She opened her eyes, registering her surroundings. She laughed softly, lying under the hide blanket. "I awaken naked, in a man's collar, on a distant world," she said. "No, it is not time for me to go to the office."
"No," I said.
She then rolled to her stomach and, under the hide blanket, stretched. Her body moved deliciously under the hide.
"That concealed slavery is behind you now," I said. "Your slavery is now of a more open nature."
"Yes," she said.
I then lifted the hide blanket back, and down to her calves. Such may be done with a slave. Her curves were marvelous.
I listened for a moment to the sounds of the camp outside. Somewhere I heard a girl crying out, being beaten. It was probably a white slave girl.
I looked at Winyela, on her stomach, on the dark robes.
I then, sweating, my fists clenched on the hide blanket, drew it back up, over her, to the middle of her back.
"I may be revealed," she said. "I am a slave."
I said nothing. I fought for my self-control.
She turned then, to her side, supporting herself on her elbow. This action caused the hide blanket to slip to her waist. "Thank you for letting me sleep," she said. "You were very kind."
"It was nothing," I said.
"I should like to thank you," she said. She reached her lips toward mine but I, by her upper arms, held her from me. "What is wrong?" she asked.
"The kiss of a slave can be but the prologue to her rape," I said.
"Oh," she said, smiling. She then drew back, and then, on her side, lay down. She pulled the hide blanket up about her neck.
"You must get up soon," I said. "In a while it will be time to return you to the lodge of Canka."
"If I dally," she asked, "will you quirt me?"
"If I think you dally overmuch," I said, "of course."
"Could you do that?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Of course," she said, "for I am only a slave."
"Of course," I said.
"Sometimes it seems strange to me," she said, "thinking of myself as subject to the whip."
"There is nothing strange in it," I said. "You are a slave."
"That is true," she said.
"Master," she said.
"Yes," I said. It had surprised me, for a moment, that she had called me 'Master', but then I recalled that she had been given to me, for the afternoon. Indeed, for the afternoon, or, I supposed, until, within reason, I chose to return her to the lodge of Canka, she was, for all practical purposes, my own slave.
"You have treated me with great tenderness and kindness," she said.
I shrugged.
"May I surmise from this," she asked, "as I know little of slavery, and am new to the condition, that there can be tenderness and kindness for a slave?"
"There can be tenderness and kindness for a slave," I said, "of course. It is not permitted, however, to compromise in the least the iron discipline under which she is kept."
"I see," she said.
I regarded her.
"I want to be kept under an iron discipline," she said.
"I know," I said.
It was hard for me to forget that she was naked under the hide blanket.
"Do masters ever love their slaves?" she asked.
"Often," I said. Indeed, a female slave is the easiest of all women to love; too, of course, she is the most natural of all women to love; these things have to do with the equations of nature, in particular with those of dominance and submission. To a man a female slave is a dream come true. A free woman, understandably, cannot even begin to compete with a female slave for a man's love. That is perhaps another reason why free women so hate their vulnerable, embonded sisters. If a free woman would assure herself of her man's love she could not do better than, in effect, become his slave. She can beg of him, if she senses in herself the true bondage of love, an enslavement ceremony, in which she proclaims herself, and becomes, his slave. In their most secret and intimate relations thereafter she lives and loves as his slave. If a woman fears to do this she may, on an experimental basis, resort to limited self-contracting, in which her documents will contain stated termination dates. Thus, by her own free will, she becomes a slave for a specific period, ranging usually from an evening to a year. The woman enters into this arrangement freely; she cannot, of course, withdraw from it in the same way. The reason for this is clear. As soon as the words are spoken, or her signature is placed on the pertinent document, or documents, she is no longer a free person. She is then only a slave, an animal, no longer with any legal powers whatsoever. She is, then, until the completion of the contractual period, until the expiration date of the arrangement, totally subject to the will of her master.
