Norman, John - Gor 20 - Players of Gor.txt

by Players of Gor [lit]

  “Keep holding the veil up high,” she said. “Perhaps I will consider giving some

  thought to the matter.”

  Suddenly, with a cry of apprehension, looking down the road, Boots snapped away

  the cloth and whipped it behind his back, seeming to stuff it in his belt,

  behind his back. “Oh!” she cried in horror, cringing and half crouching down,

  trying to cover herself as well as she could, in maidenly distress. “What have

  you done, sir? Explain yourself, instantly!”

  “I fear brigand approach,” he said, looking wildly down the road. “Do not look!

  They must not see the wondrous veil! Surely they would take it from me!”

  “But I am naked!” she cried.

  “Pretend to be a slave!” he advised.

  “I,” she gasped, in horror, “pretend to be a slave?”

  “Yes!” he cried.

  “But I know nothing,” said the Brigella, in great innocence, to the audience,

  “of being a slave.”

  There was laughter.

  “What you know nothing of,” said the free woman to her, “is of being a free

  woman, meaningless slut.”

  The Brigella at one time or another had doubtless been a free woman. Accordingly

  she would presumably know a great deal

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  about being a free woman. On the other hand she did not dare respond to the free

  woman, for she was now a slave.

  “Would you rather be apprehended by the brigands?” inquired Boots of the

  Brigella. “They might be pleased to get their capture cords on a free woman.”

  “No!” she cried.

  “Kneel down,” he said, “quickly, with your head to the dirt!”

  “Oh, oh!” she moaned, but complied.

  “That way,” he said, “they make you for a mere slave, perhaps not worth the time

  it might take to put you in a noose and the time it might take to transport you

  to a salves point, and me for a poor merchant, perhaps not worth robbing. Here

  they come. They are fierce looking fellows.”

  “Oh,” she moaned, trembling, “oh, oh.”

  “Do not look up,” he warned her.

  “No,” she said.

  “No, what, Slave?” he said, sternly.

  “No, Master!” she cried.

  There was laughter. He now had her kneeling naked at his feet, addressing him as

  “Master”. In the Gorean culture, of course, this sort of thing is very

  significant. Indeed, in some cities such things as kneeling before a man or

  addressing him as “Master” effects legal imbondment on the female, being

  interpreted as a gesture of submission.

  There was now great laughter for, strolling across the stage, swinging censers,

  mumbling in what was doubtless supposed to resemble archaic Gorean, in the guise

  of Initiates, came Tarsk-Bit’s Lecchio and Chino. In a moment they had passed.

  “Those were not brigands,” cried the girl, angrily, looking up. “They were

  Initiates!”

  “I am sorry,” said Boots, apologetically. “I mistook them for brigands.”

  She leaped to her feet, covering herself with her hands, as well as she could.

  “You may now give me the veil, sir,” she said, angrily.

  “But you have not yet given me my peep,” protested Boots.

  “Oh!” she cried angrily.

  “Consider how you are standing,” said Boots, “half turned away from me, half

  crouched down, and holding your legs as you are, and with your hands and arms

  placed as they are, such things seem scarcely fair to me. Surely you must

  understand that such things constitute obstacles uncongenial, at the least, to

  the achievement of a peep of the quality in question.”

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  “Oh! Oh!” she cried.

  “It is a simple matter of bargaining in good faith,” said Boots.

  “Sleen!” she cried.

  “Perhaps we could get a ruling on the matter from a praetor,” suggested Boots.

  “Sleen! Sleen!” she cried.

  “I see that I must be on my way,” said Boots.

  “No!” she cried. “I must have that wondrous veil!”

  “Not without my peep,” said Boots.

  “Very well, sir,” she said. “How will you have your peep? What must I do?”

  “Lie down upon your back,” he said, “and lift your right knee, placing your

  hands at your sides, six inches from y our thighs, the palms of your hands

  facing upwards.” He regarded her. “No,” he said, “that is not quite it. Roll

  over, if you would. Better. Now lift your upper body from the dirt, supporting

  it on the palms of your hands, and look back over your shoulder. Not bad. But I

  am not sure that is exactly is. Kneel now, and straighten your body, putting

  your head back, clasping your hands behind the back of your head. Perhaps that

  is almost it.”

  “I hope so!” she cried.

  “But not quite,” he said.

  “Oh!” she cried in frustration.

  “Sometimes one must labor, and experiment, to find the proper peep,” he informed

  her.

  “Apparently,” she said.

  Boots, the, it seemed always just minimally short of success, continued

  dauntlessly to search for a suitable peep. In doing this, of course, the female

  was well, and lengthily, displayed for the audience.

