Norman, John - Gor 25 - Magicians of Gor.txt

by Magicians of Gor [lit]

  For example, anthropoidal fossils can be found on Gor, as well as on Earth, and

  so on. At any rate, Marcus found it much easier to believe that magic existed

  than that his world was round, that it moved, and that there might be other

  worlds rather like it here and there in the universe. In fact, in his

  philosophy, so to speak, the universe was still of somewhat manageable

  proportions. Sometimes I rather envied him.

  “It is true,” I said. “I am originally from Earth.” Undoubtedly she had detected

  my accent, as I had hers. To be sure there are many accents on Gor which are not

  Earth accents. For example, not everyone on Gor speaks Gorean. There are many

  languages spoken on Gor. For example, most of the red hunters of the north do

  not speak Gorean, nor the red savages of the Barrens, nor the inhabitants of the

  jungles east of Schendi.

  “Strange, then, Master,” she said, “that we should meet in this reality, I, once

  a woman of Earth, as now no more than a kneeling slave before you, once a man of

  Earth.”

  “Do you find it unfitting?” I asked.

  “No, Master,” she said.

  “It is as it should have been on Earth,” I said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “But such considerations need not concern us,” I said. “They are in the past.

  They belong to a different world. You are now of Gor, and only of Gor.”

  “Yes, Master,” she said. “But if I am not mistaken, it is not I alone who am now

  no longer of Earth, not I alone who am now of Gor, and wholly so.”

  “Oh?” I said.

  “It seems that we are both now of Gor, and wholly so.”

  “Yes,” I said. It was true.

  “I as a slave,” she said, “and you as a master.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I am not discontent,” she said.

  I was silent.

  “Of men who are Goreans, and such as Goreans,” she said, “women are the rightful

  slaves!”

  “And is your master such?” I asked.

  “Yes, Master!” she said.

  “Are you happy?” I asked.

  “Yes, Master!” she said. “I am happier than I ever knew a woman could be!”

  “But you are a slave?” I said.

  “It is what I am!” she said.

  (pg. 297) “Perhaps that is the explanation of your happiness,” I said.

  “It is, Master!” she said.

  “The collar looks well on your throat,” I said.

  “It belongs there, Master!” she said. “All my life I was craving and desiring

  total slavery, and now I have it!”

  “That is why you are so happy?” I said.

  “Yes, Master!” she said.

  “And has your master something to do with this?” I asked.

  “Doubtless, Master,” she said. “He is the most wonderful of masters!”

  “But what if you had a harsh master, one cruel or unfeeling.”

  “I would still be a slave,” she said. “I would still love my condition. It is

  what I am.”

  “I see,” I said.

  Her knees squirmed a little.

  “She is uneasy,” said Marcus.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “May I speak, Masters?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Marcus.

  “I fear my master will wonder what has become of me,” she said.

  “Do you fear you will be whipped?” asked Marcus.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “You are not yet dismissed,” said Marcus.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “Your tunic is still quite damp,” I said.

  Her hands moved a little on her thighs, but she retained position.

  I considered her slave curves, which would not in any event be well concealed by

  rep-cloth, and certainly were not so now that it had been splashed with water,

  even soaked by it.

  “Tuka,” I said, “is a very common slave name.”

  “It is fitting for me, Master,” she said, “who am a common slave.”

  “What is your brand?” I asked.

  “That of most girls,” she said, “the common Kajira mark. It is fitting, as I am

  a common girl.”

  “You regard yourself as a common slave?” I asked.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “Yet,” I said, “I think you would bring a good price, stripped, and on the

  block.”

  “I would try to perform well,” she said.

  “Tuka!” we heard. We looked up to the villa. From where we were, over the

  white-washed wall, we could see the veranda of the main building, where it was

  nestled back, in the side of a (pg. 298) hill. On the veranda there was a

  well-built fellow, with dark hair.

  The girl looked up at us, frightened, agonized.

  “Your master?” I asked.

  “Yes, Master!” she said.

  She squirmed. She looked about. In the beauty there was great agitation.

  Obviously she wished to rise up and run to her master, hurrying as she could.

  Slave girls do not dally when their masters call. That call takes precedence, of

  course, over a detention by strangers, but it is a rare girl who will simply

  leap up, not dismissed, and flee from the presence of free men.

  “You may go,” I said.

