by John Norman
"Do not put your clothing on, Lola," said the Lady Gina. "Go directly to your kennel. You will hear from me later."
"Yes, Mistress," said Lola. Then she looked at me. "I hate you, Slave!" she cried. "Slave!"
"Run, Lola," said the Lady Gina.
"Yes, Mistress," said Lola, and fled from the room.
"What a slut she is," said one of them, "to be excited by a mere male slave."
"Yes," said another.
"Let us retire to a more comfortable room," said the Lady Gina, "and discuss the slaves."
The Lady Gina then left the room, followed by most of the women slavers. One of them remained for a moment, looking at me. It was she who had most closely examined me, she who had worn, beneath her silken sleeve, the metal-studded, black-leather wristlet.
"Are you coming, Lady Tima?" asked one of the women, pausing at the door.
"Yes," said the woman regarding me. Then she turned and, with the other woman, who waited for her, left the room.
7
I am Thrown a Woman
I sat alone in my cell. I now sat on a heavy bench, some five feet in length, before a stout, rectangular table. These things had been put in the cell for me. I wore a light, rep-cloth slave tunic. On the floor, on straw, was a blanket which I had been given. Though the cell door was locked, I was not chained. On the table was a bowl of cheap wine, some wedges of yellow bread and a wooden bowl containing vegetables and chunks of meat.
Today I had been appraised.
I was still furious with the shame of it. I was not a woman! Then I smiled to myself. The thought had been almost Gorean. I reminded myself I was a man of Earth. How shameful, too, must be such an ordeal for a woman. How piteous it was that such fair beauties should be enslaved for the pleasures of masters.
I wished I owned one. Then, of course, I thrust the thought from my mind.
I chewed on a piece of meat and drank from the shallow, chipped bowl of clay which contained the wine.
My thoughts were mixed and troubled. Today I had been appraised. I was confident, now, that I would not be kept much longer in the pens. But I did not even know the location of the pens. I did not even know the city in which I was kept. Curiosity, I had been told, was not becoming in a slave. I smiled to myself. How faraway seemed Earth now with its pettiness and vanity. I was not even, for some reason, miserable that I had been brought to Gor. I did not understand, clearly, why this should be. Surely my condition was shameful, and I had much to fear. Surely, in many ways, it was a horrifying world to which I had been brought. I remembered the sleen. I had felt the whip. Yet I was not, truly, unhappy. Earth had been a country of pollutions and poisons. The very air men breathed there, the very food they ate, contained recognized, but, incredibly, not removed, toxic elements. It was impossible, really, to do anything about such things, I had gathered. What an incredible world Earth was. Could it not understand that the environmental criminal was far more dangerous than the lonely madman or assassin, that his crime affected not isolated, tragic victims but communities, a planet, unborn generations. Was his profit so sacred, truly? Was it truly more precious than lives, and the future? The men of Earth congratulated themselves smugly on the power of their democracies, in which the people, purportedly, ruled. But if the people, truly, ruled, why and how could their planet's processes proceed in such obvious ways inimical to their welfare? How could their world be so miserable for the people if they were truly kings within it? But perhaps they were not kings within it. Perhaps they have only been told they are kings, and that satisfies them. Who, I wondered, were the true kings? Or, perhaps there were no kings, truly, only the madness of the untended machine.
I rose from the bench and walked about the cell. I felt one of the damp walls. I was grateful for the blanket I now had. I went and felt the heavy bars, with the lateral crosspieces, which formed one side of the cell. I gripped them. I was well confined within. I went back to the table. I was a prisoner and a slave. I even wore a steel collar. Yet I was not overly discontent. I was eager to see this world to which I, a man of Earth, had been brought as a mere slave. It was my hope that if I obeyed my masters or mistresses, and well pleased them, I might be permitted to live.