"And still keep them as slaves?" asked the girl.
"Of course," I said.
"Then I could be loved," she said, "and still kept as a slave, totally."
"Of course," I said.
"Even to being beaten?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Of course," she said, "for I would still be only a slave."
"Of course," I said. "How is your back?" I asked.
"Sore," she said.
"You have felt the quirt," I said. "You will be a better slave for it."
"How strange it is to think of myself in such terms," she mused.
"What terms?" I asked.
"That I am a slave," she said, "that I am owned, that I belong to a man."
"Perhaps it seems strange to you, sometimes, lingeringly," I said, "because you are from Earth. It is not strange on Gor, of course. Bondage for a beautiful woman, such as yourself, is a common reality on Gor."
"I gather that it is so," she said.
"It is," I said. "On Gor thousands of beautiful women, branded, and in collars, serve, and must serve, their masters with the fullness of their female perfections."
She nodded. She had seen female slaves. She herself had been sold in the town of Kailiauk, near the Ihanke.
"And you, in the Barrens," I said, "are such a woman."
"I know," she said. She had seen slaves, too, in the Barrens, of course, generally white women, the helpless, obedient, collared slaves of red savages.
"It is your reality," I said.
"I know," she said.
"I think it is time we went to the lodge of Canka," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said. She then sat up on the robes. She held the hide blanket about her neck.
I almost wanted to cry out, to tear it from her, to fling her beneath me.
"I love Canka," she said. "I love him, more than anything."
I nodded.
"And I want him to love me," she said, "even though I am only a slave, if just a little."
"I understand," I said. It was natural for a slave helplessly in love with her master to hope that he might see fit to cast her at least a particle or crumb of his affection. That much he might bestow even upon a pet sleen.
She looked at me. "Canka wanted me punished," she said.
I shrugged.
"But you did not do so," she said.
"No," I said.
"Punish me," she said.
"No," I said.
"Very well," she said.
She, moving slightly, but mostly sitting as she was, let the hide blanket slip to her thighs. It seemed an accident.
"Let us hurry to the lodge of Canka," I said. I did not know if I could retain my control.
"Please," she said, "let me adjust my collar." She then, carefully, with her small hands, aligned the beaded collar on her throat. At certain points she ran a finger around and under it, adjusting it for comfort. She then, again, aligned it, setting the central knot under her chin. "There," she said. "That is better, and more comfortable. How does it look?"
"Fine," I said.
"Good," she said. "It is important to us that our collars both look well and be comfortable."
I was driven half wild, seeing her small hands so
careful and attentive upon that encircling badge of servitude, calling attention to it, adjusting it. It was, of course, a slave collar.
"Let us go," I said.
"My hair," she said, "please—Master."
I watched her putting back her head and, carefully, apparently paying me no attention, arrange her long, lovely red hair. This action, of course, raised the line of her lovely breasts.
"One of the things most startling to an Earth girl, brought to Gor," she said, "is that she finds herself the object of such ardent desire."
"Perhaps," I said. To be sure she would have encountered little on Earth to prepare her for the sexuality of Gorean men.
"Another thing which they find startling, and almost unbelievably so," she said, fussing with her hair, "is how irreservedly and passionately, and sometimes mercilessly, they are used."
I nodded. Such women, to be sure, would seldom be given much choice in the matter.
"And how ruthlessly they are owned and dominated, and made to obey," she said.
I did not speak.
"But then," she said, softly, putting her head down, her hands still at her hair, her breasts still lifted, in what was almost a delicate token of submission, "that is fitting and proper, for they are only slaves."
"Yes," I said. My fists were clenched.
"How does my hair look?" she asked, bringing her hands down and lifting her head.
"Fine," I said.
She then turned and, putting her right leg under her and lifting her left knee, she threw aside the hide blanket. She smiled at me. She had done this shamelessly, as a slave. The body of a slave, of course, is public, in a way that it would be unthinkable that the body of a free woman could be public.