  She was incredibly beautiful. The men cried out with pleasure, some of them

  slapping their thighs.

  “Disgusting!” cried the free woman.

  I myself considered bidding on the Brigella. She was incredibly, marvelously

  beautiful.

  “Disgusting!” cried the free woman.

  “It is you who are disgusting,” said one of the men to the free woman.

  “I?” she cried.

  “Yes, you,” he said.

  The free woman did not respond to him. She stiffened in her

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  robes, her small hands clenched in her blue gloves. How antibiological,, petty,

  and self-serving were her value judgments.

  “Look,” cried Boots to the Brigella, in his guise of a merchant. “Someone is

  coming!”

  “You will not fool me twice, you scoundrel, you cad!” she replied from her

  knees.

  “I think it is a woman,” said Boots.

  “What?” she cried, turning about, half rising, and then collapsed back in

  confusion, in misery, to her knees. She looked up at Boots, wildly. “It is Lady

  Tipa, my rival, from the village,” she said. “She cannot be allowed to see me

  like this. What, oh, what, shall I do? Where can I hide?”

  “Quickly,” cried Boots, “here, beneath my robes!”

  Swiftly, on her knees, wildly, knowing not what else to do, the girl had

  scrambled to Boots. IN a moment she was concealed beneath his robes, on her

  knees, only her calves and feet thrust out from beneath their hem.

  “I see, sir,” said the newcomer, who was unde
rstood to be the free woman, the

  Lady Tipa, but was presumably Boots’s Bina, usually the companion and confidant

  of the Brigella, “that you well know how to pout a slave through her paces.”

  “Why, thank you, noble lady,” said Boots.

  “I did not get a good look at her as I approached,” said the Bina. “Is she

  pretty?”

  “Some might think her passable,” said Boots, “but compared to yourself her

  beauty is doubtless no more than that of a she-urt compared to that of the

  preferred slave of a Ubar.”

  The Brigella churned with rage beneath Boots’s robes. She dared not emerge, of

  course.

  “What is wrong with your slave?” asked the Bina.

  “She burns with desire,” said Boots.

  “How weak slaves are,” said the Bina.

  “Yes,” said Boots.

  “I am looking for a girl from m y village,” said the Bina. “I was told, by two

  fellows, peddle4s, I think, whom I take to be of the merchants, that she may

  have come this way.”

  “Could you describe her?” asked Boots.

  “Her name is Phoebe,” said the Bina, “and were she not veiled it would be easier

  to describe her to you, as she is frightfully homely.”

  The girl under Boots’s robes shook with fury.

  “Still,” said the newcomer, “you might have been able, nonetheless, to recognize

  her. She is too short, too wide in the hips and has thick ankles.”

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  At this there was more churning beneath Boots’s robes.

  “Surely there is something wrong with your slave,” said the Bina.

  “No, no,” Boots assured her.

  “What is she doing under there?” asked the Bina.

  “She begged me piteously to be permitted to give me the kiss of a slave that I,

  in my weakness, at last yielded to her entreaties.”

  There was much furious stirring then beneath the robes.

  “How kind you are, sir,” said the Bina.

  “Thank you,” said Boots.

  There was a muffled cry, as of rage and protest, from beneath the robes.

  “Did she say something?” asked the Bina.

  “Only that she begs to be permitted to begin,” said Boots.

  The robes shook with fury.

  “Surely there is something wrong with her,” said the Bina.

  “It is only that she is suffering whit need,” said Boots.

  “Though she is naught be a meaningless slave,” said the Bina, “she is yet, like

  myself, a female. Please be kind to her, sir. Let her please you.”

  “How understanding you are,” marveled Boots. “You may begin,” he said to the

  concealed girl.

  The robes shook violently, negatively.

  “What is wrong?” asked the Bina.

  “She is shy,” said Boots.

  “The slave need not be shy on my account,” said the Bina. “Let her begin.”

  “Begin,” said Boots.

  The robes again shook violently.

  “Begin,” he said.

  Again there seemed a great commotion beneath his robes.

  Boots then, with the flat of his hand, with some force, cuffed the girl

  concealed under his robes. Instantly she knelt quietly. “Lazy girl, naughty

  girl,” chided Boots. The tops of her toes, as she knelt, beat up and down in

  helpless frustration. “I see that I shall have to draw you forth and beat you,”

  she said.

  “Look!” cried the Bina. “She begins!”

  “Oh, she does, doesn’t she?” said Boots. “Oh, yes!”

  “What a slave she is!” cried the Bina. “How exciting! How exciting!”

  “To be sure,” agreed Boots. “Ah! Yes! Ohhh! To be sure! Eee! Yes! Quite! Oh!

