“Yes, Master,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, approvingly, “you look well on your knees.”
“Thank you, Master,” I said.
My belly began to flame. My thighs were open, before him. He owned me.
“Go to all fours,” he said. “Fetch the leash, and bring it to me, in your mouth.”
“Yes, Master,” I said.
Chapter Seventeen
“Who whips you?” she asked.
“Tullius Quintus, of Ar,” I said.
Actually he had never whipped me, though I had occasionally felt his switch, and her question was no more than a polite way of inquiring to whom I might belong. Most Gorean slaves are seldom, if ever, whipped. The reason for this is simple. They strive to be pleasing, and, striving so, are found pleasing. Few Goreans would consider gratuitously whipping a slave. That would be as pointless as gratuitously whipping a kaiila, or any other sort of animal. It would be incomprehensible; it would be absurd; it would make no sense. To be sure, the whip is there, and may be used at the master’s discretion. The slave well knows she is subject to it. Occasionally she may be whipped, to remind her that she is a slave. That is something she is never to forget.
“My master,” she said, “is Camillus, he whose shop is on Emerald.”
We were at the Teiban Market.
“My master speculates,” I said. “He is doubtless of the Street of Coins.”
“You do not know?” she asked.
“Curiosity is not becoming in a kajira,” I said.
“My name is Lita,” she said.
“Mine, too!” I said.
“Hist!” she whispered. “Let us speed away. A free woman approaches.”
We hurried off, going different ways. Free women, I had learned, are not pleased to note slaves in converse. Perhaps they fear that slaves might be dallying, thus possibly neglecting their duties.
Doubtless that is it.
But I think it is really because they hate us, so virulently, and want to humiliate and hurt us, even in small ways, they with all their pride, power, and goods, and we, utterly helpless and powerless, with nothing, not even a rag or collar we can call our own.
Why do they wish to deny us even small pleasures, so important to women, such as those of sweet converse? Do they not themselves frequently indulge in such sweet delights, delights so natural and precious to our sex?
Why should they deny them to us?
Why do they hate us?
Is it our fault that men prefer us, bid on us, and will own us?
In any event, free women neglect few opportunities to remind a slave that she is a slave.
Do they see in us what they might be, and want to be?
How cruel they are to us!
How their switches sting!
I looked back over my shoulder, furtively, frightened.
How vulnerable we were, in our tiny tunics, our single garments, with no nether closure, our bodies so briefly and degradingly bared, before those fierce, looming beings in their resplendent robes and veils!
I no longer saw the free woman. She must have turned aside, or something. I felt a flood of relief. I was not even natively of Gor, and yet I feared them, feared them so. But why should I not? Was I not collared? Was the band of light steel not locked on my neck? Then I recalled that though I was not natively of Gor, I was surely now of Gor, truly and wholly, for I was a Gorean kajira.
Slaves fear free women, terribly. Certainly I feared them, terribly. I, a slave, was so different from them! The men, whose pleasure objects we were, were our only protection from them. How grateful we were. How we strove to please our masters, for so many reasons. It was not simply the fear of their whips, though this fear was genuine, and warranted. We knew that if we were not pleasing, we would be whipped, and as the slaves we were. But rather I think it had more to do with the radical dimorphism of the sexes in our species, divided essentially into the master sex and the slave sex. They gave us the mastering, which we, slaves, so desperately craved, wanted, and needed. What woman does not want her master, what man does not want his slave?
For several days now I had been tunicked, and had, from time to time, sometimes for Ahn at a time, to my joy, been allowed the freedom of the city. Ar, I gathered, was a typical “high city,” with its noisy, colorfully garbed, bustling crowds, its affluent quarters and its sorrier districts, some of which were not to be frequented at night; here were places of lofty towers, often linked by graceful, narrow, arching, railless bridges, which I feared to tread, places of glorious fountains, parks, and broad, tree-lined boulevards, and places, too, of mazelike, tiny, crooked streets, and step wells, places of great houses and places of sordid insulae. Here I became acquainted with a splendid civilization, a colorful, intricate, complex civilization, a high, thriving civilization which, as most high civilizations, had a place for slaves, that place in which I found myself. I looked about myself. How glorious was the civilization of Gor! How grateful I was that I had been brought here. How grateful I was that I must have had some appeal to men, however little, that they would permit me to know such a world, in the only way that I, from Earth, was worthy to know it, as a vendible, collared slave. In such a civilization, what could I be but a slave, a humble, joyful, grateful slave?
And then, suddenly, in my joy, I was afraid, terribly afraid, for slavery is not without its terrors. I was not free. I did not own myself, but was owned by another. It would be done with me as others wished. I was a rightless property, a vendible good, a small, soft, collared beast, subject to chains and the whip, who could be bought and sold. I was ownable, and owned. I was a slave.
“Oh!” I cried.
“Clumsy slave!” cried the woman, lifting her switch. There was a swirl of veils and robes, and I flung myself to my knees, my head to the stones.
“Forgive me, Mistress!” I cried.
“My robes are disarranged, my veils are awry!” she screamed.
I shuddered, at her feet.
