Norman Invasions

by John Norman

  Ninth Letter,

  Twelfth Passage Hand, Second Day

  Master:

  I have now learned the meaning of “La kajira.”

  It means “I am a slave girl.”

  You will note that I have addressed you as “Master.” That is because slaves, as I have been informed, must address all free men as “Master” and all free women as “Mistress.”

  How can it be, that I am a slave?

  I can’t be a slave!

  But I discover that I am a slave, truly a slave, literally, actually and legally!

  I do not know when, exactly, I became a slave. It may have been when I first uttered the words “La kajira.” It may have been when I was put in my first collar. It may have been when I was branded. It may have been when someone signed an order for my acquisition, or perhaps merely put an approval check by my name, I becoming a slave with the affixing of that signature, or that little check mark, on some document, a slave at that time merely not yet collected. Some here on this world, which is called Gor, seem to think that some women are “natural slaves.” Some others seem to think that all women are slaves, only that not all of them are in collars. In any event, in my particular case, my nature, condition, and legal status on this world is quite clear. I am property. That is what the keeper meant, it seems, out on the street several days ago, when he informed me that I might be stolen. I gather, for what it is worth, that I might be regarded as worth stealing.

  I am owned. I can be bought and sold.

  My lessons continue.

  I now kneel in the presence of men, when I am addressed by them, when I approach them, and so on. I do this naturally, unquestioningly. It seems the right thing to do. It is not just the conditioning, though we may be beaten if we fail to do what is expected of us, and is proper for us. It is rather that it seems, somehow, fitting, emotionally right, morally appropriate. I would have to fight against the impulse, if I were returned to Earth. Oddly, sometimes, on Earth, I felt an impulse to kneel before certain men, but, of course, one would not do that there. I often felt the impulse to kneel before you, Master. I suppose you did not know that.

  Learning that I am a slave has brought a new view of myself into my mind. I am not sure now that I am to be ransomed. That seems to me strange, for I would suppose that my ransom might be considerably more than I could hope to bring displayed on an auction block. Yes, women are often displayed on auction blocks. It is a common way of selling them. Not unusual in this culture. Not all are vended from public cages, cement shelves, or such. And few have the luxury of being exhibited in purple booths. Do I have an enemy? Or is there someone to whom my bondage means more than money? Would someone rather have me in a collar than free? Does someone so lust for me that he will be satisfied with nothing less than owning me? Could anyone desire a woman so much? So much that he will have her as his slave? That he will choose to own her, to make her his, literally his? Does money, which is so important on Earth, mean less here? Do they have so much money that they prefer to deal in precious metals, in produce, in animals, in women?

  Surely you might buy me, and free me!

  I beg to be bought! I beg to be purchased!

  I neglected to mention certain aspects of my training. I did not mention them because I thought myself free, and it would have been embarrassing to refer to them, or to acknowledge them, in any way.

  Although I remain a virgin, I am being taught how to please men, intimately, profoundly, totally. There is so much to learn, and yet I am sure that I am being shown little more than basic things, expected, as a matter of course, of a woman such I, one in a collar. We exist to please and serve, unquestioningly, immediately, fully; it is what we are for.

  Sometimes I think that these things would give me great power over men, and perhaps they do. But then I am again locked in my cage.

  I mention these things now because I am informed that one such as I, dare I say, “a slave,” is denied privacy. She is to be open to masters. She does not belong to herself, as does a free person, but to others, to masters. For example, she is not permitted to lie. How privileged is the free woman! She is permitted to lie. And, if caught, she need not fear being whipped. How often I lied as a free woman! Now I would fear to be lashed. Do you remember when you asked me, in amusement, if I found you attractive, and I said, “Not at all.”? I was lying then, Master. I must now acknowledge it. I did find you attractive, very attractive, more attractive than any man I had ever known. In your intellect, power, and assurance, you seemed so different from all other men. I often wondered how you could be such, so different. Perhaps some men are born that way.

  I am also being trained to dance.

  The music here, or much of it, at least what I have heard, is bright, intricate, exciting, and sensuous. There are stringed instruments, flutes, drums, such things. The musicians commonly sit on the floor, or on cushions. Doubtless there are chairs here, but, if so, they are perhaps reserved for personages of power and importance.

  I have been informed that the form of dance in which I am being trained is called “slave dance.”

  If you were to buy me, and free me, and return me to Earth, I might show you what I have learned.

  Intrigued?

  Linda

  Tenth Letter,

  Fifth Day, the Waiting Hand

  Master:

  It has been eight days since my last letter. Tomorrow is the New Year here, which is the Spring Equinox. That is interesting. They begin the new year here when nature begins hers.

  Forgive me for the conclusion of my last letter. It was clearly intended, and perhaps not very subtly, as bargaining. It was intended to intrigue you, and encourage you to free me, and then hope that I might see fit to repay you with certain favors. A slave does not bargain, of course. She listens, she does what she is told. Her favors are not hers to bestow, but the master’s to command.

  I was punished for that letter, for they read what I write, of course. I was put to my belly and my ankles were lifted and tied to low bar, some six inches from the floor. The soles of my feet were then beaten.

  I have learned my lesson.