"I think you find me attractive," she said.
"Yes," I said.
She then knelt back on her heels, facing me.
She had done that gracefully, beautifully. Girls are trained to move so, in the pens. Ginger and Evelyn may have tutored her in certain subtleties of movement. On the other hand, I think the business was done almost unconsciously. When a girl is enslaved a transformation comes over her. This is expressed in a thousand lovely ways, in speech, in gesture, in expression, in movement. The body language of a woman who is owned, for example, is quite different from that of a free woman. It tends to be far more feminine, which is understandable, given the realities of her female bondage, liberating her womanly pride and sexuality, and it tends as well, to speak honestly, to be more innocently seductive, and sometimes not so innocently. The female slave is well pleased with her body, and with herself. She is not riven with conflict like the free woman, torn between being an imitation man and an authentic woman, between what she is not but is told she should be, and what she is told she should not be, but is. She is commonly, appropriately or not, proud of what she is, and this shows in her movements, and vitality. Her body language, her mien, her demeanor, seems to say "I like being what I am. I am a woman. That is something beautiful to be. It is what, in my deepest heart, I want to be. I long to love and serve. I long for a master. Will you be my master?"
I regarded the slave kneeling before me.
How well she had knelt!
Clumsiness, of course, is not acceptable in a female slave.
How seductive they are!
Once Miss Millicent Aubrey-Welles might have knelt before me.
Now a slave did so.
How beautiful and exciting are female slaves!
I wonder sometimes why any woman is permitted to be free. They make such perfect, and lovely, slaves.
Gorean men tend to believe that attractive women belong in collars. I suppose that is why they put them in them.
"Alas," she said, in mock sorrow, "how weak and vulnerable are slaves."
"Yes," I said.
"How helpless and powerless we are," she said.
"Yes!" I said, angrily. I saw that she had allure, and power.
"But perhaps we are not completely powerless," she said. She put her hands behind her head and straightened her back. She thrust out her breasts and stretched.
"Perhaps not," I said.
She then lowered her hands and looked at me. She was kneeling, facing me, then, her hands on her thighs. Her thighs were closed.
"I am more powerful," she said, "than was that little snip and chit, Millicent Aubrey-Welles, from Earth." This was who she had once been. Then she had been enslaved.
"How is that?" I asked. At the merest word from one such as the former Miss Millicent Aubrey-Welles, from Pennsylvania, a free woman, a Gorean slave girl, such as Winyela, would have to grovel, lick her feet and serve her in any way that she might desire.
"I am much more powerful than she," she said.
"How is that?" I asked.
"I am a slave girl," she said.
"You speak in riddles," I said.
"More powerful, of course," she said, "only in certain ways."
I smiled. I saw that she did now wish to be quirted for insolence. A slave, of course, can be quirted for any reason, or for no reason.
"In what way," I asked, "could a slave girl possibly have more power than a free woman?"
She smiled. She lowered her head, demurely. "Some men," she said, "find us attractive."
"That is true," I said. How unpretentiously, and delicately, she had put this point. I could not help, in spite of myself, but agree with her. How could the capacity of a free woman to stimulate male desire even begin to compare with that of the female slave? The female slave, in her helplessness, her vulnerability and beauty, is the most exciting and desirable of all females. Even to look upon one can drive a man mad with passion.
"Even a magnet," she said, "which may be moved about, and put where one wishes, has a little power."
"Yes," I said. How exciting, I marveled, are such women. How natural it is that they should find themselves, perhaps to their horror, perhaps to their deep excitement and pleasure, so stimulatory to male desire. Who can begin to quantify, or measure, the attractiveness of the female slave? Does she not seem to be the object designed by nature to be at the feet of men? Wars are fought to obtain them. Tributes, in part, are levied in terms of them, along with gold and Sa-Tarna grain.