“Who whips you?” she screamed.
“Tullius Quintus,” I exclaimed, “of Ar!”
“We shall see!” she cried. “Kneel up, you disgusting creature!”
I knelt up, and she, bending down, seized my hair and pulled my head back, sharply. I cried out, wincing.
“Who owns you?” she said.
“Tullius Quintus, of Ar,” I said.
“Liar!” she cried.
“Mistress?” I said.
“Lying slave!” she cried.
“It is on my collar, noble Mistress!” I wept.
“Liar, liar!” she screamed.
Some men, and one or two women, had gathered about.
“Mistress?” I said.
“So you would deceive a free person?” she cried.
“No, exalted Mistress,” I cried.
“Do you think I cannot read?” she said.
“Exalted Mistress?” I said, bewildered.
“You thought I would not look,” she said. “But I know the wiles of lying slaves!”
“I do not understand, great Mistress,” I said.
“That is not what is on your collar,” she said.
“I cannot read!” I said.
The switch struck me across the left upper arm, and then the right upper arm, and tears streamed down my cheeks.
“You should be thrown to sleen,” she said.
“Mercy, glorious Mistress,” I said. “I thought truly that was what my collar read.”
“Liar!” she said. “Do not think to trick a free person. We are a thousand times more clever than a stupid slave.”
“I thought my collar read so, truly,” I wept.
“Liar, liar!” she said, the switch speaking again, twice.
“You should be boiled alive,” she said, “sleen for you, cast you naked and
bound amongst ravenous leech plants.”
“Please, no, Mistress,” I begged.
“Insulting, clumsy, wicked slave!” said the free woman.
“What does my collar read, Mistress?” I begged.
“You know very well, miserable she-tarsk! Remove your tunic. You will rue the Ehn you obstructed my way, and dared to lie to me!”
“Forgive me,” exclaimed a man, “but I am much smitten with your beauty!”
I surely did not need such an appraisal at this time, however welcome it might have been at another time, under different circumstances, the free woman standing over me, switch in hand. Might she not be further incensed? And, too, was I not a copper-tarsk girl, a mere copper-tarsk girl?
The free woman spun about, to regard the fellow who had spoken, he in the white and gold of the Merchants, and his robes well draped.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but in this wry contretemps your veil slackened, a misfortune for you but a splendid boon to the discerning masculine eye.”
“Oh?” said the free woman.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but I could not but note, however inadvertently, the loveliness of your features.”
She reached to the street veil, but did not hastily fasten it in place. The glance I had seen of her did not suggest to me that she would be likely to be entered into the plans of roving slavers.
“You will forgive me, will you not?” he asked.
“Perhaps,” she said, fastening the veil.
“May I not escort you from this unfortunate place, with its lamentable associations,” he said, “bringing you safely to your domicile, after, perhaps, if I might prevail upon your patience, a glass or two of ka-la-na?”
“Very well,” she said, as though reluctantly. Then she looked down upon me. “You are contrite, are you not?” she asked.
“Very much so, Mistress,” I said.
“And I trust you have been well instructed?” she said.
“Yes, Mistress,” I said. “Thank you merciful, kind Mistress.”
She then turned about. “One must try to be patient with slaves,” she said.
“So true,” said the man.
“I fear I am too indulgent, too lenient, with slaves,” she said. “It is a weakness of mine.”
“What might be a fault in one,” he said, “is often a lovely credit or merit in another.”
“Do you think so?” she asked.
“Mercy becomes one so beautiful,” he said.
“Please forget you glimpsed my face,” she said.
“I do not know if I will ever be able to do so,” he said.
As they departed, her hand lightly on his arm, he glanced over his shoulder, and smiled.
I did not know him, but I was grateful to him. To whom may a slave look for protection from a free woman if not to a man? Is it not men who put us in collars, and keep us there?
So I retained my tunic, and escaped a belaboring that I feared would have been particularly severe.
My master, whatever his name might be, resided on Venaticus. I must hurry home.
Apparently my collar had been misrepresented to me in Market of Semris, or had been changed in my sleep, my gruel having possibly been affected by the introduction of some sedating substance.
So, again, I realized, my master had had recourse to yet another precaution to make it difficult to follow him. But, I recalled, in his flight from the environs of Market of Semris, he had spoken of “gold,” but gold only as and when it pleased him. Too, as I recalled, he engaged, at least occasionally, in speculation.
I did not know in what way I might be involved in these matters.
A man looked down at me. “You had best go,” he said. “Free women do not much care for slaves, and particularly not for pleasure slaves.”
“Yes, Master,” I said. “Thank you, Master.” I then leapt up, and sped away. In my hurrying home, I remembered what he had said. He had thought of me, it seems, apparently quite naturally, as a pleasure slave!
Perhaps then I was not a mere copper-tarsk girl, after all.
Chapter Eighteen
“I do not even know your name!” I cried.
“Position,” said he.
Immediately I went to position. As he frowned, I hastened to spread my knees. How helpless and vulnerable does this make a woman feel! What could she be before a man, so positioned? Was the answer to that not clear? And how could such a position not enflame her?