  Desperately did I beg forgiveness for my stupidity, my foolishness. I beg your pardon, as well, for you are a free man, and I am only a slave girl.

  Forgive me, Master.

  I sign this letter ‘Linda’ but that is now a slave name. When I became a slave, I became nameless, as nameless as any other item of livestock. Perhaps it amuses them to continue to call me “Linda,” to summon me by that name, to order me about by that name, and so on, but it is a slave name now, put on me by masters, just as you might give a name to any animal, to a dog, a horse, a pig. Still it is a nice name. I always thought you liked it.

  Buy me, please! Free me! I do not bargain! I plead!

  Linda

  Eleventh Letter

  En’Kara, Second Day

  Master:

  They can breed me!

  They can hood me, and chain me in a stall, on the straw, to be groped for by, and used by, hooded male slaves. Neither of us is to see the other, that there be no affection formed, that we be unable, each, to later recognize the other. The couplings are arranged by masters, with attention given to traits and speculatively desirable crossings. The couplings are also witnessed and supervised by the masters involved, or their agents. We are also hooded when we give birth, that we not know the child, nor the attendants at the birth. We are livestock! I do not want to be serviced by a stud slave!

  How helpless I am!

  Buy me! Free me! Save me!

  I am told that only a slave begs to be purchased. But I am a slave! Please buy me! Then free me, return me to Earth! Please! Please! Please!

  I do not bargain!

  I beg, I plead!

  You knew me on Earth! You must be horrified at what has become of me! Perhaps we had our differ
ences, but those are behind us now! How absurd that discontented, affluent, free women prattled of “liberation”! Who owned them? Who were their masters? Were their thighs marked, as that of humble, curvaceous, herded female cattle! Where were their collars! Let them belong, if only for a day, to one of these men, men accustomed to own and master women, as thoughtlessly and naturally as they might dogs! Let such women grovel and crawl, and kiss and lick, and beg fearfully, piteously, to please! Then they would dare not speak of “liberation,” lest they be punished! Nor, perhaps, would they desire it . But I dare not speak further of this.

  Consider my plight! Save me! Please, save me, Master, for I must now, as you are free, address you as “Master.”

  Have pity, I beg you, on a woman of your world, one whom you knew as the haughty bitch, Linda. I am no longer haughty, Master! I assure you of that! I am now only a confused, desperate, helpless, needful woman! Please, Master!

  The bitch has been now been collared, Master.

  I wonder why I wrote that line.

  Surely you must wish to rescue me from my fate, that of a helpless female slave!

  I beg it.

  Too, what sort of man are you, if you would not free me? Have you not received the conditioning of Earth, to do what women want, or, perhaps better, what they think they want, or what they are told they should want, or what they feel they should tell you they want? Surely you are not the sort of man who would keep a woman in bondage! Even if the woman were a slave, rightfully so, and deserved to be a slave, fully and in every way, you would surely hasten to free her! You are a gentleman! You would not keep her in a collar, at your feet! Perhaps women should belong to men but you must pretend it is not so. Surely you must “be a man” by not being a man! Surely politics must overcome the obvious biology of gender mastery, must overcome blood, and desire. Before contrived social artifacts let nature crumble! But, alas, nature denied is nature poisoned!

  What am I saying? What strange thoughts escape me?

  But I am not a slave, as you know! That is, I am not the sort of woman who should be a slave! Perhaps other women, lesser women, but not I, not I! But I find myself branded and in a collar! Free me, Master, I beg it!

  Surely, if you owned me, you would not keep me as a slave! You are a man of Earth. You would not be serene enough, contented enough, complacent enough, straightforward enough, natural enough, strong enough, powerful enough, man enough, to do that. You are not Gorean!

  But sometimes I think how fearful it would be to belong to you! I sometimes suspect you would have me well fulfill the requirements of my beauty and collar.

  I wonder what it would be like, to be owned by you.

  Forgive me, if, above, in playing on the conditioning program to which you must have been subjected, as you are a man of Earth, I have tried to manipulate you. How much of the Earthwoman remains in me!

  Forgive me, Masters, too, who may read this letter before it is transmitted, if it is transmitted. Linda, the meaningless slave, is penitent. Linda, the rightfully embonded slut, whom you kindly strive to improve by training, is contrite. She begs forgiveness! Please do not whip her. The whip hurts.

  But you, Master, he to whom this letter is addressed, do not forget me. Rescue me! Negotiate with them! Arrange for my liberation! Buy me! Free me!

  I beg, beg, beg, Master!

  Before you, I beg as a slave, Master, a naked, helpless slave!

  Groveling,

  “Linda”

  Twelfth Letter,

  En’Kara, Third Day

  Master:

  After I wrote to you, only yesterday, I was taken into a tiled chamber, and thrown to the floor before a man in blue and yellow robes, he reclining in a great chair.

  Then I was forced to stand, and turn, and pose, and be exhibited before him. I was handled and displayed as might have been an animal. To be sure, as a slave, I am an animal.

