by John Norman
"Yes," I said, "you dance now as a commanded slave. And if I am not well pleased have no fear but what you will be well beaten, if not slain."
"Yes, Master," she said, in a small, frightened voice. I could scarcely hear her speak. She trembled with fear. She strove to maintain the attitude of the dance. It was not easy for her. I feared she might faint.
"Perhaps you think well of yourself?" I said.
"Master?" she said, frightened.
"You use the word 'Master'," I said. "I wonder if you understand it. Do you understand it?"
"Yes, Master," she said. "I think so, Master."
"Who is your master?" I snapped, as she stood before me, arms raised, in the attitude of the dance.
"You!" she cried, frightened. "You are my master!"
"You are owned," I said. "You are owned, like a tunic, a piece of cloth, a saddle, a sandal, you are owned like a tarsk or vulo. You are negligible. You are an animal, a property, and one of little value. You can be bought and sold. The Master can do with you what he wishes, whatever he wishes. Do you understand that?"
"Yes, Master," she said. Tears coursed down her cheeks.
"You are mine, fully," I said.
"Yes, Master!" she sobbed.
"When I am finished with you," I said, "you will understand the word 'Master' and you will understand the word 'slave', and you will know that I am master and you are slave."
"Yes, Master!" she sobbed.
"Do you begin to understand what I am saying?" I asked.
"I think so, Master," she said. "Please have mercy, Master."
I regarded her, closely.
Under my gaze the slave trembled.
How beautiful she was.
"You are meaningless, worthless," I said.
It is well to let the slaves understand this.
"Yes, Master," she whispered.
"And yet it is not difficult to see how even strong men might falter in your presence. Such as you are best kept in collars. Let the cuffs and chains, and the whips, be at hand. How dangerous you are, how lusciously subtle and cunning! You are woman, the beauty, the temptress. Yes, undeniably such as you have their fascinations. How exciting you are, how attractive! And you know that, do you not? How you relish that! And you would use such things to make us your prisoners and servants, your slaves. You would chain us with strands of silk, with the turn of an ankle, the softness of a glance. You are seductively dangerous. What victims nature, in her inscrutable cunning, would make of foolish, vulnerable men. How is it that anything as petty, as trivial and worthless, as you are should play so indifferently with their hearts? Surely this is some jest of nature, intent upon tormenting her own. Or is it rather nature's way of calling men to the destiny to which she has intended them, to victory, and the mastery? You are a challenge of fortune, the player, and the stake, in the game that only one can win. But here, pretty little beast, sleek little slut, on this world, it is man, not you, who will win. Here, manhood is not forfeit. Here it is not teased and tricked away. Here it is not surrendered. It will never be. Reconcile yourself to that fact. Here men will not be cheated of their birthright, their maleness. Such as you should never be far from a whip. Yes, you are beautiful, and fascinating, and troubling, and dangerous. And you can torment a man and drive him mad with desire. But there is a readily available surcease from your menace. There is a cure for such as you, curvaceous beauty, and it is the collar and the chain. Here you will not master and torment. Here you will serve and please, helplessly and totally. It is the Gorean way."
"Yes, Master," she said.
"You are on Gor, woman," I told her. "Do you understand that?"
"Yes, Master," she said.
"And you understand what that means?"
"Yes, Master," she sobbed.
"You understand," I asked, "that you are a meaningless slut, a despicable if a fascinatingly, interestingly curvaceous animal, fit to be treated with only contempt, that you belong at a man's feet, soft and piteous, licking and kissing, petitioning, hoping to, begging to, please, that you are an embonded female, and that you are accordingly, aside from some intriguing trivialities, to which some men might attend, and for which some men might even pay, however foolishly, worthless, utterly worthless, that you are a slave, that you are no more than a slave, that you are only a slave?"
"Yes, Master!" she sobbed.
I then stepped back from her. "When I clap my hands," I said, "you will dance, Slave."
"Yes, Master," she said.
I then struck my hands together, and, terrified, the girl danced.
She had not been taught the tether dance, one of the most beautiful of the slave dances of Gor, but she improvised well. Indeed, it was hard to believe that she had not had training. I am inclined to believe that the need dances and display dances of the human female may be, at least in their rudiments, instinctual. I suspect there is a genetic disposition in the woman toward this type of behavior and that certain of the movements, closely associated with luring behavior and love movements, may also be genetically based. One reason for supposing this to be the case is that a girl's growth in certain forms of dance skills does not follow a normal learning curve. It is rather like the human being's ability to acquire speech, which also does not follow a normal learning curve. It seems reasonably likely that facility in acquiring speech, which would have enormous survival value, has been selected for. Similarly, a woman's marvelous adaptability to erotic dance may possibly have been selected for. At any rate, whatever the truth may be in these matters, feminine women, perhaps to the horror of their more masculine sisters, seem to take naturally to the beauties of erotic dance. At the very least, perhaps inexplicably, they are marvelously good at it. These genetic dispositions, of course, if they exist, can be culturally suppressed.
I watched the girl dance. She was quite good.
