Plunder of Gor

by Norman, John;

  Most flute girls, as those who play the kalika, are slaves, as are most dancers. Most are owned by small companies, from which they may be rented. They are popular at dinners, small parties, banquets, symposiums, and such. They are usually attractive, and are rented for the night. Companies exist, incidentally, for many purposes. For example, there are companies from which you can obtain a cook, or cooks, if you are planning a banquet, companies from which you can rent fine robes, or sandals, jewels for your companion, and so on.

  Despite the exalted status of free women, who are equal to men in the holding of a Home Stone, can hold money and property in their own right, may found, organize, and manage businesses, may occupy positions of importance and authority, even to the occupancy of thrones, and who may enter into relationships, or discontinue them, much as they please, the Free Companionship requiring an annual renewal, Gor is essentially a man’s world. It is men who carry spears and maintain walls; it is men who encounter the violence of the enemy; it is men who stand, armed and resolute, between the Home Stone and its desecration or destruction; it is men, the masters, who will decide what respect and privileges will be accorded women. They behave so because they are men, and they have never seen fit to relinquish their nature as men, their blood, their natural dominance. Gorean men, for whatever reason, wisely or not, have never chosen to enter into arrangements whereby they might be humiliated, dishonored, reduced, and destroyed. They will not do so. I did not object. I was pleased. A woman, I did not wish to relate to lesser men.

  The back of my thighs stung, for a long time.

  The day was hot.

  I knew that I, a slave, would be kept in a collar. Moreover, an insight I had suppressed on my former world, given its nature, I had come to realize that I belonged in one, and could only be happy in one.

  I wanted a master, and yet, too, I feared belonging to one.

  I was owned by the miller, of course, as the other girls, but he had never touched me, and had scarcely regarded me. Perhaps, I supposed, he pleasured himself with the “silk girls,” those who went about on the cart with the miller’s men, attending to their deliveries.

  I was miserable, leaning forward, thrusting at the pole.

  What could I do?

  How vulnerable, how helpless, is the slave!

  If I were to improve my lot on this world, I reasoned, I, a slave, had little to hope for from free women. My hope was men. Surely I might, as a free woman might not, and a slave might, be able to influence my situation. I shook the manacles on my wrists in anger. I, despite my beauty and intelligence, my Earth origin, was chained with others, barbarians, to a mill pole.

  “Keep thrusting, barbarian,” snapped the first girl.

  “Yes, Mistress!” I exclaimed. I did not wish to be again switched. She had called me a barbarian! How dared she? But then I thought of the world from which I had come. Was it not, in its way, a barbarian world, stupid, inconsistent, crowded, polluted, thoughtless, greedy, hate-filled, afflicted with envies, resentments, and jealousies, dismal, pathological?

  Perhaps it was I, indeed, who, from such a world, was suitably viewed as the barbarian.

  I slumped at the pole, suddenly, suspended by my chained wrists.

  “Mistress!” cried the girl to my left, alarmed. “The barbarian is ill, she is stricken, she has fainted!” Instantly my chain sisters stopped turning the mill.

  I lay, seemingly unconscious in my chains.

  The flute girl desisted, and, I gather, leapt from her platform, to rush to my side.

  “Poor thing!” said the girl to my left.

  “Is she dead?” asked one of those chained behind me.

  “I do not think so,” said the flute girl, concerned, the flute left behind on the platform.

  “What is going on here?” asked one of the miller’s men, hurrying to us.

  “The barbarian,” said the flute girl. “She has collapsed.”

  “Is she dead?” he asked.

  “No,” said the flute girl. “I saw her eyelids flutter, weakly.”

  This small signal, I conjectured, might hearten those about, generating some hope that I might recover.

  “Poor kajira,” said a girl.

  “We might all so collapse,” said another girl.

  Things were going well, it seemed.

  “No more work today,” said the miller’s man. “Hold her up, that her weight not be on the manacles. Her wrists might be abraded.”

  I was supported then by the girl to my left.

  “Poor barbarian,” said another girl.

  I smiled, weakly.

  “How brave she is,” said a girl.

  “Yes,” said another.

  “She is too small, and weak, for this work,” said another girl.

  “She is not so small or weak,” said another girl.

  “No more than we,” said another.

  I did not care much for these two comments.

  “If she recovers,” said another, “sell her, and find her a gentler, sweeter collar.”

  I understood what she meant, but collars are much the same. To be sure, some collars are more ornate than others, enameled, even jeweled, and such. And some collars were unpleasant, point collars, punishment collars, and such. Turian collars, I was told, were rounded, and so on.

  “Continue to support her,” said the miller’s man. “I will fetch water, and the key to her manacles.”

  I was then aware that he had hurried away.

  Things, I surmised, were going well.

  I opened my eyes, and, to my uneasiness, found myself looking up, into the eyes of the first girl.

  “Release her,” she snapped to the girl to my left, who was holding me, which command was instantly obeyed. I then gasped, as though in pain, and, momentarily, hung again in the manacles, my body partly on the ground, my wrists up, a foot or so from the pole. Then, as though with great effort, my head down, I struggled to a kneeling position, and knelt behind and below the pole, my wrists raised, on either side of my head, held in the manacles.