  “Thank you, Master!” she cried, and leaped up. She was in such a hurry that she

  sped past the basket of laundry a pace or two, but then, suddenly recollecting

  it, hurried back, picked it up, and then, balancing it on her head with two

  hands, sped through the gate of the villa and up the path to the house. The

  fellow had, in the meantime, seeing her approach, withdrawn into the house. We

  saw her on the veranda where she turned once, to look at us, then hurried

  within.

  “A superb slave,” said Marcus.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I expect she will be cuffed a bit,” he said, “either for dallying or for

  permitting herself to be seen so provocatively on the road, with a dampened

  tunic.”

  “I expect you are right,” I said.

  “To be sure,” said Marcus, “he will doubtless understand that she did not expect

  to meet folks about, surely not at this Ahn, and that the tunic was dampened for

  his benefit.”

  “He will presumably, if he pleases, take such matters into consideration,” I

  said.

  “By now she has probably been cuffed,” he said.

  “I would suppose so,” I said.

  “Or stripped and lashed,” he said.

  “Perhaps,” I said.

  “And now who knows to what lingering, pleasurable purposes she is being put?”

  “I do not know,” I said, “but it is my conjecture that she will serve well.”

  “I do not doubt it,” said Marcus.

  I looked about, turning in the saddle of the tharlarion. “I see no one on the

 
; road,” I said. “let us now retrace our steps. By noon I wish to be southwest of

  Ar, in the vicinity of the sul fields.

  * * *

  (pg. 299) “That is she,” I had whispered to Marcus.

  “I am not sure I understand your plan,” he had said.

  “Let us approach,” I had said.

  The sun was now high overhead. It was much hotter here, in this area, and at

  this time of day, than it had been earlier in the villa districts, in the hills

  northeast of Ar, the Fulvians, foothills to the Voltai.

  In the softness of the dust, then among the vines, moving across the field, our

  tharlarion in stately gait, we approached the girl, she at the large wooden

  tank, filling the vessels which would be slung over her yoke. She wore a brief,

  brown rag, perhaps from some other girl who had been given something better. Her

  hair had been cropped rather closely to her head, as is not uncommon with field

  slaves. She was barefoot and her feet and calves were white with dust. She

  lifted the large vessel from the tank with both hands, and then, her head down

  for a moment, rested it on the rim of the tank. She then, after a time,

  carefully, slowly, lowered it to the ground. It would not do to spill the water.

  She moved slowly, as though her body might be stiff and sore. I conjectured that

  her muscles ached. She was not accustomed, I supposed, to such labor.

  As it was shortly before noon the shadows were small, and behind us, but she

  heard the movement of the feet of the tharlarion in the dirt behind her and spun

  about, frightened, immediately kneeling, putting her head to the dirt.

  We halted the beasts some feet from her. She trembled. It would have done her no

  good, of course, to have run, even would it have been permitted that she do so.

  She could have been easily overtaken or ridden down, even trampled. It would not

  have been difficult to head off or turn her back, or to have her between us in

  sport, like some object in a game, a terrified, confused quarry, buffeted, or

  struck to the ground, again and again, until perhaps she lay quietly in the

  dust, trembling, and the tharlarion would come and gently, firmly, place its

  great clawed foot on her back, holding her in place for our binding fiber. Also,

  had we been slavers, she might, in her hasty flight, as we overtook her, have

  been roped or netted. In the south, the Wagon Peoples sometimes use the bola in

  such captures, the cords and weights, whipping about the girls legs and ankles,

  pinning them together, hurling her to the ground, where, in an instant, before

  she can free herself, the captor, leaping from the saddle, is upon her.

  I let her remain in her current posture for a time. It is a good for a master to

  be patient. Let the girl well understand the meaning of such things.

  (pg. 300) “You may look up,” I said.

  She kept her head low, but turned it, looking up at us. Her hair was light

  brown, much lighter than that of the girl we had encountered to the north, in

  the Fulvian hills. That girl’s hair had been very dark. I remembered it from the

  camp outside Ar long ago. This morning, as we had seen it, freshly washed, and

  still wet, it had seemed almost a glossy black. They were, as I have mentioned,

  similarly bodied. This girl, however, I would have supposed, was not a dancer.

  To be sure, she could undoubtedly be trained as such. As the female by nature

  has feminine dispositions, needs, instincts and aptitudes, such things being

  genetically coded within her, functions of her behavioral genetics, as opposed

  to her property genetics, controlling such matters as eye and hair color, there

  is a template, or readiness, for self-surrender, service, sensuousness and love

  within her. These are, of course, familiar aspects of the female slave.

