by John Norman
"I kneel before my master," said Lola. "I await my rape."
I cried out with misery and frustration. Lola looked at me, startled, unable to comprehend the conflict which raged within me. I wanted to seize her and throw her to her back, and vent my wrath and joy upon her, uncompromisingly exercising the nocturnal rights which had been assigned to me over her, taking her hot slave flesh in my arms, making it writhe to my least touch, making her scream her submission to me as her master, but I knew that I was a man of Earth, and that she was a person.
Suddenly, angrily, stupidly, foolishly, I lashed out at her, cuffing her back with the back of my left hand. She fell backward. I was startled that I had struck her. Yet it had happened so swiftly I had hardly realized what I was doing. I had been furious not really with her, but with myself. Lola was innocent. She was only a naked, aroused, beautiful, collared slave at my feet. It was not her fault that she had been thrown to me nor was it her fault that her needs were those of what she was, a slave girl.
Yet she was the obvious precipitant of my dilemma, my misery. It was thus that I had suddenly, irrationally, struck her. It was foolish, and meaningless, that I had done so. She was flung back in the straw, blood at her beautiful mouth. I expected her to look at me with horror and reproach. Instead, she put down her head and crawled swiftly to my feet. She then lay on her stomach in the straw before me, her upper body lifted on her elbows, her head down, over my feet. I felt her lips, sweet and full, kissing at my feet. There was a kind of wonder and pleasure in her voice. "Yes, Master," she said. "Thank you, Master. I am sorry if I was not pleasing to you." I then understood that she had taken the blow as a token of my mastery over her, an explicit expression of my sovereignty over her. I felt her lips kissing at my feet, happily, gratefully.
"It is enough," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said. She continued to lie at my feet, her head turned to the side, her right cheek on my feet. I felt her hair, too, on my feet.
A slave girl is subject to discipline. She may be struck with or without reason. Usually, of course, the master would have a reason, however trivial it might be. Sometimes, of course, he may strike her with no obvious reason whatsoever, even one which is trivial. This serves to remind her that she is a slave and that no reason is needed to strike her.
I looked down at Lola.
She looked up at me, and then, turning her head and lifting herself on her elbows, she again kissed my feet. She then rolled from my feet a yard or so away in the straw. She lay on her back and regarded me, happily. "It will not be necessary to strike me again, Master," she said. "I will be docile, and obedient and loving." She looked up at me, smiling, her left knee raised, her hands beside her, palms up, in the straw. "Have me, Master," she said. "Subject me, uncompromisingly, to your pleasure."
"Do you beg it?" I asked. I did not know why I asked the question.
"Yes, Master," she said, smiling, "I beg it."
"Why were you put in with me tonight?" I asked.
"To be punished," she said. She smiled. "I await my punishment, Master," she said.
Then suddenly I was afraid, and guilty, and confused. I was weak, and I reddened, and stammered. I had struck the poor thing. And surely she did not expect me to be strong, and to take her in hand, as would have a Gorean master. I was of Earth. And did she not know she was a person?
"I am sorry I struck you," I stammered. "It was a stupid and cruel thing to do. I was really angry not so much at you, as at myself. I behaved as a brute. I am very sorry."
She looked at me, frightened. She did not understand me, or the forces which moved within me. How could she have understood me, she a Gorean girl, collared, whom strong men had long ago taught her womanhood? Did she not know that I, because of my fears, was trying to make her like a man? Could she not, like many of the women of Earth, because of her own fears, try, too, to be like a man? Each sex could then, because of its fears, try to protect itself from the other, denying the obvious complementarities of nature, the fitting together of diverse dispositions and modalities. The wholeness is not achieved, the puzzle is not solved, by trying to put together pieces of the same configuration.
I looked at her. Quickly, trembling, confused, she knelt, making herself small. She put her head down to the straw.
"Do not be cruel to me," she begged. "If I have displeased you, simply whip me. I do not understand you, or what you are doing. I am only a poor female slave. Please do not torture me in this insidious fashion. If I have so grievously displeased you, I beg to be simply put under the honesty of a leather discipline."
"I do not understand," I said.
She moaned. "Please do not subject me to these tortures, Master," she begged. "Lola is only a poor slave. Just tie her and whip her. Perhaps then she will learn to please you better."
"I am not trying to be cruel to you," I said. "I am trying to be kind to you."
She moaned.
"Look up," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said. She looked up, frightened.
"I'm sorry I struck you," I said. "I am very sorry."
"But Lola is only a slave," she said. "Slaves are meant to be struck and abused."
"I am sorry," I said.
"Sorry?" she said.
"Yes," I said. "I am truly sorry."
She shuddered. "Tie me and whip me," she begged.
"Here," I said, hurrying to the wine, which I had left on the table behind me. I took the wine and, as the girl trembled, crouched near her, holding the wine to her lips. Shuddering, she drank. "You see," I said, "you served me wine, now I serve you wine."
"Yes, Master," she said, trembling.