The needs of human beings are a matter of biology. The values in a culture are the values of certain men. Many people take the values of their culture for granted, as though they were somehow a part of the furniture of the universe. They should realize that the values they are taught are the values of particular men, and often, unfortunately, of men who, long ago, were short-lived, ignorant, uninformed, unhealthy, and quite possibly of unsound mind. Perhaps human beings should, from the viewpoints of contemporary information and modern medicine, re-evaluate these perhaps anachronistic value structures. Values need not be something one somehow mysteriously "knows," a result of having forgotten the conditioning process by means of which they were instilled, but could be something chosen, something selected as instruments by means of which to improve human life. It is not wrong for human beings to be happy.
"Now you are becoming a woman," I told her. She knelt on one knee, her right; her left leg was flexed; the tether was taken, in a turn, about her left thigh; her hands, too, were on her left thigh; her head was down, but turned toward me; her lip trembled. "Continue to dance, Slave," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I watched her, and marveled. It is interesting to note that such movements, those of slave dances, despite the inhibitions of rigid cultures, may occur in a girl's sleep, and may even occur, almost spontaneously, when she, nude, alone, passes before a mirror in her bedroom. How shocked she may be to suddenly see her body move as that of a slave. Could it have been she who so moved? Later, perhaps to her surprise, she finds herself standing before the mirror. She is naked, and alone. Then, perhaps scarcely understanding what is occurring within her, she sees the girl in the mirror has begun to dance. The movements are not dissimilar perhaps to those of women who, thousands of years ago, danced in firelit caves before their masters. Then, knowing well that it is she herself who is the dancer, she dances brazenly, boldly, before the mirror. Well does she present her bared beauty before it in the movements, the attitudes, and postures of the female slave. Then perhaps she falls to the rug, scratching at it, pressing her belly to it. "I want a Master," she whispers.
I n
ow stood up. My arms were folded.
The girl now was upon her knees at my feet, the tether on her neck slung back behind her to the slave stake. Still in her dance, she began to lick and kiss at my body.
I then took her by the upper arms and held her, half lifted from her knees, before me.
"Please do not whip me," she begged.
I then, by the upper arms, dragged her to the side of the slave stake. I put her on her knees there. She looked up at me. "You danced well as a slave," I said.
"Thank you, Master," she said. She looked up at me, trembling.
"What are you?" I asked.
"A slave," she said.
"Fully and only a slave?" I asked.
She regarded me. Her entire body began to shake.
The secret slave in her then was summoned forth. She crept from the dungeon, into the sunlight. She knelt then on the gravel of the courtyard, small, and beautiful and naked, at the feet of masters.
"Yes, Master," said the blond-haired barbarian. "I am fully and only a slave." Then, suddenly, she threw back her head and sobbed with joy. Then she put her head to my knees and, holding them, covered them with kisses. Then she put her head to my feet. She covered them, too, with kisses. I felt her hair on my feet. I felt the hot tears of her joy. "Yes," she whispered, "I am fully and only a slave."
The secret slave, I saw, was then free of her dungeon. Never again could she be put back in it.
The blond-haired barbarian raised her head. Tears were in her eyes. The secret slave, too, had raised her head. Tears, too, had been in her eyes. "Thank you, Master," said the blond-haired barbarian. "Thank you, Master," had breathed the secret slave.
"You are my slave," I said to the blond-haired barbarian. I took her by the hair. I looked into her eyes. "You are the slave of men," I said.
"Yes, my master," she said.
The secret slave then knelt joyfully in the sunlit courtyard, on the cruel gravel. She kissed the steel collar thrust to her lips. She closed her eyes, joyfully, as it was locked upon her small, fair throat. She wore then, locked upon her neck, that for which she had yearned in the long years of her imprisonment, the sweet, liberating, uncompromising collar of public bondage.
"I am free," breathed the blond-haired barbarian. "At last I am free!"
"Beware how you speak, Slave," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
She looked up at me, tears in her eyes. "I feel so free," she said.
"In a sense you are free and in a sense you are not free," I said. "The sense, or one of the senses, in which you are free," I said, "is the sense of emotional freedom. You, a slave, have now honestly admitted to yourself, in your own heart, fully, that you are truly a slave. This eliminates conflicts. This produces a sense of emotional joy and fulfillment. You are now at peace with yourself. You are now content with yourself. The sense in which you are not free is an obvious one. You are a slave, totally, and are fully at the mercy of your master, or masters."
"Yes, Master," she said.
I seized her hair and twisted her head to the side, cruelly. "Oh!" she cried.
"Do you think you are free?" I asked.
"No, Master," she wept.
I released her. I crouched back a bit, watching her. She lifted her head. "I am very happy," she said.
I did not speak.
"I love being under the total domination of a male," she said.
I moved more closely to her. I took her by the upper arms, crouching near her.
"Did I please my master by my dancing?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"How can I please my master more?" she asked.
I then, by her upper arms, my grip tight upon them, pressed her gently but forcibly backwards. She then lay beside the thick slave stake, her shoulder blades in the dirt. The tether was still upon her throat.
"Yes, Master," she whispered.