  Accordingly the readiness for, and the aptitude for, slave dance, so intimately

  associated with beauty and sexuality, displaying the female in her

  marvelousness, excitingness and need, scarcely need be noted. These things,

  incidentally, fit into a harmonious physical and psychological dimorphism of the

  sexes, in which the male, unless reduced, denied or crippled, is dominant. This

  sexual dimorphism and the dominance/submission equations do not require

  institutionalized slavery. It is only that that institution is an expression

  within the context of a natural civilization of certain primal biotruths. In

  this sense of civilization need not be the antithesis of nature but can

  represent its natural enhancement and flowering.

  “Kneel straight,” I said.

  She knelt then with her back straight, and looked up at us.

  I stared down at her, at her knees, not speaking.

  She put her head down, quickly, and spread her knees more widely. They made two

  small furrows in the dust, and there was now a ridge of dust on the outside of

  each knee. Did she not know how to kneel before men?

  She looked up again, and then lowered her head again, spreading her knees even

  more widely.

  She looked up again, frightened, anxiously, seeking my eyes. Then she shuddered,

  in relief. Her position now acceptable.

  Her skin was burned from the sun. It was red and rough, peeling. In places it

  was cracked from the heat and mud.

  I glanced to the two vessels, to the side, now filled with water, and the

  associated yoke, thrice drilled, with slender leather straps wrapped about it,

  at the center and near the ends. The wooden vessels would be heavy in themselves

  for (pg. 301) such a small, lovely creature, let alone when weighted with a

  filling of liquid. She, too, following my eyes, regarded these things. “Your

  labors seem arduous,” I said.

  “It is as my master pleases,” she said, looking up at me once more.

  “And your day is long?” I said.

  “As my master pleases,” she said.

  “You are a field slave,” I said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “And that, too,” I said, “is as your master pleases.”

  “Yes, Master,” she said, “that, too, is as my master pleases.”

  “Your hair has been cropped, as is not unusual for a field slave,” I said.

  “That it might be sold, Master,” she said.

  “But doubtless it will grow again,” I said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “And it may then be again shorn,” I said.

  Tears sprang to her eyes.

  “Verr are shorn,” I said, “and so, too, is the bounding hurt.”

  “Of course, Master,” she said.

  “Do you object?” I asked

  She sobbed.

  “Your head could have been shaved,” I said.

  She looked up at me. I gathered she had not thought about that.

  “Are you not grateful your head was not shaved?” I asked.

  “—Yes, Master,” she said.

  “Say it,” I said.

  “I am grateful that my head was not shaved,” she said.

  Whereas a girl’s hair might be cropped, just as her head might be shaved, as a

  punishment, such a punishment would be quite unusual. After all, the master

 
commonly delights in the long lovely hair of a slave. Indeed, in most cities,

  long hair is almost universal with slaves. There are many things that can be

  done with such hair. not only can it please the master by its beauty and feel,

  but it can serve to secure the slave, to gag her, and so on. The major reason

  for cropping the hair of field slaves, both male and female, and certain other

  forms of work slaves, it to protect them from parasites. For a similar reason

  the bodies of the women transported on slave ships are almost always shaved,

  completely. Even then it is common, shortly after debarkation, and this is

  required by the rules of many port authorities, to subject them to an immersion

  in slave dip.

  “Whose fields are there?” I asked, looking about.

  “The fields of my master, Appanius,” she said.

  (pg. 302) “He is a rich man?” I asked.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “And he has many girls,” I asked.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “He must have a great many girls,” I said.

  She looked up at me.

  She had a common black, strap collar on her neck, no more, really, than a strip

  or plate of black iron. It was riveted shut, behind the back of her neck. I had

  noted this earlier, given the shortness of her hair, and her earlier position,

  facing away from us as she drew water. The legend would probably be a single

  one, not even containing the girl’s name, probably something like “I am the

  property of Appanius.”

  “That a woman such as you is in the field,” I said.

  Tears coursed down her cheeks.

  “Keep your knees spread,” I warned her.

  Swiftly she once more increased the angle between her knees.

  She certainly did not seem to me a field slave. Rather she seemed to me the sort

  of woman one would have expected to find in a house, hurrying about barefoot on

  the tiles, one ankle perhaps belled, in a bit of silk, serving, a small,

  luscious woman, well curved, smooth-skinned, and soft, her body perfumed for the

  pleasure of men, the sort of woman one keeps in mind, the sort of woman who is

  difficult to forget, the sort whom one might wish to keep close by, perhaps

  keeping her at night at the foot of one’s couch, on her chain.”

  “What is your name?” I asked.