  “How brave she is,” marveled one of my chain sisters.

  “Yes,” said another, “and she only a barbarian, as well.”

  “Fraud! Slackard! Inferior actress!” said the first girl.

  I fear my eyes opened widely then, in alarm.

  “Have mercy on her, noble Mistress,” said the flute girl. “Can you not see she is spent? Pity her, lest she perish at the pole!”

  “If she perishes at the pole,” said the first girl, “it will be my doing!”

  The switch then rained down upon my back, and legs, and neck, and I scrambled to my feet, sobbing, seizing the pole.

  “Please stop, Mistress!” I begged.

  But the switch continued to strike, and I clutched the pole in misery.

  “Faker, faker!” said the first girl, and then she desisted in her work. Her arm, I supposed, was sore or weary.

  I was shuddering at the pole.

  “What occurs?” said the miller’s man, returning to the mill, a bota in hand, presumably filled with water.

  “Little, Master,” said the first girl. “This slacking slave does not even know how to faint.”

  “She is on her feet,” observed the miller’s man.

  “And eager to work, Master!” said the first girl.

  “I was tricked?” said the miller’s man.

  “It may be so,” said the first girl.

  “I was tricked!” he said.

  “It may be so, Master,” said the first girl.

  “I do not care to be tricked,” he said.

  “Many were tricked, Master,” she said.

  “But not you,” he said.

  “I know such slaves,” she said.

  “She has been punished?” he asked.

  “I conjec
ture well enough,” said the first girl.

  I, clinging to the pole, sobbed, my protesting body raging with pain.

  “You will work to dusk,” said the miller’s man, “and then an extra Ahn.” Then he turned to the flute girl. “To your station,” he said.

  She hurried to her platform, and, a moment later, we heard the flute emit its first notes.

  “Pick up the tempo,” said the miller’s man.

  We thrust our weights against the poles.

  “Just wait until we get you tonight,” said the girl to my left.

  “Yes,” said a girl behind me.

  “Stinking barbarian,” said another.

  “Be silent,” said the first girl.

  I lay, chained, in the slave kennel, on my belly.

  The first girl was at my side, rubbing ointment into my back, slowly, with firm, circular motions. A small tharlarion-oil lamp was beside her.

  “You are a very stupid slave,” she said.

  “Yes, Mistress,” I said.

  “Doubtless you thought you were clever,” she said.

  “It seems I was not,” I said.

  “It seems,” she said, “that the attentions I accorded you were not the only attentions to which you were subjected.”

  “No, Mistress,” I said.

  Before we were chained in the kennel I had been well belabored by several of my pole mates.

  Slaves often participate in keeping their own order, punishing malefactors.

  “That is enough,” said the first girl, putting aside the ointment, and wiping her hands.

  “Thank you, Mistress,” I said. “Mistress is kind.”

  “I think they are going to let you go,” she said.

  “Mistress?” I said, frightened.

  “Do not be afraid,” she said, “not for eels, not for sleen feed. A normal sell, a common sell, somewhere in the city.”

  “I am to be sold?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “They think it may be dangerous to keep you,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “There were inquiries,” she said.

  “‘Inquiries’?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Do you know a man named Kurik, Kurik of Victoria?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He was my first master.”

  “You are to be sold tomorrow,” she said.