Why was I not more miserable than I was that I had been brought to Gor? I pondered this. Because of the diet and exercise, enforced on me in the pens, I was now healthier and stronger than I had ever been. Perhaps this had something to do with my feelings. Such homely simplicities as diet, rest and exercise can often work wonders for one's outlook. Too, I was looking forward to the adventures of a new world, even though it might be one in which I was only a slave. I laughed. Perhaps the matter was so simple as even the water and air of Gor, so fresh and pure, so stimulating, compared to that of Earth, even in the depths of the pens.
I rose from the bench again and gripped one of its legs in my fist. I lifted it from the floor by one of the legs, lifting it slowly, directly upward, until I held it at an arm's length. I could never have done this on Earth. This was not merely a function of the reduced gravity of the planet but of newly acquired strength. "A Mistress may wish to know that she is in your arms," the Lady Gina had told me. I laughed, and lowered the bench slowly to the stones.
I sat down again on the bench and fed myself another piece of meat.
I looked about the cell. The greatest reason I was not more discontent than I was, I think, was simply that I had come to a world such as Gor. I remembered Earth, with its pettiness, its greed and vanity, its smugness, its pretensions, its pollutions and poisons, its teeming, crowded, miserable populations, and its endemic fears, fears such as that of not having enough energy to spin the wheels of an exorbitant and largely unnecessary technology, and the fear, fully warranted, of the falling of the sword of a nuclear Damocles. Earth seemed a world of sicknesses and traps, a world which seemed contrived as an offense against nature, a world in which the very air itself, by the works of men, was laden with deleterious gases. How little surprising, then, that I should not have found myself overly discontent with the felicitous discovery that I had now been introduced into a quite different milieu. I sensed that in Gor there was a youth and an openness which had long been missing from my old world. In Gor I sensed an ambition, a freshness and hope, a sparkle, that had perhaps not been felt on Earth since the Parthenon was new. Doubtless there is much on Gor to be deplored, but I cannot bring myself to deplore it. Doubtless Gor is impatient, cruel and heartless, but yet, I think, too, it is innocent. It is like the lion, impatient, cruel, heartless, and innocent. It is its nature. Gor was a strong-thewed world, a new world, a world in which men might again lift their heads to the sun and laugh, a world in which they might again, sensibly, begin long journeys. It was a world of which Homer might have sung, singing of the clashing of the metals of men and the sweetness of the wine-dark sea.
I thought of the gray, blackened landscapes of Earth. How sad it is when a world grows old, resigned and vile.
Doubtless there is much on Gor to be deplored, but I cannot bring myself to deplore it. I cannot bring myself, truly, to deplore the exuberance, the joy, the vigor and freedom that is Gor. Others may do that, if they wish. I cannot do so. I have been there.
Let men again put their hands to the oars; let the low, swift ships be launched once more.
I took another piece of meat from the wooden bowl. I looked down at the straw, and my blanket, heavy and dark, upon it. I did not really wish to retire so soon.
I then heard her weeping, being dragged down the corridor. I sprang up. I then saw the guard, Prodicus, on the other side of the bars. He was a huge man. I had already had experience of his strength when he, with his fellow guard, Gron, the Oriental, had handled me with such ease. I knew he could break my arms and legs with ease, if he chose. "Stand back in the cell, Slave," he said. I stood back. At his left hip, cruelly bent over, his hand knotted tightly in her hair, he held a girl. She was naked and crying. Her small hands were fastened behind her back with slave bracelets. A key
on a wire dangled downward from her collar. It was the key, I supposed, to the bracelets she wore. Also, tied about her neck, fastened there by its blades, dangling downwards, was a slave whip. Prodicus, with a jangle of keys on his ring, thrust a key into the lock on my cell door and freed the bolt. He then returned the key, on its ring, to the hook on his belt. He swung open the cell door. He entered the cell, dragging the girl. He threw her cruelly to her knees before me. "She is yours for the night," he said. "Do not kill her. Do not break her bones."
"I understand," I said.
He then, not turning his back on me, left the cell. In a moment he had locked it and, replacing the ring of keys on his belt, had disappeared down the corridor.