I understand now her trepidation better than I did at the time. My emotional conflicts and frustrations, my warring motivations, expressing themselves in inconsistencies in speech and behavior, had terrified her. She was a Gorean girl, and her experiences on Gor had not prepared her to understand a male who had been taught to suspect his own nature, and to torture and lacerate himself for impulses, desires and feelings as natural as the circulation of the blood and the movement of molecules through the membranes of cells. Shame she could understand, such things as the chagrin of a man who has failed in honor, but pathologically conditioned guilts, instilled neurotic anxieties, used as control devices to perpetuate sickened societies were unfamiliar to her.
I think, now, she may have feared that she was in the presence of a madman, one to whom her beauty, her vulnerability and helplessness seemed meaningless, one who seemed not to understand that she was a woman and a slave, one who seemed ignorant of her desires, impervious to her needs, one who did not seem to know what to do with her or how to handle her, one who, though ostensibly sane, and possibly dangerously strong, yet behaved unpredictably and irrationally, one who, though ostensibly a male, behaved in no fashion remotely resembling that of a man. It is little wonder she was frightened. Sorely, she must have surmised, if I were not mad, I was at least a fool. Who but a fool would not drink when he was thirsty, or eat when he was hungry? But I was not a madman or a fool. I was neither, or perhaps both. I was a man of Earth.
"Forgive me," I begged the girl.
She shuddered, spilling a bit of wine. She looked at me with terror. I did not strike her.
"Are you finished?" I asked.
She nodded her head, frightened.
"There is some left," I said. "Finish it."
I held the chipped bowl, and the girl, frightened, finished the wine. I put the shallow, chipped bowl on the table.
I returned to the girl, and crouched down beside her. She feared to meet my eyes.
"Please forgive me," I begged.
She shuddered.
"Forgive me," I said, irritably.
"I forgive you, Master," she said, quickly.
"I did not mean, truly, to order you to forgive me," I said. "I would appreciate it if you, of your own free will, would voluntarily forgive me."
"Yes, Master," she whispered. "I forgive you, of my own free wil
l, voluntarily."
"Thank you," I said.
"Don't hurt me, please, Master," she begged. She refused to meet my eyes.
"Look at me," I said.
"Please do not torture me, Master," she said.
"Look at me," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
She lifted her head and looked into my eyes. I was startled. The girl was genuinely frightened.
I saw the slender steel collar on her neck. My eyes must have momentarily hardened, or glinted. She shuddered. Then I again controlled myself. "You need not call me 'Master'," I said, kindly.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Do not call me 'Master'," I said.
"I am a slave, Master," she wept. Disrespect in a slave can be punishable by death.
"Do not call me 'Master'," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said. "I mean 'Yes,'" she wept.
"Call me 'Jason'," I said.
She looked away from me, down, trembling, terrified. " 'Jason'," she whispered. "Please do not kill me, Master."
"I do not understand," I said.
"You have scorned my beauty," she wept. "You refused to rape me. You have forced me to show you disrespect. Now will you not, cruelly, punish me for being insufficiently beautiful, for not having yielded in your arms as an abject slave, and for having shown you disrespect? Will you not now throw me to your feet and kick and beat me mercilessly, venting your displeasure upon me?"
"Of course not," I said.
She shrank back. "The House of Andronicus would not like it if you killed me," she said. "I am their property."
"I have no intention of killing you," I said.
She shook with relief. Then she looked at me. "I am here," she said. "What are you going to do with me?"
"Nothing," I said.
"I find that hard to believe, Master," she said.
I shrugged.
"What game are you playing with me?" she said. "For what cruel treatment and punishment are you preparing me?"
"None," I said.
She shuddered. "I know you are not of Gor," she said. "Are all men of your world like you?" she asked.
"Most, I suppose," I said.
"How their slaves must live in terror of them," she said.
"Most men of my world do not have slaves," I said. "Our women, almost uniformly, are kept free."
"Whether they wish it or not?" she asked.
"Of course," I said, "in such a matter their wishes are unimportant."
"That is called freedom?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. "I suppose so."
"But some men, strong men," she said, "must enslave their women."
I nodded. I had known of such cases. Such men, I supposed, made their own laws.
"But most men of your world," she said, "do not have slaves."
"Of course not," I said.
"Did you have slaves?" she asked.
"No," I said.
"Not even one slave?" she asked.
"No," I said.
"Are you typical of those of your world?" she asked.
"I think so," I said.
"If that is true," she said, regarding me narrowly, "how is that you know so well how to plunge a woman into terror?"
"If I have inadvertently frightened you," I said, "I am truly sorry. Such was not my intention."
"I am naked and collared, and at your mercy," she said. "Do you truly expect me to believe that you have nothing in store for me?"
"I will not abuse you," I said. "You are safe with me. Have no fear."
"You torture me so," she cried. "Why do you not just do what you are going to do and have done with it? Was I truly so cruel to you that you have seen fit to subject me to these agonies?"
I did not know how to reassure her.