  Chapter Twelve

  A slave expects to be bought and sold. She is an article of merchandise. I had now come to think of myself as such, it is a strange sense, and realize I was such. My freedom was gone. I had now become a slave. What a total, radical, cataclysmic transformation this wreaks in one’s being, in one’s self, in one’s heart, and understanding. A free woman, I suspect, as she is free, cannot begin to understand the nature and world of the slave. It is a different nature and world. Certainly I, in my freedom, considering such things, had had no comprehension of the collar, and what it would be to wear it. It is a different world, different, profound, and deep, being owned, being vendible. Perhaps the free woman might have some intellectual sense of such matters, verbal, abstract, remote, superficial, or such, or thinks she does, but, I assure you, that intellectual comprehension is quite other than the realization of the reality, that one is, indeed, a slave. It is one thing to hear of the whip, and another to be struck with it; it is one thing to think of chains, and another to have them locked on one’s limbs; it is one thing to consider a sale, or even to view one, and another to feel the sawdust beneath your bared feet and hear the bids shouted down from the tiers. What free woman, wise and noble in her freedom, can grasp the consciousness, the fears, the hopes, the helplessnesses, the vulnerabilities, the terrors, the despairs, the desires, the feelings, the joys, the passions, the wholeness, the identity, of the slave? Suppose a woman has been free; then she is a slave. An enormous change then, profound and transformative, takes place in her, in the entirety of her, intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically. She is no longer the same. She is now what she is, a slave, only a slave. I had been free on Earth; now I was a slave, only that. This transformation had now taken place in me. I was a slave. And yet, though I had no voice in the matter, and was helpless to qualify or alter my condition, I had experienced, paradoxically, a sense of rightness, of appropriateness, and freedom. Denied freedom, I was free. At a man’s feet, his belonging, chained, I knew a liberation far beyond any I had felt as a free woman. I could now be what I was, and wanted to be, myself, a slave.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I, kneeling, with the thick, wooden blade, scraped the grease from the pan. I would then, with white, scouring sand, clean its surface, rinse it with scented water, and dry it with a woolen towel. It was the first of six such pans, placed near me, in a line. I was one of four kitchen slaves, in the house of Lysander, of Market of Semris, he of the caste of Builders. Tyrant of Market of Semris. Common governance on Gor is in terms of Administrators or Ubars. Administrators, in the high cities, are usually appointed by the Council of Castes; to which body, in theory, they are responsible. Ubars are usually generals or war leaders, originally acclaimed by, and empowered by, popular support, most often in periods of crisis. In a sense, I suppose they, too, are tyrants, as there is no legal limit placed on their tenure in office nor are there any obvious provisions for removing them from office, short of, I suppose, assassinations or uprisings. To be sure, they commonly have the support of the people. They select their own successors, often by legally adopting a favored individual. Almost invariably a Ubar is a member of the caste of Warriors. Their power remains in place then, in a sense, not only because of popular support and contentment, but, as well, by means of the backing of the military. I have spoken of Lysander as a tyrant, though he referred to himself, genially, as an Administrator, a humble servant of the people. He was, in effect, a strong man, of considerable economic power, who, by means of a coalition of personal supporters, mercenaries, and the military, controlled the city. I speak of a “tyrant” in the sense that there was no legal limit of a tenure in office involved nor any familiar, established, legal mechanism for removing from office. In a sense the tyrant is, for most practical purposes, a Ubar. To be sure, he does not bear that title. The word ‘tyrant’, I should mention, carries in itself no negative sense. Many “tyrants” are effective governors and enjoy popular support. The word in Gorean is ‘tyrannos’, and some tyrants do not eschew the word. “Hurry,” said the kitchen master. “Yes, Master,” I said, and bent more vigorously to my task. He was swift with the switch. I was not his favorite. I had often felt it. My hands were reddened, and rough. My hair was tied back, behind my head, with a cord. I and the other girls wore kitchen tunics, brown, brief, ragged, stained. We were low slaves, and were not permitted in the front rooms of the large house. But this bondage was lighter than many in which I had found myself, since my sale in Victoria.

  I now cast the scouring sand onto the cooking surface of the pan and reached for the thick, damp, rubbing cloth by means of which it might be put to its purpose. I held the pan firmly down on the flat stone, that it might not slip.

  It is not pleasant to be a kitchen slave, a field slave, a mill slave, and such.

  I, as other slaves, longed for a private master. What slave would not? Imagine being caressed by a private master, and being in his arms, being his alone. How welcome his collar! How grateful would one be for his chains! Too, one would hope to be the single slave of such a master. Most Goreans, of course, can afford but a single slave, and seldom more than two.

  It was interesting to me, from Earth, that there seemed to be little, if any, resentment on Gor for the fact that a rich man might have a thousand slaves and a poor man but one, if that. Indeed, the poor man seems most likely to admire the rich fellow, and wish that he, too, had such good fortune. Indeed, the poor man seems pleased that someone has a th
ousand slaves, better that than no one, and is inclined to wish that he, too, was so well off. He has never been convinced that the thousand slaves were stolen from him by the rich man, particularly as he never had a thousand slaves to steal. Too, he may share a Home Stone with the rich man, which means he is more likely to view the rich man as a fellow and compatriot than a thief and enemy. Too, the rich man often supports public spectacles and events, such as song dramas, readings, kaissa competitions, civic banquets, and such. Indeed, in harbor cities, rich men, doubtless to their annoyance, are often expected to underwrite the repair of docks, the construction of galleys, and so on.

  And so I, scouring the pan, let my thoughts roam about, as might clouds in a clear sky.

  How marvelous to be the one slave of one master, particularly if he should be a kind, understanding master, a good master, sensible and thoughtful, who, nonetheless, with his whip, knows how to keep a girl on her knees.

  A female slave is never to be allowed to forget that she is a slave. Indeed, she may occasionally be whipped, merely to remind her that she is a slave, only a slave.

  “Finish more quickly,” said the kitchen master.

  “Yes, Master,” I said, hastily.

  I wondered how long this bondage would last, how long I would serve here, in this house. This may seem an odd thing to wonder about, but, in actuality, it was not.

  I see I must explain.

  I had been sold in Victoria, from the wharf market, and later, following being ferried across the Vosk and transported in one of four slave wagons south, ankles chained, with five others, to a central bar in the wagon bed, had been again sold, in Torcadino, as a work slave to a mill. From that bondage I had been again sold, to me inexplicably, the first of several sales that saw me vended, usually after only a few weeks, sometimes a few days, out of one city or town, or even village, to another.