Lola, the slave whip tied about her neck, terrified, looked up at me.
"Please do not hurt me, Master," she said.
It startled me that she had called me 'Master,' but then I recalled that she had been given to me for the night. For the night I owned her.
"Get up, Lola," I said.
She struggled to her feet, frightened. Half crouching over she backed away from me, until she was stopped by the bars, which confined her with me in the cell, one of many such cells deep beneath the House of Andronicus.
I approached her.
She stood straight then, feet back against the bars, her head turned to the side. I realized, suddenly, that she feared to look me in the face.
"I am sorry that I did you such injuries, Master," she said. I recalled her many cruelties to me in my training, the many lashings of the quirt, the blows of the slave whip she had arranged for me, the blows of her small hands and fists, her kicks, her belittlings of me. I recalled, most of all, how she had spilled the wine in the training session, had accused me of it, and had prescribed twenty blows of the snake. The Lady Gina had reduced the penalty to only five. Twenty blows of the snake, I had little doubt, might cost some men their lives.
It irritated me that she was not looking directly at me. Angrily, before I had truly thought, I took the sides of her mouth between my thumb and fingers and pressing tightly inwards, which draws the inside of the cheeks painfully between the teeth, turned her head to face me. I had seen a guard do this once to Tela, when she had not seemed to be paying him attention. This is not an action a woman fights. She complies instantly. I looked at Lola, so held, facing me. She was frightened. But suddenly I saw, too, in her eyes, that she wanted to be had as a slave. It was the first moment in which I had ever dominated a woman as a male brute, her master. I have never forgotten it.
Then, of course, I released her.
"Why did you spill the wine and accuse me of it?" I asked.
"It was a joke," she whispered.
"Do not lie to me," I said.
"I hated you," she said.
"Do you hate me now?" I asked.
"Oh, no, Master," she said, hastily. "I love you now. I want to please you. Please be kind to me."
I smiled. I did not think that Lola, in her cruelties, or when she had played the cruel trick with the wine, and had prescribed the twenty blows of the snake, had anticipated that she would, one day, be braceleted in my cell, at my mercy as a naked slave girl.
"Why twenty blows of the snake?" I asked. "Did you wish to kill me?"
"You are strong," she said, her head inclined a bit downward, but looking up at me. "Twenty blows would not kill you. It would only have punished you, terribly."
"You would have had this done," I asked, "because you hated me?"
"Yes, Master," she said. Then she added, hastily, "But I do not hate you now. I love you now. Please be kind to me, Master."
"Let me relieve you of the weight of this slave whip," I said, reaching up to untie it from her neck.
She lifted up her head, her head pressed back against the bars. Her body, her back, too, her lovely shoulder blades, was pressed against them. "Are you going to use it on me?" she asked.
"I did not hear you say 'Master,'" I said.
"Master," she said, quickly.
I untied the whip from her neck and, taking it, walked back to the table and bench. I put it on the bench. I sat down on the bench. I looked at the girl, standing with her back to the bars.
"Approach and kneel, Slave Girl," I said.
Quickly she came to the side of the table and knelt down before me.
"Am I to be whipped, Master?" she asked.
"Be silent," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I looked at the girl. I felt conflicting emotions. Lola was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. She was now kneeling before me, frightened and obedient, naked and braceleted, mine to do with as I pleased. Yes, she had caused me much pain, and had much abused me. Yet, interestingly, the miseries and humiliations which she had inflicted upon me were not uppermost in my mind. It was not that I was unaware that I now had an opportunity to work out a well-deserved revenge upon her beautiful slave hide; it is rather that that thought did not particularly occupy me. It was not, surely, what seemed to me of overwhelming interest and importance in the situation in which I found myself.
I looked at the beautiful, kneeling, braceleted woman. What seemed to me of overwhelming significance was simply this, that such a woman, one who must obey, and who was in my power, knelt at my feet.
"Master," said Lola.