“You will continue to think, and speak, of me as Tullius Quintus, of Ar,” he said. “That will be, I conjecture, most convenient.”
“That is not the name on my collar!” I said.
“You have learned to read?” he said.
“I have been informed,” I said.
“And what is the name?” he asked.
“I do not know,” I said. “I was not told.”
“It does not matter,” he said. “My name is neither Tullius Quintus nor the name on your collar.”
“I see,” I said.
“But rest assured,” he said, “the name on your collar will prove quite sufficient to have you returned to me should you be so unwise as to wander off or stray.”
“That is your name in Ar?” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Surely then I may know it,” I said, “as the supposed name of my master.”
“Continue to think of me as Tullius Quintus,” he said.
“I do not understand,” I said.
“I think it is better, at least a little better, that you do not know it, not now,” he said.
“Merely that I should be kept in greater ignorance?” I asked.
“Not really,” he said. “But there are things in the city, I am sure, that can no more read Gorean than you.”
“Things?” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Thus I could only mislead them,” I said, “able only to provide them with a useless name, that of Tullius Quintus.”
“Yes,” he said.
“But surely there are many about who can read Gorean,” I said. “To them the legend on the collar will be clear.”
“Doubtless,” he said, “but I am most concerned with those who, as yourself, are unlikely to be able to read Gorean.”
“Surely they would quickly enlist literate allies, or agents,” I said.
“Quite possibly they might already have them at hand,” he said. “But, if not, a delay might ensue, which would work to my advantage.”
“Permitting escape?” I said.
“Our escape,” he said.
“But I know this place,” I said.
“And might, under any name, Tullius Quintus or another, lead others to it,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” I said. “Forgive me, Master.”
“And under torture would doubtless do so,” he said.
“I fear so, Master,” I said.
“If you are accompanied, or watched,” he said, “lift the hammer ring, and then strike twice, and then, after a pause, once, again. This signal may be repeated.”
“But what if they propose themselves as your friends, or allies?” I said.
“I have no friends, or allies,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” I said.
“Do not be so concerned,” he said. “As Lita, you are unlikely to be known.”
“Why should I fear being known?” I asked.
“It is rather I who might fear it,” he said.
“I do not think you are of Ar,” I said.
“You will continue to respond so, if questioned,” he said.
“I do not even know my master’s caste,” I said.
“Nor need you,” he said.
“I am uneasy, Master,” I said.
“Much is at stake,” he
said. “Dark matters are afoot.”
“Inform me,” I begged.
“Curiosity,” he said, “is not becoming in a kajira.”
Chapter Nineteen
I lay on my mat, on the floor, at the foot of my master’s couch. I drew my blanket more closely about me. I was naked, for slave girls are commonly slept so. I was chained to the couch by the neck. It was late, perhaps the second Ahn. The tiny lamp had long since gone out. The room was totally dark. How strange it seemed, late at night, in the utter darkness, to find myself lying on a floor, as I was, on a different world, at the foot of a man’s couch, a couch I dared not ascend, chained to it. Yet how real it was! Had I ever lived so intensely, so explicitly, so fully? I felt the chain. I was in my place, at the foot of a man’s couch, on a chain. In my heart I knew it was there that I belonged, at the foot of some man’s couch, on some chain. Outside it was pouring. I could well conjecture the light of the door lantern falling on the glistening cobbles, the water, reflecting the light, rushing down the gutters, the water diverted at the intersection by the stepping stones, high enough to protect a woman’s robe hems and slippers, spaced widely enough to allow for the passage of wheels. Earlier I had heard men passing by, outside, in the storm, probably fellows returning from some revel. They would have doubtless wrapped their cloaks about them, and drawn them over their heads. Rich men, abroad at night, will commonly be preceded by a lantern bearer and flanked by one or more guards. Arrangements for renting such, a bearer and guards, as with cooks, musicians, dress sandals, dinner robes, sedan chairs, palanquins, and such, if one does not have them in one’s own right, are available through a number of enterprises in the city. I lay in the dark, holding the blanket about me, listening to the driving rain. I was not sure why I had awakened. It would be Ahn before I would be unchained and sent to the kitchen, to prepare breakfast for my master, a breakfast in which I, tunicked and kneeling beside him, often partook.
I listened to the driving rain.
I suppressed a whimper. My master had not touched me this night. Certainly he must have noted the simple loop of the bondage knot I had tied in my hair. What master could overlook so simple a thing? This simple loop mutely pleads with the master for his attention. To be sure, there are a thousand ways a girl can signify her needs, and her supplications that her master will condescend to satisfy them, glances, subtle movements, seemingly inadvertent proximities, tiny sounds, kneelings, licking and kissing the feet and ankles, and then raising one’s eyes, tear-filled, begging, to the master. How much we are at the mercy of men, once the brutes have, at their inclination, or will, ignited our slave fires, latent in any healthy female. Do free women scorn us for our needs? Do they despise us for our vulnerability, our helplessness? Let them then wear the collar and strive to resist the flames burning in their own bellies! And will they not be successful until, at last, overcome, they crawl to their master, they, too, begging, whimpering, petitioning his pity?
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