* * * *
"I have never been so happy before in my life as this night, Master," she whispered.
She lay on her side, her back to me. I tied her hands behind her back.
"You are Janice," I told her, naming her.
"Thank you, Master," she said, putting her head back.
I had used her several times during the night. And several times she had, squirming in the helpless throes of the slave orgasm, screamed and sobbed herself mine.
"I had not known such sensations could exist," she had said.
"They are attainable only by the slave," I told her. "They are the surrender and submission spasms of the owned woman, the girl who must yield absolutely and totally, holding nothing back, to her master."
"I see, Master," she had said.
"They cannot, in the nature of things, be attained by the free woman," I said, "for she is her own mistress, not the slave of a master."
"Yes, Master," had said the girl.
"Did you like them?" I asked.
"I loved them," she said.
"Do you like being a slave?" I asked.
"I love it," she said. Then she had said, "Please, Master, rape me again," and I had done so.
I checked the knots on her wrists. The girl was secured.
"Thank you for naming me 'Janice'," she said.
"It is a pretty name," I said. "And it will give me a means by which to summon you, when I wish you to fetch and serve."
"Yes, Master," she said. Then she turned about, to lie on her right side, to face me. Her hands were tied behind her back. "I love wearing that name as a slave name," she said.
I looked at her.
"It was the name of that girl on Earth who I was," she laughed, "that pretentious, foolish little prig, that silly, naive, sanctimonious little tart, so haughty and smug, so proud of herself, so concerned to deny that anyone so lofty as herself could possibly be a slave. It gives me great pleasure to see that her master now puts her own name on her and forces her to wear it, openly and publicly, as a slave name."
"The name 'Janice'," I said, "apart from such considerations, is a beautiful name for a slave."
"I will try to be worthy of it," she said.
"If you are not," I said, "it may be soon changed."
"Yes, Master," she said. A free woman's name, of course, tends to remain constant. A Gorean free woman does not change her name in the ceremony of the Free Companionship. She remains who she was. In such a ceremony two free individuals have elected to become companions. The Earth woman, as a consequence of certain mating ceremonials, may change her last name. The first and other names, however, tend to remain constant. From the Gorean point of view the wife of Earth occupies a status which is higher than that of the slave but lower than that of the Free Companion. The case with slaves, of course, is much different from that of free women, either those of Gor or Earth. Their names are simply given to them, as the names of animals. They may be altered or changed at will. Indeed, sometimes a slave is not even given a name. The names a slave wears, of course, are functions of the master's pleasure. They can own a name no more than they can own anything else. It is they who are owned. Some masters have favorite names for girls. Some masters may reward a hard-working girl with a lovely name; others may torment a slave who has been insufficiently pleasing with a cruel or ugly name. Most girls, of course, are given beautiful and exciting slave names, for the masters wish the girl, too, to be beautiful and exciting. She is, after all, a slave. What names count as being beautiful and exciting, of course, is partly a cultural matter. For example, many women of Earth might be astonished to learn that their names, which they may regard as simple or common, names such as 'Jane' or 'Alice', are found extremely beautiful to the Gorean ear. To be sure, the Gorean commonly alters the pronunciation somewhat, to conform with phonemic variations with which he is more familiar. Further, as I may have mentioned, many Earth-girl names are found extremely provocative to the Gorean male. This probably has to do with emotive connotations resulting from his familiarity with such girls in his markets. Such names may suggest to him, usually c
orrectly, that their lovely bearer is going to be an unusually helpless and delicious slave. I once saw a girl in her chains dragged from the very market block and raped in the aisle for no other reason, apparently, than that the auctioneer had mentioned that her name was Helen. Needless to say, a slave girl, as she changes collars, may change names. Most girls, in passing from the hands of one master into those of another, will have had various names.
"The name 'Janice', on Gor, is a slave name, isn't it?" asked the girl.
"Yes," I said. "Do you object?"
"No, Master," she said. "I find that delicious, and wholly appropriate."
She leaned to me, her hands tied behind her back, and kissed me, gently.
"Let us rest now, Slave Girl," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
* * * *
I awakened, suddenly, startled for the instant. Then I realized what was happening.
It was perhaps an Ahn before dawn.
She lifted her head from my body. It was hard to see her in the light. The fire had burned down. "Please do not whip me, Master," she said, frightened.
"You may continue," I told her.
She again bent her head to my body. She knelt beside me in the darkness. Her hands were tied behind her back. The tether was on her throat.
"Stop for a bit," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said. I felt her cheek against me. Then she put her head down, on my belly.
"Forgive me for disturbing your rest, Master," she said. "I know that I should not do that. Beat me, if you must."
"I am not angry," I said.
"I could not help myself," she said, "though I feared I might be beaten. You do not know what it is to be a female slave. I am so weak. I was so overcome with desire for my master."
I regarded her.
"I so wanted to give you pleasure," she said.
"It is what you are for," I said, "that and labor."
"Please do not be angry, Master," she said.
"I am not angry," I told her. "But do not let it happen too often. It is I who will instruct you as to when to serve my pleasure."