"Yes," I said.
"I have not fed since this morning," she said. "May I feed?"
I took a piece of meat from the bowl on the table. I held it out to her. "Thank you, Master," she said. Then, turning her head delicately, she took it between her teeth. I then, for a time, fed Lola. She depended upon me, in the hours of my ownership of her, for her very food and drink. I could scarcely comprehend the feelings I had, feeding the beauty by hand. I had not realized such feelings could exist in a man. Then I placed the bowl on the floor and she, putting her head down, her hands braceleted behind her, biting and licking, addressed herself to its contents. I looked down at the kneeling, feeding slave. She was in my power. In these hours she was mine. I fought against the incredible surge of power and pleasure I felt, against the power and pleasure of blood and manhood. I fought against might and passion, and glory and joy, for I was a man of Earth. But in those moments, for a brief instant, before I could deplore and castigate my feelings, before I could muster misery and guilt, I had felt what it was to stand, if only briefly, in man's place in the order of nature. I had, for a brief instant, tasted dominance. But then I recalled that I was a man of Earth, and that the world of nature, and what I was and women were, must be rejected and repudiated. Thirsting, I must not drink. Starving, I must not feed. Never should one be true to oneself. Always should one be true to the images and lies of others, fearful ones, weaklings unable to be strong themselves, whose safety lay in the bleeding and tricking of more dangerous beasts. Is it not in the interest of slaves to prohibit kings from claiming their thrones?
Then I was overcome with misery and guilt that I had even dared to think such thoughts!
How wrong nature was! How wrong to be true to the deep themes of the animal kingdom! Did I truly need to be what I was? Why should I fulfill my needs? How wrong it was to have needs! And how far more wrong it would be to dare to fulfill them! Men, I knew, must be as flowers, not as lions, not as men.
But who will tell the lion to be a flower? Surely, only the flowers. And who will tell a man not to be a man? Surely, too, the flowers, who might otherwise fear the tread of the heavy paw, the passing of the foot of the striding warrior.
Then I laughed, for it suddenly seemed to me absurd that such incredible conflicts should rage within me. Surely I, a man of Earth, knew well how to live. I had been taught how to live, and if, in abiding by the denials and negativities of my world, I was made unhappy and miserable, what did that matter, truly, in the larger scheme of things? Who did I think I was? Did I think that I was important? Is a lion, or a man, truly, more important than an insect or a flower? If there were more flowers than lions, or men, must not it be
right to be a flower, and not a lion or a man? It may not be easy for lions or men to pretend to be flowers, but let them do their best. Above all do not let the flowers know that there may be a man or a lion amongst them. They would then be disturbed. They would flutter their petals fiercely.
Again I forced Gorean thoughts from my mind.
When I had laughed the girl, feeding, had stopped, and trembled. Then, after a time, she continued to feed.
"Here," I said. I crumbled the rest of the bread, which I had not eaten, which had been on the table, into her bowl, mixing it with the vegetables and meat which still remained there. "Thank you, Master," she said. She put down her head again, feeding. I smiled. The braceleted, beautiful slave was ravenous.
I had laughed for it had suddenly seemed to me absurd that I should even, for a moment, have allowed myself to think disapproved thoughts. Was I not of Earth? Was I not a true man, capable of conquering myself? Why, I wondered, should I conquer myself? Why should I not allow myself to be victorious? Then, again, chagrined, embarrassed, I thrust such thoughts from my mind.
But who is stronger, truly, I asked myself, he who continues to wound and bleed himself to please others, or he who refuses any longer to do so?
I shook my head, to force such a thought out of my mind.
The girl lifted her head. The bowl was clean. I picked up the bowl and carried it to the side, where I placed it on a small shelf.
"Thank you for feeding me, Master," she said.
I took a bit of her hair and, gently, wiped her mouth. To my surprise she put her teeth gently on my hand, and then licked and kissed at my hand. She then drew her head back. "You are not going to beat me, are you, Master?" she asked.