food, but, rather to my surprise, and irritation, she did so with delicacy. She had a certain breeding and refinement, it seemed, of sort which one might not expect to find in my sort, in slaves. I supposed that if she were a slave, the signs in her manner of such breeding and refinement might be of interest to a master, not that they would make her any less a slave. Similarly a high-caste accent, with all its elegance and refinement, would not make her any the less a slave either. Such learn to leap and obey as quickly as the rest of us.

  “You eat with delicacy,” I said.

  Too, this refinement, this elegance, seemed so natural in her. Such, doubtless, was the effect of breeding.

  “Your features are not unattractive,” I said.

  It had been in consequence of my orders that she must remove her veil, exposing her features. But this was not as momentous as it might seem. I was, after all, a woman. It was not as though I were a man, a brutal masculine captor, who had torn away her veil, that he might assess her promise for the collar. Too, many free women would think nothing of appearing unveiled before their serving slaves. Yet I was sure it would not have been lost upon her that she had had to remove her veil, that so precious thing to a free woman, at my command. But she had not seemed dismayed to remove it. Was she concerned, I wondered, to make clear to us the authenticity of her new understanding, that she must obey. Or, perhaps, did she find it appropriate, for some reason, that he features be bared?

  She looked up at me, timidly.

  “I am not lying,” I said. “I am not a free woman. I am a slave. I can be punished terribly for lying.”

  She threw me a grateful glance.

  “Am I pretty?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Am I beautiful?” she asked.

  “That would be a judgment,” said I, “best made by masters.” And then I added, maliciously, “-when you are stripped on a slave block.”

  “Am I beautiful?’ she pressed.

  “I would think so, yes,” I said.

  She put her hands to the throat of her robes, closing them more tightly. “Do you think I might,” she asked, “be beautiful enough to be-to be a-a slave?”

  “Shame,” cried I, “free woman,” scandalized.

  “Please!” she begged.

  “I would suppose so,” I said. “I do not know.”

  She drew her robes yet more closely about her. She put her head down, trembling.

  “Finish your food,” I suggested.

  She again addressed herself to her light repast.

  “I thought of stealing some of your food,” I said, “but I did not do so.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “The diet here has doubtless slimmed you,” I said, “but I do not think they are planning on selling you. I think they are waiting for your ransom.”

  She kept her head down, eating.

  It seemed as though she might have wished to raise her head, to speak, but she did not do so.

  I knelt down, across from her.

  I was sure she wished to speak to me, but she refrained from doing so.

  In a bit she had finished the modest collation I had set before her. She pushed back the empty dish, the drained goblet. It had held only water.

  “Doubtless,” I said, “it is not what you were hitherto accustomed to.”

  “I am grateful to be fed,” she said.

  That seemed to me insightful on her part.

  “Is this that on which you are fed?” she asked.

  “It is better,” I said. “Often we have only slave pellets and slave gruel.”

  “I am sorry,” she said.

  “We are slaves,” I said.

  I picked up the plate and goblet. I stood up.

  “The provender of slaves,” I said, “is designed to keep us healthy, trim, and vital, as the masters want us. It would be the same with other animals.”

  “Animals!” she breathed.

  “Of course,” I said. “But we get other things, too. The masters may feed us by hand, from their own plates, as we kneel by their tables, or throw us scraps, such things. Occasionally we may be given a candy, a pastry, such things. It depends on the master.”

  She nodded, frightened.

  I turned to go.

  “Please!” she said.

  I turned back to face her.

  “Slaves are exercised, are they not?” she asked.

  “We must exercise, yes,” I said. Such is important for muscle tone, improvement of the figure, responsiveness, and such. We are not permitted to neglect such matters. Masters would not permit it.”

  “You are very clean,” she said.

  “We are not free women,” I said. “We must wash frequently. We must keep ourselves pleasing, in so far as we can, for masters.”

  “I am miserable,” she said.

  I looked at her, puzzled.

  “I have been cramped in for so long,” she said.

  “This cell is large,” I said.

  “I feel dirty,” she said.

  I shrugged.
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  “Look at me!” she said.

  I regarded her.

  “I’m filthy,” she said.

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  Her clothing, perhaps the very garments in which she had been originally captured, had, in her continual wearing of it, in her sleeping in it, in its contract with the floors of cages and cells, and such, become much soiled. It was thickly begrimed with weeks of wear and filth. Too, it was wrinkled, and faded, and torn. She was, in these things, a sorry sight.

  How different was her appearance now, I thought, from what it must have been when she had long ago entered the fateful shop in Besnit.

  “I must smell,” she said.

  “I am a slave,” I said. “It would not be wise for me to notice.”

  “I must smell,” she said.

  “Yes, you do,” I admitted.

  She looked down, miserable.

  “Do not be afraid,” I said. “It is not as though you were a slave. You are a free woman. It is not as though you must, under discipline, groom yourself, attend to your appearance, keep your body clean, such things. Have no fear. Your neglect of such things, as you are a free woman, will not be punished.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, softly, to herself, “I would that I were such that I might be punished for the neglect of such things.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing!” she said. She shrank back, putting her finger tips to her lips, as though she might have chided them for what they, sweet, unwary guards, had permitted to pass their portal.

  I stood there for a moment. I thought she might have wished to speak further. But she said nothing.

  I then turned about, and went to the door of the cell.

  “Janice!” she called.

  I turned about again, and once more faced her.

  “May I call you ‘Janice’?”

  “It is my name,” I said.

  “This morning,” she said, falteringly, “you licked-and kissed-the feet of a man.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I have never licked and kissed the feet of a man,” she said.

  “You are a free woman,” I said.

  She regarded me.

  “It is a not uncommon act for a slave,” I said.

  “It is surely very symbolic,” she said.

  “There are many symbolisms involved,” I said. “It is not merely that it is a way in which a given woman makes clear her relation to a given man, that she is his slave, that he is her master. It is far more than this. It is, for example, a way in which our femininity avails itself of an opportunity to express, in the particular act with a particular master, something far broader and more profound, its deference toward, and its submission to, the very principal of masculinity. In this way its significance extens far beyond a particular couple. It has to do with men and women, and masculinity and femininity, and the order of nature itself.”