  Yes! Oh! Oh! To be sure! Eee! Yes! Oh! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Ohhh, yes, yes,

  yes.” Boots then wiped his brow with his sleeve.

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  “Has she gone?” called out the Brigella, after a time, her voice muffled from

  beneath his robes.

  “Yes,” said Boots.

  The Brigella, as the Lady Phoebe, extricated herself, on her knees, from the

  robes of Boots Tarsk-Bit. She turned about, still on her knees. “Tipa!” she

  cried in horror.

  “I thought you had gone,” said Boots

  “Phoebe!” cried the Lady Tipa.

  “Tipa,” moaned Phoebe, in misery.

  “Phoebe!” cried the Lady Tipa, in delight.

  “Tipa!” pleaded Phoebe.

  “Phoebe on her knees, as naked as a slave, on a public road, crawling out of a

  man’s robes!” laughed the Bina, pointing derisively at her. “How shameful, how

  outrageous, how marvelous, how delicious, how glorious!”

  “Please, Tipa,” pleaded Phoebe.

  “You are the sort of girl who should have been whipped and collared at puberty!”

  said the Bina.

  The free woman in the audience stiffened at these words. These words seemed to

  have some special meaning for her. She shook her head and clenched her small

  fists in the blue gloves.

  “You have always been a slave,” said the Bina.

  “I am a free woman,” wailed the Brigella.

  “Slave, slave, slave!” laughed the Bina. “This story will bear a rich retelling

  in the village,” she said hurrying away.

  “I am ruined,” wailed the Brigella, rising to her feet, wringing her hands. “I

  cannot bear now to return to the village and, if I did, they would put a chain

  on me and sell me.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Boots, soothingly.

  “Do you not think so, sir?” she asked.

  “It might be a rope,” he said.

  “Ohhhhh,” she wailed. “Where can I go? What can I do?”

  “Well,” said Boots, “I must be on my way.”

  “But what shall I do?” she asked.

  “Try to avoid being eaten by sleen,” said Boots. “It is growing dark.”

  “Where are my clothes?” she begged.

  “I do not see them em about,” said Boots. “They must have blown away.”

  “Take me with you!” she begged.

  “Perhaps you would like to kneel and beg my collar?” he asked. “I might then

  consider whether or not I find you pleasing enough to lock it on your neck.”

  “Sir,” she cried, “I am a free woman!”

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  “Good luck with the sleen,” he said.

  “Accept me as a traveling companion,” she urged.

  “And what would you do, to pay your way on the road?” he asked.

  “I could give you a kiss, on the cheek, once a day,” she said. “Surely you could

  not expect more from a free woman.”

  “Good luck with the sleen.” said he.

  “Do not go,” she begged. “I am willing, even, to enter into the free

  companionship with you!”

  Boots staggered backwa
rds, as though overwhelmed. “I could not dream of

  accepting a sacrifice of such enormity on your part!” he cried.

  “I will. I will!” she cried.

  “But I suspect,” said Boots, suspiciously, musingly, regarding her, “that there

  may be that in you which is not really of the free companion.”

  “Sir?” she asked.

  “Perhaps you are, in actuality, more fittingly understood as something else,” he

  mused.

  “What can you mean, sir?” she asked.

  “Does it not seem strange that you would have fallen madly in love with me at

  just this moment?”

  “Why, no, of course not,” she said.

  “Perhaps you are merely trying to save yourself from sleen,” he mused.

  “No, no,” she assured him.

  “I fear that you are tricking me,” he said.

  “No!” she said.

  “In any event,” he said, “you surely cannot expect me to consider you seriously

  in connection with the free companionship.”

  “Why not?” she asked, puzzled.

  “A naked woman,” he asked, skeptically, “encountered beside a public road?”

  “Oh!” she cried in misery.

  “Do you have a substantial dowry?” he asked. “An extensive wardrobe, wealth,

  significant family connections, a high place in society?”

  “No!” she said. “No! No!”

  “And if you return to your village I think you will find little waiting for you

  there but a rope collar and a trip in a sack to the nearest market.”

  “Misery!” she wept.

  “Besides,” he said, “in your heart you are truly a slave.”

  “No!” she cried.

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  “Surely you know that?” he asked.

  “No!” she cried.

  “I do not even think you saw the wondrous veil,” he said.

  “I saw it,” she said. “I saw it!”

  “What was its predominant color?” he asked, sharply.

  “Yellow,” she said.

  “No,” he said.

  “Red!” she said.

  “No!” he said.

  “Blue, pink, orange, green!” she cried.

  “Apparently you are a slave,” he said, grimly. “You should not have tried to

  masquerade as a free woman. There are heavy penalties for that sort of thing.”