"I can see," I said, "that the female slave, in her beauty, may possess, upon occasion, at least, some meager particle of power which does not appertain to the free woman."
"I think so," she said.
My response, I thought, appropriately dismissed from serious consideration the fantastic desirability and attractiveness of the female slave. Let them not grow arrogant. Let them continue to fear the whip.
"But how," I asked, "in what other way, other than in possible attractiveness and desirability, could a slave have more power than a free woman?"
"If one can do things another cannot, and if one is permitted to do things which another, in effect, could not, then, I suppose, one has, in a sense, powers which the other does not."
"I see," I said. "Powers in the sense of capacities and permissions."
"Yes," she said. "Slave girls, for example, can, and must, do things and perform acts, superbly, lovingly and unquestioningly, which would be forbidden to free women, or unthinkable for them. Indeed, some of the performances expected of slave girls, and some of the services rendered by them to their masters, are doubtless beyond even the ken of our ignorant free sisters. They probably do not even suspect their nature."
"They may suspect," I smiled. The liberties, in certain senses, permitted to slave girls doubtless constituted an additional reason why free women so hated and envied them. The free woman, in a sense, is paradoxical. She professes to despise the slave girl; she professes to loathe her and hold her in contempt; but, too, obviously, she is almost insanely jealous of her. Can it be that she, too, in her secret heart, wishes to kneel before a man, naked and in his collar, totally subject to his will?
"But some of the things they probably do not even know of," she said.
"That is probably true,
" I said. It was true that free women tended to be somewhat naive and ignorant. Some of them, at any rate, when enslaved, seemed quite startled to discover the nature of some of the even routine performances and services that would now be expected of them.
"Too," said the girl, "we are better at certain things than free women, such as serving and pleasing men."
"That is true," I said. The docility, deference and perfection of a slave girl's service are legendary. They had better be. She is owned. Too, the intimate and fantastic pleasures they can give men are well known, at least among free men.
"Too," she said, "we are permitted to act in certain ways in which I think it would be unlikely that a free woman could, or would, act."
"Oh?" I said.
"Yes," she said. She then slid to her stomach on the robes, and rolled upon them, and then lay on her back. She lifted a leg, and put her hands to it, and then lowered it, its heel, the knee bent, on the robes. She looked at me. "I could now," she said, "pose nude before you, as I might please. I might writhe here, in a girl's mute petition for attention. I could, on my back and belly, in effect, dance for you, my head never rising above the knee of a standing man. I could crawl to your feet, begging, licking and kissing."
"I am only human," I said, angrily. "Let us go now to the lodge of Canka."
She rose to her hands and knees. Her breasts depended beautifully. "Have I disturbed Master?" she asked.
"No," I said, angrily. "Of course not."
"That is good," she said. She then crawled to me, and knelt before me.
"That is the position of a tower slave," I said.
"Oh," she said. The position of the tower slave, in most cities, is very similar to that of the pleasure slave. The major difference is that the tower slave, whose duties are commonly, primarily, domestic, kneels with her knees in a closed position, whereas the pleasure slave, in a symbolic recognition of the fuller nature of her bondage, and its most significant aspects, kneels with them in an open position. The tower slave, of course, like any other slave, is fully at the disposal of the master, in any and every way. The distinction between the tower slave and the pleasure slave, though honored in some markets, some specializing in girls sold primarily for housekeeping purposes and others in girls sold primarily for the pleasures of men, is not really a hard-and-fast distinction; it is not absolute; indeed, it can even be transitory. A girl who is ordered to open her knees, or who finds them kicked apart, for example, realizes that she has now become a pleasure slave. Similarly a girl in one context may function as one kind of slave and, in another context, as another sort. Serving a supper to a young man and his mother, for example, the girl may appear merely efficient and deferential. She kneels nearby, her knees closed. After the mother departs, however, she may kneel differently before the young man, with her knees open, his.
Blood Brothers of Gor Page 13