"Is there some cruel caprice you intend to practice upon me," she asked, "some humiliating and degrading performance you will exact from me for your pleasure?"
"Do not be afraid," I said.
"Torturer," she wept. "Torturer!"
"Do not be afraid," I said.
She put her head in her hands, weeping. "How cruel and insidious are the men of your world," she wept. "How simple and bluff are the exactions of the men of Gor in comparison. Why could you not, simply, have made me serve you, and then raped and beaten me if you wished?"
"I have no intention of doing you harm," I said.
She, sobbing, crawled to the bench where I had left the whip. She took it from the bench in her teeth and, carrying it in her teeth, crawled to me. She lifted the whip in her teeth to me. I took it from between her small white teeth. "Whip me," she begged.
I threw the whip aside. "No," I said.
She, shuddering, lay at my feet. She did not know what would be done with her.
I did not speak to her but went to the dark blanket which lay to one side on the straw. I spread the blanket, which was heavy, and fashioned from the wool of the bounding hurt, on the straw. I gestured to the blanket. "Lie on the blanket," I told her, kindly.
She crept to the blanket and lay upon it, on her back. Her body was very beautiful on the dark blanket. She touched her collar, lightly, with her finger tips. She was a slave. She looked at me. "Does it begin now?" she asked.
I stood over her, and looked down at her small, trembling body, open to whatever I might choose to inflict upon it.
I crouched beside her, and her eyes, terrified, met mine. "Please be kind to Lola, Master," she whispered. "She is only your poor slave."
Gently I took the half of the blanket on which she was not lying and drew it over her, covering her. "It is late now," I said. "You must be tired. Go to sleep."
She looked at me, frightened, disbelievingly. "Are you not going to own me?" she asked.
"Of course not," I said. "Rest now, pretty Lola." Then I realized that I, a man of Earth, should not have called her 'pretty Lola'. That she was pretty, decidedly so, and helplessly a slave, must be ignored; such things must not be recognized. They might interfere with the artificial constructions of neuteristic personhood, constructions in terms of which my conditioning required me to view her. How foolish it now seems to me that I then refused to see a beauty as a beauty, and a slave as a slave.
"Are you not going to share the blanket?" she asked.
"No," I said.
"But I am branded, and wear a collar," she said.
"Rest," I said. "Go to sleep, Lola."
I went to the far wall of the cell, that opposite the bars. I sat back against the wall.
"Go to sleep," I said to the girl, gently.
She looked at me, the blanket pulled about her neck. "Am I not to be tied, or chained?" she asked.
"No," I said.
She lay there, quietly.
"You are safe," I told her. "Go to sleep."
"Yes, Master," she said. "Master," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"I am a slave." she said.
"Yes," I said.
"Are you not going to treat me as a slave?" she asked.
"Of course not," I said. "I am a man of Earth."
Did she truly think that I, a man of Earth, would treat her as a slave, merely because she was a slave?
She was silent.
"Go to sleep," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I leaned back against the wall, sitting in the straw. The girl lay very quietly. We did not speak for a long time. Then, after perhaps an Ahn, I heard her moan, and saw her twist under the blanket.
"Master," I heard her beg. "Master."
I went to her side.
In the half light, she thrust the dark blanket down about her thighs. She half sat, half lay, on the lower portion of the blanket. She looked at me. She tried to put her small hands out, to clasp me piteously behind the neck. But I caught her wrists, and held her hands from me. "Master," she begged. "Please, Master." Her body, small and curved, was beautiful in the half light. Her breasts were marvelous. I noted the sweet turn of her body where the cur
ve of her belly yielded to the flare of her hips.
"What is wrong with you?" I asked. Her small strength was no match for mine.
"Please have me, Master," she begged. "Please take me, and as a slave!"
I looked at her small body, and at the collar of steel on her throat.
"No," I said.
She stopped struggling, and I released her wrists. I rose to my feet and stood regarding her. She knelt now, trembling, on the blanket.
"I am a man of Earth," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said, her head down.
I was angry, and frightened. My heart was pounding.
"You have nothing to fear from me," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
Surely she must know that she had nothing to fear from one such as I, who would treat her with dignity and respect.
Why, then, was I terrified of her, she only a slave? I think it was because I feared she might release in me things which I feared to understand, because I feared she might release in me something proud and savage, something which would be a stranger to apologies and pretenses, something long-forgotten and mighty, something which had been bred in caves and the hunt, something which might be called a man.
I looked upon the girl, the kneeling slave. For an instant I felt a surgency of power.
Then I recalled that I must not be a man, for manhood was prohibited and forbidden; it was something to be belittled and ridiculed. One must not be a man. One must rather be a person. Lions must be snared, and castrated and bled. There is no place for them among the flowers. Let lions be taught it is their function to draw the carts of sheep. Let them then be rewarded with bleats of approval.
But, for an instant, looking upon the girl, I had felt stirring within me something dark and mighty, uncompromising and powerful, something which told me that such beauties as now knelt before me were the full and rightful properties of men.
Then I thrust such thoughts from my mind.