  Then I was put to my knees and one man held my wrists behind my back, and another pulled my head back, by the hair. By a third, a hideous drink was poured down my throat, my head held back, my nostrils pinched shut, so that, if I would breathe, I must swallow the offensive beverage. But I did not object, and drank it down, eagerly, for I knew it was “slave wine.” It was not necessary for them to tie my hands behind my back, as they did later, that I be unable to rid myself of the foul brew, for I welcomed it, but such is routine for them. So for the next Ahn, forgive me, for I am now beginning to think in their units of time, that is something longer than an hour, and there are twenty in the Gorean day, my hands were bound behind me. The meaning of this, of course, is that I cannot now be bred, indefinitely, unless a releasing liquid is administered, which liquid I am told is delicious. So they have no immediate intentions of breeding me. To be sure, the effects of the slave wine are gone but moments after the administration of the “releaser.” I am now able to follow much of their conversation. I have been assessed as meeting at least the minimum conditions for a particular category of slave.

  I wonder if Master can guess it.

  It is called the “pleasure slave.”

  Doubtless Master is surprised.

  Can he conceive of that, that the Linda he knew, with all her insolences, her disdain, her pettinesses and severities, her calculated coldnesses, her seemingly inexplicable, unpredictable hostilities, her cultivated, offensive iciness, her labored political aggressiveness, her suddenly, unexpectedly brandished formalities and reserves, her fear of men, and her hostility toward them, has been categorized as a pleasure slave? A pleasure slave! Someone, somehow, it seems, must have found her of interest, for the pleasure slave is seen in terms of the pleasure she can give men! And I think you can understand what is meant by pleasure. Perhaps Linda is indeed worth stealing. Who knows? Perhaps he saw a secret Linda, the real Linda, the one she dared not reveal to the world, the one which her world, in its cruelty, refused to permit her to reveal?

  But such slaves are said to be helplessly passionate! What do the keepers detect in her, or know of her, latently, the nature of which she, in her fear, scarcely dares suspect?

  The pleasure slave is different from a simple breeding slave, or a work slave, such as a laundress or mill worker, or a tower slave, who is utilized usually in domestic service. To be sure, a pleasure slave is a slave, and may be bred, or put in the mills, or put to the floors with brushes, and such.

  She may be weight-shackled, and have her head shaved, and be whipped, as easily as any other slave.

  A pleasure slave!

  Can you imagine that? I, a pleasure slave! Whereas I should doubtless fume with rage at this humiliating degradation, my response was one of elation. Forgive me, but, as a slave, I must speak the truth.

  I do think that I have become attractive, and beautiful. It is nice to know that one is attractive, at least to some men, that one is desirable. I thought myself attractive, beautiful, desirable, even on Earth. I wonder if you thought so. But you should see me now! I am learning to wear silks. They leave little to the imagination. But they are thought appropriate for a pleasure slave, when she is permitted clothing.

  One of the men in the tiled chamber said, “She has spirit.” Another said, “Splendid, then it will be pleasant for a master to break her to his will.”

  I wonder what it is, to be broken to the will of a man.

  I have little doubt it can be done to me. These men know their work.

  So, Master, you know a woman who is now rated as a pleasure slave! To be sure, she would not be likely, now, to bring more than a handful of copper tarsks, a small-denomination coin here, in the market, as others are doubtless more beautiful, and she is not particularly trained. But perhaps she will become even more beautiful, and she may be further trained. Surely, too, a master could train her, to his particular interests and pleasures.

  My collar has writing on it, but, of course, I cannot read it.

&n
bsp; I am, at the time of this writing, still a virgin. I wonder if you knew I was a virgin. Of course not. How could you have known?

  Having had the “slave wine” I do not know how long I will be permitted to retain my virginity. Its disposition, of course, is at the whim of masters. Am I to be soon deflowered? What a ridiculous expression! Virginity here, in a slave, is as meaningless as virginity in a pig. A common way of speaking of the matter here, where slaves are concerned, and sometimes free women, when speaking vulgarly, is “opening for the uses of men.” I gather that it is not unusual, after one’s deflowering, or opening, and subsequent services to masters, for “slave fires” to begin to burn in one’s belly, and, indeed, throughout one’s entire body. Already I suspect that, and I must speak the truth, I have some sense of what that means. Although, as yet still a virgin, I have often felt intense, helpless sexual desire. I dare not conjecture the depths, and extents, of such feelings, if I were to find myself subjected to the interests and attentions of masters. One hears of the growth in feeling, and of the varieties of, and tiers of, “slave orgasm.” I have little doubt that bondage considerably, remarkably, spectacularly, boosts female orgasm. Perhaps this has to do with the totality of the domination, the differences between the sexes, the complementarity of male and female, the fear, the knowledge that one is choiceless, that one must yield completely, totally. Or, more simply, that one is a slave. The mastery, too, one supposes, has its effect on male desire, and orgasm. How could one be more dominant, more a man, than as a master? That is not politics; that is nature.

  I have heard that slave girls, unsatisfied, sometimes cry out with need, piteously, that they can grasp the bars of their cells and cages, pressing tear-stained cheeks against them, imploring guards for their merest touch, that they can furrow the walls of their kennels in frustration. How much then we would be at the mercy of men!

  What power they would have over us, we, at their feet, begging!